Police-Involved Shootings

In this unfinished rough powerpoint for a series of lectures I explore why the United States is markedly different from other representative democracies and welfare states.  I trace the tradition of using a combination of bribery and corruption of the Congress and Judiciary, and violence and racist terror as a means of marginalizing organized labour and frustrating democratic control.  I explore how the contemporary crisis of social inequality, political corruption and racist authoritarian government long predates Trump, first emerging after Reconstruction in the Kleptocracy of the Gilded Age, receding somewhat under Roosevelt's leadership and with the Bretton Woods consensus, only to re-emerge with the Reagan revolution and the political triumph of the racist reaction to the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, and the radicalism of the 1960s.  On the foreign policy side, the resurgent power of the oligarchy within the country and the brutal repression of the poor and marginalization of labour and the voices of the black radical tradition, symbolized by the ruins of Detroit and the South Bronx, would be matched by the consolidation of the policies of the so-called Washington Consensus.  This policy approach, enforced by the IMF, World Bank, and American military force and paramilitary violence, is often sold as Globalization, critiqued as Neo-liberalism, but might more accurately be described as a return to racist colonialism of the filibusters, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.  The talk, which is intended to engage non-academic audiences and avoid jargon and theory, ought to be read in conjunction with Richard Iton's Solidarity Blues, and WIlkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level.

Officers from the Norwegian police were routinely armed with firearms from July 2014 to February 2016 in response to a terror threat. This paper explores the experiences of a sample of officers (N = 16) who were routinely armed during this period. The research took a mixed-methods approach using semi-structured interviews one month before the policy was rescinded. Two key themes emerged. First, officers believed that being routinely armed was advantageous for routine police activities. Officers described that tactical planning had improved as it was no longer necessary to wait for permission to respond with a firearm. The associated tactical freedom triggered an increase in self-belief in their effectiveness and efficiency. Second, officers believed that although officers had observed some behavioural changes when interacting with citizens, over time, citizens became acclimatised to the presence of firearms. These findings provide new empirical evidence relevant to the debate surrounding the implications of permanently arming a routinely unarmed police force. ARTICLE HISTORY

ABSTRACT Officers from the Norwegian police were routinely armed with firearms from July 2014 to February 2016 in response to a terror threat. This paper explores the experiences of a sample of officers (N = 16) who were routinely armed during this period. The research took a mixed-methods approach using semi-structured interviews one month before the policy was rescinded. Two key themes emerged. First, officers believed that being routinely armed was advantageous for routine police activities. Officers described that tactical planning had improved as it was no longer necessary to wait for permission to respond with a firearm. The associated tactical freedom triggered an increase in self-belief in their effectiveness and efficiency. Second, officers believed that although officers had observed some behavioural changes when interacting with citizens, over time, citizens became acclimatised to the presence of firearms. These findings provide new empirical evidence relevant to the debate surrounding the implications of permanently arming a routinely unarmed police force.

警员需要准确地评估致命威胁，并以适当的武力去消除自身及他人面临的威胁。当前的警察致命性武器的训练方式是模仿执法人员在现实生活遇到的情况，并让学员在模拟的致命情景中进行训练。这种仿真演练（RBT）意在为学员提供经验，帮助他们在高度紧张、情绪不稳，身体状况变动的情况下采取符合法律、政策和程序的应对措施(Artwohl & Christensen, 1997; Blum, 2000; Grossman, 1996; Miller, 2008; Murray, 2006)。三名警察学员提供了对仿真演练经历的描述。本文采用描述现象学心理学的方法分析数据，并整合出描述学员经历的总体心理学架构。该研究揭示了参与者在仿真演练中的感知、想法、感觉和行为，反映了理解和决策过程中意识和心理学主体性的作用，

On July 27th, 2013, Sammy Yatim was shot and killed by Toronto Police Services’ Constable James Forcillo during a verbal confrontation on a streetcar as Yatim brandished a switchblade knife. Forcillo was charged, initially with second degree murder, and later attempted murder—a decision that confused media commentators as attempted murder is a lesser-and-included offense to second degree murder in Canadian law. In January 2016, Forcillo was found not guilty of second degree murder and guilty of attempted murder. Video evidence, recovered from the streetcar’s onboard security cameras, was described by the presiding judge, Justice Edward Then, as proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Forcillo’s testimony was unreliable, especially in light of other evidence. This paper examines the use of video evidence to arrive at a ‘compromise verdict’ (Gillis 2016) and the paradox of being convicted of attempting to murder someone who was killed.