Video of 5 San Francisco police officers shooting a Black man dead goes viral

[anon68952647]

@awjt

But they do, and think it’s right.

[anon68952647]

@deedub

but it’s not the most likely explanation.

Ergo PCP? Since there are only two options, you win the argument. /s

[webiii1976]

Nevermind. Apprently I suck at html tonight…

[adonai]

I actually asked about this in primary school when a policewoman visited our class. She said that it was too hard to shoot an arm or leg so they were trained to shoot for the torso.

I suppose the difference is that unlike American cops, ours aren’t trigger happy psychopaths with fragile egos underpinning their power trips.

[LDoBe]

Also, your police force isn’t given a 98% discount on inappropriate military surplus weapons and vehicles either, I’d bet.

[adonai]

True, they may still even be using six-shooting revolvers (there was talk a while ago about upgrading them to automatic pistols, don’t remember if that eventuated - police were wanting to keep the old/get the new because one is more reliable [@Mister44 could probably tell me which is more likely there])

[LDoBe]

As far as I know, revolvers are considered more reliable than semi-auto or automatic pistols, because they don’t have round feeding and case ejection mechanisms that can jam or stovepipe.

But honestly I only really know that from the original 1997 Ghost in the Shell, where the main character chides one of her co-workers for carrying a Mateba Model 6 auto-revolver, instead of the standard issue semi-auto magazine fed pistols. The guy carrying the Mateba claims that it’ll never jam, while the semi-auto pistols do jam occasionally. In the context of the movie, the Mateba is about 60 years old, and everyone else’s modern sidearms are essentially brand new.

In anycase, the weaponry that seems to be causing the most trouble are the less-lethal stuff that cops have been horribly misusing as compliance tools, rather than the last resort self-defense weapons they were originally meant to be.

[enso]

So you and your friends buy a lot of PCP and chat with the first lie who sell it about the volume they’re moving?

I reject your tired “He must have been on PCP!” dismissals of someone as an excuse for them getting shot by a group of cops.

[smulder]

@LDoBe

weaponry that seems to be causing the most trouble are the less-lethal stuff

Tasers occupy this netherworld where they’re only supposed to be used as a last resort, but really cops will tase anyone who annoys them. But the thing is, their training assumes that if they’re tasing somebody it’s a last resort situation, so if they try to tase you for some other reason and it doesn’t work, they tend to get confused and shoot you.

And sometimes they skip the tasing altogether and go directly to the confused execution.

[anon85905360]

Ed Obayashi, an attorney and Inyo County sheriff’s deputy who is an instructor at the Alameda County Regional Training Center on use-of-force investigations, said from what he saw in the video and knew of the circumstances leading up to the shooting, he believed the officers were following their training.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said he does not think the video shows enough for the public to make a fair judgment on how the officers reacted.

i.e., Everything in order people, these stormtroopers were doing exactly what we taught them to.

So one of them shot because he is either a racist murderer, or a sociopath, or simply not up to the job, and once that happened the others shot to cover their buddy. Classic move to obstruct justice. And they really don’t get why people hate police, and some shoot at them? Really?

placed on adminstrative assignment

What needs to happen to put these fuckers on trial for conspiracy and murder instead of a little dent in their career?

[Mister44]

Er what are we talking about? UK cops? The pics I have seen most of them are using modern semi autos for the ones that carry them. Then again most of my experience is from UK TV shows, so that may not reflect reality.

Revolvers are generally more reliable, especially compared to the early semi-autos, but since like the 90s, especially with the Glock catching on. And with more criminals using larger capacity handguns, the cops in the US at least all upgraded.

I bet in the UK most of the larger city cops that carry have modern semi autos, but you can probably find someone who has a revolver still. The .38 Webley was hugely popular.

[popobawa4u]

@Mister44

You all are still missing the point. Getting shot is significantly more lethal than a taser or bean bag round or other measures. When someone dies from a taser it is usually due to health issues of the suspect or possibly abuse from the officer.

It seems quite odd to me, but according to Connecticut law, tasers and stun-guns are classified as deadly weapons, while firearms are not. I’d love to know how they rationalized this.

[Gort]

On a related note, this has just come in from the UK, where a knife wielding man who stabbed a few people in a London tube station, was restrained by the police using a taser. Thought I’d add this to this discussion, seeing that there are a few comments about how the British police handle such incidents. Link below:

Knifeman screams ‘this is for Syria’ in London tube machete attack.

[adonai]

Australian, actually. A quick wiki search indicates that they upgraded to the M&P40 about 5 years ago. No idea about how reliable that is, but presumably after the 3 or 4 years they took to argue it out, they hopefully picked one which isn’t a lemon.

After a number of fatal shootings [around 20 years ago,] (http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi089.pdf) they had extensive firearm and cultural retraining. Police shootings now make the news here because they’re so rare, not because they’re so blatant.

[anon3894935]

Until every cop involved in this shooting (and the many, many other unjustified police murders) is behind bars, I’d say they’re still getting away with it. More people know about it now, but that doesn’t stop it from happening or result in any actual punishment for the cops when it does.

[anon55609254]

@popobawa4u

Once again, the public lets somebody be murdered, and then complains about it on the internet. Good thing you didn’t need to intervene, somebody could have been hurt!

Hello? (Pounds on poster’s head) Hello?

Edit: I couldn’t believe this post. Intervene while 5 cops are busy shooting a guy? That’s a good way to commit suicide. And never vote or complain on the internet again.

Used to be people wrote letters and voted, and (slowly) got change that way. Protested. Walking around holding signs and stuff. Other democracy-related stuff. Nowadays letter have been largely replaced by email, twitter, etc. E-petitions. I suspect that some politicians are reading the internet too, and are maybe starting to say “WTF? Why are we getting so much bad press? Geese, did you see that video? Fuck, maybe we outta do something before we get voted outta office.” And I suspect that some change is happening faster nowadays. I could be wrong.

But telling some bad cop to lower his gun sure ain’t gonna do it.

[hello_friends]

That’s wonderful. Does public investment in UK community mental health services (for outreach, law enforcement diversion and support services) and the national health service (for med and residential treatment) also reduce the risk of future decompensation by those perpetrators impaired by mental health injuries? Seems like it would.