Has Al Sharpton & his ilk offered any justification for why the police should release the officer’s name? Or are we to just assume it’s so that they can go kill him, and maybe his family too?
Seriously. You didn’t see the photos of snipers atop armored vehicles pointing their weapons into a crowd? You didn’t hear about the guy who got slammed into the glass of a McDonalds? You din’t see the tear gas being used in residential neighborhoods? What were people supposed to do, disperse out of their own homes? And you don’t even recognize that the flashpoint for all of this was the shooting death of an unarmed teen by police?
If I had to guess, in 1940s Poland you’d be accusing the Jews of resisting authority.
Incident reports are public information.
Then I suppose the cops should have charged him with a crime. They did not.
Read the thread again. There are two factions:
One is assuming that the shooting wasn’t justified without any evidence and assuming that cops are tear gassing crowds despite evidence of the contrary. They don’t seem interested in the actual facts of the case.
The other is simply saying we don’t yet know the truth and that the incident should be investigated. The only thing we’ve seem so far that is certainly wrong is the looting and rioting. In four pages, is there anyone saying they KNOW the officer is innocent of wrongdoing? If so, I missed it.
The people protesting in Ferguson have plenty of legitimate and highly-related grievances that it doesn’t really matter whether the spark that lit that tinder is legitimate. In that sense, I think Vinyl Turnip is right that the narrative is already written. But it was written by history.
And some of the police in Ferguson have shown themselves to be thugs in their response. What kind of people arm themselves like Navy SEALS in order to arrest a compliant reporter? Cowards and fascists. Time will tell whether the police department as a whole is more professional, but it doesn’t look good. It looks like a bunch of yahoos with too much civil forfeiture money to spend on shiny man-child toys.
The problem being that they (along with hundreds of other cities) received federal money to buy surplus military gear, and dash cams are not among that gear.
And there is that pre-written narrative. Who cares whether there are riots, looting and arson going on, right? No, the police are not armed “like Navy SEALS” because of that. They are armed like that in order to arrest a “compliant reporter” (who claimed to the police that he was a reporter, then refused to show his credentials AFAIU).
If the reporter’s account is true then the cops were wrong to arrest/detain him.
However, my goodness does he come across like a little shit in that article.
It was the highlight of his year. What an asshole. The cops are telling him to pick up his stuff and he’s clumsily doing it with one hand while he records them on his cellphone with the other hand. These are cops that are in riot gear in the fourth night of a riot which goes on right at that location every night.
This is his own account and he comes across like a complete jerk.
“…in order to…”? Please. While I am troubled by the militarization of local police forces, rioting is when it’s a good thing they have the equipment. No cop dons the gear you mention “in order to” arrest ANYONE who is compliant. The thing is, you don’t know if someone is going to be compliant until after the interaction. What do you expect a cop operating in a tense environment to do—have a squire on the side holding their suit of armor and when someone is not compliant say, “Excuse me a minute, I’ll be right back. Since you’re being non-compliant I need my squire to help me into my riot gear”?
They were in a mob and when ordered to disperse they started throwing things at the cops.
Who doesn’t recognize this? Got an example?
What? They were dressed in riot gear because it was the fourth night of a riot! The reporter shouldn’t have been arrested probably, but he was fucking with the cops on the wrong night. In any case, it’s silly to claim that they armed themselves with riot gear to arrest the reporter.
It’s telling that you guys need to blatantly fabricate stuff to justify your reflexive anti-police attitudes. You don’t need to know what’s actually happening. You are just making stuff up.
He was wearing his credentials around his neck, not that it matters.
He was tweeting so people would know where he was and what happened if they decided to, say, shoot him.
These cops claimed to have shown up in response to a 911 call. They weren’t responding to a riot.
There was no rioting in the McDonald’s. That’s why the reporters were setting up there every night.
There’s virtually nobody that doesn’t have legitimate and highly related grievences about all sorts of things.
Highly related to potential police brutality.
And my point is simply that the rage being expressed in the protests (and riots) has a legitimate basis quite apart from whether this shooting went down as the witnesses say it did.
I guess the caller clearly should have specifically requested Officer Kreskin, so he would have known beforehand that the call had nothing to do with the rioting going on.
Come on, Richard Parker… This level of nonsense is not like you.
How do you imagine a 911 call to work? You dial and just say, “cops now!” You don’t give some kind of indication about why you want them?
Do you think it beyond the capacity of the police to respond appropriately to different situations? Cat stuck in tree, get the APC! Machine gun bank robbery, better put on my rubber gloves and get my pepper spray ready!
All of which is gloriously beside the point, of course. They could have been dressed as meter maids and they would still be fascist assholes if the reporter’s account is true.
There’s a bit more to it than that.
So that got pissed that Ryan was photographing the police intrusion and because of that, demanded his ID. He was right to refuse, we ALL have the right to photograph or videorecord police at any time. Then they assaulted him.
No, no police brutality here. Nothing to see, move on, disperse.
But what’s the difference if it has a legitimate basis or not?
Kids who shoot up their schools frequently have a “legitimate basis” for that too. So do Al Qaeda terrorists.
“Legitimate basis” is a very very thin reed.
In the It’s About Time Department, the Governor of Missouri is pulling the county police off the scene. No word on who will replace them, surely more details will follow.