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Ask Slashdot: What Non-lethal Technology Has the Best Chance of Replacing the Gun?
Wycliffe writes: Most cops are not out to kill someone, but when someone reaches for a cellphone or their glovebox, the cop may assumes the worst and try to protect themselves from dying. Guns are used to immobilize the target, and aren't even that good at it when a person is charging. What other potential devices could be used to protect a cop so that guns are unnecessary? Foam? Lightweight body armor? Nets? Robots? 'M.A.N.T.I.S.' paralyzing gas? Force field? What non-lethal technology out there has the best potential to be more effective at immobilizing a target and/or protecting a cop than a gun?
"Most cops are not out to kill someone..."
[Citation needed]
Common sense, the human brain? Reform of policing so citizens actually trust the police?
Of course sometimes force, even lethal force, is needed. The best non-lethal immobilizer we have at the moment is the taser, although that can sometimes be lethal.
But it seems to me that training in de-escalation can go a long way to not needing immobilizers.
What will be more effective than a gun?
How about a polite request.
Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, lemonade is generally preferable over lemons. Let's get rid of the hostility, or at least have one side (the people who are getting paid... the cops) at least do their part in trying to remove at least one side of the cause for hostility.
Remember the old phrase "to serve and protect"... notice how that phrase mentioned "protect" second, as if that was the secondary role.
That's the faulty premise in the question.
How about "What can we do so that cops shoot people who aren't doing anything wrong less often?"
Prosecute them. Hold them to a HIGHER standard than the rest of us, not a lower one.
The one with the highest profit margin.
A wooden stick works well in many places around the world.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
> So you whackos want to disarm cops too now?
Yes. It's time to take away their SWAT gear.
It's one thing to have a special action squad for the occasional well armed robber or kidnapper but it's gotten to the point where it's the day to day SOP.
There are plenty of liberal weenies crying for the disarmament of the American citizen right now. They've forgotten about the need to demilitarize the cops.
If you are afraid of civilians with guns then you need to be even handed about it and take them from cops too.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There are definitely the "person should have done X differently" scenarios, but there are also scenarios where the officers enter the encounter already expecting it to go south and itching to use whatever they have available to them against their alleged perpetrator (e.g. taser guns, regular guns, choke holds, etc.). In this case, there should also be mandatory training for officers on how to deal with people who don't immediately comply. Sometimes, the people might not be able to for some reason and responding by pulling out the taser or the gun might not be the best method to resolve the conflict. Furthermore, officers who do use inappropriate levels of force should be tossed out and not simply "given a desk job" or "transferred to another department."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How about a 2 hour course for high-schoolers in the inner cities called: How to behave around the police? Nearly every high-profile death by police officer would not have occurred if the person had simply complied with the police doing their jobs.
So your solution to bullying is to teach the victims that they should submit to the bullies?
There is a huge body of evidence that shows a hell of a lot of police abuse their powers and violate peoples constitutional and legal rights all the time just for the hell of it. Not addressing this aspect of policing escalates the problem.
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Amen... Just because someone doesn't want to go to jail or feels they are being treated unfairly doesn't mean the cop should instantly pull out a taser or gun and escalate the situation.
Point: Would a 15 year old kid who just stole a candy bar from a store, stopped by the police, but who panicked and ran, deserve a tasering?
I hope everyone's answer would be "no".
If we assume that the answer to that is "no". then you have to remove it as the "automatic" option. Clearly someone in the process of a serious crime should be stopped, with force if need be, but that is the other extreme.
Where do you draw the line?
Police officiers often have to deal with people with mental illness condition. Expecting them to comply immediately to whatever they ask is most of the time a wet dream. Often, these people with mental illness are not actually dangerous if dealt the proper way. So, then I believe there should be at least, even if it doesn't cover all the cases, some kind of education offered to police officier or even better a requirement to complete successfull a course which can give them some skills to handle these cases.
Achille Talon
Hop!
most cops do a good job, but there are bad cops that teach kids that dealing with the police is always an unfair proposition. so they run, fight, resist
we don't need a course for police on how to deal professionally with the public, because most do know how already. but we do need cops to stop protecting the bad apples in their dept that make their job harder, and we need an IA dept that is not staffed by the same cops who are out to protect their own. us vs them makes a bunker mentality that escalates all interaction with the public unnecessarily
civilian oversight is also problematic as this comes with unrelated inquisition style agendas
i think the solution is a more european style approach. where getting a job as a cop is far more rigorous, far more difficult, and the higher barrier to entry most certainly involving psychological evaluation, to weed out those types of people who will go to go on to abuse the public
but we do have a problem in the usa with too many bad, unprofessional cops
if your first reaction to this statement is hostility, or blaming the public instead, like the comment i am responding to:
congratulations, you're part of the problem
because in 2015, after recent events, to pretend bad cops don't exist and don't have a detrimental effect, is severely unintelligent and dishonest
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and those cops dont panic and murder 12 year olds with a bb gun. If you are a cop, suck it up and stop putting YOUR live above someone elses. you chose to pick a dangerous line of work, so act like you are a public servant.
Every time a cop even touches his gun he should be required to write a 20 page report as to exactly why and justify it or LOSE the privilege of carrying one. IF it was a licensed civilian citizen that would have killed that kid, you know they would have been in ass pounding prison.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The place to fight for your rights is not at the scene of the arrest. Comply with police, fight in the courts. That's the way a civil society is conducted.
Point: Would a 15 year old kid who just stole a candy bar from a store, stopped by the police, but who panicked and ran, deserve a tasering?
Yes.
Fuck him, and fuck those who taught the kid that behavior. When you remove the electrodes and wave smelling salts under their nose, ask them where their parents are so they can get sent to the "you raised a thief" detention class that runs parallel to the shoplifter's community service.
I don't kowtow to police, but I'm respectful towards them. Amazingly I don't get shot at. Also, I don't rob convenience stores, and if I did, when confronted by the police, I wouldn't run, because that wasn't how I was taught.
Someone suggested a class educating people how to behave with police officers. There needs to be an education all right, but that education needs to be about being a good citizen.
These news cases are isolated. Chicago has roughly 1.2 murders per day. Which fixes that? Giving cops less lethal weapons, or breaking a cycle of shitty education?
Tasers are the defacto standard for inflicting pain as a punishment by the officer. It's followed in a close second place by pepper spray, though pepper spray would probably be used more if the officer wasn't also exposed to it. The beauty of it is Taser use isn't even questioned, and in most departments it's not even tracked. An officer can use a taser without any expectation of punishment for using it, even under the flimsiest of circumstances. On the other hand using their gun will net the officer desk duty and a full review. Taser use won't even get them a note in their personnel file even if they use it against an innocent person for the fun of it (though they'd probably get reprimanded if it was just for fun).
What's interesting about the #blacklivesmatter movement is that police reaction that this movement constitutes police harassment. It's apparent from this that the movement is having at least some cursory impact on policing in the form of reviews of use of force.
The hope is that one day police will be held at a minimum to the same standard you or I would be held to if we did exactly the same thing. Because there should not be a waiver for police to use force in a circumstance where the public at large couldn't use the same force. And the quickest cleanest solution to this is body cameras where the public has access to the footage such that police abuse can be used to revoke the officers certification to be a police officer with such lists shared nationally along with immediate and harsh punishment for violating the standards. If a cop shoots someone and it would be murder if you or I did it they should also be charged with murder.