Discussion for article #226449
The Good Cop/Bad Cop routine? When does The Batman show up.
Sean Hannity was trying his best to twist this story,but aside from “faux news” no matter what channel you watched the rest were pretty much in agreement about this tragedy.“faux” is getting “outfauxed” on this story.IMHO.
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Gotta love it. Todd Starnes must have been jumping up and down on his Barack Obama doll last night, screaming, “STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP BEING REASONABLE! STOP BEING REASONABLE!”
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“…treated with respect…”
One would think conservatives – with their high-minded, self-anointed, so-called “christian” moral bearing – would understand the power of love. It’s a symptom of how the conservative movement has corrupted our religious institutions, when churches become apologists for pro-gun advocates of violence.
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Wow, it’s as if the assault rifles and soldier gear instilled a whole different mentality in people, cop and civilian alike.
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They already have their reward in full.
Case. Freaking. Study.
Seriously, someone needs to research this, record every detail, analyze it in depth, and publish it. And then that published research should be distributed to every police academy, every SWAT training facility, every military academy in this country.
Good police work fundamentally requires a sense of respect for the general public and an understanding of non-violent conflict resolution. And when violence is necessary, an officer should know how to effectively end the conflict - a takedown and handcuffs over mace, mace over a taser, a taser over a pistol. The minimal force necessary to safely neutralize the threat.
Proper training is significantly cheaper and more effective than tear gas, riot gear, and tanks. Now, we have a modern, high profile event that shows just how effective these basic principles can be, and we should make sure that it gets as much exposure as possible in the law enforcement community.
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Although this is all good and heart-warming now, what is going to happen at the inevitable next time? Although most police are good people, there is an increasing number that just can’t wait to get to use all those big guns and toys they now possess. On the other side, every cop, every day has to be aware of all the heavily armed goobers out there that want to scratch that same itch. Stuck in the middle are those that are going to suffer needlessly because of the stupidity of allowing bigger and bigger guns for all.
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“The hacker group Anonymous on Thursday released a name purported to be that of the officer, but the Ferguson police chief said the name was incorrect.”
Cpt Johnson deserves consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. His actions will force police forces nationwide, indeed worldwide, to reevaluate their interaction with those citizens they are charged with serving and protecting.
A Pew poll in 2009 revealed that over 60% of white Evangelicals endorse the use of torture. Given that, it’s entirely logical that some churches have become apologists for violence.
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What a concept: an African American law enforcement officer being in charge of police in a largely African American community.
It’s a lesson that major city police departments learned three decades ago, but it’s never too late to learn over again, I guess.
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No kidding! What needs to happen now is a total gutting of the current police force in Ferguson. Get rid of the current chief and every officer with any sort of history of abuse. Clean house! In the meantime, begin aggressively recruiting minority police candidates from within the community and in greater St. Louis. Bring in a Black chief with a history of cleaning up a troubled department. And then it’s up to the people of Ferguson to go vote, to vote out the mayor and anyone else on the city council who has been refusing to address the issues within their community.
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They say one of the men pushed the officer into his squad car, then physically assaulted him in the vehicle and struggled with the officer over the officer’s weapon. At least one shot was fired inside the car. The struggle then spilled onto the street, where Brown was shot multiple times.
Dorian Johnson, who says he was with Brown, has told a much different story. He has said the officer ordered them out of the street, then grabbed his friend’s neck and tried to pull him into the car before brandishing his weapon and firing.
Both of these accounts sound improbable and like bullshit. If Brown was a 300 pound “gentle giant”, I can’t imagine an officer trying to get him into a car by pulling him. If his friend said the cop tried to push Brown into the car instead of pulled, it would sound more feasible. Anyone else find this strange?
I wonder, did the police use these past 6 days to scrub any posts on social media by the officer?
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What happened to the Clive Bundy Patriots when all this was going down? They could have fought off those nasty Guvmint varmints!
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Wow.
I can hardly believe this.
And then I wake up to this headline in the NY Times:
[In Wake of Clashes, Calls to Demilitarize Police Forces][1]
Wow. Our collective consciousness just matured significantly overnight.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/ferguson-missouri-in-wake-of-clashes-calls-to-demilitarize-police.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=lede-package&WT.nav=lede-package
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I’m not sure that a lot has improved in Ferguson with the change of
law enforcement running things. The Governor put the State Highway
Patrol in charge, which is great in that they were not involved in the
shooting of an unarmed young man, but this is a Highway Patrol agency.
They run radar, investigate accidents and run around on the Interstates
for the most part. They do not do “real” Police work and they certainly
are not trained in how to deal with protesters.It sounds like
the Ferguson PD was way over the top with their response to the
protests, at least until one also reads that Molotov cocktails were
being hurled at them by protesters and that approx. 50 stores were
looted. That is the type of thing that tends to make Law Enforcement
order people to disperse. That type of activity is also not included in
the definition of a peaceful protest, which I read numerous times in
the above article, which I read immediately after reading an article
that indicated that about 50 stores were looted, that Molotov Cocktails
were being thrown at Police by the protesters and that about 12 Police
cars had been totaled so far during by those protesting. None of that
seems very peaceful to me, but I’m not there to see which story is true.I
never got that by the way: Why is civil unrest always closely followed
by looting in just about any urban area in the US? It does not take
place to this extent overseas. After the earthquake and tsunami in
Japan several years ago there was not one incidence of looting in even
their larger cities and some had no power for quite a long time. What
is it that causes people in the U.S. to believe that, since they
perceive an injustice, they now have the right to break into shops and
steal whatever it they happen to see that they might want? I just don’t
get it.Anyway, I would encourage everyone to withhold judgement
until they get all available information. Chances are that the Police
car in the area where Mr. Brown was shot has both audio and video
evidence that will be germane to determining exactly who did what
leading up to the shooting. All witness statements, both from the
Police and from the citizens, will be skewed by the protests and
emotions flowing at this point. At this point there are probably people
that were miles away from the scene explaining to anyone who will
listen that they saw this or that. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of
fame.For those of you that believe that the Police should be out
there doing crowd control in their regular uniforms and a badge, I would
encourage you to attend one of these “peaceful” protests some day.
Look at it from both sides. See the Molotov cocktails being hurled at
you, feel the batteries bouncing off your knees and then go to other
side of the gathering and inhale some CS gas or maybe get whacked by a
beanbag or a rubber bullet. You will at least see why all involved are
attired as they are.Nobody wins in these situations. Mr. Brown
will still be dead, the officer will be fired whether he deserves it or
not because he will not be able to work effectively in Ferguson under
any circumstance and the same thing would have happened to that Officer
whether there were protests or not by the way, the city now has an extra
million dollars in expenses replacing the damaged and used equipment,
hundreds of hours of lost wages are experienced by the protesters
because they were too busy “partying” at the protests to be able to go
to work and nothing else will have changed, except that the divide
between law enforcement and the citizens has become wider and now
everyone involved develops an increase in their us against them
attitude.
People should have woken up to the militarized police problem after the Boston marathon bombing. I mean they shut an entire city down with armored vehicles, tactical and SWAT teams everywhere. It looked like an occupying army with all the military hardware. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Edit: May I add that the whole operation was a display of incompetence and totalitarianism. It took an unarmed, observant homeowner who discovered the suspect in an area already searched/cleared by the police. The police did shoot the hell out of a nice looking boat that the unarmed, wounded suspect was hiding in. I was shocked he was taken alive in spite of that hail of fire.
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And the fat old white cop to the right in the top photo, looking disgusted. There’s your dynamic, right there.