I live in a big city. I'm pretty sure that several other posters do as well.

The city in which I live has approximately the same rate of violent crime as Portland, i.e., fairly low for a large U.S. city.

So as long as it is still safer than St. Louis, the crime uptick in Portland is no biggie the people that live there should worry about?

The point of the argument is that Portland underwent significant policing "reforms" and the violent crime rate spiked as a direct result. He isn't arguing Portland is as violent and deadly as other US cities, which are among the most violent and deadly cities in the whole world. I hope we can all agree the goal should be to live in a world where St. Louis isn't the bar.

Why is that more correct? Cops are thoroughly trained in use of force techniques. How is beating a limp body to death manslaughter?

I know it's not one of the very worst for violent crime; I'm not afraid to walk around my neighborhood or anything.but it has been getting worse very rapidly over the lsst few years, much more than other US cities of similar size.

There are many people who used to go downtown for cultural activities but won't go anymore because they don't feel safe, and I probably wouldn't myself if I were a smaller guy or a woman.

if by "reforms" you mean a large budget INCREASE then sure..


to your point though crime is a difficult thing to talk objectively about, i agree. it's hard to tell someone that crime actually went down in 2022 by a couple percent when their car got stolen the month before.. but that doesn't make the statistics less true. obviously chillrob is saying that homicides have risen in portland in the last 2 years, but from the 2020 statistics i found portland was something like 78th.

also crime statistics are also hilarious bad all around. we're throwing around homicide numbers and police budgets, but the one article i read listed all the homicides from 2020 in portland and 2 of them were infants that were shaken to death by their parents.. what amount of police is going to stop that homicide from occurring?? but yet it's used in the "deep dive" statistics to try and justify further increases in police budgets.

this is what i'm talking about when it comes to the inherent problems in discussing crime objectively..

this is all FEELS.. lots of people FEEL scared of NYC because they FEEL like there is a bunch of crime but that doesn't change the fact that NYC is considered one of the safest big cities.

Internet definition basically says its manslaughter one if serious harm, not death, is your goal and you are surprised (but not shocked) if he dies. Seems closer to describing what happened.

That's a woefully incomplete description of manslaughter.

Your comment is right on point, except (i) I didn't purport to comment on what level of crime should make residents uncomfortable; (ii) I never suggested that an uptick in crime in Portland should be of no concern to residents of Portland; and (iii) I didn't even mention St. Louis, much less suggest that St. Louis was an appropriate safety benchmark.

But they’re being tried under US law, not internet law.

In most jurisdictions, manslaughter is best thought of as a "passion" or "in the moment" killing. In other words, manslaughter doesn't involve planning.

Also, certain actions are so dangerous that it is futile to argue that you did not have an attempt to kill. For example, if I shoot you in the arm, I will never make any headway arguing that I intended to wing you, not kill you. I will be charged and convicted of attempted murder.

Here, (i) the beating was so severe that it arguably is more akin to shooting a gun than it is to punching a drunk in a bar; and (ii) the encounter was so prolonged and it took so long for them to get him medical help that you could justify charging them with a more serious crime than manslaughter.

It is not all FEELS. That single post was, but yesterday I posted to articles with crime statistics. Murders more than doubled between 2019 and 2021.

Those statistics make people FEEL scared of going into the city, and rightfully so.

Then the fact that people won't go downtown for cultural activities hurts the businesses in the area and eventually kills downtowns. The way people feel is important.

So, you are saying that a group of black law enforcement officers "planned" to beat up a young black man who hadn't committed a major crime to the point where his death was a decent possibility, even though they were wearing bodycams and were taking a big risk of ruining their own lives?

The fact that Slighted did not quickly join in to refute me should have been a tipoff.

They could try adding that they beat people up like this routinely with death being unusual.

i hated the charge "shooting with intent to kill" in my jurisdiction which is what your example would be here, because it had the same penalty as "assault and battery with a deadly weapon" but one more element to prove, (that the intent was to kill the victim). lol.

i didnt see what you were responding to initially. if we're talking about the memphis killing it depends on the Tennessee statutes. while a lot of times manslaughter is what you said and could be the lower charge sometimes states do weird things with the statutes; Tennessee's 2nd degree murder appears to be just "Second degree murder is: A knowing killing of another;". so any intentional action that a reasonable person knows would kill a person would appear to qualify. googling some tennessee law firm explanations of Tennessee statutes gives you which seems to fit this situation really well.

it appears that Tennessee's 1st manslaughter statute require "adequate provocation" on the part of the offender.
which would be an interesting argument if "evading" and i say that in the loosest terms with regards to this incident is an "adequate provocation".

2nd manslaughter appears to be "reckless killing" vs. the 2nd degree murder's "knowing killing".

I'm grunching a little, but could this example with the prolonged beating be considered for charging more than manslaughter precisely because the sheer negligence can be equated in badness to actual intent in that they should have known that their actions are basically similar to what a person's genuine intent to kill might have been? The discussion of intent here is reminiscent of a thread with Trump handling documents that you posted in IIRC in that as to whether he could be guilty of a particular charge could hinge on whether he should have reasonably known better.

You guys are overthinking this; if you beat someone to death with your bare hands, you're probably going to get a murder charge.

I believe that is generally true or at least ought to be, but the point that it seems extremely unlikely that they would have wanted him to actually die and thus that the intent probably wasn't there in a literal sense is an interesting point of discussion in the realm of legalese, and also perhaps a decent guess as to how Rococo perhaps might endeavor to square away DS's incredulity towards his opinion on the matter.

Sounds like classic manslaughter.

I feel like Trolly's frank and dry posts are like anything but man's laughter.

Is that a legal opinion?

there are no legal opinions in this thread.. haha

It’s legally my opinion, I guess.


It just seems like Tennessee’s murder 2 sounds exactly like the situation with the cops:

Hehe, I shouldn't have grunched as the bolded and in particular the underlined from Slighted is essentially what I was suggesting.

My early nominee for best quote for February.