The Washington Post has been collecting data on documented fatal police shootings of civilians since 2015, and they recently released an update to the data set with incidents through the beginning of 2018. Over at Sociology Toolbox, Todd Beer has a great summary of the data set and a number of charts on how these shootings break down by race.
One of the main policy reforms suggested to address this problem is body cameras—the idea being that video evidence will reduce the number of killings by monitoring police behavior. Of course, not all police departments implement these cameras and their impact may be quite small. One small way to address these problems is public visibility and pressure.
So, how often are body cameras incorporated into incident reporting? Not that often, it turns out. I looked at all the shootings of unarmed civilians in The Washington Post’s dataset, flagging the ones where news reports indicated a body camera was in use. The measure isn’t perfect, but it lends some important context.
Body cameras were only logged in 37 of 219 cases—about 17% of the time—and a log doesn’t necessarily mean the camera present was even recording. Sociologists know that organizations are often slow to implement new policies, and they don’t often just bend to public pressure. But there also hasn’t been a change in the reporting of body cameras, and this highlights another potential stumbling block as we track efforts for police reform.
Evan Stewart is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. You can follow him on Twitter.
Yale School of Medicine: "About 20 children per day in the United States are injured by firearms seriously enough to require hospitalization, and more than 6% of these children die from their injuries.“
We’re tired of the excuses and we’re taking a stand! We will no longer accept shootings by children as tragic "accidents."
fyi for those in Phoenix Arizona: stay away from Target because the Phoenix Police still won’t arrest this dude despite it being illegal to declare intention of violence like this
HEY GUYS/GALS/THEY’S I literally hate being the person asking people to reblog something and I scroll past posts that do, but I have been crying tonight about this, because I remember the Pulse shooting where LGBTQIA people lost their lives and the idea of another attack like that terrifies me, so please, because Phoenix has over 1 million people, just reblog? sorry.
Police got sued because a woman reported her abusive ex-husband, trying to protect her kids. Ex kidnaps the three girls, mother calls the police, police do jack and shit. After many hours of calling the cops, trying to get them to DO SOMETHING, the ex shows up at the police, shooting a gun. The girls were dead in his car. She sued, it went to the Supreme Court, and they literally ruled that discretion in all forms falls on the cops; basically, THEY DON’T HAVE TO PROTECT PEOPLE. Which is LITERALLY HALF of “PROTECT AND SERVE”. Police don’t serve much of a point anymore; defund the fuck out of them.
They just updated that they’re no longer taking monetary donations!
Photo ID: photo is a twitter screenshot.
Two posts from J Coley (they/them) @JColey716. The first reads: “Please donate to Black Love Resists in the Rust. They are a Black-led organization working to provide longer-term mental health and food access to the community affected by the anti-Black white supremacist terrorist attack yesterday.” Underneath is a link to the organization with a photo of their logo, with the letters B L R R stylized in black against a white background.
The second reads “Buffalo Community Fridge is no longer accepting monetary donations. Please give to Black Love Resists in the Rust.” This is followed by another link. Underneath is a photo, with a picture of cartoon vegetables on a purple background. It reads: “We are no longer accepting monetary donations. We are We are sending an enormous thank you to our community. We will be re-distributing funds to our fridge network, the Rooted in Love Fridge and other community organizations in need right now.
If you are interested in donating food (fresh or non-perishable), please come by any community fridge at any time. We have volunteers helping bag and distribute food at 275 E Ferry St today.
We will be sharing organizations to donate to on our Instagram including @BLRRBuffalo, @WNYMobileOps, @ColoredGirlsBikeToo, @Rooted_In_Love_Inc, and more.
The famous porn video-hosting website Pornhub has once again made headlines for its peculiar content, but not what you think. This time it has nothing to do with XXX titles or soft-core, but the website is hosting some of the forbidden topic YouTube has taken action against; this time is about guns since the incremental weapon assault against civilians happening in the US from Las Vegas to Florida.
Here’s the link to one of the gun video from the channel In Range TV Show(WARNING:NSFW link video!!!). If you cannot watch the video I’ll explain it briefly to you. Two guys in camouflage uniform are at a shooting range discussing about pistols, in this case the famous Glock manufacturer, with all the pros and cons of the weapon. Each of the guys pitches in what’s their opinion their view and the video continues with them in action at the range (not THAT action).
It’s interesting how change has affected the online platforms after real life events unfolded in tragic occasions, defining discussion policies that are influencing what video channels can host and what content creators can discuss. In light of this shift of wind, several Youtubers have been posting for the past months essays and v-logs arguing that free speech is important, that forbidding certain topics like guns, Islam, terrorism, shootings, violence attacks, is censorship and there ought to be a transparent conversation in order to address these problems to resolve them.
Sex, guns, violence, are being marginalized once again into a specific platform just like it happened 60 years ago with pulp magazines.
What is interesting here is how a platform like Pornhub has begun changing its behavior. Forbidden topics unable to be hosted on YouTube and other hosting sites had to converge onto pornography hosting portals to survive. The taboo effect has created a new behavior that might reshape the way we see adult-themed websites; they will diversify their capability and portfolio offering content creator the chance to upload what other platforms forbid.
This is a whole new economy for places like Pornhub that can offer a new type of service and monetize it, without the effort of advertising or actively stealing the user-base from YouTube. The need for content creators to expand their video channel has been met by an unlikely platform originally born to host hardcore material.
I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube looses the opportunity to fix their topic policies, or to open a whole new branch dedicated to content that cannot exist on their original brand anymore. What In Range TV Show has done was to adapt to their need to supply their viewers with uncensored material -something that has been disrupted- and they did so the smartest way that has already prompted others to do the same. This is the first and clear signal YouTube has to think about in terms of user behavior if they don’t want to loose millions of followers, views, and monetization.
Florida School Shooting Survivor: 17 students and school faculty, our teachers and best friends were murdered in front of us. We saw our friends being shot in the head right next to us…
Conservatives: We need to come together and pray for these families.
Florida School Shooting Survivor: We need to pass legislation for stricter gun control, comprehensive background checks and–
Conservatives:Oh shut up! You’re all actors and communists! Go back to doing your Tide pod challenges, you stupid kids! You’re not taking our guns away!
Words can’t describe how horrible this shooting was not only for the people involved but also for the country as a whole. This is the 18thschool shooting that we’ve had so far this year. Legislators have the power to pass stricter gun control laws but they refuse to because they are in the pockets of the NRA. The NRA doesn’t care if your family members, teachers and best friends are gunned down in front of you because they’re collecting money from gun sales. Conservatives have been beyond hypocritical in their response to this and past mass shootings. They keep saying “pray for the victims,” “let the victims grieve,” “don’t try to politicize this.” Well, this time, the victims are asking for more than prayers; they’re asking for a response from the government. They’re demanding a response from the government to make sure that guns don’t fall into the hands of violent men like the former student who massacred their friends and faculty. And now that the survivors are demanding action from the government, conservatives are angered that the survivors aren’t echoing their sentiment on how we as a country should respond to tragedies like these. They think “how dare these people who have witnessed their closest friends dying in front of them by the hands of a gun demand stricter gun laws!” The amount of greed that it takes to disregard the lives stolen by a blood-thirsty gunman in favor of pocketing money from the NRA is inhuman and evil. The stronghold that the NRA has on conservatives and Republicans is so powerful that it has caused these so-called Christians to not only turn a blind eye toward the murders of these students and adults but has also caused them to profit from it. After all, the gunman attained his weapons legally after the FBI failed to follow up into their investigation on him.
Now some people will blame the shooting on mental health issues (specifically Trump). Oh, it’s not guns that are the problem, it’s these lunatics who keep getting their hands on guns. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? How in the hell did this 19 year old with clear mental issues pass the vetting process to attain a gun? Was there not a thorough background check into this guy? Had no one found out that he had been reported on YouTube for posting “im going to be a professional school shooter”(sic)? Had no one looked into his history of the police being called to check in on him because of his strange behavior? Even people who had spoken to him said that he had been making jokes about school shootings and engaging in anti-social behavior. If we had more comprehensive background checks, this man would not have been able to legally purchase any firearms. It is the system we have in place that allows anyone to have a gun, including mentally ill people that causes these murders to happen. It’s the fault of these conservative Republican legislators and weak Democrats who bend over for the right that these shootings keep occurring. We’ve been having multiple shootings taking place every week now and the majority of our country’s politicians are silent on proposing sensible solutions to this issue.
I hope that the survivors keep speaking out and rallying for stricter gun control laws because this has been going on for way too long. But unfortunately, it’s going to keep happening and these politicians are going to keep sitting around doing nothing about it and pocketing their NRA money. I’m just not very hopefully about this with this nation’s track record and all. We need to primary the fuck out of all the politicians who are taking money from the NRA, we need to get money out of politics so these politicians can’t take money from the NRA and per suggestion of one of the victims’ parents, schools need to ramp up security because if the government isn’t going to do anything about these shootings, schools should. Also, if you see anyone on the internet making fun of school shootings or claiming that they’re going to be the next school shooter or wishing death upon anyone, report them to the police/FBI and make sure that they stay on top of the case. Tell them that you’re looking out for your country because this school shooter, Nikolas Cruz like other trolls turned mass shooter take their threats seriously and you’re trying to prevent another mass shooting. A lot of these internet trolls, as of late, have gone on to become mass shooters. Sometimes, these people are serious about what they say. And we can’t let them slip through the cracks anymore.
![Mind Map #47: [Tragedy reminds us to love] *Note: The drawing of the man and child is loosely based](https://64.media.tumblr.com/4dd6ca2f79e820abf2c145255d03f106/tumblr_mf3y60p8Ui1ru4tgjo1_1280.jpg "Mind Map #47: [Tragedy reminds us to love] *Note: The drawing of the man and child is loosely based")
