http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/when-surfer-dude-pranksters-meet-the-police/380016/

Lol. Dude-bros and the bro-cop clowned that bitch.


[Edited on September 14, 2014 at 1:54 AM. Reason : &]

9/14/2014 1:53:16 AM

2/3 cops are dicks.

9/16/2014 12:55:38 PM

Quote :

"Truant students beware, San Diego school district acquires MRAP Meet the newest vehicle in the arsenal of the San Diego Unified School District, a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, more commonly known as an MRAP, or the US military's answer to the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) so favored by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan."

That escalated quickly...

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/09/16/san-diego-school-district-acquires-mrap/

[Edited on September 16, 2014 at 5:05 PM. Reason : a]

9/16/2014 5:03:46 PM

What possible rationale could there be for that? The upkeep costs are going to be in the tens of thousands of dollars even if it was given to them for free. This country is doomed to become a practical dictatorship in a mere handful of years.

9/16/2014 6:05:54 PM

The school district shouldn't even have a police force, police do not belong in schools

9/16/2014 7:02:09 PM

...but it has teddy bears!

Quote :

""There will be medical supplies in the vehicle. There will be teddy bears in the vehicle. There will be trauma kits in the vehicle in the event any student is injured, and our officers are trained to give first aid and CPR," he said."

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/sep/10/san-diego-unified-new-mrap-not-tank/
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/sep/11/san-diego-unified-school-board-not-notified-about-/

9/16/2014 8:27:30 PM

Drug-sniffing dogs are largely used as tool to allow police to illegally search.

http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/09/16/dog

Quote :

"A 2011 analysis by the Chicago Tribune of police departments in the greater Chicago area found that vehicle searches initiated after dogs alerted failed to turn up drugs or drug paraphernalia 56 percent of the time. Other studies find false positives as high as 74 percent and 80 percent."

9/17/2014 4:09:41 AM

Look, don't use your statistics and facts to try to make an argument, SCOTUS already decided on this. Drug dog alerts are a legit reason for a search so long as the dog has been trained. Granted, there's no standardized training or independent certification for training so really it's just the police's word that the dog has undergone training and is now a reliable drug detecting dog and then their word that the dog "alerted."

It's not completely fucking stupid at all. Now, bend over for your dog approved cavity search.

9/20/2014 1:17:00 PM

is it just me, or does that red cross look photoshopped on there? It doesn't look like it has the right lines/angle as the text...

9/20/2014 8:19:36 PM

Quote :

"Above: An "after" image of San Diego Unified School District's MRAP shows the vehicle will be painted white with red crosses."

the whole paint scheme is a "photoshop"

9/20/2014 11:05:17 PM

They're sending the MRAP back.

9/20/2014 11:43:55 PM

http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/22/school-says-students-need-to-hear-what-m#comment

Holy fuck.

So, not only are you going to do a twice a year drill for something that is vanishingly rare and no more common an occurence now than it has ever been, but you'll also let a shooter (should there somehow in that literally 1 in a million plus chance a potential shooter is attending that school) have a great idea of what exactly the reaction will be so that they can better plan their massacre. Then there's the desensitizing effect that drills tend to have vs. the actual benefit.

I can't even begin to express how stupid this is or why anyone would think this is a good plan.

Oh, and the first guy in the comment section absolutely had a great take:

Quote :

"The same people who would throw a kid out of school for even writing the word "gun" are now going to terrorize their students with fake gunfire. These people are just hideous."

[Edited on September 22, 2014 at 8:36 PM. Reason : sdfsdf]

9/22/2014 8:35:55 PM

I'd think gun nuts would be happy to see good guys with guns on a school campus.

9/22/2014 8:43:36 PM

thats only what stupid people like you think

9/22/2014 9:02:27 PM

It's amazing the way "gun nuts" are a flexible enough strawman to be both blind shills for the cops/authorities and antigovernment whack jobs.

9/22/2014 9:24:12 PM

Schools do fire drills and tornado drills, an active shooter drill isn't much different.

Not sure why anyone would argue against being prepared... plus a lot of students have probably never heard what a real gun sounds like, so knowing this is very useful if there were a real shooter. Seems like a good learning opportunity.

It seems like gun nuts don't like this idea, because it right portrays guns as dangerous, and this community is all about sacrificing safety to impose their hobby on everyone else.

9/23/2014 3:08:03 AM

Quote :

"Schools do fire drills and tornado drills, an active shooter drill isn't much different."

Other than the fact that there are ~4k school building fires per year and ~22 school shootings per year. There's also the fact that schools don't conduct fire drills by setting fire to the building (or even dumping a crap ton of smoke in). You want your kids to know what gunfire sounds like, take them to a shooting range or the local police training range (or downtown Chicago, whichever is closer) where they can have hearing protection and have the other safety measures in place.

Quote :

"It seems like gun nuts don't like this idea, because it right portrays guns as dangerous, and this community is all about sacrificing safety to impose their hobby on everyone else."

Or because it's an extremely stupid idea, for a vanishingly rare scenario, with a thousand things that can go wrong (just ask Brandon Lee how safe guns with blanks are), with goals that can be accomplished any number of other ways if it's really something that needs to be addressed. I don't know a single gun person who doesn't know and won't tell you that guns are dangerous, which is exactly why you shouldn't have any trained professionals (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeGD7r6s-zU) firing off guns in the school.

9/23/2014 9:12:43 AM

^ in all those fires, maybe 3-4 people die. Way more people die in schools by guns than fires, why do you want children to die?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-no-charges-john-crawford-shooting-20140924-story.html

So apparently the investigation is over and no charges filed (shocker), but they still won't release the surveillance video. Seems pretty suspicious to me.

9/24/2014 2:49:37 PM

^http://www.nfpa.org/research/reports-and-statistics/fires-by-property-type/educational/school-fires-with-10-or-more-deaths

Either way, fires and guns are a contrivance next to kids dying in car accidents going to and from school so the real question is why do you want children to die.

9/24/2014 3:06:24 PM

michelle obamas lunches are killing them in droves

9/24/2014 4:12:49 PM

Quote :

"There's also the fact that schools don't conduct fire drills by setting fire to the building (or even dumping a crap ton of smoke in)."

wait do you think lockdown drills include people running around the school pretending to shoot people or something?

[Edited on September 24, 2014 at 9:49 PM. Reason : oh nm didn't see the article. but most lockdown drills are just that... going over procedure. ]

9/24/2014 9:48:38 PM

^^^ Children are usually up to no good, we should really just ban school busses and let nature take its course.

9/24/2014 11:55:29 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nfT9q9xuIw

So there is video for the walmart thing. 14:30 in.

Apparently what happened was that the 911 caller grossly misrepresented what the guy was doing (milling around on his phone the whole time), so the police came in expecting the worse, and didn't verify anything they had been told, and just blasted away.

So looks like a combination of overly paranoid poorly perceptive 9/11 caller, and skiddish cops probably not following procedure (i don't know the procedure but I can't imagine it's not come in guns blazing).

9/25/2014 2:27:12 AM

that guy was murdered, even if it was a real gun it was lazily pointed at the ground while he chatted on the phone and never even swung towards the cops

9/25/2014 8:17:40 AM

It's a shitty video, but agreed.

I still don't think police getting away with murder counts as evidence of a police state, but maybe I'm just using the phrase 'police state' differently.

9/25/2014 9:29:32 AM

So why isn't the 911 caller getting charged with something? Specifically he said the Crawford was pointing the gun at people and that was obviously not the case.

And have the police made the claim that he ignored their demands to drop the weapon? Looks like there were no such demands, and he was shot on sight.

9/25/2014 9:48:10 AM

Quote :

"that guy was murdered, even if it was a real gun it was lazily pointed at the ground while he chatted on the phone and never even swung towards the cops"

9/25/2014 11:17:19 AM

Quote :

"So why isn't the 911 caller getting charged with something? Specifically he said the Crawford was pointing the gun at people and that was obviously not the case."

I didn't watch the video yet, but does it show the entire length of time he held the gun?

9/25/2014 11:53:47 AM

Not every second, but it does show when the caller claimed he pointed the fun at some children and no such thing happened.

9/25/2014 12:02:51 PM

Is this dickhead for real?

Quote :

" FBI Director James Comey on Thursday said he is concerned about moves by Apple Inc. and Google Inc. to market phones that can't be searched by law enforcement, saying agency officials have engaged in discussions with both companies. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law," Mr. Comey said in a briefing with reporters."

http://online.wsj.com/articles/fbi-director-raises-concerns-about-smartphone-security-plans-1411671434

9/25/2014 4:23:25 PM

Ohio is an open carry state. So even if he was brandishing a real weapon, there's no way the cops could have determined it to be illegal.

The mother with the kids had a heart attack because of the incident and later died.


There's a video out there where they sync the 911 call with the surveillance video: http://m.whio.com/videos/news/911-call-surveillance-video-together/vCtDnb/


Good going, 911 caller. Good going, cops.

[Edited on September 25, 2014 at 4:54 PM. Reason : ]

9/25/2014 4:41:30 PM

Did the officer actually say anything at all before firing?

No way there's not a civil suit against the 911 caller and officer.

9/25/2014 5:46:21 PM

^Wonder if the mother who died of a heart attack receives a bigger settlement than Crawford? Wouldn't surprise me.


Both of them deserve a shit-barrel of money, though.

[Edited on September 25, 2014 at 6:32 PM. Reason : ]

9/25/2014 6:23:46 PM

http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/06/georgia-grand-jury-rejects-criminal-char

Way to go, grand jury. I'm of the opinion that anything brought before a grand jury should be presented by an independent lawyer, not the local DA/prosecutor. There's too cozy of a relationship there.

All the language indicates gross negligence, yet they didn't return an indictment. Astonishing.

10/7/2014 2:16:07 AM

Quote :

"Rather than seeing unfeeling or uncaring robots, what has not been seen before by others and talked or written about is that these individuals are suffering as well. We have seen and heard genuine regret and sadness on the part of the law enforcement officers involved, and we think is it fair and appropriate to point out that they are human beings as well."

The prosecutor probably presented the case in such a way that they would not return an indictment. The jury only got to see one sides perspective and acted accordingly. The Grand Jury system is flawed when it comes to crimes committed by LEOs.

What makes this instance even more despicable is it was not even an emergency or otherwise tense situation. The entire encounter was initiated by the police using timing and methods that they chose. They do not get to use the normal excuse that they had to make a split second decision to use force, because they planned the whole thing and had plenty of time to evaluate the situation.

10/7/2014 3:10:22 AM

Quote :

"The prosecutor probably presented the case in such a way that they would not return an indictment"

Of course they did. 99% of the time, grand juries do what they're told to do by a prosecutor.

10/7/2014 4:18:59 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/07/once-youve-dehumanized-drug-offenders-its-easy-to-steal-their-identities/


I don't know where else to post this. Editorial about a lady who was arrested, only to have the police steal her identity by creating facebook page, posting her pics, and other crap....just to catch more criminals.

10/7/2014 9:36:14 PM

hilarious and relevant to this thread

10/13/2014 3:23:59 PM

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/to-entrap-an-innocent/384273/

My favorite:

Quote :

"In the case of a 27-year-old Cape Coral man ... deputies arrested him even though he didn't even travel to meet a child for sex. Law enforcement officers responded to the man's legal 'casual encounters' Craigslist ad, pretending to be a 14-year-old girl, even though the ad said, 'age for all women must be 18+ no one under email me plz.' The man repeatedly told the undercover detectives that he was 'not OK' with meeting up with an underage girl, but because he didn't immediately end the conversation, he was arrested for utilizing his phone to solicit a sexual act from a child. Detectives went to his house and arrested him as a sexual predator of children."

1/8/2015 7:08:25 PM

http://www.copblock.org/104742/we-need-more-bad-cops/

1/27/2015 1:07:01 AM

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/26/seattle-cops-drag-68-year-old-woman-off-plane-jail-her-for-three-days-for-trying-to-change-seats-video

2/2/2015 12:09:35 AM

Thought this would probably be the best thread for this question, although I'm not sure how many TSB'ers would be in favor. Basically, my city is planning to purchase an armored vehicle and I'm opposed and I'm crafting a public argument against said purchase. What would be the strongest argument(s) in favor of an armored vehicle for a low crime city with population of around 50K?

10/10/2015 11:12:30 AM

There probably isn't one, just a lot of hand waving about terrorists or gangs or active shooters or drugs or whatever.

I could likely be convinced if the purchase was a considered response to a competent analysis of credible public safety issues and threats. The problem is that law enforcement has a not-entirely-unreasonable desire to keep secret details about how they plan to use their new toys and some level of trust from the public is required. That trust doesn't exist. I don't trust law enforcement to have a good understanding of what situations warrant using an armored vehicle. I don't trust law enforcement to have the self-discipline to create and follow processes to ensure it's deployed only when necessary. I don't trust law enforcement to be accountable when it's used incorrectly. I don't trust law enforcement to be transparent and forthcoming about its use. I don't trust law enforcement to properly train officers. I don't trust law enforcement to provide a reasonable estimate of total costs (purchasing, use, maintenance, training, etc.).

10/10/2015 6:30:08 PM

Near where I live police recently obtained an armored vehicle. A video if you want to check it out (I found it mildly entertaining):

http://www.wdbj7.com/news/local/montgomery-county-sheriffs-office-gets-massive-transport-vehicle/26150116

Supporters claimed it could have helped out during the shooting at nearby VT. However, I think the main VT shooting was over in like 15 minutes; detractors questioned whether they could even get that thing out of the garage in that time.

10/10/2015 7:18:08 PM