Real World Event Discussions

Do you support our current president?

POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 17:33
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FINN MAC CUMHAL

Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
AHEM ! May I remind you that tasers are alternatives to the use of GUNS. Somehow I don't think that if a person fails to lie down on the ground you'd automatically pull out your gun and shoot them. Or would you Finn ?

No use of a taser should ever be automatic, but yes, if the officer has reason to believe that the person will require physical restraint before he consents, the taser is a much safer option then physical restraint.

I know that it may seem like the taser is worse then physical restraint, but it only seems that way. Tasers are not alternatives to the use of guns. They are alternatives to the use of physical restraint. Guns are very high on the force continuum and tasers are very low - these two things are not in the same category, but because tasers can be effective at distance, they can extend the use of nonlethal force, into the range where only a gun might be effective.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

PIRATENEWS

Saturday, April 12, 2008 4:28 AM

Quote:
Do you support our current president?

The correct answer to that question is DICK CHENEY.

Any other answer results in Taser execution by Fatherland Security death squads.

This shall be expedited on future airline flights, when all passengers are required to wear Taser bracelets.

As we learned in Basic Military Training, when one fuks up, all must be punished.

Quote:
"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence[sic] had very little to do with that decision."
-Hero, Real World Event Discussions

Kiddie porn ring by Congressman Barney Frank and convicted GOP bank robber Larry King
www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/article_archive.htm

PS: My answer to the trick question is, that I actually signed under penalty of perjury in federal court:

Quote:
"Yes, I support the immediate arrest of our current president based upon probable cause that he aided and abetted the treasonous 9/11 Massacres, along with the immediate arrests of all those who aid and abet him."

"Remember the 2nd Amendment with the right to bear arms? That's not done for hunting or fishing, Our forfathers put that right in there so that we have the ability to rise up if our country becomes oppressive."
-Governor Jesse Ventura, Navy SEAL bomber, author of Don't Start the Revolution without Me, Colbert Report, April 7, 2008

"I kicked myself when it initially happened that the light didn't go off but I was so shocked that this thing had even taken place that I apologize for not being more aware. When I finally did watch Loose Change, I went through every emotion you could imagine, from laughing, crying, getting sick to my stomach, to the whole emotional thing. To me questions haven't been answered and are not being answered about 9/11. Two planes struck two buildings....but how is it that a third building fell 5 hours later? How could this building just implode into its own footprint 5 hours later - that's my first question - the 9/11 Commission didn't even devote one page to that in their big volume of investigation. How could those buildings fall at the speed of gravity - if you put a stopwatch on them both of those World Trade Center buildings were on the ground in ten seconds - how can that be? If you took a billiard ball and dropped it from the height of the World Trade Center in a vacuum it would hit the ground in 9.3 seconds and if you took that same billiard ball and dropped it 10 stories at a time and merely stopped it and started it it would take 30 seconds - if you dropped it every floor of the World Trade Center to the ground, simply stopping and starting it on gravity it would take over 100 seconds to reach the ground. Jet fuel is four fifths kerosene - which is not a hot burning fuel - and they wanted us to believe it melted these steel structured girders and caused these buildings to pancake collapse to the ground. I was on the site within two weeks after it happened and I saw none of these pancakes - wouldn't they all be piled up in a huge mass on the ground and yet everything was blown into dust - when you look at it from that aspect none of it makes any sense. Never before in the annuls of history has a fire caused a steel structure building to fall to the ground like these two did. Upon looking at the film in super-slow motion and the way the buildings fell and comparing that to the way that they do like a controlled demolition of a hotel in Las Vegas, they both fell identical. I did watch the film of Building 7 going down and in my opinion there's no doubt that that building was brought down with demolition. When I was watching Loose Change with a friend of mine - he happens to work for a company that helps build the Boeing airplanes and they said that when the engines completely disappeared and were destroyed, his response was, excuse my French - bulls

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CHRISISALL

Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
That’s true, but the Rodney King case is many years old though. It is history not current events - if we have to wait almost 20 years for people to gain some degree of perspective in their view of the police then that doesn’t seem very fair or balanced.

I bring that example up because it's universally known, it didn't take ME 20 years to 'gain perspective'

.
But what about my example of a bad cop in my above post? Was he having a bad day? Was he stressed on that quiet night? And I have other examples & stories...am I just a bad cop-magnet? Did I encounter the ONLY 4 bad cops on Long Island...or did I just get a percentage of a larger group? What's your opinion, Finn? Do you see me as some loud-mouth trouble-maker, bringing it down on himself?
If you need me to, I can detail all my encounters...

Troublemaker Chrisisall

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
But what about my example of a bad cop in my above post? Was he having a bad day? Was he stressed on that quiet night? And I have other examples & stories...am I just a bad cop-magnet? Did I encounter the ONLY 4 bad cops on Long Island...or did I just get a percentage of a larger group? What's your opinion, Finn? Do you see me as some loud-mouth trouble-maker, bringing it down on himself?
If you need me to, I can detail all my encounters...

What about my example that I’ve never met a bad cop? What I don’t see is any of your examples demonstrating that cops have some intrinsic non-human property to them - anymore then my experience suggest they are all saints. They are human beings who work in a high stress environment and they make mistakes, they have attitudes that get the better of them and sometimes they are real assholes, but mostly they are just like you and me. And you’re human too and quite frankly Chris, you have a stubborn attitude, a problem with authority and a desire to selectively read ideas on this board. I don’t know if that translates into your real life personality, but if it does, you’re probably a lot more frustrating for police to deal with then you think. I doubt you’re any more a saint then I am or any more a saint then those police you think are a band of assholes. What you should do is try to stop imagining that is all the fault of a some band of bad cops out there that wants to stick it to you and start understanding that we are all humans with human failings, and then maybe you‘ll understand my point.

And I'm not saying that any of those examples that you gave are not significant. It's quite possible that there could be a problem - but right now you seen to expect there to be a problem and that will cloud your judgement.

CHRISISALL

Saturday, April 12, 2008 4:32 PM

Thanks for the reply Finn, that right there just cleared up any misunderstanding of your position on this for me- I think we agree much more than we disagree on the subject. We just argue our POV so intensely, I think we sometimes miss the overall point we're trying to make to each other.

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
quite frankly Chris, you have a stubborn attitude, a problem with authority and a desire to selectively read ideas on this board. I don’t know if that translates into your real life personality, but if it does, you’re probably a lot more frustrating for police to deal with then you think.

Like Kirk said, I shall try to be less rigid in my thinking.

Actually, I am quite cooperative when it comes to Police- I operate from the angle that they deserve my total respect, until proven otherwise- like I said, I believe MOST of them to be a force for good in society.
I save my inner smartass for these boards & my employers.

Reminds me of something I read as a child:
"When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid." I guess that applies to me AND the Police...

The good Chrisisall

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Saturday, April 12, 2008 5:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Thanks for the reply Finn, that right there just cleared up any misunderstanding of your position on this for me- I think we agree much more than we disagree on the subject. We just argue our POV so intensely, I think we sometimes miss the overall point we're trying to make to each other.

Probably. I think that happens a lot.

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Actually, I am quite cooperative when it comes to Police- I operate from the angle that they deserve my total respect, until proven otherwise- like I said, I believe MOST of them to be a force for good in society.
I save my inner smartass for these boards & my employers.

Me too. As big an asshole as I can be, I always “Yes, sir” or “Yes, Ma’am” every officer I meet. It may not seem like much but a cooperative and respectful attitude will reassure the officer that I am not a threat and in return they are more likely to respect me.

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Reminds me of something I read as a child:
"When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid." I guess that applies to me AND the Police...

It probably applies to everyone.

RUE

Sunday, April 13, 2008 6:40 PM

"Tasers are not alternatives to the use of guns."

But that's exactly how they are marketed by the company that makes them:

According to Taser International (the company that manufactures tasers), tasers are a non-lethal alternative to deadly force. (And what might that 'deadly force' be one could ask himself ? The answer would be guns.) And that's how they are justified when the city councils debate whether or not to spend the money to buy them for their police. Rather than have to deal with police-involved shootings, tasers keep police protected without the legal hassles of guns. Or so the sales pitch goes.

Instead, they are being used as the next step above a verbal command. That's a LOT of mission creep that you don't admit to.

BTW - the existence of 'bad cops' goes far beyond an individual 'being human' having a bad day - and that includes planting evidence, rape, theft, murder and collusion. And the occasional dumping off of an ill and legless man direct from the ER where they refused to treat him onto the streets of skid row. But that is in addition to the bullies and creeps who feel they can do what comes naturally because they're behind a badge and they've never been caught or punished.

And for the record there are MANY high-stress, dangerous jobs where people don't react with violence. Just think of that next time you see a 'first responder' with a defibrillator in their hands or charging into a burning building.

***************************************************************

SIGNYM

Sunday, April 13, 2008 9:07 PM

Finn, I guess what you're saying is that while you acknowledge some cops are "asshole cops", that occurs mostly from individual mistakes being made, and not from either a common mindset or a culture of corruption. In other words, you assign honorable motives to the majority of police officers, and that it's relatively easy to find a few egregious examples on YouTube simply by = Znumber of honest cops * Y probability of field errors.

I thought about this for quite a while. In my encounters with police, they've always been professional and followed the "rules of engagement". The two time when police (or security) presence frightened me was (1) when they responded on a "hot prowl" to a break-in at my home and (in the dark) mistook me for the robber and (2) when I was followed by [insert three-letter agency name here] on a bogus tip that I might have been the anthrax mailer.

But then, I'm a demographic that police automatically give a "pass" on: I'm white, and (unmasks self) female, middle class, college- educated, and at this point rather older than younger. So when I was pulled over for speeding (I was) and for a fixit ticket (lost gas cap) or when I reported an assault (attempted robbery) or failure to stop at a stop sign (WHAT stop sign?) or carrying rowdy passengers (OH LOOK! A FEMALE COP!) they "ma'am" me about as much as I "sir" or "ma'am" them and everything has been by the book.

BUT. I've worked with two colleagues who later became police. I have police members in my family, and I have good friends who do NOT fit my demographic.

What really opened my eyes to what "police culture" does to a person are the two people that I worked with who decided to bail out of the technical arena and go into police-work. The first one was a natural bully anyway, but the second...

The second was a Japanese-American male. By education, he was a sociologist. If anyone should have been aware of the effect of subcultures on a population, it would have been him. He was... when I worked with him... quiet and diffident. After one year as a cop he was about the same. After two years, he was transformed: Not only had he physically bulked up and adopted "the stance" (feet apart, arms crossed) he openly bragged about breaking headlights or tail lights in order to issue what the Montebello PD called "AH" tickets. In other words, if you "dissed" the police in any way, you'd pay... one way or another. Also, my friendship with others who DON'T fit "the demographic" tells me that "rules of engagement" are so flexible as to be meaningless.

In other words, the PDs (and other security agencies) pretty much make up the rules as they go along. And they have MANY sets of rules: one for old white ladies, one for young Hispanics, one for this neighborhood and another for that

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, April 13, 2008 9:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"Tasers are not alternatives to the use of guns."

But that's exactly how they are marketed by the company that makes them:

According to Taser International (the company that manufactures tasers), tasers are a non-lethal alternative to deadly force. (And what might that 'deadly force' be one could ask himself ? The answer would be guns.) And that's how they are justified when the city councils debate whether or not to spend the money to buy them for their police. Rather than have to deal with police-involved shootings, tasers keep police protected without the legal hassles of guns. Or so the sales pitch goes.

That’s right. They extend non-lethal force into a region where previously guns were the only option. That does not mean they are an alternative to guns. They cannot replace guns. When lethal force is necessary, you cannot use a taser. BUT prior to tasers, lethal force or the threat of lethal force was often the only avenue available when the situation called for NON-lethal force. Tasers are an alternative to physical restraint - they do not and they cannot replace lethal force; they simple provide the option of non-lethal in a situation where non-lethal is called for.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, April 13, 2008 10:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
In other words, the PDs (and other security agencies) pretty much make up the rules as they go along. And they have MANY sets of rules: one for old white ladies, one for young Hispanics, one for this neighborhood and another for that

I think the police are aware that different situations call for different responses. I don’t think the police apply the same rules across the board, nor do I think they should. How an officers deals with an 80 year old woman in a relatively safe neighborhood should be completely different from how they deal with a 25 year man in a rough neighborhood. I don’t really see anything wrong with that.