The Glade 4.0

Thoughts?

Sure there are complaints that don't get reported and unsustained complaints that should be, but how much of a margin do we reasonably think that is?

and Yeah I understand the odds don't matter when you're the one struck by lightning twice, but we shouldn't make state or national policy based on the guy who is stuck by lightning twice.

All that said I think its worthwhile to consider that maybe there isn't the dearth of issues we've been led to believe?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

It is a fairly inSidious mistake.

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Holy shitsnacks!

My first thought is: The video's producers are conflating statistics from 2002, 2008, and 2012 in the same equation in an effort to show...something.
My next thought is: The video's producers are falsely stating facts about those statistics ("the BLS last identified that...") statistics they are using in an effort to show...something.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

That said, I think most people can agree on some basic assumptions. First, inappropriate conduct by police officers can vary widely, from rudeness to being shot for the most blatantly unnecessary reason. Secondly, of the inappropriate behavior, most occurs at the minor side of the spectrum. Third, people aren't going to be as likely to report minor stuff. Fourth, people that just had a bad experience with law enforcement may have an incentive not to call the department to talk to more cops and complain. And lastly, I think we can all agree that the number of contacts and the number of issues is not evenly distributed throughout the population.

The point is, the statistics shown in the video, even if 100% correct, are not telling the whole story. The majority of those contacts are spread across a much smaller population, and there are other factors involved that are resulting in large swaths of the population having a trust deficit with police.

The police are there to serve the public. If the public doesn't trust them (specifically the local public they are interacting with), then they absolutely need to reevaluate what they are doing.

In some cases this is true; in other cases they do so either because they're just mad or because they feel that diverting attention onto the police will help excuse their own conduct.



If "the public" in general does not then yes, the police need to re-evaluate. However, as a general rule the public as a whole does trust the police - and I've posted reputable statistics here before in that regard.

What we see is specific subsets of the public misrepresenting themselves as the public in general being dissatisfied, and the news media buying right into it in order to sell news - often putting out inaccurate versions of events well before all the facts are available.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was trying to say: Yeah there are people who don't report, but that's true about any kind of statistic known to mankind isn't it?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

No, I disagree. I referred to "large swaths of the population" - the intent was to describe these subsets you are referring to. If any significant segment of the population has a problem with the police, then the police needs to take a hard look and reevaluate.

Further, I'm not sure what subsets you are saying are misrepresenting themselves. I look at the protests in places like Furgeson - they aren't claiming to represent whites, for example. I didn't see any misrepresentation.

The question is whether it's a lot of people or not. I suspect in this case, there are a lot of unreported complaints.

Ferguson is actually a very good example. The fact that there are issues with the protestors does not mean that the police don't also need to change their behavior. Police in Ferguson were quite literally violating Constitutional protections for the press. They were engaged in precisely the sort of activity that prompted the Second Amendment. That is unacceptable. I don't care what the police felt they needed to do to secure law and order. I don't care how threatened they felt.

The incident that sparked the protests involved an officer shooting the suspect multiple times in broad daylight with uninvolved bystanders in the vicinity. That is not an isolated incident. The number of shots fired is also not unusual, except in that it may actually be below the national average for number of shots fired by a police officer in an engagement. Police officers in the United States are a threat to public safety. They are firing too many shots to accomplish their objectives. Police officers in the United States need to be trained to handle conflicts in a manner that does not require them to unload the clips in their pistols. This does not mean that police officers should be disarmed, or that the use of a firearm is never appropriate. There are too many questionable police shootings that have been brushed aside under the auspices of, "The police officer appropriately followed his or her training." So the officer does not need to be reprimanded. Okay, in that case there is a problem with police officer training.

Police do not need military equipment of any kind. Period. They are not our national defense institution. They are civilian law enforcement. Usage of S.W.A.T. is far too prevalent. American citizens are more peaceful now than at any other time in the nation's history. The police do not need armored personnel carriers, nor automatic weaponry. Society is becoming more peaceful, and the police should be less armed. Again, this does not mean the police should be totally disarmed or that the use of firearms is never appropriate, but there should be police officers who are unarmed. According to the statistics presented in that video the majority of police officers are not threatened in any way during the execution of their duties.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This is not necessarily true. Some subsets of the population - criminals, for example - necessarily have a problem with the police. There are generally other large swathes of the population that approve of what the police are doing.



What subsets I'm referring to depends on the situation in question. I have no idea who the "they" is in Fergueson that you are referring to - but I saw a great deal of misrepresentation by the media. Some of it was right here in the Ferguson thread.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Some police officers, on an individual basis MAY have been violating freedom of the press. The problem is that "freedom of the press" does not mean what you think it means. Freedom of the press is license to any person to publish what they wish - it is Freedom of Speech in written form. It is not freedom of conduct in finding things to report on, and it is certainly not a special protection for people in a certain profession. If you are in the middle of a riot, having a camera with you is not an entitlement to special privilege.



No they weren't. The Second Amendment was not prompted by anything found in the modern world. Even if it were, it would be irrelevant - It's one thing to talk about the Second Amendment on the internet as if and armed populace is going to correct police misbehavior; its a totally different matter to go do it. People are not going to do it because poliuce misbehavior in this country is trivial It's a first world problem. This is why you talk about it on the Glade. It gives the veneer and feeling of doing something about a problem without the actual sacrifice that would be involved if the problem really existed.



It's irrelevant that you don't care. The police are citizens, and have rights. The rules governing them are set by the courts and the legislature. This is why we do not allow people like you access to actual political power.



A suspect that was attempting to kill the officer.



No they don't. This has been discussed over and over- by people that are actually competent to evaluate armed exchanges. yoiu re not. Being a member of the public does not mean your opinion on this actually counts. You have no more business talking about this than I would lecturing you on Ohm's Law.



They already are. The fact that you think otherwise indicates that you are entirely too ignorant, too biased, or too interested in trolling to have an opinion. Thge vast majority of law enforcement training focuses on things that have nothing to do with firearms or the employment of any other weapon or form of combat.



No, there is not. There is a problem with the fact that you think there is a problem. You are armchair quarterbacking a game you have never been taught to play. The problem is that you do not understand what is needed


False.


If this is the case, then you just invalidated your earlier comment that you "do not care if the police feel threatened". Soldiers can be ordered into mortal danger or to undertake suicidal courses of action. Civilian police officers are not, and cannot be so ordered. The rules established by the courts reflect this the populace may not demand that police officers take unreasonable risks to their own safety.



It is not.



Your opinions here are essentially those of the feminists you're decrying in the threads on rape, translated into different form. You are demanding changes to the rules that put other people at unreasonable risk because you do not consider their viewpoint or interests important. No police officer should be unarmed any more than a male should have to suffer a hearing in a kangaroo court just because he's a college student.

Things like automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers indicate the depth of your ignorance - they're irrelevant. The polise rarely use them. They are around for situations where nothing else will do. The overall level of violence (and the assertion that we are "more peaceful than ever" is laughable) is not important; what's important is what the actual situation is when a given officer or department confronts it. An officer might go 20 years and not be threatened - and then one day he runs across the one guy that is determined not to get arrested at any cost.

These sorts of opinions disqualify you from being taken seriously. Like the other thread, the hyperbole hurts your case. The consequences of doing things the way you suggest - imposing arbitrary limitations based on the ideas of a person who has nothing more than intuitive ideas about the police and a serious problem dealing with authority possessed by someone other than he - would be that there would be no police, or at least very, very few. No one would do this job under such idiotic restrictions except at ruinous expense. If that were ever to come to pass, the public would have determined that it is undeserving of police protection. If the rules you suggest or anything like them were ever adopted I would demand a guaranteed income of $1,000,000 a year at least - as in, even if I were fired or imprisoned or killed my family would still receive it. Anything less and it would simply not be worth the risk. Another trip to a combat area would be preferable.

Thankfully, though, this sort of stupidity is confined to the internet where it belongs.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE - have you noticed how much time you spend defending the police?

Many, many people on this board have serious problems with the police, and how they behave.

Many, many people are protesting police behavior.

Many, many people who are not protesting have serious problems with police behavior.

You argue hard that incidents are isolated, and they don't matter, etc., that those who are complaining either don't have a valid opinion or are misrepresenting themselves, and yet the fact remains: many police departments have serious PR problems.

You say certain equipment is needed; you say procedures are appropriate, etc - yet you are of the same system that is having the PR problem. You were trained to think that way, and so were the other officers. This has resulted in a PR problem.

Have you noticed how much time people spend attacking the police? What's this got to do with anything? Ad hom much?



So what? Most of the people on this board have demonstrated repeatedly that they don't know the first thing about what police work involves and don't care to hear anything that contradicts their preconceived ideas. When videos and other examples ar eposted and the applicable rules, or problems with the evidence such as what's not contained or not know are pointed out, there's inevitably a barrage of snarky bullshit that basically amounts to "well, we already know the police must be at fault so don't interrupt the circle jerk with the facts". I can't count the number of times where the immediate response is a completely content free post about "hurf durf DE is going to defend this!" So what? Is it really that threatening that someone here does not hop on the bandwagon?



So what? Many more people object to the protests and have no such problems - and as I pointed out, I posted reputable and relevant statistics in that regard in the past.

There are 300 million people in this country. If just 1% of them have issues with the police, that's "many many people" and yet still does not come even close to representing anything but fringe lunacy. Even if it's 10% (which was what the Gallup stats indicated at the time I posted them) it's a very large number of people - but is still faced with an overwhelming supermajority that is fundamentally OK with the police.



Many more people do not. Furthermore, this is an appeal to popularity. The fact that the public has "problems with police behavior" does not mean there is anything wrong with police behavior; it mostly indicates that the average member of the public does not have any idea what police officers are sometimes called upon to do. People in this country are deeply sheltered for the most part. We saw the same thing with the release of the Wikileaks information - people freaking out about some cameraman getting lit up by an attack helicopter.

It does not occur to the typical hypocrite sitting in their study at their computer that when YOU are the one sitting in the cockpit who might get shot down and die in a flaming wreck and looking at a moving person through a thermal image that a large TV camera might look a lot like a SAM when you only get once chance to look. Replaying and zooming in the video and sitting back and analyzing it calmly and in perfect safety gives a remarkably different idea, but people knowing they will never be the one faced with that situation pompously and piously carry on about nonexistent "war crimes".

This is what people want to do with the police. People here do it all the time; they analyze video they can view over and over, that isn't even from the officer's perspective, and in total safety and comfort. Every single video of "police misconduct" ever posted on the Glade has gotten this treatment. This is why the courts do not permit police behavior to be evaluated in such a fashion - it is fundamentally unfair.

Having a problem with particular examples of police behavior based on whether they adhere to the rules established by the legislature or the courts is one thing, but extrapolating from those examples to law enforcement in general is no more valid than any other example of hasty generalization. No, it does not matter how many anecdotes one can dredge up - they still represent a small sampling and almost always include large numbers of incomplete or inaccurate accounts of some incidents.



Some police departments have PR issues specific to their departments. All police departments are not created equal. But the fact remains that people carelessly generalize from particular officers or departments to law enforcement in general, and are deeply susceptible to premature assessments of situations they don't have the full picture of or outright manipulation by the media.



Appeal to motive fallacy. Training and education make my opinion more valid than yours, not less. This is just the "shills for Big Oil" argument polished off and re-purposed and is just as invalid here as there.

Incidentally, Citizen Police Academies are a thing. They are generally free and not terribly time consuming if you wanted to actually have the foggiest clue, but I suspect that might just involve a very uncomfortable amount of having to see things from another perspective, since I am pretty sure you won't be able to go in there and waste everyone's time with the sort of uninformed, pompous crap that appears in police threads here.

As for "PR problems", we just got done discussing anti-vaxxers where you were definding a PR based approach to people that actively refuse to consider facts that are readily available. We have quite a few threads over the years demonstrating that large portions of the public believe all sorts of total hogwash about all sorts of subjects. We keep the hands of the public off the administration of justice for this reason. Males have a manufactured PR problem too at the hands of feminists and we see the same sort of argument - "change the rules because we do not like them!" in regard to rape cases. I don't really care about "Police PR problems" for the same reason I don't care that men have a PR problem - it's one manufactured by people that don't like the cops and sell outrage for a living, just like people manufacture a rape problem and try to sell it in the news.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

That's EXACTLY my point. People spend a lot of time attacking the police, which is WHY you spend so much time defending them. If you're spending that much time defending the police, what's that tell you about people's perceptions of the police?



What else would a discussion of public opinion be?









These statements all get back to exactly what I was saying. You're too close to the issue to be able to objectively see that there could be a problem. Police and the public are co-dependent. However, police answer to the public. They serve. Comparing citizens with complaints to feminists is not appropriate; the numbers are not similar, and the issues are not similar. The fact is, if the public - whom the police serve - sees an issue with police, there IS an issue with police. Perhaps police need to do a better job with explaining why they do what they do to the public, or maybe they need to reevaluate what they do. Or, most likely - both.

Feminists can't beat my *** and put me in jail with no repercussions.

Cops can.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Sounds like a Law & Order episode waiting to happen. Feminist and cyclist get into physical altercation, woman accuses man of rape, man gets arrested until 45 minutes into the episode they figure out she was lying. *Clink clink* - fade to black and show credits after she's found guilty of assault, but before an actual punishment is dealt.

Looks like we got
/sunglasses
Taken for a ride...
YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

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Holy shitsnacks!

Why is it that people only complain about potential police abuses when the "victim" is a black male?

If the cop in Ferguson had been a regular citizen not one person here would have had a problem with the shooting. You guys were OK with a homeowner baiting a trap for and executing a teenager in his garage, yet when a cop actually gets assaulted and kills his attacker, its a problem.

This myopic focus on only black male victims of police abuse is baffling. Its seriously some kind of weird inversion of missing white woman syndrome. Non incidents of brutality against blacks get all the press while real brutality gets ignored.

In my opinion, if you want a reason to dislike cops, stop focusing on the rare and usually not unjustified incidents of brutality, and focus on abuses that have near unanimous support from every police agency in the country, like civil forfeiture.

How many unreported/reported then? Twice? five times? Twenty? How do we even begin to decide?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Wow, seriously? Perhaps it's because the vast majority of police abuses - both large and small - are committed against black males? And it's not just the unjustified shootings or excessive force incidents that make the news every now and then; it's the day-in-day-out harassment. People getting stopped and questioned over, and over, and over in their daily lives for no reason at all other than being black. People getting a much higher level of antagonism from the cops in their interactions with them for no reason at all other than being black. People being at a much higher risk of being shot, tasered, or otherwise injured in any given interaction with the cops for no reason at all other than being black. The reason we rarely hear complaints about that **** when it happens to white people is that those really are rare by comparison. Seriously, man, are you that **** blind to the **** that people who aren't you have to live with?

I heard an NPR story that suggested even Black Cops gave more grief to Black Civilians not terribly long ago.

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****, you don't need NPR to tell you that. Ice Cube told you that 25 years ago.

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This is the other side of the coin.

When white people aren't looking, the black community has the same opinion of black teenagers as thugs who need to pull their pants up. The reputation for violent thuggish behavior is not undeserved. This needs to be addressed as well.

Everything being said about the police having to re-evaluate their behavior and their policies applies equally to blacks. There are a lot of black people who are unfairly harassed. That is true. There is also a reason why blacks are viewed with suspicion, and that can't be ignored.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.