My favorite shot is the one I saw on Last Week Today with John Oliver which showed police dressed in military camo and pointing military assault rifles at a civilian. As Mr. Oliver pointed out, soldiers understand the seriousness of pointing your gun directly at someone, but these police officers due it routinely without provocation.
You should be seriously concerned if your military is better at policing than your police. That is wrong on more than one level.
That also remind me of how some politicians in Germany demand that the constitution should be changed to allow the use of military forces for internal security (just "when the terrorists attack"). I'm a staunch opponent of this because military personnel in Germany isn't trained to peacefully dissolve a situation but quickly and with the use of force. I guess now have to say "I'm against it, at least with current relative levels of training".
Welf is right but this issue is borne from decisions by local government to have their own police department to police town populations of 22,000 people. Granted, St. Louis County performance also leaves something significant to be desired.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will open a broad civil rights investigation into police practices in Ferguson, Mo., where a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager last month and set off days of racially charged unrest, the city’s police chief and other officials said Wednesday.
The inquiry is in addition to the F.B.I. civil rights investigation that is looking specifically into the shooting of the teenager, Michael Brown, on Aug. 9. The new investigation is expected to be announced soon, according to two federal government officials who were briefed on the plans.
The broader Justice Department inquiry will cover whether the police in Ferguson have a history of discrimination or misuse of force beyond the Brown case, but the Justice Department has not ruled out expanding it to other St. Louis County departments, one of the federal officials said. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been formally announced.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his aides first discussed such an investigation weeks ago, immediately after the death of Mr. Brown, 18, when reports surfaced that the Ferguson police force had previously been accused of abuse.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will open a broad civil rights investigation into police practices in Ferguson, Mo., where a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager last month and set off days of racially charged unrest, the city’s police chief and other officials said Wednesday.
The inquiry is in addition to the F.B.I. civil rights investigation that is looking specifically into the shooting of the teenager, Michael Brown, on Aug. 9. The new investigation is expected to be announced soon, according to two federal government officials who were briefed on the plans.
The broader Justice Department inquiry will cover whether the police in Ferguson have a history of discrimination or misuse of force beyond the Brown case, but the Justice Department has not ruled out expanding it to other St. Louis County departments, one of the federal officials said. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been formally announced.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his aides first discussed such an investigation weeks ago, immediately after the death of Mr. Brown, 18, when reports surfaced that the Ferguson police force had previously been accused of abuse.
Yeah... there was no question that this would happen. This case is so high profile, with previous instances resurfacing, it was bound to turn into a Federal Recto-Legal Probe. A probe which may lead to the DOJ Assuming Direct Control like they did in LA a few years ago.
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Been so long since any major incidents, I don't know if this is related. But breaking news has it that a Ferguson cop has just been shot. No details yet.
Wait? This is still going on? I thought it had ended like months ago.
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.
You win. There, I have said it.
Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
Nope. We've been waiting for the investigations to finish and now it seems the Grand Jury is about ready to decide whether or not to charge the cop with murder. Seems a bunch of people are getting ready to "protest" if the Grand Jury doesn't indict him.
So what happens when he is found not guilty? More rioting?
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.
You win. There, I have said it.
Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
Purple wrote:So what happens when he is found not guilty? More rioting?
Well a Grand Jury determines if there's enough evidence to go to trial and be tried by a regular jury. If not, then he walks free. If yes, then he goes to trial and he can be found either guilty or not guilty. So if the Grand Jury says there's not enough evidence, he won't even go to trial and yeah...more rioting.
Borgholio wrote:Nope. We've been waiting for the investigations to finish and now it seems the Grand Jury is about ready to decide whether or not to charge the cop with murder. Seems a bunch of people are getting ready to "protest" if the Grand Jury doesn't indict him.
Its interesting that you put protest in quotes as if to say that none of the protestors are actually legitimate protesters.
After what happened to the peaceful protests in Ferguson, I am skeptical that these protests will remain as peaceful as they claim. But then again it's a totally different police dept so hopefully they're a bit more competent than the Ferguson cops.
There's been a heavy military police presence since the riots.
So I stare wistfully at the Lightning for a couple of minutes. Two missiles, sharply raked razor-thin wings, a huge, pregnant belly full of fuel, and the two screamingly powerful engines that once rammed it from a cold start to a thousand miles per hour in under a minute. Life would be so much easier if our adverseries could be dealt with by supersonic death on wings - but alas, Human resources aren't so easily defeated.
What? The media has been talking about is nonstop. Granted it hasn't always been front page now that there are not protesters and police barricades sprinkled with arson and riots here and there but that's to be expected given grand jury leaks and update don't provide nice visuals to sensationalize.
And it's only getting more attention as the results get close.
After the KKK threatened violence against the Ferguson protestors, Anonymous hacked the KKK and claims to have stolen personal information. They say they will release the public identities of the KKK members shortly. Neat...that should be fun.
Were it any other organization I'd say 'boo,' but the KKK was originally founded as an anonymous terrorist organization (hence the hoods). So frankly, I'm going to chalk this one up to "hoist by their own petard."
Kamakazie Sith wrote:I've been a proponent of cameras for a long time because I believe it is necessary and fair and I believe it will help US cops in the long run but I am not a proponent because I don't mind or like everything I do being recorded.
While they would be useful in situations such as the OP St. Louis - and any - police shooting, I recently heard that a local police force is considering discontinuing their use of cameras. Link.
This summarizes the problem well:
Along with the work [requests for footage] create, the requests also raise privacy concerns. "Do you want video of the inside of people's homes that have been burglarized to be available to the public?" Strachan asked. "Or an interview with a domestic violence assault victim?"
"What it really comes down to is: How can you have transparency and privacy? And I don't know if you can have both in a way that satisfies everybody," he added.
The simple answer? Don't give the videos out to the public.
What you do is you compromise. You put a procedure in place where members of the public who are directly involved in a case, or their legal representation, can request copies of the necessary videos, perhaps by putting down the badge numbers of the police involved, case number, whatever. If the people or owners of the property being filmed consent, then it can be openly released to the entire public.
Because frankly something like 50%-80% of police work is BORING. It's sitting around in between movements. When something does happen, 90% of the time you aren't there when it actually happens, you just show up afterwards. You walk around, poke into shit (sometimes literally), talk to people, take notes. It's important, but not terribly impressive on the face of it, so most people will not be terribly interested in watching it.
Now in cases where the videos are actually important, there are two things going on: first, the police department has a vested interest in not looking bad. Secondly, the privacy of the citizens involved is a concern, as noted. There is no real need for the public to be aware of what happened unless it was a case of police misconduct or other illegal activities, OR the citizens involved are fine with publicizing the case.
The example above of someone's house being broken into is actually reasonable. Say they're into... kinky sex or something and have all kinds of interesting equipment in one room. They might be absolutely ordinary and upstanding citizens otherwise, they just like a little extra spice in their sex lives. Is it really necessary for something like that to be plastered across the hometown newspaper the next morning? So confine that video to the legal teams involved (say they want to sue the police department for not handling the case well or something). That way privacy is maintained, but so is transparency.
Now in cases of police misconduct, say a cop beats some hitch-hiker or something up by the side of the road. If it was filmed by the cop's body-camera, the hitchhiker really has no reason not to release that video to the public unless it shows them clearly giving the officer reason to rough them up (trying to fight the cop or something).
Hopefully justice is served and whatever decision they made is based simply on the evidence (or lack thereof). But I doubt the mobs will see it that way if the jury decides not to indict.
The "mobs" are getting just a little bit pissed off about how often unarmed black men are being gunned down. The perception is that a black life is meaningless in the eyes of the law, that others are free to just shoot you if you're black because they felt "threatened" by you.
When the thought that you could be shot at any time just because a jumpy asshole decides you're "threatening him" suddenly you're a lot less likely to sit back and accept the narrative of the group that routinely holds you to massively different standards.
Sig images are for people who aren't fucking lazy.
