US Maniac cops at it again, this time in LA.

Any mention yet of the race of the cop or the victim? That defines how long the story will be in the media.

I wouldn't see Potter as a maniac by any means. There's plenty of evidence of police brutality that is with intent and often with discrimination.

Honestly, I believe her case to be the result of awful training practices in the police force there. To become a police officer you need 21 weeks, on average, training. This is significantly behind other developed nations. They have no national agreement on training so while it's 21 weeks on average you can be sure as **** it's a lot less in some places.

The policing system there is an absolute shambles, top to bottom. From brutality, corruption, racism to ineptitude, lack of correct funding and a lack of any meaningful training means that it is inevitable that we see incidents like this regularly.

I don't know about the incident in LA but it does seem wreckless to be firing a gun in that environment, it's well proven that hitting a target, even close range isn't as easy as it's made out to be.

... black and tans reborn...?

There was a joke:

"I want to apply to be a police officer"

" Very well - firstly, have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense involving voilence?

"No, Sir!"

"Ah well, thanks for applying..."

So you honestly think there’s no better way to disarm someone of a bike lock than shooting him and an innocent child dead? Jesus wept.

Tell me this, how come the cops are so reluctant to “deal with” these lunatics running around with automatic weapons and political flags intimidating and threatening people, dressed up in army gear? They only seem to want to go after the easy targets.

You think it was impossible to shoot something not fatal but dam powerful enough to make anyone fall, but they seem to prefer a shoot to kill if your tail light is out.

Its literally the first thing that pops up.

I saw interview with black man seriously saying how he wish for all woke white people to go back to sleep.

What does a cop get paid? It would want to be a healthy six figures. Life at risk, lots of beuraucracy,very cliquey and constant toxic environment.

It's inevitable and it's always been the case because it's the most important country in the world.

Unlike anywhere else whatever big happens in the US has consequences everywhere.

That's why you hear so much about America.

It's a vast, vast country. The way some go on they think everyone's rioting or has multiple guns or whatever.

Complete nonsense. It's a very diverse country with good and bad.

Let me put it this way, would a viral video of Travellers doing a sulky race or something be a fair representation of you as an Irish person?

Would that encapsulate Irish people?

Of course it doesn't.

Figures from 2020:

Number of sworn officers in the US: 696,644

Total US population: 331,449,281

Number of people killed by police: 1,126

Number of homicides: 21,570

Number of police contacts with members of the public: over 61,000,000

As a member of the public in the US you have a 0.0018459016393443% chance of being killed by a police officer. (number of deaths vs contacts, will be smaller if population is used instead of contacts)

You have a 0.0065077830113018% chance of dying by homicide in general in the US.

While this situation in LA is a tragedy, the facts don't hold up the assertion that police in the US are trigger happy fools willing to shoot anything that even looks at them funny. Their training practices definitely need to be improved 21 weeks (average) is way too short for the responsibility they hold, but even given that they are poorly trained compared to other international police services the figures still don't hold up the idea that the media are portraying of them as being gun weilding maniacs.

I have wondered whether, rather than admitting to a mistake when firing, she had just lied and said that he was a serious threat and that she meant to shoot him with the gun, would she have been in real trouble?

The fact that she admitted she had messed up must have limited the kinds of defence she could mount.

Why would she deliberately shoot him, then go for an 'accidental killing' defence, when it was this very admission of making a mistake that made her defence so weak?

If she was making up a story, why would she make up one in which she admits that she selected the wrong weapon and used a weapon with lethal force when the person she was dealing with did not present a threat that justified using lethal force? This is all stuff she said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and it's pretty much the worst thing somebody trying to fabricate a justification for a shooting could say.

As I said earlier in the thread, if she had never admitted making a mistake and said she meant to shoot him (and witnesses/footage did not contradict that) the shooting could likely have been ruled justified.

Shoot first ask questions later...

talk about trying to drag the thread off topic 🙄🙄🙄

Again the numbers don't support the assertion that police in the US are shooting people on sight. That's an emotive gross over-exaggeration of what has happened and neatly fits into the anti police narrative being spun in the US.

A very dangerous narrative as the people of Chicago have found out in recent times, they actually went ahead and defunded their police and violent crime figures are way up all across the city, but that's way off topic.