(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it.
"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
Just a salt of the earth officer telling it like it dog-gamn is. :|
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
PSNI had one single firearm discharge in the two year period covering October 2023 - September 2025.
Plus 948 uses of irritant spray, 496 uses of their baton, and 38 taser discharges in the same period. And 23,489 uses of "unarmed physical tactics".
That's for a population of around 2 million. By comparison, SFPD had 10 "officer involved shootings" in the past year for a population of 800k, a rate fifty times higher than that in NI.
Of course it's not like American cops have recognized the danger that poses and politically aligned themselves with reducing or restricting access to guns, so they lose a lot of credit there, but they are genuinely facing a better armed and therefore more dangerous population.
I guess the above poster is thinking of the shoot-to-kill era of the 80s (still well within living memory): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northe...
The political situation in the late 1960s provided plenty of kindling, but it seems clear that most of the sparks that actually caused the conflagration came from the barrel of guns held by soldiers and the police. They were directly responsible both for the death of the civil rights movement and the collapse of the government, and without the heavy-handed response it's likely that the settlement of the late 90s would've happened 25 years earlier.
It's actually a great example of why the militarisation of policing should be resisted at all cost.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
As a fun example I had a coworker who collected handguns. I once asked him how many he had and he asked for clarification, should he include unregistered?
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
False. Innocent bystanders are killed by police discharging guns, but rarely. And, while the goal should be zero, it will never be zero
The EU has a much bigger population than the USA, in a smaller space, and I'd bet they're already around this number.
I guess you mean "normal" non-criminal people in the EU are not allowed to have AR-15 assault rifles in their homes, that they can use if they have mental health issues.
I personally believe that is one of the reasons the USA has so much gun violence. Get rid of the guns in people's homes and things will change for the better.
I mean ... look at this ... Only in the USA!
https://dimages2.corriereobjects.it/files/image_572_429/uplo...
https://www.politico.eu/article/helsinki-no-traffic-death-ro...
"Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year, municipal officials revealed this week."
"The limits were enforced with 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy based on the national “Vision Zero” policy, with the goal of achieving zero traffic injuries or deaths. Data collected by Liikenneturva, Finland’s traffic safety entity, shows Helsinki’s traffic fatalities have been declining ever since."
And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!?
Come on, you know what people are talking about when they say "innocent bystander".
No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and even if you'd like to craft a scenario next where we're going to talk about Officer Friendly stopping a rape-in-progress, yes, that person is almost certainly guilty, AND the punishment for that crime is usually not death, AND the cornerstone of our justice system says that the officer in question, no matter how pure of heart he might be, cannot exact a death sentence on a clearly guilty person because that is not how justice works.
A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
If this was true, would you have survived?
Untrained random civilians encountering cops are supposed to have perfect sefl control. Supposedly trained professionals can be irresponsible, escalate for no reasom, risk others and shoot if they merely feel afraid - regardles of actual danger.
Guns are definitely pulled way more often by the police than they should be. but to your point I am okay with cops shooting anyone brandishing a knife or any other deadly weapon.
How police respond to you is very dependent on a lot of factors, including your age, race, what you are wearing, where you are, and what time it is. I don’t think you should use your own personal experience as a universal template.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Because, as a society, we should do everything we can to prevent harm to everyone, even people who are acting erratically. There could be all sorts of reasons for the behavior. Anyone can have a psychotic episode, and that shouldn’t immediately earn a death sentence. Of course, I understand that even an innocent person having a psychotic episode can be very dangerous, and I don’t think they should be allowed to hurt others, and it may be necessary to use force, and potentially deadly force, to protect other people.
However, I think that is very different than saying “we shouldn’t worry about the perpetrators well being at all”, or that it is preferable to kill the person rather than take ANY risk that they could hurt someone. The answer lies somewhere in between.
One way or the other, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in other countries.
If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they have knives you should also be thinking guns drawn the ~exact amount less no matter which of the 2 weapon they had.
I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
Expanding that, the deadliest part of being a police officer is almost certainly the driving component. No gun will save you from smashing your SUV into a pole. And the aftermarket modifications made to the vehicles aren't crash tested. A police cruiser is full of potential projectiles.
But there are a lot of cops in the USA, and plenty I'm sure have nice, cozy jobs, and then there are some who spend thee majority of their career policing areas that more closely resemble warzones or 3rd world nations but this isn't the majority by any means.
Relevant fictional quote:
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
> Insane take truly. First, CCW carriers are statistically the least likely to be involved in any kind of "violent life ending incident".
Sure, you could argue this, with the exception of suicide, found guns (usually by kids in the home), and stolen guns. It's not just the person certified, it's everyone around them who can obtain access to the gun they now own
>The number of non self-defense homicides caused by them is approximately 0 per year.
Only because there's no public data on this particular statistic. A nonprofit produced a database based on news headlines and limited state data, though, and found 1700 suicides and 600 convicted murders by CCW carriers between 2007 and 2025: https://vpc.org/concealed-carry-killers/
A better way to phrase it would be that the number of homicides are far less than the violence that a lack of CCW would enable, though that on its own is statistically shaky.
> Second, to suggest that people should allow themselves to be victims to violent crime because it's safer for the whole is some sort of collectivist trotskyite nonsense we will never agree on. Under no circumstance should an innocent person forfeit life or property for a violent criminal.
You're right, we (the USA) probably won't ever agree on it, due to the intense financial incentives behind firearms manufacturing and ownership and the subsequent lobbying and influence over public influence that those companies fund, but every other country apart from the US is a sweeping counterexample to this. We lose 45,000 people per year to guns (~60% by suicide). It's the #1 cause of death for children since 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-sta... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
It's reductive to suggest that the only thing having more guns around does is "prevent victimization" when the guns themselves enable violence to so many nearby parties, including to the owner themselves.
> Its astonishing to me people can look at FBI statistics, total gun deaths trending down for the last 30 years, and then suggest people who are statistically the most safe with guns shouldn't be able to carry them.
The figure you're quoting appears to be the graph from page 1 of https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/tpfv9323.pdf, which is nonfatal victimization, which hasn't trended down--it's hovered between 1 and 2 per 1000 since 2003, and appears to be more of a reflection of improved medical skill than anything about guns.
Anyway, you were quoting gun deaths--that's page 13. That chart has stayed roughly the same since 1999: 4-5 per 100k persons (except for the spike during covid)
>The qualifications for CCW are harder than police qualifications in most states. But you wouldn't know this because Everytown, MSNBC, CNN, and others have spent the last 12 or so years lying through statistics so that the government has the monopoly on violence.
No permit required for CCW in 27 states. You also have states like Utah that will mail you a permit that's valid in 30 different states and doesn't require proof of live-fire training.
But yes, in CA, for example, it's a 16 hour course, background check, fingerprints, clean record, (sometimes) psych evals, and even then there are restrictions.
This isn't an indicator that CCW is difficult to obtain, though, since this is a reasonable barrier--it's an indicator that police qualifications are laughable. (While we're on that topic, by the way, law enforcement officers (both active and inactive) are allowed to concealed carry in all 50 states)
https://aliengearholsters.com/blogs/news/how-to-get-a-concea...
Share more feedback if you have it. Would love to learn more
Something I learned from a friend is to ask permission for every movement or at the very least narrate and move slowly.
"I'm going to reach in the glovebox for my registration. Is that ok?"
I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
Edit: friend and I are also white.
All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.
That's not really true. The standard is a reasonable fear for your life. That's reasonable standard is evaluated in court by how a reasonable person would have reacted. Yes, they do give some deference to the individual who was actually there (police or civilian). The real problems happen because the DA and the courts tend to have bias when it comes to subjecting members of the system to the same process that others face.
In which case, they should spend the rest of their life in a high-security psychiatric hospital.
They're obviously too mentally fragile to be allowed out in the world.
Qualified immunity tends to chime in.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
> The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
> Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir. 2019): Qualified immunity granted for officer who, hunting a fugitive, ended up at the wrong house and forced six children, including two children under the age of three, to lie on the ground at gunpoint. The officer tried to shoot the family dog, but missed and shot a 10-year-old child that was lying face down, 18 inches away from the officer. The court held that there was no prior case where an officer accidentally shot a child laying on the ground while the officer was aiming at a dog.
> Young v. Borders, 850 F.3d 1274 (11th Cir. 2017): Qualified immunity granted to officers who, without a warrant, started banging on an innocent man’s door without announcing themselves in the middle of the night. When the man opened the door holding his lawfully-owned handgun, officers opened fire, killing. One dissenting judge wrote that if these actions are permitted, “then the Second and Fourth Amendments are having a very bad day in this circuit.”
> Estate of Smart v. City of Wichita, 951 F.3d 1161 (10th Cir. 2020): Qualified immunity granted for officer who heard gunshots and fired into a crowd of hundreds of people in downtown Wichita, shooting bystanders and killing an unarmed man who was trying to flee the area. The court held that the shooting was unconstitutional but there was no clearly established law that police officers could not “open fire on a fleeing person they (perhaps unreasonably) believed was armed in what they believed to be an active shooter situation.”
(And a bunch of others.)
And a matching case has to be very specific:
> Baxter v. Bracey, 751 F. App’x 869 (6th Cir. 2018): Qualified immunity granted for officers who sent a police dog to attack a man who had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands in the air. The court held that a prior case holding it unconstitutional to send a police dog after a person who surrendered by laying on the ground was not sufficiently similar to this case, involving a person who surrendered by sitting on the ground with his hands up.
"No clearly established law", my ass.
Here are a bunch going the other way. https://policefundingdatabase.org/explore-the-database/settl...
I never said that qualified immunity wasn't an issue, just that there tends to be more protections when use of force is involved than with property.
In other words, from the victimized populace.
I think a cop who steals seized evidence should be personally liable to the person they stole from.
(…and I'd note "v. City of Wichita" is clearly responsive to your question.)
“the only way” puts me in mind of The Onion headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
He told me a story about a noise complaint. He said him and his partner banged on the front door of the house, but there was no response. He said they called in the status, but were told to wait. About 10 minutes later multiple SWAT vehicles arrived. He said one of the vehicles literally drove into the side of the house, making a huge hole in the house. About a dozen SWAT officers ran into the house, multiple shots were fired, the tear gas started a fire. The house was absolutely destroyed. ... No one was home; the house was empty. A kid left the TV on really loud when he left for school. A neighbor called it in, hoping the cops could just go into the house and turn off the TV. Worse, there was no punishment to anyone involved; the cops were doing as they were trained.
People generally do not shoot at cops, because whether or not they hit the target doing so is pretty much signing their own death sentence. All cops have to do to protect themselves is to not provoke people to fight-or-flight reactions.
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
There's plenty of video of the guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETf7NJOMS6Y
In context, its correct, that's not up for dispute. The question is "does it add anything to the context?" and more importantly "could a student misconstrue its inclusion as something else?"
You'd think that, being so educated on the hormonal backlash from experiencing trauma, that cops and the greater judicial system would be more forgiving of e.g. emergent hypersexuality in rape victims after experiencing a rape that Grossman calls out there. But you would be wrong, because even if Grossman wants his students to understand that concept for their own health, he wildly misunderstands the culture he helped create where the police view themselves as a thin blue line holding back the manifold forces of Chaos Undivided.
Also, I feel like “nothing wrong if it does happen” regarding shooting someone, is the wrong perspective. If shooting someone is necessary, then it is necessary, but that doesn’t mean nothing went wrong. Anytime someone gets shot is a time something has gone wrong.
> They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving.
Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
The reality is there are aggressive people in society that have a tendency to escalate things. If police are trained to only de-escalate, it removes a powerful check on aggressive escalation.
The second order effect is an increase in events like people being pushed onto train tracks, glass bottles being thrown if you glance the wrong direction, etc.
I think optimally you have a police force that is trained in de-escalation but also escalates things slightly more than the average citizen and thereby provides a service to society as a buffer.
I'm claiming that some antisocial behavior is only triggered by some degree of escalation.
I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :)
I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving.
If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable.
Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)
In any game, if one side has 10x more accountability for misbehavior than the other, the low consequence side will keep testing boundaries until they are stopped.
#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
1. https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admit...
- the warrant was for distribution of narcotics and kiddnapping.
If I were to guess what a list of most dangerous warrants to execute, those two would be up there.
If you note in the video, he jokingly plays around the drugs part. I am not sure where the kidnapping part comes from, but Afroman is not necessarily a household name amongst middle-aged white police officers, so I imagine they just saw "drugs and kidnapping" and went for it.
The kidnapping claim was there was a sex dungeon in the house. The house does not have a basement.
And all of this was obviously pretextual, unless you believe drugs and women were hidden between cds or in whatever pieces of the kitchen they destroyed.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Police_Shootout_-_De...
[2] https://youtu.be/NqxTf-Vz12o?t=475
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
Also around 40% of police deaths are accidents.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
The justification most give is that they may need to be able to quickly get out of a car and pull their gun in a confrontation.
The only way this makes sense is that
A) Police aren't being properly trained based on data
B) People have an irrational psychological fear of murder over other types of death
B isn't necessarily irrational. Many other types of death are at your own actions. Things like drinking alcohol, eating whatever you feel like, not exercising, doing drug, even driving, etc provide some self-identified "benefit" to the individual that they choose to partake. It's rationale that someone is more afraid of dying from an activity they recieve no benefit from than an activity they do.
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
They didn’t say it’s funny.
If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.
> human error
Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.
Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.
So a lot of this stuff is truly self inflicted and the result of poor policy choices -- not because of governments reluctantly but dutifully obeying the 2nd amendment.
The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world.
You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
And before someone rages... look for yourself:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Af...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Ho...
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
It didn't "de-arm" - it brought all states and territories into near alignment on gun regulation.
If you're interested I can link to good footage of my actual IRL neighbour shooting 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards, here in Australia.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
Alternatively you might be interested in Australian footage of feral control, taking down 800 oversized wild pigs in 4 hours from a helicopter.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
Critical mass.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as they hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
People need to see action and see it work without repercussions to the actor.
People will take notice when someone like Thiel, Bannon, or Miller are taken down with a drone and the drone operator escapes arrest.
They'll think to themselves "Wait a minute, if someone can take out a billionaire I can take out that cop who raped my cousin and got a paid vacation as punishment for it."
What comes after that is anybody's guess but I predict an impending moment where individual citizens realize that they're not as helpless as they have been lead to believe and that technology can help them eliminate long-standing criminals operating in positions of power with immunity in theiry local communities.
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
They don't raid schools when there's someone actively killing children. They can just hold off a bit and get people when they're on the move.
That is also why the police response in Uvalde is highly criticized.
Got any data?
It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly?
What is "regularly"?
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...
There are an estimated 20k-80k no-knock warrants in the US every year for context.
At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.
Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.
1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;
2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;
3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];
4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;
5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?
6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;
7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];
8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.
A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].
One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].
It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury
[2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey
[4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.
Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
Unless it's proven someone is on imminent harm, then they should find another way to collect evidence, or just not do it.
So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
The police being able to leverage civil law against citizens to control their behavior in ways that citizens cannot leverage against cannot to comment on the abuse of power is entirely unacceptable no matter what our laws and judiciary chose to allow.
Ooh sweet summer child.
It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government.
While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
It is also worth noting that in some cases, government and business owners have diametrically opposed interests - namely governments can nationalize companies (and if I'm not mistaken, some governments, like the Nazis, did, or would use the threat of nationalization to make business owners do their bidding with no regard for the interest of the business owner)
If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'.
Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings
as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend.
And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared.
If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable.
And there is some evidence that the institutions themselves recognize this (or they did, until we elected an openly-corrupt white supremacist to the highest office): https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-doj-res...
Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That's... A very big number.
Hyperbole illustrates the point pretty well though
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
I presume this isn't coming out of the officers' paychecks....
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
See: https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity.
Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
(granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue)
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
https://ny.prelawland.com/post/719662253773832192/too-smart-...
They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally.
This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever.
I think the never here is a typo.
He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
Where is that coming from?
Do you seriously not believe (well, know) that sadly, many cops do this ALL THE TIME?
They’re facing charges too, right?
Right?
No, that video seems to be from 4 days ago, the verdict of the jury came yesterday.
Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops.
Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
It does more to expose just how incompetent, entitled and corrupt the average cop really is, something I wish was better known. The cops who brought this suit are basically the biggest crybabies, are too dumb to realize it and too entitled to realize that others wouldn't see it that way. It's fantastic.
Compare this to policing in Japan [1]:
> Koban cops go to extraordinary lengths to learn their beats. They're required to regularly visit every business and household in their districts twice a year, ostensibly to hand out anti-crime flyers or ask about their security cameras. The owner of a coffee shop told Craft, "With Officer Sota, we can say what's on our mind. He's really like a neighbor. Instead of dialing emergency when we need help, we just call him."
American cops are a gang, by and large.
Cops have absolutely massive budgets, from small towns to big cities. Let's not forget Uvalde, where the police department budget was ~40% of the city budget and it resulted in 19 cops standing outside scared while one shooter kept shooting literal children for an hour. Because they were scared.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walking-the-beat-in-japan-a-hea...
Not only did they not stop the shooter, but they actively prevented parents—who were willing to risk their lives—from intervening. They didn't just not help, they proactively ran interference for the shooter.
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
> “When these streets keep callin’, heard it when I was asleep/That Gay Z and C*ck-A-Fella Records wanted beef”
JayZ responded in kind insinuating it back on N A S.
And Drake is also a Trumpist because he told Chris Brown that he fu*ked Chris’s girl.
Tupac also, for some reason:
> ”… You claim to be a player, but I f*cked your wife/We bust on Bad Boys, n*g*as fu*ked for life.”
2Pac in hit-em-up:
> "That's why I fuc*ed your bitch"
Eminem:
> "I f*cked your mother and made her my bitch,"
You know what? Maybe it’s a rapper thing and not an indication of MAGA alignment?
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/664027-afroman-2024-presidentia...
The first two of those issues were Trump issues in his campaign and Trump rescheduled marijuana to schedule 2.
As far as I understand, the Schedule of Cannabis is written into the US Code. So Congress would need to amend it.
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
> The term "list I chemical" means a chemical specified by regulation of the Attorney General ... until otherwise specified by regulation of the Attorney General
>The other, “Lemon Pound Cake,” shows one of the officers, gun in hand, pausing briefly in Mr. Foreman’s kitchen by a cake inside a glass cloche. “It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” Mr. Foreman sings in the song.
The man has a sense of humor.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
"2002" New York Times, everyone.
Props to afroman for his perfect demeanor/attitude during all this.
If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.
I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."
Sometimes this results in radical changes to a piece within hours of publication - yesterday for instance the BBC ran a piece headlined something like “I watched my father murder my mother”, and six hours later in slides an editorial correction saying “she did not, in fact, see her father murder her mother. She was asleep in another room at the time.”
Honestly, someone could adapt it to a script and run it in a live theater.
Now I know what I'm watching tonight!
Is it just me or did the judge seemed biased towards the cops? He also dismissed Afroman's counter-suit.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
They do know the statement is true (and this is provable). Pretending like they "don't know" is a lie under oath.
That said, I don't disagree with outcome.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
1 - https://www.wirthlawoffice.com/tulsa-attorney-blog/2013/07/c...
“Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.
At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.
You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
And to the genesis of this thread, it doesn't mean I must believe the tears are fake.
I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.
This raid was in Ohio. Here's their immunity waiver: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.02
Here's a page that links to a PDF with a table given cites and details for all 50 states: https://www.mwl-law.com/resources/sovereign-immunity-tort-li...
> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,
and then "state" is defined in https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.01
> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.
> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.
Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.
> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty
and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"
> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building
People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.
Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.
On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.
distrack as legal maneuver.
If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.
THEIR privacy?!?!? Their privacy ... in his home? This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount.
> were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,”
Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.)
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
[0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
[1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy.
Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave state, it does not make sense to carry over southern slave-catching history into modern police culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1793
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
"It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate."
Boston's police department was founded in 1854.
This is from your Time.com article.
Second, fugitive slave extradition was controversial in northern states and from your Wikipedia article several northern states even passed legislation to protect fugitive slaves.
And why would northern states spend their own tax dollars to fund police forces to capture slaves? It doesn’t make sense. They created police for public safety reasons in cities.
And even if none of that were true it still does not address the genetic fallacy. Just because some police forces started as slave patrols does not imply that all police today are inherently white supremacist.
I don't see how this supports the claim
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not.
Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case.
Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu...
Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't.
(The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.)
It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
Requesting an arbitrarily high standard doesn’t create any obligation. Evidence of a high standard does.
He objected to what was provided and you accused him of ignoring evidence. I'm voicing agreement with his objection. The original claim was one of a statistical nature. Thus any purported evidence should be expected to match.
If a group is more likely to be X than the average population then being a member of that group is statistical evidence you are X. Really when referring to statistical evidence here it’s an indication the evidence is of a very low standard not a high one.
He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists which doesn’t actually mean much which is kind of a point on its own. That being it’s the same low standard as used by actual racists, but as you said there’s no actual obligation to go beyond such wordplay. Personally I was very amused by the whole thing but obviously it’s quite offensive to some people.
Taking the other side of this one, you could say something like “sure the odds at least one of them are white supremacists is non trivial, but suggesting all seven are is unlikely.” Again not a strong argument, but it’s at minimum an actual argument.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
Let's take a step back. OP, essentially, made a very basic logical error (actually not an error IMO, but a willfully misleading statement).
They said, "Statistically, [assuming a cop is a white supremacist] a pretty sensible assumption."
In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right. So it'd mean that greater than half of police are white supremacists. They then posted a link to support that statement which said that some white supremacist groups are instructing their members to join the police force. He's gone from the evidence of "some" white supremacist groups are telling "some" of their members among the police force to justify saying that it's a safe assumption to assume any officer is a white supremacist (greater than 50% chance for any random cop to be a white supremacist).
Considering that I strongly doubt the quantity of white supremacists that are members of white supremacist organizations in this county is even more than half of the amount of police officers, I very much doubt that the subset of individuals in the subset of organizations who were given this instruction and actually followed through on it comprises more than half of the police officers in the country.
To which I facetious said, "I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal." Implying that, if the cops used the same logic on a neighborhood with criminals, it'd be sensible for them to assume every member of the neighborhood is a criminal. That point seemed to go over OPs head as he replied as if I wasn't making a facetious point and implied that cops do indeed do that. Presumably he thinks that's a bad thing when they do it but is perfectly reasonable for him to do.
I don't think anyone should be using faulty logic to make claims about groups of people.
> If you support the cops on this
I never said I did and, as such, the rest of this comment is not directed to me.
I assume I should buckle my seatbelt.
Not every car ride results in an accident. But enough do.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Also, you know, protected opinion.
At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion.
If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
You're just allowed to be maliciously right about things, if you like.
This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.
Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.
This flavor of police: Stop being mean!
It's legal for you to arrest someone if you see them commit a felony. It's legal for you to arrest someone under a warrant if you are deputized by a Sheriff of the court (almost never happens, but legal). It's not legal for you, whether you are employed at a police agency or not, to vandalize someone's camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nfVWiXY3WY
Neighbors by J. Cole
Why do you think they were so annoyed at all the cameras?
You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.
https://apnews.com/article/afroman-police-raid-lawsuit-ohio-...
I’m not suggesting suspicion has merit, but given all the idiocy I’m wondering what other forms of chicanery may have taken place to get a warrant.
Do the cops suing Afroman after raiding his home have a case? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36827566 - July 2023 (19 comments)
Police sue rapper Afroman for using footage of home raid in his music videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35284187 - March 2023 (551 comments)
US Police raids home; sues homeowner over CCTV footage of raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35281258 - March 2023 (53 comments)
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
He got burglarized before, and got threatened with arrest after demanding police investigate. https://www.tmz.com/2022/08/22/afroman-home-raided-police-oh...
Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?
In addition, you're not a criminal until you are convicted.
You're subbing in "abduct" for one of those words.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abduct
sounds like what happened to me.
You're not confused about the term. We all know the difference.
> their constitutional privacy
Isn't that something that people are always pointing out "is not guaranteed by the Constitution"?
Which means what the Supreme Court says that it means. It's easy to imagine that it means something akin to what people mean by "privacy", but interpreting the Constitution is infinitely malleable so I don't have any idea what it means.
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.
Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.
If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
You make it sound like Germany bans political parties every other year.
Germany formally only ever banned two parties:
- Socialist Reich Party (SRP), 1952 - Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 1956
For context: The Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949.
There are current discussions about banning - or evaluating a potential ban of - the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). If the ban went through (I think it won't), it would be the first in 70 years.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
The Germans would argue such powers prevent the Trumps.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Thank you, Ohio cops and lawyers, for bringing this to our attention.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
There is no justice here.
His legal costs are gonna be tiny versus his YouTube/Spotify revenue out of all this.
(And I wouldn't ignore the value he probably applies to being proven right in court, either.)
This is the story of a guy who got sued for being harassed and had to waste years of their time and money fighting it.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit...
Including internationally:
Yeah, it was from "My City Was Gone," which isn't a pleasant song about the state, but pfft, it works here.
Posting their names is questionable; as officers they are public servants, but naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
Lying however would be slander and illegal, in my humble opinion. Not worth 4 million in damages, but at least a cease and desist?
No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.
> Lying however would be slander and illegal…
They couldn't prove he did.
He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man..
If that were defamatory, 90% of QAnon would be in court.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.
And yes, it's great.
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.
A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).
To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.
If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DV_7xmAEfq0/
Apologies, I wish I had a less cancerous link
