Police Shootings

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Police Shootings

Postby Seahawks4Ever » Sat Mar 31, 2018 9:33 am

I saw this thread on another site so I decided to start one of similar vein here.

The "Question"; What do we as a society have to do to END these police shootings of unarmed Black men??

Then, then answer that pretty much summed up the whole thing for me in a nut shell.

1. It will stop when young black men are home in bed resting their bodies for a hard day of work the next day so you can support those kids that you brought into the world instead of running around at night doing things that you know you should not be doing and hanging out with people who you know will only bring the police down on you. That is the FIRST place to start.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Mar 31, 2018 9:59 am

The latest police shooting of an unarmed black man in Sacramento did not fit your premise at all. The shooting victim was shot in his grandmother's backyard.

I think you need to examine that nutshell of yours. It's bordering on racist.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby Aseahawkfan » Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:18 pm

I think each case needs to be analyzed and appropriate justice needs to be carried out if mistakes or nefarious causes are found. I think the majority of incidents are less due to racism and more due to incompetence and fear.

This case looks like two cops need to be fired, maybe prosecuted. Shooting a guy in the back without visible proof a gun is maybe criminal. We'll see what they find.

As far as long-term, part of the reason is tied to the level of violence in the communities the police are called into. Often when police are called into a majority black neighborhood, they are going into a hostile area known for gang violence with their lives at risk. They are going in scared for their lives and ready to fire on anyone that threatens or shoots at them. A scared person with a gun is going to make bad decisions even with training.

I do think they need to have harsher penalties for mistakes. There needs to be some fear of reprisals for making mistakes shooting people other than getting fired.

I would also like to see an investment in improving nonlethal weapon options. The taser is unreliable. We need nonlethal weapons that work, so the police have 99.9999% effective options other than the gun.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:55 pm

Aseahawkfan wrote:I think each case needs to be analyzed and appropriate justice needs to be carried out if mistakes or nefarious causes are found. I think the majority of incidents are less due to racism and more due to incompetence and fear.


Agreed.

This case looks like two cops need to be fired, maybe prosecuted. Shooting a guy in the back without visible proof a gun is maybe criminal. We'll see what they find.


Agreed, and I'll go beyond that to say that the simple presence of an armed suspect is not a reason to use deadly force to subdue him.

As far as long-term, part of the reason is tied to the level of violence in the communities the police are called into. Often when police are called into a majority black neighborhood, they are going into a hostile area known for gang violence with their lives at risk. They are going in scared for their lives and ready to fire on anyone that threatens or shoots at them. A scared person with a gun is going to make bad decisions even with training.


Good point. But there are some instances, particularly the one in South Carolina where an officer shot a fleeing suspect in the back in broad daylight, where there is no justifiable reason for the officer to feel threatened.

I do think they need to have harsher penalties for mistakes. There needs to be some fear of reprisals for making mistakes shooting people other than getting fired.

I would also like to see an investment in improving nonlethal weapon options. The taser is unreliable. We need nonlethal weapons that work, so the police have 99.9999% effective options other than the gun.


I was going to suggest that very thing. Perhaps technology can provide a solution some day.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby obiken » Sat Mar 31, 2018 3:08 pm

The "Question"; What do we as a society have to do to END these police shootings of unarmed Black men??

Then, then answer that pretty much summed up the whole thing for me in a nut shell.

1. It will stop when young black men are home in bed resting their bodies for a hard day of work the next day so you can support those kids that you brought into the world instead of running around at night doing things that you know you should not be doing and hanging out with people who you know will only bring the police down on you. That is the FIRST place to start.


First place to start is at Chris Rock, can we all agree that there are some professions that don't get a bad day, or allowed to have bad apples. Airline pilots, Brain surgeons, or Cops.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Sat Mar 31, 2018 4:57 pm

obiken wrote:First place to start is at Chris Rock, can we all agree that there are some professions that don't get a bad day, or allowed to have bad apples. Airline pilots, Brain surgeons, or Cops.


Hard to argue with that.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby Seahawks4Ever » Sun Apr 01, 2018 7:56 am

Border line racist?? GET REAL! Did you see the video Dog?? First of all, I don't know why a report of vandalism warrants a full police response including a Police helicopter but it did allow us to watch his movements in the moments leading up to the shooting. He was evading the police and we all watched him jump the fence into his grand parents back yard. How is the police to know that the suspect they are chasing, AT NIGHT, just jumped a fence into his own grand parents back yard??? There CAN"T know that. Then, he is trying to get in to that residence, the police don't know that he isn't escalating the incident and is about ready to take hostages or something.

Now, IF he had been in bed (his GP's were already in bed themselves) resting his body getting ready to put in a hard days work instead of PROWING his grand parents neighborhood (he was staying with them because he was IN TROUBLE) breaking in to cars and ripping people off. He brought two kids into the world, they deserved to have that father to support them rather than prowling around at night doing the Lord knows what.

This was exactly the scenario I pointed out in my initial post. I has NOTHING to do with racism, a charge that I find "rich" considering the "source" it came from.

In almost every case, the ones that have gone viral, the person who died had been doing stuff they should not be doing. There ARE exceptions, of course. The guy that was just driving with his girl friend and daughter who was gunned down right AFTER he told the officer that he had a gun. In THAT case I firmly believe the officers should have been prosecuted.

Have there been cases of abuse by police? You bet there are, but, even in many of those cases the people killed where doing things that they knew would attract police attention and yet did it anyhow.

That black woman, Ms. Brand who was MURDERED by a police officer when he did a traffic stop of her less than a block from her destination? Did you READ what I just wrote? MURDERED BY POLICE. So, NO, I don't lump all of these cases into the same basket.

Here is a SHOCKER for you. I SUPPORT the Black Lives Movement! I have too many family and friends who are people of color to NOT support the BLM. What is inferred in their name but LEFT off is the word ALSO but, come on, did they REALLY have to? NO! They should NOT have wrote it instead as Black Lives Matter ALSO. Those people who don't "get it" don't understand because they don't WANT to understand.

I don't lump all cases together though. The case of Eric Garner to me is 100% different than the case of Mike Brown, who attacked a police officer who may have been a scum bag did what he was supposed to do when Brown attacked him. The second suspect did NOT attack officer Wilson and therefore wasn't shot by officer Wilson.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby MackStrongIsMyHero » Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:01 am

Definitely not a black-and-white subject. All of these cases should be judged on their own, and, if possible, without bias.

I will say that doing something wrong does not necessitate lethal force. There has to be some way for LEO's to get enough information about a subject before they resort to lethal force. I don't have that answer, but one has to be found.

I don't know if y'all have seen it yet, but the Louisiana Attorney General did not press any charges against the officers involved in the Alton Sterling shooting. Within the week, however, the Baton Rouge Police Department reviewed the officers' conduct and fired the Salamoni, the shooter, for improper use of force and improper escalation of the incident (losing his temper) and suspended the other officer, Lake, for 3 days for losing his temper. They also released both officers' body camera footage. The camera of Salamoni, in my opinion, puts the whole incident in another light.

Salamoni showed up and immediately started threatening Sterling. Sterling kept asking what he had done wrong. Yes, they knew he was a felon carrying a gun, but Sterling didn't pull that gun out and threaten the officers. I don't know why Salamoni immediately started yelling profanities at Sterling. It seems they could have explained they were there because of reports he had a fire arm, and, as a felon, he's not allowed to carry. Focus on getting him to surrender the weapon peaceably instead of getting violent.

Perhaps pie-in-the-sky or wishful thinking, but it seems the actual outcome could have been avoided with different behavior.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sun Apr 01, 2018 12:08 pm

There's over 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers in this country, and over the past 10 years, an average of 144 per year were killed in the line of duty. When you put those two facts together....and believe me, every one of those 900K officers know how dangerous their jobs are...it shouldn't be too surprising when we have situation where a cop over reacts and makes a mistake.

But the one in Sacramento is very hard to justify. The unarmed victim was shot 8 times, with 6 of those bullets hitting him in the back. There is no way a cop can justify the shooting by claiming he was facing a life or death threat, which is the only time an officer should be using lethal force, when 3/4 of the shots hit the victim in the back.

Listening to the excited voices on the video shouting "gun, gun, gun!!!!" no doubt got the adrenaline pumping and IMO the cops panicked and started shooting. There sure seems to be a lack of training issue involved here. They need to be taught a litte bit of Clint Eastwood's cool.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Tue Apr 03, 2018 7:10 am

With "open carry" a thing now with militia wanna-be types with a pistol on the hip and a rifle in the arms can parade around but a black kid with a B B gun is killed.


Because the number of unjustified shootings is not yet approaching zero, police need to be better trained in diffusing high-stakes situations without putting their own lives in undue danger, however:

1. Police don't just go around indiscriminately killing kids with BB guns, black or otherwise.

2. It happens occasionally because BB guns look like any other gun, and there's no way to expect anyone to be able to discern the difference in a split second, even in daylight.

Maybe I am just not hearing about all the "open carry" killings?


Well, more whites are shot by police than blacks- when was the last time you heard about one of them? So maybe?

It's worth pointing out, though, that "open carry" doesn't mean you can run around pointing guns at people (etc), and people who open-carry (and who've gone through the rigmarole to get a CCP), both black and white, are typically well aware of how to handle firearms responsibly. That alone puts them at very low risk to be shot by the popo.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby Aseahawkfan » Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:53 pm

Old but Slow wrote:While I try to stay out of these politically explosive topics, I am curious about one aspect. With "open carry" a thing now with militia wanna-be types with a pistol on the hip and a rifle in the arms can parade around but a black kid with a B B gun is killed. Maybe I am just not hearing about all the "open carry" killings?


1. It depends on where you live. Some states have tougher gun laws than other states. Quite a few of those states with tougher gun laws generally have larger minority populations like California. And cities have tougher gun laws. If you're talking about the Walmart killing, that was in a city I believe.

2. The media tends to sensationalize cop killings of black men for obvious reasons: it gets rating and the politicians get to talk about it and grandstand for a while. If a white, Asian, Latino, or anyone other than a black man is shot by a cop, no one cares. It doesn't get blasted on the media. It's another example of how biased the media is and how racist they are, which no one talks about. The media exploits cops killing black men for ratings and so do politicians. They don't care when cops kill someone from another group.

The cops do the same thing when they kill someone from another group. They make them look like criminals and people of questionable character. You recall that native American man they killed in Seattle? Cop had no reason to bother the guy. He had a small carving knife. People around him did not care. They were walking around him feeling completely safe. One dumbass cop decided to stop this guy, yell at him to drop his small carving knife, then shot him while a lady was talking across the street on the crosswalk because this Native American guy wasn't doing anything threatening. The cop was more threatening than the Native American guy. The local media released a few stories about the guy being a criminal and coming from a bad family. The cops started harassing his family. Eventually, the cop was fired. The government had to payout for the wrongful killing.

That's how most of it goes. There's usually someone fired and some kind of payout. If its a black male, then there is usually some media coverage to racial hate.

If you research deeper, you'll find the police kill a lot of other people than black males. A certain percentage is for the wrong reason. It gets no national coverage because cops killing anyone other than a black male doesn't get the ratings or the outrage from the groups like Black LIves Matter or the liberals who continue to coddle black folk due to their horrible history in this nation. To sum it up, if the media can't tap into the racial politics and white guilt to boost ratings, they ignore the police shooting.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:36 pm

As is too often the case, there was more to the Sacramento situation than I'd heard initially.

I don't know if this was already covered here, but apparently there was someone smashing car windows in the neighborhood, and a police helicopter was tracking Stephon Clark running through backyards and jumping fences (I don't know if they had seen him smashing windows or just suspected him of that part).

This of course doesn't mean he deserved to die, and I don't see how the police can justify their choice to begin shooting nearly the instant they walked around the corner and saw Mr. Clark, but this doesn't sound like what it was initially portrayed as.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:44 pm

burrrton wrote:As is too often the case, there was more to the Sacramento situation than I'd heard initially.

I don't know if this was already covered here, but apparently there was someone smashing car windows in the neighborhood, and a police helicopter was tracking Stephon Clark running through backyards and jumping fences (I don't know if they had seen him smashing windows or just suspected him of that part).

This of course doesn't mean he deserved to die, and I don't see how the police can justify their choice to begin shooting nearly the instant they walked around the corner and saw Mr. Clark, but this doesn't sound like what it was initially portrayed as.


Yea, S4E covered it in one of his rants.

To me, the information available doesn't change a thing. Unless there were reports of shots being fired, there was no reason for them to suspect that someone's life was in danger and no justifiable reason to use deadly force, let alone shooting the suspect 8 times with 6 of those shots being in his back.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Wed Apr 04, 2018 3:01 pm

Unless there were reports of shots being fired, there was no reason for them to suspect that someone's life was in danger and no justifiable reason to use deadly force, let alone shooting the suspect 8 times with 6 of those shots being in his back.


I agree with the last part, and I'm betting they're going to be facing punishment for it, but I don't agree with the bolded, and I don't think anyone in law enforcement would, either.

You don't have to have used the gun for police to consider it a threat.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Wed Apr 04, 2018 5:25 pm

burrrton wrote:I agree with the last part, and I'm betting they're going to be facing punishment for it, but I don't agree with the bolded, and I don't think anyone in law enforcement would, either.

You don't have to have used the gun for police to consider it a threat.


They were chasing a person that was on foot and jumping over fences with no one else around. Unless he was known to be armed, it's hard for me to imagine how anyone's life could be in danger.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Wed Apr 04, 2018 5:45 pm

Unless he was known to be armed, it's hard for me to imagine how anyone's life could be in danger.


Huh? Cops will *never* rely on *knowing* someone is armed before operating under that assumption- never have, never will. And they shouldn't. It'll get more cops killed.

What they should do, however, is assume there's at least a remote possibility a guy is unarmed, which I think we agree on.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Wed Apr 04, 2018 6:35 pm

burrrton wrote:Huh? Cops will *never* rely on *knowing* someone is armed before operating under that assumption- never have, never will. And they shouldn't. It'll get more cops killed.

What they should do, however, is assume there's at least a remote possibility a guy is unarmed, which I think we agree on.


I was speaking with regard to the use of deadly force. Of course, cops should always expect the worst possible situation so as to protect themselves. In other words, they can draw their weapon and be ready to defend themselves or the public but it had damn well better be a life or death situation before they pull the trigger, and this one obviously did not fit that scenario if the victim was unarmed and had 6 bullet holes in his back.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Wed Apr 04, 2018 7:03 pm

I don't think we disagree there, RD.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby NorthHawk » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:54 am

Here's an opinion piece by a Police Officer that fits into the better training aspect.
For me, the most important comment is:

"To save lives, especially in urban, minority-rich environments, we must train officers to understand how the brain responds in conditions of deadly duress."

The article itself is an interesting comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/05/opinions ... index.html
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Apr 07, 2018 10:09 am

NorthHawk wrote:Here's an opinion piece by a Police Officer that fits into the better training aspect.
For me, the most important comment is:

"To save lives, especially in urban, minority-rich environments, we must train officers to understand how the brain responds in conditions of deadly duress."

The article itself is an interesting comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/05/opinions ... index.html


That's a good article and it's refreshing to hear something other than using race hatred as an explanation for the shootings. The article makes alot of sense and I can see where it can be used to help in the training of police officers and others that carry deadly weapons as part of their job. I think we've all experienced situations where your mind sees what it expects to see or hears what it expects to hear. I know that I certainly have.

But I don't think it explains the case that we've been discussing, ie the killing in Sacramento where 6 out of the 8 shots the suspect sustained were in the back. Something else is at work.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby NorthHawk » Sat Apr 07, 2018 10:59 am

The only thing I can see that relates to the article is they were in the Old Brain mode and when one fired, it heightened the pressure and the others followed.
But I'm not a psychologist, so it's just a guess.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Apr 07, 2018 12:21 pm

NorthHawk wrote:The only thing I can see that relates to the article is they were in the Old Brain mode and when one fired, it heightened the pressure and the others followed.
But I'm not a psychologist, so it's just a guess.


Yea, I suppose. My theory is that the cops got their adrenaline flowing during the hunt...and I can equate "the hunt" to my bird hunting days when the dogs got on a hot trail and started getting excited, which in turn got your own heart racing....and when someone started shouting "gun! gun! gun!" as you could hear in the video, they panicked and started shooting almost indiscriminately. If that's what you call Old Brain mode, then it fits my explanation.

I do agree that the author of that article has an excellent point and hopefully they incorporate it into police training....if the don't already. What I don't agree with is the proposition that the BLM movement seems to be promoting, that these well publicized police shootings all have something to do with race hatred.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby NorthHawk » Sat Apr 07, 2018 1:17 pm

I found it interesting he's a Peace Officer Standards and Training instructor. Being an instructor would mean he would have a deeper meaning as to the mindset than someone who hasn't been on the course or maybe even someone who has had minimal training.
Peace Officer caught my eye as there is a difference between Peace Officers and Law Enforcement Officers in how they approach policing.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Apr 07, 2018 3:35 pm

NorthHawk wrote:...there is a difference between Peace Officers and Law Enforcement Officers in how they approach policing.


I guess I'm not clear on the differences. Merriam-Webster has this definition:

Definition of peace officer
: a civil officer (such as a police officer) whose duty it is to preserve the public peace

https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... %20officer

Perhaps they're including park rangers, tribal police, et al as peace officers? It seems to me that they're all part of law enforcement.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby c_hawkbob » Sat Apr 07, 2018 3:43 pm

There is no difference, it's just two different ways of saying the same thing.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby burrrton » Sat Apr 07, 2018 5:20 pm

c_hawkbob wrote:There is no difference, it's just two different ways of saying the same thing.


This. If there is no law, there is no peace, so enforcing the law *is* keeping the peace.
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby RiverDog » Sat Apr 07, 2018 6:46 pm

I'm going to have to stick up for our friend North Hawk. After doing some research, I discovered that in Canada, there is a difference as peace officers can include anyone in the correctional service such as jailers, bailiffs, and other prison employers, game wardens, judges, and a few other occupations that differ from what we in the states consider peace officers to be.

So let's give him a break! :D
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Re: Police Shootings

Postby NorthHawk » Sat Apr 07, 2018 9:23 pm

It's a different mindset between the two.

My brother in law had a friend who was a Police Officer in Britain for more than 10 years and never carried a gun.
He was trained to de-escalate the situation.

He came here and got on to a Police Force in another province and had to go through their training.
They had to pick out a gun and he selected the smallest one. The other Police Officers laughed at his choice. The trainer was talking about the gun being their best friend and they should even sleep with it.
They also went into how to approach situations and in the vast majority of cases they were to be very aggressive. But his prior training and experience wasn't that way so he showed them
how to calm the situation instead. It infuriated the instructor who said you'll change when you get shot or knifed. The British cop unbuttoned his shirt to show a big scar where he was knifed in a domestic.
It shut the instructor up.

He's moving up the ranks of the force and some of his influence is being used, but for many Police Officers used to coming into a situation with what is sometimes called Overwhelming Force, it's a culture change.
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