US Police

[Ants]

General thread on US policing. Sometimes good, often examples on how not to do things.

This incident shows that its not about police race, its about police culture, training, militarisation, group mentality and their silence on their own acts.

Video shows Tyre Nichols calling for his mother, beaten by officers now charged in his death | CNN

The city of Memphis has released police body camera and surveillance video showing the traffic stop and violent police confrontation that led to the death of Tyre Nichols.

edition.cnn.com

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/27/us/tyre-nichols-memphis

 

[Malifice]

This incident shows that its not about police race, its about police culture, training, militarisation, group mentality and their silence on their own acts.

It never has been about police race. It's about people (usually black) getting pulled over and then murdered for trivial offences due to over policing, racial profiling and a s**t culture in the police force.

 

[Sydney Kicker]

 

[Ants]

Slightly older article, but it does show where some of the police focus is.

In the Face of Rising White Supremacist Violence, Police Continue to Investigate Victims and Activists

A white supremacist attack on a civil rights icon in Tennessee remains unsolved while police across the state illegally spy on community activists.

theintercept.com

 

[Ants]

This list of blogs, articles and updates from the NYT is interesting. Especially the parts on some of the background around the policing in Memphis.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/27/us/tyre-nichols-memphis

The story of policing in Memphis has often mirrored in miniature the story of policing across America over the last decade.

Yet after all those conflicts, the city had largely kept tensions from erupting so violently that they spilled onto the national stage. There were several reasons for this. Its police force was less wedded to stop-and-frisk tactics than the New York Police Department, or to pretextual traffic stops than the police in Ferguson, Mo. Memphis, a predominately Black city, has a long tradition of Black police chiefs. And in a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, the police have a deep reservoir of support.

The five officers, who were indicted on second-degree murder charges Thursday, had been assigned to a new unit with an acronym that emphasizes subdual: Scorpion. It stands for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.”

Commissioned in late 2021, the roughly 40-person unit was modeled after the aggressive anti-crime squads that in many big cities patrol neighborhoods deemed to be high-crime in unmarked cars, on the lookout for gang members or any sign of criminal activity. Such units typically rely heavily on car stops and stop-and-frisk tactics. In Memphis, city officials were eager to tout the unit, claiming it was racking up arrests. The very day after Mr. Nichols died as a result of his injuries, the mayor publicly credited Scorpion with helping bring about a slight drop in the city’s homicide rate in 2022.

But with Mr. Nichols’s death, it has already come at a cost, said Earle Fisher, a Memphis pastor and community activist who was among those caught up in the earlier surveillance by the Memphis police.

“The mayor and police director put that unit together in the fall of 2021, and you don’t even have a year-and-a-half go by before there’s at least one dead body,” Mr. Fisher said. The fact that five officers stand accused, he said, meant that the incident reflected the culture of policing within the unit. “This doesn’t fall in the bad apples category,” he said. “If two is company, and three is a crowd, then five is a system and a structure.”

Little has yet emerged about the five officers. One of them

Dr. Adkins noted that the Police Department had in the last two years instituted a number of reforms, ranging from a ban on chokeholds to de-escalation training. “We got all these things instituted and were satisfied that had been done,” he said. “This comes as a huge shock to us that these five would perpetrate this.”

The five officers charged with Mr. Nichols’s murder had all been hired in recent years — between 2017 and 2020.

When the city scaled back the pension plan for the police in the middle of the last decade, officers left in droves. Mark LeSure, a former Memphis police sergeant who retired in 2021, said pay cuts and other bureaucratic issues had driven many of the force’s veterans into retirement, leaving the ranks to be filled with inexperienced officers. Officers landed in specialized outfits, like the Scorpion unit, far earlier in their careers than had been typical in the past.

Adding to the potential peril is the nature of a specialized team like the Scorpion unit. It was launched after Mr. LeSure had left the force, but he had been told by former colleagues that it had a mandate to aggressively go after suspected criminals, and its members were supposed to be on the streets, doing what they could to make arrests.

 

[Ants]

Traffic stops with police can be deadly...

Deadly Police Encounters

The staff of The Times won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for revealing the killings of hundreds of unarmed motorists across the country after vehicle stops for nonviolent offenses. Few officers are punished; the blame is often deflected to the victim. We also scrutinized...

www.nytimes.com

A series of articles.

The staff of The Times won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for revealing the killings of hundreds of unarmed motorists across the country after vehicle stops for nonviolent offenses. Few officers are punished; the blame is often deflected to the victim. We also scrutinized in-custody deaths, piercing a curtain of obscurity around autopsy records. We were the first news organization to expose the use of sickle cell trait to falsely account for in-custody deaths of Black people.

 

[mellowyellow]

The following article certainly highlights how culture, recruitment, standards and training of the police in the US contributes significantly to the higher rates of police brutality and deaths of the public . And in particular to black Americans.

What Are Police Like in Other Countries?

Recent killings by U.S. officers have sparked widespread calls for police reform and an end to systemic racism. Here’s how U.S. policing compares with other countries’ approaches.

www.cfr.org

 

[Lets Roar like '44]

General thread on US policing. Sometimes good, often examples on how not to do things.

This incident shows that its not about police race, its about police culture, training, militarisation, group mentality and their silence on their own acts.

Video shows Tyre Nichols calling for his mother, beaten by officers now charged in his death | CNN

The city of Memphis has released police body camera and surveillance video showing the traffic stop and violent police confrontation that led to the death of Tyre Nichols.

edition.cnn.com

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/27/us/tyre-nichols-memphis

So where are the good videos? Or we just highlighting the 0.001 percent instead?

 

[Spearman]

The policing in the States is as messed up and entangled as the gun debate. I have seen many videos showing the absolute humanity and kindness of police officers to all demographics of citizens, and non-citizens. But these sorts of murder occur way too often. There are just so many factors, it will be hard fixing it. Racism, even as in this case black on black racism, and undertrained, but aggressive individuals and units would be chief cause IMO.
I might add that I fully understand the danger that police face at every interaction. It's a shitty job, but only the best should be doing it.
If you understand what the "thin blue line" means, you understand a lot of the problem. Many cops in certain areas have an us against them mentality. The citizens get scarred by their interactions and become very untrustful and it becomes a circular argument. In this situation, I would hope the cops take the initiative to clean out the incapable, and work hard to re-integrate into the community. Very long, hard road.
Whoever came up with the label 'defund' should be given a massive kick in the nards. The original idea is great. Retrain and streamline the scopes of most officers. They cannot be jacks of all trades. They need to be able to de-escalate situations unlike the OP where they did the opposite. More and better training in handling situations, better screening of incoming officers, and just better(less testosterone) culture. Very expensive to do though. But much better training has to happen.
Make law enforcement more attractive to a wider range of people, get more pride back. s**t I sickens me to see so many fat assed Barney Fife's in some of those local news reports. Too many individuals get into LE who shouldn't.
And again, training, training, training. Make them elite, but also thoughtful and analytical, like our best troops. A huge ask, but better to strive for an ideal, than settle for the filth that seems to regularly pop up at the expense of a civilian's life.

 

[Strange Cat]

So where are the good videos? Or we just highlighting the 0.001 percent instead?

ACAB

just makes you realise the stuff they would had gotten away with before social media and the wide spread use of security cameras

 

[mellowyellow]

T

 

[Ants]

So where are the good videos? Or we just highlighting the 0.001 percent instead?

There was a reason I said "sometimes" good, "often" wrong. Their good is also far more often going to be not highly shown because its things which are expected and by their very nature, keep things from being newsworthy.

First responders response to 9/11 in New York was fantastic. I would strongly recommend people reading on the FBI and their learnings around serial killers which is relevant for police forces all around the world. The profiling they did was cutting edge.

 

[Malifice]

So where are the good videos? Or we just highlighting the 0.001 percent instead?

The 'good' videos are the expectation. That police do their ******* jobs.

And there are tons of them. Cops love releasing videos of drugs on the table following a major bust, and there are plenty of crime shows out there that highlight policing done right.

This dude was pulled over for no apparent reason less than a klick from his mothers house, and despite pleading his innocence repeatedly, was tasered, pepper sprayed, beaten by 5 cops armed with batons, possum stomped on the head, and then casually tossed against a car with zero concern for his wellbeing after the fact.

His last words were calling out for his mother who was in her house 80m down the road.

If she were to hear him, what's she going to do? Call the police? They're the ones who murdered him for *s sake.

 

[Strange Cat]

The 'good' videos are the expectation. That police do their ******* jobs.

And there are tons of them. Cops love releasing videos of drugs on the table following a major bust, and there are plenty of crime shows out there that highlight policing done right.

This dude was pulled over for no apparent reason less than a klick from his mothers house, and despite pleading his innocence repeatedly, was tasered, pepper sprayed, beaten by 5 cops armed with batons, possum stomped on the head, and then casually tossed against a car with zero concern for his wellbeing after the fact.

His last words were calling out for his mother who was in her house 80m down the road.

If she were to hear him, what's she going to do? Call the police? They're the ones who murdered him for *s sake.

Not only that they were bragging about it after the fact despite having body cams….if it wasnt for the street pole cameras I doubt there would be repercussions…they were very confident to use him as a punching bag with no thoughts about being filmed

Even worse the paramedics didn’t do * all when they arrived and were standing around chatting to the police before rendering assistant

I hope more are charged it was an absolute disgrace and sickening watching that video

 

[Lets Roar like '44]

Not only that they were bragging about it after the fact despite having body cams….if it wasnt for the street pole cameras I doubt there would be repercussions…they were very confident to use him as a punching bag with no thoughts about being filmed

Even worse the paramedics didn’t do * all when they arrived and were standing around chatting to the police before rendering assistant

I hope more are charged it was an absolute disgrace and sickening watching that video

What video are you watching? All I saw was a guy get stopped, then somehow ran away and then the cops puffing and panting.

 

[Strange Cat]

What video are you watching? All I saw was a guy get stopped, then somehow ran away and then the cops puffing and panting.

 

[Spearman]

In this Memphis case, I think I saw/heard a report that the victim and the cops have had earlier interactions before that night. I might be wrong though.
Part of the siege mentality of the PD is taking things personally. "You don't obey me immediately, TURN AROUND, PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!"

 

[Strange Cat]

In this Memphis case, I think I saw/heard a report that the victim and the cops have had earlier interactions before that night. I might be wrong though.
Part of the siege mentality of the PD is taking things personally. "You don't obey me immediately, TURN AROUND, PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!"

I think it’s more of the fact that it was a unmarked cop car and they didn’t announce themselves when pulling him over and there has been recent cases of a gang using that method to attack people

Hence why I think he ran (we will never know now) ….they just used him as a punching bag despite being handcuffed and no threat to any of them


Sickening

 

[Lets Roar like '44]

Yeh that’s pretty ordinary.

 

[Sarcoidevo]

A mate and I spent a couple of days in Memphis back in the mid 90s whike traversing the States and had a night in Beale St but were struggling to get a taxi back to our Hostel .... so we decided to walk back about 5km or so in the rain ... when we spoke to the Hostel worker the next morning about what we did she was horrified as she explained our route back was thru one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods of Memphis .... she said the fact it was raining probably saved our dumb arses from getting mugged or worse .... the stupid things you do

 

[aj1992]

It's time for America to earnestly protest Black-on-Black crime. Maybe this "incident" will be the catalyst for large high-profile protests and demands for greater intra-racial peace

 

[Al Heimer]

A mate and I spent a couple of days in Memphis back in the mid 90s whike traversing the States and had a night in Beale St but were struggling to get a taxi back to our Hostel .... so we decided to walk back about 5km or so in the rain ... when we spoke to the Hostel worker the next morning about what we did she was horrified as she explained our route back was thru one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods of Memphis .... she said the fact it was raining probably saved our dumb arses from getting mugged or worse .... the stupid things you do

The local street hoons do the mugging and the local cops do the worse?

On SM-J250F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Sarcoidevo]

The local street hoons do the mugging and the local cops do the worse?

On SM-J250F using BigFooty.com mobile app

Maybe the local cops were previously the local hoons

 

[Ghost Patrol]

It's time for America to earnestly protest Black-on-Black crime. Maybe this "incident" will be the catalyst for large high-profile protests and demands for greater intra-racial peace

There's plenty of white on white crime as well. Why you gonna ignore that?

 

[aj1992]

There's plenty of white on white crime as well. Why you gonna ignore that?

Sure protest that too. But I don't see whites burning cities down when a black person kills a white person.