Riots/Police/Social Justice Issues

[downzy]

7 minutes ago, Swampfox said:

You know knives can kill people right?  At what point does the cop start shooting in your opinion?  This thug should have followed the cop's orders and this never would have happened.   And don't forget how it all started.  A woman called the police because she was scared. 

A cop can shoot when there is an imminent threat to his or her life.

A man who has his back to you who may or may not be reaching for a knife is not an imminent threat.  

[Blackstar]

10 minutes ago, Swampfox said:

You know knives can kill people right?  At what point does the cop start shooting in your opinion?  This thug should have followed the cop's orders and this never would have happened.   And don't forget how it all started.  A woman called the police because she was scared. 

But he didn't even hold a knife when he was shot. And, like I said, even with your police culture over there, according to your laws the cops shouldn't and are not authorized to apply the death penalty to someone for something he is a suspect for (an assault in this case), let alone for not following orders.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Blackstar

[Silverburst80]

yeah well seems like a real coming together of rational thinking individuals on both sides in the last week.

[Len Cnut]

https://apple.news/Ar_Itl_gGSpuBZb8XAdUjTg

’I am used to young men in my house’, oh yeah Gary?  

[Ace Nova]

On 9/1/2020 at 9:56 PM, downzy said:

A cop can shoot when there is an imminent threat to his or her life.

A man who has his back to you who may or may not be reaching for a knife is not an imminent threat.  

* Or an imminent threat to someone else

 

(Meaning if the rumors are true that there were children inside the vehicle, it could be considered a threat to the children when he reached into the vehicle, after previously making threats or saying he has a weapon)

 

And again, just playing devil's advocate here.  

[Ace Nova]

A Black man who had run naked through the streets of a western New York city died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday by the man’s family.

Daniel Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. His death received no public attention until Wednesday, when his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.

“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help. Not for my brother to get lynched,” Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, said at a news conference. “How did you see him and not directly say, ‘The man is defenseless, buck naked on the ground. He’s cuffed up already. Come on.’ How many more brothers gotta die for society to understand that this needs to stop?”

The videos show Prude, who had taken off his clothes, complying when police ask him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. Prude is agitated and shouting as he sits on the pavement in handcuffs for a few moments as a light snow falls. “Give me your gun, I need it,” he shouts.

Then, they put a white “spit hood” over his head, a device intended to protect officers from a detainee’s saliva. At the time, New York was in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

“OK, stop. I need it. I need it,” the prone man begs before his shouts turn to whimpers and grunts.

The officers appear to become concerned after he stops moving, falls silent and they notice water coming out of Prude’s mouth.

“My man. You puking?” one says.

One officer notes that he’s been out, naked, in the street for some time. Another remarks, “He feels pretty cold.”

His head had been held down by an officer for just over two minutes, the video shows.

The officers then remove the hood and his handcuffs and medics can then be seen performing CPR before he’s loaded into an ambulance.

Spit hoods have been scrutinized as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in the U.S. and other countries in recent years.

A medical examiner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.

 

Prude was from Chicago and had just arrived in Rochester for a visit with his brother. He was kicked off the train before it got to Rochester, in Depew, “due to his unruly behavior,” according to an internal affairs investigator’s report.

Rochester police officers took Prude into custody for a mental health evaluation around 7 p.m. on March 22 for suicidal thoughts -- about eight hours before the encounter that led to his death. But his brother said he was only at the hospital for a few hours, according to the reports.

Police responded again after Joe Prude called 911 at about 3 a.m. to report that his brother had left his house.

The city halted its investigation into Prude’s death when state Attorney General Letitia James’ office began its own investigation in April. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general’s office, rather than handled by local officials.

James said Wednesday that investigation is continuing.

“I want everyone to understand that at no point in time did we feel that this was something that we wanted not to disclose,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at a press briefing. “We are precluded from getting involved in it until that agency has completed their investigation.”

One officer wrote that they put the hood on Prude because he was spitting continuously in the direction of officers and they were concerned about coronavirus.

Activists demanded that officers involved be prosecuted on murder charges and that they be removed from the department while the investigation proceeds.

“The police have shown us over and over again that they are not equipped to handle individuals with mental health concerns. These officers are trained to kill, and not to deescalate. These officers are trained to ridicule, instead of supporting Mr. Daniel Prude,” Ashley Gantt of Free the People ROC said at the news conference with Prude’s family.

Calls to the union representing Rochester police officers, and to the organization’s attorney, rang unanswered Wednesday.

Protesters gathered Wednesday outside Rochester’s Public Safety Building, which serves as police headquarters. Free the People ROC said several of its organizers were briefly taken into custody after they entered the building while Warren was speaking to the media.

They were released on appearance tickets, said Iman Abid, regional director of the NYCLU, who was among those taken into custody.

Demonstrators later gathered at the spot where Prude died, chanting, dancing and praying. They stayed late into the night.

Prude, known to his big Chicago-based family by the nickname “Rell,” was a father of five adult children and had been working at a warehouse within the last year, said his aunt Letoria Moore.

“He was just a bright, loving person, just family-oriented, always there for us when we needed him,” she said, and “never hurt or harmed anybody.”

Prude had been traumatized by the deaths of his mother and a brother in recent years, having lost another brother before that, Moore said. In his last months, he’d been going back and forth between his Chicago home and his brother’s place in Rochester because he wanted to be close with him, she said.

She knew her nephew had some psychological issues. Still, when he called two days before his death, “he was the normal Rell that I knew,” Moore said.

“I didn’t know what was the situation, why he was going through what he was going through that night, but I know he didn’t deserve to be killed by the police,” she said.

The fatal encounter happened two months before the death of George Floyd in Minnesota prompted nationwide demonstrations. Floyd died when an officer put his knee on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.

 

 

https://apnews.com/5c2f0cf366e560b7f41ebb3c964b099c?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP

 

 

This is one of the reasons I am a proponent of "mental health teams" being a part of police departments.  Could this situation have been avoided if that police department had a "mental health team"?  Maybe...maybe not but unless we at least try to implement these types of "units" within police departments, we won't know.  But logic would dictate that they would (more than likely) help, imo.

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Ace Nova

[SoulMonster]

2 hours ago, Ace Nova said:

* Or an imminent threat to someone else

(Meaning if the rumors are true that there were children inside the vehicle, it could be considered a threat to the children when he reached into the vehicle, after previously making threats or saying he has a weapon)

And again, just playing devil's advocate here.  

He was going into the front seat, wasn't he? Not back where the kids were sitting. And weren't it his kids? Sounds a bit strange to me to interpret what was happening as an imminent threat to his kids. I would have thought that starting to shoot the guy would be more a threat to the kids than allowing him to get into the front seat.

I don't believe for a second that the cop who shot him were afraid of the safety of the kids. I believe the cop was panicking and not thinking much at all. And that is the outcome of insufficient training and/or not being right for the job.

[dontdamnmeuyi2015]

Probably the cop was afraid of what might happen. I know it's not right, but honestly, the police didn't know if he would have had a gun or not? Just because he said he had a knife doesn't mean it was true.

Also this guy had a warrant for sexual assault, so what is up with that? how could he have his kids if he's accused of this crime?

Sometimes it has to be hard for any one to make a decision at that given moment. But cops shouldn't panic especially when there were other cops around. I just think times are super bad for everyone and everyone is acting on impulse and people are dying for it. It just seems like everything is so out of control and I don't see anything getting any better.

[Ace Nova]

 

[Blackstar]

He gave an interview shortly before he was found and killed by police, saying he did it in self-defense

 

[action]

they make such a fuss about police violence in the USA. Whereas countries like Turkey, have been convicted countless of times for police violence by the european parliament on human rights. when there's riots in turkey, erdogan makes sure it's quickly taken care of

I can reference as an example, the following three cases where turkey has been convicted by the ECHR for police violence / assaults:

- the case of DIKME vs turkey (judgment of 11th july 2000)

- the case of IZCI vs Turkey (judgment of 23rd july 2013)

- the case of BEKTAS & OZALP vs turkey (judgment of 24/4/2010)

You don't hear anything about these cases in the media, even though police violence is far more severe in Turkey than in the USA, or any other western country.

Edited September 4, 2020 by action

[Ace Nova]

14 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

He was going into the front seat, wasn't he? Not back where the kids were sitting. And weren't it his kids? Sounds a bit strange to me to interpret what was happening as an imminent threat to his kids. I would have thought that starting to shoot the guy would be more a threat to the kids than allowing him to get into the front seat.

I don't believe for a second that the cop who shot him were afraid of the safety of the kids. I believe the cop was panicking and not thinking much at all. And that is the outcome of insufficient training and/or not being right for the job.

Again, not agreeing or disagreeing. 

Vehicles can be considered "weapons" as well.  If they were to let him take control of the vehicle and he hit/ran people over, would the police not be considered "responsible for letting him run over people"?

Things like that happen (likely more often) than an unarmed person being shot by police...

 

[SoulMonster]

24 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

If they were to let him take control of the vehicle and he hit/ran people over, would the police not be considered "responsible for letting him run over people"?

As opposed to what, shooting him just to be sure he wouldn't run someone over? 

[Ace Nova]

19 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

As opposed to what, shooting him just to be sure he wouldn't run someone over? 

I'm not even in this "debate"...just pointing out there are other possible scenarios in which the police could think there was a "threat". 

[SoulMonster]

10 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

"...just pointing out there are other possible scenarios in which the police could think there was a "threat". 

Oh, I can come up with quite a few scenarios too where the police could think there was a threat, myself - none of which would justify shooting the guy 7 seven times in the back.

As we have said before, there should be an imminent threat before the police is allowed to shoot. Otherwise we risk police shooting too frequently, whenever they are scared or angry, and getting away with it because one could always conjure some improbably "threat". And this would lead to something as twisted as a fear of the police in the population, and leading to people not trusting the police, and leading to people arming themselves, which means the police becomes more afraid and more likely to shoot, which leads to a militarization of the police, and leading to a division between those likely to be shot and those not. What I am describing is basically what you have now in the United States. And it is caused by people accepting and defending the police killing people.

[action]

2 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Oh, I can come up with quite a few scenarios too where the police could think there was a threat, myself - none of which would justify shooting the guy 7 seven times in the back.

As we have said before, there should be an imminent threat before the police is allowed to shoot. Otherwise we risk police shooting too frequently, whenever they are scared or angry, and getting away with it because one could always conjure some improbably "threat". And this would lead to something as twisted as a fear of the police in the population, and leading to people not trusting the police, and leading to people arming themselves, which means the police becomes more afraid and more likely to shoot, which leads to a militarization of the police, and leading to a division between those likely to be shot and those not. What I am describing is basically what you have now in the United States. And it is caused by people accepting and defending the police killing people.

I have seen the footage, and I agree with you here. I see the police shooting that man in the back, cold blooded. There is something seriously wrong with the mindset of many police officers. But, there is something seriously wrong with society in general. there is no respect for authority anymore. We live in a culture of "dialogue" now, but you can't secure social stability this way.

There is a reason, that for milennia, there were so many dictators and governments based on force and terror. It is the only system that works. A culture of dialogue is great on paper, but this really requires that you have a population of rational people. The fact of the matter is: the vast majority of people are not great thinkers, let alone great negotiators. It's everyone for themselves, and everyone has vastly differing goals.

More and more, I'm of the opinion that the only way to halt this massive wave of social unrest, is a dictatorship based on power and immediate reaction, and a severe limitation of individual participation in matters of social order. People should go to work, and the government should take care of running the country.

[SoulMonster]

8 minutes ago, action said:

I have seen the footage, and I agree with you here. I see the police shooting that man in the back, cold blooded. There is something seriously wrong with the mindset of many police officers. But, there is something seriously wrong with society in general. there is no respect for authority anymore. We live in a culture of "dialogue" now, but you can't secure social stability this way.

There is a reason, that for milennia, there were so many dictators and governments based on force and terror. It is the only system that works. A culture of dialogue is great on paper, but this really requires that you have a population of rational people. The fact of the matter is: the vast majority of people are not great thinkers, let alone great negotiators. It's everyone for themselves, and everyone has vastly differing goals.

More and more, I'm of the opinion that the only way to halt this massive wave of social unrest, is a dictatorship based on power and immediate reaction, and a severe limitation of individual participation in matters of social order. People should go to work, and the government should take care of running the country.

It is always reason for a pause when you agree with me on something and I was about to "like" your post until I came to your second and third paragraph and the balance of the universe was restored 

[action]

2 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

It is always reason for a pause when you agree with me on something and I was about to "like" your post until I came to your second and third paragraph and the balance of the universe was restored 

prove me wrong then.

Show me one example of a country, no, a community, that could maintain themselves on the ideals of dialogue and mutual understanding, without the need for a strong police force.

Thomas more's Utopia is not a valid example.

People's minds are so utterly empty and stupid, that there is much room to fill it with inanity and hatred.

 

[SoulMonster]

58 minutes ago, action said:

prove me wrong then.

Show me one example of a country, no, a community, that could maintain themselves on the ideals of dialogue and mutual understanding, without the need for a strong police force.

Thomas more's Utopia is not a valid example.

People's minds are so utterly empty and stupid, that there is much room to fill it with inanity and hatred.

 

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with the notion of having a strong police force (and "strong" can be defined in ever so many ways), but your statement that only "dictators and governments based on force and terror" work.

[action]

3 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with the notion of having a strong police force (and "strong" can be defined in ever so many ways), but your statement that only "dictators and governments based on force and terror" work.

depends on how you define "work", I guess.

To me, for a social model to work, it needs to ensure stability and rest. Not riots, crime, shooting innocent people in the back and terrorist attacks. Instability is caused by people who do not oblige to the rules voluntarily. As the willingness to accept the rules lowers in a society (and I argue that this is very much the case today where everything is questioned), then there is no option left but a strong state.

the problem with the left, is their naive belief in the goodness of people. the left, is blind for the many bad sides of people, and rather than punishing people they tend to seek causes and explanations. All in the naive assumption that you can "re-educate" people, that you can find causes for crime and eliminate them... ultimately questioning the moral validity of punishing people altogether, because how can you punish a person who is the victim of mysterious forces that made him commit crimes?

It's this "all talk, no action" side of the left that we see today in so many countries, and we can all see with our own eyes the instability in most countries, with riots increasing as we speak. In turkey, in russia, the army would have long dispatched, but in the west we still feel the need to "talk", to "explain". It does not ensure safety, it is a failed ideology.

[SoulMonster]

14 minutes ago, action said:

depends on how you define "work", I guess.

To me, for a social model to work, it needs to ensure stability and rest. Not riots, crime, shooting innocent people in the back and terrorist attacks.

Oh, you are talking about a society with no crime, too. Well that has certainly never been achieved with any for of government before and will likely never be achieved, even with your "let's go for dictatorship" idea.

But as far as societies go I think we have enough precedence to argue that modern democracies work better than dictatorships, especially in the long term.

[Ace Nova]

2 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

Oh, I can come up with quite a few scenarios too where the police could think there was a threat, myself - none of which would justify shooting the guy 7 seven times in the back.

As we have said before, there should be an imminent threat before the police is allowed to shoot. Otherwise we risk police shooting too frequently, whenever they are scared or angry, and getting away with it because one could always conjure some improbably "threat". And this would lead to something as twisted as a fear of the police in the population, and leading to people not trusting the police, and leading to people arming themselves, which means the police becomes more afraid and more likely to shoot, which leads to a militarization of the police, and leading to a division between those likely to be shot and those not. What I am describing is basically what you have now in the United States. And it is caused by people accepting and defending the police killing people.

Didn't you agree that this situation was an "outlier"?

300+ million police encounters in the US every year.

Between 11-30 "unarmed" people shot by police per year. 

And no, I don't think anyone likes to see a person get shot in the back 7 times.  But the reason you see people "defending" the police is that most know it's a statistical outlier for something like that to happen.

 

 

[SoulMonster]

36 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

But the reason you see people "defending" the police is that most know it's a statistical outlier for something like that to happen.

It must be possible to defend the police as an institution yet denounce the shooting of Blake. Even further, it must be possible to defend the police in principle but admit that it is not doing a good enough job and needs to be improved. 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

The antifa guy who allegedly murdered the Trump supporter Aaron Danielson has been killed as authorities attempted to arrest him.

https://apnews.com/f0418fd4a37be8d9b6953c8359109587

Quote

“Initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers. Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene,” the statement said.

Generally not a good idea to produce a firearm and threaten the people attempting to arrest you. This guy seemed like quite the loose cannon.

[Gibsonfender2323]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/rochester-new-york-city-see-violent-clashes-following-daniel-prude-video-release