Roter Baron

She looks like Batman's little sister dressed by the Joker to make Supes angry ... nah, I don't like theses "subdued" colors at all.
I want bright colors.

TV cameras have no business in being at a police raid! This whole "reality" show bullshit has to go since it has nothing to do with getting the public involved or controlling the conduct of law-enforcement officers but everything with ratings and vouyerism and officers who are openly or matter-of-factly encouraged to "show" the audience how tough the job is and how they show the criminals the power of the law.
 
In each instance good law-enforcement goes out of the window! Disgusting! And an invasion of the privacy of citizens who are at least to be given the doubt if they are perps or not before their faces are on every screen in the nation.

TV cameras have no business in being at a police raid! This whole "reality" show bullshit has to go since it has nothing to do with getting the public involved or controlling the conduct of law-enforcement officers but everything with ratings and vouyerism and officers who are openly or matter-of-factly encouraged to "show" the audience how tough the job is and how they show the criminals the power of the law.
 
In each instance good law-enforcement goes out of the window! Disgusting! And an invasion of the privacy of citizens who are at least to be given the doubt if they are perps or not before their faces are on every screen in the nation.

... Obviously he ran out of heroin and hand grenades.

Camaraderie, mainly. Even though I don't play, I have created many characters in several different systems. And I'm a writer, this place discusses sci-fi, fantasy, and other genres I like. While I can't answer questions about specific rules, I can answer when people ask about creating drama in their setup. And I've asked questions on those lines, too.
 
This place has a whole lot of geeks, and I feel comfortable here.

@FrankL:
 
B5: Skip the first and last seasons.  Start with Season 2.
 
New BSG: Watch the first two seasons then come up with your own ending for the series.
 
Voyager: Ski the first and last seasons, and all seasons in between.
 
DS9: Skip everything up until the Dominion War.
 
Sit down RPGs: Remind me again why you are here?

Allow me to take a slightly differing approach here.
 
i) Yes, police do bad things. As someone who remembers being a self-righteous teaching assistant stumbling into trouble due to unconcsious insecurity and a general try-too-hard approach, I ....find it hard to judge. Where is the on-the-job supervision, the practical training, the moderating influence of experience? If absent, I've been in that place. (From the other side, I face junior employees letting their egos and prejudices get in the way of good customer service all the time. It's something that takes constant correction, as hard to learn as letting the ego go in the first place.)
 
So, that bit of true confessions left aside, let me acknowledge another set of unfortunate problems: unions are full of themselves; and union activits are often the self-selected jerkiest jerks in the shop.
 
And you what the historical effect of all those obnoxious unions getting in society's face has been? Good wages, good incomes, a middle class society, broad-based home ownerrship, a solid retail sector, low-cost health insurance, good schools. All the stuff we've been losing little by little over the last 30 years or so.
 
Rookie NYPD salary, 2014, including non-monetary benefits: $44,744/year;
Average studio apartment rent in Harlem, 2014: $1500--$2500. You do the math.
 
So, in sum: I find the NY city police union obnoxious and offensive. I also support their work-to-rule.  

@ The "Young Turks"-clip: First, yes - police who is not investigating crimes, that is not acceptable.
 
But am I the only one who is reminded of "Sesame Street" when watching the clip: The guy and the gal keep repeating their argument over and over and over and then some more times AGAIN:
 
"The cops are not doing their jobs! They are not doing their jobs! The cannot do their jobs not! I am outraged at theim not doing their jobs and they should be fired! They should be fired because they don't do their jobs! Did I mention that I am mad because the cops don't do their jobs? Because they don''t!"
 
What is this show? Are the people who watch the show really mentally retarded or have the attention span of a gnat that the "hosts" (journalist they can't be!) have to repeat everything at least twice in each sentence and then the other has to say it again - for 6 minutes!?!
 
A pain to watch (I got the fisrt 4 minutes then I had to close the video). But now I really know what the meaning of the word "redundant" is ...
 
It seems to be a new style

@ The "Young Turks"-clip: First, yes - police who is not investigating crimes, that is not acceptable.
 
But am I the only one who is reminded of "Sesame Street" when watching the clip: The guy and the gal keep repeating their argument over and over and over and then some more times AGAIN:
 
"The cops are not doing their jobs! They are not doing their jobs! The cannot do their jobs not! I am outraged at theim not doing their jobs and they should be fired! They should be fired because they don't do their jobs! Did I mention that I am mad because the cops don't do their jobs? Because they don''t!"
 
What is this show? Are the people who watch the show really mentally retarded or have the attention span of a gnat that the "hosts" (journalist they can't be!) have to repeat everything at least twice in each sentence and then the other has to say it again - for 6 minutes!?!
 
A pain to watch (I got the fisrt 4 minutes then I had to close the video). But now I really know what the meaning of the word "redundant" is ...
 
It seems to be a new style

Next up: grenade launchers.

@ The Rose:
The guy lost (or let loose of) his job and as far as I remember the article the young lady is considering to press charges. That is what should happen if you choke somebody with no reason and you are a police officer. Looks okay to me, especially since we do not know what else is coming towards him. Nothing good, I presume.
 
@ Agent X:
Regarding the "Taunt and harass them till they react in a mildly physical way - THEN HIT' EM HARD and get away with it"-cops: What country and century is this this again? Alabama - the 1920s? Dodge City in th 1880s?
No wonder people are increasingly irritated and react irate if behaviour like this is not, say, an everyday occurence but happens more than twice in any given community. per year.
 
By the way: A lot of people have the understanding that Germany is quite extensively policed. In comparison to the USA: Far from it! If I am in Bochum, a neighboring city of about 350,000 (about the size of Pittsburgh) I usually NEVER see a police car. In Pittsburgh I run into police (city, University, Sheriff's Department, sometimes Highway Patrol) almost every third or second block.
As much in a DAY as I see in a YEAR in Germany!
Friends from the US noticed the absence of the omnipresent police force, too.
 
And I still feel pretty save here. Actually, I only became the victim of a crime (a mugging) in Pittsburgh.
And someone broke into my appartment to rob my landlady who lived upstairs.
Oh, and I got into a drug raid once.
On three different stays.
And Pittsburgh is considered one of the safest cities in America.
In Germany: ZILCH in 44 years. If you don't count car accidents (only vehicle damage - and always my fault).

Judging from the article and video that The Rose posted the training of a lot US police officers seem to consider of armed and unarmed techniques to get a person "down" (alive or dead) and of showing them a few Western and Dirty Harry movies for how and when to apply them - basically whenever you don't get the response you wanna hear or see when you ask a citizen: "Do you have a problem, pillgrim?" or "Do ya feel lucky, punk?"
 
As I said before: Does not primarily seem to be a racist cop force but a Legion of Judge-Dredd-Wanna-Bes that are the root of the problem - and that root is lack of training and accountability and a sense of professionalism, and not spurs clinking and blinking on Main Street at High Nooon.

That's the sad thing. The witnesses didn't sound particularly credible to me. We've got the running buddy who was with him when he's shoving a small man around. We've got a couple of women who may have seen some or all of it and who changed their story immediately after the preliminary autopsy. This stuff wasn't hard to find but people's CONFIRMATION BIAS set in and they started tuning anything out that didn't fit with the bias. Michael Brown is a sweet, lovable kid (who is huge and commits violent crimes against a storekeeper). Michael Brown's hands were up (but other witnesses said they weren't). The cop tried to pull Michael Brown into the cop car through the window (which one really ought to visualize before they don't get a little skeptical). So you get knuckleheads making stuff up about what they thought they saw. Then you've got the Law and Order crew who ignore the fact that Wilson's explanation of why he got so close to Brown is... stupid. One of them decides to take it further and put out a pic of some other victim and pass it off as the cop.
 
Meanwhile, everyone forms an opinion without doing any digging. If they want to push police brutality they go listen to MSNBC and read DailyKos and get the spin they desperately want. If they want to push a hero cop puts down a black thug they go to Fox News and read DrudgeReport and the Blaze to get the spin they desperately want. Eventually, when it all comes out, the wrong side (in this case the more wrong side) has invested too much and now they have to pretend they didn't screw up. So they chant, "Hands up, don't shoot!" when it's pretty obvious from forensics that scenario didn't happen. It's pathetic. Every few years somebody gets shot down by multiple cops without having done anything and without a weapon and it doesn't catch fire like this did, a case which should have had everybody be careful about jumping to conclusions as the first factoids dripped in.

I consider Al Sharpton an scandal-chasing race-riot hunter. Sure, he isn't the cause of the incidents and he isn't the one who is inciting riots but he is basically "laying it out" so that things can happen or he is approving it.
Hey, I can understand that people have to get violent to make society notice injustice.
BUT: You have to see who is the enemy and who is not.
If I see (mostly but not exclusively) black folks protesting angrily in the street because of the unjustified and unneccessary death of a black man making end smeet with selling cigarettes in a park in New York City I do understand their justifies outrage - they kept it peacefully.
That was wise, good PR and tactics since nobody attacked them.
Had the NY police attacked peaceful demonstrators and they had defended themselves that would have been totally justified IMO.
 
But the people in Missouri whose idea of "Justive Now! seemed to be to plunder and loot the shops of the people in their own city who had ZERO to do with the killing there, not only did a good job at discrediting the protest (who is - thanks to people like Sharpton - quite aimless and one-side) but also showed the world what lumpen they really are.
 
No, I do not feel sympathy with people who use each and any excuse to loot and shout about "justice" while robbing and stealing from their fellow man.
And peopel like Al Sharpton play the tune to this kind of music. And for that I find him quite despicable, though the causes he involves himself in (is he invited? does he just pop up?) are often not.
But his involvement always turns them away from the centre of the problem and towards his greedy, self-rightous self.

So can we at least agree that Al Sharpton is a tapeworm upon American society?

If you guys think that NSA, CIA and other US services are fruit-cake crazy, try the German military one: M.A.D.
 
(No kidding.)

These prices for rental are NUTS! "Free" market my hairy commie behind!

Regarding the Michael Brown-Leroy Brown-parody-song:
In a time where going to the toilet in the privacy of your own home has a good chance of being recorded by
a) your spouse,
your guest(s) or failing that
c) yourself
one can only admire the total braindeadness of the pensioned officer to sing something like that at an occasion like that in the times as they are without thining that the P U B L I C will react to it in a most unfavourable way.
 
Or a lot if not most of the cops in L.A. really feel that way and don't think of it any more than telling dirty jokes at a stagg party.
That would indeed tell you something about the sorry state US law-enforcement is in.
 
If it makes you feel any better: The murders of immigrants and the robbing of banks by a trio of national-socialist terrorsist over the last decade in Germany was protected and sponsored by the German secret service of the interior (Verfassungsschutz) and the police was either hindered in their investigations or were eager to follow any lead but the obvious - that the perps were committing hate crimes, They shamed the victims/ family of the victims instaed by assuming that the killings had to do with illegal gambling or drug-dealing/ -smuggling.
 
Hope it gives you some perspective about class rule in other countries.
 
P.S.: Being a state employee myself (like police-officers) I still do not think that all or most of them (here in Germany that is) are out to "get me". They are trying their best to do their job, to uphold law and order.

I tried to edit that post. I thought it was "short". For some reason, I couldn't.
 
There is a massive incongruity with claiming you have a bias for justice.
 
Your outrage toward the prosecutor just screams "grudge" to me. There was no meaningful difference in the autopsies. There were a host of witnesses who saw all sorts of things. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/newly-released-witness-testimony-tell-us-michael-brown-shooting/ Of course, some witnesses changed their story after the preliminary autopsy report, witnesses who had to tone down their description of what happened. We've got a young man who just threw around a store owner and is wandering down the middle of the road and a police officer who tells him to go to the curb to walk and it goes downhill from there.
 
I know that a lot of people "voted" to make this incident the rallying point against police brutality, especially against minorities, and that gives everyone who desperately wants to change the system a motivation for endless special pleading against Wilson and for Brown. I looked into it and I can say I do not for a minute believe Wilson should have gone to trial. Oh, and I DO understand why people are so angry (and it's not about Brown and Wilson). That's why I can pick up on a lot of smart people willfully ignoring information they don't want to hear. I am not impressed with a militarized police force. I have witnessed shoddy police work. I was hassled by a cop for no reason other than being a teen. Once, I was an adult I thought that was probably over with. However, I discovered having a beard and walking on the sidewalk at 10 at night gives a cop a reason to hassle you as well. I've read up on cops who are too free using force. I've seen the footage of a man getting shot for following a cop's directions to produce his ID. I've read up on no-knock warrants on the wrong house leading to accidental death. I read up on the predatory policing in St. Louis and even talked to a friend of mine who lives in the area.
 
I just wish people would have picked their incident more carefully.

@ Sinanju: Thanks for the first-hand report about the garnd jury system: I had no idea (or quite a blurry one) of how that works.
Seems quite 19th century to me, quite well for a close-living community where most people know each other and are fully aware of the circumstances and know the person about to being tried (at least like "Yes, it's the nephew of Old Widow Miller who used to work in Mr McPherson's store. Married Susan Maurer last year."). 21st century conditions are not really well addressed by this jury system, it seems.

Sometimes, I think many of my countrymen believe themselves to be living in an action film.

I've served on a Grand Jury. Once, for an an afternoon. It was for a small county in rural Virginia when I was about 20, so a long time ago. In theory we were on call for a month, but in practice, we spent one day at it during our term of service. We the jurors sat in a room in the courthouse and prosecutors and cops would enter, tell us who the defendant was, what crime he/she was being charged with, and what evidence they had to support the charge. They did not present any exculpatory evidence, only the evidence for the prosecution. Our job was to decide whether they had enough evidence of the defendant's guilt to warrant a trial.
 
They say that a competent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. In my experience, that's true. We okayed every case brought to us (everything from passing bad checks to one murder). And why not? They had a convincing case for guilt (at least in the absence of any defense); presumably, if they didn't think they had enough evidence to convince us, they'd have waited to find more and presented it to another grand jury later on. If they had fabricated evidence or the cops perjured themselves, would we have known? No--but that's why all we can do is okay a trial. The defense would be able to make those arguments in the actual trial later on.
 
This is why I have no doubt that the presecutor in the Ferguson case deliberately sabotaged his own case against Officer Wilson. He didn't want to prosecute but wasn't man enough to make that decision himself and stand by it in the face of public anger, so he used the grand jury process to engineer the same result while retaining barely-plausible deniability.

Please don't lower yourself to putting words in my mouth. My post didn't go anywhere near there. We're done here.

Holy crap! I just watched the video of the shooting! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!
 
They drive through the park, stop what looks like 15 feet away from the kid, probably scaring the living (soo to be dead) dalight out of the boy who may or may not move his hand (can't see that) to the "gun".
And basically gun the kid down in what looks like a cop-drive-by!
 
From what I heard before I thought they were stopping the car at the pavement, shouted at the boy who then blatantly and full of pre-puberty machisma pointed the toy-gun at the cop - who then, of course, shot to defend himself, not knowing he was only faced with a toy.
 
This looks more like "[sCREECHING TIRES] DROP IT, PUNK!" - "What the ..." - "BLAM!" - Problem solved.
Where did these guys get their training as officers of the law? Grand Theft Auto?
 
Now I can really see why people are really upset about this kind of behaviour - police officers behaving like gang-bangers in uniform!
 
This.
Is.
Shameful.
 
Please note that I am not a cop basher: At my old school we had a top-notch neighbourhood officer, Polizeihauptkommissar Heiko Müller. Great guy, more the fatherly type and 100% helpful when he had a bad day. Usually had a mediocre day and then gave like 150% plus. On a good day scored way higher.
 
It really takes more than a gun to be a good and efficient policeman, as Heiko is living proof: He really serves and protects his community.
These .... (I don't have words or them) ... don't belong to the force.
 
I am really shocked.
 
P.S.: Just read the thread one more time and understand that fellow forum-member Marcus Impudite is a police officer who distances himself from these wrongdoings. My hat's off to you, Sir, and it proves what I just said about your German fellow officer Müller: Don't judge all the cops by these (extremely bad) examples.
Most people don't have contact with police on a friendly basis - usually we only get to speak with them when we get a ticket or when we need theire help - and then we wish that they get the job done like yesterday as if they had a magic wand to make all our perceived evils go away at once.
Of course, we then have a rather bleak perception on them and the service they do. The majority is just doing their job - and a lot if not most in the most professional way they humanly can.