Just noticing: Observations Of A Blogger
Posted by Michelle Moquin on October 26th, 2014
Good morning!
A few topics to sink your teeth into, that I am just noticing.
When you can’t get the cops to help you, ladies, take matters into your own hands. Social media might be the avenue.
#1 from the Huff Po:
Woman Tweets Photo Of Alleged Groper
SEATTLE (AP) — Police say a convicted sex offender is a person of interest in a groping incident involving a Seattle woman who turned to social media when she decided a police officer didn’t seem to care enough.
Police said late Wednesday on their website that the man is currently in jail for a violation of his state Corrections Department supervision.
The Seattle Times reported that Julia Marquand photographed the alleged groper with her cellphone after the incident last Sunday and filed a police report.
She says a female officer took down details but had to be persuaded to look at the cell phone photo. So Marquand posted the man’s photo on her Twitter and Facebook accounts, saying, “This dude groped me in Seattle yesterday. Cops didn’t want the pic.”
Within a few hours, Seattle police contacted Marquand and said her case had been assigned to a detective.
Police spokesman Drew Fowler said earlier that it wasn’t the tweet itself that caused police to re-evaluate Marquand’s case, but it alerted the department to a “deficiency” in the way her case was handled.
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#2 Need protection? If you really feel the cops aren’t on your side but they are actually against you, like we have seen in so many instances lately, this one company has come up with an idea that could further help prevent police brutality. Will it work?
Also from the Huff Po:
Company Makes Gun Tech That Could Help Prevent Police Brutality
Police may soon start using electronic guns that can track how, when and where the weapons are used, which could lead to greater accountability in investigations of police shootings.
The firearms technology company Yardarm Technologies has developed a new product that can record crucial information about when, where and how police officers use their firearms. This technology could be a welcome tool amid growing criticism of heavy-handed police tactics in the U.S., which were exemplified by the controversy around the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.
Yardarm’s new system can recognize and record things such as when the weapon is unholstered, when a magazine is inserted, when the first bullet enters the chamber and when and (roughly) where the weapon is fired, company spokesman Jim Schaff told The Huffington Post. Soon, Yardarm plans to give the gun the ability to know the direction and angle of each shot, Schaff said.
Why is it important to know this information? The system can provide an objective record of an incident in which a police officer used his weapon, Schaff said, which could be helpful in an investigation. He added that it “goes both ways” — the data could also be used to exonerate an officer accused of misconduct, or to prosecute a criminal in a court of law.
“We’re there to show what happened, to make an accurate reporting of the event, so that it can be used as necessary after the fact,” Schaff said.
Earlier this month, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department and the Carrollton, Texas, Police Department began equipping some of their officers’ Glocks with the new technology, Yardarm stated in a press release Friday.
“We’re looking forward to what we believe law enforcement is heading towards,” Carrollton Police Sgt. Wes Rutherford told HuffPost. “We thought we might be interested in purchasing this in the future.”
Schaff added that the technology can be also be used to keep police officers safer. When an officer draws his weapon, for example, the gun will send an alert to the police command center and to nearby officers, alerting them to a potentially dangerous situation.
Yardarm does not manufacture an actual gun, but a two-inch long device that fits into the grip of an existing gun. That device detects the gun’s every movement through high-powered motion sensors known as accelerometers.
“It’s the same kind of sensor your iPhone uses to change the screen from vertical to horizontal when you turn the phone to the side,” Schaff said. “But ours is way more powerful.”
Currently, for the sensor to work, an officer must be carrying a smartphone. That’s because the device sends a signal through the officer’s phone and then on to Yardarm’s data servers in Washington and Texas, where the information is stored for future use.
The SENSOR can also detect, to a limited extent, where each shot is fired in relation to the shots that were previously fired. “If you fire a shot and then moved laterally ten feet and fired another, we’d know that you moved,” Schaff said. “But three feet? Maybe not.”
Rutherford noted that the sensor could be helpful in an event where an officer uses his gun on a civilian. “Whenever we investigate an officer-involved shooting, we look for every particular avenue that we can, to obtain the objective information, in order to piece together the whole puzzle of what happened,” he said. “So it could absolutely help, yes.”
One of the most recent major development in police officer accountability is the use of body-worn cameras by officers in several states across the country, a practice that has received greater attention after Brown’s killing. Studies have shown that when officers wear video cameras on their uniforms, they’re significantly less likely to use force in their interactions with civilians. Civilian complaints against officers have also been shown to drop when officers wear the cameras, suggesting that this kind of technology could save cities money by reducing litigation fees.
Dashboard cameras, which became popular in the 1990s, have also proven useful for providing an objective record of problematic encounters between civilians and police: Camera footage often helps cut through the he-said-she-said chatter that inevitably accompanies allegations of police misconduct.
But there is a welter of issues with police recording themselves on the job, includingprivacy concerns and the nation’s complicated patchwork of consent laws. Another problem is that video footage isn’t always as reliable as we think. “Sometimes there can be multiple gunshots and it will sound like one, because they cover each other up,” said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a police accountability expert.
And even though dashboard cameras have been around for years, they still aren’t used in some places in the United States. Body-worn cameras, a much newer concept, are hardly used at all, though more cities are starting to consider them.
For as long as police officers have carried guns, advocates have bemoaned the lack of data and accountability regarding police shootings. To date, there is still no official data on how many people are shot by cops in the United States every year.
Gun tracking technology like Yardarm’s would add to the amount of data available to law enforcement officers and courts about controversial officer-involved shootings. Knowing where and when each shot is fired could bring greater transparency to investigations of these episodes.
In Brown’s case, the version of events recounted by Darren Wilson, the officer who shot him, has at times been at odds with accounts from witnesses. But it’s not clear that the sequence of events would be any less hazy if Wilson had been using Yardarm’s technology.
“Cameras and sensors on weapons would represent a quantum leap forward in policing and accountability,” said Kirsten John Foy, a civil rights advocate who is also the Northeast Regional Director of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. “But technology has its limitations as well. You can’t understand a person’s intent, a person’s mindset, or the circumstances which that officer felt made it necessary to use deadly force. It won’t record those things.”
“So I think we have to be mindful that policing is not just a science, it’s also an art form,” he added. “And there are other factors that have to be taken into account.”
This isn’t the first time Yardarm Technologies has attempted to develop a firearm to help address public safety issues. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Yardarm set out to create a consumer “smart gun” that could be remotely disabled using an app. But the company abandoned that plan when it realized how politically controversial the idea was. Compared to the consumer market, Yardarm encountered much less resistance marketing its technologies to law enforcement, Schaff told HuffPost earlier this year.
CORRECTION: This article originally suggested that Yardarm manufactures its own firearm. Rather it makes a small sensor that fits into an existing gun.
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#3 This one is shocking and sickening, but no surprise considering what has been heavily in the news lately.
From Think Progress.
Report: Black Male Teens Are 21 Times More Likely To Be Killed By Cops Than White Ones
Lesley McSpadden, right, the mother of 18-year-old Michael Brown, watches as Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., holds up a family picture of himself, his son, top left in photo, and a young child during a news conference Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo, on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014.
CREDIT: AP PHOTO / JEFF ROBERSON
There’s a lot we don’t know about how many people have actually been killed at police hands in the United States, thanks to woefully inadequate transparency and federal record-keeping. But there’s one thing we do now know: Among those we do know were shot by police, black teens were 21 times more likely to be shot deadthan their white counterparts.
“The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police,” a new ProPublica report explains, noting that if whites were killed at the same ratio there would have been another 185 white deaths, just during that three-year period, just of those in that narrow age range.
To arrive at this statistic, ProPublica analyzed the list of 12,000 police shooting deaths that were self-reported by agencies to the Federal Bureau of Investigation between 1980 and 2012. Because this data is self-reported and departments are not required to submit information, this data likely significantly undercounts the number of shootings. Florida departments, for example, haven’t submitted data since 1997 and New York City hasn’t submitted data since 2007. And the FBI asks only for “justifiable homicide”figures, meaning in those instances where the shootings are most overtly viewed as unjustified or the litigation is ongoing, departments are less likely to report.
Still, assessing available data may provide the best insight we have into how grave racial disparities in police violence are, particularly when it comes to young black men, who were stopped by NYPD officers in 2011 more times than the total number of young black men in New York City. Unsurprisingly, past analyses have also found disproportionate violence against blacks, including a 2007 investigation by Colorlines and the Chicago Reporter in 10 major cities. An NAACP report of Oakland, California, found that 37 of 45 police-involved shootings were of blacks, while zero were of whites. “Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, the NAACP found, no officers were charged,” Mother Jones reported.
Studies of human and police behavior suggest that racial bias is baked into policing, particularly because individuals misperceive the threat posed by African Americans. Nonetheless, a 2012 poll after the George Zimmerman verdict found that that the gap between whites and blacks who think the justice system is biased was greater than ever.
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Readers: Notice a common thread here? Choose one to chat about or all three. Your call. Blog me.
Happy Sunday everyone! Go Giants!
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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October 26th, 2014 at 11:35 am
I have some frightening news which begins in the Middle East and will spread to the entire world, concerning the intentional use of the Ebola virus as a weapon of war — first to Israel and eventually the entire world.
How is this going to happen? . . . Simple.
There are some 30 men in Arab sleeper groups who are posing as Jewish Israeli citizens and are presently supposed to be vacationing in the United States . . . But are really in Syria and Iraq working for ISIS.
They intend on being given the Ebola Virus and returning to Israel because they have citizenship there. Then they will allow the virus to incubate in their bodies and return to their jobs as food handlers, such as cooks so they can spread their deadly virus from a few to the many via eating in restaurants.
It is so low tech that it will kill many before it is even detected as a plot to destroy Israel by getting as many innocent people sick with the Ebola virus as possible and spreading it to their friends and families.
Eventually this plague will spread to other countries from people traveling to and from Israel to many other countries until it kills off millions.
This goes out as a warning to the Israeli government. Keep your eyes and ears open to people who have left the country to vacation in America but have not been there at all in reality. These sleepers have been Israeli citizens for a long time and can come and go undetected so it is especially difficult to catch them, however if anyone is even a little suspicious then all that you can do is keep them in quarantine until they either become sick or nothing happens. Then you will know who your spies are.
These men do not need to strap on a vest with explosives in order to kill — they just need to come in contact with people and food to spread a deadly disease to a population and cause devastation.
It sickens me to have heard about this plot. I know that we humans are not capable of containing a disease within the borders of one country. It will break through barriers just as AIDS did in the early 1980’s. It was meant to kill Black men in Western Africa and Gay men in the U.S. but spread to the entire population.
How do you feel about this comment? I really would appreciate some feedback from readers.
HOWIE
October 26th, 2014 at 12:16 pm
Howie, this will also affect the people on the West Bank and Gaza. I hope the Plo and Hamas thinks twice before they implement something that could kill more of their people than jews.
October 26th, 2014 at 12:18 pm
A camera gun will never take off. Cops would not have the excuses they need to kill OTWs with impunity.
October 26th, 2014 at 12:19 pm
I live in Israel this is too scary. I hope those in charge are paying attention.
October 26th, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Howie, I can’t believe the lows people will go to. This is one of the lowest. Risking world pollution to attack Israel is just plain mad.
October 26th, 2014 at 12:28 pm
Howie, has the world gone crazy? Let’s hope Israel is listening.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:02 pm
Howie, this is interesting because two new companies are now selling genetic babies. You can go to companies like Genesis Genetics and Genepeeks. They can custom design your child to give it the height, color of eyes, hair, brain aptitude and just about any other trait the customer wants to give their child.
You start with a digital baby to select the genetic traits you want your baby to have. Then you and your spouse contribute a sperm and an egg. Both the sperm and the egg have their DNA manipulated and enhanced to design the type of child the couple wants.
Check out Genepeeks patent. It is scary.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:35 pm
This is becoming one fucking scary world Howie. Someone should nuke those bastards.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:40 pm
Young black drivers should have signs on their cars saying ..I have a video camera. I record all stops by police officers.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:41 pm
Maybe black male teens should behave better..
October 26th, 2014 at 11:41 pm
maybe because the black teens dont listen like white teens, or perhaps the black teens are carrying weapons or do something to provoke a scary life threatening situation ? I dunno.. It isnt a racist issue. Of course no paper or news article would say that. it would be too politically incorrect
October 26th, 2014 at 11:42 pm
Maybe niggers should quit doing stuff that will get them shot.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:42 pm
I suggest less thug culture.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:46 pm
Who cares if the nigs didn’t do what they were stopped for they did something else.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:47 pm
Niggers and jews the plague of this planet.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:48 pm
I left out bitches. Women need to controlled or they will pollute the planet with lust.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:52 pm
To paraphrase Mike “Huckster” Huckabee.
The police believe that young black male American Citizens need to be “forced at gunpoint” to act white.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:53 pm
Not statistically representative of the country as a whole. The report says,”The data, for instance, is (sic) terribly incomplete. Vast numbers of the country’s 17,000 police departments don’t file fatal police shooting reports at all, and many have filed reports for some years but not others. …. Still, lots of the reporting police departments are in larger cities, and at least 1000 police departments filed a report or reports over the 33 years.” Looks like you got a huge big city police department problem — cities run almost exclusively by Democrats. Clean house baby.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:56 pm
My own nightclub witnessed some pretty good examples of how Blacks are treated differently than Whites. My nightclub is in a largely Black or mixed race area of Northeast Portland, OR, and I used to hire an all Black work crew, with the exception my girlfriend, one bartender and myself who were Jews, and on nights where I would feature R&B music or Hip Hop acts, all night long you would see city inspectors, fire department, police, police gang enforcement units, county inspectors, Oregon Liquor Control officers who would do walk throughs or other harassment all night long. But, then when I’d have most White rock shows, then not a single one of these officers or agents show up all night. In a supposedly liberal city like Portland, race based politics is very much alive and government at all levels seems to equate skin color to gang ties even if it’s some 70 year old men coming in the club for a New Years event. It’s paranoid and nonsensical. – So we switched venues back to a strip club, which has actually cut government harassment significantly.
Police and government are so conservative and out of step with culture, that you play almost any popular song by a Black artist in the club, and they are convinced that you’re pandering to hoodlums. Heck, a lot of White artists like Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke and Britney Spears are heavily influenced by Hip Hop, but none of their music is any more a gang attraction than playing Sammy Davis, Jr. – Last night the DJ even played a few country songs. – That’s got to be like kryptonite for gang members?
Last night some city inspectors stopped by again, once again bringing up the nonsense that the club used to be a gang member hangout and even claiming that some local steakhouse was now a gang hangout. – Yeah, ever since they put in that salad bar, the Bloods and Crips were drawn to that like a magnet. Right…
With this sort of mentality in the minds of law enforcement, they are too quick to assume that all Blacks are gang members, or are carrying a weapon. – This only sets many Blacks up to be a victim of police gunfire at a hair’s trigger, for even very minor things, such as a routine traffic stop or even “driving while Black”.
October 27th, 2014 at 12:00 am
Freeman#18, Ah that’s it. It’s just an “unhappy coincidence” I suppose.
I almost didn’t recognize you without your sheets on.
October 27th, 2014 at 12:04 am
Freeman#18, .that would be free of rational thought. Why don’t you reach in your back pocket and scratch your brains!
October 27th, 2014 at 6:06 am
Frank 15 & 16. I beg to differ. seems to me YOU and your ilk are the plague of humanity (and being just plain humane likely doesn’t occur to you either).
But …
oh yes. thanks SO much for offering up CONTROL over me (& all women) bc we really need that (NOT) I think you’re angry that our lustiness doesn’t include the likes of men like you, most women (I hope) have radar for repellant individuals.
- ZL
October 27th, 2014 at 8:53 am
Frank #15, You certainly are a repellant individual. Zen Lill has you pegged.
As a Jew, I must scold you for your stupidity.
HOWIE