The Glade 4.0

RACIST !!

Completely agreed. I just think the balance is way out of whack when you look at stats for things like NYPD's (now "officially" defunct Stop-and-Frisk program) and realize that they were stopping hundreds of thousands of people, almost all of them minorities, and over 90% of those stops revealed no criminal activity at all. That's why I suspect one of the biggest things we can do to move back toward an appropriate balance is move away from "broken windows" policing and start tightening the leash on what passes for "reasonable suspicion".

Yeah, I've seen/heard similar reports. On a related note, I've seen accounts of various studies showing that a cop's level of education is actually one of the biggest predictors of frequency of arrest, use of force, public complaints, disciplinary actions, etc.. Basically, the more educated a cop is, the less likely he is to arrest people, use force, engender complaints or otherwise engage in abusive misconduct.

Power corrupts, and absolute power is actually pretty neat.

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Holy shitsnacks!

What? You're saying ignorant people are more likely to act ignorant? We need to get this message out to the world!

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1. The "bait" dude was just a dude, not a cop.
2. HOW **** HARD IS IT TO NOT GO ON OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY AND TAKE THEIR ****?

I have zero sympathy for that ****.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Michael Brown stole **** from a convenience store like five minutes before he got shot. If this had been a regular citizen challenging him and then shooting him after being punched in the face, no one here would have any kind of problem with it.

Which the cop didn't know about. If he had been shot during the commission of that crime, or immediately thereafter? Yeah, that's different. He was walking down the middle of the street when confronted by the cop. Granted, he then apparently assaulted the officer, and due to the officer's poor training/handgun security/whatthehellever struggled for the officer's weapon and was shot in the back whilst running away. Cops have more tools to subdue a perp. They have training. We expect them to be better at it than the average homeowner.

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Holy shitsnacks!

He was not shot in the back. There is also no evidence that he was able to make a grab for Wilson's gun due to poor training or tactics - Wilson was still sitting in his car when Brown came over and assaulted him for no apparent reason.

Just because a situation goes poorly for an officer (or for that matter a mitary person or a citizen defending themselves) does not mean there was any problem with their training or tactics. Believe it or not bad situatuions sometimes just go bad. Quit armchair quarterbacking - and while you're at it try to stick to events that actually happened.

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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."

No, they can just call the cops and get you thrown in jail as a sex offender with almost no evidence.

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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."

You say that like the cop hadn't confronted Brown at all about being in the middle of the road.

Both parties in that case are at fault. Brown for assaulting the cop, and the cop for escalating the situation to lethal force. The kid's dead, and that's probably a tragedy. Unfortunately, the cop got away with manslaughter. Just like the cops in NY who killed the fat dude.

Because they're cops.

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Holy shitsnacks!

So what if he did? All he did was ask him not to walk in the middle of the road, which you're not supposed to do.



No, both parties are not at fault. Brown assaulted the cop and tried to take his weapon, and was much larger and stronger than the officer, and he did so for no reason other than anger at being told to get out of the street. The officer reasonably believed that if Brown got close enough to hit him, he would, and could, do so, take his weapon, and kill him. He was entirely justified in using lethal force, is not at fault in the slightest and did not "get away with" anything.

Which you would realize if you had anything resembling a clue.

In the New York situation they tried to throw one cop under the bus with the wrong charge and gave the other ones a deal against their buddy. It is not a similar situation in any respect. Which you would also realize if you had any idea what the **** you were talking about.

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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."

*Facepalm* The people I'm defending the police from are the posters on this board. There's maybe 2 dozen or so active Hellfire posters. It doesn't tell us anything about people in general's view of the police, and the views of an obscure internet forum are not an issue of nationwide importance.



We aren't discussing public opinion. We're discussing what the police should and should not do. That isn't a matter of what's popular with the public. The public has no more business deciding what's reasonable for the police to do in making an arrest than it does telling an F-16 pilot how to drop a bomb.



I'm not comparing citizens in general to feminists - I'm comparing specific subsets of citizens to feminists, and the comparison is entirely appropriate because the same logic is being used.

Furthermore, the fact that the police "serve the public" is simply tautological. Obviously. No one is questioning that. The issue is the manner of that service.

The simple fact is that we do not live in a direct democracy, and therefore the public does not make the rules for the police. In this country we run things as a Republic, which means rules for the police are made by the legislature, the courts, and the executive. The public may express displeasure to the elected representatives, but it does not get to directly demand they do anything in particular; elections are held on the aggregate view of who would be best elected on all issues. Judges may also be elected, but Federal judges - the ones most responsible for setting legal standards for police behavior are not elected and cannot even be easily removed by the other branches, and for a very good reason - the public has no business having any but the most indirect influence on any portion of the justice system. Just as feminists have no business anywhere near standards of proof in criminal cases, the public has no business deciding what is "Excessive" what is "Reasonable" or anything like that with respect to limits on the police.

so, when the police "serve" the public, they "serve" the public as a collective body by enforcing the law, not by making themselves popular with the public. Popularity is all well and good since a positive public view makes police work easier, but it is not a goal to be pursued at the expense of their reason for being there in the first place. The public in this country fails to understand that it is essentially the head of a Constitutional Monarchy where it reigns but does not rule. Like the British sovereign, the public has only very limited actual control over anything.

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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."

First, incidents with white people are not "rare" by comparison. More whites than blacks experience these things; it's just that blacks experience more relative to their population. That does not make it "rare by comparison" for whites.

Second, most of the "unjustified shootings, excessive force, and harassment" are anything but. It's in the nature of criminals to latch onto any thread to excuse their behavior, and blacks are much more likely to be criminals - because they are poorer and less likely to be well educated, just like better-educated police use force less often.

Garner is a perfect example - he was breaking the law, and he'd been caught doing it over 2 dozen previous times. He was not being "harassed" or "hassled"; he was stopped becuase he was committing an offense, one he habitually committed.

Yes, it was a very minor offense, but just because an offense is minor does not somehow obligate the police to let it go, especially when other citizens demand its enforcement. Nuisance laws did not get there by accident. People wanted them.

As I pointed out in that thread, if people don't want black men harassed for minor offenses like selling loose cigarettes, then they need to demand the repeal of laws like "no selling loose cigarettes". If the law goes away, the police will not enforce it.

That's the proper role of the citizenry - demanding that the legislature pass laws it wants and repeal ones it doesn't. If people feel that someone should not die because they resisted arrest over cigarettes, the answer is not to have silly laws about loose cigarettes, not demand that the police guess which laws people want enforced and to what degree.

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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."

Yeah, let's not let ourselves confuse two things here. I think Police in the USA could stand to be better trained and encouraged in the use of non-lethal force/tactics when possible.

That doesn't make the cop in Ferguson wrong. Brown committed several crimes, and attacked a cop. The moment you don't comply, then you deserve the bullet if you catch it. Again, people made a huge deal over this, rather than the poor 9 year old in Ohio with an obvious toy, who'd be a far better rallying point. I'm not crying over violent criminals getting shot.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

1) Cops should be held to higher standards.
2) People unwilling to accept that are unfit to be cops.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Indeed. The police are expected not to merely defend themselves, but to respond to situations other citizens can avoid and take violent criminals into custody. They have a duty where other citizens have no oigation whatsoever.

That IS the higher standard. "Cops are held to a higher standard" does not mean "whatever standard some armchair quarterback comes up with." If the officer has met the standard in the eyes of the courts, then that's all that matters. You can argue whether that standard has been met or not, but the instant you step outside the meaning of the law (case or statutory) you are just a resentful would-be dictator angry that other people will not let him set the rules according to his own whims.

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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."

Except the American Justice System currently exists in a questionable state, largely because the courts have some very glaring biases. Hinging legitimacy on the courts is probably not the best idea, particularly when prosecutors and judges broker all sorts of interesting deals. Rule of Law has no meaning in the United States right now, largely because everyone is treated differently when they step into the court room; or, as is increasingly the case, they are confronted with a law enforcement officer. There's far too much individual discretion in law enforcement in the United States.

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DE - The police serve the public. Of course that doesn't mean any citizen gets to decide standard for the cops, or that they operate based on polls.

That said, when an organization that serves the public is pissing the public off, there's a problem.

I just agreed that they serve the public. They do not do so, however, according to public whim. When I come in here and tell you guys "this is how such situations are judged" and then apply the rules to them, I'm not giving my personal viewpoint on the rules, I'm just saying "This is how things work." When people argue "but it shouldn't be that way!" that, right or wrong, has nothing to do with the particular incident in question. The police don't set the rules. They are what they are, and they're set the way they are because the courts realized a long time ago that it is not fair to judge situations that are difficult, dangerous, and happen in seconds based on hindsight from the comfort of a courtroom or law office. In this case, that means the living room or the computer desk.



First, you have to establish they are "pissing off the public" as a whole, not just that members of the public are pissed off, and that the problem is actually with the organization and not being manufactured by the press or other organizations that want a crisis.

Finally, the police in this country are not a single organization.

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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."

Such as? According to who?

You can surely question the justice system; that does not mean it exists in a questionable state - and even if it does, the police are in no position to affect that.



On what else would it hinge then? And how do prosecutorial deals have anything to do with precedents set at the Circuit or USSC level? Those are where the rules come from - and the "deals" that are made are made in light of them.



Rule of Law does not mean what you think it means. Everyone is treated differently because everyone is in a different circumstance. Police officers have obligations and responsibilities other people do not have - that means a different circumstance. If anything, there is not enough individual discretion. New Jersey was trying to prosecute a senior citizen for transporting and unloaded, 1700s-era pistol in his glove compartment prior to a major press outcry. Mandatory sentencing laws are a massive failure. Mandatory arrests in domestic violence cases regularly cause all kinds of legal trouble for people for no good reason - usually just because they are unfortunate enough to have a penis.

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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."

Diamondeye:

We'll just have to agree to disagree, seeing as how you're a proponent of relativistic law enforcement. I'm not. The law is the law. You either broke it or you did not. There's no grey area. There's also no mitigating circumstances. And law enforcement officers should not receive extra authority or credibility by way of their occupation, but they do.

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If police officers receive no authority by way of their occupation, then there is no point whatsoever in having them. If you just want to not have any law enforcement, then by all means come right out and say so.

"The law is the law" is a tautology. There is nothing "relativistic" about saying that circumstances should govern; circumstances are where we get the evidence that a violation occurred or not in the first place.

Finally, you are still up against the fact that the police are not the producers of the current state of affairs. If your problem is with the justice system as a whole and the rules it operates by, trying to change the police is a singularly ineffective approach. Like I told RD, if you don't like it when a guy gets arrested for selling loose cigarettes, repeal the law against selling them. You would not find me disagreeing with that.

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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."

Diamondeye:

They receive additional authority in a court of law that leads to well documented outcome biases. Anyone reading the last 20 years of law journals and publications is well aware of these biases. The courts are prejudiced in favor of law enforcement, as are prosecutors and other components of the Justice system. Justice, correspondingly, is not blind when it comes to that facet of its existence. Cops do not make better eyewitnesses than other people. They do, however, protect their own, which can also be problematic.

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Oh, really? That's very interesting.

Now normally I would call out that you are appealing to authority and not providing evidence, but you're really just sort of waving your hand in the general direction of authority.

That said, I think it's quite clear that this is Khross's reading of legal journals, not some sort of consensus of "anyone" who reads them.



Cops ARE, however, often better versed in what the law is in the first place and how to articulate themselves in court. This is not bias in favor of the police - it's the unavoidable effect of education and experience. People who testify in and deal with the courts a lot will be better at it than inexperienced people, and a lot of the people the police are dealing with are poorly educated to begin with, to say nothing of other underlying issues. If two people are equally reliable as eyewitnesses, the one who you can clearly understand what the **** they are even talking about will come across with greater credibility.



It can be, but it is not always problematic. In some departments, in some cases, officers can be found trying to cover for the misconduct of others. This does not mean that every incident some segment of the public takes a dislike to is some sort of abuse and the officer was unreasonably let off the hook if nothing happens to him.

Given the behavior of those segments of the public, however, there is great call for the police to protect their own. The public has access to a largely sympathetic press, and plenty of opportunities for self-press such as YouTube with zero vetting for quality or accuracy, to say nothing of manipulation and editing. People rush to judgement with few of the facts, and are loudly encouraged by that same press. In the midst of an incident, people loudly insert themselves into situations as if the police were accountable to whatever jackass happened to be standing by at the moment. People whine about the treatment of "nonviolent" protestors while businesses are being burned int he background.

This country is a nation of spoiled brats. The reason public officials are not held more accountable is that people do not hold themselves accountable. Everyone has an excuse for why what they did is ok, but it's unacceptable if someone else did it. Portraying the person with "power" or "authority' as the bad guy just for having it is the same argument race pimps and feminists use - it's merely the weaponization of excessive victimhood.

If you want less police bias, get people to start exercisign their right to silence. People not acting like total idiots and then unintentionally admitting it would probably solve at least 50% of bias, real or imagined.

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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."