Dumpster Fire Discussions

[Fippy]

What exactly is dumpster fire, burning trash cans?

 

[thetrooper]

Metaphor

 

[Strong Reaction]

the justification is the presence of the taser. i admit, i do not like the "schrodinger's taser threat", where everyone claims non-lethality when they have it and then it's suddenly lethal/dangerous in the other person's hand. that bothers me, and as mentioned earlier it's one hypocrisy police and people they interact with share.



i know 26 year olds sometimes act like children (heck, people more than twice that age sometimes do), but that is firmly in "adult" territory.



both people were contesting the taser, until the cop lost it. it shouldn't be that hard to use it from a "non-dominant" position.

i don't know your experience, but i can tell you that if you are fighting over some object and the other person has it while face down, they have a significant leverage advantage. doesn't matter if it's a ball, gun, toy, etc. contesting it like that is easier as the person on the ground. this is also why football players fall on a fumbled football and cover it with their body; that makes it the hardest to take it from them by far.

it would be somewhat harder to use from the ground, but we're talking 1-2 seconds tops. actually these situations unfold incredibly quickly in the moment, generally. you don't actually get time to consider it carefully, once it's happening.



https://cvpcs.asu.edu/sites/default/files/content/projects/Taser Media CPP.pdf

"less lethal", indeed. i don't think it's as black and white as you say. this is also why police and suspects alike use the "schrodinger's taser" argument. though one might notice that this also makes its attempted use by the cop questionable as well. if it's a sufficient threat to merit self defense, maybe it wasn't appropriate to use it in this context at all, and maybe it's not a surprise when the other guy doesn't want to get tased either...



i would agree this case was mishandled (i don't really believe "clean shoot" above, was just annoyed). what i will not agree with is that it's an incident of "shooting an unarmed black man", because that's false and not a matter of opinion. it ignores what actually happened, and the situation at time of shooting.

First lets just put the age reference to rest since its not really an issue here. OK he is literally not a kid lets just call him a young adult. Anyone 20 years or more younger than me is a kid, but OK lets just stick with young adult. As far as the taser goes sure there are instances where it can cause death. However, its not a firearm which has a high probability of causing death. We can go back and forth over the struggle, but like you said it happened so fast its easy to sit back and play Monday morning quarterback. In my eyes if someone has given you their back its as close as a submissive position that you can get. As far as the media misrepresenting the case well welcome to Merica! The right does it the left does it. Its just the sh*tty state of divisive politics in America.

I just want to point out some information I got from the Police Executive Research Forum about limiting use of force in non firearm situations which is what the Lyola incident is.

Spoiler Use of Force Options :

We have focused especially on two types of police encounters:
1. With subjects who have a mental illness, a developmental disability, a
condition such as autism, a drug addiction, or another condition that
can cause them to behave erratically or threateningly; and
2. With subjects who either are unarmed, or are armed with a knife, a base-
ball bat, rocks, or other weapons, but not a firearm.
It is these situations—not incidents involving criminal offenders brandish-
ing guns—where we see significant potential for reducing use of force, while
also increasing officer safety.

Spoiler Use of Force Options :

Several Hundred Officer-Involved Shootings Last Year
Did Not Involve Subjects with Firearms
Regarding non-firearm encounters, the Washington Post data indicate the
following:7
• In approximately 25 percent of the 990 fatal officer-involved shootings in
2015, the subject displayed signs of mental illness.
• In 16 percent of the cases, the subject was armed with a knife.
• In 9 percent, the subject was unarmed.
• In 5 percent, the subject was “armed” with a vehicle.
It is in these types of cases, representing as many as one-third of the
annual total of fatal officer-involved shootings, that leading police execu-
tives believe there is significant potential for de-escalation and resolving
encounters by means other than the use of deadly force.

I think the Lyola case falls in the category of unarmed or not armed with a firearm. There techniques to use that don't have to result in dead civilians. The problem is the police tactics and rules they learn. Cases where an individual has a rock, knife or other non firearm weapon can be approached from and entirely different angle that does not involve deadly force. There are examples to prove it too.


Police Service of Northern Ireland Sergeant Dave McNally:
Our Officers Are Seldom Required To Use Firearms
Because They Have Other Options
It’s a consequence of the terrorist threat that our police officers are all
armed with a handgun, which isn’t the case in Scotland, England, and
Wales. Our officers are armed for their protection, but there are many, many
circumstances that routine officers respond to—domestic disturbances,
robberies, burglaries—where they are not required to use their firearms
because they have other options available to them.
I can’t think of an example where a police officer in Northern Ireland
has had to use live rounds against an individual with a knife or a bat. There
are numerous calls to those individuals that are dealt with daily by routine
officers, armed only with a handgun for personal protection. There are
numerous calls on a weekly basis. I can’t think of an example where officers
have had to open fire.

"I can’t think of an example where a police officer in Northern Ireland
has had to use live rounds against an individual with a knife or a bat."

I can think of one example of an incident around two miles from where I live in which a homeless man was murdered by the police because he was armed with a rock.

Its not necessary to use deadly force in many non fire arm incidents. I think the Lyola case is one of them. Also consider this every time an officer stops questions or otherwise interacts with a citizen that citizen is in jeopardy of losing his/her life depending on how the interaction goes simply because the cop brings a firearm into the equation. That's a huge responsibility to bear. Sometimes it seems the police have an entitled attitude when it comes to taking our lives in defense of their own i.e. ere on the side of caution. Example "he was reaching for his waistband" as in the Shaver case. Who by the way was unarmed and the officer that killed him was acquitted fired and rehired for one day so he could receive a 30,000 dollar a year pension.


All the above quotes are from https://www.policeforum.org/assets/30 guiding principles.pdf

 

[Angst]

I think the Lyola case falls in the category of unarmed or not armed with a firearm. There techniques to use that don't have to result in dead civilians. The problem is the police tactics and rules they learn. Cases where an individual has a rock, knife or other non firearm weapon can be approached from and entirely different angle that does not involve deadly force. There are examples to prove it too.

I was baffled to learn about the general level of professional training in the US. Now, there are several entrenched problems (such as most of disputes over whether things were handled "well" are done internally by the potential offender's collegues - this is like asking for corruption), but what most surprised me is how short police training is. They basically only learn to shoot. (EDIT: Only learn to shoot properly is the point - much less focus is spent on threat management. There's a very enlightening video by Knowing Better where he talks about the differences of military and police training. One thing, for example, is that if you draw your gun on someone, their behavior will be very hard to predict - you're literally threatening to kill, and harmless individuals can then panic and try to appear much more harmful than they are. American military learns how to lower the weapon to seem as nonthreatening as possible, whereas police tends to be much more aggressive with pointing the weapon.) It can be as lows as a few months to half a year ish. In Norway, police education lasts three years and heavily orients itself after managing threat rather than gun pow pow.

Mishandling of mentally ill people by the police is something that happens in Europe too, but there are wayyy too many cases of police action in the US that are just completely incapable if not cruel. Beside all of the other issues, you get what you pay for.

 

[Strong Reaction]

I was baffled to learn about the general level of professional training in the US. Now, there are several entrenched problems (such as most of disputes over whether things were handled "well" are done internally by the potential offender's colleagues - this is like asking for corruption).

Yes this is a huge and obvious conflict of interest issue. A division within the police department "investigates" the police. Similar to a wolf guarding a hen house. Here where I live they tried to remedy this by having the Sheriff department investigate the various police departments in the area. Don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining! Its the same effing thing, law enforcement peers investigating law enforcement. They need an objective independent team investigating the police. Also Police Unions are huge and powerful groups that wield political power. In some cases a Police chief may know an officer is a bad officer have good reason to fire him but cannot do so because of the Police Union.

A court in 2009 convicted Washington DC police officer Michael Sugg-Edwards of sexually assaulting a teenage woman in his squad car. After conducting its own internal investigation, the department quickly fired the then 35-year-old officer.But, six years later, Sugg-Edwards was back on the force. A provision in the police union’s contract allowed him to appeal against the decision to a union-selected arbitrator who reversed the department’s firing and reinstated him – with back pay.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...nion-contracts-collective-bargaining-officers

 

[Strong Reaction]

What exactly is dumpster fire, burning trash cans?

Or Brittany Spears is a good example of a dumpster fire.

 

[Birdjaguar]

A minute-by-minute recap of driving through the ‘People’s Convoy’
By Damon Young

"Is that a Canadian flag?” asked Morgan as we hit the stretch of I-270 North between D.C. and Hagerstown, Md.
“No,” I replied. “I think that’s just a maple leaf pasted to a bedsheet.” On closer inspection, I was right.
“It’s supposed to be a Canadian flag, though. I think?”
“Maybe. Or they’re just really into syrup.”

I was invited to D.C. by Crooked Media to appear on the “Lovett or Leave It” live show in March. This was also the week my Crooked Media-produced podcast (“Stuck With Damon Young”) launched. And so, Morgan, who’s one of my producers and also lives in Pittsburgh, and I made the four-hour drive midweek and drove home Friday.

During the trip back, we noticed that traffic was moving much slower than usual. The speed limit on that stretch is 70 mph, but cars were going below 50 mph. It wasn’t until I saw a blob of flags flapping from trucks in the right lane a quarter-mile ahead that I realized what was happening. We were behind the infamous and infamously stupid “People’s Convoy,” which drove, in a circle, from Hagerstown to D.C. every day, on a stretch of highway Defector’s Albert Burneko described as “a hellish interchange that turns into a giant snarled parking lot” — on a normal day.

And they’re doing this to … protest? And they’re protesting … cloth? Science? Daylight saving time? How the rules of spades change depending on the house and the city and how the arbitrariness of this feels democratic but is just unfair? Who knows? They don’t, so I won’t pretend to! Anyway, it took a half-hour to drive past them. Here’s a recap of that experience.

0:01: Have you ever encountered something so uniquely, aggressively and impressively dumb that you wished you had a friend with you to verify what you saw? Morgan is a talented producer, but I’m now convinced that God convinced me to hire her just so someone could witness the miles-long hillbilly elegy with me. It was like driving past Bigfoot, but if Bigfoot wanted to ban books about small feet.

3:23: Most of the cars in the convoy are draped with American flags. Some with not just a flag or two, but a flag orgy. Flag Freaknik. I never understood the compulsion to be so conspicuously patriotic — to show every American in America that you’re the Americanest American … when everyone knows that you’re American. It’s like me walking around my house with a flag that says “I’m Damon, and I live here.”

Also seen: A dozen or so Blue Lives Matter flags, two “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, at least one Confederate flag and at least one hundred Trump flags. Most of the Trump flags were pretty straightforward — “Trump 2020” or “Trump Won.” And some were just weird, including one with what appeared to be Trump either greeting or arm wrestling a dog-sized frog. Morgan, after seeing the dog-sized frog flag. “These are strange people.”

I never understood the compulsion to be so conspicuously patriotic — to show every American in America that you’re the Americanest American.
17:45: Admittedly, the convoy isn’t the only thing slowing traffic. They’re in the right lane, and there’s enough space to pass them What’s happening, though, is that many of the cars in the left lane are doing what Morgan and I were doing: gawking, pointing, filming, taking pictures, giving them the finger, etc. Basically, exactly what you’re supposed to do when seeing Idiocy in the wild. I actually wished I had my kids with me then, just to give them an impromptu tutorial.

“Who are those people, Daddy?”
“Those are idiots, baby. White American idiots.”
“Where do idiots come from?”
“The idiot tree. Also, Texas.”

29:12: When I shared this experience with some friends, a few of them responded with concern for my safety. But fear never crossed my mind. As we drove through and eventually left the convoy behind, I felt pity more than anything else. How small must these people be to think that what they’re doing is doing anything other than providing entertainment for an otherwise mundane stretch of highway?

And they weren’t even good at that, because after the first 10 minutes or so, I got so bored that I had to open my window to keep from nodding off. They’re not patriots. They’re Percocet.

Morgan, however, felt otherwise.
“Yeah, I think they’re patriots.”
“Why do you say that?”
“To drive this much with gas this expensive, you definitely love America.”

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In my eyes if someone has given you their back its as close as a submissive position that you can get.

and i'm telling you that belief can get the crap kicked out of someone, even ignoring weapons, in a matter of literal seconds. it's fantasy. if you also have control/restrained them, it's different, but not the fact pattern in this case.

I think the Lyola case falls in the category of unarmed or not armed with a firearm.

lyoya began unarmed, then armed himself with a taser. as i mentioned earlier, the cop drawing it seems to be the most important point of divergence/escalation. once someone has "non gun" in the middle of a scuffle, it's too late for de-escalation. that had to be done sooner.

I was baffled to learn about the general level of professional training in the US. Now, there are several entrenched problems (such as most of disputes over whether things were handled "well" are done internally by the potential offender's collegues - this is like asking for corruption)

we often disagree on things, but this is such an obvious/overwhelming problem that it annoys me that it couldn't have been fixed with bipartisan support decades ago. current practice is a joke for the same reason that enron auditing itself would be a joke.

i can definitely get behind improving training + moving oversight to someone other than "ourselves".

 

[Angst]

we often disagree on things, but this is such an obvious/overwhelming problem that it annoys me that it couldn't have been fixed with bipartisan support decades ago. current practice is a joke for the same reason that enron auditing itself would be a joke.

i can definitely get behind improving training + moving oversight to someone other than "ourselves".

Yea, it's completely mad and I have no clue as to why it isn't being fixed. I guess it costs money, but still. I think the only people that are against this are hardline police abolitionists, since they want the police gone anyways. Anyone else should see the benefit of better training (particularly in threat management/de-escalation, better psychological understanding is crucial for officers) and better oversight.

 

[Strong Reaction]

and i'm telling you that belief can get the crap kicked out of someone, even ignoring weapons, in a matter of literal seconds. it's fantasy. if you also have control/restrained them, it's different, but not the fact pattern in this case.



lyoya began unarmed, then armed himself with a taser. as i mentioned earlier, the cop drawing it seems to be the most important point of divergence/escalation. once someone has "non gun" in the middle of a scuffle, it's too late for de-escalation. that had to be done sooner.



we often disagree on things, but this is such an obvious/overwhelming problem that it annoys me that it couldn't have been fixed with bipartisan support decades ago. current practice is a joke for the same reason that enron auditing itself would be a joke.

i can definitely get behind improving training + moving oversight to someone other than "ourselves".

The key, he said, was the Taser at the time of the shooting and whether it posed a threat of death or great bodily harm to the officer. It had already been fired twice, striking the ground.

“What were the capabilities of that Taser as a weapon? And what was the motorist, the driver, trying to do with that Taser?” he said.
https://www.woodtv.com/news/grand-rapids/use-of-force-expert-grpd-footage-raises-red-flags/

The Grand Rapids PD is still reviewing the incident and may even charge the officer with a crime it remains to be seen. I doubt they charge him with a crime, it seems more like negligence and bad policing rather than malicious intent. Still how do you hold someone accountable if there are no mechanisms in place to do so?

 

[Birdjaguar]

When sitting on top of another man's back, one Bullitt to the head is clearly insufficient to bring him under control. Two are recommended.

 

[Yeekim]

If it's about fairness, then using "gender" or "sex" as a proxy for performance or competitive advantage is a poor approximation given that physical variation within each population is greater than variation between the populations.

[replied here so as to avoid derailing the other thread]
You're saying that as if that somehow mattered.
Those female Olympic medalists, who would have finished somewhere in the total obscurity of a second hundred if they had to compete against biological males (meaning most, if not all of them) are not going to be consoled by the fact that physical variation within each sex is greater than variation between the sexes.

Now, professional sports can go die in a fire for all I care, so it is not exactly a concern for me... but that also means I don't see it as "existential right" for someone to participate in said competitions.

 

[sophie]

[replied here so as to avoid derailing the other thread]
You're saying that as if that somehow mattered.
Those female Olympic medalists, who would have finished somewhere in the total obscurity of a second hundred if they had to compete against biological males are not going to be consoled by the fact that physical variation within each sex is greater than variation between the sexes.

Now, professional sports can go die in a fire for all I care, so it is not exactly a concern for me... but that also means I don't see it as "existential right" for someone to participate in said competitions.

In the first part, this is a misrepresentation of my point. I'm not saying "this is all moot so let's do away with the separation altogether." What I'm saying is that if the interest for the separation is fairness, then a distinction along gender or hormone levels (as a proxy for gender), or even gender assigned-at-birth isn't actually a very effective way at going about creating fair competitive pools. Michael Phelps is unfair. Kate Ledecky is unfair. Usain Bolt is unfair. The American and Chinese Olympic teams, generally speaking, are unfair. And yet we don't get long thinkpieces about how Michael Phelps is destroying the competitive integrity of swimming when he dominates the field at Beijing because of unique physiological attributes that he and nobody else was born with. We don't get massive whinges about all the runners who have been denied the Olympic gold that otherwise would certainly have been theirs had not Usain Bolt with his absurd, abnormal stride been crowding out the field for a decade. Innate, random, immutable physiological and genetic advantages are intrinsic to the physical competitions around which this controversy arises. The whole point, one could argue, of these sorts of games is to identify and celebrate genetic freaks for their freakishness. So my point then, is that if fairness really is your concern as you (royal you) say it is, then you're left with two positions to take: 1) acknowledge that this physiological unfairness is inherent to the sport and that's fine, leaving things more or less as-is, 2) recognize that the unfairness is far more pervasive than the narrow trans wedge, and if the objective is to create competitive pools with all entrants having an equal or roughly equal likelihood of victory at the outset then we should probably find a better heuristic (or handicapping model) that will actually effectively create that reality. Or 3) (secret bonus ending) acknowledge that this physiological unfairness is inherent to the sport, that that is cool as hell, and allow for a maximalist "take all the drugs and let's see what peak performance really looks like" approach. If your position rejects those conclusions and instead says, "yeah I know all these other inherent inequities exist in sport in pretty much exactly the same capacity out of which these 'grave concerns' are arising, but really there's just something different about trans people that requires greater scrutiny and nuance and perhaps prohibition from participation," then I'm sorry, you're just a transphobe.

 

[amadeus]

You could have a third category. I don’t know, I’d let the ladies decide that one because I’m not the one potentially adversely affected, nor would I ever possibly be an Olympic-quality athlete.

Personally, I think the Olympics are a lot of crapola and run by crooks. If we want to see the world’s best, that’s fine and all but it’s just a total scheme to get countries to fork over taxpayer dollars to some fathead German from the seventies who gets to flout the coronavirus rules and stay in luxury hotels subsidized 99% by me.

I want to see the Average Joelympics! Do like a random draw of people from each country and let them do some of the old Athenian sports like the shotput and what have you. Wouldn’t that do more to promote the ostensible Olympic goals of sport and brotherhood than this insufferable commercial fest every two years? Oy.

 

[João III]

I imagine it's only a matter of time before people either have to acknowledge that there are, in fact, differences between men & women or do away with separate sports leagues altogether on account of them being "separate but equal" or something

 

[sophie]

I imagine it's only a matter of time before people either have to acknowledge that there are, in fact, differences between men & women or do away with separate sports leagues altogether on account of them being "separate but equal" or something

Who here is not acknowledging that there are differences between men and women?

 

[João III]

Who here is not acknowledging that there are differences between men and women?

I don't know, I didn't mention anyone here as far as I can tell?

 

[Lexicus]

Personally, I think the Olympics are a lot of crapola and run by crooks.

A rare point of agreement between us.

 

[Berzerker]

Michael Phelps is unfair. <...> you're just a transphobe.

No, a sexist... Would it be more fair if women raced him? We create all sorts of categories in pursuit of making it fair, but a race among the best in the world will be men who look like human greyhounds - thats about as fair as we can get. Now if a trans athlete was able to join such an elite group they'd probably be a transwoman like this Lia Thomas.

physical variation within each sex is greater than variation between the sexes.

how is that possible?

 

[Farm Boy]

It's possible if they're identical.