Discussion: Why This Missouri Town Looks Like A War Zone After Black Teen's Shooting

Discussion for article #226265

I think it’s telling that police organizations resist using the simple, relatively inexpensive video ‘Go Pro’ type technology to address questions of police accountability.

In places where this technology has been implemented there is an immediate and marked dropped in police abuse claims- which in turn increase public support and decrease the drain on city coffers through unnecessary litigation.

And yet police unions across the country fight tooth and nail to keep their actions hidden from public view.

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The eyewitness (friend of the victim) says the cop told them, “get the f—k on the sidewalk,” not “off the sidewalk.”

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“Why This Missouri Town Looks Like A War Zone After Black Teen’s Shooting”

The reason this town looks like a war zone is that we’ve condoned the militarization of police – ostensibly to protect us against terrorist attack, but we well know those troops and their military vehicles, weapons and tactics are intended to keep us in line when the shit hits the fan.

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We all know which picture Faux Noise and the rest of the right wing media will use.

Yet, in many states, if you film cops making an arrest you can be arrested yourself and have your phone/camera confiscated, and those same police unions support that tactic wholeheartedly. Police claim to want accountability, apparently they don’t think the accountability should apply to them.

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…and…?

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The town is 67% Black according to the 2010 census. The police department has 53 sworn officers, 3 of which are black and 2 are other minorities. Stops, searches, and arrests are all between 85% and 90% black. Is it really surprising that there is some resentment simmering in the place? The story offered by Brown’s associate sounds a whole lot more like the truth, and in any case, shooting down an unarmed man who is fleeing with his hands in the air isn’t likely in the Police Procedures Manual. I don’t condone the looting, but the police and city have no one to blame but themselves for this disaster.

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When you shoot and kill an unarmed teen, leave his body in the street unattended for hours, and respond by calling in MORE police from other communities it says that you care more about suppressing a reaction than dealing with the action.

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If a town is 67% black but has a predominantly white police force, it may be time for a little community organizing. The community needs to take charge of its own destiny. Rioting and looting are not the right path. The painful sixties proved that it leads to white flight, reactionary politics, and economic collapse in primarily minority residential neighborhoods.

…and they didn’t get on the sidewalk so it was ok to shoot at them…duhh…some people just don’t know the rules…for black folk…