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Author | Topic: Police Shootings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Hyroglyphx writes:
If I was going to argue that point, I would argue that point. My point is that we can't extrapolate that point.
As I said, sometimes it is necessary to take the life of a violent felon in order to save an innocent hostage. Are you really going to argue that point? Hyroglyphx writes:
Hmm... that doesn't sound like any central point that I would make. Maybe you can quote where I said any such thing. The central point that I thought I was trying to make was that cops shouldn't get a free pass just because their jobs are "dangerous". That was your central point! You made the suggestion that the police are so quick to be heavy-handed in light of numerous instances that we ought to disarm them. I don't know if I have ever advocated disarming cops. Maybe you can refresh my short memory on that. I did mention that many cops manage to do their jobs without shooting people.
Hyroglyphx writes:
Well, I seem to recall saying that shitty cops are more likely to make fatal mistakes with guns than without guns.
If the real issue is shitty cops then whether they're armed or not seems like a secondary issue to the real problem, no? Hyroglyphx writes:
Point of information: I come from a Mennonite background. In case you're not aware, Mennonites are pacifists. I'm not a good Mennonite by any means, but I am in favour of disarming the military whether they make incorrect decisions or not. That is, however, a separate issue from the police. In any case, if a standing army was making incorrect force decisions in combat, would your solution be to disarm the military or would your solution be to increase training and increase punitive measures against those who violate the rules of engagement?And our geese will blot out the sun.
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
We all know, or should know, that most people are murdered by people they know. I could look up the statistics, and if someone doubts this then I will, but for now I just want to stay on point and make sure it is clear that most people are not murdered by strangers.
It's important this is clear because I want to relate a statistic I just heard cited by DeRay McKesson of Black Lives Matter while speaking on Face the Nation: one third of people murdered by strangers are murdered by police officers. This isn't a black or white issue. This is an every person issue. There are around 326 million people in this county. Any one person can only know so many people, maybe a few thousand at the very most, so by definition almost everyone in this country is a stranger. There are only about 1.2 million police officers in this country (full and part time), only 0.37% of the population. So despite police officers being at most only 0.37% of the strangers, they commit 33% of the murders of strangers. Of course this statistic should be verified, but if DeRay McKesson is correct then police officers commit murders at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population. As long as I'm posting, and this isn't about a shooting, but here's a video of a Baltimore police office assaulting a man who yelled at him and slapped his hand away. He put up no resistance. The officer has been suspended pending an investigation:
If there wasn't a video do you think the beaten man's complaint would have gone anywhere? It's the same with shootings. Anyone who believes it's just a coincidence that the only time police misbehave is when there's someone recording a video with a cell phone is living in a dream world. The evidence is telling us in stark terms that our police place as at greater rather than lesser risk too often to be tolerated. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1053 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
Of course this statistic should be verified, but if DeRay McKesson is correct then police officers commit murders at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population. He is not correct, if you're quoting him accurately. The research on which this claim is ultimately based is here. It's an attempt to estimate the total number of people killed by police in the US. This includes justifiable homicides in the course of duty and people killed by accident. The actual claim of the researchers is that the police are responsible for approximately one third of homicides committed by a stranger. They make no claims about the proportions of murders, manslaughters and justifiable homicides. Edited by Admin, : Fix italic dBCode.
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
I couldn't where in that paper (Estimating Undocumented Homicides with Two Lists and List Dependence) it says anything about murder by strangers. It's main focus seems to be unreported police homicides in not just the United States but other countries, too.
The only information I used from DeRay McKesson was that one third of murders by strangers are committed by police. The rest was just me using the population of the country and the number of police to do a simple calculation, and that showed that if DeRay McKesson's claim was true then police officers commit murders at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population. --Percy
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1053 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I couldn't where in that paper (Estimating Undocumented Homicides with Two Lists and List Dependence) it says anything about murder by strangers. It's main focus seems to be unreported police homicides in not just the United States but other countries, too. That paper doesn't say anything about murders by strangers; but that paper is the source of the estimate for how many homicides the police commit in the US on which the subsequent claim is based. Here is a magazine article by one of the authors of the paper describing their research. It's here he points out that..
quote: The only information I used from DeRay McKesson was that one third of murders by strangers are committed by police. And that's not true, or at least unevidenced, as not all homicides are murder.
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Let me use your quote from POLICE HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES to redo the calculation. Here's the quote:
quote: Taking the lower figure that 8% of murdered Americans are murdered by police so as not to overstate things, since police officers are 0.37% of the population, that means that police commit murders at a rate 21 times greater than their proportion of the population. But 8%-10% of all homicides is not the same thing as the percentage of murders by strangers. Most people are murdered by people they know. We need the figure for what percent of people are murdered by people they don't know. The FBI webpage 2014 Crime in the United States tells us that that figure is 11%. If we use the 8% figure from the webpage you found this actually creates a figure much worse for the police. Most people probably only know a few policemen at most, so the odds are tiny of being murdered by a policeman you know. The vast majority of those murdered by police must be murdered by police they don't know. So if police commit 8% of murders (almost all strangers), and if 11% of murders are of strangers, then police commit 72% of murders of strangers, not 33% as DeRay McKesson claims. I suspect your 8%-10% figure of murders being committed by police is too high. Either that or police are committing a great many murders of people they know, but I think that's very unlikely. Or maybe there's some other explanation, I don't know, I won't look into it unless that becomes the focus. So where does DeRay McKesson's figure of 33% come from? It's explained in the article The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead. Sam Sinyangwe, a data scientist and activist, wondered if the available statistics about police violence could be trusted. Working with fellow activists DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie they developed the Mapping Police Violence website. The 33% figure comes out of data they gathered. --Percy
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1053 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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Taking the lower figure that 8% of murdered Americans are murdered by police It's not a lower figure - it's the same estimate. About 75% killed by someone they know; about 8% killed by police. 8% is approximately a third of the 25% killed by strangers (it ignores the negligible overlap, since the estimate of people killed by police is looking at killings 'on the job' - not cases where a policeman kills his wife at home). You're missing the part I was questioning. I'm not arguing about the number. I'm saying it's not a count of people murdered by police. It's a count of homicides committed by police. The police could commit thousands of homicides without murdering anyone. Homicide is not the same thing as murder. Murder is one type of homicide. We need different data to know how many police homicides are murders.
So where does DeRay McKesson's figure of 33% come from? It's explained in the article The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead. Sam Sinyangwe, a data scientist and activist, wondered if the available statistics about police violence could be trusted. Working with fellow activists DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie they developed the Mapping Police Violence website. The 33% figure comes out of data they gathered. I don't see this mentioned in the article you linked or on the Mapping Police VIolence website. I think it's more likely to come from the source I already showed you that does explicitly mention the 'one third' estimate, and is the ultimate source cited anywhere I found the claim that bothered to cite a source.
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
I'm headed for bed and will figure this out tomorrow, but a quick glance makes we wonder if there isn't a possible misunderstanding:
Taking the lower figure that 8% of murdered Americans are murdered by police
It's not a lower figure - it's the same estimate. Your quote said "eight to ten per cent". I was only saying that I did my recalculation based on the lower figure of 8%. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Read your post, I get it now. You've been differentiating between justifiable and unjustifiable homicides and I just wasn't picking up on it. Sorry about that. From what gets reported in the news it seems like the vast majority of police homicides get classified as justified, so the number of people murdered by police must be small.
Yet most times when a video turns up it turns out it wasn't justifiable or that at least there's doubt, so I just don't believe the police. I don't think DeRay McKesson believes the police, either, so he used the term murder instead of homicide. But there's no proof of that, so let me restate my conclusion using the term "homicide": Police officers commit homicides at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population. Let me apologize again. You were clear enough from the beginning, I don't know how I missed it. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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The headline says it all: Police use Taser on 87-year-old woman cutting dandelions with a knife.
Martha Al-Bsihara's daughter-in-law says she has dementia and only speaks Arabic. She was across the street from her home. After the tasing officers helped her up, arrested her, placed in in handcuffs, and took her down to the station house for booking. Her court appearance is scheduled for September 19th. The officers said the tasing was justified because she failed to follow repeated instructions to drop the knife, including pantomimes of dropping a knife, and continued advancing toward officers - there were four. PERF (Police Executive Research Forum) suggests that jurisdictions prohibit taser use on the elderly. I know what 87 and dementia looks like - there was no excuse for tasing this elderly woman. This taser use was criminal and I hope the family files charges. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
This time it's in my own state of New Hampshire: Shooting of Nashua man during welfare check legally justified
Justin Contreras's mother contacted Nashua police requesting a welfare check for her son who she said was depressed and suicidal. They almost welfare checked him to death. In a stairway foyer a police officer encountered Contreras holding a revolver and immediately shot him. He survived. Contreras's gun was not loaded, and he did not point it at the police officer. Seems to me that this officer should be charged with reckless endangerment and attempted homicide and whatever else seems appropriate. Police with their training should be well prepared to encounter depressed and suicidal people, especially when forewarned. They should expect that such people may well have in their possession the means to carry out their own demise, including potentially deadly weapons like knives and guns. Oh, what a surprise, we've found the suicidal person and he has a gun, let's shoot him. But that's not the end of it. Contreras has been brought up on criminal charges whose nature has not been made public, and the Attorney General refuses to release any details of his investigation into the shooting of Contreras until the legal proceedings against him have run their course. So let's summarize: Contreras is suicidal and depressed. His mother asks the police to conduct a welfare check. The police visit his residence and shoot him. The Attorney General brings Contreras up on criminal charges. No details are made public. Ah, New Hampshire, gotta love it: Live Free or Die (our state motto) This incident is consistent with why there are so few police murders. It's because almost all police homicides are ruled justifiable (except, strangely enough, when there's a video available). It's worth mentioning an incident from over 30 years ago that took place in the Nashua area. It might even have been Nashua, but I no longer remember. The police weren't involved, but the Attorney General was, which is why I mention it. Anyway, in a 3-story apartment building a man in a 2nd floor apartment was cleaning his gun at his kitchen table. The gun went off and killed a man sleeping on his couch on the floor above. The Attorney General conducted an investigation and no charges were filed. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
This past Thursday in Los Angeles actress Vanessa Marquez, who appeared on 27 episodes of "ER", was shot by police at her apartment and later died in a hospital ER. Her landlord had called for a wellness check. Three police and a mental health clinician spoke with her for an hour and a half when she reached for what looked like a semiautomatic handgun but was just a BB gun. Police fired at least one shot, striking her in the torso.
This again calls into question the professionalism and adequacy of the training of our police force. Suicidal but afraid to pull the trigger? Now you don't have to. Just call the police, reach for your gun, and they'll do it for you. Police are evidently unable to handle suicide risks who possess lethal means. Source: Former ‘ER’ actress Vanessa Marquez fatally shot by police doing wellness check --Percy
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
It's important this is clear because I want to relate a statistic I just heard cited by DeRay McKesson of Black Lives Matter while speaking on Face the Nation: one third of people murdered by strangers are murdered by police officers. Murdered or killed? Important distinction.
There are only about 1.2 million police officers in this country (full and part time), only 0.37% of the population. So despite police officers being at most only 0.37% of the strangers, they commit 33% of the murders of strangers. Your mischaracterizations are astounding. Lets suppose those statistics are accurate. Even supposing they were on the low side, it's not at all surprising. See, unlike total strangers, who have an infinitesimally small chance of being involved in a homicide, justified or unjustified, police are 1. constantly patrolling and, 2. are the one's called to dangerous situations. So of course there would be a much higher likelihood that they were involved in a homicide. But, again, you have an interesting choice in words [murder] as if to insinuate that their use of force is virtually all unjustified. They kill people that try to kill them... or someone else. Check out these cops murdering this poor, innocent man who was simply minding his own business.
As long as I'm posting, and this isn't about a shooting, but here's a video of a Baltimore police office assaulting a man who yelled at him and slapped his hand away. He put up no resistance. The officer has been suspended pending an investigation As he should! The Baltimore Police Department is a notoriously corrupt force that has been under FBI investigation numerous times. A total disgrace to the profession. If you took a hard line at corruption, no one would be arguing with you right now. But it is very obvious at this point that you are convinced this nonsense represents the overall profession when it doesn't even come close. Sensationalism is sensationalizing, Percy. You never see the millions of innocuous interactions with the public, so your perception is horribly skewed towards the statistically tiny fraction of shit head officers who disgrace the profession.
If there wasn't a video do you think the beaten man's complaint would have gone anywhere? It's the same with shootings. Anyone who believes it's just a coincidence that the only time police misbehave is when there's someone recording a video with a cell phone is living in a dream world. The evidence is telling us in stark terms that our police place as at greater rather than lesser risk too often to be tolerated. There's never been a cleaner time to be a police officer because of constant accountability. Maybe if you stepped down from the ivory tower to see what the real world is actually like, you'd have a greater appreciation of the nature of the job and all of its trappings. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given."Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
This past Thursday in Los Angeles actress Vanessa Marquez, who appeared on 27 episodes of "ER", was shot by police at her apartment and later died in a hospital ER. Her landlord had called for a wellness check. Three police and a mental health clinician spoke with her for an hour and a half when she reached for what looked like a semiautomatic handgun but was just a BB gun. Police fired at least one shot, striking her in the torso. Lol, how fortunate it must be for you to have the luxury of Monday-Morning Quarterbacking, as if they should have intrinsically known it was a BB gun.
This again calls into question the professionalism and adequacy of the training of our police force. Suicidal but afraid to pull the trigger? Now you don't have to. Just call the police, reach for your gun, and they'll do it for you. Police are evidently unable to handle suicide risks who possess lethal means. Right, because who has ever heard of Suicide by Cop?' Probably never happened in history. There is no greater conduit for mental illness than the justice system, which is a testament to the overwhelming long-suffering that is exhibited towards those with mental illness. Law enforcement, particularly in major cities, have contact with the mentally ill on a daily basis and provides them resources that they otherwise could not or would not do on their own. That's just a fact. Your representation of things is that the police murder the mentally ill when in fact that the overwhelming interactions are to help them, not to hurt them. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given."Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Hyroglyphx writes: It's important this is clear because I want to relate a statistic I just heard cited by DeRay McKesson of Black Lives Matter while speaking on Face the Nation: one third of people murdered by strangers are murdered by police officers.
Murdered or killed? Important distinction. Caffeine already picked up on this - see my last reply to him in Message 129.
There are only about 1.2 million police officers in this country (full and part time), only 0.37% of the population. So despite police officers being at most only 0.37% of the strangers, they commit 33% of the murders of strangers. Your mischaracterizations are astounding. Lets suppose those statistics are accurate. Even supposing they were on the low side, it's not at all surprising. See, unlike total strangers, who have an infinitesimally small chance of being involved in a homicide, justified or unjustified, police are 1. constantly patrolling and, 2. are the one's called to dangerous situations. So of course there would be a much higher likelihood that they were involved in a homicide. Of course. But it shouldn't also be true that you'll have a much higher likelihood of being involved in a homicide if police are called to your house.
YouTube videos can be embedded in messages by saying [utube=tZbtWN1skkQ]. I'll check it out if you first explain the point that it is presumably being offered in support of.
As long as I'm posting, and this isn't about a shooting, but here's a video of a Baltimore police office assaulting a man who yelled at him and slapped his hand away. He put up no resistance. The officer has been suspended pending an investigation As he should! The Baltimore Police Department is a notoriously corrupt force... I guess I wasn't looking at this as a corruption problem but a police violence problem. Are you assuming the cop lied on his report? If so then I guess that's a low level form of police corruption. If his buddies backed up his false report then I guess that would be even more corrupt. But corruption isn't the problem I had in mind. I'm talking about police shootings. Put a badge on a guy with a gun and, given how few police homicides are classified as unjustifiable, you're just legalizing murder.
But it is very obvious at this point that you are convinced this nonsense represents the overall profession when it doesn't even come close. My view is that people (including the people in police uniform) are pretty much the same the world over. Any randomly selected set of people is going to include pretty much the same percentages of all types. Application forms, interview questions and psychology exams have not advanced to the point where future violence committers can be reliably identified. Therefore the percentage of police with the potential to commit murder is about the same as in the general population. Making things worse, as you made clear above, police much more often find themselves in uncertain and precarious situations.
Sensationalism is sensationalizing, Percy. You never see the millions of innocuous interactions with the public, so your perception is horribly skewed towards the statistically tiny fraction of shit head officers who disgrace the profession. Except they're not shit head officers. They're you. They're me. They're everyone. They're "there but for the grace of God go I" people.
Maybe if you stepped down from the ivory tower to see what the real world is actually like, you'd have a greater appreciation of the nature of the job and all of its trappings. The commensurate response is, "Maybe if you took off the rose-colored glasses you'd see the true harm committed by an armed police force," but where would that get us? The true problem is that the 2nd Amendment has saddled us with a nation of gun nuts, equally well represented in both the police and the general population. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Fix some quote formatting. Edited by Percy, : Fix it right. Edited by Percy, : God I'm pathetic.
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