More police brutality than you can shake a stick at.
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teqniq
DisMembered
You are probably right on the first one, I can only but hope you are right on the second.The bloke on the floor the barstards will probably get away with "as he was reaching for a gun"as if you could do anytthing like that after being tasered.
He guy in the car the cop is probably going to be done the cold dead hand of the NRA is stirring.
What I want to know is why the cops felt it necessary to detain both his wife and child (see above link) and why they were allegedly separated whilst detained. Completely unacceptable, various individuals should be made to pay all round.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
I haven't watched and I won't. I really don't need to see.
It's not unbelievable at all. It is not safe to be black in the USA.
Who cares what the other guy does for a living? Why wouldn't the police shoot a school teacher?
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Are they black?
teqniq
DisMembered
Yes, and now you think I've answered my own question perhaps. It shouldn't matter what colour she is, but it obviously does. Whichever way you slice it, it's unacceptable. Incidentally the guy they shot was a cafeteria manager at a school. Not as you say that it should make any difference.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
It's not unacceptable. It get's accepted all the time. I think part of making it actually unacceptable is for people to understand fully that black people in the USA (and in the UK too) can be shot dead by the police at any time for no reason, no fault of their own. And no fault of their own includes behaving 'aggressively' in ways that wouldn't get a white person shot as well as doing nothing at all that anyone could successfully argue is provocative. You just have to be black and your life is at risk at all times.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Just saw the videos on the news. Both extremely shocking but the baton rouge one made me shout at the television. The bloke was on the floor, held down, two coppers and he's shot six times!?
teqniq
DisMembered
I see your point but it is unacceptable to me as an individual.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
How does/will your feeling of it being unacceptable manifest itself? What will you do?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It's been pointed out that you now have to specify _which_ video of a black man being shot by the police for doing nothing taken in the last few days you're talking about.
teqniq
DisMembered
in the first instance despair that the race problems in the States will ever be resolved, I talk about it on here along with you and other interested people; as an individual I feel that there is relatively little that I can do but it does make me much less inclined to visit the States.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
yeh, while you can point to a range of groups who have been targeted by the police, the two most durable targets for the police have been working class people and black people, with - as you say - black people at greater risk: being black and working class multiplies the risk factor. sure, the barrister mark saunders was shot dead by the police: but very much an exception. and irish people have also been at risk from the police (e.g. diarmuid o'neill, shot while complying with police orders), but so many black people have been killed by the police and so little done about it it's, to put it mildly, a fucking disgrace.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
I've been there several times for various reasons (work, brief study, visiting a friend, accompanying my dad when he had, er... experimental treatment) but I don't think I could set foot there again.
It always makes me sad when a friend who is unlikely to be a target goes off to live in or spend an extended stay in countries that are even more demonstrably racist or oppressive than here.
Actively protesting; standing in person in support, when there is a call; that helps.
Completely agree.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Two more black people murdered by racist KKK cop scum. Can't wait for the 700 page grand (wizard) jury verdict that repeatedly shooting an immobilised individual in the chest and back at point blank range was 'a proportionate response to a lethal threat that the officers genuinely believed existed at the time of the incident' or some other such bollocks. 
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
You should, especially the most recent one, the school worker from Minnesota.
What struck me was the calm strength of his girlfriend, who videotaped the aftermath.
Philandio Castile is a martyr. Trayvon Martin is a martyr. We who might come to benefit because of their sacrifice, owe it to them to bear witness to their sacrifice, no matter how frightening, gut-wrenching and infuriating it might be to do so.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Police often behave as though any kind of resistance or indeed anything else than total passivity and compliance with instructions, regardless of the legality of those instructions, is grounds for the use of force. It's very hard to be passive and compliant with people who are behaving like complete arseholes, as the police so often are. If someone is using physical force against you for no good reason it is natural and instinctive to try and defend yourself.
If you're a member of a group in society which is generally at greater risk from police violence, if yourself or your friends, neighbours and relatives have been treated like shit by police in the past, then it must be almost impossible to keep a cool head, even if you're aware of the possible consequences of any kind of resistance. And even if you do everything you're told, if you allow yourself to be unlawfully manhandled or assaulted, still there's no guarantee you'll make it out of the situation in one piece.
In the UK black people might not be at constant risk of getting shot by police but they do endure a far greater chance of being arbitrarily detained, arrested, assaulted and in extreme cases killed or left to die. In that situation I can only assume that the mere appearance of a police uniform is enough to make people scared, defensive or aggressive. It is for me, and as a white person I'm looking at it all from a safe distance. But people I love have been attacked by racist police around here and, cowards that they are, they didn't give their names and numbers when they did it. So every copper I pass in the street could be one of the ones who did those monstrous things.
I can only imagine how people feel when they're at the sharp end of all this shit, when they look at their council tax bill every month and see how much they have to contribute to the wages of an organisation who are constant threat to them and their families. What right any copper in the US or UK thinks they have to expect compliance and passivity from black people I can't begin to imagine.
Dunno why I wrote all that, preaching to the choir and all that, but still. ACAB.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
It is quite extraordinary how she keeps her head, probably not least because of the child in the back seat. Adrenaline is like that, it can give you a brief window in which you keep functioning in the face of traumatic events. But it is a brief window, and it soon leaves you mentally and physically exhausted just as you need to be coping with the realisation of what has happened. If you're in a prison cell when you get to that point, utterly powerless...doesn't bear thinking about really.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I was stopped a couple of years ago for not wearing my seatbelt.
I'm talking to the one cop at the driver's side window. He's decent enough.
Then I look in the mirror - and his partner is standing back a little on the passenger side, with her hand on her gun. It was a sobering moment for me. I realized that if things went badly off the rails for whatever reason, I could end up shot. Because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt; and because I'm black.
I know I'll be ok. What scares the shit out of me, is thinking about possible interactions between the police, and my sons.
And this is Canada, not the US.
I'm talking to the one cop at the driver's side window. He's decent enough.Then I look in the mirror - and his partner is standing back a little on the passenger side, with her hand on her gun. It was a sobering moment for me. I realized that if things went badly off the rails for whatever reason, I could end up shot. Because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt; and because I'm black.
I know I'll be ok. What scares the shit out of me, is thinking about possible interactions between the police, and my sons.
And this is Canada, not the US.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
I can't right now. Maybe later. It won't help in terms of bearing witness (for me - not saying what's good/necessary for you). I already know it; believe it. It has already happened. And I'm already at emotional/stress-related breaking point.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Perhaps I'm wrong but I really don't understand how this makes them a martyr. They've been killed for being a black man minding their own business. That makes them a murder victim of a racist system in my eyes. Maybe that does make them a martyr I don't know because martyr is a term that confuses me at times. If I was killed in such circumstances I would want lessons to be learned from it and things to change but that doesn't seem to be forthcoming with any gun violence in America.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I understand. I'm just angry right now, and when that happens, my blood gets fired up.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Yeh so it was going to be a good summer before I suppose
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
5 dead now. This won't make black and poor people any safer. But given apparent police impunity and a cultural attachment to guns, perhaps it isn't surprising.
Not cheered at all - Louis MacNeice
Not cheered at all - Louis MacNeice
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
I agree. But it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.
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