Our Boys In Blue

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Mongrel
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:28 pm



I'm torn between "Wow that cop actually did the right thing!" and "WHITE OR NOT, HOW IN THE FUCK IS THAT GUY NOT DEAD?!"
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Bal
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Bal » Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:18 pm

I'd have at least taken a night stick to that guy. Jesus christ.

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:19 pm

Yeah, I mean, it's good that the cop didn't need to shoot him in the end, but I wouldn't have actually blamed the cop if he shot this guy.

He tried to carjack the cruiser for fuck's sakes. How do you not get shot after that?
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby malikial » Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:06 pm

Well I mean, be white. Answer is in the post

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:13 pm

A very small bit of good news. Out in Salt Lake City, the chief of police fired the cop who roughed up the nurse - and demoted the supervisor who told him to do it.

I mean, the guy'll probably be working as a cop again in six months, but this is still good.
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Joxam
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Joxam » Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:37 pm

He also demoted a veteran sergeant down to patrol cop. Like that's literally a 'fuck your pension you should quit' demotion.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby McDohl » Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:34 pm

This only happened because she was a white woman.

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Joxam » Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:38 pm

By the cop's lawyer's own admission it only happened because of its publicity.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:14 am

Pacific Standard: A new study uses a statistical technique from wildlife ecology to estimate the number of people killed by cops. It turns out every database is undercounting them.

How many people are killed by police every year in the United States? It depends on whom you ask.

The federal government tries to track this subset of the population with databases like the National Vital Statistics System, which is based on death certificates. As public attention on police violence has increased in recent years, media organizations began making databases of their own—like the Guardian's The Counted or the Washington Post's Fatal Force—to track law enforcement-related deaths. Comparisons between the data sets suggested that the official government data was severely undercounting police-related deaths. However, no one really knew how accurate those media databases were either.

Now, in a new study published today in PLoS Medicine, researchers borrowed techniques from wildlife ecology to estimate how many people are really killed by police officers in the U.S. They found that, while the media database The Counted documented roughly twice as many cases of police-related deaths than the NVSS, it still missed up to 7 percent of cases.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:25 am

What in the actual fuck

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:23 pm





Sometimes I really do wonder if I really should just stop seeking and linking all this bad news and wallow in happy ignorance.

It wouldn't help, I suppose.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 25, 2017 5:59 pm

Good golly, why can't people trust the police to stop Nazis?

DC Weekly: White Nationalist who Fantasized, Plotted Murder of Minorities Discovered to be Chief Deputy of Palm Beach PD

“Jokingly I said he was a suspected Storm Front member and I told him about the conversation I had with John Doe, and showed him the printed list of correspondence between “Krieger” and John Doe. Chief Deputy Gauger became extremely nervous, his mouth went dry and his completion became pale. I could see his jugular vein pulsing hard, like a person under enormous stress. He looked at me, ripped up the paper, and told me that I would not be filing a report on this incident. I was informed by Chief Deputy Gauger if I should report this incident or attempt to take any action, my career would be over and he would find a reason to put me in prison. “
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mothra » Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:08 pm

This story is weird. Only seeing it pop up on two other super sensationalist sites. Not sure if it's true.

But, definitely seems like the sort of thing that could be.

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Yoji » Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:00 am

Mongrel wrote:Sometimes I really do wonder if I really should just stop seeking and linking all this bad news and wallow in happy ignorance.

It wouldn't help, I suppose.

I guess my worry is how long one can remain happily oblivious before reality can't be ignored anymore.

Like, I have a cousin who I'm relatively certain voted for Trump, if she voted at all. She's the type who goes "whoa, I don't keep up with all that shit, they're all liars," but she still maintains some dumb opinions that more often than not come from Facebook. I just wonder how long she, a bit of a pothead, will be able to not keep up with all that shit if Jeff "Reefer Madness" Sessions has his way with marijuana enforcement.

I mean, there's not much we can do whether we're aware of things or not, but there's some comfort in knowing. If we're going to end up living in The Man in the High Castle or what have you, I think I'd rather see it coming than just look up one day and see it all happening.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:24 am

Mothra wrote:This story is weird. Only seeing it pop up on two other super sensationalist sites. Not sure if it's true.

But, definitely seems like the sort of thing that could be.

Yeah, that crossed my mind too. I figure it's sensational enough that it'll hopefully get picked up now by larger sources so we'll see soon if it's real or bogus.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Thu Nov 16, 2017 6:42 pm



Were the witnesses sure they weren't just watching a Mel Brooks movie?
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:38 am

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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:46 pm



Jesus Christ.

Fucking Baltimore.

I'd say it should be burnt to the ground, but the residents have been working on that already for a few decades now.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:17 pm

https://granta.com/violence-in-blue/

Approximately three-quarters of all homicide victims in America are killed by someone they know.[2] And the real threat from strangers is quite different from what most fear: one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.


Uh.
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Re: Our Boys In Blue

Postby Mongrel » Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:17 pm

So the Broward County PD is turning out to be quite the operation.

First some background.

So I think I've mentioned in the past that one of my friends - I'll call him Lyndon - is the bureaucrat who handles disbursing Federal police grant money to local PDs in Florida.

Whenever police stuff comes up, Lyndon's something of an apologist, but it's always grounded in actual police policy (i.e. explaining why a policy that may seem dumb or weird to a civilian is the way it is) or in other matters of legislation or PD policy. Even if the rest of us end up disagreeing with him anyway, he's (mostly) civil and interesting to listen to and learn about that cop of stuff instead of having some raging ideologue spout off.

Usually conversations go something like

Us: "This thing the police did is dumb"
Lyndon: "Well, it's because of this PD policy, which came about because of X and Y"
Us: "Well that policy is producing stupid outcomes"
Lyndon: "Then tell your Local Alderman/State Rep/Congressman and vote for someone who will change that policy."

So after the recent Florida shooting, people were quite angry about the Broward County Deputy reportedly not entering the school as the shooting was in progress, and of course Lyndon ended up explaining the reasoning behind it.

Not only is 99% of police field policy designed around officer safety (which he's mentioned often), but that in about half of the cases where a cop or guard has charged in solo to stop an active shooter (assuming a cop even arrives before the shooting's over, which only happens about 40% of the time) they just ended up shot and either incapacitated or dead anyway. This slows response down further because if a second cop shows up alone, they're in the exact same situation, only now there's an officer who's been shot in the building too. Lyndon has actually done active school shooter drills, with police, in a three story building very similar to Parkdale, and he also talked about how difficult it is to clear a hallway or intersection if you're searching alone for a shooter without being ambushed or spotted first.

We also asked about the +/-EV to the kids if a cop simply disregards the question of their own safety. Apparently any direct encounter may well wind up killing more kids rather than less, so based on studies of past mass shootings, the +EV for "lone cop charges in solo" is very close to even, although this is something you can't really calculate all that easily because the studies are essentially might-have-been reconstructions. Still, it's not even clear that sacrificing yourself will do anything useful anyway, because as even Lyndon knows, the "good guy with a gun" narrative is total bullshit. To truly be a solo hero (hey, it does happen, albeit rarely), you need to not just be action-movie-hero smart, you need no small amount of luck.

I can actually understand this, because not only have I read about past shootings where that did happen, I also remember that when we had a shooting on Parliament Hill here (2014), when the shooter walked into the building an officer on duty who saw him come in actually grabbed the shooter's gun and still ended up shot and unable to help further.

So all this is to say that I can see why a lone officer might have good reasons to stay put instead of cosplaying Dirty Harry when real lives are involved, even if it still doesn't sit right on a gut level.

That said, the officer is not actually legally prevented from going in if their conscience does demand it of them. In fact, if they do choose to take that risk, they're very strongly legally covered. So it's a case of "We don't want you to do this and it's probably a bad idea if you do, but whether you do or not, we've still got your back." which, if they do go in, I should fucking hope so.

This all matters because while the deputy in question in the school shooting was immediately fired by the department, this was a flagrant violation of all those legal protections. Essentially, the firing was purely for show, so that the department could give a furious public a scapegoat. In fact, the Broward County Sheriff actually quietly walked the firing back two days after he did it. If he hadn't, the officer could have very easily won a massive lawsuit against the department.

And that's the end of it, right? Well, no. Apparently even when they had FOUR deputies on site, the Broward County deputies STILL refused to go in:

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The narrative of "prudent response" rather than "gutless cowards" is stretching rather thin now.

Meanwhile, in a TOTALLY-UNRELATED STORY, it turns out that, oops, an independent who previously investigated the local School Board's relations with the Broward County Police claims they uncovered a hell of an interesting tale.

What I stumbled upon was a Broward County law enforcement system in a state of conflict. The Broward County School Board and District Superintendent, entered into a political agreement with Broward County Law enforcement officials to stop arresting students for crimes.

The motive was simple. The school system administrators wanted to "improve their statistics" and gain state and federal grant money for improvements therein.

...

Initially the police were excusing misdemeanor behaviors. However, it didn't take long until felonies, even violent felonies (armed robberies, assaults and worse) were being excused.

...

Well it didn't take long for criminal gangs in Broward and Miami-Dade to realize the benefit of using students for their criminal activities. After all, the kids would be let go... so organized crime became easier to get away with if they enlisted high-school kids.


At the end, they allege that Nicholas Cruz was one such kid - and that the reason that the multiple reports of his intent to shoot up the school went ignored locally were because it was part of a continued pattern of not charging kids with ever-more-serious crimes.

Now I got zero clue who this anonymous "investigator" is, and they sure claim a lot of conpiracy-level access so biiiig grain of salt here. BUT they do provide some reference documents (see original Twitter thread if they don't display in the Threadreader link above) and links to supporting news stories. This could be a legitimate local reporter who was following a story and is choosing to publish it anonymously, or it could be a shit disturber trying to inflate some sketchy local policy decisions into an oversized scandal. Either way, they've certainly put a lot of effort into this, far more than the usual trolling internet jokester hoaxter.

Stay tuned, I guess?

EDIT: Lyndon saw this and he's saying that in Florida that the Federal grant money he knows of/handles goes to counties with higher reported crime, not less. So that's one count against. On the other hand, he also said it's very possible (he's definitely not one to claim there's no or minimal police corruption - even he knows it's a very real and huge problem), just that it would have to be for other reasons than that grant funding:

Lyndon wrote: The grant money goes to places with more reported crimes, not less.

School funding for education isn't going to look at crime at all. School funding for behavior/crime is going to go up with higher reporting. There isn't a combination of agencies and grants that would work like this is saying.

That isn't to say the scheme wasn't happening. I think it was and everything in that thread checks out for me EXCEPT the part about getting more money. That's a big assumption they're making. I would not be surprised to find that the DJJ money actually went down.
school funding for education might look at like, graduation rate, which would be adversely impacted by arresting students?

Yeah but less than you would expect and in a very slow trend-based manner that doesn't fit the MO for the type of scheme being described. It sets off my fraud alarms but I don't think the writer has actually figured out who is benefiting and how yet.

Like they are describing a conspiracy between a bunch of cops wherein none of them individually benefit. The district benefits and the sheriff's office indirectly benefits, but the individual cops do not. So that's bullshit right there. You're missing the primary ingredient for fraud.

This person has done their analysis backwards. These big conspiracies, when they occur, grow organically out of individual people benefiting from something.

[...]

Somewhere nestled down in there is a nonprofit run by someone's brother. That's where it'll be, not some plan to get a tiny bit more state funding for a major metro area.
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