OK, this is interesting: From some tabloid, we have the following quote:
The unidentified witness wrote that the 18-year-old Brown “has his arms out with attitude,” while “The cop just stood there.” The witness added, “Dang if that kid didn’t start running right at the cop like a football player. Head down.”
This is exactly how I reconstructed the event in This picture tells a shooting story. I said: the reason I’m sure Brown was moving is the extreme torso angle suggested by the lack of exit wounds on the back. A human trying to do that standing still would overbalance and fall, which is why I think he was running or lunging when he took the bullets.
The witness said “arms out with attitude”. I said “with his right arm stretched forward […] probably while Brown was grabbing for Wilson or the pistol with his right hand.”
So much for “Hands up – don’t shoot.” It’s as I thought: Brown autodarwinated, bull-rushing an armed policeman he had already injured once.
UPDATE: I failed to make clear before that this account was part of the evidence dump from the grand jury proceedings, not just some random the tabloid turned up.
Hrm. You make this sound like nothing more than an unnamed witness cited by thesmokinggun.com. Based on my current defaults, this is practically nil affirmation relative to the forensic analysis you wrote on the basis of the published description of wounds. More accurately, this was an unnamed witness who was also presented as evidence to the grand jury, implying a fair bit more provenance.
That said, I’m not sure how reliable I’d find even eyewitness testimony in a court, unless it was several witnesses each independently affirming some critical detail of an incident. Again, the wound forensics tell a more compelling tale to me.
>Hrm. You make this sound like nothing more than an unnamed witness cited by thesmokinggun.com.
My error. It was part of the evidence dump from the grand jury proceedings.
There’s been one website that I know of that has been doing remarkable work analyzing this event, using only publicly available photos and news reports. Check out this post. It’s speculation, but very interesting that anti-police activist Anthony Shahid showed up at the scene very quickly and talked to a bunch of witnesses just before the whole “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative appeared….
Recent events have firmly entrenched in me a conviction that our current civilization is beyond saving (or, perhaps, even wanting to save.)
What happened here wasn’t an acquittal. It wasn’t a failure to convict. It was a failure to *indict*. Indictment is a very low bar for the prosecution to clear. A grand jury refusing to indict is a clear-as-day announcement that the prosecution has functionally no evidence.
And great numbers of people are going all out religious zealot, mouth frothing *crazy* about it, because a white cop had the audacity to defend his life against a black thug. And though the agitators at the tip-top know it very well, the people carrying out this holy war have no inkling that *they* are the primary reason there are still race-relations problems in America.
Can read it on the court transcripts, starting around page 107: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370504-grand-jury-volume-15.html
Sorry the ‘football’ statement starts on page 91:
“He wasn’t saying anything at that time that I heard. And then the officer had his gun, was drawn and pointed at him, and that’s when Brown started to charge, you know, kind of like a football, like this, with his hands out.
MS. And your hands are clenched.
Right, his hands were clenched at this time. He was bent, but not much. It was kind of like a football charge not, you know, and then that’s when the gunshots started.”
really, really didn’t want an indictment.
For a long time I thought that the racial grievance industry was just running out of good martyrs to promote, and making mistakes by choosing the wrong ones, but now I wonder: maybe the celebration of violent criminals like Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown is intentional. After all, if your goal is not simply “justice” but to intimidate whites (and Hispanics and Asians), then it makes perfect sense to promote and defend violent criminals, and to object to anything bad that happens to them.
Also probably same witness here, starting page 111:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370507-grand-jury-volume-18.html
“The cop was wobbling, the big kid turned around and had his arms out with an attitude and the cop just stood if that kid didn’t start running right there. Dang, at the cop like a football player, head down. I heard three bangs, but the big kid wouldn’t stop. I heard the cop say something, but not sure what or if it was just that, he was just making noise.”
Hanlon’s Razor is enemy propaganda. At a certain scale, effect signals intent.
> the people carrying out this holy war have no inkling that *they* are the primary reason there are still race-relations problems in America.
I think they know exactly what they are doing, if by “they” you mean the so-called black “leaders”, who are all cultural Marxists, including the President and the Attorney General, who have done everything they can to rouse the rabble while maintaining what passes in the supine press for plausible deniability. “They” are trying to Cloward-Piven their way to a socialist take-over of the country, and have been doing so for the better part of a century. Why do we know about this? They told us. Sure, they didn’t put it in those terms, but this is their clearly stated intent. What else could “fundamental transformation” mean?
If, however, by “they” you are referring to the average protestor in the street (and not the thugs who were bussed in by the manipulators described above, or the free-agent anarchists who simply showed up for an opportunity to break some skulls and burn some buildings), then, no, they don’t know that they are the real problem here. But since their position is that the country is hopelessly racist, they are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Meanwhile, how many hundreds of young black men were killed by black cops, or non-black men or women were killed by any cops this year? Those don’t matter, because they aren’t Alexrodian crises to make into opportunities.
In America today, whether it’s street crime by young thugs or decisions made in the board rooms of high-tech companies, everything is politicized, and unfortunately, that means you have to take a stand on every issue or you’ll be overwhelmed by those who do.
I had to explain to a co-worker today why I use Pale Moon instead of Firefox, and he replied that it’s similar to reason he doesn’t patronize Chick-Fil-A.
In a society where what kind of fried chicken you eat or what you use to browse the Internet makes a political statement (intentional or not), how can we possibly ever expect to find any kind of unity? In a society where there are riots over open-and-shut grand jury investigations, how can law and order prevail in the long run? In a society where the voting system is being increasingly corrupted by widespread adoption of untrustable voting mechanisms (the number of stories about “uncalibrated” touch screens this election was farcical), how can we conclude there is anything but a widespread an systematic attempt to subvert the laws and the very order of our society.
Oops. This didn’t start out to be a rant. I’m very pleased to see that Eric’s thoughtful and detailed analysis has proven to be correct. Not that it does much good for the victims of today’s violence.
On CNN this morning they interviewed one lady who claimed he had his hands up peacefully, and that she didn’t believe he was moving at the cop, but even if he was, no – one should shoot an unarmed man.
The level of ignorance in the interviewer was apalling. Leave aside whether or not he’d had a chance to read conflicting witness testimony that indicated aggression, enough other facts were out there….
1) That he was hardly the “gentle giant” given the minutes-before strong-arm robbery.
2) The autopsy report contradicting the first set of stories about being shot in the back, and NOT consistent with “hands up”
3) No understanding of weight classes in boxing and wresting and why they exist, or the Tueller drill.
Hell, if he’d only asked her how she could square her testimony with with the autopsy report…..
Who says the interviewer was ignorant? Most of the reporting hasn’t quite been lies, it’s been Bullshit.
The grand jury, in this case, was presented with all of the evidence, not just a carefully selected subset. The prosecutor could easily have obtained an indictment if he wanted to; after all, there’s a lot of truth in the old saw that a prosecutor can get a ham sandwich indicted if he wants to (see, for example, Rick Perry). Instead, he chose to present every last scrap of evidence he could find, precisely so the decision of whether to subject Officer Wilson to everything that would go along with a trial would not be his alone. That’s in the interests of justice – the real kind, not the racist substitute Al Sharpton and his ilk are demanding.
It’s probably safe to say that any halfway-competent defense attorney could have shredded the state’s case. Would it have been any better to give the mob the indictment it demands only to have the resulting acquittal trigger the same reactions?
>And great numbers of people are going all out religious zealot, mouth frothing *crazy* about it, because a white cop had the audacity to defend his life against a black thug. And though the agitators at the tip-top know it very well, the people carrying out this holy war have no inkling that *they* are the primary reason there are still race-relations problems in America.
And they will keep doing it, until the people at the tip-top stop rabble-rousing, or there is a backlash the likes of which will leave scars for centuries.
And the people at the tip-top will not let up. Which makes perfect sense when you understand how a community organizer works- he finds a group, convinces them that they have been victimized until they are very angry, then stage manages that anger to Mau Mau TPTB into giving things to the ‘victims’ (and to the community organizer, of course). With that approach to governance, the people at the tip-top, who all have ‘community organizer’ on their resume, *can’t* stop.
This is all similar to things you’ve already mentioned on your site so I don’t imagine you’d learn anything new, but you might consider promoting this as a useful resource: Larry Correia on the Legalities of Shooting People.
> That’s in the interests of justice – the real kind
Is it? Was it really in the interests of justice to give Wilson a different process than the usual one? Even if the usual process is a corrupt and abusive one?
Serious question. I can see the argument that rescuing anyone from an unjust process is a victory for justice. I can also see the argument that allowing exemptions from an unjust process only serves to compound the injustice.
Below is a song about it all:
(Requiem for the street of West Florissant in Ferguson Missouri.)
If the business owners return (I doubt they will) their insurance premiums will be sky high.
The protestors burnt down a good number of buildings, and cars.
What will happen is the protestors will then have to shop in neighboring towns, it will be determined that the neighboring towns are no longer good communities, and the residents will slowly leave, housing prices will decrease, new residents will move in.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
What would you have done differently if you were in control that night? The police commissioner told the news he said to “go easy on them” (can be heard in the video below). Thus burnings. If the shop owners stayed in their shops and shot the looters and arsonists they would have been put away forever.
http://youtu.be/MKWeF5dEI0g
Suppose that, instead of a cop, it had been Joe Blow random citizen who shot Brown under the same circumstances. Do you think the grand jury would have decided not to indict? I am doubtful.
Another good shoot. Well done, Officer Wilson.
Scumbag got what he deserved.
The primary significance of the Michael Brown incident is that it is a symptom of a much larger systemic pathology within our culture. A large cohort of our population is no longer capable of exercising independent rational thought and instead is being driven by memetic cues into destructive herd hysteria. This is an anti-evolutionary social disease in our species.
TomA – Fuck you and your bullshit.
Stupid nigga gets what stupid nigga deserves.
burnitalldownDept asks:
> What would you have done differently if you were in control that night?
I would have made it *VERY* *VERY* clear that at the FIRST sign of trouble I was going to turn the water cannons up and make it rain.
That the constitution grants one the rights to *peaceably* assemble, and since the protestors were so fond of collective guilt–Wilson was a racist/white supremist JUST because he was white–that anyone in their crowd stepping out of line would mean they were *all* guilty, and, well, it’s a little too cold out here to get soaking wet, isn’t it.
Stay peaceful, have a chant or six and go home, no worries. Get violent, get wet.
To be clear, I’m talking about shooting the water up in the air so it rains down, not using the hoses to physically push them off the streets.
Did using fire hoses to disperse crowds go out of fashion because they were misused in the early ’60s against peaceful civil rights demonstrators?
Perhaps they should have used liquid manure trucks…they can hose an area down in the blink of an eye.
Never see them looting bookstores or libraries.
Interesting site on Chicago crime stats, including the “shot in the ass-o-meter” and the “shot-in-the-junk-o-meter”. The commentary tab is also worth a look for the Honor Student of the Week write ups.
http://heyjackass.com/
PapayaSF on 2014-11-25 at 21:25:39 said:
> Did using fire hoses to disperse crowds go out of fashion because they were
> misused in the early ’60s against peaceful civil rights demonstrators?
Dunno how “peaceful” those were, but yeah, probably.
Used for “direct water” they are damn near lethal force, you can seriously hurt someone that way.
Used to drop cold water on rioters, well, it cools the passions…
Indeed. It’s very, very rare for a prosecutor to not get an indictment — except in the case of police shootings.
This is yet another case of “rule of law for thee but not for me”, a salient characteristic of the American legal and justice system…
Alternative explanation: it was a good shoot, and the grand jury knew it.
Prosecutors don’t usually bring cases to a grand jury unless they are 1) pretty sure a crime occurred, or 2) they are trying to deflect political pressure. This looks like the second case. I think McCullough knew the case against Wilson was feeble at best, so rather than take the heat directly, he let the grand jury say it.
It should also be noted that not only is he a Democrat, he was one of Obama’s attack dogs in 2008, part of a self-proclaimed “truth squad” that threatened legal charges against anyone “telling lies” about Obama. This was slapped down pretty quickly, but I think it undermines the “racist prosecutor” narrative now forming.
@PapayaSF
For a long time I thought that the racial grievance industry was just running out of good martyrs to promote, and making mistakes by choosing the wrong ones, but now I wonder: maybe the celebration of violent criminals like Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown is intentional. After all, if your goal is not simply “justice” but to intimidate whites (and Hispanics and Asians), then it makes perfect sense to promote and defend violent criminals, and to object to anything bad that happens to them.
I have another hypothesis: when you convince someone that they are evil for disliking someone likable they will feel guilty for a moment and stop disliking them. When you convince someone that they are evil for disliking someone unlikable they will feel guilty for an eternity.
Sorry, Jeff, but PapayaSF’s post right after yours nails it. The DA wasn’t going to let this one go all by himself; the political fallout would have been even worse. This way, he gets a second opinion on just how weak the case really is to back him up.
I ask again: Would it really have been better to subject Officer Wilson to a trial that, given the evidence, he would have certainly been acquitted by just to attempt to satisfy the race-baiters and the howling mobs they incite? Not that it would have actually appeased them; that trick never works. But it would have delayed the final reckoning.
And today’s Day by Day cartoon is claiming that the New York Times has published Officer Wilson’s home address. Anyone wanna bet that a literal lynch mob won’t mass outside his house and burn down the neighborhood just for good measure?
>And today’s Day by Day cartoon is claiming that the New York Times has published Officer Wilson’s home address. Anyone wanna bet that a literal lynch mob won’t mass outside his house and burn down the neighborhood just for good measure?
Not ‘claimed’.
http://www.nytimes.com/news/ferguson/2014/11/24/quiet-wedding-for-darren-wilson-police-officer-in-ferguson-shooting/
They publish his street and town. It’s a short subdivision street, has something like 40-50 houses on its entire length.
And Slate, just to be sure, has published a picture of the actual house.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/24/darren_wilson_married_recently_wed_fellow_officer_barbara_spradling.html
@ Dan – “Fuck you and your bullshit.”
Stupidity is not an existential imperative. Michael Brown discovered that stupidity gets you dead. The protesters are being reinforced in their stupidity by a diseased culture. And your inability to think versus react is a manifestation of how insidious this problem is.
The question on grand jury indictments of police is, how many police shootings go to a grand jury when they “normally” wouldn’t even get that far?
For a ready example, let’s remember that in the Trayvon Martin shooting, the local prosecutor initially declined to even take Zimmerman to the grand jury, on the evaluation that the merits didn’t justify indictment. The only reason that case ever even went to a grand jury was political pressure that resulted in a special prosecutor being appointed. Under circumstances not motivated by politics, Zimmerman never goes before a grand jury.
But when a police officer is the shooter, it is always and automatically a political issue, because, well, an officer of the polis is the shooter. There is accordingly an incentive for the prosecutor to go to the grand jury even if the case does not actually merit going to a grand jury, to deflect criticism. Accordingly, a large number of failures to indict might not indicate that police are treated leniently by grand juries, but rather that politics drive too many police shooting cases to grand juries when they shouldn’t be pursued even that far.
Obviously, opinions will differ on which hypothesis is the more likely to be true—but citing the percentage of grand juries that don’t indict alone won’t tell you which is true. Hell, it doesn’t even tell you that only one is true. It might be that police are taken to grand juries in cases where they shouldn’t even be pursued that far at an excess rate and that police genuinely deserving of indictment are let off by grand juries at an excess rate.
(And now I double-check; Zimmerman wasn’t even brought before a grand jury; he was indicted directly by affidavit.)
“After all, if your goal is not simply “justice” but to intimidate whites (and Hispanics and Asians), then it makes perfect sense to promote and defend violent criminals, and to object to anything bad that happens to them.”
There’s two goals here, The above one appeals to the white, would-be radicals that go for the leftist bullshit. You should be aware that the reaction of the blacks is quite different. It’s the lower-class, non-intellectual attitude of, “One of THEM shot one of US. We have to get back at them.” Keep that in mind.
Yes, the raw ethnic tribalism is part of what I was trying to describe.
What I find truly remarkable about all of this is that, by the numbers, our justice system is actually really racially unbiased.
There’s good evidence that black people are stopped/searched more often by police, but the data is confounded all to hell because black people, proportionally, live in higher crime areas.
There is no good evidence that black people are arrested or convicted at a disproportionate rate.
There is mild evidence that black people are sentenced more harshly (10-20% longer sentences), if you believe the most damning studies.
But there’s actually a reverse bias when it comes to shootings. White police officers disproportionately shoot white suspects, black police officers disproportionately shoot black suspects, but overall, the data suggests that police officers are making a special effort not to shoot black suspects.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
Now, experience has taught me that statistics and actual data are only for people who know how to think rationally.
One of my friends, who I’ll call a “larval-stage engineer”, tried to mention this to some of his (liberal) friends.
I’d like to report new kafkatrap model:
“Statistics that disprove the claim of institutionalized $SIN were generated by the same system of institutionalized $SIN and are therefore invalid. Your failure to understand this shows that you are either naive or corrupt.”
It looks like the recent murder victim in Ferguson may have been one of the grand jury witnesses. “Snitches get stitches.”
…And your inability to think versus react is a manifestation of how insidious this problem is.
Nonsense. Your pathological psychobabble to discern pseudo-intellectual societal ills where they do not lie, is a big part of the problem. You are an apologist and an enabler. Your ilk just have to keep the blacks on your plantation.
“Nigga ‘Culture’ ” is a disease of sorts, true, and people like me *do* think about it – seriously – thoroughly identify the source of the rot…and have to also seriously consider the unflinching use of deadly force to end it when it bares its fangs at decent society.
But, by all means, continue gazing at your navel and mumbling about checking your privilege…or whatever sociological crap is in vogue today.
>“Nigga ‘Culture’ ”
Your use of the term “nigga” is a tactical error. Most people hearing it will interpret it as a regressive racial slur rather than (correctly) as a cultural description used by blacks of other blacks. I advise against it.
I appreciate your advice, and for the longest time I have held to it.
Now, the camel’s back is broken. I use it to intentionally rub their noses in the filth they have generated.
Dan, Michael Brown was killed by his stupidity, not his race. Last night in Denver, a group of Caucasian college kids blocked a highway in solidarity with Michael Brown’s stupidity and got maced in the face for their arrogance. You don’t have to be black and poor to be stupid. Anyone can qualify.
This is the fundamental problem. Our culture is inculcating and rewarding stupidity. And this problem will not disappear even if you succeed in ridding the world of “niggas.”
I would suggest that the cop-worshippers here read William Grigg’s analysis of the case:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2014/11/darren-wilson-and-reality-of-blue.html
>I would suggest that the cop-worshippers here
Um…you think we have cop-worshipers here? On this blog?
*blink*
I certainly don’t see any.
Dan, Michael Brown was killed by his stupidity, not his race.
Strawman. I never claimed otherwise. This has nothing to do with ‘race’, per se, but *culture*.
The stupidity he demonstrated is rooted in “nigga” ‘culture’.
The stupidity the white kids demonstrated is rooted in…well…stupid naive white college kids thinking they know shit about the problems of black society.
When the Ferguson funhouse began a few months ago I posted a link to your analysis on a libertarian IRC channel and got chewed out because apparently all cops are racist and are trained as such. No exceptions.
Makes the communists look like staunch individualists.
Sadly, even libertarians can fall into clichéd groupthink.
Grigg’s analysis could have been written by Al Sharpton or some other professional race-baiter. It shows a hatred of cops, through and through.
I’m probably the closest you’ll find around here to being a cop-worshipper. I do truly believe they are the thin blue line between civilization and savagery. Then again, I’m obviously biased; I worked with them day in and day out for 17 years as a street paramedic.
Yes, there are bad cops. I had a hand in getting a couple punished for mistreating prisoners. Still, they’re very much in the minority. The average cop is out there, risking his life daily, because he thinks he can make a difference in keeping the population safe.
Until the day comes that we achieve libertarian nirvana and people always act rationally and in everyone’s best interest, we’re going to need cops. We don’t need to make their jobs tougher by micromanaging them with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
I’m probably the closest you’ll find around here to being a cop-worshipper. I do truly believe they are the thin blue line between civilization and savagery.
Though I disagree with you vehemently on some matters I (more or less) agree with you here.
We will always have the sheepdogs, and if the “libertarian utopia” is ever achieved it will not be because sheepdogs are no longer needed: it will be because they aren’t being suppressed by every fool in a marble building.
Kevin S. Van Horn on 2014-11-26 at 20:30:29 said:
> I would suggest that the cop-worshippers here read William Grigg’s analysis of the case:
Griggs analysis is disproven by the Martin/Zimmerman case. Until the family retained a PR team the local police weren’t even going to bring it to a grand jury. The evidence and testimony clearly showed that Martin jumped Zimmerman and was beating the life out of him.
@Jay Maynard
“Yes, there are bad cops. I had a hand in getting a couple punished for mistreating prisoners. Still, they’re very much in the minority.”
That might be true, but this minority does a lot of damage:
You’re Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist
http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed-police-officer-terrorist
We have seen how much damage terrorists have done to US liberty and justice. We can now speculate about how much more damage this minority of “bad cops” are doing to US liberty and justice.
The problem runs much deeper, to get back to Ferguson, :
Ferguson and the Modern Debtor’s Prison
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/ferguson-and-the-debtors-prison.html
@Winter:
“You’re Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist”
– Yes. You realize that there are far, far more police officers in the US than terrorists, certainly far more than eight times the number? I should point out that many of these deaths are of insane people who leave the police no other option, including suicides that don’t want to go out quietly.
“Ferguson and the Modern Debtor’s Prison”
I read the article, but they don’t break down the actual offenses that led to those fines. I believe that if they had, they would have to admit that the great bulk of those are paid by the families of a very small percentage of the people. Teens in that sort of environment will decide that it’s real cool to join a gang, and start shoplifting and small-time robberies at the behest of local gang leaders who exploit them ruthlessly. Running drugs between the street and the dealers hidden safely inside an apartment building is another source of multiple arrests. The would-be gangster shows how cool he is by ignoring the resulting warrants, which leads to still more warrants….and finally a lot of fines and fees for various ‘programs’ as the courts desperately try to find a way to keep the wayward kid out of prison. Of course, the wayward kid’s family has to pay, and pay, and pay…It’s certainly not fair to them, but the municipality is not to blame.
@ Winter:
How many cop – civilian interactions are there, and how many terrorist incidents?
You are much safer when dealing with a cop (by probably 6 or more orders of magnitude or so) than when dealing with a terrorist.
That “eight times more likely to be killed” was obviously uttered by a complete idiot. I won’t soil my brain by even trying to look at that crap.
@Kurt B & LS
There are on average around 400 “justifiable” police killing each year in the USA (~350M people).
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-police-kill-each-year/
For comparison, the German police force (85M people) kills on average ~8 people each year (justifiable or not): In total 109 deaths by service weapons in Germany since 1998.
http://www.dw.de/why-german-police-officers-rarely-reach-for-their-guns/a-17884779
German police only fired 85 bulits in 2011 and killed 6.
http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-only-85-bullets-against-people-2011/52162/
Australian police killed 2 people in 2011, cops in England and Wales killed 2.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-us-police-kill-so-many-people-2014-8
@LS
“I read the article, but they don’t break down the actual offenses that led to those fines. I believe that if they had, they would have to admit that the great bulk of those are paid by the families of a very small percentage of the people.”
Maybe you should do some remedial math. Ferguson collected $2,635,400 in one year. Do you really want to insist that that was collected from only a small percentage of 8,192 households?
More here:
http://valuesandcapitalism.com/profit-policing-means-ferguson-basically-debtors-prison/
Actually, the total police force of Germany fired 85 bullies on people in 2011.
Maybe you do not want to see what is wrong?
Some editing mistakes in my comment (in moderation).
Without the links:
Basically US (350M) cops kill ~400 people per year justifiable (no one knows how few or many more).
German (85M people) cops kill ~8 per year in total (6 in 2011), Australian cops killed 2 in 2011, cops in England and Wales (combined) also 2.
Actually, the total police force of Germany fired 85 bullets on people in 2011.
Without links (moderation)
@LS
“I read the article, but they don’t break down the actual offenses that led to those fines. I believe that if they had, they would have to admit that the great bulk of those are paid by the families of a very small percentage of the people.”
Maybe you should do some remedial math. Ferguson collected $2,635,400 in one year. Do you really want to insist that that was collected from only a small percentage of 8,192 households?
You’re assuming that that was collected only from Ferguson residents. That’s effectively impossible.
@Jay Maynard
“You’re assuming that that was collected only from Ferguson residents. That’s effectively impossible.”
Now you are making assumptions. Then tell me, where do all these articles go wrong? Who did pony up the $2.6M?
Btw, most seems to be collected from traffic tickets. And it is not limited to Ferguson:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/cries-for-reform-in-traffic-courts-grow-louder-in-wake/article_0295f598-7421-515a-8c52-337a36b7cc71.html
“Maybe you should do some remedial math. Ferguson collected $2,635,400 in one year. Do you really want to insist that that was collected from only a small percentage of 8,192 households?”
@Winter: Well…let’s see…$2635400/8192 (nice to know Ferguson is a power-of-two town) is about $330 per capita. If Wayward Child shoplifts, his family will be on the hook for about $700, which means that another Ferguson resident will not be paying. Add in revenue from additional charges, visitors parking and traffic fines, etc., the debtors’ prison line does not hold water.
I much preferred it when “the total police force of Germany fired 85 bullies on people in 2011.” Served those bullies right.
@LS
“If Wayward Child shoplifts, his family will be on the hook for about $700, which means that another Ferguson resident will not be paying.”
Speculation. It was traffic fines mostly. And your reasoning comes down to half the households. Not exactly a small percentage. Come back when you have found real evidence instead of wild guesses countered by the links I gave.
Winter, if the entire black and Hispanic population of the US were moved to Germany, I guarantee you that their police would be firing more bullets, and ours firing fewer. (I’ve read that if you look at statistics for crimes by just whites in the US, we have a lower violent crime rate than the UK.)
But I’ll admit there are other differences. We are still, to some extent, the West West. We were settled by people aggressive enough to move to another continent. Then, in Europe, they had two world wars that killed off a lot of their more aggressive people (and lots of others). So it doesn’t surprise me that the US has a higher rate of violence.
Winter: What makes you think Ferguson only collects traffic fines from Ferguson residents? Look at a map. Ferguson’s connected to the rest of the road network in St. Louis, and more than just Ferguson residents drive there.
Winter, you need to think more.
This is Ferguson:
http://tiny.cc/5yyzpx
Notice “Route N”, Florissant Ave, and also notice that Ferguson extends *just a bit* over Interstate 270 to the north.
I’d bet you my next paycheck that the majority of that 2.6 million in fines comes from those three roads. That’s how those towns work.
See this “town”: http://tiny.cc/a8yzpx
Yes, 12 square blocks. http://www.9news.com/story/news/investigations/2014/05/20/9wtk-tiny-metro-town-addicted-to-tickets/9312621/
Almost none of that is local residents.
Oh, I should mention that both my mothers family and my fathers family are from Saint Louis, I have family that lived and owned property in Ferguson (although I think that was years ago, I don’t know if that’s still true) and I myself lived in St. Louis for a year.
I am mostly not going to engage with this one because rationally there’s little chance Eric will change his mind, but I’m going to point out one thing:
There are a lot of witnesses giving a lot of contradictory testimony. Eric, I sincerely think it would do you a lot of good to meditate on why you chose this witness account to accept. You could certainly find others that disagree. I’ve found witness accounts that disagree with my assumptions.
The NPR infographic is really good. If you (the general you, not Eric) react to “NPR” by assuming it’s biased, I’d suggest looking at that page anyhow. It reminded me of the important lesson: witnesses are often wrong.
>Eric, I sincerely think it would do you a lot of good to meditate on why you chose this witness account to accept.
I didn’t choose to accept any witness account at all. I formed an early suspicion about which faction was telling the truth from the fact that Brown had just been caught on video robbing a convenience store; later, I based my conclusions on the forensic evidence from the autopsy.
Considering the bullet forensics was enough to tell me that the “hands up” witnesses were lying or deluded. But I didn’t start with that position; given the amount of jackassery and incompetence that the Ferguson police displayed afterwards, it wouldn’t have been all that surprising to me if the “hands up” crowd had been telling the truth. If you were reading my posts at the time, my initial reaction was to be pissed off by the systemic failures after the shooting, not to defend Wilson per se.
What has since happened is that a credible witness (that is, one whose testimony is not contradicted by the hard evidence) has pretty much confirmed my reconstruction down to details. But it’s not that I chose to believe that witness; I chose to believe the evidence. Which, apparently, is more than Brown’s partisans can manage.
Bryant, check out the link in my post near the top of this thread. An anti-police activist showed up at the scene very quickly, and appears to have coached witnesses. And Eric is choosing witnesses to believe whose testimony squares with the forensic evidence.
Bryant, while I can’t presume to speak for Eric, I apply a simple heuristic: A witness whose account is backed up by the physical evidence is credible. A witness whose account is directly contradicted by the physical evidence – like the one who claimed that Officer Wilson stood over Brown and “finished him off” – is not, and his testimony should be ignored.
Seeking corroboration between witness testimony and physical evidence is a rational thought process, and incorporates intelligent reasoning. The converse is also true.
The autopsy makes clear that one of the bullets entered the top of Michael Brown’s head. This is consistent with the testimony that he bull-rushed the police officer with his head down “like a football player.”
It is troubling that so many people are unable to conduct this act of simple reasoning. 50,000 years ago, this shortcoming would likely have gotten you killed at an early age. Nowadays, it makes you a popular social justice warrior.
Bryant:
At least one of the people giving a different version of the events–one that the media has relied strongly on, was Dorin Johnson, who was Brown’s assistant in the robbery, and the one who *started* the confrontation with the officer rather than just keeping his mouth shut and getting out of traffic.
This site, using media photographs makes some interesting points:
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/11/24/mike-brown-shooting-understanding-the-acquital-and-how-the-media-again-got-it-so-wrong-the-initial-media-witnesses-were-false/
As Jay M. notes, generally speaking the witnesses who say that Brown assaulted Wilson, ran away, then ran back are more strongly backed up by physical and forensic evidence than those who say he was standing there hands up trying to surrender.
TomA:
> 50,000 years ago, this shortcoming would likely have gotten you killed at an early age.
50,000 years ago *trying* to reason whether a non-tribe member who killed a tribe member was justified or not might very well have gotten you killed or thrown out of the tribe, which was just a slower way to die.
This is what I have elsewhere referred to as “a reversion to historical norms”. My tribe is good, yours is bad, and if you kill one of my tribe members I jump up and down and shake my spear until you run away, or we fight to the death.
ESR: Some people compare you to hitler, how does that make you feel?
>ESR: Some people compare you to hitler, how does that make you feel?
Like it’s an honor to be hated by people that stupid.
With regard to [at]Mr. Winter here, he is a confused puppy. His anti-military-cop narrative is lifted from the copiously-rectilinear conservative commentator Mark Steyn. While I am not disinclined to this position – in the least – [at]Mr. Winter (most likely suffering from ambivalent-interwebs-post-gamergate trauma) feels an intense need to cast his arguments in a modern-day, black-and-white, binary invective–also known as Facebook Syndrome.
Slate Star Codex rules!
It RULES!
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(At least for this beer anyway)
You my Hacka, Eric!
@Those trying to speculate away Ferguson’s use of fines as tax income
Read the links I gave. Everyone involved admits it is happening and that it targets locals.
No one commenting here is involved, or has professed any personal knowledge of the situation, or has shown anything but speculation that it is not true.
If what these articles write is not true, it must be very easy to find a witness that conforms your speculation that it is indeed not true.
Added:
Except William who admits he has no recent information.
Btw. The practise to raise fines as additional tax income seems to be a statewide racket. Which means that it does not even matter which county raises the fines.
@PapayaSF
“Winter, if the entire black and Hispanic population of the US were moved to Germany, I guarantee you that their police would be firing more bullets, and ours firing fewer.”
I doubt it. Whites are a minority in London. Whites make up less than 90% of the total population of England and Wales.
Still only 2 people were shot by police in 2011.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246288/Census-2011-UK-immigrant-population-jumps-THREE-MILLION-10-years.html
Or you must mean that US citizens are just a violent bunch, and they would make any place a war zone.
@Ed
I have no idea what yoy are talking about. But it seems you have no arguments to counter my comments, just an opinion about my personality.
@PapayaSF: it sound reasonable to think a selection factor like having the courage to move accross an ocean and eke out a living on the frontier must have some effect on the gene pool, but the thing is, the general culture of Canada, Australia, New Zeeland is closer to UK/Europe than to America and that is where the prediction fails. A Rooseveltian frontier-culture prediction fails for the same reasons, Canada _still_ has a frontier northwards, not for agriculture but e.g. logging. If you want to make a diff between America and say Australia you will find the following factors: earlier settlement, better agricultural land, puritanism, and slavery. For the sake of optimism I hope the first two was more important. A diff between America and Canada largely removes the early settlement factor, and then the optimist can hope the much better agricultural land matters more than puritanism or slavery. (You can tackle the slavery factor by diff(America, Brazil) )
@PapayaSF don’t get it wrong, but exporting the guns (imagine a foreign buyer would pay a lot for them and owners would sell it voluntarily) would have more effect than exporting people of color. No, I am not saying you should ban guns – there is so much of them out there already that it would create the mother of all black markets, dwarfing pot. That ship has sailed. The two optima is nobody or everybody having guns, you have no chance for making nobody have them, your only chance is making everybody have them. I am just saying Europe having banned them back them when there were not so many kicking around out there helped. Sort of nipped in the bud before it got out of hand, although, of course, there is a huge differential factor: wildlife, both for pleasure hunting and the necessity of pest control. Guns were bannable in Europe because there was already not too many of them and the reason was largely running out of animals to shoot hence hunting permits getting expensive etc. etc.
Winter, you’re still missing the point. Yes, Ferguson uses fines as a source of income, as do man other cities large and small.
But you persist in attributing that entire amount to the citizens of Ferguson. That’s simply wrong, unless you can demonstrate that the fines are collected only or disproportionately (think number of vehicle-miles traveled) from Ferguson residents.
In fact, cops try hard to collect traffic fines from folks from outside the local area, because they are less likely to return to the area to challenge them in court.
@Jay Maynard
“In fact, cops try hard to collect traffic fines from folks from outside the local area, because they are less likely to return to the area to challenge them in court.”
That is speculation which is not supported by the reports.
If you read the articles I linked to, you see that it is more than just traffic fines (“Debtors prison” they call it). Moreover, from the reports you get a strong impression that the cops in Ferguson were indeed targeting locals. That might be stupid, but people have been known to do stupid things.
@Jay Maynard
“But you persist in attributing that entire amount to the citizens of Ferguson.”
I do not see how this matters. If neighboring counties do the same, resident will be hit by cops anyway, either their own or others. They will not care whom they have to pay to. And the amount is so disproportionate, that it does not matter whether all of it or only half of it is from locals.
But I am curious why people here are so desperately denying that this is happening? It is a well know problem and absolutely no one involved has denied that the people of Ferguson are subjected to this abuse. So, why are you, who do not even know what happens there, so desperate in denying it?
Whether or not the county of Ferguson was running a racket on its own people has nothing to do whether the cop was justified in killing the suspect in this particular case.
If “Whether or not the county of Ferguson was running a racket on its own people has nothing to do whether the cop was justified in killing the suspect in this particular case”, then why did you bring it up? Oh, right, you just think American cops are evil.
@Jay Maynard
” then why did you bring it up? Oh, right, you just think American cops are evil.”
You wrote:
@Jay Maynard
“Yes, there are bad cops. I had a hand in getting a couple punished for mistreating prisoners. Still, they’re very much in the minority.”
I replied that this minority does a lot of damage.
Then I posed Ferguson as an example that the roots of this problem run much deeper, in the way the police is used in the USA. I never blamed the cops for hatching this racket, but they are the “executioners” of this devious policy. Naturally, they get the blame for it.
Now, where did I write that cops in the USA are evil?
Winter:
Is it legal to drive your car in excess of the posted speed limit?
@William O’Blivion
“Is it legal to drive your car in excess of the posted speed limit?”
What has this question to do with the problem under discussion? Read the links.
@everybody I just want to say if the Roma ethnic people living in the 8th district of Budapest had as easy access to guns as the people in Harlem, it would be as bad as in Harlem. This does NOT mean gun control in America is a good idea, or that the Roma or Black culture is very much fucked up, or that racism/poverty results in this, rather, it means gun violence = SUM(guns, ethnic subculture, racism/poverty) and it is up to further research to figure how important each factors are, my point is mostly that there cannot really be any factors outside these three, so the rational approach is to try to quantify how important each are. I think this model is useful for limiting the “factor space” (is that a word?)
I think this model should be useful for people of both left and right leanings – obviously their Bayesian prior evaluation of factors will be different. Lefties will assign higher Bayesian priors to guns and racism/poverty, righties will assing higher Bayesian priors to ethnic subculture.
(People who think the style of my comments has changed recently and resembles more the stuff one can read on lesswrong.com / slatestarcodex.com are guessing right. I think those people are doing kind of what I always wanted to do but I did badly.)
One of the criticisms of IQ tests is that they are not comprehensive and neglect peripheral intelligence such as street smarts. What that, and this topic in mind, a Ferguson IQ test.
Problem #1 – Mike wakes up one morning with a nicotine craving, no money, and inkling to snatch some smokes from the local convenience store. Is this a good way to start the day?
Problem #2 – Given that shopkeepers in his high-crime neighborhood often keep a pistol grip 12 gauge behind the counter, would Mike be better off a) bumming a smoke from his homey, or b) proceed to shoplift a item worth a few bucks?
Problem #3 – After some puny-ass shopkeeper confronts him in the act of stealing, should 6’4″ 300 lb. Mike a) apologize and leave, or b) upgrade a misdemeanor to a felony by backhanding the little shit?
Problem #4 – Upon exiting the shop with stolen goods and a potential felony assault charge, should Mike a) hide out and lay low for a while, or b) draw attention to himself on public street?
Problem #5 – After walking down the middle of a street, getting stopped by a police cruiser, and told to get over to the sidewalk, should Mike a) say “yes sir” and then disappear quickly, or b) reach into the cruiser, punch the police officer and then try to steal his gun?
Problem #6 – After the police officer floors the accelerator and breaks off the attack by backing away, should Mike a) run like hell and take the next bus out of town, or b) bullrush toward a adrenalin-hyped policeman pointing a 9mm at him?
Problem #7 – How much of Mike’s fate is due to his skin color versus his rational judgement?
Problem #8 – Who is stupider; Mike or his fan club?
TomA: Ouch, but… yeah.
Though of course the fan club cares nothing about all that, or even whether Wilson did anything wrong. What they care about is that they have another symbol to use to club the Racist Capitalist Heteropatriarchy.
If find y’alls reaction to Winter fascinating. I think he has a great point, some of those numbers are pretty crazy. My first reaction to the information about this shooting was that it was probably the cop over-reacting to some kid giving him attitude that spun out of control. The facts didn’t bear that out, and my view is that the cop’s testimony before the grand jury is probably a pretty accurate, if somewhat sanitized version of what actually happened. Which is curious because the stupidity of Brown, the arrogant :can’t touch me attitude that he evidently had is almost breathtaking in both its credibility and incredibility at the same time. In many ways my big questions is how could someone be that stupid? How could someone behave in such a reckless way? It is almost like a reverse reaction where believing being black makes him a target, but being a target makes him think he has a special immunity.
However, I can believe that this kid was unbelievably stupid and reckless, and I can agree with Dan that it is certainly in part due to the culture he came from, partly due to the very race baiting nonsense that followed, and surely partly based on his on stupidity and arrogance. My biggest surprise is that the kid wasn’t full of some sort of drug.
However, to say that isn’t to somehow absolve the police of all bad actions. I think in this case this cop acted correctly, and I also think his life will be ruined because of this stupid thug’s actions. But I have a real bias against the police who have a strange parallel attitude with some of the black community that I find equally disturbing.
For example, they too have an attitude of the persecuted minority. They too have the attitude of demanding “respect” and using unjust force of one kind or another to garner that respect. They too have a serious disregard for the rights of private citizens, and a deep sense of entitlement.
Of course they are quite different in many ways. Certainly they put their lives on the line, they have a certain sense of professionalism, and they tend to do more good than bad. But frankly if the cops don’t make you a little nervous then you are not paying attention.
@Winter
With regards to police killing, I have no doubt there is a lot of bad stuff there, but it is rooted in two things: the violence that is intrinsic in one particular racial community, a violence that is a direct result of the people now burning down the last vestiges of civilization in Ferguson, and the war on drugs which is prosecuted in the most appalling manner by the police, and fought against the police in an equally brutal fashion. Now of course the UK and Germany have a war on drugs too, but neither is quite so passionate about it as their American cousins, and neither has the problem of the proximity of the Mexican border and the drug highways from south America up.
However, America is far from the worst in this area. Consider for example this article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazilian-police-kill-11000-people-in-five-years-study-says-9856621.html
Which describes how Brazil, a country with 2/3s the population of the USA has a police force that killed 11,000 people in five years, which is eight times as high per capita as the USA (based on your number of 400.)
TomA: Makes me think he was on PCP or something, but apparently not so the reports say.
Once I saw him pushing around that old man who was shop keeper, well once “We” saw it, my cuzins and I all felt he got what was coming to him.
(If I were the shop keeper I would have shot him dead right then and there. (Well that’s my thinking anyway))
ESR and everyone else:
What do you think of the step father demanding “this bitch” be “burnt down”, and then the crowd going ahead and doing that?
What is your opinion on the mother (with the stepfather) assaulting the grandmother and stealing 1.4k in proceeds collected from the sale of Mike Brown t-shirts, and the fact that the mother had a lead pipe on her at the time.
Seems like the apple doesn’t fall all that far from the tree.
In other news there’s a fork of debian over systemd now starting, to get away from the systemd/SJW tree (SJW’s love change, systemd is change, SJWs took over Debian some years ago, instituted a new constitution that didn’t require consensus (which stalled change), here we are)
Devuan I think they’re calling it, it was on slashdot.
Problem #8 – Who is stupider; Mike or his fan club?
Mike at this point: none of his fan club is dead. They know their limits atleast, as a group.
(Burning down their own town is obviously within that limit, If they went and burnt down neighboring towns they would have been killed by ex-military hired to prevent them from doing so)
If the brazillians want to not be killed by the police at a rate of 11k per 5 years they need to get their act together (much easier said than done): no more infighting. And then they need to stage a french style revolution and wipe those police and the people that benefit from the police out (I imagine that would be white brazillians), and somehow defeat those people’s will to live or atleast stay in the country.
They won’t gain anything, of-course, other than revenge (as the french revolution showed). Well the country probably will be less feminist. Women’s rights isn’t a top priority after a brutal civil war.
@Jessica
“Which describes how Brazil, a country with 2/3s the population of the USA has a police force that killed 11,000 people in five years, which is eight times as high per capita as the USA (based on your number of 400.)”
I hope you set the standards for the police in your country somewhat higher than Brazil?
I’ll just leave this here:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/11/21/small-packages
Mike: [citation needed] on the story you tell about the mother and the T-shirt money…
@Eric When are you going to weigh in on the systemd controversy?
@Winter
lol, Winter the “scientist”. Perhaps you should consider a job more suited to your intellectual capabilities, like the service industry. Terrorist killings and police killings don’t follow the same distribution. Police killings are like auto accidents – there is never going to be a year with 1000 times the normal level of police killings.
Jay: Here’s some info about that incident below.
Sounds like the son followed what he had been taught.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/michael-brown-mom-face-felony-armed-robbery-charges-article-1.2001373
BEGINQUOTE:
The mother of Michael Brown could be charged with felony armed robbery for allegedly attacking people in a Ferguson, Mo., parking lot because they were selling T-shirts honoring the late teenager.
The Ferguson Police Department is currently investigating claims that Lesley McSpadden brought a group of people — including her own mother — to beat vendors and rob them of their “Justice for Mike Brown” merchandise Oct. 18, The Smoking Gun has learned.
One person was hospitalized in the reported attack and another unidentified alleged victim was reportedly beaten with a pipe.
McSpadden’s former mother-in-law, Pearlie Gordon, was among those beaten by “a large group of about 20-30 subjects” who had “jumped out of vehicles and rushed” the group of sellers, according to the police report.
A grand jury is deliberating whether to bring charges against the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, pictured. Big’mike Jr Brown via Facebook A grand jury is deliberating whether to bring charges against the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, pictured.
Gordon, 54, was allegedly knocked to the ground and repeatedly struck in the head. She detailed the brief exchange she had with McSpadden at the time of the attack.
“You can’t sell this s**t,” McSpadden allegedly said, according to the report.
ENDQUOTE
@Roger Philips
“lol, Winter the “scientist”. Perhaps you should consider a job more suited to your intellectual capabilities, like the service industry.”
You have no idea where I work and what I do.
@Roger Philips
“Police killings are like auto accidents – there is never going to be a year with 1000 times the normal level of police killings.”
No, this is more like a low-level ongoing war versus a single shooting. But distrust in justice and its officers destroys much more than a few terrorist can do with some bombs.
@Winter
> I hope you set the standards for the police in your country somewhat higher than Brazil?
Let me respond to this Winter. I have been to Rio, it is simultaneously the most beautiful and the scariest place I have ever been. One of the main reasons why is to do with geography. The beach cities of Rio: Copa Cabana, Ipanema etc., are build on a thin strip of land on the south of an east-west strip of land on the coast. Very close behind are the mountains and the rain forest. Since Rio is a very rich city the hills behind it are clustered with fafellas, slums controlled by drug lords. The geography forces these two parts of town to be right next to each other.
I remember sitting in my hotel, a fancy Hilton on the western end of the beaches. If you looked down to the left you would see the richest people in Brazil at play on the beach. If you looked to the right you would see the poorest people in Brazil living in cardboard boxes in districts controlled by the drug lords, and no go areas for the police.
It is a powder keg, and it is no wonder that it is one of the murder capitals and kidnapping capitals of the world. The police in Brazil are moderately corrupt. But they are also fighting in a war, and bad stuff happens in wars. Which is to say geography, culture, circumstances really matter in how hard it is to police a country. Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States,_November_2014
This is a list of people killed by LEOs this month in the USA. Based on the brief summary it is hard to argue with the cops’ choices. Something that I think you don’t seem too willing to accept is that sometimes the police killing someone is a good thing because some people are so dangerous and bad that their elimination is a net benefit to society. Perhaps the Dutch and the Germans don’t have too many of those people, perhaps their long history has weeded them out of the gene pool, or perhaps they all liked the opportunities American immigration had to offer them and their gene pool and you sent your trash our way.
Who knows? But I am sure there are few on that list that, had I known them that I would long lament.
@Jessica
My point is that such large numbers of killings by cops indicates that there are structural issues. In Brazil it seems to be the social tensions and extreme poverty that are the main problems. You will know best what could be the underlying problems that make the war on drugs and other crime so violent in the US.
In Europe, people tend to be more sensitive towards police violence. But we also lock up much fewer people for less time. The stakes are lower then. And violence breeds violence. So the differences will grow larger.
@Winter=a
> My point is that such large numbers of killings by cops indicates that there are structural issues.
Actually I think your point was that large number of killings indicate that there are structural issues *with the police*, which I don’t think is something the data demands at all.
> You will know best what could be the underlying problems that make the war on drugs and other crime so violent in the US.
One of the two causes is light brightly in Ferguson, MO this past week. Black people used to be among the most law abiding decent citizens in America. However, race hustlers, entitlement pushers, and victimhood enablers have been mixed with the easy life of violence and crime that the war on drugs facilities, and we have what we have.
> In Europe, people tend to be more sensitive towards police violence. But we also lock up much fewer people for less time.
There is a pretty direct correlation between incarceration rates and reductions in crime levels, and I don’t think there are any other reasonable explanations for the dramatic decrease in crime over the past decade. So putting thugs, robbers and murders in jail for a long time benefits society. I think we will stick with our model, it works pretty well here.
@Winter
Did you even bother trying to understand what I said to you? As usual, the answer is “no”. Sorry, but you should not be interpreting statistics of any kind.
LOL. Just LOL. Violence breeds violence, but it is also the #1 KILLER of violence. You have such 1-dimensional brain.
Another good article:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/paul-craig-roberts/do-the-police-recruit-psychopaths/
From the article:
“Few, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.
The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation…”
>The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation…”
Hardly relevant here, is it? One of the things the physical evidence makes clear is that Wilson was attacked and injured. And nobody is claiming that he shot Brown before he was injured. His account, which we have zero reason to disbelieve and which is backed up by the physical evidence, is that he resorted to force only when attacked.
There simply isn’t any way to jam this shoot into a cop-went-off narrative. The people who claim otherwise are telling falsehoods refuted by the forensic evidence. Wilson may have been the last cop in Ferguson to do the right thing, but he did it.
Jessica Boxer: I followed your link and read the list of police killings which you say are justified, I found this:
“Capt. Brian McGairty said Mark Allan Bartlett, 42, was killed after police say he brandished a gun at an officer in a threatening way when police were called out to a domestic disturbance. The officer fired one shot, hitting Bartlett, who died of his injuries.[3]”
So: woman calls police to come arrest her husband/boyfriend. Man is not king of his castle since we live in a woman’s world.
I’m not surprised you see that as justified.
The police should not have been there in the first place. This is why I’ve in the past hated police for a long while: They enforce laws that help women and hinder men. Men are neutered when women can call on the state. I really hope this state collapses completely. I’d rather starve than for this to continue (It would not only be me starving so it would be worth it, just to watch and be happy when the people I hate also starve (feminists), because I will never ever get what I want: they have taken over the world)
I really wish there was an anti-feminist man’s country made up of people of European decent that I could move to. (Totally anti-feminist, as in not 1800s feminism either (where the first thing they did was to outlaw men marrying girls)). Then I wish I could help that country fight against the feminist countries.
Police take local power (men) and give it to whomever our betters decide.
I wish the boys from brazil the best. Better us white men die, than our women rule the world.
Here are a couple of articles analyzing the testimonies of Officer Darrin Wilson and Mike Brown’s friend Dorian Johnson.
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7287443/dorian-johnson-story
In my opinion, it is likely that neither is telling the complete truth. I will note, however, that there is no rational reason to trust the cop’s testimony more than Johnson’s.
> I will note, however, that there is no rational reason to trust the cop’s testimony more than Johnson’s.
Yes there is. The cop’s testimony is consistent with the physical evidence. Dorian Johnson’s is not – and as someone noted upthread, he has previously been charged with making false reports to the police.
Jessica Boxter: “So putting thugs, robbers and murders in jail for a long time benefits society. I think we will stick with our model, it works pretty well here.”
It works well for women. It doesn’t work for men. Men are powerless in America. Men fared better in european dictatorships and monarchies: they had more rights in what mattered.
Now men cannot defend themselves, cannot marry girls, cannot discipline his wife, cannot defend his property, and is a serf to the woman when she decides.
But men are not “we”. “Us” and “We” are american women. The man is just a mule.
I hope the thugs and robbers win, somehow. I hope they get their act together and take collective action. I hope they create a russian revolution in america and other similar states.
They’ll do me in too, but what I wanted was banned in the 1870s in the north and the 1990s in the south (and the 2000s-now in the rest of the world). Women have won, so I hope soon the earth is done. This is your world.
Kevin S. Van Horn: Sorry, but Ezra Klein is laughable. In short, he can’t believe Wilson because he just can’t believe Mike Brown would act so stupidly, so irrationally, and so violently. Well, Ezra, I hate to break it to you, but 18-year-old males are often stupid, irrational, and violent. Especially black ones from poor families, who like to flash gang signs in photos, and commit strong-arm robberies at local stores with security cameras, while carrying pot, and then jaywalk with the loot and get into altercations with cops who tell them to walk on the sidewalk. The known facts about Brown’s behavior on his last day all say: stupid, irrational, violent.
As for Dorian Johnson, his testimony has been all over the place, often self-contradictory, and in 2011 he was arrested for theft and making a false report. So who to believe: a cop with a clean record (AFAIK), or Mike Brown’s friend, who had previously lied to police?
@Mike Hanover
People like you are worse than the feminists. What you want is for somebody to come along and give you “permission” to lord yourself over females. I can’t fathom how much of a spineless loser you must be to feel controlled by women. The whole point of “men” is that we -want- difficulties. Why don’t you just get that sex change already and be done with it?
In essence, all this MRA stuff is weak men who have accepted all the core values of feminism and are busily trying to poison everyone against the people who produced those values – just as feminists turned against Christianity while building on its core values. The Christians did the same thing to the Jews in turn.
I don’t want to leave the impression that I am picking on Michael Brown because of his stupidity. His path to an early death is still tragic; even if the penitentiary was his likely destination in life.
My beef is with the institutional and cultural leaders that are deliberately fostering an environment that instills and encourages stupidity in all youth; not just the poor and minorities. Herd animals are typically simpleminded.
Winter on 2014-11-28 at 11:58:25 said:
@William O’Blivion
> “Is it legal to drive your car in excess of the posted speed limit?”
>> What has this question to do with the problem under discussion? Read the links.
I did.
See the thing about *most* fines, almost all drug arrests (especially in Missouri), and the vast majority of the traffic stops is that if you OBEY THE LAW they don’t ticket you.
If you follow the link I sent about Mountain View Colorado you’ll note that their big target is “obstructed view”, with a compliant judge. Those tickets are *complete* bullshit.
But in the US it’s not usually necessary to skirt that close to stupid to find a reason to pull someone over, especially given the attitude of inner city (and to be fair young and poor rural) folks. In many states you’re only allowed to tint your car windows to a certain degree, but often windows are so opaqued (don’t wanna say black) that you can’t see through them at all. License plates aren’t renewed on time, windshields are seriously cracked. Speed limits are ROUTINELY ignored, stop signs are blown off–and this is in working class neighborhoods. You get into the inner city and music is turned up well past what public nuisance laws allow–in CARS mind you, license plates are deemed optional for a while folks were having whistlers welded into their tailpipes (short lived fad).
This is like claiming that drug laws racist because they have a disparate impact on blacks and hispanics because they get arrested more.
Yeah, they get *arrested* more. Don’t want to get arrested for committing a crime? DO NOT DO THE CRIME.
When it comes to this sort of traffic farming it’s REALLY REALLY easy not to caught up, pay your license fees on time. Stop at red lights, don’t drive faster than anyone else, don’t break the law and you (usually) won’t get fined.
And if it *is* a problem of the police going above and beyond the law, fire your politicians and get new ones. In the last mayoral election in Ferguson the mayor ran UNOPPOSED and only 12 percent voted. The mayor got 97% of the vote, with 31 people writing in a name of some sort.
12 percent bothered to vote. 12 PERCENT.
The mayor ran UNOPPOSED.
There were plenty of avenues open to fix these problems, all they had to do was run a few reform candidates and stay sober for a *couple hours* on one day. But the black residents of Ferguson were used to their white masters in the Democrat party (STL is a Democrat stronghold, at least at the city/county level) taking care of them, just like they have since Johnson.
” In short, he can’t believe Wilson because he just can’t believe Mike Brown would act so stupidly, so irrationally, and so violently. Well, Ezra, I hate to break it to you, but 18-year-old males are often stupid, irrational, and violent”
I’m not sure it’s that irrational. He was going to go away for awhile if arrested. 5 years atleast for the strong arm robbery, then some for the police assault.
At that point why not rush the cop and get shot to death? Better than being in prison. His life was going nowhere, though that’s pretty much the same for any man in any progressive country (other than hobbies).
Dead is better than prison. No one will take revenge for you if you’re locked up: they just might if you’re killed.
I think that’s the thought process, and it is rational. It is hateful, revolutionary type thought, desperate, but it has reasoning to it and the reasoning is sound.
Roger Phillips wrote: “People like you are worse than the feminists. What you want is for somebody to come along and give you “permission” to lord yourself over females.”
The people who wrote the old testament, specifically Deuteronomy already have come around and given that permission. They did that some time ago.
“I can’t fathom how much of a spineless loser you must be to feel controlled by women.”
I and what army is going to go against their police who are only a phone call away? Mike Brown tried that. He’s in the ground. Maybe it’s a better place though.
“The whole point of “men” is that we -want- difficulties. Why don’t you just get that sex change already and be done with it?”
You must not be a man, since you see the man as a mule to dump difficulties upon, or you have internalized woman’s role for you.
“In essence, all this MRA stuff is weak men who have accepted all the core values of feminism and are busily trying to poison everyone against the people who produced those values – just as feminists turned against Christianity while building on its core values. The Christians did the same thing to the Jews in turn.”
MRA stuff is pretty weak. They totally reject child marraige of young girls to men. The Old Testament does not (you can study Deuteronomy 22 28-29 in hebrew (numbered 27-28 in some hebrew bibles) as a start). You are right about the Christians, they rejected that too eventually, and they gased up the women too, and ran down men. Then the feminists took that later Christian belief (angelic women, devil (malevolent) men) and ran with it.
Well the the people who wrote the book of Deuteronomy must have been feminist women. Read it in hebrew, or with a good hebrew dictionary.
“My beef is with the institutional and cultural leaders that are deliberately fostering an environment that instills and encourages stupidity in all youth; not just the poor and minorities. Herd animals are typically simpleminded.”
They are honouring Mike Brown by getting revenge. Modern notions of honour are false and trash. What you see there is the real, the old, definition of honouring the dead: taking revenge for the loss of them against the group that killed them.
Not that I agree with it in this case: I am not part of their group. But one of the worst things about modern white “families” in the feminist age (of mandatory education) is that they are not clannish, they do not care about the death of their men, they do not ever take revenge against the killers or kidnappers (jailers) be they third parties or governments. They even turn in their fathers to the authorities. It is disgusting. Their (our) religion is whatever the government declares legal/illegal – and that is decided muchly by women through whom they elect via their democracy.
“In many states you’re only allowed to tint your car windows to a certain degree, but often windows are so opaqued (don’t wanna say black) that you can’t see through them at all.”
So? It’s your car. Your property. Driving on roads you are forced to pay for.
“See the thing about *most* fines, almost all drug arrests (especially in Missouri), and the vast majority of the traffic stops is that if you OBEY THE LAW they don’t ticket you. ”
Why should free men obey laws that were not created by them?* These laws were created by a democracy of women, gays, and lastly men who have not been imprisoned (a minority vs the women and the gays). Men have no stake in this whatsoever. It is not their government, it is not their country: they are subjects.
Why should they not hate their masters? Why should they obey them? Why should they not revolt and overthrow it at some point, no matter what the consequences?
*When it was a democracy of men the laws were completely different, there was more freedom, and man was the master of his home, of his woman or girl, of his property. Such is not the case anymore and never will be until pluralistic democracy is one day globally defeated and burnt to the ground.
@Winter
>> Speed limits are ROUTINELY ignored, stop signs are blown off–and this is in working class neighborhoods.
>> You get into the inner city and music is turned up well past what public nuisance laws allow–in CARS mind you,
>> license plates are deemed optional for a while folks were having whistlers welded into their tailpipes (short lived fad).
>> This is like claiming that drug laws racist…
>> Yeah, they get *arrested* more….
>> When it comes to this sort of traffic farming…
>> And if it *is* a problem of the police going above and beyond the law…
>> 12 percent bothered to vote. 12 PERCENT.
>> There were plenty of avenues open to fix these problems….
>> But the black residents of Ferguson were used to their white masters in the Democrat party…
Wow!
Your white awareness of the black struggle is stunning! It is such a perfectly distilled concoction, I can almost bottle it!
Thank you for feeding the fish-eye lens of my camera eye at the behest of your most meaningful provocations.
#BOLO White Progressives
PS – I also liked how you started zeroing in on the female here (one most highly favored and astute). You’re a champ!
>> @Ed
>> I have no idea what yoy are talking about.
That’s because you are a Millennial.
Dismissiveness is no excuse of incompetence.
“You hear what I’m sayin’, Yoy?!”;
@Mike Hanover
Are you an imbecile? I see -weaklings- as mules to dump slave work onto, be they male or female. You have not absorbed the point – that feminists are fundamentally losers. And anyone who reacts them in the way you have reacted is an even bigger loser. You think your ancestors had it any easier? LOL
@Ed
“Your white awareness of the black struggle is stunning!
I have no idea why you add me to this. It was written by William.
@William O’ Blivion
“See the thing about *most* fines, almost all drug arrests (especially in Missouri), and the vast majority of the traffic stops is that if you OBEY THE LAW they don’t ticket you. ”
Differential law enforcement is a hallmark of discrimination and the police state.
The links I posted were specifically pointing out that the fines were doctored to extract as much money as possible out of the community. And it has been noted before, in the USA, the police can always fine you or arrest you for something. It is just a matter of who they pick out for checking. The laws are made that way. (read “Ham-Sandwhich Nation” and watch “Don’t talk to the police”).
It can be worse:
http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Man-films-local-officers-attempt-to-intimidate-him-under-false-pretences-249957921.html
@Jessica
“There is a pretty direct correlation between incarceration rates and reductions in crime levels, and I don’t think there are any other reasonable explanations for the dramatic decrease in crime over the past decade.”
We have much lower incarceration rates than the USA (everybody in the world has), and much lower crime rates. But it does not even hold for the changes in crime rates in the USA. So I do not see how this even qualifies as an argument.
And the other reasonable explanation is that there was a generation change just before 2000 when the 1960/1970s generation grew out of the crime age bracket.
“Are you an imbecile? I see -weaklings- as mules to dump slave work onto, be they male or female.”
I never claimed to be smart. I only claimed to hate.
“You have not absorbed the point – that feminists are fundamentally losers.”
So are assistant district attorneys, yet they still rule over me and you.
“And anyone who reacts them in the way you have reacted is an even bigger loser.”
I haven’t reacted at all. Words are not action. I would say the fact that men have never reacted shows that men are losers.
“You think your ancestors had it any easier? LOL”
I think they married young girls when they wished to.
@Roger Philips
“Did you even bother trying to understand what I said to you?”
We have long ago established that my intelligence is insufficient to understand your writing. As I am unable to increase my intelligence and you do not change your writing style, we are doomed to eternal miscommunication.
It would help a little if you would stop frotting at the mouth when commenting.
@Winter How could it possibly be clearer? You cannot compare death rates of terrorism and police killings in the manner you suggest because they are distributed completely differently.
@Kevin S Van Horne
I will note, however, that there is no rational reason to trust the cop’s testimony more than Johnson’s.
That’s absurd. It’s already established beyond doubt that Johnson is a violent criminal. How can that not make his word suspect? If he has no compunctions about robbery, why would he cavil even at perjury, let alone lying to the press? Wilson, meanwhile, is as far as we know an upstanding person; what basis is there to suspect him of perjury?
@Mike Hanover
“Capt. Brian McGairty said Mark Allan Bartlett, 42, was killed after police say he brandished a gun at an officer in a threatening way when police were called out to a domestic disturbance. The officer fired one shot, hitting Bartlett, who died of his injuries.[3]”
So: woman calls police to come arrest her husband/boyfriend. Man is not king of his castle since we live in a woman’s world.
I’m not surprised you see that as justified.
The police should not have been there in the first place.
Irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether they should have been there. Even if we lived in your utopia, where police will ignore any call for help that comes from a female, the fact is that they were there, and he was brandishing a gun at them. What were they supposed to do at that point? What basis did they have for supposing that he would not shoot them? What would happen in your utopia in such a situation? What would you do if someone was pointing a gun at you, which he might shoot at any moment?
@TomA: I don’t want to leave the impression that I am picking on Michael Brown because of his stupidity. His path to an early death is still tragic;
Why?
I’ve got no problem at all with the idea that Michael Brown autodarwinated. Still, I do consider his death to be a tragedy: he was led astray by a toxic culture that convinced him that strong-arm robbery and trying to take a cop’s gun were not just acceptable, but desirable, responses to the world around him. Any culture that leads kids down that path should be considered anathema and rooted out vigorously.
If our culture were healthy, then prominent opinion leaders in Ferguson (and nationally) would be speaking out about how Michael Brown’s gangster lifestyle and serial stupidity led him to an early, self-inflected death. The public message should have been; don’t mimic this behavior because it can get you killed.
Instead, the message being sent is; Michael Brown is not responsible for his fate, it was racism that killed him. In other words, the leadership of the black community is fostering continued stupidity in their youth rather than take corrective action. And it doesn’t end there, prominent liberals are promoting the same stupidity among white college students by encouraging them to protest is support of Michael Brown’s stupidity.
Stupidity is not a virtue. This nonsense is anti-evolutionary.
Milhouse said: “Irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether they should have been there. Even if we lived in your utopia, where police will ignore any call for help that comes from a female, the fact is that they were there, and he was brandishing a gun at them. What were they supposed to do at that point? What basis did they have for supposing that he would not shoot them? What would happen in your utopia in such a situation? What would you do if someone was pointing a gun at you, which he might shoot at any moment?”
They should have not invaded the man’s property. The fact that we live in a woman’s country is not irrelevant. Nor is the fact that the government people feel it is their right to intrude upon a man’s life because a woman wanted it that way.
It is completely relevant: It is the cause. I hope that cause crumbles someday.
“The public message should have been; don’t mimic this behavior because it can get you killed. ”
That would simply be seen as a threat. The public of the area might react with a small civil war. With the right words and equipment that could become a large civil war (syria).
(With the right words and equipment)
Remeber the stepdad screaming ‘BURN THIS BITCH DOWN, BURN THIS BITCH DOWN” and then they did: They robbed a liquor store, set it alight, drank the liquor (or emptied it), made gasoline bombs, and went to town.
Here’s Mike’s Mother talking to the crowd before the place was ruined:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOsn4LiyvJE
Here’s a family member’s tribute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOsn4LiyvJE
@Roger Philips
“@Winter How could it possibly be clearer?”
For instance, by giving reasons why the statistical distribution of terrorist attacks would matter in the current context.
@Roger Philips
“You cannot compare death rates of terrorism and police killings in the manner you suggest because they are distributed completely differently.”
To the target communities, the effects corresponds rather nicely: Sow terror in the hearths of the people, letting them know they are not safe and can be killed randomly. The fact that IS, AQIA, and Boko Haram kill civilians with regularity does not stop them from being terrorist organizations.
The boundary between “terrorism”, “guerrilla warfare”, and “violent oppression” (Tyranny style) are fluent. The differences in distribution are irrelevant.
More criticism on police brutality in the USA:
http://thehill.com/homenews/225497-un-blasts-us-for-police-brutality
The full report:
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/USA/INT_CAT_COC_USA_18893_E.pdf
The UN has no credibility, and any “report” it issues may as well be printed on toilet paper. Being criticised by the UN is like being criticised by the kindergarten class of some fleabag madrassah 100 miles outside Niamey.
No…being criticized by the UN is like being criticized by the ruling mullahs of Iran or Vladimir Putin: a badge of honor.
As anti-American as the UN is, why are we still paying by far the largest share of its budget of any country?
@Jay and Milhouse
The UN have witness accounts. What evidence have you they were false? Did the police department come forward telling this did not happen? I can find literally dozens of news reports from all newspapers about similar things with a single search on Google.
I think your attempt to shoot the messenger shows you are not interested in what is happening in your own country.
Yeah, the UN has eyewitness accounts. So did the folks pushing the narrative that Officer Wilson murdered Brown in cold blood. I find them about as credible.
I’m quite interested in what’s happening in my own country. I don’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass what the UN thinks about what’s happening in my own country.
@Jay
“I’m quite interested in what’s happening in my own country. I don’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass what the UN thinks about what’s happening in my own country.”
I doubt it. The only response you have is shooting the messenger. And you deny everything, whatever the evidence. You never come up with anything of substance that might counter the point give. Just your wild speculations and conspiracies.
As in this case, you did with every link I gave. So I don’t believe you will ever admit a fact you do not want to be true.
The reactions to Winter are not much more than pseudointellectual rationalizations of the liminal butthurt that results when conservatives and libertarians realize that he lives in a country that is, by most relevant metrics, objectively superior to the USA — and is willing to speak truth about just how terrible things are here.
But yes, as you say, fascinating…
A Bosnian man was beaten to death with hammers by 2 or 3 black guys and a hispanic a day ago in St Louis. Previously the hammerers were protesting Mike Brown’s death.
The Bosnian man was likely killed as a revenge killing for Mike Browns death. He was killed in-front of his wife. He was dragged out of his car and beaten until he was dead using hammers. He was seen as sufficiently white to be a sacrifice.
How do you feel about this?
@Mike Hannover
This is a horrible story. I hope further violence can be prevented and justice can be done.
But did you intend to imply there is a lesson for us here? Then you must be more specific.
#JusticeforZemir
“But did you intend to imply there is a lesson for us here? Then you must be more specific.”
Last year they called a pizza delivery guy from the same bosnian community in saint louis out to one of their houses. They (the black guys) then murdered him and stole nothing. They killed him because they wanted to kill a white guy.
Same this year. Is there a lesson?
I don’t know. This feels kinda like syria.
Over the last few years there has been a growing backlash undertone against the police in general (against swat and all that).
And then it was turned into a racial thing. So where there was a groundswell against the government, it was turned around.
Just like in syria: that’s a race war now, didn’t start as one. Started as an anti-police state uprising.
I don’t think a revolt can ever happen in the USA again. It will always be turned into a race struggle instead to defuse it.
@Mike Hanover
So for all the police violence and some 400 people killed each year by cops (justifiably, as they say), the violence still cannot be halted.
Isn’t a popular definition of insanity “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”?
And this is not exactly the first time people in the USA go on a rampage looting their neighborhood.
Maybe, shooting more people is not the best answer?
Maybe looking at the output (crime) should be augmented with looking at the input (young people)?
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/02/protests-sparse-after-pack-hammer-wielding-teens-beats-man-to-death-in-shadow/
““We’re going to have a little bit of fun blocking our own traffic,” Adnan Esmerovic, 27, told the Washington Post. “In Ferguson, they want to make a protest about nothing and yet that attracted attention across the nation. We’re just trying to keep more police down here because of these little thugs.””
““We come from Bosnia because we were getting killed and our homes and families were getting destroyed,” Denisa Begic, his 23-year-old sister, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Never in my life did I think he would get murdered.””
http://www.gofundme.com/i0hi58
(Funeral expenses)
Winter: Talk doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make one side win and the other side lose. Force is what does that. You know all those laws I hate and you love, that have been enacted all around the globe now. That’s force, and that’s why I can never do as I wish, I can’t have the natural pleasures in life.
If you want to win, you got to fight. Doesn’t matter what it is you want, what side you’re on, you got to fight for it. Your side knows that. Words are only good for propagandizing children (your side knows that aswell… mandatory schooling), past that, it’s all force.
Not sure how accurate this link is but here it is: http://www.infowars.com/blacks-screamed-kill-the-white-people-before-brutal-murder-of-zemir-begic/
Screamed “Kill the White People” Before Brutal Murder of Zemir Begic
Winter, 400 people auto-Darwinating by attacking cops (and if that’s not justifiable shooting, what IS??!!) is a tiny drop in the bucket of those destroyed by thug culture. You’re straining at gnats and ignoring boulders.
@Mike Hanover
“Winter: Talk doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make one side win and the other side lose.”
Shooting does solve things? Apparently not. And there is no winning side, only losers. And a lot of dead bodies and destruction.
@Jay Maynard
“Winter, 400 people auto-Darwinating by attacking cops”
We have bad experiences with forced eugenics. No thanks. See my earlier quote about stupid people.
The US have a very high crime rate and a violent, militarized police force. North-Western Europe have a low crime rate and a nice police force. Now, what looks like the more successful strategy?
>Shooting does solve things? Apparently not.
*snrk*
Generally when shooting doesn’t solve things, it means you haven’t shot enough people yet. The problem isn’t that shooting people isn’t a solution, it’s that it’s a solution with a higher cost than a decent human being is usually willing to pay. But this should not be confused with ineffectiveness; to pick one example, ethnic cleansing frequently achieves its political objectives.
So let me get this straight, Winter. You are seriously advocating that attacking a cop should be allowed and the cop should not be permitted to defend himself??!
If so, then we have nothing more to discuss, because you therefore deny someone who’s employed as a cop the basic right to self-defense.
Gee, I wonder if there are any relevant differences between the US and North-Western Europe besides their police forces? *rolls eyes*
@Jay Maynard
“So let me get this straight, Winter. You are seriously advocating that attacking a cop should be allowed and the cop should not be permitted to defend himself??!”
Wrong question. Defending is not the same as shooting to kill. Should a cop not try to get attackers alive? It can be done, you know.
@Jay Maynard
“If so, then we have nothing more to discuss, because you therefore deny someone who’s employed as a cop the basic right to self-defense.”
Cops are not soldiers in a war zone.
>Should a cop not try to get attackers alive? It can be done, you know.
Winter, there are times you sound like a complete blithering idiot. This is one of them.
I am a highly trained martial artist, a pretty good pistol shot (better than most cops for sure), also unusually strong and physically tough (my sifu introduces me to new students by saying “Hit him as hard as you want, you can’t injure him”, and he’s only half joking). My odds in an empty-hand or contact-weapons fight against a street thug like Michael Brown would be better than those of 99.9% of the population and significantly better than Officer Wilson’s. And I have no desire to kill anyone; I would strongly prefer to use non-lethal subdual techniques if possible, and I know more of them than you probably even imagine could exist.
But you damn betcha that if a thug Brown’s size charged me, I would be shooting to kill. As tough as I am, one good blow to the head from a man that size could induce a hematoma that would kill me. I have a wife I want to go home to; I dare not let anyone that large and apparently deranged get within striking or grappling distance, he could be on PCP or bath salts and jacked up to hysterical strength levels. So it’s Mozambique drill – two shots to center of mass, one to the head, assess, and if he’s not down I keep firing until he is.
Wilson probably isn’t as good a shot as I am (though he might be – he did well for a cop). From his description of the encounter, he isn’t as strong or tough as I am, either. If he were a trained martial artist I think we’d have heard about that by now. It would be stupid and wrong of me, not just hazarding my own life but betraying my responsibilities to others, to let someone like Brown get to close quarters if I could prevent that. It would have been been stupider and more wrong of Wilson in exact proportion that his odds of getting killed or maimed in a stand-up fight are worse news than mine.
That shoot-to-wound crap? Doesn’t work. Seriously increases your odds of popping a bystander – a secondary reason cops and civilian sheepdogs like me train to shoot for center of mass is that this minimizes the chances of the bullet overpenetrating. And if you try nonviolent subdual on someone who’s dusted he’s going to laugh and kill you. Pain-compliance techniques and comealong holds don’t work in this context, only a fool or someone with no regard for his own life would try them.
And all this is before we get to the fun and games if Brown pulls a knife out of his pants – trash like him carries a blade often enough to make it likely. If I don’t want to watch my guts pooling on the pavement, I have to assume he’s carrying before I actually see it and take him out before he reaches pointy-thing range.
Not only is it the counsel of prudence and ethical correctness to shoot to kill in this scenario, but when Brown is down you can also damn betcha that I’m looking for his sidekick and lining up my sights to kill him too if he so much as twitches in my direction. Generally speaking, violent trash comes in clumps; you have to be prepared for that if you want to go home to your family rather than ending your day in an intensive-care ward or a morgue.
Should a cop not try to get attackers alive? It can be done, you know.
Oh, now you are saying that Wilson should have dealt with a charging 290 lb. man who had already punched him and tried to take his gun by shooting to wound? I will let Eric or someone else who knows firearms more than I do explain why that’s a bad idea.
Not to deprive Eric of that bit of fun, but Michael Yon already beat him to it.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ferguson-shooting-why-did-the-officer-not-shoot-brown-in-the-legs.htm
@PapayaSF
It is disingenious to let depend 400 killings a year be decided on this single case. The complaint is not this single case, but the hundreds of cases each year. Where other poluce forces focis on defusing situations and arresting attackers, the US police is trained to kill in army battle gear.
It is a joke to argue this is the bedt they can do.
You’ve been led astray by the leftist US MSM, Winter. It is incredibly rare for a US cop to get out in battle gear.
As for being trained to kill: no, they’re trained to end the threat. That means shooting center-of-mass and continuing until the threat is ended. If that means they’re lying on the ground dead, oh well, they shouldn’t have attacked the cop in the first place.
So you can’t dodge the issue. If a cop justifiably shoots someone, it is because they feared for their own life or that of another. In such cases, the cop had better be prepared to kill.
So I ask again: are you or are you not in favor of banning cops from defending themselves with deadly force?
As for not being soldiers in a war zone: tell that to the cops in Sweden who won’t go into many Muslim immigrant neighborhoods…
What was it Heinlein said? Ask the dodo bird?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Winter’s mindset in regard to the fantasy of shoot-to-wound compassionate police procedure is a reflection of the lack of warrior stand-your-ground spirit that has wussified much of Europe. Perhaps several centuries of internecine warfare has culled the high testosterone males from their gene pool. In any event, it’s easy to spout liberal dogma when you’re not in the threat zone, and real life police work is not a theoretical social experiment.
@Winter
And this has.. what to do with your bogus use of statistics? LOL? At no point did I say anything about any of this. I mean you even ramble on about the classification of various groups as “terrorist”. This has what to do with anything? It’s like talking to some kind of n-gram association machine.
lol. So the psychological effects of routine crime, accidental police killings, spree shootings, airliners hitting skyscrapers, secret political killings, gulags, use of WMDs are the same provided that you adjust for total deaths per year? Just stop talking. Stop pretending you have a brain inside your fucking nut please. Some of these get vastly more “bang for your buck” than others. I mean we haven’t even started talking about WHO is on the receiving end of this treatment because you can’t get past this basic technical point, which is another factor that makes a huge difference.
@Jeff Read
Winter comes from what, Finland or some other eurotrash country? Its accomplishments are what exactly? I mean if your measure of accomplishment is that very little of note occurs then yes, Finland is a raging success and naturally this extends off into the realms of crime and other social conditions as well.
>Winter comes from what, Finland or some other eurotrash country?
Holland, I believe. We subsidize their defense and fund most of the medical research they use, apparently for the sole benefit of listening to ignorant pseudo-sophisticates tell us what yahoos we are.
Speaking of European “sophisticates” – especially French – Sarah had an interesting article up recently.
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/11/30/refuse-the-despair/
“Shooting does solve things? Apparently not. And there is no winning side, only losers. And a lot of dead bodies and destruction.”
You win by being the last man standing. This has always been the case in all of history. You know why I lose? Because I cannot stand up against the force people like you project (not you specifically, but your proxies in the law and thus in law enforcement). I have to obey all your laws, many of which I hate. I have zero choice and these days I have zero places where I can go that do not have your laws (that are not bombed into oblivion).
Brown thought he could stand up against your proxies. He was wrong. He was dumb or just didn’t want to live any longer. If it’s the second, I guess good for him, he’s probably having a lot better time in eternal sleep than whatever your society had ready for him (lets see, what do men like: girls, weapons, power. [preceding words are to be strictly construed] All those things are denied men by SJWs. All allowed in the old testament, but not allowed by the force of your police, your armies, your ariel bombardments.)
“Gee, I wonder if there are any relevant differences between the US and North-Western Europe besides their police forces? *rolls eyes*”
Not really. Same social beliefs. And now the same is starting to become true for the middle east and then the russian republics. If you don’t tow the social progressive (feminst) line you are cut out of business deals, if you don’t have any economic output to attack you are bombed. There is nowhere to go. All of the world is the same now.
India used to be different.
Many places used to be differnet
Before then places in rural France used to be different.
Women have won the whole world. Thanks to America.
“The US have a very high crime rate and a violent, militarized police force. North-Western Europe have a low crime rate and a nice police force. Now, what looks like the more successful strategy?”
You go to prison if you say unpopular things in NW-Europe (hate speech). It is unfortunate that the men of Europe are completely disarmed. They would overthrow your governments if they had easy access to weapons while drunk (that’s how the American revolution started). I hope Russia somehow remedies this. They’re the only hope (and a faint hope at that).
ESR says:
> Wilson probably isn’t as good a shot as I am (though he might be – he did well for a cop).
He did well for a cop that had just gotten popped twice in the head by someone who outweighed him by about 80 pounds *and was used to fighting*.
I’ve got almost the opposite training from Mr. Raymond–I’ve had rifle training in the Marine Corps, National Guard, US Air Force Reserves, and private training (Suarez Internationals AK Gunfighting). I’ve had pistol training from 5 or 6 different instructors, and at one point was going through about 600 rounds a month on the pistol range. I haven’t been shooting as regularly as I’d like recently for financial reasons, but I’m still reasonably proficient with both rifle and pistol. I’ve studied 3 different martial arts, but I’m not genetically robust, and have to work for it. I’m not *bad*, but I’m certain not gifted.
While in the US AFR I spent a year in a “Security Forces” squadron, and while I did not attend their school, I sat in on much of the refresher material being taught. I’ve gone through two or three “use of force” training sessions, I’ve been taught their method of searching prisoners, I’ve done scenario based training including kicking in doors and securing buildings.
ESR is 100 percent on the mark. No serious, competent self-defense expert recommends shooting to wound. There are goofballs who do, but there are goofballs who recommend drinking colloidal silver, breatharianism, chiropractors who claim to cure the flu, and socialist economists. All are given airtime, all are charlatans or blithering idiots.
That is not an xor.
ANY time you pull the trigger on a pistol you are using *LETHAL FORCE*. A 9mm bullet, fired into the meat of the thigh and wind up hitting the femoral artery. If you don’t get it a tourniquet on fast (assuming you can) the “victim” is going to die in no more than 3 minutes. FWIW I carry 2 with me *EVERYWHERE*. A good one, and a “I hope this works” one.
There simply is *no place* on the human body that it is *safe* to shoot with a pistol. Well, maybe a .22 short, but that’s a story best told face to face.
Anyway, in as much as there’s no place *safe* to shoot someone, when using common military or police caliber pistols there is also very few places that produce immediate incapacitation. There is the face and head, although shots to the sides of the head don’t *always* work, but the head, especially the area needed to IMMEDIATELY stop the fight is VERY hard to hit, especially under stress and with a moving target. Getting shots into the head isn’t hard though, and generally convinces people they want to stop fighting now and get help. Unless as ESR notes, PCP, Bath Salts, or Navy SEAL. Do not shoot a Navy SEAL. It won’t go well for you.
Every single defensive and offensive pistol class I’ve taken since the Marines (almost 30 years ago) suggested that you fire 2 or 3 shots CENTER MASS, assess, and then repeat as needed. Those were the nice guys. At least one instructor says to start shooting low and zipper to their face (this in a close-quarters surprise reaction, you draw to retention and start shooting as soon as the pistol is on line. Then as you’re firing you step back if possible extending the pistol into the space you were standing. This brings the pistol up to shoulder/head height completing the zipper. This is probably going to result in a casualty. Don’t mess with some people, it’s not worth your life.)
Flat out a pistol is a *lousy* tool for defending yourself against a violent opponent. There have been multiple cases of people walking (and I mean *WALKING*) into emergency rooms. In one case the lad had been shot over 20 times with a Tec-9 pistol (cheap, crappy 9mm pistol). The words of the ER doc were “the bullets were practically falling out of him”. He was patched up, spent some time in the hospital, and walked out.
At the same time when I was working in an ER in…1990, a guy was lifeflighted in who had already died twice, he coded once more while I was there (first time I ever saw the inside of someone’s chest–I was heading into the trauma room to get some information. I backed right out) and then finally died the 4th time a bit later.
Shot once in the stomach with a .22 LR. You never know.
There as a case on the East Coast of a narcotics officer shooting a suspect through the back of a van. He blew the guys heart out onto the windshield. The Suspect, high on PCP *CAME OUT OF THE CAR SHOOTING*. This is No Shit. SHOOTING. The other officers COULD SEE THROUGH HIS CHEST. 28 seconds later he completely stopped moving. He’d been dead the whole time it just took his CNS a while to catch up.
There’s dozens of old school stories like this. People shot, often with INCREDIBLY lethal weapons (a VC gut shot with a .308 straps a pot over his entrails and runs for 3 days) and they keep going.
But even that doesn’t matter, because as you so blithely note, these are cops, not soldiers. They are not (supposed to be[1]) out there trying to kill people. Violence, for a police officer is supposed to scale up as needed to preserve life, but it is their job to go put themselves in front of the very, very worst our “civilization” has to offer and expected, often times outnumbered, often times (these days) outgunned to stop the bad people. And every single one of them has some sort of family they want to go home to, and they have a *right* to that.
To a certain extent they have an obligation to finish their shift and go home.
And see, this is what “Theory of Mind” is all about. You realize that you are a thinking, feeling, person, and you assume that other people have that same mental state.
Which is good and necessary for us to live together.
But what you need to get is that not everybody has your borderline pacifist view, hierarchical view of the world.
Not everyone’s brain works *just* like yours, only a little better or a little worse, You seem to thing that if people would *just accept your facts* they’d come to the same conclusions. You intellectually can handle the notion of things like schizophrenia, sociopathy, etc.–things where the brain is *structurally* different–but you make few if any allowances for that.
What Brown did made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, so you and many others feel that because of that he *must* have been goaded into it, that something Wilson did set him off.
No.
I’ve known *extremely* violent men, and these were *controlled*. It would take very *little* to set them off. Brown did not have the benefit of learning self control. I suspect that if you could really dig into his background you’d find a history of violence. Maybe small stuff like pushing that Indian clerk out of the way, but he’s a big boy, and people *would* back off.
Hell, his *mother* is currently being investigated for felony assault against Browns Paternal Grandmother. His step father is (purportedly) a convicted felon (drugs) and “former” street gang member (allegedly. He wears a *LOT* of bright red and throws gang signs).
He just finally met someone who wouldn’t back down.
Brown made all the decisions. Wilson didn’t choose to shoot Brown, Brown chose to put himself in a position to *BE SHOT*. At any time he COULD HAVE raised his hands and gotten down. He would the be suing the Ferguson PD for whatever. Instead he doubled down and died.
[1] There are cops who violate this, and there is (mostly) a code of silence that protects them. Partially this is because of the constant attacks on *all* police have caused the police to “tribe up”, partially this is because most of their targets are *not* good guys, but guys the law can’t touch. Problem is that’s not the system. Other problem is sometimes they’re wrong. This is distinct from criminal sociopaths who use the badge as a shield for their sickness. The only way we can get through blue code is to respect what police do, allow them to be human, but draw a line at clearly criminal behavior. Stop treating them like an occupying force and eventually they’ll stop treating us like they are an occupying force. It’s a feedback loop.
lol. First, there are still plenty of child molesters out there. So really, the only thing stopping you from living your dream of being a child rapist is a pair of balls. It’s true that the carrying of weapons has declined – but the right to carry state-of-the-art weapons was only generally granted to NOBLES. That is, people who were willing to risk death in battle to obtain power, which brings me to your next point. SJWs cannot “deny” you power. What does that even mean? If you’re “denied” power all that means is you didn’t have it in the first place. Like the feminists, SJWs etc you want to be “gifted” power, which is completely fucking impossible.
Shooting does solve things? Apparently not. And there is no winning side, only losers. And a lot of dead bodies and destruction.
One thing shooting solved: People in the Netherlands aren’t speaking German and saluting a swastika. I’d call that a win.
@esr et al
“Generally when shooting doesn’t solve things, it means you haven’t shot enough people yet. ”
So why is it that shooting twenty (forty?) times as many people than the German or UK police does not solve the problems? Why does all the incarcerations and police shootings give the USA a much higher crime rate than countries like Germany, the UK, and France? Different culture? [expletive]. You are burying your head in the sand
You are a martial arts practitioner. Didn’t you learn that the actual fight is the last resort? That a conflict is generally won before it starts?
I have no idea how police training in the USA compares to ours, but from all your arguing, I get a strong impression ours puts a lot more emphasis on preventing incidents and defusing dangerous situations.
Hey, no one mentioned the option that Wilson could have let Brown escape before things became dangerous. They could always come back and arrest him later. Brown alive and in prison, lives saved, property intact, Ferguson more peaceful.
Moreover, you are insincere. You all know that a lot of the 400 “justifiable” killings and the probably more “unjustifiable” police killings each year are not life and death situations. Even I have seen the reports, and I am not even trying. The point is not that cops should not defend themselves, the point is the police forces seem to be not even trying to prevent these things from happening.
@Mike Hanover
“You go to prison if you say unpopular things in NW-Europe (hate speech).”
Less often than in the USA. In the USA, people go to prison ten times more often than in Europe. For instance, journalists are more likely to end up in jail in the USA than in, say The Netherlands or Sweden.
@Mike Hanover
“You win by being the last man standing.”
Yeah, that worked in Afghanistan and Iraq. It does not even work in the US. Wilson won and Brown is dead, and now Ferguson is burning. Big victory for justice and safety that is.
@esr
“We subsidize their defense and fund most of the medical research they use,”
You should do some research, you might be surprised.
http://www.ofii.org/sites/default/files/FDIUS_2013_Report.pdf
Page 4. Direct investment of the Netherlands in the USA is $275B. More than a third of our GDP. Our research is on par with that of the USA, including our medical research. Just visit some impact sites.
@esr
“listening to ignorant pseudo-sophisticates tell us what yahoos we are.”
Who is telling whom they are yahoos?
@Roger Philips
“I mean if your measure of accomplishment is that very little of note occurs then yes, Finland is a raging success and naturally this extends off into the realms of crime and other social conditions as well.”
Finland is a beautiful country with a good technological base. I still hope to be able to visit it at least once. As Eric already wrote, I am from the Netherlands.
Our accomplishments? What should I say.
The pilgrim fathers left from here, we founded New York (New Amsterdam), and we invented the stock market. But that was all a long time ago. We also invented the Compact Disc. And it seems we were hired to reconstruct the levies of New Orleans after the US were unable to do so. In computers, Edsgar Dijkstra was Dutch, and in physics, Van der Waals and Lorentz were Dutch as was the discoverer of super conduction. The guy who recently found out why bird flue was not that contagious and was banned from publishing it, Ron Foucher, is Dutch too. He seems to play a role as virologist in the latest Dan Brown novel. Oh, we also build parts for the Rosetta satellite and the comet lander.
But this is silly. We are a highly developed industrial nation and as such contribute our share to the world. What is also silly is that you seem to be unable to look at another country and see something of value. I do see a lot of value in the US. But I also see a lot of missed opportunities.
@Roger Philips
“Stop pretending you have a brain inside your fucking nut please.”
I always love your deep insights and the subtle way you are able to express them. If there is a minor issue I still have, it is that you tend to keep facts out of your reasoning.
@PapayaSF
“One thing shooting solved: People in the Netherlands aren’t speaking German and saluting a swastika. I’d call that a win.”
There was much, much more involved than shooting. The shooting solved this conflict, as an earlier shooting had solved WWI, and earlier the French Prussian war and so on, all the way back to the Romans. It was the EU (and its predecessors) that “solved” the problem of a major European war in every generation. Lets hope for good.
@Winter
Blah blah blah. You have no ability to interpret text for meaning. I guess from now on every sentence I write will have to include thirty qualifications just to get across a simple point.
You are a stupid, disingenuous fuckwit. The post I was replying to stated that your home country was superior to the USA. And it is manifestly INFERIOR. Even if I had said “the Netherlands have ZERO accomplishments” – which I *didn’t* – you should have understood the intent. After all, no place has ZERO accomplishments. The only possible interpretation is that it was a comparison. Grow a fucking brain please.
My insights *are* deep – at least, compared to the little puddle you swim in. Your outright *abuse* of facts (as above, citing facts that don’t have the faintest fucking thing to do with anything I said) is one reason you are a mental defective. Whereas I don’t cite lots of little “facts” because it is not necessary for the kind of argument I am making. Your bullshit is absolutely INTERMINABLE. You simply can’t help yourself from reading ridiculous imaginings into the things I say. Someone says “the Netherlands is superior to the USA”. I say “no it’s not.. lol”. You say “BUT NEVERLANDS IS KEWL!!!” And your response when you are finally forced to confront you error is always to rationalize things by demanding that every fucking little thing be spelled out for you in utterly ball-aching detail, and further in a way that is anodyne enough to avoid upsetting your highly effeminate sensibilities.
#JusticeforZemir
Zemir Begic was subject to a revenge killing by 2 coloured young men for the death
of Michael Brown. The killers reportedly shouted “Kill all the white people”
before beating Zemir to death with two hammers. It has been reported that
previously the killers were involved in the Ferguson protests.
This was a revenge killing.
This is a plea for equality of outcomes: That justice, that is: an eye for an eye
comes to the people who killed Zemir Begic.
(C) Gnu GPL v2
Instrument: Cello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHmraL3wvE&feature=youtu.be
@Roger Philips
In a three sentence comment, you insulted Finland and asked one single question:
“Its accomplishments are what exactly?”
So I was polite and answered that question for my country.
@Roger Philips
“And your response when you are finally forced to confront you error is always to rationalize things by demanding that every fucking little thing be spelled out for you in utterly ball-aching detail, and further in a way that is anodyne enough to avoid upsetting your highly effeminate sensibilities.”
We have established long ago that my intelligence is insufficient to follow your reasoning. Therefore, you should not be surprised that I ask for annoying things like facts to support a statement. I am simply still at the intellectual level that I need facts before I believe overarching statements. In the future I may rise to your level where I do not need facts anymore, but alas, I am not that far yet.
Maybe if American cops had been trained to exercise a bit more restraint, shit like this wouldn’t happen:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-officer-shoots-daughter-crashes-car-en-route-hospital-police-article-1.1904362
“Hey, no one mentioned the option that Wilson could have let Brown escape before things became dangerous. They could always come back and arrest him later. Brown alive and in prison, lives saved, property intact, Ferguson more peaceful.”
Merciful $DEITY. You’re actually ADVOCATING that cops not do their fucking JOBS??!?!!
Free clue, though you seem to be especially clue-resistant about this, Winter: things already were dangerous. Brown had already committed a violent robbery. He had demonstrated a willingness to use deadly force against someone he knew to be armed. Letting someone like that go is exactly what a cop should NOT do. It is his responsibility to catch people like that, as soon as possible, so he doesn’t go out and hurt still more people.
You care one hell of a lot more for the lives and rights of violent criminals than either law-abiding citizens or the cops we pay to protect us. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
20/20 hindsight much, Jeff?
We just don’t know what that cop saw and heard in that garage, and that’s the only thing that matters.
This comment thread is getting a bit emotional and personal (to be expected given the topic and context); however, I would add that most Americans have a favorable opinion and close ties to Europeans (most of us are descendants and we have strong ethnic attachments). It’s modern Euro-socialism and it’s attendant wussification that annoys us.
In defense of Winter’s home country, most of the Dutch engineers that I know are extremely intelligent, very hard working, and tenacious as hell. I’ve never seen one quit on a problem, ever.
@Jay Maynard
“You care one hell of a lot more for the lives and rights of violent criminals than either law-abiding citizens or the cops we pay to protect us.”
I care for all lives. Cops, public, and suspects, the less dead people, the better. Pride should not go before lives.
And it is the function of a cop to “serve and protect”, not to execute. Only a court can decide on guilt and punishment.
You, however, do not seem to care much for the lives of suspects. At least not some classes of suspects.
@ Winter
In relation to Brown punching the cop, Brown wasn’t a “suspect”. This isn’t about “guilt and punishment”; it is about the cop doing his job and then having to defend himself against a violent and potentially lethal attack.
Have you ever even been in a fistfight? Intentionally coming up to a law-abiding individual and shooting him without warning, as per the Cleveland police department, is unquestionably murder and should be dealt with as such. A confrontation with a very large, aggressive adversary, however, is not a situation where you can call a time-out to pick things up at a later date in a courtroom. You seem to believe that dealing with such situations is like tag football.
Officer Darren Wilson was not deciding on guilt or punishment. He was defending himself from a violent attack.
At that point, while Mike Brown was still a suspect in the robbery, he was much more than a suspect in the attack on Officer Wilson. He was trying very hard to kill the officer. Officer Wilson had the duty to attempt to arrest him then and there, and the right to defend himself from the attack. That is why Mike Brown died.
If someone has so little regard for their own life as to attack a cop with deadly force, why should I give his life any more regard? Mike Brown attacked a cop. Get that through your thick European skull. That changes EVERYTHING.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyregion/grand-jury-said-to-bring-no-charges-in-staten-island-chokehold-death-of-eric-garner.html?referrer=
What did I tell you? The rule of law doesn’t help you if you’re black and being assaulted by a white cop. Not in this country.
>The rule of law doesn’t help you if you’re black and being assaulted by a white cop.
You say this, and yet on the numbers cops are more likely to shoot white suspects than black ones. See Race and Justice: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.
Cops respond to incentives; they know who they can shoot with relative impunity and who will get them politically crucified. Thus it’s actually safer, in a confrontation with police, to be black.
We’ve also recently learned that the media’s Black-people-are-never-wrong taboo is so powerful that a gang of black “youths” can beat a Muslim immigrant to death with hammers and the story will be suppressed. New rule, apparently only white people can be “islamophobic”.
Jeff, what do you know that the grand jury doesn’t?
“There simply is *no place* on the human body that it is *safe* to shoot with a pistol. Well, maybe a .22 short,,,”
No even that one. The .22 rimfire is an outside-lubricated bullet. There are rings of little grooves around it that are filled with wax to ease its passage down the barrel. When someone is shot with one of these little darlings, the wax picks up dirt from the surface of the skin and the bullet injects this dirt deep inside the body, which can result in untreatable, fatal infections.
Jeff’s right on the immediate conclusion, though he can’t help knee-jerk race-baiting. As Mark Bennett put it, being black might make getting murdered by a cop a bit more likely, but the races of the people involved are irrelevant–the cop’s not going to be held accountable for anything short of murder-for-hire. White shoots black gets media play, but black shoots white, white shoots Latino, white shoots white happen all the time as well.
Shoot to kill seems to be in the basic training of cops. However. I am wary about their skills in conflict and agression handling.
The NYC man who died was unarmed and did not resist arrest. And we just heard the harsh treatment leading to his dead was somehow “justified”. So this was another justified police killing.
These 400 justified police killings are not all like Mike Brown as you all so desperately insist on. And I assume these numbers should be ground to reevaluete the conflict handling skills of the US police. But I see no such effort.
Given that none of you here seems to see any problems with these killings, I am not surprised no reevalution is heard of.
>The NYC man who died was unarmed and did not resist arrest. And we just heard the harsh treatment leading to his dead was somehow “justified”. So this was another justified police killing.
Um, from whom? I have heard nobody here defending it.
My opinion is that that was genuine police brutality, utterly unjustified, in response to a trivial offense (selling loose cigarettes). The racial grievance-peddlers gave a far stronger case here than they did in the shooting of Brown.
Shoot to stop, as has been specifically pointed out to you in this thread.
Okay, at this point, you have to just be being deliberately obtuse.
@Christopher Smith
“Shoot to stop, as has been specifically pointed out to you in this thread.”
I asked about this when the Brown case was first mentioned on this blog. I interpreted the answer as positive:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6172&cpage=1#comment-1055465
@Christopher Smith
“Okay, at this point, you have to just be being deliberately obtuse.”
Sorry, but I got a lot of responses on this thread where I was attacked for complaining that 400 “justified” police killings each year is huge. Few of the complainers hinted that they found this number troubling. They only had complaints about my supposed “anti-cop” attitude. Most also tried to make it look like I was defending Mike Brown and accusing Wilson, which I never did. Your response is the first I notice that implies you do have problems with these killings.
>I asked about this when the Brown case was first mentioned on this blog. I interpreted the answer as positive:
The problem here is that the intention to shoot to stop implies the pragmatic necessity of shooting to kill, even though killing is not the desired end. This is something tender-minded people have trouble reasoning about.
What I would want, and what a cop wants, is to end the threat rather than specifically desiring for the assailant to die. But in many situations (including Brown’s attack on Wilson) the only way to reliably end the threat is to use lethal force. It is inflammatory, at best, to claim that Wilson wanted Brown to die; what he was trained to do was stop violent suspects with lethal force rather than allow them to injure or kill him.
@esr
“Um, from whom? I have heard nobody here defending it.”
The jury. At least that is my interpretation of it. Or will it not be tabulated under the “justified police killings”?
@esr
“what he was trained to do was stop violent suspects with lethal force rather than allow them to injure or kill him.”
Ok, but to my untrained eye, shooting at the center of mass is not very different from shooting to kill. Btw, how is this different from the instructions for the military?
As far as I know, our police is trained to shoot at the legs after firing a warning shot, if they have to shoot at all.
>Ok, but to my untrained eye, shooting at the center of mass is not very different from shooting to kill.
You shoot at COM for two reasons: (1) to minimize your chances of missing, and (2) to specifically minimize your chances of perforating someone downrange of the target. Killing is not the goal of shooting at COM, though it is a frequent effect of doing so. If one is intending to kill, the head would be a better target, but it’s also a more difficult one.
The ethics of the situation are written in miniature in Mozambique drill, which is COM COM head (stop, stop, kill) You don’t take the third shot – most likely to be lethal, most likely to miss – if your target is down after the first two. I said this before.
>Btw, how is this different from the instructions for the military?
The military are in fact trained to kill. Unlike me, or a cop, a military shooter aims to terminate the most enemies he can as quickly and efficiently as he can.
I, as a civilian sheepdog, might make a judgment call on someone less deranged and muscular than Michael Brown to try to use nonlethal force in order to avoid the onus of killing (accepting some minor risk to my own life). A cop might be required by department regulations to do so. A military shooter wouldn’t be; that kind of restraint is not in his job description, nor should it be. This is why line military make very bad substitutes for civil police.
[citation needed], especially for that warning shot. “Warning shot” is a synonym for “firing in a random direction”.
>Warning shot” is a synonym for “firing in a random direction”.
That is correct. Warning shots are stupid and dangerous to bystanders. Any police training that teaches otherwise is incompetent.
Warning shots are also, legally, deadly force, indistinguishable in the law from actually shooting at the target. The required justification, and the legal ramifications, are identical no matter where you aim when you pull the trigger.
If your police are trained to shoot at the legs, they are trained to hurt others. Not only are the legs going to be much harder to hit simply because the person they’re trying to stop is likely to be running – and therefore moving their legs vigorously – but the likelihood of overpenetration and hitting something behind the target goes way up. This latter part is less likely from a European cop simply because Europeans don’t get firearms, and think 9mm Parabellum is a more than amply powerful cartridge, but by the same token, a 9mm hit to the leg isn’t going to be as likely to make the attacker give up unless it hits something vital like the femoral artery – in which case we’re back to the subject being dead.
I must also point out here that, while I’m troubled by the Eric Garner killing, he was resisting arrest. I’m not any more ready to rush to judgment over that one as I was over Michael Brown’s killing.
My remark about warning shots was base on local lore and proved to be wrong. I have looked it up.
The only requirement is that there is a clear warning before using force. A warning is not required when there is acute danger. No mention is made about warning shots. There are specific instructions that forbid the use of force against trunk or head if it can be at all prevented.
I have a document that discusses the legal use of force by the Dutch police. Sadly, it is in Dutch:
https://www.nationaleombudsman.nl/uploads/rapport_2013-055_verantwoord_politiegeweld.pdf
Obviously, our police do get complaints about the use of excessive force.
@Jay Maynard
“This latter part is less likely from a European cop simply because Europeans don’t get firearms,”
That is only true in the UK (or even England and Wales). Most countries in Europe deploy armed police. I have no clue at all about the use of ammunition or hand guns.
When I say Europeans don’t get firearms, I mean they don’t understand what it takes to be effective in using them to stop violent attacks. There is no European equivalent to Colonel Jeff Cooper. Hence the European misconception of the 9mm Parabellum – middling-powered, whose chief virtue is that you can pack a lot of them into a comparatively small space – as a powerful round.
As for the facts of the Eric Garner case, it’s not as cut and dried as it looks. <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/03/actual-facts-Eric-Garner"Brietbart has an examination.
…and rereading Winter’s message, he makes my case for me:
“There are specific instructions that forbid the use of force against trunk or head if it can be at all prevented.”
As discussed, this is a terrible idea. Only someone who doesn’t understand firearms would claim this is a good idea, let alone make it legal policy on deadly force.
@Jay Maynard
“Only someone who doesn’t understand firearms would claim this is a good idea, let alone make it legal policy on deadly force.”
Yeah yeah. Our police is not supposed to use guns. They are reserved a a last resort. Not killing bystanders is part of their training. And they are also not supposed to kill suspects.
You know, the German police fired a grand total of 85 bullets in a year, for the whole police force (I do not have numbers for the Netherlands). That means their focus is mainly on other means of force.
No, it doesn’t. It means that Germans don’t attack cops. I have no trouble believing that at all.
And if you’re required by policy, if not law, to shoot in an ineffective manner that carries with it a much greater likelihood of harming the innocent, then you’re naturally going to be more reticent to shoot in the first place. If you need deadly force to defend yourself from an attack? Sucks to be you, I guess.
@Jay Maynard
“If you need deadly force to defend yourself from an attack? Sucks to be you, I guess.”
I think you are exaggerating.
I cannot get the number of cops killed in Germany in the line of duty. But altogether, its seems to be around the number of people killed by cops. That is, around half a dozen or so each year.
As for the Netherlands (population 17M), here is a complete list of all cops who died from unnatural causes since WWII (second last column is time of death). Most died in traffic accidents:
http://www.politie.nl/binaries/content/assets/politie/documenten-algemeen/onderwerpteksten/tuin-van-bezinning/lijst-omgekomen-collegas-tuin-van-bezinning-2013
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_omgekomen_Nederlandse_politiefunctionarissen
Once again, you’re ignoring any difference in the rate at which bad guys attack cops. I would be astounded if that rate was not very much higher among the victims of thug culture than it was among the citizens of the Netherlands.
@Jay Maynard
“I would be astounded if that rate was not very much higher among the victims of thug culture than it was among the citizens of the Netherlands.”
Received wisdom around here is that violence breeds violence. That is, a violent population might breed a violent police force. But also, a violent police force breeds a violent population.
In a completely different arena, these two approaches have been compared. Our army was send to the province of Uruzgan in Afghanistan to relieve the US forces whose operational tactics had pushed the province to the brink of revolt. Here is a mixed account of the results by the Economist.
http://www.economist.com/node/13279199
Draw your own conclusions.
>Warning shots are also, legally, deadly force, indistinguishable in the law from actually shooting at the target. The required justification, and the legal ramifications, are identical no matter where you aim when you pull the trigger.
As in, you can be prosecuted, convicted and put away in prison for many years for simply ‘firing a warning shot’ in a situation where it is determined (ultimately by a jury of your peers) that lethal force was not justified. There was in fact a case of that happening recently, though I can’t seem to find a link to it.
Jay, Eric, et al.: if German (and other European) police are trained to use 9mm rather than more effective arms, and the public is aware of this, that ought to raise the chances in any individual’s mind that he or she can successfully resist arrest, and therefore increase the expected number of attempted resists in a reasonably large statistical sample population (such as that of Germany). That does not appear to be what we’re seeing. What do you suppose accounts for this? Public unawareness? Culture? Some other aspect of police procedure not yet mentioned?
@ Winter – “Draw your own conclusions.”
I’m all in favor of letting the Dutch military be the policemen of the world and using their compassionate tactics to civilize third world peoples.
The US military is, and should be, a bad-ass tool of extreme destruction and only used when necessary to utterly eliminate a threat or foe.
Moral of the story, don’t hire a warrior when you need a nanny.
Paul, it’s a difference in culture. To illustrate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZS2nu6NPxQ
I find this BMW commercial totally lacking in credibility. No German would be that untidy, no matter how severe the provocation.
For the same reason, I just don’t see Germans attacking cops at the same rates thugs in the US do, not by at least a few orders of magnitude.
Both my wife, and several of our friends from Germany who’d worked at the local Bosh plant, had noted to me that the Germans don’t refer to a house as being “clean”, they refer to it as being “proper”
I think it’s Bill Cosby who once joked that a brit could be bleeding out in front of you and would be apologizing for leaning and getting blood everywhere while trying to stand straight.
Yeah yeah. Our police is not supposed to use guns. They are reserved a a last resort. Not killing bystanders is part of their training. And they are also not supposed to kill suspects.
“They are reserved a a last resort.”
“And they are also not supposed to kill suspects.”
You have a contradiction here.
Black woman talks about
“Bosnian immigrant was invading”
“At the expense of black infant babies”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxgRIHCiUfg
Basically “Zemir Begic Deserved it” is what she is saying.
If “accidents” happen it’s “your fault”
“Invaders”
She is happy he was killed.
So this is the belief of the black community vis a vi the
bosnian community. it seems. There you have it.
Zemir Begic murdered by Mike Brown protestors
Cello song in remembrance.
http://youtu.be/5eHmraL3wvE
#JusticeForZemir
@Jay and Milhouse
The UN have witness accounts. What evidence have you they were false?
The fact that the UN quotes them is enough. The UN has no crediibility. There is no need to address its allegations, even to look into them, just as there’s no need to address an allegation made only in The Onion or The Daily Currant, or a sworn statement made by a convicted perjurer.
@Milhouse
” The UN has no crediibility. There is no need to address its allegations, even to look into them”
Yeah, shoot the messenger and ignore any facts you do not like. That seems to be a popular position here.
Btw, are you also advocating abolishing witnesses in criminal courts? It would streamline matters a lot.
@Milhouse
Not that police brutality in the USA is a new concern. Her are some other report to ignore from last millennium:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/147/1999/en
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports98/police/uspo06.htm
I know, these contains unpleasant facts and therefore, cannot be true.
As in, you can be prosecuted, convicted and put away in prison for many years for simply ‘firing a warning shot’ in a situation where it is determined (ultimately by a jury of your peers) that lethal force was not justified.
Until recently there was a perverse situtation in Florida, where prosecutors and judges took the position that even where deadly force would have been justified in self-defense, a warning shot was by definition not self-defense, and therefore a felony that could put a person away for decades. You’d think nobody could be that stupid by accident, and you’d be right. But since this was happening, the legislature had to make a new law clarifying that wherever deadly force is lawful, warning shots (however ill-advised) are also lawful.
There was in fact a case of that happening recently, though I can’t seem to find a link to it.
You may be thinking of the case of Marissa Alexander, who was widely misreported as having fired a warning shot. In fact the evidence showed that she was not defending herself at all, and that she fired directly at her victim’s head, presumably with the intent of killing him. That she missed was almost certainly luck, not design. Inexplicably, Angela Corey re-offered her the plea deal that she turned down several years ago, and this time she was smart enough to take it.
Yeah, shoot the messenger and ignore any facts you do not like. That seems to be a popular position here.
The UN is not a reliable messenger. Anything it has to say is not worth listening to.
Btw, are you also advocating abolishing witnesses in criminal courts? It would streamline matters a lot.
No, of course not. What would make you think so? But in every court I’ve ever heard of, known perjurers cannot give sworn testimony.
Oh, Amnesty and HRW, two shining examples of credibility! Yeah! Amnesty may once have been a respectable organization; I don’t know. But by no later than 1990 it had become irrelevant. HRW, as far as I know, was never relevant. Anything either group has to say is pure noise; you can’t even rely on them to always say the opposite of the truth, in which case you could just reverse whatever they say and extract some information. No, there is no reliable relationship between what they say and the truth, so there’s no point in paying them any attention. The same goes for any “witnesses” they purport to cite. One would have to independently research whether these “witnesses” exist, whether they are credible, and whether they said what they are quoted as having said. There’s simply no basis for assuming any of these things to be true, so there’s no reason to go to all that trouble.
>There was in fact a case of that happening recently, though I can’t seem to find a link to it.
Spent more time on it, eventually found it.
It’s the case of Lee Wollard.
>Until recently there was a perverse situtation in Florida, where prosecutors and judges took the position that even where deadly force would have been justified in self-defense, a warning shot was by definition not self-defense, and therefore a felony that could put a person away for decades. You’d think nobody could be that stupid by accident, and you’d be right. But since this was happening, the legislature had to make a new law clarifying that wherever deadly force is lawful, warning shots (however ill-advised) are also lawful.
Yes, Lee Wollard’s case also seems to have been in Florida.
Statements like these are the definition of shooting the messenger.
I suspect that the UN, Amnesty, and HRW are not considered reliable by conservatives because they report facts which make conservatives uncomfortable. When faced with such facts, conservatives tend to skip right to “pounding the table”.
The Linux kernel has a make target “mrproper”. Saying “make mrproper” cleans up ALL auxiliary or generated files and restores the tree to a completely pristine state.
It turns out that Mr. Proper is the brand name in several countries of Europe of a home cleaning solvent known to Americans as Mr. Clean…
What about the witness who stated that Mike Brown was running away — the witness identified as Officer Darren Wilson? (Go to page 218 of his grand jury testimony.)
The rabid-sheepdog “justification” for shooting Mike Brown was taken apart like a two-dollar wristwatch — by a feminist college student who checked and presented the facts. Now only one thing remains: if you’re white and a cop in Murka, you can get away with the murder of a black man.
Can’t wait for the conservatives to shoot this messenger.
@Milhouse
“One would have to independently research whether these “witnesses” exist, whether they are credible, and whether they said what they are quoted as having said.”
But you can do do that. And you will be hard pressed to find cases where these organization lied and produced false statements and fictuous witnesses. Because there are many organizations that try to find such lies, both AI and HRW check and double check.
No, the problem is that you simply refuse to look at any evidence you do not like. In other words, you do not care about the victims. Blame the victim seems to be the one and only ethics of your political philosophy.
Oh, good grief, Jeff. The physical evidence shreds your own arguments. Brown was not running away when he was shot. If he was, the autopsy results would not have shown the bullets entering from the front. Yes, he started to run away, but then he turned and started running toward Officer Wilson. Your page 281 “smoking gun” says nothing about what Brown was doing when he was shot.
Similarly, your feminist SJW idol is so full of shit it’s leaking out her ears. She already had to retract one claim, that Brown was the same size as Officer Wilson. When someone’s leaning over and running toward you, and the adrenaline is pumping, missing high is not at all unheard of, and the target area for a body shot is smaller anyway. Brown’s fingerprints may not have been found on the gun, but his DNA was. The eyewitnesses with identical stories may well have been coached by the same guy who went around trying to intimidate other witnesses. No true eyewitness stories ever coincide in every detail. Far from the claim the simple fact is that if Brown had had his hands int he air, the bullets could not have entered his body as they did. The market owner is desperately trying to distance himself from Brown’s crime because he wants to keep the mob from destroying his life.
Sorry, but that article you linked to could have been written by Al Sharpton. It bears at best a very superficial resemblance to the truth.
@Jef Read
“The rabid-sheepdog “justification” for shooting Mike Brown was taken apart like a two-dollar wristwatch — by a feminist college student who checked and presented the facts.”
Sorry Jeff, but that evidence will not be acceptable here as the messenger is a feminist. So whatever she writes must be ignored.
Obviously, the vocal defenders of Wilson will not read the jury report themselves.
@Jay Maynard
“The eyewitnesses with identical stories may well have been coached by the same guy who went around trying to intimidate other witnesses.”
Or they may not have. You are reserving this for the witnesses you do not like, but not for the ones you do like.
And it is clear Browns DNA is found on the gun. His blood splashed over Wilson. Only his fingerprints on the gun would be material proof he actually grabbed it.
And Brown was stopped for jaywalking. That coincides well with the cash flow model of the Ferguson police you so strenuously denied.
>And Brown was stopped for jaywalking.
Not really. Jaywalking provided a pretext. It’s pretty clear that Brown was actually stopped for being a suspicious person near the scene of a robbery – and Wilson’s instincts were correct in this, because he was in fact the robber. This kind of judgment is part of what cops are paid for.
>That coincides well with the cash flow model of the Ferguson police you so strenuously denied.
Jay means well, but he exemplifies why conservatives’ prejudices prevent them from grappling with some of the problems behind Ferguson effectively. The ghetto archipelago is eloquent about the “cash flow model”, which is only partly driven by a desire to corner funds. In significant part it’s also a result of perverse incentives created by “tough on crime laws”.
That bad news is that the left’s response is even less helpful. Everything, for them, has to be about “institutional racism”. But as we get more perspective on the event it’s clearer that the Brown shooting wasn’t, and neither was the astonishingly stupid and hamhanded police response afterwards. As usual in the U.S. today, what looks like racism is better understood as classism.
I think Jay is right about the anti-Wilson witnesses having been coached. It’s not a symmetrical situation; the hands-up and shot-in-the-back stories are grossly incompatible with the forensic evidence. We have objective reasons to disbelieve them that have nothing to do with politics.
Opinion leaders in the media and government are proactively driving a meme that the US has become a corrupt police state in which innocent minorities are being killed both routinely and indiscriminately. Regardless of the facts or impact of any particular incident, this macro-level movement is having an incremental effect on the herd’s behavior and mental state. Anxiety depresses rational thinking in favor of conformist emotional reaction. Riots are a form of stampede.
@TomA
“Opinion leaders in the media and government are proactively driving a meme that the US has become a corrupt police state in which innocent minorities are being killed both routinely and indiscriminately.”
But there is more than just the killings. Any short search on your favorit search engine will result in dozens of reports about police officers trying to frame random people upto a cop who tries to frame a victim of his for dui
http://lastresistance.com/5655/cop-runs-stop-sign-causes-accident-arrests-sober-victim-dui/
In many (all?) cases the only rescue of the victim was some recording the cops did not get hold of.
@TomA
And here another example
http://blog.angryasianman.com/2014/09/chicago-to-settle-police-abuse-lawsuit.html?m=1
What is crucial is that these reports induce a strong impression that the police is unable to keep their collegues in check. Victims only have a chance when there is some evidence out of reach of the officers.
I can understand that the people start to believe the police operates outside of the law and can do to them what they want.
Well, if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck…
@ Jeff Read – “Well, if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck…”
I suppose that one way to eliminate systemic police misconduct is to kill all the non-conformists and reduce the population to a compliant herd of untermenschen; i.e. socialist utopia.
Take off those duck-colored glasses, Jeff.
Among OECD countries, the more socialist nations tend to fare better when it comes to human rights than the USA. Sweden is ranked #1 on the IHRRI. The United States doesn’t even place in the top 15.
It makes conservatives uncomfortable to look at the facts which say that the United States is decidedly not the greatest country in the world.
Yeah, if you look at the list of rights that page lists, you’ll find like “right to an adequate standard of living.”
Not only no, but hell no. They betray their leftist bias by even thinking that such a right exists.
What do you make of this? http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
It doesn’t sound good. On the other hand, her story does match the physical evidence; “Hands up don’t shoot” doesn’t.
> On the other hand, her story does match the physical evidence;
Of course it does, her first contact with police was after the forensic report was released, after you (and everyone else, just pointing out the timeline) had blogged about it, and after comments on that blog entry had fully quieted down. There’s a good chance that she wrote her statement (in which she incidentally changed the reason she was in the area from what she’d previously told investigators) after she’d first been in front of the grand jury.
>>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
>It doesn’t sound good. On the other hand, her story does match the physical evidence; “Hands up don’t shoot” doesn’t.
I haven’t read the GJ testimony or notes. Might be worth looking into. I’ve heard that the prosecutors pretty much ripped her apart, and nevertheless the GJ decided not to indict.
Hers was far from the only story they ripped apart. Many on the other side that tried to claim Officer Wilson shot Brown while he was running away, or shot him while he was lying on the ground, got their stories shredded, too.
In the end, Officer Wilson wasn’t indicted because the physical evidence fully backed up his story.
Back in 2014, we were discussing whether the police in the USA are overly violent. There were quite a number of commenters here that ridiculed me for saying that.
Just a reminder how much a few months can change things.
Since then, it was shown conclusively that the people of Ferguson were extorted by the police force. And not only the people of Ferguson.
We also have seen a nice selection of cases where police officers murdered (black) men in cold blood. One even drew a gun against a black teenage girl at a pool party. All these cases were uncovered only because someone filmed the whole thing. It was obviously clear that in each and every case, the police officer would have gone free, had it not for the recordings.
Here is the newest crop:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/body-cam-captures-cop-shooting-motorist-in-head-murders-charges-follow/