Three strikes? Nope. Quota system? Gonna be fucked with.
You are thinking as if any kind of objective measure of guilt or motive is possible. We already know that isn't the case!
The only objective measure is "did someone die? Who killed the dead person?"
Extra punishment can be dealt out to unjustified killings, but a baseline zero tolenrence outcome of no longer being a police officer or being able to carry a gun would do a lot to stop deadly encounters/weed out bad apples.
There's a much simpler solution that is proven to work in so many other countries. Cops don't have guns except in special circumstances. Done. Punishing the cops after the fact and getting proper justice is well and good, and I'm all for it. But such vengeful justice doesn't matter to the dead person. Preventing the deaths in the first place is priority number one.
That works in other countries, because mostly citizens don't have such easy access to guns. Cops needs guns in response to citizens having guns.
That said, cops don't need metallic projectiles. So while I agree, lethal weapons should only be used in special circumstances, police would at least need to transition to non-lethal firearms in conjuncture with adequate gun control reforms.
I don't think it's wise to disarm the police, and not also disarm it's citizens, whom can be equally reckless.
See Axel's post right above yours. Police can deal with armed criminals without having guns themselves. Also, it's not like they don't have them. They just don't have them on their hip ar all times. If a situation arises where they truly need them, then they go get them. But at a traffic stop of a black guy, they won't, and a life will be saved.
If you want to argue that somehow more police lives will be lost because criminals will start gunning them down, I think you need to read the thread title again.
There's a much simpler solution that is proven to work in so many other countries. Cops don't have guns except in special circumstances. Done. Punishing the cops after the fact and getting proper justice is well and good, and I'm all for it. But such vengeful justice doesn't matter to the dead person. Preventing the deaths in the first place is priority number one.
That works in other countries, because mostly citizens don't have such easy access to guns. Cops needs guns in response to citizens having guns.
That said, cops don't need metallic projectiles. So while I agree, lethal weapons should only be used in special circumstances, police would at least need to transition to non-lethal firearms in conjuncture with adequate gun control reforms.
I don't think it's wise to disarm the police, and not also disarm it's citizens, whom can be equally reckless.
See Axel's post right above yours. Police can deal with armed criminals without having guns themselves. Also, it's not like they don't have them. They just don't have them on their hip ar all times. If a situation arises where they truly need them, then they go get them. But at a traffic stop of a black guy, they won't, and a life will be saved.
If you want to argue that somehow more police lives will be lost because criminals will start gunning them down, I think you need to read the thread title again.
I remember when the Boston Marathon bombers got found in Watertown(right by my house, as it turns out) there was an interview with one of the police officers who was involved in the gunfight. He noted that he had a shotgun in his car that he went to retrieve but had trouble getting. Perhaps instead of carrying a gun on their hip, they have a pistol and a shotgun in their patrol car, and whatever clip holds them in place is tied to a device that notes the times that each are released and that gets sent to the local precinct to be logged in a database.
If you want to argue that somehow more police lives will be lost because criminals will start gunning them down, I think you need to read the thread title again.
Not saying the populations is going around killing police, nor that non-lethal weapons aren't effective. The point is, the likely hood of police encountering a citizen in possession of a lethal weapon is far greater in America, than any other developed nation.
Therefore it's more likely that police will need to carry lethal weapons even as a precaution.
The likelihood of you encountering armed police in London is low, because no one owns assault weapons. Armed police more recently are only ever seen, if there are terror threats. Gun violence still exists, but not rife.
Gun violence is an American problem, because 2nd amendment + racism + no accountability. You have to solve all 3 issues to make an effective difference I believe.
So you're of the opinion that passing law that disarms police would do nothing to stop armed police shooting innocent and unarmed minorities, or to use your own words: wouldn't "make an effective difference"?
If you want to argue that somehow more police lives will be lost because criminals will start gunning them down, I think you need to read the thread title again.
Not saying the populations is going around killing police, nor that non-lethal weapons aren't effective. The point is, the likely hood of police encountering a citizen in possession of a lethal weapon is far greater in America, than any other developed nation.
This is true.
Therefore it's more likely that police will need to carry lethal weapons even as a precaution.
This is not true. Police around the world, including the USA, frequently handle armed, sometimes heavily armed, people. They take them into custody without any need to use arms of their own. If it is a situation where they do actually need to shoot somebody, going to get guns that are not permanently attached to their hip has never been a problem for police forces anywhere.
A more practical solution would be to have two classes of police: regular police and gun police.
Gun police have minimum salaries, high training, regular re-certification, and a very high standard, regulated at the federal level. There is a limit on how many gun police can be employed by any given police department, and they are only able to be used for specific kinds of circumstances.
A more practical solution would be to have two classes of police: regular police and gun police.
Gun police have minimum salaries, high training, regular re-certification, and a very high standard, regulated at the federal level. There is a limit on how many gun police can be employed by any given police department, and they are only able to be used for specific kinds of circumstances.
Pretty sure that's what France does. There are regular old police that do the every day stuff, and then there are the Gendarms who have guns. And then there's the GIGN who play Counter-Strike.
There really isn't too much of a significant difference between keeping guns at the station and keeping gun police at the station. I guess having gun police artificially creates more jobs since they won't be doing normal police work?
Pretty sure that's what France does. There are regular old police that do the every day stuff, and then there are the Gendarms who have guns. And then there's the GIGN who play Counter-Strike.
Not quite. The Gendarmes are your regular everyday police, the guys you're calling the regular old police are the Municipal police, who pretty much only serve in smaller towns, and are a step below the Gendarmerie. They are trained, but mostly don't carry guns(except for special duties), because they're basically the dudes who handle stuff not worth spending actual police time on, like traffic tickets, administrative issues, stuff like that, and patrolling small towns where crime isn't terribly common. If actual serious crime happens, their job is to basically get everybody out of the way and make sure nobody enters the scene, then call the real police.
The other Services are the National Police(who do carry firearms, and are the general cops for larger cities), and the National Gendarmerie, who are the big swinging dicks, and are kind of a cross between the FBI and the national guard. GIGN are part of the National Gendarmerie, and there's also overseas(mostly for international co-operation, and assisting in the policing of overseas french and french allied territories) and military components(things like guarding naval bases, or serving as millitary police) of the NG.
Pretty sure that's what France does. There are regular old police that do the every day stuff, and then there are the Gendarms who have guns. And then there's the GIGN who play Counter-Strike.
Not quite. The Gendarmes are your regular everyday police, the guys you're calling the regular old police are the Municipal police, who pretty much only serve in smaller towns, and are a step below the Gendarmerie. They are trained, but mostly don't carry guns(except for special duties), because they're basically the dudes who handle stuff not worth spending actual police time on, like traffic tickets, administrative issues, stuff like that, and patrolling small towns where crime isn't terribly common. If actual serious crime happens, their job is to basically get everybody out of the way and make sure nobody enters the scene, then call the real police.
The other Services are the National Police(who do carry firearms, and are the general cops for larger cities), and the National Gendarmerie, who are the big swinging dicks, and are kind of a cross between the FBI and the national guard. GIGN are part of the National Gendarmerie, and there's also overseas(mostly for international co-operation, and assisting in the policing of overseas french and french allied territories) and military components(things like guarding naval bases, or serving as millitary police) of the NG.
That's still a step better than the US where the same municipal police in small towns that give out traffic tickets are all carrying guns at all times.
I'd be happy to settle for properly training police in escalation of force. Instead it seems like they're increasingly training them to "Shoot first and ask questions later." If I shot somebody I better have a damn good reason. Police? He moved a little too fast! He reached for something! (after I asked him to get his license and registration). It should only be when lives are actually in danger, not when your job got a little harder. Less lethal technology keeps getting better. Normal tasers not good enough? We have paintball guns that shoot pepper balls. There are (or were) shotguns that shoot fucking taser slugs. They don't seem to have a problem shooting bystanders with rubber bullets and pepper spray, but god forbid they use them on actual criminals before heading right for the kill switch.
Honestly, if you read accounts from police officers (I specifically remember one comment made by a cop on Reddit), no amount of training will stop how paranoid US cops are. This one Reddit comment mentioned how the cop honestly worries if a black individual flags them down that it's a trick to attack them. They are so assuming that the black population wants to murder them, and because cops are basically an insular fraternity with guns, they spread that belief like wildfire, forming a protective brotherhood against the "dangerous urban population." We can't destroy decades of cops building up a racist and dangerous mindset towards the citizens they're meant to protect, so we have to take away their ability to let that faulty judgment take innocent (or even only moderately innocent) lives.
That's still a step better than the US where the same municipal police in small towns that give out traffic tickets are all carrying guns at all times.
True, but let's face it, french cops don't have a problem where they keep gunning down unarmed folk in the street, even among the cops who do carry a firearm on the daily.
And really, we shouldn't forget - the problem doesn't begin and end with cops shooting people. There's still plenty of black folk who are abused, mistreated, and killed by cops while under police care, too. The problem is a lot deeper than just people being shot.
That's still a step better than the US where the same municipal police in small towns that give out traffic tickets are all carrying guns at all times.
True, but let's face it, french cops don't have a problem where they keep gunning down unarmed folk in the street, even among the cops who do carry a firearm on the daily.
And really, we shouldn't forget - the problem doesn't begin and end with cops shooting people. There's still plenty of black folk who are abused, mistreated, and killed by cops while under police care, too. The problem is a lot deeper than just people being shot.
Yes, those other things are all problem that need fixing, but being killed is on another level. If you get abused, you can still live, file suit, get some money, have an ok rest of your life. Dead is dead.
Yes, those other things are all problem that need fixing, but being killed is on another level. If you get abused, you can still live, file suit, get some money, have an ok rest of your life. Dead is dead.
I think you're missing the forest for the tree a little here, man. I'm not saying one method of killing is better or worse than another, I'm saying that getting rid of their guns is just a stopgap solution that will only stop some of the deaths, the root cause is institutional racism and failed or absent oversight measures, and we shouldn't forget that.
I don't think anyone's arguing that getting rid of guns isn't a stopgap, just that getting rid of institutional racism is a problem that even a dozen legal reforms can't fix. That's a societal issue we have to change over time. In the meantime, we need a stopgap to lessen the amount of deaths going on, and as we've argued, getting rid of guns (in some form or another) is something that we don't feel will have a massive negative impact to outweigh the good.
On the subject of paranoia, a former coworker was a former cop from the district next to Ferguson. I'm not going to comment on his "goodness" as a cop as I'm sure he hasn't told me his entire working history, but after a particular incident where he had to go out to the parking lot to confront a loiterer he told me about a time where he stopped a vehicle and the passenger had a derringer ready to kill him. They had drugs in the car, and the only reason the guy didn't shoot him was because of him standing at an angle that prevented the guy getting a shot off, as he had learned in training. Guy admitted his intentions when he and the driver were arrested for drugs.
Disclaimer: this is not to exonerate extreme paranoia in interacting with the public, particularly black people (the suspects in the above tale were white, as well), and is just an anecdote told secondhand. Training on how and where to stand, as well as deescalation techniques, can help mitigate risk, and, theoretically, mitigate paranoia about being attacked.
Yeah, being a police officer is a dangerous job. There are crazy people out there who do want to kill you. Some amount of fear and paranoia is a given. Just because having that fear is justified, acting inappropriately because of that fear is not justified. If you don't have the courage to put yourself in harms way and NOT pre-emptively shoot someone who you believe may want to kill you, then you are not qualified to be a police officer.
I'm saying the training should sort that out. It obviously doesn't right now so we need to figure out training methods that will stop itchy trigger fingers.
I'm saying the training should sort that out. It obviously doesn't right now so we need to figure out training methods that will stop itchy trigger fingers.
I don't think they've received any training at all.
I'm saying the training should sort that out. It obviously doesn't right now so we need to figure out training methods that will stop itchy trigger fingers.
I don't think they've received any training at all.
Comments
Disarming the populace = pretty much impossible in practice
Fuck it, disarm police and let their lobby worry about disarming the populace.
You are thinking as if any kind of objective measure of guilt or motive is possible. We already know that isn't the case!
The only objective measure is "did someone die? Who killed the dead person?"
Extra punishment can be dealt out to unjustified killings, but a baseline zero tolenrence outcome of no longer being a police officer or being able to carry a gun would do a lot to stop deadly encounters/weed out bad apples.
If you want to argue that somehow more police lives will be lost because criminals will start gunning them down, I think you need to read the thread title again.
Therefore it's more likely that police will need to carry lethal weapons even as a precaution.
The likelihood of you encountering armed police in London is low, because no one owns assault weapons. Armed police more recently are only ever seen, if there are terror threats. Gun violence still exists, but not rife.
Gun violence is an American problem, because 2nd amendment + racism + no accountability. You have to solve all 3 issues to make an effective difference I believe.
Gun police have minimum salaries, high training, regular re-certification, and a very high standard, regulated at the federal level. There is a limit on how many gun police can be employed by any given police department, and they are only able to be used for specific kinds of circumstances.
There really isn't too much of a significant difference between keeping guns at the station and keeping gun police at the station. I guess having gun police artificially creates more jobs since they won't be doing normal police work?
The other Services are the National Police(who do carry firearms, and are the general cops for larger cities), and the National Gendarmerie, who are the big swinging dicks, and are kind of a cross between the FBI and the national guard. GIGN are part of the National Gendarmerie, and there's also overseas(mostly for international co-operation, and assisting in the policing of overseas french and french allied territories) and military components(things like guarding naval bases, or serving as millitary police) of the NG.
And really, we shouldn't forget - the problem doesn't begin and end with cops shooting people. There's still plenty of black folk who are abused, mistreated, and killed by cops while under police care, too. The problem is a lot deeper than just people being shot.
Disclaimer: this is not to exonerate extreme paranoia in interacting with the public, particularly black people (the suspects in the above tale were white, as well), and is just an anecdote told secondhand. Training on how and where to stand, as well as deescalation techniques, can help mitigate risk, and, theoretically, mitigate paranoia about being attacked.