General Police Abuse Thread

[Borgholio]

The company'd cheese that argument real quick, with a cleaning bill that'd cost me a lot of cheddar.

Could ask your passengers to chip in.

[Terralthra]

We shouldn't taco-bout this.

[Borgholio]

We shouldn't taco-bout this.

Yeah we don't want to make munch ado about nothing...

[Dominus Atheos]

9-year-old led away in handcuffs by Portland police prompts outrage, push for policy changes

Two uniformed Portland police officers showed up at the home of a 9-year-old girl last May, questioned her on the front porch about a fight at a youth club six days earlier, then handcuffed her as she stood in a blue-and-white bathing suit.

They drove her to police headquarters in downtown Portland, where she had her fingerprints and mugshot taken.

Latoya Harris couldn't believe what was happening as she watched the officers head off with her daughter in the back seat. The girl was still wet after running through a neighborhood sprinkler, wearing flip flops and a pink Velco wrap-around towel over her swimsuit.

"When they put handcuffs on, I thought, 'Wait a minute, this has got to be a joke,' '' Harris recalled Monday. "The look on my daughter's face went from humiliation and fear, to a look of sheer panic.''

Harris is speaking out publicly after she complained to the city's Independent Police Review Division and no significant discipline resulted.

Her account is now prompting citizen members of a police oversight panel and youth justice advocates to press for new city guidelines that would prevent police from taking children into custody under the age of 10 without a juvenile court order.

"I'm just a mother at the end of her rope,'' Harris said. "I'm going to advocate for my daughter, but no child should have to go through that.''

The police encounter resulted from an argument between several girls near the basketball courts outside the Boys & Girls Club on North Trenton Street in Portland's New Columbia neighborhood on April 26, 2013.

Harris' 9-year-old daughter, witnesses told police, got in the middle of a dispute between two other girls who had been arguing because one told on the other in school earlier in the day for drawing on a desk.

The 9-year-old ended up in a fistfight with one of the other girls outside the club, according to a police report. A staff member broke the fight up, but said Harris' daughter continued to try to strike and kick the other girl before they were separated in different rooms.

Both girls apologized to each other. Staff members found no obvious injuries on any of the girls, they told police. The 9-year-old was sent home and suspended from the club for one week.

But later that day, the mother of one of the girls called Portland police to report the fight. The mother accused Harris' daughter of striking her child in the face and bashing her head against a brick wall, and told police she wanted an arrest made. Police took a cell phone photo of a red bruise on the girl's cheekbone. Officers went to Harris' home to try to talk with her daughter, but were told she was at her aunt's house.

Portland Officers David McCarthy and Officer Matthew Huspek returned to the Harris home six days later on May 2 to question the girl. McCarthy wrote in his report that the 9-year-old gave "vague answers'' and appeared to get angry when pressed for more details.

"I observed (her) breathing speed up, she looked down at the ground ... crossed her arms and would eventually answer my questions,'' McCarthy wrote.

Finding the 9-year-old's statements "inconsistent'' with witnesses who described her as the aggressor, the officers took her into custody, accusing her of fourth-degree assault, the police report said.

"Officer Huspek and I handcuffed (her) and no inventory was performed due to the tight clothing (the girl) wore,'' McCarthy wrote. The report did not mention that the girl was wearing a bathing suit.

Harris said the officers aggressively questioned her daughter. "They repeatedly asked her, 'Why don't you tell me what really happened?'"

When they led her daughter to the patrol car, Harris asked to go with them, but said the officers wouldn't let her. They did offer to drive the 9-year-old girl back home after she was fingerprinted and photographed.

Harris said she wasn't about to let police bring her daughter back in a police car. "This has got to be some kind of mistake. She's just a child,'' Harris said she kept thinking.

Harris said she took a bus to police headquarters because she didn't have a car. The girl was photographed and fingerprinted on the 12th floor of the Justice Center at the police Forensic Service Division and held in a holding area for just over an hour until her mother arrived.

A year later, Harris said, her daughter "is a different child.'' The girl, now 10, had been a talented and gifted student at Rosa Parks Elementary, but transferred in October to another school because of teasing and has been in counseling since June, Harris said.

The district attorney's office never brought charges against the girl, and Harris filed a complaint.

The Independent Police Review Division, under oversight of Portland's auditor, found officers violated no Police Bureau policies, and forwarded the complaint to the officers' supervisors at North Precinct for a "service improvement opportunity,'' essentially a debriefing.

Perturbed by the lack of response, Harris last month told her story to the Citizen Review Committee, a panel that hears complaints of alleged officer misconduct against Portland police. The Portland Mercury first reported Harris' account.

On Wednesday, the panel is inviting Harris back, and digging deeper into whether the city or Police Bureau should adopt more restrictive guidelines for taking children into custody.

"We really don't think there's circumstances where children under 10 should be taken into custody,'' said Mark McKechnie, executive director of Youth, Rights & Justice, a not-for-profit law firm that serves vulnerable children.

The Citizen Review Committee also has invited juvenile advocates to the meeting. "We just want to hear what some of these experts say, and based on that, decide if we want to weigh in and make a recommendation,'' said Rodney Paris, the committee chair.

McKechnie and Joseph Hagedorn, chief supervising attorney for the Metropolitan Public Defender's juvenile unit, said they've talked in the last week about two potential changes to city ordinances and police directives that would:

-- Prevent police from taking a child under 10 years old into custody without an order from a juvenile court judge.

-- Allow police to take children ages 10 and 11 into custody only on Class A or B felonies. For less serious offenses, a court order would be needed.

Both said they were concerned about why police made the arrest almost a week after the fight, and particularly, when the girl was at home with a parent.

"It was way over the top for them to do that,'' Hagedorn said.

Jamie Troy, a member of the Citizen Review Committee, said he was disturbed that the 9-year-old was handcuffed. "While there are some instances where handcuffing of kids may be necessary, I would hope that would only be in very rare instances. As a community, we need to come together and sort this out."

Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said officers use handcuffs as a safeguard, and acted according to bureau policy.

The policy (PPB Directive 640.70) says juveniles taken into custody for any felony or Class A misdemeanor "shall'' be fingerprinted and photographed at the forensics division, while juveniles taken into custody for Class B and C misdemeanors "may'' be fingerprinted and photographed. It makes no age distinctions. Police consider those under age 18 as juveniles. Fourth-degree assault is a Class A misdemeanor.

Harris said she never got an answer about why the officers needed to handcuff her daughter and lead her off.

"In my opinion, they were trying to scare and humiliate her,'' she said. "All they had to do was give her a talking to. We're talking about two grown men in uniform with guns.''

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... ndcuf.html

[Dominus Atheos]

Police arrest tow-truck employees who towed away unmarked cars

Bradley Kelley and Timothy Hall thought they were following their towing company policy and city code when they asked for proof of ownership and identification before releasing three impounded cars to a group of men seeking the vehicles.

The cars, it turned out, were unmarked police cars. The men, two of whom wore police uniforms, were from Salem Police, Keizer Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to a federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Portland.

But that's when Sgt. Andrew Roberts flashed his badge at the two tow-truck employees, telling them that it was all the identification he needed to get the cars, the complaint states. The employees soon found themselves arrested and handcuffed in the back of a patrol car.

The arrest is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in the fall by the two men and their employer alleging malicious prosecution, abuse of process and negligence by the officers and their agencies. Although a Polk County jury acquitted the tow-truck employees of obstruction of governmental administration, their employer spent thousands defending the two men in the yearlong prosecution, the complaint states.

The case is making its way through federal court with a hearing Tuesday. Lawyers for the city of Keizer are asking a judge to dismiss most of the claims against the lone officer from Keizer Police, saying he played no role in the arrests or in initiating the Polk County prosecution.

The incident dates to January 2012, when a business owner noticed unauthorized cars in the lot at 4743 Lancaster Drive NE, the complaint states. The business owner left a note on the windshield and, the next day, spoke personally with one of the drivers who "responded with expletives" that they would not be moving the cars, the lawsuit states.

The business owner notified the property trustee, who then called Bales and Brady Towing West to haul the unauthorized vehicles away.

Employees Kelley and Hall arrived at the lot, saw the five cars but didn't see anyone around. They photographed the vehicles before starting to tow them.

After moving three of the vehicles to the tow lot, two officers arrived at the towing company office asking to retrieve the unmarked police cars. They were unable to provide license plate or the vehicle ID number or other proof of ownership, the complaint states, but one officer was allowed to retrieve a bag that had his name on it from one of the cars. The two officers left, saying they would return with the necessary information, the complaint states.

Shortly after, a larger group of plainclothes and uniformed officers appeared, leading to the exchange with Roberts and their eventual arrest.

The officers lacked probable cause to arrest the two men, the lawsuit states, violating their constitutional right to due process and protection against unreasonable seizure. The officers did not tell them what crime they were accused of committing, the plaintiffs claim, and they also accuse Roberts of threatening their lawyer with arrest if he kept asking questions. An assistant city attorney for Salem declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The employees, their boss and the company are seeking recovery of lost income and profits. The employees also are asking for $500,000 each in pain and suffering and are additionally seeking punitive damages due to the "reckless disregard" the officers showed for their constitutional rights, the lawsuit contends.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-north ... eized.html

[Dominus Atheos]

Man beaten, shocked with Taser by Portland police awarded $562,000 by jury

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... an_be.html

I'm sure the victim feels a little better, but since that money comes out of the city's treasury then even a massive monetary award like this provides absolutely no inclination to change.

[Dominus Atheos]

Texas police officer cleared of shooting, killing dog

The officer, whose name has not been released, said in a police report that one dog charged at him, prompting him to fire three shots and kill the dog, according to CBS DFW.

It only looks like the two dogs are standing there waging their tails as he calls them over to him, in reality they are aggressively charging him.

Who are you going to believe, a police officer or your lying eyes?

[Dominus Atheos]

Eh, I'm in a good mood today so I'll post this:

Cranford, New Jersey police officers come to rescue of choking dog

CRANFORD, N.J. (WABC) --
Three New Jersey police officers sprang into action to save a choking dog.

On Friday night, Cranford police received a frantic 9-1-1 call reporting a choking dog in the field adjacent to Walnut Avenue School.

During a game of catch, Leo, a Great Dane/Shepherd mix weighing over 140 pounds, began choking and couldn't breathe when a tennis ball became lodged in his throat.

Officer Robert Jordan encircled the dog with his arms and attempted to clear the dog's airway using abdominal thrusts. Officers John Rattigan and Brian Trotter arrived and assisted in the rescue.

When the ball was partially dislodged and the responding officers detected that the Leo was able to breathe, they immediately moved the canine to a waiting patrol car.

Leo and his owner, Cranford resident Donna Stone, were transported to Westfield Animal Hospital, where waiting staff performed an emergency procedure to completely remove the tennis ball.

"As an animal lover myself, I am well aware of the relationship that exists between dog and owner," said Cranford Police Chief James Wozniak. "I'm glad we were able avert a heartbreaking incident for this family during the holidays."

[Highlord Laan]

The little girl from Portland is lucky she wasn't asleep on the couch. Then they would have just shot her.

[Kuja]

Try to guess what color the kid is before you open link

Cops handcuff and interrogate boy, 7, for hours over missing $5

This kid was no killer — but some callous Bronx cops sure treated him like one.
Instead of earning himself a simple trip to the principal’s office, a terrified 7-year-old boy was hauled out of class, handcuffed like a hardened criminal and “interrogated” by police for a grueling 10 hours — all over a playground dispute involving $5, his family is charging.
“My son was crying, ‘Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!’ I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized,” Wilson Reyes’ distraught mom, Frances Mendez told The Post last night.
“Imagine how I felt seeing my son in handcuffs!’’ she said. “It was horrible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
The bizarre overreaction by cops came after the child had been accused of swiping $5 from another student after school.
The money, which was supposed to be used for a school trip that never happened, had fallen on the ground in front of Wilson and two other boys, and one of them scooped it up.
Wilson was falsely accused of taking it, and he scuffled with one of the kids.
Officers showed up at PS X114 on Dec. 4 at about 10:20 a.m., and handcuffed and held Wilson in a room there for four hours. They then hauled him off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse, according to a $250 million claim against the city and the NYPD.
The boy protested his innocence, to no avail.
“Reyes was handcuffed and verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed,” the documents say. He was then charged with robbery.
Mendez said that she and her sister first went to the station house, they were told they couldn’t see her son.
When cops finally allowed the pair to see the boy, they found the panicked kid seated in a shabby chair with his left wrist cuffed to the wall, Mendez said.
She quickly snapped a damning photo of the scene.
“My sister and I started crying when we saw him,” Mendez said.
Seth Acevedo, the boy Wilson was accused of punching and robbing, had been pushed around before by Wilson and other kids, his father Santiago Acevedo said.
“There were always teasing him because of his weight. Sometimes he didn’t even want to go to school because of it,” Santiago Acevedo, 63, told The Post today.
The city’s Law Department wound up dropping the robbery charge against Wilson on Dec. 26. Inspector Kim Royster said yesterday the story was “grossly untrue in many respects, including fabrication as to how long the child was held in the precinct which was less than half of the time mentioned.”
The legal papers say another classmate later admitted the theft.
Family lawyer Jack Yankowitz — who filed the claim with the city Comptroller’s Office Monday — blasted cops over the incident.
“It’s unfathomable, what the police did. The whole thing sounds so stupid. They were interrogating him like he was a hardened criminal,” Yankowitz said.
“If you have a child, a nephew, can you even imagine this happening to them?”
But law-enforcement sources insisted that Wilson was treated like any other young suspect.
“We responded to a 911 call of a robbery and assault . . . Eventually, [Wilson] was taken back to the precinct and placed in the juvenile room,” a source said.
“He was charged with robbery. The allegation was that he punched the kid and took his money. He took the money forcibly.
“The kid came into the precinct a little bit after 3 p.m., and he was out by 7:45 p.m. . . . That’s standard for a juvenile arrest.”
School officials said the incident took place off school grounds and referred questions to the NYPD.

[Dominus Atheos]

There's many a slip twixt the cop and the news clip

Writing at Wonkette, Shrill unearthed a revealing story the other day that you might have missed:

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, the New York Police Department requested the public’s help in finding a man who grabbed an MTA worker, threw her on the ground, throttled her, and then ran away with a jaunty and satisfied smirk on his face.

Being the New York subway system, surveillance cameras captured the play-by-play. Turns out the attacker was an off-duty police officer. But here's where Shrill turns it into a man-bites-dog story:

The hilarious coda to this story is the treatment of this story in the news by the New York Daily News. Here’s the headline from the story they wrote before they knew that the culprit was a police officer:



And here’s the lede of that story:

A hulking brute grabbed a 28-year-old MTA employee up in a bear hug at a Bronx train station, shoved her onto the platform and began choking her in an unprovoked attack – then ran away smiling, authorities said Wednesday.

Here’s the story after they found out that the culprit was a police officer:



And here’s the lede of that story:

Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker — who was on-duty and in her uniform — was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said.

Notice anything? Gone is the evocative “thug” in the headline and the “hulking brute” of the lede, and the sensationalism of the label of an “unprovoked” attack, replaced by plainspoken and bare nouns. Gone, too, is the directness of the active voice, replaced by a circumspect passive voice, accompanied by the (necessary) lawyerly “allegedly”. The callousness of him smiling has been dropped, too, demoted to the second paragraph. This is no surprise — it’s just an example of the subtle way in which our media defers to and genuflects before law enforcement, shaping and coloring the narrative in their favor.

That's about as plain as it gets. "There was an officer-involved shooting," etc. An officer "discharged his weapon," etc. News language is indirect and allows that things "just happen" when police are involved. Or as Jameson Parker snarks:

“A shot rang out from the officer’s gun.” Who is the actor there? The gun? So much for the old NRA adage “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Apparently officers’ guns do.

No thugs around the station house, either, people. Move along.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/ ... -news.html

Sorry about the size, it's the only way to make the story readable.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Not a story of police abuse

For months the topic of police shootings and violence (specifically involving African-American males) has dominated the headlines. For most of that time I’ve tried to bring rational discourse to this debate, though I quickly realized that most people didn’t want an actual “debate” – they just wanted someone to tell them what they wanted to hear.

But a situation here in Texas, just a few miles from where I live, might be the best story to cover all aspects of this debate that I’ve seen anywhere.
On Saturday in Duncanville, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, there was a 911 call made by an African-American woman emphatically telling the operator that there were three young boys, one in a grey hoodie, walking around “with a big old ass gun showing it!”

Then we see the dashcam video showing Duncanville Officer Ben Luna approaching the three suspects. As he pulled up behind them, they look at the car – and one reaches toward his waistband.
As Luna exits his vehicle he orders the three young men to put their hands up and get on the ground – except they don’t listen. While one individual does put his hands up, he continues to walk toward the officer instead of simply complying with commands to get on the ground while the other two simply sat on the curb.

“They’re fixing to either pull the gun out or they don’t really care what – what I’m saying,” Luna said of his thoughts as all of this transpired.
So, what we have here is an officer approaching three suspects while responding to a fairly alarmed woman calling 911 reporting three young males are flashing a big gun, with two barely complying (one even slightly turned then reached into his pockets) and the third (granted with his hands up) walking toward the officer as he was being instructed sternly to get on the ground.
And as Luna said, at the time he wasn’t sure if the gentleman walking toward him was “just trying to distract me looking at him, and these two could pull out a weapon. I’m not for sure.”
But ultimately, what the three men had was a BB gun that was almost an exact replica of a Beretta 92F.

Tell me if you think you could tell the difference between these two Berettas from a distance:
<photos did not transfer see source>

By the way, the top one is the BB gun. Before moving on, I think it’s time we have a real debate in this country about these BB guns being made to look like damn near exact replicas of real guns. That’s just idiotic.
This could have turned out so much worse. And had Officer Luna shot one of these young men, there’s no doubt that the headlines would have been, “Another Unarmed Black Teenager Wearing a Hoodie Killed by Police in Texas.”

Thankfully that didn’t happen.
But this whole situation covers so many facets of this entire debate that I really do hope this article gets seen by a lot of people.
First, it gives commentary from the officer into what he was thinking driving up on these three suspects. Then it shows these three males, who did have a very realistic replica BB gun, not listening to the officer’s commands and just how little time the officer has to react in these situations if the one individual who walked toward him had kept coming forward.
And all of it happened in a matter of just a few seconds.

But it also shows how an officer can approach this kind of situation and not “shoot first, and ask questions later.” That’s an attitude that, had the officer who shot Tamir Rice used, would have saved the 12-year-old’s life.
Then again, in the situation here in Texas, Luna could have just as easily been shot himself had these three males actually had a real gun. It’s always easy in hindsight to assess what should or shouldn’t have happened, but in real time it’s not nearly that simple, as this video shows.

People just need listen and do what cops tell them to do. If the officer is in the wrong, then let them be in the wrong and sort it out later. Police officers don’t know intent going into these kinds of situations. While in hindsight we know that these three young men weren’t doing anything wrong (though it can be seen as questionable why they would stroll around flashing a realistic looking BB gun), Officer Luna had no way of knowing that as he approached them. And it’s a very real possibility that the individual who decided to walk toward the officer was no more than two or three steps away from being shot. Even the two who just decided to sit down and start reaching around in their pockets could have easily been victims as well.
When people are combative with police officers, don’t comply with their orders or flat-out resist arrest – nothing good can come from that. Unlawful arrests by bad police officers can be dealt with later down the road; being killed because you resisted arrest or ignored an officer’s orders to get on the ground cannot.
But I would like to commend Officer Luna for setting an example as an officer who proved that these kinds of situations can be defused – though we need to remember that not every single situation is exactly the same. Thankfully this entire ordeal turned out positive for everyone involved.

[Raw Shark]

"Positive for everyone involved," in this case meaning, "Nobody got shot by your typical trigger-happy asshole cop who got into this business because he wanted to shoot dark people and thinks that's a good thing," Still the best-case scenario with police-involvement, of course, but not exactly ideal.

[Kamakazie Sith]

"Positive for everyone involved," in this case meaning, "Nobody got shot by your typical trigger-happy asshole cop who got into this business because he wanted to shoot dark people and thinks that's a good thing," Still the best-case scenario with police-involvement, of course, but not exactly ideal.

No. It's positive for everyone involved because nobody, including the cop, was shot due to that officer tolerating non-compliance at dangerous levels. Fsilure to comply is a serious issue that I would argue is causing these shootings more often than you're allegation of trigger happy racist cops.

[Terralthra]

I'm just seeking clarification here: are you saying that under the circumstances described,

a) the police officer in question should have shot one or more of the people involved?
b) the reason he should have shot is that one or more of the people involved was not obeying the officer in question's orders?
c) that such disobedience was, in and of itself, dangerous?

[Kamakazie Sith]

I'm just seeking clarification here: are you saying that under the circumstances described,

a) the police officer in question should have shot one or more of the people involved?
b) the reason he should have shot is that one or more of the people involved was not obeying the officer in question's orders?
c) that such disobedience was, in and of itself, dangerous?

Wow. I really need to stop posting from my phone.

Anyway, what I am saying is C. Disobedience as show in the video is dangerous for all involved. It is dangerous to those three because from a police officers perspective closing the distance and failing to comply is doing a couple things. It's making it more difficult to observe the other two and it's reducing the time the officer has to observe behavior and act on behavior proportionally. With firearms distance equals time. If someone is going to shoot at you from a distance they have to take time and aim. Up close you don't have to take that time to aim. You just pull, point, and fire.

Tolerating this behavior is dangerous for the officer because if the subject really does have a firearm and is willing to harm the officer then the subject is likely to succeed and is possible to do so without the officer being able to respond.

[Kamakazie Sith]

This video seems relevant to the current discussion.

[Lagmonster]

That video does reinforce what KS has been saying all along - if you don't immediately comply, you risk triggering a fight-or-flight reflex in a well-armed and trained guy.

I would love to see what happens in the second scenario if the cop decides firmly NOT to shoot under any circumstances. Does the actor attack the officer bare-handed or go for his gun or otherwise demonstrate that the shot both took was inarguably justified, or is the actor told to remain belligerent and continue to push into the policeman's comfort zone without actually escalating into an open attack, so as to make it more ambiguous?

[Kamakazie Sith]

That video does reinforce what KS has been saying all along - if you don't immediately comply, you risk triggering a fight-or-flight reflex in a well-armed and trained guy.

I would love to see what happens in the second scenario if the cop decides firmly NOT to shoot under any circumstances. Does the actor attack the officer bare-handed or go for his gun or otherwise demonstrate that the shot both took was inarguably justified, or is the actor told to remain belligerent and continue to push into the policeman's comfort zone without actually escalating into an open attack, so as to make it more ambiguous?

I can only tell you what happens from my experience. They try to kick your ass and relieve you of your firearm and then shoot you with it. One of the major points raised is that there is always a firearm present in every police/citizen encounter.

I have an issue with the training in this video though. They didn't provide him with other tools such as baton, taser, and/or OC spray. Those are critical tools in any shoot/don't shoot scenario because they give the officer other options. In that video his options were seriously reduced.

The training usually has more scenarios that involve situations where someone is angry and they aggressively pull out a wallet and these scenarios usually follow those where you have been shot or had to shoot someone. In one I had this actor responds to my signal to pull over by aggressively pulling over to the side of the road and jumps out of the car with his hand behind his back while quickly approaching me and then produces a wallet.

[Lagmonster]

The training usually has more scenarios that involve situations where someone is angry and they aggressively pull out a wallet and these scenarios usually follow those where you have been shot or had to shoot someone. In one I had this actor responds to my signal to pull over by aggressively pulling over to the side of the road and jumps out of the car with his hand behind his back while quickly approaching me and then produces a wallet.

I don't like to think so, but I could very well have panicked and shot the wallet guy, which is an excellent reason why I am not a member of any profession that has to decide whether or not to use weapons on angry people. The angriest person I have to deal with is armed with nothing more threatening than a cardboard sign.

This is where you really want to turn your attention not to police daily operations, but to police hiring, screening and training procedures. Is there any way of knowing what the pass/fail rate is for policemen? I'm sure it varies based on location and need, but there ought to be some kind of general statistics which demonstrate whether police forces properly screen candidates and whether they are willing to lose staff, once hired, if they fail training.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I don't like to think so, but I could very well have panicked and shot the wallet guy, which is an excellent reason why I am not a member of any profession that has to decide whether or not to use weapons on angry people. The angriest person I have to deal with is armed with nothing more threatening than a cardboard sign.

Many recruits end up shooting this guy. That's why they have it as a scenario. To show you that people will have intense behavior at times and shooting isn't the right answer but neither is taking no action. For example in the scenario of the video I posted where he makes contact with the actor looking in vehicles who eventually ends up shooting both the activist and the journalist. When he became non-compliant simply pulling their gun, pointing it at him, while moving to a place of concealment may have obtained compliance.

This is where you really want to turn your attention not to police daily operations, but to police hiring, screening and training procedures. Is there any way of knowing what the pass/fail rate is for policemen? I'm sure it varies based on location and need, but there ought to be some kind of general statistics which demonstrate whether police forces properly screen candidates and whether they are willing to lose staff, once hired, if they fail training.

Unfortunately there isn't and I wouldn't be surprised if the figures would be disappointing and/or concerning in areas where a police union is plaguing the area. I like unions to a point but I think they have way too much power. This bullshit in NY is a prime example of that.

[Lord Relvenous]

Remember that shooting against the homeless guy we debated a while back?

Yeah, the officers are finally being charged.

Albuquerque police charged in homeless killing

Two police officers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will face charges for killing a homeless camper, their lawyers say.

Former detective Keith Sandy and officer Dominique Perez will face a murder charge in the death of James Boyd, 38.

Their lawyers argued the two will be cleared of wrongdoing.

The fatal shooting in March last year sparked city protests, some violent, and came amid a federal investigation into the police department's practices.

A year-long US investigation found Albuquerque police had inappropriately killed suspects and used more force on those with mental illnesses.

Protests against the city's police department happened before nationwide protests over the shooting deaths of unarmed black men and women by police in various US cities.

The Albuquerque police department has had more than three dozen police shootings since 2010.

The justice department ordered the city to reduce the use of deadly force in April, but another woman suspected of stealing a lorry was shot and killed weeks later.

Boyd was killed in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains on the east side of Albuquerque following a stand-off.

Protests against Boyd's killing occurred after a video emerged of police shooting him, filmed from a helmet camera.

In the video, Boyd appears to be surrendering when police shoot a stun grenade at him.

After the smoke clears, Boyd holds two small knives in his hands and police shoot him several times after yelling at him to get on the ground.

Police then tell him to put his hands out to the side and drop the knife, to which Boyd replies he can't move.

Lawyers for Mr Sandy and Mr Perez were confident their clients had done nothing wrong.

"To the contrary, he followed his training and probably saved his fellow officer's life," said Sam Bregman, Mr Sandy's lawyer.

Luis Robles, Mr Perez's lawyer, said he was "confident that the facts will vindicate Officer Perez's actions in this case".

City officials recently signed an agreement with the justice department that requires police to provide better training for officers and dismantle troubled police units.

[Lagmonster]

This is where you really want to turn your attention not to police daily operations, but to police hiring, screening and training procedures. Is there any way of knowing what the pass/fail rate is for policemen? I'm sure it varies based on location and need, but there ought to be some kind of general statistics which demonstrate whether police forces properly screen candidates and whether they are willing to lose staff, once hired, if they fail training.

Unfortunately there isn't and I wouldn't be surprised if the figures would be disappointing and/or concerning in areas where a police union is plaguing the area. I like unions to a point but I think they have way too much power. This bullshit in NY is a prime example of that.

I couldn't argue for why problems exist, but I would hope that there were at least strict minimum standards for conditioning and training of the people who can shoot me. I would be a hell of a lot more likely to forgive bad calls that end in tragedy, if I knew that the criteria for hiring and training was high enough that bad outcomes were the fault of the hard coded limits of human ability.

[RogueIce]

This is where you really want to turn your attention not to police daily operations, but to police hiring, screening and training procedures. Is there any way of knowing what the pass/fail rate is for policemen? I'm sure it varies based on location and need, but there ought to be some kind of general statistics which demonstrate whether police forces properly screen candidates and whether they are willing to lose staff, once hired, if they fail training.

Unfortunately there isn't and I wouldn't be surprised if the figures would be disappointing and/or concerning in areas where a police union is plaguing the area. I like unions to a point but I think they have way too much power. This bullshit in NY is a prime example of that.

I couldn't argue for why problems exist, but I would hope that there were at least strict minimum standards for conditioning and training of the people who can shoot me. I would be a hell of a lot more likely to forgive bad calls that end in tragedy, if I knew that the criteria for hiring and training was high enough that bad outcomes were the fault of the hard coded limits of human ability.

I don't know if there are standards for hiring, such as background checks, psych screening, etc. But most (if not all) states do have mandatory minimums for certification as a peace officer, that are set at the state level and all academies must meet. So it's not all the "Wild West" as pertains to LEO training in the US.

[Dominus Atheos]

The celebration by Ohio State students after they won the NCAA Championship: