# Cannot believe what I just saw... **URL:** \ **Category:** Lounge\ **Created:** [November 9, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537 "2007-11-09T20:24:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/1 "2007-11-09T20:24:57Z")
was walking up broadway to get lunch… old guy in a crappy little car makes an illegal turn or something, cops in a police van turn on their siren and flashers, guy puuls over and exits car… obviously elder, all white hair and beard, making no threatening gestures, hands out of pockets, clearly no weapons… two cops are out of the van, one pulls his (what appears to be) a chrome plated service .45 and takes aim at the guy, other cop has hand on holstered gun… guy nearly faints, stumbles backwards and gets back in his car… looks to me like they would have shot him if he had made one false move… this is f\*cking downtown manhattan ? Are we turning into a police state ? WTF ? ---
**Author:** ![Mtnjim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/mtnjim/32/2010_2.png) [@Mtnjim](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Mtnjim)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/2 "2007-11-09T21:27:14Z")
> [@tacitus](#): > > Are we turning into a police state ? WTF ? You just noticed??☹ ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 9:53pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/3 "2007-11-09T21:53:21Z")
There is more to this… last weekend I was walking around Union Square… there was nothing out of the ordinary, crowds of tourist and all that… EXCEPT on the corner of Broadway and 14th street were the thuggiest looking NYC cops I ever laid eyes on… about half of them were in helmets, flak jackets, and were carrying M-16s… yup… in a heavily populated area full of lethargic, unarmed, non-threatening civilians these guys are packing urban warfare kit ? There were about 8 on duty, 4 regular uniform police and 4 “paramilitary”… there was no purpose in them being there, it was pure intimidation bullshit… lowest degree of political theater… so I wrote it off as some idiot election posturing… until I saw what I saw today… that was REAL… and scary as hell… that dude could have had his ass shot off if he has flinched… I never saw flat out terror in a man’s face like that… like he KNEW they were prepared to kill him in a blink… whew… this is not cool, not a’tall… this is bleak freak…😮 😮 😮 ---
**Author:** ![nbully79](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c68b51/32.png) [@nbully79](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/nbully79)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 10:24pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/4 "2007-11-09T22:24:07Z")
> [@tacitus](#): > > was walking up broadway to get lunch… old guy in a crappy little car makes an illegal turn or something, cops in a police van turn on their siren and flashers, guy puuls over and exits car… obviously elder, all white hair and beard, making no threatening gestures, hands out of pockets, clearly no weapons… two cops are out of the van, one pulls his (what appears to be) a chrome plated service .45 and takes aim at the guy, other cop has hand on holstered gun… guy nearly faints, stumbles backwards and gets back in his car… looks to me like they would have shot him if he had made one false move… this is f\*cking downtown manhattan ? Are we turning into a police state ? WTF ? I don’t know man…I am more scared of people who are just hell bent on not following instructions or common sense…who think they are above everyone else! Police atleast bring some normalcy to everyone’s life, if for no cops we will have the jungle rule…everyone for themselves… the biggest baddest guy (or someone who has a weapon) wins… what you mentioned is very scary but I would also think about the cops life too…he has a family waiting at home…he doesn’t know this guy is just ignorant or really a threat! ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 10:43pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/5 "2007-11-09T22:43:13Z")
Phew… don’t know how the cop really perceived it… from my vantage point it looked waaay excessive… the guy was mmmm 65-70 y.o., he wasn’t reaching for anything, wasn’t doing anything weird or abnormal… I’ve seen a lifetime worth of civilian-police interactions… there was something different about this… like they intended to scare the shit out of the guy as a basic tactic… it didn’t look or feel right… too heavy handed, to ready to pop for no reason… left me with a very uneasy feeling about the general situation… ---
**Author:** ![tisha23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@tisha23](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tisha23)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/6 "2007-11-09T23:04:40Z")
I dont care if your 20 or 100 it dosnt take much to whip out a gun and shoot a cop. Cops are trained to approuch a car with there hand on there revolvers. If a person is pulled over and exits the car for any reason they are to be considered protentially hostile. Its not like NYC is mayberry. Cops go though this every day and while it may seem excessive its more likely someone will take a shot at them before they ever take that shot at someone else. Sure it may not be nice to scare old people, but with all the crime they are up against on a daily bases they have the right to protect themselves as well. Just my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Eldros](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/eldros/32/279_2.png) [@Eldros](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Eldros)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 3:08am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/7 "2007-11-10T03:08:50Z")
If you’ve ever taken a firearm course, then you’d realize that they’re doing nothing wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Holmes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/holmes/32/2128_2.png) [@Holmes](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Holmes)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/8 "2007-11-10T04:35:50Z")
> [@tacitus](#): > > was walking up broadway to get lunch… old guy in a crappy little car makes an illegal turn or something, cops in a police van turn on their siren and flashers, guy puuls over and exits car… obviously elder, all white hair and beard, making no threatening gestures, hands out of pockets, clearly no weapons… two cops are out of the van, one pulls his (what appears to be) a chrome plated service .45 and takes aim at the guy, other cop has hand on holstered gun… guy nearly faints, stumbles backwards and gets back in his car… looks to me like they would have shot him if he had made one false move… this is f\*cking downtown manhattan ? Are we turning into a police state ? WTF ? The police force here in the city isn’t exactly tops these days (putting it _very_ politely). It’s rife with corruption and ineptitude, abuse of power and authoritarian bluster. That might not be the most politically-correct position to take - it may, in fact, be the _least_ (everyone’s supposed to say how great the NYPD is and what a wonderful job it’s doing) - but anyone who lives here and pays the slightest bit of attention will see evidence of the above on nearly a daily basis. They might even be lucky enough to be personally involved. ---
**Author:** ![MarkL](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/markl/32/825_2.png) [@MarkL](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/MarkL)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 4:55pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/9 "2007-11-10T16:55:47Z")
Cops (pairs) who roll in the van tend to be a little different than cops rolling solo or in pairs in a marked squad versus those in unmarked cars. Once you get two cops stepping out of the wagon you are very likely to get drama in a way you’d never expect from plainclothes in an unmarked. At least they a/ were not sleeping and /b had the gumption to notice a traffic stop and move their butts out of the van. ---
**Author:** ![smn1234](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/smn1234/32/2430_2.png) [@smn1234](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/smn1234)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 6:06pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/10 "2007-11-10T18:06:26Z")
Ya man… grand central scares the shit outta me sometimes… military all over the place ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/11 "2007-11-10T20:00:22Z")
dunno exactly… it a change in tone.. I know from cops in trigger happy mode, almost got gunned down myself once upon a time… even the guys who nearly knocked me over didn’t have this friggin’ swagger… there’s a nuance to it, guess you have to live in several cultures or whatever to have a nose for the power tripping.. these guys were power tripping, big time… ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 8:02pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/12 "2007-11-10T20:02:01Z")
> [@changazn](#): > > If you’ve ever taken a firearm course, then you’d realize that they’re doing nothing wrong. Any firearm couses you would recommend ? ---
**Author:** ![Kitten](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/kitten/32/1051_2.png) [@Kitten](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Kitten)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 9:04pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/13 "2007-11-10T21:04:17Z")
One time my boyfriend got pulled over by the police. I had been following him in my car. So I looped back and pulled up behind the police car. Then I started to get out of my car to see what was going on. Not the best idea. A female cop immediately focused on me and yelled at me to get back in the car. I remember sitting there, shaken and a bit miffed about being yelled at when I hadn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t draw any kind of gun on me. Later on when I complained about it indignantly to my friends, several said I was lucky I hadn’t gotten shot. So I still see the police as a noble calling. They are supposed to protect the innocent (and the ignorant). Which is why they deserve respect. Take away the protection and respect aspects, and you just have people with guns and no genuine authority. Which would be why some of them are so scared. ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/14 "2007-11-10T21:42:01Z")
I knew this gentleman who was a former general in the USMC.. also happened to be my mother’s boyfriend… absolutely first class leader, superb shot with pistol and rifle… and from what I heard, had killed men with his bare hands… when he had no other choice… served bravely in Viet Nam, badly wounded, and retired to civilian life… he was a consummate professional soldier, as was his father… this guy was so in control at such a high level and could exert command in something like seven languages… I can tell you there is behavior he would never engage in, he would never indulge in macho penis waggling with a sidearm, but he could drop you fifty feet away if he needed to… but he would consider what I saw professionally and personally disgraceful, amateurish, egotistical conduct… as least that’s how I remember his comportment. ---
**Author:** ![tho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de053/32.png) [@tho](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tho)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2007, 2:20am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/15 "2007-11-11T02:20:39Z")
The other day, at a CANADIAN bar: This drunk idiot starts screaming and keeps putting his hands in a cops face. Cops let him do it 10 times and the guy gets bored and leaves. American cops would have tazer him, thrown him in jail and caused a few thousand dollars in losses for the bar because because of all the comossion. Most US cops are trained with “the crazy American mentality”. Québec cops are trained with “chill out man”. Yhea, sure, some are idiot asshole with ridiculously malnourished brains that don’t function properly, but most are very well trained and witty individuals. Québec cops do know when to get evil on your ass though. If you pull a knife on them, they wont hesitate to shoot you in the leg. But you will **NEVER SEE** a cop pull out his gun in canada unless you have a gun, running at him with a chainsaw. ---
**Author:** ![chads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@chads](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/chads)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2007, 3:50am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/16 "2007-11-11T03:50:53Z")
All the police I know are trained to shoot to kill if someone pulls a knife. A person with a knife can cover metres (yards) in under a second. I find more power trips with border guards than police. ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/17 "2007-11-11T16:15:23Z")
I got a life lesson in the difference in judicious power versus ego-authoritarian-poseur indulgence power as kid growing up in Texas… there were basically two kinds of cops back in the 1950s and 1960s… one, what we referred to as good old boys… good old boys were typically veterans, guys with extended family systems, strong basic values and they were pretty cool dudes.. and then… there was east texas river bottom white trash… and man, if you knew what was good for you you had your spider sense tuned up for approaching white trash… these cats had an agenda, mostly dealing with pathologic childhoods, ku klux klan underground movements (which was later to emerge as the white supramacist trip), excess love of firearms, near total lack of worldly education… in a word, defensive. Dangerously defensive. Their mantra was “nobody gives me any shit”… we (me and my deviant friends) had a code language when we spotted trouble, based on the old clock dial method… if one of us spotted approaching trouble nobody else whould look around (“looking around” would be interpreted as “suspicious behavior”… which could easily be expanded to this legal concept known as “probable cause”…) which all came about as sort of an unconscious survival response, nobody individually thought it up, but if one of us saw a…mmmmmm… problem about to happen the one who noticed it would just say… problem at 5 o’clock, or whatever angle of approach it was coming from, and everybody would get on their party manners right away and act like they had no idea the cops was moseying over for a chat… but you would not dare make eye contact, much less any rapid bodily motions… we routinely kept our wallets on the dashboard if we were driving so the cop could clearly see you we’re digging in your pocket… because, you see… there was this thing they called an “east texas ass whipping”… ---
**Author:** ![Holmes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/holmes/32/2128_2.png) [@Holmes](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Holmes)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 5:46am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/18 "2007-11-12T05:46:17Z")
> [@tacitus](#): > > I got a life lesson in the difference in judicious power versus ego-authoritarian-poseur indulgence power The difference is unmistakable. Appears that it’s mostly the latter around here nowadays. Judicious power seems to surface only as a response to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, alien invasions, etc. Generally-speaking, of course. A few weeks ago, a cocky, young newbie cop drew a gun on me and two other colleagues, for doing… next to nothing. The prevailing vibe seemed to be that he and his sidekick were bored/pissed off about something or other and wanted to practice their freshly-honed intimidation skillz on some relatively easy targets. Very next day, my mother arrives in town for a visit and gets mugged at knife-point… with nary a badge nor billy club in sight. I live right across from the -------- Precinct, which I have to say inspires surprisingly little confidence. Sometimes I think that Sting, Stewart, and Andy would do as good a job as what we got now. Anyway, enough bashing. Let’s everybody get some donuts. ---
**Author:** ![tacitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@tacitus](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/tacitus)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 5:10pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/cannot-believe-what-i-just-saw/6537/19 "2007-11-13T17:10:30Z")
Ah… yes… as of today’s news, in light of my recent experiences, this makes me more than a little queasy, especially because it comes as no surprise: "A young man was fatally shot last night in a hail of more than a dozen bullets fired by five police officers who responded to his mother’s 911 call for help in a domestic dispute in Brooklyn, the authorities said. The shooting occurred on Gates Avenue about 7 p.m. The police said they believed that the man, Khiel Coppin, 18, had a gun. But when the gunfire stopped, it turned out that he had been holding a black hairbrush. Police were investigating a number of scenarios this morning, including whether the man held the brush under his shirt to prompt officers to shoot at him, a phenomenon known in law-enforcement circles as suicide by cop. But witness accounts varied, with some people at the scene saying they heard the man tell officers he had a gun, and others saying the man was shot as he dropped the brush and attempted to raise his hands in the air in an effort to cooperate. The shooting began shortly after officers went into the building at 590 Gates Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, about 7 p.m. The police said they were responding to a 911 call from Mr. Coppin’s mother reporting domestic abuse and asking for help to “deal with this,” and that on the call a man was overheard threatening to kill her and claiming “I have a gun.” One resident of the building, Andre Sanchez, 17, said that after the police arrived, he saw from the hallway through the open door of the apartment that the officers inside were talking to Mr. Coppin, who was in a bedroom and opening and closing that door as they spoke, possibly with a knife in his hand. Mr. Coppin then climbed out a first-floor window and confronted more officers outside the building, and multiple shots were fired at him, bystanders said. Wounded, Mr. Coppin fell to the ground and was handcuffed, witnesses said. He was taken to Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, where he was pronounced dead, the police said. It was unclear how many of the shots hit Mr. Coppin, a law enforcement source said. Mr. Coppin’s mother, whose name was not released, was among the people outside the building during the shooting. Earlier in the day, she had called a hospital psychiatric unit asking for urgent help in dealing with her son, the law enforcement official said. Psychiatric workers came, but Mr. Coppin was gone. After waiting two hours, the workers left, and later, Mr. Coppin returned. Two bystanders who said they had seen the shooting said that Mr. Coppin was not armed, but was carrying a hairbrush when he climbed out the window and that he dropped it when the firing began. The two witnesses also said they both heard one officer yelling for the shooting to stop. According to the police, another witness described Mr. Coppin as concealing the hairbrush under his shirt, pointing it outward. A restless crowd quickly gathered and grew to as many as 150, as some neighbors shouted protests against police brutality. “You need training — this is absurd!” one woman shouted out a window to the police. Another man pressed against a yellow crime-scene tape and said: “I’m not trying to start a riot. I’m just saying it’s not right.” The site and surrounding blocks were cordoned off as dozens of police officers, detectives and community affairs officers arrived to investigate the shooting and control the crowd. Community leaders at the scene included City Councilman Albert Vann. Witnesses and the police offered different details about how the shooting occurred. Mr. Sanchez said that just before the shooting, he went outside and saw several officers there with guns drawn. Mr. Coppin approached the window, backed away, then returned and stood on the sill, Mr. Sanchez said. When an officer told him to get down, he jumped to the ground and started to go through a gate in the fence in front of the building, Mr. Sanchez said. An officer told Mr. Coppin to put up his hands, and when he did he dropped the hairbrush and the shooting began, although one officer called out to stop the gunfire, Mr. Sanchez said. Officers started chasing Mr. Sanchez and knocked him to the ground after, he said, he protested: “Why you got to shoot him like that, for nothing?” A similar description of the shooting was given by Precious Blood, 16, who said she heard about 10 shots fired, most if not all by one officer. Another officer called out: “Stop, stop, stop shooting — he’s down,” she said, but the shooter kept firing, “like he was playing with a toy.” The law enforcement official gave a different version of the encounter, saying that Mr. Coppin charged toward the officers and refused repeated orders to stop. The police said they were also exploring the possibility that Mr. Coppin was trying to prompt a shooting, a phenomenon that a handful of studies in recent years have shown can account for a small fraction of police shootings in some American cities. One study by researchers at Harvard Medical School in 1998, for example, looked at all officer-involved shootings in Los Angeles County in a 10-year-period — about 430 shootings in all — and found that “suicide-by-cop” incidents accounted for 11 percent of the shootings over all and 13 percent of the fatal shootings. Mr. Coppin’s mother was at the 79th Precinct station house last night and gave a statement to the police, they said. The five officers who fired all passed Breathalyzer tests, the law enforcement officials said. Al Baker and Annie Correal contributed reporting." Passed breathalyser tests ? How… comforting !