The Law Enforcement Officer Thread

From memory I think it fell into the basement of one of the buildings it was ripping up and a brave cop Took the opportunity to sneak up in and shoved a potato in the exhaust pipe. With the engine down the driver anticlimactically top himself.

I love how even the mightiest of vehicles can be taken down with a vegetable in the exhaust.

What happened is the radiator had gotten damage during his rampage and while he dozing someones home he dropped a track into someones basement. The Engine overheated and shortly after he offed himself.

They managed to get a flash bang down the exhaust but it didn't do anything.

This is tragic, but darkly humorous:

Siri, how do you hide a body?

News crew reporting on crime gets their van robbed

Is that hilarious or sad?

Both.

NYPD urged to step up body-worn camera pilot after chokehold death

Absolutely frightening. And what's truly scary is I don't see this changing anytime soon.

edited 13th Aug '14 7:03:58 PM by speedyboris

Seconded.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/08/police_in_ferguson_military_weapons_threaten_protesters.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/ferguson-police-face-civil-rights-protest-dressed-for-military-combat/375962/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/13/the-true-stereotypes-behind-michael-brown-s-death.html

https://medium.com/@mcbyrne/failing-in-ferguson-how-the-police-are-doing-everything-wrong-and-why-its-dangerous-for-everyone-82e21325f622

edited 13th Aug '14 10:58:45 PM by PhilippeO

Due to a rash of incident in Makati where crooks ride in tandem via motorbike to attack/rob people, there's a pilot (based from Colombian experience) for 6 months where the Philippine National Police can stop two males riding unless they show ID to prove that they are family. They have taken to consideration that the crooks may try to hide by using wigs.

Reports don't take to consideration female crooks riding on motorbikes or young kids forced to ride with them.

edited 14th Aug '14 4:13:59 PM by Ominae

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/us/ferguson-dashcams/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

So they can`t afford to install Dashcams, yet mine resistant vehicles are readily available from military surplus? Methinks there might be an issue with budgetary priorities.

Now to be fair. I heard that the military are literally giving those surplus MRAPs out for free.

edited 14th Aug '14 5:38:53 PM by LeGarcon

Yeah, local departments only have to pay for shipping and upkeep apparently.

As my father put it, the only thing that has changed is new toys make it easier to kill.

The tools the cops are using aren't the problems. I know what a billy club can do to a person. Rodney King wasn't shot.

The same cops who are willing to use shit trigger discipline, hold bigoted views, and use their badge as a foundation to swing their dick off of are going to be that way regardless of what they have at their disposal. We have had pepper spray in some form since the 1930s. You can pepper spray someone to death. In the south in just the 40s and 50s some bad cops carried tow ropes in the back of their cars so they could lynch someone. I've been trained in the same holds as cops have, you don't just accidentally do the wrong thing. You can't accidentally chokehold someone.

Let's blame the men, not the machines.

Now if you want to talk about budget misapplication, I'm all for that too. But I am very, VERY against just saying "It's the militarization of police"! NO! It's the fact cops are paid shit wages, often aren't trained properly, and aren't screened enough.

This isn't much different then the military. For every one good person who just wants to make an honest living helping people, wants to serve, or likes the community, you're also going to find the one douchebag who wants an excuse to exercise power and control over people. You have the people who join the military because they want to kill someone.

Police isn't much different. It's just not as screened as well as the military. There's not as many ways to get around people and get action in the military. And likewise with the military, not every cop who turns out to be a bigot capable of danger starts like that. They can grow into that position from just being stupid and jaded after so many years on the force.

I put all the responsibility on the men and women who are abusing their badges. Not what they have in their belt.

Maybe on an individual level but there is still the higher levels of authority which handle budgets and gear decisions. If you have MRAP, tactical gear etc you have to justify its existence on the budget. The easiest way to do that is to use it. But like you said that doesn't cover the brutality and bad attitude.

From Gawker: People Are Getting Along in Ferguson Now That the Local Cops Are Gone. Sounds like the Governor has had the Missouri State Highway Patrol relieve the Ferguson PD of their duties and things are calming down.

I think cops could stand to do some serious rebranding. If you want to keep the MRAP, paint it the same color as your police cars, not tacticool black. If you aren't routinely fired upon with rifles or deal with explosives though, I'd say the MRAP might be beyond the scope of what you actually need. Have any of these police MRA Ps ended up sinking into pavement yet? I saw a tour bus do it in Arlington, TX once.

Jalopnik's Patrick George on how US police departments came to be this militarized. So, there is only going to be more ex-military kit for police departments with the winding-down of the Afghan conflict. Would this kit be better off used by the National Guard instead?

Gawker post claiming that the US military is a lot more competent at crowd control than the Ferguson police was.

I'm sure the National Guard have more than enough ex-Afghan kit already...

I thought that Gawker post was very impressive indeed. Especially this bit:

Saw some comments regarding the shooting. Very sad ones that some comments suggested that the minority communities and their backers are hyping it up just to let the world know that they're playing victim.

Those guys need to get locked up with the keys thrown away.

edited 15th Aug '14 6:23:25 AM by Ominae

There's the thing, even the dumbest soldier has had more hands on, supervised training than the average cop.

I've been through the police academy and it's not boot camp. It's not bad, but we're not supposed to be soldiers. More attention is put on social skills, recognizing problem signs, body language, how to use diffusing speech.

Police are supposed to be defensive first. Soldiers are supposed to be offensive first. Totally different mindsets.

I don't mind SWAT teams having better gear. I remember when the gang violence was really bad here in Little Rock. We had bangers with converted full autos while the average beat cop still carried a revolver in some parts. SWAT needed better gear and the average patrolman needed just a pistol upgrade and a better capacity sidearm.

What I did appreciate of Little Rock is they had severe oversight. They had federal trainers brought in because the gear was bought in part with federal grants (their weapons at least. Body armor was bought privately with fundraising.)

I can't find anything definitive online, but from what I can infer, there isn't the same conditional training and extra "If you want this you have to study".

I don't mind little police stations having what some would call excessive gear. There are several small town cities here in Arkansas that send their officers to LR or the State Police for heavy training and bomb squad training because they may have to deal with meth labs. We have a lot of creepy people out here and I'm sure every state has "that population" that just is a very flexible criminal.

We need better training, better screening, and more safeties for cops to crack down on bad cops without reprisal. They will turn on each other if their supervisors will have their backs.

But for this to happen, people will have to be willing to invest money, and until they want to pay for all of this, it's not going to happen.

Looks like the Ferguson PD is going to officially reveal the name of the officer involved.

edited 15th Aug '14 7:03:28 AM by Ominae

50 of the worst charities in America

An insane number of these charities are law enforcement, firefighters, or military. I found this very pressing because this is another problem with how we have set up our system to keep the wrong people in charge.