Law and Order in America

[Michael Hardner]

Are 4 videos in a row really necessary here ?

Here's one LINK - http://phys.org/news/2012-04-racial-profiling-arrestees-local-police.html - that surveys cases comprising 100X the number of videos you posted.

[GostHacked]

Are 4 videos in a row really necessary here ?

Here's one LINK - http://phys.org/news/2012-04-racial-profiling-arrestees-local-police.html - that surveys cases comprising 100X the number of videos you posted.

Am I breaking any rules by doing so?

[Michael Hardner]

Am I breaking any rules by doing so?

This has been discussed - as to how many, and what kind of images/videos are necessary to make an argument. The mods have opted against making a hard and fast rule. As such, it falls partially on me to nag people to pick up their socks in this regard.

[GostHacked]

This has been discussed - as to how many, and what kind of images/videos are necessary to make an argument. The mods have opted against making a hard and fast rule. As such, it falls partially on me to nag people to pick up their socks in this regard.

So just to be clear, I am not breaking any forum rules here, correct?

[Scotty]

Sure...the very famous example is a bank robbery shootout in North Hollywood,

That is, in fact, just about the ONLY example. Furthermore, bank robbers commonly used tommy guns in the thirties too.

Edited July 9, 2013 by Scotty

[Guest American Woman]

So just to be clear, I am not breaking any forum rules here, correct?

Perhaps this will help shed some light:

If you post an image with none of your own writing to accompany it, your post will be deleted without warning.

If you post an image with a feeble attempt to accompany it with your own writing, your post will likely be deleted without warning as well.

That's in response to a video being deleted.

[bush_cheney2004]

That is, in fact, just about the ONLY example. Furthermore, bank robbers commonly used tommy guns in the thirties too.

You are hedging your bet with "just about"...I could find others as needed. Cops routinely wear armour now and face threats from more than just bank robbers and gangsters. Dick and Jane Perp are now armed with semi-automatic handguns and/or assault rifles...just for entertainment.

[Scotty]

You are hedging your bet with "just about"...I could find others as needed. Cops routinely wear armour now and face threats from more than just bank robbers and gangsters. Dick and Jane Perp are now armed with semi-automatic handguns and/or assault rifles...just for entertainment.

My point is what you posted was hardly routine. You couldn't find another like it in the last decade. The number of cops being killed and wounded is not going up but down. And as has always been the case, the vast majority of cops go through their entire careers without ever being shot at or having to shoot at anyone else.

And I'm not objecting to the existence of SWAT teams, but to the militarization of the entire police force and the commensurate change in police personalities and how they deal with the population at large.

[Scotty]

I feel safe knowing these guys are on duty.

This illustrates exactly what I've been saying. The reason police acted up here is that they had the assumption that everyone must do whatever the police tell them. It didn't matter that the individuals weren't breaking any laws. The police ordered them to get off the street. As was their right, they didn't, so got beat up. The second guy was taking videos and wouldn't go away, so half the Omaha police force showed up to punish him for refusing to obey. Instead of such things as Serve and Protect, a better motto for police cars would be "Obey me or else'.

[bush_cheney2004]

And I'm not objecting to the existence of SWAT teams, but to the militarization of the entire police force and the commensurate change in police personalities and how they deal with the population at large.

Meh.....cops use to be a lot meaner when they wanted to be with total impunity. Escalation in force/tactics has been paralleled with non-lethals and better training. I learned a long time ago that police officers are required to engage with some very unsavory citizens, and that means overwelming force when required. The "population" is very well armed in the U.S.

[bush_cheney2004]

This illustrates exactly what I've been saying. The reason police acted up here is that they had the assumption that everyone must do whatever the police tell them. It didn't matter that the individuals weren't breaking any laws. The police ordered them to get off the street. As was their right, they didn't, so got beat up. The second guy was taking videos and wouldn't go away, so half the Omaha police force showed up to punish him for refusing to obey. Instead of such things as Serve and Protect, a better motto for police cars would be "Obey me or else'.

Tough titty.....disobey police orders at your own peril. Go ahead...be a dead "hero".

[GostHacked]

Tough titty.....disobey police orders at your own peril. Go ahead...be a dead "hero".

Should let more line out on the downrigger, you might catch something.

[Michael Hardner]

So just to be clear, I am not breaking any forum rules here, correct?

I can't say for sure. It's a qualitative rule, not a hard limit.

[Charles Anthony]

So just to be clear, I am not breaking any forum rules here, correct?

I can't say for sure. It's a qualitative rule, not a hard limit.

I can not say for sure either.

GH,

I do not care if you are breaking any "rule" in the forum because as MH said, there is no hard and fast rule. We are all bumbling forward in the evolution of internet discussion.

All we want is to foster civil intelligent debate in written form ---- that is the priority. Photos and embedded media detract from this by their very nature. Just use your best judgement for now.

Ch. A.

[GostHacked]

I can not say for sure either.

GH,

I do not care if you are breaking any "rule" in the forum because as MH said, there is no hard and fast rule. We are all bumbling forward in the evolution of internet discussion.

All we want is to foster civil intelligent debate in written form ---- that is the priority. Photos and embedded media detract from this by their very nature. Just use your best judgement for now.

Ch. A.

Sounds fair, thanks for the clarification.

[Guest American Woman]

I can not say for sure either.

GH,

I do not care if you are breaking any "rule" in the forum because as MH said, there is no hard and fast rule. We are all bumbling forward in the evolution of internet discussion.

All we want is to foster civil intelligent debate in written form ---- that is the priority. Photos and embedded media detract from this by their very nature. Just use your best judgement for now.

I find this response very confusing in light of what you've had to say about this very issue previously, when another poster's video was removed for the very things that GH did in this thread. It sounded as if there was a "hard and fast rule."

If you post an image with none of your own writing to accompany it, your post will be deleted without warning.

If you post an image with a feeble attempt to accompany it with your own writing, your post will likely be deleted without warning as well.

I bring this up because it's so difficult to know what is allowed and what one will be warned or suspended for, as the moderating actions seem to be so inconsistent - as evidenced here. I'm truly confused as to why one member would have their video removed as another member's videos stand.

[kimmy]

I think the videos Gosthacked posted are good illustrations of the kind of mentality that some of us are complaining about and others seem to be defending or dismissing.

-the one with the cop tazering an already-compliant suspect is reminiscent of the slaying of Robert Dziekanski, or the actions of Geoff Mantler, the RCMP officer who kicked a compliant and cooperative suspect in the face while he was on his hands and knees.

-the one with the cop demanding that the men open their door so she can look into their home illustrates an authoritarian attitude. She had no legal authority to demand access to the home, but for refusing to do something she had no authority to demand, he is charged with "obstructing an officer"? Amazingly she is actually boasting about this on a TV program. It is especially worth pointing out that this is the exact same strategy employed by the Henderson Nevada police to arrest the people whose homes they wanted to invade to use for their stake-out.

-the behavior of the cop at the check-stop is interesting, first off in that it is similar to the police woman attempting to deceive the men into giving her access to their home and his refusal to answer the question "am I being detained". The trick of getting the "drug dog" to give them an "alert" to justify access to the car was instructive. And the cops' reaction to discovering the video recorder... you could almost picture an "aw, crap" thought-bubble above his head.

-and I don't even know what to say about the Omaha video.

Here is an article explaining the aftermath. 4 officers fired, 3 placed on "administrative leave", 1 "reassigned from regular duty."

And here is another article discussing a possible conspiracy by police involved to destroy the video-recording that they knew about and to cover up the incident. "The information that we've been privy to is that there was evidence that was mishandled in that residence by Omaha police officers," said County Attorney Don Kleine.

And the video accompanying this story explains that one of the cops, James Kinsella, is charged with destroying the video in the cell phone, and another Aaron von Behren, is charged with helping cover it up. Specific charges against Kinsella are "Tampering with Evidence", "Obstructing Government Operations", and "Unlawful Theft By Taking". Charges against von Behren are "Obstructing Government Operations" and "Accessory to a Felony".

You have 20 officers swarming into the house because a guy video recorded another cop beating up a suspect. You've got 2 of them charged with destroying evidence and conspiring to cover it up. And as with other police situations, the only reason they're being held accountable is that a third party recorded the incident, showed it to the public, and generated sufficient public outrage to demand the police be held accountable.

-k

[kimmy]

Scotty's timing in starting this thread is most fortuitous, as a book is just being released, called "Rise of the Warrior Cop: the militarization of America's police forces."

The ACLU website has posted an article by the book's author, talking about the subject.

The numbers are staggering. In the early 1980s, there were about 3,000 SWAT "call-outs" per year across the entire country. By 2005, there were an estimated 50,000. In New York City alone, there were 1,447 drug raids 1994. By 2002, eight years later, there were 5,117 -- a 350 percent increase. In 1984, about a fourth of towns between 25,000-50,000 people had a SWAT team. By 2005, it was 80 percent.

Today, the use of this sort of force is in too many jurisdictions the first option for serving search warrants instead of the last. SWAT teams today are used to break up poker games and massage parlors, for immigration enforcement, even to perform regulatory inspections.

Troubling as all of this is, the problem goes beyond SWAT teams. Too many police departments today are infused with a more general militaristic culture. Cops today are too often told that they're soldiers fighting a war, be it a war on crime, on drugs, on terrorism, or whatever other recent gremlin politicians have chosen as the enemy. Cops today tend to be isolated from the communities they serve, both physically (by their patrol cars) and psychologically, by an us and them mentality that sees the public not as citizens police officers are to serve and protect, but as a collection of potential threats.

Salon published an excerpt from the book earlier this week, describing a SWAT team shooting an unarmed man to death in Fairfax Virginia. They were going to arrest him for betting on football games. I realize that they take football very seriously in some parts of the United States, but even so calling in a SWAT team seems excessive.

-k

[cybercoma]

Calling the SWAT team is excessive? Might I suggest murdering someone over betting, even if it is a criminal activity, is not only excessive but absolutely appalling. This stuff reminds me more and more each day of the philosophical dilemmas in Judge Dredd, a popular British comic series from the 70s that has seen a couple movie adaptations over the years.

Edited July 11, 2013 by cybercoma

[kimmy]

Another blood-curdling excerpt from "Rise of the Warrior Cop" was published today.

The incident: in July 2008, a SWAT team smashes down the door of a man's home, shot his dogs, put a gun to his mother-in-law's head and put her face-down on the floor. When he reached the scene, they bound his hands and put him on the floor too. Then they ransacked the house, tracking dog blood all over everything, and kept the man and his mother-in-law cuffed on the floor for hours while they interrogated them and trashed the house. They were looking for evidence of drugs.

The man, coincidentally, was the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. And it really was coincidence that he was the victim of this debacle; it could have been anybody. The reason the SWAT team attacked this particular home had nothing to do with the occupants. It had to do with a drug smuggling scheme in which drugs were mailed by FedEx to unsuspecting recipients; the shipments were supposed to be intercepted by a FedEx employee who was part of the scheme. The drugs were never supposed to reach the people they were addressed to. However, the police caught wind of the scheme and the drugs were delivered by an undercover cop to the address on the package-- mayor Cheye Calvo's home. The police later cleared mayor Calvo and his wife and mother-in-law of any involvement in drug smuggling; they arrested the FedEx driver who'd been pulled off-duty so that the undercover cop could deliver the drugs.

In the aftermath, we find many themes that are common with stories like this. The police told a series of lies in attempting to explain the incident. Once again we find the police lying about the behavior of the "suspects"-- they initially claimed that Calvo had slammed the door in their face when they requested entry, even though he was upstairs at the time. They claimed to have a "no-knock warrant", even though they had no such things. They claimed to have shot the dogs because they were "aggressive", when in fact ballistics determined that the dogs had been shot in the back.

And, like other stories like this, the police themselves weren't accountable; the taxpayers were on the hook for this recklessness. Calvo filed a lawsuit; two years later they received an out-of-court settlement for some amount of money.

-k

[GostHacked]

Kimmy, there have been a rash of incidents termed 'SWATTING'. Where an anonymous call is placed to the police in which they report a fake crime on unsuspecting innocent people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

Swatting is the tricking of any emergency service (via such as a 9-1-1 dispatcher) into dispatching an emergency response based on the false report of an on-going critical incident. Episodes range from large to small, from the deployment of bomb squads, SWAT units and other police units and the concurrent evacuations of schools and businesses to a single fabricated police report meant to discredit an individual as a prank or personal vendetta. While it is a misdemeanor or a felony in every state in and of itself to report any untruth to law enforcement, swatting can cause massive disruption to the civil order and the public peace by the hoaxed deployment of police and other civic resources such as ambulances and fire departments. The term derives from SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), a highly specialized type of police unit

Quite dangerous to both the emergency services and to the unsuspecting victims.

[GostHacked]

Here is another incident where a police man had clearly crossed the line ...

Gets stopped at a checkpoint, refused the search, gets pulled into 'secondary' and then when the person refuses to get out of the car or roll the window down, the cop simply smashed the window.

[Guest American Woman]

So that makes, what - about a dozen or so incidents? I think that's about how many videos you've posted now - and good for you being allowed to post said videos.

In a nation of 312 million people, with hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers having countless encounters on a daily basis throughout the year, they most definitely represent "law and order in America." (and yes, that is sarcasm ..........)

[GostHacked]

So that makes, what - about a dozen or so incidents? I think that's about how many videos you've posted now - and good for you being allowed to post said videos.

The clarification was that videos can be posted as long as commentary is provided to further the debate. However, in those videos posted, I am not sure any commentary I posted would do it justice. There are many videos on line that show the kind of thing. I could post them, but then I run the risk of being called out for spam or something. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what I do.

In a nation of 312 million people, with hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers having countless encounters on a daily basis throughout the year, they most definitely represent "law and order in America." (and yes, that is sarcasm ..........)

Here is another video for you. So bad that a fellow police officer resigned. Protect and serve? Over 50 separate incidents of this specific officer, and has not been reprimanded once. Both the cop and the chief need to be fired and charged themselves.

[Guest American Woman]

Your examples, as I pointed out, are needles in a haystack. Doesn't make them ok by any means, but it doesn't make them representative of "law and order in America," either. It never ceases to amaze me how the small minority of instances are made out to be representative of the whole. Why isn't the way the vast majority of law enforcement officials handle themselves representative of law and order in America?

But do keep those videos coming. Considering the fact that we have over half a million law enforcement officers, a dozen videos for visual effect is likely a necessity to try to present it as oh-so-awful here in America.