I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I can’t personally provide alternatives. However, I do think that Mr. King wasn’t the first strong, belligerent drunk that the LAPD (or other fine law enforcement institutions) has been tasked with arresting. Does every strong belligerent drunk have to get beaten half to death before arrest?
King was not some sort of super-human, who could not be subdued with normal means. He was just a garden variety big stupid drunk, who happened to amp up the situation to the point where the police went overboard in getting him restrained.
Not hitting him for a 50th time is an alternative. Under the circumstances, I think it was okay to whale on him for a bit. “A bit” is some number less than 30 strikes.
And because they didn’t drive drunk at 100 mph and violently resist arrest.
I wasn’t aware that Emmett Till was drunk, had a criminal record, or violently resisted arrest.
I think it is wrong to suggest that the beating of King was due to racism. Because I suspect that a white man who drove drunk at 100 mph, mooned the officers, and violently resisted arrest, would also have been subdued with violent means such as baton strikes, and that the two blacks in the car, who did not drive drunk at 100 mph, moon the officers, or violently resist arrest, were not harmed.
Are you suggesting that, were King white but behaved in the same manner, the officers would not have laid a finger on him?
I wouldn’t have suggested that, but once you asked the question I realized I couldn’t think of a single famous case of a white person who was the victim of police brutality, except as part of a crowd (G7 protests, etc.)
I wouldn’t characterize that as “police brutality.” More of a political murder, assuming it happened as the Weavers claim (although presumably you’re referring to Vicki and Sammy Weaver, since Randy Weaver was not harmed.) I’m talking about rank-and-file cops of the sort involved in the King case.
I will concede that if Shodan doesn’t think police officers referring to King as a “gorilla” or accusing King of threatening “a Mandingo sexual encounter” is enough to suggest they were guilty of racism then I don’t see what the point of continuing the argument as to whether or not the beating was at least partly motivated by racism since if using racial slurs isn’t strong enough evidence for him I’m not sure what is.
There was that case not to long ago of a grandmother (but a bit youngish for a grandmother IIRC) getting tazed during a traffic stop because she would not calm down, shut the fuck up, or do what the officer told her to do. And I highly suspect she was a shitload less of a threat to officers than King was. And she wasn’t violent or did any of the other crazy assed shit King did before his beating began.
Then there was that violent little kid at a school threatening everybody with a sharp piece of wooden molding. And his assed got tazed as well. I don’t recall if the kid was white or black though. But little black kid should be different enough from big angry drunk black man to still count as another class.
Well…I never heard the ‘Mandingo sexual encounter’ bit (THAT, if true, is pretty obviously racist and can’t be defended IMHO), but he was a big and very strong dude, so I could see ‘gorilla’ being used without it necessarily being a racist remark. Especially if you consider this was in the early 90’s, so what did or didn’t constitute racism and racist remarks were a bit different then than now. I cringe sometimes watching stuff from the past, even when they were obviously going out of their way to be PC, or what passed for PC back them.
Not to mention that Shodan’s claim that the other passengers weren’t beaten isn’t supported by the facts but simply a myth put forward by supporters of the racist cops. Freddie Phelps and Bryant Allen both claim they were kicked and beaten, though not as severely as their friend King and they successfully sued for damages.
Sure, though there seems some doubt as to the remark in your cite there. However, I’ll happily concede that if the officer said ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ wrt King that it was racially charged. I hadn’t seen that before…I followed the case when it happened but never really dug that far into it at the time.
She was 72 and refusing to sign a traffic ticket. And in hindsight, she didn’t leave the cop very much choice in that she refused to sign the ticket, apparently yelled and cursed at him for a long time, and went to drive away. It’s possible it could have gone down without the tasering (she agreed to sign the ticket after he’d told her she was under arrest and I guess that was a potential out) but some people are dicks, even if they’re senior citizens and great-grandparents. And if a cop has told you you’re under arrest, you don’t get to just drive away.
It’s a good example, though. I mean, she’s 72; I don’t think anyone could reasonably claim that a police officer can’t safely subdue a grandmother without using a taser.
Safely for who? There’s a reasonable argument that a taser is less likely to result in broken bones, and other trauma that can happen to an older person when you’re trying to wrestle them to the ground. Old people can also grab weapons or bite, and I don’t personally feel that cops need to subject themselves to that kind of treatment just to avoid forcefully arresting someone.
My view is get it done with the least overall trauma possible, focusing on reducing (not necessarily eliminating) the risk for the officer.
Right. But those methods also pose some risk of injury for both of them. It’s arguably different from the King case in that nobody thinks she was attacking the officer, but she was trying to get back in her car and drive away (and I’m not sure how close to her the cop was). If he’d run grabbed her or ran at her and then tackled her on asphalt, that’s also dangerous. It’s possible he could have talked her down at some point, but again, she was sober and he had told her repeatedly what was going to happen if she continued to do stupid things like scream at him or just blow him off and get back in her car. I agree that in general, the police officer has to be the bigger person in these types of situations.
What do you base this on? This isn’t new technology. This stuff had been around back when I started working in the early eighties.
As for availability, I don’t see how you can argue the LAPD had time to sent all those other officers but nobody had time to get something out of their trunk.
This isn’t true. Tear gas is routinely used on individuals. And, again, if you had time to hit King fifty-six times with a baton, you had time to pull some tear gas out of your pocket.
You seem determined to argue that batons were the only possible idea and that they should have kept being used even when they obviously were not working.
But more importantly unless she appeared to be drunk or was driving like King was when he got pulled over letting her get away did not pose any imminent danger to society or for that matter likely threat to society .
And the batons did work BTW. King was kept down and finally subdued.