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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?
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.
3D printed laser drones should be the perfect solution, as long as they aren't running systemd.
I wonder how much it will cost in Bitcoin.
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.
Tasers already exist. Yet, cops shoot to kill instead of stun to disable. Why do we need another non-lethal weapon that won't be used?
> 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.
They all know who the bad ones are and don't dime them out.
Ergo they are all 'bad ones'.
I'm with Frank Serpico, '10% of cops are absolutely crooked, 10% are honest, 80% wish they were honest'. Even the honest ones are dirty IMHO. They should turn in the crooks in blue, but don't.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Dynamite ones
Nullius in verba
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You are 100% correct... Too many times police have what is called "contempt of cop" syndrome. Anyone who doesn't comply to their demands is just spitting in their face, from their point of view, and needs to be "taught a lesson".
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!
They all know who the bad ones are and don't dime them out.
Ergo they are all 'bad ones'.
I'm with Frank Serpico, '10% of cops are absolutely crooked, 10% are honest, 80% wish they were honest'. Even the honest ones are dirty IMHO. They should turn in the crooks in blue, but don't.
The problem is the 80 percent will still protect the crooked 10 percent against the ten percent honest as they can be viewed as a shared threat to the "police tribe". Cops are a job that society needs, without the honest 10 it would be much much worse. The only option the good cops have is to play along in many cases so that they can continue to do the good the can.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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.
Exactly. any good cop that does not turn in and testify against a bad cop is also a bad cop.
The fucking "boys club" they have going is 100% identical to a street gang. The courts need to be enemies of the police not their friends.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
1) Keep your head down
2) Avert your eyes - initiating eye contact is sign of defiance and will be punished
3) If police officer deigns to address you, immediately drop on the ground face down. Delay over 50ms will be punished
4) If you think law matters and you deluded enough to assume that you have some civil rights, you are an idiot. The only source of law is a guy with a gun
5) Remember that police officer can kill you if he feels like it, and it is very unlikely he will be even indicted
6) Everything can be 'resisting arrest' - including trying to breathe when police is choking you to death or bruising officer's knuckles with your face
7) Tasering is like saying 'hello'
Here is a rough sketch of the lesson.
Yes, kind of like mafia. It is not a good sign if omerta is the standard way for police.
This is exceptionally dishonest.
Do those states have more leniency if you can prove motivated self defense? Yes. Are they shooting galleries? No.
The castle doctrine and family of laws is a (perhaps over reaction) to discretionary prosecution. Many states still have the legal doctrine that you must attempt to flee before you are allowed to respond with deadly force. There are examples of prosecutors who take self-define cases to court after the defendant has retreated all the way to a room like a bathroom, then while their assailant was attempting to come through the door finally returned deadly force. The prosecutors would then take these people to court making the case there was a window they could have attempted to squeeze out of.
Unfortunately the only easy way to say "hey ... really? That was them attempting to flee first." Is to make the laws around the definition of when lethal force can be returned very liberal and remove the discretion from the prosecutors.
END
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.