Rendered at 12:21:17 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
NikolaNovak 22 hours ago [-]
I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they seem to keep them drawn and hair triggered throughout the search? :O
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
keybored 19 hours ago [-]
> > I'm just being honest.
Just a salt of the earth officer telling it like it dog-gamn is. :|
mmaunder 19 hours ago [-]
I think she got a few "oh shit she spoke truth" reactions around her which is what prompted that.
Henchman21 11 hours ago [-]
That should be immediately disqualifying for an law enforcement officer. Saying that on the record should end their career immediately. Alas, we don't live in a just world and they will likely be continuously promoted.
slyall 6 hours ago [-]
So what happens to all the other cops that believe that but don't say it?
account42 22 minutes ago [-]
They at least know that it's not acceptable.
bean469 5 hours ago [-]
Although just anecdata, I have heard the exact same point from US cops numerous times in private conversations
drsalt 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tomhow 4 hours ago [-]
This kind of comment is unacceptable on HN. It breaches these guidelines...
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.*
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
roryirvine 19 hours ago [-]
It's rare even in NI.
PSNI had one single firearm discharge in the two year period covering October 2023 - September 2025.
Plus 948 uses of irritant spray, 496 uses of their baton, and 38 taser discharges in the same period. And 23,489 uses of "unarmed physical tactics".
That's for a population of around 2 million. By comparison, SFPD had 10 "officer involved shootings" in the past year for a population of 800k, a rate fifty times higher than that in NI.
Anthony-G 19 hours ago [-]
True. The PSNI have had an excellent record – particularly given the difficult context they work in.
Yeah, it was very different back then. And not just the police - we had the army on the streets with weapons drawn, routinely aiming at passersby.
The political situation in the late 1960s provided plenty of kindling, but it seems clear that most of the sparks that actually caused the conflagration came from the barrel of guns held by soldiers and the police. They were directly responsible both for the death of the civil rights movement and the collapse of the government, and without the heavy-handed response it's likely that the settlement of the late 90s would've happened 25 years earlier.
It's actually a great example of why the militarisation of policing should be resisted at all cost.
BobaFloutist 16 hours ago [-]
The one thing I'll say in defense of American cops is that they are police a population that's vastly more likely to have their own guns, too.
Of course it's not like American cops have recognized the danger that poses and politically aligned themselves with reducing or restricting access to guns, so they lose a lot of credit there, but they are genuinely facing a better armed and therefore more dangerous population.
roryirvine 15 hours ago [-]
To be fair, guns aren't exactly unknown in NI, either!
There are 153k people who have legal firearms (so about 10% of the adult population, vs about three times that in the US). That's largely farmers with shotgun licenses (NI is pretty rural by European standards) plus licensed "weapons for personal protection" for people exposed to threats for whatever reason as a legacy of the Troubles.
And then there are some unknown number with illegally-held guns - the main armed groups put their weapons "beyond use" as part of the decommissioning process in the 2000s, but inevitably some will have been missed, and then there are the dissident groups who still hold significant amounts of weaponry.
Hard to put an exact figure on it, but if you guesstimate it at a weapons ownership rate at about half that of the US you probably wouldn't be too far from the truth.
So even after accounting for the differential in gun ownership, SFPD are still shooting people at ~25x the rate of the PSNI.
atherton94027 16 hours ago [-]
Canada has the same rates of gun ownership as America and you don't see cops come up with guns blazing like they do here
EdwardDiego 14 hours ago [-]
If Canada is like New Zealand, which also has a similarly high rate of gun ownership - it's largely different types of guns - that is, guns for hunting, not for killing people - very hard to conceal a rifle or shotgun compared to a pistol.
dogemaster2025 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ceejayoz 15 hours ago [-]
> Let’s bring data:
> Source: ChatGPT
Please tell me this is a joke?
dogemaster2025 15 hours ago [-]
Why? Do you have different data or you just don’t like the numbers?
I fail to understand why you cited ChatGPT in the first comment instead of just linking the sources in the first place. That was obviously the critique of your comment, and it seems bad-faith to claim it was because they "just don't like the numbers".
dogemaster2025 5 hours ago [-]
I guess I was equally lazy as the people that need spoon feeding instead of doing their own research. I brought data to a comment that didn’t and didn’t think it was going to be too controversial. Nobody who complained brought any data; they just complained.
I agree and have the same reaction, but I also wonder how long before we accept "ChatGPT" source like we do Wikipedia.
For ChatGpt answers we reasonably expect to cite actual sources rather than "Source: ChatGPT".
For Wikipedia, most of us just stop at "Source: Wikipedia".
dghlsakjg 10 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia is easily viewed by anyone, and their sources are right there for further verification.
“Source: ChatGPT” frequently doesn’t include the link to the original chat, so is hard to verify that is the actual output, and we all have experience with ChatGPT wholesale making up facts when it is led towards the conclusion, or just inventing facts and sources.
I personally treat ChatGPT “facts” like “facts” from Reddit or Meta. There might be a grain of truth in it, but treating it like an actual source is a fool’s game.
Open-Sourcery 15 hours ago [-]
"My source is that I made it the fuck up"
dogemaster2025 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
14 hours ago [-]
MrSkelter 3 hours ago [-]
Couches aren’t known to have guns and the cops in Afromans house search the couch as if it’s about to bite them.
It’s a very American mixture of fear and bravado in a feedback loop which means every piece of evidence of cowardice has to be compensated for with even more overt aggression.
Hence cops in full body armor with guns drawn behaving like black and tans in Palestine.
watwut 17 hours ago [-]
In Britain, there is independent civilian investigation when cops kill a person. It creates pressure to not kill, because you wont be judged by buddies.
tialaramex 12 hours ago [-]
Well, the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) has mandatory referrals, not only when police apparently shot somebody, or they die in police custody, or in a traffic accident with a police vehicle, but also cases where the police were recently involved. e.g. Sharon calls police because she says her husband punched her, when officers attend Sharon now says he didn't mean to and seems reluctant to leave or for her husband to be arrested, attending officers decide to leave it as it is, an hour later Sharon is dead and her husband is her presumed killer - that's a police involved death and so that gets referred to the IOPC even though nobody thinks a cop killed anybody.
However, the IOPC is not mandated to conduct investigations. So it is possible (though less likely for a shooting) that the IOPC will just kick it back to local police. It is also possible (and more likely) that they will oversee but use local police to do the actual work, just because that's much cheaper and their budget is limited.
_menelaus 14 hours ago [-]
Have you ever been to inner city America? Honestly curious. I couldn't imagine policing it without using a gun sometime.
GJim 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
petesergeant 21 hours ago [-]
If you need some context, you can look up the history of policing in Northern Ireland on Wikipedia, where British police were happily shooting other British people for many years.
GJim 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
EQmWgw87pw 21 hours ago [-]
So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
cortesoft 21 hours ago [-]
I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
antonymoose 15 hours ago [-]
Historically speaking, there were a few shoot-outs in the 80s and 90s. The Hollywood shooting and I think one historically bad incident with cocaine traffickers in Miami - bad days for the police showing up with .38 revolvers and a shotgun or two fighting against a dedicated enemy with AK style weapons and body armor.
The sadly predictable response of the police in America is to overmatch the “enemy.” Presume they have a weapon for crimes of certain classes, obvious violence crimes like kidnapping and also drug crimes, which poor Afroman was accused of both.
Personally, having been SWAT’d as a young man, it’s not that I think they shouldn’t have access to armaments. It’s that their rules of engagement are obscenely lopsided to the point that they just bring them always, all the time, and will not use common sense judgement.
This could have been a knock-and-talk from Officer Friendly and if things didn’t go well - send in a higher level of officer. Starting at bootleg Navy SEAL raids for every accusation is a blight in modern law enforcement.
17 hours ago [-]
EQmWgw87pw 21 hours ago [-]
Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
danlitt 20 hours ago [-]
> Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default.
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
socalgal2 19 hours ago [-]
> Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns
False. Innocent bystanders are killed by police discharging guns, but rarely. And, while the goal should be zero, it will never be zero
tsimionescu 18 hours ago [-]
Let's aim for a max of once every year, then, over the entire USA. And once that's achieved, let's aim for once every few years. Once a decade should be good enough, you probably won't get better than that.
The EU has a much bigger population than the USA, in a smaller space, and I'd bet they're already around this number.
socalgal2 18 hours ago [-]
The EU doesn't have armed criminals like the USA. The EU also doesn't have police being killed by criminals. It's close to 50 to 1.
realo 17 hours ago [-]
Well... the sicilian mafia comes to mind... the french can be quite violent too... Western Europe is not so bad either, with guns.
I guess you mean "normal" non-criminal people in the EU are not allowed to have AR-15 assault rifles in their homes, that they can use if they have mental health issues.
I personally believe that is one of the reasons the USA has so much gun violence. Get rid of the guns in people's homes and things will change for the better.
Why is it not zero? This strikes me as the exact sort of calculus they used way back when they stopped chasing fleeing suspects in vehicles: the danger to the public is too high to justify the use of force. If you can't hit your suspect without hitting other civilians, then don't fucking fire! And no I don't particularly care if the LEO's life might be in danger either, that's literally the job they signed up for: to put themselves in danger to enforce the law. It's ridiculous that cops just get complete power of life and death every time they feel a spot of stress, and have to be handled with kid gloves by the general public less they be murdered in the streets.
socalgal2 19 hours ago [-]
I will never be zero because perfection is impossible. It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities. We should work to get them down (enforcement against drunk driving, maybe checkpoints, stronger driving tests), but asking for zero accidents just isn't reality.
ceejayoz 19 hours ago [-]
> It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities.
"Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year, municipal officials revealed this week."
"The limits were enforced with 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy based on the national “Vision Zero” policy, with the goal of achieving zero traffic injuries or deaths. Data collected by Liikenneturva, Finland’s traffic safety entity, shows Helsinki’s traffic fatalities have been declining ever since."
Dylan16807 17 hours ago [-]
That's one city, for one year. Their rate of traffic fatalities is still above zero, I guarantee you.
ToucanLoucan 19 hours ago [-]
That's not analogous at all. Everyone drives, and so everyone is a possible source of a car crash. Police are not (in theory) just whoever wanders into the goddamn precinct. They're (in theory) trained professionals, educated in what they do, and therefore entrusted with both the force of law, and the deadly force they wear on their belts.
And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!?
socalgal2 18 hours ago [-]
1300 is not the rate of innocent bystanders being killed. It's the rate of people killed by police period. Maybe if we didn't have police being killed by criminals in the USA then they wouldn't need to go in armed and scared for their lives.
ToucanLoucan 18 hours ago [-]
By definition, every person the police interact with is innocent, because at such time as they are talking to a cop, even being detained by one, they have not been convicted of a crime.
Dylan16807 17 hours ago [-]
That's not the definition of 'innocent', and that argument extremely falls apart when the word 'bystander' isn't omitted.
Come on, you know what people are talking about when they say "innocent bystander".
ToucanLoucan 16 hours ago [-]
> That's not the definition of 'innocent'
No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and even if you'd like to craft a scenario next where we're going to talk about Officer Friendly stopping a rape-in-progress, yes, that person is almost certainly guilty, AND the punishment for that crime is usually not death, AND the cornerstone of our justice system says that the officer in question, no matter how pure of heart he might be, cannot exact a death sentence on a clearly guilty person because that is not how justice works.
A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
Dylan16807 14 hours ago [-]
> No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty"
It sure is! So let's not confuse it with something else.
> A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
That's a perfectly reasonable point but let's get there without mixing up two very different statistics.
vostrocity 18 hours ago [-]
Has anyone done a study on correlation between no-chase policy and increase in robbery or retail theft? Would be pretty interesting
cwillu 6 hours ago [-]
> And, while the goal should be zero, it will never be zero
Why the fuck not?
horacemorace 19 hours ago [-]
Personally as a teenager I’ve been met with a group of cops all pointing guns at me when I was just walking around at night with no weapons whatsoever. They got a call from a paranoid homeowner nearby.
They’re trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
californical 14 hours ago [-]
Actually same happened to me - small group of friends maybe ~14 years old walking around late at night through our middle-class very safe neighborhood.
Two cops in a car rolled up and jumped out of the car with guns drawn and screamed at us to put our hands up because we “looked suspicious”.
They then asked us what we were doing, we said “walking home”, and they put their guns away and said “be safe out there, we didn’t realize you were kids”.
Absolutely no idea why it warranted guns pointed at us
singleshot_ 17 hours ago [-]
> They’re trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
If this was true, would you have survived?
watwut 16 hours ago [-]
They should not have guns out at all. Also, expectation on cops are super weirdly low.
Untrained random civilians encountering cops are supposed to have perfect sefl control. Supposedly trained professionals can be irresponsible, escalate for no reasom, risk others and shoot if they merely feel afraid - regardles of actual danger.
gus_massa 16 hours ago [-]
"Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to kill"
t-3 20 hours ago [-]
I got pulled over in Cleveland and had a cop point a gun at me and threaten to shoot - I was apparently wearing the wrong color on the wrong side of town with out-of-state plates and reached for my ID instead of waiting for the cop to tell me to get it. In later stops I've been admonished many times for not preemptively getting out my ID, but I really can't help thinking about almost getting my brains blown out for grabbing my ID too quickly.
akimbostrawman 4 hours ago [-]
Hands on the steering wheel for your and the officers safety until they ask you to do something. It really is not that difficult you can always just ask. Legally speaking a traffic stop means you are detained = follow orders.
They don't know you or what you could be capable off.
tverbeure 21 hours ago [-]
In most civilized societies, there's an extremely high chance that somebody wielding a knife doesn't have a gun.
nsxwolf 19 hours ago [-]
Wielding a knife is a deadly threat so I am not sure what the relevance is.
tverbeure 18 hours ago [-]
The relevance is that you don’t need to assume that the knife wielding person can hit you from a distance.
One way or the other, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in other countries.
mothballed 18 hours ago [-]
Pulling a percentage out of my ass that can't be terribly inaccurate, 99% of police encounters with guns drawn the police are under 21 ft away, at which distance a knife is as dangerous as a gun.
If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they have knives you should also be thinking guns drawn the ~exact amount less no matter which of the 2 weapon they had.
tverbeure 18 hours ago [-]
And one way or the other, none of that is a problem is other countries.
mothballed 13 hours ago [-]
I don't dispute that. But in most those 'other countries' literally anyone could be hiding a knife as easily as someone in US could be hiding a gun. So it appears in the vast majority of the cases where people are already right next to each other where both a knife or gun could kill someone, whether it is a knife or a gun is almost a moot point. It's only at a distance that you can treat a knife as a less lethal threat. Therefore the problem lies with the police, by vast majority.
bean469 5 hours ago [-]
A knife is not equivalent to a gun. One is a kitchen appliance that can be used as a rather ineffective weapon, the other is a tool literally designed for eliminating life as efficiently as possible
Disarming someone who poses a threat with a knife (especially via the use of modern equipment) is absolutely possible and can be performed in most cases with training, even with just one officer. Meanwhile, disarming someone with a gun is a much more complex task, often requiring a coordinated effort from multiple officers
akimbostrawman 4 hours ago [-]
>a knife (especially via the use of modern equipment) is absolutely possible and can be performed in most cases with training
I want to see you attempt that in real life when someone is within 21 feet. If you watched enough training videos and the literal flood of body camera videos that show even tasers are more often than not infective you would not speak so conveniently about a split second life or death situation.
bean469 4 hours ago [-]
> I want to see you attempt that in real life when someone is within 21 feet
Sadly I did not film it, but you could have been! I have attended multiple classes during which I had to disarm people with knives and other weird objects. It is absolutely possible with the right circumstances and training, but it's a completely different story when it comes to guns - the element of luck is much more meaningful, as a instructor who was shot quite a few times in their career has pointed out
akimbostrawman 36 minutes ago [-]
You can but you absolutely should not try just because you can in training, its a last resort when it too late and all other options are not possible.
dogemaster2025 15 hours ago [-]
Sorry but I am not taking my chances.
cortesoft 12 hours ago [-]
Then you shouldn't be a police officer. We can't have a society where police shoot first and ask questions later just because they want to make sure there is zero risk to them.
dogemaster2025 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dogemaster2025 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dogemaster2025 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dogemaster2025 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dogemaster2025 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jbenner-radham 19 hours ago [-]
I had a gun drawn on me and was told “I’m going to blow your f** brains out” because I was a stupid teenager toilet papering a house when I was young. That’s when fight or flight kicks in and logic goes out the window. Needless to say I didn’t fight.
cortesoft 18 hours ago [-]
> Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default.
How police respond to you is very dependent on a lot of factors, including your age, race, what you are wearing, where you are, and what time it is. I don’t think you should use your own personal experience as a universal template.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Because, as a society, we should do everything we can to prevent harm to everyone, even people who are acting erratically. There could be all sorts of reasons for the behavior. Anyone can have a psychotic episode, and that shouldn’t immediately earn a death sentence. Of course, I understand that even an innocent person having a psychotic episode can be very dangerous, and I don’t think they should be allowed to hurt others, and it may be necessary to use force, and potentially deadly force, to protect other people.
However, I think that is very different than saying “we shouldn’t worry about the perpetrators well being at all”, or that it is preferable to kill the person rather than take ANY risk that they could hurt someone. The answer lies somewhere in between.
dec0dedab0de 19 hours ago [-]
I had a rifle pointed at me about a week after I got my first car, because I accidentally drove on the wrong side of the median.
Guns are definitely pulled way more often by the police than they should be. but to your point I am okay with cops shooting anyone brandishing a knife or any other deadly weapon.
whaleofatw2022 17 hours ago [-]
... how do you know if they have a gun?
As a fun example I had a coworker who collected handguns. I once asked him how many he had and he asked for clarification, should he include unregistered?
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
Most of the other places I'm aware of with such penetration of arms but no police basically rely on monetary bonds through family ties and intertribal appeals rather than trying to capture and imprison them. If the family won't accept the bonds and the criminal refuses to pay then they become an outlaw of sorts and have no recognition in society. A bit brutal, but then again so is mass imprisonment and a heavily armed police state. I make no claim whether it is better or worse.
chneu 22 hours ago [-]
American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last.
I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
adrr 20 hours ago [-]
Not even the most dangerous job in the US. Forest workers, commercial fishermen, pilots etc are more dangerous. If we're talking about gun violence, your corner market cashier is more likely to get shot, Has anyone thanked a 7 eleven worker for their sacrifice thas you can get a slurpee at 2am?
ToValueFunfetti 18 hours ago [-]
I don't think you can use this datapoint for this purpose. Cops are employing the paranoid strategies already, so there's no way to discern between 'these strategies are needless' and 'these strategies are effective'.
cool_dude85 20 hours ago [-]
Probably the most dangerous aspect of the job in the US is driving.
Its more dangerous being a spouse to a cop than it is to be a cop.
PaulDavisThe1st 18 hours ago [-]
Roofing, I think, tends to be the most dangerous.
mywittyname 18 hours ago [-]
Depends on how you look at the numbers. But construction, logging, garbage collection and truck driving tend to be the most deadly depending on the specific metric (absolute, per capita, by industry, etc).
Expanding that, the deadliest part of being a police officer is almost certainly the driving component. No gun will save you from smashing your SUV into a pole. And the aftermarket modifications made to the vehicles aren't crash tested. A police cruiser is full of potential projectiles.
adrr 17 hours ago [-]
Depends how you define dangerous. If we look injury rates and not deaths, meat processing/packing is the most dangerous.
shagmin 19 hours ago [-]
Curious how much this varies among police. Some jobs are by their nature always dangerous.
But there are a lot of cops in the USA, and plenty I'm sure have nice, cozy jobs, and then there are some who spend thee majority of their career policing areas that more closely resemble warzones or 3rd world nations but this isn't the majority by any means.
vostrocity 18 hours ago [-]
Neither working as a 7 eleven worker nor a cop is a sacrifice, it's a free labor market.
RajT88 20 hours ago [-]
I have seen some shit go down in 7/11's at 1am. You are not kidding.
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
phatskat 13 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, the police in Adama’s world are different from our own:
> the other serves and protects the people
The only time this was actually true was at the advent of organized policing in the United States - there were two purposes for cops. In the north, they were meant to ensure the protection of property, particularly commercial.
In the south, it was the same except that usually meant slaves, so in the worst kind of technically correct sense, they did at one point protect people…kind of. Well, kept them “safe” from freedom and such.
GiorgioG 21 hours ago [-]
In the US police have no obligation to protect the people.
V-eHGsd_ 20 hours ago [-]
indeed, and this is unironically cited by the "shall not be infringed" crowd as a reason that they should be allowed to bring guns anywhere and everywhere, potentially turning any movie theater disagreement or minor road annoyance (or traffic stop, to bring this back to the police) into a violent life ending incident. to quote jwz out of context, "now you have two problems".
stuffn 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
morserer 17 hours ago [-]
I thought this was interesting, so I checked your sources
> Insane take truly. First, CCW carriers are statistically the least likely to be involved in any kind of "violent life ending incident".
Sure, you could argue this, with the exception of suicide, found guns (usually by kids in the home), and stolen guns. It's not just the person certified, it's everyone around them who can obtain access to the gun they now own
>The number of non self-defense homicides caused by them is approximately 0 per year.
Only because there's no public data on this particular statistic. A nonprofit produced a database based on news headlines and limited state data, though, and found 1700 suicides and 600 convicted murders by CCW carriers between 2007 and 2025: https://vpc.org/concealed-carry-killers/
A better way to phrase it would be that the number of homicides are far less than the violence that a lack of CCW would enable, though that on its own is statistically shaky.
> Second, to suggest that people should allow themselves to be victims to violent crime because it's safer for the whole is some sort of collectivist trotskyite nonsense we will never agree on. Under no circumstance should an innocent person forfeit life or property for a violent criminal.
You're right, we (the USA) probably won't ever agree on it, due to the intense financial incentives behind firearms manufacturing and ownership and the subsequent lobbying and influence over public influence that those companies fund, but every other country apart from the US is a sweeping counterexample to this. We lose 45,000 people per year to guns (~60% by suicide). It's the #1 cause of death for children since 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-sta...https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
It's reductive to suggest that the only thing having more guns around does is "prevent victimization" when the guns themselves enable violence to so many nearby parties, including to the owner themselves.
> Its astonishing to me people can look at FBI statistics, total gun deaths trending down for the last 30 years, and then suggest people who are statistically the most safe with guns shouldn't be able to carry them.
The figure you're quoting appears to be the graph from page 1 of https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/tpfv9323.pdf, which is nonfatal victimization, which hasn't trended down--it's hovered between 1 and 2 per 1000 since 2003, and appears to be more of a reflection of improved medical skill than anything about guns.
Anyway, you were quoting gun deaths--that's page 13. That chart has stayed roughly the same since 1999: 4-5 per 100k persons (except for the spike during covid)
>The qualifications for CCW are harder than police qualifications in most states. But you wouldn't know this because Everytown, MSNBC, CNN, and others have spent the last 12 or so years lying through statistics so that the government has the monopoly on violence.
No permit required for CCW in 27 states. You also have states like Utah that will mail you a permit that's valid in 30 different states and doesn't require proof of live-fire training.
But yes, in CA, for example, it's a 16 hour course, background check, fingerprints, clean record, (sometimes) psych evals, and even then there are restrictions.
This isn't an indicator that CCW is difficult to obtain, though, since this is a reasonable barrier--it's an indicator that police qualifications are laughable. (While we're on that topic, by the way, law enforcement officers (both active and inactive) are allowed to concealed carry in all 50 states)
> I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
Something I learned from a friend is to ask permission for every movement or at the very least narrate and move slowly.
"I'm going to reach in the glovebox for my registration. Is that ok?"
I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
Edit: friend and I are also white.
briffle 20 hours ago [-]
A famous case of this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile where the man identitified he had a concealed carry, the cop told him not reach for it, he started to say he wasn't, he was getting his license the officer asked for, with the officer cutting him off repeatedly and the officer shot him because he 'feared for his life'.
All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
"All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc."
That's not really true. The standard is a reasonable fear for your life. That's reasonable standard is evaluated in court by how a reasonable person would have reacted. Yes, they do give some deference to the individual who was actually there (police or civilian). The real problems happen because the DA and the courts tend to have bias when it comes to subjecting members of the system to the same process that others face.
PaulDavisThe1st 18 hours ago [-]
Police officers in court cases don't have to meet that standard until it established that they do not have qualified immunity. In vastly more than 9 out of 10 cases, they do, and thus that standard is completely irrelevant.
giantg2 17 hours ago [-]
Qualified immunity only applies to civil cases, not criminal.
PaulDavisThe1st 17 hours ago [-]
Most (not all) cases against police officers for excessive/fatal use of force are civil (typically civil rights violations).
fireflash38 17 hours ago [-]
Oh good. So you'll still be dead, and they might get a reprimand. If you're lucky they'll lose their job.
ErroneousBosh 19 hours ago [-]
> All they have to prove is that they fear for their life.
In which case, they should spend the rest of their life in a high-security psychiatric hospital.
They're obviously too mentally fragile to be allowed out in the world.
phatskat 10 hours ago [-]
To some degree this is how they’re trained, and imo the people doing the training also need some form of repercussions - if you haven’t before, check out some information on the courses that are (were?) taught to precincts across the country: Killology. Yes, that’s the literal name.
zmb_ 21 hours ago [-]
A black friend of mine did exactly this, asked for a permission to get a pen from his pocket. The cop laughed “sure” and the moment he put his hand inside his pocket they jumped him and arrested him.
> The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
qingcharles 19 hours ago [-]
And handed down in only one circuit, so the other 80% of cops in the country can say "well, in my circuit there was no established case law that said stealing the property was a constitutional violation."
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
That's not exactly consistent with the given scenario. Use of force issues tend to have much better case law at both the federal and state levels than property related issues.
> Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir. 2019): Qualified immunity granted for officer who, hunting
a fugitive, ended up at the wrong house and forced six children, including two children under the age of
three, to lie on the ground at gunpoint. The officer tried to shoot the family dog, but missed and shot a
10-year-old child that was lying face down, 18 inches away from the officer. The court held that there
was no prior case where an officer accidentally shot a child laying on the ground while the officer was
aiming at a dog.
> Young v. Borders, 850 F.3d 1274 (11th Cir. 2017): Qualified immunity granted to officers who, without
a warrant, started banging on an innocent man’s door without announcing themselves in the middle of
the night. When the man opened the door holding his lawfully-owned handgun, officers opened fire,
killing. One dissenting judge wrote that if these actions are permitted, “then the Second and Fourth
Amendments are having a very bad day in this circuit.”
> Estate of Smart v. City of Wichita, 951 F.3d 1161 (10th Cir. 2020): Qualified immunity granted for
officer who heard gunshots and fired into a crowd of hundreds of people in downtown Wichita, shooting
bystanders and killing an unarmed man who was trying to flee the area. The court held that the shooting
was unconstitutional but there was no clearly established law that police officers could not “open fire on
a fleeing person they (perhaps unreasonably) believed was armed in what they believed to be an active
shooter situation.”
(And a bunch of others.)
And a matching case has to be very specific:
> Baxter v. Bracey, 751 F. App’x 869 (6th Cir. 2018): Qualified immunity granted for officers who sent a
police dog to attack a man who had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands in
the air. The court held that a prior case holding it unconstitutional to send a police dog after a person
who surrendered by laying on the ground was not sufficiently similar to this case, involving a person
who surrendered by sitting on the ground with his hands up.
"No clearly established law", my ass.
giantg2 19 hours ago [-]
What was the outcome of the lawsuits against the agencies? You don't have to win a suit against an individual. Most of the big payouts have to come from the cities.
I never said that qualified immunity wasn't an issue, just that there tends to be more protections when use of force is involved than with property.
ceejayoz 19 hours ago [-]
> Most of the big payouts have to come from the cities.
In other words, from the victimized populace.
I think a cop who steals seized evidence should be personally liable to the person they stole from.
(…and I'd note "v. City of Wichita" is clearly responsive to your question.)
saynay 16 hours ago [-]
I would probably say that both the city and the cop should, independently, be liable. Given the position of authority the city provides, it is ultimately responsible to hire and properly train people who will use that authority well, while the individual is also responsible for their own actions.
giantg2 10 hours ago [-]
If the cop is following procedure, the city and others who set the procedure should be liable. If the cop is breaking procedure, then they should be liable. If there is no clear procedure, then they should both be liable.
ceejayoz 16 hours ago [-]
Both is good with me, yes.
giantg2 10 hours ago [-]
"In other words, from the victimized populace."
Sadly, yes. They're also the populace that voted for that leadership. There are many leaders of major cities that continually push policies that are highly probably to result in legal action due to their conflict with existing law and case law. I don't like it, but its true.
tsimionescu 18 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the "qualified" part is relatively misleading, it makes it sound like there are clear limits to police immunity.
SapporoChris 11 hours ago [-]
Some more recommendations. Keep your registration and insurance in an easily reachable place like in the passenger side visor/mirror. Keep your hands on the top of the steering wheel where the officer can see them at all times. Keep your car clean.
The goals are to make the officer comfortable and minimize the time.
petesergeant 21 hours ago [-]
> I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
“the only way” puts me in mind of The Onion headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
bobsh 21 hours ago [-]
It started after the Iraq war. They got Hummers and vets.
jimt1234 20 hours ago [-]
A childhood friend's dad was a cop for 25 years; retired in the mid-90s. He never shot his gun, and only unholstered once in his entire cop career. My friend followed his dad, also became a cop in the exact same district; he's getting ready to retire. He's unholstered his gun countless times. He says he's shot at numerous people in his career, and even killed one dude. I once asked him what the difference was between his career and his dad's. He said crime was actually worse when his dad was a cop, a lot worse. But the big difference was the public's attitude and his training. He said the public had accepted the "tough on crime" narrative; that wasn't the case in his dad's days. But also, the training was straight-up military. He said that if he didn't use the military-style tactics, he would be sunned by his peers and even reprimanded. He said the training repeated one narrative, over and over: "It's us versus them."
He told me a story about a noise complaint. He said him and his partner banged on the front door of the house, but there was no response. He said they called in the status, but were told to wait. About 10 minutes later multiple SWAT vehicles arrived. He said one of the vehicles literally drove into the side of the house, making a huge hole in the house. About a dozen SWAT officers ran into the house, multiple shots were fired, the tear gas started a fire. The house was absolutely destroyed. ... No one was home; the house was empty. A kid left the TV on really loud when he left for school. A neighbor called it in, hoping the cops could just go into the house and turn off the TV. Worse, there was no punishment to anyone involved; the cops were doing as they were trained.
lIl-IIIl 11 hours ago [-]
I find the noise complaint story hard to believe. Cops know what a "noise complaint" is.
This sounds like a generic urban legend "A friend of a friend told me".
If something like this happened, it would have to be in the news, right?
lovich 16 hours ago [-]
Your friends a liar or has fallen for the propaganda if he tells you crime has gotten worse. Other than a brief blip during Covid it’s been trending steadily down for decades.
verteu 16 hours ago [-]
"crime was actually worse when his dad was a cop" implies crime rate is going down
lovich 15 hours ago [-]
You’re right, I misread the sentence as the opposite
danlitt 20 hours ago [-]
Are you sure about that? Police brutality has been reported as a huge issue in the US since at least the 60s. If anything, from the outside it looks like it's got better since Iraq.
tokai 20 hours ago [-]
The MOVE bombing was well before the Iraq war.
stevenwoo 17 hours ago [-]
Not only that but if they claim they were afraid for their life, that excuse is used to justify any action, which works short of admitting wrongdoing on video and in post incident interviews.
dpark 22 hours ago [-]
“Warrior mindset”. When you’re trained to assume that everyone you interact with is a lethal threat, you tend to react as such.
helpfulclippy 21 hours ago [-]
They go around barking orders at people who haven’t done anything wrong because they look “suspicious,” escalate what could otherwise be calm encounters by showing up to everything armed to the gills, make it clear they can’t wait to use force against persons and property, demonstrate a consistent us-vs-them mentality that looks the other way for clear cases of corruption, commit brazen armed robberies under euphemisms like “civil asset forfeiture,” bypass policymakers wherever possible and lie to them when they can’t, and then wonder why some people don’t like them very much.
gypsy_boots 20 hours ago [-]
not only trained that way, the justice system upholds this by not prosecuting police violence in any meaningful way
mpweiher 21 hours ago [-]
Could also be that this is at least partially justified due to the incredible pervasiveness of guns in the US.
NohatCoder 19 hours ago [-]
No, treating people with hostility and escalating the situation only makes it more likely that someone will snap and attack a cop.
People generally do not shoot at cops, because whether or not they hit the target doing so is pretty much signing their own death sentence. All cops have to do to protect themselves is to not provoke people to fight-or-flight reactions.
21 hours ago [-]
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tacitusarc 22 hours ago [-]
The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation:
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
malfist 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.
danlitt 20 hours ago [-]
The quoted text describes separate comments from different police officers. It's also reported by a third party, is a paraphrase rather than a quote, and isn't bragging.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
The bit where he calls it a perk of the job is Grossman himself.
There are a million ways to express the fact of the hormonal backlash without including a quote that makes it sound like killing will improve your sex life.
In context, its correct, that's not up for dispute. The question is "does it add anything to the context?" and more importantly "could a student misconstrue its inclusion as something else?"
You'd think that, being so educated on the hormonal backlash from experiencing trauma, that cops and the greater judicial system would be more forgiving of e.g. emergent hypersexuality in rape victims after experiencing a rape that Grossman calls out there. But you would be wrong, because even if Grossman wants his students to understand that concept for their own health, he wildly misunderstands the culture he helped create where the police view themselves as a thin blue line holding back the manifold forces of Chaos Undivided.
drdeca 20 hours ago [-]
I don’t see why any of those should be exonerating?
Also, I feel like “nothing wrong if it does happen” regarding shooting someone, is the wrong perspective. If shooting someone is necessary, then it is necessary, but that doesn’t mean nothing went wrong. Anytime someone gets shot is a time something has gone wrong.
vostrocity 18 hours ago [-]
So if someone threatens to kill you and your family, and you shoot them, something has gone wrong? I'd say something has gone right.
ceejayoz 14 hours ago [-]
There are many situations where that isn’t the right response to that.
wat10000 20 hours ago [-]
I really have to wonder what part of that he thinks makes it OK to call it a perk of the job that you get to have awesome sex after murdering somebody for work.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, shitty people often claim the context is exonerating.
> They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving.
Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
scarecrowbob 21 hours ago [-]
Damn, hoss, didn't think I'd wake up and have to read someone normalizing police violence.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
aeternum 19 hours ago [-]
This will be a controversial opinion but I think some escalation by police is warranted.
The reality is there are aggressive people in society that have a tendency to escalate things. If police are trained to only de-escalate, it removes a powerful check on aggressive escalation.
The second order effect is an increase in events like people being pushed onto train tracks, glass bottles being thrown if you glance the wrong direction, etc.
I think optimally you have a police force that is trained in de-escalation but also escalates things slightly more than the average citizen and thereby provides a service to society as a buffer.
wffurr 19 hours ago [-]
I don't think you understand what "de-escalation" is. It's not ignoring antisocial behavior or failing to confront people.
aeternum 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not claiming that de-escalation implies ignoring antisocial behavior or failing to confront.
I'm claiming that some antisocial behavior is only triggered by some degree of escalation.
bjoli 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder what you base this on. What would statistics backing this up look like?
HanClinto 18 hours ago [-]
I'm amazed at the number of people who are answering "this is just the way that it is in America".
I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :)
I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving.
If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable.
Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)
beepbopboopp 18 hours ago [-]
Its not even police specific.
In any game, if one side has 10x more accountability for misbehavior than the other, the low consequence side will keep testing boundaries until they are stopped.
jrflowers 2 hours ago [-]
I want to point out that no, the contents of the warrant are in no way “the reason” for this type of raid. It is factually untrue to use that detail to suggest in any way that this is not business as usual in the US.
I cannot stress enough how factually untrue the comment I’m responding to is - it is more of a prayer than a description of the reality of policing in the United States. At best what GP meant to say is that to the best of their knowledge this usually doesn’t happen in the sparsely populated handful of square miles that they’re familiar with in the time that they have lived there and mistakenly given the impression that it is categorically uncommon in the US.
It is business as usual for the entirety of the country, though it’s I guess fun for the locals (?) to see some “torture dungeon” flavor thrown in there by a ‘witness’ that the public will definitely never hear from.
Finding examples of this is trivial. It happens all the time and if Afroman were not famous this would not have risen to the level of national news. It’s even somewhat common for raids like these to happen where they get the address wrong and raid the wrong house.
HanClinto 4 minutes ago [-]
> I cannot stress enough how factually untrue the comment I’m responding to is
Which fact did I report incorrectly?
I was not answering the question in generalities. I was answering the question that asked for specifics about this case ("why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here?"). The answer: serving a warrant for kidnapping and drug trafficking.
You may disagree with my :opinion: (that armed response during the serving of a warrant for kidnapping is reasonable), but you can't just claim that I'm lying about the facts of this case and then not bring receipts. Handwaving about "well that's how it works everywhere else" doesn't change the facts of the situation here at hand.
markdown 14 hours ago [-]
Sounds like swatting.
embedding-shape 13 hours ago [-]
"an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it" sounds very far away from what I understand "swatting" to mean normally.
markdown 11 hours ago [-]
AFAIK we have no idea if an informant testified to it, or even if there was an informant. Cops claimed that someone had told them about it, and the judge signed the warrant.
Swatting is the action or practice of making a hoax call in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address"
Either there was an informant, and the false claim was made to a police officer, or there was not informant, and the cop made a false claim to the judge. Either way, the intent was to get cops to show up and screw with Afroman, and that goal was achieved.
HanClinto 1 minutes ago [-]
I agree with you. It might not be "swatting" in the crank call sense, but it definitely feels like malicious lying (on the part of _someone_) to harass or cause injury through police action. So yeah, definitely feels like swatting to me too.
TheCondor 16 hours ago [-]
Look up castle doctrine.
It's the laws that we have. Basically, if someone breaches your home, you're under no obligation to back down and if you respond with lethal force you have a lot of the benefit of the doubt, fear is implied in that situation. The police are treating it as if they were breaking in to one of their own homes, because if you or I did that, we'd get shot and killed. The only difference it that they have a legal document that allows it in that case, you have to serve that document though.
I had a coworker that lived on a street like "N 13th Avenue" and I guess there was some sort of crackhouse at "S 13th Avenue" one night the police served a no-know warrant, he was pissed and demanded to know what was going on, they shot his dog and killed his dog, he was shot in the hip and had permanent damage from it, his wife was marched out in cuffs half naked in-front of the neighborhood. When the dust settled the police realized they went to the wrong address. The police reached some sort of settlement with them, it never seemed remotely fair. (Think $700k in the mid-1990s) He was in his 50s when I worked with him, this happened in his late 30s or early 40s. He looked like he was 80 though, walked with a cane. He ultimately passed away at a fairly young age.
garciasn 22 hours ago [-]
#1 - He's Black.
#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
gadders 19 hours ago [-]
They did the same when they raided Roger Stone.
dimitrios1 21 hours ago [-]
If you were to take a positive intent approach:
- the warrant was for distribution of narcotics and kiddnapping.
If I were to guess what a list of most dangerous warrants to execute, those two would be up there.
If you note in the video, he jokingly plays around the drugs part. I am not sure where the kidnapping part comes from, but Afroman is not necessarily a household name amongst middle-aged white police officers, so I imagine they just saw "drugs and kidnapping" and went for it.
x0x0 20 hours ago [-]
And that's part of the issue.
The kidnapping claim was there was a sex dungeon in the house. The house does not have a basement.
And all of this was obviously pretextual, unless you believe drugs and women were hidden between cds or in whatever pieces of the kitchen they destroyed.
mylies43 17 hours ago [-]
Gotta check between the slices of cake, never know what it could be hiding
bigstrat2003 21 hours ago [-]
> That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
AngryData 13 hours ago [-]
Its more likely because affluent people live in that area who can afford to drop $100k on a lawyer and sue the department. If you are in an area where people are poor and can't drop that kind of money on a lawyer and get the case pushed to state or federal courts the cops know they won't get in trouble for being pieces of shit and see citizens as an easy source of funding to exploit.
simonhfrost 20 hours ago [-]
Are you white?
Tostino 20 hours ago [-]
That's lucky. My county sheriff implemented predictive policing [1] until they were forced to stop because of many constitutional violations.
Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
legitster 22 hours ago [-]
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
dpark 22 hours ago [-]
> Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
advisedwang 21 hours ago [-]
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
rocqua 21 hours ago [-]
There's likely natural experiments in cases where police was misinformed either way about the danger of the suspects being arrested.
mothballed 22 hours ago [-]
I think the traffic stop paranoia stems from a couple high profile incidents like
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
dpark 20 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure there’s a general trend of federal officers using state/local officers sacrificially, but no doubt these cases are hammered into officers’ minds over and over.
wat10000 20 hours ago [-]
It's worth pointing out that, while being a cop is a somewhat dangerous profession, it doesn't even crack the top 10. It's much more dangerous to be a tree trimmer, non-airline pilot, logger, roofer, etc. than it is to be a cop.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
breakyerself 21 hours ago [-]
Policing isn't in the top ten most dangerous jobs. It's usually listed around the 15-25th most dangerous job in the US. Many Americans including myself are regularly in more danger.
Also around 40% of police deaths are accidents.
breakyerself 21 hours ago [-]
It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
kej 21 hours ago [-]
>interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.
breakyerself 21 hours ago [-]
Upon closer inspection it seems it's more a result of decreasing accident rates than increasing homicide rates although that is a factor lately.
That gives a homicide rate for cops of about 7.5 per 100,000. That's a bit less than twice the US national average, and about on par with the overall murder rate in the Carolinas or Mississippi. Seems pretty good for a profession that would logically bring a substantially increased exposure to murderers.
legitster 20 hours ago [-]
To really emphasize this, car crashes are the top source of police deaths. Yet less than 50% of police use their seat belts.
The justification most give is that they may need to be able to quickly get out of a car and pull their gun in a confrontation.
The only way this makes sense is that
A) Police aren't being properly trained based on data
B) People have an irrational psychological fear of murder over other types of death
giantg2 19 hours ago [-]
A is the likely part.
B isn't necessarily irrational. Many other types of death are at your own actions. Things like drinking alcohol, eating whatever you feel like, not exercising, doing drug, even driving, etc provide some self-identified "benefit" to the individual that they choose to partake. It's rationale that someone is more afraid of dying from an activity they recieve no benefit from than an activity they do.
EQmWgw87pw 21 hours ago [-]
This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?
atmavatar 20 hours ago [-]
It's a common argument because police and their supporters regularly claim they need to roll up in tactical gear and treat every encounter with civilians like it's a life-and-death struggle because they have one of the most dangerous jobs, yet the truth is they have about an order of magnitude fewer workplace fatalities than roofers and loggers.
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
dpark 21 hours ago [-]
> So it’s funny
They didn’t say it’s funny.
If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.
> human error
Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.
rocqua 21 hours ago [-]
I think intentionally and willingly doing something whilst informed of the consequence doesn't count as human error. At least not in this context.
Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.
dpark 20 hours ago [-]
I agree. It’s actually systemic error.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
martin_a 22 hours ago [-]
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
qup 21 hours ago [-]
You can hardly make stricter gun laws; we have a right to them in this country.
It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
Teever 19 hours ago [-]
But not all States' gun laws are equally strict? So if the state with the stricted gun laws is acting in a constitutional manner then other states could also implement those laws but choose not to.
So a lot of this stuff is truly self inflicted and the result of poor policy choices -- not because of governments reluctantly but dutifully obeying the 2nd amendment.
qup 15 hours ago [-]
As a matter of fact, the right for states to impose strict laws is before the supreme court right now.
I expect to see them reigning in the states. The 2nd amendment is unambiguous.
markdown 14 hours ago [-]
> You can hardly make stricter gun laws; we have a right to them in this country. It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
What an odd take. Gun rights weren't dictated by a burning bush. A group of 39 guys decided for everyone else that that right should exist a quarter of a millenium ago. A completely undemocratic system. Every citizen should have a say and if they will it, anything in the constitution can be amended or struck off.
AngryData 12 hours ago [-]
I agree, but I also doubt you could get anywhere near the population needed to vote for strict gun control to start with. And if it was passed anyways I don't think enough people would accept it and give up their guns even if they had to hide or fight to keep them.
I personally don't trust the US government enough to willingly vote to give them a monopoly on violence even if I otherwise don't shoot guns very often.
martin_a 10 hours ago [-]
This is all such a strange take. What do you think would happen, what's the expectation?
Everybody goes out and starts shooting down their local police force? The military?
I just don't get how people think this would work and if the government would be intimidated by that. I think they'd just shoot first and ask questions later and that's it.
AngryData 7 hours ago [-]
I would say the same thing about the opposite. What do you think people are going to do, take time out of their way to go turn in thousands of dollars worth of guns and ammo for nothing in return? Do you think cops are going to go door-to-door seizing guns and that nobody is going to ever fight back despite being fed the fear of the government barging in and taking citizen's guns by force for their entire life?
I don't believe gun control is effective unless nearly the entire population is accepting it willfully, and if people wanted to do it willfully it would be easy to gain a large majority of votes for that cause. But even the democratic party in some of the densest cities struggle to gain a simple majority from voters on the issue.
I also don't think the government has the power to take peoples guns by force even if they wanted, it would collapse the US if even a tiny portion of people fought back and defeat the entire purpose of trying. Would the US military lose battles against citizens? No, there wouldn't even be very many. But they still wouldn't win the war when some random hillbilly takes a few pot shots at a sub station from 2 miles out and takes down the power for potentially millions of people and all the work and value they produce. Factories don't work without power, essential munitions don't get produced if they can't secure material inputs from across the nation or the world, and if financial institutions takes a dive in response to destruction and chaos there goes US trade power. And you can bet your ass that all the countries the US has been taking a dump on for nearly the last century are going to take advantage of a weakened US.
maest 21 hours ago [-]
Maybe that right is not worth the trade off
20 hours ago [-]
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
wafflemaker 20 hours ago [-]
To get a gun in Norway i need 6 months in a shooting sports club. And then can only take the gun with me for shooting exercise. Strictly prohibited to have a round chambered when not standing on the shooting lane. And then only after an order from the guy running the training.
martin_a 19 hours ago [-]
Again, a bit naive, but that actually sounds okay to me. You'll learn to use the gun responsibly and in a controlled manner. What else would you want to do with it and why?
somehnguy 19 hours ago [-]
Most people, including myself, have no interest in jumping through such hoops to exercise a constitutionally protected right. We also value the ability to carry (mostly) anywhere we see fit for the purpose of defending ourselves in a worst case scenario.
maest 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, the American cultural preference for guns is well established. The GP's point was that in most of the world guns are more restricted and people are doing just fine.
mothballed 18 hours ago [-]
Sure, but I could print a reliable firearm with ECM'd barrel and make ammunition within a couple weeks if I went to Norway and so could most of your citizens, just following FGC-9 and "but what about ammo" instruction guides. The law says 6 months but in practice that's not the limiting factor. And then with no problem chamber a round and walk around with it in a backpack. The same applies in most of EU; of course in someplace like France or Poland you can straight up buy a black powder revolver over the counter which although heavy works quite well for most self defense cases with a firearm.
The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.
Helloworldboy 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Aurornis 22 hours ago [-]
> Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world.
You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
martin_a 22 hours ago [-]
True!
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
fc417fc802 22 hours ago [-]
I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
miramba 21 hours ago [-]
I think “culture change” is what is ultimately proposed here.
fc417fc802 22 hours ago [-]
That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.
VHRanger 21 hours ago [-]
Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique?
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
mothballed 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
VHRanger 14 hours ago [-]
Ah, some egregious misuse of statistics!
Murder is a byproduct of crime. Crime is, largely, downstream of economic conditions with some obvious caveats.
New Hampshire has the 2nd lowest crime rate of the USA states. You could make the same argument for, say, Switzerland (high gun ownership but no crime/murder). But no one would be surprised if you had high gun ownership in Monaco.
Similarly for the ethnic argument you're trying to make: Majority black neighbourhoods in the USA tend to be poor. They also tend to be near more affluent places. Unlike poor white neighbourhoods, which are on average more rural in the USA.
Being poor, and being next to rich people, and being excluded from legal increases of becoming rich, will increase crime.
This should be obvious. Brazil has famously Favelas right next to wealthy areas and has a persistent crime problem for example.
---
In short, it's really incredible how far some Americans will go to deny the obvious truth: *gun prevalence increases deadly crime*.
Sure, some cultural factors will increase crime/violence on the margin. But the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with. That simple.
fc417fc802 12 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's good to hold a misunderstand of the statistics against someone when (as in this case) they're so easy to read in a certain way.
> the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with
Yet by your own admission poverty and inequality appear to account for the bulk of the effect.
Actually I think you'll find that plenty of Americans will acknowledge the link you point out. Just not in a politically charged exchange where the other party appears to have an ideological axe to grind. Where they'll likely disagree is the extent or significance of it. In many cases they will object that rights should never be curtailed for the purpose of lowering petty crime (I tend to agree).
I think it's also worth mentioning the statistic that legal gun owners (which is a wildly low bar in the US) have a lower rate of violent offense than the police.
VHRanger 11 hours ago [-]
Sure poverty explains crime, and murder is the ultimate crime.
That said, my point was that a place like Rio, where you feel alertness at a physiological level by the constant lack of security, still has a murder rate around Houston, a vastly richer and safer city.
And Brazil really is a good comparison in my opinion: the economic inequality is actually worse than in the USA, and they both have the slave holding history leading to concentrated poverty areas with high ethnic segregation
I don't personally think that the upsides of the US gun laws are worth anything near the downsides being paid.
Regarding the police, American police is notoriously prone to violence compared to other developed countries.
mothballed 13 hours ago [-]
Ah it seems you finally understand the point. Blaming the skin pigment is as silly as blaming the gun.
Murder rates in US have very little to do with gun law, and they have very little to do with skin color, even though they're heavily correlated to the latter and weakly correlated to the former.
VHRanger 11 hours ago [-]
Of course within the USA the state levels laws will do little. There's free movement between states!
Compare the USA to Canada, where you can't bring a gun easily. You'll see Canadian murder rates being very low. Even controlling for similar factors at the city or neighborhood level.
Of course I'm blaming the gun: it's pretty hard to kill someone with other weapons. Stabbings are often survived, even.
mothballed 10 hours ago [-]
If you just want to pick an American neighbor and make a crude comparison based on that, I could just as easily point out Mexico, which has stricter gun laws than the USA and Canada and fewer guns per capita than both USA and Canada. And yet a higher murder rate than both. And I cannot 'easily' (disputable, but lets accept on face these semantics for the purpose of controlled national border) take a gun to or from Mexico.
I assert again it is not the gun laws even if you want to do a national level view. Even a national analysis of gun laws in the three major countries of North America do not yield the conclusion you assert.
You are cherry picking to try and find causality while damning a comment where I merely pointed out a correlation between black people and murder rates. This is hypocrisy.
When you started to look at underlying causes at crime, you were so very close to getting there, but for some reason disengaged from that and went back to our flawed basis that would suggest it's the black pigment or it's the guns causing it.
Hikikomori 14 hours ago [-]
A map over poor people would likely look the same.
mothballed 13 hours ago [-]
Which shows how ridiculous it is to assign that as the cause, doesn't it? It's almost as if pointing to a lot of guns or black people in one spot doesn't show that's why murders are happening, only allows you to tie statistical correlation.
LPisGood 22 hours ago [-]
We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
fc417fc802 21 hours ago [-]
We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
LPisGood 21 hours ago [-]
If tweets were a leading cause of death in children we should probably at least consider making it harder to tweet.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
It was an arbitrary example. Try to see past the politically charged topic to the actual analogy that I'm attempting to make.
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
EQmWgw87pw 21 hours ago [-]
I don’t know if there is any precedent from taking away hundreds of millions of guns from an armed country actually
LPisGood 21 hours ago [-]
Australia de-armed pretty successfully.
defrost 21 hours ago [-]
Australia has more guns now, and more guns per capita, than it did at the time it almost unified all gun laws.
It didn't "de-arm" - it brought all states and territories into near alignment on gun regulation.
If you're interested I can link to good footage of my actual IRL neighbour shooting 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards, here in Australia.
Alternatively you might be interested in Australian footage of feral control, taking down 800 oversized wild pigs in 4 hours from a helicopter.
markdown 13 hours ago [-]
It significantly de-armed.
Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms. You have to be a farmer, hunter, or belong to a shooting club.
While the number of guns increased, the number of gun owners dropped. And the new regulations enacted this year drop the number of guns one can own even more.
There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns. See how the terrorists at the massacre last year were limited by the type of guns they had access to, only managing to kill 15 despite having all the time in the world. An Ar-15 or similar weapon could have been used to slaughter that 15 in under 15 seconds.
defrost 10 hours ago [-]
> It significantly de-armed
In the sense that there are more private registered guns than ever before in Australia, sure.
> Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms.
More importantly, it unified gun laws - before the Port Arthur shooting, Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, probably the Australian Capital Territory were all unregulated.
Unregulated states with no border control effectively made the entire Federation of States unregulated.
Regulated states, at least the ones that I lived in prior to Port Arthur, didn't have "self defence" as a reason for owning gun - it was always about hunting, feral control, specific security (regularly carrying money) etc.
The last I checked, the emphasis was more on where you intended to use / carry a gun; shooting club (common), carry for security in street (rare), rural (property owner or have letter of authority to shoot from a property owner).
> There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns.
Sure .. they serve no real purpose, the only activity that requires high fire rates and larger magazines is pig shooting, maybe camel control, and rat shooting.
Rats can be shot with professional BB guns .. a better choice when shooting in sheds, silos, etc - no spark or risk of punching holes in tin walls.
If you're pig shooting in bulk, that's a contract shooting licence.
fc417fc802 8 hours ago [-]
> they serve no real purpose, the only activity that requires high fire rates and larger magazines ...
Did the Australian ban of "military style" rifles include a blanket clause that covers all semi-automatic fire? Or is it an almost entirely aesthetic category as it tends to be whenever such measures are proposed in the US?
When it comes to automatic fire there's a rather famous US case where someone was ultimately convicted for possessing a shoelace (IIRC) attached to some fastening hardware. As to larger magazines, those probably don't even meet the bar for an introductory level highschool shop project.
AngryData 7 hours ago [-]
From what I understand most semi-auto guns are banned in Australia, but of course they never had a ton of those to start with. But there are still plenty of pump action, lever action, bolt action, etc guns which aren't meaningfully less capable. Shooting twice as fast doesn't mean you can kill twice as fast because you can't aim twice as fast. Like the majority of guns Afgan insurgents had were 60 year old bolt-actions which were quite obviously still capable enough to be deadly even to the top military in the world.
mindcrime 21 hours ago [-]
> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago [-]
All my life I've heard that an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government. Now that we have creeping authoritarians running the country, where are all of those "second amendment solution" people? What trigger are they waiting for, exactly?
pesus 18 hours ago [-]
Realistically, it's more to protect from unhinged supporters of the current regime than the regime itself.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
Recall that this authoritarian won the popular vote ~18 months ago.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
mindcrime 20 hours ago [-]
> What trigger are they waiting for, exactly?
Critical mass.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as they hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
Teever 18 hours ago [-]
But you won't get that critical mass without a spark.
People need to see action and see it work without repercussions to the actor.
People will take notice when someone like Thiel, Bannon, or Miller are taken down with a drone and the drone operator escapes arrest.
They'll think to themselves "Wait a minute, if someone can take out a billionaire I can take out that cop who raped my cousin and got a paid vacation as punishment for it."
What comes after that is anybody's guess but I predict an impending moment where individual citizens realize that they're not as helpless as they have been lead to believe and that technology can help them eliminate long-standing criminals operating in positions of power with immunity in theiry local communities.
krapp 20 hours ago [-]
They either voted for the authoritarian or they don't care as long as the authoritarian doesn't touch their guns. Womp womp.
NikolaNovak 21 hours ago [-]
Can you tell me more?
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
mindcrime 20 hours ago [-]
> As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime.
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
Aside from the obvious (being ready and able to form an armed resistance) there's the deterrent. When you know that your populace has certain options available to them that will inform your actions.
terminalshort 22 hours ago [-]
You are naive for assuming that the government aren't the bad guys with guns. Just ask the 30,000 Iranian protesters that were slaughtered if you don't believe me.
coryrc 20 hours ago [-]
They should stop "raiding" people's homes.
They don't raid schools when there's someone actively killing children. They can just hold off a bit and get people when they're on the move.
themaninthedark 20 hours ago [-]
They are supposed to. That was the lesson learned from Columbine.
That is also why the police response in Uvalde is highly criticized.
pizlonator 22 hours ago [-]
> Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Got any data?
It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly?
What is "regularly"?
EQmWgw87pw 21 hours ago [-]
Doing quick research says about 1 shot at per day, 1-2 fatalities per week, and about 26,000 assaults per year
dpark 21 hours ago [-]
That’s total officers shot, not specifically for raids.
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
There are an estimated 20k-80k no-knock warrants in the US every year for context.
awkward 21 hours ago [-]
There's a reason we had a few years of heavy anti police protest across the US.
baggachipz 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jagermo 3 hours ago [-]
i would follow that up with: Why do americans have so many cameras in their homes? not just afroman, but i see so many videos form surveilance cameras in living rooms etc, isn't that considered creepy?
HEmanZ 22 hours ago [-]
Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.
pempem 18 hours ago [-]
Not a silly question. If you go back to the 2000s, you'll see the growing militarization of local police. This is partially an economic prop-up where the military can now sell police departments materials/arms/etc. and police departments can buy them. Thus the military needs more. Nice little situation they found.
At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.
dogemaster2025 15 hours ago [-]
Police carry guns and draw because there is a certain class of criminal that own guns and that pretty much don’t care about other people’s lives and would shoot for no reason. And also cops just want to go home and live. We also value the life of a cop more than the life of a member of that certain group of criminals.
Anvoker 9 hours ago [-]
By accepting that valuing the life of a cop over a criminal is a good reason for American cops to behave the way they do, what you end up encouraging instead is cops valuing their own lives over those of citizens to a shocking extent.
dogemaster2025 5 hours ago [-]
But this is not unreasonable. You value your life more than you value mine. And we are equal. But criminals are not equal to us.
jmyeet 20 hours ago [-]
Let me outline how broken policing is an institution in the US:
1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;
2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;
3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];
4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;
5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?
6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;
7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];
8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.
A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].
One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].
It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.
It’s disturbing. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were pulled over and my window and door is closed. If I reach for the door handle will the cop think I’m reaching for gun? Do wait for him to scream at me through the window? How do I keep from things escalating? Is there a place in the US where the cops aren’t totally insane? SF? Santa Barbara? Maybe Marin County?
johncessna 22 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying what they did was correct, but they were allegedly told that he had a drug operation and a kidnapping dungeon.
m-s-y 21 hours ago [-]
which is fine. But they didn't vet this info, just ran with it. Massive negligence & duty failure
HanClinto 18 hours ago [-]
A judge reviewed the evidence and signed the warrant. It's not like the cops just took what the witness said and ran with it.
scj 17 hours ago [-]
One of my favourite little details in Jeeves and Wooster is that British cops are shown as bumbling fools who fit right in with the cast.
Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.
galaxyLogic 8 hours ago [-]
Talk about shooting, how about shooting wearing a mask with no identifiable badge on then driving away in an unmarked car, and perhaps shooting more people who try to video you shooting people. Comparatively speaking there's nothing rotten in Denmark
whimsicalism 7 hours ago [-]
because we have 500m guns in the country.. you can’t expect european style policing
21 hours ago [-]
michaelmrose 16 hours ago [-]
The stereotype is probably if anything less horrible than the reality. There was a notable situation where police were called because 12 year old Tamir Rice was walking whilst black with a bb gun. The officer exited the passenger side of the cop car so fast it was still moving when he jumped out. He immediately fired and executed the little kid. Despite the horror of the situation this is what would be colloquially termed a "good shoot" and officers faced no legal consequences.
Despite officer being 25th on the list of most dangerous professions falling below construction helper and farmer officers are trained as if they are going to war and equipped with many of the same toys. They are taught to prioritize preserving their lives over those they are supposed to protect.
SanjayMehta 11 hours ago [-]
Positive reinforcement from Hollywood movies and TV shows.
Maybe 50 years ago Dirty Harry was an exaggeration but now you have several generations of wannabe cops, cops and their bosses who grew up watching those stereotypes.
saltyoldman 17 hours ago [-]
Not many people watch them, but there are countless videos of police stops where it's not the police drawing a gun, but the driver of the car pulled over. Often it's not just pulled- it's aimed and fired. Some cops die, thankfully many get hit in the arm and it's non fatal.
It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.
busymom0 18 hours ago [-]
Considering this was a no-knock warrant, one of the probably causes being kidnapping (shady & possibly corrupt warrant in itself) where they broke down the doors, I'd say they expected some sort of gang activity or something.
vasco 19 hours ago [-]
A big part of being police is the cosplay of being in the army. Why do you think airsoft is so popular?
standardUser 17 hours ago [-]
In Europe there's a maybe 0.1% chance that any random adult is carrying a firearm. And the vast majority of those are going to be rifles for hunting. In the US, it's more like a 3% chance. And firearms in the US tend to have higher capacity and higher rates of fire. Hence the default militaristic response from law enforcement. Or at least that's one of several reasons.
BurningFrog 22 hours ago [-]
When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you.
Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
fc417fc802 22 hours ago [-]
If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
luxuryballs 21 hours ago [-]
and I would argue no knock is unconstitutional, the whole point of a warrant is to prove you’re allowed to search me and the law was written in a time where everything was on paper, we’re suppose to be secure in our papers short of a warrant, if you can’t show a warrant how do I know I’m not being robbed and need to defend myself? it’s totally bonkers
BurningFrog 21 hours ago [-]
If you're there to arrest people, that seems reasonable. But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
coryrc 20 hours ago [-]
> But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.
Unless it's proven someone is on imminent harm, then they should find another way to collect evidence, or just not do it.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
I'm aware, but there seem to be an awful lot of instances where "high stakes high priority evidence collection" doesn't apply.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> When you break into someone's home…
So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
BurningFrog 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
downut 22 hours ago [-]
Best to kill anything that moves; it's the only way to survive.
TallGuyShort 22 hours ago [-]
The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
embedding-shape 24 hours ago [-]
Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
delecti 23 hours ago [-]
I suspect it was less about the legal merits and more about punishing (whether or not they won) through the lawsuit itself.
JoshTriplett 23 hours ago [-]
Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
ryandrake 23 hours ago [-]
Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.
SaltyBackendGuy 23 hours ago [-]
This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).
mywittyname 18 hours ago [-]
> don't necessarily think it was racially motivated
Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend.
And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared.
If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable.
underlipton 21 hours ago [-]
American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around.
> American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated
the history of the United States is a collection of States and territories, forming under very different legal conditions over 100+ years or so.. that blanket statement is without context or detail aka insufficient.
Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc.
delecti 23 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).
malfist 21 hours ago [-]
Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
ctoth 18 hours ago [-]
Millions?
That's... A very big number.
throwaway902984 17 hours ago [-]
Counting from the dawns of the various police forces in the country maybe? Impossible to know, but even then...
Hyperbole illustrates the point pretty well though
embedding-shape 23 hours ago [-]
That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs?
JoshTriplett 23 hours ago [-]
You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
embedding-shape 23 hours ago [-]
This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing.
JoshTriplett 23 hours ago [-]
It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently".
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
tehwebguy 22 hours ago [-]
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose.
evan_ 22 hours ago [-]
They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
shadowgovt 23 hours ago [-]
This is a key insight.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
sixothree 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think this is "better" for him really. He didn't win any money afaik. He spent a lot of time defending himself against something that could have easily gone in a different direction given a different jury.
mwigdahl 23 hours ago [-]
"The process is the punishment"
johannes1234321 23 hours ago [-]
This may be true in many cases.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
throwaway27448 21 hours ago [-]
Billed to the public, too.
Rebelgecko 19 hours ago [-]
Adams County paid for their civil suit???
throwaway27448 16 hours ago [-]
> Foreman was sued by the Adams County Sheriff’s Office
I presume this isn't coming out of the officers' paychecks....
Rebelgecko 15 hours ago [-]
I think that's just sloppy tabloid reporting. The actual lawsuit is from 7 individuals:
If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.
busymom0 18 hours ago [-]
I suspect that either this was some confidential informant who just reported false claims about Afroman and the police used it to get a warrant. Or the whole department is just corrupt and make up stuff to get a warrant in order to raid his house hoping to forfeiture his money.
embedding-shape 13 hours ago [-]
They also claimed that they're received hundreds of calls one day, with violent threats from some anonymous individual, and when they tried to track the number, it didn't work, "the numbers didn't actually exists" or something like that, and there is no way of proving the calls actually happened, except for the call log at their police station.
atmavatar 20 hours ago [-]
> I know cops aren't known for being smart
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic.
nitwit005 16 hours ago [-]
You forgot that they stole his money. When he went to get the cash, it was $400 short. They blamed a counting error, but it was supposedly in a sealed evidence bag, so how did it escape?
That generated a whole slew of extra stories, because it elevated the whole thing to a deliberate crime.
ncr100 21 hours ago [-]
In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
throwaway27448 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying that the public has no control over the police, but it does often feel like that.
athrowaway3z 22 hours ago [-]
US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
lenerdenator 23 hours ago [-]
> don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not?
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
SpaceL10n 23 hours ago [-]
I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
cucumber3732842 23 hours ago [-]
> The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
cucumber3732842 23 hours ago [-]
This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular.
avidiax 18 hours ago [-]
This has curbed somewhat in small cities because of the insurance industry. Turns out that small towns need insurance to cover police malpractice, and those insurers don't like high-risk or overly aggressive police tactics. Turns out the police can be reasonable, if only they are even slightly accountable.
AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client.
thinkingtoilet 23 hours ago [-]
>I know cops aren't known for being smart
Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart.
(granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue)
renewiltord 22 hours ago [-]
Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer.
ngc248 22 hours ago [-]
Mega-streisand effect ... they stacked together so many of em
busymom0 18 hours ago [-]
I hope they appeal this case just to stack together one more humiliation.
busymom0 18 hours ago [-]
I had never even heard of Afroman until 3 days ago when I saw some lawyers livestream the trial on YouTube. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and I was surprised why the case wasn't even summary dismissed by the judge in the first place.
Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity.
BLKNSLVR 22 hours ago [-]
I hope he makes another song with additional material from the court case.
testing22321 22 hours ago [-]
His instagram has daily updates from the court case.
shevy-java 23 hours ago [-]
> Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
plagiarist 23 hours ago [-]
If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor.
mmooss 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ProjectArcturis 23 hours ago [-]
> Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
Moomoomoo309 23 hours ago [-]
To be fair, there is legal precedent for cops not being too smart.
They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally.
tptacek 18 hours ago [-]
People keep saying this and this case from 2000 is the one instance anybody has been able to cite. Most police agencies use standardized domain-specific written exams --- the PELLETB, NTN, IOS --- that are both not general cognitive exams and have no ceiling score.
This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever.
Tostino 23 hours ago [-]
Have you watched any of the video from the raid, depositions, or the trial? They are not smart people.
echelon_musk 23 hours ago [-]
> way less people (including myself) would have never heard about it
He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.
yread 23 hours ago [-]
> pedofile
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
embedding-shape 23 hours ago [-]
> but a reasonable person might assume these rumours to be true
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
Rebelgecko 19 hours ago [-]
Although funnily enough, when one of the questioned about if his wife had an affair with afroman he was like "I dunno". If he doesn't know it's a lie, kinda defeats the point of the defamation suit
philwelch 13 hours ago [-]
To be fair, this raises an interesting question of epistemology. Can any man know for sure that his wife has never had sex with Afroman? It's almost always possible, however unlikely. One can and probably should trust that his wife hasn't had sex with Afroman, but it's rarely possible to be absolutely certain.
shadowgovt 23 hours ago [-]
We are, of course, not privy to the jury's reasoning unless they choose to divulge it.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
jhallenworld 20 hours ago [-]
I thought it was big time defamation risk for Afroman to call him a pedofile.. but maybe the cop is afraid of discovery in this case..
jrm4 23 hours ago [-]
"Of course?"
Where is that coming from?
Do you seriously not believe (well, know) that sadly, many cops do this ALL THE TIME?
walletdrainer 24 hours ago [-]
This all feels extremely mild next to what these people did to Afroman.
arianvanp 23 hours ago [-]
I think you're confusing gender and sexual orientation. He's calling her a lesbian
Mashimo 23 hours ago [-]
No, I'm not. He also posted about her deep voice and people should check what genitals she really has.
hedora 23 hours ago [-]
So, in the music video, the cops pretty clearly steal something (probably money, as alleged), and attempt to destroy evidence.
They’re facing charges too, right?
Right?
cryptonym 23 hours ago [-]
Yes and as a result they will give taxpayer money in a deal and, officer will be moved to nearby county.
No, no way they could have known stealing money and destroying evidence is illegal. So the Post-It note on the old court case gives them qualified (absolute) immunity.
> here appears to be his celebration of his victory
No, that video seems to be from 4 days ago, the verdict of the jury came yesterday.
milkshakes 23 hours ago [-]
even more amazing then
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
This might be peak Streisand effect.
mmaunder 19 hours ago [-]
Almost too good to be true. They didn't find large quantities of weed, and afroman had cameras set up and caught it on camera. I mean, talk about landing with your bum in the butter. His career just caught a major reboot.
23 hours ago [-]
progbits 14 hours ago [-]
Love the morons wearing desert/forest camo to an urban job. GI Joe cosplayers.
behringer 14 hours ago [-]
It's worth it for a spin at millionaire roulette.
maerF0x0 21 hours ago [-]
They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property and conducting the work _that we pay for_. They work for us.
ykl 20 hours ago [-]
That is not just your opinion, that is the opinion of multiple United States Court of Appeals circuits in many many cases, and by its declining to overturn these cases, that is also the opinion of the United States Supreme Court. The United States is a common law country, so really what that means is that your opinion is actually not an opinion at all; you have simply stated the established law of the land.
borski 20 hours ago [-]
That is, in fact, what the law says and what the courts have agreed with multiple times.
avs733 20 hours ago [-]
and I imagine that if the INVERSE of this case had come up, the police suing for defamation would have been protected by qualified immunity so no lawsuit would have been possible.
The police being able to leverage civil law against citizens to control their behavior in ways that citizens cannot leverage against cannot to comment on the abuse of power is entirely unacceptable no matter what our laws and judiciary chose to allow.
Henchman21 11 hours ago [-]
> They work for us.
Who are you trying to kid? Sorry this obviously got under my skin a bit, but it is standing legal doctrine that the police don't even have to protect us. Work for us? They extort money from municipalities all over the nation and call it a "budget". They straight up steal from us through "civil forfeiture". They are assumed innocent in court, even when demonstrably guilty of breaking our laws.
They most certainly do not "work for us" unless you specifically are one of the 0.01%
Edit: I see this is discussed further down. I absolutely get the point being made, I just cannot let it slide. Enough internet for today.
bestouff 20 hours ago [-]
> They work for us.
Ooh sweet summer child.
schiffern 20 hours ago [-]
Cynicism is very cooler-than-thou, but it's not because we don't know better.
It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
hbn 19 hours ago [-]
It's logistically a fact. Their paycheck comes from taxpayers. If you believe they're doing a bad job it's unrelated.
19 hours ago [-]
notlenin 19 hours ago [-]
er... if you'll excuse me confirming the "HN is the 'well actually capital of the internet' stereotype"...
If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'.
Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do.
as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.
gonnagetbanned 20 hours ago [-]
well, to be fair, there are a higher-than-average number of business owners on here, so they really might work for them
cucumber3732842 20 hours ago [-]
Only insofar as those business interests align with the government's interests.
The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government.
While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
notlenin 19 hours ago [-]
yes.
It is also worth noting that in some cases, government and business owners have diametrically opposed interests - namely governments can nationalize companies (and if I'm not mistaken, some governments, like the Nazis, did, or would use the threat of nationalization to make business owners do their bidding with no regard for the interest of the business owner)
maerF0x0 19 hours ago [-]
I understand what you're saying, but I was speaking in the ideal or purpose, rather than the defacto/pragmatic.
postalcoder 23 hours ago [-]
It gives me immeasurable delight seeing afroman at the top of HN.
Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops.
Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
rtkwe 23 hours ago [-]
I think this all started with cake in the face of a cop not pie!
jborden13 22 hours ago [-]
Lemon pound cake you say?
jmyeet 19 hours ago [-]
I love the Afroman story so much. Everything about it.
It does more to expose just how incompetent, entitled and corrupt the average cop really is, something I wish was better known. The cops who brought this suit are basically the biggest crybabies, are too dumb to realize it and too entitled to realize that others wouldn't see it that way. It's fantastic.
Compare this to policing in Japan [1]:
> Koban cops go to extraordinary lengths to learn their beats. They're required to regularly visit every business and household in their districts twice a year, ostensibly to hand out anti-crime flyers or ask about their security cameras. The owner of a coffee shop told Craft, "With Officer Sota, we can say what's on our mind. He's really like a neighbor. Instead of dialing emergency when we need help, we just call him."
American cops are a gang, by and large.
Cops have absolutely massive budgets, from small towns to big cities. Let's not forget Uvalde, where the police department budget was ~40% of the city budget and it resulted in 19 cops standing outside scared while one shooter kept shooting literal children for an hour. Because they were scared.
> Let's not forget Uvalde, where the police department budget was ~40% of the city budget and it resulted in 19 cops standing outside scared while one shooter kept shooting literal children for an hour. Because they were scared.
Not only did they not stop the shooter, but they actively prevented parents—who were willing to risk their lives—from intervening. They didn't just not help, they proactively ran interference for the shooter.
therobots927 10 hours ago [-]
Uvalde should’ve been the nail in the coffin for the thin blue liners. Turns out, not only do they not have a problem with cops murdering black people, they also have no problem with them standing by while their own kids are shot inside a school.
Hell of a death cult this country has turned into.
largbae 19 hours ago [-]
I wasn't gonna run from the cops...
no_shadowban 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
smt88 23 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately Afroman is not particularly pro-freedom (big MAGA supporter). He seems to support certain rights for himself and not for others.
nazgulsenpai 22 hours ago [-]
Even if this were true, are we really so far gone in the political discourse that we can't appreciate a win as Americans because of the perceived political orientation of the recipient?
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
smt88 16 hours ago [-]
I didn't say I don't appreciate a win. I was saying that Afroman isn't a crusader for freedom or anything of the sort. We can appreciate the win without glorifying the victim of the case beyond the scope of the case.
edm0nd 13 hours ago [-]
> I was saying that Afroman isn't a crusader for freedom
Sure he is, he literally just won this case as a crusader for freedom :)
RIMR 19 hours ago [-]
I can appreciate that this verdict is a win for freedom, while also finding the footnote that Afroman is not pro-freedom quite useful.
It is interesting that his treatment is being cast in the light of racial politics rather than persecution of a political dissident.
Y-bar 22 hours ago [-]
I see he celebrated anti-ICE protests in some videos on his YouTube channel. Where does his MAGA support you claim come from?
Rebelgecko 19 hours ago [-]
I think he tried to be the Libertarian presidential candidate and made a song about Hunter Biden, so people just assume he's full MAGA and doesn't deserve 1st amendment rights
watwut 22 hours ago [-]
I mean, both him and Trump have similar approach to opponents or those who wronged them. In this case, the opponents are deeply unsympathetic to most, so it is harder to see.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
Y-bar 22 hours ago [-]
I’m not at all convinced, because that would mean N A S is a Trumper because:
> “When these streets keep callin’, heard it when I was asleep/That Gay Z and C*ck-A-Fella Records wanted beef”
JayZ responded in kind insinuating it back on N A S.
And Drake is also a Trumpist because he told Chris Brown that he fu*ked Chris’s girl.
Tupac also, for some reason:
> ”… You claim to be a player, but I f*cked your wife/We bust on Bad Boys, n*g*as fu*ked for life.”
2Pac in hit-em-up:
> "That's why I fuc*ed your bitch"
Eminem:
> "I f*cked your mother and made her my bitch,"
You know what? Maybe it’s a rapper thing and not an indication of MAGA alignment?
djohnston 8 hours ago [-]
no! no! he said hunter biden! he said wrong! bad man! MAGA! NAzi!!!!!!!!!
boca_honey 19 hours ago [-]
Yes, it's unfortunate that this good thing happened to a person not aligned to my political worldview.
hedora 22 hours ago [-]
He’s willing to publicly criticize government corruption and child abuse, so there’s no way MAGA would accept him. (Both these stances came up in the defamation lawsuit and in the music video.)
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
The problem isn't finding people who will publicly criticize child abuse and government corruption. The problem is finding people who actually will do something about those specific problems and not find some way to enrich themselves (or their supporters) in their name instead.
parineum 21 hours ago [-]
> citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues
The first two of those issues were Trump issues in his campaign and Trump rescheduled marijuana to schedule 2.
flatline 20 hours ago [-]
There was an EO, but that is not law. Cannabis is still schedule I last I checked. The order is to make it schedule III.
themaninthedark 19 hours ago [-]
A president can not make a law, only sign them into existence. He can also direct enforcement or lessen it.
As far as I understand, the Schedule of Cannabis is written into the US Code. So Congress would need to amend it.
It's under the purview of the executive branch to determine drug scheduling
> The term "list I chemical" means a chemical specified by regulation of the Attorney General ... until otherwise specified by regulation of the Attorney General
themaninthedark 17 hours ago [-]
Thank you, TIL!
pstuart 22 hours ago [-]
That's good to know. The second sentence you gave was superfluous because the first one told us that -- I add this not to dismiss your efforts but to highlight them.
BLKNSLVR 1 days ago [-]
Pretty funny, worth seeing at least once to be able to reference it at appropriate times.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
ourmandave 24 hours ago [-]
Hoping it wasn't the SWAT guys. Those guys go hard and everyone is a meth terrorist until zip tied on the floor and proven otherwise. They also tend to shoot your dog. =(
embedding-shape 24 hours ago [-]
Judging by the videos, they look like the typical American "deputy" that wouldn't even pass the fitness tests in other countries, which probably means it's easier to escape, but also that they are more trigger-happy.
BLKNSLVR 22 hours ago [-]
Mime was in Australia, so much lower chance of violence, more polite.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
duxup 21 hours ago [-]
> In one of the music videos, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” surveillance footage shows officers swinging open a gate, kicking down a door, and roaming armed around a living room and a kitchen.
>The other, “Lemon Pound Cake,” shows one of the officers, gun in hand, pausing briefly in Mr. Foreman’s kitchen by a cake inside a glass cloche. “It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” Mr. Foreman sings in the song.
The man has a sense of humor.
asveikau 20 hours ago [-]
Seems like the Streisand effect to me. Suing him over this calls attention to the inappropriateness of police raiding his house. I hadn't heard this story and now I took away from it some embarrassing stories about the cops.
dmix 20 hours ago [-]
He's also a savvy businessman, this will be great for his career
sixothree 8 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately that might be all he gets out of it. He apparently lost the civil suit for damages to his house and the stolen property.
mytailorisrich 19 hours ago [-]
The lemon pound cake first features in the first video, "Will You Help Me Repair My Door" and seems to have become popular (a chubby sheriff deputy glancing at a lemon pound cake, gun in hand is a viral godsend!) so he made that second video about it [1] and it completely took off. I have watched videos outside the courthouse after the verdict and supporters were even handing free lemon pound cakes [2]. Has the apple pie got competition?
>[2]>"I've handed out about 120 pieces of lemoncake today — this last piece is for you [to reporter]."
What a fantastic collection of Americans supporting each other.
#FragileBlueLine
Reubachi 23 hours ago [-]
"Mr. Foreman was not at home during the 2002 police raid, but a security camera system and his wife, using her cellphone, recorded the “faces and bodies” of the officers while they were on the property, according to the lawsuit"
"2002"
New York Times, everyone.
Props to afroman for his perfect demeanor/attitude during all this.
esprehn 23 hours ago [-]
2022. I'm not sure phones recorded useful video in 2002.
embedding-shape 13 hours ago [-]
Sony Ericsson P800 from 2002 had 640×480 videos captured from its camera :) While I wouldn't claim the quality is great, you could tell more or less what was going on.
refulgentis 23 hours ago [-]
Right. It’s a little hard to parse but they’re saying “The NYT has a typo”
netsharc 22 hours ago [-]
And what he's implying. "The NYT has a typo, it's all garbage!"
amiga386 21 hours ago [-]
They're implying "An establishment calling itself a 'newspaper of record' can be expected to have high standards, such as correctly reporting dates, and I'll hold them to that"
If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.
ddellacosta 21 hours ago [-]
Myself and most other programmers I know have at least once (more like 100 times) had the experience where you can't figure something out in some code you've been staring at for an hour, then another person comes along and immediately sees an obvious glaring error that you missed.
I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."
HWR_14 18 hours ago [-]
That's why all news stories are supposed to be reviewed before publication by a second person
Dansvidania 21 hours ago [-]
Youd expect them to have a checklist too though.
tehjoker 21 hours ago [-]
Newspapers used to have copyeditors for this kind of thing. I thought NYT still did.
20 hours ago [-]
refulgentis 20 hours ago [-]
They do and yet they also can make errors
madaxe_again 20 hours ago [-]
The process these days is more like publish then do editorial review. See it on major outlets all the time - break the story as early as possible, get the eyeballs and ad revenue, then get it cleaned up for posterity.
Sometimes this results in radical changes to a piece within hours of publication - yesterday for instance the BBC ran a piece headlined something like “I watched my father murder my mother”, and six hours later in slides an editorial correction saying “she did not, in fact, see her father murder her mother. She was asleep in another room at the time.”
tolerance 20 hours ago [-]
There used to be a Twitter account that pointed out typos like this—I think exclusively—in the NYT.
newobj 19 hours ago [-]
Surprised they didn't write 2ÖÖ2, knowing the Times' predilections
nightpool 19 hours ago [-]
You're thinking of the New Yorker, not the New York Times.
drsalt 9 hours ago [-]
that's not how it works, you only need one umlaut
snackbroken 24 hours ago [-]
Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
anon84873628 23 hours ago [-]
Or claiming you don't know what crime your brother was charged with that led him to resign from the same police department.
mcdonje 23 hours ago [-]
The ACLU called it a SLAPP lawsuit. If true, they probably didn't care if they won or not.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
Rebelgecko 19 hours ago [-]
Honestly it was pretty ballsy of Afroman to release songs during the trial (which did come up, but I think they sort of ignored due to some law that changed in 2024?)
fsckboy 22 hours ago [-]
>Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
tantalor 21 hours ago [-]
I think comment was alleging perjury.
They do know the statement is true (and this is provable). Pretending like they "don't know" is a lie under oath.
snackbroken 14 hours ago [-]
That wasn't actually what I was implying. Just that if the plaintiff isn't even willing to assert that the statements were false, what are you wasting the court's time for?
> He falsely claimed my wife is cheating on me!
> So you assert that your wife didn't cheat on you?
> No.
> ???
tantalor 10 hours ago [-]
Technically, the burden of proof is on the defendant.
giraffe_lady 20 hours ago [-]
Are you saying you believe the cop who said, under oath, he "doesn't know" whether his wife could be having an affair with afroman chose to do that as part of a deliberate legal strategy? And that you think this casts him in a more positive light than merely being clueless?
fny 21 hours ago [-]
I highly recommend people watch video from the trial--specifically the officer testimonies. It's absurd this lawsuit was even fit for trial.
gwbas1c 17 hours ago [-]
The bits I watched were so captivating I had to take them off, otherwise I wouldn't be getting anything done this afternoon.
Honestly, someone could adapt it to a script and run it in a live theater.
Now I know what I'm watching tonight!
quchen 19 hours ago [-]
Do you have a link? There are plenty of snippets that are easy to find, is there one canonical full video?
With some strange commentary, ended up watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ozZIWy7OWk from that playlist and I'm not sure it's AI or what's going on, at one point she said Afroman called one of the police officers a "PDF" which is the first time I heard, doesn't seem Afroman actually said something like that, and I also don't understand at all what's that's supposed to mean. Doesn't seem to be a typo either?
philwelch 13 hours ago [-]
"PDF" is a zoomer euphemism for "pedophile".
busymom0 17 hours ago [-]
> It's absurd this lawsuit was even fit for trial
Is it just me or did the judge seemed biased towards the cops? He also dismissed Afroman's counter-suit.
fny 17 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, cops have the right to break down your door if the warrant warrants it--like having a sex dungeon.
bilbo0s 15 hours ago [-]
"..raid my house and then get pissed, because the dungeon don't exist.."
Bars.
That guy is like a court jester of old unleashed onto an unsuspecting, (and corrupt), 21st century steward class.
hollywood_court 23 hours ago [-]
Those cops embarrassed themselves. Especially that one lady that was faux crying. Shameful behavior from the largest gang in the US.
anon84873628 23 hours ago [-]
That didn't seem like faux crying. Making fun of her in that way is the hardest to defend IMO, since it had nothing to do with her job performance or relevant character attributes. (E.g. how the other officer had been accused of stealing before, or had a brother resign from the force after being charged with a crime involving a minor).
That said, I don't disagree with outcome.
embedding-shape 23 hours ago [-]
Aren't cops by default public figures? They're the de facto face of the police for the ordinary citizen, not sure they should be the type of individual who cries because someone calls them fat, lesbian or whatever. These people have the legal right to essentially execute you in public, I think we should set the bar a bit higher on who should be allowed to be a police officer in the first place.
hollywood_court 23 hours ago [-]
I was raised by LEOs. My mother and all four of her husbands were career long LEOs in the South.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
edm0nd 13 hours ago [-]
>My mother and all four of her husbands were career long LEOs
how many of them physically abused her? the stats say 3 out of 4 did.
komali2 23 hours ago [-]
It seems the job selects for those types. I suppose people interested in law enforcement / justice that aren't that way either end up as lawyers or working for the FBI or something.
hollywood_court 23 hours ago [-]
If you don't have any kind of marketable skills yet want to make a decent living with plenty of benefits, becoming a LEO is the easiest choice for most people.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
jrm4 23 hours ago [-]
Other way around, right? Those types select that job. You're weak but you want to appear powerful, so...
cucumber3732842 22 hours ago [-]
It's a use it or lose it skill. When you carry a badge and gun around and can bark orders at people all day and they have to comply or face the infinite violence you can summon with your radio your skin will grow thin over time.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
alistairSH 22 hours ago [-]
This is a career that quite literally selects for "not too smart" [1]
These people carry guns and can kill you on the street and they can't take getting called some bad names?
throwaway173738 23 hours ago [-]
Yes, exactly. Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face. Or breaking up with a cop. Or just say no to something they’re asking you to do.
“Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.
lwkl 22 hours ago [-]
> Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face.
At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.
ryukoposting 21 hours ago [-]
I cannot imagine living in a place where I can't tell someone what I think of them once in a while.
maest 20 hours ago [-]
You can tell them they are doing a shameful job or that you disagree with their actions or whatever.
You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?
19 hours ago [-]
malcolmgreaves 20 hours ago [-]
The first thing you described is an insult.
maest 20 hours ago [-]
No, an insult implies insolence, rudeness, condescension, insensitivity. You can communicate a dim view of someone without being rude.
eudamoniac 20 hours ago [-]
It is viscerally against my cultural upbringing for the government to make illegal a verbal insult, it seems like an incredible overreach. I'm genuinely culture shocked hearing this. I'd be no more shocked hearing that it's illegal to dye one's hair.
maest 15 hours ago [-]
Fyi, insults are illegal in the US, under certain conditions, under the fighting words doctrine.
nirava 21 hours ago [-]
being fined != physical, possibly fatal violence with body-cam turned off and irrevocable immunity
anon84873628 22 hours ago [-]
I do agree with you and the other comment in this vein. I have very little sympathy for these officers.
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
runako 22 hours ago [-]
> say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it?
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
anon84873628 21 hours ago [-]
So? Even if the officer doesn't live up to our emotionally resilient ideal, it doesn't mean the stereotyped insults are any more acceptable.
And to the genesis of this thread, it doesn't mean I must believe the tears are fake.
hrimfaxi 18 hours ago [-]
I agree with you on the sentiment—I don't think it's cool to use racially charged terms or otherwise in degrading ways. That isn't to say my sympathy is lost. When you feel powerless you reach for power in any way that you can and trying to make someone feel bad for who they are is low-hanging fruit.
23 hours ago [-]
alphawhisky 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwa356262 22 hours ago [-]
Serious question: how come the police have not paid for the damage they caused?
wl 22 hours ago [-]
They chose not to do so. And the courts are no help, because generally speaking, you can't sue the government unless there's a specific law allowing you to do so (sovereign immunity). The police as individuals are generally immune from civil suits unless they violated some clearly established right (qualified immunity).
delfinom 21 hours ago [-]
Eh? This falls under tort law for damages caused by the government.
wl 20 hours ago [-]
The laws that provide a right of action against the government generally don’t cover damages caused by police in the lawful exercise of their duties.
So yeah, sovereign immunity.
wnoise 12 hours ago [-]
Even though you would think that'd be a taking for public use.
wl 9 hours ago [-]
Perhaps it should be, but the courts have not agreed. See Pena v. Los Angeles for an example of an appellate case that rejected this argument. It found that a "police power" exception to the takings clause applies in such cases.
Refreeze5224 21 hours ago [-]
Serious answer: cops are not accountable for their behavior, in the vast majority of cases.
Drakim 22 hours ago [-]
If the damaged party tries to sue the police for the damage they caused, the police can get the case instantly dismissed underqualified immunity.
dec0dedab0de 22 hours ago [-]
Qualified immunity just protects the police, and other government officials personally. If there is grounds for a lawsuit then he could still sue the government that employs the police department.
I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.
voxic11 22 hours ago [-]
The government has sovereign immunity which is why you usually have to sue the people involved rather than the government directly.
tzs 20 hours ago [-]
The federal government and a most state governments in the US have laws that waive or partially waive sovereign immunity for tort claims against the government.
But these police don't work for the state government. They worked for the Adams County government. The immunity waiver you linked explicitly only applies to the state government.
> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,
> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.
> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.
Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.
> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty
and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"
> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building
I didn't know about sovereign immunity, but I just looked it up and there are exceptions to it. I think this one in particular could fall under a civil rights violation.
People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.
Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.
On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.
petcat 21 hours ago [-]
Police departments are sued constantly. Most major police departments even have dedicated divisions set up just to assess and respond to lawsuits. Oftentimes by just knocking on the door and handing over a check.
ngetchell 22 hours ago [-]
The government is sued all the time.
lightedman 22 hours ago [-]
Stealing things out of a person's fridge and eating it is not covered under qualified immunity.
RIMR 22 hours ago [-]
Making up details of the incident doesn't help either. They didn't eat anything, a cop just did a double-take at the lemon pound cake, and Afroman wrote a song about how they wanted to eat it.
cobbzilla 21 hours ago [-]
um it probably is. Wasn’t there a case a few years ago where a dispensary was raided and the cops stole marijuana, and got away with it due to QI.
caymanjim 22 hours ago [-]
Qualified immunity.
iririririr 22 hours ago [-]
which is double genius on afroman, because they forfeited qualified immunity to start this trial. now he can even sue further damages.
distrack as legal maneuver.
giraffe_lady 22 hours ago [-]
He is a seasoned professional at this. He was respected in the diss track game in his day, he definitely understands the boundaries of defamation. And what has long been known in rap in newspapers: even if you're right it's not worth it to be on the stand defending defamation. "It's average size your honor."
jhancock 22 hours ago [-]
I'm going to keep this one... underqualified immunity :)
quickthrowman 21 hours ago [-]
They’re not liable to repair damage incurred from a raid or any other action. If the fire department has to chop your door open with an axe to gain entry to your home, they don’t pay for that either, you do.
If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.
malfist 21 hours ago [-]
There's even a legal case where police took a backhoe to a building and tore one wall completely out instead of negotiating during a hostage situation. The homeowner was unable to get compensation for their destroyed home.
cucumber3732842 20 hours ago [-]
His mistake was stopping when the lawsuit failed. Anyone can rent a backhoe. People forget that there is also a court of public opinion you can appeal to.
malfist 20 hours ago [-]
Are you suggesting a killdozer v2? I'm not sure what you're implying.
cucumber3732842 16 hours ago [-]
Just tear the wall off a relevant party's house and then return it to the rental place.
purpleidea 18 hours ago [-]
The thing I don't understand is why it isn't a felony for the police the disable the surveillance cameras! That alone should be a crime. I get that you need search warrants and protections, but you shouldn't be able to suppress the evidence of your work, since it's common for police to steal, plant evidence, or destroy property.
jMyles 18 hours ago [-]
It is a crime, obviously. Things don't magically become crimes depending on the employer of the perpetrator - that's the whole point of "a nation of laws and not of men."
It's legal for you to arrest someone if you see them commit a felony. It's legal for you to arrest someone under a warrant if you are deputized by a Sheriff of the court (almost never happens, but legal). It's not legal for you, whether you are employed at a police agency or not, to vandalize someone's camera.
NoSalt 22 hours ago [-]
> "On March 14, 2023, seven Adams County police officers sued Foreman, alleging that his use of the video of the raid invaded their privacy."
THEIR privacy?!?!? Their privacy ... in his home? This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard.
jkestner 22 hours ago [-]
The term I learned for this yesterday is “crybully”.
junaru 22 hours ago [-]
This is not some footage issue, there apparently was a smear campaign online.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money”
That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount.
> were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,”
Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.)
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.
tt24 22 hours ago [-]
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
alpha_squared 22 hours ago [-]
The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5].
One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy.
Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave state, it does not make sense to carry over southern slave-catching history into modern police culture.
ceejayoz 19 hours ago [-]
> In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s.
"It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate."
Boston's police department was founded in 1854.
janalsncm 17 hours ago [-]
> The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838.
This is from your Time.com article.
Second, fugitive slave extradition was controversial in northern states and from your Wikipedia article several northern states even passed legislation to protect fugitive slaves.
And why would northern states spend their own tax dollars to fund police forces to capture slaves? It doesn’t make sense. They created police for public safety reasons in cities.
And even if none of that were true it still does not address the genetic fallacy. Just because some police forces started as slave patrols does not imply that all police today are inherently white supremacist.
tt24 21 hours ago [-]
> The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves
I don't see how this supports the claim
alpha_squared 21 hours ago [-]
You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
tt24 21 hours ago [-]
No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.
alpha_squared 21 hours ago [-]
I've attempted to take your responses as made in good faith twice now, despite evidence to the contrary in other threads. I understand if this topic is uncomfortable for you, either because it challenges your world view or because it feels personally invalidating. It appears as though you're looking for one very specific statistic or logical vulnerability in what others are sharing to refute the overall claim. However, I can only lead you to water.
tt24 21 hours ago [-]
Sorry, just looking for evidence that supports the claim that was made. So far there isn’t any.
defrost 21 hours ago [-]
Not the claim made.
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not.
Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
ahhhhnoooo 21 hours ago [-]
Your post is essential. No one is claiming 100% of cops are white supremacists. One is claiming that it's sensible to assume they are.
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
tt24 21 hours ago [-]
Is there evidence to support the claim that, more often than not, a given cop is a white supremacist?
defrost 15 hours ago [-]
> more often than not,
Again, that's _not_ the upthread claim made by somebody other than myself, a non-US read along.
Still, IIRC the US UCLA has written much on the matter, so perhaps start there if you're interested.
tt24 10 hours ago [-]
What has the UCLA written that agrees with this claim?
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
ahhhhnoooo 21 hours ago [-]
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the claim here is "majority of cops are white supremacists". Thats not the claim. The claim is that it is sensible to assume a cop is.
A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case.
Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
Where in this article does it suggest that it’s a statistically safe assumption that most cops are white supremacists?
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
> This study seems unconvincing. We see that black drivers are pulled over more during the day - why does that necessarily mean that it’s due to their race?
Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't.
(The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.)
It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
tt24 11 hours ago [-]
Neither your comment nor the article answers my question. There’s no evidence here that the discrepancy is due to race.
kstrauser 22 hours ago [-]
Behold, the sea lion in its native habitat.
tt24 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Retric 22 hours ago [-]
No, you ignored evidence presented while failing to provide any of your own.
Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
fc417fc802 22 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
Retric 20 hours ago [-]
> statistical defensibility
Requesting an arbitrarily high standard doesn’t create any obligation. Evidence of a high standard does.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
There's no obligation in either direction in this context (idle chitchat) unless of course you care to convince someone of something.
He objected to what was provided and you accused him of ignoring evidence. I'm voicing agreement with his objection. The original claim was one of a statistical nature. Thus any purported evidence should be expected to match.
Retric 19 hours ago [-]
> of a statistical nature. (True) … should be expected to match. (False)
If a group is more likely to be X than the average population then being a member of that group is statistical evidence you are X. Really when referring to statistical evidence here it’s an indication the evidence is of a very low standard not a high one.
He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists which doesn’t actually mean much which is kind of a point on its own. That being it’s the same low standard as used by actual racists, but as you said there’s no actual obligation to go beyond such wordplay. Personally I was very amused by the whole thing but obviously it’s quite offensive to some people.
Taking the other side of this one, you could say something like “sure the odds at least one of them are white supremacists is non trivial, but suggesting all seven are is unlikely.” Again not a strong argument, but it’s at minimum an actual argument.
fc417fc802 13 hours ago [-]
> He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists
This is the crux of the matter. I don't agree with that statement. I believe the provided evidence does not support that claim in any meaningful sense.
I would at least agree that it suggests to seriously entertain the possibility though.
I'm not sure what to make of your true/false response. Suppose I claim that apples have a higher chance of poisoning you than oranges. Evidence that someone at some point made an effort to put poison into the apple supply does not directly support that claim. However if credible it is certainly cause to entertain the possibility.
More generally a claim about a possibility (discreet) can be supported by an event but a claim about averages (statistical) requires population data. Further, a claim that X is more likely than Y is a claim involving multiple populations.
tt24 22 hours ago [-]
Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Retric 20 hours ago [-]
Court cases look at things like when someone arrives in a city as evidence, that alone doesn’t make someone more likely to have done whatever than a million other people, but it’s still evidence. So you dismissed it, but it is in fact evidence that there were white supremests just as your post is evidence you are a serial killer.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
kstrauser 21 hours ago [-]
And to expand on that, this isn’t even a debate. It’s a casual chat about an actual courtroom debate. Here, no one is judging our presentation. We don’t have to meet a high standard of evidence to speak our opinions, lest they be judged invalid.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
parineum 22 hours ago [-]
You understand that white supremacist groups existing as cops doesn't make the majority of cops white supremacists, right?
I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
parineum 21 hours ago [-]
Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.
pear01 20 hours ago [-]
People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
parineum 18 hours ago [-]
> People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state
Let's take a step back. OP, essentially, made a very basic logical error (actually not an error IMO, but a willfully misleading statement).
They said, "Statistically, [assuming a cop is a white supremacist] a pretty sensible assumption."
In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right. So it'd mean that greater than half of police are white supremacists. They then posted a link to support that statement which said that some white supremacist groups are instructing their members to join the police force.
He's gone from the evidence of "some" white supremacist groups are telling "some" of their members among the police force to justify saying that it's a safe assumption to assume any officer is a white supremacist (greater than 50% chance for any random cop to be a white supremacist).
Considering that I strongly doubt the quantity of white supremacists that are members of white supremacist organizations in this county is even more than half of the amount of police officers, I very much doubt that the subset of individuals in the subset of organizations who were given this instruction and actually followed through on it comprises more than half of the police officers in the country.
To which I facetious said, "I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal." Implying that, if the cops used the same logic on a neighborhood with criminals, it'd be sensible for them to assume every member of the neighborhood is a criminal. That point seemed to go over OPs head as he replied as if I wasn't making a facetious point and implied that cops do indeed do that. Presumably he thinks that's a bad thing when they do it but is perfectly reasonable for him to do.
I don't think anyone should be using faulty logic to make claims about groups of people.
> If you support the cops on this
I never said I did and, as such, the rest of this comment is not directed to me.
ceejayoz 17 hours ago [-]
> In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right.
I assume I should buckle my seatbelt.
Not every car ride results in an accident. But enough do.
parineum 16 hours ago [-]
It's safe to assume you won't get in an accident.
You _should_ buckle your seatbelt anyway because it's low effort, high reward in the unlikely case you get in an accident.
ceejayoz 15 hours ago [-]
> It's safe to assume you won't get in an accident.
If that were the case, I wouldn't need a seatbelt.
parineum 12 hours ago [-]
Indeed, your chances of needing a seatbelt for a particular car trip are very low but, over many trips, it becomes a safe assumption you'll be in an accident and, therefore, generally good policy to be prepared for that eventuality.
ethagnawl 21 hours ago [-]
Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
Spivak 21 hours ago [-]
This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical
professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
allan_s 22 hours ago [-]
We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
mothballed 22 hours ago [-]
Won't someone think of those who falsely accuse someone of kidnapping when they get a similarly ridiculous accusation against them?
This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
EvgeniyZh 22 hours ago [-]
Statistically speaking "murderer is black" is a sensible assumption in US [1], but I'd prefer it wouldn't be made
The chance of a random black person being a murderer is substantially lower than the chance of a random cop being racist.
loeg 19 hours ago [-]
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Also, you know, protected opinion.
terminalshort 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> I claim that Afroman is a criminal.
At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion.
If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
terminalshort 21 hours ago [-]
Of course it's not defamation. But that's not what you said. You said "seems fair"
TheCoelacanth 22 hours ago [-]
The bar for defamation is much higher for public officials like police than it is for private citizens.
Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
terminalshort 21 hours ago [-]
No it's not and neither is Afroman's statement. But the comment I was replying to said it was a fair statement, not merely that it is not defamatory.
TheCoelacanth 22 hours ago [-]
Doesn't really matter since police officers are public officials. The bar for defaming a public official is actual malice, which is clearly not the case here. They need to prove that he deliberately said facts that he knew were false with the deliberate intention of harming them. It was also obviously a satirical song which further weakens the case. This is such a weak case it should have been thrown out before it ever reached trial.
ceejayoz 19 hours ago [-]
Honestly, "actual malice" part probably the thing both parties here agree on existing. It's a series of diss tracks, they're inherently malicious.
You're just allowed to be maliciously right about things, if you like.
snackbroken 13 hours ago [-]
"Actual malice" is confusingly not about if the defendant was acting maliciously. It is specific legal jargon meaning that the defendant knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth made the false statements.
ceejayoz 54 minutes ago [-]
One of the songs claims he fucked one of the deputies' wives; I presume that, at least, fits it. (Unless it's true.)
ryukoposting 21 hours ago [-]
It's a NY Post article. Expect some slant, and find a second opinion.
behringer 22 hours ago [-]
It's not smears when it's (mostly) true or opinion.
kstrauser 22 hours ago [-]
Civilians, in the middle of the forest: We want our privacy.
This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.
Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.
This flavor of police: Stop being mean!
sanitycheck 22 hours ago [-]
I don't understand how they found nothing in the raid, wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant? If they forgot those that's a whole new level of police incompetence.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
> wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant?
Why do you think they were so annoyed at all the cameras?
jkestner 22 hours ago [-]
I guess they assumed that a musician whose whole persona is built around weed would supply the evidence.
polothesecond 22 hours ago [-]
You say that, but I’ve been watching a lot of those body cam channels over the past few years.
I remember one quite well, in which the police were raiding some suburban Texas home and decided to steal the guns and cocaine they found in it.
The kicker: They forgot to turn off their body cams while doing and discussing it.
parineum 21 hours ago [-]
> Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show...
You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.
lotrjohn 23 hours ago [-]
I was gonnna click the link, but then I got high.
dghf 23 hours ago [-]
I would’ve posted to say what I think, but I got high.
looselygoosy 23 hours ago [-]
Can't be bothered to upvote, and I know why
22 hours ago [-]
debo_ 23 hours ago [-]
Is the NY Post some kind of National Enquirer analogue? This article reads like it was written by a grade school child trying to emulate the voice of an villainous news reporter.
Yes, it's a pretty over the top paper. Feels like you're reading TMZ for stuff that didn't happen.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
Yes, it's a right-wing tabloid. Our equivalent of the Daily Mail.
culi 20 hours ago [-]
Interestingly enough this is not the first time cops have invaded a famous rapper's house and the rapper proceeded to make a music video out of the footage
They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property.
paxys 19 hours ago [-]
Police, and government agents in general, should have no expectation of privacy when doing their job, period. If you have to hide your face then I don't trust you. And yes, that applies to all of ICE.
iamacyborg 1 days ago [-]
I’ve had “lemon pound cake” stuck in my head all morning thanks to this
embedding-shape 24 hours ago [-]
I've heard "Randy Walters is a son of a bitch, ooooh oooooh, uuh!" the entire day today after hearing the song yesterday, probably the most catchy one to come out of this whole story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U
Gotta say I love Afroman's choice of courtroom atire.
bonesss 23 hours ago [-]
I made this joke in another thread, but: I keep imagining Afromans court getup as the formal attire for American civil lawyers. Like robes and wigs, suits n ‘fros.
subpixel 23 hours ago [-]
I haven’t found any information about what cause the police had, why a warrant was issued, etc.
I’m not suggesting suspicion has merit, but given all the idiocy I’m wondering what other forms of chicanery may have taken place to get a warrant.
dghf 23 hours ago [-]
Tip from a “confidential informant”, I believe I read somewhere.
Suing for invasion of privacy over a music video demonstrating how they invaded his privacy is wild!!
khernandezrt 22 hours ago [-]
Never thuoght i'd see Afroman at the top of the Hackernews articles haha
dyauspitr 13 hours ago [-]
Makes me feel nostalgic for the 2000s.
sayYayToLife 23 hours ago [-]
Okay at first I was like this music is not my style, but the humor was so good.
Tade0 33 minutes ago [-]
I've only seen the clip where Afroman is escaping from that police lady zigzaging backwards, but that's enough for me.
How is it that a law enforcement officer can't keep up with a man in his 50s who isn't even trying to be the fastest?
eks391 22 hours ago [-]
Same. It was such low quality video and audio, but I stayed for the same reason you continue listening to a comedians story
anon84873628 23 hours ago [-]
One of my favorite parts is when Afroman is being cross examined about why he brought the media and his lawyer to retrieve his money.
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
It's a small county with an extreme minority of black people, like a couple hundred or less. It's quite likely he had personally encountered some of these officers before, and almost certain they knew who he was. Within the realm of possibility he saw something like this coming. Small rural sheriff depts are astoundingly corrupt.
notepad0x90 21 hours ago [-]
Is there anyone who isn't super rich who feels safe in america anymore?
Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?
qup 21 hours ago [-]
Arrests aren't abductions. You can't change the words and suddenly make criminals into victims.
amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago [-]
If they have a warrant maybe. If they don't, abduction seems right.
In addition, you're not a criminal until you are convicted.
john_strinlai 21 hours ago [-]
ice has literally abducted citizens with no criminal record. those people are victims.
qup 20 hours ago [-]
Law enforcement can arrest people or detain people.
You're subbing in "abduct" for one of those words.
schwartzworld 16 hours ago [-]
If you don't have probable cause and you don't have a warrant, it's not an arrest and you aren't law enforcement. You're subbing in some words yourself.
john_strinlai 20 hours ago [-]
abduct: to seize and take away (a person) by force
Law enforcement arrests people every day. It's their primary job.
You're not confused about the term. We all know the difference.
john_strinlai 19 hours ago [-]
correct, i am not confused about the term "abducted", and i stand by what i said.
lostmsu 15 hours ago [-]
In most cases police or ICE does not take away people by force, but by the threat of legal authority.
OK, I am not certain about police and "most", but rather certain about ICE and "most".
lenerdenator 23 hours ago [-]
Y'know, officers, if you'd shown up to his house after the raid and apologized and offered to buy the guy a new door of his choosing and the installation for it, we're probably not having this conversation.
alphawhisky 23 hours ago [-]
They don't have the emotional intelligence for that.
no_shadowban 22 hours ago [-]
They got what they wanted.
Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.
If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.
ChrisMarshallNY 21 hours ago [-]
Heh.
> their constitutional privacy
Isn't that something that people are always pointing out "is not guaranteed by the Constitution"?
jfengel 20 hours ago [-]
The Constitution guarantees the right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects".
Which means what the Supreme Court says that it means. It's easy to imagine that it means something akin to what people mean by "privacy", but interpreting the Constitution is infinitely malleable so I don't have any idea what it means.
djfobbz 19 hours ago [-]
Suing for invasion of privacy over a music video demonstrating how they invaded his privacy is wild!!
xeckr 19 hours ago [-]
Cops bust in searching for his drugs, then accuse him of invasion of privacy and humiliation...
dehrmann 20 hours ago [-]
Defamation is the most boring version of this case. Barring dishonest editing, of course it's fine.
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
OkayPhysicist 18 hours ago [-]
> If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws
Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.
wnoise 12 hours ago [-]
I knew that about the feds, but does it also apply to the states?
dehrmann 10 hours ago [-]
I think most states don't consider it public domain.
fortranfiend 21 hours ago [-]
That lemon pound cake did look tempting though.
shevy-java 23 hours ago [-]
This was also on youtube - Afroman made his points very clearly. That was an easy case.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
Asooka 23 hours ago [-]
I know things are bad in the USA right now, but news like these show that you still have your basic rights. This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. There have been some people abusing their freedom in recent times cough Kanye cough, but for every loud nazi there are ten more excellent people whose right to speak should not be infringed!
SketchySeaBeast 22 hours ago [-]
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
OkayPhysicist 18 hours ago [-]
Canada has better defamation laws than most of Europe (as truth is an absolute defense), but the US puts the onus of proving falsehood on the plaintiff, not the defense, in cases concerning public figures. The US's freedom of speech laws are one of the few truly exceptional legal constructs we should be proud of. Most other good legal concepts the US has pioneered have been copied to similar or greater effect abroad, such as the ADA and worker's comp.
circlefavshape 22 hours ago [-]
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
martin_a 22 hours ago [-]
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
sneak 23 hours ago [-]
This wasn’t a 1A case, it was a civil defamation suit. He won because they failed to prove defamation, NOT because the judge threw out the lawsuit because of a violation of constitutional rights.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
waysa 20 hours ago [-]
> Germany sometimes bans entire political parties
You make it sound like Germany bans political parties every other year.
Germany formally only ever banned two parties:
- Socialist Reich Party (SRP), 1952
- Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 1956
For context: The Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949.
There are current discussions about banning - or evaluating a potential ban of - the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). If the ban went through (I think it won't), it would be the first in 70 years.
sneak 8 hours ago [-]
That’s just an example. Germany’s censorship (a violation of human rights to peaceful free expression) doesn’t just stop at political parties.
The fact that they are even discussing a ban of AfD shows how ridiculously dangerous such powers are when held by the state. The AfD is disgusting but until and unless they take up arms, speech is speech. “First they came for the racists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a racist. Then they came for the publishers of violent video games…”
There is no power that you can give to the state that they will not eventually abuse at their convenience. It positively astounds me that Germans do not understand this, given the nation’s history.
shadowgovt 23 hours ago [-]
Perhaps interesting here is that some of the things he said were definitely not defensible via "truth is an affirmative defense." But it's ultimately up to the jury, and they can also find him innocent because a reasonable person wouldn't be offended by outlandish accusations.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
sneak 8 hours ago [-]
“walk” refers to criminal prosecution where the alternative is going to prison. This was a civil trial, he was not being prosecuted. The police, despite raiding his house, never charged him with a crime. He was not “found innocent” in a civil suit. He was innocent the whole time even if he lost this trial, it’s just a matter of monetary damage.
TheCoelacanth 22 hours ago [-]
Truth is far from the only defense.
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump.
The Germans would argue such powers prevent the Trumps.
no_shadowban 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
LightBug1 1 days ago [-]
As someone who has never seen that video before, could I respectfully say:
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Thank you, Ohio cops and lawyers, for bringing this to our attention.
duskdozer 23 hours ago [-]
When he started reversing the video around lemon pound cake I really thought the officer was backing up to take a piece lol
quietsegfault 1 days ago [-]
I highly recommend watching the video that made the other cop cry.
The judge really loved the cops for some reason. So embarrassing for him.
embedding-shape 23 hours ago [-]
Well, he probably interacts with them on a daily/weekly basis, or at least other people from their department, and probably don't want to end up on their bad side.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
chaps 23 hours ago [-]
If you think "justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed", then please consider the people who aren't famous and can't get media attention when this sort of thing happens to them. Justice and freedom of expression fail to prevail on the regular and this is just one win amongst many, many, many losses.
tehwebguy 22 hours ago [-]
Even just in this instance justice would include damages for their destruction and an inquest into the warrant from the cop that wrote it to the judge that signed it.
Tostino 23 hours ago [-]
For this one case. He seems to be a horribly biased judge though from what I saw in this case over the three days.
sneak 23 hours ago [-]
Justice didn’t prevail. Afroman had to spend THOUSANDS defending himself in this bullshit civil lawsuit, and his countersuit got thrown out because police have qualified immunity.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
There is no justice here.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
One of my local (several states away) bakeries announced a "Afroman lemon cake macaron" today.
His legal costs are gonna be tiny versus his YouTube/Spotify revenue out of all this.
(And I wouldn't ignore the value he probably applies to being proven right in court, either.)
Capricorn2481 22 hours ago [-]
Which is great for him. The point being this happens to other people who aren't famous, and maybe don't want to spend their time asymmetrically fighting for themselves on social media.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
That's fine, but "There is no justice here" is incorrect.
Capricorn2481 20 hours ago [-]
How so? The positives you described had nothing to do with the courts. That's just an outcome of his own savvy. If he didn't make the video or the song, he would be out a lot of money. That's not justice, that's an entertaining person using their virality to claw back some of what was taken from them. How would that go for Joe Average?
This is the story of a guy who got sued for being harassed and had to waste years of their time and money fighting it.
shadowgovt 24 hours ago [-]
One of the more interesting parts of the whole ordeal was officers getting on the witness stand and declaring that the lyrics that insinuated he had had sex with their wife were deeply traumatizing.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
SketchySeaBeast 22 hours ago [-]
It's important to remember to thank them for their service.
iririririr 22 hours ago [-]
was this on the regular media? I've been bombarded by this case on tiktok for the last 5 days. and i don't follow police, law, celebrity, or rap.
gotta love some Streisand effect in the morning...
mkovach 24 hours ago [-]
As fellow Ohioan Chrissie Hine and The Pretenders said, "Ay, oh, way to go, Ohio."
Yeah, it was from "My City Was Gone," which isn't a pleasant song about the state, but pfft, it works here.
mcdonje 23 hours ago [-]
It works here because it isn't a pleasant song about Ohio.
syngrog66 14 hours ago [-]
This story should not be on HN. Shame on you folks.
moi2388 22 hours ago [-]
I would argue that using the footage ought to be legal; they are in his home.
Posting their names is questionable; as officers they are public servants, but naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
Lying however would be slander and illegal, in my humble opinion. Not worth 4 million in damages, but at least a cease and desist?
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
> naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.
> Lying however would be slander and illegal…
They couldn't prove he did.
moi2388 22 hours ago [-]
I’d argue that’s rather different than just a cop somewhere.
He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man..
Rebelgecko 19 hours ago [-]
My understanding is he said "Adams county sheriff's are crooks because they took my money" (which is not disputed)., and individual officers, who weren't actually mentioned by name, sued because someone else was responsible for taking the money
ceejayoz 21 hours ago [-]
> He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man.
If that were defamatory, 90% of QAnon would be in court.
Iamkkdasari74 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
3327 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Aryanto 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
maverickmalti41 24 hours ago [-]
[dead]
s5300 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
speefers 23 hours ago [-]
[dead]
MaxVeritas775 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cardsstacked47 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
_alternator_ 21 hours ago [-]
Explain?
awithrow 19 hours ago [-]
You're talking to a bot. There has been a wild influx of these accounts that just add filler comments like this.
dang 19 hours ago [-]
Thousands of them in fact.
lokimoon 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jcarrano 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
headz 23 hours ago [-]
You mean the cops. Right?
no_shadowban 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
circlefavshape 22 hours ago [-]
They're not. Really. You know less about the world than you think you do. Come to Ireland and talk to a cop
ohyoutravel 23 hours ago [-]
I’m curious what the alternative is? I’m not aware of anyone, save you and the aggrieved police, who think this went the wrong way.
sneak 23 hours ago [-]
This is not remotely true. Furthermore, the way people don’t get away with stuff like this is via extralegal/extrajudicial harassment, abuse, violence, and sometimes assassination (see also: MLK, Huey, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Barry Cooper, etc), so we aren’t really sure that he has gotten away with it yet.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
jrm4 23 hours ago [-]
Feels like some unfair downvotes, so I'll ask again.
In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.
And yes, it's great.
input_sh 22 hours ago [-]
I'd work the same in pretty much any European country, as in you'd record them, you'd publish that, they'd make up some lame excuse why that's not allowed, it'd go to a court, and a judge would decide who was right case-by-case?
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
OkayPhysicist 20 hours ago [-]
He'd probably actually be guilty of something defamation-adjacent in a lot of European countries.
In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.
A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).
To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.
jcarrano 21 hours ago [-]
100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)
input_sh 20 hours ago [-]
Absolutely not, Germany in general cares more about privacy than any other European country, which of course extends to cops, but you cannot extrapolate anything privacy-related from Germany as a continent-wide rule.
If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)
jcarrano 21 hours ago [-]
Exactly what I meant. For example, in Germany one would have a hard time for much less.
josefritzishere 23 hours ago [-]
This is the single funniest thing to happen in at least a decade.
anonymars 21 hours ago [-]
You owe it to yourself to watch this testimony from the trial
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it.
"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
Just a salt of the earth officer telling it like it dog-gamn is. :|
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
PSNI had one single firearm discharge in the two year period covering October 2023 - September 2025.
Plus 948 uses of irritant spray, 496 uses of their baton, and 38 taser discharges in the same period. And 23,489 uses of "unarmed physical tactics".
That's for a population of around 2 million. By comparison, SFPD had 10 "officer involved shootings" in the past year for a population of 800k, a rate fifty times higher than that in NI.
I guess the above poster is thinking of the shoot-to-kill era of the 80s (still well within living memory): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northe...
The political situation in the late 1960s provided plenty of kindling, but it seems clear that most of the sparks that actually caused the conflagration came from the barrel of guns held by soldiers and the police. They were directly responsible both for the death of the civil rights movement and the collapse of the government, and without the heavy-handed response it's likely that the settlement of the late 90s would've happened 25 years earlier.
It's actually a great example of why the militarisation of policing should be resisted at all cost.
Of course it's not like American cops have recognized the danger that poses and politically aligned themselves with reducing or restricting access to guns, so they lose a lot of credit there, but they are genuinely facing a better armed and therefore more dangerous population.
There are 153k people who have legal firearms (so about 10% of the adult population, vs about three times that in the US). That's largely farmers with shotgun licenses (NI is pretty rural by European standards) plus licensed "weapons for personal protection" for people exposed to threats for whatever reason as a legacy of the Troubles.
And then there are some unknown number with illegally-held guns - the main armed groups put their weapons "beyond use" as part of the decommissioning process in the 2000s, but inevitably some will have been missed, and then there are the dissident groups who still hold significant amounts of weaponry.
Hard to put an exact figure on it, but if you guesstimate it at a weapons ownership rate at about half that of the US you probably wouldn't be too far from the truth.
So even after accounting for the differential in gun ownership, SFPD are still shooting people at ~25x the rate of the PSNI.
> Source: ChatGPT
Please tell me this is a joke?
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts...
- https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/guns-an...
- https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2025001/article...
See Sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
For ChatGpt answers we reasonably expect to cite actual sources rather than "Source: ChatGPT".
For Wikipedia, most of us just stop at "Source: Wikipedia".
“Source: ChatGPT” frequently doesn’t include the link to the original chat, so is hard to verify that is the actual output, and we all have experience with ChatGPT wholesale making up facts when it is led towards the conclusion, or just inventing facts and sources.
I personally treat ChatGPT “facts” like “facts” from Reddit or Meta. There might be a grain of truth in it, but treating it like an actual source is a fool’s game.
It’s a very American mixture of fear and bravado in a feedback loop which means every piece of evidence of cowardice has to be compensated for with even more overt aggression.
Hence cops in full body armor with guns drawn behaving like black and tans in Palestine.
However, the IOPC is not mandated to conduct investigations. So it is possible (though less likely for a shooting) that the IOPC will just kick it back to local police. It is also possible (and more likely) that they will oversee but use local police to do the actual work, just because that's much cheaper and their budget is limited.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
The sadly predictable response of the police in America is to overmatch the “enemy.” Presume they have a weapon for crimes of certain classes, obvious violence crimes like kidnapping and also drug crimes, which poor Afroman was accused of both.
Personally, having been SWAT’d as a young man, it’s not that I think they shouldn’t have access to armaments. It’s that their rules of engagement are obscenely lopsided to the point that they just bring them always, all the time, and will not use common sense judgement.
This could have been a knock-and-talk from Officer Friendly and if things didn’t go well - send in a higher level of officer. Starting at bootleg Navy SEAL raids for every accusation is a blight in modern law enforcement.
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
False. Innocent bystanders are killed by police discharging guns, but rarely. And, while the goal should be zero, it will never be zero
The EU has a much bigger population than the USA, in a smaller space, and I'd bet they're already around this number.
I guess you mean "normal" non-criminal people in the EU are not allowed to have AR-15 assault rifles in their homes, that they can use if they have mental health issues.
I personally believe that is one of the reasons the USA has so much gun violence. Get rid of the guns in people's homes and things will change for the better.
I mean ... look at this ... Only in the USA!
https://dimages2.corriereobjects.it/files/image_572_429/uplo...
https://www.politico.eu/article/helsinki-no-traffic-death-ro...
"Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year, municipal officials revealed this week."
"The limits were enforced with 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy based on the national “Vision Zero” policy, with the goal of achieving zero traffic injuries or deaths. Data collected by Liikenneturva, Finland’s traffic safety entity, shows Helsinki’s traffic fatalities have been declining ever since."
And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!?
Come on, you know what people are talking about when they say "innocent bystander".
No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and even if you'd like to craft a scenario next where we're going to talk about Officer Friendly stopping a rape-in-progress, yes, that person is almost certainly guilty, AND the punishment for that crime is usually not death, AND the cornerstone of our justice system says that the officer in question, no matter how pure of heart he might be, cannot exact a death sentence on a clearly guilty person because that is not how justice works.
A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
It sure is! So let's not confuse it with something else.
> A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
That's a perfectly reasonable point but let's get there without mixing up two very different statistics.
Why the fuck not?
Two cops in a car rolled up and jumped out of the car with guns drawn and screamed at us to put our hands up because we “looked suspicious”.
They then asked us what we were doing, we said “walking home”, and they put their guns away and said “be safe out there, we didn’t realize you were kids”.
Absolutely no idea why it warranted guns pointed at us
If this was true, would you have survived?
Untrained random civilians encountering cops are supposed to have perfect sefl control. Supposedly trained professionals can be irresponsible, escalate for no reasom, risk others and shoot if they merely feel afraid - regardles of actual danger.
They don't know you or what you could be capable off.
One way or the other, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in other countries.
If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they have knives you should also be thinking guns drawn the ~exact amount less no matter which of the 2 weapon they had.
Disarming someone who poses a threat with a knife (especially via the use of modern equipment) is absolutely possible and can be performed in most cases with training, even with just one officer. Meanwhile, disarming someone with a gun is a much more complex task, often requiring a coordinated effort from multiple officers
I want to see you attempt that in real life when someone is within 21 feet. If you watched enough training videos and the literal flood of body camera videos that show even tasers are more often than not infective you would not speak so conveniently about a split second life or death situation.
Sadly I did not film it, but you could have been! I have attended multiple classes during which I had to disarm people with knives and other weird objects. It is absolutely possible with the right circumstances and training, but it's a completely different story when it comes to guns - the element of luck is much more meaningful, as a instructor who was shot quite a few times in their career has pointed out
How police respond to you is very dependent on a lot of factors, including your age, race, what you are wearing, where you are, and what time it is. I don’t think you should use your own personal experience as a universal template.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Because, as a society, we should do everything we can to prevent harm to everyone, even people who are acting erratically. There could be all sorts of reasons for the behavior. Anyone can have a psychotic episode, and that shouldn’t immediately earn a death sentence. Of course, I understand that even an innocent person having a psychotic episode can be very dangerous, and I don’t think they should be allowed to hurt others, and it may be necessary to use force, and potentially deadly force, to protect other people.
However, I think that is very different than saying “we shouldn’t worry about the perpetrators well being at all”, or that it is preferable to kill the person rather than take ANY risk that they could hurt someone. The answer lies somewhere in between.
Guns are definitely pulled way more often by the police than they should be. but to your point I am okay with cops shooting anyone brandishing a knife or any other deadly weapon.
As a fun example I had a coworker who collected handguns. I once asked him how many he had and he asked for clarification, should he include unregistered?
I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
Expanding that, the deadliest part of being a police officer is almost certainly the driving component. No gun will save you from smashing your SUV into a pole. And the aftermarket modifications made to the vehicles aren't crash tested. A police cruiser is full of potential projectiles.
But there are a lot of cops in the USA, and plenty I'm sure have nice, cozy jobs, and then there are some who spend thee majority of their career policing areas that more closely resemble warzones or 3rd world nations but this isn't the majority by any means.
Relevant fictional quote:
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
> the other serves and protects the people
The only time this was actually true was at the advent of organized policing in the United States - there were two purposes for cops. In the north, they were meant to ensure the protection of property, particularly commercial.
In the south, it was the same except that usually meant slaves, so in the worst kind of technically correct sense, they did at one point protect people…kind of. Well, kept them “safe” from freedom and such.
> Insane take truly. First, CCW carriers are statistically the least likely to be involved in any kind of "violent life ending incident".
Sure, you could argue this, with the exception of suicide, found guns (usually by kids in the home), and stolen guns. It's not just the person certified, it's everyone around them who can obtain access to the gun they now own
>The number of non self-defense homicides caused by them is approximately 0 per year.
Only because there's no public data on this particular statistic. A nonprofit produced a database based on news headlines and limited state data, though, and found 1700 suicides and 600 convicted murders by CCW carriers between 2007 and 2025: https://vpc.org/concealed-carry-killers/
A better way to phrase it would be that the number of homicides are far less than the violence that a lack of CCW would enable, though that on its own is statistically shaky.
> Second, to suggest that people should allow themselves to be victims to violent crime because it's safer for the whole is some sort of collectivist trotskyite nonsense we will never agree on. Under no circumstance should an innocent person forfeit life or property for a violent criminal.
You're right, we (the USA) probably won't ever agree on it, due to the intense financial incentives behind firearms manufacturing and ownership and the subsequent lobbying and influence over public influence that those companies fund, but every other country apart from the US is a sweeping counterexample to this. We lose 45,000 people per year to guns (~60% by suicide). It's the #1 cause of death for children since 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-sta... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
It's reductive to suggest that the only thing having more guns around does is "prevent victimization" when the guns themselves enable violence to so many nearby parties, including to the owner themselves.
> Its astonishing to me people can look at FBI statistics, total gun deaths trending down for the last 30 years, and then suggest people who are statistically the most safe with guns shouldn't be able to carry them.
The figure you're quoting appears to be the graph from page 1 of https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/tpfv9323.pdf, which is nonfatal victimization, which hasn't trended down--it's hovered between 1 and 2 per 1000 since 2003, and appears to be more of a reflection of improved medical skill than anything about guns.
Anyway, you were quoting gun deaths--that's page 13. That chart has stayed roughly the same since 1999: 4-5 per 100k persons (except for the spike during covid)
>The qualifications for CCW are harder than police qualifications in most states. But you wouldn't know this because Everytown, MSNBC, CNN, and others have spent the last 12 or so years lying through statistics so that the government has the monopoly on violence.
No permit required for CCW in 27 states. You also have states like Utah that will mail you a permit that's valid in 30 different states and doesn't require proof of live-fire training.
But yes, in CA, for example, it's a 16 hour course, background check, fingerprints, clean record, (sometimes) psych evals, and even then there are restrictions.
This isn't an indicator that CCW is difficult to obtain, though, since this is a reasonable barrier--it's an indicator that police qualifications are laughable. (While we're on that topic, by the way, law enforcement officers (both active and inactive) are allowed to concealed carry in all 50 states)
https://aliengearholsters.com/blogs/news/how-to-get-a-concea...
Share more feedback if you have it. Would love to learn more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksim_Gelman_stabbing_spree#L...
Something I learned from a friend is to ask permission for every movement or at the very least narrate and move slowly.
"I'm going to reach in the glovebox for my registration. Is that ok?"
I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
Edit: friend and I are also white.
All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.
That's not really true. The standard is a reasonable fear for your life. That's reasonable standard is evaluated in court by how a reasonable person would have reacted. Yes, they do give some deference to the individual who was actually there (police or civilian). The real problems happen because the DA and the courts tend to have bias when it comes to subjecting members of the system to the same process that others face.
In which case, they should spend the rest of their life in a high-security psychiatric hospital.
They're obviously too mentally fragile to be allowed out in the world.
Qualified immunity tends to chime in.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
> The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
> Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir. 2019): Qualified immunity granted for officer who, hunting a fugitive, ended up at the wrong house and forced six children, including two children under the age of three, to lie on the ground at gunpoint. The officer tried to shoot the family dog, but missed and shot a 10-year-old child that was lying face down, 18 inches away from the officer. The court held that there was no prior case where an officer accidentally shot a child laying on the ground while the officer was aiming at a dog.
> Young v. Borders, 850 F.3d 1274 (11th Cir. 2017): Qualified immunity granted to officers who, without a warrant, started banging on an innocent man’s door without announcing themselves in the middle of the night. When the man opened the door holding his lawfully-owned handgun, officers opened fire, killing. One dissenting judge wrote that if these actions are permitted, “then the Second and Fourth Amendments are having a very bad day in this circuit.”
> Estate of Smart v. City of Wichita, 951 F.3d 1161 (10th Cir. 2020): Qualified immunity granted for officer who heard gunshots and fired into a crowd of hundreds of people in downtown Wichita, shooting bystanders and killing an unarmed man who was trying to flee the area. The court held that the shooting was unconstitutional but there was no clearly established law that police officers could not “open fire on a fleeing person they (perhaps unreasonably) believed was armed in what they believed to be an active shooter situation.”
(And a bunch of others.)
And a matching case has to be very specific:
> Baxter v. Bracey, 751 F. App’x 869 (6th Cir. 2018): Qualified immunity granted for officers who sent a police dog to attack a man who had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands in the air. The court held that a prior case holding it unconstitutional to send a police dog after a person who surrendered by laying on the ground was not sufficiently similar to this case, involving a person who surrendered by sitting on the ground with his hands up.
"No clearly established law", my ass.
Here are a bunch going the other way. https://policefundingdatabase.org/explore-the-database/settl...
I never said that qualified immunity wasn't an issue, just that there tends to be more protections when use of force is involved than with property.
In other words, from the victimized populace.
I think a cop who steals seized evidence should be personally liable to the person they stole from.
(…and I'd note "v. City of Wichita" is clearly responsive to your question.)
Sadly, yes. They're also the populace that voted for that leadership. There are many leaders of major cities that continually push policies that are highly probably to result in legal action due to their conflict with existing law and case law. I don't like it, but its true.
The goals are to make the officer comfortable and minimize the time.
“the only way” puts me in mind of The Onion headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
He told me a story about a noise complaint. He said him and his partner banged on the front door of the house, but there was no response. He said they called in the status, but were told to wait. About 10 minutes later multiple SWAT vehicles arrived. He said one of the vehicles literally drove into the side of the house, making a huge hole in the house. About a dozen SWAT officers ran into the house, multiple shots were fired, the tear gas started a fire. The house was absolutely destroyed. ... No one was home; the house was empty. A kid left the TV on really loud when he left for school. A neighbor called it in, hoping the cops could just go into the house and turn off the TV. Worse, there was no punishment to anyone involved; the cops were doing as they were trained.
This sounds like a generic urban legend "A friend of a friend told me".
If something like this happened, it would have to be in the news, right?
People generally do not shoot at cops, because whether or not they hit the target doing so is pretty much signing their own death sentence. All cops have to do to protect themselves is to not provoke people to fight-or-flight reactions.
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
There's plenty of video of the guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETf7NJOMS6Y
In context, its correct, that's not up for dispute. The question is "does it add anything to the context?" and more importantly "could a student misconstrue its inclusion as something else?"
You'd think that, being so educated on the hormonal backlash from experiencing trauma, that cops and the greater judicial system would be more forgiving of e.g. emergent hypersexuality in rape victims after experiencing a rape that Grossman calls out there. But you would be wrong, because even if Grossman wants his students to understand that concept for their own health, he wildly misunderstands the culture he helped create where the police view themselves as a thin blue line holding back the manifold forces of Chaos Undivided.
Also, I feel like “nothing wrong if it does happen” regarding shooting someone, is the wrong perspective. If shooting someone is necessary, then it is necessary, but that doesn’t mean nothing went wrong. Anytime someone gets shot is a time something has gone wrong.
> They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving.
Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
The reality is there are aggressive people in society that have a tendency to escalate things. If police are trained to only de-escalate, it removes a powerful check on aggressive escalation.
The second order effect is an increase in events like people being pushed onto train tracks, glass bottles being thrown if you glance the wrong direction, etc.
I think optimally you have a police force that is trained in de-escalation but also escalates things slightly more than the average citizen and thereby provides a service to society as a buffer.
I'm claiming that some antisocial behavior is only triggered by some degree of escalation.
I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :)
I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving.
If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable.
Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)
In any game, if one side has 10x more accountability for misbehavior than the other, the low consequence side will keep testing boundaries until they are stopped.
I cannot stress enough how factually untrue the comment I’m responding to is - it is more of a prayer than a description of the reality of policing in the United States. At best what GP meant to say is that to the best of their knowledge this usually doesn’t happen in the sparsely populated handful of square miles that they’re familiar with in the time that they have lived there and mistakenly given the impression that it is categorically uncommon in the US.
It is business as usual for the entirety of the country, though it’s I guess fun for the locals (?) to see some “torture dungeon” flavor thrown in there by a ‘witness’ that the public will definitely never hear from.
Finding examples of this is trivial. It happens all the time and if Afroman were not famous this would not have risen to the level of national news. It’s even somewhat common for raids like these to happen where they get the address wrong and raid the wrong house.
Which fact did I report incorrectly?
I was not answering the question in generalities. I was answering the question that asked for specifics about this case ("why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here?"). The answer: serving a warrant for kidnapping and drug trafficking.
You may disagree with my :opinion: (that armed response during the serving of a warrant for kidnapping is reasonable), but you can't just claim that I'm lying about the facts of this case and then not bring receipts. Handwaving about "well that's how it works everywhere else" doesn't change the facts of the situation here at hand.
Swatting is the action or practice of making a hoax call in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address"
Either there was an informant, and the false claim was made to a police officer, or there was not informant, and the cop made a false claim to the judge. Either way, the intent was to get cops to show up and screw with Afroman, and that goal was achieved.
It's the laws that we have. Basically, if someone breaches your home, you're under no obligation to back down and if you respond with lethal force you have a lot of the benefit of the doubt, fear is implied in that situation. The police are treating it as if they were breaking in to one of their own homes, because if you or I did that, we'd get shot and killed. The only difference it that they have a legal document that allows it in that case, you have to serve that document though.
I had a coworker that lived on a street like "N 13th Avenue" and I guess there was some sort of crackhouse at "S 13th Avenue" one night the police served a no-know warrant, he was pissed and demanded to know what was going on, they shot his dog and killed his dog, he was shot in the hip and had permanent damage from it, his wife was marched out in cuffs half naked in-front of the neighborhood. When the dust settled the police realized they went to the wrong address. The police reached some sort of settlement with them, it never seemed remotely fair. (Think $700k in the mid-1990s) He was in his 50s when I worked with him, this happened in his late 30s or early 40s. He looked like he was 80 though, walked with a cane. He ultimately passed away at a fairly young age.
#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
- the warrant was for distribution of narcotics and kiddnapping.
If I were to guess what a list of most dangerous warrants to execute, those two would be up there.
If you note in the video, he jokingly plays around the drugs part. I am not sure where the kidnapping part comes from, but Afroman is not necessarily a household name amongst middle-aged white police officers, so I imagine they just saw "drugs and kidnapping" and went for it.
The kidnapping claim was there was a sex dungeon in the house. The house does not have a basement.
And all of this was obviously pretextual, unless you believe drugs and women were hidden between cds or in whatever pieces of the kitchen they destroyed.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
1. https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admit...
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Police_Shootout_-_De...
[2] https://youtu.be/NqxTf-Vz12o?t=475
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
Also around 40% of police deaths are accidents.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
The justification most give is that they may need to be able to quickly get out of a car and pull their gun in a confrontation.
The only way this makes sense is that
A) Police aren't being properly trained based on data
B) People have an irrational psychological fear of murder over other types of death
B isn't necessarily irrational. Many other types of death are at your own actions. Things like drinking alcohol, eating whatever you feel like, not exercising, doing drug, even driving, etc provide some self-identified "benefit" to the individual that they choose to partake. It's rationale that someone is more afraid of dying from an activity they recieve no benefit from than an activity they do.
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
They didn’t say it’s funny.
If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.
> human error
Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.
Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
So a lot of this stuff is truly self inflicted and the result of poor policy choices -- not because of governments reluctantly but dutifully obeying the 2nd amendment.
I expect to see them reigning in the states. The 2nd amendment is unambiguous.
What an odd take. Gun rights weren't dictated by a burning bush. A group of 39 guys decided for everyone else that that right should exist a quarter of a millenium ago. A completely undemocratic system. Every citizen should have a say and if they will it, anything in the constitution can be amended or struck off.
I personally don't trust the US government enough to willingly vote to give them a monopoly on violence even if I otherwise don't shoot guns very often.
Everybody goes out and starts shooting down their local police force? The military?
I just don't get how people think this would work and if the government would be intimidated by that. I think they'd just shoot first and ask questions later and that's it.
I don't believe gun control is effective unless nearly the entire population is accepting it willfully, and if people wanted to do it willfully it would be easy to gain a large majority of votes for that cause. But even the democratic party in some of the densest cities struggle to gain a simple majority from voters on the issue.
I also don't think the government has the power to take peoples guns by force even if they wanted, it would collapse the US if even a tiny portion of people fought back and defeat the entire purpose of trying. Would the US military lose battles against citizens? No, there wouldn't even be very many. But they still wouldn't win the war when some random hillbilly takes a few pot shots at a sub station from 2 miles out and takes down the power for potentially millions of people and all the work and value they produce. Factories don't work without power, essential munitions don't get produced if they can't secure material inputs from across the nation or the world, and if financial institutions takes a dive in response to destruction and chaos there goes US trade power. And you can bet your ass that all the countries the US has been taking a dump on for nearly the last century are going to take advantage of a weakened US.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.
The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world.
You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
Murder is a byproduct of crime. Crime is, largely, downstream of economic conditions with some obvious caveats.
New Hampshire has the 2nd lowest crime rate of the USA states. You could make the same argument for, say, Switzerland (high gun ownership but no crime/murder). But no one would be surprised if you had high gun ownership in Monaco.
Similarly for the ethnic argument you're trying to make: Majority black neighbourhoods in the USA tend to be poor. They also tend to be near more affluent places. Unlike poor white neighbourhoods, which are on average more rural in the USA.
Being poor, and being next to rich people, and being excluded from legal increases of becoming rich, will increase crime.
This should be obvious. Brazil has famously Favelas right next to wealthy areas and has a persistent crime problem for example.
---
In short, it's really incredible how far some Americans will go to deny the obvious truth: *gun prevalence increases deadly crime*.
Sure, some cultural factors will increase crime/violence on the margin. But the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with. That simple.
> the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with
Yet by your own admission poverty and inequality appear to account for the bulk of the effect.
Actually I think you'll find that plenty of Americans will acknowledge the link you point out. Just not in a politically charged exchange where the other party appears to have an ideological axe to grind. Where they'll likely disagree is the extent or significance of it. In many cases they will object that rights should never be curtailed for the purpose of lowering petty crime (I tend to agree).
I think it's also worth mentioning the statistic that legal gun owners (which is a wildly low bar in the US) have a lower rate of violent offense than the police.
That said, my point was that a place like Rio, where you feel alertness at a physiological level by the constant lack of security, still has a murder rate around Houston, a vastly richer and safer city.
And Brazil really is a good comparison in my opinion: the economic inequality is actually worse than in the USA, and they both have the slave holding history leading to concentrated poverty areas with high ethnic segregation
I don't personally think that the upsides of the US gun laws are worth anything near the downsides being paid.
Regarding the police, American police is notoriously prone to violence compared to other developed countries.
Murder rates in US have very little to do with gun law, and they have very little to do with skin color, even though they're heavily correlated to the latter and weakly correlated to the former.
Compare the USA to Canada, where you can't bring a gun easily. You'll see Canadian murder rates being very low. Even controlling for similar factors at the city or neighborhood level.
Of course I'm blaming the gun: it's pretty hard to kill someone with other weapons. Stabbings are often survived, even.
I assert again it is not the gun laws even if you want to do a national level view. Even a national analysis of gun laws in the three major countries of North America do not yield the conclusion you assert.
You are cherry picking to try and find causality while damning a comment where I merely pointed out a correlation between black people and murder rates. This is hypocrisy.
When you started to look at underlying causes at crime, you were so very close to getting there, but for some reason disengaged from that and went back to our flawed basis that would suggest it's the black pigment or it's the guns causing it.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
It didn't "de-arm" - it brought all states and territories into near alignment on gun regulation.
If you're interested I can link to good footage of my actual IRL neighbour shooting 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards, here in Australia.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
Alternatively you might be interested in Australian footage of feral control, taking down 800 oversized wild pigs in 4 hours from a helicopter.
Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms. You have to be a farmer, hunter, or belong to a shooting club.
While the number of guns increased, the number of gun owners dropped. And the new regulations enacted this year drop the number of guns one can own even more.
There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns. See how the terrorists at the massacre last year were limited by the type of guns they had access to, only managing to kill 15 despite having all the time in the world. An Ar-15 or similar weapon could have been used to slaughter that 15 in under 15 seconds.
In the sense that there are more private registered guns than ever before in Australia, sure.
> Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms.
More importantly, it unified gun laws - before the Port Arthur shooting, Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, probably the Australian Capital Territory were all unregulated.
Unregulated states with no border control effectively made the entire Federation of States unregulated.
Regulated states, at least the ones that I lived in prior to Port Arthur, didn't have "self defence" as a reason for owning gun - it was always about hunting, feral control, specific security (regularly carrying money) etc.
The last I checked, the emphasis was more on where you intended to use / carry a gun; shooting club (common), carry for security in street (rare), rural (property owner or have letter of authority to shoot from a property owner).
> There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns.
Sure .. they serve no real purpose, the only activity that requires high fire rates and larger magazines is pig shooting, maybe camel control, and rat shooting.
Rats can be shot with professional BB guns .. a better choice when shooting in sheds, silos, etc - no spark or risk of punching holes in tin walls.
If you're pig shooting in bulk, that's a contract shooting licence.
Did the Australian ban of "military style" rifles include a blanket clause that covers all semi-automatic fire? Or is it an almost entirely aesthetic category as it tends to be whenever such measures are proposed in the US?
When it comes to automatic fire there's a rather famous US case where someone was ultimately convicted for possessing a shoelace (IIRC) attached to some fastening hardware. As to larger magazines, those probably don't even meet the bar for an introductory level highschool shop project.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
Critical mass.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as they hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
People need to see action and see it work without repercussions to the actor.
People will take notice when someone like Thiel, Bannon, or Miller are taken down with a drone and the drone operator escapes arrest.
They'll think to themselves "Wait a minute, if someone can take out a billionaire I can take out that cop who raped my cousin and got a paid vacation as punishment for it."
What comes after that is anybody's guess but I predict an impending moment where individual citizens realize that they're not as helpless as they have been lead to believe and that technology can help them eliminate long-standing criminals operating in positions of power with immunity in theiry local communities.
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
They don't raid schools when there's someone actively killing children. They can just hold off a bit and get people when they're on the move.
That is also why the police response in Uvalde is highly criticized.
Got any data?
It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly?
What is "regularly"?
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...
There are an estimated 20k-80k no-knock warrants in the US every year for context.
At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.
1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;
2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;
3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];
4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;
5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?
6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;
7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];
8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.
A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].
One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].
It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury
[2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey
[4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
[5]: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City
Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.
Despite officer being 25th on the list of most dangerous professions falling below construction helper and farmer officers are trained as if they are going to war and equipped with many of the same toys. They are taught to prioritize preserving their lives over those they are supposed to protect.
Maybe 50 years ago Dirty Harry was an exaggeration but now you have several generations of wannabe cops, cops and their bosses who grew up watching those stereotypes.
It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.
Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
Unless it's proven someone is on imminent harm, then they should find another way to collect evidence, or just not do it.
So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend.
And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared.
If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable.
And there is some evidence that the institutions themselves recognize this (or they did, until we elected an openly-corrupt white supremacist to the highest office): https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-doj-res...
the history of the United States is a collection of States and territories, forming under very different legal conditions over 100+ years or so.. that blanket statement is without context or detail aka insufficient.
Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That's... A very big number.
Hyperbole illustrates the point pretty well though
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
I presume this isn't coming out of the officers' paychecks....
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23721379/afroman-comp...
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
See: https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/
That generated a whole slew of extra stories, because it elevated the whole thing to a deliberate crime.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
(granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue)
Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
https://ny.prelawland.com/post/719662253773832192/too-smart-...
They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally.
This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever.
I think the never here is a typo.
He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
Where is that coming from?
Do you seriously not believe (well, know) that sadly, many cops do this ALL THE TIME?
They’re facing charges too, right?
Right?
No, that video seems to be from 4 days ago, the verdict of the jury came yesterday.
The police being able to leverage civil law against citizens to control their behavior in ways that citizens cannot leverage against cannot to comment on the abuse of power is entirely unacceptable no matter what our laws and judiciary chose to allow.
Who are you trying to kid? Sorry this obviously got under my skin a bit, but it is standing legal doctrine that the police don't even have to protect us. Work for us? They extort money from municipalities all over the nation and call it a "budget". They straight up steal from us through "civil forfeiture". They are assumed innocent in court, even when demonstrably guilty of breaking our laws. They most certainly do not "work for us" unless you specifically are one of the 0.01%
Edit: I see this is discussed further down. I absolutely get the point being made, I just cannot let it slide. Enough internet for today.
Ooh sweet summer child.
It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'.
Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings
as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.
The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government.
While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
It is also worth noting that in some cases, government and business owners have diametrically opposed interests - namely governments can nationalize companies (and if I'm not mistaken, some governments, like the Nazis, did, or would use the threat of nationalization to make business owners do their bidding with no regard for the interest of the business owner)
Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops.
Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
It does more to expose just how incompetent, entitled and corrupt the average cop really is, something I wish was better known. The cops who brought this suit are basically the biggest crybabies, are too dumb to realize it and too entitled to realize that others wouldn't see it that way. It's fantastic.
Compare this to policing in Japan [1]:
> Koban cops go to extraordinary lengths to learn their beats. They're required to regularly visit every business and household in their districts twice a year, ostensibly to hand out anti-crime flyers or ask about their security cameras. The owner of a coffee shop told Craft, "With Officer Sota, we can say what's on our mind. He's really like a neighbor. Instead of dialing emergency when we need help, we just call him."
American cops are a gang, by and large.
Cops have absolutely massive budgets, from small towns to big cities. Let's not forget Uvalde, where the police department budget was ~40% of the city budget and it resulted in 19 cops standing outside scared while one shooter kept shooting literal children for an hour. Because they were scared.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walking-the-beat-in-japan-a-hea...
Not only did they not stop the shooter, but they actively prevented parents—who were willing to risk their lives—from intervening. They didn't just not help, they proactively ran interference for the shooter.
Hell of a death cult this country has turned into.
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
Sure he is, he literally just won this case as a crusader for freedom :)
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
> “When these streets keep callin’, heard it when I was asleep/That Gay Z and C*ck-A-Fella Records wanted beef”
JayZ responded in kind insinuating it back on N A S.
And Drake is also a Trumpist because he told Chris Brown that he fu*ked Chris’s girl.
Tupac also, for some reason:
> ”… You claim to be a player, but I f*cked your wife/We bust on Bad Boys, n*g*as fu*ked for life.”
2Pac in hit-em-up:
> "That's why I fuc*ed your bitch"
Eminem:
> "I f*cked your mother and made her my bitch,"
You know what? Maybe it’s a rapper thing and not an indication of MAGA alignment?
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/664027-afroman-2024-presidentia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroman
The first two of those issues were Trump issues in his campaign and Trump rescheduled marijuana to schedule 2.
As far as I understand, the Schedule of Cannabis is written into the US Code. So Congress would need to amend it.
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
> The term "list I chemical" means a chemical specified by regulation of the Attorney General ... until otherwise specified by regulation of the Attorney General
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
>The other, “Lemon Pound Cake,” shows one of the officers, gun in hand, pausing briefly in Mr. Foreman’s kitchen by a cake inside a glass cloche. “It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” Mr. Foreman sings in the song.
The man has a sense of humor.
[1] https://youtu.be/9xxK5yyecRo?si=rnz34IxCeFPRKQ4M
[2] https://youtu.be/pSEOiu0RvLk?si=xx2ZrN1rzEg3n1Ve
What a fantastic collection of Americans supporting each other.
#FragileBlueLine
"2002" New York Times, everyone.
Props to afroman for his perfect demeanor/attitude during all this.
If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.
I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."
Sometimes this results in radical changes to a piece within hours of publication - yesterday for instance the BBC ran a piece headlined something like “I watched my father murder my mother”, and six hours later in slides an editorial correction saying “she did not, in fact, see her father murder her mother. She was asleep in another room at the time.”
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
They do know the statement is true (and this is provable). Pretending like they "don't know" is a lie under oath.
Honestly, someone could adapt it to a script and run it in a live theater.
Now I know what I'm watching tonight!
Is it just me or did the judge seemed biased towards the cops? He also dismissed Afroman's counter-suit.
Bars.
That guy is like a court jester of old unleashed onto an unsuspecting, (and corrupt), 21st century steward class.
That said, I don't disagree with outcome.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
how many of them physically abused her? the stats say 3 out of 4 did.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
1 - https://www.wirthlawoffice.com/tulsa-attorney-blog/2013/07/c...
“Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.
At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.
You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
And to the genesis of this thread, it doesn't mean I must believe the tears are fake.
So yeah, sovereign immunity.
I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.
This raid was in Ohio. Here's their immunity waiver: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.02
Here's a page that links to a PDF with a table given cites and details for all 50 states: https://www.mwl-law.com/resources/sovereign-immunity-tort-li...
> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,
and then "state" is defined in https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.01
> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.
> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.
Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.
> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty
and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"
> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building
https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2935.12
People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.
Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.
On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.
distrack as legal maneuver.
If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.
It's legal for you to arrest someone if you see them commit a felony. It's legal for you to arrest someone under a warrant if you are deputized by a Sheriff of the court (almost never happens, but legal). It's not legal for you, whether you are employed at a police agency or not, to vandalize someone's camera.
THEIR privacy?!?!? Their privacy ... in his home? This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount.
> were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,”
Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.)
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
[0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
[1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/
[5] https://genius.com/123154
One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy.
Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave state, it does not make sense to carry over southern slave-catching history into modern police culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1793
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
"It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate."
Boston's police department was founded in 1854.
This is from your Time.com article.
Second, fugitive slave extradition was controversial in northern states and from your Wikipedia article several northern states even passed legislation to protect fugitive slaves.
And why would northern states spend their own tax dollars to fund police forces to capture slaves? It doesn’t make sense. They created police for public safety reasons in cities.
And even if none of that were true it still does not address the genetic fallacy. Just because some police forces started as slave patrols does not imply that all police today are inherently white supremacist.
I don't see how this supports the claim
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not.
Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
Again, that's _not_ the upthread claim made by somebody other than myself, a non-US read along.
Still, IIRC the US UCLA has written much on the matter, so perhaps start there if you're interested.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case.
Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu...
Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
* https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/24350/ocr
Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't.
(The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.)
It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
Requesting an arbitrarily high standard doesn’t create any obligation. Evidence of a high standard does.
He objected to what was provided and you accused him of ignoring evidence. I'm voicing agreement with his objection. The original claim was one of a statistical nature. Thus any purported evidence should be expected to match.
If a group is more likely to be X than the average population then being a member of that group is statistical evidence you are X. Really when referring to statistical evidence here it’s an indication the evidence is of a very low standard not a high one.
He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists which doesn’t actually mean much which is kind of a point on its own. That being it’s the same low standard as used by actual racists, but as you said there’s no actual obligation to go beyond such wordplay. Personally I was very amused by the whole thing but obviously it’s quite offensive to some people.
Taking the other side of this one, you could say something like “sure the odds at least one of them are white supremacists is non trivial, but suggesting all seven are is unlikely.” Again not a strong argument, but it’s at minimum an actual argument.
This is the crux of the matter. I don't agree with that statement. I believe the provided evidence does not support that claim in any meaningful sense.
I would at least agree that it suggests to seriously entertain the possibility though.
I'm not sure what to make of your true/false response. Suppose I claim that apples have a higher chance of poisoning you than oranges. Evidence that someone at some point made an effort to put poison into the apple supply does not directly support that claim. However if credible it is certainly cause to entertain the possibility.
More generally a claim about a possibility (discreet) can be supported by an event but a claim about averages (statistical) requires population data. Further, a claim that X is more likely than Y is a claim involving multiple populations.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
Let's take a step back. OP, essentially, made a very basic logical error (actually not an error IMO, but a willfully misleading statement).
They said, "Statistically, [assuming a cop is a white supremacist] a pretty sensible assumption."
In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right. So it'd mean that greater than half of police are white supremacists. They then posted a link to support that statement which said that some white supremacist groups are instructing their members to join the police force. He's gone from the evidence of "some" white supremacist groups are telling "some" of their members among the police force to justify saying that it's a safe assumption to assume any officer is a white supremacist (greater than 50% chance for any random cop to be a white supremacist).
Considering that I strongly doubt the quantity of white supremacists that are members of white supremacist organizations in this county is even more than half of the amount of police officers, I very much doubt that the subset of individuals in the subset of organizations who were given this instruction and actually followed through on it comprises more than half of the police officers in the country.
To which I facetious said, "I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal." Implying that, if the cops used the same logic on a neighborhood with criminals, it'd be sensible for them to assume every member of the neighborhood is a criminal. That point seemed to go over OPs head as he replied as if I wasn't making a facetious point and implied that cops do indeed do that. Presumably he thinks that's a bad thing when they do it but is perfectly reasonable for him to do.
I don't think anyone should be using faulty logic to make claims about groups of people.
> If you support the cops on this
I never said I did and, as such, the rest of this comment is not directed to me.
I assume I should buckle my seatbelt.
Not every car ride results in an accident. But enough do.
You _should_ buckle your seatbelt anyway because it's low effort, high reward in the unlikely case you get in an accident.
If that were the case, I wouldn't need a seatbelt.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Also, you know, protected opinion.
At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion.
If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
You're just allowed to be maliciously right about things, if you like.
This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.
Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.
This flavor of police: Stop being mean!
Why do you think they were so annoyed at all the cameras?
I remember one quite well, in which the police were raiding some suburban Texas home and decided to steal the guns and cocaine they found in it.
The kicker: They forgot to turn off their body cams while doing and discussing it.
You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.
https://apnews.com/article/afroman-police-raid-lawsuit-ohio-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nfVWiXY3WY
Neighbors by J. Cole
I’m not suggesting suspicion has merit, but given all the idiocy I’m wondering what other forms of chicanery may have taken place to get a warrant.
How is it that a law enforcement officer can't keep up with a man in his 50s who isn't even trying to be the fastest?
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
Do the cops suing Afroman after raiding his home have a case? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827566 - July 2023 (19 comments)
Police sue rapper Afroman for using footage of home raid in his music videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35284187 - March 2023 (551 comments)
US Police raids home; sues homeowner over CCTV footage of raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35281258 - March 2023 (53 comments)
He got burglarized before, and got threatened with arrest after demanding police investigate. https://www.tmz.com/2022/08/22/afroman-home-raided-police-oh...
Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?
In addition, you're not a criminal until you are convicted.
You're subbing in "abduct" for one of those words.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abduct
sounds like what happened to me.
You're not confused about the term. We all know the difference.
OK, I am not certain about police and "most", but rather certain about ICE and "most".
Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.
If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.
> their constitutional privacy
Isn't that something that people are always pointing out "is not guaranteed by the Constitution"?
Which means what the Supreme Court says that it means. It's easy to imagine that it means something akin to what people mean by "privacy", but interpreting the Constitution is infinitely malleable so I don't have any idea what it means.
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
You make it sound like Germany bans political parties every other year.
Germany formally only ever banned two parties:
- Socialist Reich Party (SRP), 1952 - Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 1956
For context: The Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949.
There are current discussions about banning - or evaluating a potential ban of - the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). If the ban went through (I think it won't), it would be the first in 70 years.
The fact that they are even discussing a ban of AfD shows how ridiculously dangerous such powers are when held by the state. The AfD is disgusting but until and unless they take up arms, speech is speech. “First they came for the racists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a racist. Then they came for the publishers of violent video games…”
There is no power that you can give to the state that they will not eventually abuse at their convenience. It positively astounds me that Germans do not understand this, given the nation’s history.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
The Germans would argue such powers prevent the Trumps.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Thank you, Ohio cops and lawyers, for bringing this to our attention.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
There is no justice here.
His legal costs are gonna be tiny versus his YouTube/Spotify revenue out of all this.
(And I wouldn't ignore the value he probably applies to being proven right in court, either.)
This is the story of a guy who got sued for being harassed and had to waste years of their time and money fighting it.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit...
Including internationally:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq57557d6p6o
Yeah, it was from "My City Was Gone," which isn't a pleasant song about the state, but pfft, it works here.
Posting their names is questionable; as officers they are public servants, but naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
Lying however would be slander and illegal, in my humble opinion. Not worth 4 million in damages, but at least a cease and desist?
No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.
> Lying however would be slander and illegal…
They couldn't prove he did.
He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man..
If that were defamatory, 90% of QAnon would be in court.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.
And yes, it's great.
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.
A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).
To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.
If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DV_7xmAEfq0/
Apologies, I wish I had a less cancerous link