Ferguson

MobBoss said:
Brown's body did fall forward despite being shot in the upper area of the body. If he had been standing straight up, it would have knocked him backwards.
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I feel completely out of my league here, countering an All-American gun-totin' ex military but I'm feeling nippy this fine evening. Doesn't the impact of the bullet have very little or no influence of the direction where and how the body falls? I've read that people who don't know they are shot won't even fall down at all (until a point is reached where fatality or unconsciouses kicks in of course). The idea we should fall when shot is ingrained in us from movies and that's why people who know they've been shot fall. And they are just as likely to slump forward as fall backward, more likely even because falling backward is quite unnatural.

I think I learned this from QI, and they've been wrong before.

edit: Blimey, this is from page 21. :eek: You guys have lots of opinions.

edit: And it was discussed. No consensus was reached. Not want to open this discussion again.
 
I think all that you can really say is that it's unreliable; the amount of kinetic energy transmitted by a bullet to the target is pretty minimal - it's logically always less than the recoil transmitted by the gun to the shooter.
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
edit: And it was discussed. No consensus was reached. Not want to open this discussion again.
Click to expand...

While not quite a consensus, I rated Mobby on one side and physics accompanied by many people who appeared to make sense on the other to be quite definitive.
 
President Obama just came out with a plan to help heal the rift between police and citizens. :D
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/u...ards-on-police-use-of-military-gear.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — President Obama, grappling with how to respond to the racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and a wave of anger at law enforcement officials across the country, said Monday that he would tighten standards on the provision of military-style equipment to local police departments and provide funds for police officers to wear cameras.

But Mr. Obama stopped short of curtailing the transfer of military-grade gear to local law enforcement authorities and continued to put off a visit to Ferguson. Instead, the White House tried to channel the rage over the fatal police shooting of a black teenager there into a national debate about how to restore trust between the police and the public.

Administration officials said they concluded after a review that the vast majority of transfers of military-style equipment strengthened local policing, even after the police in Ferguson were criticized for heavy-handed use of such gear to quell protests last summer. But the officials said local authorities needed common standards in the types of hardware they requested and better training in how to use it.

Following two weeks of images from protests in Ferguson, Mo., where police officers deployed military gear and equipment to quell unrest, President Obama ordered a review of several federal programs that provide money and equipment to local police.

All told, the changes were modest, and Mr. Obama himself was circumspect in remarks about Ferguson after an orchestrated day of meetings at the White House with civil rights and religious leaders, big-city mayors, and law enforcement officials. The president seemed eager to keep the focus not on what happened in Ferguson but on its broader lessons for the country.

“Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis,” the president told reporters, describing a “simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.” He called for a “sustained conversation in which, in each region of the country, people are talking about this honestly.”

The Ferguson case, with its fiercely disputed facts, has posed a particular dilemma for Mr. Obama, forcing him to balance his sympathy for the anger it has aroused among African-Americans with his commitment to the rule of law. He has not spoken about it in the raw, personal tones he brought to other racially charged cases, like the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 or even the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2009 for disorderly conduct after the police thought he was breaking and entering his own home.

The limited nature of the White House response also reflects the reality that transferring military-style surplus gear to police departments remains politically popular in Congress and in the municipalities. While Congress held hearings after the initial unrest in Ferguson in August, it has not acted to curb its grants and transfers of such equipment.

Curtailing those transfers, experts said, would be a reversal of years of policy and would have scant support in Congress. The militarization of police has been part of a broader counterterrorism strategy of fortifying American cities, which took root after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has become a reliable source of federal largess for local authorities...
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I like this plan. :goodjob:

Militarizing the police to combat terrorism sounds pretty dumb on paper. (Congress :mad:)
Is combating terrorism really supposed to be part of a regular policeman's job?


warpus said:
This guy needs to learn how to speak good.

"That's right"
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Well played sir. ;)
 
If police are going to be using military style equipment, they better get proper training.

But they don't - and that's the problem. If you gave me a tool that I don't know how to use properly, I'll probably do some damage with it too.
 
If you give a boy a hammer, it is amazing how many things will appear to him as needing a good pounding. If you give him a tank...
 
Instead, the White House tried to channel the rage over the fatal police shooting of a black teenager there into a national debate about how to restore trust between the police and the public.
Click to expand...

Misrepresentation.

The rage doesn't need to be channeled to the topic. The rage is already about the lack of trust between the police and the public. The question is whether it can be channeled into a national debate or if it is time to settle in for the long haul and have a nationwide riot.
 
I'd agree with that.

But it's equally absurd to urge people to protest violently when they're being beaten, shot and killed by the agents of the establishment.

That's just going to get more of them beaten, shot and killed, imo.

If that fat guy wants people to protest violently he should do so himself instead of standing on his hind legs and urging others to do so.
 
Absolutely, but then protesting non-violently seems to have the same effect. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be non-violent - only that the people telling them to be so shouldn't be the people who are violent towards them. If they're going to be non-violent, it should be because they think that'll be most effective, not because they've been twisted into some moral argument by people who are far worse.
 
I don't think protesting non-violently does have the same effect at all. I think its effect is substantially magnified. Provided it's publicized and visible.

But of course, that's all very easy for me to say.
 
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