So how did we get here? How can the Police shoot someone who is unarmed?

[Savannahmann]

My wife and I were discussing this last night. She was sickened by the whole thing. This is not quite verbatim of what I told her, perhaps it's better, or worse.

In the 1980's, it began. First the Cop movies showed the buddies standing up against impossible odds to stop the criminal empires. Then the reality came in. A cop in a dark apartment complex, he sees a silhouette of a person holding something that looks like a gun. He sees a gun in other words. The cop draws his pistol and fires. A child playing a game of cops and robbers is killed.

We as a community feel sorrow, and horror. The discussion waffles back and forth. The reasonable argument there is that the cop believed that the person he could barely see was holding a gun, it looked like a gun. Then things converged.

Armed Robbery faced a stiffer penalty that just Robbery. So criminals pretended to have guns, or other weapons, but were not actually armed. The definition was changed, if the victim believed you to be armed, you were to be charged with armed robbery. So a bank robber who passes across a note that says that he has a gun and will shoot the teller if she doesn't give him the money is committing armed robbery even if he doesn't have a gun.

In other words, reasonable belief became the rule. Everyone knew that if you shot someone, you were in trouble. But there was an exception, if you were in fear of your life, you could shoot someone to defend yourself. This was the beginning of the "castle doctrine" that has now been codified into law in many states. Your fear was the defining factor of the event. So everyone told each other that if you had to shoot someone, make sure you tell the cops you were in fear of your life.

The police were aware of all of this, and much like our notional homeowner above, learned that as long as they said they "believed" the suspect was armed, they would be exonerated. From the 1970's, when the police could not fire first, to the present day when they could shoot anyone as long as they say the magic words. "I thought he had a gun."

This like the I was in fear of my life statement above became the routine lie. Whenever force is used, the cops automatically, they are trained to do this mind you, use these routine lies to justify it. It has become so routine that it is taught like wearing gloves at a crime scene. So if it ever gets to the point where it is reviewed by a Prosecutor, he checks the blocks on the report. The officer was in fear of his life, he had a reasonable belief that the suspect was armed.

Automatic routine lies. And a pattern of justifications. Well, the cop was a good guy, and if I was there and I saw a human shape holding a gun, I would think it was a man with a gun too. Well, if I was at home, and someone stormed into my house, I would be in fear of my life too.

The militarization has been going on about as long too. It started thanks to Darrel Gates, yes, that one, who formed the first SWAT team in Los Angeles. Originally intended to respond to hostage situations and terrorist attacks it rapidly became the force de jour. Then the question became one of what about the regular cops? What if they don't have time to wait for SWAT? Then it was we have a SWAT team, why not use them to serve warrants on dangerous drug dealers. Then they became warrant squads, who did nothing but serve search and arrest warrants. Treating every warrant for arrest over traffic violation like they are raiding a compound full of Branch Dividians.

We got here by a whole bunch of little steps, little steps that have each been reasonable when considered by the tiny step before. We couldn't ask cops not to shoot at a person holding what appeared to be a gun could we? We couldn't doubt that someone in fear of their life has the reasonable right to self defense could we? We couldn't do that could we? A lot of little steps, and now we have police that are more heavily armed, and armored than the infantry we send into combat. We have situations where the police are justified by law in shooting unarmed people because the cop says the magic words. He believed the suspect was armed.

Routine lies. I've told this before, but in the 1980's I was working as a Security Guard. I took the class to get my permit for a nightstick which was called a baton under California law. During the class, the instructor, a cop, told the class to make sure if we ever used the baton on someone, to tell any observers that the guy was a child molester. The cop explained that this changed the tone of their testimony when they were called to court. A routine lie, taught to a bunch of mall cops, on how to modify the testimony of witnesses.

Routine lies, which are told with no more thought than the phrases used by the rest of us every day. "Yes, that is a lovely dress."

That my friends, is how we got here. Now the question is, how the hell do we get out of here because it seems that this is a one way street, and the next block looks even worse than this one.

[libdem4life]

1. Very succinct analysis. About the only thing that makes sense here. n/t

[Savannahmann]

6. Thank you

I probably have a lot left out, and some things that are in that shouldn't be. But as an overview, it's as good a place to start as any.

[HooptieWagon]

2. Very good. One more thing....

I think there's a number of cops using steroids... one side effect is a marked increase in aggression. That's just a strong hunch... to my knowledge there hasn't been any drug-testing for steroids, or an investigation/report on their use by LEO.

[hedgehog]

11. Good catch! How about amphetamines (cough! meth cough!) to handle a lot of overtime

and/or diet drugs to keep within weight limits.

[kelliekat44]

3. Kick for an excellent post. nt

[Solomon]

4. Nope. it started with Clint Eastwood

Make My Day. Law Enforcement was forever changed after that.

[Savannahmann]

9. In the 1970's,

Dirty Harry was a big box office win. But look at the movies again. The second one was corrupt cops that Harry hunted like he did anyone else. That is missing from the situation today. There are no Dirty Harry's hunting for corrupt cops.

Now, all the cops are in on the thin blue line of silence.

[FiveGoodMen]

16. That, and about a million movie and TV trailers that say

"Sometimes you have to bend the law to get the bad guy"

[Lurks Often]

5. It's been this way for a long, long time

Long before Clint Eastwood and the police tv shows and movies there have been good cops and bad cops, the only difference now is the 24/7 news cycle.

Do we need to do better, of course we do. We need to put a lot more pressure on our elected officials, they're the ones that hire these police chiefs.

[Iggo]

7. How did we get here? Baby, we've been here!

We're just better at spotting it.

[libdem4life]

8. Bingo...now we have a civilian army with little cell videophones with real time reporting and

transmitting to the internet and in turn to broadcast it to the world. That is until they make it illegal to videotape a LEO or something. Poor Mitch found out the hard way, too.

[hedgehog]

10. How often have you watched a movie or TV show and heard the phrase -

"Stop, or I will shoot!"

It makes for great drama, but in reality, I don't think police are allowed to fire on a fleeing suspect.

(Someone please correct me if there are exceptions or if I am totally wrong)

Is life imitating art ?

[Maedhros]

28. They seem to be allowed to do so in Ferguson.

There was a case here in Portland involving a victim named Kendra James:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendra_James

Kendra James was a 21-year-old African-American Oregon woman who was shot to death by police on May 5, 2003. The incident sparked a controversy over the use of deadly force by the Portland Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon.[1][2]

James was a passenger stopped by Portland police officers Rick Bean, Kenneth Reynolds, and Scott McCollister. The driver, Terry Jackson, was arrested and placed in a squad car after he was discovered to have an outstanding warrant.[3] After he and another passenger in the car were removed peaceably by the officers, James jumped from the back seat into the driver's seat. McCollister then made several unsuccessful attempts to remove James while partially within the vehicle through an open door. He claimed to have tried to pull James out by her hair, and also attempted to use a Taser.[3] He said that he had also attempted to use pepper spray to subdue James, but was unable to operate the canister; an investigation by the Portland Police Bureau found McCollister's pepper spray canister was operational, but no traces of spray were found.[4] McCollister drew his firearm and held it to James' head, demanding she exit the vehicle.[3] McCollister said he then felt the car move and, concerned that he could have fallen out and been run over, fired a single shot.[4]

The James family's lawyers questioned whether evidence existed regarding James attempting to move the car, and whether the tactics McCollister used, especially his attempt to enter the car (McCollister said that he was 80% in the car), were consistent with police training.[2] Several witnesses alleged that McCollister did not fire while within the car;[3] powder residue testing indicated that McCollister's handgun was at least 30 to 48 inches away from James when discharged, a fact which lawyers for James' family alleged was inconsistent with McCollister's version of events. Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk declined to hold a public inquest into James' death;[3] McCollister was cleared by a federal grand jury.

In 2005, the bureau announced changes in the guidelines for police use of deadly force, including a prohibition against shooting at a moving vehicle, that were intended to prevent similar incidents. In 2005 a civil suit against McCollister seeking $10 million in damages went to trial.[citation needed] On June 29, 2005, the jury ruled in favor of McCollister, ending the civil case.

She attempted to flee in the car, and the officer shot her in the head. It was "consistent with police training."

[NYC_SKP]

12. We militarized the police post Viet Nam, then we whittled away our civil rights.

And we continue to call for less privacy and more authoritarian control.

This is precisely why I'm a firm supporter of the Second Amendment.

gotta run.

[WinkyDink]

13. Abner Louima. Rodney King. Chicago, 1968.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/the-abner-louima-case-10-years-later/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/protests-at-democratic-national-convention-in-chicago

[tblue37]

14. Another routine lie they use is "Stop resisting arrest," repeated in a monotone

as they beat the crap out of an unresisting person who has probably not done anything much to begin with. That WaPo reporter said the cop arresting him was repeating, "Stop resisting arrest," even as the reporter calmly put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, while saying, "I am not resisting."

[WinkyDink]

15. Which is why Lee Harvey Oswald stated, "I am not resisting arrest," inside the movie theatre.

[Savannahmann]

18. I wonder if we should start a thread with routine lies told by law enforcement

There are just so many of them.

[blkmusclmachine]

17. Police know there are NO REPRECUSSIONS. NO responsibility for their actions. And now they have their

military toys to play with. Bad, worse, and ...

[Live and Learn]

19. They are also encouraged to lie to suspects if the police shows

have a ring of truth to them. Since they are constantly lying, why should anyone ever believe them?

They also use to show respect to people using terms like 'sir' and 'madam' but now are allowed to use foul language.

[Savannahmann]

20. They do lie.

I'd give you examples, but I'll just link to this lawfirm and a couple other sites.

http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/2010/06/18/myth-2-cops-cant-lie/

http://www.knowmyrights.org/knowledgebase/faq/police-encounters/are-police-allowed-to-lie

Interesting thing, in most states it is against the law to lie to a cop, but perfectly acceptable for a cop to lie.

[Live and Learn]

21. Encouraging people to lie and swear is more likely to produce

professional liars than professional law enforcement officers.

Thanks for the links.

[rock]

26. My understanding

is that if a cop lies to you then no crime is committed but if you lie to a cop then there could be a case made that you are impeding their investigation. And that's a crime.

[Savannahmann]

27. In Georgia, there is actually a criminal charge

Providing false information to the police. If they ask your name and you say Bob when your name is Frank, you have just committed that crime.

There are justifications for it, plenty of them. However, yes, the Police lie all the time. What does it say about a group that consistently cheats? Broward County Police were caught conducting improper communication with the Judge. They were telling the Judge by the use of smiley faces on the part of the ticket kept by police, and used in court, that the suspect was pleasant, unpleasant, or an A hole. This improper communication is a direct violation of the 6th amendment. You have a right to know all the information the police are presenting to the court. Secret communication is a violation. According to the Law Professor who was interviewed at the link, any First year law student would know that. So how did the Judge not know that? Or was it just that the Judge didn't care?

It's only traffic tickets, what does it matter really? Well, if the police routinely cheat, break the rules, and violate the constitution on something as simple, as meaningless in the grand scheme as a traffic ticket, what do they do when something bigger comes up? They are in the habit of cheating and breaking the rules on the most minor of offenses, are we to believe them to be dedicated and honest and we're telling the truth now people?

I wish that the world was fully aware of the truth about Police. Because the routine is killing our people. It's injuring our neighbors, our friends. The deck is stacked so heavily on their side, we may never see it tilt back again. Yet, no political leader who is in a position to really see all of it promotes any change. The reason? Everyone wants to be seen as tough on crime. We can be tough on crime without voiding our humanity, and our honor.

[damnedifIknow]

22. I define it as a mental illness

Would not a person have to be mentally ill to shoot and kill someone who is unarmed? A total loss of reality? I can't understand being cruel to any living being but maybe I'm just a softie.

[LiberalElite]

23. Excellent post nt

[Liberal_from_va34]

24. Hasn't the police in this country always been brutal and authoritarian?

In that context, this horrible tragedy is about par for the course, sadly. I fear we will see many more such incidents in the future.

[Savannahmann]

25. To a certain extent, yes.

However, there were always rules that limited the actions of the police. In the 1960's the police no longer had to fire a warning shot. Some were not firing it anyway, they were firing it into the air after they had shot the suspect.

But here is the thing. There were rules. The cops couldn't fire first. They could return fire, but not initiate. Then they changed the rules to seeing a gun. Which is where the kid in the apartment building with the toy gun came in.

In the meantime, in California, the law changed from shoot to wound, to shoot to stop. Shoot to stop was widely approved of by the police. Shoot to wound meant you had to try and miss the head or heart. Shoot to stop meant you could keep shooting until they stopped moving. That's why the cops today are trained to rapid fire their pistols, something we never saw before, because they are not shooting to kill, they are shooting to stop. The victim just dies from the totally unrelated introduction of a dozen pieces of lead in him.

Have you heard of cop killer bullets? No such thing. The only place those bullets ever killed a cop is on a Hollywood production. After the director calls cut, the "dead" cop stands up and says good job everybody.

But the Cops had to have better guns, vests, and more latitude to protect themselves from these magic bullets that would somehow seek out a cop and wipe them out. They couldn't take the risk, because the bad guy might have cop killer teflon coated bullets and those would kill the cop even if he had a vest on. We just had to let the cops fire first.

It was a series of small steps, a hundred of them, probably more. In each of those small steps, the cops became more outrageous, but only a tiny bit at a time. Now, you see the militarized police force in action. Now, people are angry, and wondering what the hell is going on. They don't realize, we a a society approved of almost all of the tiny little steps to get us here.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

29. When we lived in Savannah, Georgia in the 1960s, my mother was horrified to read in the newspaper

one morning that a little black boy who was throwing rocks at cars was shot in the back and killed by a police officer when the kid tried to run away. It happened in a nearby town. The black boy was six years old. To my knowledge nothing was done about the killing. The way black people were treated during those days was horrible, and Savannah was supposed to be a bit more enlightened than other parts of Georgia.

[Puzzledtraveller]

30. We live in a zoo

We are all zoo animals.

[JEB]

31. Fear ginned up to pass madatory sentencing

and to elect "tough on crime" candidates had a role in creating this situation. Probably at least twice as many cops as necessary in this pant pissing country of ours.