Ferguson, Missouri

You left the domain out of that link; it's just a relative address at the moment, pointing back to GWJ.

Fixed. Was on my phone and must have only copied half the link.

Of course the officer's department says he did nothing wrong and criticized the father for complaining.

Officials recommend firing of 7 Chicago cops in Laquan McDonald death

Seven Chicago officers have been recommended for termination in relation to the death of teenager Laquan McDonald in October 2014, Chicago police said. The recommendations came from the city's Office of the Inspector General.

Dashcam video of the fatal shooting contradicted nearly everything police said happened the night McDonald died. It showed McDonald veering away from police as he held a knife, not lunging toward officers as police had said.
One officer jumped out of his vehicle and pulled his gun, firing at McDonald six seconds after arriving on the scene.
The officer continued to fire, unloading every round from his gun in 15 seconds.

I have no doubt that the officer felt he was being threatened. That feels to me like an issue of training, something that more cameras won't fix.

I think it would be interesting to have these kind of cameras on soldiers and see their their accounts match what happened. I think a certain blindness is common.

Body cams are becoming standard issue kit in the military (Australian at least and American I'm sure) in certain roles and engagements for both intelligence and accountability reasons. While adrenaline does all sorts of weird things to the body, soldiers are trained to remain actively observant under intense pressure so I think you would see a marked difference in recall ability once their internal RoE flowchart has instructed trigger action is in order.

The fundamental issues with the American police force to me (with my 10,000 mile view ) are lack of training, accountability and respect for the population they are policing. If the police were held to military standards things would be a lot different.

I think it is also a problem that we don't really train our officers in non-combat/descilation/etc very well - or as much as we train in combat.

farley3k wrote:

I think it is also a problem that we don't really train our officers in non-combat/descilation/etc very well - or as much as we train in combat.

I think that is about 1/3 of the problem. The other 2 parts being institutional racism and a need to get money without raising taxes.

farley3k wrote:

I think it is also a problem that we don't really train our officers in non-combat/descilation/etc very well - or as much as we train in combat.

I agree. I think it's a problem that we expect our officers to be skilled mental health professionals and deal with people and situations they were never adequately trained for, all the while dealing with things on a regular basis that would cause major PTSD in most normal people. Being the first on the scene in a domestic violence call to find a woman with multiple stab wounds grasping at the last straws of her life, or trying to fathom the carnage of an 3 vehicle accident where a drunk driver just ran a light and obliterated a minivan full of kids is something that most of us simply can't comprehend.

I'd also toss in some problems with so heavily prizing military experience in recruiting police officers. If the military member in question was an MP, great... but active combat roles are where I'm a little less ok with that happening.

Demosthenes wrote:

I'd also toss in some problems with so heavily prizing military experience in recruiting police officers. If the military member in question was an MP, great... but active combat roles are were I'm a little less ok with that happening.

Demosthenes wrote:

I'd also toss in some problems with so heavily prizing military experience in recruiting police officers. If the military member in question was an MP, great... but active combat roles are were I'm a little less ok with that happening.

Exactly. The fact that we recruit for The Big Boss Man and expect Andy of Mayberry is pretty dysfunctional.

I would also like to see pro athlete level drug testing.

We've got decades of TV and movies that play up the American hero cop to be the one who shoots the drug dealers, beats the confessions out of the guilty, and gets in car chases that leave a dozen vehicles wrecked in their wake. There aren't a ton of cop shows that focus on officers developing community ties, peacefully resolving disputes or even making arrests that don't involve slamming someone to the ground or screaming. It's hard to convince a group of people that grew up with Dirty Harry, RoboCop, and Cobra that having a cop pull their gun and fire off a few rounds at a "bad guy" is insanely dangerous.

Right. You have to watch Continental or British police shows to get an idea of how the "don't beat them, let them talk and catch the lies" approach is carried out...

The Closer, on TNT, got its name from the reputation of the lead character's (Deputy Chief Johnson) ability to elicit confessions from the suspect. (The "spin-off" of the show, Major Crimes, is still more focused on solving the crimes than shooting the suspects.)

Yeah, while I'm not going to argue there isn't a ton of American media that glorifies police violence there is a lot of procedurals that don't. I know because my wife watches all of them.

Really sad thing... Whenever I see that this thread has new unread comments I worry that someone else has been killed.

I was severely put off by the ads for "The Closer", which portray a woman who has lied to a beaten, injured suspect to get him to confess, and then when he pleads with her that he'll be harmed if she sends him back to the prison (apparently she promised him some kind of protection), she turns and snaps "Ah don't *care*".

To me, that seems to sum up the attitude that we have towards prisons and criminals, that the latter are just animals who deserve Hell on Earth as punishment. It horrifies me every time I see that ad.

In the show's defense, it not only acknowledges how problematic gaining confessions is, the last two seasons were dedicated to investigations into her improper conduct, which eventually led to her leaving her position.

The show was then rebranded as Major Crimes, with a former IA officer leading the division, with a focus on following the law and all regulations. The department now calls in city attorney's to monitor their interrogations regularly.

While The Closer was excellent, Major Crimes has become an important show, in terms of social commentary on a variety of issues, in particular gender and sexual preference. It handles these from a very progressive perspective.

Well, that's good, but they are still advertising the older shows this year with the tone of "24". Extremely off-putting.

Are the aggressive police dramas a more modern creation, or is my mother's, aunts', and grandmother's obsession with Columbo skewing my perception of how peaceful older police dramas were?

Hmm, although there are modern police dramas in that same vein huh? Psych and Monk being two good examples.

Hi I'm the generic white person coming to say The Wire in response to your question.
It confronts the realities of clearing corners and larger investigative work.

Yonder wrote:

Are the aggressive police dramas a more modern creation, or is my mother's, aunts', and grandmother's obsession with Columbo skewing my perception of how peaceful older police dramas were?

Hmm, although there are modern police dramas in that same vein huh? Psych and Monk being two good examples.

Law & Order, which ran for something like a hundred years, devoted roughly half of each episode to a trial, which wouldn't happen if they were always shooting the suspects.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Law & Order, which ran for something like a hundred years, devoted roughly half of each episode to a trial, which wouldn't happen if they were always shooting the suspects.

True. Though I was never a fan of how often they would portray the defense attorney as a) amoral b) an assh*le c) evil or d) all of the above. Usually for simply doing their literal job to the best of their abilities.

Zona wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Law & Order, which ran for something like a hundred years, devoted roughly half of each episode to a trial, which wouldn't happen if they were always shooting the suspects.

True. Though I was never a fan of how often they would portray the defense attorney as a) amoral b) an assh*le c) evil or d) all of the above. Usually for simply doing their literal job to the best of their abilities.

At least, they had some very good episodes where they showed how competent and full of conviction the defense attorneys could be. I need to go find the actors, but the dude who is the head writer for the Spanish soap opera episode of Psych and the female attorney that my brain is telling me was Cpt. Janeway.
Off to IMDB...

Detective Munch was the only good thing about Law & Order.

Lennie Briscoe's opening one-liners. Plus he was always putting Baby in a corner.

We should make a law and order Gamers with Jobs unit. We could solve crimes while playing multiplayer games.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

We should make a law and order Gamers with Jobs unit. We could solve crimes while playing multiplayer games.

Why do I feel like I would always get cast as the heavy?

I can just see me being played by Chrisopher Meloni.

Sorry, Paleo, in L&O the Asian guy plays the psychiatrist.

Hey now, that dude from Jurassic Park has been an awesome psychiatrist/psychoanalyst.