In comments, some of us mentioned part of the police racism and violence problem was unions. Seems we aren’t the only ones to think so.
Minnesota AFL-CIO Calls for Minneapolis Police Union President Bob Kroll’s Immediate Resignation
Minneapolis Police Union President, Bob Kroll, has failed the Labor Movement and the residents of Minneapolis. Bob Kroll has a long history of bigoted remarks and complaints of violence made against him. As union President, he antagonizes and disparages members of the Black community. He advocates for military-style police tactics making communities less safe and the police force more deadly. Despite his conduct, Kroll was reelected with an overwhelming majority. If Bob Kroll does not value the lives that he is sworn to protect, then we can only expect more death under his leadership.
Now, instead of seeking meaningful dialogue or reform to make sure what happened to George Floyd never happens again, Bob Kroll is trying to justify this senseless killing and have the officers involved reinstated. Unions exist to protect workers who have been wronged, not to keep violent people in police ranks. All four police officers involved in George Floyd’s murder must be charged.
Today, Americans have witnessed the disastrous outcomes of unchecked power, authoritarianism, and white supremacy in our highest levels of leadership. We have seen Bob Kroll proudly stand behind this type of leadership. Kroll is no friend to working Minnesotans and should be the last person entrusted to enforce the law or protect our residents.
After ~$1B of damage to Minneapolis businesses by looters, it’s probably not the best time to complain about “military-style police tactics”, ha ha.
The George Floyd incident does I believe point to a problem with unions that cover government workers. I doubt that there is anything unique about how the Minneapolis police unions react to claims against their police and in how the few successful claims are handled. It all boils down to accountability and all too frequently with government operations it does not meet the standards applied in the private world.
I doubt that so-called progressive politicians, who should be ultimately responsible for these operations, like the police forces in large cities and in protecting private property and especially during rioting, will be held accountable. They will continue to be elected and re-elected by a voting public majority that believes in more government and is willing to settle for a politician that mouths what the public wants to hear but accomplishes little in the way of changing these situations for the better. Blaming it all on some unspecified source of racism will probably hold the progressive line with the help of the media, at least, for now.
You might see a progressive politician voted out of office on occasion only to be replaced by another progressive politician because it is not the political philosophy that failed but rather the individual.
At what point is it appropriate? Deaths of unarmed suspects or even non-suspects should be considered a catastrophic failure that triggers introspection and consideration of everything that lead up to that failure. When instead the leadership dismisses even the most egregious, such as the Louisville police shooting and death of the EMT in her own bed, as just an unavoidable tragic mistake or solely the fault of the deceased, you have a broken culture that fails in their primary purpose of protect and serve.
Obviously it’s a trade off between police self protection and citizen safety. Let’s just say who gets to make the rules is probably winning that trade off.
Andrew P (Comment #185721): “At what point is it appropriate? Deaths of unarmed suspects or even non-suspects should be considered a catastrophic failure that triggers introspection and consideration of everything that lead up to that failure.”
.
Indeed. But I think that is probably the norm in most police departments. Police make something like ten million arrests per year. Not summonses; arrests. The police kill maybe a couple dozen unarmed people a year. So such occurrences are rare exceptions. That does make them OK; but it indicates that treating them as tolerable is not the norm.
Louisville police have released video showing the victim was firing at the police.
Castile, the yoga instructor, and now Floyd. Three unjustified use of deadly force Incidents in the national news just in the last five years. Minneapolis police haven’t seemed to be that introspective. https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior-problem/ From above:
“Admittedly, violence is relatively uncommon in police/civilian encounters and most uses of physical force involve relatively low-level violence, with injuries to both officers and civilians being correspondingly uncommon, but an officer who needlessly aggravates a situation doesn’t just increase the risk he faces in that encounter. He also increases the risk that other officers face in other encounters. Consider that of the ten most destructive and violent riots in United States history, fully half were responses to perceived police abuses.”
The AFL/CIO guy is perhaps half way to his senses. Yes, the union president should resign. But that doesn’t address the real problem: Police unions are inherently dangerous and contrary to the public interest. Psychopathic cops should be fired instantly, never to be re-instated. The union protects psychopathic cops. The stupid union president is pushing for the four monsters to be reinstated! He has to be just as much a psychopath as they are.
.
The answer is for the legislature to pass a law making police unions illegal in Minnesota. Then disband the union and fire any cop who uses excessive force.
The key point to me is that the union president was re-elected by a large majority. That says to me that the majority of the Minneapolis police force is also tainted. No wonder the other three officers present while Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd didn’t do anything to stop it.
DeWitt,
Likely. The police as a whole must want a union boss who protects them and others even if they use excessive violence and/or are racist.
Fortunately, the union doesn’t control whether or not they get charged with murder.
I read the Minnesota statues for first, second, and third degree murder. The third degree murder statute is very poorly written and confusing, and could be interpreted as limiting third degree murder charges to cases where the person who died was just one of many who could have died due to reckless behavior by the killer (like shooting into a crowd). I doubt that was the legislature’s intent, but that is the way it reads. The Second degree statute is also poorly written, and could be interpreted as limiting second degree charges to cases where a killer was already under a restraining order to keep away from the victim. The first degree statute is written clearly, but premeditation most certainly does not apply in this case; the cops didn’t plan ahead of time to kill the victim.
.
Such poorly written statutes will make the prosecutor’s job very difficult. I would not be surprised if they are forced to offer a plea agreement to a much lesser charge…. with a short prison sentence. There is a great deal of incompetence in Minnesota government, at all levels.
I very much doubt this case will be plea bargained. A 2nd degree murder charge is also a heavy lift and is just setting up false expectations. I’ve never even heard of “aiding and abetting 2nd degree murder” but my guess is that these charges are usually not prosecuted (or used as pressure to force people to testify against the assailant). The requirement that they were assisting in a felony is a huge stretch. I’d also predict that people who are actually convicted of this crime serve short sentences.
.
This just sets up a second series of protests when the proper heads aren’t put up on the proper pikes. Thankfully the wheels of justice grind slowly.
The Lancet hydroxychloroquine study has been retracted, that was abnormally fast.
https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/article/s0140673620313246
.
“They were unable to complete an independent audit of the data underpinning their analysis. As a result, they have concluded that they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”
.
I think there is a newer/different one that shows taking it as a protective measure doesn’t work.
.
It was rather odd how the media jumped on the original study with apparent glee that something doesn’t work. Clearly this was the Trump factor. That it was reported so widely with such flaws once again shows how our arbiters of truth and justice step on their own feet with regularity, but usually only when it suits their preferred narrative. Too good not to be true.
Tom Scharf,
Unless you have and maintain a good serum level of zinc while taking HCL, it probably won’t work. You don’t take Tamiflu or the other influenza anti-viral drugs as a prophylactic for influenza either. The side effects can be unpleasant. The object of taking these drugs is not a cure, it only reduces the recovery time by about one day, but to prevent serious complications for those with comorbidities.
DeWitt –
I don’t think anyone should take HCl 😉
DeWitt,
“Unless you have and maintain a good serum level of zinc while taking HCL”
.
I think that may be called acid influx.
HaroldW,
Beat me to it.
Try betaine hydrochloride for increasing stomach acidity.
Tom
Obviously, retraction doesn’t show it does work. But the situation surrounding the retraction suggests even the peer reviewers might have been a bit over eager to approve the paper. After all, criticism of the paper was almost instantaneous. Peer reviewers don’t do audits, but readers found these issues fast which suggests they were somewhat obvious.
The flaws weren’t difficult to understand (more patients in Australia than even exist.)
It took some more digging for the Guardian to figure out the entire database appears to be a scam. But. Still. People who actually do research should have gotten the heebie-jeebies over the notion that so much data was so easily available in a magical “database”. The specific peer reviewers didn’t really ask themselves if this made sense. So they appear to have fallen for a scam.
Hydrochloroquinine may very well turn out to be useless and Trump pumped it up in his Trumpian way. I do think the studies on HCL are getting more press period than other studies. I’m not sure that’s entirely “anti-trump”. I think it’s partly just that this is the drug everyone heard of, so what is found is more “newsy” than other drugs.
If any of these things was producing miracles we would know by now. Cutting a couple days from recovery time is good, but not exactly a breakthrough. The Guardian did some good reporting on this one.
Tom Scharf,
“ If any of these things was producing miracles we would know by now.â€
.
True. But a couple of days in the hospital is a big savings, if only monetarily. There are still no good studies of HCQ as a prophylactic. Those results will probably become available about the time the first vaccines are approved for use.
Lucia,
Quote from the NEJM Article (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638?query=TOC)
“The incidence of new illness compatible with Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants receiving hydroxychloroquine (49 of 414 [11.8%]) and those receiving placebo (58 of 407 [14.3%]); the absolute difference was −2.4 percentage points (95% confidence interval, −7.0 to 2.2; P=0.35). )
100 * (14.3 – 11.8)/11.8 = 21.2 %.
To me, it looks like there is a 21% less chance of being sick after a contact with a carrier if you take Hydroxychloroquine instead of a placebo.
Sorry about the previous attempt at posting!
Tom Scharf (Comment #185810): “Cutting a couple days from recovery time is good, but not exactly a breakthrough.”
.
But isn’t that all any drug does? I have never taken an antibiotic that produced an instant cure after just one dose.
A shorter recovery time presumably means a less severe illness. Really bad results are the tail of the distribution of illness severity, so they should be sensitive to small changes in average severity. In that case, cutting a couple days off average illness duration could be a big deal. But it takes a much larger sample to get statistically significant results on extreme outcomes.
MikeM,
Yes. Cutting a few days off could be a big deal. I’ve read articles cautioning that a vaccine might “not work”. What the details said is that it might not give 100% immunity, and “all” it might do is make it so the vaccinated person had a mild case with cold like symptoms rather than ending up on a ventilator or dead.
I’d take a vaccine that “only” does that. Of course I’d prefer full immunity but just making it so I can then be in the category that doesn’t end up hospitalized or dead is good enough.
That sort of vaccine probably wouldn’t cause the vaccinated to confer herd immunity on others… but … well… ok. I’d still take the vaccine for myself. That’s my main reason for taking vaccines anyway!
A real test of HCQ as a prophylactic would need to be double blind, with a control group taking placebo, with the people in the study taking the HCQ before they had known exposure. I have read that when a covid 19 virus particle infects an epithelial cell, it kills the cell and releases up to a thousand of copies of itself within 24 hours. Giving HCQ to people 1 to 4 days after known exposure (NEJM article) gives the virus time to multiply… a lot. Since the rate of symptomatic infection is low in the general population, any study would require a very large number of people in both groups to have much statistical power.
The NEJM article is not proof that HCQ doesn’t work at least somewhat as a prophylactic. Nor is it proof that it doesn’t work at all. The sample size was too small. Only one person from each group ended up being hospitalized so you also can’t say that it did or didn’t reduce the severity of the illness. Also, the trial subjects had already been exposed to the virus, so it wasn’t a true test of prophylaxis. And there was no mention of serum zinc levels or zinc at all. So it wasn’t a test of the regimen of the original French reports or of the comments from some of the doctors on the VA paper.
A drug treatment that cut deaths in half would be a big deal. People are scared of dying a lot more than a few extra days in the hospital.
I’m not sure if cutting recovery times in this case was also reducing the death count. Unclear.
Two police officers were suspended in Buffalo after a pushing incident injured a protester. This was a pretty tame incident that ended with a significant injury, a kind of freak accident.
.
All 57 members of the police riot squad then resigned from the riot squad unit.
https://buffalonews.com/2020/06/05/57-members-of-buffalo-police-riot-response-team-resign/
.
I’m surprised we don’t see more of this stuff from fed up police that live in cities where the managers are capitulating in every possible way to the protesters.
The NYT has just reported that the Minneapolis City Council has, IMO, completely lost what passes for its mind:
I haven’t read the article, nor do I plan to. It would be too depressing. I predict, though, that the new public safety system will still have its workers represented by a union. That is, nothing will actually change.
DeWitt,
What passes for government in Minneapolis is at best a joke… just look at the utter clowns they elect to Congress. I do wonder about a few things: dissolving union contracts (especially PUBLIC union contracts!) may be beyond the pay grade of the city council. The legislature could surely do it, but then the governor would have to go along, and the state courts might also become involved, since there could be state constitutional issues when the government decides to renege on a binding contract. They are not going to get rid of the police department without a huge political fight… if ever. It is all very high in irony. It would be easy to get rid of problematic police officers and “change the culture” of the department if there was no police union. The Democrats who run the city and the state refuse to see the root cause of the problem even after the killing of a handcuffed black man in the street….. by a cop who had along history of inappropriate use of violence…. vigorously protected by the union. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
As you point out, the chances of it actually happening are practically zero. They’ll put on a show and then admit defeat. Trump will probably be to blame somehow. Virtue signaling and buck passing.
I am not convinced that police unions are the main problem. Spineless administrators, that is almost all public administrators, follow the path of least effort. Normally, that means not ticking off the unions. But when the public gets sufficiently riled, the path of least effort becomes bowing to public pressure. Then police administrators have no difficulty in taking action against cops.
.
There is nothing wrong with unions standing up for their members; that is a good thing. The problem is with administrators who are too lazy and cowardly to stand up for anything. So under normal circumstances they cave to the union, then blames the union if criticized. The real problem is not the unions, it is the spineless administrators.
If you want some real hilarity, read a couple articles on what defund the police “really” means, as if there was some intellectual heft behind this protest chant.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/defund-police-heres-what-that-really-means/
.
Mostly it is magical thinking that if there was more community investment and social workers roaming the streets crime would just disappear. It’s similar thinking to mental illness would disappear if people sought treatment. The key tell here is that the additional funding for a community MUST be taken from the police department’s budget.
.
I maintain that if a community doesn’t want police, they should get what they want. However I suggest that a vote by the good citizens of Minneapolis would result in a desire for a police department, especially after the riots. A few city council members are likely to lose their jobs next election I predict.
.
Lost in the shuffle are some of the most egregious complaining is coming from blue communities in blue cities in blue states that have had progressive governance for decades. Their police forces now have more minorities in their ranks and their leadership. Yet the (alleged) problem still persists.
.
It’s almost like this is a very difficult complex problem that won’t be solved by good intentions, a protest chant, or adjusting a budget. Dissolving the police department and recreating a new one will not magically fix anything if the underlying behavior remains the same.
SteveF (Comment #185947): “I do wonder about a few things: dissolving union contracts (especially PUBLIC union contracts!) may be beyond the pay grade of the city council.”
.
The extremists on the Minneapolis city council claim to have the votes to abolish the police department even over the mayor’s veto. I don’t see how the union contract would be a significant impediment, unless it specifies that there be a minimum number of police officers.
.
I am half hoping that they do it. Then after Minneapolis is reduced to chaos, the defund police nonsense will be finished. Of course, the hard core is immune to evidence, but I would think that they would then no longer be able to get significant public support.
Apparently there is a city charter that a police department must be maintained above a certain ratio to the population, and a change to that would require a vote by the people. Not that it matters, this is just posturing. I bet gun sales are going to explode.
I guess we’ll see what happens with police in MN. I’m glad I don’t live in Minneapolis or St. Paul right now.
Obviously, their police force has issues. . . That doesn’t mean the cure will be a cure.
Mike M,
Have you ever worked someplace where most employees were protected by a union? Real question.
SteveF (Comment #185982): “Have you ever worked someplace where most employees were protected by a union? Real question.”
.
I paid union dues for 25 years. At various time I was a steward, on the executive, and on the bargaining team.
I have been a shop steward and on bargaining committees.
.
The Unions first responsibility is to protect its members.
.
Consider union support for it’s members the same as a defense attorney. They are both hired guns defending their clients rights against arbitrary sanctions from the hired guns supporting management.
.
You want to sanction a union member? Fine, just do not expect the union to help, but do expect the union to fight you the entire way.
Ed,
I don’t think anyone is asking the union to help. I’m pretty sure most people already believe they won’t– just as you say they won’t.
The suggestion is to reign in the union so it has less power to help bad cops escape consequences of their actions. Of course one wants to defend clients against in appropriate sanctions. But that doesn’t mean we want clients to should be sanctioned to escape consequences that are well deserved.
Well… sure. But it’s worth looking into things to determine whether unions have been given so much power that they can prevent appropriate sanctions from being levied. Because we all suspect they will fight sanctions even if those sanctions are well deserved. You’re just confirming that.
Ed Forbes,
“ The Unions first responsibility is to protect its membersâ€
.
And that is the problem. Sometimes a union member really needs to find another job because he (or she) is doing a terrible job. But with a union involved that person almost never gets fired, no matter how much damage they do. Let me tell you about Jimmy Blankets (just a nickname… he hid blankets to sleep on)
.
Jimmy was in his early 60’s with just about the highest seniority at a large chemical plant, so he could get and hold any job he wanted. He chose 11:00 to 7:00, responsible for 8 polymerization reactors, which produced polymer products in batches of about 5 tons each. We consistently had quality problems with what was produced in those reactors. After some effort, we collected enough samples from individual batches to determine that only the batches Jimmy made came out badly. So, we spent some time with Jimmy (and a union rep) reviewing the procedures step by step. He assured us he followed every procedure exactly. We explained that only his batches had quality problems. He suggested our samples were wrong.
.
I assigned a young engineer to work 11:00 to 7:00 for a week, to identify what could be causing the problem. Every single batch Jimmy produced with someone observing was perfect. As soon as the supervision ended, all bad batches again. Place an observer, all good batches again. We raised the issue again with the union; they told us to pound sand (actually the words were stronger than that). The guy was willfully not following the correct procedure (but the union said we could not prove that). He was costing the company thousands of dollars a day (the union said that was not their problem). The guy was willfully damaging the company, and the union made sure we could do nothing about it.
.
So our choices were permanently keep an employee who was doing great damage, or permanently assign an engineer to shaddow him seven nights a week. The guy needed to be fired. Only the union prevented that.
.
After 6 months of fighting the problem, Jimmy got stomach cancer and took medical leave. Never saw another bad batch. He died about 3 months later.
Steve
Sounds like a management issue to me. The Union did its job. Management needs to do theirs.
.
The union is not there to make management easier, they are there to protect the member. I have zero sympathy for management in these cases. The horror stories tend to have management too lazy to document the case per contract.
.
If the contract excessively favors the union, then management needs to get better hired guns.
.
Ed Forbes,
I figured you would say that. I have other experiences of just how terrible unions can be, like the physical intimidation of a young woman for nothing more than doing her job correctly and efficiently. The union told her and us to call the police if we didn’t like it. She quit, of course, rather than face the constant threat of assault from men twice her size.
.
I think you are utterly wrong, and so are unions, in most every case. Protection of competent workers, or even protection of incompetent workers who don’t know how to do their job but are willing to try, is not the same as protection of malicious workers who are trying to do damage. Police unions specifically are dangerous to the public, as the nightmare of the past couple of weeks shows.
Ed Forbes (Comment #186085) is pretty much spot on. Management agreed to the contract. The contract has terms covering dismissal for cause. If management is unable or unwilling to comply with those terms, it is on them.
There was a time when private sector unions were strong enough that there was a power imbalance, but that has not been the case for 40 years.
.
In some states labor laws might create an uneven playing field when it comes to firing workers for cause. But such laws typically apply to all non-salaried workers, whether unionized or not. Civil rights legislation might also create problems with firing minority workers. But I suspect that none of that really stops management from justified firings. They just make it so that the firing has to be justified and management does not want to bother with that.
.
Public sector unions are somewhat different since they sit on both sides of the bargaining table,via their influence on elections. That ought to be prohibited. But I don’t know that actually matters. It seems that police departments have little trouble firing cops when they really want to, unless they are careless about procedure.
Mike M,
I believe you are simply wrong about this. There is a reason many states are now “right to workâ€, and why union membership has gradually fallen nationwide for several decades (except public employee unions, which are just an arm of the DNC). That reason is pretty obvious: the economic damage unions do. Public employee unions, and especially police unions, are far worse.
Mike M.
This only strengthens the argument that we need legislation to limit what “administration” can agree to when bargaining with public unions. This includes terms for dismissal and issues related to public pensions, overtime and so on.
The individual Minn police who killed Floyd aws well on the high side for public complaints lodged against them. His companion senior officer also had a lot of complaints. Something should have been done but was not. Not only did the two senior ones continue to be police, they were assigned to trainees who were then the ones not interfering with their behavior as when Chauvin killed. No matter whose “fault” this was, it needs to be fixed.
From one source I read (probably WSJ… but don’t have link) officers ultimately involved in these excessive ue of force cases generally are in the top 5% of those against whom complaints have been lodged.
On possible fix: Those with the highest rates of public complaints should be monitored. The complaints should be public record, and should never be redacted. The investigative reports should be public record, and not redacted. (Complaints against Chauvin are redacted.)
Their salaries bumps could be moved off the normal schedule for increase based on complaints that are found be be anything other than “baseless”. (Investigative bodies can have three levels of finding– baseless, some merit and sustained.)
If any the a complaint is found to be “some merit”, the cop should be treated as a “trainee” for a period of time– possibly with a commensurate reduction in salary. Allowing them overtime should certainly be forbidden. One should certainly forbid allowing them to be assigned “trainees” for a significant period of time. (Chauvin was acting as a trainer with two trainee cops in two while he killed Floyed!)
After some number of complaints are sustained in a set period of time, the cop should be fired. (The number could be determined by finding the top 5% of sustained complaints in a 10 year period.)
The union can, of course, represent any accused cop during an investigation. They just can’t block the outcome.
These should be considered as potential provisions in law that cannot be bargained away.
They may not be the best ones and people need to think of what provisions make sense (or more sense than mine.) But the rules need to accept that we cannot expect the union to do help out here. The rules have to ensure that unions and administration cannot agree to rules that go against the public interest.
The WSJ had a good letter to the editor.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/police-shooting-data-give-incomplete-picture-11591739366
Lucia,
Yes, there are a multitude of things which could be done to reduce the risk of dangerous police officers staying on the job. But the simplest and most effective is making public employee unions unlawful.
.
Even shop steward Mike M admits that public employee unions are not a good idea (since they effectively sit on both sides of the bargaining table). That conflict of interests with public employee unions is bankrupting many states, like Illinois. There are multitudes of civil service regulations which protect public employees, and that seems to me more than enough protection from unwarranted firing or harassment by supervisors.
lucia (Comment #186110): “After some number of complaints are sustained in a set period of time, the cop should be fired. (The number could be determined by finding the top 5% of sustained complaints in a 10 year period.)”
.
No way. If you do that, then every criminal who gets arrested will file a complaint against every cop involved. And you will fire 5% of all cops every year, automatically.
.
Cops gets lots of meritless complaints. All complaints should be looked into, but only complaints that have merit should count against a cops record.
.
I think that many department do a good job of policing their officers. And some do not.
SteveF (Comment #186115): “Even shop steward Mike M admits that public employee unions are not a good idea (since they effectively sit on both sides of the bargaining table).”
.
I did not say that. But public employee unions should definitely be banned from any sort of political activity.
A different point of view from a cop:
https://www.lawofficer.com/america-we-are-leaving/
Mike M,
“I did not say that. But public employee unions should definitely be banned from any sort of political activity.”
.
But they are effectively an arm of the DNC. How are they to be banned from political activity? Real question.
MikeM,
I don’t see how you can really ban that. You can’t ban members of officials being involved in political activity. The most you can do is ban them pending any funds on political activities.
Mike M,
I said “sustained”.
Presumably, the ones sustained have merit.
That’s a feature not a bug. . . Look, you could make the percentage lower. But if you are going to say no to this, you should then suggest a way that cops do get fired. I admit to prefering the one I read in the letter to the editor at the WSJ– I read it after I made my suggested, and then posted it.
Sure. And we need ways to deal with the ones that do not. Presumably, departments with lots of officers in the top 5% of complaints need to be looked at– and there needs to be a method to fire their officers and their supervisors. Of course training is useful, but endless training…. at some point it doesn’t work.
.
I think everyone here has probably had “on the job training” for things. I still remember “driver’s safety training” at one job. Oh. Come. On.
Mike M
From your link
Uhhmm…. they are still often believed. But then there is now often video evidence that indicates their story does not correspond to reality.
I guess he is unaware of the existence of firemen. For commercial fishermen. 🙂
The problem with police work is that it draws the type of personality that is border line dangerous, which the job requires if society as a whole is to be protected. A Barrney Fife of Mayberry will not get the job done.
.
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.“
.
And might I remind everyone here that the facts of the cases are not fully in for the current crying of the mob. Due to mass media getting just about all of these types of conflict wrong, I will generally take the side of the police or citizen involved until proven otherwise. Many cases where edited vid implies something that is just not true.
Post gone to moderation for some reason
Quoting the cop: “It’s the only job you can do everything right and lose everything.”
lucia (Comment #186130): “I guess he is unaware of the existence of firemen. For commercial fishermen.”
.
He was obviously talking about legal risk, not physical risk. Doctors do not risk a murder conviction if a patient dies. But a cop does risk a murder conviction if a suspect dies, even if the cop did nothing wrong. As it stands, the risk of conviction is small. But given the high stakes, that is little consolation. Just being charged with murder puts the accused through hell and results in financial ruin. And people are working hard to dramatically increase the risk of conviction.
Mike M.,
Whine, whine, whine. I wasn’t impressed with all the whining on the TV last night about Floyd (which continues tonight) and I’m not impressed with this cop. Nobody held a gun to his head and forced him to become a cop or to remain a cop. If he can’t stand the heat, he should quit. When you are authorized to use lethal force, then you can expect the possibility that you may be charged with misusing it.
Doctors may not face criminal liability, but they spend a large amount on malpractice insurance every year to try to avoid financial ruin from a malpractice suit that may not be justified. You have juries making billion dollar awards for the utterly ridiculous concept that talcum powder that may, or may not, have contained traces of asbestos could cause ovarian cancer.
Mike M,
“It’s the only job you can do everything right and lose everything.”
.
This is not accurate. Police officers who do everything right are not convicted of murder. The grand jury in Ferguson refused to bring charges against officer Wilson. Dashboard and (especially) body cameras would help a lot, and would also help to defuse potentially violent ‘protests’ that arise from false claims about an incident. I can’t understand why they are not used in every police department.
.
My oldest son (a lawyer) has an automatic dashboard camera in his car; records the last two hours the car was running. He says it is probably the best way to avoid fraudulent claims being made after an accident.
.
BTW: https://www.quora.com/Can-doctors-be-charged-with-manslaughter
Ed– The comment should be released.
MikeM
There’s little risk a cop will be tried for murder even if the cop did something wrong.
Doctors risk getting sued for malpractice if a patient dies. They can sue and even lose if a patient dies.
But beyond that: Doctors can also be charged with manslaugther if their behavior is perceived to be in reckless disregard for their patient’s safety. Conrad murray was charged and tried for manslaughter in Michael Jacksons death. The standard underwhich the doctor was charged is the same for a cop.
Anyone can be charged and tried under this standard. Usually, they are suspected of having done something wrong and there is some evidence they actually may have done something wrong. What they did wrong may not amount to manslaughter or at least some people will think it doesn’t. But the claim that cops are somehow the only group who is at risk of being convicted of murder if they did nothing wrong is laughably wrong.
SteveF: “Police officers who do everything right are not convicted of murder. The grand jury in Ferguson refused to bring charges against officer Wilson.”
I think it is a little more nuanced and worse than that with respect to Wilson. Wilson was 100% innocent, which the prosecutor knew. The matter was sent to the grand jury as a public relations ploy to deflect responsibility from the prosecutor for not prosecuting a clearly innocent person when much of the uninformed public thought he was guilty. The matter should not have even gotten to the grand jury because there were zero grounds for prosecuting him.
All that being said, the prosecutor was later voted out because he did the right thing in not pushing harder for a prosecution and the public was still uninformed or, by that time, willfully uninformed about what happened.
Quoting the cop: “We used to be able to testify in court and we were believed. Now, unless there is video from three different angles, no one cares what you have to say.”
lucia (Comment #186130): “Uhhmm…. they are still often believed.”
.
I thought so too. But the Colorado Senate has passed a bill that would prohibit such testimony by police officers in court. That would seem to make it a requirement of the law that the testimony of police officers is not to be believed.
.
I also thought the cop a bit whinny. But what happens if the only people who want to be cops are the ones that are so desperate for the power trip that they are willing to risk the consequences? I don’t know, but it can’t be good.
.
It seem to me that if the public wants cops to run toward danger, we have got to tell them we’ve got their backs to at least some degree.
JD Ohio,
“All that being said, the prosecutor was later voted out because he did the right thing in not pushing harder for a prosecution and the public was still uninformed or, by that time, willfully uninformed about what happened.”
.
Sometimes you just have to do the right thing. Bodycams and dashcams are the biggest potential improvements. If there had been a bodycam video of Brown charging Wilson, nobody would be talking about Wilson shooting a man in the back with his with his hands up.
.
What made the killing in Minneapolis so damning was the clear video evidence…. the police officer was way out of line (and arguably both sadistic and psychopathic), and the other officers did absolutely nothing. Most everyone who sees the video knows that. Like it or not, white police officers, like Caesar’s wife, have to be above suspicion.
The libertarian view on police reform I believe would require 3 major changes: (1) change the justice system evolved qualified immunity for police to criminal charges, (2) get rid of government employee unions including police unions and (3) back off the drug wars.
“In order for a plaintiff to defeat qualified immunity, they have to find a prior case that has held unconstitutional an incident with virtually identical facts to the one the plaintiff is bringing,” said UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz. “And over the last 15 years, the court has made it a more and more difficult standard for plaintiffs to overcome to go to trial.”
Government employees work for government operations that are essentially monopolies and thus they hold much more power through unionization than their counterpart unions in the private sectors.
The war on drugs takes much of the police effort away from violent and property crimes which only make up about 20% of police arrests.
Mike M,
I googled to find a Colorado bill on police. I found this
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb20-217
I don’t see anything in there to suggest it would become illlegal for juries or judges to believe police. Could you cite the provision that makes you think it would? Or is it some other law?
Honestly MikeM,
I find nothing to object to in https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb20-217 . Heck, it removes qualified immunity (and requires agencies to indemnify officers.) That’s a great step! Now people whose rights are violated have recourse, but cops who really didn’t know won’t be pauperized. That’s way better than saying “tough luck” to people whose civil rights are violated.
It makes complaint records transparent. It requires cops who plead guilty or nolo to unlawful use of force to have their certification revoked. And so on.
I hope Illinois passes something like that.
There’s an idiotic op-ed in today’s WSJ about why slavery reparations should be paid in the US. The author opines that the US is bound by international law. I don’t think so. We obey international law when we feel like it. We have never submitted to the plenary authority of the International Court of Justice, for example, and have not abided by several adverse decisions of the Court.
Enforced by whom? Certainly no one outside the US. Not to mention the unintended consequences. Do you want to increase racism in the US? Pay reparations and leave the rest of the racial preferences like affirmative action and set asides untouched.
On the legal liability of police who kill a civilian and the failure of academia to provide solutions:
I’m sure that the police officer cited by Mike M. above would want those numbers to be much closer to, if not equal to, zero. That would be a disaster.
lucia,
I based my comment on an AP story in my local paper. Here is a similar story:
https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Colorado-police-accountability-bill-picks-up-GOP-15327164.php
Mike M.,
If an officer with a body camera responding to an incident doesn’t have their body camera on and working, they should be disciplined, up to and including employment termination. Failure to keep the battery charged would not be a valid excuse. I think not allowing testimony if the body camera was not on is, in fact, quite reasonable. If you can’t trust the officer to properly use their body camera, you shouldn’t trust their unsupported testimony either.
MikeM,
The bill itself is here:
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2020A/bills/2020a_217_ren.pdf
I may be missing something, but I don’t see a provision that actually forbids them from testifying on events not recorded. I do see that they will be provided cameras and are required to record.
I’m not sure I’d be stupendously bothered if a policeman’s testimony is limited in cases where they decided to turn their body camera off. The bill requires them to turn it on. They should just leave it on and make sure they keep it charged.
(FWIW: I doubt a provision that absolutely positively prohibits police from testifying in their own defense would hold up. If you can find the bill and the provision, I’d be interested in reading what it actually says.)
I’m certainly not bothered by jurors being given “permission” to not believe a police officer who decided to turn his camera off during incidents. Heck, it doesn’t bother me if jurors tend to view intentionally not recording when it’s required by law as suggesting the cop wanted to conceal something.
Ummmmm … the mob out there is likely to assume all police action is lawless. The police need to have protection against false accusation. If not a union then by some other means.
.
Police rarely run toward danger on their own and hunting down people they dislike. They are called by citizens and this prompts the large majority of police/citizen interactions that end badly. Mentally ill people wielding weapons are generally who get shot. If you want your parent/spouse/sibling/child who is a cop to not be able to use lethal force in this situation then you are in a minority. Non-lethal force such as tasers are a better option but not always available.
.
Police need to be held to a higher standard, but that standard needs to be reasonable. Engaging in a hostile confrontation with police is a very bad idea, just as it is with anyone who is bigger or better armed than you are.
.
Body cameras should be mandatory. Period.
.
The jury should be able to disregard testimony without camera data, but it should be up to them to do so. I can see where the burden of proof can change here. However regular people who murder people are on a standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” and this shouldn’t change just because it is the police.
I agree De Witt that it’s an idiotic position. Next thing, modern Egyptians will be asked to pay reparations to Israel for slavery thousands of years ago. No one should be held responsible for things other people did let alone for the actions of other people’s distant ancestors.
Tom
Agreed. Which way the presumption falls would depend on who is being accused. The body camera evidence can matter both in cases where the person arrested is charged, and the police are making claims used as evidence in the non-police persons trial or it can matter when the police are accused and charged.
.
As a juror, I would automatically consider who had control of turning the camera on or off. I’m the same when I view some videos on youtube and so on. But in a trial or proceeding, it appears the peace officer can indicate why the camera was off (malfunction… so on.) I’m not seeing anything that says they can’t testify.
.
I think a law requiring the police to have camera and turn them on, and requiring them recording to be made available to the accused and/or the accused family is good. Associated rules strongly encouraging the camera being on are good. If anyone has an argument why it’s not good, I’d certainly like to hear it.
There is no quicker way to kill momentum for police reform than to throw reparations into the mix, a poison pill of epic proportions. There seem to be mountains of weeping people out there performatively professing their guilt, let them write those checks voluntarily. I have a suspicion that their guilt ends at their checkbook.
I would support qualified immunity ending if the body camera is turned off.
Tom–
The bill ends qualified immunity. But it also protects the individual policeman from financial peril for the civil suit–the police department (city etc.) would indemnify the police man.
.
This means the person whose civil rights were violated can get justice if they prove their rights are found to have been violated.
.
The taxpayer will pay– but that already happens in cases where civil immunity did not apply. It doesn’t if the violation was something previously ruled to be a violation.
.
I think this is, on the balance, good. The person alleging a violation still needs to prove it, but it should make police (and those training the police) more careful. Even if it doesn’t, really, people whose rights were violated should be able to be restored– even if there is no previous court ruling some specific thing was not a civil rights violation.
David Young,
IMO, International Law is a colossal oxymoron. You get lots of hits if you search on ‘international law oxymoron’. So no nation, much less the USA, is actually bound by international law unless they choose to be so bound. And even then, it’s likely to be case-by-case, not general.
I can’t read the op-ed advocating reparations based on international law so perhaps it answers this question — are other nations actually paying reparations to citizens who are descendants of former slaves?
To me the idea that the US government owes reparations to the descendants of slaves seems nonsensical. Slavery pre-exists the United States by millenia, and was ended by government action. Absent slavery it’s not likely that the American Civil War would have ever happened, and while not all of the Union dead meant to “die to make men free” that was an important result of the war. Was not the cost in blood sufficient payment for sins that the government did not commit?
Dale S,
AFAIK, no other nations have ever paid slavery reparations. Some institutions like churches have created reparation funds, but they are very limited, supporting things like scholarships and charitable contributions and tries to make it seem practicable. The main thing is that they mostly involve voluntary contributions, AFAICT.
Here’s a WAPO article that is, needless to say, favorable to reparations:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/31/slavery-reparations-seem-impossible-many-places-theyre-already-happening/?arc404=true
lucia (Comment #186162): “I may be missing something, but I don’t see a provision that actually forbids them from testifying on events not recorded.”
.
page 5:
What we we do without experts?
.
NYT Today:
“Public health experts and communications strategists say that regular, clear and consistent messages to the public are essential.”
.
The experts are also “alarmed” that there are rising case counts that might be tied to states reopening.
.
NPR keeps everything consistent: “Like many public health experts, including those at the World Health Organization, Pierre, who is African American, says she thinks the demonstrations are necessary, even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. “COVID has fed off the pandemic of racism,” she says”.
.
Magical thinking and platitudes from our esteemed experts. Somehow the fact checkers are not taking any of these statements up. This is one of the worst examples of journalism’s hive mind going bonkers I have ever seen. This is idiotic and self destructive to their profession. What was left of their reputation is now a smoldering ash heap.
DeWitt thanks for that link. The Chicago example doesn’t fit slavery reparations, payments were made to individuals directly harmed by the City of Chicago. The Georgetown example is private and voluntary, neither of which would apply to a government distributing taxpayer funds. While it’s nice of Georgetown to raise a fund to distribute to descendants of the slaves Georgetown sold, they had no obligation to do so.
Cities and states that were direct slaveowners at least have a tie to slavery, but they also lack money of their own. Taxing the citizens of Virginia, many of whom are descendant of slaves themselves, in order to compensate a few thousand descendants of Virginia-owned slaves hardly seems just, even if we imagine a continuity between the current state of Virginia and the rebellious Virginia that considered itself a sovereign state.
In the case of the federal government, actual slaveholding is not pointed to but rental. Paid labor being provided by slaves instead of free men primarily benefits slave-owners at the expense of the slaves, but it’s not at all likely the slaves would be freed in the absence of governmental rental. The benefit to the government comes when slave rental is cheaper than free labor, so the real financial victims are the unemployed free whites and blacks. Should their descendants receive reparations?
Similarly, the idea that officers being paid for servants whether they were free or not was a “powerful inducement to own slaves” depends on how high the allowance was — but even if the economics justified it (not shown), the beneficiary is clearly the officer and *not* the government, who is reimbursing the slaveowner for nonexistent wages! It also seems unlikely the policy would cause someone to be enslaved who otherwise would have been free, contrary to the statement that this policy meant “thousands of enslaved people owed their bondage directly to federal policy”. The article specifically mentions Zachary Taylor and Jefferson Davis as examples, as if they weren’t both slaveowners on a massive scale outside of the army.
Mike M,
First (a) presumptively. “Presumptively” means something that is presumed but can be rebutted. So this is not a bar to introducing something. The cop’s lawyer just needs to explain, why, in this instance, the cop violating the law and electing not to record should not bar him from presenting evidence.
(b) If the cops failure to follow the law and record is due to mmalfunction then, their testimony can be admitted.
So: in fact this claim of your is mistaken
The bill does not prohibit testimony in court. It creates a presumption of inadmissibility (a) when the cop elects to deviate from his legal duty to record and (b) presumptions can be overcome. So.. in fact, your statement is incorrect.
I noticed another important bit not included in the poriton MikeM quoted:
The presumption that the footage not recorded due to the officers choice to violate the law requiring him to record only applies in cases against people other than the officer. So the presumption of inadmissiblity and so on appear to vanish if the officer is being tried.
.
I would think officers should be fine with this. Sure: it’s true if the just goof and the camera is off, the non-cop perp might get off. But that’s something that can always occur. But with respect to accusation against the cop the presumption vanishes. Seems fair enough to me.
I’m all in favor of providing equipment to record and an obligation to record, which both protects good cops doing their job and citizens at risk of extent.
.
The same obligation should go beyond patrolmen wearing body cameras and include all of law enforcement. For example, I see no reason why a citizen should be prosecuted for lying to the FBI when no recording was made.
Dale S,
The FBI should definitely record when questioning.
Yes, the FBI should always record an interview/interrogation.
But they never will unless forced to do so by Congress, first because it might make a fair representation to prosecutors and juries, lessening the chance of prosecution and conviction, and second because such recordings would show just how dishonest and devious the agents are in their pursuit of a target…. it would make them look very bad. And make people reluctant to talk to FBI agents.
SteveF,
I agree that the FBI will not require themselves to record all interviews/interrogations. We need legislation.
.
It’s no different from needing legislation to address local policing. As Ed points out, regulating and disciplining the police can’t and won’t be done by unions or by the officers themselves.
.
So I think it’s clear it has to be done at a different level where legislation prohibits local administrations from bargaining and then “agreeing” to rules that prevent any real discipline of bad behavior by police. That requires the legislature to act.
.
Rules similar to those in Colorado look good.
lucia (Comment #186184): “‘Presumptively’ means something that is presumed but can be rebutted. So this is not a bar to introducing something.
.
I am pretty sure that in law there are both rebuttable and non-rebuttable presumptions. To have the former, I think there has to be conditions; the judge can not just overrule the presumption on a whim. The law provides one condition to rebut the presumption: A camera malfunction that was not the officer’s fault. Video from an independent source might qualify by making the lack of lapel camera video moot. But it can’t be just arbitrary.
.
But then neither of us is a lawyer.
Legislatures micromanaging police departments is unwise for the same reason that legislatures micromanaging pretty much anything is unwise.
Most police departments seem to do just fine under current law. The policies of such departments should be seen as defining best practice. All departments should be required to follow best practice.
So maybe states should set up independent boards composed of individuals with extensive experience in the criminal justice system. Those boards could accredit department policies and review repeated and/or egregious problems so as to ensure that procedures are brought up to standard.
Mike M,
“Legislatures micromanaging police departments is unwise for the same reason that legislatures micromanaging pretty much anything is unwise.”
.
Of course. But I think “All police departments must have outside independent review of all complaints of excessive force.” or similar isn’t micromanaging. Neither is “Any officer judged by independent review to have used excessive force shall be immediately discharged.” amount to micromanaging. Nor is “As a condition of continued employment, all on duty police officers are required to wear and used a body camera.” Those types of requirements address real deficiencies which have caused huge damage, both financial and social.
MikeM,
It doesn’t say it’s unrebuttable. I’m pretty sure would have to say so for it to be unrebuttable.
This article discusses the use of presumptions. https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1676&context=facultypub
The first (long) footnote discusses the general meaning of “presumption”
It seems to me your reading in “unrebuttable” where unstated is a stretch for two reasons.
(1) If the presumption was unrebuttable, they could simply leave the word presumptively out of the sentences in which they appear. For example
This:
” AS REQUIRED BY THIS SECTION ARE PRESUMPTIVELY11INADMISSIBLE”
Could just be edited to say this:
” AS REQUIRED BY THIS SECTION ARE 11 INADMISSIBLE”
So: by your reading the word “presumptively” means… well nothing.
Of course a judge can’t overrule a presumption on a whim. Someone would need to provided evidence to set aside the presumption. That’s what a presumption means.
My reading is that line doesn’t say the malfunction is grounds to rebut the presumption. It says the presumption doesn’t exist if the camera malfunctioned and the cop didn’t know it was malfunctioning prior to the incident. That’s different.
But since we read it differently, we could ask JDOhio. He’s an real lawyer. 🙂
Sure. Video evidence from another source could be introduced. The law says nothing to suggest such evidence is barred nor does it bar third party eyewitness testimony. Presumably, that video and eyewitness testimony would be welcomed by a court. If it happens to support what the cop would have said, the cops statement wouldn’t be necessary. If the 3rd party video or witnesses show the cop was acting correctly, that evidence would be used to overcome the presumption.
So: that presumption could be overcome by evidence. That’s the normal situation with evidence.
SteveF/Mike M
I also think if you want an independent board (like the POST board) in the Colorado bill) to monitor to review repeat and eggregious offenses, the board will need records. So, it seems this provision would be necessary:
Evidently, in many juridictions, the law permits and union contracts require discipline records to be purged after fairly short periods of time. Clearly, noone on an oversight board can identify repeat offenders if the data are not kept.
Also, this provision would appear necessary if the oversight board MikeM thinks useful is to function properly
So: it looks like this bill sets up the system Mike M wants: A board to review egregious and repeated behavior. I’m not sure, but perhaps Mike’s objection is that it applies sanctions to individual officers rather than merely accrediting departments (whatever accrediting departments might mean.)
I actually think it’s much better to permit individual officers to be decertified.
Reparations are unlikely to happen because they are immoral. Holding people responsible for sins they had nothing to do with and which their ancestors had nothing to do with is immoral. If we cross this Rubicon, we destroy the whole idea of individual guilt/innocence and start down the road of collective guilt. We do it in war time in that every member of the enemies military are held guilty for the governments actions that caused the war, it’s a very dark place we don’t want to go to.
David Young,
What I don’t understand about things like demands for reparations is why anyone thinks they will improve the general situation, i.e. reduce systemic racism and white privilege. Chief Justice John Roberts once said: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.†Whether he still believes that is an open question. But I would think anyone who has the slightest understanding of human nature would realize that policies that favor one race over others are going to, if anything, make more people dislike and disrespect the race receiving the favors.
Affirmative action has always struck me as being the modern version of the white man’s burden. It’s inherently insulting even if you ignore the unintended consequences.
David Young,
“ If we cross this Rubicon, we destroy the whole idea of individual guilt/innocence and start down the road of collective guilt.â€
.
Yes, we might as well attack todays Germans or Japanese for the sins of 80 years ago, by people long dead. What is next, attacking the French for the attack on Britain in 1066? Crazy. Why not punish the Portuguese because Brazil exists today? Maluco. Punish the Spanish for Mexico (mierda) and punish the English for the USA? (Keep a stiff upper lip.) Let’s punish the Italians for sacking and destroying Carthage 2300 years ago…. and those horrid Egyptians for driving out the Jews. There is so much madness on the left that it beggars belief.
.
Clearly, guilt for past sins does not pass to offspring, except among the terminally evil and among the terminally progressive, and which seem almost indistinguishable.
.
Nobody in my family lineage was present in the States prior to 1880. How am I or my kids culpable for slavery? How are immigrants from Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, or France culpable for slavery? It is all madness, profoundly evil madness of the left.
DeWitt,
“ The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.â€
.
Big talk, no action. If he believes that, and I doubt he really does, he has spent his entire time on the SC doing his best to ensure that discrimination based on race continues unabated. He is either dishonest or a fool…. and I rather suspect both.
None of the rioting and accusations of racism are actually about racism, except in the minds of some “useful idiots” in the protests. The accusations of racism are about polarizing the people of the country. And think about who benefits from that…
1. Anyone looking at the evidence of numbers (as opposed to anecdotes pushed by propagandists) would dispute “the police racism and violence problem” even exists. Arithmetic matters. The stereotyping and slandering of 800,000 cops is simply evil.
2. Cops of all colors are less likely to shoot and/or slower to shoot blacks than people of other races. Easy to understand — incentives matter. Ask Wilson in Ferguson case whose life was destroyed despite extraordinary restraint in a wholly justified shooting. As one of the black witnesses told the grand jury, he couldn’t believe how long the cop waited before shooting. He’d have shot him much earlier.
3. Good cops are quitting blue cities in droves. Some employment agencies are setting up to help them get jobs with police departments in cities that aren’t batshit crazy with hatred.
4. Would any sane person rebuild a business that was torched in a blue city?
5. Bizarre tidbit — the founders of BLM, in addition to being avowed Marxists, include several voodoo witches. For real. source — long time civil rights lawyer Robert Barnes.
Pauligon59,
I think at least some of the accusations about racism are about racism.
Presumably you think Trump benefits from that.
Stan,
No. It’s not true that anyone looking at numbers would dispute the existence of police racism or violence. I think it’s interesting that you make claims about what numbers show and then provide absolutely no numbers.
stan,
“4. Would any sane person rebuild a business that was torched in a blue city?”
.
I don’t know, maybe you could offer an answer to your own rhetorical question. I expect that many, but certainly not all, will in fact rebuild; but I’m in no position to evaluate their sanity.
.
I am 100% opposed to sterotyping cops (or people doing any other profession, for that matter). I’m also 100% opposed to brutally killing a handcuffed man on the street. I know that is rare, but it has led to billions in damage and many deaths.
.
Please suggest how the next similar instance can be avoided. Please also suggest how psychopaths can be kept off police forces.
Trump benefits, I believe, come election time; however, that is based on my perception of how most of the country is perceiving what is going on. But I was thinking more about who else benefits from a divided United States? The upcoming election is very important, not just for Americans, but for many world polities. I worry that a divided America is seen as a weak America and that those various polities benefiting from that are contributing to what is going on is at least plausible.
Willis Eschenbach has some numbers on police shootings:
There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of systemic racism in the police depaetments across the country. That isn’t to say that some local departments might be largely racist, his analysis didn’t go that deep. But nationally, there is no obvious evidence of racial bias by the police.
Once again, you don’t bring any numbers here. And you don’t provide a link to your numbers.
No amount of massaging numbers can erase the fact that Chauvin was violent and killed someone.
Brooks, the drunk guy who got shot recently was also unnecessary cop violence. The cops knew who he was. His temporary escape would not have presented a danger to the public. The cops could have let him run off, and come around the next day and arrested him when he was sober. It’s admittedly not as egregious as Chauvin killing Floyd. But shooting the guy was unnecessary violence and it’s a problem.
Whether these were both racist and violent,… the video evidence doesn’t tell us. But it was violent.
You can try to sift and sling any numbers you want: but we do have evidence that at least some cops resort to shooting people unnecessarily, or standing on their necks for no good reason and so on. This needs to be fixed.
SteveF
We can be pretty sure that sifting and massaging numbers to show the violence is “not a problem” isn’t going to help us avoid future upheavals like we are seeing. I’m guessing no one whose convinced by these analyses is going to want to ask who ever is top of the heap at #CHAZ or #CHOP to invite them to give a talk, live, in Seattle this week!
Lucia, The statistics on police killing unarmed suspects shows its actually quite rare. I think last year 20 whites died in these incidents and 10 blacks. That sounds disproportionate but you much consider that blacks commit proportionately much more crime and are thus much more likely to be in contact with the police. With some research I can be more exact. These numbers as I recall are also declining significantly. Numbers of police being murdered in the line of duty are much less rare.
60 years ago, there may have been a problem with racist police, but there is to my knowledge scant evidence for it these days. There is lots of evidence that black neighborhoods are much more dangerous than white neighborhoods. It’s insane to blame these facts on the police. The attempt to do so is a deflection tactic to keep the narrative on minor issues rather than on the real problems. Demogogues make lots of money off these narratives.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883
has lots of numbers. Based on their surprisingly high rate of crime commission which surprised me, blacks are much less likely to be killed by police than whites. Blacks commit 53% of all homicides in the USA.
In fact, numbers of unarmed people shot by police has been dramatically declining since 2015, during the reign of our lord and savior Barack the magnificent.
David,
Well, based on the statistic you give, blacks unarmed blacks are killed at disproportionately high rates. After all: there are more than 2 whites for every black. In fact, only about 12% of the population is black and about 77% are white. So by fraction, we should expect 64 whites killed for 10 blacks killed. I’m sure with more research you can be more exact.
Also: I think 30 unarmed suspects getting killed by cops in one year suggests a violence problems on the part of cops. That’s true whether or not the violence is accompanied by a racist tinge. BTW: In your statistics, would the drunk guy in Atlanta who had a taser be considered armed, or unarmed.
So it seems pretty clear to me the numbers suggest:
1) a violence problems (which is supported by the videos) and
2) police violence may be hitting blacks at disproportionate rates– possibley owing to racism, possibly due to other reasons.
But that data hardly suggests the claim that police are violent or racists is meritless!
Well… we can argue about how much evidence is “scant” vs. “abundant”. But you’ve just argued that blacks being killed at a higher rate per capita (of blacks) than whites is evidence against the proposition that police violence affects blacks more than whites. So, I might suggest that your just refusing to see evidence even when it exists.
Or… perhaps your argument is a deflection tatics to keep the narrative away from discussing the very real problem of police violence and what to do about it.
Uhmmm… well… yes. But I would point out that you are advancing a narrative. It just happens to be the one that you think connects the various threads. It has obvious big holes and problems. But, oh. well.
Lucia: “Well, based on the statistic you give, blacks unarmed blacks are killed at disproportionately high rates.”
The two studies that I am aware of don’t reach this conclusion.
Roland Fryer, a black man and Harvard Professor wrote this:
“Partitioning the data in myriad ways, we find
no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings. Investigating the intensive margin – the timing of shootings or how many bullets were
discharged
in the endeavor – there are no detectable racial
differences.” See link to paper here https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/11/no-racial-bias-police-shootings-study-harvard-prof/ [p. 4 of study –Fryer, Roland G. Jr. (July 2016). “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force”]
It should be noted that Fryer found that Black people were disproportionately stopped for small offenses but that as the offenses got more serious the discrimination was less.
…….
Here is a PNAS study
……
“A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the Democratic narrative regarding race and police shootings, which holds that white officers are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased shootings of black men. It turns out that white officers are no more likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot black civilians. It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against white civilians, the study found.
The authors, faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park, created a database of 917 officer-involved fatal shootings in 2015 from more than 650 police departments. Fifty-five percent of the victims were white, 27 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic. Between 90 and 95 percent of the civilians shot by officers in 2015 were attacking police or other citizens; 90 percent were armed with a weapon. So-called threat-misperception shootings, in which an officer shoots an unarmed civilian after mistaking a cellphone, say, for a gun, were rare.
Earlier studies have also disproven the idea that white officers are biased in shooting black citizens.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/
People here more knowledgeable than me can sift through the statistics.
I think that one of the confounding issues here is that people tend to dismiss and ignore police brutality against whites, such as police laughing when they killed Tony Timba and unarmed Daniel Shaver on his knees begging not to be killed by police, but he still was. (Check youtube for videos. Also, severe beating of Jimmy King for zero reasons)
JD
I’m willing to believe the violence isn’t racist. Or maybe it is. I’m merely pointing out the overly simplistic statistic David is posting is no where near sufficient to support the contention of racism. As provided it suggests precisely the opposite.
It is worth noting even with respect to the article you cite, racism could still be a big problem. For example:’
1) Police killed the Atlanta guy who they initially stopped in a smallish offense. (He was asleep in a car that was inconveniently parked.) If it is the case that blacks are stopped for small things at larger rates, this is a case where someone was stopped for a smallish offense that subsequently escalated to a killing. So “only” being stopped disproportionately for small offenses doesn’t mean blacks are being treated somehow fairly.
2) The article above seems to focus on cops shooting unarmed people. But Chauvan choked the unarmed Floyd to death.
3) Death isn’t the only violence that matters. It happens to be the outcome that does result in the maximum mount of press.
4) I also object to police violence against whites or any other race. I think the cases of Timba and Shaver are appalling. In fact, I tend to think the main problem is police violence in some forces that fail to deal with individual members of the force who are problems. (Like Chauvin.)
I think it would be a damn shame if the fact that police are also exhibit unnecessary violence against whites is somehow used an an excuse to not address the problem of police violence. I think it’s just more reason to address the problems of bad apples in the police force. After all: They kill white unarmed white people too is hardly a reason to overlook killing of blacks.
Lucia, The stats in the WSJ piece point out that blacks commit over 50% of the crimes in this country. That means they are equally likely to come into contact with police in hostile situations as whites. If there was no bias in police use of force, one would therefore expect 50% of all police killings to be of blacks. The fact that its far less shows there can’t be widespread bias.
The fact that police shootings are declining rapidly is good news and shows that this is being exploited by politicians and hustlers.
bout 7000 blacks are murdered annually mostly by other blacks. That is a huge problem and the narrative allows naive people to be fooled into supposing that we should ignore it, leaving criminals in control of many black neighborhoods.
“A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.” And then the article gives the evidence. It looks overwhelming to me.
“The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,†they concluded.”
Lucia: “Police killed the Atlanta guy who they initially stopped in a smallish offense. (He was asleep in a car that was inconveniently parked.) If it is the case that blacks are stopped for small things at larger rates, this is a case where someone was stopped for a smallish offense that subsequently escalated to a killing.”
……
I have watched the entire video. The police were extremely polite as was the victim originally. Then after the sobriety test was failed the victim went nuts and tackled the police officer and stole a taser. Then the victim tried to shoot one officer with the taser, which if successful could have given the victim access to the police officers gun. Personally, if it was me, I would not have shot the victim in that the police had his car and videos of his face. The victim was surely facing 10-20 years in prison. On the other hand, do you want someone guilty of a violent felony who is drunk and has a weapon (possible that taser could be shot more than once) loose on the streets? That is for the people of Atlanta to decide and I can see reasonable arguments on both sides.
…….
I am in no way excusing police brutality because people like Chauvin (seems like a sociopath to me) need to be fired before they do their damage. However, police are daily dealing with the flotsam of society and very violent people and some percentage of police will inevitably turn into bullies. I think the public at large has no idea of the actual numbers of killings and probably imagines that there are 5,000 to 20,000 per year.
For example, several Ohio State football players [very good, hard working people] commented that as young black people, their goal has to be just to live because of the violence they are subjected to by the police. The statistics don’t justify that fear although the inference that they would be subjected to a large amount of police killings is initially reasonable because they are quite often harassed over small matters.
……
This article by Bernie Kierik, using Washington Post statistics shows that there are not really a huge number of killings in the US when considering that there are 330 million people in the US.
…….
“in 2018, 995 people were shot and killed by police, the lowest number since 2015 when they began collecting and reporting this data publicly.
So, here’s the 2018 breakdown of the 995 people shot and killed by the police.
403 were white, 210 were black, 148 were Hispanic, 38 were classified as other, and 199 were classified as unknown.
Out of that 995, 47 were unarmed — 23 were white, 17 were black, 5 were Hispanic, and 2 were unknown.” https://www.newsmax.com/bernardkerik/police-shootings-crime-statistics/2019/01/22/id/899297/ Again the original study is hard to link to, so I am linking to article
Lucia: “The article above seems to focus on cops shooting unarmed people. But Chauvan choked the unarmed Floyd to death”
The articles I linked dealt with both armed and unarmed people. Apparently they were limited to shootings. However, it is very unlikely to me that the police killed a large number of people through choking or non-firearms means. Would be curious if someone has the data.
My general conclusion is that there is a substantial amount of police brutality, but nowhere near the level that anyone should be considering lunatic policies such as defunding the police or abandoning police buildings. [which people are actually taking seriously] My reading of comments by prominent black people is that they are outraged by what they perceive to be as a huge number of unjustified killings and not nearly as much by non-lethal police use of force and brutality.
David Young
The rate at which they shoot unarmed blacks should not be proportional to the rate at which they apprehend armed blacks. That the article tries to make this link is one of it’s weaknesses.
.
Of course it’s good news that police shooting are declining rapidly. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t address a continued problem that has not disappeared.
.
The rate of black on black crime is irrelevant to our need to fix police violence. We should fix both. Saying we need to fix police violence is not saying we should ignore non-police violence. Neighborhood violence should not be used as an excuse to not fix problems in police forces.
.
Beyond this, I really don’t know why you want to spend so much time discussing to the “black-white” aspect. In my view the important aspect is the police violence aspect. This needs to be corrected whether the victims are black white or any other race.
.
As far as I’m concerned, whether the violence is color blind is almost beside the point. The violence is violence. Government police should not be unnecessarily violent in instances like those seen recently, and that’s what needs to be fixed. If it gets fixed, it will barely matter if the police harbor hidden inner racist feelings. If they act properly it won’t manifest in violence, and it’s the violence that’s the problem.
Don’t be so sure that Chauvin is a sociopath. While it is possible there was some reason for direct murder due to prior work together at a bar, there is also the possibility he acted within police procedure.
At one point in the video, Floyd lifts his head, evidence that the knee to the neck was not at full weight, but instead to keep him in position.
One officer suggests Floyd should be placed on his side due to a certain condition. Chauvin says that’s why he has him on his stomach. Evidence that Floyd had this condition ‘excited delirium’.
Here is what Minneapolis teaches its officers about this condition:
https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/File/1853/Pre-Hospital%20Sedation%20Report%20Revised%2011-20-2018.pdf
Pay attention to appendix 4 starting on page 45.
“Since these parameters are thought to contribute to poor outcomes in ExDS, the specific physical control methods employed should optimally minimize the time spent struggling, while safely achieving physical control. The use of multiple personnel with training in safe physical control measures is encouraged.”
Consider the case of Donald Lewis:
https://youtu.be/GdzpoS8pTks
Police had knee on back/neck.
Victim crying for help.
Autopsy said one thing, Michael Baden came in with a different diagnosis that blamed the police.
One difference is they tried to get Lewis to an upright position once he became unconscious.
Mike N: “Don’t be so sure that Chauvin is a sociopath.”
Floyd didn’t have a pulse for nearly 3 minutes, yet Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck. I think the description is accurate. The language you quote refers to “achieving” physical control. The nearly 3 minutes that Floyd had no pulse was a period when the police had physical control.
JD
I don’t support defunding the police or abandoning police buildings. I do support some other polices that are starting to be implemented– like setting up databases to retain information on past disciplinary history. Firing people in appropriate circumstances. Requiring body cameras.
On the body camera note: Just this week, the Aurora Illinois police did a great job by releasing a stop/arrest that was fully recorded by the cops camera (mounted on the police car.) Some people had released the final two minutes on twitter. Those two minutes are, of course, when the police are finally arresting two people who are resisting.
The Aurora police released the full 20 minute recording– and eventually by two police cars. Transparency is great for cops when the cops act properly. The four cops involved were very professional.
Lucia: “I don’t support defunding the police or abandoning police buildings. I do support some other polices that are starting to be implemented– like setting up databases to retain information on past disciplinary history.”
……
I agree. What I would support is the daily or potentially 2 or 3 times a week tracking of all police stops by race in big cities. If certain police officers are unfairly stopping black people, it could be nipped in the bud. For instance, last year my daughter was at a birthday party of a black girl at a hotel. The girls gave each other the peace sign, and the police intervened to say they were giving gang symbols. Also, I have a very admirable black tenant who works notwithstanding having a bad case of multiple sclerosis. One day his wife pulled their car up to the front door, and the police came by and said that couldn’t be done. They wouldn’t even listen to the wife trying to explain the MS.
MikeN,
“ Don’t be so sure that Chauvin is a sociopath. While it is possible there was some reason for direct murder due to prior work together at a bar, there is also the possibility he acted within police procedure.â€
.
I watched the video. Chauvin’s behavior was way beyond shocking. The guy is a cruel sociopath, if not worse. The other three officers are little better. There are no excuses or explanations that will change the video. Chauvin will be sentenced to prison for a very long time, and unless held in strict solitary, he may not survive as long as Whitey Bulger did.
.
If the Minneapolis police procedures are consistent with violent sociopathic behavior, and I doubt they are, that doesn’t make Chauvin any less a monster. If the Minneapolis police procedures really are consistent with sociopathic behavior, then the entire department leadership is culpable as accessories to homicide.
JD Ohio,
“ They wouldn’t even listen to the wife trying to explain the MS.â€
.
Maybe they would have listened to you.
.
As I said earlier, I knew only three young men who went into police work; I would not have wanted any of them able to use force. They were all ‘head-cases’, as we used to say. That anecdotal information is not statistically meaningful, but it does give me pause, and motivates a question: Are the right people hired as police officers? I don’t know the answer, but I think it is a legitimate question to ask, and certainly relevant in light of instances of excessive use of force by police.
JD Ohio (Comment #186451): “Personally, if it was me, I would not have shot the victim in that the police had his car and videos of his face. The victim was surely facing 10-20 years in prison.”
.
That is not clear to me, but I have no experience with the legal system.
Isn’t a blood alcohol tests needed to convict someone of drunk driving? If so, letting the suspect run away would have meant that no charges would ever have been filed.
I suppose they could still have charged the guy with resisting arrest, but wouldn’t the failure to file charges undermine that case? It might not prevent conviction, but I think it would surely make it harder.
He stole police equipment. But a conviction on that might not be trivial, especially if he was smart enough to wipe off his fingerprints before ditching the Taser. On the video, it looks like he did take the Taser, but it does not appear to be beyond a reasonable doubt that he did so.
So I am guessing the DA would have ended up offering a plea to much lesser charges. Quite possibly no prison time, if he had a previously clean record. But as I said, I have no expertise.
MikeM
No. In GA, refusing a tests results in automatic 1 year suspension of a drivers license. https://statelaws.findlaw.com/georgia-law/georgia-dui-laws.html
He also failed a field sobriety tests and I’m pretty sure he admits to being shift-faced drunk.
There are some longer videos and some shorter ones. (I’m hunting for the longer one. )
The main difficulty in convicting the man of drunk driving was that he was asleep in the car when the police found him. (The car was not properly parked– it was blocking other cars wanting to use the Wendy’s drive through window.)
So the question is not whether he was drunk. It’s whether he was driving. I’m pretty sure he did move the car after the cops woke him up– and even though they knew he was drunk– ordered him to move his car. He complied. That driving might be the “drunk driving”. I need to find the longer tape to check my recollection. (Obviously, his car got to the parking lot somehow too– but the interview has some discussion of a girlfriend being with him and then leaving.)
MikeM
I seriously doubt they need a guy to be present to charge him with fleeing after resisting arrest!
lucia (Comment #186462): “In GA, refusing a tests results in automatic 1 year suspension of a drivers license. https://statelaws.findlaw.com/georgia-law/georgia-dui-laws.html”
.
And why is that? It is because they need the test to convict someone. It might be technically possible to get a conviction without the test, but that does not mean it works that way in practice.
Confirmation: “field sobriety tests do not include a measurement of blood/alcohol content. The lack of science behind such tests means the results are not usually strong enough to hold up in court.”
https://lawofficeofmichaelwest.com/2018/10/31/can-you-refuse-a-field-sobriety-test-in-georgia/
.
And this: “Law enforcement in Georgia is being taught that an alcohol blood test may be upheld when the breathalyzer test will not.”
https://www.georgiacriminaldefense.com/blood-tests.html
Lucia’s link seems to imply that in Georgia refusing a blood test is not a DUI conviction or even a crime and has much less severe consequences than failing the blood test, especially if you have prior DUI’s. This seems to confirm that: https://www.georgiacriminaldefense.com/blood-tests.html
It also explains why it is not smart to simply refuse the blood test: The police can still get a warrant to draw your blood.
———
lucia: “So the question is not whether he was drunk. It’s whether he was driving.”
Was the car parked? I thought it was in the drive-through lane. Stopped is not the same thing as parked.
—–
lucia (Comment #186463): “I seriously doubt they need a guy to be present to charge him with fleeing after resisting arrest!”
.
??????????
It seems to me that being able to claim that the officer had no cause to arrest me would greatly help in defending myself against a charge of fleeing after resisting arrest. Especially if I were black and argued that I was justifiably afraid of the cops.
MikeM
This seems to discuss the general sequence in arrest/ charging and so on.
https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/criminal-offense/pressing-charges-a-criminal-act.htm
If I understand correctly, in the circumstances where the police have a good case for probable cause where the accused is not arrested on the spot (for whatever reason) the police would need to request and obtain a warrant from a judge. This would involve pesky paper work (but I think most policing requires paperwork.) The police officer would need to describe why they thought they had cause– likely showing the videos in this case.
.
In the event there is probable cause for the arrest, the judge would presumably issue the award. (My guess is the judge would issue the warrant in this case. At a minimum, they have resisting arrest.)
.
Whether or not the accused is ultimately charged is a decision by the DA, not the police. (The police can file paper work that recommends the DA charges the accused. But the police themselves don’t seem to charge anyone.)
JD, like I said, the difference between Daniel Lewis’s case and George Floyd was the police tried to get him upright once he was unconscious.
MikeM, my point is this is proper procedure, and according to the white paper from ACEP, death is a possible result in the case of ‘excited delirium’. It is possible one of the four cops were involved in an experimental study done last year by MPD. 41 cops were selected, and they have about 800 officers.
https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
Again, note the part where they say the best result for the person in this state is to stop him struggling as quickly as possible.
MikeM
I’m sure the test increases the probability of getting a conviction. But so would video evidence of him failing the field sobriety test, video evidence of his slurred speech, the accused admission, and his fleeing.
I don’t think the slight increase in the probability of convicting the accused is a justification for shooting him.
I also don’t think the reason for the implied consent is that the cops need the evidence to convict someone in cases where the person is pretty much so drunk they passed out (which is what being “asleep” might have been here.) It is for borderline cases. At the lower alcohol levels people are often lucid, can pass field sobriety tests and so on.
The tests allowed the legislatures to put teeth in laws with blood alcohol levels where impairment exists but is not so obvious as to be provable otherwise.
No. You lose your license. It’s a penalty.
A conviction requires being charged and tried (or plea bargaining to guilty.) Refusing the breathalizer is part of the crime.
Of course being able to claim the officer had no cause might be seen as some sort of defense for resisting arrest. I don’t know if it could succeed. But it seems pretty unlikely in this case given the tons of evidence that the police had probable cause to arrest him. (This includes the people at the drive through having phoned the police because someone was passed out drunk and blocking the drive through lane, a failed sobriety test, and video showing the guy was totally blind drunk!)
.
In an ycase, that the accused might later file a defense against a charge has nothing to do with whether the guy has to be present for him to get charged. And as noted above: it appears that– officially– cops don’t charge anyone. They can recommend the DA charges him– which would involve writing up paper work–, but actually charging them is not in the cops wheelhouse. I’m pretty sure the accused doesn’t need to be present when the DA charges them. I bet the accused doesn’t even need to be present when the cop files the paper work to recommend the accused be charged.
So the cop failing to “charge” him immediately seems rather irrelevant. Filing the paper work without him present is probably routine.
I think he was asleep with the engine off. The car seems to either have been in the drivethrough lane or blocking it. I call that parked. (If I saw a car stopped in the middle of an intersection with the driver asleep in the seat, I’d complain “The car is just parked there in the middle of the intersection!”
But of course, I could be wrong on legal definitions which sometimes differ from ordinary use. This appears to be a common legal definition
https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/parking/
So… sounds like “parked” to me.
It might be illegally parked but illegally parked is still parked.
I suspect the distinction you might be looking for is not whether it was “parked” or not. It’s how GA law considers a driver “being in control” of the car. Generally, a car could be “parked”. But if the driver is awake, in the driver’s seat with the engine running, it might be “parked” or “standing”, but they could be charged with DUI. If an equally drunk driver is asleep in the back seat of a parked car whose engine is off and whose keys have been seized by the bartender, the driver is “not in control” and would not be charged with a DUI.
I don’t know which degree of “parking” is closer here. But they said he was asleep.
This has a timeline. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/us/videos-rayshard-brooks-shooting-atlanta-police.html
Scan down to
That’s where the time line starts. The Atlanta police use the word “parked”. 🙂
Stuff happens (not violent.) Among other things, the accused offers to walk to his sisters house.
It appears the police had gotten a breath test. So they wouldn’t lack evidence to charge him with drunk driving– provided they can show he drove. (He claimed his girlfriend dropped him off and left.)
In the sequence of events, the accused (Brooks) is running holding a taser. Officer Rolf is in the process of drawing his gun when the accused fires the taser accused took from officer Brosnan.
It’s too bad Officer Brosnan didn’t follow his first inclination to let Brooks sleep it off in the parking lot.
You can watch the video snips.
BTW: Brosnan the cop whose inclination was initially to let Brooks sleep it off is on administrative leave.
Rolfe who advised (or overruled?) Brosnan’s inclination, and who later shot Brooks has been fired. Rolfe had previous complaints about excess force on his record. Brosnan did not.
It seems to be Brosnan’s initial inclinations were correct– and they were also perfectly allowable under GA law. Rolfe was the more aggressive hard line cop.
Lucia,
“Of course being able to claim the officer had no cause might be seen as some sort of defense for resisting arrest. I don’t know if it could succeed.”
.
I think a sensible DA would drop the case if there was any real doubt of probable cause, since lack of probable cause implies either gross incompetence or willful harassment by police, either of which brings up all kinds of civil rights issues. All of which would likely be a lot more trouble than the resisting arrest charge is worth.
.
I see a troubling common thread in many of the cases of excessive force (putting aside the true psychos like Chauvin): really poor judgement by the police officer(s) involved. They seem too often motivated by anger/uncontrolled rage than by reason. Uncontrolled rage and a loaded piston on your belt is not a good combination for a police officer. Which is why I have doubts about the suitability of screening procedures for hiring police officers.
Lucia,
“Rolfe had previous complaints about excess force on his record.”
.
First time I heard that. Sort of like Chauvin and Tou Thao, the two “training” officers in Minneapolis. This is not going to go well for the APD in civil court.
I can attest from having watched the evil Live PD program that people falling asleep in their cars while driving is a fairly common call. This often happens at stop lights, and the people are almost always completely wasted with the drug of choice being heroin.
Refusing a breathalyzer in FL is an automatic 1 year license suspension, but you will still typically get arrested for DUI anyway. Normally you can get a “business purposes only” license to get to work and back on that suspension. You can still get convicted of DUI based on officer testimony (and body camera footage!) but the chances of plea bargaining the charge down to reckless driving is higher if they don’t have that evidence. The first question a DUI lawyer will ask you is “Did you blow?”.
.
On the other side, if you feel the breathalyzer is mistaken or the officer’s conclusion to arrest you is wrong you can apparently demand to have a blood test.
Tom,
Brooks failing the breathalyzer suggests it was alcohol in this case. 🙂
.
I think there was probable cause to arrest. He was drunk, he was behind the wheel. He appears to have been asleep in the driver’s seat. So it’s reasonable to not believe the story about the girlfriend driving him there.
.
But Brosnan’s initial inclination to let him sleep it off seems to me to have been the wisest course. It was entirely permitted by law. It’s too bad he called and Rolfe showed up. (I’m suspect Brosnan considers calling and having Rolfe show up is the worse mistake of his life.)
I don’t know what planet anyone else lives on, but the one I live on is the planet where MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) holds a lot of sway for the past 40 years.
.
Nobody gets to walk home after found to be highly intoxicated in their car. They are a clear and present danger to others. There is zero tolerance for this.
.
There are lots of legal discussion on whether someone was “driving” when they are found asleep in their cars. Stop lights and drive thru’s are a “yes”. The arrest rate for finding someone obviously intoxicated in their cars is 100.0% from the years of having watched cop shows.
.
In the early days of Live PD they showed these stops. It was rarely a close call. Note that people taking opioids pass a breathalyzer. They stopped showing DUI stops after a while because it was so routine. Normally other drivers call a person driving erratically in or the cops just sees it.
lucia (Comment #186474): “But Brosnan’s initial inclination to let him sleep it off seems to me to have been the wisest course. It was entirely permitted by law.”
.
Completely wrong, for the reasons given by Tom Scharf (Comment #186475).
.
Not arresting him might have been reasonable if he was in a legal parking space outside an establishment that serves alcohol. But even in that case, letting him sleep it off would have been a bad call. The cops would had to have roused him and made sure he got home safely, at a minimum. Imagine if the cops just left, then the drunk wakes up, drives off, and kills someone. There would be hell to pay. Legal settlements also.
It is pretty difficult to have a car in a drive thru while sleeping, and not in park. There is no curb for it to be stopped against.
I don’t see how cops can let him sleep it off if he is in a drive thru, shutting down the business. It would still be open for either a half hour or an hour and a half.
MikeN,
The couldn’t let him sleep in the drive through lane. That’s why they were called in the first place. After the first cop woke him up, he made him move to an actual official parking spot– the ones that exist for the customers who walk in. The first cops inclination was to let him sleep it off in the official, legal, parking spot where he was no longer blocking the drive through.
MikeM
No.
MADD may have sway. But they don’t write laws and it remains legal for the cops to not arrest. As for cop shows: I don’t think we can necessarily assume arrests for people asleep in their cars is 100% because it’s 100% on a cop show!!
Well… there is hell to pay now. There may be legal settlements too.
Tom,
Letting him sleep it off doesn’t necessarily involve “just” leaving. They can take the keys and tell him to pick them up the next day. They can drive him home leaving the car in the lot. The drunk guy told them his sister lived two blocks away and he was willing to walk. So even the drunk guy could think up options that would prevent him from just driving away.
They could drive him to his sister’s two blocks away. All of these options would prevent the drunk from driving away after the cops leave.
All would be legally permissible options for the cops.
I think I will repost
“ We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.â€
.
Civilization requires force to protect its citizens from those who would harm them, from both foreign and domestic entities.
.
Governments ONLY main function is supplying force to protect its citizens.
.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.“
.
Did they have him drive to the parking spot, or get out and have one of the officers move it? Letting him sleep it off is an option.
I know of a case where a car was found by the side of the road, and the police showed up at his house with intent to arrest for DUI.
MikeN,
I’m not sure. I think the first cop (who was the only one there at that point) directed him to move the car. So.. that would constitute driving– but at the order of the cop who suspected he was drunk. So… weird….
But I know the car was moved. You can see it’s in a real parking spot during the field sobriety test pictured at the top of this article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/us/videos-rayshard-brooks-shooting-atlanta-police.html
Ed Forbes,
“Civilization requires force to protect its citizens from those who would harm them, from both foreign and domestic entities.”
.
Sure, but that doesn’t include slowly killing a handcuffed man on the street. You may be perfectly OK with having potentially violent and abusive cops. I suspect most people are not.
I’m thinking the officer had to be confident he wouldn’t drive off drunk rather than park the car as instructed.
MikeN,
Yes. I think the officer would want to do something that made him confident Brooks wouldn’t just hop in the car and drive off the minute the cops left.
According to the part of the story I posted, the drunk had already parked the car as instructed. That’s why it’s in a regular parking spot as shown in the photo of him taking the field sobriety test.
Taking the keys would prevent him from driving off drunk. Taking the keys and dropping him off a his sisters house should work doubly well. Going to his sisters house was drunken Brooks’s suggestion.
Rolfe’s judgement in particular was to arrest Brooks, not let him go home. Rolfe was also the one who is reported to reject Brooks claim to have been dropped off at the Wendy’s. Mind you…. I don’t think I believe he was dropped off either. . .
I think in this situation, it was legal for Rolfe and Bronson to arrest Brooks. But I don’t think that meant they had to.
Agreed they had a right to arrest Brooks. I’m thinking about how they knew Brooks wouldn’t drive off when they told him to park the car. How drunk was he?
MikeN,
I’d say he was very drunk. I think they would need to take his keys.
Or drive him to his sisters two blocks away and drop him off there. Then to drive, he’d have to walk back to the car.
I don’t trust breathalyzers. I don’t know if they fixed it, but I read a paper many years ago proving that the test was biased against women, who almost always showed a higher blood alcohol level by breathalyzer than by a blood test while men showed a lower level. The calibration curve was the average.
IIRC, in most places you can demand a blood alcohol test rather than a breathalyzer test without penalty, and you should. In fact, you should get two tests an hour apart so you have a real number for the slope used to extrapolate the level back to the time of arrest. Odds are that a correct slope will extrapolate to a lower level than using the default slope from a single test.
If he was that drunk, why did they tell him to move the car? He might have just driven off.
Mid West meets BLM. BLM looting and rioting seems to only be an issue for Dem controlled citIes. Antifa also seems to be staying clear of areas that support their police and of their residents who are willing to take up arms for defense of their homes and neighbors.
.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-protester-sucker-punched-as-bikers-overwhelm-rally/
.
“ A small Black Lives Matter rally in an Ohio village was overwhelmed by hundreds of armed bikers, disturbing video shows….
.
“.. the Black Lives rally ended up getting 80 people — but was totally overwhelmed by up to 800 counter-protesters, with at least 250 motorbikes parked nearby, village officials said..
.
“.. we were outnumbered many times with people having more weapons than the officers do..
Lucia, I think you are missing the facts on the ground. In may situations, police confront violent and dangerous people. They have the right to self defense. The instances of misconduct are rare.
Being a policeman is a tremendously demanding job with a high risk of on the job death or injury.
I’m much more concerned about the political prosecutors in many cities that charge policemen with NO evidence and then the officers are acquitted after having their lives ruined. It happened in Baltimore and its happening in Atlanta. A taser is by law considered a lethal weapon in Georgia. It almost happened in Ferguson Mo.
The net effect of all this is that policemen quit or refuse to do their job. They avoid confrontations where they might make a mistake. That happened in Baltimore and the body count is in the thousands by now.
I think you are not considering and may not know the brutal facts on the ground law enforcement has to deal with. Just imagine being assigned to disperse recent rioters and being told to just sit there and take it as your vehicle is torched, you are pelted with deadly bricks, and people shout vile insults. Or having to answer a 911 call in CHOP. In Charleston SC, business owners and employees were terrorized in their businesses for hours and police refused to respond to 911 calls. I am more empathetic with these innocent people than with career criminals on whom most of the burden of police “violence” falls.
Trump has already taken a few reasonable steps to tighten up the system. Those are good. But if we as a nation take the road of mob rule (and its only the police that stand between you and that mob) we become Mexico, ruled by mobs and war lords.
I also think its easy for middle class suburban dwellers to grow complacent or not realize how brutal conditions are in many slums in our major cities. Policing needs to be contextual. What is needed in the case of people like you or me is completely inappropriate when confronted with a career violent criminal who wants to harm you. The right of self defense to me is sacred. If police become ineffective, people will arm themselves and organize self defense groups. Once again, that a road you don’t want to go down. Most Americans in the heartland already own firearms and know full well how to use them. In the last month firearms sales have skyrocketed.
Not supporting your police has major repercussions for your city. Letting a VERY small number of incidents cause city police policy to view criminals In better light their police officers leads to disaster.
.
“ Immediately upon the riot, policing changed in Baltimore, and it changed very dramatically..â€
.
“ Millions of police records show officers in Baltimore respond to calls as quickly as ever. But they now begin far fewer encounters themselves. From 2014 to 2017, dispatch records show the number of suspected narcotics offenses police reported themselves dropped 30 percent; the number of people they reported seeing with outstanding warrants dropped by half. The number of field interviews – instances in which the police approach someone for questioning – dropped 70 percent.“
.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/
They threw the book at the Atlanta cops. Looks like serious prosecutor overreach to satisfy the mob in my view. The second cop being charged with aggravated assault seems way out of line from what I know of the case.
.
A guy resists arrest, fight the cops, grabs their taser and fires it at them and the cops are the bad guys? I think there is some legitimate debate on whether the use of deadly force was justified here but there are penalties between nothing and murder charges.
.
The mob won’t be satisfied anyway, and when you overreach and the jury eventually lets one or both walk then you setup another round of riot and looting “speechâ€.
.
Prosecutor: “He went on to propose the idea of giving prosecutors the ability to indict police officers without first going to a grand jury in similar cases as a means of police reform.”. That sounds like anti-justice reform.
Not arresting Brooks is an example of what I’m talking about above. Police start making decisions based on the path of least resistance for them (or least likely to upset activists) and not based on public safety or legal issues. Someone who drives drunk once is very likely to do it again if he is not arrested and charged. Driving drunk is dangerous to the public. Not arresting these people is the wrong decision.
I want police to protect public safety and arrest people who pose a danger to me or others.
Ed, A taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law. The officers acted well within the law. This prosecutor should be disbarred and impeached by the legislature.
David, I totally agree
“.. Some weapons charges in Georgia specifically apply to stun guns and Tasers. For instance, it’s a felony if you have a stun gun or Taser while you are committing or trying to commit certain crimes that are themselves felonies..â€
.
“.. Obstructing an officer (felony)
If you knowingly and willfully obstruct or hinder officers from completing their duties by threatening violence or actually committing violence, then this is a felony, punishable by a prison term ranging from 1-5 years..â€
https://statelaws.findlaw.com/georgia-law/georgia-resisting-arrest-laws.html
MikeN,
I don’t know why they told him to drive the car. I only know the article said the policeman did tell him to drive the car.
David Young
And I think you are avoiding discussing the cases where we have clear video evidence of police doing things like standing one someone’s neck.
Look, I haven’t said police should never use force. I’ve never said the police job was easy. I’ve said I don’t want to defund the police repeatedly on this thread. So, I don’t know (a) the point of most of that verbiage above and (b) would suggest you not try to post counter arguments that are based on your complete wild guess about what I might be overlooking. But most of what you write seems to be a counter argument to someone who is suggesting the police be defunded. If you want to argue with that person and diagnose what they are overlooking to support that claim, go find them and argue with them somewhere where they will read it.
Yep. I would have said “finally” rather than “already”. I think the database is a good start. I’m glad he did that.
There’s a limit to how much a president can do with an executive order. I hope the federal and state legislatures take further steps to help curb police violence. I think it’s great that the focus is on identifying individual police at fault. We do need changes in our system to make it possible to identify those people and usually get them out of the force.
Tom Scharf,
I agree– from what I see, the 2nd cop being disciplined seems wrong.
I agree. Obviously, if others need to be brought in front of a grand jury, so should cops!
.
The Atlanta situation is different from Minneapolis. I do think it shows that mishandling of initially non-violent people can escalate. But neither of those cops were like Chauvin.
David,
You might think arresting Brooks was right. But sorry… shooting him was not. I don’t consider it murder, but the policeman was clearly in the process of moving his own taser out of his hand to grab his gun when Brooks shot the taser.
You claim you are for self defense. If so, you ought to think Brooks had a right to try to defend himself against someone reaching for a gun. Since Brooks ought to have a right to protect himself from getting killed, the cops decision to reach for the gun rather than just trail the guy while letting him run was (to put it mildly) sub-optimal.
Brooks was drunk. Even at that point in the whole debacle, the cop could have just let Brooks run a little faster, stay out of taser range… and if he got away, he got away. Sure drunks might get drunk again in the future. But that danger is neither clear nor present.
Escalating to the point of shooting someone who was stopped because they were sleeping in a parked car ought not to be good procedure.
And no, the fact that I live in the suburbs doesn’t magically transform that into good procedure.
“ You claim you are for self defense. If so, you ought to think Brooks had a right to try to defend himself against someone reaching for a gun. â€
.
Has there EVER been a successful claim of self defense for shooting, or other assault, on an officer of the law in performance of his duty ? I would be real interested in the case if anyone can point to one.
.
The officer is legally empowered to use force to enforce the law. A suspect is legally required to comply with the officers orders. If you do not comply, bad things can legally happen to you as a result of your poor choices.
Ed Forbes,
I don’t know if there has ever been a successful claim. But clearly if you have a right to try to prevent yourself from being killed, it shouldn’t matter if it’s the police or not. Rights aren’t things that can be set aside by legislation.
Sure. “Bad things” can happen. But that doesn’t mean cops can just shoot you willi-nilly.
There are laws governing a cops use of deadly force and the law doesn’t say they are allowed to shoot you merely because you didn’t follow an order. Doing so would be absolutely illegal in GA.
It’s actually not clear that shooting Brooks would be allowed under GA law. I think it could be argued either way and the case saying it was illegal would be pretty strong.
(1) Police generally argue that tasers are not “deadly weapons”. Deadly weapons are ones that kill people. If they were “deadly weapons”,police couldn’t tase people for merely resisting arrest. If it’s not considered “deadly” in a cops hand, it can’t magically become deadly when in someone elses hands.
Tasers are are considered “firearms”. But that’s law doesn’t say you can shoot if they have a “fire arm”. It says “deadly” weapon.
(2) When he was actually shot Brooks was holding a discharged taser which takes a while to recharge. So he did not present an immediate threat of physical violence to officers. No one else was near enough to endanger physically. The discharged taser couldn’t even be used to inflict pain.
(3) Brooks had not committed a crime involving infliction of serious physical harm. Tasers are used precisely because they are claimed to not inflict serious physical harm. Just pain.
Now, in the trial, I’m sure the cop’s lawyers will argue that the taser is a “deadly” or that it causes serious physical harm. We’ll hear all sorts of claims both ways.
But back to your claim which seems to insinuate the cops can just kill people for failing to follow orders. Sure, “bad things” can happen to you if you fail to follow police orders. The legal consequences include arrest, being charged, getting fined, getting imprisoned and so on. But no, that doesn’t mean they can just legally shoot you for failing to follow an order.
Moroever, if our laws did allow police to just shoot you for failing to follow orders, then we really would need everyone to arm up and protect themselves from cops! Our system would be come complete anarchy. So that would be something that needs to be changed.
Seems to me unlikely the officer will be convicted of murder. The circumstances are complicated enough that even considering a murder charge seems foolish. The choice to shoot showed very poor judgement, probably motivated by anger/rage. In light of the officer’s history, the shooting is a very good reason to fire him. But murder charges? I don’t think so. The unfortunate result of those charges is that other police will see this as a warning to not actually enforce the law, and that will invite more lawbreaking.
lucia (Comment #186506): “The Atlanta situation is different from Minneapolis. I do think it shows that mishandling of initially non-violent people can escalate.”
.
lucia (Comment #186507): “Escalating to the point of shooting someone who was stopped because they were sleeping in a parked car ought not to be good procedure.”
———
Except that the cops did NOT mishandle the situation in any way. The escalation was 100% the fault of Brooks. Not 99.9999%. 100%. I do not see how anyone could argue otherwise, unless you want to claim that the cops should not enforce the law.
.
You can indeed argue that the cops mishandled things *after* Brooks decided to turn a peaceful situation into a violent one. But at that point, the cops were not dealing with a peaceful suspect, they were dealing with a violent one.
.
The cops had to make decisions in real time, with no knowledge of the future. It is unfair to them to pick apart their actions in super sol-mo with the 20-20 vision of hindsight. Even if they handled the situation in a sub-optimal manner, that does not mean they did anything remotely criminal.
It just occurred to me how the cops could have handled the Atlanta situation to both enforce the law and prevent the need to use firearms. Once they decided to arrest Brooks, they could have assumed he would become violent, thrown him to the ground, forced submission, handcuffed him, and kept him in that position until help showed up. It takes more than two people to toss a large uncooperative man into the back of a police cruiser. There are a variety a ways they could have forced submission, such as kneeling on his back. Or maybe his neck.
——
Hmm. On second thought, I see a couple of serious flaws in that plan.
The filing of charges against the other officer…. who really did everything right…. is so nutty that his lawyer will surely ask the judge for a summary dismissal, and probably get one. Really, charging the second cop is just crazy.
I appreciate this discussion. I’ve realized in thinking about the arguments that to some extent I excuse or rationalize the use of lethal force by police because I think of it as a disincentive towards resisting arrest and fleeing. Having realized this, I go on to note that disincentivizing resisting arrest and flight generally shouldn’t (IMO) justify use of lethal force.
This said, I think discouraging people from resisting arrest and running is still a useful thing to shoot for [edit: unfortunate choice of words, strive for maybe] by some other mechanism. I agree we don’t want a murderous police force, but I don’t think we want an ineffective police force either.
This comment seems to be on point and follows Georgia law as I read it. So no, the Taser does not, need to be considered a deadly weapon for a deadly response by the officer.
“In Georgia, an officer is entitled to use deadly force when he reasonably believes his life is in danger or he’s at risk of receiving a serious physical injury. When this case goes to trial, the jurors will be instructed that they must consider the context of Brooks attacking the officer, grabbing the Taser and shooting the Taser at the officer. This analysis includes the possibility that if Brooks hit the officer with the stolen Taser, he could grab the officer’s gun and shoot him.“
Ed Forbes,
Of course. Jurors will be asked to consider the full context. The prosecution and jury will present their cases. The jury might go either way. Unless this gets plead or dropped, the decision will ultimately be a juries’.
mark,
Yes. We want to discourage resisting arrest. But under the circumstance, even once he was running, they could follow and stay out of range of the taser. (In fact, they may have been out of range. I don’t know the range of APD tasers. Wikipedia says some police tasers have ranges up to 35 feet. )
There would be a risk he got away….. but so? They have his name. They have his car. They have breathalizer evidence (and more). If they are worried he’ll come back to the car they can tow it. Or have a boot put on it. Then he’ll need to interact with the cops to get his car back.
The pile up of charges this guy will face in addition to DUI, along with the need to cover the costs of towing and so on should make him think twice before resisting arrest and running again. He wasn’t a danger to others and he wasn’t going to truly get away.
I actually do like the fact that the BLM protestors are the ones who got the video footage of the white woman accused of torching the Wendy’s. They turned their evidence over and put it on social media.
Lucia,
.
I agree with you in this instance that lethal force was unjustified.
.
I read here and there that resisting arrest is generally a misdemeanor, although state laws vary and there is such a thing as felony resisting arrest.
https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/Resisting-Arrest.htm
.
I don’t know. If our society cracks down in a very publicized way on police using lethal force in cases where suspects resist arrest, it seems to me that we could expect the number of instances where people attempt to resist arrest or flee could increase. Perhaps people will begin to think ‘well, they aren’t going to shoot me. What do I have to lose by giving it a go?’
I am wondering if we shouldn’t publicly take steps towards further discouraging resisting arrest, if we are taking visible steps towards discouraging police from using lethal force when people resist arrest. Maybe I’m full of cheese whiz. Just thinking about it.
shrug.
mark bofill,
“If our society cracks down in a very publicized way on police using lethal force in cases where suspects resist arrest, it seems to me that we could expect the number of instances where people attempt to resist arrest or flee could increase. ”
.
Sure, that is a likely outcome. Another likely outcome is that officers will arrest fewer people unless a crime is very serious…. the personal downside is pretty big for them if someone does resist arrest and things go south. I suspect that future arrests will tend to involve more police officers (3, 4, or 5), making it clear to the suspect that resisting arrest will likely not be successful.
Steve,
Yes, I’m worried about unintended consequences like that. I hadn’t thought of that one, but I think you could be right. More police resources to deal with fewer crimes could be another result.
.
[Edit: Let me reiterate – I don’t think these problems justify police using lethal force, not saying that. What I *am* saying is that fixing the unnecessary lethal force problem may introduce other lesser problems downstream that ought to also be looked at.]
Motivation for resisting arrest becomes more clear:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11890410/rayshard-brooks-probation-prison-dui-arrest-wendys/
.
If that story is accurate, then he was facing revocation of parole and prison time for a DUI conviction.
.
.
Perhaps the officers had received information on the suspect’s case history before trying to arrest him.
If you want your city to mirror the crime rate in Baltimore, continue support for felons and felons resisting arrest. Baltimore is a very good example of where not supporting the police in their duty to suppress unlawful activity leads.
.
I live in the somewhat conservative city of Fresno, so not generally a problem for me. My local government still believes in protecting its citizens from felons, though state laws are making it increasingly harder to do.
.
If you want to turn your local community into a crime ridden hell hole such as Baltimore and portions of Chicago, just continue with supporting felons over the police and law abiding citizens.
.
Intentionally letting felons escape custody does not promote respect for the rule of law and societies that lose respect for the rule of law become hideous places for it’s citizens to live.
mark bofill,
Brooks was not shot because he resisted arrest. He was shot because he turned a potentially lethal weapon on a police officer.
The former would have been unacceptable. The latter was unfortunate. In a perfect world, it would not have happened. But in a perfect world, we would not need police.
We ask police to run towards danger. It is only fair that we give them some latitude in defending themselves. We might ask our police to strive for perfection. But falling short of perfection should not be treated as a criminal act.
Brooks’ other known crimes were age 19: sale of marijuana, possession of a firearm during commission of a crime (he was armed when he tried to sell marijuana), age 21: receiving stolen property, and age 26: leaving Georgia (to Ohio) in violation of probation.
SteveF,
If they had that information, then I think that leaves the decision either to chase closely enough to be in range of the taser (or react as if they are in danger of the taser) as a mistake by the cops.
.
Honestly, knowing this, I’d still be for going more slowly— towing or booting his car so he can’t drive it off, bringing in more back up while dealing with the car. (Possibly, going even more slowly in the arrest– take time to get more backup!)
.
Do they have wagons or vans anymore? (I suspect it’s easier to put someone in a wagon or van compared to a car. So… real questions.)
.
No matter what his priors, he wasn’t presenting an imminent threat of bodily harm. He could still be arrested later after fleeing. It would take the paperwork of a warrant. Maybe cops find that frustrating, but cop frustration is not something that should justify not taking other alternatives.
.
I suspect he was going to lose his probation anyway. Drunk as he was I’m sure he wasn’t thinking straight, but I don’t think fleeing was the way to avoid losing his probation!
.
The police will definitely not be convicted of murder under the circumstance. (But I thought they shouldn’t be convicted of murder before this. Just that they escalated unnecessarily or improperly, which I think they did. It’s a different question from murder.– and is more administrative.)
Mike,
Believe me, I sympathize. I understand that police have to make split second decisions under extreme pressure and that mistakes are going to happen. I don’t think we should extend them no latitude. I think the split second decision to shoot Brooks was the wrong call, but I understand that people under pressure make mistakes when they have only a few instants to decide and react.
I don’t think the office[r] who shot him should be convicted of murder. Still, he made a mistake and killed Brooks without real justification. There has to be some penalty for that.
MikeM
Yes and no. We actually want to encourage police to do things safely where possible. That’s why we have training on de-escalation, understanding alternatives, knowing when to call for backup and so on.
.
I haven’t seen anyone saying these guys should be up for murder or even a crime. The argument is whether the cops bungled and that bungle resulted in a death.
.
I think it is entirely legitimate to discuss whether police bungled this. Trying to rebut it with “it’s not a crime” is a red herring– no bungling is not a crime. Trying to rebutt by saying “police jobs are dangerous” is also a red herring. Bungling only makes their job more dangerous.
.
Suggesting that we can’t discuss whether mistakes were made is one of the ways we end up with more mistakes. Worse, not allowing discussion of mistakes like in this case ultimately provides cover for the more aggressively awful behavior like we saw in Minnesota. So I think those suggestions should be rebuffed.
Heh… I was writing when mark posted. Yep. What Mark wrote. 🙂
Grand theft auto is one example of what happens when enforcement stops happening. They no longer chase stolen cars almost everywhere and here in FL auto theft is a “property crime” and for minors that means almost immediate release no matteer how many times they have been arrested. The auto thieves know this and automatically just run at high speed anytime a cop finds them. The chase is called off.
.
The end result here is an auto theft epidemic mostly just for joy riding by some of our finest citizens.
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/florida-pinellas-auto-theft-kids-hot-wheels/
.
A couple miles from my house joy riders in a stolen vehicle went through an intersection red light at > 100 mph, wrecked, 3 died. ** The group of minors had 126 arrests between them **. Not a typo.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/teens-in-stolen-car-crash-had-126-arrests-murder-charges-possible-wvideo/2332984/
.
Incentives and punishment matter. The trade off is between police instigating car chases that end badly for innocent citizens, the police, and the perps.
.
The media down here went bonkers a few years prior when 3 of our finest young teen girls stole a car, got chased, drove into a retention pond and drowned. I just have a hard time having sympathy with situations like that. Chases that end with innocent bystanders get killed is another story.
Lucia,
Good point. Knowing the background, suspecting that the situation could get ugly — these are reasons to be more careful and wary of the situation escalating.
The cop’s defense may be that he wasn’t sure if the guy had a gun or not and thought he might be getting fired at. I’m not sure if they searched him prior to the scuffle.
Tom,
I also don’t have much sympathy for the girls who drove into a retention pond.
But you’ve got extra policies besides “no chase” going on here. You can have a policy of “no chase” and still impose serious penalties for grand theft auto and car jacking.
Policies for dealing with juveniles may need to be fixed. On the one hand, you want some leniency for immaturity. OTOH, you can’t go around excusing multiple arrests. But the problem here doesn’t strike me as being the “no chase” policy, but rather the “juvies get off” policies.
Family story: Popsie-Wopsie’s uncle Frank told me he was the “bad boy” in the family. He took a joy ride in Staten Island’s fire engine when he was a kid. Got off. (Family connections. . . Frank’s father was the county judge. I don’t know how old Frank was at the time of the joy ride. )
lucia,
Suicide by cop. He didn’t want to go back to prison, which is what would have happened if he were arrested. He grabbed for a weapon so the cop would likely be forced to shoot him. That doesn’t excuse the cop, but it does explain the situation better to me at least.
Tom Scharf,
The record indicates the police checked if Brooks was armed. He wasn’t when stopped. He did have the taser after he took it from one of the cops.
lucia (Comment #186532): “I haven’t seen anyone saying these guys should be up for murder or even a crime.”
.
Lot’s of people are saying that. I suppose you mean that nobody here is saying that. OK. I sure had the impression that you were saying that, so I guess I misread you.
.
lucia: “The argument is whether the cops bungled and that bungle resulted in a death.”
.
OK. But I would not use the word “bungled” for a sub-optimal decision mad under extreme duress. I suppose that bungled could be used to describe two cops losing control of a suspect while handcuffing him. But quite possibly the only alternative to that was to use excessive force.
The media is just absolutely shameless at this point.
.
NBC News Yesterday:
‘Extraordinarily dangerous’: Trump rally draws grave concerns from top health officials
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/extraordinarily-dangerous-trump-rally-draws-grave-concerns-top-health-officials-n1231041
.
“The Trump campaign has declined to respond to repeated questions about whether it will require attendees to wear masks, socially distance or take other measures to reduce the risk of virus transmission.”
.
NBC News Today:
Black health experts view protesters with admiration, anxiety over exposure to COVID-19
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-health-experts-view-protesters-admiration-anxiety-over-exposure-covid-n1231322
.
“Neptune said many Blacks are eschewing masks during the rallies for deeper reasons than ignoring safety guidelines. “One aspect of police-involved events that target African American men is the subtext that these persons are not seen, not recognized as people of value,†she said. “The ability to show one’s face is a way of saying, ‘This is what I look like, and I matter.’ So a mask can attenuate that assertion of individuality and importance and ‘This is who I am.’ That part of the protests has been under-examined.—
.
It’s just comical at this point. The Onion and the The Bee no longer need to exist.
lucia, mark,
The only suggestion that I have seen and take seriously as to what the cops should have done differently is that they should have backed off and pursued from outside of taser range. OK. But how does that end? Just hope that the guy eventually comes to his senses? If he doesn’t, then what? How do the cops put handcuffs on the guy? Real questions.
Speaking of comical. Supreme Court rejects Trump effort to end DACA. Because the fact that it was probably unconstitutional in the first place isn’t a good enough reason I guess…
Mike,
It is a good question. The answer IMO varies on a per case basis.
In this case, the police could have let him go, impounded his vehicle, and apprehended / arrested him the next day. Knowing that he resisted arrest, they could have brought more officers.
I don’t love this answer, as it seems to be expensive with respect to police resources. But I don’t love police killing suspects either. Between the evils, I’m inclined to say – pick the guy up the next day.
Lots of good discussion here.
Cops training has been changing over the years to improve their abilitiy to do their job without gatting seriously hurt or killed. They rarely know exactly what they are going to run into in any situation – no matter how benign it seems up front. So part of their training is called “Shoot! Don’t Shoot!”. They go through scenarios using simunitions (ammo made out of chalk instead of lead that can be used in their service weapon) and have to make the call in real time to shoot or not and get after action assessments and critque. It is pretty intensive stuff but allows you to train your behavior when adrenaline is shooting through your veins. I’ve never been a cop, but I have done some of the training they get as part of my personal protection training (if you get a gun for personal protection, you should learn something about how to use it in those scenarios. My training was almost 20 years ago at the Firearms Academy of Seattle run by a fello named Marty Hayes and his wife – both active duty police at the time).
I agree that based on what I know and have seen about the Atlanta event, the mistake, if any were made, was to not use more force as soon as Brooks started to fight – failure to control Brooks is what led to the taser being taken and Brooks running away. 20/20 hindsight is wonderful that way, isn’t it. Perhaps that was the training htey had which led them to be too slow to escalate the force required for the take down. Perhaps they were just caught by surprise – which is also a training issue.
Running away from the cops is different from running away from a civilian. A civilian would be crucified for shooting someone running away from them. On the other hand, the cops job is to apprehend people and prevent them from doing harm to anybody else. Given the violence committed by Brooks, the fact that he was armed with what was considered a lethal weapon, and the fact that they had’t done a full frisk before trying to cuff him meant that Brooks was a risk to the population. If they had also been aware of Brooks prior record prior to the stop, then as soon as Brooks turned to fire the taser at them, he was going to get shot. That is what the training was going to make happen.
Also know that training shooters always has them practice the double tap because shooting some one only once almost never takes them down. One shot stops are really unlikely so cops are trained to quickly shoot center of mass twice, observe and only shoot again if they make another offensive move. From what I saw and have read – the cop actually had very good shooting discipline – at least from that perspective.
I also know that nothing in the media is ever the full story. Look back to the Rodney King fiasco – the media gave an edited version of the video showing the cops beating the crap out King, and left out everything leading up to the event. Everything leading up to the event showed that King was a menace and was not responding to lower levels of force. The jury that saw the whole video let the cops off which set off the mob that had only seen the version the media put out there. Something like that may well be happening here.
Or not. The jury will get to decide which is what the media should do before fanning the flames under the mob – but that doesn’t sell any ads, does it.
MikeM,
Yes. I mean nobody here is saying that. I certainly have not been. I don’t think I’ve been unclear. For example, I’ve written things like
And so on.
I think they bungled long before the actual shooting.
One never knows exactly where something will ends. But possibilities:
1) The drunk guy ends up stumbling and tripping, possibly dropping the taser. (He’s pretty much already passed out once in his car!)
2) The drunk guy actually manages to out run the cop. Then the cop recognizes he’s gotten away. Recognizing the perp got away, the cop, turns around, has the car towed. He might also call for backup and suggest they send someone to this guys house (or sisters house who he said was two blocks away.) The cop can also then go to the precinct, file a report. Applie for a warrant. Police come around to the mans residence the next day. Perhaps they send someone to the guys sister’s house.
As for how do they cuff the guy: Maybe they don’t cuff him that night. I’m not seeing his not being cuffed and processed in the briefest possible time a priority. I know wrapping things up may give the cop mental satisfaction, but also: relative to not getting people killed, that is not a priority.
Other than not getting cuffed and processed immediately what do you see as the horrible thing that happens if the guy gets away temporarily? Real question. The only “horrible thing” I’m seeing is the guy might not be booked and processed quickly. He’s still going to get booked and processed, just later on.
mark bofill (Comment #186545): “pick the guy up the next day.”
.
That sounds like a terrible idea.
If they do that, then when they go to pick the guy up they MUST ASSUME that he now has a gun, is willing to use it to avoid arrest, and will be expecting them. So now we are talking about a no-knock warrant and busting the guy’s door down shorty before dawn. That is a real good way to get innocent people hurt.
.
I hate no-knock warrants and think they are way overused. But it strikes me that one time they would be justified would be in arresting a guy who has assaulted cops and stolen a weapon during his previous arrest attempt.
—–
lucia (Comment #186547): “Other than not getting cuffed and processed immediately what do you see as the horrible thing that happens if the guy gets away temporarily?”
.
I think I just answered that.
——-
Thanks guys. You are clarifying my thinking on this.
mark bofill,
Appointing Roberts is the biggest mistake George W. Bush ever made.
.
Really, Roberts has been pretty much a straight-vote progressive ever since Kennedy left the court, and a lot more likely to vote with Kagan on any significant case that with the four conservatives. He is a terrible, incompetent, SC justice who only pretended to be a conservative. I’m hoping for a massive stroke.
pauligon59,
I realize pulling away from cops and running away is legally defined as “violence”. But that only shows there is “violence” and there is “violence”. I don’t think resisting arrest and running away makes him a threat to the populace. And no, attributing the word “violent” to this doesn’t turn his behavior into evidence he was any sort of a risk to the populations.
And that’s where your analysis goes wrong.
Perhaps your “training” has taught you to see this behavior as evidence he is a threat. Perhaps cops training has too. But if so, that’s a problem with the training.
Of course we don’t have the full story. But we do have details of what happened at the scene based on the video from the police cars and the Wendy’s security camera.
Paul,
I can’t articulate succinctly why, but I doubt Brooks was a danger to the public. Other than that he was intoxicated and should be prevented from driving. But it isn’t clear to me that ( struggling with cops + grabbing a police taser and firing it at cops while fleeing) = danger to public, once the escalated situation had passed. But I could have this wrong.
MikeM
Why must the assume he has a gun and is willing to use it? Real question.
If he’s really expecting them and intends to resist or flee, I would expect he wouldn’t be at his or his sisters home. That means it will take them longer to catch him. In the meantime, he doesn’t have his car.
Cops should use an appropriate level of force, neither too much nor too little for the situation at hand.
Let’s assume that *all* cops accept that and strive to do so to the very best of their ability. Then both of the following outcomes are inevitable:
(1) Cops will sometimes use excessive force.
(2) Cops will sometimes use insufficient force, with occasional tragic outcomes.
My purpose is not to excuse excessive force. It is to point out a common fallacy in judging events in hindsight.
LOL. what Lucia said.
.
Mike,
I don’t see why they have to assume that. I think the police always ought to be ready for somebody to draw a weapon on them, but that doesn’t mean they need to expect it. Once the guy sobers up and thinks it through, it ought to be pretty clear that going to war with the police is going to have a worse outcome for him that compliance.
I don’t see why the guy would be expecting the police at his house either; they could pick him up anytime, anywhere.
I agree with you that no-knock warrants are a terrible idea though.
Thanks Mike.
lucia (Comment #186554): “Why must the assume he has a gun and is willing to use it? Real question.”
.
Because cops have a very strong and very reasonable aversion to becoming dead cops.
.
lucia: “In the meantime, he doesn’t have his car.”
.
Easily solved, if he has a gun, or even a knife, and is willing to use it.
Mike,
A DUI suspect shouldn’t be considered a murderer by default. I don’t think that’s reasonable. A drunk DUI suspect who resists arrest and flees isn’t a default murderer either.
I grant you that firing the taser at the police muddies the waters. Fine. When police go to take the guy into custody, they need to go well prepared. Point taken.
MikeM
Cops not wanting to be dead ≠the accused will arm himself and shoot. I also don’t see why you would expect he’s going to go out and steal a car.
I would think the bigger danger (if you want to call it that) is the accused will have lawyered up.
Interesting!! Brooks interview from months ago!!
ttps://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/18/rayshard-brooks-interview-probation-van-jones-newday-vpx.cnn
mark bofill (Comment #186558): “A DUI suspect shouldn’t be considered a murderer by default.”.
.
Of course not. But we are not talking about a DUI suspect who gave the cops the slip. We are talking about a convicted felon who assaulted police officers. He should not be considered a murderer by default, but he should be considered armed and dangerous.
We can all speculate what might have happened had they let Brooks go. One could also assume that Brooks would fight the next time an attempted arrest was made, thus just delaying an eventual violent confrontation and perhaps he would be armed next time. See how easy speculation is? There ought to be actual policy instead of using our biased imaginations.
.
People who are being arrested who flee are chased down and most often caught. A common tactic is the other officer goes to his car and chases the man on foot in his car and calls for backup. Most people simply can’t run very far and these chases end within minutes. The fresh guy in the car finds him after a couple blocks and chases him down. The perp may also get tired and hide, then police dogs find them more often than one imagines. What I have also normally seen is an officer who has someone at gunpoint who flees will holster his weapon and then run after the person. The gun is mostly a show.
.
However if the person is armed then the rules change. If the person comes close to pointing that gun at the officer then deadly force will be used. That’s reasonable. Many people are armed (drug dealers) not to attack police but to stop people from robbing them. Much more common is a perp running and throwing away an illegal weapon. They don’t want a shootout with the police and felons with illegal guns get sent back to prison. One can imagine a perp grabbing a gun to throw it away in a chase can sometimes end badly.
.
What I can tell you also is the one thing that really annoys police officers is when you state you have no weapons in the car and they find a hidden gun. Everything changes after that.
.
The officer here probably panicked in an adrenaline rush and went trigger happy. People who are prone to this shouldn’t be police officers in that role. Not sure if this can be screened out. Psychological screening tests are likely easy to know the “correct” answers.
Looks like the DA in Fulton county is under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for corruption, i.e., using a non profit to funnel over $100,000.00 to himself. He’s also in the middle of a tough re-election campaign.
I’m sorry, I don’t follow the argument that this guy is just a drunk that resisted arrest and fled. If that was all he did, you have a point. You also lose the point that it would have been a de-escalation to chase him, at least a short way, on foot.
But, it isn’t that. Instead, he fired a weapon at an officer. Whatever happened up to that point is largely irrelevant or counter-factual. It’s certainly Monday-morning quarterbacking. In the moment the officer was fired upon, the suspect turned into a threat to the public. I mean, if he’d shoot at an officer, who wouldn’t he shoot at?
Further, when the officer gave chase, he may or may not have been aware that the suspect had successfully taken the taser from the other officer. The officer giving chase had his taser out, but wasn’t pointing it or deploying it — he was chasing the suspect, on foot, in the parking lot. At this point, from the officer’s point of view, the suspect points a something at the officer and it discharges. The officer then immediately deploys lethal force.
This is textbook. It’s good policing. Arguing that the officers should have ignored a violent suspect and let him go with one of the officer’s weapons in hand is utterly ridiculous levels of justification. “Fight the cops and steal their weapons and they’ll let you run.” Is that what we want people to understand?
I wish this suspect had not been shot. I wish he had chosen to not fight. It’s a tragedy that this escalated, but the police are not responsible for the escalation, the suspect is. They did things pretty much by the book. Arguing that the police should have done it differently is ignoring the actions of the suspect, and further suggesting that police should be prescient. It’s not an achievable standard, and the result of letting violent suspects go while armed with stolen police weapons so that you can confront them later is not a good practice in any way and is likely to end up in more violent encounters, but in homes not parking lots.
So Mikes M &N , David, Ed and pauligon59,
Suppose the following allegations are true:
* that Officer Rolf kicked Brooks after he was shot and was lying on the ground
* that the officers did not call for medical aid for more than 2 minutes and
* that Officer Brosnan stood on Brooks shoulder while he was down
Would any of these be considered acceptable behavior? Are they excusable? Should there be any penalty for these actions?
I think the answers are no these are not acceptable, no, not excusable, and yes, there should be a penalty. But I want to hear yours.
Note: my question is not whether the evidence they did these things is strong, nor what you think if these charges are false. My question is your response assuming these allegations are true.
Spellbound,
I appreciate the counterargument. Perhaps you’ve got this right. Still, I’d like your view on these points:
1) Brooks fired a non lethal weapon at the officers. My impression is that lethal force is justified when an officer reasonably believes himself to be in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. Tasers don’t kill [generalizing]. Maybe I don’t understand what serious bodily harm means. Here I find a definition that proports to be legal that specifies criteria such as protracted loss or impairment of functionality, obvious disfigurement, or death. I’m not sure a taser qualifies. So I’m not sure self defense justifies. Do you disagree?
2) If the escaping suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the public. The drunk didn’t want to get arrested and go to prison is apparently why he resisted, fled, and fired the taser. What reason is there to believe he would attack anyone else? Real question. Why would he attack anybody else?
I can assume the allegations true, but that doesn’t actually help as many of those allegations are vague and broad. For instance, “kick” covers light contact with the foot all the way through to full punt with follow-through.
Assuming the worst of the allegations, I agree with you except on 2 — I’d really need to know what those 2 minutes were spent doing. Officer’s duties do not move to immediate care for shot suspect. You make sure the situation is safe by making sure the suspect is no longer fighting, you clear the weapon away, you check the medical condition of the suspect, and you make sure your partner is medically okay. Also, the officer had to walk back to his patrol car to call. I can easily see that taking 2 minutes and none of it is objectionable. If they stood there and ogled the suspect, then, no, not cool.
Spellbound,
I have no idea what you think is “counter-factual”. The fact of drawing the taser has been stated multiple times here. He shot it after Rolf began reaching for his gun.
Actually, the moment the taser was fired, it was temporarily inactive. That’s the way capacitors work. I know because my electric thermometer has a small cacacitor and I have to wait before I can take my temperature again. 🙂
So after firing, Brooks was no longer had possession of an operable firearm. Even if he would use it, he couldn’t.
As for the rhetorical question: A person fleeing might have a motive to shoot at a cop but none to shoot at anyone else. So even if he had a weapon, the idea that shooting at a cop means you’ll shoot at anyone and everyone is false.
No. The cop wasn’t pointing his taser. He transferred his taser from his right hand to his left hand and began reaching for his gun. If, as you suggest, the cop might have been unaware Brooks had a taser, and thought he was chasing a guy carrying nothing at all, then the cops decision to prepare to have his gun handy rather than the taser was totally out of proportion to what was going on!
I’m betting the cops lawyer will not suggest a defense remotely similar to this one!
Out of curiosity: Assuming it’s true the officers did not call for medical help for 2 minutes after the shooting, do you think that was by the book? How about Rolf kicking Brooks after shooting him? Is that by the book? Once again: assuming it’s true. Real questions.
BTW: this trial is going to have tons of video evidence. The DA who charged the cops evidently looked at eight videos counting cell phone and surveillance videos! Everyone in Wendy’s must have whipped out their phones!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5vOf7J5DJc
Mark,
1) a taser is classified by Georgia as a lethal weapon. That aside, taser will incapacitate for 5 seconds or longer, which is enough time for a suspect to retrieve your service weapon and kill you. Firing a taser at an officer puts that officer in a potentially lethal situation for multiple reasons, and you cannot assume good intentions in these cases. Perhaps this suspect would have just fled. Maybe he’d have returned to attack. You cannot put police officers in the position of having to divine intent when a weapon is being discharged at them, and they are trained to not try.
2) what reason is there to expect he wouldn’t? We’re arguing counterfactuals that require assuming the mindset of the suspect. Let’s recall that he had, quite suddenly, become violent and assaulted two police officers, giving one a concussion and stealing his taser. Let’s also recall that he was on parole because he had been convicted of violent felonies. Do we really want to state that this person, now in serious trouble, will not resort to violence again? I can’t say, and neither can you, even if you lead with pointing out that the start of this confrontation was just being drunk and asleep. The police did not escalate that (I don’t buy the argument that they should have left him to sleep it off), the suspect did, in every particular. Why would we assume he’d suddenly turn rational and calm and not escalate again?
If this guy was on probation they could just arrest him at the next probation officer meeting where he has to go through a metal detector. This is easy enough. This isn’t about a dissertation the officer should have wrote while chasing down a suspect contemplating carefully all the available options.
.
Was he trained? Did he follow policy? Was his actions reasonable given what he knew at the moment? Reasonable is a range of actions. Do you think this officer knew the intricacies of whether Georgia considers a taser a deadly weapon? It would be interesting to know if other officers know this. Police officers aren’t exactly the STEM crowd.
.
A guy who fought with police and took their taser and fired it at them is not in the same category as a drunk guy who got out of his car and ran. In hindsight this looks like excessive force, but that isn’t the correct question I think. This looks like a job termination offense with compensation to the victim’s family, but not murder.
Spellbound
I don’t see how even a gentle kick would be reasonable if it occurred.
I haven’t seen video of the kick. The DA showed a still that suggest a big “windup” to the kick. But we really can’t know without the video. There are supposedly at least 8 videos!
Spellbound,
Well answered. You may be right.
I think police *do* have to try to figure out the mindset of a suspect though. I don’t see how that’s avoidable. Questions like ‘What is this guy up to? What’s he doing? Why? What’s he going to do next? What does he want?’ and even ‘what’s this situation all about’ seem instrumental to being a detective.
I see what you’re saying about the dangers of the taser though. I think that’s a pretty decent argument.
Two minutes to render aid is completely reasonable in my view. The likelihood that had they done something in one minute would have resulted in a different outcome seems like a stretch. This line of argument I find uncompelling. Most gunshots are survivable (>90%) and those that aren’t probably aren’t close calls. The term “golden hour” is used in emergency care, not “golden minute”.
On speculation Rolfe might not know Brooks had the taser: It’s clear Rolfe knows Brookes has the taser. There are two bodycam vidoeos here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAAr1kVRlCo
The verbal has a cop threatening to tase Brookes. Brooks puts his hand on the taser (likely initally to interfere with the offiers ability to aim it.) Once he’s grabbed the taser Brooks takes it.
It sounds like Rolf fires his own taser then chases. (This could explain why Rolfe switches to his gun.)
Lucia,
The counterfactuals are arguing that it would have been better to let him go. That didn’t happen, we do not have that fact pattern, it’s a counterfactual.
The taser in question can be used in contact mode even after firing. This is called “drive stun.” It’s not a one and done weapon — if you replace a fired cartridge, you can use it again. In other word, it’s not a single use weapon. You seem to have some misunderstanding of police tasers.
Second to this, the officer, in the moment, could not be sure the weapon discharged at him was a taser. They had frisked the suspect, yes, but frisking isn’t foolproof, especially for smaller holdout weapons. Frisking is also not a full search, and not even as invasive (usually) as what they do to you at the airport if you opt-out. Even if the officer knew it was a taser, he couldn’t know for sure if the suspect didn’t have another weapon.
As for the officer not deploying his taser, I don’t know what you think this indicates. To me, it indicates that he was chasing the suspect but not escalating to firing his weapon. I guess you can suspect that the officer was planning to shoot because he transferred his taser to his other hand, but he doesn’t draw until after the suspect points the taser. I don’t understand why you’re attributing bad motives to the officer but arguing the suspect should be considered to be a good person and safe after firing the taser and so should be not pursued and picked up (again, assumption being safely) the next day. This is very uneven assignment of motivations.
Rule 1: Don’t resist arrest.
Rule 2: If you do resist arrest don’t take a cop’s weapon (of any kind).
Rule 3: Of you are a cop, don’t shoot someone who is running away from you, even if he is holding your partner’s taser.
.
Running away usually means, you know, not running toward you, and most often means the person is not about to attack you. There were many things the cops in this case could have done differently (and perhaps should have done differently) to avoid what happened. They didn’t. Some of that is poor judgement, some is acting on adrenalin and/or anger instead of reason. Some is not calling “overwhelming force†for backup.
.
The cop who shot the fleeing suspect will not be convicted of murder; perhaps some much lesser charge. The second cop will walk for sure. The biggest problem is what will happen in Atlanta and elsewhere over the next few days.
Lucia,
Re: kick. Would you prefer he shoot him again to make sure the threat is stopped? Or, is it preferable that the officer take his weapon off the target to lean down close and check?
The officer just decided that this guy was dangerous enough to shoot. He was a 9 year veteran with a good record and had, up until the suspect assaulted two cops and stolen a weapon, been nothing but polite and professional. Poking/kicking the downed suspect to determine his ability to continue fighting is perfectly acceptable.
A wind-up kick is not. What the DA says is utterly unreliable at this point because the charges he brought are massive overcharging and the investigation isn’t even complete. GBI has stated that the DA’s office didn’t even contact them prior to the announcement and that GBI didn’t know about the announcement. This is a DA trying to seize a moment for political advantage because he’s in the middle of a run-off election. Without video evidence (and I think if it existed the DA would have made sure it was out), we have the word of someone clearly engaged in political grandstanding saying that it was a big kick.
lucia (Comment #186565):
This is a big change in topic. It has little or nothing to do with what has been discussed. That said, if the claims are true they are an important and relevant topic.
The first and third actions are not excusable and should be penalized. The second depends on what was happening in the meantime. Some time would be needed for the officers to assess whether the other was injured and if the suspect was in fact incapacitated.
——-
Is there any evidence for those claims? The prosecutor apparently showed a still shot in support of the first. That would suggest a lack of actual evidence.
This is the wendy’s cam video. I don’t know if it’s all of it. It has a gap between
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eGj4YRwv_U
23:22:49 and 23:33:14.
Any kick would presumably be between those two times.
Evidently (for another report) an SUV was shot. My guess is that’s the SUV parked next to the handycap spot after the shooting.
If someone has a link to a more complete Wendy’s video, I’d like to see it.
Mike M
It’s not a change in topic. The topic is police behavior during the Brooks arrest/killing etc.
I’m looking for the video evidence of the claims. There is evidence, but what the DA showed was a still photo which appears like it would have come from a video. There is also eyewitness testimony.
I now agree the two minutes is “it depends”. I was sort of assuming: Well… he’s shot. But of course, one can be shot…. and still a threat. So it depends makes sense to me.
I don’t know why the “Wendy’s” footage has a gap where it does. I’m looking to see if there is more. (I did find a video taken by someone in the white car– and there was clearly a kid in that car. Imagine having your kid witness a shooting because you took them to Wendy’s?! Wow!)
I don’t know about the kick, I’d have to see it. However it is just human nature to kick, shake, or push someone who is non-responsive to see if they are asleep, alive, or responsive. It might be something different. It won’t be helpful for the officer if it was spiteful.
.
What we can expect is the the officer will have a story after coaching by his lawyers and peers and he will say he felt his life was in imminent danger. Ultimately if Brooks points a taser at him and it flashes then I think the officer can say he wasn’t sure what was happening and had to assume it was a deadly weapon, and he will walk. A hung jury at a minimum.
Tom,
Oh… I agree the cop is not going to get convinced of murder. He shouldn’t. I’m waiting to see the kick though. (Hunting…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYheKZ4sb4
The still picture of the alleged kick to the head is at 1:55 on the video above. I absolutely cannot find the video associated with that still. (I’m assuming it’s from a video.)
The gap in the Wendy’s video is quite unfortunate, a bit suspicious. Not to mention the body cam getting knocked to the ground during the fight.
.
I’m not sure who shot the guy, the lead cop, or the trailing cop? If it is the trailing cop then it’s hard to see this as anything but a tragedy. The trailing cop saw the guy point the taser, fire it, and the leading cop looks like he actually got hit with something and falls against the red car. It was probably instinct to avoid getting shot, but from the trailing cop’s perspective ….
SteveF,
Your 3 is a good rule of thumb, but not an absolute. If a suspect with a firearm has fired over his shoulder at you while running, shooting him in the back is appropriate because he may do it again.
In this case, yes, the taser only has one shot, but it’s not what we, in the safety of our homes and arguing on the internet, think that matters. It’s what a reasonable officer, in the moment, would think. So, it turns on if it’s reasonable to expect an officer to, in the moment, know it’s a taser and not a firearm. Iffy, good bet the officer could tell, but it’s seconds in a highly charged situation, so not guaranteed. Then it turns on if the officer truly believed that the suspect was a threat. That’s clearer, and reasonable.
I won’t apologize for cops. I think qualified immunity is a blight. I think militarized police forces are a blight. No knock raids are one of the worst inventions of the drug war, and that’s a long list of ugly things. I’m not reflexively defending the police here. But, that said, this was in the bounds of a good shoot. The officer had reasonable fear of life and the facts support that. We can second guess, but we’re not there, and it has to be that officers are afforded deference in the moment. The facts are that a suspect turned violent suddenly, took a weapon, and fired it at an officer. That’s sufficient. I don’t want it to be where cops are afraid to shoot in this kind of situation because they’ll get charged with death penalty felonies and lose their jobs. That’s a great way to have no cops.
That still of the kick is… odd. The suspect is behind the officer’s planted leg and the officer is leaning forward. Any “kick” from that position would be a very weird way to deliver a kick. I mean, you’d have to say that the kick is a straight down toe kick behind the back of the officer, all while, what, dabbing?
The shadows also confirm that the suspect is entirely behind the officer. I think this is a photo of the officer stepping over the downed suspect, not a wind up for a kick. I don’t even see how that would even work.
Lucia,
Off topic, thank you for having this blog up for so long. I’ve been a very long time lurker (I think I might have posted a few times over the years), and I greatly enjoy both your posts and the collection of posters that frequent your establishment. I’m actually a tad embarrassed that my major debut is in disagreement, as I hold you in very high esteem. This site is a near daily visit for me.
And none of that earns me any leeway. 😉
Spellbound
I don’t think the only three alternatives possible are kick him in the head, take his weapon of the target or shoot him again. He could, for example, stand back and peruse him for a while– especially if that’s the justification for waiting 2 minutes to call the ambulance. He could wait for the other officer to arrive and train his weapon while he leans over to check.
I would prefer he not give a head kick to someone who just fell over from two bullet holes in the back.
Maybe it’s overcharging. Maybe it’s not. If the investigation is not complete, you can’t know if it’s overcharging. This might be charges that can be supported based on what’s already known.
You also don’t know if the DA would show video evidence if it was out. I do wonder why he hasn’t shown it– but he might have reasons. I’m deferring conclusions on what sort of kick it was until I see video. (I think jury will want to see that too.)
No. Tasers can only be fired once without reloading.
(Afterwards, it might be useable as a stun-gun. But you have to be close for that to happen.
See https://www.stun-gun-defense-products.com/buy-stun-gun/TASER-Frequently-Asked-Questions.html
A reasonable officer who has been trained to carry a taser should know it can only be fired once. So a member of the general public might be excused for not knowing the weapon is now no longer lethal but the a reasonable cop should know.
But you seem to be doing so. You seem to be suggesting that it’s reasonable for a cop who is trained to use tasers to not know a taser won’t fire twice!
Anyway: I don’t think the murder/manslaugther is going to stick. I think it was poor judgement because a cop should know the taser won’t fire again without recharging.
Some of the other charges might stick. (Evidently one is for shooting the van. Evidently a third bullet went into the occupied van. That must have been exciting for the occupants! It should teach people to leave a drive through line if they see cops getting ready to arrest someone! )
Spellbound,
Diesagreeing is fine. I did come around to thinking 2 minutes before calling the EMTs might be ok.
I think I’m going to give up on finding video of the “gap” in the Wendy’s video. Maybe it will eventually show up.
Some tasers can be fired twice, such things exist. Don’t know how common they are, or what Atlanta police are using.
https://www.axon.com/products/taser-x2
Sorry the link is so light on details…
mark,
Ok! clearly, that’s the taser I need. (They have a video btw.)
That’s supposed to be a kick? It looks to me like someone running and trying to avoid stepping on whatever is on the ground.
https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/watch-garrett-rolfe-kicking-rayshard-brooks/
The DA says it was a kick, but the DA is obviously a liar: “Mr. Brooks never displayed any aggressive behaviorâ€.
Spellbound,
I think the argument about using the taser to get a gun would be more persuasive if the arresting officer was alone. The trouble is, while Brooks was tasing the one officer and getting his gun, we have to assume the other officer wouldn’t be blowing Brook’s head off. I think everyone in the situation probably understood that intuitively but probably pretty clearly nonetheless [that Brooks using the taser to incapacitate the nearer officer and get his gun would get him shot immediately by the other officer].
Also, why wait until after Brooks shoots the taser and misses to open fire?
Still, it was a dicey situation. After thinking it through, I still don’t agree that lethal force was necessary, but I understand how the officer using lethal force could have made that quick decision.
Thanks!
>If this guy was on probation they could just arrest him at the next probation officer meeting
He already had a hearing scheduled for revoking parole. The arrest would have revoked his parole and sent him to jail for 6yrs 8 months, plus whatever he gets for the DUI.
“If this guy was on probation they could just arrest him at the next probation officer meeting”
.
Seriously? A felon on the lam is going to keep his appointments with his probation officer? I think not.
MikeM,
Yes, he had already ‘disappeared’ once (went to northern Ohio) and had to be arrested to be returned to Georgia. He wasn’t going to show up for a parole hearing after fleeing an arrest. He knew he would go back to prison for several years on the DUI as a parole violation) that is probably why he resisted arrest. Being drunk probably didn’t improve his judgement any, but the guy had 8+ years displaying very bad judgement, so being drunk might not have made much difference.
Lucia,
“Ok! clearly, that’s the taser I need.â€
You don’t strike me as the taser type. Do you keep one in the glove compartment?
I was hoping to get a strap on taser. I figure I should do open carry. Plus, a firearm strapped to a thigh is such a fashion statement. 🙂
Dropping irony: No. I am not planning to get a taser. But clearly, if I were going to get a taser, that’s the one I need.
Lucia,
I was joking about the glove compartment.
FL has a pretty major escalation in cases, but the age breakdown of the positive cases has changed significantly. See the graph at the end of this article:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/06/18/florida-sees-record-3207-new-coronavirus-cases-with-new-highs-for-tampa-bay/
.
Big relative increase in young people. It may be possible that the deaths don’t increase as much as the active case counts would suggest, we shall see.
SteveF,
And again I say: Suicide by cop. He grabbed for a weapon knowing that would likely make the cops shoot him.
Tom Scharf,
Yup, I have been looking at the importance of population age for some time. The fraction of confirmed cases in FL above age 75 has fallen from a peak of ~26% of total to ~6% of total today. The increase in cases in FL is almost all among people who are very unlikely to die from the virus. Which I guess means that, so far at least, the increase in cases has not really reached those most likely to die. There could be some increase in deaths, of course, but it is unlikely to be anywhere close to proportional to the increase in cases.
.
In countries with very young populations (under age 20 median, some as low as 15 years!), there is no pandemic, and the number of deaths is tiny (a few per million population). Looks like the virus just can’t spread very effectively when most of the population is young. Those countries also have a tiny population in the >65 age range, so there just aren’t many people the virus can kill. Most countries that have been hard hit have median age above 38, and the worst hit countries above 42. Countries in between those age extremes (eg Mexico, Colombia) have higher rates of spread, but relatively fewer people likely to die from the virus, and so will likely end up with far fewer deaths than the worst hit countries.
.
Seems to me that in hindsight, the objective should always have been to reach herd immunity and allow the pandemic to decline, with the minimum possible exposure of those at greatest risk. Unfortunately, the actual policies adopted in places like New York and New Jersey were the exact opposite: try to prevent progress toward herd immunity, while increasing exposure of the most vulnerable. Their high death rates, almost all among elderly people, reflect those policies.
DeWitt,
I think you would have to ask him to be certain about that. Running away doesn’t seem like a good way to be sure they would shoot you.
.
Based on his past, I would bet that he didn’t make any reasoned decision at all.
All – this is a great line of discussion!
Lucia, you asked:
Suppose the following allegations are true:
* that Officer Rolf kicked Brooks after he was shot and was lying on the ground
* that the officers did not call for medical aid for more than 2 minutes and
* that Officer Brosnan stood on Brooks shoulder while he was down
Would any of these be considered acceptable behavior? Are they excusable? Should there be any penalty for these actions?
Without reviewing any of the videos, the acceptability of those three actions depends on the behavior of Brooks at the time. Once the decision to use lethal force was made by the officer, the officer needs to control the person. If the person makes any motion perceived as an attempt to attack or go for a weapon, the officer will take action to further subdue the person. People may not realize it but it isn’t all that uncommon for an individual shot several times and keep fighting and being violent. Especially if they are on drugs. I haven’t heard whether there was a report on whether a tox screen was done on Brooks.
Until Brooks is controlled, the cop doing the takedown will not call an EMT – a bystander, partner or dispatch may if they are aware of the need. Once handcuffs are on, the officer will likely make the call if it hasn’t already been made.
Note that part of controlling the person is to make it harder for them to get up again – hence the kneeling on the back.
Note also that the cop is reacting as training dictates but only when the perp took things farther. Each step of escalation during the whole thing was done by Brooks, not the cops.
None of us civilians fully understand that there really are violent, amoral, thugs out there and it is the job of the cops to deal with them. Most of us civilians would be a bloody patch on the ground if we had to deal with those people every day.
Note that I believe that the Brooks scenario is completely different from the Floyd scenario. Floyd had been controlled so the prolonged knee to the neck was deliberate at the time and had no apparent justification. That it lead to Floyd’s death is criminal – as everybody seems to agree on – so why the riots?
I concur also with Spellbound that there are many aspects of policing that are abhorent – no nock warrants and such. What would you do if somebody starts breaking your down in the middle of the night? Do you assume its the cops hitting the wrong address… again… or do you assume its an actual criminal home invasion? I wonder what the folks who live down the street in the CHOP worry about these days?
SteveF,
Also, based on the body video, I don’t think Brooks thought about it either. Rolfe didn’t say “You are under arrest”. He just tells him he is to drunk to drive, asks him to turn around and starts cuffing him. The second he realizes Rolfe is putting the cuffs on, he just reacts.
I don’t think there was any coherent thought. It looks almost reflexive– as if his mind whent “Oh… shit! NOOOOOO!” Then he just reacted likely in fear.
Whether any major reasoning happened during the next minute… dunno. Probably not.
BTW: One of the charges against Rolfe appears to be not informing him he was under arrest. Assuming that’s a violation, based on the video, it appears Rolfe is guilty of that.
SteveF,
True, if that had been all he did. In which case a murder charge for shooting might actually stick. But he didn’t just run away. First he grabbed a weapon from one of the cops and used it. Perhaps he had second thoughts after he triggered the Taser and as a result turned and ran. But at that point is was a bit late.
And in other news, there’s an article in the latest JAMA:
From the abstract:
[my emphasis]
Which had the desired effect, a piece in the NY Times:
Oh? The only ‘evidence’ for that being due anthropogenic climate change are models, which have zero skill for that sort of thing.
Can you say ‘fake news’? Yes, you can.
What I particularly like in the NYT article is the following:
So let’s be like California (or Germany) and make electricity much, much more expensive so even fewer can afford air conditioning while having an insignificant effect on the trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
DeWitt,
I should think Democrats would be displeased. They seem to largely support Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions for far more black women than white. About five times as many back in 2014.
lucia (Comment #186622): “One of the charges against Rolfe appears to be not informing him he was under arrest. Assuming that’s a violation, based on the video, it appears Rolfe is guilty of that.”
.
That sounds completely bogus. I would think that SOP is to arrest a suspect, then tell him he is under arrest and why. I find it hard to believe that a suspect has to be informed that he is under arrest before being cuffed.
Marc Bofill, they are renaming/retiring the Robert Fisher prize due to his support for eugenics. They will have to eventually go for Margaret Sanger.
SteveF, Absolutely agree the strategy should have been to protect the elderly and ill populations while letting everyone else go about their business so we get to herd immunity. That could have been done with only minor harm to the economy. Why didn’t we do that? Probably for the same reason we irrationally make everyone go through airport screening rather than just those fitting the profile of possible terrorists. It shows that “nondiscrimination” has become the new sacrament in our secular culture.
MikeM,
Hey… it’s one of the charges. I don’t know what the law is!
DeWitt,
Wrong, obviously you aren’t aware it is police shootings of unarmed black men that cause all the damage to black mothers.
.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-police-shootings-of-unarmed-black-americans-could-be-harming-the-health-of-black-infants
“Research published Wednesday in Science Advances finds that black mothers who were exposed to police shootings of unarmed black Americans during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to infants who were born prematurely or with low birth weight.”
.
That “study” from 2019 was eventually retracted. When there is zero push back for correlation only and politically correct science it just hurts the credibility of science in general. It’s one thing for academia to put this kind of taxpayer funded crap out, it’s another for the MSM to pick it up and amplify it.
.
The NYT has really gone off the deep end in the past 5 years, they are social justice 24/7. Their own readers are getting fed up with it if you read some of the comments sections.
lucia (Comment #186631): “Hey… it’s one of the charges. I don’t know what the law is!”
.
I was not blaming you. I was just pointing out one more way that the charges are obviously bogus.
Fatal shooting in the Age of Aquarius zone. Odd that I can’t find the story anywhere but Newsweek of all places.
A shining example for us all.
.
[Edit: The Daily Beast has it too. https://www.thedailybeast.com/seattle-police-investigate-shooting-inside-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone%5D
The Summer of Love is in full swing now. Happy Solstice BTW.
This didn’t age well.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin.
I am wondering what the odds of someone 22 or under, who is healthy are of dying of Covid. My question is motivated by the good number of college football players testing positive.
My instinct is that it is something like 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000. If the odds are very low of dying from the virus, then a logical argument can be made in favor of the very good players who could earn millions in the NFL draft playing college football notwithstanding the risk of catching the virus. I realize many here are much more competent than me in analyzing the statistics.
…..
I also realize there is an important additional issue in that potentially carriers of the virus who have virtually no risk of dying could infect others who are at risk. On my end, I would like to take one step at a time.
JDOhio,
The problem is determining whether someone had significant underlying heath issues that contributed to their death. As of two weeks ago, the youngest person to have died in Florida from covid was 26 years old. I believe the next youngest was 29. No matter if there are other health issues, the risk among those under 35 is very close to zero. There are plenty of confirmed cases for people above ~16-17, just not many deaths until >50. The rate of positive tests for people below 16 is about 15% of the rate for people above 20; there was almost no difference in the per capita positive rate between 20 and 65. Young kids really are very resistant.
SteveF “The problem is determining whether someone had significant underlying heath issues that contributed to their death. ”
Of course, we are dealing with college football players who are 99% healthy. In my mind, the argument that needs to be considered is that really talented players can make $20 to $25 million by having a good college season (For instance, Joe Burrow, Chase Young and Jeffrey Okudah) and that even from a health perspective the argument can be made that with that kind of money, they can buy great health care from their families and ultimately playing can be a health care plus for their families.
Also, if the risk is low enough, college football players playing, when properly informed, and signing a proper waiver is analogous to sky diving or riding a helicopter to view the Big Island of Hawaii where there are significant risks caused by tricky winds.
……
The next argument to be considered is the danger of spread to others. However, to fully consider the pluses and minuses, I think first, they need to be carefully considered separately and then combined together to analyze ultimate risks and benefits.
Is the Wuhan virus more dangerous than the common cold? Real question. Of course, I refer to infection by the virus, not fear of the virus.
The common cold can kill. For example:
https://reference.medscape.com/medline/abstract/28134768
.
There is a large seasonal variation in weekly deaths. It correlates well with pneumonia, so respiratory infections are likely a major cause of the seasonal variation. The correlation implies some 800K annual deaths in the U.S. associated with respiratory infections.
.
There are about one billion respiratory infections a year in the U.S., of which only a few percent are from influenza. If they cause 800K deaths, then the IFR would be about 0.08%. That would make the Wuhan virus somewhat worse than average for respiratory infections. Not surprising for for something our immune systems have not seen before.
JD, do you mean odds of dying if infected, or overall odds?
The NBA tested 120 players, and got 10 infected, for 8.3%. I haven’t seen results of testing for the other 20 teams.
The NFL may have linemen close to 400 lbs that are higher risk, but I’m not sure.
JD,
Some of the questions you are asking are difficult because people would have to go hunting for data that provides information binned by age, pre-existing and so on. It’s somewhere, but someone would have to hunt it down, collate and so on.
It is clear that older people are getting killed by this disease more than young people and so on.
Mike N: Yes, I am referring to dying.
…..
Lucia: “Some of the questions you are asking are difficult because people would have to go hunting for data that provides information binned by age, pre-existing and so on. It’s somewhere, but someone would have to hunt it down, collate and so on. ”
I have seen a good number of statistical comments here, and I thought someone had already done it. Obviously, not asking anyone here to do it for me. Would think that someone in college football administration would have done it. But if odds are something like 1 in 50,000, the power 5 players could play for 3 years and it would be unlikely that there would be any deaths.
Steve Mc tweeted today that:
“the fatality rate for sick LTC residents is really quite astonishing: 31%, but for sick staff only 0.2%.
COVID deaths in Ontario are dominated by very old: 33% of COVID deaths over 90, another 35% 80-89.”
JD–
I didn’t think you were demanding. People are looking for things locally– for example, Steve looked at some florida numbers. As far as I can tell, Illinois numbers for that aren’t readily available.
JD Ohio,
I did post a couple of links to graphical data for Florida. If you look back over a couple of threads I am sure you can find the links. Those graphs included number of confirmed cases by age, chance of death per confirmed case by age, and cumulative deaths versus age. The chance of death from a confirmed case reaches about 30% at age 90.
.
One other graph I did not post was life-years lost per confirmed case versus age. Life-years lost was calculated by multiplying chance of death per confirmed case by the Social Security actuarial table of life expectancy by age (eg at age 79 your life expectancy is xx years; life-years lost is xx multiplied by chance of death per confirmed case at age 79). That graph shows the life-years lost peaks at about age 76 (IIRC), but is relatively flat…. younger victims are much less likely to die, but lose more years of life if they do die, older victims more likely to die, but lose far fewer life-years.
The worst part of the Atlanta shooting is the officer fired with citizens in the background and hitting the car. There is little doubt this was not advisable, at all. This video also shows the kick more clearly at around 8:30.
https://nyti.ms/3dtZWT7
.
As far as the taser being a deadly weapon, Atlanta unfortunately created a double standard for themselves here by firing two officers about a week earlier for tasing some college students. The usual sides saying the exact opposite of what they are saying now.
Brazil just set the world high for cases reported in a single day, and climbing.
Tom Scharf (Comment #186718): “The worst part of the Atlanta shooting is the officer fired with citizens in the background and hitting the car.”
.
Yes, that is a concern. Were the citizens visible, or were they in the car? If the latter, I don’t think the officer can be blamed.
It was a car waiting in the drive-thru, so I think it was a clear do not shoot scenario in hindsight.
Here’s a little more crazy for you courtesy of Indiana University.
.
https://youtu.be/6QVhtBBBxyc
John Ioannidis found the fatality rate for those under 70 to be .04%.
“In the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Ioannidis surveyed 23 different seroprevalence studies and found that “among people <70 years old, infection fatality rates ranged from … 0.00-0.23% with median of 0.04%."
The median fatality rate of all cases, he writes, is 0.26%, significantly lower than some earlier estimates that suggested rates as high as over 3%.
In the paper, Ioannidis acknowledges that "while COVID-19 is a formidable threat," the apparently low fatality rate compared to earlier estimates "is a welcome piece of evidence." https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/stanford-prof-median-infection-fatality-rate-coronavirus-those-under-70
This undoubtedly means the death rate for young men under 22 is very low.
Tom Scharf, I don’t think cases is a useful metric, but instead hospitalizations. How many of these cases are from contact tracing, and otherwise asymptomatic?
Florida’s new cases have a median age of 35 versus a previous median of 65.
For those interested in whether Covid can infect/kill those not elderly here is an interesting article from the LA Times
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-21/babies-children-december-deaths-join-the-wait-for-covid-19-testing
Given the confusion in allocating at a particular death to COVID and differing testing rates in different countries I find the change in overall mortality a more reliable statistic. The Financial Times has a tracker https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 and it does vary a lot.
Wouldnt an appropriate metric be no.of positives per total tests for each day? Hospitalizations and deaths are probably the important metrics for any policy, but for estimating whether the disease is spreading faster, they also depend on measures in place to protect the at-risk groups. Hopefully very strong by now.
Phil Scadden (Comment #186745) the trouble with “no.of positives per total tests for each day” is in some places only people with clear symptoms are tested, in other places althoughs with symptoms but those who have had contact with overseas travelers, in others the tests cost so that limits who gets tested all up this confusion about who gets tested makes a mess of this as a metric. Even deaths assigned to COVID is confusing, in the first 2 months the UK didn’t assign people that died at home to COVID and so there was an under count. And what do you do about people with multiple health problems, they might die with COVID but not of COVID, different countries classify these deaths differently. Total mortality doesn’t rely on any classification.
Andrew, it depends on what you are trying to understand. Comparing covid19 stats from one place to another is fraught by definitions etc. However, to look at whether rates of infection are increasing rather than rates of detection are increasing in say a single city or state, then positive/total seems a reasonable metric, even as testing regime changes. You can guarantee that no. will get smaller if R is reducing. Far from perfect but a better indicator than no. of cases.
Andrew/Phil
In the US, this has been a very real problem from the start of the pandemic to at recently as a month from now. Early on we just didn’t have enough testing capacity. We are just finally getting to the point where anyone who wants a test can get one.
Later on we had an additional problem that those tabulating data did not distinguish between “viral” tests (active infection) and serology tests ( now better, and possibly immune.) So for a period, the numbers weren’t necesarily meaningful.
.
Notwithstanding it’s problems ratio:(positives/tests) is the metric being used to decide on states moving into “phases” to leave lock downs.
.
No matter what confusion there may be for binning deaths as Covid/NonCovid, that’s what I look at when trying to see how Illinois is progressing. It’s a lagging indicator, but even if there is a bias in the number, the bias isn’t undergoing sudden changes.
Lucia,
When looking at how things are changing in a single jurisdiction then positives/tests may be enough but even then how do you account for travellers who move between jurisdictions? Are they assigned to the jurisdiction they are tested in or where they live or where they may have caught the virus. Here is Australia this has been debated, most cases have been of people returning from overseas and since most overseas flights arrive in Sydney and arrivals have to go into hotel isolation for 14 days before travelling on are they counted in for the country they came from or for Sydney or for where they go afterwards?
Andrew,
I have no idea how the covid “case” for someone who moved between DuPage County and Cook gets partitioned and I don’t know how it gets partitioned for even more diverse jurisdictdions.
I tend to assume the test and it’s outcome all get attributed to wherever the person was when tested. That’s the only easy clean way to do it.
It’s true a person tested in Du Page county who came out “positive” might have actually gotten exposed in New York, Wisconsin and so on. I don’t think the quesion of attributing where they got sick matters unless the number of cases in a jurisdiction is very small. When cases numbers are very small it’s actually possible to just explain that ever case was someone who arrived at the airport.
Lucia,
Yeah when this is all over there are going to be as many statistics PhDs as Medical Science. 🙂
Andrew, what question are you looking to answer? Why does it matter where/how they are counted? I would have thought that the policy questions in Australia, what matters is the occurence of covid19 outside of quarantine. I am in NZ with very similar regime. So long as cases are caught and contained in quarantine, then we stay at level 1, with no restrictions. If all of Australia’s cases were in quarantine, then travel could resume between NZ and Australia.
I understand WHO reports are made on basis of where detected. There was confusion here over returnees from Paraguay. We had actives cases imported, but if detection was in Paraguay, then didnt go into WHO stats for NZ. (it was later reversed as Paraguay didnt report them). But why does it matter who reports? From NZ point of view, we had active cases to manage; that is what mattered. Likewise, NZ reported probables as positives unless later ruled out. For disease management, probables are just as important as confirmed positives.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the NYT publishes a piece that states journalistic objectivity needs to be replaced by … errrr … “honesty and truth”, ha ha.
.
A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists
What’s different, in this moment, is that the editors of our country’s most esteemed outlets no longer hold a monopoly on publishing power.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html
.
“For years, I’ve been among a chorus of mainstream journalists who have called for our industry to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard, and for reporters instead to focus on being fair and telling the truth”
.
I hope this doublespeak clears everything up! This organization just fired its editor for allowing people to read the sacrilege that some people in America wanted rioting and looting to be met with force. A view shared by a majority.
.
This smokescreen is just a call for being objective through heavy selection bias, not covering stories at all that offend one’s sensibilities, among many other tried and true methods of only telling half a story. I daresay that the NYT made this leap at least 5 years ago, only now trying to codify it as a good idea.
Well, I think that part is already done. Pretty much.
It was interesting phrasing, as in their objectivity was for appearances only. The burden of appearing objective while knowingly publishing one’s propaganda must be heavy indeed.
And they have the chutzpah to complain about Fox News.
And the definition of publishing the truth is the same one that Pravda (Russian for truth) uses.
Phil Scadden — I mostly agree with you as far as managing the crisis today. However if we are ever going to understand what policies helped and what hindered, in an effort to be prepared for the future we need something better.
Andrew, response to any new pandemic is always going to struggle with limited testing capacity at start of the pandemic. You cant build testing capacity in advance for an unknown organism. I dont know what metric would better that is also feasible to implement early.
One thing certainly doesnt help – policies that deliberately bias metrics for political purposes. Enough sampling biases that unavoidable without adding any.
To assess effectiveness of policy, you need an estimate of R with time. (Assuming your policy objective is to control the spread of the disease). Annan is doing that via SIER model and death rate https://julesandjames.blogspot.com/. Looks interesting but death rate only really useful when it is high enough to have some statistical significance. I dont think it would be that useful in Australia or NZ. For all of its imperfections, the postive rate seems best of what you can get, especially late in the pandemic with death rate low.
Andrew,
I suspect there will be some time consuming data sorting over time. For example: We know the Swedes have an “instant” record of daily deaths which is a tabulation of the deaths *reported* on a particular day. That later gets updated to associate the death with the actual day when the person died. It seems to take about 10 days to finally get the count for a particular day completed.
They *may* eventually have information about each case that lists both where the test result was reported or the case diagnosed AND where that person came from. This is rather more difficult though as I don’t think *every single person* who triggers a positive case is later asked to tell people all the gory details of where they were over the past few weeks. So the data to figure out where they were infected will almost certainly be….. dubious.
Those trying to draw inferences will need to be aware of the limitations of data. But that’s just life.
Honestly, I don’t think we NEED to know where each person was infected to figure out that New Zealand drove the number of cases down to virtually zero, we did not and so on and so on. We already know that without doing much in the way of data processing.
We also don’t NEED to know where each person got sick to know that the overwhelming majority of new cases detected in the US NOW are from people who caught it in the US.
We may *eventually* have specific data to indicate where individual got sick– but really we can’t have that information with any great confidence until we have contact tracing aps programmed into chips embedded into our bodies. That’s not going to happen.
If your death rate is so low that you can’t figure out what is going on, then you don’t have a problem.
.
Another interesting metric is graphing death counts from all causes year over year and examining excess deaths. Interesting stats here:
https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441
Tom, yes, but Australia and NZ are very keen to keep it from being a problem, so testing results are the metric for management. Waiting till you have noticable excess deaths before acting is not my idea of good policy.
Excess deaths is by far the best metric of your real problem but it seems this data is quite hard to find for many countries. When there is a big disconnect between excess death and reported cases, either countries health care is terrible, testing is grossly ineffective, or someone is telling porkies.
Once your death rate is down to certain level, you need good testing strategies to track your effectiveness.
Phil Scadden (Comment #186833): “Excess deaths is by far the best metric of your real problem but it seems this data is quite hard to find for many countries.”
.
Yes, but what problem is it measuring? The virus or the overreaction to the virus? The latter is killing a lot of people in the USA.
It is? Excess mortality seems to pretty much correspond to Covid19 mortality. What is your data that leads you that conclusion?
Phil: while my earlier post was supporting using excess deaths as the most reliable metric (although a lagging metric and so more useful for post epidemic studies) one confounding factor put forward here in Aust in the early days of COVID was that there would be a spike in suicides driven by loneliness during lockdown and general despair which would drive all cause mortality up beyond a direct virus effect. The more recent impression is that this hasn’t happened. I suppose another confounding factor is the prevalence of DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate requests) since COVID effects the elderly disproportionately to the rest of the population and the elderly especially those with other health issues in elderly care are more likely to have DNRs then there will be deaths of people who could have been saved, this certaly seems th ecase in the 2 big care home outbreaks.
A lagging statistic is not that useful for policy makers having to make decisions on the hoof, but I agree that very useful for post-epidemic studies. I have heard fears of an increase in suicide, but I have yet to see supporting data. Chief Coroner here stated
“The provisional trend suggests the suicide rate was lower during the Alert Level 4 period than the 33 days prior to it (22 February – 25 March 2020).
“The suicide rate during Alert Level 4 was also lower than the rate for the same period from 2008 to 2020.”
Appeared to be a social media rumour. I suspect created by someone opposed to lockdown.
Doesnt show up in Australia mortality data yet whereas respiratory illness most certainly spikes in Mar.
I am not sure really why you think DNR pollutes the statistics. Half of NZ deaths were in dementia unit with people who had DNR too, but surely policy is to tightly protect those places. Our local heroes were in one unit where staff decided to lock in as well for duration of level 4 and level 3. Seasonal flu would also disproportionly affect the same group, so still seems pretty effective measure of the impact of the epidemic.
What are you trying to filter for and why?
I’m not trying to filter for anything, I’m trying to mull over the numbers (its what I do). Yes I’m aware of seasonal flu. Seasonal flu whilst effecting elderly more than young doesn’t show up quite as disproportional as COVID so having a much higher level of DNR in the elderly will be associated with more deaths for COVID than seasonal flu. If we are to make sense of these numbers then we must be careful of any confounders.
Michael Mann’s lawsuit against Steyn and others was a big topic here several years ago. He has suffered a significant setback in DC where he was ordered to pay $9500 in attorney fees for failing to answer the discovery requests of Rand Simberg and CEI. https://www.steynonline.com/10400/the-costs-of-mann-delay
To me it is particularly significant that the docs that Mann refused to release relate to his income. Not really hard to produce tax returns. I would make an educated guess that the amount and sources of his income are embarrassing. I would also guess that he has not suffered any financial losses.
Interesting side note on attorney muddling/incompetence. Mann has a respectable argument that he is entitled to presumed damages because he has filed a claim of libel per se. However, his complaint pled compensatory damages, so the judge ruled that Simberg and CEI were entitled to Mann’s income tax returns. In my mind, a muddling attorney not smart enough to think ahead who is representing a muddling defendant. Both should have realized at beginning that Mann’s income would become an issue.
Andrew, I still dont get why it is a “confounder”? What kind of policy decision could go wrong by failing to take into account that DNR levels in the elderly?
This may be independent of the lockdowns, but here in Georgia and elsewhere in the US they were accompanied by a ban on “elective” medical procedures. Accompanied by the fear of contracting covid if you went to the hospital, I would expect increased deaths from cancer down the road and increased deaths from heart ailments both during the lockdown and after. My wife is a cardiac nurse and at her hospital the number of emergency heart patients was a fraction of normal; it seems unlikely that strokes and heart attacks were prevented by the shutdown. Since the end of lockdown she’s lost several patients who noticed symptoms during the lockdown but failed to seek medical attention out of fear.
.
The ban also has been hard on hospitals, the vast majority of which here did not have enough covid patients to keep them busy or profitable. Medical/dental practices were also hit very hard, and medical was the 4th highest sector of job losses here during the lockdown.
JD Ohio,
Penn State professors have a salary of about $90K to $260K, form lowest assistant to senior professors with exalted titles. Mann is “Distinguished Professor of Meteorologyâ€, which probably puts him near the top of that range. The stated salary is normally for 9 months, and professors can “pay themselves†at the same rate for 3 summer months out of research grant funds. They also pocket 100% of consulting and advisory fees paid by outside organizations. In Mann’s case, it is very likely he is paid generously by environmental organizations for advisory work, so I would be very surprised if his total compensation is below $400K per year, and possibly much higher.
.
I agree that Mann’s (relatively high) income and his outside sources of income would be an embarrassment if disclosed. So he never will, even if it means abandoning his claim of financial loss. I don’t think the suit is really much about Mann at all, since he is being funded by environmental advocacy groups; the suit costs Mann neither time nor money. The suit was and is a naked effort by environmental activists to intimidate into silence anyone with a significant audience who wants to criticize climate ‘science’.
JD, this is the legal team that refiled their case to scrub the fake claim of being a Nobel Prize winner.
Andrew Kennet,
I’m with Phil. I have no idea why you thing the DNR is a co-founder. Could you explain what, precisely, the DNR issue is that makes it a co-founder? Because whether someone dies with a DNR in place or dies without it, it seems to me they are still dead. So it seems to me for these cases:
Get covide, die with DNR = +1 Covid death. Get Covid, die w/o DNR = +1 Covid death.
That sees like it’s counted right in both cases.
Dale S (Comment #186860): “Accompanied by the fear of contracting covid if you went to the hospital”
.
Indeed. That was hardly an irrational fear, since people were being told not to go to the doctor or the emergency room. The latter was specific to cases of the Wuhan virus, but was typically delivered in a way that obscured the distinction.
JD Ohio,
I’d be very surprised if Mann has experienced any financial losses. He hasn’t lost a job. He likely makes money speaking, consulting and so on. It may turn out he makes so much from advocacy groups that he knows revealing his income is only going to give support to the “conspiracy” claims that climate scientists are pushing climate change “for the money”.
Mind you: I don’t think money is the motivation for the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. That doesn’t mean that some of the more vocal ones end up making quite a lot of money for getting out and vocally stumping.
Lucia,
Then there are the perks like free private jet travel paid for by wealthy enviro-activists (and actors) and being generally fawned over by the climate faithful as a hero to ‘the cause’.
DNR reduces the level of care, so it’s possible people with DNRs might have survived if that care was given. However, DNR is a personal choice so it seems odd to complain that less people might have died without one.
SteveF,
I do suspect that happens to Mann.
JD Ohio (Comment #186672): “I am wondering what the odds of someone 22 or under, who is healthy are of dying of Covid.”
.
Just came across this:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863
FL deaths are starting to uptick right on schedule, a few weeks after increases in infections. Accordingly people are changing behavior. All 3 counties in my area just went to mandatory face masks in public and in businesses. This will be an interesting test of “safer behavior while not in lock down”. It was pretty clear that BAU was not going to work. Jun 1st = 1K cases per day. Jun 22 = 5K cases per day. It’s doubling about every 10 days.
I’m quite sure Mann profited handsomely from his climate martyr status. That was going to be exposed no doubt.
Tom,
We’re entering “phase 4” on Friday. The Glendora is having a open dance limited to 50 people. I so want to go. I won’t.
I know the people who will go to these things early during the unlocking are the very social ones some of whom will also go to every bar, ballroom, social etc. that is offered. Partner dancing has got to be one of the worst possible situations for getting breathed on and breathing on someone. Masks will slip. They are no fun to wear dancing either. That means that at least some of these people will skip wearing it when they can get away with it. I’m sure that will be possible somewhere even if the Glendora is strict.
So. No. Way.
But I really do want to go.
The logical endpoint of investigating genetic and group differences in academia given our current hysteria.
.
A Twitter Mob Takes Down an Administrator at Michigan State
The Graduate Employees Union denounced Stephen Hsu, and the president demanded his resignation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-administrator-at-michigan-state-11593106102
.
“Mr. Hsu says these accusations “were made in bad faith.†Take that 2018 blog post, which responded to New York Times articles that, in his words, linked “genetic science to racism and white supremacy.†In it, he wrote: “All good people abhor racism. I believe that each person should be treated as an individual, independent of ancestry or ethnic background. . . . However, this ethical position is not predicated on the absence of average differences between groups. I believe that basic human rights and human dignity derive from our shared humanity, not from uniformity in ability or genetic makeup.†Mr. Hsu doesn’t work in this field but rejects the idea that scientists should categorically exclude the possibility of average genetic differences among groups.
In a 2011 post, Mr. Hsu argued that standardized tests are predictive of the quality of graduate-school candidates. The post mentioned nothing about race, but the union imputed to him a belief “that lack of Black & Hispanic representation in higher ed reflects lower ability, despite evidence these tests negatively impact diversity.â€
.
Lysenkoism is alive and well in the US.
“Accompanied by the fear of contracting covid if you went to the hospital, I would expect increased deaths from cancer down the road and increased deaths from heart ailments both during the lockdown and after.”
The concern here has been delays in screening procedures and a there is frantic effort now to catch up. However, the pertinent question is whether the excess mortality from delayed procedures will be higher than deaths from Covid19 without the lockout. Health professionals here emphatically do not believe so.
The intersectionality of COVID-19, masks and racism is a convoluted and murky thing. We’re through the looking glass. People wanting everyone to be treated the same are racist. Horrifically so, in fact.
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/coronavirus/article243773412.html
I know of one person who postponed investigation because of covid fear. They have lung cancer and in the time they waited it invaded the pulmonary artery.
DaveJR – undoubtedly many similar examples, though covid fear of hospitals would there whether there was a lockdown or not. You could regard this as another way to die of Covid19 , rather than dying because of lockdown measures.
But question remains:
Will excess mortality from delayed procedures will be higher than deaths from Covid19 without a lockdown?
Phil Scadden,
“Will excess mortality from delayed procedures will be higher than deaths from Covid19 without a lockdown?â€
.
Not really the right comparison. It should be life-years lost versus life-years lost, not number of deaths versus number of deaths. Of course, national health care plans are even more exacting: QUALITY adjusted life-years lost is the normal measure, not just life-years.
.
Which doesn’t even address the economic damage of the lockdowns, nor the trillions of dollars spent trying to reduce that damage. National health systems generally assign a value to a quality adjusted life-year somewhere between about US$80,000 and US$175,000. Even at US$200,000 per QALY, the Federal expenditures in the States are way out of line with any rational balance between costs and benefits; four trillion is consistent with an expectation of 20 million QALYs lost, or somewhere near 2 million deaths at 10 QALYs per death. It is a wildly outlandish number.
Phil wrote: “You could regard this as another way to die of Covid19 , rather than dying because of lockdown measures.”
.
The media terrified him to death. He was too scared to risk it.
I absolutely agree with using QALYs as metric for assessing and comparing value of different treatments. So fine with reframing the question as to QALYs lost from delayed procedures versus QALYs lost from not doing a lockdown. I have not seen the analysis that heath authorities did but comments imply that was factored here at least.
In my opinion QALYs work best is assessing questions like “am I best to spend $10m pushing intervention A versus intervention B”. Quantifying human life is way too subjective. Different people have wildly different opinions on value. Acceptable death rates versus acceptable economic costs comes down to social licence or at least it should in a democracy.
SteveF, Lucia, the only pushback I’ve seen is Christopher Nolan naming the bad guy in Interstellar “Dr Mann”, though that was probably meant to evoke ‘Because Mann couldn’t watch a man die, humanity survived’.
Mike M. (Comment #186876) Thanks for your link to age statistics. Those from 5-19 have an IFR of 1 in 312000 if I haven’t got my zeros wrong. I would assume that at least half of those who died had co-morbidities. Thus, my best guess of the chances of a college football player dying would be something like 1 in 624,000 — meaning that the chances of death for a college football player, himself, are so small as to be inconsequential.
…..
Of course, there are very serious reasons to be concerned about players spreading it to others, but the dangers to the players seem to be very small, particularly when compared to the inherent violent nature of the sport. Thus, the analysis of if and when college football should return this year should be focused on the danger of the spread to others.
Phil Scadden,
“ Quantifying human life is way too subjective. Different people have wildly different opinions on value. Acceptable death rates versus acceptable economic costs comes down to social licence or at least it should in a democracy.â€
.
Opinions vary, but they are just opinions. Humans make, and indeed must make, subjective judgements all the time. If voters were fully aware of the cost per QALY saved of current policies in the USA , I believe voters would reject current policies as wasteful. The problem is the lack of any reasoned discussion of the costs of those policies versus a rational measure like QALYs lost. Politicians in the USA refuse to be involved in any reasoned discussion of costs versus benefits, and the childish left shouts down anyone who dares address this most important issue.
.
National health systems make value-of-life choices all the time; in the UK, you can’t get routine colonoscopies without symptoms (I think you get only one near age 60), because the costs are way higher than the value the UK assigns to the QALYs that might be saved with routine colonoscopies. IOW, routine colonoscopies are a judged a waste of resources. I believe covid policies in the States are as well, only 5 orders of magnitude larger.
JD Ohio,
Yes, the risk to players is essentially zero. Same with the risk to almost ALL young people. The NFL is not like professional golf: a big piece of their income is gate sales. They are not going to play in empty stadiums. They could have anyone who wants to enter the stadium sign a covid waiver, but I don’t think they will do that. I am not even certain they *could* fill a stadium with all the endless fear-mongering the MSM has been engaged in for 4 months. The sensible path is to warn people that if they are over 45 and/or with serious health issues, they shouldn’t attend a game. That option won’t even be considered…it’s too honest. It’s too mature. It’s too politically incorrect.
The media and academia/science are connected at the hip. There is zero pressure by the media to get a vaccine developed faster, or to increase risk in the process. They produce endless hand wringing stories about the spread of the virus, but completely ignore the “heroic” science establishment with respect to stopping the spread and/or producing both effective treatments and vaccines.
.
So far the science establishment has effing FAILED completely. 7 months in and they barely can tell us how it spreads, have no effective treatments, vaccines are a long way off, and there * 500K dead people *. Oh, by the way, don’t wear masks because important people like us need them, but we will be working from home for now. I sense zero urgency here:
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/25/883366849/a-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know
.
I’ve always been a fan of the science establishment and science in general, but this is a distressingly poor performance so far and nobody seems to recognize it or care much. It is completely BAU. They are too busy patting themselves on the back while they spit venom at their perceived political enemies.
.
Perhaps this is a very hard problem, but I’d expect this to be treated more like an emergency, and I’m just not seeing that outside of front line healthcare workers. The media gives everyone else a free pass.
FL cases are exploding. 9,000 cases today, which was 1,000 on June 1st. They are going to need to roll back re-opening. If we learned anything so far, it is that time matters a lot with exponential expansion. This experiment has not gone well, time for plan B.
Tom Scharf (Comment #186924): “So far the science establishment has effing FAILED completely. 7 months in and they barely can tell us how it spreads, have no effective treatments, vaccines are a long way off, and there * 500K dead people *.”
.
Tom is shocked and dismayed to discover that scientists don’t know everything. I’ve tried to read sarcasm into that, but it seems just to be stone headed ignorance.
.
The public health establishment has done a terrible job. Scary and inaccurate predictions. Botched roll out of tests. Bad and dishonest communication on masks and such. A complete failure to asses which public health measures actually matter. Those would seem to be failures of leadership in public health agencies, especially at the CDC. Those are essentially failures of government and have been badly under reported.
.
We can not cure the common cold. Vaccines can not be developed overnight. People die. Those facts are not evidence of incompetent scientists. Complaining about them shows a disconnect from reality.
Huh. I didn’t understand Tom Scharf to be complaining about incompetent scientists. Complacent, maybe.
…There is zero pressure by the media to get a vaccine developed faster…
…I sense zero urgency here:…
…It is completely BAU…
…I’d expect this to be treated more like an emergency, and I’m just not seeing that…
I wouldn’t have bothered to remark, except for the dig at the end that Tom seems disconnected from reality. Seems a little harsh considering that you didn’t even seem to grasp the essence of what he was saying.
I don’t particularly agree or disagree with Tom’s point.
shrug.
I guess if I saw a line of media trucks lined up outside the establishments that are developing treatments/vaccines and asking for daily reports and being disappointed in progress so far then I would feel a little better.
.
I’m sure some people are working 24/7 here, but the only visible pressure by the 4th estate is on politicians to implement draconian policy that only elites will not suffer from the consequences. They are not pressuring the science establishment to produce actual results, basically “give us a call if you have something to report you wonderful people”.
.
Pressuring the science establishment does not necessarily result in anything positive, but sometimes pressure does work. Personally I think they deserve criticism here. The forces of capitalism are their own incentive for private industry, but not for the academia side.
.
For example, zero discussion on the trade off between a safe and effective vaccine versus a quick vaccine. The “do no harm” religion will delay a vaccine by months in multiple stage testing while 100K people die in order to make sure a 1000 don’t die from the vaccine itself. This isn’t good math IMO. Too early and partially tested vaccines could be a disaster, but we are already in a disaster. That’s the difference here.
.
The media blindly accept they are developing this in a reasonable way and ask no hard questions. We aren’t seeing evidence of their competence either way here. They are seemingly beyond criticism, a protected class.
Huh?
The urgency for vaccine development is off the charts.
The effort going into vaccine development is off the charts.
The government is promising to buy vast quantities of unproven vaccines that are not yet approved. Just in case they get approved.
There is massive pressure to rush a vaccine into distribution. The odds of a fiasco are high.
When the vaccine does come out, I will want nothing to do with it until I know it is safe.
We can’t cure the common cold, but we’ve lived with it for a very long time and I would expect the medical professionals to have a very good idea exactly how it spreads and exactly how effective various behaviors are likely to be in preventing spread. I never expected a vaccine this year, but I expected *characterizing* the disease to be a much shorter and more exact process, and for what was learned to inform policy on very short scales. I also would’ve expected practical treatment experience to be distributed widely and widely discussed, not clamped down upon if it failed to meet the expectations of the moment. This doesn’t seem to be the case, or at least if there has been large gains in practical knowledge it hasn’t been communicated to the public.
.
In April we learned that sunlight kills the coronavirus quickly (not sure why it took until April to discover that, given that UV light was already known to affect viruses), but aside from dunking on Trump for saying something stupid, what came of it? Were any lockdown policies changed to encourage people to socially distance outside instead of staying cooped up indoors? Did criticism of “open” beaches abate? Was there any discussion of using UV in a business setting for sterilizing objects? Did anything happen at all?
.
And here’s a current WHO page:
https://www.who.int/southeastasia/outbreaks-and-emergencies/novel-coronavirus-2019/fact-or-fiction
“Fact: there is no evidence that sunlight kills the new coronavirus”. None? Really? And why southeastasia for that page?
On their Myth busters page under advice for the public it’s phrased a bit differently:
.
“FACT: Exposing yourself to the sun or to temperatures higher than 25C does not prevent nor cure Covid-19.” The rest of the graphic explains that “Countries with hot weather have reported cases of Covid-19”, which says nothing at all about the sun — or even high temperatures, given the existence of air-conditioning. The same page bothers to tell people not to ingest bleach, as if anybody but Mrs. Cuomo was actively using it as a treatment regimen, but it can’t spare any space to tell people whether being outdoors *while social distancing* has any benefit?
It would be appropriate IMO for a “rushed” vaccine to be sent to market and let individuals decide for themselves. As it sits now you cannot rush a vaccine to market given the slow and methodical requirements for developing any vaccine. I am questioning whether the vaccine legal requirements should change based on the virus breakout. Clearly(?) if a virus hits the world with a >25% mortality rate, highly contagious, and airborne transmission then the calculus should change. It seems we have a one size fits all method here, not sure.
Tom Scharf,
We’ll see in a few days if the explosion of cases causes an explosion in deaths. So far, no. BTW, based on the random serology testing from several weeks ago, it looks like there are ~15 to 18 mild (non-diagnosed) to asymptomatic cases per confirmed case. If that is true, the actual number of new infections is more like 100,000 per day. At that pace, herd immunity begins to build pretty quickly, especially in areas with higher infection rates. Look at the NY pandemic evolution, and how it has died out. That is the likely outcome in Florida as well. The difference is going to be in total deaths.
They fail to differentiate clearly whether coronavirus is killed on * surfaces * by sunlight (very likely) and whether an * infected human * exposed to sunlight is miraculously cured (very unlikely).
.
For the most part the science community says everything is untrue unless methodically proven to be true, and don’t communicate the gray areas very well to the public. Thus you get statements from the media that said the WHO said “human to human transmission” wasn’t happening. It just wasn’t definitively proven yet.
My guess is the death rate will be lower on the second breakout than the first. The age group of the infected is looking much lower this time around, unclear if that is just an artifact of testing. If you are old, you need to isolate yourself because I don’t see us going into full lock down again. I’d expect the FL death rate to at least double in the next few weeks. That’s still not super-high numbers, but requires intervention with an exponential transmission.
It seems that many states have been ramping up contact tracing, but details are hard to find. Contact tracing will result in potentially exposed people getting tested, even if they have no or minimal symptoms. That would move the number of new daily cases in the direction of actual new infections; that would be a much higher number than the number of cases severe enough for the patient to seek to be tested. Might that be the cause of the recent surge in cases?
Tom Scharf,
“….but requires intervention with an exponential transmission.”
.
Why? If the death rate increases to 50 per day, and the confirmed case rate is 15,000 per day, that means 0.33 % fatality rate among the confirmed cases…. and probably 200,000 new cases per day that don’t need treatment. At 200,000 infections per day, growing herd immunity would stop the spread, probably within 60 days. That said, if the fatality rate reaches 60 per day and is rising, DeSantis will probably institute a new stay-at-home order.
Mike M,
“We can not cure the common cold.”
.
That was the conventional wisdom, but like most wisdom, it has been replaced in the last few months by new insightful (AKA idiotic) government policies.
.
So, inspired by the success of some relatively low population countries in controlling the coronavirus spread, I suggest that we all just self-quarantine for 3 months, with nobody allowed to leave their home… not even for food, drugs, medical care, or to provide essential services like power and water, and with all violators shot on sight by roving drones. The (very) few survivors would emerge into a nearly empty Western world without any communicable diseases. Of course, some countries might stubbornly resist, and so inherit the world; but we should trust them to honor the suicide pact anyway.
.
I think it is a great idea, and perfectly aligned with covid policies. 😉
SteveF,
That reminds me of a plot point in the first show (I think) of the Dilbert animated TV series. Dilbert’s company produced an “all natural” throat lozenge containing gastrointestinal anthrax bacilli. No more sore throat. Marketing couldn’t understand why the product was a failure.
Also: Have you noticed how the media wants you to think that the lowering of the average age of those developing COVID-19 is a bad thing.
The number of active cases in Mexico is about to increase dramatically. Apparently they were counting outpatients as recovered. I thought the numbers looked odd.
“If voters were fully aware of the cost per QALY saved of current policies in the USA , I believe voters would reject current policies as wasteful. “
I think that is wishful thinking. If you get into a situation where hospitals are overrun, medical staff are dying, and granny is told to die at home, then governments lose the social license for doing nothing . Ask the UK. And that was despite some quite open comment about the economic value of killing off the elderly (reduced pensions, early inheritance). I notice Swedes approval for policy plummeting as the death toll rises too despite not suffering overrun hospitals.
Because of the Pharmac system in NZ, relative health cost/benefits accounting is frequently in public debate. However, after 4 weeks of rigid lockdown, open acknowledgement of costs of nearly US$1000 per person for putting economy in freezer and signally eventual costs over several years of maybe US$5000 per person, the government was sitting at 87% approval rating for its action. You could build a few brand new large hospitals for the cost and the public know it, but preferred that to seeing a situation like Italy or UK. Maybe your countrymen would make different decisions with those costs but I wouldnt bet on it.
Phil Scadden,
There is not going to be a situation in the USA where hospitals are overrun. That didn’t even happen In New York City, despite the dumbest (and most deadly) public policies…. remember that the local government was urging people to go to restaurants and ride subways and busses, even as the pandemic spread; then they sent granny back to her nursing home, even when they knew she was infected. Destructive policies in NY probably tripled the total number of deaths among the elderly. Focusing on hospitals being overrun is a scare tactic, nothing more.
The cost in the USA until now far exceeds 4 trillion, US$12,500 per person, and that doesn’t include all the State and local expenditures, nor the loss of thousands of small and medium size businesses. I note the Swedes continue to have a 20% lower death rate than the UK, but at vastly lower economic cost. Are you convinced more deaths at higher cost is the better option?
Both Phil and SteveF are correct. Steve is right that the hospitals being overrun was, in retrospect, unlikely absent a mandated lockdown virtually everywhere in the country. We have more permanent and emergency hospital capacity than places where that happened, and nationwide the bigger problem has been hospital under-utilization. Avoidable covid deaths here were concentrated in poor nursing home policies, something that could and should have been avoided independent of lockdowns.
.
But I think Phil is correct that even if the people were fully aware of QALY issues, approval rating would decline and voter pressure would be overwhelming in favor of restrictions. I hate to say it, but despite the media being untrusted and less watched, a steady drumbeat of tilted coverage across all platforms can and will affect public opinion. In totalitarian states even when the state media is distrusted, it still influences public opinion. And here in America Trump is well behind in the polls a man who has both embraced socialism and is actually senile. Cuomo gaining popularity and DeSantis losing it came despite New York faring much, much worse with a less vulnerable population, showing that the perception of doing something strong is much more important than actual results. I wish it were not so.
.
I do think if you gave individuals without strong risk factors a choice between losing their job and avoiding covid, or contracting covid and keeping their job, the majority would opt for covid. I certainly would.
Phil Scadden (Comment #186956): “the government was sitting at 87% approval rating for its action.”
.
Of course they are. NZ had had something like 5 deaths per million people. People are going to be happy with their government even if government action had no effect other than to run up a massive bill.
.
There are big factors at play other than government action or the population’s attitude toward collectivism. The U.S. has had something like350 deaths per million. Montana and Alaska are at about 20 and Hawaii is at 12 per million. Those states might be doing as well as New Zealand, depending on how deaths are counted.
I think the US went into this facing a bigger challenge than New Zealand. We have to LONG borders with lots of traffic. It includes foot traffic, motorized vehicle traffic, boat and air. Some of the traffic is illegal and those people disperse all over the place. (So do those who cross the border legally!)
We may not have tried hard enough to monitor entry and exit, but I suspect we never would have been able to monitor and intercept Covid-carriers. (Now that we learn it seems the ratio of cases to detected cases seems to be 10, I think we certainly would have failed to contain this.)
I’m sure it wasn’t trivially easy for New Zealand, but at least it was possible. New Zealand is surrounded by lots of sea.
The performance of island nations is interesting overall–NZ, Taiwan, HK, Singapore…
More information on age and mortality for the Wuhan virus. Specifically, your chances of dying *if* you are hospitalized:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbcHAPiXsAEn2vM.jpg
Of those 25-34 who are hospitalized, just 2.3% die. Data from Florida.
The entire post is worth a read:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276490546471677952.html
New York had subways open, with no distancing or masks. Perhaps herd immunity is there already.
CDC is currently reporting 2500 new deaths. The number had been under 1000 for weeks.
The 2500 deaths on Thursday is one day, completely out of line with previous days. Yesterday was back to what it has been (~600). It is almost certainly some sort of a reporting glitch, like the -74K new tests reported on May 27 for Georgia.
MikeN,
The 2,500 new deaths reported Thursday include 1,854 deaths in New Jersey that have now been attributed to COVID-19. The deaths occurred over several months. From worldometers.info for June 25:
So for June 25, worldometers.info reports 653 new deaths, not 2,507.
The Woke want reparations for past slavery in the US. They don’t, however, seem to be all that interested in actual slavery, often referred to as human trafficking, in the world today, including in the UK.
From an anonymous letter written by someone who claims to be a UC Berkeley professor:
So people who didn’t even descend from slave owners are supposed to pay ‘reparations’ to people who weren’t slaves and probably can’t prove they were descended from slaves? Meanwhile, we aren’t doing much to combat actual slavery. Sounds like a bad idea to me.
By the way, what’s Washington and Lee University supposed to do? One suggestion from a student there was to call it And University with the & as the logo.
Thanks DeWitt,
That large number of deaths for June 25 is in the github data.
Hmm, the last article I read lamenting the plight of Cobalt miners showed men, women, and children doing dangerous work for low pay voluntarily *because the alternatives were worse*. Are they really *literal* slaves?
.
I suspect the proportion of people in “debt bondage” and “forced marriage” is declining over time, and has shown dramatic declines historically in free-market countries.
As far as reparations go, none of my ancestors were slaveowners in America, but I have Scottish ancestors who were legally tied to the mines, at least one ancestor in Virginia who came as an indentured servant, and multiple ancestors driven out of Illinois by mob violence. I also have ancestors who were killed by natives in New Hampshire during King Philips War and an ancestor who was executed as a witch in Connecticut. None of those things happened to me, and none of the people who did it to my ancestors are alive today; I deserve nothing, and no one owes me for what their ancestors did to my ancestors.
.
We’ve seen a number of voice actors resign their roles since they were white and voicing black or mixed-race characters. Logically, if only black actors “should” voice black animated characters, then only white actors “should” voice white animated characters — this is a toxic philosophy. If animated shows feel black voice actors are under-represented (I don’t know if they are or not), maybe they should recruit more black actors to voice characters of any color, as animation allows you to do.
Re: Reparations.
Here is my response to those seeking reparations for slavery.
……
These plans typically leave out a subrogation claim against African nations who are half-responsible for slavery.
Any debt owed by the US to blacks should be reduced by welfare payments (disproportionately received by black people) and also by the disproportionate damage inflicted by black criminals on society as a whole. (For instance, blacks are 13% of population but commit half of murders). Also, America should have a claim against the substantial number of black fathers who have abandoned or very poorly cared for their children.
After these tasks are carried out, then we can decide who owes what debt to whom in the US. Not particularly an exercise I would like to go through, but the crazies on the Left need to be hit in the face with a very strong dose of cold water. Would add that on both sides my grandparents were immigrants coming from Italy and England after 1900.
SteveF – your underlying assumption seems to be that if US took a Sweden approach, then you would “only” get a toll as bad as Sweden (somewhat higher on per capita stakes than US) but a better economy? In my opinion, that is unlikely. Population densities in major urban centers for one, but culture for another. Swedes trusted their government and according to Google mobility data, massively changed behaviour without a lockdown. By comparison, it seems significant sections of US community regard their own government like an occupying power to be opposed. Would US have done as well? Maybe?? Estimating what the toll would be without lockdown is an extremely difficult problem. Or maybe you are suggesting that it doesnt matter what the toll is so long at it is mostly composed of elderly (low QALY values)?
Mike M. I think the stats for deaths in NZ are reasonably reliable since HD was attributing to covid19 when there was reasonable cause to believe it was a major factor, even without a positive test (or any test). It didnt matter where you died. More likely to have overcounted than under-counted. By contrast, the criteria to be counted in US is tougher.
The point about approval was that people were happy to lockdown despite the cost, even if cost could be argued to be unjustified on QALY grounds. When poll was taken, it was obvious that measures were working but people were still dying. (Approval for lockdown at point when it started was over 90% and I dont think we had our first death).
Being an island makes shutting the borders massively easier. Absolutely no doubt that NZ was in a very privileged position. I am with the people in January that argued that world should have collectively shut their borders to travellers. Sure, it hurts airline and tourist industries but good chance to have contained and eliminated virus which would have worked out faster and cheaper for everyone.
Mike N,
“ New York had subways open, with no distancing or masks. Perhaps herd immunity is there already.â€
.
Almost certainly there is a strong herd immunity effect in places were there were many cases. In mid-April some 22% of serology tests in the city were positive, with 4% positive upstate, 14% overall in the state. That was a long time ago, and for sure the number of positives is now much higher. Add to those people ~35% more who are resistant from an earlier infection with a different coronavirus, and substantial herd immunity is nearly certain. If you look at the fatality curve for NY, it appears the rate of transmission had dropped below 1 by mid April. The rate of deaths for NY has dropped about 95% from it’s peak, with a nearly flat ‘tail’, most likely from regions where herd immunity has never been reached.
.
For me the crazy thing is the almost complete lack of random serology testing. The number of people who have had the virus and recovered is critically important to understand the illness and the risk demographics. Yet nobody appears interested.
SteveF,
JIm had his physical. They were drawing blood anyway, so his doctor suggested adding the serology. He’s gotten results for all the other things, but not that.
The CDC has finally reported a serology study from random blood samples collected for reasons other than covid illness. These were mostly very early in the pandemic, and were limited to a handful of regions. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/commercial-lab-surveys.html?referringSource=articleShare#nycmetro
The NYC region samples were collected March 24 to April 1. But since seropositives had the illness 7-10 days before developing antibodies, that means the seropositives had the illness in the time frame somewhere near March 15 to March 24. The number of confirmed cases in the region on March 24 was about 25,000, and the fraction of seropositives in the city region was 6.93%. Today, the total confirmed cases in the region is (about) 250,000…. so, a rough guess is that the NYC region has somewhere near 70% of people who already had the virus. Of course, that is only a very rough guess, because the rate of testing has likely increased over time, but it is clear the rate of infection in the NYC region was extremely high, and there are few people left for the virus to infect.
Lucia,
Maybe Jim is seropositive and there are rules about reporting positives; wouldn’t want anyone to think they are unlikely to be infected again.
Phil Scadden (Comment #186993): “your underlying assumption seems to be that if US took a Sweden approach, then you would “only†get a toll as bad as Sweden (somewhat higher on per capita stakes than US) but a better economy?”
.
I can’t speak for Steve, but I’d say it *might* have been a littler worse than it was in the short term, but no worse in the long term.
.
Phil Scadden: “Swedes trusted their government and according to Google mobility data, massively changed behaviour without a lockdown.”
.
Really? Well, that is easy to check. For the Google data on “Residential”, Sweden reached a maximum of 10-12% compared to 30% for the USA. For “Workplace”, Sweden got to -35%, the USA was at -50%. For “Retail and Recreation”, Sweden was -25% compared to -45% for the USA. The USA reached the Swedish levels before lockdowns were imposed.
Trying to read the Swedish data is a bit hard because of some odd spikes in the data.
.
Phil Scadden: “By comparison, it seems significant sections of US community regard their own government like an occupying power to be opposed.”
.
That is nonsense. Americans willingly complied with restrictions until they got ridiculous.
Phil Scadden (Comment #186993): “I think the stats for deaths in NZ are reasonably reliable since HD was attributing to covid19 when there was reasonable cause to believe it was a major factor, even without a positive test (or any test).”
.
OK. That sounds the same as the US.
.
Phil Scadden: “By contrast, the criteria to be counted in US is tougher.”
.
In what way?
Re herd immunity: It looks like the states with the highest total number of cases relative to population also tend to be the ones with the biggest declines in new positive tests. Those states are NY, NJ, CT, MA, RI, DC; all in the NE. But I have not gotten around to looking at that systematically.
MikeM,
The NY lockdown was little different than the Florida lockdown. The difference was the huge number of people who caught the virus prior to the lockdowns in NY. While Florida has rising cases (mainly among younger people) that is exactly because the number of infected in Florida, California and several other states has always been way lower than the States in the northeast; the lockdowns in Florida and several other states just delayed/slowed the spread of the virus. The idea that lockdowns could continue for a year (or more!) while awaiting a vaccine was always wrongheaded. Still is.
.
Herd immunity is clearly dominant in the northeast. The only question for me is how much lower the deaths among the elderly (and overall) will be in Florida due to more sensible policies. My SWAG is about 1/3 of the NY rate. In any case, I believe herd immunity is going to happen in most places long before a vaccine becomes available. Endless lockdowns are unsustainable.
SteveF,
Jim and I both think it’s highly unlikely we’ve had Covid. Neither one of us has has any symptoms of anything at all. OTOH: It seems possibly some people don’t get any noticeable symptoms. We’ll find out when we find out. I’m sure they will report something back. 🙂
We both think it’s great his doctor is encouraging everyone who has blood drawn to get the test. But yeah… if he comes out positive we won’t assume he’s now immune. (Though, I’ve got to say, that seems to be the most common outcome antibodies with most diseases. )
Everybody wishes they already got Covid and didn’t know it, ha ha. That would lower the stress level.
America was founded on the principle that government could not be trusted. The constitution is designed to have separate branches be a check on each other’s power, and to avoid the pitfalls of tyranny by the majority. The amendments make clear the limits on governmental power, and the founders’ philosophy is that rights are god-given and held by the people, not granted by the state. There has been from the beginning of lockdowns a sentiment among the section of the population that the governmental intrusion violated multiple constitutional rights.
.
With that said, from what I can see the vast, vast majority of citizens abided by the local rules, even when they thought the rules were stupid (this isn’t just a cost vs benefit thing, it’s also about pointless overreach, like cracking down on worship services with all parishioners *in their cars*, or taping off non-food items at Walmart lest shoppers buy something “non-essential”).
.
I expect re-imposed or new rules will be widely adhered to, though there is considerably less trust now than when this all started. This is not caused by pre-existing skepticism of government authority and power, but a variety of factors:
.
1) We were told at the beginning of lockdown that the goal was to “flatten the curve” so the hospitals would not be overwhelmed. This was not sold as a strategy that could *end* the pandemic, nor was it a strategy that *could* end the pandemic, given the practical inability to confine all citizens inside their homes for weeks and completely secure the borders. We were not told it would reduce the area under the curve. We did as asked, we accomplished the flattening at a heavy economic cost, and then the goalposts shifted.
.
2) We were initially told that surgical/cloth masks for general population would not be beneficial. Now we are told that everybody should wear them if possible. It’s hard not to conclude that we were being lied to, and being lied to erodes trust in authority.
.
3) The protest/riots were accompanied by a notable *absence* of hand-wringing about coronavirus spread; the prevailing media sentiment being that protesting “institutional racism” is so important that the increased health costs from the pandemic are worth it. Since the protests will neither end nor significantly affect “institutional racism”, and since the number of wrongful deaths attributed to police malfeasance is vastly smaller that caused by the pandemic, if the protests are “worth it” from a public health point of view the only logical conclusion is that things like gathering in large groups, in close proximity, with or without masks, have a *negligible* effect on public health at this point in the pandemic’s progression.
.
Now it may be that the effect is non-negligible, and the protest fallout in Covid deaths will be substantially higher than those killed directly by the rioting. It may be that public health figures were biting their tongues because they didn’t want to go against a particular narrative or be accused of being racist themselves. But like lying about masks, if your messaging is inconsistent you *will* lose trust. If the powers-that-be had strongly come down against the protesting on health reasons, as so many did against the much smaller lockdown protests, the damage could have been confined to the protests themselves, involving a small fraction of the population. Justifying the behavior sent a strong message to everyone who wasn’t protesting that the pandemic is, practically speaking, over and we can do what we want. It will be very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.
Today’s gold medal winner in the irony Olympics:
.
“Several Minneapolis City Council members who have received death threats following their calls to defund the police after the death of George Floyd have been assigned private security details — reportedly costing the city $4,500 a day in taxpayer dollars.
According to information obtained by Fox News, the city has spent $63,000 on private security over the last three weeks.
One council member told Fox 9: “I don’t feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats.â€
.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-city-council-members-private-security-detail-death-threats
.
Clearly they should have instead hired social workers to deescalate the situation and make it magically go away.
“Security for me, but not for thee” and the great thing about private security is it isn’t beholden to any requirement to uphold the law, follow police rules, or proceedure.
So the obvious solution is to defund the police and hire private security for everyone. I also note that defunding the police removes a major point for the case that citizens don’t need guns.
Good graphs of swedish mobility data here: https://www.macrobond.com/posts/new-mobility-data-google-citymapper-how-different-is-sweden-covid19/
What I see is that Sweden far more mobile as you would expect than places with lockdowns, BUT with very marked behaviour change compared to pre-covid levels.
“By contrast, the criteria to be counted in US is tougher.â€
My understanding is that US requires positive Covid test. I was also under impression that there was controversy of people that died in their own homes in some States.
“Americans willingly complied with restrictions until they got ridiculous.”
Ridiculous like bans on large gathers, particularly indoors, like sports, bars, churches and rallies? Ok, I am remote. My impressions are formed from very unreliable selections by media.
Dale S,
If the alternative is starvation and death, then I would say yes.
The song ‘Sixteen Tons’ describes that sort of exploitation:
That would probably qualify as human trafficking today. But literal chattel slavery still exists today.
See here, for examples of human trafficking.
I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I don’t agree that when the alternative is starvation and death then when somebody voluntarily accepts a crappy job it is slavery. Provided it is not the employers doing that the alternative is starvation and death, anyways.
Tom Scarf,
“Everybody wishes they already got Covid and didn’t know it, ha ha.â€
.
Which sounds a bit like a corollary to ‘everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die’.
.
The best available data is that more than 90% of all people who contract the virus are either completely asymptomatic, or have symptoms so mild that they seek neither medical attention nor a covid test. It is the endless scare-mongering by the MSM which so frightens people, not the reality of the virus infection.
DeWitt, Mark,
I agree that if the employer makes the alternative to employment be starvation and death, that would qualify as literal slavery. But if the employers did *not* create those conditions, merely gives an option that is voluntarily accepted because it’s better than other available jobs or subsistence farming, I don’t consider that any sort of slavery. We don’t do third-world countries any favors by closing down “sweatshops” when the sweatshops pay better wages than the alternatives.
.
In the case of artisinal Cobalt miners, they aren’t really employees at all, but freelancers digging stuff up by hand to sell. AFAIK there’s no “company store” creating a cycle of debt, the miners just find subsistence mining more lucrative than subsistence farming.
.
Human trafficking is real, but I would argue there’s a distinction between that and literal chattel slavery, where the slaves are legally owned and legally bought and sold. Involuntary workers in this country are held illegally, and I’m not aware of anywhere were chattel slavery is still legal. I’m also not sure if company store shenanigans would count as slavery as long as the workers retained freedom of movement. My wife’s coal-mining ancestors in Kentucky (inspiration for “sixteen tons”, though in a different county) left for coal fields elsewhere and eventually migrated to Chicago for factory work. My coal-mining ancestors in Scotland were legally bound to the collier by force of law.
Phillip
The restrictions varied from state to state. The governor of Michigan banned people going out in power boats (even with only 1 person in the boat.) She banned lawn mowing services. Some governors banned outdoor church services even if people stayed in cars. Obviously, there were also less stringent rules– like banning indoor church services and so on.
.
Some of these things were challenged in court. Some got thrown out; others were upheld. Some governors dropped some of the rules as soon as they were challenged because they sort of realized they would lose.
.
Our governor in Illinois allowed people to do all of these things.
.
NY Gov Cuome and Mayor De Blasio got some of their recent rules thrown out becuase (a) they burdened religion more than other activities (which is a 1A problem and (b) They made speeches in which it’s pretty clear some of their exceptions for protests were dictated by approving of the political leanings of one type of activity. Mayors aren’t allowed to decide one type of 1st amendment protected activity is “important enough” to protect and burden another. ( Speech, assembly and religion are all first amendment activities.)
Dale,
I think we agree on the slavery issue. Slavery is (in my view) a pretty specific thing. It’s not “I’ll probably starve if I choose to walk away”, it’s “I’ll be killed or imprisoned if I try to escape”.
Lucia – all of those things were effectively banned (not on list of allowed activities at least) in level 4, many because involved travel or possibility of needing emergency services (out in boat). Maybe over top, but sure brought transmission down. I dont see them as “ridiculous”.
Church services puzzle me. I expect churches to see mission in looking after their own community and in the wider community. Here they went to Zoom, sometimes even before lockdown, and were often heavily involved in the neighbourhood support groups that sprang up all over the place in lockdown. Insisting that having to meet in person seems kind of odd (and surely endangering your flock). The Eyam plague village sets a good historical parallel for church response to pandemics.
Funerals/Tangihanga were another story. This was real hardship – but a necessary one. There were a few breaches at grave side. Lots of “catch up” memorial services being held now.
Phil,
I don’t know if they were ridiculous or not. That’s an opinion. But as far as I’m aware, those are the most stringent types of rules in the US. I haven’t heard of any state where people were literally locked up in their houses. It was sometimes funny to read which stores different governors thought “essential”. (BTW: Liquor stores are essential in most — perhaps all– states.)
One of the weird things about the governor in Michigan is she banned going out in a motor boat but allowed going out in a row boat. The other thing that was sort of funny (later on) was that when they finally allowed people to use their boats, the governor’s husband tried to get his boat moved into the water early!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/26/gretchen-whitmer-husband-marc-mallory-boat-lockdown
Some churches went to Zoom. My mom is Roman Catholic, they all did church online. I helped mom figure out how. But other groups… not so much. It’s always hard to explain religion. But I guess in some religions, they really feel they need to get together in person. Some conservative Jewish groups definitely need in person for things like funerals.
As far as our first amendment goes: The government doesn’t get to decide some religious beliefs don’t get protection because they are “odd” or “unusual”. The government also can’t decide what a religion “should” think. So while lots of people would certainly agree with you that it would be prudent for religions to find ways to meet without gathering together, those religious members might have some other logic they adhere to. (Hey. I’m an atheist. Don’t expect me to explain further than that!)
The thing is, in the US the government can’t write rules that only restrict religions doing things while not restricting others. So some rules were tossed out in New York because they restricted religions in ways that did not restrict small businesses and did not restrict the protestors. The rules likely would have held up if NY were also imposing them on small businesses like theaters, restaurants and on protestors. But they didn’t. . .
One quote from the ruling
You can read more here: https://reason.com/2020/06/26/n-y-officials-endorsement-of-anti-racism-protests-leads-to-successful-religious-freedom-challenge-to-gathering-ban/
I should add: One of the reasons the ban on religious services in parking lots was tossed was that people shopping were allowed to drive to stores, to take out restaurants and to wait in parking lots outside stores.
So basically, you could do “X” unless you were participating in a religious observance. If “X” had been banned utterly, then banning it for religious observance would generally pass legal muster. (Some people might not like it– but religion isn’t a magic get out of jail free card. )
Ok. I guess if you devise a religion that says that your practise is meet in person and you must do it every week no matter what hell is going on around you, then so be it, it is protected by your constitution. I somehow suspect that intent of law was more along lines preventing a government from banning particular religious observances outright, as had been experience of dissenters of various European religions, rather than temporary ban on meeting in confined groups.
Level 4 didnt ban so much as proscribe – unless essential worker, then you could only drive to supermarket, pharmacy or Dr (the obvious essential things).
Phil,
If those governors had banned driving in cars to your destinations and waiting in parking lots for all purposes, the law could have held up. But they allowed people to drive to grocery stores, drive the restaurant drive up windows, drive to the hardware store and wait in their cars or queue and so on. Meanwhile, people could not drive to religious services and sit in their cars.
Sitting in your car at the hardware store has pretty much exactly the same potential for spreading covid as sitting in your car at a religious service. The governors have wide latitude but they can’t make the regulations for religion more burdensome than they are for non-religious activities. They would need to either ban both sitting in your car outside the hardware store and during a religious ceremonyor neither.
Allowing more than 10 people in a theater but banning more than 10 in religious ceremonies isn’t permitted. Once again: both or neither. (Or, you have to make a damn good argument that with respect to the virus spreading, the two things have different potential effects. )
Making regulations that only apply when the event or activity is related to religion is a method of banning religious observances.
The example lucia gave were the most extreme and were not very common; but they served to undermine support for restrictions even where they did not apply.
Many places closed parks, beaches, etc. and only permitted people to leave their homes for certain very limited purposes. Not quite house arrest, but close. In some places, people got arrested for being on the beach or in a park alone.
By far the most insane restriction was prohibiting people from getting necessary medical care.
A big problem was that the restrictions were initially for a limited time, for the purpose of flattening the curve. Once that was done, they should have been lifted, even if only very gradually. Instead, they were extended and intensified. That was unreasonable. The authorities only started to let up when the people were starting to refuse to comply.
There were many examples of the elites ignoring the restrictions while piously lecturing the masses on how essential they were.
Thought experiment. Imagine a list of activities that should be avoided to prevent transmission. Consider two approaches toward discouraging such activities:
(1) A strict ban on those activities.
(2) Encourage people to avoid such activities. But allow them to participate a specific activity if it is really important to them as long as they reduce overall participation in such activities by at least 90%.
Approach (2) would achieve 99% of the benefit of (1), but with far less damage. Yes, 99%; the effect is quadratic.
MikeM,
The problem is that (2) is somewhere between difficult and impossible to monitor. Lots of people will take advantage and insist whatever they are doing is their 10% of allowed activity.
Lots of places are slowly opening. I still pay more attention to deaths compared to anything else– just as I have all along. Cases are up in Florida and other places. (Texas too… right?) So far, deaths are not significantly up in Florida. So… maybe FL will turn out to be ok. Or maybe not. If they we see no uptick in two weeks, I think the people arguing it’s different from NY cases will turn out to have been right.
Lucia said:
“It was sometimes funny to read which stores different governors thought “essentialâ€. (BTW: Liquor stores are essential in most — perhaps all– states.)”
Pennsylvania closed the state run liquor stores, much to the ever-lasting gratitude of privately run liquor stores in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York. I can expect my taxes to go up because of that revenue bleed to neighboring states, and I doubt that anyone can plausibly link the closure to controlling the spread of COVID-19. (The liquor stores are now open with the same rules in place as for grocery stores.)
Also, PA banned pleasure driving, but you could go for a nice long solitary drive as long as you stopped somewhere along the way and mingled with people in a grocery store.
IMO, the real problem in PA was that the governor and his staff decided they were going to define “life-sustaining activities.” Rather than having its health professionals focus on safe and unsafe environments, the State got tied up in its shorts deciding what was “life-sustaining.” So we had garden centers at Lowe’s and Home Depot staying open, but the garden center at Walmart was closed. I still can’t figure out why, but suspect corporations just winged it since they didn’t know what the Hell the rules were.
lucia (Comment #187073): “The problem is that (2) is somewhere between difficult and impossible to monitor. Lots of people will take advantage”
.
I suppose that depends on what you means by “lots”. Compliance with lockdowns was very high before lockdowns started. And compliance was by no means perfect during the lockdowns.
So maybe (2) would give “only” 95% of the benefit of (1). At a fraction of the cost to health and well being.
The evidence is that the indiscriminate lockdowns accomplished little or nothing beneficial; at least not in proportion to the costs. I have seen no evidence that behavior changes have had any impact. But I suspect that a subset of those changes have had an impact. The most obvious candidates are things like not going out if sick and shutting down bars and nightclubs.
——-
I strongly object to the idea that the citizenry must be treated like four year olds. Such an attitude is totally incompatible with democracy.
John M (Comment #187074): “IMO, the real problem in PA was that the governor and his staff decided they were going to define “life-sustaining activities.†Rather than having its health professionals focus on safe and unsafe environments,”
,
Indeed. That was the general approach taken most places, though not always as obvious as in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
It speaks volumes about the governors. Specifically, it tells us that their concern was with control rather than public safety.
MikeM,
“I strongly object to the idea that the citizenry must be treated like four year olds. Such an attitude is totally incompatible with democracy.”
.
Which is a sure-fire way to tell the difference between a ‘progressive’ and everyone else. Progressives refuse to hold people responsible for their personal choices, and simultaneously insist everyone do as they say. For progressives, democracy seems a quaint throw-back to the days of slavery in the South.
.
“it tells us that their concern was with control rather than public safety.” Progressives want only control; absolute control.
RE: PA’s alcohol ban
Ohio mandated sales only to OH residents along the PA border due to their ban and the increase in cross border traffic in our stores.
MikeM
Lots is more than than 30%. In the case of your guidance it might be pretty much everyone would break it. As in: “Lots of people break the speed limit”.
Uhhmm…. The first sentences doesn’t make any sense. Of course no one breaks any rules when there are no rules is it is impossible to break a “non-rule”. This fact means nothing other than that people don’t break rules when it is literally impossible to do so.
The second merely supports my observation. People will break rules that exist.
So that’s hardly a rebuttal to my observation that the specific guidance you suggest would not be followed by many people.
Or maybe it would “only” get 5% of the benefit resulting in costly deaths due to the virus.
I don’t know where you think your evidence is from. New Zealand has done pretty well.
I also don’t like citizens being treated like 4 year olds. But I think it’s silly to deny reality. Where countries have actually locked down early, cases and deaths plummeted. Where they locked down late, it took a while for cases to drop (which is what is expected.) At cases that did not “lock down” (which is pretty much the entire US, “stay at homes” slowed cases and deaths noticably, but they cases are either essentially level or mostly slowly declining.
The US is a complex example because breakouts are happening state by state. This is similar to large regions like the EU/ Latin America/ Asia where break outs are popping up and dying down.
MikeM,
I think Pritzker has been hunting the fine line between rules that have some hope of enough compliance to keep circulation to a minimum. At the end of May, I could read stories on Facebook of small retailers debating whether stocking a few shelves of soap and sanitizer so they would qualify for ‘essential’ the way Walmart, Target, etc. were. Or maybe they could stock a few token hammers and nails to get the “building materials” exemption.
Of course the sanitizer might run out, but… so what? A rule is a rule.
Then we entered phase 3 and the retailers got to open with limited capacity, but it made a huge difference for the retailers. The fact is: with cases and deaths dropping– and never being high in many counties– mayors, county sherriffs and so on were openly saying they were not going to help the Governor enforce. Without help from Mayors, Sheffiffs, police and so on, Governor just doesn’t have sufficient capacity to enforce super stringent rules.
The government clearly crossed the line when they overtly * endorsed * the protests. They didn’t have to do that, it was crass political calculation. They still have the option today to state “we will treat religious gatherings exactly the same as we will treat protests going forward”. Instead they pick winners and losers based on political advantage. It makes one cynical.
.
I gave up Catholicism decades ago, but my Dad still practices and they are doing everything via Zoom. The media showcased its usual honesty and integrity by selectively choosing the most wacko religious groups and painting all religion with this brush. The bans should never state “religious gatherings” in any way.
.
The state has now lost all its moral and legal authority for public health pronouncements with its selective enforcement rigor for different groups. Compliance will need to be voluntary (as it probably should have been all along) as they are going to lose in court every time until they state they will start throwing protesters in jail. I think they will just proceed with threats of enforcement with rare actual enforcement.
Andrew P:
.
“Ohio mandated sales only to OH residents along the PA border due to their ban and the increase in cross border traffic in our stores.”
.
Yeah, I had heard that, but I think it was almost a full month before they did. I guess WV did it earlier. But I wonder how many PA residents just drove the extra 30 miles or so to get to a non-border county.
.
In any event, Delaware and NJ were perfectly happy to welcome PA customers in SE PA. In fact, they were running advertisements to attract them.
FYI: The CDC has revised their Covid underlying medical conditions list:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
.
Chronic kidney disease
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant
Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30 or higher)
Serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies
Sickle cell disease
Type 2 diabetes mellitus
.
Of note is that high blood pressure and smoking have been demoted to “might be at an increased risk”.
Why, why, why, are there no viable 3rd party candidates?
.
Trump vs Clinton
Trump vs Biden
.
What a disaster the 2 party system has become.
Tom Shcarf…. Yes. Such bad candidates.
Here in Georgia my congregation stopped meeting back in early March and still has not resumed, and judging by church marquees I would estimate about 50% of the churches are still not having in-person worship meetings despite the state allowing it starting two months ago. I expect we will resume shortly in smaller groups so we can distance physically, while the at-risk members will continue at home.
.
But it’s not at all unusual to have religious ordinances that require an element of physicality. The #1 reason we have weekly meetings is to participate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We have a lay ministry and so have been able to do that weekly in our homes, but that’s not true for all sects. Zoom meetings are also a poor substitute for the fellowship that occurs at a meetings, and it requires internet access and a tiny amount of technical knowledge that not all church members will have. Make no mistake, going without physical services is a real loss to many church members. I know several retirees whose chief joy in life was church service, and the measures against the pandemic have reduced that to practically nothing — they may not have the financial blow that comes from losing a job, but the psychological blow is similar, I think.
.
We have a constitutional right both to free exercise of religion and to peaceable assembly in this nation; they are *inherent* rights, not rights granted by the state. There is and was widespread willingness to change or skip religious activities to help battle the pandemic, but there never was any pandemic-related reason to crack down on religious services broadcast on radios to persons sitting *in their cars*.
.
I don’t buy that a crackdown that travelling in cars *in itself* is a disease distribution risk. Cars are rarely in contact with other cars, and are not known to distribute infectious diseases with each other. Operation is a solitary activity, fuelling is typically done without human interaction, and transmission via fuel handle can be handled with sanitizer and/or handwashing.
.
I don’t see the rare breakdown case as being a likely transmission mechanism either, though I’m obvious less worried about it than the professionals. My wife could not start her car after a shift at the hospital, and AAA *could not find* a servicer who was willing to risk going to the hospital to attempt jumping it. During the lockdown, people loved our healthcare workers, but only at a safe distance.
Dale S,
It’s also clear the governors didn’t think traveling in cars in itself increased the disease distribution risk. If they had thought so, they would have banned traveling in cars. They didn’t. In the case of the state that banned religious observance in parking lot:
1) driving to the parking lot where services were held was not banned.
2) driving home from the parking lot where services were held was not banned.
3) sitting in your car in the walmart (or grocery store & etc.) parking lot was not banned.
So basically, the “ban” only applied when religious service were broadcast in the parking lot. That sort of inconsistency makes people perceive the rules as arbitrary.
Shootings up 42% in NYC so far this year
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rise-in-shootings-continues-in-nyc-amid-unrest/
.
De Blasio announces proposal to cut NYPD budget by $1B
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/nyc-mayor-nypd-budget-cuts-1b
.
If (other) communities don’t want police, fine by me. I very much doubt that is what communities want. Let them vote on it in a referendum, not mob politics and political theater.
Tom Scharf,
Buy Smith & Wesson (SWBI).
DeWitt,
There are lots of options if you want to buy stock…. or a gun, including Smith & Wesson. https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/most-popular-guns-in-america/10/
.
Tom Scharf,
I think De Blazio is actually insane. He is term limited, so he is acting now only on what he really wants, like Obama with the ‘Dreamers’.
I thought Bloomberg eliminated the term limits so he could repeat.
MikeN,
No, it’s two four year terms, then he has to leave office. He could, in theory, wait 4 years then run again, but a major asteroid strike in the city seems more likely than his election to a third term. He has been frighteningly damaging to the city. Really, he’s a crazy communist, and even NYC residents are unlikely to re-elect him when all the damage he has done becomes more apparent over the next few years.
MikeN (Comment #187102): “I thought Bloomberg eliminated the term limits so he could repeat.”
.
No, he got the city council to make an exception, just for him. De Blasio, like Guilliani, is limited to two terms.
Mike M
” I have seen no evidence that behavior changes have had any impact. ”
Then you sure havent looked very hard. Again, what evidence would you find convincing?
“I strongly object to the idea that the citizenry must be treated like four year olds”
The problematic bit is that some citizens must indeed be treated like that. Do you think that there are no people who, knowning that they have Covid19 would still refuse masks and isolation? Less clear cut is people who are not feeling flash but have paid a lot of money for air ticket etc to attend a wedding or similar (eg the mother of the bride?) so avoid testing or confession of illness, perhaps even to themselves. Nothing wrecks something that depends on social cooperation like a few defectors. It seems much of our social mores and legal system is about punishing defectors in setups that model rather like iterated prisoner dilemma.
During lockdown, police said that much of people checked while driving were “their usual customers” – lockdown made criminal activity suddenly visible.
The tough problem is how do the manage the anti-social without undue burden on larger society. This is a constant balancing game across all aspects of society.
It also seems to me that there are highly conflicting aims in covid19 management and miscommunication about those aims. Elimination, containment and control, and “flattening the curve to get not-too-terrible deaths” are all valid control strategies with very different costs and lockdown rules. Mixing them doesnt work; having part of population trying to one while another part aiming for something different doesnt work either.
It also occurs to me that while US has long borders, incoming cases by plane would exceed drive/walk in by orders of magnitude. If Canada/Mexico also closed air travel, then incoming cases would be managable. Shuttting down air travel early could have been way to play at being island.
Phil S
According to Wikipedia, there are 350 million border crossings a year at the Mexico/US border.
According to a 2019 page by the US DOT, the record for international airtravel into and out of the US is 233.6 Million international air.
Even without counting travel across the Canadian border, or travel arriving on ships, drive/walk travel into/out of the US exceeds air travel into/out of the US. Cutting air travel would come no where close to turning us into an “island” for Covid purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border
https://www.bts.dot.gov/newsroom/2018-traffic-data-us-airlines-and-foreign-airlines-us-flights
Phil Scadden (Comment #187106): “Then you sure havent looked very hard.”
.
I have looked very hard indeed. “Evidence” is only available if you *don’t* look hard. There are plenty of facts that can be cherry picked to support the narrative. For example, some change occurs after a certain action was taken. Those usually fall apart once you look hard at them, typically by not actually agreeing at all with expected timing. Then when you look at other cases they don’t agree at all.
.
If a specific action causes a specific result, then there out to be a fairly consistent connection between action and result. There is no such connection. Isolated cases that agree prove nothing.
A question for Phil Scadden: When is New Zealand going to reconnect to the rest of the world?
Phil Scadden,
“The problematic bit is that some citizens must indeed be treated like that.”
.
No the problematic bit is that folks like you imagine such rubbish is true. No adult should be treated like a 4 year old. Adult people have agency to do what they want. But they also have responsibility for their own actions and should be held legally responsible for any violations of law. Liberty and responsibility go hand in hand. The human temptation is to want liberty only for those who agree with you, and who act in the way you think they ‘should’, not those who disagree with you; it is a temptation which should be resisted.
Mike – so Annan’s modelling of R in UK? Is that evidence? What happened in NZ and Australia? your alternative hypothesis? Like any scientific question, you ask “does the data match what the model (mathematical or otherwise) says?” Model is that lockdown reduce R be reducing opportunities for virus to infect, (assuming that people observe lockdown). Infection rate should reduce within 14 days (though it will continue to rise at first). All viruses shouldbe affected, not just Covid19. Also supported by data.
When will NZ reconnect? No time soon. Returning kiwis with the covid19 keeping quarantine very busy. It will likely open soon to Pacific when they are comfortable that NZ is virus free (and provided they are excluding other travel). Other countries with it under control will probably happen slowly. I suspect we will know by September about likelihood of effective vaccine and reassess then.
SteveF. So someone decided that liberty allows them to pig farm on section they have bought in a residential suburb. Are they allowed that liberty or do you have planning laws that can be used to sanction their irresponsibility respect to rights of neighbours? If someone knowingly attends wedding with covid19 and kills off the elderly attending, then no law is broken so what sanction applies? Clearly I am more comfortable with creating sanctions than you, but I note that those sanctions are usually created in response to someone behaving badly. Society demands a penalty for failure to respect the rights of others.
Phil Scadden (Comment #187106): “The problematic bit is that some citizens must indeed be treated like that.”
.
No. Flattening the curve, which we were told was the objective, does not require 100% compliance. That is only required by 21st century left wing puritanism.
That is puritanism as per Mencken’s definition: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
——
Phil Scadden: “Do you think that there are no people who, knowning that they have Covid19 would still refuse masks and isolation?”
.
Quarantining the ill is completely different from quarantining the healthy. Far more effective and far less burdensome, since it is only for a short time.
——–
Phil Scadden: “Nothing wrecks something that depends on social cooperation like a few defectors.”
.
There is some truth to that, but most people are perfectly happy to act for the common good, especially when there is some actual benefit to them and expectations are reasonable.
Heavy handedness is usually only required when demands are unreasonable or when individual acts of defection cause great harm.
“Always cooperate” is quite a good strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma game. Which is why people are inclined to that, or something close, like tit-for-tat.
MikeM
That’s not the optimum strategy. That’s the optimum on the first round. After that: do what the other guy did.
MikeM,
Quarantining the ill is not necessarily effective. Quarantining the contagious effective. However, it requires you to be able to identify the contagious. It appears people are contagious before symptoms appear. That makes it hard to identify the contagious.
Phil Scadden (Comment #187114): “so Annan’s modelling of R in UK? Is that evidence?”
.
Not even close. He built his conclusion into his model, so any decline over time would give the desired result.
.
Phil Scadden: “What happened in NZ and Australia?”
Individual data points can only disprove, not prove.
Some states (Idaho, Vermont, maybe Hawaii) had similar results to down under. Most didn’t. And what did happen was all over the map.
———
Phil Scadden: “your alternative hypothesis?”
.
My guess is that some behavioral changes had at least some effect. But the more severe impositions did not. I think a factor in the early reduction in R was the virus burning through the highest R sub-populations.
———-
Phil Scadden: “Like any scientific question, you ask does the data match what the model (mathematical or otherwise) says?”
.
Right. And in general it does not.
——-
Phil Scadden: “Infection rate should reduce within 14 days (though it will continue to rise at first).”
.
Which is not, in general, what happened. In the U.S., infection rates started decreasing too soon to be due to the major behavioral changes. Subsequent changes show no connection to policy.
.
Phil Scadden: “All viruses shouldbe affected, not just Covid19. Also supported by data.”
.
In the U.S., influenza deaths went UP under lockdown. Don’t know about elsewhere or other viruses.
well you can open the paper every day to see stories of people who do not choose to cooperate in any no. of scenarios.
The annan model has date built into it where R can vary without smoothness. Easy to test, remove or change the date.
“Which is not, in general, what happened. In the U.S., infection rates started decreasing too soon to be due to the major behavioral changes. Subsequent changes show no connection to policy.” Not seeing that all. Got a pointer to analysis that shows it?
Flu tracker here and australia went dramatically down. CDC data https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm seems to support reduction but then leaving flu season US but going into here.
“I think a factor in the early reduction in R was the virus burning through the highest R sub-populations.” Utterly unsupported by contact tracing data in both Aus and NZ.
Phil S,
Pig farming in a residential neighborhood? That is your idea of adult agency? Most odd.
.
Knowingly attending a wedding while suffering covid illness could be made criminal, and certainly would be subject to civil process. As far as I am aware, nobody is arguing that people known to be carrying a dangerous contagious illness should not be quaranteened. How about attending a wedding not knowing that you had covid? What sanction is then appropriate… drawing and quartering? How about the action of all those at-risk elderly people attending the wedding? Should they not be aware of the risk, and take personal responsibility for choosing to attend despite that risk? None of my questions are rhetorical. Of course, it is a bit of a slippery slope…. if you have a sore throat, it could be the flu, or a different strain if covid, or even a rhino virus…. all of which can (and do) kill the elderly some fraction of the time. Where does he who would direct the behavior of all others draw the line? Should a sore throat lead always to home isolation…. with severe punishment for violators? If there is no defined rule, then it is pure tyranny, which is I believe a reasonable description for most of the governor- mandated covid rules in the States.
.
Yes, it is clear you want to sanction people who disagree with you, but it is nice you at least appreciate that. Wanting to force people to do what you want is standard for those on the left of the political spectrum; in that you are in no way exceptional. I sometimes wonder if people obsessed with controlling other people’s behavior can appreciate how loathsome those they wish to control find them; I suspect not.
Phil Scadden,
“Do you think that there are no people who, knowning that they have Covid19 would still refuse masks and isolation? Less clear cut is people who are not feeling flash but have paid a lot of money for air ticket etc to attend a wedding or similar (eg the mother of the bride?) so avoid testing or confession of illness, perhaps even to themselves. Nothing wrecks something that depends on social cooperation like a few defectors.”
.
To what extent does it require cooperation, though? Here in the Atlanta suburbs, there’s always been plenty of room for me to stay six feet away from other people outside my house even *without* it being important to other people, and other people can’t interfere at all with my hygiene. If *most* people are social distancing, wouldn’t a few defectors only be able to infect each other? That might be bad for them, but I wouldn’t expect it to dramatically affect overall infection rates.
The problem here is that “compliance” with strict rules of personal behavior is impossible to enforce in a country like the US or in fact in most Western countries. That’s a feature and not a bug.
Just for context, we are having a breakdown in law and order in many major American cities. Police seem powerless (or unwillling) to step in on even serious crimes like murder. Mobs are breaking into gated communities and threatening homeowners. Why would police show the slightest interest in enforcing things like mask wearing or self quarantine for sick people. They will not and should not. Phil, I don’t what world of “nice” people you imagine we live in. That world went away with the Victorian era or more accurately never existed.
” That is your idea of adult agency” Funnily enough not. What I am saying is that people do it unless there is that hated regulation. ie you cannot rely on people to use adult agengy responsibly.
Now I agree the with the slippery slope. Where to set boundaries, where not. The case I am thinking of was more a “might be problem but if I test positive, then cant go so wont get tested, and anyway I am feeling not to bad”.
Now I am not advocating a sanction on person attending wedding while sick. I am advocating for limited-time sanctions on large gatherings at times of high risk. I guess that is controlling but does make it lot easier for people balancing risk versus social obligation.
Dale, what if my “defector” get on board a public bus? Can be tricky in supermarkets too.
” how loathsome those they wish to control find them”. Well here I guess those finding regulations burdensome are the 1% who vote for the libertarians. Clearly the vast majority are comfortable regulation though no shortage of debate on where the lines go.
“Phil, I don’t what world of “nice†people you imagine we live in.”
I am litte confused. I believe that SteveF is asking for little regulation and enforcment relying instead on people to exercise responsible adult agency. You are saying that high-end laws are broken (murder, robbery) let alone expecting people to be responsible about not spreading a dangerous virus.
Regulation on mask wearing (not that I am actually advocating it) doesnt need police enforcement. It does give premises license to prohibit unmasked people entering etc.
Phil S,
“I am advocating for limited-time sanctions on large gatherings at times of high risk.“
.
Yes, you obviously want to make sure people can’t make informed personal choices about risk whenever you think you know better, which appears to be most of the time. We all live with risk and have no choice but to accept it. Different people have different tolerances for risk, and that is fine with me. What is not fine is mandated tolerance for personal risk. We ride in cars (and planes, trains, buses) which always puts us at risk of injury or death. We go out in public and to places like theaters, dance halls, and restaurants even though we know that someone we encounter might carry the virus or bacteria that could sicken or kill us (especially if we are older).
.
Life is fatal; a nanny state run by the infantile is not going to make it less fatal. But that nanny state can greatly diminish the quality of life and impoverish us all in the process.
Phil Scadden writes:
‘Dale, what if my “defector†get on board a public bus? Can be tricky in supermarkets too.’
.
As I said, I live in the suburbs. Excepting school buses, there was no such thing as a crowded public bus *before* the pandemic hit, and after it hit public ridership cratered before any government actions were taken. There’s only a small fraction of the public population that rides public busses here, and plenty of room for individuals to space out. It’s not likely at all to be a significant infection vector due to a few intentional defectors — it’s not even likely to be a significant infection vector due to far more common *unintentional* defectors, due to the limited usage by a largely fixed subpopulation.
.
Now inside the city where ridership is higher and there are more people who can’t just drive instead, a defector is a larger potential problem — but that just shows why one-size-fits-all policies are dubious at even the state level, let alone the national level. Still, even in cities there was a dramatic ridership drop even before mandatory lockdowns. You don’t *need* defectors to be exposed to virus-shedding people in crowded mass transit, you assume that’s going to happen and act accordingly. Transit workers in New York initially were told not to wear masks — they ended up with a lower positive rate than general population anyway. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face.
.
Supermarkets aren’t particularly tricky. Even before lockdowns people were still staying away from each other, not passing in aisles, waiting at the end of aisles for others to clear out. And if someone is coughing or sneezing they will get a wiiiidddeee berth, mask or no mask. This virus has not been shown to be so contagious that an infected person will get you if you they happen to momentarily be within 6 feet of you, both time and distance matters. If someone gets closer than I am comfortable with, I can move away.
.
In my area, it appears to me that the mandatory lockdowns had negligible effect on the willingness to practice social distancing in public places. Obviously they had an effect in that the closed businesses no longer had people gathering in them, but the vast majority of small retail stores were never crowded in the first place (outside of the Christmas shopping season), and dine-in restaurants were operating way under capacity due to infection fears anyway. In the weeks prior to the shutdown, the *only* shut-down business I went to that had strangers in proximity closer than six feet for more than seconds was the Shakespeare Tavern (live performance), and even there attendance was down enough that my party was not seated within six feet of strangers.
.
Places that weren’t closed by the shutdown are a different story. Governor Kemp opened the parks (shutdown by the county order briefly before the state opened in), and they were *much* busier than usual, probably due to the large number of bored stay-at-home people wanting to get out of the house. But social distancing on the parks and trails was positively easy, there’s plenty of room, and the chance of infection via defector in the sunlight and open spaces seems ridiculously low. I think it’s more healthy to be outside getting sunlight than be trapped inside and the blanket closing of parks and beaches that happened in some other states was ridiculous counterproductive overreach.
.
The grocery stores that were open I would rate about as busy as usual, possibly slightly busier based on the number of cars in the parking lot. Due to capacity limits places like Costco and Home Depot had enormous lines to get in (spaced six feet apart), but the total number of people present was I think not larger than typical weekend crowds. Unlike the parks, I don’t think the attendance was driven by boredom, I think it was the capacity limits making it take longer to actually shop, and the necessity of hitting multiple stores to overcome panic-buying shortages.
Phil Scadden (Comment #187120): “well you can open the paper every day to see stories of people who do not choose to cooperate in any no. of scenarios.”
.
Yes, such people exist. So what?
.
Phil Scadden: “Not seeing that all. Got a pointer to analysis that shows it?”
.
I set up an IMGUR account, but I can’t get into it. Can someone tell me if the login is my email or my user name? One less variable might help.
.
Phil Scadden: “CDC data https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm seems to support reduction but then leaving flu season US but going into here.”
.
Flu deaths here went up in the first two weeks of April. Positive flu tests (maybe 1 or 2% of flu cases) dropped dramatically in late March, to some extent that is normal and to some extent it might be people not going to the doctor.
.
Phil Scadden: “Utterly unsupported by contact tracing data in both Aus and NZ.”
.
That tells us nothing about what caused the early reductions in R in the USA.
Contact tracing here should have provided info on that. But I have not seen anything about that and am not sure it was even done.
I think one of the main problems here is the failure for advocates to time limit lock downs or limit them to only high risk activities. They just want lock downs forever until the virus disappears completely out of fear.
.
This is justifiable fear, but not necessarily justifiable policy. Certainly for many of us who are financially stable, retired, or can work from home this is the optimal policy * for others *. I would say those advocating for strict lock downs fall into this financial category at nearly 100%.
.
This virus is not going to disappear. It’s pretty clear we have at least 6 more months before an effective treatment or a vaccine is available. Stay at home is simply not economically sustainable for a very large segment of our population. More people will die, but that’s the trade off in a situation nobody wants, and people have to make hard ugly decisions based on a lot of unknowns. Mistakes will be made, and hopefully corrected in a sane way. We have to learn to live with it for the time being.
.
Stay at home and wishing it will all go away is over. Now we are in the phase of picking all the low hanging fruit to reduce risk. Anyone who wants can still stay at home, but not at taxpayer expense. Many businesses will likely innovate to survive.
Tom Scharf,
“ Many businesses will likely innovate to survive.â€
.
Those in a position to minimize damage from official policy (and non-official fear) will do what they can. My company, which sells only to other companies and universities, has seen some (very modest) return to normal business activity, but we are still off more than 50% compared to normal. Company managers are more skittish about spending money on investments than any time in the past 25 years or more. Really, this is the worst business environment I have ever seen. It is killing the economy.
SteveF – “But that nanny state can greatly diminish the quality of life and impoverish us all in the process.” Well obviously we are both living in countries that suit us. I do notice that on all QOL indexes that I could find, (QOL index, happiness index, OECD better life index, US news index,Economist Where to be born, Standard of living etc), that the nanny states were outscoring the US. You must be weighing some factors much more highly than most.
Mike M. My understanding is that you postulate decrease in cases was due to immunity developing in community. I postulate that it was due to behaviour change restricting chance of transmission. If you are correct then easing lockdown will make little or no difference to hospitalisation rate (I choose that rather than death rate because treatment is improving). I would predict that hospitalization rate will increase over next 3 weeks. I will be very happy to be proved wrong.
Phil Scadden (Comment #187167): “My understanding is that you postulate decrease in cases was due to immunity developing in community”
.
I am not sure that I said anything about decrease in new cases. I have said that I don’t think the decrease in R was primarily due to lockdowns and speculated about the effect of subgroups.
.
I think that in some places, such as the NE U.S., the strong decrease in new cases is at least partly due to herd immunity. But many places have clearly not reached that.
Phil S,
A free market economy is the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you strangle it, bad things happen. Regulations, in general, strangle the goose.
.
The QLI values I have seen for Western Europe, the States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and a few other ‘advanced’ countries are so close as to be difficult to discern, and certainly the evaluation is wildly subjective, so even more difficult to discern. For those comfortable with social control (like you), there are countries like Denmark which are close to nirvana, but which for me are horribly oppressive.
.
I do know from personal experience that people with (a bit of) money who live in many places outside those high QLI countries live extremely well, and certainly much better than most people in the countries with high QLI values. The issue is how many people have (a bit of) money; in many countries, the number is low, hence the lower QLI values.
Mike M,
“I think that in some places, such as the NE U.S., the strong decrease in new cases is at least partly due to herd immunity.â€
.
I am pretty sure that is in fact what is happening in the NE of the States. The drop in cases and deaths is so dramatic that you have to either believe people in those states are saints in their compliance with isolation, or that heard immunity has taken over. I am originally from the NE; people in the NE are no more saints than in the rest of the country. I am close to 100% confident that herd immunity has taken over.
What I’ve seen is that people are wearing masks but generally ignoring the 6 feet rule in grocery stores. The one way lines are gone, and they will pass by each other as before.
People are still wearing masks and social distancing around here.
Here in Eastern PA, mask usage is pretty good, and people are cognizant of social distancing, but are more likely to cross someone’s path in the grocery store than in the past if more convenient. Haven’t been to a bar or restaurant, so can’t speak for those. I have however noticed a small minority of wearers covering their mouths, but not their noses.
.
And a sign of the times on “reporting”—I suspect everyone has noticed the love affair our best and brightest have for the word “SU-U-U-R-R-GE!”, but this morning I heard a Philly radio station reporter talk about a “small surge” in COVID-19 numbers in Philadelphia.
.
Gotta get that word in!
.
FWIW:
.
https://www.phila.gov/programs/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/testing-and-data/?mc_cid=c9c3c9a822&mc_eid=65480ba8cb
I’m afraid I find the concept of not crossing someone’s path ridiculous. Following behind someone seems like you’ll likely be breathing in a hell of a lot more what they’re breathing out.
An important thing to remember is that socialism isn’t evenly spread across all areas of life. Denmark may have socialized medicine and higher taxes, but in the Heritage foundation rankings of economic freedom, Denmark is #7 and US is only #17. Like other quality metrics the combination of components and the components themselves have a subjective element, but Denmark is rated significantly better for Property Rights, Government Integrity, Business Freedom, Monetary Freedom, Trade Freedom (only recently), and Investment Freedom. We do a lot of interfering with the economy here, some other nations do less.
.
Economic freedoms are only a part of the equation, of course. Singapore is #1 on the Heritage index, but would not rank so high in political freedom.
.
A comparison of averages may also underrate America due to its diversity of cultures. Is the proper comparison for a Dane really the average american, or a Danish-American? According to this article, Danish-Americans (as of 2013) had a 55% higher standard of living than Danes in Denmark, with half the unemployment and poverty rate of their continental cousins:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/08/25/commentary/world-commentary/denmarks-nice-danes-live-better-u-s/
.
Of course, I don’t know how that standard of living was calculated either. The details can always matter. For example, in one of the QLI indexes referenced above I saw that they had a housing affordability ratio, which is sensible enough as a start — but not if the housing itself differs in quality. A calculation that used price/sf instead of just price would result in quite a different order.
Dale S (Comment #187199): “in the Heritage foundation rankings of economic freedom … We do a lot of interfering with the economy here, some other nations do less.”
.
I am very skeptical of such rankings, especially when the people doing the rankings have an axe to grind. The Heritage Foundation is very critical of many aspects of American policy and might very well have weighted their rankings to emphasize those.
——-
Dale S: “Denmark is rated significantly better for Property Rights, Government Integrity, Business Freedom, Monetary Freedom, Trade Freedom (only recently), and Investment Freedom.”
.
Government Integrity is very much in the eye of the beholder. It might refer to specific favored policies with regard to campaign funding.
.
What the heck is “Monetary Freedom”? or “Investment Freedom”? I can’t recall ever encountering those, which leads me to suspect they are ideologically motivated.
.
There is no doubt of that with “Trade Freedom (only recently)”. That clearly refers to the degree of adherence to the oxymorionic free trade ideology.
Oxymoronic because trade deals that run to thousands of pages are not about free trade.
The NYT Orwellian quotes of the day:
.
“The virus outlook in the United States is bad and getting worse. The number of new cases in the United States has shot up 82 percent compared to two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. With more than 48,000 new cases on Tuesday, the country set a daily record for the fourth time in a week. ”
.
A few stories later in their daily coronavirus feed:
.
“After the police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, tens of thousands of New Yorkers poured into the streets to protest police brutality and racism.
Epidemiologists braced for a surge of new coronavirus cases. But it has not come yet.”
.
And of course, the shameless double standard and moral scolding continues:
.
“‘Celebrate at home’: Health officials make a plea for the holiday amid record caseloads in the U.S.”
We are under mandatory mask orders for indoors in my area, so mask compliance is high. There is definitely lock down fatigue though.
.
As it got hotter coronavirus got worse in FL, it might be the opposite effect of the flu/cold season getting worse in the winter. Everyone is driven indoors in the summer in FL. (Hmmmmm …. seems to be a correlation here, TX, AZ, etc.).
.
As it sits now, the death count is not exploding nearly at the rate of the case count. It is still flat. Another week or so and we will know for sure if that is a real trend. There will be an increase I’m almost sure, but if the cases go up 6x and the deaths only went up 2x, that is a likely sign something new is happening.
Looks like a reasonable trial for prevention, not cure as have most trials
.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine/global-covid-19-prevention-trial-of-hydroxychloroquine-to-resume-idUSKBN2410SW
Mike M,
Yes the Trade freedom index took a hit due to tarriffs being imposed (before that Denmark and USA were rated very similarly), it is most certainly about restrictions on international commerce. You are correct that the Heritage Foundation rates open markets most highly, but not correct if you think they want “trade deals that run to thousands of pages”. They want international commerce to be as free as possible from government intervention.
.
A discussion/definition of the twelve areas they look at is found here:
https://www.heritage.org/index/book/chapter-2
I’ll admit that “Monetary Freedom” and “Investment Freedom” aren’t as obvious as something like Business Freedom or Labor Freedom (where we rate higher than Denmark). Monetary Freedom seems to be about avoiding inflation (and so keeping the value of money from eroding), Investment Freedom is about the regulation of the flow of capital both internationally and domestically; apparently in the eyes of the Index makers, Denmark has less restrictions on that.
.
All these ratings certainly have some subjectiveness to it, and they are most certainly based on an ideological basis — the index makers are unabashed champions of free-market capitalism. “No alternative systems—and many have been tried—come close to the record of free-market capitalism in promoting growth and enhancing the human condition. The undeniable link between economic freedom and prosperity is a striking demonstration of what people can do when they have the opportunity to pursue their own interests within the rule of law.” Worldwide they see a *positive* trend in economic freedom.
.
What about “Government Integrity”? This doesn’t mention elections, in fact *political* freedom doesn’t really seem to be a consideration(Singapore is #1 overall, after all). It’s more about political favors:
“Of far greater concern [than individuals paying officials for service] is the systemic corruption of government institutions by such practices as bribery, nepotism, cronyism, patronage, embezzlement, and graft. Though not all are crimes in every society or circumstance, these practices erode the integrity of government wherever they are practiced. By allowing some individuals or special interests to gain government benefits at the expense of others, they are grossly incompatible with the principles of fair and equal treatment that are essential ingredients of an economically free society.”
.
It goes on to claim that the more regulations are in place, the easier it is for bribery and graft to be practiced, and more incentive for black markets to form.
Dale S (Comment #187206): “All these ratings certainly have some subjectiveness to it, and they are most certainly based on an ideological basis — the index makers are unabashed champions of free-market capitalism.”
.
Well, I am an unabashed fan of free market capitalism. But I have huge disagreements with many who would make the same claim.
For example, I am opposed to open borders. I recognize that genuine “free trade” is probably not desirable between countries that have hugely different legal and economic systems and is not possible with a government that is determined to meddle. I do not think that more trade means freer trade, meddling that increases trade is just as damaging as meddling that decreases trade. I believe that nations have a right to defend their national interests, even if that means something less than perfect free trade.
Ed Forbes (Comment #187205): “Looks like a reasonable trial for prevention, not cure as have most trials”
.
Welcome news indeed. The previous trials that are claimed to show no effect actually did show a positive effect. But the sample sizes were not large enough for that to be a conclusive result.
Interesting new paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1
.
The authors say the there are ~2 people with T-cell mediated resistance to covid19 who had mild or no symptoms when they were infected for each person with antibodies to the virus. The implication is that the number of people who have been exposed and now have some immunity is roughly 3 times higher than antibody testing indicates. They say the ‘robust’ T-cell response is consistent with the response needed for a successful vaccine.
If this report is reasonably accurate, then herd immunity is reached when only ~20-25% of the population is antibody positive.
Ed Forbes,
No mention of zinc in the study you cited. Either the designers of the study are ignorant or are biasing the study toward failure. The likely mechanism for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as antiviral drugs is to increase intracellular zinc concentration which interferes with viral reproduction. If serum zinc levels are inadequate, that won’t happen.
Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate continues to decline. The latest seven day moving average is 6/day. That’s down from a high of 99/day on April 16. The ‘surge’ in new cases in June had a barely noticeable, by eyeball, effect on the death rate. The daily case rate nearly doubled in June compared to the April high. But the death rate trend was still down.
DeWitt,
Lucia and I found that Sweden is very slow at posting final death numbers by date. IIRC, it was >10 days to get a reasonably reliable daily value. So that 7 day trailing average is probably not very accurate. The rate is clearly falling, but if you take that long delay into account, the true rate right now is probably still near 20/day. If the decline in rate continues as over the past couple months, Sweden will likely end up with about 6,000 deaths on a population of ~10 million.
DeWitt,
Definitely ignore the final 7 days. Even 10 days may not be enough. The just slowly trickle in the deaths and assign them to the correct date of death.
I looked at this because Sweden’s death rate was constantly looking like it was declining rapidly in the final 7 days. So I downloaded daily, and updated. You could see that final drop is an artifact of the way the create their tally.
Other places seem to just lodge the reported deaths to date. Those deaths didn’t necessarily happen on the date reported, but the number doesn’t rise over the next few days.
SteveF,
Brazil. I should go back and look up your comment on the maximum number of cases you predicted.
SteveF and lucia,
I seriously doubt that ten days from now the seven day moving average for July 1 for Sweden will be 20/day, probably more like 10/day. Sure the numbers change some, but they change less and less over time. With fewer people dying/day, they may not be as far behind as they were in April too.
Even if it were 20, it would still be way down from the peak and still declining in spite of the new case/day rate nearly doubling in June.
DeWitt,
I was fooled by the initially very low case rates in Brazil. Perhaps the initial very slow spread was because most people were afraid to do much of anything outside their homes. But Brazil is not a rich country, and my associates there say lots of poorer people have been ignoring the lockdown rules to try to make a living. In the long term, the demographics of Brazil, with a median age of 32.6 years, will probably keep their final death rate below most countries with older demographics. Daily deaths have been flat since the beginning of June; the rate should start declining soon.
DeWitt,
The fraction of the population >60 YO in Brazil is approximately 6%, while in the USA the fraction >60 YO is approximately 21%. There are just fewer likely to die from the illness in Brazil. A worse health care system will have a negative impact, of course, but demographics is likely going to dominate.
Unless the US death rate picks up a lot, I expect Brazil to pass the US for deaths/million at some point. Currently it’s 286 for Brazil and 395 for the US. I will be pleasantly surprised if Brazil, Chile(301) and Peru(299) don’t catch Spain and Italy at 607 and 575. Peru has a median age of 28.0 and Chile is 34.4.
In the US, the death rate for infected has dipped below 5%. When I pointed the lowering earlier in April, it was pointed out that this was due to a lag between deaths and infection.
At this point we have had 17 days of at least 20,000 daily cases, and 14 days of at least 30,000 cases.
If the new cases are as serious as the previous, then we should be seeing at least 1000-1500 daily deaths within a week.
MikeN,
The demography of new cases has changed to a younger average age and includes far fewer of the most vulnerable age groups. You can be certain that Florida’s 5-fold increase in cases will not translate to 5 times more deaths; average age for a diagnosed case has dropped from >60 to 37. Very few bar-hopping 20-somethings are going to die from the virus. There will be some increase in deaths in Florida, but nothing like the increase in cases. If cases remain near 8-10 thousand per day, I expect herd immunity starts to take over in 30 days or less.
SteveF, the population of Florida is around ten million. Ten thousand cases per day is 300,000, just 3%. How is that enough to get herd immunity?
This article argues that in dealing with George Floyd, Officer Chauvin appears to have followed Minneapolis PD policy to the letter:
https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
.
He also goes into very informative detail as to what likely caused Floyd’s death.
MikeN,
Sorry I didn’t see your comment from July 3. The population of Florida is about 22 million. Random serology tests in Florida (some weeks ago) suggest the number of people with antibodies is conservatively more than 10 times the number of verified cases. I looked at the data, and I think a more likely value is between 15 and 20 times the number of confirmed cases. Other recent publications indicate widespread T-cell mediated resistance among those who were exposed but had mild on no symptoms…. but no detectable antibodies in their blood. A plausible multiplier is 30 resistant individuals (antibodies or T-cells) for each confirmed case. So that 10,000 per day indicates resistant individuals increasing by 200,000 to 300,000 per day, and the 200,000+ cases so far suggest a starting point of 4 million to 6 million resistant individuals. So reaching herd immunity at 10,000 confirmed cases per day should not take long.
.
Consider NY: 425,000 cases, and the pandemic nearly as dead as a doornail, with the death rate falling 97% from it’s peak. (There is still an upstate population in NY that has not reached herd immunity). Some might argue it was the masks…. I doubt it. Same thing will happen in Florida, but with, I expect, a much lower death rate.
SteveF, the problem with that is if the higher number of cases is coming from expanded testing of contacts, then the 10-1 or higher ratio doesn’t apply. You are catching more of the 10 people in the 10-1.
MikeN,
The case rates in Florida have increased 10 fold; Texas and California have increased nearly as much. Those increases aren’t from increased contact tracing, it’s almost all from symptomatic people being tested.
MikeN,
That might be true if the fraction of positive tests was low and decreasing. But it’s not. It’s going up. IIRC it’s over 10% in some places. That means more cases are being missed, not fewer.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #187498): “That might be true if the fraction of positive tests was low and decreasing. But it’s not. It’s going up. IIRC it’s over 10% in some places. That means more cases are being missed, not fewer.”
.
I am not at all sure that is true. Inadequate testing would lead to both a high positive rate and a lot of people being missed. But that does not mean that those two things are always linked. And we certainly do not now have a problem with inadequate testing.
.
Why does a person get tested? Because they think they might have it it. Why would a person think they might have it?
One reason would be that they know they have been exposed; that might well lead to a high positive rate and, if such people are being efficiently identified, it might also lead to a higher percentage of actual cases being tested.
Another reason would be if they have symptoms. The symptoms for the Wuhan virus are pretty much cold/flu symptoms. Cold/flu is much more common in winter. So people with such symptoms now are much more likely to have Wuhan. Also, people with Wuhan are much less likely to dismiss it as just a cold or flu. The result would be both a higher positive rate and fewer missed cases.
.
Does anyone know if states are still mixing antibody tests in with PCR tests?
From what I understand part of the hospital protocols is some places is to test every patient on intake and daily. That’s going to create an increase in negatives over what had been in place earlier. In my county the positive cases have increased faster than the active cases for a straight week, so I’m starting to believe they are now mixing in antibody positives with PCR. Unless you see the results separated I think it’s safe to assume they are combined.
DeWitt,
I think all other things being equal, a higher positive/total ratio does mean more cases are being missed. The problem is we *still* don’t know if all other things are equal.
For example:
(a) Maybe a false negative rate is down for some reason.
(b) Maybe there previously was a “burst” of new tests from people who were required to get tested to start work. (Illinois has some of these orders in place.) The burst temporarily supressed the positive/total ratio. Now it’s over.
(c) Maybe fresh availability of testing caused a burst of semi-hypochondriacs to go get tested “just in case”. They got tested and the “burst” is over.
I don’t necessarily think any of these things are happening to a significant extent. But honestly, when I look at anything other than “death”, I tend to recognize that multiple factors other than changes in the rate of infection or changes in our ability to treat at least could affect the numbers.
Increase in cases is worrying. Increase in positive/total is worrying. But one might need access to more data to decide how worrying. And in the end, deaths is the metric that is (currently) less affected by policy. (This would change if hospitals got overloaded and people couldn’t be treated.)
AndrewP
(1) It should increase the ratio of negative/total.
(2) It likely would increase the total positive cases detected.
The degree to which (2) happens depends on how many asymptomatic cases truly exist. If it’s 10 asymptomatic/symptomatic, and lots of people start scheduling elective surgery, it’s going to increase cases a lot. If it’s 1.1 asymptomatic/symptomatic, and people continue to defer elective surgery, it’s barely going to make a difference.
The data sets I can access easily don’t provide the nuances to estimate how much of the increase in cases is due to routine testing.
MIke M
Well…. presumably not in Georgia, since the total number of cases fell dramatically a while back! 🙂
I suspect you need to check state by state. I’d guess most understand the difference at this point. Still, catching the error and fixing is not something the agencies tended to proclaim loudly to the world. I mean they aren’t going to have a formal press conference to announce, “Whoops! We were doing stupid. Now we are not. Make sure you understand before date “x” the thing we called ‘new cases’ included both infections and now-immune. Were as now they only include ‘new cases’! Or worse: “BTW: some counties are still mixing, other counties are fixed and we are slowly getting all the counties on the same page”.
The info, if it is public exists on some page somewhere at each state site.
Speaking of immunity, Tom Hanks and his wife were on the Today show yesterday and were still saying that in spite of having recovered from COVID-19 they could still get it again. The current global case count is north of 12 million and, AFAIK, there is not a single confirmed case of reinfection. There were some false alarms that have since been corrected. I think it’s now safe to say that having had the disease does, in fact, confer immunity for at least a few months until there is some evidence to the contrary.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for Fauci to say this.
Also, death rates in Texas and California appear to have turned up. Texas set new records for daily deaths yesterday and the day before with the previous day equaling the old record. California set a new daily death record yesterday. Florida seems to be trending upward, looking at the seven day moving average, but hasn’t reached new record territory yet.
A discussion on possible causes of the case/death count divergence. Just ignore the annoying but apparently required political verbiage.
.
COVID-19 Cases Are Rising, So Why Are Deaths Flatlining?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/why-covid-death-rate-down/613945/
DeWitt,
“Florida seems to be trending upward, looking at the seven day moving average, but hasn’t reached new record territory yet.”
.
I will not be surprised if the daily deaths in FL reach 75 to 100 per day at their peak. I will be surprised if they go much higher than that before falling due to herd immunity.
.
Tom Hanks is a good actor, but is likely wrong about getting re-infected. People infected a decade ago with the original SARs still have T-cells that react to covid19. Unless the virus mutates a lot faster than it has so far, there is a good chance of long term immunity after infection.
.
Fauci is just dishonest; he will never say something so obviously correct when it might reduce the level of alarm.
Tom Scharf,
Hard to get past the rapid political spin… ‘evil Republicans are trying to kill everyone’. The Atlantic publishes mostly rubbish, and when the authors are shown to be wrong, they change the subject and never admit error. Really not worth reading.
Tom Scharf,
From the Atlantic article you cited:
“The typical COVID-19 patient is getting younger.”
Artlessly phrased, that statement makes one wish to be a typical COVID-19 patient ! 😉
HaroldW,
Dang! I should have gotten Covid-19. Then I’d be younger!!!!
.
Sadly, I got something else. I got sick but reap no benefit.
HaroldW,
“The typical COVID-19 patient is getting younger.â€
.
What do you expect of journalism and literature majors who mostly studied woke leftist ideology in college? It is almost inevitable that they write poorly of things they know nothing about.
SteveF,
156 deaths yesterday and the trailing seven day moving average is at 95/day (worldometers.info). The trend is strongly upward.