its a good concept but since they can easily and readily shut them off or not turn them on at all (and not get disciplined when they do so,) its kinda like hoping a wet band aid sticks
Eff da po-lice some more
- Thread starter MMike
- Start date
I can't say I'm surprised the shooter was off'd, but I will mention that the Boston Bomber dude was spared when his former wrestling coached convinced him to surrender. I read something today that the shooter was displaying classic psychopathic behavior and you can't negotiate with them in throes of psychosis. Not to say a non-lethal method could not have been tried, but perhaps they were concerned if could only agitate him and he'd come out guns blazing and possibly injure/kill more people.
Good thing he had access to a gun.
That's a slippery slope to take - you either have a due process, or you don't. Is not this exactly the reason why have the police killings issue? "I was concerned he was getting agitated and he'd come out guns blazing so I shot him first".
Fair point. Although in this case he'd already shot and killed 5 people, so its not like they weren't sure if he was armed and dangerous. Another aspect is it seems like he indicated he planted bombs all over the place, in which case you could make an argument that he needs to be instantly dead (i.e. not kinda sedated or tazed) before he detonates the explosives. I know that's going down another slippery slope, but I'm not sure what decision I would've made in such intense circumstances - as eloquently described by Squeeb. Part of me does think that if I walked through downtown wherever and killed 5 cops, I shouldn't expect to live to experience the joys of due process, especially if I didn't willingly surrender almost immediately afterwards. But another part of me thinks of the Boston bomber kid, in which they had him cornered in the boat and didn't send in a robo-bomb to blow him up (although he was apparently shot up pretty bad).
Bu...bu...but they had background checks and everything! How could this happen? Oh well, fuck it, it probably won't happen again.
On a brighter note, the tags for this thread are outstanding.
The police being "over gunned" is a problem.
This became evident to me over a period of time and was clarified a few years ago when I took six hours of handgun training from a Vermont State Police instructor. The course was suffused with an interesting mythology of criminal as superman; gets up after being shot and throttles you, therefore put as much lead in center of mass as you can.
Especially subsequent to the World Trade Center fiasco, police have withdrawn from the community. Police stations have become fortresses - you don't speak to an officer, you speak to a disembodied voice and a camera. They patrol in cars and seldom engage in face contact with those they're charged with protecting.
I had reason to speak to a Vermont State Police officer a couple of days ago. She had her pistol, a taser, a shotgun, and, I suspect, a rifle in her car. She was loaded with so much gear it's amazing she could move.
The training, the armament, and the isolation have predictable results. In central Vermont, it most often expresses itself in mentally ill people being killed in or near their homes during an intervention. I hold that these killings are inappropriate and unnecessary, as are most shootings by police.
update I heard said they used a piece of C4 to blow up the sniper. 
ain't no walking from that.
ain't no walking from that.
And why the hell do police even have access to c4??update I heard said they used a piece of C4 to blow up the sniper.
ain't no walking from that.
I'm assuming here, but they have a bomb squad, and the whole purpose of the robot is to examine suspicious items / potential bombs. another purpose is to remotely detonate the same if need be. maybe that?
now that you mention it, I'd now bet that any police dept bomb squad could have explosives too.
now that you mention it, I'd now bet that any police dept bomb squad could have explosives too.
they sometimes blow stuff up....like suspicious packages and shit.
it goes home with tsa employees?
Fairly common practice. What do you think happens to unaccompanied luggage?
The use of a robot doesn't change the argument though. Same situation as using a police sniper or just a cop with a sidearm who feels they're in danger. The exact line a suspect must cross before you allow a LEO to use deadly force is a bit poorly defined, but the mode of delivering the deadly force doesn't really matter. It wasn't a question if weather or not he had a gun, the robots have cameras, they knew what he was holding, and there had just been a dozen officers shot, and act he claimed credit for. It wasn't a question if he were a threat to officers.
The minor asterisk you could add to this situation is that nobody was in immediate peril when they detonated the bomb, which seems to be the one universal rule to using lethal force. However, the counter argument is that there may have been no way to end the situation without putting an officer in danger, even an armored vehicle isn't bulletproof. As mentioned above, if he claimed to have a bomb, time may have been a factor, but also there may have been no way to end it without the suspect dying.
You can argue that deadly force wasn't required in the Philando Castile shooting, and based on the video publicized thus far, it's a pretty solid argument that it was a bad shoot. I have mixed feelings about the events that lead up to the attempted arrest of Alton Steerling, but from the moment they took him to the ground I believe it was a justified use of force.
It really is high time to start mandating body cams, though I doubt the footage of any of these incidents would be released yet, as the investigation is ongoing, but it would certainly clear things up to release the footage once the investigation concludes. I also don't see why we couldn't mandate that they not be tampered with or turned off while we're at it. It's an expensive proposition to outfit every cop in the country with a body camera, but it's gotta be cheaper than what we've currently got going on.
That's the nature of the job, otherwise they'd just call in a drone-strike or use turrets with machine guns mounted on their police car to take out motorists during traffic stops that reach for their wallet instead of not moving.
I wouldn't say they should be in excessive danger, but what you talk about is the way of life as an LEO. IMO, that's why they are police and not soldiers.
The problem becomes the guy gets vaporized at a time where he is not currently threatening anyone. If he's pointing a gun at someone, firing off rounds, etc., by all means, use force to stop him. I don't know all the details, but this allows someone to remotely walk a bomb into a place and kill someone, at which point it becomes too-easy IMO to end someone's life and I do not trust people under duress to make perfect decisions, including law enforcement. This is the whole reason we are killing people left and right with guns, because the availability of specialized weapons makes it easy, and when it's easy, the barriers are gone and people will do things they wouldn't normally do.
I think this came as a surprise to many citizens, that police departments are stocking robots with bombs. WTF else do they have that we don't know about? What are the controls on the usage of this equipment?
I'd rather see robot going in with CS gas, filling the place, incapacitating them, then storm and arrest the bad guy or shoot him if he poses an immediate threat. Why? Maybe only post-bomb is when you find out he was hiding a little girl in the room...
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Until evidence to the contrary surfaces, I may be with the cop on this one.
I'm now predicting that the first organization to break Asimov's first law will be an American Police Department. 
FWIW, all these robots have live video streams to the control van. The theoretical little girl in the room with the suspect is likely safer with the robot than a SWAT raid. Robots don't get nervous, and robots don't worry about getting shot at, they have tons of time to video the whole area and allow it's handlers to make a decision. Think of it as a SWAT team, with a half dozen lawyers in their ear telling them what is and isn't okay to shoot at.
This isn't like a drone strike where we lob a JDAM at a cell phone and hope the guy who we're sort of certain owns the phone is there.
Less than lethal options aren't really safe either. Put a canister of CS in a small room with a little girl and there's a good chance you're going to fuck her up far more than the bad guy. When Dorner went nuts they lobbed CS into the cabin where he was holed up and it wound up burning him alive. Same result, much less tasteful.
Law enforcement is dangerous, and the rights of the people they protect should never be trumped solely for their safety. However, there is almost zero information released about what happened that night in Dallas, I'd like to think they could have just starved him out, but until we know a lot more, we can't really say that was an option. The uproar about the robot just seems silly IMHO. We've all seen how these situations end, call it revenge, call it suicide by cop, either way the suspect never lives through it. If we take the suspect's death as a given, I don't see the need to risk a LEO's life in the process. There is reasonable and unreasonable danger to ask a LEO to rush into, and a guy they're reasonable certain just shot a dozen cops, claims to have a bomb, and has been talking about how much he wants to kill cops the whole time they attempted negotiations is pretty clearly an unreasonable situation to expect a cop to rush into.
There is certainly a case to be made for cops using too much force, but IMHO, this isn't one of those cases. Ironically in all of this, the Philando Castile case seems all but forgotten, and that appears to be a prime example to too much force being used, and also triggered the rampage that crooked LEOs will use to justify excessive force at the next traffic stop.
Just listened to an interview with Norm Stamper on NPR. He seems to have his shit together, and has written a book: To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America's Police.
McCrory has got to go in November. HB2, not renewing the film industry tax credits, and now shit like this...
mccrory is nothing but a spineless fucking puppet of the gop-controled legislature. his political career is just about over.
The white reporter, Tara Grimes, interviewing this black protester was not arrested for doing nothing, just the protester and two black reporters doing nothing:
http://nypost.com/video/shocking-video-shows-police-making-arrests-without-warning-at-rochester-protest/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-lives-matter-protest-video-rochester-new-york-alton-sterling-philando-castile-activist-a7129216.html
http://nypost.com/video/shocking-video-shows-police-making-arrests-without-warning-at-rochester-protest/
More on this first amendment violation:NY Civil Rights Lawyer said:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-lives-matter-protest-video-rochester-new-york-alton-sterling-philando-castile-activist-a7129216.html
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driver plows through protesters....
the plow through wasn't that dramatic....the take down at 20:58.....rate it a 9.5...
GWB loves a good hootnanny for dead cops.
a.) those self-righteous a-holes aren't doing anything but pissing off a bunch of people who don't effing care.
b.) someone should have slowly driven through those pricks MUCH sooner.
c.) takedown of white guy . . . hahahahaha
d.) afterwards: STFU and leave. someone should tear gas those d'bags
d.) michelle obama is less than pleased to be forced to hold hands with 'ol george during his shuffle. lollerz.
b.) someone should have slowly driven through those pricks MUCH sooner.
c.) takedown of white guy . . . hahahahaha
d.) afterwards: STFU and leave. someone should tear gas those d'bags
d.) michelle obama is less than pleased to be forced to hold hands with 'ol george during his shuffle. lollerz.
If this starts to be a thing around me I'm putting Hella Supertones on my Land Cruiser and will stand on the horn unapologetically.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/war-on-cops-president-barack-obama-police/
"According to the Officers Down Memorial Page, which tracks police fatalities, the number of law enforcement officers who have been intentionally killed on the job has fallen from 101 per year under President Reagan, to 90 per year under George H.W. Bush; to 81 per year under Bill Clinton; to 72 per year under George W. Bush; to 62 per year under Barack Obama — a figure that doesn't change when accounting for the Dallas ambush."
"According to the Officers Down Memorial Page, which tracks police fatalities, the number of law enforcement officers who have been intentionally killed on the job has fallen from 101 per year under President Reagan, to 90 per year under George H.W. Bush; to 81 per year under Bill Clinton; to 72 per year under George W. Bush; to 62 per year under Barack Obama — a figure that doesn't change when accounting for the Dallas ambush."
More police violations of the first amendment. Why don't they arrest people who insult/threaten women or minorities?
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/after-dallas-shootings-police-arrest-people-for-criticizing-cops-on-facebook-and-twitter/
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/after-dallas-shootings-police-arrest-people-for-criticizing-cops-on-facebook-and-twitter/