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I don’t really want to watch the video, so my comments are based off of written reports, but I do wonder why non-lethal force such as a taser could not be used. I find any type of looting or other violence to be despicable.
Go to the Tatum report on youtube - he explains exactly why they didn't taze him
Wallace was supposedly on lithium and under a dr's care for his mental disorder as it's usually used for those who are bipolar. There is a lot of armchair quarterbacking and the fact is - none of us were there and NONE of us are cops.
Wallace had quite an arrest record - 2013 pled guilty to assault and resisting arrest after hitting a police officer
Four years later he pled guilty to robbery, assault, and possessing an instrument of crime after kicking down the door of a woman and putting a gun to her head, the station reported.
His social media pages show him rapping about shooting police officers and other people.
It's funny as Heavy.com had his police record and a link to his social media pages in their article 2 days ago - when checking just now - they've been removed from the article.
As far as shooting for his legs - that's in the movies - do you know how hard it is to hit a person in the legs - especially if they are moving. Not only do you have a huge chance of missing him but then you have the possibility that those bullets rikochet and hurt an innocent bystander. If you shoot to stop someone - you shoot the largest area of body mass - the chest / abdomen. I do feel the amt of shots was excessive - but I blame ourselves - as the current energy in society has put everyone on edge - I'm surprised that cops even bother reporting for duty anymore.
As far as Social workers - that's an average salary of $50,000 for one and who in their right mind wants to put themselves in these kinds of situations for that small amt of pay. Being a Social Worker is one of the top 20 deadliest jobs. I don't see any liberals stepping up to the plate and offering their services to these police depts.
I will never understood how looting things and destroying property relates to protesting.
Not that I condone looting or vandalism...but from what I understand, the general idea is that when one is caught up in generational poverty and harassed/oppressed as a community for so long by law enforcement that when a police shooting appears to be unwarranted, you lash out at the business that have what you covet or need. Add to that a pandemic where low-income people are unable to work - and are receiving inconsistent federal government relief - or are compelled to work in high-risk "essential" jobs and something is bound to break.
Now, I know people may counter with LeBron James/Ben Carson/their Black friend who is doing well despite their respective personal odds. But the city and metro are a microcosm of the result of decisions made over the last several decades that hamper opportunities for African-Americans and other people of color. And while one might want to blame political parties - Jim Kenney may deserve some general criticism - I'm not sure if the alternative would do any better for lower-income residents of any stripe. Not even Wolf's good intentions may be enough as he faces a majority legislature representing areas that are highly resentful of the city and its majority residents.
I don't believe we need to "defund" the police...but I do believe ramping up that Behavioral Health Staff quickly will help. We would also otherwise benefit from taking note of what our neighbors across the river in Camden did to revamp their own police force.
For christ sake, stop using the term "defund." It stops the discussion dead in it's tracks.
- No choke holds
- Non-lethal tactics to stop threats
- Preemptive health services with incentives to clients who take advantage
- Mandatory non-paid leave to cops with violations
- Body cams 100% of the time. Suspension on 1st violation
Seems like a reasonable start.
We also need to get weed rescheduled (out of sched 1) and double drug trafficking penalties for sched 1 drugs. There needs to be some deterrent to entering that industry.
<clap clap clap clap clap on the boldfaced parts>
One of the persistent problems those of us on the left side of our political spectrum face is this: The far left side really does advocate either chaos, or dictatorship (often without knowing that they're doing so), or even both. Then the right gets to wrap this around the left. Here, it was the anarchist left that injected that phrase into the discourse, forcing everyone else to define it downward. Most of us do not support "defunding" the police. We do support spending the money we spend on policing better, which may mean we spend it on something other than actual cops.
But there was a poster downthread who points out that some of the things we want may mean we end up spending more on the police. Are we ready to acknowledge that this may be true?
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Originally Posted by FindingZen
I'm otherwise in agreement with everything you say. I don't know if doubling penalties for schedule 1 drugs will be so much of a deterrent. In an environment where there is already little hope for gainful employment, dealing drugs will only become a higher-risk/higher-reward occupation.
I'd include powder cocaine with marijuana on the list of drugs that should be taken off Schedule I instead. I hear your latter point, but most of the other drugs on Schedule I are not in as great demand as those two, and if we could figure out a way to get the current street dealers into a legit system, we'd have gone a long way towards tackling the problem you identify. (And we should be able to do that: several states brought the rum-runners and bootleggers into the legal distribution systems they built after Prohibition ended. I understand California is doing this with marijuana now, and also expunging the records of those incarcerated for weed crimes.)
And let's not forget that opioids are legal.
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Originally Posted by thedirtypirate
“ Looters raided La'vanter Boutique in Philadelphia last night. The black owner claims she emptied her bank accounts and sold her house in order to open the business.”
And I think it worth noting here that the looting has not been accompanied by Black Lives Matter taking to the streets with huge protest marches. In general, the equating of BLM with the looters and rioters is a canard foisted on us from the Right, and what we've seen these past few days should drive that point home. There's outrage aplenty, but no large-scale demonstrations — just looting, a purely opportunistic crime.
And it's we who live in the lower-income neighborhoods who pay the price for it — twice: the second time in the form of other businesses preemptively closing in self-defense, as happened on Chelten Avenue up where I live on Tuesday. (By the way, that ransacked Rite Aid drugstore I photographed in that essay has not reopened since then. Most of the other drugstores in my neighborhood did, and they all shut down again on Tuesday. My local supermarket, however, remains open.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curly Q. Bobalink
One answer is to send more officers on every call, with more non-lethal options, but that costs MORE money, not less.
Tasers are effective, but their failure rate is high enough such that they cannot be trusted to work on an individual who is armed and aggressive. Mythbusters did a test that showed that even with an open gap of twenty feet, an assailant with a knife can cross that distance and deliver a fatal wound before the officer can draw his weapon and fire.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet are beanbag shotguns, they can be deployed from a greater distance than a taser and are pretty effective. But again, you need to have the subject covered with lethal force at the same time in case it does not work, so it takes more manpower. You can't have it both ways.
The cops in the video went out of their way to back up before opening fire. I sure don't see the folks who are "protesting" buying police scanners and intervening before the police arrive, and getting themselves killed in the process. All of the bystanders present could have put themselves between Mr. Wallace and the police. Why didn't they? Because they didn't want to die, the same as the cops on scene.
Chokeholds should NOT be banned, they are a form of non-lethal force. Routinely performed in MMA, they cut off the blood flow to the brain and cause unconsciousness. The suspect can then be cuffed or otherwise hobbled. Eric Garner, I believe, had a heart attack, he was NOT killed by the chokehold. He was a BIG guy, I believe the cop that applied the choke had to jump up to get his arm around his neck. Joe Rogan has said that he believes all cops should earn purple belts in JuJitsu, but again, training for that takes time and money, so get ready to pay higher taxes.
I myself was taken back when I saw the video of the cop with his knee on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes. But instead of burning down stores, I waited for the facts to come out - Mr. Floyd ASKED the police to take him out of the squad and hold him on the ground, he was hallucinating from having ingested enough drugs (Fentanyl?) to kill a person two-and-a-half times, he was NOT killed from being "kneeled on", and the officers involved are going to be found not guilty.
Before I get to my main point, a couple of things:
If chokeholds should't be banned, then maybe we need to take Joe Rogan's advice, for the cops don't seem to be administering them properly.
And if your description of what happened with George Floyd is true, how come we haven't heard this?
Now on to my main point, which is actually broader than this discussion: One of the big problems we have right now is that we (that is, the American people taken as a whole) actually like or want many of those government programs and services the libertarians and conservatives rail against, but we don't want to pay their true cost. This applies on many fronts.
One more thing, addressing the subject of the militarization and distrust of the police: Some of these problems stem from the fact that we all seem to have forgotten that effective policing is also a matter of community relations. The best cops know the people they protect and serve because they interact with them routinely in non-confrontational, casual situations. I get pushback from the defenders of the status quo when I bring up what I understand has happened in Camden as an example — or a case study, if you will.
I'm sure that most of you know that thet city did disband its police department — as a cost-saving measure, true, but it was disbanded anyway and replaced with a new police department run by Camden County. With that, the new police department also got rid of the old FOP lodge, which was unwilling to go along with the new terms of employment being offered.
The new top cop made it clear that Job 1 for the officers was to be getting to know the people where they were patrolling. That meant things like sponsoring cookouts and other social events for residents in their patrol areas.
I understand that crime in Camden has fallen significantly since then.
I think Malcolm Jenkins made this point in one of his Philadelphia Citizen articles on public safety, written after a ride-along in a neighborhood much like mine: The residents know who's committing the crimes (edited to add: and want them to stop). The police would love to know this. But neither side gets satisfaction because the cops and the residents remain strangers to one another, and wary strangers at that.
Soft and squishy? Sure, but so's mental health counseling, and as we've acknowledged here, sometimes that approach is more effective.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 10-29-2020 at 07:19 AM..
One more thing, addressing the subject of the militarization and distrust of the police: Some of these problems stem from the fact that we all seem to have forgotten that effective policing is also a matter of community relations. The best cops know the people they protect and serve because they interact with them routinely in non-confrontational, casual situations. I get pushback from the defenders of the status quo when I bring up what I understand has happened in Camden as an example — or a case study, if you will.
I think this is the most important point in the discussion. We can shift money around all we want, call in more mental health or non-lethal tactics, etc., but until we change the mindset of how we police, it won't matter much.
I've lived in this city a long time, in various neighborhoods up and down. I have never seen a police officer walking a beat where I lived. Not once has any officer made it a priority to get to know any neighborhood I lived in, to meet with local residents and hear their concerns and try to understand what's really going on and how they can help. So there's absolutely no comfort, no familiarity, and no trust. And to make it worse, when people do try to call the police for help with minor crimes or quality of life issues, they often get a big 'ole shrug. "Sorry, we can't help you."
This is the same argument David Simon made in The Wire--that community policing had been replaced by, essentially, hostile war games. A lot of it was in the context of the war on drugs, but the underlying point remains the same. As one character says:
Quote:
This drug thing, this ain't police work. No, it ain't. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a f***ing enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your f***ing enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory.
Sadly, this is even more true now than it was 15 years ago.
The immediate-term bottom line? Police HAVE to find a way to consistantly de-escalate dangerous situations without killing the perpetrator.
This. And, we must live by the tenant that if our society becomes more equitable, and the quality of life drastically improves for poor and working class communities, the need for extensive policing will diminish. Thus, police budgets will decrease over the long-term, and quality social programs and infrastructure will improve.
This. And, we must live by the tenant that if our society becomes more equitable, and the quality of life drastically improves for poor and working class communities, the need for extensive policing will diminish. Thus, police budgets will decrease over the long-term, and quality social programs and infrastructure will improve.
We have immigrants that come to this country with nothing but the clothes on their back and within their first generation they own homes and are sending their kids to college. My wife's family is literally that story (they cleaned toilets when they arrived here, but came here legally).
Yet we also have citizens that have generational poverty throughout their time here (all races).
America has not been designed to be "fair", it has been designed to give every person an equal chance at success. For many, it seems to be executing on that premise well.
There will be some stuff moving forward that is of concern regarding automation. But blaming one's fate on generational poverty when people can come here with nothing yet succeed is laughable and doesn't acknowledge one's failures in life to make it their own. Which is really what this shooting and then looting was about - no one seems to blame the guy with the knife with a history of assault running towards police with their guns drawn.
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