Militarized police kill 80-year-old man in his own bed. No drugs found

Your naiveté is giving me fits of giggles.

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Is it that people don’t actually care if someone else is murdered by police? Or is it that people are willing to accept murderous police on the job, if it allows them to believe that it reduces the chances of something bad happening to themselves or their children?

I don’t think most people actually like the idea of police killing innocents, but why are they willing to swallow it in the name of “this is the price we pay for safety and security”?

Most folks who support law enforcement don’t think of themselves as the “kind of people” who end up on the wrong end of a police bullet. They think they will be protected by police, and are not disabused of their delusion until/unless they are personally screwed over or someone they love is dead.

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It think we’d be better served fixing our shitty drug laws, and stop encouraging thuggery by cops. . .

Since the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the creation of their Constitution in 1917 they have been a federal presidential constitutional republic which is the same type of government as the U.S.

It’s not the people who are indifferent, but rather the politicians who are indifferent to the populace. Their only concern is big money and will step on the people for another buck.

It’s been tried in earnest for over 200 years and things have only gotten worse. Blaming the voters misses the mark by miles. Our politicians have had the chance to reform campaign finance for a long time and refuse to do anything about it. Couple that with giving the police the power to seize property and use it for funding their own department and you have an entrenched system that no amount of voting can fix. Until those 2 basic issues are resolved, voting is an immoral and slimy affair and most Americans know it. That’s why we don’t vote. We aren’t so foolish as to think it makes a difference.
You can argue that the wrong people get elected but no matter who wins it only gets worse for the people. We all know that so why, I ask, would we bother to legitimatize the corruption through participation?

It’s both. Politicians are indifferent to the populace, but then they can afford to be, because of how many people will support being tough on crime even when it means things like this, vote for judges who promise to execute more people even when it is known some are innocent, oppose government services for poor people and unions, agree with indiscriminant spying and even oversight-free drone strikes, and so on.

But we talked about this before, and I don’t think you were willing to acknowledge any such division in what the populace has been asking for exists, or provide any serious evidence that united voting does nothing comparable to the burden of proof you demanded from me, so I am not eager to repeat the argument with you.

Instead I’m going to put this up again, because I think it’s funny:

Ok, maybe my Australian mindset is skewing this. but there would be a full, independent, Federal, Commission of Enquiry (or whatever your version of a Royal Commission is.) into this event right? To stop public outcry, inflammatory statements in the Murdoch press, and general things burning on the street, you know. Because that’s what would happen here if this were an ISOLATED event.

I am quite frankly shocked at how your citizens don’t spend most of their time charging police lines with Bill-Hooks and Molotov’s given how little attention your government seems to pay to just about any misuse of power.

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So you are asserting that people support tough crime laws even if they end up killing innocent old men, that people support hanging judges who put the innocent to death?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to think that these people who support tough on crime politics are unaware of the abuses by police since the major media markets don’t report on it? Or that tough judge supporters are unaware of the number of known innocents put to death each year for the same reasons?
It all smacks of victim blaming to me. It’s like you see the U.S. as a scantily clad woman who when she is abused or raped you say “well, look at how she dressed. it’s as much her fault as the attacker” and then when the police raid her home on an anonymous tip you explain that she already had a history with the police.
Are you a politician?

The alternative solution is to issue DEA and state police with baggies of methamphetamine to distribute at crime scenes, so that they can still score a ‘win’ when the subject of the warrant has “managed to hide” / “never possessed” the sought-after drugs mentioned to be found in the search warrant.

Finding no physical evidence of drugs at the scene is really just showing how sophisticated the drug ring under investigation is, hiding the evidence is proof that they were tipped off to the raid.

There must be a mole in the police who informed the 80-year old in time for him to hide the evidence. So get IAS to investigate one of the do-gooder police - any cop who’s voiced concerns about the overly-militarised aspect of the police force, or perhaps a cop who has a medical marijuana licence (or has someone in his family who possesses one, or associates with other people who do) - failing that, pick a police officer whose kill-during-search score is below average for the force. Those kind of officers are likely the subversive elements who are trying to derail the war on drugs.

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Depends. When they are told about it, actually presented evidence of the harm that is happening, do they change their mind?

Because that hasn’t been what I’ve noticed in discussions on the subject. Instead, I’ve noticed even here people readily use whatever excuse to dismiss problems as isolated incidents and blame the victims. I linked an example discussion for drone strikes; have you really never seen examples for the others?

I’m not surprised; you previously were willing to use any quibbling to dismiss what I said, and caricaturing it as itself victim blaming is a good way to do that. I assume accusing ordinary people who believe in voting of propping up the system that oppresses them was victim blaming too, right? No, of course that’s totally different.

But no, I’m not a politician. I know, you think I’m wrong, and a member of the general public would never be on the wrong side of an issue. But if I were, I doubt I would be so eager to have the public own up to what they allow in their politicians and realize they shouldn’t have to accept it.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t protest because I fear the police. I have something to lose, and I am not brave enough to destroy my life by bashing it against the police state.

Keeping the populace quiet through fear? Check.

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How often do violent riots result in a reduction of police powers?

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Interesting hypothetical. You are saying that people who want tougher anti-crime laws are also in support of the police killing the innocent and abusing the people but I see that as a false equivalency. It seems more reasonable to assume that those supporting tougher anti-crime laws do not support murder and rape and methods for crime fighting and would not support such activity.

The scared grandmother of 80 who wants tougher anti crime laws would reasonably assume that these laws and law keepers are going to not commit murder, rape, and abuse to get the job done. Those people believe in the system which means they also believe that the system will work within its own boundaries and not turn to crime to fight crime.

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I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to extrapolate the general attitudes of Americans from comments posted on BoingBoing. I don’t think this readership is very representative of the people.

I am not saying anyone directly supports that stuff, in the sense that they would opt for murder with all else equal. I’m saying many people are happy to support it indirectly because they care less about it than the perceived benefits of being tough on crime, or rationalize it away when they see it. I think you would have understood that if you were feeling at all charitable toward me.

And no, I don’t think BoingBoing is a representative sample; on the contrary, I think it a sample of people who are unusually informed about thing like police abuses or drone strikes and often care a great deal about them, and you still see people rationalize them here. I hear that from other websites, letters in the paper, callers on the radio, and people in restaurants too. If you think none of it represents the true public, it is time for you to provide some evidence.

Anyway the end result is the same. Whether people support militarized police knowing all the problems it entails, or out of total ignorance of them, that still works out to lots of people supporting it. And that enables politicians and businesses to take advantage in a way that widespread opposition would not.

If the protest is about police violence? More often than you’d think. See Ukraine where increased outrage led to the abandonment of anti protestor laws.

But the general point is that most European and Commonwealth governments wouldn’t let it get that far, they’d capitulate as soon as an extended outcry had been made, or even before one began, lest their party decide that a new cabinet is in order if they want to win an election ever again. Popular riots do happen, but that kind of misjudgement is inexcusable, so it almost always results in the fall of the government, if not immediately than at the next election.

The USA, by contrast, seems to use a combination of ignoring public outcry and relying on their internal security to stifle it. A response more suited to totalitarian regimes.

I had always thought that the ignorant and loud who rationalized such things represented a small portion of the population which still bothers to vote. That being a minority of the country, I had perhaps incorrectly marginalized those people as clueless participants.

There are around 2 million people employed as police in the US not counting federal agencies like the FBA, DEA, and such. Right there you have 2 million people who support the police engaging in criminal activity in pursuit of ‘justice’. Then you have those working in the prosecution side of the justice system. They generally have no soul either. Then there’s the DEA, commercial prison workers, drug awareness people, etc etc. That’s more than enough to account for the loud crazies out there posting all over the internet. Not to say that sort of thing is limited to these groups, only that they represent a large negatively biased voting block whose livelyhood depends on our fear and complacency. To paraphrase an over used quote, you can’t get people whose job depends on the system to change the system.

edit:
You are a big kid. I’d never insult you with charity.

I know exactly two people in that valley and they’re beyond fucking awesome, which is all the more sad to see what it’s become.

After thinking about it for a while, I still stand by my original suggestion:
A major reason amongst the many that the pols know they can ignore you is that you’all don’t vote. It almost doesn’t matter which candidate you vote for, as you pointed out, but the fact is only the Nomenklatura vote.

Aside from the fact that the Tea Party is just Koch Industries under a different name, there’s a reason the pols are a little scared of them - the Tea Party’s misguided, uneducated members vote (for the candidate that they’re told to vote for, but they vote).

Are you kidding? Sometimes out of control Canadian cops don’t even say that they are sorry!!! Bloody Fascists!

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Define “criminal.”

Now, is that the same definition that the law uses? Maybe you see the problem.

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