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Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com)
A police standoff with a suspect in the killing of five police officers in Dallas came to an abrupt end on Friday morning in an unusual way. The police said that negotiations broke down, an exchange of gunfire happened, but then they had no option but to use "bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was." Motherboard explains the unprecedented shift in policing. From an article: Peter W. Singer, an expert in military technology and robot warfare at the New America Foundation, tweeted that this is the first known incident of a domestic police force using a robot to kill a suspect. Singer tweeted that in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers have strapped claymore mines to the $8,000 MARCbot using duct tape to turn them into jury-rigged killing devices. Singer says all indications are that the Dallas Police Department did something similar in this case -- it improvised to turn a surveillance robot into a killing machine. Improvised device or not, the concerns here mirror a debate that's been going on for a few years now: Should law enforcement have access to armed drones, or, for that matter, weaponized robots? In 2013 Kentucky Senator Rand Paul staged a 13-hour filibuster that was focused entirely on concerns about the use of armed drones on US soil. Last year, North Dakota became the first state to legalize nonlethal, weaponized drones for its police officers. [...] The ability for police to remotely kill suspects raises due process concerns. If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life? Are there clear protocols about when a robot can be used to engage a suspect versus when a human needs to engage him or her? When can the use of lethal force be administered remotely?
Brings a new definition for Battlebots.
"I mean you call something a war, and pretty soon everyone is going to be running around acting like warriors." -- Major Colvin
Regan declared The War On Drugs and, unsurprisingly, people started acting like warriors. We now have a militarized police force that, in many areas, is effectively an occupying military. Guess what happens when an occupying military starts killing civilians? Insurgents are created.
I have a feeling this situation is going to spiral out of control pretty quickly.
State or Private Actor?
Who will they blame when they realize what they've done?
I, for one, welcome our murderous Robot Overlords.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Just be careful - robotics are becoming easier to use / knowledge on these is becoming more widespread. The more they are used in this fashion, the more people will think to do it. It won't be just police. It is just a tool, but as a society, we should definitely do our best to stay away from using killing force simply because it's the easy option. They may not have had a better choice in this case, but this will be a recurring issue.
"If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life?"
In this case, definitely yes. Obviously a blanket judgement cannot be made for all cases. Each situation is entirely different.
5 people are dead. 5 more are in the hospital.
There are major perceived racial issues and conflicts at hand, and you want to focus on the specific equipment at hand?
This was not an autonomous killing machine. It was similar to an RC car with an explosive charge attached to it. All other attempts to kill the gunman had failed, and putting even more people into extreme risk was ill-advised. Putting him down *hard* was the best possible option given the situation.
The gunman was actively shooting other people. At that point, killing them via whatever method is the only sane option. The situation had already been escalated beyond most thresholds.
Turning the conversation into a "but... robots are evil" mess detracts from the very real issues at hand.
Stock small, robot deployed napalm bombs for future BLM attacks.
The police should be required to always give the option of surrender first (something that is currently broken in the policy). If a suspect refuses to surrender and continues hostile behavior then the choice seems pretty clear to me. If a suspect does not surrender, but ceases endangering the lives of others, then the policy should be to wait it out. You'd think someone would have already written a manual on this...
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
http://philly.curbed.com/2013/5/13/10244298/how-philadelphia-became-the-city-that-bombed-itself
"It has been 28 years since police lieutenant Frank Powell leaned from a helicopter and tossed a gym bag packed with C-4 and Tovex explosives onto a residential rowhome in West Philadelphia, leading to the deaths of six adults and five children, along with the complete destruction of 61 homes.
On May 13, 1985 at about 5:30 PM, Philadelphia gained the immortal moniker of "The City That Bombed Itself"; a brutal ending to the city's longstanding struggle with an organization that called itself MOVE."
Has a hashtag ever inspired this much violence, much less murder?
They'll need to be pretty good to correctly target the blacks, er, whoops, "criminals" that the cops really want dead.
Since when is "progress" dependent on precedence? This is merely the next logical step, an "evolution"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This isn't an issue, as long as there is a human controlling the robot.
It's like saying that using a rifle raises issues because the rifle is isn't close to the target. Using the robot merely slows down the process of moving the killing object from the source to the target.
No, a real issue would be autonomous killing devices. They are coming and will probably be in use before there is general awareness of them. Their use is more likely after that experiment that showed an autonomous robot pilot was better than a skilled human pilot.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is a tremendous shift. They didn't just detonate a bomb nearby the subject, the PLACED a bomb near the subject and detonated it. In my opinion that is not law enforcement, that's assassination.
Opinions aside there are a few questions raised: does the bomb squad keep a stock of bombs around? Are they fragmentary devices? Undirected charges or directional? Did they fabricate this bomb themselves or repurpose an existing explosive? Is this something they train for or were they improvising on scene (potentially risking even more lives)? Who made the risk/benefit determination? Similarly, who approved this action? The police chief? The Mayor? Governor? FBI? Justice department? Was compliance with the posse comitatus act waived? By whom?
Until robots get a vote, they will always be abused like this.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It is a remotely-controlled device, jury rigged for a purpose that is not at all its use.
I know people will become uncontrollably outraged about this, but it's a standoff weapon. Just like a spear, a bow and arrow, an explosive tossed through a door or window, a gun, or even a vehicle employed as a weapon.
The legal standard for lethal force is the same. Beware of academics or other commentators who will claim this is some kind of new territory for which there is no legal standard and that we have no idea how to approach.
But by all means: pretend this is an "Unprecedented Shift in Policing" instead of an improvisation under nightmarish circumstances.
Why didn't the robot kill the gun?
Ignoring the Robot issue, Should police have lethal explosives in their arsenal?
Critical piece of information here is that the suspect said that not only did he have bombs on his person but also, I believe, that there were other bombs in the area that he could/would detonate. If that was the case then treating this as a controlled detonation of an explosive with a robot is pretty appropriate.
Why should the police be forced to expose themselves to someone who already killed several cops? He claimed to have several bombs, stated a desire to continue killing (white people - making it a hate crime) and refused to surrender for at least an hour. It simply wasn't safe to risk walking up to him to try using a taser. Who can reasonably tell how many bombs might be hidden in this premeditated murder spree?
The concept of lining up and exposing yourself to danger went out of style well over a century ago. This isn't a sporting match where you're trying to give the other guy a chance to score. This isn't Hollywood, it is real life, with several very real people already murdered. There is no sane reason that anyone should have had to risk their life just to try to overpower this killer.
What are they going to do the next time there is a hostage situation and they need to get a cell phone to the hostage taker so they can try and negotiate? From what I can tell that is not an uncommon situation and sending in the bomb disposal robot with a cell phone is an easy way to make everyone comfortable in doing so. From now on? Not so much. I predict there are going to be a bunch of hostage rescue teams bitching about this for quite some time.
If the guy was pretty much penned in, they really should have just sent the robot in with a cartoon bomb in his claw. Hell, put BOMB on the side and have a fuse burning on top just for the hell of it. Then when you blow him up it doesn't screw up the whole cell phone thing for the future.
What I wondered is: did the suspect have a gas mask? If not (I haven't seen anything that said he did), why not launch some tear gas - or even have the robot deploy it - rather than an explosive device?
If they took the guy alive, then perhaps they could have gotten information on accomplices etc.
Just for clarification, which BLM attacks are you referring to?
How many more cops needed to be shot by this guy? 13 seems like enough.
Cops have dropped bombs on civilians before. Look up Bombing of west philly . They accidentally burned a few blocks in the resulting fire. Only one cop was shot in that instance, and probably from friendly fire. Cops have used bombs before.
Authorities have bombed suspects, and their children, in our shameful past.
I hope the racist old days aren't back now that many Conservatives are now openly-racist, and even nominated a fascist as the Republican Presidential candidate.
http://www.telesurtv.net/engli...
He had already murdered 5 innocent people. The cops talked to this guy for hours to try and get him to surrender. People that had nothing to do with bad cops elsewhere in the country. If labeling all cops as racist black killers helps your sick world view....you are part of the problem. Your statement makes you no better than the KKK or other hate groups. They judge people based on the color of their skin, you judge based on someones profession. At least the cop was trying to make sure a protest remained peaceful.
Why was this lie given a +5? The term War on Drugs was used for nearly a decade before Reagan was elected. Why reward this person that is obviously paid to disrupt this site.
From "the unprecedented-shift dept?" Really? That's the level of thought and effort that the editors are giving now?
Does no one read Mad magazine anymore?
They effectively used a suicide bomber with an IED to get the job done.
Something that we, as America, have a tendency to denounce whenever it's used against us. .. outstanding.
We're not going to shoot them anymore, we're going to blow them up . . . . . . lol .
What's next ? We going to strap a suicide vest on the K9's, let them run the suspects down ? :|
Maybe fill a police car with explosives and drive it into the house the bad guys are holed up in ?
Here's a thought, maybe someone should take a step back and figure out what the problem is
here. ( Hint: Police keep killing folks. Many of them unarmed, in handcuffs, and mostly black )
Of all the people killed by police under questionable circumstances, how many times were the police
prosecuted for it ?
Exactly.
Once enough folks lose faith in the system, they will cease to rely upon it. The results can be quite
devastating. The police love to tell everyone " This is a war ! ". Though now that folks are no longer playing
by their rules, the game becomes a little more difficult to play doesn't it ?
I suppose the same argument can be made for the Government's behavior as of late. ( I'm looking at you
FBI ) When the rich and powerful get a free pass to do whatever they want, the rest take notice. When
that system pisses enough people off, I would expect the reaction will be very similar.
If the same thing happened when LBJ declared the war on poverty, I wouldn't want to hang around an unemployment office.
First death by DRONE in the US?
This started as a white-hate issue, people wanting to kill white cops. But that's the only racist part of this. Cops don't like being killed no matter who's killing them. If it was an asian group or a white group killing the white cops, the cops would still have used the weaponized drone.
lazy? i missed the part where they are obligated to risk life and limb to stop an active shooter. when you are actively murdering people(shooter did not surrender as far as I know), don't complain when victims brothers in arms get pissed and come to stop you. and by stop, i mean, shoot you in your head(or blow it off with a bomb). deadly force is met with as much disproportional violence as possible. this ends threats quicker and tends to make others think twice before attempting anything like it again.
one does not actively start a fight with a well trained militia. last i heard, we have not had one go on a shooting spree and thus did not need to be put down.
The police can't kill people with bombs, they have to use small explosions in shells to speed up a specific projectile, not an accidental one with a bomb, like god intended it to be.
People were killed and wounded, yes. Ends don't always justify the means though. Police in the US DO choose to use force far more often than is necessary. This seems more to me that their goal was to kill this "bad guy" then to prevent further death or injury. I suspect that all other avenues to deal with it were actually not spent.
I think its a horrible precedent
You heard it here first.
(sometimes I wish I hadn't worked on that)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Others have mentioned the "war of drugs" term was coined in 1971. This was in response to the violent drug gangs that rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. New York and Detroit was especially dangerous.
Look up Frank Lucas aka "Superfly", Griselda Blanco aka Black Widow aka the Godmother, Felix Mitchell aka "The Cat", etc.
Blanco alone is responsible for at least 200 murders.
If you want to talk about Reagan, compare the situation in the cities in 1979 vs 1989. Fact is, the drug gangs were greatly reduced during that time frame, though Los Angeles continued to have a problem during the 20 years of democrat control of California that followed.
If they can carry the bomb on the thing, couldn't they just put a taser on it?
Step 1: Get in position
Step 2: Fire taser.
Step 3: Storm the position.
Step 4: If he resists, shock him again.
now has 1002 uses, up from 1001!
when they burned Chris Dorner alive? Not really unprecedented...
There, I fixed it for you.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
>If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life? Are there clear protocols about when a robot can be used to engage a suspect versus when a human needs to engage him or her? When can the use of lethal force be administered remotely?
And this is written like it's a bad thing?
Look, the questions are valid but unrelated to the facts. SURE can an assailant be handled with his life preserved if he's isolated & ineffective, wounded, quiet, remorseful, apologetic, sleeping, or in other words harmless plus this that, and the other... but in this case those if's did not apply. Let's review:
- Sniper purposefully holed up in the location, (he was not chased & hiding for his life- but purposefully holding in the spot).
- Sniper was continuing to exchange fire, even when being negotiated with.
- Sniper said his goal was to continue to kill, not surrender.
- And here is the best part for those that want conventional measures taken: officers DID try to approach closer and neutralize, capture, negotiate, kill, etc. the sniper but please read the above four lines. He wasn't having any of it!
So yes, an unconventional & alternative measure was used on a determined subject. Problem?
Next time you want to get rid of a hornet nest just walk close and knock it down- don't dare use some spray from a distance or wear a thick jacket, hat, and gloves or any advantage. Just walk up and hit it with your hand that's the only fair way.
All cops are the problem though, because even if they aren't racist killers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are. The few whistleblower cops who are actually innocent get blackballed and quickly cease to be cops.
If the police don't want to be attacked like this, they should stop acting like a criminal gang of thugs and terrorists themselves.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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Seems like the USA is going more and more into a civilian war ...
aaaaaaa
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"Suspect" is NOT "convicted by due process in a court of law." By law, the man was innocent of anything except possibly being armed and terrified of trigger-happy police. Instead, the cops bypassed the law and took the accused straight to execution with no intervening steps.
Remember the cop mentality: A cop is ALWAYS innocent, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt, and a civilian is ALWAYS guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence.
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Oh, okay then - as long as they spent "hours" talking without resolution, then it's okay that they threw due process out the window and executed him. I must have just missed that amendment to the Constitution.
And drones in general is that you can kill a man without risking an Officer's life It sounds fucked up when i day it like that, but the whole situation's foobared. I mean, when it's this easy to take out a perp why wouldn't you?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The next time a robot starts driving towards a perp, that robot is going to get shot up.
The worst aspect about this is accountability. I've noticed a trend in corporate America where decisions are made less and less by one person, and are now more often made collectively (or at least are given the appearance of having been made collectively). The advantage of this is that, if the decision is made by multiple people, then no single person can be blamed if the decision is a bad one. It's a safe way to manage. If several people can agree to do something, then no one has to take the heat if there is a failure somewhere down the line. "Passing the buck" is, of course, as old as civilization itself, and Harry S. Truman had a sign made for his desk in the oval office that read, "The buck stops here." But in this new method of decision making, the buck isn't passed, and it never lands anywhere, it simply does not exist.
This concept applies to the use of robots. No single person wields the weapon. Many people are involved in the operation of the robot. Therefore, no single person can be held accountable if anything goes wrong. I worry that, in the future, more and more policing will be done remotely. No single person will be making the decisions, so that it will be easier to make poor decisions and get away with it.
Proverbs 21:19
Does anybody else remember that guy Christopher Dorner who declared a personal war on the MIC?
I am pretty sure I can't be the only one who was fascinated by how a flashbang "detonated ammo stores" in the vacation home of some total stranger in which he'd holed himself up and turned the entire building into a smoldering crater, quickly cut away from by all video news coverage as the black smoke rose out of the center.
That is some supreme 'Officer John Law is always right' gymnastics. Hope you didn't pull a hamstring. They didn't blow up the fucking building, so I guess they exercised great restraint.
What inspired this cycle of violence was a problem even more basic than the race angle: the steady drift to more militarized law enforcement. What just happened was another step on this road. In the eyes of the police now, we're all burka-clad Fallujans.
Coming soon - the first purpose-built dog shooting robot.
If the suspect Johnson was shot and killed during exchanges of gunfire twenty minutes into the standoff, no one would care. He was a shooter, he was shooting at cops, he got shot. It would become a part of the tragedy that was last night, but no one would be calling for the head of the Dallas police officer who fired the gun with the bullet that ended his life.
Instead, DPD negotiated with him for hours. They gave him every opportunity to peacefully end the standoff, to lay down arms and leave with his life. I can only speculate on how those hours passed since we don't have details yet. But you don't spend that time before you drive a robot in with an explosive device without giving him several warnings. Johnson knew the only way out was if he laid down arms and came out with his hands up. Johnson chose not to do so. Instead he chose to continue to be a threat to the people of Dallas, to continue taking shots at police officers, and to continue to make threats on the citizens of the city. His life was in his own hands.
It is a tragedy that the end was what it was. This man chose to plan, organize, and execute a planned attack upon law enforcement officers who were guarding citizens demonstrating peacefully. This isn't about war, this is about terror. For the most part no one here in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is blaming anyone except for the individuals who carried out this attack. The rhetoric and platforming is primarily coming from y'all, the rest of the world. Here we're just mourning the loss of five officers who died in a peaceful situation for absolutely no reason other than other people were consumed by hatred enough to ambush them in the line of duty.
I don't care what the sides are. I don't care about anyone nitpicking the means. I care about the people around me. Y'all should too. And that's where it should end.
Racism is alive and well, in all the Red states, pretty much.
Code words are used "Family Values" and such drivel, but the actions of those in charge are the same.
Amazingly, few black people here want carry permits; it makes them a target of all the Crackers that wear them openly.
Trump is a facist for sure; some of his backers are Nazis.
But ALL of them I know are are Racists.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
How tiresome. Yet another pundit who, wanting to get media attention, calls something unprecedented. It's not. The Israeli's have a robot that's armed with a Glock 26 hat can be aimed and fired remotely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9jYEM3Feew
A pistol is, of course, better than a bomb, since it can be used in hostage situations to take out the killer while harming no one else.
All cops are the problem though, because even if they aren't racist killers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are.
This is going to get me flamed, but I'm past the point of giving a crap. Let's change out a few words here and see how it works
All blacks are the problem though, because even if they aren't gang bangers and killers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are.
Let's try a less inflammatory one
All programmers are the problem though, because even if they aren't bad programmers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are.
There are good people and bad people, good cops and bad cops, good programmers and bad programmers. How about we quit painting with such a broad brush?
What infuriates me is the lack of accountability. I understand that cops have a shitty job, and I understand that the use of force is probably justified the majority of the time. Even if the majority of them are justified, that leaves a percentage that aren't. Where is the accountability for those? On the other hand, where is the accountability for the citizens dancing and taunting police officers after they came to stop a local 7-11 from being looted, while the officer's brothers are laying dead?
for all your policing needs...
ED-209
Have gnu, will travel.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/terminator/images/0/08/HK_Aerial_2029.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090528042539
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/terminator/images/2/23/T1_HK-Tank_satchel_charged.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20081008215138
Only one thing about the whole recent train of events is new:
Smartphones. They've either ripped our heads out of the sand, or overturned a rock, whichever metaphor you prefer. Now what police have long been accused of, and what could reasonably be viewed skeptically, is out in the open.
Should the shooter have done it? No, but that's immaterial.
Was it wrong? Yes, but that's immaterial.
Should he have been engaged with lethal force? Yes, but that's immaterial.
Brutalize a population long enough, and they'll strike out. Forget right and wrong: they WILL, and we can't talk it away or threaten it away. If you don't remove the stimulus, it will just keep happening. And thanks to the smartphone, we now know whether the stimulus is still around or not.
Just as the CIA with Ollie North was importing shitloads of cocaine into the us, and teaching inner city drug-dealers to make Crack, with was as destructive as Free Base, but easier on the supply chain.
I knew several guys who flew planes full of coke back into the us, completely covered by the govt.
The last two died mysteriously after all that started hitting the papers; one died in a parachuting fail while smuggling a planeload, and the other disappeared after a meeting...
Smokescreens all...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
That has happened Since the Clinton Administration; things were in pretty good shape when he left office.
The biggest Fuck we got was the "Fight Two Wars completely without funding them" that drove the economy into a tailspin.
How long can you just print money to support your government?
Apparently from 2001 to 2008... :(
The only thing Congress has done since then is try to repeal Obamacare and outlaw abortion; both complete wastes of time and energy.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Agreed, 100%. Every time a cop is dumb enough to commit a crime on camera, I notice something disturbing: they're never looking around in nervous anticipation of encountering one of those many "good cops." They know damn well that even cops who are too honest to initiate criminal activity, will turn a blind eye to the crimes of their co-workers, and probably even lie to cover up those crimes. No one expects every cop to be a perfect little angel. No one expects that from any group. But when Hans Reiser murdered his wife, he got put behind bars where he belongs, and so no pervasive mistrust or hatred of programmers arose from that trajedy. If every programmer could count on the police to cover up their crimes, people would harbour just as much animosity towards programmers as the police are currently facing, if not more. It's about accountability. You can't trust someone who flaunts their unaccountability, and cops have been doing that more and more.
I'll bet the operator for very excited to grease the creep.
Even military language is standard operating procedure for police.
Police do not patrol neighborhoods, they patrol sectors. Even in small towns it is broken into sectors.
When I think of sectors, I think of militarized zones with fences and lines that need monitoring.
In order for this cycle to end there needs to be respect on both sides. #Blacklivesmatter need to call out people who are being idiots and inciting, #Police need to call out over aggressive idiots on their ranks that are abusive with force instead of condoning it silently as a bystander.
According to reports, this was one man with an AR-15 and a bunch of ammo and look at the damage.
It has to stop on both sides and it has to stop today. It is not cool when someone mows white people down with an assault rifle and it is not cool when police harass Americans for "DWB", driving while black. It is not cool that black people have to teach their children to comply with police or risk getting shot. It is not cool that so many people have nonviolent felonies that they can't get a job. It is a giant cluster mess.
This will take action from society as a whole to fix. I saw an encouraging first step in Detroit recently.
Jobseekers get nonviolent records expunged.
It is not cool that Hilary Clinton gets a get out of jail free card.
It is not cool that General Patraeous gets probation.
It is not cool when teens like Ethan Couch with affluenza walk away with probation or little jail time.
It is not cool that cities like Flint and poisoned with lead just because they are poor.
It is not cool that America rebuilds New Orleans but lets Detroit rot even though it suffered an economic Sunami of Free-Trade Agreements.
It is not cool that some kids can get a decent public education and others can not based on their zip code.
It is not cool that Jails are now a "For Profit" business further preying on people on the margins of society.
It is not cool that America incarcerates more people per capita than any other modern country in history.
American is not perfect, but Trump was right when he said the "system was rigged". While we might not be perfect, we believe in a union of people working together for the common good, freedom, and the hope of liberty and pursuing happiness. The hope to live a good life that doesn't have a violent end because you walked down the wrong street or drove in the wrong neighborhood.
I would encourage everyone looking at these events today not to take a sides, but ask,
"What can we do to fix this, before it gets worse?",
"How can we heal the racial divide?"
"How can we love our neighbor?"
The natural tendency is to be tribal, pick your tribe and then prepare to war with the other tribe. It's human, it is how we survived long ago. If we go down that path, more will die. America is awash with guns and ammo and the killing of whites, blacks, gays, muslims, seeks, mexicans NEEDS TO STOP.
Reflect and ask yourself, "how can I be the change I want to see in the world?"
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Oh, wait . . . that hasn't been true since forever. But hey - since they aren't military, this isn't the government using the military against civilians. Never mind the BDU's, assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, flak jackets, tactical training . . . nothing to see here, people. Move along.
Evidently, 30-45 days is just the right amount of time to let a bunch of armed white rednecks occupy federal property, but black men in garages should be blown up immediately.
Presumably this robot, under police control, had a video camera so the operator could guide it to the target. I'd like to see that video. I'd be Ok with it not showing the gruesome outcome, but the trip to the target, what the target was doing at the time and the eventual detonation. You'd think that a robot carrying a package to an armed man would have been been viewed with some suspicion, even for this unprecedented action. Did it get close enough to see the target? Did it confirm that the target still armed and dangerous at the time? If he aimed his gun at the robot, will that be construed as an aggressive act against a police officer? Who detonated the bomb? If it's a legal, justifiable action, then knowing who did it should be public.
If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life?
What the fuck you fucking moron? This guy shot a dozen people and killed 5 of them. He stated that he intended to kill more and that the building he was in was booby trapped. Of course he was a threat. What's with all this hand wringing about whether this was justified? Were the police supposed to offer him ice cream and a trip to Disneyland?
...autonomous. Stop acting like it is.
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In the 80's, the Philadelphia police dropped two bombs from a helicopter onto the headquarters of a black liberation group. It destroyed 65 houses and killed 10 people, including 5 children. The police shot at people trying to escape the resulting fire. So no, this is not a new thing. The police have always been in the business of reckless killing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Programmers aren't generally required to police other programmers, and the job description for "black person" doesn't entail policing other black people. The job description for "police officer" does include enforcing the law, and they do an appallingly bad job of that when the person committing the crime is another police officer. Obviously, that doesn't mean it's morally right to shoot random police officers, but there absolutely is culpability far beyond the "few bad apples" who actually get caught doing bad things.
It always kind of amazed me that the police unions use the phrase "a few bad apples" all the time to describe those guys. Do they not know what the rest of that fucking saying is and what it means?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
No, that's a false analogy because the vast, vast majority of black people are neither gang bangers nor aiding and abetting them. In contrast, police officers with enough integrity to refuse to aid and abet their corrupt coworkers are so far and few in between that they're newsworthy.
See, you agree with me! The only difference is that what you characterize as "lack of accountability" I characterize as criminal conspiracy and collusion.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
it's no different from using a sharp-shooter to take out a suspect from half a mile away. if you don't wanna get shot or blown up, don't do crimes.
also, when your subject is threatening to remote-detonate bombs, what are you gonna do?
Bullshit. You could argue that all cops in departments that kill innocent people are the problem, but even then I don't think that's right. In jurisdictions where they haven't had any killings where the justification is even a little bit in doubt, you can't say those cops are the problem too. Dallas has a pretty good police force, from what I hear. Their police chief is black, and I doubt he's aiding and abetting the cops who are racist killers.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
24 hours passes after a judge signature (federal level) and it is a non lethal weapon that works for the situation.
However driving an RC car into a room with a bomb strapped to it is not very cool. Neither is the absurd use of words like drone for what that really is.
It seems pretty simple to tie the military meaning to the weapon itself, not the vehicle carrying it. I mean if I make a bicycle that's automatic then strap a weapon to it does it become a drone or something?
What, you mean with rebels trying to kill as many cops as possible in a mis-guided act of vengeance for racists cops killing black people?
Honey, it's already happened.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Detroit as lots of problems, but poverty isn't actually the worst or most intractable of them.
* Detroit is fairly small in terms of land area compared to cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta... and a HUGE portion of its land area was polluted decades ago in ways that would probably shock people in CHINA.
* If sufficiently-bad environmental pollution is discovered on a tract of land, the current owners are legally on the hook for 100% of the clean-up costs... regardless of whether those costs exceed the value of the land, and regardless of whether the current owners actually had anything at all to DO with the pollution. During the early 20th century, American factories did some really awful things that would never pass muster today... and Detroit was Ground Zero for American Industry. As a result, no sane company will DARE to take ownership of land in Detroit that's likely to be polluted. Not even if the city/county/state/feds gave it to them for FREE. Because that cheap/free plot of land could end up costing them literally unlimited amounts of money for clean-up costs. And the city can't even indemnify purchasers, because the city ITSELF is insolvent & the feds could still turn around and force the new owner to eat 100% of the costs itself.
* Pollution aside, most of Detroit is what's called a "lienfield" (pun on "minefield"). Many of the properties in Detroit have old city liens whose amounts far exceed any conceivable value of the property. In theory, the city could write the old, uncollectable liens off in order to get the property back into productive use again... but in reality, it can't afford to. The value of those old liens might be a polite fiction that exists only on paper... but it's a polite fiction that's propped up what's left of Detroit's credit rating. If Detroit started writing off old liens, its credit rating would plunge.
If America wants to save Detroit (the literal city of Detroit... the larger metro area is doing just fine), the best place to start would be to change the laws for environmental liability so that someone who buys a property there in good faith, then discovers an environmental nightmare below the surface that they literally had nothing whatsoever to do with, could at least wash their hands of the loss and walk away without being on the hook for more than what they paid for the property.
Note that this problem isn't unique to Detroit... cities all across the "Rust Belt" have problems with abandoned factories rendered untouchable by legal liability. Detroit just happens to have a lot MORE of them relative to its total land area. THIS is the #1 reason why when a factory closes, the land it sat on sits abandoned more or less "forever", and new factories only get built on virgin land (usually, far away from those same factories).
This is also part of the reason why some have advocated having the City demolish entire blocks that have been abandoned by their owners... individually, those derelict properties are worth less than nothing... but as a vacant lot that's a square block in size, they might start to become interesting to investors. Especially if those same investors can buy SEVERAL adjacent square blocks & get the City to agree to vacate the streets & infrastructure dividing them so the property can be redeveloped as a single huge structure. And more importantly, with residents gone from the area, the former neighborhood can become the site of a new factory (that would NEVER be allowed to get built next to a residential area, no matter HOW poor it is).
This isn't just a "racist killers" problem, though (I used those words only to reflect the AC's terminology). Merely managing to have a department that isn't so egregiously out of control that the officers are murdering people is not good enough! I have zero doubt whatsoever that I could find all sorts of other police corruption in Dallas or any other jurisdiction, from petty stuff like failing to write up a DUI for the drunk officer that got pulled over all the way up to racial profiling and civil forfeiture.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Been watching these assholes sling their weight around for almost 50 years. Fuck the assholes who make the laws who empower the police. Police are just another cult group like the NRA or the Catholic Church, preying on peoples fears. Everyone wants us to feel sorry for the Police since they got ambushed, yet I didn't see any of those same assholes bitching about their fellow cult members shooting unarmed citizens. Downmod away.
So when an obvious remote-controlled car bomb is driving through the streets towards a public place anybody blocking its progress is likely to get prosecuted for obstruction of police operations? What do we need terrorists for if we must not obstruct car bombs patrolling our streets? And if I am a fanatic suicide killer wanting to take along a bunch of hostages I don't even need to bring my own explosives any more but will get remote-controlled delivery?
This is a really, really stupid Pandora's box to open.
But then if the U.S. weren't eager to open and maintain really, really stupid Pandara's boxes, they'd accept the judiciary of the International Court of Justice, would destroy their chemical weapons stashes, would sign the treaty against anti-personnel landmines and destroy their stashes and so on.
The mods here went full on conservative about a decade ago.
As I understand it:
The mods are chosen algorithmically from the non-anonymous Slashdot users.
The meta-mods, who moderate the moderators' decisions (and affect the algorithm's future awarding of moderator points) are self-chosen.
Are you saying that the algorithm went right-wing? Or that the meta-moderators drove it that way?
Or are you saying that you, personally, are so left-wing that the general membership's moderation looks right-wing to you.
= = = =
A hint, though:
Many left-wingers apply social pressure to each other to conform to certain behavioral templates. This includes agreeing with a number of ideological points, regardless of whether they are consistent with observed reality - or each other.
To someone who has internalized this idea system, any questioning of any of its points is a sign of heresy or non-membership. This calls for immediate criticism - to return the straying sheep to the fold or to attack a non-member of the flock.
Such criticism often takes the form of labelling the heretical speaker as right-wing, i.e. a member of the perceived largest group of enemies.
To a true believer, any deviation honestly appears to be a product of the alleged vast right-wing conspiracy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The biggest Fuck we got was the "Fight Two Wars completely without funding them" that drove the economy into a tailspin.
That got started at least as far back as when LBJ ran both the Vietnam adventure and the Great Society on the government's credit card - to the tune of progressively impoverishing future generations as the interest mounted. (And it was cited as a problem at the time.)
(WW II and the "Korean Police Action" ran partly on credit, too. But at least in those days there was some intent to actually pay it off eventually.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The founders of this nation distrusted standing armies, viewing them as inherent threats to liberty. The Second Amendment was primarily established as a way to secure the ability of the People to defend their Nation. The burning of the Capitol in 1814 might well have heralded the death of the civilian militia: the defenders, though vastly more numerous, were unarmed or poorly armed, and completely failed to impede the British Army. Even before the War of 1812, with the purchase of the original six frigates of the United States Navy, we turned away from the path of the citizen militia, and since then we have gone so far away from the ideals of our founding as to have amassed the largest and most expensive defensive force that the world has ever seen.
There have been a handful of examples where the U.S. Military has been used against its own citizens, but overall the threat to (domestic) liberty has been negligible, although the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII could be an important exception to the rule. The Founders' fears of standing armies were completely mistaken -- or were they?
Until the middle of the 19th Century, guns were expensive, time-consuming to maintain and to fire, and police forces when they existed at all were armed with swords and clubs. During the middle of the 19th Century, however, we see a great shift in American society and culture. The Civil War spread both arms and conflict, and men like Samuel Colt both popularized and enabled gun ownership on a wide scale. It was (as far as I am aware) during this era that police forces were instituted -- and armed.
Today we have a national crisis. The country resounds with gunfire, and daily we hear of new atrocities, of acts of brutality, and of ever-greater police powers. I believe that we have taken the idea of the citizen soldier to its ultimate bloody conclusion, and that we must disband this hostile Army which has set itself over us. I believe we also have a duty to disband the Gun Culture or perhaps even to disarm ourselves as well, given the failure of the purpose of the 2nd Amendment and the examples of other countries around the globe. We have badly strayed from our founding principles. We have a new Civil War which is escalating daily. We need to drastically revise our society, starting with our Police.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If the shooter has taken out 5 cops, he is not safe to be left alone. I am just happy the building did not come down on him.
Incidents like this may vent some rage, but it does not make the police more relaxed.
It rightly ups the paranoia level for them. Perhaps this would be a good day for Blue Flu.
If violence is never the answer, then why did we send 187,900 troops into the Middle East to kill people? The hypocrisy of our leadership amazes me sometimes. I think the real tragedy is that the legislature has let it get to the point that people feel the need to resort to violence. This shooting epidemic that has spread across America is merely a symptom of a greater problem. Our judicial system for peacefully resolving disputes is completely inaccessible to us commoners, we have no voice anymore. My heart goes out all who were killed and hurt, but in all seriousness, what did you expect would happen after countless unjustified shootings by the police? You can only push people so far before they break. Police officers are no longer peace officers, they are law enforcement officers; somewhere along the way they forgot what they're really here for and have been perverted into quota driven government enforcers. Our government has failed us.
Bomb squads keep explosives around to destroy bombs. The standard operating procedure is to pick up the suspicious device, put it in a big, steel, blast-proof vessel, and use a glob of plastic explosive to blow it up.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
How about some numbers:
.74%
.2%
Number of law enforcement officers in the US: 765,000
Number of LEO related deaths last year: 1,000
Deaths/LEO:.1%
Number of blacks in the US: 37,685,840
Number of black gang members in the US: 279,000
Blacks that are gang members:
Number of gang related deaths last year: 2000
Number caused by blacks: 600 (This assumes the same ratio of total gang members vs black gang members, 31%)
Deaths/gang member:
I'm not sure the point I was trying to make, but numbers are interesting, nonetheless. (I was going to just not post this, after forgetting what my point was, but I wasted too much time digging through the internet for numbers) WP has a good article analyzing the all police involved shootings in 2015: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
While I have met a few people who do it for 'fun', others do it due to peer pressure (shitty social circle), and especially among fat women (maybe men too), some of them do it to self-medicate around what are usually thyroid conditions that cause them to have reduced energy. As stupid and dangerous as it is, that often gives them the boost they need to be productive, even if it has a number of horrible side effects (A friends mom for instance began bleeding out of her armpits from continued meth use.)
Or waiting until he falls asleep. The same robot that blew him up could have kept checking on him as needed, but a better robot for this situation would be one that could place cameras to watch him until he falls asleep. That way the robot only needs to be strong enough to make a couple of visits, though it also depends on how much ammo he had for trying to disable robots.
Seems to me as though they didn't want to risk capturing him alive, though that also seems on the insane side. How can we know he was alone? Or perhaps even worse than the lone wolf scenario, what if he was an DAESH agent and the real objective of the attack was to start a race war in America?
Okay, now that I've clarified the problem in my own mind, I know what to search for. Sadly, I predict that today's slashdot won't offer anything--and if someone tried that comment would be modded into oblivion, so I won't find it anyway. Key phrases are "lone wolf" and "race war" and things along the lines of aborting a complete investigation. Perhaps the last bit would be to make it easier to control the spin?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Like Cuba, Russia, China, Venezuela, etc, are run by leftist Marxists not conservatives. Liberals love Cuba and used to love Venezuela, not so much since it collapsed under its leftist ideals.
Islam is also an authoritarian form of government and that aint Western Conservatism. All the rest are petty tyrants. Conservatives are about rule of law and self determination. The only authoritarian governments that are rightist in any way are South American juntas, which have mostly disappeared and African warlords. Neither of which are Western style Conservatism.
But, but, but you stammer, we build roads and bridges and, and, and Scandinavia! There are probably more Scandinavians in America then in Scandinavia. You'd think so if you ever saw the US play Norway in soccer in the USA.
In a no-hostage situation, sending in a robot with explosives seems like a pretty rational response to terrorist claiming to have explosives. And, law enforcement can always claim, "We were just trying to trigger his explosives, we weren't trying to kill the guy." The Dallas case isn't quite like that, but still I approve. Someone wants to hold police in an armed standoff, no sense putting law enforcement officers at risk -- go ahead and sign the guy's death certificate, then send in the robots. They told him, "Surrender or die", and he chose "die". Greatest common good is the path that harms the least number of additional persons. Property damage is cheap by comparison.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is whether the general public should have access to weapons, not about the choice of means for law enforcement to kill somebody. And I believe it has been debated and answered plenty.
He just killed 5 people and wounded others. The five he killed were armed and trained. Of course he was an imminent threat. Would you walk into a building some fuknut was likely trying to lure you into after all that? I'll admit that the remote control drones have encouraged a casual attitude toward killing in other theaters, but there was nothing casual about this particular event. They absolutely made the right call to not risk any more lives trying to take that guy. If I was going to debate against use of drones I wouldn't start with the incident where it was unquestionably the best decision.
The military have been killing people with flying drones and bomb disposal robots for ages. Why is this suddenly a problem? Lethal force is lethal force, regardless of whether or not there is a human body 3ft behind the device doing the killing or not.
Story smells like yet another clickbait beatup written by some clueless media-studies dilettante. Why are we wasting our time even discussing this?
Why do cops have explosives?
Is C4 (or a hand grenade, or whatever they used) commonly required for their daily activities??
This signature is false.
I'm fine with them using robots and drones as such in lethal situations. I don't want police breaking out lethal drones for shoplifting.
All blacks are the problem though, because even if they aren't gang bangers and killers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are.
Perhaps if the police didn't act as though they think this is the case, they wouldn't have so much need to cover each other for being racist violent corrupt cunts?
This is revolting. Yes, he was (allegedly) a terrible person who had done terrible things. But this? Even the worst criminals have a right to a fair trial. I'm pretty sure that he fully expected to be murdered by the police no matter what, and the police fulfilled that expectation.
I worry greatly that these events will lead to still more murders by the police (currently we're at ~3/day in the US).
Radio control cars and trucks with and IED attached. The horse is out of the barn now.
And the shots have been fired. I feel America lived by the sword and will die by it.
Every ever of your church as a m16 how do you deal with it bombs.
The man was a violent criminal, armed, and claiming he had explosives.
I *truly*, *genuinely* don't care one more iota about his story, circumstances, or situation.
Kill him, preferably in a way that threatens no other people.
Not every life is sacred. Not everyone is a precious snowflake.
-Styopa
They live in a war zone.
Sure, certain areas of the US might be nice, just like Mexico...but most of it is scarred by violence, just like Mexico.
Fucks sake...you have an enormous underclass, a military culture that worships violence, and everyone is high and armed to the teeth. How did you think it was going to turn out ?
The US will collapse from inside. It doesn't need any pretend Russian or Islamic bogeymen.
like this in the vicinity of a hostile that is willing to take lives. What a wonderful thing to disable with a cheap jammer. Free bomb for the bad guys. It's already been done with drones and there are hackers now working on how to disable this sort of robot.
The second dumb thing is to be so short-sighted as to not regard how the next robot will be met. Remotely piloted robots are great for dealing with hostage situations in non-lethal ways (enabling communication, ferrying food or medicines for hostages)--or they used to be. Now, every robot will be regarded by the bad guys as a bomb-carrier. Seeing one approaching you there can only be one safe assumption: it is carrying a bomb. Act accordingly.
It is fine to argue the finer points of how to kill someone without exposing law-enforcement to danger. The robot worked very well for that this time. But from here on, it won't go so well and could create an even bigger disaster if the robot gets hacked.
I think your comments about the Constitutional aspects of this issue are spot on, but not quite the whole picture. I have elaborated on my concerns here, perhaps you could gratify me with your further opinion? In particular, I should like to note that there is no Constitutional justification for the police to bear arms (aside from the 2nd Amendment), that such was not envisioned by the Founders, and that in their capacity as war officers (as you adroitly term them) they fulfill all the fears that our Founders had relating to the tyrannies of a standing army. I do believe this now constitutes a Constitutional crisis, but of slightly different scope than you have identified.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The amount of ignorance in your post is unbelievable.
Well, it is believable seeing as you are a foaming-at-the-mouth lefty.
How do you even make it day to day, without falling off that rainbow you're riding on?
I'm posting as an AC because I just don't want to deal with the shitstorm your fellow ignorant leftists throw at any who challenge their make-believe world.
Why bother surrendering if they are going to kill you anyway?
San Bernardino was also a first, as far as I know. The suspects were killed by gunfire from an armed government helicopter. Back when I was an aviator, the Federal Aviation Administration had rules and regulations that prohibited any government helicopter (or anyone else) from firing on suspects from any type of aircraft. I guess that has changed as well. The fact that the perp in Dallas was killed by a remote bomb gave me chills.
The robot was sent in because the shooter placed a bomb and it had to be detonated before the police could move in. I think this entire thread is reaction to misinformation
I've been wondering about a part of this for a while. I mean aren't officers supposed to apprehend suspects to be tried in court. I understand this guy was dangerous but couldn't they just have waited him out or if there was immediate danger kill him. It seems like it was just more convenient to send in a bot to dispose of him. It just makes me uneasy to hear about law enforcement blowing someone up, without exhausting all other options. Yea the guy was a dangerous murder but he was also a US citizen holed up. Is this a sign of things to come?
If they are sure that is the guy, the best solution is to bring him in in a body bag or 2. He deserves death for killing 5 police officers and that is not likely to happen in our court system, and if it dose, it would take 30 years.
With the repeal of Prohibition, Americans now have A Right to Drink Alcohol. Combine that with the Second Amendment, and we have The Right to Bear Arms while Drinking Alcohol.
One word: Gonzo
A bullet also kills remotely, it just gets transported over an almost straight line and hits where it can be seen directly by the shooter. A killer robot moves around obstacles and the operator can see via a camera. However, a missile, grenade or mortar travels in an arc and explodes where it cannot be seen at all. So, using remote vehicles to deliver a killing blow isn't really a new idea.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
People should start thinking about the cost of what they want done for them and what they want done to their neighbors.
How many police do you want to get shot or to shoot people while enforcing your laws or collecting the taxes you want to spend on yourselves?
Do you really need that speed limit sign? That law against vaping? That prohibition on 19-year-olds drinking beer? Your free government mobile phone? That blue law? That marijuana law? That licensing requirement for barbers? Or cab drivers? That gun law? Those special government union privileges? Your high-speed rail dreams? Your composting law? Your animal cruelty law? Your abortion law? Your discrimination law? Your ethanol subsidy? Your favorite defense project? Your favorite clean energy project?
Is it really worth bullying people? Do you really want your neighbors to have a criminal record? Or be forced to register? Or be shot in a misunderstanding? Or end up in a shootout with police? Or be forced to leave their homeland in order to escape your controlling hand? Or your greedy hand?
What kind of person sends the police after his neighbors who are minding their own business? Would a good person do that? What if you decided to be kind instead? To forgive and be open? To be generous instead of self-interested? To understand and empathize rather than slur and dismiss?
Give it a try. If you want peace, be peaceful. If you want understanding, be understanding. If you want your people treated respectfully, be respectful and respectable.
The ability for police to remotely kill suspects raises due process concerns.
Really? "due process concerns." Why all of a sudden? The police aren't concerned about due process or most of the rest of the Bill of Rights. (Try reading it sometime.) Unless of course they somehow get charged with a crime themselves.
Basically it's back to the 1920's where they "Shoot first! Ask questions later." Unless of course you have been rendered unable to speak, or even breathe. It seems like the police don't even bother to drop a knife or gun on a dead suspect anymore to justify the murder. All they need do now is say, "I felt threatened."
Black lives matter. Cops lives matter. ALL lives matter. Come on... We can do better than this.
In many remote areas it is next to impossible to catch people who are stealing livestock or farming equipment. There may be little or no law enforcement for a hundred miles or more. What better way is there than to have intelligent, automated weapons that will gun down anyone trespassing in the night or hold them at gun point until the property owner or law enforcement arrives? Such weapons could also keep cars from being stolen or burglars from entering a home. Frankly it is no more wrong than having a large guard dog that is trained to be silent until it can take out an intruder. Even in cities many people keep small dogs that bark at almost anything as they fear sleeping in their own. homes.
The Congressional Black Caucus was a heavy supporter of the "war on drugs" in the 1980s. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 passed a Democratic House with 205 Democratic co-sponsors to 96 Republicans.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This asshole was shooting police officers and was holed up. They made the judgment that he wasn't going to be taken alive, so fine, don't take him alive. Seriously, why risk another police officer's life on that piece of shit?
You have figured out the statistic that never gets reported: black violent offenders are slightly less likely to be shot by police than white violent offenders.
News channels like CNN, when broadcasting 24/7 coverage of the Ferguson riots et. al., must be intentionally spreading the false narrative of systemic racism.
This is incredibly destructive to society.
It's a return to old policies. Police didn't try to capture John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd -- they set out to kill them.
That's not self-defence. That's murder.
Fuck da police.
3rd world use suicide bomber
1st world use robot bomber
I read earlier that the suspect requested a cell phone. The bomb robot brought the suspect a cell phone, but the phone was carrying a secondary payload of explosives. They then detonated the phone once the suspect was on an active call, thus detonating a bomb directly next to his head. This is far beyond putting a firecracker on a robot stick.
This was a military grade assassination technique used on an american civilian, albeit a murderous criminal civilian, a civilian none-the-less. This action is very, very far beyond the line of acceptable, no matter the risk.
The police just eliminated the entire judicial system, the penal system, and everyone else involved in the justice system and went directly to becoming the executioner, which is the reason the madman was out there shooting to begin with.
This type of thing must not be allowed to happen. This must stop in order for our society to recover from the spate of extremely morally destitute, criminally behaved, self-investigated and exonerated police causing the current problems between civilians and the law enforcement.
"How can we heal the racial divide?” - instead of calling it “black lives matter”, call it “lives matter”. Instead of calling them “african american”, call them “american”, or even just “men” or “Women”. The racial labels that we use in society nowadays are part of the problem. Changing the label from “nigger" to "african american" doesn’t do a damn thing. You’re still calling a human different from another human based solely on the color of their skin...
Stop playing dumb. This entire story was about a sniper killing cops in retaliation for cops playing judge, jury, and executioner on minority suspects. Some were innocent, some were not. That overall doesn't matter. It is not their job to execute people without a trial unless no other option is available. In the two latest videos, a lot of people including myself do not see that as the case. Many folks also keep screaming to see the first part of the videos so they can "prove" they deserved it. Again, that is not the polices' job. Just as the police are not supposed to shoot first and make up answers later, we as a society are not supposed to resort to vigilante justice unless no other route is possible. The sniper thought otherwise. #BLM as an organization does not condone this and have not fallen to vigilante justice. If you wish to sway the fringe elements to stop taking matters into their own hands, you have to prove to them justice is being served.
Love military technology to save lives, but on American soil is it Constitutional to use war technology and bring it into civil society? Getting hard to tell who is the ambusher, & who is the ambushee! Like military assault rifles bringing the war toys home to play with them in normal society seems very risky, and tilts the odds between a militaristic police and a defenseless public, armed or not.
How is this different than using these tech toys in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran?
Using them on your own countrymen is equivalent to turning them on your neighbors. Is that rational?
Or drones.
It's an issue that now and forever every guy with a gun, who is surrounded by police or simply holed up somewhere and high on paranoia - is expecting to be exploded with bombs and perhaps robots.
And while this may or may not trigger a series of shootings of drones and toys - it most certainly will create a situation where now the perps expect that they are not getting arrested.
That it is a fight to the death. No negotiation. No deescalation. Cops will kill you so you must kill cops.
It's actually a bit ironic that Detroit depicted in RoboCop was actually mostly Dallas.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The shootings were a muslim plot. The thing was with the video of Philando Castile and so on many whites were beginning to see that there is real injustice in the way that some police deal with minorities. There could have been a coming together and a call for improvement. Of course the muslims don't want this. Following the teachings of the hateful warlord Muhammad they want to drive people apart, attract black Americans to their own violent cult.
I don't see why they needed to kill him. If they could get close enough for a bomb they could arguable detonate it far enough away from him such that it would only stun him. So many options here yet they close to kill.
Radio controlled devices ARE NOT ROBOTS.
I don't know why "with a robot" is a complicating factor. Would a police sniper have been justified in shooting him? If yes, then I don't care what the weapon is. Take the guy down in the most expedient manner with the least possibility of harm to anyone else. If the use of the sniper was not justified, I still don't care what the weapon is, they're doing it wrong.
In my mind that's the only question. Was the use of lethal force justified? I don't know, but with multiple officers already down I'd say it's clear they tried other possibilities first. I'm willing to concede that the force may have been justified. And at that point, as I said, I don't really care what weapon is most expedient.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
2001 to 2008, huh?
The current administration added more to the debt than all previous administrations combined. Let that sink in for a moment.
So did the prior administration. Let that sink in for a moment....
So will the next administration. It is already baked in to the required outlays. No tax increase can absorb it. We will have a 30 trillion dollar debt before you can turn around twice. We have never reliably been able to raise more than 18% of GDP in revenue for more than a brief period (like a war), and never more than 22% even in a burst. Yet our outlays are headed north of 24% of GDP, regardless of who wins the next election.
The debt bomb is going to explode, long before the climate bomb explodes. It is a bipartisan effort. Obama and Bush are two peas in a pod. Outside of a speech impediment and some window dressing on a couple of issues, they've been no different whatsoever. Obama has been bombing random countries at a rate that would have given Bush the hives. Hillary plans to do even more. Trump says he'll bomb the shit out of everyone. They all want to spend more money than the other guy.
But you go ahead and keep playing their game for them. That'll help. Yeah, it is all Bush's fault. Obama didn't even bother to submit a budget for years.... but it is all Bush's fault.
You guys are pathetic.
What is so difficult about just making sure the dude does not escape,
keep distance so he's not able to hurt anyone and wait for Hunger to arrive ?
(Wasn't this a surveillance bot they used ?)
Sure, maybe it takes a bit longer, but the final 'negotiations' would boil down
to the dude's demand for a meal, which would be agreed upon, only if the
dude comes out and pays for it with his weapons.
Of course having these new bomb-toys are much too tempting _not_ to try out
and the false feeling of victory just tastes soo sweet...
Enough shrapnel to disable (probably blind and maim) but without enough to kill him. Capturing and making an example of him would have been important to making him an example of the rule of law. Instead we have an example of the Rule of Force, which will only incense likeminded individuals further.
yet... Who authorized the use of the bomb+robot?
The police chief? The mayor? The governor? The president?
Given how many hours passed, someone up the civilian chain of command should have been making this judgement and taking responsibility for it. If not, whoever was involved should be tried in court for it. Just because they did something that needed doing doesn't mean it was legal, even if justified. And if they aren't willing to face the consequences of those actions, they are no better than Micah was.
Veterans unless actively deployed?
And even then as I understand from a friend, they get reduced benefits compared to active enlistment personnel, even if they were deployed for a tour of duty.
If we stop exporting it to LA/SF.
The majority of drought issues in the Central Valley/NorCal are due to the coastal cities leeching away inland water, rather than working out alternatives using their huge supply of salt water they shit into every day.
Make them use the expensive to extract but local water supply and you will see both demand drop due to cost, and regional water supplies return to a surplus. But that falls outside the narrative which helps keep Californians in-line with bad domestic policies. We also have a lot more agriculture exports than Texas as well. So Texit the fuck out and make room for Calexit.
And for the record: California has refineries, natural gas, and oil too. The majority of it just wasn't considered viable with cheaper and cleaner alternatives available from out of state/country.
these definitions of Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, etc are all IDEALIZED or 'definitions' and not the reality of the current people calling themselves each.
Yes, current Liberals and Conservatives are authoritarians with only a few key social and business platforms seperating them (Mostly abortion, racism, and whether they are in the pocket of big intangibles or big tangibles.) Libertarians on the other hand tend to want to be the first to the 'next big unregulated thing' so they can be in charge of it and charge everybody else admission/licensing costs (Seriously, Bitcoin, seasteading, liberland, you name it.)
America is a woman's country. It needs a strong police presence to keep the males in line. The white cuck males are easy to deal with. The black men less so.
Everything males liked has been banned. (child brides, man as the master weapons, etc)
Everything women like is upheld and not punished. (woman as the master, divorce at woman's choice, cutting off cocks)
Sacramento has become somewhat notorious locally for emininent domaining properties in order to hand over to developers, many of whom overstated the financing for the projects which the eminent domain would involve. A major example was a uniform supply shop downtown called 'JoSun' which owned a building opposite the K Street Mall (Soon to be the new Kings Arena, and already causing both traffic issues as well as the loitering of a new criminal element in the adjoining vicinity.) The developer in question did nothing with the building (and 2-3 others gained at the same time) for a period of several years, during which some or all of them were vacant, then 'renovated' them by putting up new facade and renting them out at 4x the prior rates. If that is the American Way, there are plenty of other countries you can get treated just as poorly in with far fewer regulations to worry about. And confiscating property for private benefit is not the purpose of eminent domain to begin with.
if you're planning to re-enact either American or German punitive activities from WW2. Yeah those ones. Ask the survivors or their descendants how that all worked out.
Was the "robot" destroyed in the process? The first time police have used a suicide bomber.
Basically every cellphone produced for the past 5 years has been made to allow less and less hardware-level user control over its functionality. Similiar to the Intel and AMD Management Engine/Processors they have started using signed firmware at a level above what the end user has access to. Additionally for US phones they are now required to have an always on channel for 'over the air emergency services updates', like the 'Amber Alert' only for cell phones. It is not a far stretch to imagine that feature being expanded to provide localized disabling/enabling of phone recording/calls/playback to benefit or cover up law enforcement/government/corporate misconduct.
Most people just haven't been paying attention to just how little control they have over their 'own' ubiquitous spying devices, and how soon they can be subverted from a game changing device of freedom to another shackle in their chains of technological slavery.
>If America wants to save Detroit (the literal city of Detroit... the larger metro area is doing just fine), the best place to start would be to change the laws for environmental liability so that someone who buys a property there in good faith, then discovers an environmental nightmare below the surface that they literally had nothing whatsoever to do with, could at least wash their hands of the loss and walk away without being on the hook for more than what they paid for the property.
Women wouldn't like that, so it won't happen.
They want the satanic mmmmmaaallleeeesssss with money to buy land imprisoned, insolvent, and castrated and then raped by blacks. (after they give all their money to them (the women), ofcourse)
>People should start thinking about the cost of what they want done for them and what they want done to their neighbors.
Women do not want males ruling over females nor marrying female children.
When MMAMAMAAALLLEEESSSSSSSSSSSS were in control men married female children and ruled over the woman as master. (Even in the born-cuntrry of americunt:
>In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10-12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895).[8] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign[9] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16-18 years by 1920.
)
If you read the hebrew in the book of Deuteronomy the man is refered to as master and he can also rape young female children and just keep them after paying the father some money.
Women do NOT want males to rule, so maaaaaaallllleesss are suppressed by the police.
There is no "people" here. There are women: mainly white women. White males are dogs: to work and support the woman, black men are "bucks" that the women ride for a good time. Hispanics... maybe she'll have a kid with him.
Every cunt has her work-male (white), her buck (black), and maybe a breeder (hispanic). That is America, that is europe (replace hispanic with arab). That is white CUNT society.
Oh and any white What kind of person sends the police after his neighbors who are minding their own business?
Women.
> Would a good person do that?
Women are good by default.
>What if you decided to be kind instead?
It is just a tool in her tool box.
>To forgive and be open? To be generous instead of self-interested? To understand and empathize rather than slur and dismiss?
Women will not give up their lofty position, they will not allow MMMAAALLLLEEESSS to rule over them and their young daughters again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In the book 'AnthroTechne' there is a chapter dedicated to "I pledge to elect machines to govern, arrest, or nullify problematic humans".
Seeing all these things happen to humans in today's world and in a Big Country like USA. I can only wait for an END TO THIS BIG WORLD that we are only living HUMANS killing each other for living. I wish it was the END OF THIS WORLD in 2000. No Joking as there are no peace. Is these days killing our-self for living is the right thing to do? I can tell you in everyday on Radio/TV/internet you see only CRIMES, do the politicians Cares about this? no Cause they are not getting kills why would they bother for you as they only want your votes people.
> and the hope of liberty and pursuing happiness
Bullshit.
America believes in woman's rights.
The pursuit of happiness was banned long ago, at the behest of women.
>In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10-12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895).[8] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign[9] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16-18 years by 1920.
Women support this.
Aslong as it's mmmaaallleesss being killed.
Women do not want to be slaves to maaallleesss again and do not want the mmaaalleessss marrying female children again.
>In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10-12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895).[8] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign[9] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16-18 years by 1920.
>Also: see: Deuteronomy chapter 22 verses 28-29, hebrew allows men to rape girl children and keep them: thus man + girl is obviously fine. Feminists are commanded to be killed as anyone enticing others to follow another ruler/judge/god is to be killed as-per Deuteronomy. It is wonderful when this happens from time to time: celebrate)
: the steady drift to more militarized law enforcement.
The police could have approached the suspect without fear of injury from his rifle fire if they had what is known as a "SWAT tank;" generally just an armored vehicle, often a modified version of a military Armored Personnel Carrier. They're used to get police into a building or close to a suspect despite them being armed. They could have fired tear gas canisters from the shielded rifle ports in the side of the vehicle, that sort of thing, and not have had to use the bomb on the robot to kill him.
These vehicles are stupidly expensive - unless you buy a military surplus MRAP, which is pretty much the same thing. But then you are "militarizing the police" and demonized for it.
From what I remember of the timeline, the suspect at this point had claimed to have planted explosive devices throughout the area, and there had not been enough time to validate the claim. So, he could easily have made a call on his cell phone to detonate remote bombs, rushed out at the surrounding officers with a suicide vest or gym bag of explosives, etc. I would have assumed had I been there that based on his own statements he was still a risk to the community and safeguarding that community was my primary duty. If his finger is on the call button, you can't give him a chance to detonate, so it's either a very well placed sniper shot if you have line of site, or something like what they improvised. If explosives had been found wired to a cell phone detonator, their efforts would have been applauded. I agree it's a very slippery slope, but we need to understand the full context here.
I have no idea why many people are appalled. This was the correct and safest option to halt the shooter and stop the threat to police and civilians. The shooter made no bones about stating that he wanted to "kill white people, especially cops". So at that point the police know the intention and have to respond with appropriate force after shootings/murders occurred to keep themselves and the public safe. If he had been in an enclosed area the option to use non-lethal force like tear gas may have been used but he was in a garage (open air space) where that was not a viable option. The Philando shooting was horrible but responding in kind as a domestic terrorist does nothing but make the situation worse.
If I understand correctly, these machines are basically oversized remote control cars, they are not "robots" in sense of having any level of autonomous decision making capacity.
I'm pretty sure that they used a bomb strapped to an RC car in one of the lethal weapon movies, so it's not exactly correct to say it's "unprecedented".
From the standpoint of economy, the cops did the right thing. In the end, the shooter probably would have killed himself rather than be captured. You have to be suicidal to get in a fire fight with the cops.
But they didn't have to go this direction. At some degree of risk, they could have waited till he went to sleep and captured him.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
With all due respect, that Couch kid was given probation because he was under 18 (17) and couldn't be charged as an adult. He didn't break his probation until he was 18. He fled the country because his probation violation is no longer a juvenile matter. He is fucked, and the judge knew he would fuck himself. It was entirely cool what the judge did because it showed Ethan was incapable of rational thought.
who would of thunk it slashdot full of THE MAN haters and tinfoil hat brigade-Im all for cops using a device be it a robot or a rc vehicle to kill a suspect WHEN he is holed up without hostages, its reasonable to believe jhe might have explosives with or on him to take out as many cops as he or she can when they would otherwise have to assault his position.
in this situation he was sporting a handgun and AR type rifle -think its been reports to be an newer AK variant. Not sure when we got =word he was out to kill white cops. But when you watch the video of him shooting its obvious he had gun training by his stance and way he held his gun while firing and moving. He shot 10 cops killing 4 so far. Min 2 bystanders got shot and 2 of those cops were Hispanic so he failed in his mission since 28.5 % of his victims were NOT who he wanted to shoot.
By all means take him out by an explosive.
it was going to happen. not a big deal, unless abused. my idea is to have drones approach drivers at traffic stops, ask the driver to hold up their license, and have a photo sent to the officer. that dangerous interface between officer and driver can be mitigated. the driver could even inform the officer remotely if he has a weapon, and place the weapon somewhere safe, maybe where the drone can retrieve it.
If we're talking about unjustly killing people, then yeah, it's a killers problem. There are probably plenty of other things wrong with the Dallas PD, but that's not the topic we were on.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Furthermore, almost no city budget is capable of such military-grade purchases. To afford Pentagon-level weapons suites, the police had to be granted to power to steal cash and property from people without the legal action that was traditionally required. For you foreign Slashdotters out there it may seem incredible that US police can do this, but they can.
In my opinion The police could have used Sleeping gas to take the suspect down but Chose to use a bomb because their answer is always Shoot it" Kill it" Blow it up" in order to solve their problems. If they can use Robots to take down suspects then they do NOT ever need anymore man power. Use robots. Robocops.
The police are trained to shoot to kill not shoot and maim in order to arrest the perp.
I'm sure they think they are saving tax payers money but that is not the point. If they are going to be jail trial and jury and executioner then they dont need to hire anymore Judges or Juries or anymore court officials....Maybe they just hate doing paperwork.
Disgraceful in my opinion.
maybe they killed an android
Compare these sentences of 13-18year olds to the affluenza teen.
Source: http://fairsentencingofyouth.o...
Racial Inequality in Youth Sentencing
The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth is dedicated to ending the practice of sentencing any young person to die in prison. This harsh, extreme life without parole sentence has a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Human Rights Watch reports that more than 2,500 people in the United States have been convicted of a crime committed before they were 18 years old and sentenced to life without parole. One out of every 8 African-American youth who are convicted of killing someone will be sentenced to life without parole, however this is only the case for one out of every 13 white youth convicted of murder.[i]
The most extreme sentence that a person under the age of 18 can receive is life without parole, which occurs when young people are transferred from juvenile court to be tried as adults in criminal court. Young people sentenced to life without the possibility of parole have effectively been discarded by society. They will never again have their sentence considered or have their cases reviewed to see if they have grown or matured. Below is a list of facts that demonstrates the channel from school to prison–sometimes for life–to which youth of color are disproportionately subjected.
funny, I was with you until the programmer part. its true that I let a lot of slop pass review and that part of the reason why is that this is the team I have to work shoulder to shoulder with on a daily basis. alienating my team will definitely not make us better or more productive.
the good news is that when someone checks in messy code, no one dies
Granted this individual was highly dangerous, but seriously, there was no other option than to KILL him???
*SWAT team with tear gas/flash bang
*Tranq dart from sniper rifle
*Sedative laced pizza
*Strap taser(s) on the bot
Cops killing black people... isn't this how all this trouble stared in the first place
#BlackLivesSplatter
If you study the police tactics of the turn of the century, cops blew up entire buildings to get "anarchists".
One story in particular this reminds me of is some time in the early 1900's (1906 maybe?) french police blew up an entire building by rigging the accessible basement with dynamite in order to kill a perpetrator on the 2nd floor that had heavily fortified himself.
I bet you if you put the same people in the same situation 30 years ago they would put a hand grenade on a pole and use mirrors to find and kill the guy.. it really depends on the psychology of the officer in charge of the operation.
Is it only shooting victims you are concerned about, cuz they guy brought down in Dallas wouldn't count as he was bombed.
Police are way too militarized & violence happy. How many police even carry a NON-lethal weapon to subdue suspects?
Of course, there are the killings that happen "by accident" in police custody, like 3 white women in Capitola, California in the 1st 3 months of the year that died by being left alone during opiate withdrawal -- something that their rules say should be done under medical supervision. Instead, they were put into the solitary 'detox' tank, where food is delivered to them, but otherwise are ignored.
The shooter in Dallas was explicitly upset about the two viral-videos of police murdering blacks that were in no way creating any threat to the police. In the Baton Rouge case, the mandatory personal-police-cams officers are supposed to wear when engaging in any police action were both left in their squad car -- if it hadn't been for a cellphone camera of an interested by-stander, there would have been no proof that the suspect was already pinned-down and helpless when the officer over him pulled his gun and shot the suspect, on the ground, point-blank in the chest.
The one in Minnesota -- the police asked for his license -- when he went for it, they shot him -- also caught on video showing he was not threatening the police or violent. He was survived by his wife and kid -- both in the car with him.
The cops can't continue to escalate violence w/o expecting any blow-back.
How many police shootings do you hear about in the UK, vs. the US? I have seen evidence that UK-prisons are far more humane than those in the US, that treat prisoners like animals. US prisons (a growth industry)and have a reputation for being "colleges" for criminals, where the idea of reform has been abandoned, and prisoners mostly learn to be "better" criminals from their peers.
Of course, I'm sure nonsensical laws, and long mandatory prison sentences have nothing to do with US officials (like a recent past V.P.) that have large investments in privately run prisons (like Chaney's, Texas-based, prison corporation).
Who. When. Where. Have people tried to outlaw abortion. You do realize that Roe v Wade outlawed abortion after the first trimester. So laws outlawing it past 20 weeks is even more pro-choice than Roe v Wade.
Anonymous because already moderated