How did we get this far without mentioning the elephant gun in the room? I would have expected one of our foreign dopers to do the deed, but maybe they’re just gun shy. (You see where I’m going now, don’t you?)
Not that I’m trying to excuse the behaviors of the cops in any of these incidents, nor deny the apparent racism likely to be involved in many of them, but a fairly common denominator in these incidents are that the cops are terrified of getting shot out there. Putting myself in their shoes, I can hardly blame them. (For being terrified of being shot, that is, not for the inappropriate, but statistically predictable ways they sometimes respond to that fear.)
Aren’t we just paying the price to be expected when our nation is positively awash with guns?
But those who believe in the right to bear arms constantly reiterate:
a) that simply allowing people to carry guns does not increase danger, because law-abiding citizens with guns do not constitute a threat and are not going to shoot cops,
and
b) that banning guns won’t help, because the criminals won’t obey the law, and therefore will still have guns.
If both of these things are true—and i concede the possibility for the purpose of this discussion—then we should expect the police, just like every other person in the country, to go about their business and do it properly and professionally despite the fact that there are lots of guns in the United States.
If, like officer Groubert of South Carolina, you can’t prevent yourself from shooting a person who is obeying your direct instruction because you’re worried that he might be going for a gun, then man up and get a job dispensing fries or collecting bridge tolls instead of pretending that you’ve got what it takes to be a law enforcement officer.
Your whole position seems to suggest that, as long as we accept that this is a society of guns, we might also have to accept that cops are going to keep shooting unarmed civilians. I don’t accept that.
(Gah, the hamsters are currently denying me access to the quote function, so…)
mhendo: I fully agree with everything you said, except the part suggesting that I had presented a position accepting anything. I was simply pointing out an issue central to the problem we’re discussing that seemed to be completely overlooked here and elsewhere.
I simply made the observation and asked a rhetorical question in an effort to advance the discussion towards one of the roots of the problem. Sadly, I have no answers to that problem - but not ignoring it is a pretty good start, I think.
Voltaire: “…but a fairly common denominator in these incidents are that the cops are terrified of getting shot out there.”
This conclusion is based upon … what? I’d say a very, very limited number of cops have a reasonable basis to be “terrified of getting shot”. Statistically, there’s no basis for this “terror” for law enforcement generally. Unfortunately, it’s part of the overall persistent myth. Combined with the lack of proper temperament and basic aptitude, it’s a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, we don’t assure the same level of competence these days as any average battle-trained horse of a century ago not to freak out when it hears bullets or cannon, and we don’t stringently test them either. Where they are right to be nervous (not terrified) generally is of being killed in an auto accident, and particularly those who are traffic cops.
“Aren’t we just paying the price to be expected when our nation is positively awash with guns?”
That’s a much broader issue but, sure. Unfortunately, there’s next to no undoing of it, unless indeed the government decides to “take away” guns. We can’t even manage to agree on basic standards for ownership, however, so … Most cops aren’t well-trained in firearm use though they may misperceive themselves as such; as a practical matter, most humans are pretty bad shots even under controlled calm conditions, let alone in a high-stress spur of the moment situation. That cop who shot the dude at the gas station being a good example (and had his life actually been in danger, he’d merely be left to hope the guy he was shooting at was as shitty a shot). Another random one that comes to mine are the two cops that shot nine innocent bystanders in NYC a couple of years ago.
That conclusion is based on the fact that nearly all of the incidents that prompted this thread were based on exactly that - cops’ treating everyone as if they were about to pull a gun out on them, even when that fear is seemingly unreasonable and unlikely. (i.e. “terrified”) As to your reference to statistics disproving the myth that cops have all that much to fear out there, one could argue that if they didn’t act so defensively as a matter of routine, the statistics of cops getting shot might be much different.
That’s only part of the recipe, I’m just pointing out the not-so-secret, but key ingredient people all too often completely overlook, and that you seem to completely dismiss.
Yeah, I know. By pointing out this inconvenient truth, I’m just trying to get people to fill in the blank after your ellipses. Like it or not, easy answers or not, it’s a very relevant issue, IMHO. Don’t shoot the messenger!
Both of these things are true, precisely because a law-abiding citizen remains so until they commit the unlawful act of shooting someone. It therefore follows that they are law-abiding citizens until they are not.
In my experience police officers are not particularly worried about being shot, but my experience is that of a white male with no history of violence. I grant that they might respond differently to other people they might suspect of being violent, and they suffer from the same biases as anyone else.
It’s that bias we need to work on, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Maybe one place to begin is to make clear that, if and when that bias expresses itself in policing tactics that treat one group of people differently from another, or results in an unreasonable abuse of authority or exercise of force, we will remove the officer from the force and also, where appropriate, press criminal charges.
And if that bias makes itself known before the officer in question actually violates anyone’s rights or shoots someone dead, we thank them for their efforts and boot them back into the civilian population. This is where, as i suggested earlier in the thread, the “good cops” need to man up and be willing to call out their racist or violent or trigger-happy or bullying colleagues, and not simply stay quiet in the name of the blue wall and business as usual. If they’re not actively working to improve the quality of the force, then they’re part of the problem, and shouldn’t whine when people include them in generalizations about asshole cops.
Police unions should get on board with this too. If the majority of cops are indeed good cops, then it should be in their own interests to see the bad ones pushed out of the profession. I wonder, in large national discussions like this, where are the conservatives who constantly hammer on the self-interested tactics of unions when those unions represent teachers or auto workers or public transit workers? They are happy to slam unions as the end of civilization for attempting to protect workers’ health insurance benefits and overtime pay, but seem to have little problem with police unions when those unions go to bat for trigger-happy assholes and racists and rights violators.
Watching the John Oliver civil forfeiture clip got me to wondering why, unless the motive was stealing, a traffic cop would ask a driver if there were large sums of cash in the vehicle.
Unbelievable story. Why the fuck would cops take the word of a thief that the methamphetamine in his possession happened to be in the car that he had stolen? Because we all know that drug users never steal to support their own habits. :rolleyes:
I’ve got to believe that civil asset forfeiture greed played a part here. The cops probably thought to themselves, “Hey, we don’t really believe this guy, but if his testimony gets us a search warrant, and we find any contraband in the theft victim’s house, we can seize the house and keep the proceeds.”
I assume, from this comment, that you are suggesting that the victim is black? I can find no evidence that this is the case. None of the news stories mention his race, and the only two photos i’ve managed to find of the victim suggest that he’s a white guy, albeit with a good tan in one of the images.
You have an interesting idea of “executed”. I wouldn’t use it for someone who gets killed because they threaten police - who have a warrant - with a shotgun. Darwin award contender right there.
Can we also have the requisite “Over-Blown Hyperbolized Encounters In Which The Police Acted Appropriately But The Race Baiters And Recreational Ouragers Decided To Only Tell Part Of The Story To Inflame People” Thread?
I think it’s entirely correct. He was executed. The police kicked down his door without announcing their identity. He would have been completely within his rights, both legally and morally to kill every one of them. The cops didn’t have a “no-knock” warrant (which is another thing that needs to be banned) and were operating wholly outside common sense and logic. It is their fault the homeowner is dead, and if there was anything remotely resembling justice in the state of Georgia they would all be charged with homicide.
I don’t know how the Dope appears on your computer, but on mine there is a big blue button on the top left side of the screen that says “New Thread”. If you click it a window comes up with a box for the thread title, and a box under it for the content of the post. It’s similar to the box that appears when you click “Reply”.
Congratulations for begging the very question that is at the heart of this issue: whether the homeowner even knew about the warrant. If you assume that the homeowner was informed of the warrant and had an opportunity to comply with the cops, then your scenario might make sense, but this is precisely the situation that is being contested by the man’s family and his lawyer. While they might have some motivation to lie, the fact that this warrant was executed on the word of a known thief who was found with a personal quantity of meth, and then claimed that he found the meth while commiting his crime, speaks volumes for the perspicacity and analytical abilities of the cops in question. Are they friends of yours?
The problem with a warrant is that, for a civilian to accede to the conditions of the warrant, he has to be aware of its existence. I don’t know about you, but if armed and camouflaged men kick in my door in the middle of the night, the first thing that would come to mind probably isn’t, “They must have a warrant, so i’ll let them go about their business.” This is especially the case because i know that i haven’t done anything that would require the police to investigate me in the first place. As the story notes, the police found no evidence of any contraband at the house of the man they gunned down. I guess he must have kept ALL of his meth in the exact place where the thief found it, right? :rolleyes:
It was a rhetorical question. Of course, nearly every one of these threads turns into the thread to which I inquired, so maybe I don’t even need that blue button.
This would be the case for anyone, and doubly so for a man who had just been fucking robbed and reported the theft to the police… who in the name of all that’s holy would think that the armed men raiding his house would be the cops themselves?
The stupidity and incompetence on display by the police here is flabbergasting. Heads should roll, but fat chance of that.
