The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[crazy canuck]

Grumbles, if you the one proclaiming your own superiority it probably means the opposite.

[grumbler]

Honest question, since english is not my native language and I am not really accustomed with the training of US police officers:

Does probation not mean that your training has finished? For german officers, practical time would only be a small part of their training period to compliment theory with insights into everyday work. Courses would continue throughout your 2 to 3 years of academy time. The actual probation period (Probezeit) then starts after the final exam and lasts for another three years.

Probation doesn't mean that your training has finished.  It means that training has shifted from the classroom to on the job.  Probationary officers have supervisory officers assigned to them, responsible for their on-the-job training and often partnered with them (though many police departments allow probies to patrol alone if their officers are not normally paired up).

The extent to which probies actually get training depends on a lot of local factors, though.  it is considered a training period, though, and failure to master the training will result in job loss without compensation, just like failing a course in the academy.

If German officers actually stay in the Academy for two or three years (I can't find anything that confirms that - the sources i can find say 6 months, but that could just be me not being able to find the real details in English - and then serve an additional three years before they are actual full-fledged police officers, I'd have to wonder how long they serve.  If they come into the academy after college-equivelence, they graduate from the academy at 23 or 24, serve as a probie until 27, and then start to lose the physical abilities to be a cop around 45.  That doesn't leave a lot of time to actually serve as a cop, and means that a given police force is like 1/3 recruits or probies.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation, or maybe the German police can afford to have enough officers to afford to be 1/4 to 1/3 in training status at any given time.  We certainly don't hear stories about German police departments funding themselves through bogus traffic stops.

[grumbler]

Grumbles, if you the one proclaiming your own superiority it probably means the opposite.

cRazy, you might want to get your humor meter checked.  If you even have one.

[DGuller]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

That to me is the real problem in all of this.  Bad shootings will always happen in US, there are too many guns out there, but police omerta that we see time and again is what is really destroying the relations between civilians and cops.  The cops that keep mum and maintain conspiracy against the public are almost as bad as the cops that do the shooting.  At least shootings happen in a matter of seconds, while the cover-ups are premeditated.

[crazy canuck]

Grumbles, if you the one proclaiming your own superiority it probably means the opposite.

cRazy, you might want to get your humor meter checked.  If you even have one.

If your exchanges with Marti are what you think passes for humor then that explains a lot.  Given that context you are hilarious.

[Admiral Yi]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

I saw the video of Slager picking up his taser from next to the dead dude, but not planting it.  Do you have a link to that video?

[DGuller]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

I saw the video of Slager picking up his taser from next to the dead dude, but not planting it.  Do you have a link to that video?

It's the same video, you're just seeing different things.  In the video, Slager picks up the stun gun from where he was standing when he was shooting, and walks over to the dead guy and drops it next to him.

[Admiral Yi]

It's the same video, you're just seeing different things.  In the video, Slager picks up the stun gun from where he was standing when he was shooting, and walks over to the dead guy and drops it next to him.

And I didn't see the part where he drops it next to the dead dude.  I saw the part where he picks it up and holsters it.

[crazy canuck]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

That to me is the real problem in all of this.  Bad shootings will always happen in US, there are too many guns out there, but police omerta that we see time and again is what is really destroying the relations between civilians and cops.  The cops that keep mum and maintain conspiracy against the public are almost as bad as the cops that do the shooting.  At least shootings happen in a matter of seconds, while the cover-ups are premeditated.

Its a good point.  We had the same thing happen here when RCMP officers at the Vancouver airport killed a Polish tourist coming to visit his mother.  All four of the officers stated that the Polish guy attacked them.  Thankfully, another passenger videod the whole thing and it was clear that the account given by the officers was false.  What is more disturbing is that the passenger had given his video to the RCMP shortly after the incident and even with that video in their possession the RCMP came to the conclusion that the officers had done nothing wrong.  The video only came to light during an inquiry into the incident.  At least one of the officers has now been convicted of perjury for the testimony he gave at that Inquiry.

That event was one of the catalysts to this jurisdiction putting an end to the practice of police investigating police.  We now do it through the offices of a civilian investigation unit whose only task is to investigate all incidents where injury or death occurs when police are involved.

[grumbler]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

That to me is the real problem in all of this.  Bad shootings will always happen in US, there are too many guns out there, but police omerta that we see time and again is what is really destroying the relations between civilians and cops.  The cops that keep mum and maintain conspiracy against the public are almost as bad as the cops that do the shooting.  At least shootings happen in a matter of seconds, while the cover-ups are premeditated.

I think that this is a good point.  Nothing destroys the ability of police to operate effectively against the bad guys as the loss of public support, and nothing ruins public support faster than the police siding with criminals (whether in uniform or not) against the public.

[Zanza]

If they come into the academy after college-equivelence,

That's a difference in American and German tertiary education. They would go from high school to the police academy directly. The police academies will often give them something that may be comparable to your community college degrees. So by the time they are done with police academy, they would be like 21.

and then start to lose the physical abilities to be a cop around 45.

Hmm, not sure. You see older cops here. Not in all tasks of course (i.e. not in riot police), but also not limited to desk jobs.

[Barrister]

Here is another question about the South Carolina shooting:  what about the second cop on the scene?  Slager just casually walks over and plants his stun gun on the dead guy, and the other cop doesn't seem to flinch or do anything about it.  Given the police report that came out after the shooting but before the video, it's probably safe to assume that the other cop didn't rat Slager out. 

That to me is the real problem in all of this.  Bad shootings will always happen in US, there are too many guns out there, but police omerta that we see time and again is what is really destroying the relations between civilians and cops.  The cops that keep mum and maintain conspiracy against the public are almost as bad as the cops that do the shooting.  At least shootings happen in a matter of seconds, while the cover-ups are premeditated.

Its a good point.  We had the same thing happen here when RCMP officers at the Vancouver airport killed a Polish tourist coming to visit his mother.  All four of the officers stated that the Polish guy attacked them.  Thankfully, another passenger videod the whole thing and it was clear that the account given by the officers was false.  What is more disturbing is that the passenger had given his video to the RCMP shortly after the incident and even with that video in their possession the RCMP came to the conclusion that the officers had done nothing wrong.  The video only came to light during an inquiry into the incident.  At least one of the officers has now been convicted of perjury for the testimony he gave at that Inquiry.

That event was one of the catalysts to this jurisdiction putting an end to the practice of police investigating police.  We now do it through the offices of a civilian investigation unit whose only task is to investigate all incidents where injury or death occurs when police are involved.

This is going far afield, but everything the RCMP did with the polish guy was perfectly justifiable.  In hindsight it wasn't perfect, but their actions were justifiable.

What sank the cop however wasn't tasering the dude, but lying about it - hence the perjury conviction.

[Malthus]

Is there any statistics out there about the number of fatal shootings by cops in different countries, per population?

I certainly get the impression it happens a lot more in the US than anywhere else in the 1st world, but have no actual figures to back that up with.

[Zanza]

Is there any statistics out there about the number of fatal shootings by cops in different countries, per population?

I certainly get the impression it happens a lot more in the US than anywhere else in the 1st world, but have no actual figures to back that up with.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/11/11662345-german-police-fired-just-85-bullets-total-in-2011

German police fired just 85 bullets total in 2011
German police officers fired a total of 85 bullets in 2011, 49 of which were warning shots, the German publication Der Spiegel reported. Officers fired 36 times at people, killing six and injuring 15. This is a slight decline from 2010, when seven people were killed and 17 injured. Ninety-six shots were fired in 2010.

Guess there wasn't that much change in the last years.

[Valmy]

21 hits in 36 shots? They must have some excellent marksmanship training.