The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[Barrister]

No need to denigrate yourself, just act subservient and promptly follow every order.

No need to denigrate or act subservient, but yes follow every order.

I remember I was at NDSU campus late one evening with a fraternity buddy of mine while in university.  We were stopped by cops while walking.  I can't remember exactly what was said other than I was polite and followed directions, but I also politely asked the officer what he was doing and why.  My buddy was super-impressed that I had pulled some kind of "lawyer mind trick" on the cop as he left us with a very different attitude than he started with.   

Look I'll admit I'm white, not black, so I can't fully comment on what difference that would make.  And I think being polite and respectful while also standing up for yourself is actually trickier than it sounds.  But there's no magic in it either.

[Syt]

All I can say about Canadian cops is that my colleagues who went to Toronto talked one into giving them a speed boat ride in the harbor, two girls had their pictures taken with a young cop, playfully wrapped around him while handcuffed, and that the show Rookie Blue has a very attractive female cast.

[Barrister]

All I can say about Canadian cops is that my colleagues who went to Toronto talked one into giving them a speed boat ride in the harbor, two girls had their pictures taken with a young cop, playfully wrapped around him while handcuffed, and that the show Rookie Blue has a very attractive female cast.

NDSU is in Fargo, North Dakota.

[Syt]

Which is practically Canada.

[Malthus]

All I can say about Canadian cops is that my colleagues who went to Toronto talked one into giving them a speed boat ride in the harbor, two girls had their pictures taken with a young cop, playfully wrapped around him while handcuffed, and that the show Rookie Blue has a very attractive female cast.

Toronto cops have radically changed their image during my lifetime.

When I was a teen, there was still the notorious "Cherry Beach Express" - Cherry Beach was (then) an isolated section of the waterfront, where the cops would take people who displeased them (mostly gays, minorities, and rowdy teens who lacked good connections) and beat the shit out of them - then dump them. Allegedly, one trick was to use a telephone book for padding and whack the air out of the victim's lungs with a nightstick. Never happened to me, but stories are rumors about this sort of thing were rife.

Nowadays there are still issues around policing (the practice of "carding" is controversial), but it is around 100% better than it was in the late 70s early 80s.

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like this is a problem that is solvable if the police had the will to do so, sadly it deos not seem like they have the will.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-predict-which-chicago-cops-will-commit-misconduct/

The extensive catalog of complaints against officers appears to bear out the theory of a few bad apples: Among the 7,758 police officers who received a complaint during that time period, more than half received less than one per year (officers with zero complaints do not appear in the database). Meanwhile, the bad apples seem to be the ones racking up the grievances.



To avoid the overworked "bad apple" metaphor, the Invisible Institute prefers to call officers with many complaints against them "repeaters." Repeaters only make up a small fraction of the more than 12,000 officers on Chicago's force — perhaps 1 percent to 10 percent of the officers in the database, depending on where you draw the line — but are responsible for a huge fraction of the complaints: 10 percent of the officers who had received complaints generated 30 percent of the total departmental complaints since 2011. The 10 individual repeaters with the most complaints in the past five years averaged 23.4 complaints against them in that span.

In addition to the outsize number of complaints, Kalven said, repeaters have broader, cultural impacts, both within and outside of the department. Within the department, repeaters might normalize misconduct toward residents, pushing other cops toward wrongdoing. Outside of the department, the behavior of these officers can turn the community against the police. "That's what the 'few bad apples' theory doesn't capture: the kind of compounding, metastasizing arms that flow from the impunity of bad cops," Kalven said.

The Chicago Police Department declined to comment on this article, saying in an email that it could not address studies provided by outside sources. But the paradigm of repeaters is promising, in a way. It suggests that if we could identify the bad actors within a police department and remove them from the force, the overall performance of the department would improve. Not only would dismissing these officers trigger a significant reduction in complaints and misconduct, the thinking goes, it could spark a cultural shift toward more responsible policing.

[garbon]

No need to denigrate yourself, just act subservient and promptly follow every order.

Well that may be normal to some of us, but others may find that denigrating.

Yep. Do nothing to even make a cop think he has been provoked. You never know what kind of jerk you are going to get. I have had a couple cops come at me all redass and belligerent just for regular traffic stops and shit.

I'm not into the whole S&M scene. YMMV.

[Admiral Yi]

The trial of the first cop (they're being tried separately) in the Freddie Gray case (Baltimore, died in a paddy wagon) ended in a hung jury.

[Valmy]

The trial of the first cop (they're being tried separately) in the Freddie Gray case (Baltimore, died in a paddy wagon) ended in a hung jury.

Well that has to be a bummer for everybody who showed up for the riot.

There will be another trial then I guess.

[Admiral Yi]

Well that has to be a bummer for everybody who showed up for the riot.

There will be another trial then I guess.

Eh?  I thought the riot was because of the hung jury.

Prosecutor has already said she'll go again.

[Valmy]

Oh wait there was a riot? Huh. Silly me thought there wouldn't be.

[11B4V]

Oh wait there was a riot? Huh. Silly me thought there wouldn't be.

Riots a couple weeks before Christmas, that's one way of getting your shopping done.

[Syt]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35185394

Chicago police 'accidentally kill' mother of five

A Chicago police officer "accidentally struck and tragically killed" a mother of five after responding to a domestic disturbance, department officials say.

Bettie Jones, 55, was killed along with her neighbour, 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, who was the reason for the police call-out early on Saturday.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said an investigation had been launched.

The city's police department is already the subject of a federal investigation over its use of force.

It follows the killing of a black teenager by a white officer in 2014.

'Public deserves answers'

Saturday's double shooting happened in the early hours. Antonio LeGrier told the Chicago Sun-Times that he had returned home to find his son, who had mental health issues, in an agitated state.

He said he called the police, and warned his neighbour Bettie Jones, who lived on the floor below, about what was going on.

When the police arrived, he said, he heard gunshots and found his son and Ms Jones lying in the foyer.

Chicago Police Department said in a statement that "upon arrival, officers were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer's weapon, fatally wounding two individuals.

"The 55-year-old female victim was accidentally struck and tragically killed. The department extends its deepest condolences to the victim's family and friends."

Mayor Emanuel, in a statement, said: "Anytime an officer uses force the public deserves answers, and regardless of the circumstances, we all grieve anytime there is a loss of life in our city."

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced earlier this month that a federal investigation into the Chicago Police Department would focus on whether there was a racial dimension to its use of force and its accountability procedures for officers involved in the use of force.

According to the Better Government Association, Chicago police shot 240 people in the 2010-2014 period, or about one per week. Seventy of those people died and of those, two-thirds were African American.

Ms Lynch's announcement came after weeks of protest which followed the release of video footage, showing the moment a police officer opened fire on 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, shooting him 16 times, in 2014.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder just a few hours before the video was released in late November - more than a year after the shooting.

In response to the outcry, Mayor Emanuel fired the city's police chief and later announced the resignation of the Independent Police Review Authority's chief.

Mr Emanuel originally said a federal investigation would be "misguided", but later back-tracked and welcomed an investigation.

[Razgovory]

The use of "struck" sounds weird here.  It implies being hit something physically connect to a person, like their hand or a bat.

[11B4V]

The need to hammer these cops to get rid of the "pull my gun for everything" culture.