This is April 29, only 4 months into the year. 335 people have been killed by the police so far this year.
Nope. And I know you’re not really advocating it, but the whole “had it coming” mentality, even as a joke, is exactly how this kind of behavior gets self-justified by perpetrators, and how colleagues and juries decide to not do anything about police brutality.
Yeah, the guy was being a bit of an ahole, but no law against that. And the action of the cop, supposed to be the professional in the room, rises to way above the level of ahole. So, cop = biggest ahole in that encounter. Good job Loveland PD. Your proving yourself in need of some serious reform and defunding.
Also, MLB banned the use of chewing tobacco long ago. It’s banned in my work location (along with cigarettes). Is it really still allowed for these “upstanding” professionals?
Audit the Audit had that one too, with running commentary from the channel owner:
He filed suit, and the case was settled for $290,000.
Settled isn’t enough. The officer needs to be fired.
In fact, there needs to be a federal law: fired from one force for specific constitutional violations disqualifies you from being hired from another force.
Hey, look on the bright side, that is less than 3 a day. Slightly. 6% less than 3 a day. So, it could be worse. It could include the ones they do not tell us about.
I think that gets to the heart of it for me: why do some people seem to expect more from somebody that they call a criminal than they do from agents of the State, presumably well-trained, often surprisingly well paid, and – at least on paper – highly professional ?
Thanks for that. I hadn’t seen it.
The element of that video that stands out most for me is (Loveland PD Officer) Delima saying that Sowd simply helping to move the motorcycle out of the driving lane (if Sows actually did this) was Tampering With Evidence – a crime.
I have often said: if the criminal justice gets its hooks in you, you stand utterly alone. Even the person you pay to defend you, or the Public Defender assigned to your defense, all work together. Nobody is really on your side.
A friend who went to law school always remembers what a professor told her in year one: clients will come and go, but you work with these people (everybody else in the criminal justice system).
Combine this with the horrid perverse incentive of raising money to feed, sustain, and grow the criminal justice system that is – at its core – a necessary evil (at least as it’s currently constituted), and you have a fearsome bull in a china shop that has developed a shocking Us vs. Them mentality.
And it is fair to assume that “we don’t hear about the planes that don’t crash,” (ie, that the majority of LEOs are good, decent, and professional) but I don’t need to hear about those. I’d like air travel to be perfectly safe. I’d like crashes to be a vanishingly rare exception that shocks our very senses.
Ditto law enforcement.
Follow-up from Florida:
The AP has a story about bad cops relocating, a subject we’ve decried for years now:
A cop in Vandergrift, PA (near me!) is under investigation after he harassed a Black patron of a local restaurant. The owner of the restaurant is shocked. The patron was so innocent and the cop may have had a few.
Texas:
He already had a record that included substance abuse issues and assaulting a minor. Good to know that the screening process works – not!
He’s all that and more. Nearly twenty years ago he arrested my daughter for refusing to talk to him when he stopped her on the street; I’d taught her to ask for a parent or lawyer and she did! He wanted her to tell him the names of classmates who were at a party, drinking.
My attorney (a friend) thought it would be a good learning experience for her. He treated her case as if she were accused of a felony that carried jail time, even down to having a paralegal in court with him, handing him papers, etc. The magistrate found in her favor and ordered the cop to apologize in open court.
A lot of the problems with policing can be murky but this one seems like it should be pretty easy to address. Cops who leave a job due to problems shouldn’t be hired anywhere else. Some sort of national record is necessary.
And yet Professor Goldman has been working for over 40 years to implement just such a thing, and we still don’t have it. Despite a clear majority of people thinking knowing this is a good idea.
Missouri:
Georgia deputy sheriff says on social media that he relieves stress by beating black men. But then again, he claimed to have arrested a black man for stealing a gun from a gun store, and the sheriff’s office pointed out that there are no gun stores in the county.
The deputy was also convicted of possession of an illegal weapon, and he posted to rightwing websites in which he bragged about making and acquiring illegal firearms, explosives and suppressors. He also said he would charge Black people with felonies in order to keep them from voting during the 2020 elections.
Is there something controversial about this one?
IMO, as worded, the story does not demonstrate that the person who shot the officer and the person shot by police were the same person.
Competent law enforcement will arrest somebody. (esp. if they know they will confront an armed suspect)
Death squads kill people.