General Police Abuse Thread

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Ziggy Stardust
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Same. Back-right is far and away the most popular I've experienced. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anyone keep their wallet in a front pocket unless it was a special circumstance (like wearing exercise clothes or something where back pocket is specifically not an option).
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Terralthra »

I stopped carrying in back pockets because of both risk of theft (pickpocketing) and muscular deformation over time. Having one gluteus lifted half an inch over part of its surface is not something for which the rest of the body can easily compensate.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Elheru Aran »

I carry my wallet in the right leg pocket of cargo pants/shorts. If I'm not wearing cargo pants, I don't wear the wallet in my pocket in the car, it goes in the door pocket or cup-holder usually; it only goes in my right ass pocket when I get out.

Partly this is because my wallet is one thick bastard...
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by The Vortex Empire »

Front left pocket for me, I don't know anybody who keeps it in their back pocket. Back pocket would be so much more uncomfortable, and why would you want to make it so much easier to pickpocket?
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by fordlltwm »

Front left for me, most people i know front left or front right
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Batman »

Back right for as long as I've been old enough to have one, and everybody else I know too. Front pockets is where you keep your keys or maybe your lighter
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

Wallet placement sure is more important than the police officers who are cowardly shits that murder people, that's for sure.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Gandalf »

Flagg wrote:Wallet placement sure is more important than the police officers who are cowardly shits that murder people, that's for sure.
I enjoy how many discussions embrace the idea that civilians need to be properly trained in all matters of handling police.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by JLTucker »

Flagg wrote:Wallet placement sure is more important than the police officers who are cowardly shits that murder people, that's for sure.
You never know where that wallet can save you from a bullet fired by an overly-frightened cop.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

Gandalf wrote:
Flagg wrote:Wallet placement sure is more important than the police officers who are cowardly shits that murder people, that's for sure.
I enjoy how many discussions embrace the idea that civilians need to be properly trained in all matters of handling police.
It's a scary dangerous job. Which means cowardess is a legitimate defense when blue oinkers gun down brown people. Remember those pussies shooting elderly women in cars vaguely looking like what Christopher Dorner was driving? Blue is the new yellow! :lol:
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by TheFeniX »

Gandalf wrote:I enjoy how many discussions embrace the idea that civilians need to be properly trained in all matters of handling police.
A CCW holder "should" know what officers will expect, but at least in Texas: it's not part of the course. The exception being "inform an officer ASAP you are carrying legally" if asked for ID. NOTE: if some cop just asks to bum a smoke (or whatever), you aren't required to inform him of anything.

We did discuss it both times I qualified, but it isn't required.

But your point still stands: civilians are somehow expected to understand the consequences of actions that are innocent in nearly any other given situation. If I get carded for buying smokes, the shop owner can't use "he reached into his pocket" as an excuse to blow me away. That's just sanity at work. Until (and it would have to be a federal standard) the government steps in and uses something like public or Driver's education system to inform people how to act "right" around police, then I don't see any justification for police to use the "he should have acted in X capacity during the stop."

But even then, you have few options against police escalation of force. Even doing nothing, in your own home, can get you mauled by a police dog in the face and ass while the police representative says shit like "He could have easily been hiding another weapon on him."

So... they wanted him moving when he might have had a weapon? I have to wonder what the cop would have done if he didn't have fido around to give that guy a face lift. Just shoot him?

If the police have an axe to grind or panic or just maybe are having an off-day, they can fuck your shit up and there's little recourse. Really, unless they are shooting white kids for holding Wii-motes, not a lot happens.

I have to wonder how little they've recovered as an institution after the crime waves of the 90s and/or how much they've doubled down since 9/11. The Dorner case was brought up. That's another good example: Cops shot somewhere in the area of 100 rounds into a truck that looked like Dorner's. One lady was hit, and the officers got off due to the stress of the whole incident, even though inquiry found (obviously) NUMEROUS failures of policy. Further, they lit up a white guy's truck in another example of just... whatever, and the guy is only alive because thankfully the officers couldn't shoot for shit.

Even if you didn't want to fire/arrest the officers involved in these incidents, the bigger issue is that they act like there was no fault and the cops just go back on the beat. Worst, they might get desk duty for a few weeks till it blows over. How about "we sent Officer Shoot McShooterton back to police academy to requalify" for just a joke option?

Oh whoops, that would be admitting there is a problem. And it's not completely assholish they deny deny deny. I recall an incident (I believe in Houston) where a cop apologized on his off-time to the wife of a man he shot during an arrest. Her lawyer used this as evidence the officer and department were at fault. Though, I can't back this one up.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

The police are so insulated by legislation that they can literally transpose the last 2 numbers of your street address, kill your dogs, beat the shit out of you, and cause thousands of dollars of property damage and you have zero recourse in any capacity, criminal or civil. You could call it the "Oops Defense" except they don't have to actually defend it. And if you're armed and they shoot you, that still applies.

When I lived in FL a SWAT sniper in a hostage situation shot and killed the elderly black woman being held hostage in the head and not only wasn't charged, after his paid suspension (which was just due to the investigation) was put right back on the SWAT team in his old position as a sniper.

And when they shoot a fleeing suspect in the back the first thing the pigbrass does is release the suspects rap sheet (if there is one) and talk about how bad a person the suspect was, even when the cop that murdered them didn't know who the fuck they blew away.

But civilian oversight? CAN'T HAVE THAT!!!
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Simon_Jester »

I wonder how things would look if we did the following things, and basically just held police to the same standard we hold professionals in important professions like medicine...

1) Institutionalize the practice of making it feasible to sue police for damages, specifically for violating law enforcement best practices,* or committing errors that due diligence could reasonably have prevented.**

2) Force police departments to purchase malpractice insurance the same way doctors do.
_________________

In this hypothetical scenario, you don't change anything else. You don't go like an attack dog after individual cops and try to throw them in jail for murders, because that's like trying to sink a floating cork with a sledgehammer. You'll never get rid of all the trigger-happy, undertrained cops by jailing the ones who actually kill anyone, because only a tiny fraction of them kill anyone in a given year.

What you need to do is give the departments themselves an incentive to use best practices (like good training). And to perform due diligence before doing anything that has the potential to get them sued for massive damages (like checking addresses, and approaching traffic stops in a sane manner rather than being trigger-happy loonies). And you do that by hitting the departments themselves in the pocketbook.

The thing is, even that's going to be a scattershot "floating cork with a sledgehammer" situation, because any given police department doesn't get hit with a scandalous thing like this all the time. It's more like, you have a terrible department that horribly screws people over every twenty years, and then you have thousands of such departments across the country creating dozens or hundreds of such incidents each year.

The overall perception is that the police are "always abusing people," but that's not really what's happening. Any one department might commit an abuse that makes national news only once a century or less- but there are so many individual departments that it doesn't matter.

...

And that's what the malpractice insurance is for. It's a classic example of a market where insurance works- because the police malpractice suits could be for huge amounts of money (especially if someone died), but are unlikely to arise in any given year. And insurance companies being insurance companies, they'll offer lower premiums for departments that follow good practices, and higher premiums for departments with a history of trouble with things like "your cops randomly beat people up" and "you don't train your cops about when to NOT draw their guns."

The biggest risk is that police departments will be incentivized to avoid collecting evidence and paperwork that could be used to prove malpractice claims against them, but we already have that problem anyway, and that's an issue that can potentially be solved with regulation.

*Failing to ask the correct questions during a police stop of a suspect's car would qualify.
**Screwing up the address of the house you raid would qualify.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

It's not a bad idea. I still think independent civilian oversight is a must.

And the idea behind insulating police from some civil shit makes sense, you don't want them counting pennies and wringing hands over knocking down the wrong door on a 911 call for a dire imminent emergency.

It's when they silently open an unlocked window, drop an attack dog inside, and have it turn out to be the bedroom of a 7 year old girl 3 blocks from where the raid is supposed to take place and the police don't have to pay for the medical bills to put her face back on.

And invariably raids = money. Honestly if I could change 1 thing it would be no longer allowing local, county, and state police to keep a 1/4 cut of whatever is seized in a raid/"asset forfeiture. Policing should not be a money making venture, but it is.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

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Flagg wrote:The police are so insulated by legislation that they can literally transpose the last 2 numbers of your street address, kill your dogs, beat the shit out of you, and cause thousands of dollars of property damage and you have zero recourse in any capacity, criminal or civil. You could call it the "Oops Defense" except they don't have to actually defend it. And if you're armed and they shoot you, that still applies.
There IS recourse, it's just a craps shoot and that's the problem. Criminal penalties may as well be non-existent in many of these circumstances. Because no one fights the police (citizen or politician) and no one wants to dial down the war on drugs because "weak on crime." So, they drop the ball, people die, but unless they are doing something explicitly illegal or exceptionally capable of tugging at heart strings (such as making the mistake of harming a young white kid), then it's "a terrible tragedy, but nothing could have been done to prevent it." Honestly, when this shit happens, I would actually be less insulted if an official added "and we'd like to once again thank the tax payer for shouldering this burder so we don't have to and also don't have to change our policy of fucking with anyone we want at any time."

And the cops aren't the only ones at fault here, juries seem much more prone to slide minorities into the "must have been doing something to deserve it" group. And morons still continued to support Arpaio after that handjob cost his state MILLIONS in wrongful death suites and civil rights violations.

Now, at least in Texas, the dumfuckery of police has (as far as I can find) lead to two difference cases of "mistaken" home invasion which got the police killed or wounded by armed homeowners. IIRC, one lead to a Grand Jury refusing to indict. And one they didn't bother to prosecute because the actions of officers was "clown shoes." Now, in both cases: I recall the prosecutor being out for blood.

It worked for them in one instance: a black home owner got the book thrown at him for defending his home. Like I said, craps shoot.

And civil cases against "the police" work out ok. The biker who was kicked by a cop on camera got like $400k+ + medical expenses paid due to the broken ribs. But that's STILL not a good recourse because insurance covers a lot by police and the rest nearly NEVER comes out of their own coffers. Like, you wouldn't see the police pension get gutted because the NYPD couldn't stop curb stomping black people.

Tack on something where EVERYONE suffers (besides just the victim and the tax payers) when bad eggs go bad-er and you'd see this "blue line" bullshit evaporate fast. Because covering for bad cops doesn't cost you anything right now and in fact is dangerous to your police career and maybe even your life.

But, imagine pay cuts came around every time the department had to pay out a couple mil? Or that cops had to spread the insurance cost of the department over their own paycheck and then had to pay the increased premium after a blow-out. Under this system, I find it hard to believe good cops wouldn't rat out "Captain McMinoritiyBeater" the second they realized they were going to have to pay out the ass for his anger management issues. Would that be fair? I don't really know. What I DO know is that in my job(s), I have dealt with both the consequences of coworkers bullshit sliding onto me AND the consequences of ratting them out to protect my own bottom dollar.

I'm sure billions of other people do the same every day.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Crazedwraith »

TheFeniX wrote: Tack on something where EVERYONE suffers (besides just the victim and the tax payers) when bad eggs go bad-er and you'd see this "blue line" bullshit evaporate fast. Because covering for bad cops doesn't cost you anything right now and in fact is dangerous to your police career and maybe even your life.

But, imagine pay cuts came around every time the department had to pay out a couple mil? Or that cops had to spread the insurance cost of the department over their own paycheck and then had to pay the increased premium after a blow-out. Under this system, I find it hard to believe good cops wouldn't rat out "Captain McMinoritiyBeater" the second they realized they were going to have to pay out the ass for his anger management issues. Would that be fair? I don't really know. What I DO know is that in my job(s), I have dealt with both the consequences of coworkers bullshit sliding onto me AND the consequences of ratting them out to protect my own bottom dollar.

I'm sure billions of other people do the same every day.

You're suggesting Collective Punishment then?

I fail to see how that would work. You're actually incentivising them to cover shit up then. Because if it gets out Officer Bob beat that guy we're all out a packet so you better not blab.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

Yeah, the goal should be encouraging whistleblowers (or as the blue ham brigade and mafia call them, "rats". Funny how they use the same terminology). But police should be held to a higher standard, period. No "negligent homicide", second degree murder should be the minimum charge for blowing away unarmed suspects. If you're afraid they are going to take your gun, you don't get a gun or you sit in a cage for 25 years getting shit thrown at you.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

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Crazedwraith wrote:You're suggesting Collective Punishment then?
What the fuck are you talking about? Even the cases where debt collectors go after anyone with any kind of relation to a debtor isn't in the realm of what you're talking about. Nor can you claim the man who fired you for drinking on the job is somehow responsible for the hardships of your children.

Holy shit, I don't know whether to be insulted or just laugh at your question. "Oh, you think war crimes is the answer?"

Obviously not, but in a system where mistakes mean people end up dead, more responsibility needs to be brought down on said system because the consequences are so high. Even if I ignored the humanity of the situation: dead/maimed people or their families get shittons of money from taxpayers, a police spokesperson says "we'll work hard to fix this issue, even though there's nothing to fix, our policies are great," and then they wipe their ass of the whole thing.

There was a time in my field where dead people were kind of "whatever." But at least since I've held a job in this field: dead/maimed people are a very big deal. Even near misses are taken seriously. There was a problem at a refinery where we were doing some work. But we weren't process, we're environmental contractors. Our "handler" was an employee, but also environmental, so process is kind of "meh" on that. The Coker could have blown and, considering how close we were, the only possible way we would have survived was because we were sampling a below-grade landfarm. The explosion might have rolled right over us. Still, probably would have died... horribly, actually.

We never got a notice they were evacuating for safety. And I can't/won't go into reason the horn wasn't blown. And there was no one else even in sight who could have come up to us and said "get the fuck out." They just kind of "forgot" about us.

As we were the only enviro guys out there, the safety guy in charge decided to cut out to lunch early. When he came back, he didn't have a job. That was expected. From what I heard, the union tried half-heartedly to get him rehired due to whatever reason, but it also holds that had the coker gone up and we died: he'd be in jail.

That's responsibility. That's reality. And that guy wouldn't have actually been the person who pulled the trigger. The company we worked for (I can't give names) restructured a whole lot after that (like, we had to go through the ringer on work permits and logs afterward) and that was just a near-miss.

You think bean counters give two fucks about 3 dead rednecks and a local employee? Maybe, but they DAMN SURE care about paying out the millions my wife and the wives of the other contractors would have sued their ass for.

But Bob gets shot in the face and it's like "our policy is good because.... fuck you, that's why."
I fail to see how that would work. You're actually incentivising them to cover shit up then. Because if it gets out Officer Bob beat that guy we're all out a packet so you better not blab.
Like they aren't already incentivized to cover things up. I'm talking about the incidents where somehow "no one was at fault" but the city/county/state is still forced to pay out large sums of money in civil damages. Civil damages that rarely, if ever, come out of police coffers.

That same "type" of thing happens in my job. OSHA has numerous "no fault" policies; however, claims can and still will be made and settlements paid out. That means higher premiums paid by the company. An expense passed off on the employee in some form or another (layoffs, no bonuses, paycuts, etc). Going further, claims can also lower your safety rating thus making contracts harder to bid on, thus loss of work which can lead to bankruptcy.

This is not a special circumstance, a ridiculous amount of businesses operate this way. I'm not saying run police like a business, but there are similarities that hold among all structured groups. One is the concept of SOME TYPE of responsibility. And responsibility is bullshit without the idea of consequences for fuck-ups.

And going even further, I have major issues with any system where people ending up dead is treated as blasé as it is with police work. Other industries used to be like that. They "got better" and it's about fucking time something was done to get Law Enforcement there as well.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Crazedwraith »

TheFeniX wrote:
Crazedwraith wrote:You're suggesting Collective Punishment then?
What the fuck are you talking about? Even the cases where debt collectors go after anyone with any kind of relation to a debtor isn't in the realm of what you're talking about. Nor can you claim the man who fired you for drinking on the job is somehow responsible for the hardships of your children.

Holy shit, I don't know whether to be insulted or just laugh at your question. "Oh, you think war crimes is the answer?"
Did I say War Crimes? The article I linked to provided a lot of examples, many of which where it's not considered a crime. (coming back to say: Including all the corporate stuff you're about to talk about)

But you did in that quote outright say you wanted to punish all policemen if one fucks up. That people wouldn't cover for bad cops if they were footing the bill collectively for repayments/increased insurance premiums. What is that if not collective responsibillity/punishment?

Obviously not, but in a system where mistakes mean people end up dead, more responsibility needs to be brought down on said system because the consequences are so high. Even if I ignored the humanity of the situation: dead/maimed people or their families get shittons of money from taxpayers, a police spokesperson says "we'll work hard to fix this issue, even though there's nothing to fix, our policies are great," and then they wipe their ass of the whole thing.
Show me where I approved of the current system? I disagreed with your method of tackling it. Not the need to tackle it
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As we were the only enviro guys out there, the safety guy in charge decided to cut out to lunch early. When he came back, he didn't have a job. That was expected. From what I heard, the union tried half-heartedly to get him rehired due to whatever reason, but it also holds that had the coker gone up and we died: he'd be in jail.

That's responsibility. That's reality. And that guy wouldn't have actually been the person who pulled the trigger. The company we worked for (I can't give names) restructured a whole lot after that (like, we had to go through the ringer on work permits and logs afterward) and that was just a near-miss.
Safety guy fucks up. Safety guy loses job. He made an error. He's responsible. They didn't pay damages out of everyone else's wages did they?

I fail to see how that would work. You're actually incentivising them to cover shit up then. Because if it gets out Officer Bob beat that guy we're all out a packet so you better not blab.
Like they aren't already incentivized to cover things up. I'm talking about the incidents where somehow "no one was at fault" but the city/county/state is still forced to pay out large sums of money in civil damages. Civil damages that rarely, if ever, come out of police coffers.

That same "type" of thing happens in my job. OSHA has numerous "no fault" policies; however, claims can and still will be made and settlements paid out. That means higher premiums paid by the company. An expense passed off on the employee in some form or another (layoffs, no bonuses, paycuts, etc). Going further, claims can also lower your safety rating thus making contracts harder to bid on, thus loss of work which can lead to bankruptcy.
This makes a little more sense to me than how I original read you post that seemed at lot more extreme/punitive. But I'm still skeptical. It seems a little top down. Worrying about the health of the company is going to make managers make more of a shit about safety. Not lower levels.

If you lay off staff/don't give raise/cut bonuses to people really take the lesson 'well we should be more safe then/work on what reasons the bosses have said is the reason' or do they think 'fucking bosses stole my money' and carry on as they were?

This is not a special circumstance, a ridiculous amount of businesses operate this way. I'm not saying run police like a business, but there are similarities that hold among all structured groups. One is the concept of SOME TYPE of responsibility. And responsibility is bullshit without the idea of consequences for fuck-ups.

And going even further, I have major issues with any system where people ending up dead is treated as blasé as it is with police work. Other industries used to be like that. They "got better" and it's about fucking time something was done to get Law Enforcement there as well.
Yeah, if people fuck up they should be held responsible. As should the people who were responsible for training that person and making sure they didn't fuck up. Not every person of that whole police force.

I'm not arguing nothing should be done. I'm from the UK, any time one of our police officers shoot someone it automatically (IIRC) gets taken to a review board and thorough investigates if it was justified. The point I read an article to the effect police officers down want to choice armed response team because of the scrutiny they get for the quick life or death decisions they make.

And evne then we have problems with the perception of white washing and the police closing ranks around wrong doings.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Napoleon the Clown »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Napoleon the Clown wrote:Yanez went on the defensive immediately upon being informed of the firearm, did he not? He immediately became terrified?
The sequence of events, which we have from earlier in the thread, is:

9:05:52 – 9:05:55 p.m. — Castile told Yanez: “Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me.” Before Castile completed the sentence, Yanez interrupted and replied, “Okay” and placed his right hand on the holster of his gun.
9:05:55 – 9:06:02 p.m. — Yanez said “Okay, don’t reach for it, then.” Castile responded: “I’m… I’m … [inaudible] reaching…,” before being again interrupted by Yanez, who said “Don’t pull it out.” Castile responded, “I’m not pulling it out,” and Reynolds said, “He’s not pulling it out.” Yanez screamed: “Don’t pull it out,” and pulled his gun with his right hand. Yanez fired seven shots in the direction of Castile in rapid succession.

So you can say Yanez went on the defensive and immediately became "terrified."

That doesn't mean Yanez was just as likely to shoot someone who appeared to be obeying his words as someone who appeared to be disobeying them.
But it does mean that Castile was immediately at higher risk of being subjected to violence and excessive force or wrongful arrest.
Yanez would have still remained at high probability of violent retaliation and would have probably concluded arresting Castile was appropriate at that point, and dragged him out and when the gun inevitably fell out as Yanez got his police brutality on, concluded Castile was going for it then shot him. For all Castile could have known, at least. Odds of that are at least as good as the odds of Castile trying to pull a gun after announcing he had one.
As far as we can tell, Castille's calculation was:

"Is it more likely that the panicky cop will shoot me for reaching into my pocket just after I told him I have a gun, and after he told me "don't reach for it!" ? Or is it more likely that the policeman will shoot me for moving my hands the hell AWAY from my pockets?"

You're implying that this is some kind of mysterious imponderable. Like, who knows what affects your likelihood of getting shot by an armed man who tells you to do something? Maybe ignoring him is just as safe as obeying him! Who can possibly guess, right?

And I kind of sympathize, because it smacks of 'blame the victim' to say "it's a good idea to do what police officers say, rather than ignoring them, after you just told them you have a weapon." Thing is, it still is a good idea to do that. Even given that Yanez is a horrible person who should never have been born, let alone put on a badge...

Of the set of all possible universes in which Castille stopped reaching for his pocket, Castille is alive in most of those possible universes. In this universe, he's dead. That is, by any reasonable interpretation, a fact we need to understand, if this is to be anything other than an exercise in people shrieking at each other as a way of signaling their hatred of the opposing tribe.

Because ultimately, this is a large part of why a jury, including black jurors, voted to find Yanez 'not guilty.' Because the sequence of events as depicted is consistent with Yanez honestly but wrongly thinking Castille was pulling out a gun. Are we sure that's what happened? No, we are not, and cannot possibly be. But is it sufficient to raise reasonable doubt? And frankly... It kind of is.

And that is, so far, the way our criminal justice system runs. "Innocent until proven guilty." If you want to argue that negligent police officers should be considered guilty until proven innocent instead of the other way around, fine. But you need to acknowledge that you're doing that.
There's a possibility Yanez wouldn't have violently arrested Castile, but given the immediate response to Castile doing what you are told to do and announcing he legally was carrying a firearm means that arrest would have been likely for "reasons" and if the gun fell out... And you recognize that what you're doing is victim blaming. A reasonable person would not have assumed Castile was going for a gun. Do an experiment for me. Purchase a water pistol and put it in your front pocket. While seated, see how quickly you can draw it.

Was Castile's hand already in his pocket by the time "Don't reach for it!" was yelled? Does it not matter that an innocent murdered man said he wasn't reaching for the gun?
In my view, if a cop's killing of someone is declared legally justified that is the same as declaring the person had done something that legally warrants death or was attempting to do something that legally warrants death because police are ostensibly acting in the name of the government with the government's consent.
The logical consequence of this it is legally impossible for a policeman to make a mistake, even a mistake involving a suspect's contributory negligence, without the policeman being punished for it.

Do you think this is a desirable state of affairs?

Yes, or no?
More reasonable than cops being able to consistently get away with murder because "Oh, I thought..."

As it stands, police don't even need reasonable suspicion that a person was dangerous. They can just say they believed the person to be a threat. Do you think this is a desirable state of affairs?
So... no need to answer the question, because it's dishonest to ask it at all. Because... Um.

Well, honestly, I'm still sincerely curious, what do you think would happen if there were literally no increased penalty or risk associated with violence directed against a police officer? If that were the only thing that changed, all else being equal? Would the rate of violence directed against the police remain broadly consistent with that directed against the populace at large? Would it be much higher? Lower?
The question is inherently dishonest and moronic, because attempting to kill someone is already illegal. Unless you're a cop. Then you've got a shitload of leeway. Expecting the police to have to actually confirm that a firearm is being introduced by a suspect isn't a high bar.
So in other words, you're entitled to ask questions and make arguments about the incentive structures created by the status quo. But I'm not entitled to ask questions and make arguments about the incentive structures created by changing the status quo. Do I have that right?
Your question is a fucking strawman and you know it. I never made any mention of killing police being legalized, or that penalties for killing police should be lessened. I have being arguing that police should be penalized for murdering an innocent person and that they need to confirm that the person is actually a threat.
[I would also like to see the specific rules of engagement you're referring to, and where these soldiers were posted, by the way]
Deadly force should only be used in response to a hostile act or a demonstration of hostile intent. Deadly force is defined as force that causes or has a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily harm.
More info can be found here No hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent was present on Castile's end. I've seen actual war veterans that are horrified at how little discipline US police show engaging with our own citizens. Soldiers taking offense to articles that go on about vets becoming police and how bad this is because soldiers are actually taught some fucking discipline. When police training boils down to "everyone is itching to murder you" the institutional problems run very deep indeed.
I am pretty sure that if you told a soldier in a war zone that you had a pistol in your pocket, and they said "don't reach for it," and you reached for your pocket and they shot you... That would not be a violation of that particular set of rules of engagement.

Because if you make soldiers wait until someone physically draws the weapon they just told you you have, your soldiers will get killed.
So Castile is guilty of reaching for a firearm?

If the soldier had asked the person for something that required reaching into the pocket, it's certainly plausible that they would at minimum face actual disciplinary action for shooting a civilian without confirming the person was going for a gun and not the requested item.

Of course, the city streets aren't a fucking war zone and civilians in actual war zones aren't told to announce to soldiers that they are armed.
'Safe' was perhaps a poor choice of words. To rephrase question (1)...

How few instances of cops that you believe are guilty, but who are not punished or convicted, would there have to be, before you felt reasonably inclined to trust police? Measured in "no more than one per year" or "no more than two per day" or some such rate?
If it were at a rate even the same order of magnitude as regular-ass Joes that would be a huge improvement. Civil forfeiture laws would need to be reworked completely, including the police paying all of your court costs when you have to sue to get your property back as well as pay for any time you had to take off work. If they cannot show reasonable suspicion that seized property of money was somehow involved in or acquired via criminal activities, the officer should be summarily terminated and charged with theft appropriate to the value of goods stolen. Including grand larceny. Fuck, throw in treble damages and raid the guilty cop's retirement fund before going into public funds.
Okay, so your distrust has more to do with civil forfeiture than with violence? Or are you meandering around from one issue to another?

I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong to be upset about police violence OR civil forfeiture OR both. I'm just saying, we can't have a meaningful conversation if one of us has a free license to change the subject at will.
It's both. This is a thread about police abuse, not just police violence. Civil forfeiture, when it is not held to very strict standards, can easily fall into the realm of abuse. It was an example of police abuse and why police cannot be trusted without significant change.
(2), too, needs rephrasing.

What is the number of "bad cops I think get away with it per year" that you would have to learn about, in order to convince you that police were untrustworthy? How many is too many? Can you give me a number?

So I guess they converge to the same question.

What is the number of "cops I think are bad, but know weren't punished" that it takes to convince you the police are dishonest?
Do you not grok the issue? The issue is that, as it stands, there are bad cops and they can get away with it far more often than if they were not a cop. It's a risk-assessment scenario...
When you assess risks, do numbers matter? I'm not joking. I mean, I don't even understand how you can say "this isn't about numbers, it's about risk assessment!" But that seems to be what you're saying.

Furthermore, you're advancing a lot of arguments about what the public as a whole should do, based on your opinion of what the risks are, but implying that we shouldn't be "even trying to start discussing how many bad cops can be out there without making every cop a risk" until certtain (somewhat vague) reforms are in place. I say 'vague' because it's not clear what YOU think would be "actually doing something."

The reason I keep poking this subject is because it really does matter how we think about issues like this.

The problem is... it's not that simple. Because "a risk" can mean anything from "a 99% chance of horrible disaster" to "a one in a billion chance of some unforeseen and trivial event." The argument "_____________ is a risk, therefore we should do _________ to avoid _________," unless you fill in the blanks. They have to be filled in with statements like [this thing that costs so and so many dollars] or [this thing that has such and such a probability of actually happening.]

Think about the vaccine debates. Anyone can say "there's a risk of vaccines causing side effects, so the government is wrong to force me to expose my children to a risk." Phrased that way, it sounds very neat and compelling. No one should be forced to risk their child, right? Rhetorically very straightforward.

But that argument starts sounding really shitty when you fill in the blanks, because then it becomes something more like "I should have the right to expose my child to a (greater) risk, to protect them from a (smaller) risk, while also exposing other children to risk." That is... NOT so rhetorically straightforward.

ANY argument about risk can be made to sound compelling, if you strip out the numbers. You can even go around proving an argument and its exact opposite, using the same rhetorical structures. Because any time there are two risks that have to be weighed against each other, you can just play up the risk you oppose, and ignore the magnitude of the risk you're willing to take!

So... do you really want to play the "this isn't about numbers, it's about risk assessment!" card?

If not, are you willing to have a numbers-based conversation about this?
How about this: When cops get tried at the same rate as the average Joe, when cops take plea deals at the same rate as average Joes... Then we can start considering them trustworthy. At what rate would you consider cops to be untrustworthy?

Here's the thing... We know cops can fuck up your life, or end it outright, and often suffer no significant consequences. The cost of running into one of the bad cops (and the rate varies by location) can be extremely high.

The ideal rate of "bad cops" would be zero. But if they were to have the same rate of going to trial and being convicted (with sentencing being the same as for an average Joe) I'd consider police to be no higher risk than the average person.

Here's the thing, though. With more power, there should be more responsibility.
Put it this way: Would you let some random jackass borrow your car? Would you let some random person have a copy of the key to your home and knowledge of where your home is? How low would the percent of people who would drive your car recklessly (or steal it) need to be for you to lend your car to a complete stranger? How low a percent of people that have zero respect for another person's property or are outright thieves would it need to be for you to entrust your keys to a stranger? Get my point here?
If your answer is "literally zero people would have to be thieves or reckless destroyers of property," then fine- but we can talk about that. We can talk about ANY answer to the question. In my opinion ALL possible answers have interesting implications. But what shouldn't be done is to avoid the question in order to avoid being expected to be logically self-consistent with one's own beliefs.

Which brings us back to the question. What is your answer to specific questions? For example:

What proportion of police have to be untrustworthy, for you to advocate for declaring the police to be guilty until proven innocent when put on trial for wrongful shootings?
I'm honestly not sure. But as things are, police are almost always cleared regardless of how blatantly guilty of murder they are. They aren't indicted as often as they should be. They're just taken at their word by default, where someone who doesn't have a badge to hide behind is not taken at their word at the same rate.

The great difficulty of holding police criminally accountable is that jurors so often just automatically side with them. It's one of the great weaknesses of a jury of one's peers. And I honestly have no idea how this can be resolved short of using an entirely different system.


I think a good comparison to use is a doctor. Doctors don't need to act with malice for a malpractice suit to result in them being stripped of their medical license. At minimum, police that act with gross negligence (which is pretty much what it takes for a doctor to lose their license... otherwise, their malpractice insurance pays out if the case is decided in favor of the plaintiff) should be fired and no police force should be willing to touch them with a 10 foot pole.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by TheFeniX »

Crazedwraith wrote:Did I say War Crimes? The article I linked to provided a lot of examples, many of which where it's not considered a crime. (coming back to say: Including all the corporate stuff you're about to talk about)
Whatever the word or phrase: targeting people unrelated to law enforcement (ex, friends and family of police officers) is something I never even came close to saying.
But you did in that quote outright say you wanted to punish all policemen if one fucks up. That people wouldn't cover for bad cops if they were footing the bill collectively for repayments/increased insurance premiums. What is that if not collective responsibillity/punishment?
"Hey, I'm a young male who statistically is unlikely to need anything but emergency healthcare, why should I pay to support women or the elderly?"

Maybe you force them to pay into the system. Shit sucks, but we're all in it together.

And just because I'm done with this line: Why not punish police for the mistakes of other police rather than the taxpayer who is completely unrelated to the issue? I never "chose" to be born in the U.S., but cops chose to be cops.
Show me where I approved of the current system? I disagreed with your method of tackling it. Not the need to tackle it
My example might be shit-tier, but U.S. law enforcement needs restructuring at the top and from the top, whereas most the people who get spanked are at the bottom and that's if you're even lucky enough to see that.
Safety guy fucks up. Safety guy loses job. He made an error. He's responsible. They didn't pay damages out of everyone else's wages did they?
The cost of retraining and revamping their safety training and protocols put them out more than a few bucks. I have no idea how this affected the bottom line since this was when crude was over $100 a barrel and business was a-boomin'. And getting Law Enforcement to even admit their was a mistake is a herculean task itself.
This makes a little more sense to me than how I original read you post that seemed at lot more extreme/punitive. But I'm still skeptical. It seems a little top down. Worrying about the health of the company is going to make managers make more of a shit about safety. Not lower levels.
It would have to be combined with a reassessment of policy from the top and more responsibility for writing and enforcing poor policy. This same thing is what lead to restructuring of training in the oil industry in the... what, early 80s? Essentially, companies spent millions on large scale safety training, but that didn't matter because the "train them and let them loose" mentality was ultimately flawed. While regulation helped in this regard, the companies themselves realized the amount of money to be made (or saved) by having employees not getting fucked up and collecting disability and/or suing due to "safe yet unsafe" work environments.

Police (either beat cops or administration) rarely if ever have to deal with the bottom line. Money gets paid out, no big deal "not my money." And you can combine this with an incentive system such as bonuses, but you have to be real careful considering the history.
If you lay off staff/don't give raise/cut bonuses to people really take the lesson 'well we should be more safe then/work on what reasons the bosses have said is the reason' or do they think 'fucking bosses stole my money' and carry on as they were?
True enough here because when "I" fuckup, me or one of my coworkers usually bear all the consequences. However, when cops fuck-up, it's usually randos who are eating dirt. This is an exception that exists almost exclusively for cops.

Yeah, if people fuck up they should be held responsible. As should the people who were responsible for training that person and making sure they didn't fuck up. Not every person of that whole police force.
The problem is "policy." The cops followed policy, so they're ok. The cops didn't follow policy, but they're still ok because no handsome young white guy died or no cute white woman/girl.

Very few people say "maybe police policy is shit."
I'm not arguing nothing should be done. I'm from the UK, any time one of our police officers shoot someone it automatically (IIRC) gets taken to a review board and thorough investigates if it was justified. The point I read an article to the effect police officers down want to choice armed response team because of the scrutiny they get for the quick life or death decisions they make.
The UK is a good start as they will stall and deal with dangerous situations without resorting to lethal force anywhere near as quickly as U.S. cops. Even U.S. citizens will say "they should have just shot him."

Are American citizens just more stupidly violent than the British? Possible. However, they are much more quick to jump to "end that fucker." And I have to wonder if that's because we've become so used to "move wrong in front of a cop = die horribly" we've just accepted that's the way it is. Either way, it's not an acceptable position and something besides "throw a few cops under the buss here and there when shit goes down" needs to be attempted. It needs to go much higher up and affect everyone in the chain of command, and include a stick or a carrot or both.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

Fenix, agree with the sentiment but the argument that the blue oinkers will be more likely to cover for eachother even moreso is compelling. But I'm making the assumption that this happens along with strong independent oversight.

The biggest issue is that it may make the best of them seek greener pastures and the worst/meh of them wallow in the potential sewer. I don't see my best colleague working security who IMO went on to make an excellent cop wanting to go into policing under a system like that.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Simon_Jester »

Flagg wrote:It's not a bad idea. I still think independent civilian oversight is a must.

And the idea behind insulating police from some civil shit makes sense, you don't want them counting pennies and wringing hands over knocking down the wrong door on a 911 call for a dire imminent emergency.

It's when they silently open an unlocked window, drop an attack dog inside, and have it turn out to be the bedroom of a 7 year old girl 3 blocks from where the raid is supposed to take place and the police don't have to pay for the medical bills to put her face back on.

And invariably raids = money. Honestly if I could change 1 thing it would be no longer allowing local, county, and state police to keep a 1/4 cut of whatever is seized in a raid/"asset forfeiture. Policing should not be a money making venture, but it is.
The problem with my idea is defining what constitutes "police malpractice." Anything that creates a conflict of interest (civil forfeiture) could easily fall under that standard. Anything that is clearly caused by a police officer failing to follow reasonable procedures like "double-check the address at each step of the process before blasting down the door" could fall under that standard.

But responding abruptly to a 911 call? As a general rule, that isn't malpractice. There are times when the police really do cause property damage or suffering by accident, and it is a genuine accident that happened without the police doing anything they can reasonably be held liable for. This is, as you say, precisely because there are times when we expect the police to act... precipitately.
Flagg wrote:Yeah, the goal should be encouraging whistleblowers (or as the blue ham brigade and mafia call them, "rats". Funny how they use the same terminology). But police should be held to a higher standard, period. No "negligent homicide", second degree murder should be the minimum charge for blowing away unarmed suspects. If you're afraid they are going to take your gun, you don't get a gun or you sit in a cage for 25 years getting shit thrown at you.
I already mentioned this.

See, the trigger-happy cops who shoot unarmed suspects aren't making calculated decisions where they weigh the benefits of shooting someone against the cost of maybe going to jail. Increasing the jail sentence doesn't make them more likely to hold fire, because the exact number value of the jail sentence isn't really on their radar.

The problem isn't that people are making calculated decisions to risk X years in jail in exchange for whatever leads them to shoot an unarmed suspect. The problem is that they're not thinking, they're poorly trained and trigger-happy and stupid and drunk on power. And even if you throw every one of the current trigger-happy cops in jail, if you don't change anything else, the next generation of cops will have the exact same proportion of trigger-happy cops. Trying to punish the individual 'bad cops' with massive jail sentences is like playing Whack-a-Mole. No matter how many times you strike, the problem will just pop back up.

The solution to this is to force the police to make sure that they don't send people out with guns and insufficient training, or with guns and insufficient vetting to make sure they're stable, and so on. This is why I proposed "malpractice insurance" for police that actually varies the premiums based on how the department behaves. A well behaved department has a low risk of abuse of power and low insurance premiums. A badly behaved department is costing the local government money even if they don't actually bust anyone's head or anything, because of the insurers being paranoid about what happens if they DO do that.

If current premium systems don't allow for this, that's an obvious target for change.

Again, this kind of thing does work in a lot of industries. The trick is in the details, and obviously if the details are screwed up it causes problems all along the line... But that doesn't invalidate the core idea, which is that financial liability is a powerful tool for forcing organizations to actually think rationally about how to ensure that their employees follow good procedures and safety rules.

It's like, in 1900 a lot of meat-packers would have told you it was "too hard" to keep random rats from getting scooped up and ground into the hamburger. They were wrong, it turned out- and it was in many cases the meat-packing companies themselves that figured out how to accomplish the goal. The problem had been that in 1900 there was very little incentive for them to improve, so they didn't really try. Once the legal system made it extremely expensive to run a filthy meat-packing plant, the CEOs very suddenly discovered all sorts of amazing ways to clean the place up!
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Napoleon The Clown wrote:How about this: When cops get tried at the same rate as the average Joe, when cops take plea deals at the same rate as average Joes... Then we can start considering them trustworthy. At what rate would you consider cops to be untrustworthy?
Somewhere between what you propose and the status quo, we lack sufficient data to reach a conclusion as to exact rates. The average Joe does not often find themselves in a position to use lethal force at all and under such uncertain conditions, mistakes will happen and those mistakes do not always constitute a criminal act.
Here's the thing... We know cops can fuck up your life, or end it outright, and often suffer no significant consequences. The cost of running into one of the bad cops (and the rate varies by location) can be extremely high.

The ideal rate of "bad cops" would be zero. But if they were to have the same rate of going to trial and being convicted (with sentencing being the same as for an average Joe) I'd consider police to be no higher risk than the average person.

Here's the thing, though. With more power, there should be more responsibility.
Unless you want police dying in job lots, they will always be a higher risk than the average citizen. Again, they are exposed to danger and react accordingly (with varying degrees of accuracy depending on how good their training is). Training and oversight can be improved to increase their accuracy in threat-evaluation and reduce the degree to which they are cognitively disabled by threat-responses, but there will always be a chance for error that does not exist in the civilian world.

And that is leaving out the implicit racism in threat determination entirely.
Flagg wrote:Yeah, the goal should be encouraging whistleblowers (or as the blue ham brigade and mafia call them, "rats". Funny how they use the same terminology). But police should be held to a higher standard, period. No "negligent homicide", second degree murder should be the minimum charge for blowing away unarmed suspects. If you're afraid they are going to take your gun, you don't get a gun or you sit in a cage for 25 years getting shit thrown at you.
Even if it is actually a mistake? I can get behind a legal standard for negligence that is higher on account of presumably better training. What is negligent for a doctor is not negligent for a layperson attempting first aid, afterall. What I cannot get behind is a presumption of pre-meditated murder for honest mistakes or fuckups. Not only is that unjust, but it won't do anything for the reasons Simon_Jester describes.

The solution is to change police departments. Their policies, their training, and their operational practices. The idea of making the departments pay insurance premiums is a damn good one. Hell, have insurance actuaries comb through the files and complaints every year when the rates are being determined. Create career and financial incentives that promote whistleblowing rather than discourage it. It would not be hard to create a Civil Rights and Safety Culture inside police departments with the right training and incentives. Hell, get the feds to set up the police version of the NTSB to independently investigate every single shooting and forward their results to a branch of the state AG's office--and they decide whether or not to prosecute rather than the local DA. The feds because they are completely independent, and the state AG because they don't have to work with the department in question.
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Re: General Police Abuse Thread

Post by Flagg »

Mistakes happen, and if you or I make one we had better damned we'll be able to prove it's a mistake because innocent until proven guilty are pretty words that only seem to apply varying on jurisdiction and skin tone. That said if it's a mistake made while following correct procedure then it should be evident.

And really, define "mistake". The dipshits that opened up on 2 little old ladies thinking it was Dorner (who apparently was to be killed on assumption of identity because police were wetting their didies) made a "mistake".

But I largely agree with what you're saying.
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