One major issue with all of this and other events is the way that policing is carried out in the US.
It partly stems from the perceived need to appear assertive by politicians which itself stems from the culture of the US itself.
Add in that some posts within law enforcement are also dependent upon public opinion through voting and you have an imperative to consider simplistic solutions that will relate well to the voting public, and this leaves less room for subtlety and strategy.
US police appears from this side of the pond to have become more militarised over the last 10 or so years which seems to coincide (not necessarily caused) with the more polarised politics of the US itself.
Seems to me that all US citizens have at the very least a residual fear of police and how they might use their powers in the interactions with the US police.
This surely should not be how policing should work - seems to me that policing in the US is far more about imposition, and that some sectors of the population feel the effects of that more than others.
It appears to me that US policing is about force and not about consent and cooperation. The result is steadily increasing escalation and populations who feel they are not in control but are the subject of it by a paramilitary state organisation.
I think you must be confusing me with someone else. I only accused you of being ignorant of American football. It’s a natural conclusion based on your ignorance of the stiff arm. I never once referred to your language or fighting skills.
That’s not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing the runner take out defenders with a stiff arm, clearing a path for him to run through. You know, offense.
I must have missed when you responded to my previous post on intent (post 24). Oh wait, I didn’t miss it: You never responded. So yeah, I’m bringing up the same points you never responded to.
Earlier you said:
and that is what I take issue with. What you said is bullshit. You are now reframing it with the victim dying, but neither intent nor death are required for charges.
So: Can we agree that your earlier claim “**there would (I suppose) be no charges at all. **” is complete bullshit?
Well, no. Not really. If I push you with the intent to stop you from interfering with my official duties I would suppose no charges are appropriate. As I said, such a death would be the next thing to an accident. Certainly in such a case charges would be much reduced.
I suppose we’ll just have to disagree, then. That’s not what I’m seeing in the video, anyway; it was a far more forceful shove than was necessary (especially for a 75 year old man…but who could tell a man’s age, anyway? For all the copy knew, he might have been 23. :rolleyes: Again, just unbelievable ignorance coming from you).
I take it you’re at least aware that in many situations charges are appropriate even when no intent whatsoever is present, correct? Because that wasn’t at all clear in your initial posting.
Well, yes I am aware of that. I certainly hope I used words like “should,” “might,” and so on.
I take it you are at least aware that charges might inappropriate if no intent is present. Correct? If so, I suspect we are in rough agreement.
Well, I suppose that is why we have judges and juries and all the rest of it. As my father pointed out the entire parimutuel industry is based on differences of opinion.
But it seems to me that your argument is, “The police wanted to do something, a man got in their way, and therefore they had the right to push him.” Have you considered the possibility that what the police wanted to do was less important than the man’s right not to be pushed?
Is anyone asserting that the cop’s intent was to kill? Is that what we’re debating? The incident was “complex” because it wasn’t a straightforward murder attempt? :smack:
Except in American football, the players wear pads and helmets and willingly engage in a sport where physical contact is a part of the game. In fact, the player with the ball is actually tackled to the ground. The old man in Buffalo was not playing football, however. Stiff-arming him so he lost his balance and fell was cruel and completely unnecessarily. And it’s impossible to distance this from George Floyd’s murder. That death held a microscope to police actions that have long gone unredressed in our society.
I only saw footage of the old guy falling and hitting the back of his head. It was about a two second clip shot from almost across the street. Not up close.
I could see without even being told that he was an elderly man.
No way that officer could’ve NOT known that he was shoving a senior. And you don’t shove elderly people. You cannot shove an elderly person and remain a decent person yourself.
One reason people are protesting is there is no accountability, as the system of accountability is corrupt from top to bottom.
Cop assaults someone, cop says A and witnesses say B. Generally the cops are believed over the witnesses unless there is videotape. In the Buffalo situation the cops lied and pretended the protester tripped and fell, but there was luckily video evidence. Cops lied and said George Floyd resisted and luckily there was video evidence against it.
Cops are investigated by other cops, who tend to find no wrongdoing. The FBI has had something like 150 shootings, they investigated themselves and found themselves innocent all 150 times.
Even if there is enough evidence to bring charges, most prosecutors don’t want to prosecute cops since they rely on cops to bring them cases. They don’t want to punish their coworkers.
Even if the cops are prosecuted, they’ll likely get a very light sentence from a judge who has a bias.
From top to bottom the whole system is corrupted. Its why people are protesting.
It seems the only time cops are held accountable is if there is video evidence and a lot of public outrage. For the most part cops can still do what they want without consequence.
Cops being occasionally held accountable when there is video evidence and public outrage isn’t going to cut it, because everyone knows for every 1 situation with video evidence and public outrage there are hundreds of interactions without a video camera.
There are just a lot of people doing lots of different thing. The citizen was seeking to confront the police. The policeman was trying to do … what exactly? The media has said the police did not render aid. The video shows the fellow being taken away in an ambulance. The police union is lying. The union got all 57 policemen to quit the team. (Why?) The mayor is calling out both the union and the citizen.
There is simply a lot to it.
There is nothing mysterious here. I am an old soldier and was once a young and very foolish man.
You’re the one who used the word. What you personally choose to use to assault people is irrelevant to “the very definition of a defensive move.” If you stiff-arm the next rando in your way at the grocery store, your definition doesn’t fly.
If I am walking, and I have somewhere important to be, can I stiff arm anyone who gets in my way, then keep walking as they bleed on the concrete? Is that the “next thing to an accident”? After all, if they are in my way, and get hurt, I was only acting defensively, right?
I say i didn’t intend to seriously injure them, but I also didn’t intend to help anyone, either, since I not only didn’t help, I didn’t allow my companion to help, either.
Simple question: If a policeman, who are generally what you would call “active in the community” got in the way of me on purpose, then I pushed him - with a stiff arm, not a leg sweep to purposefully throw him to the ground, he fell and cracked his head, and then I walked away, what would you expect the other police in the area to do? Would you expect me to not be charged with anything as you advocate for the cop in question, or would I be charged with some flavor of assault or battery, probably a felony-level ‘assault on an officer’?
The basic premise of this thread is absurd; the idea that pushing someone to the ground with a “stiff arm” like a football player making a play, then walking away when he’s clearly bleeding on the pavement instead of giving aid is something that is the ‘next thing to an accident’ does not stand up to even the least investigation. The fact that someone doing this to a cop would be rapidly beaten, then charged with a felony if he survived the beating demonstrates clearly that it is not something minor.
The entire point of the current protests, and of a number of earlier ones for that matter, is that these incidents produce a pattern that leaves people in fear of their lives because of police behavior.
The incidents must be considered together. Insisting that they must be considered separately is to insist that there is no forest, there are only individual trees; and that the impact of the forest as a whole is a forbidden topic of discussion.
It really isn’t possible to make people agree with you by repeating that they do agree with you when it’s clear that they don’t.
I doubt that on these boards this will even convince other people that those who disagree with you actually agree.
If the cop had been rushing to render aid to an injured person, and this person was blocking the only path that the cop could take, then maybe the action was justified, but even then, probably could have been handled much better.
As it is, this man was only interfering with the cop in following his orders, and we’ve been aware for the best part of a century that “following orders” can never be your excuse for using violence.
Well, should never, anyway, because apparently it does in some people.
No one is saying that the police intended to injure the old man, or that this was even in the same league as what happened to George Floyd, but it does clearly illustrate the issue that the police culture seems to have deviated from their stated role of serve and protect, into one of repress and dominate. Given the old mans obstruction I can understand the police pushing him out of the way, but when the resulting push lead to him lying motionless on the concrete with blood oozing from the back of his skull, the response of the officers should have been, “Holy shit, what did I do? is he OK?” Instead it was keep marching, nothing to see here, just another impediment cleared. What mission at that point in time did the police have that was more important than rendering aid to someone who might be seriously injured at their hands? Apparently according to the footage presented by Banquet Bear, retaking the square in front of some building from a few scattered individuals who were undermining the efforts of the police to repress and dominate by holding up signs and possibly saying unflattering things about them.
Is anyone asserting that the cop’s intent was to kill? Is that what we’re debating? The incident was “complex” because it wasn’t a straightforward murder attempt? :smack: