Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I know which side I'm on and which side dan's on and mine is by far the easier side to live on.

I'm not disputing that

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/michael-dunn-guilty_n_5913926.html

Some good news - Michael Dunn, who killed Jordan Davis at a gas station for playing loud music, was convicted of first degree murder

v gratifying

not a cop tho

Well, shit

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2014/10/03/weekley-trial-aiyana-stanley-jones/16636179

A Detroit police officer accused in the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones walked into a Detroit courtroom Friday facing a felony and misdemeanor charge.

Officer Joseph Weekley walked out of the courtroom with just the misdemeanor charge after Wayne County Circuit Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against him. Weekley still is charged with careless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 shooting, which happened as police executed a search warrant for a murder suspect.

http://gawker.com/nypd-thugs-caught-on-video-pistol-whipping-teen-with-ha-1643271317

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/family-sues-hammond-police-over-traffic-stop-violence

In cell phone video captured by a terrified 14-year-old sitting in the back seat of Mahone’s car, you can hear Mahone on the line with a 911 operator saying that she fears for her life and that moments earlier officers had pulled their guns on the couple.

http://abc11.com/340724

The parents of a Wake County high school student are outraged that police pepper-sprayed him inside their home after a neighbor mistook him for an intruder.

The video of that is absolutely horrifying xp

Some posts about this in the Michael Brown thread:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/09/crowds-in-streets-of-st-louis-after-fatal-shooting-by-off-duty-police-officer/

Meanwhile...

http://brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/41/dtg-police-beats-teen-2014-10-10-bk_37_41.html

A police officer apparently knocked out a Clinton Hill teen with one blow after stopping him for smoking a cigarette, hitting him so hard he now has neurological problems, according to the boy’s family.

This is interesting in light of all the bad news from this thread: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/10/08/foxhall-police-encounter-caught-on-video-and-the-interaction-is-fascinating/

Oof.

Yeah. I mean, good on the woman, but if she was black she would have been on the ground, tazed and beaten after about 10 words.

I was thinking she'd be dead, but yeah, somewhere within that range.

Also the class connotations, the sense in which the rich white lawyer is saying "He's okay because he works for me, this man isn't the KIND of person you're looking for because I buy/control his labor." And at the end, where the white person muses “It was very interesting, in the sense of getting a picture of how black cops treat black people" Stop. Just stop.

More on the Hammond, Indiana incident. The more you read about it the angrier you get. I grew up down the street from Hammond and I am so disappointed.

The offense the driver committed was driving without a seatbelt. I thought they couldn't pull you over for that? Then they accuse the dad of reaching for a weapon.

Two kids in the back seat had glass all over them.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/pair-alleging-excessive-force-police-traffic-stop-state/story?id=26024762

Where is the sanity? Relations with the police will go into the toilet because of this. Next we will hear the driver was on PCP.

Yeah. I mean, good on the woman, but if she was black she would have been on the ground, tazed and beaten after about 10 words.

― bippity bup at the hotel california (Phil D.), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:32 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was thinking she'd be dead, but yeah, somewhere within that range.

― Certified Genious (Old Lunch), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:34 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for this sensitive context provision, really enlightening material

That means a lot. We're all striving for the lofty heights of your self-regard.

strive for the lofty heights of not being an idiot instead.

idk in terms of imaginative wallowing in lurid hyperbolic violence against black people its not quite as bad as this so he is learning, slowly

The Death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri

this guy

I guess that's what I get for ignoring the 'do not feed' sign.

maybe you don't belong in the zoo

It's what you get for casually referencing the destruction of non-white people. The lurid speculation about what violence might be done to someone is...it brings images to mind that are very very real for some people, even if they seem like just a recitation of facts to others.

Yes, it does bring images to mind that are very very real to some people, including me. My observation was far from casual however it might have read to you. These issues make me deeply angry and deeply sad, partially for personal reasons I'd rather not disclose when a troll with a penchant for ad hominem attacks is trying to control the direction of the conversation.

does anyone not feel sad and angry about the sort of things documented here? at best it adds nothing to the conversation, nor is it particularly realistic, for while there is evidently no limit to what police are capable of doing, in the most likely scenario if that person was not i) white ii) upper middle class iii) middle aged iv) an attorney, the police would just have just intimidated them into going away with the spoken or unspoken threat of arrest

power works in far more insidious ways than just shooting people, that clip is so striking precisely because the extraordinary power and confidence displayed by that woman is the conferred upon her by various systems of inequity and is usually used to perpetuate rather than mitigate them

does anyone not feel sad and angry about the sort of things documented here?

lol let's peruse some comments sections shall we

"here"

ANYWAY, here's another, from my neck of the woods. Similar in circumstance to the Hammond one above -- car pulled over for a minor infraction, woman driving, child in back, male passenger asked to identify himself -- but with a lot less violent result.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2014/10/06/Video-of-Sandusky-traffic-stop-goes-viral-after-man-records-his-arrest.html

It's worth noting in the story: "According to a Sandusky police report, Officer Denny saw a vehicle, driving without headlights . . . The video shows that officer pulled over the vehicle at 7:07 p.m." Assuming this was taken the date it was uploaded to YouTube, sunset in Sandusky that day was at 7:16pm. And based on the visible weather in the video, while it might be polite to have your headlights on already, there's no legal requirement to do so.

shakey you are really lamentably dense

who is shakey? i don't see a post by a shakey recently.

If you were to take a guess who would you say is shakey

what's the point of creating new socks if you're just gonna abandon the pretense

I'm not a sock I got sick of having an old name I couldn't change

i have no idea who shakey is. other than neil young.

https://twitter.com/KilledByCops

An undercover NYPD officer rushing in to aid uniformed colleagues making an arrest kicked one of them in the head after apparently mistaking him for a suspect, a video obtained by DNAinfo New York shows.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20141023/coney-island/video-nypd-officer-kicks-colleague-head-during-arrest

that kick was totally unnecessary!

come on tho, the guy could have been the one beating up those innocent subway fares

oh look

In the past 20 years, at least 17 police officers in the United States have been charged with murder for their actions in line-of-duty shootings. None of these officers, though, was convicted of murder — and most weren’t convicted of anything,

"Why would you kill her? He shot her in the head and in the chest," Stephens said. "It was a woman with a knife. It doesn't make any sense."

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/11/witness_in_ann_arbor_police_sh.html

http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/serial-and-white-reporter-privilege

cross post with rolling thread abt race

"Why would you kill her? He shot her in the head and in the chest," Stephens said. "It was a woman with a knife. It doesn't make any sense."
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/11/witness_in_ann_arbor_police_sh.html

― Andy K, Monday, November 10, 2014 1:26 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i hate how there's this whole vein of "police theory" that is always trotted out in response to these commonsensical objections, that serve to explain how police are in fact justified in shooting first and asking questions later in every conceivable circumstance. one thing that bothers me is how police can take almost any action they want if they have even the remotest fear of bodily harm. shouldn't police be willing to risk harm more than the average person? that's why they're police. maybe it's police unions that are to blame for a lot of this.

sorry if this post isn't very well thought through, this stuff makes me so angry and then the inevitable justifications by very calm-sounding police apologists make me angrier.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/17/is-texas-getting-ready-kill-innocent-man/

this seems completely insane

xxp along the lines of your "shouldn't police be willing to risk harm": I remember seeing coverage after Ferguson of recently-implemented policies by (iirc) Seattle & LAPD that would make officers liable for mishandling/escalating situations to the point where lethal force becomes necessary, EVEN IF that actual use-of-force is 'justified' by an imminent threat to the officer's life or w/e

remains to be seen what actual enforcement of this will look like, but it seems like a step in the right direction

http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-outpacing-gang

In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.

Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.

And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners.