Discussion for article #233971
These are not shocking for people in St. Louis who know that the police in some places are ultra aggressive and see themselves as The Law.
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Not just the Law but Judge and jury.
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#2, A black man loses his job because he is illegally arrested.
#3, Racist email about Obama not having another term because black men can’t hold a job for more than 4 years.
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No. You entirely missed the point, TPM. While these isolated incidents are certainly horrifying and no doubt evidence that can be filed under “for every incident they found, there were X incidents they didn’t find,” the most disturbing part is not the individual examples. The most disturbing part is the pervasive, institutionalized racist abuse of power to “generate revenue,” particularly in ways that help red-state municipalities avoid generating revenue by raising tax rates. This finding, and the breadth and depth of the evidence supporting it, is HIGHLY suggestive that it’s a pervasive problem ACROSS THE COUNTRY. Targeted, systematic, highly orchestrated inequitable law enforcement and judicial policy designed to milk the poorest, most heavily minority communities…who are of course helpless to defend themselves and therefore make the best victims…of what little they do have in order to keep them poor, keep them criminalized, keep them locked up, keep them in debt, keep them in the system, keep them uneducated, keep them unemployed and unemployable, etc., is not just some freak, unique occurrence in Ferguson or the St. Louis area. IT IS UBIQUITOUS, particularly in these southern and red states…and is designed to keep white people in power, in privilege, in control and able to avoid inconveniences like having to compete for jobs with minorities. The connection between red state municipalities attempting to “prove” their ideology of keeping taxes low and their choice to engage in flagrant racist abuse of a segment of the population to subsidize that “proof” is undeniable. Conservatism and racism go HAND IN HAND.
In short, the number one takeaway from this report is this, and you missed it: FERGUSON IS NOT UNIQUE.
Holder waved goodbye with a mirror in his hand.
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I’ll just add that sadly, its not just in the south.
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Now that is what you call home grown TERRORISM. Or is “apartheid” more apt? Let’s ask Bibi, he still in town?
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Fvck!ng sick SOBs. I hope there is karma in the universe, because these “police officers” deserve one hell of a karmic backlash. Pieces of sh!t.
And if I hear ONE more god d@mned police officer saying they deserve more freaking protections or blaming the victims after they abuse or kill them, he/she can go to straight to the hell of pineapple anal penetration. They’ve become entitled sadistic prima donna thugs who get off on the violence, misery and death they can then unleash on their fellow men. They are truly sick.
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The new face of fascism in America.
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Basically Holder just ripped the curtain off the hooks. Jim Crow never died in America. He just learned how to hide better.
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This connection between anti-tax ideology and police brutality needs to be trumpeted to skies. Thank you so much for making it so clear. I knew that’s how the southern strategy worked, “smaller government” has always been a dog whistle for racism, but I never got it that the inevitable consequence is revenues therefore have to be raised instead by shaking down the poor. How awful and deeply, hideously shameful for our poor old country!!!
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Exactly, and kudos to James Rowen at The Political Environment for explaining why the “canine welfare” message seemed eerily familiar to those of us watching Scott Walker’s march to the Republican Convention: the same, or a closely similar, message was found on the work computer of his Deputy Chief of Staff, the now-convicted and disgraced Kelly Rindfleisch, when Scotty was Milwaukee County Executive.
There’s a reason for this, folks, and “South” is not the operative term. Rehearse the rhetoric of the newly-elected Glenn Grothman (Tea-West Bend). Review the New Republic’s (I know, I know) article on race relations in Milwaukee. Plenty of fodder for questions to be shouted over the adulations of Rush and Co. as we go Forward.
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Racism is in this, but as you say… its about targeting the poor and less educated who can’t fight back very well
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You want evidence of that? According to NPR this morning, there are 21,000 residents of Ferguson. 16,000 of them have had arrest warrants issued against them. In 2013, the Ferguson police made more arrests than there are citizens in the city.
This is beyond insane. The police have become an occupying army, and all they want is submission and all your money.
We’re supposed to say “but of course most cops aren’t like that.” I no longer believe that. You don’t enter that culture and stay in it unless you find it congenial.
I’m old enough to have had a reasonable number of interactions with police and I can say that every single one of them has been negative, from the time they planted marijuana in my car to the time they left me for four hours in 25 degree weather, at night, outside my burglarized house before they bothered to show up.
Cops are scum.
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If anything is certain it is certain that nothing of substance will be done to correct any of this. And, as long as we worship guns and dollars as our gods, we don’t deserve a lot of fixes. With such a large percentage of the population armed to the teeth the police have justification for being even more armed, being trained in how to use their arms, and being not just willing to use them, but wanting to do so.
Our racism as a nation is behind a lot of our willingness to give our police forces carte blanche to shoot or otherwise harm anyone who doesn’t jump the instant they say to jump. The majority of us just assume that the police will only kill and maim the minorities we are discriminating against, so we simply don’t care.
It is possible that the USA was once the finest nation on earth, but it is the height of ridiculous to think we are that today. We may possibly have the moral high ground among the 3rd world nations, but certainly not among others.
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This report is enough to make anyone sick. The conclusion is what is most damning, though. The DOJ said that the problems were so pervasive that the only remedy is complete overhaul of the department and oversight. If this is happening in Ferguson, is there any reason to believe it is not happening in other departments? It could be an eye opener to those who believe that the problem is a few bad apples.
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Actually other cities have received scathing reports from DOJ- Cleveland, New Orleans, East Haven, Connecticut for three. See CNN “Ferguson’s not the only city to get scathing federal report”, just out.
I find the most shocking incident to be this do-nothing Justice Department thinking that issuing this report could substitute for their depraved unwillingness to let a genuine jury determine what happened in the Michel Brown case, in the name of the justice for which Holder’s department is assumed to stand, out of craven political considerations that there was a chance they might lose the case.
I trust history will not be as kind to Holder as the corporate-controlled media has been during his do-nothing tenure.
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Yes, it’s a shame that Holder won’t prosecute Wilson after a DOJ investigation did not provide evidence that meets the federal standard for a prosecution. How dare Holder assume he must act according to the law and established procedure.
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You are correct, and I admittedly tend to rely on that easy stereotype as a sort of shorthand.
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