Politics Ferguson

I call bullshit. Police work doesn't take place in a vacuum and it is absolutely society's job to determine what exactly constitutes an acceptable amount of violence from the state. This is especially important considering all the money and toys these departments have been given after 9/11.

So far as I know, the shop owners have yet to come forward and confirm that it was indeed Mike Brown pictured in that video. Beyond that, it's obvious that we'll likely never know exactly what happened on that day. From the joke of a grand jury to the conflicting/useless witnesses, shoddy police work, etc. Whatever justice this process was supposed to guarantee us is clearly impossible.

What I don't understand is the willingness of those who side with the Ferguson County police department. Why would anyone want to be in league with them? Aren't they an embarrassment to the profession, to all the legitimate LEOs out there? From their leaking of that video to the press to their generally racist and fucked policing practices to how they've handled the protestors, isn't this shit embarrassing?

I'm an anti-capitalist lefty with who isn't holding out for anything less than revolution and still, with all my friends and family who are/were LEOs, it pains me to consider what springs to mind when people think of the cops, what unnecessary danger that creates for them. Why doesn't that appear to bother any of you?

 

Agreed.
Awful headline.

 

Ok, didn't make myself clear referencing the coroner's report. There were powder burns on brown. Those only come from close range. Like inside a vehicle. So there is no allegedly. It is not in dispute. Now considering that a jury can decide to convict or not convict despite evidence shows that evidence is not always important. The evidence doesn't lie. So your use of allegedly is wrong. There is no dispute about where brown's hands were. And for the record, I'm a trooper. And my job is a little more complex than your ability to decide if mayonnaise or apples are bad. But continue to presume that you know more than me regarding my job. Most of my posts here have been to correct your mistakes. Maybe it's time to weigh your discourse and see the standard level of stupidity.

 

Traditionally, we use trials to determine if allegations are true. So I don't agree that I'm using the term "allegedly" incorrectly.
Sorry if I pissed you off, though.

 

I don't presume to know more than you about your job.
In fact I'm certain you are one of the good people who make this world better by doing your job.
However my issue is with the group that make it worse.
Which from their record many of the police in Ferguson look to be.

We will never know why that gun was drawn in the first place.
Was Brown actually resisting arrest or trying to protect himself?
Yes, I know it was a police officer so the very idea that he was at fault and the aggressor is hard to swallow but we will never know how the situation started because there will never be a trial.
There are still so many unanswered questions or misdirected ones, that I can totally understand the frustration of his family and the people marching in the streets.

 

Thank you, I do get a little heated sometimes. A coroner's report is a scientific report of available evidence. It does not go into motivation, or interpret. But it did show where brown was when the gun was first fired. Now you can use allegedly, but why else would brown's hands be inside the Wilsons vehicle? To me, using allegedly at that point is just playing defense attorney games. The end result is the same. So maybe not incorrectly, but it doesn't refute the facts.

 

I see your point, but have there ever been coroner's reports that are wrong? Would there be an opportunity at a trial to present evidence that might cast doubt upon the coroner's report? That's my point.

 

This is America, a coroner here could do a shooting in his sleep. That's a poser, I don't know how often coroner reports are actually called into question.
Redravin, I totally agree that there is racism, and officers being human can still be racist. But if you talk to any officer, we all agree based on what has been presented, that Wilson acted correctly. Has anyone proven him racist? And even if he were, that doesn't mean that he can't make the right decision. You can't convict his individual actions based on issues in the department. I just think that this was the wrong battle to argue racism, and I see an officer who lost his job. He won't work for any large department again. He could be picked up by some tiny place, but not anything that matters. Now discussing garner, that's a whole other issue. There are some definite problems there.

 

Coroners are political figures who are chosen for their partisanship and connections; they are often funeral directors, and rarely have medical degrees. Medical examiners are pathologists and tend to be more independent and professional, and are far superior to coroners in doing death investigations.

Most states have replaced coroners with medical examiners. It sounds like Missouri has stuck with the antiquated coroner system.

See Death Investigation in America — Jeffrey M. Jentzen | Harvard University Press (I have a copy of the book right here, given to me by the author.)

 

And I've seen some argue that Garner couldn't be about race because the supervisor of the officers was a black female.
Or that what he did wasn't really, legally a choke hold and don't you know if he hadn't been so unhealthy Garner would have been just fine.
There seem to be just as many excuses for his death as there are for the shooting of Tamur Rice or John Crawford.
It gets wearing after a while.

 

This is the USA, race is an informative angle in most discussions (especially discussions about representatives of the state meting out extra judicial capital punishment) whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Avoiding discussing race does nothing but help "colorblind" white people feel comfortable. Comfortable white people have never done a damn thing worth doing (except Sudoku, maybe).

 

Like a shot from the heavens!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for evidence that shows what's up. But we'll never know.

I wholeheartedly concur that the rampant militarizing of the Citizens-On-Patrol is way outta hand but the initial situation is a completely separate thing from hand-me-down MRAPs and shock troops.

And who the fuck would be so stupid as to come forward claiming anything either way in Ferguson after all that hoopla? Arson and death threats, anyone? Apu just wants to sell slushies, not get crucified by a mob from either "side."

Plus, according to TVTropes, the only thing worse than being a young black man in the US is being a first generation immigrant that owns a convenience store. It's pretty much a death sentence. You can't even get life insurance.

#ProprietoringWhileIndian
#ProperietoringWhileKorean

*fast forwards in an alternate reality* Man, that trial was a huge farce / waste of time. Twisted evidence. Bullshit testimony. He walked / went to jail but nothing really changed. Everybody is wearing useless badge cams now, though.

Maybe it isn't siding with the Buttfuck, Missouri PD so much as it is imagining someone fucking with a police officer and losing.

That bullshit article I linked that Bodkin clearly didn't read illustrates how often cops get assaulted for no real reason.

But that's all okay, because they're racist pigs. I mean, just look at their evil simian eyes and ginger mustaches.

The answer precedes the question.

...

Let's all kill our families to assuage our liberal democrat white guilt.

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/entire post is trollin'

 

You should read the things I write instead of reading into them.

 

Let me know when we start speaking the same language so I can apply this handy tip.

One of us is going to have to get baptized, brother.

Google searches for "baptism" are racist.

 

No white liberal guilt is required to acknowledge the fundamental role that racism has played in lighting the bright beacon on the hill that is America. For this fact alone, even if everyone wasn't racist, it would still be useful to include race in discussions because race is a huge part of how we got to where we are. You don't need a bunch of people in Klan costumes to have a racist society if that society is still tangling with the residue of favoring whites for most of its existence (this is hypothetical, since clearly there are still really racist people everywhere in America).

Race is a complicated, painful issue for a lot of people. It's also relevant. To pretend otherwise is, to paraphrase Ta Nehisi Coates, to pretend that once you've removed the knife from someone you stabbed, you have no responsibility for anything that happens to them afterward.

 

Some of us do try to see things from both sides, often to a point that it annoys the people standing on the wings expecting an opinion that supports that side.
My problem is that I understand that awful things do happen, people attack police officers for no reason, leaving them to make split second decisions about situations that we would have no right to second guess and that training only goes so far in dealing with the weird shit that out there.

However I'm also aware of the history of awful things that have been done in the name of the law.
People who have told me first hand stories of being dragged out of bed and beaten because they belonged to the wrong organizations or spoke up at the wrong meetings.
There is a major problem in this country and while it isn't as bad as it was in the 60s, it has metastasized and is getting worse with the militarization of the police.

We need to make major changes in the system and maybe the Brown case isn't the best case to use as an example but it was the start.
There are many others to point to and I would be happy to.
One example is the shooting of Darrien Hunt, the cosplayer in Utah who shot in the back six times.
New video emerges of black cosplayer running for his life from cops who then shot and killed him - Boing Boing
Each one is an example of why we need to change how this country trains and deals with police shootings.

 

Most definitely, but this shit goes back to the beginning of fucking time. What is anybody at any level supposed to do about that other than, well, breed it out?

According to NPR on the ride home from the doctor's office, white people will be the minority in the US by 2045 and I can't fucking wait. Wish I'd see 2100 CE.

When we're all the same damn color, we'll still have the same bullshit socioeconomic stratification issues with new and improved group identifier buzz words.

It's gonna be great fodder for the next gritty blockbuster young adult dystopian fiction novel series, that's for sure. #HungerGames #Divergent #RedRising

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Or maybe we need to change how 'Merica values equipment (things) versus training (knowledge and skills) and where our taxpayer priorities really are (I got mine, don't care as long as it stays that way) vs. what we tell ourselves (we are the world). Police departments purchase and are given millions of dollars of military-style equipment as a way for politicians to say that they're "tough on crime." Camo jammies and tear gas, ahoy. Training isn't flashy or easily quantifiable, so it's neglected to the point that they have to start changing the equipment (MA / NY pistol triggers, for example) or that they feel they need more equipment (ZOMG tanks) because they don't have the training to head off situations before they reach the oh-shit-shit stage.

Academics have been harping on this since the '70s, too.

 

Clearly, Plan9, what we need is to formalize this. After all North Korea's obviously got the right idea with their Three Generations punishments.

You're missing one important detail: This isn't a failure of training, this is training working as intended. The excessive force, the mass murders covered up under "excited delirium", the near guarantee any pet anywhere near a cop is getting killed, agents provacateur, everything down to the habitual need to manufacture a situation to justify force even where it's not needed is a direct result of their training.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Not all cops are bad cops but all cops do participate in a system of policing that is inherently corrupt, violent, and militarized and virtually all cops participate in the Blue Code of Silence which continues to enable and protect bad cops.

 

This thread has gone wide from the subject of Ferguson but I think that's a good thing.
It seems to followed the nature of the protests that are spreading across the country where people aren't just speaking out about the case in Ferguson, they are protesting the basic problems of the militarization of the police forces, the closeness of the prosecutors and the police and the automatic criminality that is brought to race.

That said, all too often in these conversations I'm accused of being anti-police which isn't true at all.
There are plenty of good officer out there but all too often they aren't treated very well.
Case in point ...
Fired Buffalo police officer fights for pension after stopping fellow cop from strangling suspect