An article in The Economist lays out the problems:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...8/armed-police

With some interesting statistics:

Stark contrast...
 

But, then again, guns are outlawed in Great Britain.:salute:

As for us cousins across the big lake, we have plenty of guns. Most in the hands of responsible law abiding owners. It's the much smaller percentage of desperadoes and whack jobs that have made things extremely tough on our police officers. Giving them the idea that every citizen is a potential cop killer and in need of deadly force to subdue 100% of the time.
So, our local, state and federal governments hire Neanderthals to be their enforcers of a plethora of laws and regulations.
Cops and criminals have one thing in common. They're both considered sociopaths from a mental health point of view.
We have plenty of good cops and a select few bad cops who make their good brethren look bad in the eyes of the public. No unarmed suspect should ever be shot, tasered or killed in cold blood by a police officer. Ever!

Mister Brown was shot 6 times. SIX! And he's not the only citizen who has been murdered by an angry police officer who allowed his emotions to cloud his judgement.
A badge is not a license to kill.

That is the problem, the police have to be armed to counter the armed citizens who might be criminals (and I know that people are going to turn around and say 'when have criminals obeyed the law in regards to firearms', however as the article also points out:

)

and as such the default position to avoid potential police fatalities is to go for lethal force if there is a possibility that a weapon is involved.

In essence, de-militarising the police might change the police attitude, but I'm not so confident it will lower the amount of people killed by the police in the US every year.

I don't think there is a solution. I wish we could b like great Britain, that stat is amazing.

Of course,there could be consequences to policing unarmed.http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...le-murder?lite

I do not know where i read it, but if the police gets armed tank-like vehicles, assault rifles, black masks and all that military stuff, it will at some point behave like the military.

And the terrain will become a combat zone - the neighbourhood, that is. And the enemy will be civilians living in that zone.

Until they do not step down from overreacting, there will only be further escalation.

Depends Wolferz, a big man can easily kill another with his hands or do severe damage, worse, one blow, take his gun and shoot him. If Mike did in fact go for the officers gun, punch him, that in itself could give him the legal right to shoot a fleeing felon. If that person turned and charged, that would give him the legal right to shoot. The fact is, cops don't have to risk their body or lives based on the possibilities of what might or might not happen. You attack one, he can shoot you.

Now, if Mike surrendered. went to his knees and got blasted...that's murder, but seems many conflicting statements.

The fact is the media is causing all the stir for the ratings....nothing else. No one is giving the officer the benefit of the doubt, everyone is claiming his guilt before trial.

5 Gunfights That Changed Law Enforcement
In the past 25 years, American law enforcement tactics, procedures, and policies have evolved because of these horrific incidents.

http://www.policemag.com/channel/pat...forcement.aspx


everyone cop wants to go home at the end of the day. Better equipment helps with that. Keep the bump helmets, vehicles, and firearms but ditch the camo and BDUs and get back to blue and show a little bit more restraint.

This is true, however when you look at the statistics, this is not a common event, and to be honest if they had been armed it probably wouldn't have done them much good because he got the element of surprise on them. The guy shot 31 rounds in 32 seconds, and since the hoax call that brought them there mentioned nothing to do with firearms then even a US cop would have been surprised when they opened the door and received a face full of ammunition followed by a hand grenade.
Incidentally, that was the last time a British police officer was killed by a gun in the UK, sadly I'm sure there will be others, but when you make the comparison, and the consequent rise in fatalities, it's ultimately not practical to do so.

I don't think I would call it a murder or refer to the officer as angry until all the facts get straightened out.

Right said! :up:


<O>

Aye, as tragic as it is, at the moment the worst it is is manslaughter, until there's a formal inquiry as to the events then we just won't know.

Of course, the Catch-22 is that the inquiry will be likely held by the 'establishment' and as such, the results will likely not be believed by the aggrieved parties. A full public, open, inquiry is probably the better option, but that will be a long and messy process, however hopefully one that will yield results that will be more satisfactory than an internal inquiry.
We will see, last night was a quieter night than the one before it, so we'll see what happens tonight, with any luck the civil disorder is starting to burn out now. Some rain might help, it did in London.


Seems like someone was listening to me, of course, this being America it just has to go one better and have hail...

Federal involvement could go a long way to help quell distrust of the county's handling of the case. Sometimes it's very difficult for a district or a county attorney to convince a minority community that he or she can be objective where the police are concerned. However, the Civil Rights Division prosecutes police officers all the time. That's what they do. Plus, blacks have traditionally held a higher opinion of the federal government then they have of local and state jurisidictions (for a multitude of historical reasons I won't get into, but I'm pretty sure it started with The War of Northern Agression. :D)

But the downside is that they work slow. The answers, and potential charges so many are demanding, won't come quickly. We're talking months, not weeks and some civil rights investigations have taken years. FBI agents have now reportedly conducted more than 200 interviews and even that will take a long time to plow through.

There's never going to be a solution. Things like this will always happen. But there are hundreds of things we can do to help reduce the frequency and severity of these kinds of incidents. Brown's case is pretty muddied, and there are all kinds of conflicting eyewitness accounts, so really not much can be definitively said about him. But there is no question that the police response to the protests were simply grotesque. Simply the fact that tear gas is used AT ALL anymore is disturbing. What, it's illegal to use tear gas in war but when you're firing tear gas canisters, which have a very real chance of severely injuring or even killing someone simply from impact, indiscriminantly into crowds of citizens, it's ok? Threatening to shoot reporters over a camera light? The police collectively presented themselves as authority figures that were far above the law, and it felt as though they treated everybody as if they were criminal threats. And in my opinion, this attitude is one of the primary reasons why so many incidents occur and why so many innocent people get harassed, injured, and even killed. It also really doesnt help when police are trained as if they were deploying to Feluja and their firearms are admired and awed instead of respected for what they are: dangerous weapons that are only to be used in the utmost desperate of situations as the last resort. Police training, accountability for actions, and generally the attitude of many police officers in this country need a complete overhaul.

But those kinds of attitudes and rules take a long time to change. One of the more effective and quicker solutions is to require things like body cams or things of that nature. Not only will incidents like this never again have to rely on he said-she said, but overall the quality of service should go up. A cop on camera is far less likely to use excessive force when they understand theyre being filmed and far less likely to overreach their authority. It also helps the cops themselves when unjust complaints are filed against them. Just something to consider.

Normally i would agree.

However: Shot six times, two in the head, one from above leaving the ear.
In the 1950ies and 60ties in Alabama, "straightened-out facts" would have added a block of concrete and a well, and called that a clear case of suicide.

Everytime you think those times are over (and if you ask a contemporary citizen anywhere in the US, they are), such things happen again. The US is not the only nation where such things happen, but just of all there .. a pity.

I wonder what happened to the US after 1999, for me it seems there was a real break in social behaviour, and rights. Of couse, 9/11 did not help the situation.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BviGFEtCAAAxEMz.jpg:large


Things seem to be dying down now, the weather helped I think, but I think the anger and rage is drying up, and the media has refocused on IS after the recent beheading.
It might flare up again when news snippets are released, but otherwise I think we might be seeing the end of this now, not so much by police intervention but just through sheer old fashioned patience. The clean-up will begin, it already has really, the community has helped, and some businesses will reopen, others will not...I think the QuikTrip has folded, I heard that somewhere but I'm not entirely sure.
Of course, the important thing that should start after that is the investigation and the asking of vital questions into race relations in America, is there a problem? Certainly when the BBC asked a group of people the results were...telling, one could say, and perhaps something that should be considered, because ignoring it really does not seem to be an option in todays society.