By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Politics Discussion - Police circulate picture of wrong man after Dallas shooting.

Nuvendil said:
hershel_layton said:

By imposing more requirements to be a policeman.

 

You can become an officer in Dallas in less than a year. That's ridiculous. Shows how a person not fit for the job can easily become a police man 

Yeah, these unfit freaking officers, circulating one picture of one suspect and exposing him to some Internet trauma for less than a day.  I mean, it's not like they ran straight at the gunfire yesterday, some laying down suppressive fire while exposed so that civilians could be cleared.  Not like they saved lives and died in the process as noted by several civilian witnesses from among the protesters.  Not like they caught the darn guy in less than a day.  

Come off it, they made one honest mistake that ultimately caused very little harm.  They didn't arrest the guy, interrogate him, detain him overlong, or shoot him.  Stop trying to take this one hiccup and say all of the Dallas PD are incompetent you ass.  And as for the time it takes to be a cop, it takes just over a year to be a cop in Dallas and they conducted themselves well yesterdas.  Minnesota, where the cop shot some dude for reaching for his wallet?  2 to 4 years.  It's not as simple as you make it out to be.  Also, they still have to pass numerous evaluations and exams plus an Academy.  You don't just walk in and say, I want to be a cop and BAM you're practically locked in irregardless ofor what you're like.

Never said all Dallas police are crap...

 

Not like I said I'm automatically right though. I simply made a recommendation for Obama possible doing something for the police department. No need to act as though I'm now a police hater. 



 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

Around the Network

Sorry if I come off to you two as gruff, but I'm just sick of the outrage culture around...well this and everything else. Seeing every single action of the police, at least where a minorities are involved (sorry but it's the truth), be examined and analyzed to death and almost always judged based on hindsight. I'm sick of every single mistake, no matter how honest or how ultimately inconsequential it all turns out to be, is blown out of proportion to insinuate cops don't care, are out of control, or are incompetent.

Was this a mistake? Yes. Could it have been avoided? Maybe, though it's harder to coordinate information flow at this time, I mean do you even realize how many calls probably flooded the Police HQ at that time? But is the guy dead or even hurt? No. Did they arrest him and hold him all day? No. Did they use unnecessary force or brutality? No. It was a mistake, an honest mistake for which the whole Dallas PD does not deserve all this outrage. And I personally find it very frustrating when THIS becomes the focus after everything else that happened and all the OTHER actions of the Police in the last two days.

And if I sound like I come down largely on the side of cops at times, it's because I've watched as this has slowly devolved into a borderline witch hunt at times. I've seen protesting groups march chanting that they want dead cops and they want them now, chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon." And I've seen shootings that weren't cut and dry but you better freaking believe the victim of the shooting was white washed and the cop was preemptively declared the reincarnation of Hitler and you had better freaking agree or you are clearly a racist. Instead of taking everything and making outrage out of it, instead of stoking the flames of hate, we should all take a step back and breath and act like civilized human beings?



Nuvendil said:
Sorry if I come off to you two as gruff, but I'm just sick of the outrage culture around...well this and everything else. Seeing every single action of the police, at least where a minorities are involved (sorry but it's the truth), be examined and analyzed to death and almost always judged based on hindsight. I'm sick of every single mistake, no matter how honest or how ultimately inconsequential it all turns out to be, is blown out of proportion to insinuate cops don't care, are out of control, or are incompetent.

Was this a mistake? Yes. Could it have been avoided? Maybe, though it's harder to coordinate information flow at this time, I mean do you even realize how many calls probably flooded the Police HQ at that time? But is the guy dead or even hurt? No. Did they arrest him and hold him all day? No. Did they use unnecessary force or brutality? No. It was a mistake, an honest mistake for which the whole Dallas PD does not deserve all this outrage. And I personally find it very frustrating when THIS becomes the focus after everything else that happened and all the OTHER actions of the Police in the last two days.

And if I sound like I come down largely on the side of cops at times, it's because I've watched as this has slowly devolved into a borderline witch hunt at times. I've seen protesting groups march chanting that they want dead cops and they want them now, chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon." And I've seen shootings that weren't cut and dry but you better freaking believe the victim of the shooting was white washed and the cop was preemptively declared the reincarnation of Hitler and you had better freaking agree or you are clearly a racist. Instead of taking everything and making outrage out of it, instead of stoking the flames of hate, we should all take a step back and breath and act like civilized human beings?

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Being a cop is very difficult, and very dangerous and for every bad cop out there, there's a million cops working hard to protect their communities.

I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, or even that it wasn't an easy mistake to make. I'm simply saying that it was a dangerous mistake to make that could have realistically been avoided.

Luckily nothing happened, but it doesn't change the fact that they needlessly put that man in danger.

Also, there's nothing wrong with coming down on the side of cops. The vast majority of the time cops are doing the right thing. There is absolutely a middle ground betweenbeing a racist and hating cops. Cops need to be able to defend themselves, but also seem to need to be better prepared to handle certain situations. I honestly don't really get why that's so controversial.



Bet with Adamblaziken:

I bet that on launch the Nintendo Switch will have no built in in-game voice chat. He bets that it will. The winner gets six months of avatar control over the other user.

Normchacho said:
Nuvendil said:
Sorry if I come off to you two as gruff, but I'm just sick of the outrage culture around...well this and everything else. Seeing every single action of the police, at least where a minorities are involved (sorry but it's the truth), be examined and analyzed to death and almost always judged based on hindsight. I'm sick of every single mistake, no matter how honest or how ultimately inconsequential it all turns out to be, is blown out of proportion to insinuate cops don't care, are out of control, or are incompetent.

Was this a mistake? Yes. Could it have been avoided? Maybe, though it's harder to coordinate information flow at this time, I mean do you even realize how many calls probably flooded the Police HQ at that time? But is the guy dead or even hurt? No. Did they arrest him and hold him all day? No. Did they use unnecessary force or brutality? No. It was a mistake, an honest mistake for which the whole Dallas PD does not deserve all this outrage. And I personally find it very frustrating when THIS becomes the focus after everything else that happened and all the OTHER actions of the Police in the last two days.

And if I sound like I come down largely on the side of cops at times, it's because I've watched as this has slowly devolved into a borderline witch hunt at times. I've seen protesting groups march chanting that they want dead cops and they want them now, chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon." And I've seen shootings that weren't cut and dry but you better freaking believe the victim of the shooting was white washed and the cop was preemptively declared the reincarnation of Hitler and you had better freaking agree or you are clearly a racist. Instead of taking everything and making outrage out of it, instead of stoking the flames of hate, we should all take a step back and breath and act like civilized human beings?

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Being a cop is very difficult, and very dangerous and for every bad cop out there, there's a million cops working hard to protect their communities.

I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, or even that it wasn't an easy mistake to make. I'm simply saying that it was a dangerous mistake to make that could have realistically been avoided.

Luckily nothing happened, but it doesn't change the fact that they needlessly put that man in danger.

Also, there's nothing wrong with coming down on the side of cops. The vast majority of the time cops are doing the right thing. There is absolutely a middle ground betweenbeing a racist and hating cops. Cops need to be able to defend themselves, but also seem to need to be better prepared to handle certain situations. I honestly don't really get why that's so controversial.

My problem is the context surrounding this, imo, makes this less of an issue than it is being made out as.  And in the case of Dallas specifically as far as their department standards and conduct goes, this is a good read to see whyI honestly don't think they're a problem department like people seem to imply:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/07/08/what-dallas-pd-does-right-and-why-doing-those-things-could-now-be-more-difficult/

As for being prepared to handle this situation specifically, I would say almost no police department is prepared to handle something like this flawlessly.  I just think people need to take a step back and breath on this issue because it often times gets to the point where people look at cops as almost inhuman beings, like some other race that should be incapable of mistakes and thus anything that goes wrong they should be held as responsible as if they had intended such things to happen.  People need to accept that sometimes, it's just an honest mistake and move on with our lives.  And in this instance be patient, this all happened extremely fast and no doubt tied their resources down and kept their attentions quite divided. 

And all this isn't helped at all by peopel  promoting messages of violence, hatred, and open violence towards the police, an atmosphere that's only going to put more officers - the good and the bad - on edge and more prone to hasty decisions or mistakes. 



Normchacho said:
pokoko said:

You seem to be implying that what one cop knows, they all know, even when they're scrambling around during a manhunt.  I don't think it works like that.

I kind of agree, though.  The police need to try less hard and not step on any toes.  More people might die, sure, but they're going to need to be less aggressive in this age of social media.  Be more polite, make double sure of everything before they act.  This guy here just won the lottery and it's going to keep happening.  Catching criminals is just going to have to take a backseat to being media safe.  I think that's going to be the future.

Are fucking serious? Are you seriously suggesting that this was an issue of hurting someones feelings or stepping on someones toes? I'm actually stunned. Stunned that we have a situation where the police posted a picture of a man calling him a suspect in the shooting of police officers to the public before checking with the officers in the field to see if he could be accounted for, and people are acting like they were just being impolite.

They implicated that an innocent man was involved in a very serious crime without taking the literal minutes it would have taken to call out over the radio to ask if any of the officers had seen or could account for a man matching his description.

Also, remember that they clearly called him a suspect. Which means that they directly stated that they believed he may have been involved in the crime.

Do you have to blow every fucking thing out of proportion?  Instead of calmly discussing what I said, you have to jump into fucking drama queen mode?  Bloody hell.  As for what I said, I'm absolutely serious.  People like you, who are always perfect and calm and flawless, even when your coworkers have just been murdered and there is a killer on the loose, will always be ready to attack people who are in the middle of hell on earth.

 

Seriously.  And you're sitting in judgement because they haven't fucking apologized yet?  You are the one stunned?

No, I don't want to be part of this thread any longer.  It makes me feel awful.  You want to criticize, go ahead.



Around the Network

Even I've seen pictures of this guy posted on the New Zealand and Australian news....



pokoko said:
The guy was walking around with an AR-15 when a bunch of people were shot to death.

Yeah, they should have been a lot more casual and laid back about it. Maybe they could have played some Pokemon Go while they waited for the murderer to turn themselves in.

Isn't Texas an open carry state? The Republicans keep spouting out that everyone having their guns will make them and the rest of the citizens safe, so there shouldn't have been a problem if one were to listen to what those politicians say...



Nuvendil said:
SvennoJ said:
The speed of social media is both a blessing and a curse. It can help and also escalate.

What I find more questionable that in 2016 the best way we can come up with to arrest a cornered gun man is to use a remote controlled bomb. Real life imitating video games. Why do the police have robots with bombs.

Robots are usually bomb disposal.  They probably just put an explosive in its hands.  SWAT has explosives for breaching purposes.  That's what they probably used.  As for why, the guy refused to surrender and had a loaded high power rifle.  Breaching could have wounded and/or killed more people.  If your going to go down guns blazing the cops are not obligated to risk their necks if they can take you out without doing so.

True, yet I find it a worrying mentality not to exhaust all other options first before using lethal force. That's kind of a theme with these police shootings. Sending in a bomb after a few hours is a sign of admitting defeat. Plus the guy who did it got the easy way out. Luckily he seems to be enough of a nut job not to become a martyr (except to even worse nut jobs)
Maybe pressure from the media plays a role too, get it resolved quickly, no 2 day standoff media circus.



SvennoJ said:
Nuvendil said:

Robots are usually bomb disposal.  They probably just put an explosive in its hands.  SWAT has explosives for breaching purposes.  That's what they probably used.  As for why, the guy refused to surrender and had a loaded high power rifle.  Breaching could have wounded and/or killed more people.  If your going to go down guns blazing the cops are not obligated to risk their necks if they can take you out without doing so.

True, yet I find it a worrying mentality not to exhaust all other options first before using lethal force. That's kind of a theme with these police shootings. Sending in a bomb after a few hours is a sign of admitting defeat. Plus the guy who did it got the easy way out. Luckily he seems to be enough of a nut job not to become a martyr (except to even worse nut jobs)
Maybe pressure from the media plays a role too, get it resolved quickly, no 2 day standoff media circus.

Not just the media, the public very often is up in arms fast when a major shooting happens and want the cops to get the guy almost no matter what.  The cops definitely didn't want that, it further fuels panic and anger.  As for how long they should go without using lethal force, if the person makes it crystal clear - as this guy did - that he's going to shoot until he is put down, is it really worth further human loss to arrest him?  Personally, any killing based on racist anger or prejudice as this one apparently was is a hate crime, regardless of what color commits the act and what color the victim is and I have no sympathy for those who commit such acts.  If this were an open Nazi or KKK member, we wouldn't bat an eye.  This guy should get no different treatment.  

Besides, they negotiated for hours and he refused to surrender, threatened the officers and the city, and then fired on the officers.  Also, he was wearing body armor and was a military veteran so it's a good thing they didn't breach cause there's very good odds he would have killed or seriously injured one or more.



As lawyer I can taste the lawsuit... and its delicious.