Justice - US style

[WaspInWales]

This video is just shocking:


Pulled over for a broken tail light and the penalty is death.

The girl who streamed the events showed an amazing level of calmness considering what she had just witnessed. While the man dies after being shot 4 times after allegedly reaching for his ID as he was instructed, the cunt of a police officer is still aiming his weapon just itching to fire a few more rounds into the man or his girlfriend. All this happened in front of the woman's child.

This is just a day or so after another black man was murdered by police in Baton Rouge. Alton Sterling was pinned down on the ground by two officers who then shot and killed him.



Will the cops face charges? Be reprimanded? Lose their jobs? Lose their freedom? Face the death penalty for murder?

Answers on a postcard.

[morepork]

This is bad. The police have got to deal with the cancer in their ranks or it'll be Newark '67 all over again. That sort of disproportionate use of force is utterly unacceptable in any context. Anyone calling the outrage in response to this "PC" can go and fuck themselves.

[Which Tyler]

Seen a great post on these shootings, and the depressing regularity of similar incidents) elsewhere; says it better than I could, so I'll just copy/paste it in here:

The USA has a clear Problem with police Training. It seems every idiot can become a police officer.

It's worse than that. There are two fundamental issues which lead to this happening over and over again. The first is that a substantial fraction of US police forces appear to have the mentality of an occupying force in hostile territory and the communities they patrol reciprocate this mentality. The police buy hand-me-down military equipment from the armed forces and will generally defend one of their own as if they are soldiers fighting an enemy rather than members of the same community as the people they're dealing with.

Second, the legal system gives them too much leeway. What happened in Baton Rouge is effectively a summary execution and if a member of the actual military did that overseas, they'd be in trouble because the military has a system for dealing with such actions. It's not perfect, but at least somebody has given the issue some thought and tried to avoid conflicts of interest. We don't really have such a system for the police -- they are generally investigated by their peers and the prosecutors who are supposed to be trying to convict them are on the same "side" as the accused (and also need to keep the good will of their peers). In a high profile case like this one, the federal government might step in, but they simply don't have the resources to conduct investigations of most police misconduct. Furthermore, the law itself (not an actual law, but a Supreme Court decision) gives the police a great deal of latitude.

The result of all this is that even if the officers are trained, they treat every encounter as potentially dangerous and have absolutely no compunction about using deadly force at the slightest hint of a threat to themselves. They're acting rationally in that their policy minimizes their personal risk. In 2016 so far, 53 police officers died in the line of duty, but this includes causes like accidents and heart attacks. If you combine their statistics for gunfire and vehicular assault, you'll get something like 30 casualties which is quite low for an entire nation of gun enthusiasts. On the other hand, the number of people killed by police is somewhere around 500*(i.e. more than an order of magnitude greater than the number of police deaths).

* point of order; the count is 561... so far this year, or 1146 for last year.

[kk67]

Our Police aren't exactly blessed in the brains department.
As for the military 'having a system to deal with such actions'......Deepcut springs to mind. Or that guy who's been in court for shooting a prisoner in Afghanistan. Some people clearly thought he should be let off with a slap on the wrist.

Give young blokes guns and they'll eventually shoot an innocent. That's a scientific fact and it's endorsed by Jonny Cash.

[morepork]

The militia things is definitely apparent. State troopers are tooled up like you wouldn't believe and are an armed militia in all but name. The problem has to be acknowledged from the top down, and it will take a generation to fix, but sweet jesus does it need fixing.

[Stones of granite]

The militia things is definitely apparent. State troopers are tooled up like you wouldn't believe and are an armed militia in all but name. The problem has to be acknowledged from the top down, and it will take a generation to fix, but sweet jesus does it need fixing.

As an outsider, one of the mystifying things in the US is the shear number of law enforcement agencies, and another is the breadth of agencies that have authorisation to have armed officers. Even the IRS and the department for Veteran Affairs have armed officers. It's all rather bizarre.

[jared_7]

It seems the US police are capable of doing some fine work, and are in fact prepared to try to safely disarm a man shooting at oncoming traffic, and them, in some circumstances.

I'm sure the fact he was white had nothing to do with the difference in treatment...

http://usuncut.com/news/armed-white-man ... -alive-nc/

[WaspInWales]

It seems the US police are capable of doing some fine work, and are in fact prepared to try to safely disarm a man shooting at oncoming traffic, and them, in some circumstances.

I'm sure the fact he was white had nothing to do with the difference in treatment...

http://usuncut.com/news/armed-white-man ... -alive-nc/

What thoroughly decent chaps...all round.

There's a lesson here for people with darker skin who run into the po-po; perhaps try resisting next time. Complying hasn't worked out too well so this is the next logical step.

Don't thank me, thank William Bruce Ray.

[rowan]

More than half a century later, nothing's changed

[kk67]

The militia things is definitely apparent. State troopers are tooled up like you wouldn't believe and are an armed militia in all but name. The problem has to be acknowledged from the top down, and it will take a generation to fix, but sweet jesus does it need fixing.

The amendment needs an amendment. Yup.
Law of precedent should apply.

[canta_brian]

It seems the US police are capable of doing some fine work, and are in fact prepared to try to safely disarm a man shooting at oncoming traffic, and them, in some circumstances.

I'm sure the fact he was white had nothing to do with the difference in treatment...

http://usuncut.com/news/armed-white-man ... -alive-nc/

What thoroughly decent chaps...all round.

There's a lesson here for people with darker skin who run into the po-po; perhaps try resisting next time. Complying hasn't worked out too well so this is the next logical step.

Don't thank me, thank William Bruce Ray.

Seems that decision may have already been taken in Dallas today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-36743033

[jared_7]

It seems the US police are capable of doing some fine work, and are in fact prepared to try to safely disarm a man shooting at oncoming traffic, and them, in some circumstances.

I'm sure the fact he was white had nothing to do with the difference in treatment...

http://usuncut.com/news/armed-white-man ... -alive-nc/

What thoroughly decent chaps...all round.

There's a lesson here for people with darker skin who run into the po-po; perhaps try resisting next time. Complying hasn't worked out too well so this is the next logical step.

Don't thank me, thank William Bruce Ray.

Seems that decision may have already been taken in Dallas today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-36743033

Oh, fuck.

[rowan]

So much for having an African-American president. It it wasn't apparent before that the president of the US is no more than the puppet of the billionaires club running American & the world, it must be now. Next on stage, war criminal Hillary . . .

Meanwhile, it's all kicked off in Dallas . . .

At least five police officers have been shot dead in the United States at protests over recent police killings of black men.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/d ... 33850.html

[Mikey Brown]

What the fuck is going on?

[WaspInWales]

Perhaps if some of the bystanders and other protesters had guns, they could've taken the snipers out?

I'm sure the NRA will recommend something similar in the coming days. The only cure is more guns.

[zer0]

What the fuck is going on?

Just a heavily armed population having a slight dust up. More guns and concealed carry permits will solve it, obviously.

[WaspInWales]

So, is this a terrorist attack?

[rowan]

Perhaps if some of the bystanders and other protesters had guns, they could've taken the snipers out?

Or they might've just taken a whole lot more cops out . . .

[rowan]

So, is this a terrorist attack?

Depends how many of them are Muslims ...

[WaspInWales]

Perhaps if some of the bystanders and other protesters had guns, they could've taken the snipers out?

Or they might've just taken a whole lot more cops out . . .

It was a tongue in cheek comment but no doubt someone from the NRA or GOP will put that point of view forward in the coming days.

[Lizard]

Surely in Dallas there were enough "good guys with guns" to stop this?

[Sandydragon]

Surely in Dallas there were enough "good guys with guns" to stop this?

I wonder if the weapons used were bought legally?

Didn't Dallas (or Texas) recently pass an open carry law?

If this, plus the other incidents of large scale massacres, plus the attitude of certain police officers towards how they police their communities doesn't highlight the problem the US has with guns (legal or otherwise) then nothing will.

The incident in Dallas is disgusting, so too the excessive use of force examples against Americans who aren't white.

[rowan]

Surely in Dallas there were enough "good guys with guns" to stop this?

The only guys who could have stopped this were in Washington, including an African-American so-called leader. They had their chance to stop this many times over the past eight years that Obama has been "in power," but failed to do so - because there are no good guys on politicis. That's precisely why this is happening. Even the first African-American president has failed them. So anyone who is surprised needs to brush up on their history and read about the great revolutions and what caused them

[WaspInWales]

Surely in Dallas there were enough "good guys with guns" to stop this?

The only guys who could have stopped this were in Washington, including an African-American so-called leader. They had their chance to stop this many times over the past eight years that Obama has been "in power," but failed to do so - because there are no good guys on politicis. That's precisely why this is happening. Even the first African-American president has failed them. So anyone who is surprised needs to brush up on their history and read about the great revolutions and what caused them

I don't think it would matter who was POTUS, no-one will ever change the gun laws and the amendments that people depend on to own lethal weapons.

If the Dalai Lama was somehow made the US president, he wouldn't be able to change it either. The pro-gun lobby is far too powerful and if that wasn't enough, so many politicians are happy to add their weight to their cause.

The only opposition to it seems to be sit ins and vigils after countless people get murdered for no apparent reason.

[Rich]

Surely in Dallas there were enough "good guys with guns" to stop this?

There was....and they did.