She was lucky she wasn't male and black. Because if she were, they'd probably shoot him, and then say "they thought he was drawing a weapon...as he fled".
Not like it hasn't happen exactly like that before. There was even a video of it online. I think if more tourists knew stuff like this is happening in America, they'd stay the hell away from it.
Surely you can't let a 20 year-old get away with what might be a beer.
Law enforcement showed great mercy in dropping charges against this girl. In fact she should consider herself lucky they spared her life. But I fear other disobedient subjects may think they too can get away with no consequences for their reckless actions.
Reckless were the officers, that did not have properly recognizable badges. They should've called in Police to stop the car.
As a team they showed tremendous lapse in judgment and should be fired for endangering a group of teens.
For all it was - tour de force by people who had nothing better to do. There are safe way to do things and there are stupid ways that might make them feel empowered.
Yeah, pulling a gun on an underage buyer of alcohol seems like it shouldn't even be an option. You're essentially pulling a gun on a child. Not to mention the huge waste of money to have that many agents staked out to catch some petty criminal.
According to your legal system, apparently so. If the law says that 20 year olds are not mature enough to buy alcohol, then by definition at least at some level they are legally considered to be immature and not able to make rational decisions for themselves.
Sometimes I think the lack of Armed Police in the UK is a benefit as they take arming an officer with a lethal weapon is a serious matter and requires specific training/psychoanalysis.
What possible requirement could the " Alcohol Beverage Control Division" need to be armed?! Does every Government Official get a weapon/carry/threaten permit when they join?!
As much as I agree, the US at some point passed a tipping point: Police and the population were armed, so criminals needed to be armed, so police needs to be armed etc. Rolling that back would be incredibly hard.
In UK and other countries where police are generally not armed, using a dangerous weapon often also adds substantial amounts of time to potential sentences, and there's either low levels of private ownership of guns (UK) or tight controls on storage and use (e.g. Norway has tons of firearms, but the law requires it to be separate into at least two non-functional parts that must be kept locked down separately, so your hunting rifle is not something you'll go fetch on a whim when you hear a weird sound), and so criminals know that not only are they unlikely to face an armed response if they don't arm themselves, but they're also likely to get off lighter if caught without weapons, and so there's very little incentive for criminals to arm themselves in most situations.
It's one of those things where de-escalation is nearly impossible because of the likely public response to news of dead cops, and how widely guns permeate the culture.
I was just thinking the same thing. Unfortunately Australia was a very different environment to that in the US at present (very small hunting/sports shooting culture given an almost entirely urban population, broad public support, a parliamentary system such that the executive branch could easily pass the required legislation - although I recall it had bipartisan support, lack of a constitutional right to arms etc.)
At the core of it though, I do believe the pervasive culture of fear in the US and the media that supports it renders any progress on serious gun control nearly impossible.
We seem to have a real problem with police misusing tasers atm. They see them as non-lethal and deploy them without hesitation despite proper training. Several people have been killed by police tasering already subdued suspects multiple (sometimes dozens) of times.
I appreciate that, its about the polices training and response to "threats" as someone mentioned below pulling a firearm on a "suspect" just leads to aggravating the situation (innocent will panic and probably do something stupid, guilty will probably pull their own weapon to escape) neither ends well for anyone.
America can't undo its weapons problem even if it introduced gun control but discouraging pulling weapons out in public without serious consequences (even for the police) might stem this trend of pulling weapons at every situation.
It seems to me that the UK police, since they are not armed, generally try to defuse situations. (Of course, they can call for armed backup if it is necessary.)
Time and again, I read of US police unnecessarily escalating situations. If your immediate response to any tension is to pull out a gun and start shouting, then things are very likely to get a lot worse in many cases.
Perhaps this is just confirmation bias though. I only get to read about the US cases where things have gone wrong.
I saw on a forum, a couple of people arguing that women should not be cops, I was confused, since the argument was filled with cop jargon and seemly started elsewhere.
Then someone posted a personal anecdote that I found interesting, about escalation.
The guy was a cop, returning home after work. He saw a female cop confronting a teenager (that the male cop knew personally) that was obviously not in the right state of the mind.
The male teenager, was obviously stronger than the female cop, and started to make a imposing pose (but not threatening, just "imposing" I am bigger than you), the female cop pulled her gun and threatened the guy, that obviously got shitless scared, and started to run toward her, the male cop also as soon he saw she pulling the gun, also run toward her (unseen by both of them), he shouted, and in the confusion she pointed the gun at him, he did some evasive movement and ended tackling her before the boy reached her.
Then he took her gun, and the boy stopped (not feeling threatened anymore), then he explained the boy he was a cop and was taking him to drug exams and he was free to go, and that noone would use violence against him. Immediately the boy turned around and allowed himself to be hand cuffed.
This guy was arguing that female officers in his apartment killed way more people with guns than male officers and this is why they should not be there...
But anyway, I brought this here, because I think it is a good example of a attitude to just bring up guns whenever they feel they can use it to impose power, and obviously this many times only result in dangerous escalations (like pulling a gun on a junkie, or a scared innocent), I doubt the pair (female cop, junkie boy) would leave intact if it was not outside intervention, or the junkie would have killed the cop, or the cop would have shot the junkie.
Whilst that is a harrowing case, it is hardly the same as the routine pulling of guns first and asking questions later attitude that you were replying to?
I considered the same point before posting the link, but decided that it was appropriate considering (imo) that it is a product of the same 21st century paranoia and police culture of "shoot first, ask questions later".
These were officers who, at short notice, were staking out a suspected terrorist's flat just days after a bombing and during a national hysteria. It was a horrid chain reaction of errors, but it was hardly officers waving guns around to apprehend a girl they thought had brought beer?
I know this is a typo, but that picture in my head made me smile.
Confirmation bias is only dangerous when there is significantly more evidence against the statement. You rarely hear, "we could have saved the day if we had higher damage output!"
I did mean shouting; it wasn't a typo. I see that the way I phrased it was ambiguous though. :-)
I meant that the police generally pull out their gun to emphasise their power and to reinforce their shouts, not always with the intention of actually shooting.
I don't think this necessarily has to do with weapons. There are ten thousands of armed German police officers who (number went through the press) shot 85 bullets in 2011 and usually do not draw a weapon immediately.
That's a very small proportion of the overall police force that carry. It's got to be to do with the attitude around weapons.
There are about 7000 armed police in England and Wales. Their weapons are kept in safes in the back of their cars, they need to have a very good reason to be carrying one, let alone actually using one.
I think in the UK, despite the police closing ranks when threatened (I don't think we have this as bad as the US either) an officer that drew a weapon on a suspect that they had no reason to think was armed (and was only suspected of underage possession of alcohol) that officer would be subject to some sort of disciplinary action.
Every German police officer is armed when on duty. Attitudes are different, and the judicial investigation after the use of a weapon is anything but pleasant.
The us has approximately 80 times that many armed police officers. So, if they shot ~7,000 bullets a year they would arguably be showing similar levels of restraint.
Unfortunately, it takes less training to become a police officer than a kindergarten teacher in the US so we don't see the same level of restraint. IMO we would be better served by a smaller but better trained force unfortunately the federal, state, and local governments all do law enforcement and at the local level there often seen as a way to generate revenue making them 'free'.
Sorry for my typo, I've meant to write tens of thousands of police officers. Would have been funny if Germany has only ten thousands with a population of 80M people.
In 2010 there were 243k police officers in Germany. Could not find 2012 numbers.
In Northern Ireland, all Police Officers are armed. I may be wrong in this but in recent years it hasn't led to many shots being fired mistakingly and I don't think there has been any deaths.
Even still, why would a unit that polices underage drinking need firearms?
Yes there was a case in the UK local to me where one of the armed response team put a magazine on the roof of the car and accidentally drove off - I think some one found the mag the next day
He was suspended from the team immediately - the UK police do take fire arms training very seriously.
I have to admit that stories like that definitely factor into my travel decisions. From the outside, the US looks like a very scary place.
Perhaps it is all just overblown media stuff? But for the time being there are also other nice places to visit...
Keep in mind that stories like these are pretty rare and the US is a big place. Even if the police in the US were generally as good as you'd hope any police were there would still be the occasional story of someone abusing their power or making egregious mistakes just due to the sheer size of the US. That's not an excuse, it's just a reminder that you need to temper your judgment of a place that you might have formed based on stories of the most freakish and abnormal events in that place (like, say, imagining that Pakistan is full of terrorists or some such).
Additionally, for various reasons you don't hear reports of equivalent stories like this happening in, for example, Europe, though such things are not exactly significantly less common there.
Well sometimes I read forums like ar15.com where lot´s of security officers post, and also some police forums in Spain (I got some police friends and I like commenting with them about these issues).
I have noticed that in the USA the policemen´s state of mind is much more violent (more movie style) and "shoot first ask questions later" than in Europe.
I think is logical under their point of view, because of the long campaign of fear and violence that´s been playing on the media.
Also it´s true that american criminals are more likely to just draw a handgun and start a confrontation with police. Maybe this is due to the difference in prison sentence for the same crime. Here in Spain, most criminals just walk away after they spend a night in prison, and even a hard sentence for drugs or a kill will have great discounts that effectively make stays longer than 10 years in prison very rare. Also live inside jails is much more humane than in the States.
Oppose that to the third strike rule, that will put you for live in jail even if the last offense is minor.(I don´t know if this law is still active)
With over 300 million people, extreme things can happen to .0001% of the people any day, and that's still 300 people affected. 300 stories to choose from a day makes for lots of sensational news.
On average, it's not that bad. Yes, there are assholes everywhere (police and otherwise), but for the most part the stuff you read about is few and far between.
That being said, knowing the proper way to deal with people in authority positions is incredibly important. In this case, she should have asked for ID (yelling at them through the window if necessary). If they kept insisting that she roll the window down - and for some reason her car is unlike every other car out there, requiring the engine to be on, she should have tried to explain that through the window.
(Seriously, what cars require the engine to be running for the windows to roll down?)
I can't recall ever being in a car with power windows that would work with the car completely turned off (key out of the ignition). You can turn the key backward or partially forward in most cars just to engage the battery and operate the windows, but she may not have known about that.
Yep, the accessory setting (key turned on click forward) should do the trick - providing power for windows/radio etc.
Upon further consideration, I wonder if she had a push-button starter. Having never driven a key-less car before, how the heck does the accessory setting work (if at all)?
"how the heck does the accessory setting work (if at all)?"
In my wife's old Prius, tap the power switch without a foot on the brake and you get accessory mode. Tap the power switch with a foot on the brake and the car goes into run mode although its in park mode.
Confusing as hell precisely one time, especially if you're used to an automatic transmission. My regular tech car won't start unless its in park or neutral, why would I push on the brake? My left foot is already busy kicking the parking brake out... and the Prius does in fact have a parking brake for the left foot to kick out making the UI even more confusing. However it makes perfect sense to a manual transmission driver, because you always kick the parking brake out with your left foot and then hold the clutch in with left foot.
The confusing as hell part comes the first time you shut off the car and put your left foot on the parking brake to kick it out like you'd do with a normal car, and it boots up in accessory mode and won't move. WTF? Hopefully you try leaving the parking brake alone and press the regular brake before you ask for a tow.
This is all beside the point. If a bunch of crazy men in civilian clothes on a dark night waving guns rush my wife or daughter and start screaming at her, I want her to escape at all costs, run them over if necessary. Behaving like a pack of uncivilized wolves has consequences and she shouldn't feel sorry at all. Those officers should all be in jail.
It's all very well saying she should have asked for ID, but lets face it - if you were suddenly faced with a bunch of armed strangers yelling at you, would you be thinking straight? The story did say that she panicked, and I can't say I blame her.
shoot him, and then say "they thought he was drawing a weapon...as he fled".
Its worse than that. They wouldn't need to have worried about a gun to open fire. A vehicle is a deadly weapon. I think that if the agents thought the car was going to hit them, they'd be justified in shooting.
A teenager in (again) Virginia was shot and killed by an off-duty cop working as a security guard who thought he (the teen) would hit him with a car after the kid stole pancakes.
I'm honestly surprised that we don't have the Russian dashcam phenomenon in the US. If I were a black male, I would most certainly have a GoPro or something similar in my car running at all times.
As a bicyclist, I'm just about ready to purchase a GoPro for when drivers are reckless and endanger me.
I cannot wait for the day when you can purchase a small recording device like a GoPro and have it stream continuously over wifi or cell phone signals. When that happens, citizens will be able to record the aggressions of police officers (especially during riots) without any fear that the device and it's contents will mysteriously "go missing".
Not like it hasn't happen exactly like that before. There was even a video of it online. I think if more tourists knew stuff like this is happening in America, they'd stay the hell away from it.