Police Shoot Aussie Woman

Riiiiiight. Because you are sure it is happening, each and every time a black or brown man is shot by a cop of any race. I, on the other hand, try to look at each and every case without jumping to a conclusion that the cop is trying to commit slow genocide on non-whites.

 

Why even bring race into it? Can you understand that my race has nothing to do with my perception of these events? I don't hate black people. I certainly don't think black people deserve to die. But I am not going to pretend to support a conclusion I think is false just to keep from offending you.

I'm sure I have a bias. But it's not about race. My perception is that your bias is at least somewhat about race. I came to that conclusion based solely on your comments.

 

I am sure that there are a large number of white people who assume the black person had it coming when a cop shoots him.

And you are not reading my words very closely. I have not said ALL whites. I did not say each and every time. You did. That is known as a strawman argument or a sign of reading comprehension skills.

 

I brought race into it because I live in the real world.

 

Just because you see the world that way does not mean it's the real world.

 

How are you sure of that? I know, you live in the REAL world.

You didn't say this was a problem for blacks. You said it was a problem for MANY whites. I didn't say ALL whites either. But you are throwing blame for a problem at MANY whites and no other race. Maybe this is an ignorance problem and not a race problem. I guess that's hard to see with a chip on your shoulder.

 

What world do you live in? If you think race is not a factor then I'm not sure what to say. You may be an individual who is truly color-blind and disciplined about what happens but I think you are kidding yourself if you think race doesn't play a huge factor in what people assume to be true and what they choose to believe.

So what you are saying is that the vast majority of whites treat the news of a pretty white girl and a young black man being shot by the police the same way. That their initial response is to wait for the facts.

I don't believe that to be the case. I believe there is a significant portion of the white population that treat the two scenarios differently when they see the headline.

 

Ha ha... you're the one who is offended. It's pretty obvious. You were moved to say you don't hate blacks. Who said you did? Yet you felt the need to tell me that. And yet you say I have the chip. Where is that chip in my words. Please point out my chip so I can work on removing it.

 

How many is too many? I bet as a % of all interactions they have, it's going to be a decimal with a lot of zeroes after it.

 

"Had it coming" is too strong for me, but I do tend to side with the cops in these cases until proven otherwise. That's not because I am racist, it's because a) the media almost always gets it wrong in their rush to blame the police (when a black person is shot) and b) just about every dashcam or bodycam video I see where a black man is interacting with police, the black man is running his mouth, fighting with police, not obeying orders, or a combination of those three. In these cases, "brought it on himself" I will own. If you wanna call that "had it coming", well, you sit on your tale and I will sit on mine.

 

I don't believe we are a color blind society. But when say MANY white people believe that a policeman killing a black person with little provocation is ok, I think you are very wrong. Sure there are probably racists out there who do think that way. I have not heard anyone express that thought; nothing even close to that. I think you are making assumptions about how others think without knowledge of how they think.

I think a majority of whites will listen to the facts with minimal consideration of race. I don't know the how vast a majority. Maybe I am naive.

 

That's an issue I have with this whole debate, and you can't discuss it with most people because it sounds horrible to say "stuff is going to happen." The reality is, when you send thousands (how many policemen are there that go into what we would consider high-crime areas) of armed policemen into situations where there's a likelihood of interaction that is at the least tense, do we really think that no one is ever going to use a weapon? And of those times, do we think they're going to make the right judgment every time? I feel like only the most strident ideologue would disagree with those general principles.

So if we understand that mistakes will happen - some of them a product of circumstances and some of them a product of a bad cop - then what percentage is high enough that I can now call this an "epidemic" or a result of a systemic problem that warrants changing how ALL the cops go about their business?

One of the dumbest cliches that politicians and activists use today is "if it saves just one life, it's worth it." NO ONE BELIEVES THAT. Not one. There are plenty of things we could do today that would save lives - but they'd infringe massively on personal liberty. How many kids would be saved from death by outlawing private swimming pools? By outlawing unlocked medicine cabinets? I bet if we required every patron who leaves a bar to take a breathalyzer, it would save lives.

This question always comes down to cost-benefit, whether we want to admit it or not. And you can't make that assessment when you hear someone say "well last year, police shot and killed 30 people." Well, clearly no one wants anyone to be shot and killed by policemen, but in a vacuum that number doesn't mean anything. Was it 30 out of 30,000 stops? Or 3 million stops?

I can say "i have no doubt that cops are shooting people without cause" all day long and be convinced it's true because I can go find some examples of it to support my accusation. The question should never be whether it's happening, but is it happening at a rate that's disproportionate from what we would expect when you factor in the human element and the situations involved?

It's just easier to call people racist and pat yourself on the back for being "woke."

 

You are correct. I am offended by your comments. I find your presumption that MANY white people think a certain way to be bigoted.

This is the chip.

 

And I'd be willing to bet that he's grouping a whole lot of people in that category that don't think the person deserved to die, or should have been shot. But it makes for better arguments if you say that the guy who says "under the circumstances, I can't fault the cop for making that decision" to "good - lousy punk ought to have been shot for it!"

 

% of all interactions they have is not a good standard. By % of all interactions he has had, OJ's murder % is pretty low.

American policing has always involved trigger happy law enforcement dating back to the Boston Massacre, and this has not been limited to one race. It is an aspect of America that has always existed. I am in favor of improvement in the area to the extent possible. My position on the matter does not mean that I think police officers should not defend themselves. I also agree that police shootings are probably justified or at least defensible most of the time. One can think that and still think there are too many times where they are not justified and efforts should be made to limit unjustified or indefensible shootings.

 

What about willful negligence? Most people think negligence is the willful kind.

 

At least from a legal standpoint, they're wrong. If you're willfully negligent, that suggests that you not only behaved unreasonably but knowingly did something dangerous. We'd call that gross negligence in the legal community. It's a higher level of screw-up. For example, rear ending somebody because you took your eyes off the road at the wrong is negligence. Rear ending somebody because you're driving drunk would be gross (or willful) negligence.

 

Well, you were grossly ignorant for not voting for Trump, but I forgive you.

 

I wasn't ignorant. I knew what I was doing.

 

You're conflating two completely different issues. It's one thing to say that if OJ kills one woman, then the women he didn't kill are irrelevant. He's not being punished for all the murders he might commit in the future. He's being punished for the one murder he did (allegedly) commit. (Wait... he actually wasn't punished for that, was he? Oh well, moving on...) He broke the law, and all you have to do is break one to be a lawbreaker.

So now you want to say that if 30 cops shoot one person each, then it doesn't matter that the other thousands of cops didn't. And you also assume that all those shootings were "bad" shootings in the sense that they were either malicious or triggered by racist reactions. Everyone wants to throw out all these stats with no context, which obviously is how we argue in America today because we've become a bunch of mentally lazy people who don't understand logic or common sense.

Now you're talking about a broad sample group, and you can't use the same reasoning that you would apply to an individual. Percentage of interactions is a good place to start because it provides context. It is worthless in reviewing individual situations, but if you're going to start looking at trends, it is absolutely essential.

 

Ain't that the truth.

 

The liberal mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, had to get in the standard warning about Islamophobia. She posted this on facebook:

Noor was an affirmative action hire. Reportedly, instructors said he wasn't ready, but the politicians were in a rush to get him out there.

 

How Qualified Immunity Became Absolute Immunity for Police Officers | Chris Calton

Qualified Immunity: Explained - The Appeal

Two excellent articles on the ludicrous expansion of the definition of "qualified immunity" (from protecting officers who made reasonable judgments in good faith to protecting any officer who didn't break a specific law crafted to his particular situation).