continuing proofs America is wacko [2]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/us/shooting-accounts-differ-as-holder-schedules-visit.html?_r=0

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2014/08/20/witnesses-disagree-on-details-of-killing.html

The balance of witnesses seems to support the police version, though the number changes depending on the reporter:

http://nypost.com/2014/08/19/witnesses-say-ferguson-teen-attacked-cop-before-shooting/

I still think it shows why arming cops is a bad idea- had this happened i the UK no one would be dead. It is more likely had the guy become aggressive and charged the police they would have tazered him, or jut whacked him down with truncheons.
But the end result would be no one dead, no riots, no grieving mother. Surely thats better?

Depends if the criminals habitually carry guns. Here they carry more because of other criminals than because of police, but unarmed police would be basically helpless if orders were ignored.

What about non lethal stuff?- tazers, pepper spray and the good old truncheon in the face? Works here.   

And if you think the bad guys have guns you step down and call in the armed response unit who are specifically trained for such incidents.

This guy wasnt armed, so why the need to respond with arms?

I'll just say (if I don't get censored again) that a young man who was about to start college in a couple days takes a shortcut across the street while walking with a friend during the middle of the day. He is stopped by a police officer in a car and given a warning. The two young men walk away. By at least one account I heard, one of them may have said something rude. The officer re-engages and less than a minute later the young man is dead with six bullets in him.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think most police officers I've known would have handled that situation differently. Shooting an unarmed jaywalking suspect without even bothering to get out of the car is lazy, if nothing else.

I have never understood why crossing the street is a crime in the US. That seems so weird.

Traffic. It's a minor violation, but obeying the pedestrian rules saves lives. Most people ignore it, but it's there to legally protect the motorist who hits someone who is not where they should have been.

David H wrote:I'll just say (if I don't get censored again) that a young man who was about to start college in a couple days takes a shortcut across the street while walking with a friend during the middle of the day.  He is stopped by a police officer in a car and given a warning.  The two young men walk away. By at least one account I heard, one of them may have said something rude. The officer re-engages and less than a minute later the young man is dead with six bullets in him.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think most police officers I've known would have handled that situation differently. Shooting an unarmed jaywalking suspect without even bothering to get out of the car is lazy, if nothing else.

there's a lot of stories floating around, we don't know which is correct yet.

Traffic. It's a minor violation, but obeying the pedestrian rules saves lives.- Halfy

Don't Americans have the ability to look right and left before crossing to make sure its clear and safe too?   

We have that drummed into our children from a very young age. There is even a catchphrase, 'Stop, look, listen'

We have several such mottoes.

So why do you need a law about it? Are Americans particularly prone to just walking out into the street in front of traffic?   

As I said, legal reasons. If a motorist hits somebody in a crosswalk, the motorist is at fault ... always; if in the middle of the street, very likely not.

It's an urban thing Petty. Nobody cares where you cross in the country or small towns. If you get hit it's your own damn fault.

But when the traffic is running bumper-to-bumper at 35 mph like it does in the cities and you need to cross, you need to figure that American drivers aren't used to pedestrians darting through the gaps like they do in most of the world.( A lot of them don't even stop for crosswalks! )

Then you get a mess on the road, and worse, it slows down commuter traffic which is inconvenient for many people! Consequently they've tried to outlaw pedestrians as much as possible.

Way it works here is if a pedestrian steps out onto a road which is clear to cross, and a car then comes along, the pedestrian has the 'right of way' and the car has to wait till they cross.
If you step out when the road is not clear the car has the right of way and its your own stupid bloody fault for stepping out in front of a car.

There is usually a lot of evidence when a car hits someone- tyre marks from breaking that can give you speed, the impact itself ect and in the UK chances are it will be caught on a traffic camera there are so many of them, so determining who was at fault never seems to be a problem.


David- that makes more sense- in Glasgow most times you will cross at an official  pedestrian crossing (more generally called a zebra crossing as there are alternating white and black bands on the road to designate them) not just anywhere- its just common sense though so doesn't require a law about it.

BBC Magazine had an interesting write-up about the history of jaywalking laws a few months ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

Speaking anecdotally, they seem to be rarely enforced in my (suburban) community, but it's something everyone is aware of from childhood, even if they don't follow the law in this respect.

So its just a car industry ruse!


Who gets the money from the fines?   It seems like an excuse to dip peoples sporrans!   

Interesting article! There's a lot of responsibility to be laid at the feet of the American Auto Industry, not only for usurping the roads from pedestrians, but for systematically dismantling most of the nation's public transportation. Oh and restructuring retail loans so that car payments became a right of passage into adulthood. And more, but that's enough. I'm thoroughly crabbit now.

I think it was less about the money from fines and more about getting the government to pay to create and maintain infrastructure that would then be used exclusively by the products the auto industry was selling. They didn't want to have to pay to create infrastructure the way train companies did, building their own railways. But they also didn't want to share the roads.

David H wrote:Interesting article! There's a lot of responsibility to be laid at the feet of the American Auto Industry, not only for usurping the roads from pedestrians, but for systematically dismantling most of the nation's public transportation. Oh and restructuring retail loans so that car payments became a right of passage into adulthood. And more, but that's enough. I'm thoroughly crabbit now.

Yeah, they were (are?) pretty insidious.

I think it was less about the money from fines and more about getting the government to pay to create and maintain infrastructure- Eldo

I dont doubt that, but its always worth following the money. Might explain why somewhere like LA suddenly decides now is the time to start enforcing a previously little enforced law- someone has realised there is a potential cash cow they arent milking.

Quite possible. It's pretty well-established that the automatic speed cameras that started cropping up a few years ago are pretty much entirely a revenue scheme (and are highly inaccurate to boot).

Same here- just cash cows.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:What about non lethal stuff?- tazers, pepper spray and the good old truncheon in the face? Works here.   

And if you think the bad guys have guns you step down and call in the armed response unit who are specifically trained for such incidents.

This guy wasnt armed, so why the need to respond with arms?

Gun beats tazer, Petty. Americans have guns. They have the right to bear arms. Police there do too.

Btw one punch can kill or seriously injure. If he was the guy in the store and he got aggro with me and charged - I'd shoot.

{{{Ph my, how quickly does Police slaying gentle innocent turn to the evils of jay walking at Forumshire!   }}}

halfwise wrote:I think what's feeding the outrage isn't the details of this particular incident so much as the long standing animosity in this community between police and the black community, as exemplified by how the police are reacting to the media.

The key word here is "Media". It appears they went early with something like "Police shoot un-armed black man clearly innocent of all sin while poor butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth martyr tries to surrender in all peace."  I despise the Media. Note also short phrase "Police shoot". The whole Missouri Police Force? Of course it was! No wonder African Americans and Left-leaning Liberal-Socialsts are rightfully outraged!

But they don't help things by being hostile to the media.  They could have worked to ensure the more balanced story came out.   It looks to me like the policeman in question reacted to a rough situation and unfortunately killed someone, a history of bad relations between the community and police leads to a very negative spin on the story getting out; and then instead of working rationally to try to fix the problem with a coherent narrative the police (swamped no doubt by the riots) put out a piss-poor narrative interwoven with hostility to the very media that could help them fix the problem.

Looks like things moved too fast, and they panicked and lost control of, well, nearly everything.  I think they're trying to regroup and reframe the situation, but a lot of damage has been done already.

Orwell wrote: I despise the Media.

Me too, especially the commercial media which consciously creates drama for profit with no thought to the ethics of the situation [I'm looking at you, FOX  ]. I feel the same about corrupt police departments. But telling them you despise them rarely makes the situation better.

In my book, both the Media and the Police have a special place in keeping our society honest. Both have special privileges and both should hold themselves to a higher standard. There's going to be friction as the two groups keep each other in balance, just like any two branches of government.