All I really get from this thread is that cops are evil bullies and no that no one is safe from them, not even if a cop is your dad. Even mobsters respect each others families. Of course, in the Timothy Runnels case, that probably is why he got any jail time at all. If it wouldn’t have been the white kid of a fellow cop nothing would have happened to him. And even then what did happen wasn’t much.
At least the other cops are just harassing him, they haven’t tried to kill him again, but still that poor kid has to got to be terrified of going out anywhere by himself.
Of course black people live that way their entire lives, and even the kid’s dad admitted, in the long article linked up above that he killed a black kid and didn’t say he felt any remorse for it. And up until he watched the video he still felt his kid must have deserved what happened to him.
So I guess that’s why cops can get away with bullying/hurting the family members of cops, since cops still side with other cops over their family members. Scary and sad.
Since I can’t edit my post I shall quote myself and reply with a better post, hopefully!
I don’t actually think all cops are evil bullies. There are way too many cops out there for that comment to really make sense. It’s hard to know what the true statistics are of how many cops are out there bullying people and how many are actually racist. I’m sure some are truly evil, but most are probably either neutral good or neutral chaotic, with a few of them being true heroes.
I’m also sure that being a cop can’t be an easy job, it probably is very stressful and feeling that everyone hates and fears you and having cameras popping up all over to catch you doing something bad probably doesn’t make their jobs any easier.
Although, I’m also pretty sure that knowing citizens are watching them is helping to curb at least some of the more egregious civil rights violations that some cops would like to commit if no one was watching.
I wish cops didn’t have so much power and that there was more true oversight and accountability for them. I also wish they would go back to community policing and work on weeding out as much racism and bigotry as possible. They all need much better training, a lot more counseling, and much harsher consequences for when they violate people’s civil rights.
And the thin blue line needs to go - instead of it being them against us, they need to see us as part of them, there should be no separation. Empathy classes should be mandatory, and no one lacking empathy should ever be able to work in law enforcement.
This would totes work and create a much more peaceful and beautiful world, in my imagination, at least.
Officer Juan Velez brake checks a guy then tickets him in Clifton, NJ. The whole thing is recorded on the victim’s dashcam, with audio. The best part is when Officer Velez tells the guy he brake checked because he was afraid the guy was following so close he was gonna hit the cop.
How does that work? If you are afraid someone is getting too close, you do something to draw them closer?
The victim is obviously stunned by this comment from Officer Velez. A short time later, I’m sure he was even more stunned when he was handed 3 tickets for his “offenses”.
Well, on the “bright side”, the driver looked to be a person of color and he wasn’t shot or arrested. Maybe because the cop knew he was on the dashcam (he says to bring the video to court)?
Progress, maybe?
But still the cop is a jackass for not thinking through the accident his brake check could have caused. What if it had been a drunk driver who would not have stopped in time or reflexively swerved without looking ahead?
Let’s not rush to judgement here. In the current climate I don’t think any cops are stupid enough to summarily execute a guy in public for no damn reason whatsoever. The video is no help at all, you can’t see what’s going on in the crucial instant.
My bet is that the guy did manage to get a gun out and was trying to use it. But we shall see.
Bullshit. The gun was pulled out of his pocket later. He bought the gun to protect himself while selling CDs. What kind of shitty cop can’t keep a man who was just tasered under control. I usually take less of a strong view on these situations but this one is so fucking obvious there is no need to wait for more info. The guy died prone after being tasered. There cannot possibly be a rush to judgement here because at some point you need to accept what is obvious.
Well, to be fair, the guy was reported to have brandished a gun at another person and did have gun on him (unlawfully as he was a convicted sex offender) and did appear to resisting the officers orders and was tased first. So lets not jump to any conclusions here. But you’re probably right. Since he was also black it was probably a bad shooting.
What they claim is that they found a gun in his pocket after the fact. Did they shoot him after he supposedly brandished it then put it back in his pocket? :dubious:
The report was that he threatened someone with a gun. Therefore, the cops had reason to believe he was armed. When a cop thinks you’re armed, it’s really a bad idea to reach into your waistband or pocket when told to get on the ground. I don’t know all the facts, so I’m just making a wild ass guess like you are, so perhaps we should wait for the investigation to shed light on all the facts before placing blame.
Let me get this straight- if the Secret Service sees a guy brandishing a gun in the process of entering the White House grounds, they can shoot him once, subdue him, and he lives. A guy selling CDs on the sidewalk has a gun in his pants and if he so much as puts his hands near his waist, it’s time to shoot him many times and kill him. Why do they have to go batshit crazy and empty their guns?
Eh, it’s training to fire multiple rounds like that. It’s not really that reasonable to expect most people to be trained to “only shoot as many times as necessary”, since “necessary” is unknown and uncertain. Since the only time you should shoot someone is if there’s a point where it’s justifiable to kill them, the reality is trying to “less lethally” shoot someone just isn’t feasible.
That’s why in determining if something is right/wrong we have to look at whether the act of shooting was justified, not how many shots were fired.
The Secret Service receive vastly more training than patrol cops–keep in mind like 95% of a patrol cop’s job is pulling over cars, writing tickets, responding to domestic violence and nuisance calls and etc. It wouldn’t make sense for them to receive the high level, paramilitary and body guard training of a Secret Service agent. Despite what is shown on TV many cops never fire their weapon in service, so that really isn’t so big a part of the job that we should expect them to be equivalent in skill and response ability as the U.S. Secret Service.
Why not, if they know they’ll get away with it, or at the very least be given every single benefit of the doubt unless and until they give a written confession?
There’s a middle ground, where the shooting is neither justified nor murder. This is based on a summary of the events in the video–I don’t have the stomach for that kind of violence, I’m ashamed to admit, so I can’t say I saw the vid myself. There’s no way to confirm this is the case short of a months-long investigation. But it’s plausible, and it’s important to remember that not all human tragedies have to have a good guy and a bad guy. The version of events is roughly as follows:
Cop A says “Gun!”
What Cop A means is “I see the gun he was reported as having, it’s in his coat pocket.”
What Cop B hears is “Your about to get shot, open fire!”
In the video you can see him on the ground pinned by 2 or 3 cops, limbs being knelt on, totally immobile as far as we can see. How exactly was he reaching for his gun in this state?
Why did a cop draw his weapon and point it at the guy’s head after he was pinned?
How do you shoot someone who is pinned to the ground in both the chest and the back?
