"Militarization" of the police

[billvon 2,990]

>Thanks and im not a conservative. I'm libertarian if anything. Only registered
>conservative to vote in primaries. I have agreed with liberal topics here, and agree
>with them on things like women's choice on abortions, gay marriage, ending the
>wars etc. It's the bullshit fear mongering things like always posting shit about
>cops like they are the worst problem I america and will not stop until they kill us
>attitude that kills me the most here. We have bigger issues.

Sounds like your opinions are very close to mine, then. Does that make you a liberal?

[normiss 798]

So you're cozy with over 400 shootings a year.
hmmm.
I'm not.

[cgriff 0]

Anvilbrother

Answer the question and prove me wrong that you actually researched it on your own. I want to see the number of cops charged and convicted for murders annually.

Isn't that rather the point? They ARENT charged, let alone convicted.

Now, had you asked how many are guilty of such a thing, I could see the point. It's a pretty low number. However, it's not non-zero.

[rehmwa 2]

normiss

So you're cozy with over 400 shootings a year.
hmmm.
I'm not.

I'm not either. Now of those 400 -

How many are eliminated if we get rid of crooked cops?
How many are eliminated if we get rid of terrible thugs?
How many are accidents?

I'm not satisfied with the two answers I'm seeing on this site:

400, 0, 0
0, 400, 0

I suspect the first number low. But those are very important to address that issue.

I suspect the 2nd number is huge. Now digging into the root causes for that is something worth investigating - and also a clear statement of the conflict of new age social strategy (and the general trend of self isolation and anonymity is huge here, IMO) as well as past sins and biased attitudes across all segments of the population.

I suspect any in the 3rd number is really sad and a tragedy for everyone involved.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Anvilbrother 0]

Ok normiss, how many are guilty of shooting a person that did not meet the rules of a justified shooting. Ie was a threat to them others, or presented a threat which to a reasonable person would have understood as a lethal threat?

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[rehmwa 2]

billvon

>Sounds like your opinions are very close to mine, then. Does that make you a liberal?

I've always thought you were a libertarian that just tries to self identify with a 'liberal' label because that's the social circle you identify with or was raised to think the 'liberal' label is special in philosophy rather than just another tag for a political agenda.

Or a guy that at least has more fun arguing from that bias than the others... ; )



I find Speaker's Corner doesn't have alot of true (liberals, conservatives). Rather we have a lot people that are very opposed to a false stereotype that they've been indoctrinated about. So they self label to the opposite group.

To be true believer on either side, you really have to be some kind of fanatic, or a one issue weirdo, or very very wide eyed to the real world.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[normiss 798]

Given the threshold of "I was afraid" with an almost golden pass (to the point that most aren't even listed in any shootings database), how do we reach a logical and justifiable "justified" shooting in the first place?

This is exactly why this needs addressed and changed.
Outside, neutral investigations MUST occur for every officer involved shooting. Period.
I think that's where we're headed.

You can attack me for making these types of comments all you want. I'm not the singular voice of this perspective.
Read much news lately???
Times, they are a changin'.

[Anvilbrother 0]

So your telling me you won't even do the research and come up with an educated guess. You have no clue how many shootings there are, how many are charged and how many are actually guilty. You have no clue what's going on outside speculation. You don't know if out of 400 shootings if only 7-8 were actually a shooting where a cop intentionally or incompetently shot someone. You don't know if all 400 were straight up murders. That's exactly what I thought you DO gobble up the medias storyline and run with it.

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[billvon 2,990]

>I've always thought you were a libertarian that just tries to self identify with a 'liberal' label

I don't really self-identify as a liberal; people here just assume that. I am registered as an independent and I don't vote for either party as a rule.

However, someone who supports alternative energy, gay rights and climate change research must be a liberal, so there you are. (Ironically I'm often labeled a conservative and asked if I want to kill minorities on science forums.)

[christelsabine 1]

Ever heard about punctuation?

dudeist skydiver # 3105

[normiss 798]

Reading comprehension. You're doing it wrong.

It was OVER 400 fatal shotings [sic] last year.
1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data.

Your turn.

[normiss 798]

BTW, you're distracting me from my Yamaha receiver shopping!

[Anvilbrother 0]

To the German guy keep being a grammar nazi I don't care. I'm typing on an iphone be happy you can even read it.


To normiss. Over 400 shootings you say ok let's go with that. How many of the 400 people killed were presenting an active lethal threat to the cops or someone else? How many were suicide by cop? How many were accidental? And how many were intentional murders by the cops?

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[normiss 798]

Fine. Ignore it.
Enjoy your Holiday.
I've got a pile of PTO I have to burn.

[Anvilbrother 0]

That's what I thought you have no clue what really happening, and choose not to find out for yourself.

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[normiss 798]

Liar. I do, and I have.
Yet you continue to ignore the data.

"The data, for instance, is terribly incomplete. Vast numbers of the country's 17,000 police departments don't file fatal police shooting reports at all, and many have filed reports for some years but not others. Florida departments haven't filed reports since 1997 and New York City last reported in 2007. "

I call you liar because you have no clue what I have studied nor do you yourself know.

"There were 151 instances in which police noted that teens they had shot dead had been fleeing or resisting arrest at the time of the encounter. "

[Anvilbrother 0]

I asked for you to show me out of your 400 shooting the reason for the shooting and the outcome, and you can't. That shows me you don't care, or you know it's gonna prove you wrong in your cop rampage. I have ran the 2011 numbers and out of the 400 shootings only a few dozen would even make the case for out of of control police.

Keep calling me a liar I don't care, you have proven what you are here today.

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[billvon 2,990]

Part of the problem is that police simply don't get prosecuted for what they do. Strangle a guy? Understandable. A guy who has been searched and handcuffed is found shot dead in the back of a cop car? He must have killed himself.

But in the end, even as violent crime has gone down, police shootings have gone up - and the vast majority are not even presented to a grand jury, much less indicted.

A good take on this from the Daily News:
==============
In 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years, only 3 cases led to indictments — and just 1 conviction

A Daily News analysis of NYPD-involved deaths starts with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets in the Bronx and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn stairwell. Where race was known, 86% were black or Hispanic.

Monday, December 8, 2014, 2:30 AM

A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict white NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner — a black father of six — stunned large swaths of the city and added fuel to a nationwide surge of protests over police killings.

But history shows the odds were always in Pantaleo’s favor.

A Daily News investigation found that at least 179 people were killed by on-duty NYPD officers over the past 15 years. Just three of the deaths have led to an indictment in state court. In another case, a judge threw out the indictment on technical grounds and it was not reinstated.

Only one officer who killed someone while on duty has been convicted, but he was not sentenced to jail time.

The analysis of the police-involved deaths begins with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley, who police say was hit by a ricocheting bullet fired by a rookie cop in a darkened housing project stairwell in Brooklyn. Gurley was also unarmed.

The News found that since 1999:

Roughly 27% of people killed by cops were unarmed.
Where race was known, 86% were black or Hispanic.
Twenty-one people were killed — three of them by off-duty cops — in 2012, the highest during the 15-year span.
====================

[rehmwa 2]

billvon

>I've always thought you were a libertarian that just tries to self identify with a 'liberal' label

I don't really self-identify as a liberal; people here just assume that. I am registered as an independent and I don't vote for either party as a rule.

However, someone who supports alternative energy, gay rights and climate change research must be a liberal, so there you are. (Ironically I'm often labeled a conservative and asked if I want to kill minorities on science forums.)

If the 'advocates' from either side accuse you of being hardcore for the other side, then you are likely doing something right (by my standards anyway - thrifty in spending and socially not-intrusive). Main reason is the socially driven elements seem to be the ones that get bent out of shape and won't discuss things reasonably. But I generalize. I always generalize ; )

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[skycop 0]

Getting this thread somewhat back on topic, I've noticed some interesting things in the media coverage of the "militarization" of the police.

The POTUS own "study" of the 1033 program showed 96% of the items received were not "military grade". The other 4% largely consisted of M-16 rifles, night vision, and HMMWV's.

The vast majority of HMMWV's are not armored and used for bad weather, search and rescue and other specialized uses. Night vision is passive and most would agree has several law enforcement applications. The M-16's are used as patrol rifles, the departments would have bought rifles on the open market anyway. The M-16's are acquired at a much lower cost, saving millions in local tax dollars. Every department I know that has M-16's modified them to be semi-auto only.

This leaves the MRAP, which by any objective measure is nothing more than an armored capsule on a large truck body. I've read numerous media reports of these being tanks. mounted with machine guns, that were used in Ferguson or other areas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-pruett/what-ferguson-says-about-_b_6283576.html

There were no LE owned Humvees with mounted machine guns in Ferguson or anywhere else.

I challenge anyone to find a photo of a 1033 acquired MRAP being used for crowd control in a protest.

The MRAP has no maintenance infrastructure to support anything but light as-needed use. One was used in our area effectively to end an armed stand-off, it was used as rolling cover and worked as advertised. It took numerous rounds and had the lights shot out.

The facts have been led astray by the 24 hour news cycle, one of the POTUS recommendations was local oversight of acquired items. Agencies have no problem with that, we had a guy do an open records request for our stuff. We provided a list and offered to show him the items we had.
Never heard another word, we've increased our ability to serve our community, we would never have these capabilities without the 1033 program.

"Just 'cause I'm simple, don't mean I'm stewpid!"

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

Full auto rifles are used by some departments (primarily the Tactical teams).
Around me, some use semi AR-15s, but one uses select fire H&K G36s.

Another uses both semi ARs & select fire MP5s. Again, tactical teams, not just patrol car rifles.

AFAIK, these were all departmental purchases, not 1033 acquisitions.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[skycop 0]

When I was a SWAT guy we had semi/three round burst/full-auto Mini-14's and select fire MP-5's. Now they have MP-5's and AR-15's.
1033 M-16's save about $600.00 per rifle, they are A2's and easy and cheap to modify to semi-auto. Some of the tactical guys keep full auto, or three round burst. Some departments will further mod the A2's to the M-4 style. M68 Aimpoint reflex sights are also available, I have one on my patrol rifle.

"Just 'cause I'm simple, don't mean I'm stewpid!"

[Southern_Man 0]

Anvilbrother

So your telling me you won't even do the research and come up with an educated guess. You have no clue how many shootings there are, how many are charged and how many are actually guilty. You have no clue what's going on outside speculation. You don't know if out of 400 shootings if only 7-8 were actually a shooting where a cop intentionally or incompetently shot someone. You don't know if all 400 were straight up murders. That's exactly what I thought you DO gobble up the medias storyline and run with it.

Fivethirtyeight.com suggests there are about 1000 police shootings a year. Much higher than most sources. You can read their methodology here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/another-much-higher-count-of-police-homicides/

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[normiss 798]

He's ignoring the numbers dude.
Civilians deserve to be shot.

[champu 1]

It would be an interesting exercise to parameterize how the situation escalated in each of the shootings in that spreadsheet. Or maybe just pontificate here on how one might approach that...

Note that this would be different from (perhaps orthogonal to) concluding "justified" or "unjustified." Something like...

1 - Shots had been fired at people by the suspect prior to police arriving
2 - ...
3 - ...
4 - ...
5 - Police initiated contact on suspicion of a crime only and with no particular reason to suspect the suspect was armed