Discussion for article #226672
Police officers are legal criminals (yes, not all police officers), just as priests are legal pedophiles!!!
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My jaw would have dropped to the floor if this had come as an actual surprise.
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Iâm shocked to find this out. Shocked, I tell ya!
There is no group more likely to lie for each other, or to justify WHATEVER they do by whatever means necessary, than cops.
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My brother is in law enforcement. He and all his buddies are trained to overreact to situations. Everything, except following EXACT instructions is viewed as a lethal threat.
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A few months ago, Rachel Maddow was covering the shootings of suspects detained or encountered by the FBI:
It turns out between 1993 and 2011, so an almost 20-year period, there were 150 cases where FBI agents shot someone, 70 times when an FBI agent shot and killed someone, and 80 times when an FBI agent shot and wounded someone. In those 150 cases, the FBI shooting review process ruled that all 150 of them were good shoots. Every single one of them was fine. No disciplinary action, no need for any further investigation, 150 for 150.
No comment other than a âwrongful death/shootingâ attribution appears to be a very highly unlikely outcome when the FBI shoots someone.
Thatâs the only coherent part of your screed, you really do not know any facts do you?
Youâre just another newbie coming here to firebag while adding not one coherent thought to the discussion.
Oh wait!!! Are you a sockpuppet? I think weâll take a look-see.
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No shock that this article was cop-hater bait.
As the article states:
Law enforcement and legal veterans told TPM earlier this week that a convergence of U.S. law, cultural norms and the fact that officers are frequently justified in shooting an assailant contributed to the exceedingly rare instances of an officer being charged or convicted for on-duty homicides.
âIt is really hard to convict a police officer,â Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles, said. âThey get a super presumption of innocence.â
Which is as it should be. Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Law enforcement is extraordinarily dangerous work, and it inherently involves situations where criminals respond with violence in surprising ways. Police are human beings with survival instincts like any other, but because of the line of work theyâre in, they are always a target, and always on alert, ready to respond to sudden or suspicious movements. I could go on, but, the point is that when an officer shoots someone while on-duty, in the line of work, the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions of the officer were unjustified or willfully unlawful is extremely difficult. One assumes innocence first - as is the case for all of us - and then the burden for prosecutors is to prove the officerâs actions went beyond what might reasonably be expected of an officer under the specific circumstances of the case.
For some here to rant and rave about police offers in the same broad-brush way that racists generalize negatively about others is disgusting. Itâs the same mindless process of hate simply applied to a different group of people: jump to conclusions and assign negative qualities to an entire group based on limited information in order to justify your predisposition to hate them. Bravo.
I donât say this to excuse cops for the things they do wrong. There are bad cops, just like there are bad people anywhere in society. And there are plenty of police departments with dysfunctional cultures, processes, training and management. Police work attracts a lot of people who get off on wearing uniform and acting tough - itâs an inherent problem of the profession.
But police work also attracts a lot of people who want to do good in the world, to contribute to their community, and they chose police work as a career for that reason.
Police work is inherently flawed because it is done by human beings. But letâs remember that a lot of those human beings put their lives at risk on a daily basis for you and me. A little understanding and grounding in reality is sorely missing in this and many other recent threads.
Ace hardware is having a sale on prybars.
Youâll need one to pry your lips loose from LEâs donut fat butt.
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That was enlightening. Do you actually have a response to the content of my post, or do you prefer to act like a 2nd grader by throwing your chocolate milk at me in a hissy fit and running away?
Which part do you disagree with? Can you actually form a logical, reasoned rebuttal to anything I wrote, or are you just going to pretend it isnât there and attack me personally?
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Police state.
Read those numbers to Western Europeans and they would freak. Greatest nation in the world my ass. They literally are getting away with murder.
We have three witnesses who seem credible and whose account makes it difficult to see any justification for at least six bullets being fired at Michael Brown (though at least one bullet was fired inside the police car).
Weâre getting a Fox News account (Fox News? Of course) that Officer Wilson suffered serious face wounds. But there is apparently a video of Officer Wilson walking around after the shooting and he does not appear to be bleeding nor dramatically injured. But itâs possible he may have suffered some kind of injury around the head or face. How he received those injuries, assuming some level of injury occurred, is not clear, though again any scenario put out by Officer Wilson would have to be consistent with the witnesses.
We donât know for sure what happened. In fact, a major irritation is that details have been trickling out every few days. But Iâm going to offer two possible scenarios:
In the first scenario, Officer Wilson was inside the police car and had some kind of verbal exchange with Michael Brown. For some unknown reason, Wilson grabbed Michael Brown through the window while sitting in the police car. Wilson may have grabbed Brown either by the neck or by the top of Brownâs shirt. In this scenario, it is plausible that Officer Wilson started to pull out his gun while holding on to Brown. Michael Brown saw Wilson pulling the gun and jerked back in order to break free. In breaking free, Brownâs motion pulled Officer Wilson against the frame of the car door causing whatever facial injuries occurred and also causing Wilson to fire his weapon reflexively. In this scenario, Brown was at no time inside the vehicle.
The only difference in scenario two is that Michael Brown saw the gun being pulled and broke free without injuring Officer Wilson (though Wilsonâs gun went off), but in the act of hurriedly getting out of his car, Officer Wilson injured himself on his car door.
There are other scenarios and itâs still not certain what happened. But there is a limit on the number of scenarios because of the consistent picture painted by the witnesses.
How do you justify the racial disparity?
Did the article refer to racial disparity, or are you referring to something else? Because thatâs not remotely what this article is about, and neither is my response.
Iâm guessing that youâre referring to Furguson, and the disparity between the number of AAâs in the general population as opposed to the AA representation in the local police department. If my guess is right about your comment, then I wouldnât even want to try and justify it. I could try and explain some of the factors as to why that would be, but thatâs far different than justifying it. In fact, based on what Iâve read and heard so far, Iâd place a significant bet on a major factor being that the department is âunfriendlyâ to blacks and other non-whites, and probably towards women too. I actually know a thing or two about this stuff, and there are quite a few police departments that operate as good-olâ-boy clubs. Itâs deplorable and dangerous. I suspect the Furguson PD is one of these clubs.
So, perhaps that is enough to clarify that Iâm not here to make excuses for police officers. But I think thereâs a lot of utter nonsense, ignorance and stupidity going on right now with regards to attitudes and assumptions about cops being a malevolent force in society. That kind of thinking is counter-productive in the extreme.
The financial .01% are the malevolent force that we should be angry about.
Are you suggesting that cops are equal opportunity shooters?
Do you think I suggested that anywhere? If so, where?
As opposed to asking me leading questions, why donât you make your point? Itâs a lot more effective that way.
Do you think 4 arrests per 385 homicides is equitable? Sounds pretty heavily tilted toward the cops to me.
The article was not clearly written, but as I read it, the average of 4 arrests were related to one category of homicide, and the 385 number relates to another. So, the numbers donât go together⌠or at least the article makes it appear that they donât go together. To clarify: when it refers to the arrest rate averaging 4 per year, it is in relation to:
murder or non-negligent homicide committed with a firearm while on duty
Then, when it mentions the 385 number, it is within the context of:
justifiable homicides
These appear to be very different categories. The article only touches on this second category once, whereas they go deeper into the first category again, later.
I notice you keep asking questions as if I made a statement that I havenât. I beginning to feel Iâm wasting my time here. Are you actually capable of forming your own opinion, and backing it up with a reasoned argument? Is there something Iâve actually written in my original post that you have a disagreement with, or a specific counter-argument to make against any of my specific comments?
You seem to be on a fishing expedition with your leading questions. Youâre trying to find something to argue with me about because you donât like my original comment, but you wonât actually address the content of the original comment.
Thereâs no question that the entire legal system from laws to cops to judges to prisons is racially inequitable. But your line of questing is not even linked to any facts or clear position that I can respond to, nor do any of your questions respond to the content of the article nor my comment.
Iâm not going to stay up all night responding to more non-sequiter questions and one-liners. Iâll check in the morning to see if you actually came up with anything of substance. Good night.
New data my ass; ask anyone anywhere on Earth if police have an immensely difficult job and theyâll tell you âyes, they do.â
Ask those same people if they believe police face the same measure of equality as the general public when it comes to facing the judicial consequences of their actions, and I would be stunned to hear even one of them say âYes.â
Itâs not rocket surgery. Law enforcement has a problem with lethal force happening too often with too few acknowledgements of wrongdoing. Youâre free to pretend otherwise.