Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread

Here’s what a house looks like after a visit from the friendly local SWAT team:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/front-range/greenwood-village/owner-of-greenwood-village-house-blown-apart-by-swat-says-this-is-an-abomination-this-is-an-atrocity

I’m still waiting for the conservatives to step up and decry this overreach of big government.

How dare they use physical force to arrest someone who only opened fire on them with a gun and was holding a child hostage! Clearly, they should have just sat outside and berated him with harsh language (not politically incorrect harsh language, though) until he got tired of trying to murder them and agreed to be released on his own recognizance and to report for a court hearing in three months.

I agree entirely! Charge on in! Kill the fucking kid if he gets in the way! He should know better than to resist the police!

Wait, no, maybe the above is an inaccurate summation of my attitude.

Y’know, Smapti, you’re going to be the next Der Thrihs.

Yeah, that’s an accurate summation of my attitude.

To be fair, I can see how a panicky moron can mistake some crayons for a gun.

Nowhere in the story does it say he “opened fire” on them, and the child had already been released by the time they breached the house.

Learn to read, Smapti.

Actually, the article says:

It’s not clarified anywhere exactly when this opening of fire took place. I suggest a more detailed account of the events is needed before anyone can make any bold declarations of any weight.

To expand on what I was saying in that other thread, it seems to me that the racial component is that a lot of people, including cops, are much more likely to perceive a black person as a threat to their lives. If you catch a white kid in your house, you think “oh, he’s come for my TV, I’m certainly not going to kill someone over a TV” but a black kid is “oh, he’s come to kill me. I have to save my life”. And it’s not a “fake” emotional response–in the first case, the person is not afraid for their life, in the second, they are. In addition to the legacy of racism, I think it’s in large part because we live in a world that is saturated in images of violent black people. Furthermore, for many white people, black people are still “other”. If I find a white kid in my living room, I’m imagining he’s there for some purpose that’s at least comprehensible to me–like stealing my TV for drug money. But a black person? Could be anything. Random murder, rape, who knows?

And I think cops can have the same sort of racist emotional reaction. It’s really, really deeply embedded. So in that gray area of “reasonable fear for your life”, black people are not getting the benefit of the doubt when other people do, and they are dying from it. And in many of the individual cases, you can construct an argument that there was a “reasonable fear”. But the pattern is appalling, utterly wrong, sickening. And I have no idea what the fuck to do about it. But I do think an important early step is for police officers to realize that this is even a thing, and start talking about it as a problem, a pattern, that needs to be fixed, not just taking this on an incident by incident basis.

I’m not sure it’s all about race except to the extent that race in the USA is a partially-correlated visual identifier for class. What I see is an ongoing war by police against the underclass- the “war on drugs”, street prostitution, gang activity, nuisance crimes like loitering, etc., etc.

Here’s something I’d be interested to know: how the British “Bobby”, traditionally considered the model of benign but effective policing, interacted with the (white) lower-classes, which were at least as socially dysfunctional as anything to be found in the USA. And especially, if racism is a factor, if the British police are becoming more abusive as the minority population of blacks, Indians, Pakistanis and Arab muslims increases.

It’s certainly both. Poor whites use drugs at roughly equal rates as poor blacks, but poor blacks are arrested two or three times as often in most places. The same is likely true for other offenses, though harder to prove because our data on drug usage (independent from arrest data) is better than such data for the commission of most crimes. And we don’t just know it’s racial on an instrumental level. If you look into the history of how and why drug laws were passed and implemented, there’s lots of evidence of racial intent.

The other big thing that makes it about race is officers display racial bias in who they choose to shoot–not on the level of conscious racism but on the level of overestimating the threat level of black people vs. white people. We know that officers, like everyone else, tend to overestimate the age of young black men, for example. This is part of why there are far more shooting of unarmed black men than shootings of unarmed white men. There is a pervasive stereotype of the dangerous black man–and even if you’re among the camp who thinks this stereotype has some basis in fact, it still means that lots of black men who aren’t dangerous get shot because cops aren’t willing to give them the few more seconds they’d give to a white guy.

Not sure what’s happening with this video. It appears that a number of African Americans from out of town celebrating the end of the school year showed up at the McKinney, Texas swimming pool. It is said that some had passes - maybe most did. A number of cops were called in following complaints. One officer had an extended freak out, ordering black kids to the ground, and pulling a gun on a black girl in a bikini. He’s been placed on administrative leave.

The situation was shameful. I opine that the McKinney cops have a training problem: the good cops need to learn how to intervene to give the cop without composure a time out.

It has been said that police work is a dangerous job. And we have statistics that suggest that the hazard is very likely overstated. But the real problem is that many officers act like total fucking assholes, because they can, I guess. So, if their job is dangerous, it is because they are making it dangerous. I mean, when I encounter an asshole, my reaction, if I cannot get away from them, turns toward hostility, possibly leading to violence (though I am generally not a violent person). The police have made their bed, whether it is because of training or because of institutional assholery, now they have to figure out how to walk it back. If they fail to make an effort to walk it back, things can only get worse.

You know it’s messed up when even half-naked black kids frighten a cop so badly that he has to pull a gun on them.

Black social media has it that this was your typical end-of-the-year pool party. Like all such parties, words gets around and everyone starts showing up whether they are formally invited or not. A lot of the kids did have guest passes. But because the community is majority white, it was just a lot easier for the cop to round up all the black kids ask for their “papers”, versus asking all the teenagers in attendance to disperse.

Notice how the kids being “rounded up” were cooperative, if not also scared and confused. Why he started hand-cuffing that one kid, I have no idea. The cop had no cause to be so harsh and offensive in his engagement, as none of them were resisting. Until, that is, he man-handled that girl. Of course all her friends would run to her defense, because that was pure craziness right there. If that had been my friend or my sister, I would have charged him too. Those kids are lucky that one officer stopped him when he pulled out the gun.

Totally fucked-up situation.

My favorite part of that video: the cop trips and falls while chasing one of the kids, and does a TJ Hooker-style barrel roll to get back on his feet and continue the pursuit. Amazingly, he neglects to say, “I meant to do that.”

I admit that was a pretty good barrel roll. Those who have taken certain martial arts know that rolling properly can prevent injury.

Yeah, everyone should have had their papers I guess. Teen me probably would have. Plenty of my white friends would not in a similar situation. African American kids just don’t get cut any slack, to put it mildly. Holy sheesh.

I noticed. While I trust there were some assholes among the citizenry, I didn’t spot any.

Well the way I saw it they rushed in, but generally respected the cop’s personal space. Again, pretty polite considering the circumstances.

I repeat what I said earlier. Another cop needed to tell him to stand down. I understand that the NYPD makes that an explicit aspect of police training. People lose their temper: you need to have partners who keep things in check.

More media: this is low grade ore.

Gawker: McKinney Cop adds that video to his playlist. Weird. http://gawker.com/did-the-mckinney-cop-watch-video-of-himself-terrorizing-1709690822

Reason quoting Mashable claims none of the teens were charged. Whew. Cop Pulls Gun on Unarmed Black Kids at Pool Party

Fusion: Cops say folk weren’t obeying orders: [INDENT]Among the police orders seen in the video are “Get your asses on the ground,” “On your face,” and threats to jail onlookers if they didn’t stop “[screwing] around” and “running their mouths”—not to mention the officers’ repeated use of force.[/INDENT] That struck me as terrible crowd control. http://fusion.net/story/146406/white-cop-caught-on-video-grabbing-black-teenagers-hair-pinning-her-to-the-ground-at-pool-party/

Dallas News: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2015/06/mckinney-police-officer-on-leave-after-video-shows-him-pushing-teen-to-the-ground-friday-night.html/

CNN: Eventually there were 12 officers on the scene. CNN describes the footage is some detail. A Georgia cop maintains the teens weren’t compliant. I saw one shirtless kid asking if he could stand up and look for something of his. What I didn’t see were any adults saying, “Gather your things and go home. You can wait here.”

CNN says the event happened at the residential area Craig Ranch North. Here’s a pic of their gym: the pool is seen in the background:
http://www.cooperaerobics.com/Cooper-Fitness-Center-McKinney.aspx?utm_source=www.coopercraigranch.com&utm_medium=Vanity%20URL
Youth Programs: http://www.cooperaerobics.com/Cooper-Fitness-Center-McKinney/Youth-Programs.aspx
Swim lessons: http://www.cooperaerobics.com/Cooper-Fitness-Center-McKinney/Youth-Programs/Swimming-Lessons.aspx
Leafy.

No idea what’s happening in that part of the video. But you’re wrong about him pulling the gun on the black girl with the bikini. The officer pulled the gun when there were aprox 8 people around him, and the guy with the purplish solid color shirt and tan shorts appeared to be grabbing for his waistband with his left hand at the 3:11 mark of this vid. That’s the folks that got the gun pulled on them. The gun was never pointed at the girl on the ground. Situation looks out of hand - and afterwards there seems to be a a lot of power struggle pushing her head to the ground for no reason.

The gun draw though, surrounded with crowds closing in on the guy…that seems reasonable from the video I watched (no sound).

It’s fairly common knowledge that a very small step off a very tall building will almost certainly get you killed.

If you’re suggesting that there should be a similar common understanding of the lethality of even the smallest form of non-cooperation with police, then parents need to teach their children to fear your police, to keep away from the edge, and to pray that the proverbial tall buildings never come for them.
Maybe that is the state of things, but it shouldn’t be.

Can you appreciate that a great many people with perspectives and experiences different to your own are indeed horrified for the very reasons you describe?

The guy grabs his own waist at his hip, after having been bumped by his friend and maybe a little off-balance. Not exactly the classic “reaching inside the waistband” movement. And from what I can tell, the cop doesn’t pull his gun until after the guy was already backing away with his hand away from his waist.

That said, I agree with the larger point. The guy who had the gun drawn on him got very close to the scene of an arrest in which the officer was already physically struggling with a couple of onlookers. It was a chaotic scene and people were rushing up to the cop while he was trying to make an arrest (lawful or not). Once the officer had allowed things to get to that point, the decision to draw his gun and momentarily point it at these guys seems like bad judgment but probably not excessive force.

I think the more avoidable error was that the cop created the whole chaotic scene by his own actions. He was alternately ordering people to sit or disperse, willy-nilly. He randomly arrested a bunch of kids who didn’t disperse (or didn’t sit where he told them). All to impose more control on a scene of…nothing. There was no ongoing crime or threats to physical safety. At some point he was just imposing control for control sake.
He should have been trying to calm the scene down, and realized he wasn’t going to calm things down by arresting a bunch of people arbitrarily. From the audio, it seems he was pissed that he wasn’t being sufficiently respected, and he didn’t handle it like an adult. And then, once highly agitated, he opted to arrest this girl because she was “running her mouth” and not dispersing fast enough. All of that could have been avoided if treated the scene like a place where a bunch of teenagers were hanging out and maybe there had been a fight–like this colleagues clearly were–instead of like a ranger running into a riot.

I appreciate posters who provide an extra set of eyes. Frankly, I had difficulty overcoming my sense of disbelief when I saw that chaos.

  1. I agree the girl never had a gun pointed at her.
  2. Based on the preponderance of the evidence, I don’t think the guy was going for the cop’s waistband. Words chosen carefully: the clip was quick, so I captured it on a gif then viewed it frame by frame in Media Player Classic. I don’t see a grab. But… a grab could have occurred but somehow the frame got dropped by a) the cell phone camera, b) the upload to You tube or c) my copying over to the gif.

Anyway here’s the gif for those who want to see it.
http://wm40.inbox.com/dnl/TexasPool.gif.aspxx?_cu=REl3BNnDFtYw5HCUyW8T8qJfC34wdhvOC0k6bM9K6HRnJjK62Zw2LqPaOWZzHOPK9kxWfKA72T4s_SAfldWemO_c@&PATH=0_5_137&V=1
Again, Media Player Classic permits frame by frame viewing.

Or check out this page I just made at gif-exploder. Look at the guy’s hands:
http://gif-explode.com/?explode=https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/VnykbKmXQWyWkdBtspCw
Or not. I’m getting an error 522 now. Maybe it will work some other time.

InThe guy grabbed his own waist area - not the police officer’s.

The officer, while trying to detain the girl in question, was interfered with by two other females who the officer had to physically push back. As others began closing in around him, two males approached rapidly from the officer’s right side. In the officer’s peripheral vision he saw one of the males with his hands grabbing at his waist area. Thinking the person may have been positioning to attack the officer drew his weapon at a low - ready position. The person began to flee and the original officer directed another officer who just reached the scene to apprehend the two males who were fleeing. Determine there was no longer a continued threat the original officer holsters his weapon and continued with the detention/arrest of the first person.

No idea if that’s how it went down in the cop’s mind but it seems reasonable and matches the video. The thing is, the cop isn’t doing frame by frame. He’s surrounded and has very small windows to make decisions. Detached reflection is not required in the face of an uplifted knife. The only standard is if it was reasonable for the cop to draw. I think it was. If the exact scenario played out and the cop shot the purple shirt wearing person I’d think the same thing. Purple shirt guy (who was apprehended and returned to that scene about 2 min later) rapidly approached a police officer trying to arrest someone and had his hands obscured in what would appear to the officer as if he was reaching behind his waist. What I think was actually happening was the purple shirt guy got bumped, stumbles a bit, then pulls up his sagging pants while regaining his balance. Cop may not know that though and the above scenario would be reasonable too.

This does not in any way condone the decision making that led to that point. The gun draw thougj, that seemed fine. Many of the headlines did state that the officer drew on the black female which is in error and is plain to see.