Detroit Pigs Murder 7 Year-Old Girl

Apparently there was a film crew from the TV series "The First 48 Hours" covering the homicide team that was investigating this murder (link below); which led to the raid on that house that killed the little girl. The TV crew was on the site of the raid and one has to wonder if that influenced the actions of the special response team...

If the incident happened almost as soon as the team went in the house I doubt the film crew got the shooting on tape; they would not be allowed in until the house was secured. You would maybe have audio though that might help with the investigation.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100515/NEWS01/5150355/1003/Boy-17-argues-then-is-killed

Cueball wrote:

My investigation is already concluded:. Faulty police procedures that allowed for police to conduct house to house combat operations in in residential neighborhoods, without clearing citizens from the area were at fault.

So now you blame the procedures rather then the police officers involved?

Excelent idea, but how does one write such procedure?

Years ago, driving into Vancouver on a busy highway  with two companions, I found myself suddenly boxed in by four or five police cruisers. They forced me to stop. Turned out that they stopped the wrong car and they ended up apoligizing. There had been an armed bank robbery and my car fit the description.

Was that a proper procedure?How would you have handled that if you had been a cop?

Not condoning anything here or to suggest that the police's tactics weren't misguided, but might their procedure be intended to prevent the situation turning into a hostage event?  I'm thinking that asking a suspect to come out first might give him an opportunity to use the other inhabitants in such a way. 

The reports don't indicate anything about weapons one way or the other.  It's also standard training to assume the presence of weapons - based on situations where that assumption was not made resulting in deaths of both officers and bystanders.

Prevention of harm of officers and prevention of a hostage-taking is not necessarily mutually exclusive, either.

Hard to say.  There's not enough information, for sure.

Cueball wrote:

Maybe they work for Al Queda. Hard to say.

That was unnecessarily snarky.

Quote:

The SHR reports only report law-enforcement homicides separately when a government agency rules the use of force justifiable; otherwise they are lumped in with other criminal homicides. It’s clear that some states do not report all of the cases where people are killed by cops to the DCRP: California, for example, reported 354 law-enforcement homicides to the SHR program, but only 160 to the DCRP, even though the deaths reported to the DCRP should properly be a superset of the deaths reported to the SHR.

... Hence, the figure of about 500 people killed a year should be treated not even as a lowball estimate, but simply as a minimum, for the real numbers.

In counting there is strength. Rad Geek People’s Daily

Frankly, I have no issue with insulting those responsible for killing a 7-year-old child while sleeping in her own home. If a stray bullet from a street gang had killed her, few would complain about the police and press labeling them thugs, punks, and goons.

As for procedure, the police have the means to determine where the suspect is residing. If he was holed up in a nice middle-class or rich neighbourhood, the police would have crossed their 't's and dotted their 'i's and know exactly where he is located or they would have staked out the address and waited for him to emerge. They do it all the time. But because this alleged perp is in a poor neighbourhood rights and safety don't matter. To quote the t-shirt: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

If that's harsh, it is also accurate. What was the rush? Why didn't this family's safety and privacy matter in the effort to arrest yet another alleged Detroit killer? 

A little girl is dead, a family is scarred forever by trauma and memory, and it was all a mistake. If a gang member killed that little girl with a stray bullet they would call it murder. The cops who carried out this home invasion should face no less a charge.

The question is why do police exist as external to the community, Sven? Why aren't police recruited from and dedicated to serving within the communities where they live? Unfortunately, your well indocrinated mind won't allow you to examine that question but it has a lot to do with why they recruit one ethnic group into the armed forces that will exert force against another ethnic group.

Frankly, I have no issue with insulting those responsible for killing a 7-year-old child while sleeping in her own home.

I haven't a problem insulting them either.   But I'll tell you why I get the heebie geebies when I, or other people start to use comparassons with animals in our insults:  it reminds me of Romeo Delaire's account of the Hutu radio station constantly refering to Tutsis' as "cockroaches".   The first step in getting people ready to kill other people is to dehumanize the target.  

And yes, the irony of the fact that Delaire is now a senator, and most of my rhetorical dehumanizing flourishes is aimed at that....body is not lost on me.

But, as I said, the shooting death of a 7 year old is so beyond description it invites such epithets.

If the incident happened almost as soon as the team went in the house I doubt the film crew got the shooting on tape; they would not be allowed in until the house was secured. You would maybe have audio though that might help with the investigation.

One wonders, too, if the crew from "48 Hours" played a part in all this.  "Ya know, detective, if we don't get an arrest in the next 6 hrs, we'll have to go with the Toledo Ohio feature and your mom and dad won't get to see you on T.V."   

These unreality cop shows are instructive.  I like how "Cops"  never seems to follow officers busting the DUI person who lives in Cleveland's Shaker Hieghts, but instead always manages to find the fat guys with no shirts in trailer parks.   

Oh, and they missed this guy, too:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/04/03/entertainment/main283841.shtml

Tragic story. 

Quote:

Writer said - Things like a civilian group consulting with the police about strategy in dealing with rape? Progressive stuff like that?

Knowing someone who was involved with similar kind of work a few years ago, I recall one of the conclusions being that the Police Act remained a huge barrier to systemic change. 

Sineed wrote:

A more interesting thread than simply posting links to stories of police brutality from all over the world would be, what replaces the police?

Indeed.

Sineed wrote:

White guy started three threads with "Pig" in the title.  They are closed in less than 10 posts, and dude is threatened with banning.

I tell ye, I don't know when we white guys are ever going to catch a break around here, or anywhere else for that matter.

A more pertinent question would be what could replace the day in and day out brutality of the police, whose only role in this society vividly appears to involve serving and protecting the dominant corporate infested society to the detriment of everyone else, historically and more often than not in the present circumstances with horrific consequences?

Sven wrote:

I've always said that more progressives should become cops.

It would be interesting to see how, for example, many of the "pig" critics would act if they were cops and were confronted with the scene of the woman who was being attacked by a man with a claw hammer (see the recently-closed thread on the subject).  "Let's see...I could shoot the SOB or I could try to physically overpower and subdue him, although in the latter case I might end up with a hammer embedded in my forehead.   Hmmmm....lemme think about that for a couple of hours, lady, and I'll get back to you, okay?"

Of course you remember Dennis Melvin Howe, Sven.

Isn't it funny that this guy, who had his picture plastered all over Canada, a man who had a low I.Q., and had all his family staked out and watched to see if they were hiding him has never been found.

It's my belief that police probably did apprehend Howe, and if his remains are ever found, no one will know whose they are.   And you know what?  I could give a rat's ass if the police did do something like that.

Your example is funny, Sven, because a guy (not sure if he was progressive) a guy here in London took a hammer to a guy who was raping his wife.

The police charged him, and he ended up being dragged through the courts before a jury deliberated for .00005 seconds and aquitted him.   

But our police chief and crown attourney wanted to prove a point.  With civilians.

No, police never seem to have an incident with Paul Bernardo falling down the back stairs of the precinct house, or Conrad Black hitting his head on the roof of the cruiser.  

It's always someone who questions their authority, fights back, and, surprise! doesn't look like they can afford a decent lawyer.

Sven wrote:

Sineed wrote:

A more interesting thread than simply posting links to stories of police brutality from all over the world would be, what replaces the police?

Indeed.

Indeed shit. What replaces the paramilitary killers in Colombia?

The premise is such to argue we have no choice. We must accept these thugs in uniforms who are granted life and death over other humans with so little in the way of accountability. But we do have a choice. We can police ourselves. We can form neighbourhood committees. We can perform are own patrols. We can also determine are own resoultions depending on the crime and when it is necessary to involve others. Humans have been doing it since the dawn of time.

What you call police are mercernaries employed to run roughshod over other people's communities enforcing laws that jails some for life for the smallest crimes while rewarding others will trillions for super crimes.

ss atrahasis wrote:

Pigs might not be kosher here, how about shit-pant'sed cowards?

Was it mentioned that they fired into the house before even entering? That can't be police procedure can it?

What about the fact that the raid was being filmed for television?

It is pornographic airing footage of "criminals" getting their "just desserts" by police. Is this not a predictable illustration - laden with violence - to excite the blood-lusting viewers that are duped into believing that they are "deprived" of justice everytime one of "these types" is loose?

Killed for ratings.

j.m. wrote:

ss atrahasis wrote:

Pigs might not be kosher here, how about shit-pant'sed cowards?

Was it mentioned that they fired into the house before even entering? That can't be police procedure can it?

What about the fact that the raid was being filmed for television?

It is pornographic airing footage of "criminals" getting their "just desserts" by police. Is this not a predictable illustration - laden with violence - to excite the blood-lusting viewers that are duped into believing that they are "deprived" of justice everytime one of "these types" is loose?

Killed for ratings.

I agree 100%. I don't enjoy anything remotely like that, especially when the Harper's of the world use it to hypocritcally reinforce support for their Law and Order agenda. Didn't Steven Seagal or one of those 'tough guys' have a show like that, and wasn't he accused of being a rapist and human trafficker not too long ago? Figures though. Anyway probably media crime ghoul shows should be their own thread maybe.

We should all read Racism 101 and Racism 101 pt. 2.

No suprise that the word "pig" emerges with the first professional police force in London. If you know London during this time period, it was the site of grave inequalities and poverty as a result of industrialization and capitalism.

Let's stop reproducing this idea of the police as a necessity but as a white, European response to the living in cities founded on industrial capitalism. No fucking wonder why E. Tamaran is pissed off with the pig loving and pig apologizing.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2209/why-are-the-police-called-...

Sineed wrote:

Frustrated Mess wrote:

So you understand why a "cop" murdered a 7-year-old girl? 

When you compare the number of children murdered by cops with the number of children murdered by people who are not cops, what sort of figure do you come up with?

I really don't think vigilante justice is the way to go for reasons that surely don't need explanation.  Instead we need lots of oversight for the cops.

People with power will abuse that power if it goes unchecked, and that would apply to neighbourhood vigilante groups as well as the police.

Your use of the word vigilante is interesting. Popular culture is replete with cops as vigilantes. Whenever cops break the law, use excessive force, or kill 7-year-olds, the apologists always invoke the need for cops to act in response to the threat--the very argument for vigilantes.

And then you argue that people will behave as the police, brutal and repressive, if not checked. That is an interesting argument, it appears you acknowledge police are thugs but would argue we just must live with it. But communities seldom act like the cops or other external forces imposed on communities enforcing externally imposed laws.  Communities, being of the community, will likely know both parties in any situation and will act to protect the community rather than seeking vengeance. Vengeance, well glorified by Western media, is a symptom of the disease as is street crime, bankster crime, and police killings.

It is worth noting that despite the massive crime committed against all Americans by Wall Street, no bankster has been accidentally killed by police. But I suppose you'd have to face arrest for that to happen.

"neighbourhood vigilante groups" what a weasley framing of optics, sineed...

There are 10's of thousands of neighbourhood watch programs, block parent programs, and community policing initiatives, that aren't out there stringing up the criminals, and battering doors down.

sanizadeh wrote:

Vigilant justice does not have to be about going out and killing the one who did it. People can stay within the framework of law and still make the officer think twice next time before pulling the trigger too quickly. Members of the police force live in the society and neighborhoods. They have children and families. A rogue officer can be identified and named publicly, shamed and confronted in the neighborhood, their address and information publicized, their children and family shunned and humiliated, petitions can be signed to expel them from community and neighborhood activities; all without crossing the line into criminal harassment. Peer pressure can work both ways.

Bolding mine.

Yeah, hey, collective punishment!  Awesome.  How fucking progressive.

remind wrote:

"neighbourhood vigilante groups" what a weasley framing of optics, sineed...

There are 10's of thousands of neighbourhood watch programs, block parent programs, and community policing initiatives, that aren't out there stringing up the criminals, and battering doors down.

Give them guns and the power of the state behind them, and see what happens.

Torches and pitch-forks, anyone?

Quote:

See Sineed, we just had to give you some time and you would paint us that imaginary.

Okay, so for the sake of argument, let's get rid of the police and empower neighbourhood groups to mete out justice.  How do you ensure these groups don't abuse their power? How do you keep them accountable?