This is sounding too much like Steophan’s bullshit line of
“He shouldn’t have been in that bed / that house / that yard that what fucking ever.”
It was his fault for being anywhere.
Shots fired. Uh huh. They fired all the shots, and he was not given any chance to surrender, and he was the wrong guy.Here is the video at the Houston Chronicle site; it does not autoplay.
How many years have we been doing this thread now?
ETA: Since 10 October 2014, so over 3 years now.
The Stephon Clark case has led to the usual foolishness and posturing, as well as some indications from the grieving grandmother that she doesn’t quite get how it works -
“Why didn’t you just shoot him in the arm, shoot him in the leg, send a dog, send a taser? Why?”
Clark was apparently breaking windows on a truck, although he didn’t steal anything. But of course he wasn’t shot for breaking windows. It was racism, pure and simple - the police never shoot white people who are coming towards them with something in their hand and refuse to stop and show their empty hands.
Regards,
Shodan
Even if he were a white guy shot for breaking windows, it seems a bit ridiculous. I’m somewhat surprised, as my father – a Vietnam combat vet and long-time Republican voter and right-wing radio listener – even he is finding these police shootings completely outrageous.
This disturbingly sounds like you would be okay with it if he were, in fact, shot for breaking windows.
You mean questioning and skepticism? Would you prefer that police accounts are never questioned, even when the cops involved muted their bodycams right after the shooting?
How horrible! Surely grieving grandmothers wishing that the cops had done something differently is terrible for society, and must be mentioned as a vital piece of evidence of how society has gone wrong in response to police shootings. Thanks for bringing this up, because a grieving grandmother’s response is obviously a critical part of the facts of this incident.
It’s not clear to me what you’re saying here. Are you accepting the police account as 100% accurate, and if so, based on what evidence? Are you saying that he was “shot for breaking windows”, and if so, is that appropriate? Do you have any concerns as to why they muted their bodycams after the shooting?
No, it wasn’t racism, pure and simple. White people occasionally get shot by overzealous, frightened, poorly trained and/or sociopathic cops, too. But not generally as quickly as black people. I think the main problem is that law enforcement tends to attract too many of the wrong people (they also attract many of the “right” people, too, of course); does not weed out the violent, callous ones; trains officers improperly; emphasizes a mindset that separates LEOs from the rest of us “civilians”; and then builds the “blue wall” to prevent correction of the problem.
I don’t think most cops are overtly racist, but it’s hard to argue that there isn’t at least some subconscious racism that makes young black men particularly at risk for being shot by police. I do understand, of course, that young black men tend to be over-represented in criminal activity. Nobody says it isn’t a difficult problem. But it is a problem that needs to be addressed, not covered up and ignored as it has been for decades.
In this particular incident, there is plenty of blame to go around. The guy should not have been breaking windows (if that’s true), but most of all he shouldn’t have run away. He wasn’t some young teenager… he was 22 years old, right? Running sets off the same instinct in cops that it does with dogs who are trained to be mean. They lose discipline and restraint. The man’s parents and grandparents should have instructed him to a) not go around breaking windows; b) don’t run from the cops; and c) hold your hands up empty when being screamed at by cops.
And what about the screaming? You always see cops screaming at the top of their lungs in many of these videos. It seems to me that does nothing but heighten the panic and fight/flight response of the suspects. It isn’t just loud talking, it is panicked screaming. I suspect I would be flabbergasted and disoriented if someone rushed up to me screaming in panic at the top of their lungs. Yes, I understand that it’s a stressful situation for the police, but aren’t they supposed to be the ones who are trained and in control?
I am talking mostly about the shutting down of the highway in protest, and the swarming of the race pimps mentioned in the cite.
What I found interesting about it was, she didn’t say he shouldn’t have been shot - just that he should have been shot in the leg. Granted, she is grieving, but there is a difference between “it was unjustified to shoot him” and “it was unjustified to kill him”.
And what is bad for society is the notion that it is possible to reliably shoot someone in the leg as opposed to aiming at center mass. And that the police ought to be criminally charged if they don’t, or if Monday-morning quarterbacking ought to be the standard by which the police are judged.
Apparently.
I am not accepting the police account as 100% accurate. I am also not accepting what the family’s lawyers say as accurate at all.
The part where I said he wasn’t shot for breaking windows might give a hint as to what I was saying.
Are you accepting the account that it was 100% racism as accurate, and if so, based on what evidence?
Regards,
Shodan
Okay, so you disagree on the best tactics for protesting police violence. That’s entirely reasonable.
I’m not sure what’s interesting about it. Undoubtedly she wishes he wasn’t shot at all, and since he was, she wishes it wasn’t a fatal shot. I didn’t see any quotes of hers that indicate she thinks it was just to shoot him.
Many folks are going to “Monday-morning quarterback” police shootings whether anyone likes it or not. It’s entirely reasonable to look at shootings and consider whether they were warranted or not, in order to try and minimize the likelihood of unnecessary shootings in the first place (as this one obviously was now that we have all the facts). Especially when the cops do suspicious things like turn off their audio after the shooting.
If so, I can’t tell what you mean – maybe because there’s no sarcasm font, and because the following sentence appeared to be very obviously sarcastic, from what I understand of your views.
Certainly not.
To date, I have not seen any indication that the police acted in a callous or improper way.
This person was (apparently) breaking windows on a truck. This gets reported, the helicopter spots him and directs the police’s attention to him, he runs, they chase into his back yard, yell at him to show his hands and freeze, and he continues to approach with an unidentified object in his hands. The police think it is or might be a gun. So they all shoot until he falls. That’s very sad, because we now know it wasn’t a gun. Now.
No argument with this, apart from the notion that the police had lost discipline or restraint. If you run away from the scene of a crime, the cops chase you. That’s kind of their job. If you continue to advance towards them and your hands aren’t empty, they get scared and have a tendency to shoot you. That is, unfortunately or otherwise, also kind of their job.
No offense, but this seems like kind of a silly objection. I too would be flabbergasted and disoriented if someone rushed up to me screaming. But if they are wearing police uniforms and pointing guns at me, I would stop and show them my empty hands, no matter how flabbergasted I was. And if I were breaking windows on a truck, I wouldn’t be particularly flabbergasted if the police showed up and spoke to me in other than tones of sweet reason.
“They shouldn’t have screamed at him” seems like rather more than flimsy. I don’t have a cite, but I expect that criminals rarely respond to “pretty please with cream and sugar”, or even “Please”.
Robert Louis Stevenson, IIRC in his novel Kidnapped, put it this way.
If the cops point guns at you, and you don’t do what they say even if it is hard for you, you are a fool. And there ain’t no cure for stupid - even bullets.
Regards,
Shodan
Having taught in a college law and security program, I can vouch for that. Fortunately, here in Ontario, Canada, most get weeded out further up the chain. As one of my friends (a retired Deputy Commissioner of a 5800 officer police force) put it, “They hired me to bust heads, but that’s changed now.”
I don’t know that the shooting was justified, but is there any evidence to support this point, other than his family’s claim that there was someone else? I watched the helicopter video, and while he is not in full view the entire time, there’s enough continuity that it appears to me to be the same person.
SO the things she said that you don’t agree with, you ridicule, but the things she said (or didn’t say, but that you infer) that you agree with, you support. Got it.
So you accept the police version less than 100%, but you accept the family’s version 0%. Nice.
Is there ever a time that you don’t side with the police or do you just always make stuff up so you can feel righteous? :dubious:
Congratulations on your insight. I support things I agree with, and I don’t things that I don’t.
How long did it take you to figure that out?
I think you missed a word there. I will leave it to you to figure out - shouldn’t take you more than a few months. Please nobody tell him. He wants to do it himself!
No.
Regards,
Shodan
I know, I know! The word he left out is “shithead”.
It is not. When a person is shouting or screaming at you, you hear them shouting/screaming. You do not hear the words, you hear the noise. When an officer says that he told the suspect to get down and the suspect failed to comply, it is likely that the officer was shouting, so the suspect became confused. Then the other officer is shouting at the suspect to move in a certain direction, but he cannot do both of these things.
Shouting or screaming is a way to escalate as situation, and it communicates to the suspect that the officers are scared, barely in control of their bowels, less so of themselves, and the situation is already out of hand. This is a major flaw in training. The police should be in control of themselves at all times, and individuals who fail at this need to be removed from police work entirely due to being unsuitable.
No, you didn’t come up in the conversation at all.
Regards,
Shodan
If you exclude people who shout when they think they are about to be shot from police work, you are going to wind up with about twenty police nationwide. Tops.
Besides, come on - someone in a uniform is coming towards you screaming and pointing a gun at you. Is it really so hard to figure out your next steps?
Regards,
Shodan
What if you already have your cellphone in your hand? Do you think you would be able to think calmly and clearly as people are running toward you screaming at the top of their lungs. C’mon, put yourself in the other shoes for a change. To be honest, I can’t really discern what is happening in this particular video, but I’ve seen other videos where the suspects/victims are shot so quickly they don’t have time to do anything, let alone think about their next steps.
You say you don’t accept the police account, but then you keep repeating that Clark’s actions matched the police account (if I’m reading you correctly, anyway). Which is it?