And he was black.
According to attorneys, Wheeler believed Smith was that man and had an outstanding arrest warrant,
This is where the BS starts. Thank to our judicial system and “qualified immunity”, law enforcement is not held accountable for their crimes against civilians as long as they claim “I believed”. They can make up a law (because they believed it was a law although “ignorance of the law is not an excuse” if you’re a civi), and because the cop “believed” there was a warrant or “reasonable suspicion of a crime” (even if the act is not illegal it’s ok because the cop “believed” it was illegal) throw the person on the ground because they are “resisting arrest” or “obstructing justice” and shoot them because the cop “believed” he had a weapon. The Courts look at that and say “qualified immunity” and the thug is free to continue policing.
Qualified impunity.
Right, that’s the kind of authoritarian support of summary execution in the streets that decent people object to. I give a shit about Mr. Blake, and the lives of every human being, and think that people who murder human beings should be punished for doing so. I guess I’m one of those weird law and order radicals who believe in things like due process and basic human rights, instead of just straight-up murdering people at the whim of jackbooted thugs.
Miami police officer’s wife dies after she gets trapped for hours in the back of his work vehicle.
Does Miami charge parents who have their children die in the back of hot cars?
You commented on it because you are racist trash.
Yes, the point was to show how much restraint police officers can show and how far they can go to not kill someone who is a threat. Contrast this with the many situations posted in this thread where police officers are quick to empty their guns at the slightest provocation, usually when the suspect is black.
Fucking weird. Why would she climb into the back of the police car and shut the door behind her?
Right? It smells funny to me.
Exactly, what could possibly be in the back of a police cruiser that she needed to get? And why would she close the door behind her?
Absolute speculation, but he got home, was tired and wanted to sleep. She was bothering him, so he went ahead and put her where she wouldn’t for a little while.
Be surprised if it doesn’t come out that this wasn’t the first time she got herself “trapped”.
If it is considered acceptable to profile based on the statistically likelihood of a “brown son” being more likely to commit a violent offense than “white sons”, then I find it prudent to profile based on LEO’s statistical likeness to commit domestic abuse.
Since a cop is allowed to shoot someone in the back for their suspicion, I preemptively rule this as a domestic abuse murder.
As sure as I am of the course of events, however, I am even more sure that there will be a cover-up, as his fellow domestic abusers in blue make sure that their buddy faces no consequence for his little mistake.
“Reform” will be a meeting where they tell their officers to make sure that they leave the windows cracked when they lock their spouses in their cruisers.
An even better example is a white guy armed with a rifle can walk right up to police still carrying his rifle and not get shot. The fact that on one hand ‘white guy who has shot people walks up, armed, to police and doesn’t even get arrested’ happens and on the other we’re supposed to believe ‘black guy might be reaching for a gun, so it’s justified to shoot him seven times in the back’ really highlights the differences.
The police have no duty to defend or protect, nor to arrest murderers, if they just don’t want to.
Lets them team up with terrorists if they want to, and nothing can be said about it.
Apparently, the shooter was one of “the good guys” , or associated with them,
But, at least someone caught him – a day later, over in Illinois. From which he will have to be extradited.
You know he’s gonna say he feared for his life and had to shoot.
When are we as a nation going to stop accepting this as an excuse for murder?
If you start a fight and end up on the losing end you don’t get to claim you feared for your life.
You don’t get to bring a gun to a protest, and berate the protestors and then claim you feared for your life when they turn on you and start beating you up. It was your stupid choices that put you in harm’s way.
LeBron James says this shooting makes him and other Black people “terrified” that they could be shot by the police. Is he actually afraid he is going to physically struggle with cops and then walk all the way around his car, with his kids inside, ignoring the cops with guns drawn and opening his car door to reach in for who knows what? In a country with hundreds of millions of guns (which sucks, but which is a genie we’re not getting back in the bottle anytime soon, and is the reality cops in Wisconsin were dealing with on that day), are they seriously supposed to just hold their fire until they get shot themselves?
If that’s the new rule we are looking to implement, good luck. I don’t think with that kind of hard and fast rule you could get enough police on the streets to maintain public safety even if you paid each one $1 million a year.
How incomprehensible must it be to the white Wisconsin suburbanites who may determine this election, to imagine that they would just wrestle free of police, and ignore their drawn guns, admonitions to freeze etc., to stubbornly walk around and reach into the car where their children are sitting? And if they can’t imagine doing what Blake did, how likely is it for them to feel empathy for him rather than for the white cops who were put in such a difficult situation by his actions?
I remember when the outrage was reserved, and rightly so, for situations where a Black man was shot for pulling out his wallet or cell phone. Those are the kind of incidents Black people can legitimately point to and complain that it makes them feel like they themselves, or their sons, could be shot. But a scenario like Blake’s, or the guy who wrestled with police and grabbed a Taser from one of them, are very very different.
We can certainly debate whether the police were justified in using deadly force in those incidents, but you can’t argue that this was just some innocent person doing something innocent and being shot for it. That makes a huge, HUGE difference in public perception.
You are correct that there are a large number of the public that believe that trying to get away from police who are threatening you is a justified reason to be shot in front of your kids.
That is a real problem, but it is a problem that there are a large number of white people who see black lives as not mattering, rather than black people believing that they do.
Of course the white suburbanites are going to have more empathy for the white cop who shoots the black guy in the back more than the black guy that got shot in the back, that’s the whole point of black lives matter, that too many people just don’t think that they do.
Your post being a direct case in point.
Don’t try to flatten this to “Black man gets shot in back”. That accurately describes the Walter Scott shooting. It does not accurately describe the Jacob Blake shooting.
Yes it does. He was literally shot in the back.
The police were never in danger of being shot themselves. Blake was not holding a gun. The cops had their weapons drawn. Blake had his back to most of the cops most of the time. There was no gun in the vehicle.
I can’t speak to the mental state of the cops, but they were in no danger of actually being shot at any point during the encounter. You can play all the “what if” games you want but the reality of the situation is that the cops were in no danger and attempted to murder Blake.
I didn’t flatten it to “Black man gets shot in the back.”
I described it as “Black man gets shot in the back in front of his children.”