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Failure to Communicate
In regards the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting, once the body camera video was produced there didn’t seem to be much to talk about as far as the incident itself. A police officer showed up for a call and within less than ten seconds had to shoot an aggressor with a knife. But I was wrong; apparently, there is a very large cohort of Americans who honestly believe that the officer was wrong to take the actions that seem obviously necessary to the rest of us. I read this morning about an encounter with a radio host and a guest that was sort of enlightening, but in reality disturbing. After the quotes I’ll tell you why:
“DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God had argued over Ma’Khia’s case. “Every case is different, and in this case, if I pull up to a scene and see a girl chasing another girl [and] about to stab a girl, my job as a police officer is to make sure that girl doesn’t get killed,” Envy said at the time. “And the law allows me to stop that killing or that stabbing by any means necessary. That’s what the law allows me to do, on both sides.”
On a later broadcast: “On Monday, April 28, Dr. Umar delivered a passionate statement regarding the case and condemned officer Reardon’s deadly use of force. “I work in schools, Charlamagne,” Dr. Umar explained. “I have seen lunchroom aides with no police training. No bulletproof vest, no knife-proof vest, no gun in the pocket. I have seen elderly Black women and elderly Black men take knives and other weapons out of the hands of students during lunchroom riots. You mean to tell me … a trained, armed police, with a bulletproof vest can’t get the knife outta the hand of a 16-year-old?”
Here is the thing: I have literally no point of reference for a discussion with someone who thinks students possessing “knives and other weapons” during “lunchroom riots” is an occurrence anything short of catastrophic. There appear to be millions of Americans who aren’t outright shocked at a 16-year-old girl attacking other people with a knife while making deadly threats. I’ve seen the interview with the neighbor and the street looks like a fairly typical suburban neighborhood, but the people involved in the dispute seem to be anything but typical. If you watch the body cam video you see what appears to be an adult male kicking one of the women to the ground and then again when she is down. He immediately starts yelling at the officer after the shots are fired.
I just don’t get it. I don’t know if I could have any sort of conversation with people that do this or defend it. It’s a different America than the one I live in. What is going on?
Published in General
This was in Floyd’s criminal history.
Um.
OK firstly, I agree that policing should be local, and styles of interaction will vary, and that we should not be surprised to find that urban police are less warm and fuzzy than suburban police, who, in turn are less all-smiles than rural police.
Because of their population distribution, a black person person can reasonably conclude that the different treatment is about race, rather than class or location.
The feeling of ‘they’re out to kill us’ among minority populations switches very easily between ‘the cops’ and ‘whites’. That’s why we have new phrases like ‘white adjacent’, and why ‘Uncle Tom’ gets a resurgence.
Yes, but there are certain groups who are just innately inferior and can’t really ever understand statistics. I think we all know who I’m talking about here; journalists.
These two statistics you mention are particularly annoying in their dishonesty.
I don’t know if black-on-black violence is more likely in cities than in rural areas, but with more blacks in cities than in rural areas, the raw numbers are definitely higher.
Maybe politicians too.
I can’t take a man who refers to himself as “tha God” seriously.
”Is tha God here?”
”No, he went to Arby’s.”
Cops work for cities or counties, but they can still follow national standards. Think of firefighters. They work for a city or county and while they have different types of challenges, they should all be trained on best procedures. One important thing about having national standards, is that it helps the people that cops have to deal with. Who wants a different standard every time they get pulled over? This is important, because I want my local police to be effective in controlling crime. When there are badly trained cops, it hurts the entire profession and then makes me less safe.
I’ve got you beat, I stop taking someone seriously as soon as I get to “Charlamagne.”
How’s this for a national standard, Don: Don’t fight with police, don’t resist arrest and don’t flee.
Cops working to national standards will be nationally controlled. New York and California will control your police.
Firemen don’t arrest people and throw them in jail.
Having different standards is beneficial, not a detriment. If everyone has the same standards then improvement is slow and hard.
And…that’s why we don’t put engineers in charge.
Lots have state standards, too. You’re essentially arguing to nationlize the police.
That’s not a good idea, and it’s not going to solve or stop problems where those same people, under some sort of magical federal training mandate, have to make life or death decisions in seconds.
You really think a nationalized training program is going to create magical failure-proof human robots? The human world is not math.
We should then have:
National Drivers Licensing Standards
National Gun Permitting Standards
National Cupcake Baking Standards
The thing is, right now, a cop is somewhere wrasslin’ some chowderhead to the ground. Did his or her training work well enough to handle the situation? Would it have escalated? Would lethal force have been required?
Who knows? I know though, that providing an Approved Tactical Response Checklist that officers responding to 911 calls must walk through, so all standards are adhered to, will mean more deaths, not fewer, because Fed Cops ™ will simply stop taking action. They will become federal bureaucrats, locked into the standards behavior created by idiots, and enforced by simpletons.
But yeah. Let’s nationalize everything. That’ll fix it. That’ll stop untenable situations from occurring. It’ll weed out bad cops and make criminals think twice before doin’ dirt.
Much preferred to one stupid national standard.
Yes!!! That book is very eye-opening and why I tend to be fairly skeptical of them. And it’s not a very long read.
How to Lie with Statistics
I actually bought a couple or three print copies a while back, one brand new for keeping, the others are “reading copies.”
Fair enough. I think, though, that we need a word for people who are ‘lying to themselves’ that differentiates from lying to others while knowing the truth.
Isn’t that “deluded?”
One of the nice things about duels was that the participants were obliged to keep them out of sight and out of range, and they knew full well that the law was not with them.
People who fight with crowds watching – well, there’s a reason we have referees for that kind of sport.
I think it’s like ‘schizo’, ‘depressed’, ‘manic’, and similar – the terms are properly kept to the literally mentally ill rather than the casual usage.
Isn’t self deception still deception? And isn’t the great majority of behaviors resulting from self-deception matters of convenience?
People who self-deceive are less to blame that people who purposely deceive others. The self-deceived need help, the other-deceiving need censure.
I can see that. But they can also be equal at times. Who is more harmful, the self-deceived Munchhausen’s-by-proxy mother who dresses her 5-year-old son up as a girl and calls him Luna and a few years later schedules him for hormone blockers? Or those professionals who propagate the whole transsexual fantasy?
Come to think of it, who are these professionals? Everyone seems to take transsexuality as a matter of faith; who is actually advocating for it? For example, where would Angelina Jolie have gotten the idea from? Hollywood personalities?
(PS: I hear Meghan Markle is thinking of having Harry transition.)
Isn’t “he” about halfway there already? Sure sounds like it to me.
I like to think that people can be deluded and yet not mentally ill. Look at dyed in the wool NTers.
We read that book when I was in High School, I forget for which class, I think it was AP Biology to be honest.
Well, actually… Okay,fine, I won’t pile on!