Amnesty International Fails All 50 States on Police Tactics

Ouch.

Full Report Here.

yeah, like they have clean hands.

i mean sure i'm glad they are around to do what they do but ai is in no way a squeeky clean organization.

one of their own board members outed them years ago as an organization in which money, publicity and individual power always comes before human rights.

anyway even with that i have no problem believing this accusation.

we are basically property of the state and property shuts the **** up and does what it is told to do or property can be locked away where people can't hear property run its mouth.

Oh ouch, some of those laws are nuts. So there are states where the police can legally shoot me in the head for punching someone? Other states where the officer is the one who determines if they're allowed to shoot me?

What a shocker.

What the hell is Amnesty International and how have they developed standards and who controls and modifies these standards?

@ferrari2001: A non-governmental organisation founded in London in the 60's that conducts studies to prevent human rights abuse. I know they won a Nobel Peace Prize somewhere along the line.

Well ain't that shocking?

Is this the same organization that wanted Swiss authorities to arrest George W. Bush?

@ferrari2001: Yup

Look it's difficult to be a police officer. Everyday they deal with trouble. That toy gun that looks like a toy gun may actually be a real gun so they are justified in shooting that kid. And sometimes they need to give that thug a ride of his life even if he's in medical trouble. It's to teach respect. And hey they do need to be above the law because they are the law.

Kids these days don't respect the police these days so we got to break their backs so we can get respect. God if you're not a police officer and a police cocksucker supporter then shut the hell up and call a crackhead to your crime scene!

#policelivesmatter #blackonblackcrime

If all you can say is, "and you too," then you are not really trying to solve the problem.

On topic:

This is for the best. If we got a good report, there would obviously be an issue with the evaluation.

solve what problem?

there are 800,000 cops in america and millions of individual encounters daily.

with those kinds of numbers it is statistically impossible for them to not kill the citizenry.

as long as there is enforcement of the laws there will be fatalities either through incompetence, accident or malice.

hell, with 800,000 on the job tens of thousands will be sociopaths and psychopaths and a very real possibility that at least one or two will be full blown serial killers.

what solution is there for that?

sorry man, civilization demands blood.

and yet many other countries are doing a much better job.

i'm not talking about unnamed countries with unknown numbers.

i'm talking about the one with 800,000 active cops that has millions of encounters a day.

in that one the sheer numbers of encounters ensure fatalities of innocents.

it's unavoidable.

sorry guys, this is not going away.

The United Kingdom has 128,351 police officers. In 2011 the police opened fire only 5 times, killing two people. This was considered so bad by the public that it sparked rioting. The year after not a single person was shot dead by the police.

There have been a total of 55 fatal shootings by the police in the past 24 years. In America they had 59 in the first 24 days of 2015.

well i'm glad it's that simple.

do you want to go out and collect everyone in americas guns or shall i?

lulz.

Well at least you agree that Americas attitude towards guns is a problem.

No of course it's not that simple. However you seem to think it's impossible.

LOLOLOL

Holy shitballs.

i only think it is impossible because it is impossible.

as long as you have laws and have to enforce them people are going to die along the way.

nobody wants to hear it but it is the price of civilization.

and that's not even taking into account how you are going to have psychos on the police force.

on top of that america has a culture of fear so we have unstable fearful cops and unstable fearful people being force fed a steady 24 hour news-cycle diet of how dangerous the world is.

what do you expect is going to happen?

And the UK also has laws that it enforces, yet few deaths.

Culture can change. If the fear culture is causing deaths then get rid of it.

I read parts of the report. There are some good points. Some of it it is laughable, though. Especially the part where I'm expected to warn somebody who may be threatening my life---or the life of somebody else---that I'm about to use deadly force on them.

"STOP OR I'LL USE DEADLY---!" -Gets shot by a perp before I can give a verbal warning.- That turned out well.

Not sure what can be done aside from better accountability. My department hasn't deemed it necessary to get body cams yet, so I got one on my own. Not going to lose my job because of a bad camera angle, or somebody outright lying about me.

get rid of tabloid news? what would be left? that is all there is.

look. i treat every encounter with officers of the law as life and death situations.

because they are.

every single one of them.

i have ended up in this science fiction existence where my government is an evil overgrown empire of bureaucracy that threatens my existence and is too large to have any real control over and all you can do is manage your risk and cross your fingers.

it's not going to change anytime soon so you either learn to manage your risk or you get pulled over and shot by a psycho.

i don't give a shit about the ethics and hypotheticals of it, i just live in it.

people can piss and moan about unfairness all they want, they can scream and cry about the constitution all they want, in the end the reality is you are going to encounter an unknown quantity and your life depends on how you handle it.

sorry ot, i wish i had better news for you.

We've all been there Aljosa rofl

However you seem to think this is an issue with civilisation and not specifically America. Like I said America is the exception, not the norm. Civilisation is not at fault, America is.

I highly doubt America will be fixed in our life time or even the next generation, however it clearly can improve and one day in the future be fixed. But that can't happen if everyone gives up and accepts the broken system.

well it's not exactly fair to compare a pile of disarmed populations with america.

we have guns, we love guns, there is a price to pay for that.

if you can change that you can change what the problem is.

America isn't the only country with guns. Canada has guns yet still much less people killed by police. Finland has a very large amount of guns yet very few shootings by the police.

So why shouldn't America address it's problems? What problem would be caused by doing that?

@toast_burner: well the canadians are just flat out nicer people that you don't like to shoot if you don't have to and the finns are militarily trained and part of a standing militia (or so i have been led to believe) so really that's apples to oranges as far as comparisons go.

you can't disarm americans because the news tells us shortly after that the jackbooted brownshirts are going to kick down our doors to cart us off to the white male only concentration camps and people believe whatever fox tells them to believe.

and no matter whatever solution you come up with you are still confronted by the numbers.

over the course of millions of unique encounters that happen daily people are going to die.

that one will never be solved.

I am disappointed by this thread.

Why? Because no one can come to a consensus on anything on OT? :P

Awesome. Has your department said anything about you wearing one?

Not yet. I talked to the lawyer in my union and he says I'm OK to wear it. I take it off when I go back to the station and put it on as soon as I get in my car. I don't want to rock the boat, but I also don't want the reports of the media to be the only account of my actions. At this point I honestly can't trust anybody except the people I work with. It seems like there are so many people who just want to cause me harm simply because of my profession.

Smart man. Stay safe out there, okay?

Always do. Got too many video games to play.

The major contention I read before the comment I quoted in this post in this thread is that we should accept things as they are because that is how they shall stay. I do not want to send a message of harshness, here. That overall message is a hopeless sentiment acting as if nothing matters beyond present day circumstances.

I refuse to accept failure of protecting life as a certainty in life.

@airshocker: I think that's a very mature way of dealing with things and a healthy compromise. You are part of a team and as such it's in your best interest to not be "that guy" even though the rest of your team could benefit from doing the same as you but at the same time you're also protecting yourself and the people you encounter while on the job so well done.

The thing is that if a body cam is not sanctioned by the workplace I'm seeing that the footage will be brought up at the time of any unjust claims but magically be missing during the ****-ups for a lot of officers who use it, especially if said work place has no knowledge of the camera's existence.

i'm not saying you should accept anything,

i'm saying you have absolutely no other choice.

sorry about the horrid terrible very bad message of abject soul crushing hopelessness but lets give it 10 years and see who called it.

i'm not happy about it if that helps any.

I have no control over whether my department implements a bodycam policy. The camera I got is meant solely to record events from as close to my point of view as possible. I'm one of the biggest advocates for body cameras. I'm also very confident in my knowledge of the law and my departments SOPs. I don't have any reason to believe my actions would be wrong. The only thing I fear is that my actions are taken out of context, or recorded in such a way as to try and paint an unflattering view of my work. So I have no reason to hide my camera---or the footage---if it ever records an incident. I'm simply not going to give the brass a reason to chew on my ass. At least not right now. It's always better to beg for forgiveness, anyway.

They are not above the law. No one is. They are not the law either. They enforce the law... You're not getting respect the way you mention, you will get people fearing the police.

Stop riding the fear wave?

Granted the media could perhaps be better to at not blowing everything out of proportions only because they want more viewers/readers.

fear = $$$ so that will never happen.

Then it falls on the educational system...