This is a great reminder that the LAPD is largely a bunch of thugs with badges and guns. I don’t mean that in a teenage angst “every cop is a thug” way, but in a “raining federal convictions” way. [1][2]
The current sheriff was a member of the “Grim Reapers” [3] and the battle against the thugs has been on going for fifty years [4]
There's a paragraph that starts: "“Why would a group of deputies who are charged with protecting people from violence and upholding the law choose a symbol of death?” he asked. Del Mese replied that he didn’t know."
LAPD and LASD are different orgs, but yeah they are probably both corrupt to the core. I know for a fact that there was a LASD gang called the Compton Executioners that excluded women and people of color.
Great catch! As a long time resident of LA, few people make the distinction (I surely didn’t). The LAPD has its fair share of awfulness [1] but when the allegations are this bad it’s important not to paint every cop as guilty by association without evidence (and the evidence against the LASD is very strong)
Coincidentally, the latest episode of The Rookie (S05E02 - a show which portrays the LAPD as highly caring/moral) was partially about a group of dirty cops. Essentially the good cops were (sheriff plus deputies) like: "Cops can hang out together all they want, but as soon as they give themselves (their group) a name, they are destined for jail. 'Never fails'."
Great show, funny how that works out. I'm sorry that it isn't remotely accurate it seems (when it comes to the rest of the cast).
Of all the places with some background on the LAPD, "O.J.: Made in America" from 2016 covered the major race-relations problems the LAPD had in the 20th century. It was pretty eye-opening.
I'd be interested to know if there are any documentaries focused purely on the LAPD, however.
Throughout the years I'm learning that all of our leaders and major institutions are corrupt and flawed. We're just lucky that there was enough wealth to go around to placate people in the past few decades but now we're reaching a point where there isn't and people aren't happy and won't be happy until a major shift happens.
There's an ancillary realization that comes with this, and that is the fact that many of us are actively building a security state via tech that will enforce the status quo more effectively than any other system in history has, and it won't matter how many people want change after that.
>Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."
Sure sounds less like a simulation and more like an actual event.
It's really not easy to have someone die during an exercise with this many injuries caused by physical contact. Things like drownings, falls, and collisions can occur in a hugh risk training event- but this extent of injuries from falling on the ground seems real tough to spin as accidental or unintentional. At best you'd have to be extremely negligent, at worst this was a deliberate choice.
You'd really think someone would notice the person they're training with is actually hurt and stop to check in on them, presumably there are measures in place to pause the exercise which people are aware of before starting- were these ignored?
I guess we'd have to have a discussion on the intent of the exercise and the extent to which force is used with no regard for safety during training, which is a whole other issue.
Broken ribs are common from CPR. They even mention it during CPR training (and they told us to keep going anyway).
I don't remember anything about liver lacerations but a quick google does say it happens: looks like the sternum can slice your liver during compressions[1] (warning: graphic).
No idea on head injuries or a broken neck from "grappling" though.
Paramedic: if you're getting CPR, you're dead already. Doesn't get worse.
It's not so much broken ribs (though those are possible), but separation from the sternum. Not pleasant, but not particularly problematic (people walk out of the hospital at times within 3-4 days of cardiac arrest as subsequent ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation) after CPR/defib.
And if you survive to ROSC, you're getting a stay in ICU as it is, where things like internal lacerations, aspiration can be treated.
>When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't.
IMO LAPD is actually pretty good about using body cams when they're supposed to. Way better than LASD and other law enforcement agencies in the area. In California they're required to release footage (if it exists) after every OIS (officer involved shooting) or LERI (law enforcement something injury, like if a cop hurts someone without shooting them via tazing/dog/baton/bean bag/punches).
If you look at their Youtube channel [1] pretty much every OIS and LERI video does have body cam and/or dashcam footage. The events that don't are mostly compliant with their policy (although it sounds like their policy should be amended to include training activities. Both for safety and to make the training more realistic). When I looked at a sampling of 30 LAPD incidents, 28 of them had body cam footage recording during the incident. The two that didn't involved off-duty officers[2]
Probably every law enforcement agency in a first-world nation looks good if you compare it to the LA County Sheriff's Department, seemingly best known for their gangs, my own crowning memories being the deputy assigned to my high school selling drugs to students and my dad once getting cited for parking more than 18 inches from the curb at the end of a cul-de-sac at which our house was the only one, so the only traffic we could have conceivably impeded was ourselves.
Body camera systems are not sold to police departments as devices that are meant to keep cops honest, they're sold to police departments as devices that will keep the lying public honest and thus keep cops out of court and prison.
They're meant for cops to turn them on when they feel like they need evidence against whoever they're detaining, arresting or otherwise dealing with.
In this case, video surveillance was working as intended.
Your argument is not necessarily incorrect, but I do think it's important to understand that this attitude depends a lot on the specific implementation.
In some police departments, there is a requirement that body camera (OBRD, BWC, different departments like to use different terms) footage be uploaded after every call for service or reported incident, officers are audited against this requirement, and missing footage is an infraction subject to suspension without pay. In some departments, there is no policy at all, and no interest in creating one.
The biggest vendor, Axon, has a fairly well-designed system for video management where the auditing system makes it fairly easy to determine whether or not footage exists and why (e.g. cameras log all deletion of footage e.g. due to full storage and report it at the next upload, the management system reports on cameras that have not uploaded for more than two shifts, video once uploaded cannot be deleted until the end of routine retention even if not associated with any incident). This is not to portray Axon as a saint, because there are questions about the auditability of their evidence.com product specifically when it comes to preparation of video footage for court or public release, and this can be a material problem. But it also makes it even more troubling that some departments, district attorneys, etc. make no effort to use the auditability features that exist, or routinely accept sketchy excuses that are not consistent with the audit record.
Well they’re sold to whoever will buy them. While what is recorded depends on department policy which can vary, but clearly could be improved and of course if the policy is not enforced that’s another big problem.
Losing insurance is making a number of police departments actually make changes:
> Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police.
Get rid of Qualified Immunity for starters. Next should be some sort of malpractice insurance that police must carry themselves (none of this using our tax dollars to pay for their own crimes).
One thing i absolutely love and that police officers were not always aware off, is that initially their bodycam were always recording, and keeping the video they just recorded in a buffer (sadly, not often with audio). The buffer can change, but is a minimum of 30 second to up to 15 minutes, and some cops were busted by that. Now more often than not the configuration is 30s, so tape goes missing at a lower rate.
I think their is another kind, used more in cities, with bodycam uploading the video directly, with 3 modes (low-res, lowframe, low-res, normal framerate + audio, and high res high framerate).
No footage exists, like many of other times officers claimed no footage exists or they didn't have their cameras on until it mysteriously appeared out of thin air.
I'll point out another dimension to this: it can be entirely true that Tipping's death was an accident, because the other cops at the training exercise may have "merely" intended to beat him within an inch of his life for daring to break the wall of silence.
In other words: defenses on the grounds of his death being an "accident" are not sufficient. What matters is the totality of circumstances, and those include the implicit threat of violence against any cop who dares to out the crimes of their peers.
It's both: it's involuntary manslaughter stemming directly from assault. The assault is intentional; the death is conceivably not.
And remember: this is entirely speculation. It's entirely possible that they did intend to kill him; the entire point of my comment was that you can't wave the crime away by claiming that the death was an accident.
- Officer Tipping wasn’t investigating rape, but simply took the victim statement.
- The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.
- The medical examiner ruled the killing an accident. The article then quotes a tweet that says medical examiners undercount murders by police, implying collusion or coverup.
- There is no recording of the training. The article states that often video recordings are made, implying a cover up.
Abuse of power by the police is heinous. They are supposed to be our protectors, so I hate it as much as the next person.
But we must be led by fact not belief or we are no better than those who believe the Big Lie.
> - The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.
It appears you did not finish reading TFA. There was an investigation that confirmed the same officer was at the training:
"Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious that an officer who investigated four LAPD officers raping a woman later getting killed in a freak bicycle training accident isn't suspicious, you may need to reset your baseline for what is "speculation and innuendo." What happened here was extremely suspicious. Even before considering that one of those officers charged was at the training.
(One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.)
First, my very point is that when you have only suspicion, you must be extra skeptical of speculation and innuendo, not less.
Second, it is against the HN guidelines to accuse others of not reading the article.
Because, third, I did read that your quoted paragraph. I took it to mean, they believe but are not sure. As in “[he] could not confirm…”
Sadly, I struggle with your other points as they as suffer the same issues as the article. E.g., again, this was not a bicycle training, have the officers been formally charged? was the accused officer the trainer or a participant?
Far be it from me to defend Reason, but I think you're overstating the degree of innuendo: the victim's statement directly accused 4 LAPD officers of rape, meaning that Tipping's conscience was the only thing between four men with guns and four potential, very long prison stays.
Combine that with the attorney's claim that one of the accused officers was at the training, and you have ample motive, cause, and setting. A court case would reveal more details, and that's precisely what the Tipping's family appears to be seeking.
I appreciate the nuance. These two comments summarize it for me:
> "Officer Tipping did not sustain any laceration to the head" and "was also not struck or beaten during this training session," Police Chief Michel Moore told the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners in June. "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."
Which is to say: I don't know. A thorough investigation by a competent expert with no conflicts of interest seems necessary.
I agree that there's lots of unhelpful innuendo there. Though suffering "three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck...subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side" accidentally, during a "grappling exercise", raises some eyebrows.
I wonder how a medical examiner could possibly distinguish between bludgeoning injuries sustained as part of a simulated mob attack (accidental) and bludgeoning injuries sustained as part of a murder that took place during a simulated mob attack (not accidental).
I believe medical examiners make that determination based off the police report in cases like this. So if the cops said it was an accident, and the ME finds that the accidental injury was the cause of death, then it's an accidental death.
I don't get it. No side denies that there was some sort of struggle which resulted in his death - how can that be accidental? Why would a "medical examiner" make that judgement?
“The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.”
Talk about grasping for incongruities… The article even mentioned it was, so why the misrepresentation from your end? Why present a view of moral skepticism for the accused on the one hand, while falsifying evidence for the accusers on the other?
“The name of one of the officers accused of rape ‘seems to correlate with one of the officers that was at the bicycle training,’ said Gage.”
“Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
“Seems to correlate”
“Could not confirm”
“Indicates”
The two may indeed be the same person, but a fair reading is that they are presently unsure.
I agree that we shouldn't take this report to be dispositive. That is, we shouldn't just fling the cops at the training into prison. The issues raised in the article certainly seem suspicious and the thing to do with meaningful suspicions is investigate.
Generally speaking, "the Big Lie" refers to the idea that the 2020 US presidential election's result was fraudulent and Donald Trump was the true winner.
So far arguments can be made that officer Tipping was not really murdered, or that the woman was not really raped, but it is known for sure from prior cases, including criminal convictions, that there are plenty of rapists and murderers and all sorts of sick individuals in the police, that obviously should not be in the police.
Many articles and discussions on police criminal activity carry a tone of surprise, but in my view nothing here is surprising considering that large numbers of questionable individuals who passed some subjective selection process are armed with guns and placed into what are essentially life-long appointments where lots of money and power is at stake. In my mind it would be surprising had there been no criminal activity within the police under the current system. It would be just as surprising if dictators stayed benevolent and never abused their authority.
I'd say the solution to this problem is to have the public democratically elect police just like politicians, and to also have them be subjected to term limits just like politicians.
So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians or maintaining political power, and I argue that in the same way it would prevent lots of people who should not be in the police from becoming or remaining police officers.
Generally public officials in countries with fair elections are an order of magnitude better than public officials in countries without fair elections. For example, compare Bush II with Ahmadinejad.
> Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
There are some problems with the current election system in the US in that many potential voters don't register to vote to not get summoned for jury duty and similar issues, while lots of police vote in blocks guided by powerful police unions. These problems can be fixed, and overall the US election system is better than in countries like Russia.
> Is your comment satire?
Even US politicians who are massively disliked are way better than their counterparts in countries without fair elections. Furthermore, these massively-disliked politicians get voted out at the end of term if a better politician runs against them. And even if they don't get voted out, they have to leave eventually due to hard term limits.
I'm not saying that democratic elections with term limits for police will keep absolutely all bad people out of police, but what I am saying is that there will be an order of magnitude less bad people in the police, and they will also be an order of magnitude less bad than under the current traditional employment scheme.
>I'd say the solution to this problem is to have the public democratically elect police just like politicians, and to also have them be subjected to term limits just like politicians.
There are, but there are a lot less of them in countries with fair democratic elections, and those who are corrupt are on average a lot milder than in countries without fair democratic elections. On average we're talking theft vs murder / genocide.
Experience doesn't make cops good. A good cop with experience is better at being a good cop, but a bad cop with experience is better at being a bad cop.
Furthermore, I think good cops may be corrupted with time, but bad cops are never redeemed with time. So all else being equal, I expect experienced cops to be more corrupt than novice cops, and more effective at being corrupt.
I happen to have seen a recording of a crowd control exercise including regular police, a riot control unit and even a SWAT-style unit, including "arrests" and "resistance", and it was a lot tamer than the description may make it sound.
A bicycle exercise for regular police spontaneously morphed into a mob control exercise spontaneously morphed into a grappling match definitely sounds fishy on its own.
Wait. Do we know that bicycle training spontaneously morphed or was it a change on the schedule? Was it a grappling match or did grappling occur during the simulated riot? Was the riot training you’ve seen the same protocol used during the incident.
I hate that I’m in the position of defending a possible cover up of a possible murder to cover up the possible rape by police officers. But damn people. Stick to verifiable facts.
This list of injuries seems consistent with falling out of a sixth-story window in Russia. I would have hoped that a sworn officer of the LAPD would have had more sense than that.
The author switches between a bicycle and grappling exercise and it makes it really confusing. Were they grappling people off of bicycles? Like why are people being thrown around and having their spinal cords broken from bicycle use?
> According to Gage [the family lawyer]...The training at which he sustained injuries "was supposed to be bicycle training," but somehow wound up entailing the "grappling exercise" that the LAPD says killed him.
I think that they article shows that there's confusion as to how bicycle training lead to a grapple exercise. Even the Police Chief is reporting grappling:
> "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
Readit News
The current sheriff was a member of the “Grim Reapers” [3] and the battle against the thugs has been on going for fifty years [4]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Baca
[3] https://www.dailynews.com/2022/07/01/former-top-aide-to-vill...
[4] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/the-la-county-...
There's a paragraph that starts: "“Why would a group of deputies who are charged with protecting people from violence and upholding the law choose a symbol of death?” he asked. Del Mese replied that he didn’t know."
Reminds me of: "Have you looked at our caps lately? .... They've got _skulls_ on them. Are we the baddies?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
https://knock-la.com/tag/lasd/
https://lasdgangs.knock-la.com/
Great show, funny how that works out. I'm sorry that it isn't remotely accurate it seems (when it comes to the rest of the cast).
I'd be interested to know if there are any documentaries focused purely on the LAPD, however.
Dead Comment
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Sure sounds less like a simulation and more like an actual event.
It's really not easy to have someone die during an exercise with this many injuries caused by physical contact. Things like drownings, falls, and collisions can occur in a hugh risk training event- but this extent of injuries from falling on the ground seems real tough to spin as accidental or unintentional. At best you'd have to be extremely negligent, at worst this was a deliberate choice.
You'd really think someone would notice the person they're training with is actually hurt and stop to check in on them, presumably there are measures in place to pause the exercise which people are aware of before starting- were these ignored? I guess we'd have to have a discussion on the intent of the exercise and the extent to which force is used with no regard for safety during training, which is a whole other issue.
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I don't remember anything about liver lacerations but a quick google does say it happens: looks like the sternum can slice your liver during compressions[1] (warning: graphic).
No idea on head injuries or a broken neck from "grappling" though.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245224731...
It's not so much broken ribs (though those are possible), but separation from the sternum. Not pleasant, but not particularly problematic (people walk out of the hospital at times within 3-4 days of cardiac arrest as subsequent ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation) after CPR/defib.
And if you survive to ROSC, you're getting a stay in ICU as it is, where things like internal lacerations, aspiration can be treated.
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That seems like standard procedure by now. When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't.
IMO LAPD is actually pretty good about using body cams when they're supposed to. Way better than LASD and other law enforcement agencies in the area. In California they're required to release footage (if it exists) after every OIS (officer involved shooting) or LERI (law enforcement something injury, like if a cop hurts someone without shooting them via tazing/dog/baton/bean bag/punches).
If you look at their Youtube channel [1] pretty much every OIS and LERI video does have body cam and/or dashcam footage. The events that don't are mostly compliant with their policy (although it sounds like their policy should be amended to include training activities. Both for safety and to make the training more realistic). When I looked at a sampling of 30 LAPD incidents, 28 of them had body cam footage recording during the incident. The two that didn't involved off-duty officers[2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/LAPDONLINE1/videos
[2]: Here's the videos if you want to see for yourself, but FYI the first one shows some unpleasant aftermath: Attempted car theft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgESIr-MIUg Cop shoots at someone after a drive-by on his neighbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWJIX2rL4Y
Am I reading this wrong or is this a very biased sample? Of course videos are more likely to have video.
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They're meant for cops to turn them on when they feel like they need evidence against whoever they're detaining, arresting or otherwise dealing with.
In this case, video surveillance was working as intended.
In some police departments, there is a requirement that body camera (OBRD, BWC, different departments like to use different terms) footage be uploaded after every call for service or reported incident, officers are audited against this requirement, and missing footage is an infraction subject to suspension without pay. In some departments, there is no policy at all, and no interest in creating one.
The biggest vendor, Axon, has a fairly well-designed system for video management where the auditing system makes it fairly easy to determine whether or not footage exists and why (e.g. cameras log all deletion of footage e.g. due to full storage and report it at the next upload, the management system reports on cameras that have not uploaded for more than two shifts, video once uploaded cannot be deleted until the end of routine retention even if not associated with any incident). This is not to portray Axon as a saint, because there are questions about the auditability of their evidence.com product specifically when it comes to preparation of video footage for court or public release, and this can be a material problem. But it also makes it even more troubling that some departments, district attorneys, etc. make no effort to use the auditability features that exist, or routinely accept sketchy excuses that are not consistent with the audit record.
These body cams are useless if the video can go conveniently missing whenever it needs to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
> Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
I think their is another kind, used more in cities, with bodycam uploading the video directly, with 3 modes (low-res, lowframe, low-res, normal framerate + audio, and high res high framerate).
In other words: defenses on the grounds of his death being an "accident" are not sufficient. What matters is the totality of circumstances, and those include the implicit threat of violence against any cop who dares to out the crimes of their peers.
It could possibly be first degree murder, if California's felony murder rule were applied, maybe using the crime of torture as the felony.
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And remember: this is entirely speculation. It's entirely possible that they did intend to kill him; the entire point of my comment was that you can't wave the crime away by claiming that the death was an accident.
- Officer Tipping wasn’t investigating rape, but simply took the victim statement.
- The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.
- The medical examiner ruled the killing an accident. The article then quotes a tweet that says medical examiners undercount murders by police, implying collusion or coverup.
- There is no recording of the training. The article states that often video recordings are made, implying a cover up.
Abuse of power by the police is heinous. They are supposed to be our protectors, so I hate it as much as the next person.
But we must be led by fact not belief or we are no better than those who believe the Big Lie.
It appears you did not finish reading TFA. There was an investigation that confirmed the same officer was at the training:
"Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious that an officer who investigated four LAPD officers raping a woman later getting killed in a freak bicycle training accident isn't suspicious, you may need to reset your baseline for what is "speculation and innuendo." What happened here was extremely suspicious. Even before considering that one of those officers charged was at the training.
(One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.)
Second, it is against the HN guidelines to accuse others of not reading the article.
Because, third, I did read that your quoted paragraph. I took it to mean, they believe but are not sure. As in “[he] could not confirm…”
Sadly, I struggle with your other points as they as suffer the same issues as the article. E.g., again, this was not a bicycle training, have the officers been formally charged? was the accused officer the trainer or a participant?
> But he said 'our investigation "indicates" that yes, it was.' "
It's definitely suspicious. But it needs to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
What? Mind reading. GP was mostly stating facts, not commenting about their own state of mind
My personal thoughts are very closely aligned with yours, btw
Because accusations are cheap enough to be weaponizable as a denial-of-service attack.
The penalty for false accusations is something pathetic, like 1 year.
Combine that with the attorney's claim that one of the accused officers was at the training, and you have ample motive, cause, and setting. A court case would reveal more details, and that's precisely what the Tipping's family appears to be seeking.
> "Officer Tipping did not sustain any laceration to the head" and "was also not struck or beaten during this training session," Police Chief Michel Moore told the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners in June. "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."
Which is to say: I don't know. A thorough investigation by a competent expert with no conflicts of interest seems necessary.
This is missing something.
CPR often results in broken/cracked ribs and abdominal injuries.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652042...
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Why do you believe this implies a cover-up? Could just be systemic bias, a big problem in the justice system.
“The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.”
Talk about grasping for incongruities… The article even mentioned it was, so why the misrepresentation from your end? Why present a view of moral skepticism for the accused on the one hand, while falsifying evidence for the accusers on the other?
“Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
“Seems to correlate” “Could not confirm” “Indicates”
The two may indeed be the same person, but a fair reading is that they are presently unsure.
Deleted Comment
Many articles and discussions on police criminal activity carry a tone of surprise, but in my view nothing here is surprising considering that large numbers of questionable individuals who passed some subjective selection process are armed with guns and placed into what are essentially life-long appointments where lots of money and power is at stake. In my mind it would be surprising had there been no criminal activity within the police under the current system. It would be just as surprising if dictators stayed benevolent and never abused their authority.
I'd say the solution to this problem is to have the public democratically elect police just like politicians, and to also have them be subjected to term limits just like politicians.
So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians or maintaining political power, and I argue that in the same way it would prevent lots of people who should not be in the police from becoming or remaining police officers.
Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
>So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians
Is your comment satire?
> Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
There are some problems with the current election system in the US in that many potential voters don't register to vote to not get summoned for jury duty and similar issues, while lots of police vote in blocks guided by powerful police unions. These problems can be fixed, and overall the US election system is better than in countries like Russia.
> Is your comment satire?
Even US politicians who are massively disliked are way better than their counterparts in countries without fair elections. Furthermore, these massively-disliked politicians get voted out at the end of term if a better politician runs against them. And even if they don't get voted out, they have to leave eventually due to hard term limits.
I'm not saying that democratic elections with term limits for police will keep absolutely all bad people out of police, but what I am saying is that there will be an order of magnitude less bad people in the police, and they will also be an order of magnitude less bad than under the current traditional employment scheme.
Are there not corrupt politicians?
There are. And democracy makes politicians seem more legitimate. Democracy in the wrong place can make corruption worse.
Hiring cops should not be a popularity contest (i.e. democratic) in my opinion.
There are, but there are a lot less of them in countries with fair democratic elections, and those who are corrupt are on average a lot milder than in countries without fair democratic elections. On average we're talking theft vs murder / genocide.
Why would we want cops to have less experience on average?
Furthermore, I think good cops may be corrupted with time, but bad cops are never redeemed with time. So all else being equal, I expect experienced cops to be more corrupt than novice cops, and more effective at being corrupt.
A bicycle exercise for regular police spontaneously morphed into a mob control exercise spontaneously morphed into a grappling match definitely sounds fishy on its own.
I hate that I’m in the position of defending a possible cover up of a possible murder to cover up the possible rape by police officers. But damn people. Stick to verifiable facts.
> According to Gage [the family lawyer]...The training at which he sustained injuries "was supposed to be bicycle training," but somehow wound up entailing the "grappling exercise" that the LAPD says killed him.
I think that they article shows that there's confusion as to how bicycle training lead to a grapple exercise. Even the Police Chief is reporting grappling:
> "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."