National Protest and 'disband the cops' discussion (please review page 1)

Locksteady said:
There is no reason that 2/3 of a responding police force should remain unequipped with non-lethal alternatives of incapacitation, and I see only positives from procuring funding for the Philadelphia PD to outfit its force with non-lethal response options.
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....and that brings the argument full circle.

No reason, except the department doesn't have the funding or support from elected officials to make these purchases.

These purchases require significant cash outlays. Which is more important, body cam or taser? How about officer training programs, where is that in the mix? Then of course, there's the actual manpower needs. These decisions make the issue very political. It also puts culpability at the feet of the officials, but they'll never take ownership of it.

On a separate note, I don't live in Philadelphia but maybe those that do, like @policemedic, are willing to opine on this:
I read somewhere, maybe here or elsewhere, that the police commissioner is relatively new and recently from Portland PD. I haven't been impressed, to say the least, by the police response in Portland. When I hear about things like only 1/3rd of the force has tasers, Red Herring or not, it makes me wonder: what level of support do rank and file really have from the leaders in this department?
 
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Blizzard said:
....and that brings the argument full circle.

No reason, except the department doesn't have the funding or support from elected officials to make these purchases.
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Support which comes when elected officials are shown the results of what happens absent their support for funding these and other initiatives.
Blizzard said:
How about officer training programs, where is that in the mix? Then of course, there's the actual manpower needs. These decisions make the issue very political. It also puts culpability at the feet of the officials, but they'll never take ownership of it.
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Of course - and as mentioned before, prioritization for something rises in the midst of a crisis or public outcry.
Blizzard said:
When I hear about things like only 1/3rd of the force has tasers, Red Herring or not, it makes me wonder: what level of support do rank and file really have from the leaders in this department?
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Why exactly would the Department - much less a Commissioner who just got there in 2020 - suddenly have the culpability that you just assigned to elected officials for failing for more than a decade to support the Department's repeated requests for more funding to arm and train the whole force with these tools?
 
Locksteady said:
However, the fact that they've been working on trying to fill the Department with Tasers and training for non-lethal intervention methods for at least a decade would indicate that this is less of a reactive red herring PR tactic and more like the crescendo of a several-years-long effort to resolve an ongoing problem that now is actually being taken seriously and corrected with funding thanks to the media magnitude of the shooting.

There is no reason that 2/3 of a responding police force should remain unequipped with non-lethal alternatives of incapacitation, and I see only positives from procuring funding for the Philadelphia PD to outfit its force with non-lethal response options.
Click to expand...

Let me preface this by saying I’ve been certified as a Taser instructor, carry one, and have been known to use it. I’ve seen it work spectacularly and marginally. To me, its main utility is in how quickly it deescalates a situation once someone is painted by the targeting lasers. I do believe a Taser should be available to every officer, but the truth is police services can and are provided without them.

However, failure to issue Tasers cannot be conflated with a lack of less-lethal options. PPD line officers have OC spray and batons. Other units have a more robust selection of options (well, until CIty Council makes them illegal and takes them away from us).

I can tell you without equivocation there has not been any urgency within the PPD leadership to issue Tasers, not now and not in previous administrations. PC Outlaw cannot be held responsible for this. They were used as a carrot to motivate officers to volunteer for an unpopular program. Tasers have been available to select personnel for more than a decade, but they have not widely distributed. Even the recent announcement of a $900K line item in the municipal budget for Tasers is a sop; even with discounts applied, that is roughly 600 Tasers or less once you account for the devices, cartridges, holsters, training, and backfill expenses. For context, there are some 6500 sworn officers within the PPD.

Having a Taser should not have changed the outcome of this incident. That is a segue for my next post....
 
Blizzard said:
On a separate note, I don't live in Philadelphia but maybe those that do, like @policemedic, are willing to opine on this:
I read somewhere, maybe here or elsewhere, that the police commissioner is relatively new and recently from Portland PD. I haven't been impressed, to say the least, by the police response in Portland. When I hear about things like only 1/3rd of the force has tasers, Red Herring or not, it makes me wonder: what level of support do rank and file really have from the leaders in this department?
Click to expand...

Let’s just say the rank and file do not have confidence in the PC. It is felt she has proven she cannot be trusted, is a weak leader, and is frankly out of her depth.

An example is her unwillingness to stand behind these officers. She could have explained that there are certain instances where, regrettably, the police must exercise their lawful authority to use lethal force. She could have done this in a way that didn’t taint the investigation, but she chose not to.

I do agree that she inherited the Taser problem (and others) and she shouldn’t be viewed as culpable for those. Those issues can be fixed, but will require time, funding, and training.
 
GOTWA said:
You need to be more gender neutral so you can't say boy. Maybe, holy smokes. No, too religious. Gee golly might work.
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It's only a matter of time before they realize those, too, are just euphemisms for the Christian God.

There is no escape!
 
Ooh-Rah said:
Boy, email signatures have changed quite a bit compared to the one that we got last year from this teacher....

View attachment 36647
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Before the "What's wrong with the Left" thread was merged into the "All Politics" thread, I posted about how academia was ideologically compromised. I even posted a gender and sexuality worksheet an elementary school 'teacher' was trying to push to his students.
http://www.transhealthsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/The-Gender-Unicorn.pdf

Reason the above is pertinent, is due to the way kids are socialized at school. If you ever wonder how you get people to deify criminals and champion socialist causes like defunding the police, this is it. If said 'educator' is comfortable sending that in an email, imagine what goes on behind school doors.
 
R.Caerbannog said:
Before the "What's wrong with the Left" thread was merged into the "All Politics" thread, I posted about how academia was ideologically compromised. I even posted a gender and sexuality worksheet an elementary school 'teacher' was trying to push to his students.
http://www.transhealthsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/The-Gender-Unicorn.pdf

Reason the above is pertinent, is due to the way kids are socialized at school. If you ever wonder how you get people to deify criminals and champion socialist causes like defunding the police, this is it. If said 'educator' is comfortable sending that in an email, imagine what goes on behind school doors.
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This is a fail. Major fail.

You mention right off the bat a thread that has been merged into another, but posted here instead. STOP.
 
RackMaster said:
Try to keep this relevant protest and disband the cops. We don't want this going off the rails.
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Kaldak said:
This is a fail. Major fail.

You mention right off the bat a thread that has been merged into another, but posted here instead. STOP.
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Apologies, not trying to derail the thread. Reason I mention that earlier thread was due to the timeline I posted these observation. I made these observations months before the George Floyd incident and before this was a thread.

The common theme I was trying to illustrate is that the core message of these protests is that America is unfair, patently racist, and that the police serve as enforcers of this 'order'. These themes don't just show up out of nowhere, they're being pushed by people and many of these false premises were showing up in academia years before they became a national issue.
 

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