The US killer guns, death and destruction thread

By: snafu - 27th August 2016 at 23:45 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Oh dear.

A US National Football League (NFL) quarterback has refused to stand for the national anthem in protest at what he sees as racial injustice.
Colin Kaepernick, who plays with the San Francisco 49ers, remained seated as the anthem was played.
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour," he explained.
Some fans booed the player when he took to the pitch...

...Kaepernick has been outspoken on social media about race relations and a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way," Kaepernick told NFL Media.
"There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.''
He appeared to be referring to police use of deadly force which sparked the Black Lives Matter protests.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37205032

Of course the majority will, metaphorically, shoot the messenger and ignore the message.

By: snafu - 28th August 2016 at 11:33 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Ah ha, I called for nutters; more fool me.

Killer GUNS

Hi, long time no appearance.

Yes, I am well aware that you believe them to be tools, like a screwdriver or a spanner. But if I don't have a spanner I cannot get the wheel off my bike: true?

Guns don't kill people rappers do / So do the police / Woo woo woo… - Goldie Lookin Chain

By: snafu - 29th August 2016 at 00:49 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Maybe the problem as they see it isn't so much that there is a black on black crime problem (if they didn't have access to guns...;o)) but that the US police appear to withdraw their guns and fire them for the simplest of reasons. They are almost like a toddlers security blanket - something to grip on to when there is a scarey problem. Worldwide there will always be a lot more interest in a story with a video of a cop shooting a man in the back for running away from a traffic stop, complete with the false claim that he had made a grab for the officer's weapon, which makes police all over the world look like they were in on the lie. Man shoots other man outside a bar happens all the time, but the cops being caught out and seen to be caught out is newsworthy.

In Britain armed police are supposed to yell 'ARMED POLICE' before using their weapons; obviously there will be occasions when the situation makes that impossible, and there have been times when no witnesses heard those words being called although all the police insist they heard it despite the fact that the requisite video either never caught the warning or was mysteriously either not working or the video itself 'disappeared'. The man in Indianapolis coming out of his garage wouldn't have seen the police and they were apparently behind cover anyway so there seems to be no reason not to shout a warning that the suspect was covered, any problem after the warning could allow the shooting to have happened without the bad PR for the cops. Under these circumstances the man would - hopefully - have heard the warning, lowered his gun to the ground and all would have been sorted out. Had he been a bad guy and levelled his weapon they could have shot him, or if he had lowered it in surrender they could have arrested him, but to just fire at someone because he had a gun and without verifying his intentions is, essentially, stupid and always going to lead to bad publicity for the police one way or another.

The boy ran; he believed himself to be in trouble and like all kids would do his best to get away. The cops hit him once and he surrendered - so what the hell was the point in firing at him after his hands were up? The door was locked, the boy was wounded, there were three officers and the only reason that makes any sense is that they were upset that he had made them run and one of them wanted revenge. Shooting whilst running might keep the boy from slowing down, for fear of being shot, but - in the eyes of the officers - also stop him from trying to fire back, yet not only was the boy given incentive not to stop but others who see this video and hear about the story will have second thoughts for fear that if they do stop they will still be gunned down: it could be said to be the same option as surrendering to Isis and getting shot (beheaded, burned alive, gunned down by kids, etc) or keep on running and maybe getting away.

Wasting my time telling you this, but the others who read it can make their own minds up so don't forget that when slinging racial stereotypes around...

By: snafu - 15th September 2016 at 20:47 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Mayor Andrew Ginther appeared to choke up as he called for the community to come together to help ensure children remain safe. He questioned why an eighth-grader would have a replica of a police firearm.

“There is something wrong in this country, and it is bringing its epidemic to our city streets,” Ginther said. “And a 13-year-old is dead in the city of Columbus because of our obsession with guns and violence.”...

...An officer responding to a reported armed robbery shot and killed a 13-year-old boy during a chase when the teen pulled from his waistband a BB gun that looked “practically identical” to a police weapon, authorities said Thursday.

Because the officer was white and the boy black, the case has brought inevitable comparisons with the 2014 fatal shooting in Cleveland of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Columbus police are early in their investigation but say the differences in the Wednesday night shooting of Tyree King and the Cleveland case are stark.

“The only thing similar in nature is the age, race and outcome,” said Columbus police spokesman Sgt. Rich Weiner. “The facts are not similar, and that must be reiterated.”

Officers investigating the armed robbery report on Wednesday spotted three males east of downtown Columbus who matched the description of the suspects, authorities said. Two of them ran away when officers tried to speak with them.

The police chased the pair into a nearby alley and tried to take them into custody. That’s when Tyree pulled out a gun, and one officer fired his weapon, hitting the boy repeatedly, police said.

Tyree died at a children’s hospital. Authorities identified the officer who fired as a nine-year veteran of the force named Bryan Mason.

At a news conference Thursday, Police Chief Kim Jacobs displayed a photo of what she called a “replica” of the BB gun that Tyree had.

“Our officers carry a gun that looks practically identical to this weapon,” she said. “As you can see, it looks like a firearm that could kill you.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/white-police-officer-in-ohio-shoots-black-boy-13-armed-with-bb-gun/article31894549/

Cannot fault the police officer - if the guns were practically identical what else could he do?
But why are 'BB' guns made to look that realistic?
My eldest son - against my wishes and best judgement - bought himself one which looked like some sort of pistol, but the upper bodywork and gun barrel was painted bright orange. He wanted to over paint the weapon because that is what his mates have done; apparently one of them has an M16 replica which originally had large areas of orange has been resprayed with disruptive camouflage over the orange, with orange bits that weren't over painted being toned down - sheer stupidity. But you can't forbid a 19 year old from anything easily; luckily he ran out of BBs and soon swapped his gun for a '£150(!) top of the range skateboard', which he managed to snap about a month later...
But the fact is that the police would have difficulty deciding whether it was a real weapon or a fake, and any movement seen as threatening would result in death.

By: snafu - 16th September 2016 at 00:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

It was essentially a rhetorical question - they are made to look realistic so that they give their owner/handler the sort of sensation they'd hope to get from having a real weapon in their hand but without the opportunity for death when they pull the trigger. And they do, all the bloody time. 'Pick your pellets up,' I'd say, only to the response 'there's too many of them...'

By: snafu - 22nd September 2016 at 23:22 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I was talking with eldest daughter about the protests in Charlotte, North Carolina, this afternoon and whilst investigating some questions she asked I came across this incident.

West Virginia cop fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun
By Radley Balko September 12

We’ve tracked countless cases here where cops were able to keep their jobs after killing unarmed people, killing people after responding to the wrong house, killing people and then lying about it . . . the list goes on.

Give the Weirton, W.Va., police chief some credit. He’s come up with a new spin on the the same problem. He just fired a cop for not killing someone.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

After responding to a report of a domestic incident on May 6 in Weirton, W.Va., then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader found himself confronting an armed man.

Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot.

“I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me,” Mr. Mader recalled, noting the silver handgun was in the man’s right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.

Mr. Mader, who was standing behind Mr. Williams’ car parked on the street, said he then “began to use my calm voice.”

“I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother.’ Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.

“I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop” situation.

Mader was responding to a 911 call from Williams’s girlfriend. In that call, she told police that Williams was threatening to kill himself, not anyone else.

What Mader did upon arriving at the scene is a hell of a lot braver course of action than simply opening fire when the suspect doesn’t immediately disarm. What Mader did is in fact exactly what we want cops to do when someone is in crisis. It’s also precisely what law enforcement officers say they do on a daily basis — put themselves at risk in order to save lives. Mader should have been given a medal. Unfortunately, two more cops then showed up, and quickly shot Williams dead.

As it turns out, Williams’s gun wasn’t loaded. There’s no way any of the police officers could have known that. But it does show that Mader had read Williams correctly — he wasn’t actually a threat to anyone but himself. His life could have been saved.

The Weirton police department then refused to name Williams for three days and assigned an investigator to look into the shooting . . . who then promptly left for a weeklong vacation. Then came the punchline.

Mr. Mader — speaking publicly about this case for the first time — said that when he tried to return to work on May 17, following normal protocol for taking time off after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to go see Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander.

In a meeting with the chief and City Manager Travis Blosser, Mr. Mader said Chief Alexander told him: “We’re putting you on administrative leave and we’re going to do an investigation to see if you are going to be an officer here. You put two other officers in danger.”

Mr. Mader said that “right then I said to him: ‘Look, I didn’t shoot him because he said, ‘Just shoot me.’ ”

On June 7, a Weirton officer delivered him a notice of termination letter dated June 6, which said by not shooting Mr. Williams he “failed to eliminate a threat.”

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-fired-officer-who-did-not-fire-at-man-with-gun/stories/201609090080

The city mentioned two other incidents in firing Mader, but it seems clear that his failure to kill Williams was the motivation for his termination. Even the rare cop who gets fired often gets to keep his pension. Mader won’t be getting one.

After he received his termination notice, Mr. Mader sought attorneys to help him fight the city. He was told because he was still a probationary employee in an “at-will” state, he could be fired for any reason and there was no point in fighting the city.

One attorney told him the best he could hope for was to ask to resign instead of being terminated.

“But I told [the attorney] ‘Look, I don’t want to admit guilt. I’ll take the termination instead of the resignation because I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” Mr. Mader said. “To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think I’m right in what I did. I’ll take it to the grave.”

Over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article about the longstanding problem in which even the rare bad cops who do get fired are often able to quickly find work at another policy agency. Mader, who served a tour in Afghanistan and has two sons under five-years-old, told the Post-Gazette that he’s now studying for a commercial truck driving license, but he’d consider another job in law enforcement if he were offered one. I hope that happens. I hope he’s given the same second chance that corrupt, trigger-happy cops are given. My hunch is that he’ll be driving trucks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/12/west-virginia-cop-fired-for-not-killing-a-man-with-an-unloaded-gun/

Suffice to say the man was black.

The two other incidents mentioned when the officer was fired are mentioned in the original story:

The notice of termination included two other incidents in which the city believed Mr. Mader acted improperly: An incident in April where neither he nor two other more experienced officers - the same two who were involved in the Williams’ case - reported as suspicious the death of an elderly woman who appeared to have had a stroke and fallen in her home, though no one has been charged in her death; and an incident in March when a woman complained that Mr. Mader was rude and swore at her when she asked why her husband was being arrested for disorderly conduct over receiving a parking ticket.

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-fired-officer-who-did-not-fire-at-man-with-gun/stories/201609090080

Mader claims he was not questioned about either event or given an opportunity to clarify his position, believing that these incidents were used to cover for the other two officers who were involved in the shooting, so as to not need to admit that their actions were wrong and the almost certain lawsuits that would follow. Mader was a probationer and therefore easier to drop.

Additionally, Mader was fired 6 June, received notice of the termination 7 June when it was delivered to his home by another officer, yet his chief told a press conference on 8 June that all three officers involved in the shooting were 'back at work and doing fine'!

Further, the deceased man's family are not happy. Various reports gave the number of shots fired as as few as one and as many as four; the killing shot was found by the independent pathologist they hired to have been fired downwards, behind his right ear, yet the police reports did not indicate how this could be. A full week after the press conference that lied about all three officers working and doing fine, the deceased's family were given the same information - eight days after Mader was fired.

But the prospect is, the real danger is, that this will inform other police officers that if you see a gun, you shoot, or you are out of a job.
Rather than sizing up the situation, as Mader with his marine training did, the police chief wants unthinking drones to resolve - monkey see, monkey do.
And they are protected since they are rarely subject to investigation, let alone prosecution.

Does this worry you, America? It will worry the rest of the world.