Police State USA

[drayer54]

You dont get it.... COPS DONT GET TO DECIDE WHO DIES OR LIVES

NOBODY SAYS THIS IS TRUE. IF YOU POINT A GUN OR PULL A GUN ON A COP THEN YOUR DUMBASS JUST DECIDED TO RISK YOUR LIFE. ACCOUNTABILITY MEANS SOMETHING.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

I did acknowledge your outreach and then your confusion on why they don't trust people. Read it again and it will address both concerns. The rest of this is your opinion. I think it's bullshit. You think I'm full of shit. It's why this conversation on IE and nationally goes nowhere and the violence and madness continues to escalate.

There is no confusion on my part. I have sat with cops and with victims, with the mayor, with the Emanuel church families with the Scott families and had these tough discussions. If you think that’s bullshit and I have a bullshit opinion then you are free to believe that. I’m not going to argue with people who can justify extrajudicial killings. I will never accept people’s judicial rights being taken away by being killed with no way to defend themselves. Chauvin and other cops get their day in court if it even makes it that far. The people being killed. Do not.

 

[TDHeysus]

is Keith Olbermann in this thread?

 

[drayer54]

There is no confusion on my part. I have sat with cops and with victims, with the mayor, with the Emanuel church families with the Scott families and had these tough discussions. If you think that’s bullshit and I have a bullshit opinion then you are free to believe that. I’m not going to argue with people who can justify extrajudicial killings. I will never accept people’s judicial rights being taken away by being killed with no way to defend themselves. Chauvin and other cops get their day in court if it even makes it that far. The people being killed. Do not.

I've stated my opinion on Walter Scott and nobody should be killed by a cop unless they present physical danger, like a weapon to an officer. Police have the right to self-defense as does anyone else in this country.

 

[RDU Irish]

This is an absolutely awful comment. It's the victim's (and of course the media once again!) fault????

We basically have 2 ways to look at this situation:

1) It's blatant police misconduct.

2) The kid had a gun but threw it away at the last second, it's a difficult grey area, but he technically surrendered and was shot anyway.

The cop only shot once and immediately administered first aid and calls for an ambulance so I'm willing to cut him some slack but....

Toledo was shot on March 29th and the district attorney over this past weekend (prior to the video footage being released) in court in front of a judge said Toledo had a gun in his right hand when shot. The video gets released and the DA's office had to correct that statement: "An attorney who works in this office failed to fully inform himself before speaking in court. Errors like that cannot happen and this has been addressed with the individual involved. The video speaks for itself." Then you have the union president on TV yesterday say the kid should've been shot twice, that's what they're trained to do. Come on.

So, that makes me want to move away from No. 2 above. I feel somewhat for the officer but not the Chicago police as a whole who looked well on their way to lying and sweeping the truth about killing a 7th grader under the rug.

Also, for more context: 376 Chicago police have died from gunfire in their ~150 year history. On average, 2 per year. It's been 2.5 years since the last death, and 3 deaths by gunfire in a decade.

Let's be honest - probably not really "IN" 7th grade. A series of horrible decisions leading to catastrophic results that is only news because a cop was his final adversary instead of one of his neighborhood pals.

You seem to be implying more Chicago police should die more often than they do which is at least consistent with your belief they should not defend themselves. Better yet - just don't respond and see how that works (I'm sure the currently rising violent crime rates in urban utopias are fake news).

https://twitter.com/LeonydusJohnson/status/1382384668557840387

 

[ab2cmiller]

The mods/owners/admins have access to edit my post for anything seen as "over the line". Maybe the line about February is on the line, however I will note that I do not see a comment from you regarding a user posting that someone "lacked oxygen at birth" or a post referring to any race as not white incapable of governing. So I'm a bit confused to where the line is.

I haven't been on much lately. I had to search for the oxygen post. Yes that was over the line. Not sure where someone posted about the other item to be able to state my opinion.

 

[NorthDakota]

The way I see it, more people are killed than necessary. But unless what the cop did was egregious, I'll let it go. I'm not gonna do some VAR frame by frame analysis. These guys got a hard job, and have too much on the line for too little for me to not give them a pretty long leash. I try to be a realist rather than an idealist when it comes to policing.

Some of them suck. We've all met some bad cops. Some should not be cops. Some should be in jail. There's probably ways to address those things.

But when proposals are things like: "cops shouldn't be armed during traffic stops" or "cops should shoot to wound, not to kill!", the conversation can end right there because those aren't reasonable proposals.

Prosecutors got a tough job too. If they get overzealous, cops will quit or move. Too lenient and guys who should be in jail remain free.

Tough deal all around. The cops around town here seem fine so none of this has much of an impact on me. Don't drive above .08 late at night or speed in a school zone and things generally buff out.

The worst thing for those who want to see changes to policing IMO is how they handle many of these shootings. Jacob Blake, Michael Brown, etc are not hills to fight on, much less die on. All that's gonna do is push people away.

 

[Rocket89]

Let's be honest - probably not really "IN" 7th grade. A series of horrible decisions leading to catastrophic results that is only news because a cop was his final adversary instead of one of his neighborhood pals.

Yup, that's right he was just a gangbanger why do we even need to care about him? People need to care more about all the black-on-black violence in Chicago, no wait, whoops you don't care about those people either insofar as the crime doesn't score you enough political points from the vile media.

You seem to be implying more Chicago police should die more often than they do which is at least consistent with your belief they should not defend themselves. Better yet - just don't respond and see how that works (I'm sure the currently rising violent crime rates in urban utopias are fake news).

You thought I was implying more cops should die? What, how?? It's almost like you feel like the cop was the one who got shot and died. You're this defensive of the guy who killed someone?

 

[RDU Irish]

There is no confusion on my part. I have sat with cops and with victims, with the mayor, with the Emanuel church families with the Scott families and had these tough discussions. If you think that’s bullshit and I have a bullshit opinion then you are free to believe that. I’m not going to argue with people who can justify extrajudicial killings. I will never accept people’s judicial rights being taken away by being killed with no way to defend themselves. Chauvin and other cops get their day in court if it even makes it that far. The people being killed. Do not.

Kumbaya, hope everyone feels better. WTF does Emanuel Church have to do with cops?

Judicial system is slow and expensive, would love to know if it has ever been "fair". Maybe some reform for faster trials with better "free" representation would be a more logical reform topic than sending out social workers to deal with violent criminals. Cops lie to get the results they want, always have.

Scott case is one of the more egregious cases out there. Cop is in jail as he should be.

 

[RDU Irish]

Yup, that's right he was just a gangbanger why do we even need to care about him? People need to care more about all the black-on-black violence in Chicago, no wait, whoops you don't care about those people either insofar as the crime doesn't score you enough political points from the vile media.



You thought I was implying more cops should die? What, how?? It's almost like you feel like the cop was the one who got shot and died. You're this defensive of the guy who killed someone?

Nobody has the balls to actually deal with the problem. State military school that delinquents are sent and parents can opt in if they want - he would be doing push ups at 6AM instead of waving a gun at cops. Nobody takes kids out of these crap environments and even caring parents don't have resources available to deal with it. It is not just truancy but proper behavior in class when you are there. Rich people ship their kids to boarding school if they are running with the wrong crowd.

"Care" about it all you want - pandering exacerbates the problem so who is the real bad guy here? Ramping up rhetoric and placing it all on racism seems productive though.

 

[IrishLax]

What kind of person?

Whenever they are called on someone who is reported as suspicious/armed or has outstanding warrants they are inclined to shoot first and justify later. They approach the situation in combat mode regardless of whether the person is actually a threat.

Especially since the Police Officer not only did not get jail time or convicted of anything, he was rehired so he could retire and collect a $31k pension.

That is the problem. Like this is exactly what people are upset about. There is a group of people that sees some trigger happy wannabe Judge Dread with "You're Fucked" painted on the side of his gun go blast some poor unarmed, unthreatening person for no reason... and then suffer no consequences... and they go "Hey, maybe this is messed up? Maybe there should be better police accountability for needlessly killing people?"

I think the huge different between Kyle Rittenhouse situation and pretty much all others is that it was during protest/riots. Police are routinely told to stand down in these events. People are sometimes assualted right in front of police. Often times the police are assaulted during these events and they do nothing. For people to act like Kyle Rittenhouse situation in the middle of a sitaution police are routinely told to stand down is ignorant of facts and blatant cherry picking.

This is all fair and accurate. But we should also note that Kyle Rittenhouse received thousands of dollars in donations from cops after he shot those rioters, so a large group of cops simply endorse what he did. It is exceptionally clear from social media comments and donations that many cops were appreciative that he did something they wanted to do but couldn't.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Emanuel has to do with cops because Dylan Roof was armed and dangerous and was taken alive and bought cheeseburgers on his way to jail where he had his day in court. Believe me when I say sitting in a room with these people and with cops.... there isn’t anything peaceful or nice about it.

 

[IrishLax]

We are the only first world country that trains cops like we do and arms cops like we do. And then we have cops executing people at more than 3x the rate of the next closest first world country (Canada). Our cops kill people at 15x the rate of any western European country. It's easy to pretend that shootings are justified, it's much harder to grapple with the fact that we have the worst policing in the first world by basically every metric not just cop involved killings.

 

[Rocket89]

Nobody has the balls to actually deal with the problem. State military school that delinquents are sent and parents can opt in if they want - he would be doing push ups at 6AM instead of waving a gun at cops. Nobody takes kids out of these crap environments and even caring parents don't have resources available to deal with it. It is not just truancy but proper behavior in class when you are there. Rich people ship their kids to boarding school if they are running with the wrong crowd.

"Care" about it all you want - pandering exacerbates the problem so who is the real bad guy here? Ramping up rhetoric and placing it all on racism seems productive though.

I'm sorry that you feel like people saying "hey maybe don't shoot a young kid who just threw his gun away and hadn't fired at you first" is ramping up the rhetoric. It's almost as if the problem for you is that it's a losing PR struggle for your side. The kid is dead, but it's just not fair to you.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Bottom line for me is that our system of justice is based on the ideal that even the worst among us has the right to a defense no matter what crimes they committed. I don’t care if you are Ganga banger, a repeat offender or school valedictorian playing with an air soft in the park. So I find that cop killing a surrendering kid with his hands in the air absolutely appalling and unnecessary and wrong. Do I find his past activities appalling? Absolutely. Does he deserve to die on the spot for that? Absolutely not.

 

[RDU Irish]

Emanuel has to do with cops because Dylan Roof was armed and dangerous and was taken alive and bought cheeseburgers on his way to jail where he had his day in court. Believe me when I say sitting in a room with these people and with cops.... there isn’t anything peaceful or nice about it.

So they should have shot him dead after beating his ass on the spot? Does not seem consistent with your other claims that Roy Rogers should lasso them to the ground or shoot their guns out of their hands. Maybe if the AA community hadn't been fed a pile of lies about police killing black people willy nilly they would not be so sensitive to them feeding the killer, which on some level, at some point, they are obligated to do?

Could it be there are no good ways to handle these crappy situations and out of the 800,000 cops in this country a few will make crappy decisions often with fatal consequences? These cases are the exception, not the rule. Police are involved because it is their job to be involved.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Emanuel has to do with cops because Dylan Roof was armed and dangerous and was taken alive and bought cheeseburgers on his way to jail where he had his day in court. Believe me when I say sitting in a room with these people and with cops.... there isn’t anything peaceful or nice about it.

Roof wasn't taken to Burger King on his way to jail as some sort of special treatment or implicit approval of what he did. Shortly after his arrest and while he was being held in an upstairs conference room for questioning, it was determined that he likely hadn't eaten in a couple of days and they had no facilities for feeding him where he was being held. It's illegal to withhold sleep, bathroom privileges, food, water, or medical treatment from a suspect, regardless of the crime they're charged with. Someone was simply sent out to get him a meal at a nearby Burger King. This all comes from Snopes.com, who tend to be rather liberal. Even they said there was nothing to it other than just providing an arrestee with a meal.

from Did Police Take Dylann Roof to Burger King? | Snopes.com

Regardless of all the straightforward reasons why police would provide food to a suspect in their custody, the plain explanation is that Roof hadn’t eaten in days, and the Shelby PD didn’t have the facilities to house him and provide him with meals while waiting for federal and Charleston authorities to arrive, so they had to dispatch someone to a nearby business to pick up some food for him:

With the department’s phone ringing nonstop in the background, the young suspect with the bowl-cut hair was locked away in a second-floor conference room with an officer watching over him.

“Organized chaos,” Ledford later called it. “Because there were so many moving parts.”

Including feeding the unexpected arrestee.

“He hadn’t eaten, they said, in a couple of days,” [Pastor Strickland] Maddox said. “They bought him a hamburger. They just sent out for it. I guess one of the police officers went and picked it up.”

Ledford confirmed that this purchase was made.

“He did have something to eat while he was there, and he was secured in cuffs the entire time,” the chief said.​

No reasonable reading of Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford’s accounts would suggest that Roof had actually been “taken to Burger King” after he was apprehended.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

So they should have shot him dead after beating his ass on the spot? Does not seem consistent with your other claims that Roy Rogers should lasso them to the ground or shoot their guns out of their hands. Maybe if the AA community hadn't been fed a pile of lies about police killing black people willy nilly they would not be so sensitive to them feeding the killer, which on some level, at some point, they are obligated to do?

Could it be there are no good ways to handle these crappy situations and out of the 800,000 cops in this country a few will make crappy decisions often with fatal consequences? These cases are the exception, not the rule. Police are involved because it is their job to be involved.

You know that’s not what I believe or what I am saying so stop twisting my posts. No one should die at the hands of cops.

maybe cops should exercise similar care with of ther citizens and not kill them when they have hands raided. Or shoot them in their cars. Or kill them in the park when they are kid playing with a toy.

 

[RDU Irish]

We are the only first world country that trains cops like we do and arms cops like we do. And then we have cops executing people at more than 3x the rate of the next closest first world country (Canada). Our cops kill people at 15x the rate of any western European country. It's easy to pretend that shootings are justified, it's much harder to grapple with the fact that we have the worst policing in the first world by basically every metric not just cop involved killings.

Fair points. Land of the free has the highest incarceration rate #winning! Legalize drugs, get more serious about mental health (real nuts, not low T anxiety twats) and have a social work system that is serious about taking kids out of bad homes. Then have $$ follow kids so less affluent folks can have real school choice.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Roof wasn't taken to Burger King on his way to jail as some sort of special treatment or implicit approval of what he did. Shortly after his arrest and while he was being held in an upstairs conference room for questioning, it was determined that he likely hadn't eaten in a couple of days and they had no facilities for feeding him where he was being held. It's illegal to withhold sleep, bathroom privileges, food, water, or medical treatment from a suspect, regardless of the crime they're charged with. Someone was simply sent out to get him a meal at a nearby Burger King. This all comes from Snopes.com, who tend to be rather liberal. Even they said there was nothing to it other than just providing an arrestee with a meal.

from Did Police Take Dylann Roof to Burger King? | Snopes.com

Regardless of all the straightforward reasons why police would provide food to a suspect in their custody, the plain explanation is that Roof hadn’t eaten in days, and the Shelby PD didn’t have the facilities to house him and provide him with meals while waiting for federal and Charleston authorities to arrive, so they had to dispatch someone to a nearby business to pick up some food for him:

With the department’s phone ringing nonstop in the background, the young suspect with the bowl-cut hair was locked away in a second-floor conference room with an officer watching over him.

“Organized chaos,” Ledford later called it. “Because there were so many moving parts.”

Including feeding the unexpected arrestee.

“He hadn’t eaten, they said, in a couple of days,” [Pastor Strickland] Maddox said. “They bought him a hamburger. They just sent out for it. I guess one of the police officers went and picked it up.”

Ledford confirmed that this purchase was made.

“He did have something to eat while he was there, and he was secured in cuffs the entire time,” the chief said.​

No reasonable reading of Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford’s accounts would suggest that Roof had actually been “taken to Burger King” after he was apprehended.

Don’t know why you spent 1000 words whitewashing the scenario even though my quote was “ they bought him cheeseburgers”.

They bought him food and took him alive. Lol

 

[RDU Irish]

You know that’s not what I believe or what I am saying so stop twisting my posts. No one should die at the hands of cops.

maybe cops should exercise similar care with of ther citizens and not kill them when they have hands raided. Or shoot them in their cars. Or kill them in the park when they are kid playing with a toy.

Maybe they do, thousands of times throughout the year and in a few rare instances they make a horrible mistake. The dangerous narrative is that police are out there stalking the populace looking for an opportunity to shoot someone in a way they can get away with it. You really think that vast majority of police who have to shoot someone (fatally or not, legitimately or not) isn't haunted by those events? Then again, just like pedophiles flocking to be Boy Scout leaders, some sick twists will gravitate toward law enforcement with bad intentions. As Lax says, better actions to root out the bad apples and better train the good ones are hard to argue against. UNIONS tend to be the problem though, just like with teachers they help the bad ones get away with murder (in the case of police, quite literally).

No human should die at the hands of another human - look, at how much more empathetic and altruistic I am than you!

 

[RDU Irish]

Don’t know why you spent 1000 words whitewashing the scenario even though my quote was “ they bought him cheeseburgers”.

They bought him food and took him alive. Lol

Isn't that your desired outcome from every police encounter? Or only for black people? Because that would be racist to desire a different outcome based on race.

 

[Trait Expectations]

Everyone has a side on this. Where's the side where Michael Brown was a distinct case? Where each of these is a distinct case? Where it looks like Chauvin's death was homicide?

Police forces need more consistent training. They need more de-escalation training and more training with non-lethal weapons.

I'm grateful I'm not a police officer, has to be one of the most difficult jobs out there. I hope we see less people killed by cops, less cops killed by people and I hope we see less incarceration.

How do we get to that point?

 

[Rogue219]

I'm a white middled aged guy in the suburbs. I keep my distance from police. Last thing I want to do is catch someone at the wrong time, wrong place. Part of that comes from some less than positive interactions with police as a kid. We have a nice enough guy that we see in our area from time to time. He's kind of old school in that regard in that our neighborhood is kind of his "beat" and he works his beat in an old school kind of way. We'll be in the yard or hanging around in front and he'll drive by, wave, etc.

I do a donation every year to FOP so I can have that sticker on my car. Makes a world of difference and has gotten me out of a pinch or two when my foot has gotten heavy.

With all of the equipment we have coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, suburban police forces look like warrior squads now. It's when they start acting like it that makes me worried. I'm also concerned with the recruiting pool they are pulling these people out of.

I just get confused when the freedom, no overreach, small government people who disdain authority so much jump to a different side of the discussion when it comes to cops.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Don’t know why you spent 1000 words whitewashing the scenario even though my quote was “ they bought him cheeseburgers”.

They bought him food and took him alive. Lol

Your quote was "and bought cheeseburgers on his way to jail." The implication being that he was given special treatment. The PD holding him, having no facilities for feeding him where they were, simply sent someone out for food at a nearby restaurant. Even Snopes says you're misrepresenting what happened.

 

[NorthDakota]

I'd like fewer people to get killed. Obviously some of the shootings are absurd and indefensible. But police are people too. I am not sure its really fair to expect them to be zombies in the name of due process. At the end of the day, they need to get home at the end of the day too.

Maybe they can get better training and stuff, i don't know.

 

[IrishLax]

Everyone has a side on this. Where's the side where Michael Brown was a distinct case? Where each of these is a distinct case? Where it looks like Chauvin's death was homicide?

Police forces need more consistent training. They need more de-escalation training and more training with non-lethal weapons.

I'm grateful I'm not a police officer, has to be one of the most difficult jobs out there. I hope we see less people killed by cops, less cops killed by people and I hope we see less incarceration.

How do we get to that point?

I firmly believe we need to pay cops double or triple what they're currently making in order to attract better people. I also think it starts with basically firing almost all police leadership across the country and having a completely different style of incentive-based policing that isn't about collars/fines/tickets.

While federal agents aren't choir boys and have a whole slew of faults of their own... they don't nearly the incidence rate -- even in armed or dangerous confrontations -- of regular local cops. That comes down to intelligence, training, and career motivation. So I'd start there, and I'd also do what a lot of other countries do where any mental health/erratic behavior call is responded to by a cop AND a trained mental health professional who can deescalate the situation. Pay cops more, change incentives, fire bad leadership, and hire mental health professionals and you'd probably cut police shootings in half within 2-3 years.

 

[RDU Irish]

This is literally a stupid post. I’m sorry. It’s fucking stupid Why on earth would you think I’m only defending black people. Are you even reading my posts? My desired out come is that if cops engage purported criminals the criminal regardless of race or severity of crimes should be secured or subdued but nonetheless alive so they can face their accuser and receive their day in court.

Which is what happened to Roof - so what is the problem? You brought it up, not me.

And I disagree - would prefer for Roof to be six feet under rather than taxpayers paying for his three hots and a cot for the rest of his life. I hear capital punishment is actually more expensive - which indicates to me our system sucks and needs to be more cost effective. Which is consistent with the absurd cost and time to defend yourself in court if accused/arrested. Vast majority cannot afford proper representation and the public defender thing is a complete joke. Even small claims court is built for schisters to prevail. Accountability in our just-us system is a joke from arrest to arraignment. Step one - don't get anywhere near any of it. Step two - repeat step one.

In the twelve years I have lived in our town of 120k there was bank robber shot dead in a standoff at a bank and a burglar shot dead between some houses (my actual neighborhood) at 2AM in the morning. Kind of OK with the outcome of both cases even though I am sure force was excessive. Same police did not even try to do their job in two cases I needed addressed, gotta keep those crime stats down and one good way is to pretend it didn't happen. Had enough interaction growing up to know not to trust cops too. Pretending we have 800,000 Captain Americas out there is naive AF - work in the reality of the flawed world we live in.

 

[Blazers46]

We have about 10 million arrests made per year, yet 25% of crimes are solves by arrest meaning 75% of crimes go unsolved and the criminal is still on the loose. With the 10 million arrests, even more police contacts that do not end in arrest or ends in civil citation we are still cherry picking cases and running with a narrative police are overall racist and trigger happy. When I say "cherry picking", the amount of contact per incident is so small there is not a better word of phrase than cherry picking. Do I think police can do better, sure. But I sort of see this like Lumberg getting upset about a cover sheet on a TPS report when my other million TPS reports had a cover letter. Sure the shooting of anyone is tragic no matter the age, and a lot more tragic than a TPS report but people are wanting to overhaul the whole system over a few things they can cherry pick and label as systemic racism or bad policing.

 

[Crazy Balki]

Based on the footage, it's pretty obvious that this was a bad situation, but the idea that you can pin wrongdoing on the cop for shooting in this situation is pure hindsight bias.

It's true that Toledo did disarm himself, however, he disarmed himself outside of the line of sight of the police, thus they didn't observe him actually disarming, he then quickly turns towards the cop. Knowing what we know now, it's evident that he was trying to surrender. However, police don't have the benefit of hindsight and still frame observation like we do. They are in the moment. In the moment, this is an armed individual, running from them, they are in pursuit, they repeatedly order him to stop, disarm and put his hands up.

It's sad that Toledo did disarm, but it's also asinine to blame the cop for shooting, since he's expected to have night vision and see the guy subtly disarm himself out of their peripherals. This is also all happening in the span of less than a second. The cops don't have the benefit of just waiting for him to physically determine if he still has a gun or not. They need to see him actually drop the weapon, if not, they're still treating him as if he's armed. You can say "they should've waited a second to see there was no weapon". That one second is all a suspect needs to fire off a couple shots and then you end up with a wounded or dead cop.

Any attempt to compare this to the likes of Daunte Wright or hell, Dylann Roof, are simply done in bad faith, as they are purely false equivalencies.

Roof was arrested in broad daylight, had physically disarmed himself and when confronted by police, immediately surrendered.

Wright resisted arrest and the cop that shot him yelled "TASER TASER TASER" and immediately responded "Oh my god, I shot him", indicating that the discharge was not intentional and done out of pure negligence. That isn't defending the cop, because a negligent discharge should be an easy manslaughter conviction for the prosecution, and I fully support those charges going through. His death was done out of negligence, not murder. This cop did the right thing, based on the information he had available to him at the time. Ideally, he physically sees Toledo disarm himself and he isn't compelled to shoot. But again, that's hindsight bias and hindsight is hardly ever a solid justification for condemning someone's split second actions in the moment.