MigL

You remind me of another member we had a few years back, who continuously bragged about his stock portfolio. He crashed and burned very quickly. Are you really participating/contributing in the discussion if you post cryptic comments, then refuse to clarify when politely asked ?

It's a good thing most of us ignore your 'generally disagreeable' position, because it's as clear as mud.

There is a certain simplistic truth to that statement. ( I did not downvote ) We all make choices based on our own priorities, and should be responsible for those choices. The OP seems to believe a 'chemical imbalance' absolves the perpetrator of a crime from responsibility. As an example, drunkenness is a temporary 'chemical imbalance' which affects judgement; are we going to absolve drunk drivers who kill others of responsibility ? I don't think anyone here would support that. Even if you propose that the driver had previously made the choice to drink and drive, the counterargument is that alcoholism is a recognised disease, so he/she is still not responsible for their actions. So where do you draw the line of accountability ? Society has no choice but to consider most to have free will and to be responsible for their actions. So, if you choose to steal ( and possibly hurt others in the process ), instead of making do with what you have, asking for government assistance, or even begging, because you are hungry ( or greedy ), you have made your choice, and are held accountable by society.

Simply astounding, how insignificant we are.

Mae West would have been impressed. She said ... "Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me ?" You have a whole universe in yours !

Grown men don't play with dolls, Endi. Picture your typical simulation of an expanding universe, a balloon with dots on it. As you pump air into the balloon, it gets bigger and the dots separate just like galaxies do. There is no center to the surface of the balloon, no matter if finite or infinite. For eternal inflation, picture multiple 'aneurysms' on the surface of this balloon; areas where a smaller sphere starts expanding on the surface of the original balloon. In real space-time these new 'aneurysms' would be separated from the original by an event horizon, but in our balloon analogy they are still connected so that air can be pumped in. As the 'aneurysms' expand, any dots you draw on them will again start to separate like galaxies do, and again, there is no center to the surface of the 'aneurysm', whether finite or infinite. Actually eternal inflation can have 'aneurysms' on top of 'aneurysms' on top of the original balloon, but space- time is only represented by the surface of the balloons/aneurysms in this analogy.

Many Worlds is an interpretation of what the mathematics tell us, into 'understandable' concepts. All interpretations are equally valid, whether it be Many Worlds, Copenhagen, or others, but only the mathematics are true. There is a difference.

OK, I'll re-phrase. In every other normal, or sane, country in the world, if you are carrying a weapon, you intend to do harm to others ( or yourself ). In the US, where you are Constitutionally enabled to carry military assault weapons into grocery stores, banks, or even churches, I guess that rule doesn't apply. And you defend that right, making a police officer's choice either getting harmed ( or shot at ) while 'talking', or shooting first, asking questions later, and possibly going to jail for having made the wrong choice. Policing in the US is becoming untenable; I'm surprised you can find people who want to do the job. ( and possibly a reason why you get people like D Chauvin ) Carry-on, I'm going back to vacationing ...

I'm on vacation but I had to respond... If they have a bat, knife, gun, any other weapon that can be used against you ( vehicles are sometimes also used ), or if they try to take the police officer's weapon away from him, they have made their choice, they intend to hurt someone. That is the definition of violent offender. You go ahead and talk to them first, Dim; me, I will put my safety, and that of those I care about, first. If you don't intend to do violence you should not have a weapon !

Welcome all. Roaming the British countryside on a horse sounds fantastic, ChockHazeNut.

Neither did anyone else . Maybe expand on your ideas a bit more ? It has been established for the current situation ( which is not satisfactory ). As the correct approach hasn't been established yet, chances are good that more money will be required.

I don't even have a better half... Just my own worse half.

Those people should be screened out in the hiring/training process, or if their behavior is predisposed to violence, the unions shouldn't be allowed to keep them on the force, where they can repeat violent incidents. Daniel Larusso would say Cobra Kai is one such school .

Were you adopted ?

As with everything else you see on YouTube, be prepared to do some research on your own ( in good old fashioned books ), to separate the wheat from the chaff, AND the 'made-up'.

Speak for yourself, criminal .

Have none of you guys ever been out at 3 or 4 in the morning, when bars let out, and belligerent drunks are looking to do property damage, start a fight, or get in their vehicle and drive off kill some unsuspecting pedestrian or another driver ? Are you saying cops shouldn't stop these people because they are 'citizens with rights in a free society' ? I'm fairly certain you cannot reason with those kinds of drunks until they've had a chance to sober up; but what would you suggest be done, INow, let them go on their way, or try to detain them ? If you think they should be detained, then you have to provide cops with the means necessary to do so. If they fight back should the cop let himself be beat up, or should he try to incapacitate him with a choke hold, or other aspects of his training ? If they try to wrestle his taser or gun away from him ( yes, I've seen that, in Niagara Falls, NY ) should the cop let him go with a weapon, or should he stop him by any means necessary ? If on the other hand, you think the cop should just back off, and let them do as they please, I'm not sure I wanna live in your "free society, where citizens have rights' but obviously no responsibility. ( Note that I ask a lot of questions as I'm genuinely interested in your answers ) That seems to be a major problem, and I attribute it to the prevalent gun culture in the US. No cop wants to get shot, so even traffic stops are conducted with their guns drawn ( yes, I've seen that too, in Buffalo, NY). It's gotten so that even when someone wants to commit 'suicide by cop', the cops oblige him and shoot him, when he actually needed to be talked to ( or more exactly, listened to ) The lack of training that I note, is the inability of American cops to do a proper threat assessment when doing their job; as Dim rightly notes, violence is sometimes warranted, but it should not be the first recourse every time. That is the kind of training that I would like to see money spent on. But I don't think it's a 5 hour refresher per year, or even a few months per year; the US needs to get serious about police training. I would also point out that Canadian police I'm familiar with, Niagara Regional and Ontario Provincial, are two of the best paid police forces in Canada, as a result they are exclusive and hard to get into; a simple College diploma will not suffice any more, almost all new recruits of the last 30 years have University degrees along with their Police Foundations College diploma. That Nordic model that Eise suggested sounds interesting ( and very applicable ).

It seems that Seattle's 'CHOP' zone is to be dismantled. https://6abc.com/seattle-will-de-escalate-and-dismantle-chop-autonomous-zone-mayor-/6261518/ Apparently, after one homicide, two other shootings, reports of assaults, robberies, rapes and multiple cases of arson, it was decided that society, in general, is just like cops; some idiots spoil it for everybody. Or should we assume that there is a systemic problem with 'utopia'. ( yeah, I'm being a little inflammatory; I enjoyed this thread, and want to get it re-started )

You will kindly notice that I stated some of the more obvious/simplistic causes of black violence in my post. And quite a few of those are due to/caused by systemic racism. But those are circumstances, and don't change the definition of 'crime'.

And that very same data that you've shared is skewed by the system currently in place. I notice you cite traffic stops and drug possession, where Black Americans are way over represented. And you are right, they certainly are targeted more and receive stiffer penalties for simple possession. But what about more serious crimes, like shootings ? One could easily blame it on peer pressure ( gangs ) of growing up ( 72 % of the time ) fatherless, with a mother who has to work two jobs to make ends meet, living in a depressed neighborhood, with no future. But that doesn't make black on black violence any less of a crime ( although I've never heard of a black mass murderer )

Just to be fair, INow, what you say above is certainly true, and I agree with it. What you said earlier "Blacks make up only 13% of the population, yet they are 25% of police killings, and worse still comprise 38% of those in prison, and all despite committing crimes at the same (or lower!) rate as their white peers. is not necessarily true. It relies on the assumption that a specific percentage of any group will commit crimes, and therefore the percentage of that group in the general population should be reflected by incarceration rates. One might as well ask why women, who make up slightly more than 50% of American society are not incarcerated more ( they are at about 10% incarceration ). I don't want to imply that Black Americans commit more crime, because quite frankly, I don't know ( crime statistics are also skewed by the system against blacks ); But you also cannot say they commit an equal, lesser, orgreater percentage than their white peers.

Sorry if I was short with you, Zap. A 'strawman' is creating an extreme version of the opposing argument and the proceeding to attack that extreme version. While I did cite some extreme versions, I attacked generalizations about groups of people, which is what I perceived CharonY's post to be doing. So you can call it a 'whole field of hay' for all I care, sometimes 'stretching' an opinion helps demonstrate the faults with that opinion.

The issue that I see with this thread is that I'm proposing actual implementable changes. To the Police Unions and Hiring/training practices, for example. Then we start to work on the DAs who bring up unfair charges on minorities. Saying the problem is systemic ( your meaning CY ) means the whole justice system ( and more ) needs to change, from cops, all the way to the Supreme Court. And we both know that's not going to happen; so nothing will change. The higher up you go in the justice system, the more political it is. And with your polarized two party system, who would even propose such a change, and hope to get re-elected ? Myself, I don't see the point of self-flagellation, and saying "It's all whitey's or the system's fault, and not trying to do something about it. People are dying needlessly, and all I'm hearing is blaming, but no solutions.

I see you picked up a trick from Swansont. I most certainly don't think that, and you don't have reading comprehension problems. I'm sorry CharonY, I can't agree. the word 'systemic', means system wide, as in 'everyone in the system'. But even using your meaning, I can't bring myself to believe that a person who is NOT racist, can become a racist from system and peer pressure. ( I can see the process going the other way; a racist becoming more tolerant through education ) Only a person who is already racist/white supremacist/a*shole will be influenced to become even more racist. I stand by my assertion that you guys need to do a better job of hiring only GOOD cops.

So ALL cops are guilty of this "disdain for certain groups", not just the ones who are racist, white supremacist, or just a*sholes. And 'screening' those out would make no difference whatsoever. That's almost like the systemic laziness of Mexicans. Or the systemic Mafia association of Italians. Or the systemic irresponsibility of Black American fathers. There is a word for those who generalize about groups of people. The word is 'notmakingavalidargument'. ( what did you think I was gonna say ? )