How would you fix American policing? (UPDATED)

Great Debates
121

The difference that you are ignoring is that police are generally presumed to be in the right and have so-called qualified immunity, whereas your average citizen is generally presumed to be in the wrong.

A police officer can kill someone and be subject only to an internal investigation. An average citizen who kills someone is all but guaranteed to be arrested at the very least. Note that I’m not talking about a store owner defending themselves against an armed robber who is threatening to kill them. I’m talking about the types of cases we read about every day in which a person is merely holding what is thought to be a dangerous weapon, is not threatening anyone, but is still shot dead by police.

If a kid was playing with a toy gun in my front yard, and I shot and killed him because I supposedly feared for my life, my defense would be laughed out of court. Yet a police officer who did just that wasn’t even charged.

Except that frequently these cases never make it that far.

How about we go back to the time when police weren’t routinely murdering citizens?

At least I provided some citations. You haven’t provided anything.

So the solution to the possibility of a stray bullet injuring a bystander is for cops to open fire at the first sign of danger? :rolleyes:

Note that in many cases, nobody is firing anything except the police. Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun. His toy gun was not endangering anyone.

Not to mention the people shot by police for the capital crime of picking up a gun in self-defense, in their own home, who were unaware they were facing police instead of home invaders, as in these two recent cases:

Authorities shot a woman during a botched raid at her home. The real suspect was already in jail.

Woman killed by officer in her own home heard noises outside and drew gun.

Sometimes, people do shoot back – but only after police have already opened fire, like the couple who defended themselves after a cops burst into their home with a no-knock warrant (obtained under false pretenses) with guns blazing:

A No-Knock Raid in Houston Led to Deaths and Police Injuries.

The problem here isn’t with alleged perpetrators who might open fire at any moment. The problem is with trigger-happy police who open fire first at the first sign of potential danger.

122

I know I am invisible, but I have discussed this in this thread. There are major differences.

If a kid is playing with a toy gun in your front yard, then the obvious inference is that it is a kid playing with a toy gun in your front yard. Neither you nor anyone else would believe that he was trying to kill someone.

In the Tamir Rice case, it wasn’t clear that the gun was a toy gun as the orange indicator had been removed. Further, the police were dispatched to the scene where it was reported that a juvenile black male was removing a pistol from his pants and pointing it at people.

When the officers arrived and ordered Rice to show his hands, Rice did not and made an action as if to draw a gun.

None of that is remotely similar to a kid playing in your front yard with an obvious toy gun. In all of these “horror stories” the shooting could have been avoided by simply complying with the officer’s demands. If you think he is racially profiling you or acting inappropriately by attempting to detain you or give you orders, then comply, but look into a civil suit afterwards.

You may think in the spur of the moment that an officer is acting like a jackboot, but you don’t have all of the information. Maybe you fit the description of a guy that just executed his whole family a block from where you are. Save calling him a motherfucker for later when the situation is under control.

123

The Tamir Rice shooting video shows that the cop shot him within 2 seconds of arrival. I don’t think any reasonable person would agree that was enough time for the arriving officer to assess the situation, give an order, allow the target of the order to hear and process the order, and comply with the order.

Regardless, instead of charging headlong into the situation and immediately shooting the boy, why couldn’t the officer have attempted to de-escalate the situation from a distance?

Again, to this layman, it looks like the cop either let fear and adrenaline take over, or he was looking for a reason to shoot a “bad guy.”

Daniel Shaver was desperately trying to comply with the contradictory orders that police were screaming at him before they executed him at close range with an AR-15.

As far as a civil lawsuit is concerned (which doesn’t do a dead person much good), that’s getting more difficult, too, in many cases. As the linked article reports, specialized police forces (which have been increasing in number) are ducking lawsuits by playing games with state-federal jurisdiction.

124

  1. When the cops approach after you have been brandishing a pistol from which you have removed the orange indicator which doesn’t give it the designation of a toy, don’t reach for your waistband.

  2. If the cops tried to observe the situation from a “distance” and this kid had a real gun and killed three people, there would be complaints as to why they didn’t act sooner. It’s not a game; the cops are there to stop things from happening and it is their duty to do so, not hang back from a distance.

  3. Daniel Shaver was a dumbass drunk pointing an air rifle out of a hotel window. It is completely reasonable for officers to think they have a sniper situation. Again, they do not know that it is an airgun until afterwards. His buddy made it into police custody because his buddy followed directions. Shaver reached for his waistband after being instructed not to. Lesson: Don’t get drunk and point an air rifle out of a hotel window, and if you do, follow police instructions, and

  4. Don’t reach for your waistband.

This is all really simple shit. Yes, they were tragedies once all of the details are known, but you are requiring the officers to have all of this knowledge beforehand. If you simply follow the rules of “Don’t be a fucking idiot” and follow that up with “If you disregard the previous rule, follow all police instructions” you don’t get shot.

125

I’m not ignoring or overlooking anything. I have a B.A.
in Criminal Justice with a background including Policing as well as Criminology, which itself included studies of police behavior, use of force, corruption, etc. I also have a law degree. So I understand these issues from multiple disciplinary perspectives and have studied the actual data compiled by the people who study such things, their interpretations, and the resultant policy recommendations. Naturally, I also know how the law functions in such contexts and perhaps more importantly, why it does so.

You on the other hand keep on making bare assertions and resorting to ridiculous hyperbole. And did you miss the part where your “cites” weren’t actually cites? One benefit of all that education is I know what actual cites are. Another is that I know that virtually everything you are claiming is wrong, and I can certainly provide actual, relevant, academic cites to prove that (more in the vein of academic journals and not so much… newspapers, for instance). So, by all means, pick one of your ridiculous assertions that you have provided no meaningful evidence for and I’ll gladly disprove it with, you know, actual evidence.

But to address one particular bit of drivel in your post, yes, police are in fact supposed to use bullets, if necessary, to prevent an armed suspect from firing their own bullets and endangering the police or any civilians present. This is because police are specifically trained for that situation and because people who are willing to commit a crime with a gun can’t really be expected to be considerate of civilian casualties, as evidenced by their illegal use of a gun in the first place. So, maybe you should hold off on the whole rolleyes thing since any expert, or really any halfway intelligent person giving the matter sufficient thought, would characterize your own suggestion of the police only firing when fired upon as something along the lines of “laughably stupid.”

126

I have an Associate in Police Science, A Bachelor in sociology, and a Masters in Criminal Justice Administration. I was with a major metropolitan Sheriffs Office for 25 years, including having held a rank, before taking a retirement and starting a 2nd career with another large major metropolitan law enforcement department that I have been with for 13 years now, and with which I am ranked a specialist in several different fields and assignments.

But Whoop Dee Freaking Doo for us. WTF do we know, right?

I have no hopes or intentions of changing the views of robby. Only to make others aware that he is extremely ignorant and his positions on things would quickly result in a lot of dead police officers and a multitude of unsafe communities if they were implemented.

127

OK, can you provide any studies that support your assertion that police fatalities would necessarily increase dramatically if they weren’t so trigger-happy? How much would they increase? Similarly, how many civilians would be saved if the current use-of-force policies were changed?

Again, not everyone with a gun is using it illegally, yet police frequently don’t appear to make this distinction – not apparently do you.

The people killed in their own homes for picking up a gun when they think they hear a prowler outside weren’t using a gun illegally. Philando Castile wasn’t using a gun illegally when he was shot by a police officer, either.

So let me ask you two: do you agree or disagree that there is a problem today with policing in America? What do you think about the fact that U.S. police use lethal force far more often than police in other developed nations?

More cites (though not academic studies):
By the numbers: US police kill more in days than other countries do in years
American police shoot and kill far more people than their peers in other countries

Do we just shrug our shoulders and chalk this up to American exceptionalism? :rolleyes:

If you agree that there is a problem with policing in America today, can you apply your vast education and experience to address the question posed in the OP and provide any useful suggestions to fix it?

128

So the entirely hypothetical (and frankly, remote) possibility that a 12-year old might abruptly start shooting and kill three people is worth the certainty of shooting and killing him within 2 seconds of arriving on the scene?

The fact that this type of police response has been normalized and that you are defending it is appalling, IMHO.

The cases that have been mentioned here seem to demonstrate that police frequently appear to interpret what would otherwise be innocuous actions in the most extreme way possible. Again, this is a war-zone mentality.

Tamar Rice was likely pulling his Airsoft pistol out to place in on the ground or to surrender it to the officer. Daniel Shaver was pulling his shorts up after being ordered to crawl toward the police on his belly. Philando Castile didn’t do anything other than calmly tell an officer he had a pistol on his person, and that he was licensed to carry. He still got shot. What lesson should we take from his case, UltraVires?

The police get all of this training that teaches them rules of engagement. They also apparently get training that emphasizes how innocuous actions can have deadly intent. Note that the ordinary public does not get this training. I would wager that your typical civilian would not expect to get shot for what they think are innocuous acts, especially if they are unarmed.

Even if they are armed, from watching TV shows and movies, many people likely expect an extended back and forth interaction with police (i.e. “Put the gun down!”).

129

With as many videos out there of cops making up laws (Must show ID, can’t video in public, etc.) I’m not inclined to presume an LEO is an expert in how the law is applied.

130

Simple question.
In the videos I linked to in this thread, were the cops justified in their actions?

131

Holy shit, it’s hard to know where to even begin. First of all, I never asserted anywhere that police fatalities would necessarily increase dramatically under any theoretical change in their lethal force policies. I only referred to the potential cost to civilian bystanders even if one believes the police should submit themselves to the risk of only returning fire when fired upon. Go ahead, go back and re-read my posts and find where I asserted anything like you claim.

I do believe that such a policy change would increase police injuries and deaths but I never previously stated so or speculated at all to what degree. The conclusion of a likely increase, of course, is based on pretty basic math where increased exposure to risk is pretty likely to lead to increased negative outcomes. I mean we know from those pesky statistics that shootings based on things like misidentification of a toy are a very small percentage of police shootings. So given that a much larger number of shootings must involve a more typical situation of a criminal threatening armed violence why would you possibly believe that giving such violent offenders a free first shot would not involve increased casualties among both police and civilians?

Also, maybe you should spend some time on learning how the basics of how the social sciences work. Do you actually think there’s an academic study out there that uses vague, ill-defined terms like “trigger-happy”? See, they like to use precisely defined terms and actual data to support their conclusions. You, on the other hand, keep making the bare assertion that police are “trigger-happy” without defining the term in any meaningful way and having provided no quantitative or qualitative data to support even the most vague definition of the term or justifying it’s application to the police in general.

Also, how exactly do you think this hypothetical experiment would play out? Do you actually think the scientists would go around to various police agencies and ask them to change their lethal force policies “just
to see what happens”? And then just count the victims and compare the data? Of course to get a meaningful data set they’re going to have to conduct the experiment over a whole range of police shootings while trying to control for other variables. Seems like there’s quite a few problems with that approach.

No I understand just fine. Once again, it comes with all the degrees and education. And one of the things I learned and understand is something you and others apparently can’t. And that is a person can legally respond with lethal force if they have a reasonable belief that they or others were in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, even if that belief turns out to be false. The objective standard of the “reasonable person” appears in US law in multiple contexts and in legal systems throughout the world. Holding a person to such a standard given any particular set of facts and circumstances they find themselves in isn’t some arcane legal concept, it’s basic logic.

Once again, you might want to save the rolleyes for when you have something meaningful to add beyond a question that you have no idea what the answer is. Because the US is exceptional, in a lot of ways. It’s exceptionally large, exceptionally diverse, exceptionally rich, etc. And its laws are in some ways exceptional as well. Actual scientists would call these differences variables. And they know that before you can explain a disparity as caused by something like “trigger-happy police” or “racism” you need to control for those other variables. So what makes you think that the higher number of police shootings in the US as compared to other countries is entirely attributable to “trigger-happy police”?

And of course there are problems with American policing. It’s a ridiculous absolutist straw man to suggest anyone would believe otherwise. That’s why we have social scientists who make whole careers out of studying specific issues like corruption, use of force, etc. And those scientists often pass along that data and their conclusions to politicians and policy makers who are members of various committees and commissions who then implement policies based on those findings. Seems a better way of doing things than crowd-sourcing it to a random message board where quite a few participants seemed determined to keep the discussion largely fact-free. Maybe if you’re so concerned about the issue and determined to make real progress in this thread you should start googling the actual literature and come back when you have something substantial to add.

132

No, there is no problem with policing in America. At least no problem within the scope of this thread. The almost 1 million LEOs in this country make millions of public contacts every single day. And you foolishly think the dozen or so questionable situations you’ve cited to are representative of the average police/community contact. You come across like someone who believes they are going to win the lottery because they want to believe they are going to win the lottery and one time they got 4 numbers so there is your proof. :rolleyes:

Officers hardly ever get into shooting situations yet you post as if it happens all the time. So your own well is poisoned yet you insist we debate based on your false beliefs that have no data to support them. It’s like arguing with a mentally ill person who gets pissed that you won’t acknowledge the invisible pink elephant in the room.

And your solution to a non-existent problem is insane.

The real problem in this country is the lack of consequences for criminal actions. Criminals are allowed to plea down charges, serve reduced sentences, plea down to an ordinance violation over a criminal act, etc… The revolving door justice system gave the government an excuse to try and create a police state by passing endless laws and spending more money on enforcement, prevention, and so on.

133

And of course you are ignoring a couple of key points.

  1. Police are shown repeatedly escalating the situation changing the situation from one where force is not reasonable into one that is.
  2. Police, DAs, Judges and Juries contribute to the culture of condoning officer behavior even when not reasonable.
134

The police in this country kill 1,000 people a year, and a man with VAST law enforcement experience across multiple forces, who holds a position of respect and responsibility within his department thinks nothing is wrong. Well, except that we don’t punish criminals hard enough. We have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, but we don’t lock people up often enough or long enough.

135

In 99% of those, they are shooting at the police. Now, sure there’s something wrong, but it aint necessarily with the police.

136

So, the police already wait to be shot at before defending themselves? I thought the very idea of that was ridiculous.

137

I didn’t say that but yes, sometimes the bad guys are shooting first, in fact it’s quite common.

138

Once again, I’m not ignoring anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve studied these issues and all the relevant aspects, from the perspective of multiple disciplines no less, more than just about anyone in the thread and the vast, vast, majority of people in general. You’re just offering more bare assertions without any evidence whatsoever. Someone’s opinion that officers have escalated potential use of force situations or that others have played a role in condoning unreasonable or even criminal officer behavior in any particular case is just that, an opinion. It is not objective fact.

But sure, I’d stipulate that somewhere, at some point, a police officer needlessly escalated a use of force situation. Or that a prosecutor, judge or jury let an officer off too easy. I’ve read cases like that and I’ve read social science literature that specifically focused on such topics. But in another instance of something those social scientists understand that you and others seem not to (besides the whole supportive evidence thing) is that merely identifying the existence of a phenomenon is fairly meaningless without also quantitatively measuring its prevalence and (relatedly) its effects. Kind of where the whole science and data thing comes in handy again.

Additionally, while such data can tell you a lot about the general behavior of large groups as a whole, it’s of extremely limited value when applied to a particular individual or event. So even if you could somehow objectively prove that 60% of officers needlessly escalate use of force situations, or juries are 3x less likely to convict an officer than an ordinary citizen, that in no way is evidence that Officer Smith needlessly escalated the situation or should have been convicted. The practically infinite number of fact patterns that could be involved in such situations (there are those variables again) would preclude anything but the broadest conclusions and nothing even close to definitively probative regarding any particular case.

139

Yeah, I was aware of your background and you were the first person I thought of in the thread as another person who would actually know the material (a few others as well). It’s amazing how people seem to think that no one ever asked these questions before, let alone that people spend entire careers studying them. It’s even more amazing how many people are willing to spitball the issue without any actual data or evidence, whether the 60+ years of scientific research we already have on the issues or maybe even going out and getting some fresh new evidence. Either of those really, as long as there’s actual science and data involved. Doesn’t seem too much to ask.

140

Robby, if you armed and a guy is behaving in such a way that you think he might have a weapon and is about to use it against your child, would you wait until he fired a shot before you shoot him? You know, just to be sure? If the police were there, should they wait? If the answer is “no”, are you saying that the cops’ lives are less valuable than your child’s? Please don’t say that they are paid to take that kind of risk. They are not. Nobody is.

Cheesesteak - police are not waiting to be shot at in the vast majority of cases. Officers are being fired on before they realize that there is an imminent threat. There is an old saying, “The first sign that you are in a gunfight is that you’ve already been shot or shot at.” There was a fairly recent case of an officer not shooting a double homicide suspect who kept approaching him, hands in pockets and refusing orders. He was hailed by his Chief and the public as some kind of hero. While backing away, the cop fell onto his back. If that guy had a gun, there is a good chance the officer’s widow would have a nice, new flag. Most other cops that I know and work with found his actions more stupid than heroic. Both he and his Chief later admitted it wasn’t the brightest move. The very idea of waiting to be shot at IS ridiculous.

According to Statistica, in 2018 6237 black males died by homicide. Roughly 229 were killed by police. I suspect the vast majority of them weren’t controversial in the least, once investigated. Hell, even at first glance. So, lets say 6000 by non-police -26 times the number killed by police. To say that police killings are a leading cause of death and not even mention this fact is missing the bigger point. If we limit the number to police killings that were ultimately found to be unjustified I wonder what the number would be and where it would rate on the cause of death scale.