US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1908

On April 30 2015 07:35 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Is that correct? IIRC police have been using firearms less, etc. However, I'm hardly an expert so the question is honest.

On April 30 2015 07:47 Acrofales wrote:

Well, this seems to be supported. Crime has been declining. Police violence has been decreasing.

And while I cannot confirm, I really doubt that crime is down because of police being more thuggish.

On April 30 2015 07:38 GreenHorizons wrote:


What I would give for American's to actually think we were a race

On April 30 2015 07:52 KwarK wrote:
I disagree. The opinion of a lot of Americans, both those I've interacted with since being in the US and those in this topic, is that police violence is not a failure of policing. That sometimes it is appropriate, or necessary, or even deserved. That's the cultural divide between Europe and America, although many Europeans fall on the side I've arbitrarily called "American" and many Americans agree with the "European" side.

The police do not administer justice. They are not empowered to do so, and they should not be. That is what separates the police from an occupying force. They are empowered to protect society by allowing the justice system, of which they are not a part, to do its job. There is a crucial difference there. You need police so that people who break the law can have their day in court and be judged by their peers/an appointed judge but the police themselves do not administer justice.

If a police is forced to kill a suspect in self defence that is a failure of policing. The suspect never made it to court, they were never judged, they were killed. Sometimes it is unavoidable and in those cases so be it but it is still a failure of policing, in an ideal world the police would have been trained, equipped and prepared to resolve the situation without a loss of life. Too often I see "well that's what happens" or "well he deserved it" or "he was a criminal" as if they changes anything. Even if the person had committed a crime that is punished by death they still need their day in court.

When the police get away with taking justice into their own hands, and in my city they have gotten away with it far too much for far too long (Albuquerque, DoJ recently tore into them for their routine killing/beating of unarmed civilians), the contract between police and society has been broken.

On April 30 2015 07:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I know right? Whenever I hear the words "screen door" or "submarine" I think of my Polish heritage and want to cry... and it's 2015 and stores still sell Polish remover T.T

North Dakota state Rep. Randy Boehning (R) said he was outed as being gay after he voted against a gay rights bill, the Forum newspaper in Fargo, N.D. reported on Monday.

Boehning, 52, told the site that a personal text exchange using the gay dating app "Grindr" was made public as retribution for his vote. Boehning also alleged that an employee at the Capitol told him another lawmaker had promised to out him if he voted against the bill, according to the Forum.

The personal exchange was made public when Dustin Smith, a man who'd spoken with Boehning on Grindr, reportedly recognized a photo of him in an article published in The Forum newspaper. The April 3 cover story displayed photos of all of the lawmakers who had voted against the bill outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Smith, 21, contacted the paper more than two weeks ago and reportedly revealed that Boehning went under the alias "Top Man!" on the dating site. According to Smith, he has no connections to the Capitol and was not coerced into exposing Boehning but rather decided to step forward because he thought it was hypocritical for Boehning to vote against a gay rights bill, the Forum reported.

On April 30 2015 07:53 puerk wrote:

Good data seems hard to get, as apparently american police departments still have not gotten their act together on reporting incidents and accounting for every shot they fired.

The FBI understates the true incidence but their numbers show a slight upward trend surpassing levels of 1994 when there were much higher crime levels (as you previously documented) http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_14_justifiable_homicide_by_weapon_law_enforcement_2009-2013.xls

vs http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ph98.pdf

On April 30 2015 08:04 GreenHorizons wrote:



Keepin it classy as always Jonny.

On April 30 2015 08:07 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

np, I thought the thread could use a little (bad) humor

On April 30 2015 08:11 GreenHorizons wrote:


Can we get some rape, cancer, and transgender jokes in poor taste too? It's been way too heavy lately, plus I wouldn't want them to feel left out that we aren't laughing at their situation too

On April 30 2015 07:53 Millitron wrote:
Uh huh. That has got nothing to do with what I said. Which is that the comparison between the US and Germany, based solely on the number killed, is bullshit. It's such a complicated problem you can't just go "German police don't kill many people, ergo US police are out of control fascists."

They might be. I hate the prevalence of SWAT teams. I hate that the police get armored vehicles from the military. But there will still be more police killings in the US than in Germany, simply because of our size. And even if the militarization of the police is ended and SWAT teams are all disbanded, you may STILL see more killings, even on a per capita basis, because our situation is different. We have a different culture. We border a 3rd world country. We have other poor nations with easy smuggling range just across the Gulf of Mexico.

On April 30 2015 07:42 KwarK wrote:

I'm sure if you guys required the same amount of study and lessons as I had to do in Europe and hadn't turned the roads into some kind of insane ego fuelled arms race you'd be fine. This idea that road safety is only achieved by being the biggest most aggressive vehicle on the road is pretty nuts. So many trucks

On April 30 2015 08:06 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Thanks, it looks like justifiable homicides are loosely correlated with the crime rate. It's hard to tell about the last few years with the data cutoffs though.

On April 30 2015 08:21 Sermokala wrote:
Theres a reason why they call chicago chiraq
+ Show Spoiler +

On April 30 2015 08:17 puerk wrote:

Number of deaths is not the be all end all, but they are an indicator, you can not simply ignore.
You on the other hand have this weird city on a hill surrounded by savages out to get you fantasy, that somehow justifies not even holding your police force accountable for how many shots they fired, when, where, how and why.

- No, the United States are not struggling against insurmountable uncomparable geographic odds.
- Germany doesn't need a 5000km land route to south american cocain production when primarily consumed illegal nonsubscribable drugs are cannabis, heroin and mdma.
- You have no fucking clue about Eurasian drug-geography.
- You have no fucking clue about the size of the area you are even talking about. If "just across the Gulf of Mexico" is close by, Germany is in the most dangerous region of the world surrounded by war in ukraine, dictatorship in belorus, civil war in north africa, the middle east, and not to forget chechnya and even your favorite boogyman iran is closer to my german hometown than Baltimore is to your ultimate destroyer of american livelyhoods Columbia.

On April 30 2015 08:21 Danglars wrote:
I don't know if study and lessons is the key to be honest. I did chuckle at the "insane ego fuelled arms race" and aggressive driving hyperbole. It's a good break from these race politics and law enforcement arguments.

On April 30 2015 08:30 Paljas wrote:
"you have no clue about geography"
"no, you"