Atlanta Shooting

[CS1983]

This article has a few good points, but the overarching tone of it was "We dindu nuffin!"; it is, therefore, tone deaf (which is a theme for Maj. Yates in recent years).

For example, in Sacramento (https://i.imgur.com/NDglcu8.mp4), a man was falsely ID'd as having a warrant. Complies with police commands and stands with his hands on his head. Proceeds to then get drop kicked in the back by some tactical retard moron and that sets off a chain of events that leads someone who literally hadn't done anything being charged with resisting arrest. A false arrest, I might add (since, well, the warrant wasn't for him). What are people supposed to think when they see stuff like that? What is a person supposed to do when they are doing everything right and still get drop kicked in the kidneys?

What are people supposed to think when someone like Sgt. Charles Langley is playing some sick game of Simon Says Twister while continually telling the poor bastard he's going to get shot, and another cop on scene, Philip "Mitch" Brailsford, with a completely inappropriate engraving on his AR-15's dust cover (You're Fucked) unloads rounds when a drunk, sobbing, scared for his life person trips while crawling; when all they had to do was tell him to keep his hands up and secure him in cuffs the moment he was in the hall. How do any of us know we won't be the next Daniel Shaver, who did his best to comply under completely ridiculous and contradictory circumstances and was rewarded with being murdered? And then Brailsford not only gets away with it, he now gets a PTSD pension because he murdered someone. What the actual f...?

How do we know we won't be the next John Crawford? Given no time to drop a weapon before the responding officer opens fire, when we have no idea what's going on?

How do we know we won't be the next Philando Castile? Trying to get a wallet out and, having done our duty to inform the cop of the presence of a weapon, get lit up.

Such cops don't have the constitution to wear the uniform and interact with the public.

Are these incidents normative? Of course not. But they have a serious impact on the national consciousness and perception of police.

Just like 1 psychotic break for SSG Robert Bales ruined any possible good being done in Panjwayi Afghanistan, so too does every incident of police brutality, or general dickheadery, erode trust a little more. Every time a police officer approaches someone like an dickhead instead of a person. Every time a cop acts like his badge and gun somehow excuse him from a little human decency, they are the ones who have brought it to where it is now.

Police have a serious public relations problem, and frankly they largely brought it upon themselves. Departments across the nation seem to be about as self-aware as the cretins at 16th Street mall.

As my first Platoon Sergeant said, "You can have 1000 attaboys, but all it takes is one 'ah, shit'."

Just had this pop into my recommended.



Jocko making the same point: public relations are in need of fixing.

He also makes a great point about the "us vs them" problem. I'd tack on, in his example of cops who are nervous, etc., that the public is in the same boat. Just as any cop on any stop may be walking up to a car wondering if he's about to get into a gun fight, so too does a not insignificant portion of the public wonder if any interaction with police will lead to a fabricated arrest, injury, or death.

Know those videos they show in the academy of cops getting murdered on country roads, dash cam catching them screaming in terror as the criminal unloads into them at point blank range? Those are a double edged sword. They show a statistically unlikely reality in order to drill not being complacent. But they also propagandize and instill fear. Similarly, when people see videos of police brutality or cops murdering people who didn't do something so heinous as to deserve such treatment, or the cops are obviously escalating the situation, the same statistically unlikely reality is instilled in the mind of the public.

For those who would guffaw at the public having such a perception, I would pose the following question: if the statistically unlikely is enough to completely put away such fears, or serve as fodder for derision, then why do you carry a gun?

This is not a subject where we can have an "iron sight" argument. 99% of what we see is due to bad optics. So perhaps it would be a good idea for police nationwide to stop drinking their own Kool Aid and using CounterSniper™ optics style pounding of the table. They need some Schmidt and Bender or Nightforce level PR. Cus right now? Well, right now, the multi-colored, switchable reticle with military overrun on the box ain't looking so hot.