That's horrible. And should be grounds for firing the cop.
I'm not sure how many on HN have shot a gun. But if you've got a qualified instructor, before you are even allowed to TOUCH the gun, you need to memorize the 4 basic rules of gun safety.
1. Every gun is always loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire.
4. Be sure of your target and what's behind it.
The second cop failed the last 3 rules. Was he willing to destroy the children? Was he ready to shoot when he put his finger on the trigger? Was he sure of his target and what's behind it?
Given that the answer is no, he shouldn't be allowed to handle that gun. He's a danger to the public, and a liability to the police department.
(Raymond Chandler, 1943)
By the time he retired, he was broken by the things he'd seen and dealt with that nobody should ever see or deal with. He got a nice pension, but he earned it.
He once commented that ever since he helped investigate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587, the smell of jet fuel has made him sick.
Once there was an offhand comment about Soylent Green, and he said, "I've seen the stuff." It was in a bottle that the murderer kept in his fridge. If the police hadn't thought to do a DNA test on the liquid, they wouldn't have realized what it was.
Every Spring NYC has "floaters". These are people who died and were thrown into the river. Often with weights attached. As the water warms slightly, the body starts decomposing and eventually bloat from the gas makes it buoyant so it comes to the surface.
He once commented, "I don't think that there is a way that one human can kill another that I haven't seen." He then began giving a long list.
Good enough?
That's a bit harsh. Standards (and holding to them) varies considerably by jurisdiction (and sometimes by precinct).
And before anyone accuses me of making a "Not All Police" argument or anything similar, I'll point out that, generally speaking, poor enforcement of such standards (and harsher responses by officers) seem to be associated with communities that are poorer or have more minorities.
There are also issues with 'problem officers' getting shuffled off to departments in other cities or states without adequate record keeping or sufficient scrutiny, which can result in them tending to collect or concentrate in certain places (and predictably, that makes it more likely that such officers will have like-minded colleagues that are willing to cover for them).
This is definitely a "wicked problem".
A common misunderstanding. The police in the USA are regarded as above the law; rules don't apply to them.
You'll never find a prosecutor willing to address criminal behavior like this by police.
If you want to fix this, do a five whys on that, not some idiot cop waving his gun around at children.
News at 11.
This cop almost certainly was in fact willing to destroy whatever he pointed his gun at and whatever might be behind it, because that's how he was trained.
Second, we won't fire the cops who don't follow basic gun safety - we will at most fire the ones who get caught on video as part of a story of national importance. This cop isn't the one bad-trigger-discipline cop in that department, let alone the country. Fire him without figuring out how to systemically fire them all, and cops will dismiss it as politically-motivated persecution, have some protests about #BackTheBlue or maybe even a work stoppage, and then go back to business as usual, with the same trigger discipline.
And the fired cop will get a job in another department.
I agree you can have both. I just think you can't have one without the other.
(Not disagreeing with your overall point, just saying that it would be (IMO) laughable for a cop to try to make those arguments, even considering their training.)
Municipal bond offerings are currently exempt from SEC registration and disclosures, we can get the federal government to change that upon evidence of small infractions and force an extremely high level of disclosures such as policing statistics for the next 10 years if the municipality wants to raise capital.
This beats activist's state-level FOIA requests.
It doesn't harm the ability of an officer to make split second decisions and get home safely, which is usually their argument against any proposal.
It doesn't require a whole civil suit or criminal suit for anything to happen.
Just gets the message across that actions have consequences. It lets them run out of excuses so their real thoughts can be made as clear as day.
I think we need private police, subject to the same law as anyone else, and third party arbitration in private courts when something happens.
There are several major issues like that in US politics.
Why is climate change a left or right issue?
Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Because businesses don't want to pay/lose money on climate change action, and the "party of small businesses" endorses this view.
> Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Because the virus was seen as a political/messaging problem (rather than a public health issue) by one of the sides, therefore wearing masks was viewed as capitulation.
There are definitely people who believe the party line on everything. If that's the case, that could be an indication you're not thinking for yourself.
You really broadcast your ignorance and your failure to understand others positions with comments like that.
Because as with all politics it determines the distribution of resources. Those who stand to gain v/s those who stand to lose have both heavily manipulated the science, or at least the reporting.
> Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Voluntary masking wouldn't be. Compulsory masking runs afoul of those who have a fundamental belief in self-ownership, negative rights and reject most positive rights [1]. This has deep political roots.
There are plenty of prominent Republicans explicitly supporting Kyle Rittenhouse (not a cop, but a similar event.)
There are, of course, vastly more examples of explicit support for police brutality and other lawbreaking in opposition to protests.
> When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ [Trump, July 2017]
> If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise. They won’t be so much, because the courts agree with us too — what’s going on in this country? [Trump, July 2016]
> “Sometimes they grab one guy, ‘I’m a reporter! I’m a reporter!” ...they threw him aside like he was a little bag of popcorn.” [Trump, September 2020, clearly mocking the reporter in context]
So the people on the “right” who are cool with this are basically every Republican official and about 70m Americans who voted for Trump last month. Seems like a lot of people!
The police were literally started in the late 1800s to protect capital and share the responsibility of cost across all people. (In the South, they were tightly related to patrolling for slaves, in the north they were predominantly helping wealthy merchants protect warehouses and other stores of wealth.)
In the decades since, the police (and their unions) have had a long, long history of right wing action.
The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is known for their 'Red Squad', which was used in the 1900s to bust up unions, leftists, and people suspected of being communists. They regularly welcomed literal Nazis into their ranks in the 30s and 40s.
The stories aren't unique to Portland either. A common piece of police iconography is a Punisher skull. Police with SS tattoos are not uncommon.
Historically, enforcement of the law was a military, community, religious, or rotating obligation. It was not particularly respected, organized, or high class. There were some exceptions, but in general our current model of policing evolved from English tithings. Groups of men who were responsible for bringing criminals forward. These groups were collected into Shires, overseen by a Shire-reeve (later "Sheriff"). The shire reeve could round up a posse to go collect a criminal.
Over time, cities started to want to improve the protections for their capital. They wanted to try and prevent crime rather than hunt criminals. The night watch had a reputation of being low class and unruly, and the city of Glasgow decided to clean up their act. They founded the first uniformed police department in 1800 in an effort to be a visible presence in hopes of deterring crime.
Police in America were largely slave patrols, sheriffs and posses, and militias until the middle of the 1800s, when larger cities started following Glasgow's model.
This is a correct reading of the history of policing in America[1].
I'm serious baffled as to how people got the idea that police were created in the 1800s. Do people really believe that cities like Boston and New York existed for centuries with nobody to enforce laws?
> Among the first public police forces established in colonial North America were the watchmen organized in Boston in 1631 and in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1647.
Again, police are as old as civilization. Laws without a body to enforce them are just words in paper (or clay tablets).
That said, we're skidding towards a semantic argument, so if you are comfortable agreeing to disagree here, I am too. We can continue to think each other wrong, looking at the same history.
This isn't a semantic disagreement, this is factually incorrect. ”Organized, uniformed, powerfully armed standing patrol police forces" have absolutely existed in the US before the 1800s and date back to classical antiquity at least. Rome often employed it's legions as police, and there was even a dedicated legion stationed specifically to police Rome [1]. It's hard to get more "Organized, uniformed, powerfully armed" than deploying the military as a patrol force. And in the US professional police forces, not militia or community watch, have existed since the 1600s. And by the way, many police forces are still led by elected leaders - professional, organized police and community oversight are not mutually exclusive.
It might be fair to say that in the 1800s and early 1900s industrialization and technology had progressed to the point that police started to resemble modern police, and many US cities grew to the point that they started municipal police forces in this time frame. But the police of the 21st century with cameras, computers, dna testing, 911 systems and radios are arguably even more removed from the police of 1900 than the police of 1900 were to the police of 1800 or 1700.
This strikes me as the kind of characterization of other peoples' beliefs that they would find to be false, misleading, and uncharitable.
Not that odd. One side believes in decentralized power which tends toward police doing "pretty much anything" according to their read of the situation, and another side favors reams of paperwork and regulations that may hinder effective policing. The oddity in the US is how the media convinces people to pick one side and criticize the other absolutely, rather than commit to compromise.
I would say that being careful with one's language to avoid offense is reasonable, if the hypothetical other party's propensity for taking offense is reasonable. Incense at the specter of a political discussion is not reasonable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Po...
I'm on the right side economically but I'm fiercely anti authoritarian and I find this terrible. I don't like the "peaceful protests" because it's just destruction of private property but I hope they can create enough momentum to push for the privatisation of police. Some BLM leader in NY was organising something like that, a militia to defend their people. I speculate this is also why people like Kyle Rittenhouse were defending people in the protests despite not agreeing with the violence (before being identified as not part of the violent mob and attacked).
Incidentally I don't think police privatisation is going to happen, even under a Biden presidency, because that would remove power from the government and neither democrats nor conservatives are happy with that.
My own experience working near a lot of police early in my career led me to believe that the majority of the training instills a "us vs them" attitude in the police, and it carries through to everything they do. Combined with the constant bombardment of stories about the tiny percentage of cases where someone is actually violent and the results are predictable.
Frankly, i'm of the opinion that the vast majority of cops shouldn't be carrying lethal weapons into the average traffic stop or whatever other activity is basically 100% safe outside of infinitesimal number of cases which go violent. After all, by pulling over, the person has basically already yielded to their authority.
Also, the threat on a traffic stop is not to be dismissed - there are officers attacked during those stops. Those stops are not just for traffic violations, but can also happen if the vehicle matches one used in a crime or reported stolen. Do you really want to be unarmed when making traffic stops or other calls? Sometimes they may stop, not to yield to authority, but to ambush the officer so they can get away without being identified.
Those were the systems I was working on 20+ years ago.
Related to that point, defunding may actually have the opposite of the intended effect. You may actually have to spend more money to increase accountability, change culture, and improve the quality of policing.
And I don't for a moment consider most police forces to be underfunded. The lions share of most city budgets are the police force, and it goes to buying armored cars and helicopters, and "benchmark city" ratios of police/citizens. And where I live the armored car gets used once or twice a decade, and in all cases so far could have probably just called the larger city an hour away and borrowed theirs as was done 15 years ago before the purchase.
Some how we survived for a century with far less police, and outside of the crime wave of the 1970/80's which were likely caused in large part by other things, were generally safer too. That "crime wave" seems like it would have solved itself without the huge ramp up of police funding we now have today, although the tough on crime people like to attribute it to that. A large part goes to fighting the failed drug wars. Which in turn feeds into the massive prison populations we have now, the largest part of which are there for non violent crimes.
Violence has never gone down from defunding. Although this should be obvious, an alarming number of people don’t seem to be thinking rationally on that topic. It has certainly gone up after defunding, however.
They’re not paid better due to the fact that they are in unions at all. Otherwise teachers would be rich, and police departments in major cities wouldn’t be struggling to hire even with relatively high wages. They pay that because nobody wants the job and the public is inexplicably antagonistic towards cops who join out of a desire to help people.
Saying that it’s quite safe is absurd and obviously untrue. It didn’t make your top 10 list of professions with the most deaths, but it’s barely below the cut, so still in the top 20 easily. And again, that data doesn’t tell the whole story.
American police training routinely promotes an us-versus-them mentality. It instills the idea that every situation is a threat that must conquered and dominated. You can see this in their comments that the streets are "a war zone" and talk about being "warriors", and a routine glorification of violence and stereotypes. This is why American police routinely escalate situations. Note on the video, the police don't just pull guns, but then start agressively barking orders.
Contempt of Cop is real.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-clas...
It’s weird too, because on one hand you have them being patient and restrained, on the other they decide to pull their guns out.
You have 20 seconds to comply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzlt7IbTp6M
The people with actual power in this situation have the greater responsibility.
This cannot be stated enough. It seems in our general conversations that whenever there is a tribal component to the discussion that this responsibility shifts when it aligns or disaligns with your tribe. I've always been a firm believer that you can complain about those in other tribes, but it is your responsibility to hold those in your tribe to a higher bar. After all, you don't have a voice in the tribe you don't belong to and your tribe isn't perfect and can always seek to improve.
And there should never be a question about a person in a position of power being held to a higher responsibility than an average person. No one should be getting a pass on this, inside or outside of your tribe.
Your options are pretty much comply and hope you don't get shot, fight, hide somewhere and hope you don't get shot when they storm in, or set up a camera streaming to someone you trust just in case you don't survive. It looks like she used those 20 minutes to go with the latter option.
Thats terrible judgment. If you think you might be shot for no reason at all, then it certainly doesn't improve your chances to start giving people reasons to shoot you.
I wonder if things like this are what honor duels were about in the past? A way to semi-legally call out someone personally with potentially severe consequences.
Pointing a gun at a kid in a situation like this seems like it should be punishable by itself.
Your civilian scenario isn't exactly congruent because you are missing the legal authority point. If you are a civilian with the authority to search a building (your house when you hear a noise at night for example), then you you would be justified in clearing the building in the same way the police did. The response of deadly force depends on if there are alternatives to that use of force (and greatly varies by state). In this case, the alternative to the occupant using deadly force is to comply with the warrant, and if necessary, sue in court for any damages.
My impression of developing countries was that police are vicious, brutal, and corrupt by default. As opposed to the US where bad cops are the exception. And they have very little oversight. Which countries are you talking about where that's not the case?
I understand the sentiment. I really do. But that is the wrong response when someone is pointing a gun at you. That’s how’s your child loses their father or mother.
Don’t forget that police are trained to shoot to kill. There is no training for “shoot to injure” ... the logic being that if you are injured, you can reach into your clothes and pull out a gun, potentially killing the officer who shot you.
You may not understand this type of situation, but I've experienced the feeling of going from a safe, comfortable environment to being in pain and seeing friends hurt, all in a split second; even with Marine Corps training, I was ready to snap. My hands were shaking, there was a roaring in my ears, and I was ready to kill the first threat I saw. That situation, in my home, with my family? It isn't a choice. We are biological creatures, and there are some reactions that are just biological. It's easy to play armchair general and discount all of the human factors.
I understand and I assume you have weapons stashed around your residence in case of these kind of encounters.
But this family almost certainly did not. If you watch the video, the gun is pointing upstairs, presumably at the husband and children. I doubt the husband has a firearm handy or a means to defend himself for this situation.
So his emotional response to attack without proper weaponry is foolish, unless on the odd chance he’s a trained ninja like you :)
Read through your comment: "I doubt the husband has a firearm handy or a means to defend himself for this situation. So his emotional response to attack without proper weaponry is foolish"
This point of view is speculative, it doesn't come from experience (or even a basic psychological understanding). People do NOT function that way. Maybe they do when playing Call of Duty or watching a Die Hard movie, but not in real life. I can't really impart what it feels like in that sort of situation, but I hope you never have to experience it. You end up needing therapy.
I'd have thought the logic is, "If you want to injure, use a baton. Guns are tools for killing."
Teaching "shoot to injure" would be reckless considering the chances a "wounding" shot ends up killing somebody.
Most training is to shoot “center of mass”. That often kills, yes, but if the goal was to kill (or even kill quickly), tactics like the “Mozambique drill” - two shots center of mass and one shot to the head - would be standard. It’s not. It’s specifically used as training for exceptional circumstances.
How to avoid this:
1) When they show up at your house with a search warrant, let them execute it.
That's it.
My brother, a Portland living, Bernie Sanders voting guy who is in charge of the covid data analysis for a large, global defense contractor (he does it all day, every day) has called her an irresponsible hack from day 1.
Can you do this forever? Just ignore them and stay in your house forever, or at some point are they allowed to escalate the situation?
(serious question)
Her key claim (She refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."[1]) doesn't appear disputed by any of the counter narrative, which seems mostly about smearing her about a cyberstalking charge related to her personal life and questioning her credentials[1].
> My brother, a Portland living, Bernie Sanders voting guy who is in charge of the covid data analysis for a large, global defense contractor (he does it all day, every day) has called her an irresponsible hack from day 1.
Well that settles it? Although with ESRI crediting her work on the C19 dashboard[3] and Google finding her skills credible enough to work with her on the school opening dashboard[4] I'm think there is some evidence that perhaps your brother-in-law's "day 1 judgement" might have been rushed.
[1] https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/12/07/rebekah-jo...
[2] https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/05/21/florida-he...
[3] https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/blog/scientist-maps-flor...
[4] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/data-analytics/former-...
Taken from the article:
She claims to be a data scientist.
Her quote:
“Hacking is not something I ever thought they would accuse me of because I have never displayed any capability of doing that,” she said. “I’ve never taken any computer courses or anything like that. I do statistics in a software program designed basically to do all that stuff for you by clicking stuff.”
Yeah, that's the data scientist to hire: someone who "clicks stuff."
Additional quote from article:
"In an affidavit signed by FDLE investigator Noel Pratt on Dec. 3, he concluded the email message was sent to approximately 1,750 accounts before it was discovered. Pratt said in the affidavit that he tracked down the IP address of the computer associated with the email and it directed him to Jones’ home address, which he said was probable cause to conduct a search of her property and seize her computers."
This person is not trustworthy, or qualified as a source. None of her colleagues have corroborated her claims. She was put on a pedestal by a media that desperately wants to attack any governor, especially a Trump ally, who wanted to open their state back up rather than go the lockdown model. It's that simple. I'm not a DeSantis fan at all, but if an anti-vaxxer was crusading against him, I wouldn't give them a platform just to get to him. I'd think about the implications of putting an alarmist with no scientific credentials to speak of on a platform as a weapon against him. She's a GIS specialist with no coding skills. How exactly does that make her qualified to talk about infectious disease data publicly, and to unilaterally change the dashboard she was tasked with maintaining without consulting her boss and/or team? (that's why they fired her)
We can talk all day about the appropriate police response to this kind of crime, but she's not credible as an expert. She's a click jocky who is skilled with Tableau, Qlik, and ESRI. And she's engaged in a deceptive charade of labelling herself a whistleblower, down to the tweets leaving out key information.
So I can get that part.
Pointing a gun, loaded or not, at someone else should be a serious crime though! And there probably is, but cops can safely break most laws.
Guns should not be drawn unless there is a reasonable suspicion of a threat. What I tried to say in my OP is that there appears to be no indication of a reasonable suspicion of a threat.
As for gun ownership stats, I think many will be surprised with some of the data points: https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
There is not enough time to draw and shoot if the occupant runs out with his gun.
By the way, you are absolutely right about what it means to have a gun drawn: they are indicating that they are willing to kill. That's how they are trained.
Its completely unacceptable. Police don't pull over drivers for speeding with a gun drawn. However, anyone in Florida may be armed and you cannot reasonably argue that the drivers are cool headed.
This overreaction is unprofessional, dangerous, and thuggish.
We have a law that we may not be required to quarter soldiers, perhaps a better law would have been to make it illegal to enter private property without consent armed.
I believe that a warrant gives them this right. But the give a bit more nuance there is a difference in entering armed vs drawn. We should definitely have a high standard for when weapons are allowed to be drawn. It is in fact the police who are in a position of power, so they have the higher standard to meet.
When you break down a door, you can't know what's waiting on the other side.
EDIT: I'm not sure why this is being downvoted? We're discussing gun ownership in America, when it is legally allowable to use said firearms and the fact that none of that matters when it comes to Police entering your home, all in the context of police acting like the Gestapo at this woman's home.
If they've announced that they're law enforcement, it's a bad idea though. You may be in the right if you're just armed and not pointing it, but being in the right never protects you.
Cops just have qualified immunity and have shown they throw hissy fit little tantrums if a DA holds them responsible for being the worthless sacks of shit that they are.
If you want to structure society around fear, that is (I guess) a country's prerogative, but it's not something I (as a non-American) would ever support.
Which doesn’t stop NYC having many, many guns being concealed carry. Because of you are looking to commit violent crimes, what’s another felony vs. having the power of life and death over victims?
And if you are a likely target of violent crimes, what’s a concealed carry felony vs. being dead or having a family member assaulted or murdered because you couldn’t stop it?
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/06/denver-star-program-me...
That is IMO a side-effect of the (from an European POV) absolutely mind-boggling, ridiculous sentencing of criminals in the US. Here in Germany, when a drug smuggler gets caught, they can expect four, five years behind bars. Not worth to shoot the cop that just stopped your car full with meth and make a life sentence out of it for murder.
In the US however? Decades, sometimes centuries behind bars. Given that perspective, it does make sense for a criminal to shoot that traffic cop - the chance to get away and escape a death in prison is non-zero.
Add to that the fact that there are more guns than people in the US, plus extremely lax carrying laws, and "stand your ground" laws.
The result are (rightfully, I have to admit) afraid and thus extremely trigger-happy cops.
If the US wants to get rid of trigger-happy cops they have to get the gun problem and sentencing under control first.
See the recent-ish school shooting in Florida where the on-duty cop ran away like a baby and let children die. Brian Miller. Still has his job. No one gives a shit.
Cops in the US are cowards who don't deserve to arm with a super soaker.
Three-strikes sentencing can also exacerbate this - escalating minor drug possession to potentially life-ending prison sentence.
(No I didn't vote for Trump)
His joke was to the effect; imagine airplane pilots spending 90% of training learning how to use the ejection seat and a couple hours learning to fly
It's less amazing when you start to realize that police are cowardly and most are dumb enough to think that having a gun out will protect them.
It's currently a side life goal of mine to get the IANA to assign me acab::/16.
Police _are_ overly militarized and overly aggressive. We should be able to have a conversation in a healthy democracy about appropriate rules of engagement and escalation.
Personally, I think it can be traced directly to the failed war on drugs. and indirectly, to the wars on terror creating both an excuse and a market for police weaponization.
They spent almost half of an hour politely requesting that these people allow them to carry it out, and these people refused to comply with what amounts to a legal court order.
A functioning state requires that the state has a monopoly on violence. If you are ordered to allow the police to seize some of your property, and you refuse, force will be escalated within the limits of the law until you the property is taken. That is a good thing. If the police show up at your house with a warrant, COMPLY WITH THEM. You aren't going to win a physical battle against them because, again, they have an ultimate monopoly on violence and the only way to change that is going to be the creation of a new state.
From [1]: "Plessinger said Jones refused to answer the door for 20 minutes and hung up on agents. Jones eventually let the agents into the home, she said.
Her family was upstairs when agents entered, Plessinger said.
The 31-second video Jones posted on Twitter shows agents entering her home with their guns drawn. Jones tells the officers that her husband and two children are upstairs as they direct her outside of the house.
One of the agents points his gun toward the stairwell. An officer shouts, “Police, come down now.”
As the video ends, Jones yells, “He just pointed a gun at my children.” The video does not show any children, or agents pointing guns at any children. FDLE said agents didn’t point guns at anyone."
...
There's a couple things missing from your comment:
1) The person refused to answer the door for 20 minutes, which is definitely a form of resistance and an indicator of possible problems, at which frankly, SOP probably kicks in and 'guns are drawn' at the point of entry.
2) The cops deny pointing guns at anyone, including children.
So frankly, that seems very reasonable.
While all of the journalists seem to want to recount only one side of the story, and only even part of it - is frankly deeply troubling, and it's misinformation of a serious kind. Right now we are getting really spooked about 'someone' misinforming American about election results, and attacking the integrity of the press, so I'm perennially amazed that journos want to avoid the important details that provide context.
Finally, remember there's SOP (standard operating procedure). There are a lot of guns in America, and people are pretty violent in general in terms of trying to get away, or to assail cops in the process. Most warrants served are probably not for 'hacking' rather more violent actions, and there may very well be established SOP about when to draw and not.
If the incident basically amounted to: 1) No answer at door 2) Cops enter with guns draw, point only upstairs urging people to come down.
Then it's completely reasonable.
Obviously, nobody should be pointing guns at regular people for white collar crimes, but as usual, all this might have been avoided if the individual answered the door and 'used her words'.
Also, the 'big story' here is the possibility of someone being harassed for whistle-blowing, which is disconcerting, but that's not so much relevant when worrying about the specific facts of an altercation.
[1] https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-whistleblower...
This is what Defund the Police is about. Its not about getting rid of cops, its about providing the right resources and tools and staff for the type of job they have.
> We found that, in a two week period at the beginning of June, when the anti-racism protests began, New York City spent $115 million on police overtime, which was over four times what the city spent in the same period last year.
> $14 million went to new locker rooms. $64 million went to motor vehicles and $104 million was planned for police training. During that training, 60 hours are spent on firearm skills while just eight hours are spent on conflict management.
So the training given to police is a fraction of money spent on annual overtime, and the training that is received goes towards increasing violence.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-cost-of-police-nypd...
Also, you know, tanks. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/towns-dont-need-...
I think there's a conversation about law enforcement and civil rights that people in the US need to have. But its awfully hard to have a real conversation when people don't want police to use lethal force and also don't want cops to have access to things that allow them to do their job with less reliance on lethal force.
> Also, you know, tanks. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/towns-dont-need-...
Actually those are not tanks. And the US military has no problem using .50 cal on personnel. Which are just nitpicks but they illustrate how hard it is to talk about these subjects when the people making the criticisms are so profoundly ignorant about the facts of the matter.
Yeah, and safer cars increase reckless driving for the same reason...
"Defensive equipment promotes escalation, as it is a social signal that you come prepared to enact violence."
It's being used in response to a suspect's social cue that they are there to commit violence. What should we do, just lay down?
"Less lethal equipment promotes escalation, as it has a perception of being harmless and more acceptable to use in non-violent situations."
This is false. The use of less lethal force is not viewed as harmless and any training will show that. That training will also contain use of force education.
They pay for it and in fact if they dont USE it, it will be confiscated and not refunded.
so not only do they get very big brutal hammers, but for contractual reasons they are FORCED to use them or lose they money they paid for them.
In the incredibly rare event you have an active terrorist attack and can move the MRAP to it before it's over, it may provide the benefit of movable cover.
The rest of the time you have to park it (in two parking spaces likely), train people with it, fuel it, clean it, maintain it. It's just a huge distraction that sends a terrible message to the people you are supposedly serving.
And what events in the US are at high risk of attack by IEDs and mines?
Also, a regular truck will not stand up to storm debris in strong winds.
NYC alone has dropped over $300M on settling lawsuits due to their poor training over the last 5 years[0]
I know a couple current and former NYPD officers and the amount of times I’ve been told of how a routine mental health check up turned into 4+ cops beating the crap out of an unarmed person in their own home would likely surprise most people who aren’t familiar with how brutal the police in the USA are.
[0] https://nypost.com/2020/01/31/city-payouts-in-nypd-misconduc...
And then you still have armed police without training.
I suspect your comment is greyed out because of this term. Such a fucking stupid slogan, when you turn off people and then try to clarify "It means..." to an audience that's mostly stopped listening.
People's public personas really aren't a guarantee that they'll act a certain way on their property, especially when they are not doing something voluntarily.
Combine that with the fact being that gun ownership is a Constitutional right--that means the chance that anyone can have a gun is above 0. And various attributes of anyone that might determine whether or not someone is about to retaliate are extremely unknowable without long observation times. There's no possible way to quickly ascertain someone's proclivity to violence, agitation level, emotional state, number of guns they really have on hand, willingness to use them, etc. People will act differently outside of a public setting like work, on a TV show, etc.
So as long as guns are as easily available as they are currently, it's not unreasonable to expect a law officer to start the interaction in this way which is a manner that protects the officer the most.
So you or me entering this woman's home with guns drawn - we have the same obligation to be there as a cop.
This whole "oh but the cops are scared for their life" crap needs to stop. They have no obligation to do anything, so anytime they do, it's their choice. Just as much their choice as you or me busting into a home with guns drawn.
You wouldn't be sitting here sympathizing with how a random burglar is totally justified in entering a home with a weapon drawn because the homeowner could be armed.
Why do you do the same with cops?
Edit: to summarize my point: cops have no obligation to be there, so if their solution is to enter with guns drawn and barking orders, we shouldn't try to sympathize with that behavior. We should tell them to stay at home and cuddle a teddy bear instead. A lot more people would be alive today if we quit making excuses for why cops are so eager to kill people.
This is a search warrant situation. Obligations exist in this situation - to the judge, court process, and CO. If you want to debate the obligations to the public or immunity of cops, fine--but this isn't like a random traffic stop. What the police is supposed to do in this situation is very clear--serve warrant, get evidence.
> You wouldn't be sitting here sympathizing with how a random burglar is totally justified in entering a home with a weapon drawn because the homeowner could be armed.
This isn't sympathy but just expectation. You would expect a house invader to be armed for exactly that reason, right? Similarly, why wouldn't you expect a cop to do the same?
On your second point... I agree? Cops are forcing themselves into people's homes with the express intent of fucking shit up, that's why they enter armed and dangerous, the same as a thief. Is that what you're saying? Because that's what I'm saying. Do you sympathize with the thief? I don't, the same as I don't sympathize with the cop.
Edit: to clarify - the cop could be entering the home as a neighbor and a friend, and that's what everyone would prefer. Unfortunately, cops decided long ago they'd rather hold onto their right to kill with no questions asked, so now they're no better than a methhead busting down a door. It's ultimately their fault for this image, and they're the only ones that can fix it.
Was surprised to learn this is true.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
This mentality is so wrong to me.
Yes there is danger associated with entering a home, but if you are not willing to take any risk, don't try to be a cop. Sure, if cops can reduce risk for themselves without increasing it for others, then by all mean they should, I'm not saying they should be daredevils.
But this is different, this is just offloading all the risks from their side onto the citizens. A situation that could be minimal risk to everyone (because let's not pretend that people shooting at cops entering a home is a usual thing), is now high risk (and traumatic in all cases) for the citizen. I would even wager that the risk for themselves is getting increased over time because of people freaking out more and more seeing a cop with a gun in the US.
And let's not pretend that cops in the US are well trained, they are so afraid and completly unable to de-escalate a situation that I would have 0 confidence in a cop pulling a gun on me in the US (not saying I would like it anywhere, but I would sure be less freaked out in Europe).
This is just plain stupid, it's not a necessity of life like you paint it.
> The officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota,[...] clocked more than 100 hours of trainings on topics such as firearms usage, street survival, and the use of force—but had only attended two hours of deescalation training.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-clas...
Well, if you are arresting a person, perhaps there's things that can be done, like waiting outside. How is it supposed to be handled when you have to get evidence?
> I would sure be less freaked out in Europe
I'm sure this is an oversimplification but AFAIK states in Europe either have more restrictions on gun ownership or a culture/mediascape/welfare-state that doesn't encourage the desperation/antagonism you see in the US.
It's totally unreasonable for the officers to act this way, and I don't think it's particularly obvious that escalating to guns drawn makes them any safer. Maybe it does, but maybe it turns them into a threat in the minds of the people they think they are protecting themselves from.
I don't think it is as simple as this. While one should train for the worst possible scenarios one also has to be aware what to reasonably expect. Like the source in my original comment notes, being a police officer is relatively safe. Given those statistics an officer should not view every situation as deadly. Though it is fine for them to be on high alert. It is still something that is often drilled into people during gun training that you should not point a weapon at something you do not intend to destroy. That is rule #1. Officers need to understand that by erring on the side of weapons drawn is equivalent to escalating any given interaction. Is that the mode of failure we want to have in police?
Sometimes (I'm actually going to say most of time) giving the suspect warnings or time isn't a good idea. In the case of collecting evidence that is on computers, this evidence is easily destroyed if someone knows what they are doing and giving the suspect a warning could ultimately result in loss of justice.
Therefore, coming in unexpectedly, and performing actions to make sure the suspect does not do anything until the evidence is collected makes sense. Yes, coming in with guns drawn is scary, etc. But would knocking on the door and asking for the computers have worked? It might eventually, after many opportunities for evidence destruction occurred... but which way has a higher chance of working?
It's useful to note here that I think if you work for the state, you should be held to a higher standard--this is different than working at a private company and embezzlement, stealing, etc. If you have violated the trust of the citizens of Florida via doing something wrong at your state job, and a judge agrees there is enough probable cause that evidence is on your home computer, isn't better that a method of evidence collection is done that is swift and not likely to result in destruction of evidence? If someone more or less commits a crime against the state of Florida, isn't that more important than the fear/mental health of the individual suspect?
This chance is always above zero, unless you've just full-body-and-orifice searched the person.
I am not american, but isn't there some constitutional clause on bodily integrity or something like that? And isn't that more important than this right on owning guns/pointing guns at people that might own guns, and/or carry said guns?
> So as long as guns are as easily available as they are currently, it's not unreasonable to expect a law officer to start the interaction in this way which is a manner that protects the officer the most.
Going into a home gun-first is something I would expect from armed burglars, not from police that are there for a digital media search warrant.
[edit]
So, after a search, TIL: the USA does not have constitutional bodily integrity, but does grant you the right to own a gun... What ?
While this is often true, it wasn't true in this specific case. The person whose home the cops wanted to search was a former state employee, whose record they had plenty of time to examine prior to going to her home, so she was not an unknown quantity.
In the vast majority of cases, the police choose which situations to enter and how to engage.
I doubt this is true. To me it is clear that their demeanor and behavior increases the liklihood of escalation and an incident.
Invading someone's home isn't an every day task. Most people don't like that. And since this in the US where potentially anyone could easily have a gun, some will take the opportunity remove the invaders of their house by force, especially if they aren't aware or sure it's the police. [0]
But anyway, I'm not sure why police should even be the focus of this thread. They're just doing their job. The bigger issue I see here is the police have been called to take care of an issue that shouldn't require police.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
EDIT: I'll just add since I'm getting downvoted to oblivion for saying something that could slightly be viewed as remotely favorable to police: It's sad to see this topic hijacked from the focus on Rebekah Jones, where there's an actual interesting story here about her work being potentially surpressed, to some unrelated topic about how much force police should use. Something that has been talked about ad nauseam across HN already, and yet this (at this time) is the most upvoted comment.
Of course, if they received a tip or confirmed that someone in the building is armed and dangerous, then that’s a different story. But simply going in with guns drawn in every single situation is simply unacceptable.
I've seen a lot of people with bad trigger control and not knowing proper gun safety, but I've seen it far too often from police. The acceptable level of this for police is zero and it isn't even close to that.
[0] This is a cult classic for "Bad" movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ZpyKSmgdE
[1] From what I've seen, it does still seem like they do similar training that is highly fear based. As in "you could die at any second. It is you or them" and does not reflect the reality that being a cop is relatively safe. At least that narrative is not in the public domain. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-23/how-da...