More black man & dog shootings by police

[Kamakazie Sith]

I don't like how much power that American police have already, and I don't think that effective oversight will be enough to curb the things that they do that I find distasteful. Placing a greater risk on them, might be extreme, but it's also a bit of a proxy for me generally wanting to see powers limited as an addition to their activities being externally policed and monitored. Placing them under the same RoE as soldiers in Vietnam served under seems like a good place to start given that they aren't in a war zone.

Effective Oversight by definition is sufficient. Deliberately putting the police into danger makes them more likely to make mistakes. Are you fucking stupid or something?

You implement rules and prosecute the police for violating these rules. Hold them to a high standard and make them earn their status. That is what independent oversight can do for the police.

Except that the rules as they stand would still legally allow them to do stuff like shooting dogs if they can articulate feeling threatened. The rules on police, regardless of oversight, are too lax and give them too much power. Plus they already have less restrictive RoE's than soldiers in certain war zones, so why shouldn't we tighten that up?

I've heard this talk about ROE's before so I'm going to ask you for a citation.

The rules aren't too lax. The enforcement of these rules is lax. You fix the enforcement issue then you will fix this appearance of too much power. I mean, YOU could shoot a dog if you were able to articulate how it was threatening you. So, I don't see how something that you can do is suddenly a great power afforded to police.

Ghetto Edit: Plus like I said, it's a proxy for wanting less police power, not some grand end goal or a seriously thought out idea for how to fix things. I know exactly what the end result of letting criminals shoot first will be and it won't be less armed criminals. What I do want is to slow police down a bit so they don't put themselves in stupid situations.

Point out what power the police legally have that is too much. Keep in mind I'm not talking about instances of abuse. I'm talking about a legally executed power.

[Kamakazie Sith]

And they can make up that reasonable suspicion.

Which is why I said if they tell you to stop then stop. I guess I should have told you that I was talking about honest police and not shit bags.

Which is perfectly consistent with not hearing them while rummaging through a car + as mentioned, a false positive in a threat assessment due to subconscious racism.

In what way is partial compliance consistent with not hearing someone?

Furthermore, the guy says he heard them and complied with their orders and back out with his hands up and then was shot when he turned to face them. So, your "he didn't hear them" claim does not fly.

And then there is the good old "Oh shit, we just shot an unarmed man. Quick, make something up that seems plausible. The department will back us.", which they can do, because people trust the police and the department will in fact stand by them.

Like I said. I'm a huge supporter of body cameras so these will no longer be concerns.

Yes, but that is not most of the population, nor is it the case in the average traffic stop.

I think you need to back up and consider the context of my discussion with Jub. I wasn't saying they are most of the population or anything like that. What I am saying is you can't make assumptions about the public when you're dealing with them in a law enforcement capacity. This means if you're dealing with them because they appear like they're engaged in a crime, especially a felony, then you deal with them in a manner that keeps you from dying just in case they are one of those few that will attempt to kill a cop.

The thing is training aside all they have to really be is a good shot under stressful conditions. If they then that means even under favorable conditions they will still likely get a shot off at the same time the officer does.

Even so, if the police abuse their power and the civilian resists, the civilian gets charged with a crime and the very fact that they were resisting after the fact will be used as justification. If the police start beating me with a baton because I am protesting somewhere, and I fight back, I get arrested, and even though they beat me first, my fighting back will be used as justification for the initial beating. And there is nothing I can do about it.

Huh. I recall a number of cases where charges were dropped because the police used excessive force. The fact is that all sorts of conclusions happen that range anywhere from your concerns to charges, conviction, and sentencing for the officer.

The problem is that they are permitted to unreasonably "defend themselves".

I agree. Sometimes they are. The article that TheFeniX posted is a good example of that.

The difference is that the police are trained in exactly how to articulate such things--irrespective of the truth value of that articulation--and they belong to the very institution that investigates and has that institution backing them up. Combined with a prosecutors obvious who does not want to alienate the police department upon which they depend.

No, we aren't. During classroom training and scenario training you are taught to articulate your observations that made you take the action you took. During scenarios if you shoot during a don't shoot situation then this fuck up is noted in your training record and you're monitored to ensure that you've learned from your mistake and don't shoot during don't shoot situations. They don't take you aside and say "Okay, this is what can you say to make this fuck up a good shoot!!". At least not where I was trained. Maybe they do that somewhere but frankly if you haven't actually seen this "training" then you shouldn't be making claims about it.

[TheFeniX]

The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services.

Holy shit, that is terrifying. A big problem I have is that even illegal arrests by police are still technically legal. I wouldn't be opposed to everyone involved in this official blackmail to all be charged with 4 counts of kidnapping. A couple cases of shit-bags getting life in prison would probably straighten that out really quick. As always, enforcement would be the issue and travelers might end up "missing" in response. Fulshear and Kendleton had their own dust-ups with shitty rural officials, but it wasn't anything like this.

[Simon_Jester]

This seems to be a variant of the infamous "speed trap town," where rural police use jurisdiction over a local highway to rack up piles of speeding tickets against anyone driving a mile or two per hour over the limit, to help pay the bills.

It's a serious step up from there into this kind of... I want to call it highway robber under color of law... but it's not necessarily impossible. Especially if, for example, you have a situation where the police in Tenaha really do have a problem with drug couriers, and just start getting paranoid and trigger-happy about it... and then start realizing that it is to their advantage to intercept the couriers, and for that matter anyone who vaguely looks like they might be a courier.

[PeZook]

The problem lies in the way they can confiscate your money and take away your kid before you're even charged. In a sane system, the money would only end up in city coffers to be spent after they were actually convicted, and it would be flat out illegal to strike deals in exchange for not charging. It smells of bribery.

[RogueIce]

One result is the rise of improbable case names such as United States v. One Pearl Necklace and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins. (Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson’s forfeiture was slugged State of Texas v. $6,037.)... Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. The Real Property and Improvements Known as [their address]... One of the first cases that caught his attention was titled State of Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix.

The Fuck? Um... This is still happening? I thought the DOJ and subsequently FBI threw the small towns in TX that were doing this into federal prison on racketeering charges (yes. the towns, as in, their elected governments). And that is what this is. It is racketeering.

And how the hell does the legal theory work here? You cannot sue a non-person.

Look at the date of the incident: 2007. The class action suit was settled last year, August 2012. This fact was was probably buried somewhere in the article DA posted but I'm not going through 12 pages to find it. So I let Google do the work for me instead.