St. Louis Vs. The Police IV: Now It Gets Real!

I think it must vary city-to-city. The donut-destroyers here genuinely do not look like they have much more than an undershirt on, but I'll pay closer attention next time I'm near one. I'd consider calling down to ask, but I fear that would be interpreted as me planning a shooting spree or something equally insane.

Oddly enough, Canada bases a lot of it's legal and police practices based on trends happening in the US, with just enough spin to make it uniquely Canadian.

We also have just as much police corruption, even at the federal level, lies, defacement, slander, etc. as the US, so while the general culture is *somewhat* different, it's honestly not totally different.

They will also use corruption as a means to defend themselves from being responsible, like in the US.

As far as I could find, the number of civilians killed by police in recent years, was less than 10 fatalities - including deaths at a hospital or later date sustained by injuries.

As far as I could find the number cops who frequent Tim Hortons is disproportionate when comparing Canada and the US. #donut-destroyers

as your lawyer, I'm going to have to advise against it.

The police in my city are split between Timmy's and Boston Pizza.

as your lawyer's lawyer, I'm going to advise him to advise you against it.

feh, I'm a lawyer, what would I need you for?

Because only a fool chooses to represent himself.

Personal experiences paint your perceptions. I'm sure an inner city minority teen would have a much different perception of a police officer telling them to get on the ground than a white kid from the suburbs. Likewise, a rural cop isn't going to approach a situation the way an urban officer would.

Also, by shoot first I mean the general mentality of "gotta get the crim at all costs". When your initial goal is to take a suspect down immediately, whether they pose an immediate threat or not, things will escalate along those lines. In the case of Garner, the moment he started to resist, the officers could have taken a moment and just talked to him. I'm not saying it would have changed the outcome or that all situations warrant that approach.

I know I posted an experience on the forum at one point, we have established a citizen's review board with largely symbolic power to review internal investigations locally. I attended their first meeting and had the opportunity to speak candidly with a few of the officers represented there. I noticed that both officers had their sidearm immediately below their hand, one carried a taser on his offhand side nearly behind his back, the other didn't carry one at all. I asked the officer why he had his gun in an instictual location and his taser in a nearly inaccessible location. His response was innocent, but very telling. "If I need to reach for something, I want it to be my sidearm, because it means that I'm in danger." It's a culture of assuming the worst possible outcome rather than simply preparing for it.

that saying assumes he's a layman, c'mon now.

No, even the best lawyers don't represent themselves, because it's not in their best interest.

If something goes wrong with their defense, they can't elect to request a mistrial or a new trial, like they can with representative council.

I call me to the stand.

That was my point.

You should have said that, then, since they're different things.

Since our country uses an election system for things like county sheriffs and chief prosecutors and judges, and since our electorate are a bunch of mouth-breathing morons incapable of thinking more than 5 seconds into the future, we've created the problem where aggressive, unrestrained pursuit of conviction (not guilt, mind you, nor justice) trumps everything. One doesn't get elected for saying, "We convicted 40% of the people we brought before the bench because the others were innocent" (mind you, it doesn't help saying "60% of our arrests were wrongful or unnecessary").

I've been pondering this problem for a long time and cannot find an adequate fix, either, since appointing our justice system would still ultimately be the job of some elected official and, thus, we'd likely end up with serious imbalances. Maybe some kind of process akin to how Supreme Court justices and cabinet members are installed? It might help if we could somehow get the population to actually think about this kind of thing. I've seen more reasonable discussions about the alleged snubbing of Selma at the Oscars than I generally see regarding election issues.

I hadn't seen your anecdote, so thanks for sharing that. And I share your trepidation. I suspect the problem of policemen and their priorities is the same problem we face with most authority figures: the people doing the job are practically the last ones who should be doing the job.

But police, along with prosecutors, defenders, and judges, have the problem of confirmation bias: when you spend all day surrounded by criminals (not just the ones in blue uniforms, but they don't help matters), it's difficult not to assume everyone is a criminal. And with our ridiculously convoluted system of laws, everyone is a criminal, anyhow, which only adds to the confirmation bias. The problem that ought to be confronted, though, is that most policemen don't encounter dangerous situations, but they are both trained to do so (for obvious reasons) and, in my experience, too many of them are itching for a fight and, thereby, ready to do so.

It's the difference between responding to an escalation by drawing your gun and causing the escalation by drawing your gun. Having not been at the scene of this particular incident, I can't be sure which. I won't be shocked in the least if the officers drew their weapons before the suspect stumbled out of the car and I'll denounce them for it if they did.

No single term is long enough to make any effective change so the question is not "how to get elected."

The question is "how to get re-elected." That's a matter of riding the pendulum whichever way it's swinging.

With that being said, I think we'll see some interesting "roll-over" in St. Louis over the next 5 years. Which will likely have a causal correlation with the public's view of current police tactics in the city.

Oh, I was hoping someone would say that.



That's my skull a year and a half ago. I was going 20 miles an hour, lost control of my bike, and slammed face-first into the concrete. I fractured the left orbit of my eye and completely fractured my skull, resulting in brain hemorrhage (none of which required surgery, thankfully). I was able to stand up, get myself out of the street and onto the "sidewalk" (I was in a construction zone, so it was really the gravel on the side of the road), and make two phone calls. And, no, my phone did not have voice recognition. This was while telling my friends to calm down while I figured out what to do. I lost most of my visual acuity after about 15 minutes (I could only see big shapes). About an hour later I went into cardiac shock and was dragged to the hospital, but while amped up on adrenaline, I was clear and functional.

People really underestimate what the human body can and will do in times of emergency. This is another reason why cops are a bit trigger-happy with people in intense situations. Those stories of mothers lifting cars to get at their trapped kids are nothing compared to what a red-blooded teenage male can accomplish on a cocktail of adrenaline and testosterone, fear and fury.

For those interested, I wear my helmet now.

It also really depends on the person involved.

I've been in too many stressful situations with family members where the default position is loud dramatic histerics where they run around being the direct opposite of helpful and rational.

Mothers lifting cars off children (or people on PCP) is deliberatly (or medically) ignoring the limitations and signals of your body (e.g. Pain). Adrenaline and testosterone also reduce pain receptors, if I remember correctly. So do endorphins.

It tends to go beyond what you believe yourself capable, but is within the upper echelons of human limits.

Most people never reach those heights normally, but it's medically ignoring the receptors due to an influx of adrenaline out of fear of something much worse happening.

Granted, it sounds like a page out of science fiction, but statistically speaking, it's roughly on par with people being struck by lightning (without the aid of pcp) as it becomes necessary in the mind of the individual and the individual's body to release enough "power" shall we say, to do what would ordinarily be seen as impossible.

Still though, the human body and brain places psychological limits on physical and emotional strengths as a preservation tactic.

No clue why my photo link went wonky, but let's hope it's fixed now. Anyhow...

"Stressful situation" is a bit vague. Hysterics seems to be a response when one feels there's literally nothing they can do. At least, that's probably the only time I could see myself getting like that.

Standing up to get out of the way of potential oncoming cars while fighting the effects of a severe concussion or attempting to flee from the police in a similar condition after having knowingly attracted their attention are really more mental effects than anything else, anyhow. My comparison to lifting a car was a weaker simile than I'd like, but disregarding the pain of shredding one's muscles is the effect I was aiming at, rather than magically turning into Superman because Timmy fell down that damned well again.

It does pay to remember that I'm male, though. A Western-acculturated male is taught not to admit weakness or defeat. I know for a fact that part of why I hoisted myself was because I had ~30 other people, mostly guys in their 20s, around me. This is no doubt also why I managed to barely hold myself together until I got back to my close friends' house. An alleged car thief armed with a gun and in the presence of an accomplice strikes me as having the same HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE macho motivation, above and beyond simply not wanting to get caught by the po-po.

Anytime head trauma is involved, the outcome is incredibly variable. Some people trip on a sidewalk and can barely speak with a mild concussion, other's have significant injury and are still very lucid.

I don't believe anyone can be certain of the state of his mind immediately following the wreck, and that extends equally in both directions.

Until we get further information, we have so little to go on... nonetheless, my experience of traumatic brain injuries doesn't make a strong case for this deceased.

There's my story, where I was able to maintain my composure and was operable, but deteriorated after a certain amount of time. My little brother was once struck in the head with a baseball and blacked out for a couple minutes. And I've heard stories of people wandering dazed and confused.

I'm going to give the officers the benefit of the doubt (which I'll admit they may not deserve) and suggest that a.) they gave the suspect reasonable time to hear and respond to their commands and b.) the suspect was moving in a coherent enough manner to suggest threat. That latter one, though, could be open to a LOT of interpretation. Depending on how often they've seen people strung out on hallucinogenic or other disorienting psychoactives, a concussed person staggering around might still be interpreted as a potential threat, even if his gun was dangling limply in his hands. If he was sprinting with the weapon clutched, that's quite different.

Maybe we'll eventually see the officers' vehicle video. Based on similar cases, that's not likely to be released until March at minimum, so right now this is a lot of speculation. And right now I'm choosing to argue against my own suspicions by suggesting these cops were operating within reasonable guidelines. We'll see what we see if this story manages to make the news cycle again as the investigation continues. I've not been able to find any follow-up yet.

Assuming you're right about his state of mind, which is all speculation, he was still a fleeing individual, armed or not, shooting him when he posed no immediate threat to the officers was excessive. More information might change my position on that, if he was even raising his hand with a gun in it, regardless of the direction, I could see justification for shooting him. But, with lack of better information, I see a dead kid who was attempting to run away being shot in the back by zealous or under-trained officers.

i salute the men brave enough to be police officers in this overly politically correct country of ours

thanks for having the bravery to risk being badmouthed, arrested, or forced out of your job by liberals who have never been in the vicinity of an armed criminal to protect the safety of said liberals

Nice try, bubba. I've more blatant d-baggery, to be sure, but not by much. If you truly "salute" them for their efforts, you would leave it at that instead of trying to inject pathetic political talking points into it.

i'm sure there are men who would keep their gun holstered while an extremely frazzled criminal has an automatic weapon in their hand

there's a word for those men, dead

you can say he was fleeing, but it only takes a split second decision to turn around and drop you, they gave him a chance to drop the weapon and he didn't.. if they draw but don't fire it escalates the situation and drastically increases the chances one or both officers will need a body bag

you don't draw unless you're prepared to shoot and not drawing in that situation would've been extremely dangerous to the officers

I wonder if there is hidden, more important, issue than police officers behavior today in the US; what if people are just generally becoming less responsive to the law and civility, and not just law enforcers?

There's no way of knowing without a good study because the media can't be depended on. Everything seems to be just a political points scoring exercise these days.

Well, the supreme court would disagree with your assertions. Plenty of officers diffuse situations every single day in this country. I find it quite interesting that more citizens are killed by police than the other way around. If it were the case, not shooting everyone who could possibly pose a threat if they stopped running away and suddenly decided to turn around and start shooting would have quite a different result.

That kind of thinking it what leads to things like shooting a teenager who has a candy bar in his hand. I'm sure you'd feel differently if you'd ever had an encounter with officers who feel the way you do.


I'd wager it's something of a feedback loop. Someone gets the ball rolling, then it's an endless cycle of aggression and response. I don't have any particular problem with the police, but I damn sure don't give an inch on my civil rights anymore. I've been burned far too many times in the interest of civility.

if more officers were killed by citizens than vice versa, i think the efficacy of the police in general would need to be called into question.. they're trained professionals, most armed criminals are carrying primarily for intimidation and have no training.. in a life or death situation the police should be winning most of the time

(yes, i understand you quoted that to imply something about thug hunting, but it's not the only way to interpret the data and that's far too vague a statistic to carry any weight)

if i was in an encounter with an officer, i would immediately make myself as non-threatening as possible(visible hands, cease movement, state compliance)

you would do the same thing, i'd hope

it's not really that complicated

If it is a cycle something needs to break it. Would imagine this would be priority #1 for the country's leadership. It can easily reach a point of no return if left unchecked for long. Citizens and law enforcement need to have a healthy relationship built on trust.

If you ask me, I would just say this is another symptom of the disease- the disease being extreme wealth disparity.

I stated it to prove a point, the police are more dangerous to citizens than citizens are to the police. It's perfectly evident in the words we use. Police are meant to be a civilian protection and service force, yet we commonly differentiate them from civilians. We give them military weapons without military training. We guard them from accountability and allow them to have lobbyist groups. In most cases, they're no better trained or screened than the success rate of picking random people off the street, handing them a gun, and telling them to go catch bad guys.

There are tons of great officers who try to do the best they can and take their oaths seriously. But, there's far too many who don't. And when it's your brother or cousin or child that ends up in their path, you might have something different to say besides "Liberals!".