Interesting! We have similar diaeresis in Spanish. But on the other hand, given English's spelling ambiguity and lack of overall consistency, I wonder what is the point of using this nowadays... But I guess, that article also wonders :D
You are right, only ü to break the gue and gui forms. The "diptongos" containing a weak-strong vowel combination may be broken into a "hiato" with an accent, such as: vía vs via.
This usage is correct but dropped by almost all publications, as it has fallebln out of usage (perhaps in the era of the typewriter which didn't have the necessary keys?). The New Yorker is one of the few major publications that still does it. The dieresis is used any time there are two consecutive vowels that are not voiced as a diphthong (the difference between cooperate and a coop where you keep chickens). "Cooperate" and "naive" seem to be the most common affected words (with the latter sometimes retaining the dieresis in publications that don't otherwise employ it).
We do change our style from time to time. My predecessor (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died.
This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
---
¹ Or should that be diæresis?
² Speaking of style guides: Ooh, look! An Oxford comma!
1. It's a story about a Hispanic male, most likely wrongly jailed.
2. It's about the remorse of a cop.
3. It's about the huge number of homicides in the 90's--in the Bronx--600. Now it's around 100. (That doesn't sound right? It must be more, or I got it wrong?)
4. It's about how cops put more resources into the murder of their own. Something I don't quite understand. They are paid public servants. They shouldn't be able to pick, and choose what's important?
"The murder of a former cop electrified the Forty-seventh Precinct. The next morning, phones rang constantly as Potter’s former colleagues called in for updates. The N.Y.P.D. threw all its resources behind the investigation, putting some forty officers, including Forcelli, on the case. (For most murders, two was the norm.) The pressure to make an arrest was intense."
5. It's a well written story, as usual. The end where Garry befriends a stray cat got me. I was expecting a state penal regulation stating prisoners coudn't feed/keep stray cats, but it's o.k., according to this. That was the only bright spot in the article.
I don't buy that police work has imporoved significantly since the ninties though.
(I'm a little biased--maybe? I interned at a Coroner's office while in high school. I only saw great detective work one time. A female model, who specialized in nudes, was found dead. These dectives investigated it forever. Personally, I thought she just overdosed, but who an I? In all honestly, most people who died in my county died of natural causes, or suicide. Murder was very rare.)
> this was a case of mistaken identity. “I always
> wondered—and it sounds weird—how did it feel to
> these guys who arrest the wrong guy?” Forcelli
> told me. “It feels terrible.”
Thing is, it arrest actually IS a problem. It's often said that any decent prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. Throw in a dash of racism or classism, and you've got a recipe for sending lots of people to jail who didn't commit the crime. Every step of the way needs to responsible and honest in order to mitigate this problem as much as possible. Can't just let cops do whatever they please under the premise that the prosecutor's office will figure out the truth.
The mere arrest can totally disrupt your life. Lost job if you miss work. Loss of trust with friends and family. Lost money if you can afford bail. Confusion in your kids if you suddenly have to get someone to pick them up from school that day, and arrange for care. Record of arrest.
Bail is the opposite. If you can afford it you get the money back if you show up to your court date. If you can't you go to a Bail bondsman and pay 10% up front - but you don't get it back at all.
This job should be made a institution, a office of last appeals, allowing to reopen every case, should new evidence surface or the involved persons, methods and legal proceedings give cause for reasonable doubt.
Yes. England and Wales have for a while had the Criminal Cases Review Commission. If they see a case that suggests a miscarriage of justice, even after twenty years or the exhaustion of appeals, they can send the case back to the Court of Appeal. It's done some good work.
Well, I'd hope not. In general TV and movie cop dramas present exceptionally poor models of policing which emphasize aggression, violence, and a contempt for the public. The last thing I'd want is for any police officer to model themselves after those distorted depictions of what a cop should be.
Within the context of the article at large and his work in revisiting old cases and getting convictions overturned, I think the more likely reading of 'colored by the cop dramas he watched growing up' is that he's taking inspiration from the characters pursuing truth at all costs, with 'to hell with 'the system'' attitudes, etc.
>The last thing I'd want is for any police officer to model themselves after those distorted depictions of what a cop should be.
Most real life cops are much worse (sexist, racist, aggressive, easy to lie/tamper if they don't like a suspect, easy to pull the trigger, etc). So even the average tv cop as a role model would be an improvement.
I don't think that's true. This doesn't describe any of the police officers at London's Metropolitan Police Service (or the NYPD for that matter) I ever interacted with.
That clears it up then! I on the other hand have had plenty of questionable interactions with (and due to) police officers in different parts of the US, which have ceased once I hit middle age.
The question you have to ask yourself is if you did something completely legal, but rude and obnoxious to a police officer (say calling them a "dirty pig") every time you saw one, would they turn the other cheek (as they're supposed to) or would they endeavor to harass, arrest, assault you?
While YMMV there is an interesting difference to policing in the UK and the USA.
In the UK, the officer calls you "sir" or "ma'am" and you call then whatever you want to ("occifer" and "cuntstable"
being perennial favourites).
In the US, you call the officer "sir" or "ma'am" and they call you whatever they feel like (my interactions have almost always been polite, but I've witnessed "boy", "punk", "shithead")
Gonna go ahead and venture a guess that you're not a black or Latino male ages 14-24. I think you'd be surprised by just how different experiences are.
For one, your Twitter profile and other info is in your profile pic.
Second, parent didn't say "you are X" but that they'd "venture a guess" based on the specific context of what had been said. So they don't need anything else (personal backstory etc) to make it -- just to apply what they know/believe is the general case for people making similar statements (positive view on the police behavior etc).
Even if you specifically are not white, it doesn't mean what the parent said doesn't apply in the general case: that whites generally have smoother interactions with the police, so their appreciation of how policemen are is more positive.
While the Swiss guard in the Vatican may look like something out of Alice in Wonderland in their parade outfits, you really do not want to mess with them; in addition to their medieval kit they also serve in plain clothes, carrying such hardware as Glocks and HK MP5's.
If your point was that they have better people skills than many US police officers, though, I agree fully. (Probably more fair to compare the Swiss guard to some elite squad in the US - I would be very much surprised if they didn't get quite literally hundreds of applications for each position, allowing them to be very, very picky.
Luckily that's not true; there's about 810.000 police officers in the US (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...) (or 266 per 100K people); if they were all like that, you'd see a police murder incident several times a day.
Instead, the US has toddlers shooting people every day.
Lots of cops have batons. It's surprisingly easy to crack some ribs with those things. I guess they could also just hit people with cars - car accidents are pretty common overall, so it might just blend into the noise.
some other ways that deaths occur in police custody: suffocating, heart attacks induced by tasing, beating, denying/delaying medical treatment for existing injuries, denying access to prescription medications, leaving someone handcuffed on the floor of a van and driving around recklessly until they break their neck
"Shot and killed" is not "murder"; murder by shooting is a subset of those. However unfortunate it may be, the base rate of police shootings isn't ever going to be zero in a diverse country of 300 million or so.
Australia had 94 fatal police shootings in the 19 years from 1992 to 2011. That's about 5 per year. Australia didn't institute significant gun control until the gun buy back in 1996, so for at least 4 of those years Australia was a heavily armed country - a good analog for the US. Germany has a small handful of police shootings per year (6 - 8 on average). Many years that number is zero. England & Wales managed to go 24 years with only 54 police shootings total. So roughly 2 per year. Germany, the UK, and Australia are all plenty diverse.[1]
Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better. It's excusing terrible performance rather than demanding accountability. The US currently has 1000 - 2000 police involved shootings per year. Every year. We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that. A lot of those shootings can be traced back to police hiring and training practices which can unquestionably be improved.
"Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better."
No, it doesn't, and that's a hostile attitude to take.
"We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that."
Exactly how much better? Or are you demonstrating an unwillingness to address the issue concretely? Or do you perhaps not like that excessively hostile attitude on my part?
The situation is complicated, and people like to fling around statistics with the apparent intent to simply inflame passions with no regard for the result it produces. So the US has been talking all about this for the last year or so... has it improved the situation any, or has the inflammatory rhetoric actually made things worse? I look to results, not words, and I can make a far better case for the latter than the former. So I'm pretty unimpressed by the attempt to socially shame me into accepting a line of rhetoric that from my point of view has killed more than it has helped. (My current estimate is in the mid-hundreds at a minimum, just to put some numbers on it.) Whatever the solution is, this doesn't appear to be it.
I also consider the fact that it is visibly not working to trump any other vague arguments, such as, say, "but it's raising awareness". So what? It's not working. Awareness is not the end goal some people seem to think it is, it's as best a method to attain some goal, and that goal is not being attained. This rhetoric line is killing more people and corroding social fabric. Concrete results don't get changed by hypothesizing about how they could have possibly been good maybe sorta in an alternate universe. Do we care about reducing the violence, or do we just want to feel brief moments of emotional catharsis by blaming everything on cops? Because if it's the former, a change in approach is needed.
"shot and killed" is either accidental (negligent homicide, a form of murder in the U.S. legal system) or intentional (uncontroversially homicide).
in the case of intentional we can distinguish between self-defense shootings and aggravated shootings. self-defense shootings might not have been intended to kill, in which case it could be merely aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, resulting in accidental death (i.e. manslaughter). the legal system here allows for juries to find a shooter non-culpable of homicide if there is a clear case for self-defense. legal non-culpability is a technicality (i.e. no criminal conviction), it doesn't mean there was no homicide involved. the other guy is still dead by the actions of another human. murder.
I looked at the data collection methodology. It looks like they are just web scraping news sites?
Right now, when a police officer kills someone, there's no national database to report the incident.
I was told the problem is every state, city, town, providence has their own protocol. They all have their own Police Squad, and ways of handling events. So basically, we have a bunch of Public Servants with high school diplomas, and not much training. Since there's no national standards/licensing who knows what they are trained to do?
Why isn't their a national registry that all law enforcement personnel should have to report to? I'm not just concerned about killings either.
I want a full account of what that officer/anyone with a gun and the authority to ruin someone's life does during their shift. I want details of every stop. Every call.
It seems like it wouldn't be much of a problem with our current technology?
We could fire the bad cops? We could promote the good cops? We could identify speed traps? We could cut down on the abuses I see daily? And we could get the money to the areas that actually need extra police presence?(federal grants, etc.).
The time has come for change, and strict accountability. I'm a white guy, live in a upper income area, but for as long as I can remember these cops are allowed to do pretty much whatever they like. I have lost track of the times I was pulled over for no reason. I can't imagine what minorites have to go through.
> 963 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016
And please outline every one of those situations. Because those are just numbers, nothing else.
- How many of those were suspects who threatened a cop with a gun or some other weapon?
- How many of those were a suspect was assaulting a cop and he drew his weapon to save his own life?
- How many of those where a suspect refused the orders of the cops to put down a dangerous weapon and surrender?
In fact, all you have is numbers. Without any context, those numbers are useless.
By comparison, in Chicago this year, there were 762 homicides. That's ONE CITY which nearly equals the entire country's worth of people being killed by police in the same time frame.
An important distinction: many of those who killed someone in Chicago ended up in jail. Mike Brown's, Eric Garner's and Tamir Rice's killers are all walking free.
There's some context for you, but I'm guessing that's not what you were after.
I'm not saying that cops were in the right in every one of those situations. It just means there's no context in a majority of those incidents - which is critical to determine if the cop was justified in what he did.
Likewise, the context is critical for each of the examples you listed. . .
Mike Brown - So much evidence that contradicted the whole "hand up, don't shoot" narrative:
In summary, the DOJ report concluded: There are no witnesses who could testify credibly that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was clearly attempting to surrender. The accounts of the witnesses who have claimed that Brown raised his hands above his head to surrender and said “I don’t have a gun,” or “OK, OK, OK” are inconsistent with the physical evidence.”
The whole incident took place after Brown had just committed a strong arm robbery and assaulted the owner of a shop. There's a mountain of evidence that proves officer Wilson was well within his rights to shoot Brown but I won't go down that rabbit hole at this point.
Eric Garner - I would agree the cops acted callously in arresting Garner. That should have been a standard arrest. Take him to the ground, cuff him and put in the car. The cops were wrong in this scenario, and should have done a better job of simply cuffing Garner and getting him in the car - especially when he kept saying he couldn't breathe. There is however, still some responsibility on Garner's part that he resisted arrest in the first place, which then resulted in the officers putting him in the choke hold that eventually killed him. Had he simply allowed the officers to arrest him without incident, he'd probably still be alive today.
Tamir Rice - This was an egregious act on the cops part. Not only did the callers mention that the gun was probably fake, the dispatcher didn't rely that to the cops who showed up. The cop also acted way too fast in drawing his gun and shooting Tamir immediately without hesitation or warning. A $6 million settlement probably confirms this was the case. Not to mention the officer in question had also been deemed "unsuitable and emotionally unstable" in his last position in a different county and shouldn't even been allowed to be a cop again.
There are about 3 times as many people living in Chicago as there are police officers in the United States. So all your Chicago stat tells us is that police officers are much more likely to kill people than the average citizen in Chicago.
According to that 811 people were shot and killed by police in 2016 who had a weapon. So a significant % of those killed did indeed have a weapon. I clicked on a few stories of unarmed people shot and killed by police and in some cases it seems obviously justified eg they were driving a vehicle as a weapon or attacked an officer reaching for the officers weapon.
In other cases its less so, eg man killed on 12 December after neighbours mistook his crucifix for a gun or 22 November where a teenager was shot in the back for running from the police or 16 September where a mans car broke down in the road and was shot by police despite clearly complying with instructions.
"Instead, the US has toddlers shooting people every day."
Do you have a source for that? I Googled it and found an article from 2015 that cited less than 1 toddler shooting per week, no where near one per day!
While tragic, that is substantially different from one per day :) I don't know if there is anything we can do to fix stupid, but better education may reduce the frequency of these tragic events.
I don't generally like cops either, but saying most or them behave a certain way based on your own experience doesn't really work, as you've probably interacted with <1% of them.
Television and movies absolutely over-emphasize the aggression and violence, but most police officers that I know who have been on the job for more than a few years have very obvious contempt for anyone they don't feel is on "their side." If you're not employed by or a vocal supporter of the criminal justice system you are a rung below everyone who is.
I've worked with several hundred state and local police officers in my career through various jobs and it is a pervasive belief.
I live in New York City. our situation is even worse here than what you describe. The Police Department, mostly through the political action of its various unions, actually considers the Mayor's office and the people of the city to be their enemies.
You have to remember he grew up in the 60's and 70's, so you can't use today's cop shows. Back then, they had things like Dragnet and Adam-12, which portrayed things differently.
I can't bring myself to care about the effect of media on cops with any higher level of concern than other areas.
TV and movies portray exceptionally poor models of most aspects of life, and are among the primary sources large swaths of the population model themselves after.
I do it, you do it, everyone does. And we all lie to ourselves with the same lie we use for advertising: "Oh of course I know it's unrealistic and dramatized for affect (or deliberately manipulative), but it doesn't effect me.
I hate to be the sanctimonious European on HN, but I was really surprised to read that 3 days and 2 detectives is all that is (or was) used to investigate a murder. From American films and tv we get the impression of maverick cops with this gung-ho attitude who investigate alone or with one partner. This article makes me wonder how close to reality is this?
You really shouldn't base your understanding of a society on media presentations, other than perhaps very lightly. I just watched a Belgian crime show "La Treve" / The Break on Netflix, but it doesn't mean I assume every Belgium small town is rife with murder and intrigue.
Good, so you've seen one 10-episode Belgian series. We've seen hundred, thousands of of American series and movies (and books). After a while we begin to be able to pull out some constants that are represented, and more importantly and more interestingly, we become able to see the constants which are not purposely represented.
You don't realise the massive power of the American cultural imperialism. It is a steamroller: most European people have a better knowledge of the police and justice systems of the USA than of their own country!
(And that's not only about fiction but about the news: we also know better the political system and political life of the USA than the ones of our neighbouring countries. We still know our own better, luckily :-) )
It is true. A lot euros use "free speech, free speech" but majority of countries dont have one! It's an American concept.. You'd be surprised how much the cultural influence America has over here!
So 80% of known killers are apprehended, 20% aren't? That sounds totally believable - in reality, many communities most affected by homicides are places where police can't guarantee your safety, so speaking to the police could get you targeted as well. Or the people who know the killlers identity are more inclined to just do the killing themselves, rather than wait for police.
Moreover, it's tough for a interpersonal conflict to rise to the level of homicide without someone else noticing.
Well then adjust it to having enough evidence to mark it as cleared.
If you can't accept that police will often know who committed a murder without having sufficient evidence, you're denying the messiness of the real world.
I agree that the above 'statistic' was [probably made up, but there are still plenty of murders that could be solved with 2-3 days or less of 'foot-on-the ground' investigation work (Obviously going to take longer on a time-line considering lab tests, autopsies, and all of that stuff taking longer in many instances to get results back before you can close the investigation).
What's worse is that this is highly unlikely to be the only case in which Forcelli sent the wrong person to jail. I don't know if he's come to that realization yet.
All police are represented by the worst of the police. Therefore it would be in their interest to weed out the bad cops. Instead, they line up and protect them. Thus they make the public perception of police even worse. It then becomes manifestly clear that the police are not about protecting the public. Especially from bad police.
All Muslims are represented by the worst of the Muslims. All black people are represented by the worst of the black people. Therefore it would be in their interest to weed out their own worst members.
I think yours is a flawed analogy, but I am not sure I can articulate why - but here goes:
Noone can force you to leave the Muslim or the black population; you are what you are, and so any suggestion that someone should be removed from that population is pointless (unless, of course, one thinks murder is an acceptable method; I am not suggesting that you do)
The police (or engineers; nurses; judges; etc) are a professional body; it is in their best interest that certain minimum standards apply to all members, thus making the public trust the competence of any representative.
I think you did a fine job articulating the difference.
It's not the fact that there are bad apples people are angry about (we understand there are bad apples in every profession). It's the absolute lack of accountability that is the issue.
There are probably a few anti-cop sentiments in here, but on the other hand instantly responding to a thread on US police culture criticism as an automatic "anti-cop dumpster fire" doesn't help matters either.
From my perspective, there is a bit of an American law enforcement culture problem. Broadly speaking, I see it as quite a bit overly-militaristic / "them vs. the bad guy" oriented, and too little oriented towards the dull community service type things that in reality is more likely to make up most of a police officer's job (http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21649507-when-la...). This explains much of the other problems, such as overly-aggressive behavior that I've personally only encountered from American cops (vs other Western nations), and often over-aggressive prosecuting where there is too much pressure to convict.
None of this necessarily reflects anything on individual officers at all. I've encountered all kinds, and broad, sweeping statements about "all cops" are going to be wrong. However, nothing will change to improve law enforcement culture if statements like the above are perceived as "anti-cop". Sadly, that sometimes seems like what happens in any debate on American law enforcement...
108 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 51.3 ms ] threadBesides ü?
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-t...
We do change our style from time to time. My predecessor (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died.
This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
---
¹ Or should that be diæresis?
² Speaking of style guides: Ooh, look! An Oxford comma!
1. It's a story about a Hispanic male, most likely wrongly jailed.
2. It's about the remorse of a cop.
3. It's about the huge number of homicides in the 90's--in the Bronx--600. Now it's around 100. (That doesn't sound right? It must be more, or I got it wrong?)
4. It's about how cops put more resources into the murder of their own. Something I don't quite understand. They are paid public servants. They shouldn't be able to pick, and choose what's important?
"The murder of a former cop electrified the Forty-seventh Precinct. The next morning, phones rang constantly as Potter’s former colleagues called in for updates. The N.Y.P.D. threw all its resources behind the investigation, putting some forty officers, including Forcelli, on the case. (For most murders, two was the norm.) The pressure to make an arrest was intense."
5. It's a well written story, as usual. The end where Garry befriends a stray cat got me. I was expecting a state penal regulation stating prisoners coudn't feed/keep stray cats, but it's o.k., according to this. That was the only bright spot in the article.
I don't buy that police work has imporoved significantly since the ninties though.
(I'm a little biased--maybe? I interned at a Coroner's office while in high school. I only saw great detective work one time. A female model, who specialized in nudes, was found dead. These dectives investigated it forever. Personally, I thought she just overdosed, but who an I? In all honestly, most people who died in my county died of natural causes, or suicide. Murder was very rare.)
Convicting the wrong guy, especially if you know they're the wrong guy even as 'due process' finds them guilty - now that's another issue entirely.
Well, I'd hope not. In general TV and movie cop dramas present exceptionally poor models of policing which emphasize aggression, violence, and a contempt for the public. The last thing I'd want is for any police officer to model themselves after those distorted depictions of what a cop should be.
Most real life cops are much worse (sexist, racist, aggressive, easy to lie/tamper if they don't like a suspect, easy to pull the trigger, etc). So even the average tv cop as a role model would be an improvement.
... because they can.
In every area, power and money don't change you, they merely reveal who you are.
In the UK, the officer calls you "sir" or "ma'am" and you call then whatever you want to ("occifer" and "cuntstable" being perennial favourites).
In the US, you call the officer "sir" or "ma'am" and they call you whatever they feel like (my interactions have almost always been polite, but I've witnessed "boy", "punk", "shithead")
Edit: see also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop
Second, parent didn't say "you are X" but that they'd "venture a guess" based on the specific context of what had been said. So they don't need anything else (personal backstory etc) to make it -- just to apply what they know/believe is the general case for people making similar statements (positive view on the police behavior etc).
Even if you specifically are not white, it doesn't mean what the parent said doesn't apply in the general case: that whites generally have smoother interactions with the police, so their appreciation of how policemen are is more positive.
If your point was that they have better people skills than many US police officers, though, I agree fully. (Probably more fair to compare the Swiss guard to some elite squad in the US - I would be very much surprised if they didn't get quite literally hundreds of applications for each position, allowing them to be very, very picky.
Instead, the US has toddlers shooting people every day.
> 963 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016
And that is just shootings, never mind other methods of murder.
Don't downvote blindly, I was really wondering how "lawful" death could occur without gun in self defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner
That's also a not entirely uncommon occurence.
USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/08/cops-gagged...
Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semira_Adamu
South Africa http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/01/south-african-police-suff...
Sweden http://filmingcops.com/witnesses-horrified-as-cop-beats-and-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray
Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better. It's excusing terrible performance rather than demanding accountability. The US currently has 1000 - 2000 police involved shootings per year. Every year. We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that. A lot of those shootings can be traced back to police hiring and training practices which can unquestionably be improved.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-...
No, it doesn't, and that's a hostile attitude to take.
"We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that."
Exactly how much better? Or are you demonstrating an unwillingness to address the issue concretely? Or do you perhaps not like that excessively hostile attitude on my part?
The situation is complicated, and people like to fling around statistics with the apparent intent to simply inflame passions with no regard for the result it produces. So the US has been talking all about this for the last year or so... has it improved the situation any, or has the inflammatory rhetoric actually made things worse? I look to results, not words, and I can make a far better case for the latter than the former. So I'm pretty unimpressed by the attempt to socially shame me into accepting a line of rhetoric that from my point of view has killed more than it has helped. (My current estimate is in the mid-hundreds at a minimum, just to put some numbers on it.) Whatever the solution is, this doesn't appear to be it.
I also consider the fact that it is visibly not working to trump any other vague arguments, such as, say, "but it's raising awareness". So what? It's not working. Awareness is not the end goal some people seem to think it is, it's as best a method to attain some goal, and that goal is not being attained. This rhetoric line is killing more people and corroding social fabric. Concrete results don't get changed by hypothesizing about how they could have possibly been good maybe sorta in an alternate universe. Do we care about reducing the violence, or do we just want to feel brief moments of emotional catharsis by blaming everything on cops? Because if it's the former, a change in approach is needed.
in the case of intentional we can distinguish between self-defense shootings and aggravated shootings. self-defense shootings might not have been intended to kill, in which case it could be merely aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, resulting in accidental death (i.e. manslaughter). the legal system here allows for juries to find a shooter non-culpable of homicide if there is a clear case for self-defense. legal non-culpability is a technicality (i.e. no criminal conviction), it doesn't mean there was no homicide involved. the other guy is still dead by the actions of another human. murder.
Right now, when a police officer kills someone, there's no national database to report the incident.
I was told the problem is every state, city, town, providence has their own protocol. They all have their own Police Squad, and ways of handling events. So basically, we have a bunch of Public Servants with high school diplomas, and not much training. Since there's no national standards/licensing who knows what they are trained to do?
Why isn't their a national registry that all law enforcement personnel should have to report to? I'm not just concerned about killings either.
I want a full account of what that officer/anyone with a gun and the authority to ruin someone's life does during their shift. I want details of every stop. Every call.
It seems like it wouldn't be much of a problem with our current technology?
We could fire the bad cops? We could promote the good cops? We could identify speed traps? We could cut down on the abuses I see daily? And we could get the money to the areas that actually need extra police presence?(federal grants, etc.).
The time has come for change, and strict accountability. I'm a white guy, live in a upper income area, but for as long as I can remember these cops are allowed to do pretty much whatever they like. I have lost track of the times I was pulled over for no reason. I can't imagine what minorites have to go through.
And please outline every one of those situations. Because those are just numbers, nothing else.
- How many of those were suspects who threatened a cop with a gun or some other weapon?
- How many of those were a suspect was assaulting a cop and he drew his weapon to save his own life?
- How many of those where a suspect refused the orders of the cops to put down a dangerous weapon and surrender?
In fact, all you have is numbers. Without any context, those numbers are useless.
By comparison, in Chicago this year, there were 762 homicides. That's ONE CITY which nearly equals the entire country's worth of people being killed by police in the same time frame.
There's some context for you, but I'm guessing that's not what you were after.
Likewise, the context is critical for each of the examples you listed. . .
Mike Brown - So much evidence that contradicted the whole "hand up, don't shoot" narrative:
In summary, the DOJ report concluded: There are no witnesses who could testify credibly that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was clearly attempting to surrender. The accounts of the witnesses who have claimed that Brown raised his hands above his head to surrender and said “I don’t have a gun,” or “OK, OK, OK” are inconsistent with the physical evidence.”
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/why-did-justice-departme...
The whole incident took place after Brown had just committed a strong arm robbery and assaulted the owner of a shop. There's a mountain of evidence that proves officer Wilson was well within his rights to shoot Brown but I won't go down that rabbit hole at this point.
Eric Garner - I would agree the cops acted callously in arresting Garner. That should have been a standard arrest. Take him to the ground, cuff him and put in the car. The cops were wrong in this scenario, and should have done a better job of simply cuffing Garner and getting him in the car - especially when he kept saying he couldn't breathe. There is however, still some responsibility on Garner's part that he resisted arrest in the first place, which then resulted in the officers putting him in the choke hold that eventually killed him. Had he simply allowed the officers to arrest him without incident, he'd probably still be alive today.
Tamir Rice - This was an egregious act on the cops part. Not only did the callers mention that the gun was probably fake, the dispatcher didn't rely that to the cops who showed up. The cop also acted way too fast in drawing his gun and shooting Tamir immediately without hesitation or warning. A $6 million settlement probably confirms this was the case. Not to mention the officer in question had also been deemed "unsuitable and emotionally unstable" in his last position in a different county and shouldn't even been allowed to be a cop again.
According to that 811 people were shot and killed by police in 2016 who had a weapon. So a significant % of those killed did indeed have a weapon. I clicked on a few stories of unarmed people shot and killed by police and in some cases it seems obviously justified eg they were driving a vehicle as a weapon or attacked an officer reaching for the officers weapon.
In other cases its less so, eg man killed on 12 December after neighbours mistook his crucifix for a gun or 22 November where a teenager was shot in the back for running from the police or 16 September where a mans car broke down in the road and was shot by police despite clearly complying with instructions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...
But your point is a bit of a strawman. You can still have dishonest/aggressive/sexist/racist behavior that does not result in death.
Funny you should say that, since with ~1100 murders last year [1], that's indeed one such incident "several times a day".
And of course you can be agressive, impolite, sexist and racist, as an officer without murdering anyone too.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/15/us-police-ki...
Do you have a source for that? I Googled it and found an article from 2015 that cited less than 1 toddler shooting per week, no where near one per day!
https://twitter.com/SUPGVNetwork/status/816283238285135872
I've worked with several hundred state and local police officers in my career through various jobs and it is a pervasive belief.
Some 60's (including seeing 60's shows in the early 70's in reruns), mostly 70's, and then 80's through '84.
Also, Starsky and Hutch & Barney Miller in his formative years. I think my point still stands.
TV and movies portray exceptionally poor models of most aspects of life, and are among the primary sources large swaths of the population model themselves after.
I do it, you do it, everyone does. And we all lie to ourselves with the same lie we use for advertising: "Oh of course I know it's unrealistic and dramatized for affect (or deliberately manipulative), but it doesn't effect me.
You don't realise the massive power of the American cultural imperialism. It is a steamroller: most European people have a better knowledge of the police and justice systems of the USA than of their own country!
(And that's not only about fiction but about the news: we also know better the political system and political life of the USA than the ones of our neighbouring countries. We still know our own better, luckily :-) )
The official police are always bumbling morons and most crimes are solved by a quirky amateur with a personal connection to the case.
Why don't you guys just hire better police? Maybe Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Miss Marple should be running Scotland Yard.
You also forgot the bizarre way TV/Movies compare law enforcement agencies as well:
1) Local cops are the smart ones - FBI are the idiots
2) FBI are the smart ones - Local cops are the idiots
3) CIA/Gov Agents are the smart ones - FBI/local cops are the idiots
4) Local detectives are the smart ones - CIA/FBI/Gov agents are the idiots
It's kind of funny to see how each agency is either propped up or summarily demonized - and it changes in every movie or TV show.
TV shows are of course centered around cases where the ID of the murderer is harder to prove. That's just basic storytelling.
[1] http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-t...
Moreover, it's tough for a interpersonal conflict to rise to the level of homicide without someone else noticing.
If you can't accept that police will often know who committed a murder without having sufficient evidence, you're denying the messiness of the real world.
Come on.
Noone can force you to leave the Muslim or the black population; you are what you are, and so any suggestion that someone should be removed from that population is pointless (unless, of course, one thinks murder is an acceptable method; I am not suggesting that you do)
The police (or engineers; nurses; judges; etc) are a professional body; it is in their best interest that certain minimum standards apply to all members, thus making the public trust the competence of any representative.
It's not the fact that there are bad apples people are angry about (we understand there are bad apples in every profession). It's the absolute lack of accountability that is the issue.
From my perspective, there is a bit of an American law enforcement culture problem. Broadly speaking, I see it as quite a bit overly-militaristic / "them vs. the bad guy" oriented, and too little oriented towards the dull community service type things that in reality is more likely to make up most of a police officer's job (http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21649507-when-la...). This explains much of the other problems, such as overly-aggressive behavior that I've personally only encountered from American cops (vs other Western nations), and often over-aggressive prosecuting where there is too much pressure to convict.
None of this necessarily reflects anything on individual officers at all. I've encountered all kinds, and broad, sweeping statements about "all cops" are going to be wrong. However, nothing will change to improve law enforcement culture if statements like the above are perceived as "anti-cop". Sadly, that sometimes seems like what happens in any debate on American law enforcement...