> We live in a society where anywhere and everyone can have a gun at any time, and police are responding with fear in dangerous ways.
We have always lived in a society with lots of guns. This level of police fear is totally unwarranted (yes, I am well aware of the Dallas shootings, but they happened recently, while the police have been shooting willy-nilly for years). I blame the militarization of police, and indirectly the war in Iraq (from where a lot of these cops come from, having served a tour or two).
Both sides need to calm the fuck down. And aggressive, pumped cops who draw their weapons at the first chance need to be put out uniform.
Added later: I'd like to add that policing has not been this safe in decades. Last year 123 officers were killed on duty (which includes all deaths, including accidents, falls, etc.). The last time this few were killed (excluding last couple of years) is in 1959: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm...
>We have always lived in a society with lots of guns.
No we didn't (lot's of guns maybe -- the police using them like this, no).
In the times of the "Old West" maybe, but from what I've read and watched, police didn't behave that way up until after the 50s and 60s, this "Rambo/Dirty Harry" shit started sometime in the late 70s-80s, along with "Zero Tolerance" and other stupid ideas...
And of course sending something like a SWAT team for BS micro-offences like we read today was unheard of.
>Both sides need to calm the fuck down.
Both the police and the innocent getting shot or targeted?
Like joezydeco said & Dirk Praet on Schneier's blog, the "militarization" of police here is worse than it seems because our police are more aggressive than soldiers on battlefields. Those among my friends and family all griped about the rules of engagement they follow. Like their should be with policing, there's a series of events and escalations that can happen to reduce odds they shoot wrong person or just cause a huge scene.
Dirk said in a debate that our situation would improve a lot if U.S. police encountering U.S. citizens would exercise at least as much caution as U.S. troops do on foreign ones. What an observation.
Yeah, I have family that went to Iraq and they seem to be like "If we were that trigger-happy we'd be in jail. If we can operate in a war zone with tighter rules of engagement and risk of car bombs what's their problem?"
I think it's training and discipline. Training: Seems like Military's primary job is training and police see it as an annoyance. Discipline: military people go to jail for breaking RoE. Police CYA and get away with it.
Things are pretty wack when the infantry is better at not shooting innocent people in a war zone than police in a relatively safe country.
I resent the automatic position the union takes in any case.
> Carmine Disbrow, president of the Jersey City Police Officers Benevolent Association, is defending the cops.
They seem too eager to try to prove that they are worth the money they take out from the salary.
Edit: Here's another:
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/10/jersey_city_polic...
> During the trial, Garrigan noted that Clifford was crossing against the green, implying that Clifford bore some of the responsibility. He also noted that speeding on Kennedy Boulevard is common.
Can I say that to get out of a speeding ticket? No? Why not?
Yeah, but the war wasn't always a Rambo like affair.
If anything, an experience in WWII or Vietman etc, would make you not take violence that lightly, as the modern "war as game" and not being in equal terms with the enemy but 10 times as armoured can make you...
Cops need to have their use-of-force rules be softened to exactly the same as what is required of a non-police lawful carrier, unless they are engaging someone who's known to be hostile (serving a warrant, for instance).
The new standard: you only draw if there is an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. If you use "his hand was too close to his waist" as an excuse to draw on someone, or you draw before seeing them actually pose a threat, you go to prison for a very long time.
While we're at it, ban police unions, and don't require a conviction to have a bad cop removed from their job. Better safe than sorry.
I agree with the general sentiment, but cases like Trayvon Martin tells that a non-police US citizen can apparently chase a person down for not much more than "he doesn't look like he belong in this street", start an altercation, shoot and kill, and claim self-defense.
If drawing a gun because you think you're threatened is a US citizen's right, then it will remain a US police officer's right. You can have both, or you can have none.
> If drawing a gun because you think you're threatened is a US citizen's right, then it will remain a US police officer's right. You can have both, or you can have none.
I disagree - the police should absolutely be held to a higher standard, because they're empowered by the state.
Right. So when a police officer is on duty, he's more than just an American citizen - he's the embodiment of the people's desire to enforce law and order, and as such, he or she should be held to a higher burden than "I was scared someone was going to hurt me".
But here's the thing: imminent threat is exactly what they are allowed to react against now.
I think the issue isn't actual threat, it's perceived threat. And, cops perceive a lot of things as threatening enough to endanger your life upon.
But we know this. How to fix it? I don't think better training is the answer. I don't think cops will allow cams to work. I think incentives need to change.
Here's a fix: give a 40% (or whatever) pay bump to any officer that chooses to work without his gun.
We'll probably start seeing exactly where guns are required vs where they are an emotional crutch.
Most officers get less than six months of training.
In other countries (with much lower rates of officer involved homicides), officers receive years of training.
It is exactly perceived threat.
But they're so untrained that they perceive many things as threats that are not threats (a man with autism rocking back and forth on the ground while holding a toy firetruck, for example).
I think better training might help, but the problem isn't pre-job training, it's the training they get once they've been on the job.
Surely, most average people's first instinct isn't approach any interaction with hand on weapons? I doubt that's due to lack of training. I think that's due to an entirely wrong sort of implicit and explicit training.
Walking around with a gun + license to kill + fostering sense of us vs them for years will probably teach you that escalation and confrontation is the way to get people to back down. So that's what you do.
By incentivizing them to take a second look at their assumptions, maybe we can make progress?
I'd say just the opposite. Normal people don't react to others this way. The violent hair trigger that cops are set on is a result of their training - they're taught to do this.
The solution is not to train them more. The solution is to change the relationship between police and the public, and train them to respect that.
Police are presently trained to shoot first, to pull out their guns first, and perhaps not formally trained for this but they're taught by at least their peers and mentors to be hostile and aggressive first.
Better training changes this. Better training fosters their membership and relationship with the community. Better training gets them to pull out their guns only when they intend to use them, not when they first pull someone over. Better training will get NYC cops to stop shooting passerbies while trying to kill suicidal people (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-ch...).
The present training is overly focused on violent intervention. And for the majority of police-civilian interaction no violence is intended by the civilians or needed by the police. But their mindset is entirely predicated on "be violent before they are".
Interesting thought on the pay incentive, but what will happen is eventually a cop will get shot in the line of duty without a gun and the media will have a frenzy and that incentive will get canned.
It's hard enough to find good people (note the qualification) willing to be police already. Add more restrictions and penalties and you'll soon find that nobody will be willing to take the job.
Or you'll start the end of entire minorities fearing the police, the "system" and everything legal that you expect to represent fairness and justice. Fixing this undermines the gangs that operate in plain sight because locals fear them less than the police. It could even mean that your life isn't limited by where you grew up.
That is all to say by just improving police standards, you improve the entire country.
If you want better, train better. Hire better. Pay better. Don't keep settling for scraping the barrel for these gun-ho lunatics.
(I'm sure there are some very responsible, conscientious police out there but if they want to stop being tarred with this brush, they need to sort this shit out from the inside too!)
I don't accept that this is the case. Restrictions which disproportionately burden bad people in the job may make the job more attractive, rather than less, to good people.
Especially if those restrictions result in improved working conditions by mitigating police/community relations problems (either directly, or by disproportionately burdening, and thus encouraging job changes by, the bad people already in the job.)
> Add more restrictions and penalties and you'll soon find that nobody will be willing to take the job.
That's probably fine. If we really need them we can pay more to get them. What's happening now is that we're paying them with "get out of jail free" cards instead of money.
> What's happening now is that we're paying them with "get out of jail free" cards instead of money.
Which, just to emphasize this, disproportionately (compared to paying in cash -- I'm not saying that the majority of police have this preference) attracts people who prefer payment in "get out of jail free" cards, who may not be the people you want doing policing.
It's absolutely insane how quick and willing the police are to use lethal force. It's a systemic problem and an ongoing national tragedy. To fix it we need cameras on every single officer and a complete institutional overhaul where basic procedures are reworked and violations are dealt with aggressively. Too many officers currently see zero repercussions for this type of illegal behavior, and it tears apart the social fabric of our communities.
The police treat their personal safety as the top priority, and have been doing so for some time. As a result, they are totally willing to hurt or kill others in order to prevent themselves being threatened.
My view is that their job is to protect non-police, not the 'boys in blue'. As such, they should be willing to put themselves at risk in order to 'serve and protect' the public, including suspects. Most police units should change their motto to reflect their current priorities:
"to serve and protect police".
> they should be willing to put themselves at risk in order to 'serve and protect' the public, including suspects
By and large, they are. They'd be a lot more so, except for a press and a public ever ready to rip them to pieces for doing their jobs in a way that doesn't make sense to well-meaning people who really don't understand what they're looking at.
I've never been a police officer, but I've had some in the family. Their job is a lot like that of a systems administrator, in one specific way that's of import here: you don't get credit for your successes, because they're mostly only visible to people in your profession, but your failures are obvious to everyone.
First of all, the statistics for police violence in America are so incredibly awful compared to the rest of the world that we have to wonder what's going on here. It's not the press reports that is killing innocent people, it's the police.
Secondly, my personal experience doesn't support the idea that most police are bending over backwards for the people. My scorecard:
- Really great help with a flat tire and a missing jack.
- Decent, professional interactions in a handful of traffic tickets and that kind of thing.
But on the other hand:
- I watched a friend get roughed up (not exactly beaten, but rough physical treatment) for no reason at all.
- Been cursed at and had my IDs thrown around by annoyed cop (I understand why he was annoyed, but it was the result of him misinterpreting the situation)
- I've had false evidence entered against me over a speeding ticket (to be fair, I was guilty, but the actual evidence offered was fabricated)
- At about 13 y.o., in a market with a friend, and some bigger kids were physically bullying us. We turned to a police officer saying "those kids are trying to hurt us". The reply from the cop was, "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".
It's impossible to quantify, but my experience shows me that there's a really large proportion of bad cops.
I also have police officers in my family and I have anecdotal evidence from them that there are bad cops and everybody in a department knows who they are and what the issues are with those officers.
The expectations of performance are different between a police officer and a sys admin. It may happen that a sys admin makes a mistake causing systems to go down. Coworkers might be involved in the cleanup and pull an all nighter to recover the systems. Immediately after the incident there will be changes to process and responsibilities to minimize the likelihood of a similar event from happening. Sometimes people are fired. Sometimes people are demoted. Sometimes management is held responsible. Sometimes there is retraining.
Policing does not take any such corrective actions. Individual officers have the protection of powerful unions which hold all officers equal regardless of their performance and efficacy. Sergeants and captains can't correct the actions of the officers under their responsibility without facing repercussions from union representatives. Management becomes damage control and officers regress to the lowest mean because that is what makes their job easiest.
I think there is a lot of blame to go around. I blame our society for allowing this to continue for so long without demanding change from public representatives. I blame our elected officials for not changing laws to reflect our current reality. I blame police unions for protecting bad officers. I blame police department management for not attempting to deal with bad officers and enabling poor policing. Lastly I blame individual officers who should know better but most likely are not incentivized to change their behavior.
"I've never been a police officer, but I've had some in the family. Their job is a lot like that of a systems administrator, in one specific way that's of import here: you don't get credit for your successes, because they're mostly only visible to people in your profession, but your failures are obvious to everyone."
Excellent point. It's why I always qualify these reports with "some police departments, officers, etc" or "the corrupt cops." I make sure to differentiate between the lethal ones and those doing anywhere from non-lethal abuse (eg overticketing) to those doing a good job. Let's show some gratitude that the good ones are good and the bad ones are usually not that bad.
I'm not sure it is very useful to frame the matter in terms of gratitude; I might say rather that, in rightly condemning the actions of those officers who do abuse their office, we must take great care not to overreact at the expense of supporting those who faithfully discharge their oaths to serve the communities we all share.
To fix it we need cameras on every single officer and a complete institutional overhaul where basic procedures are reworked and violations are dealt with aggressively
Policing does seem like it should be a 1 or 2-strike you're out kind of a job, not a "we'll get multiple reports about misbehavior and do nothing until someone dies" kind of a job.
It sounds like this officer was out of line. However it made me think that maybe this type of stop is a trade off you have to make for the 2nd amendment. A stop where a cop is overly cautious and ready to use his weapon at a moments notice because the other person could have a weapon too. Police here don't carry guns and I am not worried if they try to stop me. In America I would be very worried if I was going to be stopped and I would be extremely cautious and deliberate in my movements whereas at home I wouldn't think about moving slowly and explaining every action I was taking.
Edit: To be 100% clear I am commenting generally, not on this specific incident which, from what we know, seems out of line.
As someone who lives in Arizona I find the officer's behavior really unusually extreme. Concealed carrying people and permit holders get pulled over all the time and it's usually not a big deal.
Rather, this seems to be an example of self-priming for some kind of worst case scenario, which I think is entirely unrelated to 2nd amendment. It's the assumption that, since something's awry, the worst case must be the immediate case, or even some sort of echo of PTSD and war mentality, or misguided ideas along the lines that keeping himself absolutely "safe" is somehow the same as keeping everyone else "safe."
I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. Knocking on the rear-window with a pistol (and pointing it at a little girl!) isn't taking a reasonable precaution against potential aggression, it's plain provocation.
First line of my comment: "It sounds like this officer was out of line.". I thought it was clear my comment was about stops in general, not this specific one.
I mean interactions where police are stopping someone they think may have committed a crime. Whether that's a traffic stop or theft they proceed with an abundance of caution because the perpetrator could very well be armed. This isn't an issue in other countries. In the UK it's unlikely the criminal will be carrying a gun so police in general don't even need guns.
This word "cautious" is getting thrown around in this discussion. What was described in the article was insane aggression, not caution. Caution means taking care to AVOID danger and mistakes, not escalating the situation in order to assure it. A cautious person does not point a gun at a child or threaten to murder someone who's non-threatening.
> However it made me think that maybe this type of stop is a trade off you have to make for the 2nd amendment.
Nonsense — we had a 2nd Amendment and far more prevalent arms ownership in the 19th century, with less police violence.
Being a police officer really isn't very dangerous. What we need are the police to realise that the vast majority of the people they encounter aren't a danger to them.
> For a stolen license plate? Let's be real here, it was an over reaction by the police officer given the circumstances for stopping him.
I suspect this is SOP, actually. I live in AZ. When I reported my license plate stolen some years back, they told me to report back if I found it or I would be pulled over at gunpoint. I never did get it back and I checked the screw holes for evidence of stripping--there was none, it was clearly stolen.
I think it's due to the drug runners around here using stolen plates. A fair number of police get shot when busting them.
Yeah I agree with that. People are by and large a product of their environment and police officers spend a large part of their day around garbage people, however I don't believe that forgives behavior like this.
> I made it VERY clear this officer seems to be out of line. My comment was more on officers in general being extremely cautious in the US .
It isn't caution. It is a lack of consequences combined with political propaganda consumed by a small minority of police officers.
Most police officers are fine. The problem is a small subset have realized they don't face consequences if they act this way and the propaganda they consume encourages that behavior.
> And no matter how you slice it, police work has been getting a lot safer. Fatalities and murders of police have been falling for decades—per resident, per officer and even in in absolute terms.
> In 2016, the job of the average police officer has become more difficult and dangerous
> Of course, this type of specious reasoning is ludicrous. A perfunctory look at the raw numbers might be enough to influence the easily persuadable into believing that no war on cops exists, or that there hadn't been a better, safer time to be a police officer in decades, but as with any data set there is more to the numbers than meets the eye.
> Since the outgrowth of unfettered, anti-police rhetoric took hold of the public discourse in the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, the job of the average police officer has become more difficult and dangerous.
"Ignore statisics, we feel its more dangerous because of anti-police rhetoric"
> When greater numbers of officers remove themselves from inherently dangerous self-initiated enforcement situations, the likelihood of injury or death correspondingly drops. That doesn't mean that society is any less dangerous or that the job of the average street cop is any safer, however.
Aka "We take less unnecessary risks, everyone is safer" somehow became in the mind of the article's author "more dangerous" for everyone.
They shouldn't be taking these "self-intiated enforcement actions" (like what happened to the OP) in the first place because what the OP experienced is what these sorts of things look like. They are dangerous to everyone involved and make everyone less safe.
Its really quite frightening the level of doublethink the political supporters of police engage in. Its also quite frightening when you realize a substantial percentage of police officers with similar political beliefs share that behavior.
That link on deaths per 100k people is gold. I think most people(cops most of all) would be absolutely shocked at all the "normal" jobs that are more dangerous or almost as dangerous as being a cop.
If they were higher on that list, wouldn't it mean they were bad at their jobs? Police officers face people intentionally trying to kill them, the other jobs generally face some sort of accidental risks.
> If they were higher on that list, wouldn't it mean they were bad at their jobs? Police officers face people intentionally trying to kill them, the other jobs generally face some sort of accidental risks.
That is the same line of thinking that leads to people playing up other reasonably low risk threats (i.e. Terrorists) and ignoring high risk threats (i.e. medical errors).
Statistical risk is far, far more important than people's feelings that humans are more dangerous than trees.
Flip your logic around, are you going to argue that loggers are bad at their jobs because statistically they are more likely to be killed by a tree than police officers are by human violence?
The goal for the worker in both cases is not getting killed while performing your job function.
The simple fact is the police have a far, far less dangerous job than most people are willing to admit.
Even staunchly Republican sources are ready to admit that as long as they aren't Fox News.
> According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 58% of likely voters believe there is a “war on police” in America today. The same poll found that 60% believe “comments critical of the police by some politicians make it more dangerous for police officers to do their jobs.” But misinformation also abounds.
> According to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), which keeps data on officer deaths going back over 100 years, 24 officers have been shot and killed by suspects this year. This puts the US on pace for 36 non-accidental, firearm-related police fatalities in 2015 [I calculate 35 deaths in 2015 based on 24 during the first 251 days this year]. Each one of such deaths is a tragedy for the officers killed, their families and the communities they serve, but this would be the lowest total in 25 years [ more than 125 years according to the ODMP website] aside from 2013 which saw 31 such deaths.
> In the study, researchers wrote that their analysis of the 990 fatal shootings in 2015 “suggests the police exhibit shooter bias by falsely perceiving blacks to be a greater threat than non-blacks to their safety.”
> In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.
I'm more worried about the police shooting unarmed civilians (given it happens more often) than the reverse, particular since trees are more dangerous to loggers than civilians are to police.
There are several things wrong with a facile analysis like this:
* The risk is not evenly spread among all cops (desk job vs. patrol, Detroit vs. small town cops).
* It got safer because they keep changing tactics to minimize their risk. Some of those tactics are things you're complaining about: they know that people are less likely to shoot when faced with overwhelming force, which scares the crap out of normal people.
* All your links prove is that they've become successful in reducing officer deaths. They're not facing accidental death here, the drop is a deliberate effort, calling them out for being successful at reducing deaths is silly.
I'm amazed at how many people wax poetic about how awful it is that they should, say, turn on the light when their car is stopped, but have no problem asking the cops to face people who want to shoot them. And you can say there's no "war on police" because some stats are down, but doesn't that make it a bit hard to explain the parade of crazy people shooting cops simply because they hate them? You compare this to terrorists, but I think it's pretty clear that they believe they're warring against us. If, in fact, they're not very good at it, that's a good thing.
We're just asking to make our police force worse by driving anyone with better options out of the force, creating a downward spiral. Given how few people would live in a place without cops, this doesn't seem like a solution. One of the things you don't seem to realize is that the police hating culture is one of the things that helps make cops extra edgy and it makes things worse for everybody.
Now, there's a sensible option here, where we ask "how can police adapt their tactics to scare people less while remaining safe" and "how can we adapt things so that we minimize police + civilian deaths?"
> I'm amazed at how many people wax poetic about how awful it is that they should, say, turn on the light when their car is stopped, but have no problem asking the cops to face people who want to shoot them. And you can say there's no "war on police" because some stats are down, but doesn't that make it a bit hard to explain the parade of crazy people shooting cops simply because they hate them?
Those always existed and are not new or news. They are actually fewer than before.
See the problem here is the argument it is increasing and it is a "war" when literally no part of that argument is based on fact.
I could call the fact I've had my home broken into and physically assaulted in the past by someone who specifically wanted to harm me a "war" against me. I don't do that either.
The difference here is the amount of media coverage it gets, that is literally all of it. If every source of death caused by people got equal coverage, the police would not even be noticed because of how rare it is.
> We're just asking to make our police force worse by driving anyone with better options out of the force, creating a downward spiral. Given how few people would live in a place without cops, this doesn't seem like a solution. One of the things you don't seem to realize is that the police hating culture is one of the things that helps make cops extra edgy and it makes things worse for everybody.
Honestly, based on the criminal acts that have been committed against me in my life, I might as well live in a place without cops. I've had to resolve 100% of the crimes committed against me myself because the cops took 0 positive action to resolve the issues. This stems from bike thefts to breaking & entering & assault on my person.
Cops have stolen my car and scraped off the registration tag when I called them on it.
They've damaged my property and refused to pay for it, arguing that since I don't have a video of the asshole on his motorcycle driving down a back alley and slamming into my fence it didn't happen. Even tho there were 5+ cops in the vicinity who saw him do it.
The police have caused me more harm through malice than actual criminals. However, how many criminal acts like these actually end up in the news? None.
Who ends up paying for this stuff like this? Me.
You can argue cops are the solution if you like, but as far as I can tell, the ledge is currently 0/6 crimes resolved by police. 2/2 acts by police that caused me financial harm.
Similarly, police shoot more unarmed black men than get shot...but hey, its the cops that need protection eh?
> Those always existed and are not new or news. They are actually fewer than before.
That depends on whether or not you consider motive. Sure, people shooting cops during their crimes might be down, but people going hunting for cops is quite clearly up and it takes a bit of cognitive dissonance to equate the two.
> See the problem here is the argument it is increasing and it is a "war" when literally no part of that argument is based on fact.
So, what exactly do you call it when people hate you and go out of their way to shoot you based on who you are, as if all cops are exactly the same and bear collective guilt.
> I've had to resolve 100% of the crimes committed against me myself because the cops took 0 positive action to resolve the issues. This stems from bike thefts to breaking & entering & assault on my person.
This only makes me wonder how you're resolving issues like that and if there's a correlation with your expectations that's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have completely the opposite experience, if we're working on anecdotes, and approximately as many interactions, including the case where my own mother was murdered. The officers there went out of their way to check on us and make sure that no one was mistreating us.
> (CNN)Two Australian police officers face an investigation after shooting three innocent bystanders outside a suburban shopping mall, while confronting a psychiatric patient armed with a knife.
I'm not sure it's wise to threaten to sue Arizona law enforcement while still located in Arizona. Unlike in the incident TFA described, it's not likely now that they'll kill him, because it's clear that such an outcome would come under severe scrutiny. However, they're now quite motivated to engineer some sort of legal threat, the charges for which a prosecutor could waive in return for dropping a lawsuit. Maybe someone could assault him, with enough Arizona-friendly witnesses around to "establish" that Walton started it. Maybe he could get into a wreck, for which he could be blamed by Arizona investigators. Those are some lonesome highways in northern Arizona.
This is inexcusable. If it's impractical to prosecute police officers who behave like this because of the cozy relationship between the district attorney and police department, then at the very least the cops should be immediately and permanently fired.
It is unacceptable for police officers to endanger and terrorize the public like this.
Can insurance help solve this problem? As in, police depts. require each cop to get some liability coverage. When incidents like this lead to a payout on the cop's behalf, their premium goes up. Eventually it's too high for them to afford so they must leave the job. If it's feasible then, regardless of how they feel about BLM, convince taxpaying citizens to get behind this scheme because their tax dollars shouldn't be going to settle these well-justified lawsuits.
On making cops accountable, it does all come down to the public clamor for this. We see these incidents and many are horrified and yet nothing changes. This is why I wonder about working the wallet angle, and if insurance can be part of the solution. How many New York taxpayers know that the City paid close to half a billion over 5 years to settle NYPD related lawsuits? Can we get more data on this from other cities and publicize it? Could a concerted #TaxpayersLivesMatter campaign put enough political pressure on mayors and governors (and counteract the police unions) to change the way these legal settlements work today?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/428-million-in-...
> This is why I wonder about working the wallet angle, and if insurance can be part of the solution.
Personal insurance requires personal liability to insure.
But if you establish personal liability (which is not an easy legal issue, among other complications), that itself is essentially the whole ballgame, whether or not there is an insurance mandate and even whether or not the liability is even insurable.
> Could a concerted #TaxpayersLivesMatter campaign put enough political pressure on mayors and governors (and counteract the police unions) to change the way these legal settlements work today?
Or would the effort backfire, and taxpayer concerns align with police unions to create even more barriers to public agencies being held liable, which would deal with the taxpayer issue without dealing with the police violence issue at all.
>Personal insurance requires personal liability to insure.
Any insight into how this gets established by profession? Seems to be an entire industry offering and encouraging nurses to take out malpractice insurance, beyond whatever their employers' coverage is.
On the effort backfiring...maybe, but I don't see why it would play out the way that you describe. The criminal justice system lets these cops skate, but apparently the civil system is picking up the slack -- as evidenced by that NYC figure cited. Somebody is going to keep paying for these, I do not think there's anything the unions can do to change that fact. So the only question is who and if you can make the case to taxpayers that it sure as hell shouldn't be them, self-interest might rule and help fix this.
Edit: some clues here as to the question of personal liability of cops. From a study by Joanna Schwartz in the NYU law review:
>This Article empirically examines an issue central to judicial and scholarly debate about civil rights damages actions: whether law enforcement officials are financially
responsible for settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases. The Supreme Court has long assumed that law enforcement officers must personally satisfy settlements and judgments, and has limited individual and government liability in civil
rights damages actions—through qualified immunity doctrine, municipal liability standards, and limitations on punitive damages—based in part on this assumption.
>Scholars disagree about the prevalence of indemnification: Some believe officers almost always satisfy settlements and judgments against them, and others contend indemnification is not a certainty. In this Article, I report the findings of a national study of police indemnification.
Through public records requests, interviews, and other sources, I have collected information about indemnification practices in forty-four of the largest law enforcement
agencies across the country, and in thirty-seven small and mid-sized agencies.
>My study reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98% of the dollars that plaintiffs
recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied a punitive damages award entered
against them and almost never contributed anything to settlements or judgments — even when indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers
were disciplined, terminated, or prosecuted for their conduct.
> The criminal justice system lets these cops skate, but apparently the civil system is picking up the slack -- as evidenced by that NYC figure cited.
The civil system picks up the slack because of the current state of the law -- which is also the same reason that the departments and not the individuals are picking up the tab.
If you propose changing the law to protect the taxpayers -- rather than protecting victims -- from the costs, and the change you propose is to move the liability to the officers, you have to be prepared for the alternative proposal to be made that the correct way to protect the taxpayers is to change the law to reduce or eliminate the exposure to liability entirely, rather than moving it police officers.
No, really, why are the departments picking up the tab, even in cases where the city's law prohibits this? The NYU paper has a couple illustrations.
>Only one jurisdiction in my study—El Paso, Texas—reported a
practice of never indemnifying police officers.145 Yet no El Paso officer personally satisfied settlements or judgments against him during the study period. The city of El Paso did, however, pay $279,000 to settle sixteen civil rights cases against its officers between 2006 and 2011. The deputy city attorney in El Paso explained that, because the city is responsible for paying officers’ attorneys’ fees, it
sometimes settles claims against officers because it would be less expensive to pay a small settlement than to continue to pay for the defense of the case. From the deputy city attorney’s perspective, paying a settlement on behalf of an officer to avoid the cost of further litigation should not be understood as equivalent to indemnifying that officer.
>California allows indemnification of punitive damages if the
“governing body of that public entity” finds that “[p]ayment . . . would be in the best interests of the public entity.”
[How do they figure?]
>Some jurisdictions [Las Vegas, New York, Oklahoma City, and Prince George’s County] appear to have indemnified
officers in violation of governing law.
>Jurisdictions may sidestep prohibitions against indemnification of punitive damages by vacating the punitive damages verdict as part of a post-trial settlement.
>Although my study shows that officers almost never contribute to settlements and judgments, I found anecdotal evidence that some government attorneys affirmatively use the possibility that they will deny officers indemnification to gain settlement leverage, limit punitive damages verdicts, and reduce punitive damages verdicts after trial—
only to indemnify their officers once the cases are ultimately resolved.
>During litigation, the threat that a city will deny indemnification may discourage plaintiffs from proceeding with claims against individual officers.
i'm not white, and i also like sports cars, which means i'm pulled over a lot.
i think a lot of white people aren't actually familiar with the 'protocol' because they've never really had to think about it. but here it is, for those of you who don't know it:
when you get signaled to pull over:
1. turn your blinker or hazards on, and start to pull over
2. pull over in a safe spot away from traffic, but without going too far away from the main road. oftentimes the officer will get on the loudspeaker and direct you where to pull over.
3. while you're stopping, ROLL YOUR WINDOWS DOWN (this is apparently what he forgot to do)
4. once stopped, turn your engine off and put the parking brake on
5. put your hands at 10 and 2, ON THE WHEEL
6. look into the rear or side mirror so they can see your eyes are on them and not something else.
i guess it's just getting to the point where even white people have to do these things. probably because of the meth / heroin epidemic.
I stick both hand out of the window with fingers spread out. I have had odd reactions, and most officers actually think I am an officer myself or I have family that is LEO (I am not and I don't, but I have practiced as a criminal defense lawyer, which I don't acknowledge either). Probably the oddest reaction was one officer saying I must really not want to get shot while laughing at me.
Reaching outside my car window sort of sounds like a really bad idea. That's what someone would do when holding a gun trying to aim backwards at the cop.
>That's what someone would do when holding a gun trying to aim backwards at the cop.
I note my fingers are spread out (show all 10 digits), I wouldn't recommend doing it with anything in your hand: cell phones, wallet or even ID. Anyway ask a cop about it...it has always been acknowledged and appreciated in my experience.
This is different from the advice we got during traffic school from an off-duty CHP officer.
His suggested steps:
1. Turn on the inside cabin light (the overhead light).
2. Pull over.
3. Turn off your engine, but leave the key turned to Accessories so you can
roll down the windows later.
(But wait until commanded to do so.)
4. Put your hands on the top of the steering wheel.
5. Refrain from:
a. Rolling down any windows.
b. Reaching for the glove compartment.
c. Reaching for your wallet.
d. Opening the car door.
6. Await further instructions from the officer, follow lawful orders.
While we're at it, why not just get out of the car, take off all our clothes, and just lie face down on the pavement, butt naked, arms and legs spread wide??
This reminds me of stories of slavery, and how slaves were supposed to act around white folks.
I personally would not roll the windows all the way down, just low enough to hand them ID and to hear and be heard clearly, and I would make sure the doors are locked. The Sandra Bland footage taught me this. https://youtu.be/jpSEemvwOn4?t=2m14s
Additionally, in my experience if you have an older car without keyless ignition, taking the keys out of the ignition and putting them on the dashboard will help as well.
Number 5 is one of the most important things!
6. Can be difficult especially at night when they're shining the spotlight in specifically to blind you.
Also don't forget to ask permission before reaching anywhere.
note that i indicated plural. windows. that's the thing he missed. they want to have a clear non-glass-obstructed view into the vehicle from both sides, especially at night.
and they will always approach on the passenger side if there's a lot of traffic.
'the protocol' is tricky. even i forget things sometimes, and need to be told by the cop. but i usually get enough of it right that they don't yell at me. it's hard when you're new at this and the adrenaline is pumping when you see the blue and red lights. he probably left his engine running too. not good.
somewhat un-intuitively, if you nail it perfectly (meaning you've clearly learned this through many pullovers), they tend to be more lenient. this is my own personal experience from being pulled over multiple times per year for 17 years of driving.
It makes me sick that we have to do those kinds of things to make them feel safe. They're the ones who took the job willingly.
Anecdote: I was recently pulled over on a rural Arkansas road for speeding (at the front of a pack of cars one of whom was riding my ass on a 2 lane road, but I digress). I followed most of the "protocol", but I didn't roll all my windows down. The officer approached, and when I told him that I needed to reach into the glovebox for the rental information, he said "you're fine" in a dismissive way.
It immediately struck me that I had no way of knowing whether he meant that he was a cop that won't over-react to reaching into the glovebox without the disclaimer, or that I was white.
this is my own personal experience from being pulled over multiple times per year for 17 years of driving
Wow. That's a lot. I've been driving for over 40 years and have been pulled over about a half dozen times total.
Part of it must be that you're not white, and part of it must be the sports cars. But maybe you're driving around in the "'hood" a lot? Policing is probably much more aggressive in certain parts of town.
So do you have motorised windows on all your cars or do you get into the passenger seat to roll it down? I can't reach my passenger window from the driver seat and I always assumed it would be better not to be moving around a ton while the officer approaches...
well, chances are if you're driving a car that old, the cop is going to be on high alert anyway, and will know to approach from the driver's side, or tell you what to do from the loudspeaker.
i didn't make the world an unfair place, but that's how it goes.
The cop was over reacting, no question about it. However it sounds like the issue stemmed from a computer system that did not make it clear that it was a plate that was missing and not the car. I wonder what the actual screen looked like that the officer misread. He was driving, reading and typing in a license plate, and reading the computer readout. Seems like a color coding system or some kind of better UI could have prevented him from mis-interpreting that the car was stolen. It sounds stupid to say that a UI fix could prevent this kind of violence but I wonder if it could have and how often this type of thing happens.
Proper communication is the first line of defense against conflict.
A harrowing story. I especially appreciate his explicit recognition of Black Lives Matter. Privilege is extremely hard to notice when you're in the middle of it. But when you get up close to its edges, it can be much easier to see.
His statement "[if] I was black, or young, or long-haired, or tattooed, or didn't speak English - I believe he might have pulled the trigger" was entirely speculation.
He, and you, are projecting your opinions on this situation without relevant evidence.
You are quite the mindreader, aren't you? To know the entirety of his thoughts and mine, and our two lives of experience, without having met either of us. Impressive.
I'm not trying to read anyone's mind, only the words you've written. If you're holding back evidence that this cop is racist, please share it and I'll happily admit I was wrong.
OTOH, if you can't provide any evidence, I would ask you to withdraw your statement connecting a white man being held at gunpoint by an aggressive officer to white privilege.
Then, you might want to peruse The Counted, the BBC's database of people killed by police in America, and see people of all races who were killed by police while unarmed.
It is not my job to educate you in the history and mechanics of privilege and power, and I certainly won't try to do it through a comment box. I also have no idea why you think yourself entitled to ask me to withdraw anything.
And yes, of course, you aren't trying to read anyone's mind. That's the problem. You appoint yourself vigilante of any statement offered without a dissertation's worth of evidence. But then you immediately make unsupported statements about what we know, about exactly how we think. You took not a moment to understand, you asked not one question.
The only difference I see is that our statements question the status quo, while yours defend it. That is a depressingly common double standard when the police come up. It's also common from white people on the topic of race, and there when I dig into it it normally is rooted in white fragility[1].
Either way, I stand by my statements. I'm sure that Ken Walton stands by his. That you don't understand is not my problem. Stomp your feet all you like, but your ignorance is your problem to fix.
The author publicly made a serious allegation of racism against an officer of the law, based solely on his own preconceived notions, which you supported, and apparently neither of you have any evidence to back up those allegations. Ironically, it's actually YOU pre-judging the officer.
Then you mischaracterized my statements entirely. I'm not defending the status quo - I'm pointing out that you and BLM are wrong to assume this is only a problem for black people.
Police brutality can happen to anyone.
Like Chase Sherman, a 32 year old white male.
> Sherman's mother called 911 after he had a bad reaction to a substance she believed to be the drug 'spice'. According to authorities, Sherman and the responding deputies ended up in an struggle and a Taser was used. Sherman became unresponsive shortly after. Body camera footage shows Sherman being shocked repeatedly while handcuffed in the back of his fiancee's car. Sherman was shocked at least 15 times, according to deputies' Taser logs.
Or Eric Tompkins, a 41 year old white male.
> Tompkins allegedly refused to keep his hands out of his pockets while talking to officers who had been dispatched to respond to reports of a suicidal man. Two officers fatally shot Tompkins when he pulled a cellphone out of his pocket, which the officers said they believed was a gun.
Or William Bowers, a 51 year old white male.
> A deputy shot and killed Bowers, who was homeless, after he ran from police, authorities said. Deputies reportedly tried to stop Bowers while he was riding his bicycle because they recognized him and knew he was on probation.
But by all means, continue to attack anyone who asks for evidence if you wish.
You did not "ask for evidence". You made judgments about the OP and me.
Your "racism is not a problem" agenda also blinds you to what was actually said. Neither I nor he "assume this is only a problem for black people". That's something you made up to argue with.
Again, it's not my job to educate you on this stuff. If you would like to understand the racial component to state violence in America, there's been plenty written on it, from before America's independence up to the present day.
If you won't bother to do that, I'm entirely ok with that. American opinions on race get saner at a rate very close to the birth/death rate:
Planck said that "Science advances one funeral at a time;" society is, if anything, worse. Thanks to white fragility, you may be one of the many white people that takes your ignorance to the grave, just like all those now-dead opponents of black/white marriages.
I'd rather spend my time on people young or curious enough to learn something.
I pointed out the lack of relevant evidence in my very first post, and the second, and third. And again as the first sentence in this post.
Once again you've missed the point, because your agenda about society has led you to ignore the facts of this case.
The author made allegations of racism against a specific officer based solely on his belief that such officers are common in society.
And you refuse to acknowledge that you have no evidence this officer is racist. No matter how common you may believe racism is, you should not publicly accuse people of racism without evidence.
And about society, you're also ignoring two simple facts: 1) more white people are killed by police than black people, 2) the number of people killed by police, by race, is roughly proportional to the violent crime rate, by race, as well as the murder rate, by race (which is what one would expect if police were not racist, but rather simply targeting criminals).
My only agenda here is to find the truth. Your agenda is to ignore the truth and simply accuse people of racism without evidence.
On a happier note, I'm encouraged to see some people have put aside a racial agenda in favor of protesting deaths at the hands of police regardless of race:
> But one group of mostly African-American civil rights leaders is stepping up to question a deputy's shooting of an unarmed, white, homeless man in Castaic — because it just might be the right thing to do.
> "We can't only be advocates when black people are killed by police unjustly," says Najee Ali, founder of Project Islamic Hope.
> "They shot this homeless man for nothing," Ali said of how witnesses have described the shooting. "He was unarmed and they killed him. I found out he was white later on. It doesn't matter to me."
Yes, you caught me. Ignoring the truth is my agenda. Truth is dumb. Truth bad! How smart, how perceptive you are to see so deeply into my character. You are indeed a mind reader.
Again, I have no idea why you think you're entitled to infinite time spent spoon-feeding you explanations, spent arguing you out of your ignorance. The ignorance of random anonymous internet commenters is not my problem. Especially when it's so willful and entrenched as here.
50 years ago there were people like you just wanting to get at the "truth" of miscegenation. 150 years ago, it was just wanting to get at the "truth" of the essential, natural inferiority of black people. [1] They saw themselves as having no agenda. They saw themselves as having perfect understanding of a deeply complicated topic.
But when there's an infinite amount truth and you choose a very particular patch of "truth" to defend, your agenda isn't just truth. You may not know what your agenda is, but the rest of us don't have much trouble telling.
And once again you're accusing people of racism without evidence.
Merely for questioning your agenda you've compared me to people who were against interracial marriage, and now to people who believed in racial inferiority.
I don't think I'm entitled to your time, but I do think I, and this officer, are entitled not to be the target of baseless insults.
But calling people racist merely for questioning the BLM agenda has become such a cliche, I'm not surprised at all.
Personally, I believe all victims of police brutality deserve justice, regardless of race, even the white victims.
And I think it's disgusting that BLM doesn't care (or at least, doesn't protest) unless the victim meets their racial requirements.
They ignore nearly 75% of all people killed by police simply because of their racial agenda. [1]
> And I think it's disgusting that BLM doesn't care (or at least, doesn't protest) unless the victim meets their racial requirements.
BLM isn't about police killings, its about the neglect of the value of black lives throughout society (especially, but not exclusively, in the lack of accountability for killing blacks.) The killing that crystallized things and triggered the formation of BLM wasn't even a police killing (it was the killing of Trayvon Martin.)
The fact that the problem BLM exists to deal with overlaps with the problem of police violence doesn't make it "disgusting" that they focus on the distinct problem that the organization was created to address, anymore than it would be "disgusting" that a hypothetical organization founded to address the problem of the lack of accountability in police-on-civilian killings didn't address white-on-black killings where the killer isn't a police officer, even though "white-on-black" killings overlaps with police killings.
Then we need another organization to address the neglect for the lives of the poor of all races, and another to address the lack of police accountability for killing civilians in general.
Two problems that are rarely reported when the victims are white, and I sometimes wonder if wealthy liberals in SV are even aware of the white victims.
> Then we need another organization to address the neglect for the lives of the poor of all races, and another to address the lack of police accountability for killing civilians in general.
There are a number of each (including, in the latter case, the National Police Accountability Project.)
BLM happens to, at the moment, be more successful in gathering media attention. And, insofar as it is building support for specific policies, most of them are not specific to its narrow problem focus (e.g., universal police body cameras and attention to how those cameras are used are ideas that have become more broadly focused on due to BLM advocacy -- but don't do anything less to protect non-black victims than black victims.)
Indeed, the media focuses almost exclusively on BLM, and that's not entirely thanks to media savvy on the part of BLM.
And while some of the policies BLM advocates will be good for everyone, many responses to structural racism specifically exclude poor whites trapped in structural poverty.
I will continue to advocate non-race-based solutions that benefit all struggling people, and argue against race-based solutions that help some and exclude others.
I'm not accusing you of racial bias. I wouldn't know.
I am happy to say that the "all lives matter" brigade are supporting structural racism, though. And I'm happy to say that you're displaying typical white fragility on the topic of race. Until you get over that, I don't see any point in me trying to fix your ignorance. Educating you is not my job. It's yours.
But I can simultaneously recognize that America's racism runs so deep that it was part of our constitution. That our one civil war was a fight to preserve it. That it continues, somewhat reduced, to the present day. That Black Lives Matter is our era's civil rights movement.
Your turn. Can you recognize those things? Do you care about them?
No, I don't recognize riots and killing cops as a "civil rights movement". I just saw a video in which the sister of the man shot in Milwaukee called for rioters to "take that shit to the surburbs. Burn that shit down."
Perhaps BLM's problem is that they have no official spokespeople, so they get the best and the worst.
Are there racists in America? Yes. Too many.
But this is a story about a white cop acting aggressively toward a white man.
If we both care about all victims of police brutality, once in a while we should actually discuss (gasp) some of the 75% of victims who aren't black.
As MLK says, "riot is the language of the unheard". And as you should know, BLM supports neither riots nor police killing. It's explicitly a non-violent protest movement.
If you really cared about limiting police brutality, you'd be spending your time working on police brutality. But instead, you're busily arguing that people should stop talking about white suppression of black Americans. Your refusal to acknowledge black grievances is part of the white supremacist structure that goes back to our country's founding, a structure that riots are a natural reaction against. You are part of the problem.
Whatever you say you care about, I'll believe how you spend your time over your words.
How can you claim BLM supports this, or doesn't support that? Who speaks for BLM officially?
Whoever writes the website blacklivesmatter.com did support the Ferguson riots. [1] As did Simone Sebastian in the Washington Post. [2] DeRay Mckesson called In Defense of Looting "absolute required reading". [3] The list goes on and on.
And you yourself just defended riots. In one sentence you defend riots and in the very next falsely claim BLM doesn't support riots.
And speaking of how you spend your time, you could offer some evidence for your claims. How many words have you written now? How much time have you spent trying to persuade me, yet offering no evidence. Do you have any evidence, or just prejudice and insults?
Your biased reading of these things is exactly why there's no point to give you evidence on anything. Your goal is not to understand; it's to "win".
I'm not trying to persuade you of anything. As I said, I think you are in the same sort of laggard [1] category as other people were on other opinions about race. Although I hope otherwise, I expect you'll take your hate for Black Lives Matter to your grave.
If you were serious about ending police violence, you'd be out there trying to end police violence. Instead, you spend your time trying to shut up anti-racist people. Why? Try taking a look at who else spends their time objecting to Black Lives Matter:
It's weird! I have a life where I go do things that are not always compatible with replying to internet randos.
And seriously, I am doing a terrible job at persuading you because I'm really not trying to persuade you of anything. As I've said, I don't believe you're persuadable.
People who vigorously mount a defense of a biased status quo rarely are persuadable because their motivation isn't rational; they're the sort of person who will defend whatever status quo they happen to be born into. That they have convinced themselves that they're the only truly rational people is also not a new phenomenon. The people who argued against the anti-slavery movement felt exactly the same way.
It's weird! I have a life where I go do things that are not always compatible with replying to internet randos.
And seriously, I am doing a terrible job at persuading you because I'm really not trying to persuade you of anything. As I've said, I don't believe you're persuadable.
People who vigorously mount a defense of a biased status quo rarely are persuadable because their motivation isn't rational; they're the sort of person who will defend whatever status quo they happen to be born into. That they have convinced themselves that they're the only truly rational people is also not a new phenomenon. The people who argued against the anti-slavery movement felt exactly the same way.
This is truly frightening. A tiny (additional) mistake by anyone would have cost lives.
There will be many people defending the right to bear arms. But seeing this from another country and cultural background just makes you shake your head in disbelief. If police officers think they have to be that overly aggressive and cautious because of the general prevalence of guns, then maybe it would be a good thing to reduce it.
I understand though that once there are so many guns out there it is hard to reduce the number.
EDIT: There are more aspects to this, of course. Including better training for police officers etc.
My expectation of myself is that I change my beliefs if (new) evidence suggests that I should.
How would that trend (...and I assume you are right...) disprove the hypothesis that the prevalence of guns has something to do with the reported problems (excessive police violence / aggression / for the lack of better terms)?
Look, this sucks, but if a cop is pulling over a car that's showing up in their onboard computer as stolen, it's going to be treated as a felony traffic stop, with weapons drawn.
License plate that's reported as stolen + seen by police mounted on the "wrong" car (make/model does not match make/model of car where the plate came from) = stolen car.
They're going to interpret it that way when looking at a car from behind, in traffic, until they can prove it otherwise. They have no idea who the driver or passenger are until they've stopped the car and checked things out.
Felony traffic stops are one of the MOST likely times and places when a police officer will get shot and killed. I'm not surprised at all they came out with guns drawn. It really sucks and I'd be pissed off and indignant if it happened to me, as an ordinary non-felon law abiding driver.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I've never held a gun), but from my gun-owning friends, the first words I've generally heard regarding guns are "Don't point the working end at anything you don't intend to put a hole in".
Is this criminalized? If not, can we lobby for it?
So, while we're on the subject of major tech players who had a negative interaction with the police and posted about it publically, and now that it's been a little over half a year, did we ever find out what the full story was with Ian Murdock's death?
If we removed guns from non-federal officers and made gun violence a federal crime, we could reach a Nash equilibrium state from a game theory perspective. Criminals have no incentive to harm local police. Failure to surrender to a police officer becomes a federal crime.
Horrifying to even imagine that someone has to go through this with their 7 year old sitting right behind them. Now I will be shit scared to rent a car EVER!!
This SERIOUSLY pisses me off! You've never lived until you've had a loaded gun pointed at you and a POS cop yelling lies at you. I hope that officer gets nailed to a cross.
In other countries, there would be a real chance of professional consequences for drawing a weapon on an unarmed person who is cooperating with instructions.
Not America? In what other first world countries does this sort of thing happen with such regularity? Is it terrorism? Yup. We have a serious police terrorism problem in the US.
Or that the cop involved will never face any consequences? At all?
Freddie Gray showed up with a fucking SEVERED SPINE and it was apparently an act of god, just like the virgin birth, because none of the cops were responsible.
Hell, they can murder Eric Garner on video and walk.
Or shoot a man by "accident", watch him die, and nothing happens. Oh noes, probation! That'll learn 'em!
I wouldn't expect much here. I don't see a lucrative early-adopter market. The wealthy and privileged are already mostly exempt from police states; their biggest victims are those with the least money and power. There also isn't a big, obvious revenue stream to divert, as with most startup disruption.
The one bright spot here I see is Twitter (and the parts of Facebook that are most Twitter-like). Turning everbody into a micropublisher and microeditor has helped make police abuse much more visible.
It may save your life. After learning what was going on in this country, I read it several times before the stasi's forcible, warrantless entry into my home in the middle of the night. I believe it has saved my life on more than one occasion. The reach of the police state in the US has extended to the more fortunate of us, I'm afraid. If you don't think it could happen to you, please reconsider. I'll tell you my stories some time.
I don't see why there can't be a public website for civilians to submit cases like this. Obviously there will be complex legal/moral issues, but there needs to be a way to put a spotlight on police who misuse power, as well as reward the few non-corrupt ones left. If they serve the public, why should the public not be aware of what they are doing? Twitter and Facebook are fine, but not good enough. If anything they are evidence that a way to catalog and aggregate police data would be in high demand.
this is an absurd statement. I hope you realize that you're coming across like the worst and most base kind of cliché. what do the words you wrote even mean?
We have always lived in a society with lots of guns. This level of police fear is totally unwarranted (yes, I am well aware of the Dallas shootings, but they happened recently, while the police have been shooting willy-nilly for years). I blame the militarization of police, and indirectly the war in Iraq (from where a lot of these cops come from, having served a tour or two).
Both sides need to calm the fuck down. And aggressive, pumped cops who draw their weapons at the first chance need to be put out uniform.
Added later: I'd like to add that policing has not been this safe in decades. Last year 123 officers were killed on duty (which includes all deaths, including accidents, falls, etc.). The last time this few were killed (excluding last couple of years) is in 1959: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm...