Bharat Rakshak

UlanBatori wrote:Back in 1961, an elephant got a bit mad and decided to get some exercise in the narrow streets of downtown Ulan Bataar, Kerala. Rather large target, mind u, other points of comparison ignored. The Kerala Polis were heroic then as now, and well-prepared. Since the elephant's trajectory was predictable, they brilliantly predicted it, cleared the streets, formed an Ambush Box, and had their 0.303s at the ready.

COMPANEEE!!! AIM FOR THE LEGS, ONLEEEEE THE LEGS!

was the order.

They waited until they saw the white of the tusker's tusks, calmly raised their 0.303s to their shoulders, and fired. 20 bullets. ONE hit the elephant. In the middle of the forehead. Finis.
.

But any way here is the conflicting description:
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7287443/d ... nson-story

Overall, three basic cultures are regularly exposed in the papers in Khanland - Gun culture, Rape Culture and Drug culture. Oh! well!!

One down, many more to go

At least three shooting attacks on downtown Austin buildings ended early Friday morning after a mounted patrol officer confronted the suspected shooter, police said.

Shortly after 2:30 a.m., Sgt. Adam Johnson, a 15-year veteran with the Austin Police Department, was corralling two horses after his night shift when he saw a man firing multiple rounds at the police headquarters building and managed to return fire, police said.

“For a guy to keep his composure and holding two horses with one hand and taking a one-hand shot with the other hand, it says a lot about the training and professionalism of our police department,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said.

The suspected gunman was later pronounced dead but police said investigators and the medical examiner’s office are still working to determine whether a shot fired by Johnson or by the gunman himself caused his death.

Johnson had been placed on administrative leave, which is standard police protocol during officer-involved shootings.

Johnson has been leading the 12-member mounted patrol unit, which focuses primarily on keeping Sixth Street and the Warehouse district safe at night.

The mounted patrol unit was one of several police units that responded during the Halloween floods in 2013. Johnson and the other unit members helped find lost horses along Onion Creek.

Shreeman wrote:Re. Dilli or Mumbai pandus, in most cases the cane (which often causes blunt force injuries) is a savior.

Everyone with power, any kind of power, is a dictator in their own little kingdom.

Do note that Wilson is on TV, in lawyered up language, hours after the jury verdict. This is not the behavior of a responsible person. The gentleman was not carrying a tazer by choice. He had a chance to disengage when Brown tried to run away, but chose to get out and shoot him. Then he went to the station, washed his hands, made sure no fingerprints, pictures or recordings were made, and then hid.

Cain Marko wrote:Not to belabor the point Karan, but what you are missing is perspective. While it might not be easy for many to see, a bunch of the ills we see in india today are directly due to the colonial legacy. And every time we blame Macaulay or Muller, we are not providing excuses but looking at things in a relevant context.

The way the police is trained to handle situations requires deeper thought. US culture, including police procedures, is a product of its history, and the relevant episode here is especially traumatic. One can't just wish it away. Under the circumstances, I think it is fair to question the official line.

Are we absolutely sure that the dead man actually assaulted the cop ? And that too in such a fashion that the officer was scared for his life? Do images show what should be truly drastic damage to the officer's face? Keep in mind, hulk Hogan would pretty much pulverize a five year old. And then, having just beaten the officer within an inch of his life, said demon decides to run away. Wonders don't end here, now the quaking officer of the law who has just had a brush with the grim reaper, suddenly finds his courage, and gives chase. In another twist, dead man who presumably ran away out of fear, now has a change of heart and turns around, simply because he decides it is a better idea to run towards the gun toting officer instead of away from him. It doesn't end here, crime scene images are supposedly missing because professional photoman has sudden case of dead batteries and carries no spares. Off course, jn an age of smart phones and ubiquitous cameras, nothing is available. Then the dead man stays unattended for a few hours. The list of wonders goes on....

Again, this is.not to.condone thuggery or rioting, but to look at deeper factors. and unless this is done, I doubt the situation is going to change. Afterall, the punishment for robbing an unfortunate desi is not death so what is the point in bringing up dead mans aggressive nature. Surely, his criminal behavior in the convenience store does not constitute proof that he was aggressive with the officer?

The report found that across the entire country, only 76 LEOs were killed in “line-of-duty” incidents. 27 died as a result of “felonious” acts and 49 officers died in accidents–namely, automobile (ironically, of the 23 killed in car accidents, 14 were not wearing seat belts–a violation for which cops routinely ticket drivers). More officers die from accidents than actual murders on the job. The report also outright admits that intentional murders of cops were down from 2004 and 2009.

27 police officers in a country with over 300 million people died last year. Law enforcement deaths-by-murder are included in the 49,851 “assaults” against officers, which means that .05 (half a percent) died as a result of alleged attacks. Crime against cops has dropped to a 50 year low. It’s more dangerous to drive a car than be a cop (this is bolstered by the fact that the number of cops who died in car accidents almost equals the total number of cops murdered–23 to 27).

A grand jury’s exoneration of Darren Wilson, the white police officer who on August 9 shot dead an unarmed teenager on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, sent shock waves across the United States this week. The fact that 18-year-old Michael Brown died violently on the streets of the quiet St. Louis suburb and no one will be held accountable for his death has left Americans of all colours once again searching their souls for answers. Some of them made their anger known to the world. Thousands took to the streets across major cities, braving the likelihood of yet another heavy-handed crackdown by the police and the National Guard. In Ferguson, the rage spilled over and took an ugly turn as gunfire erupted across the night, dozens of buildings and police cars were set ablaze, and looters had a free run in parts of the city. President Barack Obama reiterated his muted call for calm on all sides, but had clearly not sensed the mood of collective anguish that was engulfing the African-American community, or did not wish to confront the questions that they were asking: why had a behind-closed-doors grand jury that was 75 per cent white decided that there was no probable cause to take the case to trial? Why was police officers’ use of deadly force, especially against minorities, considered an acceptable practice?

The Brown-Wilson case holds up a mirror unto the troubling state of race relations in America. First, it is only the latest in a long list of flashpoints triggered by law enforcement brutality towards unarmed African-Americans, including the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin (17) and the videotaped 1991 beating of Rodney King, both cases in which the accused officers were acquitted. Second, it shows how public prosecutors or other government officials may manoeuvre juridical proceedings in a manner that renders a plaintiff victory effectively impossible. Since the verdict was announced, the St. Louis County Prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, has come under fire for his decision to use a grand jury in this highly sensitive case, thus precluding a transparent and exhaustive trial involving detailed cross-examination. Third, the imprint of the racist stereotyping of African-Americans amongst police officers, which was arguably evident in the testimony of Mr. Wilson, has a wider echo in terms of relatively higher incarceration rates. The searing racism in the U.S. has often made it an uncomfortable place for minorities, as it was for Muslims, Sikhs and even Hindus in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. African-Americans of all backgrounds, however, face a daily, ongoing threat to their lives and security, given the toxic mix of historical prejudice and law enforcement’s gun culture.

The Ferguson episode shows how nothing has changed for the African-American community since Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation into law in 1863

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty — Thomas Jefferson

Each year incidents of violence against African-Americans sear the national conscience in the U.S.; yet in most cases there is little accountability for the crime, fragile hope for a fair review within the judicial system and an infinitesimal chance that justice will be served.

When an unarmed 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown was shot no fewer than six times by a white police officer Darren Wilson on August 9 on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, his death was a poignant reminder that nothing fundamental has changed for this community in the 151 years since Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation into law.

When Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called out 2,200 members of the National Guard and declared an emergency in his state ahead of a ruling in the case this month, it was an eloquent statement on the atmosphere of suspicion and repression that has engulfed parts of the U.S.

America’s intractable “race problem,” which has shown no sign of withering under the nation’s first-ever African-American President, Barack Obama, is rooted in multidimensional prejudice, which taints not only the various institutions of law enforcement but also seeps through broader socio-cultural mores.

Brown’s case exemplifies all that is wrong with this state of hate. In the immediate aftermath of his killing, peaceful protesters in Ferguson, comprising African-Americans, whites, and other ethnicities, were greeted with a fierce crackdown by police armed with military-grade weapons.

Despite President Obama’s appeal for calm, tensions escalated as the police began strong-arming and arresting protesters and mediapersons in Ferguson. Already bitter from experiencing police intimidation and the use of tear gas against them, protestors and those seeking justice for Brown had to wait for more than three months for his legal case to make its way through the justice system.

Grand jury’s verdict

On November 24, a grand jury effectively exonerated Mr. Wilson of any wrongdoing by refusing to indict him for the shooting and thus blocking the case from proceeding to a trial jury. The very use of a grand jury in such a sensitive case begs interrogation.

Grand juries in the U.S. are in some senses an anachronism of medieval English law, wherein a coterie of “informed citizens” would aid the king and his administration in sifting through rumours and common knowledge about an alleged crime, before a formal verdict was reached and punishment meted out.

While the functioning of modern-day grand juries in this country has some similarities to its transatlantic antecedent, U.S. law does not permit criminal prosecutions to be brought by private individuals for the most part, unlike in medieval England, and grand juries serve in an environment of prosecutorial guidance or discretion.

This means that in a majority of cases the public prosecutor calls up a grand jury when he is actively seeking to prosecute, and once he does so, the prosecutor has a free hand to present his side of the arguments and urge the grand jury to produce an indictment so long as they find probable cause.

In a case of relevance to India the indictment and re-indictment of Devyani Khobragade, former Indian Deputy Consul General who was arrested in New York in December 2013 on visa fraud charges, was by a grand jury which, upon receiving arguments and evidence from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, found probable cause in the prosecutor’s case.

It is in this context that a former judge famously said that prosecutors could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich,” a likely reflection of official figures suggesting that of the 1,62,000 federal cases prosecuted by U.S. attorneys in 2010, all but 11 resulted in an indictment by the grand jury.

What went wrong here?

One “catch” with the mechanism of grand juries, and a reason why incensed protestors in Ferguson and across the nation have taken to the streets, is that grand juries do not hear the full extent of evidence that trial jurors would, and neither is there an established precedent for cross-examination.

While it may be true that in the Darren Wilson case the 12 members of the grand jury heard 70 hours of testimony, the hearings were held in secret and even the public release of reams of evidence presented to the grand jury was not tantamount to a public trial.

Racial composition

The second, disturbing aspect of the grand jury was its racial composition — of the 12 jurors “selected at random from a fair cross-section of the citizens,” according to Missouri law, 75 per cent were white. Although St. Louis County’s overall population is 70 per cent white, nearly two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are African-American.

Whatever the intentions of Mr. McCulloch in taking the case before a grand jury in this manner, even if it was to create a sense of public legitimacy or deflect blame away from himself for the outcome, his decision to not exercise prosecutorial discretion and allow a fuller examination of evidence and testimony is one more nail in the coffin of fair trials for a much-trampled community.

If the country’s juridical proceedings can thus be manipulated to undercut minority communities seeking justice, then a quiet undercurrent of racist stereotyping in the wider society perpetuates the notion that these communities are legitimate, even deserving, targets of malign official power.

Some of the stereotypes that haunt African-Americans can be gleaned from Mr. Wilson’s testimony, in which he said that Brown’s face looked “like a demon,” and that while the two scuffled in the officer’s car Mr. Wilson felt “like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.”

Finally the Ferguson episode highlights a devastating, constitutionally protected, disease of the U.S. — gun proliferation, and the use of deadly force by law enforcement, particularly in incidents involving minorities.

In this regard, it carries echoes of the racially charged 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin (17) by an abuse-hurling George Zimmerman, the gun-toting “neighbourhood watch” officer who, similar to Mr. Wilson, went on to get acquitted by a jury on the charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

That episode appeared to test the practised neutrality of Mr. Obama who said at the time, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” You may not have a son, Mr. President, but the nation is your ward, and you have failed to speak up for core values that you’d want all Americans to have.

Multatuli wrote:Some rapper made a song about endemic police brutality (I kind of like it, the song not the brutality shown).

[*] From Harvard to Texas A&M to Stanford, college students nationwide have walked out of classes or staged "die-ins" to decry police violence and racial profiling.
..
[*] up to 50,000 additional body-worn cameras for law enforcement agencies," Obama said.
..
[*]In the first leg of his national dialogue, Attorney General Eric Holder met with community members at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church -- where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
Holder's speech was interrupted by a group of protesters chanting, "No justice, no peace" and "We have nothing to lose but our chains."
..

LokeshC wrote:^^^ What are you talking about? He is a big black scary man and a leech who lived off of social security and unemployment pension. If they had not jumped on him, he would have whipped out his phantom black weapon: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/12/0 ... o-weapons/

/posted in the spirit of this thread... i.e. sarc

saip wrote:

LokeshC wrote:^^^ What are you talking about? He is a big black scary man and a leech who lived off of social security and unemployment pension. If they had not jumped on him, he would have whipped out his phantom black weapon: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/12/0 ... o-weapons/

/posted in the spirit of this thread... i.e. sarc

Add to that, in 43 years of his life, he was arrested 31 times!

That should make a true ogre!

krishnan wrote:wow why is no one highlighting that fact

LokeshC wrote:^^ Most of them have PTSD, and grow up in houses with poor stability (both are correlated). They will be unable to provide for their next generation and the cycle continues, right from the days of slavery era to jim crow era to current day post-modern latent-racism era.

Many have just given up on society and dont even know of many of the avenues they can avail of. Inner city US is a clusterf****. These guys are poor, they cannot pay taxes, the school district get de-funded because of low tax revenue, quality of education falls, resulting in the next generation of poor with no scope of upward mobility.

Try to compare that with India and her policies. There is really no comparison here.

Abhijit wrote:LokeshC, how was the grand jury rigged in this case? And what do you mean by 'file charges first' and then convene a grand jury from some other state? Yesterday, based on the outpouring of sympathy that I saw on the BR for MB, I shot from the hip in my discussions on another board. Then I started reading the transcripts of the GJ proceedings. There is no reason to believe that the GJ was rigged in any way. Thousands of questions were asked and the witnesses were properly grilled. The GJ has a much much lower bar for indictment - any other GJ would probably return the same verdict. and the actual trial would have a much higher bar for conviction.

BTW, your assertion that Mexicans have a huge support system in the form of Mexico is completely nonsensical. Every Mexican laborer in US send money to Mexico, not the other way around. In what way is Mexico a support system for the latinos?

rajsunder wrote:
u forgot the important thing where in males behavevious is more of a "Fck and forget". And in the end most of these wanabe thugs end up growing up in a single parent home(close to 80% of them)

Report alleges at least three female officers were taped at various times over the period of a year
Victoria Richards
Friday 05 December 2014

A criminal investigation has been launched following allegations that at least three female officers were secretly filmed showering and changing aboard a US Navy submarine.

The incidents are alleged to have taken place on ballistic missile submarine the USS Wyoming, which is based in Kings Bay, Georgia, over a period of a year.

US Navy officials have confirmed that no one has been taken into custody, but a report filed last month alleges that the recordings may have been distributed to other crew members.

The report also claims that the recordings took place in the boat's unisex bathrooms.

According to CNN, Navy Vice Adm. M.J. Connor stated in a letter that "an investigation is in progress." He said that the women affected were receiving assistance and that the alleged perpetrators had been removed from the ship pending the results of the probe.

"Incidents that violate the trust of our sailors go against every core value we hold sacred in our naval service," he wrote. "We go to war together with the confidence that we can rely on each other in ALL circumstances, and incidents of sailors victimizing other sailors represent an extreme breach of that trust!"

Women were first deemed eligible to serve on submarines in December 2011, and the USS Wyoming - which holds 135 people - was one of the first to host female officers. Mr Connor wrote that integration had made the US Navy "unequivocally... a better force". Women are expected to be integrated on fast-attack submarines for the first time in January, when female officers will be assigned to the USS Virginia and USS Minnesota.

Read more:
• US Navy deploys first ever laser gun against drones
• US sailors attacked by protesters in Turkey

Service spokeswoman Lt. Leslie Hubbell confirmed in a statement that the US Navy was aware of allegations of alleged criminal activity and was investigating. "If the allegations prove to be factual, the Navy will ensure individuals involved are held accountable for their actions," she added.

It comes as the number of reported sexual assaults in the US military rose by eight per cent this year to 5,983.

"Given the under-reported nature of sexual assault, the department believes this increase in reporting is likely due to greater victim confidence in the response system," the report said.

While the total number of overall troops who said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact fell - from 26,000 two years ago, to 19,000 in 2014 - almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of those who reported sexual assault admitted they had faced retaliation.

Of those 19,000 people, around 10,500 were men and 8,500 women, according to the anonymous survey conducted by the Pentagon.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said a three-year crackdown on sexual assault was showing "real progress" but there was still "a long way to go".

He said that the issue of retaliation should be tackled "head on", adding: "When someone reports a sexual assault, they need to be embraced and helped, not ostracised or punished with retribution.''