Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

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Empiricist-Bruno
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Steve, you say a police action can be killing another person to prevent likely harm to other people. Well, it would appear to me that this very well may have been the intent of this guy who shot at uniforms, and it may reach that outcome in the end. If this the end result then this sniper is a heroic cop?

If policing were a citizen's right, then that is one area where innocent lives could be saved, in my opinion.

Supine, I think you are right about your remarks regarding the use of fragmentation bomb delivered by robots to get control over the situation. It does represent a significant escalation of violence, a new level of drug use to medicate a situation. This does sound desperate to me. The use of bombs is not in my opinion a police activity; it is clearly a war measure and most definitely shows that the men in uniform are now impersonating a military force, as you suggest.

Does this mean that the men in uniform have declared war against the concept of police as a civil right? That sounds so desperate on their part, like a Hitler's retributions. I don't know where this will lead to.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Alec Smart »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote:, a new level of drug use to medicate a situation..
This can be regarded as a prescription drug, administered at the correct dosage.

-- Updated July 9th, 2016, 5:41 pm to add the following --
Lucylu wrote:. I was attempting to analyse and debunk the ideas in your post.
An activity not unlike shooting ducks at a fairground.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Supine »

Bruno, I for one appreciate the presence of cops in society and their role of providing a thin blue line between the predators and the prey within society. But that thin blue line of protection, in the form of deterrence, operates indirectly. The police don't protect me (not directly anyways), I protect myself. The same is true for nearly everyone else on the planet I would say. Yet, there is that indirect form of protection police forces do provide whole communities.

But law enforcement embodies not just police forces but the court systems and the prison systems as well. Working together they all provide that deterrence.

I always find it interesting how "tough guys" rarely go tough on cops :lol: . Unlike this young man that sniped cops in Dallas nearly all of your tough guys try to avoid confrontation with police. And they usually always allow cops to pat them down and even handcuff them, kidnap them, and then enslave them in a small cell. Kind of like what that guy in Ohio did to those 3 young women for years having kept them locked in his basement. So, tough guys aren't so tough, not when they are at a power disadvantage. And it's the organized police forces, courts, and prisons that have a greater advantage over the tough guys, unless those systems become corrupted.

But one issue I have with discussion of police or military for that matter is that both evoke cliche hero comments. Probably because man is fundamentally a beast and our instincts for violence run deep. The medical doctor is not the hero. Not spoken of that is. Nor are the engineers in their various branches. No one speaks of veterinarians (a field dominated by women too) as being heroic people. And some physicist in academia wouldn't be thought of as contributing anything to human freedom. Nor the philosopher. But then... extending freedoms is arguably a separate thing from acting heroically if heroics has to involve saving the lives of people in some way.

Due to societal indoctrination--especially as a reaction to the ill treatment returning Vietnam vets received--in the United States it's taken as a simple "truth" that the police and military personnel protect every American citizen's life and freedoms. But that cliche view is so over-simplified to the point of being absurd. But that emotionally held view point is supposed to squash any criticisms of the American police forces and the US military.
LuckyR wrote: The other two are: the fact that there was a huge outpouring of protest AND YET what followed was an escalation in the rate of deaths of unarmed black men. So the message to the community isn't just: we can kill unarmed folks without any repercussions. It is: we can kill unarmed folks without any repercussions AND there is NOTHING you can do about it, IN FACT your protests are kind of pi55ing us off so we're gonna do even more of these shootings.

Now, I am not implying that that is the intended message sent out by anyone. But I believe that is the message received by many in the community.
I tend to agree with this.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Wilson »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote:Steve, you say a police action can be killing another person to prevent likely harm to other people. Well, it would appear to me that this very well may have been the intent of this guy who shot at uniforms, and it may reach that outcome in the end. If this the end result then this sniper is a heroic cop?
No, the intent of the shooter was to kill white people, preferably cops. He was a racist murderer.

I think it's rare that a cop intends to kill a black man just to kill a black man. Usually they are afraid for their own safety - often more afraid than they should be, true - and have an itchy trigger finger. And there's also a lot of macho posturing going on, where cops who psychologically probably shouldn't be cops are determined to control the situation and end up overreacting. Any time there's a confrontation where guns are involved, there's the danger of somebody getting shot, whether it's an interaction among residents in an inner city or one where police are involved. And it's come to the point now that any time a policeman shoots a black man, there will be protests, even when the cop acted appropriately, which was the case in Ferguson.

With the dangers being as they are, a lot of black parents are telling their kids that for their own safety, follow the cops' instructions, don't be belligerent, don't fight back, it's not worth it. That's the smart advice.

I'd like to see a change in police procedure where unless there's no choice, shoot to wound, not to kill. Hit a knee, not a heart. And a lot of better training, which may be going on now, and try to weed out those officers who can't handle confrontations well.

It's a tough job. I sure wouldn't want to do it.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Supine »

Wilson wrote: No, the intent of the shooter was to kill white people, preferably cops. He was a racist murderer.
Could a Jew in 1940's Germany, sniping Gestapo as well as civilian non-Jewish Germans be accused of being "racist"? Or ethno-centric?
I think it's rare that a cop intends to kill a black man just to kill a black man.
I concur. But it's not rare for white cops (at least the male ones) to bring their own racist baggage to the job which leads to Civil Rights violations, from everything from excessive force, to sodomization (in Chicago reputedly with a firearm on a Latino man in Chicago's perverse hunt for guns) with batons, to shooting someone when Deadly Force was not merited.

Or to put it another way they police white people differently than black people, with the latter being Second Class citizens.

Of course, the situation has many layers and is therefore more complicated. The high violent crime rates in black communities invites the aggressive policing and over policing.
Usually they are afraid for their own safety - often more afraid than they should be, true - and have an itchy trigger finger. And there's also a lot of macho posturing going on, where cops who psychologically probably shouldn't be cops are determined to control the situation and end up overreacting. Any time there's a confrontation where guns are involved, there's the danger of somebody getting shot, whether it's an interaction among residents in an inner city or one where police are involved.
Cops enjoy an advantage I don't. They open carry if in uniform or concealed carry if not. And they have radios, backup as any gang member or mafia man or Mexican Cartel member. The radio communication and police troops on the streets in cars, on bikes, on foot and if need be in helicopter or boat provides rapid backup with other men in women armed to the teeth and empowered to kill, beat, and destroy. And their mere badge gives them street clout to be feared and left alone just as any mafia man dropping names of his bosses.

Now, try being a crackhead alone, by yourself on the streets with zero clout or backup.

I don't buy the cops "fear" thing. I bet if a statistical comparison were made as to violent assaults and murders on cops and crackheads the cops stats would look more akin to Nazi Germans assaults and murders by Jews and the crackheads would look more akin to the Jew's assaults and murders during the Nazi reign of Germany.
And it's come to the point now that any time a policeman shoots a black man, there will be protests, even when the cop acted appropriately, which was the case in Ferguson.
I believe the Fergunson shooting of Michael Brown was justified.

Trayvon Martin was by law (not morality) probably justifiably shot. The use of Deadly Force laws, pertaining to firearms, are vague enough (or they are in Wisconsin law but I suspect in Florida and other states too) that his shooting death case could and did go to court. Lawyers love vague laws and it helps keep them in business. But be that as it may... lawyers arguably do more to protect and/or advance the freedoms of Americans than cops and military personnel do combined.

Ethnic Black-Americans in some ways remind me of the Hebrew Jews of the bible when given a choice to pick and free Jesus or what's his name... Barabus. They picked the latter due to a greater love affair with thugs and violent or anti-social revolutionaries or thieves. I think the Black Lives Matter movement was spawned out of a cultural love affair with thugs etc. As modern day Black-Americans, spurned on by white media empires and white journalists of both sexes, have an irrational disdain of say... carpenters with no college education. And Jesus himself was a carpenter. It strikes with no little irony that Black-American Christians would loath a black male Jesus if he walked today on earth as a carpenter, rather than as a college educated theologian or pastor or NBA player or musician or medical doctor.
With the dangers being as they are, a lot of black parents are telling their kids that for their own safety, follow the cops' instructions, don't be belligerent, don't fight back, it's not worth it. That's the smart advice.
That is advice given to slaves. The 1/3 of white colonists that decided to revolt in armed violence against the British authority policing and taxing them suffered far less indignities than Black-Americans then or now. Actually, if I recall correctly (I could be wrong) the Brits were taxing American merchants at a lower rate than what the US Government is taxing them now :lol: . Yet, if you listen to white Americans today, America became "The Land of the Free" by putting a hatchet in the skulls of British Red Coats, or ambushing them in the woods with musket fire so that if the injured Brits survived they'd go back to England with an arm or leg amputated.

If one is to follow the way of the white man, who conquered most the earth's landmass and even battled each other over what they took from others, I'd say violence and might makes right and secures "freedoms." Or what is the USA doing in Syria and arming civilians with military assault rifles and bombs and encouraging them to maim and kill Syrian police commissioned by the Syrian Government to act as officers of the law?

The threat of violence often works better--or at least good in conjunction with--non-violence direct action. The Nation of Islam and the socialist Black Panther Party offered violent alternatives to the non-violent black Christian movements of the American South for which Martin Luther King Jr became their most visible figurehead. The US Government weighed the options. Decided to listen to the non-violent black Christians lest they'd have to deal with the violent guerilla attacks of the NOI and BPP. Likewise, this Black-American sniper in Dallas already has the police departments across the nation being stimulated to better address police brutality committed against ethnic Black-Americans.
I'd like to see a change in police procedure where unless there's no choice, shoot to wound, not to kill. Hit a knee, not a heart. And a lot of better training, which may be going on now, and try to weed out those officers who can't handle confrontations well.
Hitting a knee or leg with a bullet from a pistol only works in movies. Hollywood. Only the best pistol marksman can pull that off on a moving target let alone under stress (even if the target/person is still.

That's aside from the fact bullets can travel in the body tearing up veins, arteries, flesh and organs in their pathway. So, a knee or leg hit can be fatal as well. But in terms of the upper-body that's another Hollywood movie myth, in which bullets entering a person never change directions in the body nor travel more than an inch or so deep into the flesh, and therefore with a knife and prongs a person can just poke into the entrance hole and pull a bullet projectile out.

The police are like military enlisted men and women in that they don't care about ballistic science from a medical/health standpoint of severity other than if stops an attacker from attacking. In other words they are only concerned about how fast a type of bullet can drop and incapacitate a person. They are not concerned with aftermath on an emergency table that doctors, nurses, and surgeons are left to deal with. I bring this up because by American law enforcement's own statistics having studied people shot by different caliber of bullets/guns Law Enforcement's big wigs in the upper ranks already are aware that almost every adult American shot by .38's, 9mm's, .40 calibers anywhere on the body including the foot, drops to the ground after a few seconds. If I recall correctly after 3 seconds. Albeit, 3 seconds is a long time in terms of time needed to cause damage with a knife or gun in hand, but 3 seconds is still a small scale of time once it elapses.

Police and Federal agents used to be trained to hit/target (but not everyone hits that or gets "tight groups" where their bullets strike) the center upper chest with the "Double Tap" or 2 bullets to the chest is what it is. In the most life threatening situations it would be 2 to the chest and 1 to the head.

But Law Enforcement breaks the rules of the Democrats and liberals by judging most by a tiny few, by judging most by statistical outliers. So, in the few rare cases American adults have been shot 5, 7, 10 times by American cops yet remained on foot and still continued to engage in gun battle with cops, the American police have modified their shooting tactics for this. Now, most American law enforcement are taught to shoot a person until that person falls to the ground. Remember my 3 seconds comment earlier. If you have 2, 3, 10 cops with their weapons trained on you, if you do not fall to the ground until about 3 seconds or so, you can imagine your body can get riddled by a lot of bullets in that space of time.
It's a tough job. I sure wouldn't want to do it.
It's a stressful job.

Physically it can be a tough and dangerous jobs when subduing people. Especially at domestic violence calls most cops will tell you.

But in terms of physical energy expended on a daily basis most cops will probably tell you the job is mostly sedentary. Lots of sitting down inside your squad car. Prone to enlarging the fat around your midsection if you don't exercise.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Wilson »

Supine wrote:
Wilson wrote:With the dangers being as they are, a lot of black parents are telling their kids that for their own safety, follow the cops' instructions, don't be belligerent, don't fight back, it's not worth it. That's the smart advice.
That is advice given to slaves.
No, that is advice given to keep your kid alive. It would be really stupid to fight back when your life is in danger from an armed individual.

I, a white guy, remember getting stopped for speeding and giving the cop grief for wasting the taxpayers' money, when he could be fighting crime. Now I cringe at how dumb that was. The cop was just doing his job. Probably there was no danger, because as a white person I didn't seem to pose a threat, but a hostile black man would make the cop feel uncomfortable. Is that prejudice? Depends on your definition. Maybe there is more danger from the average black guy than the average white guy. So I can sympathize with a black person who feels oppressed by the man, and the temptation would be to get in his face. But that would be playing with fire. Live to fight another day. Complain to the authorities if it wasn't handled properly.

-- Updated July 10th, 2016, 12:11 am to add the following --

Oh, and another issue I have with deadly force. If one cop shoots, usually every cop will also fire, almost guaranteeing a fatal outcome. Always the possibility that the first shot was an accident discharge or a bad decision by one individual. A training issue. And I think that while it's true that someone who fears for his life is justified in shooting to kill, there are some situations where someone can shoot to disable rather than to kill.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Steve3007 »

Wilson:
...but a hostile black man would make the cop feel uncomfortable. Is that prejudice? Depends on your definition. Maybe there is more danger from the average black guy than the average white guy...
This is a central point about the concept of prejudice. Suppose we remove the emotive, politically explosive issue of skin colour and make it about some other physical characteristic that society doesn't deem to be an indicator of the tribe that you belong to. Say, I don't know, the length of your earlobes. Suppose it was widely known to be a statistical fact the people with long earlobes, on average, shoot cops more often. It is then a perfectly rational reaction for a cop to be more nervous of being shot, and therefore have a more itchy trigger finger, if confronted with a long-lobed driver, regardless of any reasons why that statistic might be true. Does that make him prejudiced against long-lobes?
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Supine »

Wilson,

The young man in Minnesota was not "hostile" towards the cop, as reported by his girlfriend. By all indications from friends, family, and even white co-workers he was a laid back guy. He essentially followed the concealed carry laws. Bearing in mind state laws (distinct from Federal laws) vary from state to state, even concerning gun laws, but an educated guess is that Minnesota concealed carry laws mandate you inform police that stop you that you have a firearm on you. He did that. But if Minnesota's concealed carry laws are like that of Wisconsin the laws do not provide a step-by-step playbook as to how a person is to conduct themselves when stopped by a cop, let alone while seated in an automobile. In many US laws from contract law to use of deadly force the legal phrase "what a reasonable person would think" is used. It provides a vagueness that allows for both the prosecution and defense lawyers to argue a case before judge and/or jury in the hopes of persuading them. As in the case of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Bearing in mind in some states (if not all) like Wisconsin even a person engaged in felony illegal activity (say... forcible rape, child abduction, drug dealing etc.) is allowed to use deadly force with a firearm (shoot someone) if they "reasonably" feel their life is in danger.

The issue of what a "reasonable person would think" goes into the defense of a cop using deadly force on a person during a traffic stop. The cop's defense attorney will ask the jurors to put themselves in the place of a cop in the context of his daily job and see the situation through his eyes, and understand the cops fear for his life or the life of others was "reasonable" and he acted with "reasonable" force. The prosecution will argue otherwise and try to persuade the jury.

But Americans have to grapple with if I am correct about most Americans or not being violent savages. A cop's defense lawyer, and cops themselves, will almost likely spin my rendition of most Americans being true in the daily work lives of cops. The job of a cop is so dangerous that almost every American they pass or encounter or stop on the street is as deadly as Islamic terrorist, constantly gunning for their heads. They tremble in perpetual fear as they sit in their cars or stop 12 year-old children or 70 year-old men because the daily life of a cop is one in which singular Americans and mobs of wild American rob them while in police uniforms, snatch the female uniformed cops into vans and gang rape them, occasionally decapitating a few cops. It is a world in which Mexican cops in Mexico are happy they do not have to work as police in the United States.

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The issue of shooting someone to disable is misguided I think. The best persons to judge that are medical doctors and not the police, military soldiers, Obama, Trump, the NRA, myself, you or any liberal with an opinion. This is why I brought up earlier that cops and military personnel don't much care for medical opinion from doctors and surgeons that deal with the medical ("disabling" or killing) ramifications of gun violence on American streets. In fact, a good number of young black men that survive being shot by police or other black males are left disabled for life. You see them in the inner-city in wheelchairs for which they are confined to for life. A young black man that went to my community college permanently confined to a wheelchair, shot by local police, was among them.

Some argue that the AR-15 platform rifles like the M-16, firing a smaller round than the AK-47, was/is in fact strategically chosen to wound and not kill enemy troops so that 1 or 2 other enemy troops can be taken off the battlefield carting off their wounded comrade. I'm not sure how true that is or isn't. But one man can survive being shot 5 times by a 9mm while another man dies being shot 1 time by a tiny .22 pistol/round. When shooting from a distance the whole "shoot to disable" thing becomes a crap shoot. A gamble. Added to the fact most people, including most military persons and most cops, are not that good of shots with pistols. The AR-15 as with most rifles allows greater accuracy for most people as a rifle stock pressed in shoulder allows greater control and stability of the weapon and therefore the barrel.

Medical doctors are not huge fans of guns I will tell you. I asked the head doctor supervising the surgical removal of a bullet in my back (originally left in by doctors at a private hospital, trauma 1 center, because they said it was close to my spine, but I suspect it was also because it was not life threatening and I had no insurance) if knife injuries were worse than bullet injuries. He said hands down bullet injuries are worse. I suspect because bullets travel in the body, sometimes in jagged patterns, tearing up organs and flesh in their path. Upon his team, lead by a woman doctor, pulling the bullet out of my back (they used some numbing injection and had to dig around for a while, deeper than they originally thought) he remarked at the large size of the .40 bullet projectile, "Man! you must have really pissed somebody off!"

At that point he was unaware the bullet came from a cop from his service issued weapon. Cops in the USA went up from a 9mm pistol to a .40 pistol because they wanted something more lethal to use on Americans. They originally went down from a .45 pistol to a 9mm pistol because the classic .45 while regarded as more lethal holds less rounds. And most cops can't shoot that well and want more rounds to increase the odds of hitting their target. Same reason most of the US military ditched the .45 pistol for the 9mm pistol. Most American cops are now armed with pistol ammunition more lethal than those of which the US military uses in war for against enemy combat troops. Furthermore, American cops and civilians load with hollow points, a type of ammunition regarded as a War Crime in the Geneva Convention and banned for use in the US military. But it is understandable cops and civilians load with hollow points and not the standard ball ammunition Marines and Army soldiers load with. The latter will exist the body and the former (hollow points) are less likely to and therefore less likely to injure bystanders.

My point here is that I doubt most medical doctors are enthusiast of American cops (or civilians) being armed with pistols. But they are generally left out of the discussion. Both cops and the NRA see bogymen behind every corner. Pretty convenient. But more interesting is that many cops want Americans disarmed while they want to remain armed. Why? Most British police seem able to subdue a grown man with a broomstick in his hand but American cops would give you an NRA-like talk about why they need to shoot such a man as they are "in fear of their lives."

--
--

Anyways... here is an article related to members of the Kurdish ethnicity carrying out terrorist attacks. The US Government wants to give the Kurds their own homeland. To me that would be like giving ethnic Black-Americans the state of Texas as their own sovereign country as a compromise to them carry out more Dallas sniping attacks.

Not that I'm player-hating on the Kurds. Just that they seem less inclined to "assimilate" than Black-Americans into their adopted country and that the US Government likes to pontificate to other nation-states about their violent response to local terrorists whom the US seems to claim are just "misunderstood" people with legit grievances.

Remember when white, Muslim, Chechens were killing Russians via terrorist attacks and how the US Government ridiculed the violent response of the Russian Government. If this sniper was in Moscow and not Dallas and if he was Ukrainian or Chechen and not Black-American be sure Obama and Americans would be condemning the Russian authorities and special response tactics police for using a bomb on a robot to kill the sniper.

America is the land of do as I say and not as I do.

nytimes.com/2016/06/08/world/europe/ist ... -bomb.html
ISTANBUL — A car bomb destroyed a police vehicle near a central tourist district in Istanbul on Tuesday morning, instantly killing 11 people and wounding dozens more, Turkish officials said, the latest in a series of deadly attacks in the country.

Explosives in a parked car were detonated by remote control as a police shuttle bus passed through the historic Beyazit district during rush hour, Gov. Vasip Sahin of Istanbul said in a televised statement.

Seven of the dead were police officers, Governor Sahin said. Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, militants from two groups Turkey is currently fighting — the Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. — have staged major suicide attacks in urban areas this year.

Militants from the P.K.K., which has carried out an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than three decades, have claimed responsibility for similar attacks against Turkish security forces since the breakdown of a fragile peace process last July.
Despite that victory, violence sharply escalated and the P.K.K.’s youth branches, fighting for self-rule, began carrying out increasingly sophisticated attacks in urban areas.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Wilson »

Steve3007 wrote:Wilson:
...but a hostile black man would make the cop feel uncomfortable. Is that prejudice? Depends on your definition. Maybe there is more danger from the average black guy than the average white guy...
This is a central point about the concept of prejudice. Suppose we remove the emotive, politically explosive issue of skin colour and make it about some other physical characteristic that society doesn't deem to be an indicator of the tribe that you belong to. Say, I don't know, the length of your earlobes. Suppose it was widely known to be a statistical fact the people with long earlobes, on average, shoot cops more often. It is then a perfectly rational reaction for a cop to be more nervous of being shot, and therefore have a more itchy trigger finger, if confronted with a long-lobed driver, regardless of any reasons why that statistic might be true. Does that make him prejudiced against long-lobes?
Yes, again depending on your definition of prejudice. A cop is generally going to be more wary of a man he stops as compared with a woman, because a man is more likely to be violent. Is that cop prejudiced against men?

There was a study of onscreen simulations where they found that white cops viewing the screen were more likely to shoot a black man who had something in hand that resembled a gun but wasn't. Guess what - black cops had the exact same reaction. It may be prejudice, but it's not that simple. Black men in the US do commit more violent crimes than white men, and unfortunately innocent black guys are tarred with the same brush.

-- Updated July 10th, 2016, 2:18 pm to add the following --
Supine wrote: The young man in Minnesota was not "hostile" towards the cop, as reported by his girlfriend. By all indications from friends, family, and even white co-workers he was a laid back guy. He essentially followed the concealed carry laws.

The issue of what a "reasonable person would think" goes into the defense of a cop using deadly force on a person during a traffic stop. The cop's defense attorney will ask the jurors to put themselves in the place of a cop in the context of his daily job and see the situation through his eyes, and understand the cops fear for his life or the life of others was "reasonable" and he acted with "reasonable" force. The prosecution will argue otherwise and try to persuade the jury.
Yes. Horrible situation. Probably a good guy. A jumpy, fearful, perhaps incompetent cop. I don't think he acted reasonably, so while I sympathize with cops doing a job I wouldn't want, but when they screw up like this, they need to be punished. I hope that's the case here.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Wilson,

Yes, he has been punished already. He paid the death penalty 5 times already. I am not sure it will deter him from continuing though.

Smart Alek, the use of a bomb gave the uniforms a sweet moment, a nice high. But now if policing is to be considered a civil right, it may mean that bombing a uniform station should be considered an act of policing and not an act of war. That's the message sent by the uniforms. No, that wasn't the proper prescription for sure, unless you're all for an escalation of violence.

A protection racket is not a system capable of delivering adequate police services and it impedes the development of policing as a civil right in my opinion.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Supine »

My former Africology professor was big on understanding the meaning of various words. Part of the course material was looking up the words (in a dictionary) prejudice, discrimination, racism, and sexism and understanding how they differ or at least are not one and the same thing. Africology as a social science promotes feminism, too, so sexism (which predates racism) was always something mentioned throughout the course.

Having a prejudice and/or discriminating against another person does not de facto make one racist or sexist. If one ever sits in on a lecture about Sexual Selection as a sub-theory in the Theory of Evolution, they will come to discover that female humans are the most discriminating between the two sexes of humans. Whereas, males are not very discriminating at all when it comes to having sex. One could argue females are by far the most prejudiced people between the two sexes.

Everyone has prejudices. Every person presumably discriminates against some category of people they hold in disdain.

Racism supposedly is a specific concept. Supposedly. And that specific concept supposedly is the belief in the superiority of one race over another.

So, Southern upper-middle-class that had black domestic servants during the Jim Crow era racial segregation, who got along with their servants but thought that by race and genetic heritability they could not know how to appreciate wealth even if they had it (and therefore did not need it), were racist because they believed in a basic biological inferiority of black people to that of white people.

Racism and sexism usually draw upon or utilizes prejudice and discrimination, though.

Black people typically have internalized the racism and racial prejudices used against them. Drug addicts do much the same thing. Women often will argue that women have internalized the sexism used against them in patriarchies too.

A person can have a prejudice against certain types of body language and the way a person dresses (young man with pants hanging down his but, with cap turned backwards) without being racist. At a recent social gathering, predominately visited by young and middle-aged professionals, I had a middle-aged white woman approach me, standing next to me striking up a conversation with me. I was dressed in jeans, boots, collared shirt, and a navy blue blazer, with a ring of crushed diamonds on my pinky finger. I gather she didn't find my look (the way I was dressed) and body language threatening or dangerous. I'll take an educated guess she's not racist.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Wilson »

Good post, Supine, about some of the words we all use in discussing race.
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Steve3007 »

Supine:
So, Southern upper-middle-class that had black domestic servants during the Jim Crow era racial segregation, who got along with their servants but thought that by race and genetic heritability they could not know how to appreciate wealth even if they had it (and therefore did not need it), were racist because they believed in a basic biological inferiority of black people to that of white people.
In this attempt to define the concept of prejudice, there is at least one thing that is unambiguous: When people treat other people differently because of their physical appearance it could be based on information that is either factually correct or incorrect. In the example given by Supine, above, treating people differently is based, in part, on a factually mistaken belief that there is a fundamental step-difference between the mental capacities of people whose recent ancestors grew up on different continents, which is a function of their genes and not their upbringing. This is different from the prejudice that one might have against a person because of a correlation between skin colour (or any other physical characteristic) and statistical likelihood to commit a particular type of crime.

If reliable statistics show that tall people are far more likely to kill me than short people then I am factually justified in fearing tall people (that I don't know) more than short people (that I don't know).

-- Updated Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:00 am to add the following --
A person can have a prejudice against certain types of body language and the way a person dresses (young man with pants hanging down his but, with cap turned backwards) without being racist.
One of the guys I work with is very stockily built, has a shaved head, various piercings and numerous tattoos. His personality is meek and mild and he has right-on liberal/left, anti-racist views to such an extent that his concern for morals is sometimes quite annoying in its earnestness. If I didn't know him; if I had to guess then I would probably assume that he was a right-wing nationalist type. If he wore glasses and a brown tweedy jacket with patches on the elbows and had hair and was skinny and crossed his legs when he sits down in that way that intellectual people do (you know what I mean, they never sit with their legs wide open in a manly way), then I'd assume he was a lefty-liberal, morally self-righteous, namby-pamby, save-the-stickleback, ban-the-bomb, anti-capitalist, James-Joyce-reading, Woody-Allen-in-movies-persona (but not Woody Allen in real life) kind of a person.

I personally pigeon-hole people based on their appearance and demeanor just as much as anyone else. (More so?)
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Ormond
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Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Ormond »

QUESTION: It seems that in many of the cases of officers killing black civilians the officers were in physical contact with the civilian at the time of the shooting. Why didn't the police use tasers, does anybody know? Is there something I'm missing about tasers? Are they unreliable perhaps? Something else?
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
Supine
Posts: 1017
Joined: November 27th, 2012, 2:11 am

Re: Should policing be regarded as a civil right?

Post by Supine »

Steve3007 wrote: One of the guys I work with is very stockily built, has a shaved head, various piercings and numerous tattoos. His personality is meek and mild and he has right-on liberal/left, anti-racist views to such an extent that his concern for morals is sometimes quite annoying in its earnestness. If I didn't know him; if I had to guess then I would probably assume that he was a right-wing nationalist type. If he wore glasses and a brown tweedy jacket with patches on the elbows and had hair and was skinny and crossed his legs when he sits down in that way that intellectual people do (you know what I mean, they never sit with their legs wide open in a manly way), then I'd assume he was a lefty-liberal, morally self-righteous, namby-pamby, save-the-stickleback, ban-the-bomb, anti-capitalist, James-Joyce-reading, Woody-Allen-in-movies-persona (but not Woody Allen in real life) kind of a person.
:lol: I sit with my legs crossed. In the same way Frank Balisterier (spelling?) in this photo is seen.

Image

Granted, I have some college education and Frank had a bachelor's degree and 6 months of law school (he was also a pianist), but unlike myself he was a made man in the mafia, the mafia boss of Milwaukee, and ordered people killed, maimed, and beaten up. Frank was also short and thin. According to undercover FBI agent "Donnie Brasco" who helped take him down, he was always dressed impeccably like an Old School mob boss.

But I get what you're saying.

It is true you can misjudge a book by its cover. But the reality is nearly all of us make split second judgements about people based on how they are dressed, their body language, and so on. Usually we are probably correct. Sometimes we might be wrong.
I personally pigeon-hole people based on their appearance and demeanor just as much as anyone else. (More so?)
I understand. And I could have been a serial killer standing next to that woman. That's how serial killers lure their prey in, we don't suspect them of being ruthless, dangerous, murderers.

I have a prejudice against that popular fashion of the pants hanging down a guys butt. I can tolerate it a lot more among the young but it does irk me the rare occasions I see some man my age or older than myself dressed like that. But more importantly even if such judgements and prejudices are wrong they still exist. One needs to be aware of that and willing to accept the costs of dressing like that by choice.

The Marine Corps always taught me (one of their maxims) that, "First impression is last impression," so it behooves one to cut a good impression the first time. looking good in uniform (meaning your physique as well) is very important in the US Marine Corps. Apparently, more so than it is in many US police departments judging by some of the obese and semi-sloppy dressed officers. In Marine Security Forces they also emphasized that a security agent or guard can deter aggression, crime, or challenge in part by how "squared away" he is in uniform. Because if you take care in your appearance it indicates some diligence. You'll notice in the USA you rarely if ever see an obese Federal agent in law enforcement in organizations like the FBI or IRS. But you see them routinely in city police forces. You don't see them among State Troopers either.

Not that I'm against obese law enforcement agents. I'm sure as detectives in homicides or other areas of investigation their body fat ratio has little to no bearing at all on how good they are as investigators and puzzle solvers.

-- Updated July 11th, 2016, 11:04 am to add the following --
Ormond wrote:QUESTION: It seems that in many of the cases of officers killing black civilians the officers were in physical contact with the civilian at the time of the shooting. Why didn't the police use tasers, does anybody know? Is there something I'm missing about tasers? Are they unreliable perhaps? Something else?
In at least the City of Milwaukee few are outfitted with them on their belts. I don't even think most are issued them to put in their squad cars.

My guess would be its similar around most of the rest of the country.

That makes their pistol their first go to weapon.
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