Being quiet and compliant is what everyone black/white/brown/etc does for our own safety when dealing with police. However, as Castile and his family learned it isn’t a shield against violent freak outs by police. Nor will it guarantee subsequent justice in the courts. Blacks are simply ‘fair game’ to violence by police.
It’s outrageous that people will defend this injustice. Where’s the J’accuse moment for some?
Every black person I’ve ever spoken to about it (or heard/read from) was taught from a very early age to be incredibly careful around police – far more careful than any instruction that I received from my folks.
The proposed alternative is for good cops to stop looking away, ignoring, or covering up the actions of bad cops, and to actively fight against them and report them (to the media if the chain of command isn’t working), and for good cops to actively resist and refuse to obey policies that disparately harm peaceful black people (like the way Ferguson police targeted black people for nuisance tickets to raise revenue), in addition to other proposals already being considered in many localities (body cams, independent investigators rather than local DAs for accusations about cops, community reviews and involvement, and more).
Yes, even if Zimmerman had woken up that morning and told himself “I want to kill me a n***** today” in the mirror while shaving, if Martin had just gone straight home after he lost Zimmerman, Zimmerman would have had to have gone home disappointed and empty-handed.
Yes, I understand your point, which made it odd that, in making that point, you’d bring up the cases of Walter Scott and Sean Groubert (Levar Jones, #SayHisName 
). It’s not a big deal, I just didn’t know if you were confused about the outcome of those two cases or not.
Or Zimmerman might have shot him anyway. In such a scenario (which I’m not certain occurred), it’s hard for me to fault Martin for choosing to try for a fighting chance against a deadly foe (or at least I fault him far, far less than Zimmerman in that scenario).
Thanks for correcting me on the name. But yes, I know the outcomes – those are examples of disparate treatment on the street.
Everyone agrees that Zimmerman shot Martin. There’s no mystery there. Zimmerman’s entire defense rested on the claim that he was justified in shooting Martin, because he was defending himself. The jury agreed. I can’t think of another kind of “justified self-defense” besides the kind where the jury acquits someone of murder for killing the person everyone agrees they killed.
I think you’re getting a little too wrapped up in the semantics, but whatever.
You don’t think the jury acquitted Zimmerman because there was reasonable doubt that he killed Martin, do you?
The jury found him not guilty, meaning they didn’t find sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for the charge. That doesn’t mean they “concluded it was justified self defense”. It means they were not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution’s argument that it was murder. They might have thought the preponderance of evidence indicated murder rather than self-defense, or they might have thought it was 50-50, or other, but a “not guilty” verdict doesn’t require a conclusion that it was justified self defense, just that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
IANAL, so any lawyers can feel free to correct my understanding of how verdicts work.
So what went ‘wrong’ for Sean Groubert and Michael Slager? Did someone not get the ‘fair game’ memo?
I may have missed it, but I don’t think anyone at least here in this thread feels like the shooting of Philando Castile was justified.
They were recorded. If they hadn’t been recorded, do you believe Groubert’s victim’s word would have been taken over Groubert’s to the level of “beyond a reasoanble doubt”? Do you think Slager would have been convicted (or plead guilty)?
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Not if Zimmerman wanted to kill him (which, again, I’m not certain of, but it seems to me to be a reasonable possibility).
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Why do you believe it is a reasonable possibility when there is no evidence in its favor?
You keep rejected the scenario for which there is evidence, and asserting one with no evidence at all.
If Zimmerman wanted to kill him, why did he have his gun tucked away on his waistband? Why did Zimmerman wait until Martin had broken his nose, knocked him down, sat on his chest, and bashed his head against the ground?
Regards,
Shodan
Do you think Walter Scott was heeding that instruction? Jumping out of a vehicle during a traffic stop and fleeing, while it doesn’t justify his murder, is hardly what I’d describe as being “incredibly careful around police”.
I think this is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. Mortal terror can drive decisions that seem irrational when looking on soberly with hindsight.
Based on the totality of Zimmerman’s behavior before, during, and after the shooting (those parts that are confirmed and not in question, including Zimmerman’s own words), I think it’s reasonable to believe that Zimmerman, in part or in whole, might have wanted to kill someone due to perverted notions of vigilantism. It’s not hard at all to come up with a scenario (Zimmerman accosts Martin with gun pointed at Martin, Martin responds with fear and violence, Zimmerman either puts the gun back in his waistband to “square up” with fists or the gun ends up somewhere else or the gun stays in Zimmerman’s hand, and eventually Zimmerman is able to point the gun again at Martin and shoot him, after he is on the ground and clearly losing, for example) consistent with the evidence in which Zimmerman was the aggressor and Martin was defending himself.
Obviously there’s no way to be certain, but I’m sympathetic to the view that police are given an undeserved ‘credibility bonus’ when facing prosecutors, judges, and juries. So, it wouldn’t surprise me if, without the video, Sean Groubert were not prosecuted. Possibly the same for Michael Slager, although a bunch of shots into the back of a fleeing person never look particularly good, with or without video. I believe that the video was quite damning evidence in his case, which is one of the reasons I support the idea of bodycams and widespread recording of police official activities by citizens.
Hey, you’re the one that brought Walter Scott up in this discussion (at least, I believe that’s who you meant back in post #210, and then later said “Every black person I’ve ever spoken to about it (or heard/read from) was taught from a very early age to be incredibly careful around police”. Maybe that second claim is true (that they were taught to), but it’s a not infrequent occurrence where they do not actually act “incredibly careful around police”. Walter Scott is a prime example. The man didn’t deserve to be gunned down, but he also would very likely be alive today if he had just stayed in the vehicle. Maybe the parents of young black men should spend more time teaching them how to react appropriately when they feel “mortal terror” (don’t punch people in the face, don’t run from the police, etc) rather than just to be “incredibly careful around police”. Chris Rock had this figured out years ago.
Maybe I’d feel this way if we didn’t have a history, unbroken, of black people being routinely (if less than before) unjustly brutalized by law enforcement (and society in general). There’s nothing new about mistreatment of black people by law enforcement, and it wasn’t black people’s behavior that started it – black people’s behavior isn’t going to solve it either. Black people and the way black people behave are not the problem, and never have been. The vast majority of black people are peaceful and non-violent, and yet black people are still quite frequently mistreated (see Castile, Scott, Groubert’s victim, among many others), often with minimal or zero consequences for the abusers/shooters/killers.
This problem isn’t going away until law enforcement (and society in general) recognize that routine mistreatment and abuse of black people really does still occur.
Sounds great. But in the absence of such reforms, what are people of color supposed to do when accosted by police?
I don’t know. Maybe wear body cameras at all times that are constantly uploading to the cloud (and therefore can’t be removed/disabled by an attacker without being recorded)?
And on the subject of fleeing a lawful detainment or not, which choice would you counsel?
I would counsel cops to not shoot fleeing suspects. That’s a much, much bigger problem in our society than people scared of police (with good reason, obviously) running from them.
That non-answer is weak tea.