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Coin Sniper
Picture of Rightwire
posted Hide Post
It is clear that the mass media is doing everything they can to keep rubbing this in our faces in the hopes a riot will break out somewhere.


Oops... spoke too soon, Philly just went riot.




Pronoun: His Royal Highness and benevolent Majesty of all he surveys

343 - Never Forget

Its better to be Pavlov's dog than Schrodinger's cat

There are three types of mistakes; Those you learn from, those you suffer from, and those you don't survive.
 
Posts: 37912 | Location: Above the snow line in Michigan | Registered: May 21, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
The Quiet Man
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by jljones:
quote:
Originally posted by copaup:


Plain clothes and unmarked should be used as spotters. Uniforms and marked units should make the stops.


Must be nice to to work in a place where you have all these resources standing around just looking for work. In the real world, these resources don’t exist. At least not in any agency around here.


I wasn't aware I didn't work in the real world. That particular unit was made up of both unmarked and marked units. I ran a plain clothes team for over a year back when I was young.

We are almost 800 officers under complement and most shifts still try to run a unmarked car and/or a plain clothes unit every night they can to watch for prowlers. They aren't supposed to be going hands on though. Police who don't look like police doing police stuff lead to major issues. Blue on blue and "I didn't know those guys were cops so I shot at them" being high on the list.

If you don't have enough people to have someone in uniform to work with the unmarked units, don't use unmarked units.
 
Posts: 2590 | Registered: November 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Sigforum K9 handler
Picture of jljones
posted Hide Post
Given the context of this thread debating large agency tactics versus the other 98 percent of LE is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Memphis is north of 2000 officers and this didn’t happen because of an unmarked vehicle.




www.opspectraining.com

"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for them"



 
Posts: 37071 | Location: Logical | Registered: September 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of 2BobTanner
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rightwire:
It is clear that the mass media is doing everything they can to keep rubbing this in our faces in the hopes a riot will break out somewhere.


Oops... spoke too soon, Philly just went riot.


Could it be because the Eagles just won a trip to the Super Bowl?


---------------------
LGBFJB

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." — Mark Twain

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H. L. Mencken
 
Posts: 2692 | Location: Falls of the Ohio River, Kain-tuk-e | Registered: January 13, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
Picture of RogueJSK
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by radioman:
quote:
TFOs in uniform


What is a TFO??


Task Force Officer
 
Posts: 32411 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
The Quiet Man
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by jljones:
Given the context of this thread debating large agency tactics versus the other 98 percent of LE is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Memphis is north of 2000 officers and this didn’t happen because of an unmarked vehicle.


I don't believe I said it did. I was trying to provide some background on the situation and in doing so point out one of the flaws in which a certain agency I may or may not be affiliated with does things that could have at least contributed to a bunch of crooks wearing badges going cowboy so other agencies might learn a lesson we...THEY... are learning much to their chagrin.

Maybe I'm reading tone wrong, but I'm tired. Bad, bad tired. My soul hurts from this. I didn't know those guys directly, but I know people on that unit. Good people. We've had an officer attacked outside his home this morning. An officer completely uninvolved in the situation. Another got followed all the way to their neighborhood until marked units made the scene.

MPD had 5 officers go completely off the rails and do something unimaginable. "Don't murder people" seems like an obvious lesson to take from this, so I'm left trying to process it by finding other lessons we can take from it other than "don't hire murderers." Maybe a reason why a totally innocent person ran, because he WAS totally innocent. None of that should have happened. None of it.

Nichols was not the problem here. I find it deeply irritating when people, often other police, try to put the blame at least partially on him by asking questions like "well why did he run?" or "what was his history like." That's not important. What's important is "what did we do wrong and how do we make sure nothing remotely like it ever, ever, happens again?" It's entirely likely he ran because he thought he honestly didn't think that first car that lit him up was the police. They certainly didn't look or sound like police when they jumped out on him. They looked like criminals and were proven to be criminals.

MPD hasn't had 2k sworn officers in nearly a decade. Any given shift is a third overtime just to make minimum complement. And given that this absolute disaster occurred on a large department, large department tactics are fairly germane to the conversation.

Even before this happened, we'd already had circumstances pop up where officers were shot at and the defense was "I didn't know they were the police and thought I was gettin robbed." That's a strong argument to a jury. Police who don't look like police doing police stuff is an invitation for bad things to happen. Not things like THIS. Things like police funerals or justified shootings that shouldn't have been necessary. What I'm saying is when you have police doing hands on police stuff it's probably a really good idea that they are obviously police. And maybe don't put guys with 3 years or less on into a high speed saturation unit without extremely close supervision lest they lose track of reality and their basic humanity.

But I'm out. Like I said, I'm probably emotionally compromised on this topic and don't want to say something I don't mean or will later regret.
 
Posts: 2590 | Registered: November 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Sigforum K9 handler
Picture of jljones
posted Hide Post
I’m not emotionally attached to any of this. Which is the reason my reply was short, sweet and to the point.

You seem to be trying to assign blame, look for reasonings to comprehend why or how this happened. Sometimes you just have to accept that evil lurks amongst us. You can take rookies and put them in street crimes. As long as they have sound supervision, they can and will thrive. Unmarked vehicles had nothing to do with this. You can claim that it does but surely you don’t think this would have ended any differently had they been pushing a roller. Or wearing class A’s with a campaign cover or bus driver hat.

Evil.

We can blame all sorts of things to make ourselves feel better. Or attempt to heal “us” on how this happened on “our” watch. We can disconnect and say “ah this happened 2000 miles from me and had nothing to do with me”. We can take solace that we work in a two man agency. Or 10. Or 100. And that it couldn’t happen here.

What we have to recognize is that evil is in our society. And police are a cross section of society. Therefore, evil exists. You can’t reason with it. Most cases, try as you may, you can’t understand it. All we can do is keep our head down and keep trying to do the right thing. For the right reasons.

Evil. Some people are just fucking evil.

Be well and rest.




www.opspectraining.com

"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for them"



 
Posts: 37071 | Location: Logical | Registered: September 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
King Nothing
Picture of SigSauerP226
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by copaup:
quote:
Originally posted by SigSauerP226:
I do find it a bit strange you have a specialized street team trying to perform a traffic stop, kind of curious if they were looking for him, if there’s a history maybe…


There was not. They were not. And it wouldn’t matter if they were…


In my experience, these units don’t try to stop random vehicles for traffic violations. They see something really crossing the line, they radio for patrol and then hand it off. My thinking was he’s in a high traffic gang/drug area and that’s why they were interested in this guy. Or they could have known him from prior contacts, plenty LE know the players, though they never said his name… Idiot fled and resisted the whole time, but didn’t deserve kicks and punches to the head, and ghetto ass kicking he got.




...Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just a freight train coming your way...
 
Posts: 2432 | Location: Simi Valley, CA | Registered: September 25, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by G-Man:
quote:
Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Well, I finally watched it. Or at least until the medics arrived. That was tough to sit through. Let's be frank: If that was six white cops, Memphis would be a smoking pile of rubble right now.


Let's face it, every large city in America would be on fire right now. This was probably the most horrific video of police action I have ever seen. Nobody can possibly defend this conduct. However, it will be interesting to see the social mantra shift from racist cops (can't do that here unless they identify as white) to condemning American policing in general . Taking a one in a million incident (literally) and labeling these rogue thugs in uniform as somehow "systemic."


As predicted - no surprise

"Tyre Nichols case revives calls for change in police culture'

https://www.amny.com/police-fi...e-in-police-culture/
 
Posts: 763 | Location: Southeast Tennessee | Registered: September 30, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Prepared for the Worst, Providing the Best
Picture of 92fstech
posted Hide Post
I was working all weekend and finally got a chance to watch all the videos. What I saw was appalling...tactically, morally, ethically...pretty much every way you can imagine. I won't go further than that, as I don't have much to add beyond what has already been discussed here.

Copaup, thanks for sharing your thoughts here. Be safe, man, and do your best to get the physical and mental rest that you need. I can only imagine what you and the other guys working down there are dealing with right now. This isn't your fault, you didn't do this, and while we all get tarnished to some extent when something like this is perpetrated by others wearing the badge, we can only control what we do personally, and in some small way influence those immediately around us. Keep up the good fight!
 
Posts: 8388 | Location: In the Cornfields | Registered: May 25, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posting without pants
Picture of KevinCW
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Wow. I have so much to say, so much I probably shouldn't say, and most of that will probably fall on deaf ears (not so much here, but in general).

First off. I'm amazed. This is one of the worst things I've watched. Fuck these guys. To call them an embarrassment would be an understatement. I'm not sure I have the words to describe how ridiculous this is. THIS is WAY worse than any of the George Floyd stuff.

These guys are going to prison, and should go to prison.

To break down SOME of the things I remember... And some questions and random points I have:

(I've seen lots of video on this, but not repeatedly, not over and over, and certainly not all of it. I'm not trying to lawyer the whole thing. Trust me, that will be done to death)

1. The stop is supposedly for "Reckless driving" Ok, sure. That's a valid stop for sure. One of my pet peeves actually. I hate revenue generation via traffic stops, in my mind, stop people for traffic who are doing unsafe things. THOSE are the people who need tickets. Those are the ones I'm zero tolerance for. If I stop(ed) you for the following:

1. Driving without a License (mostly Suspended/Revoked)
2. Aggressive driving/Careless and Imprudent driving
3. No Insurance
4. Road Rage

it was ZERO TOLERANCE. You are getting ticketed. Full stop. You are getting a ticket for EVERY INFRACTION there is.

If we want to justify traffic stops for traffic safety, the let's do that. If you are doing the above you are driving a vehicle weighing thousands of pounds and endangering the lives/safety of others. That's a ticket. Act responsibly.

From watching some of the videos I can't see the initial violation. It may be out there, but I haven't seen it. If it is, and I see it, I may change my opinions.

If the stop was JUST for a reckless driving charge, i'm dumbfounded why they approached the way they did "Get out of the car M***** F*****" and such. Why? (Now, having served on task forces, and ESPECIALLY targeted task forces where the traffic stop was a pretext to stop some REALLY BAD DUDE that needed to go to jail, I get it. But from the back story, this doesn't' seem to be that unless this is a mistaken case of identify, which also, doesn't seem to be the case. Not sure why they approached him and ripped him out of the car like that. That's how you approach a person you KNOW is armed and dangerous. I've done it tons of times, but not someone who i have no intel is not a threat.

Now, once they got him out, they seemed to have control of his left arm. I'll get back to that.

Now, first off, they MAY (depending on what they were doing and the pretext (see above) for the stop, had justification to order him out of the car. I dunno and can't say with the information available to me. If this is correct, and getting him out and ordering him onto his stomach and cuffing is all totally justified, obviously depending on a variety of circumstances.

Now, when they first got him out/down, and his left arm is bend back, why in the world a cuff wasn't applied there is beyond me. Especially with a numbers advantage. A knee to the shoulder blades turning the suspect to his left onto his stomach while another officer controlled his left arm, followed up with leverage (even a baton, not for strikes but used as a lever) to apply cuffs to his right wrist would have been textbook. But, I"m watching the video, not actually there.

Then to go to pepper spray, and taser when you have numbers, and size, and half of them are standing around and not each taking an appendage, is equally silly. Even in the "old days" you knew to grab an appendage and "hold the fuck on" until you can get cuffs applied.

How he gets up and runs is beyond me. That shouldn't have happened.

Then after getting caught again, they spray him OC multiple times. Holy crap. First off, if one OC spray doesn't work, no matter how many more you do, it still won't. OC SUCKS!!!!! I've had it directly in my eyes in the academy, and a number of times on the street, self inflicted, residual, and collateral. It SUCKS. If someone fights through the first OC spray, change tactics. The second, third, etc, etc sprays WILL NOT WORK. It is TOTALLY possible to fight through, and THAT is the reason we have to experience it in the academy.

They guys continuing to spray him is idiotic. If what you are doing isn't working, stop doing that and try something else.

Ok, then he runs. OK. By letter of the law they are justified here. I get it. UNLESS I MISSED SOMETHING (and it's possible i did, there are so many different versions passing around) I'm good with it until they catch him again and there is punching.

I can understand punches, if they are fighting. He didn't seem to be. He was out of breath and seemed to be able to be cuffed. There were two officers and one suspect. Just use your weight and isolate the limbs, then cuff. That's week 2 or 3 academy stuff.

After that, this ENTIRE thing is off the rails. Honestly, I don't' even want to watch any more (I have, but I don't want to watch it again). I don't know how ANYONE could think this is alright. Even if you are the WORST possible human being, you would have to admit this is the stupidest tactics and most bush league police work known to man.

I honestly can't think of ANY possible use of force, or ANY use of my weapons that I don't have at leave ONE bit of experience in. I'm not an expert certainly, but I do have experience.

In addition to the things I've criticized earlier in my post, EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT is bullshit.

Yes, there IS certainly the aspect of the fact that the "suspect" (I hate to say that term without any backstory. I don't know Mr, Nichols and have no idea as to who he is, what he is about, what the Police were doing there, why they pulled him over, etc etc.) resisted arrest. I won't venture into that territory. I just know that OUR guys in similar units ARE NOT GOING to waste their time on some one innocent, when we have a literally barrel of fish to focus on.

Now, the questions is why?

From what I have read, and that's to be taken with a grain of salt due to the media, these officers were all newer.

Was this shit training? What this shit HR? Was this a shit culture of the Dept?

Are the wrong guys being hired as police officers? Probably.

If they are like almost every dept across America, they CANNOT get people to do this job.

For those long time members here, they are aware of MY story of trying to get in this career. It was not just 10 years just to get hired, I had to pay for the academy myself. After that, I competed with LITERALLY hundreds of people for one or two jobs to get on.

Then after the events of 2014 (of which I was at ground zero) and since then, we have not only nearly doubled the starting salary, but are literally going to college campuses and BEGGING people to sign up. We have also lowered the standards. My dept used to be the "industry standard" requiring on paper, an associates degree, but in reality wouldn't hire you without a bachelors degree. Now, after multiple reductions, we reduced the requirements to a GED.

How much of this is not just on the idiots who beat this man to death, but on the stupid admins who hired people like this? How much is on the "activists" who "defunded" or their real goal "demoralized" the police? They pushed SO hard to check boxes instead of letting departments hire people deemed good by police, but instead deemed "good hires" by civilian boards, or activists, or idiot alderman (or alderwomyn) to check boxes. And maybe those people have no business being officers?

I know where I would lay my 20 dollar bill....

Sorry, i'm irritated. This SHOULD NOT have happened. But I think the reason it happened is not on police as a whole, but on the extreme pressure society places on police.

The wrong people were place on the dept, for the wrong reasons, to check the wrong boxes, and the unit was directed to do the wrong thing and the wrong person died.

Sadly, while the officers involved here need to be held accountable, absolutely no one is going to hold the OTHERS accountable. Mainly the chief, the mayor, the City Council, and really..... Society.

Society ALSO needs to be accountable. This is what happens when "thug culture" becomes mainstream. This is what happens when you "pass the buck."

This SHOULDN'T happen.





Strive to live your life so when you wake up in the morning and your feet hit the floor, the devil says "Oh crap, he's up."
 
Posts: 33287 | Location: St. Louis MO | Registered: February 15, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Drug Dealer
Picture of Jim Shugart
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^ ^ ^ ^
Kevin, that was an excellent essay. Thank you for taking the time to write and to post it.



When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. - George Bernard Shaw
 
Posts: 15470 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 03, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
No, not like
Bill Clinton
Picture of BigSwede
posted Hide Post
I heard this morning that the dead young mans parents will be at the SOTU. I'm sure Joe will make very unifying and uplifting statements



 
Posts: 5291 | Location: GA | Registered: September 23, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
superior firepower
Picture of parabellum
posted Hide Post
He may forget they are even there.

The comment by Nichols' mother that she hates that her son was murdered by black men- what a bizarre statement. It would have been better if he had been murdered by white men? Just bizarre.
 
Posts: 107224 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Tequila with lime
posted Hide Post
quote:

Originally posted by KevinCW:

How much of this is not just on the idiots who beat this man to death, but on the stupid admins who hired people like this? How much is on the "activists" who "defunded" or their real goal "demoralized" the police? They pushed SO hard to check boxes instead of letting departments hire people deemed good by police, but instead deemed "good hires" by civilian boards, or activists, or idiot alderman (or alderwomyn) to check boxes. And maybe those people have no business being officers?



This is happening in every major industry and in every major field. In the engineering field (my area), most of your major companies are quite open about their diversity programs, hiring, and promotion policies. Political check-boxes trump aptitude and temperament in many cases. Incompetent people get hired and promoted, often on accelerated schedules, and then the remaining competent people become demoralized, often leaving for smaller companies or forming isolated pockets of competence within larger companies. The net effect is incompetence becoming more prevalent. With these cops, incompetence results in very public, very deadly incidents like the one we are discussing here.

Excellent write up, by the way.




Thank you President Trump.
 
Posts: 8366 | Location: KS, USA | Registered: May 26, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
would not care
to elaborate
Picture of sse
posted Hide Post
If those guys were white...??!!! Can't imagine.

Not watching the vid, heard the descriptions.
 
Posts: 2711 | Location: USA | Registered: June 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
superior firepower
Picture of parabellum
posted Hide Post
FoxNews reported that Nichols liked watching sunsets. Roll Eyes

I hope they don't turn this guy's life into a Summer's Eve commercial.
 
Posts: 107224 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Get Off My Lawn
Picture of oddball
posted Hide Post
My first impression of the beating- it was strictly personal, not business. Pre-meditation. IMO, the Rodney King beating was business, not personal.


Here is an interesting video of the dead man, a guy who had a job as a Fed X driver, skateboarding, and not bad at all. Doesn't strike me as a gangbanger or violent thug type.




"I’m not going to read Time Magazine, I’m not going to read Newsweek, I’m not going to read any of these magazines; I mean, because they have too much to lose by printing the truth"- Bob Dylan, 1965
 
Posts: 16603 | Location: Texas | Registered: May 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
The Quiet Man
posted Hide Post
The hiring issues predate the current Chief. Memphis is nearly 800 below complement and the hiring standards are not what they once were or should be. Hiring for Police is difficult the last several years and MPD had a mass exodus about 2015 when there were some changes to the retirement benefits. Almost everybody who could leave for somewhere else without starting over from scratch did. It left a huge hole in regard to senior seasoned patrol officers.

I have to be very careful what I say about this situation and be very clear that anything I say is purely personal opinion. Everything that follows is based on publicly available information.

Scorpion was a saturation unit. It wasn't like LAPD SIS where they had targets under surveillance. You had 30 car breakins in your ward last night? Scorpion might show up with 10 cars and stop everything that moved with a broken taillight or obscured drive out tag. They used those stops to check for stolen vehicles and warrants. They got a ton of felony arrests and recovered an enormous number of stolen or otherwise illegal weapons that way. Most of the folks in the unit are good people and effective cops. Memphis has other units that do the SIS type work (for now at least) but that wasn't Scorpion's job.

The systemic problem, as I see it, is when you take young inexperienced officers in any department, put them in a high speed unit tasked with aggressive policing without very close supervision, and then pump them up with "you're elite and special" egos get involved. Add in a few very, VERY bad people with strong personalities, and the culture of that unit can go very bad, very quickly. That's not specifically a Memphis issue, we've seen it all over.

I'm a big fan of task forces. I've worked on them and run one. They are incredibly effective. You just have to be careful they don't spiral out of control. This one got out of control in the worst possible way imaginable.

Nothing in that video was representative of the training or tactics of MPD. From the initial stop to the tragic end no one made the slightest effort to deescalate the situation. No one acted like a professional. No one sounded like a professional. They acted like common street criminals, which is exactly what it turns out they were. They are responsible for their own actions. The Department should have caught it before they got to that point though. There are safeguards in place that clearly didn't work.

I fully expect that in the next few days more people will be charged administratively, including some ranking officers. I expect we may even see more criminal charges. None of the investigations either internally or externally are completed yet.

It's the most horrific thing I've ever seen in 25 years on the job. For the first time in my entire career I'm uncomfortable to be in my uniform in public.

I will say this though. I'm extremely proud of the way Chief Davis has been handling this. She's been open, honest, and has moved with unprecedented speed. So has TBI and the DA.
That poor family has displayed more grace than I can even begin to fathom. They've been a voice of reason and calm that did much to keep the city from coming apart over the weekend.
 
Posts: 2590 | Registered: November 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
and Money
Picture of chellim1
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by KevinCW:

This SHOULD NOT have happened. But I think the reason it happened is not on police as a whole, but on the extreme pressure society places on police.

The wrong people were place on the dept, for the wrong reasons, to check the wrong boxes, and the unit was directed to do the wrong thing and the wrong person died.

Sadly, while the officers involved here need to be held accountable, absolutely no one is going to hold the OTHERS accountable. Mainly the chief, the mayor, the City Council, and really..... Society.

Society ALSO needs to be accountable. This is what happens when "thug culture" becomes mainstream. This is what happens when you "pass the buck."

This SHOULDN'T happen.

Good summary, Kevin.



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 23926 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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