[Slings and Arrows]

Steyn ping.

[Slings and Arrows]

JBT ping.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

The response will eventually become to ambush any officer who shows up unexpectedly for any reason.

Too many laws results in too many confrontational encounters with law enforcement.

[CitizenUSA]

Police nowadays are generally paid well and have generous pensions and health care plans. There was a time when these benefits were justified, because police assumed greater risk as part of doing their jobs. That is no longer the case when “officer made it home safe” is the single greatest goal in policing today.

I totally agree we need gun control...by COPS! They need to keep those weapons holstered—even if it means they assume a very slight increase in risk to their own safety—because otherwise peaceful and law abiding citizens don’t deserve to be shot down in cold blood over simple misunderstandings.

I daresay many actual crimes, like possession of drugs, shouldn’t also expose one to the risk of execution at the hands of police. Violence should ALWAYS be the last resort, and fear for one’s safety should be based on some higher level of reasoning than seeing something that might look like a gun in the hands of an otherwise nonviolent person, EVEN IF that person isn’t immediately complying with police instructions.

Our militarized, overly violent police must be addressed!

[RC one]

Like I say at the end of every post: Militarized law enforcement is just a nice way of saying martial law enforcement.

Welcome to martial law.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

“Guns don’t kill people. Cops kill people.” - Joe “The Hole” Cole

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0yA9L7GR_k

[Slambat]

“If someone shoots up a grade school or a movie theatre,”

If someone shoots up a grade school or a movie theater,
the cops usually hide behind their cars outside until the
shooter runs out of ammo then they go in guns blazing.
Usually they get 1 maybe 2 hits per 300 rounds fired.
In these cases I wonder how many civilians are killed by
the cops and blamed on the perp. When these things happen
they ALL lie like an Obama to cover their asses. I do know
that in court you are not allowed to use a cops past record
of lying as evidence when it’s your word against the fuzz.

[Pollster1]

Officer Edwards draws his gun . . . Sgt Cotton arrives, pistol drawn . . . Cotton then drew his pistol and fired three shots at Tolan.

Errors from Steyn are rare, but I believe he should revise this (unfortunately, I can't find his email). Either the narrative should include holstering the pistol in between, or the final sentence quoted should not include drawing the pistol.

[nathanbedford]

I am not sure that it makes much more sense to blame the police than it does to blame the guns. We are doing to policing what we have done to education, diverted the teachers and the cops away from their basic and legitimate mission to try to cope with overall cultural breakdown.

If we try to use the school system as a place of remediation for the dysfunction of the home we find that the school simply cannot cope and where they do not cope they attempt more and more to compensate with arbitrary and draconian regulations. A kid draws a picture of a gun and becomes a three-year-old felon.

So it is with the police, if we spread them too thin we should not be surprised if the rubber band breaks at the weak point and cops overreact or just simply make tragic mistakes.

It is easy for politicians to pile responsibility after responsibility on teachers and on police and equally easy for them to demand more and more as they get less and less. Most politicians say, throw more money at the problem and the result is they get bigger and better financed problems or they get mega school systems loaded with administrators in the educational arena and they get SWAT teams hanging on armored personnel vehicles at a local precinct.

What could go wrong?

[BobL]

Maybe the cops overdid it, but I sure wouldn’t be screaming at anyone if they had loaded guns drawn on me...perhaps there’s something cultural at work.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

In the 1970s, there were some police assassinations by leftist and racialist murderers. The response to this by the federal government was to encourage police departments across the US to stop using “Old West” tactics, and to adopt “SWAT” tactics.

Old West tactics had several axioms, the first of which is that the vast majority of the public are honest and more or less cooperative with the police.

Because people of different economic classes usually have different ways of behaving, it was reasonable for police to treat these classes differently.

And importantly, that police should not draw their gun unless they had intent to shoot to kill—which if they didn’t have to, was a better outcome. Conversely, if someone murdered a police officer, they were guaranteed a trial, guilty verdict, and prompt execution.

The new, SWAT axioms were radically different. The first bad assumption was that the public were hostile to the police. A well to do elderly widow was just as likely to hate the police as was a young criminal with several priors.

The second bad axiom was that no matter how they behaved, all citizens should be treated equally, as if they were all lower class criminals. That the honest poor, the middle class, and the wealthy deeply resented being treated this was was not the policeman’s problem.

The third and truly dangerous axiom was that the police should frequently brandish their pistol, to quickly establish dominance and control of any situation. And this idea turned into a nightmare of police and citizens being accidentally shot in the process. Far more fatalities than any intentional assassinations.

Making things much worse was the Democrat opposition to the death penalty, even for savage murderers and cop killers. Combined with leftist judges would would give violent criminals slaps on the wrist, or worse, release them on technicalities, it left the police little choice but to carry out deserved executions themselves.

The icing on the cake, that is still in progress, is giving police “aggression training” as well as equipping them with military weapons and equipment, turning them into hostile, violent paramilitaries, who are encouraged to see the public as the enemy.

Fortunately, the pendulum has hopefully reached its maximum, and soon there will be efforts to demilitarize and retrain police agencies so that their behavior is far more appropriate to the typical need for police in society.

[Balding_Eagle]

Does anyone know the story here?

“particularly since a meek mild-mannered mumsy employee of mine was unlawfully seized by an angry small-town cop last year.”

[DuncanWaring]

[kiryandil]

nully, you got to check this one out.

The innocent peasant kid is lying on his face, and the King's Man starts beating up his mom.

The UNARMED kid gets to his knees and DARES to verbally challenge the gunthug from 15-20 feet away. Gunthug blasts him, and the various courts think that's just swell, until it hits the Supreme Court.

Holy crap! I just realized I've got the kid's dad's baseball card from 1968. The elder Tolan was part of the 1967 & 1968 St. Louis Cardinals World Series teams.

[mylife]

We need to end the police state that is being put in place.

[bamahead]

It's worth noting that, in other countries with a different policing culture, a gun would not have been drawn and the officer would have asked to see the registration.



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!

[Vendome]

Wow.

[zeugma]

In routine encounters with law enforcement, a citizen should not have to weigh the likelihood that the officer will decide to shoot him dead. That's about as basic a standard for civilized society as one can muster.

As usual, Steyn sums it up perfectly.

[beaversmom]

In light of the more recent case of Mr. Shaver being murdered by an AZ unlawful enforcer and said enforcer being acquitted, a ping to Steyn’s piece from 2014. (And I do not hate police, but we should call out the bad ones...in this case *horribly* bad.)

http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/364218-buck-sexton-if-police-can-execute-an-innocent-man-on-video-none-of-us