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Anyways, when you are talking about people getting killed, i hate to bring this up to this thread, but when any citizen can be armed, you will have this shit happen as the police must be extra careful. It's not like in other countries minorities get less killed because they aren't harassed by the police, but because there is very little chance they are armed in the first place to endanger the officer's life.
Training a "better" police won't change that.
On July 08 2016 07:21 zeo wrote:
9h:54m:10s in
How is this not perjury?
nvm it loaded well now.
I agree that is part of the problem too. Some other poster mentioned how cops in Europe don't have these issues but these same cops aren't dealing with the same threat levels as well for the reasons underlined in your post
You should not feel like you are in mortal danger when approaching a car you pulled over for a broken tail light.
If your that intimidated by a random car you have no training and no confidence and certainly should not be patrolling the streets.
It doesn't matter if it's rare, but that it happens for a police officer to be really cautious and overdefensive.
There is a difference between being cautious and approaching every traffic stop with a drawn gun. You cannot do you job as a police officer if you act as if your in a more dangerous situation then a soldier in Iraq.
You have soldiers coming forward saying the rules for shooting someone are laxer in the police force then when they were deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan. How utterly fucked up is that.
No the US is not a war zone. Stop fucking treating it like one.
The reality of guns in America has to be treated like any other job hazard. A table saw or chain saw can kill you, people can fall off ladders, a pallet of product can crush you, etc. So many jobs have deadly dangers and are statistically more dangerous. If you work around deadly heavy machinery or power tools you have to respect them and their ability to kill or maim you but you can never fear them. When you fear something that's when you get jittery and jumpy, fearing something is virtually asking to get hurt by it. Respecting a danger means you understand its power and the possibilities that come with it, but you work around it safely and smartly. Fear is how the Falcon Heights situation happens.
Anyways, when you are talking about people getting killed, i hate to bring this up to this thread, but when any citizen can be armed, you will have this shit happen as the police must be extra careful. It's not like in other countries minorities get less killed because they aren't harassed by the police, but because there is very little chance they are armed in the first place to endanger the officer's life.
I agree that is part of the problem too. Some other poster mentioned how cops in Europe don't have these issues but these same cops aren't dealing with the same threat levels as well for the reasons underlined in your post
You should not feel like you are in mortal danger when approaching a car you pulled over for a broken tail light.
If your that intimidated by a random car you have no training and no confidence and certainly should not be patrolling the streets.
It doesn't matter if it's rare, but that it happens for a police officer to be really cautious and overdefensive.
There is a difference between being cautious and approaching every traffic stop with a drawn gun. You cannot do you job as a police officer if you act as if your in a more dangerous situation then a soldier in Iraq.
You have soldiers coming forward saying the rules for shooting someone are laxer in the police force then when they were deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan. How utterly fucked up is that.
No the US is not a war zone. Stop fucking treating it like one.
The reality of guns in America has to be treated like any other job hazard. A table saw or chain saw can kill you, people can fall off ladders, a pallet of product can crush you, etc. So many jobs have deadly dangers and are statistically more dangerous. If you work around deadly heavy machinery or power tools you have to respect them and their ability to kill or maim you but you can never fear them. When you fear something that's when you get jittery and jumpy, fearing something is virtually asking to get hurt by it. Respecting a danger means you understand its power and the possibilities that come with it, but you work around it safely and smartly. Fear is how the Falcon Heights situation happens.
It really makes no sense at all to compare a general tool which serves multiple functions to a gun, which literally is only good at one thing, which is shooting stuff. You don't need guns for the economy and everyday life to function, but you need chainsaws. I mean go ahead and say "I love guns so much, screw anybody else" but stop comparing things to guns that are actually useful in everyday life.
Anyways, when you are talking about people getting killed, i hate to bring this up to this thread, but when any citizen can be armed, you will have this shit happen as the police must be extra careful. It's not like in other countries minorities get less killed because they aren't harassed by the police, but because there is very little chance they are armed in the first place to endanger the officer's life.
I agree that is part of the problem too. Some other poster mentioned how cops in Europe don't have these issues but these same cops aren't dealing with the same threat levels as well for the reasons underlined in your post
You should not feel like you are in mortal danger when approaching a car you pulled over for a broken tail light.
If your that intimidated by a random car you have no training and no confidence and certainly should not be patrolling the streets.
It doesn't matter if it's rare, but that it happens for a police officer to be really cautious and overdefensive.
There is a difference between being cautious and approaching every traffic stop with a drawn gun. You cannot do you job as a police officer if you act as if your in a more dangerous situation then a soldier in Iraq.
You have soldiers coming forward saying the rules for shooting someone are laxer in the police force then when they were deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan. How utterly fucked up is that.
No the US is not a war zone. Stop fucking treating it like one.
The reality of guns in America has to be treated like any other job hazard. A table saw or chain saw can kill you, people can fall off ladders, a pallet of product can crush you, etc. So many jobs have deadly dangers and are statistically more dangerous. If you work around deadly heavy machinery or power tools you have to respect them and their ability to kill or maim you but you can never fear them. When you fear something that's when you get jittery and jumpy, fearing something is virtually asking to get hurt by it. Respecting a danger means you understand its power and the possibilities that come with it, but you work around it safely and smartly. Fear is how the Falcon Heights situation happens.
It really makes no sense at all to compare a general tool which serves multiple functions to a gun, which literally is only good at one thing, which is shooting stuff. You don't need guns for the economy and everyday life to function, but you need chainsaws. I mean go ahead and say "I love guns so much, screw anybody else" but stop comparing things to guns that are actually useful in everyday life.
Guns are not going to go away so assuming a situation in which they are not around is pointless.
Anyways, when you are talking about people getting killed, i hate to bring this up to this thread, but when any citizen can be armed, you will have this shit happen as the police must be extra careful. It's not like in other countries minorities get less killed because they aren't harassed by the police, but because there is very little chance they are armed in the first place to endanger the officer's life.
I agree that is part of the problem too. Some other poster mentioned how cops in Europe don't have these issues but these same cops aren't dealing with the same threat levels as well for the reasons underlined in your post
You should not feel like you are in mortal danger when approaching a car you pulled over for a broken tail light.
If your that intimidated by a random car you have no training and no confidence and certainly should not be patrolling the streets.
It doesn't matter if it's rare, but that it happens for a police officer to be really cautious and overdefensive.
There is a difference between being cautious and approaching every traffic stop with a drawn gun. You cannot do you job as a police officer if you act as if your in a more dangerous situation then a soldier in Iraq.
You have soldiers coming forward saying the rules for shooting someone are laxer in the police force then when they were deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan. How utterly fucked up is that.
No the US is not a war zone. Stop fucking treating it like one.
The reality of guns in America has to be treated like any other job hazard. A table saw or chain saw can kill you, people can fall off ladders, a pallet of product can crush you, etc. So many jobs have deadly dangers and are statistically more dangerous. If you work around deadly heavy machinery or power tools you have to respect them and their ability to kill or maim you but you can never fear them. When you fear something that's when you get jittery and jumpy, fearing something is virtually asking to get hurt by it. Respecting a danger means you understand its power and the possibilities that come with it, but you work around it safely and smartly. Fear is how the Falcon Heights situation happens.
It really makes no sense at all to compare a general tool which serves multiple functions to a gun, which literally is only good at one thing, which is shooting stuff. You don't need guns for the economy and everyday life to function, but you need chainsaws. I mean go ahead and say "I love guns so much, screw anybody else" but stop comparing things to guns that are actually useful in everyday life.
Guns are not going to go away so assuming a situation in which they are not around is pointless.
Precisely. If you love or hate guns it doesn't matter, for better or for worse they're a reality of life in America for the foreseeable future. Since that's a case you gotta be aware they're a potential danger of the job and as such you need to approach situations with a clear head without any distractions like fear. Police need to be trained around that reality just like you'd train someone to respect any other work place hazard. They come with the job.
Also I never said I loved guns, in fact I never stated my opinion on them at all. I'm stating that completely removed from my personal opinion on them. Personally I could take guns or leave them. I see both sides of the issue, I don't feel super strongly either way. We could use some common sense regulation, seems reasonable to me. But I see where the tyrannical government guys are coming from and I also see where the these things cause way more trouble than they're worth camp is coming from. Either way I'm certainly no gun nut that "loves guns so much". I'm just trying to be realistic. They're here and I don't see them going anywhere in my life.
I think the Comey interview today is going to go down as one of the crucial mistakes made by the GOP this year. Comey went from scathing criticism to explaining, bit by bit, why there was no legal reason to press charges. This is Benghazi all over again. How they managed to drop the ball after Comey's original statement is just baffling. This is one of the many benefits to the party being in such disarray.
On July 08 2016 05:35 GreenHorizons wrote: People who defend the police, and more importantly defend the legal process that follows, I have to ask. What percentage of killings/complaints of abuse by police do you think there is no wrong doing worthy of criminal penalty?
The vast majority of police are just ordinary people doing their job.
Honestly I think this is part of the problem. Being a cop is basically a job that no one is really qualified to do and no person in their right mind would want. What person really wants to wield that kind of power? I think the fact that we have a lot of very ordinary people doing a job that is extraordinary in nature leads to a ton of problems. The average Joe just isn't cut out for that line of work and yet they're out there doing it anyway and when the rubber meets the road weak people crumble and the shit hits the fan. To do the job properly calls for extraordinary people.
I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.
No one makes them take the job though. Its a hard job if they can't handle it don't sign up for it. The vast majority of cops shouldn't be cops. Police shouldn't be revenue collectors, their performance shouldn't be based on quotas, they need to be enforcing way way way less stupid laws, there should be a fraction of the total number of police now like way less cops total, there should be way more oversight, way more regulation, body cams, dash cams. They should be significantly better trained, constantly tested and evaluated, rigorous physical and mental fitness testing no tub of shit cops, they should be paid well because they should be the cream of the crop, they should be from the communities they serve. They're currently none of those things.
This country has some things all wrong and the criminal justice system is right up there. Police should be the Navy Seals or Delta Force of humans. The apex, the best of the best. But not at killing people, at being strong, smart, brave, but also kind and caring. People are always going to resent authority, they always have and they always will, nothing will change that. It's part of the job and the type of person we want as police should know that and totally get it. People are going to dislike them and it's understandable for them to. They still have a job to do though and that job isn't being done properly right now.
You're never going to fill the ranks of the police force though if you set Delta Force standards.
Much of the training they go through is to ensure they are strong, smart, brave, kind, caring, etc. They are obviously trained not to kill innocent people. Most normal people wouldn't dream of doing that. The real world just works differently than these idealistic standards of a 'perfect police force of the citizens finest doing their duty to enforce justice'. The work they have to do is sometimes dark and gritty and a lot of cops die in the line of duty because fearing for their lives is a very real thing.
The reality is you have normal ordinary people being tasked with a great deal of responsibility and power and expected to do extraordinary things. They work their hardest to do things most people take for granted.
People not respecting them because of their fuck-ups seems like a spoiled teenager bad-mouthing their parent who gave them everything. Yes there's a few parents who abuse their children but the vast majority are normal people who want to do right by their children. Spoiled bratty teenagers who don't know what it's like to work in the real world just don't understand what being a grown-up is like until they have to live through it themselves.
The vast majority of people whining that police are racists, trying to assassinate people, abuse their power are people who have never had to deal with any sort of adversity in their lives on par with that of serving as police.
I'm not saying I want black ops police. In fact generally I'm not big on military veterans being police at all. It's too easy to go from a military occupying force us vs. them mentality and bring it into civilian scenarios. I think that's a major no-no and it creates a shitload of the problems we're seeing. I'm talking about that degree of excellence but as good people. We demand only the best for the job.
The world police currently opperate in isn't the real world. A lot of the problems are because we have them making money for the department and enforcing laws that shouldn't exist let alone be enforced. All those things end up doing is A- Requiring more police and B- Making more situations for all those police to interact and get into situations that could turn south. We want less police that are better trained and we want those better trained police to have less reasons to hassle people over BS.
Again, I want zero ordinary people on the police force. If you have Joe Sixpack on the force you're going to have problems. It's not a job a regular person can handle properly.
People don't like authority, they never have and never will. I'm sorry, deal with it.
That last sentence is laughable.
I think the biggest problem with US police is training. The constant in these scenario's is always 'he made a threatening move', 'I feared for my life' ect ect. Its like police spend every moment of their job fearing some dude is going to kill them. Now of course a significant part of that is the prevalence of guns but more then that I feel like its a lack of confidence and training in how to handle and de-escalate situations. It always sounds as if they are completely inadequately prepared in how to deal with normal and routing situations.
Take the recent one with the broken light traffic stop. You never need to approach a vehicle you stop for a broken tail light with a drawn gun. Ever. Even if the biggest bunch of gang stereotype weed smoking guys are in it. The moment you approach with a drawn gun any hope of de-escalating or alternate approach is gone. Either he complies or you have to shoot him. That is terrible! Then when you ask for his driver license and he mentions he has a gun in his pocket aswell you don't order him to put up his hands, there is no need for it, a guy that is planning to shoot you is not going to tell you he has a gun. Sure, pay some more attention to his movement but again, no reason to escalate the situation.
Every single one of these incidents is always preceded but such blatant failures that they are nigh impossible to comprehend for someone from outside the US. No cop will ever act that way in Europe and so all these life or death situations can not even begin to take form.
The extreme cases of cops executing handcuffed suspects are a completely different problem obvious but I wager you can reduce a massive number of police shootings every year but simply giving cops proper training, cause what ever the hell their being taught now. Its garbage.
Absolutely the ubiquity of guns add a certain level of uncertainty to everything. Those guns aren't going anywhere regardless of what you think about them they're always going to be a potential variable so police need to learn to live with that and work around it. More training is absolutely required so cops know how to calmly and confidently deal with a potential situation and bring everything down a few pegs.
I agree completely. Again I think so much of this comes back to the soldier/occupier/us vs. them mentality displayed by police now days. Camo, assault rifles, gas masks, etc. Even police cruisers here are made to completely blend into traffic now, they're sneaky. In Europe cop cars are bright green and hideous and stick out like a sore thumb so everyone can know "Hey that's a cop". It's just a different mentality where it's more like "Hey guys, I'm over here if you need help in my hideous car if you need it". I'm not a fan of cops being all covert ops when they're supposed to be servants of the community.
NSFW. THIS is what we should expect from every cop. This is absolutely amazing work. Even though he ends up shooting he does everything in his power to deescalate things and has some great discipline with his gun. + Show Spoiler +
Just on the video. It's difficult to see exactly what is going on with the first shot, but the later shots would be an unlawful killing in the U.K.. When the man with a knife is shot for the second time he's a threat to exactly no one. The highway has been closed, there are no members of the public around, he's been shot already and is clearly weakening. He has a knife, all the officers have guns. By shooting him the police on the scene made the judgement that his life was less valuable than the half hour of road closure / police time it would take to wait for him to calm down / collapse - assuming of course that there's no one there with the equipment or the training to disarm him.
I'm not an expert, but I have talked to a friend of the family who worked for a decade in a police firearms unit in the U.K. about videos like this in the past. In all cases his position is that killing is the last option and that it the duty of the police to do everything possible to minimise loss of life. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many officers end up involved. If there is no direct threat to to life you do not shoot and, if you do shoot, you shoot to wound in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
Now that's not to say that these police officers were doing a bad job. I have no idea what kind of training the U.S. police get or how they are instructed to behave. You guys have a bunch of different kinds of police right - City, county, state? Have I got that vaguely right? And the training varies from PD to PD? I just don't know enough to say whether those police behaved as they should, you'd know better but...
I was just thinking, after looking at this video and reading you praising it, that there must be a different philosophy at work in British and U.S. policing. Regardless of how many guns are around if this video is any indication.
There is also this thing that it seems in usa people shoot to kill. You don't have to kill someone to protect yourself,could also shoot in arm that is reaching for something,or leg if someone runs away but all I see in the news is chest wounds. Don't understand how these shootings end up in killing people so often. Are police in usa trained to "shoot to kill" ? In country where I live they are supposed to be trained to shoot to not kill,though death by police has been rising here as well over the last few years.
Anyways, when you are talking about people getting killed, i hate to bring this up to this thread, but when any citizen can be armed, you will have this shit happen as the police must be extra careful. It's not like in other countries minorities get less killed because they aren't harassed by the police, but because there is very little chance they are armed in the first place to endanger the officer's life.
I agree that is part of the problem too. Some other poster mentioned how cops in Europe don't have these issues but these same cops aren't dealing with the same threat levels as well for the reasons underlined in your post
You should not feel like you are in mortal danger when approaching a car you pulled over for a broken tail light.
If your that intimidated by a random car you have no training and no confidence and certainly should not be patrolling the streets.
It doesn't matter if it's rare, but that it happens for a police officer to be really cautious and overdefensive.
There is a difference between being cautious and approaching every traffic stop with a drawn gun. You cannot do you job as a police officer if you act as if your in a more dangerous situation then a soldier in Iraq.
You have soldiers coming forward saying the rules for shooting someone are laxer in the police force then when they were deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan. How utterly fucked up is that.
No the US is not a war zone. Stop fucking treating it like one.
I am just indicating that first, de-escalation with guns involved is nothing you can reliabily do or expect to go right most of the time with training involved or not, and that when there are guns involved it is much easier for mistakes to be made. That US policeman are more jumpy than European policeman makes complete sense when you compare the odds of one getting shot vs the another. It's not a warzone, but you can't try to compare both at work neither.
Comparing a gun de-escalation situation to the use of a tool certainly is a bad analogy, specially since safety is priority number 1...
I don't disagree that should be the objective to de-escalate always. Just that changing that mentality when police get killed is really hard if not outright impossible. And that won't happen with fireguns in the streets.
On July 08 2016 09:06 Mohdoo wrote: I think the Comey interview today is going to go down as one of the crucial mistakes made by the GOP this year. Comey went from scathing criticism to explaining, bit by bit, why there was no legal reason to press charges. This is Benghazi all over again. How they managed to drop the ball after Comey's original statement is just baffling. This is one of the many benefits to the party being in such disarray.
If they play it smart this hearing can really play into their hands. There are now dozens of sound bites of the director of the FBI telling everyone that Hillary is a shitty leader, that the State Dept under her is a mess, that if she did what she did inside the FBI she would get serious sanctions, and that the "Crooked Hillary" label is spot on. The question is, will they do that or will they try to prosecute the issue?
Personally as the R party I'd add "clean house in the State Department" to the campaign platform and emphasize the anti corruption issue.
On July 08 2016 09:13 pmh wrote: There is also this thing that it seems in usa people shoot to kill. You don't have to kill someone to protect yourself,could also shoot in arm that is reaching for something,or leg if someone runs away but all I see in the news is chest wounds. Don't understand how these shootings end up in killing people so often. Are police in usa trained to "shoot to kill" ? In country where I live they are supposed to be trained to shoot to not kill,though death by police has been rising here as well over the last few years.
US rule is, if you shoot you shoot to kill. The validity of that approach belongs in a different thread.
On July 08 2016 05:35 GreenHorizons wrote: People who defend the police, and more importantly defend the legal process that follows, I have to ask. What percentage of killings/complaints of abuse by police do you think there is no wrong doing worthy of criminal penalty?
The vast majority of police are just ordinary people doing their job.
Honestly I think this is part of the problem. Being a cop is basically a job that no one is really qualified to do and no person in their right mind would want. What person really wants to wield that kind of power? I think the fact that we have a lot of very ordinary people doing a job that is extraordinary in nature leads to a ton of problems. The average Joe just isn't cut out for that line of work and yet they're out there doing it anyway and when the rubber meets the road weak people crumble and the shit hits the fan. To do the job properly calls for extraordinary people.
I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.
No one makes them take the job though. Its a hard job if they can't handle it don't sign up for it. The vast majority of cops shouldn't be cops. Police shouldn't be revenue collectors, their performance shouldn't be based on quotas, they need to be enforcing way way way less stupid laws, there should be a fraction of the total number of police now like way less cops total, there should be way more oversight, way more regulation, body cams, dash cams. They should be significantly better trained, constantly tested and evaluated, rigorous physical and mental fitness testing no tub of shit cops, they should be paid well because they should be the cream of the crop, they should be from the communities they serve. They're currently none of those things.
This country has some things all wrong and the criminal justice system is right up there. Police should be the Navy Seals or Delta Force of humans. The apex, the best of the best. But not at killing people, at being strong, smart, brave, but also kind and caring. People are always going to resent authority, they always have and they always will, nothing will change that. It's part of the job and the type of person we want as police should know that and totally get it. People are going to dislike them and it's understandable for them to. They still have a job to do though and that job isn't being done properly right now.
You're never going to fill the ranks of the police force though if you set Delta Force standards.
Much of the training they go through is to ensure they are strong, smart, brave, kind, caring, etc. They are obviously trained not to kill innocent people. Most normal people wouldn't dream of doing that. The real world just works differently than these idealistic standards of a 'perfect police force of the citizens finest doing their duty to enforce justice'. The work they have to do is sometimes dark and gritty and a lot of cops die in the line of duty because fearing for their lives is a very real thing.
The reality is you have normal ordinary people being tasked with a great deal of responsibility and power and expected to do extraordinary things. They work their hardest to do things most people take for granted.
People not respecting them because of their fuck-ups seems like a spoiled teenager bad-mouthing their parent who gave them everything. Yes there's a few parents who abuse their children but the vast majority are normal people who want to do right by their children. Spoiled bratty teenagers who don't know what it's like to work in the real world just don't understand what being a grown-up is like until they have to live through it themselves.
The vast majority of people whining that police are racists, trying to assassinate people, abuse their power are people who have never had to deal with any sort of adversity in their lives on par with that of serving as police.
I'm not saying I want black ops police. In fact generally I'm not big on military veterans being police at all. It's too easy to go from a military occupying force us vs. them mentality and bring it into civilian scenarios. I think that's a major no-no and it creates a shitload of the problems we're seeing. I'm talking about that degree of excellence but as good people. We demand only the best for the job.
The world police currently opperate in isn't the real world. A lot of the problems are because we have them making money for the department and enforcing laws that shouldn't exist let alone be enforced. All those things end up doing is A- Requiring more police and B- Making more situations for all those police to interact and get into situations that could turn south. We want less police that are better trained and we want those better trained police to have less reasons to hassle people over BS.
Again, I want zero ordinary people on the police force. If you have Joe Sixpack on the force you're going to have problems. It's not a job a regular person can handle properly.
People don't like authority, they never have and never will. I'm sorry, deal with it.
That last sentence is laughable.
I think the biggest problem with US police is training. The constant in these scenario's is always 'he made a threatening move', 'I feared for my life' ect ect. Its like police spend every moment of their job fearing some dude is going to kill them. Now of course a significant part of that is the prevalence of guns but more then that I feel like its a lack of confidence and training in how to handle and de-escalate situations. It always sounds as if they are completely inadequately prepared in how to deal with normal and routing situations.
Take the recent one with the broken light traffic stop. You never need to approach a vehicle you stop for a broken tail light with a drawn gun. Ever. Even if the biggest bunch of gang stereotype weed smoking guys are in it. The moment you approach with a drawn gun any hope of de-escalating or alternate approach is gone. Either he complies or you have to shoot him. That is terrible! Then when you ask for his driver license and he mentions he has a gun in his pocket aswell you don't order him to put up his hands, there is no need for it, a guy that is planning to shoot you is not going to tell you he has a gun. Sure, pay some more attention to his movement but again, no reason to escalate the situation.
Every single one of these incidents is always preceded but such blatant failures that they are nigh impossible to comprehend for someone from outside the US. No cop will ever act that way in Europe and so all these life or death situations can not even begin to take form.
The extreme cases of cops executing handcuffed suspects are a completely different problem obvious but I wager you can reduce a massive number of police shootings every year but simply giving cops proper training, cause what ever the hell their being taught now. Its garbage.
Absolutely the ubiquity of guns add a certain level of uncertainty to everything. Those guns aren't going anywhere regardless of what you think about them they're always going to be a potential variable so police need to learn to live with that and work around it. More training is absolutely required so cops know how to calmly and confidently deal with a potential situation and bring everything down a few pegs.
I agree completely. Again I think so much of this comes back to the soldier/occupier/us vs. them mentality displayed by police now days. Camo, assault rifles, gas masks, etc. Even police cruisers here are made to completely blend into traffic now, they're sneaky. In Europe cop cars are bright green and hideous and stick out like a sore thumb so everyone can know "Hey that's a cop". It's just a different mentality where it's more like "Hey guys, I'm over here if you need help in my hideous car if you need it". I'm not a fan of cops being all covert ops when they're supposed to be servants of the community.
NSFW. THIS is what we should expect from every cop. This is absolutely amazing work. Even though he ends up shooting he does everything in his power to deescalate things and has some great discipline with his gun. + Show Spoiler +
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVe7bx_CaSU
Just on the video. It's difficult to see exactly what is going on with the first shot, but the later shots would be an unlawful killing in the U.K.. When the man with a knife is shot for the second time he's a threat to exactly no one. The highway has been closed, there are no members of the public around, he's been shot already and is clearly weakening. He has a knife, all the officers have guns. By shooting him the police on the scene made the judgement that his life was less valuable than the half hour of road closure / police time it would take to wait for him to calm down / collapse - assuming of course that there's no one there with the equipment or the training to disarm him.
I'm not an expert, but I have talked to a friend of the family who worked for a decade in a police firearms unit in the U.K. about videos like this in the past. In all cases his position is that killing is the last option and that it the duty of the police to do everything possible to minimise loss of life. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many officers end up involved. If there is no direct threat to to life you do not shoot and, if you do shoot, you shoot to wound in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
Now that's not to say that these police officers were doing a bad job. I have no idea what kind of training the U.S. police get or how they are instructed to behave. You guys have a bunch of different kinds of police right - City, county, state? Have I got that vaguely right? And the training varies from PD to PD? I just don't know enough to say whether those police behaved as they should, you'd know better but...
I was just thinking, after looking at this video and reading you praising it, that there must be a different philosophy at work in British and U.S. policing. Regardless of how many guns are around if this video is any indication.
He's walking towards traffic putting civilians in potential danger from cross fire or him stabbing them. For my money that video is as text book as it gets and I absolutely applaud those cops. They try to calm him down, they keep their distance, they try and keep themselves between him and innocent people, they don't aim their guns at him when there are innocent people potentially in the wake. Also the guy lived because the officers showed restraint and clear thinking. They very obviously did NOT want to shoot him or they would have just blasted him and been done with it.
On July 08 2016 09:13 pmh wrote: There is also this thing that it seems in usa people shoot to kill. You don't have to kill someone to protect yourself,could also shoot in arm that is reaching for something,or leg if someone runs away. Don't understand how these shootings end up in killing people so often. Are police in usa trained to "shoot to kill" ? In country where I live they are supposed to be trained to shoot to not kill,though death by police has been rising here as well over the last few years.
I take it you've never shot a pistol before. Limbs are small, limbs also move a lot. Hitting a small moving target with a pistol is quite difficult even for a highly skilled shooter. If there's something behind that small moving target like an innocent person shooting at that limb is monumentally stupid. I'm sorry its just not realistic, this isn't a movie. That is why police aim center mass, its the largest target on a person, it moves relatively little, and bullets are less likely to go through a torso and continue on. If you have to shoot someone it's statistically the best place to shoot. Also if you're going to start opening fire you're going to shoot until your target drops to the ground where they're less of a threat. The problem is how often police interacting with people turns into shootings not the shooting practices themselves. I hate this shit as much as anyone but this idea that you're going to blast the gun out of someone's hand with your pistol like James Bond just isn't how it is.
Ya I never fired a pistol or weapon before,other then an air gun. The discussion about the validity of the approach to shoot to kill maybe is better for the thread about gun control. Was not my intention to start a discussion about it though it could be an interesting discussion. It was something I did not knew and have been wondering about. Knowing now that in the usa the rule is shoot to kill and till person drops on the ground I can understand a bit better how these shootings often end up in killing people.
On July 08 2016 09:06 Mohdoo wrote: I think the Comey interview today is going to go down as one of the crucial mistakes made by the GOP this year. Comey went from scathing criticism to explaining, bit by bit, why there was no legal reason to press charges. This is Benghazi all over again. How they managed to drop the ball after Comey's original statement is just baffling. This is one of the many benefits to the party being in such disarray.
If they play it smart this hearing can really play into their hands. There are now dozens of sound bites of the director of the FBI telling everyone that Hillary is a shitty leader, that the State Dept under her is a mess, that if she did what she did inside the FBI she would get serious sanctions, and that the "Crooked Hillary" label is spot on. The question is, will they do that or will they try to prosecute the issue?
Personally as the R party I'd add "clean house in the State Department" to the campaign platform and emphasize the anti corruption issue.
The public's reaction could be like Snowden's
Trump needs to grow his team still to take advantage of opportunities.
On July 08 2016 09:36 pmh wrote: Ya I never fired a pistol or weapon before,other then an air gun. The discussion about the validity of the approach to shoot to kill maybe is better for the thread about gun control. Was not my intention to start a discussion about it though it could be an interesting discussion. It was something I did not knew and have been wondering about. Knowing now that in the usa the rule is shoot to kill and till person drops on the ground I can understand a bit better how these shootings often end up in killing people.
Its understandable. On paper it makes sense, just shoot him in the arm! But the reality of the situation isn't that easy and it gets overlooked sometimes. It would be great if that's how it was but pistols aren't very accurate, arms are small and move erratically so this is how it is.
On July 08 2016 09:38 Doraemon wrote: can't imagine how scared a black person would be when he is approached by cops. man... how do you live like that
Guy I work with here told me a story about how he kept his hands on the steering wheel and when the cop asked to see his license he was like "it's in my pocket man listen I'm carrying with a permit so I ain't gonna reach for my license it's in my pocket man lol" so the cop was like 'ok lol' and got it for him.
It comes back to why you might want to say 'cops need to earn our respect' but if when approached you're disrespectful and unlawful from the get-go it's not helping the situation at all.
On July 08 2016 09:38 Doraemon wrote: can't imagine how scared a black person would be when he is approached by cops. man... how do you live like that
Guy I work with here told me a story about how he kept his hands on the steering wheel and when the cop asked to see his license he was like "it's in my pocket man listen I'm carrying with a permit so I ain't gonna reach for my license it's in my pocket man lol" so the cop was like 'ok lol' and got it for him.
no one should have to live like that.... that is so messed up
EPT
