Politics Ferguson

"Everybody bleeds in a knife fight".

 

Holy crap. I thought you were trolling, or playing devil's advocate. You're serious, aren't you?

I won't even address the drivel comparing a kitchen knife to one carried and brandished with hostile intent. Pepper spray deters, can sometimes disable. Requires close range, can be fought through by someone who's determined. Tasers, again, are an imperfect defense, with close range and single discharge of as the disadvantages.

Yea, just shoot the target who's charging you with a well placed shot to the leg, it's easy.

Isn't your ignorance on this topic embarrassing?

 

@omega I understand the idea of shooting in the leg or arm is stupid.
You shoot for body mass.
And pepper spray is hit or miss.
On some people it takes them right out, other people can handle a lot of it.
But what about tasers?
The videos I've seen have been pretty consistent that even people who had to take a second shot to be knock down weren't in enough control to be dangerous.
Yes, there are cases of the them killing people too but they seem to be a lot safer then shooting someone.

 

There are very few cases of tasers killing people, and most of them have been on drugs. There have been abuses of tasers too, on occasion. If one or two jolts doesn't do the job, four or five more won't either.
if it was a man charging me with a knife, I'm going to shoot him. Even if he gets me, maybe he'll bleed out before he can hurt someone else. Tasers are really interesting in that it's severe and intense pain, but there is no pain afterwards. You are totally functional immediately after. If it was a situation where someone was cornered by several officers, and one had a chance to taser, sure. But the other three or four better still have guns on him. Thing about tasers, you have one shot. If you miss, then your only choice is the prongs on the front. Touch a person with that, and it will affect most people. But as soon as you lose contact, they are ready to go. Unless the fear is overwhelming. I think in a fight for my life, I could still knee moving after getting tasered it's pain. A lot of pain, but pain. Problem with pepper spray is you and every other officer is going to eat it too. Everyone is going to be fucked up.

 

He Was Raised By A White Mom And Didn't Think The Cops Were Out To Get Him. Until They Got Him.

 

Omega, I think that anyone "charging" an arned policeman is attempting to get shot. What time and again shocks me, as an English observer, is the number of times in the news I hear about someone shot what seems like an insane number of times, when evidence shows they were well out of range and not moving into striking distance.

That case near Ferguson is a case in point. The guy was dazed, dangerous, a thief, all true. But he was a few paces away, not moving fast. It is hard not to use the word "execution" for what happened.

I understand the movie trope of shooting to wound is not realistic, but the idea of NEEDING to shoot six bullets into anyone, as punishment for "being a lary twat" is demented.

Surgeon is a British policeman, I assume. Over here it is normal now for every cop to wear anti stab vests. That seems not to be the case in America. I see two images on our news, the cop in shirtsleeves, and the cop in camoflage and body armour.

Why camo? What earthly need is there to be unseen? In green camo in town, you are not hidden, you're just a paramilitary.

I get that I cannot know the pressures of serving in your world, but why does it seem so hard for Americans to accept that the rest of the world looks at you an is scared?

In my life only one person has ever reached for a gun to try to dominate me, and that person was a uniformed member of the American police. My offense was asking, after I had been told "no talking" what date I should write on the imigration form. A world in which a glorified post office clerk has to put his hand on a lethal weapon because I ask him the date is a world that is not about safety, it's about asserting dominance.

I'm sure many many cops are in it for public good, but clearly some are in it to be powerful, to be feared, and to treat anyone they're allarmed by as a threat.

 

This isn't about all the good cops. They are irrelevant here, except maybe tangentially in the sense that for every bad cop, there are several "good cops" acting to protect that bad cop from the legal consequences of their actions.

Ferguson resonates with a lot of people because it illustrates something meaningful about their day to day experiences with police. For a lot of people, that day to day experience seems to be one of officer abuse and impunity and questionable racial contexts. When you have the largest police force in the country getting by for years on an obviously (and openly) racist policy like Stop and Frisk, there can be no doubt that race plays a role in how people are treated by police. Given the well documented historical and contemporary facts of racism in this country, there can be no doubt that race plays a role in how people are treated by police. You cannot be a person who interacts with reality via a functional brain and deny this fact.

Ferguson isn't about how police have policies to follow. It's about how in many instances, when the police don't follow their policies, they can get away with it because A) the police are responsible for investigating themselves, B) the media has an incentive to defer to official police explanations, C) local prosecutors typically have cozy relationships with the local police department that might deter them from pursuing valid instances of abuse in court, and D) knee-jerk, deference to authoritarian control of people of color (a la the samcols of the world) on the part of the local white population. Ferguson is about how police officers can literally (literally literally) get away with murder.

 

@Daniel, the rapper fifty cent was shot six times, and lived. There was a case where an officer approaching a car was shot by the driver with a .22 pistol, a small round. When the officer saw the gun, he put his hands up to cover his face and turned. Thebullet went under the armpit , missing his vest, and penetrated his heart. He unloaded his .357 Sig into the guy's center mass, twelve rounds. Then the officer bled out internally and died. The assailant was so fat, that the bullets were lodged in his chest and torso and didn't penetrate deep enough for a lethal injury.
If I have made the decision to use lethal force to stop the threat, why only pull the trigger once and maybe still get hurt or killed? Better to pull it multiple times to give me a better chance of survival. An arm or leg shot won't put someone down. Needs to be a head shot, hit something vital like the heart or spine, or a hip shot to take out the legs.
Bullet resistant vests are not stab resistant. I'm sure they help, but they are not proof. And anyway, you reach for a guy with a knife to go hands on. With one twist of the wrist and a movement of his arm, he has severed your brachial or femoral artery. You are going to bleed out very shortly. Or he slashes your throat. Or comes up under the arm where your vest doesn't cover and punctures your lung.
Again, why should I take a chance on dying?
And for all you tourists visiting, we do not pull in front of a vehicle to pull them over. We activate our lights and stay behind you. Also, you don't get out of the car to talk to us. We approach the vehicle, you stay seated and doors shut. We like to know exactly where you are at all times.

 

Relevant:

Police Militarization By County Via The Law Enforcement Support Office

 

This is interesting.

Lawyer: Audio shows pause in fire in Ferguson - CNN.com

 

Break in fire?

Meh, doesn't mean anything. Once you engage in a lethal force option, you continue until the threat is neutralized. No halfsies.

Only time it would be bad is if there were like 10 shots rapidly, a ten second break and then two more shots from a different location (the old sure-tap). This is not that.

Despite TV news idiot commentary to the contrary, you do not attempt to shoot a suspect in the leg or fire warning shots or any of that horse puckey.

When a police officer draws a handgun it is aimed center mass (the sternum) and is fired until the suspect stops moving.

Presence, commands, soft hands, OC, taser, hard hands, baton and then gun.

Guns are always a last resort in the use of force continuum.

For some reason this dude went right to the gun.

 

Guns aren't the last resort, they are the most lethal option. We are reactionary. Other people's actions determine where we are on the force continuum. I don't have to move from step to step; I can go straight to my gun if need be. But if someone starts off aggro with me and then surrenders after I taser him, I can't just taser him again to be sure. But it doesn't mean I have to give him a nice talking to. I can still cuff him and then let ems remove the probes.
I know plan9 knows this, but not everyone else does.

 

Let's not confuse the kids, Omega... guns are the last resort because they are a lethal option. All other items on the use of force continuum are capable of less-than-lethal force and are designed to be employed as such.

So, exactly what option do you have other than your pistol / shotgun / patrol rifle? You got a plasma cannon I don't know about? Ugh, I really have to talk to DOD about selling local cops space weapons again. Unacceptable.

I know we're beating a dead horse but I think it is important to explain things in a way that a nervous 7th grader can understand. The problem with the whole Ferguson case is average morons are asking many dumb questions:

1. "Why didn't he just shoot him in the leg?" - Because guns are a lethal option only and point shot probabilities via reaction? GTFO.

2. "Why did he have to shoot him so many times?" - Because guns aren't death rays and pistols especially don't instantly incapacitate large humans

3. "Why didn't he use a taser or OC or karate chop him?" - Because he doesn't have to use each step in the use of force continuum if he feels his life is threatened

4. "Can you shoot another kid so I can have an excuse to riot more?" - Sure, the media cycle will pick up another shit sandwich two years from now somewhere in Ohio

 

Cultural expectations distort who gets classified by default as a threat. So, for some officers large black male = always a threat, whether actually a threat or not. If you are a black male in a community that assumes you are a threat, you basically have no actual right to not get killed by the police and your family has no legal recourse should you be killed (justifiably or no) by police.

 

Meh, it's not just hard to prove... it's hard to disprove.

I mean, the soul-jumping demon Blanco Racisto is known to take over people to sow discontent in melting pot countries, but nobody has actually seen him at work.