Sharks predate the dinosaurs and have survived countless drastic climatological changes. Something tells me they'll survive this one. The Great White and other apex species might not do too well, hell, they're already under pressure, but selachimorpha aren't going anywhere.
Do not presume to lecture me about what New York State's use of force law says. I can assure you that I know it better than you do. In the case of someone who has committed robbery, rape, or murder and whom is in immediate flight therefrom the use of deadly force to affect an arrest is permissible, if you reasonably believe it to be necessary.
Here's the plain text of the law, feel free to parse it yourself if you wish:
A private person acting on his or her own account may use physical force, other than deadly physical force, upon another person when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to effect an arrest or to prevent the escape from custody of a person whom he or she reasonably believes to have committed an offense and who in
fact has committed such offense; and may use deadly physical force for such purpose when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to:
(a) Defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she
reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical
force; or
(b) Effect the arrest of a person who has committed murder,
manslaughter in the first degree, robbery, forcible rape or forcible
criminal sexual act and who is in immediate flight therefrom.
That's the applicable section for private citizens; the section that's applicable to peace officers is similar, albeit slightly broader.
The "reasonable belief" part is key; in short you would need to articulate that there was no reasonable way to stop the person from escaping without using deadly force. How hard do you really suppose that is if you're confronted with someone you just witnessed commit a murder?
Neither the law nor morality obligates you to fight fairly if confronted with someone that has already demonstrated the willingness to violate other human beings in the most heinous manner possible.
Morality is in the eye of the beholder; I would not shoot him if he clearly surrendered, because I've known people that have taken human lives and have seen the damage it does to one's psyche. That said, I am not going to take any chances when confronted with such a person, and I will do everything within my power to ensure that he does not gain (or regain) the advantage over me.
The scenes in the movies where someone gets attacked, manages to somehow get the drop on their attacker, and then runs away? I'm the one screaming "FINISH HIM OFF" at the television. If you get the drop on someone that's trying to kill you the last thing you should be thinking about is running away. That's the ideal time to strike and neutralize the threat.
Self-defense isn't about fighting fair, it's about fighting to win. The best fight is the one you avoid; when that fails the only remaining rule is to win. At all costs. The prize is your life. Failure is not an option.
I don't agree that fleeing from a rape scene warrants killing the supposed rapist.
As a matter of morality I would not regard shooting him as the first or even the most desirable option. I do however recognize the inherent danger when confronted by someone who is willing to commit such a heinous crime and let's just say that he's not going to get much benefit of doubt from me.
The fact that the departments refuse to cull their bad fruit and, occasionally, even protect / defend them is a HUGE part of the problem. Point of fact: If you did something to publicly embarrass your employer, they would likely fire you on the spot. Yet, it happens daily with LE and only rarely do they get more than a slap on the wrist because of it.
They're public unionized employees in most jurisdictions, which in means it's very difficult to fire them. The number of police agencies that operate under "at will" rules of employment is exceedingly small. To discharge a police officer a municipality typically needs to prevail in an adversarial hearing. In order to do that they need to meet a burden of proof (typically greater than preponderance of the evidence but less than beyond a reasonable doubt) that the officer committed misconduct or was grossly negligent.
The astute observer will note that the same complaint has been made against tenured public school teachers.
I'd be willing to agree that blacks are much more well represented in arrest records and the prison populations, but do you have any evidence that they COMMIT CRIMES at a higher rate than any other racial group?
You're asking me for evidence that people who go to prison have committed a crime? Seriously?
Incidentally, a better correlation can be found between poverty and crime than race and crime; poor whites commit crimes at higher rates than middle class or rich blacks. Unfortunately, there are more poor black people than white people, for reasons that are beyond the scope of a Slashdot post.
The point is, people who are serious about addressing crime need to attack the socioeconomic underpinnings thereof. But that's hard and doesn't win votes; much easier to play the race card and rile up the base that way, or to blame the guns/drugs/fluoridated water.
if a complaint is made and the interaction is not on video then it is presumed that the complaint is valid, just like any other destruction of evidence.
That's not how the burden of proof works in the American judicial system. Not collecting evidence (i.e., the camera was turned off) is light years away from the destruction of evidence (i.e., deleting footage after its shot) and even in the case of the latter it does not change the need for the State to prove that a crime was committed.
In any case, since my example of a need to be able to disable the footage was piss breaks, the hypothetical makes itself. Officer stops at roadside rest stop to take a piss, disabling the camera prior to entering the bathroom. Officer is then involved in a use of force incident within the bathroom. Suspect claims that the use of force was unjustified. Officer claims that it was. You're going to automatically side against the LEO because the camera was disabled?
Maybe you should have kept reading my post before you clicked "Reply," because I acknowledged exactly what you're saying. Statistically speaking, policing has never been safer. That doesn't exactly matter though, does it? Police are human beings, just like the rest of us, and human beings are prone to treating their perceptions as reality. Follow that feed I mentioned on FB and you'll understand how it reinforces the perception that policing is an extremely dangerous job.
I'm generally supportive of body cams but there are legitimate concerns that will need to be addressed. In no particular order:
1. They can intimidate witnesses to crimes or the victims thereof, particularly the victims of sex crimes.
2. Certain agencies may be tempted to use them as supervisory tools to remove officer discretion, which means instead of a warning you're now getting a speeding ticket in all instances. Officer caught your kid with pot? Maybe without the camera he takes the weed, scares the hell out of the kid, then sends him on his way. Now he's going to arrest his ass.
3. Who controls when the camera is on or off? Can you imagine working at a job where your every moment was recorded? Say the officer makes a personal phone call to his wife during a quiet moment, should that be recorded? What about the officer's piss break? Seems to me like the officer has to have the ability to disable the camera, but then how do you respond to the tin-foil hat crowd that's going to scream about cover ups?
4. Who decides which recordings go into the public record? It can't be all of them, see Item #1 above. Very few people are voyeuristic enough to claim that a rape victim's interview with the police should go into the public record. My State (NYS) keeps 911 recordings out of the public record, which I tend to think is a good thing, but we're definitely in the minority there.
There's nothing insane about using deadly force against someone who has killed or raped another human being. Such a person has demonstrated that they're capable of anything, which leads a reasonable person to conclude that they're apt to kill or seriously maim others in their attempt to escape.
Robbery is a trickier issue; as defined in New York State it requires that you use (or threaten to use) force to achieve your objective. In that instance you've demonstrated that you're capable of anything and a reasonable person has cause to fear for their life if confronted by you. Other jurisdictions may define robbery differently than New York does and I'm certainly not trying to justify the use of deadly force against a shoplifter or other non-violent thief.
Blacks are more likely to be pulled over, more likely to be searched, more likely to be harassed, etc. Something's not right.
Blacks commit crimes at rates higher than whites. Any public policy that ignores this fundamental fact is doomed to failure. If you want to address this problem I suggest you start by tackling the socioeconomic factors that are responsible for this disparity in crime rates. That means you have to address poverty, broken families, the war on drugs, and the disparity in the quality of public schools.
Of course, doing those things is a lot harder than screaming "RACISM!"
Recent events in New York City suggest that they won't; that asshole had to see the person aiming the cell phone at him and continued his verbal abuse nonetheless. An officer with anger management issues and a sense of entitlement is not going to discover self-control just because a camera has entered the equation.
I got pulled over once upon a time, by a bloody railroad cop (did you know they have Statewide jurisdiction in NYS? I did not) who took exception to my passing him on the highway. He pulled me over just to scream at me how dare I pass him, even though he was going 55 when the flow of traffic on this particular highway is 65-70. I don't know if he fell into the asshole cop category or was just having a bad day, but I do know I was being disproportionally screamed at for a non-violent speeding offense that wouldn't even have gotten me pulled over by a real cop. NYSP doesn't pull people over on this particular stretch of highway until they exceed 70, which was why I was genuinely surprised when his lights came on.
He got the "Yes sir, no sir." treatment, because there's nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by arguing with a pissed off LEO. Fucker wrote me a ticket too, 62 in a 55, which was later thrown out of court because he neglected to do the required supporting deposition in a timely manner. I enjoyed that "win" a great deal and might have made a snide comment about him being better equipped to catch graffiti artists than speeders when I walked by him in the court house lobby.:)
The discussion really isn't that interesting. I just find it amusing that you keep penning walls of text and are obviously unwilling to surrender the last word even though I made a point of saying I'm not bothering to read your drivel.
The real thread hijacker was the asshole that inserted his off-topic political opinion into the mix, replying to an apolitical informative post to do so. Interesting that you haven't called him out.... I guess there's a different standard for those that share your political opinions?
I'll leave you the last word since I know you're not going to settle for anything less. Just don't count on my actually reading it.:)
If I disturb a car thief and he runs away shooting him is murder
That depends on the jurisdiction in the United States. Here in New York State (hardly a bastion of Red State Conservatism) it's legal to use deadly force against someone who has committed murder, rape, kidnapping, or robbery and whom is in immediate flight therefrom. It's legal for both civilians and LEOs to do this; there was a civilian in Buffalo who pursued a bank robber outside after the conclusion of the robbery and took several shots at him. He was not charged.
Are there videos that show justified shootings that don't make national news because there's no story other than "cop defends life of self and/or others"?
These stories of police corruption come from north and south, from many different cities and neighborhoods.
This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue. I have friends and family members who are police officers, the lion's share of them are decent people, but knowing them and the small handful of their colleagues who aren't decent people I can proffer a few opinions on what drives behaviors such as these:
1. There's a siege mentality in modern law enforcement, manifested as "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do you have to worry about getting shot at your job? Probably not. LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.
2. Modern media reinforces #1, by making line of duty deaths/injuries more accessible than ever before. Follow the "Officer Down Memorial Page" on Facebook; there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time, but in a large country statistically rare occurrences happen with distressing frequency and modern media ensures that we know all about them.
3. The War on Drugs provides such a profit motive that criminals are encouraged to arm themselves and resist violently, which in turn drives the militarization of law enforcement while reinforcing the siege mentality. The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.
4. There are a handful of people in law enforcement who have no business being in law enforcement, or any other field that requires them to interact with human beings as a matter of course. They have chips on their shoulders, the stereotype is the kid that got bullied a lot in high school, now he has a badge and a gun, so don't you dare fuck with him. These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.
5. Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly. They only make the news when they screw up. There was a police shooting captured on body cam a few months ago. It was a clean shoot, so naturally it got perfunctory treatment by the national media, not the 24/7 coverage that we would have seen had it been unjustified.
Regarding racism, I haven't met any genuinely racist LEOs, even from category #4 above. I have encountered a certain level of cynicism, best demonstrated by a quote I heard from a LEO friend, "Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."
Another wall of text. Don't you tire of hearing yourself talk? Here's an English word for you to research: brevity.
To recap, you and another person took cheap thread hijacking shots at people who think it's more appropriate to regulate certain items at the State level. The original post was informative and apolitical, adding value to the headline story. You two hijacked it in order to share an unrelated and ill-informed political opinion.
When confronted with that opinion I simply pointed out what American law actually says about the regulation of alcohol. You then dismissed this simple fact as "irrelevant" and accused me of contributing noise to the thread that you hijacked. Yawn.
What is the web you speak of? Is that the Facebook or the Twitter? I'm so confused.
A bit of sarcasm there but it does feel to me as though we've taken a step backwards. We've gone from the walled garden of services like AOL and Compuserve to the walled garden of Facebook and Twitter. Like AOL, there's nothing forcing people to use the Internet in this manner, except for sheer size and inertia. There are now countless examples of businesses, recreational groups, fundraisers, and so forth whose sole online presence consists of their Facebook and/or Twitter pages. If they bother to maintain a webpage it's hopelessly out of date. Need updates about our activity? Like us on Facebook! Have a question? Post it on our wall! Good luck trying to e-mail us.
Besides the sheer annoyance (not all of us wish to be sucked in Facebook's ecosystem) factor there are consequences here for free speech. Mediums like Usenet or IRC were resistant to attempts at censorship, they embodied the internet as most of us knew it. The contrast with large corporations like Facebook or Google is depressing; they're compelled to engage in censorship for legal (try Googling Tienanmen Square in the PRC) reasons, to say nothing of their tendency to cave to public pressure and censor unpopular viewpoints, or even to behave like our nanny (Facebook's policy towards non-sexual topless photos of females)
At the rate we're going I'd be surprised if anyone remembers the "internet" in another ten years.
inevitably some Constitution-beating asshole like yourself feels the need to derail the thread by injecting irrelevant shortsighted crap about said Constitution into it
The 21st Amendment is hardly irrelevant in a conversation about the regulation of alcohol in the United States. Why don't you go read it? It's a hell of a lot shorter than your post. I'll save you the trouble of the Google search, here's the relevant part:
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
At what level should the Chinese, the Russians or the Europeans regulate drugs?
That's not for me to decide. I don't interject myself into the domestic political debate of other countries. Why don't you show me the same courtesy?
Do you even understand the meaning of the word arbitrary?
Yes I do. Amazingly enough, English is my native language. Do you understand the concept of Federalism in the United States of America? That's a rhetorical question, obviously you don't, if you did you would not claim that the States are an "arbitrary level" of Government.
Nice wall of text. I stopped reading around the second paragraph. You appear to have quoted the thread though, but conveniently selectively quoted your own post, the one I was replying to:
Government control on [arbitrary level] == TYRANNY
Government control on [slightly lower arbitrary level] == THE WAY IT IS AND WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE
On the issue at hand, i.e., the regulation of alcohol, this is the way that it is and was always meant to be. I'm sorry that you can't understand that. Why don't you bugger off and join a political conversation about whatever shit hole country it is that you call home? You obviously can't be bothered to learn about mine.
Now, take a look at sci-fi today. Dystopic, post-apocalyptic vision, one after the other. I am damn sick and tired of story after story about our future being a world where the only technology advances are to inflict pain and death on other human beings, with alien races being either popcorn eaters on the sidelines, or there to stir things up. Space travel? Either doesn't happen due to everyone wanting to kill each other for religion, or a nation like China or North Korea starts the Kessler Syndrome, preventing anything getting into orbit for the known future. Tricorders and medical benches have been replaced by agonizers, heart plugs, and pain amplifiers.
There is enough depressing drivel on the news. Why should the fiction I read be just as bad if not worse?
I've said this before in discussions about Babylon 5 or the Battlestar Galactica remake and usually get shouted down by the fans of those shows. It's not that I disliked either of those shows, it's that I preferred Star Trek's inherent optimism, or at least the optimism that it displayed in the pre Nemesis/JJ Abrams era. One could watch an hour of TNG without feeling the need to slit one's wrists afterwards. Unfortunately, the masses seem to eat up dark depressing story lines, a phenomena that's not limited to Sci-Fi, but rather one that seems to encompass most forms of modern entertainment.
TV and movies are supposed to be escapism. Who the hell wants to escape to somewhere dark and depressing? I'm reminded of the exchange between Dr. Crusher and the terrorist dude in a TNG episode, going something like:
Terrorist: You are an idealist.
Crusher: I live in an ideal culture.
No such thing. A smart person is not going to gamble losing a few decades of their life over a four digit sum of money. That's assuming the teller(s) don't just dye pack the money, in which case you end up with nothing, even if you manage to elude the law enforcement response. In the United States you've also got a non-zero chance of running into an armed security guard, civilian, or off duty law enforcement officer.
The lottery has a higher return on investment than bank robbery, with zero chance of one ending up behind bars or dead.
You may not "give a shit" about the laws in my country but they are most definitely relevant to the topic of this thread. The Supreme Law of the Land in the United States gives the States carte blanche to regulate alcohol as they see fit. interkin3tic's childish swipe at Conservatives notwithstanding, this is a proper use of Legislative Power at the State level, as outlined by the 21st Amendment.
As far as your swipes at Conservatives, if you care to research the history of prohibition in the United States you'll learn that it was championed by the Progressives of the day, in alliance with religious interests. They thought it would empower women, end poverty, and cure other societal ills. Like most Progressive experiments with social engineering it failed miserably. The Amendment that repealed Federal prohibition made clear that the States had the right to regulate alcohol within their borders, a power they arguably already had (see the 10th Amendment), but one that is now spelled out plain as day.
Incidentally, equating States with "areas" shows your lack of understanding about the United States. The States are not political subdivisions, they are sovereign entities that retain all powers not specifically delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution. That's one of the reasons why people get up in arms about the Feds doing certain things but not the States doing the same. If you're going to join conversations about our system you should take the time to learn how it actually works. You don't see me throwing my two cents in about the domestic politics of other countries, even those that I've visited or lived in.
Slashdot Mirror
No sharks though.
Sharks predate the dinosaurs and have survived countless drastic climatological changes. Something tells me they'll survive this one. The Great White and other apex species might not do too well, hell, they're already under pressure, but selachimorpha aren't going anywhere.
Do not presume to lecture me about what New York State's use of force law says. I can assure you that I know it better than you do. In the case of someone who has committed robbery, rape, or murder and whom is in immediate flight therefrom the use of deadly force to affect an arrest is permissible, if you reasonably believe it to be necessary.
Here's the plain text of the law, feel free to parse it yourself if you wish:
A private person acting on his or her own account may use physical force, other than deadly physical force, upon another person when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to effect an arrest or to prevent the escape from custody of a person whom he or she reasonably believes to have committed an offense and who in fact has committed such offense; and may use deadly physical force for such purpose when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to:
(a) Defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force; or
(b) Effect the arrest of a person who has committed murder, manslaughter in the first degree, robbery, forcible rape or forcible criminal sexual act and who is in immediate flight therefrom.
That's the applicable section for private citizens; the section that's applicable to peace officers is similar, albeit slightly broader.
The "reasonable belief" part is key; in short you would need to articulate that there was no reasonable way to stop the person from escaping without using deadly force. How hard do you really suppose that is if you're confronted with someone you just witnessed commit a murder?
Neither the law nor morality obligates you to fight fairly if confronted with someone that has already demonstrated the willingness to violate other human beings in the most heinous manner possible.
Morality is in the eye of the beholder; I would not shoot him if he clearly surrendered, because I've known people that have taken human lives and have seen the damage it does to one's psyche. That said, I am not going to take any chances when confronted with such a person, and I will do everything within my power to ensure that he does not gain (or regain) the advantage over me.
The scenes in the movies where someone gets attacked, manages to somehow get the drop on their attacker, and then runs away? I'm the one screaming "FINISH HIM OFF" at the television. If you get the drop on someone that's trying to kill you the last thing you should be thinking about is running away. That's the ideal time to strike and neutralize the threat.
Self-defense isn't about fighting fair, it's about fighting to win. The best fight is the one you avoid; when that fails the only remaining rule is to win. At all costs. The prize is your life. Failure is not an option.
I don't agree that fleeing from a rape scene warrants killing the supposed rapist.
As a matter of morality I would not regard shooting him as the first or even the most desirable option. I do however recognize the inherent danger when confronted by someone who is willing to commit such a heinous crime and let's just say that he's not going to get much benefit of doubt from me.
The fact that the departments refuse to cull their bad fruit and, occasionally, even protect / defend them is a HUGE part of the problem. Point of fact: If you did something to publicly embarrass your employer, they would likely fire you on the spot. Yet, it happens daily with LE and only rarely do they get more than a slap on the wrist because of it.
They're public unionized employees in most jurisdictions, which in means it's very difficult to fire them. The number of police agencies that operate under "at will" rules of employment is exceedingly small. To discharge a police officer a municipality typically needs to prevail in an adversarial hearing. In order to do that they need to meet a burden of proof (typically greater than preponderance of the evidence but less than beyond a reasonable doubt) that the officer committed misconduct or was grossly negligent.
The astute observer will note that the same complaint has been made against tenured public school teachers.
I'd be willing to agree that blacks are much more well represented in arrest records and the prison populations, but do you have any evidence that they COMMIT CRIMES at a higher rate than any other racial group?
You're asking me for evidence that people who go to prison have committed a crime? Seriously?
Incidentally, a better correlation can be found between poverty and crime than race and crime; poor whites commit crimes at higher rates than middle class or rich blacks. Unfortunately, there are more poor black people than white people, for reasons that are beyond the scope of a Slashdot post.
The point is, people who are serious about addressing crime need to attack the socioeconomic underpinnings thereof. But that's hard and doesn't win votes; much easier to play the race card and rile up the base that way, or to blame the guns/drugs/fluoridated water.
if a complaint is made and the interaction is not on video then it is presumed that the complaint is valid, just like any other destruction of evidence.
That's not how the burden of proof works in the American judicial system. Not collecting evidence (i.e., the camera was turned off) is light years away from the destruction of evidence (i.e., deleting footage after its shot) and even in the case of the latter it does not change the need for the State to prove that a crime was committed.
In any case, since my example of a need to be able to disable the footage was piss breaks, the hypothetical makes itself. Officer stops at roadside rest stop to take a piss, disabling the camera prior to entering the bathroom. Officer is then involved in a use of force incident within the bathroom. Suspect claims that the use of force was unjustified. Officer claims that it was. You're going to automatically side against the LEO because the camera was disabled?
Maybe you should have kept reading my post before you clicked "Reply," because I acknowledged exactly what you're saying. Statistically speaking, policing has never been safer. That doesn't exactly matter though, does it? Police are human beings, just like the rest of us, and human beings are prone to treating their perceptions as reality. Follow that feed I mentioned on FB and you'll understand how it reinforces the perception that policing is an extremely dangerous job.
I'm generally supportive of body cams but there are legitimate concerns that will need to be addressed. In no particular order:
1. They can intimidate witnesses to crimes or the victims thereof, particularly the victims of sex crimes.
2. Certain agencies may be tempted to use them as supervisory tools to remove officer discretion, which means instead of a warning you're now getting a speeding ticket in all instances. Officer caught your kid with pot? Maybe without the camera he takes the weed, scares the hell out of the kid, then sends him on his way. Now he's going to arrest his ass.
3. Who controls when the camera is on or off? Can you imagine working at a job where your every moment was recorded? Say the officer makes a personal phone call to his wife during a quiet moment, should that be recorded? What about the officer's piss break? Seems to me like the officer has to have the ability to disable the camera, but then how do you respond to the tin-foil hat crowd that's going to scream about cover ups?
4. Who decides which recordings go into the public record? It can't be all of them, see Item #1 above. Very few people are voyeuristic enough to claim that a rape victim's interview with the police should go into the public record. My State (NYS) keeps 911 recordings out of the public record, which I tend to think is a good thing, but we're definitely in the minority there.
There's nothing insane about using deadly force against someone who has killed or raped another human being. Such a person has demonstrated that they're capable of anything, which leads a reasonable person to conclude that they're apt to kill or seriously maim others in their attempt to escape.
Robbery is a trickier issue; as defined in New York State it requires that you use (or threaten to use) force to achieve your objective. In that instance you've demonstrated that you're capable of anything and a reasonable person has cause to fear for their life if confronted by you. Other jurisdictions may define robbery differently than New York does and I'm certainly not trying to justify the use of deadly force against a shoplifter or other non-violent thief.
Blacks are more likely to be pulled over, more likely to be searched, more likely to be harassed, etc. Something's not right.
Blacks commit crimes at rates higher than whites. Any public policy that ignores this fundamental fact is doomed to failure. If you want to address this problem I suggest you start by tackling the socioeconomic factors that are responsible for this disparity in crime rates. That means you have to address poverty, broken families, the war on drugs, and the disparity in the quality of public schools.
Of course, doing those things is a lot harder than screaming "RACISM!"
Recent events in New York City suggest that they won't; that asshole had to see the person aiming the cell phone at him and continued his verbal abuse nonetheless. An officer with anger management issues and a sense of entitlement is not going to discover self-control just because a camera has entered the equation.
I got pulled over once upon a time, by a bloody railroad cop (did you know they have Statewide jurisdiction in NYS? I did not) who took exception to my passing him on the highway. He pulled me over just to scream at me how dare I pass him, even though he was going 55 when the flow of traffic on this particular highway is 65-70. I don't know if he fell into the asshole cop category or was just having a bad day, but I do know I was being disproportionally screamed at for a non-violent speeding offense that wouldn't even have gotten me pulled over by a real cop. NYSP doesn't pull people over on this particular stretch of highway until they exceed 70, which was why I was genuinely surprised when his lights came on.
He got the "Yes sir, no sir." treatment, because there's nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by arguing with a pissed off LEO. Fucker wrote me a ticket too, 62 in a 55, which was later thrown out of court because he neglected to do the required supporting deposition in a timely manner. I enjoyed that "win" a great deal and might have made a snide comment about him being better equipped to catch graffiti artists than speeders when I walked by him in the court house lobby. :)
The discussion really isn't that interesting. I just find it amusing that you keep penning walls of text and are obviously unwilling to surrender the last word even though I made a point of saying I'm not bothering to read your drivel.
The real thread hijacker was the asshole that inserted his off-topic political opinion into the mix, replying to an apolitical informative post to do so. Interesting that you haven't called him out.... I guess there's a different standard for those that share your political opinions?
I'll leave you the last word since I know you're not going to settle for anything less. Just don't count on my actually reading it. :)
If I disturb a car thief and he runs away shooting him is murder
That depends on the jurisdiction in the United States. Here in New York State (hardly a bastion of Red State Conservatism) it's legal to use deadly force against someone who has committed murder, rape, kidnapping, or robbery and whom is in immediate flight therefrom. It's legal for both civilians and LEOs to do this; there was a civilian in Buffalo who pursued a bank robber outside after the conclusion of the robbery and took several shots at him. He was not charged.
Are there videos that show justified shootings that don't make national news because there's no story other than "cop defends life of self and/or others"?
Yes.
These stories of police corruption come from north and south, from many different cities and neighborhoods.
This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue. I have friends and family members who are police officers, the lion's share of them are decent people, but knowing them and the small handful of their colleagues who aren't decent people I can proffer a few opinions on what drives behaviors such as these:
1. There's a siege mentality in modern law enforcement, manifested as "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do you have to worry about getting shot at your job? Probably not. LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.
2. Modern media reinforces #1, by making line of duty deaths/injuries more accessible than ever before. Follow the "Officer Down Memorial Page" on Facebook; there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time, but in a large country statistically rare occurrences happen with distressing frequency and modern media ensures that we know all about them.
3. The War on Drugs provides such a profit motive that criminals are encouraged to arm themselves and resist violently, which in turn drives the militarization of law enforcement while reinforcing the siege mentality. The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.
4. There are a handful of people in law enforcement who have no business being in law enforcement, or any other field that requires them to interact with human beings as a matter of course. They have chips on their shoulders, the stereotype is the kid that got bullied a lot in high school, now he has a badge and a gun, so don't you dare fuck with him. These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.
5. Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly. They only make the news when they screw up. There was a police shooting captured on body cam a few months ago. It was a clean shoot, so naturally it got perfunctory treatment by the national media, not the 24/7 coverage that we would have seen had it been unjustified.
Regarding racism, I haven't met any genuinely racist LEOs, even from category #4 above. I have encountered a certain level of cynicism, best demonstrated by a quote I heard from a LEO friend, "Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."
Another wall of text. Don't you tire of hearing yourself talk? Here's an English word for you to research: brevity.
To recap, you and another person took cheap thread hijacking shots at people who think it's more appropriate to regulate certain items at the State level. The original post was informative and apolitical, adding value to the headline story. You two hijacked it in order to share an unrelated and ill-informed political opinion.
When confronted with that opinion I simply pointed out what American law actually says about the regulation of alcohol. You then dismissed this simple fact as "irrelevant" and accused me of contributing noise to the thread that you hijacked. Yawn.
What is the web you speak of? Is that the Facebook or the Twitter? I'm so confused.
A bit of sarcasm there but it does feel to me as though we've taken a step backwards. We've gone from the walled garden of services like AOL and Compuserve to the walled garden of Facebook and Twitter. Like AOL, there's nothing forcing people to use the Internet in this manner, except for sheer size and inertia. There are now countless examples of businesses, recreational groups, fundraisers, and so forth whose sole online presence consists of their Facebook and/or Twitter pages. If they bother to maintain a webpage it's hopelessly out of date. Need updates about our activity? Like us on Facebook! Have a question? Post it on our wall! Good luck trying to e-mail us.
Besides the sheer annoyance (not all of us wish to be sucked in Facebook's ecosystem) factor there are consequences here for free speech. Mediums like Usenet or IRC were resistant to attempts at censorship, they embodied the internet as most of us knew it. The contrast with large corporations like Facebook or Google is depressing; they're compelled to engage in censorship for legal (try Googling Tienanmen Square in the PRC) reasons, to say nothing of their tendency to cave to public pressure and censor unpopular viewpoints, or even to behave like our nanny (Facebook's policy towards non-sexual topless photos of females)
At the rate we're going I'd be surprised if anyone remembers the "internet" in another ten years.
inevitably some Constitution-beating asshole like yourself feels the need to derail the thread by injecting irrelevant shortsighted crap about said Constitution into it
The 21st Amendment is hardly irrelevant in a conversation about the regulation of alcohol in the United States. Why don't you go read it? It's a hell of a lot shorter than your post. I'll save you the trouble of the Google search, here's the relevant part:
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
At what level should the Chinese, the Russians or the Europeans regulate drugs?
That's not for me to decide. I don't interject myself into the domestic political debate of other countries. Why don't you show me the same courtesy?
Do you even understand the meaning of the word arbitrary?
Yes I do. Amazingly enough, English is my native language. Do you understand the concept of Federalism in the United States of America? That's a rhetorical question, obviously you don't, if you did you would not claim that the States are an "arbitrary level" of Government.
It can't be rape; the router has ways of shutting itself down when that happens.
Nice wall of text. I stopped reading around the second paragraph. You appear to have quoted the thread though, but conveniently selectively quoted your own post, the one I was replying to:
Government control on [arbitrary level] == TYRANNY
Government control on [slightly lower arbitrary level] == THE WAY IT IS AND WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE
On the issue at hand, i.e., the regulation of alcohol, this is the way that it is and was always meant to be. I'm sorry that you can't understand that. Why don't you bugger off and join a political conversation about whatever shit hole country it is that you call home? You obviously can't be bothered to learn about mine.
Now, take a look at sci-fi today. Dystopic, post-apocalyptic vision, one after the other. I am damn sick and tired of story after story about our future being a world where the only technology advances are to inflict pain and death on other human beings, with alien races being either popcorn eaters on the sidelines, or there to stir things up. Space travel? Either doesn't happen due to everyone wanting to kill each other for religion, or a nation like China or North Korea starts the Kessler Syndrome, preventing anything getting into orbit for the known future. Tricorders and medical benches have been replaced by agonizers, heart plugs, and pain amplifiers.
There is enough depressing drivel on the news. Why should the fiction I read be just as bad if not worse?
I've said this before in discussions about Babylon 5 or the Battlestar Galactica remake and usually get shouted down by the fans of those shows. It's not that I disliked either of those shows, it's that I preferred Star Trek's inherent optimism, or at least the optimism that it displayed in the pre Nemesis/JJ Abrams era. One could watch an hour of TNG without feeling the need to slit one's wrists afterwards. Unfortunately, the masses seem to eat up dark depressing story lines, a phenomena that's not limited to Sci-Fi, but rather one that seems to encompass most forms of modern entertainment.
TV and movies are supposed to be escapism. Who the hell wants to escape to somewhere dark and depressing? I'm reminded of the exchange between Dr. Crusher and the terrorist dude in a TNG episode, going something like:
Terrorist: You are an idealist.
Crusher: I live in an ideal culture.
I hate to comment without knowing the facts.
You must be new here.
A smart bank robber would do it 3 or 4 times.
No such thing. A smart person is not going to gamble losing a few decades of their life over a four digit sum of money. That's assuming the teller(s) don't just dye pack the money, in which case you end up with nothing, even if you manage to elude the law enforcement response. In the United States you've also got a non-zero chance of running into an armed security guard, civilian, or off duty law enforcement officer.
The lottery has a higher return on investment than bank robbery, with zero chance of one ending up behind bars or dead.
You may not "give a shit" about the laws in my country but they are most definitely relevant to the topic of this thread. The Supreme Law of the Land in the United States gives the States carte blanche to regulate alcohol as they see fit. interkin3tic's childish swipe at Conservatives notwithstanding, this is a proper use of Legislative Power at the State level, as outlined by the 21st Amendment.
As far as your swipes at Conservatives, if you care to research the history of prohibition in the United States you'll learn that it was championed by the Progressives of the day, in alliance with religious interests. They thought it would empower women, end poverty, and cure other societal ills. Like most Progressive experiments with social engineering it failed miserably. The Amendment that repealed Federal prohibition made clear that the States had the right to regulate alcohol within their borders, a power they arguably already had (see the 10th Amendment), but one that is now spelled out plain as day.
Incidentally, equating States with "areas" shows your lack of understanding about the United States. The States are not political subdivisions, they are sovereign entities that retain all powers not specifically delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution. That's one of the reasons why people get up in arms about the Feds doing certain things but not the States doing the same. If you're going to join conversations about our system you should take the time to learn how it actually works. You don't see me throwing my two cents in about the domestic politics of other countries, even those that I've visited or lived in.