Serious Police Brutality in the U.S.

Do you believe the U.S. has a problem with police brutality?

  • Yes, especially towards black men

    Votes: 187 53.3%
  • Yes, but not specifically biased against black men

    Votes: 101 28.8%
  • No

    Votes: 63 17.9%

  • Total voters
    351

Myzozoa

to find better ways to say what nobody says
is a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/...ield-to-protect-black-protesters-from-police/

https://blindfieldjournal.com/2016/10/06/potters-field-part-one/

http://www.killedbypolice.net/ - a count that also attempts to name

https://freebresha.wordpress.com/

"Bresha Meadows is a courageous 14 year old girl who is accused of shooting and killing her abusive father on July 28th in Ohio. After years of witnessing her father beat her mother, Bresha lived in fear and often tried to run away. She has now been detained and the prosecutor is considering trying her as an adult for aggravated murder. Tomorrow, she has an important court hearing..."

There will be police in the courtroom at that trial. There will be police working at the facility where she is detained. These are all police. The police all do cavity searches, all of them. Going home from the bar turns into drunk in public, turns into a stay in county (if you have a record), a cavity search, like. no. thats fucked up.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/ne...er-Against-Dakota-Pipeline-20160928-0029.html

facebook gold (not ever written by me):

"sorry, this space is not meant for pro-reformist, pro-police , pro-white supremacy rhetoric :-) thanx for keeping that stuff to your page..."

"if im interested in evolutionary bio ill come to you... if your interested in ways that the Prison system works in our country feel free to talk to me and I can point you towards books by folx who actually know stuff"


and on that note ive got just one short reading to add to this celebration of (not impotent) narcissism that you've slogged ur way to the end of:

http://plaza.ufl.edu/sharky85/Blind and Dumb Criticism.pdf

Qui savez-vous comme Roland Barthes?


Ok so maybe they aren't killing the black community over here, or even over there. They don't do it where you're looking. I know, okay, okay, not that one then. But it's the one you forgot about: thats just how it works practically. It used to be though that this shit was liable to go down: "In the early 20th century, Tulsa was home to the "Black Wall Street", one of the most prosperous black communities in the United States at the time.[25] Located in the Greenwood neighborhood, it was the site of the Tulsa Race Riot, one of the nation's worst acts of racial violence and civil disorder, with whites attacking blacks.[25] Sixteen hours of rioting on May 31 and June 1, 1921, was only ended when National Guardsmen were brought in by the Governor. An official report later claimed that 23 black and 16 white citizens were killed, but other estimates suggest as many as 300 people died, most of them black.[25] Over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, and an estimated 10,000 people were left homeless as 35 city blocks, composed of 1,256 residences, were destroyed by fire. Property damage was estimated at $1.8 million.[25] Efforts to obtain reparations for survivors of the violence have been unsuccessful but the city and state re-examined the events in the early 21st century, acknowledging the terrible actions that had taken place." Now they wait for a natural disaster.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/03/sacramento-police-shooting-joseph-mann-dashcam-video

trigger warning, see the thread title. and if you want to know, i dont watch the videos and i think it's better that way. mainly because i dont need to see these videos to know about the fact of police brutality in the U.S. There is an unbroken timeline of police brutality from the transport of slaves to the americas in 16xx to the Guantanamo Bay of the present day.


Finally a list of introductory sources to learning about prisons and police in america:

James Kilgore "understanding mass incarceration: a peoples guide to the key civil rights struggle of our times" http://www.understandingmassincarceration.com/

"golden gulag: Prisons,surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing california" Ruth Wilson Gilmore http://condemnationofblackness.voic.../10/Golden-Gulag.Ruth-Wilson-Gilmore_Ch.1.pdf

http://condemnationofblackness.voic.../10/Golden-Gulag.-Ruth-Wilson-Gilmore_Ch2.pdf



"Are Prisons Obsolete? " Angela Davis https://www.feministes-radicales.or...2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf

"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" Michelle Alexander http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ctp/The_New_Jim_Crow.pdf

"Discipline and Punish" by Michel Foucault https://zulfahmed.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/disciplineandpunish.pdf

Jasbir Puar. “Coda: The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints”
 
Last edited:

Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
Last Week Tonight just did an episode on accountability in law enforcement. Doesn't have a ton we didn't already know but it's still an interesting watch.

 

thesecondbest

Just Kidding I'm First
Hope you have seen this... its pretty true. Now I think they should tazer and not shoot, but if the person doesnt comply then dont blame the policeman
 

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
Alternative to walking directly up to someone you suspect of having a gun, how about trying to get their attention from a distance? IDK there's hundreds of ways to go about not getting yourself hurt, shooting first without repercussions or value of the human life you're approaching is not one that should be considered by the people who are "laying their life on the line".
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
Alternative to walking directly up to someone you suspect of having a gun, how about trying to get their attention from a distance? IDK there's hundreds of ways to go about not getting yourself hurt, shooting first without repercussions or value of the human life you're approaching is not one that should be considered by the people who are "laying their life on the line".
Those guys were put into these situations the way the police wanted them to and with no prior instruction. I ran scenarios (and proctored exams), and I never met a trainee who hadn't spent months in a classroom. The first problem I saw was that they let the guy's hand leaves line-of-sight (going behind the car was him getting the gun). They also didn't use proper commands or command tone at all, which might not prevent use-of-force, but part of use-of-force training is ensuring that it's a last resort.

But this wasn't a training session at all, or at least I'd hope it's not. This was a farce. Scenario 1 is designed to teach these two men who know nothing (because they weren't trained) that they need to shoot or they will die. Scenario 2, which immediately follows them dying, is designed just to give them as outsiders pause when they consider criticizing cops, after all, they shot an unarmed man right??? Except most cops will never have an unarmed man walk toward them like that when their gun is drawn on them. That's practically a suicide-by-cop scenario. It's not impossible, but unrealistic if it's one of only 3 scenarios you run. And the third is just to show that things work when people comply. This is useless as a use-of-force training scenario. You have to learn how to obtain compliance, not just be given it or shoot.
 
The police are always going on about what a tough job they have, and fair enough they are risking their lives, but interestingly being a police officer isn't in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America.

Source: http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs-america/
#15 out of myriad thousands of jobs is still very high up on the list of dangerous positions, so that claim is clearly valid. Being a police officer is clearly not easy work; we're lucky that the fatality rate is as low as it is, especially considering how important a job it is they do.
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
#15 out of myriad thousands of jobs is still very high up on the list of dangerous positions, so that claim is clearly valid. Being a police officer is clearly not easy work; we're lucky that the fatality rate is as low as it is, especially considering how important a job it is they do.
Even now you're choosing to look at this in a vacuum. The death rate per 100,000 cops is 13.5 The death rate for literally everyone is 823. I did some math myself, and Heart Disease is 193, Cancer 186, (being a logger, fisher, pilot, or roofer is more likely to kill you after this point), chronic respiratory diseases 46, etc. The Flu, at 17, is more likely to kill you than being a cop. YOU are at a higher risk of killing yourself than a cop is of dying on the job.

You should look into micromorts. They are a unit measurement of associating each activity with a 1-in-a-million chance to kill you. Going to work as a cop is just another source of micromorts. Aside from the sources of micromorts that everyone lives with, there may be elements to your lifestyle that are more dangerous than being a cop. It all just adds up.

That list doesn't specify either, but it's not a number of cops killed due to altercations with dangerous people, either. A lot of cops who die on the job die in unrelated accidents. It's no surprise that the micromort value for police work is only slightly higher than for driving a car, as most cops will do a lot of that, and anecdotally, faster and more reckless than other people.
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
Even now you're choosing to look at this in a vacuum. The death rate per 100,000 cops is 13.5 The death rate for literally everyone is 823. I did some math myself, and Heart Disease is 193, Cancer 186, (being a logger, fisher, pilot, or roofer is more likely to kill you after this point), chronic respiratory diseases 46, etc. The Flu, at 17, is more likely to kill you than being a cop. YOU are at a higher risk of killing yourself than a cop is of dying on the job.
I feel like you're failing to control for a lot of things here. I'm not sure I understand you fully, but it appears youre saying that police officers have a way lower incidence of suicide, and various sicknesses? Or are you saying that the risk of being a police officer is additive to these other factors?
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
I feel like you're failing to control for a lot of things here. I'm not sure I understand you fully, but it appears youre saying that police officers have a way lower incidence of suicide, and various sicknesses? Or are you saying that the risk of being a police officer is additive to these other factors?
Additive
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
I see.

Anyways, the way I see it is that American police violence is a product of policies that departments have, that are ultimately necessary because of how many criminals in the country are armed with firearms. So many criminals have guns that to prevents officers from dying, they're trained to use deadly force at lower threshold of reasonable doubt than countries with a less armed population. This obviously leads to a lot of unjustified killings, but also a lot of justified ones too. Until there are a lot less guns, or a lot less crime, I don't think the rate of police violence in the USA can go down.
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
So many criminals have guns that to prevents officers from dying, they're trained to use deadly force at lower threshold of reasonable doubt than countries with a less armed population. This obviously leads to a lot of unjustified killings, but also a lot of justified ones too.
58 cops were killed by people in 2015. 1146 people were killed by cops in 2015. I don't know how many of those were justified. But I know that your logic can't merit more than a 1 to 1 ratio of people being killed so that cops might not be, much less almost 20 times as many citizens dying. And it's not as if any of the more dangerous jobs, for instance maintenance workers, get to have policies that endanger the lives of others just to keep them safe, much less killing other people. This whole line of thought also just really sweeps over the many instances where the threshold for reasonable doubt wasn't just low, but where it was non-existent, inconvenient, discouraged, overwritten by cruelty, and subject to wild shifts due to bias. It's the outliers that make us concerned with police brutality, and it seems clear that they stem from poor infrastructure and a lack of accountability that almost no police communities are making steps to correct, instead opting to act like they are somehow the collective victim (see why it's important to understand the actual statistics and not misuse them).
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
58 cops were killed by people in 2015. 1146 people were killed by cops in 2015. I don't know how many of those were justified. But I know that your logic can't merit more than a 1 to 1 ratio of people being killed so that cops might not be, much less almost 20 times as many citizens dying. And it's not as if any of the more dangerous jobs, for instance maintenance workers, get to have policies that endanger the lives of others just to keep them safe, much less killing other people. This whole line of thought also just really sweeps over the many instances where the threshold for reasonable doubt wasn't just low, but where it was non-existent, inconvenient, discouraged, overwritten by cruelty, and subject to wild shifts due to bias. It's the outliers that make us concerned with police brutality, and it seems clear that they stem from poor infrastructure and a lack of accountability that almost no police communities are making steps to correct, instead opting to act like they are somehow the collective victim (see why it's important to understand the actual statistics and not misuse them).
what do you think the "police deaths by civilians vs. civilian deaths by police" numbers would look like if police accountability was not completely broken?
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
what do you think the "police deaths by civilians vs. civilian deaths by police" numbers would look like if police accountability was not completely broken?
I can only link reports on the success of programs such as community policing (I believe there was another good one earlier in this thread, or in a similar thread). Community policing is proven time and time again to reduce crime. Reduce crime, make police feel safer, reduce fatality incidents between police and civilians. It should be a non-partisan blast as it reduces criminalization and is frankly, classic good old-boy policing. But criminalization is not something that the private prisons and their lobbyists want reduced.
 
'Policeman' or 'Policewoman' is a job. That's like saying 'please explain to me how bankers are good people'.

Obviously, we want our police to be fair, responsible, and just, but ultimately they're people - not necessarily the paragons of everything good about Western society that they're meant to be. Good cops exist, but so do bullies with badges, and so do people who're just doing what they're told regardless of whether it's right or not.

The question you should really be asking is, 'why aren't we doing a better job of filtering out assholes before they actually enter the police force?'
 

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
Exactly! If there were just a few less bad cops then we wouldn't have the entire police force attacking protesters with firehoses and concussion grenades!

Christ almighty.
 

shaian

you love to see it
is a Tutor Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
if you think complaining about shooting environmental protestors makes people "spoiled whiny little kids who grew up with no rules" then ur fucking nuts. the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental part of liberal western democracy and any sort of action taken to threaten or dissuade people from doing so deserves much more scrutiny than framing it as doing 1 or 2 things wrong.
 

atomicllamas

but then what's left of me?
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
FFS, people nowadays don't understand how important discipline is anymore?
Spoiled whiny little kids who grew up with no rules?
If you have 0 idea of what's happening in a thread can you go ahead and not respond, your uninformed comments are pointless, tangential, and distracting (which is why there are 2 pages in the election thread of you attempting to justify white supremacy in the election thread). The United States government is violating a treaty with a Native American tribe at the risk of poisoning their water supply (at least that's what the whites people argued that got the pipeline redirected so it wasn't through their town). The action of spraying protesters with water is illegal in Europe in the temperatures at which this occurred (10 degrees F below freezing), and hypothermia can be fatal. But yeah fuck the whiny rich kids protesting so that the us government doesn't illegally put the water supply of an entire group of people at risk after they've gone ahead and destroyed some of their sacred sites.

You'd benefit from thinking before you post, so maybe work on that.
 

Cresselia~~

Junichi Masuda likes this!!
If you have 0 idea of what's happening in a thread can you go ahead and not respond, your uninformed comments are pointless, tangential, and distracting (which is why there are 2 pages in the election thread of you attempting to justify white supremacy in the election thread). The United States government is violating a treaty with a Native American tribe at the risk of poisoning their water supply (at least that's what the whites people argued that got the pipeline redirected so it wasn't through their town). The action of spraying protesters with water is illegal in Europe in the temperatures at which this occurred (10 degrees F below freezing), and hypothermia can be fatal. But yeah fuck the whiny rich kids protesting so that the us government doesn't illegally put the water supply of an entire group of people at risk after they've gone ahead and destroyed some of their sacred sites.

You'd benefit from thinking before you post, so maybe work on that.
No, I'm responding to people who say all police are bad people, and questioning why the police exists and why the police needs to exist.

Police exists to maintain law and order, and discipline. That's what police were originated for.

I also originally said that "just because they have done 1 or 2 things wrong, doesn't make them bad people", which means I agree that spraying environmentalists with water is wrong.
I know exactly about this piece of news before coming to Smogon. And that wasn't what I was talking about.

You clearly aren't reading my intentions properly and you attack me because you thought I meant something else.

But fine, apparently, you think it's perfectly ok for people to say that all police are bad people, and that they don't need to exist, and for some reason, you don't think these comments are stupid and ignorant just because these comments are , at least look like they are on your side.
(Whilst my comments do not look like they are on your side, according to your comprehension.)


Tip: I never justified white supremacy. I'm just saying that these studies exist.

if you think complaining about shooting environmental protestors makes people "spoiled whiny little kids who grew up with no rules" then ur fucking nuts. the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental part of liberal western democracy and any sort of action taken to threaten or dissuade people from doing so deserves much more scrutiny than framing it as doing 1 or 2 things wrong.
No, please read carefully next time.
That clearly was not someone I'm responding to.

Tip: Don't just quote any one of my sentences, single that sentence out, and twist the meaning.
You should be old enough to know that a sentence' meaning varies compared to what other stuff is in the same passage.



But at least, thanks for telling me what you are all hating me for.
That at least gives me a chance to explain to you where your mistakes are.
 
Last edited:

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
But fine, apparently, you think it's perfectly ok for people to say that all police are bad people, and that they don't need to exist, and for some reason, you don't think these comments are stupid and ignorant just because these comments are , at least look like they are on your side.
ok, this is vital. WHO is saying that?
like point out to me one post where someone has called out the police wholesale without nuance/context, much less has declared in any shape/form/nuance/metaphor/metonymy/allegory that "they don't need to exist".

You can't make shit up to righteously oppose it. God.
 
Last edited:

Cresselia~~

Junichi Masuda likes this!!
ok, this is vital. WHO is saying that?
like point out to me one post where someone has called out the police wholesale without nuance/context. You can't make shit up to righteously oppose it.
TheValkyries was saying that, at least I think he meant that.
 

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
TheValkyries was saying that, at least I think he meant that.
Ok you "think". That's not encouraging given the confident tone of your intensely patronizing post and response thereto... but let's see. This is the only recent TV post I can see. Is he saying/implying/alluding to what you charged him of saying?

Exactly! If there were just a few less bad cops then we wouldn't have the entire police force attacking protesters with firehoses and concussion grenades!

Christ almighty.
No. he isn't. He's responding to this (below) post specifically. With a rhetorical device called sarcasm.

The question you should really be asking is, 'why aren't we doing a better job of filtering out assholes before they actually enter the police force?'
Which is planspeak translates into, "you cannot be naive enough to make it a case of a few bad apples, rather than systemic practices and biases which result in an uncomfortably high amount of police brutality, and that too v/s specifically protesters made up of minority groups".

What you still haven't shown me is the "stupid", "ignorant" comment which resembles: "it's perfectly ok for people to say that all police are bad people, and that they don't need to exist"

Your confident use of those strong adjectives is turning out to be quite ironic. Just take atomicllamas' advice. It's in good faith. Stop derailing the thread. And develop reading comprehension skills.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top