What’s your point, if any?
Blacks constitute about 13% of the U.S. population. About 13% of police victims would be black if all other things were equal. Here’s a test for you, Terr. Guess what the actual number is; then try to Google for information and see how close you came.
You wasted some Googling to find some anecdotes showing that the percent of police victims who are black is something less than 100%. Wow. Did anyone claim differently? You really are a dolt aren’t you?
No, actually, I think it was fair. I asked him to mention any incidents to the contrary, and he met my request; I’ve been meaning to acknowledge that, and to acknowledge my foolish implication that it never happened to white people. So here’s that acknowledgment.
At the same time, septimus is correct: while my implication was incorrect, a weaker point is still correct and really disturbing: minorities, especially African Americans, face police violence at an extremely disproportionate rate.
Okay.
Well, ain’t that something. I thought Terr recently started a thread about how unfair it was a guy was charged with murder after killing an officer conducting a knockless raid. But then in reading his posts in this this thread, I assumed that must have been a dream. How wrong of me!
Terr, what make Currie’s situation materially different than the one you were complaining about? Maybe, like the guy you defended, he should have killed these cops, huh? Instead of letting himself be victimized by their pepper spray.
I know this will probably make your head explode but I’ll throw this out anyway.
Lets assume for the sake of arguement Currie started tussling with the cop after being told repeatedly to have a seat. At which point he was pepper sprayed.
My reaction? Totally deserved.
Now, lets go to an alternate timeline.
Currie is surprised by the cops, thinks its a home invasion, is himself armed, and kills one before he figures out its the cops.
My reaction? Let the man go free.
Why the hell do you waste so much of your time here, then?
nm
This is like watching an angry monkey trying to tune up a car.
His life is such a failure that he has to find some place to feel superior to others, but he can’t even succeed at that unless he builds a fictional representation of the others, so he comes here, misunderstands every word he reads, and imagines himself superior to other posters, and at last the tree was happy.
But not really.
Since the cops entered his space just like a home invader would, violating his privacy and then having the audacity not to even explain the reason for their visit, why would he have been at fault for tussling with someone who, as far as he knows, are thugs pretending to be cops? It would be an act of self-preservation just like shooting them would.
I don’t think you can reconcile these two view points, but I appreciate you at least looking at this situation from the victim’s point of view.
You can reconcile them. If you actually stop, think, and look at things one piece at time (and actually read carefully what was written).
IMO you are trying to wrap it all up in one big thing and trying make something of the mess (hence the tune up comment).
I read that comment and that thought you referring to Shodan.
Next time when you want to call someone an angry monkey, either make it clearer who you’re referring to or just use the word nigger. Thanks!
If I understand Billfish’s point, there are two steps:
Is this correct, billfish?
As for me, while I don’t think that Curry acted in the best possible way, I’m a lot more willing to forgive his behavior than I am the behavior of the cops, for several reasons:
As for the legal discussion of whether they violated his fourth amendment rights, I find myself less interested in that than in a discussion of how we can avoid this sort of thing in the future. Whether the cops acted legally or illegally (and I hope they acted illegally so that they can face consequences for their incompetence), they failed at every turn to de-escalate, and because of their failures, an innocent guy was violently tormented and humiliated by the people who are supposed to be protecting us from violence and torment. No public good was served by this incident; instead, it served to undermine the public good and to cause needless suffering in the world.
While Curry shares a small part of responsibility for how it went down, for the reasons given above, the cops have the primary responsibility, and we should be looking at changes that can keep this sort of thing from happening again.
In 2012, there were about 780,000 cops in the US. (Google it like I did if you want a cite) So far, I’ve seen a few threads, with a mere handful of questionable police officer activity, being used as the standard for ALL police conduct in the US.
So many here are so willing to taint the 3/4 million good officers based on the questionable actions of a very few.
I’m not going to say the majority of cops are racist thugs, of course not. At the same time, I think there are tons of racist incidents and bullying bullshit events that happen that aren’t recorded and therefore we never hear about.
In general, I would agree with this. My issue is that because the cops took the most intrusive approach they could have short of busting through the window ninja style, and failed to treat Currie with even a modicum of sensitivity and respect (the first words out of their mouth was put your hands on the wall…not pardon us sir, we thought maybe a burglary was in progress. Care to talk with us?), I don’t place any blame on Currie for being shaken, angry, and reluctant to comply.
Ordering him to sit down and then interrogating him in handcuffs…what the hell? Just allowing them to do this without resistance allows cops to get away with too much. The more we obey, the more their abuse is normalized, the less offended people get when abuses occur. I’m glad Currie resisted because otherwise a spot light would’t have been turned on the police force.
To me it doesn’t make sense to say both of the parties in question acted poorly. If Currie’s actions were less than agreeable, we can safely say it was largely due to the way he was ambushed and subsequently treated. If I was going to judge him, I would need to see how he would have acted if the cops started with the assumption that he belonged there. And that didn’t happen, so he gets a complete pass from me.
I 95% agree with you on this, and the disagreement is almost semantic. I do think that he could have acted in a way that didn’t result in as much humiliation to him, but that’s almost like blaming a victim of a mugging for getting stabbed because he fought back instead of handing over his wallet. Sure, handing over your wallet is the best approach to a mugging, but I’m not going to lay the blame for getting stabbed on the person who reacts angrily instead of sensibly when getting mugged.
Maybe I should post this in the omnibus thread but I’m posting it here to show, on a social level, there is power in pushing back against abusive cops.
Mall Cop Pepper-Sprays Innocent Black Guy, Ignores Real Perpetrator
If the crowd had blindly followed the cop’s order to step aside while he arrested the black guy, hadn’t argued with him and hadn’t let him show off his pig-headed persistence, no one outside of that event would know about his misconduct. And his boss might have given him a promotion, instead of maybe reprimanding him.
Public tolerance towards blatant and pig-headed discrimination is lessened as these issues gain visibility, and some amount of resistance is needed to bring that about.
He’s a fucking mall cop.
Jesus.
But, just so I understand your point, you think that people should have the right to physically resist the REAL police whenever they themselves feel like the police are rude, antagonistic, or not nice enough? Do you put any limit on what a person can do to physically resist a police officer if they themselves determine that the police officer isn’t doing what he should?
I think that is a recipe for disaster.
What does you mean by this? Yes he’s a fucking mall cop. A mall cop who pepper-sprayed an innocent bystander and then put him in handcufffs for no discernable reason.
I can’t tell if by your response if you’re saying he’s held to lesser standard than “real police” or not. If he is, that makes it all the more disturbing that he resorted to macing someone without so much as a howdy do.
Do you think people have the right to physically resist mall cops?