I wonder if there was racism involved here. Yes, the cops were Black, but even a Black cop might be conditioned to treat a Black suspect worse than a white one. It might even be more dangerous, because a Black cop might feel more freedom to be racist because they would feel insulated to accusations of racism due to their own race. (Complete WAG on my part here. Nothing but speculation.)
The family is calling for calm, and I respect that. But it’s hard to be. I’m white and live in a completely different part of the country and have no personal connection to Nichols. And I’m still mad. Mad that this kind of crap keeps happening. It’s disgusting.
You also know it’s bad when the chief of police comes right out and says this kind of stuff:
I think that its important to note how quickly these officers were thrown under the bus, how the police unions have been silent, and how instead this entire thing has been reframed into “Hey black people! Don’t you dare protest about this one!”
Its not as if we don’t already know how bad the police are generally at the job.
But apparently, this time it’s gonna be different. I’m guessing they are playing up the “savagery” of this due to the colour of the officer’s skin. “This Black man was beaten by these Black cops and this is going to be the worst video you’ve ever seen so all you Black people, just keep calm about it, because we all know that you have trouble keeping things under control.”
This whole thing, from start to now, is just plain evil.
This is exactly what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about - they are addressing police brutality against the Black community. When black motorists are being killed for minor traffic violations due to a moment of uncooperativeness, something is wrong. People want to be heard that this sort of thing is not OK. Mr. Nichols should not have been killed in the first place, even if the process after the fact is better now.
You want the cops fired even more quickly? Executed on the spot without a trial?
If the City does exactly what it should do, why the protest? Doesn’t that lead to “well, why bother doing the right thing, people will protest anyway”?
And it is not “OK” the perpetrators were immediately punished.
Protest only punish the city for doing the right thing.
Yes, true. But cops are human. Cops make errors because they are human. Unless we stop hiring human cops, this sort of thing will happen. All we can do is do the right thing quickly after it does.
And I also doubt that these were 5 police officers with spotless records, excellent training, and possessed of the utmost respect for the welfare and rights of their fellow human beings, who were zapped with a Cosmic Zeta Ray and transformed into monsters one tragic day.
I’m sure there were signs that something is wrong. Someone trained them wrong. Someone ignored issues leading up to it. There has to be a way to get in front of these things before someone is dead.
It’s different when there is an incident where a cop has to make a split-second decision to pull a gun and stop someone who appears to be about to harm someone, perhaps the cop themselves. These are five guys that brutally beat a sixth guy to death.
Yeah. losing their temper at someone who pissed them off.
No, they also act are pressure on the city or state to do the right thing- which has already been done.Dont take that line out of context. that is bad debating. Once the city has done the right thing then the only thing protest can do is punish the city. They have done the right thing, they can not “do the righter thing”.
There are two very different sets of “right things” that the city ought to do:
Punish the perpetrators (fire them, file criminal charges, etc.)
and
Change the system so that these sorts of incidents don’t happen in the first place (better training, taking lesser incidents of racism seriously, changing the mindsets on the force, etc.).
Number 1 seems to be well underway; what’s happening on number 2?
Here’s a way to explain why people are pissed off.
Imagine that you are staying on a cruise ship. Every time you eat at the only restaurant on board you get sick. Now, each time you get sick, you complain, the restaurant learns that the person who made the food did something wrong (used spoiled meat, didn’t cook it enough, put something unsanitary in it). And each time they fire the employee responsible. After the 4th time it happens you demand that they do something, because you have to eat. They ask you what else they are supposed to do, they always fire the person responsible. So stop complaining already
Same reason Emmett Till’s mother demanded an open casket.
You may say that you know what happened, you may believe you know what happened. But have a look, and understand what happened.
Any reply I could make would repeat what others have already said much better than I could, so just assume I said those things, but less eloquently. But, I do have a little more to add.
Tell me, do you honestly believe that these are the only 5 people in the employ of the local city government who are “bad apples”? That firing these 5 will ensure that this never happens again?
My mother once bragged about how she got some fast food cashier fired for getting her order wrong. She went back the next week, and some other person got her order wrong. The problem isn’t the employees, per se, but the culture and leadership. If the problem is the employees, then the problem starts with hiring practices, and that won’t be solved by firing a few of the ones who got caught. If the problem is culture and leadership, then the employees won’t matter, as they will be corrupted or forced out. I suspect there’s a lot of column A and B involved there.
And so that’s why, after a man is brutally tortured and beaten to death, the mere firing of the ones who were directly involved is not enough for the people who actually have to live in the communities policed by this organization.
