The Police Brutality Thread

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Thanks for that, because I'm definitely saying he deserved to die. Hell, I didn't even say he deserved to be tasered.

Don't be a dumbass.

Sorry. That wasn't my goal or my point. It seems to me that today's police force have become overly reliant on their firearms and Tasers. These things are given to the officer to help protect themselves. In the above cases, and more frequently, the officers are a)putting themselves in dangerous situations unnecessarily, because they are armed and b)bypassing all of their communication and conflict avoidance training, for the faster, easier solution of aggressively restraining the other person with electricity or bullets.

I listened to a fascinating piece on state toopers in rural Alaska. If anyone could justify the need to be heavily armed, it's the officer who is an airplane ride away from any type of backup. But these guys rarely carry a firearm when carrying out their duties. The feeling is that the presence of a firearm actually escalates the situation. Instead, the officers rely on their ability to communicate with the potential offender. I'm obviously not proposing that we disarm our police force here in the lower 48, but in these cases of mental illness, it seems that the results too often end up in the death of someone that could have been helped.

My comment wasn't meant to be a personal attack towards you. Just a poorly worded thought. By arming our police officers to protect themselves, are we providing them with a false sense of security that allows them to put themselves in situations where they feel they need to project themselves. (Yep, pretty sure that cleared it right up.)

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Isn't this just another example of things gone horribly wrong?

The dude is taking off his clothing and darting in and out of traffic. The wife calls the police for help. What are they supposed to do? They were in a no-win situation. They can't stop the guy, so he keeps running in and out of traffic and eventually causes an accident in which he may or may not be hit and killed or others trying to avoid hitting him may or may not wreck and be seriously injured or killed.

Or, they try to stop the guy by using a tazer, which they don't believe to be deadly, and it results in his death.

I don't think this guy needed to die either. But would those who are so upset at the police propose another solution to what they should've done? I'm not saying there aren't other options. I'm saying a horrible accident happened here in which no harm was intended - and either way the police were going to look bad. Unless they just didn't respond and luckily nothing happened to the guy as he jumped in and out of traffic.

Crazy story.

I don't know, maybe stop traffic?

[smokymountainrain]

Sorry. That wasn't my goal or my point. It seems to me that today's police force have become overly reliant on their firearms and Tasers. These things are given to the officer to help protect themselves. In the above cases, and more frequently, the officers are a)putting themselves in dangerous situations unnecessarily, because they are armed and b)bypassing all of their communication and conflict avoidance training, for the faster, easier solution of aggressively restraining the other person with electricity or bullets.

I listened to a fascinating piece on state toopers in rural Alaska. If anyone could justify the need to be heavily armed, it's the officer who is an airplane ride away from any type of backup. But these guys rarely carry a firearm when carrying out their duties. The feeling is that the presence of a firearm actually escalates the situation. Instead, the officers rely on their ability to communicate with the potential offender. I'm obviously not proposing that we disarm our police force here in the lower 48, but in these cases of mental illness, it seems that the results too often end up in the death of someone that could have been helped.

My comment wasn't meant to be a personal attack towards you. Just a poorly worded thought. By arming our police officers to protect themselves, are we providing them with a false sense of security that allows them to put themselves in situations where they feel they need to project themselves. (Yep, pretty sure that cleared it right up.)

I appreciate the thoughtful response and explanation.

There is no question officers need to use better judgment and especially ensure that the fact they are carrying weapons doesn't influence their decisions to a point where they become unnecessarily dangerous. I'm not even trying to defend the officer(s) in the Cardall situation. Sounds like whether or not there was a heart condition, they were reckless in regard to where they tased him. My point, in response to KL, was that the two situations are completely different. When a cop shoots somebody, they nearly always, if not always, shoot to kill. In this most recent case, the intended penalty for running was indeed death. In the Cardall case, death was not the intended penalty.

[old_gregg]

I don't know, maybe stop traffic?

what if the guy is a danger to his wife and kids? what if there's no time to stop traffic? what happens when traffic stops, do you just wait for him to run around and tucker himself out? we expect police to intervene and put themselves in dangerous situations where they might reasonably feel the need to protect themselves. we train cops and expect them to rely on their judgment. sometimes that leads to bad outcomes, which suck. but the line between a manic dude running through rural highway traffic and this guy is pretty thin:

[Omaha 680]

Body cameras should be mandatory. I think police officers will come around to realize that it is in their best interest as well to utilize body cameras. Even if they don't....too bad....to many bad cops out there to worry about.

I wrote earlier in this thread that I think eventually departments will come around and realize the cameras protect the police as much as the public. Not just form bad cops but from false accusations. Some departments that have implemented body cams have seen a significant decline in complaints against officers.

[Bo Diddley]

Tasers are a generally non-lethal tool for protecting the officer. They are not supposed to be used to subdue the suspect. Brian Cardall did not deserve to die. And did not deserve to even be tasered.

A more appropriate term might be less-lethal, as death sometimes occurs.

For me, I think police in general are heavy handed and move up the force continuum to much.

[byu71]

It is a scary thing when someone gets angry and has quick access to a gun.

[smokymountainrain]

A more appropriate term might be less-lethal, as death sometimes occurs.

At least some departments require all officers be tased before being made active (or whatever the term is). If a taser were considered a lethal weapon, I'm thinking that wouldn't be the case. Do people die? Of course they do, due to health conditions, improper placement of the taser, etc. People die eating steaks too.

If an officer wants to kill somebody, he isn't ever going to use his taser.

[Omaha 680]

Sorry. That wasn't my goal or my point. It seems to me that today's police force have become overly reliant on their firearms and Tasers. These things are given to the officer to help protect themselves. In the above cases, and more frequently, the officers are a)putting themselves in dangerous situations unnecessarily, because they are armed and b)bypassing all of their communication and conflict avoidance training, for the faster, easier solution of aggressively restraining the other person with electricity or bullets.

It certainly seems that way. But is there reliable data to back that up? We all know that the impression in the media is that crime gets worse every year. But the opposite has been true for most of the country for over 20 years now.

For police shootings, the data seems to be extremely incomplete, with only a small portion of departments voluntarily reporting the stats. They don't continuously report and the criteria for determining justifiable shootings likely varies significantly so any attempt at determining trends is pretty useless.

David Klinger, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said there is no reason to believe the number of agencies that do report are representative of the population, and the number who report may fluctuate from year to year. It’s entirely possible that the reason the number went up from 2012 to 2013 is simply because more police agencies reported their officer-involved shootings than in previous years. Even less definitive conclusions can be drawn from comparing 2013 results to 1994.

And there’s no way to extrapolate the FBI figures because there is no benchmark that indicates by how much the information is underreported. We couldn’t even tell if more or fewer police departments were reporting the numbers over the years. A spokesman for the FBI did not get back to us.

Klinger said academics and others in the field have publicly questioned these numbers for decades.

"I wish people would just admit that the data sucks and they shouldn't be using it for anything other than to say, that’s the baseline number of people who have been reported to be killed by the police in a given year," Klinger said. "To talk about trends against time? No, we don’t know what agencies are coming in and out of reporting and how many are accurately reporting."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...hest-20-years/

[Bo Diddley]

At least some departments require all officers be tased before being made active (or whatever the term is). If a taser were considered a lethal weapon, I'm thinking that wouldn't be the case. Do people die? Of course they do, due to health conditions, improper placement of the taser, etc. People die eating steaks too.

If an officer wants to kill somebody, he isn't ever going to use his taser.

I know in the military, we had a policy come out that prohibited getting tased in training, due to potential injury. I've read there were also several lawsuits from police officers who were allegedly injured from this training.

[Eddie]

A more appropriate term might be less-lethal, as death sometimes occurs.

For me, I think police in general are heavy handed and move up the force continuum to much.

I think there is probably some truth to this. In my experience, this is particularly true of the patrol officers. When they get a call, their response seems to be to respond as quickly as possible and then get back to doing whatever it is they do when not on a call. So - I think they tend to escalate quickly. But I think it is because they generally think that a quick show of force will end whatever it is and get them back to being finished with the call.

Examples I've seen is telling couples in a DV situation - "One of you needs to find somewhere else you can stay tonight, or I'm taking one of you to jail to make sure I don't have to come back later!"

Kids caught shoplifting - "If you don't get an adult on the phone who can come pick you up in the next 5 minutes, I'm going to have to take you to DCFS. You don't want to go there. That's a rough crowd. They'll steal your stuff, beat you up. You better find someone to pick you up fast."

Often they show up just to tell someone to "knock it off" so that they can leave. They don't even care who is at fault most of the time. If there's been an argument, they just want someone to go so it ends.

I don't know if they are trained that way - to finish calls quickly so that they are ready for the next one. And I'll even assume that MOST of the time it works for them - no one is willing to escalate above the level they've taken it to. No one wants to go to jail. But I also think it can lead to escalating the person they're interacting with, on occasion with very bad outcomes. Particularly with people who are more afraid of the potential police response than they should be and who think they HAVE to react to the police escalating.

[wuapinmon]

[imanihonjin]

What's weird is that about 2:00 or so of the video you posted earlier he appears to pick the item back up and holster it.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

The Police Brutality Thread

The officer's dash cam video has been released. Shows the first part of the interaction. The only new revelation is that the cop is listening to Everlast "What It's Like," which tells me everything I need to know about him. Makes for kind of a surreal soundtrack. http://www.live5news.com/clip/113738...t-traffic-stop

[dabrockster]

Video of Sherriff's in San Bernadino beating a man even though he had given up.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/lo...299250951.html