The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[garbon]

Fair.

[DGuller]

Totally.  Where are the moderates among cops?

[Valmy]

Not buying it and calling BS. What's the per capita results buy population numbers and ethnic groups. IOW whats the total population numbers of white and black and the percentage of police shooting deaths for each. I think you will find blacks are killed at a higher percentage.

Of course they are they killed at a higher percentage per capita. It is obvious in this graph.

The thing that drives me nuts is that THAT is the only issue it seems. Like if the cops just shot MORE Latinos and Whites then hey the number of blacks being shot would be ok. Why aren't whites and Latinos also out there marching about this? Why are they ok with their people being gunned down?

[Valmy]

Totally.  Where are the moderates among cops?

I just wish that the Cops would realize how socially destabilizing this is. How difficult it is to do their jobs. This has been going on for years and yet they just kept letting it go on until it started to really get people angry.

[DGuller]

Totally.  Where are the moderates among cops?

I just wish that the Cops would realize how socially destabilizing this is. How difficult it is to do their jobs. This has been going on for years and yet they just kept letting it go on until it started to really get people angry.

The fundamental problem is that a truly bad cop is the cop that takes part in the exercise to keep everyone's story straight.  And when it comes to these kinds of bad cops, I don't buy into the bullshit narrative that they're just a few bad apples.  Maybe it's unrealistic to expect individuals to buck a very vindictive culture that does not tolerate taking side of justice against cops, but something has to be done systematically to destroy the thin blue line.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean I think it's true that only a small % of cops are outright criminally bad. It's probably like most jobs, a large percentage or "moderately competent" a small percentage are genuinely great, and a small percentage are shit.

It's the pernicious union culture (which should be squashed in all public sector jobs by force of law), which I think makes police behave so poorly when one of their own fucks up. I'm a Federal employee and am not in a union, if one of my peers gets in trouble I don't give a flying fuck, that's his problem. Unions create a culture of covering for poor behavior.

[Berkut]

Bullshit, this has nothing to do with unions. There are plenty of cops who are not in unions who have this same problem.

This is about a police culture, not a union culture.

[The Brain]

https://youtu.be/lBoK_73NMJs?t=547

Monstrous.

[derspiess]

Apparently the asshole in Dallas used an SKS.  From what I saw though in that video with the columns, he had whored it all up.  Optics, banana mags, etc.

Actually I think it was a converted Saiga in 5.45x39.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Actually I think it was a converted Saiga in 5.45x39.

Yeah, there's a photo a...I dunno how long this current conversation has been going on, but it's a page or two back now if you want to eyeball it. 

E: 5.45 (a -74 type, I guess) seems like an odd choice.  An AR using 5.56 seems like it'd be more....convenient. 

[Razgovory]

Bullshit, this has nothing to do with unions. There are plenty of cops who are not in unions who have this same problem.

This is about a police culture, not a union culture.

Ehhh, I'm not sure I agree.  One of the big things the Union does is protect cops from prosecution.

[Malthus]

look at the numbers. US has nation of 318 million, rounded down. there are 240 million 911 calls. there were 986 people killed by police last year. how many were caused by mistakes? etc., etc. you break the numbers down and you get an insanely small percentage of people killed by mistakes. you're never going to reduce it to 0%, not with the factors US police deal with. by no means are they perfect, but I don't see concrete evidence that there's a big problem in the US.

The problem though is that US cops shoot a much larger number that cops in other comparable Western countries, on a per-capita basis. That provides some evidence that there is a problem.

To give one example, here's an article from the start of 2016 complaining of police shootings in Canada:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/samir-shaheenhussain/police-killing-youth_b_8914048.html

This guy is outraged that there have been 150 shootings "since 2005". That's around 15 a year on average.

Canada's population was roughly 35 million in 2013, compared with 316 million in the US. So if Canada had cop shootings at the same rate as the US, it ought to have roughly 109 per year, rather than 15. That's a pretty big discrepancy.   

[derspiess]

Actually I think it was a converted Saiga in 5.45x39.

Yeah, there's a photo a...I dunno how long this current conversation has been going on, but it's a page or two back now if you want to eyeball it. 

E: 5.45 (a -74 type, I guess) seems like an odd choice.

Could have been .223, not sure.  But the 5.45 round is popular with AK enthusiasts.

[Barrister]

Fair.

No, it actually isn't.

Cops have no problem saying another cop screwed up - once all the evidence is in.  But the radio guy doesn't want to wait for due process or investigation - they want "hot takes" in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.

Some of these police shootings that garnered police attention have generally shown police actions to be justified (see Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson).  Some of these police shootings appear to show police actions to be unjustifiable (see Philando Castille a few days ago).  But it's wrong to immediately criticize each and every police shooting without waiting for all the facts to be known.

[Valmy]

Some of these police shootings that garnered police attention have generally shown police actions to be justified (see Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson).  Some of these police shootings appear to show police actions to be unjustifiable (see Philando Castille a few days ago).  But it's wrong to immediately criticize each and every police shooting without waiting for all the facts to be known.

You are completely ignoring the context of decades of this kind of thing going on. The benefit of the doubt is wearing thin. If we felt confident that police were going to responsibly deal with every shooting then there would be no issue.