True, but suicide seems unlikely given the victim’s immediately preceding communications with her sister. I don’t know if you can get beyond a reasonable doubt but it looks bad.
School cop extends his Christmas vacation by body slamming a wee teenager.
What the fuck is the matter with your country? All your crowing about freedom is horseshit. You live in a police state.
The video doesn’t seem to be available to US viewers. I guess that CBC probably restricts its content outside of Canada.
Here’s the video again, at the Guardian website. That story says that the girl who was slammed was actually not involved in the fight, but was trying to break it up. To be honest, i don’t think that even matters; anyone who thinks it’s appropriate for a police officer to treat an unarmed 13-year-old like this is a fucking animal.
Here’s the video from CNN. Like in almost all these videos the lead up isn’t shown. One wonders why this always seems to be the case. It’s almost like, oh, I don’t know, the original video was edited maybe? I know my iPhone has that capability and I imagine most other smart phones do too.
Anyway, the girl was apparently trying to break up a fight between her sister and another girl. I would imagine the cop was himself either trying to break up the fight or about to when she came charging in and he mistook her actions as her trying to join in the fight. I also doubt he knew she was a 13-year-old kid (if she was. CNN says 15). He just knew someone else appeared to be trying to jump into the fight.
Cops have to deal with a lot of shitty people day in and day out for years and I’m sure it becomes second nature to at least suspect the worst when violent behavior is going on. This guy had apparently been working at the school for four years before this incident without apparent blemish, so it’s not like he routinely went around bullying and manhandling the students.
I’m thinking that like with so many of these RO threads and incidents it would be best to wait and see what the investigation shows. If the cop just lost it and threw her down for no good reason, then year, he’s an asshole and deserves to lose his job. But if he was trying to contain and break up a fight and trying in the middle of doing that to deal with someone he thought was trying to jump in and escalate things, then he was justified in trying to bring her under control as quickly and decisively as possible.
These are real life situations where people have to respond to things going on in front of and around them that are potentially explosive and dangerous and almost always preceeded by years of having experienced similar behavior that resulted in criminal behavior and someone getting hurt. Sometimes cops misread things or over-react based upon having to make split-second decisions in the midst of turmoil. It’s easy to make Monday-morning ivory-tower judgements and declarations about cops being professionals and therefore should have the training and temperament and skills never to do the wrong thing, but everyone, professional or not makes mistakes. Surgeons make mistakes, airline pilots make mistakes, and cops make mistakes.
So how about holding off on the RO until we find out more about what was going on and why this cop did what he did? I’m thinking that in his own mind and with all the things considered that he had to consider on a split-second basis he did what he felt was the best and proper thing to do at that time.
Did he, now. You must have some inside information about what was going on inside his head at the time — which is most likely even more than he himself has, as memory and perception is often faulty in stressful situations.
In any case, flinging a person in such a way as to cause a concussion sounds like a bit of an over-reaction. Like a guy who probably should not be doing a job in which he loses his own self control.
So try not to be Mr. Genius-I-Know-What-Was-Happening dude. Unless, of course, you are intent on bolstering the prevailing impression that you are a dumbfuck.
There’s no time for reasonable analysis or looking at the big picture. The important thing is that a white cop used physical force against a black person, and therefore RACISM and the cops are all corrupt and this is a police state, and therefore the officer in question must be publicly lynched before he tries some fascist move like getting a lawyer or insisting on a fair trial.
You guys might be interested in the story of Jennifer Tanner.
Short version - woman found shot dead in her home in 1984 with TWO bullet wounds to the head. And wounds in her hands. Ruled a suicide :eek: until ten years later another :eek::eek: body found down a disused mineshaft on the property. Re-opened investigation, new coroner returns finding that she was killed by her brother in law.
Brother in law hasn’t been charged to this day. House conveniently burned down some time after the discovery of the second body - nobody’s been charged for that either.
And the brother in law’s occupation is…?
Yep, this is why people get so shocked when these cases don’t result in convictions. They see a few seconds of something, and extrapolate a scenario where it could be a crime, and assume that therefore it must be one.
This incident happened before this thread was started, but I figured I’d post about it anyway.[
The jaw fracture was left out of the original autopsy report, although the cops claims to have discussed it at the time. Coroner ruled homicide, but it was later ruled suicide. One can only imagine why.
The investigators bent over backward to rule it a suicide. Given the facts, should still be a homicide. I understand it would have been an uphill battle to get a conviction, but they circled the wagons to protect on their own.
The medical examiner says otherwise -
Regards,
Shodan
Maybe he can tell us how a cardboard tube played a role.
And what else do you suppose he would have thought she was trying to do, fling herself into the fray in order to pin the combatants down and stop the fight and it pissed him off because that was his job? I know it’s difficult but try not to be an idiot.
We don’t know for a fact the girl got a concussion. Her mother said she did, but her mother also sounded like she was laying the groundwork for a lawsuit.
We also don’t know that he lost self-control. As I’ve already suggested he may well have thought she was a would-be combatant herself and was therefore trying to bring her under control as quickly as possible so he could get back to the other two.
Actually I try to be Mr. Keep-An-Open-Mind-Untill-The-Facts-Are-In-Instead-Of-Knee-Jerkingly-Assuming-The-Cops-Are-Always-Racist-Wrong-Stupid-And-Mean-Based-On-A-Likely-Edited-Video dude.
Contradicted in the article:
But then maybe he did note it. He also concluded it was a homicide.
Yeah, well, you suck at that. You suck so bad at it that you come across as Mr. Closed-Minded-Smug-Asswipe-Who-Doesn’t-Listen-To-Anything-Anyone-Else-Says-And-Who-Has-Really-Morally-Repugnant-Ideas-And-Attitudes.
Suppose it actually was suicide. But suicide directly caused by the pain and grief from the felonious battering. Could the batterer then be charged with homicide?
I can’t find any links to the original autopsy report itself, so I don’t know who is right. Somebody claimed that the jaw was broken partially by the gunshot, and then split the rest of the way in the autopsy, so maybe that has something to do with it.
It sounds to me like the family doesn’t want to let this go, which is understandable, but five years after the fact, and three autopsies - I would be surprised if anything new turns up.
Regards,
Shodan
AFAICT, he is saying lets not jump to conclusions just yet, because there are some perfectly good and valid reasons to body slam a girl that is half your weight. Almost the opposite of Mr. Genius-I-Know-What-Was-Happening dude.
I don’t think we need to wait. I mean, she may not be in a bikini but she is still a kid. If that was my daughter I’d be fucking furious, I bet SA would be too. Unless she was attacking someone with a knife or kicking someone in the head with her sister, I don’t see how you justify that sort of thing. I’ve broken up fights between teenagers before and I never had to hurt any of them.
But then again, those uppity black bitches don’t deserve the same care and consideration as the nice white girls. They’re practically boys, amirite?
With that said, the video does seem suspiciously clipped, so if it turns out she did have a knife or she was actively kicking someone in the head with others, then the officer might have acted appropriately.
In other words, you have no way of knowing if it was appropriate or not. The video shows something that should be investigated to determine what actually happened and why - but that’s all.
I am trying not to let the mother and her statements reflect poorly on the 15 year old girl.
I agree he seemed in control after the body slam but you have to cross a pretty high threshold before body slamming a kid like that starts to look justifiable.
I think the problem is that the mind seems to be open to things that might exonerate police but less pen to suggestions that the [police might have behaved inappropriately… I think its pretty obvious that without knowing more, the video looks fucking bad for the cop.
Not that the other side isn’t guilty of the same thing. The open mind they apply towards some apparently bad shit committed by the civilian shut closes like a bear trap when they are considering the actions of an officer.