Plain Truths That Can't Be Mentioned

My guess is that it no longer an option for most police departments, depending upon the probable crime...i.e. a drug charge vs. a murder charge.

 

Yes, it is the nexus. This is absent or by now Trump would have been charged with a crime.

 

Not necessarily...depends on the investigation. Worried?

 

Not at all.

 

So you are, you so called truth may simply be an opinion?

Life may not be fair, but using that expression to say we should do nothing about violations of people’s rights is absurd.

The problem is when police make a mistake using deadly force, there’s no do over. It’s a less likely but incredibly serious outcome and we should continue to focus on it and address it. We should not dismiss it as just another part of life.

 

We are not called upon to be superhuman, and of course could not be even if we tried. As I said, we do our best, but in a violent world including some criminals, unfortunate outcomes will occasionally occur.

 

There is no do over when they react too slowly and get killed themselves, or when they act in haste and misread a situation. Both instances can result in a tragic death. More training is always a good idea, but this situation is inextricably a part of life, just as is people dying in traffic accidents with police as well. Unfortunate as it may be, to expect zero mistakes is simply not realistic.

 

And when they do, people should be held accountable. Like Derek Chauvin was.

 

You don’t improve by being realistic. My company excepts zero safety incidents. Is that realistic? No, it’s idealistic. But ever since they adopted that idealistic mind set, guess what? Accidents have tended towards zero every year.

Accepting reality is the same as giving up. If we accept reality as is today, nothing would progress or change. Imagine if people in the 1800’s had the same mindset.

Every police car where I live says to protect and serve. None of them say, save my own life at the cost of another. So right there, the police claim to live up to what you might call an unrealistic ideal. There’s no wrong in holding them to the very ideal they advertise on their own vehicles.

 

As I said, more training is always a good idea. You can hope all you want, but zero is NOT realistic. Your company is NOT a country of 330 million people. In a country of 330 million people and 800,000 police on the street, the extremely rare mistake is going to happen. When you look at the number of unarmed people that are shot by police each year ( remember unarmed does not automatically mean their actions did not justify shooting), it is remarkably low when put into perspective of the population in this country. To expect it to be appreciably lower is not realistic. Undoubtedly, their low rate is comparable to the low rate in your company, only the population is far greater. There are an awful lot of police departments that have zero unarmed shootings.

You can never eliminate the exceedingly rare human error. The number of people that die in police chase auto accidents FAR outweigh the number of unarmed people shot by police. It is not even in the same stratosphere (in 2020 there were 60 unarmed people shot and killed by police [20 were black] versus about 300 annually killed from police chases). If you are going to go to great lengths to improve training, those efforts would be far better directed at driving lessons because proportionally it is the FAR bigger issue.

 

The actual numbers of rates of accidents at my company will never compare to the rates at which police kill people or the wrong people. It's simply incomparable nor did I make a comparison of the actual rate. My point, which you continue to dodge, is that idealistic values are what drive results. Accepting reality as it is does not. You're way is an excuse not to change. Being idealistic is a way to drive change. What's your fear of that?

There's plenty of room to further reduce human error in policing. We accept that if someone is speeding and runs from the cops, we should chase them at any cost, including the cost of the lives of other motorists. And sometimes the life of the police officer. Why do we accept that? Why do we put the risk of such a chase into the hands of a human who as you say is prone to errors? There are plenty of ways to catch someone fleeing from the police that are safer. We should default to those ways first. Chasing someone through a busy city should be the LAST option, not the first given the increase in risk to public safety. Driving lessons won't solve it because the best trained driver can't account for the unexpected nature of other people on the road. We should change this mind set. There's very little risk associated with letting speeding violations or even drug possession violations get away in a chase compared to chasing them through busy streets.

As for shootings, the consequences of the outcome are severe. It's a violation when done without cause of one of our most basic and dear held rights, that is the right to life. People will gladly ban abortion to protect that right. That means they accept 0 violations of that so called right on fetuses, yet they are willing to accept perhaps up to 60 or so when it comes to living people? Doesn't make sense to me. So again, if some can be idealistic about ending all abortion, something that's never been achieved in the history of humanity, then why can't some be idealist about this? What is it you fear will happen if we are?

 

I am not "dodging" anything. I have addressed your point every bit as much as you have addressed mine. Shoot for the moon. That is perfectly fine and i have said nothing to the contrary. You will not make it, and on that we both agree. What you are not recognizing is that they have already shot for the moon, which is why you see such a shockingly low number of unarmed people that are killed by police every year. They continue to shoot for the moon. You act as if it is out of control and that this issue has never been addressed or that it is being ignored. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as your company's safety team at some point made a commitment of constantly trying to improve, so too are the police. Any suggestion to the contrary is bereft of reality. Of course they have been doing so.

Nobody was trying to compare the rates of accidents, but even if you are going to point to zero safety accidents in a given year which definitely happens in an awful lot of companies, it also happens with an awful lot of police departments. When you look at accidents in an enormous cohort like 330 million people, 60 is an almost imperceptibly low number.

So you dont think we can compare your company's safety rate to that of a police department, but you want to compare abortion to 60 unarmed people being killed by police? Does that really make sense to you? It does not make a lick of sense to me.

Lets be honest here, this is about BLM. If we really wanted to lower the rate of unarmed black people being shot (about 20 per year mind you) by police, they would be encouraging their adherents to be exceedingly cooperative with police. That above all else is what would come close to ending accidental police shootings altogether. Instead, the culture is for BLM adherents to be exceedingly uncooperative, and we can all go to youtube and find countless videos of such. These people being pulled over and acting as uncooperative as humanly possible arent afraid of being shot. If they were, they would cooperate. If we could only implement ONE change to the police/ citizen interactions that would lower the number of unarmed people being shot, it would be cooperation on the part of the citizen. Without cooperation, there will always be mistakes. Extremely rare, but mistakes nonetheless. For some strange reason, BLM never seems to make this very obvious suggestion to their adherents.

Why do you suppose they do not encourage cooperation? How successful do you suppose your company's safety initiatives would be if they had to let in the general public who does not follow your safety rules? Do you suppose that would increase the number of accidents?

 

I didn't invite the comparison number to number to my company, I merely compared philosophy. My point is simply in other political discussions about life, idealism is acceptable to the same people who don't want to apply it to the police. But if you're amenable to shooting for the moon, then I'm fine with that.

There it is. Well this is interesting because the same people who oppose BLM are the same ones who are quick to point out how more white people are shot by the police. So let's say that uncooperative suspects isn't a "those people" problem. More over, why do the police expect 100% cooperation? And the notion that someone being uncooperative with an arrest means they are a threat to your life is a false conclusion. And there are laws that note that 100% cooperation with the police is NOT required. That's even true if you are under arrest for a crime, not just pulled over on the side of the road for a civil infraction. The notion that you have to do whatever they say in the moment or else they might shoot you is ridiculous. Would you accept those terms in any other scenario in this country?

Also, since race was brought up, here's an example of the very problem with your way of thinking.

Daniel Holtzclaw - Wikipedia

It took a while to catch him. And more over, he only got caught after he assaulted a woman who wasn't poor or didn't have a criminal record. So do you see the flaw with the notion that do whatever the police want because they might kill you? This is one example, and I will concede it doesn't happen all the time nor does it make very police officer a rapist or a bad person. But this happened because of the very thinking you articulated above. Cooperate with the police and you will be fine. Well, not necessarily. This highlights that the power imbalance needs to be corrected. We shouldn't accept this happening at all.

 

I get and acknowledge that you are promoting the concept of idealism. I get and acknowledged that the first and second times you said it as well. I am not sure why you keep returning to this concept. It does not change this conversation at all. Idealism is great, but so is realism. I promote a mixture of the two. Can we put this issue to bed? You are promoting idealism. We get it. How many times are you going to keep saying it?

So despite the fact that I did not say anything about more whites being shot by police, you are introducing the concept by saying "the same ones that say...", and then you proceed to argue against the concept that YOU just introduced into the conversation. Apparently you are also trying to put "those people" into my mouth as well. You do know this is a textbook strawman do you not? Apparently I have not said the things you wanted to argue against, so instead you just figured youd falsely put those words into my mouth and then proceed to argue against the point that you apparently wished that I had said....cmon.

100% cooperation is not required. You are correct in that. But if a person of any race is going to feign that they are so scared, it would be far more credible if they cooperated because that would be by far the most logical means of ensuring one's safety. I dislike cops too, but if one has a gun pointed at me and tells me not to move, you can rest assured that I am going to listen to every word he says, VERY CAREFULLY. If he tells me to twerk, I am going to immediately start shaking my as*. If the cop is in the wrong, I will take that up in the proper place which is in court. People are smart asses with cops specifically because they are comfortable in the notion that the cop is going to not shoot him. You can rest assured they would not be uncooperative with the demands of a criminal robbing a liquor store that they fear might just be crazy enough to pull the trigger.

So you are pointing to a case from 1986 where some psycho whom was a cop that committed multiple rapes, and are now therefore pretending like that provides cover for a person not cooperating when lawfully pulled over by a cop and they tell you to show your hands? or to freeze? or to get out to be frisked etc?.....LOL....cmon. This is silly.

Try as you might, we are legally required to listen to the lawful demands of a cop, and that is obviously for a good reason. You cannot summarily decide that this guy is a rapist so therefore I am not going to listen to his lawful demands. Nobody is suggesting that a citizen should go into an abandoned building with a cop or something highly out of the ordinary, but if they tell you that you are under arrest....you are under arrest and need to react accordingly. Your wikipedia link from 1986 has no bearing on this principle. Not even a little.

 

There was a Portland Police officer who had a habit of "searching" homeless women. After all, you know, homeless women are notorious for hiding contraband in their bras and panties. Of course their complaints went nowhere. Eventually a group of citizens sent in a woman who was not homeless and filmed the interaction with the officer. Even though he wasn't charged with a crime, he soon quit the force.

 

There are always bad apples, so I don't want to portray all police as evil. But this is another case in point where fear of power is abused. Arming citizens with the knowledge and power to not comply under the threat of being shot would help end such abuses.

 

There is just something so charming about a conservative loving a good ol' police state. Do as I say or I'll shoot you dead. What a hoot. And to think that conservatives accuse liberals of being authoritarians.

 

Extortion, incitement to violence, sexual assault, tax evasion, official corruption, voter fraud....

 

I'm not saying they are all bad either. As far as the police go, the Portland police are better than most. Much better than most. After all the leadership is on the liberal side. It is just the few bad apples that make the rest look bad.

 

Certainly, but there's no broader issue.

 

What is your thinking on this famous alleged law breaker?
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPt1UtZcQxC4yg5SNYWICbVpIHfhlTPI5

 

Plain Truths That Can't Be Mentioned

6 charts show the virus' shift from blue to red states
https://www.pantagraph.com/news/nat...n_715a11be-7c8f-5007-ba71-da3d95e4e447.html#1