Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

grim lol

http://gapersblock.com/merge/archives/2014/12/06/i-couldnt-believe-what-i-was-hearing/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/

@JamilSmith
Officer Loehmann not only shot Tamir Rice, but per his mom, handcuffed his 14-year-old sister at the scene while her brother lay dying.

Rice said that when she got to the park where her son was shot, she found her 14-year-old daughter, who was also at the park that afternoon playing, handcuffed in the back of a police car. When Rice later reunited with her daughter, the young girl said police officers tackled and handcuffed her once she saw her younger brother lying on the ground, bleeding.

When Samaria arrived and saw her youngest child shot and her daughter in the back of a police car, police officers warned her that if she didn’t calm down, she’d be placed in the police vehicle as well.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/tamir-rices-mother-wants-conviction-for-officers-involved-in?bftw

rally at the nets game in BK tonight

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/07/horrible-missouri-bar-offered-michael-brown-six-shots-special/

ugh

ffs

http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mugshots8.jpg

I sarcastically hope that bar burns to the ground.

The specific history of police forces varied in all American cities, but since they were facing similar problems in repressing urban workers and the poor, they all tended to converge on similar institutional solutions. The Southern experience also reinforces the point that was already clear in the North: Anti-Black racism was built into American police work from the very first day.

A long consideration of the history of the police: http://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police/

http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349

Was just reading that. I've had to absent myself from Facebook recently, because a very, very good friend of mine, who I've known for 25 years and was best man at my wedding, is a cop. He's been in law enforcement his entire adult life, and is the chief of police in a small--ish Ohio city known for its annual twins convention. And even though he should know better, he's very "Thin Blue Line" and closing ranks and all that. The day after the Garner grand jury announcement he posted, "I feel like I'm being painted with a very broad brush," and I feel like a complete coward for not commenting, amongst all his cop friends, "IMAGINE HOW BLACK PEOPLE FEEL."

We were out together at a bar the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and another of his friends, a firefighter, was there as well. They were watching the Ferguson coverage on TV, and his friend referred to the protestors as "imbeciles." My friend praised the prosecutor for "coming to exactly the right decision and laying out logically and exactly how and why." Again, I wanted to say, "If the county prosecutor treated a case your office sent him like this prosecutor did this case you'd be outraged." But I didn't.

I guess I am part of the problem.

it sounds to me like at some point you want to make your feelings clear to your cop friend, so it's harder for him to think it's "them" "persecuting" him.

Ugh. So sorry. My wife has a cop cousin or something and has gotten very "cops deserve to be able to protect themselves and go home to their families" a few times during all of this.

my dad ran a police academy in SE missouri so he has definitely sided with the police on this one

xxp yeah, I really want to have a conversation with him about it, but at a time when he's not surrounded by other cops. Several years ago his force lost an officer in a shooting -- the only one in the history of the force -- so it's only strengthened his "us" v. "them" feelings.

Is "them" just criminals in general?

"them" = "not cops, especially brown not-cops"

If that's true, then he's holding that brush ("I feel like I'm being painted with a very broad brush")

you will never pierce dude's veil of self-righteousness, is my cynical guess

DJP has it right. It goes without saying that the community where he is chief is about 80% white. (Compared to my city, which is about 40% white.)

interesting.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/12/at_eric_garner_protests_some_whites_behaving_badly.php?page=2

the (basically always white) guys / occasionally women at protests looking to actively agitate against passersby and engage the cops with preemptive hostility are the worst. you want to shake them and say 'you're not helping'.

i saw one of those in dc friday--turned out to be an undercover.

~~plainclothes~~ and "in character" if you prefer

And theres that too yes

whaaaaaaaaaat

that's what they do, SOP

http://www.wmur.com/news/police-man-arrested-after-shooting-bb-gun-at-officers/28219706

misleading URL

police man

if this war gonna start ur gonna need more than a bb gun

that's what they do, SOP

^^^yup

whaaaaaaaaaat

― $0.00 Butter sauce only. No marinara. (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, December 10, 2014 5:53 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i actually thought this was sarcasm at first--DC sends undercovers into any and all developing protest groups within the city. some friends outed one & sued her.

http://wamu.org/news/13/08/28/dc_police_defend_use_of_undercover_police_officer_to_infiltrate_labor_group

oh it's not just DC

oh for sure, i just mean i've seen it firsthand here.

...'any and all' is kind of overkill, but new groups making a splash get undercovers quickly. they used to be easy to pick out ("spot the crew cut"), but they're getting better. the dude i saw last fri looked like he belonged, it was his behavior that tipped me off.

was he like "hey man do you have any connections to the more radical and violent elements of this protest movement, and/or do you want to help me get everyone to riot?"

I was sincerely shocked by this. It feels like something out of Brooklyn 99.

this has been SOP for decades - since at least the 60s - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it dates back further than that to the big labor struggles of the early 20th century

Panthers were riddled with agent provocateurs etc.

2004 GOP Convention: The New York Times has also reported on two occasions that the police videotaped and infiltrated protests, as well as acting as agents provocateurs during the protests.

plainclothes cops infiltrating a large protest group to monitor it is one thing and somewhat understandable, but then actively agitating false flag style to discredit it is so loathsome

we were relatively scattered along the block--waiting for enough of our folks to arrive to block the intersection. i headed over to one corner where a small crowd was gathering and saw a guy i thought was a livestreamer i knew. when i said 'hey whats up' and he turned to me i realized he was someone else. guy i'd never seen before. within a few minutes i noticed he was making a concerted effort to ask the names of everyone arriving in the group, without giving his own name. between learning people's names he was hollering at no one in particular LET'S SHUT THIS SHIT DOWWWWN. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, LET'S TAKE THE STREET.

we weren't ready. we didn't have a large enough crowd. LET'S FUCK UP THIS TRAFFIC GUYS COME ON

after another 15 minutes or so the crowd had grown enough to take the intersection. we did a die in. i stood up, and he was gone. got names, made transparently bad suggestions very loudly, and disappeared once we actually got moving--that smelled like cop to me.

he was also a larger middle aged white guy which, tbqh, you don't see very many of at a rush hour blockade against police brutality on a weekday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

it's not science fiction, it's history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Darby

by "history" I mean of course "stuff that really happened and is still really happening today"

plainclothes cops infiltrating a large protest group to monitor it is one thing and somewhat understandable, but then actively agitating false flag style to discredit it is so loathsome

― anonanon, Wednesday, December 10, 2014 2:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this is what got me.

btw even the fuckin darbyrat thinks the garner decision was incomprehensible