US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4268

On July 13 2016 07:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I would love to see the data before concluding this and I'm sure you'd love for the data to be made public as well so in that we're united.

On July 13 2016 07:54 JinDesu wrote:


So, the wall is just for pandering, eh...

The District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department have shot and killed more people per resident in the 1990s than any other large American city police force.

Many shootings by Washington police officers were acts of courage and even heroism. But internal police files and court records reveal a pattern of reckless and indiscriminate gunplay by officers sent into the streets with inadequate training and little oversight, an eight-month Washington Post investigation has found.

Washington's officers fire their weapons at more than double the rate of police in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami. Deaths and injuries in D.C. police shooting cases have resulted in nearly $ 8 million in court settlements and judgments against the District in the last six months alone.

"We shoot too often, and we shoot too much when we do shoot," said Executive Assistant Chief of Police Terrance W. Gainer, who became the department's second in command in May.

The shootings involve a small proportion of the District's 3,550 officers. But the details of individual cases can be chilling even to police veterans: An off-duty police officer out walking his dog in August 1995 fired 11 times while trying to stop an unarmed motorist who had hit a utility pole and left the scene of the accident. An off-duty police officer fishing in May 1995 shot an unarmed man three times after arguing with him on the banks of Rock Creek. In August, an officer ended a police chase of an irrational truck driver who had rammed several cars by firing 38 times into the truck's cab, killing the unarmed driver.

The extent and pattern of police shootings have been obscured from public view. Police officials investigate incidents in secret, producing reports that become public only when a judge intercedes. In a small hearing room closed to the public, nine of every 10 shootings are ruled justified by department officials who read the reports filed by investigating officers but generally hear no witnesses.

The spate of police shootings in the District this decade is closely tied to the training and supervision of officers and the way the department investigates cases and holds officers accountable, records and interviews show.

Police shootings began to rise at the beginning of the decade with a huge infusion of new, ill-prepared recruits and the adoption of the light-trigger, highly advanced Glock 9mm handgun as the department's service weapon. By the mid-1990s, shootings by officers had doubled to record levels even as a succession of police administrations failed to accurately track shooting patterns or correct acknowledged deficiencies in firearm skills.

Among the findings of The Post's investigation:

In the last five years, D.C. officers shot and killed 57 people -- three more than police reported in Chicago, which has three times the police force and five times the population. During that period, D.C. officers were involved in 640 shooting incidents -- 40 more than the Los Angeles Police Department, which has more than double the officers and serves six times the population. Since 1990, Washington police have shot and killed 85 people.

District officers in the last five years shot at 54 cars they said drove at them or others in "vehicular attacks." The shootings have killed nine people -- all of them unarmed -- and wounded 19. Police officers in the District and elsewhere are instructed to get out of the way and not shoot at moving cars, except in the gravest circumstances, because bullets can ricochet and because cars with wounded drivers can become unguided missiles. In New York City -- with 10 times the number of officers and 14 times the population -- officers shot at only 11 cars in vehicular attacks in the last three years.

In addition to the incidents in which officers fired into cars, D.C. police in the last five years shot nine unarmed men on foot, killing two. Five of the surviving men were charged with assaulting a police officer, but the charges were dropped in all but one case.

In 11 cases from 1992 to 1997, D.C. police ruled shootings justified despite eyewitness accounts or forensic evidence that contradicted officers, an examination of internal investigative records showed. Investigations were sometimes marked by errors, omissions and internal inconsistencies.

Nearly 75 percent of the District officers who used their weapons in 1996 failed to meet the District's basic firearms standards for using the Glock semiautomatic handgun, a weapon that requires a high degree of training and skill. There have been more than 120 unintentional discharges of the gun in the past decade; 19 officers have shot themselves or other officers accidentally.

On July 13 2016 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:
This isn't even going very far back but it reinforces the idea that this isn't a new discussion, people have just been forced to engage in it.

Unfortunately, they haven't been forced to do any research about what's already been discussed. So they end up saying things (like referencing the FBI stats, or the piece GG is referencing not to pick on you) that have been long since discussed and properly placed in context.

This is from the 90's...



Source

What people seem to conveniently forget, is up until recently, everyone was just denying this was the reality.

On July 13 2016 07:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
I'll just drop this one quickly to show FBI numbers are totally inaccurate. But this is just comparing the FBI to a sample of Police agencies own reporting

http://graphics.wsj.com/justifiable-homicides-by-police/



I think what you and many others fail to realize, is while many of you are just showing up, this is a question we've been asking for decades in one form or another. The opposition to it is clear for those of us who didn't just start asking these questions.

What is it you are imagining is the reasonable explanation for refusing to share this data for so long, other than intentionally obfuscating the truth?

On July 13 2016 07:49 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I would argue that this isn't the result of a resurgence of white supremacy racism, rather the MSM and establishment are creating more racial problems in society by drastically blowing out of proportion what racial problems do still exist, which serves only to incite further racial tensions. All-the-while they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of those same racial problems still present in modern society, which results in an ineptitude in the ability to appropriately address and present solutions for said problems.

On July 13 2016 08:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
Just never mind.

On July 13 2016 07:49 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I would argue that this isn't the result of a resurgence of white supremacy racism, rather the MSM and establishment are creating more racial problems in society by drastically blowing out of proportion what racial problems do still exist, which serves only to incite further racial tensions. All-the-while they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of those same racial problems still present in modern society, which results in an ineptitude in the ability to appropriately address and present solutions for said problems.

On July 13 2016 08:12 Broetchenholer wrote:


And i would argue that you don't need a resurgence of white supremacy racism to not have your media to create more racial problems by blowing existing out of proportion. African americans might meet blatant racists that consciously target them for their colour, and some of those people might be cops. Way more problems arise when your police somehow approach african americans completely different then white people due to a different perception of threat. The Castile shooting is a prime example of that. Somehow a cop draws a weapon at a traffic stop. Do americans even understand how unreal this situation sounds to an european? There is a guy in a car with a busted tail light, he has a woman and a small girl in the car. I stop him for the broken light and then somehow i feel threatened by him. That's the problem. To the police, everybody is a potential copkiller and the study you brought up shows strong racial bias in the way the police treats african americans. If it represents reality, i can't tell, i am neither black nor us-citizen. But the perception of the people is exactly that, police officers are more aggressive towards african americans, probably not because they hate them, and last week 2 people died because of it.

On July 13 2016 08:22 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


Honestly there isn't much you can do about the underlined portion until the crime statistics start to balance out more proportionally. Unless you can blanket brainwash the stats away that blacks commit violent crimes more proportionally than whites or are more likely to shoot at cops than whites, then you aren't going to be able to combat this stereotype.

Are asians not the least likely to be shot by police and also less likely to commit crimes or shoot police than whites?

I would argue the Castile case, assuming the worst from the lack of video of what actually occurred when it occurred, is due to police incompetence.

On July 13 2016 08:34 zlefin wrote:
templar-> A rebuttal need not completely counter or negate an argument. The extent of the rebuttal was significant enough, and most relevantly, completely nullified the excessive claims you made. So my counter-points were entirely justified and true. The squad came to my defense because I was right; that you refuse to consider that you were wrong, and consider it a circlejerk against you, is a sign of your own bias and mentality.

On July 13 2016 08:31 Broetchenholer wrote:


And you would certainly right, Castile died because of incompetence. And yes, there is a lot you can do. There is a lot you have to do. You can't have your police officers perceive a person they just stopped for a broken light as a thread based on their skin colour. You can't excuse the maltreatment of a group of people because statistically they are more likely to be criminals.

On July 13 2016 08:35 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


You're right that maltreatment of a group based on statistics is wrong in any situation.

But is it wrong for the Officer to take a more cautious approach when confronted with general characteristics of an individual more likely to be violent against them? If that is racist policing as GH suggests, then I would say racist policing is probably widespread and systematic throughout the country, but that at this level it isn't exactly a problem so much as it is a symptom of a greater societal problem.

Is it wrong for a cop to take a less cautious stance upon approaching a vehicle when he sees the driver is a mother with a backseat full of children than a driver who is just a single adult male? Approaching an individual in a clean tuxedo suit versus a raggedy unshaved individual?

These are not simple problems to solve.