OUT OF CONTROL COPS - A SERIOUS PROBLEM IN AMERICA

Max, if you continue to ignore people, at this rate you will have nobody to debate with! I do think it's a little...hypocritical? might be too strong a word. If everyone was as trigger happy with the ignore feature, nobody would be able to see your posts either.

author=Dyhalto
A close knit, literally gated community where everyone's got each other's back. Me and my bros vs the world, in an informal way. There IS a certain glamour to it, actually.

I don't know if you are, but this is the whitest thing I've ever read. Really? This is your impression of the fucking ghetto?

author=Dyhalto
As for jail time and pension repealing... what for? So other people can feel good? Discharge and debarment from law enforcement will suffice

But if he broke the law in the worst degree (murder), why wouldn't jail time suffice? I'm hardly a fan of America's view on crime and punishment, but if you don't go to jail for murder, what then?

author=Dyhalto
It's not the ghetto or the poverty or tough gun-toting goons on the rooftop. It's the kinship. Brotherhood and family.

Having watched Game of Thrones recently, I can say I admire Tywin Lannister and enjoy watching him on screen. He's a genius strategist and commands unanimous respect. But that doesn't mean I admire every single characteristic of him, particularly the evil ones. Same idea with war movies. Saving Private Ryan doesn't make me want to be a soldier, but there is something to admire in the character interactions.

Sure. A lot of people do glamorize the thug life and sure, even bad things/people/characters have admirable traits. It can be fun watching Tywin scheme and there were some points where I watched Alonzo and thought "Man this is a bad motherfucker".

But your original points were pretty much all wrong. The Cuban community lambasted Scarface, Menance II Society is a textbook example of why the thug life actually is self destructive and sucks, and Training Day is a classic 'bad cop dies, good cop wins' film. Even Martin Scorcese, a director famous for encouraging viewers to take their own meaning from films, in movies like Goodfellas and Wolf of Wall Street were about scumbags who had an exciting time then came crashing down.

Your examples were bad ones, which is what we took issue with.

author=Dy
I don't know the full story of the Mike Brown case. Was Darren Wilson fucked in the head? Did he have legitimate fears from an indirect source? I don't know. For now, get him off the force. Courts are there to decide out the rest, not you and I on a gamedev forum.

My impression was that you thought worst case scenario he gets kicked off the force. If I'm mistaken, my bad.

Yes, even though I think Darren Wilson is a piece of shit, we do run by innocent until proven guilty, and yeah, being taken off the force pending investigation would be fair, I think. However if he doesn't even get indicted, that's fucked up.

Oh well, I guess it's all over for me on this site after this post :(
Max, you used the word "pig" 13 times in your original post and I'm pretty sure several times in other post on this thread you created :)
That kind of tells me what you think of cops in general, but maybe your high IQ has something to do with that. Some very smart people don't think or feel the way a lot of us think.
I did take the time to google your examples of police brutality and murder.
Guess what I found, not one of them was premeditated or racially biased.
Yes, they all had violent endings and it really hurts to hear or see that happen, but most of them escalated and the outcome was terrible, but if the jury or grand jury actually goes by the law, the law says they could not be charged even if the jury wanted them to be punished for screwing up and not doing their job correctly.

Maybe what we need to discuss are the laws and the lawyers who get the criminals off time and time again.

I'm just going to talk about Eric Garner and Michael Brown because they are the only two I've been following each and every night in hopes we don't have a race war in this country.

Eric Garner: the cops were asked to do something about him by the local merchants who said he was taking away business by selling loose cigarettes. Granted, it is a very low crime, as crime goes, but he had been arrested OVER 30 times by the cops in the past. He resisted arrest, was severely overweight and had a heart condition. The initial holed the cop used was not a choke hold, but turned into that as they wrestled Mr. Garner to the ground. Again, really sad for the kids and family, but he was a criminal and the cops were called in to do their job. Yes, a low level crime, but they had a job to do and he ignored their authority. If only he had gone along with them.....

As for Michael Brown. Again, a sad thing that his parents lost their child and he does not get to live out his life. But you don't smoke pot, rob a store, ignore police when they tell you to walk on the sidewalk and not block traffic, punch a cop in the face several times, try to get his gun (and what would he have done with that gun?), run from the cop, taunt him and charge at him.....and expect to go home for dinner. If you had watched the news as much on this as I did you would also have seen that the witnesses did not get their story correct nor tell the same story.

Yes, most of the cops need more training, but even more...the police departments need better hiring practices so the cops who are hired are better suited mentally for the job.
I heard a statement Jessie Jackson made sometime in the recent past about walking down the street in a black neighborhood, hearing steps behind him and when he turned to see two cops walking behind him, he breathed a sigh of relief. Even Jessie Jackson is afraid to walk the streets where people of color reside :)

Hopefully I will not get blasted since these stories, and that fucking ISIL is really bothering me :(

It's 2am, so I hope this reply rant came out clear :)

author=Linkis
Yes, most of the cops need more training, but even more...the police departments need better hiring practices so the cops who are hired are better suited mentally for the job.

Oh, jeez. This is such a tough one. There's really nothing in the Constitution about a police force except to say that States have the right and responsibility to determine how the law was enforced. It also says that a military presence will not be used on U. S. soil and will be housed and kept in areas specially designated by Congress. It is then expressly written that military force is not to be used against citizens. Finally, it says that States are not permitted to organize or form an army. The articles that say this form a rule called Posse Commitatis.

The next rule is to apply to all. None shall be held above the law, be it an elected official or a hired clerk.

Next, the framers wrote the 2nd Amendment. "A well regulated militia being essential to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Now, the interpretation of this has been lately skewed in the media in way that benefits the power of the government, even going as far as to suggest that the 2nd Amendment was intended for the military only. In fact, it's been said that every judge has always known that and that framers never intended citizens have access to firearms, which is very different from what the framers have actually written. In fact, the law is to be taken in such a way that you may use deadly force to rightly defend yourself from anyone, even a police officer.

Now, as for the police getting better training, better training according to who? Do you remember back in the late 90s the LA police spent some time in the news for a rather embarrassing discovery on the part of the media. The LA police do not accept applicants with an IQ over 82. Yes, that's considered developmentally disabled and possibly borderline downs syndrome. This is almost laughable, but it's true. Maybe you remember the story, or all of the skits on Saturday Night Live or all of Jay Leno's jokes (and he did a few skits, too)...

Criminal: "You can't hit me with those!"

Cop 1: "Why not?"

Criminal: "It's daytime. Those are nightsticks."

Cop 2: "He's right! We need..."

Both: "Daysticks!"

Both run off, leaving their patrol car behind.

(I'll never forget that skit. Funny as shit.)

So, we've established that the state wants only people of low intelligence (they obey without question and are often of the predisposition to become violent towards anything that doesn't fit their accepted pattern). Remember the post I made about killology. The state wants its police to be aggressive and paranoid. They also prefer to recruit ex-military, people who have been trained for combat and to view people as an enemy (plus, veterans have been often traumatized and there are often cases of veterans being unable to tell right from wrong. Growing up, I knew a veteran who got arrested as a serial killer. He and a war buddy marrying off their daughters, killing the husbands, and then collecting from inheritance and insurance over the course of several years). I'm not sure a better trained police force would actually be such a good thing.

In Norway, the police are trained to withdraw from a violent situation, reassess, and then find a way to approach it in such a manner that calms everyone down. In Norway's entire history, police have only caused two gun deaths. Last year, Iceland had it's first police shooting in history. Not only were the police justified, but they paid for the death expenses and issued a written apology to the family. Why should we have to put up seeing police on the news for highly questionable acts of violence every single day? There's no excuse for shooting a 7-year-old girl in her bed twice and killing her, and then having a grand jury rule that he was justified (a flash grenade thrown by another officer blinded him so he just started shooting randomly. They weren't even in the right house). There's no excuse for shooting a homeless man in the back. It's illegal to shoot at a fleeing man. A 70-year-old wheelchair bound veteran in a nursing home wouldn't take his meds so the staff called the police and they gunned him down.

People are justifying this! I'm tired of people justifying this! Police ask why you run. It's because we're terrified of them! This isn't new. The news has only recently started reporting on what every American has known since we were little kids. The police are killers. I've known it ever since I was old enough to talk. Teachers always told me I had no reason to be afraid of the police and I always thought they were liars. By the time I was five, I had seen enough police point their guns at my family to know they could never be trusted. St. Louis County police pulled a guy over for having a busted taillight. This is a family story, by the way, my family. The guy told him that he kept spare bulbs in the trunk. So the officer had the man get out and go to his trunk and open it and get the bulb out. When he was done, the officer beat him into unconsciousness, cuffed him, dragged him to his cruiser and put him in and then had the car towed. Isn't that nice? If you read my posts regularly, you already know that when I was three, a construction worker tried to kill me and my mother (I was three; this literally means it was one of my first memories, the year was 1983). My dad shot him in the arm and after years of court, and finally being put on probation. He had never once violated his probation and in 1991, the court decided to change his sentence to 8 years in prison. Police have terrorized my family all of our lives.

My grandmother, her sister, and brother lived in the same house since 1963. In 2009, my grandmother died. Earlier this year, police entered their home, deprived my great-uncle of his oxygen, stating he would no longer be allowed to receive it (he died the next day), forced my aunt out of her home, and began selling off her personal belongings. My father and I claimed possession of the house and now live there with her. Police have been watching the house. Why, I don't know. What should I do? What can I do? I believe, truly believe that one day soon, they will come into this house, and I don't know what they'll do, and I don't even know why.

author=Linkis
Eric Garner: the cops were asked to do something about him by the local merchants who said he was taking away business by selling loose cigarettes. Granted, it is a very low crime, as crime goes, but he had been arrested OVER 30 times by the cops in the past. He resisted arrest, was severely overweight and had a heart condition. The initial holed the cop used was not a choke hold, but turned into that as they wrestled Mr. Garner to the ground. Again, really sad for the kids and family, but he was a criminal and the cops were called in to do their job. Yes, a low level crime, but they had a job to do and he ignored their authority. If only he had gone along with them.....

He may have been a bit of a con man, but he was actually a respected member of his community and the amount of force exerted on him is incredibly disproportionate to his crime. Also, I'd avoid using labels like "criminal" to justify anything that happen to him. In reality, all human beings are "criminals" in the sense that, like any other animal species on the planet, we do what we can to survive in our environment, even if that means taking advantage of others to preserve ourselves. Some people are disadvantaged, especially poor black people in America, and the fact that Garner was a part of the "prison trap" system so many blacks in poverty are, means he had little to no options to get ahead in anywhere else in life. So how is he "the bad guy" in this scenario, and how does that even nullify the point? The cops used excessive brute force on a lower-class citizen and got away with it. If any other group of citizens did the same, it would be classified as murder.

And while he may have resisted, if you were in his shoes, both in terms of financial state AND skin color, and you grew up all your life knowing that society is against you, wouldn't you do the same as an act of fear?

author=Linkis
As for Michael Brown. Again, a sad thing that his parents lost their child and he does not get to live out his life. But you don't smoke pot, rob a store, ignore police when they tell you to walk on the sidewalk and not block traffic, punch a cop in the face several times, try to get his gun (and what would he have done with that gun?), run from the cop, taunt him and charge at him.....and expect to go home for dinner. If you had watched the news as much on this as I did you would also have seen that the witnesses did not get their story correct nor tell the same story.

Where did you get this information? A lot of it sounds like it's directly from Wilson's testimony, which is not only biased in the sense that he has the most to gain from not receiving charges, but his testimony behind the reasons for gunning this kid town is a load of ridiculous nonsense. Besides that, one trial lawyer noted how horribly conducted the investigation on Wilson was through twitter. Even watching this story on the news myself, there were inconsistencies on the main story: One stating that Wilson didn't even know Brown was responsible for robbery in the first place, and later stating that he did. The whole thing is way too convoluted to have the definitive answer of "Mike attacked cop, cop kills him, end story" and that there IS some sort of bias going on, racial or not.

Even when you put the whole racism thing aside, all of this demonstrates how biased our political system is. America hasn't actually moved away that much from say... Middle England in terms of how it treats certain classes within its society: The nobles get the benefits and passes, while the peasants get the short end of the stick. Replace "rich" with "law enforcement" and "peasants" with "poor whites and minorities."

PS: Also just wanted to add:

author=Linkis
That kind of tells me what you think of cops in general, but maybe your high IQ has something to do with that. Some very smart people don't think or feel the way a lot of us think.

The fact is, the more you actually know about society, the more you become depressed by how terrible it is. :(

@Cave_Dog
This is turning into too much of a defend-Darren-Wilson topic. I'm not biting (I admit, I haven't been keeping up on it).

author=Feldschlacht IV
The Cuban community lambasted Scarface

This is news to me, seriously. My first job was stockboy in a small manufacturing shop, and three guys who worked there were of Cuban descent. They were head over heels with Tony Montana, quoting him all the time and talking about how badass he was. I liberally used "Cuban community" because I thought the sentiment was more widespread. My mistake.

I still say that a setting/circumstance can be glorified, even if the core storyline ends in the character's demise though.

author=pianotm
Now, as for the police getting better training, better training according to who? Do you remember back in the late 90s the LA police spent some time in the news for a rather embarrassing discovery on the part of the media. The LA police do not accept applicants with an IQ over 82. Yes, that's considered developmentally disabled and possibly borderline downs syndrome.

I've heard that before, but actual facts/articles always eluded me. Do you have any substantiating links offhand? I'm not challenging you or anything. Just want something for the archive.

You mention "the state" in a villainous light a couple of times. The reason US cops are tailored to act like hooligans is because it's a crony capitalist society. The wealthy always have a bigoted fear of the poor, proportionally so to the class discrepancy, so of course they'll exercise their usual influence and setup an environment of violent enforcers on their behalf.
If the state was in control, the police would probably behave more like in Sweden and Norway where the state is strong relative to the business and financial interests therein. If anything, the state is undermined by the thuggish behavior of it's police, similar to a parent being undermined by the misbehavior of their child.

author=pianotm
Next, the framers wrote the 2nd Amendment. "A well regulated militia being essential to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Now, the interpretation of this has been lately skewed in the media in way that benefits the power of the government, even going as far as to suggest that the 2nd Amendment was intended for the military only.

In a similar vein, the irony of the 2nd Amendment debate is that "the government" loves it for it's value as a polarizing issue. Nobody in the ruling class really cares if Americans lose their guns, but if stupid gun fetishists are showing up for every gun rally that pops up, they won't be as energized to show up for a Jobs Program or other economic disparity rally. So to suggest the government is out to end civilian access to firearms is simply wrong. It's the issue itself they want you up in arms about.
No pun intended.

Granted, there may be a few kooks who really do think Joe Pleb will walk up and shoot them if you leave them with the tool.

"pot" is a depressant, the odds of him being sent into some hulk-esque fury to beat down the man ((aka darren wilson)) are about 0, especially considering potential marijuana usage which wasn't actually mentioned at all at any time so that is irrelevant. the autopsy would have probably revealed drug-use related information...

i don't know about you, but if your average person is shot at and struck by a bullet, their first reaction isn't going to charge at their assailant... you can't assume the extraordinary. i mean the fact that you are defending eric garner's death makes me very concerned...

minorities of any kind are disproportionately victims of police brutality, that really isn't something that you can spend hours debating on. to say otherwise is to intentionally leave your eyes closed

author=Linkis
Second: he was 6'2-4", a very healthy 18yr old AND about 350lbs. The initial 3-4 bullets were along his hand, arm and upper right side of chest, and with the adrenilen and anger rushing through his body, he very easily could have rushed the cop AND a cop with an angry large, heavy man rushing him SHOULD have been afraid for his life.

At the speed the average bullet travels and the force of its impact (granted, I've never been shot, so I don't know how it truly feels), there is no way, in my point of view, that a kid like Brown wouldn't drop after the first bullet as if he had mad tanking powers. Also, Wilson is 6'4 and 210lb, not as heavy as his opponent, but how the hell would he be truly threatened by an unarmed kid?

author=Linkis
@Ratty: Concerning Eric Garner, ALMOST nothing about his status in life gives him the right to take away the livelihood of the local store owners. As stated, he had been arrested OVER 30 times and when the cops ARE CALLED IN, not stopping him for hell of it, he should have complied. It looked to me on the video like one of them was writing out a summons (not positive) and he told them to leave him alone, they had harassed him enough and "it was going to stop today". That is when they arrested him, he resisted and the cop used a take down hold, NOT choke hold. If you watch the video again, you will see a cop shorter than Mr. Garner put his forearm under his chin and try to pull him back....that is the takedown method he was trained to use. Unfortunately, as the cops wrestled with Garner, the cops are slipped under his chin to his throat, that may be why everyone says "choke hold". Garner was extremely heavy, had asthma and a heart condition. If the EMT's thought he was having trouble breathing, they would have put him oxygen right away. It took six men to get Garner on the stretcher.
As for me, I grew up in the East New York section of Brookly, NY. Poor, on welfare, father in prison. Sister had a job but mother did not. So yes, I know what it was like to grow up poor and feeling like the world was against me. BUT I WAS TAUGHT TO RESPRECT THE COPS AND DO WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO. As a teenager I was once picked up by the cops, they took me home to my mother and I got hell for getting into trouble :)

I agree that it is still wrong to disrespect cops and storeowners and whatnot, that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that nobody just does illegal shit for the sake of being bad. There are underlying issues through finances and cultural status that can possibly prevent someone from advancing through society. Especially if you've been convicted in the past, as the case with Eric Garner, there is no way in hell you'd have access to any high-paying job, and when your life is hanging in the balance as a result, people have to look towards "new" options, to put it lightly.

But god, I feel like the more I talk about that side of the spectrum, the more it detracts from the real issue, and the media keeps doing the same shitty thing over and over to make one side look like the enemy and the other side "good". That is to bring up things like background and previous criminal involvement to undermine the fact that a cop used EXCESSIVE FORCE to deal with a victim.

author=Linkis
@Ratty again:) My knowledge of the Michael Brown case is the same as Eric Garner.
CNN,MSNBC,FOX NEWS. Their TV shows and their websites. PLUS: God only knows how many internet articles TV stations, AP and Routers. As for the witnesses, several of the witnesses who corroborated the cops story are black. Several of those who said the cop "gunned down" the gentle giant are black and when pressed, they changed their testimony.

The authors of the articles/tweets I linked in my post were both white. Also, considering how some major news broadcasting corps have the tendency to blow things out of proportion and promote bias towards one particular side, I tend to overlook them over written articles. I did see the live report on the Micheal Brown case, however, and after the supreme court ruling the following questions went on in my head:
> If the witness testimonies were hardly viable, why was there no effort to find additional, viable ones?

> There is so much backstory information being thrown about Micheal Brown, but what about Wilson? What's HIS history? How is his testimony legitimate over anyone elses?

The whole thing felt like a "guilty before proven innocent" trial on the Brown's side than the other way around.

EDIT: Oh and...

author=Linkis
I do believe the parents are partially at fault for buying toys that look like the real thing and also the toy company for making the orange tip removable.

The last photo there to show how this has been going on for years. Many kids, even the ones I grew up with, played with a toy gun once in their life that looked just the same. There is zero excuse for what happened to that 12-year-old.

Damn, I knew I should not have clicked on "Notices" :)

@The Teen Idol :) Adon, marijuana in fact was found in the autopsy blood work and no I did not mean that sent him into a rage and attack the cop BUT it MIGHT have had a little to do with his frame of mind.
Michael Brown was not your average man. I remember reading an interview of one of his family members who said Michael was a very large man who did not get into many fights because he used his size to INTIMIDATE. He also had just robbed a neighborhood store of cigars, shoved a man back into a rack of chips and when the man tried to follow him outside he turned and walked toward that man backing him up into the store then turned and walked out. PLEASE, don't try and call him a "gentle giant". He was a very large, angry black teenager who had the balls to push a cop back into his car, reach in and punch that cop twice in the face, try to grab the cops gun, there was DNA on the gun, then walk away and when the cop got out of the car Michael Brown turned and came at the cop. That is the testimony of at least a few of the BLACK witnesses.
Defend the killing of Eric Garner? No, but I also will not indict the cop for trying to do his job. I guess we are looking at this from two different perspectives. All Garner had to do was admit he got caught breaking the law AGAIN or you can try to change that law so the cops are not asked by store owners to protect the people who pay them to do a job.

@Ratty, Yes, Wilson had a gun BUT when a 250lb ANGRY teenager is charging you as several of the black witnesses stated, I do believe Wilson could have wondered if his bullets would stop Brown. I don't know and neither does anyone else but I think the first few shots from Wilson are the ones that hit him in the arm. The wound in the hand happened in the car. The one that DID begin to bring him down was the hit to the upper right side of his chest. I THINK as Wilson was firing and the bullet wound to the chest made Brown begin to fall to the ground, THAT is when the head wound happened, when he was falling forward. It would have been nice if Wilson had stopped shooting for a second, Brown might still be alive but I GUESS Wilson did not stop shooting because Brown was so close.
All the evidence I've seen says Brown was about 35' from Wilson when he went down. I did see an artcle recently that said he was 100' from Wilson but I have no idea where they came up with that.

I also believe some cops DO use excessive force. I've seen at least 3 times recently I felt the cop belongs in jail for what he did but in the case of Brown/Wilson, I don't feel that way. As for Garner.....I wish that had not happened, but I will not condemn a cop for doing his job. OH, by the way...did anyone notice a BLACK female cop at that scene who was a sgt. and supervisor who DID NOT STOP THE OTHERS. Maybe she knew the others were doing their jobs. As a Sgt. and probably one who gave testimony to the grand jury...do you think she lied to protect a white cop??

@Max: Why was it necessary--why was it imperative--for them to physically attack him at all?
They were doing the job they were called to do.
Why did Garner have to die?? HE DID NOT HAVE TO DIE !!!
He simply, knowing he had a heart condition, asthma and was caught again...all he had to do, was cooperate with the cops and when he refused, he should not have tried to fight them.
I guess we will never agree on this.

As to your reference of my racism, that is the term being used my the black people being interviewed and by the black news anchors.
What other term would you like me to use.
Maybe before you talk about my racism you should look at how many time you refer to cops as pigs.

OK, time to go watch some news and get a little more upset :( :)