Asshole (ex-)officer who pulled over Sandra Bland has been indicted for perjury in the case.
Progress? Or will he just walk like so many others?
This article and others I found don’t have much detail. Maybe I missed something from when this was last in the news. What’s the perjury charge about?
Per [the AP story about this:
The cop was in fear, so any defensive move he made was justified. If he hadn’t injured her hand, she might have used it against him by failing to signal again.
She may have also damaged the ground with her head–potentially causing a traffic hazard if the ground was the street or a pedestrian hazard if it was to the side of the road.
Did you watch the video? That guy totally deserved the beatdown. If you didn’t notice, that guy was brown without a doubt.
You have to break some brown eggs if you want to make a justice omelet.
Ex-officer in Md. gets 5 years for aiming gun at man’s head
Umm. If there’s a video, you are that guy darlin.
But obviously the man deserved to have a gun aimed at his head for failing to respect the cop’s authority. Or something.
You’ll have to ask Smapti to get a definitive answer.
One should never point a gun at another human being unless one intends to shoot and kill them.
This officer was in the wrong.
I think the appeal of that sort of logic is that there is no nuance or judgment. You always follow the rule, and there’s no ambiguity about what you should do, or what the right thing is, just if you are strong enough to do it.
In some ways, it’s crushingly disappointing that reality isn’t like that: it demands judgment. Anyone who is 100% certain they did the right thing is deluded, because we can’t really ever be sure we did the right thing. I’m not sure we can ever be sure we did the best we could. All we can do is keep trying. It’s terrifying, really.
Interesting how you’ll never condemn an officer’s actions until after he’s been tried and convicted. Until that happens it’s quite sad watching the contortions you’ll put yourself through to justify their actions.
Had he emptied his gun into the man, killing him, and claimed that he was in fear – the suspect might have been reaching for a nail-file or something == the cop would have been let off scot-free.
It does seem that this verdict sends the wrong message to cops. Shoot to kill and get the automatic grand jury whitewash. Point the gun without shooting and go to jail. 
Right, smapti ?
So if he had pulled the trigger, you’d have been fine with it?
NYPD cop assaults a man photographing the police, arrests him, ruins the camera, and files a false arrest report accusing the citizen of assaulting the cop! Just another day in modern American “crime-fighting”?
No. A nearby business also video-recorded the whole encounter.
If he’d pulled the trigger, then it would have been up to the jury to decide whether or not his use of force was justified. Pointing the gun and not shooting proves he didn’t need to pull the gun in the first place; thus it’s unjustified.
So pulling a gun, shooting a man climbing out of a wreck, then re-holstering his weapon and not telling anyone about it is plausibly an accident while pointing a gun at someone’s head without shooting them is obviously at fault.
Think I’ve got it straight now. Thanks for the clarification.
Smapti’s lessons to law enforcement – always pull the trigger and keep shooting until they are dead. Then he is on your side. If you don’t shoot them, Smapti definitely disapproves. If you shoot them, he probably approves.
Black deliveryman beaten by San Francisco cops while en route to deliver a burrito. As someone who calls SF home, it’s incredibly sad seeing the litany of police violence stories coming out of the city. The SF police force have been known to be a problem police force for a while now and it doesn’t seem like there’s any strong movement towards reform.
And using a phone while operating a vehicle. And refusing to provide ID. And resisting arrest.