THE POLICE PROBLEM
The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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Our definition of ‘cops’ is broad, and includes prison guards, probation officers, shitty DAs and judges, etc — anyone who has the authority to fuck over people’s lives, with minimal or no oversight.
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RULES
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
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ALLIES
• r/ACAB
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INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
• Killings by law enforcement in the United Kingdom
• Killings by law enforcement in the United States
• Know your rights: Filming the police
• Three words. 70 cases. The tragic history of 'I can’t breathe' (as of 2020)
• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.
• Police lie under oath, a lot
• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak
• Police unions and arbitrators keep abusive cops on the street
• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
• When the police knock on your door
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ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
view the rest of the comments
Here's an idea: Maybe we shouldn't be trying to SUBDUE people who are having mental health crises. Maybe we should try some de-escalation. Maybe we should try to get them to accept sedating meds. Shit, maybe we should hit them with sedating meds from a fucking tranq gun. I can think of several steps along the path long before we arrive at "shucks, guess we had no other option but to murder them" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am NOT an expert on the topic, so if someone with more knowledge has something to add, please do. Anyway:
Tranquilizers do not work like they do in movies. It’s not uncommon for tranquilizers to require several minutes to take full effect, and a dangerous person can do a lot of damage before losing consciousness. (I’m not trying to suggest that the person in this case qualifies as “dangerous”.)
Also, the tranquilizer dosage needs to be adjusted according to the body mass of the target. There’s no “universal” tranquilizer dart that’s safe to use on both a skinny teen and large adult. Too little tranquilizer, and it will be only partially effective or not effective at all. Too much, and it can be deadly, which negates the point of using a tranquilizer in the first place.
Lastly, there’s the problem of drug interactions. Even if the dosage was correct, one or more tranquilizer ingredients could have an adverse reaction with any medications or other drugs that may be in someone’s system. Actually, even without any drugs playing a role, tranquilizers can still be dangerous. A person’s system can react badly to tranquilizers for any number of reasons. An ambulance and team of paramedics would need to be on site.
I do see your point, and I agree that there should be a much greater emphasis on de-escalation techniques. Unfortunately, tranquilizers aren’t the easy answer that they appear to be.
I'm a nurse. We tranq people in healthcare regularly when they become a danger to others. "Danger to self and others" is not the moment where we worry too much about dosage calculations, allergies, or drug interactions. If you're about to hurt someone, you're getting intramuscular haldol. They will need immediate medical attention, but it's much better than murdering them.
Lol I didn’t realize I was talking to a nurse! You know more about potential medical issues than I do. I appreciate the feedback!
Haha, no worries. I realized it wasn't clear that I wasn't just speculating lol. Like I get that someone with a bladed weapon is a threat, but if they're isolated from immediately harming another person, then trying to talk then down should always be the first option. It IS possible to talk a psychotic person into taking medications voluntarily, if you can calm them down a little. Or talk them into putting down a weapon so you can get them with an IM dose. (I'm kidding about the tranq gun lol, but seriously deploying something like that would be a better option than using an actual gun ffs.)
It's a little amazing to me how many members of the general public are chomping at the bit to dehumanize people with mental illnesses who get agitated. Y'all, I guarantee I've dosed your dementia grandma when she got wigged out and started kicking people and trying to yank out her IV line. Agitation is a temporary psychological state, not a character trait. People don't deserve to be murdered because they got flipped out.
They did try and talk him down.
Yeah that famous de-escalation technique known as tazing someone. Please do everyone a favor and shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.
What would you prefer them to have done?
Is it possible to do this with a dart though, or does this require an injection?
I'm glad someone else is looking at this rationally.
You guys are off the deep end.
The deep end is murdering people with a mental health crisis.
Sounds like they exhausted every other option to me.
So just so I'm clear...
Shooting him = Totally justified
Incapacitating him = off the deep end
Must be a fun reality to live in buddy
You're off the deep end for thinking that would work, tranquiliser darts aren't really a thing for people.
Tranquilizers do work on humans though. So do tasers or several other non-lethal options, which is really the point people are making while you're choosing to be pedantic.
It's pretty common for a tazer to not work, for various reasons, and if it doesn't, your chances of getting your firearm out before they get to you are slim to none. Similar story with this hypothetical tranquiliser gun.
Would you take that chance?
Police are trained and supposed to take that non-lethal force chance, yes absolutely. I am personally not a cop, because I don't want to be in those situations. But people that DO sign up to serve and protect the public should be held to a higher standard than the general public, especially considering the tools, training, and resources (money) police forces have at their disposal.
You're not going to convince me the only way to safely end this altercation was by shooting the mentally ill man to death. We have to ask ourselves how we can do better so we can learn from these situations and less people die violent deaths.
To use your your logic: why do tranquilizers even get produced at all then? Why don't we just shoot every unruly animal? Wild and sick animals are just as or more dangerous than a man with a knife on a stick.
They did try other options before shooting him though. It unfortunately sounds like they ran out of options.
He had a knife taped to a stick.
They put numbered him.
They could have done a lot more than just kill him.
We don't have video anyways to know exactly what happened.