…let’s look at “what’s on the board, Ms Ford”.
Sort the list per capita. Look at the countries above the United States. Then compare that to the countries below them. Where Canada comes in at nearly a third of the rate, where New Zealand where the police aren’t even routinely armed is higher than Germany, Portugal and Sweden.
…the police, the police unions, and consulting companies like Lexipol all argue that the “standard distance” is supported by law and supported by science, so:
Is kinda irrelevant. What would be reasonable for me is perfectly encapsulated through three words: “defund the police.” If you want to understand what that means, I would suggest you read this:
I mean, do you really think the problem here is that American police are insufficiently trained in “movement tactics with firearms training” that this would make any difference at all in how it handles knife crime?
If the cops that shot Anthony Lowe had just done a couple of tactical rolls, then fired more precisely, that Anthony Lowe would be alive right now?
No. Your cite expressly discounted that. Maybe you missed it? It was the first key takeaway, in the very same paragraph you quoted, in boldface. Lexipol is against the 21-foot rule.
Key takeaways
While most officers would agree that the 21-foot rule is a bad standard in policing, it is important scientific information is used to support its abolition.
[…]
- Reject the notion of a standardized safe distance. Police interactions with citizens are fluid and it does not seem practical to set a standard distance for such encounters. Having an officer attempt to keep 32 feet from an individual is not practical in most interactions.
ETA:
Back up. I didn’t bring that cite, you did. The problem the study you cited was trying to address was not keeping Anthony Lowe alive, it was keeping police alive in edged blade situations. I thought we pivoted back away from that specific case, the police actions of which I’m not defending.
The major takeaway from the citation you provided was that the fixed distance standard needs to go away. Yes, getting rid of it would make a difference in how American police handle knife crimes, because according to your other cite the standard is used to justify police shootings.
~Max
…Lexipol still advocates and supports the 21 foot rule. The article is all about pushing the window to remove the “standardised distance” so that an officer at any distance could consider themselves at threat.
It was one of several key takeaways, and out of all of them, that one in particular was the most disingenuous.
The main takeaway is that police propaganda is very very good. The 21 foot rule was getting bad press. So they’ve slapped a new name on it, made it even more lethal, and have called it a day.
@DrDeth, it’s not about “1% of cops”. When one cop is murdering someone while 20 other cops just stand there, that’s not one bad cop, that’s 21 bad cops. And when it’s possible to have 21 cops in one place and all of them just happen to be bad, that’s not 1%, that’s almost all cops. If you’re trying to claim that you’ve known a lot of good cops, then tell us how many other cops they’ve arrested. Because cops doing things that they need to be arrested for are all over the place.
…I missed this, so just adding:
Of course, I bought the cite. But it wasn’t so that I could get into further debate about police knife tactics. It was to show how police and police advocacy groups have been so successful in framing the debate.
It means when a “police shoot man with a knife” incident happens, the conversation immediately turns to “well, it’s bad, but he had a knife.” And when you point out that the man uses a wheel cheer, the response is "well, that doesn’t make it even less deadly. And when you point out "but he wasn’t in the wheel chair at the time he, was on the ground desperately trying to get away the response is “well, he might have thrown the knife. Lets have a debate about how deadly thrown knives can be.”
And there you go. Debate successfully reframed.
People start to question the 21 foot rule. So the police and advocacy groups change the narrative frame. They do this by “conducting research.” Then establishing that “it shouldn’t be 21 feet. It should be any distance, just in case. This makes is safer.”
And people just buy that bullshit up. But its still bullshit.
Knives are dangerous. The police’s job should be keeping themselves safe, they should be keeping the public safe, but they should also try to be keeping the suspect alive. Police training should be focused on this: instead its focused on “keeping the officer safe at all costs” which often means the subject or the public are put at risk.
So when you say this:
You are completely missing the point. The “standard distance” is the least important thing about any of this. It was never ever really a standard distance anyway, just a rule of thumb. “Getting rid of it” is a matter of semantics.
Precisely.
When you send out someone whose only tools are a gun, taser, and handcuffs, and the training to use them, they aren’t going to be able to properly serve people in need. They should be crisis managers first and foremost, trained well in that, and only using force to prevent eminent and serious harm.
That was my line of thought, nearly. Except I didn’t want to debate whether thrown knives were deadly. I had assumed they were. I just wanted to know, as a matter of fact, whether the threat of a thrown knife justifies deadly force. In the course of answering that question, it was pointed out that thrown butchers knives aren’t a grave threat. If I had known that at the start I wouldn’t have any need to respond to your post about the Lowe case. I wasn’t motivated by apologism. I gave my own opinions, based on ignorance - which I suspected when I first responded to you, and which ignorance I was specifically motivated to rid myself of.
Now you appear to be saying that the way I approach police brutality is wrong because… I’ve been influenced by police propaganda? How does that assertion help me realize the error in my ways? I need something tangible to wrap my head around! I’m not going to assume everything pro-police is motivated by a desire to kill brown people, and I’m sure that’s not what you’re trying to tell me… that’s a standard right-wing strawman. But sometimes it seems like you’re saying something is obviously wrong, and if I assume you are right and try and work out why, that’s the only obvious explanation that I can find on my own! And I know that’s not your view.
I’ve read the study you cited multiple times over now, I’m just not seeing what you’re saying is there. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. I’m also getting sick of reading it. Getting rid of the 21 foot rule doesn’t seem disingenuous to me at all. In fact it seems very reasonable to me, and while you haven’t explicitly agreed, it is my impression that you do because when I asked you, you wrote your opinion on that question isn’t important as police unions, Lexipol, etc.
The main point of the study as I read it was,
“This study showed that on average 21 feet is not a safe enough distance for an officer to be able to successfully draw and fire their weapon at a charging suspect with an edged weapon.”
Therefore officers shouldn’t assume that they have time to draw and fire at 21 feet.
Nothing about saying an officer should be justified in shooting a charging suspect from any distance, which I think is the motive you are imparting on firm, but is not something you’ve written explicitly.
It said an officer who wants to minimize his or her risk when confronting an individual with an edged blade should avoid standing still. Which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
It also says an officer who is constantly moving should be skilled in shooting while moving, which also seems perfectly reasonable to me. It seems to me a good thing for police to have good aim.
If possible. I don’t think police should be expected to risk their lives to keep the suspect alive to the same extent that they do to protect the public at large, other police, or themselves. I would think the suspect’s safety, while still a priority, is or should be unambiguously the lowest priority in that list. For example during a raid I would expect medical care to come only after the premises have been cleared, even if that means some of the suspects subdued succumb to their wounds. My uninformed take - as I haven’t previously given any thought to this specific subject - is that some or even many tactical exercises should be focused on keeping the officer safe at all costs, because there are situations where that is the number one priority. For example a standoff situation with no hostages, but where containment is absolutely necessary for public safety.
Clearly!
~Max
…I’m not trying to make you realize the error of your ways. I’m just pointing out the error of your ways.
That’s a you problem. I can’t fix that.
There are more people locked up in America than anywhere else in the world by orders of magnitude. And 74% of those people haven’t even been convicted of a crime. That’s an obvious problem.
That’s just the end-point of a system that is designed to reach the outcome.
Of course, it seems reasonable. What else would you even expect?
Propaganda always sounds reasonable. Especially when it doesn’t directly affect you.
In which case, your point has been made and there is no reason for me to continue my participation in this discussion. So I’ll bow out.
~Max
Firstly of course, I didn’t say that policing absolutely sucks, that was someone else.
But secondly, of fucking course it’s newsworthy when officers beat a man to death (while barking nonsensical and/or contradictory instructions at him, and still with no clear offense even claimed).
A plane crash is newsworthy. You don’t get to say “Hey, look at all the planes which don’t crash”.
What are two or three non “Mainstream Media” sources I should look to to keep me informed without wasting time reporting on non “newsworthy” stories?
There are plenty of statistics to back it up as well.
But I guess you are saying that the media shouldn’t report on police shootings?
What you say here has merit. So many guns out there that it puts cops in danger. If only there was anyone trying to do anything about that.
Reuters, BBC, and a few others, but the Mainstream media does do good reporting.
Except, if you relied upon them, you’d wonder why only attractive blond females are abducted. Sure, they really have been, but males, and minorities are not very “newsworthy”.
Not at all.
But dont just judge how bad or good American cops are based upon that. Just like if you followed just the national news, the only shootings reported are Mass shootings or VIPs. You have to know that mass shooting by an assault weapon (for example) are only about 1 or 2% of all homicides. But of course they have to cover the Monterey Park shooting, that’s fine. But that sort of murders are quite rare.
Biden just rammed thru some laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and violent abusers. It is a decent bill.
That’s pretty rare. I mean the George Floyd killing only had four cops, two of which were trainees.Tyre Nichols had five officers.
Oh on that- 4 of the officers charged with Tyre Nichols' death had prior violations at work : NPR
Four of the five former Memphis Police officers who have been charged in the death of Tyre Nichols had previous infractions with the department, according to Memphis police personnel records shared with NPR.
Former officers Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Emmitt Martin, Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean were fired Jan. 20 and are now being charged with murder. Video of the Jan. 7 incident was released Friday.
Now in at least one case it was for not reporting damage to his police car. But two were about use of force.
Four of those officers — Haley, Martin, Mills and Smith — were reprimanded or suspended earlier for their failure to report when they used physical force, failure to report a domestic dispute, or for damages sustained to their squad cruisers, according to the files from Memphis police. Bean did not have any reprimands or suspensions in the files.
But yeah, the “thin blue wall” is not always a Good Thing.
There were more than five officers there. Did any on the others report the incident as being wrong?
Are they outliers or is that typical?
Oh right, we don’t know, and that’s why transparency is one of the things that groups like BLM are campaigning for.
I don’t.
My mother was in a car accident yesterday. I left work to help her out, and the cops on the scene were extremely nice and courteous. I know a couple of cops, and have more as clients, and I have no problem with them.
But just as I may eat apples out of a barrel and find them delicious, that doesn’t mean I should ignore the rotten ones at the bottom.
I am also a white middle class business owner who is well known in my community. My experience with the same exact cops is probably very different from those who do not enjoy my privilege.
And media bias goes both ways. Do you actually think that they report on every time that a cop abuses their authority? It really only makes it to national news if someone is dead due to police misconduct, and then only if there is video showing it. There is much less reporting on “lesser” incidents of dehumanizing and degrading conduct. If Mr. Nichols had survived his assault by the police, or there was not such clear video, we wouldn’t be talking about them, and they’d be out “policing” their beat right now.
And if you followed just the national news, there’d be no car accidents that weren’t multi-car pileups. And just like car accidents, gun homicides are just so common that the media doesn’t report on them unless they involve large numbers or children.
Could be better, and I guarantee it will end up in front of SCOTUS, where I suspect it will be struck down.
A “suspect” is “the public at large”. The people the police endanger and kill are precisely the people they’re supposed to be protecting.
As for the common police refrain that “going home alive is the #1 priority”, or “Cops need to keep themselves alive”, well, if that’s really your number one priority, then you can achieve that by retiring from police work.
Unfortunately paywalled:
Since its formation in November 2021, the specialized squad of some 40 officers that was deployed to deter violence in some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods was responsible for repeated acts of intimidation, harassment and violence by some of its officers, according to interviews with dozens of people in the community, including several arrested by the unit’s officers. “Police out here riding around like hound dogs,” said Lareta Johnson Ray, whose family members wound up in a violent encounter with the unit’s officers after running from them last summer.