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

Indeed.

 

Oh good, that means they're more protected than they otherwise would have been when they do nothing of use in a crisis.

 

Cracked and Radiolab did stuff on that

Radiolab: No Special Duty

 

Yup, but it hasn't stopped people that do respond to those that have safety concerns for themselves with "that's a job for the police" or some variant. Despite the track record of inaction backed by an appeals court.

A huge political issue could be resolved if we had some sort of organization that was designed to protect people when they were facing threats rather than people needing to be able to handle those situations on their own. But the US has no such organization.

 

Of course they did. That police department is terrified. They’ll all be out of jobs soon.

The next step from their superiors is to dissolve the police department and expand a neighboring community police department to cover their territory or have state police patrol their area.

That’s not what the police department wants but for politicians and other law enforcement they’ve become a liability. So just dissolve them and be done with it.

Then anytime a ‘liberal’ reporter asks about the police response the answer is ‘we dissolved that police department that problem is solved.’ It’s not but its an easy out answer that the person being asked the question can use to shut down that line of questioning with.

 

Unfortunately, the Police Chief is now on the City Council, so they have even more inside protection from town government now. Despite the media spot light and investigation, I bet nothing happens. At all.

 

There are other small police departments that came under scrutiny for wrongfully killing a person or mishandling a criss situation that were then quietly disbanded. That’s why I think it could also happen here.

 

Given that the article says the guy swam 30 to 40 yards, and that the transcripts say the officers were getting a boat...... what exactly is the thing expected of the cops on this one? You're not handing him a stick if the distance swum is on the order of many yards, so it's not clear from that article what, outside the getting of something like a boat to get there safely, they *were* supposed to do. They mishandled it with the wife, absolutely, but I don't see what extra 'help' was expected there.

 

I don't particularly blame the cops here, as the guy was a total idiot who tried to escape by jumping in a lake despite apparently not being able to swim, but the obvious thing the cops could have done was, you know, jump in, swim to him, and help him reach safety. Assuming at least one of the three cops knew how to swim.

 

The result of someone who knows how to swim, but not how to rescue a drowning person, going in after someone usually isn't "rescuing someone" it's "two people drowning instead of one". I'm highly doubtful the cops are actually equipped with the stuff to do a water rescue themselves.

Take it away, Red Cross:

 

It’s further evidence that Scalia was a nutcase. Alito is no different. He thinks people should openly carry guns on the subway.

A friend of mine posted on FB about how cashiers and servers don’t attack rude customers. So, if they can handle attitudes, why can’t the police?

 

I think the attitude is what is problematic here. "What's your plan now?" The person said they were in distress and were drowning. That should have been taken seriously, whereas the recorded comments seem dismissive at best and mocking at worst. When George Floyd said he couldn't breathe, there was also a dismissive attitude. You are right that there may not have been a way to save the person. But there are much better ways to be a public servant and a human being. They would not have lost one iota of investigatory capacity or prestige or anything by making some acknowledgement that the person was actually in danger. Especially when it seems there was only a concession about trying to get a boat after the wife started to arguing about it--and they threatened her with detainment for making said argument.

 

30 to 40 yards is a long way to throw something. Getting a boat seems like the best option for the police.

What this guy did is the slow motion equivalent of trying to escape the police by jumping onto power lines.

 

What are they going to do, pelt him with tear gas canisters? (now that I write that, I'm slightly surprised they didn't). We can tell the cops don't have life buoys issued to them because I've never seen the cops beat a peaceful protester over the head with a buoy.


As the article itself had as a statement: "Tempe police have no training or equipment specifically for water rescues", and given that they don't bother to train cops generally, I'm hardly surprised by that. They're poorly trained as cops, they're even less trained when it comes to dealing with other things. Now, firefighters.... they might've had a chance here to do something competently.

Well the exact thing cited was not that they were dismissive jerks about the whole thing, it was explicitly that they 'let' him drown. It was clear what the objection was about.

 

Sure. And if we're being frank, if people had better judgment, many of them would never end up in situations where the police were pursuing them in the first place. But their errors don't void them of humanity, nor give the police license to belittle the life-threatening situations the people under pursuit find themselves in.

I never took you as asking for an article summary. I thought you were posing a general question about what we would have liked to have seen done differently in that situation. I gave the answer that was in my heart; it was based on what I read but not a direct regurgitation of it.

Though for what it's worth, I think it would have been much harder to consider them as having "let" him perish if they had not been so baroque in their demonstrations of disregard. Do you really think we would have gotten the same article if the police had responded "Hang on! We're trying to get to you" or radioed frantically for distress or even just tried to console the wife from the beginning? They mocked the guy and threatened to detain his wife. People are acting like they were callous because they were callous.

You've talked a couple times about what police are "trained" to do. I'm pretty sure they weren't trained to know with certainty that someone is lying. I'm also pretty sure that the evidence around "lie detection" is in many cases pretty crappy anyway. So maybe they should stop acting like they know when human beings that are actually dying are instead just trying to put on a show.

 

Something suspicious is happening. The changing timeline of events. Odd statements and contradictions. Did the Uvalde police make a mistake they want to hide? Were they just unable to take action?