Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Why are so many police forces across the nation becoming paramilitary. Heavy weaponry, vehicles like those used in Afghanistan the right to use snipers against unarmed people in a conflict and other hard measures.

What needs to happen is a definite enquiry into the actions of the pole officer concerned as his actions hardly look balanced or reasonable.

Maybe we should do it the British way: Cameras on every street corner

Quote from: rjhowie on 2014-08-19, 21:09:04

What needs to happen is a definite enquiry into the actions of the pole officer concerned as his actions hardly look balanced or reasonable.

I had assumed the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit but all I can find is one from the ACLU.

Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2014-08-20, 03:37:26

Maybe we should do it the British way: Cameras on every street corner

I'm a little surprised there isn't dash-cam footage. It is a bit concerning the police have armored vehicles but a simple dash-cam and microphone in the squad car is missing. Plenty of force available to keep the public accountable but none for the officers? A camera or even audio alone would of stopped this from getting out of hand from the jump. If he was attacked and pushed into his squad car where a struggle led to the use of deadly force it would be proven easily that way. Whether or not it was excessive may be disputable if the dash-cam missed the shooting but only to a point. In some jurisdictions a willingness to fight police and even go for their weapon is considered an immanent threat to public safety and deadly force is authorized. Youtube is littered with dash-cam footage of officers handing it better but as the suspect flees more lives get put in danger and it ends sometime later the same way, with the suspect shot.  

There was a time when photographing or filming required people's authorization...

Laws have to grow with technology

Multiple witnesses in riot-torn Ferguson, Mo., said that the unarmed black teen killed by a white cop attacked the officer in his patrol car before the teen was shot, according to a new report...............continued

Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department's top brass told FoxNews.com.

“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”

According to the well-placed source, Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson to stop walking in the middle of the road because they were obstructing traffic. However, the confrontation quickly escalated into physical violence, the source said..

“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move," the source said. "They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face.

The source claims that there is "solid proof" that there was a struggle between Brown and Wilson for the policeman’s firearm, resulting in the gun going off – although it still remains unclear at this stage who pulled the trigger. Brown started to walk away according to the account, prompting Wilson to draw his gun and order him to freeze. Brown, the source said, raised his hands in the air, and turned around saying, "What, you're going to shoot me?"

At that point, the source told FoxNews.com, the 6 foot, 4 inch, 292-pound Brown charged Wilson, prompting the officer to fire at least six shots at him, including the fatal bullet that penetrated the top of Brown's skull, according to an independent autopsy conducted at the request of Brown's family.

Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket in the fracas, and was left dazed by the initial confrontation, the source said. He is now "traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified" that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will "make some kind of example out of him," the source said.........continued

..........professional police officers who take their oaths seriously, a body-cam could save a lot of trouble when Internal Affairs has to investigate, and when/if the DA has to get involved. For guys who wear the uniform and carry a badge so they can push people around--- we need to get rid of those SOBs anyway. The cameras would sooner or later reveal those guys for what they are.

Right were the Indians when believing that photographs destroys the soul.

The police in some departments are trigger-happy these days.

For me this is an entirely new experience. I have been in several conflict zones: I was in civil war regions in Georgia, in Gaza, I illegally entered the Kaliningrad region when the then Soviet Union strictly prohibited access to westerners; I was in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Vietnam and in China; I secretly met dissidents in Cuba. But to end up arrested and roughly treated and snarled at by police and see the actual inside of a prison – for that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in Missouri in the United States of America. [...]

The numbness in the wrists is gone, and this absurd interlude will certainly trigger no nightmares for me. No one shot at us, no one really brutalized us. But my childlike trust in the police, my belief that – even in the USA, which I have always so passionately defended from their many critics – the police, despite their often harsh and unsympathetic manners, is your friend and helper – that belief is gone.

Of course, you think it was over a couple of sodas, Sang. 

Powell walked out of the Six Stars Market, at 8701 Riverview, without paying for two energy drinks, and the store owner told him to stop. A few minutes later, Powell came back and took a package of muffins or pastries, Dotson said, adding that the store owner walked out with him and asked him to pay for the items. 

You really don't understand the problem do you?

Reminiscences from the correspondent of Die Welt, the well-known rabble-rousing rag and consort of communists (Axel Springer was the German Murdoch).

It is something about something called the freedom of press

For curiosity, was the police man arrested?

My mistake. Energy drinks and muffins. You really don't understand the problem do you? Further, you think I'm automatically siding with Powell. In fact, I'm merely pointing toward another maelstrom with police saying one thing and an eyewitness video showing something completely different.