Family of 'Swat' Victim Sues Kansas Police, Lawmakers Propose 40-Year Jail Terms (cbsnews.com) 291
An anonymous reader brings more updates about the 'Swat' call that led to a fatal police shooting:
The gamer who dared another gamer to send police officers to his home had offered the address where he used to live, until his family was evicted in 2016. While he may also be charged for the fatal shooting that followed, the victim's family has now sued the city of Wichita as well as its police officers, with their attorney saying the city "is trying to put all the blame on the young man in California who placed the swatting call. But let's be clear: the swatter did not shoot the bullet that killed Andy Finch. That was an officer working under the direction of the Wichita Police Department."
The attorney points out that the 911 caller in California provided a description of the house which didn't match the actual house in Kansas, adding "How can Wichita police department officers not be trained to deal with this type of situation...? Prank calls are not new," according to CBS News. "The lawsuit cites FBI crime statistics showing Wichita has a ratio of one shooting death for every 120 officers -- a number that is 11 times greater than the national ratio and 12 times greater than the ratio in Chicago."
Meanwhle, Kansas lawmakers have introduced a new bill proposing a penalty of 10 to 40 years in prison if a swatting call ends in a person's death, which would also cause the offense to be prosecuted as murder.
One lawmaker argues that the bill is necessary because under the current system if a person phones in a swat call, "there's really no consequence for his actions."
The attorney points out that the 911 caller in California provided a description of the house which didn't match the actual house in Kansas, adding "How can Wichita police department officers not be trained to deal with this type of situation...? Prank calls are not new," according to CBS News. "The lawsuit cites FBI crime statistics showing Wichita has a ratio of one shooting death for every 120 officers -- a number that is 11 times greater than the national ratio and 12 times greater than the ratio in Chicago."
Meanwhle, Kansas lawmakers have introduced a new bill proposing a penalty of 10 to 40 years in prison if a swatting call ends in a person's death, which would also cause the offense to be prosecuted as murder.
One lawmaker argues that the bill is necessary because under the current system if a person phones in a swat call, "there's really no consequence for his actions."
Why only when there is a death? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the barest minimum, the swatter needs to pay the cost of the police action he caused, which will be probably a few thousand if not tens of thousands of dollars after the government accounting is done.
Then making a false accusation and/or a false statement which could have caused other harm since the SWAT team wasn't available for real emergenicies.
Make swatting immediately illegal with at least possible jailtime, with punitive damages and of course actual damages incurred by the police department. Then the civil suit from the victims.
Re:Why only when there is a death? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you call it a police action. Sounds like the police treated that civilian as an enemy combatant.
Re: (Score:3)
Vietnam was a "police action". The term fits.
Re: (Score:2)
Vietnam was a "police action". The term fits.
When historians discuss Viet Nam, they don't refer to the Vietnam Police Action. It's the Vietnam War. Don't glorify the government propaganda machine.
Re: (Score:2)
Note the use of scare quotes. I was saying that if the term "police action" can be applied to a war, then it can be applied to shooting an unarmed civilian.
Yes, lets (Score:2, Informative)
Cops don't have dangerous jobs in the USA - roofers, retail workers, fishermen about a dozen other professions all have it harder than cops do, and thats before taking out car accidents that have nothing to do with Officer Fife needing to get his gun off.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They cannot hold people responsible for the costs, since it is only the police that determines how to react and how much cost to involve. They should, however, be held accountable for false accusation or claims involving the police, this is almost certainly already illegal and just needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Let's be clear though, the responsibility for the death lies 100% with the police. It is their job to ensure that they act reasonably to any circumstances. Clearly the police n
Re: Why only when there is a death? (Score:2)
Sure they can. In most US jurisdictions if you call in a false fire alarm, they can charge you for the cost of the fire department response. Why would police be different?
Re: (Score:3)
So I'll run a screwdriver down the side of your car. I won't have to pay because I didn't know in advance how much the respray would cost.
The DeVry JD alumni meeting is over there ------------------->
Re: (Score:2)
Your original claimwas that you can't be held responsible for costs that you couldn't ascertain in advance.
"They cannot hold people responsible for the costs, since it is only the police that determines how to react and how much cost to involve. "
It's rubbish, as logic and case law both prove.
Re: (Score:3)
Since we're not willfully obtuse authoritarians, we can see that cops who had a house (that didn't match the description in the 911 call) surrounded, at distance, were in cover and yet shot the first person to come to the door within a matter of seconds.
Re:Why only when there is a death? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would go one more, If i call in a false fire alarm, and a fire truck, while lawfully going through a red light, accidentally hits a car who didnt hear the siren, killing the young family in the car, am I not ultimately responsible for their deaths? Anyone calling in a swatting should be responsible for not only any deaths, but the civil suits that will fly after.
I am in no way excusing the excessive force used by the police, but the swat caller set in motion a chain of events that led to the whole murder.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Around here (BC), emergency vehicles are supposed to only go through a red light if safe, which in practice means they pretty well come to a stop at a red light, make sure the intersection is clear, then go through the intersection.
Cops are also supposed to stop giving chase if it is dangerous due to high speeds etc and I can think of at least one case where a cop was convicted of dangerous driving causing death IIRC for driving stupidly with his siren on and killing someone.
Consequential Damages are crazy (Score:2)
Because of the nail the shoe was lost
because of the shoe the horse was lost
because of the horse the rider was lost
because of the rider, the message was lost
because of the message the battle was lost
because of the battle the kingdom was lost
So the king sues the iron monger that provided the iron that made the nail?
Re: (Score:2)
If the cavalry horse-shoe maker was intentionally acting to cause this chain of events, then yes, yes the king should.
Otherwise your analogy seriously misses the point here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would argue that the answer to your question is no.
Take a very slightly different circumstance. My house is on fire, I call in a fire alarm and someone is killed in a traffic accident in a similar manner to the one you describe. Am I responsible for their deat
Re: (Score:2)
while lawfully going through a red light, accidentally hits a car who didnt hear the siren
It is only "lawfully" when the driver is certain that all conflicting traffic has stopped. In other words if he hits one, it was not lawfully. At least not in my country.
Re: (Score:2)
Poor analogy. If I call in a false fire alarm, the fire department shows up, and without investigating applies water to the entire building, who is at fault for the water damage? I would certainly say the fire department since they blindly applied water without all the facts.
Re: (Score:2)
Simply monetary? No. Easily fixed with a GoFundMe.
The swatter needs to go to jail as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, the accountants and auditors in this case are going to cost tens of thousands of dollars - it will run over into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, especially with all the press handling.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, but your approach may only help with a fraction of swatters. Many of those swatters are underage, or their families are already so deeply in debt, that an additional bill they don't pay won't do anything to them. No, in addition to all of what you're suggesting, I think that if you swat somebody (regardless of age):
* You should automatically lose your xbox (even a family one), any other gaming console, your computer (if it's in your room), your tablet (if any of your accounts are on it), your smart
Re: (Score:2)
Fucking cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They have guns, you don't. They can use them with impunity, you can't. He who has the guns makes the rules.
Re:Fucking cops (Score:5, Interesting)
I have many guns.
The Conservative dichotomy: I must be armed so that I can keep the police from oppressing me/We need strong police to protect us.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The liberal dichotomy: I don't trust my fellow citizens being armed / I must trust the same police that I hate to round up and arrest all the citizens with guns.
Re: (Score:3)
The Conservative dichotomy: I must be armed so that I can keep the police from oppressing me/We need strong police to protect us.
Yeah, "law and order" types need to think it through. You don’t want big government messing up your life, but you want tough enforcement by big government?
You want to protect your right to own guns, but you support the police who will be at your door to take your guns the next day if courts would let them?
Some of them are old and remember being afraid of crime 30 or 40 years ago when there was a lot of crime. There’s less crime now.
Re: (Score:3)
And then its the cops doing a no-knock raid on your house for a bogus warrant (or when they should be going to the house across the street) and they will shoot your dumb ass if you're holding so much as a cell phone?
Re:Fucking cops (Score:5, Insightful)
We demand officers plunge headfirst into dire situations.
Time to demand they stop doing that then. Understand a situation before getting involved and opening fire on people.
Anyone can jump in and start just killing people. We don't need police for that. There are plenty of guys in the prisons who would be happy to do it instead.
Re: (Score:2)
The police aren't to blame for something that could have been prevented. They're only rightfully blamed for things they actually do. Stop killing innocent people. Stop killing non-innocent people when there's an alternative choice. Even if that means something bad happens that could have been prevented.
Re:Fucking cops (Score:4, Informative)
Then we have the Branch Davidians. The first two cops arrived to simply serve papers and were fired upon one being killed as I recall.
Your recall is VERY wrong. Nobody walked up to serve a warrent. The compound was rushed by a large group of ATF agents armed with automatic weapons including a team whose job was to immediately shoot all the dogs no matter what else happened. It was a paramilitary assault from the start. Peaceful execution of the search warrant was never contemplated by the ATF.
Also, the ATF "fibbed" a bit to obtain the warrant.
And there's a serious issue. Law enforcement at all levels going for the exciting and violent option because knocking on the door and having a polite conversation or arresting an unarmed man jogging alone isn't nearly as much fun as raiding a compound with paramilitary gear.
Re:Fucking cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Put your righteous indignation away, sweetheart.
I, for one, will not. Remember that the SWAT raid did not occur at the swatter's intended target, but at a mistaken address where some random guy with no experience at being the target of a paramilitary raid just opened his front door and went, "Wha..?" Blasting away at such a person without checking to see whether he was an actual menace is criminal negligence not just on the part of one untrained donut muncher, but on the part of whoever trained this team. Indict them both and take away this town's SWAT toys for good.
Re: Fucking cops (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean imagine if it was a real hostage situation and the hostage was sent to open the door.
Re: (Score:3)
I mean imagine if it was a real hostage situation and the hostage was sent to open the door.
You jest, but now that SWAT teams are behaving this way, that is exactly what the bad guys are going to do if the cops show up: shove the hostage out the door, and then jump out a back window as he is being reflexively blown to pieces.
Re: (Score:2)
So the police are now run by Leo Wanker [youtube.com]?
Re:Fucking cops (Score:5, Insightful)
They received an anonymous call that someone had hostages, they showed up and a man walked out unarmed. They gunned him down. This is not a mistake in the heat of the moment, it's untrained unhinged heavily armed people not knowing what their job actually is.
None of the other emergency services operate like this. If you call in a fake fire to someones house the fire department don't show up and "in the heat of the moment" burn it to the ground. If you call an EMT to someones property they don't make an "honest mistake" and administer a lethal dose of medication to a perfectly healthy individual who answers the door.
These people aren't police officers. They're mob justice. Shoot first and think about the situation afterwards. The motto is "protect and serve" not "guns blazing."
Re:Fucking cops (Score:5, Insightful)
they showed up and a man walked out unarmed.
That man moved his right hand up very quickly, starting from the waist. That would look to the cop like he was pulling a gun from his waist, and so he was shot. Next time you raise your hands, raise them extremely slowly, so as to prevent the cop from assuming you are pulling a weapon from your pants.
I support law enforcement but this guy was killed for no reason. He was an innocent guy who opened his door to see what was going on outside. He sees a lot of lights and people are yelling at him. He may have been raising his hand to try to shield his eyes from all those lights so he could see what was going on.
The fact that police work can be a dangerous job should not grant police the right to shoot first and ask questions later. They are in the wrong profession if they can't make correct decisions in the heat of the moment. There were multiple cops outside, only one fired. That cop shouldn't be an armed police officer. One innocent dead guy is one too many.
Re:Fucking cops (Score:4, Insightful)
And for all the cops knew, this was one of the hostages walking out the door.
A handgun no one saw. Don't know about Kansas cops, but I had firearms safety when I was eight and one of the cardinal rules was "always know what you are shooting at". Also the 911 all described a completely different house, a fact that none of the pathetic cop excuse makers will acknowledge.
Decisions like "hey we're pretty damned safe since we're a hundred feet away and in cover".
Empty hands two seconds after walking out his own door.
See above on distance and cover. Even if that was an actual hostage taker, the cops chances of winning the Powerball on his way home would be greater than the suspect getting off a successful hip shot at that range.
They had shields.
There was a little court case a while ago that settled the issue of "just following orders".
Re:Fucking cops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That girl wore some very provocative clothes. That would like to the man like she wanted to be raped. Next time you go out, wear very conservative clothes that show no more than 3% skin so as to prevent men from assuming you want to be raped.
See how your logic works?
An innocent person with no fucking clue what's going on should be allowed to react with fear and wanting to INSTANTLY SHOW HE IS NO THREAT.
Re: (Score:2)
And get shot for failing to promptly follow orders.
And that doesn't even consider the panic a person must be feeling when they are suddenly the target of a large number of guns, spotlights and shouting - I'm sure they can calmly asses the situation to determine the correct speed at which the shouted orders should be followed.
Re:Fucking cops (Score:4, Interesting)
It's barely February and American cops have already shot more people than most other countries do in a decade. And that's only looking at lethal shootings, not cases like a 2014 incident where a cop shot a man for following the cops orders [cnn.com] who survived.
The fact that cops can gun people down for no reason and get away with it, throughout most of the country, puts the lie to that statement.
40 years for the police officer ? (Score:5, Insightful)
we have a police violence problem. the victim was killed by the police and was unarmed. Well I think he was unarmed, apparently it's difficult to find that out. No matter, if he needed to be armed he would have been.
by all means let's put the prankster in jail for life and let the officer who showed such incredibly poor judgment and a police department that is operating under almost amazing levels of incompetence skate away without even a slap on the wrist.
This is not police thinking they were in a bad situation, this is a situation in which police think they need to handle every situation with a SWAT team.
Re:40 years for the police officer ? (Score:4, Insightful)
we have a police violence problem. the victim was killed by the police and was unarmed. Well I think he was unarmed, apparently it's difficult to find that out. No matter, if he needed to be armed he would have been.
Indeed, there was a report just this week about police in Baltimore planting toy guns to justify shootings. That's the sort of thing that erodes confidence, and extends beyond mere violence, to a pattern of corruption.
This is not police thinking they were in a bad situation, this is a situation in which police think they need to handle every situation with a SWAT team.
To be fair, this isn't a case where that's evident. It is a problem, but don't use this to excuse it. Instead, quite rationally appreciate that while they were mislead into circumstances where they would appropriately deploy a SWAT team, the use of force was nonetheless not properly warranted, and treat the police officer appropriately. If they fired in violation of established protocols and training, then hold them accountable. If they were trained to shoot in such circumstances, hold their trainer accountable, because such protocols are clearly inappropriate and ill-advised.
Re: (Score:2)
Give this cop apologia a rest. For all the LEO knew, the man walking out the door was a hostage. An obviously unarmed hostage.
Cops have to deal with false calls all the time. If they can't do that without being dumb panicky shits that murder people, they have no business wearing a badge in the first place.
Any investigation of police must be independent (Score:5, Insightful)
Every state government ought to have a group whose sole purpose in to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes by local police.
We also need to outlaw qualified immunity [washingtonpost.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can at least have cops and DA's from different jurisdictions/forces doing the investigating. Police officers shoot an unarmed man minding his own business? At least have the county sheriff's office investigate. Oh, it was the county sheriff's that did the shooting? Have the state highway patrol do the investigation. etc.
There would still be an institutional bias but it wouldn't be as bad as organizations clearing themselves of their actions.
I don't like laws like this! (Score:2)
BTW I am not a lawyer so I truely don't know what I am talking about
Example
Murder Premeditated - did the individual do things in the real world related to planning the crime.
Murder Hate Crime - what was the individual thinking/feeling when the crime happened.
Do we really need all these special new laws? When our standard laws might be used as a path to justice.
Just something I wonder about as an uneducated lay person
Just m
Re: (Score:2)
Murder Premeditated - did the individual do things in the real world related to planning the crime.
Murder Hate Crime - what was the individual thinking/feeling when the crime happened.
Do we really need all these special new laws? When our standard laws might be used as a path to justice.
Yes, we do. We need all these special case laws so when police stop someone, there is at least one law they are breaking unknowningly, allowing police to arrest, detain and search their victim for more criminal activity.
Our justice system is very very broken. In a lot of municipalities, justice is a means for the municipality to make money. It's part of their budget to include projected fines and such paid by victims of police.
Don't believe it? Just take a census of any detention facility in the USA, te
Re: (Score:2)
Rich people aren't in jail, they can afford to make deals that exchange jail sentences for a big juicy fines and court fees.
Sorry for double post, but I had to add in.. rich people make bail, they can afford lawyers to drag the thing through court for years, costing the state enormous amounts of money. While poor people can't make bail, rot in jail without means to make enough money to pay their fines or hire a lawyer, so they rot in jail longer, get a public defender eager to make a deal with their colleague at the other table. Debtors prison basically. It's all super broken and in dire need of massive reforms.
Deadly Weapon (Score:2)
Here's a question, why shouldn't swatting be considered assault with a deadly weapon.
There are definitely big issues with how police deal with reports of crimes, recall also the swat team showing up recently at the home of someone with a phone mistakenly reported as stolen. A big issue is that for someone not a criminal and not currently engaged in a crime the police appearing is entirely unexpected and their brain isn't primed to process the situation and even realize commands are aimed at them.
This is why ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I lock someone in a cage with a hungry lion (Score:5, Insightful)
* If I lock someone in a cage with a hungry lion - it's not I who killed them.
* I release a cobra into someone's bed and it bites them - it's not I who killed them.
* I chain someone to a pole in hyena country - it's not I who killed them.
This is all true - but it ignores the context, which is that I put them into an extremely dangerous situation which led to their deaths.
I make irrelevant comparisons (Score:2)
Tigers, lions and hyena's oh my aren't people, and aren't trained to deal with hostile situations. Cops are. And when said cops fuck up - like shooting at the first unarmed guy to come out the door within seconds when they were at distance and behind vehicles and ballistic shields - they should go to jail. For a longer sentence than the prank caller.
Being a cop isn't even in the top 20 most dangerous jobs in the USA, once you take out car accidents which don't have anything to do with them needing to get
Re: (Score:2)
This fellow used social engineering to create a context for the cops: that they had an active shooter/imminent mass murder situation, and that he'd tied up his
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Insightful)
So there is nothing between police officers getting away with being trigger-happy and no police at all?
One might think that proper training and guidelines together with reasonable consequences for officers who abuse their powers might lead to a police force that dies a good job without needlessly murdering citizens.
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why you Black Lives Matter types resort to the sort of racism that you've just displayed. Not only does it make you look like hypocrites, but it only serves to hurt your cause.
Americans of any and all races do support convicting a police officer who does murder somebody else.
The problem is that when it comes to these recent incidents involving the police, often the supposed "victim" wasn't innocent at all. What you wrongly call cases of "murder" end up being pretty clear-cut cases of the police acting in very reasonable self defense.
Let's take the notable Michael Brown incident [wikipedia.org] as an example. The media and those on the political left immediately portrayed Brown as a "victim", before all of the evidence came out. Then as the facts of the case became known, it became clearer and clearer that Brown was the aggressor. There was indisputable footage showing Brown violently attacking a cashier minutes before he encountered the police officer. Then it became clearer and clearer that Brown had launched physical attacks against the police officer, including at least one attempt to steal the officer's firearm, before the officer was put in the extremely difficult position of having to use deadly force to defend himself against Brown's aggressive physical attacks. The officer was not a "murderer". He merely defended himself from Brown's attacks.
Time and time again we find that these incidents do involve the police being attacked with weapons, or the police officers involved otherwise having their lives put in imminent danger by a violent attacker.
Ignoring the reality of these sad situations doesn't help your cause.
Mislabeling very reasonable acts of self defense by the police as being "murder" doesn't help your cause.
Making generalizations about people based on the color of their skin, like you just did, doesn't help your cause.
Failing to acknowledge the problem of black-on-black violence in most major American cities doesn't help your cause. There have been single weekends in a city like Chicago where more blacks have been killed by other blacks, than there have been blacks killed by police officers (of any race) across the country in the preceding decade.
For all of your talk about "justice", people like you seem to be the least inclined to do anything positive to actually achieve real justice.
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet there are huge numbers who do support the "it was self defense!" argument for police and citizens alike. Ie, George Zimmerman claims "stand your ground" as a defense even though he followed Trayvon Martin after police dispatcher told him not to, and is not even convicted of manslaughter.
Maybe they don't support police murdering someone, but they also rephrase it as self defense, or a quick reaction based on police training, or that the suspect probably was guilty of something so that makes it ok.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
George Zimmerman claims "stand your ground" as a defense
No, he did not. Zimmerman's defense was based on a claim of pure self-defense. It was NOT based on "stand-your-ground". The preponderance of the evidence is that he was walking away when Martin assaulted him.
Personally, I think stand-your-ground laws are stupid. If you have a clear choice between killing someone and safely backing down and walking away, you should be legally obligated to refrain from killing.
But the Zimmerman-Martin incident is irrelevant to that, since it was not a SYG situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Police called it stand-your-ground, according to wikipedia. So my mistake.
Re: (Score:2)
... George Zimmerman ... even though he followed Trayvon Martin after police dispatcher told him not to, and is not even convicted of manslaughter.
So if you follow someone against instructions and he attacks you, you're supposed to let him kill you? I guess that's why we have jury trials: to answer those sorts of questions.
What crime would you convict George Zimmerman of for following someone against instructions where nothing bad ends up happening? You must consider following someone to be criminally reckless in some way for this to make any sense.
Re: (Score:2)
An unarmed person was shot, and there was little evidence about what really happened or if he was really attacked or merely felt threatened. Zimmerman had phoned the police often in days and weeks before the shooting, complaining about suspicious people and that they kept getting away.
Re: (Score:2)
... there was little evidence about what really happened...
Hence the Not Guilty verdict. When no one can really say for sure what happened, it's reasonable to doubt that he wasn't engaged in self defense. He doesn't have to prove it was self defense. The state has to prove it wasn't.
Obviously I have no idea whether it was or wasn't.
Re: (Score:2)
You muddy the Michael Brown issue. You make it sound like he was shot in a struggle for the gun, but in fact he ran away and the officer pursued him and killed him. You know little or nothing about the cause you are intent on criticizing.
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Insightful)
One lawmaker argues that the bill is necessary because under the current system if a person phones in a swat call, "there's really no consequence for his actions."
So in other words, the police themselves are saying, whatever you do, don't call the police. If you call the police, innocent people are likely to die.
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Informative)
That should put an end to it.
Sadly, it wouldn't. Making punishments more severe only has a weak effect on how well they work as deterrents. People always assume if you punish a crime really harshly, no one will commit it. But it doesn't work. People go on doing it anyway. If you're thinking of committing a crime, whether the punishment would be five years in prison or ten just isn't going to affect your thinking much.
The thing that actually does make a big difference is the certainty of punishment. If you think you can get away with it, you just don't consider the potential punishment much. But if you think you'll probably get caught, that becomes a big deterrent even if the punishment is a lot lighter.
Re: (Score:2)
Singapore would be a good counterexample. Consider crimes in the rest of the western world that are met with relatively light sentencing, like drug trafficking and "illegal firearm trafficking" (defined as being in possession of 2 or more illegal guns). In Singapore they are met with a mandatory death penalty, and not surprisingly there's (1) remarkably low occurrence and (2) even lower recurrence of those crimes.
A remarkably low occurrence because once you're facing the death penalty, why not do more crime. It's the problem all justice systems face, the punishment is supposed to be proportional to the crime but you have a limited dynamic range. Sure we could dial up to where jaywalking = death penalty, but then kidnap-rape-murder couldn't really be punished any harder. Singapore keeps the petty crime away through huge penalties. Does it keep serious crime away... I doubt it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not death penalty for everything, but proportionately high penalties for everything. Fines for seemingly common things like fare evasion or littering reach into the S$1000s. Thus, no littering and no one dares jump a turnstile. For price perspective the cheapest adult train fare is less than 80 cents.
A few years ago Singapore was listed as the #1 safest country for women to travel alone. This is a country where four completely opposite cultures live peacefully (Chinese (Atheist and Buddhist), Islam
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Funny)
'tis true. Look at other countries with strict sentencing. America for example executes people or puts them away for very long periods in horrible prisons and has one of the lowest murder rates in the free world. Same with illegal drugs, those harsh penalties mean almost no illegal drug use. Meanwhile there is the various Scandinavian countries with very light sentencing plus coddling prisoners, very high crime rates.
One thing that won't affect crime rates is culture. Having a culture of getting along and deference to authority won't make any difference. Another is economics, when stealing a loaf of bread in Great Britain meant being hung, along with most other crimes, people just sat down and starved rather then turning to crime and the crime rate was almost non-existent.
Re: (Score:2)
I see your sarcasm, but it's completely wrong. We do not have strict sentencing on the level of Singapore. There's "deals", "parole/good behavior", and "release due to overcrowding" which all allow violent offenders the chance to get back out there and do it again. Our prisons are also a lawless place - they do not rehabilitate but instead breed worse criminal behavior. As for the death penalty, there's reluctance to use it, and no such thing as a speedy, mandatory, no-pleading-out death penalty. The U
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless it's not. Cops in NYC insisted that stop-and-frisk was responsible for lowering crime rates, and if the policy was ended, crime rates would go back up. Policy was ended....and crime rates continued to fall.
Re: (Score:2)
You can stop trying to fuck that chicken now. I know you would really like to make this "the left supports unaccountable police unions" thing happen, but it's not going to happen. Unless you can point to where leftists and the UAW have gotten together to allow auto workers to beat people heads in with wrenches (for no reason) and get away with it scott free, of course.
Re:Bad Precident? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a cop who wants to protect life and serve the people of his community rather than shoot them? Let’s hire cops like that.
Learn what’s going on before opening fire on people. Or don't be police officers at all.
We don’t need you to shoot us. We can shoot each other just fine. We need a police force to prevent violence and loss of life, not cause it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How about a cop who wants to protect life and serve the people of his community rather than shoot them? Let’s hire cops like that.
After 5 years of "Fight for the TEAM" there are never any such cops.
Us v. Them all the way
Republicans, mostly
Re:Bad Precident? (Score:4, Informative)
How about a cop who wants to protect life and serve the people of his community rather than shoot them? Let’s hire cops like that.
Learn what’s going on before opening fire on people. Or don't be police officers at all.
We don’t need you to shoot us. We can shoot each other just fine. We need a police force to prevent violence and loss of life, not cause it.
That is a very valid criticism and generally a good idea that works just fine in many other parts of the world to the point where some countries don't even arm their police officers. Your suggestion is, unfortunately, also fundamentally incompatible with the traditional American fondness for 'come down on them like a ton of bricks' justice where police are heavily militarised, eager to shoot first and ask questions later and trained by defence contractors to use tactics pioneered by the US Army and the IDF when dealing with insurgents in the Middle East.
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:2)
How about a cop who wants to protect life and serve the people of his community rather than shoot them? Letâ(TM)s hire cops like that.
Sounds good; when are you signing up?
Re: Bad Precident? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is leftists pretending that the shitbags are, "jus' a good boy on his way to church. He wus goin' to college next year!" when, in fact, he wus a violent drug-selling asshole who just brutalized the local deli owner, and tried to steal a cop's gun.
Whether that’s true or false, we still don't need police officers to go murder that guy. The deli owner can do it just fine. Or the rival gangs. Or just any random guy walking by. Guns are cheap and easy to fire.
We need police to prevent random violence and retaliation. Their purpose is to give a society an alternative means of dealing with problems. If the police are just another rival gang, then it's time for the public to stop sponsoring and supporting them.
Re: (Score:3)
The theory is that every organization that surpasses a certain number of members eventually starts to make compromises when the optimal applicants start running out. In the case of police this means resorting to either hiring Wild Bills or social workers and it seems PD has made their choice.
So do less policing then. Stop trying to micromanage (for profit) everyone's driving. Stop being tax collectors. Stop worrying that a 19-year-old might drink a beer. Stop enforcing licensing rules that mostly protect incumbent businesses from competition. And, if you must do some of this enforcement, send unarmed administrators to do it so the real police can do real police work.
And - this is really critical - fire the bad police.
Re: (Score:3)
The reason for lax enforcement is that everybody(*) speeds, and the speed limits are set lower than necessary under the assumption that every car on the road will speed. If someone managed to pull over every car going over the limit, there wouldn't be room on the shoulder, an
Re: (Score:2)
Look up the number of incidents handled every year vs. shootings. You will quickly see that you already have what you ask for.
So we can immediately fire the bad officers like this guy in Kansas then? There’s only a few of them, right?
If police killings of innocents are so rare that we can just live with them as an inevitable consequence of policing, then we can just as easily live with immediately firing the few officers involved.
Re: (Score:2)
The point isn't that firing a few police officers solves the problem. The point is that they'll never agree to even that.
The "it's rare, so nevermind" argument is phony. What they're really saying it "it's rare and it doesn't happen to us, so nevermind". Change it so it affects them and all of a sudden it won't matter that it's rare.
Re: (Score:2)
This cop may or may not have done something wrong.
Can we can agree that shooting and killing completely innocent people is "wrong"?
Is there any indication this guy was NOT shot by a cop?
So a POS caused the SWAT team to be dispatched. Sorta like calling in a fake bomb threat. When it comes down to reality, who pulled the trigger that ended an innocent life? What are we doing about THAT problem?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"We need a police force to prevent violence and loss of life, not cause it."
...What you want is a physical impossibility. They can't be there before it happens unless you want a police state where they are literally listening and watching to everything from the get go.
Police exist to provide a means of settling disputes without the blood feuds and cycles of violence and revenge that exist when there's no law. That's how they prevent violence.
The problem is that they're now handling this role very poorly, bringing violence where there was none before and escalating minor situations into deadly ones.
This is also the same argument that comes out when people talk about the failing schools. Blame the teachers! The parents that are raising the feral rats aren't at all to blame.
I have a similar answer for that teacher. If the kid can't be taught, we don't need to pay you to fail to teach him. Anyone could do that. Or no one. It you can't be blame
Re:Bad Precident? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who are ready and willing to shoulder full responsibility for their actions. Meaning they think about what they do instead of acting as killing automatons with an "oh well" attitude.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't see it making any difference to the honest decent ones.
Both of them.
Re: (Score:2)
If I read the summary correctly, the proposed law doesn't charge the incompetent police at all, only the person who makes the misleading call.
The summary seems to garble together two different actions, one aimed at police incompetence and the other aimed at making prank phone calls...although "prank" is not exactly the correct term for a call that can be expected to lead to, if not death, at least severe property damage. Still, there's often too little actual intelligence involved to call it malicious, and
The police were idiots (Score:2)
How difficult is it to bring a spare gun to a SWAT. They could have just given it to the dead victim and everyone would be happy.
Re: (Score:2)
He/she thinks that punishing the people who make fake phone calls that lead to a police shooting death will cause the police to not come out. Pedantically, he/she's right, but only because people will stop making the fake phone calls.
Re: (Score:2)
California has deep pockets. This gamer was supposed to be in prison. But CA let him out early. So it's on them.
Re: (Score:2)
Courts ordered California to bring prison population below 137.5% of design capacity. California did not add capacity to bring prison population below this mandated point. Their decision, their liability.
Re: (Score:2)
[ Wheres that Fucking AI ] When u need them. Cops are the first job I hope is done away with. Replaced by a robot.... that would be sweet.
It won't happen in the foreseeable future for three reasons:
1. Police Unions
2. Public Distrust Of "Robot Cops"
3. Police Unions
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)