I’ve just finished watching the very, and not surprisingly, combative press conference held by Brooklyn Center, MN leadership regarding the police shooting of Daunte Wright. This included watching the body cam footage that they released and played. That video is below from Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.
WARNING, THE VIDEO IS GRAPHIC!
Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described it as an accidental discharge, but that is both an antiquated and not exactly accurate description. The more accurate term, though equally banal term, is negligent discharge. It was negligent because it is clear that, as Chief Gannon described, the officer that shot and killed Daunte Wright was intending to use her taser. This is clear from the audio where she says:
I’ll tase you! I’ll tase you!
Get clear! Get clear!
TASER! TASER! TASER!
BLEEP!!! (ALS: this was either Fuck, Damn, or Shit) I shot him!
I shot him!
You can hear this in the audio in the video above. And you can see she’s holding her service GLOCK and has brought it to bear on Wright, not her Taser! And that she drops her gun/puts it down as soon as she realizes she’s shot him, which, in the video, is between the “BLEEP!!! I shot him! and “I shot him” as Wright drives off as he’s bleeding out from the wound.
The Tasers, as you can briefly see when the one on the officer trying to cuff Wright comes into focus on the video, has a yellow grip. The color is to help law enforcement distinguish it from their service weapons, regardless of make, to prevent shootings like this from happening. You can see the taser on his left hip (weak side) between the 52 and 54 second mark of the video above. It is holstered for a right handed cross draw, so the butt of the grip is facing out from the front of his body. I have no idea where the female officer’s Taser was holstered or how it was set up for draw, but it is usually they holstered on the opposite side of the body from the service firearm to prevent this from happening.
This doesn’t justify the shooting, it just explains it.
There were three officers on site and this quickly escalated from him being cuffed to a couple of seconds of scuffle before she decides to escalate to using “less than lethal” force, which, because of negligence in confusing her GLOCK with her Taser, turned into lethal force.
Daunte Wright was pulled over for expired tags, which is a running problem in Minnesota because of pandemic related delays in processing renewals. Expired tags are a misdemeanor offense. When they ran him in the computer, they got a return that he had a warrant for failing to appear after being sent a summons for a court appearance on a different misdemeanor. Neither of these things would seem to necessitate any form of escalation. Wright is not heard threatening the cops. He’s not moving towards them when he pulls away from being cuffed after the female officer intervenes while one of the two male officers is trying to cuff him. I’m not even sure why she would escalate to the Taser.
I’m going to make a semi-informed guesstimate, however. I would put money on the fact that this officer has attended a continuing education class with Bill Lewinski* and the absolutely bullshit training from his Force Science Institute, which teaches law enforcement to immediately escalate to the highest level of force lest they be killed by any interaction with the citizenry. Lewinsky created his own course of study and “field” within psychology when he did his doctorate and Canadian courts won’t allow him to provide expert testimony anymore because he is a “self proclaimed authority” on law enforcement use of force. Lewinski’s “police psychology” and his expert witness testimony justify every police shooting on the basis that police cannot wait to employ force lest they be harmed or killed. And if she didn’t take one of Lewinski’s continuing education course, then she had one on “killology”, which is equally garbage. Or one of the other similar courses that have turned too many law enforcement officers into “shoot first and don’t answer questions later” responders.
I write this as someone who has taught hundreds of law enforcement officers as a former criminology professor, as well as conducted continuing education for Federal and state law enforcement on how to conduct Engagement to deescalate situations in order to be more effective. And as someone who is a member of the Nassau County, NY Detectives Association**. Until or unless law enforcement training – both the initial entry education and especially the continuing education – is revised to remove the bullshit junk science that justifies immediate escalations of force, this is going to continue.
I expect that the community response is going to escalate, especially because some idiot prevented most of the news media from attending the press conference, so the mayor, the city manager, and Chief Gannon were predominantly taking questions from community activists.
I’ve now seen far too many of these types of press conferences and whoever is in charge of crisis communications for these departments are terrible. Too many of these pressers are combative and/or uninformative. This one was both and did far more harm than good.
The bottom line is that Daunte Wright is dead. For, at best, a pair of misdemeanors. Even if he had been adjudicated guilty of both of those misdemeanors, neither of them carry a sentence of death. Daunte Wright is dead because a cop made four errors in a matter of seconds. The first was to escalate the arrest as Wright was being handcuffed. The second was to decide the escalation warranted applying her Taser. The third was to draw her service GLOCK when, apparently, she intended to draw her Taser. And the fourth was to then pull the trigger on the GLOCK even though a GLOCK’s grip and a Taser’s grip feel very different. Daunte Wright was extrajudicially killed under cover of law because one of the three responding officers to a potential misdemeanor traffic stop.
Two things need to happen now. The first thing, which is general and applies everywhere, is this has to stop. The second is that a thorough, independent investigation needs to take place to figure out why this officers made several operational and tactical errors in short order that resulted in her shooting and killing Wright. And the lessons learned from that independent investigation need to be applied so this doesn’t happen again.
I expect that Brooklyn Center, MN is going to be a powder keg until explanations are forthcoming.
Open thread!
* Lewinski’s work has been raised in regard to Officer Chauvin’s defense in his murder trial.
** During my year teaching criminology in New York, prior to leaving academia and going to work for and with the military, one of my students was the then Deputy Commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department. He took my graduate research design and methods and graduate statistical analysis classes. I provided a small amount of analytical support to him and his department after he’d completed my classes and my membership in the Detectives Association was his way of thanking me. The membership got me a lapel pin, which is the crest of the Detectives Association, a money clip that has the crest of the Detective Association, and a membership card. Interestingly, he encouraged me to leave academia. He said to me one day: “What the hell are you doing wasting your time doing this for? What you can do is needed and can be put to better use elsewhere.” Two months later I’d quit rather than fix student grades and three weeks after that when I was recruited to go to work for the Army I took that job. And that ultimately led me to you lovely people…
dnfree
This is just awful. (Even without watching the video, just knowing the result.) And it’s also awful that an officer has just been fired NOW for an incident in Virginia, video also available but at least no one is killed. I would have been afraid to get out of my car with two obviously excitable and riled-up officers pointing their guns at me and shouting. The only person trying to de-escalate and behave reasonably is the victim. This article has video combining what the person stopped took with the officer body cameras.
But why was the officer not fired until now, after the person stopped filed a lawsuit?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/04/10/virginia-police-gunpoint-army-nazario/
Cheryl Rofer
This must stop.
It’s clear in all these killings that the cops are frightened and overaggressive, which go together.
piratedan
and here we are…. young black men being killed for shit most of us white people wouldn’t even get a warning over and STILL the police seem to feel like they’re the victims.
At the point where I want to say fire them all.
Josie
@dnfree: And why was just one officer fired?
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: No arguments from me. Lewinsky’s running quite the scam. He, or people working for his Force Science Institute, does the training teaching cops to escalate lest they get killed, for which they get paid. Then, when a cop does what Lewinski or his people have trained that cop to do, Lewinski comes in and charges $1,000 per hour as an expert witness for that cop’s defense.
For instance, as he just stated under oath, the Law and Criminal Justice professor testifying for the prosecution as a law enforcement training and response expert witness, he charges $295 per hour as an expert witness and, for trial days, he has an 8 hour minimum for billing. I’m sure he also gets his travel expenses and meals compensated if he has to travel.
James E Powell
I would like to see & hear the rest of that body cam video.
I can already hear the “why didn’t he comply” remarks, but really do wonder why there are at least three and maybe more officers for an expired tags traffic stop.
Couple years ago, I was driving a friend to LAX in her car. At a stoplight, an LAPD car pulled up next to us and said to me, “Hey, you’re tags are expired” – My friend shouted from the passenger side, “Sorry, it’s my car. I got the sticker in the mail and forgot to put it on!” The officer said, “Well make sure you do that today!” and drove away. This was that white privilege we all know so well.
debbie
NPR confirms she meant to fire the taser, FWIW.
Darkrose
I am so fucking tired.
Elizabelle
I’m glad you’re addressing this, Adam. Poor Daunte and his family, friends, and loved ones.
I am glad we have Biden-Harris in office as a lot of communities come to terms with the need to rein in the police/change policing procedures, and not Mr. Gasoline.
In the Windsor, VA incident dnfree linked above: a huge factor in that motorist surviving was: he was wearing his active duty fatigues at the time of the (fucking dubious) traffic stop. (Windsor is maybe 30 miles west of Norfolk, and SE of Wakefield.)
So: one officer “terminated” in Windsor, VA, and perhaps the other’s job is in jeopardy too.
Two officers fired in Rocky Mount, VA (south of Roanoke) for being in the Capitol during the insurrection and posting photos on Facebook about it. The more senior of the two told his command that he had been “invited in” to the Capitol. I am wondering about that statement. It could be true, and by whom on the scene? Must track that one down.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: One of those officers is a sergeant in the VA National Guard. His next weekend of Guard training is going to be, I think, very unpleasant.
Benw
He died because he is black and the cops kill black people. No way that would have gone down the same way with a white person
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Perhaps his last?
rp
Holy shit those cops are fucking stupid. Even putting aside the mix up of the gun and taser (and while I get that it’s a stressful situation and adrenaline is flowing, that’s obviously inexcusable), why the HELL was she jamming her weapon inside the car right next to the other cop? Why escalate the situation like that? Take a step back and let him drive off. YOU HAVE HIS PLATES AND THERE ARE NO EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES!!!
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: No, more likely he’ll be told to mow the grass at the base using a pair of cuticle scissors. Or clean all the toilets with his tooth brush.
guachi
I’m honestly surprised we don’t see more cops getting shot in response to cops killing people.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
“Hell, yes, I ordered the Code Red!“
The Thin Black Duke
@guachi: I’d rather not give these pigs an excuse to napalm an entire neighborhood. And they would.
Adam L Silverman
@guachi: We’re far better off without that happening. The last thing we need is a widespread series of police riots across the country.
henrythefifth
@Cheryl Rofer: Yup. Just google “Killology Trainings.” Police are either taking them or being influenced by other police who have. It teaches hyper-agressive and violent policing with a kill-or-be -killed mindset.
Ken
My engineer-type mind immediately thinks “How can we make mixing up taser and gun less likely?” For example, require that the safety catches on the gun and taser be in different places, or that the fasteners for the holsters use different mechanisms.
(I will probably now be informed that the taser doesn’t have a safety catch, or that police do not engage the safety catch on their holstered weapons, or that they do not fasten the holsters.)
Adam L Silverman
@rp:
That’s the thing that gets me. There appears to be somewhere between a flat and a negative learning curve for the cops. They seem to be completely unaware of the fact that all of their vehicles have dash cams. That they and their colleagues are wearing body cams. And that everyone they interact with has a camera and a video recorder in their phones. You would think or expect that those overlapping dynamics of documenting what they’re doing would have some effect on their behavior. But in reality it doesn’t.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
How many bullshit traffic stops make our communities better?
Tinting on windows, broken taillights, expired registrations. Send a notice to the driver giving a reasonable “time to correct” and to show proof. Penalties on failure can then be dealt with by registration cancellation and repo orders on subsequent violations.
germy
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: They’re shaped completely differently. They law enforcement models are either yellow or yellow and black. The holsters are different. And, by policy, they’re supposed to be worn on different sides of the body to prevent confusing them.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Naveed is correct.
germy
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ken:
Also in these instances are the shouts of the “Glocks have a trigger ‘safety’” crowd, which is complete bullshit. A Glock is a military weapon, developed specifically for military purposes.
My vote is for good old-fashioned .357s as the standard duty weapon.
Bill K
Adam,
Thank you for the detailed analysis. I am sure Lewinsky-style training is partly to blame. I also think the BLM movement, once it’s been filtered through Fox news and other right-wing media sites, has given the police a sense of being besieged. Somehow we need to get through to them that most people still respect the police and consider them necessary. We just want them to stop with the un-justified killings.
dmsilev
@Ken: I’d start with “guns must be stored in the trunk of the cruiser, not worn on a holster”. Yeah, the police unions would scream. At this point, don’t care.
rp
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly. And they’re in MN right in the middle of the Chauvin trial. What conclusion can we draw aside from they’re so stupid/poorly trained that they’re incapable of reacting to the immediate (no exigent circumstances) and big picture (their behavior is going to be scrutinized extra carefully) stimuli when out on patrol. There are probably amoeba who are smarter and better trained.
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: I was half expecting these answers. I wasn’t quite sure enough to go full tongue-in-cheek with the helpful suggestions to avoid future confusion.
germy
Roc Ingersoll
The other fact worth mentioning is why you have your” suspect” right by the open door. In my day, officers would escort the person to the back of the vehicle for the safety of everyone from traffic. Here they start arresting him right away with the open door right there. This is negligent in its own sense because if there was fear of him grabbing a weapon or something, they would not have had him at the door. To me, this all bears on the overall lack of training.
The Thin Black Duke
@Adam L Silverman: Why would they change their behavior? Most of the time the cops get away with it. No accountability, no consequences, no big deal.
Elizabelle
The root of all of this is too many guns out there.
As in, the cops are afraid of the people they “serve and protect” because they think they themselves are going to be gunned down. So they treat the community members, and especially people of color, like the potential shooters the cops fear. They are taught to do so, by this lunatic Lewinsky and others like him.
And then the cops say that they were in fear for their life.
Of course, Officer Dimwit who killed Daunte Wright is saying she cannot tell a taser from her service weapon.
Never forget that the NRA and its politicians and sponsors/donors helped create this minefield for American communities.
Martin
Non-lethal tools like tasers are generally bullshit. They’re justified as a substitute for using the gun, but they seem to only serve to escalate violence when a gun is clearly unwarranted. I mean, if police didn’t have pepper spray here, would they have shot instead? Because that’s the argument we’re being offered.
Elizabelle
End qualified immunity.
stacib
@The Thin Black Duke: Exactly, in addition to half the population making more excuses for them than they make for themselves.
It’s so hard being black in America. Your psyche takes a real beating – regularly.
Doc Sardonic
@Adam L Silverman: The learning curve is flat or negative because they have been shown over a long period of time, that there are few or no consequences for their actions. They beat the shit out of someone they may get an excessive force note that gets filed away or lost in their personnel jacket and has no real effect on their job mobility. If a civil suit occurs and their department loses or settles it costs the taxpayers not them. Last but not least, if they kill someone while on duty and do wind up getting charged in most cases they will be acquitted, essentially they are trained that they are not above the law, they are the law and therefore any action they might take is justifiable.
Martin
@Elizabelle: Yup. It’s the concept of mutually assured destruction brought to the individual level. I need to carry a gun to protect me from tyranny, and police need to use a gun to protect them from criminals. And it’s impossible to tell the two apart.
The whole point of the exercise should be to give government a monopoly on violence and retain sufficient non-violent legal and electoral mechanisms to regulate and restrain that. We seem to have managed to fail both sides of that.
germy
@Elizabelle:
It’s been ended in NYC
germy
@Elizabelle:
And Officer Dimwit is described as a Senior Officer.
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The GLOCK Safe Action System is a passive safety system. It isn’t a flip up frame or slide mounted safety, nor is it a grip safety, both of which are used on most 1911 style pistols. The GLOCK Safe Action System, including the trigger dingus, is intended to prevent negligent discharge, which it doesn’t always do, hence the term GLOCK leg. Here’s GLOCK’s own description of this system:
https://us.glock.com/en/LEARN/GLOCK-Pistols/Safe-Action-System
Diagram and videos at the link above.
Fair Economist
I don’t think this cop is due criminal prosecution, but firing for incompetence is straightforward. Can’t have a cop that doesn’t even realize he is firing a gun.
Doc Sardonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: A Glock has a little tiny peepee between the legs of the trigger. The only time it acts as a safety is when your booger hook isn’t in the trigger guard. One of several reasons I don’t own one.
Elizabelle
@germy: Good to hear. Will read up on that.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: And none of those are sufficient. What is the officers muscle memory? What’s their instinct? They wear the lethal choice on their dominant side and the non-lethal choice on their non-dominant side.
Their instinct is to draw from the right, from their dominant side, so they do that when under stress.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill K: They already felt besieged. We have excellent, year on year, decade on decade, studies of law enforcement culture. One of the consistent findings is that American law enforcement think of people as being in three categories:
That’s pretty much it.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: I think she should get sued to Kingdom Come by the late Mr. Wright’s heirs.
Make her an example.
Adam L Silverman
@rp: I will not be surprised that Brooklyn Center issues a lot of moving violation, especially speeding, and other misdemeanor citations as a revenue generator. And that Black and brown people are over represented among those stopped and ticketed.
Betty Cracker
A cop pulled me over for an expired tag sticker in Tampa several years back, and I said whoopsie, must’ve forgot to put it on the tag (which was true).
I had a UF license plate holder, and he said if it had been an FSU plate holder, he might have had to give me a ticket heh heh heh — put that sticker on, and have a nice day. ma’am!
It’s clear to me we need to radically change the way cops are recruited and trained — de-militarize it, aim for a public servant mentality rather than an occupying army mindset, etc. But in the meantime, maybe STOP using armed officers to police shit like vehicle equipment and registration issues?
Seems like technology could snag those sorts of infractions and automatically send people tickets, warnings, notices, etc., right? That would save some lives right there.
Adam L Silverman
@Roc Ingersoll: Yep. I’d be curious to see what the trained to standard procedure for this type of stop was supposed to be.
Adam L Silverman
@The Thin Black Duke: There is that…
Martin
@Doc Sardonic: That’s was clearer than the 8 technical paragraphs that Glock offered up for Adam to use.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: These same cops are also the ones who oppose the gun control laws that might make their jobs, as well as the communities they police, safer.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: I’m not arguing with you. Something is really screwed up here. And it led to Wright being killed for bullshit reasons.
James E Powell
@Adam L Silverman:
Totally anecdotal, I know, but there was a time when the law firm I worked for was on the police patrol union’s referral list and we got a steady stream of officers for domestic relations, personal injury, real estate, and the like. In my experience working with those officers, city & suburban, they all had that “three kinds of people” mindset, even the “good ones.
And the “besieged” mindset. Over the top bordering on paranoia.
germy
@Adam L Silverman:
And often they’re way down on the list of priorities. Rape victims, victims of color, etc.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
I would like them to carefully go through each step of the stop, starting with whether a misdemeanor summons ordinarily justifies this kind of response from police, and if it does, why they’re operating like that.
In addition to all their other problems, US police aren’t very good at solving serious crimes. The “clearance rate” for serious crimes is appalling. So you want them out there solving rape and murder and robbery and you’re not getting that- instead they’re harassing people for expired tags, fucking it all up and killing them. They’re not doing what we need them to do and instead spending thousands of hours turning minor problems into huge tragedies.
Part of our “reform the police” discussion needs to be about why we’re not getting actual effective and important police protection and instead are getting this junk.
Almost Retired
That press conference was a shit show. Based on my limited understanding (I was watching it while multi-tasking), press attendance was limited, but community activists were allowed in and able to ask questions. And those questions were waaaaaay better than the usual measured press inquiries. One woman in particular was having none of their officer-due-process bureaucracy speak. I assume the Police Chief fled mid-conference to change his underwear.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well I suppose incompetence is a step forward from cold blooded murder. sigh.
Ah, I see Adam’s point about junk science is driving this all.
Adam L Silverman
@James E Powell: It’s why, even when they’re in social situations, far too many immediately try to assert dominance over whomever they’re talking with. It’s completely ingrained. Can’t let someone get over on you because then you’ll have trouble, so make it clear who is in control from the beginning. There are a few videos of guys who like to reverse the dynamic and it is both funny and frighteningly sad to watch the cops try to deal with the reversal of dominance in interpersonal interactions.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: No argument there.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: Isn’t there something wrong with a course that instills SUCH a degree of terror in cops taking it, that they are primed to kill over pretty much anything? (or, a society that supports cops taking such courses?) Adam, is that degree of terror justified by what cops are up against? It didn’t use to be; have things actually gotten more lethal for cops recently
(also, do you have any links to the videos of reversing dominance that you could point to? Or search terms I could try? I’d like very much to see that!)
germy
Why did the police chief walk out of the press conference and then return a few minutes later?
Was he called away on urgent business or did he just get fed up with answering questions?
Cheryl Rofer
Aaron Rupar, as usual, has videos from the press conference in this thread.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Support Your Local Gestapo
Chief Oshkosh
@henrythefifth: Who is allowing this sort of training? At what level? Who has oversight on these decisions? I assume the sheriff or chief. These are often elected officials, but can a city’s mayor or a county’s commissioners simply say “Nah, we’re not going to fund this bullshit training. Come up with a better idea, Junior.”?
Ken
@Martin: But Adam’s had ® symbols. That’s how you know Glock’s SAFE ACTION® is a synergistic innovative paradigm bringing transformative engagement in diverse operational deployment scenarios. If it were just a boring old safety catch that worked, they wouldn’t have bothered with the registered trademark.
Roger Moore
@rp:
I think this gets back to the theories of Bill Lewinski that Adam was talking about. IIRC, one of his big ideas is that the police need to be in charge of any situation, because the chance of violence increases if the police aren’t in charge*. Unfortunately, the police idea of “being in charge” of a situation seems to be ordering everyone around, and the way they try to enforce compliance is with threats or actual violence. It tends to escalate situations rather than defusing them. Even worse, once they get in this mindset, any situation will be interpreted as evidence the approach is effective. If threats or violence get people to comply, it’s proof that taking charge was effective. If threats or violence fail, it’s evidence of the need to escalate further.
*There may be some truth to this idea, but only when dealing with people who are already contemplating violence. If someone thinking about violence thinks the police have the drop on them, they’re more likely to give up rather than attack. But when dealing with people who aren’t aggressive, it just results in needless escalation and increases the chance of the police beating someone up for passively resisting.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: There is a major problem with it. I don’t think society supports this training, I don’t think most Americans, even informed ones, know it is happening. Law enforcement is year on year/year after year not a particularly dangerous occupation. Is it more dangerous than doing a desk job? Yes. Is it as dangerous as being a roofer? No it is not.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-23/how-dangerous-is-police-work
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That’s an excellent point and “ROI” framing that should appeal to everyone, regardless of political views. What are we getting in return for the enormous power we delegate to these organizations and the gigantic amount of money the entire thing costs even when they aren’t getting sued for killing or maiming people?
geg6
@James E Powell:
I’ve known a lot of cops in my many years and can’t disagree. Only three, two state cops (both Black) and my hometown’s chief when I was young, who didn’t look at things that way. And in more recent years, all the campus police on my campus. But our campus police are chosen by different criteria (all have BAs or BSs and are encouraged to get a Master’s, in addition to their policing credentials) and community policing in its most liberal sense is what they are charged with by their employer. It’s a totally different mindset and the ones who, by some chance, get hired despite their authoritarian mindset don’t last a year on the job because they are not encouraged to act like your typical cop and may even be disciplined for acting like one.
Gvg
@Adam L Silverman: hmm, maybe it does. Maybe what we are seeing is just the stupider ones who haven’t toned it down due to changing times. Maybe it was worse before phone cameras etc.
Ruckus
@rp:
Cops have been taught both in class sittings and in field training, to be in control at all times and to use whatever force is necessary. And that all citizens, but especially black citizens are violent. It comes, as Adam stated, from formalized training and from each other in their daily lives as cops. Add in the inherent racism of the US into a mix of “It’s us against them,” full control 100% of the time and “Everyone has a gun,” and this is what you get, “Shoot first, Fuck questions.” I’ve told this story before, but 35 yrs ago, my business was in the LAPD Newton St. precinct, which later on was under federal mandate for this kind of crap, I would see 6 huge cops drive around in unmarked cars and stop and harass black people walking down the street. I’m talking 6 burly men with nightsticks drawn, surrounding one black woman and harassing her for walking down the street, nothing more. Men would be handcuffed, searched and checked for warrants.
This concept that black men are the most dangerous creatures that walk the earth has been a part of US police street lore for far longer than anyone alive. I’m not sure it can be changed but it needs to be. And of course current gun laws don’t help, what with all the white assholes carrying them, with far less training and concept of who and when they can or even should shoot. I have a HS buddy who worked for the CA Highway Patrol for 30 yrs, who told me after he retired over 15 yrs ago, that it’s actually worse now than it was when he started.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: He got fed up and walked out. He explained it that he’s used to making his statement, taking a few questions, and then handing it off to Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Which may all be true, but given that the BCA wasn’t there, is not a sufficient answer.
rikyrah
He is dead, and shouldn’t be ???
Old School
According to CNN:
“Holy sh*t!” the officer screams. “I shot him.”
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: There are no accidental discharges of a firearm unless something in the gun’s mechanism is broken or malfunctions. Which does actually happen. Outside of those specific mechanical problems, this was, at best, a negligent discharge. And at worse something much worse. But we won’t know that until an independent and transparent investigation is completed and its results presented.
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
This is true, there is no safety on any Glock… what a trigger safety does is prevent the gun from discharging unless the trigger is depressed. It can be depressed by your shirt, by the edge of the holster, anything, and then the gun will very reliably discharge.
.357 revolver can shot through 2 or 3 people AND a wall. Not a good duty weapon for a cop, unless they don’t care about the people on the other side of the perp they want to shoot. In that apartment building across the street, for example. Will shatter an engine block, although the engine will stop the round in the process.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Point gets driven home pretty well in this piece.
Nobody. An un-person.
And there’s Ralph Friedmans NYPD challenge coin. What’s often overlooked is that one of his 4x killings was the victim of an act he was responding to. That individual was systematically shifted from victim to perp.
There’s also Adrian Schoolcraft, who was reporting on his fellow officers, so they kidnapped him and had him committed. They were sufficiently proud of this that they made a challenge coin about it as well. He too was systematically shifted from cop to perp.
Adam L Silverman
@Chief Oshkosh: In some places they can and do. In others no one is paying attention. In others, the police union is driving the training. This has come up in the Chauvin case. Apparently the Minneapolis PD had indicated that officers would not be reimbursed out of the training budget to attend Lewinski’s training. That white supremacist biker who was running the police union until he was outed as a white supremacist biker shortly after Chauvin killed Floyd, issued a union memorandum that the training was so necessary that any officer that wanted to attend would be reimbursed out of the union budget. So the official policy was you can’t take it and we don’t want you to take it, so we won’t fund it, while the union’s policy was you should take it and we, the union, will pay for it because it is important that you do take it.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: There is a reason why I loathe you people…//
Cheryl Rofer
Gonna be ugly demonstrations tonight.
Kattails
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, and what is the reality of the police fears that they are besieged at all times? I’m pretty sure their on the job death rate is lower than many other professions. (I know, I could look this up myself, just adding a sarcastic note). I’ve personally been in two situations where the local cops escalated, and this is in the country, and white.
OH BTW thank you for the kind compliment about “you lovely people”, although I’m feeling a tad disheveled today from clearing out the wood shed. ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@Gvg: My guess is that at least since the 1990s when deescalation and community policing was deemphasized for escalation and over policing of minor infractions (the broken windows bullshit) that it has been consistent. The difference is everyone now has, and has had for several years, a camera, a video-audio recorder, and an audio recorder in their pocket 24/7/365.
Barbara
“Accidental” is when the gun goes off after the officer trips and falls with the gun in their hand. “Meaning to shoot” but shooting the wrong weapon is at least negligent homicide, not an accident. The deliberate escalation in the use of force by police in the context of stops for penny ante stuff is unacceptable in a free society. Police who do this should be fired, whatever else happens to them.
Adam L Silverman
@Old School: So that’s what was bleeped.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
The registration stickers are unnecessary now that the police can easily check if your registration is current. They’re already going to run your plates any time they stop you, so requiring the sticker is just an excuse for stopping people. We should just abandon them already.
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: Just one?
Elizabelle
One refreshing facet of this post and discussion: I’m not sure I’ve seen the word “civilian” applied.
The police work for us. Protect and serve. They are not an occupying army.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
One would have to be fairly badly trained, as in not at all, to confuse the two weapons. Training for this kind of work has to include how to recognize adrenaline, and use it, how not to allow it to use you. But of course that costs money and doesn’t kill enough of them.
Hell the military trains you that not every situation is open hunting season, and police training can’t do that?
Brachiator
@dnfree:
I have been avoiding most of this stuff because it is just too upsetting.
In the case of the Army lieutenant who was pulled over for trivial crap, you can hear one or more of the officers insisting that the person must simply “obey” the officers commands, and that the officers are under no obligation to explain anything, or even try to de-escalate the situation. The officers are not even under an obligation to insure that some traffic violation has occurred.
It comes down, to once the officers have decided to pull someone over for any reason, then that person must do everything that they can to be meek, passive, obedient, even though the cops can arbitrarily decide to interpret everything the person does as potentially hostile.
It is fucking insane.
Chief Oshkosh
@Bill K:
I’m an old white dude in the middle-to-upper middle class. I don’t know very many people who respect the police. Anecdotally, I’ve had to deal with police on several occasions over the decades for various reasons. With the exception of one guy from a small town police force, they were uniformly incompetent at their jobs and just plain awful human beings. Dumb or mean or both. That’s maybe ONE good apple in a barrel of totally incompetent assholes.
Don’t know what to do about that, and I hope that this is not generalizable across the country. However, I’ve lived in several cities and several rural areas.
Maybe it’s just me and my bad attitude? ;)
Annie
This is what Johannes Mehserle said about why he shot Oscar Grant at the BART station. But not only do a Taser and a gun have different color grips, the two weapons also feel very different. Here’s a description from the Court of appeal opinion on Mehserl’s conviction:
“Defendant [Mehserle] carried two weapons: a black model 226 40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun and a bright yellow Taser International X26 taser. The handgun weighed more than three times as much as the taser. The handgun had no manual safety switch, while the taser had a safety switch that also functioned as an on/off switch. The taser had a red laser sight; the handgun did not.
Defendant’s handgun was holstered on his right side, called the dominant side―presumably because defendant is right-handed. The taser was holstered on defendant’s left, or nondominant, side, in a cross-draw configuration for use with the dominant (right) hand. The handgun holster had an automatic locking system, requiring a two-step process to remove the weapon: first, a rotating hood must be pressed down and rotated forward; second, a safety latch must be pushed back to release the weapon from its holster. The taser holster had a safety strap and a safety hood.”
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: The discussion of caliber and type of firearm are, to be honest, a distraction. You can buy hard cast Keith +P and +P+ (overpressured) outdoorsman rounds for all of the standard handgun calibers. Provided you’re not shooting from less than a 3 inch barrel, these rounds are designed to over penetrate because they’re marketed as allowing one to carry a full size, carry size, or compact .45 ACP or 9mm or even a .380 outdoors and be able to effectively use those handguns to defend oneself from large, four footed predators like bears.
Martin
@Ken: At a prior point in my career I hired technical writing instructors and I just want to put those two explanations side by side and ask them to tell me which audiences these are written for.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
One good thing they’ve done here in PA recently is exactly that. No more registration stickers. You still need to register and have your registration card with you, but no stickers.
StringOnAStick
@Brachiator: I have a friend who grew up in Poland until she was in her 20’s. She described to me how the cops would harass them as teens, telling them “your parents will never find you if we take you”. This was before the Berlin wall fell, and yet our city cops are using their authority to act like Soviet era police in a communist police state. Something has gone very, very wrong.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: Yep. And you’ll find more examples of that if you decide to look.
J R in WV
Remington Model 700 rifles had occasional failures and could discharge when the safety was switched off.
Being high-powered hunting rifles, they could and did kill people in the house next door. Because the company (Remington) denied that there was any possible way their weapons could discharge unintentionally, people were accused of homicide when their rifle went off when they flipped the safety off. I may have seen this first on 60 Minutes…
UncleEbeneezer
Adam, just curious, given your experience, what do you think of POST training? I know our local PD uses POST. Generally, would that replace Lewinski style training or could it supplement it? Or are they two totally separate things?
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: I have a list…
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Many officers appear to view anything that might restrain their behavior, or even to help them deal with the public, as an unfair and unreasonable attempt to hurt them.
In the case of the Army officer pulled over, the cop even remarks about “minority” people pulling over into a well-lighted place when they see flashing lights. Even while seeming to acknowledge that this might be reasonable, the cop is sill annoyed, upset, aggravated that the person did not simply immediately obey him.
So, the guy did not speed off or try to evade in any way. His offense was to not to immediately obey the officer. So, his reasonable (even by the officer’s admission) attempt to insure his own safety instead causes the officers to escalate the situation.
Again, this shit is insane.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Frankly the rules of engagement for deployed military personnel in combat zones and the UCMJ provided stronger institutional safeguards than we have in regard to most American law enforcement.
trollhattan
This sounds awfully familiar.
Oscar Grant III killing on 1-1-09 by a BART officer.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: At the rate they’re working through the trigger recall repairs, they’ll have all of them fixed some time in 2374.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
This. One of the things that’s clear when you look at it is that investigations of police use of force are focused around assigning blame rather than figuring out how to do better in the future. It’s a legalistic approach, which makes sense given where police are coming from, but it is much too narrow.
I think the contrast with my work is instructive. When we have a problem we’re required to investigate, it’s not enough to find a convenient person or situation to blame and stop there. We’re supposed to dig into why a person failed or conditions weren’t right so we can keep it from happening again. Everything is supposed to be taken several steps back if we can, and we’re always supposed to look for systematic failures rather than treating things as unpredictable, one-off events.
Cheryl Rofer
Back to school! If the virus doesn’t kill you, a gunman will.
coin operated
@Roger Moore:
They don’t need to stop you before running your plates. I had my license suspended (my own stupidity) and a LEO acquaintance of mine warned me not to even think about driving during that time. The camera system the Oregon State Patrol have deployed in their cruisers are able to scan and process the licenses of vehicles on the fly while they’re parked on the side of the highway.
Mary G
@Bill K: I have to tell you, I was raised by White Republicans to respect the police and frankly, I no longer do. Too many departments seemed to have decided that the law doesn’t apply to them and flat out ignore or refuse to even allow civilian oversight. Even here in trending blue Orange County, CA, the sheriff flat out refused to enforce mask wearing because the public health director was a woman, who ended up quitting because she got death threats for her family and protests at her house.
Adam L Silverman
@UncleEbeneezer: Peace Officer Standards Training should be required for all law enforcement officers. What Lewinski and Grossman are teaching should never be taken by law enforcement officers.
narya
Back when I was copyediting, I did a police training book. In it, the author claimed that there was no such thing as date rape, that it was all just a woman either changing her mind or wanting to get back at the man. I normally did not comment on content, but I made a major exception for this book. The author was NOT HAPPY with me, and I doubt the manual got changed, but I could not in good conscience let it go without comment. The “training” mentioned above brings that to mind–“training” that tells/teaches cops how to regard the folks in front of them.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Sort of. One question that should always be asked and answered well is ‘how is this policy enforced’ before implementing a policy. If I’m good enough to not get pulled over, can I get away with not registering my vehicle?
Now, with automated license plate readers, then you have a mechanism, but those are illegal in places like CA and some other states because they’re also used for widespread tracking of people. Of course, we could find other mechanisms other than the police for enforcement, but as things stand now, an expired sticker is the rationale for pulling someone over, and that’s the enforcement mechanism.
lowtechcyclist
ISTM that the first escalation was their handcuffing Wright, when all he’d done at that point was get out of the car. What the hell was with that?
I know what was with that: he was Black. I’ve been pulled over for expired plates, but I’m white, so nothing remotely close to that shit has ever happened to me. Anyone who says there’s no such thing as ‘white privilege’ can go fuck themselves.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
I believe that some owners have had their recalled triggers repaired/replaced by Remington, only to have the unintended discharge happen again to the “repaired” weapon.
ETA: Evidently Remington doesn’t know what exactly is wrong in their trigger/safety design, and can not actually fix it. Sounds like bankruptcy go out of business problem to me!
I won’t ever own/handle/be around someone with a Remington weapon.
I’m not crazy about Glocks, either. Kimbers appear to be pretty safe.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I just put a post on it up.
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
The concept of border in your usage has long, long ago been outdated. IOW paranoia has long taken over most cops as far as citizen persecution goes. Us against them and we don’t know which are the good and the bad, except that we know the color of the good, is the entire premise of current law enforcement in the US. Black/African Americans make up 13.4% of the US, which means approx 6.7% are black males. One out of every one thousand black males can expect to be killed by police. One out of every two thousand males can expect to be killed by police. All the black males have a twice as high expectation of being shot by police as all the rest of the males combined. Another way to see it is that a non black man has about 1/7 or less the expectation of a black man of being killed by police.
AndoChronic
Chauvin’s trial is 30 blocks south of us and this is 30 blocks north of us… These fucking cops.
Adam L Silverman
@lowtechcyclist: The arresting officer decided the summons was a warrant for Wright’s arrest. So either he doesn’t understand the difference or it came up wrong on the computer in his vehicle.
Laura Too
Thanks Adam! I’ll have lots of time to catch up on reading this. Curfew 7pm-6am. Dog is restless now, demanding a walk. I must obey. (And if anyone has a chance, listen to St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. He did a nice job today.)
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: It didn’t help that Cerberus was driving Remington into bankruptcy because guys who run hedge funds amazingly do not know anything about firearm manufacturing.
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: I wish to emphasize that I am not a marketing executive and cannot speak the jargon. I merely know the URL of a good buzzword generator.
Adam L Silverman
@Laura Too: You’re welcome. I’d like to be able to stop having to do them.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: I think it was more likely this is what happens when legal rewrites the technical language the engineers give them.
Soprano2
It’s absolutely crazy to me that they were arresting him for a misdemeanor warrant. Is this usual practice in these situations? I’m a white female, and my experience with traffic stops is that you get a ticket for something like this. Has police practice changed a lot since the last time I got a ticket in the 1980’s, or is this just because people are black?
Bill K
@Adam L Silverman:
Sadly what you say has a lot of truth, although I can think of police departments that are professional and respected by their community. Can we just pretend to respect them then? Anything to get them out of this defensive paranoia that so many of them are in.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill K: I’m not happy to have to say it.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Now that you mention the hedge fund, or whatever it is, I knew there was that kind of management ogre involved.
But I can’t remember every detail about everything I used to know…
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I would be willing to accept that as an outcome. In practice, you would probably increase the penalty for driving with an expired registration at the same time you changed the rules so an expired registration was no longer justification for a stop. Or you would change the rules so checking registration status was part of parking enforcement rather than traffic enforcement.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: It finally got sold through bankruptcy. Remington, as a brand, with all the intellectual property for producing the firearms and ammunition was purchased by one company. Marlin was spun back off/separately sold to Ruger, which has promised to reinvigorate and do right by the Marlin brand. I think the other tertiary things that Cerberus had forced Remington to be involved in that were tangential to producing firearms and ammunition were sold off to other companies as well.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I suspect it has more to do with not caring about the company going bankrupt after they were done looting it. It’s amazing how often companies go bankrupt when they’re stripped of assets and loaded up with debts. Hoocoodanode?!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ken:
“Safety” in this context means that of the officer, as in “will this trigger engage the firing pin every time I pull it?”
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: I think it ended up that way. It appears to have started because one of the Cerberus leaders had a fondness for Remington and thought he’d like to own the company when it went up for sale. But his partners and associates decided that for Remington to be profitable they had to a whole bunch of tangential stuff, as well as purchase some other legacy brands like Marlin. And since none of these people were even remotely gun guys in the sense that they understood that even mass producing firearms using modern manufacturing techniques requires expertise in the form of engineers to design and/or update the product and armorers to assemble and work on them. And from there the damage was begun.
GrannyMC
Fucking Glocks are part of the problem. No thumb safety. If she had to flick a safety off before firing, she might have realized she had the wrong weapon. And that extra half-second might have helped her brain to kick in.
Police departments love Glocks because they’re cheap and easy to maintain. Unfortunately, they are also easy to fire. The default setting is point-and-shoot.
No firearm should ever allow firing to be initiated by pointing and pulling the trigger. You should have to do something else first, like release the safety or cock the hammer manually. This isn’t a problem just with Glocks. Many revolvers and long guns have no effective safety other than “don’t carry a round under the hammer”. However, Glocks are a massive problem because there are so many of them. Those kids who keep finding Daddy’s firearm and shooting their baby brother or sister? I’ll bet you at least 9 out of 10 involve Glocks or Glock knockoffs.
The ammosexuals will screech, because they’re congenital dumbasses and WATBs, but a reasonable precaution is require all sidearms to have an external lever-operated safety. A 1911-style double safety would be even better.
Also, buy American, you flag-humping faux-patriotic jagoffs. Yes, I know most Glocks and Sigs sold in the US are made here, but that’s because we buy so much of their shit.
Adam L Silverman
@GrannyMC: GLOCKs are made in Georgia. SIGs are made in New Hampshire. Because of Federal law and regulation, it is somewhat difficult to buy the ones made in the factories in Austria and Germany respectively.
debbie
I don’t know why all these white people are upset about the violence. It’s not like they stormed the Capitol or anything.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s a little bit better than that. The safety system on the Glock is designed to prevent the gun from firing without the trigger being pulled, e.g. if it’s dropped or jarred. That’s good as far as it goes, but it’s not the same thing as the safety on most guns that requires a deliberate action beyond pulling the trigger before the gun will fire. IOW, Glocks are reasonably safe against accidents but not against human error.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
This happens in every business where people who only know what a dollar bill looks like and every other issue on the planet is subservient to that get involved. The fact that their “thinking” is based around “I should have all those dollar bills and everyone else can suck it,” doesn’t really create anything positive. The dipshit that bought EpiPens was one of those. A product he didn’t need so he didn’t give a fuck if 99% of the people who might need one couldn’t afford to even think about it.
Roger Moore
@GrannyMC:
I bet it’s less than 9 out of 10, because there are plenty of people who refuse to use the safety mechanisms their guns have. If you’re dumb enough to keep a loaded gun where your child can find it, you’re dumb enough to leave the safety off.
raven
(CNN)Three law enforcement officers were injured during a police chase in Georgia that ended with one suspect being killed and a second suspect taken into custody, authorities said Monday morning.
The officers from the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Carrollton and Villa Rica police were taken to hospitals in Atlanta, authorities said at a news conference. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The chase began when a Georgia state trooper clocked a car traveling 111 mph on Interstate 20 around 3:30 a.m. on Monday, Capt. Brandon Dawson of the state patrol said at a news conference. The trooper pursued and the car stopped, then drove away, Dawson said.
The trooper used his vehicle to force the car to stop beside the road, but the driver regained control and “continued to run,” Dawson said.
Multiple officers were shot during an early Monday morning police chase in Georgia that ended in Carroll County, according to the Carroll County Sherriff’s Office.
“His passenger used a rifle and shot at the trooper’s patrol car, striking it and disabling it,” he said. Local agencies took over the pursuit.
The two suspects continued into Carrollton County on Highway 61 when the passenger “leaned out the window and fired rounds” into a city of Carrollton police officer’s vehicle resulting in an officer being struck and another hitting a utility pole, said Carrollton Police Chief Joel Richards.
Richards said Sgt. Rob Holloway, the officer struck by gunfire, was flown to an Atlanta-area medical center where he is undergoing surgery.
Obdurodon
They’re apparently still flying a Blue Line flag at the police department where this happened.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/thin-blue-line-flag-daunte-wright/
Steve in the ATL
@Cheryl Rofer: @Obdurodon: when you’re in a hole, stop digging; don’t pour gasoline on fires…if only there were some conventional wisdom to give them guidance in this situation
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Holy crap!
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: If that went up today, those are some tone-deaf assholes right there.
JanieM
@MisterForkbeard: “Tone-deaf” would mean that someone inside there gives a flying banana how the public might react, if only they weren’t too dim to figure it out. I think it’s just as likely to be deliberate, in-your-face defiance.
raven
@MisterForkbeard:
Mike Hicks
@mulad
·
4h
Replying to
@AndrewMannix
and
@BillLindeke
From a peek at Google Streetview, it looks like they usually do (not that I think it’s appropriate)
Feathers
@Kay: One of the real problems is that detectives are promoted out of the ranks of beat cops. As this thread shows, cops on the street have every bit of ingenuity which would help in actually solving crimes drilled and trained out of them.
In the torture debates during the early Iraq War, I remember reading about a former Soviet officer (historian?) talking about the KGB. That as soon as you started torturing people, no one decent and thinking would go to work for you. You end up with mindless brutes. The other issue is that torture and brutality aren’t really intended to get actual knowledge, they exist to coerce false confessions which fit the police theory of the crime. You end up with a system that is not actually interested in finding the actual culprits for a given crime. Sustaining the police infrastructure is the ultimate goal.
And here we are,
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: you can replace “Brooklyn Center” with just about about any suburb anywhere in the US, no?
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Most likely.
Roger Moore
@JanieM:
Absolutely. It’s 100% a provocation. They want the protests to turn into a riot, and you can bet they’ll make sure it happens if the protestors don’t go along.
raven
@Roger Moore: Do you think they should take it down if it’s been there before this?
Cheryl Rofer
@raven: It should never have gone up. Police supremacy has no place in this country.
Here’s a graphic:
Cassandra (fka mostly a lurker)
@Fair Economist: Can a lawyer respond? I mean the level of incompetence and stupidity (of both the officer and the department’s training protocols) boggles the mind. But doesn’t the very fact that she didn’t intend to shoot him make this a case of criminal negligence or manslaughter? Also, while of course the officer was incredibly poorly trained, escalated rather than de-escalated the situation, and I feel terrible for kid who got shot and his family, the fact that she didn’t mean to kill him (unlike Chauvin) is probably going to eat away at her for the rest of her life. Actually being punished for doing wrong is part of what’s supposed to happen, and (in the ideal world I don’t believe in), isn’t being found guilty and serving your time, when you really did commit a crime, meant, at least in part, to transfer that guilty conscience into physical recompense? Idk, maybe that level of self-insight is beyond the capacity of someone this incompetent.
(OT, needle-phobic me got my 1st shot today. It wasn’t that bad, as getting shots go. And I’m already scheduled for my 2nd in exactly 3 weeks. As for after-effects, too soon to tell, but side-effects, schmide-effects, I don’t enjoy feeling ill, but I’m not phobic about it, so que sera sera)
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe it went down this way, maybe not. Given the high, high standards of policing we’ve been discussing, it may be that one Barney shot another Barney while chasing a couple kids who were bored and borrowed mom’s car.
We just cannot trust that the police will give us the truth. They don’t get that benefit anymore.
Roger Moore
@Feathers:
I remember hearing something that perfectly encapsulated this line of thinking recently. I forget which case it was, but it was one in which a decades old murder conviction was being thrown out because the evidence was being called into question. The police were fighting against freeing the guy, as they always seem to do, and one of their arguments was that the victim’s family deserved to know that someone had gone to prison for their loved one’s murder. They were completely oblivious to the concept that maybe the family wouldn’t be comforted to know that the person who was in prison was the wrong one, and the actual killer had never been found and punished.
Chief Oshkosh
@raven: Yes.
Roger Moore
@raven:
Yes. I think they should take it down and never put it back up again. I think they should fire anyone who thought putting it up was ever a good idea.
Frank Wilhoit
“…until explanations are forthcoming….”
We have the explanation. it is a very bad one.
WaterGirl
Minnesota, we have a problem.
debbie
@raven:
Similarly:
WaterGirl
@Frank Wilhoit:
Kay
@Feathers:
The citizenry has some responsibility in over-policing too. You would not believe what people call the police for – it amazes me on almost a daily basis. Where did they get this idea police are supposed to adjudicate all their disputes or whatever? It almost never makes the situation better. No, you don’t get an “escort” to go buy furniture off ebay. “Defiant child” calls. WTF. Ours get calls to go to someone’s house and tell a teenager to go home. We’re giving them mixed messages.
Crime fighting. That’s the goal.
MCA1
@rp: That’s the thing that chaps my hide the most about damned near every single one of these cop killings. There’s absolutely no fucking danger to the community to let someone go in the moment and then show up at their door to cite or arrest them later on, unless it’s an active shooter situation. Even if it’s a thief fleeing the scene of the crime. He’s on camera. Go back to hq and do some policework and track them down. You feel threatened as a cop at a traffic stop? Then get in your cruiser and use the loudspeaker to communicate with the driver. If they take off, you’ve got the plates, for crying out loud.
The fact of the matter is traffic enforcement should be 100% firearm free. No one sitting on the side of the road with a radar to catch speeding drivers needs a pistol. What deterrence against any illegal activity is gained by highway patrol people strapping? It’s amazing that we’ve let ourselves get to the point as a society that we don’t blink at the fact that every interaction we have with a public institution that’s paid for by our tax dollars and is supposedly there to serve the citizens is pre-escalated by the fact that they’re carrying a loaded weapon. Everyone is therefore subservient to the cop in the relationship, even when they’re asking for help. The intimidation of the citizenry is just accepted without reflection.
That’s all to say nothing of the us-against-them, every citizen is a deadly threat at all times training Adam’s talking about. That’s very real, as well, and pernicious, but it wouldn’t be leading to a thousand innocent people getting shot by police every year during routine traffic stops if they weren’t given the means to just shoot people during routine traffic stops.
“Defunding” or “abolishing” the police were/are terrible slogans because they’re so easily misinterpreted and misrepresented. But we do need to completely reimagine and reinvent policing in America, and the power of the purse and existential threats to the entire institution might be the only way to do so.
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Wow is right. Good example of a graphic doing the heavy lifting where bare statistics do not effectively communicate.
Laura Too
Adam, from overnight police log-they hit same as before. Gas stations, pharmacies, liquor stores all over. Plus this little gem: white dude about 30 poured diesel fuel out on ground and tried to light it. Lots of random gun fire and a few shootings. Didn’t take long. With all my heart I do wish you didn’t have to do these anymore.
laura
The young man called his mother. He had a reasonable expectation of imminent death. Training is not the most pressing issue. The most pressing issue is the desire/willingness of police to kill black men and women with the confidence that it will have no impact on their career.
John Cole
This is a great post. That is all.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I used to work in Westerville and have visited my gf’s dad with her and his wife in that very hospital, about 22 yrs ago. Nice knowing that gun fire can ring out any time you are anywhere in this country. I didn’t have to worry about that when I was in the military, in the middle of a war, tied up at docks in foreign countries.
Feathers
@MCA1: “Abolish” and “defund” are the slogans we’ve got, so until there is a better one(s), that’s what we have to go with.
It really irks me that people who basically agree with the sentiment attack the slogan rather than working to shape the message.
If someone complains about abolish, I tell them We can’t go on like this, we need a real change. Scientific, evidence based forensic science, rather than the whatever the prosecutor and crime scene investigators pull out of their ass shit we have now. Civilian control of police forces. Rules of engagement and training which are approved of by the communities a police force serves.
If someone complains about defund, I go with either 1) pointing out that police budgets are locally determined. People should look at their town or county budget and see what share goes to the police, as compared to schools, street maintenance, social welfare, etc. If you don’t like what you see, work to change it. 2) if I’m talking to a wing nut, I’ll go in on asset forfeiture, how it is a scam and a corrupt overreach of government powers. They will usually agree about the forfeiture and sometime see the point about police self funding. I’ll also point out that funding government through petty fines and fees is wrong as well. That’s when I find out how wing nut they are.
One of the things in the abolish movement is to remove registration, minor traffic enforcement (other than immediate danger) from armed police officers.
Feathers
@debbie: Why the hell didn’t they wait until he was done in the emergency room and arrest him after he walked out the door? This is the sort of nonsense bullshit we put up with too easily. Like the fact that David Koresh went into town regularly. Why not arrest him there?
Ruckus
@MCA1:
Not saying your logic is wrong but just playing a bit of a devils advocate here.
Police in this country have been armed long before any of us on this blog started breathing. Cops were often brutal but didn’t pull out their guns near as often, a nightstick is an effective weapon, against most unarmed humans. It is the arming of the public, some of which has always been armed as well, but was a rather small part of the public. Next, it’s not just the number, it’s the weapons themselves. Pistols with a capacity of 10-15 rounds, semi automatic rifles with even larger capacity and that can be made automatic. A cop doesn’t know if someone is armed and as important, with what. The shitforbrains party has decided that the only way to get their racism on is to kill all the darker than lily white people. Now that’s not really an excuse to just shoot everyone, but the societal changes make a lot of things different. Politically, half the country has gone stark raving, lunatic level, fucking insane. As Adam has eluded to, companies with no scruples whatsoever looked and saw that they could make money with guns, money being the overwhelming important thing, rated way above life and all that other stuff.
My point is that it isn’t as easy and clear as gun crazy cops, there are a lot more pieces to the puzzle. The gun crazy cops are an aspect, along with hiring issues, budget issues, all the military style equipment, the fact that we’ve been at war somewhere what feels like most of the last 70 yrs, insane conservative politics/politicians, the uber wealthy, and our ease of purchasing lots of weapons.
Kathleen
@Martin: I know thread is dead but L&O SVU had an episode about the cop who was committed.
Adam L Silverman
@John Cole: Wait till you see the one about my high protein, low to no refined carbohydrate diet.//
More seriously, thank you.
evodevo
@Kay: Yes..LOL…our local paper in a neighboring town lists police blotter reports every week, and it is astounding what gets called in to the local dept. Every week there are at least one or two “defiant teenager” calls, 1 or 2 “my girlfriend ran off with my car/credit card” calls, etc. The idea of sending out psychiatric social workers or psychological counselors on these calls is overdue for implementation…
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
Also, children are much better at finding hidden things than parents generally know.
When I and my brother were young, probably less than 10, we found an automatic, what looked like a German officer’s sidearm from WWII (he was a rifleman in WWII across Europe), buried at the bottom of a large box of cloths and rags in the attic. We just put it back, and my father was a bit shaken when a decade later we mentioned that we’d found it. I don’t recall why we searched; perhaps some accidental subtle hint.
Bobby Thomson
Not all accidents are negligent, but all injuries caused by negligence are accidents.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Ol'Froth
Just my two cents, not only is the Taser bright yellow and the grips are different, its significantly lighter than one’s service weapon. I didn’t carry a Glock when I was working as a police officer (retired after 27 years) but I’m pretty sure its similar to the SIG I was issued.