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I was wrong. Cops are racist!

some statements I think we can all agree on:

1) racist cops exist

2) police using unjustified excessive force (i.e. resorting to lethal force even in situations where there is no physical threat) is way too frequent in this country

3) police using unjustified excessive force and getting away with it is wrong and should never happen

4) police lie to protect themselves as often as anyone else, which is pretty damn often

I think this one should also be obvious and agreed on, but I'm thinking people may disagree:

5) but for the widespread possession of camera phones, some of the recent police killings would have gone unreported or been buried by friendly testimony from other cops and covered up, because indeed, thats what started happening in each case before video was released
 
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two statements I think we can all agree on:

1) racist cops exist

2) police using unjustified excessive force (i.e. resorting to lethal force even in situations where there is no physical threat) is way too frequent in this country

3) police using unjustified excessive force and getting away with it is wrong and should never happen

4) police lie to protect themselves as often as anyone else, which is pretty damn often

I think this one should also be obvious and agreed on, but I'm thinking people may disagree:

4) but for the widespread possession of camera phones, some of the recent police killings would have gone unreported or been buried by friendly testimony from other cops and covered up, because indeed, thats what started happening in each case before video was released.

rational people would conclude therefore that the police accounts in other killings should be considered highly suspect.

Cops are people too. Who would have guessed? "Get on the ground, or else!"
 
Cops are people too. Who would have guessed? "Get on the ground, or else!"

cops are entrusted with the right to use violence, including lethal violence, to enforce the laws of the state. they should be held to a higher standard of conduct to prevent the abuse of this right.

and police testimony is often given more creedence by judges and juries. you never want to be in a situation where it's your word against a cop's.

but it does seem though that "everyone makes mistakes" is all too frequently trotted out as an excuse or one of the excuses when we have a unarmed guy attempting to surrender or flee from a misdemeanor shot and killed.

they're regular humans when it suits them.
 
Tasers don't always work. That pedophile in Minnesota was tased twice and he was still fighting back before he was shot.

Just for the record, the pedophile was the Baton Rouge guy, Alton Sterling.

Ironically, he is a distant cousin of the racist former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling.
 
3) police using unjustified excessive force and getting away with it is wrong and should never happen

Picking apart this statement, expanding on it, not disagreeing with it, you can't reasonably expect excessive force to never happen, it's the getting away with it part that's we can work to prevent. But building a system that addresses excessive force fairly is difficult. You can envision one officer with an exemplary career misreading a situation a making a mistake on one bad day or you could have an asshole with issues that wields power irresponsibly or you could imagine a a racist asshole that's excessive with people he's biased against. It's tough to stop the last two types before they victimize multiple people while only reprimanding the first guy.
 
Shoot a man in the leg with hostile intentions and he can still shoot back.


If you want to get technical a man with hostile intentions can still shoot back even if you shoot him in center mass.

And using a gun because the Taser failed is not a justifiable action either, shooting someone (even justifiably) should always be a LAST resort.
 
a man shot in center mass may shoot back but he is less likely to because he's more likely to be dead or incapacitated.

what are cops supposed to do when the taser fails? use their fists against a guy barely phased by 50,000 volts of electricity? wrestle the guy, try to knock him out with a few punches and risk being seriously injured, crippled or killed? Lethal force should be a last resort, after the tazer if they're still not compliant and threatening, you're pretty much there.

when people pose arguments like this I wonder if they think actually being a cop is like playing cops and robbers as a kid or watching CHiPs, where the bad guys give up as soon as they're cornered by a cop in uniform..
 
some statements I think we can all agree on:

1) racist cops exist

2) police using unjustified excessive force (i.e. resorting to lethal force even in situations where there is no physical threat) is way too frequent in this country

3) police using unjustified excessive force and getting away with it is wrong and should never happen

4) police lie to protect themselves as often as anyone else, which is pretty damn often

I think this one should also be obvious and agreed on, but I'm thinking people may disagree:

5) but for the widespread possession of camera phones, some of the recent police killings would have gone unreported or been buried by friendly testimony from other cops and covered up, because indeed, thats what started happening in each case before video was released

somewhat agree.

1) a lot more aren't that are and there is no evidence to support systemic institutionalized racism among police.

2) data would suggest otherwise. Hunches about cover ups and under reporting are worthless.

3) I think that's a reasonable statement anyone would agree with - that they shouldn't get away with it, but as Gulo says, it's going to happen.

4) They probably don't lie to protect themselves as often as criminals do so in the "cops word against criminals" the cops word should probably be trusted more often.

5) Unclear at best. To say that the scumbag cop in South Carolina would have gotten away with it with just eye witness testimony corroborating physical evidence of him being shot in the back at a distance instead of cell phone video is a stretch. Cops charged and convicted on witness testimony without video evidence could also have been wrongly convicted just as innocent suspects sometimes are. Video camera evidence can exonerate cops, like it seems to in the Fresno case. To say it's what happened in each case before video is a flat out lie. I don't recall any "friendly" testimony in the South Carolina case - just the crooked cop's lies. Same with Louisianna and Minneapolis. Isn't it true that in both those cases there isn't video evidence until after the shootings? I know you have a preconstructed narrative for how black people end up getting shot by cops but that's just speculation of a cop hater.
 
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a man shot in center mass may shoot back but he is less likely to because he's more likely to be dead or incapacitated.

what are cops supposed to do when the taser fails? use their fists against a guy barely phased by 50,000 volts of electricity? wrestle the guy, try to knock him out with a few punches and risk being seriously injured, crippled or killed? Lethal force should be a last resort, after the tazer if they're still not compliant and threatening, you're pretty much there.

when people pose arguments like this I wonder if they think actually being a cop is like playing cops and robbers as a kid or watching CHiPs, where the bad guys give up as soon as they're cornered by a cop in uniform..



What I said about the center mass was to nullify the argument that shooting someone, but not in the leg changes any certainty of outcomes. It does not. Your response about them not likely being able to shoot back is true, it's also true for someone shot in the leg. Pistols are hard to shoot accurately under normal circumstances, and the difficulty goes up exponentially when you factor in the pain and loss of the use of their leg.
 
I don't think they get taught to shoot in the leg.

Since we're not police and they have like a half a second to make a decision.. If they're running away a leg shot seems appropriate. But coming at ya/facing you, shoot to stop.
 
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Before anyone gets further confused, I'm not, and never was, saying they should shoot in the leg(s).
 
What I said about the center mass was to nullify the argument that shooting someone, but not in the leg changes any certainty of outcomes. It does not. Your response about them not likely being able to shoot back is true, it's also true for someone shot in the leg. Pistols are hard to shoot accurately under normal circumstances, and the difficulty goes up exponentially when you factor in the pain and loss of the use of their leg.

My point is they're not the same pain and don't have the same debilitating power - they're not even close to the same thing. It may not change the certainty of an outcome but it certainly has a higher probability of achieving the outcome you want. The probability that someone shot in the leg can continue to engage in a gun fight is much, much greater than someone shot in a vital organ - just like the probability of killing someone is greater when shot in the chest or head vs a leg. Sure, you can shoot someone in the chest and not hit a vital organ and you can shoot someone in the leg, hit a main artery and they can bleed out quickly, but your odds of ending the fight and neutralizing the threat are far greater going shooting them in critical mass vs. the leg. If shooting someone in the leg was as certain an outcome, cops would be trained to always shoot people in the legs.
 
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There's no magic way to have clairvoyant knowledge of the appropriate amount of force before an interaction. Police have to react and guns kill quickly, so I believe it's impossible to have a process that isn't excessively forceful most of the time without exposing police to some amount of risk. I was just looking at comparing the numbers of police killed to people killed by police. There's no line in the sand, but I think the ratio is around 7:1. My gut says that's not indicative of a police force that's trigger happy.

That doesn't mean there isn't racial bias or that there are problems with a system that sometimes protects bad cops. But overall, 7:1 doesn't seem like excessive prioritizing of making sure police get home as some suggest.
 
There's no magic way to have clairvoyant knowledge of the appropriate amount of force before an interaction. Police have to react and guns kill quickly, so I believe it's impossible to have a process that isn't excessively forceful most of the time without exposing police to some amount of risk. I was just looking at comparing the numbers of police killed to people killed by police. There's no line in the sand, but I think the ratio is around 7:1. My gut says that's not indicative of a police force that's trigger happy.

That doesn't mean there isn't racial bias or that there are problems with a system that sometimes protects bad cops. But overall, 7:1 doesn't seem like excessive prioritizing of making sure police get home as some suggest.

I don't think that ratio even matters as it doesn't provide meaningful information - I'd feel the same if it was 100:1 or 1000:1. Looking at the number of lethal encounters as a percentage of total police interactions would be more meaningful.
 
I don't think that ratio even matters as it doesn't provide meaningful information - I'd feel the same if it was 100:1 or 1000:1. Looking at the number of lethal encounters as a percentage of total police interactions would be more meaningful.

The other stat may be more meaningful, but I think if it was 1:1 or 2:1, it would be safe to say we're not doing enough to protect police and 7:1 is more to that side of things relative to 100 or 1000:1.
 
The other stat may be more meaningful, but I think if it was 1:1 or 2:1, it would be safe to say we're not doing enough to protect police and 7:1 is more to that side of things relative to 100 or 1000:1.

I see your point and I agree if the ratio were closer to 1:1, it would be indicative of an issue - i wasn't thinking about it like that since we were mostly talking about the number of civilian deaths.
 
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