This is why that LA cop that could shoot had little trouble with the ones that couldn’t when he decided to go all Rambo.
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$10 will leave you $5-6 short of a box of 50 cheapy of 9mm FMJ. But to insure the rounds you use in the field feed reliably in your gun, they run $25-$40 for a box of 20 self defense rounds (heavier hollow point types)
They don’t arrest mentally ill people as a matter of course, as they would be a burden on the state to provide them care. They just let them go over and over and over.
There was a lady who would regularly take off all her clothes and direct traffic in front of the bar I worked at. The cops would arrive after an hour. Talk to her, gather up her stuff, run her off, and she’d be back the next day. For years.
Also… prisoners in the US are regularly dosed up on lots and lots of psychiatric medications… unnecessarily. A big business.
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Thats why they have SWAT teams. If they think they need to kill people, they call in the professionals.
Its not even about hitting their targets… its about being aware of what’s behind what you are shooting at.
[quote=“grimloki, post:60, topic:15752, full:true”]
- Deadly force isn’t acceptable. Ever. We need some method to stop people at range that doesn’t involve punching holes in their vital organs.[/quote]
While I think use of deadly force is used in situations where it is not warranted, certainly there are cases where it is 100% warranted. They do use less-than-lethal methods such as OC spray and tasers - both of which are abused as well.
[quote=“grimloki, post:60, topic:15752, full:true”]
8) The militarization of police. I assume this is done to protect officers… at least ostensibly. Its results in more use of excessive force, [/quote]
Militarization is an over reaction to an isolated incident. But once you have a SWAT team formed, you’re going to use them as often as possible to justify the expense.
They also need to get rid of balaclavas and other masks for police. The psychology involved in hiding behind a mask gives you the ability to do things you normally would not do.
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If cops could have weapons that incapacitated at range, reliably, and as effectively as firearms, but didn’t kill people, would you still think deadly force was necessary?
There have been some interesting developments as far as weapons go… nothing reliable enough yet, but I think that has to do more with a lack of demand and less to do with it being a hard problem to solve.
Should we also charge all the family and friends of the accused with a felony for potentially having a hand in creating the situation which lead to mental distress?
Next up: NYPD officers rape woman, charge woman with indecent exposure. “She was practically asking for it the way she was dressed.”
Sure - but that is science fiction right now.
That makes no sense. Taser has sold millions of units and continues to upgrade and make new ones. I know DARPA has invested in crowd dispersion with microwaves. There is absolutely a market for something like that.
I’d be interested in what developments you are referring to, I don’t know of anything approaching what you’re suggesting.
This is the first I’ve heard of police using a dessert to sheild their identities. Tell us more!
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They put them on their heads and everyone is like, “Wow - that looks delicious. Somehow I don’t feel like rioting right now.” And it gives police this false sense of superiority where they think they could pull off making a souffle.
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In Durham, NC three people have died in police custody in as many months.
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It’s worth noting here that when the NYPD switched to Glocks as their service weapons, they had quite a number of accidental discharge of weapon incidents due to the way the safeties on a Glock are (pretty much every time you read about some guy who shot himself in groin / leg / foot with his own gun, it was a Glock.) Rather than invest the time and effort in appropriately retraining the massive NYPD, they opted to reset the trigger pull to 11 pounds on service weapons (which weight about 2 pounds).
If you have a ten pound weight laying around, go ahead and lift it with your index finger - that’s what the NYPD thought would be a good trigger pull. This doesn’t speak to morals / ethics of the department, but if you wonder why the NYPD seems to have such awful aim there is actually a mechanical reason.
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Interesting.
Really good point.
Personally I think Glock triggers suck, and 10lbs is an insane pull, IMHO. It is a double action trigger as well, which means it cocks and releases the hammer in one pull. Trying to pull something that quickly is going to throw your aim off.
For those that don’t, Glocks don’t have a safety in the traditional sense. A safety used to mean that if you pull the trigger, nothing would happen. Glocks have a safety in the sense the mechanism prevents it from going off if it is dropped or other wise go off with out pulling the trigger. The safety on the Glock is a small lever on the trigger, which is depressed as one squeezes the trigger. So it’s a gun that you really need to keep your booger hook off of until you are ready to shoot. In most cases, when you have an accidental shooting or negligent discharge, it doesn’t just “go off”, someone pulled the trigger.
There are other guns on the market with similar safeties, and some with the more traditional safety and/or a grip safety, which requires the gun to be held and the trigger squeezed to cause it to fire.
This incident sucks, but my wife, who’s been a NYC social worker for 20 years and runs a large mental health clinic in Brooklyn, says she’s constantly impressed with how the cops generally deal sensitively with her disturbed clientele. It may be a matter of scale that makes the NYPD look so bad so often. It’s a force of 38k policing a city of 8m, with tens of thousands of responses each day. I can’t find an overall number, but in 2012 there were 260,000 responses just for domestic violence! Think how easy those can go bad. 2 trigger happy clowns overreacting doesn’t make a rule.
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12gauge and 40mm taser shot. Those have better effective ranges. Taser in the shell sort of thing.
I found some research being done on a directed energy weapon using vortexes (those are fun stuff). They were able to knock down man sized targets at a good range, but up close it would rupture organs. Thats entirely a matter of adjustment on the fly, but they didn’t get that part worked out.
Sonic weapons are another option. Its been awhile since I’ve looked. Ultrasonics are dangerous however, and hard to direct. They cause some serious brain trauma with any kind of exposure. Kinda a nightmare.
Stupid glue and net guns. I think these are nonstarters. I hope I’m proven wrong.
Finally a taser works by the frequency of the wave they direct into the nervous system… inducing a charge in a persons nervous system is also possible without touching them with any kind of conductor, but instead exposing them to a field of sufficient strength. Those fields are a bit easier to direct than a sonic weapon. So you get EM and particle weapons.
Yeah its sci fi… but so are pocket computers attached to global networks. But consumers drive that market, so there is plenty of money for that stuff. The ultimate consumers of bullets generally don’t have that kind of purchasing power.
Come to think of it… a gun could similarly function using a bean bag or other projectile and adjusting the propellant (via ventng?) to match the range of the target. Less than lethal rounds aren’t so hot because they only work at certain ranges. Hmm.
So yes… Taser does a good job, and personally I’m glad they exist, but they fire once, and up to 15 or 30 feet. Good but with flaws that necessitate a sidearm for law enforcement. However… if sufficient motivation existed, I’m sure we could find a way to incapacitate people without killing them, at range. I’m also sure we will, but not fast enough.
Oh and there’s a US military page on less than lethal weapons systems. They are mostly focused on crowd control. Unpleasant lights, sounds, sensations… not incapacitation.
But the police union and the D.A.'s office approving of and defending the 2 trigger happy clowns does.
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It’s the “thin blue line”. Too many back up their brothers even when it’s obvious they screwed up or acted with malice.
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Yes, 100 X. Many years ago, I got wrongfully charged with a felony - that thing you fear.
Despite being a false charge, the aftermath harmed my family - legal expenses, having my young child snagged on the street by police, not being safe in my own home, hours spent in endless questioning at the station because they would haul me in any time I went for groceries or whatever, etc. It was a program of pure harassment.
Ultimately, I discovered that the cop who started it all was already known to be dirty - he was scamming various grant programs in the city and county and finally got caught. The charge he had brought against me was eventually dropped and never went to trial - meaning I have an unresolved charge on my record for absolutely no good reason at all. I was nothing more than a convenient way for a bad cop to distract attention from his own criminal behavior. Oh - and I had publicly and successfully opposed the mayor’s support for a group that wanted to take my entire historic neighborhood under eminent domain and build a bunch of restaurants and a stadium. Can’t prove it…but that might’ve had a lot to do with my being targeted.
I haven’t lived there in many years now. With any luck, that bad cop has since died of unnatural causes. The damage to my family? Still there. My housemate, also charged - took a plea and spent time in jail for a crime he also did not do - his mistake was being associated with me while I was loosely connected to a person who actually did a crime. They didn’t even know one another when the crime was committed. And yet, I did no crime whatsoever in the first place. (The person who did the crime was a subordinate on my job, and was not even one of my hires. He took a plea, did some time, and went on his merry way.) Nobody died, but everyone was harmed.
(LOVE the calendar trick, btw.)
Oh! Did you say sue them? Sure. Middle-class, working, single parents? Where do you figure they get that kind of cash - especially after defending a false charge? Instead, I sold my home and moved away from that piece of crap town.
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