Here we go again, another school shooting.

[Troy]

Meanwhile one dead and three wounded at Tennessee State University campus shooting during a dice game.

But, along with some of the "reports" that I mentioned before, this is different than the typical "school shooting" because it wasn't some mass murderer guy who feels that the world hates him so he plans for months to take out a pile of people with as many guns as he can carry. In my opinion, these discussions always get derailed - which does nothing to further the discussion or solve a problem. If Billy Bob and his brother are hunting squirrels in the woods behind the local high school on a Sunday and Billy Bob gets a .22 hole in his calf because his brother tripped with his finger on the trigger is it a "school shooting"? Yes, according to the CDC data. Will that information help stop what is commonly referred to as a "school shooting" in the future? Not one iota.

Troy

[skip68]

Yep.  Two completely different kind of shootings.   These school massacres (which is what they are) are being lessened and muddied down to just gun violence every time they start talking gun control or bringing up random normal gun violence.   A drug deal going bad on school grounds or two parties fighting over something ending up with shooting has nothing to do with school massacre lone wolves.   
Random shootings involving two arguing parties is talk for gun laws.  It may be possible to make a difference.   School massacres are acts of terrorism in my book and no law in the world is going to stop them.  These are not crimes in the heat of the moment.  They are planned out well in advance.   

[skip68]

Let's say I'm going to kill my wife for insurance money or to show her or make her family suffer or whatever.  Who cares what the reasoning is.  Now, I start planning ways to carry out my mission.  There's so many ways I can do this.  If I truly want her dead and family to suffer and show the world then guess what, I'm going to do it.   
If I can't get a gun I'll just gas her or mess with the car or drop a damn piano on her if I have to.   Either way I'm going to erase her.   So, if Joe public has no idea what I'm planning how the hell can any laws stop me.   
Now let's not forget that I'm also suicidal and have no plans on living. 
That means there's nothing I won't do to achieve my mission.   That makes me a very dangerous person.    Some of you guys were talking about prison Scaring these guys.   These guys aren't planning on going to prison.  They're planning on dying.   

[John_Kunkel]

If prison was hell nobody would be going back.

Ask any criminal if they planned to be apprehended when they planned their crime. Of course, the answer is no...even though it is hell they never figure they'll get caught.

[Mike DC]

  
A lot of the impulsive offenders aren't even weighing their odds of getting caught at all.  The whole idea is just out-of-mind at the time.  

[el dub]

Here's one way to solve it, maybe......http://www.eater.com/2015/10/26/9614804/gun-discount-papa-roux-indiana-concealed-carry-permit-firearms

A restaurant in Indiana is now offering a discount to customers with concealed carry firearm permits. According to the Indianapolis Star, Papa Roux — a Cajun restaurant located in Indianapolis — was robbed on Saturday night by a man claiming to have a gun. In response to the incident, owner Art Bouvier created a 25 percent discount for customers who are legally allowed to carry concealed guns. Bouvier tells WISHTV, "I don't see that it makes anything worse by letting those people think twice about coming in here and thinking, 'Oh my gosh, there might be people in here that do have weapons.'"

[XH29N0G]

That is creative thinking.

[polywideblock]

so two coloured police shoot an unarmed  white 6 year old dead  +his father , where are the riots with the white guys raiding the liquor store in retaliation 

[JB400]

We're all working at the moment

[ITSA426]

Maybe, because the police officers are in custody pending murder charges there is a sense of justice.  There seems to be plenty of outrage.

[skip68]

That's the first thing I said when I saw that story the other night.   I suppose we should be pulling the race card.  Why not?      
After all, the two cops were black and they did kill unarmed whites so obviously they are racists.    They just wanted to kill whites.  But of course we will do the right thing and investigate and find the truth that is they used poor judgment and did not fallow policy.  
Dammit, white lives matter.      
I don't know all the details.  I'm white and I don't think this has anything to do with race.   Just two cops that made mistakes.   

[68charger440]

I don't think this has anything to do with race.   Just two cops that made mistakes.   

That is the bottom line.  They made mistakes, but not because of race. 
I think the black people react more violently partly because it is not just a once in a while thing with them.  It's the presumption of guilt that we white people don't have to face as often.  Then even when police are caught on tape beating someone to death they get away with it way more often than with white people.  I am not justifying the looting of the town, but I bet if we were black we would understand more of the outrage they have. 
Even as a white person growing up in New York I have seen outrageous police activity over and over and over again that was not the exception, but the rule.  We are seeing more videos of this stuff all of the time, and somehow some of these bad apples get off saying they felt their life was in danger when the unarmed suspect is surrounded by 10 cops and is only trying to keep his head from being bashed in.  Before the advent of the cell phone camera the cops would win nearly every one of those police brutality cases.  I can see of no reason why the Police object to body cams other than to cover this kind of behavior.
...and I'm am not a lefty liberal either, just someone who has grown up seeing the reality of big city policing.

[skip68]

Yep.  There should be no reason for police to be against body cameras.   
I know it's not cheap but if you consider the money it will save in lawsuits it's worth it.   

[68charger440]

Yep.  There should be no reason for police to be against body cameras.   
I know it's not cheap but if you consider the money it will save in lawsuits it's worth it.   

I agree... Besides, it's not their money to begin with, it's ours!

[Troy]

Yep.  There should be no reason for police to be against body cameras.   
I know it's not cheap but if you consider the money it will save in lawsuits it's worth it.   

I don't know a single police officer against wearing body cameras. I know a whole bunch who oppose making all the footage available publicly (which is what some people demanding the cameras are also demanding). No one needs unfiltered access to rape victims, child abuse, domestic abuse, drug deaths, or any of the other 100 things police officers have to deal with daily - not to mention cases that never make it to trial, lose in court, or get sealed/expunged.

Disregarding the personal privacy issue... that's a LOT of data! Who manages it? Who stores it and for how long? The Federal Government (in some cases I believe) will supply the equipment but no one wants to pay for the ongoing maintenance. I have a couple of GoPro cameras. It takes about 6 GB to store an hour of video. For an 8 hour shift that's 48 GB and 240 GB for the week. If you've got 150 officers that's 36 TB (terabytes!) of data per week (assuming no overtime). That's just body cameras. Now, that's at 1080p resolution so you could reduce the image quality a bit and really cut into the storage requirement. But then, what good is grainy video when there's an investigation?

Troy

[68charger440]

Well there are a thousand or so in the Denver Police union suing to stop it using whatever strawmen or red herrings they can find. I agree It doesn't have to be open to the public, but if there is a question of misconduct it should be available with the victim's consent. Amazon web services could handle it in a blink of an eye. As could Google or any number of other Cloud companies.

[Mike DC]

 
They don't need to record all 8hrs of a shift.  Just switch it on when dealing with people face-to-face.  That + a lower-resolution video (480p?), and it should be pretty manageable.

But if the camera goes on & off, then we would need some very strict punishments for having it left off during something controversial.  No tolerance for "forgetting" to switch it on.

[68charger440]

Just to further address the cost aspect...
Patrol Cops spend 49% of their time in the car so the camera doesn't need to be active for more than half of the day. Software can easily be written to motion activate the camera once it has exited the car further reducing the recording time.  It probably already exists.  Administrative cops on desk duty don't need body cams.  
LTO5 tapes are $6.00 per terabyte, $5.00 in large quantities. Your 36 terabytes is easily cut by two thirds with just these simple reductions above.   That is 12 terabytes times $5 = $60 per week, but that is only until you start overwriting the tapes at which time it becomes a maintenance cost only situation. Since most of these cases are reported within the first few hours you could overwrite the tapes following a pretty short retention policy. Certainly you would catch the vast majority of these incidents with a 60 day retention policy. So after the initial cost of the tapes and tape library unit you would only have to replace old tapes that are past their lifetimes.  Take the multimillion dollar legal settlements off of the cost and the expense argument looses a great deal of it's weight if not all of it.  Add in the goodwill of having accountability on both sides.  Add in the savings on legal costs defending the false accusations and the costs just keep going down.  But since the taxpayers are overwhelmingly in favor of the body cams even when it does cost more, the cost is a straw man argument to begin with.

[Troy]

And all that sounds good to an IT person - but politicians are basically clueless. No one who wants 100% coverage is going to let an officer control the camera nor are they going to be willing to "lose" some of the footage. I can't imagine a retention policy as short as 60 days. Perhaps if there were a review process where specific data could be put into longer term storage? But then you need resources for that. And this is all great for large departments in large cities - but not for small departments who likely don't even have an IT staff.

While it may keep the departments from losing (some) lawsuits it doesn't make the lawsuits go away. It's still going to cost money when dealing with people.

I think the cameras are a good idea/tool - but they aren't the "cure" for everything and there's a lot of room for abuse/mismanagement. When used carefully and in moderation (with some attention to the "real" cost) I don't see much of a downside. The problem comes from the "gung ho" attitude of the proponents and/or the overselling of the technology. Without a clear plan, the officers have every right to be wary. So many politicians are more concerned with nailing the cops than the criminals.

Troy

[polywideblock]

wouldn't they just be watching cops eat donuts for about 60% of the time   

[68charger440]

And all that sounds good to an IT person - but politicians are basically clueless.

I guess my IT roots are showing...  and I sure won't argue with your comment on politicians. 
Like most everything regarding human interactions there is no silver bullet solution, just hopefully movement in the right direction and sometimes even that seems like a tall order.

[ws23rt]

OH OH--Here we go again ---I wonder if any of the shooters in France were killed by armed citizens??  This all seems to close and personal to expect any gov. to protect us.

[myk]

This is far worse; 150 and probably more dead is more along the lines of 9/11.  It sounds like the attacks were planned and very well thought out, along with being well equipped.  The simultaneous attacks spread throughout the city is also noteworthy.  Rumor has it that there were radicalized French citizens involved in the attacks.  Wow...

[ws23rt]

Wow is right. And understated --A game changer???

[68charger440]

A handful of citizens with concealed carry permits might have saved a dozen or two lives.  At least you would have a fighting chance rather than being slaughtered.