Ferguson

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:01 am #46099

Bottom post of the previous page:

It's odd, I think it's easier for people to believe that everyone is good deep down except for people who are pure evil like comic book villains or some shit. Violence never solves anything, that everything could be talked out or there's a compromise blah blah blah.

They want to believe everything is fueled by racism because it makes the problem simpler. If only we didn't have such racist police officers shooting unarmed people nobody would ever do the crimes or whatever. If only people could stop being racist all the problems would go away.

It's a harder problem to admit that economic disparity, social disparity, depression, frustration, and just raw animal hate exist. There's no quick fix for that shit. The fairy-tale fight of good vs. evil is all fucked up when you put that on the table.

No, it had to be fueled by racism because the alternative is too hard to swallow.

Post by **MisterPerson** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:14 am #46100

Stickymayhem wrote:I took part in the London protests and was there during the riots. Seeing how people behaved there it's hard not to think that human nature can only be bundled up in societal constraint before bursting at the slightest opportunity. I saw people I know looting phone shops, hell I even joined in screaming at the riot cops, though after they started beating the shit out of people.

It's just hard to see this as anything but an endless cycle with no positive outcome.

On the bright side you get to watch hipsters and anons from 4chan streaming themselves getting the shit beat out of them and teargassed which is endlessly entertaining for some reason.

Rioting, groupthink, and mob behavior are well-documented to involve otherwise rational, normal people and turn them into violent individuals with seemingly no inhibition. Afterwards they go back to normal like nothing happened. I'm not saying what happens in riots is ok, I'm just saying that a peaceful crowd can escalate into a riot at a moment's notice with little to no escalation or even provocation. One guy gets antsy and throws a brick, it happens to smash a window, suddenly people are rushing inside and people are stealing shit and they have no idea why. It just happens.

The rioting is shit but the rioters aren't.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:42 am #46103

Mob mentality. It's a basic survival instinct.

If you were walking down a crowded street and everyone suddenly dropped to the ground and put their hands over their head you'd do the same thing to.

Likewise if you see everyone around you fighting something you're going to want to either join them for your own survival or run the fuck away. If you see everyone running in and smashing and stealing stuff your reptile brain is going to think "HOLY SHIT I MUST NEED ONE OF THOSE TOO".

I didn't wake up today and think "man it would be great if I could steal some shit during this chaos" but when you see everyone else running in and stealing something like their life depended on it you're going to have a huge urge to want to join them and do the same.

Fuck we see that happen in spessmens even. Someone breaks in somewhere and someone else sees it and runs in too. Even if there's nothing to see it's like a car accident. People keep running in and loitering for a minute to see if something is going on. I've observed moments where a ton of people are just standing around in an area where nothing is happening just because there are a lot of other people standing around there and there's this underlying knowledge that "hey I shouldn't normally be in here...but maybe something is happening I should be a part of?" Nobody ever lingers for too long, but everyone runs in and looks at least.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:14 pm #46136

Steelpoint wrote:Irrespective of race, if you rush to attack a police officer, especially when your larger and bigger than them, don't act surprised when said officer fires on you.

I took some time to read the court notes, the evidence presented (from the investigation) backed up the officer's testimony that Brown rushed the officer and tried to reach for his gun.

There are multiple witness testimonies, including a friend of Brown's who was right there, who say that Brown had surrendered already, his hands in the air, before he got shot. The only testimony that didn't match up with the others was, guess what? Wilson's testimony.
Brown even has a bullet wound on the top of his head. When you shoot someone rushing at you, that's not a location where bullets end up, unless they make a 90° turn.

Steelpoint wrote:Not to mention there is surveillance footage showing Brown stealing 50$ worth of cigars at a local store a few minutes prior to the altercation.

1. The shop owner testified that this is false.
2. The timestamps on the video don't match up with the time Brown supposedly stole those cigars. In addition, whoever is in the video is wearing completely different clothes.
3. Even if 1 and 2 weren't applicable... Stealing 50$ worth of cigars does NOT justify Brown's murder whatsoever.

Steelpoint wrote:When it come's to criminal cases, you have to present enough evidence to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that the defendant (officer) is guilty. You can't go in thinking he "might have done it" or there's a 50/50 chance he did. It's clear in this case there is insufficient evidence to support the officer being in the wrong and far more evidence saying his actions were justified.

There has never been any doubt that Wilson murdered Brown. The entire question was whether Brown deserved it. And frankly, with all the evidence against Wilson, I am appalled that he wasn't even indicted.

Steelpoint wrote:It's just a bad situation all around.

Yeah, this shit keeps happening and nothing ever changes. All these murderers walk away acquitted because this judicial system is a fucking joke. I'm so sick of it. The black community of America isn't just sick of it, but also terrified, because they know that a cop can pull a gun on them and shoot them and get away with no charges. Are you surprised there are fucking riots?

Akkryls · Post by **Akkryls** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:50 pm #46141

Thought I'd just link to the information used in the case so people can read rather than just shouting at each other.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014 ... .html?_r=0

Antonkr · Post by **Antonkr** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:23 pm #46145

Keep in mind this is coming from a guy who absolutely hates the militarization of the police force in any way shape or form.

This situation from reading various testimonies was absolutely valid. The people raiding shops, throwing bricks at police and reporters are doing this because they can get away with it. Not a single person there gives a fuck about what happened past whitey kill blackie must be racism. This entire community is fucking itself in the ass and the protestors arent protestors at this point, they are looters and criminals.

See Battle of Athens on how a protest should be done, and thats when there is an actual good reason for it. This isnt one of those times.

FredNodoor · Post by **FredNodoor** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:22 pm #46155

This has been me from this situation

But if your trying to take a cops fucking gun from them, you will be fucking shot, plain and simple, no questions about it. You punch a cop? Your going to get the shit smacked from you one way or another. If Mike Brown was just being a smartass spewing insults and that was it, no shots would have been fired, plain and simple.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.- Malcolm X

FredNodoor · Post by **FredNodoor** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:47 pm #46159

By the way on one of the streams, some of the dumbest shit happened

>AYY FUK DA POPO
>Some guy jumps on the hood of a moving truck
>Guy gets slammed by truck
>AYY WE NEED SOME COPS OVER HERE!

... i just cant

QuartzCrystal · Wed Nov 26, 2014 4:11 pm

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/d ... in/7041840

Have any of you actually read all the evidence to released that the Grand Jury looked at? The ME didn't take pictures of the crime scene because his "battery died" in his camera (the body was in the street for 4 hours, no time to grab a different camera/charge a battery/etc). Not to mention that Darren Wilson's entire story is ridiculously full of shit, and unsurprisingly reports are coming out that he would joke about being racist a bunch at work.

Then this is tied into the near incapability of white cops have when it comes to not shooting black people (like the 12 year old who got shot over the weekend). People are mad and shit needs to change, this isn't a one-off incident. It's oppression.

EDIT: Also worth pointing out that the police were heavy in the white side of town yet didn't do shit in the black side of town when a minority of protesters got violent towards property.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 4:22 pm #46163

Regardless of what you think about the actual shooting, the protests and riots are arguably more important. Police shootings, unfortunately, are uncomfortably common in this country due to how we have decided to train our police force. Riots don't happen every single time it happens, there usually is a massive controversy but there isn't a breakdown in civil order every month in some city in this country. This incident escalated due to the poor decisions of the police.

Ferguson as a society has been completely opposed to its police force after the shooting. The local police handled this opposition absurdly poorly by essentially attacking a community that they view as an outside force they need to protect themselves from rather than one they need to protect. They repeatedly escalated the situation, because no one in Ferguson's police force actually cares about Ferguson.

The whole idea that its just riots to kill whitey falls apart when you see what happened when the state troopers rolled in, looked at the fergesuon police, and said "hell naw." The violence pretty much instantly stopped once the state troopers made it extremely clear that they were there for the community rather than in opposition to it. There were still protests, but they were peaceful at that point. It gets extra hillarious/pathetic when the chief of police tried to emulate that state trooper who marched with the protesters despite the fact he was the guy being protested.

The people of Ferguson view themselves as under attack by the police, and that is a sentiment shared by many other communities in the country. And it is because they are not wrong. And that is what we really need to be taking away from this. It is an open secret at this point that the police are not trained to protect and serve in this country anymore, and they haven't been for a while. You wouldn't know this from the mass media, but you would from pretty much any form of higher education related to the police. They are, outside of very wealthy communities like the one I grew up in, trained to intimidate you and make you compliant while looking out for their own interests. That isn't hyperbole. That is the stated intent of the people coming up with police procedures. You learn about it if you go to college and take any courses on compliance gain, law and society, sociology, or criminal justice. The police live by an unofficial, or in the case of the drug war an official, quota system and they feel like they are better able to do their job by intimidating the people they interact with. If your idea of a police officer is the friendly neighborhood cop then you probably grew up in an affluent suburb like me. Not saying that police officers are evil or anything, we just deliberately train them to take on an absurdly adversarial relationship with the people they are protecting because that inflates the amount of arrests they get to make, because they can bully you into giving up your rights.

It is really telling when lawyers and cops alike, when asked what you should do when confronted with a belligerent police officer, inform you that co-operating is the dumbest shit you can do. The system is currently set up so that co-operating with the police is the second worst option available to you besides physically resisting them.

Should people be rioting? Of course not. They are not going to gain anything out of it, not anything that peaceful protests wouldn't do better, especially as there is very little in the land of TV that generates more PR than peaceful protesters getting gassed and attacked. But it is important to think about societal events through the lens of society rather than ascribing individual failings to a massive group of people. That is sociology 101, the ability to think about groups reacting to societal effects without trying to explain it away on the individual level.

Also the fact he wasn't indicted was retarded. Of course he wouldn't be found guilty, but the standards for indictment are very different than for a guilty verdict, the question is if there is a reason to have a trial, not if he did or didn't do it. Witness testimony in general is probably the shittiest form of evidence on the planet because people's memories are not nearly as accurate as they would like to believe and can be changed simply by being asked to re-tell a story often enough, so any sort of memory expert being brought up by the defense would get him off, but there was clearly enough ambiguity to indict him. And the fact the jury was stacked with people outside the local community was extremely relevant to him not being indicted, though of course I think everyone could agree there was no real fair way for this jury to be assembled.

Antonkr · Post by **Antonkr** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 4:29 pm #46166

Dezzmont does bring up a pretty good point about police in some jurdistictions being outright incompetent and dangerous to everyone around them. My point is really about the riots and the situation that happened itself specifically, but what is going on with the way police is militarizing in US is insane

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 4:34 pm #46167

dezzmont wrote: (...)
Should people be rioting? Of course not. They are not going to gain anything out of it,(...)

While I do agree with the rest of your post and pretty much everyone American I know confirms the cops there are shit and trained to be shit, I'd just like to point out that some of the rioters and looters clearly got new clothes, electronics, and whatever else those shops had at the time out of it

Also, a friend of mine loves bringing up some court case that at one point decided that the US cops are not there to protect citizens at all during gun control debates. I don't remember the specific case, but it seems to fit what's been said. US cops aren't there to protect

Intigracy · Post by **Intigracy** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 5:05 pm #46178

.

LA MAYONESA · Post by **LA MAYONESA** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 7:00 pm #46199

Antonkr wrote: See Battle of Athens on how a protest should be done, and thats when there is an actual good reason for it. This isnt one of those times.

have you read UC?

miggles · Post by **miggles** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 9:37 pm #46236

ricotez, not everything you read on tumblr is true

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 9:54 pm #46243

Maybe police are shooting more people because we live in a country that glorifies violence, disrespecting authority, and never backing down from a fight.

Maybe police are shooting more people because there are more people and more cops in this world than there were 60 years ago.

Maybe police are shooting more people because the instances in which people are are putting themselves into situations where they deserve to be shot are on the rise.

Antonkr wrote:Nice fallacy there kiddo but the 12 year old was shot by a black cop. (Thus no riots about it)
There is ample evidence for no charges to be pressed and burning down a community and stores will only make your community shittier. It wont change what already is decided. Stay delusional.

#wrekt

nsos · Post by **nsos** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 9:58 pm #46247

wait time out i was going to just shitpost and leave again but

Antonkr wrote:Nice fallacy there kiddo but the 12 year old was shot by a black cop. (Thus no riots about it)
There is ample evidence for no charges to be pressed and burning down a community and stores will only make your community shittier. It wont change what already is decided. Stay delusional.

this is factually untrue

anyway whatever

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:00 pm #46248

An0n3 wrote:Maybe police are shooting more people because we live in a country that glorifies violence, disrespecting authority, and never backing down from a fight.

Maybe police are shooting more people because there are more people and more cops in this world than there were 60 years ago.

Maybe police are shooting more people because the instances in which people are are putting themselves into situations where they deserve to be shot are on the rise.

Police are shooting more people because we are giving them millitary guns, not training them to use those guns properly, taking away funding if they don't use those guns, and literally training police to be more and more adversarial.

We know full well why police are getting more violent. It is one of the most discussed topics in the field of sociology and criminal justice.

Like, for real, in most communities the police are trained to be rude and intimidating because it makes you more compliant and more likely to make a mistake and allow them to arrest you. That isn't a conspiracy, that is the actual intended goal of this training. Departments are encouraging more violent police officers. People are not asking to get shot more.

And I will repeat: The actual advice lawyers give you is to actually be as uncooperative with the police as possible without putting yourself in danger for this reason. In all but the most affluent communities the police are not there to help you. They admit they are not.

Intigracy · Post by **Intigracy** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:05 pm #46250

.

nsos · Post by **nsos** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:06 pm #46251

Intigracy wrote:You do realize that the 12 year old had a bb gun he had been holding and threatening people with, right?

That's why the cops were called. The orange tip wasn't on the end. When the officer told him put his hands up, he reached for the bb gun (which was in his waistband).

did i dispute that point?

antonkr's information was correct and i corrected him re: the the race of the officer that shot the 12-year old

as to why there's no "riots" over it it's certainly a lot more complicated than whatever supposed race argument he's trying to pull about whether or not black people give black cops a pass in shooting black men or something

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:10 pm #46254

dezzmont wrote:millitary guns

The fuck is a "military gun"?

Beat cops don't walk around with M4's out just chillin'. They trot that stuff out when there's something ridiculous going down. SWAT teams have existed since the fucking 60's, dude.

Do those teams get more active use these days than back in the 1960's?

Hell yeah they do. Because this is the world we live in. Shit like this happens, and these are the people we task with protecting us from it.

What the fuck are you even doing, standing at the sidelines of that duty and saying "Well I think they use too much firepower to do their job." What world do you live in where, if the cops stop using "military guns", the criminals will understand and stop doing the same?

Brown was shot with Wilson's duty sidearm. He didn't reach into the trunk of his tank and pull out an M60 and empty a belt into him or some shit.

The SWAT guys and "Military guns" showed up later when the streets were filled with people on the warpath. They showed up after people started burning down buildings and looting shit.

Maccus · Post by **Maccus** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:11 pm #46255

How are we still talking about this? You do something dangerous like go for a cop's gun or go for your own gun (even if it's fake, the time it takes for a police officer to register "holy crap somebody's about to shoot me" is a lot shorter than the time it takes for someone to get a BB gun out of their wasteband), you are more than likely going to end up deaded. Has nobody seen Die Hard?

Also, I don't feel like reading through the thread all the way again but hopefully nobody has said "why didn't he just aim for the knee so it can be nonlethal and stop him?" Hopefully we're smarter than that.

nsos · Post by **nsos** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:15 pm #46257

Maccus wrote:How are we still talking about this?

it's not like we can't have a discussion about a hot button topic in a relatively civil manner

"WOW GUYS HOW ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS GUYS WOW GUYS" is fucking dumb and there are still certainly other topics re: darren wilson incident outside of the actual shooting that can be touched on like responsible adults

and it's not like we talk about anything else here but anime and porn so

Maccus wrote:Also, I don't feel like reading through the thread all the way again but hopefully nobody has said "why didn't he just aim for the knee so it can be nonlethal and stop him?" Hopefully we're smarter than that.

thankfully everyone here understands what an artery is so we avoided that one

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:22 pm #46260

I think being shot in the leg would be worse in every way than being shot in the chest.

There's more fat and muscle on a person's torso to help deflect and disperse the kinetic energy. You have more vitals there but you also have this handy thing called a ribcage to protect them. Unless you get hit in the shoulder you shouldn't experience any loss of mobility.

Vs being hit in the leg which has a major artery in it with less protection and any hit at all is likely going to necessitate physical therapy to recover from, if you're able to walk to walk at all afterward from all the muscle and tendon damage. Putting a bullet in someone's knee-cap to immobilize them, or shooting them in the foot, is actually really fucking horrible because they're going to be like that prettymuch for the rest of their lives.

Shooting someone center mass causes more shock:trauma and is more humane in putting someone down. The injuries are more recoverable from. In either case, being shot is much better than being stabbed holy shit. Most people who get shot survive. Most people who get stabbed don't.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:36 pm #46265

An0n3 wrote:
dezzmont wrote:millitary guns
The fuck is a "military gun"?

Guns literally given to police by the millitary. Most swat gear is provided by the US army.

An0n3 wrote:[They trot that stuff out when there's something ridiculous going down.

They actually don't. They were given military equipment under the condition that if they don't use it it gets taken away. So it has become a thing for police officers to use military equipment serving on pretty much any warrent. SWAT teams are over deployed because of the use it or lose it clause in that program. It is why there are videos available showing police officers driving around a real world Ares Roadmaster down the street like it was fucking nothing. Beat cops. In small towns. Towns with no business having swat teams.

An0n3 wrote:What the fuck are you even doing, standing at the sidelines of that duty and saying "Well I think they use too much firepower to do their job." What world do you live in where, if the cops stop using "military guns", the criminals will understand and stop doing the same?

Most criminals are not cartoon characters from payday. These weapons are usually deployed on no knock drug raids, usually against civilians and often against homes that have children in them. The kingpin argument has been disproven time and time again, most data suggests that officers focus their attention on poor people in order to easily seize property to fund their departments. They also disproportionately try to target people of color.. 70% of all SWAT deployments are aimed at private homes for raids. Not a mass murderer going nuts. Or people rioting. To serve drug busts against unarmed citizens. Not forAnd you my friend are also on the sidelines. You are either saying you have the right to an opinion and I don't, or that no one has any right to question the current structure of the police. Neither statement makes sense.

An0n3 wrote:Brown was shot with Wilson's duty sidearm. He didn't reach into the trunk of his tank and pull out an M60 and empty a belt into him or some shit.

Yeah no shit. But Wilson was still trained to be more aggressive and hostile than ever before.

The police are not there to protect you. As has been stated, the supreme court ruled as such. Increasingly police operate by a real world police for profit system due to both civil forefiture and monetization of the war on drugs.

You are free to believe that the police are on your side. But you are wrong.

Maccus · Post by **Maccus** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:40 pm #46270

Those sources seem really, really, really biased, Dezzmont. "www.abuseofpower.info" doesn't even remotely sound like a neutral source.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:43 pm #46272

srifenbyxp wrote:
(Skip to 4:00 for the wrath of the golden bolt)

I wonder how many people know what thats a reference to

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:47 pm #46273

Maccus wrote:Those sources seem really, really, really biased, Dezzmont. "www.abuseofpower.info" doesn't even remotely sound like a neutral source.

Your right. It isn't. Unfortunately in terms of their compliance gain tactics most of the literature I have on that is stuff I own, either purchased for classes or personal reading. I didn't figure it was fair to bust that out and the field of communications isn't as sexy as sociology, so you get less trying to find stuff online. I could probably get something way better if I dipped into my school's research databases, but there is no guarentee anything I find won't be on a sociology or law site behind a paywall when I try to link it to you.

That said there are some really great resources on there too like the government's own site to explain the DOD 1033, or the ACLU's metadata on what raids are actually being deployed for. This information is from the police or government itself and doesn't paint a good picture.

I highly recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini for a more respectable source, as well as The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. These two are probably the greatest authorities in their field, with Robert not only catologuing these police intimidation tactics, but working to create some of them indirectly. Pretty huge guy in the communications field in terms of compliance gain tactics, from basic foot in the door stuff to real mindfuckery. Meanwhile Michelle is a Stanford Civil Rights lawyer and has an impeccable record. The New Jim Crow also is a really light read designed for people who are not used to thinking like a sociologist.

I also recommend The Sociology Project, which goes really deep and heavy into this stuff and is a direct descendant from the book written by the guy who basically founded the field of sociology, but its a super expensive book, and I already spoiled the main idea of the book: "Don't ascribe personal traits to people."

If you want to ignore the stuff where I can't get a good internet source, I suppose that is fair, but it is still clear from the data that the police don't act in the manner we imagine them doing.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:58 pm #46275

Sounds good let me check some of these out:

More African Americans are under the control of the criminal justice system today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850

In 1850 there were only 3.6 million African-Americans living in the country. 3.2 million were slaves.
Today there are over 44 million African-Americans living in the country.

So while it's really cool to open your whole thesis with that hit in truth that's less than 10%, though anybody who read that would probably think it was a whole lot more.

And with that I'm satisfied that the sources you've provided are less-than-objective when it comes to the situation. I'll stick to my scientific journals, government census statistics, etc. etc.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:05 pm #46276

You can be a smug asshole and discard everything I said, but that just makes me think you are a disingenuous jerk. That doesn't make it true, and pointing out she used a bit of rhetoric to strike the point home that we have a disproportionately large amount of African Americans in prison

Spoiler:

and then discarding someone's entire argument is a shit tier move.

Why don't you check out some of the data that I posted that is actual government information. Rather than being a brat about the fact your entire thesis that SWAT teams are deployed to stop the bad people in clown masks is a lie by the police's own admission and then implying you have some super ironclad sources that support you and then, you know, not sharing them.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:09 pm #46278

[youtube]tWUkBxmFUvU[/youtube]

For those people who use Firefox, on which youtube tags are still broken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWUkBxmFUvU

Remie Richards · Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:14 pm

Ricotez wrote: For those people who use Firefox, on which youtube tags are still broken

And Chrome!

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:16 pm #46282

dezzmont wrote:And I will repeat: The actual advice lawyers give you is to actually be as uncooperative with the police as possible without putting yourself in danger for this reason. In all but the most affluent communities the police are not there to help you. They admit they are not.

The reason lawyers advise their clients to shut up is because under Common Law, which both the US and UK operate, the burden of proof is on the State. The cops have to prove that you committed a crime or release you without charge.
Thats what the whole "You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say can and will be used as evidence against you" and 5th amendment are about.

It makes the job of the defence attorney alot easier when they have a blank canvas to work with than a recorded interview where their client has slipped up and indited themselves.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:41 pm #46289

Malkevin wrote:
dezzmont wrote:And I will repeat: The actual advice lawyers give you is to actually be as uncooperative with the police as possible without putting yourself in danger for this reason. In all but the most affluent communities the police are not there to help you. They admit they are not.
The reason lawyers advise their clients to shut up is because under Common Law, which both the US and UK operate, the burden of proof is on the State. The cops have to prove that you committed a crime or release you without charge.
Thats what the whole "You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say can and will be used as evidence against you" and 5th amendment are about.

It makes the job of the defence attorney alot easier when they have a blank canvas to work with than a recorded interview where their client has slipped up and indited themselves.

It is a bit more screwed up than that.

At best talking to the police can't help you. Police, as in the officer arresting you, are not allowed to offer you preferential treatment for co-operation.

However at worst it can screw you. Not even because of police being corrupt or adversairal. A police will almost always be a hostile witness to a defendant outside of extreme circumstances. It is very easy for you to just assume something that makes you say something that makes the police assume you knew about the crime, the classic "I didn't say she was murdered" gambit. And the police may just plain not remember what you say, which can get dangerous if they attribute something you didn't say to you because it really is hard to convince a jury that you didn't say something in a conversation you admitted has happened.

Of course there is also the fact that the police generally will have decided to arrest you once they approach you, and talking to them will increase their chances of deciding to take you in and not decrease it, where as being visibly savvy of your rights tends to make them less likely to want to deal with you. Depends on your neighborhood obviously, but this advice is mostly for street-side questioning and stop and frisks because those two situations are where the police as a rule are adversarial to you, as the goal is to get you to fuck up and do something that lets them take you in.

And for the love of god don't be a dick to police officers. The idea of "Don't talk to cops" is that you want to disengage as fast as possible and make it clear you are aware of your rights and thus 'dangerous.' Not to be adversarial, like An0n3 said that is a good way to at least get them to set intent to harm and whip out a baton.

nsos · Post by **nsos** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:44 pm #46290

Remie Richards wrote:
Ricotez wrote: For those people who use Firefox, on which youtube tags are still broken
And Chrome!

idk about ff but you can get embedded videos on this forum to show on chrome by clicking on that shield and selecting the 'load unsafe script' option.

alternatively, clicking on the lock icon next to the url in chrome's taskbar, then opening the permissions tab and checking "always allow on this site" for the Media option.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:45 pm #46291

dezzmont wrote:You can be a smug asshole and discard everything I said, but that just makes me think you are a disingenuous jerk. That doesn't make it true, and pointing out she used a bit of rhetoric to strike the point home that we have a disproportionately large amount of African Americans in prison
Spoiler:
they make up 14% of the population yet make up 40% of the prison population
and then discarding someone's entire argument is a shit tier move.

Why don't you check out some of the data that I posted that is actual government information. Rather than being a brat about the fact your entire thesis that SWAT teams are deployed to stop the bad people in clown masks is a lie by the police's own admission and then implying you have some super ironclad sources that support you and then, you know, not sharing them.

Dezzmont, if someone is willing to use such crap hyperbole as arguing that more blacks are in prison than were slaves over 100 years ago, without factoring in the massive populate difference, it throws their entire thesis out the window because it shows they're either:
1. A dumb cunt
2. A lying cunt
or 3. A dumb lying cunt
It shows thats they're either completely ignorant of what the data means or unable to correctly interpret it, or are someone that is willing to manipulate the meaning of the data in order to fit their biased agenda.

A thesis is a scientific document, a requirement of a scientific document is that it is empirical and attempts to remove as much bias as possible.
This is why legit scientists will never take social justice warriors social scientists legitimately, because they are unable to argue their point without injecting hyperbole and bias into their reports.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:50 pm #46295

You should probably google the author before assuming that she is an idiot or isn't an authority in her field. Just saying.

Spoiler:

Also just going to leave this here. Not liking someone using deceptive rhetoric to disregard everything they say is pretty antithetic to critical thought. The point is to try to find what works and what doesn't using rigorous thought, not to be lazy, look at one thing you don't like, and bailing.

fleure · Post by **fleure** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 12:13 am #46299

nsos wrote: idk about ff but you can get embedded videos on this forum to show on chrome by clicking on that shield and selecting the 'load unsafe script' option.

Clicking the shield icon seems to work on my version of FF (33.1)

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 12:59 am #46308

nsos wrote:alternatively, clicking on the lock icon next to the url in chrome's taskbar, then opening the permissions tab and checking "always allow on this site" for the Media option.

That fixed the problem on Firefox too, thanks a bunch.

Post by **oranges** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:39 am #46345

It's because the embedded videos are http and the site is https, plugin needs to be updated to use the https links for all the youtube videos.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:00 am #46350

Violaceus wrote:"Hey guys we must protest against police murdering people, so let's smash some windows and burn some cars, this will obviously help our clause"

I think everyone agrees that it is pretty dumb. Even if you think a community shouldn't have police officers that they view as outside invaders forced on them this won't help them accomplish their objectives. It is a breakdown in civil order, plain and simple, at best a representation of how dysfunctional this police department is and at worst an outlet for people people to vent their rage. Individuals make decisions, but groups react.

Incomptinence · Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:51 am

So what will you call cops in a few centuries time? The Infallible Caste?

Post by **MisterPerson** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 7:58 am #46379

dezzmont wrote:
Violaceus wrote:"Hey guys we must protest against police murdering people, so let's smash some windows and burn some cars, this will obviously help our clause"
I think everyone agrees that it is pretty dumb. Even if you think a community shouldn't have police officers that they view as outside invaders forced on them this won't help them accomplish their objectives. It is a breakdown in civil order, plain and simple, at best a representation of how dysfunctional this police department is and at worst an outlet for people people to vent their rage. Individuals make decisions, but groups react.

It's retarded to blame the fact that people are looting on the police. Don't even try to play that game. The looters are the perpetrators and the rest of the town, including the police, are the victims.

"If security didn't want us to greytide them, they should have locked their doors and not carried tasers openly! It's not my fault, it's theirs!"

"If the police didn't want us to loot all these businesses, they should have gotten an indictment! It's not my fault, it's theirs!"

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 9:38 am #46392

>not disarming cops who carry tasers around in their hands

scrub

not even a felony

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:00 pm #46417

What a lot of media conveniently left out are the images of protesters protecting businesses (you know, the job of the police, which they couldn't get to because they were too busy putting on more equipment than most soldiers have on them in warzones), and cleaning up the mess they created.

The goal of these riots is not to loot business, or to cause violence. The goal of these riots is to create change, to let the world know that these people are completely sick of the way the entire judicial system is biased against them. I'm sorry if they inconvenience you, maybe you'll finally pay some attention to these people's issues now.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:36 pm #46420

Ricotez wrote:What a lot of media conveniently left out are the images of protesters protecting businesses (you know, the job of the police, which they couldn't get to because they were too busy putting on more equipment than most soldiers have on them in warzones), and cleaning up the mess they created.

The goal of these riots is not to loot business, or to cause violence. The goal of these riots is to create change, to let the world know that these people are completely sick of the way the entire judicial system is biased against them. I'm sorry if they inconvenience you, maybe you'll finally pay some attention to these people's issues now.

Its a lose-lose scenario for the police and politicians in this situation. They have two options in this scenario, they can either...

Deploy the National Guard and Police, using heavy handed approaches to suppress the riots and protect the businesses. However they will be called out for their "militaristic" and "heavy handed" approach on the matter. People will use that to justify more aggression towards authority figures.
Hold back the National Guard/Police and let the protesters burn themselves out. They cannot be criticised for going in and cracking skulls but they, as demonstrated, are shown to be ineffectual and not caring.

Nothing's black and white, and in this case they have decided to go for the option that is less likely to escalate violence. It's the lesser of two evils, etc.

Stickymayhem · Post by **Stickymayhem** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:56 pm #46423

The reason the cops have more equipment is because not only are there far fewer police than soldiers, but it's far harder to subdue people effectively than kill them effectively. Riot equipment is needed because they are at great personal risk in such close quarters against a mob they aren't allowed to severely injure. Multiple forms of non-lethal weaponry are needed to counter-act the various methods people use to get around them like gas masks and body armour. It's silly to use their equipment as some kind of evidence they are corrupt or a totalitarian force. During the streams everyone yelling "LOOKS LIKE THE COPS ARE PLAYING WITH THEIR NEW TOYS" was really irritating. Now that gas masks are common place something with a wide ranging brute force is pretty much the only reliable and relatively safe option.

Also crowd control is a fucking nightmare. Someone in a crowd of a hundred people can fire on a police officer with total ease, especially if they are aiming at random cops as they are likely to be. Meanwhile those cops can't use any kind of the same force in retaliation because firing into a crowd is moronic. The literal only option in the case of riots like this is pre-emptive crowd control to keep everyone safer.

I'm as left as the next internet fuckwit but honestly the police did the best they could. Yes there is corruption and incompetence like in pretty much any system of more than a couple hundred people but treating police forces as the collective big bad guy is really stupid and not a solution. As far as I can tell there really isn't a solution. So much awful shit is piling up and ready to fail in the next 50 years that anything could happen and we can barely do anything to stop it. Aside from demonstrating some kind of collective anguish these riots don't actually serve any purpose. They are a release of pent up aimless, furious cultural frustration.

Spacezenegger · Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:37 pm

nsos wrote:
paprika wrote:
Ricotez wrote:The goal of these riots is not to loot business, or to cause violence. The goal of these riots is to create change, to let the world know that these people are completely sick of the way the entire judicial system is biased against them. I'm sorry if they inconvenience you, maybe you'll finally pay some attention to these people's issues now.
im too much of a child to have a remotely serious discussion

i understand you have a reputation as le epik coder trole xD to uphold though

How do you even respond to such liberal ignorance? If I were to say the opposite of what Ricotez said was true I'd be labeled as a racist and ignored.

Maccus · Post by **Maccus** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:27 pm #46453

Ricotez wrote:The goal of these riots is not to loot business, or to cause violence. The goal of these riots is to create change, to let the world know that these people are completely sick of the way the entire judicial system is biased against them. I'm sorry if they inconvenience you, maybe you'll finally pay some attention to these people's issues now.

This is by far the most retarded thing I've ever read. Do you think the guy smashing up a store to steal a TV cares about change? Do you honestly?

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:31 pm #46455

Maccus it's a political statement stfu we are fed up with this government stop blowing this for us

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 7:39 pm #46469

Ricotez wrote:What a lot of media conveniently left out are the images of protesters protecting businesses (you know, the job of the police, which they couldn't get to because they were too busy putting on more equipment than most soldiers have on them in warzones), and cleaning up the mess they created..

Which images?
You mean that video of the white women protecting the Papa Johns, she probably worked at, from two black savages?