Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I wish that letter had said, "Like Mayor Rawlings-Blake and city police officials I am very concerned about the distinct possibility of a miscarriage of justice resulting in civil disorders following the announcement of an unjust verdict allowing corrupt and criminal behavior on the part of the police to go unpunished."

xp thanks, I have a somewhat vested interest in bridgeview politics and wasn't having any luck with my searches after reading your initial post

i read that page and sometimes click on particularly appalling posters just out of morbid curiosity, like "who the hell is this person?" and then i saw that photo of him with his police chief dad and i wasn't as shocked as i wish i could have been, in another slightly better world.

http://www.ocweekly.com/news/new-video-footage-shows-noel-aguilar-shot-from-behind-by-la-county-sheriff-deputy-in-long-beach-6844726

OC deputies appear to straight up murder a guy during an arrest after one deputy accidentally shoots the other while they're scuffling with him

LA county deputies, rather

No indictment in the death of Sandra Bland.

... nor in the death of Tamir Rice.

I don't even know what to call this anymore. "Shocking" is hardly accurate and "depressing" doesn't come close.

this chicago story is insane. sorry i should clarify, "this" being the one where the cop shoots up a house or whatever and kills two people, at least one being an innocent bystander. there are plenty of chicago stories to go around.

Guys. No indictment of Tamir Rice's murderer. I don't have anything to say. Just so sad and angry.

it's just insane.

there was no "prosecutor" in the Rice case, it was a joke

When I taught American lit, I used to teach the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in which he generates powerful outrage at an incident in which an overseer, Gore, shoots an enslaved man, Demby. Slavery sickens a society, Douglass observes, to the point where a white man can kill a black man with impunity. (Demby's master questions Gore about what happened, but he is unpunished in any way, though there were multiple enslaved witnesses to the murder.) I taught that book three years in a row at my former job, and each year supplied me a fresh black death and a white man who got away with it on whom to train our discussion (Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Mike Brown.) I wish I had Douglass's eloquence to speak the disgust I feel today. What does a white person have to do to be held accountable for killing a black child, all these years later?

urgh that's rotten

It may be time to focus more on racist scumbag prosecutors than on racist scumbag cops for a little while, because racist scumbag prosecutors have more power to protect racist scumbag cops than anyone else in the system.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/the_tamir_rice_grand_jury_decision_shows_that_we_give_police_too_wide_a.html

good analysis imo, but where to start?

It may be time to focus more on racist scumbag prosecutors than on racist scumbag cops for a little while, because racist scumbag prosecutors have more power to protect racist scumbag cops than anyone else in the system.

― Three Word Username, 29. december 2015 12:57 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's probably time to focus on all parts of white supremacy...

Some people have talked about prosecutors, I know vox.com is writing a lot on the subject. Probably a useful thing for white allies to do, while #BLM focus primarily on the people actually shooting them.

Not interested, sock.

Dude? What's your problem? Perhaps take it to some other thread, keep it for another time and place?

Post as yourself or leave me alone with all of your alts.

Not that I really care if you think I'm a sock or not, I'm not looking for a discussion with you on any subject, but not only is this my only ilx-profile, I'm using parts of my real name, and I've linked to stuff written under my own name before. I'm less anonymous than you are. And even if this was a sock, again, this might not be the time and place for an anti-sock crusade?

frederik b has been around a while, twu

So have a lot of people who post with identical grammar and concerns.

But regardless: who is Frederick B. from Denmark to say what allies may argue and what BLM is to argue?

god stfu both of you

Good post.

it may not be but at least i have a few

I liked this one: "maybe you should go to the danish grocery store to buy some danish groceries for your week in denmark. feel like that would be a helpful thing to do."

wtf is wrong with all of u

this subject is too important for bullshit "you're a sock!" stuff imo. threewordusername, I don't know you or Frederik B but please avoid turning this thread into senseless message-board bickering.

That jamelle bouie article is good.

This country is bullshit though

As is Denmark, btw.

This will be my final word in this whole unfortunate sideshow, but I'm not going to be bullied by white americans into keeping my mouth shut about american racism. Just as I think it's only awesome that foreigners has begun noticing the fucked up things happening in my country at the moment.

I ought to have gone with my first impulse, which was simply to ignore Frederick. Sorry. But does anyone else seriously want to take up the idea that concern about racist prosecutors is an "allies' issue" and a mere distraction?

was gonna make a 'joke' about the system working because the affluenza kid has been apprehended but jesus fucking christ

i don't think discussing it in terms of racism of individual prosecutors makes sense -- like there's a whole system which i only partially understand as an outsider of how prosecutors work hand in hand with the police all the time as a single sort of unit, etc. structurally prosecutors are part of the same machine the police are, and expecting them to turn on their colleagues and buddies in order to defend the people that they otherwise both work together to arrest harass and convict every other day of the year doesn't really make much sense any more than we might imagine that fellow police officers of someone who shoots someone will all turn around and say "yo, that guy who i work with every day, doing what we all do, more or less, in this instance nah he's a murderer"

which isn't to ignore prosecutors either, but sort of to just to argue that they really shouldn't be expected to be a check on the system - they _are_ the system.

oh! okay then, nbd

Most states and counties have elected chief prosecutors, and those elections are routinely ignored by everybody but old white folks. There's a reason to focus on individuals, I think.

Also prosecutors are very powerful parts of the system -- the system is designed to work with them as a check on police excesses, and in fact we keep electing and appointing tough law and order who make it very clear that they are not interested in that role but in being "top cops" and kicking ass white supremacist style. Demanding accountability from prosecutors strikes me as a potentially powerful weapon.

Which no-one is arguing against, in fairness.

Your fairness were involved, you would not have felt the need to post that. I'm responding to what s. clover posted and not positioning myself 180 degrees from him.

If, dunno where that "your" came from.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-police-union-president-on-tamir-rice-act-like-a-thug-and-youll-be-treated-like-one-8141523

got caught in a twitter argument on boxing day with a work colleague who was repeatedly asking "well what crime do you think the police officers who shot tamir rice should be charged with, huh?" his dad is a policeman so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but he was having none of it and it was a depressing conversation

Lemme at 'em: my cousin and I have a very effective pincer movement for dealing with these arseholes, which is saying a) the answer should be 'murder one' but is probably manslaughter/unlawful killing and b) our dad/uncle was the US equivalent of a DCI, and your dad is? It doesn't leave them much room to argue.

My uncle would probably be very fucked off with MPD's handling of policing in North Minneapolis, too. He always told us policing doesn't work for anyone if it doesn't work for everyone.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Prince-Georges-County-Police-Officer-Sentenced-For-Threatening-Man-364653471.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_DCBrand

a scintilla of optimism on this, or not?

On the day a heavily armed couple fatally shot 14 people and wounded more than 20 others in San Bernardino, Calif., last month, Michael J. Bouchard, a sheriff here in the Detroit area, got an order to return his department’s 14-ton armored personnel carrier to the federal government.

It was one of hundreds of similar notifications from the Obama administration to law enforcement agencies across the country — from Los Angeles to rural areas like Calhoun County, Ala. — to give back an array of federal surplus military equipment by April 1, in response to concerns that the equipment was unnecessary and misused. The items to be returned: armored vehicles that run on tracks, .50-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, bayonets and camouflage clothing.

Most of the agencies have complied without complaint. But to Sheriff Bouchard and some other suburban and rural sheriffs, the orders were an infuriating, if entirely legal, federal overreach, leaving local officials without critical tools in an age of heightened fears about terrorism and mass shootings....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/us/some-sheriffs-bristle-at-recall-of-military-equipment.html

this is great

armored vehicles that run on tracks

Like, train tracks? Because that's just a recipe for "Dammit, the car we're chasing is no longer driving parallel to these tracks! He's getting away!"

“This isn’t Mayberry, where a guy goes and locks himself in jail because he got drunk,” Sheriff Bouchard said, describing Oakland County, Mich., where he has been the sheriff since 1999. “There are guys who walk up to you and fire off 13 rounds in a couple of seconds.”

Those "guys" are usually likely to be cops.