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44 Responses to “Saturday Links/Open Thread”
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Would the “It’s for the children” crowd call the Nirvana cover kiddie porn these days? Hmmm.
As for the Yahoo! music debacle, anyone who subscribed can still burn the music to CD and re-import it to their music library DRM free. Yes, it’s a pain, but it’ll work. BTW, I’d suggest a music DVD so you can fit more songs on a single burn, and use a DVD-RW so you can re-use the same DVD disc.
Officer: “Get up right now!”
16 year old: “I am sorry officer, I believe that my back is broken.”
Officer: “If you do not comply I will be forced to use my less-lethal Taser to induce compliance.”
16 year old: “The nerves in my spine are severed. I think my foot is broken too. I can’t get up.”
Officer: “Are you disrespecting my authority boy?”
16 year old: “No, I- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
{Sound of Taser discharging 19 times}
Oh, wait, rather than being totally polite a sixteen year old with a broken back was verbally belligerent / only partially coherent (according to officers who have no self interest whatsoever in lying about his conduct) and thus there was obvious cause for the officer’s actions.
“Police say although there are several unanswered questions; the reason for the use of a stun gun is not one of them.”
Wow… Is there any point at which colleagues and superiors stop standing behind the actions of rogue police officers?
19 times….evidently they consider someone convulsing on the payment because their back is broken and probably having a head injury to boot as “dangerous”
What I envision happened:
“Get off the ground! Get up! Get up or Officer Bob’s gonna TAZE you!
HIt em Bob….ZZHTZTZTTtztzt……he’s still moving….
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s still moving…..
Hit em again, Bob…….ZZHTZTZTTTZZ…..dude’s …ummm
I think we can cuff him now….oh wait, is he still breathing? You heard he was coming after me…anyone got a knife”"
Dang it! You beat me to it Jeff. My apologies for the same-thread
I signed up for MusicMatch a few years ago and my kids got into the habit of giving me MusicMatch gift certificates for my birthday and Christmas. I had built up quite a lot of credit on my account when I suddenly noticed I could no longer access the license servers. I was forced to install SP2 on my computer (which I didn’t want to do) and transfer my account to Yahoo Music. Needless to say, I was not too pleased. Also, needless to say, I am yet again, “not too pleased.”
When I built my first computer, I never paid a dime for any of the software I ran on it. Bootleg software was what everyone was using. No one could afford to shell out hundreds for a word processor (remember Wordstar), spread sheet (remember Lotus 123), assembler, or compiler. Even many games were too pricey (MS Flight Simulator). Now, everything on my computer is legal because it’s reasonably priced.
The moral of the story? Simple. People don’t want to break the law or steal stuff. But when companies start treating their customers like they’re the enemy, then they can look forward to war. MusicMatch and Yahoo have taught me to hate the recording industry.
He’s a teenager, so that kid has an excuse to be a bit of a dork, but the kid seems to be obnoxious.
Police in Ozark, Missouri tase a teen lying on the ground with a broken back, “up to 19 times.”
I swear to god, Radley, one of these days I’m just going to bleed out through my nose after reading something you post. This one came pretty close.
‘Wow… Is there any point at which colleagues and superiors stop standing behind the actions of rogue police officers?’
The ‘rogues’ outnumber the good cops by a good percentage. Great cops are worth their weight in gold. They consistently de-escalate tense situations and look out for the best interests of the citizens. This constitutes maybe 10% of the cops (I’ve been on 15,000 911 calls as a medic/firefighter and this is my guesstimate). The rest range from indifferent to incompetent to corrupt. The good guys are just trying to get through the shift. I can’t recall ever seeing a high-ranking officer I cared for. When things go bad, they all turtle and try to protect what they have. The great cops don’t want to ruin a job they love by fighting overwhelming incompetence/arrogance/corruption and the rest cover up as a reflex. Politicians putting pressure on cops to increase revenues don’t help matters.
I no longer use the phrase “rogue police officer”. With only the rarest of exceptions, I categorize all cops into the following two classes:
1. Thugs.
2. Thug enablers.
#8 Your numbers might be a bit too optimistic when you consider the burn out rate for officers.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that the officers who post over at ratemycop are 100% above board and honest to a fault. They assure me that except for 1% (of 800,000 officers), the rest of their brothers are just like them.
“‘He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he’s also making statements such as, ‘Shoot cops, kill cops,’ things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers,’ said Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset.”
This Ozark story is pretty crummy reporting. According to the Captain, the police had trouble subduing a kid who had just fallen off an overpass, which would probably subdue most people without any help from Officer Taser and his 18 buddies. What orders did the kid refuse to comply with? Was he told to get up? Was he physically capable of complying? What exactly did this horribly injured person do that plausibly seemed threatening? Incoherent statements alone don’t cut it. As for the hostile statements about police, did he make them before or after he had been tasered a dozen times?
I realize once the questions are actually aggressive, the interview is over and the Captain would shift to “I can’t comment, internal investigations continue, just trust us, etc.” but at least we would get the public officials on record refusing to explain or justify their actions.
This tasering incident reminds me of the cops that plugged that Iraq war vet last year.
“Get up, get off the ground – DEAR GOD HE’S COMING RIGHT FOR US POW POW POW POW POW”
last I heard no one was held accountable for what was pretty much a state sanctioned murder.
err my mistake, this guy actually lived – my bad. It’s hard to keep track of all the police abuses these days.
Perhaps I’m just dense, but I don’t understand what’s unfortunate about the logo…
I can’t comment on the tasering story; it’s Saturday and I’ve declared it “Freedom from government outrages day”.
“Perhaps I’m just dense, but I don’t understand what’s unfortunate about the logo…”
It took me a moment.
Think about a nude woman and look at what the dancers head and arms resemble.
Two questions on the tasering:
1. What did the kid NOT do to comply? Was it that he didn’t get up on his knees and put his hands behind his head?
If he’s prone on the ground with a broken back, why did it take up to 19 tases to determine that his lack of compliances wasn’t necessarily voluntary?
2. Why are officers saying he needed to be subdued? If you can’t freaking move due to a broken back, how “un-subdued” can you possibly be in the first place?
And BTW, if I’m ever tased 19 times while unable to physically stand nor follow verbal commands due to broken limbs…. don’t be surprised if i start yelling things like “Shoot cops, kill cops.”
“Think about a nude woman and look at what the dancers head and arms resemble.”
And the dense woman, who sees something similar in the mirror each morning, has an “ah-HA” moment…. It’s kind of like those 3-d hidden picture things, I practically had to cross my eyes to see it.
I think it’s clear the surge has worked. Obama is on his heels when talking about it. Anyone that follows the polls can see a clear uptick for McCain.
This sort of MTV rock and roll hype for Obama is not the answer and he is rapidly letting his window of opportunity to define himself as something more that a liberal.
The speach in Germany bordered on bad-mouthing his country, and go ask the Dixie Chics how that works out. Plus it was a very bad speach, boring.
Mace’s dad believes it was just that, a fall, not a jump. The question is why.
“They tested his system. He was clean of drugs and alcohol. We don’t know why unless just being in shock and the whole thing in itself caused him to forget everything,” said Hutchinson.
I think his dad’s implying what seems kinda obvious to me; getting tazed 19 times is surely enough to push someone over a cliff.
—-
#19 – “Speach?” What is that? Sounds like smokers cough-up. I thought Obama’s speech in Berlin was excellent. I think it’s more clear that a surge is needed today in Afghanistan, which I believe was Obama’s point. McCain hasn’t got a chance.
And not that he did, but doesn’t this country deserve some bad-mouthing once in a while? I feel like it’s any citizen’s right.
Be sure to watch the linked video of the the Hutchinson tasering report, if for no other reason than to actually see and hear Police Capt. Thomas Rousset try to justify police actions. I swear I think he’s actually ashamed to stand in front of a camera and make such unbelievable claims. He looks away. Stammers a bit. Surely he understands that virtually no sane person is going to believe what he’s saying.
And note that he’s offering his lame explanation 4 or 5 days after the incident. If there was anything — anything — that would make 19 hits from a taser understandable, wouldn’t the cops have come up with some sort of careful presentation or something? Maybe even thrown in some dash cam video — which, you gotta wonder, where the hell is that?
Nother thing — on the video the narrator says, with emphasis, that the kid’s heel was “broke <em.off“. He was a very, very badly injured kid indeed when the cops got there — almost as badly injured as when they left.
“broke off”
Sorry. Got a little agitated there.
Regarding the Ozark incident: That police spokesman may well just be relaying what the tasering officers told him, but he would be wise, when he hears a story so dubious, to just say “no comment”. I mean, no matter what the kid was screaming as he was laying there with a broken back and broken heal, the argument that he was an immediate threat to the cops is obvious bullshit. I understand that “broken back” does not mean “paralyzed”, but either one of his injuries would likely keep him from even standing up, much less being a credible threat. I find it difficult to believe anyone would be unable to see that he was injured.
The severity of nerve injuries can depend on how quickly treatment can be administered. If this kid has long-term nerve damage because docs had to wait two days before operating on his back, I’d say the police are looking down the barrel of a big lawsuit.
I’ll admit, it took me a minute to figure out what was going on with that logo. I may have never noticed if I hadn’t known in advance there was something to see. :D
I’m not sure I believe that he was already laying on the ground when the cops got there. The statements from the sock puppet police chief about the cops being unable to “subdue” the boy seem too farfetched to make about a person just lying there. I think that it is highly possible that the thugs in blue (or black) stupidly tased him off the bridge to “protect” him from traffic and then lied about it.
Since this is an open thread, I was wondering if anyone saw the story on 20/20 last night about Rachel Hoffman, the girl that the Tallahassee cops set up to conduct a drug sting that got her killed. I thought it was handled quite well. The police chief looked like a real dick head.
My speculation on what happened to the kid:
Police saw him walking alone on a busy highway, pulled over to question him, he didn’t want to be questioned by them, they tazered him, causing him to fall over the edge. They found him injured and tazered him some more.
Sydney Carton:
“My speculation on what happened to the kid:
Police saw him walking alone on a busy highway, pulled over to question him, he didn’t want to be questioned by them, they tazered him, causing him to fall over the edge. They found him injured and tazered him some more.”
Sadly, that’s probably pretty close to the truth. Perhaps the quantity of tazings was an effort to stop his heart, to keep the boy from squealing on them, knowing full well that if the boy was dead they could make up any story they wanted and the Authoritarian types would just eat it up and say “Fukkin kid got what he deserved blah blah blah”.
Would explain why their story/coverup is in such disarray and reeks of bullshit. They were in a hurry to come up with something.
Police are disgusting and worthless cowards. I am tired of the “few bad apples” argument. It is old and stale. It is bullshit, You are not heros. You are not protectors. You are worthless c*cksuckers. You do not have even the most basic concepts of decency or honor.
Damn it Chris, you crossed the line. Now some idiot apologist for the thugs in blue is going to come in here and be like
“Fine, next time your sister/mother/wife/dog is being robbed/raped/attacked we won’t come to help you, or we’ll take an extra long time getting there – take that lowly serf!”
or some variation of that for the millionth time.
Fuck. Tha. Po-lice.
Further, deponent sayeth not.
Brown Acid,
There is an easy response to that.
Just because police officers perform some necessary and beneficial functions within society, that does not excuse them from behaving like thugs.
If an E.R. surgeon saves the lives of several people who were in a bad car crash, that does not authorize him to go out and drunk drive all over town.
You don’t need to take the good with the bad.
If there were more cops like Frank Serpico, Joseph McNamera, and Ralph Salerno this s–t just wouldn’t *happen.*
Another taser incident in Missouri where I live yesterday:
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jul/20080726News003.asp
The taser victim is hospitalized with critical condition.
This happened while Columbia was hotly debating a federal grant to purchase even more taser’s.
“Fine, next time your sister/mother/wife/dog is being robbed/raped/attacked we won’t come to help you, or we’ll take an extra long time getting there – take that lowly serf!”
I wonder if those who would say such things (and they exist) realize that they’re openly admitting that they put personal interests above the law.
“Fine, next time your sister/mother/wife/dog is being robbed/raped/attacked we won’t come to help you, or we’ll take an extra long time getting there – take that lowly serf!”
If and when the time comes that someone tries to break in my house and rob/rape/attack someone, I won’t be calling the police. I’ll be chambering a round.
‘#8 Your numbers might be a bit too optimistic when you consider the burn out rate for officers.’
I’m an optimistic kinda guy! I think a huge contributor to burn out is the ‘serve and collect’ mentality- it’s all about ticket revenue and ‘self-initiated arrests’… Our city recently put into service motorcycle cops- they’re supposed to fill a ticket book a day! and they’re doing just that…
‘On the other hand, I know for a fact that the officers who post over at ratemycop are 100% above board and honest to a fault. They assure me that except for 1% (of 800,000 officers), the rest of their brothers are just like them.’
it’s not corruption until they’re caught. ‘Testilying’ is an effective strategy to reduce crime, not lying under oath. ‘Ghost tickets’ is a way to ‘get’ someone who needed to be messed with, not writing fake tickets to abuse authority. Letting another officer off the hook is ‘professional courtesy’ not covering up a crime. Of course they’re 100% above board. They just don’t say which board they’re above…
How about cops like Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson in Deathwise) and Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry).
Analysis: US is now winning Iraq war that seemed lost; focus finally shifts from combat
By ROBERT BURNS and ROBERT H. REID , Associated Press
I think GWB should be the poster child for standing firm.
Thanks for the assist above. I too didn’t see what was up with the logo (and I don’t think the tonight show did either – or at least whomever submitted it – I think they were pointing out the unfortunate wording of the bottom (what was not supposed to be a) tag line.
But now that I see it. there’s no way that was an accident.
#27 “Perhaps the quantity of tazings was an effort to stop his heart”
Wow. That is a chilling statement and as the primary witnesses to what happened appear to be the officers themselves it may be impossible to disprove.
I can’t gather any coherent expression of anger over the tasering story, so I’ll go easy on myself.
The Nirvana baby is 17?!?! Shit, that makes me feel old.
I still have my cassette tape of that Nirvana album, purchased in the magical kingdom of Saud. The baby on that cover is wearing a white-out painted diaper. Yessir, can’t have any naked baby pee-pees showing… could excite someone. Didn’t know ’til I returned stateside for vacation that the baby was supposed to be naked. Oh, and Suzanne Vega is wearing black leggings and long sleeves in the liner notes to 99.9F.
Are you fucking kidding me?!?
“It’s a big concern for the officers to keep this guy out of traffic, to keep him from getting hurt,”
So, what? An ambulance, backer board and a stretcher didn’t cross anyone’s mind?!?
Let’s taze ‘em. Yeah, that’ll get ‘em on his feet and off the road right quick. God damn f….
see? can’t be coherent
Actually, I think the “pro-war” argument left a few things out, such as:
- If you oppose the war, you’re a Saddam Hussein appeaser.
- If you oppose the war, you must be a leftwing socialist.
- If you oppose the war, you’re unpatriotic.
- It’s your right to oppose the war. But once the war starts and our troops are in harm’s way, you had best keep you anti-war opinions to yourself.
- Iraq…9/11…Iraq…9/11…Iraq…9/11…