No, it is not. How does negligently killing Freddy Gray protect us, if the result precipitates riots (which are protest marches that the police escalate into violence)? Or strangling the dastardly supervillain Eric Garner? Or the killings in Charleston, Minneapolis, Red Stick, on ad finitum? You have a very strange idea of “protecting”.
At least we know the source of the disagreement – you think all the Bull Connors in America ceased to exist or instantly became non-racist in the 60s, while I think bad practices continued to some extent even into current years.
You don’t see this as a problem? When the video clearly shows that it wasn’t justified but the cops and the courts and the people in the courts that work with the cops on a daily basis then turn around and say uh, nope, totally justified. Cops are officially allowed ot kick the crap out of you for NO REASON.
Talk about being frustrated that something so obvious is being ignored.
Now this is the pit. I was mad at the latest example in an endless list of examples of cops being cunts, so yes, I was just venting, not not all of them are such. A close friend of mine always wanted to be one, and I think he’s a mountie now, but I never heard of mounties acting like American cops, so I’m hopeful he’s still a good guy. My sensei back in middle school was a good cop, I think. I remember clearly seeing a group of cops cursing at and belittling 3 kids, who were committing the crime of wearing black and wearing makeup. Sensei rolls up and attitudes immediately change. Other cops shut up, and sensei is nothing but professional and NICE (I know, so weird) to the kids, determines that ey are in fact just being harassed and scoots them along.
Good cop, who probably couldn’t do much more to stop the other ones from being obnoxious ass-hats.
And that’s the REAL issue. Bad cops? They will always exist. It’s an incredibly boring, grueling job, that has you dealing with the dregs of society day in and day out. I can see how for some people that has you thinking you’re better than everyone, everyone is always lying, and everyone is dangerous. And some people can’t remain professional afters years of that.
No, bad cops are a symptom of a corrupt system that has no interest in developing and applying methods for self correction. It doesn’t immediately act to remove bad cops, it actively protects them. Sometimes it even punishes cops who do the right thing.
That’s the real problem.
You seem to think you know better than the cops and the courts and the politicians and so on about what is legally justified. That’s the problem here, and the problem with most of the arguments in this thread, and for that matter the protests on a wider scale. You, and they, simply don’t understand what is happening. The police, for the most part, aren’t corrupt or crooks, they are people doing the jobs they have been told to. And before someone gets into the “only following orders” bullshit, it’s clear that the job they are doing is legal.
You want things to change? Build a majority, get people elected, and get them changed. But claiming something is “obviously wrong” when those who know more than you about it have shown otherwise is fucking stupid, on a par with anti-vaxxers or climate change deniers.
Of course the bad practices continue to some extent - that we’ve seen criminal cops charged and convicted, in cases referenced in this thread, show that.
But we’ve seen far more cases where accusations of misbehaviour are made, but when they’re investigated the claims fall apart. The vast majority of the deaths protested by BLM and the like fall into this category - situations where the police acted correctly and someone unfortunately died.
True, the police probably should be given more powers to protect people from the rioters. For some reason, though, many people have sympathy with the “protesters” rather than the people who’s communities are being damaged by them.
We continue to disagree on a lot of things. I don’t think it was correct to drive within feet of Tamir Rice and get out of the car and shoot him immediately. I think other actions would have reduced the risk to the cops and to Rice – those were very, very poor choices by the cops, not at all “correct”, IMO. I don’t think it was correct to physically accost Eric Garner when he posed no threat to anyone, then choke him to death, even while he’s urgently struggling to breathe and expressing that he can’t, and then do nothing for minutes after he’s clearly suffered something extreme (which turned out to be death). There are many other instances in which we probably disagree. I think BLM has chosen some poor examples of mistreatment, but also many good ones.
I’ll ask again about the 60s – you said earlier that black Americans have had equality (in terms of police treatment, based on the discussion) since the 60s. Do you really believe that? That seems insane to me… cops were, quite obviously, extremely racist nation-wide in the 60s, very commonly mistreating black people, and then you believe that all this changed instantly? That’s nuts. You know that sundown towns existed long after that, right? You know that they still exist (like Vidor, TX), right?
Steophan, just because something is legal does not mean that it is right. It’s a pity you are incapable of understanding that and recognizing that by first world norms your country has an extremely serious police violence problem, and that your society, in particular through people such as yourself, has permitted this blight to exist.
When either of the senior Canadian cops that I socialize with (one a provincial and one a Mountie, of which one of them has had to kill on the job) comes back from Can-Am joint training or police conferences, they go on, and on, and on, about their disgust for the corruption and violence that some of their American counterparts brag about. The same disgust was conveyed to me on several occasions by a neighbour who had retired as provincial police Chief Superintendant. Another friend who is a border services officer regularly complains about American police regularly lying as they try to bring their guns with them into Canada (a very serious thing here).
Not my country, just one I can observe pretty easily. Hence the reason I keep saying if people want to change what’s happening they need to gate out and change the laws, that’s how a democracy works.
America has, by first world norms, a violence problem in general, not one specific to the police.
As for legal not equalling right, you are of course correct. But something being legal means that society does not consider it to be wrong, or at least wrong enough to bother dealing with. However, in the specific incident that started this, despite the investigation finding that the use of force was justified (that is, legal and within the force’s guidelines), they nevertheless changed the guidelines going forward. That is, they decided that the legal standard wasn’t good enough, and imposed a more stringent one.
The whole thing is the exact opposite of police corruption, or of excessive use of force being swept under the carpet. Unless you think that people should be punished for following the laws and policies that apply to them, this should be exactly what you want.
Or, I suppose, unless you want
Eric Garner was forcefully resisting arrest, and Tamir Rice was seen waving a gun around. Perhaps both scenarios could have been resolved peacefully, but you are expecting the cops coming into an apparently dangerous and life threatening situation to somehow know exactly what should be done to produce the best possible outcome, rather than one which in most cases will at least allow everyone to go home.
You expect them to know that the kid reaching for his gun actually has a replica modified to look like a real one? How, exactly? And why shouldn’t they have restrained Garner? He was being arrested (legitimately) and violently resisting. As for not acting, the EMTs who arrived within minutes also din’t feel any treatment was appropriate - were they violent racists as well?
No, I image it took a few years in most places, and a lot longer in some others - as long as 1993 in Vidor, according to a quick Google. At that point, there were serious issues with the community but not with the police. Well, I’m assuming you’re OK with the police allowing KKK marches since you’ve said they shouldn’t be preventing BLM ones.
But that’s almost a quarter of a century ago. If sundown towns and the like really do still exists, that’s abhorrent - but given they’ve been illegal for half a century and there are many organisations that would give legal assistance to anyone caught by them, it should be easy to deal with them.
On the first point, a problem here is not simply the laws themselves, but the fact that, in the case of police violence, the people who get to make determinations about things like “excessive use of force” are the police themselves, and prosecutors who have to work closely with police on a daily basis and who don’t want to alienate the cops. If you’re not aware of this stuff, i submit that you haven’t actually been observing things very closely. Either that, or you’re just ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit your narrow worldview.
As for the second point, some of these specific incidents are, in fact, symptoms of a broader police culture in which cops actually do violate the laws and the constitution, and sweep the violations under the carpet. Read the Justice Department’s reports on policing in Baltimore and Chicago; those reports detail dozens of actual legal and constitutional violations, and talk in detail about the ways in which the hierarchies of those police departments, and the politicians who oversee them, consistently failed to do anything about such violations even when they were well aware3 of what was going on.
And your understanding of the history of racial equality in the United States is, quite frankly, risible in its ignorance and stupidity.
I’m expecting cops to not act in the most aggressive and conflict-escalating way possible, which is how they acted in both these scenarios. They didn’t need to arrest Garner that instant – and once he started resisting (and it was pretty mild resistance), they didn’t need to continue to escalate force… they could have backed off and waited for backup, or for senior (and smarter) leadership. Garner wasn’t presenting any threat to the public, and he wasn’t going anywhere, and he was well known to the police.
As for Rice, why did they drive up so close? Why did they immediately come out screaming and shooting? That was negligent behavior, IMO, and should be harshly criticized, both by the public and by their fellow cops.
It’s not about “violent racists” – that’s a tiny part of the problem, most likely. It’s about a pattern of using different standards for force against black people vice white people, and about defaulting to aggression and escalation vice diplomacy and de-escalation, especially with black people, and similar issues. If there’s actual personal racism among cops, most of it is probably subconscious, even if there are still some Bull Connors out there.
With a longer Google, you’ll see that Vidor is still a sundown town, and all efforts to integrate the town (and there have been many) have failed. This is a ~100% white town in one of the blackest parts of the country – neighboring towns and communities are typically close to 50/50 black and white. That’s not a coincidence. Black families occasionally try to move to Vidor, but they’re gone within days or weeks.
And Vidor’s just one of the better known sundown towns – there are probably many others, hiding more stealthily in whiter parts of the country. I only know of Vidor because I’ve been there – I used to drive between Baton Rouge and Houston a dozen times per year.
This part of American history isn’t over.
A sundown town is one where the police would, forcibly if necessarily, remove people from the town at the end of the day. That is not happening in Vidor based on your comments and my, admittedly cursory, research. The residents are making it unpleasant to live there to the point that it’s impossible - that is not the same thing. It’s abhorrent, and should be dealt with, but it’s not remotely close to state imposed segregation.
The people making it impossible should be stopped from doing so to the full extent of the law, just like people who refuse to make cakes for gay weddings, or prevent trans people from going to the toilet* should be. The difference is, in the vast majority of the country, that has already happened for black people.
You might as well claim that, because the Klan still exists (will all of 4000 members) nothing has changed from the days when it had 4 million.
Is it fuck. Just because I won’t join in with the current leftie fad of identity politics and assuming everyone but straight white men is underprivileged doesn’t mean I don’t see what’s happening. Black people are being given equality of opportunity - in fact, due to affirmative action and the like, much greater opportunity - but instead of taking that opportunity, they are believing a false narrative that they are still being held down, said narrative mainly coming from their community leaders. To see that it’s utter bullshit, just look at your president. Then go slap yourself in the face if you voted for Hilary in the primary…
Sundown towns aren’t just about official government policy. Informal agreements between business owners (i.e. an agreement to find excuses to not serve black customers) can make sundown towns. And do you really think that the Vidor PD isn’t aware of this kind of thing, and either tolerates it or supports it? Do you think it’s the only town like this in the US? Isn’t it reasonable to believe that while Vidor may be an extreme example, there are probably many more towns and communities that are less racist and oppressive than Vidor, but still have discriminatory policies and practices, whether formal or informal?
At the very least you must recognize the absurdity of a non-American non-black person trying to convince an American that all the black people among his family and friends are wrong about how they’re treated by law enforcement in America.
Exhibit A in your historical ignorance, or at least your over-simplification.
Sundown towns in the United States have historically been maintained as much by extra-legal community action as by official law enforcement. In many sundown towns, extra-legal pressure and violence were considerably more important than police action, although police willingness to turn a blind eye, to ignore the depredations of violent racists, and to ignore also the rights of racial minorities, were crucial in maintaining the white supremacist practices of those towns.
Yes, it’s reasonable to assume there are some. But those actions are illegal, and can be challenged and prevented.
I’m sure their anecdotes are correct, and just as valuable as any other anecdotes.
When it’s an informal agreement within a town, and businesses disguise their bigotry (e.g. they booted the black family because they were out of space, or out of food, or because they weren’t dressed up to standards, not because they were black), then it can be nigh-impossible to prove illegality.
Most people base their behavior on their own personal experience, which can be summed up as a series of anecdotes. And considering a lot of these folks’ personal experience, it’s quite reasonable for them to see law enforcement as dangerous and malevolent enemies, or at least completely unpredictable creatures capable of random violence. Do you at least understand this?
I read about it in WaPo.
I cannot believe how angry this makes me. A man in his own car. Driving while black.
I see no reason for the rush to tackle him. He’s got his hands up in the air. No guns, no weapons. Nothing.
At after he has been taken down, an officer talks to the woman who had reported him. She said something about worrying if it could be a mistake and having racially profiled him. Which of course she had.
The officer said to not worry, they had him on something else now. “He’s got different issues now.”
“Yeah, we got that n1gger!” seems to be the thought here.
Fuck, what a horrible side of America is finally being exposed because of ubiquitous cams.
One thing I noticed was that the woman who called 911 said it was suspicious. The dispatcher reported it as a stolen car, not a potentially stolen car. I wonder if that also contributed to it or if they were going to beat him up anyway just for being black.
Looks like officer Raja lied about what happened that night. Check out the FBI recreation of the events.