It's an idiot power struggle between the cop and the wanna-be homey, competing for dominance.

We don't shoot the people we're sworn to protect."

And, I imagine, they don't shoot you, like they sometimes do here.

I once debated with a coworker the then-recent major league baseball expansion by two teams (Tampa Bay and Arizona). He did not like expansion because the extra teams meant that sub-par players had to be admitted to the league to fill out rosters. There was a limit to how many players were actually good enough to play at that high level.

That seems to be playing out in policing. As we expand the police forces, we seem to be accepting (and arming) officers who might have been rejected in the past; that is despite expanding the pool of potential officers by including women.

We've also systematized the management of our officers. With Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like tickets issued and arrests made, we've told them simply being out there is not enough, we must see evidence that they're doing their jobs. So, instead of simply serving and protecting, they're expected to ticket and arrest. Simply clocking time on the street is no longer enough.

An officer once told me he is no longer allowed to exercise judgement on the street. He said in the past, he'd allow a public drunk to simply go home, but now he is held responsible for anything that drunk might do after he leaves the officer's custody. That means an arrest for public intoxication even if he's on the doorstep of his own dwelling.

I also wonder if it's a generational thing. A beat police officer is typically younger and less experienced. His actions on the job are informed by his high school experience and his academy training. With the education system churning out illiterate an innumerate graduates, the newer officers have a lesser education to rely on to inform their actions. As do the people they're stopping.

Hmm on the baseball-expansion analogy. A possibly related factor is that there was a time when a lot of police were ex-military. That was back when the U.S. military had over 10 million in uniform, or recently discharged, and the academies had their pick. Now we've got about 15% of that number in uniform, and a lot of them are in until they reach retirement age. (Or else they take a discharge and then go to work for a contractor.) So police academies are having to take more people who walk in from off the street.

In Noor's case, though, it's clear that he was fast-tracked through the academy so that the department could earn its diversity merit badge. The academy wasn't going to be allowed to flunk him no matter what.

I'd have a freak out too if I had a gun drawn on me for 9 minutes. Why not the taser first? What if a car drives by and backfires? Apparently there is a chasm in between where WE think an officer's appropriate show of force is and where an officer thinks his appropriate show of force is.

I could never be a cop or a doctor--for the same reason. I wouldn't handle the pressure of literally holding someone's life in my hands well.

You don't want me to take down the bad guys any more than you want me to take out your infected appendix.

The other thing about the KPIs I mentioned earlier is that those are the things the officers are measured on and judged ready for promotion.

In this article (posted earlier on the Chelsea Handler thread), the speaker, former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, relays a comment from a Web site post on a similar subject, "To put it bluntly, beat cops do not become homicide detectives by helping little old ladies across the street, and district attorneys are not reelected for dismissing cases or shrugging off acquittals."

As a result, every case, every stop, every interaction becomes a potential career-making criminal case and must be pursued as such.

Yeah, the thing is: this is going to escalate.

If someone were to point a gun at me, for no justifiable reason whatsoever, I am going to feel threatened (duh). If the person with the gun is a cop rather than some random dude on the street, maybe they get a bit more tolerance, as in, I will think again: "is there any possible justification for this".

If there's not any good reason, then the person is a thug threatening my life. If they give me a window of opportunity, I will end the threat. The only way to end a deadly threat is with deadly violence.

Is this really how cops want people to think about them, and react to them? This idiot. The Somali copy in Minneapolis. Too many other examples to count.

When the cops start threatening - and killing - innocent citizens... When the lose the faith of the people they are supposed to protect... When the gloves come off, the cops will lose. So will civilization, unfortunately, because we will then have to rely on vigilantes, which will not be pretty.

When the [police] lose the faith of the people they are supposed to protect ... the cops will lose. So will civilization, unfortunately, because we will then have to rely on vigilantes, which will not be pretty. ~ a_random_guy at August 7, 2017 10:38 AM

A majority of Southern lynchings up to the '60s were about that. The politically-connected and popularly elected sheriffs had little-to-no experience in law enforcement or investigation and lost the faith of the citizens of their communities, resulting in lynch mobs dispensing rough justice, and quite a bit of injustice, too.

Today, quite a few smaller departments across the US use officers with no Police Academy training due to money and staffing shortages.

These idiots need to stop pulling their guns whenever the breeze brushes their cheeks.

Gog's got the right of it. I understand Conan's points, but they don't work for me. Keep in mind the worst time to have an encounter with LEO is half an hour before the end of xher shift. It is imperative that they make it home alive. It's just too bad if you don't.

Additionally, there more than few cops who are slime weasels and shoot dogs for no damn good reason other than "they can get away with it".

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y9sq9f9v

If you can't be trusted to not shoot a dog that isn't a threat to you, you can't be trusted with firearm or taser.

Noor originally claimed he was "startled" by a loud noise.
"startle" means almost a reflex, a flinching. The only candidate for a loud noise is the assertion that Damond slapped the rear of the cop car as she approached.
So that means she had to walk from the rear to the front drivers side window and slightly in front of the driver. That would take several seconds and that means there's no "startle".
Seems the cops have run a search warrant on her place, probably looking for anything which would imply she was acting squirrely and which would, thus,justify the "reasonable fear" criterion. That's where you go to the evidence locker for some throw down.
Anyway, who elected these clowns? Right. The citizens of Minneapolis. Who are putting up with such nonsense daily, trusting the local paper not to mention it. This is not going to make a difference. Virtue signaling is too important.

Lotta judgment here from people who have never had someone chat them up, then change their behavior to reach for something out-of-sight. Absolutely nothing is a threat, huh? Have you not seen the news about police ambushes?

If anything, being tardy in securing the scene is the issue. If you fear guns, I see you being afraid - but the taser is NOT selected until the subject is clearly not armed, because guns beat tasers. That's why every cop carries a gun.

Are you suggesting that the public - you - should decide whether a given individual is a threat? Where are we getting this massive self-esteem, that we think this, and that situations like this have never happened before?

There is a cable TV show called "Live PD", in which several departments are followed by video crews. Perhaps a few minutes of that will tell you what the typical interaction between police and the public is.

Rad. Nothing of the kind is asserted in the Damond killing. The driver did not see a problem and did not draw.

Right, Richard. Not only did Noor watch Demond walk around the back and side of the car, he then had to draw from a seated position, and reach across his partner (who was closer to Damond and evidently didn't feel threatened) to fire the shot. If Noor was worried about an ambush, he should have been maintaining a watch around the car while his partner talked to Damond. Instead, he was looking in the same direction as his partner -- at Deamond. If that had been an ambush, those guys would have been easy targets.

I don't know if the cop was right or wrong, not seeing what occurred in the few minutes before the video started. It says talking man reached under the seat to find the whatever documents the cop asked for. Who keeps their license, registration, proof of insurance and such things under the seat? The guy in the car: his pants with the crotch just above knee level; the pseudo prison tats; the unnatural, acquired manner of speech - he's made an effort to give the impression that he identifies as some kind of criminal or thug. His effort appears to have had the intended effect on the cop. He asks the cop questions: "Why you doin' this, bro?" Why you holdin' a gun on me, man?" "Why you lyin', man?" And whenever the cop speaks the guy interrupts, challenges, disagrees with, defies, drowns out whatever the cop says. The more the cop talks the more guy escalates: interrupts more, talks more, talks louder, talks faster. When the cop's quiet - the opposite. It's interesting. You see that kind behavior every day in unstable patients in a psychiatric hospital. Most of the time they're no threat, but when interacting with them I stay out of arm's reach and don't let them get between me and the way out. Again, I don't know if holding a gun on that guy was justifiable, but if he was a patient on my psych unit I wouldn't turn my back on him.