It’s nice that it’s possible for at least some people on the right to recognize a murder of a black man by white cops.
“From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision here is totally incomprehensible.” – Charles Krauthammer
The thing is, it’s really not all that incomprehensible unless you’ve been living in the Fox News studio for the last fifteen years.
Here’s how it works: white cops kill a black man. Prosecutor doesn’t do shit, and the mostly white grand jury doesn’t do shit.
Why?
Because justice has nothing to do with it.
So my faith in cop cams is shaken, obviously. But then again, the video of Garner’s death has outraged even moral swamp thing Krauthammer.
So, step one is still cop-cams.
Step two might be special prosecutors to deal with cops killing people.
Yes, this.
There needs to be an outside or special prosecutor when a police officer kills someone, line of duty or not.
The cops still collect the crime scene evidence.
As with body-cams, an automatic special prosecutor in LEO killings is more likely to lower the number of incidences and not increase the number of indictments. Prevention is always a good thing, but I’m not sure that’s what most people want out of body-cams and sp. prosecutors.
Prosecutors are the Grand Jury.
The Grand Jurors are putty.
By removing one key gear in the Prosecutor/Grand Jury/Police Officer system, the Grand Jurors aren’t just squatters.
Cameras won’t do anything until they are ubiquitous. Once every police officer knows that their actions are being filmed, they might think twice about shooting first.
Of course, the best way to decrease incidents is to stop training police officers as soliders, and to stop training police officers in theatres of war as occupiers trained to shoot first.
It hasn’t outraged the Reich Wing, Martin.
It outrages them in the sense that cops still collectively bargain in most of the country. In fact, it’s one of the key “reforms” I see on right wing sites, if they acknowledge a problem of police brutality at all.
The next step is to focus outrage on the individual case, and target their favorite boogeyman, taxes. Oh sure, they say they favor consumption taxes instead of income taxes, but the ultimate goal is just to eliminate them altogether. Even Rich Lowry is getting in on the act, though I obviously agree with him (even though his ilk are responsible for the funding model)
Of course, while the left continues focusing on systemic police violence, mostly targeting POC — which it does, no question — and the right likes to turn every issue where they might even slightly agree with us into a stick with which to hit liberals (Rand Paul was on TV talking about the tyranny of the tobacco tax), it ignores the ultimate systemic problem that we have as a white supremacist society, which Marie2 tried generating discussion with in a diary.
Cops are a problem because society told cops that we should focus resources on minority communities. A belief in the inherent criminality of blacks and their communities didn’t originate with the LAPD or the NYPD, though.
Also, we as a society decided to put these cops beyond reproach. I again attribute that to white supremacy, though it can also eat their own
I attribute it to 9-11. Before that we never saw this adulation of cops and firemen. Similarly, guilt over the treatment of Vietnam vets has transformed today’s vets into paragons of virtue.
Sure we did. Otherwise little kids (mostly boys) since at least post-WWII wouldn’t have been given toys that made them want to grow up to be a fireman or policeman. Cops as good guys are a TV staple.
I don’t know about that. Growing up in the 80/90s in around DC cops weren’t “good guys” at all.
For poor people cops were evil assholes who ran around killing people and harassing them. For the well off cops were stupid hicks who couldn’t make it to college and thus vented their frustrations by giving speeding tickets to and harassing those who didn’t fail at life.
They were universally hated, mocked, and despised from all angles.
The only group of people who didn’t seem to hate them were local politicians, but that was always laughed off as “well sure, the police union is an unbeatable political force” because they made fun of the cops when the cops weren’t around as well.
Cops aren’t the good guys for almost anyone that grows up in a minority and/or poor area.
Not surprising that there’s some conflict when wealthy elite assholes meets a LEO that expects deference.
But everybody seems to like those firefighters who if reports are correct, may be as, if not more, juiced up and racist than cops.
One of my childhood friends (female) is a firefighter. While she was volunteering in the town I grew up in, she invited me and her brother to one of their “parties”; her brother brought his fiance with him. Anyway, after being there maybe twenty minutes, her brother, his fiance, and I all dipped out.
I have never been so uncomfortable at a social gathering that’s supposed to be “fun” in my life.
Uncomfortable because?
Oh, I thought it didn’t need to be explicitly stated.
Imagine a caricature of a middle class white trash Southern Alabama family inviting all of their middle class white trash friends to get drunk on cheap beer while talking about “porch monkeys” and other assorted garbage. Except that’s what happened.
Maybe they had less money than they displayed, but the house wasn’t anything to sneeze at, and this was post-bubble bursting.
Cheap beer and cheap racist jokes sounds like a party from hell.
Firemen have always kind of been adulated. Everyone’s happy when the fire department shows up, because they put out fires!
No one’s happy when the cops show up. Ever. Often as not, not even the victim.
Cops showing up to the wrong house killing elderly people, vets, active duty military, dogs, and flashing infants in cribs is a thing. No matter what your race, sex, age, gender, hell even if you are a puppy, the cops showing up is a horrifying experience.
Yes I know it’s worse for some than others.
Hell recently the cops arrested some people in my gated apartment complex. I happened to be walking to our shopping area (grocery store, dry cleaners, salon, fitness center, park) and was about 30 feet away when the plain clothes officers jumped out of the SUV. I had a pistol and a shotgun pointed at me as more and more cops poured out of various vehicles yelling and screaming and generally terrifying the shit out of everyone.
I was told to leave the area at gun point. I got the fuck out of the area.
Not in Chicago. Fire engines were often greeted by snipers.
“treatment of Vietnam Vets” is a myth
Was you there, bunky?
no, but was on a program with a vet who became an anthropologist, wrote a book about it, read part of his book. fascinating. will look for info for you
He writes about what a strong part of the anti-war movement the Vietnam Vets were, – the principal part, iirc- and that creation of that myth was in the interests of dividing that coalition, and obscuring that fact, also, part of dealing with the “loss”;
Max Blumenthal: Inside the Twisted Police Department That Kills Unarmed Citizens at the Highest Rate in the Country
Booman you’re forgetting something here.
We’ve created an environment where the police rampantly gun down men, the elderly, children, veterans, active duty military, across all races, hell they shoot puppies.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/us/california-homeless-beating-verdict/
The person was beaten to death on camera, he isn’t black, and I understand that means it’s not an issue worth getting upset about, but this isn’t happening only to black people.
This incident in California was especially troubling to me personally. This man, Kelly Thomas, was known to police in the area as being homeless, and also that he suffered from a mental illness for which he was not receiving any treatment. This policeman entered into this confrontation with the intent of severely hurting or killing this man. It was not in dispute that the officer casually put on his gloves, shook them in front of Thomas’ face and said to him, “Now see my fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up.”
The officers then commenced to beating him for 10 solid minutes. They pinned him to the ground so hard that he had trouble breathing. Prosecutors say he was shocked four times with a Taser, kneed in the head, punched in the ribs and bashed eight times with the butt of a stun gun. When the tape of the beating was played in open court, it brought audible gasps from those present.
During most of the beating, he wailed and cried out for his father to help him, begged for his life and cried out numerous times that he couldn’t breathe. Eventually he lost consciousness. He died in the hospital. This is what he looked like after the beating.
I have a mentally ill brother. He, like Kelly Thomas, suffers from schizophrenia. He has lived on the streets at times over the last 30 years. When I look at Kelly Thomas, I see my brother. When I watched an interview of Thomas’ father, weeping as he sits and listens to the recording of his son frantically calling out to him for help in his last moments, and he wasn’t there to save him, I see my own father. As all of this comes to me in this very personal way, I am again filled with a combination of rage, sadness and, yes, hatred. Absolute hatred for these police officers, and those like them that seem to have a need to dehumanize people to the point of seeing them as nothing more than animals not worthy of any respect, empathy, understanding or right to live.
The fact that these officers still freely walk the streets makes me sick. They are human scum, in my mind. If there is a hell, it is where they belong.
The grand jury process has been contaminated. It no longer serves any community to bring justice but instead serves prosecutors who seek to crush equality under the law.
This is a red flag for a Constitutional crisis. It is terrifying that it not only has happened but that it happened despite the coroner’s report that this was a homicide and that it was all captured on film.
How can any part of our laws be respected or trusted as long as the grand jury process is run this way?
jeff Roorda, pres. of the WHITE Police Union in StL just said on CNN: “The lesson learned by #MichaelBrown and #EricGarner is comply with the police.”
DAs are complicit with Police is it because they, too, know to be afraid of them?
When in a police state don’t fuck with the police. Better listen or people will get hurt. Nice.
Eric Garner’s last words transcribed.
“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. […] I’m minding my business, officer. I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. Please. Please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me. [garbled] I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe”
I watched the video he said “I can’t breathe” 11 times. I didn’t make it past 4…
Video: Eric Garner’s widow when asked if she accepts officer’s apology in Garner’s death…HELL NO!
The headline as ABC says the wife “lashes out at cop” way to go ABC…chumps.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/eric-garners-wife-lashes-cop-killed-husband/story?id=27350764
FoxNews, you built that.
…with a little help from other spinoffs of the Reagan Revolution.
Just tired of hearing about it. Tuning out the assholes.
What cab driver said, yesterday evening- I know, Friedman,-“no one will take on the police” (reference to Ferguson and Garner, the demo had left the location he picked me up, and a section of midtown was blocked off, then told me some about police issues in some immigrant communities. it’s an out of control institution.