America is such a violent country. No one comes out unscathed from this madness. Police fears citizens, citizens fear police. Only the gangs and criminals are the winners.
Policing in the UK is based on the principle of public trust and approval. i.e Peelian principles. That doesn’t mean there aren’t terrible racist cops or thugs in the ranks because there are, but generally it means cops aren’t on power trips, recognise they are the public and there to serve the public, not just arrest people, and they also exercise discretion and common sense. Again, not perfect and there are rotten apples, but there is that ethos in policing.
I think that is lacking in US forces. They’re more like a civil military, separate from the public in mentality and adversarial. That said, I think US cops are also burdened with societal problems that shouldn’t be theirs to deal with - mentally ill, homeless, addiction, guns. I’ve seen enough “officer involved shootings” to realise most were justified in the moment. More than half are straight up felons getting into gun fights with cops. Others are gray though - e.g. a crazy homeless dude pulls a knife and charges a cop and of course they shoot the guy - which is justified - but why did society care so little that it came to this? Money spent on programs for addiction, homelessness and mentally ill would pay off in terms of less criminality and less shootings. As would changing policing to be more Peelian in nature.
Is the lemmy swarmed with bots already? I am not even American and it is wrong to accuse whole country of something. I don’t even do that to Russians or certainly not Chinese even though their governments are way more evil.
I suspect you have some agenda or maybe even are paid in rubles. Weird to see here I thought no geopolitical actors would bother.
In general, fire ant don’t bite, they sting. Not that it changes what a piece of shit the cop is, but I wish the headline was accurate to what happened.
They do both. They use their mandibles to bite and latch on, while they spin around their latch point and repeatedly sting in a circle. The twisting (from them spinning in circles while latched on) and repeated stinging is what creates the characteristic burning sensation that gives them their name.
You think most of us want it like this? What do you want us to do? Organize? Do you know how much the system has been built against that? Against a voice? Against acting out? Its a grinding slog out there, if you want to make your voice heard you basically need to make a career out of it, or have a lot of money to be able to organize.
She was dropping her son off as school. Her son was still in the car. She drove into the bus lane accidentally. The officer’s response was that he was “scared she was going to run someone over” … while her son who goes to the school is in the car. You could verify that in a 5 second radio call to the front office.
We need to re-think policing in general if cops are allowed to enforce their worst fears instead of seeing what’s actually happening.
I don’t believe for a second that that cop was actually afraid. This reads like he is a bully who grasps at every opportunity to pounce on someone who is in a weaker position than him. Classic bully behaviour that will continue as long as he gets away with it.
My read was that she was trying to bypass the line of cars dropping off kids, and he was trying to stop her so she wouldn’t run over a kid exiting a vehicle. If you’ve ever dropped off kids at school in the morning, you know this is a major nono. The problem is that, if you rush someone yelling “STOP” in that situation, you run the risk of making them panic and do something even more unexpected (like accidentally turn into the bus lane). It would have been better to flag her down calmly, and explain the problem. But this guy was so obsessed with enforcing The Rules that he got aggressive and created a much worse situation for everyone involved.
Without knowing the exact layout of the lanes, I couldn’t be sure, but I do think you’re correct. She did need to stop, but he only escalated the situation.
Considering she had PTSD from a previous police encounter, it sure seems like a regular crossing guard or traffic director without a gun on their hip would’ve prevented this from escalating in the first place.
You can point out that someone fucked up and incited the initial incident while still acknowledging that the response was overblown. If someone breaks into my house and I kill them thats one thing, if I instead lock them in a shed and torture them for a month they are still a victim while also initially putting themselves into the situation. Ones a fuck around find out scenario the other is disproportionate insanity.
anybody still waiting around for government and democracy to fix this shit is extremely naive. government is just a form of organization. we have all the tools to organize without the help of government.
Because a group to punish cops is just cops punishing criminals with extra steps.
Systemic oppression is a problem but the police are a symptom rather than the source.
Police is a tool by those in power, one of the main objectives is to protect private properties because ownership of resources is what competition has always been about.
I support pretty much any left pushing operation but my personal angle(dream) would be to further radicalize the youth into being more class conscious and to occupy the space we need to not just survive but thrive as decentralized network of solarpunk communities.
They’re supposed to catch them. Then a whole other branch of the justice system judges what sort of punishment is warranted and yet another branch of the justice system see to the actual punishing. If things went by the book.
Unfortunately the system doesn’t exactly work as it’s supposed to.
I don’t think people are smart or sane enough for self governance. Just look how many trump supporters there are. To let them wild and expect to have some sane self organisational system that isn’t outright slavery of minorities…
Democracy is a screening test for anarchism, first step. If you fail it, there is no sense pursuing the latter. Only country apparently smart enough to arrive at the next step - direct democracy, is Switzerland.
What we all really mean is that the current borders in the age of internet grow weaker and weaker. People want to have their own countries with likeminded folks. It’s only a matter of time before internet tribalism materialises in reality as the web permeates our culture deeper and deeper.
USA will probably split sooner or later unless someone can unite people again.
Even if you could get away with it, it’s only a matter of time before some vigilante decides that they too like the cops are the law and starts abusing people.
They did the same in the US and Mexico many times already! Start a group of people that protect the others. Obviously, they’ll need guns to do so. They’ll need to recruit new members willing to apply force and so in no time you have the next gang that cuts people into pieces and hangs them from bridges for failed drug sales while they kidnap their next victim for quick money.
Vigilantism never ends well, we are not batman, we are human.
People keep acting like this is some sort of gotcha, but I don’t see it. The police are a part of the government, every dollar in the system is taxpayer money.
The complaint that the money isn’t taken directly from the police department budget is a Red Herring. The state violates people’s rights, the state pays the damages. Fair’s fair.
Would I like to see damage taken from police budgets and pensions? Sure, but we actually need the government to make that the rule. What better way to convince them by making police settlements cost a fortune for the government?
If you have a case to sue the police, even for a little bit, you should do it. Let the state deal with the chaos law enforcement brings them. It’s honestly a great use of your tax dollars to sue the police and win. Do it enough and you might convince others in government to give a shit and consider the current state of policing to be an actual liability. Money seems to be the only language these assholes speak.
And if we do one day see police hold the liability for their actions, there will undoubtedly be larger budgets assigned to police departments to handle that, but then we actually get to see the massive cost police are to taxpayers, and we might actually convince the so-called fiscal conservatives to slash police budgets.
This doesn’t actually work in reality because governments are constantly underfunded and nobody is going to tie a funding shortage in, say for example, 2024 to a lawsuit settled in 2022 over a crime that happened in 2018.
We saw the response to the George Floyd protests in that nobody is going to change their mind about the issue when they’re fed a constant stream of propaganda from police, Facebook, YouTube, the news, etc painting police as heroes because that’s what they portray in movies and TV.
They’ll just whine about how crime is so bad because they don’t have enough funding, and they need more officers/equipment. All they have to do to convince people of this is simply not do their job and every Karen in the city will be screaming on Facebook about how “you get what you vote for” and “this is what happens when you defund the police.” Before too long they’re awarded half the city budget and go back to breaking the law and trampling people’s rights.
Right, as someone who is, that’s terrifying. Meanwhile, Everytime anything like this happens every other cop says I wouldn’t do that., but somehow this keeps happening.
Yea that’s fucked what they did to her. I’ve had them bite me and it was just a few and on my legs, I can’t imagine the pain having them attack your face.
How even? Are the cops supposed to search the ground first? Like seriously, regardless of the circumstances leading to the arrest, how to prevent that?
What a stupid fucking take. She said there were fire ants on her face. In that instance you move her. I’m not a cop, and I know this, and wouldn’t do this to someone, because I’m not a fucking moron.
I swear to god you guys who stick up for the cops don’t even think for five seconds before hungrily jamming pig cock down your throats for all to see.
Yes, cops are supposed to check the ground they are shoving someone’s face into to prevent injury to that person. Maybe not shove any nonviolent faces into the ground at all? But that is too much to ask, I guess.
Did you even read the article? She accidentally drove the wrong way in a bus lane. Her son was still in the car. The police officer freaked out and instead of calmly talking to her, they called backup and the officer who came freaked out even worse and slammed her to the ground on an ant hill and then ignored her saying that ants were boring her face. You don’t see any point where this could have been avoided?
Kindly go put your face on a fire ant nest, and then come back and tell us how the cop shouldn’t have moved her once she yelled about the fire ants.
The nests can sometimes be hard to spot, so I’m not voting one way or another on that. But basic human decency says, if you accidentally put someone on a fire ant nest, you move them asap once you notice.
You’re assuming that this was an accident and that he didn’t do it on purpose (he absolutely did). Humoring this theory though, let’s consider your question:
**Q: **Should a cop survey his surroundings, including the ground, before restraining someone?
**A: **Yes, of course, you would be a fucking idiot not to. Furthermore, forcing a person into some sort of hazard and injuring them, even unintentionally, is a problem to be avoided.
How to prevent that?
Your idea seems to be to do nothing at all so I’ll start by saying that’s fucking stupid.
Some might say to abolish law enforcement, but honestly, with compassionate police training emphasizing de-escalation, harm reduction, and civil service, we might actually have an ethical system someday. Also by firing cops on the first offense for use of excess force and blacklisting them from law enforcement for years requiring re-certification to ever become a cop again. And abolishing police unions and narrowing legal immunity for on-duty cops so that they don’t get away with maiming and killing people. And not funneling all of the excesses of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex into the hands of every suburban police department so that they can act as a standing army in our turnkey dictatorship.
Since you are the only person that actually replies: Has nothing to do with the case at hand, as I said (or the person I reply to) generally speaking. Since thinking abstract is hard, here an example: There was an armed robbery, they got the person cornered, one officer gets ready to charge him in order to disarm. This works. Person now on the ground. Face is wherever it happened to land. How to avoid that? Is that possible?
If you take someone into your custody via an arrest, you are then responsible for their wellbeing. This is common sense.
Imagine if someone is in the middle of a shallow river getting arrested. Would it be okay to hold their head underwater while you are restraining them? Of course not.
The officer is responsible for making sure that the suspect is not put into harms way during the course of having them in their custody. If they fail that very basic expectation, they should not be in law enforcement period.
Body worn cameras stop a lot of cop abuse (and also false accusations of abuse) since in the aftermath of some incident the footage often speaks for itself. As is the case here.
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