Regarding cops and shootings. What is the answer?

First let me say that with regards to the shooting in New Orleans the other day, I don't know all the facts so I am not really an expert on the case and therefore my opinion hasn't completely been formed.

Every time a cop is involved with a killing people tend to blame the cops in almost every situation. I can understand some frustration among society concerning "the man" and there has been obvious cases when the cops have over-stepped their bounds and did things that were totally over the line.

When anything happens like this, this board becomes pretty hot with both sides debating whether the cops were right or wrong with the way they handled the situation. My question to you is what would be some changes you would like to see to help law enforcement do their jobs better and toward your personal liking?

Would more money for the officers be the answer? Would it be more tax money spent on equipment, training and personnel? Would it be better to just get rid of the law all together? Should they invent some "Johnny Socko flying robots"?

To all the people in the threads that are here bashing the way the cops handle every situation, do you belong to any groups that are trying to change the way things are? Do you write to the proper people, expressing how you feel about how bad things are? In other words, are you active in the resolutions to the problem or do you just post your disgust on here and call it a day? That's not slamming anyone, it is just the best way I can say it.

Seriously, what would be changes *you* would like to see? Or are you satisfied with the way it is now?

Hire experts in martial arts and conflict resolution. They can use nonlethal weapons for worse situations. Above all, screen the personalities. No one who is vindictive, petty, authoritarian, or trying to get back at their childhood bullies need apply.

Britain armed its cops after 9/11 and is now having its first spate of widespread gun violence. Armed cops=armed criminals, eom.

of shoot to kill?

As long as the cop is a good shot and he doesn't hit a major artery it might be ok. Then again, if the person is whacked on something like PCP, the bullet would probably do nothing for a while but piss the person off.

But instead it is shoot to kill as option one.

In a man with a knife scenario, as long as the knife is not in cutting range it does not represent a major threat. (Lets assume that we don't have a master of knife throwing here.) So keep the idiot at bay and shoot him in the legs until he drops the damn knife.


How come there is never a Taser when it would actually be useful?

I have this feeling that if they would have tasered the man and he died as a result, a lot of people would still be bashing the cops. :shrug:

I have huge problems with tasering people who are not obeying instructions fast enough or have a perceived atitude problem.

Rereading the accounts it seems that the NO police did try to pepper spray the guy and it did no good. So perhaps they simply don't have tasers as a non-lethal alternative.

There are literally thousands of good martial arts schools that can train police in non-lethal tactics. It seems that there is little interest in these skills in law enforcement. Instead the focus is on militarization and escalation. It is all about applying maximum force and obtaining total compliance. There is a thin line between a police force as part of the community and a police force as an a branch of an occupation army. I think that in many urban areas our police are essentially an occupying army subduing a hostile population, not a community agency tasked with maintaining order. I blame the stupid war on drugs for getting us into this situation, and it seems the equally stupid war on terror has made the matter far worse.

A person may survive a round to the chest, but die of a round to the leg or arm, depending on what arteries are hit. There is no such thing as shooting someone "a little bit." If shooting to stop (a.k.a. "shooting to kill") is not justified, then NO shooting is justified, as a general rule.

There's also the fact that a bullet is an unguided weapon. Trying to hit a moving arm or leg, even as close as 21 feet, with a handgun, while that person is wielding a lethal weapon that puts you in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, is neither safe nor rational. There's also the fact that a bullet will generally go right through an arm or leg and keep on going down the street, not something that's generally advisable.

I'd say the best solution is to equip officers with less-lethal weapons (OC, Tasers) and training to keep them from using them inappropriately; less-lethal weapons are a good way to defuse many, though not all, attempted "suicide by cop" scenarios, such as this one appears to be. But still, there's no getting around the fact that even if every police officer is Jet Li, there are still some violent criminals who will stop at nothing (including murdering police officers) to stay out of prison, and some of those criminals will end up being shot.

But it is much more likely that you will die from getting shot in the chest or head. There were three cops in the video with guns trained on the man - all safely out of range of a knife so small it is not readily visible in the picture. In some other situation there may have been no choice, but I don't think that was this situation, I just think that our police are not trained to have many choices after 'oops the pepper spray didn't work', other than kill the guy.

And we're usually shown one side - or at least that little clip of footage that shows the beating. We don't see what happened before or even get told BY the mainstream media those relevant things that happen before the beating.

Some cases it's still clear the cops did wrong, but our media system is so jaded it's only going to tell what it wants - combined with whatever it thinks will harvest for them the most money. That's not media. That's money laundering. And, ironically, FOX is one of the worst offenders. (it just depends on the issue at hand too...)

They show a few seconds of some footage and people make judgments based on those few seconds. I will say that it seems many people want to fault the cops, so the msm caters to that.

...the correct answer may be scalability...a raised fist equals a squirt of pepper spray,a club equals a rubber bullet, and a knife equals a taser...the pantheon of restraint runs all the way from a spouse's "I don't think so." through 15 cops declaring a free fire zone....though a knife would scare the hell out of me,it is more often painful than lethal-especially when applied in haste by an untrained assailant...at one end of the scale are "I don't care if it's my Mother, shoot her!" and at the other lies "OK the first cop is dead-now use some force..."
I really think the main problem may be a faction of police training that says the first priority in any confrontation is to "take control of the situation" which works OK until the situation approaches the extreme...at the far end of this,the people involved (normally mentally unbalanced or deficient or emotionally disturbed) will NOT respond as predicted and the training will REQUIRE they be "subdued" with whatever force is "required"...the result is that those with the LEAST ability to respond to an aggressive police response are those most often faced with it,to the detriment of the society as a whole...I don't want a society without a village idiot-I'll have lost an example for my child......

home. I can't imagine what it's like to be a cop. I have a great deal of respect for the line of work, and those that uphold the law as it should be upheld. Those officers with "agendas" are omitted from that respect.

Anyway, if you're in your home, with your spouse and kids, and the same situation were to arise, how would you handle it? Granted, the average citizen isn't trained as a cop is, but then again, cops are also human. That's how I react to a shooting or tasering.

...I ain't one...but I've been an ambulance worker in a city of 1/2 a million within 50 miles of NYC...it is scary at times and sometimes approaches insanity.Sometimes the call comes with the warning "shots fired"...even just on an ambulance it takes a certain chesty declaration of "yeah,today sucks, but I am the best thing to happen to you ALL DAY"...I've done shit most people have only seen in movies...ever performed CPR with a guy who attempted suicide with a shotgun and failed....ever attempted CPR in earshot of automatic weapons fire??? But one thing it NEVER takes away is your responsibility to respond as a person...last night or week or month, never grants you the right to respond differently to the next injured person...for cops unfortunately, this does not hold...

When something terrible like this happens the cops are all over the news, when a team of cops catch a serial rapist or a killer, you never know who the cops are that did all the work.

I agree with you on putting yourself in their shoes. I hope that many people never have to do that.

these situations our culture has bailed on.

So, yes. It is murder for our cops to kill the mentally ill -- because we as a society have bailed on them.

COPS don't like the way they are being trained on this. They don't like offing mentally ill people. So, two Milwaukee cops started a project that is exploding -- The Consensus Project. I talked to one of these guys on the phone, and man, they so much wanted a better way to respond. These guys started the project after 2 schizophrenics were shot by the PD in the same year. Cops did that. :)

www.consensusproject.org


Next, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) is supporting special training for our PDs: CIT training, aka, "Crisis Intervention Training". So that our cops know how to "look" when they go into a situation, and so on.

This is what I know for sure: In this country we have state of the art mental health treatment that doesn't get delivered.

That most insurance policies don't recognize mental illness as a real health condition!

That our families and our cops have to try to cope as best as they can.

That this is a recipe for disaster.
/spellin' and who knows what else

peace
Beth

I honestly believe that no cop really wants to kill anyone. I am sure that if they end up killing a person who is mentally ill, it weighs on them pretty hard.

I hope that organization really takes off. If police departments across the country start doing that, there is no telling how many lives could be saved.

Thanks for posting this.

:toast:

The biggest contribution toward all of the violence we see (imo) is due to the underlying sentiment of our country. We are bullies. We are inconsiderate. (Except for the likes of those who belong to forums like this one, etc.) Our society is virtually uncultured. Uneducated. Like Bush. Turn that around, and we have a much better chance of all getting along.


The things I got away with when I was young. One would never get away with them now.



And as I always say, it is partly the fact that we have twice as many human beings roaming the planet as we did when I was young. That's one of the reasons why things have changed.

:kick:

Now:

"Hmmm. Guy has a knife, he's a good ways away, and it's 20 minutes till Monday Night Football." BLAM BLAM BLAM

Future:

"Hmmm. Guy has a knife, he's a good ways away, and I'VE GOT A GUN. I'll make sure there's no immediate threat to anybody, take a step back, develop the situation, and seek a non-lethal means of diffusing the situation. Besides, Tivo has my back."

The problem is what is "a good ways away." Inside 21 feet, you are in immediate lethal danger from a guy with a knife, even if there's a gun already in your hand and you are trained to use it. Inside 15 feet, it's an even fight, and whoever makes the first move wins...

A lot of people underestimate knives and overestimate guns, which may be why many "gun versus knife" discussions get so heated. Both are serious, lethal weapons; it's not like "rock, scissors, paper"...

No one here is a cop.
No one here knows what its like to get a radio call, show up to an unknown location, with unknown suspects, and suddenly have your life be in jeapordy.
Therefore, no one is qualified to comment.

From our armchairs, we can hypothesize all we want. Sure, technology would solve most of the problem.

Picard: "Set phasers to stun, fire at will."
Will: "Huh? <ZAP><Thud>"
Picard: "Not at Will, at will! Oh, nevermind!"

I know of at least 3 that post here regularly,that are still active duty officers. Several others here have been officers, and at least one thats retired after 22 yrs with the Sheriffs Dept, me.

I wanted *opinions* on what people think would help. No one here is the President of the United States, but we still all share ideas of what it would take to get a better one.

Police officers used to consider themselves public servants, to protect and serve. They gave respect to everybody, and in turn it flowed back to them. Yes, there were some major exceptions to that, especially in areas of race relations, but in general it was a comfortable relation that the police and the public had.

But over the past fifty years that back and forth relationship has disintigrated. Now police consider themselves to be guards at an outdoor insane asylum. There is no respect for the public, and despite all of the PR campaigns undertaken, there is little respect amongst the public for the police. This has breeded distrust and bad feelings on all sides, and more importantly it is an attitude that makes life cheap.

Part of this attitude arose out of the '60s, when a large segment of society was rejecting all authority figures, including the police. But this attitude was also brought on by the police themselves. Graphic images over the years of police killings and brutality, increasingly frequent stories of police riots and the killing of innocents has made the phrase Help, Police into a cry of warning instead of a cry for help.

And the law itself has aided in this attitude change. More laws, more draconian laws, the erosion of civil rights, miscarriage after miscarriage of justice has eroded the publics' faith and confidence in law enforcement. They see police time and again suffer little or no consequences for their violent actions, and thus this leaves them cold. Laws designed to erode our civil rights are carried out by the police, who thus become the face of emerging fascism in this country.

What needs to be done has absolutely got to start with the law itself. Roll back these draconian laws that are stripping us of our civil rights. If police don't have to enforce unjust laws, then they won't have to take the misplaced anger. This includes the laws that enable the War on Drugs, and also the more recent draconian laws attendant to the War on Terror.

But the next step is going to have to be taken by the police themselves, and that is to recapture that attitude that they are public servants. Yes, this will mean turning the other cheek for awhile, possibly years. And this means not taking the easy way out of killing people for minor infractions. They need to become more active in the community, getting to know people on a personal basis. Training and sensetivity in how to deal with those who are mentally ill. Stop inflicting brutal beatings ala Rodney King and others too numerous to mention. If they start giving this kind of respect in the face of an overwhelming negative public perception, eventually their actions will win back the respect of the public, and life will be better for all concerned.

But until this happens nothing positive will occur. This vicious cycle that we're caught in will continue, as people become increasingly angry at the police, and the police retreat further into their bunker mentality. And this all has to start with the police first, otherwise it will never, ever work.

That would solve the problem.

Come on, this wasn't the amadou diallo case here.

Don't pull out your wallet, don't be mentally ill, don't submit peacefully to your beating, don't be African American, and on and on, ad nauseum. Just let the police run rampant like rabid Rottweilers on crack. After all, they are the law, and all we are all just problems to be solved in their eyes:eyes:

Just absolve the police of any resonsibility to act like decent human beings. Sorry, but that is not the answer.

Yup, people who wave knives at cops are utterly innocent, its the damn cops fault.

This wasn't the Diallo case.

Go on with your anti-cop crusade, it sure will help democrats get elected.

Shoot a guy pulling out a wallet, shoot a mentally ill man, put a five tap into the skull of a man whose only crime was having dark skin, shoot a man who they vastly outnumber who has a knife vs. their multiple guns, put a beat down on a guy whose only crime was that he didn't lay down and take it, yeah, that's it, just continue to excuse such inhumane behaviour because hey, it isn't you:eyes:

Trouble with that attitude friend is that if you continue to posit excuse after excuse for such behaviour, one of these days it will be you. And all of your excuses, all of your police uber alles support won't mean a goddamn thing, for you to will be dead, and some clown somewhere will be saying "Well, he shouldn't have done that":eyes:

Despite what the prevalent notions of law enforcement is, police are first and foremost public servants, "to protect and serve". It is about damn time that they started acting like it again.

the cops did the right thing.

You are arguing that because some incidents go bad, all cops are bad.

That is a pretty lame arguement to say it nicely.

Can't come up with a logcial, reasonable rebuttle of an arguement, so you stoop to personal attacks and ad hominems. Real class there friend, NOT.

Nowhere, in any of these posts did I generalize that all cops are bad. Geez, if I did that I would be insulting too many of my family members for me to enumerate here.

No, what I am arguing against is the attitude that is prevalent in law enforcement now, the attitude amongst police that they're guards at an outdoor insane asylum, the kind of attitude that makes life cheap, and easy to dispose of. I have personal knowledge of that attitude, from both sides of the coin, therefore I know whereof I speak. What do you have?

That's right, bumpcus, zip, zero, zilch.

Which is why you're pulling that real class act of going for the personal insult over the logical arguement.

Real class there:eyes:

When you try to debunk right-wing talking points on the internet, you're probably going to face personal attack. It's how they operate.

I just like to point out when they're intellectually bankrupt and morally depleted.

"No, what I am arguing against is the attitude that is prevalent in law enforcement now, the attitude amongst police that they're guards at an outdoor insane asylum, the kind of attitude that makes life cheap, and easy to dispose of. I have personal knowledge of that attitude, from both sides of the coin, therefore I know whereof I speak. What do you have?"

Note the bolded word. Police. You just claimed that all police have an attitude that life is cheap and disposable.
I am calling you on that. Its bullshit and a lie. You have no evidence to back that statement up whatsoever, and as I said the first time, you are claiming all cops are bad when you make that statement.

Your arguement is crap. You have 0 evidence to support it other than:
"I have personal knowledge of that attitude."

I call bullshit.

How many cops have you worked with? How many police stations have you worked in? How many cops are in your family?

I have numbers in all categories there pal, I have first hand experience. But hey, if you want some sociological treatise on it, well here
<http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/181312.pdf#search='police%20attitudes%20towards%20the%20public'>
<http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles1/nij/194077.txt>
<http://www.emory.edu/AAPL/Bull/J264-625.htm>
<http://www.communitypolicing.org/publications/artbytop/w5/w5thras.htm>
<http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/policewomen2/Alcorn.pdf#search='police%20attitudes'>

Let me know if you need more evidence. Or hey, just go down to your local police station and see if you can get on a ride-along. That'll open your eyes.

Geez, don't have the cojones to keep the original example of your intellectual and moral failing up? LOL. No friend, you didn't originally say that I had a lame arguement, you called me out as an "idiotic fool"

Geez friend, at least have the courage of your convictions!

Too sad, and yet too funny:rofl:

Too late now, people did see the original, might as well own up to it:evilgrin: