That's a product I am really looking forward to. I hope there will be at least a POD-option - I like PDFs, but having long-dead processed tree in my hands beats any PDF every time of the day and twice on High Nooon!
Meanwhile at the federal courthouse protests in Portland the AP has done some brilliant journalism. They put a reporter in the crowd AND one in the building so they could get both perspectives on what is happening.
Seriously great work.
The article: https://apnews.com/1dd1bb39093a3691f4e78093787ab877
Some thoughts from the AP reporter inside the courthouse:
At the rate this is escalating I wouldn't be surprised to see live ammo fired at the protesters soon.
They are doing real - in some cases permanent - damage to the federal officers who are inside the structure.
Honestly, I can't believe the level of restraint that has been shown so far. This attack on the courthouse has been going on for weeks.
You are not the only one! Very insightful, unbiased and looking at it from every perceivable angle - not this "black-white-this side is 100% right and you are all nogoodniks" that most of the media, "activist", pundits and politicians are spreading.
Let's hate - in the name of whatever ...
I long for times when problems are addressed in a civilized, fact-based manner again, when arguments are exchanged and listened to from both sides. Hell, even the 80s with the Cold War getting hotter were better than today in this regard - and then the USA and the USSR had literally a gun at each others' temple and whispering "Hey, bub! Want some?"
I am so tired and fed up with screaming people on either side of the fence unwilling (and I fear - becoming unable) to even considering that the other side might have half a point here and there.
Democracy is the rule of the majority while looking out that the minority still holds rights that defend them and make them NOT wonder if they are alive or in a cage tomorrow. Democracy is - for better or worse - working on compromise within a society.
I'm not going to try to get into an argument on this. I'm just going to state things as I see them. It will be kinda long. I am a defense attorney and was a public defender for nearly a decade. Some of this will probably offend some people here. So be it. I believe everyone here has the same general good goals and none of us are trying to be irrational or hateful.
This is, at the same time, both a massive problem within our justice system and also a fairly minor one. In a country of 1/3 of a billion people, about 1000 people a year are shot and killed by the police. Of those, about 10% are reported to be unarmed. Some percentage of the unarmed people are either fleeing or attempting to commit suicide by cop (however I was unable to find those numbers).. A large number of them are also mentally ill (so they do unexpected things). Approximately 40% of the unarmed people who are killed by police are black (mostly young males). About 13% of the US population is black, but they make up a disproportionate share of all inmates in US prisons (accurate numbers are difficult to find quickly on this topic -- I've seen statistics anywhere from 1/3 to more than half, these numbers also appear to be going down). For raw population numbers, unarmed black people are killed at a rate 3 times what we would expect. But compared to how likely they are to be arrested by police, the numbers are much closer (this of course, makes us ask whether black people are unfairly targeted by police in the first place). However this does mean that police do not appear to be more likely to shoot black people in any given encounter (i.e., per contact).
Any stance of "even one person being wrongfully killed is unacceptable" doesn't work for me. Mistakes happen. Accidents happen. Outright murders happen. We want to minimize these of course, but as TrickstaPriest said above with the person who set a cop on fire in Mexico, "that one person is an asshole and an instigator". Police departments in the United States are local. They vary from massive organizations like the NYPD and LAPD, down to small towns with two part time cops. You cannot have such a dispersed system and also guarantee against one person being "an asshole and an instigator". You cannot say that the entire justice system failed just because Officer Hardass decided to put a bullet in somebody. Single digit incidents across a country of 330 million people are not a sign of a manifestly unjust system.
It's also possible for rational people to disagree on individual police shootings. I have not seen the video of the guy who got shot in the back after he stole the cop's taser, but I've talked to several people who have. Everybody seemed to have their own opinion on it. I've seen police shooting videos where I thought the officer should be prosecuted immediately, and other people say "nah, it's fine". And I've seen others where I thought it was perfectly justified (or at least understandable) and the cop gets arrested. People are going to see things differently.
However, all that said, there are serious problems within our justice system. We need to change these things. Some of these are going to be extremely difficult to fix, and right now nobody is talking about many of them. Some of them would be easy to fix, but nobody is lifting a finger to do what is necessary.
--Police unions have far too much power and influence. In my state, when an officer shoots a suspect he is not questioned about it until days later when he's had a chance to consult with his union rep and an attorney. That's part of their contract (source: a buddy of mine who is an ex-cop). Bad cops get rehired or are never fired in the first place because of union contracts. Even when something is "makes national news" bad, the unions are reluctant to go against their officers.
--There is a political problem within the Democratic Party right now. African Americans vote Democrat about 90% of the time, but police unions are also major contributors to Democratic politicians. Taking on the unions is a career killer for local Democrat politicians. Republican politicians have no real incentive to take action (though they try to combat public sector unions on general principle, it's not Republicans who are getting shot), and Democratic politicians are paralyzed. Two of their largest voting blocks are in opposition to each other here.
--Cops aren't tested for steroids. This is a major problem, it's obvious, and no one has ever mentioned it. I've seen these guys in the courtroom. Everybody knows who they are. They're clearly juicing and everyone knows it. Yet cops aren't drug tested, and they certainly aren't tested for steroids. I'd say at least 10% of cops are juicing. Now don't get me wrong -- I was once in a room with a client who was one big mean son of a bitch, he got mad at me and jumped out of his chair at me. I was very happy to see Officer Zangief (clearly taking some "Vitamin S") come in and smash that sucker into the wall. Cops deal with dangerous people, that's why so many of them take steroids. But we need to start doing something about it.
--No one is keeping track of bad cops. Social media companies, instead of doing something useless like saying "we support BLM", could actually do something helpful. It would be trivially easy for Facebook or Google or another company that already mines our data to create an algorithm that scans news reports for instances of police violence and assembles a database. When somebody tweets out "my cousin Ricky got shot by the police", people should be collecting that. When a cop gets fired for illegal use of force, that should follow him. As it is, it's too easy for him to go to a different department and get hired there. But if a report was widely available, and you could see this guy had already shot 3 people and had 15 complaints against him? A lot less bad cops would get rehired.
--Police are not trained enough in de-escalation. They're not trained enough, period. But they're especially not trained in de-escalation. Every cop who goes through the academy should know how to approach a suspect who is not actively resisting and talk to him in such a way that they don't start actively resisting. Too many cops go to violent confrontation too quickly. This is a problem that can be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed by spending less money.
--Local prosecutors have very close relationships with the police. Prosecutors are friends with cops. They marry cops. They work with cops every day. It's hard to file charges against a guy who came to your cookout a month ago. Last week you were asking him how his wife and new baby are doing, this week you're trying to decide if it was okay for him to shoot a guy who had been to prison three times. In most circumstances, the cop gets the benefit of the doubt. Federal prosecutors need to take a much more active role in reviewing state police shootings. This is something the President can order at any time (yes, Trump could have already done it, but so could have Obama). Again, it's politically costly. In some states, apparently DAs have to present charges against officers to a grand jury. This is a total cop-out, when they say "the grand jury cleared the officer", because grand juries only see the evidence the DA presents. It's easy to softball it and intentionally fail to present enough evidence. Federal prosecutors and state AGs should review every single shooting that is even remotely questionable.
--There are, in fact, some racist policies in use when it comes to law enforcement. I once had a case where a dozen police officers pulled up to a run down apartment building and jumped out, guns drawn. They rushed forward like they were conducting a raid. They didn't have any specific information about a crime being committed, they were simply flushing out anybody who ran. Of course my client and several others saw the cops coming and bolted. Fleeing from the police gives them probable cause to stop you, so 10 seconds later my client gets tackled and of course he's got a bunch of drugs on him and a gun. The problem is that my client was a total scumbag who had been to prison multiple times, so the judge was not interested in my argument that the police department's actions were unfair. Of course they don't do this in neighborhoods where dentists and accountants live. They only do it in high crime (i.e., black) neighborhoods. To put a stop to this, you're going to need groups like the ACLU or other well funded organizations to actually look at every arrest in a given city, look for disparate policing policies, and then sue them in federal court. But that's a lot of work, and nobody wants to do it.
All that said, there are problems in the black community as well.
--Young black men have a skewed perception of how likely they are to get shot. The actual chances of getting shot are incredibly low, but I've seen tons of videos of black men talking about how afraid they are when they are pulled over. I understand why they are (the same reason I don't want to swim in the ocean -- JAWS will get me). But this perception is not accurate. It also makes them more likely to panic and resist arrest. And that makes cops more nervous and more likely to use force. I've read several articles and facebook posts written by black people talking about how they had done nothing wrong, but they were so worried that they almost ran anyway. We've got to publicize that it's actually exceedingly rare for an unarmed person of any race to get shot.
--While there are issues with a disparity in justice (black men prosecuted more harshly than white men), there's also a real problem in that a small number of young black men commit a very large percentage of the crime. I once represented a client who said you weren't considered "a man" in his family until you did a 20 year prison sentence. That's heartbreaking but it's true. It isn't racially discriminatory policing that is locking many of these guys up (that guy did a home invasion robbery on Christmas and pointed a gun with a laser sight at a baby). Many times an innocent person is stopped because he "matched a description of a suspect". But I don't think the cops are always lying when they say that. Frequently they are investigating a real crime, and the only description they have is "black male, average height, wearing a dark jacket".
--There's also a fairly high tolerance for "victimless crimes" in poor African American communities. Driving without insurance? Driving while a tail light is burned out? Not using your turn signal? Not wearing your seat belt? "That's not even really a crime, man." I actually had a client say that. Combine that with a tendency to not pay tickets and you get suspended driver's licenses and arrest warrants. A huge percentage of my public defender clients got pulled over for some dumb traffic violation, the officer finds out they have a warrant because they didn't show up for court on the previous dumb traffic ticket, he goes to arrest them and then they would do something stupid (like run). And of course then there's something illegal in the car. I would suspect the cop of being a lying racist jerk, and I'd ask my client about it and he'd say "aww, hell no man I never use my turn signal..." Well, shit.
Nobody is going to listen to any of my suggestions on how to fix any of this, and my post has gone on too long anyway. In real life I've remained quiet on this, it's too radioactive to touch, especially since I know a lot of cops and judges and prosecutors (many of whom are black). But I figured I'd try to offer my perspective on these problems.
And I would be on the Harbinger of Justice's side and with him. There are no excuses for rioting and looting, nor with sedition and subversion against the police.
This attitude - right here - is partly why we have a massive prison population and a stupidly high rate of recidivism. There is no such thing as "paying your debt to society" because you're forever in the pocket of the judgmental. Insidiously draconian values are instilled in us once we're taught what/who is bad and what/who is good. Furthermore, any time someone is killed or "merely" brutalized by the police in a clearly inequitable manner, people start scrambling over themselves to find the tiniest offense in the victim's past to justify so blatant a legalized crime.
On a per capita basis is an ineffective way to compare this type of thing. Otherwise you have to ask why police in 2019 killed 961 men, but only 43 women while women make up slightly more than half of the population.
Is it some super androgynist hatred of men among police? Most certainly not.
Also, if you find some of the crunchier statistics sites you'll see that the death risk peaks for nearly all men in the 20-25 range right when their testosterone levels are peaking.
Unless police are only racist against young black men, but like old black men just as much as they do white people.
And Asian women, man, the police love them their risk is so low on the chart you can't hardly see it.
Couple Links I used:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../police-shootings-2019/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6708348/
Asian women - on a per capita basis - are about 65x less likely to be killed by police than white men.
Does this seem like a good candidate for pillorying the police over their sexist, racist favoritism of Asian women?
If you look up police shootings per capita by city you can see differences of up to nearly 10x. There is definitely a wide variety of policing practices and cultures and definitely room for improvement.
New York clocks in at 1.3 per million while Phoenix comes in at 11.
That seems like a massive difference and one worth investigating. Minneapolis where this whole thing kicked off actually has a pretty good record at 3.0.
It's a serious issue, but it's also a complex one and there are many factors. It's not as simple as white cops like to murder black people. One thing is for certain - burning our businesses to the ground, beating elderly people trying to protect their stores and shooting police officers is NOT going to make it better.
And why does George Floyd's murder (and I feel it was - that cop deserves major jail time) draw so much more sympathy and martyrdom than David Dorn. A black police captain with 38 years of service who died to "protestors" so they could steal some TVs.
Why does the black life of the convicted felon and long time drug abuser matter so much more than the black life of a man who was a great role model and at damn near 80 was doing what he could to protect a local business?
One of these men robbed a pregnant woman by shoving a gun into her belly and the other guy was an absolute role model for any man. Anyone going to take a knee for David Dorn or even know who he is?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/04/will_anyone_take_a_knee_for_david_dorn_143373.html
I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for. Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between. Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.
Yeah, it's just us ugly folks playing HERO. *sigh* It's a shame ... 😉
But generally speaking: HERO has always been quite under the radar. As far as I remember (started with Champions back in the 80s) it was always the "odd system out" - you had a better chance to find someone playing GURPS (which BTW is also not as popular as it used to be).
Emperor Kang got a reaction from Duke Bushido in Western Hero 6th edition
Emperor Kang reacted to ScottishFox in [Police brutality] American injustice, yet again.
Emperor Kang got a reaction from massey in [Police brutality] American injustice, yet again.
Emperor Kang got a reaction from TheNaga in Western Hero 6th edition
Emperor Kang got a reaction from Kaze9999 in What happened to HERO?
