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The Ferguson subreddit is moderated by a racist clique that has 90+ subreddits (link goes to an article, not the sub itself). 

 

I'm a giant free speech proponent, but I'm becoming uncomfortable with Reddit over racist and misogynistic content there.  All sorts of good things have come out of Reddit as well, probably more good than bad...but it is leaving an increasingly bad taste in my mouth to spend any of my time or attention there.

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Me and my big mouth, someone I know opened up their mouth about Ferguson. Their position was that the protesters are getting what they deserve and the media was asking for it. This person lives in the UK and had a... interesting position about the London riots.

 

Anyway, came here to post a couple things. First, supposedly the cop who was on film pointing his assault rifle at people and saying he would kill them has been "suspended indefinitely." Whatever that means. I hope it means fired.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/officer-who-pointed-gun-protesters-suspended

 

Second, a PMC has been contracted to protect one individual, not disclosed who, that is going to be in Ferguson. They've been deployed into the shit in the Middle East and such, and now... a metropolitan area.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/20/6050937/private-military-in-ferguson

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Me and my big mouth, someone I know opened up their mouth about Ferguson. Their position was that the protesters are getting what they deserve and the media was asking for it. This person lives in the UK and had a... interesting position about the London riots.

 

Anyway, came here to post a couple things. First, supposedly the cop who was on film pointing his assault rifle at people and saying he would kill them has been "suspended indefinitely." Whatever that means. I hope it means fired.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/officer-who-pointed-gun-protesters-suspended

 

Second, a PMC has been contracted to protect one individual, not disclosed who, that is going to be in Ferguson. They've been deployed into the shit in the Middle East and such, and now... a metropolitan area.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/20/6050937/private-military-in-ferguson

 

The cynic in me says that "suspended indefinitely" means "suspended until no one is paying attention."

 

I had seen an early report about the PMC, but thought it had to be false.  Before we called them PMCs, we had another word.  Mercenaries.  Deploying mercenaries in the US is a bad fucking idea. 

 

On a personal note, I currently have a thread going in Facebook that includes a super liberal priest, a kinda nutty conspiracy theorist, a super combative atheist, and a relative who has said some pretty racist/homophobic stuff on FB before.  This should be fun.  So far no one has said anything (too) stupid. 

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holy christ

 

Edit: I'm reading reports on this and it kept saying that he was holding a knife or something. The video isn't clear but it certainly doesn't look like he was.

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holy christ

 

Edit: I'm reading reports on this and it kept saying that he was holding a knife or something. The video isn't clear but it certainly doesn't look like he was.

 

It looks like he pulls it out of his jacket at 1:29, at which point the officers start saying "drop the knife" repeatedly. The video isn't clear enough to be certain but from then on his right hand looks like could be holding a knife.

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To me it looks like he was indeed holding a knife, but he sure as shit wasn't 3-4 feet away from them and he wasn't lunging at them. Sure you could justify deadly force if the dude had a knife, but fucking 12 shots? And then the flip over his second-away-from-corpse body so they can cuff him? Seriously?

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I think it looked like he was headed to a car, police probably thought he was trying to get away? Doesn't justify killing the man but I'm trying to figure out why the police would feel the need to immobilize him at the moment.

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I'm a giant free speech proponent, but I'm becoming uncomfortable with Reddit over racist and misogynistic content there.  All sorts of good things have come out of Reddit as well, probably more good than bad...but it is leaving an increasingly bad taste in my mouth to spend any of my time or attention there.

 

Reddit is basically the same thing as 4chan.

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To me it looks like he was indeed holding a knife, but he sure as shit wasn't 3-4 feet away from them and he wasn't lunging at them. Sure you could justify deadly force if the dude had a knife, but fucking 12 shots? And then the flip over his second-away-from-corpse body so they can cuff him? Seriously?

 

My guess would be that the officer paniced when Brown started turning towards him, which would also go a ways to explaining the poor accuracy and the amount of shots. The handcuffing was probably protocol, even if it's ridiculous.

 

You are absolutely correct about the distance and lack of lunging however.

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I view that video as evidence of an unnecessary execution.  The officers set the scene for a lethal takedown within the first second of their arrival on the scene, and it proceeded to escalate quickly until lethal force was necessary.  Try searching for something like "knife wielding suspect subdued" and see what kinds of stories you have.  Police all over the world routinely take down people with knives non-lethally.  Sometimes a non-lethal approach doesn't work, and the suspect is still killed.  But non-lethal options are attempted.  In this case, the police force make it clear that going lethal is the last option, not the default.

 

“Our goal is to subdue the suspect," Russell McClung with Metro Transit Police said. "This is a less lethal system and is much better to use than deadly force.”

 

Or take a look at this case which made the rounds a few months ago, a drunk or unstable white guy holding a gun screaming at traffic.  Look at how the police approach him, and compare it to the video of the StL video.  In StL, the entire incident takes about 17 seconds.

 

1.  Officers arrive, and park within 20 feet of suspect

2.  Do not wait for backup, immediately engage

3.  Pull guns within a second or two of opening their doors and take aggressive stances

4.  Bark orders at the man, but do not try to talk to him

5.  Do not back up, they stand their ground

6.  And they shoot him dead

 

Now, in the Kalamazoo vid,

 

1.  Officers arrive, and quickly retreat creating a distant perimeter around the man

2.  Wait for backup

3.  Communicate with the man over loudspeaker, asking him to put the gun down

4.  Clearly there is organization of other officers going on in the background as the officer on the loudspeaker engages the man

5.  Do not pull guns trained on him (that you can see) and do not take an aggressive stance

6.  After several minutes of talking, ultimately calm the man down and disarm him

 

That's a good procedure.  That's discipline.  That's valuing the life of a suspect, and seeking out non-lethal solutions before lethal ones.  It's everything that didn't happen in StL yesterday.  Go reading from police and military sources about aggression, and about how approaching a potentially violent situation with aggressive, weapons drawn procedures is more likely to result in a violent encounter.  Everything about that encounter was a step-by-step procedure where escalation was the most likely outcome.  And that's fucked.  It's wrong. 

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holy christ

 

Edit: I'm reading reports on this and it kept saying that he was holding a knife or something. The video isn't clear but it certainly doesn't look like he was.

 

Witness report I saw say it was a table or butter knife. it doesn't matter. As outlined above, they EXITED THE CAR WITH GUNS DRAWN. If the police were only equipped with tasers, I bet the first instinct would NOT have been to tase that man. It would have been their last option to subdue him.

 

If all you have is a bullet hammer, everything needs bullets in it. When a man sees your gun drawn and yells to shoot, you oblige? How about saying "I'm not going to shoot you" and also not having your fucking weapon drawn.

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If all you have is a bullet hammer, everything needs bullets in it.

 

I laughed at that.  It's morbid, but I think I needed a laugh.  I'm also using that line at some point. 

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Witness report I saw say it was a table or butter knife. it doesn't matter. As outlined above, they EXITED THE CAR WITH GUNS DRAWN. If the police were only equipped with tasers, I bet the first instinct would NOT have been to tase that man. It would have been their last option to subdue him.

 

If all you have is a bullet hammer, everything needs bullets in it. When a man sees your gun drawn and yells to shoot, you oblige? How about saying "I'm not going to shoot you" and also not having your fucking weapon drawn.

 

Yeah if it's at a point where you have to respond and your most obvious option for response is a gun...

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My guess would be that the officer paniced when Brown started turning towards him, which would also go a ways to explaining the poor accuracy and the amount of shots. The handcuffing was probably protocol, even if it's ridiculous.

 

You are absolutely correct about the distance and lack of lunging however.

You seem to be confused -- this is an unrelated shooting that happened a few days ago, not the Michael Brown shooting.

 

I know, there's a lot of them. Crazy, huh?

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You seem to be confused -- this is an unrelated shooting that happened a few days ago, not the Michael Brown shooting.

 

I know, there's a lot of them. Crazy, huh?

 

Oh, you're right, my mistake.

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I laughed at that.  It's morbid, but I think I needed a laugh.  I'm also using that line at some point. 

 

I'm beside myself. I've torn myself apart for a week straight about what's going on and what has happened in Ferguson. It's not about me. I'll be fine. I've reached a point where just "being outraged" isn't carrying any further. The only things I can do that will potentially even have any impact from where I am is call my congressmen. Once I do that, what do I do? So, humor, even if it's awful. Glad I could make someone else laugh.

 

The British police would not have shot that man, because they can't shoot that man. Because they would be unable to threaten that man, it is less likely that he would be viewed as a threat.

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There are currently trials to have armed police patrolling routinely in the UK. That said, about twenty years ago a friend kicked a football into a moving car, and one of the police that turned up got out of the car carrying an MP5. He didn't do any of the talking though and he certainly didn't point it at us. The consequences for UK cops are different if they shoot someone. The resulting inquiry is basically, if not the end of an officer's career, the end of that part of their career. (American cop shoots someone: chief ruffles their hair, hands them a clip and sends them back out).

 

I don't have much to say about Ferguson other than that it's been making me very angry. I'd been struggling to understand how a police force can be so poorly trained, macho and hostile to the populace of their town. Revenue collection duties go some way to explaining how the political will around an entire police force can be so corrupt. Bjorn, you've made some really informative posts, thank you.

 

The combination of asshole personality traits with a career path dressed up in imagery of heroism and mottoes like "Protect and Serve" is malignant and deeply psychologically unwell. I can't think of many ways to uproot it that are personal, other than humiliating bullies and spreading the idea that "alpha male" is something to be ashamed of. By that I don't mean leadership; I mean dominance, any need to be dominant, and getting off on it. It's pretty astounding that members of the US army are shocked at the unempathic behaviour of US police.

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In Norway, the Police federation/union is pushing to have police always carrying arms. They repeated this stance earlier in the month after a suspected terror threat towards Norway, when the police did carry weapons and set up checkpoints. The crime stats went down, which they took as proof that carrying weapons lowers the crime rate. Link.

 

The authority of the Norwegian police academy replied, saying that's a "complete miss", and gets support from the police leadership and politicians, citing that if the numbers indeed went down in this period, it's most likely due to the amount of visible uniforms on the street, not the guns. And that in Sweden, where they do carry arms, they have 6 times the amount of shootings by the police, despite having less than 2 times the population. They also worry that the criminals will arm up to match the police. Google translated link.

 

And similarly, Iceland had their first case EVER of Police killing a person in December. (via Henroid on Twitter)

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Britain is the first place I've ever been afraid of the police. Granted that was an airport, but seeing them walking around with submachine guns did not make me feel safe.

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Britain is the first place I've ever been afraid of the police. Granted that was an airport, but seeing them walking around with submachine guns did not make me feel safe.

 

That's a pretty reasonable reaction. I just want to point out that that is only standard at an airport. British police do not usually carry firearms, though there have been some unfortunate incidents with "terrorism suspects" over the past decade. Our issue with excessive force and racism-esque responses by police in this country tends to be against Muslims or people who "look Muslim", rather than the apparently anti-black stuff going on in America at the moment.

 

That said, I definitely feel like British police are way less inclined to roll up and start shooting on a regular basis than US police, as has been said partly because most of them are not armed (and therefore also not trained) that way.

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I was first scared by a police officer in Italy. He was walking through the street with his hand on a holstered pistol. Really freaked me out.

Also in the USA, I was asked a bunch of unreasonable questions about why I was coming, why I only had hand luggage and how could I afford the flight. I answered all the questions (although I don't believe I had to) because I didn't want to be detained at the airport for hours. 

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US borders are weird like that. I find the questioning flip-flops back and forth between casually friendly and lightly aggressive. More toward the latter for a friend who's a mountain bike journalist; the last word of that seems to be a red flag.

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