In short, yes. The easy thing to do is shoot. Just like the easy thing to do when someone less physically able than you threatens you is to knock them out. But I don't think we should be knocking off or out those who may very well be suffering from a transitory loss of control. I'd add the caveat that if the man in question was an immediate threat to anyone around him other than police, then that threat would have to be immediately neutralized, even if it meant shooting him. But conservative measures when it comes to the taking of life are surely what we want of our security forces.

On the money side of things -- we spend a considerable amount on police. In our city -- and I'm lead to believe that this isn't an anomaly, though I haven't sifted through the data -- the police department is the single largest chunk of the general fund. Police have more than striker fire pistols -- APC's, body armor, shotguns.

The force has been militarized in recent years because the feds have given surplus military gear to local PD's.

Policing may have to be different in different cultures. But, here at home, the police shot a disabled drunken grandmother because she was "wielding a knife". As it turns out she wasn't even strong enough to be able to hold her grandchildren. On top of that these things almost always happen in the black communities [and when they happen in white communities, punishment is dolled out -- while the opposite is the case with black communities, in spite of black leadership within the city].

I mean -- eh. I wouldn't give the U.S.P.D the pass because of culture. It's so clearly fucked up and crazy. I suppose I live in the U.S., so I can understand the hesitancy [I'm generally less critical of other countries, just because I know I know very little about them], but it's nice to have counter-examples like this.

I wouldn't give the U.S.P.D the pass because of culture. It's so clearly fucked up and crazy. I suppose I live in the U.S., so I can understand the hesitancy [I'm generally less critical of other countries, just because I know I know very little about them], but it's nice to have counter-examples like this. — Moliere

Well it's not all bad in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqi10h0Tg_U

Looking at the comments on the first video, it seems there is a different kind of expectation from the public, that cannot stand the uncertainty of this guy with a machete being there for a minute. Instant resolution, and an instant othering that divides the world into decent and monstrous. I think the cops are a reflection as well as a support for the culture, so a move away from this is not straightforward. Which is why I suppose I wanted to share this, and ask the question of civilians. I don't know this guy and I certainly don't want him on the streets in this condition, but he really doesn't have to be dead.

No doubt about it, he'd be dead pretty damn quick.

The police fall back on a few basic principles:

1. Don't back down.
2. Do not tolerate resistance.
3. Escalate to deadly force rapidly.

These guiding principles result in an excessive number of people getting killed by the police, and we haven't even brought up the number of common folk killing each other. I believe that these rules are not a consequence of deep racism. They are more a consequence of social conditions. Like what, you ask?

Greater friction between capital and (organized or unorganized) labor. Strikes tended to lead to violent confrontations among strikers and scabs. Capital desires control (not just in the workplace, but beyond the workplace). Police are called upon to do more than maintain order. They were also asked to suppress what the people at the top considered threatening behavior. Labor may not be a huge threat, but disorderly crowds can make the people at the top just as nervous.

It is my understanding that the United States has been a more violent country than most other industrialized countries. Part of this was self-inflicted, like Prohibition, which yielded a lot of (relatively nonviolent) law breaking. The US has had a clearly identified underclass that it wanted to maintain control over. Blacks--formerly a slave class--certainly are a component of the underclass, but they are not alone. Poor whites, too. Labor organizers, communists, etc. People who deviate too far out of the ordinary.

Lots of countries have had criminal enterprises, but it seems like American criminal enterprises tended to wield violence fairy readily. There were (are) also armed gangs, and of course there is our Second Amendment gun fetish.

Because the US has lagged (or actively and proactively retrogressed) we have more untended social ills than many countries. There are more more-desperate people running around here than in other industrialized countries.

The police, therefore, are not out of control. They are attempting to maintain the kind of tight control that certainly the ruling class wants, and that many other people are reasonably comfortable with.

For the majority of Americans (like 70%-80%), encounters with the State Highway Patrol, County Sheriff, city police, or even Federal Marshals, are likely to be routine, non-violent, reasonably polite, and so on. BUT... Challenge, resist, or threaten and the situation can turn 180 degrees in seconds.

Just as the "war against terrorism" has been applied to every American air traveling, police control has been brought home to the neighborhood -- lots of neighborhoods, and not just the black ghetto.

Individualism definitely has something to do with all this: Individualists, whoever we are, are prone to be trouble. They want to be unimpeded; they don't want to cooperate with arbitrary "authority"; the individualist is suspicious of either (or sometimes both) the corporation and the state, for whom both the cop is the defender. Individualists are likely to consider themselves above authoritarian control. All that makes social deviants (like citizens who think they live in a free country) potential targets.

Heh. I don't know how it is in Delaware, but I know that where I'm at this is just part of the game. The police do public relations stunts like that in order to have a good report with the communities they police. I say stunts because there's still a culture of silence among police officers whenever a police officer violates the law and a culture of us vs. the world. They treat the public as an enemy that needs to be contained rather than as fellow community members. They are trained to fire center mass -- which is what they taught us in the US military as well. Many of them are ex-military, and are used to military operations and seem to utilize that experience in policing the streets. And police tend to treat civilians as civilians in the sense that police view themselves as not-civilian.

It may be a damned-if-you-do-or-don't assessment, but one way of containing people is intimidation, and another way of containing people is good PR. Usually a mixture of the two works great in maintaining control.

Personally I would move away from having beat cops and large standing paramilitary forces. How you do that is difficult because the police are an entrenched lobby at municipal, county, state, and federal levels -- and they tend to have a good relationship with the judiciary, given how much they work hand-in-hand.


For me, though, I suppose I'll never really look at police in a positive light. At least as they are currently organized. So I may just be at the extreme end of things. But I don't think that my extremity is irrational, at least, though I know that folk could rationally disagree with me.

When it comes to the police, I think the situation is very much the same as with politicians: 90% of them give the other 10% a bad name. And indeed, like @Moliere mentioned, increasing militarization seems to be driving a lot of the problem. But I think it goes beyond just equipping the police as if they were soldiers. There is also more and more of a military mentality behind policing in the United States. One of the things that strikes me in various defenses of the police is how often fatal incidents are referred to as "combat situations."

Now, the police are still human beings and citizens of whichever state they serve, so they retain all of the normal rights to self-preservation. And when the police face an armed individual, it certainly counts as a self-defense situation. But a self-defense situation is importantly different from a combat situation. In a self-defense situation, the aim is to stop the threat. In a combat situation, the aim is to kill. Stopping a threat is consistent with everyone involved escaping unscathed. It is consistent with diffusing a situation, or recognizing that there was simply a misunderstanding. Not so with combat.

Police officers, who are charged with protecting and serving their community, ought to take themselves as defenders rather than combatants. If they are going to be protecting a community (even if that sometimes means protecting it from its own members), they have to be part of that community. Instead, they behave like an invading force. And just like @BitterCrank says, that's the way the system was designed. From the perspective of those giving the orders, it's not a bug—it's a feature. This is why many people argue that there can be no such thing as a "good cop." The very decision to join the police is seen as siding with the oppressors. And on that view, it makes very little difference whether any given officer joined out of malice or ignorance.

But conservative measures when it comes to the taking of life are surely what we want of our security forces. — Baden

Indeed. And as a martial artist, what often stands out to me is that I—a private citizen—seem to be not only better trained in how to handle some (emphasis on some) of these situations, but expected to show more control in these situations than a police officer. It seems there are failures at multiple levels here: in the hiring process, the training process, and perhaps even the assignment process. As money gets tighter, it becomes harder to hire qualified candidates and budget gaps are filled with (military-grade) equipment rather than training. Then officers are taught to be suspicious of everyone rather than to learn about and integrate with the community in which they will be serving (particularly bizarre when you consider this would make threat assessments much easier, and threat assessment is precisely what so much of an officer's training focus on). And perhaps there is an important mistake being made in which assignments are given to novices and which to officers with more experience. Maybe beat cop isn't the entry-level position that it gets treated as.

The police do public relations stunts like that in order to have a good report with the communities they police. — Moliere

And while such stunts might be fine so far as they help officers integrate with their communities, it often seems to be nothing more than public relations (as you say). And the public they are trying to impress doesn't seem to be the one they are policing. In fact, I'm far more impressed by the officer who diffused a situation with a dance-off (and then refused media attention) than by any police media event.

A machete blade is normally less than two feet in length (I have two of them). It's what I like to call a very personal weapon, which is to say that those who would use it to harm others must necessarily be in close, personal contact with their victims. That's the case with all swords, of course.

This is significant because someone wielding a machete is a direct threat "only" to those within close range, as opposed to someone wielding a firearm. I think it's also significant in that those wielding a personal weapon intending to do harm with it, unlike those with a firearm, have made a commitment to do harm in a very visceral manner, to see and perhaps be splashed with the blood, bodily fluids, and guts of their victim, and to expose themselves to the dangers which are attendant to close personal conduct if their victim fights with them. Those wielding a firearm have no such exposure and may kill or wound from a distance without directly experiencing the "messy" aspects of the harm they inflict. They have the luxury of being detached in a sense from the results of what they do, unless they face guns themselves. It's far more easy to kill or inflict harm with a gun than with a machete.

So I think that when police encounter someone with a machete, they're in a situation where the bad guy presents less of a danger to others than someone with a gun if there is nobody near him, but are probably dealing with someone who is more dangerous in the sense that though his ability to do harm is limited, he is more willing to do harm even if it means being intimately involved in the "mess" and danger of it.

In a situation like this, where, apparently, there is no hostage and nobody is close to the relatively small blade, there is no immediate threat to anyone and so would be no need to resort to firearms to protect anyone. Firearms should be used only where immediate harm is threatened. I don't know that 30 cops would be required to subdue someone with a machete, but I think several of them could in the manner employed in this case or in some other manner without using guns (though stun guns or rubber bullets may be another alternative).

I personally wish the Constitution provided a right to bear swords rather than "arms." My guess would be people with swords would present less a danger to others than those with guns, because it takes a certain skill and courage to use a personal weapon, and a willingness to intimately encounter death and harm rather than inflicting them from a comfortable distance.

On the money side of things -- we spend a considerable amount on police. In our city -- and I'm lead to believe that this isn't an anomaly, though I haven't sifted through the data -- the police department is the single largest chunk of the general fund. Police have more than striker fire pistols -- APC's, body armor, shotguns.

The force has been militarized in recent years because the feds have given surplus military gear to local PD's. — Moliere

The % of the 1.3 billion dollar Minneapolis budget that is spent on police is about 12%. Public Works and Capital Improvements are about 40%, give or take a little. Schools and hospitals are managed by the State, School Board and County. The population of Minneapolis is 400,000. 12% doesn't seem like an inordinate share of the budget to me. (The budget doesn't include the cost of retirement or payouts as a result of successful lawsuits against police misconduct, of which there have been a few.)

I haven't seen a lot of military equipment in Minneapolis. Horse patrols are used, and a man with a gun on a big horse is fairly intimidating. However, during the 2008 Republican Convention in the decrepit Twin City of St. Paul, the police presence in both Minneapolis and St. Paul was heavy and the policing tended to be on the harsh side. There were raids at the homes of a few people who had been planning some sort of civil disruption. The Republicans and Protestors were far enough removed from each other that there was really no point in protesting. One could just as well have protested in Omaha, for all the proximity there was.

On the other hand, during the Occupy Whatever protests on the county courthouse square, the police were very mild -- but then, so were the protestors. Most of the time the police here are "appropriate". But then, this from the perspective of an old white guy. Young black guys have a much, much different impression, justified or not.

As one then elderly socialist put it back in the 1970s, "I'll take northern pigs over southern pigs any day."

I'm not too sure what to make of this, but I feel that the police in my (former) hometown did a fairly good job. Indeed he didn't have a machete, but this did occur in a housing development where for the most part younger Families with children tend to live.



This is about 3 km away from where I'm going to in about 72 hours time.

Funny thing is I know most of the people in the video. They all gain a bit of weight since I last saw them 22 years ago. I suppose the good life has a tendency to stick to the bones after a time. :D

Anyway...

... maybe there is a bit of hope for the USA and the police.

Meow!

GREG