Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza => Topic started by: Jubal on August 19, 2014, 01:14:13 PM
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(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77026000/jpg/_77026631_023552696-1.jpg)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28848753
US police say they have arrested 31 people during another night of angry protests in the town of Ferguson in the state of Missouri.
Unrest flared hours after President Obama called for calm following the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown on 9 August.
The US attorney general is due to visit Ferguson on Wednesday to meet federal officials investigating the killing.
The National Guard has been deployed to support police operations.
So, this was all sparked by police shooting an unarmed black teenager who almost certainly hadn't done anything wrong at all.
Turns out that if you take a bunch of guys, dress them as soldiers, give them heavy duty firearms, train them like soldiers, they'll start acting like soldiers. And then all of a sudden people are surprised when the "enemy" that they've made out of perfectly ordinary citizens finally wants to fire back. The race issue is obviously also a really severe part of this, the police in much of the US are overwhelmingly white and there keep being continued cases of disproportionate focus and disproportionate sentences given to black people as regards crime.
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If you look into the studies they will show that more crimes are committed by Blacks and Hispanics than other races. That's just a fact. But it doesn't mean that kid should have been shot five times.
The real issue here is the militarization of our police forces and their growing tendencies to oppress the citizens they are sworn to protect.
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Yeah, they're poorer on average than whites so you'd expect that. But the studies do also tend to show that sentencing is harsher on those people for equivalent crimes, more of them get targetted by police, etc.
I agree though that the militarisation of the police is absolutely a core issue. I had no idea until all this flared up how much military kit your cops actually have, it's kinda terrifying. Who do these guys think they're going to be fighting?
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Texans?
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One of the podunk towns near here received a 12-man armoured personnel carrier for their Sheriff department from the guvment. They don't even have half that many on the entire force!
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Now that IS nuts.
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As usual, John Oliver gives a better account of the problems than actual news sources:
I still can't believe there are towns that size that have a tank. That place was the size of Diss. And it had a tank. An actual up-armoured on tracks honest-to-goodness tank.
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Now that IS nuts.
Now that IS nuts.
IS
IS? ISIS? Its a conspiracy, Obama really is a terrorist mozzer geezer. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
But seriously that is portugaled up. Move far away CG. Like here. Or Canada, Canada sounds nice.
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I'm afraid you've been beaten to that conclusion, Penty, in a rather big way: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28745990
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(http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/14/1407996974454/c1c5a545-599c-443f-bf62-260c2e833ff6-620x413.jpeg)
Actual photo of police sniper in Ferguson
Couple of points;
A bipod and a tripod?!
A telescopic scope and a reflex sight?!
This appears to be an AR-15 and as far as I am aware not standard police issue which leads me to believe that it is that officer's own gun.
I've seen many people comment on reddit about how members of the police in America like to play soldier
As seen in this incident http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/james-boyd-killed-by-cops_n_5021117.html
The shooting of Michael Brown and the police response to the subsequent unrest highlight serious problems in the local (and to some extent national) police force. An autopsy has shown Mr Brown to of been shot six times, twice in the head, from a distance greater than 2 ft, does that not seem like a gross misuse of force?
I would like to see if these events make american police forces clean up their act.
Obviously my opinions on this are of a curious Brit looking on a situation in a country whose police force shoots dead more people every month than the british police shoot in more than a decade. Heck I've only ever seen armed police in airports and around London.
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From the sounds of it, it seems as if Brown was unlawfully killed. However, there are clearly some people hijacking the protest by burning and looting stores and throwing bottles and rocks and (possibly) molotov cocktails at the police, so there does need to be a response and comparing it to situations like the riots we had in cities in the UK a few years back is innaccurate.
Though I have to wonder, whats caused this to escalate so quickly? I suspect the fact that the police have these pieces of kit has given them a false sense of conflict being immanent and so snapped into action. Though they have managed to avoid killing many people, unlike in places like Egypt where the security forces are clearly brutal.
The second person killed seems more defensible, he was moving on them with a knife so they'd have felt endangered. Why they couldn't have used a taser or some other sort of non-lethal restraint or incapacitation does strike me as being this false sense of conflict again.
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I don't like the phrase "unlawfully killed". Call a spade a spade, he was murdered, or if we think the state was culpable, executed without trial. I don't think shooting a man with a knife is a proportional or defensible response either, honestly. I can see why police would want to restrain or arrest such a man, but the fault is with the police entirely if they then choose to kill someone. If you're running around pointing a live firearm at people, wearing full body armour, you have no business feeling excessively threatened by someone who is only armed with a knife and certainly no business killing them.
I agree that the militarised police are a major part of the picture. I think a very disaffected, poor, unemployed underclass in the form of Ferguson's young black community seems to also be a problem - it's not just the response that's the issue, it's massively higher sentencing rates for blacks and continued racial profiling policies and anger at that is boiling over. Burning and looting clearly needs to be addressed at some stage, but right now the police need to stand down and de-escalate the situation, confrontation is only increasing the levels of property damage.
Also apparently Egypt has called on the US to show restraint in dealing with protestors. Which I think may be the final straw to show just how badly this is going.
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But seriously that is portugaled up. Move far away CG. Like here. Or Canada, Canada sounds nice.
I am also armed to the teeth, so bring it on cop-bitches. :)
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Who do these guys think they're going to be fighting?
The British might invade! Reclaim our territories, fight the usurpers! Or Mexicans, Injuns, 'gators, anyone looking a little middle eastern, The Beckhams, democrats, basically you just never know who you're going to have to use state empowered lethal justice on at any given time.
'Murica!
Also, that American journalist that got beheaded by ISIS? I'm sure his country will use a mediated and appropriate response, maybe find the killer and convict him through a fair trial and certainly not bomb a few villages/towns/cities/countries just in case the felon was hiding in them.
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The British might invade! Reclaim our territories, fight the usurpers! Or Mexicans, Injuns, 'gators, anyone looking a little middle eastern, The Beckhams, democrats, basically you just never know who you're going to have to use state empowered lethal justice on at any given time.
'Murica!
Also, that American journalist that got beheaded by ISIS? I'm sure his country will use a mediated and appropriate response, maybe find the killer and convict him through a fair trial and certainly not bomb a few villages/towns/cities/countries just in case the felon was hiding in them.
The IS(IS) guy was a Brit, I'm waiting for the right wing nuts to start screaming about 1772 again
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The IS(IS) guy was a Brit, I'm waiting for the right wing nuts to start screaming about 1772 again
Yup, that's pretty much what my sarcasm was aiming for, plus a laugh at cops and such. ;)
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On another note, it seems that some protests over police brutality in LA have managed not to decend into battles with the police
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/18/375727/americans-in-la-protest-police-brutality/
Instead, the Chief and Deputy Chief of police have attended ommunity meetings to discuss the issues at play. So perhaps there's more hope for the US police system than our fairly negative outlook here would suggest!
Oops, I meant to reference 1776 earlier!
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1776
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Guess LA learned from the riots in '92
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And apparently in the modern USA, shooting unarmed people dead is okay. :(
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For reference, here is the statement given https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuupBHUGbYo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuupBHUGbYo)
Now from this I can kind of see why they acquitted the officer. I do still think the policy of shooting to kill is wrong, a taser could have disabled him without the need for killing him. But given the way US law enforcement officers are trained to act it seems that they didn't really have a choice except to acquit him.
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Yeah it's not so cut and dry.
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I'm not saying what he did was necessarily illegal - I'm more suggesting that a legal system that permits this (and other police shootings of unarmed people as have happened across the US in the last few years) has very deep-seated flaws in it. The officer is ultimately a cog in the machine, it's the people at command level who have to bear most responsibility here. I think the specific case is less important than the frankly terrifying pattern - military-style police forces wearing combat gear patrolling neighbourhoods where they treat the inhabitants as potential insurgents. That's really, really not how you do effective policing - cutting crime has to come from within communities not just be imposed externally.
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I think the specific case is less important than the frankly terrifying pattern
This.
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Interview with the officer who killed him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CU2NPSxjho
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Seems legit.
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http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ferguson-shooting-13-facts/2014/11/25/id/609483/
Even if some of it isn't true, he was hardly an innocent little unarmed boy.
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Yes, but the point is not that he was an angel, or different. It's that human lives portugaling matter. Stealing a pack of cigarillos doesn't carry the death penalty, and nor even does common assault. I mean, seriously, we in the west spend lots of time acting all het up about how in other countries there isn't a functional justice system, how they cut people's hands off for theft, whatever. How is the idea that cops have pretty much carte blanche to shoot suspects in a robbery any different?
If someone's a criminal, you try them. Maybe you put them in jail. YOU DO NOT SHOOT THEM MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE HEAD.
Also, that link takes all of the officer's later report as verbatim truth, which is questionable at best when multiple witness statements do not agree, and it's known from forensics that he didn't tell the truth about some elements of it. But even so - that's not the point. Even if this is totally legal, that's a terrifying indictment on the system as a whole. And I'm just going to add this; if a middle class white kid shoplifted then got shot in an altercation by police, we'd all be asking where he went wrong, discussing how tragic the whole thing was, etc etc. Look at some of the coverage of that guy who went nuts and shot a load of women, it was all pussyfooting around his mental health issues, and here we are with a black kid who got shot dead totally unjustly and somehow the right-wing part of the media are desperate to portray him as a thug whose life didn't matter. It's that attitude - both that the police shout be given total carte blanche in these cases and that some people's lives fundamentally matter less than others - that is frankly shameful and which permeates many layers of American media and society (not to say that Britain is anywhere near perfect on this, it's just less obvious here because our cops don't have guns and can't shoot to kill).
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YOU DO NOT SHOOT THEM MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE HEAD.
In all the cases I've never heard anything like this happening.
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I was using hyperbole. But the facts remain that several people HAVE been shot and fatally wounded by police, that they have been predominantly non-white, and that this keeps happening. If police are going to use rapid responses when they feel threatened, they should be carrying tasers not firearms for that purpose.
The US police are literally getting away with accidentally murdering innocent people on a regular basis. We're getting case after case of this. Losing one person like that would be a tragedy. Two would look like carelessness. The numbers that it's actually happened to look like a systematic failing across America to a) train police properly to not kill people, b) have a legal system that actually holds someone to account when someone gets killed, c) refuse to accept that the lives of poor black citizens are more than somehow "acceptable collateral damage".
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I was using hyperbole. But the facts remain that several people HAVE been shot and fatally wounded by police, that they have been predominantly non-white, and that this keeps happening. If police are going to use rapid responses when they feel threatened, they should be carrying tasers not firearms for that purpose.
This.
The police have to have a way to defend themselves, but in my opinion they're too quick to jump to lethal force.
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Totally agree on police, but not about "poor black citizens". They will always remain "poor black citizens" if they are continuously treated and act as such. Their lifestyles often lead to a higher propensity to commit crimes. It's not bigotry it's just fact. Over to you, Chuck:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/25/charles-barkley-unintelligent-blacks-brainwashed-to-keep-successful-black-men-down-video/
Edit: Dammit, I told myself not to get involved in one of these arguments. Whatever gets said next I'm not going to reply to it. :P
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How they act shouldn't lead to a different perception on whether their life has inherent value. This isn't just a socioeconomic question - the fact is that black people tend to be more likely to be punished more harshly (or indeed at all) for the same crimes as white people. Nobody is disputing here that poor black neighbourhoods have high crime rates - but that doesn't mean that black lives should be considered less valuable.
And hey, if the rest of the world started treating them like human beings, maybe that might start making a difference - when you grow up feeling like the cops could hit you, beat you or kill you for pretty much no reason, that's rather a disincentive to be positively engaged in your society. (To take another prominent case that emphasises the "no reason", a guy was killed in Utah in September. He was cosplaying and carrying a sword, and the cops shot him six times in the back. No charges were filed for this pretty much inexplicable murder.)
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Cop shoots unarmed boy then holds him in his arms as he dies.
(http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/width620/img/oregonian/photo/2014/11/28/16448702-mmmain.jpg)
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So I was sent this
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/02/hug-photographs-ferguson-protests-lie?CMP=fb_gu
I kind of agree with what he says, you can't jump on one image and assume the problem is solved, but equally I find it quite hard to believe anyone is actually doing that.
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Cop shoots unarmed boy then holds him in his arms as he dies.
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Cop shoots unarmed boy then holds him in his arms as he dies.
I've been looking and can't seem to find anything saying this. Where did you find this?
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Meanwhile, elsewhere... (http://nypost.com/2014/12/03/cop-cleared-in-eric-garner-chokehold-death/)
Unlike in Ferguson, this looked like pretty much the perfect case, too: the officer was on video trying to restrain Garner in a way that he had been specifically trained not to do because it is dangerous; he was overweight, middle aged, and asthmatic; unarmed, and not a threat in any concievable way.
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Unlike in Ferguson, this looked like pretty much the perfect case
Agreed, I don't understand how they managed to reach this decision
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Agreed, I don't understand how they managed to reach this decision
Systemic racism looks like the most likely reason...
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Agreed, I don't understand how they managed to reach this decision
Systemic racism looks like the most likely reason...
Having said that, I've now heard analysis that says he was resisting arrest. Restraining someone who doesn't want to be restrained is damn hard, and supposedly the methods they used are approved methods. It was suggested that perhaps they should have paid more attention to his claims that he couldn't breathe. In all the situations being brought into the public eye there is some confrontation with police officers, perhaps the focus should be on why these conflicts happen?
The interview in question was with an ex-MET police officer from the UK, it was on tonights PM programme on radio 4 at around 45 minutes in. Don't know if international people can access that in any way, but if you can I recommend it.
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Agreed, I don't understand how they managed to reach this decision
Systemic racism looks like the most likely reason...
Having said that, I've now heard analysis that says he was resisting arrest. Restraining someone who doesn't want to be restrained is damn hard, and supposedly the methods they used are approved methods. It was suggested that perhaps they should have paid more attention to his claims that he couldn't breathe. In all the situations being brought into the public eye there is some confrontation with police officers, perhaps the focus should be on why these conflicts happen?
The interview in question was with an ex-MET police officer from the UK, it was on tonights PM programme on radio 4 at around 45 minutes in. Don't know if international people can access that in any way, but if you can I recommend it.
Here is a source (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/nyregion/after-eric-garner-chokehold-prosecuting-police-is-an-option.html?_r=0) that claims that both the Medical examiner concluded that Garner's death was due to a chokehold, and that chokeholds are forbidden by NYPD as a restraining tactic.
Unless anyone can find any evidence that the method used was not a chokehold, I'm going to continue to act as if it was.
The footage here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30323750) shows the police officer attacking the neck, which is ridiculously easy to portugal up and put pressure on the windpipe or arteries, even if you are not intending to, and shows Garner saying "I can't breathe" twice. Even if it came out in court that technically they hadn't done anything wrong, refusing to take it to court at all looks ridiculous.
CG: I don't normally watch Family Guy, but that's worryingly on point these days...
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More positively (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/04/3599718/today-in-south-carolina-a-white-ex-cop-was-indicted-for-shooting-a-black-man/)...
So indictments of police officers are still possible...
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867794/You-t-let-kids-hungry-Police-officer-caught-mom-shoplifting-dozen-eggs-gives-eggs-hug-instead-ticket.html?ito=social-facebook
"The officer then shot the woman 17 times as she drove away from the scene."
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Yeah, there are some good eggs (pun wholly intended and embraced) in the police force. But people having enough food to scrape by and live shouldn't be dependent on the charity of cops - that's just adding the power of life to the power of death they apparently already have, which is an improvement but doesn't solve the problem!
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I just thought the quote I added was hilarious so I had to post it. :P
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So more things seem to be happening on this front.
Firstly, 2 officers murdered in New York, apparently in retaliation for the recent killings http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30566232
To me, this shows that the US has a violence problem rather than simply a race problem.
Secondly, back to St. Louis, a black man was shot after apparently pointing a loaded handgun at a police officer http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30596531
I honestly don't know what the protesters would have had the policeman do. If someone threatens your life, such as by pointing a gun at you, it's reasonable to strike pre-emptively with lethal force.
I've heard some claim that there was no gun, but I can't see how the police could expect to get away with making up something like that. Some say the confrontation shouldn't have happened, but the police should be able to question anyone without having their lives threatened.
What's peoples take on this?
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the US has a violence problem rather than simply a race problem
It has both, surely? Disproportionately this is a violence problem that is comprised of the armed wing of the government shooting people of a specific racial origin. Plus a smaller number of people from that racial group shooting back at the (overwhelmingly white) police.
I can't see how the police could expect to get away with making up something like that.
I can (not saying they did make it up, I've no idea, but I wouldn't discount the possibility so fast). The legal system is obviously hugely biased in favour of the police, and some US cops are getting away quite literally with murder. In the current climate, I have great difficulty trusting the US police on anything they don't have video evidence of, not least because on several recent cases across the states video evidence has proven them to be lying their asses off. And they're still not getting convicted when that does happen.
Whilst I clearly don't condone pointing guns at the police, we are talking about a country where the police shoot black people, many of them totally innocent, on a not irregular basis. I can absolutely see why some black people in the current climate may simply have reached a point where they regard the police as simply a body of people trying to kill them, and as such will be much more inclined to wave firearms at them on the grounds that for all they know, the cop might shoot them anyway. Especially if they're actually involved in crime, but more broadly as well; a perception among US police that black lives are expendable does genuinely seem to exist and be worryingly strong. The police in places like St Louis are in a total legitimacy crisis in my opinion, essentially being wholly unsupported by the communities they're theoretically working in/with - and a very radical change of policy is needed to try and cut down on what may well soon become a cycle of reprisals, violence and killing.
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There is video of the incident.
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In which case fair enough - but the generic points in my post all still stand.
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There are black cops kill white men, black cops kill black men, white cops kill white men, but the news media like to drum up unrest because it makes them money. Let's say in a neighborhood 3 black men and 1 white guy commit a crime in which case 3 black men and 1 white guy are arrested. Is that racism? Statistically blacks commit more crimes so naturally more of them get arrested and generally more attention from police. I'm not condoning the shoot first ask questions later at all, that's just poor policing. I just think the media is cashing in on the race thing.
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I think the issue is that there's a circular element, part of the reason you get those higher crime rates in black communities is that they feel more alienated from the system as a result of having all-white authority figures, racial profiling used very heavy handedly, etc. Of course your example isn't racism, but the poor training and behaviour of cops is happening in a way where the people who get shot, some of whom are clearly not criminals at all, are people getting targetted specifically because of their race. And that IS racism in a very systemic way. The fact a slightly higher percentage of crimes are committed by black people does not make being black sufficient grounds to suspect someone of a crime, which is how some police forces are using it.
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Not individual black people but some neighborhoods just have that dangerous feeling environment. The "'hood" if you will. Also there are plenty of black and Hispanic authority figures, and it doesn't make sense to blame the authority for keeping these people living like they do. Look up some of Charles Barkley's recent quotes.
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Not solely blaming the authorities - I think there are wider issues with the whole system - but I don't think the way police treat black citizens in many cases is at all helpful to any attempt to integrate those communities into mainstream society. The police play along with the negative expectations of these communities when they could be challenging them more effectively.
And sure, some neighbourhoods everywhere feel dangerous, but its not just those areas we're talking about. The black guy who got shot for carrying a LARP sword wasn't walking in a rough area, and there are plenty of stories about police stopping people even in pretty upmarket areas of New York despite having no grounds for suspicion of them. I feel like a certain preconception, based on race, has found itself deeply ingrained in US police forces even far from the areas where it originated, and I think that's a) unfairly racist and b) helps reaffirm and provide fuel to its own concepts. It's not the whole story of course, but its a self fulfilling prophecy to an extent. And its something I think could be tackled, and it'd help with these violence problems somewhat if it was tackled.
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Surely something to point out here is that like 0.0001% of arrests are even made news. That tiny fraction of a percent get infinitely more coverage than all the others promoting an unfair bias in favour of whatever happens to be fashionable news. Which is police killing black guys. The idea that arguing that 'a majority' or 'a minority' of cases on either side is pointless surely? For fairness, each case would literally have to be looked at, decided on whether force was necessary, each cops service record and history looked at to see already established prejudices or if they came about since joining the police etc, etc.....Point being there is a lot of bs that can account for any of the risk factors. For once I don't really have a stance, just pointing something out that seems to be being missed. And the news is the top proponent of bad science. Any news. Ever. Even science news.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/justice-department-ferguson-civil-rights-darren-wilson.html?_r=0
Witnesses lied. How shocking.
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Just when things seemed to have calmed down, Baltimore....
Evidence that there is a more widespread problem than certain commentators would like to admit? Almost certainly.
But it should be noted that if one sets aside a recent influx of up and coming middle classes, much of Baltimore looks A LOT like Ferguson...
Any thoughts?