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F is for Fascism (Ferguson MO)

myDeaconmyhand said:
It's authoritarianism. Cops are allowed to kill people who don't comply with their orders. They are allowed to do that because of an authoritarian society that reduces every criminal encounter to this:It's not "Protect & Serve" it's "Comply or Die", and for some minorities its comply AND die. Cops are legally allowed to kill leashed dogs for barking, what else do you need to know?
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Feel free to make your point by charging a cop or anybody else you encounter today.
 
Deacon923 said:
my overall take on law enforcement killings, which I have expressed several times on this thread, is that they are largely a function of the extreme overabundance of firearms in American society. Officers are correct to fear that anybody they encounter might have a gun, and they are trained to shoot first and figure out if their fear is justified later. The law protects them when they do this. The "thin blue line" mentality of never snitching on bad cops and defending even the worst abuses of bad officers is a major contributor, too. Nonetheless, I do have sympathy for cops who our society requires to police a heavily armed population with crappy mental health care. Often they are put in impossible situations.

In this particular case, however, the "I thought he had a gun" excuse doesn't fly. An officer confronted with a obviously unarmed person should be expected to find a way to resolve the situation without deadly force. That might mean retreating (i.e. running away). There's nothing wrong with "observe and report" when you're dealing with a crazy naked guy. I think it is very legitimate to expect officers to find a way to preserve life in these situations instead of resorting to deadly force. I'm just very, very skeptical that there was nothing this officer could do other than shoot the guy.
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I know I've contested this argument before, but your position is such an innocent, and imo ignorant, take on the history of policing in this country and the state violence that our society has permitted/empowered. Police officers have been extra-judiciously killing black people in this country long before we had this amount of gun saturation in communities. We really don't know how many people police killed before 5-10 years ago. The police are a militarized force that has been trained to view poor communities as enemy combatants. We have tried to reform racism out of the police force through more training and funding and it has not worked. It is an inherently racist institution. We need community alternatives to policing, surveillance, and incarceration.
 
MHBDemon said:
I know I've contested this argument before, but your position is such an innocent, and imo ignorant, take on the history of policing in this country and the state violence that our society has permitted/empowered. Police officers have been extra-judiciously killing black people in this country long before we had this amount of gun saturation in communities. We really don't know how many people police killed before 5-10 years ago. The police are a militarized force that has been trained to view poor communities as enemy combatants. We have tried to reform racism out of the police force through more training and funding and it has not worked. It is an inherently racist institution. We need community alternatives to policing, surveillance, and incarceration.
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I don't disagree that American policing and the carceral state is fundamentally and severely flawed and I am aware of the historical reasons for many of those flaws. I don't know what "community alternatives" means, but I do know that police seem to be able to function in plenty of other countries without killing lots of people and I am not aware of "community alternatives" that are functioning instead of the police in, say, Germany or the UK. Therefore I think it is possible to have an American police force that is not authoritarian, murderous, corrupt, and racist. There are two huge obstacles to that goal: (a) the racist and counterproductive "war on drugs"; and (b) the gun saturation of America, which creates a built-in excuse that is very credible to most Americans for many acts of police violence. I don't think that American policing can be effectively reformed without addressing these two base causes. I don't think there are any "community alternatives" that are going to move the needle without addressing these base causes, either. Electing reformist prosecutors, ceasing the flow of military hardware to police departments, and having a Justice Department that will actually try to enforce the civil rights laws are all just tinkering around the edges until we do something about the guns and the "war on drugs".
 
Black man says he was pulled over in a Kansas town, and 'vegetation' led to a search

The video shows an officer at a patrol cruiser as Samuel talks about being pulled over. When the officer returns, the video shows, he uses a hand without a glove to pick up what he calls "vegetation stuff" from the driver's window seal.

Samuel tells the officer that the vegetation is "tree stuff."

The officer said he was going to put it in a bag, and Samuel said, "I don't even smoke."

When the officer returns, he tells Samuel to get out of his car, the video shows. Samuel said the officer has to test it first, but the officer replies that, "I'll test it here in a little bit, OK, I ain't got to test it right now."

The officer repeats that Samuel must get out of the car, and as Samuel asks why, the officer forcibly removes him, video shows.
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just drivin' around with weed on my car

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Video of tasing and arrest of Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown to be released soon, sources say

Assistant Police Chief Michael Brunson Sr. referred to the Brown video in a speech at a Milwaukee church Sunday during the city's Ceasefire Sabbath.

"There's going to be a video that's going to come out soon, in the next couple of weeks, involving the department, and I'm going to honest with you, we're going to need your support during the challenges," he said, according to video posted on WITI-TV.
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small point of light: the prosecutor for the county that contains Houston and its suburbs is overhauling how they prosecute drug offenses. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/will-texas-follow-houstons-lead-on-drug-policy-reform/561035/

Ogg then targeted enforcement of other drug laws. She stopped prosecuting people caught with residue amounts of drugs other than marijuana that are too small to use—about 2,000 cases a year, she estimates. And she said she’s sent about 6,000 people caught with slightly larger amounts of drugs, particularly crack cocaine and methamphetamine, to a special “reintegration” court “for treatment through a mechanism that still allows them to keep their records clean.” She’s also backed an array of other diversion programs for other nonviolent crimes, including one that eliminates jail time for small retail thefts.
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Officer fired after intentionally hitting fleeing suspect with his police car

The department released video of the June 1 incident, in which Saulters can be seen driving after a suspect fleeing on foot from he and his partner. Saulters initially turns left to try to block the suspect, but the man dodges the car. The suspect then continues running down the street, at which point Saulters drives to the right and hits the suspect with the front right of his police car.

The man who was hit, identified as Timmy Patmon, rolls up on the hood of the car and falls to the pavement. Saulters and his partner, officer Hunter Blackmon, who had been chasing the suspect on foot, arrest Patmon as a group of angry onlookers gather around the arresting officers.
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New Sterling Brown Arrest Videos Show Police Standing On Player's Ankle, Celebrating Overtime Pay

Milwaukee TV station WISN has obtained additional body-cam and squad-car footage from the night of Sterling Brown’s arrest, as well as new photos of Brown’s injuries. One video shows an officer standing on the Bucks guard’s ankle to prevent him from kicking them, a suggestion Brown laughs off as absurd since he never tried to attack any of the numerous officers who showed up to arrest him, while another clip shows an officer celebrating the overtime he’d earned by showing up to arrest Brown. These new videos come two weeks after initial arrest footage was released that showed Brown getting tackled and shot with a stun gun for no reason, which can also now be seen from the perspective of the four officers who took him down.
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Robert Johnson, unarmed man beaten by Mesa police: 'I want Mesa to be held accountable'

Police repeatedly ask Johnson to sit down, but he refuses, the video shows.

The four officers close in on Johnson. An officer identified in the police report as "J. Jones" knees Johnson twice in the stomach and punches him six times in the face, the video shows.

The police report details that another officer identified as "R. Monarrez" punched Johnson in the face at least once.

As Johnson is being hit, someone is heard saying, "Sit your ass down, motherf--ker."
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Mesa police have faced criticism for other use-of-force incidents in the past year.

In February, a family posted pictures of an 84-year-old grandmother's bruises after a Mesa police officer grabbed her and took her down. After the pictures went viral on Facebook, Mesa police video showed the takedown. Police had originally said the woman slipped.
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Totally normal.

 
Hitler was just a very talented leader, loved his country. And his people loved him—they really stood at attention when he addressed them.
 
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