Well, for starters, Freddie Gray didn’t do any of the things you list, but he still ended up dead. He was black and that’s enough for hateful bigots to assume that he had it coming.
Don’t be upset Smapti, when I called you an unhinged loon, I said it was with all due respect.
Baltimore has a history of putting healthy people in police vans and pulling out people with spinal injuries. They’re called rough rides and last night’s rioters aren’t the only thugs in Baltimore, a lot of them wear badges.
Here is a big part of the problem. The bad cops that use excessive force targeting minorities are not disciplined by the force. They are not fired. They are not ostracized. They are protected. They remain part of the culture. They end up training newer officers, move up in the ranks and can become sergeants, captains and police brass. The cycle continues…
jjandyiiii said “Like it or not, many black people have rational and legitimate reasons, due to personal experience and personal interactions, to respond to police with distrust and fear.”
That is absolutely true. But, like it or not, many police have rational and legitimate reasons, due to personal experience and personal interactions, to respond to blacks with distrust and fear."
An officer of any color assigned to a poor black (or hispanic or pick your minority) neighborhood is likely to to spend most, if not all of his time, responding to the worst of human behavior. day in and day out. For years. Sooner or later they may (will?) become of the mindset of “In almost every situation which I deal with a black person there is at least one criminal and witnesses don’t want to cooperate (fear of retribution - not fear of the cops). The streets are filthy and houses infested with cockroaches. Therefore, most black people are dirty criminals” I am not saying that this is excusable or their perceptions are accurate but it is understandable, perhaps inevitable. The looting and arson going on in Baltimore only serve to reinforce the perceptions.
This is a two way street. You can’t blame the cops for everything. I don’t now what the answer is. Cops need to be held accountable but so do criminals.
This does not go both ways. Both sides are not the same, nor equal in their interactions. One side is part of institutional power, and one side is historically disadvantaged and mistreated. One side has the power when they interact. It’s absolutely part of the responsibility of every police department to ensure that its officers treat people equally and fairly with regard to race. It’s an occupation, not a race/ethnicity/etc. If a cop responds to black people differently because they’re black, they shouldn’t be a cop, and it’s the responsibility of police departments to find these individuals and fire them. There’s nothing comparable the other way – black criminals don’t have superiors that can fire them, and most black people disapprove openly and vocally of black criminals anyway.
Pretty much the same rationalization for mistreatment of black people in all of our history – “if only they’d behave better, they’d be treated better”… which not only ignores the fact that most black people behave fine, but it perpetuates the cycle. When a black kid sees his dad mistreated, and that black kid is hassled when he’s a teen, he’s a lot more likely to see the police as the enemy.
Police departments need to be held responsible, and so do criminals. But not most black people. Most black people have done nothing wrong and bear no blame for anything. I believe many or most police departments have not done enough to ensure that their officers don’t mistreat people due to race.
Someone deliberately drew a gun and pointed it at him? That contradicts the evidence, and the decision at the trial. The officer drawing the gun not the taser in this encounter was criminally negligent not deliberate, hence it wasn’t murder.
So no, it’s not reasonable to argue it was murder, when to do so involves ignoring the evidence.
Crime has declined for the past 20 years. Cops are recruited with videos showing them kicking ass. Yet much of their job involves essentially social work - dealing the homeless, drunks, domestic abuse.
We know that police training makes a difference, because the rate of weapons discharges by officers varies across cities and the variation isn’t entirely driven by crime. New York City cops are actually less trigger happy. Sacramento, Albuquerque, and Tuscon cops are more so. Training matters.
Cite: Don’t shoot (sub req)
It’s sad to say, but Hart does have a point: prior to the riot, there had been a week of peaceful protests and hardly any coverage. Once buildings burned, then the networks showed up. Besides, what would the Boston Tea Party have been without the destruction of property?