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Nearly at year's end and still hard at work at one project for another. Filmed my last shooting day of the year last week, stored the gear away from that, ordered some new supplies. I also managed to get the new broadsword rack built in the labs. 
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Every call about liability for the theaters and Sony and all I hear is, "they deserved it. Look what they were screening."
If we're at the point where we seriously think that can happen in an American courtroom, we're fucked. (Tort reform: it's not just for evil corporations anymore) And this has been coming. This was coming when riots erupted around the world over Danish cartoons, and pitifully few had the guts to show them in the U.S. It was coming when Theo Van Gough was murdered and nobody mentioned it, not out of fear of being next, but fear of being culturally insensitive, which was somehow supposedly worse. It was coming when comedy central refused to let South Park show Muhammad as a character. Congratulations. We've now proved that pathetic little men with pathetic little lives can make ranting threats half a world away, and American artists will bend the knee. I'm not even going into what the administration's response may be, because ultimately it doesn't matter. Kings and councils come and go. But when the jester's corpse is cooling on the floor of the hall when nobody dared raise a hand to help, the realm is fucked. There's only so much I can analyze on the Garner case, mostly because some important information hasn't hit the press. But here goes with what I have:
I don't know what hold the officer is trying to make. I think he initially tried some sort of triangle arm choke, realised it would never work applied to someone that much bigger, and then held on however he could because he already had hands on Garner. Reports of it being an attempted takedown make even less sense, given the size difference (football players try to tackle at the waist for a reason). The officer hangs on, how is blocked by other people on the video I saw. By the time he has Garner on the ground, his arm is around Garner's neck with the elbow up near a shoulder. This is a bad position, assuming he's trying for a blood choke, as it leaves the pressure on the trachea instead of the carotids. So, regardless of intentions, the officer fucked up, and likely didn't know how much damage he'd done. So the first bit of info I need and don't have: what related holds are SoP by NYPD policy, and did he at least attempt to use them, and correctly? Second bit of info I need and don't have: what's SoP for administering first aid to suspects in custody? Seven minutes waiting around for ems happened for a reason. I think the ultimate reason for the Grand jury's decision lies somewhere with those bits of info. Fucking tragic any way round. So, I just read President Obama's request on "strengthening community policing." (exact words, I'm not being sarcastic. Yet.)
There's three parts. Part one deals with what it calls Local Law Enforcement Acquisition. Basically, being at war for over a decade means we have a lot of stuff left over. Some of which is extremely useful for cops (radios, body armor, carbines, ect), some which might not be ideal, but can do the job in a pinch (an agency might not be able to afford a Bearcat, but if you can get an MRAP for a quarter of the price of a Bearcat, it might come in handy), and some of which might not. In the last few years, state and local P.D.'s have been buying stuff at various levels of appropriateness from the feds kinda willy-nilly. In essence, part one deals with making sure these are appropriate and civilian-approved. You can translate that as "paperworked to hell and back." Part two is appointing a task force on community policing and awaiting their findings. Another task force. Thrillsville. But maybe not too destructive. Part three is a 3-year, $263M investment package. About $75M is a price matching body camera program that would supply them to about $50K cops. (For those curious, the U.S. has something in the neighborhood of 450K sworn officers) So, is this a bad thing? Not.. really? I mean, yeah, part one is pandering to some vocal yelling to the far left and giving some bureaucrats something to do, and part two is pretty much SOP. What worries me about part 3 is that it focuses on body cameras more than training. And focusing on things to solve a people problem is a bad idea. It's also a pittance of a budget and the President knows it. Boils down to about 400 bucks per officer in the country, which means that whatever comes out of it is likely destined to be a check-in-the-box annual training requirement. Do I have a solution? Not particularly. But neither do I see this as an end-all or even major achievement either. |
Jay Peterson
Musings on violence, storytelling, and humanity in general. Archives
August 2024
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