[News] The USA Police State will never satisfy its lust for beating, gassing, and imprisoning minorities

Dave

Staff member
So what happens when a police department wears body cameras? Citizens are protected from assault and police are protected from bullshit complaints.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-cameras-20150318-story.html

In San Diego, complaints have fallen 40.5% and use of "personal body" force by officers has been reduced by 46.5% and use of pepper spray by 30.5%, according to the report developed by the Police Department for the City Council's Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee.
 
So what happens when a police department wears body cameras? Citizens are protected from assault and police are protected from bullshit complaints.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-cameras-20150318-story.html

In San Diego, complaints have fallen 40.5% and use of "personal body" force by officers has been reduced by 46.5% and use of pepper spray by 30.5%, according to the report developed by the Police Department for the City Council's Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee.
Gee, it's almost like, if they know there'll be evidence of what they're doing, and they'll be accountable for it, they behave better.
 

Dave

Staff member
Gee, it's almost like, if they know there'll be evidence of what they're doing, and they'll be accountable for it, they behave better.
And complaints are down in part because of the bullshit like the "hands up don't shoot" fiasco.
 
It's odd how this isn't being considered a privacy issue. It'd be wildly illegal and heavily protested here, I'm sure.

I've always wondered about that phrase, "wildly illegal.


It flies in the face the law sir!

Which laws!?

ALL OF THEM! ALL THE LAWS!
 
I've always wondered about that phrase, "wildly illegal.


It flies in the face the law sir!

Which laws!?

ALL OF THEM! ALL THE LAWS!
Plenty of stuff is technically illegal but accepted or condoned. This wouldn't be. Is what I was getting at.

Also, it's against the Law of the Wild. Lions won't accept cameras, dammit.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It's odd how this isn't being considered a privacy issue. It'd be wildly illegal and heavily protested here, I'm sure.
By law, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public space, and anyone has the right to film anything (and anyone) for any (or no) reason.

In fact, there's been quite a dust up over the opposite of this situation - cops trying to confiscate cameras/prevent filming of what they're doing in public to cover their asses. But because they're cops, it's hard to get traction against them for illegally confiscating the cameras, especially since it seems like so minor a thing.
 
Oh, I know - it's a European-vs-American thing. I'm not surprised it isn't being criticized there, really, I'm just saying it would meet a lot of opposition here. Because "Big Brother". Normal people filming each other is one thing, the government is quite another. The UK is closer to America in this regard. In a large part of Belgium it's still illegal for the government to put up cameras that cover public places.
 
By law, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public space, and anyone has the right to film anything (and anyone) for any (or no) reason.

In fact, there's been quite a dust up over the opposite of this situation - cops trying to confiscate cameras/prevent filming of what they're doing in public to cover their asses. But because they're cops, it's hard to get traction against them for illegally confiscating the cameras, especially since it seems like so minor a thing.
Though since a lot of people now use their phones as cameras, and most people have one, it's kind of hard to confiscate everyone's recording device. On a normal day I have at least two devices with me capable of taking photos and video, three if I actually bring my camera with me. Stuff can upload to Youtube pretty fast, too. On a practical level, it's impossible to entirely stop this stuff, something police departments around the country need to get an understanding of.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Though since a lot of people now use their phones as cameras, and most people have one, it's kind of hard to confiscate everyone's recording device. On a normal day I have at least two devices with me capable of taking photos and video, three if I actually bring my camera with me. Stuff can upload to Youtube pretty fast, too. On a practical level, it's impossible to entirely stop this stuff, something police departments around the country need to get an understanding of.
Indeed. That's why we know about it. There are videos galore of cops trying to stop people from taking videos, in futility.
 
A

Anonymous

Anonymous

This is what will happen. She wins her case. She wins millions. She buys a Rolls Royce. She visits her friend in Harlem. She's pulled over. She's put back in Arkham. She plots a dastardly plan. She escapes. She kills Batman.
 
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/13/3633381/nypd-wikipedia-edits/

Jeezus fucking christ. Orwell was supposed to be a WARNING, not a goddamn INSTRUCTION MANUAL.
I've been calling Wikipedia the Ministry of Truth ever since its inception.[DOUBLEPOST=1427390917,1427390651][/DOUBLEPOST]
Oh, I know - it's a European-vs-American thing. I'm not surprised it isn't being criticized there, really, I'm just saying it would meet a lot of opposition here. Because "Big Brother". Normal people filming each other is one thing, the government is quite another. The UK is closer to America in this regard. In a large part of Belgium it's still illegal for the government to put up cameras that cover public places.
You mean like the CCTV camera network that covers the majority of British cities?
 

Necronic

Staff member
Yeah I don't think I would put Belgium in the same category as the US. Anywhere in Europe frankly. We're a whole separate beast. We have some of the best and some of the worst aspects of both sides of the pond.

-We have a strong respect for privacy laws so we wouldn't do the whole CCTV thing.

-We have the worlds largest inmate population/prison industrial complex. We'll lock up anyone and bleed ourselves dry giving money to "competitive" private industries to jail them.

-We have arguably the best freedom of speech/freedom of religion laws in the world. The anti-hate speech stuff that's been going on in Europe since Charlie Hebdo would never have been seriously considered here, even after 9/11. To be clear, our supreme court defended Westboro Babtist church....EIGHT TO ONE.

-We have the most aggressive military foreign policy in the first world (of the countries that can actually back it up). And we will seriously go into a fugue state and burn the world if someone looks at us cross.

Not sure what we are really. We hold onto certain liberties that no one else in the world seems to realize how important they are. And then we imprison large chunks of our own country and start wars everywhere.

Some kind of Hippie Swartzenagger Kindergarden Cop thing where he occasionally shoots and imprisons children
 
Ain't seen none of that in Canada. Don't think they do that in the USA either. And I think Barcelona is in Spain ( where the rain, so my 3rd grade education tells me, falls mostly in the gutters), so I'd have to disagree with @Bubble181 that Europe is more enlightened on this matter.
Barcelona is big on irony, though!
 
"at their expense"....Err, yeah? I mean, I don't think everyone needs camera surveillance, but if a business wants to add cameras to their arsenal of security measures, who else would pay it? You want all those cameras to be paid for and controlled by the government? Now there's some Big Brother shit right there.
 
Many businesses and homes already have security cameras. I don't see where the facepalm comes in... the article doesn't say anyone is making it mandatory. Just that the police chief thinks it would help solve crimes if more people had them.
More a reaction to the reputation of UK survelliance, I guess. The implication being police would press to have access to the video feed just like the cameras right outside. IIRC, a while back there was a proposal to install exactly that type of CCTV in homes of people under ASBOs.
 
http://mic.com/articles/114900/20-tweets-show-america-s-response-to-the-murder-of-walter-scott

White officer stops unarmed black man. Black man runs, gets shot 8 times in back and drops. Officer then walks over to him, yells for the dead man to put his arms behind his back twice, handcuffs the corpse, drops his stun gun (which he reported was taken from him in a scuffle) - you can see him pick it up from next to the body at 2 minutes, and waits for other officers to show up.

However, since someone got video of it, and released it, the officer is actually facing charges. If not for that, it is incredibly unlikely it would have even been considered a 'bad shooting'.
 
http://mic.com/articles/114900/20-tweets-show-america-s-response-to-the-murder-of-walter-scott

White officer stops unarmed black man. Black man runs, gets shot 8 times in back and drops. Officer then walks over to him, yells for the dead man to put his arms behind his back twice, handcuffs the corpse, drops his stun gun (which he reported was taken from him in a scuffle) - you can see him pick it up from next to the body at 2 minutes, and waits for other officers to show up.

At least it's being called murder.
 

Dave

Staff member
It'll get downgraded to manslaughter and then plead even lower. In civilian cases they would have also charged him with several other crimes like assault with a deadly weapon, etc just in case the original charge got reduced. But in this case it's curiously only the one charge. If that charge gets lowered then nothing else would matter.
 
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-police-are-americas-terrorists-1696463523

For as long as there have been white people and black people and brown people in America, white people have slaughtered black people and brown people. Over the years, the techniques have changed slightly, even as they've bled into each other. Slavery was slaughter, just as hanging and dragging and beating and hacking are slaughter, just as electrocuting and poisoning and shooting are slaughter. But whatever the method, whites have slaughtered minorities, and there is no reason to think they won't continue to do so.

The killings of minorities by police are instructive in this regard, not because all policemen are violent racists or murderers (the vast majority are neither) or because they are personally responsible for killing large numbers of black and brown people (they aren't), but because they are agents of the state, and so their actions, and the consequences they face, serve as a sort of index of the public will.
yeah...
And this, most of all, is why a continual and ongoing if statistically rare type of slaughter qualifies as a kind of terrorism. The actions of police represent the will of the government; the will of the government represents the will of the people; the actions of police, it follows, are the embodiment of political opinion. We can talk about Michael Slager, but he was, if almost certainly unwittingly, a tool. The issue is who wields him.

As long as there have been white people and black people and brown people in America, the slaughter of black and brown people has been used as a form of control. For centuries, on apopulation level, the racial majority has voted and lobbied to give agents of the state more power to act without sanction, to militarize, to kill. Functionally, this has enabled them to wage war on behalf of the majority of the public; to express hatred and fear and aspire to power through campaigns of terror and carnage.

The slaughter of black and brown people is, in this light, a political act, political violence enacted for political purpose against a civilian population to raise fear and obtain compliance. That Slager probably never thought of things in these terms doesn't matter; what does is that he was trained and given incentives in line with the interests of a particular class intent on preserving its power. The violence he enacted is a kind that keeps one class of citizens terrorized and fearful of random violence for the benefit of another. It's meant to keep that class in line and intact, even as the sands of time shift and racial minorities slowly crawl toward majority status.
mm hmm.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Ugh. That reads like a freshman rhetoric paper.[DOUBLEPOST=1428691912,1428691780][/DOUBLEPOST]Actually, that's not fair. It reads like an op-ed at a low-ranked college newspaper
 
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