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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The problem goes beyond the number of police officers or unnecessary use of force. The incident illustrates a pattern of police deliberately escalating encounters with minorities in ways that they would not do with white suspects.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Yes. People can and do bite if not properly restrained, and human bites are nasty, nasty things. A dozen+ stitches and potentially-deadly infections (to say nothing of the risk of chronic illness via blood-borne disease, etc) kind of nasty.
This particular incident doesn't illustrate anything of the kind, because we don't know any of the details of how things got escalated. It's entirely possible that the guy did something that entirely justified the police physically subduing him. We don't know; nothing was said about it. It's also entirely possible that he did nothing wrong and the decision to restrain him was the wrong one. In that case, the problem isn't using five officers to restrain him, it's restraining him at all.
Either way, that doesn't change the fact that there is a substantial systemic problem. But it also means that this particular incident isn't necessarily part of that pattern.
edited 19th Aug '15 1:38:19 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.@Jovian
Talking from a purely pragmatic perspective, it was 14 officers for a single handicapped man. 5, you could argue, would be able to have one for each limb (including prosthetic) and another as "safety". What the hell are the 9 additional cops going to do?
Setting moral sensibility aside, it's like a weird setup for the joke of "One guy does the work, the other 3 stand around chatting".
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"![]()
Racial politics aside, do you imagine that there was nothing more useful for the nine extra officers to be doing at the time? Like preventing or investigating actual crimes?
,![]()
Like I said, you could argue that 14 guys is excessive and I'd probably agree. From the video, it looks like the rest were on crowd control duty, which is a legitimate thing that also constitutes good policing. (You can't focus on the person you're restraining and the crowd surrounding you at the same time.) Whether 14 is actually necessary I don't know and won't argue. Of course, I didn't actually see that many officers (I think the max I saw at once was seven?) but I skimmed the second half of the video, so who knows.
In any case, there's a huge difference between "suboptimal use of police resources" and "police brutality".
edited 19th Aug '15 1:46:45 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.![]()
Continuing with the pragmatic angle, an estimated 4 hours is spent booking and processing arrested suspects during a patrol officer's beat. That's 4 hours lost where a potentially more severe crime or emergency cannot be addressed properly. I bring this up because arrests resulting relatively minor infractions (and non-existent ones) like the one Sandra Bland faced are, morality set aside, a complete waste of time. Most reputable law enforcement veterans admonished the officer for not just giving her a citation and letting her be. Apparently his ego got in the way and that became too difficult.
I'm not specifically speaking in the context of the homeless man. I'm just making a general observation.
edited 19th Aug '15 1:46:04 PM by Aprilla
I'm not 100% sure this is the perfect thread to post this article: I Can Tolerate Everything Except The Outgroup
. But this might be the most interesting article that I've ever read, and it is extremely relevant to this discussion in particular, and to the way this forum works in general.
It's not hard to understand. Laymen are fed up with politics in Washington: the obstructionism, the failure to accomplish anything meaningful. Many of them are party-agnostic, especially as the media continues to portray the situation as one equally contributed to by both sides rather than a Republican-led effort. Many of them buy into the "control our debt" rhetoric, and were disappointed to see the Congressmen they elected "sell out" on accomplishing that goal, never mind that our deficit is way below what it was in 2008. That hasn't made the news.
They think that "furriners" are to blame for many of our problems: lost jobs domestically and overseas, crime, and whatnot. They want someone to take back America for Americans who won't take shit from anybody. Trump is certainly selling himself as that man.
If he wins the nomination, Hillary (or Bernie) will have to work extra hard to prevent herself from being seen as Yet Another Boring Politician who doesn't get the people.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm gonna hope this guy was just trolling the interviewer.
Now this guy on the other hand is definitely a troll. The Joker comparison just killed any believability.
edited 19th Aug '15 2:20:41 PM by AngelicBraeburn
The artist formally known as Deviant BraeburnNot entirely. It's a very popular sentiment, especially among younger people who don't have any real appreciation for how disastrous "letting everything burn" would be.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In other news:
Citigroup to pay $15 million to settle SEC charges over compliance failures.
edited 19th Aug '15 2:32:21 PM by AngelicBraeburn
The artist formally known as Deviant BraeburnNo, I've heard that same bit before. Joker and everything.
That's how disinterested and uneducated people are in the way of politics.
You'll usually find that people who say these things are upper class white children who never suffered a moment of hardship in their life.
edited 19th Aug '15 2:20:30 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?Maybe that's their problem: they want hardship, challenge, to be tested and hurt. Isn't that why BASIC training is so fetishized?
They also feel impotent to shape the world in their own image, rather than that of their overprotective, condescending guardians, and so they wish for the opportunity that they think chaos will provide. That notion is not entirely without its merit... if you're willing to handle the potential risk as opposed to the status quo.
Also, no comment on the article I linked earlier?
edited 19th Aug '15 2:33:29 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I used to want stuff like that to happen to the country, I felt the era I was raised in, which at the time I was told was one of prosperity and America being the greatest country on Earth was, "boring." I wanted life or death, liberty or tyranny, struggles that I had heard about in the history books. Though some of that foolishness may yet linger subconsciously, you know when I stopped believing that bull shit? WHEN I WAS 8!! I would say these people are stupid, but that would be an insult to stupid people.
Indeed, but I was born in 98. Yeah I know a lot of shit went down in that era, but my parents mostly shielded me from it, especially any indication that the Iraq war was not a spectacular American victory. In some stupid way I blamed myself for what happened to the country, be careful what you wish for and all that.
Edit: Like I said, small child.
edited 19th Aug '15 2:48:46 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.![]()
![]()
So fucking true![]()
Edit: Honestly these kids do seem a bit like Comic villains or something of the like. While some of us are actually trying to research the issues and cast our vote for whomever is best for the country, these stupid fucks are talking about "burning it all down." I know it's a stupid analogy, but regardless, we can all agree that these little misanthropes are fucking stupid.
edited 19th Aug '15 3:04:26 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.It would be nice if "there is an oppressive, unjust, hypocritical, seemingly unmovable system in place, youth appear that, by their merit and action or by sheer accident, trigger a chaotic upheaval of the system, are challenged by these circumstances to perform heroic feats, rise to meet these challenges exceeding all expectations, and ultimately triumph and replace the old order with truth, justice, freedom, and the hope for positive change" wasn't the plot of practically every damned story we serve them in all media.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.They eat it up, and we serve it to them.
I suppose such stories are still better than perverse romant—oh, wait, actually Twilight does that as well. Sigh.
edited 19th Aug '15 3:07:20 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

@Native Jovian: He had a prosthetic leg and was in crutches. What could he have possibly done, gnaw your arm off?
edited 19th Aug '15 1:28:52 PM by kkhohoho