Your employees aren’t union. Most cops are. There are plenty of examples where where they have been fired but then had to be brought back on.
That would have only been a bit better – the vast majority of BLM supporters have never rioted, and BLM leaders and organizations explicitly denounce rioting. Though it would have had the virtue of not being explicitly racist.
But you said you don’t know. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because you have some unconscious negative feelings about black people. Just maybe – no need to dismiss it outright without considering it.
But in this case you were the one who “injected” race, and you admit that it’s reasonable to interpret your post as racist. That’s good that you recognize this, but I hope you can go to the next step and dig deep within yourself and find any potentially bigoted unconscious biases. If you recognize they exist, hopefully you have the desire to root them out.
I’ll strongly dispute your last paragraph (the middle is a reasonable point and in hindsight the rhetoric against McCain and Romney was sometimes a bit too harsh, not that it was any worse than rhetoric against Obama). Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and other racism-deniers are far, far more to blame for any of this phenomenon than overzealous liberals. Virtually no prominent person has suffered greatly for being the target of a false accusation of racism (can you name a single one?). Plenty of prominent people have suffered essentially no consequences for racist assertions (hint – one of them is President, and many others have held high office for this President, along with several House Reps, and many more). In a rhetorical sense, racism still generally “wins” against anti-racism, except for the rare cases in which the racism goes to a level that even Limbaugh and Hannity can’t deny. Maybe less than 50 years ago, but not as little as it ought to. This is a popular right-wing meme, but IMO it’s 99% bullshit.
In other news, even sitting in your own apartment, minding your own business, might not save you from the bullets of law enforcement: Dallas officer enters apartment she mistakes for her own, fatally shoots man inside Dallas police seek manslaughter warrant against officer who killed neighbor
From the article:
What you don’t see in this article, or any of the others that Dallas media have put out about this incident last night, is any mention that the officer has been arrested, or that a drug or alcohol screen has been performed, or anything beyond a, “Yep, I shot him.”
I’m curious how this turns out, and I’m really curious how an officer can be so addled to mistake someone else’s apartment for her own, and compound that mistake by killing the resident.
That’s breaking and entering, assault and battery, and at least voluntary manslaughter.
Woman walks into the wrong apartment and shoots the occupant, and then only gets placed on fucking administrative leave??
You’ve got to be kidding me.
C’mon, the police department needs time to run drug and alcohol tests, complete a criminal background check, and otherwise dig up dirt on the resident. He has to be found at fault somehow.
Plus, maybe the cop mistook his TV remote for a handgun. All completely understandable.
Devil’s advocate, and so much so that I can smell brimstone, I can see the shooting being justified if: it was a mistake by the officer to enter the man’s apartment—maybe he left the door unlocked—and once she entered, he did his best Rorschach impersonation, “That door and lock were for YOUR protection, not MINE!”, EDIT: Thereby, putting her in fear of her life, and/or unlawfully preventing her from leaving.
She’s entitled, as you or I would be, to defend herself from an unreasonable threat of immediate serious bodily injury. The question then would be whether his hypothetical threat of immediate bodily injury—and I’d like to stress that there’s been no evidence given so far that he did anything other than get shot and die—was unreasonable.
FWIW, as I read Texas Penal Code § 30.02. Burglary (https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-30-02.html), the officer wasn’t guilty of burglary. That requires, from Sub-section (a)(1),
We have an implied lack of effective consent of the owner, an entrance into a habitation not then open to the public, but we don’t have any intent to commit a felony, theft, or assault. Yet. Similarly, she’s not guilty of criminal trespass, which is found at Texas Penal Code § 30.05. https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-30-05.html
In my hypothetical, she’s made a mistake, hasn’t used force to enter the domicile, but isn’t trying to commit another crime like theft or assault, and isn’t trying to stay on the property after notice of a trespass. In that situation, the apartment owner would not be privileged to use deadly force against the officer, and accordingly, if the officer reasonably believed that the owner was immediately trying to use deadly force against her, she could defend herself. See for yourself: the self-defense statute in Texas is found, along with other “Justification[s] Excluding Criminal Responsibility” at Title 2, Chapter 9, of the Texas Penal Code. (Start here: https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-9-01.html, self-defense is covered in section 9.31, here: https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-9-31.html)
So I’m not 100% sure that she’s committed a crime here, despite how absolutely heinous and tragic this was, but damn, has she got some explaining to do.
I think most of us have absentmindedly walked in a wrong door at one time or another in our life. But it should be immediately obviously that the furniture, decorations, junk piled around is not ours. So our reaction is an embarrassing “Oops, sorry”, not pulling out a gun and killing someone.
How exactly did she enter the wrong apartment? Her key shouldn’t have worked in his lock-Did she kick the door open, or what?
We have a smidge more info about the Dallas police officer going into the wrong apartment and killing a man incident. Per WFAA, Dallas chief: Texas Rangers asked DPD to hold off on warrant in Botham Jean case | wfaa.com , and this helpful synopsis at Heavy.com, Botham Shem Jean: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com the victim is 26 year old Botham Shem Jean, a risk assurance associate at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He is also the son of several important people with the government and industries of the nation of Saint Lucia. Graduated with an accounting degree from Harding University in Arkansas. Sang in the church choir there. No criminal record so far as we know.
The officer has not been identified, other than as a Caucasian female, in the Patrol Division. Worked for the department for 5 years. Worked a 12 hour shift plus some OT before the shooting. Blood draw was performed at some point. Warrant for manslaughter is being sworn out now for the officer. EDIT: No idea how she gained entry into the apartment though the Heavy.com link quotes a family member saying that her keys were jammed in the lock and other apartment residents heard pounding on the doors. So, maybe he opened the door for her? We don’t know yet.
So far as we know, former actual choir boy and current accountant, working for one of the Big Four, and with family members connected with the government of his country of origin—oh, and he’s black—while minding his own business gets killed in his apartment by a white female cop. This will end well.
Why do they need to obtain an arrest warrant? Can’t they just arrest her?
IANAL. I am not a Texas lawyer. That said, my understanding is that Texas requires that warrants be issued for the arrest of people who are suspected of a felony, unless one of the exceptions to that rule, contained with Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 14, Arrest Without Warrant, apply. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 14 – Arrest Without Warrant » LawServer
Basically, those exceptions cover offenses that the officer witnessed personally, a magistrate witnessed personally, or that the officer has probable cause to believe a crime was committed. The warrant is a procedural matter, but an important one, as powers to arrest with a warrant (discussed in Chapter 15 of the same Code, if you’re bored) are much broader than without. For one, it allows the officer to enter a residence to arrest the accused, which otherwise they would need to show some exigent circumstance excusing the necessity for a warrant.
This is pretty quick, all things considered. Compare with, say, the shitshow of the shooting of Justine Damond by Officer Mohamed Noor in Minneapolis, and how long it took to indict Officer Noor. The officer here hasn’t been indicted yet, but that’s going to happen real soon, I think.
I’m sure that they have probable cause to believe a crime was committed. Since the woman said she shot the guy, and the guy is dead.
No biggie, I’m sure they are doing it the right way. Just seemed strange to me.
Do cops have to shoot everything that moves?
No, they shoot things that don’t move, too.
Cincinnati cop tases an eleven year old black girl for shoplifting, puts her in handcuffs, tells her “this is why there are no grocery stores in the black community.”
Right here you lose the argument. We want the police to treat everyone fairly, not do stupid shit that gets certain types of people killed at a disturbing rate and not close ranks to protect the guys who do stupid shit. That is called “hey, don’t be reckless assholes”. None of us feel any “white liberal guilt”, we feel pissed at police officers (some them even black) who betray the public trust and behave like reckless assholes.
But I guess you would not recognize assholery, it being your natural MO.
You guys should go become cops.
I’m only half joking. Walk a day in their shoes. I get the feeling you guys don’t even associate with very many cops.
I have a cousin who’s a cop, and know a few others. I’m sure it’s tough challenging an ingrained workplace culture (i.e. the blue wall) that is justified as a life-and-death brotherhood, protecting itself against a public and society that doesn’t fully understand the risk and danger. But that doesn’t excuse decent people from the responsibility of trying to demolish an immoral and harmful system.
And there are plenty of good cops who have tried. Serpico, for example. Every cop should be like Serpico. The ones that see bad things and stay silent are guilty of a very immoral sin.
I am not sure what you are saying.
Are you saying that accusations of racism still carries the same weight it once did or that it never carried much weight (even among liberals)? I am pretty sure both of these are untrue.
Accusations of racism still carry some weight and can still shut people up but less and less so.
Accusations of racism never carried much weight with actual racists but it did with liberals. It was used by the crit race theorist disciples to shut down the most logical and analytical elements of the liberal movement so that the wingnuts could monopolize the podium.