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What constitutes excessive force in your mind? Ignore the Grand Jury's decision for this question, because we have ample evidence demonstrating that the system does not always work toward justice. You can see how many charges law enforcement agents have had to face, even after they brutally beat a homeless person to death on the street. This is one of at least several similar events where no charges were filed.

It is that question that has many people bothered about this event.

Buried under the racism and claims of execution and murder is a valid concern, which is that law enforcement has undergone a fundamental change in the last few decades which does not benefit society. The slogan of "Protect and Serve the Public" today is invalid, officers are placed above all members of the public and the statement "Officer Safety" has become a mantra justifying any and all actions the officer takes.

The take away we should be discussing is the question I proposed initially. The psychological profiling of potential law enforcement officers is a concern, the militarization of police forces is a concern.

I'm not a pacifist. If an armed suspect is threatening the public, the police have the right to shoot to kill. It's when suspects are not armed that we need to draw a firm line on the amount of force required versus the amount of force used. Unloading a full clip into an unarmed suspect from a vehicle goes beyond necessary force, especially in this case where bullets kept flying after the suspect was 15feet from the vehicle (from the evidence released to the public).

Further reading can be found pretty much anywhere, from cases of officers shooting dogs in yards to tossing flash bangs into the wrong house during an unannounced raid to serve a warrant.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381446/barney-fife-meets-delta-force-charles-c-w-cooke
http://www.sagepub.com/gabbido...
http://www.copwatch.org/databa...

That's not quite working out as well as planned.

But it's not to say we shouldn't do what we can.

become a participant for http://www.copwatch.org/ .

All you gotta do is just simply watch the police go about their usuall routine. If they threaten you to leave remind them that they are public servants and that you are fully within the scope of the law if doing so

Go on and observe, It is your patriotic duty!

it's called "RUNNING A PLATE FOR A DATE" http://www.copwatch.org/sheehanmichigandatabase.html Hey sorry, if you thought you were being slezier than a cop, well... the pros are amused by the amatures

Unless you're an active suspect that is specifically being watched, there's no reason to watch you.

Thank god the government and businesses are perfectly honest. Law enforcement officials never abuse access to such data for personal use. The government never uses data originally collected for innocent purposes then uses it to round up everyone of a particular ethnicity. Private investigators and stalkers never engage in pretexting and other forms of fraud to get access to phone records and other private information.

Abuse of data is a matter of when, not if. My money is on it only being a matter of time before we discover that a murder victim was stalked by someone with access to the victim's cell phone location data. By erring on the side of limiting how much data you give businesses or government, you limit the possible damage if you're the unlucky person who gets incorrectly targeted.

You can police the police at http://www.copwatch.org/

I'm in favor of cameras watching public places, so long as they're strictly regulated. Something along the lines of, "Only law enforcement officers can see the video. If the video is recorded the video and all backups must be deleted within 14 days. The only except to the deletion is if the video is being actively used in a crime investigation, and then only the relevant sections of the video may be retained. The video can be used as evidence in criminal cases, but the sections admitted to evidence must be carefully trimmed to the minimal parts possible. Violations are subject to harsh penalties (say, several thousand dollar fine and 18+ months in prison?). "

Why? In short, because I don't want to be justifying my activities out of context five years ago.

The video is going to be recorded; if you're looking for crimes you're going to want to document those crimes. And once it's recorded, it's going end up in the hands of people with other intents. If we don't make a clear stand against it now, some cities are going to think, "well, people have no right to privacy in public anyway, and Bob's Private Investigation is offering us a bucket of money each month for copies, so let's give him a copy." Or the deal might be in the form, "Bob's Surveillence is offering us free cameras, installation, and maintenance. Zero cost, but they keep a copy of everything." If it's illegal, eventually the data will slip out anyway; Bob might bribe an officer, or perhaps the police department's IT guy to make the copies. An officer might decide to access the records himself, maybe to snoop on an ex-lover.

Sound impossible? Law enforcement has been caught doing exactly that. Here a Canadian cop tried to frame a journalist critical of the police. Or this collection of gems, including an officer who helped a man stalk his ex-girlfriend and an FBI agent who sold data to the mob.

So, the data's out. What's the harm? Today, not much. Scanning lots of video trying to track someone is expensive. Simply transfering that much data is non-trivial. But costs are dropping and the computer technology to automate scanner video is getting better and better. Eventually it will be cost effective to scan that data. It will start out seemingly harmless. A business might pay to get a list of addresses of people who stopped to look at the store's front window display, but didn't enter. Or everyone who entered. Or everyone who shopped at a competitor. Now send these people some coupons to try and win them over.

It's the next few obvious steps that start creating real problems. A small business owner might notice his company's health insurance rates are going up. Pay a video searching company to found out which employees are visiting doctor's offices or pharmacies the most often, then fire them. Or similarly, worried about hiring a female employee for a highly skilled job because she might get pregnant, leaving you without an employee for a window? Surely someone will offer to generate monthly reports on who is visiting infant clothing and supply stores, allowing you to fire such an employee prior to her showing or potentially even being pregnant, making it harder to prove why you fired her. (Of course, thanks to "right to work" laws which are actually "right of employers to fire you" laws, it's extremely difficult to challenge being fired.)

Maybe you're part of a religion that your employer is rabidly against; you might be trapped in the job by a bad job market. Your employer might get it in his head to pay to find out who attempts the local church/temple/synogogue/mosque/shrine to weed out undesirables.

Maybe you're part of a group that is harassed because of you religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or politics. You're in a location where harassment is entirely possible b

Of this incident

Think of this utopia: The government is honest, never abuses info collected about the people,... Now would you really mind having a lot of data about yourself collected,... Collecting personal data by itself is harmless.

Ok, I'm thinking of your utopia. I'll even make it a better utopia: I'll posit that no business try to hack into the government databases for personal gain. And I'll go so far as to pretend that no government employee with access ever abuses that access for personal reasons.

Now, imagine that your utopia is The Netherlands. And imagine it's not May 15, 2004, but May 15, 1940 -- one day after The Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany. Note that in surrendering, The Netherlands legally turned over government control to the Nazis. Presumably that would included your database -- if the Nazis hadn't simply seized it outright.

Your utopian database contains the details of all residents, anyone who might join the Resistance, and all the Jews -- including Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne.
The Frank family managed to hide from the Nazis for two years; how long do you think they'd manage in your "utopia".

Now some will say that there's little chance of Nazi invasions these day, so we should feel safe with "utopian" databases. But it doesn't take a foreign invasion to radically change a government: sometimes it just takes an election, of an Anzar or a Berlusconi or a Blair & Blunkett team or a Bush or a Howard -- or a former war criminal like Waldheim.

Remember COINTELPRO?

No surprise there. Police agencies intentionally reject applicants with high intelligence. Don't believe me? Check this out, or this, or this. A cop who can't spell his own name would not surprise me.

Think of this utopia: The government is honest, never abuses info collected about the people,... Now would you really mind having a lot of data about yourself collected,... Collecting personal data by itself is harmless.

Ok, I'm thinking of your utopia. I'll even make it a better utopia: I'll posit that no business try to hack into the government databases for personal gain. And I'll go so far as to pretend that no government employee with access ever abuses that access for personal reasons.

Now, imagine that your utopia is The Netherlands. And imagine it's not May 15, 2004, but May 15, 1940 -- one day after The Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany. Note that in surrendering, The Netherlands legally turned over government control to the Nazis. Presumably that would included your database -- if the Nazis hadn't simply seized it outright.

Your utopian database contains the details of all residents, anyone who might join the Resistance, and all the Jews -- including Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne.
The Frank family managed to hide from the Nazis for two years; how long do you think they'd manage in your "utopia".

Now some will say that there's little chance of Nazi invasions these day, so we should feel safe with "utopian" databases. But it doesn't take a foreign invasion to radically change a government: sometimes it just takes an election, of an Anzar or a Berlusconi or a Blair & Blunkett team or a Bush or a Howard -- or a former war criminal like Waldheim.

Remember COINTELPRO?