The Ferguson, Missouri thread

[ronin sparthos]

"Do you want this 50 caliber machine gun we have sitting around?"

Any dude: FUCK YEAH.

[ronin sparthos]

You can thank an incident (I really want to say it was socal, my dad was telling me about this as he's a retired Lieutenant for the same agency I work for) and for the longest time, you just had your service weapon, and a rifle. I can't remember the specific's of the incident, but police responded to something and were thoroughly outgunned. Due to that incident there was a huge push to get law enforcement AR-15's or equivilants. I believe we have approximately 500ish sworn staff (been a while since I looked at the seniority list) and i'd say maybe a quarter of it is certified for the AR-15's. Definitely a lot more are Taser certified.

As to what they have, my guess is if they have a SWAT/SRU team, they probably have the same shit we have. Bunch of AR-15's, supply of Flash/Smoke grenades, and some less than lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, bean bags, etc.

The only other incident where cops were totally unprepared I remember offhand was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer AKA the Killdozer incident.

[Melena]

But there is plenty of money for armored vehicles, AR-15s, riot gear, tear gas, specialized military-style training, SWAT team specialization, and many other unnecessary and over-the-top gear. It's just too much to expect that they would invest in a way to record what they are doing with all that gear and training.

You do realize a lot of that is grant money, right?

That said, law enforcement is just like the military when it comes to money. Buy what you want, then ask for what you need. I can also safely say, all the AR's we bought, don't even come close to the cost of the storage we just bought over the last couple of years. To give you an idea, we are looking at buying a lower end Netapp chasis with 60x 4TB drives. That's about 90k before service contract. That's about the same as 112 AR-15's, more than what our agency owns. All the stuff you are describing is a drop in the bucket kind of thing. A lot of that equipment also just sits on the ready. I don't think we've had any call outs since Occupy Oakland was going on and even then that was at least for our staff a lot of standing around doing nothing.

As for SWAT training, in a perfect world, no police department would need a SWAT/SRU team. But you look at the Boston Marathon Bombing, the 4 OPD officers gunned down, all the school shootings where it's unconfirmed if it's still an active shooter situation, that is why they have them. That is why they spend money on gear and weapons. I have gotten to know quite a few people on our SRU team. The jail i'm stationed at, our Captain is the head of our SRU unit and they admit that in a perfect world they wouldn't have to do it. Every single one of them on top of doing their normal day to day job's, are essentially on call 24/7. And they can be called out for anything from an active shooter situation, bomb threat, or even natural disaster.

[Melena]

The only other incident where cops were totally unprepared I remember offhand was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer AKA the Killdozer incident.

This was the situation I was trying to think of. http://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0303/030397.us.us.5.html

LAPD initially outgunned in thwarted bank robbery shown on live TV





L.A. Gunfight Ignites Debate Over Media, Police Firepower


By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor March 3, 1997


NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. — A wild street shootout between Los Angeles police and automatic-weapons-wielding bank robbers has opened a new chapter of self-examination for local law enforcement in America's second largest city.


The initial outgunning of the police during Friday morning's gunfight was played out in vivid color on live television. At the height of the crisis, several officers had to resort to the arsenal of a nearby gun store to commandeer nine rifles with enough firepower to pierce their assailants' protective clothing.


The incident not only underscores the degree to which media coverage can heighten the public's insecurity about crime, but it may also prove to be a factor in next month's elections in Los Angeles. Mayor Richard Riordan (R) and Police Chief Willie Williams, both up for reelection, have butted heads for years about how best to manage the Los Angeles Police Department.

At the same time, the incident has renewed a debate over gun control and whether police officers should be armed with more powerful weapons

"We are going to examine and reexamine all the issues of relative firepower for police vs. criminals," says Chief Williams. "We have gone from .38s [calibers] to nine millimeters to .45s for many officers. This shows that no matter what, we will be outgunned ... we are behind the curve and are still catching up."


Yet some city officials urged against overreacting to this event and Williams appeared unwilling to arm all police with assault rifles. "You can't equip our general patrol officer with an AK-47. We're supposed to live in somewhat of a civilized society, " he says. Currently, the LAPD SWAT officers are the only ones authorized to carry heavy weapons.

Dressed in black body armor, the two bandits toted AK-47 assault rifles and a car trunk's worth of ammunition and other weapons. They shot up the inside of a North Hollywood bank before spraying the surrounding neighborhood with hundreds of bullets while trying to escape. Eleven officers were wounded, eight by gunshots, and five civilians were hurt in the subsequent gun battle. Both robbers were shot and killed in the gunfight.

The incident is the third high-profile shooting case here in two months, following the murder of Ennis Cosby and the maiming of an innocent resident by armor-clad SWAT officers. It comes at a crucial juncture for Williams, whose public support has been rising over his handling of these cases.

At the same time, however, a citizen police commission filled with Mayor Riordan appointees seems to be attempting to oust Williams. Some political observers suggest that criticism of Mayor Riordan has been increasing, in part because of his failure to make good on his first-term campaign pledge to put 3,000 more police officers on the street. The LAPD has far fewer officers per resident than any other major American city.

In addition to the local elections, April marks the fifth anniversary of the worst riots in US history, set off by the acquittal of four white officers charged with beating black motorist Rodney King. The emotions that led to those riots were set off, in part say experts, by the repeated showing of the videotape of Mr. King being repeatedly clubbed. The tape galvanized national and world opinion and set off a wave of investigations into police brutality.
Some experts feel the North Hollywood episode may have the same power of public persuasion. If the same incident had occurred outside the view of local TV cameras, they say, it might not have generated the widespread sense of community concern.

"The presence of live cameras overhead turned this into a kidnapping of the city's attention," says Brian Stonehill, a media theorist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. "Every viewer could see and hear for himself the astonishing lack of fear of these [robbers]." Outside the live media eye, the event could have just been a minor crime story, he says.
But at least some police here were heartened by the coverage, which showed the public what officers say they face every day.

"This graphically highlights the dilemma of the police officer in America today," says Lt. Nick Zingo, a 22-year LAPD veteran who helped wage the battle against the robbers. Twenty years ago, two of Lieutenant Zingo's partners were killed by automatic weapons in a similar shootout.

Though he knows crime rates are dropping across America, Zingo says criminals increasingly are resorting to violence.

"This is the same old story that I have been worried about for two decades - suspects who have the capability of high-powered weapons that I don't have," says Zingo. "When officers get into situations like this, the odds are not in their favor."

"I can't think of a more graphic, visual reason for the public of the United States to get on board in advocating for rational, sensible gun control," says Laura Chick, chair of the Los Angeles City Council's Public Safety Committee. "These people are better armed than our law-enforcement experts. We have to find a way to eliminate military assault weapons being out on the streets."

[Callisto]

The initial reason why they were removed from the McDonald's was the owner called the police because he didn't want people loitering in his establishment. They packed themselves in there to do stuff like charge their phones and get out of the elements. It sucks that they were caught up in the sweep, but the paranoia and already stressed out police force are turning abrasive to minor skirmishes when tensions are already high. Sensationalized media are putting out topics like "Reporter Arrested for Filming Police" which is fueling even more discord.

Kinda touching back on this but:

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly · 1h
Back at McDonald’s once again, where the very friendly manager just came over to shake my hand and say hi.

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly · 1h
He’s been told that I have to go to the authorities if I want to get the tapes.

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly · 1h
Unclear in this situation: just which authority I can go to.

Either there's a disconnect between the owner and the manager or something is doesn't line up here. And their security tapes were confiscated, lol.

[Kuya]

Callisto, why is your white ass so mad about this?

[Callisto]

because I'm not rich, once they run out of brown people to shoot I'm second on the list :/

[NynJa]

because I'm not rich, once they run out of brown people to shoot I'm second on the list :/

I'm pretty sure the rate of immigrants coming in is greater than the rate of brown people getting shot.

[Niiro]

http://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0303/030397.us.us.5.html

Who knows how many decades it will be before that shit happens again!?

But seeing as we have all this military grade equipment lying around we might as well use it to spook the spooks in the meantime, amirite?

“We went through some pretty bad areas of Afghanistan, but we didn’t wear that much gear,” said Kyle Dykstra, an Army veteran and former security officer for the State Department.

[Acevalefor]

You do realize a lot of that is grant money, right?

That's the point. There is plenty of grant money to make it rain military gear, armored vehicles, etc. But there is suddenly no money when it comes to providing a means of accountability when these things are used. We ha a security system recording from 15 cameras, 24/7, storing video for 6 months where I used to work. It was a small company with nowhere near the money that even most small police departments have. Yet we were able to afford to secure the place and keep people accountable.

How is it that every poor black person can pull out their iPhone and record when shit goes down, but the cops can't afford it?

[Kuya]

because I'm not rich, once they run out of brown people to shoot I'm second on the list :/

Ah.

Good point.

[Niiro]

That's the point. There is plenty of grant money to make it rain military gear, armored vehicles, etc. But there is suddenly no money when it comes to providing a means of accountability when these things are used. We ha a security system recording from 15 cameras, 24/7, storing video for 6 months where I used to work. It was a small company with nowhere near the money that even most small police departments have. Yet we were able to afford to secure the place and keep people accountable.

How is it that every poor black person can pull out their iPhone and record when shit goes down, but the cops can't afford it?

Because there's no dashcam-industrial complex.

[Melena]

That's the point. There is plenty of grant money to make it rain military gear, armored vehicles, etc. But there is suddenly no money when it comes to providing a means of accountability when these things are used. We ha a security system recording from 15 cameras, 24/7, storing video for 6 months where I used to work. It was a small company with nowhere near the money that even most small police departments have.

How is it that every poor black person can pull out their iPhone and record when shit goes down, but the cops can't afford it?

Then you need to complain to the Fed's. Grant money is something you have to apply for. It's not just I need a new AR-15, i'll pull from this grant. For stuff like Data and storage, that's coming out of your city/county's general fund that you have to budget for. If the county say's sorry, you have to cut 10 million from your budget, they are going to cut IT related stuff.

You also can't use grant money for something other then what the grant is for. If you get a 100k grant to hire two new crime tech's for the year, that 100k has to go purely to their salary. If you use it to replace a patrol car, the grant money gets yanked back and you have to pay back what you already spent. It's obvious you are angry (and with this situation in Ferguson, rightly so) but you obviously have no clue how City/County Budgets and grant money work.

Again as to recording, the shit isn't the cameras. It's storage. Say you got 40 dashboard cam's that activate every time your lights are on. We will say it's not even HD, it's just standard shakycam footage like you got when people pirated movies with a sony handycam in the movies. So 2 hours of video, say 1gb of storage. On average say each car records for four hours, even if the majority of it is just your random pull over, see your license, here's your ticket for speeding, have a nice day shit That's 2gb a day per camera. Now you have to store that 80gb for 3 years. You then the next day have another 80gb that has to be stored for 3 years. Then another and another and you can't delete a single megabyte for 3 years. You realize how quickly that's going to eat up on storage. You are talking about Petabytes at a time. And then you have to make incrimental and full backups of said data.

We are adding storage as fast as we can, and we are not even at the 3 year requirement mandated by our county. Storage is not cheap, backups are not cheap.

[Acevalefor]

Then you need to complain to the Fed's. Grant money is something you have to apply for. It's not just I need a new AR-15, i'll pull from this grant. For stuff like Data and storage, that's coming out of your city/county's general fund that you have to budget for. If the county say's sorry, you have to cut 10 million from your budget, they are going to cut IT related stuff.

You also can't use grant money for something other then what the grant is for. If you get a 100k grant to hire two new crime tech's for the year, that 100k has to go purely to their salary. If you use it to replace a patrol car, the grant money gets yanked back and you have to pay back what you already spent. It's obvious you are angry (and with this situation in Ferguson, rightly so) but you obviously have no clue how City/County Budgets and grant money work.

Again as to recording, the shit isn't the cameras. It's storage. Say you got 40 dashboard cam's that activate every time your lights are on. We will say it's not even HD, it's just standard shakycam footage like you got when people pirated movies with a sony handycam in the movies. So 2 hours of video, say 1gb of storage. On average say each car records for four hours, even if the majority of it is just your random pull over, see your license, here's your ticket for speeding, have a nice day shit That's 2gb a day per camera. Now you have to store that 80gb for 3 years. You then the next day have another 80gb that has to be stored for 3 years. Then another and another and you can't delete a single megabyte for 3 years. You realize how quickly that's going to eat up on storage. You are talking about Petabytes at a time. And then you have to make incrimental and full backups of said data.

We are adding storage as fast as we can, and we are not even at the 3 year requirement mandated by our county. Storage is not cheap, backups are not cheap.

I do understand how budgets and appropriations work. Thank you for the explanation, but it was unnecessary. I am talking about the federal government and their grant programs. Niiro hit the nail on the head. There is very little interest in holding departments accountable and much more interest in arming departments with unnecessary gear. My complaint is with the distribution of funds and what those funds are allowed to be used for.

[kuronosan]

Storage is insanely cheap. What are you on?

[archibaldcrane]

You realize how quickly that's going to eat up on storage. You are talking about Petabytes at a time. And then you have to make incrimental and full backups of said data.

We are adding storage as fast as we can, and we are not even at the 3 year requirement mandated by our county. Storage is not cheap, backups are not cheap.

So...a couple DL blu-rays per day. Double that if you want backups. I mean, yeah, at what $3 a pop you're talking $12 a day, $4380 per year, some burners and a data tech who is backing everything up daily?

That'll cost ya....not really all that much.

[Talint]

Has anyone pointed out that on the police report that Brown and Johnson are/were going to be charged with felony robbery?

I imagine this is how the police gets out of this. Murder committed during a felony falls on the alleged perp.

I hope I'm wrong about that. That will be insanely cold and cynical, even for me.

[archibaldcrane]

um

no

[archibaldcrane]

Here's the actual video of the surveillance footage. http://threepercenternation.com/2014...n-is-released/

Too bad it doesn't have audio.

[Talint]

Er, murder ain't the right word. "Death" is more apropos.

edit Or maybe it is. I dunno. I really don't like the fact that they were charging him with felony robbery.