Police accountability

[RavenSky]

Your example is unconvincing because even if the story had been accurate, the shooting was unjustified.

And that was discussed more on the other thread. Another item to not get shot by police, don't try and evade them.

Not acceptable

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Wouldn't have helped Tamir Rice who was shot pretty much immediately by a man who was previously dismissed from another PD for being too immature and unstable to be an effective officer.

My kids are aware that waiving one of their guns, whether or not it has a red tip has a very good chance of getting themselves killed for it. If your kid isn't responsible enough to know that they don't bring out those guns in areas besides air soft ranges or approved fields, then they shouldn't have them.

Are your kids perfect? Do they always do exact right thing? Or do they do the same things other kids do, but get a benefit of the doubt not all other kids get?

 

[laughing dog]

He was not in an automobile when he was shot. Otherwise the "driving while deaf" would be accurate. He was shot while he was unarmed and on foot. So, I fail to see the point of your response. But to answer your question, no it is not hard to avoid. Then again, neither are strange dogs. So what?

Do you realize your responses are reinforcing my original point?

And the article writer didn't even wait for any details about what happened. Just assumed that he was deaf that he was shot because he was deaf. He was shot because he was evading police.

Which is not justifiable.

So if you want to teach people about not getting shot by police, tell them not to evade police officers. It's very simple.

Neither Philandro Castile nor Tamir Rice was trying to evade anyone, and that didn't help them one bit.

With every response you are reinforcing my point.

 

[coloradoatheist]

My kids are aware that waiving one of their guns, whether or not it has a red tip has a very good chance of getting themselves killed for it. If your kid isn't responsible enough to know that they don't bring out those guns in areas besides air soft ranges or approved fields, then they shouldn't have them.

Are your kids perfect? Do they always do exact right thing? Or do they do the same things other kids do, but get a benefit of the doubt not all other kids get?

No, but there are activities that the might perform that if they do death is very possible for that action. Running into the street, driving drunk, texting while driving or waving a gun around in a public location.

 

[ronburgundy]

My kids are aware that waiving one of their guns, whether or not it has a red tip has a very good chance of getting themselves killed for it. If your kid isn't responsible enough to know that they don't bring out those guns in areas besides air soft ranges or approved fields, then they shouldn't have them.

TAMIR RICE WAS NOT WAIVING A GUN - TOY OR OTHERWISE - WHEN POLICE ROARED UP ACROSS THE LAWN AND SHOT HIM DEAD

None of us should have to keep saying that to any of you

You're right, he wasn't literally "waiving" his extremely real looking gun, just pointing it at other people in the park and holding it and possibly pointing it at the cops when they pulled up.
A distinction without a difference. In fact, "waiving" it might have made him seem less like a plausible lethal threat.

 

[coloradoatheist]

And the article writer didn't even wait for any details about what happened. Just assumed that he was deaf that he was shot because he was deaf. He was shot because he was evading police.

Which is not justifiable.

So if you want to teach people about not getting shot by police, tell them not to evade police officers. It's very simple.

Neither Philandro Castile nor Tamir Rice was trying to evade anyone, and that didn't help them one bit.

With every response you are reinforcing my point.

Of the three, Castile was the one that was wrong by the police.

The other two were preventable by the individual and the behavior of the individual triggered it.

 

[RavenSky]

TAMIR RICE WAS NOT WAIVING A GUN - TOY OR OTHERWISE - WHEN POLICE ROARED UP ACROSS THE LAWN AND SHOT HIM DEAD

None of us should have to keep saying that to any of you

You're right, he wasn't literally "waiving" his extremely real looking gun, just pointing it at other people in the park and holding it and possibly pointing it at the cops when they pulled up.
A distinction without a difference. In fact, "waiving" it might have made him seem less like a plausible lethal threat.

You seem to forget that we have video of the killing of Tamir Rice which shows that he was not "holding" his toy, and especially not "possibly pointing it at the cops." Moreover, he was a CHILD. Not even a teenager, but a CHILD.

But the more you go on with these strawmen, the more you prove that a very large part of the problem that must be addressed is the ridiculous lengths both police and authoritarians in the general public will go to pretend "bad cops" are somehow the "good cops."

 

[Angry Floof]

It isn't "an excuse", it is an undeniable fact of basic human psychology that when people are attacked, and when their attackers are unreasoned and dishonest in those attacks, then those people will protect themselves by using counter-measures that are similarly dishonest.
The actual facts needed to fully hold cops accountable are rarely available to anyone but other cops. There is no way to effectively hold them accountable without the assistance of good cops, most of whom have or will likely do something that they know the rabid "it's always racism" crowd will crucify them for.
There is no changing this simple fact that unreasoned attacks against cops (and most criticism has been unreasoned) will inherently cause their to be less accountability and thus more "bad apples" that get away with it. So, anyone that honestly cared about solving the problem would be loudly condemning as a cause of the problem, any unreasoned over-reactions`` (which includes nearly all immediate protests and accusations of wrong doing prior to all the facts being plausibly ascertained).

Sure, it may make cops uncomfortable, but that's not only not an excuse, it doesn't compare to the discomfort of citizens who are targeted by police and suffer from the corruption. There is no excuse for "Well, we probably could change and make things better if only it weren't for those protesters and people being all upset with us and stuff! It's too hard to be accountable! Thanks to you hippies objecting to our corruption, it's now harder for us to deal with our own corruption!" Boo fucking hoo.

You are too ideologically blind and rabidly making moral condemnations to bother trying to think about the objective causal factors underlying the problem and inherent to any solution. It isn't a matter of having sympathy for lives of good honest cops that not only ruined, but as we've recently seen, ended by unreasoned hysteria and accusations. Though, you reveal your lack of moral compass in showing such disdain for those who do have such sympathy. It is a matter of actually understanding the inherent psychological and sociological causal factors that contribute to the problem and must be dealt with in any solution.

Public response to police corruption should not even be a consideration on how or whether police corruption needs to be fixed.

No one is arguing that police corruption should not be fixed, but rather what is important to fixing it and what will prevent any solution (e.g., irrational attitudes like yours).
Considering the objective causal impact public responses have on the culture and the action of cops toward other cops is only "not even a consideration" if you don't care about a real solution and only care about the political mileage your trying to gain.

People don't like corruption. People don't like blacks being targeted by cops for execution. Tough shit. You take the criticism and do you fucking duty until you can measure up to "serve and protect" again.

People also don't like being killed by criminals, including black criminals, which the cops (even the "bad apples") are far more likely to prevent than they are to be the criminal that targets an innocent citizen. The vast majority of the citizens want the cops out there approaching people with a gun in their hand as what they objective are, an extremely probable lethal threat to anyone around them.If you don't like that, tough shit. The majority of the public who the cops work for understand that when cops are unreasonably attacked for honest mistakes in the course of perusing those real threats, then many times more innocent people will be harmed by those criminals than are harmed by the cops. So, the majority of us know that rabidly going after all cops whenever a black person is harmed by them, causes far more harm to innocent people than the cops do themselves. Criticism must be measured, reasoned, and selective targeted at instances where there is strong evidence of criminal wrong doing.

Do police or their authoritarian defenders really think the public works for the police?

No, the police works for the public, the overwhelming majority of whom do not illegally carry guns, illegaly flee from the police, nor have ever committed a violent crime.
They work for us, who overwhelmingly recognize that all innocent people of all races are far more in danger from other citizens than from the police, and that honest errors with very bad outcomes are going to occur, even when cops are only acting in ways needed to protect the public. Thus, it is critical that life ruining and violence fueling attacks on good cops due to unreasoned public over reactions are extremely dangerous to all innocent people.

I think some of you do. I think some of you really believe that the public is responsible for police corruption because we don't criticize in ways that are acceptable to corrupt law enforcement.

The irrational attacks unsupported by evidence that you think are "not even a concern" are unacceptable, not just to cops, but to anyone that values reason, fairness, or a real solution to the problem. IF the criticism doesn't selectively target the real avoidable criminal police actions and "bad apples", then it ensures that the no solution that does so will be advanced.

The people in power - the police - are not abused victims in any of this. No matter how the public reacts, the police are not victims. They are not dampened in their efforts to improve their own behavior by the actions or protests of citizens. They cannot lay their own bad behavior on citizens.

In fact, it is imperative that the powerful be held accountable, no matter how much they pretend to be cowering victims. The powerless are held accountable! More than accountable! So until citizens take over every police precinct and vehicle and weapon and tank, it is not by any stretch of any authoritarian imagination on citizens to do anything at all before cops are able to take responsibility for themselves. They are able now, regardless of what any citizen is doing or saying.

 

[coloradoatheist]

My kids are aware that waiving one of their guns, whether or not it has a red tip has a very good chance of getting themselves killed for it. If your kid isn't responsible enough to know that they don't bring out those guns in areas besides air soft ranges or approved fields, then they shouldn't have them.

Are your kids perfect? Do they always do exact right thing? Or do they do the same things other kids do, but get a benefit of the doubt not all other kids get?

Are you going to go tell your kids to go carry an airsoft rifle, especially one with no red tip, and wave it around because police may use non-lethal force?

 

[ronburgundy]

Perhaps if we had not had years and years of bad cops silencing the good cops and getting away with it, then the general public would not have had to reach a point of reacted to every shooting with a public outcry.

The public does not "have to" react to every shooting with public outcry, and it not a solution to the problem of the code of silence. I realize that this code did not start with public outcry. It started because cops are humans and humans have in-group bias. There are ways to counter it, but attacking all cops involved in shootings as though they are the same only reinforces it.

There is no system that can work without the good apples wanting to actively help to expose and punish the bad apples.

On this point we agree, and I think one way the general public can help is to insist on an accountability system that rewards good cops for testifying against and getting rid of the bad cops.

Yes, such rewards might help, but they will do little to nothing if the good cops know that the same people rewarding them will come to destroy their life the very second they commit an honest error on the job. Their job entails using force against suspects, so that means those errors are treated as crimes by people who fail to grasp how actions that are needless and reckless criminality resulting from actions that civilians never need or should be taking against any other people are sometimes unavoidable accidents resulting from what cops are required to do to some people some times. It is analogous to a licensed doctor who makes an mechanical error stitching an artery that winds up resulting in the patient death, compared to some random person on the street stabbing a guy in the artery because they want to try out their stitching skills and failing to do it properly, so the guy dies. By your reasoning, these incidents should be treated identically.

And that will not happen if every honest error that even the best apples will occasionally commit is presumed to be the act of a bad racist apple prior to any facts that clearly support this conclusion.

Assumes a conclusion I see no evidence of. I have yet to see a genuinely "good shoot" causing a public outcry - only highly questionable ones.

All shootings are "questionable" and should be questioned. Immediately screaming that a cop is a racist murderer and setting the town on fire is not an act of "questioning", but destructive acts fueled by certain conclusions reached in violation of any rational thought. Presuming racist motives when their is evidence that the suspect had a gun in his hand and was a violent criminal who had shot someone previously is absurd.

As for "honest errors", I don't agree that "honest errors" should be disregarded when they cause someone's death. We wouldn't allow it for a civilian, or a corporation or even a soldier... why should we allow it for a cop.

And you demonstrate the extremely destructive mentality that disregards all relevant facts and prohibits a rational solution.

We allow it for soldiers all the time, for the very same reason we must allow for such unfortunate mistakes by cops. Almost none of the killings of non-combatants by soldiers in a war zone are viewed by US or international law as criminal acts or even something for which the soldiers or their country can be held in any way liable. Basically, the only such killings not allowed are those where there is evidence of deliberate intent to kill known innocent non-combatants, which would be analogous to a cop shooting a person that they knew was not a threat and not a suspect in any crime (a situation that applies to virtually none of the cases in question.

Within the context of communities over-run with heavily armed violent criminals, there is no possible way that cops can do their required job without exerting force against people who, at the time, are merely suspected and not yet convicted by a court, of a crime and of being a lethal threat. Given the inherent flaws of human perception and judgment in such high-stress time-pressure situations, errors are certain to occur in who that force is directed at and the calibration of force given the facts (most of which are not available to the cop at the time). This means, there is no way the cops can do the job that all innocent people demand they do without there being such errors. If you make it a criminal offense to cause occasional accidental outcomes inherent to doing the required job as well as humans can do it, then you have no one to do the job.

 

[ksen]

TAMIR RICE WAS NOT WAIVING A GUN - TOY OR OTHERWISE - WHEN POLICE ROARED UP ACROSS THE LAWN AND SHOT HIM DEAD

None of us should have to keep saying that to any of you

You're right, he wasn't literally "waiving" his extremely real looking gun, just pointing it at other people in the park and holding it and possibly pointing it at the cops when they pulled up.
A distinction without a difference. In fact, "waiving" it might have made him seem less like a plausible lethal threat.

No, he wasn't "possibly waving it around at the cops". It was out of sight and his hands were empty when he was shot.

 

[ksen]

Are your kids perfect? Do they always do exact right thing? Or do they do the same things other kids do, but get a benefit of the doubt not all other kids get?

Are you going to go tell your kids to go carry an airsoft rifle, especially one with no red tip, and wave it around because police may use non-lethal force?

Are you just going to be all, "oh well" if one of your kids gets gunned down like Tamir Rice was?

 

[coloradoatheist]

Are you going to go tell your kids to go carry an airsoft rifle, especially one with no red tip, and wave it around because police may use non-lethal force?

Are you just going to be all, "oh well" if one of your kids gets gunned down like Tamir Rice was?

What is your reaction is a parent if your kid died drinking and driving? Of course it's not oh well...but how do you handle any death when you are child is responsible for their death?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I will have to watch it, but I do think it's a good idea to have kids get instructions on how to handle interactions with police officers. Understand what they want, and how to handle it.

White kids don't need that instruction. White people don't need training on how to not get killed by police. Sometimes white people are killed by police, but as a group, just being white isn't a consideration when dealing with police. Asshole people escalate things, asshole cops escalate things, but in general, white people don't have to worry too much about being pulled over for a tail light out or speeding. Other than the worry about their driving record or being able to pay the fine, white people have to have something else going on to really fear simply being pulled over.

Everyone needs that instruction. It's just that white people generally aren't raised with the hostility towards police that causes many of the bad outcomes. Don't start trouble with the police and a traffic stop isn't going to be a problem.

 

[Angry Floof]

White kids don't need that instruction. White people don't need training on how to not get killed by police. Sometimes white people are killed by police, but as a group, just being white isn't a consideration when dealing with police. Asshole people escalate things, asshole cops escalate things, but in general, white people don't have to worry too much about being pulled over for a tail light out or speeding. Other than the worry about their driving record or being able to pay the fine, white people have to have something else going on to really fear simply being pulled over.

Everyone needs that instruction. It's just that white people generally aren't raised with the hostility towards police that causes many of the bad outcomes. Don't start trouble with the police and a traffic stop isn't going to be a problem.

Fuck you and your bootlicking. Citizens do not need to do a damn thing different from anything we are doing right now or at any time in order for corrupt, murderous police to be held accountable.

The training shown in the video is way beyond what "everyone" gets when they get a license. It's training that NO citizen should ever need.

Again, there is NOTHING, not one thing, that any fucking citizen needs to do differently in order for law enforcement to take responsibility for THEIR corruption.

You will always side with power, and I will always hold it accountable. You're dead weight on any effort in our country to solve problems with law enforcement.

 

[RavenSky]

The public does not "have to" react to every shooting with public outcry, and it not a solution to the problem of the code of silence. I realize that this code did not start with public outcry. It started because cops are humans and humans have in-group bias. There are ways to counter it, but attacking as though they are the same only reinforces it.

Since no one is "attacking all cops involved in shootings", your strawman contributes nothing to the discussion

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But until waiting to find out what happened, they said, "Shot while driving deaf" That wasn't the case. He was shot trying to evade police officers. Whether or not it was okay, it was a different story.

Your example is unconvincing because even if the story had been accurate, the shooting was unjustified.

You simply decided that, it has not been proven.

What we have seen is that he was resisting arrest to the point that the police resorted to at least less-than-lethal force, maybe even lethal force. (We don't know how fast he was going when the PIT maneuver was done.)

 

[ZiprHead]

Are you just going to be all, "oh well" if one of your kids gets gunned down like Tamir Rice was?

What is your reaction is a parent if your kid died drinking and driving? Of course it's not oh well...but how do you handle any death when you are child is responsible for their death?

That's twice now you've dodged the question.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My kids are aware that waiving one of their guns, whether or not it has a red tip has a very good chance of getting themselves killed for it. If your kid isn't responsible enough to know that they don't bring out those guns in areas besides air soft ranges or approved fields, then they shouldn't have them.

Are your kids perfect? Do they always do exact right thing? Or do they do the same things other kids do, but get a benefit of the doubt not all other kids get?

Note that he offered two options:

1) The kids are responsible enough.

2) The kids don't get such toys.

Any parent can comply with #2.

(And personally, I feel this should be the law. Playing with realistic replicas on the street should be illegal.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're right, he wasn't literally "waiving" his extremely real looking gun, just pointing it at other people in the park and holding it and possibly pointing it at the cops when they pulled up.
A distinction without a difference. In fact, "waiving" it might have made him seem less like a plausible lethal threat.

You seem to forget that we have video of the killing of Tamir Rice which shows that he was not "holding" his toy, and especially not "possibly pointing it at the cops." Moreover, he was a CHILD. Not even a teenager, but a CHILD.

1) While he wasn't at that moment he had been pointing it at people. That's why the cops were there in the first place.

2) There's no reason to keep saying "CHILD". He was big for his age and looked basically adult and it doesn't even matter anyway. Kids with guns are still a threat.

3) It seems like what happened is when the cops pulled up he went for his "gun". That's very likely to get you shot no matter what you look like. Now, I figure he was going for it to ditch it but the cops have no way of knowing that.

But the more you go on with these strawmen, the more you prove that a very large part of the problem that must be addressed is the ridiculous lengths both police and authoritarians in the general public will go to pretend "bad cops" are somehow the "good cops."

You have it backwards. You keep trying to show good cops are bad. Until you can accurately identify the problem don't expect people to care about what you have to say about solving it.

And note that we seem to have two bad shootings involving the same problem: finger-on-trigger. That strongly suggests there's a systematic training problem. We also have two involving taser/gun confusion. Again, this suggests a systemic problem that should be addressed in training.