This is the first time I have read an article of yours and felt it was actually bad. While you seem to want to take a nuanced viewpoint of racism and white supremacy among police, what you are actually doing is saying that police suck.
They don’t.
If you are unarmed and don’t fight with police, regardless of your race, you may get bad treatment but you will NOT be shot. If you attack police officers, shoot them, try to steal their weapon, flee the scene, you will probably get shot, regardless of race. And that’s 100% on you.
Exactly. Not enough is said about the real reason anyone is killed by Police; they resist arrest. Anytime you resist arrest you’re playing the odds. Fight the case later. The media lost all credibility last year when they pretended there were thousands of unarmed killings of blacks.
John McWhorter had a blogpost this week about how 'badly' the cops talk to blacks, never considering the aggressive, unhelpful and often violent language used by blacks on police. Doesn't every kid growing up learn respect authority AND not to ' talk back' when in the hands of the authorities (or parents for that matter). No matter, we see video after video of police in traffic violation stops where many blacks, male & female just shoot off at the mouth only aggravating the situation from the get-go. Aggression never gets you anywhere, but calmness & reason do.
More good advice - for good, well-behaved peasants. We aren't supposed to be that here.
Nor does it work: remember the guy who was shot in his car for PROPERLY informing the cop that he was legally armed? Some people just shouldn't be cops.
Philando Castile. Appalling case. (I stress here that my understanding of it is limited strictly to media reports.) Dude was carrying legally, informed the cop truthfully when asked, complied with directions, and got shot by the cop anyway. Clearly his mistake -- as with so many other situations in the USA -- was telling the truth in the first place.
NRA-adjacent lawyers should have been swarming all over this one, but... crickets.
Potentially yes. If you resist arrest or escalate a situation, you never know where it could lead. It’s so strange that people think they can just resist arrest and not have anything bad happen.
The cop overreacted. He seemed to have gotten scared. He was tried but acquitted and fired. Castile’s family got a $2 million settlement from the city.
Grisha, i'd be ok if I got shot on the street and my family got $2m. Just saying. True, my life would be over, but i'll probably die of something else and not get the $2m deposited in my wife's bank account.
Your point about the NRA is taken, however, i've found that the NRA itself is more a PAC. They barely pay much attention to their former bread and butter - gun training and publications. Just send out begs for funding by inventing new ranks in their lifetime membership system. If you want a modicum of protection for legal gun ownership/carry/use, you need something like US Law Shield, which isn't free either.
It's interesting the way the NRA has fluctuated on this throughout the years.
In the 1990's the NRA was still defending individual gun owners from government abuse. In 1992, Wayne LaPierre famously referred to the agents that shot and killed Randy Weaver wife at Ruby Ridge as "Jack booted thugs," but the NRA has since become just another cop shop conspicuously quiet on the gun rights of people threatened by home invasion by the police and black home owners in particular.
They have also formed a lobby group that works the Prosecutor and Police Unions to push for more draconian punishments around all crimes, but especially guns.
<<In 1992, Wayne LaPierre famously referred to the agents that shot and killed Randy Weaver wife at Ruby Ridge as "Jack booted thugs," but the NRA has since become just another cop shop conspicuously quiet on the gun rights of people threatened by home invasion by the police and black home owners in particular.>>
Oh man. I wish somebody would do a deep dive on this stuff. George H. W. Bush (at the time, President) notoriously resigned his NRA Life membership after LaPierre's "jackbooted thugs" remark on the principle that all federal agents were fine, upstanding people incapable of error.
What would the Founders think of the pathetic slaves many Americans have become? They risked everything to fight for their freedom. Now we have citizens who think being a good American is all about supporting their slave masters over the Constitution that was put in place to prevent America from becoming the police state it now is. At least in 1984 Winston had to be broken before he learned to love big brother.
I call them citizens, because it's only through an accident of history and geography that they occupy the same actual land once occupied by the proud independent men they have nothing in common with. Most of the 2.5 million Americans we hold in prison each year are more free than they are because at least a prisoner is not in denial about his relationship with the State barring those few who suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
Could you imagine George Washington showing up to Valley Forge and giving the troops a rousing speech along the lines of:
"Well if you stop resisting the British and accept their authority, then we won't have so many problems!
They write posts on how to be a good peasant without ever questionaing why a free man should need to bow down to the police like a peasant in their own country.
It's odd because they recognize freedom in other countries and people. They make a big showing of supporting the students in Tienanmen Square. They are with the Students in Hong Kong and those who want freedom on Cuba, but when it comes to their own country they always support the violence of their slave masters.
It would be fine with that if their slavish need for State Authority only ruined their own life. What sucks is that they are going to take the rest of us still willing to fight for freedom with them.
A few months back there was a news story about some black guy in Florida out jogging who was stopped by police. They put him on the ground and interrogated him. Given the national mood and the human anxiety most of us would feel if that happend to us, he understandably thought he was going to die. But he had the presence of mind to cooperate politely. There’d been a burglary and he met the perp’s description. The police satisfied themselves it wasn’t him and thanked him for his cooperation. They were so happy with how he handled the situation they offered him a job on the force as a community relations outreach liaison. That’s where he works today. True story.
What does it mean? We all have our own answer I suppose.
Back in the 20th century aggressive ticketing by police at certain times in certain places was a cliche. It rarely led to anything but an angry motorist a few bucks poorer.
The common denominator in who gets shot (with some rare exceptions) is who fights the police. For some subset of the youth population, There may be cultural stigma in not fighting back, you’re not a man or something, letting the police push you around. And that makes the police more aggressive. It’s a chicken and an egg problem.
Better community relations efforts seem a step in the right direction.
I think this ignores that many police officers intentionally escalate situations in order to charge the person with resisting arrest, which is a felony.
We watched this play out in Florida. The city council passed a law making it a simply misdemeanor to not wear a helmet while biking. The police enforced this almost exclusively among youth in poor neighborhoods and more than once were caught escalating the situation to get a felony for resisting arrest.
I'm restricting my comment on this Post to "how to avoid getting shot in a police encounter". In most cases, it's fairly easy to avoid -- cooperate politely. There does not appear to be a racial factor in the data in the few instances where unarmed people not resisting arrest do end up shot -- contrary to last year's agit-prop that many media channels and democrat politicians stoked to get elected and that caused riots in cities across the US.
That rhetoric was every bit as ugly as the iconic early 20th century southern politician stoking up race hate among poor whites.
I never thought I'd see this in my life in the USA coming out of mainstream democrats and their mouthpieces. Silly me. Lesson learned.
Some of the stuff people are getting shot and killed over is just ridiculous. And then the cop keeps his job or maybe goes and gets another job -as a cop. C’mon, man.
The question i always have, in the instances where the suspect isn't actually aiming a gun at anyone, is why couldn't these cops just aim for the leg, instead of for the kill?
“There’d been a burglary and he met the perp’s description,”? What was the description? Black dude? The go-to excuse for every single unwarranted stop-and-frisk that I was subject to when I lived in Florida was ALWAYS,”There’s been some reports of burglaries in the neighborhood.” Even though I’d be walking down the street empty-handed, no “burglary tools” on me, no stereos or televisions, no nothing. I was walking to the store to get some groceries or some beer. Minding my own business.
“Oh, I guess if the cops say there were some reports of burglaries in the neighborhood, they can do whatever…” Do y’all even hear yourselves? You’re advocating for a police state, the same shit you cry about when you talk about “Google” and “Facebook,” but when actual human beings are victims of police state tactics, stopped and searched for non-existent reasons, you’re like,”Just lay down and take it.” Get off the internet. Because that ain’t real life.
I know all about being angry and pissy about a cop-stop. LA cops were notorious for being aggressive. About 20 years ago, I got ticketed $15 for jaywalking on a crowded street crossing - I was chatting with a friend and admittedly wasn't really paying attention to the lines. I'm a white chick and at the time (lol) kinda cute. By the time, we had crossed the street, a cop was in our faces. I thought he was joking when he told us we made a 'violation'. What a douche bag. I guess he was having a slow and boring evening. Yes, those types of cops are out there.
I should add that the first night i moved to LA, my new roommate (friend of a friend, whom i had never met before) picked me up at the airport. He was driving us back to the apartment in Hollywood, and we got pulled over by cops into a gas station, car searched, luggage searched, patted down, etc. He was a white guy, i'm a white girl, we were both kind of preppy looking, and were like, wtf? Turns out he was wearing a blue baseball cap, and the cops said they thought we might have been gang members. Right.
Any cop should be trained to deal with that aspect of things, letting it slide off their backs, and not needlessly escalate any potentially fraught situation. Seriously. If you can't keep your cool when you are going to be being yelled at a lot, you're in trouble, and better off finding another career.
Esp since a lot of the people who become cops are exactly the kind of people who want to be obeyed and being a cop is an easy way to get that kind of authority.
Impunity virtually guarantees abuse, from some if not all, and attracts the worst. We all know that, but apparently not those who write the laws and policies protecting police.
The big demonstrations in 2020 have had one useful effect: there are now more prosecutions of abusive cops, and more reporting of them. Long term, that might help, though the first effect seems to have been doubling down by abusive cops.
I'm not BLM and I'm not Antifa, but I marched in Portland when the Feds showed up because they had no business being in my city. No question there have been some stupid people playing stupid games with the police and you can always find some click bait jackass to tell the media he wants the entire White Supremacist American government overthrown to the delight of the Ben Shapiro's out there who never met an idiot on the street they did not portray as speaking for every protester out there and a threat to America.
Here's what we accomplished, however:
The current police union contract is being directly challenge by the city council for the first time ever in areas like police impunity when they violate the law.
We are setting up a meaningful civilian oversight board with the power to punish bad actors within the police. Also a first.
After 30 years of never charging a single police officer with violence regardless of circumstances, 3 officers have been charged for violent crimes for the first time ever in the last 12 months.
Hopefully there will be more changes, but these alone justifies some graffiti and silly people with a silly agenda.
OK, I get that, but if that were the definitive case we would hear about fuck all except the bad cases. How many GOOD cases vs bad cases are we walking about here? Seriously.
In the general human populace? I mean, are you trying to insinuate that no police officers can de-escalate a situation? Seriously? Think about yourself. Never had a time when you knew that responding to shouting would not aid matters? What a joke.
True DAT ! ;-D I have four cops in my family (hey, we're Irish, what else are the kids gonna do ?) but you should HEAR THEM (after being carefully coached at the beginning of every shift on the "Talking points of the day") trying to defend videos like - A cop shooting an unarmed black man in the back, *while the victim was RUNNING AWAY FROM THE COP ! The justification ? "The cop feared for his life". The video of cops who shoot and kill a black man whom they do not know, who has no visible weapon, and who is SLEEPING in his own car. "The cops feared for their lives ......"
Cops who shoot and kill an 8 year old boy with an air gun ...... the cops who shoot and kill a 12 year-old boy in an alley because he has a gun in his hand ...... ooops, gun turns out to be the boy's cell phone. This is the result of a SCREWY training program. The wealthy have *always paid cops to "keep the riff-raff out of the wealthy neighborhoods." The way cops define "riff-raff" has changed very little since the beginning of the U.S.
"Qualified Immunity" has morphed into an equivalent of the 007 License To Kill.
And before we start playing violins for "good cops", my family members ARE
good cops. But they are *also members of a twisted System trying their best
to *remain "good cops", in *spite of the System they work for. Three quarters of them (total of four, three male, one female working in different "cop shops" around the West) would be the first to *agree that the System is in dire need of some HUGE changes. CHANGE ? Yes. DEFUND ? Don't talk like a silly child.
One of my badge-wearing relatives is with LAPD, and is now in his mid-fifties.
You should hear HIM trying to justify the video of the beating of Rodney King !
So, indeed, as Mr. Warrick remarks above, it is all about the way your biases (even those loaded into your head this morning at cop roll call) lead you to view the video.
Error "cops who shoot an 8 year old boy who is *carrying an air gun" is correct. The cops did not shoot the boy *with an air gun ..... we might only wish.
You know, I almost mentioned that blogpost, but because McWhorter has been so good on attacking idiotic CRT a lot of right wingers who think the police can do no wrong (with the exception of Jan. 6 of course) have embraced him. He is black too, which in a twisted example of "but my best friend is black!" think supporting him gives them street cred even when they go on to refer to other black people as thugs. (see post above).
They have so few heroes that are the right color. It seemed cruel to steal him away from them with that blog post.
McWhorter cited a study that took into account the demeanor of the people the cops were talking to. Besides, what is your evidence that blacks are less respectful toward cops in an encounter? I know that’s the stereotype, but is it substantiated empirically?
Blacks are not necessarily less respectful but they can be culpable, unlike today's narrative that they can seemingly do no wrong or are not responsible for their bad deeds. George Floyd didn't deserve to die, but his behavior was hardly stellar; He was found to have been involved in 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, the beating of 4 victims senseless, passing counterfeit money, and was arrested 23 times since 1998. Yet, Floyd is revered as a saint - statues are raised to honor him, his family has been awarded millions.
Wow, this is not what this article is saying at all. This piece is actually exploring how different aspects of our society inform one another without the current common caveman theme of “Police Bad,” or its counterpoint caveman story, “Police Good.” These things are incredibly complicated.
There are problems in our society with over-policing and bad policing that should be addressed, but people have instead attacked working class police as if they’re practicing ancient witchcraft without looking at the issues that lead to bad policing, and how dumb sloganeering has replaced any constructive change.
This is the kind of reporting we need on these issues.
I completely disagree with you. We have communities which are in crisis because the rule of law has been undermined by the ongoing attacks on policing. Police have a very specific role in communities and it's a vital role. Stop undermining them and let them protect our children.
This is the issue: I absolutely agree that police are vital to communities. I am not undermining police, and neither is this piece. I think "abolish the police" and "ACAB" and "defund the police" were ridiculous, daft slogans.
As this piece recognizes — and many liberals, leftists, conservatives, and libertarians recognize — there are issues in communities that have been done a disservice by over-policing and crooked policing.
Justin Amash, the republican-voting libertarian in congress tweeted during last summer's protests and riots:
"End qualified immunity. End civil asset forfeiture. End the drug war. End overcriminalization. End no-knock warrants. End militarization of police. End mandatory minimums."
I don't agree with Amash on much, but I agree with him on all of this. Dim activists attacked this line of thinking, saying "defund" is the only solution so conversations went absolutely nowhere.
Reactionaries bitterly attacking reactionaries is no way to run a society.
If you end qualified immunity, and let people sue police officers personally, there will be a flood of biblical proportions of nuisance lawsuits and we will no longer have police. During last summer, while brick-throwing arsonist cop attacking rioters were destroying 2 billion in property and killing 30 people, a lot of politicians reflexively said a lot of irresponsible things. Whether it's rioters on January 6th or rioters in Lafayette Park trying to breach the barriers to the White House and forcing the President's family to be moved to a bunker, that is not what should inform out decisions about what is best for the community. What remains true is that we need a highly functioning police force. YES, if an officer is incompetent or breaks the law, they need to be removed from that job. And they should not be able to work in policing again. But that is a tiny fraction of cases. What we are seeing is police are being criticized for their actions when dealing with people who are actively attacking them, sometimes with weapons, sometimes not. But if you attack the police, I have sympathy for you, but you are going to be shot and possibly killed. If you are unarmed and not attacking them, they you won't except for an extremely tiny number of instances.
«If you end qualified immunity, and let people sue police officers personally, there will be a flood of biblical proportions of nuisance lawsuits and we will no longer have police.»
Those are two separate thing. In any case as to "qualified immunity" there are two typical cases:
* In civilized countries the police have fairly *limited* qualified immunity and abuses of that limited qualified immunity are investigated and punished severely as a counterpart to the privilege of that immunity.
* In third world countries with fascist governments with colonial attitude to the populace the police have pretty wide qualified immunity, and abuses are not investigated or or punished very lightly, as long as the police treat with the "shoot to kill" iron fist only the peasants (of any color or type), not the masters; the logic is keep the colonial population cowed and scared.
I guess many people would like the philipino, turkish, congolese or uzbek approach to policing in the USA, and indeed it has mostly like that in many places for a long time.
Before you judge, go for a ride-along. I did, and it completely changed my perspective. If you're not willing to experience it, please don't judge the cops from a standpoint of ignorance.
Even the best cops end up jaded because they predominantly deal with victims of crime and perpetrators of crime. When that is your daily grind, it's going to warp your view of people. Not a gig I would choose, but it is one that society needs filled.
The problem is we don't have a system to hold the bad ones accountable, and ideally weed them the hell out of the job (instead of cycling them between agencies).
No but we have a system for NOT holding them to account and not weeding them out. It’s called police unions, in conjunction with a court-created law called qualified immunity.
And the cops find themselves running after the same dopes and former convicts on the street days after they just arrested them the last time. That's the burnout; it's a revolving door of justice or perhaps, more accurately injustice.
Internal affairs is not a system, it is a charade. At the very best, it removes a problem from one department, but does not stop that problem from attaching itself to another agency. And that is on the rare occasions when the cops in IA don't serve the interests of the police union first.
Now why don't you regale us all with how narrow a protection qualified immunity is.
It was pretty obvious that when he said "we don't have a system", he was implicitly saying "we don't have a system that actually works", which is effectively the same thing as not having a system.
In fact, you could argue that it's even worse than not having a system, since what you actually have is a facade that fools people into thinking there is something effective in place, so they don't push for change the same way they would if there was nothing there at all.
Unfortunately it always elicits a comment from the dumbest person in the thread, who can’t wrap his head around the difference between someone with a pseudonym who LARPs fake physical bravado, and someone with a pseudonym who doesnt.
Physical bravado? You do realize he was being hyperbolic and not physically threatening?
One of the more disappointing changes I have seen in America is an entire new group of people unable to distinguish between upsetting language and actual physical violence.
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.
Jesus Christ, Dude! Your comments are some of the most naive I've read in this forum! You sound exactly like people, especially cops, DA's, etc, that say with regard to our justice system things like, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about." That is complete bullshit! Once law enforcement sets it's eyes on you, you got A LOT to worry about, regardless. You are probably another person that has never had any interaction with law enforcement in your life, because those are the ONLY people that believe what you believe.
Dave - Do be clear. We had a President that bragged about breaking tax laws thus stealing millions from tax payers. And these same people that say "If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" defend him stealing millions from tax payers out of one side of their mouth while defending cops for beating someone selling cigarettes on the street...
CNN: I guess you don't listen to Trump himself. I dont know about you but i had to pay rent with after tax money. I had to pay for my kids tuition with after tax money... But Trump thinks he did not have to?
“They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car,” he said at a rally in Sarasota, Fla. “You didn't pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is. You didn't pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don't even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?”
Adam - "Cheating" on your taxes is breaking the law. Giving a bank documents that value property at one value and government that value it at a different value is fraud.
Nothing wrong with minimizing your taxes.
Trump's team is not being indicted for minimizing his taxes. They are bing investigated for fraud.
Sure, if he actually cheated on his taxes, that's obviously breaking the law. But you said "We had a President that bragged about breaking tax laws thus stealing millions from tax payers." This never happened. Trump never said he broke tax laws. He may well have done so, but he only "bragged" about using legal methods to minimize his tax.
Adam - He has been convicted of breaking tax laws with his Charity. He is under investigation for breaking tax laws and his accountant has been indicted.
He is no more or less guilty of breaking the law than the guy the police kicked the door in on and ended up shooting his girlfriend dead...
My point is that the crimes Trump is being investigated for involve far more theft than the crimes the accused "petty" drug dealer was being accused of. But Trump or his attorney Cohen, his 2 Campaign Chairmans and his CPA did not get their doors kicked in with no knock warrents.
My point in drawing the comparison aligns with Matt's. This is coming down to stupid leadership of the police. My additional observation is that the stupidity leans to the poor and away from the rich and my example validates that.
There are lots and lots more examples of rich having a far different justice system than the poor and middle class.
Nah not really. Once your pulled over, that’s it; can’t argue and then resist arrest. If you get an asshole cop fight it later. Why is that so difficult to understand?
For him - "fight it later". Good idea. The average person of color, with less than $400 in their bank account, rent due and a shitty job who is beaten for no good reason by a cop is going to "fight it later" and it will all be good,,,
Actually I did that once, purely for humor, and also to annoy the cop by making him show up in court. I had been given a speeding ticket basically for speeding up to let a police car get by a line of trucks, but it was me the cop wanted. He lied thoroughly about the whole incident. I had written up a description of it which the magistrate didn't even look at before finding me guilty; all as expected, except the cop lied so extravagantly that he got a case of nerves and was shaking before he got done. I hung around for the next few cases. One was someone who had six witnesses on his side -- ignored. The next one was a blonde bombshell the cop had obviously pulled over just to get a closer ogle and chat her up a bit. Guilty, but later the presiding magistrate instructed the cop and how to do the bombshell thing without having to go to court. It was all pretty funny. I appealed, of course, just to run up their costs, and add to the waste paper supply. But the real payoff occurred a month or two later, when the magistrate himself was arrested for selling dismissals. By the way, everyone was just as White as all get-out. Couldn't've been Whiter. I can imagine what would have happened if I had gone in there improperly pigmented.
Not sure what pigmentation has to do with it; plenty of blacks and whites have been convicted for being corrupt. The wheels of justice move slowly but they do move.
I'm not advocating resisting arrest. I don't know where you got that, but your statement is just as naive. It assumes you and the cop are equally considered in the eyes of the court. That is NOT how it works. You must be another one that's had few if any interactions with our justice system.
What are you reading?!?! Where in the world are you getting the idea that I'm advocating resisting arrest, or "fighting a guy with a gun"?!?! OF COURSE if you're pulled over, just take the ticket! You'd have to be a moron to do otherwise! What's going on in your head, man?
He will learn. Or he won't. Though he is probably going to be lucky enough to get to live to so do. You think any of the people under discussion thought they were going to die that day when they left the house? Nope. There is a REASON why black people in America don't call the police.
The founder's knew what they were doing when the wrote the 5th.
It should surprise no one that in the rare event the police, prosecutors or judges are arrested they ALWAYS ask for a lawyer first and say nothing.
These are the people who actually understand how the system works and can expect some sympathy from those they talk to. If they need a lawyer, you can be damn sure you do also.
I hate it when I read articles where the journo makes some idiotic statement like "he was hiding behind the fifth,' or "he was coaching him to "play it cool" when he told him to get a lawyer and not talk."
With so many authoritarians in the media, it's amazing we have any Constitution left at all.
"preposterous reason that she’d failed to signal before changing lanes"...
...this to me is a valid (not preposterous) reason to pull someone over. A lady who failed to signal almost killed me and my 2 children, a couple of decades back.
The escalation is the issue. Almost do what the cops tell you on the spot, and deal with the issue in court, later, if necessary. Least that's what I always told my kids.
If someone that didn't signal their intentions almost killed you and your kids, then YOU were not paying attention, and/or you assumed something you shouldn't have.
I have seen cars, on countless occasions, unknowingly speeding down the highway with an indicator flashing. If you trust an automobile indicator, whether on or off, you're an idiot.
2. Yes, cars and motorcycles often incorrectly use their indicators. If you think that this can't contribute to an accident even if you're paying attention, then quite frankly you haven't driven enough.
Diallo fled and reached into his jacket. It turned out that he was pulling out his wallet but that is still a foolish move.
The Castille situation is less clear, as far as I can tell as it is based only on what the shooting officer could or could not see in a dark automobile. (he believed that Castille was pulling out his gun, despite being ordered not to). A jury (including people of color) decided they believed the officer and acquitted him (the officers in the Diallo case were also acquitted by a multiracial jury).
In both cases, people who saw and heard a great deal more information than you came to the conclusion that both men behaved in a way that made the police reaction "reasonable."
There have unquestionably been cases where police have been completely wrong (and even malevolent) but the reality is that we, as citizens, require LE to confront life threatening situations on a daily basis and errors will occur. Statistically, these are rare but unfortunately we have an unethical media that misrepresent these tragedies and a large segment of the population that is so innumerate that they cannot grasp the statistics.
Skeptic.com conducted a survey that showed that vast numbers of Americans believe that more than 1000 unarmed black men are killed by police every year and a mindboggling number believe it is 10 thousand or more! Every stripe of political belief has the ratio of blacks (to others) killed wrong but liberals, as a group, put the percentage at about 60% (versus the actual of around 25%). Generally speaking, the more conservative you are the more likely you are to have the numbers right.
Does this make unnecessary deaths caused by police "acceptable"? Of course not. It does, however, make it clear that the problem is not pervasive (which, in turn, makes the presumption of a wildly violent and/or racist police force even more absurd).
"Diallo fled and reached into his jacket" Diallo was standing in the entry to his own apartment building when the gang of police accosted him. He pulled out his wallet when they demanded ID.
In other words, you're being deliberately deceptive.
No, you are being deliberately obtuse. Testimony that a jury believed was that he fled and reached into his jacket. You have a problem with that, take it up with them.
Prosecutors control all the evidence and judges defer to them on all court decisions.
When you have prosecutors acting as an additional defense attorney on behalf of the police officer it's not hard to arrive at a reasonable doubt. It's why there was so much outrage over the Taylor grand jury and why the DA tried to suppress the information from the public. DA's are in no position to hold the police they work with every day accountable.
Yawn - the "they are all dirty" defense. Getting back to the real point, are you suggesting the juries were in on the "dirty dealings" of the two cases I referenced????
Similarly, violent crime is a smaller cause of death than people think. Way more people die from medical malpractice. Not a reason to not to address violent crime.
Bingo - and thanks for the names. The Castillo killing was lame-brained panic, but Diallo's looked exactly like a mob rubout, and there've been others, similar.
«If you are unarmed and don’t fight with police, regardless of your race, you may get bad treatment but you will NOT be shot. If you attack police officers, shoot them, try to steal their weapon, flee the scene, you will probably get shot»
That seem to be an extraordinary claim that the police have a right to self defence that includes shooting to kill people who flee and thus pose no threat to them, shoot to kill unarmed people, shoot to kill armed people who don't draw or use their weapons, and that of course usually sooner or lated includes shoot to kill pretty much in any case in which they can claim they felt threatened by the possibility of any such action.
I guess that "proportionate response" only applies to the peasants, not to the enforcers or their masters.
"police have a right to self defence that includes shooting to kill people who flee and thus pose no threat to them, shoot to kill unarmed people, shoot to kill armed people who don't draw or use their weapons" First off, I did not say police have the right to shoot people who flee. I said, if you do the listed things, you are likely to be shot. Draw their weapons? Is this is old west? If you attack the police, armed or not, you are asking to be shot. But the instances of police shooting people who were unarmed are few and far between compared to 61 million interactions with the public. "As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019."
«First off, I did not say police have the right to shoot people who flee. I said, if you do the listed things, you are likely to be shot.»
But you did write that “If you [...] flee the scene, you will probably get shot, regardless of race. And that’s 100% on you”: if it is “100% on you” obviously the police have done nothing wrong in shooting to kill well beyond legitimate defense.
In civilized countries the extent of police immunity is to presumptively believe them when they say "he started shooting", not a licence to start shooting first.
«If you attack the police, armed or not, you are asking to be shot.»
Not in civilized countries; resisting arrest is not a capital offense, and even if were police agents are not empowered to prosecute, convict and execute capital punishments on the spot, straight away, as in "shoot to kill".
Saying "Shoot to kill" shows you do not understand how this works. Police are not trained to shoot people in the hand or the foot or the leg. They are aiming at the body.
I think you're smart enough to know the difference between what I said and what you're saying I said. I said if you do the things listed that you are likely to get shot and that is on you. That doesn't not say that police have the right to shoot unarmed suspects who are fleeing. I find your comment to be extremely disingenuous.
If you attack police, try to take their weapon, or otherwise fight with them, you should know the risks you are taking. The type of felon who would attack police are a very dangerous group of individuals. I have sympathy for them, but they are putting themselves at risk of death. It is they who is putting themselves in that situation. That is not to say that I condone police shooting unarmed people. I have specifically said that police shooting an unarmed person is a crime.
I have also made a distinction between armed citizens shot by police and unarmed. The reason is that if you are armed and in conflict with the police, you are automatically in a situation of high risk, and you have put yourself in that situation. Putting yourself in that situation or attacking police is 100% on that person who has undertaken that.
Civilized countries, in your view, would allow armed criminals to attack police without the police having the right to shoot back. I don't know what countries those might be, but I suspect you are wrong.
Regarding unarmed people, yes, there are vanishingly rare cases where police shoot unarmed people, and those are crimes.
There seems to be this assumption in posts like this that if the police do anything other than shoot you they are justified.
You're welcome to make that your standard of acceptable conduct, but I consider the routine domestic violence, rape, theft, assault, planting evidence and general police corruption problematic even if no one is shot in the process.
The fact they didn't shoot them doesn't make everything else OK.
Yeah Bill, and a lot more times Americans themselves suck. What if it were your job to impose order on millions of selfish, maladjusted assholes whose “parent” just couldn’t be bothered to teach their demon spawn to respect authority? We’ve got a serious problem in this country alright, but it’s not with the police.
What if your view of society was a group of "selfish, maladjusted assholes whose “parent” just couldn’t be bothered to teach their demon spawn to respect authority"
I would argue that view should disqualify you from law enforcement. Instead, it appears to be a requirement.
That's not how I read it at all. I read it as "bad treatment" appears to be positively correlated with "contact" and "contact" is higher in lower income areas that are positively correlated with racial minorities. Which certainly seems to be more nuanced than "police suck".
Same. Matt doesn’t day it, but ditching the futile and unjust War on Drugs would go a long way. We learned that well enough to end Prohibition, but need to learn it again.
You're up top, so you're the example. There's an ongoing discussion - probably here - of whether modern "conservatives" are authoritarian. Speaking from experience, they certainly aren't the anti-authoritarians that Goldwater exemplified. Anybody remember him?
The perfect example of "authoritarian" is the kneejerk support of police, the essence of government authority, and repeating all their propaganda. Granted, nobody wants to live in a lawless society; the real issue is whether contemporary police are really enforcing the law, or just acting like well-armed gangsters. Their case-solved rate, notably on the crimes of theft we all object to, is very poor. Instead, they're out there gratuitously throwing their weight around and, on bad days, killing people. About half the people they kill are white, as far as anyone can tell, so this isn't just a race problem. If you meet the wrong cop, your white privilege won't save you - but whites often fail to make the huge stink that blacks know they have to do.
So, cop-supporting conservatives: you're the perfect example of what we mean by "authoritarian."
First off, I've been in the GREEN PARTY since the 90's after Biden's Crime Bill, the Credit Card Bill, and Welfare Reform were passed by the Democrats -- Something the GOP could never have pulled off. I just want my kids, and everyone else's, to live in safe communities.
Second, it is not authoritarian to want safe communities. So your premise is just wrong.
Third, saying police are not "enforcing the law" but are "well-armed gangstars" is "repeating all their propaganda". I have repeated no one's propaganda.
"gratuitously throwing their weight around and, on bad days, killing people. About half the people they kill are white" This is not born out by the data. In 2019 when 61 million people had interactions with the police, under 40 unarmed people were shot by police.
Overall, I think your comment is out of perspective and you should rethink. The fact that you classified me as an authoritarian conservative, when you know nothing about me, demonstrates that you are out of perspective.
It isn’t “authoritarian” to want safe communities. But advocating for authoritarian tactics makes you, literally, an authoritarian. “The children! What about the children?!?” Gimme a fucking break, dude… You sound like the people in the 50’s who said Elvis was the devil’s music or the people in the 60’s who said television would melt people’s brains.
My point is that if people want to fight with police, they are risking death. But my point is not that police have the right to kill whoever they like. Unarmed people who die at the hands of police are both a tragedy and a crime. But if you are armed and you fight with police, or even if you are unarmed and you fight with police, you are putting yourself in a situation where you will probably get shot. YOU ARE PUTTING YOURSELF IN THAT SITUATION. Not the cop.
You get a lot of credit from me for being a Green. Apparently I mischaracterized you - as I wrote, you were the defender who was at the top.
On the other hand, I think you might want to re-examine your position on the police in particular.
I actually agree with Taibbi that the root of the problem is very poor management - police chiefs that refuse to supervise their employees, compounded by the excessive power of the unions - and very poor laws. Impunity is an open invitation to abuse. One thing it does is attract the worst possible candidates for the job. Then the training turns them into bullies and sociopaths.
Incidentally, my personal experiences with the local police are good, partly because I'm an old white guy and mainly because I live in a town (not Portland or Eugene) where the police are properly managed. Not perfect, but offenders are held to account. A town that usually has Greens on the city council, incidentally.
Also: you really should provide links for the numbers you're quoting; they aren't altogether plausible. The Guardian's numbers are higher, for one thing. And they don't match the news coverage - which could be distorted, I admit. For one thing, I don't think cops have much excuse for killing people armed just with a knife; if they can't disarm someone like that, they shouldn't be in the job. Or the guy with a pipe; or, of course, the ubiquitous cell-phone "guns." And despite supporting labor, I think police are one group who should NOT have a union; they have too much power without that.
"Americans want too much security at the expense of individual rights."
So, should Trump Supporters be allowed to share their beliefs on election fraud? Should people who are against masks and school closure and don't want the vaccinations be able to share their views online?
Very well-put, dude. It’s the same thing as the whole,”America! No matter what!” attitude. “Love it or leave it”? Fuck you. What actually shocks me about right-wingers’ entire attitude is that they’ll scream holy hell about something getting banned on Facebook or wherever, but when somebody gets stopped-and-frisked for no reason and then points out that their civil rights were violated, right-wingers’ first (and only) response is,”Well if you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to worry about!” They scream about “Police state! Police state!” on the internet, but when actual police state tactics are utilized, in the form of searching people (and much worse) for zero reason, they’re like,”Whatever. He should’ve just sat still. She shouldn’t have asked why she was pulled over.”
That is maybe the worst analysis of an article I have ever read. It is as if you didn't read it at all. the point he is making is that simple minded thinking is the problem. Your simple minded analysis is proof of his point.
You are entitled to your opinion. I think Taibbi added to the negative assertions about police and policing which have pervaded the discussion for a decade. And that does severe harm to policing, which does extreme harm to communities and puts more and more people at risk.
You know Matt wrote an entire in depth book about Eric Garner and the police system in America don't you? He did not do some simple drive by of the American criminal system. He performed a deep dive analysis and found serious systemic problems both with policing and those institutions that lead to bad policing (the primary topic of this article).
Matt did not do any harm to the police that they did not do to themselves. If anything, he gave them too much credit and went too easy on them.
You are the most pro-statist authoritarian member of the greens I have ever read. You don't belong in the same category by a long shot, but I guess Hitler was a vegetarian.
I accidentally tapped the heart. I meant to comment as Ron Warwick did. Sometimes police kill unarmed people who are doing nothing wrong. Sometimes police fear for their lives, or say they did, when the police were not actually in any danger at all. Oops moments happen.
“Data from The Washington Post shows that 23 “unarmed” black suspects were fatally shot by the police in 2018, while even fewer, 12, were shot in 2019.”
"Unarmed' doesn't necessarily mean you aren't violent or didn't exhibit violent behavior. In our family, my Uncle Hans, a 6'5" Latvian, had hands so big that he literally killed soldiers with them in WW2.
How many examples? Very few in comparison to the number of interactions between police officers and the public. Don't be hysterical. Please be reasonable.
If you’re unarmed and don’t resist arrest, you won’t be shot? Are you fucking serious? There’s been dozens and dozens of cases over the last decade of unarmed people being shot by the police before they even had a chance to resist arrest. Not to mention, if you weren’t doing anything wrong and the cops rolled up on you, questioned you and then and tried to take you into custody anyway (as in the case of Eric Garner), you would absolutely “resist arrest.” I know I would. I would not go willingly into a police cruiser if I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Talking about Eric Garner specifically, he wasn’t even doing anything that warranted being stopped and questioned in the first place. When I lived in Florida, that shit used to happen to me all the time. And it irritated the fuck out of me, every single time. Walking down the street and a cop car pulls up and asks me what I’m doing, where I’m going, where do I live… Fuck you. None of your business. And when I told them it was none of their business, I’d get shoved up against their car and searched. If they’d tried to take me into custody, I absolutely would’ve resisted, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place. You’d do the same thing. If not, I really admire your “passive resistance” and your “live to fight another day” mentality. Not all of us can afford to hire a lawyer or have the time and money to fight it in court later. Which is exactly what the police are counting on.
Also, Eric Garner wasn’t shot, he was strangled. So there’s that…
Haha! There it is! The “provide me with links” response. How predictable. If you’re genuinely interested, you can go find them yourself. Also, cops can call anything besides “total acquiescence” resisting arrest. If you ask them why they pulled you over in the first place, they’ll call that “resisting arrest.” After one of my (legitimate) arrests, when I actually was breaking the law, they tried to tack on a “resisting arrest” charge, which was later dropped. I absolutely did not resist. But after you’re booked and during your bond hearing, that extra charge increases your bail. Which, again, is by design.
And you’ll be waiting, guy. I’m not trying to “win the internet” so I don’t have lists of links at the ready. These are stories I’ve seen over the years. If you’re truly interested, all you have to do is Google “unarmed man shot by police.” There’ll be dozens of stories that you can peruse. Like I said, Google “Philando Castile,” who was a registered gun owner and told the cops he had a gun in his glove compartment when they pulled him over. They shot him anyway. If googling that is too difficult for you, then you’re clearly just a simple little troll who isn’t here to actually talk about anything.
Exactly. You have nothing to back up your false bullshit claim because it’s false and bullshit.
As I told you- don’t resist arrest and cop an attitude. If you’re subject to a bullshit stop, take the ticket and fight it in Court. That’s the only way.
"Also, Eric Garner wasn’t shot, he was strangled. So there’s that…"
And there's the rub of the game they continually play to excuse bad policing.
They take those the police report as shot (which the police routinely undercount). Then they take those who were actually killed. Then they take a subset within a subset (black people the police admit to killing with a gun who did not have a weapon at the time) and come up with a predictably ridiculous low number by excluding all the Eric Garner's, the George Floyds, and even the Castille's in Minnesota who was not actually reaching for a gun, but had one is the car so he is not counted in the black unarmed category.
It's such a silly and transparent ploy, and yet they keep repeating it over, and over and over.
"Hey look, the number of unarmed one eyed black rabbi's confined to a wheelchair on a Tuesday that the police shot and killed is like one. Clearly we have no problem with police violence in America!"
You are entitled to your opinion. Your use of profanity makes you sound uneducated. Just letting you know. Are there instances of abuses? Yes. Are they vanishingly rare compared to the number of interactions between police and citizens? Yes. Are they out of proportion racially? No.
Are they out of proportion racially? Are you really asking that question? There’s tons and tons of data that says yes, they are. This isn’t my opinion, these are facts. And the reason instances of “abuses” are “vanishingly rare” is because a light is being shined on them and people have had enough. What rock have you been living under? As far as my use of words like “fuck” and “shit” in my posts are concerned, sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities.
What I love about these people who complain about the US becoming a “police state” because of Google and YouTube and shit is that when they’re actually confronted with real cases of police state-type goings on, like stop-and-frisk etc, they’re like,”Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to be worried about!” Cops rolling up on you, fucking with you and searching you without probable cause is the very definition of Police State. But they’re fine with that, because its never happened to them. They’re morons.
I think this may be Steve’s first fucking time on the internet. Or maybe it’s his first time on a fucking non-Christian website. Which has gotta be a really shitty experience for somebody as fucking “educated” as his sorry-ass. Or something… I dunno.
The data does not support that shooting over unarmed citizens demonstrates a racial bias. "As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019." However, in terms of being abusive at traffic stops, yes, there is data that suggests a racial bias.
Regarding the rudeness, profanity and personal attacks. That is your personal issue to solve for yourself.
Blacks are only about 10% of the population, so 14 to 25 is grossly disproportionate - your own numbers. And I suspect those numbers are being manipulated; for one thing, they exclude people who could and should have been disarmed by any competent cop.
"As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019."
You asked,”Are there instances of abuses?” not “unarmed shootings.” You asked if the instances of “abuses” were disproportionately racial. They are. All of the data bears that out. Also, I didn’t say anything about “unarmed BLACK people being shot” in my initial post; I said “unarmed PEOPLE.” You’re boring, dude. And predictable. I’m done with your sorry-ass.
I answered my own questions that there is evidence there is a racial component to abuses. But not to shootings of unarmed citizens. Not sure why you are carrying on about it. Your level of discourse is also quite rude and uneducated.
When you don’t really have anything to say, I guess you say,”Gosh, when you said ‘fuck’ in your post, I really thought that sounded uneducated.” Because only really dumb people cuss? I guess?
This is the first time I have read an article of yours and felt it was actually bad. While you seem to want to take a nuanced viewpoint of racism and white supremacy among police, what you are actually doing is saying that police suck.
They don’t.
If you are unarmed and don’t fight with police, regardless of your race, you may get bad treatment but you will NOT be shot. If you attack police officers, shoot them, try to steal their weapon, flee the scene, you will probably get shot, regardless of race. And that’s 100% on you.
Exactly. Not enough is said about the real reason anyone is killed by Police; they resist arrest. Anytime you resist arrest you’re playing the odds. Fight the case later. The media lost all credibility last year when they pretended there were thousands of unarmed killings of blacks.
Thanks for the cop-shop propaganda.
I’ll just cut right to the endgame here.
When I’m being loaded in a box car, should I resist? Or should I pin my hopes on later fighting the case from the gas chamber?
Grow up.
I guess you're pulling for prison guard, right?
Only if you can by one of the inmates.
Don’t resist. Fight it later.
Gunning for train conductor, are you?
John McWhorter had a blogpost this week about how 'badly' the cops talk to blacks, never considering the aggressive, unhelpful and often violent language used by blacks on police. Doesn't every kid growing up learn respect authority AND not to ' talk back' when in the hands of the authorities (or parents for that matter). No matter, we see video after video of police in traffic violation stops where many blacks, male & female just shoot off at the mouth only aggravating the situation from the get-go. Aggression never gets you anywhere, but calmness & reason do.
More good advice - for good, well-behaved peasants. We aren't supposed to be that here.
Nor does it work: remember the guy who was shot in his car for PROPERLY informing the cop that he was legally armed? Some people just shouldn't be cops.
Philando Castile. Appalling case. (I stress here that my understanding of it is limited strictly to media reports.) Dude was carrying legally, informed the cop truthfully when asked, complied with directions, and got shot by the cop anyway. Clearly his mistake -- as with so many other situations in the USA -- was telling the truth in the first place.
NRA-adjacent lawyers should have been swarming all over this one, but... crickets.
Extremely rare that someone complies exactly with instructions and gets killed. Almost never.
So "failing to comply" with a cop carries the death sentence. You want to show us law on that?
Potentially yes. If you resist arrest or escalate a situation, you never know where it could lead. It’s so strange that people think they can just resist arrest and not have anything bad happen.
This way to the gas chambers, ladies and gentlemen.
I call bullshit
In denial, huh?
Not at all. If you’re pulled over- comply. Comply. Comply. Comply.
Fight it later if it was a bullshit stop. In Blands case, seems to have been a bullshit stop.
The cop overreacted. He seemed to have gotten scared. He was tried but acquitted and fired. Castile’s family got a $2 million settlement from the city.
Good for Castile's family. Sucks to be Castile.
Grisha, i'd be ok if I got shot on the street and my family got $2m. Just saying. True, my life would be over, but i'll probably die of something else and not get the $2m deposited in my wife's bank account.
Your point about the NRA is taken, however, i've found that the NRA itself is more a PAC. They barely pay much attention to their former bread and butter - gun training and publications. Just send out begs for funding by inventing new ranks in their lifetime membership system. If you want a modicum of protection for legal gun ownership/carry/use, you need something like US Law Shield, which isn't free either.
Well, of course. I think that officer was probably tragically undertrained. He should have walked away. Castile was no threat to him.
It's interesting the way the NRA has fluctuated on this throughout the years.
In the 1990's the NRA was still defending individual gun owners from government abuse. In 1992, Wayne LaPierre famously referred to the agents that shot and killed Randy Weaver wife at Ruby Ridge as "Jack booted thugs," but the NRA has since become just another cop shop conspicuously quiet on the gun rights of people threatened by home invasion by the police and black home owners in particular.
They have also formed a lobby group that works the Prosecutor and Police Unions to push for more draconian punishments around all crimes, but especially guns.
<<In 1992, Wayne LaPierre famously referred to the agents that shot and killed Randy Weaver wife at Ruby Ridge as "Jack booted thugs," but the NRA has since become just another cop shop conspicuously quiet on the gun rights of people threatened by home invasion by the police and black home owners in particular.>>
Oh man. I wish somebody would do a deep dive on this stuff. George H. W. Bush (at the time, President) notoriously resigned his NRA Life membership after LaPierre's "jackbooted thugs" remark on the principle that all federal agents were fine, upstanding people incapable of error.
Ya, and they tell me he was a "good" Bush.
Sheesh, like such a thing exists.
You nailed in OC
What would the Founders think of the pathetic slaves many Americans have become? They risked everything to fight for their freedom. Now we have citizens who think being a good American is all about supporting their slave masters over the Constitution that was put in place to prevent America from becoming the police state it now is. At least in 1984 Winston had to be broken before he learned to love big brother.
I call them citizens, because it's only through an accident of history and geography that they occupy the same actual land once occupied by the proud independent men they have nothing in common with. Most of the 2.5 million Americans we hold in prison each year are more free than they are because at least a prisoner is not in denial about his relationship with the State barring those few who suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
Could you imagine George Washington showing up to Valley Forge and giving the troops a rousing speech along the lines of:
"Well if you stop resisting the British and accept their authority, then we won't have so many problems!
They write posts on how to be a good peasant without ever questionaing why a free man should need to bow down to the police like a peasant in their own country.
It's odd because they recognize freedom in other countries and people. They make a big showing of supporting the students in Tienanmen Square. They are with the Students in Hong Kong and those who want freedom on Cuba, but when it comes to their own country they always support the violence of their slave masters.
It would be fine with that if their slavish need for State Authority only ruined their own life. What sucks is that they are going to take the rest of us still willing to fight for freedom with them.
An anecdote here, an anecdote there... it only takes a few to construct a narrative! Nicely done, Charles!
Or the pregnant woman who was pit maneuvered for not pulling over fast enough?
We are supposed to be shitheads either.
A few months back there was a news story about some black guy in Florida out jogging who was stopped by police. They put him on the ground and interrogated him. Given the national mood and the human anxiety most of us would feel if that happend to us, he understandably thought he was going to die. But he had the presence of mind to cooperate politely. There’d been a burglary and he met the perp’s description. The police satisfied themselves it wasn’t him and thanked him for his cooperation. They were so happy with how he handled the situation they offered him a job on the force as a community relations outreach liaison. That’s where he works today. True story.
What does it mean? We all have our own answer I suppose.
Back in the 20th century aggressive ticketing by police at certain times in certain places was a cliche. It rarely led to anything but an angry motorist a few bucks poorer.
So maybe if they printed the good news and ignored the bad stuff like they used to, these problems would go away.
The common denominator in who gets shot (with some rare exceptions) is who fights the police. For some subset of the youth population, There may be cultural stigma in not fighting back, you’re not a man or something, letting the police push you around. And that makes the police more aggressive. It’s a chicken and an egg problem.
Better community relations efforts seem a step in the right direction.
I think this ignores that many police officers intentionally escalate situations in order to charge the person with resisting arrest, which is a felony.
We watched this play out in Florida. The city council passed a law making it a simply misdemeanor to not wear a helmet while biking. The police enforced this almost exclusively among youth in poor neighborhoods and more than once were caught escalating the situation to get a felony for resisting arrest.
https://bostonreview.net/race-law-justice/lisa-cacho-jodi-melamed-how-police-abuse-charge-resisting-arrest
I'm restricting my comment on this Post to "how to avoid getting shot in a police encounter". In most cases, it's fairly easy to avoid -- cooperate politely. There does not appear to be a racial factor in the data in the few instances where unarmed people not resisting arrest do end up shot -- contrary to last year's agit-prop that many media channels and democrat politicians stoked to get elected and that caused riots in cities across the US.
That rhetoric was every bit as ugly as the iconic early 20th century southern politician stoking up race hate among poor whites.
I never thought I'd see this in my life in the USA coming out of mainstream democrats and their mouthpieces. Silly me. Lesson learned.
Some of the stuff people are getting shot and killed over is just ridiculous. And then the cop keeps his job or maybe goes and gets another job -as a cop. C’mon, man.
The question i always have, in the instances where the suspect isn't actually aiming a gun at anyone, is why couldn't these cops just aim for the leg, instead of for the kill?
“There’d been a burglary and he met the perp’s description,”? What was the description? Black dude? The go-to excuse for every single unwarranted stop-and-frisk that I was subject to when I lived in Florida was ALWAYS,”There’s been some reports of burglaries in the neighborhood.” Even though I’d be walking down the street empty-handed, no “burglary tools” on me, no stereos or televisions, no nothing. I was walking to the store to get some groceries or some beer. Minding my own business.
“Oh, I guess if the cops say there were some reports of burglaries in the neighborhood, they can do whatever…” Do y’all even hear yourselves? You’re advocating for a police state, the same shit you cry about when you talk about “Google” and “Facebook,” but when actual human beings are victims of police state tactics, stopped and searched for non-existent reasons, you’re like,”Just lay down and take it.” Get off the internet. Because that ain’t real life.
I know all about being angry and pissy about a cop-stop. LA cops were notorious for being aggressive. About 20 years ago, I got ticketed $15 for jaywalking on a crowded street crossing - I was chatting with a friend and admittedly wasn't really paying attention to the lines. I'm a white chick and at the time (lol) kinda cute. By the time, we had crossed the street, a cop was in our faces. I thought he was joking when he told us we made a 'violation'. What a douche bag. I guess he was having a slow and boring evening. Yes, those types of cops are out there.
Don't feel bad, i got a $100 jaywalking ticket in LA. They hated New Yorkers, apparently.
Your mistake was walking in LA. Nobody walks. You drive. And, yes, everyone hates New Yorkers.
Cut me slack, it was in Westwood Village. But, New York doesn't have jaywalking, we cross when we can. That must piss of LA cops.
I should add that the first night i moved to LA, my new roommate (friend of a friend, whom i had never met before) picked me up at the airport. He was driving us back to the apartment in Hollywood, and we got pulled over by cops into a gas station, car searched, luggage searched, patted down, etc. He was a white guy, i'm a white girl, we were both kind of preppy looking, and were like, wtf? Turns out he was wearing a blue baseball cap, and the cops said they thought we might have been gang members. Right.
Any cop should be trained to deal with that aspect of things, letting it slide off their backs, and not needlessly escalate any potentially fraught situation. Seriously. If you can't keep your cool when you are going to be being yelled at a lot, you're in trouble, and better off finding another career.
And where do you find these people?
Esp since a lot of the people who become cops are exactly the kind of people who want to be obeyed and being a cop is an easy way to get that kind of authority.
Impunity virtually guarantees abuse, from some if not all, and attracts the worst. We all know that, but apparently not those who write the laws and policies protecting police.
The big demonstrations in 2020 have had one useful effect: there are now more prosecutions of abusive cops, and more reporting of them. Long term, that might help, though the first effect seems to have been doubling down by abusive cops.
I think this is right.
I'm not BLM and I'm not Antifa, but I marched in Portland when the Feds showed up because they had no business being in my city. No question there have been some stupid people playing stupid games with the police and you can always find some click bait jackass to tell the media he wants the entire White Supremacist American government overthrown to the delight of the Ben Shapiro's out there who never met an idiot on the street they did not portray as speaking for every protester out there and a threat to America.
Here's what we accomplished, however:
The current police union contract is being directly challenge by the city council for the first time ever in areas like police impunity when they violate the law.
We are setting up a meaningful civilian oversight board with the power to punish bad actors within the police. Also a first.
After 30 years of never charging a single police officer with violence regardless of circumstances, 3 officers have been charged for violent crimes for the first time ever in the last 12 months.
Hopefully there will be more changes, but these alone justifies some graffiti and silly people with a silly agenda.
OK, I get that, but if that were the definitive case we would hear about fuck all except the bad cases. How many GOOD cases vs bad cases are we walking about here? Seriously.
If they were actually good, they'd report the bad ones that make them look bad. But they don't.
In the general human populace? I mean, are you trying to insinuate that no police officers can de-escalate a situation? Seriously? Think about yourself. Never had a time when you knew that responding to shouting would not aid matters? What a joke.
I see a lot of"Karens" popin' of with nothing but an embarrassing video to apologize for.
Depends where you get your videos.
@Ron Warrick
True DAT ! ;-D I have four cops in my family (hey, we're Irish, what else are the kids gonna do ?) but you should HEAR THEM (after being carefully coached at the beginning of every shift on the "Talking points of the day") trying to defend videos like - A cop shooting an unarmed black man in the back, *while the victim was RUNNING AWAY FROM THE COP ! The justification ? "The cop feared for his life". The video of cops who shoot and kill a black man whom they do not know, who has no visible weapon, and who is SLEEPING in his own car. "The cops feared for their lives ......"
Cops who shoot and kill an 8 year old boy with an air gun ...... the cops who shoot and kill a 12 year-old boy in an alley because he has a gun in his hand ...... ooops, gun turns out to be the boy's cell phone. This is the result of a SCREWY training program. The wealthy have *always paid cops to "keep the riff-raff out of the wealthy neighborhoods." The way cops define "riff-raff" has changed very little since the beginning of the U.S.
"Qualified Immunity" has morphed into an equivalent of the 007 License To Kill.
And before we start playing violins for "good cops", my family members ARE
good cops. But they are *also members of a twisted System trying their best
to *remain "good cops", in *spite of the System they work for. Three quarters of them (total of four, three male, one female working in different "cop shops" around the West) would be the first to *agree that the System is in dire need of some HUGE changes. CHANGE ? Yes. DEFUND ? Don't talk like a silly child.
One of my badge-wearing relatives is with LAPD, and is now in his mid-fifties.
You should hear HIM trying to justify the video of the beating of Rodney King !
So, indeed, as Mr. Warrick remarks above, it is all about the way your biases (even those loaded into your head this morning at cop roll call) lead you to view the video.
Error "cops who shoot an 8 year old boy who is *carrying an air gun" is correct. The cops did not shoot the boy *with an air gun ..... we might only wish.
You know, I almost mentioned that blogpost, but because McWhorter has been so good on attacking idiotic CRT a lot of right wingers who think the police can do no wrong (with the exception of Jan. 6 of course) have embraced him. He is black too, which in a twisted example of "but my best friend is black!" think supporting him gives them street cred even when they go on to refer to other black people as thugs. (see post above).
They have so few heroes that are the right color. It seemed cruel to steal him away from them with that blog post.
McWhorter cited a study that took into account the demeanor of the people the cops were talking to. Besides, what is your evidence that blacks are less respectful toward cops in an encounter? I know that’s the stereotype, but is it substantiated empirically?
Blacks are not necessarily less respectful but they can be culpable, unlike today's narrative that they can seemingly do no wrong or are not responsible for their bad deeds. George Floyd didn't deserve to die, but his behavior was hardly stellar; He was found to have been involved in 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, the beating of 4 victims senseless, passing counterfeit money, and was arrested 23 times since 1998. Yet, Floyd is revered as a saint - statues are raised to honor him, his family has been awarded millions.
One poor example is the best you can do? I could do better than that myself.
I suggest a (careful) walk around your local city.
Done that. Harlem. When crime rates were a lot higher than they are now. It wasn’t like it’s shown in the news, I can tell you that.
Wow, this is not what this article is saying at all. This piece is actually exploring how different aspects of our society inform one another without the current common caveman theme of “Police Bad,” or its counterpoint caveman story, “Police Good.” These things are incredibly complicated.
There are problems in our society with over-policing and bad policing that should be addressed, but people have instead attacked working class police as if they’re practicing ancient witchcraft without looking at the issues that lead to bad policing, and how dumb sloganeering has replaced any constructive change.
This is the kind of reporting we need on these issues.
I completely disagree with you. We have communities which are in crisis because the rule of law has been undermined by the ongoing attacks on policing. Police have a very specific role in communities and it's a vital role. Stop undermining them and let them protect our children.
This is the issue: I absolutely agree that police are vital to communities. I am not undermining police, and neither is this piece. I think "abolish the police" and "ACAB" and "defund the police" were ridiculous, daft slogans.
As this piece recognizes — and many liberals, leftists, conservatives, and libertarians recognize — there are issues in communities that have been done a disservice by over-policing and crooked policing.
Justin Amash, the republican-voting libertarian in congress tweeted during last summer's protests and riots:
"End qualified immunity. End civil asset forfeiture. End the drug war. End overcriminalization. End no-knock warrants. End militarization of police. End mandatory minimums."
I don't agree with Amash on much, but I agree with him on all of this. Dim activists attacked this line of thinking, saying "defund" is the only solution so conversations went absolutely nowhere.
Reactionaries bitterly attacking reactionaries is no way to run a society.
If you end qualified immunity, and let people sue police officers personally, there will be a flood of biblical proportions of nuisance lawsuits and we will no longer have police. During last summer, while brick-throwing arsonist cop attacking rioters were destroying 2 billion in property and killing 30 people, a lot of politicians reflexively said a lot of irresponsible things. Whether it's rioters on January 6th or rioters in Lafayette Park trying to breach the barriers to the White House and forcing the President's family to be moved to a bunker, that is not what should inform out decisions about what is best for the community. What remains true is that we need a highly functioning police force. YES, if an officer is incompetent or breaks the law, they need to be removed from that job. And they should not be able to work in policing again. But that is a tiny fraction of cases. What we are seeing is police are being criticized for their actions when dealing with people who are actively attacking them, sometimes with weapons, sometimes not. But if you attack the police, I have sympathy for you, but you are going to be shot and possibly killed. If you are unarmed and not attacking them, they you won't except for an extremely tiny number of instances.
«If you end qualified immunity, and let people sue police officers personally, there will be a flood of biblical proportions of nuisance lawsuits and we will no longer have police.»
Those are two separate thing. In any case as to "qualified immunity" there are two typical cases:
* In civilized countries the police have fairly *limited* qualified immunity and abuses of that limited qualified immunity are investigated and punished severely as a counterpart to the privilege of that immunity.
* In third world countries with fascist governments with colonial attitude to the populace the police have pretty wide qualified immunity, and abuses are not investigated or or punished very lightly, as long as the police treat with the "shoot to kill" iron fist only the peasants (of any color or type), not the masters; the logic is keep the colonial population cowed and scared.
I guess many people would like the philipino, turkish, congolese or uzbek approach to policing in the USA, and indeed it has mostly like that in many places for a long time.
Have you bothered asking why someone feels the need to throw Molotov’s instead of talking?
Maybe the problem is your “community,” boyo.
And maybe you can explain how using that Molotov to burn down the corner bodega, and the Auto Zone, is going to bring justice.
And if you could do so without calling me any names, or attaching any labels, that would be a plus.
How many of you would be wiling to do the job police officers do?
Before you judge, go for a ride-along. I did, and it completely changed my perspective. If you're not willing to experience it, please don't judge the cops from a standpoint of ignorance.
Even the best cops end up jaded because they predominantly deal with victims of crime and perpetrators of crime. When that is your daily grind, it's going to warp your view of people. Not a gig I would choose, but it is one that society needs filled.
The problem is we don't have a system to hold the bad ones accountable, and ideally weed them the hell out of the job (instead of cycling them between agencies).
No but we have a system for NOT holding them to account and not weeding them out. It’s called police unions, in conjunction with a court-created law called qualified immunity.
And the cops find themselves running after the same dopes and former convicts on the street days after they just arrested them the last time. That's the burnout; it's a revolving door of justice or perhaps, more accurately injustice.
Speedy trials are a big missing piece of the puzzle for sure. And shorter, surer sentences would help, too.
Ever heard of this thing call “internal affairs”?
Ah yes, the rat squad. Well, we see how effective having the foxes guard the henhouse is, don't we?
So you admit you lied and that there IS a system in place. You just think they are all liars.
Internal affairs is not a system, it is a charade. At the very best, it removes a problem from one department, but does not stop that problem from attaching itself to another agency. And that is on the rare occasions when the cops in IA don't serve the interests of the police union first.
Now why don't you regale us all with how narrow a protection qualified immunity is.
It was pretty obvious that when he said "we don't have a system", he was implicitly saying "we don't have a system that actually works", which is effectively the same thing as not having a system.
In fact, you could argue that it's even worse than not having a system, since what you actually have is a facade that fools people into thinking there is something effective in place, so they don't push for change the same way they would if there was nothing there at all.
Ever heard of a thing called a fig leaf?
If you can’t do the job right, get out.
So you'll get off this board, then. Excellent.
You should get help.
Take it up the ass from the state for a paycheck?
Have to say I'm good, brother.
Your Internet courage behind a pseudonym has ovaries throbbing.
I've always been curious about people who use a pseudonym, accusing other people of being cowards for hiding behind a pseudonym.
How exactly does that work?
Unfortunately it always elicits a comment from the dumbest person in the thread, who can’t wrap his head around the difference between someone with a pseudonym who LARPs fake physical bravado, and someone with a pseudonym who doesnt.
Physical bravado? You do realize he was being hyperbolic and not physically threatening?
One of the more disappointing changes I have seen in America is an entire new group of people unable to distinguish between upsetting language and actual physical violence.
The only physical motion I'm making toward you is with my hand.
Spoiler: it's the jerking off motion.
Your Mom named you that?
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.
-Lincoln
Jesus Christ, Dude! Your comments are some of the most naive I've read in this forum! You sound exactly like people, especially cops, DA's, etc, that say with regard to our justice system things like, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about." That is complete bullshit! Once law enforcement sets it's eyes on you, you got A LOT to worry about, regardless. You are probably another person that has never had any interaction with law enforcement in your life, because those are the ONLY people that believe what you believe.
Dave - Do be clear. We had a President that bragged about breaking tax laws thus stealing millions from tax payers. And these same people that say "If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" defend him stealing millions from tax payers out of one side of their mouth while defending cops for beating someone selling cigarettes on the street...
That is the logic you are dealing with here
> We had a President that bragged about breaking tax laws
You are so full of shit.
CNN: I guess you don't listen to Trump himself. I dont know about you but i had to pay rent with after tax money. I had to pay for my kids tuition with after tax money... But Trump thinks he did not have to?
“They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car,” he said at a rally in Sarasota, Fla. “You didn't pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is. You didn't pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don't even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?”
Following tax laws to minimize your tax is not breaking tax laws. And it's not stealing anything from tax payers.
You may want to hold off on criticizing others on their use of logic.
Adam - "Cheating" on your taxes is breaking the law. Giving a bank documents that value property at one value and government that value it at a different value is fraud.
Nothing wrong with minimizing your taxes.
Trump's team is not being indicted for minimizing his taxes. They are bing investigated for fraud.
Sure, if he actually cheated on his taxes, that's obviously breaking the law. But you said "We had a President that bragged about breaking tax laws thus stealing millions from tax payers." This never happened. Trump never said he broke tax laws. He may well have done so, but he only "bragged" about using legal methods to minimize his tax.
Adam - He has been convicted of breaking tax laws with his Charity. He is under investigation for breaking tax laws and his accountant has been indicted.
He is no more or less guilty of breaking the law than the guy the police kicked the door in on and ended up shooting his girlfriend dead...
My point is that the crimes Trump is being investigated for involve far more theft than the crimes the accused "petty" drug dealer was being accused of. But Trump or his attorney Cohen, his 2 Campaign Chairmans and his CPA did not get their doors kicked in with no knock warrents.
My point in drawing the comparison aligns with Matt's. This is coming down to stupid leadership of the police. My additional observation is that the stupidity leans to the poor and away from the rich and my example validates that.
There are lots and lots more examples of rich having a far different justice system than the poor and middle class.
Nah not really. Once your pulled over, that’s it; can’t argue and then resist arrest. If you get an asshole cop fight it later. Why is that so difficult to understand?
For him - "fight it later". Good idea. The average person of color, with less than $400 in their bank account, rent due and a shitty job who is beaten for no good reason by a cop is going to "fight it later" and it will all be good,,,
Seriously... your empathy is stunning
People aren’t quite as stupid and helpless as you think they are. There is zero point in resisting arrest and having a shit attitude with the cop.
If its a bullshit stop keep your cool and fight it later.
Actually I did that once, purely for humor, and also to annoy the cop by making him show up in court. I had been given a speeding ticket basically for speeding up to let a police car get by a line of trucks, but it was me the cop wanted. He lied thoroughly about the whole incident. I had written up a description of it which the magistrate didn't even look at before finding me guilty; all as expected, except the cop lied so extravagantly that he got a case of nerves and was shaking before he got done. I hung around for the next few cases. One was someone who had six witnesses on his side -- ignored. The next one was a blonde bombshell the cop had obviously pulled over just to get a closer ogle and chat her up a bit. Guilty, but later the presiding magistrate instructed the cop and how to do the bombshell thing without having to go to court. It was all pretty funny. I appealed, of course, just to run up their costs, and add to the waste paper supply. But the real payoff occurred a month or two later, when the magistrate himself was arrested for selling dismissals. By the way, everyone was just as White as all get-out. Couldn't've been Whiter. I can imagine what would have happened if I had gone in there improperly pigmented.
Not sure what pigmentation has to do with it; plenty of blacks and whites have been convicted for being corrupt. The wheels of justice move slowly but they do move.
I'm not advocating resisting arrest. I don't know where you got that, but your statement is just as naive. It assumes you and the cop are equally considered in the eyes of the court. That is NOT how it works. You must be another one that's had few if any interactions with our justice system.
Irrelevant and incorrect. You will never win a fight against a guy with a gun.
If an asshole pulls you over- take the ticket and fight it later.
What are you reading?!?! Where in the world are you getting the idea that I'm advocating resisting arrest, or "fighting a guy with a gun"?!?! OF COURSE if you're pulled over, just take the ticket! You'd have to be a moron to do otherwise! What's going on in your head, man?
Do not resist arrest. Comply with officer commands. Fight it later if necessary.
Don’t resist arrest, you can’t win. That was my only point. Fight it later.
He will learn. Or he won't. Though he is probably going to be lucky enough to get to live to so do. You think any of the people under discussion thought they were going to die that day when they left the house? Nope. There is a REASON why black people in America don't call the police.
There’s a reason lawyers say never talk to a cop who wants to talk to you. Nothing good is likely to come of reasoning with them.
Here's what I was told by a lawyer - when a cop is talking to you, he's gathering evidence against you.
The founder's knew what they were doing when the wrote the 5th.
It should surprise no one that in the rare event the police, prosecutors or judges are arrested they ALWAYS ask for a lawyer first and say nothing.
These are the people who actually understand how the system works and can expect some sympathy from those they talk to. If they need a lawyer, you can be damn sure you do also.
I hate it when I read articles where the journo makes some idiotic statement like "he was hiding behind the fifth,' or "he was coaching him to "play it cool" when he told him to get a lawyer and not talk."
With so many authoritarians in the media, it's amazing we have any Constitution left at all.
"preposterous reason that she’d failed to signal before changing lanes"...
...this to me is a valid (not preposterous) reason to pull someone over. A lady who failed to signal almost killed me and my 2 children, a couple of decades back.
The escalation is the issue. Almost do what the cops tell you on the spot, and deal with the issue in court, later, if necessary. Least that's what I always told my kids.
Oh, give me a break. There were no other cars around. He just liked to give people tickets. And the following escalation was horrendous.
So is your argument that if this guy had just followed the officers directions, he would be alive today?
https://invidious-us.kavin.rocks/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8
If someone that didn't signal their intentions almost killed you and your kids, then YOU were not paying attention, and/or you assumed something you shouldn't have.
If that was true then we wouldn't require cars to have indicators. Do you think they're just decorative?
I have seen cars, on countless occasions, unknowingly speeding down the highway with an indicator flashing. If you trust an automobile indicator, whether on or off, you're an idiot.
1. You didn't answer the question.
2. Yes, cars and motorcycles often incorrectly use their indicators. If you think that this can't contribute to an accident even if you're paying attention, then quite frankly you haven't driven enough.
Ask a cop. See what they tell you.
Look at why she hurredly changed lanes.
He forced her over, looking for a pretext. Driving While Black, I'd say.
Driving while stupid fits better
Which of these did Philandro Castille or Amadou Diallo do?
Diallo fled and reached into his jacket. It turned out that he was pulling out his wallet but that is still a foolish move.
The Castille situation is less clear, as far as I can tell as it is based only on what the shooting officer could or could not see in a dark automobile. (he believed that Castille was pulling out his gun, despite being ordered not to). A jury (including people of color) decided they believed the officer and acquitted him (the officers in the Diallo case were also acquitted by a multiracial jury).
In both cases, people who saw and heard a great deal more information than you came to the conclusion that both men behaved in a way that made the police reaction "reasonable."
There have unquestionably been cases where police have been completely wrong (and even malevolent) but the reality is that we, as citizens, require LE to confront life threatening situations on a daily basis and errors will occur. Statistically, these are rare but unfortunately we have an unethical media that misrepresent these tragedies and a large segment of the population that is so innumerate that they cannot grasp the statistics.
Skeptic.com conducted a survey that showed that vast numbers of Americans believe that more than 1000 unarmed black men are killed by police every year and a mindboggling number believe it is 10 thousand or more! Every stripe of political belief has the ratio of blacks (to others) killed wrong but liberals, as a group, put the percentage at about 60% (versus the actual of around 25%). Generally speaking, the more conservative you are the more likely you are to have the numbers right.
Does this make unnecessary deaths caused by police "acceptable"? Of course not. It does, however, make it clear that the problem is not pervasive (which, in turn, makes the presumption of a wildly violent and/or racist police force even more absurd).
"Diallo fled and reached into his jacket" Diallo was standing in the entry to his own apartment building when the gang of police accosted him. He pulled out his wallet when they demanded ID.
In other words, you're being deliberately deceptive.
No, you are being deliberately obtuse. Testimony that a jury believed was that he fled and reached into his jacket. You have a problem with that, take it up with them.
Prosecutors control all the evidence and judges defer to them on all court decisions.
When you have prosecutors acting as an additional defense attorney on behalf of the police officer it's not hard to arrive at a reasonable doubt. It's why there was so much outrage over the Taylor grand jury and why the DA tried to suppress the information from the public. DA's are in no position to hold the police they work with every day accountable.
Yawn - the "they are all dirty" defense. Getting back to the real point, are you suggesting the juries were in on the "dirty dealings" of the two cases I referenced????
Similarly, violent crime is a smaller cause of death than people think. Way more people die from medical malpractice. Not a reason to not to address violent crime.
Well, in addition to being a straw man, your post demonstrates that you do not see any distinction between intentional and unintentional.
Bingo - and thanks for the names. The Castillo killing was lame-brained panic, but Diallo's looked exactly like a mob rubout, and there've been others, similar.
«If you are unarmed and don’t fight with police, regardless of your race, you may get bad treatment but you will NOT be shot. If you attack police officers, shoot them, try to steal their weapon, flee the scene, you will probably get shot»
That seem to be an extraordinary claim that the police have a right to self defence that includes shooting to kill people who flee and thus pose no threat to them, shoot to kill unarmed people, shoot to kill armed people who don't draw or use their weapons, and that of course usually sooner or lated includes shoot to kill pretty much in any case in which they can claim they felt threatened by the possibility of any such action.
I guess that "proportionate response" only applies to the peasants, not to the enforcers or their masters.
"police have a right to self defence that includes shooting to kill people who flee and thus pose no threat to them, shoot to kill unarmed people, shoot to kill armed people who don't draw or use their weapons" First off, I did not say police have the right to shoot people who flee. I said, if you do the listed things, you are likely to be shot. Draw their weapons? Is this is old west? If you attack the police, armed or not, you are asking to be shot. But the instances of police shooting people who were unarmed are few and far between compared to 61 million interactions with the public. "As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019."
«First off, I did not say police have the right to shoot people who flee. I said, if you do the listed things, you are likely to be shot.»
But you did write that “If you [...] flee the scene, you will probably get shot, regardless of race. And that’s 100% on you”: if it is “100% on you” obviously the police have done nothing wrong in shooting to kill well beyond legitimate defense.
In civilized countries the extent of police immunity is to presumptively believe them when they say "he started shooting", not a licence to start shooting first.
«If you attack the police, armed or not, you are asking to be shot.»
Not in civilized countries; resisting arrest is not a capital offense, and even if were police agents are not empowered to prosecute, convict and execute capital punishments on the spot, straight away, as in "shoot to kill".
Saying "Shoot to kill" shows you do not understand how this works. Police are not trained to shoot people in the hand or the foot or the leg. They are aiming at the body.
If you're shooting at someone's torso, what else could you be trying to do? Shoot to snuggle?
Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached peak Steve.
We keep some pretty important organs in our torsos, you dumb fucking bag of retarded cunts.
I think you're smart enough to know the difference between what I said and what you're saying I said. I said if you do the things listed that you are likely to get shot and that is on you. That doesn't not say that police have the right to shoot unarmed suspects who are fleeing. I find your comment to be extremely disingenuous.
If you attack police, try to take their weapon, or otherwise fight with them, you should know the risks you are taking. The type of felon who would attack police are a very dangerous group of individuals. I have sympathy for them, but they are putting themselves at risk of death. It is they who is putting themselves in that situation. That is not to say that I condone police shooting unarmed people. I have specifically said that police shooting an unarmed person is a crime.
I have also made a distinction between armed citizens shot by police and unarmed. The reason is that if you are armed and in conflict with the police, you are automatically in a situation of high risk, and you have put yourself in that situation. Putting yourself in that situation or attacking police is 100% on that person who has undertaken that.
Civilized countries, in your view, would allow armed criminals to attack police without the police having the right to shoot back. I don't know what countries those might be, but I suspect you are wrong.
Regarding unarmed people, yes, there are vanishingly rare cases where police shoot unarmed people, and those are crimes.
You mean I didn't win a smart prize AFTER I played a stupid game?
Yeah, it's a tough concept to grasp.
But won’t you think of the children?
There seems to be this assumption in posts like this that if the police do anything other than shoot you they are justified.
You're welcome to make that your standard of acceptable conduct, but I consider the routine domestic violence, rape, theft, assault, planting evidence and general police corruption problematic even if no one is shot in the process.
The fact they didn't shoot them doesn't make everything else OK.
A lot of times police do suck. A lot of times our laws suck, too.
Yeah Bill, and a lot more times Americans themselves suck. What if it were your job to impose order on millions of selfish, maladjusted assholes whose “parent” just couldn’t be bothered to teach their demon spawn to respect authority? We’ve got a serious problem in this country alright, but it’s not with the police.
What if your view of society was a group of "selfish, maladjusted assholes whose “parent” just couldn’t be bothered to teach their demon spawn to respect authority"
I would argue that view should disqualify you from law enforcement. Instead, it appears to be a requirement.
Yeah, it's fucks like you.
That's not how I read it at all. I read it as "bad treatment" appears to be positively correlated with "contact" and "contact" is higher in lower income areas that are positively correlated with racial minorities. Which certainly seems to be more nuanced than "police suck".
Same. Matt doesn’t day it, but ditching the futile and unjust War on Drugs would go a long way. We learned that well enough to end Prohibition, but need to learn it again.
And this is a comment that completely misses the point
You're up top, so you're the example. There's an ongoing discussion - probably here - of whether modern "conservatives" are authoritarian. Speaking from experience, they certainly aren't the anti-authoritarians that Goldwater exemplified. Anybody remember him?
The perfect example of "authoritarian" is the kneejerk support of police, the essence of government authority, and repeating all their propaganda. Granted, nobody wants to live in a lawless society; the real issue is whether contemporary police are really enforcing the law, or just acting like well-armed gangsters. Their case-solved rate, notably on the crimes of theft we all object to, is very poor. Instead, they're out there gratuitously throwing their weight around and, on bad days, killing people. About half the people they kill are white, as far as anyone can tell, so this isn't just a race problem. If you meet the wrong cop, your white privilege won't save you - but whites often fail to make the huge stink that blacks know they have to do.
So, cop-supporting conservatives: you're the perfect example of what we mean by "authoritarian."
First off, I've been in the GREEN PARTY since the 90's after Biden's Crime Bill, the Credit Card Bill, and Welfare Reform were passed by the Democrats -- Something the GOP could never have pulled off. I just want my kids, and everyone else's, to live in safe communities.
Second, it is not authoritarian to want safe communities. So your premise is just wrong.
Third, saying police are not "enforcing the law" but are "well-armed gangstars" is "repeating all their propaganda". I have repeated no one's propaganda.
"gratuitously throwing their weight around and, on bad days, killing people. About half the people they kill are white" This is not born out by the data. In 2019 when 61 million people had interactions with the police, under 40 unarmed people were shot by police.
Overall, I think your comment is out of perspective and you should rethink. The fact that you classified me as an authoritarian conservative, when you know nothing about me, demonstrates that you are out of perspective.
It isn’t “authoritarian” to want safe communities. But advocating for authoritarian tactics makes you, literally, an authoritarian. “The children! What about the children?!?” Gimme a fucking break, dude… You sound like the people in the 50’s who said Elvis was the devil’s music or the people in the 60’s who said television would melt people’s brains.
I have not advocated for authoritarian tactics. You guys make things up.
Your advocacy has been quite clear.
Resist and risk death.
My point is that if people want to fight with police, they are risking death. But my point is not that police have the right to kill whoever they like. Unarmed people who die at the hands of police are both a tragedy and a crime. But if you are armed and you fight with police, or even if you are unarmed and you fight with police, you are putting yourself in a situation where you will probably get shot. YOU ARE PUTTING YOURSELF IN THAT SITUATION. Not the cop.
You get a lot of credit from me for being a Green. Apparently I mischaracterized you - as I wrote, you were the defender who was at the top.
On the other hand, I think you might want to re-examine your position on the police in particular.
I actually agree with Taibbi that the root of the problem is very poor management - police chiefs that refuse to supervise their employees, compounded by the excessive power of the unions - and very poor laws. Impunity is an open invitation to abuse. One thing it does is attract the worst possible candidates for the job. Then the training turns them into bullies and sociopaths.
Incidentally, my personal experiences with the local police are good, partly because I'm an old white guy and mainly because I live in a town (not Portland or Eugene) where the police are properly managed. Not perfect, but offenders are held to account. A town that usually has Greens on the city council, incidentally.
Also: you really should provide links for the numbers you're quoting; they aren't altogether plausible. The Guardian's numbers are higher, for one thing. And they don't match the news coverage - which could be distorted, I admit. For one thing, I don't think cops have much excuse for killing people armed just with a knife; if they can't disarm someone like that, they shouldn't be in the job. Or the guy with a pipe; or, of course, the ubiquitous cell-phone "guns." And despite supporting labor, I think police are one group who should NOT have a union; they have too much power without that.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice
Do you believe black people being shot is the only sign of corruption and if you make that looks small than no other corruption exists?
Also, on the accuracy of the killed-by-police body count:
Health department: More than twice as many police-related deaths than previously reported
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/06/24/health-department-more-than-twice-as-many-police-related-deaths-than-previously-reported-1294342
I like Chris hedges.
"Americans want too much security at the expense of individual rights."
So, should Trump Supporters be allowed to share their beliefs on election fraud? Should people who are against masks and school closure and don't want the vaccinations be able to share their views online?
I suspect Hedges' answer to your questions might be, "Yes."
Very well-put, dude. It’s the same thing as the whole,”America! No matter what!” attitude. “Love it or leave it”? Fuck you. What actually shocks me about right-wingers’ entire attitude is that they’ll scream holy hell about something getting banned on Facebook or wherever, but when somebody gets stopped-and-frisked for no reason and then points out that their civil rights were violated, right-wingers’ first (and only) response is,”Well if you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to worry about!” They scream about “Police state! Police state!” on the internet, but when actual police state tactics are utilized, in the form of searching people (and much worse) for zero reason, they’re like,”Whatever. He should’ve just sat still. She shouldn’t have asked why she was pulled over.”
I’ll take the cops over this guy any day
How many people have his words killed?
At best you’ve got a clutched pearl or two.
The cops are being abused and the people who abuse them fail to understand what it takes to run a city. The anti-cop critique is grossly exaggerated
It takes butchering people to run a city?
Sorry, not good enough.
Why do they have to? What benefit derives from that?
That's ridiculous and stupid. You don't know what you're talking about.
You are entitled to your opinion. But you should be aware that how you express yourself impacts whether or not people pay attention to you.
That is maybe the worst analysis of an article I have ever read. It is as if you didn't read it at all. the point he is making is that simple minded thinking is the problem. Your simple minded analysis is proof of his point.
You are entitled to your opinion. I think Taibbi added to the negative assertions about police and policing which have pervaded the discussion for a decade. And that does severe harm to policing, which does extreme harm to communities and puts more and more people at risk.
You know Matt wrote an entire in depth book about Eric Garner and the police system in America don't you? He did not do some simple drive by of the American criminal system. He performed a deep dive analysis and found serious systemic problems both with policing and those institutions that lead to bad policing (the primary topic of this article).
Matt did not do any harm to the police that they did not do to themselves. If anything, he gave them too much credit and went too easy on them.
You are the most pro-statist authoritarian member of the greens I have ever read. You don't belong in the same category by a long shot, but I guess Hitler was a vegetarian.
You just never know.
I accidentally tapped the heart. I meant to comment as Ron Warwick did. Sometimes police kill unarmed people who are doing nothing wrong. Sometimes police fear for their lives, or say they did, when the police were not actually in any danger at all. Oops moments happen.
“Data from The Washington Post shows that 23 “unarmed” black suspects were fatally shot by the police in 2018, while even fewer, 12, were shot in 2019.”
"Unarmed' doesn't necessarily mean you aren't violent or didn't exhibit violent behavior. In our family, my Uncle Hans, a 6'5" Latvian, had hands so big that he literally killed soldiers with them in WW2.
Some of the unarmed individuals in Steve Pesce's reference were trying to run over cops with their cars, actually.
The point was that "oops" moments with respect to police killings don't happen often.
There is absolutely NOT an "epidemic" of police killings of unarmed black people. The idea is laughable on its face.
Heather MacDonald's, an expert in police stats, research outlines this fact clearly.
"If you are unarmed and don’t fight with police, regardless of your race, you may get bad treatment but you will NOT be shot."
How many examples proving you to be completely ignorant would you need to change your mind? Tamir Rice comes to mind immediately.
Then too, Taibbi didn't say that "Police Suck". He didn't come close to saying that.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf
How many examples? Very few in comparison to the number of interactions between police officers and the public. Don't be hysterical. Please be reasonable.
If you’re unarmed and don’t resist arrest, you won’t be shot? Are you fucking serious? There’s been dozens and dozens of cases over the last decade of unarmed people being shot by the police before they even had a chance to resist arrest. Not to mention, if you weren’t doing anything wrong and the cops rolled up on you, questioned you and then and tried to take you into custody anyway (as in the case of Eric Garner), you would absolutely “resist arrest.” I know I would. I would not go willingly into a police cruiser if I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Talking about Eric Garner specifically, he wasn’t even doing anything that warranted being stopped and questioned in the first place. When I lived in Florida, that shit used to happen to me all the time. And it irritated the fuck out of me, every single time. Walking down the street and a cop car pulls up and asks me what I’m doing, where I’m going, where do I live… Fuck you. None of your business. And when I told them it was none of their business, I’d get shoved up against their car and searched. If they’d tried to take me into custody, I absolutely would’ve resisted, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place. You’d do the same thing. If not, I really admire your “passive resistance” and your “live to fight another day” mentality. Not all of us can afford to hire a lawyer or have the time and money to fight it in court later. Which is exactly what the police are counting on.
Also, Eric Garner wasn’t shot, he was strangled. So there’s that…
Name the cases then genius. Cases where there was NO RESISTANCE and the person ended up dead.
I’ll stand by for your list.
Haha! There it is! The “provide me with links” response. How predictable. If you’re genuinely interested, you can go find them yourself. Also, cops can call anything besides “total acquiescence” resisting arrest. If you ask them why they pulled you over in the first place, they’ll call that “resisting arrest.” After one of my (legitimate) arrests, when I actually was breaking the law, they tried to tack on a “resisting arrest” charge, which was later dropped. I absolutely did not resist. But after you’re booked and during your bond hearing, that extra charge increases your bail. Which, again, is by design.
Still waiting. I’ll be waiting awhile because you don’t have a list do you?
And you’ll be waiting, guy. I’m not trying to “win the internet” so I don’t have lists of links at the ready. These are stories I’ve seen over the years. If you’re truly interested, all you have to do is Google “unarmed man shot by police.” There’ll be dozens of stories that you can peruse. Like I said, Google “Philando Castile,” who was a registered gun owner and told the cops he had a gun in his glove compartment when they pulled him over. They shot him anyway. If googling that is too difficult for you, then you’re clearly just a simple little troll who isn’t here to actually talk about anything.
Exactly. You have nothing to back up your false bullshit claim because it’s false and bullshit.
As I told you- don’t resist arrest and cop an attitude. If you’re subject to a bullshit stop, take the ticket and fight it in Court. That’s the only way.
One of many. A favorite because it exposes what a bunch of sociopaths the police really are:
"Disturbing video shows unarmed man begging before fatal police shooting"
https://invidious-us.kavin.rocks/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8
Would you like more? I've got a whole lot of them!
Just to help you out, Google “Philando Castile.” You can do the rest of the work. If you’re interested. But you’re really not, so…
"Also, Eric Garner wasn’t shot, he was strangled. So there’s that…"
And there's the rub of the game they continually play to excuse bad policing.
They take those the police report as shot (which the police routinely undercount). Then they take those who were actually killed. Then they take a subset within a subset (black people the police admit to killing with a gun who did not have a weapon at the time) and come up with a predictably ridiculous low number by excluding all the Eric Garner's, the George Floyds, and even the Castille's in Minnesota who was not actually reaching for a gun, but had one is the car so he is not counted in the black unarmed category.
It's such a silly and transparent ploy, and yet they keep repeating it over, and over and over.
"Hey look, the number of unarmed one eyed black rabbi's confined to a wheelchair on a Tuesday that the police shot and killed is like one. Clearly we have no problem with police violence in America!"
You are entitled to your opinion. Your use of profanity makes you sound uneducated. Just letting you know. Are there instances of abuses? Yes. Are they vanishingly rare compared to the number of interactions between police and citizens? Yes. Are they out of proportion racially? No.
Use of profanity is a clear sign of higher intelligence. It is known.
Are they out of proportion racially? Are you really asking that question? There’s tons and tons of data that says yes, they are. This isn’t my opinion, these are facts. And the reason instances of “abuses” are “vanishingly rare” is because a light is being shined on them and people have had enough. What rock have you been living under? As far as my use of words like “fuck” and “shit” in my posts are concerned, sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities.
I’d prefer cops pulling out cusses than guns, to be honest.
What I love about these people who complain about the US becoming a “police state” because of Google and YouTube and shit is that when they’re actually confronted with real cases of police state-type goings on, like stop-and-frisk etc, they’re like,”Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to be worried about!” Cops rolling up on you, fucking with you and searching you without probable cause is the very definition of Police State. But they’re fine with that, because its never happened to them. They’re morons.
I think this may be Steve’s first fucking time on the internet. Or maybe it’s his first time on a fucking non-Christian website. Which has gotta be a really shitty experience for somebody as fucking “educated” as his sorry-ass. Or something… I dunno.
“Non-Christian website” lmao
Goddamn I wish I would’ve realized that first.
The data does not support that shooting over unarmed citizens demonstrates a racial bias. "As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019." However, in terms of being abusive at traffic stops, yes, there is data that suggests a racial bias.
Regarding the rudeness, profanity and personal attacks. That is your personal issue to solve for yourself.
Blacks are only about 10% of the population, so 14 to 25 is grossly disproportionate - your own numbers. And I suspect those numbers are being manipulated; for one thing, they exclude people who could and should have been disarmed by any competent cop.
Blacks are 13.4% of US Population.
"As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019."
You asked,”Are there instances of abuses?” not “unarmed shootings.” You asked if the instances of “abuses” were disproportionately racial. They are. All of the data bears that out. Also, I didn’t say anything about “unarmed BLACK people being shot” in my initial post; I said “unarmed PEOPLE.” You’re boring, dude. And predictable. I’m done with your sorry-ass.
I answered my own questions that there is evidence there is a racial component to abuses. But not to shootings of unarmed citizens. Not sure why you are carrying on about it. Your level of discourse is also quite rude and uneducated.
39 too many.
But it’s protecting your children, amirite?
Hey Steve. Fuck you.
Gotta love people absolutely fine with tyranny getting upset over some naughty words.
Seems to be a feature of the type.
When you don’t really have anything to say, I guess you say,”Gosh, when you said ‘fuck’ in your post, I really thought that sounded uneducated.” Because only really dumb people cuss? I guess?
You shouldn’t trust anyone that doesn’t cuss. Slang is language rolling up it’s sleeve and getting to work.
But that is it: they think only dumb people cuss - or perhaps such a view will play well with their intended audience.
Probably the latter. Gods know these guys are hypocritical liars.
He’s a stupid moron, nothing can be done about him its too late.