If a 12-year-old is an imminent, deadly threat to you, then you’re simply not skilled enough to be a police officer.
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I totally loved that book, yesterday, today and tomorrow. One of my favs. of all time.
Just had to say that for some darn reason.
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This union president is putting cops at more risk because of his asshat’s statements will make the public trust cops less and less.
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I served on a jury for a rape trial in a major city in the late 80s. Black defendant and elderly white rape victim. During selection and before sending us to the jury room, the judge made this big deal about not giving discount or added weight to police testimony.
I didn’t get it until we were in the jury room. White jurors all thought cops were good guys. The black jurors thought cops were bad guys. It was really an eye opener. I learned a lot about my city being on a jury. One thing was that black folks in the city didn’t like seeing cops on the street they way I (and other white folks I knew) did–at all.
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This is why the police are always gonna come out on the wrong side of
this argument. The complete lack of remorse and the abundance of
stupidity.
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All that is of course true, it’s undeniable on the face of it. But there’s also the astonishing inability of this person, so immersed in his subculture, to acknowledge that if a child with a toy is killed by a policeman, it’s regrettable, it’s an unwished-for outcome, it’s a shame, it was a bad thing. But no. Comply instantly with police orders, no matter your age or innocence, or you will die and the police will not feel bad about it.
There’s another thing I haven’t seen mentioned in the welter of police killings we’ve seen lately, and it’s this: The cops are on edge and it’s because of guns guns guns guns guns. So many guns. A guy reaches into his glove compartment, and the cop shoots him. Because he’s black. But also because of guns.
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There seems to be a problem with police unions that is actually similar to the problem the Major League Baseball Players Association experienced during the early PED years. In both cases, the unions viewed it as their role to protect all of their members, publicly and without question. Eventually, the MLBPA, under pressure from its own members, decided that protecting the majority of its members required supporting tougher penalties against those members who break the rules. Now, the MLBPA takes the more nuanced approach of publicly denouncing PED use and quietly providing support to its members who are accused of using PEDs.
Police Officers unions should consider a similar approach. The vast majority of good police officers should realize that the few bad apples really do make the job more harder and dangerous for the majority of police officers, by creating distrust within the community. The unions should publicly support harsher discipline for officers who use excessive force, even while continuing their role of privately representing their members.
All unions have a role advocating on behalf of their members. However, there is a difference between providing counsel to a member in a criminal or workplace judicial proceeding and publicly defending wrongful actions. The unions should consider the impact upon the rest of its rank and file members before taking these public positions.
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Q: Did any of these Police Unions take as high a profile position on school shootings of children or a willingness to fight the NRA and get guns off the street in the last several years???
Q: Did they help to fight for the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban?
Because I’m sure if they had, I would have heard about them more then, like I am now. I see they’re now a bit busy for that, yet have plenty of time on their hands to defend killer cops. Fuck 'Em.
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Sometimes I really hate white people.
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“You’re saying that the video clearly shows that the 12-year-old boy was an imminent lethal threat to the officers?” Melber asked.
“Oh, absolutely. I don’t know if you didn’t see it, but yeah absolutely," the officer replied.
After watching this video, I am quite certain that Mr. Follmer poses an imminent lethal threat to the people of Cleveland. Dude is a psychopath.
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I’m getting really sick of this no-regrets-ever, shoot-em-up-cowboy mentality that some people (ok let’s be specific: white republicans) in this country have. No regrets about shooting a 12-year-old black kid, no regrets about torture. Never admit there could be even the remotest possibility that you could have been wrong about something. The whole thing would feel better if even ONE of these dickheads could express even the SLIGHTEST amount of regret or empathy. Makes me sick to my stomach.
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It was pointed out in another thread about cops’ brutality and overall insensitivity that steroid use is rampant in the law enforcement community. Here’s a link to an article I found which points out that cops “juice up” to get the edge on criminals, some as young as 12.
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It also leaves plenty of room for getting you and your partner killed if the suspect is indeed armed and dangerous.
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Ari is impressible but Ratchel M is amazing
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There are times in the heat of the moment that the police will do very bad or very stupid things. I’m not sure “in the heat of the moment” was a sufficient excuse in this situation. But the police, if they are acting responsibly after the fact, need to recognize that minimum position.
No, the boy was not a threat to the police. No, the word “absolutely” is not reality. It is only possible to say the 12-year-old boy was a perceived threat to the police (still questionable, mind you) and not cling to the mistaken notion that the boy was, as a factual matter, a real threat to the police. He was not.
The police would do themselves an enormous favor by first stating that they will look at how such situations can be prevented in the future, and secondly, they need to follow through on that statement. Getting back to community policing would be the most important step for many police departments in our country,
We’re seeing these kind of things too often. It is a bad sign when police try to justify a mistake, and then double down on that mistake. And if it was something worse, police departments need to confront it.
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Is it possible for thinking people to trust “cops” less?
He does look like a fascist authoritarian thug, doesn’t he.
A 12-year-old kid would have been in 7th grade. He calls him a male.
He was a kid.
I despise this cretin.
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At this point, I’m not sure community policing would work. When police are perceived as a threat by the community, giving them a more visible presence would exacerbate the situation.
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Please limit that to RWNJ fools and I’ll agree
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See, I don’t think it’s just this guy. There seems to be a lot of that going around. It’s the general attitude of a not small number of people. Look at the Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown cases. Both Zimmerman and Wilson said there’s nothing they would’ve done differently, that they have no regrets. And too many Americans wholeheartedly agree with them. From Zimmerman, there was no “I wish I’d stayed in the car” or “I really wish I had the let the cops do their jobs”. From Wilson, there was no “I wish I had just waited for backup” or “I wish we’d both handled it differently”. Nope, these guys and their supporters believe there was nothing particularly regrettable other than the fact that these executioners have been inconvenienced.
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