Cross posted with Freeman there. Yeah, those figures from the cause of death line do not look definitive, unless there has been a big uptick recently.
dag hammarsjkold wrote:More police assassinated by black gunmen today in Baton Rouge.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/18/us/baton-rouge-shooting.html?_r=0
In May 2010, two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas were shot and killed by Joseph T. Kane after Kane and his father were the subject of a traffic stop. Kane and his father were later identified as members of the sovereign citizen movement.[48][49]
On August 16, 2012, two sheriff's deputies were shot to death and two others seriously wounded after having been ambushed near LaPlace, Louisiana. Authorities arrested seven suspects, two of whom have been identified by law enforcement as members of a sovereign citizen's group.[82]
On August 22, 2013, David Allen Brutsche and Devon Campbell Newman were arrested for plotting to abduct, torture and kill Las Vegas police officers in order to attract attention to the sovereign citizens movement. They reportedly attended sovereign citizen philosophy training sessions, bought guns, and found a vacant house for their activities. The two allegedly planned to torture and kill police officers[117] and are alleged to have created videos explaining their actions and why officers had to die.[118]
On June 6, 2014, Dennis Marx, who was later identified as being a member of the sovereign citizens movement, opened fire on a Forsyth County, Georgia courthouse, injuring one deputy before being shot and killed himself.[140]
dag hammarsjkold wrote:IA cop need not shoot to kill. I've said it before here but police training is terrible. Friends who have served have described to me the limited training they receive. It's simple really....if you feel threatened in anyway, it's got to be him, not you, that goes.
Our police need better training, military grade training in my view. The kind that makes it possible for a soldier to go into an apartment complex in Fallujah and within mili-seconds decide who is friendly and who is not.
Such training should be federally funded and not passed on to local departments.
Said training would NOT be cultural sensitivity training. Most cops will tell you that this type of training (that does exist and is pushed by the way) is a waste of time and results in nothing.
I'm talking about training that allows someone under tremendous, potentially life threatening stress remain cool and collected.
What we have today is a fear based approach to dealing with black american males. And with more and more incidents like the ones taking place this summer, that fear will become more and more legitimized.
dag hammarsjkold wrote:Of course those factors come into play. Every situation has its own context. What I was attempting to explain is that in many situations where a white cop stops a young black male or black male and shoots him dead, fear has played a major role in that cop's decision. I'm not saying that this fear isn't justified, only that it's fear and the desire for self preservation.
I want training for police that resembles that of our military who seem to deal with their fear under duress a lot better than our police.
My initial training was more than 30 years ago. I'd just gotten out of the Army. During the first 72 hours of Army basic training, I really thought there was a chance they might kill me. Needless to say, the Sheriff's Academy was not as stressful for me. After all, I went home every night and I was never face to face with a First Sergeant who had a picture of him holding a severed Vietnamese head on his wall.
Even so, many of my classmates were stressed out. And, quite frankly, they were not pleased that I was not stressed out. Well, first of all, I never wanted to be a cop. Secondly, this was like going from the major leagues to single A in terms of stress.
If they raised the stress levels of training, I promise you: 1) they would have to pay a LOT more to attract candidates who could make it; 2) they would lose a lot of females. Sorry, but that's a fact. Women are a lot more sensible when it comes to dying.I'm generalizing here but you get the point, trained soldiers seem to keep the fear in check somehow. How? I don't know.