Seems kind of run-of-the-mill these days. Sadly. There is video of his booking, in which there is a scuffle. Just the violence in a this video alone is disturbing, with one or two officers stomping on the man’s head as he is curled up on the floor.
The more troubling aspect to the video is that Ajibade seems compliant and calm until the police start manhandling him. It looks for all the world like they are escalating the situation, which seems to be SOP: provoke the [del]victim[/del] suspect and they can get away with all kinds of shit by claiming that he was violent. It is like the classic old-west gunfighter’s ethos of justifying shooting because the other guy made the first move.
I dunno about you, but if I’m stranded, all alone, in the middle of the night and a guy in an unmarked car rolls up on me, I’m probably gonna flex a little muscle–just to let the rando know I’m not to be messed with. But apparently, we aren’t supposed to do this with police officers operating covertly. We’re supposed to intuit that such people are harmless folk who have more to fear from us than we of them. Doesn’t matter that Florida, where this took place, is a Stand Your Ground state. You’re only allowed to be defensive with hoodie-wearing teenaged black youth walking around in their own neighborhoods.
How dare you insinuate that any police officer is anything but a heroic and fair-principled defender of the public’s freedom? The thug probably got just what was coming to him for being stupid and disrespectful. No one should fault the hero for shooting to kill if he had any fear, or sensed the slightest whiff of a threat. And although I am certainly not a racist – NO I’M NOT A RACIST – the skin color and hair texture of the thug correlate strongly with stupidity, criminality and disrespect.
And I’m no hypocrite. I’d say exactly the same if it was the white LEO’s car which had broken down, and the black thug stopped to help. Permute the skin colors also if you wish… Wait a minute! Who would hire a stupid disrespectful black thug to be a cop?
Let me go over all the ways you’re completely misrepresenting me.
This isn’t a law enforcement issue. If he’d been a civilian he would have exactly as much right to defend himself from a perceived threat. Both parties had that right in this case. I note that neither you or the person you’re responding to deny that the victim had the right to defend himself.
There is no “thug” in this story. Nor a “hero”. Not every justifiable shooting has a Good Guy and a Bad Guy in it like in the Hollywood movies you’ve learned about law enforcement from.
No one should fault anyone who chooses to defend themselves from a perceived threat.
Bullshit.
The only one here asserting that black people can’t be cops is you.
We are, however, apparently supposed to intuit that the armed man who jumps out of a parked car at you at 3 AM is a completely harmless guy just waiting for roadside assistance.
Suppose this story had ended with the civilian shooting the unarmed cop. Would you deny that he had a right to defend himself?
By that logic, the “civilian” had every right to kill the guy that jumped out of the unmarked car that pulled him over, because everyone is a lethal threat until proven otherwise, and everyone has the right to defend themselves.
Well, yes, he did at that moment in time. He had no way of knowing the plainclothes man in an unmarked vehicle was a cop. He had the right to defend himself. Are you saying that if a random person pulls up next to you and approaches your broken-down car at 3 AM, you have no right to defend yourself?
Of course he was poor, it’s not like he had a real job. Unless you consider robbing, murdering people, and stealing to be a real job. How dare those good guys with guns take down the bad guy with a gun.