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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate No Donuts For You: The U.S. Police Brutality Thread

Discussion in 'Community' started by Outsourced, Sep 5, 2020.

  1. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    I think it's reflective of the extent that this has been normalized. And those terms have been set up by anyone that has set this debate up as "I bet that they wouldn't kill a white man". It stops being about the act being intrinsically wrong, and shifts it to just making sure they treated everyone equally bad. Also how there are people that seem genuinely upset every time the police *don't* use excessive force arresting someone white. At that point, it is no longer about preventing police violence, it's just about making sure it's uniform.

    It's the equivalent of deciding that COVID-19 is only bad because there are race and gender gaps in who's dying, and not that these are deaths that could be prevented in the first place.

    Yeah, the Canada numbers do highlight that as well, that while I'm using a national number there, it is black and indigenous Canadians being killed at rates higher than their share of population, and white and Asian Canadians being killed at rates lower than their share of population. Use of force statistics are going to be particularly hard to come by, though, given that the US doesn't even have actual statistics for killings by the police, there's just a lower bound based on what independent sites can find in media reports.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2020
  2. Point Given

    Point Given Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

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    Dec 12, 2006
    The old J-Rod special
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2020
  3. gezvader28

    gezvader28 Chosen One star 6

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    Mar 22, 2003
    Are there any statistics on police brutality ? Is it worse now than it was 10 , 20 years ago etc.?
     
  4. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

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    Jun 25, 2002
    I watched an excellent Profs and Pints lecture last night on the "defund the police" movement. The lecturer was Prof. Alex S. Vitale, who has studied the subject of policing from a sociological perspective for 30 years. You can watch a recording for free here: Pints and Profs: On Defunding The Police. The lecture is about an hour and there is approximately 30-45 minutes afterward of Dr. Vitale answering questions.

    Vitale basically summed up his lecture at the end during a Q & A session: "If you don't want violence and racism involved, don't call the police."

    A lot of us have already arrived at that conclusion, but the lecture covers the process of how things got to be the way they are, and should give you ammunition for arguing with people who think that the entire maintenance of civilization is, and should be, placed on the backs of "violence workers," as Vitale calls them.

    I would have liked there to be more examples of essential social services successfully being taken over by non-police organizations, but Vitale did mention Portugal's decriminalization of drugs and a project in Olympia, WA, where unarmed "crisis responders" answer some 911 calls instead of police officers.

    Vitale also has a couple of books out, but only one, The End of Policing, is currently in stock at Amazon. (I suspect the other is out of print, as happens often with more academic titles.) I'm going to check "End of Policing" out to see if it has more of a vision for what the world could look like in the future. I already get that our current system is untenable. I'd like more of a sense of what we can do about it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2020
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  5. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    In a complete sense? I don't think so, as there is no real effort made by any government component to get this information on a widespread nature.

    https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ does have data from 2013 for specifically instances of deaths, which shows that in their data set, the number of people killed has increased, though the portion that are black has decreased. There's still concerns with completeness, though. It's something that really needs mandatory reporting to a government agency that provides statistics for both fatalities and broader use of force.
     
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  6. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    Adding a story that, while old, I never heard about at the time. Covered by the Intercept, it's an in-depth look into an incident where an officer actually did get 4 years jail time.

    Background to the event, this teen, Bryce Masters had been searched by police, and when his parents found out, thought what happened was an illegal search as there was no probable cause for it. The reason the parents thought that? His dad's a police officer in the same department. They'd called to complain about this (and say they were considering a formal complaint), and so Masters started to get a lot more interaction with the same two cops that searched him in the first place.

    On the day in question, one of the two cops pull Masters over with questionable justification. Teen rolls window partway down, and doesn't roll it down further, so the cop goes around to the driver's side, opens it, and tells him to go out. Masters asks if he's under arrest, repeatedly, and the cop won't answer at first. Finally he says yes, but won't say why he's under arrest. Masters isn't getting out of the car, and the officer isn't saying why he's under arrest, and so the cop uses a taser on Masters for 23 seconds, stopping his heart. Masters is able to stumble out of the car to the ground, and then is barely responsive. So the officer tells him to get up, and he doesn't. So he picks Masters up, carries him over toward the curb, then throws Masters to the ground, meaning his head hits the ground hard as he's not able to do do anything to catch himself. It's not until a second officer shows up and notices that Masters is turning blue that there seems to be any acknowledgement that something is seriously wrong. Indeed, it's not the first time that police have basically taunted someone who was clinically dead.

    There's a couple points that make this particular account rather noteworthy. The first is that those 4 years didn't come from the excessive taser use or anything that the officer did up through that. It was because of the way he dropped Masters at the very end of the incident. It gives an idea of how much will get tolerated as acceptable even in an overall incident that leads to charges. There's a whole lot that falls into the range of things that shouldn't have occurred because the cop wanted to throw his weight around.
    The second is the perspective from the father about how inadequately police are trained regarding tasers, and specific discussion of how many cops have been trained, and still believe, that tasers can't kill. They just blame the deaths on 'excited delirium', which is recognized by the American College of Emergency Physicians, but not by the WHO, APA, or AMA, and is not included in DSM-V or ICD. If the term looks familiar, it's most recently come up regarding the death of Daniel Prude, where it's getting blamed as a contributing factor in his death. Part of this is why I find the "just use a taser" rhetoric concerning. There's very real risks of that, a significant portion of police do not know that or don't care, and they shouldn't be that cavalier about less-lethal force either.

    Finally, because the father is a cop, he pinpoints exactly how the official story changes as the officer that nearly killed his son is trying to find an angle that he can justify what he's already done. Also a practice that has been seen many times in other incidents, like the officer that killed Eric Garner.

    And of course, again we see that there are very few that are 'immune' to being at risk of this sort of treatment, and additional cops would go on to taunt or harass Masters after this incident because so many of the cops easily view most other people as 'the enemy'.
     
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  7. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

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    Jul 19, 1999
    When you get right down to it, there is no form of force that is guaranteed to not be lethal. A single shove or punch in just the right place can be lethal.
     
  8. Thena

    Thena Chosen One star 7

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    May 10, 2001
    This seems pertinent to the discussion and hasn't been mentioned specifically yet.

    Spoiler-tagging for potentially triggering material regarding invasive police searches.

     
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  9. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

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    Aug 16, 2002
    For people who want to avoid Amazon it's also available on the publisher's website. $3 for the ebook alone and $10.77 for the paperback and ebook.
     
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  10. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

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    Apr 10, 2017
  11. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

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    Jan 5, 2011
    Zero tolerance, even when it doesn’t make any sense.
     
  12. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

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    Mar 4, 2011
    Either toy manufacturers need to stop selling toy guns, or police (and in this case, school officials) need to stop being so chicken-**** as to think a toy gun is a threat. The ****ing gun was neon and had “zombie hunter” on it. This is ridiculous.
     
  13. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

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    Aug 16, 2002
    I think the pandemic is exposing just how much the education system is about controlling students-- particularly black and brown students-- and teaching them to be obedient to and fearful of arbitrary authority. I recently saw list of rules going around that requires the kids to wear shoes in their own homes when you can't even see their feet.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2020
  14. Glitterstimm

    Glitterstimm Force Ghost star 6

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    Dec 30, 2017
    Take away cops' guns, and you won't have to worry about cowards getting badges
     
  15. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

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    Jun 25, 2002
    I saw that too. That’s the kind of thing that would really piss me off as a parent. So long as a kid’s not naked or wearing a shirt that says “KIL ALL TEECHURZ, LOL,” they’re fine. The district people can set a dress code for inside the school building, not inside my house.

    As for people who call police on a Black child, particularly if the word “gun” is involved, they need to be charged with reckless endangerment, at the very least. I could say more about that, but I don’t want cops called to my house either.
     
  16. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    Teachers need to be given gun education. Really, in the US, schools should have gun education the same way that there's sex education.

    (that the mere existence of a gun apparently triggered a 'welfare check' is absurd)
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2020
  17. Healer_Leona

    Healer_Leona Squirrel Wrangler of Fun & Games star 9 Staff Member Manager

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    Jul 7, 2000
    Not a problem for white boys playing with toy guns...
     
  18. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

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    Mar 4, 2011
    Not at all. I never worried about my kids playing with TCW blasters when they were kids, or looking at the realistic looking toy guns in Cracker Barrel. And now I don’t worry about them walking around my neighborhood wearing a hoodie with the hood up.

    I feel bad for Black and Brown parents.
     
  19. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    I am in no way surprised that some people think when a white boy is shot by police because a kid that doesn't have a firearm is reported as a man with a gun and the police show up, that that kid deserved it.

    (edit: and this is to say nothing of zero tolerance meaning kids get in major trouble for guns that are even more unquestionably toy guns)
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2020
  20. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

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    Apr 10, 2017
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  21. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

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    Aug 16, 2002
    Two Los Angeles Sheriff's deputies were shot in Compton and are in critical condition.

    For those who may be unaware, the L.A. Sheriffs in Compton have been outed by multiple whistleblowers as being controlled by "the Executioners," a white/male supremacist gang who require initiates to kill people.

    This is why there are no good cops-- one reason anyway. They all quit or are pushed out.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2020
  22. Thena

    Thena Chosen One star 7

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    May 10, 2001
    Breaking news out of Rochester...
    ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren fired the police chief and suspended her top lawyer and communications director Monday in the continuing upheaval over the suffocation death of Daniel Prude.

    Chief Le’Ron Singletary announced his retirement last week as part of a major shakeup of the city’s police leadership but said he would stay on through the end of the month.
     
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  23. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

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    Apr 10, 2017
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2020
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  24. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    This might be a little too edgy for public, but if people who are being arrested need to do all this just so that a cop feels safe, then simply put police lives aren't worth this.
     
  25. Lowbacca_1977

    Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One star 7

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    Jun 28, 2006
    In my view, there is zero justification for the police to have dogs, and I blame Americans love of dogs (and police) in tolerating this as much as they do. Drug dogs have been shown to often just be responding to their handlers' biases and so I think there's no strong case to be made that those should be used by police: link

    Beyond that though is this pattern of using the dogs as weapons. If police had a gun that would often shoot people even if they didn't pull the trigger, there'd be a clear problem with that. But dogs are able to act independently and there isn't that level of control. A dog isn't capable of showing restraint, and a dog once released isn't necessarily going to be easily stopped. The use of dogs to go after suspects should be entirely banned, and any officer that allows or orders a state-owned dog to bite someone should face weapons charges that will bar them from owning weapons, or dogs, in the future, or living in a house that has them.

    The incident that this most recent one reminded me of was the 2014 killing of James Boyd, where police eventually were able to deescalate a tense situation, and as it was deescalating, they took the opportunity to fire a flashbang and release the dog on Boyd, and then justified Boyd's reaction to this to shoot him in the back. And I'm sure that's just the one other incident like this that led to a death that I've happened to see the video of, not the lone time that this has happened with fatal consequences.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020