Police opened fire on a subway platform in Brooklyn during a confrontation with an alleged fare-beater, striking the man cops said was armed with a knife, two straphangers caught in the fray, and one of the firing officers, NYPD officials said Sunday.

One of those two passengers hit by the cops’ bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD.

The two officers who opened fire were assigned to patrol the Sutter Avenue subway stop in the 73rd precinct when they spotted a man skip the station turnstile and walk through an open gate toward the train platform, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey explained at an evening press conference from Brookdale Hospital.

  • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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    Can we just go back to having a legitimate conductor who also has a protected union job that is properly staffed so that they can do occasional walks through the train to be able to offer ticketing services that allow for rapid and mass transit for the masses that connect us in a way that allows for fucking easy travel.

    Please! Or can we at least stop treating trains like an old existing extension of the singularly for profit monopolies paid by the government they were and just straight up have been allowed to become again!

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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      Not even just conductors, these trains need staff period. One of the things about crime in general is that people are less likely to do it if they feel like the area presents itself as safe. Even things down to cleanliness, lighting, staff presence, and noise level will affect crime.

      It seems like the city just doesn’t care at all about their transit because it’s extremely dirty, staff are basically nonexistent, the stations are loud and have no boundaries, and every part of them seems to be decaying infrastructure. Japan knows this well, your passengers will reflect the expectations you put upon them by their environment and staff.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    Our system of regulation has become dysfunctional.

    Our police system turns human beings into violence machines. If our police system creates behavior like this from the people closest to it then that system is broken.

    The officers are doing what humans do when given too much raw force.

    Change the system and the officers will change with it.

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    straphangers

    What the hell, I’ve NEVER heard or read this word in my entire life.

    The first known use of straphanger was in 1896. Defined as a standing passenger in a subway, streetcar, bus, or train who clings for support to one of the short straps or similar devices placed along the aisle

    I guess that might explain part of that… but I’m seeing consisntent uses from merriam webster’s recent examples on the web for the word.

    Strangely enough there is a military alternative definition:

    “Straphanger” seems to have a different, and negative connotation in current US military parlance. Since this is a militarily-oriented movie, it is probably the definition that applies.

    In an article unrelated to Zero Dark Thirty, I found a reference to strap hangers.

    "We have a saying in the SEAL Teams about the 90-10 rule. It goes: 90% of the guys that make it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training are solid Operators and go on to do great things. The other 10% are constantly bringing the community and their team down. We are always trying to cull the 10% out of the herd. In the military these guys are commonly referred to as “strap hangers”....grabbing at the straps of the good men that participated in this operation."
    

    source

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      I associate the word “straphanger” with tabloid media. They have some words that they really like. It doesn’t really even make sense for NYC Because the subway doesn’t have straps.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      Trust Hollywood to get it wrong. In the military the term strap hangars can be derogatory, but it’s not any better for the person being held on to if it’s used this way. It has to do with patronage systems and people not making it on their own merit. Rather than constantly trying to cull the hangars, the people with the straps are enabling them. “There goes Colonel Good Idea Fairy and his straphangers.”

      Alternatively in the Airborne community it means someone who isn’t scheduled to jump but shows up anyways, hoping there’s an extra parachute. This isn’t derogatory because airborne soldiers have to jump every so often to maintain their status and pay, and life happens so there’s no telling why they’re in need of a jump. “We have five extra parachutes for straphangers.”

    • 5oap10116@lemmy.world
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      I’m in Suffolk and can confirm. Kid got a 680/2400 on the SAT. Not that the SAT is a great intelligence test but damn.

    • Test_Tickles@lemmynsfw.com
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      One of the people shot was 1 of the 2 cops doing the shooting.
      Let me repeat that just to be clear, the cops fucking shot each other.
      I can’t even conceive of the level of stupidity involved here.

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    NYPD goes HARD on toll jumpers, but there’s virtually zero enforcement on traffic and cars. Everywhere I go I see assholes with illegally modified vehicles, degenerates speeding down shoulders and medians, motorcycles on crowded sidewalks and pedestrian paths, and too many drunk drivers to count. There are so many cases where one pig parked on the shoulder during rush hour would fund the city budget for a year.

    Instead we get whole families of pigs loitering by the turnstiles

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      The NYPD also loves to go after jaywalkers and vagrants, particularly when they’re interfering with the flow of street traffic.

      Cars are King, baby.

      • Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com
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        I totally agree about the vagrancy thing. I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking but I only lived there for 50 years.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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          I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking

          I had a friend who got grabbed by a police officer and thrown against a wall by a NYPD officer, then arrested on the spot, for crossing outside of a designated crosswalk.

          But that was during OWS, so maybe a few other political winds were involved.

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      Apparently we’re calling commuters “straphangers” now too. I wonder if the NYPD will shoot at speeding wheelgrippers next.

      • Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com
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        The subways used to have straps on the bars to hold on to during the ride. They’ve been called straphangers for a very long time. In the 80’s one of my brothers was part of the Straphangers Campaign.

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          Fair enough, my ignorance/age is showing.

          I’ve taken public transit all my life so I understood what it meant. Never heard the term in Canada before though.

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          So now can we call them “pole hangers”? “Pole grabbers”? “Pole holders”? If they’re listening to music and swaying in time, perhaps “pole dancers”?

          I’m sure there are better terms but I’m not very creative.

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      The reason is the same reason why bullies go after vulnerable and/or isolated kids. The type of person who has a car and has the money and means to illegally modify it is also the type of person who would give the police absolute hell if they so much as dared to look at them the wrong way. A person jumping a small toll is someone who is poor and will never attract the sympathies of any judge who will treat them very harshly.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        Yeah I just can’t help but think of all that sweet sweet money that we absolutely used to get by charging the rich assholes being bad with their fancy toy cars to the point of it being the main funding force for police for decades and wonder…

        Why not take?

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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          I want that. I really do. The major problem is that throughout most of history the wealthy have always gotten away with the most incredibly blatant shit and the general attitude of the legal system has been to comfort the comfortable and grieve the aggrieved. The times where the people on the top got their comeuppance and where the wealthy were forced to comply with some level of propriety towards the average person are both rare and brief.

          In the US, the New Deal era was by far the most prosperous era in US history, and many of the wealthy people HATED it. The whole modern anti-politics as politics started shortly after WW2 as a response to the whole thing. The video I linked has more information on it… and it is far from the whole story. What I am saying is that it is really fucked just how powerful the propaganda apparatus of capitalism has grown. This isn’t to say that it was somehow unbiased in the past. Prior to WW2 the liberal media basically aided fascists gain power even when fascists were killing many of the same liberal journalists and shutting down their newspapers.

          It isn’t impossible. It is just fucked is what I am saying, and things will get a lot worse before things get better… and the sad reality is any recovery will be very brief since that is the way how humans work.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      Once I was in NYC and saw a little pack of motorcycles doing wheelies and running red lights.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      Definitely sitting at home, getting paid leave and talking to his union provided lawyer and was told not to say anything by his coworkers who didn’t arrest him for shooting multiple people.

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    [Chief] Maddrey said during a verbal altercation, they “became aware of a knife.” Body-worn camera footage, which Maddrey said he reviewed before the press conference, allegedly showed the man make a verbal threat to the officers. He told the cops, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me,” the chief said. As the encounter continued to escalate, a northbound L train pulled into the station. The train cars opened and the man jumped inside, according to police. Maddrey said the officers followed the man, each firing a Taser which proved ineffective in subduing the man. He then exited the train while it was still at the station and charged the officers with the knife, the chief said.

    Cops clearly did nothing wrong in shooting at a guy charging at them with a knife–anyone would be justified in doing so, cop or not. Bystander injuries are on the aggressor’s hands.

    Also:

    Mayor Eric Adams, who also attended the briefing, described the knife-wielding man as a “career criminal” with over 20 arrests.

    Shhhhhhhhhhhocking!

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      Bystander injuries are on the aggressor’s hands.

      Excited to see the NYPD press b charges on the turnstile jumper for the cop who shot the other cop.

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      USA is the only shit hole in the world where you can get shot for fare evasion.

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          The country has barely measurable mental health care and social network. The dude that brandished the knife would probably have been somewhere else if these were in place. How many other countries have you heard of where this could have happened? Someone jumps turnstiles, they are unhinged and feel cornered by the pigs so they brandish a knife at them.

          This regularly happens in the US and nowhere else, yet it’s also the country that is unable to deal with it. Just need to have slightly more IQ than average to put 1+1 together.

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    Ahh yes. Nothing like killing a perp and a few bystanders for a few dollars’ worth of fare. USA! USA!

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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      I think if people had even more guns this could have been avoided. What if there was a six year old with a 22 there to respond to the gunshots with some of his own? maybe less people would be dead.

      Guns make everyone way safer. We need to start providing them in utero.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      This has been an ongoing problem in the city. Fuckin Mayor Officer Landlord has been dumping millions into multiple cops sitting on platforms, on their phones, watching for people jumping the 2.90 fare. Which they just raised from 2.70. They’re more than spending what they’re hypothetically losing on fare jumpers. Neoliberal capitalist bullshit in action.

      • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
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        Meanwhile in Albuquerque we’ve made buses free because the fare infrastructure costs more than to run the buses.

    • superkret@feddit.org
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      They stopped him for a few dollars’ worth of fare.
      They shot him for charging at them with a knife.

      • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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        We’ll see if that story pans out, I’m sure the body cam footage is coming any minute…

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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          The statement by the Department Chief literally references that there is body cam footage, that is the source of information for the statement.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            No no no. They mean the footage being released for public scrutiny. The police have lied about the body camera footage before.

      • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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        The uniformed duo followed the alleged fare-beater up the stairs to the elevated L train platform around 3 p.m., when they gave him commands to stop and turn around. Maddrey said during a verbal altercation, they “became aware of a knife.”

        Body-worn camera footage, which Maddrey said he reviewed before the press conference, allegedly showed the man make a verbal threat to the officers. He told the cops, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me,” the chief said.

        As the encounter continued to escalate, a northbound L train pulled into the station. The train cars opened and the man jumped inside, according to police.

        Where is this knife charge mentioned?

        • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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          Maddrey said the officers followed the man, each firing a Taser which proved ineffective in subduing the man. He then exited the train while it was still at the station and charged the officers with the knife, the chief said.

          it was the next sentence from what you copied lol

    • bean@lemmy.world
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      I know it’s like that by headline, but they repeatedly tried to subdue him and eventually he charged at them with a knife after having said “I’ll kill you”. I don’t know I would hesitate to stop him without my gun if he suddenly ran at me with a knife. I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.

      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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        I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.

        Kind of fair point for yourself.

        However I expect more of a trained professional who has repeated firarms training. They should be sesitized to controlling their direction of fire even in an emergency.

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          It really is bizarre how many people seem to just accept lower standards for police than for random Joe gun owner off the street. It’s not confusing though; it’s just another facet of the great team sport of society for many people.

          If we’re supposed to value and respect our police, maybe we should actually expect good things from them!

        • Rinox@feddit.it
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          That’s not even the point. The training should have taught them how to de-escalate the situation, or even let it go. They transformed a 3$ fare skipped into a massacre, how’s that normal?

          It’s 3$, if he has a knife, just let him go, it’s not worth the risk. You’ll track him down later and get him without killing him, passerbys and other cops.

          You don’t need to drop a nuke because there’s a pickpocketer somewhere in the city

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        Ok, so these people are too incompetent to win a 4v1 against an untrained opponent? Is this better somehow?

      • bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
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        If a guy doesn’t pay $3, has a knife and threatens the police -> mental problem. The answer isn’t shooting but handling the situation and deescalating.

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      They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.

      Any bystander injuries are to be blamed on the aggressor Mr. Knifey.

      • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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        Until cops prove themselves trustworthy, I will assume they’re lying. They have a long way to go.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        They chased someone into a train over 3 dollars. There is now hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, possibly over a million. Because someone “stole” a 3 dollar fare.

        How the police react to stuff is absolutely up for debate. This is why we stopped doing car chases.

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          If someone runs a red light, and a cop tries to pull them over to give them a ticket, and instead the guy jumps out of the car and tries to attack the cop with a knife and gets shot in self-defense, it is absolutely not accurate to frame that as “cop shot that guy for running a red light”.

          But this is what exactly the OP is trying to do. And that’s bullshit.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            Police don’t chase for red lights anymore specifically because the damage car chases were doing was out of line with the civil infraction.

            • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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              Don’t see how that’s relevant to anything. A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.

              It is completely ridiculous to frame this as “police shot a man over $2.90”, when the shooting only happened after a verbal death threat, brandishing a lethal weapon, followed by an overt attempt to make good on that threat with that weapon.

              Only the most ACAB-addled mind would think it appropriate to frame the events that way.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.

                Looks at the number of people that got shot.

                Obviously that’s not true.

                And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims. The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.

                • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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                  Looks at the number of people that got shot.

                  Obviously that’s not true.

                  Not as a result of two people walking, but as a result of someone brandishing a knife and attempting murder in a public place. Cringe goalpost move.

                  And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims.

                  And all of what you’re saying is based on literally nothing but your hate boner for police, lmao.

                  The image released shows a knife clutched in the criminal’s hand. I’m sure he was strolling around like that very innocently and cops just opened fire on him for a laugh, right?

                  The straw-grasping is incredible.

                  The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.

                  Like it’d matter to your type. We have extensive hard video evidence of what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, all put online publicly mere days after the event, and there are still innumerable imbeciles claiming shit it directly contradicts happened, lol.

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        The knife that mysteriously doesn’t show up on any footage and couldn’t be located after the fact?

        I know better than to believe police lies. It’s all they do. ACAB, no exceptions.

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      Proposed reform measure: Just like teachers have to buy classroom supplies out-of-pocket, have police officers buy their own ammo.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      Just having them there on detail probably costs more than they recover from fare evaders.

      • bestagon@lemmy.world
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        Legitimately. It’s not even a joke. Millions have been spent on defending 100k in fare evasion.

        The NYPD budget is in the ballpark of 11 billion

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      They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.

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            Until they release the body cam footage, all we have is a blurry photo of someone on the ground holding a knife. As nice as that image is, it does nothing to support the claim that they were “charged at with a knife” and that is the claim people are holding you to task over (and assuming that is true, just allowing this situation to escalate to that point was inexcusably incompetent). The NYPD has been caught intentionally misleading the public with bodycam footage many times before and thus lack the credibility to be believed without evidence, especially when they are being this cagey over releasing the footage. This may very well have been the case, but until they prove it we can’t reasonably take them at their word and you damn well know it.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            They have a picture of a knife

            That they cannot produce.

            The police lie. We’ve caught them lying so many times now that they don’t get the benefit of the doubt much less some higher credibility.

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    “We will be working through the timeline of today, but make no mistake, the events that occurred on the Sutter Avenue station platform are the results of an armed perpetrator who was confronted by our officers doing the job we asked them to do," Donlon said.

    Could we maybe not ask police officers to escalate minor and petty conflicts all the way up to shooting everyone in the immediate vicinity?

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      doing the job we asked them to do

      Ah, so we should pursue this ‘we’ who are asking cops to kill innocent people. Thanks, Donlon!

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      “armed perpetrator” ah, so any american that commits a crime, then?

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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    Schrodingers pig.

    The cop shot an innocent bystander in the head but also shot another cop. Until trial, he is both a bad guy with a gun and a good guy with a gun.

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    NYPD pays $126,000 annual salary, that’s about $60 an hour or $1 a minute, 4 cops respond to the fair jumper, if they spent more than 45 seconds on this it costs the city more than the fair was worth.

    • FuzzyRedPanda@lemm.ee
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      No way would I do that job at that pay in NYC, especially as long as pretty much any idiot in the USA can own a gun.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      The point is not how much it costs.

      The point is that a poor person needs punishment, and if they’re lucky, they might get to shoot somebody.

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    This obviously has in part to do with the toxic American gun culture and it’s corrupt and untrained police, but alsonwoth it’s misguided need for what it thinks is justice, and revenge for real or imagined crimes.

    Shoplift something small? In you go with hardened criminals to punish punish punish, fuck you for daring to do that! No rehabilitation, just punish

    A lot of Americans complain about low prison sentences in Europe, not understanding that the focus there is on actually solving the problem of crime, instead of revenge, revenge, revenge.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      It makes more sense if you start from the premise that there are “good people” and “bad people”, and bad people need to be punished to protect good people. The people who do the protections–like Joe Arpaio–can do no wrong. Even if they seem to do bad things, that’s just in the service of protecting good people.

      This premise is bullshit, but everything follows from there.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      The problem is rooted in prison spending moving from a social cost to a private revenue stream.

      It’s the classic Cobra Effect of economics. Monetizing the solution to a problem creates an incentive to increase the instances of said problem.

      In this case, we have criminalized the free use of public transportation in order to justify more spending on policing.

      • RumorsOfLove@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        it seems like you are assuming it wasnt always this way. but perhaps this has always been the function of prison. CIP: Australia

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      The same thing in Canada. Despite the reputation of Canadians being polite wusses by Americans the Canadian legal system is much harsher than the American system.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      Yes! I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve had with people who genuinely think that burglars deserve to be shot and killed.

  • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Imagine the 2 by standards suing the department getting and 6 million dollars. Because shooting a guy for jumping a turn style worth 2.90.

    This is a joke they need to take that money out of the police officers pension.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month

      Start giving police officers actual training. You know, teach them how to deescalate, how to actually use a gun (because they don’t even know that part) but also teach them to let go.

      High speed chases may look cool but they endanger the innocent until found guilty suspect and hundreds of innocent bastards, none of those chases are worth it. Let them go, catch them later safely using actual police investigation work.

      Guns may look cool but they kill at a distance and are a high risk for all bystanders, they should be a last resort, not a first resort.

      Also,mgive police officers a mandatory psychological evaluation, filter out the psychopaths and the racists. Those you don’t want in a force that needs to protect and serve.

      A lot more improvements can be and should be made, but you get the picture

      • redisdead@lemmy.world
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        If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month

        Seems like it’s a whole lot of not my problem.

        Garnish their wages too. Fuck these fucking bastard pigs.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      They would never win. The police were just doing their jobs after all. So what if a couple of innocent people get shot? After all, just because they are currently innocent, doesn’t mean they aren’t future criminals. So really, by shooting them they make it less likely that they’ll commit future crimes!

      • thoro@lemmy.ml
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        People win suits against the police all the time. It’s just the police rarely face consequences for it, especially as an institution.

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          It also exceptionally rare that police officers themselves get prosecuted. Chauvin’s conviction was a surprising twist as such things almost never happen. This is one situation where they threw one of their own under the bus to placate the public while the whole situation actually gets worse.

          Like ever since BLM got started, the rate of police shootings have only gone up, and funding has increased AND there are far more laws protecting police than before. In many states it is becoming increasingly illegal to film police officers for any reason. So they might have thrown Chauvin under the bus, but they might make it illegal to film cops in his area, so future Chauvins who get filmed will have nothing to fear, as they will arrest the person filming them and charge them, and since the film obtained is criminal it will be dismissed as evidence.

    • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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      qualified immunity says there’s no specific law or statute saying you can’t fire indiscriminately into a crowd of people whilst attempting to “apprehend” someone suspected of not paying their $2.90 subway fare… so they’ll be let off with a warning and a nice long paid vacation. Maybe the victims will get some token amount…

      Oh wait, you didn’t even mention the cops getting punished, I guess it’s just a given at this point that they won’t be. We see a headline these days about cops shooting innocent people and we can’t suspend disbelief long enough to even imagine the cops getting punished.

      America!