We should all be compassionate towards the real victims – cops who might face criticism from random people online, not the people (and their families) treated violently and sometimes killed by cops. It’s not like we have a history in this country of certain groups of people who, for most of our history, reasonably viewed law enforcement as dangerous and deadly enemies due to recurring and consistent brutal mistreatment.
For a less snarky response, it’s a very good thing too look very skeptically at the explanations by authority figures for uses of force that look like they might be sketchy. “I’m not certain, but based on the video, that looks like mistreatment” is a perfectly reasonable response to videos like this. We’re not saying “off with his head”, but we’re rightly and reasonably being very skeptical of law enforcement that, in our country’s history, has historically routinely tried to defend and rationalize both good and bad uses of force. We should be skeptical of law enforcement uses of force, and we should demand very high standards.
If there was a video of a cop shooting a civilian in the back as he was running away, there might be some circumstances where the shooting might be justified but the conditions that would justify that sort of shooting are unlikely. Similarly, the conditions that would justify this sort of behavior are unlikely. I say this because if ere was a knife or if she was in fact actively kicking someone in the head, it is significant enough to most likely have been part of the original story.
So investigate, but don’t assume the conclusion of the investigation. It shouldn’t as difficult as it seems to be to many people here to give cops the same benefit of the doubt as anybody else.
They should get the same legal benefit of the doubt, but should be held to a higher standard by society at large aside from the legal system, IMO. Power and responsibility and all; in most instances, cops have far more power than those they interact with, and such power should be looked at very critically and skeptically when force is used. We should be more skeptical of law enforcement justifications of force than for random citizen’s attempt at justifying his/her behavior. If society had been very skeptical of police use of force throughout American history, there might have been far less suffering and brutality brought on by police (overwhelmingly directed at people of color).
Perhaps you should be holding everyone to the same higher standard, not just cops - who are just citizens doing their jobs, and have exactly the power that society has decided it’s necessary for them to have.
Or, you could ignore the actual issue and try to make it about race, as you (and many others) usually do.
Yes, by talking about race I’m ignoring the “actual issue”. Since obviously I said that race is the only thing involved and nothing else is involved ever at all. I said that many times – I just can’t find the quote… can you?
Or are you, once again, reading stuff into my posts that aren’t there? Could it be that I think race is a significant part of this but there are other issues as well?
A cop searches and handcuffs a suspect but doesn’t find gun.
If he was handcuffed with hands behind his back, how does he get the gun up to his head?
If he was handcuffed with hands in front of him, how did he get his hands behind him to the small of his back?
Is he some sort of contortionist? Could any of you perform this maneuver? My bones keep me from attempting it.
I think we ARE talking about a very different incident here.
It is possible, if you’re not too bulky. How feasible that is in the back of a police car, without being noticed, is another matter. but I wouldn’t think it’s impossible for everybody.
That video took about 10 seconds to find, by the way, this isn’t particularly obscure.
It was not “unnoticed”. There was a conversation. Then the guy got the gun out, the officer pulled over and tried to stop him. Not sure how – by yelling and pointing a gun at him? That would sure work on someone intent upon suicide. The story says there was a witness. It says that the incident took 6 minutes. Really? That is a long damn time.
The actions SEEM inappropriate regardless of who body slammed the girl into the floor. If it was a teacher that did that, I think most people would jump to the same conclusions about whether or not it was appropriate.
Generally speaking, body slamming a 100 pound girl into the floor requires some pretty exigent circumstances. The sort of thing that would have probably come out with the original story.
I agree that it certainly appears the cop who slammed the young girl to the floor was over-reacting. I guess it’s easy to do when you are confronted with a unruly group of kids and are trying to calm things down and sort things out. I don’t know; I don’t like to be around a bunch of screaming kids.
That does not excuse such behavior, however. I expect our police to be prepared to handle these situations properly and not given assignments in such environments until they have demonstrated they know how to defuse a situation like this. This applies to dealing with the homeless, people with mental issues, and the disabled. They should spend as much time learning how to deal with abusive people peacefully as they spend on the shooting range.
I agree with the first sentence. I have a problem with the second. While the officer may not have been trained adequately to deal with abusive people, I am sure they are given plenty of training in not discussing any of the circumstances with the media. Anything he says can, and will, be used against him in both the court of public opinion and in any possible lawsuits. Since the only source of information for the original story comes from the kids, it would not be all that surprising to discover that they just forgot to mention any exigent circumstances.
All that said, instead of using these incidents to castigate the few officers caught on video, we should be using them to demand that the training be changed to prevent further occurrences like this from happening. Giving the girl’s mother $10 million and firing the officer might seem as being an incentive to prevent such behavior, but it is just as likely to reinforce the “us vs. them” mentality that is often a big part of the problem. Going to the mayor and demanding that only police that are trained to deal with abusive children be allowed to sent on calls like this would probably be more effective.
Does this seem odd to anyone else? He makes ‘suicidal comments’ and the cop asks if has means to do that? Not “it’s gonna be OK”. Not “it’s not that bad”. Not “shut the fuck up till we get to the station”. No, it’s “do you have the means to do that?”
Anyway, he gets a gun, presumably from his waistband. Then does that ninja-esque move of pulling his hands from behind his back, under his legs and to the front while seated in the back of a police car. How bad of a fuckup is it to not notice a firearm in the waistband of someone you are frisking for a weapon before handcuffing?
I would be surprised if she was going for someone with a knife or curb stomping some other child and no one, not even that other child mentioned this detail.
That may be but nothing focuses the mind of a bureaucrat like a 10 million dollar judgment for filing to provide training that only costs 1 million dollars.
Yes it seems odd. That’s why we are all very skeptical. I didn’t think of your particular (very good) point about the weirdness of asking a suicidal person “do you have the means to do that” (STFU seems like a much more believable response) but there are a dozen reasons why this story is fishy.
It would surprise me, too. However, if such an unlikely thing was happening, I also would not be surprised that a bunch of unruly kids failed to mention it, particularly if all of them were jumping on the “look at the mean Mr. Policeman” bandwagon.
Except that the whole community ends up paying the $10 Million, not the bureaucrat. Sure, compensate for actual damages, but punitive damages against the city really just hurts everyone and only benefits a tiny few.
No real surprises. When the Justice Department report into the Baltimore Police Department came out last year, i took the time to read the whole thing, and i’m going to do the same with this one.
While news organizations often do a pretty good job of summarizing the key issues raised in these reports, reading the whole report gives a better sense of the scale of this stuff. The Baltimore report contained example after example of violations of codes of conduct and violations of people’s civil rights, and seeing them piled up like that, along with Justice Department descriptions of the lack of any real effort within the department to fix the problems, really brings home how pervasive some of these practices are. They’re not just a few bad apples; this stuff is entrenched in many police forces, from the street to the people in charge.
Black man in Evanston Illinois brutalized for driving his own car. Charges thrown out by a judge (obvious from the video, IMO, that the man did nothing to warrant being brutalized).
Why bother with the charges? Why bother trying to justify this brutalization? Until PDs and law enforcement in general stop knee-jerk defending this kind of behavior, many communities will (reasonably, IMO) see law enforcement as malevolent and dangerous enemies.
I’m not a big fan of excessive punitive damages, but I think your reasoning here is incorrect.
The relevant supervisors were at fault, and will suffer for this financial loss even though it doesn’t come directly out of their pockets. And, hopefully, the voters will remember the loss when it comes time to elect Sheriff or other relevant official.
The despicable and disgusting police forces we have in the U.S.A. did not arise in a vacuum. They exist because citizens tolerate or admire them. It’s not feasible to fine just the racist red-neck turds who want a vicious police force, but if the loss of community money focuses good-spirited citizens to turn out and vote against deranged police leadership, it will be money well-spent.