It's obvious to me that police officers have lost their common sense about dealing w/"dangerous" people.

Each officer has several devices (guns, spray, taser, batton) on his belt. All require him to either have them in his hand or some distance/time to ready them.

Why on earth do these "stupid" cops get w/in 6 inches of the "dangerous" suspect? Stupidity on their part and their training.

Distance and being calm are their friends but either their personality type or their "macho" attitude demands close fierce encounters.

Stupid. Most situations are "mistakes" (guy doing nothing dangerous) and most suspects are hoping not to get shot so they are compliant. Distance and being calm reduces fear on both sides.

If the guy runs, let him. You'll catch him later. Macho attitude coupled w/fear is killing people.

(My attitude is that I would not close w/a violent animal and Man is the most violent animal.)

I love how the cop conveniently points his body camera out of sight and then like magic Alton is oozing blood from chest.

I believe the woes would be solved if the Cop unions didn't shield the scumbags from the consequences. But that also can be extrapolated to a lot of unions.

Some light reading: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2016/07/07/when-cops-and-civilians-both-have-guns/

Here’s a note to cops everywhere. Assume everybody is carrying a firearm. Take a deep breath. Be a friend to the person you have stopped. Stay calm. If a man pulls his car over, rolls his window down and announces pursuant to the law that he is carrying and agrees to produce his permit, don’t unholster your weapon and kill him. He hasn’t done anything illegal. These are basic childlike things that any fifth grader should know. And don’t tell him to put his hands up. That’s stupid. Grow up. Ask him to put his hands on the steering wheel if you can’t take the stress. But don’t tell him to produce his license and then shoot him for moving his hands. That makes you out to be the moron, not him.

There is no need for a cop to approach a motorist's window over a broken taillight.

The taillight is just an excuse. We don't in fact know if there was anything wrong with the lights. By now the vehicle has been confiscated, so we may never know.

Officers don't want to sit in their car and write B.S. tickets. This does nothing for their career. Their fellow officers would start to think they were lazy or cowardly. If they approach the vehicle they can choose to escalate the encounter in a number of profitable ways according to their judgement.

They often have quotas to meet, and if they have to stop a hundred people to find ones where they can issue high dollar tickets, or confiscate goods, or take the vehicle, well they have a job to do and they get out there and do their job.

If you fail to report enough contacts, or if you fail to meet quota for whatever the city wants this month, you get put on the bad assignments, you work the shifts nobody wants, you don't get picked for overtime, and promotions just don't come.

Any officer with the slightest lick of sense or ambition is out there actively looking at plates, looking at lights, looking at stickers, and is downright eager to find their next encounter.

It is not some kind of terrible flaw or problem with the officers, they are just working in the system they have been given.

I feel that the NRA should come to the defense of the man in the car. And all cops need to go through better psych testing and live-training to better determine that they a) aren't going to shoot someone out of aggression when the adrenaline gets sky high or b) aren't going to shoot someone out of fear whenever they hear the word gun. I have tended to believe this is a cop issue, but it does really seem that there is absolutely no trust between cops and black people anymore, that anything they do is being seen as aggressive and that the cop was in "fear for his life." We can't make this job not scare you, maybe it's time to find different employment.

Sixclaws:

"I believe the woes would be solved if the Cop unions didn't shield the scumbags from the consequences."

Bit of a problem here. There is a culture in the law enforcement community, and an important part of that culture is that you *always* protect your fellow officer, no matter what.

Not the NRA:

https://www.saf.org/saf-ccrkba-call-for-independent-probe-of-fatal-shooting-of-legally-armed-citizen/

The NRA is generally concerned with the big picture items, not individual cases. But they're not the only game in town, so...

There is a culture in the law enforcement community, and an important part of that culture is that you *always* protect your fellow officer, no matter what.

We had a long and involved discussion of that yesterday about Hillary. The question that I have, does protecting your fellow officer include when s/he's a fucking criminal?

When you exempt the enforcers of the law from actually following the law, all you breed is disdain for the law. That's not a good place to go, and the police, their leaders, and more particularly, their unions should not be in the business of protecting the guilty just because someone gave them a badge and a gun.

@Kenmce,

That coverup attitude seems to be an universal trait among unionised workers.

"That coverup attitude seems to be an universal trait among unionised workers."

I didn't know President Nixon was a union man.

My taillight's been out for ages and I've never been pulled over for it.

That coverup attitude seems to be an universal trait among unionised workers.

Sixclaws at July 8, 2016 7:55 AM

A government union's purpose is to protect the incompetent and corrupt. These same government unions also funnel a lot of money to politician's coffers. Good luck getting rid them.

@Shtetl,

Something I borrowed from Reason(dot)com: Unfortunately, there are not enough wood chippers in the world to tackle this problem.

What particularly disturbs me is that after the cops shoot someone, they do not allow bystanders to help and often don't call an ambulance--they just let them bleed to death. Many of these victims could have been saved. The same thing happens in jail where injured prisoners or those with asthma or diabetes are denied medical care. One is supposed to even treat prisoners of war better than this.
As far as the media goes, they never report police shootings of non-black persons. Almost as if they had an agenda or something.

Some years ago I got pulled over for some traffic mistake and out of state plates. It was a semi-highway. When the black cop (I am white) got to my window, I said "this spot is really dangerous, how about we move up to that gas station?" (like 300 ft ahead). We did so. When we did, I got out of the car. The cop was actually smiling. I got him out of danger and got out of the car so no worries about a concealed gun.
No, I did not get a ticket.

Oh, and The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf is right:

There is no need for a cop to approach a motorist's window over a broken taillight.

So, the person stopped won't be told why they were stopped? A cop pulled them over, photographed the car, and left.

Along with reducing traffic violations, traffic stops can be useful in capturing non-traffic criminals as well. Timothy McVeigh was captured when pulled over for not having a license plate. "...sheriff's deputies in Whittier spotted a car with an expired registration tag and ended up recovering $15,000 in stolen money and arresting four bank robbery suspects. California Highway Patrol officers ... found protected desert tortoises--you guessed it--in a car that was traveling too slow."

It's time to disarm the police. They've proven to be irresponsible with our lives and our rights.

And enough already with the thousands of tiny fiefdoms in this country. Nationalize and standardize the force and take their guns away.

"My taillight's been out for ages and I've never been pulled over for it."

I was pulled over a couple of weeks ago in a fairly upscale suburb of Austin. The reason? Burned out rear license plate lights.

(I provided the fine upstanding officer with my driver's license and Texas license to carry permit, though I was not actually carrying at the time. I had trouble pulling up my insurance card on my phone, but he was able to verify my insurance and sent me off with a warning.)

Nationalize and standardize the force and take their guns away.

Oh Deer Lord. More faceless, nameless bureaucrats who will be even less accountable to the population they "serve" since they won't be accountable to city and/or county governments.

Another TSA. Yeah, that's gonna work out well.

It's time to disarm the police. They've proven to be irresponsible with our lives and our rights. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 8, 2016 11:42 AM

We could give them whistles, like London bobbies. That way, when the criminal threatens them or someone else, they could shout, "Stop! Or I'll toot!"

Nationalize and standardize the force and take their guns away. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 8, 2016 11:42 AM

Unlike Darth, I won't be praying to a ruminant god over this. However, I will agree with his negative sentiment on it.

A local police force is answerable to local citizens and politicians. A national one with its headquarters located potentially thousands of miles from an incident, is effectively answerable to no one.

"The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement--one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative," Winkler wrote.

Why is this ironic Mr Winkler? Such laws were pushed by liberal urbanites

"A local police force is answerable to local citizens and politicians."

That certainly explains why the cops are so polite and nonviolent.

As for the "blow a whistle like the bobbies", I suppose we don't have to be like those losers in Britain, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, New Zealand - we can continue to emulate Mexico, Iraq, Somalia...you know - the civilized places of the world.

As a veteran I'd like to say that regarding the veteran who killed those police officers in Dallas - and the cops who killed those unarmed citizens - maybe America can now stop hanging the "hero" sign around our necks just because of our uniforms?

Some cops and some vets do heroic things. Some don't.

Thanks.

I'm on board w/emulating the Bobbies as long as we do not go metric.

Gog, where do you want the responsible parties for your police force to be headquartered, downtown in your own city or 1,000+ miles away in Washington, DC, where no one gets fired when someone gets caught doing wrong?

Which headquarters do you think will be more aware of local conditions and preferences in making policy.

From which headquarters do you think the politicians in charge will hear you when you complain that the police are out of hand?

Which set of politicians will your local vote affect more? Which set can balance your "no" votes with "yes" votes from other states or cities and stay in office?

A nationalized police force is always one sensationalized crime away from becoming the Gestapo.

I'm on board w/emulating the Bobbies as long as we do not go metric. ~ Bob in Texas at July 8, 2016 2:47 PM

'cause you'll always be able to attract the best and the brightest to join your police force when you tell them they'll have to take on heavily armed criminals with a nothing but a whistle. Yeah, that'll work out.

And ditto on that metric thing.

The idea of pulling people over and then having no interaction with them is massively stupid, and likely to lead to people eventually getting out of their cars in bewilderment to ask the reason for the stop. That could turn ugly if the cop is jumpy.

I've been pulled over three times for having a taillight or headlight out. I wasn't wild about the fix-it tickets, but I appreciated at least knowing why I was being stopped and what I could do about it. Under Friedersdorf's ridiculous scenario, I could have been stopped multiple times in a single trip across town without ever knowing what the hell was going on.

Once I was stopped because my registration tag was missing. I had put it on, but it had been stolen, something I didn't think really happened. (The one year I didn't score it with a razor ...)

If I'd been stopped without the cop telling me the tag was out of date, I would have assumed I had a taillight out. After my mechanic confirmed that they were both working, I would have been stumped. I have better things to do than puzzle over mysteries that don't need to exist.

The answer is better training for cops, not absurd changes in a well-established procedure for minor citations.

"'cause you'll always be able to attract the best and the brightest to join your police force when you tell them they'll have to take on heavily armed criminals with a nothing but a whistle."

Why in the blue fork would you tell them that?

Those unarmed-cop countries have armed response units for that sort of thing.

But no, let's just keep doing what we're doing, keep getting what we're getting, and then go online and complain about the police behavior like they're going to be motivated to change by our chats.

As to the "best and the brightest", I refer you to this lawsuit by a man the cops refused to hire because he was too smart and too well-educated. The chief LIKES his cops dumb and violent, and the appeals court agreed.

One more argument for a single police force with standardized hiring requirements instead of local goons doing as they please.

Link.

I'm not happy about the two men killed by police and I'm not happy about the police who have been recently killed.

Unfortunately, until the police, across all jurisdictions, modify their policies regarding interaction with the public to be less fatal then absolutely necessary, we will see more killing on both sides.

Many people consider the police a brotherhood, and if they will not take care of the bad apples, they are all seen as bad apples. All are responsible for the bad actions of a few, when all defend those few.

And the way the police respond after a police killing of an unconvicted person makes us all think they are guilty of a cover-up because they act like they are guilty and are covering up.

"One more argument for a single police force with standardized hiring requirements instead of local goons doing as they please."

Okay, let's go the other way.

In Brevard County, FL from 1963 to 1977, the Sheriff insisted that his deputies go out of their way to learn who was who. They were expected to know everyone, not easy as population grew radically with the space race, there at Kennedy Space Center.

Ever have a deputy you don't know call you by name? Ever have one hang out in the parking lot with you for an hour talking about street racers?

See, that's the actual solution to all this NOISE about militarizing police, civil rights violations, etc: knowing who you're dealing with. It's EASY to be violent with a stranger.

In the '70s, the legal environment changed, and our moral superiors said you have to treat the thug and the valedictorian the same. There went the Sheriff's mandate, and parts of the county have traded drug dealers and other thugs ever since.

Guns are great. Fucking great. And powerful guns are the greatest. Guns are one of the reasons the United States of America is a great country, far superior to wimpy countries like France, Sweden, Canada and Australia. The more guns people own, and the more powerful the guns are, the better off this country is. God bless the Second Amendment. God bless America.

Those unarmed-cop countries have armed response units for that sort of thing.

Yes, and often they have to call them to respond - after the unarmed cops figure out they need an armed response. That doubles (and triples) response times.

While unarmed community liaison officers could be an idea worth investigating, having an armed police unit nearby is also going to be necessary.

As to the "best and the brightest", I refer you to this lawsuit by a man the cops refused to hire because he was too smart and too well-educated. The chief LIKES his cops dumb and violent, and the appeals court agreed.

The case to which you refer is an outlier, and shows the depths of stupidity to which municipal (government) management can sink. That a person with an estimated IQ of 125 would get bored as a police officer in New London tells me that the NLPD is a department that does not challenge its officers. Could the guy not rise in rank to a detective? Could he not gains forensics training and work in a crime lab? No, in New London he will always walk a beat.

By all means, let's extend this kind of managerial stupidity to a national scale. That'll work.

Our genius applicant can always move to another city and apply there, unless that kind of bureaucratic stupidity has been nationalized.

If you want to know how a national police force will work, it will set standards and procedures based on the needs of the city in which the management of that force resides. Check out the nationally accepted standard for "rich" preached by Congress and accepted by the IRS, $100,000 in annual income; a luxurious wage in Des Moines, but barely a middle class income in San Francisco. OR how about cries for a national minimum wage of $15? That would be a generous wage in Des Moines, but again, barely a living wage in San Francisco.

I'm sure the federal government mandated police procedures and policies that work in densely crowded Washington, DC will work just as wonderfully in Shiprock, Arizona. The armed response unit will be no more than 4 hours away.

Nationalized police procedures work in England, Wales, and Scotland because these countries are fairly homogenous in culture and geography. The Arizona desert is a dangerous place in ways that the Bronx is not. And vice versa. Manchester and London, on the other hand, are far more comparable.

The Carabinieri are members of Italy's armed forces, so unless you're okay with the Army patrolling the streets, you might not want to use that model for a US nationalized police force.

In the Iraq war, a journalist noted that the British soldiers and the American soldiers patrolled differently. British tactical training, conditioned by years of urban warfare experience in Northern Ireland, taught the Tommies to scan rooftops and upper story windows, looking for shooters and observers. The Americans, with training based on experience in the Vietnam jungles, scanned the ground for trip wires.

Different environments require different procedures. Bureaucrats, anxious to standardize everything, never understand that.

The reality is that, despite this past week and other high profile cases, the police are not the most dangerous thing the public (even the African-American public) encounters. Most police encounters end without violence and with civil rights intact.

Not exactly the same, of course, but we're thinking along the same lines (and their robot did blast him to smithereens.)

JD (on a thread about Orlando) at June 29, 2016 10:29 PM: What someone needs to develop is a lightning-quick highly-maneuverable drone that has an AI ability to detect who the murderous monster is in a space full of people and blast him to smithereens.

NYT: The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman suspected of killing five officers with a tactic that by all accounts appears to be unprecedented: It blew him up using a robot.

"Yes, and often they have to call them to respond - after the unarmed cops figure out they need an armed response. That doubles (and triples) response times."

But mistakenly shooting a citizen only takes seconds, so let's not make any changes. Besides, nobody's all up in arms about it, right?

Everything is fine. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. We'll investigate our own and let you know if we find anything out we feel like sharing.

But mistakenly shooting a citizen only takes seconds, so let's not make any changes. Besides, nobody's all up in arms about it, right? ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 8, 2016 8:39 PM

No one said make no changes. I merely disagreed with a nationalized police force.

We definitely need a better understanding of how people react under stress, so we can reduce incidents like these. People who are stopped by the police need to have a clear idea of how to communicate cooperation with them (in any language). Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting breakdown of this in Blink using the Amadou Diallo case.

A lot of these incidents are not about racism, but about how the brain processes information in the blink of an eye. Diallo reached for his wallet and police, already keyed up, processed it as him reaching for a weapon and fired.

I was in an armed bank robbery once and my I kept telling my self "no sudden moves" trying to make sure anything I did could not be misinterpreted by the brain of the very hostile man holding a .357 Magnum. I apply that same logic in dealing with the police (or any already keyed-up heavily armed person).

Older generation Blacks knew that many small-town Southern cops would shoot first and get away w/killing blacks because that's the way things were done in the South. Lynchings were not uncommon and were definitely not an urban myth. (See below.)

This factual background of black lives not mattering, the police macho negative attitude towards Blacks during stops, the "us against them" attitude of the police, and the tolerance given towards police misconduct has created a perfect excuse for those desiring anarchy.

I say "excuse" because factually other races are killed by police. (Google "police killings by race", images)

However, facts can not override the visual evidence of police beating/killing Blacks (starting w/the Rodney King beatings).

The younger Black generation have found their voice about a issue going back for generations even though ironically black on black violence is more of a threat than police misconduct.

I believe we are in for a violent future unless the older Black generation takes control from the young and promotes forgiveness for past actions by Whites instead misguided hate for police killings that are not driven by race.

(I believe fear and heightened emotions are causing these killings rather than "I get to kill a black man today.".)

Even if they do will the younger generation respect their elders and forgive?

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/02/10/even-more-black-people-were-lynched-in-the-u-s-than-previously-thought-study-finds/?utm_term=.346459cf66f9)

I posted this a long time ago about interacting with police. Although it was about dealing with a SWAT team, you should probably remember it...

--------

Just to keep this in front of everybody, to defuse a few assumptions and outright lies:

Raids are ordered to seize criminals with their property when such property is likely to be evidence. When a raid is ordered, the officers all have a right, and some have the duty, of checking the warrant in the raid briefing. If it is known, the blueprints of the building will be gone over. Expected points of cover and concealment will be discussed and likely occupants' pictures will be passed around.

All of the armament the police use will be department issue, and so will the ammunition. Each officer will have in their service records his/her qualification to carry a weapon in the line of duty.

The nature of the raid may include a "no-knock", break-the-door entry, if the evidence can be disposed of. This is the worst sort of raid, because in many states, it is totally legal to resist any entry of excessive force with deadly force. Also, practically speaking, any person who is prepared against home invasion may assume that this is what is really happening and may shoot to kill regardless of announcements like "Police! Search warrant! Get on the floor!" and so forth. Anyone can shout these things.

Police ordered to go on these raids may have body armor and even "flash-bang" stun grenades, but this is not a guarantee against being shot; head and neck shots are still fatal to police. Consequently, anything that looks like a threat to the police will be shot more often than not.

If you want a more-chilling scenario than someone kneeling - which looks like a thug ready to shoot - consider that police have to figure out how not to shoot standing children, who will typically just stand there crying, and who are the right height to be a crouching thug ready to shoot.

There are an awful lot of people flapping figurative gums about this and that without knowing one damned thing about how raids happen. It all boils down to this:

You don't want to be shot? Don't make somebody pull a gun on you. Even police. Because no matter who you are, where you are or how good a person you think you are, bullets don't care, and the shooter usually doesn't have time to talk about the weather.

IF you have somebody with armor and and M-16 or MP-5 in the yard or in the house, your only practical chance at survival is to lie on the floor, face down, with your hands in plain sight away from anything whatsoever. If you cannot get into the yard, clear of the house, before police get to your door, do not be next to the door. If you are holding anything - dog, cat, baby, paper, comb, oxygen bottle - you greatly increase the risk you will be shot dead. If you move, you may be shot dead. Ditto if you hide your hands at any time. If anyone else in the room with you moves, that increases the chance you will be shot also, because of the possibility that you are a decoy.

These things are very tough to do because the emotional trauma of having armed troops storm your sanctuary is huge. I'm just telling you how to make the best of it, and what's really going on.

And if you had the job a cop does, you'd do exactly what he does in most cases, because the #1 consideration is for you to stay alive. You are being sent into a building after people who have already shot other people. Most cops, by the way, haven't!

If the raid is improper, you can argue the Constitution in court - but you have to survive to get there.

Be smart about this. You might think it's horrible that drug raids happen, or that all police are thugs, but that doesn't change what happens today in any way whatsoever (sorry, you're totally impotent on this issue, short-term). If it looks like an armed thug, it gets shot, and sometimes it isn't a thug. Raids happen without producing the evidence hoped-for by law enforcement all the time, too, because probable cause doesn't exist for the bulk of any thug's activities and a house or apartment is the only chance. This is part of what I meant by people not understanding what a crime is. No, arresting a dealer on the street does not result in a lasting conviction for possession. Period. Generally, a person will be arrested on the street only for evidence connecting them to a criminal act which is independent of possession.

Indignant people will blame police for other people breaking the law, and thus activating enforcement powers.