Fenris, what I heard was this (paraphrased) “The officer in question said that the suspect grabbed his uniform and would not let go.”
So take that for what you will. Also, the fact that he apparently has a history of a bit of ‘anger’ leads me to believe that maybe…just MAYBE…this is one of the asshole cops of the world.
j
Gobear: I’m going on the assumption that if someone attacks me, my life is in danger!
I will never (and have never) thrown the first punch. I have never fought when I could back down and leave. I’m not saying that I’m just going to blow someone away at the first hint of a confrontation. But if, as in that incident that I mentioned I’m just attacked out of the blue, I’m going to have to assume that their intent is to kill or cripple me.
Besides, I have no idea how to be 100% sure of stopping someone who’s attacked me without killing them (I’m a damned good shot, but if I’ve got a lunatic beating me, I don’t think I’ll trust my aim beyond a gutshot) and I’m not willing to risk being beaten/crippled/etc. If I didn’t have a gun, I’d use a chair, a fireplace poker, whatever it takes. I have no interest in “fighting fair” or “fighting clean” and I have no respect for the life of someone who’s attacking me or my loved ones.
There’s an (IMO) idiotic idea that if someone comes at you with fists, the issue should be settled with fists. I disagree: the issue should be settled by whatever stops the attacker before he can do more damage.
Fenris
[B[Fenris**, on this one I am afraid there is a streak of vigilantism showing. You seem to be awfully vociferous in the defense of the police officer on the strength of a lot of speculation and self serving press statements.
The facts that the general public knows are pretty well restricted to the video clip its self and a press statement made by the officer’s lawyer. Everything else is rumor and third hand rumor at that. There has been talk about the officer having a history of losing control but I don’t have anything on that topic that I would be willing to rely on. As far as the lawyer’s statement to the effect that the arrestee had provoked the officer by grabbing his privates or trying to grab at his privates, it is pretty obvious that the lawyer is fully into that great old California tradition of poisoning the jury pool. His statement to the press must be taken with a big grain of salt. I have also heard statements to the effect that the arrestee was ankle manacled as well as handcuffed when the balloon went up. The video shows hand cuffs but ankle chains seem unreasonable.
The video, however is bad enough. What we see is three or four big policemen, all of whom look like they have been spending a lot of time in the weight room, and a kid with his hands cuffed behind his back standing next to a police car. Without any apparent move by the kid the officer standing to his right rear grabs the kid, lifts him and drives his face into the hood of the police car. Immediately the officer cocks his right hand and punches the kid in the face. The other two or three officers pull the first officer off the kid.
Now that is damning. What is worse, and you should know this, Fenris, it happens every day all over this country and all over the world without benefit of video cameras. Remember that it was a stock joke on Monty Python ( and, all together boys, assault on a police officer). I will accept that police are subject to daily risks and pressures that ordinary citizens can’t imagine. I will not accept that a badge on the chest and a gun on the hip is a license to act out every impulse --and especially the impulse to relieve frustration by savaging a man who is trussed and helpless. Policemen are given great authority to use force and violence, but with that comes great responsibility to use that force and violence with restraint and only when plainly needed. All too often “reasonably necessary force” is a highly subjective concept and translates into “whatever force impulse leads me to use.” Police officers do not get to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, but that is precisely what this officer appears to have done.
God, I know I’m gonna catch hell for this, but…
I watched the tape, and I didn’t seeth at all.
I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen close friends treated worse personally. More about that in a moment.
Let’s start with the ‘body slam’, or head slam, as some people have called it. I’ve been slammed harded by close friends while play-fighting. And I’m gonna agree with Fenris inasmuchas anyone who grabs someone by the balls is gonna get punched. It’s a given.
Maybe the kid didn’t grab the jewels, that would make the cop wrong. But if he did, he deserved to get punched. BTW, just the 'cause the cop was involved in another ‘incident’ 2 weeks prior does not mean he’s lying!
Now, I grew up as junkie criminal. As such, I hung around with mostly junkie criminals and thugs. It was commonly accepted among us that, if you are arrested and you put up a fight, and continue to mouth off…you is gonna get hit. It was a given. My friends got hit. And at the time, they were being assholes of the 1st order. They knew they were gonna get hit and seemed to asking for it. All they had to do to not get hit was …wait for it…not resist and keep their mouths shut!! I would just shake my head at their stupidity
So, no, I was not shocked. Maybe this cop is a ‘loose cannon’ like some of y’all say. Then he should be weeded out. But maybe he’s not. Maybe he just reacted.
To all of you that say ‘Cops have to be better than that’, I say that they are people. People who do a very hard job, and who take a lot of shit while doing it. Sometimes even killed while doing it. If some of you want to hold cops to a much higher standard, why don’tcha go down and apply for a job in your local PD? They take men and women alike.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong. YMMV.
Back to the OT - I’m afraid I don’t see the wrongdoing. Would you prefer that officers not arrest people on outstanding warrants for people who made them look bad?
Did anyne notice the big gash above the cops ear? In my opinion the cop got the worst of the struggle. That is what a criminal wants, he wants the cop to look like he has been worked over. It wins you friends and prestige at the jail. Showing up at the jail with out signs of a struggle will make you someones bitch.
gobear: Why do you continue to display your sheer ignorance on this subject along with your knee jerk hatred of police?
The warrant for Crooks was issued in May 1999 after he failed to surrender to begin a jail sentence for a conviction on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, hit and run, and petty theft with a prior conviction.
The police did not know he had a warrant until he blew off a grand jury that wanted him to hand over the tape and authenticate it.
So tell us, what is the waiting period for getting arrested on previous warrants after you film a police arrest?
Do you think he should just walk?
**
Apache: Fuck off, you walking rectum.
Really, for the self-proclaimed smartest person on the Board, you display an astonishing degree of stupidity. Given the limited amount of evidence that we have on either side, this is a topic over which reasonable people can disagree.
Which, come to think of it, explains your post.
And Gobear is anti-cop? Bwah-ha-ha!
Thank you for providing an object lesson as to why first cousins shouldn’t marry.
Does anyone know when school gets back in session? This crop’s dumber than last year’s.
Fenris
First off numbnuts, I’m NOT the self-proclaimed smartest person on the Board. You have mixed up your posters. :wally
Second, his argument was that Crooks should not have been arrested. I’m disagreeing. :rolleyes:
Next, gobear was an ass in my post, I’m just returning the favor.
Lastly, gobear’s post seemed pretty anti-cop to me.
Oh yeah, and BITE ME.
It’s too small to bite and too dirty to touch besides.
Maybe if I had tweezers…
Apache, your chutzpah is matched only by your stupidity.
I I didn’t argue that Crooks should not have been arrested if he had outstanding warrants; my points were A) the timing of his arrest was awfully suspicious; and B) at the time I posted Crooks had been hospitalized while in police custody.
[quote]
Next, gobear was an ass in my post, I’m just returning the favor
II I have no idea what you’re talking about
III As Fenris said, BWAHAHAHAHA! Fuckhead, anybody who has spent much time on this board knows that I am a conservative, flagwaving, pro-military, pro-cop patriot. More important, I am pro-freedom, and I strongly believe that one of the things that separates the US from other nations is the police are the guardians of the civic welfare. If the police use their powers of arrest to serve their own ends and to terrorize whistleblowers, we’ll end up like Brazil or Mexico, where the cops are feared more than the criminals. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
You got the wrong end boy.
Or did I awaken some homoerotic fantasy with you?:eek:
Oh yeah, stop following me. It makes you look weird.
Translation for the clueless:
Original latin: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
English: Who watches the watchmen?
Now Apache might get it.
Hhhmmm…Looks in thread.
Jeepers everyone! That time machine that KGriffey accused me of? Apache thinks I’ve got one too!
'cause apparently I’m able to “follow him into a thread” by posting in it before he does.
Looks like you’re following me, Chuckles!
And if we’re talking about homoerotic fantasies, you’re the one who asked me for sado-masochistic oral sex.
Tell ya what, Junior. Go to the dictionary and look up the word “projection” before you continue to make a fool of yourself.
Fenris
Watch out, Hastur, with Apache’s nearly triple-digit IQ, he might say something devastating towards you. I’d be careful!
He might even accuse you of being a (sotto voce)[sub]homosexual[/sub]!! :eek:
Do you REALLY think that we are just one more beating accusation away from turning into a banana republic? What militia branch do you belong to?
The warrants Crooks was arrested on were misdemeanor warrants that would not likely have been served in Los Angeles County unless the cops were looking for a way to lay their hands on him. I doubt that police agencies check the outstanding warrant lists for other counties unless there’s some other reason they want to put their hands on someone. gobear is right. It is suspicious.
I suppose it’s remotely possible that some sterling Northern Californian saw the news broadcast and thought to himself, “Hmmm, that guy Crooks looks awfully suspicious. He reminds me of a desperado the cops up here are looking for on a couple of misdemeanors. I better call Inglewood and let them know that this dangerous criminal is about to escape them.” Remotely possible.
As for the cop’s other complaints, his own chief admitted in a news conference that there had been other beefs against him, although he wouldn’t say what they were for. I think we may see a pattern of excessive force here. Stay tuned.
I hear that it was a felony hit and run warrant, but that may not be the case (as I see no mention of that).
Here is a partial cut-and-paste:
Ralph Boyd, who heads the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, flew to Los Angeles to meet privately with Inglewood officials and others, and in downtown Los Angeles a parade of witnesses appeared before the county grand jury.
One of those whose testimony was sought by that panel was Mitchell Crooks, 27, the deejay who shot the videotape of the beating that now has aired across the nation. Crooks was under subpoena to attend the grand jury hearing with his tape, but he did not appear as ordered, and instead was confronted by police outside CNN’s Los Angeles studios, prosecutors said.
Crooks ran from police, they added, and he said later that he was hurt in the scuffle. He was arrested on warrants for petty theft, driving under the influence and hit-and-run, according to the district attorney’s office.
The three charges stem from a sequence of events in February 1999. Sheriff’s Capt. Rick Armstrong said Crooks is accused of driving under the influence on Interstate 80 in Roseville, northeast of Sacramento, when he became involved in a wreck. Armstrong said that after the accident, Crooks drove to the nearby town of Rocklin, where police caught him trying to steal two VCRs from his mother’s home.
He was convicted of all three crimes in March 1999 and ordered to begin serving a seven-month sentence in Placer County Jail in May of that year. But he never showed up for the jail sentence, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
In Los Angeles County, prosecutors, who had been looking for him all of this week, responded to several tips regarding Crooks’ whereabouts over the last several days, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. Investigators tailed Crooks, but were one step behind him until Thursday.
Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay said Crooks could have avoided the arrest if he had responded to earlier requests to cooperate with investigators.
“Let’s put it this way: Had we been able to secure his presence on the first day, the second day or the third day, we wouldn’t have even known about the warrants,” he said. “He could have been here and gone and been free today.”
To me, it sounds like they did not consider looking for him until he blew off the Grand Jury subpoena.
Woah, now.
Those of you who are criticizing the police, I ask again: Would you rather the police ignore it when they have outstanding warrants for arrest and make contact with an individual that they let him go just to appear seemly?
I’m sure in LA County (and, hell, everywhere else) they simply don’t have the money or manpower to launch a full-scale manhunt over every warrant. However, it’s standard procedure to check people for outstanding warrants – even people who did not commit a crime and just happen to be there. It’s not uncommon, for example, to check all the people in a car who are driving around at night. It’s a matter of officer safety and public safety. If you have contact with the police, and you have an outstanding warrant, they damn well should arrest you, whether you’re being nice, nasty, or indifferent! The fact that he videotaped the cops matters not at all.
This is not Brazil, gobear. They did not make up these charges just to harass the guy. The warrants were already there and they made the arrest. I’ll bet what happened is this: they were taking information from people who were nearby, and the guy decided to give his ID or his name, and they discovered he had a warrant on him. Once that’s done – and it’s all computerized and logged – they have a responsibility as peace officers. I imagine that the officer’s sergeant wouldn’t appreciate letting people go who have warrants out on them just because he felt like it!
I’ll ask one more time: what would you prefer that the officers had done? Should they pick and choose when they have confirmed a warrant for a guy who is standing right next to them because of how it might appear in the media?
fluid 'afore you go too far down that road, please try to determine if LA county has it’s own outstanding felony warrants to serve. (clue - yeppers)
then ask - how easy is it for another jurisdiction to get any LA County officer (let alone the large ## that went) to serve outstanding warrents there.
then ask - how many officers are normally sent to process routine warrents of any type (doubt that it’s the ## that went on this one).
At any given point in time any large jurisdiction has quite a few outstanding warrents of their own to serve (bail jumpers, those who don’t appear in court, new arrests, etc etc etc.).
When an officer stops some one, does a check and discovers outstanding warrents from other jurisdictions, yea, folks get picked up. But police sent to serve them?