Ferguson

[rohlfinator]

Yeah, I can't imagine any good coming of this... If anything, the image of armed black activists on the news will be one more way for people to convince themselves that the Ferguson police have been justified in their tactics. I could see Fox falling back on it as stock footage of "scary violent activists" for years. The hypocrisy will be completely lost on a lot of people.

[feelthedarkness]

unless something has changed it is illegal to sell automatic weapons (title 2 weapons) to civilians without specific law enforcement or military credentials. Some of this obviously varies by state, but there are still "pre-ban" weapons. like ak-47s or whatever made before 1989 which were grandfathered in. 

[Henroid]

The St. Louis police department is getting mad that their actions are being broadcast on the internet to be criticized. But they do nothing to curb their actions. Last night, and I still don't know what's been confirmed, two teenagers will shot and killed by them (one of the teens was just 13). The police then smoked the crowd with tear gas. I guess they didn't want witnesses.

[Ninety-Three]

The St. Louis police department is getting mad that their actions are being broadcast on the internet to be criticized. But they do nothing to curb their actions. Last night, and I still don't know what's been confirmed, two teenagers will shot and killed by them (one of the teens was just 13). The police then smoked the crowd with tear gas. I guess they didn't want witnesses.

 

The man shot has been confirmed to be 18, the 13 figure apparently a rumour that took hold. Officers claim he fled a house where they were executing a search warrant, then pointed a gun at them. Also as far as I can tell there was only one person killed last night, no news mentions of anyone else.

I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest that tear gas was deployed not to avoid witnesses (of what?) but to disperse the object-throwing, Interstate-blocking protestors.

[Gormongous]

I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest that tear gas was deployed not to avoid witnesses (of what?) but to disperse the object-throwing, Interstate-blocking protestors.

 

I don't think it was to avoid witnesses, but it definitely was to force a demonstration to disperse or turn violent through direct confrontation with armed officers and then get broken up after they'd spent the entire day antagonizing it with heavy-handed but mostly futile attempts at control. The protesters blocked I-70 for a while, but they had returned to the intersection on their own. It was the police line attempting to force them to move off from there that turned the crowd ugly and gave the excuse to drop tear gas. Police sources claim that there were warnings, but I've found no civilian sources that corroborate that.

 

Regardless, I'm not particularly sympathetic of a police force that integrates tear gas into its standard crown-control doctrine, considering that its use is banned in international warfare, and I have several friends whose lives have been endangered from its reckless deployment by police in St. Louis, especially when they "hotboxed" MoKaBe's Coffeehouse on South Grand last year by throwing in canisters and then blocking all exits after there were reports that protesters were taking refuge on that supposedly neutral ground.

[Henroid]

Someone I went to school with was hit by tear gas during Occupy Oakland. Mind you the protestors were non-violent. There's more to Ferguson and Black Lives Matter than the proportion of police committing crimes against black people; it's also about how trigger happy the police are, the militarization of the police, and how it's somehow become okay to rob people of their right to assemble as granted by THE FIRST THING WRITTEN IN THE CONSTITUTION.

 

Haven't seen it confirmed but the BLM movement received an email from an anonymous source in the St. Louis Police Department. The email outlined that the officers seen recording the crowds are doing so with the instructions to find any sort of wrongdoing on their part, no matter how minor, especially if it's violent. The SLPD are trying to justify their actions. Thankfully, the protestors haven't given in to being incited to violence. The letter also outlined that the reported fires were started by the cops in an attempt to blame the protestors, and that emergency services weren't allowed to put out the fires until the media had covered that the fires started. The fires were in areas protestors were not centered on. Lastly, the local PD has officers embedded within the movement for information gathering and trying to incite people to break the positive spirit / non-violent nature of the protests.

 

Like I said, it's not confirmed, but I wouldn't be surprised by any of it. If anyone here is going to ask why the good cops don't come forward, it's because of the Blue Code. "Never snitch on a fellow officer, even if they are actually wrong and guilty." It's a code enforced by mob rules. As in, the Italian mob. You snitch on a fellow cop, then either you or your family is in for getting murdered.

[Mangela Lansbury]

The man shot has been confirmed to be 18, the 13 figure apparently a rumour that took hold. Officers claim he fled a house where they were executing a search warrant, then pointed a gun at them. Also as far as I can tell there was only one person killed last night, no news mentions of anyone else.

I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest that tear gas was deployed not to avoid witnesses (of what?) but to disperse the object-throwing, Interstate-blocking protestors.

 

There was one person who died, an 18 year old who was shot in the back. The other person with him escaped the attackers. Thanks to the odd requirements of police reporting, the official police report lists the dead man as Suspect and his murderer as Victim.

[Gaizokubanou]

Maybe I'm being too naive here, but Henroid could you substantiate the claim that the general police force is operating under this kind of shadowy death threat system to keep everyone in line?  Apologies for being frank here but that claim sounds ridiculously corrupt to the point where the accusation itself comes off as a slight to actual systematic injustices that are taking hold.

 

There was one person who died, an 18 year old who was shot in the back. The other person with him escaped the attackers. Thanks to the odd requirements of police reporting, the official police report lists the dead man as Suspect and his murderer as Victim.

 

That's some damning stuff.  Hard to explain shooting someone in the back and saying that you shot them as a reaction to them pointing a weapon at you (not impossible, as it could be done in sequence, just improbably as heck)

[jennegatron]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence

 

 

Here's one of the news stories directly linked in that wiki from 2010 http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/18/americas-most-successful-stop

 

It's pretty widely accepted that cops will defend & lie to protect other cops, and will ostracize and ruin the careers and lives of those who don't fall in line

[Gaizokubanou]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence

 

 

Here's one of the news stories directly linked in that wiki from 2010 http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/18/americas-most-successful-stop

 

It's pretty widely accepted that cops will defend & lie to protect other cops, and will ostracize and ruin the careers and lives of those who don't fall in line

 

There is ostracizing which I get (I mean that kind of exists in any group), but that's a whole another level of difference from "snitch and either you or your family member dies".

[Twig]

It's definitely widely accepted, but, at least for me, in no small part because it's also deeply ingrained in the set of fictional tropes often associated with police forces.

 

Like Gaizokubanou, my immediate reaction was, "This sounds cartoonishly evil..." I'm willing to believe it's potentially true, but man it's one of those things that sounds like it's straight out of a movie or TV show or whatever. (Strictly talking about the threat of death, here. Again, as with Gai, I have no issues believing the ostracization (is this a word) factor.)

[Mangela Lansbury]

There is ostracizing which I get (I mean that kind of exists in any group), but that's a whole another level of difference from "snitch and either you or your family member dies".

 

America is a nation where the FBI radicalizes Muslims and then punishes them for having been radicalized. I treat all police departments like they're willing to do the shadiest things, and operate on that assumption until proven otherwise. It's just true too often.

[jennegatron]

In his book Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper explains the implicit threats that make the Blue Wall so successful:

 

You have to rely on your fellow officers to back you. A cop with a reputation as a snitch is one vulnerable police officer, likely to find his peers slow to respond to requests for backup—if they show up at all. A snitch is subject to social snubbing. Or malicious mischief, or sabotage...The peer pressure is childish and churlish, but it's real. Few cops can stand up to it.

 

By refusing to show up as back up or sabotage (perhaps of a police cruiser), it's very easy to see how this could directly lead to your death as the police officer who broke the code.

[Gaizokubanou]

@Mangela Lansbury, Yeah ethics of 'sting' operations like that are often dubious but I guess this (the part about police force in general operating under unwritten death threat system) is just where our world view and expectations are very different.

 

@jennegatrron, there is one thing to be put in more dangerous situations in the job because noone wants to help you (which I'm sure comes as part of ostracization(sp?)), then there is "you and your family are in for getting murdered".

 

Again, not saying it never happens.  Not saying implicit threats caused by ostracizing isn't there and that life doesn't get lot worse for officers who are willing to speak against another officer, but it's the idea of police force in general operating under death threats that I find baffling.

 

Kinda like what Twig said (where he said kinda like what I said).

[Zeusthecat]

For better or worse, my stance is to basically never trust anything the police say. There are so few repercussions that cops ever have to face for their actions and I truly believe it is a deeply corrupt system. How can a system with no accountability not be corrupt?

[Bjorn]

Again, not saying it never happens.  Not saying implicit threats caused by ostracizing isn't there and that life doesn't get lot worse for officers who are willing to speak against another officer, but it's the idea of police force in general operating under death threats that I find baffling.

 

There's the most famous individual example of Serpico, where a cop who had been pushing back against corruption was sent into a dangerous situation, backup was withheld, and fellow officers didn't call for medical aid after he was shot.   And you can find more recent stuff, like an officer warning a cop they may go home in a casket.

 

The thing about threats like this is they don't actually have to be very likely to happen.  I'll bet almost every cop in America knows what happened to Serpico.  There's just enough history to make the threats feel very real. 

[itsamoose]

I can't find any at the moment, but I've come across a few news stories of police unions and fraternal orders (kind of like a VFW for cops) plotting and carrying out character assassinations against anyone that criticizes them.

[Henroid]

It just so happens that Campaign Zero's website - which is impressive by the way and I encourage everyone to read it through - has a section regarding police contracts. The general site link is here: http://www.joincampaignzero.org/

 

The 10th item on the main page is the one about police contracts and pertains to what I was talking about. The police have two rules of conducts when it comes to crimes - the rules for everyone who isn't a cop, and the rules for themselves. And the rules for themselves give them a lot of unfair ground or methods for deceit.