How many fire extinguishers sit unused in homes and businesses every year? Does the cost outweigh the benefits?
That’s like saying me putting on my seatbelt makes me want to cause auto accidents, or encourages others to hit me with their car. “Shock and awe” would be the officers unloading rubber bullets and gas the first time a protestor steps onto the street. This lady was probably told to move off the street. She didn’t, so she got arrested. It doesn’t matter what the cops were wearing. It doesn’t matter if she is black.
If I’m standing in the street for ten minutes, police ask me to move, I refuse, I get arrested. I don’t get to decide if it’s ok to stand in the street. If I’m standing on the boobytrap detonator then yeah, I’ll tell the cops what the situation is and hope for the best. If I’m trying to get arrested to “make a point”, fine. But don’t defend illegal behavior with “ohhh… but they’re not really HURTING anything…”
Two more cops got killed in a courtroom yesterday. Think they had enough protective gear on?
Militarization of police is a serious problem that affects the way police interact with the public in ways that cause immediate harm by changing for the worse how police interact while policing and causes lasting effects by chilling and even eroding civil liberties.
Coupled with the absurd notion that any measure that prevents any harm at any cost to police discharging their duties is good, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That’s how children get shot by police for behaviour that just 35 years ago was recognzed by all as childs play.
Comparing such measures with the rational safegaurd of fire extinguishers is incredibly dumb. You are also incorrect, shock and awe is the use or display of overwhelming force in acts of rapid dominance. It isn’t a means of keeping peace and never has been in it’s 20 year existence. It is a wholly inappropriate tactic for policing, and demonstrative of their militarization.
Many people of varying levels of ineptitude believe the militarization of police a good thing, they usually have no concept of history, an axe to grind with whoever is under the bootheels of the police, or the desire to see someone there.
So we’re making unsupported guesses about what happened now? Okay.
Notice how the cops are leaning backwards? That’s not a standing posture; that’s what it looks like when you take a photo of someone just as they’re pulling up from sprinting.
So, what exactly was it about that peaceful unarmed woman that caused two cops in riot gear to charge at her? Since this was apparently a deadly dangerous situation, what was the imminent threat that led those two heroic cops to bravely leave the safety of the massed ranks behind them?
Seems like you just don’t get it: the cops are the good guys!
Even when they avoid all pretense to due process and necessity by assassinating suspects with robot bombs (I wonder if that bit of savagery in Dallas will get much corporate-media scrutiny).
[quote=“Miguel, post:62, topic:81231”]
Two more cops got killed in a courtroom yesterday. Think they had enough protective gear on?
[/quote]They were actually shot with their own gun. So the question is “what protective gear could they have worn that would have protected them from someone able to wrestle a gun away from two men?”
Shouldn’t you be asking if they needed the gun in the first place instead of if they should have been wearing more armor?
There is a direct fucking line between Obama’s slaying of Anwar al-Awlaki and the Dallas slaughter.
Not only is there no media scrutiny, there’s no legal scrutiny.
I’m, on average, an Obama Fan. But I will be really fucking sick-to-my-stomach if part of his lasting legacy is providing precedent for the extrajudicial killing of US citizens, at-home or abroad, by the feds or by the local blue, using fancy robo-technology.
People on this thread are ridiculing the safety gear worn by officers and claiming “militarization” of police is causing problems. An officer just sustained a serious, possibly career-ending injury responding to protests.
Does the officer deserve his/her injury, or do they deserve protective gear? If there is a middle ground, I’m all ears.
And while we’re moving the goal posts, how do European officers dress for soccer riots?
Chicago Tribune with slightly less egregious numbers than graphic above:
990 people shot dead by police in 2015
2015:
So, yeah, cry me a river because a single f’ing cop gets hit by a thrown chunk of concrete just right to get an injury. Just pretend he’s black and a cop threw it and it will be fine.
You’re assuming it’s a white officer that was injured. I’m not crying a river, I’m saying the officer deserves to have protective equipment. His/her medical bills will quickly equal that of much of the equipment worn by all the officers that day.
I’ve got another view of the “five times more likely” graph. It is very similar to this one (from 2010 data).
If you consider there are 5.7 times more blacks per capita than whites in prison (in 2010), wouldn’t it be true that other comparisons between white/black~law enforcement statistics would also show disproportionate numbers? Look at the Latino/Hispanic rates between the “Mapping Police Violence” chart and this one. Almost exactly the same, proportionally.
So yes, the US black community absolutely suffers disproportionate contact with the law enforcement system. I just don’t see how that justifies assaulting police officers or taking away their protective equipment.
The problem is that yet another gun debate is indeed off topic. When ever we have a thread about BLM, protests, etc, it somehow magically morphs into yet another gun debate… And they really go nowhere. I don’t think that @anon15383236 and @Mister44 are any where nearer to agreeing that they were the first time we had this debate.
I’m all for yet another gun debate in a thread about guns/NRA/legislation/etc. How about we stop letting these threads about BLM devolve into those?
And what does Ieshia Evans have to do with that? Does she look particularly dangerous to you, like she’s about to magically shoot those cops with no gun?
It’s not about her specifically. Cops got to protect themselves. Who knows what could happen? Danger lurking everywhere. Got to gear up. Keep your head on a swivel. We’re at war you know. (Never mind the psychological impact of treating “civilians” like the enemy.)
yeah!
