The Police Thread

[cobainwasmurdered]

When there's a really big one like Garner or Trayvon it needs a thread of its own but we should have a specific thread just for normal articles on the police, where we can post articles on what is going down and talk about things.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site?CMP=share_btn_fb

This is fucking terrifying.

What do you guys think of the movement to get police to wear body cameras? Do you think it will help some? It seems like the pilot programs it's done well but on the other hand juries have shown they don't want to convict cops of murder. I think it might help with some of the issues but we'll still be left with a lot of the core problems.

 

[oldskool]

If they don't want footage getting out, they'll just destroy it beforehand. There'll be so much footage coming in from an entire force recording 24/7 there'll be no way to hold one IT guy responsible if a particular file's backup doesn't save right, or there's a hard drive crash (since the budget won't allow for the large levels of redundancy you'd like to see in something like this).

& of course there's the "Let them turn it on when they interact with citizens" argument, to cut down on unnecessary footage recording/transmittal/storage, which fails the second somebody 'accidentally' flips the camera off right as they're about to lay a beatdown on somebody.

It's just the same as it is now; the only ones you won't have to worry about abusing it are the ones you wouldn't have to worry about abusing you. The assholes with god complexes looking to throw their weight around will still have their ways to do it and still have the backing of the police chiefs of the world when shit goes down.

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

Body cameras should absolutely be worn. There is no justification against it beyond the cost.

 

[SFH]

Not trying to stir any paranoia for anyone, but if you live in a reasonably small town with a relatively small police force, it may behoove you to take a day and look at their public employee rosters and block them from viewing your social media accounts (like Facebook).

I'm not in any legal trouble, I just know people that know stuff. Sure there's all sorts of ways around it (use a dispatcher's Facebook, wife's etc...) but shit at least make it difficult for them.

Also, take your phone # out of your account settings or make your profile unsearchable by that.

Also see if your community offers a program like "smart 911" and sign up for that. It's a private, not government, service that cities are starting to offer. It's only accessible for 40 minutes from the time a 911 call is answered and then it goes away until 911 is dialed again. It provides the same information as a landline call only for cell phones. You can list nearest hydrant location to your home, medicines, illnesses, etc.. and it has a text feature in case you're in a position of choking, diabetic attack, or you can't talk due to an intruder.

My city has it and they've already saved a bunch of lives. I've looked into it, and a reasonable person should definitely give some pause to "big brother" type thoughts, but it is legit. And you can put as much or as little in it.

Hell we have our cat's vet information and "home again" microchip serial # in our profile. Also, emergency contacts, pictures, etc.. The presentation I saw said something about Amber alerts if you're a parent. The picture of your kid in your profile can get sent to the police immediately to start the search rather than wait until they get to your house to have a picture.

OH and if you don't update your information every 6 months, the profile deletes itself so no one can have access to your information if you get a different # down the road or something.

 

[vivisectvi]

Also, take your phone # out of your account settings or make your profile unsearchable by that.

I'll never understand why people put that in there in the first place.

 

[Edwin]

I thought this was in the music folder.

 

[SFH]

In either case, "I'll be watching you."

 

[Kinetic]

I thought this was in the music folder.

Murder by numbers. 1, 2, 3...

 

[Damaramu]

I just learned from a Hispanic guy I work with that cops should always get the benefit of the doubt because they deal with black people all day.

Seriously most Hispanics I meet are more racist than the white people I know. What's that about?

He also said he has no problem with cops approaching every single situation with their guns drawn because they "just don't know what the other person has".
Even routine traffic stops.

 

[SFH]

I've been attending neighborhood watch meetings recently.

Last night a high ranking local official in law enforcement stated that the officer who drew his gun on the teenagers was out of line. He should have instead pepper sprayed the whole crowd. I went from "damn right" to "Wait, WHAT!?"

Then there was 45 minutes of talking by the official and me realizing how out of touch some people are, but the crowd was 50+ years old on average, so they just nodded in agreement with most of it.

There was a LOT of good points made though and I do feel a lot better knowing that they are aware of some of our concerns. I refused to raise my hand to be a "block captain" (friend was there elbowing me to sign up) since I live at the edge of the neighborhood on a highway.

I encourage you guys to drop in for a neighborhood watch in your areas and if one doesn't exist, start one. We have a Facebook group for ours also.

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

I keep lol'ing at the McKinney cop doing the barrel roll.

 

[Jingus]

I keep lol'ing at the McKinney cop doing the barrel roll.

That town's just a couple miles down the road from my house. The officer in question did resign today; but then again, someone has been leaving "Thank you, McKinney PD, for protecting us!" signs at the scene of his tantrum. Gotta love how the video clearly shows him stopping only black kids and not detaining or yelling at a single white one. And him whining about how heavy his police gear is, oh, LOL.

Last night a high ranking local official in law enforcement stated that the officer who drew his gun on the teenagers was out of line. He should have instead pepper sprayed the whole crowd. I went from "damn right" to "Wait, WHAT!?"

Then there was 45 minutes of talking by the official and me realizing how out of touch some people are, but the crowd was 50+ years old on average, so they just nodded in agreement with most of it.

That's the kind of short-sighted intellectual laziness that scares me the most, and I run into people exhibiting it on a truly depressingly-frequent basis. Pepper-sprayed the crowd why? What was their crime? Could the officer at your meeting explain that bit? Of fucking course he couldn't, but nobody cared anyway. It's like people think that Pro Wrestling Logic actually WORKS, and that all the world's problems would magically solve themselves if "We" just commit enough violence on everyone who's not On Our Side. People really believe this shit, in horde-like numbers, and it leads to stuff like the useless wars we've been forcing on the world. (Hey guys, we've only been trying to violently control half of Asia since before my parents were born; when is that gonna provide us any tangible benefits worth having, or practical conflicts worth winning?)

My stepfather sometimes talks in these "we need to kill more criminals" hang-em-all generalities, and it's beyond aggravating to try and argue with him because he literally doesn't listen to logic. You explain to him something like, oh, for example, the fact that capitol punishment has historically proven not to be a deterrent to criminals; crime rates are overall never lower in areas where executions still happen. All this is absolute fact, thoroughly proven and re-proven over and over again by cold hard statistics and numbers which can't be denied. And yet when you tell that to someone like him? Nothing. No-sold like Sting taking a Flair chop during the comeback. He just stares at you, and then says something which boils down to either "I don't believe you" or "I don't care". We've had a never-ending running argument over the size of prison populations; he simply can't accept the fact that America has by far the highest number of people in prison in the entire world (not just percentages, I mean number of asses in cells). My stepdad would prefer this not to be true, so he just mutters "the other countries must be lying about their numbers" and pretends that reality doesn't fucking exist. How do you deal with people like that? And you can't just say "don't even try to", because they are legion and they run the whole goddamned world.

 

[Bored]

I keep lol'ing at the McKinney cop doing the barrel roll.

https://vine.co/v/eOqeXtL9Yxz

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

Papa Jingus and Dadaramu should meet up and have a beer.

 

[NoCalMike]

As citizens tire of war overseas they seem to be replacing their blood-lust urges on their own fellow citizens.

Incidents, and I use that term loosely, like the one in the video happen all the time and a police presence is never required. Just a bunch of kids looking to swim in a pool on a hot day at a party. Over-crowding may happen, but it's obvious the skin color of the kids was what set the ball rolling in the first place.

Even more telling was how most of the other police were just sort of standing around letting people flee, just kind of making sure nothing out of the ordinary was happening, while "Rambo" instead decides he is going to bring justice to the neighborhood that had been plagued by "illegal swimming"

 

[vivisectvi]

Lots of video here from the McKinney thing: http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/texas-police-officer-suspended-after-pulling-weapon-on-teens#.cpvdGQ0DX

 

[Damaramu]

Of course the local news media's fb feed is filled with comments about how the cop was justified, the kid that ran up on him assumed a shooter's stance, the kids were all thugs, they were vandalizing cars and terrorizing the neighborhood and then somehow it turned into a race war.

 

[Epic Springs]

Get some new friends, Dama.

 

[Damaramu]

Get some new friends, Dama.

Read my post again. I never said they were my friends. It was the local news' facebook feed.

 

[NoCalMike]

Interested if any of the news orgs have labeled the fighting-mom a thug?

 

[Jingus]

Papa Jingus and Dadaramu should meet up and have a beer.

The sad part is, he's far from conservative in a lot of ways. He's a classically-trained musician with two master's degrees, he's finally coming around to the fact that he thinks organized religion is totally full of shit, he voted for Obama twice and hates Republicans with a blowtorch-hot passion. Yet even a guy like that STILL says the stuff I mentioned above.

 

[Epic Springs]

So a few months back, I mentioned that a kid I went to middle and high school with (who has 2 young sons) went on to become a cop. He got busted for trying to buy cocaine in Florida from undercover cops late last year. He was just sentenced a few days ago. 10 years. Damn.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/nypd-sentenced-10-years-fla-drug-deal-article-1.2248785

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

http://news.yahoo.com/york-governor-name-special-prosecutor-killings-police-071422083.html#

New York will appoint a special prosecutor to handle investigations when civilians are killed during confrontations with police, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday.

Cuomo told reporters he would issue an executive order valid for one year that would place Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in charge of investigating and prosecuting police-involved killings, taking those cases out of the hands of district attorneys.

"We will be the first state in the country to acknowledge the problem and say we’re going to create an independent prosecutor who does not have that kind of connection with the organized police departments," Cuomo said, according to the New York Times.

Cuomo said the appointment of a special prosecutor would help rebuild public confidence in law enforcement, following several high profile killings of unarmed black men by officers. Among them was Eric Garner on Staten Island in New York, who was choked to death nearly one year ago.

We'll see if this is a real move or just a PR gesture but it could be a good move in the right direction.

I also found this article about the Race Gap in Police Departments in the US although its based on 2007 info as that is when the last detailed info came out apparently http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race-gap-in-americas-police-departments.html

 

[SFH]

Watching Season 02 of True Detective reminded me of a real life laugh I get with law enforcement. The characters from various agencies are sitting around discussing (and fight for) who gets to take lead on the case. In the movie Super Troopers it was a running theme of "No this is OUR jurisdiction!" There's a few more but in REAL LIFE anytime there's something that could go one way or the other for who it is for, they argue in the vein of "NO it's not for us! It's for you!" because no one wants to do the paperwork.

I've known people who've had to wait over 2 hours (with cops free to take the complaint) after wrecking at the intersection of a state highway and a local road. Or we have a state highway here that is the border for two parishes (counties). If someone wrecks on the road, state. They go off the road and into a ditch on the northbound lane, Parish A. They do it in the southbound lane, B. Because no one wants to actually go out and do the damn paperwork!!!

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/10/there-have-been-500-people-shot-and-killed-by-police-in-the-u-s-so-far-in-2015/

Police officers in the United States have shot and killed at least 500 people so far in 2015, according to a Washington Post analysis.

The 500th gun death at the hands of police officers came Thursday night in Boulder Creek, Calif., after officers were dispatched to a home on reports of a family fight. Police officials told local media that when they arrived, they encountered a man with two firearms whom they shot and killed.

It was one of four fatal police shootings that occurred on Thursday — the others were in Chicago, Phoenix and Parowan, Utah.

The 500th fatal police shooting comes amid a particularly deadly stretch — at least two people have been shot and killed by police every single day so far this month. At least 31 people were shot and killed by police officers during the first week of July, making it the deadliest such week of the year so far. On Tuesday, officers across the country shot and killed eight people, the most police shootings that have occurred on any single day in 2015.

The number of people shot and killed so far this year tracked by The Post easily exceeds the figures reported by the FBI for any single year since 1976. The federal data, which officials acknowledge is incomplete, relies on voluntary reporting from just a sliver of the nation’s more than 13,000 state and local police departments. While the FBI has never recorded more than 460 fatal police shootings in an entire year, The Post identified 463 such shootings in just the first six months of 2015.

That's scary as fuck.

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

The scariest part?

The number of people shot and killed so far this year tracked by The Post easily exceeds the figures reported by the FBI for any single year since 1976. The federal data, which officials acknowledge is incomplete, relies on voluntary reporting from just a sliver of the nation’s more than 13,000 state and local police departments. While the FBI has never recorded more than 460 fatal police shootings in an entire year, The Post identified 463 such shootings in just the first six months of 2015.

500 isn't even an accurate number.

 

[Jingus]

It's amazing to me that no government agency anywhere keeps any kind of count for how many people are killed by police, and apparently nobody's been doing that for years and years. Yet of course they keep a meticulous running count of how many cops get shot on the job. 126 last year died on the job. Which is obviously 126 too many (give or take a few which might have been doing some dumb or naughty shit that got their asses buried), and in fact that number is way down from previous decades, when more than double that total died on the job. But still, it's pretty chilling to consider that even the super-conservative under-reported numbers estimate that at least eight civilians die for every one officer killed in action.

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

http://www.wcvb.com/news/millis-schools-closed-thursday-as-hunt-for-gunman-continues/35077538

An officer in Millis, MA claimed he was fired upon yesterday afternoon by a man in a red pick-up truck which caused him to crash his cruiser into a tree, where it caught fire. A town-wide manhunt ensued, featuring armed officers at every intersection looking for red pick-up trucks and helicopters. Earlier today, he admitted he made the story up to cover for his accident.

TLDR:
Somebody thought the cops in Superbad had the right fucking idea.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Probably should update this thread more. Chicago has had a lot of big shit go down some of which has been covered. The biggest story is the secret detention center they were running and the torture and deaths there. The Guardian has been doing a big expose on it and it's essential reading for people interested in this stuff.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/homan-square-chicago-police-files-custody-death-jaime-galvan

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square the main page is a great resource.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Should update this more with police news:

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/08/03/19211054/portland-police-say-its-fine-if-officers-punch-suspects-they-think-are-noncompliant-in-the-face?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

"The reality is punching—causing a short, hopefully non-enduring pain elsewhere to somebody—can cause them to focus their mental energies on that area," Lt. Morgan explained yesterday, "which will in turn lower the resistance to the arm they're trying to get out, and that's what happened in this case."