Law Enforcement and its abuse of power

[BigFatCoward]

7 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The thought occurred to me, but the question is also why was the kid being held at gunpoint for a minor traffic violation to begin with. And one of the answers is that the 2017 law changed the rules for the use of firearms by the police, who are now quick to draw their guns, even in situations when they are unnecessary.
A bit of perspective here: this was a 17 year old kid behind the wheel of an average car. The officers in the video are biker gendarmes, i.e. they are technically military, not police, and part of their job is precisely to catch people in cars...
So what led military law enforcement agents to draw their guns after a routine traffic stop? Even assuming the kid was uncollaborative (probably terrified, possibly defiant), was there anything he could have said or done that justified placing him at gunpoint?
To be clear: this ain't the US. The police aren't supposed to place you at gunpoint just because they can, and the gendarmes especially are trained to deal with serious criminals. Did that kid do or say anything that made him seem like a dangerous criminal, or did he just look like someone who might be?
I'm sure the gendarme in the video will claim that this was in fact an accidental discharge. I'm sure they'll say Nahel was uncollaborative and defiant, and that they drew their gun because he was being insulting and threatening. But the question here is whether Nahel was an actual threat to the officers. Of course, the video alone doesn't allow us to be absolutely certain he wasn't. It doesn't change the fact that thirteen people were killed in such circumstances last year alone, which tells us the problem is that these guns should stay in their holsters.

Well why don't we wait and see?  They may have had intel that there were firearms in the vehicle.  Since we don't know (as far as i'm aware the information hasn't been released) maybe people should wait before they burn stuff down. 

If it was just a random traffic stop then its outrageous, but driving off from a random traffic stop with a gun pointed at you is clearly a terrible decision.  

To the bolded, that is insane.  

[Rippounet]

Just now, BigFatCoward said:

To the bolded, that is insane.  

Yes, and that's why people are burning stuff down. On some level, Nahel specifically isn't that relevant, it's the pattern that is outrageous.

But I'm angry at myself for mistaking the thugs for gendarmes, so I must repeat myself as a kind of apology.
I had friends in the police some years ago, and they always said police bikers were cowboys. They just don't get enough training for what they do compared to the gendarmes with the same job. The uniforms look similar, but biker gendarmes are far more professional.
Those guys being police explains a lot to me. I'm a white middle-aged middle-class male and I am scared of these guys. A brown-skinned 17 year without a driving licence would be absolutely terrified of them.

4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

They may have had intel that there were firearms in the vehicle.

Even though we can't absolutely rule it out, that's a huge stretch.

[BigFatCoward]

3 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

 

Even though we can't absolutely rule it out, that's a huge stretch.

The london riots were caused by someone with a firearm in their vehicle being shot dead, its the most likely reason they had their weapons drawn, after small dick energy. 

[Week]

56 minutes ago, Week said:

One might think that this would be the type of case to convince the US' largest legal violent gang coalition to advocate for gun regulations... But nah.

Maybe one good apple (on this topic at least)

 

 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

If it was just a random traffic stop then its outrageous, but driving off from a random traffic stop with a gun pointed at you is clearly a terrible decision.  

 

I disagree; if there's a good chance that you get shot for being there (as apparently 13 others did last year) then running away becomes a way in theory to save your life. Even if it's a small chance it's significantly higher than zero. 

[BigFatCoward]

7 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I disagree; if there's a good chance that you get shot for being there (as apparently 13 others did last year) then running away becomes a way in theory to save your life. Even if it's a small chance it's significantly higher than zero. 

How many traffic stops do you think there are a year? 13 out of hundreds of thousands is statistically zero. Driving into an officer with a gun pointed at your face, you are far more likely getting shot.

You shouldn't get shot for either, but it was a bad choice. 

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

if there's a good chance that you get shot for being there (as apparently 13 others did last year) then running away becomes a way in theory to save your life.

Huh?

Quote

The lethal shooting on Tuesday was the third of its kind this year, down from a record 13 people who were killed after not complying with a traffic stop in 2022, according to a police spokesperson

BFC seems to be correct: not complying is what gets people killed. There appear to have been 0 deaths among those who did in fact comply with traffic stops.

[Zorral]

Here in the USA people who comply are shot by cops all the time.

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Huh?

BFC seems to be correct: not complying is what gets people killed. There appear to have been 0 deaths among those who did in fact comply with traffic stops.

Forgive me for being cynical about this but in the US at least people who don't comply with stops are people like George Floyd and Philando Castile. Police have said many times that the person they killed was not complying - only to find out later that this was entirely covering their ass. 

 

[BigFatCoward]

I'm amazed there are only about 120 a year in the US. I thought it would be waaaaaaay higher. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, BigFatCoward said:

I'm amazed there are only about 120 a year in the US. I thought it would be waaaaaaay higher. 

It's probably about that high, but police kill people for a whole lot of other reasons too. Also our reporting on police stats in the US is highly non-uniform and sketchy as hell. 

[Ran]

55 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I thought it would be waaaaaaay higher. 

Media and the internet wildly skews perceptions. 

From this site, I tried to find all deaths related to vehicles:

April 12: Witnessing two men loading marijuana into a car, police attempt to stop them, the driver refuses and strikes the police as he drives away, the police shoot and the passenger is killed.

April 24: A drug trafficking related stop leads to the driver trying to get away, a police officer clinging to the door of his car. Another officer shoots and kills the driver and the passenger dies of wounds later.

May 25: A driver leads gendarmes on a chase for several kilometers, refusing to stop. He ends up abandoning the car and jumping into a river, where he drowns.

June 4: Bicycle police attempt to stop a vehicle for failure to wear a seatbelt. The driver starts the car and allegedly rushes at the police, leading to several shots being fired by the police. Witnesses claim that the driver started the car but did not actually advance. The passenger is killed, and the driver has been sued by the family for her death.

June 14: A police roadblock is set up for a vehicle that is apparently acting strangely. The refrigerated van refuses to stop and a brigadier of the police fires several times. One person is killed.

July 7: Police spot two men on a scooter with the passenger carrying an automatic weapon. A pursuit begins, the passenger allegedly aims at the police, and the police fire, killing the driver. 

July 13: Not sure if this counts, as the vehicle complied with the stop... but the passenger, wanted for questioning in a  rape, began to stab himself with a knife, and then turned the knife on the police, injuring one. The officer's colleague fired and killed him.

July 27: A car driven by six minors at high speed attempts to avoid a police check, and the 16 year old driver loses control of the car. One of the passengers, a 16-year-old, is ejected from the car and dies instantly. 

August 18: Police check a parked car reported as stolen, the driver tries to flee, striking one of the officers who is thrown over the front of the car. The officers open fire. The passenger is immediately killed, the driver dies the next day. 

August 23: Police try to check a driver of a scooter without a license plate, the driver refuses to stop and is chased, loses control, and dies as a result of the subsequent crash.

August 29: Police check a car with lights off and fake license plates. The driver starts the car and tries to drive away, one officer grabs the door and opens it, and manages to fire once as he believes the "extreme movement" of the vehicle at that moment is endagering him, killing the driver.

September 7: A driver trues to break through an anti-drugs blockade, and strikes an officer in his flight. The passenger is killed, the driver injured. 111kg of cocaine is found in the car.

September 7: An SUV driving dangerously, the police attempt to stop him, he drives off and a chase ensues. The SUV is stolen, and strikes a police vehicle. The police open fire and the driver is killed. 

September 10: At 3:20 AM, police attempt to stop a car that was driving at high speed. The driver ends up hitting a tree and fleeing. A taser is deployed, and the man throws himself into a river to try and get away. The police try to rescue him but fail. His body is later found, drowned.

October 5: Police attempt to stop a vehicle, who refuses. A chase begins. The man ends up in a dead end, and opens fire at the police (it may be it's the passenger who fires). The police fire back, and the passenger is killed, while the driver is injured.

October 14: Police try to check a car that lacks insurance and has not used a turn signal correctly. The vehicle ends up in a back alley and reverses towards the police, who believe he was trying to run them over, and they shoot and kill him. Witnesses claim he was driving very slowly, 

October 28: Police try to stop a scooter whose driver was not wearing required gloves and who had run a traffic light. He refused to stop, and in the process of turning to see if he was being followed lost control of the scooter and ran into two oncoming cars. HE dies of his injuries.

December 27: Police try to stop a scooter where the driver and passenger did not have required helmets. They try to get away and are pursued until they hit a van. The driver dies of his injuries.

The bolded items are the police shootings that I believe add up to the 13 killed last year, although a 14th person was shot and killed on July 13 (the passenger who stabbed a police officer after the driver complied with the traffic stop). Of these 13 deaths, 10 are fairly clear-cut cases in which criminals refused to comply because they were conducting criminal activity (drug trafficking, stolen vehicles, illegal firearm possession) and the police argue in all those cases that they and/or the public were endangered.

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Ran

[BigFatCoward]

@Ranthere's a few of them that on the face of it seem to be no blame for police at all.

Some others though make depressing reading. My thought has always been (and I never have or would carry a firearm) if someone escapes so fuck, they'll come around again, criminals always do.  Clearly most police shootings during stops involve significant criminality, which makes the suspects make poor decisions. 

Unless I was actively being fired at I can't imagine any reason to discharge a firearm.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

16 minutes ago, Ran said:

Media and the internet wildly skews perceptions. 

From this site, I tried to find all deaths related to vehicles:

April 12: Witnessing two men loading marijuana into a car, police attempt to stop them, the driver refuses and strikes the police as he drives away, the police shoot and the passenger is killed.

April 24: A drug trafficking related stop leads to the driver trying to get away, a police officer clinging to the door of his car. Another officer shoots and kills the driver and the passenger dies of wounds later.

May 25: A driver leads gendarmes on a chase for several kilometers, refusing to stop. He ends up abandoning the car and jumping into a river, where he drowns.

June 4: Bicycle police attempt to stop a vehicle for failure to wear a seatbelt. The driver starts the car and allegedly rushes at the police, leading to several shots being fired by the police. Witnesses claim that the driver started the car but did not actually advance. The passenger is killed, and the driver has been sued by the family for her death.

June 14: A police roadblock is set up for a vehicle that is apparently acting strangely. The refrigerated van refuses to stop and a brigadier of the police fires several times. One person is killed.

July 7: Police spot two men on a scooter with the passenger carrying an automatic weapon. A pursuit begins, the passenger allegedly aims at the police, and the police fire, killing the driver. 

July 13: Not sure if this counts, as the vehicle complied with the stop... but the passenger, wanted for questioning in a  rape, began to stab himself with a knife, and then turned the knife on the police, injuring one. The officer's colleague fired and killed him.

July 27: A car driven by six minors at high speed attempts to avoid a police check, and the 16 year old driver loses control of the car. One of the passengers, a 16-year-old, is ejected from the car and dies instantly. 

August 18: Police check a parked car reported as stolen, the driver tries to flee, striking one of the officers who is thrown over the front of the car. The officers open fire. The passenger is immediately killed, the driver dies the next day. 

August 23: Police try to check a driver of a scooter without a license plate, the driver refuses to stop and is chased, loses control, and dies as a result of the subsequent crash.

August 29: Police check a car with lights off and fake license plates. The driver starts the car and tries to drive away, one officer grabs the door and opens it, and manages to fire once, killing the driver.

September 7: A driver trues to break through an anti-drugs blockade, and strikes an officer in his flight. The passenger is killed, the driver injured. 111kg of cocaine is found in the car.

September 7: An SUV driving dangerously, the police attempt to stop him, he drives off and a chase ensues. The SUV is stolen, and strikes a police vehicle. The police open fire and the driver is killed. 

September 10: At 3:20 AM, police attempt to stop a car that was driving at high speed. The driver ends up hitting a tree and fleeing. A taser is deployed, and the man throws himself into a river to try and get away. The police try to rescue him but fail. His body is later found, drowned.

October 5: Police attempt to stop a vehicle, who refuses. A chase begins. The man ends up in a dead end, and opens fire at the police (it may be it's the passenger who fires). The police fire back, and the passenger is killed, while the driver is injured.

October 14: Police try to check a car that lacks insurance and has not used a turn signal correctly. The vehicle ends up in a back alley and reverses towards the police, who believe he was trying to run them over, and they shoot and kill him. Witnesses claim he was driving very slowly, 

October 28: Police try to stop a scooter whose driver was not wearing required gloves and who had run a traffic light. He refused to stop, and in the process of turning to see if he was being followed lost control of the scooter and ran into two oncoming cars. HE dies of his injuries.

December 27: Police try to stop a scooter where the driver and passenger did not have required helmets. They try to get away and are pursued until they hit a van. The driver dies of his injuries.

The bolded items are the police shootings that I believe add up to the 13 killed last year, although a 14th person was shot and killed on July 13 (the passenger who stabbed a police officer after the driver complied with the traffic stop). Of these 13 deaths, 10 are fairly clear-cut cases in which criminals refused to comply because they were conducting criminal activity (drug trafficking, stolen vehicles, illegal firearm possession) and the police argue in all those cases that they and/or the public were endangered.

The biggest obstacle to stopping police violence is justifying it because the victims were engaged in criminal activity.  Police chases often put the public in far more danger than a stolen car or someone driving without a license.  

It's a crazy amount of damage done in the name, ostensibly, of an endangered public.  Particularly, given the rise of the public panopticon of technology and information, there's got to be a balance between the potential danger to the public from the perpetrator of a low level infraction being allowed to flee the scene, versus a full on police chase to apprehend or kill the suspect in the moment no matter what. 

In the US we've certainly made a point of formally and informally placing great value on the latter.  It's a shame to see other countries follow down that path.  

Edited June 29, 2023 by Larry of the Lake

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The biggest obstacle to stopping police violence is justifying it because the victims were engaged in criminal activity. 

Who knows how many dozens (hundreds?) of criminals complied and were arrested without violence, and how many dozens (hundreds?) didn't comply but end up being arrested without violence? We're only seeing a tiny sliver of all traffic stops, the cases of the ones who did not comply, who allegedly endangered the police (sometimes incontrovertibly, like the guy who opened fire on the police or the car that flung a police officer onto the hood) or the public, and whose non-complicance ended in a death. 

 

11 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Police chases often put the public in far more danger than a stolen car or someone driving without a license.  

In 2022, the number of deaths related to people complying with traffic stops is ... well, 1, the accused rapist passenger who stabbed himself and then the police. The number of members of the public killed or injured by police at traffic stop incidents was 0.

Which goes to show that the notion that "not complying may be saving your life" is a patent falsehood, in France... and, truth be told, in the US (20 million motorists are pulled over every year in the US!). Far more traffic stops happen without incident than with an incident. Believing otherwise is nonsense.

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Which goes to show that the notion that "not complying may be saving your life" is a patent falsehood, in France... and, truth be told, in the US (20 million motorists are pulled over every year in the US!). Far more traffic stops happen without incident than with an incident. Believing otherwise is nonsense.

Depends a lot on the person and the situation; per your logic how many stops did a person who would be otherwise killed get away? We can't know that either. 

And yeah, far more stops happen without incident in the US than not. Not gonna argue there. It changes significantly when you're talking about being a minority, or in certain neighborhoods; as an example, Minneapolis was specifically called out by the feds just recently for a systemic failure and pattern of abuse of people. It's not just deaths by shooting here, either - George Floyd wouldn't be counted in that statistic and he would have been someone who did not comply and was coded as a medical failure, not a murder - if there weren't witnesses. 

Ultimately here's the big problem: the main people who are reporting these statistics and keeping these records are the people who have a declared interest in ensuring they do not run into any problems. Using those statistics to prove that police are fine when you just comply assumes that anyone who wasn't fine was listed by the police as non-compliant; surely you see the error in using that data, right?

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

per your logic how many stops did a person who would be otherwise killed get away? We can't know that either. 

I'm sure that there's information somewhere on how many traffic stops there are each year, and how many aren't complied with, and how many who don't comply who actually get away. 

I did find the second of those: 

Quote

According to an article in Le  Monde  dated September 2022, the number of refusals to comply has multiplied by 25 over the past thirty years. According to a police source at BFM-TV, 25,822 refusals to comply were recorded by the police in 2022, compared to around 27,700 the previous year.

So, of 25,882 refusals to comply, we have 13 shooting deaths, a rate of 1 shooting death in 1991 refusals, vs. 0 shootings in some much larger number of traffic stops which were complied with. How many who refused to comply got away? No idea, can't find that statistic. However, in 2021, it was noted that police fired their weapons in .76% of all non-compliance stops. And in the US, 18% of people who evade police get away, so lets just transpose that.

So if we translated that to France... 4659 non-compliance that led to successful evasion, which if we suppose they were unsuccessful may mean ~2 people might have theoretically died if they had both failed to comply and been less lucky about their evasion... but then again, if they simply didn't fail to comply, there would be 0 deaths.

France is not the wild west. 

 

 

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

BFC seems to be correct: not complying is what gets people killed. There appear to have been 0 deaths among those who did in fact comply with traffic stops.

It's far more accurate to say that the police always claim the driver did not comply after having opened fire.

Again, I must stress this is not the US: only hardened criminals have firearms in the first place, which is why police officers are supposed to draw their guns only if they feel threatened or if they believe the driver is endangering people.
It's also useful to point out that (no doubt because of this) police sources originally claimed the driver had refused to stop and tried to run over them with his vehicle, which is why they drew their guns and opened fire, and then the video was released on the internet, contradicting their version of events. This is why the damn president himself did not side with the police on this one.
In a nutshell, the question isn't so much why the officer shot, but why they drew their gun. If the police started their communication with a lie, it's reasonable to assume they were trying to cover up a mistake, as in "we held a teenager at gunpoint because we didn't know how to convince him to step out of the vehicle." or maybe "we drew our guns because we could and because we didn't know someone was filming us."

[Rippounet]

Explosions and burning smoke in the air tonight.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm amazed there are only about 120 a year in the US. I thought it would be waaaaaaay higher. 

The fascists made it illegal to keep track of gun deaths.