Quote: Alyssa Myracle

So, using a police dog is RACIST now?

Yeah, I guess that is where we are headed as a country.

No Alyssa, it's where we came from as a country. I agree that invoking the charge of racism here is over the top, but those images of police dogs being used against civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham in 1963 are still fresh in our national conscious.

Siaty,

See:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/m_r/randall/birmingham.htm

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1358

 Quote: Rich Pallechio

 Quote: Alyssa Myracle

So, using a police dog is RACIST now?

Yeah, I guess that is where we are headed as a country.

No Alyssa, it's where we came from as a country. I agree that invoking the charge of racism here is over the top, but those images of police dogs being used against civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham in 1963 are still fresh in our national conscious.

that was forty five years ago, lotta things changed, time for some people to move on and stop making excuses for poor behaviour

Okay,
I wasn't going to commit on this thread, but I can't help myself.
As a preface I grew up in the 50's & 60's, I watched people gunned down, cannoned hosed, churches and homes burned and bombed as well as dogs sic'd on them for trying to exercise their constitutional rights. I watched as the federal government had to mobilize troops just so citizens could send their children to local schools.

I've read the present day editorial........I've also read of the community reaction...........Stupid. Do they want law and order? Or do they really want to go back to the 50's and 60's.
If they really want to go back.....they have no idea what they're asking.


Randy

Well, i may bet hung out to dry, but here we go. There is no way the cops should have been there. I played hockey as a kid, and kicked the snot out of (i lost a few) about 20 guuys on the ice, on 2 occasions crowd and bench were involved, THIS IS SPORTS PERIOD. How many of you have seen total chaos on the feild of sport on sports center??? This situation sounds to me like the police trying to throw their weight around. Unless game officials asked for K-9 presence, that dog needs to be in the cruiser along with the AR-15 and the shotgun and riot gear, These are kids playing at a school, not convicts playing in a prison yard. Fights in sport is like butter on toast. Anyone see holyfield and bowe 2, The whole stadium was fighting, in NY city, no police dogs, no riot gear, it sorted itself out with beat cops and security. The more power your government has, the less you have. As far as race, well, i dont know what was going thru the head of the police that day, unless racial comments were made by the police we cant assumme it was a race thing, these players and im sure a good portion of the crowd were just teen kids, and teen boys like to fight, i was one once, i know.

been awhile since you walked thru an inner city school?

I didnt see in the article where knife weilding thugs had to be had to be detured.

Well here's the thing Patrick,
Do we really want a free for all involving one, two hundred or more people? What if someone does get seriously mamed or worse?
Why wait for it to devolve into mayham before doing something about it?
It only puts the police officers in an unwinnable position. If they don't stop it before it begins and someone ends up DOA, they get the shaft for not doing something earlier. If they stop anything before it begins, they catch hell for spoiling a community gathering.
So what's the answer? What would you have them do?

I gotta say, if I were a PD officer the last thing I'd wish for would be for my local team to be playing for a championship. Who needs it? The fans and assorted hanging-on-ers are going to go on a rampage wheather the team wins or loses.

The kind of impossible positions the police are put in, I honestly don't know why anyone would want to do it.

Heads I win, tails you lose. That seems to be what we give our police for standard operating procedure.
Randy

Randy stated;

" Heads I win, tails you lose. That seems to be what we give our police for standard operating procedure. "



Randy , you've summed up how I've felt many times .

A good example of this would be the LA riots. The police department was criticised heavily for pulling officers out of the area , hoping it would deescalate the crowd . It failed miserably .

A few months before the LA riots in Minneapolis there was a shooting of a teenager . A false rumor was spread throughout the area that a police officer had done it . Riots broke out and a female news reporter had her face bashed in by a brick while reporting it . This has been shown often on the many different police video shows .

The police pulled out of the area , just like LA and THIS time it worked and the crowd dispersed on their own . The media praised this department for such a wise move .

The same 2 tactics 2 different outcomes .

My point in this is I think it would be more effective to focus more on the perpitrators then the police . It's very hard to control chaos , much easier to cause it especially when you have no rules you have to operate by .

Should the police actions be looked at also ? You bet and if the public had any knowledge about how we work they would see that in most of the cases we were doing the best we could , with what we had .



Patrick ,

You should come to my town and see some of the inner city basketball and football games . We have fights there weekly. Many gang related but sometimes not . We've had shootings while we (the police) were there .

I can tell you here it's a no brainer . The cops are going to be there and this is St Paul , MN . We have no where near the violence and gang problems of Gary , IN and my understanding is from speaking with officers from Gary and Chicago , that there schools are very violent and it can many times comes to a head at their HS sporting events .

This is just another example of how many people have no clue how violent inner city schools and sporting events have become . I'm sure someone will have some success story for me about their inner city school system . It doesn't change the fact that there are many more out there where violence is an every day occurrence.

 Quote: patrick petrie

Well, i may bet hung out to dry, but here we go. There is no way the cops should have been there.

Yeah, because there's no chance that some basketball games might turn into riots, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFNA9ji_d44

My, what short memories some folks have.