Police Brutality Protests Thread

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thousands of YouTube comments on Sky News Australia video celebrate BLM activist being shot in head

Exclusive: The racist and violent comments appear below a video news report about Sasha Johnson who was shot in the head in London

www.theguardian.com

 

[WolfEyes]

Sometimes humans can be so stupid.

Cops Are Now Using a High-Tech Lasso on People (msn.com)

As recently noted by Motherboard, the BolaWrap Remote Restraint device looks a lot like a taser and functions, more or less, like something from a James Bond film. It uses gunpowder to explosively discharge an eight-foot “Kevlar tether” designed to fly through the air and ensnare a suspect with barbed restraints. Also referred to as “remote handcuffs,” it allegedly works at a distance of 10 to 25 feet and is meant to be used on suspects who are “non-compliant.” A user’s manual for the police department in West Plains, Missouri, provides a lot of details on how the device is ostensibly supposed to be used.


Produced by security firm Wrap Technologies, the BolaWrap is specifically marketed as a de-escalation tool and a means by which cops can detain people who appear to be exhibiting a host of issues, such as mental health problems, cognitive disabilities, or suicidal ideations. Wrap CEO Tom Smith recently said his company’s mission statement is “to use technology to end confrontations safely” so that “officers go home safe” and “suspects go home safe.” How likely is it that the product will actually be used like it is intended? And is firing a gunpowder-propelled restraint the best way to handle someone experiencing a mental health crisis?

What's going to happen the first time they cut off someone's arm or leg or decapitate them? Nothing. Cops are still going to murder people and get away with it. Welcome to the US, land of death and home of murdering cops.

 

[Soen Eber]

I'm not forseeing any amputations, but throat, eye, head injuries? Yeah. Or deployment inside minimal safe distances? "Guess you earned that gut injury". And hitting your head, your pelvis, your knee or wrist when falling? More than one guy has lost an eye or died from a brain hemorage. But the cop gets to go home while someone's kid or grandma had a "medical incident" during a protest or wandered away drunk or confused or with alzeimers and got beligerantly non-compliant. Yay.

 

[WolfEyes]

I'm not forseeing any amputations, but throat, eye, head injuries? Yeah. Or deployment inside minimal safe distances? "Guess you earned that gut injury". And hitting your head, your pelvis, your knee or wrist when falling? More than one guy has lost an eye or died from a brain hemorage. But the cop gets to go home while someone's kid or grandma had a "medical incident" during a protest or wandered away drunk or confused or with alzeimers and got beligerantly non-compliant. Yay.

I'd agree with you on the amputation thing if it weren't for the knowledge I have of real bolas and what they were used for and how they were modified to use for killing, not capturing.

It uses gunpowder to explosively discharge an eight-foot “Kevlar tether” designed to fly through the air and ensnare a suspect with barbed restraints

Barbs are the first step towards a lethal weapon.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

So when are these things supposed to be used, and why is the use of force necessary in the first place in these circumstances?

At the moment, what do the police do when confronted with the circumstances in which they might prefer to use these things, and why would bolas be better?

That video tells me nothing -- if the suspect is peacefully standing there, waiting for you to aim at him, like the bloke in the video, then you don't need to use one of those things to tie him up, do you?

One of my many concerns about these kind of non-lethal weapons is that they lower the bar at which law enforcement use force in the first place, and lead to is use in circumstances where the British police are trained to use de-escalation techniques.

Rather than giving the US police new weapons, I'd start re-training them in how to conduct normal civilian policing.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Last summer during the protests over police brutality, many departments, including here in Columbus, were willfully misusing less lethal weapons. In addition to indiscriminate use of chemical irritants, they were using "baton rounds" that are essentially a wooden round fired at low velocity from a shotgun by firing them directly at the bodies of protesters instead of aiming for a hard surface to bounce the rounds (slowing them in the process). This has a great deal of potential for misuse, either willfully or as a result of poor training.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

When police officers use force, there are two questions, it seems to me.

There's the obvious question of whether both the use of force and the degree of force used were reasonable, which are the basic legal questions, but from a broader perspective of future policy and training there's also the question of how the encounter had deteriorated to the extent force ever became an issue.

Not just "was that the right call under the circumstances?" but also "When and how did things start to go wrong so that force had to be used at all?"

 

[Free]

 

[Romana]

When police officers use force, there are two questions, it seems to me.

There's the obvious question of whether both the use of force and the degree of force used were reasonable, which are the basic legal questions, but from a broader perspective of future policy and training there's also the question of how the encounter had deteriorated to the extent force ever became an issue.

Not just "was that the right call under the circumstances?" but also "When and how did things start to go wrong so that force had to be used at all?"

And then there are the cops that are so anxious to use it that they twist the facts to fit their views, like the one who flipped the pregnant woman's car over.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Patrick Hutchinson, one year after the iconic photograph of him rescuing a far-right counter-demonstrator at a BLM protest was taken

‘Really surreal’: moment BLM activist rescued far-right protester from mob

Patrick Hutchinson’s decision to carry a far-right protester to safety became the defining image of last summer’s anti-racist movement

www.theguardian.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[WolfEyes]

Yes, there are a few idiots that live here. It's actually a rural area so we do have more than our fair share of idiot Repugs.

I hope they come cruising through my neighborhood. It's mostly Mexican.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

You do really wonder how someone sends a letter like that without realizing they are the bad guys...

 

[Romana]

You do really wonder how someone sends a letter like that without realizing they are the bad guys...

Same mentality that allows someone carrying a "back the blue" flag to beat up a Capitol cop with it.
They think they're the good guys ("real Americans") and anyone who disagrees is the bad guy.
Whoever sent those letters is absolutely convinced that BLM supporters are the bad guys.
What exactly the rationalization for threats of violence, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if if includes the words "by any means necessary".

 

[WolfEyes]

I'd ask them what their rationalizations are but I really don't want to be any where near them. Living in the same town is bad enough.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

You do really wonder how someone sends a letter like that without realizing they are the bad guys...

As you wonder how someone burns a cross on someone's front lawn without realising they're the bad guys, too, but they clearly don't see it that way (though since the sender almost certainly thinks Donald Trump won the election, too, they're clearly good at deluding themselves).

 

[Soen Eber]

(I'll leave the Monty Python "Are we the badies?" gif for Free to post)
*whistles and walks away*

 

[Free]

(I'll leave the Monty Python "Are we the badies?" gif for Free to post)
*whistles and walks away*

I DON'T NEED YOUR CHARITY!

(By the way, it's Mitchell and Webb, not the Pythons...)