The Bay of Pigs was a fiasco because the US president pulled the plug without telling the Cuban counterrevolutionaries.
Kuwait was the first step or did you forget the appeasement issue in WW2. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc were on the list. It would have been much harder to stop Saddam if Saudi Arabia had fallen before action was taken.
This is the problem with tasers. They make the Police think they should use them when we as citizens think they shouldn't be using a weapon at all.
We as citizens do not put our lives on the line every day dealing with people who have no respect for their lives or the lives of others. We were not there in the situation and we have the calm detachment and the time to make the exact correct decision. We were not in a situation similar to one that got a friend seriously injured or killed just last week. Armchair quarterbacking is very rarely helpful.
Are tazers used too often? Yes and the people who misuse them need to be punished. Are tazers used to save lives; officer and suspect alike? Yes and they should be available to continue to do that.
Are you serious? Would you go up against someone with a knife, machete, or ax armed only with a baton? You would be asking to die or be seriously injured.
And a lot more people died of bullet wounds. I believe that tazer discharges should be dealt with the same scrutiny as pistol discharges. The officer has to justify the use. In my opinion "He called me 'pig'." is not a valid reason to taze someone.
Weapons include knives, clubs, broken bottles, etc.. All of which an officer does not want to get within range of or they may die. By the way the lethal range of a knife wielding person is 20 to 30 feet. They can be on the officer before he has time to draw and shoot. Do some officers misuse tazers? Yes and they need to be punished for that. That does not mean they should be taken away from all officers.
If the suspect has NO weapon, there is no reason to use a tazer.
I guess you have never encountered someone who is immune to pain due to drugs, psychosis, etc. Sorry but every officer can't be expected to best a 300 pound steroid enhanced boxer on meth. Blanket statements like that always have exceptions. By your standard all police officers should be heavy weight wrestlers. Sorry but there is not enough of them to go around. Even if you are a heavy weight wrestler you are going to take a lot of damage in a real fight.
I guess we should go back to the old option to subdue an armed violent suspect; guns. I think tazers are a much better option than shooting a person wielding a weapon. Sure tazers have killed people but then so have batons. If you confront police with a weapon you may die. Tazers are much less likely to kill than guns.
Just because Tazer International builds the recording system does not mean that they will run it.
WW2, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iraq wars (the US economy would have been ruined if oil was cut off), Afghanistan (decreasing terrorist attacks on US soil). Defending does not always mean preventing enemies from taking your land.
I guess you missed Mahatma Gandhi who freed an entire country without violence. Countering violence with violence fails many times as well. Just look at the War on Terror. That does not seem to be working to well.
Stolen cars, stolen plates and the owner may not be the driver. It is not valid to suspend the license of someone who loaned their vehicle to a friend who drove while drunk. Also they have to prove that the suspect was driving while drunk. If they catch up with him hours later the driver could be sober by then or say he drank when he got home. All a suspect needs is reasonable doubt and that is easy if the diver is not caught in the act. It is like the ruling that an IP address is not proof that the owner of the hardware broke copyrights. A license plate is not proof that the owner of the vehicle broke the law.
One of the issues in the article is that the drone does not have a TCAS. According to international rules it is not required to have one.
It is a type of airborne collision avoidance system mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization to be fitted to all aircraft with a maximum take-off mass (MTOM) of over 5,700 kg (13,000 lb) or authorized to carry more than 19 passengers.
Most light aircraft, which can and have brought down passenger aircraft, are not required to have it either as they are smaller than 5,700 kg and carry less than 19 passengers.
A stupid drone pilot took a drone where it should not have gone and some people are trying to use it to show drones are dangerous. Pilots of small aircraft do that all the time and people are not demanding they be banned. It is a weak argument to deflect attention from other issues.
If the officer believes the suspect has a weapon, then the officer should probably not engage in hand to hand in the first place.
Officers are trained to assume everyone is armed until proven otherwise. That is a main reason people are frisked when taken into custody.
Shooting to disable someone on the ground that's unresponsive
As I have stated, safely shooting someone to disable is impossible. There are too many negative outcomes including the PR issue of "police shooting non-resisting suspects". Look at the issue of hitting suspects do you really thing shooting them will get better acceptance?
So exactly what are you arguing here?
That most people have no idea of how to assess what necessary force is which is exacerbated by only seeing the last part of an altercation.
I too prefer to stop at "I don't know" but in certain cases that is not possible. The question at hand is should high speed chases occur or not. There is no data to support either contention but a decision needs to be made. My gut feeling is that letting all fleeing suspects go is a bad one. There definitely needs to be guidelines to control the risk but a blanked ban is not the answer.
Have there been incidents where suspects have been brutalized by police? Yes. Have there been instances where police have done what appears to a layman to be brutality but really isn't? yes. All this armchair quarterbacking Is baseless. Most people who comment have never had training and have never been in a physical altercation with a determined foe.
If the suspect is on the ground, they are pretty much submissive, any further beating is definitely a sign of excessive force.
Yet more evidence that you have never tried to arrest someone. The suspect goes down and turtles. Every time an officer gets close he lashes out with feet, elbows, knees, etc. While the officers are away he looks passive. When the officers get close he is aggressive. On the ground does not mean passive. And again, The reason he won't show his hands could be the knife he has concealed there.
I'm fully ok with a shot to the leg to stop the problem, all on film, of course.
So you are advocating discharging a firearm in a non life threatening situation to subdue someone? Do you realize how dangerous that is? People have died by being shot in the leg. Hit the femoral artery and he's dead. The bullet could hit the knee permanently disabling the suspect. Miss and the bullet could go anywhere killing someone else. I can just hear the headlines "Drunken party goer shot and killed by police". This aiming for the leg thing is also unreasonable. Unless the suspect is lying completely still the shot could be a difficult one. Anyone who has ever fired a handgun knows that in a hand to hand fight it is very likely for the suspect to get control of the gun and shoot the officer. Also bringing a gun into the situation escalates it and the suspect will fight harder as they see their life is in danger.
By the way, tazers are not completely effective. They work while they are active buth then officers can't be in contact with the suspect at that time. After contact, some people, especially those high on crack or meth, recover very quickly and become aggressive almost immediately.
any further beating is definitely a sign of excessive force
I agree with that statement but the beating is not definitive proof of excessive force as so many people would believe. One needs to take the whole incident into context and not just the last 30 seconds.
When you deal with medications that alter consciousness dose is very tricky. Ever wonder why they tell you not to eat before general anesthetic? The patient may throw up and inhale the vomit. This can cause pneumonia or worse. Proper dosage depends on weight, general health, other medications, etc. There is no way police officers in stressful situations can figure out the correct dosage.
So you say that officers will need medical training to administer the drug? Sure, fair enough.
Anesthesiologists are medical doctors and go through years of specific training in administration of drugs. Even they will not do it without oxygen and e respirator available. When even more people die due to drug interactions and overdoses who will get the blame? The police.
You're half-pinned, someone's beating you to "stay calm" and "stop resisting"
The police are not "someone". They are representatives of society who's job is to apprehend suspects. They are not some guy off the street.
Tazering may look violent,
I am all for tazers. They work most of the time but some times they are not available or have been expended.
It's pretty much the same situation as with a traffic enforcement camera
Traffic violations have a different burden of proof than criminal complaints. Traffic cameras are used in speed traps and red light cameras. Both of these are relatively minor fines and are charged to the vehicle. More serious offences like excessive speed, hit and run, etc which could entail jail time require proof of who was driving.
I would drive away in high speed (to my own peril),
Some people believe they are great drivers
probably get arrested by police officers at my home for all my neighbours to see,
To some people that is a badge of honor.
have to explain to my boss that I need to take some days off to go to court
It would never get to court as any vaguely competent defense lawyer would get the case dismissed long before it went to court on precedents alone. Any district attorney would be sanctioned for even placing the charges. They may pay the fine but the police didn't get the cocane that was in the back seat.
So biting, scratching or kneeing a cop is reason enough for the cop to beat you senseless and into a pulp?
There have been police beating that go beyond reasonable levels. There have also been incidents where the actions of the suspect have changed drastically when they know they are being filmed. Some of the issues include suspects who appear docile but will not show their hands. Many time they have had knives, needles or guns in their hands and use them when the officers get close. If you have never tried to take a violently resisting person into custody then you really don't know what you are talking about. My solution: chloroform.
Anyone using a drug useing a drug as an anesthetic would need medical training. Give a little too much and one could kill the patient. The application of the chloroform would require the officer to place his hand over the mouth of the suspect for a period of time. Even if the officer could hold long enough, chloroform is not instant, that is a great way to lose a finger. To counter the chloroform for a while all the suspect would have to do is hold his breath. There is also no way to control the fumes. The officers could be effected to. Finally, as another poster pointed out, chloroform is toxic.
Since nether of us have data we have to go on belief. Considering the number of drunk drivers that kill innocent people I believe that if drunk drivers sped away and were not chased there would be more deaths than not chasing.
Can't prove that the owner of the vehicle was driving unless you catch them in the act. All one can prove is that the vehicle was on the road and not who was driving it. For those serious offences one can not charge the vehicle. Then there is the issue if stolen plates and stolen vehicles.
There was a traffic stop that turned into a high speed chase that ended in the capture of a man that was on a multi state killing spree. He had already killed at least three people and was planning on killing more. Had the chase not occurred more people would have been killed.
The "what if the chase never happened" numbers are very difficult to come by as it is almost impossible to know what might have happened. The only thing we can go by is generalities. I find it hard to believe that letting every person who initiates a high speed chase go would not cause more damage than the deaths of 117 people per year. The number of habitual drunk drivers that would not be caught would cause more deaths than that.
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Decreasing the number of terrorist training camps has an impact on the number of trained terrorists available for operations.
The Bay of Pigs was a fiasco because the US president pulled the plug without telling the Cuban counterrevolutionaries.
Kuwait was the first step or did you forget the appeasement issue in WW2. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc were on the list. It would have been much harder to stop Saddam if Saudi Arabia had fallen before action was taken.
This is the problem with tasers. They make the Police think they should use them when we as citizens think they shouldn't be using a weapon at all.
We as citizens do not put our lives on the line every day dealing with people who have no respect for their lives or the lives of others. We were not there in the situation and we have the calm detachment and the time to make the exact correct decision. We were not in a situation similar to one that got a friend seriously injured or killed just last week. Armchair quarterbacking is very rarely helpful.
Are tazers used too often? Yes and the people who misuse them need to be punished. Are tazers used to save lives; officer and suspect alike? Yes and they should be available to continue to do that.
Batons are defence against non fire arms weapons
Are you serious? Would you go up against someone with a knife, machete, or ax armed only with a baton? You would be asking to die or be seriously injured.
And a lot more people died of bullet wounds. I believe that tazer discharges should be dealt with the same scrutiny as pistol discharges. The officer has to justify the use. In my opinion "He called me 'pig'." is not a valid reason to taze someone.
Weapons include knives, clubs, broken bottles, etc.. All of which an officer does not want to get within range of or they may die. By the way the lethal range of a knife wielding person is 20 to 30 feet. They can be on the officer before he has time to draw and shoot. Do some officers misuse tazers? Yes and they need to be punished for that. That does not mean they should be taken away from all officers.
If the suspect has NO weapon, there is no reason to use a tazer.
I guess you have never encountered someone who is immune to pain due to drugs, psychosis, etc. Sorry but every officer can't be expected to best a 300 pound steroid enhanced boxer on meth. Blanket statements like that always have exceptions. By your standard all police officers should be heavy weight wrestlers. Sorry but there is not enough of them to go around. Even if you are a heavy weight wrestler you are going to take a lot of damage in a real fight.
If you are stupid enough to grab for an object in your pocket while a police officer id yelling at you to not move then you may get the Darwin award.
I guess we should go back to the old option to subdue an armed violent suspect; guns. I think tazers are a much better option than shooting a person wielding a weapon. Sure tazers have killed people but then so have batons. If you confront police with a weapon you may die. Tazers are much less likely to kill than guns.
Just because Tazer International builds the recording system does not mean that they will run it.
WW2, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iraq wars (the US economy would have been ruined if oil was cut off), Afghanistan (decreasing terrorist attacks on US soil). Defending does not always mean preventing enemies from taking your land.
I guess you missed Mahatma Gandhi who freed an entire country without violence. Countering violence with violence fails many times as well. Just look at the War on Terror. That does not seem to be working to well.
Stolen cars, stolen plates and the owner may not be the driver. It is not valid to suspend the license of someone who loaned their vehicle to a friend who drove while drunk. Also they have to prove that the suspect was driving while drunk. If they catch up with him hours later the driver could be sober by then or say he drank when he got home. All a suspect needs is reasonable doubt and that is easy if the diver is not caught in the act. It is like the ruling that an IP address is not proof that the owner of the hardware broke copyrights. A license plate is not proof that the owner of the vehicle broke the law.
One of the issues in the article is that the drone does not have a TCAS. According to international rules it is not required to have one.
It is a type of airborne collision avoidance system mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization to be fitted to all aircraft with a maximum take-off mass (MTOM) of over 5,700 kg (13,000 lb) or authorized to carry more than 19 passengers.
Most light aircraft, which can and have brought down passenger aircraft, are not required to have it either as they are smaller than 5,700 kg and carry less than 19 passengers.
A stupid drone pilot took a drone where it should not have gone and some people are trying to use it to show drones are dangerous. Pilots of small aircraft do that all the time and people are not demanding they be banned. It is a weak argument to deflect attention from other issues.
I know I certainly don't fight back no matter how unhappy I am.
The problem is that many people don't react as reasonably as you do. Remember the officer is always armed and people fight back.
If the officer believes the suspect has a weapon, then the officer should probably not engage in hand to hand in the first place.
Officers are trained to assume everyone is armed until proven otherwise. That is a main reason people are frisked when taken into custody.
Shooting to disable someone on the ground that's unresponsive
As I have stated, safely shooting someone to disable is impossible. There are too many negative outcomes including the PR issue of "police shooting non-resisting suspects". Look at the issue of hitting suspects do you really thing shooting them will get better acceptance?
So exactly what are you arguing here?
That most people have no idea of how to assess what necessary force is which is exacerbated by only seeing the last part of an altercation.
I too prefer to stop at "I don't know" but in certain cases that is not possible. The question at hand is should high speed chases occur or not. There is no data to support either contention but a decision needs to be made. My gut feeling is that letting all fleeing suspects go is a bad one. There definitely needs to be guidelines to control the risk but a blanked ban is not the answer.
Have there been incidents where suspects have been brutalized by police? Yes. Have there been instances where police have done what appears to a layman to be brutality but really isn't? yes. All this armchair quarterbacking Is baseless. Most people who comment have never had training and have never been in a physical altercation with a determined foe.
If the suspect is on the ground, they are pretty much submissive, any further beating is definitely a sign of excessive force.
Yet more evidence that you have never tried to arrest someone. The suspect goes down and turtles. Every time an officer gets close he lashes out with feet, elbows, knees, etc. While the officers are away he looks passive. When the officers get close he is aggressive. On the ground does not mean passive. And again, The reason he won't show his hands could be the knife he has concealed there.
I'm fully ok with a shot to the leg to stop the problem, all on film, of course.
So you are advocating discharging a firearm in a non life threatening situation to subdue someone? Do you realize how dangerous that is? People have died by being shot in the leg. Hit the femoral artery and he's dead. The bullet could hit the knee permanently disabling the suspect. Miss and the bullet could go anywhere killing someone else. I can just hear the headlines "Drunken party goer shot and killed by police". This aiming for the leg thing is also unreasonable. Unless the suspect is lying completely still the shot could be a difficult one. Anyone who has ever fired a handgun knows that in a hand to hand fight it is very likely for the suspect to get control of the gun and shoot the officer. Also bringing a gun into the situation escalates it and the suspect will fight harder as they see their life is in danger.
By the way, tazers are not completely effective. They work while they are active buth then officers can't be in contact with the suspect at that time. After contact, some people, especially those high on crack or meth, recover very quickly and become aggressive almost immediately.
any further beating is definitely a sign of excessive force
I agree with that statement but the beating is not definitive proof of excessive force as so many people would believe. One needs to take the whole incident into context and not just the last 30 seconds.
I agree completely. Others are arguing that they should never be turned off while on duty.
When you deal with medications that alter consciousness dose is very tricky. Ever wonder why they tell you not to eat before general anesthetic? The patient may throw up and inhale the vomit. This can cause pneumonia or worse. Proper dosage depends on weight, general health, other medications, etc. There is no way police officers in stressful situations can figure out the correct dosage.
So you say that officers will need medical training to administer the drug? Sure, fair enough.
Anesthesiologists are medical doctors and go through years of specific training in administration of drugs. Even they will not do it without oxygen and e respirator available. When even more people die due to drug interactions and overdoses who will get the blame? The police.
You're half-pinned, someone's beating you to "stay calm" and "stop resisting"
The police are not "someone". They are representatives of society who's job is to apprehend suspects. They are not some guy off the street.
Tazering may look violent,
I am all for tazers. They work most of the time but some times they are not available or have been expended.
Agreed and one can not judge how much force was necessary when only seeing the last couple of minutes of a much longer altercation.
It's pretty much the same situation as with a traffic enforcement camera
Traffic violations have a different burden of proof than criminal complaints. Traffic cameras are used in speed traps and red light cameras. Both of these are relatively minor fines and are charged to the vehicle. More serious offences like excessive speed, hit and run, etc which could entail jail time require proof of who was driving.
I would drive away in high speed (to my own peril),
Some people believe they are great drivers
probably get arrested by police officers at my home for all my neighbours to see,
To some people that is a badge of honor.
have to explain to my boss that I need to take some days off to go to court
It would never get to court as any vaguely competent defense lawyer would get the case dismissed long before it went to court on precedents alone. Any district attorney would be sanctioned for even placing the charges. They may pay the fine but the police didn't get the cocane that was in the back seat.
So biting, scratching or kneeing a cop is reason enough for the cop to beat you senseless and into a pulp?
There have been police beating that go beyond reasonable levels. There have also been incidents where the actions of the suspect have changed drastically when they know they are being filmed. Some of the issues include suspects who appear docile but will not show their hands. Many time they have had knives, needles or guns in their hands and use them when the officers get close. If you have never tried to take a violently resisting person into custody then you really don't know what you are talking about.
My solution: chloroform.
Anyone using a drug useing a drug as an anesthetic would need medical training. Give a little too much and one could kill the patient. The application of the chloroform would require the officer to place his hand over the mouth of the suspect for a period of time. Even if the officer could hold long enough, chloroform is not instant, that is a great way to lose a finger. To counter the chloroform for a while all the suspect would have to do is hold his breath. There is also no way to control the fumes. The officers could be effected to. Finally, as another poster pointed out, chloroform is toxic.
Since nether of us have data we have to go on belief. Considering the number of drunk drivers that kill innocent people I believe that if drunk drivers sped away and were not chased there would be more deaths than not chasing.
Can't prove that the owner of the vehicle was driving unless you catch them in the act. All one can prove is that the vehicle was on the road and not who was driving it. For those serious offences one can not charge the vehicle. Then there is the issue if stolen plates and stolen vehicles.
There was a traffic stop that turned into a high speed chase that ended in the capture of a man that was on a multi state killing spree. He had already killed at least three people and was planning on killing more. Had the chase not occurred more people would have been killed.
The "what if the chase never happened" numbers are very difficult to come by as it is almost impossible to know what might have happened. The only thing we can go by is generalities. I find it hard to believe that letting every person who initiates a high speed chase go would not cause more damage than the deaths of 117 people per year. The number of habitual drunk drivers that would not be caught would cause more deaths than that.