Institutional racism in policing and how to rectify it.

[nc-1701]

So I'll be honest I haven't read the whole thread, just the OP and I want to add to what the OP has put forward.

I think when it comes to racism in policing there are two pieces that need to be separated to both understand the problem.
Most police are decent people, some are tools, and a few are actually good people. Of those in the tool category many are racist, we aren't talking a lot just a few % of the total police force. But that accounts for many thousands of such officers.
Now the problem is that we cannot stop tools from being tools or racists from being racists.

But then comes the second problem, the police problem. Most officers aren't racist at least not when it comes to black and white, but they do see blue and not blue. The police, their unions, the DAs etc. all work to protect any and all police officers from charges of wrongdoing. Thus the many not racist cops create a system where the racist ones are protected and lots who are just tools but not necessarily racist get protected too.

I think that the racism problem is almost impossible to fix directly. While there's bad people there will be bad police officers. We can do our best to avoid hiring them, but it's not a strategy that will be very effective at least outside of the super long term.

But the police problem is absolutely fixable and would significantly dampen the opportunities for a bad cop to do damage with no repercussions. We have to end the blue line of silence and be able to hold individual officers accountable the same way we do civilians.


tl;dr
Racist cops are a problem, but the bigger problem and the reason people are upset is because they are almost never held accountable for it.

 

[Colonel]

Get it through your head. Criminals along with everyone else know that "all you have to do is get away from this cop" is total BS. Unless you can get away from this cop and never be identified you are screwed.

When a cop car behind you on the freeway turns their lights on, is your thought process "well, it's just a fine not significant jail time so I suppose I'll pull on over" or is it "they have my license plate number and have probably already called it in". Hint: trying to lie because one choice supports your theory will do you no good here because the real answer is totally obvious.

I live off the grid. It requires an entirely different mindset that most people I know think is insane, and they don't even see every aspect of how hard it is, even without being wanted by the cops. Nothing you consider normal is available to someone who has been identified by the police. They can't have a job other than under the table cash work. They can't get pulled over, meaning that they need to do a quick lights and registration inspection every time they get in a car. They can't have a credit check run, so they can't own property or even rent anything. They can't visit their relatives, or have friends close enough to be identified with.

And you think 'oh if the cop can't shoot them down right now they will just disappear like a puff of smoke'. Get a grip.

Your mis-representing my position, I'm not saying cops should shoot every criminal, I'm saying they should have ready access to a weapon because of the many instances of violence that an officer has to deal with. As to the would more people commit crimes if the cops weren't there or were unarmed. Yes I know and believe whole that crime would sky rocket if you did either of those two actions. Oh and by the way if you do a comparison of increasing armaments for police departments and over all violent crime you will notice a corresponding trend that crime goes down as Police get better armed.

As to your example, if someone who had committed various crimes was being pulled over, I would expect that they would run if the officers were disarmed. All they'd have to worry about is getting away.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Your mis-representing my position, I'm not saying cops should shoot every criminal, I'm saying they should have ready access to a weapon because of the many instances of violence that an officer has to deal with. As to the would more people commit crimes if the cops weren't there or were unarmed. Yes I know and believe whole that crime would sky rocket if you did either of those two actions. Oh and by the way if you do a comparison of increasing armaments for police departments and over all violent crime you will notice a corresponding trend that crime goes down as Police get better armed.

As to your example, if someone who had committed various crimes was being pulled over, I would expect that they would run if the officers were disarmed. All they'd have to worry about is getting away.

Get away to where? The land of magic license plate amnesia? If you are going to read them with willful stupidity there's not much point in providing examples.

 

[Flying Pig]

The issue isn't often whether they will get away permanently but the damage they will do in their failed attempt to do so.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The issue isn't often whether they will get away permanently but the damage they will do in their failed attempt to do so.

Absolutely right. That high speed chase down of someone who you can just go pick up at their house in an hour is usually worth the effort.

/sarcasm

I know a guy who got an 'evading' charge dropped. He went to court and applied sufficient obsequiousness.

He was on the freeway, looking for a gap into the right lane because his exit was coming up. Didn't see the cop behind him turn on his lights just about the time he saw his gap, cut in, and exited the freeway. The cop didn't make the exit, so the evading charge was added to the fix it ticket for the guy's burned out brake light.

The tickets got written at his house. There were two cop cars at the curb when he pulled into his driveway. The cop that he had 'lost' on the freeway arrived about five minutes later. For some reason it never crossed his mind that if he just shot them all dead, abandoned his life, created a new identity from scratch, and never got fingerprinted ever that he could have gotten out of this situation. I'm guessing the reason it never crossed his mind is because it is outright flamingly stupid.

 

[Flying Pig]

Absolutely right. That high speed chase down of someone who you can just go pick up at their house in an hour is usually worth the effort.
.

That's not what I said at all - only that saying that it doesn't matter if suspects temporarily escape because they'll be caught eventually is misguided at best.

 

[Colonel]

Absolutely right. That high speed chase down of someone who you can just go pick up at their house in an hour is usually worth the effort.

/sarcasm

I know a guy who got an 'evading' charge dropped. He went to court and applied sufficient obsequiousness.

He was on the freeway, looking for a gap into the right lane because his exit was coming up. Didn't see the cop behind him turn on his lights just about the time he saw his gap, cut in, and exited the freeway. The cop didn't make the exit, so the evading charge was added to the fix it ticket for the guy's burned out brake light.

The tickets got written at his house. There were two cop cars at the curb when he pulled into his driveway. The cop that he had 'lost' on the freeway arrived about five minutes later. For some reason it never crossed his mind that if he just shot them all dead, abandoned his life, created a new identity from scratch, and never got fingerprinted ever that he could have gotten out of this situation. I'm guessing the reason it never crossed his mind is because it is outright flamingly stupid.

Your trying to justify it by small crimes, your average CRIMINAL commits MANY CRIMES of varying degrees to which if he were caught he would face more then a simple traffic violation. Thus it worth it for him to evade and escape the law.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That's not what I said at all - only that saying that it doesn't matter if suspects temporarily escape because they'll be caught eventually is misguided at best.

If that's 'not what you said at all' then what exactly did you say? Why does it matter so much if suspects escape temporarily? I mean, I get it if we are talking about a devolving psychopath with an axe, but that isn't exactly the typical representative sample of a criminal.

Barring some really good answer here I'm going to attribute this to cop ego balm. A guy lying dead in the street is a positive outcome compared to the possibility that his heinous spree of shoplifting may have gone unabated...because cops gotta play the hero. Guess what; it ain't workin'.

 

[Flying Pig]

It's a law of large numbers problem. Most of the time, you're right - if someone runs away from a traffic stop, nothing particularly bad will happen. Every once in a very long while, something bad will - the Yorkshire Ripper was caught at a traffic stop, for example. Once you start applying that to a population of millions of whom thousands might be stopped for traffic violations in a given week or so, the odds of something awful happening if suspects in general escape don't look so slim after all.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Your trying to justify it by small crimes, your average CRIMINAL commits MANY CRIMES of varying degrees to which if he were caught he would face more then a simple traffic violation. Thus it worth it for him to evade and escape the law.

Now, care to cough up clue one how this evade and escape the law is gonna happen?

Your TV and movie fantasy world may be full of people creating new identities out of whole cloth, or racing across the Mexican border to disappear to mysterious El Rey after a minor dispute with vampires, but reality doesn't work that way.

Criminals operate in the reality of 'if I am ID'd I am caught.' The vast majority of them are well aware of it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's a law of large numbers problem. Most of the time, you're right - if someone runs away from a traffic stop, nothing particularly bad will happen. Every once in a very long while, something bad will - the Yorkshire Ripper was caught at a traffic stop, for example. Once you start applying that to a population of millions of whom thousands might be stopped for traffic violations in a given week or so, the odds of something awful happening if suspects in general escape don't look so slim after all.

The only criminal that gains anything at all from shifting the traffic stop at the side of the road to the driveway of their house is the criminal driving a stolen car. If you are in a stolen car you haven't been identified at that point, so getting away makes all the difference. But only if you can successfully transition out of the car unobserved. I don't know about where you live, but where I live the cops are thick enough on the ground and have sufficient air coverage that they genuinely don't need to do the high speed chase bit.

 

[Colonel]

The only criminal that gains anything at all from shifting the traffic stop at the side of the road to the driveway of their house is the criminal driving a stolen car. If you are in a stolen car you haven't been identified at that point, so getting away makes all the difference. But only if you can successfully transition out of the car unobserved. I don't know about where you live, but where I live the cops are thick enough on the ground and have sufficient air coverage that they genuinely don't need to do the high speed chase bit.

That makes absolutely no sense. Escape is paramount for a criminal, even if identified because it means at the very least at that moment THEY DONT GO TO JAIL!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That makes absolutely no sense. Escape is paramount for a criminal, even if identified because it means at the very least at that moment THEY DONT GO TO JAIL!

Add to list of things Colonel talks about while knowing nothing about:

Criminals.

If they are identified they are going to jail, and they know it since they do not live in this fantasy world of identity amnesia that you apparently believe in. The only difference made by this 'escape' you are babbling about is that they go to jail longer and have some probability of getting killed before they get there.

 

[Smote]

If you listen to how he says it, his airway isn't being impeded by the officer otherwise you will see damage to the windpipe. What we saw was a choke to the blood supply to incapacitate the person. It is a very common hold used in MMA and wrestling.

No, it looked like an air choke for about 15 seconds.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xHqf1BVE4 1:40 -> 1:55

This shouldn't kill someone by itself. You can tell its an air choke instead of a blood choke by the shape of the arm across the neck - its a straight line, focusing pressure straight into the neck, instead of elbow under the chin like a blood choke, which puts pressure on the arteries/veins on both sides of the neck. A worry here is that it will damage the windpipe, which can inflame and block airflow, but that didn't happen in this case per the autopsy report. Also, Eric Garner doesn't lose consciousness from the choke, which usually happens quickly in blood chokes, but not in air chokes. Based on the position of his arm, I could see one side of the neck arteries/veins potentially being blocked, but not both sides.

A big problem with what the cops did in my opinion is hold the choke for another 8 seconds after Eric Garner said "I can't breathe" at 1:47 in the video. He holds it until Garner says again, in a more panicked tone, "I can't breathe!" 8 seconds later. Those extra 8 seconds seemed criminally excessive.

According to Dr. Baden's interview in which he discusses the autopsy, there is evidence of hemorrhaging, which apparently indicates some of the veins did seem to be blocked:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/39226806...ight-into-death-of-eric-garner/#sp=show-clips

Around 2:40 in video:
"BADEN: But I think the autopsy itself -- the medical examiner did a great job on this. There's 27 pages in the report. And the female (ph), she found that there were 10 hemorrhages on the inside of the neck, in the muscles of the neck, petechial hemorrhages in the eye, hemorrhage in the tongue. And those are all evidence of neck compression. You're right, chokehold has many different meanings in all. What we're concerned at autopsy is was there pressure on the neck."


http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/v...autopsy-report-eric-garner-chokehold.cnn.html

0:40:
Dr. Samson Davis:
"You're compressing the jugulars so now blood is able to go to the brain but not leave it... and that causes the petechia"

So it does appear that bloodflow was blocked. I'm not sure why this happened. My best guess is, as they said before, neck/chest compressions complicating pre-existing conditions. The force used was excessive - and I do think it was a case of criminal negligence.


http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article15.htm
"Criminal negligence." A person acts with criminal negligence with
respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining
an offense when he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable
risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The
risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to perceive it
constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a
reasonable person would observe in the situation.