Flying Magazine article

WDD said:
No, there are not police shootings of innocent people on a daily basis.
You have a greater chance of getting hit by lightening than being accidentally shot by police when at a stop.
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The odds are actually pretty similar, when averaged across the population:

Odds of being hit by lightning per year of living in the USA - 1 in 500,000
Odds of being unarmed and yet killed by a cop per traffic stop - 1 in 400,000

The actual personal odds will vary considerably and depend upon things like the color of your skin, social class, and whether you like to run around with an umbrella in a thunderstorm.
 
CaptainXap said:
The odds are actually pretty similar, when averaged across the population:

Odds of being hit by lightning per year of living in the USA - 1 in 500,000
Odds of being unarmed and yet killed by a cop per traffic stop - 1 in 400,000

The actual personal odds will vary considerably and depend upon things like the color of your skin, social class, and whether you like to run around with an umbrella in a thunderstorm.
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Source?

Meanwhile, in the real world...

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883
 
donjohnston said:
Last time I checked, the job of the uniformed police officer was to enforce the laws, investigate crimes, maintain the peace. When did it become the job of the police to predict and prevent people from doing stupid things?
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The job of a police officer is not to be great dealing with people who are doing everything right. Their job is to deal with people who are breaking the law, who may be under the influence and not acting predictably, who may be belligerent, confrontational, and non-compliant, and in general just doing stupid things. That is their job, and if they cannot deal with these situations they need to find another job. Its like saying someone is a great doctor as long as their patients are not sick; it is nonsensical.
 
donjohnston said:
When did it become the job of the police to predict and prevent people from doing stupid things?
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Stevea621j said:
The job of a police officer is not to be great dealing with people who are doing everything right. Their job is to deal with people who are breaking the law, who may be under the influence and not acting predictably, who may be belligerent, confrontational, and non-compliant, and in general just doing stupid things. That is their job, and if they cannot deal with these situations they need to find another job. Its like saying someone is a great doctor as long as their patients are not sick; it is nonsensical.
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What you just wrote is that they are required to predict the unpredictable? That's pretty funny.
 
donjohnston said:
What you just wrote is that they are required to predict the unpredictable? That's pretty funny.
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It's not funny, it is a reality at times for a cop and it is difficult. They won't always get it right, but it is a complete cop out to say over and over if the person would have just done everything he was supposed to do, nothing would have happened. People the police have to deal with generally are not doing everything they are supposed to do, which is why the police get involved in the first place. That doesn't give the police carte blanche to do whatever they want because someone is not recognizing their authority to the extent the cop would like.
 
rk911 said:
not in my opinion, no, you're not over reacting. none of us were there and from my experience people who either feel they were wronged or who were actually wronged tend to exaggerate what they consider to be improper/illegal/unwarranted actions of police...human nature, I guess. I think one needs to walk in their shoes to truly understand how things look to an officer during a felony stop. I have not seen the article but if this truly happened 10-years ago then I have to question Flying Magazine's motives for printing the article now.
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My guess is that their motive is to sell magazines.
 
Stevea621j said:
It's not funny, it is a reality at times for a cop and it is difficult. They won't always get it right, but it is a complete cop out to say over and over if the person would have just done everything he was supposed to do, nothing would have happened. People the police have to deal with generally are not doing everything they are supposed to do, which is why the police get involved in the first place. That doesn't give the police carte blanche to do whatever they want because someone is not recognizing their authority to the extent the cop would like.
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Did not say the job of cop is funny. In fact it's quite difficult.

What's funny is someone who doesn't understand a contradiction. What's next, someone legally doing something illegal? :D

I must have missed the post where someone said "if the person would have just done everything he was supposed to do, nothing would have happened".

Also missed the post where someone said "the police have carte blanche to do whatever they want because someone is not recognizing their authority to the extent the cop would like."
 
I read John King’s column in the September issue of Flying. Hint: Apple News+ readers can bring it up in seconds, on their device.

I agree completely with what King wrote.

I doubt if the OP is correct in guessing the editorial intent. John King has to write columns periodically, and these columns will largely be based on his many decades of piloting experience. The fact that he wrote an article about an incident 11 years ago should be no surprise, especially when nobody has fixed the problem since:

Excerpts:

“… an agency of the Drug Enforcement Administration. One of the functions of EPIC is to maintain crime databases and distribute the information to police departments. One of those databases is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, which is a database of crime information including, among many other things, stolen airplanes. “

“It appears there is no system in place to prevent this from happening repeatedly. We’ve had numerous pilots tell us they had the same thing happen to them—including a previous case with the identical airplane. The database had not been corrected ..,”
 
I think I can see a couple of sides to this. I've taken some of the same firearms training courses that some police and military units take. And I've been on the receiving end of a felony stop in Schenectady one weekend evening at about 2am. They were responding to an anonymous tip, and 25 years ago Schenectady wasn't known for its stellar police force. Even with the knowledge I had, and keeping my hands in plain sight, I knew I was one mistake away, mine or theirs, from being killed. That's a little stressful.

I really believe the problem is in training. The people taking these courses are taught that the number one goal is to get home safe each night. That's it. Not "take reasonable risks". Every setup, every situation is premised with the logic that the safe thing for the officer to do is fire. It's absolutely correct training for military personal in a combat situation. Or, for a hostage rescue unit in one of the handful of groups that can actually do such a thing. But in my view it's completely wrong for a normal policeman. And to the OP's point, if things go wrong, they don't blame the training, they blame the officer. Who's is supposed to know everything, and make a judgement in 1/10 of a second. It's unrealistic and unfair.

The other problem with the training is an overall approach of control and escalated aggression from first contact. It is perfect to setup a fight or flight response in people, if they don't pick up the cues and understand the need to take the higher ground of de-escalating themselves. It's not an appropriate response for most situations they're in.

This isn't just my opinion. I've heard the same from retired law enforcement officers here in NY, friends that I used to work with. The new guys are being set up with an us/them mentality, that just makes things worse. We're giving civilian law enforcement officers military training, and then expecting them to ignore that in the real world. When they react exactly as they've been trained, we blame the officer. I'm not talking about the clear brutality situations in this case, I'm talking about what they do when they don't know if the guy has a wallet or a gun in his hand.

A tow truck driver has a more dangerous job than a police officer, statistically. And that does NOT mean I'm anti-law enforcement in any respect. Last I knew the stats, and they could be different now, a LE officer was most likely to be killed on the job in an automobile accident. Second most likely was being shot - by another officer by accident. My point being that I believe that poor training and over-reaction to risk by the people developing those training programs and department management is to blame for much of the bad incidents. Not so much the officers. People aren't any different than they were 50 years ago. But the training is.
 
donjohnston said:
Did not say the job of cop is funny. In fact it's quite difficult.

What's funny is someone who doesn't understand a contradiction. What's next, someone legally doing something illegal? :D

I must have missed the post where someone said "if the person would have just done everything he was supposed to do, nothing would have happened".

Also missed the post where someone said "the police have carte blanche to do whatever they want because someone is not recognizing their authority to the extent the cop would like."
Click to expand...
I am not really sure why you focused so much on my saying that part of a police officers job is to learn to deal appropriately with people who may be unpredictable. To me it is obvious that they are put in unpredictable situations quite often, thus dealing with them is part of their job.

My other comments where not directed at any specific post but to what is always said in defense of police whenever situations involving police get out of control and something bad happens. Sorry for the confusion.
 
NoHeat said:
I read John King’s column in the September issue of Flying. Hint: Apple News+ readers can bring it up in seconds, on their device.

I agree completely with what King wrote.

I doubt if the OP is correct in guessing the editorial intent. John King has to write columns periodically, and these columns will largely be based on his many decades of piloting experience. The fact that he wrote an article about an incident 11 years ago should be no surprise, especially when nobody has fixed the problem since:

Excerpts:

“… an agency of the Drug Enforcement Administration. One of the functions of EPIC is to maintain crime databases and distribute the information to police departments. One of those databases is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, which is a database of crime information including, among many other things, stolen airplanes. “

“It appears there is no system in place to prevent this from happening repeatedly. We’ve had numerous pilots tell us they had the same thing happen to them—including a previous case with the identical airplane. The database had not been corrected ..,”
Click to expand...
I haven’t been able to find the article. It looks like from the excerpts you’ve posted, his complaint is the data bases. Did he complain about how the officers themselves treated him?
 
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