Minneapolis Cops Who Watched Officer Derek Chauvin Kill George Floyd Convicted On Federal Charges
from the more-of-this-please dept
It’s not often you see a cop face criminal charges for injuring or killing someone they’re attempting to arrest. It’s even rarer still to see a cop convicted. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is a unicorn. He knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, choking the life out of the unarmed black man, who was suspected of nothing else than passing a bogus $20 bill at a local store. He did this for three minutes after another police officer told Chauvin he couldn’t detect a pulse.
Chauvin’s violence provoked protests around the nation targeting routine police violence that has gone unaddressed pretty much since law enforcement organizations were formed in the 1800s primarily to hunt down escaped slaves.
For this, Chauvin was convicted of murder and handed a twenty-two year sentence by a Minnesota judge who noted the officer’s actions abused his position of authority and were deployed with “particular cruelty.”
But what about the other officers present during Chauvin’s cruel and abusive display of force? Well, we have more unicorns to add to the list of anomalies. The three officers who watched and assisted Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd have all been convicted on federal charges.
Three former Minneapolis police officers were found guilty on Thursday of violating the civil rights of George Floyd, the Black man whose death at the hands of police in 2020 spurred protests against systemic racism around the world.
The former officers, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, all were convicted of depriving Floyd of his civil rights while acting under government authority when they failed to give him medical aid. Kueng and Thao, additionally, were convicted of not intervening to stop their fellow officer Derek Chauvin from using excessive force.
Some justice finally. I mean, at least up until the appeals, during which anything could happen. The NBC News report notes each conviction contains the possibility of a life sentence but also points out sentences this lengthy are unlikely,
But, hey, we have the convictions! This is a good thing and will hopefully start moving towards being the new normal, rather than something that only happens when an entire nation starts burning following a killing of an unarmed black person by police officers. And these officers are still facing state charges for aiding and abetting the murder of George Floyd, which means these might not be the only convictions they’ll obtain for standing idly by while one of their own took the life of a Minneapolis resident.
If anything has the potential to change the law enforcement attitude that the people they serve are expendable, it’s convictions on serious criminal charges that will force them to rub elbows with people they’ve always considered to be less than human.
The path to these convictions ran through some truly gobsmacking defenses deployed by the accused officers. Officer Tou Thao actually claimed he didn’t believe George Floyd was being killed by Officer Derek Chauvin because other officers on the scene didn’t express any concern for Floyd’s wellbeing while Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine uninterrupted minutes.
Thao testified that he never saw the officers reposition Floyd or begin rendering medical aid.
Asked by his attorney Robert Paule if he found their lack of medical intervention “significant,” Thao said this shaped his view that Floyd wasn’t in any medical danger because of department policy that requires officers to begin CPR when someone in their custody or care doesn’t have a pulse.
“If they are not doing CPR, then I assume he’s still breathing and fine,” Thao said. “It indicated that Mr. Floyd was not in cardiac arrest.”
Ah, the elliptical defense. Thao assumed Floyd wasn’t in medical distress because no officer had acted on Floyd’s repeated statement that he couldn’t breathe. Well done, Thao. Please remember that defense when your fellow prisoners deliver a savage beating and the guards claim they didn’t realize you were being injured because no other guard had attempted to determine whether you were in “medical danger.”
I am not here to praise the carceral state. I am only here to observe how rare it is for the justice system to deliver something approaching justice when it’s cops accused of criminal acts. And I’m also here to note with more than a little enjoyable schadenfreude that the cheerily dismissive platitudes offered by law enforcement officers (i.e., “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,” etc.) now apply to some of their own. Let’s hope these unplanned field trips to the dehumanizing hellholes we ridiculously refer to as “correction facilities” will educate the cops that happen to pass through him and serve as a serious deterrent against future atrocities committed by officers.
Filed Under: derek chauvin, george floyd, j. alexander kueng, police brutality, thomas lane, tou thao
Comments on “Minneapolis Cops Who Watched Officer Derek Chauvin Kill George Floyd Convicted On Federal Charges”
‘I didn’t think the victim needed help because if the cop kneeling on his neck thought he was unable to breathe he would have been performing CPR instead of murdering the guy’ strikes me as the kind of line you come up with when even you realize you have no valid excuse for standing by while someone was murdered in front of you.
Nice to see the judge got it right this time, hopefully any future appeals will likewise tell them that the only appropriate place for them is in a cell where they can’t hurt those around them.
Yes, more of this. Much more.
This ^. And not only for cops, but for prosecutors, judges, and the assortment of other politicians, bureaucrats, and government functionaries who abuse their positions of power and authority to violate the rights of the citizenry.
Where is the line between justified action and unjust interference?
The song makes a good point about Bystander Apathy or the potential for it. Initial reports from the New York Times about the murder, which prompted the song, were found untrue.
So… where is the line?
At what point do you – fellow police officer or common citizen – choose to actively intervene? What information do you have to have, to make that decision?
Prior to this set of convictions, to err on the side of not intervening was far and away the most prudent option. And for citizens, it still is. Even if you are right, interfering with an arrest will get you arrested … and you might not even save the person on whose behalf you acted.
Floyd was an easy case: several minutes in, one of the officers couldn’t find a pulse. There was a lack of resistance even before that.
But what about all the other cases? Think of all the ways a police encounter can go wrong, for the officer or for the detainee. No, you aren’t inventive enough. All those ways happen regularly.
That’s better. (Though the Duct Tape, the cat, and the jingly bell thing only happened that once, and the cat wasn’t arrested.) Now, remembering that if you guess wrong, you’re going to be fired and/or charged.
Where is that line?
These convictions are a good step towards narrowing that line. It doesn’t have to be a bright line. But it only does us good if the line is narrower than just “we know it when we see it”.
Re:
The line is already brightly defined for cops, which is when ever force is be applied to someone who is complying or no longer resisting. When the force being applied is greater than reasonably necessary to gain compliance- like the cops breaking and dislocating the arm of a 90lb grandma who was confused about what was happening. They have policies and regardless of their amnesia of convenience, they know that shit
Not long ago an officer in FL stepped up to a higher ranking cop to prevent him from unnecessarily escalating a situation, and that shithead tyrant grabbed her by the throat and shoved her back- other cops on the scene should have jumped in and busted him in the head with those night sticks they love so much, that’s what they would have done if it was the suspect that had done attacked her like that. But there is an example of a cop knowing where that line was before someone in custody got hurt, and the only danger was the meat head cop aggressive reaction.
Honestly, I’m not sure there are any cases documented anywhere that a private citizen or another cop intervened and unintentionally made the situation worse.
People should keep doing what they have been doing: recording, speak up, call attention to the situation to bring more witnesses, de-escalate if you can, offer assistance when qualified to do so, call 911 for paramedics and more cops. No need for a bright line, you do these things based on your personal moral values.
Re: Yeah, here's the problem with that narrative...
…it’s already solved. When you say;
“These convictions are a good step towards narrowing that line. It doesn’t have to be a bright line. But it only does us good if the line is narrower than just “we know it when we see it”.”
…you aren’t taking into account that in the entire OECD law enforcement has mapped that line out and nailed down very specific and generally applicable guidelines on how to do what in which situation.
There is exactly one nation in which a police officer would be in doubt on how to react in given situations. The US. For everyone else there’s an actual playbook which every officer will have studied, been quizzed on, and applied in practice.
Your point certainly stands…but only in that one nation whose law enforcement is still in the pre-Peele era of the 18th century.
I didn't realise
“Multiple people were telling me that he was dying or dead. How could I possibly have known?”
Perjury?
Over and above the violence and death handed out by cops which is obviously horrible is why are they never charged when they lie in court.
There have been times where a cop will testify in a case and then we see video proof that they lied there ass off.
Nothing happens to the cops other than losing the case.
Yet prosecution against non-cops for perjury happens on a regular basis.
I can understand if it is a he said she said situation as the cops are going to win them 99% of the time. However if there is clear video proof that the cop committed perjury they should be charged every single time.
And they are surprised when so many people do not trust cops and the justice system.
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“Enjoyable schadenfreude”
I’m responding to this article not to defend the actions of the officers but to counter the author’s “enjoyable schadenfreude”.
I was very proud of my son when he became a police officer. Very proud when he married my daughter-in-law, also a police officer. Very proud of my daughter and her husband, also in law enforcement. That was over 20 years ago. Today, no one in their right mind should want to be a police officer. As one officer put it, “one bullet away from death and one mistake away from prison”. My daughter-in-law has retired, my son has transferred from patrol and everywhere officers are exiting. Police departments rely on the idealism and morale of its members to protect the public and put themselves in harm’s way. That has been shattered not only by cries of racism but also the decriminalization of crime. As my son put it, “I feel like a snake wrangler. Every day I go out and get the snakes off the streets and put them in a bag and every night they let them go. Some of those snakes are garden snakes, some are rattlers, and some are cobras. Sooner or later, I’m going to get bit.”
Even the most idealistic candidates who might apply will have families or spouses that will try to talk them out of or demand they not apply to be police officers. Hiring and retention bonuses will only retain the money motivated and true public servants will be few and far between. Police are no longer doing proactive policing which means more guns on the streets, more shootings, more murders, and a much more dangerous situation for the police. Look for longer response times, tunnel vision and inaction as officers necessarily become more protective of themselves and less of the public.
While I wish no harm to the author, Karma will demand that at some point his “enjoyable schadenfreude” directed at the police will bite him in the ass.
Re:
That was quite a screed, and somehow completely avoided even mentioning all the murdering, raping, assaulting, thieving, bullying, lying, psychopathic, sadistic cops, many of whom have been documented on this very site!
And “proactive policing,” besides being blatantly unconstitutional, is just plain wrong.
Re: Re:
Ah but you see those are just ‘a few bad apples’ that will be thrown out of the barrel any day now by the majority of cops who are total paragons of justice and would never condone that sort of behavior either actively or by looking the other way.
Re: Re:
As I understand them, “proactive policing” isn’t the same as “predictive policing”.
If done right, it’s about connecting with communities, encouraging communication, building trust and respect, discouraging crime rather than punishing it. These are perfectly constitutional and are positive in the long term.
Predictive policing is arresting or harassing “potential” criminals before they commit crimes, based on bias, statistics and algorithms which are all flawed and, even in the best of cases, cannot determine if a specific individual is going to commit a crime. This is indeed blatantly unconstitutional.
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These are things that can be done by anybody, and probably should be done by lots of people. It does not require armed police to accomplish those goals, and, in fact, armed police are probably among those least likely to succeed in accomplishing those objectives, even if they tried to do so. These are not pictures of people who are likely to connect with communities, encourage communication, or build trust.
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s true that everyone can and should do these things.
But it’s particularly important for the police. They must stay connected to their communities, otherwise they end up adopting an “us versus them” mentality, with all the problems it triggers. They’re not part of the community, so they are outsiders, and in many cases they see themselves as “above” the community they police because of the power and authority they’ve been granted.
For some people, it’s just a matter of quality of life.
For the police, it’s a literal matter of life and death. (Mostly other people’s life and death, but still.)
Re: Re: Re:3
The police deal with that same 2% of the population that makes everyone else’s lives miserable, and they do it day after day. The “us versus them” is the 98% of the population (which the police are a part of) vs that 2% creating havoc. If people believe they can change that 2% by other means than the police, by all means fund that.
Re: Re: Re:4
First, you seem to encourage predictive policing rather than proactive policing, by the definitions I gave above. If I understand that right, I disagree with you whole-heartedly. You won’t prevent crime by harassing, arresting… or even killing… random people because cops can’t be bothered to look for actual criminals. Due process exists for a reason. If you don’t understand why, you might need several lessons in history.
Second, cops interact with tons of law-abiding people, not just the “2% that make everyone’s lives miserable”. But when they are disconnected from the community, when they are in “us vs them” mode, they will treat everyone, including innocents, like criminals.
Because they are outsiders, because they are “the law”, because the normal citizens are barely human in their view, because they are only trained to wield a hammer…
You get the picture. They are acting towards normal people in the same way they are trained to act towards hardened criminals. And the way they are trained to handle hardened criminals is already wrong, which compounds issues.
Then, there are external factors which indirectly cause more harm, such as the gun entitlement culture. US cops live and work in a country where everyone and their dog is allowed to own and carry a gun (with minor regulations in some states, which often have loopholes). So, they are always “in fear for their lives”, which justifies just about any abuse of force on their part. Amusingly enough, this “fear” excuse is applied very inconsistently, where an unarmed black men who is not resisting is more “frightening” than a white man actually shooting at them. (YMMV, but that seems to be the prominent pattern.)
So, let’s stop funding crazy trigger-happy power-tripping nutjobs invested with near total legal immunity. And please, let’s stop giving them more excuses. When a cop misbehaves, he must be punished with the same standards as other criminals, or better yet: with harsher standards to compensate for the authority they are given.
Good cops deserve respect. But this is tainted when the system protects the worst among them.
Re: Re: Re:5
From your comments it is clear you don’t know anything about policing or even know a police officer. Make an effort to know one and get their perspective. If you have an open mind, it will be illuminating.
Re: Re: Re:6
From your comments it is clear you have never been a victim of a cop, and do not know anyone who has been a victim of a cop. Before you expound on the virtues of cops, make an effort to get to know someone who has been a victim of a cop, and get their perspective. If you have an open mind, it will be illuminating.
I am not asking or wishing that you become a victim of a cop, because the experience is often non-survivable, and therefore no illumination would be forthcoming.
Re: Re: Re:7
When I was in the Navy in 1972 I spent 2 days in jail because the officer charged me with a DUI even though the breathalyzer initially read .06 (at the time .1 was considered intoxicated). I felt it was unfair and refused to post bail, so they put me in jail with felons and every single one of them was a VICTIM. The mentality was, “If the thieving son of a bitch hadn’t stole my parking spot, I never would have killed him. It’s his fault I’m in here.”
Re: Re: Re:8
The same mentality you’re demonstrating of yourself here.
Re: Re: Re:6
Well, you’re wrong on that one. I do know police officers. They are not family so I might not know them as well as you know your relatives. And we have discussed about their job quite a few times. So there’s that.
And you know what? They are doing their job without arresting a random passerby. Or killing a suspect. Or killing a random passerby. Maybe you should have an open mind and start thinking that violence is not the only tool available to police.
Just one last thought before I completely drop this conversation. Remember that, when criminals don’t have rights, neither do you.
You might think that your cop relatives will protect you. Or, depending on your ethnicity, that your skin will. But sometimes, none of this mattes.
You might be the neighbor of a suspect. Or shop at the mall on the wrong day. Or call the wrong cop when you are in danger. Or just meet the wrong cop on his bad day. All of these are real-life examples.
As long as cops are allowed to steal, choke or shoot at will, you are not safe.
Re: Re: Re:7
I don’t know where you got the idea that the cops are arresting random passerby’s (which has nothing to do with proactive policing). That would be self-defeating because it would take them off the street and they would just end up filling out paperwork creating a burden on the rest of the shift. If know police officers, then you know they hate paperwork.
My son was on patrol for over 25 years and never shot anyone. My daughter-in-law was serving warrants when the guy she was serving came at her with a Buck knife. She fired three shots. The first one went into the ground and the next two went into his chest. Fortunately, he lived. My granddaughter was three at the time.
Re: Re: Re:8
Quick reply there: watch the news.
If you’re on a stead diet of Fox News, you might want to expand your menu.
If not… you still might want to.
There are tons of news of random people being arrested (or worse) without having committed a crime. Mostly black people, but that’s not an absolute rule, just a major pattern.
Then only when there is video footage and national attention might the cops get punished. That’s not even guaranteed.
Re: Re: Re:8
Stop and frisk is arresting a random passerby. You can argue all you want about what the standards are supposed to be for such a search, it doesn’t change how the policy was actually executed.
I learned the hard way that police will absolutely target you when you are the victim. Who cares about solving crime when making arrests is considered more important. And when I say victim, I mean literally the victim reporting the crime that occurred against them. Being innocent won’t protect you.
Cops don’t like paperwork? Ya don’t say. Guess that’s why they either don’t do it, or use copy and paste. Some times they use copies with boxes already checked off! The police report for when I was arrested had sections of someone else’s case mixed in. Funny, once they start writing a ticket, they claim they can’t stop.
Re: Re: Re:8
Sometimes called ``stop and frisk”, and enshrined in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). The required level of articulable suspicion is famously known in NY City as walking while black.
(preview still broken)
Re: Re: Re:9
I don’t know of anyone who is doing proactive policing now. Some cities are calling for its return, but since getting thrown under the bus, the cops are very leery of participating. I know in Portland they dissolved the Gun Violence Reduction Team and then due to Portland breaking its homicide record of 70 in 1987 with a whopping 92 in 2021 they tried to bring it back. Initially none of the cops would volunteer.
Portland police struggle to fill new uniformed team to stem shootings, citizen oversight group holds initial meeting – oregonlive.com
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/portland-police-struggle-to-fill-new-uniformed-team-to-stem-shootings-citizen-oversight-group-holds-initial-meeting.html
When dealing with gangs it’s hard not to appear racist. There are about a million gang members in the US and 89% are not white. In Portland they labeled the Gun Violence Reduction Team as racist and disbanded it because 81% of the people they stopped weren’t white.
Re: Re:
Now that my children are safely out of the way I will let you lead the charge against the police. In your zeal, please remember if you get it wrong, people die.
As far as proactive policing goes—the criminal element was afraid of the police catching them with a firearm, so they left them home. Now the felons, the drug dealers, and gang members are more afraid of one another than the police, so they are almost forced to carry guns. The result is some of the highest homicide rates in 30 years. Ironically the same people most arrested by proactive policing were the ones whose lives were saved by it.
Re: Re: Re:
Again,your buying their narrative, correlation is not causation.
Violent crimes, specifically those associated with guns have seen an increase, but not because all of a sudden cops have been tacitly asked to appear to respect people’s right not to be arbitrarily stopped and searched, or because a couple cops got a modicum of punishment for their horrid actions.
First, studies show that when people are afraid of cops, perceive the justice system as manifestly unjust, they are less likely to report crimes the suffer or witness and cooperate with investigations. With low crime solvency rates, with cops stealing from citizens not accused of doing anything wrong, hundreds of thousands of rape kits tossed in closets to collect dust, cops being indiscriminately violent with utter impunity caught on camera, cops turning a blind eye to fascist and often racist groups violent activities, some times even coordinating with them, and I’m really just scraping the surface here, people don’t have any reason to trust cops.
With the pandemic, when we saw this crime rate increase, all of the programs, activities, social interaction support systems stopped. Opportunities for gainful employment disappeared. Kids and teens not in school, no community programs to keep them busy, no face to face mediation and mentoring services, drug and mental health counseling, all that gone. Nothing to do all day but shit post. And no trusted community member to talk to or get help. Lots of crazy Trumpian armies and Boogaloo agitators roaming around intimidating folks. Young people with no real incentive, guidance or resources to save their pandemic checks,feeling scared, hopeless, angry, bought guns.
Of course the things that are needed to most effectively curb violence and crime don’t actually involve cops for the most part. Sure, they should be present, walking a beat, but let’s be honest, they aren’t coming out of those cruisers any easier than suspects are going in. We need all the stuff that was lost to the pandemic and a whole lot more.
Re: Re: Re:2
Ironically those who want to see less cops made the rest of us buy guns. I bought my first gun in over 50 years and when I went to buy it the cupboard was bare and there was a waiting list. People stood in long lines just to get ammunition. I have yet to see a “Trumpian” or a Boogaloo anywhere, but my next-door neighbor had his house broken into while he and his daughter were home. I’m 70 years old and it’s just me and my wife. There is nothing in my house worth protecting except my wife and I can’t rely on a depleted, demoralized and defunded police force to do that. Nor can I expect drug addicts, the mentally deranged and the just plain evil to get counseling.
Re: Re: Re:3
Nobody made you buy a gun, that was your choice.
You couldn’t count on the best police force in the world to get to your house in time to protect you from an invader.
Re: Re: Re:
Did you know there’s a direct correlation between the decline of spirograph and the rising gang activity? Think about it.
Re: Re: Re:
When the police get it wrong, people die too. Funny you don’t seem willing to admit that.
Re: Re: Re:
“Now that my ass is covered, the rest of you can burn. Fuck you, got mine!”
Re: Police
One mistake seldom lands an officer in prison. Even many mistakes. In Chauvin’s case there was no mistake. He went to prison because he intentionally killed a guy.
If that is even possible.
If the officers who are unable or unwilling to do their jobs without violating the civil rights of the policed are quitting, I consider that a positive development, even (especially?) if they’re not replaced by anyone.
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Re: Re:
To answer your first part—Kim Potter, Garrett Rolfe, Alexander Kueng, 19 police officers in Austin Texas, and I could go on.
To answer your second part—well at least the murders and shootings are making someone happy.
Re: Re: Re:
Right. Seldom. Compared to the number of mistakes police officers make in a single day, let alone over the period you’re referring to, those incidents are extremely rare, so to say officers are “one mistake away from jail” is disingenuous. “One severe and unjustifiable mistake that is fatal to a member of the public and also receives widespread media attention” would be more accurate. And I have no problem with people going to jail for those.
Citation needed.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Doctors and nurses mistakes kill 250 times more Americans every year than the police do. Start throwing them in jail and see how many people join the medical profession.
Re: Re: Re:3
Doctors and nurses aren’t immune from prosecution if they kill people. And in case you should try to claim it, that isn’t why there’s a shortage of nurses.
“In order for a medical malpractice incident to be tried as a criminal case, it must be proven that the doctor exhibited gross negligence in their actions. Gross negligence defines cases of negligence in which the defendant was extremely careless in their actions, and continued with the negligent act despite knowing the high rate of risk.
Gross negligence, and therefore criminal litigation, is generally reserved for extreme cases of medical malpractice. It must be proven that medical staff was drastically indifferent to their responsibility to care for patients. In fatal cases, offenders can be charged for involuntary manslaughter.”
Sounds fine to me, whether a cop or a doctor.
https://www.brownbarron.com/blog/2019/may/why-is-medical-malpractice-a-civil-case-and-not-/
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Re: Re: Re:4
The split-second life and death situation that doctors and nurses deal with doesn’t usually involve their lives. All the more reason to be harsher on them. As I stated they cause 250 times more deaths than cops do so if we treat mistakes as murder then I’m sure we could cut their mistakes in half. Of course, no one would want to be a doctor or nurse under those circumstances.
Re: Re: Re:5
How many interactions per day are there between medical professionals and patients, compared to between police and the public? If you don’t have that number, then “250 times more” is meaningless.
Is it your position that treating police mistakes as murder is a new thing? If so, did it massively reduce the rate of police killings? Does that not imply that the main issue police have with killing people is that they could be held accountable for it?
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Re: Re: Re:6
250 thousand deaths attributed to medical mistakes verses 1017 killed by the police last year. While I’m not sure how many people saw doctors, I do know that over 10 million arrests were made last year. That is .01% did not survive and about 30% of those were suicide by cop.
Treating police mistakes as murder is a new thing. Kim Potter, Garrett Rolfe. Charging police officers for following their training like the 19 charged in Austin Texas is also new. And no, it’s not making a difference.
My son once told me, “When I go to work, I have a gun, pepper spray, a Taser, and a night stick. That doesn’t make me dangerous that makes me well armed. She makes me dangerous” as he pointed to my 3-year-old granddaughter. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to ensure I get to come home to her.”
Killing someone is the second to the last thing they want to happen, but they will do it if it prevents the worst thing happening. Putting police in jail is not going to cut down on the number of people killed by the police.
Re: Re: Re:7
Again, if the people who will kill anyone they feel stands between them and seeing their kids again are quitting the force, that’s great. Maybe the ones who are left will understand they’ve signed up for the 22nd most dangerous job in the US, and that doesn’t justify killing anyone who makes them feel unsafe. Maybe we’ll just end up with fewer cops, and that’s fine too. I haven’t seen any evidence that more cops results in a safer or better society anyway.
But you seem 100% confident that it would have exactly that effect on doctors. Interesting.
Re: Re: Re:8
When the guy pulled a Buck knife on my daughter-in-law you wanted her to let him kill her???????
You didn’t give a rat’s ass that my granddaughter would grow up without her mother????????
When I said nobody in their right minds would want to be a cop today, you certainly qualify.
The most callus absurd comment I’ve heard. Wow!
Re: Re: Re:9
Please clean up the straw when you are finished making straw men.
Re: Re: Re:7
You do realize that, while fictional, why Darth Vader was driven to evil?
Your son took an oath to the constitution, knowing that in service of that oath, he may not get to go home to his family. And I don’t want any kids growing up without a parent, so don’t twist my words. But your son just admitted that he believes he is above the law.
Your son thinks everyone that get arrested are equivalent to different species of snakes, and that his right to make it home to family trump’s everybody else’s rights.
Re: Re: Re:7
The “study” you use for your 250,000 number has been shown to be erroneous. That study extrapolated the number without taking into account that the sourced data wasn’t meant to be representative of an entire population among other things. The real number is somewhere around 7100 according to a recent study from Yale School of Medicine.
Comparing fatal police shootings to deaths due to medical mistakes is just pure whataboutism since almost everyone going to a hospital are going there because they have a medical problem that needs treatment.
Re: Re: Re:3
That last time you spewed this, you claimed it was 400 times.
Lowered it so your narrative would sound more believable?
Re: Re: Re:4
A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000.
Re: Re: Re:5
And both studies have been shown to be in error. As I mentioned above, the real number is ~7100.
I should add that the total number is actually ~22000 but the discrepancy of ~14900 are for those with fatal health-conditions that meant that they would have died within 3 months anyway. That I didn’t mentioned it in my post above is because it’s irrelevant in comparison to fatal police shootings. The study you cite didn’t even make that distinction btw.
Re:
Decriminalizing crime? 🤣 Shit that NEVER should have been a crime in the first place, like those that target the poor and homeless. Or drug prohibition laws drafted for entirely racist reasons. Funny how the violence and death associated with alcohol prohibition was reason enough to repeal a constitutional amendment on alcohol, something profiting the white man, and despite the havoc it wrought on society that drove the prohibition movement in the first place. And yet the violence and death associated with drugs is directly attributable to them being criminalized)
Did it ever occur to you that calling human beings snakes, comparing them to some of the most notoriously scary kinds of snakes, is fucking dehumanizing?!?! This is exactly the problem with the mentality of cops, they don’t see the public as deserving human dignity, and least of all Black people.
Oh wahhh, wahhh, somebody call the wambulance! Calling cops racist hurts their fee-fees. Cops no likey da rules, dey no fair!
Do you have any idea how many cops are rapist, sexual predators, abuse intimate partners and their children? Do you have any idea how much of it they get away with it? (Extra gross TN cop raped a 14 year old girl repeatedly for nearly 2 years gets probation!)
Decent people don’t want to be cops because more are paying attention and realizing that they can’t change the cancer that is law enforcement. They will get fired at minimum if they speak up- like in LA when cops dragged a man from his car and beat him to death, the cop reporting it lost his job. Or, go read a rather lengthy and disturbing story on The Intercept about Chicago cops trying to get two whistleblowers killed. Or the cop that did end up dead in Baltimore who was set to testify about the jump out gun task force, very shady circumstances; oh, gun control laws also come specifically racist intentions, regardless of today’s progressives “intentions”) Or like Lane and Keung in this case. They were rookies, they both took the job to do good, and how quickly did they end up taking direction from a sick bastard who was smirking at the distress of the crowd telling him he was killing a man, shifting his weight as if to mock them. They were too afraid to break, or pull rank since technically Lane was in charge,that they would be fired to stop what was plainly happening under them, that they knew wasn’t protocol. Prison really shouldn’t compare to the utterly devastating guilt that should weigh on them for the rest of their lives.
This isn’t the place for badge licking.
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Re: Re:
100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year.
Stores closing because people can steal up to $950 without being prosecuted. Hundreds of thousands of homeless, most refusing help because they can steal enough to support the drug habit without going to jail. Parks closed. People afraid to come to work or shop. Sidewalks full of human feces. Schools and hospitals blocked by homeless encampments. Politicians unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
My son once solved a child porn case because he recognized the décor of a seedy hotel that he had been called to multiple times. They were able to connect the room to a man and recovered the child. Who was dehumanized there, the child or the SNAKE who raped the child?
If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist. I’m willing to bet you don’t know who Kelly Thomas is.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” My son has lived by those words all his life and made it his career. YOU?
Re: Re: Re:
You keep going on about how much your son is a hero when that’s irrelevant. If your son deserves so much respect for his position as an officer (and I doubt it, given he refers to the people he’s supposed to work for as snakes), why aren’t you doing something about the officers that bring them into disrepute, those who rape and murder under the cover of the law?
If your son is a good man, he’s done fucking nothing. Tell him to get off his ass and make the police accountable for their own wrongs, and maybe then we can see about the police getting respect.
Re: Re: Re:2
Nobody hates bad police officers more than good police officers. A little over a year and a half ago he was standing in formation while people who had never met him before were calling him “a racist piece of shit” for what a cop in Minneapolis did.
I’ve asked him if he has ever witnessed a cop doing something illegal and he said, “I’ve seen them do some stupid things but nothing illegal”.
The child rapist is not someone he is working for, that is someone he is working against.
I’m a 70-year-old Vietnam era veteran and a retired aerospace engineer. I have 4 children. 2 with master’s degrees and 2 in law enforcement. Between myself, my son, my daughter-in-law, my daughter, and son-in-law we have over 80 years of service to this country.
Anonymous Coward seems like an appropriate name for you. What have you done?
Re: Re: Re:3
>
Re: Re: Re:3
That’s a logical fallacy. It’s not quite argument from authority as you’re not claiming expertise. Argument from virtue? Arguing that you (and your family) are more virtuous than the other person and therefore correct.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, just answering the question from a self-described Anonymous Coward. Asking people who have put their lives on the line for this country “Why don’t you do something?”
I doubt you see the hypocrisy in the question.
Re: Re: Re:5
“Anonymous Coward” is a default name, it’s not “self-described”. Even being criticized, you don’t have to be an asshole.
Re: Re: Re:6
This is contrary to facts in evidence.
Re: Re: Re:5
But he didn’t ask what you’ve done for the country, he asked what you’ve done about the cops bringing police forces into disrepute.
Re: Re: Re:6
Me? Very simply, I raised a good one.
Re: Re: Re:7
And you think the fact that you raised a good one is reason enough to not only sidestep the bad apples in the organization, but also get angry at bad apples getting punished for their actions.
Re: Re: Re:5
Cop does not equal soldier. Cops are not the last line of defense of civilization.
While I agree it’s unfair to paint apples in a different barrel the same as the ones in the barrel with the rotten, I’m also finding it difficult to believe that most of the apples aren’t diseased by the time they make it into any barrel. (By which I mean how they are trained in the first place, and the laws they are tasked to enforce)
Can you name something that makes policing so much more difficult or impossible today than, I don’t know, when did the golden age of policing come to a dark and tragic end 5 years ago, 10, 20 years ago when it was actually more dangerous to be a cop than it is and has been since? Don’t move the goalposts or throw out more distractions, spell out what has ruined the once glorious profession of policing besides the obviously shitty police themselves.
Re: Re: Re:6
I’ve answered your questions in many of my replies, but I will try and consolidate in one reply.
The decriminalization of crime and the criminalizing of the police. Laws like Proposition 47 in California which is hugely responsible for homelessness because it not only allowed open drug use but gave drug users the means to finance their addiction so most don’t seek or want help. Over 100,000 drug overdoses last year. District attorneys are only prosecuting violent felonies yet police are required to respond to all crime. When the cops respond with “even if we catch the guy, they’re not going to do anything to them”, a lot of times the victim is so frustrated they don’t even follow through with their complaint and the crime isn’t even recorded. In the victim’s eyes, the cops are the useless bad guy, not the DA. If they do catch someone, they are back on the street before the cop completes the paperwork on charges that will probably be dropped. The police see the streets they are patrolling literally turning to shit.
With this political climate the DAs are making war on the police. Kim Potter, Garrett Rolfe, the 19 police officers in Austin Texas. “One bullet away from death and one mistake away from prison”. Police assaulted and the assailant not prosecuted. Mayor candidates laughing while next to them a protestor is on a bullhorn telling police to “kill yourselves so we don’t have to”. 10s of thousands more people driving around with guns in their cars. So many frustrated cops understandably exiting leaving the rest shorthanded.
In your first line you mentioned soldier. I’m a Vietnam era veteran so I know how painful it can feel to risk your life only to be demonized by those you were risking it for.
Re: Re: Re:7
So you think criminalizing poverty and addiction, so that all those awful “snakes”, can be locked away out of sight is how modern society should deal with it’s problems? I guess prisons do a really good job hiding what happens inside so it would make you boomers feel all warm and fuzzy not having to look at the problem.
But the younger generations, we see our fellow human beings suffering. We see years of repeating the same failed tough on crime policies just making things worse and perpetuating inequality, reverberating through the generations. It’s my friends, people I grew up with, my family. You know why prop 47 doesn’t seem to work? Because the state didn’t invest in recruiting the skilled social workers and arm them with resources. Because they failed to preempt the local zoning laws that keep housing from being built- like tiny home communities, prevent life saving methadone clinics from opening up, won’t allow safe injection sites, that favor tax money sucking stadiums and polluting factories over grocery stores, small businesses, health clinics, green space and recreation areas and the housing of course. The state still hasn’t done anything to improve successful reentry. All of this necessary investment/spending that could permanently improve living conditions for generations to come.
Funny, those poor demoralized cops never once saw a budget cut. Their paychecks padded with overtime they may or may not have actually worked and pension checks always cleared, they don’t have medical bills. There’s no way your convincing me cops don’t skim off of what the citizens forfeit simply because the cops deemed it was too much cash to carry, or drug sniffing dogs responded as trained.
What you should be upset about is that while a 22year old kid, well father, was shot to death without fully understanding why he was even being arrested and Potter is going face as much as what a decade for her recklessness, that L.A. Sheriff’s department has a god damned gang running free, with tats for killing citizens. Instead of crying about some imaginary victim losing faith in the system because the suspect (caught? You say the suspect was caught, oh that’s rich) was charged with a misdemeanor instead of a felony, you should be outraged at cops shoving rape kits by the thousands into closets (or even going into a college football locker room to warn the players to be careful of Mormon chicks, they are apt to claim rape to their pastor) and how that undercut victim’s faith in the system. It is Squarely the fault of cops that so many people feel the cops are more likely to make the situation worse. Kids aren’t sufficiently respectful, or boot licking, you can point your finger to those SRO pushing for a kid to be charged for exploiting herself, for cops hassling kids from the neighboring town riding bicycles without a license, or tasering teens for vaping out fucking doors.
For every single case you got your panties in a wad because overly aggressive, reckless cops have had to face modicum of justice, I can bury you in countless injustices without scratching the surface, just within my life time. Oh, and a protestor you claim yelling that cops should kill themselves, or let’s just go with Trump’s idea of terror over pigs in a blanket chant, because that I know was actually said one time, SNOWFLAKES! For fucks sake, we have heard cops making fun of people dying, laughing about hitting people with rubber bullets, and sharing jokes about running over protesters or even breaking granny’s arm, and yet I’m supposed to feel bad that protestors hurt their feelings, or that your son suffered the worst human indignity of being called a racist? GTFOH
Re: Re: Re:8
Sorry you don’t like snakes. I think they are beautiful, but I know some are harmless, some will hurt you and some will kill you.
Show me a city in the US where Defund the police is working. Show me an existing example of what you are trying to achieve.
Re: Re: Re:9
https://denverite.com/2021/08/30/denver-star-mental-health-police-program/
Re: Re: Re:5
You missed the question. It was not ``how many years of service have you?”, but rather ``why do none of the alleged good cops do anything to weed out the bad ones instead of paying dues to police unions which protect the bad ones?”
(preview still broken)
Re: Re: Re:6
You are a little late to the conversation, but I’ll repeat my previous response to the question.
Patrolmen spend most of their time alone unless they are providing or asking for backup. I asked my son if he ever saw another cop doing something illegal and he said no. “I’ve seen them do some stupid things, but nothing illegal”.
Re: Re: Re:3
It’s funny you attack me for not being sure I’d chat more so not making an account.
What have I done? Not let my organization cover for rapists and murderers. Which I would figure is a simple thing to ask of police but that’s apparently way too hard. If your son isn’t actively working to stop those in the force that abuse their power, of which there are plenty documented such as in this thread (one of many, by the way) then I would not call him one of the “good guys”. But I guess it tracks that he wouldn’t be, can’t trust anyone who refers to the people they’re supposed to protect as “snakes”. And that you’re chastising schadenfreude towards murderers and their protectors shows you aren’t as virtuous as you think you are, either.
Re: Re: Re:4
When my son was on patrol, he spent most of his time alone except when he needed or provided backup. To blame him for what another police officer thousands of miles away did is beyond unreasonable.
I have been on ride-a-longs with my son where he arrested a guy and the guy thanked him on the way to the jail. He once solved 5 car burglaries before the people even knew they were robbed. I told you about the child rapist (snake). He has dealt with people on the worst day of their lives with empathy, compassion and sometimes humor and he has been doing those things day after day for decades. I knew who he was before he became a police officer, and I knew other people’s pain would hurt him too. And it has. He once told me, “I would do this job for free if they just paid me enough to sustain my family”. Now he says, “I am so done.”
From what he has told me, I know how hard the job was and how impossible it is now. When one of my grandsons (his nephew) suggested they wanted to be a police officer he practically screamed “Nooooo”!
Re: Re: Re:5
I think this says more about your son than you realize, and not in the way that you think it does.
Re: Re: Re:6
Seeing as you have never met him, your judgment on his motivation means nothing.
Re: Re: Re:7
And yet here you are…
Re: Re: Re:3
Nobody hates bad police officers more than good police officers.
Which explains why the first and loudest voices condemning police who cross the line are always other police and their unions, because they just hate bad cops so very much. /s
Re: Re: Re:4
Sometimes you have to walk in other people’s shoes to understand how something well intended can seem blatantly evil.
This is how my son could easily have been a Derek Chauvin—
There was this Black guy in his late 50s or early 60s who liked to sit in a wheelchair on the sidewalk and get drunk. When he got drunk, he would start harassing people so they would call the police. The guy could walk but at some point, he would usually piss and shit himself, so the cops all dreaded dealing with him. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the guy) my son got the call. My son had dealt with him many times before only this time it was different. The guy seemed really scared. His body is twitching all over the place and he is screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. It took a moment or two for my son to realize the guy was on something and was screaming “I’m sorry” because he couldn’t control his body. So my son called for an ambulance, but he knows the paramedics won’t do anything until the guy is restrained on the gurney, so he also calls for backup. All the while, the guy is twitching, terrified and screaming “I’m sorry”. When everyone was finally there, my son and three other policemen each grab a limb to try and get the guy on the gurney only the guy is twitching and throwing them around and all the while screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. By the time they got him on the gurney the cops are exhausted and they haven’t noticed the guy has quit breathing.
Fortunately, the paramedics were able to revive him.
It is not hard to imagine what it would have been like if the guy had died and a video of 4 police officers dragging a terrified elderly Black man screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again, out of a wheelchair and to his death.
You would all be screaming “How can this happen in America”, but a lot of cops would be saying “I know exactly how it could happen”.
Re: Re: Re:5
I hope you’re not claiming that’s the same thing as kneeling on a guy’s neck for nine minutes.
Re: Re: Re:6
Re-read it. The answer is in there and you obviously missed the point.
Re: Re: Re:7
You seem to be saying the only difference between that incident and George Floyd’s death is that that guy didn’t die, and possibly that nobody was filming it. I still hope you’re not actually saying that. But it seems like you are.
Re: Re: Re:5
Exactly the sort of situation that long since should have been dealt with by social workers. Cops aren’t trained to deal with this type of situation so they default to arrests because that’s really the only option they have. One would think getting cases like this delegated to other professionals, who could arrange services that would substantially reduce the risk of having repeat calls, would be something cops want. But then one only need to look at Karen Garner, and the cops viewing the body cam video, laughing at the sound of her shoulder dislocating, while she sat without medical care within earshot of their laughter. A woman less than 100lbs, with dementia, who had actually handed the stuff she walked out with back to an employee when they stopped her. Someone who is a snake in that little analogy you pretend is only meant to be reserved for the worst imaginable perpetrator. Cops would rather keep the chance to rough up a demented granny, snatch blankets and tents from the homeless, pepper spray little kids in the face, & shoot the counselors of autistic folks that walked off center grounds.
Re: Re: Re:6
Cops would love it if they didn’t have to deal with the situation, I mentioned but the paramedics won’t touch the guy until its SAFE. Same with social workers. For potential suicides the police are the last ones that should be there, but they have to go to make it SAFE for the counselors. When ambulances are called to a shooting or a crime, they won’t do anything until the cops make it SAFE. In certain areas the fire departments won’t respond until the cops make it SAFE. Starting to see the picture here? It’s not SAFE. How many times can you go to a place that’s not SAFE before you get bit?
One of guys my son worked with was killed by a man who wanted to police to kill him. He pointed a rifle at the cop car from his second-floor balcony and pulled the trigger and hit the cop right between the eyes. They arrested the shooter without incident.
My son works for a very progressive police department and the employ counselors on suicide calls. In the one instance, the counselor talked to a man for over an hour and determined the guy had a gun and was indeed suicidal and need help. The counselor then turned to the cops and asked, “how are you guys going to get him out of there?” See the problem?
Re: Re: Re:7
Where did you get this idiotic idea firefighters wait for cops to make it “safe” before clearing a building and putting out the fire? Or paramedics for any situation that isn’t an active shooting when they arrive?
Colorado has a pretty successful experimental program that sends essentially professional social workers to address mental health & substance abuse calls, non emergency situations that were called into 911, things that involve the homeless. They don’t need the cops to show up with them.
And after seeing the SRO cower outside and do literally nothing to help victims or engage with the shooter, or even just identify and locate the shooter in the Florida school shooting, how do you reconcile with this notion of cops are heros bullshit?
Re: Re: Re:8
Because davec desperately needs to push the narrative that cops are the be all and end all of what happens during an emergency. Cops are singlehandedly the only reason why anything gets done or resolved in davec’s world because the other risky occupations of firefighting and first response are too cowardly to do what’s needed, apparently.
You’ll notice davec won’t acknowledge those scenarios. Instead he’ll claim that the fact that the police won’t do anything in those scenarios is claim that this justifies not defunding the police. davec’s understanding is that they’re not being paid enough to risk their lives, because people have become less accepting of their “I feared for my life” excuse to pump bullets into anything that moves.
They’re a little like the bankers that pushed for the subprime mortgage crisis. They heavily abused the system, knowing full well that they’d make a killing if they succeeded in stringing everyone along, and even if they were caught, the system would be so reliant on them that nobody could afford to punish them.
Re: Re: Re:9
My question should be ‘why do you think that I, or anyone else here, would believe such a stupid claim’ instead of where he got the stupid idea. I really am sick of that hero bullshit. And for fuck sake I’m so tired of hearing idiot “conservatives” appropriating the word “woke” and slinging it every, dripping with condescension, and such profound ignorance of what it really means. I try to expose myself to alternative viewpoints, even if they turn my stomach, and I read something in Conservative American, and quickly looked back over previous articles, and like 8/10 used the word woke in the title. It’s like they think if they use it enough in such a mocking & ignorant, way that it makes racism less bad, or that being woke is worse than being racist.
Re: Re: Re:10
That doesn’t really change the answer. He’s still going to push the hero narrative regardless, even when confronted with examples of cops not being heroic. Literally in this article, his justification of cops not being heroic is “well no duh, you idiots keep wanting to take their toys and money away”.
There is no counterexample to davec that he will not have a snooty response to. He can always default to the victim mentality and insist that anything that paints cops in a negative light is the result of a mob persecuting them. A reasonable perspective on defunding the police would have to acknowledge that good cops exist to some degree, and that defunding has its proper definitions and limits. davec has no such restrictions. His entire point is to pound the drum of “COPS GOOD” over and over and punish anything that even remotely contradicts this.
“Woke” is one of those words that has more or less lost its definition, aside from vaguely alluding to an association that a person can use to say that someone else is backwards and bigoted if they don’t agree. I’ve seen “woke” being used to defend the belief that white males’ only role is to be raped up the ass by superior big black cocks, or to claim that “minor attracted persons” are a natural progression from the greater acceptance of LGBTQ+.
Re: Re: Re:11
FIREFIGHTERS PROPERLY STAGE TO WAIT FOR THE COPS – MAN DIES AND THE COMMUNITY PROTESTS “THE DELAY” | Firefighter Close Calls | Firefighter Close Calls is the home of the Secret List. The worlds most visited website focused exclusively on firefighter survival
https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/firefighters-properly-stage-to-wait-for-the-cops-man-dies-and-the-community-protests-the-delay/
Why EMS providers wait for cops before entering ‘hot scenes’ (ems1.com)
https://www.ems1.com/scene-safety/articles/why-ems-providers-wait-for-cops-before-entering-hot-scenes-ViyQuG8zzn4Qw8zP/#:~:text=Violence%20is%20one%20such%20outcome,take%20care%20of%20their%20patients.
I have not argued that the SRO in the Parkland shooting shouldn’t have been fired for ineptitude or cowardice. What I am arguing against is the “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” treatment of police officers that is driving people out of policing. It’s not going to matter if cops are heroes or cowards if there are none to send or if they respond 2 hrs later.
Re: Re: Re:12
You’ve already made it clear. You get angry when cops suffer the consequences of actions that they’d previously enjoyed being in the clear for such as gunning down the unarmed, and you get angry when people think it’s a good thing when they do get punished.
It’s been rant after rant from you, man. It’s really not that hard to figure you out.
Re: Re: Re:10
FIREFIGHTERS PROPERLY STAGE TO WAIT FOR THE COPS – MAN DIES AND THE COMMUNITY PROTESTS “THE DELAY” | Firefighter Close Calls | Firefighter Close Calls is the home of the Secret List. The worlds most visited website focused exclusively on firefighter survival
https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/firefighters-properly-stage-to-wait-for-the-cops-man-dies-and-the-community-protests-the-delay/
Why EMS providers wait for cops before entering ‘hot scenes’ (ems1.com)
https://www.ems1.com/scene-safety/articles/why-ems-providers-wait-for-cops-before-entering-hot-scenes-ViyQuG8zzn4Qw8zP/#:~:text=Violence%20is%20one%20such%20outcome,take%20care%20of%20their%20patients.
I have not argued that the SRO in the Parkland shooting shouldn’t have been fired for ineptitude or cowardice. What I am arguing against is the “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” treatment of police officers that is driving people out of policing. It’s not going to matter if cops are heroes or cowards if there are none to send or if they respond 2 hrs later.
Re: Re: Re:11
What you do is tout it as an example of defending police inaction. You use it as an example of why it takes so long for the police to do anything. You think it means that police should be given all the leeway and benefit of the doubt. Realistically what that looks like is you insisting that the cops should be allowed to do whatever they want, even if whatever they want is nothing, because the rest of us haven’t sucked them off enough.
Re: Re: Re:5 Only In America
“You would all be screaming “How can this happen in America”, but a lot of cops would be saying “I know exactly how it could happen”.”
Maybe at this point you should take a look at some 20-odd other nations where when shit like this happens the officers are assigned benefit of doubt because as a rule in those countries there’s not a fuckton of examples of rotten officers to poison the well.
If that exact same thing happened in Sweden or Germany the police officers would be very much in the clear because every citizen takes for granted, based on a long history of”not fucking up” that the cops will have followed the rules in the playbook. There would be a hearing. It would be a fair one. Officers using too much force would be queried and usually given refresher training in the proper use of force.
In the US it is, by now, assumed that cops only follow the book if you force them to or the rare idealistic rookie tries to do so.
Let me boil this down for you. You can blame “Code Blue” for the current perception of cops. The average citizen knows that although a lot of cops are good people, should they encounter a bad cop those “good cops” and the PD as a whole, will have the back of the bad cop.
Thus, every time an officer is seen handling someone with force, every bystander knows for a fact that they can’t take for granted the cop is using reasonable force…or even that the handling is merited.
This is the result of good cops abetting, assisting, and having the back of bad cops for centuries.
You have no arguments here. The US Army have managed to consistently police, for decades, hostile cities in foreign countries while racking up a lesser death toll due to policing than US police officers on home ground.
In a law enforcement force it’s not enough that 8 or 9 out of 10 cops are good. Because one bad cop spoils all the work made by hundreds of other officers.
The rest of the world can make this work so why can’t you?
Re: Re: Re:5 All that text and none of it was relevant
So just a little tip for the future: if you’re going to try to throw out a red herring rather than address the point save yourself the typing and just go with ‘Look, a distraction!’
Same result with a lot less work on everyone’s part.
Re: Re: Re:
That’s blatantly false, but more importantly this is rich when the article you’re is about cops who helped kill a man over an allegedly fake $20 bill.
I’m not even going to address the other claims here since they are equally doubtful. (Not in that “they don’t exist”, but more in “they’re not the widespread plague you make it sound like”.)
Re: Re: Re:2
In November 2014, California voters approved another criminal justice reform with far-reaching consequences: Proposition 47. With nearly 60 percent voter approval, Prop 47 reduced six non-violent felonies (including certain drug offenses) to misdemeanors and required misdemeanor sentencing for property crimes in which the value of the property involved is less than $950. (The Pre-Prop-47 threshold for felony sentencing was $500.) The changes mandated by Prop 47 went into effect immediately, and the initiative allowed for re-sentencing of people convicted and sentenced before passage of Prop 47.
DA haven’t been prosecuting misdemeanors.
Re: Re: Re:
My son has lived by those words all his life and made it his career. YOU?
Your son made a career choice out of his own free will. He wasn’t conscripted or forced to. He chose to. And he got paid while doing it.
If you think that merits some ass kissing, this is the wrong place to ask for it. If the job is too dangerous, he can quit. But to insinuate that the rest of us are somehow not as good as him because he decided to be a cop is insulting to the rest of us. It’s a menial job that requires a high-school diploma. It’s not as if any idiot can’t do it.
Re: Re: Re:2
When he made his career choice, he knew the job was tough and dangerous. He went on a lot of ride-a-longs and attended the academy for 10 months before he even signed on with a department. My daughter-in-law has her degree in criminal justice and my daughter has a master’s degree in forensic investigation. There was a lot of dedication and hard work that went into it prior to them ever being sworn in so they didn’t go into it blindly. That was then, before they criminalized the police and decriminalized crime. Before the started throwing police in jail for making a mistake like Kim Potter and Garrett Rolfe or prosecuting them for following their training like the cops in Austin Texas.
In today’s environment would he make the same choice—absolutely not! My daughter-in-law has since retired, and my son has transferred to a tech job until for the next 28 months till he can retire.
Since any idiot can do it, seems like you would be a good candidate.
Re: Re: Re:3
That was then, before they criminalized the police and decriminalized crime.
I’m not following this – who arrested the ‘criminalized police’ apart from other police? Surely if they’re arresting their own, given how upstanding all of them are, they must be arrresting them because they’re fucking criminals, no? If not, then doesn’t it just prove my point as to how corrupt they are in the first place?
Since any idiot can do it, seems like you would be a good candidate.
Nope. IQ is too high. And dog fucking forbid having a cop that’s capable of saying something other than ‘but muh training…,’ ‘I feared for muh life!’ or “how was I supposed to know the law despite being in ‘law enforcement?’
Re: Re: Re:4
Kim Potter, Garrett Rolfe and the 19 cops in Austin were all charged and turned themselves in.
Well at least you are in your right mind. Why risk your life, your safety, your freedom, and your lively hood to arrest someone the DA won’t even prosecute. You won’t do they job, and neither will anyone else in their right mind.
Re: Re: Re:5
Why risk your life, your safety, your freedom, and your lively hood to arrest someone the DA won’t even prosecute.
Because that’s what they’re paid to do. If they don’t want to do it, fine – fuck off and learn to code. But what happens to a person once they’re in the system isn’t their concern. It’s not part of their training, is it?
You won’t do they job, and neither will anyone else in their right mind.
They’re more than welcome to fuck off somewhere else with the same kind of pay & benefits. Just like everyone else who doesn’t want to work.
Re: Re: Re:6
Yet despite retention bonuses, pay raises, and signing bonuses they are leaving and not looking back. They must figure the jobs not worth it.
Re: Re: Re:7
Yet despite retention bonuses, pay raises, and signing bonuses they are leaving and not looking back. They must figure the jobs not worth it.
Or they’re lazy, want to do shitty work, and cost the taxpayers in settlements because none of them want to be responsible for their conduct.
There’s never really been a shortage of meatheads that want to be cops, despite what you might think personally.
Re: Re: Re:3
It might be wise to do this more often.
It is hard to see Potter, who shot a person driving a car, as not extremely culpable. Assuming without deciding that Potter had legitimate fear not caused by her own actions, shooting the driver means that you are creating the hazard of an uncontrolled moving car. That sounds like the very definition of a road accident. Rememeber, her stated intent was to tase, so as to disable the driver of a moving vehicle.
Rolfe might be a tougher call, until you realize that shooting someone in the back is generally not well regarded, and for a reason.
You call them mistakes. I call them at least manslaughter, and more likely homicide with depraved indifference.
(preview still broken)
Re: Re: Re:4
Most cops don’t see themselves as Derek Chauvin, but they do identify with Kim Potter who was an exemplary officer for 26 years and then made a mistake and wound up in jail. One of the officers that worked with my son was shot and killed while answering an attempted suicide call.
“One bullet from death and one mistake from prison”.
That’s why my daughter-in-law has retired, and why my son has transferred from patrol until he retires in 28 months. It’s also why cops everywhere are transferring away from high crime areas, developing tunnel vision, quitting, retiring, and why (despite signing and retention bonuses) their replacements aren’t stepping up. The few that remain or slow to leave are in a more stressful and dangerous position than ever before. When my grandson suggested he might want to be a police officer, my son’s reply was “Nooooooo!!!!”
Throwing Kim Potter in jail may have been a bigger mistake than the one she made. It will certainly cost more lives and it won’t prevent another officer from making the same mistake (it happened 9 previous times).
Re: Re: Re:
“100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year”
Hmmm…
Well, first of all drug overdose doesn’t necessarily indicate crime, since people overdose on prescription drugs.
The rest of your complaints seem to me to be an oft-repeated list of complaints about a specific part of the Bay Area, and while they’re not necessarily untrue does not reflect the experience of most people.
“My son once solved a child porn case because he recognized the décor of a seedy hotel that he had been called to multiple times”
Well if true, kudos to him. I’m not sure what your bigger picture solution is based on this, but good for him.
“If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist.”
Everything? Maybe. The stuff where there’s verifiable statistics about institutional and other types of racism? Not so much. For example, studies have been done where people send out the same resume with an “ethnic” sounding name and the same resume is sent out with a “white” name, and the latter regularly gets more interview appointments. Assuming that it’s more difficult to get a job if you’re a minority based on those studies does not mean you’re a racist.
Re: Points to the problem, doesn't it?
“Even the most idealistic candidates who might apply will have families or spouses that will try to talk them out of or demand they not apply to be police officers.”
Only in the US.
Here’s the fact of the matter. US law enforcement has goofed. For decades. To the point where the citizenry today looks at an officer uniform and sees just another gang member who is not to be extended benefit of doubt.
This is why in the rest of the OECD peelian principles are generally applied. In travelling extensively through europe I have never once been intimidated or afraid of spanish, french, german, swedish or danish police.
But I would go as far a loop around a US officer as I would an MS-13 member. Because god help you if the one you encounter is one of the very, very many rotten apples in that force.
“Police are no longer doing proactive policing which means more guns on the streets, more shootings, more murders, and a much more dangerous situation for the police.”
And when they did do proactive policing in most of the countries the police themselves turned out to be responsible for much of the assault and abuse.
Police get paid by the taxpayer to do a job. As an institution US law enforcement has singularly failed to fulfill that job.
“While I wish no harm to the author, Karma will demand that at some point his “enjoyable schadenfreude” directed at the police will bite him in the ass.”
Happiness at the barrel of rotten apples finally seeing a good cleaning is, in your eyes, deserving of karma?
That alone tells us only that in your eyes the uniform is so sacred that officers not getting away with robbery, assault and murder is a case for mourning.
I’d be appalled…if I wasn’t, by now, so used to americans turning to code blue to defend US police getting away with willful murder for the sake of the badge.
But not accessory to the murder? Which is certainly what citizens in that position would have gotten.
You may not have noticed, but I have never sworn at or called anyone here a name.
Re:
Just because you’re sealioning doesn’t mean you’re not trolling.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
I realize people today don’t want to hear another viewpoint which is all the more reason they should.
Re: Re: Re:
[Asserts facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:
I’m a white, middle class 40yr old female, from Delaware. There is nothing novel or unknown to me or anyone that comments here regularly. Your viewpoint was the default for a lot, maybe even most of us. Thinking that cops were the good guys you called for help, who cared about solving crimes and putting the real bad guys away. I didn’t think racism was still a thing until I was 21 and met unapologetically racist (& homophobic) people who demanded I agree with them under the threat of violence. I thought cops actually tried to solve crimes until the response we got when asking if they were done getting prints off my mom’s recently recovered stolen car was, and I quote “we’re not Columbo”. I didn’t understand the reality and degree of racism among the cops until I saw it with my own eyes, and it is beyond shocking. And I didn’t think the cops would ever be a problem for me until my prescription narcotic was stolen.
You aren’t red pilling the masses, you part of the machine.
Re: Re: Re: Context matters
“I realize people today don’t want to hear another viewpoint which is all the more reason they should.”
No we’ve seen your viewpoint and the thing is that it isn’t one we haven’t seen before.
Here’s the thing; Only In America does this shit actually exist. Within the OECD Peelian policing have been a thing for centuries. In europe police officers are given benefit of doubt because they very rarely give cause for people not to assume otherwise.
In the US people know for a fact that if they encounter a bad cop Code Blue kicks in and they’ll be worse off than meeting most normal gang members.
In the US it’s known for a fact that white supremacists have recruited unhindered among US law enforcement for decades.
A single country in LA alone had 18 actual gangs composed entirely of police officers and where the entry test and ranking was dependant on the kill count.
In numerous states police departments are still using “civil forfeiture” to rob people without cause in order to fund themselves.
And then there’s George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the thousands of other people demonstrably killed by cops either going completely nucking futz or, at best, by being demonstrably incompetent in the handling and use of force.
Your point of view here has been taken into account and found to be about as relevant as the attempted exculpation of southerners vis-a-vis their great-great-grandfathers marching with the confederate army.
US law enforcement has – entirely due to their own lack of action in times past – a very long uphill struggle to rebuild themselves into something the citizenry will trust. And they’ll just have to own that based on past and present actions they will be marching that long slog without any benefit of doubt extended to them.
US law enforcement has become attainted. To fix that will require more than just a token “Our bad, we’ll do better”. Much more. I’m not even sure you can get it done without tearing the police down to the foundations and rebuilding it all from scratch.
Re: Re: Re:2
Population of US 2021—332,915,073
Number of guns in the US—393,347,000
Number of gang members in the US–More than 20,000 gangs consisting of approximately 1 million
Number of Homeless in US in 2021– approx. 550,000
Number of arrests in the US in 2021—10,085,207
Number of Murders in US in 2021—approx. 23,000
Number of people killed by police in US in 2021—1055
Number of police officers intentionally killed in 2021—73
Number of police officer died in line of duty in US in 2021—458
Number of police in US in 2021—approx. 700,000
Population of UK in 2021—68,207,116
Number of guns in the UK—586,351
Number of gang members in the UK—2666
Number of Homeless in UK in 2021– approx. 37,000
Number of arrests in the UK in 2021—676,476
Number of Murders in UK in 2021—approx. 680
Number of people killed by police in UK in 2021—2
Number of police officers intentionally killed in UK 2021—0
Number of police officer died in line of duty in UK 2021—0
Number of police in UK in 2021—approx. 160,000
Which country would you rather be a police officer in? If you took 500 police officers from the UK and put them in Chicago for a year at twice what they were making in the UK, I doubt they would sign up for a second year. As I said policing in the US was tough before and has now become impossible. Nobody in their right mind should want to be a police officer here and they aren’t. Cops are exiting at record numbers and qualified candidates are few and far between. Ironically the most qualified officers are transferring to areas they are least needed. After more than 21 years on patrol, my son has taken a tech job and will stay there for the next 28 months until he retires.
Now that my kids are out of the way, tear it down and start over. In many cities they have gone from “Defund” to “Refund” but let’s try your viewpoint and see what happens when you take the lid off. You (critics of the police) step up and fill the empty positions and I’ll cheer you on.
Re: Re: Re:3 Start over
At least there’s something we can agree on.
Re: Re: Re:4
Go for it, but then own it. Best of luck.
Re: Re: Re:3
In many cities they have gone from “Defund” to “Refund” but let’s try your viewpoint and see what happens when you take the lid off.
Yeah! And while we’re at it, let’s loosen the gun & concealed carry regulations and let folks defend themselves. Surely cops can get behind this, no?
Tell all those cops affected to learn to fucking code. Let’s see how well their mediocrity translates to something other than being a cop.
Re: Re: Re:3
You (critics of the police) step up and fill the empty positions and I’ll cheer you on.
Are you saying if we hold police accountable, then few will stay? That says a lot, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if it’s not a few bad apples but most of the barrel, no?
Re: Re: Re:4
Most cops I’ve talked to aren’t worried about being the next Derek Chauvin, they are worried about being the next Kim Potter or Garrett Rolfe. They rely on their training for that split second decision and reaction. If they make a mistake, it is either death or jail. “One bullet away from death and one mistake away from prison” and that’s why they are leaving.
You (critics of the police) need to step up and show them how it’s done.
They are offering a lot of sign on bonuses.
Re: Re: Re:5
Most cops I’ve talked to aren’t worried about being the next Derek Chauvin, they are worried about being the next Kim Potter or Garrett Rolfe.
Well, if they don’t kill anyone by either incompetence or mistake, they have nothing to worry about. Just like the rest of us, no?
They rely on their training for that split second decision and reaction.
Uh-huh. About that training…
https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/06/judge-helps-ensure-that-more-ignorant-law-enforcement-officers-are-more-theyll-be-able-to-get-away-with/
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/11/cop-trainer-encouraging-cops-to-run-facial-recognition-searches-people-during-traffic-stops/
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/04/07/fourth-circuit-appeals-court-takes-aim-police-officers-training-expertise-assertions/
https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/22/law-enforcement-training-expertise-parade/
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/28/seventh-circuit-no-immunity-chicago-cop-who-lied-to-judge-before-accidentally-raiding-right-apartment/
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/07/21/court-calls-bullshit-cop-who-claimed-he-could-smell-weed-sealed-bags-moving-car-his-own-moving-cruiser/
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/01/18/pennsylvania-says-legal-medical-marijuana-means-cops-cant-just-sniff-their-way-into-warrantless-searches/
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/07/20/court-to-cop-you-need-more-than-odor-marijuana-inconsistent-testimony-to-justify-warrantless-search/
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/04/05/appeals-court-extends-qualified-immunity-to-cops-who-knew-they-were-violating-photographers-rights/
Re: Re: Re:6
Without taking the time to go through and verify these articles, which I’m sure are above reproach, I can only say; if their training was bad and they followed it (like the 19 officers in Austin Texas) then prosecute the trainer and not the officers.
Re: Re: Re:7
prosecute the trainer and not the officers
So blame anyone except the cop. I see a trend.
Re: Re: Re:8
I gave you the example of the 19 cops in Austin Texas who followed their training and are now facing charges for doing so. Do you honestly think that’s fair?????
Why would anyone take a job where if they follow their training they end up in jail? Answer is they won’t.
Re: Re: Re:9
‘Just following orders’ didn’t work for the Nazi’s either.
Re: Re: Re:10
At least Hitler went down with them. Why aren’t the mayors, police chiefs, and captains that not only ordered the officers response but paid for and oversaw the training of the officers, being charged?
Re: Re: Re:11
There exists a culture in most, if not all organizations, where the low level grunts get punished for the actions and negligence of their superiors. This is not unique to the police. Many are still waiting to see those bankers whose gross abuse of trust led to the financial meltdown of 2008 see some level of comeuppance.
There should, in fact, be some punishment levied throughout the entire policing structure. Thing is, when any form of major punishment or upheaval is asked for, people like you throw yourselves in front of the thin blue line to protect them. Even if you didn’t, the low-level cops are expected to make themselves the scapegoats to protect the greater cop fraternity, even if they won’t do it willingly. The ones who don’t comply are quickly pruned out of the system.
How we get the people at the top to go down with the grunts they leverage would be by drastic measures. Which might mean defunding, or limiting the amount of damage they can do – but from your responses, you’re obviously not interested in that either.
Re: Re: Re:12
Trying to discourage the collective punishment of 100s of thousands of police officers based on the actions of less than 100 seems a reasonable effort. My son became a police officer over 25 years ago and I have been following policing ever since. I know where we were and how we got here.
I know that between 1960 and 1990 violent crime quadrupled. One of the reasons my son became a cop was because people were demanding something be done. Governors and mayors were ordering their police departments to go after those committing the violence. One segment of our population was responsible for over half the homicides in this county. 20,000 gangs and a million gang members in a country with more guns than people. Focusing on gangs and the drug trade caused violent crime to drop. As violent crime dropped the police were able to address quality of life crime and people were arrested for nonviolent crime. Unfortunately, gang membership wasn’t evenly distributed and 89 percent of gang members weren’t white, Asian, women, or old. Neighborhoods where the most violence occurred received the most policing and to the WOKE that was obviously racist. If you want to stop something in this country call it racist. That will make politicians throw their own children under the bus, but in this case they just had to throw the police officers there.
Now we have come full circle and cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Philadelphia that were claiming the police were the problem are trying to get them to crawl out from under the bus and fix the rising crime, the drug deaths, and homelessness that their policies created. Now they want to spend more money on cops than ever before, and train them better. But the cops have seen that even if they follow their training, if the video doesn’t look good they are going to jail.
Re: Re: Re:13
It’s not really less than a hundred. But considering that you’ve made it clear that you’re not interested in reading articles, pointing that out to you seems futile.
Ah, now your anger at a policeman getting punished for kneeling nine minutes on a man’s neck starts to make sense.
What stats have you even been looking at? Realistically, cops going to jail is a minority statistic. You keep bandying about Kim Potter like it’s the new normal to be expected. It’s not. Judges can and will still prefer the testimony of cops even in the face of contradictory eyewitness and video evidence. It sounds more like you don’t want cops to face trial. Aren’t you cops and fans of cops believers in the mantra, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”?
Re: Re: Re:14
I will see your 9 anti-cop links and raise you 15 counter links.
The prosecution of Kim Potter is the new normal. Prior to George Floyd there were several incidents where the police mistook a Taser for a gun, and they weren’t prosecuted. It’s not the judges, it’s the DAs that are pursuing charges. Officer Rolfe is still facing murder charges, and the 19 Austin police officers are facing 5 years to life.
One bullet from death and one mistake from prison. And that’s why cops are leaving.
Re: Re: Re:15
5 years to life is realistically not a fun result to be looking at. When cops and DAs work together though, this is often the fate of many people they haul into court. The sentencing guidelines like the one you mentioned are often defended by cops, the judicial system, and patsies like you because the maximum sentence rarely actually happens. So… you got the system you wanted. I can see why you’d be angry that your tribe is getting hoisted on the petard they asked for.
Yeah, that tends to happen when cops ask for driver identification, then a compliant driver gets shot because the cop feared for their life going into a “many armed cops versus one driver” scenario.
Re: Re: Re:16
“Yeah, that tends to happen when cops ask for driver identification, then a compliant driver gets shot because the cop feared for their life”
If they even get that chance. There’s numerous stories about people who didn’t even have time to react to the fact that a cop was there before they opened fire, some of whom had no reason to suspect a cop would have any reason to be there in the first place.
Those stories are rare, of course, but so are stories of cops being killed on duty by criminals. COVID, suicide and car accidents are the most common forms of death in the line of duty.
Re: Re: Re:16
First of all, cops arrest people they don’t try them or sentence them.
As far as getting “the system you wanted”—
60% of Californians voted for Proposition 47 and the result has been 10s of thousands of homeless in the state. Open air drug use with thousands of overdose deaths. People actually walking into stores with calculators to ensure they don’t steal more than their daily allotment of $950. Streets covered in shit. Repeat offenders back on the streets before the police can even finish the paperwork. Violent crime and murder rates not seen in 30 years. People afraid to go to work, the hospital, even schools. More people driving around with guns.
Police who were once protected by following their training are now being prosecuted for doing so. DAs that won’t prosecute criminals now going out of their way to throw the book at cops. Police unsure of their limits and unwilling to risk their lives or their freedom. Despite hiring and retention bonuses, thousands of cops are retiring or quitting and cities can’t find anyone to replace them. Police response times measured in hours instead of minutes.
Seems like you and your patsies won. You should celebrate.
Re: Re: Re:17
“I didn’t kill him, the bullet did!” Snore.
Re: Re: Re:17
“First of all, cops arrest people they don’t try them or sentence them.”
Well, apart from the examples of extrajudicial summary execution you keep defending.
Re: Re: Re:16 meant the reply to go here
First of all, cops arrest people they don’t try them or sentence them.
As far as getting “the system you wanted”—
60% of Californians voted for Proposition 47 and the result has been 10s of thousands of homeless in the state. Open air drug use with thousands of overdose deaths. People actually walking into stores with calculators to ensure they don’t steal more than their daily allotment of $950. Streets covered in shit. Repeat offenders back on the streets before the police can even finish the paperwork. Violent crime and murder rates not seen in 30 years. People afraid to go to work, the hospital, even schools. More people driving around with guns.
Police who were once protected by following their training are now being prosecuted for doing so. DAs that won’t prosecute criminals now going out of their way to throw the book at cops. Police unsure of their limits and unwilling to risk their lives or their freedom. Despite hiring and retention bonuses, thousands of cops are retiring or quitting and cities can’t find anyone to replace them. Police response times measured in hours instead of minutes.
Seems like you and your patsies won. You should celebrate.
Re: Re: Re:17
I’m a lifelong Delawarean, I have no say in CA law. I didn’t get anything I want and I don’t know who those patsies I acquired at some point even are. Obviously you didn’t read the article in the Intercept that I linked, talking about the retaliation a couple whistleblower cops in Chicago suffered, that came from the top down and crossed different divisions. No response to the other recent or memorable cases of good cops suffering retaliation (even likely murder in Baltimore) for speaking up about a couple bad apples. Or the sexual assault of minors running rampant in the Explorers program. Must be those damn calls for a modicum of responsibility for their actions that are running the cops out. Oh and how dare we ask folks working with the public, often around vulnerable members of the public, actually cooperate with pandemic mitigation efforts, let’s not forget how many cops are acting like jack asses over this tiny request.
Since Prop 47 is only in CA, how do you explain homeless camps, drug addiction, crime spikes (that coincide with the pandemic) that plague other densely populated cities across the country? Or even not so densely populated areas, where there has been nothing but ever increasing police budgets (as have all those in CA)? Could the problems be more complex, deeply rooted in systemic racism and oppression of minority groups and women? Inescapable cycles of poverty exacerbated by criminalizing poverty? Surely some of these seem more plausible than whatever that garbage you heard or imagined about homeless folks using calculators for shoplifting (I mean, if you were a regular reader here you might actually know that the shoplifting stats haven’t actually increased by any significance, and the matter is being pushed by big retailers that don’t want to compete with e-commerce. Oh, didn’t expect that red pill did ya)
You think we can incarcerate our way out of complex social problems; you want to double down on policies that don’t work and actively cause more harm. You choose not to understand what defunding actually means, or see the reality of systemic racism. You think you actually hold the moral high ground while dehumanizing people you know nothing about. And I’m self righteous?
Re: Re: Re:18
The only thing worse than fighting a war is losing a war. It used to be the homeless were made up of mostly alcoholics since alcohol was cheap, legal and easily available you didn’t need a job to maintain your addiction. Now that we’ve lost the war on drugs and allowed stealing up to $950 a day, drugs are cheap, somewhat legal and easily available. The homeless problem was growing long before the pandemic started.
Seems everyone has their own definition of defunding. The dictionary says, “prevent from continuing to receive funds”.
If you believe the cops are more corrupt than essential, then by all means get rid of them. Just answer a few scenarios so I can understand what to expect.
Who do I call?
If a drug dealer sets up shop in front of my house?
If the drug dealer’s competition machine guns him in front of my house?
If the new drug dealer tries to sell my grandkids drugs?
If there is a man demanding money before allowing me to go into a store and shop?
If the same man demands, I pay rent for using HIS shopping cart?
If the same man slashes my tires because I didn’t pay the rent?
If the same man slashes me because I still won’t pay the rent?
I have a million more, but just indulge me on the above.
Re: Re: Re:19
You want to dance around semantics of “defund” because you think there isn’t a broad consensus about the concept. It’s not abolish, never has been. It’s not even about punishing cops! It’s about using some of an ever growing budget to fund public safety and crime reduction by adding qualified professionals to do things that never should have been put on the police in the first place. It’s about creating a stronger social safety net, trying different solutions than incarceration. Police should be showing up for crimes in progress, solving reported crimes that have victims, pulling dangerous as in aggressive or intoxicated drivers off the road. No more policing for profit. No more hassling people for expired tags, window tint. No more arresting little kids.
And it would do a world of good if drugs could be decriminalized. The reason that violence surrounds the dealing of drugs is because of the risk of going to prison, which has driven up the price and made it so profitable for those willing to take the risk. It’s not hard to understand by looking back at why prohibition of alcohol was ultimately rolled back- and only alcohol because it was harming the white community, and the white man was who profited on legal sale of alcohol anyway. oh, and legal pharmaceutical opioids should be regulated to keep the price down, no screwing with the market, ensure that the drug makers who lied about the dangers make no profit off the new system. And sell it to people without a prescription, along with the other controlled substances.
And sex work must also be decriminalized so that consenting adults can create a safe market for buying and selling. Vices that have sunlight make it difficult to be criminally exploited. Yes, be able to call the cops if someone tries to rip you off! And the cops must know their place and treat a prostitute, a coke dealer no different than the rich white folks upset about a black family at the same community pool.
Also, cops lie. The calculator story, I’m not buying it. Did the guy also clip coupons to maximize his $950 or however much? GTFOH with that bullshit. This is not an ignorant group around here. We recognize your little games, bad argument tactics, and badge licking induced blindness to the reality of policing. Go find out about shit like race riots, redlining, Daughter’s of the Confederacy, Cointel Pro. Go read some stuff at The Marshall Project, the Innocence Project, Propublica, the Intercept, Muckrakers.
Re: Re: Re:19
The Ghostbusters, since you’re so obsessed with fighting phantoms of your own imagination.
Re: Re: Re:20
That’s about as intelligent an answer as I expected.
Re: Re: Re:21
With your proven inability to judge character, your projection is high praise.
Re: Re: Re:19
“It used to be the homeless were made up of mostly alcoholics”
Citation needed.
Re: Re: Re:20
Just pointing out that addiction usually accompanies long term homelessness. Prior to cheap opioids, alcohol was the drug of choice. Laws against alcohol abuse were always misdemeanors but now (thanks to laws like California’s Proposition 47) use and possession of nearly all drugs is a misdemeanor.
The Connection Between Homelessness and Addiction – Michael’s House Treatment Centers (michaelshouse.com)
https://www.michaelshouse.com/drug-abuse/study-homelessness-addiction/
Re: Re: Re:18
BTW I know about the calculator because my son arrested a guy using one to insure he would only be charged with a misdemeanor and not a felony.
Re: Re: Re:15
“I will see your 9 anti-cop links and raise you 15 counter links.”
Weird, you first lie about the links provided then don’t provide any yourself.
“One bullet from death and one mistake from prison”
…and those are just the poor bastards who have the misfortune of encountering the roided up bullies itching to use their weapons.
Re: Re: Re:16
Don’t know what lie you are talking about. The links you posted are definitely anti-cop. What kind of pro-cop links would you like?
Cop saves man from train
Officer saves man in wheelchair from oncoming train – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgqQE4qVyz0
Cop saves life
Quick action: California police officer saves life of 2-year-old on fentanyl (wbtv.com)
https://www.wbtv.com/2021/03/30/quick-action-california-police-officer-saves-life-year-old-fentanyl/#:~:text=Officer%20Khamosh%2C%20a%20patrol%20officer,the%20backseat%20had%20stopped%20breathing.
Anti murder
Murders are spiking. Police should be part of the solution. – Vox
https://www.vox.com/22580710/defund-the-police-reform-murder-spike-research-evidence
Just plain pro-police
Crime Prevention in the 21st Century – Police Chief Magazine
https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/crime-prevention-in-the-21st-century/
Police officer sacrifices his life
Tacoma officer sacrificed himself to save others, says witness | The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/tacoma-officer-sacrificed-himself-to-save-others-says-witness/
Officer honored for sacrificing his life during robbery | CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/health/beyond-the-call-wilson/index.html
Utah police chief: Slain officer ‘sacrificed his life’ | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/2a29d4086b114646a712cd11b61d344f
Anti-anti cop
San Francisco Restaurant Apologizes for Asking 3 Police Officers to Leave – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/us/san-francisco-restaurant-police-officers.html
‘War on Cops’: Biden Faces New Crisis in Wake of High-Profile Violence Against Police (newsweek.com)
https://www.newsweek.com/war-cops-biden-faces-new-crisis-wake-high-profile-violence-against-police-1674364
Police staffing
Cops Are Leaving Their Departments In Droves And Few Want To Take Their Place : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-morale-and-department-scrutiny-are-driving-them-away-from-the-job
Why police forces are struggling to recruit and keep officers – CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/us/police-departments-struggle-recruit-retain-officers/index.html
Anti- Defunding
The Predictable Consequences of ‘Defund the Police’ – WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/consequences-of-defunding-the-police-libby-schaaf-violent-crime-rate-murder-public-safety-11638915238
Demonizing and Defunding Police Has Consequences – Opinion Editorials – U.S. Senator John Thune (senate.gov)
https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/7/demonizing-and-defunding-police-has-consequences
Racism
81% of Black Americans Don’t Want Less Police Presence Despite Protests—Some Want More Cops: Poll (newsweek.com)
https://www.newsweek.com/81-black-americans-dont-want-less-police-presence-despite-protestssome-want-more-cops-poll-1523093
How black Americans really feel about the police, explained – Vox
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/17/21292046/black-people-abolish-defund-dismantle-police-george-floyd-breonna-taylor-black-lives-matter-protest
There’s my 15
Re: Re: Re:17
“The links you posted are definitely anti-cop”
I didn’t post anything, but at least you’ve now backed your words up instead of misrepresenting what others say then expecting people to believe your words without evidence.
It’s a shame that half the links you posted back up none of what you claim, but that’s progress I guess.
Re: Re: Re:18
What claim are you referring to?
Re: Re: Re:15
I should like to see some support for this. My impression is that few cops who endanger the public, such as by shooting or tasing the driver of a moving car, turning it into a deadly missile, ever see the inside of a prison cell.
Shooting a taser, or a bullet, at a driver of a moving car seems like an attempt to cause death or great injury. That it was a bullet insted of a taser in Potter’s case does not change the fact that she showed clear intent to cause harm.
Since she created the danger she perceived, no sympathy for her.
(preview still broken)
Re: Re: Re:16
As I explained to others, now that my kids are literally out of the line of fire, I’m seriously hoping you guys will get your way which I think would put the argument to rest.
Re: Re: Re:13
(What’s actually happening)
Re: Re: Re:7
I suppose the US First Amendment will come as a surprise to cops in Austin, but for the rest of us it is fairly well established. So cops shooting ``less lethal” rounds at people protesting police violence seems like it should be the sort of thing that a good cop would avoid.
On the other hand, finding at least 19 ``bad apples” in the Austin barrel does not seem too difficult.
Re: Re: Re:8
Those 19 “bad apples” were ordered to use the equipment and training provided for them by the city during a riot. Some of those charged had nothing to do with the instance they are being for, but they are still facing up to life in prison. They didn’t charge the mayor, the city council members, the Chief of police or anyone that trained or okayed their training and equipment. Nobody is saying they did not follow their training. They just didn’t like the results, so they threw the cops under the bus.
During the next riot, hopefully the cops won’t show up.
Re: Re: Re:3
Of course no decent human would stay at Chicago PD, https://theintercept.com/series/code-of-silence/
The cops have been criminalized?
Re: Re: Re:4
You might be right. 900 police officers left Chicago PD in 2021. More decent and right-minded humans will be departing.
Lightfoot who initially defunded the police by $80 million is now pleading with the feds to help with rampant crime.
Re: Re: Re:5
Maybe you should look into how budget and spending are determined in IL, Lightfoot has tiny influence over spending policies, let alone an 80 million$ cut
Re:
“I can’t be the rude one here because I didn’t use coarse language” is a hallmark lie told exclusively by those acting in bad faith.
Guess what, davec – when the police get it wrong, people die too. Yet you don’t seem to have a problem with that. Can’t imagine why!
Re:
When they get it wrong you want to put them in jail. If you get it wrong, are you willing to go to jail?
Re: Re:
What do you propose exactly is being “got wrong” here, that ordinary citizens should be sent en masse to jail to fulfill your power trip fantasies?
For someone who claims that he’s not here to defend the officers’ actions you have an intense desire to see everyone else burn because a judge ruled against a cop for once.
Re: Re: Re:
Kim Potter is in jail because she made a split-second decision and got it wrong.
Would you be willing to replace her and if you get it wrong, go to jail?
Most people in their right mind wouldn’t so that’s why the cops are leaving. I don’t blame them, I blame you.
Re: Re: Re:2
Confusing a gun for a taser is one of those things that has repercussions regardless who you are.
Re: Re: Re:3
Unless you’re a cop apparently.
Re: Re: Re:4
Not so much that, it’s more like “Wait a minute, cops should probably face the consequences for fucking up, just as any other human would”. And davec is apparently angry that it’s finally happening.
Re: Re: Re:5
And when you fuck up at your job, do you go to jail: do you die?
Re: Re: Re:6
If I killed someone I might.
Re: Re: Re:6
If I fuck up in any part of my life I could die, hurt an innocent person, go to jail, face financial ruin. If I cause harm to another person at minimum I could be sued.
I don’t even have to have done anything wrong to end up in jail, or dead in jail, learned that lesson.
And I don’t know any job that let’s employees fuck up to the degree of causing death, dismemberment, or an experience that results in another suffering PTSD, and keep my job and get protected from all civil and criminal liability. I certainly wouldn’t keep my job if I just shoved customer complaints in a closet to be ignored for years and years.
Seriously, how do you defend people who treated the crime of rape like annoying customers they didn’t want to deal with? That’s not a one off, that was hundreds of thousands of rape kits just ignored?
And what about the hundreds of cases that have been over turned because of cops framing or coercing a false confession, which isn’t even a fraction of a percent of times it’s happened? And these are malicious actions, not mistakes.
What about the Catholic church cares program that has allowed predator, incompetent, criminal, violent, abusive cops bounce around to new jobs and promotions like nothing ever happened after being caught for something serious happening? Gee, ever think a real deterrent to young people becoming cops is their experience in the young explorers club (looking at you Kentucky)?
I’m not saying your Son and daughter in law are these bad people, or they turned a blind eye to awful things, or that you shouldn’t be proud of them- they’re your kids of course you should be proud. But to paint cops as essentially victims, or underdog heroes wrestling back the fall of society all on their own, it’s just so wrong. It’s wrong for so many reasons, and none of them are hypothetical like your ridiculous example of man in a wheelchair dying during arrest. The crimes, the brutality, the injustice at the hands of people whose job is the exact opposite, often for racist motivations. You think people who are supposed to uphold the law should be exempt from it, and have expectations lower than everyone else. Who you dehumanized as just snakes, and then have the gull to make jokes about dehumanizing people. Shame on you.
Re: Re: Re:2
Kim Potter is in jail because she made a split-second decision and got it wrong.
Yeah, let’s talk about that…the little mistake she made.
Despite different triggers, different weights, different grips, different safetys, and not to mention one being bright fucking yellow, she managed to get it wrong. The taser is purpose-built to make it clearly distinguishable from a gun. And she still fucked up.
Pardon me if I lack empathy for someone who I’m sure was trained, missing every fucking single difference that the manufacturer of the taser put in place specifically to avoid incidents like this.
Know those tags on things warning you not to do something that you plainly view as stupid? They’re written for people like her.
Re: Re: Re:2
Well, actually, she is in because she created a dangerous situation and then did the worst possible thing therein. Shooting a driver, whether with taser, beanbag, or bullet, is going to create a great risk of death or serious injury because of the uncontrolled moving car.
Her problem is that the intent was bad. She intended to shoot a driver with a taser, incapacitating him while he operated a moving vehicle. What possible good outcome is there to be had in such a case? This appears to be at least depraved indifference, even if not premeditation.
(preview still broken)
Re: Re:
“When they get it wrong you want to put them in jail”
Yes, murderers should be sent where they belong, even if they wore a badge when they committed their crime. There’s a couple of ways to avoid this, ranging from not murdering people to not being a cop if you feel that getting away with literal murder is a necessary part of your duties. Your non-psychopath colleagues will thank you for giving people less justifiable reasons for hating them.
“If you get it wrong, are you willing to go to jail?”
I would be if I did the same thing, but the chances of me murdering a person through incompetence or in a psychotic fit of rage in the process of my duties is exceedingly small.
Re: Re: Re: With great power should come great responsibility
Yes, murderers should be sent where they belong, even if they wore a badge when they committed their crime.
Just ‘even’, especially, a cop who murders someone or in another way violates the law should face much harsher penalties for doing so due to the power and privilege they are granted for their job.
‘Breaking the law is a bad thing’ is the justification for arresting, trying and jailing those without badges, when someone’s job is to uphold the law the punishment for violating that should be far higher.
Re: Re: Re:2
First of all, there is no power or privilege if we treat them like just another drunk in a bar fight. We train them and then ask them to put themselves in positions that 98% of us would run from. If they make a mistake or in some cases, follow their training to a tee they face going to jail. If they hesitate, they could get killed.
“One bullet from death and one mistake from prison”
Would you take a job like that? I certainly wouldn’t and that is why more and more police are getting out.
Re: Re: Re:3
First of all, there is no power or privilege if we treat them like just another drunk in a bar fight.
But that’s not what happens now is it?
We train them and then ask them to put themselves in positions that 98% of us would run from.
Bollocks. If they can’t handle a job that involves risk then they are more than welcome to get the hell out and let people with a backbone take their place.
If they make a mistake or in some cases, follow their training to a tee they face going to jail.
I’m not sure what world you live in but it’s sure as hell not this one. Cops are notoriously hard to convict, the idea that they’re one ‘mistake’ from jail is beyond absurd and if their training is so abhorrent that they are engaging in prison-worthy actions and they still follow through then they deserve to be locked up as a danger to society.
If they hesitate, they could get killed.
As opposed to not hesitating and getting someone killed? See above about not being able to take the risk, if they can’t handle stress without opening fire then a job that involves risk is clearly beyond their capabilities.
Re: Re: Re:4
Are you one of those people with a backbone willing to step up and take their place? Would you want your son or daughter to be a cop? Are you willing for your spouse to be a cop knowing if they make a mistake, you might lose your home and savings? Are you willing to take the blame for what another cop two thousand miles away did?
Despite signing bonuses and retention pay, people are deciding the job is not worth it.
Re: Re: Re:5
Are you one of those people with a backbone willing to step up and take their place? Would you want your son or daughter to be a cop?
I have integrity and wouldn’t be keen on looking the other way should a fellow officer decide that rights and lives are optional when it comes to non-cops so that alone would disqualify me for the job, and if I had kids I wouldn’t want them to take the job for the same reasons.
Are you willing for your spouse to be a cop knowing if they make a mistake, you might lose your home and savings?
You keep referencing a fictional world where ‘one mistake’ is all the stands between a cop living a normal life and things going straight to hell, exactly what sort of ‘mistake’ do you think would garner that sort of repercussion and be specific, ideally with actual examples that would make it a reasonable concern rather than just hyperbolic nonsense.
Are you willing to take the blame for what another cop two thousand miles away did?
I thought that no-one hated bad cops more than good cops, were I in that position the one I’d be angry at would be the other cops who ‘screwed up’ so badly that people across the nation were mad at me for it, and you’d better believe I would be loudly and publicly tearing into those other cops for abusing their power and position to such a gross degree.
Despite signing bonuses and retention pay, people are deciding the job is not worth it.
One sec, I’ve got the world’s tiniest violin here somewhere…
Re: Re: Re:6
So, your answer to the first part was, BLA, BLA, BLA, you have no backbone to either stop criminals or corrupt cops.
You want a specific example of the world cops live in–
You, along with two others, are called as backup to help arrest an elderly Black man in a wheelchair. The lead officer tells you to grab a leg and help lift him on to a gurney. Despite being in a wheelchair, the Black man is flailing and kicking you and you can barely hang on. All the time he is screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Finally, after about 3 minutes you’re exhausted but you finally got him on the gurney and strap him down. Then you realize he is not breathing, and he dies. You look around and see dozens of people videoing the whole incident. The video is on CNN that night and the newscaster is warning everyone that this is “very disturbing”. There are marches and candlelight vigils. Everywhere people are taking a knee and demanding something be done. You watch the video and it’s horrible. The poor elderly Black man is screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” yet you don’t appear to do anything except continue to drag him out of his wheelchair. You are watching the Black man’s grieving family being interviewed when you get the call letting you know you’re fired. Your wife comes in and says there are people gathering outside your house. You call the police because you’re worried about your children. When they police finally show up it isn’t to protect you, it is to arrest you. The DA is charging you and the other officers with “Second Degree Murder”. Riots are breaking out everywhere. Cops thousands of miles away are getting rocks, bottles and shit thrown at them because of what you did.
How much money would it take for you to be that cop?
Re: Re: Re:7
It’s almost like other people may suffer as a result of someone else’s negligence or something. Or people jump to conclusions based on something that looks really bad. What an absolutely revolutionary thought that nobody else in the world experiences aside from cops.
Except that in fact, that’s the sort of thing that happens all the time when chaps like you continue reinforcing the “we cover our own” and “fuck you, got mine” mentality, and treat every naked man running with his back exposed as a threat. Or throw a flashbang into a baby’s crib as a justified response.
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Re: Re: Re:8
So, I gather something like the example above happened to you? I’m shocked. What kind of work do you do? Please tell me what happened.
You’ll have to explain the rest of your comment because at no point did I say “fuck you, got mine” or throw a flashbang anywhere.
Re: Re: Re:9
What you’ve said is that everyone else is free to mess with the existing police system purely because your children are out of it. It’s quite clear that the only reason why you blithely permit such changes is because your children won’t be affected.
You didn’t throw a flashbang, you’ve just spent various comment threads here whining and moaning and bitching that cops encountered consequences for being assholes, and people celebrated that cops were, for once, actually held accountable for their actions. It’s a fair assumption to make that if the cop who flashbanged the baby was taken to task, you’d complain about that too.
Re: Re: Re:10
There have been a lot of changes to policing in the last 10 years that’s taken the job from tough and dangerous to impossible and deadly. The elimination of proactive policing has allowed people who are strictly forbidden from having a gun to feel safe enough to drive around with one. The passage of measures like proposition 47 in California has allowed people to steal up to $950 per day with little or no consequences. This has allowed people to finance their drug addiction and created open air drug use and homeless encampments where life has become “steal, shoot up, and repeat”. 100,000 overdose deaths in the US last year. Murder rates not seen since the 1990s. People afraid to shop, go to work, the hospital or even in some cases school. Streets literally covered in shit.
Despite things getting worse, there is an element in our society that thinks we haven’t gone far enough. They have such a hatred for the police that some have suggested officers don’t even have the right to self-defense. “ACAB all cops are bad.” I comment on this thread to dissuade that attitude but it’s like talking a 4-year-old out of touching a hot pan. Every time you look over, they are reaching for it so eventually you have to let them touch it, so they’ll understand.
Yes, I’m glad my kids are out of the way of that.
Re: Re: Re:11
That’s a long and convoluted way to say “Yes, cops deserve the benefit of the doubt when shooting naked unarmed people and flashbanging defenseless babies, and I’ll fight to make sure that remains the status quo.”
Re: Re: Re:12
I’m sorry if English is your second language, but that’s not what I said.
Re: Re: Re:13
Yes, you’ve certainly gone out of your way to avoid directly admitting you don’t believe that cops should face consequences for their mistakes, and people shouldn’t take them to task for their nastier behaviors even when it’s clearly documented.
Re: Re: Re:7
Ah such delightful and blatant dishonesty, where you attempted to turn ‘I’m not corrupt enough to want the job’ into ‘I’m not brave enough to want the job’, that’ll really help your case. That’s strike one, do it again and I’ll just write you off as too dishonest to have a discussion with.
As for stopping corrupt cops that’s the job of the mythical ‘good cops’ you claimed hate them with a passion, if they actually do then they sure seem to suck at doing anything about it and trying to shift the blame to people who don’t feel like swimming in the sewage that is the US police system by joining doesn’t change that. The supposed good cops are already in the system, they can clean up their own house before demanding others step in and do it for them and if there really is ‘only a few bad apples’ as the excuse goes it should be really easy for them to do so.
How much money would it take for you to be that cop?
How much would it take for me to be someone who faces consequences for my own actions? Nothing, like everyone else without a badge I already am.
If someone ends up dead because of something you did the fact that you’ve got a badge should in no way reduce the consequences for that, and if anything they should be even higher. ‘I didn’t mean to kill the guy’ doesn’t bring the dead back but that’s what trials are for, to determine the appropriate punishment for your actions.
As for other cops catching heat from a situation like that if they’d bothered to police their own and made clear by word and deed that any officer that steps over the line deserves no more special treatment than anyone else does people might be more willing to cut them some slack, but thanks turning it into an ‘us vs them’ with the public as the enemy they get and deserve no benefit of the doubt.
Re: Re: Re:8
If you want an honest discussion, tell what kind of work you do and the consequences you face if you make a mistake.
Do you have coworkers that you monitor for corruption or are you like most patrolmen, alone 80 to 90 percent of the time?
How many of your coworkers have been killed on the job?
When your coworker makes a mistake do people throw rocks, bottles and shit at you?
Re: Re: Re:9
“How many of your coworkers have been killed on the job?”
How many coworkers of the average US cop have been killed on the job?
Difficulty: stats from the last 2 years show that most cops have been killed “on duty” by COVID, something against which many of them have been fighting against being protected from.
“When your coworker makes a mistake do people throw rocks, bottles and shit at you?”
Fast food workers have been assaulted or even murdered for asking people to comply with basic mask mandates. Typically police officer is not on the top 10 of the list of most dangerous jobs in the US by fatalities. Why are they special, especially when they’re sometimes responsible for the danger in the first place (for example, escalating rather than de-escalating situations as cops in many other places are trained to do)?
Re: Re: Re:10
Cops undergo training constantly and following that training used to exempt them from prosecution. Not anymore. The 19 Austin police officers followed their training and yet they are being charged with assault. Garrett Rolfe was well trained in de-escalation and talked with Rayshard Brooks for 40 minutes before trying to arrest him. Now Rolfe is facing felony murder charges that could include the death penalty.
10,085,210 arrests and 1055 people killed by the police in 2021. Cops aren’t shooting first and asking questions later.
Re: Re: Re:11
“10,085,210 arrests and 1055 people killed by the police in 2021”
You do realise those are disproportionately high figures, right?
Re: Re: Re:12
10,085,210 arrests in a country with more than 400 million guns. 1055 people killed with about a third using a gun or weapon to commit suicide by cop. 17 police officers intentionally murdered. Not sure what country you could compare that to.
Re: Re: Re:13
10,085,210 arrests in a country with more than 400 million guns.
Must be people don’t think the cops are any good at what they’re doing.
Re: Re: Re:14
I bought a gun when they started talking about defunding the police. First time in 50 years and there were hardly any guns left. Stood in line for hours to get ammunition.
In Portland a child was held at knife point by an intruder and the police didn’t respond for an hour and 36 minutes. That is totally unacceptable, yet many still call for defunding.
Re: Re: Re:15
You were the one who defended cops leaving the job.
I’d also like to add that you’ve consistently brought up all these anecdotes that are supposedly famous, yet not bothered to link a single one to an external source.
Re: Re: Re:16
Intruder with knife, boy being held: No Portland police response for 1 hour, 36 minutes – oregonlive.com
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/09/intruder-with-knife-boy-being-held-no-portland-police-response-for-1-hour-36-minutes.html
In June 2020 the Portland City council and the mayor cut millions from the police budget. The above happened in September of 2020
Just one year after defund the police cuts, Portland mayor calls for big budget increase | Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-mayor-wheeler-increase-police-year-after-defund-police
Re: Re: Re:17
You keep thinking you have gotcha points, but you really don’t make the effort to search out anything that doesn’t confirm what you want it to.
In Portland, yes they took a tiny little bit off the budget (they were getting 10 million a year increases every year for quite some time, the approx 28 million reduction was a little less than 1/2 for budget shortfalls due to pandemic, and the rest was supposed to be spent on other resources), during a crime surge that was happening all over the US. And yes they are throwing another 5 million back on to the police budget. But, were those reallocated funds a waste? The Portland Street Response program was only funded as a pilot for one neighborhood, and only for outdoor/homeless response. Program worked well, recommended to be expanded city wide,and to include additional services to suicide and domestic/in home calls. Unfortunately the police union WONT ALLOW this alternative team respond to certain things city wide, such as the in home mental health/suicide calls- no surprise there that the union is screwing shit up. Something interesting, that I mentioned before, that the researchers found when assessing this program was that many of the respondents were TOO AFRAID to call 911 for help because they didn’t trust that the police wouldn’t show up, and inevitably make the situation worse. When the police are corrupt and kill and beat and abuse the citizens they are supposed to protect, the people will not report or cooperate in investigations, which hampers effective policing.
Anyway, funding cuts, also as I mentioned before, have to coordinated with the implementation of new programs; they did good with the program above, but it wasn’t city wide. Other investments were things like an extra million towards homeless housing, which is good, but way too little. Homeless programs need to be for permanent housing, can’t go chasing people from shitty motel to shitty motel like Reno.
They used the rest of the funds for some miscellaneous programs like some sort of leadership thing, and a chunk went into general funds.
Lots of lip service, but I don’t see a sufficient commitment to addressing the the drivers of crime, like economic insecurity, fixing the community trust through major police reforms, training and rules ect. And you know who stands in the way to new styles of training,like those emphasizing de-escalation, more public access to body cams, more discipline for police who otherwise are completely unaccountable without bystander video, those scumbag police unions. They want to keep putting police in danger by having them act aggressively, keep having them in those split second decision positions, keep using their time and manpower to respond to things cops aren’t qualified to respond to (resulting in a disproportionate number of folks with mental illness getting shot to death), sending them into no knock raids to risk getting shot at by someone protecting their home and family, fight tooth and nail against the de-escalation training resulting in good cops getting PTSD because they were scared in a situation they made worse and killed someone. (And I’m all for lots more mental health help for officers, suicide and domestic violence are real problems. Probably can’t fix the rapiness or child porn fetishes) It’s the police unions, they are standing in the way, and have far too much power. Settlements from cops beating and murdering people come from our tax dollars, I bet if they had to insure each cop they would force the changes. (Don’t believe any crying of poor from public unions, they make a shit ton of money)
Re: Re: Re:18
So, police officers are leaving because of the police unions. Riiighhhtttt.
Portland police expand recruitment strategy | KATU
https://katu.com/news/local/portland-police-set-to-announce-expanded-recruitment-strategy
You and I have discussed this several times. Police support things like the Portland Street Reponse, but it is an experimental program and quite often requires police support. Many suicide calls come from family members of a person who threatens suicide and then grabs a weapon and locks themselves in a room. You can send a counselor to talk to the person, but once a weapon is involved so are the police. Clearing out homeless encampments is literally a shitting job so if the Portland Street Response team could prevent that or assume that responsibility they would be cheered on by the cops.
BTW—my daughter-in-law was task with evicting homeless people from 5 star hotels rooms that the local cities thought would be a good remedy for the homeless problem. Unfortunately they caused so much damage to the hotel rooms that the policy was discontinued. “They turned a 5 star hotel room into a homeless encampment.”
Portland Street Response Pilot Adds Increased Areas of Service, Adds More Call Types | Portland.gov
https://www.portland.gov/streetresponse/news/2021/4/7/portland-street-response-pilot-adds-increased-areas-service-adds-more
My son spent the first 3 years of his career in the jails so he was immersed in the criminal element. There were some that he could tell wouldn’t be back, but there were those who weren’t going to stop hurting others until someone stopped them. That recommitted him to being a police officer.
Re: Re: Re:15
“I bought a gun when they started talking about defunding the police”
So, you panicked when people suggested that social workers should be the ones responding to suicidal people and those suffering a mental health issue instead of cops who come in guns blazing?
“many still call for defunding”
Yes, and if you stopped being a panicky idiot and read up on what people mean by defunding, you’d know that response times aren’t something that’s intended to be affected by that. In fact, by narrowing the scope of calls that police are expected to be first responders to on the scene, response times should actually be reduced by defunding.
Re: Re: Re:16
de·fund
/dēˈfənd/
Learn to pronounce
verbUS
prevent from continuing to receive funds.
“the California Legislature has defunded the Industrial Welfare Commission”
I bought a gun when I realized the politicians were more concerned with appeasing activist than protecting the public.
Re: Re: Re:17
Dictionaries have multiple definitions of words. Why did you cherry pick that one?
In any case, the actual words of the people calling for defunding make it clear that they’re not talking about reducing funding to zero. There’s merely more concerned with, say, taking the funds currently used to buy armoured personnel carriers for small town departments, and use them to fund things like mental health specialists and social programs that will reduce the need for cops to be out there in the first place. Nobody’s going to be less safe because murderers aren’t the first responders.
But, cower in your bunker with your gun instead, people don’t need the type of violent coward that you and your family represent out on the streets.
Re: Re: Re:18
You probably didn’t check the example of the California Industrial Welfare Commission given in the definition. It doesn’t exist anymore. It was defunded. Show me a definition of defund that means continue to fund.
In the beginning of the Defund the Police movement, defunding was exactly what they had in mind. Who wants to fund “murderers”? Unfortunately, by defunding the police you in effect funded murder and the murder rate rose to record levels. In Chicago, every week some child under 10 was killed by stray bullet. The communities that defunding was supposed to help were the first to demand more police. That’s when the definition of “defund” changed. But now there are fewer police (murderers) to send and in some areas, they have been overwhelmed.
A few weeks ago, my neighbor was burglarized while he and his daughter were at home. I’m 70 years old, if someone breaks into my house am I supposed to fight him? If he wins the fight, does he get to hold me hostage while my wife goes to the bank and empties our banking accounts? If I dial 911 will they send a realtor instead of a cop (murderer)? Maybe a grief counselor?
Re: Re: Re:19
Given your beliefs, I’m sure that if a cop did come, no-knock raid your house and shoot your wife, you would agree that you had no grounds for complaint. After all, you admit to having a gun in your house, which legally allows the police to make the “I feared for my life” claim. And if the police got punished for your wife’s unfortunate accident, why, that’s just as good as murdering your son!
Re: Re: Re:20
You’re kind of tangled up in your shorts there. There is a process for a warrant and training on how to serve that warrant. If they are all followed how do you justify throwing cops in jail? No knock warrants are meant to be a surprise against a possibly well-armed suspect like a drug lord with an AK 47 and thousands of rounds of ammo. They have been proven faulty and dangerous and discontinued in many places. If one was ordered against me and my wife was killed, the judge, the detectives, and everyone involve should bare the blame equally. We exempt judges and DAs that ask and order these dangerous moves yet we want to throw cops in jail for carrying them out?
Re: Re: Re:21
And what do you do with cops who don’t serve that warrant, and instead expect qualified immunity to carry them out of the courtroom? You’d get angry at those cops getting punished, too.
Your cops defend those practices. These are the actions that get cops their funding. Taking these away and stopping those practices means cops don’t get funding. And you don’t want that, do you? So you default back to your rant of “I don’t like it when cops get punished and therefore you criminal pleb normies don’t get to celebrate cops getting punished.”
Adding an additional layer of “Why am I the only one getting punished” doesn’t absolve you of the “I don’t think you should be happy that Derek Chauvin got punished” you started this entire discussion with.
Re: Re: Re:22
By all means throw your party. Remove qualified immunity. Remove police unions. At that point, you certainly won’t have to defund the police, because there won’t be any. They’ve already started lowering standards just to get warm bodies to sign up and they still can’t fill the rosters.
I understand civics and how the legal system works. Policing is a huge part of it, and I hope you have figured a way to do it without the police. I know (I think we all know) that at some point they will have to once again extend protection to people doing the job of policing, but a lot of damage will have been done. Already we have murder rates at all-time highs with more guns on the street than ever before. A lot of people including cops are going to die before you’re done experimenting.
Re: Re: Re:23
See, this is why nobody believes your claims that you’re not calling for no consequences for cops. It’s been nothing but “give us benefit of the doubt or we leave your world a smoldering wreck” over and over.
Re: Re: Re:21
Breonna Taylor. Bounkham Phonesavanh.
(preview still broken)
Re: Re: Re:11
You aren’t even current/correct on your pathetic examples of the war on cops. Rolfe isn’t being charged, has already been reinstated as a cop for almost a year now. And this is one of those cases where cops create unnecessary danger, risking their own safety. Brooks was drunk driver- not something I’m very sympathetic to because a friend of mine was killed by a repeat drunk driver- but he no longer posed a risk. The cops had his vehicle, had enough personal information that they could have just lel Brooks run. Could have shouted at him as he ran that he was just making the situation worse for himself, he was better off going to jail voluntarily. They could have gone to his home to arrest him the next day, or waited for him to try to get his vehicle back. Brooks wasn’t a risk to anyone now that he wasn’t behind the wheel.
Potter’s mistake ended the life of a young father who was practically still a kid himself. The reasons for pulling him over in the first place are highly questionable- taking in account what the trainee said, and the bullshit reasons they first cited to Wright. There were so many ways that danger could have been mitigated for the cops while also making clear to Wright that he had a warrant, and that the vehicle stuff they pulled him over for could be resolved after the warrant. The kid was clearly scared and confused, and it’s entirely possible he had a legit reason he didn’t show for a hearing. But Potter wanted to show the trainee how it’s done and was too cocky to pay close attention to her actions. She’s got a whopping 2 years and this young father is dead.
And those 19 officers “following training”, clearly weren’t following their training because they fired bean bag munitions way too close and directly at people, causing brain damage to a young man in one case, and breaking a woman’s jaw in another. Lots of complaints were lodged about violent suppression tactics, which so far haven’t looked very favorable to cops. Pretty much always cops instigated, provoked, responded disproportionately and escalated the violence. Sure, there are some higher ups that should be accountable for sending an insufficient response to the actual crowd size, leaving them unprepared. Of course, if police brutality had actually been addressed the hundreds and thousands of times it occurred in the past, these protests wouldn’t be so desperately emotionally charged.
But cops don’t want different training and won’t get it. They refuse accountability, use their unions to manipulate the rules in their favor, cost cities billions in lawsuits while demanding more money and toys. They don’t even want to let their training methods be evaluated, only the sanitized version.
Re: Re: Re:12 Sometimes when you test the police, the police fail.
“One bullet from death and one mistake from prison.”
Officer Rolfe initial firing was a violation of his due process. He has been reinstated as a police officer but still faces murder charges and probably a civil suit. Policy changes were made after the death of Brooks.
Kim Potter was facing up to 23 years. She was a sympathetic figure who showed a lot of remorse, so the judge only gave her two years. She is still facing a civil suit. Policy changes were made after the death of Wright.
Training for the Austin police in the use of bean bag rounds probably includes aiming at what you want to hit. 19 officers charged, many of them sergeants or corporals. Many of the officers never fired the bean bag rounds yet they were still charged and face from 5 years to life in prison and probably a civil suit.
Re: Re: Re:11
You seem to think that not reading the linked articles you’ve been referred to is an effective counterclaim to say that they didn’t happen.
Re: Re: Re:9
That’s a lot of words to avoid responding to anything I actually said, didn’t I point out above that when you want to do that you can just say ‘Look, a distraction!’ and save yourself the extra work typing?
What a surprise, no addressing my points just changing the subject again.
Yeah, I’ll let other people waste their time on you, I’ve got more productive things to do like watching paint dry than be in a back and forth with someone not actually interested in addressing what’s said.
Re: Re: Re:5
Are you one of those people with a backbone willing to step up and take their place?
I don’t need to be a janitor to know when one’s doing a shitty job.
Re: Re: Re:3
follow their training to a tee they face going to jail
So apart from their ‘training,’ they know nothing else. Like I said earlier, you’ve got to be stupid as fuck to be a cop. That’s the problem.
Re: Re: Re:4
The cops are coming to the same conclusion and that’s why they are leaving. I’m anxious to see where this all leads.
Re: Re: Re:5
Well, personally I’d hope for a change in police training from viewing the public as a hostile force that needs to be attacked as a first response, with hopefully first responses to things like suicidal or mentally ill episodes being responded to in the first case, with something other than the end of a gun. Combined with an overall reduction in things like seeing 10 minute long clips of people with extrajudicially executed by police officers, that might help reduce the general idea that cops are a hostile force to be defended against at all costs in some areas.
Re: Re: Re:
Just ‘even’, especially, a cop who murders someone or in another way violates the law should face much harsher penalties for doing so due to the power and privilege they are granted for their job.
Should read, Not ‘even’, ‘especially’,…
I read that sentence multiple times to look for typos and still managed to get the first word wrong, bloody writer’s blindness…
Re: Re: Re:
Your solution is not being a cop. The cops are coming to the same conclusion.
BTW—When the guy came at my daughter-in-law with a buck knife, did she shoot him out of incompetence or a “psychotic fit of rage?”
Re: Re:
The thing is, it’s rare that a police shooting leads to any kind of prosecution. Most cases are considered “justified” or that qualified immunity lets the officer off. This leads to the situation shoot first – ask questions later.
Compare that to civilian shootings and how many are prosecuted in such a situation.
And we haven’t even touched on the subject how many departments uses sloppy forfeiture laws to essentially rob people to finance new toys.
A majority of officers today goes onto a shift with the mentality that civilian they meet is probably an “enemy” and treats them as such.
“Defund means defund” according to AOC.
Adding counselors is great, but you do realize they are not being sent to anything dangerous. They are not going to domestic violence calls, robberies, shootings, fights, and they wouldn’t be assigned to arrest a man over a counterfeit $20. The counselors are being sent to calls that would be ignored by a busy police department and that is great. They should also handle barking dogs, traffic control, neighbor disputes, loud parties and other nuisance calls. They should also be available 24/7 and I don’t think a cop in the world would turn down that help, but they haven’t eliminated anything illegal.
Homelessness and drug use is still a huge problem in Denver and the city is spending more money on cops than ever. Show me a city that has significantly eliminated the police in favor of counselors or even unarmed constables.
Re:
You just pissed all over the pilot program, which for it’s limited scope and budget, is working well. So well that the city wants to expand it. AOC didn’t come up with the concept of defunding the police, and it sounds like you are conflating that with her calls to abolish ICE. You know the difference, but that doesn’t fit neatly into your war on cops, who are you going to call when there’s a burglar if there’s no police bullshit narrative.
Wanna know what I want to see even more than defunding the police? Abolish collective bargaining for all law enforcement. I’m generally against public sector unions, but none more than cops. No more cop unions, all contracts void (except for retirement benefits already promised) and all legislation, like cops bill of rights (that shit is the antithesis of our constitution and enumerated rights) and special treatment for cops stricken as unconstitutional.
Re: Re:
Know what else Denver wants to expand—its police force, so that must be working well too. I didn’t “piss” on anything. In fact, I suggested the counselors expand to 24/7 and answer the calls police don’t have time for.
You cannot force people to be police officers. If you demonize them and treat them like just another drunk in a bar fight, don’t expect people to sign up or stay no matter what you pay them.
I can argue with you and pointlessly show you what I see as the inevitable result or let you plow on in a self-righteous rage. I’m not sure who is going to destroy this country first, you, Brandon, or Putin. I’m 70 and I don’t think it will outlast me.
Re: Re: Re:
Weren’t you the one claiming that as a result of everyone being big meanie poopoo pants to the police, the police were all leaving? If they were all leaving how are they still working well?
Oh, are you going to finally take your ball and go home? You’ll have to be a little more explicit instead of consistently spiteful and passive-aggressive so the rest of us civilians, who you treat with utter disdain, can eke out the appropriate amount of sympathy. The effort required would probably herniate one’s back to defend Derek Chauvin the way you do, but one suspects that you’d like that.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m not going anywhere. Fighting ignorance and stupidity is rewarding and necessary.
My parents’ generation lived through the Depression and WW2. They fought and defeated actual fascist. They were heroes and celebrated as such. When my generation turned 18 we were faced with a very unpopular war in Vietnam. Those of us who fought in it were either drafted or volunteered but we all suffered the “enjoyable schadenfreude” focused on us by the anti-war movement. “Go fight for your country and we will cheer on the people that kill you.” People marched against the war and were so certain they were right that they hated anyone who disagreed with them. Despite warnings when Saigon fell, people in the anti-war movement went, “Oooohhh!!!” When 100s of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees fled their country, again the anti-war crowd went “Oooohh!!!” When the killing fields of Cambodia came to light with 1.5 to 2 million dead, again they went “Oooohh!!”
Today we are witnessing that same self-righteous stupidity directed at the police. Rather than address a very, very small number of officers that have crossed the line, it’s ACAB “all cops are bad”. “Shut up! Do as you’re told but if we don’t like the video we’ll defund you and put you in jail.” When you are in the military and you don’t like the situation, you still have to stay. The police don’t. They can retire, quit, transfer, develop tunnel vision, etc. and that’s what they are doing. No one is being drafted or volunteering to replace them so violent crime is rising. Mayors and citizens that marched against them are suddenly going “Ooooohh!”
Re: Re: Re:3
What you are doing is not fighting ignorance and stupidity.
What you did was thump your chest in self-professed righteousness because several cops who were found to have made a mistake that cost a man his life were subsequently put through the legal system, just like any other citizen they apprehend and arrest, and received consequences that statistics indicate they were unlikely to. Instead of focusing on that small portion of cops who do deserve the consequences, you’ve written comment after comment effectively threatening, “If you people think cops should be punished for killing people, just wait until all of us throw you to the dogs.”
What you’ve demonstrated is this victim mentality of everyone going after your son. You chose to think of everyone who had a negative experience with the police, even the unjustified ones, as murderous plebeians out to get you. You think of yourself as someone who’s against bullies. You’re genuinely not. You’re angry because you have cops in the family and think of everyone else as thinking of you as the parent of a bully. You’re not even that – you’re the parent of a classmate of a bully, who after the bully gets punished, sees that the bully’s parents aren’t interested in treating their kids to ice cream after school anymore and are angry at the victim for speaking out.
Re: Re: Re:4
Can we agree we need the police? Whether or not you want counselors to help or not, when we feel our lives are threatened and we call the police we want them to be there. I’m saying they won’t be there. Not because they have changed, but because we have. I get that you want to take down bad cops, but Kim Potter wasn’t a bad cop. Neither was Garrett Rolfe or the 19 Austin police officers facing 5 years to life by following their training. You’ll argue “well they made a mistake, and they have to pay for it”. Cops know how quickly things can go sideways and they no longer want to risk making that mistake that will either land them in jail or the morgue.
You’ll argue, “Fine, let the cowards quit and we’ll just hire new people”. And I’m saying you won’t. The parents, spouses and even the children of cops will press them to quit. My granddaughter brought home a letter from her principle stating “we have to all band together to stop this senseless police violence” in the Kim Potter case. Cops that can will retire or transfer from patrol. Some cops might stay in areas where crime and risk is low. Some will stay and proceed cautiously to every call and patrol with blinders on but no police department will be fully staffed. Crime will continue to rise affecting our economy and our way of life.
Then you’ll say, “Gee, I didn’t see that coming”.
Re: Re: Re:5
See, you almost had us there when you led with this, as if you were honestly agreeing that there was a need for compromise. Then you followed it up with more of the same screed you’ve been spouting this entire article. “If you feel happy that these Minneapolis cops got punished, we’ll take our ball, go home, and tell all of you plebs to go fuck yourselves!”
It’s almost as if people eventually get tired of bullshit like cops having full permission to shoot the unarmed because someone moved their hands. Or cops getting no-knock raids into the wrong house and gunning down everything that moves. What an earth-shattering thought. I hope that revelation didn’t strain your faculties too much.
Yes, yes, you’re taking your ball home and telling the rest of us to go off ourselves for not licking your footprints judiciously enough. You think that cops should only do their job if we agree to turn a blind eye to all the mistakes they internally clear. We get it. It’s the same “fuck you, got mine” you insist you’re not saying but are demonstrating for all to see.
Re: Re: Re:6
You didn’t grasp the concept at all, did you? It’s not what the cops “should do”, it’s that you won’t have any cops to do “it”.
I’m 70 years old and yes, I’ve had mine and since my kids are literally out of the line of fire, I am willing to step aside and let you have your’ s. Hope you know what you’re doing and not just throwing a tantrum.
Re: Re: Re:7
Yes, we get it. Now that you’ve got your own safely out of what you think is the line of fire, you’re perfectly happy with threatening everyone else with the withholding of peace and order because we haven’t worshipped you enough.
This didn’t start out on an article that called for the removal of cops, it started out on an article that acknowledged that a cop got punished, something that rarely happens even with the most egregious cop behavior, and you found that so offensive you went on tirade after tirade to demean, belittle, and mock the rest of us civilian normies. You picked one of the dumbest hills to die on and, after being called out on it, then threw up your hands and tried to play the victim – effectively with the same quote you considered trite: “Gee, I didn’t see that coming.” It’s almost as if in civil society, defending bullies who get punished doesn’t make you look good or something.
Re: Re: Re:8
Seems as though you haven’t read the article or the comments of some here that suggest cops shouldn’t even have the right of self-defense. The article references Derek Chauvin as a “unicorn” for being convicted and then hopes this will become the new “normal”. Looking at Kim Potter, Garrett Rolfe and the 19 Austin Police officers, it may be the new “normal”. Judging from early retirements, transfers, resignations, low recruiting, slow response times, and rising crime, the new “normal’ maybe an unacceptable risk for members of law enforcement and their families.
As a 70-year private citizen I don’t have the ability nor the intent to threaten anyone. Nor can I withhold “peace and order”. I can however warn you and if you are not sure of the difference between a warning and a threat—
Cut and pasted from the web
A warning is intended for the benefit and safety of the recipients. As nouns the difference between threat and warning is that threat is an expression of intent to injure or punish another while warning is the action of the verb warn; an instance of warning someone.
Re: Re: Re:9
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:10
This was from one of the posters here.
“Again, if the people who will kill anyone they feel stands between them and seeing their kids again are quitting the force, that’s great. Maybe the ones who are left will understand they’ve signed up for the 22nd most dangerous job in the US, and that doesn’t justify killing anyone who makes them feel unsafe. Maybe we’ll just end up with fewer cops, and that’s fine too. I haven’t seen any evidence that more cops results in a safer or better society anyway.”
That’s a pretty callous disregard for the lives of police officers and their families.
Re: Re: Re:11
If by “Maybe we’ll just end up with fewer cops” you thought I was talking about cops getting killed, I wasn’t; I meant cops retiring and not being replaced. Otherwise, I would say the attitude of killing anyone necessary to get home shows callous disregard for the lives of the public (you know, those people the police are supposed to be serving and working for) and their families.
Re: Re: Re:11
Thank you for proving my point further.
Re: Re: Re:9
The extrapolation of this into:
Was entirely your own decision. Personally, I think the arrest of everyone based on Kim Potter’s actions is a bit much. Disciplining? Probably warranted with an overhaul of what kind of training these cops underwent. Jail time to the maximum of life in prison? Difficult to justify. But again, maximum sentences are touted by law enforcement as perfectly acceptable because of how infrequent such sentences get handed out, and defended by cop fans like yourself. That such a tool would one day be used against people you support is unfortunate, but unsurprising.
Aside from insist that everyone else who doesn’t believe in the things you do represent everything that’s wrong with the world.
Re: Re: Re:10
If you think Kim Potter being charged with 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter was wrong, how do you think police officers viewed it? You may not know it from all these fine posts here, but there are people that HATE the police and they tried to get the charges increased to 3rd degree murder.
Garrett Rolfe is charged with felony murder and could face the death penalty. While the death penalty is unlikely, those fine people who HATE the police will push for it.
The 19 Austin police officers are facing 5 years to life in prison for aggravated assault charges for using equipment and training purchased by the city. Meanwhile their superiors who ordered them into a riot, oversaw their training, purchased and issued the equipment face no charges at all.
As a police officer, maybe you would do some extrapolation. Maybe you might feel that the people you work for and the people you are trying to protect either HATE you or are unwilling to stand up to the people that HATE you. Maybe they wouldn’t HATE you if you weren’t a cop.
Re: Re: Re:10
If you think Kim Potter being charged with 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter was wrong, how do you think police officers viewed it? You may not know it from all these fine posts here, but there are people that HATE the police and they tried to get the charges increased to 3rd degree murder.
Garrett Rolfe is charged with felony murder and could face the death penalty. While the death penalty is unlikely, those fine people who HATE the police will push for it.
The 19 Austin police officers are facing 5 years to life in prison for aggravated assault charges for using equipment and training purchased by the city. Meanwhile their superiors who ordered them into a riot, oversaw their training, purchased and issued the equipment face no charges at all.
As a police officer, maybe you would do some extrapolation. Maybe you might feel that the people you work for and the people you are trying to protect either HATE you or are unwilling to stand up to the people that HATE you. Maybe they wouldn’t HATE you if you weren’t a cop.
Re: Re: Re:11
Under the same systems that the police and the law have pushed for to allow for harsher penalties, even when those punishments are unnecessary and unlikely, for deterrence.
And? Your solution is to punish nobody at all. Either way the superiors come out unscathed. How is your proposition an improvement, aside from your son possibly not being implicated – which he wasn’t?
None of this justifies, explains, or validates your first post and comment on this article, which is to say that nobody should be allowed to celebrate Derek Chauvin and his colleagues getting punished.
Re: Re: Re:12
I can see punishing Chauvin, Lane, maybe even Tao because they were all experienced but Kueng was an injustice. Officer Alexander Kueng was only on his 3 shift as a police officer and now faces life in prison. He was being trained so he was literally following his training when George Floyd died. Following your training use to exonerate you, but that was before the “new normal”. If a surgeon follows his training and the patient dies, we don’t throw the surgeon in jail. If we did, nobody would want to be a surgeon. Same with police officers.
Cops have seen the underside of the bus and the changing of the rules. They’ve seen more guns on the street than ever so as one of them put it, “One bullet away from death and one mistake away from jail”.
Let me ask you, when you are celebrating Derek Chauvin and his colleagues getting punished, are you picturing all cops as Dereck Chauvin’s colleagues?
Re: Re: Re:13
Nah, you don’t. Right from the get go you were angry that Chauvin’s punishment was celebrated. There is very little hope or belief that you actually think Chauvin should have been punished.
We don’t throw up our hands and do nothing and tell the family of the patient “Shit happens, get over yourselves.”
The ones who don’t shoot the unarmed? No. The ones who don’t silently okay the summary asphyxiation of a suspect based purely on suspicion? No. I get that you’re trying to “gotcha” everyone who disagrees with you as a murderous, violent, anti-cop menace to society, but no dice.
Re: Re: Re:14
When I first saw the video I thought this is really bad and I called my son. That’s when he told me what happened with him and the Black guy in the wheelchair. Had things gone a slightly different way, you would be cheerfully celebrating my son’s punishment. Never sure which Anonymous Coward I’m dealing with so if you’re not familiar with my son’s story I’ll repost it.
This is how my son could easily have been a Derek Chauvin—
There was this Black guy in his late 50s or early 60s who liked to sit in a wheelchair on the sidewalk and get drunk. When he got drunk, he would start harassing people and they would call the police. The guy could walk but at some point, he would usually piss and shit himself, so the cops all dreaded dealing with him. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the guy) my son got the call. My son had dealt with him many times before only this time it was different. The guy seemed really scared. His body is twitching all over the place and he is screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. It took a moment or two for my son to realize the guy was on something and was screaming “I’m sorry” because he couldn’t control his body. So my son called for an ambulance, but he knows the paramedics won’t do anything until the guy is restrained on the gurney, so he also calls for backup. All the while, the guy is twitching, terrified and screaming “I’m sorry”. When everyone was finally there, my son and three other policemen each grab a limb to try and get the guy on the gurney only the guy is twitching and throwing them around and all the while screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. By the time they got him on the gurney the cops are exhausted and they haven’t noticed the guy has quit breathing.
Fortunately, the paramedics were able to revive him.
It is not hard to imagine what it would have been like if the guy had died and a video of 4 police officers dragging a terrified elderly Black man screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again, out of a wheelchair and to his death.
You would all be screaming “How can this happen in America”, but a lot of cops would be saying “I know exactly how it could happen”.
My son did everything right yet came within a heartbeat of being your worst villain.
Re: Re: Re:15
> My son did everything right yet came within a heartbeat of being your worst villain.
We get it, all you can come up with is “Well, you people might hate my son and probably do, so you know what, I’m okay with what happen with George Floyd because my son might have been implicated. All of you cheering Chauvin’s punishment are scum that should have been taken off the streets long ago for sympathizing with criminals.”
Your son’s not the asshole, you are.
Re: Re: Re:16
Never said any of that, and nobody is okay with what happened to George Floyd. Just to be clear, Chauvin was not following his training when he put his knee on Floyd’s neck, but Kueng was. You might not like that answer but unless you come up with a better one the cops are left standing in quicksand. Cops can do everything right and still have it come out wrong and the solution can’t be send them to jail. There has to be some kind of protection for them and right now there isn’t.
PS—You guys do remind me of the ant-war crowd during the Vietnam War. Called us assholes for serving and cheered on those who were trying to kill us. Then when Saigon fell, 100s of thousands of Boat People and the killing fields of Cambodia happened they went—“Gee, that’s not what we wanted.”
Re: Re: Re:17
It’s called not standing by and letting assholes be assholes. Decent people know how to do it. Your entire screed on this thread has not been your annoyance that George Floyd was killed in the way he was, but the fact that Chauvin got punished. That much has been crystal clear from the get go. Finding excuses for his colleagues isn’t helpful or constructive. The same excuses have been flung around for a long time.
Re: Re: Re:18
Of the 4 officers involved I have only defended Kueng because he was literally following his training officer’s example.
Kim Potter is a decent person. She’s in jail.
Re: Re: Re:19
In your very first post your only priority has been to get angry at the author’s “enjoyable schadenfreude”.
You decided to set that as the tone for your subsequent attempts at rebuttal.
Re: Re: Re:19
Potter is a person who endangered the public by attempting to disable the driver of a moving car.
She also managed to kill the driver through what she describes in terms that constitute gross negligence. Had she but tazed him, disabling him, then death was still a foreseeable result of disabling him as he drove the car.
Re: Re: Re:17
Assuming for argument that Kueng was trained to stand by and watch as murder occurs, then his training has turned him at least useless and may have made him a menace to society.
Re: Re: Re:9
No one here has ever remotely suggested that police can’t act in self defense, or in defense of others. No one here hopes for cops to suffer harm, with the exception that when they go busting into people’s homes in the middle of the night, deliberately disorienting the occupants, that they face the same consequences that anyone not a cop would, and that doesn’t give them the right to murder the occupants for reacting like any ordinary person would.
Frankly, I would like to see cops taking up defensive positions, giving themselves distance from potential threats, stay back use their cars to provide a physical barrier, give clear commands from a distance. Don’t go racing up to the threat and slaughter a person who has been given no opportunity to respond to orders, like little Tamir Rice and Alton Sterling. Do not give conflicting, impossible to follow commands like Philando Castillo or Daniel Shaver- fuck have you watched Shaver get blown away, crying and begging for his life on his knees?. Policy should be not to get into long foot chases or car chases, use some of that damn surveillance to catch up with the suspects at another point. So many of these killer cops chased after and shot people the back for what were non violent (often pretextual) stops, like some shit hanging from the mirror, a broken taillight, serving warrant over tags, buying a little personal weed. Cops don’t need to pursue every suspect at all costs, and put themselves in greater danger. Chases should be limited to situations where specific innocent victims are in danger, or the threat to the public is something along the lines of an active shooter, or someone who has made armed attacks against random strangers. Just having a gun doesn’t mean they are an imminent public threat, catch them later under better conditions. Cops murdered a little 7or 9 year old girl shooting at the wrong vehicle, which was moving at the time. As reckless as the teens who exchanged gunfire earlier were, no one was hurt. Summary execution wouldn’t have been ok if the cops did have the right car.
Oh, and I’ll leave this right here, about those droves of officers leaving the force https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/09/01/police-say-demoralized-officers-are-quitting-in-droves-labor-data-says-no
Re: Re: Re:10
I will see your link and raise you 10.
Why police forces are struggling to recruit and keep officers – CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/us/police-departments-struggle-recruit-retain-officers/index.html
Police agencies face staffing crisis amid uptick in violent crime (newsnationnow.com)
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/police-departments-struggle-to-recruit-into-difficult-profession/
San Diego facing new police officer vacancy crisis blamed partly on vaccine mandate – The San Diego Union-Tribune (sandiegouniontribune.com)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2022-02-03/san-diego-facing-new-police-officer-vacancy-crisis-blamed-partly-on-vaccine-mandate
Unprecedented challenges in hiring, retaining police recruits (police1.com)
https://www.police1.com/police-recruiting/articles/why-law-enforcement-is-facing-unprecedented-challenges-in-hiring-and-keeping-recruits-pFiTKCXrne6ccNfB/
Police departments across America struggle to retain and recruit officers | Fox News
https://www.police1.com/police-recruiting/articles/why-law-enforcement-is-facing-unprecedented-challenges-in-hiring-and-keeping-recruits-pFiTKCXrne6ccNfB/
Arresting the Recruitment Crisis | City Journal (city-journal.org)
https://www.city-journal.org/police-departments-recruitment-crisis
Cops Are Leaving Their Departments In Droves And Few Want To Take Their Place : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-morale-and-department-scrutiny-are-driving-them-away-from-the-job
America’s Most Dangerous Cities Grapple With Police Shortfall in Recruitment, Retention (newsweek.com)
https://www.newsweek.com/top-us-crime-cities-grapple-police-shortfall-recruitment-retention-1660779
Crisis: Cities Can’t Keep or Recruit Police Officers (texaspolicy.com)
https://www.texaspolicy.com/crisis-cities-cant-keep-or-recruit-police-officers/
Nationwide police shortage: Experts say it’s not because of COVID-19 (theledger.com)
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2021/09/18/nationwide-polk-county-florida-police-shortage-experts-say-its-not-because-covid-19/8164249002/
In 30 years of arrest records, the biggest drop in arrests so far was from 2019 to 2020. In 2019 there were 10,085,207 arrests. In 2020 there were 7,632,473 arrests despite increases in violent crime. In 2019, 1004 people were shot and killed by the police. In 2020 there were 1,021 people shot and killed by the police. So despite nearly 2.5 million fewer arrests, there 17 more people killed by the police in 2020 than in 2019. Doesn’t seem like limiting encounters between the public and the police had that much of an impact, at least not a positive one.
Couldn’t find records for 2021, but I assume arrests were probably even lower.
In every one of those arrests there was a gun involved, carried by someone who had probably never been in a split second life and death situation. Until we get Robocop’s we will continue to see reactions and mistakes made.
Re: Re: Re:5
“Can we agree we need the police?”
I’d say most people agree with that. But they need “police”, as in the people who uphold the law for the benefit of the public without escalating or causing more violence than necessary (as it present in many other countries with far lower rates of problems with police violence).
They just don’t want “police”, as in death squads armed better than most militaries who will murder the people they’ve been called to help if they make the wrong move.
For some reason, you seem to thing that if the latter is not allowed then the type of person that you and your scummy family represent would no longer want to be cops, to which I say – yeah, that’s the point to weed violent paranoid roid raging thugs out of the system.
There’s exceptions on both sides, but you’re. not winning people over with your “my family had to quit and stockpile guns because we weren’t able to issue extrajudicial executions without consequences”
Re: Re: Re:6
Did you forget your meds again? You seem like the type of guy that if my son drug you out of a burning car, you’d sue him for not going back for your IPhone. “It was right there, you could have got it” and you would still refer to my family as “scummy”.
BTW-the number of guns in my stockpile of guns is 1.
Re: Re: Re:7
“You had a gun in the house and we got the wrong address for the no-knock raid, but we put our lives on the line all the time so I’m sure you can understand why we had to riddle your wife with bullets.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” davec said, “I’m a veteran, I know the sacrifices that have to be made. You can’t be punished or the disgusting youngsters will win.”
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If they followed their training, they wouldn’t have gotten the wrong house. Search warrants don’t just have an address, they have a detailed description of the place to be searched. i.e. white 2 story house, 3 steps to top of porch, driveway on right side, etc. If a judge were to sign a search warrant with just an address on it, and it resulted in a tragedy, he should be held just a culpable as the officer (but guess what, he isn’t).
Here is a far more likely scenario that actually happened to Eugene Craig in Saratoga California
86-year-old man identified as armed suspect fatally shot by Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputy (kron4.com)
https://www.kron4.com/news/86-year-old-man-identified-as-armed-suspect-fatally-shot-by-santa-clara-county-sheriffs-deputy/945107629/
This was a terrible tragedy involving two deputies that were just trying to help. This was pre-George Floyd so the officers weren’t charged with murder.
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“They did follow their training, they just made a mistake,” said the officers. “But their trainers won’t get punished for this anyway so we let the officers go.”
“Oh,” said davec, “In that case I have no grounds for complaint then. Carry on.”
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Which is why the rest of here have taken up the sisyphean task of debunking your stupid ignorance. If not for your benefit, then for the sake of the readers you intend to mislead.
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I’ve pointed out that police are quitting and why. Crime is rising and why. Cities have gone from Defund to Refund and why. People are not signing up to be cops and why (cities are lowering their standards and they still can’t get people to sign up). Response times are increasing and why.
I have yet to see where you have produced or debunked any fact. I’m sure you keep all your facts in your head, but unfortunately you keep your head up your ass.
Re: Re: Re:5
Nobody is here to debunk your “facts”, just your “ignorance”. Your son understandably saw a lot of nasty occurrences on the job. What people disagree with is your insistence that celebrating the arrest and punishment of Derek Chauvin and his colleagues will lead to a dystopia of lawlessness because people actually want to see consequences for police brutality.
You could have easily defended Kim Potter on the article on her last year. Picking Derek Chauvin to be the soapbox for which to demand more respect for cops was the dumbest move you made. Of your own volition. And continue to do so.
Re: Re: Re:6
The article celebrates the “new normal” and that “new normal” includes charging Kim Potter with 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter, Garrett Rolfe with felony murder, and the 19 Austin police officers with felony assault. Despite jail time, these officers also face civil suits. I’ve talked to my son and daughter-in-law, so I know what the “new normal” meant to them and their response. The inability of cities to retain, recruit or replace officers, despite bonuses and raises is the result of the “new normal”.
“A bullet away from death and a mistake away from prison” is the “new normal”.
I’ve questioned people here if they would be a police officer in the “new normal” and as yet nobody has said yes.
Re: Re: Re:7
Your extrapolation, not the article’s.
What was it that cops like to say – “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”? You mean that even people who’ve done nothing wrong have something to fear after all?
For one, the definition of “new normal” here is yours, not the articles. For two, if a chef serves you soup with a swarm of flies in it, the solution is to replace the soup. Maybe the chef, if necessary. What is not a solution is to ask the customer to apply to be a replacement chef. You would not only demand that customers unhappy with their service sign up en masse to be chefs, but should not even be allowed to complain when there are flies in their soup.
Re: Re: Re:8
What I extrapolate is unimportant. What police officers have extrapolated from the “new normal” has consequences.
Yes, in the “new normal”, you can do everything right and still have a lot to fear. Police are trained to do things the “right” way and now they are being prosecuted and persecuted for following their training. Besides the 19 officers in Austin here is yet another example.
Former Louisville Cop Facing Federal Charges For Sparking Fatal Incident During BLM Protest In 2020 (msn.com)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/former-louisville-cop-facing-federal-charges-for-sparking-fatal-incident-during-blm-protest-in-2020/ar-AAVpkf9?ocid=msedgntp
In your analogy about the soup–
The “new normal” solution, instead of removing flies from the kitchen, is to throw the chef in jail and expect the next chef to do better. I wonder how many people will sign up to be chefs. Would you?
Re: Re: Re:9
Your solution is to tell everyone that eating flies is the new normal, then get angry that nobody wants to eat flies.
Re: Re: Re:10
I stated exactly what I meant.
The “new normal” is to throw the chef in jail.
Kim Potter made a mistake. Nobody is addressing the mistake to see that it doesn’t happen again as it had 9 previous times. The solution is to throw the chef in jail.
Garrett Rolfe spent 40 minutes deescalating before getting thrown on his ass and making a split-second decision that was a mistake. Nobody is addressing “how do we keep officers from reacting out of fear or anger”. The solution is to charge the chef with murder and throw him in jail.
The 19 officers in Austin Texas were equipped and trained for riot control. It didn’t turn out as envisioned, so the solution is to throw them in jail.
Re: Re: Re:11
> Nobody is addressing “how do we keep officers from reacting out of fear or anger”.
How do you think getting the public to not celebrate officers getting punished – which, I might add, is still a rare occurrence and not the doomsday scenario you keep bleating about – is going to encourage officers to not react based on fear? You keep thinking that continuing to toe the line like obedient schmucks is the way to go. It really doesn’t. It convinces trainers, chiefs and patsies like you that the status quo is the way to go.
Re: Re: Re:12
If you want change, you got change and cops quitting is the change. Not one person posting here would contemplate being a cop under these conditions yet somehow you expect others to cheerfully volunteer to be your “patsy”. If you want a better outcome, maybe you should look for a better solution instead of just retribution.
Re: Re: Re:13
You’ve been here screaming nothing but retribution. “Punish cops, and we’ll all take our ball and go home so all of you criminals can go fuck yourselves for not listening to us.”
Re: Re: Re:14
Cops won’t take their ball and go home; they just won’t be cops. No ball, no home.
If you read the article about the nurse being found guilty of homicide, you’ll see the same concerns expressed there.
Re: Re: Re:15
You can change the words around all you want to try and mask your underlying threat. It’s not going to work.
Re: Re: Re:16
It’s not a threat!!! It’s a fact! You can’t force people to be cops! They are not in the military! If you create an untenable occupation nobody is going to do it. And that’s why the cops are quitting.
Re: Re: Re:17
We know. People in the military show significantly more restraint despite the superior firepower.
You are seriously getting your adult diapers in a twist because Chauvin got sent to jail.
Re: Re: Re:18
So your answer is “use the military”? It may come to that.
Ironically the activist claim the police are too militarized.
Re: Re: Re:19
The cops have already shown what happens when they get access to military surplus gear: they party like frat house bros, except with a greater threat to life in the vicinity.
But whatever fuels your power trip fantasies, I guess.
Re: Re: Re:5
Just curious, what made you think people would fall for this little bit of gaslignting and projection of yours, when all the evidence to debunk is still perfectly visible on this very page?
Re: Re: Re:6
If what I’m saying is gas lighting, then you should have no reservations about being a police officer. Cities are offering huge bonuses just to get people to sign up. They’ve lowered their standards for recruits so much that even you might qualify.
Re: Re: Re:7
If what you’re saying is intentional emotional manipulation, nobody is going to validate your emotional manipulation by doing what you demand. That’s just silly.
The standards for recruits have been well known for a while: don’t be a hero, don’t try to change the system, call anyone out on their bad behavior and everyone will make you live to regret it.
Re: Re: Re:8
Never demand somebody to do something you wouldn’t.
Re: Re: Re:9
You’re not “doing something”. You’re pulling your own out of the fight you want everyone else to replace your side with, then mocking everyone for daring to celebrate bad actors getting punished.
Counter of honest, fact-backed comments by davec, longest-running streak:
0
Nurse Who Accidentally Mixed Up Medications Found Guilty of Homicide
Nurse Who Accidentally Mixed Up Medications Found Guilty of Homicide (msn.com)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/nurse-who-accidentally-mixed-up-medications-found-guilty-of-homicide/ar-AAVv1Vk?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=04fdc010f0604806a4eec3073d416a81
At least now there is consistency between throwing medical workers and police in jail for their mistakes. Since medical mistakes kill 200 to 400 times more people in the US than police officers do the courts and the prisons are going to get very busy. I wonder how many people will drop out of or not go in to medicine because of this?
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If you want to see more people in the medical profession punished – i.e. you want to see change – by your own logic you should be a doctor.
Re: Re:
?? Don’t know where you got that. I have said that if you start throwing doctors and nurses in jail for making a mistake then no one will want to work in the field of medicine. I wouldn’t.
Would you?
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Your counterargument for anyone who criticizes the police is to insist that they join the police force.
One of your anger points seems to be that doctors and nurses aren’t punished as much as you would like them to be. If you want to see that change, and you don’t like how things are run, the solution is to be a doctor, just as you think that anyone who wants to change how the policing system works is to be a cop.
Re: Re: Re:2
Put the bong down.
I’ve said over and over that the “new normal” for the police is to throw them in jail if they make a mistake. Even if they don’t make a mistake but are just following their training, like the 19 Austin police officers, they are facing jail time or a civil suit. We put them in dangerous, sometimes life-threatening situations and insist that everything turn out right and if it doesn’t, they could face jail time or death. Thus the cops are saying, “one bullet from death and one mistake from prison”, and they don’t want to do the job under those conditions. That’s why they are quitting. Would you work under those conditions?
Now they are putting the same demands on the medical profession which kills 200 to 400 times as many Americans as the police do. In the story I posted before, a nurse made a mistake and was found guilty of homicide. American Nurses Association is now concerned about turning medical mistakes into crimes punishable by prison time. Would you work under those conditions?
Re: Re: Re:3
You keep waving that around as if cops don’t get a court case. Or lawyers. Or preferential treatment in court. For that matter, judges have been shown to ignore even video and eyewitness testimony purely because it goes against the officers’ interests.
Your fantasy that cops get thrown in the slammer the moment they execute someone unarmed is simply not reality. Cops shooting someone without a gun because of the “I feared for my life” trope, on the other hand, is reality you simply don’t want to admit to.
Stats for deaths on the job for a variety of industries indicate otherwise. Cops aren’t even in the top 10 of fatalities on the job. But ignoring that statistic is par for the course for you lot when it comes to defending streetside execution.
Considering we just barely hobbled through a global pandemic exacerbated by weaknesses in the healthcare system? Yes, there will be people who want to go into the nursing profession. I get that you want this to be a “gotcha” moment on why cops shouldn’t be punished, but nothing you’ve brought up so far is even a remote defense for why medical negligence or a failure to follow procedure or something that caused the death of someone else shouldn’t at least be looked at. You want it shrugged off.
Re: Re: Re:4
Kim Potter got a court case for committing a mistake that had happened 9 times previously where no one was charged. She’s in jail. Garrett Rolfe is actually facing the death penalty for his actions. Nobody is saying “just shrug it off”. We all want better and better policing but that can’t be accomplished if we demand retribution and treat all mistakes as callous indifference.
“Officer Kimberly Potter was trying to do the right thing. Of all the jobs in public service, police officers have the most difficult one. They must make snap decisions under tense evolving and ever-changing circumstances. They risk their lives every single day in public service. Officer Potter made a mistake that ended tragically,” Chu said, pausing as she appeared to get choked up.
None of the “new-normal” will reduce officer mistakes, it will only reduce the number of officers. In 2020, the police killed more people than in 2019 despite heightened scrutiny and nearly 2.5 million fewer arrests.
Doctors and nurses mistakes kill 200 to 400 times more Americans every year than do the police. So for every Kim Potter there should be approximately 300 doctors or nurses facing prison time. Again, that won’t reduce mistakes, only the number of doctors and nurses. But of course we must hold doctors and nurses (and cops) accountable. How else are they going to learn? There will be vacancies to fill.
Re: Re: Re:5
“But they started it and got away with it” is an excuse that didn’t work in grade school, and the idea that you think it should work for adults with license to maim and kill is troubling.
I’m sure you can find a similarly tearjerking defense of Chauvin if you looked hard enough. No, wait, you don’t need to. We’ve got your persistent screed of “Please don’t celebrate Chauvin getting punished, think of all the shit my son has to face” right here.
You don’t have to keep up the lie, we all know you don’t think cops should be held accountable.
Re: Re: Re:
“I have said that if you start throwing doctors and nurses in jail for making a mistake then no one will want to work in the field of medicine. I wouldn’t.
Would you?”
Depends on the mistake, the circumstances around them, the amount of negligence, incompetence or outright deliberate action surrounding those incidents.
In fact, if I believe in the nature of the hippocratic oath, I might be less incentivised to join the field if it’s widely known that doctors were causing people to die unnecessarily, and their bosses and colleagues rallied around to protect clearly dangerous individuals instead of allowing them to face consequences for their own actions.
Re: Re: Re:2
“Nurses were in the courtroom along with Vaught’s family to show support through the trial, and the American Nurses Association issued a statement earlier this week defending Vaught and repeating the concerns that turning medical mistakes into crimes punishable by prison time could severely harm the rate at which mistakes are honestly reported.”
Could be counterproductive. But at least you don’t have to worry about going to jail. Just them.
This is a little of what I'm warning about.
Law enforcement crisis hotline overwhelmed after string of police shootings | king5.com
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/crisis-hotline-for-first-responders-busy-as-law-enforcement-mourns-recent-losses/281-309ceb22-d392-4a00-8296-8d3a3fd08fd5
Does this sound familiar?
Nurses: Guilty verdict for dosing mistake could cost lives (msn.com)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nurses-guilty-verdict-for-dosing-mistake-could-cost-lives/ar-AAVEBCg?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=eb3aac9fa42a40b3a82b159910fe33d9
Re:
Thank goodness your son wasn’t in the medical profession, or we’d have to hear you bitch about “Guys, we shouldn’t punish doctors and nurses when patients die due to malpractice.”
Derek Chauvin/George Floyd
Chauvin didn’t purposely kill George hes not stupid … those cops were unsure what to do when with the crowd gathering screaming obscenities and becoming more and more violent … it was an accident … whiny ass politicians slow to act in times of crisis and unrest eventually allowing common criminals free run of the streets … poor guys … awwww … Only ignorant people (some wearing wigs) waste time worshipping felons like ol’ George … Derek was railroaded big-time simply because the government was worried about having more riots and looting. And juries, court officials, and politicians were afraid to speak up for fear of more b. s. and unrest … so wake up and quit glorifying a home invading, woman beating, pistol whipping drug-addicted felon like he was such a moral and ethical family man who paid taxes and said everyday niceties to little old ladies as the bus stop. Not even close. Nope. He chose to use counterfeit money at a neighborhood store cuz he didn’t have a real 20. And got caught cuz he was high as fuck! Crock of shit
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Guys, I think we found davec’s son!