Rampant Police Brutality and Media censorship in Ferguson Missouri
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People are throwing the Force Continuum around a lot and don't seem to fully understand it. It isn't "if he has bare hands you use a weapon, if he has a knife you use a gun".
The Force Continuum has two different sections. One section details the behavior of the subject, the other how the officer should react.
Deadly Force Assault----------Deadly Force
Active Agression--------------Intermediate weapons
Defensive Resistance----------"Hard" empty hand techniques
Passive Resistance------------"Soft" Empty hand techniques
Verbal-Non Compliance---------Verbal Direction
Psychological Intimidation----Officer Presence
Obviously you can't always stay on the same level of the continuum as the subject, as verbal commands won't work when someone simply refuses to listen to verbal commands. So people are saying that you "always stay 1 level higher than the subject" aren't completely wrong, but it isn't a dead set rule. Someone who is in the verbal non-compliance level may be issued the command multiple times, or in some cases police might ask for a close friend or family member to help convince them to comply. But at the same time moving up 1 level higher than the subject may be the only way to control the situation.
At the same time, you don't always move up or down the continuum by a single level or even start at the lowest point. It is effected by many other factors, such as a subject's past history, their access to weapons, influence of drugs or alcohol or a subject's size.
Just trying to throw some information into this circle of hate.
The Force Continuum has two different sections. One section details the behavior of the subject, the other how the officer should react.
Deadly Force Assault----------Deadly Force
Active Agression--------------Intermediate weapons
Defensive Resistance----------"Hard" empty hand techniques
Passive Resistance------------"Soft" Empty hand techniques
Verbal-Non Compliance---------Verbal Direction
Psychological Intimidation----Officer Presence
Obviously you can't always stay on the same level of the continuum as the subject, as verbal commands won't work when someone simply refuses to listen to verbal commands. So people are saying that you "always stay 1 level higher than the subject" aren't completely wrong, but it isn't a dead set rule. Someone who is in the verbal non-compliance level may be issued the command multiple times, or in some cases police might ask for a close friend or family member to help convince them to comply. But at the same time moving up 1 level higher than the subject may be the only way to control the situation.
At the same time, you don't always move up or down the continuum by a single level or even start at the lowest point. It is effected by many other factors, such as a subject's past history, their access to weapons, influence of drugs or alcohol or a subject's size.
Just trying to throw some information into this circle of hate.
From what I've heard there are actually a lot of white rabble rousers in the crowds trying to make things worse; anarchists and the like. I may be wrong though, this is based on witness sources and those aren't very reliable. Either way, it doesn't seem to be just a white vs black thing. Its mostly black businesses being looted and harmed.Dholland662 said:
Thank you for this. I've been looking for decent information for a while and its hard to find it sometimes amidst all the people writing from a noticeable bias.Therumancer said:thebobmaster said:
http://news.yahoo.com/report-teen-shot-6-times-including-twice-head-035806078.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/18/private-autopsy-on-michael-brown-reveals-that-was-shot-six-times-report-says/
There are two of them, I've read a bunch of them so the information is running together in my head. Everyone seems to be covering this at the moment. It was easy to paste because I had a few pages about this open as I was checking The Escapist.
OT: Until everything is released and we know all the details about the body no one should be jumping to any conclusions. The news is known to sensationalize this and people jump at the chance to start race debates and pick a side. Personally with the information currently released, it does not reflect well on the victim and how the struggle went, not that I think he should have been shot.
Funnily enough British ARO's are trained to shoot-to-kill and incapacitating shot counts as police brutality since there are other less damaging methods of bringing down an unarmed assailant.shintakie10 said:
Why does every policeman need to carry sidearms? and why are these policemen patrolling on their own? If they feel afraid they should be going out with a buddy not carrying a firearm.
This is due to alot of factors generally. 1 The city has a lack of funding which means less cops per assigned area. 2 The PD big boys want crime stats to be lower so they thinly spread the cops out for more coverage. 3 It possible that something else was going on at the time making it so backup was not readily available at the start of the incident(before the shooting occurred).Burs said:
This is so fresh I can't find any other articles about it. There should no longer be any debate, something terrible is happening there and it's being inflicted upon residents by the cops. The internet should be on fire over this but it's another day of articles about the goddam Kardashians. You don't kick human rights watch organizations out of a place unless you are violating human rights. Fire those cops from the chief to beat officer, get some feds in there to restore order and start the fuck over, this has gone on long enough. Is this China, Syria, Iran? Nope, it's USA, one of the oldest modern democracies.Norithics said:
Apparently the press is still being targeted specifically. They are not taking it lying down either. Whatever else happens here this shitbox of local authority will never be trusted again as long as the same corrupt people are running it.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043247/ferguson-police-media-harassment
Yes it's an op-ed, but the writer raises some valid points like if this is the shit that goes on when they are being watched what are they doing to people when the cameras are not on them?
This has gone so much farther than the event that started it. this no longer about whether the cop was justified in shooting the guy. It's now about the way the cops are treating an entire town.
That is quite frankly disturbing.jklinders said:
This is the kind of behavior you expect from a police state, not a modern western democracy.
I've wondered about the increasing militarization of American police forces for a while now, and it would seem my fears are justified.
The thing is, in our complex, globalized society problems are never that simple, there is never just one cause. It's layers upon layers, all kinds of causes and effects creating an intricate web, especially when huge problems like these are concerned.dragonswarrior said:
Is institutionalized prejudgments against the black community a part of this problem? Definitely, and a big one too. Is it the only one? Of course not, it doesn't explain the entire problem. The problem is that if you just pick out one cause you lose perspective, you get an incredibly skewed view. And that, in turn, prevents us from actually addressing and solving these problems properly. Just shouting "Look at that racism!" is not going to do anything. A problem like this with effects this terrible deserves to be addressed better because it definitely needs to be solved. These problems have a lot of angles and we need to look at all of them, not just one, that's not going to help. It's way too big of a clusterfuck.
It's really what annoys about today's rapid-fire soundbite way of communicating. When I scroll through my Tumblr dashboard or look at all those tweets I see lots of shouting, lots of sending, lots of (understandable) emotions. What I don't see is regard for context, thoughtful reflection, rational analysis, calm discussions, etc. I see people who genuinely care not employing solid methods and sometimes even making things worse. I mean good lord just look at Anonymous' fuck up here and what that caused. But that's turning this into a general rant and that we don't need here.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; it's not the fact that there is a response, you gotta do something against the looting for starters, it's about the measure of it. This problem is incredibly complex, it's gotta be approached very carefully. In a way it was a snowball effect really, they fucked up handling this at the start and now it's just one big clusterfuck.Rainbow_Dashtruction said:
At the moment I'm just so saddened about the whole affair. It looked like it was going so well and turn around, buuut noooo.
Er, "don't stop shooting until the target stops moving" isn't such a problem, provided the officer doesn't start shooting unless the target is posing an immediate danger to someone.shintakie10 said:
You can't just shoot them once, wait and see if that is enough to stop them and shoot enough if it isn't if they are posing an immediate danger to someone.
The problem happens when officers forget that bit.
Exactly. This may be hard for some to accept, but the police shoot to kill. They aim for the torso partly as it is easier to hit and partly because they intend to kill you. It's also why they tend to fire so many rounds.thaluikhain said:
They don't aim for the leg or the arm for several reasons. Shooting someone in the leg can still kill them should he bullet hit the femoral artery. Plus, both arms and legs are smaller and tend to move around a lot. Despite what movies imply, handguns are not particularly accurate at any range. And shooting even one bullet in the torso can kill a person.
The fact of the matter is that shooting to wound is largely a myth of games and movies. No one shoots to wound. Nor should they if they are under attack.
There's a reason it's a big deal when the police shoot. Because they do it fairly rarely. Because when they do shoot, the target is a clear and present danger to themselves or others.
The question here is whether shooting was justified. Was the victim attacking the officer or not? Currently, we only have very different versions of events. One claims that Michael Brown walked away and put his hands up and the other claims that he taunted and charged at the officer. The question is which is true. I'm actually curious to see what the cruiser's camera picked up. That should clear up a lot of this.
Not everywhere they're not. Dutch cops, for instance, are only trained to shoot for the torso when it's a case of self-defense. In other cases they're trained to go for the legs.Saltyk said:
From what I gathered the Ferguson PD only recently acquired two dashboard cams, neither of them as of yet installed in cruisers.
Really? Do you have a source for that, because I've never heard anything like that before.Cowabungaa said:
This is about more than just the killing of Brown. As someone so eloquently put it on twitter.
"So glad we are in the process of determining Mike Brown's guilt so this whole totally non-symbolic, context-free protest can be over with. This definitely has everything to do with that one kid's murder and nothing to do with thousands of historically similar ones. People are obviously protesting and putting their lives at risk purely because One Cop Did One Bad Thing, Once."
https://twitter.com/neilyourself
"The other shot of note was the one in the middle of his right arm. "There was a witness statement that said [Brown] was walking away and he kind of jerks so that would have occurred when he was walking away, and then he turns around," Parcells said, demonstrating Brown's possible movements. "It's consistent with that." "
http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/08/michael-browns-family-addresses-preliminary-autopsy-results/378686/
Account directly from a witness:
"Crenshaw said she witnessed Wilson trying unsuccessfully to force Brown into a car. She said they tussled, and Brown was able to get away because he was ?a bigger fella.? Brown's escape ?seemed to have upset the officer,? who began chasing Brown, she said.
She said she believed Brown was grazed by a shot near his arm, turned, and was then shot multiple times."
https://tv.yahoo.com/news/michael-brown-shooting-witness-releases-video-knew-not-143600436.html
So we have a Police Officer chasing and shooting at a fleeing, unarmed 18 year old man. When the Officer shoots the man in the arm and he turns around, either to surrender to or charge at the Cop shooting at him he got shot (at least) another 5 times.
Shooting at a fleeing unarmed man in the middle of the street in broad daylight is pretty damned excessive use of force.
Disregard for human life is what it is.
"So glad we are in the process of determining Mike Brown's guilt so this whole totally non-symbolic, context-free protest can be over with. This definitely has everything to do with that one kid's murder and nothing to do with thousands of historically similar ones. People are obviously protesting and putting their lives at risk purely because One Cop Did One Bad Thing, Once."
https://twitter.com/neilyourself
No gymnastics. Again, from the preliminary findings of the autopsy reportsCriticKitten said:
"The other shot of note was the one in the middle of his right arm. "There was a witness statement that said [Brown] was walking away and he kind of jerks so that would have occurred when he was walking away, and then he turns around," Parcells said, demonstrating Brown's possible movements. "It's consistent with that." "
http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/08/michael-browns-family-addresses-preliminary-autopsy-results/378686/
Account directly from a witness:
"Crenshaw said she witnessed Wilson trying unsuccessfully to force Brown into a car. She said they tussled, and Brown was able to get away because he was ?a bigger fella.? Brown's escape ?seemed to have upset the officer,? who began chasing Brown, she said.
She said she believed Brown was grazed by a shot near his arm, turned, and was then shot multiple times."
https://tv.yahoo.com/news/michael-brown-shooting-witness-releases-video-knew-not-143600436.html
So we have a Police Officer chasing and shooting at a fleeing, unarmed 18 year old man. When the Officer shoots the man in the arm and he turns around, either to surrender to or charge at the Cop shooting at him he got shot (at least) another 5 times.
Shooting at a fleeing unarmed man in the middle of the street in broad daylight is pretty damned excessive use of force.
Disregard for human life is what it is.
I can't see your nationality in your profile but if you can read Dutch, it says so on the actual Dutch police website.thaluikhain said:
The People of Ferguson are out in numbers every night because they want justice for a young man who was shot by police. It speaks to the fear in the Higher-Ups that the reaction they got is so very hostile.
There are of course people who will defend what looks like a clearly racially motivated crime committed by a Police Officer and on the other hand there are always those who will capitalize on a situation of fear and confusion to commit vandalism and loot homes and businesses.
What matters is that we seize this opportunity to observe what happens here because this is a very important time and trust me that these few weeks will only become more important as this oppression continues. I believe that the fact that armed Police and a Curfew are being used to suppress Protesters is practically admitted guilt on the part of the Police that Michael Brown was shot without cause. That is my opinion.
There are of course people who will defend what looks like a clearly racially motivated crime committed by a Police Officer and on the other hand there are always those who will capitalize on a situation of fear and confusion to commit vandalism and loot homes and businesses.
What matters is that we seize this opportunity to observe what happens here because this is a very important time and trust me that these few weeks will only become more important as this oppression continues. I believe that the fact that armed Police and a Curfew are being used to suppress Protesters is practically admitted guilt on the part of the Police that Michael Brown was shot without cause. That is my opinion.
I'll try to clarify. As a last resort (after the baton, pepper spray and the likes and a k-9 unit) they're allowed to fire their service pistols. If the suspect is a 'dangerous (lethal) threat' to the officer or someone else, the officer is trained to fire at the torso. If not, and the suspect has been suspected of a 'serious crime' and needs to be apprehended, the officer is trained to fire at the legs. Warning shots are recommended, so it seems, but they recognize that in threatening situations they're not always possible.Nielas said:
This all translated from a short exempt on the Dutch police's website. It's only a summary, I expect that the guidelines in official manuals/law books are a lot more detailed than that. The website doesn't, for instance, clarify what counts as a 'serious crime'.
In all cases where a Dutch officer fires their service weapon an investigation will be instigated to judge whether it was an appropriate and lawful response. Over here we're actually quite worried about the rise of police shooting incidents. A cop firing his gun isn't seen as a normal thing here. 'Shoot to kill' is definitely not a thing. Over here, an incident like Ferguson's would've been written off as insanely disproportionate straight away.