The Shrine

ManaMan wrote:Anyone want to talk about this?

Julius Seeker wrote:The second amendment may have had a purpose at one time, but it is WAY outdated. It's grown cancerous.

Don wrote: Even if there's some kind of martial law decree that everyone has to give up guns, it's not something people will go to a war for.

Shrinweck wrote:The latest shooting in Miami is one of the more absurd things I've ever heard. Black therapist pursues an autistic man who had left a treatment facility. The autistic man is screaming and someone calls the police saying that he's yelling about shooting himself. The cop comes in and tell them to lie on the ground with their hands up. The black therapist complies and starts shouting (non-aggressively) about how the autistic man only has a toy truck and is no threat. The cop (who for whatever reason has an assault rifle) supposedly hears on the radio that the autistic man with a toy truck is loading his gun and fires three times... hitting the black man with his arms up in the leg and missing with the other bullets.

So, yeah, obviously mistakes were made. This is more ironic than anything. Honestly this story is more about cops needing to know how to deal with mentally ill.

And more stuff about how cops shouldn't have assault weapons.

1) In the cell phone footage I saw he was pointing the weapon at them the entire time.. which is something you just don't do with an assault rifle until you're without a doubt killing someone IIRC

2) They're absurdly powerful weapons to use against civilians.

3) The guy missed, in a way with all three bullets. I can't imagine his training with this weapon was satisfactory in any way.

You know you're in a shitty situation when you shoot a black guy and your defense is "I meant to shoot the autistic guy, I swear"

"As long as I've got my hands up, they're not going to shoot me. This is what I'm thinking. They're not going to shoot me," he said. "Wow, was I wrong."

kali o. wrote:As long as we are on the same page -- this shooting had nothing to do with racism, but simply a poorly trained cop (or cops). I hope it does open up a conversation about training, mental health (which I have brought up multiple times) and perhaps police accountability/personal recording devices (I heard the officer tried to falsify the report).

It would be a shame if the poisonous BLM movement hijacked the narrative and those issues above get lost in the drama.

ManaMan wrote:However, racism *does* exist and you can't rule it out as a factor. It's sort of omni-present. Do you honestly think anyone would've been shot had the therapist been a middle-aged white woman instead of a large, intimidating-looking bearded black man? The police would have listened to that hypothetical person.

kali o. wrote: Racism exists in the world or racism is a factor in this case? Your second statement implies that you believe the latter, and in that case, I disagree (by the way, it would be great to know if you are one of those folks that thinks only white people can be racist so I can understand how you define racism).

If you claim something, you do have the burden of proof -- and just an assertion does nothing to validate the claim. By the same token, I do not "rule out [racism] as a factor" (because that would be a claim) but it's more to the point to state I have no justification or evidence to even consider whether racism is at play. We cannot call it racism every time someone's skin colour is anything other than white, simply by that fact alone and in total disregard for every other factor -- that simply poisons the well and does away with any honest assessment.

PS - I do think your hypothetical was interesting though. Why not just change the gender (as opposed to also skin colour)? I mean, statistically, you are 20x more likely to be shot by police as a male (I am assuming a 50/50 gender split for the population) -- that dwarves any skin colour divide. Does that mean society is sexist? Just the police force is sexist? And if yes to either, is it then fair to somehow claim the officer in this shooting is sexist? (No).

• The therapist's/patient's gender (see below)
• Their sizes (large, intimidating dudes)
• The therapist's outfit: shorts & neon green t-shirt (I suspect he would've been taken seriously in uniform or classic "clean white coat" of a mental institution worker)

Don wrote:I have no reason to believe that the Americans are fundamentally different than other comparable countries that you'll have a civil war breaking out for just disarmament.

kali o. wrote:As long as we are on the same page -- this shooting had nothing to do with racism, but simply a poorly trained cop (or cops). I hope it does open up a conversation about training, mental health (which I have brought up multiple times) and perhaps police accountability/personal recording devices (I heard the officer tried to falsify the report).

kali o. wrote:It would be a shame if the poisonous BLM movement hijacked the narrative and those issues above get lost in the drama.

ManaMan wrote:Yes I do believe that race (both of the therapist & patient) was a factor in the shooting. As were a lot of things:

• The therapist's/patient's gender (see below)
• Their sizes (large, intimidating dudes)
• The therapist's outfit: shorts & neon green t-shirt (I suspect he would've been taken seriously in uniform or classic "clean white coat" of a mental institution worker)

I don't have a specific "burden of proof" here on a message board. This isn't a courtroom. I can just use my experiences & anecdotal evidence to shoot my mouth off about whatever I so please.

I don't think only white people can be "racist". I've had a black supervisor when at University tell me not to hire Muslims, Arabs, or Indians. My wife lived in student housing with black students who refused to live near Mexicans.

Men are absolutely disproportionately the victims of police shootings/violence. Men are just more violent. That's a fact & always has been. That's not to say women aren't violent, they definitely can be (especially toward children & the elderly whose care they are tasked with). It's just that male violence is more prevalent as well as more extreme & public.

kali o. wrote:With that in mind, swap out gender for race, and let me know why one makes sense but the other doesnt, despite statistics on both.

ManaMan wrote:I figured you were going there. I'm no statistician but anyone who reads the news regularly would have have seen studies in the news about how blacks are stopped more often than whites even though whites are more likely to have illegal drugs & guns. Also, a recent study found that blacks are not shot & killed more than whites for any given encounter with the police... but the police pull them over/stop them more so this leads to more shootings of black Americans.

I'm from St. Louis originally, a racially divided city with a relatively well-off white population and a mostly very poor black population. Similar to many former industrial cities in the US. It's also one of the murder capitals of the country. The violence is largely limited to a few majority black neighborhoods in the north part of the city. I completely get why people associate black people with crime. That's what they see on the news. Same reason people associate Muslims with terrorism. The thing is, a vast majority of blacks aren't criminals. They're fed up with the constant stops by police. I'd be too. Many people think this is justified (including you) but many don't. I think that the statistics largely show that's it's not justified (& is potentially dangerous).

Also, given that you come from lily-white Canada I take anything you say about race relations in the US with a huge grain of salt.

kali o. wrote:are you still a minority with over 50%...???

kali o. wrote:As for your final lily-white jab...like most of your facts, it's distorted and/or downright wrong While I've lived in many places around the world, I've acknowledged I am from Vancouver. So here is a final correction for you - Vancouver is over 50% minority (are you still a minority with over 50%...???). Perhaps you should visit...

kali o. wrote:How is it foolish when I am addressing being fallaciously accused of having no knowledge of "minority" relations or the racial make up of the city where I live?

Shrinweck wrote:

kali o. wrote:are you still a minority with over 50%...???

If all the minorities were one group of people then no, they would no longer be the minority... But that isn't how being a minority works.

What the fuck? This is how you end your post? Even as a joke this is just foolishness.

kali o. wrote:Anyway...what was your point again? Did you have one?

Replay wrote:
Who are you, really?

Replay wrote:Nice try.

Batman never put a homeless person out on the street.

You're no hero, Kali.

German Lopez wrote: Where Latzer gets into trouble is that he’s broadly calling something "culture" that really may be thousands of causes of crime, some of which we may not know about or can’t measure in hard numbers.

Consider one of these possible factors: Black communities may be more violent and crime-ridden in response to a criminal justice system that has both under- and overpoliced them. In the fantastic Ghettoside, journalist Jill Leovy draws on the stories of police officers and black residents in violence-torn parts of Los Angeles to weave a nuanced story of how the justice system deals with crime depending on the community involved.

Leovy writes that police often harass black people for petty crimes — such as drugs, jaywalking, traffic rules, and loitering. But when black people most need police to prevent and solve violent crimes, they are not present. Investigations have found, for instance, that homicides involving black victims are much less likely to be solved than those with white victims. It’s a two-sided coin of systemic racism.

"Like the schoolyard bully, our criminal justice system harasses people on small pretexts but is exposed as a coward before murder," Leovy writes. "It hauls masses of black men through its machinery but fails to protect them from bodily injury and death. It is at once oppressive and inadequate."

The result: Only 30 percent of black people reported "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the police during a 2014-'15 period, versus 57 percent of white people, according to Gallup.

The criminal justice system has abandoned the most significant needs of black people, while fostering resentment and distrust with excessive policing of small crimes. In the face of this, black communities have turned to their own means — including violence — to solve conflicts that would normally be solved in courts.

(As Latzer notes, "Murder and its junior partner, assault, are in the main precipitated by anger, sexual jealousy, perceived insults and threats, long-standing personal quarrels, and similar issues, frequently facilitated by alcohol or some other disinhibiting substance.")

After all, preventing interpersonal conflicts is the main reason for the criminal justice system’s existence. Leovy writes:

Leovy wrote:In the dim early stirring of civilization, many scholars believe, law itself was developed as a response to legal "self-help": people's desire to settle their own scores. Rough justice slowly gave way to organized state monopolies on violence. The low homicide rate of some modern democracies are, perhaps, an aberration in human history.

Indeed, Latzer acknowledges this. In The Code of the Streets, Elijah Anderson analyzed the reality that many black people in violent neighborhoods live under and the grim rules ("the code") they’ve adopted that essentially allow violence to solve disputes the law can’t be trusted to take care of. Citing Anderson’s work, Latzer writes:

Latzer wrote:The code also was a product of the perception that law enforcement can’t or won’t control violent crime. "Feeling they cannot depend on the police and other civil authorities to protect them from danger," residents adhere to "a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, particularly violence. The rules prescribe both proper comportment and the proper way to respond if challenged."

But how do you prove anything like this empirically? How do you measure the actual, full impact of systemic racism or distrust in law enforcement? Mathematical models are very advanced nowadays, but they can’t explain everything. We still don’t even fully know why crime rose and fell during the period Latzer looks at — something Latzer acknowledges. So how can we be expected to measure something as abstract as the effects of distrust or a systemic force that has existed since America was founded?

German Lopez wrote:In fact, there’s no reason to think the violent cultural traits that Latzer describes are even "black," as the term "black culture" suggests. As Leovy wrote in Ghettoside: "Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened. Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens."