Kansas City PD Presentation Says Every Shooting Investigation Is Handled The Same Way... Unless It Involves A Cop
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The Kansas City Police Department has managed to turn a few heads -- and not in the good way -- with an internal PowerPoint that may as well have been titled "So, You've Killed Someone." The document was obtained during discovery in a wrongful death suit against the KCPD. Back in 2019, Officer Dylan Pifer shot and killed Terrance Bridges, claiming he thought Bridges was trying to pull a gun from his sweatshirt pocket. No gun was found on Bridges.The presentation [PDF] obtained from Bridges' family's lawyer by the Kansas City Star advises cops of two things: police shootings should be handled like routine criminal investigations to eliminate claims of bias. And police shootings should be handled nothing like routine criminal investigations because they involve cops.The opening slide makes it clear what the priority is in investigations of shootings by cops: preserving the narrative. It even has the number one next to it.Upon completion of this block of instruction, the participants will, with the use of handouts and notes, be able to:1. Identify the best defense again [sic] claims of bias or favoritism in the investigations of officer involved shootings. You know what's not a top priority? Preserving evidence. That comes behind officer safety.Supervisors should consider the preservation of evidence as secondary to the safety of the public and department personnel. The presentation points out that shootings are controversial and claims "police critics" will often claim investigations -- which routinely clear officers of wrongdoing -- are "biased and that police receive special treatment." So, the best defense is a good offense:The best defense to these claims is CONSISTENCY in how we conduct ALL criminal investigations.[...]The best way to do this is to treat the investigation into officer involved shootings LIKE EVERY OTHER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. All well and good, except the presentation spends most of its running time explaining how this sort of investigation won't be treated like a regular criminal investigation.Does this look like the sort of thing cops offer to non-cops involved in shootings?Don’t engage the member in detailed conversation about the incident, but you are encouraged to talk with them like you would on any other day.Make sure that all requests (bathroom, food, drinks, cigarettes) by the involved members are met as soon as possible. Forget about preserving evidence:If their recording system is active, have the member mute the mike and mute yours. They will be making calls to FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] and spouses and family. They may be in an excited state and hyperverbal. And start hiding stuff from journalists:Park somewhere that responding media will not be able to film the involved member. But that of course only means the involved cop. The non-cop will have any and all possibly incriminating information immediately forwarded to local media, along with any mugshots the PD happens to have on hand. Information about the involved officer will be much slower in arriving. Much slower than even the involved officer's statement to investigators:Generally, the member will be permitted up to forty-eight (48) hours to complete such statement… The presentation then spends a bit of time bemoaning the public's confidence in law enforcement, which isn't at an all-time high. It blames the media (again) for misrepresenting shootings by officers and, again, stresses doing everything by the book to combat this perception. But the book for officers is very different from the book for citizens. And until law enforcement agencies are willing to change that, the rest of what bothers the presenter about public perception isn't going to change.And this is about the worst possible way you could end an instructive presentation on handling shootings by officers:There is nothing wrong with being glad to be alive and being okay that you were the winner in a competition in which the winning prize was your life. Law enforcement isn't a competition with winners and losers. It's a job, an important one, but one that has apparently been handed to people who believe members of the public are enemy combatants and that shootings are just games to be won.
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Mar-2021
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Even Murkier: Microsoft Says Some Bethesda Games Will Indeed Be Xbox, PC Exclusives
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Late last year, we discussed Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax, the parent company of Bethesda, and what it would mean for the studio's beloved franchises. At particular issue, given that this is Microsoft we're talking about, was whether new or existing franchises would be exclusive to Xbox consoles and/or PC. The communication out of Microsoft has been anything but helpful in this respect. First, Xbox chief Phil Spencer and Bethesda's Todd Howard made vague statements that mostly amounted to: man, we don't have to make Bethesda games exclusives and it's hard to imagine us doing so. Only a few weeks later, another Microsoft representative clarified that while the company may have plans to make Bethesda games "first or best" on Microsoft platforms, "that's not a point about being exclusive." This naturally led most to believe that Microsoft might have timed release windows on other platforms, but wouldn't be locking any specific titles down.What a difference a few months can make, it seems. With the acquisition officially complete, Microsoft put out a "welcome" announcement to the Bethesda team, which included this fun bit to be consumed by the public.This is the next step in building an industry-leading first party studios team, a commitment we have to our Xbox community. With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players. This, frankly, is the worst of all worlds. The announcement is vague enough to not really give the public any actual idea of what games will be exclusive and which won't. Will it be new franchises developed as a first party studio, or are we talking about franchise mainstays like Fallout and Elder Scrolls? Nobody knows! In fact, all the public does know is that the exclusivity guillotine is hanging out there somewhere. And this drip, drip, drip change in the message to the public sure does make it look like Microsoft had this plan all along and only wanted to avoid a backlash in the public.A public that has caught wind of a worrying trend in the video game industry: consolidation. 2020, particularly in the second half of the year, saw a violent uptick in studio consolidation under the bigger players. With that consolidation comes a lot of control over distribution of titles and franchises, especially for studios that were acquired by the likes of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.It's not just your imagination: the gaming industry is going through a period of consolidation unlike anything we've seen before. Market research firm DDM collected transaction data over the course of 2020 and found that:-Gaming industry investment reached a new high of $13.2 billion in 2020, up 77% from 2019.-M&A volume reached a new high of 220 deals in 2020, a 33% year-over-year increase.-Things really started heating up in the fourth quarter of 2020, when 75 M&A deals took place, nearly double the number of deals made in Q4 2019. While some studios have begun to finally open up to selling across platforms, it's quite easy to see danger on the horizon with all of this consolidation. If the ability to distribute titles suddenly ends up primarily in the hands of a small number of corporate entities, we could see huge steps backwards in a return towards exclusive games, exclusive hardware, and the like. For an industry that has been speeding towards more and more revenue, this could be one hell of a speed bump.
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Mar-2021
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