US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3918

On June 01 2016 08:48 On_Slaught wrote:
First, we shouldn't expect an officer getting into a fight with a criminal to fight fair. If they bring a knife/bat to a gun fight, and still have the audacity to get violent, then they get whats coming. Do we really expect cops to show up to a violent scene, go in with his gun, yet once he sees the combatant merely has a bat he should put away his gun and pull out his night stick? Sure hope there isn't a gun hiding anywhere.

On June 01 2016 08:54 Plansix wrote:
I expect the officer to see the person has a bat, contain them so they cannot leave or run and wait for more people. Then go it with a lot of people and deal with the problem. Its really no complex. It’s a fucking dude with a bat. As long as he has not actively engaged the officer, just wait.

It’s like the story Kwark talked about earlier with the war vet with a knife. Knives can kill someone, but acting like they are this impossible problem we can’t solve without gunning someone down is just plain lazy.



Maybe our culture sucks and we need to get over it before the people our police keep shooting do something really serious. And I don't trust police, which are part of the goverment.

On June 01 2016 08:56 KwarK wrote:

Yes, that's exactly what I expect. By pulling out the gun they are escalating the stakes to immediate compliance or death with an unknown person in an unknown scenario. Ideally the guy will put down the knife but there are a hundred ways it could go wrong, he could be intoxicated, he could have PTSD and not react well to guns, he could be a decent guy who panics and runs because holy shit there is a police officer aiming a gun at me. It's not about being able to justify the killing afterwards, it's about trying not to let it get to that point. If the guy isn't going anywhere and isn't actively threatening the officer or anyone else I fully expect the officer to keep their distance, call for backup and get something like a K9 unit where the dog is trained to effectively disarm the individual and the worst case scenario is a dead dog.

So yes, that is exactly what I expect of an officer. Them to actually try to get the guy to have his day in court rather than simply killing him. Them to view killing him as a serious fuckup where they let the guy down through their own inability to handle the situation with their superior training and the resources at their disposal.

On June 01 2016 09:02 On_Slaught wrote:


I agree 100%. The problem is that unlike many other first world countries, we DO have a gun epidemic. A cop has to assume a gun is present, since if he doesn't, and gets jumped by a guy with a gun while his isn't out, he has a real chance of dying. Because guns are ubiquitous, our cops are forced to have guns. And this in and of itself leads to escalating situations.

Since this is the reality we live in, we have to try and learn how to better handle this escalation.

On June 01 2016 09:19 zlefin wrote:
I'd like to see more long melee weapons for officers; having a good 6 foot staff would be very handy for disarming knives/bats. Blunt weapons would be best imho, otherwise you get the bleeding risks; but i'd have to doublecheck the medical on that.

At least $1.9 million of the donations to veterans groups that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reported on Tuesday came in last week, after Trump began responding to intense media scrutiny of his earlier claims about raising in excess of $6 million for veterans. Trump said on Tuesday that his efforts raised a total of $5.6 million.

NPR reached out to all 41 of the groups Trump listed as receiving donations. Of those, 31 responded. One group, the Navy SEAL Foundation, said it does not disclose details of its donations. The other 30 confirmed the amounts Trump reported Tuesday, accounting for $4.27 million of the $5.6 million total.

The donations came in from a combination of sources, including the Donald J. Trump Foundation, various groups and individuals who cited Trump's efforts along with their donations, and Trump himself.

The candidate gave a $1 million check to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation on May 24, as questions from the Washington Post and other news outlets about Trump's prior claims regarding these donations accelerated.

Prior to Tuesday, only about $4 million of the fund had been accounted for as paid to veterans charities and service organizations through reporting by various news organizations, chiefly the Post.

On June 01 2016 09:19 zlefin wrote:
I'd like to see more long melee weapons for officers; having a good 6 foot staff would be very handy for disarming knives/bats. Blunt weapons would be best imho, otherwise you get the bleeding risks; but i'd have to doublecheck the medical on that.

A federal judge has given the world an unprecedented glimpse into the ruthless business practices Donald Trump used to build his business empire.

US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel on Tuesday made public more than 400 pages of Trump University “playbooks” describing how Trump staff should target prospective students’ weaknesses to encourage them to sign up for a $34,995 Gold Elite three-day package.

Trump University staff were instructed to get people to pile on credit card debt and to target their financial weaknesses in an attempt to sell them the high-priced real estate courses.

The documents contained an undated “personal message” from Trump to new enrollees at the school: “Only doers get rich. I know that in these three packed days, you will learn everything to make a million dollars within the next 12 months.”

The courses are now subject to legal proceedings from unhappy clients.

Judge Curiel released the documents, which are central to a class-action lawsuit against Trump University in California, despite sustaining repeated public attacks from Trump, who had fought to keep the details secret.

Curiel ruled that the documents were in the public interest now that Trump is “the front-runner in the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue”.

Trump hit back calling Curiel a “hater”, a “total disgrace” and “biased”. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. A hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said at a rally near the courthouse in San Diego. “His name is Gonzalo Curiel. And he is not doing the right thing ... [He] happens to be, we believe, Mexican.”

Curiel, who is Hispanic, is American and was born in Indiana.

Trump went on to attack Curiel further on Twitter on Monday and at a press conference in New York on Monday.

On June 01 2016 10:06 killa_robot wrote:


Equip cops with some battle-axes and you'll have a decrease in death along with a large increase in people shitting themselves.

You don't fuck with people who carry a battle axe.

In a rare display of wariness over civilian casualties in Yemen, the United States is halting the sale of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, according to Foreign Policy. Last week, an unnamed American official said that the move comes amid rising concerns that Riyadh's US-backed air campaign in Yemen has been dropping cluster bombs "in areas in which civilians are alleged to have been present or in the vicinity."

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly accused of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas and civilian infrastructure in its conflict with Houthi rebels in Yemen, resulting in the death of hundreds of noncombatants, many of them children. Remnants of American-made cluster bombs have been found near civilian areas. Since the war in Yemen began in March 2015, the United States has sold weapons and provided intelligence, support, and aerial refueling to the Saudi-led coalition backing the government.

Cluster bombs contain submunitions, or "bomblets", that spread over large areas before detonating. Bomblets that do not explode or self-destruct when they're deployed become de facto land mines. They remain on the ground until, as Megan Burke, director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, told Mother Jones last year, "someone or something comes along and triggers that explosion." In 2008, an international treaty banned the weapons. The United States and other major arms exporting countries refused to sign it.

A 2008 Pentagon policy directive states that the weapons can only be used against "clearly defined military targets." But, Burke said, "Once you give a weapon to another country, you lose control over how they're going to use it."

The suspension of cluster munition transfers applies specifically to the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon, manufactured by the Rhode Island-based Textron Systems. In 2013, Textron landed a $641 million contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 1,300 of the controversial weapons. In production tests, the CBU-105 cluster bombs met the Pentagon's requirement that 99 percent of bomblets explode, but Human Rights Watch has documented unexploded CBU-105 submunitions, also called "skeets" in their case, in multiple areas in Yemen. "We have a photo with one of the canisters sitting on the ground with four skeets just sitting there. They never deployed," Steve Goose, the director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told Mother Jones. "According to Textron, that could never happen."

It is unclear whether the export hold will affect ongoing shipments from the 2013 arms deal or if it will only affect future requests from Saudi Arabia. Matthew Colpitts, a spokesman for Textron Systems, told Foreign Policy that the company "does not comment on delivery dates with our customers." Neither does the United States government.

On June 01 2016 10:59 biology]major wrote:
Cop hate is one of the most unjustified things I've seen recently. Maybe the ones who patrol safe neighborhoods are just leeching government money, but the ones in cities or any area with a high crime rate should be respected and trusted for keeping people safe. How many people in here actually understand what it's like to patrol areas where the majority of people absolutely despise your presence, and on top of that you never know who is armed and who isn't? Then add to that you get the idiots who don't listen to cops when they tell them to put their arms up, or freeze but instead antagonize them even more.

On June 01 2016 10:42 ticklishmusic wrote:


I had thought cluster bombs were illegal, or was it something similar?