Police Brutality Thread

[Dizcrybe]

So did anyone hear about this yet?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/us/baton-rouge-shooting-alton-sterling/

Long story short, a black man was shot dead by cops for the heinous crime of... selling CDs.

That's right, it's time to go through the motions again, folks:

• Incident happens
• Outrage occurs
• Passive racist denial/justification
• No punishment for the cop
• More outrage/racist justification
• Time passes, people move on
• Repeat

...honestly? Knowing nothing is gonna be done about this is making me apathetic to the whole thing. I mean, we know what's gonna happen, why even bother getting angry about it anymore? No one in power seems to actually give a rat's ass, and the cycle's just gonna repeat again and again and again. I'm tired of it, but powerless to stop it.

[Patticus]

From what I can see in the video, the cops had the man pinned on the ground, in no position to be any kind of threat. Regardless of whether the man was fighting back or not, the cop who killed him had every opportunity to not kill him. If the man had to be subdued, they could have used non-lethal means quite easily.

This is straight up murder, and that dickhole is going to inevitably get away with it.

[Nepenthe]

Literally ANOTHER shooting. Dude gets killed for reaching for his wallet. Can't be bothered to write much about this. Just fuck the police.

[KHCast]

And can't wait to see the justification of it by people on FB that don't want to admit the police can do no wrong, or the ones that will go "well, MOST police aren't like that guy", just...wow, people need to learn to stop passing the blame to the air.

[Dizcrybe]

It's already happening on twitter

[KHCast]

Fucking Christ, I can't stand people sometimes. 

[Remy]

21 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

Literally ANOTHER shooting. Dude gets killed for reaching for his wallet. Can't be bothered to write much about this. Just fuck the police.

I watched the video... really wish I hadn't. absoutely a terrible and disgusting situation. what is going on with your cops america? 

[Dizcrybe]

The knowledge that it's perfectly acceptable to shoot black people for anything you could get a ticket for is what's going on with our cops.

[Tani Coyote]

Subconscious prejudices, lack of police oversight or funding thereof, and the sometimes lackluster PR efforts of the anti-brutality campaign all come together in a really nasty cocktail out here.

It's nice that President Obama's tried to expand police surveillance, but I imagine the GOP will reverse and obstruct any attempts at anything serious. They claim they are not the 1970s Party that became relevant by cashing in on racism, but the record's pretty clear on the matter.

The strong likelihood of racism influencing GOP policy aside, though. The GOP doesn't give a damn about WHITE people dying left and right in shootings. Why the Hell would they care about non-whites?

It's a very sad situation we have here.

[nintega137]

So I normally choose to avoid talking in these threads, because of all the controversy around them causing me so much stress, and I feel like I'm taking a huge risk by just typing this up with the potential responses I might get so I'm already really scared typing this out, but I just have to say something here.

 

I watched that video and I couldn't help but notice in the beginning of the video the sound of the officers voice was incredibly shaky. Just from that alone I can tell he was way to trigger happy. To quick to pull it too. Seriously if this is how anxious and jittery our "protectors" are, then this is only a small example indicative of a significantly larger problem. Not to mention the reaction to his death I want to try to excuse as just the shock and awe of killing a man, but no it doesn't change the fact that he was trying to justify his actions to him. 

And you know what? I know what's going to happen here. These cases will be posted and ignored and people will get away with it with either zero punishment or a severe punishment that doesn't last long and at best is a slap on the wrist. Protest will most likely ensue if it hasn't already, and they will likely be either ignored or classified as riots. But dealing with the person on the individual basis isn't what gets me. It's the overall process that gets me. These aren't just some isolated incidents disconnected from a larger problem. There's something majorly wrong and people aren't doing a thing about it. It's just staying the same. No one's really looking at this and thinking maybe something needs to be done with the police force? No one thinks of this as something to be concerned about? Especially with several stories recently where they're either trigger happy or could have subdued without lethal force? 

My favorite part about all of this is how people will justify both this and themselves by saying things like "we need to focus on ACTUAL racism, not stuff like this". Either justifying the event to say the people who died somehow deserved too, or by saying yea it was wrong but treating like just some random isolated incident that's got nothing to do with a constant larger problem that continues to plague this civilization no matter how much people want to say it's over already. I especially love how it seems like racism exist only in a voided color of sorts, a piece of the world that is very real and yet strangely imaginative. By that I mean the people who admit that racism exist and is a problem that needs to be dealt with, but literally anytime they see or hear cases involving it, it's suddenly not racism but rather just a coincidence. 

Sigh. Everything can't be all bad right. Seriously somebody on this board give me some kind of idea of what we can do to make things better for the world that will actually work and is withing our power to do.   

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I saw something that describes what is going on here:

I mean it is very true when you think about it and why something needs to be done.

[Wraith]

 

Everyone needs to watch this. Lady damn near had me in tears. 

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

3 minutes ago, Wraith said:

 

Everyone needs to watch this. Lady damn near had me in tears. 

Now I am in tears

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I'm not.

We've been saying that much ever since this became so prominent, if not decades before. It's the same message we've heard before from various others, yet many aren't going to listen until you force them to.

[Dizcrybe]

Force them how? Every time we try, we get pepper-sprayed, maced, and people still brand us as thugs. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

[Blue Swallow]

Read this and watch the video in it, those poor children, it's never easy to loose a parent, but certainty not when you're that young. I can't find it, but there was a good tweet that said something to the effect of: "You kill our fathers, and then mock us for being fatherless." 

And people are always saying don't argue with them, don't be confontational, just do what they say. Tons of white people will say it, and they'll have certain black celebrities on television saying it. But the Philando Castile execution shows that complying with the police doesn't make a difference, they'll still kill you. The police kill black people for existing, there's not really any other way around it. 

It sickens me that they detained Lavisha Reynolds (Philando’s girlfriend), seemingly because she was filming them, when she's just witnessed her boyfriend getting murdered, and she's got a four year old daughter. Which reminds me of another good tweet that mentioned how Lavisha was calmer then cop who just shot her boyfriend. And said daughter is pretty incredible, even after watching the cops shoot someone dead right in front of her, she comforts her mother, I just think that's incredible for a four year old.

 

[Tani Coyote]

8 hours ago, nintega137 said:

Sigh. Everything can't be all bad right. Seriously somebody on this board give me some kind of idea of what we can do to make things better for the world that will actually work and is withing our power to do.   

Really, one of the methods within reach is increased police surveillance as part of the federal funding package. I know Obama signed onto the idea with an Executive Order, although he will need Congressional funding... and that's where the sometimes subtle, sometimes not racism of the GOP gets in the way.

It's not a foolproof method, but it's definitely a start. Things being caught on videotape increases the chance of a penalty, even if it's not the desired amount.

Not sure how to end the culture of officers being always justified, though. While discussing the Oscar Grant case with my mother, for example, I mentioned how the officer looks to have gone to tase Grant, only to shoot and kill him by accident. My mother thought that was terrible... but then immediately argued against any penalty. The officer is always given the benefit of the doubt, and even when there is some sort of wrongdoing, even unintentional, no one wants them punished. It's disturbing.

I would be punished if I wasn't looking while driving and ran over a person. I did not intend it, but I was careless. Why do I get punished, while a cop does not? We entrust these people to dispense justice accurately and fairly... they need to be punished if they screw up, no matter what their intentions. "I didn't mean to" is cause for a lighter sentence, not no sentence at all.

Other than the surveillance option, it's unfortunate, but it looks like we have to wait. As older whites become a progressively smaller portion of the population, their clout on these issues will drop. While there is the issue of voter suppression, that can only eliminate so many voters. As time goes on, non-white voters will have more of a voice.

Ultimately though, this is probably going to be a localized issue for some time. Some local jurisdictions have had great success curbing brutality through their policies. In absence of federal involvement, state and local initiatives are probably where most of the victories will be.

I think one of the best things that could be done for PR purposes, however, is for groups like BLM to scour for cases of white victims. If we can establish that brutality affects whites as well (even if not as much as blacks and other non-whites), that will make the white public more receptive. It will still be a challenge though: even non-racists fall into the "law and order" trap far too easily. This idea that anyone who is shot deserved it is what really needs to get a stake in the heart... somehow, the flaws of the police force need to be given full attention. We're a strange culture: we don't trust politicians, but we trust the police without question. We accept the inefficiency of our government as a check on abuse, so why is the public so willing to assume no wrong can be done by the police, when they are historically the greatest tool of oppression?

Overall, we need to establish that police officers are people just like us. They make mistakes, and they need to have ways to be held accountable. Above all, they need to be closely regulated to limit the risk of abusive occurrences. Granted, I'm not sure how we could encourage the adoption of unarmed police when there are so many guns in the States.

If I kill a man in self-defense, you should be skeptical of me, and I should have to convince you that I was in the right. It should be no different with an officer. They are given too much of a benefit of the doubt, and that's the problem. Police officers should be fearful of the consequences of pulling out their firearm, so they will think twice about doing so.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

4 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

Force them how? Every time we try, we get pepper-sprayed, maced, and people still brand us as thugs. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

but then some of the ways people have been forcing it have been questionable. 

[Kuzu]

I am seriously getting to the point of not caring anymore, and I fucking hate myself for feeling that way. I really just don't know anymore, if I think about it, I just get unbearably angry and then I think about how I know how nothing is going to be done about it and it just really makes me fucking depressed. 

[nintega137]

56 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I am seriously getting to the point of not caring anymore, and I fucking hate myself for feeling that way. I really just don't know anymore, if I think about it, I just get unbearably angry and then I think about how I know how nothing is going to be done about it and it just really makes me fucking depressed. 

I share in you sentiments. Unfortunately maybe I'd be less depressed if I knew what to do about it. Unfortunately I don't have a clue. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

8 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

Force them how? Every time we try, we get pepper-sprayed, maced, and people still brand us as thugs. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Raise an army and go to war...

Honestly, the only ways that come to mind are to continue recording police killings among a wider group to gain more support, or for us to be careful and wait this thing out. Neither will be a drastic push, but it's all we got unless you plan to join the police force on a quest to root this out - provided that the officers don't turn against you for it given how they benefit from this brutality. 

This system is a dying beast that's fighting to stay alive, so it's gonna keep going until it finally dies. But if we end up quitting because we don't see any progress, it'll continue to stick around longer than we want. People in the past have endured who knows how long of just Jim Crow laws alone for us to even obtain the justice we have now, even if the system today is still skewed against us. We can do the same today, because the alternative of not doing anything risks rolling back a lot that progress.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I also don't understand why a person's past and arrest records make justify why the police officers did what they did. I mean, I get it, you are in support of the police. You may have had family members, husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend who is a police officer and I do understand the bluelivesmatter movement. I am saying that with that support, there's usually some sort of justification as to why an officer would shoot someone for no reason. However, when 5 officers were gunned down in Texas, everyone cared more. It's sad really. 

[PSI Wind]

I think its less of who died in Dallas and more on what the fuck is going on. You have SNIPERS AND BOMBS!

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

*Looks up Dallas shooting*

Oh shit, snipers?! Damn, that just made my joke in my previous post in really poor taste now...

EDIT: Also, is it bad that I kinda expected something like that to happen given the police brutality going on? Given everything that's been happening, some disgruntled person was bound to take things in their on hands and feel like they have to start fighting back.

[Toby]

11 officers shot. 4 dead. 1 civilian dead. 4 officers in critical condition. 4 suspects. 1 shot, 3 taken into custody. There were bomb threats, the Texas National Guard showed up. And now after everything that happened, protesters are still dancing in the streets, mocking and taunting the police who went through all that to protect them.