And the whining starts from the NYC police union:
The head of the New York police union has criticized the city’s elected leaders for not being more vocal in their support of law enforcement following a grand jury’s decision to not indict a white officer in the death of Eric Garner.
“Police officers feel like they are being thrown under the bus,” Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said at a Thursday press conference. “What we do need and what we’re not hearing, we need city hall to support the police department.”
He added: “Look, last night, the protesters we may not agree with their message, but we were protecting their right to do it. That’s what they should be saying.”
How about protecting their right to breathe, you sanctimonious prick?
And could they find a worst named head of the union, fer chrissakes. Couldn’t they find someone named Mr. I. Kill Blackpeople or Mr. Ray C. Istcop? Fer fucks sake.
Cacti
Y.T. Bashablack
trollhattan
“Lynch” eh? Sounds about right.
TR
The head of the police union wants the politicians to stand by a cop who killed a misdemeanor prep, using a technique banned by the NYPD, and was let off by the courts?
Does this dipshit not realize that if the city officials did that, then the cops wouldn’t be overseeing peaceful protests, they’d be putting down a giant fucking riot?
Shut your piehole, Barney Fife.
Legalize
I demand that the Knicks apologize to the NYPD.
skerry
#NotAllCops
/snark
mtiffany
The police were protecting the protesters’ right to protest… from whom?
scav
They really are as dense as that, choosing these exact moments to pipe up and demand, As Police, to be Protected and Served!
What a culture of entitlement and violence, all tidily wrapped up with a cute little blue ribbon.
kc
The city needs them to stop murdering people.
Gin & Tonic
@Legalize: I demand that the Knicks apologize to their long-(long!)suffering fans.
Pogonip
My sister-in-law just died. We were wondering why we hadn’t heard much from my brother after my mom died. Now we know.
beth
Any chance we’ll see the Jets or Giants mirroring the Rams show of solidarity this season?
beth
@Pogonip: Oh I’m so sorry. Had she been ill?
aimai
@mtiffany: We coulda shot alla them motherfuckers for protesting. But we didn’t. And this is the thanks we get? /translation from the original thought bubbles.
flukebucket
Bullshit. They were there to bust open some damn heads at the first opportunity given.
CarolDuhart2
@Pogonip: Good God, Pogonip. Please God, let up on Pogonip, will you?
daveNYC
What’s wrong with being Ray C.?
RaflW
Yeah. This is all part of the standard white supremacist script: stifle the race-traitors who are calling you to account.
If you cast your minds back to just a few weeks ago, that was what the Minneapolis police union was doing in its absurd shopping of what came to be known as #pointergate to our most credulous and right-wing local TV station.
It was a thinly veiled attempt to discredit/stifle our white, female, liberal new mayor who is working to make a more accountable police department.
Can’t have that. Can’t be accountable, because if you are, you may not be able to beat down the black and brown communities so easily. Police unions are part of the problem. They don’t provide workplace protections, they provide dangerous-cop protection.
CarolDuhart2
This attitude of whiny entitlement comes from recruiting high school bullies as cops at 18. I was listening to Al Sharpton’s radio show, and a caller said that in order to be a cabbie, you had to be 25. If someone who’s paid to drive somebody has to be 25, why can’t someone who has the authority over life and death also have to wait until 25? I under the need for soldiers (usually cannonfodder) to be teenagers because of the sheer number and recklessness, but cops are civilians with a gun.
Also (it may be antidotal) end the “too smart to be a cop” regulations. Maybe we need people who have been to college to talk and understand our increasingly diverse society.
Culture of Truth
Pretty sure they weren’t there to protect the protestors.
SatanicPanic
@mtiffany: I know, are they soldiers defending our freedom from Al Qaeda now? What the?
Patricia Kayden
Just heard Mr. Lynch on MSNBC saying that the cop who suffocated Garner is a model police officer and should be emulated (or words to that effect). Speechless.
Pogonip
@beth: Well, she was always quite heavy–she had that surgery but didn’t lose as much as predicted–but I don’t know if that had to do with it or not. She had seemed to be doing quite well and then just up and died.
CarolDuhart2
One more thing: the attempt to create a “race war” and a massive justification for what they do has fizzled. Except for Ferguson-nothing has been burnt down (maybe a broken window somewhere). No white people have been attacked-in fact a lot of whites have been dismayed by the verdicts and marched with the protestors. Every black leader has called for calm and peaceful protests and a search for solutions.
So the cops are whining like seventh graders.
Belafon
In the “that’s a funny name” department, there’s a tool called Scene Viewer for JavaFX development that was written by a software engineer at Oracle named Amy Fowler.
As for the cops, if they can’t figure out now is not the time to speak up, NYC needs some new cops.
Mr. Twister
Never forget that in September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”
sm*t cl*de
“Police officers feel like they are being thrown under the bus,”
I can buy tickets plz?
skerry
ST. Louis Police Chief apologizes for “Kids will be kids?” Facebook post referencing Tamir Rice
skerry
@Pogonip: I am so sorry.
Villago Delenda Est
The NYPD apparently is not made up of Lenny Briscos, Elliot Stablers and Bobby Gorens.
It’s made up of Jeff Roordas.
Which means there should be more bacon, ham, and pork chops in our future.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai: And the original German.
gwangung
@sm*t cl*de:
Only if I can be at the wheel.
M. Bouffant
@mtiffany: Possibly this guy:
Give the NYPD credit, that was in St louis.
Villago Delenda Est
@CarolDuhart2:
Please. Three year olds are fractionally more mature than these crybaby cops.
Someguy
In fairness to the cop, the guy was selling cigarettes on the street in violation of federal, state and local tax and health regulations. And we all know cigarettes are just a gateway drug to putting salt on your food and drinking Big Gulps. So clearly this guy Garner had to be stopped.
burnspbesq
Here’s the statement by Mayor DiBlasio that sparked Lynch’s reaction.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/york-city-mayor-bill-de-blasios-personal-reaction/story?id=27357694
This is being thrown under the bus?
M. Bouffant
@sm*t cl*de:
Whereas Mr. Garner was actually thrown under five ossifers.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn about police officers’ feelings. Let them develop compassion before they whine about anything.
FormerSwingVoter
If I were to express how I feel about the police right now, I’d be institutionalized.
kindness
I can’t figure out if the right wing in this country is incredibly stupid or if they are trying to provoke a fight they figure they can escalate and do what they really want to do.
Honestly I used to think it was just the former but more and more I’m thinking they are intentionally swatting a hornets nest to justify killing us. Paranoid? Yea maybe some but not so sure any more.
Cacti
@M. Bouffant:
Police feelings matter more than black lives.
That’s the sad truth about this country.
bemused
@RaflW:
Pretty telling when they don’t even recognize they look like whining babies pitching a fit that they are.
beltane
Several of my old HS friends are participating in this evening’s NYC protest. The older I get, the more I realize I went to high school with some of the nicest people one could ever hope to meet.
Pogonip
Thanks for all the condolences.
beltane
Patrick Lynch also hates teachers: http://nypost.com/2014/08/17/teachers-union-joining-police-protest-is-graceful-pba-head/
Howard Beale IV
The only way things are going to change is to remove the Government and their agent’s right of limited to absolute immunity in situations like this.
Oh, and the Grand Jury process is now so broke its beyond repair as well. When you can’t even indict ham sandwiches, you know it’s fucked.
Suzanne
@Pogonip: Oh my God. I am so, so sorry. You are already going through such a tough time.
Hugs to you and yours.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Your family is having a really shitty week. I’m so sorry. ((((hugs))))
Lavocat
All the good cops in the NYPD HAVE BEEN THROWN UNDER THE BUS!
But it wasn’t done by anyone but the District Attorney who failed to indict the one bad cop that makes ALL THE REST look bad.
Hey, NYC PBA! Best to look in the mirror and @ your D.A. when you piss yer pants whining about how people are upset about your license to kill.
Mnemosyne
@Someguy:
Well, we finally know what pseudonym Rand Paul uses when he posts here. Hello, Senator.
Lavocat
@TR: Preach it, Brother!
burnspbesq
@Lavocat:
The district attorney didn’t fail to indict. The grand jury failed to indict.
Having grown up in the New York area, it’s hard for me to be surprised when a Richmond County grand jury fails to indict a white cop for killing a black man. It is, after all, Staten Island, with all that entails.
Inexcusable and inexplicable are not synonyms.
Suzanne
@beltane: My NY family members will be there, too. Because we are pissed as fuck, and ever since my favorite (white) cousin married a black man and they have two gorgeous little munchkins, this shit is increasingly personal.
Lavocat
@Patricia Kayden:
emasculated with a pair of rusty pruning shears in Times Square.
Howard Beale IV
Seems Trevor Timm also thinks the Grand Jury system needs to be blown up.:
That’s the other elephant in the room no one wants to talk about: prosecuting attorneys are so incredibly corrupt and so few ever face consequences for their mal (or non)-feasance.
Lavocat
@Suzanne: Exactly. This shit is no longer a white versus black thing. It’s a white racist versus the rest of the world thing.
skerry
@beltane: I have one daughter at Foley Square and another in DC. The White House tree lighting ceremony is tonight and they plan to disrupt it. They gathered at DOJ and are on the way to the White House.
Hope it is all peaceful and no one is harmed.
Lavocat
@burnspbesq: Technically correct but still wrong. It is in fact the District Attorney’s job to acquire the indictment from the grand jury by marshaling the evidence against the defendant. A grand jury cannot indict w/o direction from the District Attorney.
beltane
@skerry: “No Justice, no Tree!”
burnspbesq
@Howard Beale IV:
You’re correct that the grand jury system is broken, but some folks whose views you might want to take into consideration think it’s broken in exactly the opposite way from what you’re describing.
https://www.nacdl.org/grandjury/
goblue72
“In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who commit the crimes and the District Attorneys who get them off scot free. These are their stories.” DUHN-DUN.
Cpl Cam
just@Someguy: I’m just waiting for them to finally make wearing your pants below your ass a felony so the poor dears will stop having to reach so hard to come up with excuses to execute clear “thugs.”
Howard Beale IV
Thus spake the New Joisey Whale:
Dude, the coroner said it was fucking homicide. Are you now saying (for the record, BTW) coroner’s are now political appointees?
burnspbesq
@Lavocat:
Well, that’s where we fundamentally disagree.
The district attorney’s job is not to secure indictments. The district attorney’s job is to do justice. That ham sandwiches can be indicted is a bug, not a feature. I am wholeheartedly in favor of the reforms proposed by the NACDL in the report I linked to in comment 58.
The grand jury was intended by the Framers as a check on the power of runaway prosecutors. It’s time to return it to its intended role, and the results in the Brown and Garner cases, while horrible, don’t change that.
Jamey
Kids are more afraid of cops than they are of criminals. Feature or bug?
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I think this is eventually going to be a huge motivator for change among white people. I’m white, my husband is white, but our niece and nephew on his side are mixed-race, so now we have all of the same nightmares about them being attacked or killed by the police that black people have had for decades (if not centuries). If you grew up sheltered, suburban, and white, it wakes you up with a shock when you realize that the black kid who was just killed looks like your nephew, or your cousin.
trollhattan
Meanwhile, from the people I’d chose the most rabid cop over eleven times out of ten, some gun-totin’ holiday tips for you via TBogg.
the Conster
@CarolDuhart2:
I’m a middle aged white woman and every experience with local cops has been really unpleasant because of their attitude which is a default to a sneering contempt. The smaller the town, the worse. It’s because every local cop I’ve found information about was the bully or the thug in high school. They liked to be in and around trouble then, and as cops if there isn’t any trouble, they manufacture it. Now we know it’s because they can and know they can get away with it, because the “good” cops will lie for them. The state cops are more professional and better trained. The local cops are thugs with uniforms and weapons.
gaucho
Lynch is akin to Wayne LaPierre in the NY media. You can always count on him to preen in front of the camera and say the most strident over the top thing in favor of the narrow interests of his union. When we talk about how much unions are in the dumps, a big reason is that guys like him are what people think of first when the subject of unions come up.
skerry
@beltane: They have stopped and are having a “die-in” at 17th and Penn. Ave. Blocking the intersection. I don’t think they will be able to get near the tree ceremony as POTUS and family are there. (I hope they can’t.) The night is young though.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: Unfortunately, you made the fatal mistake of linking to a site infected with a link to Koch Caotii.
the Conster
@Suzanne:
Both of my daughters married black men, so I’ve got some serious skin in this game as well. This is why they both live in the Cambridge area, and won’t consider moving.
Mnemosyne
@skerry:
I have to admit, I’m not sure what the purpose of disrupting the White House tree lighting ceremony would be, except to give CNN and Fox News some Even Liberals Hate Obama! footage.
C.V Danes
@Howard Beale IV:
Dude, the video showed the whole world that it was a fucking homicide. Cristie says what he wants because he knows that he’ll never have his fat ass thrown to the ground and strangled over some looseies.
burnspbesq
@Howard Beale IV:
Unfortunately, you made the fatal mistake of not knowing what you’re talking about. The NACDL is the go-to organization for criminal defense lawyers. Instead of some silly, knee-jerk reaction, you might want to actually read and come to grips with what they are proposing.
Laertes
@burnspbesq:
I’m not surprised that a bunch of defense attorneys think that the problem with the grand jury system is that it’s unfair to the defense. Would this surprise anyone at all?
They’re mostly right, too. The problem with the grand jury system is that the prosecutor is virtually guaranteed to get the result she’s after. Sometimes that result is an indictment, and sometimes it’s not.
NACDL is, naturally, concerned only with the former case. That makes them mostly correct, since it’s by far the more common case, but one would hardly expect them to give a shit about cases in which the prosecutor is also playing the role of defense attorney, as in Ferguson and most likely in Staten Island.
Suzanne
@the Conster: My cousin and her family moved just across the state line into Connecticut.
It’s funny how it’s so regional. The Phoenix PD shot an unarmed black man recently, but most of the time, the cops here get their hate on Latinos. Our lovely Sheriff Arpaio wouldn’t investigate sex crimes against Latina women.
Tired. So tired.
FormerSwingVoter
I’ve learned something very important recently.
Every single Black American needs to do everything in their power to get a carry permit. Period.
C.V Danes
@goblue72: I think you should end your intro with “pow-pow!” instead :-)
Major Major Major Major
@Belafon: My buddy who works at Google once had a supervisor named Paige Ranking.
trollhattan
@the Conster:
There’s a general “downward drift” in the quality of cops from large urban to remote rural locales, as those found unfit for large departments (OK, some of them anyway) go further and further afield until they find a place where they can get on, baggage and all. I try to avoid remote rural county sheriffs at all cost. Officer A might be just fine, a thee-generation resident or somesuch, while officer B is a heavily medicated sociopath. I don’t want to figure out who’s who.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: IOW-thank you for proving to me that what they are proposing isn’t going to happen.
C.V Danes
@FormerSwingVoter:
Yes. And they would all then be summarily labeled as Black Panthers, rounded up, and gunned down.
When Cliven Bundy does it they call it fighting back. When “Black Americans” do it they call it the black menace.
Suzanne
@FormerSwingVoter: Except for this case in Phoenix: an unarmed black man was killed by a white cop who mistook a pull bottle for a gun barrel.
Suzanne
Oops, link to Phoenix killing here.
burnspbesq
@burnspbesq:
ETA: See also American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section, Criminal Justice Standards, Standard 3-3.6 “Quality and Scope of Evidence Before Grand Jury”
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_section_archive/crimjust_standards_pfunc_blk.html#1.2
burnspbesq
@Howard Beale IV:
Well, it sure as shit won’t happen if you sit on your ass all fat and cynical and don’t do anything to help make it happen.
Cpl Cam
@Someguy: I’m just shocked they haven’t made sagging your pants low a felony yet so the poor dears don’t even have to reach that far for an excuse to execute clear thugs.
“Hey, boy, yer jeans are ridin’ awful low, you got any i.d.? He’s going for his piece!” *blam* *blam* *blam*
“You all saw it that criminal was ‘reppin the thug life’ in clear violation of the law…”
Mnemosyne
@C.V Danes:
Yep. If black people are currently being killed with the excuse that they might have a gun (the Ferguson cop claimed that Brown “made a gesture toward his waistband”), how in the hell is actually having guns going to improve things?
Cacti
@burnspbesq:
The Framers also permitted the perpetuation of slavery in their new Republic, and allowed said slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person for electoral college apportionment.
Just because someone put it to paper in 1787 doesn’t mean it was a genius idea.
C.V Danes
@Mnemosyne:
In defense of @Someguy, I really don’t think Rand Paul is capable of snark..
the Conster
@trollhattan:
There are easier and more lucrative ways to earn a living, and I mistrust the mentality of someone who wants to wield that kind of power over others. In small towns like the ones I just moved from, they spend their time harrassing people and kids because there isn’t any crime to speak of. I wish I had a buck for every car that was stopped that had a brown skinned driver behind the wheel, and always had two cruisers involved. They’re just gaping assholes.
Cacti
@Laertes:
The grand jury is a Star Chamber for the prosecution.
Rather than act as a check on on the State, it gives them a much easier time of things than an adversarial probable cause hearing in open court.
skerry
@Suzanne: Well, in all fairness, it was oxycodone in his pocket. And police were responding to a “loud music disturbance.” And the police felt threatened. We must respect the police officer’s feelings.
Tenar Darell
@Pogonip: My condolences to your brother and you.
Amir Khalid
I remember that a Patrick J. Lynch of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association called Bruce Springsteen a “fucking scumbag’ and a “floating fag” 14 years ago for writing American Skin and playing it in his shows. Is this the same guy? If so, does the PBA appoint its presidents for life?
beltane
@Amir Khalid: It’s the same guy.
GregB
A close friend just left a job where he had to work very closely with a city fire and police department. He enjoyed the fire department but actually felt the police were a criminal enterprise.
Civilian review boards are needed.
The culture needs to be changed from the outside.
Nutella
An interesting article about police attitudes here (via @zunguzungu)
satby
@Pogonip: Oh that’s terrible Pogonip! So sorry, your family is having such a hard time now! Condolences again on the loss of your sister-in-law!
Laertes
@Cacti:
The structure guarantees that it can’t possibly be anything else.
The prosecutor is in complete control of what gets shown to the jury. Further,since she’s the highest authority figure in the room, the jurors are going to be powerfully inclined to suss out her desires and cater to them. That’s simply how humans work. (cf. Milgram)
In the more usual case of a prosecutor who wants an indictment, there’s a fail-safe of a trial jury which gets to see the prosecution’s case subjected to a hostile examination, and which is kept in an environment where an ostensibly neutral judge, rather than the prosecutor, is the authority figure.
The case of a prosecutor who’s leading a grand jury to spring a defendant, however, is the pathological case, and one for which there’s no backstop. I can’t imagine a practical way to fix it.
FormerSwingVoter
@Mnemosyne:
It’s simple. When a cop is beating someone nearly to death, instead of recording them, you shoot them. In the head.
There is a fucking body count already, so it apparently doesn’t fucking matter if you’re armed or not. Fuck, people are saying Mike Brown literally *deserved* to die because he shoplifted and shoved a guy. This isn’t politics. This is fucking war.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: Whatever it is you are smoking, please let us know what is is, so we can avoid it.
Has the NACDL’s membership grown or shrunk over the past 30 years?
Cpl Cam
Didn’t their boy not get indicted for choking an unarmed man to death on camera? If that’s “being thrown under the bus” we had better nuke these fuckers from space.
Mnemosyne
@C.V Danes:
I’m not sure it counts as snark if you repeat what conservatives are actually saying. Poe’s Law, maybe.
Suzanne
@Cacti: I need to quote that. Brilliant.
Mnemosyne
@FormerSwingVoter:
How’d that work out for Cory Maye in court? Or is it all okay because he was eventually released from death row?
Emma
@Pogonip: Oh lord. I don’t even know what to say. I am so sorry.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
Speaking of whom, anyone want to bet that the grand jury that indicted Cory Maye didn’t need months to do the job? I’ll bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in any of yours that that prosecutor got straight to the point, and steered them to a prompt indictment.
FormerSwingVoter
@Mnemosyne:
Black people will never be protected by the courts. Ever.
People are dying. It’s time some of them are the ones who deserve it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@FormerSwingVoter:
Right, so black people shoot white cops, white cops shoot even more black people, and you sit behind your keyboard safely at home.
My personal definition of an asshole is someone who decides that other people should die for his personal cause, and you have definitely met that threshold.
Dragoon
@GregB: In some places in this country, not too long ago, the police were referred to as “The Blue Gang” and their function was to maintain order among the members of the mob. For instance, if someone had an illegal gambling operation outside his allocated territory, the Mob would tell the DA to tell the police chief to have a couple of his boys to round him up. A quick trial and a couple of years in prison would settle him down. Business as usual.
The Other Chuck
@burnspbesq:
It’s really the same problem: the grand jury is a puppet of a DA who puts their career before actual justice. It fails to be a check on overzealous prosecutors and fails to compel said prosecutors to do their job when they don’t feel like it.
Howard Beale IV
@The Other Chuck: Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought that in some jurisdictions a Grand Jury could actually have a judge removed from a case he was overseeing?
cckids
@Howard Beale IV:
Both Mike Brown and Mr. Garner committed the lethal crime of being insufficiently deferential to the cops who got in their face.
That is what it comes down to. If they had tugged their forelock & kept their eyes down they might, MIGHT have survived their lesser, misdemeanor crimes. But because they acted like human beings, they were executed. That is the only way I can see this. And the cops will not pay for what they do, because way too many Americans have the illusion that all cops are brave, good-hearted guys who approach each day with good intent.
Those Americans are wrong, sadly.
Howard Beale IV
Obligatory kitteh feeding time.
Howard Beale IV
@cckids: I think it’s now gotten to the point where new car manufacturers will now have to include 360-degree audio/video/geolocation instrumentation as standard packaging.
JustRuss
Yeah, I remember how fervently New York cops ‘protected’ protestors’ rights during Occupy. Jackass.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: The DA’s job is to have a high successful prosecution percentage.
Justice has NOTHING to do with this.
Howard Beale IV
@Villago Delenda Est: Indeed-although such criteria wouldn’t be dared aired in a public forum for obvious reasons.
And justice is relative-it is never absolute.
Linnaeus
@gaucho:
Police unions are a breed apart from other labor unions. They perform many of the same functions as other unions do, but they’re very tenuously connected to the rest of the labor movement.
I say this because the folks who tend to be against unions the most also tend to be people who favor aggressive policing and who are inclined to believe police officers over anyone else. They generally don’t think of police unions as being exemplars of trade unionism because they don’t see those unions as being in opposition to their world view. Act 10 in Wisconsin exempted police and fire unions, and I think one reason was that they “aren’t like other unions”.
Mandalay
@burnspbesq:
But what does “do justice” actually mean? Is that just another way of saying “uphold the law”?
I (probably incorrectly) think of a DA as being the government’s representative, and in that role we won’t necessarily see justice being done.
Mandalay
@cckids:
For some reason I had never equated the two cases on that level before, but now you have pointed that out it is blindingly obvious (and completely true).
rikyrah
@Pogonip:
Sorry for your loss. Prayers to your family.
Laertes
@burnspbesq:
In theory, sure. And the Soviet constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. It was right there in the text of the thing. Any historian, or for that matter any citizen who lived under that regime, will tell you that these freedoms that existed in theory did not exist in practice. And some apologist for the old Soviet Union will angrily correct them, quoting the constitution. Who’s right?
So, sure. You’re right. A DA’s job, in theory, is to do justice. In practice, however, a DA’s job is to keep his job. In Ferguson and Staten Island, among other places, that means he knows damn well which side he’s on when white cops kill brown people.
Elie
@Pogonip:
My sympathies to you and your family. This is hard stuff
Tree With Water
I still haven’t heard a word about the Staten Island prosecutor’s office. How on earth did that GJ reach its conclusion? Public officials have been corrupted since time immemorial, and this decision commands that office be subject to a flood light investigation.
JDM
@TR: Does this dipshit not realize that if the city officials did that, then the cops wouldn’t be overseeing peaceful protests, they’d be putting down a giant fucking riot?
It’s called job security, dude.
Elie
Our justice system is corrupt until proven otherwise. We are no better than Mexico where the police are implicated in murder, assault and theft. You can’t have a democracy with a corrupt police force that doesn’t enforce laws fairly. I don’t know why any decent, honest person would want to be a cop.
tones
@GregB:
So true.
The firemen ACTUALLY “Protect and serve”.
The ones with that on their cars -nah.
Another Holocene Human
Yep, they are babies. The bus drivers (school and transit) were thrown under the bus by Bloomberg and Albany, while the cops got paid.
Cry me a Hudson River.
Another Holocene Human
@tones: Or the 911 (and 311) dispatchers. Bloomberg also did them over with some corrupt messed up modernization contract that screwed up response times and blew a hole in the budget. Then he tried to cover it up.
Another Holocene Human
@Tree With Water: All the boro DA’s offices are corrupt as hell, it’s called elected DA’s and city machine politics.
One DA, Hynes, was letting kiddie diddlers walk because the block vote captains told him to go easy on their religious leaders. They even pursued bogus charges against an adult victim!
Elie
..and furthermore, the cops have made their own jobs now unbelievably worse. If they felt unsafe and resisted before — well it definitely aint gonna get better. They come across as ignorant, impulsive, stupid and undertrained racists. They have that white cop in Missouri sitting on 2 million dollars in attaboy payments from supporters who believe in what they do. I suppose this peckerwood will get his due as well as the creep in Cleveland — a real cop welfare system for racist rogues.
I think of my Mom and Dad – now gone – and how afraid and nervous they would be to even be stopped for a ticket by a white cop. I never used to think about it much. No more.
Also, I do not know what needs to be done with this Grand Jury process, but it clearly needs a little light of day.
As I said above, our system of justice is broken and corrupt.
Another Holocene Human
@trollhattan: Yes, very true, also the elected sheriffs nine times out of ten are good old boys and practicing very selective policing. The rural places pay shitty and rely on traffic fines so they very often get rejects … sometimes fired from other locales or didn’t work out in the Army or they get people who couldn’t even get into bigger depts.
Even if you have good cops they are poorly trained and botch investigations as a result.
Oddly enough, some of the Southern states do fairly decent criminal investigations when the state agencies get involved with the resources they have (and some, like Louisiana, don’t) but what happens with the justice system once you get past the police work is another matter.
Nationwide we have a problem in courtrooms with bullshit expert witnesses and also state witnesses on forensics who exaggerate the accuracy of everything but DNA (DNA’s accuracy is very well established but with other techniques, the worse the “expert”‘s training, the more than exaggerate about the usefulness of their findings, like claiming tool mark identification is a “100% exact science” or other bullshit claims … claiming fingerprint matches are never in error is a nice one … hair analysis was a good scam in the 80s), and also the justice system refuses to deal with the uses and limitations of eyewitness testimony. It’s not all good or all bad. There’s a reason that witness testimony is so fundamental to English law and there’s a reason it’s led to so many false convictions. One is that people of one race are really bad at identifying a person of another race that they only saw once. That is a fact that rarely gets acknowledged and broken down at trial. Eyewitness identification is very useful when it’s somebody who knows somebody else but ironically this testimony gets called into question more often because of the assumption that somebody who knows somebody else has a motive to lie about them. But your “objective” 3rd party is going to suck at successfully making an ID. They may give completely wrong basic info about a subject, when compared to a fingerprint or DNA ID match. Plus witnesses always miss details or get them wrong, and they don’t have to be lying to do so. There’s a lot of bullshit about human memory and recall at trial, too. Normal stuff that people who’ve been traumatized go through is characterized as suspicious. Testimony at trial is weighed over initial witness statements which are almost always more accurate. Science needs to inform the trial better, in more useful ways. Unfortunately legal experts often aren’t well versed enough on this stuff or don’t know how to evaluate an expert’s claims.
JCT
Big crowd at the Staten Island Ferry tonight – at one point the cops lined up with their visors down and batons out. Talk about inflaming the crowd. Crazy ass behavior for a completely nonviolent protest .
Villago Delenda Est
@JCT: The very fact that anyone is protesting at all, non-violent or not, inflames the jackbooted stormtroopers of the NYPD.
Tree With Water
@Another Holocene Human: That doesn’t happen in Manhattan. Or never use to, not when Adam Schiff and Jack McCoy were running the DA’s office.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan:Tbogg’s eejet doesn’t realize that if i’m within 20 ft of him he’s dead if I take the initiative.
My Truth Hurts
Bullies always cry the loudest.
J R in WV
@Pogonip:
I’m sorry to hear that. Your family is suffering more than the average slings and arrows latey!
Hang in there, summer will be along before too long! ;-)
Alice
According to Pantaleo’s defense attorney (Stuart London), this was an approved police maneuver, it was not a chokehold, and any contact with his neck was purely incidental.
In other words, forget the coroner’s report and your lying eyes, fools. I think he deserves the Big Brass Balls Award for the day.
BruinKid
Anyone upset at Scott Walker now for not going after the police unions?
A guy actually named Lynch
Some of us have to put up with this name all our lives. So, FU, Cole.
Ruckus
@A guy actually named Lynch:
No, you actually don’t.
You don’t like what you were given, you can change your name and be anyone you want. It’s a fairly easy and cheap process. That many people make worse choices than their parents/family name is beside the point. And women change their last names all the time in this country. They don’t have to but they do.
ETA On the other hand John was not disparaging the man’s name just the combination of his name and his job, especially given the nature of why his name came up.