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[Cops Gone Wild]: Don't Call a Cop a Bitch Or She'll Shoot You In the Chest Edition
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lol?
in fairness, I guess they do try to 'balance' this crap by first giving the sappy human interest introduction and giving the reader the friend's version of events, with the cops twirling their moustaches and laughing while the kid died on the ground.
I would high five the shit out of my coworkers.
There's just not enough to go on in that video.
edit: Watching it again, the female officer seems to yell something, to which the "what are you gonna do about it" comes right after.
After killing somebody?
Yes. Now who's going to re-paint the wall?
But I guess there's just no guarantee that you'll come out alive when confronted by the police and don't immediately drop to the ground and surrender.
Except for Oscar Grant, but it's cool the cop just made a mistake.
No, definitely not, but it's just shit luck.
If you run from the cops, you might get tazed. If you get tazed, your heart might give out.
The alternative is the cops tackling the kid and the same sort of shit luck can manifest there as well.
Well Oscar Grant didn't run. But he had a criminal past soooo I guess it all evens out?
And if you surrender, the cops might taze you anyway (or outright shoot you 'by accident'). Just shit luck, I guess!
The vandal shouldn't have run, and the guy in the OP video shouldn't have said, "What are you gonna do, bitch?" even if that is really the only thing he did (it's not). But, probably - just maybe - the police shouldn't be so cavalier with their weaponry, or insist that a clearly lethal weapon is non-lethal.
Basically "was the tasering justified?" Yes? Well then sometimes peoples hearts give out. No? Well then there is an issue
But as far as I can tell the answer to the previous question was probably "yes"
It's almost like that's a completely different situation.
Lazyness?
This isn't exactly a confidence-boosting statement (personally, i doubt the friend of the victim is giving us an objective idea of what happened), given that it suggests the police have no respect for what a taser can do to a victim.
Laziness as it pertains to securing the subject. Why bother grappling with a subject when you can just zap them a few dozen times and cuff them, regardless of what the zapping might do to them because "it's less than lethal". Plenty of other police around the world seem to handle the physical side just fine, without continuously killing people. It sure does take more effort than pulling a trigger though.
It's not lethal, it just kills. Coincidence.
I'm trying my damnedest to come up with a justification for using a weapon like a tazer on someone in the commission of a minor misdemeanor and nothing is coming to me. Perhaps you can enlighten me?
Cops shouldn't escalate to deadly force quite so fast, and people shouldn't run from the police / call them bitches to their face / pull a knife on a pile of people in a streetcar then call the responders pussies and advance with the knife out.
Cops escalate too quickly and they don't get punished when they step over the line. Good cops get shit on and harassed for turning over their bad buddies, so even well-intentioned dudes usually peak at "don't actively support corrupt brethren". War on drugs and other stupidity has turned the police force in some areas into an occupying army in terms of mentality and hardware.
Honestly I think tasers probably do more good than harm even with the current fucked up state of affairs, but who cares because it is a drop in bucket whether the bucket is problem or solution.
I can think of at least a couple stories that included things like 'highly decorated' officer, but also a few times when the news was less flattering - 'officer previously involved in controversy' or 'in 20XX, this officer was accused of ---'. Both on TV and in print.
I mean, the news could treat the officer and victim as anonymous and not provide any background on either of them, but that background does inform the viewer / reader on the details of the case.
I'll grant there is a lot of framing that takes place in a story - the same victim could be a 'loving father of five' as well as 'criminal suspected of a string of burglaries'. The same cop could be 'a decorated veteran officer', and 'an officer previously investigated for use of excessive force'. None of those things are mutually exclusive, and depending on the source / story the media is telling, it could go any way. But the same goes for every story the media reports on, ever. That's why you should never form a conclusive opinion on a single source / story...
One of those things is not like the others.
In fact, that middle one is also exceptional, in that if someone who isn't a cop said, "Yeah, he called me a bitch, so I shot him," a judge would use words like "Callous disregard for the lives of others," and "monstrous lack of remorse," and sentence them (properly) to infinity years in prison.
Let's be honest here.
Cop or not, if ANYONE admitted 'he called me a bitch, so I shot him', they would be facing roughly the same charges.
When a cop is stupid enough to nakedly admit / confess to out and out murdering someone - which is the scenario you are presenting here - they get charged and convicted roughly the same as anyone else.
The big problem is that, between the leeway cops have in the execution of their normal duties, their knowledge of how the system works, and the (lack of) eagerness of the rest of the system to REALLY dig into them, they are far less likely than a random person to nakedly admit / confess to out and out murdering someone. Either being broken by interrogation methods, or admitting something they think is harmless but actually amounts to a confession / pokes holes in their story.
Knowing what words to use to make 'murder' instead 'self defense'? Knowing to take your Miranda rights and lawyer up? Knowing that talking to another cop when being questioned is never helpful? Those are all part of the reason cops are far less likely to be prosecuted and convicted of a crime - on duty or not.
The police have protocols for when they can and can't draw their weapons.
Just because someone appears unarmed doesn't mean that they don't pose a danger to the officer. An apparently unarmed person can pull a knife and close faster than a gun can be drawn and fired...I think rule of thumb is 21 feet.
I can't recall what particular thread it was - maybe the Trayvon Martin thread? but we discussed just exactly how a person who is unarmed can still pose a danger of great bodily harm. That danger is even more when the person being attacked IS armed, and loses their weapon.
I'm not saying there isn't reason for police to be more conservative about when and where they draw their guns (although, my understanding is that the majority of police officers never draw their guns in the line of duty, and the vast majority never fire their guns) but it's definitely a position that has pros and cons, and isn't a simple binary.
I mean - hell - maybe cops shouldn't carry guns at all, or should have a lockbox that guns are stored in that must be released remotely. Maybe it's a good solution that will result in less overall deaths. Or maybe it will result in more dead cops...hell, maybe it will result in more dead / injured cops, but the number of innocent people not killed will more than offset those deaths / injuries.
God help you though when an officer or civilian dies because the officer didn't have a gun or access to a gun.