I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they seem to keep them drawn and hair triggered throughout the search? :O
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.*
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
If you need some context, you can look up the history of policing in Northern Ireland on Wikipedia, where British police were happily shooting other British people for many years.
So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
I got pulled over in Cleveland and had a cop point a gun at me and threaten to shoot - I was apparently wearing the wrong color on the wrong side of town with out-of-state plates and reached for my ID instead of waiting for the cop to tell me to get it. In later stops I've been admonished many times for not preemptively getting out my ID, but I really can't help thinking about almost getting my brains blown out for grabbing my ID too quickly.
> Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default.
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
Most of the other places I'm aware of with such penetration of arms but no police basically rely on monetary bonds through family ties and intertribal appeals rather than trying to capture and imprison them. If the family won't accept the bonds and the criminal refuses to pay then they become an outlaw of sorts and have no recognition in society. A bit brutal, but then again so is mass imprisonment and a heavily armed police state. I make no claim whether it is better or worse.
Not even the most dangerous job in the US. Forest workers, commercial fishermen, pilots etc are more dangerous. If we're talking about gun violence, your corner market cashier is more likely to get shot, Has anyone thanked a 7 eleven worker for their sacrifice thas you can get a slurpee at 2am?
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
indeed, and this is unironically cited by the "shall not be infringed" crowd as a reason that they should be allowed to bring guns anywhere and everywhere, potentially turning any movie theater disagreement or minor road annoyance (or traffic stop, to bring this back to the police) into a violent life ending incident. to quote jwz out of context, "now you have two problems".
A famous case of this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile where the man identitified he had a concealed carry, the cop told him not reach for it, he started to say he wasn't, he was getting his license the officer asked for, with the officer cutting him off repeatedly and the officer shot him because he 'feared for his life'.
All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.
A black friend of mine did exactly this, asked for a permission to get a pen from his pocket. The cop laughed “sure” and the moment he put his hand inside his pocket they jumped him and arrested him.
> The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
Are you sure about that? Police brutality has been reported as a huge issue in the US since at least the 60s. If anything, from the outside it looks like it's got better since Iraq.
A childhood friend's dad was a cop for 25 years; retired in the mid-90s. He never shot his gun, and only unholstered once in his entire cop career. My friend followed his dad, also became a cop in the exact same district; he's getting ready to retire. He's unholstered his gun countless times. He says he's shot at numerous people in his career, and even killed one dude. I once asked him what the difference was between his career and his dad's. He said crime was actually worse when his dad was a cop, a lot worse. But the big difference was the public's attitude and his training. He said the public had accepted the "tough on crime" narrative; that wasn't the case in his dad's days. But also, the training was straight-up military. He said that if he didn't use the military-style tactics, he would be sunned by his peers and even reprimanded. He said the training repeated one narrative, over and over: "It's us versus them."
He told me a story about a noise complaint. He said him and his partner banged on the front door of the house, but there was no response. He said they called in the status, but were told to wait. About 10 minutes later multiple SWAT vehicles arrived. He said one of the vehicles literally drove into the side of the house, making a huge hole in the house. About a dozen SWAT officers ran into the house, multiple shots were fired, the tear gas started a fire. The house was absolutely destroyed. ... No one was home; the house was empty. A kid left the TV on really loud when he left for school. A neighbor called it in, hoping the cops could just go into the house and turn off the TV. Worse, there was no punishment to anyone involved; the cops were doing as they were trained.
> Cop says, 'Knock down drag-out fight, cuffed 'em and stuffed 'em. Finally get home at the end of the shift, and?' Cop says, 'Gun fight. Bad guy's down, I'm alive. Finally get home at the end of the incident, and?' They all say, 'The best sex I've had in months.' Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.
The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation:
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.
The quoted text describes separate comments from different police officers. It's also reported by a third party, is a paraphrase rather than a quote, and isn't bragging.
I really have to wonder what part of that he thinks makes it OK to call it a perk of the job that you get to have awesome sex after murdering somebody for work.
Damn, hoss, didn't think I'd wake up and have to read someone normalizing police violence.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
They go around barking orders at people who haven’t done anything wrong because they look “suspicious,” escalate what could otherwise be calm encounters by showing up to everything armed to the gills, make it clear they can’t wait to use force against persons and property, demonstrate a consistent us-vs-them mentality that looks the other way for clear cases of corruption, commit brazen armed robberies under euphemisms like “civil asset forfeiture,” bypass policymakers wherever possible and lie to them when they can’t, and then wonder why some people don’t like them very much.
> That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
- the warrant was for distribution of narcotics and kiddnapping.
If I were to guess what a list of most dangerous warrants to execute, those two would be up there.
If you note in the video, he jokingly plays around the drugs part. I am not sure where the kidnapping part comes from, but Afroman is not necessarily a household name amongst middle-aged white police officers, so I imagine they just saw "drugs and kidnapping" and went for it.
The kidnapping claim was there was a sex dungeon in the house. The house does not have a basement.
And all of this was obviously pretextual, unless you believe drugs and women were hidden between cds or in whatever pieces of the kitchen they destroyed.
Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
I think the traffic stop paranoia stems from a couple high profile incidents like
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
I’m not sure there’s a general trend of federal officers using state/local officers sacrificially, but no doubt these cases are hammered into officers’ minds over and over.
It's worth pointing out that, while being a cop is a somewhat dangerous profession, it doesn't even crack the top 10. It's much more dangerous to be a tree trimmer, non-airline pilot, logger, roofer, etc. than it is to be a cop.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
Policing isn't in the top ten most dangerous jobs. It's usually listed around the 15-25th most dangerous job in the US. Many Americans including myself are regularly in more danger.
It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
That gives a homicide rate for cops of about 7.5 per 100,000. That's a bit less than twice the US national average, and about on par with the overall murder rate in the Carolinas or Mississippi. Seems pretty good for a profession that would logically bring a substantially increased exposure to murderers.
This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?
It's a common argument because police and their supporters regularly claim they need to roll up in tactical gear and treat every encounter with civilians like it's a life-and-death struggle because they have one of the most dangerous jobs, yet the truth is they have about an order of magnitude fewer workplace fatalities than roofers and loggers.
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
Many people think so, but when the right to bear arms is written into the fundamental law of the land alongside freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to due process, and so forth, it's not something that can easily be changed.
Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
To get a gun in Norway i need 6 months in a shooting sports club. And then can only take the gun with me for shooting exercise. Strictly prohibited to have a round chambered when not standing on the shooting lane. And then only after an order from the guy running the training.
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.
Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique?
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
Places like New Hampshire have the lowest murder rates in USA but yet the loosest gun laws (New Hampshire has nearly European homicide rates but also a very European ethnicity type demographic). The murder rates in USA are tied way closer to where black people are than what the gun law is with the notable exception of New Mexico.
We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
It was an arbitrary example. Try to see past the politically charged topic to the actual analogy that I'm attempting to make.
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
All my life I've heard that an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government. Now that we have creeping authoritarians running the country, where are all of those "second amendment solution" people? What trigger are they waiting for, exactly?
Recall that this authoritarian won the popular vote ~18 months ago.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as the hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
> As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime.
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
Aside from the obvious (being ready and able to form an armed resistance) there's the deterrent. When you know that your populace has certain options available to them that will inform your actions.
You are naive for assuming that the government aren't the bad guys with guns. Just ask the 30,000 Iranian protesters that were slaughtered if you don't believe me.
That’s total officers shot, not specifically for raids.
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
Let me outline how broken policing is an institution in the US:
1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;
2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;
3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];
4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;
5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?
6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;
7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];
8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.
A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].
One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].
It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.
Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.
If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
and I would argue no knock is unconstitutional, the whole point of a warrant is to prove you’re allowed to search me and the law was written in a time where everything was on paper, we’re suppose to be secure in our papers short of a warrant, if you can’t show a warrant how do I know I’m not being robbed and need to defend myself? it’s totally bonkers
If you're there to arrest people, that seems reasonable. But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.
This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).
American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around.
Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).
Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs?
You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing.
It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently".
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose.
They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic.
In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
> don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not?
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
> The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular.
AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client.
Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer.
> Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor.
> Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
> but a reasonable person might assume these rumours to be true
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
We are, of course, not privy to the jury's reasoning unless they choose to divulge it.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
No, no way they could have known stealing money and destroying evidence is illegal. So the Post-It note on the old court case gives them qualified (absolute) immunity.
Even if this were true, are we really so far gone in the political discourse that we can't appreciate a win as Americans because of the perceived political orientation of the recipient?
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
I mean, both him and Trump have similar approach to opponents or those who wronged them. In this case, the opponents are deeply unsympathetic to most, so it is harder to see.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
He’s willing to publicly criticize government corruption and child abuse, so there’s no way MAGA would accept him. (Both these stances came up in the defamation lawsuit and in the music video.)
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
That's good to know. The second sentence you gave was superfluous because the first one told us that -- I add this not to dismiss your efforts but to highlight them.
Pretty funny, worth seeing at least once to be able to reference it at appropriate times.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
Hoping it wasn't the SWAT guys. Those guys go hard and everyone is a meth terrorist until zip tied on the floor and proven otherwise. They also tend to shoot your dog. =(
Judging by the videos, they look like the typical American "deputy" that wouldn't even pass the fitness tests in other countries, which probably means it's easier to escape, but also that they are more trigger-happy.
Mime was in Australia, so much lower chance of violence, more polite.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
The ACLU called it a SLAPP lawsuit. If true, they probably didn't care if they won or not.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
>Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
Are you saying you believe the cop who said, under oath, he "doesn't know" whether his wife could be having an affair with afroman chose to do that as part of a deliberate legal strategy? And that you think this casts him a more positive light than merely being clueless?
Interestingly enough this is not the first time cops have invaded a famous rapper's house and the rapper proceeded to make a music video out of the footage
That didn't seem like faux crying. Making fun of her in that way is the hardest to defend IMO, since it had nothing to do with her job performance or relevant character attributes. (E.g. how the other officer had been accused of stealing before, or had a brother resign from the force after being charged with a crime involving a minor).
Aren't cops by default public figures? They're the de facto face of the police for the ordinary citizen, not sure they should be the type of individual who cries because someone calls them fat, lesbian or whatever. These people have the legal right to essentially execute you in public, I think we should set the bar a bit higher on who should be allowed to be a police officer in the first place.
I was raised by LEOs. My mother and all four of her husbands were career long LEOs in the South.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
It seems the job selects for those types. I suppose people interested in law enforcement / justice that aren't that way either end up as lawyers or working for the FBI or something.
If you don't have any kind of marketable skills yet want to make a decent living with plenty of benefits, becoming a LEO is the easiest choice for most people.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
It's a use it or lose it skill. When you carry a badge and gun around and can bark orders at people all day and they have to comply or face the infinite violence you can summon with your radio your skin will grow thin over time.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
I do agree with you and the other comment in this vein. I have very little sympathy for these officers.
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
> say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it?
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
This is not some footage issue, there apparently was a smear campaign online.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5].
One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy.
Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave state, it does not make sense to carry over southern slave-catching history into modern police culture.
You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
I've attempted to take your responses as made in good faith twice now, despite evidence to the contrary in other threads. I understand if this topic is uncomfortable for you, either because it challenges your world view or because it feels personally invalidating. It appears as though you're looking for one very specific statistic or logical vulnerability in what others are sharing to refute the overall claim. However, I can only lead you to water.
Your post is essential. No one is claiming 100% of cops are white supremacists. One is claiming that it's sensible to assume they are.
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the claim here is "majority of cops are white supremacists". Thats not the claim. The claim is that it is sensible to assume a cop is.
A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case.
Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
> This study seems unconvincing. We see that black drivers are pulled over more during the day - why does that necessarily mean that it’s due to their race?
Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't.
(The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.)
It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
And to expand on that, this isn’t even a debate. It’s a casual chat about an actual courtroom debate. Here, no one is judging our presentation. We don’t have to meet a high standard of evidence to speak our opinions, lest they be judged invalid.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Court cases look at things like when someone arrives in a city as evidence, that alone doesn’t make someone more likely to have done whatever than a million other people, but it’s still evidence. So you dismissed it, but it is in fact evidence that there were white supremests just as your post is evidence you are a serial killer.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical
professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion.
If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
Doesn't really matter since police officers are public officials. The bar for defaming a public official is actual malice, which is clearly not the case here. They need to prove that he deliberately said facts that he knew were false with the deliberate intention of harming them. It was also obviously a satirical song which further weakens the case. This is such a weak case it should have been thrown out before it ever reached trial.
They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property.
I don't understand how they found nothing in the raid, wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant? If they forgot those that's a whole new level of police incompetence.
Is the NY Post some kind of National Enquirer analogue? This article reads like it was written by a grade school child trying to emulate the voice of an villainous news reporter.
I made this joke in another thread, but: I keep imagining Afromans court getup as the formal attire for American civil lawyers. Like robes and wigs, suits n ‘fros.
I've heard "Randy Walters is a son of a bitch, ooooh oooooh, uuh!" the entire day today after hearing the song yesterday, probably the most catchy one to come out of this whole story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U
Defamation is the most boring version of this case. Barring dishonest editing, of course it's fine.
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
One of my favorite parts is when Afroman is being cross examined about why he brought the media and his lawyer to retrieve his money.
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
Y'know, officers, if you'd shown up to his house after the raid and apologized and offered to buy the guy a new door of his choosing and the installation for it, we're probably not having this conversation.
It's a small county with an extreme minority of black people, like a couple hundred or less. It's quite likely he had personally encountered some of these officers before, and almost certain they knew who he was. Within the realm of possibility he saw something like this coming. Small rural sheriff depts are astoundingly corrupt.
This was also on youtube - Afroman made his points very clearly. That was an easy case.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
Well, he probably interacts with them on a daily/weekly basis, or at least other people from their department, and probably don't want to end up on their bad side.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
If you think "justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed", then please consider the people who aren't famous and can't get media attention when this sort of thing happens to them. Justice and freedom of expression fail to prevail on the regular and this is just one win amongst many, many, many losses.
Even just in this instance justice would include damages for their destruction and an inquest into the warrant from the cop that wrote it to the judge that signed it.
Justice didn’t prevail. Afroman had to spend THOUSANDS defending himself in this bullshit civil lawsuit, and his countersuit got thrown out because police have qualified immunity.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
Which is great for him. The point being this happens to other people who aren't famous, and maybe don't want to spend their time asymmetrically fighting for themselves on social media.
How so? The positives you described had nothing to do with the courts. That's just an outcome of his own savvy. If he didn't make the video or the song, he would be out a lot of money. That's not justice, that's an entertaining person using their virality to claw back some of what was taken from them. How would that go for Joe Average?
This is the story of a guy who got sued for being harassed and had to waste years of their time and money fighting it.
One of the more interesting parts of the whole ordeal was officers getting on the witness stand and declaring that the lyrics that insinuated he had had sex with their wife were deeply traumatizing.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
I know things are bad in the USA right now, but news like these show that you still have your basic rights. This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. There have been some people abusing their freedom in recent times cough Kanye cough, but for every loud nazi there are ten more excellent people whose right to speak should not be infringed!
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
This wasn’t a 1A case, it was a civil defamation suit. He won because they failed to prove defamation, NOT because the judge threw out the lawsuit because of a violation of constitutional rights.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
Perhaps interesting here is that some of the things he said were definitely not defensible via "truth is an affirmative defense." But it's ultimately up to the jury, and they can also find him innocent because a reasonable person wouldn't be offended by outlandish accusations.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
This is not remotely true. Furthermore, the way people don’t get away with stuff like this is via extralegal/extrajudicial harassment, abuse, violence, and sometimes assassination (see also: MLK, Huey, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Barry Cooper, etc), so we aren’t really sure that he has gotten away with it yet.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
I'd work the same in pretty much any European country, as in you'd record them, you'd publish that, they'd make up some lame excuse why that's not allowed, it'd go to a court, and a judge would decide who was right case-by-case?
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
He'd probably actually be guilty of something defamation-adjacent in a lot of European countries.
In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.
A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).
To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.
100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)
Absolutely not, Germany in general cares more about privacy than any other European country, which of course extends to cops, but you cannot extrapolate anything privacy-related from Germany as a continent-wide rule.
If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it.
"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
What a poor attempt at trolling.
EDIT: And a drive by downvote from somebody who has almost certainly never been to Norn Iron in their life!
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
Relevant fictional quote:
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
Something I learned from a friend is to ask permission for every movement or at the very least narrate and move slowly.
"I'm going to reach in the glovebox for my registration. Is that ok?"
I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
Edit: friend and I are also white.
All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.
Qualified immunity tends to chime in.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
> The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
“the only way” puts me in mind of The Onion headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
He told me a story about a noise complaint. He said him and his partner banged on the front door of the house, but there was no response. He said they called in the status, but were told to wait. About 10 minutes later multiple SWAT vehicles arrived. He said one of the vehicles literally drove into the side of the house, making a huge hole in the house. About a dozen SWAT officers ran into the house, multiple shots were fired, the tear gas started a fire. The house was absolutely destroyed. ... No one was home; the house was empty. A kid left the TV on really loud when he left for school. A neighbor called it in, hoping the cops could just go into the house and turn off the TV. Worse, there was no punishment to anyone involved; the cops were doing as they were trained.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/police-trainer-best-sex-ki...
> Cop says, 'Knock down drag-out fight, cuffed 'em and stuffed 'em. Finally get home at the end of the shift, and?' Cop says, 'Gun fight. Bad guy's down, I'm alive. Finally get home at the end of the incident, and?' They all say, 'The best sex I've had in months.' Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author)
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
> They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving.
Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
1. https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admit...
- the warrant was for distribution of narcotics and kiddnapping.
If I were to guess what a list of most dangerous warrants to execute, those two would be up there.
If you note in the video, he jokingly plays around the drugs part. I am not sure where the kidnapping part comes from, but Afroman is not necessarily a household name amongst middle-aged white police officers, so I imagine they just saw "drugs and kidnapping" and went for it.
The kidnapping claim was there was a sex dungeon in the house. The house does not have a basement.
And all of this was obviously pretextual, unless you believe drugs and women were hidden between cds or in whatever pieces of the kitchen they destroyed.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Police_Shootout_-_De...
[2] https://youtu.be/NqxTf-Vz12o?t=475
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
Also around 40% of police deaths are accidents.
The justification most give is that they may need to be able to quickly get out of a car and pull their gun in a confrontation.
The only way this makes sense is that
A) Police aren't being properly trained based on data
B) People have an irrational psychological fear of murder over other types of death
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
They didn’t say it’s funny.
If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.
> human error
Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.
Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
They don't raid schools when there's someone actively killing children. They can just hold off a bit and get people when they're on the move.
That is also why the police response in Uvalde is highly criticized.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world.
You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
And before someone rages... look for yourself:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Af...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Ho...
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
Critical mass.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as the hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
It didn't "de-arm" - it brought all states and territories into near alignment on gun regulation.
If you're interested I can link to good footage of my actual IRL neighbour shooting 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards, here in Australia.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
Alternatively you might be interested in Australian footage of feral control, taking down 800 oversized wild pigs in 4 hours from a helicopter.
Got any data?
It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly?
What is "regularly"?
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...
There are an estimated 20k-80k no-knock warrants in the US every year for context.
1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;
2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;
3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];
4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;
5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?
6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;
7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];
8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.
A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].
One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].
It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury
[2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey
[4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
[5]: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City
Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
Unless it's proven someone is on imminent harm, then they should find another way to collect evidence, or just not do it.
So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
And there is some evidence that the institutions themselves recognize this (or they did, until we elected an openly-corrupt white supremacist to the highest office): https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-doj-res...
Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
See: https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
(granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue)
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
https://ny.prelawland.com/post/719662253773832192/too-smart-...
They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally.
I think the never here is a typo.
He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
Where is that coming from?
Do you seriously not believe (well, know) that sadly, many cops do this ALL THE TIME?
They’re facing charges too, right?
Right?
No, that video seems to be from 4 days ago, the verdict of the jury came yesterday.
Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops.
Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
> “When these streets keep callin’, heard it when I was asleep/That Gay Z and C*ck-A-Fella Records wanted beef”
JayZ responded in kind insinuating it back on N A S.
And Drake is also a Trumpist because he told Chris Brown that he fu*ked Chris’s girl.
Tupac also, for some reason:
> ”… You claim to be a player, but I f*cked your wife/We bust on Bad Boys, n*g*as fu*ked for life.”
2Pac in hit-em-up:
> "That's why I fuc*ed your bitch"
Eminem:
> "I f*cked your mother and made her my bitch,"
You know what? Maybe it’s a rapper thing and not an indication of MAGA alignment?
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/664027-afroman-2024-presidentia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroman
The first two of those issues were Trump issues in his campaign and Trump rescheduled marijuana to schedule 2.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
They do know the statement is true (and this is provable). Pretending like they "don't know" is a lie under oath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nfVWiXY3WY
Neighbors by J. Cole
That said, I don't disagree with outcome.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
1 - https://www.wirthlawoffice.com/tulsa-attorney-blog/2013/07/c...
“Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.
At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.
You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
And to the genesis of this thread, it doesn't mean I must believe the tears are fake.
THEIR privacy?!?!? Their privacy ... in his home? This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount.
> were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,”
Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.)
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
[0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
[1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/
[5] https://genius.com/123154
One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy.
Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave state, it does not make sense to carry over southern slave-catching history into modern police culture.
I don't see how this supports the claim
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not.
Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case.
Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu...
Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
* https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/24350/ocr
Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't.
(The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.)
It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
“Zero cops are or have ever been white supremacists, they’re all very nice and would never steal money or be racist”
Don’t ask me to support my claim, you’d be sealioning!
Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
Requesting an arbitrarily high standard doesn’t create any obligation. Evidence of a high standard does.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion.
If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.
Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.
This flavor of police: Stop being mean!
Why do you think they were so annoyed at all the cameras?
You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.
I’m not suggesting suspicion has merit, but given all the idiocy I’m wondering what other forms of chicanery may have taken place to get a warrant.
https://apnews.com/article/afroman-police-raid-lawsuit-ohio-...
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
> their constitutional privacy
Isn't that something that people are always pointing out "is not guaranteed by the Constitution"?
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?
In addition, you're not a criminal until you are convicted.
You're subbing in "abduct" for one of those words.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abduct
sounds like what happened to me.
Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.
If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.
He got burglarized before, and got threatened with arrest after demanding police investigate. https://www.tmz.com/2022/08/22/afroman-home-raided-police-oh...
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Thank you, Ohio cops and lawyers, for bringing this to our attention.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
There is no justice here.
His legal costs are gonna be tiny versus his YouTube/Spotify revenue out of all this.
(And I wouldn't ignore the value he probably applies to being proven right in court, either.)
This is the story of a guy who got sued for being harassed and had to waste years of their time and money fighting it.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit...
Including internationally:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq57557d6p6o
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
Posting their names is questionable; as officers they are public servants, but naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
Lying however would be slander and illegal, in my humble opinion. Not worth 4 million in damages, but at least a cease and desist?
No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.
> Lying however would be slander and illegal…
They couldn't prove he did.
He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man..
If that were defamatory, 90% of QAnon would be in court.
Yeah, it was from "My City Was Gone," which isn't a pleasant song about the state, but pfft, it works here.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
The Germans would argue such powers prevent the Trumps.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.
And yes, it's great.
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
In the US, the plaintiff needs to prove, to a preponderance of evidence, that the statements were false, intended to be perceived as statements of fact, harmful, and that there was negligence or actual malice in the defendant's belief in those statements.
A bunch of European countries allow defamation cases despite the statements being true. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The U.K definitely fall into that category (though in some cases like the U.K., truth is a defense if the plaintiff can prove the statements were in the public interest).
To people outside of Europe, any category of countries that includes the U.K, France, and Germany can colloquially be referred to as "Europe" pretty comfortably.
If you really want to generalise across the continent, the most common scenario would be that you're completely within your right to film them and publish that, but then the cops would argue (using GDPR of all things) that you have to blur their faces and names before publishing. (Try to argue != succeeding automatically, that's up to the court to decide.)