Discussion for article #230870
Not to worry, this officer will be let go as well by the Grand Jury.
Jeebers, when will equal justice prevail?
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He doesnât have anything to worry about. The victim was black. The prosecutor has his back.
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I was confused by this at first. They were unreachable for 6.5 minutes, but that doesnât mean the time between the shooting and the officers calling in the shooting was 6.5 minutes. A few minutes may have passed before residents called in the report of shots being fired and then a few more minutes while dispatch was figuring out which cops had been dispatched to that building. Meanwhile, Mr. Gurley lay dying for the crime of being black in a stairwell while these two jackasses covered their ass. Itâs possible Mr. Gurleyâs life couldâve been saved if the two had immediately called for an ambulance. Yeah, I think weâve reached the boiling point.
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The head of that union is a real piece of work.
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I feel like Iâm back in 1965 when I watched the training as a young man for the bus desegregation campaign in Alabama.
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Melissa Harris-Perry did a great commercial for NBC where she talked about her dad signing her birthday cards with, âThe struggle continues. Love, Daddyâ. She didnât understand what that meant at first, but later understood that the work is never done. In one of my favorite quotes in history Teddy Kennedy said, âthe work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.â The struggle doesnât end, racism, institutional or otherwise, wasnât fixed with the signing of the VRA or the Civil Rights Acts. When marriage equality is the law of the land, homophobes arenât going to go away. The work continues and itâs on us to be vigilant as hell, to keep fighting the good fight, and to make certain we hand off our work to the next generation.
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In 1965 I was 16 and my Dad , although he agreed with me, would not let me go to Alabama to participate. I was angry about it at the time but came to see the wisdom of his point. These days the feeling is the same for me. Only it seems the racism is institutional among the police and others in power and itâs everywhere, not only in one region or another. It feels to me like a lot of ground has been lost. And the very organizations who are killing people of color are the ones who have gotten huge amounts of military hardware âŚfor just the asking. MRAPs for everyone! Yay! Kevlar body armor fashion shows in the station house! Wooo Hoo! Turn in your pea shooter for a .40 cal pistol on the gummint tab!
Whatever happened to community policing that generated trust of the police?
JeebersâŚ
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We talk a lot about equal justice. but we sure donât behave like we believe in it. We carve âEqual Justice Under Lawâ in stone over the door to our Supreme Court but the court doesnât live up to that ideal. Not even close.
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"All the justice you can afford."
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Yep. And, to make it seem completely believable, the officer will convince the jury that he was in imminent fear of his life and had no other choice.
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In 1965 I was 16 and my Dad , although he agreed with me, would not let me go to Alabama to participate. I was angry about it at the time but came to see the wisdom of his point. These days the feeling is the same for me.
Yep, my mother has talked about how her parents were adamantly against her participating in any civil rights protests. She wanted to do the sit ins, to march, and show solidarity for the cause. Her parents grew up in rural Alabama, understood the danger, and protected her.
Whatever happened to community policing that generated trust of the police?JeebersâŚ
Cops stopped walking the beat. They stopped getting to know the people they were policing. They stopped talking to them and getting a sense of the neighborhood and the people who live there. For instance, if they see a kid committing some minor crime, instead of bringing him home to his mama who they know will exact a punishment far worse than any jail could mete out, they take him to jail and put him in the system. Too many cops see themselves as an occupying force, as an âus against themâ. They donât see the humanity in the people theyâre supposed to be serving and protecting.
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And alongside the âus against themâ mentality comes âget them first.â
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Ok. but why did they stop walking the beat?
Money. It takes far fewer cops to police when you stick 2 in a squad car. Even less if it is one to a car. Granted, the extra mobility allows several to be dispatched to a major scene, but in general it saves money. So what if you get an occasional excess fatality? The only other choice is to raise taxesâŚ
And we all know how inhumane that it.
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We need to specify , at a state-by-sate level, when âBlack Hunting Seasonâ is, aka BHS ( BS or for short) - specific dates when blacks are open for
hunting. Then fine cops & citizens for killing any black person âout of seasonâ and for not having a current tag for each kill, or getting beyond their daily limit. Say $500 for a first time offense (and loss of the kill credit, of course)? Enforce it with the local state Fish and Game Department.
Certainly more of a deterrent than what we have now.
/snark
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At some point it should be pretty easy to determine if this story is accurate. The 6 1/2 minutes should be easy to find on the dispatch tapes, and the text message would be on both phones. Somehow the cops saying it wasnât that way doesnât remotely convince me it didnât happen.
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Wilson met up with his union lawyer at the Ferguson police stations almost immediately but never bothered to file an arrest report before he went into hiding. If the cops keep killing people without showing any concern for their unarmed victims, they are going to find themselves fighting Republicans alone to maintain their union wages and benefits without anyone else supporting them.
The Bush Doctrine is supposed to be used only in regards to foreign conflicts not to be used against our own citizens. We have a courts system but the police seem to think itâs no longer necessary to have any trials.
Could it be that we are hiring too many cops who are former veterans used to pushing Middle Eastern civilians around without any oversight? As I recall, the Iraq Parliament refused to give immunity to US personnel staying behind in their country in that treaty that cut ties with Bush. The reason for it might be getting clearer all the time.
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Iâm wondering just how the reduction of âbeat copsâ correlates with the rise in easy access to fire arms (thank you, NRA). I did a search after Ferguson to see just how dangerous police work is. The highest I could find it on any lists of lethal occupational hazard was 10th, well below logging or fishing or even farming. And most police deaths on the job are the result of traffic accidents. In other words, in real, relative terms, the danger of being a cop is a (well cultivated?) myth. If current police officers are so afraid for their lives, perhaps they should look for other lines of (non-logging/fishing/farming) work. And perhaps we need better screening to root out such fearful applicants. AND we need to do everything we can to get guns off the streets to help reduce already exaggerated law enforcement fear.
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When referring to police shootings, Itâs time we stop using the flawed statement âfatally woundingâ and start calling it what it is, murder.
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Thatâs a very good question: at what point in all this was an ambulance called? Did these cops try to do any first aid on the guy theyâd just shot?