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Author Topic:   Police Shootings
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 659 of 670 (886990)
06-26-2021 7:57 AM


Hero Murdered by Police
Ronald Troyke left behind a note saying he was going to murder as many Arvada police as he could that day. At Olde Town Square he murdered Arvada policer officier Gordon Beesley with a shotgun, shot out the windows of nearby police cars, then rushed back to his car and fetched his AR-15. On his way back to the square he was shot and killed by hero Johnny Hurley using a handgun.
When more police arrived they saw Hurley holding Troyke's AR-15 and shot him dead.
Police as a group are nervous and anxious and not terribly discerning in moments of terror. If you commit a good samaritan act with your gun then you should immediately drop your weapon and flee the scene because when police arrive they'll be looking for the guy with the gun. If you suspect your victim may still be alive and capable of committing more harm, do not approach him and take his gun because it wastes precious time during which the police might arrive.
Source: Arvada shooting: Good Samaritan in Colorado who took down a gunman was fatally shot by police | CNN
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 660 by Phat, posted 06-27-2021 5:43 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 661 of 670 (888725)
09-30-2021 7:37 PM


It's Worse Than We Thought
According to a recent study, statistics have been undercounting the number of people dying at police hands by more than a factor of two. From More Than Half of Police Killings Are Mislabeled, New Study Says:
quote:
Police killings in America have been undercounted by more than half over the past four decades, according to a new study that raises pointed questions about racial bias among medical examiners and highlights the lack of reliable national record keeping on what has become a major public health and civil rights issue.
...
Researchers compared information from a federal database known as the National Vital Statistics System, which collects death certificates, with recent data from three organizations that track police killings through news reports and public records requests. When extrapolating and modeling that data back decades, they identified a startling discrepancy: About 55 percent of fatal encounters with the police between 1980 and 2018 were listed as another cause of death.
However outraged you've been at the number of blacks killed by police, double it.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 662 by Minnemooseus, posted 10-01-2021 8:57 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 663 of 670 (888733)
10-02-2021 9:09 AM
Reply to: Message 662 by Minnemooseus
10-01-2021 8:57 PM


Re: It's Worse Than We Thought
Minnemooseus writes:
The police, especially in troubled areas of big cities, have a very difficult job.
Yes, their job is difficult, but they're taking the difficulties of that job out on the public they're sworn to protect because of a problematic culture underpinned by and likely caused by qualified immunity. It's the age old "power corrupts" story, with the result that in too many jurisdictions police get away with all kinds of malfeasance and misbehavior including, sometimes, murder.
Arguably the job of police might be easier without qualified immunity. Without a feeling of impunity they might be less likely to walk into dangerous situations or escalate them in ways that make the chances they'll need their firearms more likely.
The cases where police have been successfully prosecuted are ludicrously extreme. Walking into a man's apartment and murdering him. Choking a suspect for seven minutes. Tossing a handcuffed man into the back of a police van without securing him with seat belts and then taking a series of violent turns that slam him into the van's sides.
The cases where police were not charged are also informative. Deaf Magdiel Sanchez murdered when he failed to follow police instructions yelled from behind him. 12-year-old Tamir rice murdered while playing with a toy gun in a park. Breonna Taylor shot to death in her own home during a no-knock raid based on an errant informant. Qualified immunity is very powerful.
--Percy

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 Message 662 by Minnemooseus, posted 10-01-2021 8:57 PM Minnemooseus has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 664 of 670 (888936)
10-24-2021 9:45 PM


A Crack in the “Shoot to Kill” Mantra?
Only have time now to provide a link to the article, more when I have time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/...41-aad8e48f01ff_story.html

Replies to this message:
 Message 665 by xongsmith, posted 10-24-2021 10:28 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 666 by Percy, posted 10-25-2021 9:46 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(3)
Message 666 of 670 (888939)
10-25-2021 9:46 AM
Reply to: Message 664 by Percy
10-24-2021 9:45 PM


Re: A Crack in the “Shoot to Kill” Mantra?
Replying to myself:
Percy writes:
Only have time now to provide a link to the article, more when I have time: A ‘shoot to incapacitate’ policy puts Georgia police chief and town in the spotlight
I don't know what percentage of police discharge of weapons results in death, but I've always suspected it was pretty high. This might lead one to believe that police are crack shots who aim for the heart and hit it every time. The reality is that a cop discharging his weapon is usually in a panicked and highly volatile frame of mind that often causes them to completely discharge their weapons at the supposed suspect.
For years I've asked why cops can't shoot to wound and the answer is always the same: the chest is the biggest target, and since a cop would only be using lethal force when lethally threatened he must aim for the area that has the best chance of neutralizing the threat.
That's a good story, but it's a lie. The big problem isn't cops constantly being lethally threatened by citizens (which of course happens, but that's not the *big* problem) but cops being spooked into thinking there might possibly be a scintilla of a chance of the potential for being lethally threatened. Kid holding a (toy) gun? Shoot him. (Deaf) man with his back to you refusing to follow orders? Shoot him. With qualified immunity to remove almost all possibility of accountability there's rarely any downside to putting their own safety above the safety of the public they're pledged to serve and protect. And so we have the current situation of a citizenry preyed upon by cops who shoot first and are later almost invariably exonerated by their department.
The war-zone style training made available to contributes to the problem, turning good cops into paranoid zombies who see citizens as potential threats instead of as the people they serve.
So three cheers for this small step forward that, if adopted nationwide, would greatly reduce the number of unnecessary police homicides. Of course the ultimate goal is to get rid of the guns. Put all the guns in an armory and break them out only when needed.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 664 by Percy, posted 10-24-2021 9:45 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 667 of 670 (888979)
10-28-2021 8:19 AM


Give a man a gun...
...and the power goes to his head.
Eddie F. Gonzalez, 51, a Long Beach school safety officer at Millikan High School, witnessed a fight between Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez and an unidentified 15-year-old girl. Manuela jumped into a vehicle which sped off. Gonzalez screamed at the vehicle to stop and fired two shots into it, one hitting Manuela in the head and leaving her brain dead. She was taken off life support a few weeks ago and her organs donated. Gonzalez has been arrested and charged with murder. (Source: Long Beach school safety officer Eddie F. Gonzalez charged with murder in the shooting death of Mona Rodriguez. )
Most school safety officers do not need guns, and most schools do not need school safety officers. As described in https://healthyschoolscampaign.org/...-belong-in-our-schools, they don't make schools safer, and they make it more likely that students will be introduced into the criminal justice system, especially minorities who are the frequent target of school safety officers:
quote:
Research does not show that increased presence of law enforcement makes schools safer. Instead, school police officers reinforce the criminalization of young people of color, serving as a key component of the school-to-prison pipeline. Black and Latinx students are more likely to be disciplined, suspended and arrested in school when police are present. Police assigned to school buildings often don’t receive the necessary specialized training on adolescent development, racial equity, restorative justice or strategies for de-escalation, leaving many unequipped to do their jobs without causing harm to students.
As the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law stated in its 2017 report Handcuffs in Hallways: The State of Policing in Chicago Public Schools: “Research shows that the mere presence of police officers in school increases the likelihood that a student will be referred to law enforcement for adolescent behavior. School-based arrests, which fall more harshly on students of color, put students in direct contact with the justice system. Poor policing within schools therefore puts students on the fast track to the school-to-prison pipeline.”
Use of school safety officers increased as school shootings increased, but it has not reduced school shootings at all. School shootings have only increased. One could argue school safety officers are causing the increase, but the correlation is not causation. School shootings have gone up with the increased prevalence of guns in our society.
We all know that school shooters frequently pull out their weapons and begin firing in the presence of safety officers - not! School safety officers are useless in a crisis because shootings will only rarely happen where the safety officer is. My old high school was huge - it took at least a couple minutes to get from one end to the other at a run. School safety officers are not needed because they don't solve the problem they were intended to solve. And they definitely shouldn't have guns. There should never be guns in schools, even on the hip of a police officer. Especially on the hip of a possibly "drunk with power and full of qualified immunity" police officer, like Officer Gonzalez.
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 669 of 670 (889329)
11-18-2021 8:04 AM


Suicide by Cop
Cops are so obliging. If you want to get shot then just behave in a threatening way, or behave in a way that could be interpreted as threatening by cops conditioned to interpret the slightest hazard as a threat to their safety.
Christian Hall was depressed and suicidal on a December afternoon last year, standing on the ledge of a highway overpass and holding what police said they thought was a real gun but was actually a pellet gun. Christian wanted to die, and the cops were just so obliging. His hands in the air, the gun in one hand, the cops shot him dead. See https://www.nbcnews.com/...ia-police-shooting-video-rcna5626.
No charges were filed because the Monroe County district attorney ruled the murder justified because the lives of the troopers were in danger.
It is just so comforting to know that there are armed men and women walking among us who only have to say they felt threatened in order to justify anything they do, including murder. They don't actually have to be under any threat, they just have to say they felt they were.
But the police have demonstrated that, their brains awash in the freeing elixir of qualified immunity (which in reality is almost always total immunity), that they are not a discerning bunch. If a few neurons in their brain twitch and signal threat then bang, bang, bang, you're dead.
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(3)
Message 670 of 670 (893464)
04-14-2022 11:14 AM


Another Police Murder
Facts are stubborn things, and one unchangeable fact is that Patrick Lyoya was shot in the back of the head. Lyoya was shot by a Grand Rapids police officer sitting on his back while he lay face down on the ground. There are no bonus points for guessing Lyoya was black - that goes without saying.
Patrick Lyoya and his family arrived from the Congo in 2014 as refugees fleeing violence. In the videos he appears confused and may not have understood the officer, but a struggle ensues when Lyoya runs away from the officer (we'll likely never know why since he's dead) toward the front of his vehicle. He was of course unarmed and not threatening the officer, was simply running away.
Traffic patrol officers should not carry guns. Or Tasers. If the driver is uncooperative, call for backup. If the driver is armed and dangerous, let him go. If they drive off, let them go. The police dash-cam already has all the necessary information. Sure, if there are drugs or crime evidence in the vehicle it gives the driver the opportunity to get rid of it, but the purpose of traffic stops is traffic safety, not to come across crime evidence by happenstance. It is long past time to stop murdering people during traffic stops. And of course it is racist. The statistics clearly bear this out.
Here's an article with links to the videos: Patrick Lyoya killed after struggle with officer during Grand Rapids traffic stop: What we know
--Percy

  
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