That is ridiculous. Why don’t you explain exactly how my questioning why he believes the police unquestioningly and does not weight anyone else’s account at all indicates that I’ve taken a side (or whatever it is that you think I indicated there).
FuriousGeorge, I notice, hasn’t been back to explain what he read in that scant OP that he thinks indicates my position; why don’t you take a crack at it? If it’s there, and you can see it as clearly as you say, you should be able to articulate just fine on what you see. Go for it.
My OP wasn’t meant to talk about just this shooting; it was, as the title indicates, about all the things going on in Ferguson lately, and how they relate to what happened last year. As such, my only position in the whole thing is “this is a fucked up situation a year after we all found out it was a fucked up situation in the first place; how long will it continue to be fucked up?”
As such, I appear on the fence here because I don’t know enough about this incident to have an opinion about it. I do have enough information, however, to feel that anyone who does have an opinion about it has jumped to conclusions and not given equal weight and consideration to information that might contradict what they’ve already decided, like Frank has. He dismissed any account of what transpired immediately, without reason, and accepted the police version unquestioningly. And then, when I asked him why, a bunch of y’all decided that I was the one showing bias, even tho no one has yet articulated exactly what I said that they think indicated I have “taken a side”. That is shitty, shitty reasoning and knee-jerk reactions, folks, not logic or evaluating the facts.
I’ve been a strident foe of bad policing practices on this board, and a vocal supporter of good policing practices. I am not anti-cop; I’m anti-bad-cop, and Ferguson, for sure, has some bad cops. Is this an example of one? I dunno; eventually I hope we’ll find out for sure. But to give consideration only to one side of the story, like Frank did, is stupid, ignorant and, depending on motivation, possibly evil and yeah, I’ll call people out on that.
When I first read the OP, I thought he was agreeing with the father, too. But that was based on my knowledge of that poster, and not what he had actually written in the OP. Going back and re-reading it made me realize I was reading more into it than was actually there. I suspected it might be the same for other posters.
I would have worded the OP differently but I read it as “Is this going to be seen as a bad shoot by the police and cause the situation to get much worse” or something similar.
As an Oakland resident, I hate to point out that you’re both wrong. No yearly riots (every 2 years, maybe, but we were remarkably well behaved when the Warriors won this year), and damn sure no relatively cheap housing anymore.
And the really sad part of this is that the people of Ferguson are the innocent victims of the violence. Last year, when hundreds were locked up during the riots, exactly two of them turned out to be citizens of Ferguson. Harris is from St. Louis, not Ferguson. The gangs having a shootout were probably not from Ferguson.
Well, fucktard, if you had managed to read the very next fucking post, you might’ve noticed I came right back to ask a couple of clarifying questions. Perhaps you were too busy at the quarry, throwing shitty catchphrases down it like a Chinese knock-off of Bart Simpson to have a look.
Short of that, I can simply just +1 and “Me too” pretty much every post by Frank in this thread to explain my process. But that would be Guin-like and a complete waste of time because you didn’t get it the first time and don’t strike me as sharp enough to pick it up on a second pass.
This is where a “bemused” smiley would come in handy.
See, in order to believe the father’s statement that the police story was “a bunch of lies,” you have to both assume that the father was there and knows what he is talking about and that the police story was a bunch of lies. So far, all evidence that has come out shows that the police story is true. Do you disagree?
Even if we were to prove, beyond question, that the vast majority of police shootings were justifiable, are we then satisfied? Is there an agreed upon ratio? If it turned out to be 80/20, would we then be obliged to shrug it off as simply the unfortunate cost of law enforcement?
Like the unfortunate cost of transportation? How many highway deaths is acceptable? None really. But we don’t stop driving. We just try to do a better job of making the highways safer.
And we don’t stop arming police. We should try to insure that the police are as well trained and right minded as possible. Recent events have shown that may not be happening.
Of course not. I don’t think I’ve said anything to give that impression. The fact is, well, my opinion is, that even with early evidence, this one appeared to be justified. With more evidence, it still does, though if anything comes out to show different, I’ll certainly rethink.
My default position is not to believe all police shootings unjustified until proven otherwise. Sorry if that ticks off people who are otherwise on my side of the political divide. My “Usual Suspects” membership card didn’t come with a key to turn off my brain. Nor is my default position to believe that they all are justified. I look at the evidence, such as it may be, and allow my position to be swayed by what the evidence is.
If this position causes chuckleheads to call me stupid, ignorant, and evil, I’m not sure why I should care.
Good, you don’t accept either of two perfectly ridiculous positions.
(By the way, my question follows yours in order, but was not intended as a direct reference, should have been clearer about that. Though it seems to me as if some in this discussion were trying to rebut one of the perfectly ridiculous positions by insisting that we acknowledge that some police shootings were entirely justified, so there! I emphasize “seems” to acknowledge that this is not a researched opinion, but a sense of an argument(s), my “take”, if you will.)