Zero faith in law enforcement anymore
 

Police not responsible for your protection
How can we, as a supposedly free people, be expected to sit quietly by as nanny state governments dictate our lives by denying not only our right to self defense (duty to retreat laws), but also denying effective means of self defense like keeping and bearing arms.

Yes, this is another thread that I'm sure will de-escalate into the supposed advantages and disadvantages of gun control and gun rights.

How do people live with themselves knowing that their support for 'non-violence' allows criminal acts like this to happen.

How do people live with themselves by wholeheartedly supporting law enforcement even with huge breaches of authority for the publics protection?

When do we, as a people, finally come to grips with the fact that you and you alone are the main person responsible for your own safety and demand that your elected representatives stop denying your rights of self defense by the most effective means possible? yes, by guns

I don't feel like researching how to hide an article, so if you don't like me or my opinions, dont' RTFA. :mad:

Violence or the threat of... is the root of all human power.

Equality of power potential allows for equality in society.

I am not convinced that this is only about guns. This seems to be about law, authority, and power.

If you are calling into question the effectiveness of repressive state apparatuses, what are you proposing to take their place? Anarchy? A loner society of autonomous rebels? I'm not entirely sure why you posted the article because you haven't mentioned anything about it directly.

What if, for the sake of argument, everyone in the article were carrying a gun? It is entirely possible that nothing would have changed, except the fact that everyone was packing. It is also possible that the assailant would have been shot. It, too, is possible that the victim would have been shot. Or both.

I'm actually feeling a bit awkward responding to this at all because it already sounds as though you've come to your conclusions. If, however, your intent is to convince people like me why I should have a gun, then you aren't doing a very good job of it. Maybe talk about the article, then we'll see.

dksuddeth:

Your words about the right to bear arms and the duty to retreat have absolutely nothing to do with the article you posted.

Furthermore, the actions of one officer operating under state pro-arrest guidelines choosing not to arrest the man is hardly indicative of a systemic loss of law enforcement.

Don't use this unfortunate event to try and shed attention on your general grievances with the government and whoever else you're pissed off at this week. This article has nothing to do with nanny states, gun control, duty to retreat laws, or any loss of personal rights or freedoms. Not every thread is your personal soap-box, and your anti-police rhetoric is tired.

Analog I think that's very very good rhetoric.

pray tell, in your mind, what is this 'unfortunate event' supposed to be about?
Is it how we should pity the ex-boyfriend for being a victim of child abuse and sexual molestation as a teen, therefore he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions?
Is it that the cop had no duty to arrest the guy because he didn't actually catch him in the act of raping his ex-girlfriend?

Because I think that all of my points tie in real nice and neat with the fact that for nearly 80 years we've had the notions of 'we don't need guns', 'guns are for law enforcement', 'cops are here to protect us', 'the government is her to help us', and my personal favorite, 'we as mere citizens can't take care of ourselves so we need to let the 'professionals' do it for us.

See, this happened in Vermont, a state with practically zero gun laws, yet a woman was assaulted, violently, in her own home and a biased media that either refuses to mention that she owned a gun or she didn't own one at all because she's been brainwashed by a government and anti-self defense groups that she'd be in more danger by having one than she would by enduring multiple rapes and beatings and calling the police later.

She, along with over half the population of this country, have the mistaken belief that all they need to do is call 911 and the cops will ride in to save the day, just in the nick of time. That the courts will protect our rights at all times, in accordance with the first amendment, by hearing our redress of grievances against a government body and siding with our rights, therefore ensuring that a government body would work harder to serve us instead of itself.

Analog, you've done nothing more than help perpetuate a herd mentatlity among the people of this country, spreading the mistaken belief that the government will protect us like the shepherd does for his sheep. Thanks for playing.

This was a failure of the community to police itself. That the cops were involved doesn't make much difference. As it happens, the person who erred in judgement was a police officer, but it could have been a neighbour, a friend, a relative, you, or me.

What's more, for all we know, the woman was packing and chose not to blow the guy away. Note also that its entirely possible that the abuser chose not to shoot the victim.

If your point is, as it seems to be, that we can only rely on ourselves because social institutions are dysfunctional, why do you care so much about laws? If society is fucked, so too are legal institutions and the violent apparatus of the state.

dk....its that time again, huh?

Every 2-3 months you post an article about one isolated incident in which one police officer may not have performed at the level one might expect. And from that, you conclude that our entire public safety system is failing to protect us and we need to arm ourselves.

IMO, its an insult to the intelligence of any reasonable person and most of all, an insult to the tens of thousands of police officers around the country who risk their lives every day to protect the public.

National Crime Prevention Month is just around the corner (October)...so if you want to do something productive, get off the soap box and get involved in a constructive way in your community.

That's complete horseshit.

Violence or the threat of violence is the root of force.

Power is the ability to produce results without force.

So one state trooper makes a bad judgement call and now the entirety of law enforcement is useless?

There seems to be a notion of non-police citizens who believe that police officers, state troopers, and sheriffs are mystical beings who never screw up and are basically superheroes who are to save the day. They're not. They're regular people like you and me who found themselves with a police job. They go through training and they're put on the street to deal with the psychopaths that are listed in the article. Is it possible that the police screw up: yes. This trooper should have arrested the guy, but he didn't. I'm sure there was a decent reason behind it also...

Where in the article does it say that the woman pressed charges? Nowhere. Where does it say the woman begged the trooper to take action and make the arrest? Nowhere. All it takes is the woman to hint at not wanting the guy to go to jail and he doesn't. The trooper did screw up by not following the manual, but discounting that, the woman has to be adamant about wanting the guy in jail, and in many DV cases the woman takes up for the man.

I can hardly see how one state trooper fucking up can mean that the thousands of police personnel in the world are falling apart or whatever. I used to place a negative aura around police until I started working for the department. I'm not an officer, but I deal directly with them everyday and it's not possible to imagine what bullshit they deal with every single day. HUNDREDS of police reports coming in everyday, dozens of domestic violence cases, homicides, false alarms, drug busts everyday and they never get a break. Their job is to FIX what's wrong with our country and it's an uphill battle that can't be won.

Your points are neither nice nor neat. I really have little idea what you are talking about. This is because you haven't explained yourself, and you haven't put forth any real argument, mainly just weak (i.e. thinly veiled) rhetorical questions.

What are you saying? Do you want a gun in every hand? Do you want to disassemble the police organizations? Overhaul the court systems? Maybe get rid the federal system? Do you want to live in a commune? Do you support anarchist communism?

ditto.

It does get tiresome to read yet another post about how bad the police are and how good it would be if the public just policed themselves.

The assumption here is that putting a gun into someone's possession must automatically make that person into a force of rightiousness. Forget the training that the police officer has with regard the use of force. Forget that the police officer has to deal with highly emotional situations with the worst 5% of the population every work shift. And forget that hundreds of complaints are handled by the police with professionalism and compassion every day. Let's put that gun, that authority to use deadly force, into the hands of the average person and hope that that will solve crime.

The article posted by dk shows that even a highly trained individual with the mandate to keep the peace can still make a bad call and people are harmed. It only helps to strengthen the idea that law enforcement should be a profession, not a hobby.

dk, get off the soapbox and purpose a viable alternative. Angry rhetoric is not a solution.

It's an insult to the intelligence of all reasonable persons that after numerous occurrences of police brutality, over agressive use of force, and the plain outright murder of innocent civilians, that you still consider them 'isolated' incidences.

all power comes from the barrel of a gun.
the ability to produce results without force is called 'persuasion', and while it is powerful, it's not ultimately powerful.

translation: you refuse to acknowledge the truth and validity of my statements of fact and will therefore attempt to discredit them by calling them neither nice nor neat.

All these anecdotes are meaningless without some sort of idea about statistics. Let's hear about what percentage of police actions fit into the stories you post.

You are trying to pass off clumsy rhetorical questions as statements of fact? Now I now for certain: I don't know what you are talking about, and neither do you.

Now, I suggest you say something that isn't self-discrediting. Seriously, all power comes from the barrel of a gun, yet persuasion is "powerful, [but] not ultimately powerful"?

You do know that power and influence are synonymous, right? Look to Gandhi when thinking of power and influence. Look to Wal-Mart. Look at the non-violent power that China is exerting over the world right now.

What do you think it is that enables guns?

From the DoJ Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2005:
1.6% of citizens who had contact with police said the police used force against them or threatened them.

Yes, I consider 1.6% to be isolated incidents, particularly if you consider of those, 17% said they provoked it by threatening the officer or resisting arrest....and of the police use of force, most was the officer pushing or grabbing the person.

The "numerous occurences" of police brutality or overly excessive use of force is a figment of your imagination.

really? think about this for a minute..

to get me to do something you want, you have two options.
1) you can persuade me, but I can always say no.
2) you can force me by using a gun.

now, whats more powerful?

how many of those 1.6% were innocent people that were killed by those cops?

If it was one, it was one too many.....police officers are human and even though trained, they do not operate as efficiently as a machine and those incidents, as rare as they are, should absolutely be reviewed and the officer held accountable.

Using your rationale, putting one innocent person to death is one too many. I assume you will also agree that we should prohibit the death penalty for the same reason.

You have not presented any data to support your assertion so I would respectfully suggest again that the "numerous occurrences" of police brutality or overly excessive use of force are a figment of your imagination.

I can try to persuade you, and you might say no. But if I do persuade you, you would be under my influence.

I can try to force you by using a gun, and you might do what I want, or you could simply refuse.

What's more powerful? I would say, the successful persuader in number 1, but one who shows no fear in the line of fire in number 2 would be a close second. Third would be the successful perpetrator in number 2, because the exerted power would likely be applied upon an individual. In most cases, you can only point a gun at one person at a time. And the overall threat range of a gun is relatively limited as well. The impact of an individual's persuasion can be multitudinous, far reaching, and long lasting.

And by the by, I have thought about this for far more than a minute. Also, your set up was erroneous because it leads to two unmatched outcomes, which makes it for an unfair comparison, which is why I answered as I did. Unless I am mistaken, you have begged the question here.

and yet, every single time I put up an article and bitch about how an officer got away with killing someone, i'm battered about the head and shoulders for ripping on cops and judges. What the hell do you guys want?

I'm a firm believer in the death penalty, when the evidence cannot be wrong, for instance, a video recording of the killing in progress etc. If there is any shred of doubt concerning the crime, then i'm way more apt to do life without parole.

Look at http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ and then tell me it's a figment of my imagination.

Its not just the fact that you point out isolated examples of improper police or judicial conduct. What many find unreasonable is that you characterize these isolated examples as "huge breaches of authority" with a sweeping condemnation of law enforcement as well as your proposed solution of arming the populace rather than correcting the criminal justice system.


I looked at your map and using your state of Texas as an example, there were 25 incidents in 20 years (since 1985) of what Cato Institute calls "botched paramilitary police raids" (an interesting if not incendiary description).....thats 1.25/year.

To put it into perspective, there were over 1 million arrests in Texas in 2005 (FBI crime figures) and from the Cato examples, there would be an average of 1.25 "botched police raids" (the actual number for that year was zero).

Of those 25 incidents in Texas over the 20 year period, 5 resulted in the death of an innocent person....thats one every 4 years. (I'm not minimizing the tragedy of one killing every 4 years). None of these should happen, but those numbers do not represent "huge" or pervasive systemic breaches of authority.

I dont condone the excessive use of force or killing of innocent civilians. Every incident should be investigated by authorities or civilian review boards and legal action taken against police officers if the evidence suggests so.

But I would still say its a figment of your imagination for you to suggest it is more that a rare occurrence. You obviously dont want to accept the fact that 1.6% (DoJ figures) of all police-public interaction represents a rare occurrence or isolated incident.

And more to the point, the solution is not vigilantism and arming the public.

Obviously the only viable solution is to just suck it up and continue to be browbeaten by your precious government and accept the deaths of innocent people as collateral damage for the greater good. all in the name of freedom and democracy. :rolleyes:

Let me get this straight. From the source dksuddeth used, Texas averages 1.25 "botched paramilitary police raids" per year out of over 1 million arrests. Bearing in mind that not all police actions even result in arrests, that means that speaking aggressively, .00000125% of arrest procedures are classified as "botched paramilitary operations".

Taking it a step farther, only a quarter of those result in the death of innocent persons. So, .00000031% of arrests end in the killing of innocent person.

Those figures, if accurate, reflect pretty well on police departments. I bet car manufactureres wish they could boast of safety margins like that. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to find that more than .00000031% of dog owners are seriously wounded by their pets, or that .00000031% of surgeries result in fatal mistakes. After all, that's basically one in 4 million.

Coincidentally, 1:4,000,000 are the odds that you'll match all 5 numbers in the Texas Mega Millions drawing.

EDIT:

I did a quick check of the medical mistake numbers.

Using figures from http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/mistakes/common.htm and http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/CHS/VSTA...st/ageadj.shtm, you can find that in 1999, 2700 people may have died due to some sort of medical mistake. This means that for that year, assuming the trends were relatively stable, you were 440 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by the police.

but didn't a bunch of people on here say that 'one death is one too many'?
or does that not count anymore?

on top of that, does nobody care that in those 'miniscule' instances, that the percentage of cops held accountable would be the same as the .000000031% stat you mentioned?

Now you're not even trying to produce statistics to back up your argument, dk.

Re: the first part - I wasn't one of those people.

As to the second - such blatant hyperbole is as ridiculous as it is self-serving. Also, you added a zero.

While I don't expect 100%, I do expect a reasonable percentage of loss. I find this number .00000031% acceptable.

Even my webhosting which boasts 99% uptime means that out of 1 year's time it will be down 3 days. For some people that's completely unacceptable, and they think that paying $15.99 entitles them to rant and rave every time that they get one of those 3 days. (So far this year my hosting has had about 24 hours of downtime.) Little did they realize when they signed up that it was what they were told.

People expect perfection from imperfect situatioins. Maybe that's what you expect our system to be, that cops are perfect and never abuse or make mistakes, that our politicians aren't corrupt or fail to do the things that we were promised in grade school textbooks.

1 million arrests a year. Gee !!

Well, I did ask you about anarchist communism, but you never answered.

I disagree with dk, but you do your argument a disservice by making light of a very serious, systemic problem. There are frequent and regular incidents of extreme police violence, particularly against minorities. Sad to say, but Americans are so used to these stories that most get lost in the local news. I doubt you heard about the Milwaukee cops who stomped all over Frank Jude. There has been an outrageous string of police shootings in Cincinnati. In 2003, police brutality provoked riots in Benton Harbor, Michigan. On the other hand, i'm sure you have heard of Abner Louima or Rodney King, or perhaps the police assasinations of nearly all the Black Panther leadership.

Communist (e.g. the Black Panthers) or anarchist solutions assume a functioning community, something that is not present in dk's world. dk seems to inhabit a post-apocalyptic world where all social institutions save the police have broken down. If that's your vision of the world, putting together a cellar arsenal makes perfect sense.

would you find it acceptable if it happened to one of your loved ones?

No, what I do expect is for people to stand up and fix shit when it isn't perfect and when bad shit happens to good people. It's too damn bad that there are apathetic people in this world that can live with small percentage of bad shit happening.

It wouldn't change the number. That's the point.

You're more likely to get kicked by Chuck Norris in a film or TV show. Seriously.

who are you?

really? is that what I've said? Because who said that I'd take it laying down? Yes I would find it acceptable for it to happen to a loved one or even me. That's called LIFE.

I know that NOTHING in the world is perfect, I don't expect perfection, I expect progress. And sometimes I expect one or two bad eggs to push that progress back. But the idea is progress not perfection.

You'd rather it be perfect from the beginning. Good for you. I don't have that expectation.

and here I thought we didn't really have trolls on TFP.

DK, you're raving on and on and on about an anomaly, which would suck when it happened to you, but it does NOT reflect upon all the rest of the systems that are linked to it.

Refusing to see things in perspective does not mean that the rest of us will share in your hyperbole.

DK's post history is quite repetitious, though, I don't really have that much room to throw stones ;p

Your appeals to emotion aside, you are assumptive in your claim. When this "bad shit" happens, it doesn't usually go unnoticed. As far as I know, both Canada and the United States are societies that have checks and balances for their public agencies--internal investigators, non-partisan auditors, and the like. This isn't Russia nor North Korea, where you might have a legitimate cause for concern, though I do think the numbers would be far worse. If you do, however, think that your government agencies are corrupt, why haven't you adequately spoken about this yet? You are too focused on the subject of guns, as though they were a solution in and of themselves, which they aren't.

As a reader of your thread, I have been all but completely unsatisfied with what you have written thusfar. There are clear lapses of logic and subject matter that you have yet to address. I suggest you do so before you run this thread into the ground. There are already threads here that discuss gun rights. I was interested in this new thread of yours because it sounded like you might be willing to discuss the wider issues.

I will reiterate: This is not about guns and gun rights alone. This is about law, authority, and power. dksuddeth, what are your thoughts on these within the context of this thread? Do you think corruption is widespread? If so, what do you propose we do about it? Clearly there is more to be done than being sure you're packing heat.

I never intended this to be about gun rights. My intention in the original post was to hopefully show people that their law enforcment and judicial branches of their governments are not being held accountable for either their serious lapses in judgement, nor are they being held accountable for illegalities in their positions of authority.......except for the most egregious incidents which happened to garner enough public scrutiny as to warrant punitive actions in an effort to save political face.

Take, for example, the comparison of two cases that i've posted on.

1) The 'accidental death' of Dr. Sal Culosi. An eye doctor who happened to be running a sports betting ring of amateurish proportions. A police officer happened to shoot Dr. Culosi in the chest while the SWAT team served a warrant....about gambling, of which the undercover officer who had infiltrated this gambling operation KNEW and INFORMED his superiors that Culosi was non-violent and had no weapons in his possession.

the final outcome of the 'internal investigation'? The offending officer was 'tired' and would not be held responsible for his actions.

2) An 82 year old Georgia woman was killed after a brief shootout with 3 Atlanta PD officers, serving a no-knock warrant on the ladies home, of which they TORE down the doors and the lady fired back thinking her house was being broken in to.

The result? The officers pleaded guilty to some lesser charges and given somewhat light sentences when they SHOULD have been charged with murder because they LIED to the judge in order to get the warrant, then falsified evidence in an attempt to justify their violent assault on this womans home and intimidated an informant to make false statements to cover up the lies they told the judge to get the warrant.

Compare this with the numerous other incidents i've posted about and been heavily reprimanded by most of the posters on this board about how I should give LEOs a break because they deal with the worst of society and the judges and politicians who usually clear said officers of all wrongdoing unless it's politically detrimental and I find myself actually supremely happy that none of you are my neighbors, friends, or family because I don't think I could depend upon a single one of you if I ever found myself on the prosecutorial end of a government that only serves its self interests instead of the interests they were originally intended for.

People 'pooh pooh' the notion that we are headed for a police state when I make the claim, followed up by the facts of the actual incident, and I find myself almost ashamed in thinking that YOU people actually just need to personally experience the issue first hand. I almost hate you for that.

Wow. Don't let the Effa-Bee-Eye read this thread! OH NO!

(puts some aluminum foil on his head to repel all the 1984 vibes)

Hmm... horseshit or not, I still vote for that violence is the root of "power", "force", whatever alphabetic icon you assign it... from a strictly universal everything-we-have-once-was-this sense.

Example might be nature: A big mama bear doesn't really ask you nicely to stop eyeballing her cubs. You piss her off? You're going to get mauled.

I vote that primitive man didn't claw his way to the stable, Dr. Phil-ish, egalitarian, communication-based money-is-God society that we have today by being polite. He did it by killing some mofos and burning some villages.

...

I believe that most men are just beasts in fancy disguises.

What do we have if we take away society's grand illusion of life rules?

We have the jungle.

What's the law of the jungle?

...

What do I know? Not much.

You ignore the fact that the reviews of police shootings and excessive force charges are reviewed by IADs or civilian review boards and many have resulted in convictions of police officers.

In addtion, the US DoJ Civil Rights Division has the legal authority to review excessive use cases and has acted on many:
As someone suggested earlier, you want a perfect, error-free law enforcement system and if you cant have that, it seems you want vigilantism.

I dont expect the former and I shudder at the thought of the latter.