Ridiculous Police News (Specific events)

[archibaldcrane]

Oscar's problem is that he was lying and the jury saw through him.

[Salodin]

I wish I could've been home to crush all the ridiculous fucking arguments people were making for the cop yesterday. None of you bothered to familiarize yourself with the case or read the 28 page letter to Lorreta Lynch I posted. Also, to the people defending the cop and blaming dispatch for making it look like an "active shooter" situation, if the cop spent more than two seconds to notice a kid sitting on a fucking park bench, I would think his critical thinking skills would have kicked in and realize "OK, not an active shooter". Just because the cop is an ignorant, self perseving, mentally unfit for duty price of shit with zero critical thinking skills doesn't mean that he's absolved from a quite clear legal definition of murder. I mean, if I do something illegal based on bad Intel, do I get away with it? Is ignorance suddenly an excuse.

Yes, sometimes ignorance is an excuse. While you might not agree with it, it has been used, successfully, many times to defend police officers.

What he did was wrong, but illegal in the current sense? A stretch at best.

[Melena]

Not even for officers. As others have stated, ignorance in the course of self defense has been used more times than I can count to be acquitted/not charged. You hear about it more for military, but in the end bad intel costs lives. So yes, that dispatcher should be just as responsible. People also need to learn that wrong and illegal are separate things.

[Salodin]

Half this thread is the result of people not knowing the difference between wrong and illegal. It's hilarious to watch people foam at the mouth because they can't tell the difference.

[kuronosan]

I never said what he did was illegal, but it was damn sure wrong and borderline retarded.

[Tyche]

People need to read and familiarize themselves with what is actually law and what they believe is law, as the law is quite clear. But apparently reading is a lost art on people in this thread.

[Melena]

I never said what he did was illegal, but it was damn sure wrong and borderline retarded.

Yes, and i think for the most part, everyone is in agreement over it. People are just raging trying to have him charged for something he legally can't be charged and would easily get off due to how the laws work. I mean we even had a military person post a link arguing that if they were in the military, they'd be in jail and the link completely contradicted his point. When people get angry over something, whether it's a social justice thing, or getting cut off on the freeway, they go pants on head retarded.

[kuronosan]

Keep in mind that he can still be charged for reckless behavior in civil courts.

He may not have broken "the law" but that doesn't mean he can't be taken to court.

[Kryssan]

Well, tbf I think Fiye was stretching on that one a bit, trying to make something fit. I agree the cop was in the wrong - he didn't try to deescalate at all - but I do not think trying to make a military scenario fit this is applicable or even a good idea. If you were to try, Article 92 ( from a ROE / GC POV ), 119 ( maybe ), 133/134 ( always ) would have been better choices.

I've been out for a while and I know that every theatre has it's own ROE anyway, but general ROE is still pretty... open.

The Standing ROE authorize the use of all “necessary means
available and all appropriate actions” in self-defense. They
specify:
(1) “Attempt to De-Escalate the Situation” if
possible by providing the hostile force a
warning and “opportunity to withdraw or
cease threatening action;”
(2) “Use Proportional Force–Which May
Include Nonlethal Weapons–to Control the
Situation;” and
(3) “Attack to Disable or Destroy” when “the
only prudent means” to stop a hostile act or
intent.
While these three measures appear conservative, the guidance
further states “pursue and engage hostile forces that continue to
commit hostile acts or exhibit hostile intent,” an action that
may go beyond restrictive views of self-defense. Furthermore,
the Standing ROE do not impose a duty to retreat in selfdefense.
Instead, they contemplate escalating measures,
beginning with a warning, if feasible, and culminating in an
offensive pursuit. They also confirm that “[t]he individual’s
inherent right of self-defense is an element of unit selfdefense.”

Military forces are not police forces and should not be parade forces. Old old debate we really don't need to get into. This is not a military situation, and military appliances for it don't fit well. IE: the military can always punish you under the articles even if a civilian court can't touch you, and often times will do just that ( but it also doesn't count as double jeopardy either, and I know the Navy at least loves to throw the book at you twice - military and civvy when applicable ).

I imagine cops have some sort of similar thing, and the punishment for not following it... well I dunno. A police unit is not a military unit, and it doesn't have the same connotations with it AFAIK. I'm not sure if, even if the police unit did have some sort of ROE, what the punishment for not following it would be outside of administrative action - I do very much doubt it'd be a court action, without the court action being performed separately.

TLDR: Ethics, not Legality.

[Salodin]

Keep in mind that he can still be charged for reckless behavior in civil courts.

He may not have broken "the law" but that doesn't mean he can't be taken to court.

But you can almost always be taken to court civilly. Zimmerman got off the hook, but he was still sued civilly. This cop was in the wrong, no one disagrees, but he is not criminally culpable in the slightest. He will be taken to poverty civilly though I'd imagine.

[Quicklet]

Probable cause is a much lower standard to meet than reasonable doubt though. I agree that being wrong does not necessarily equate to being legally guilty, but in a case like this there at least needs to be a trial. I am not in favor of these grand juries being used as a second layer of defense arguments when they are not intended to be used that way and almost never are used that way except when the prosecutor already has it in his mind not to charge someone.

[dasva]

Not really sure how this all got to be police should value all other peoples lives over protecting themselves but that's not what you sign up for.

You are signing up to keep peace and maintain the safety of peaceful citizens which will likely involve putting yourself in dangerous situations in order to prevent or stop disruptions to that peace but that doesn't mean needlessly increasing your danger more than necessary to accomplish that goal.

So while I'd certainly expect them to put a higher priority on the life of random Joe Bystander I wouldn't expect them to necessarily put a higher priority on what appears to be a reasonable threat. The necessarily being a bit of a risk assessment on things like likelihood, or lethality or immediacy of the threat or if bystanders are involved etc.

I wouldn't blame their reactions to the situation they were told some guy was waving a gun and then that guy pulled on them. Tut the way they approached was idiotic at best and helped create the situation. I mean who the hell pulls up that close to a potential gunman? If that had been a real gun they might be the ones shot instead. Or random people in the surrounding areas etc

[Yuri-G]

Only if you remove the overall context.

No one becomes a cop to die. No one joins the army to die. No one works in food service to get screamed at. I didn't get into medicine to get sued. No one plays football to get injured. I could keep going, but the point is that those are the inherent risks associated with those lines of work and you do your best to avoid those situations.

You don't go looking for trouble or, in the case of football, you don't go injuring other players so that you don't get injured.

The job of a police officer is far more dangerous than that of the average citizen - which is understood and respected by most people - and that danger is being used to hold them to a completely different standard of behavior in life-threatening situations - and rightfully so.




The problem is how far that standard has been shifted in favor of the officer. Right now it feels like the standard is basically "Do you think you might have possibly been in mortal danger? Then deadly force is justified." And that sounds all well and good until you consider the fact that a cop's line of work constantly places them in situations that might be deadly. It's extremely easy in this climate for a cop to legally justify the use of deadly force whether or not deadly force was really needed. To put it simply, the fact that an officer's job is dangerous has been used (from a criminal law perspective at least) to give their lives a greater value than that of the average citizen. "Your job is dangerous, so if you kill someone without really needing to, that's ok - we understand." As a citizen, I disagree with this wholeheartedly. Erring so far on the side of the officer's caution devalues the lives of citizens to a dangerous degree.


To put it bluntly: Officers don't know whether or not they'll come home every night, especially in dangerous areas. I understand this. But if you think someone else's mother, daughter, brother, or father should be the one to not come home, if you think someone else should lose a family member because you felt threatened - whether or not the threat was real, whether or not you had a better way to remove the threat than to straight-up kill someone - if you think your life is more valuable because you're a police officer and your job is dangerous, then you are a poor example of what an officer should be. And yet that is the prevailing attitude these days.


On the same note but a different tact, some quick googling turned up this:


https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2015 129 officer deaths in the line of duty this year, including K9 deaths as well as deaths from heart attack, 9/11 related illnesses, etc. I added up deaths that could be perceived as non-accidental, non-natural and got: Assault (3) + Bomb (6) + Gunfire (39) + Struck by vehicle (5) + Vehicle pursuit (5) + Vehicular assault (7) = 65 (and again, this apparently - from what I can tell? - includes K9 officers, aka dogs)


http://killedbypolice.net/ - doesn't list a single number but just look at that list.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States - Updated estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics released in 2015 estimate the number to be around 930 per year, or 1240 if assuming that nonreporting local agencies kill people at the same rate as reporting agencies.


Of the thousands of fatal police shootings 2005-2015, only 54 police officers were criminally charged as a result, and most of those were cleared or acquitted. According to a Washington Post report by Alice Crites and Steven Rich, those who are convicted or plead guilty tend to get an average of four years of jail time, and sometimes only weeks.[7]


Yes, wikipedia, but it's the quickest source I could find with actual numbers. Let's take that number down a bit and say 1000 - that still means a citizen is 15 times more likely to be killed by an officer than an officer is to be killed by a citizen.

[kuronosan]

The job of a police officer is far more dangerous than that of the average citizen - which is understood and respected by most people - and that danger is being used to hold them to a completely different standard of behavior in life-threatening situations - and rightfully so.




The problem is how far that standard has been shifted in favor of the officer. Right now it feels like the standard is basically "Do you think you might have possibly been in mortal danger? Then deadly force is justified." And that sounds all well and good until you consider the fact that a cop's line of work constantly places them in situations that might be deadly. It's extremely easy in this climate for a cop to legally justify the use of deadly force whether or not deadly force was really needed. To put it simply, the fact that an officer's job is dangerous has been used (from a criminal law perspective at least) to give their lives a greater value than that of the average citizen. "Your job is dangerous, so if you kill someone without really needing to, that's ok - we understand." As a citizen, I disagree with this wholeheartedly. Erring so far on the side of the officer's caution devalues the lives of citizens to a dangerous degree.


To put it bluntly: Officers don't know whether or not they'll come home every night, especially in dangerous areas. I understand this. But if you think someone else's mother, daughter, brother, or father should be the one to not come home, if you think someone else should lose a family member because you felt threatened - whether or not the threat was real, whether or not you had a better way to remove the threat than to straight-up kill someone - if you think your life is more valuable because you're a police officer and your job is dangerous, then you are a poor example of what an officer should be. And yet that is the prevailing attitude these days.


On the same note but a different tact, some quick googling turned up this:


https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2015 129 officer deaths in the line of duty this year, including K9 deaths as well as deaths from heart attack, 9/11 related illnesses, etc. I added up deaths that could be perceived as non-accidental, non-natural and got: Assault (3) + Bomb (6) + Gunfire (39) + Struck by vehicle (5) + Vehicle pursuit (5) + Vehicular assault (7) = 65 (and again, this apparently - from what I can tell? - includes K9 officers, aka dogs)


http://killedbypolice.net/ - doesn't list a single number but just look at that list.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States - Updated estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics released in 2015 estimate the number to be around 930 per year, or 1240 if assuming that nonreporting local agencies kill people at the same rate as reporting agencies.


Of the thousands of fatal police shootings 2005-2015, only 54 police officers were criminally charged as a result, and most of those were cleared or acquitted. According to a Washington Post report by Alice Crites and Steven Rich, those who are convicted or plead guilty tend to get an average of four years of jail time, and sometimes only weeks.[7]


Yes, wikipedia, but it's the quickest source I could find with actual numbers. Let's take that number down a bit and say 1000 - that still means a citizen is 15 times more likely to be killed by an officer than an officer is to be killed by a citizen.

Thank you for being the only person who actually answered my earlier hypothetical.

[Fiye]

Welp, if you ever wanted to read a little bit of backstory into Ethan Couch or "Affluenza kid" here's something i got linked to.'

http://www.dmagazine.com/publication...couch?single=1

He was driving his mom’s F-150 on a night in February 2013 when a Lakeside police officer found him peeing in the parking lot of a Dollar General at 1 am. In the truck was an unclothed 14-year-old girl, a can of Miller Lite, and a 1.75-liter bottle of Grey Goose. The officer asked the clearly intoxicated 15-year-old Ethan what he was doing.

Ethan replied, “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

Tonya was called to the scene. The officer’s microphone captured the conversation between the mother and son.

“By the way, I didn’t know you snuck out,” Tonya says.

“What do you mean, I snuck out?” Ethan says. “I told you I was—”

“Well you’re not going to tell your dad that after you go out drinking and doing this,” she says.

“I drank one beer,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says.

Though he’d broken at least six laws, Ethan was only issued tickets for minor in consumption and minor in possession. Tonya drove Ethan home, leaving the truck at the Dollar General. In her deposition, Tonya was asked what happened to the girl. “That morning?” Tonya responded. “Her mom picked her up, I assume. I guess. I don’t know.” Citing the ongoing civil litigation, Lakeside Chief of Police Lee Pitts declined to comment on the incident.

In the summer of 2014, Fred was charged with impersonating a police officer in North Richland Hills. The circumstances aren’t clear, and his attorney advised him not to answer questions about the incident during his deposition. But apparently officers responded to a disturbance call in the middle of the night, and, when they arrived, Fred was there. He identified himself as a Lakeside police officer. One of the officers happened to have worked in Lakeside and didn’t remember him. When Fred showed them a badge, they let him go, but the officer called the Lakeside chief later and confirmed that Fred was not on the force.

A warrant was issued for his arrest, and he turned himself in. Within a few minutes, he paid a $2,500 bail and walked away.

Wonderful people.

Though it was controversial, Ethan’s sentence is consistent with most juvenile DWI manslaughter cases in Texas, at least where first time offenders are concerned. “Very infrequently does a nonviolent, non-intentional crime land a juvenile in jail,” says Michael Yanof, one of Ethan’s attorneys. “Not to say this isn’t serious. It’s very serious. But it wasn’t violent or intentional, and the preference of the state is to not send juveniles to jail.” He adds: “Studies show that once you send somebody to jail, particularly as a juvenile, they tend to stay a criminal.”

[notorious bum]

Entire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels

The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/enti...-drug-cartels/

[jmc]

Poking in for a second, for those blaming the dispatcher for that kid getting killed.

Until that "firearm" is cleared by me, its going to be treated like its a actual firearm. So even if the dispatcher mentioned it was possibly a fake, the results from the Cleveland incident probably wouldn't have changed sadly.

[archibaldcrane]

You think the cops would've drove straight up to him hot and ready if they heard the gun was "probably fake"?

[kuronosan]

Apparently cops react whether the dispatcher says "pellet gun" or "real gun".

[jmc]

You think the cops would've drove straight up to him hot and ready if they heard the gun was "probably fake"?

Their approach in Cleveland was idiotic, and put themselves in a bad situation.

With that said, if i'm going to a gun call then its a gun until I deem it otherwise. So I will have the same response 100% of the time, even if its "probably fake".

Unless its something ridiculous, like a super soaker (i'm still going to be extremely cautious though, and you can blame some jack wagon in indy for that)