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Yeah, what is the problem with the word thug?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah, what is the problem with the word thug?

It's been explained by someone that it offends many times in the Off-Topic Forum.

I personally don't have a problem with it, but I understand where he's coming from. I prefer the words donkey-cave, BALETEDhole, and BALETEDface, anyhow.

Edit: Forgot those get by the DakkaDakka filter. My bad.

The word "Thug" can be racially charged. As happen last time we debated something like this the word (thug) was being used in placed of the "November" word. Was the thread about the Ferguson shooting.

 whembly wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
What can the president do except feel bad about it and try to address general social economic issues? Federalize state and local police?

Federalizing state/local police is a very, very bad idea. I very much agree with this guy:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/05/03/baltimore-federal-drugs-evidence-fbi-column/26830873/

The fix is at the very least three-fold:
1) Get rid of ridiculous laws that increases the Police vs Citizen confrontation. IE, the loosie cigarette or illegal knives that warrants actual fething arrests. (if you want to deincentivize these behaviors, simply fine them).

2) Speaking of fines, stop empowering the police/state to treat the citizens as another source of tax revenues via fines. That is, do NOT budget based on a certain expectation from revenues generated from fines.

1) & 2) is really the domain of the local/state goverments... however...

3) Nationally, we must have Judicial/Incarceration reforms. If we're honest, is really getting out of hand.

On a national level, Congress can only affect federal laws and the sentencing guidelines for them. Police Departments are enforcing municipal and state laws and the people they arrest are being prosecuted by municipal/county/state prosecutors. Congress can pass legislation to reform the DoJ and the federal agencies like the DEA, ATF and FBI but they can't effect any change on Baltimore knife laws or similar laws.

Not trying to be nitpicky but when the federal govt tries to involve itself in matters it's not designed to handle and doesn't have jurisdiction over it tends to be one size fits all solutions that are unwieldy and bring about negative unintended consequences.

While Cameras don't solve every issue(I fully believe Garner was executed by a dirty cop who Garner had filed charges against) in this particular issue, both recording the arrest and the van ride would have quickly answered virtually all the questions.

*We would have had "on Video" an officer who could say "here is the reason for the arrest, he had this knife, and see this *sproing* this makes it illegal in the city. Shows real-time interpretation of a situation, and how the stop initiated (since the knife didn't initiate the stop) opposed to manufacturing charges later to CYA.
*We would have had the interactions between the officers on recording, so *IF* someone ordered a rough ride, it would have been caught (more likely, they wouldn't have ordered it, if it was)
*If we would have had a camera inside the paddywagon, we could have immediately seen the lack of securing, any "freddie hurt himself", the words calling for help, the violent level of the ride and the actual death.
*If the sarge who investigated the community complaints had a camera, we would have seen her immediate reaction and interaction with Gray.

If they did nothing wrong and it was a horrible mistake, it probably would have proved it. If they DID do something wrong, the cameras would have provided enough 'encouragement' to not do it. He would have been arrested, taken to the precinct and alive with a public defender trying to shake a potentially sketchy arrest which would probably have been charges dropped.

Cameras protect everyone, and while doesn't address the core issues which are on the table of overpolicing, low income people disproportionately put through the system and such, it does cut down on false claims and helps remind people who might have a rage issue or walk the line of making a bad call willing to second guess when they know their actions can be under review.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Is this gonna be a repeat of the trayvon Martin case.

They aren't similar.

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Is this gonna be a repeat of the trayvon Martin case.

They aren't similar.

Some of us know that but that will not stop the comparisons

nkelsch wrote:
I fully believe Garner was executed by a dirty cop who Garner had filed charges against

Executed? Really? If Garner was even remotely fit he'd be alive. I have trouble following the thought train that starts with "cop knew Garner's heart would give out if placed under stress." They shouldn't have used the initial choke hold. But that didn't kill Garner on it's own.

I think I just have a lot of trouble with the use of "executed."

Cameras protect everyone, and while doesn't address the core issues which are on the table of overpolicing, low income people disproportionately put through the system and such, it does cut down on false claims and helps remind people who might have a rage issue or walk the line of making a bad call willing to second guess when they know their actions can be under review.

Exactly. Fewer cops toeing a line. Fewer false reports. Better for everyone.

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Is this gonna be a repeat of the trayvon Martin case.

They aren't similar.

I'm talking about an incompetent prosecution overreaching with charges.

 cincydooley wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
I fully believe Garner was executed by a dirty cop who Garner had filed charges against

Executed? Really? If Garner was even remotely fit he'd be alive. I have trouble following the thought train that starts with "cop knew Garner's heart would give out if placed under stress." They shouldn't have used the initial choke hold. But that didn't kill Garner on it's own.

I think I just have a lot of trouble with the use of "executed."

The issue is, if it really did go down the way Garner reported, it reeks of retaliation in which the only way for the retaliation to not prompt further investigation and issue is with Garner being dead.

The burring of the contents of Garner's official complaint leads to reasonable belief something bad was going on. And the history of the officer and other complaints along with the history of cops seizing money used in a crime for their own pockets in NYC, it probably did happen to some point where money was being repeatedly seized under threat of arrest for something they didn't have the right to arrest for. Saying 'no' and reporting it got him killed. Motive turns Manslaughter into Murder. Destroy evidence of motive via silence or police corruption, and Murder never gets proven and we are left scratching our heads and no clear answer or resolution.

But besides all that... Why are the NYC police using illegal choke holds hundreds of times a year when it is explicitly banned? Same reason Baltimore City cops are giving rough rides causing paralysis, because cops break the law and disregard procedure to do what they want knowing they can get away with it and it is 'banned, but accepted' within the departments.

That is the core issue... these are not isolated honest mistakes of a single hot-headed cop, this is systematic rulebreaking and violence supported by the police departments. And since I don't think the police can and will 'police' themselves, Cameras and possibly Civilian social workers are the way to go to protect citizen's rights.

nkelsch wrote:

But besides all that... Why are the NYC police using illegal choke holds hundreds of times a year when it is explicitly banned? Same reason Baltimore City cops are giving rough rides causing paralysis, because cops break the law and disregard procedure to do what they want knowing they can get away with it and it is 'banned, but accepted' within the departments.

That is the core issue... these are not isolated honest mistakes of a single hot-headed cop, this is systematic rulebreaking and violence supported by the police departments. And since I don't think the police can and will 'police' themselves, Cameras and possibly Civilian social workers are the way to go to protect citizen's rights.

Agreed on both of those points.

I'm all for body cams. I just don't want to pay for them


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:


The issue is, if it really did go down the way Garner reported, it reeks of retaliation in which the only way for the retaliation to not prompt further investigation and issue is with Garner being dead.

I mean, Garner was a career criminal and I'm fairly certain the complaint was filed against him to the police that prompted them showing up that day anyways, didn't it?

It's a real problem we have, in that we tend to automatically believe police. But I just have trouble trusting the word of a dude that's been arrested that often.

 cincydooley wrote:


I'm all for body cams. I just don't want to pay for them

Would you rather pay for a few hundred thousand dollars for cams/training/infrastructure or a few million dollars of lawsuits? The taxpayer is on the hook either way. I'll go for the cameras.

 Eilif wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:


I'm all for body cams. I just don't want to pay for them

Would you rather pay for a few hundred thousand dollars for cams/training/infrastructure or a few million dollars of lawsuits? The taxpayer is on the hook either way. I'll go for the cameras.

I can understand your stance in Corruptville, USA.

We haven't seen any such lawsuits in my neck of the woods.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Eilif wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:


I'm all for body cams. I just don't want to pay for them

Would you rather pay for a few hundred thousand dollars for cams/training/infrastructure or a few million dollars of lawsuits? The taxpayer is on the hook either way. I'll go for the cameras.

I can understand your stance in Corruptville, USA.

We haven't seen any such lawsuits in my neck of the woods.

Yeah, the math works out to make the Cams way more expensive than a few lawsuits every now and then.

I'm not sure if I'd buy that...

Sure, for a single, podunk town... it'd be a budget buster.

But, I'm sure a State could take that on, and use the collective purchasing power of the combined PD to get a great deal. That'd be another "check"... in that, the administration/archival of these videos are handle by State officials.

Old numbers but:

In 2008, 12,501 local police departments with the equivalent of at least one full-time officer were operating in the U.S.
In 2008, local police departments had about 593,000 full-time employees, including 461,000 sworn officers. About 60% of all state and local sworn personnel were local police officers.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71

Wiki shows higher numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_States#Number_of_police

At $75 per camera, buying one for every two cops comes out to $17.3 million (rounded to get the 3).

That is just local cops (where money is tightest).

And that is just for the cameras.

But hey, it is just tax payer money, so who cares right? And we can keep electing and appointing folks who keep up the same policies while we're at it.

 whembly wrote:
I'm not sure if I'd buy that...

Sure, for a single, podunk town... it'd be a budget buster.

But, I'm sure a State could take that on, and use the collective purchasing power of the combined PD to get a great deal. That'd be another "check"... in that, the administration/archival of these videos are handle by State officials.

Even at a state level, especially at a state level, the Cameras would still be way more expensive than just having a "malpractice" fund.

Not only do you have to buy cameras, but you also have to buy extra cameras. And then pay for collecting, storing, and analyzing all that data. Data storage is cheap, but the people actively downloading and archiving that data aren't.

Thats adding a lot of employees to the state tab for some rather minor gains.

 CptJake wrote:
Old numbers but:

In 2008, 12,501 local police departments with the equivalent of at least one full-time officer were operating in the U.S.
In 2008, local police departments had about 593,000 full-time employees, including 461,000 sworn officers. About 60% of all state and local sworn personnel were local police officers.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71

Wiki shows higher numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_States#Number_of_police

At $75 per camera, buying one for every two cops comes out to $17.3 million (rounded to get the 3).

That is just local cops (where money is tightest).

And that is just for the cameras.

But hey, it is just tax payer money, so who cares right? And we can keep electing and appointing folks who keep up the same policies while we're at it.

Fire a few of the cops. That should even it out.

 CptJake wrote:
Old numbers but:

In 2008, 12,501 local police departments with the equivalent of at least one full-time officer were operating in the U.S.
In 2008, local police departments had about 593,000 full-time employees, including 461,000 sworn officers. About 60% of all state and local sworn personnel were local police officers.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71

Wiki shows higher numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_States#Number_of_police

At $75 per camera, buying one for every two cops comes out to $17.3 million (rounded to get the 3).

That is just local cops (where money is tightest).

And that is just for the cameras.

But hey, it is just tax payer money, so who cares right? And we can keep electing and appointing folks who keep up the same policies while we're at it.

$17.3 million for every other cop in the US? Do it. fething do it.

Chicago alone paid $84.6 million in fees, settlements and awards due to police activities in 2013. Half a billion from 2003 to 2013. source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/01/u-s-cities-pay-out-millions-to-settle-police-lawsuits/

I actually calculated that, with 1.1million officers in the US(each of them needs his own cam, no sharing) it would cost about $88 million for the Cameras alone(assuming a 40% discount over retail)

Then you have the salaries of the individuals uploading, archiving, and general handling the video feeds and any spare cameras in case they break. That is going to get REALLY expensive. Well into the hundreds of millions.

And you're going to have to replace these cameras fairly regularly as they're going to get broken or just wear out.

Its not cheaper than just paying out lawsuits.

This is something that i got into a very heated debate with my sister. When she mentioned that it is said gays might be getting farther along in civil rights than black civil rights.
I said something that very much might be completely and utterly a hated opinion. ITs because gay rights was never an Us vs. Them mentality. But the Blacklivesmatter and other such movements have very much made it an "Us Vs. Them mentality"
Its that rather than working with those in power, they seek hatred and contempt of those in power. I remember hearing that white people shouldn't be part of the movement and if they are not part of orginizing at all but just feet on the ground. If you have that sort of exclusionary towards people and that hated(Think of black brunch) then its likely you will get push back

St. Louis County Police Department:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_County_Police_Department

Has a $90 million+ dollar budget.

Those aren't the local guys either (ala, STL city cops / Ferguson).


And for what it's worth, the ordeal over the Ferguson riots... the county police paid over $4 million dollars in mostly overtime pay.

I believe the small towns collectively paid over $6 million dollars in mostly overtime pay.

Not to mention the immediate damages to property and long-term property value. The property values itself has fallen over 50% or more now:
http://fusion.net/story/104184/ferguson-home-values-are-plummeting-and-residents-are-feeling-the-pain/

Severely impacting the surrounding neighorhood and townships.

This... is ridiculous:
http://www.zillow.com/ferguson-mo/

Do you think all of that could be prevented, if Michael Brown was on video, in charging the officer? Would the riots still happened?

Besides, in any local/state budgets, you can re-prioritize spending w/o asking for new tax increases to support this proposal. Missouri does it all the time... (ie, hold off buying new office equipment/montiors/cars for a year to address something more immediate).

Ha... Considering I value human lives over budgets... and I see safety of our police and citizens as a 'good thing' to pay for via taxes... I am fine with the costs.

But looking at my state and local payouts due to violence... the two lawsuits for the two people who had spines broken and paralyzed in Baltimore alone would cover the camera budget for all of Baltimore, officers and vehicles. Let alone the hundreds of other excessive force settlements we had here.

Calling people's lives, their future and avoiding unnecessary destruction by criminalizing some of our most vulnerable population for no reason "minor gains" shows a inhuman detachment which is part of the problem... The people who would potentially be protected and the change it would cause are seen as not having value.

 CptJake wrote:
Old numbers but:

In 2008, 12,501 local police departments with the equivalent of at least one full-time officer were operating in the U.S.
In 2008, local police departments had about 593,000 full-time employees, including 461,000 sworn officers. About 60% of all state and local sworn personnel were local police officers.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71

Wiki shows higher numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_States#Number_of_police

At $75 per camera, buying one for every two cops comes out to $17.3 million (rounded to get the 3).

That is just local cops (where money is tightest).

And that is just for the cameras.

But hey, it is just tax payer money, so who cares right? And we can keep electing and appointing folks who keep up the same policies while we're at it.

Using Cpt. Jake's numbers... each of the 12,501 local PDs would be paying just a hair under $1400 for the captain's "one camera per pair of officers"

So, while Some people are getting hung up on the hundred million for the entire country, it really isn't so expensive when you average it out. Plus, as many ideas have already come up, if you have the State pay for it, with state oversight and recording/storage, etc. That does ease some of the burden on the smallest of the local PDs.


I think when you break it down, and look at things long term, it really is cheaper to have the cameras than to pay wrongful suits all the time

 whembly wrote:


Do you think all of that could be prevented, if Michael Brown was on video, in charging the officer? Would the riots still happened?

Considering the witness in the grand jury has a dubious past and conflicts with the 12 other witnesses, and the physical evidence didn't physically match Wilson+witnesses accounts and also was based around the 21ft rule which has come under fire as never being a legitimate threshold for force, there is enough ambiguity where Pro-Police people going to say it was a good shoot and those who distrust the police are going to say it was manufactured witness and what was said and done was re-ordered to suit the police.

If they had a live audio and visual recording of the entire event, I do feel the aftermath and the way the grand jury was run would have been totally different, even if it had the same result. Or we would have seen a different trail of events, or maybe the entire thing wouldn't have happened at all if some of the involved parties was being recorded.

In no scenario, do I feel like it would have made things 'worse'.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
This is something that i got into a very heated debate with my sister. When she mentioned that it is said gays might be getting farther along in civil rights than black civil rights.
I said something that very much might be completely and utterly a hated opinion. ITs because gay rights was never an Us vs. Them mentality. But the Blacklivesmatter and other such movements have very much made it an "Us Vs. Them mentality"
Its that rather than working with those in power, they seek hatred and contempt of those in power. I remember hearing that white people shouldn't be part of the movement and if they are not part of orginizing at all but just feet on the ground. If you have that sort of exclusionary towards people and that hated(Think of black brunch) then its likely you will get push back

I think that you are, in many ways right, but it's not that simple.... I think that, by and large, the LGBT community has really taken to the MLK message of "We're Americans, we have rights, and they should be the same as yours". Whereas when you look at the racial issues, you still have many people who, whether they know it or not, are following Malcolm X's lines of reasoning.

And when you get down to it... who would you rather work with toward a "solution", someone who wants to sit down, talk things over and be a reasonable human being; or someone who, at the slightest provocation is going to become heated, and possibly violent and destructive?

If/When body/Helmet cams become standard issue to multiple levels of LEO's. A infrastructure has to be in placed to support, maintain, and to operate at those levels. For what good are body/helmet cams when storage get corrupted, drives lost or misplaced, and gear malfunction happens.

nkelsch wrote:

 whembly wrote:


Do you think all of that could be prevented, if Michael Brown was on video, in charging the officer? Would the riots still happened?

Considering the witness in the grand jury has a dubious past and conflicts with the 12 other witnesses, and the physical evidence didn't physically match Wilson+witnesses accounts and also was based around the 21ft rule which has come under fire as never being a legitimate threshold for force, there is enough ambiguity where Pro-Police people going to say it was a good shoot and those who distrust the police are going to say it was manufactured witness and what was said and done was re-ordered to suit the police.

If they had a live audio and visual recording of the entire event, I do feel the aftermath and the way the grand jury was run would have been totally different, even if it had the same result. Or we would have seen a different trail of events, or maybe the entire thing wouldn't have happened at all if some of the involved parties was being recorded.

In no scenario, do I feel like it would have made things 'worse'.

O.o

If you had actually read the Grand Jury report, the summary you just wrote are baseless. Here's Grand Jury testimonies and evidences from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html

I strenuously disagree with you... had a charging Brown, as corraborated by witnesses and evidence, been recorded on camera. We would NOT fething have had these riots. That "Hands up don't shoot" lie would be buried.

 whembly wrote:


I strenuously disagree with you... had a charging Brown, as corraborated by witnesses and evidence, been recorded on camera. We would NOT fething have had these riots. That "Hands up don't shoot" lie would be buried.

This tends to corroborate that.

Pulled from the article:

Last month, when two city police officers shot Donyale Rowe to death after they had pulled him over for changing lanes without signaling, Cincinnati’s police chief immediately named the officers involved and published their performance reviews, described how Rowe had pulled a gun on the cops and released video of the incident from the squad car’s camera. The shooting resulted in minimal news coverage and no signs of anger on the streets. Leaders of the 2001 protests said the police had apparently acted appropriately.

 whembly wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

 whembly wrote:


Do you think all of that could be prevented, if Michael Brown was on video, in charging the officer? Would the riots still happened?

Considering the witness in the grand jury has a dubious past and conflicts with the 12 other witnesses, and the physical evidence didn't physically match Wilson+witnesses accounts and also was based around the 21ft rule which has come under fire as never being a legitimate threshold for force, there is enough ambiguity where Pro-Police people going to say it was a good shoot and those who distrust the police are going to say it was manufactured witness and what was said and done was re-ordered to suit the police.

If they had a live audio and visual recording of the entire event, I do feel the aftermath and the way the grand jury was run would have been totally different, even if it had the same result. Or we would have seen a different trail of events, or maybe the entire thing wouldn't have happened at all if some of the involved parties was being recorded.

In no scenario, do I feel like it would have made things 'worse'.

O.o

If you had actually read the Grand Jury report, the summary you just wrote are baseless. Here's Grand Jury testimonies and evidences from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html

I strenuously disagree with you... had a charging Brown, as corraborated by witnesses and evidence, been recorded on camera. We would NOT fething have had these riots. That "Hands up don't shoot" lie would be buried.

I have read it, and have you read the reports on Witness 40? She wasn't even fething there. She had no reason to be there, and there was no evidence she was there and other witnesses disagreed with her testimony. And the physical evidence and other witnesses showed different distances than Wilson and Witness 40. And there is ACTUAL evidence that show she wasn't there and it was all a manufactured lie... which changed to become more in lock-step with Wilson's accounts as she heard further news coverage. That was their key witness!!! She would have never be used at a real trial, she had no business in a grand jury.

There is a lot of evidence that Witness 40 was a manufactured fraud and potentially officials knew it. And while Brown very well may have still been charging, and since the Tueller drill was directly cited for the justification of lethal force, the distance DOES matter. Without Witness 40's testimony, the other witnesses and physical evidence show it is very likely that while Brown was charging he was outside the 21ft at the time of the shots which means there could have been legitimate reason to have a trial. (besides, the Tueller drill is bad and been discredited and Tueller himself evens aid it was never meant to be used as a hard rule for justifying lethal force.)

My problem is, we have a grand jury which the key witness was fraudulent with fabricated testimony, and people knew it both then and now... They intentionally presented fraudulent witnesses to throw the case. Which is a real problem. So instead of clear innocence with good-faith prosecution, we have what smells of dirty pool to make the case bad.

If there was a recording of the entire encounter, I do say that there would have been no involvement in the fraudulent witness and the prosecutor wouldn't have had to intentionally ruin the case... Just show the recording and be done with it. I think it would have been way different, but any prosecutor who allowed Witness 40 to purger herself on the stand like that should be thrown off the bar.

(I feel video would have prevent riots... because we wouldn't have had a fraudulent grand jury case and any misconduct would have been prevented or recorded. So I want Videos.)