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Why did more than 1,000 people die after police subdued them with force that isn't meant to kill? (apnews.com)

submitted 6 months ago by octopus_ink@lemmy.ml to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/18331579

Carl Grant, a Vietnam veteran with dementia, wandered out of a hospital room to charge a cellphone he imagined he had. When he wouldn’t sit still, the police officer escorting Grant body-slammed him, ricocheting the patient’s head off the floor.

Taylor Ware, a former Marine and aspiring college student, walked the grassy grounds of an interstate rest stop trying to shake the voices in his head. After Ware ran from an officer, he was attacked by a police dog, jolted by a stun gun, pinned on the ground and injected with a sedative.

And Donald Ivy Jr., a former three-sport athlete, left an ATM alone one night when officers sized him up as suspicious and tried to detain him. Ivy took off, and police tackled and shocked him with a stun gun, belted him with batons and held him facedown.

Each man was unarmed. Each was not a threat to public safety. And despite that, each died after police used a kind of force that is not supposed to be deadly — and can be much easier to hide than the blast of an officer’s gun.

Every day, police rely on common tactics that, unlike guns, are meant to stop people without killing them, such as physical holds, Tasers and body blows. But when misused, these tactics can still end in death — as happened with George Floyd in 2020, sparking a national reckoning over policing. And while that encounter was caught on video, capturing Floyd’s last words of “I can’t breathe,” many others throughout the United States have escaped notice.

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[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The first story, about Carl Grant with dementia being body slammed for leaving a room in a hospital made me think about a how a home for the elderly in Germany solved a similar issue when their residents were wandering away.

They put up a fake bus stop, it was built and branded like any other bus stop in the city, using actual branding from the local transit authority, but no buss ever stopped there.

I became sort of like natural trap, where residents who convinced themselves that they were going into the city got to the faked bus stop, sat down and waited, X ammount of time later they had forgot about going into the city and was very happy to see the staff come out and get them back.

Not directly comparable to a person trying to find a charger for their non-existing phone, but shows a deeper understanding about how to use soft methods to try and resolve the issue.

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago

That's too close to not being willing to harm people for the US. But a really genius (and kinda heartwarming) approach!

[-] MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Manny Ellis:

Video of the incident showed officers repeatedly punching Ellis, choking him, using a Taser, and kneeling on him. State prosecutors stated that "Ellis was not fighting back", citing witness statements and video evidence. A police radio recording showed that Ellis said he "can’t breathe". Ellis told officers "can't breathe, sir" multiple times, according to prosecutors. Ellis was hogtied, face-down, with an officer on him, for at least six minutes, and a spit hood was placed on his head in this position, stated prosecutors. Ellis died at the scene while receiving medical aid from paramedics.

Some of the police officers involved got a $500,000.00 payout and resigned from the Tacoma Police Department after being found "not guilty".

[-] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

Lemme venture a guess… ACAB?

this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024

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When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.

When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."

When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.

Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.

The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.

All this is a path to a police state.

In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

That's the solution.

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