Another officer just arriving at the scene saw the off-duty officer get up and, not knowing he was an officer, fired his weapon once at the man. He hit the off-duty officer in the arm, the department said.
So a third officer shows up, has no idea what is going on, and just starts shooting. Oh but that’s okay because he feared for the other two who knew what was going on and were not shooting.
The pitbull one I read about yesterday or the day before. That’s a sad and tragic accident. The pitbull was charging the officers, had already bit one of them. I am not sure what they should have done there. Part of me is … don’t fire when there is human right next to the dog, the other is, that’s a dangerous animal that has already bit an officer and broke lose to do it again…
He was scared so it’s fine.
His union and the other cops will be the first to tell you so.
And the fact the officer they shot was black, has nothing do with it because we can’t tell the police department to stop treating people differently due to the color of their skin because they’re not systematically racist.
In the old days, you’d beat the damn dog with your nightstick if you had to. Hell, cops not that long ago were pretty proficient in non-lethal take downs of humans.
One odd consequence of the justified crackdown on casual brutality was the elimination of a lot of the non-lethal methods cops would use. All they got left with was relatively unreliable Tasers and live ammo.
Of course, this does hint that too many law enforcement officers are just itching for an excuse to fire their weapon. Contrast this to the ethos of many cops not that long ago, which was to take pride in not having to draw their weapon in many years of service. Yes, the times did change, and all that, but there’s a real problem here that is I think rooted in the psychology of people who become police officers. They remind me of the reason I stopped going to firing ranges and participating in target shooting way back when. Too many of the gun owners I associated with seemed super eager to manufacture any excuse to “defend themselves.” Their eagerness was, to put it mildly, disconcerting.
You would likely have a hard time beating down a pitbull with a nightstick.
Depends on the size and skill of the cop and the size of the dog, I suppose. You can do a hell of a lot with a stick–there’s a reason cudgels and staffs were popular weapons among those not allowed to carry swords and things like that.
My point, though, is that we’ve moved away from the very idea of an escalating scale of responses and straight to a binary, zero threat = no action, any threat = shoot 'em.
I always assumed that was just something they put in the movies for script sake. Seasoned police officer says he’s drawn his weapon once in 20 years, and never fired a shot… of course gets killed later in the movie so the rookie cop can save the day.
But you’re thinking though that that was a real accomplishment, a sense of pride even, and we’ve lost it within police culture. That drawing a weapon is essentially no big deal now.
Exactly.
This kind of reminds me of my dad’s mini speech he gave me about having too many Bushes and Clintons in the office when Obama and Hillary ran. I remember telling him, Dad… it’s been one or the other since I’ve been old enough to even know who was in office.
I can say that flying for me has always been hell since the TSA has been around for about just as along too.
And this adversarial police thing, I have no real memory outside of movies of cops ever trying to hold back. I feel like police, sheriffs… it’s just a power trip.
Yes, experience colors your perceptions, for sure. I clearly remember flying when it was not a hassle, pay phones, and Nixon…
I have minute memories of flying to Disneyland when I was 7. Since I was 7 i don’t remember how small the seats were. I do remember my mom trying to get me to eat some sort of croissant sandwich with some disgusting cheese on it and my dad drove down and his big old blue car, i think it was a Ford LTD; it broke down in Anaheim. The hole point was to give the girls a chance to fly, but sadly… I don’t remember much of the experience of flying.
Maybe if some weird guy patted me down at a metal detector, it would have stuck more.
I mean I’m about the same age as you, so have vague memories of flying in ‘the before times’. In fact we flew to Hawaii about a month before September 11th. My first solo flying? About 1998/99 going to space camp. So I can recall the time with some detail, when my parents went right to the gate with me.
But I also have a few things that didn’t fully take root until much later. I grew up a middle class white boy from the suburbs, son of a firefighter. So the whole awareness of the police culture? I didn’t grok that until I was fully an adult. Basically this growing realization over the last 15 years that this was not normal, not right. The War on Drugs is as old as I am, so those programs seemed like the nature of things.
The first election I remember was Bush- Clinton in '92. And I remember it because of all the nasty things people around me were saying about Clinton. It’s only in retrospect that I can recognize what was going on.
Individual psychological tendencies of people drawn to law enforcement has always been a problem. I think the difference that has led to the cultural shift is the mentality of the “warrior cop” coming primarily out of the war on drugs- and exploited by people like Grossman with his Killology mental illness.
I’d definitely agree that the militarization of the language and mentality of law enforcement, largely via the rhetoric of the War on Drugs, has a lot to do with this stuff.
Of course, the War on Drugs was and is a thinly disguised war on non-whites, the poor, and anyone else who discomfits white middle class suburban voters.
Not as thin was most think. There are people today who don’t know it was a racist attempt and of course have no problems with our AG going after states that have legalized marijuana because they still believe that the war on drugs was supposed to accomplish something other than line pockets and fill prisons.
Agreed. I’m starting to read Between the World and Me. I expect to be angry a lot.
The real amazing thing about the war on drugs is that originally it was based on literally nothing more than a government bureaucrat who wanted to increase the power of his department in government.
An amended version of the bill now requires that schoolchildren also be taught about “an individual’s rights under law in interacting with a law enforcement official.”
I’m certain the answer to mistrust between the community and police is not indoctrinating the children to trust police. It seems more reasonable to put the responsibility on the actual adults and have them mend the fences.