[PassedOut]

mike777, on 2014-November-27, 07:25, said:

They believe the grand jury and the justice system is rigged. The community does not trust the police or the system or process. That is the whole theme.

The belief arises from actual experience. It won't change until the system improves.

[cherdano]

This seems pretty bad:
Report: Prosecutors may have misled the Ferguson grand jury about the law for two months

Just doesn't sound like a mistake they'd have made if they had been invested in the case.

[mike777]

Good point.
It is very possible if this had not been such a hot in the news case the prosecutor would never have brought it to the grand jury. In this case he felt that if he did, if one white guy, made the decision he would be thought of as a racist guy who rigged the system. As such he believed shifting the decision to the grand jury and presenting all the ev idence rather than just one side he could have the community feel that justice prevailed. As in the actual case any decision which justified the shooting resulted in just making the community feel that America is a racist country out to murder young black men and let the cops get away with it.

[PassedOut]

The Washington Post has a troubling story today along similar lines: Did Miriam Carey have to die?

Quote

Carey arrives at the Secret Service kiosk at E and 15th. She drives past the kiosk into a restricted area that used to be E Street NW before it was closed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now only authorized vehicles are permitted.

The White House is not even visible from this outermost perimeter. Someone trying to reach it would have to pass through at least three more. Obama is inside, after a visit to a Rockville construction company.

In the first of three still images the U.S. attorney released from security videos of this encounter, at precisely 2:13:13 p.m., a uniformed Secret Service officer seems to be trying to rap the Infiniti to get Carey’s attention. He and another uniformed officer direct her to stop, according to the U.S. attorney’s report. Carey doesn’t. She makes a U-turn and drives past the kiosk again on her way out.

She is crossing back into public space, at 2:13:30 p.m., when a man not in uniform, wearing a dark short-sleeve shirt, is seen pushing a section of portable fencing against the front of Carey’s Infiniti. At the same time, he’s trying to hang onto what looks like a cooler and a plastic shopping bag.

The man is an off-duty Secret Service officer, according to the report. The U.S. attorney, the Secret Service and the Capitol Police have declined to name any officer involved.

The off-duty officer is not trying to block Carey from entering the restricted area; he is trying to keep her from exiting back onto 15th Street.

According to a tourist bystander quoted at the time, Carey tries to steer around the fence section, but the officer repositions it in front of her. This is the only security barrier Carey ever rams.

The third image (2:13:32 p.m.) shows the off-duty officer tumbling away from the left front of Carey’s car. Officials said at the time that a Secret Service officer was slightly injured but not taken to a hospital.

Five minutes later she was dead.

[blackshoe]

Moral of the story: stay far, far away from "the people's house".

[mike777]

I am in the middle of reading a book about police training written by a cop.

In one section he talks of the President and the secret service.

The secret service come to town and tell the local cops, if some guy or gal seems to be threat they tell the cops to drop to the ground. The secret service is trained to shoot through anyone, cop or civilian, to bring the hidden threat down. They will not hesitate to put a bullet through the cop to hit a threat behind the cop.

http://www.amazon.co...sl_2vju48ztkf_e


The surprise in the story about that woman is that she lived minutes longer not that she was killed.

[kenberg]

Colbert King wrote an eloquent and deeply felt piece for the Post this morning.

Colbert Kng


Any comments that I have can come later, for the moment I will shut up and let you read his thoughts.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2014-November-27, 07:32, said:

But I am not exactly shaking with fear, and therein lies the problem. There is an old book: We only kill each other, The Life and Times of Bugsy Siegle. This of course was in reference to the mafia, but the point remains. Often people are killed by someone they know. Often these eaople are known to be not very good people. Living life as I do, the chance of me being intentionally killed by someone is vanishingly small.

You're not a black man, are you?

Innocent African-Americans are presumably several times more likely to be killed than whites, either because of racial biases by the perpetrator, or just because they live in a neighborhood with a higher rate of violence where they might be a bystander.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2014-November-29, 08:57, said:

You're not a black man, are you?

Innocent African-Americans are presumably several times more likely to be killed than whites, either because of racial biases by the perpetrator, or just because they live in a neighborhood with a higher rate of violence where they might be a bystander.

Sure. The graph at rates makes your point dramatically. Actually I was, perhaps not clearly, intending the same point. You have figures of 51.5 and 2.9 for black and white males, age 10-24. Moreover, if you did the figures for, say white males age 65-80, I think the numbers would go down even further. What I meant by "and therein lies the problem" is that for me, surely reducing these numbers is a matter of civic responsibility, but not one of personal safety. I think I can be as civically responsible as the next guy, but I imagine that the sense of urgengy would be higher if I were in a different demographic category.




I had mis-read the table at Murder

Greenman, below, corrects my earlier version. Thanks.


So there is a lot of data, but data, to be useful, needs interpretation and context. And of course it also has to be read carefully.

[GreenMan]

kenberg, on 2014-November-29, 19:03, said:

I was particularly interested to see that of the 14,548 murders in 2011, there were 9,485 who were male, 1,138 who were female, and 3,925 whose sex was unknown. Say what? I have heard of sloppy investigation but there were 3,925 murdered people whose sex is unknown? Similar questions apply to race. Now I don't always know whether someone is black or white but I can usually tell if they are male or female.

The list is labeled "Murder offenders." In 3,925 cases they don't know (officially) who killed the person.

[mike777]

It is common in many states to not do an autopsy due to lack of funds on hundreds if not thousands of deaths despite the state guidelines calling for an autopsy. Without a ruling of homicide, no case.

Another problem is that often, very often the autopsy is done by an untrained local medical examiner. Actually the medical examiner need not be a doctor and is often not a full time job.

[kenberg]

GreenMan, on 2014-November-29, 19:51, said:

The list is labeled "Murder offenders." In 3,925 cases they don't know (officially) who killed the person.

Oops, my error. I am relieved.

[cherdano]

I couldn't bear to watch the video, but from what I read about the case of Eric Garner, that grand jury verdict is truly infuriating.
And it also again makes the case that the police in the US is out of control - literally, i.e. out of the control of the people it is supposed to serve. See the quote
from Bill Bratton (NY police commissioner) in
http://www.theatlant...ingle_page=true

[helene_t]

Quote

3,925 whose sex was unknown

Sometimes the sex of the victim is difficult to determine, for example if the killer ate the victim.

[mike777]

helene_t, on 2014-December-05, 05:57, said:

Sometimes the sex of the victim is difficult to determine, for example if the killer ate the victim.

The bones should clarify. Also there should be other indicators in the stomach.


In any case there often will NOT be an examination even if the guidelines call for one due to funding.

If there is an examination it will often be by an untrained person.

[mike777]

cherdano, on 2014-December-04, 13:14, said:

I couldn't bear to watch the video, but from what I read about the case of Eric Garner, that grand jury verdict is truly infuriating.
And it also again makes the case that the police in the US is out of control - literally, i.e. out of the control of the people it is supposed to serve. See the quote
from Bill Bratton (NY police commissioner) in
http://www.theatlant...ingle_page=true

Good point.

Also please note this is NYC and a high view case. A situation where funding and training were not an issue.




My local newspaper, not NY, has been running a series noting how funding and lack of training and basically lack of even doing any death examination is common in suspicious deaths in my smaller state.

It would be interesting if these issues are also common in German states?

[y66]

FBI Director James Comey gave a speech today in which he talked candidly about the legacy of racism in law enforcement and what members of his profession can do to ease tension and overcome racial bias.

[kenberg]

I saw a similar article in the Post. His mention of "paddy wagon" : I mentioned in another thread that I had been hauled off in a pddy wagon when I was 17. Apparently the term is no longer in common use and required an explanation. I called it a paddy wagon because I grew up calling it a paddy wagon and I never thought at all of the origin of the word.

I hope that we can find a way forward. It's important. I think that it is also very tough.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2015-February-13, 17:44, said:

I saw a similar article in the Post. His mention of "paddy wagon" : I mentioned in another thread that I had been hauled off in a pddy wagon when I was 17. Apparently the term is no longer in common use and required an explanation. I called it a paddy wagon because I grew up calling it a paddy wagon and I never thought at all of the origin of the word.

I hope that we can find a way forward. It's important. I think that it is also very tough.

It's funny how things evolve: somebody comes up with some term with "racist" connotations. The term is in common use long enough that the original connotations are lost. And then somebody comes along and wants to expunge the term from the language "because it's racist". No. It was racist, but it isn't any more.

I will grant that some terms that originated with racist connotations still have them, but if you have to explain to people that a "paddy wagon" is the vehicle in which the police haul people off to jail, they clearly aren't going to see anything racist in it. For that matter, how many people today know that "paddy" was once a general term for an Irishman?

Or is it still racist because the people it targeted have longer memories than the rest of us?

[aguahombre]

The two common theories about the word "paddy wagon" are that they were named for the predominately Irish cops who drove them or for the predominately Irish drunks who rode in them.

A third is that the word "paddy" was derived from "patrol".