Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I would agree with that take if it didn't feel like all of these killings were new media versions of public lynchings, consumed like horror movie entertainment.

yeah there is a ghoulish/exploitation factor to news outlet coverage. at least with internet links I can choose whether to actually watch the footage or not (and at this point that's usually "not") but with TV news they're just like "yeah let's run this on a loop in the background", which is o_0

going from "random late afternoon talk show" to "here's a black man getting shot/beaten multiple times shown on a loop" to "WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!" tells you how much gravitas/weight these deaths are being given

well you could say that about any serious issue, that's just the flattening effect of our shitty media landscape

oh all right, if they're doing it to everything I guess that's okay

EQUALITY ACHIEVED

lol well uh I didn't mean to imply that it's a *good* thing

i think DJP is pointing out that this *is* qualitatively different, though, because of a history of lynchings as public spectacle

ok sure

yep, exactly

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/24/1379966/-Smoking-Gun-Prosecutor-Anita-Alvarez-deliberately-undercharged-officer-who-killed-Rekia-Boyd

Shaun King making the case that the Dante Servin directed verdict acquittal was down to the prosecution colluding to intentionally undercharge

cops that fatally shot Jason Harris (a mentally ill man who had a screwdriver) facing no charges, thanks to a Dallas grand jury. (I'm not linking the story cuz the photo at the top is just fucked up)

we'll see if this goes anywhere: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Lawsuit-says-S-F-police-killed-Mission-man-as-he-6222579.php

I have zero faith in the SFPD so you can guess which account I'm inclined to believe

DJP, your concern about whether this is all too distasteful to contemplate or whether it is being exploited by the media..... should rank about 147th on a scale of relative importance.

Only repeated exposure of this violence to the public at large will have even the slightest chance of changing anything. Sorry it upsets you but, like, not as sorry as that it's happening and that this is the ONLY way anything might ever get done about it.

I'd note that lynching photos were consumed enthusiastically, guilt-free, by the groups that perpetuated them, yet....they also created a revulsion amongst people who wanted to do something about it, who would have been more than happy to believe that such things were exaggerations. Same thing with documenting of police violence: all sorts of regular folks, well-meaning, think first of the cop point of view and only with the most explicit evidence presented to them would think anything else.

Think Vietnam would have ended without those photos, the little girl on fire, the dead bodies, etc? Get real.

the vietnam war ended because your country lost but i'm sure djp will be glad for the rest of your insight

xp FP

Don't think it's too out of bounds to call out the tasteless and disrespectful practices of media.

not on board with that whatsoever vic perry, especially the "ONLY way" bit. really? like even if i bought your vietnam argument, would this particular way of framing, presenting and mediating these images be the ONLY possible way?

but tbh your "regular folks" come really fucking loaded. just guessing here but i'm pretty sure regular black folks do not need convincing, so who are we talking about again? who gets to be "regular"? why does it seem like the qualification for regularity is specifically still neding, somehow, at this date, more horrifying visuals to be convinced that there's even a problem? i do not personally identify with people who would "think first of the cop point of view," and basically fuck the idea that a person could be in that position, could still require "the most explicit evidence presented to them" and still be innocently described as "well meaning." i am trying to picture such a person, and seriously all i can come up with is climate-change-denial level of tendentious "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I Just don't know.... maybe if I see some more evidence :)" bullshit.

telling people what they should care about in order of priority always goes over well

^^^ this also; i actually feel like an ass for not getting to this point. my apologies, DJP.

I'm not touchin that vp post

Anyway was not that surprised to read that there's no nat'l database for police-involved killings. That seems like an achievable goal somebody get on that. (Maybe you, miss new attorney general)

sleeve otm. 'sorry if public executions upset you'? get a 1 clue

I'm shocked, shocked, etc. The motives of TV news producers are impure? They're using sensationalism? Tell me more. Gee if only white America were as enlightened, they'd just know that cops were lying about stuff and we wouldn't need to see all this unpleasantness.

"Vietnam lost anyway" uh fine right, as if "losing" had any impact whatever on America continuing stupid unjust wars.

How about the next few wars over the next few decades. What do you think the military picked up from the history of Vietnam? Much more sanitized presentation with "embedded" reporters, correct? Any iconic imagery you can think of in the mainstream media of bodies, death - other than a few images of, naturally, Americans who were killed? At this point it is out of the political mainstream in either party to suggest that maybe it isn't just American deaths we should be worried about in these wars. I think it's because nobody in America has to see it any more.

But at least it wasn't upsetting to television viewers. You're right everybody, keep the trauma out of the living room, how dare anyone suggest there might be anything more important than viewer comfort zones.

http://binarydissent.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/strawman.jpg

Don't you think sensationalizing violence enables a violent system?

No, that's very fuzzy.

As for well-meaning people who come up with excuses for authoritarian violence, check out mainstream Democrats who decide to go along with administration drone killings because they know the president loves his children and is just doing his best to keep us safe.

VP, there's a time and place for that point to be made, but you have really misplaced it here IMHO. I also think you've seriously misread the objections raised by DJP and others - at the very least gotten the tone quite wrong.

Putting lots of violent images on TV every night vs. not putting lots of violent images on TV every night. Is that too fuzzy for you?

Just as the more a word is repeated it loses it's meaning.

Brings me back to last summer, Netanyahu: “They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

Netanyahu probably mainly worried about the corrosive effects of too much violence on TV. I expect to soon see various police chiefs in the US making the same argument.

The media is there to promote powered interests. They have a platform to say whatever they want.

just in point of historic fact i'm pretty sure the anti-lynching activists around the turn of the century thru the 1930s usually shied away from graphic descriptions or imagery regarding the lynchings, because they recognized that going too far in that direction didn't actually help their cause.

Guess I have to spell out sarcasm re: Netanyahu, that he was in charge of the killings and objected to the results being shown in the mass media, go figure.

I don't know enough about anti-lynching activists and the way they handled the issue of sensitivity, but on the question of the press I notice this one muckraker who earned the praise of W. E. B. Du Bois for his efforts (without necessarily being totally admirable either):

"Investigative reporter Ray Stannard Baker, the only muckraker who directed his journalistic energies to expose lynching (Beasley, 1982), described lynchings in detail in McClure's in 1905 and in a book, Following the Color Line, published in 1908. Although Baker made statements that are glaringly offensive by today's standards (e.g., a reference to the "animal-like ferocity" of Black criminals), his work helped call Americans' attention to racial problems and was praised by W.E.B. Du Bois (Beasley, 1982)."

from this: http://academic.csuohio.edu/perloffr/lynching/

keep digging

And yeah, I know I'm not making any friends tonight so I'll just close this out by saying that I think authoritarian violence, directed by the powerful against the powerless, is endemic and one kind isn't more excusable than another even though different people like to excuse different kinds, and saying 'oh let's only talk about cops right now' is a, wait for it, cop out.

Secondly, I'm hardly the only person to ever call for, uh, MORE upsetting violence in the media:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173559/media-cover-iraq-war-images-sanitized-start

Peace (I guess I have to say I'm not being ironic?)

o wait one more thing saluting Hammer Smashed Bagels with the cool minimalism i.e. no arguments made, no arguments refuted, just nonstop Fonzie level charisma

I've said about as much as you with about 1/25th of the paragraphs

but y'know feel free to keep telling a Black man itt what he should and shouldn't find revolting in the media and go on 25 post screeds insinuating how he's part of the problem and that he's playing into the hands of the enemy. not condescending or dickish at all.

and there's the fact that you're deliberately misrepresenting what he said in the first place but w/e

there are people here whose family members have been lynched in living memory

perhaps give a thought to that when you, who have nothing at all at stake, call for, uh, more upsetting violence in the media

otm

I owe DJP an apology for my first post, the only post directed to DJP - it was disrespectful of me to make the comment personally directed.

Apology not accepted. Fuck you.

60 Minutes did a story on the sarin gas attacks in Syria that included images of people dying in the streets and in makeshift clinics, hacking their lungs out and twitching painfully, and rooms filled with piles of dead bodies. They presented this story with multiple warnings about the graphic imagery and well insulated/isolated from the rest of their program. The imagery was horrific, powerful and treated with respect.

The video of Walter Scott being gunned down was shown on a loop right after fucking Ellen with no preamble and no warning. It was then shown again as a teaser for the nightly news during Wheel of Fortune, again with no warning and no context other than "watch our story about this police officer shooting a fleeing black man later!"

Which of these do you think was meant to bring awareness to a horrible crime and which of these do you think was being marketed as lurid entertainment?

Fuck you.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDfc7dDVAAEJezW.jpg

Baltimore tonight.
(photo by @cmcampbell6)

drives me crazy that there's all this press re: Baltimore with headlines describing Gray as having been "hurt while in police custody" as opposed to, y'know, having been killed by police. cuz you know he may have inflicted that spinal injury on himself amirite smdh

stay safe Baltimore

Ugh, now people are tweeting out the address of the Baltimore mayor's house. This is so incredibly fucked up.

we've run out of firetrucks