Police Misconduct Catch All Thread

[Derec]

It's sickening to be honest. It's as if some people believe that it's ok to violate everyone's rights except theirs, without considering that the tyrants will come for theirs next.

You may have a right to own firearms. You do not have the right to pull them at police.
Why is that distinction so hard to grasp?

 

[laughing dog]

Well, he is the one who grabbed the gun without even being fully awake. That's on him.

And the police killed him - that is on them.

 

[Derec]

Quite a number of these cases involved victims having knives. Or 'having knives.'

You mean "involved perpetrators having knives" surely? And what is with the quotation marks? You don't believe they actually had knives?

One is allowed to possess a knife and also to possess a firearm in Minnesota.

True. That does not mean you can attack people with knives. Or refuse to drop one if police orders you to.

It is also very difficult to credibly mistake a knife for a gun. Certainly not in daylight.

Who said they were mistaken for guns? Knives are deadly weapons in their own right.

There were other cases than Wright's where the victim was not armed at all. In one case, the victim was profiled and bore zero resemblance to the person who had committed a robbery days prior. The victim was legally carrying a weapon and informed the police officers that he had a legal weapon and was going to show them the permit when he was killed and when his girlfriend and her minor child were very nearly killed by police.

Do you mean Philandro Castille here? The cop was prosecuted, but acquitted. He also wasn't white. So that case does not fit your parameters either.
Again, you claimed that a white officer would not be prosecuted in a case similar to that of Noor murdering Justine Damond. You claimed that there were cases like that in Minnesota, but have yet to give me even one example that fits the circumstances of the Damond murder - unarmed victim that was not attacking nor was a suspect in any crime.
Do you have any such examples, as you claimed, or not?

Quite a number of these were calls to police to help find the victim who was having a mental health crisis.

So? People in a mental health crisis can still be very dangerous. I recall the case of Keaton Otis in Portland. He had some mental health issues, but nevertheless had a gun. During a traffic stop, he shot an officer in the legs. His fellow officers returned fire, killing him.

I happen to know a fair amount about one of these cases. Someone I know went to school and was friends with the police officer involved and knew the shooting victim. I happen to know the spot where he was killed. In broad daylight. I also read the news accounts contemporaneously. The shooting happened in broad daylight where the victim, whose parents were worried about him and had called the police out of concern for their son. There is no credible way that the victim was a threat to anyone. The knife was very small, and legal--a pocket knife.

Knife being legal does not mean it is not a deadly weapon. A pocket knife still has a blade 2-3" long, depending on the model. Even 2" is more than enough to reach the heart and other vital structures (like the iliac or femoral arteries if stabbed in the groin or thigh).
For reference, this Swiss army knife has a 2.5" blade.

What was his name? Can we look up the case?

He was too far from any police officer to have been able to throw the knife and hurt anyone, even if he had been a skilled circus performer. The police made a terrible error but there were no charges filed against the officer.

How far was he exactly? We can't say that the "police made a terrible error" without knowing the particulars, so are there some news accounts of the case available online?
In any case, a person with a knife can close a distance of ~20' very rapidly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually I think this is more the hospital's fault than the cops fault.

I think there’s more than enough blame to go around. The hospital is primarily to blame, of course.

But the police are not obliged to remove a person in obvious need of medical help because a hospital demands it.

Why would you get medical help for someone an ER had just said didn't need help? Sure, they don't look good but ERs are for emergencies, not simple ill health. They are not obligated to treat a chronic problem no matter how severe.

May be the hospital threw her out when they shouldn't have, but she was complaining of breathing (yet was smoking!!) and died of a major stroke--those usually aren't related. I wouldn't be surprised if this is simply a coincidence, or that she worked herself into a tizzy provoking a weak spot to rupture. Or maybe she had the yuck but not badly enough to warrant admission--and it threw a clot into her brain. Note that the reporting on this is going to be very one-sided because the hospital is not permitted to rebut the story.

(Which is something I would like to see changed--I believe privacy laws should be automatically waived to the minimum extent needed to rebut false claims about the protected information. By making the false claim you chose to make it not private.)

It is unusual for a stroke to happen with no forewarning,

The ER might not have thought they were the right place to provide the care she needed but obviously she was in imminent need of medical help. At the very least, they could have sent her to internal medicine. The ER made an error and it cost someone her life. This does happen but in this case, the error is getting a lot of attention.

Huh? Strokes are normally out of the blue. Yes, you can have a history of TIAs and other risk factors but that's not something the ER deals with. Hospitals are required to provide emergency care to everyone but if your health conditions don't warrant hospital admission they'll tell you to go see your doctor. They are not required to take the place of a regular doctor.

People do not have strokes because they are emotionally distressed. Or extremely emotionally stressed.

Wait: was she black? Must have been excited delirium. Isn’t that what you like to say?

Emotional distress can raise your blood pressure and cause a weak spot to blow.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Data on arrests and convictions can be obtained easily enough, but drug use? And selling? Are they relying on self reporting? That makes it is less reliable than objective metrics. Many people would not be willing to admit drug use, and much less dealing, to poll takers. Would blacks be less likely to admit it than whites? I would say it is likely - distrust of authorities and all that. That alone would skew the stats. But that is the least of it. The graph just talks about "use" and "sales" as percentage of population. It does not distinguish the type of drug. It does not distinguish the frequency. Somebody who smokes a joint a couple of times a year is obviously far less likely to get busted that somebody who smokes weed every day. Rate of drug use is more complex than just having used it at some point. It would be in units like man-joints/year, man-lines/year or similar.

If you're willing to go to the effort you can poll about things that people would not admit.

"Are you a drug dealer? Take a coin, flip it where I can't see it. If it's heads, answer 'yes', if it's tails answer truthfully."

This doubles you required sample size and makes your error bars a bit wider but it works.

I do agree with your points about what constitutes "usage"--it doesn't distinguish the casual user from the hardcore and it doesn't distinguish how hard the drugs are.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Quite a number of these cases involved victims having knives. Or 'having knives.' One is allowed to possess a knife and also to possess a firearm in Minnesota. It is also very difficult to credibly mistake a knife for a gun. Certainly not in daylight.

"Armed with" implies that it's in their hands. And in poor light it's quite possible to have an incomplete image and simply see they have metal in their hands.

And note that just because they're only armed with a knife doesn't mean the cops aren't allowed to shoot. Charge a cop with a knife and you should expect him to shoot.

Quite a number of these were calls to police to help find the victim who was having a mental health crisis. I happen to know a fair amount about one of these cases. Someone I know went to school and was friends with the police officer involved and knew the shooting victim. I happen to know the spot where he was killed. In broad daylight. I also read the news accounts contemporaneously. The shooting happened in broad daylight where the victim, whose parents were worried about him and had called the police out of concern for their son. There is no credible way that the victim was a threat to anyone. The knife was very small, and legal--a pocket knife. He was too far from any police officer to have been able to throw the knife and hurt anyone, even if he had been a skilled circus performer. The police made a terrible error but there were no charges filed against the officer.

The problem with the mental health cases is that there's often no good answer. The family calls because the nut is coming after them with a knife, the police show up and the nut goes after them. Some of them also are suicide by cop. Going after a cop with a knife is a quicker and surer means of dying than using the knife on yourself because the pain might stop you from doing enough damage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the cops are justified in shooting you dead because you were armed, then you do NOT have the right to bear arms, no matter what the constitution or the courts might say.

Anyone who has ever tried to justify a police shooting, by saying that the victim was armed (with a gun, or a knife, or anything else) should be themselves prohibited from owning any kind of weapon (or anything that could plausibly be employed as a weapon).

Due to those commentators not being hypocritical tossers, not one word of complaint nor objection to such a regulation would result.

You have a right to bear arms. You do not have a right to point the weapon at someone who isn't doing wrong. That's brandishing a firearm, generally a felony, it will get you a stint in jail and you won't be allowed to have a gun again.

 

[Toni]

Quite a number of these cases involved victims having knives. Or 'having knives.' One is allowed to possess a knife and also to possess a firearm in Minnesota. It is also very difficult to credibly mistake a knife for a gun. Certainly not in daylight.

"Armed with" implies that it's in their hands. And in poor light it's quite possible to have an incomplete image and simply see they have metal in their hands.

And note that just because they're only armed with a knife doesn't mean the cops aren't allowed to shoot. Charge a cop with a knife and you should expect him to shoot.

Quite a number of these were calls to police to help find the victim who was having a mental health crisis. I happen to know a fair amount about one of these cases. Someone I know went to school and was friends with the police officer involved and knew the shooting victim. I happen to know the spot where he was killed. In broad daylight. I also read the news accounts contemporaneously. The shooting happened in broad daylight where the victim, whose parents were worried about him and had called the police out of concern for their son. There is no credible way that the victim was a threat to anyone. The knife was very small, and legal--a pocket knife. He was too far from any police officer to have been able to throw the knife and hurt anyone, even if he had been a skilled circus performer. The police made a terrible error but there were no charges filed against the officer.

The problem with the mental health cases is that there's often no good answer. The family calls because the nut is coming after them with a knife, the police show up and the nut goes after them. Some of them also are suicide by cop. Going after a cop with a knife is a quicker and surer means of dying than using the knife on yourself because the pain might stop you from doing enough damage.

I’ve never read a case where the ‘nut’ aka person in a mental health crisis—you realize, don’t you, Loren, that these are people? Human beings whose families love them? Whose families have struggled along with them to get them the help they need? Or are they just words on a paper or screen? Not someone with a life that is every bit as valuable, as precious as your own?

Family call police for help when they are afraid FOR the safety of their loved one—NOT because they are afraid for their own lives.

It may shock you to know that people really do care about their family members, even if they have serious mental health issues. Even if they self medicate because they haven’t been able to access mental health treatment as is far, far, far too common.

The instance where I know someone who went to school with both the officer and the man killed? That happened in broad daylight. By all accounts I’ve ever heard, the officer is a good person. The man who died had a lot of mental health issues. The account that is summarized is not as detailed or likely as accurate as what was reported in local news outlets at the time. It certainly differs on a couple of points.

I wasn’t there when the shooting happened but I’ve been by that spot before. The police were in no danger. No one was in any danger except the man who died. It is easy to say you thought you saw a gun. What was reported at the time was that police saw light reflecting off of something—that turned out to be a small knife. It could have as easily been a cell phone. The police believed it was a gun or said they did. Although the family told the police he had no access to any kind of firearm.

What I know for certain is that there were too many unnecessary deaths in that list of babes in the article I linked. Out of curiosity I googled man shot by police in Minnesota and found a couple of in cases that happened in February of this year. In one of those cases, the man clearly posed a danger to others. In the other? Not so much.

 

[lpetrich]

Looking at all these defenses of police violence, I can't help but think that many murderers will *love* those defenses, with their stretching of self-defense to absurd lengths.


I found mention of this curious racial issue.
Are white people at Black Lives Matter protests helpful, or a distraction? - The Washington Post

Many of the actions of white protesters this week have involved flaunting the privilege that comes with knowing white skin insulates from state violence. These displays fetishize black suffering and demonstrate the very point black activists have long made — that state violence targets black people specifically.

But they also imply we have to imagine dead white people for protest to be considered legitimate or for the actual crimes committed against black people to gain widespread sympathy. It is a Catch-22: White bodies are protected by the state, yet the prospect of white death is a way to garner empathy. This proves yet again how little black lives actually matter: Actual black deaths do not move white America as much as the simulation of white death.

 

[laughing dog]

If the cops are justified in shooting you dead because you were armed, then you do NOT have the right to bear arms, no matter what the constitution or the courts might say.

Anyone who has ever tried to justify a police shooting, by saying that the victim was armed (with a gun, or a knife, or anything else) should be themselves prohibited from owning any kind of weapon (or anything that could plausibly be employed as a weapon).

Due to those commentators not being hypocritical tossers, not one word of complaint nor objection to such a regulation would result.

You have a right to bear arms. You do not have a right to point the weapon at someone who isn't doing wrong. That's brandishing a firearm, generally a felony, it will get you a stint in jail and you won't be allowed to have a gun again.

We give the police special powers with the expectation those powers are used to protect order to protect life, liberty and property. When those expectations are violated, the officers in questions should be held accountable. Or, they lose those powers.

 

[Gospel]

Well, he is the one who grabbed the gun without even being fully awake.

If you wait until you are fully awake before grabbing your gun when a black man kicks your bed after breaking in then I agree

 

[Gospel]

I live in an area where a black person doing a home invasion is likely to happen. If I'm awakened out of my sleep abruptly, my first instinct is to go for my pistol. I'd be dead just like Locke cop or no cop, I'm gonna try to live.

 

[ZiprHead]

A Louisville police officer let his dog attack a 14-year-old Black child who was not resisting. As the dog 'gnawed' on the child's arm, the officer said 'stop fighting my dog,' DOJ said in bombshell report

The teenager was bitten at least seven times and suffered "serious injuries on his arm and back from the bites," the Justice Department wrote.

www.insider.com

A Louisville Metro Police officer unleashed his police dog on a 14-year-old Black boy who was spotted lying on the ground, leading to severe injuries and hospitalization, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Department of Justice.

The findings are part of the DOJ's broader two-year investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government that was launched after Breonna Taylor was killed during a raid by seven officers in March 2020.

The police dog incident occurred during a search for a home invasion suspect, according to the DOJ, which reviewed a video of the encounter. The date of the incident and the name of the officer were not disclosed.

"The officer was leading his dog to search for a person suspected of a home invasion. After searching for several minutes, the officer saw the teenager lying on the ground, face down in the grass," the Justice Department wrote in its report. "Immediately after noticing the teen, the officer deployed his dog off-leash — without giving any warning — and ordered the dog to bite the teen at least seven times."

During the encounter, the teen remained prone and pleaded, "OK! OkK Help! Get the dog, please!" the report stated, as officers continued to stand over him and shout orders for about 30 seconds "while the dog gnawed on his arm."

"At one point, an officer shouted, 'Stop fighting my dog!' despite video showing the teen lying still with one arm behind his back and the other arm in the dog's mouth," according to the report.

The teen suffered severe injuries on his arm and back and was admitted to a children's hospital.

The Justice Department's larger report concluded that the police department and government agency exhibited a pattern of misconduct, excessive use of force, and discrimination.

"The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government (Louisville Metro) and the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law," the report stated.

The report included another police dog incident during which the DOJ said officers found a white man "lying face up, on his back, in his boxers, with his hands up." The man tried to comply with the officers' orders while the dog continued to bite his foot for nearly a minute.

"In both incidents, officers should not have ordered their dogs to bite the people involved. Both were trying to comply with orders and were not resisting," the DOJ wrote. "Because these bites went on for far longer than was necessary, and given the way that officers spoke to these individuals, we have serious concerns that these uses of force were punitive, reflecting a dangerous lack of self-control by the officers and subjecting these individuals to excruciating uses of force far beyond lawful limits."

 

[ZiprHead]

Memphis police academy cut corners while scrambling to hire, officers say

Years before the brutal police beating of Tyre Nichols, the Memphis Police Department relaxed academic, disciplinary and fitness standards at its training academy in an effort to fill widespread vacancies, opening the door for the hiring of officers who could become dangerous liabilities, nine current and former officers who recruited and trained academy students said.


After the city slashed pension benefits in 2014, and as high-profile police misconduct cases across the country began to sour public opinion of the profession, many officers left the department, and fewer applicants expressed interest, according to department statistics and interviews with current and former officers.
Hoping to boost admissions, the department announced in 2018 that it would defer college credit requirements for recruits, allowing applicants with high school diplomas and multiple years of work experience to join the force and pledge to attend college later. The city announced a $15,000 signing bonus for police recruits in 2021, and in 2022, the department said it was adjusting qualifying marks in fitness in an effort to exclude fewer applicants.


Additional changes were made but not announced publicly, according to nine current and former academy instructors, supervisors and recruiters, five of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals and, in some cases, are still employed by the department.

 

[TomC]

After the city slashed pension benefits in 2014, and as high-profile police misconduct cases across the country began to sour public opinion of the profession, many officers left the department, and fewer applicants expressed interest, according to department statistics and interviews with current and former officers.

Here's how I interpret this.

As calls to defund the police grew and vilifying the police grew, BLM got their way. Defunding and vilifying happened.

But the residents of cities like Memphis still wanted cops. As the good cops left, the Memphis PD had to drop their standards.

A lot.
Memphis wound up with murderous black thugs, like the ones who killed Nichols, on the force because they had no other feasible option. Nobody else wanted the jobs.

Am I missing something here?
Tom

 

[Oleg]

Am I missing something here?

No. That seems to be it.

 

[Rhea]

Am I missing something here?

Yes.

 

[TomC]

Am I missing something here?

Yes.

Brilliant response.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

After the city slashed pension benefits in 2014, and as high-profile police misconduct cases across the country began to sour public opinion of the profession, many officers left the department, and fewer applicants expressed interest, according to department statistics and interviews with current and former officers.

Here's how I interpret this.

As calls to defund the police grew and vilifying the police grew, BLM got their way. Defunding and vilifying happened.

But the residents of cities like Memphis still wanted cops. As the good cops left, the Memphis PD had to drop their standards.

A lot.
Memphis wound up with murderous black thugs, like the ones who killed Nichols, on the force because they had no other feasible option. Nobody else wanted the jobs.

Am I missing something here?
Tom

I see no reason for the word "black" in your 4th paragraph. "murderous thugs" is fine. Where "black" would be relevant is places that have lowered standards in the name of diversity.

 

[TomC]

After the city slashed pension benefits in 2014, and as high-profile police misconduct cases across the country began to sour public opinion of the profession, many officers left the department, and fewer applicants expressed interest, according to department statistics and interviews with current and former officers.

Here's how I interpret this.

As calls to defund the police grew and vilifying the police grew, BLM got their way. Defunding and vilifying happened.

But the residents of cities like Memphis still wanted cops. As the good cops left, the Memphis PD had to drop their standards.

A lot.
Memphis wound up with murderous black thugs, like the ones who killed Nichols, on the force because they had no other feasible option. Nobody else wanted the jobs.

Am I missing something here?
Tom

I see no reason for the word "black" in your 4th paragraph. "murderous thugs" is fine. Where "black" would be relevant is places that have lowered standards in the name of diversity.

That's the best nitpick you can come up with?

I'm pretty sure Chauvin's race figured prominently in the outrage.

Is this some race privilege you're objecting to, pointing out that the perpetrators were black is somehow a problem?
Tom