And the stage is being set to let off the men who murdered a 12 year old boy with a pellet gun in an open carry state:
Two outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun.
Those opinions, reached separately by a Colorado prosecutor and a former F.B.I. supervisory special agent, were released Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will ultimately present evidence in the case to a grand jury to decide on possible criminal charges.
“The question is not whether every officer would have reacted the same way,” Kimberly A. Crawford, the retired F.B.I. agent, wrote in her report, which noted that Officer Loehmann had no way of knowing Tamir’s gun was fake. “Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether a reasonable officer, confronting the exact same scenario under identical conditions could have concluded that deadly force was necessary.”
In my opinion, no fucking reasonable person, let alone officer, would have acted in that manner. In fact, I don’t need anything more to back that up than the girl in the video, apparently far more reasonable than the police, who saw Tamir and just kept walking.
And it doesn’t fucking matter what other people said they saw, anyway. What matters is what the cops saw. They drove in like cowboys, pulled up and shot Tamir dead before the car was even stopped. No attempt to assess the situation, no attempt to de-escalate the situation should they have assessed there was one, no attempt to ask to see his gun permit (which they would have done for a white man), nothing. They just drove right up and executed the kid.
We’re beyond unreasonable here by a wide margin here, beyond even unimaginable and outrageous. We’re beyond description for this.
A guy
I disagree and apparently so did others
SiubhanDuinne
We use the same words, but we speak entirely different and opposing languages.
“Acted reasonably.”
“Well-regulated militia.”
“Full faith and credit.”
“Serve and protect.”
“Fair and balanced.”
I’m sure you can add many more. Maybe we should start a Loon Lexicon and collect some of the more egregious examples.
Gimlet
Two outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted reasonably
It’s the old story of choosing your second opinion from a source where you are pretty sure what the response will be.
John Cole
@A guy: Fuck off. Not in the mood for your bullshit today, especially not on this topic. Besides, what was that comment’s value other than “neener neener.” Shithead sociopath.
SiubhanDuinne
@A guy:
If you took a dump, you’d disagree that it was a turd.
Mike Jones
I’m ashamed to be in the same species as these people, much less the same country.
sharl
I’m glad you posted this JGC, but I ain’t watching it again. Once was plenty.
Lavocat
Let’s face it. Our society is completely comfortable with black people being murdered under color of law.
And it has been for a very, very long time.
If you have a badge and a gun, you quite literally have a license to kill. Everyone cop is 007 now.
A guy
Cole, your tone with me is not conducive to civil discourse. But then again this blog epitomizes the lack of civility necessary to a reversal of societies downfall. That being said, I can’t see what happened with the kids hands when the cops pulled up. So the conclusion you make is unfounded. And while certain cops are dumb and in fact criminals, I doubt they are carrying around toy guns to plant on 12 year olds they’ve decide to execute as you say.
ItAintEazy
So when the police tackled and arrested Tamir’s sister, thus preventing him from receiving any kind of medical attention (among other grievous extrapolations), was THAT a reasonable response too?
John Cole
@A guy:
Go fuck yourself.
I don’t feel like having a civil discussion about the murder of children with a blog comment sociopath.
Gimlet
If the prosecutor is “forced” to trial, he’ll just sabotage the presentation or blow the jury selection.
Suzanne
@A guy: Oh, go fuck yourself on your fainting couch.
I guess then it would be a fucking couch. Whatever.
JPL
@John Cole: You should see his misogynistic comments about the next President of the US, down below.
Lavocat
@A guy: Go away and never come back.
A guy
Well if you don’t want to frequent your blog that’s up to you
Patrick
@A guy:
m
raven
@A guy: Fuck you, fascist scumbag.
Patrick
Why is it so fricking hard for a police officer in the US to aim for the legs rather than the heart? They have the skills to do it Europe, why the heck can’t they here in the US? And yes, the investigators seem to be absolutely clueless.
Lee Rudolph
@John Cole: could you, very civilly, just ban the twerp? I (for one) don’t much feel like reading a blog comment sociopath here. There’s plenty of other places available for that dubious pleasure.
catclub
I guess Freeh was still tired from whitewashing Penn State.
A guy
I can honestly say that in my 50 years on this earth and in 26 years of practicing law and doing business I’ve never ever to anybody to ” go F yourself”. Saying something like that to another person the problem with this world.
gocart mozart
@A guy:
A guy spends another lonely Sunday afternoon trolling on the internet. As he tries to get his mind off the fact that no girl will ever like him, he consoles himself with the knowledge that at least he still has his balloon juice and his internet porn to keep him warm.
chopper
@A guy:
aw. look, you hurt his feelings.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lee Rudolph:
Second the motion.
gocart mozart
@A guy:
Go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw. Twice.
chopper
@A guy:
and oh yeah, go fuck yourself.
or would “eat a bag of dicks” work better for you?
beltane
Where is R2R? He is a much nicer troll than this one.
Suzanne
@A guy: I could tell you to go die in a fire. Does that help?
Here I am, doing my best to be Part Of The Solution.
A guy
I have a girl that likes me. I’ve been married to her for 26 years. She is from Clarksburg. I don’t want anybody else. She is a real woman and feminist. Hillary Clinton would do well to model my wife’s life.
James E Powell
@Lavocat:
What you say is true. There are way too many people who adopt a position that whatever the police did was correct. They will hold onto that position no matter what facts are presented to show that it is not correct.
This prevents the formation of a political movement for change.
A guy
Cole is just mad that the Mountie play calling was horrible in OT. I was there at mountaineer field and agree
SiubhanDuinne
@A guy:
No, the problem with this world — one of the many, to all of which you appear to be oblivious — is that cops are killing children on the streets of this country and fucking getting away with it.
Go away. Get out of here. Go on, shoo.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
It’s simple Cole.
THEY. ARE. LIARS. AND COWARDS.
Period.
It can be dressed up as sociopathy or whatever, but the result is the same. They were scared of a child.
Unfit to serve.
SiubhanDuinne
@A guy:
If she’s old enough to have been married for 26 years, she is not, by any definition, a “girl.” And if she actually is, per your claim, a “feminist,” I’m pretty sure you would know this. Good and hard.
NobodySpecial
@A guy: Say that again with all the words? Evidently you practice law in Somalia.
Unabogie
@A guy: How’s this for civil? You are a horrible troll who gets his puny rocks off taunting decent folks over the death of a child. You’re just like George Zimmerman. A sick, twisted nut who makes the world worse every moment you steal air. Go somewhere else and be awful. No one wants you here. No one will miss you once you’re gone.
JPL
@Lee Rudolph: Me too.
Also.. Until John bans him, please stop feeding him.
redshirt
A Guy is the ultimate BJ troll, apparently.
He can’t be debated.
Can he be banned?
JPL
The death of a twelve year old, and an excellent post by John are now being ignored.
Patrick
@A guy:
A friendly suggestion; you should try to get out of your bubble once in a while.
joel hanes
@A guy:
I refer you to the reply made in Arkell v Pressdram
Hungry Joe
In a way it was like the James Blake take-down, in that any reasonable person can look at the video, see exactly what was wrong, and explain what should have been done.
Rice: Cop car stops 50 feet away, cop opens door, stands behind it, calls out for the suspect to drop the “gun.”
Blake: Two cops walk up to Blake, who’s leaning against a wall, show a badge, and say, “NYPD. Can we ask you a few questions?”, or even, “NYPD. You’re under arrest. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
For the record, my total time being trained in law-enforcement technique: 0 hours, 0 minutes.
scav
So, Some Imgenue is now fluttering his eyelashes pretending ti be the legally-knowlegeable Miss Manners of blog etiquette? What did attention seeking amoral fantacists do before the interscrum? They can’t all run for President.
ruemara
Well, next time you get mad, remember that if you kill a black person, it’s always justified. Can’t wait until we start offering shoot 2 get free bullets deal.
Jon Rockoford
@A guy: In my many years on this Earth I’ve not often been uncivil. However, for you I’ll make an exception: Go fuck yourself.
I’ll do you the favor of explaining why: You seem to feel no outrage about what happened to a child at the hands of sociopaths with badges and you exhibit a total lack of empathy, So, go fuck yourself.
You do not feel outrage that two hired hacks exonerated the murderer of a child because he was a sociopath with a badge. You show no concern about the ultimate abuse of power by the supposedly responsible representatives of a democratic government. So, go fuck yourself.
And lastly, as someone with a graduate degree in History, I can tell you that what’s wrong with this world is not a lack of civility but a lack of empathy and outrage at the abuses inflicted on citizens by authority figures. Societies come apart when citizens excuse the abuses of government, not when outraged citizens decide that some douchebag is too stupid and insensitive to reason with and instead decide to pithily dismiss him.
So, go fuck yourself.
Redshift
This is perhaps the worst:
How despicable a person do you have to be to treat driving up and shooting a kid in 45 seconds to be something that just happened that prevented the cop from being able to see whether the gun was real, and not as something the cop did? It was a “split-second decision” because he chose to take a split second to decide, not because he had no choice.
If it’s true that the law allows cops to shoot to kill any time they feel threatened, and it’s well established that our entire society views black men as inherently threatening, then the law is giving any cop a licence to kill black men, and it needs to be changed now.
Redshift
Hear, hear. What it wants is to derail any discussion by provoking outrage. Don’t do it.
scav
Seriously, mostly what this clearly demonstrates is that we are not facing a few bad apples. They — police forces, FBI apparently, judicial system — have comprehensively, from top to bottom, decided this sort of behavior is unproblematic and reasonable. A panel of outside foxes ruled the foxes behavior unproblematic. Floop-di-whoop. But, don’t let them play the few bad apples card in future.
A guy
Lol at all. First she is a girl to me and as a feminist she doesn’t care. Second, I never said the cop was right, I challenged the certainty of the video cole claim shows the execution of a 12 year old. It shows a killing I believe, the circumstances of which are unclear.
Roger Moore
The underlying problem is that they were responding to what they were told was happening rather than trying to see for themselves. When we let that happen, it turns a false police report into attempted murder by cop.
Jordan Rules
This is so sad and not surprising and that makes me even more sad.
On the other note…I do not understand why these type of trolls don’t just get banned pretty early on when they show their hand and throw the cards right in your face over and over again. There is something weird about it that irks me. We all know what’s out there. We don’t need to experience it here too.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
He can be pied, and I strongly recommend it to everyone.
Gimlet
@scav:
It’s probably an extension of “sovereign immunity”.
James E Powell
@Redshift:
Two phrases in Crawford’s report stand out as evidence of predisposition, bias, and foregone conclusions.
First, as you point out, the officer was not “required to make a split second decision.” He could have hung back and assessed. No one was in danger.
Second, “the speed with which the confrontation progressed” is typical passive voice avoidance of responsibility. It was only the officer who was moving at increasing speed – and decreasing judgment. The child was stationary and presenting no threat to anyone.
Amir Khalid
I think it might help (says the guy living on the other side of the planet) to have some pushback from people with credentials at least as good as the Colorado prosecutor and the former FBI supervisory agent. From people who can say, in the appropriate professional law-enforcement lingo, that whatever the thought process might be that led a cop to kill Tamir Rice, it is plainly all kinds of fucked up. Because killing a kid for playing with a toy is a fucked-up outcome.
Jordan Rules
@Roger Moore: Can’t do it on my phone unfortunately.
But why can’t he just be unwelcomed here via the ban tool?? I just don’t get it.
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
Offer only applies to whites. If you’re a black yourself, you’re yet more proof of what a bunch of savages black people are, black on black crime, etc.
A guy
I appreciate all the kind words from you folks. That being said I’ve been chewed out by federal judges. They do it a bit more diplomatically.
Aleta
Says a lot that they waited to bury this ‘news’ until late Friday of a long holiday weekend.
Tells you *all* you need to know about anyone vocal about Second Amendment/gun rights who stays quiet about this.
No greater hypocrisy in the US than white guys displaying automatic weapons and screaming about their rights, while murder of adults and children of color is allowed because someone says a cell phone or a toy or falling pants or a glance or a hand movement could have been a weapon.
People with unwhite skin open carrying weapons into a restaurant ? Boggles the mind.
Roger Moore
@Jordan Rules:
Our blog host is very lenient toward various forms of obnoxious behavior. As I understand it, the ban hammer comes out only for blatantly racist/sexists/etc. comments, not for general assholishness; Mr. Cole would rather err on the side of letting in a few trolls than risk the temptation to ban people for expressing unpopular opinions.
David Hunt
To a guy,
I strive in life to never wish anyone harm. I maintained a studied indifference to health of Dick Cheney who I consider one the worst American this sides of the grave as the heart that was transplanted into him rejected his cancerous self. I even hoped that Osama bin Laden would be captured and publicly tried for his crimes instead of assassinated in the night. You are not worth me wishing harm on you.
But I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.
Go away.
J R in WV
@A guy:
The problem we have is that given your political and socual statements, we are inclined to expect that when your lips are moving, or your fingers are typing, you are lying!
So not a lawyer, not married for 26 years, just a sociopath trying to get her jollies on the internets.
Because the way human beings need to interpret the statements of a sociopath is to reverse everything they say.
I fourteenth the wish for this prick to be permanently banned as they provide no benefit to the discourse.
Any cop that shoots a 12 y o kid in an open carry state within seconds of arriving on “the scene” where the kid is playing, and then arrests the shot down on the ground kid’s sister, there is a monster who needs put down before he kills more kids. Kills more black people for nothing.
Jordan Rules
@Roger Moore: He’s been plenty racist and sexist as have plenty other trolls I’ve seen live a long life here. There’s something peculiar about after a while. SMH
I know that what you said has been stated as the reason but that shit feels hollow as fuck.
gene108
@Redshift:
Too late for that now.
This blog is very good at feeding trolls.
father pussbucket (fka gnomedad)
Open carry + cops get a pass when they “feel threatened” = what the hell do you expect?
ThresherK (GPad)
@gocart mozart: “I’ve got my internet poorn to keep me warm” sounds like a really bad rewrite of that old song which radio stations play in the holiday mix.
Not “Dominic the Donkey” bad, however.
Xantar
@Roger Moore:
You make a good point. After all, he tolerates the postings of Glenn Greenwald.
(Hey, if the discussion is already way off the rails…)
skerry
I hope that Tamir’s family sues the shit out of the police department. Maybe if the public gets tired of paying for police mis-conduct, something will change.
gocart mozart
It’s even sadder to think he’s not some lonely teen sociopath. What wrong with the world is too many people like that guy.
rikyrah
THIS THIS THIS
Nancy Leong @nancyleong
Ohio = open carry state. Cop said he thought #TamirRice was 20; if true, carrying a REAL gun would have been legal. https://twitter.com/tchop_stl/status/653308306732093440 …
rikyrah
I have believed that they are going so hard on this case because they don’t want to answer the question:
How did this obviously unqualified man become a police officer on the Cleveland Police Department?
Nobody has answered that question yet.
gocart mozart
@ThresherK (GPad):
Thanks, I was aiming at “really bad song lyric rewrite” style.
Gimlet
@skerry:
You forget the appeal process will find a way to undo things if they don’t like the outcome. That’s the twisted logic of law.
Jordan Rules
@skerry: That may help for a bit and then laws will change. And you know…
We know this game all too well.
Incitatus for Senate
@John Cole: Always been baffled by Balloon Juice’s love of trolls. Half the comment threads seem to be regular commenters, some of them quite insightful, indulging some jerk instead of talking about something interesting. Surprised you front pagers don’t just ban them.
debbie
I don’t know how they manage to say with straight faces that they’re more threatened by a black 12-year-old with a pellet gun than they are by actual grown men strutting around with assault rifles swinging from their shoulders?
Goblue72
@A guy: and as a lawyer from what I am sure was a hell of a more prestigious institution then you ever managed to get into sniffing distance of: Go. Fuck. Yourself. With. A. Rusty. Pitchfork.
Need me to go Bluebook that for you?
debbie
@Patrick:
They used to, but then 9/11 happened, and everyone wanted to play macho soldier.
Goblue72
@A guy: You probably get chewed out frequently. Shitty, jerk face lawyers usually do.
Keith G
@Incitatus for Senate:
Cole usually doesn’t read this far down. I suggest you use his email address located at the top right.
Morzer
@debbie:
Hatred will always find an excuse. It’s not like those people care about ethics or any such liberal nonsense.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@A guy:
Let me guess: the comment section looks like an aryan goon squad?
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Woah! That is an awesome catch!
greennotGreen
I don’t know much of anything about police training, but I thought they were trained to assess a situation before reacting to it. In both Tamir Rice’s and John Crawford’s cases, the police rushed in and started shooting. In the Crawford case, some apparently asshole/paranoid/racist guy called in with a description of the situation not supported by security video…and the cops ran in, shouted “Drop the gun!” and shot before the guy who had what he believed to be a toy could remotely have had a chance to respond. And the grand jury looked at that footage and said, “That’s okay.” In the Rice case, The Flash wouldn’t have had time to respond.
I have an idea. In the future, all video of incidents will be presented to the grand jury as cartoons computer generated from actual footage so race will be difficult, if not impossible, to discern. Let’s see if the grand juries are equally lenient with the cops if they think white children are being shot.
John Cole
@Incitatus for Senate: Because a lot of the time it is hard to separate trolls from idiots, and because I generally think just ignoring or telling someone to fuck off is easier.
Plus, sometimes when you ban an IP you end up screwing more than just the offender.
Woodrowfan
it’d be running 2d in Republican polls behind Trump so he’d probably call it “my candidate”
Honus
@A guy: I’ve been married for 26 years. And I’ve practiced law I. West Virginia for 21 years. And I grew up about 20
Miles from Clarksburg. Now go fuck yourself.
Morzer
@rikyrah:
I’ve never yet seen a 12 year old who looked remotely like a 20 year old – and I don’t believe anyone else has either. The men who murdered Tamir Rice need to be stripped of their uniforms and spend a good number of years in prison.
I suspect that the reason the usual white racists are howling with glee about this is that they are absolutely piss-pants terrified at the thought of black men with guns. That’s what made Reagan sign gun-control laws in California, after all. If we want the NRA out of business, we should probably create Minority Militias and have them marching down the street en masse with AK-47s. No-one would suddenly scream louder about the danger of guns in the wrong hands than the sad, crazy old white coots who’ve propped up the NRA’s domestic terrorism over the years.
JPL
@Morzer: this
Woodrowfan
we’ve survived not having Bob From Moscow and Spintwerp among us any longer. We’d survive without that guy too.
Morzer
@John Cole:
Maybe you could have your front-end developer deploy a system whereby the blog owner can simply mark a troll and make his comments visible only to the troll himself, while everyone else just sees a white space. That way the troll gets to yap endlessly about his various issues and no-one else has to bother with them. If the troll tries to make another ID, just slap that ID with the same treatment. It’s worked elsewhere and you don’t have to get into the business of policing IP addresses.
gelfling545
@Lee Rudolph: I second the motion. I have no objection to reading comments by people with whom I disagree, even if not expressed in the most coherent way. It can be very beneficial in (at least) helping one hone one’s argument and even, very occasionally, raising a point one has not considered. This person has to date offered nothing of substance to any discussion into which he has entered and has only served to derail discussion which I assume to be his point. It would be a kindness to the community to dismiss him to exercise his peculiar idea of amusement elsewhere.
pseudonymous in nc
Seems as though the delay has been because the prosecutor has been expert-shopping until he could find a couple of people willing to endorse cops carrying out drive-by shootings.
celticdragonchick
@A guy:
Don’t you have a fire you can go die in?
**********
You.
A huge bag of salty donkey dicks.
Enjoy your dinner, fuckface.
Goblue72
@Morzer: Bingo. All of it.
Betty Cracker
I think the philosophy on trolls here works pretty well overall. As I’m sure y’all realize, there are degrees of trollery and varying definitions.
I think of “A guy” as a troll too, but mostly because he pops up solely to dribble inane wingnut talking points on controversial topics rather than anything he’s said in this thread. I think his opinion on this topic is wrong and stupid, but it doesn’t rise to the level of trolling in my book — what makes him a troll is how he behaves (the mindlessly contrarian pattern), not what he says.
On the other hand, I’ve seen appalling behavior / statements on the part of regular commenters go virtually unremarked, and I’ve seen non-trolls hounded as trolls because they said something controversial and aren’t widely known / regular commenters.
My point is, it’s complicated. I’d rather err on the side of tolerance and reserve banning for crude personal attacks and truly egregious comments. Just my $0.02.
Morzer
@celticdragonchick:
To be fair, fire-making probably seems like an advanced technology to the troll. He’s at the stage of staring at a pile of wood and wondering when the magic sky fairy will send a lightning strike so he can have a hot dinner.
celticdragonchick
@Jon Rockoford:
Applause.
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
The question is what John (and by extension the front-pagers) think of a blog as being. If you want it to be a public space where anyone can piss on the rug so long as they don’t piss too egregiously, your philosophy makes sense. If you want it to be a reasonably well-kept public space where people can have intelligent, sometimes acrimonious conversations without being drowned out by the sound and smell of rug-pissing, I would suggest maybe rethinking this endless, futile tolerance of said rug-pissing.
Frankensteinbeck
WOAH. Hold up. Retired FBI agent? So this person has no official authority and is not answerable to FBI superiors if they spout racist shit that violates FBI policy and procedure? Someone has cherry-picked the HELL out of his sources to get the response he wanted.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: I love your idea of a Loon Lexicon.
Seconded.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Agree with Betty.
Scroll on by. Do not feed the trolls.
Betty Cracker
@Morzer: I guess we disagree on the blog’s current state. The level of tolerance isn’t endless, but the ban bar is high. You think it’s too high, I guess, whereas I don’t.
RK
Cops are always going to be given the benefit of the doubt criminally when a gun is involved. And I think Lao Tzu once said that a troll cannot trolleth if there are none to troll.
celticdragonchick
@greennotGreen:
To be fair, white kids are starting to get shot also (google, “ROTC cadet, Euharlee, Georgia” and you can find out how answering a knock at the door while holding a wii remote or anything else will get you very dead if the person knocking is a cop)
The problem is the same thing that has been going on since Reconstruction failed:
Cops have carte blanche to do utterly anything in uniform…and that includes an unspecified number of “white folks” casualties…as long as most of the damage is to “those other people” and not to “anybody I know personally”.
A large part of this is derived from the “Just World Fallacy” which is an especially American Exceptionalism myth in that anybody, however innocent or young or unarmed or asleep on a couch or in their own baby crib, who get killed by the cops is automatically assumed to deserve it or have parents who deserve it.
This myth is extremely resilient and seems to be essentially bound to American foundational assumptions where good people get good things and bad people get fucked over as they deserve. Since cops are still held by these people as part of American judgment, whatever they do to punish the wicked other will be supported.
Particularly, when you look at cop comments on cop message boards, they buy into this 100%. If cops burn the face off of a baby in a crib from the family of people staying with relatives because their house burned down…well, the parents must still be drug dealers, the kid can be put into the gang database early to save time and the parents should be charged for neglect for staying somewhere known to be the residence of a wanted drug dealer (never mind the drug dealer did not, in fact, live there at all and lived somewhere else entirely where he was arrested several days later). The above comments were all actually made by cops at Policeone.com. The kind of sociopathy needed to joke about nearly killing a baby, burning his face off with a grenade and then suggesting he be entered into a gang database while jailing his parents who were unlucky enough to have a house fire and needed to stay elsewhere…well, you can make that determination yourself.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
So what in the everloving blue-eyed hell am I supposed to do now with this brand-new expensive 50# bag of Purina Troll Chow?
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
Well, alrighty then.
Morzer
@SiubhanDuinne:
Scatter it on the rug in the name of tolerance and learn to enjoy the resulting mess.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
@Morzer:
I tend to agree with Morzer. There have been one or two trolls here who I feel were given a little too much face for a bit too long — in particular, a portrait artist I won’t name. I can tolerate almost any amount of wrongheadedness, but that troll was also habitually abusive and insulting to other commenters. “a guy” is full of it, sure, but he hasn’t crossed that line yet as far as I know.
celticdragonchick
@skerry:
They just get mad enough to cap jury awards or gripe about lawyers and “ghetto lottery winners” (I read that comment several times at cop forums online. They really, really hate uppity black people who sue).
The only time you see change in a department is when the feds come in with a consent decree.
scav
There is something a little chilling about the instrumental use of the death of children for personal amusement and self-promotion / brand management.
Roger Moore
@Jon Rockoford:
I would say that lack of honesty is also high up on the list. When civility and politeness is held to be a higher value than honesty and forthrightness, our public dialog becomes corrupted with blatantly evil ideas dressed up in nice words and fancy suits. As long as you express your ideas with pleasant vocabulary and an even tone while wearing a nice suit, you can advocate for barbarity that would make Attila cringe. TPTB consider it far worse to accuse somebody of evil thoughts than to actually have and express those evil thoughts.
Joel
@A guy: No one cares what you think.
patrick II
The “outside” review was authored by S. LAMAR SIMS Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney, Denver CO. Sims’ roles have included providing legal advice and support to Denver police and prosecuting special high-profile cases.
I would guess an “outside” review conducted by a person not a district attorney whose job has been to provide legal advice and support to police, such as a civil rights attorney, might have a different view.
Sims:
I especially love this. Disagreement is classified as “Monday morning quarterbacking”, thus disqualifying any such disagreement entirely before it is assessed for other qualities the disagreement might have , such as relevance, standard police procedure, common sense, rights of citizens in general, or black citizens in particular.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Take it to the Great Orange Satan.
EricNNY
@A guy: I don’t comment much. I’m not a Federal Judge. Basically I’m gathering this from you:
1. Make an argument completely opposite of front pager, especially Cole no matter how egregious. Plus for inflammatory, racist (not outright) or derogatory language.
2. Watch in delight as moral/logical/normal people express outrage.
3. Ever so slightly walk your argument back with a detail you probably should have highlighted in first post to make yourself look a little better and the rest of us as firebrand liberals.
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.
It’s old.
Go fuck yourself.
celticdragonchick
@patrick II:
If you don’t think that cops should be able to roll right into a park and shoot anybody at all who may or may not have an object in hand or a pants waistband their hands are close to then you must be a Monday Morning Quarterback, obviously.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: It sounds like you and I agree then. If I’m understanding him correctly, Mozer thinks “A guy” should be banned. I think “A guy” is 100% wrong and an asshole, but I’ve never personally seen him post anything I’d consider ban-worthy. (FWIW, it’s Cole’s blog, so I’m providing my opinion only; I don’t make policy here.)
Patrick
@patrick II:
And there you have it. We apparently have no right to question the actions of police officers. But why stop there? Two can play this game.
Why couldn’t this logic be applied to the Benghazi committee? Why are they engaging in Monday morning quarterbacking? Or Clinton’s emails? It is Monday morning quarterbacking to question it? Or how about ANYTHING Obama has done?
Botsplainer
Yet a white supremacist piece of shit dumbass like Randy Weaver can convince a slackjawed jury of Idaho whites that the armed standoff he started (and which got his dumbass wife and undoubted moron son killed) should result in compensation to him.
Davebo
@EricNNY: Be glad you aren’t a Federal Judge! Trust me, it’s overrated and you probably would have taken an 80% pay cut when accepting the appointment.
? Martin
@celticdragonchick:
It’s called ‘Shoot them all and let God sort them out.’ Our evangelical tendencies trivialize death because they assume that the innocent will go on to better things in heaven. So their death is only tragic for the parents, and even there God has a plan for them, to make them strong so they too can go to heaven.
So cops killing kids is just expediting God’s work. Why would we want to stop that?
raven
@Betty Cracker: I bet John is pissed that this thread turned into a conversation about that fucking shit head.
Mark-NC
@A guy: If that was your own son and the police shot him in 2 seconds you would say he deserved to die? You are a liar!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Earlier his comments about HRC were misogynistic. My opinion is that was over the line.
It appears that you did pretty good on your picks for the games.
JPL
Since we are all over the place, I’m going to add that it’s time for MSM to give Carson a history lesson on Hitler.
I’m sickened that he thought the Jewish people were to blame for their own demise.
EricNNY
@Davebo: I would be the worst Federal Judge. Not to mention there aren’t so many laws out there I don’t enjoy breaking myself…..
EricNNY
@JPL: here, here.
Elizabelle
Last question in CBS 60 Minutes interview with President Obama tonight:
Steve Kroft: If you ran again, do you think you would win?
Obama, decisively: Yes. I would. (Maybe he said “Yes, I do.” Anyway, outcome not in doubt.)
Damn straight he would, too. And we’d be better for it.
He called his last year “bittersweet.”
scav
Speaking of logic, would a Second Amendment Abortion be legal in a Stand-Your-Ground state? Especially if done by a cop? That fetus wouldn’t keep struggling! Couldn’t see his hands on the ultrasound! He scared me, I was in fear of my very life! BOOM!
sharl
@pseudonymous in nc: Do you think William J. Lewinski will be called in by Cleveland officials? I agree with what a commenter said here some time ago: that guy deserves a whole lot more attention, both for the evil he validates individually, and for the evil in the system that hires him to defend killings by police, regardless of circumstances.
J
@Hungry Joe: Exactly right!
Elizabelle
WRT the topic: Heard the news on Tamir Rice reports this morning, and thought “how could they?”
If I was in Cleveland, I’d be ready to be out in the street. I’d be tempted to carry a brick or two, as well. No way that was handled well. A report cannot paper over that.
greennotGreen
@celticdragonchick: Very good points. I’m just trying to think of a way to get the majority of Ameicans to be as outraged by the situation as most of us here are.
I love my friends who started the Avielle Foundation, but I disagree to a certain extent with their catchphrase, “You CAN imagine…” That is, you can imagine how awful it would be to lose a child. I think the problem is that lots of people don’t want to try to imagine it. Or they think that someone else’s pain is less than theirs would be. Remember when President Obama got castigated from the right for saying that Trayvon Martin looked like what his son would look like if he had a son? As long as it happens to someone else, they just don’t make a connection. How do we get people to realize that police run amok threatens ALL of us, not just someone else, and that the “someone else” might have a family that loves and will desperately miss them?
PhoenixRising
Could we focus for a moment on the deaths of Tamir Rice & John Crawford?
Specifically, on the angle that no law was being broken by either boy (yes, technically Crawford was an adult, but from my seat both boys look like children, specifically my child who is almost 16)–had the 911 callers’ estimate of his age and the toy gun been accurate, he wasn’t breaking any law?
It is legal, apparently, for cops to execute black children on the word of whoever calls 911. And they have no duty to use care, or even common sense, in evaluating the information or the actual situation.
If my hopes are riding on a Cuyahoga County grand jury…they are doomed.
RK
Except Carson didn’t.
celticdragonchick
@Botsplainer:
Jesus Christ…you really do seem to be determined to go toe to toe and match insane talking points with wingnuts.
For the record, Weaver didn’t start any standoff. The FBI and Federal Marshals choose to bring SWAT and HRT assets onto his property for no discernible reason after he missed a court date which had been already screwed up by the court. This was for was became obvious as an entrapment case where feds coerced Weaver into sawing off a shotgun and then tried to force him to become an undercover asset with Aryan nation.
Sammy Weaver was not a “moron” and your characterization is exactly the same as those cops who rolled up onto Tamir Rice and blew him away. You assume deficiency in a person who you see as different and despicable and therefore he must deserve to die. You don’t like what his dad had said about racial matters, therefore the kid deserves whatever the fuck the police do amirite?
Never mind that unannounced and unidentified Federal Marshals shot the kids dog while Sammy and an adult were hunting on the Weaver property and the kid had every fucking reason to think he was in extreme danger and shoot back.
As for Vicky Weaver…yes, she was a full metal wingnut.
She was also carrying a goddamned kid and nobody at the house was shooting at or threatening anybody at all, you half wit sociopathic shit fer brains mouthbreather…since you want to assume mental deficiency in those you disagree with.
The FBI HRT sniper, Lon Horiuchi, was given complete carte blanche to shoot anybody at fucking all at the house because reasons.
They had convinced themselves that they were facing some sort of super army in a fort and gave a blatantly unconstitutional and unconscionable order to execute people without charge, writ or conviction.
This is why he got a jury award, fucker.
By the way, seriously fuck off and die, you miserable sack of dingo shit.
If you cannot understand that civil rights covers crazy woods dwelling wingnut racists just as much as it covers the rest of us, you are damaged beyond repair.
greennotGreen
@celticdragonchick: Yes to all you said, except maybe the “seriously fuck off and die…”part. I don’t feel that strongly.
My dogs are my children. If somebody shot one of my dogs, if I were a person who had guns and used guns, I’d be sorely tempted to blow that person away.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Nice idea, but I live in Atlanta. Icy driveways aren’t unheard of, but they are, let’s just say, far less common than in New England.
magurakurin
@John Cole:
Damn. I’m only 10 comments into this thread and I already need a cigarette.
cokane
seriously?
“when he confronted the 12-year-old boy”?
when did he ever confront him? what a ridiculous orwellian butchering of english right there. what do we call it when gangsters shoot people from a moving vehicle? a confrontation?
J
@Amir Khalid: @Mark-NC: Come on, ‘A Guy’s’ son would never make the mistake of being black!
J
@celticdragonchick: I expect there are people whose first thought on seeing the famous photo of the little girl burned by Napalm in Vietnam in 1972 was ‘is she a red?’.
celticdragonchick
@greennotGreen:
Indeed, and when your dog gets cut in half by a camouflaged stranger with an M4 assault rifle while you are on your own land, you have every damned right to think you are about to get shot as well and react accordingly.
The Weavers, up to that point, had no idea that federal law enforcement was stalking them and had set up command posts and sniper teams around on their land.
Nobody went to the Weaver’s door and asked to talk to anybody. NOBODY.
They did the federal version of the John Crawford shooting: bring in the snipers and the guys with assault rifles and start shooting shit up without asking any fucking questions or finding out if you can just handcuff the guy and take him to court to get his not-guilty verdict (which is what finally happened)
Militarized law enforcement is a hazard to all of us. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander…it doesn’t matter. When law enforcement puts on military uniforms and starts playing around with military vehicles, military jargon and military tactics…we start getting treated like a military enemy.
celticdragonchick
@J:
You are almost certainly right, unfortunately.
jurassicpork
“No way of even knowing if the gun was fake”, my ass. The 911 caller even said she thought the gun was a toy. If the dispatcher didn’t tell Loehmann that, then that person is at fault. But it still doesn’t even take into account why Loehmann fired on the child literally two seconds on arrival. Or why this report doesn’t even address Loehmann was pressured into quitting his last department after a meltdown on a gun range. Or why the Cleveland PD hired him without even vetting him.
Jordan Rules
@efgoldman: Agreed.
And I guess my dog-whistle detector is just tuned a lot differently than many. I probably also react to that stuff a lot differently.
Damnet, sometimes it would just be nice to get a break and have people say you are not welcome here and mean it.
SiubhanDuinne
I would like to apologize to all for my own role in dragging this thread off its extremely important topic. There’s certainly a time and place to discuss the proper treatment for trolls, but a sad and horrifying Tamir Rice thread isn’t it.
Having said that, I honestly don’t know what I can add to the on-topic discussion — much less any useful suggestions about what we, as ordinary schlubs, can do to start turning things around. And actually, that’s the worst of it, feeling impotent and helpless against a corrupt constabulary, compromised judiciary, unreasonable and unethical legislators, and a complicit media. Yes, I phone/write my Representatives on various issues, and yes, I volunteer for blue candidates and GOTV and so on, but the ROI is pretty damn threadbare.
Elizabelle
Could we have a lighter thread tonight? Maybe a pet pic or something?
Still sad about Tamir Rice; it’s a beautiful Sunday evening and for some peeps (in DC area fer sure) a 4-day weekend.
Could we have something that’s not a buzzkill?
The GOP is falling apart in real time; PBO, fear of a black president, told 60 Minutes he thought he could win again, if he could run.
The NY Times, of course, headlines that he says HRC made a “mistake” with the email server. And that Republicans are going after it, politically.
celticdragonchick
@jurassicpork:
Because black people have scary magical powers, and police are told when seeing anything that might be even the most miniscule threat: when in doubt…shoot it out. After all, officer safety matters more than anything else…including that female bank teller who was taken hostage in Stockton, California last year, the pretty young college student taken hostage by a home invader in New York 2 years ago or some guy in Long Beach waiting for a ride home from party and who happened to be holding a lawn sprinkler attachment.
All of the above were shot and killed by cops…but remember! Officer safety is the most important thing!
jurassicpork
@celticdragonchick: I remember back in the good old days when police thought the public safety was paramount.
Germy Shoemangler
@SiubhanDuinne:
May I add assholes who call 911 whenever they see a black person doing anything they consider “suspicious”?
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy Shoemangler:
By all means. The list is long and incomplete.
celticdragonchick
@jurassicpork:
I do too.
I don’t know when the new “rules of engagement” went into effect but I am still wondering how cops could blow away hostages and not take any heat for it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/andrea-rebello-killed_n_3302043.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/08/19/chaos-reigned-and-police-fired-600-excessive-shots-in-robbery-chase-report-finds/
Oh, that’s right. The only people who get killed by cops must have must coming or their families have it coming.
I saw that attitude with both of the above hostage shooting incidents in Stockton and New York on cop message boards. Cops blamed the families (and in the case of Andrea Rubiello in NY they literally tried to go after her fiancé and accuse him of drug dealing and luring the home invader…all with no evidence at all) and accused them of “ghetto lottery” digging etc.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Yes, please. I would love to know what’s happening (or not) with Thurston. I always love Lily and Rosie photos. As for Steve … there actually is a Steve, right? He’s not just a figment of my imagination? Because it’s been ever so long since we’ve seen reference to him, let alone a nice photo or other proof of existence.
sharl
Via Hilzoy, a Mother Jones piece posted this evening:
IMO the whole thing is worth a read, grim though it is. Perhaps this particular bit deserves a greater signal boost than it has received to date in Big Media reports:
Steve from Antioch
So when guys walk into Starbucks with holstered pistols to promote open carry, they are stupid ammosexuals who are obviously compensating for something and they are putting everybody in danger.
When 5’7″ 195 guy walks around a park carrying an unholstered firearm he is a victim.
Got it.
(And anyone who thinks it matter that it was an airsoft gun is an idiot. Here is a picture of it: http://www.re-newsit.com/2014/11/tamir-rice-who-is-really-to-blame-for.html
It had the orange tip removed and it is indistinguishable from a real weapon at arms length.)
When adults don’t teach their children to respect firearms and not do stupid things, shit happens.
Germy Shoemangler
@celticdragonchick:
http://www.gocomics.com/matt-bors/2014/12/03
Germy Shoemangler
@efgoldman: It’s enough to make a cat laugh.
jurassicpork
@celticdragonchick: That’s something that’s gotten far less play in the media than police brutality or anything else: Their vindictive nature and how they abuse their police authority to get back at those they see as a threat (such as that poor guy who filmed Eric Garner’s murder on Staten Island). Unfortunately, proving police persecution and retribution in a court of law is a very slippery slope and difficult if not outright impossible to prove.
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
Tamir Rice was given the airsoft gun earlier that day by another playmate.
So you tell me what 12 year old boy doesn’t play with toy guns???
I can cite you any number of scholarly articles on that particular subject…
Nice victim blaming BTW…do you wait until the body is cold before you do that or did you just make allowances this one time?
celticdragonchick
@Germy Shoemangler:
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/11/black-people-magical-superhuman
Gex
my willingness to call police for anything short of someone facing physical harm is zero right now. Property crimes or situations that might be worth checking into aren’t worth getting someone murdered by cops.
tazj
@cokane: Those are my thoughts exactly. I don’t want to watch the video again, but from what I remember the policeman shot Tamir just as the car pulled up giving him no chance to surrender the pellet gun at all. I know the information from the first 911 call that questioned whether the gun was real didn’t get relayed to the police, but shouldn’t there be an onus on the police to use more caution? It also seemed obvious from the video that he was not an adult, and anyone should have known that from a distance, because he was not a tall child.
Chris
@raven:
If your policy is to allow trolls to run completely wild with a banhammer that’s virtually never put to use, you can hardly complain when the inevitable ensues.
jurassicpork
@celticdragonchick: I noted that in police reports filed after one unarmed black person or another was shot & killed or died in their custody. Michael Brown was turned into a raging Hulk Monster by Darren Wilson. George Zimmerman tried to convince us he was overpowered by the 120 pound Trayvon Martin. A black woman who died in police custody after being tased several times was attributed with (and this phrase was actually used in the report) “demonic superhuman strength.”
And I think this is at the root of white peoples’ terror of “Angry Black Man Syndrome”, which is a very real fear and in my opinion a virulent manifestation of white guilt over the way we’d treated them for over 400 years.
celticdragonchick
Something else…
I played with realistic looking toy guns all the time as a kid in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I never once worried about the San Bernardino County sheriff rolling up on me and killing me and my friends.
Then again, I am also Scottish barbarian white. Privilege I never asked for but I get all the same. Tamir Rice does exactly the same sort of thing I did at his age and Fuckface from Antioch blames the black kid because that’s how the good ol’ US of A has rolled for the last 200 and some years.
Youbetcha.
celticdragonchick
@jurassicpork:
This. Exactly.
Steve from Antioch
@celticdragonchick: There are two points here: 1) were the police reasonable and 2) was Rice an idiot?
As to the first question, the police receive 911 call of person with gun in park and they roll up and see 5′ 7″ 195 pound guy who advances towards the approaching car still openly holding the weapon, the office have a split second decision to make. Concluding that the officers acted reasonably is not obviously wrong.
Was Rice and idiot? Yeah, probably. He walked around in public with an altered airsoft gun that was indistinguishable from an actual 1911. What 12 year old boy doesn’t play with toy guns, you ask. When I was 12 I had bb guns and pellet rifles and I treated them like the potentially dangerous weapons that they were. If I had ever pointed them at a person, my parents would have immediately taken them from me. That is because my parents raised me right. Airsoft guns are not as dangerous, but I think it is irresponsible to walk around with them in public places and it’s inexcusable when the orange markings have been removed. I won’t let my kids have airsoft guns. They can play paintball if they want but the idea of using realistic looking guns to run around and shoot at other kids is a bad idea, IMHO.
Heliopause
You know, I’m not unsympathetic to what you’re saying. If every 12 year old who ever did a stupid thing was shot dead then the species would long since have become extinct and the planet would be better off. That is, as long as the principle is applied to all 12 year olds equally.
Steve from Antioch
@Heliopause: Exactly right.
@efgoldman: Okay, let me ask you a simple question.
If Rice had raised the pistol to point at the officer as they rolled up, would he still be a victim?
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve from Antioch:
On the contrary. It is obviously wrong. In particular, pulling up onto the grass right next to the person holding the so-called gun is wrong. Assuming that anyone holding a gun is going to shoot, without evidence of them doing so or threats – and pointing a gun around without shooting anyone is neither – is obviously wrong. Yes, everything done here was obviously wrong. The best you can say is that they could believably think that Rice COULD be, maybe, dangerous. This is an interpretation not extended to the ‘second amendment patriots’ running around packing considerably worse weapons.
This is A) a ridiculous question, because expecting a 12 year old to use adult reasoning is not rational, B) actually, it is not stupid for him to assume his life would be safe, since as above it was unreasonable to shoot him, C) an irrelevant attempt to divert from the basic point that the cops did behave obviously incorrectly, and D) victim blaming, which is absolutely disgusting. If the child was actually telling people he would shoot them and pointed the gun straight at the cops before they approached, he would still not deserve death and implying he did so is obscene and offensive.
Steve from Antioch
@Frankensteinbeck:
Okay we disagree. I can see someone arguing that it is wrong, but I don’t see it as clearly wrong given the circumstances. It might still be worthwhile to pursue criminal charges even though they were “cleared” of wrongdoing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: Ohio is an open carry state. It is perfectly legal to stand around with a gun your hand.
PurpleGirl
@Morzer: Or the troll’s comments can disemvoweled as they do at Making Light. The comment is still there, if someone wants to read it they just have to mentally put back all the vowels. They haven’t done it in a while but I can remember threads where there was a lot of fun in answering the trolls, like the troll who accused Teresa Neilsen Hayden of hacking his computer. Good times, good times.
Heliopause
@Steve from Antioch:
Mmm, not sure you grasped the point.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve from Antioch:
No. It is clearly wrong. There is no reasonable disagreement. Driving right up next to someone who you think is dangerous is the dumbest thing I can think of. A policeman is supposed to know better. Knowing better is their job. This is not a ‘reasonable people can disagree’ situation. This is a sandwich vs. tire rims and anthrax argument. Driving up next to someone, opening your car door, and immediately shooting them is not correct procedure for anything under any circumstances. Especially when you have to drive up onto grass to do it. It is obviously, inexcusably, unjustifiably wrong, and it costs a child his life.
Roger Moore
@jurassicpork:
Only the safety of the right kind of people. If you were from the wrong neighborhood or your skin was the wrong color, the police have always been a danger.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: No, I do take your point, but the fact that Ohio is an open carry state is one of the things that makes decision to shoot immediately without any attempt at investigation particularly egregious.
Steve from Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus: I ain’t no expert on Ohio law or nothing, but I would think that there is a continuum from: open carry in holster — carrying — brandishing.
Also the fact that something is legal doesn’t mean its a good idea. I’ve been approached by LEO while carrying rifles/shotguns hunting and I’ve always made a point of breaking the action on the shotgun or clearing the action on the rifle and then holding the weapon muzzle down. Would I it have been “legal” for me to keep the gun loaded and hold it at port arms while the LEO walked up? Yep. Perfectly “legal.”
Steve from Antioch
@Heliopause: Oh I did and I agree with most of what you say.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch:
You could have stopped there.
ETA: Watch the video at the top of the post and tell me where any behavior that could be described as brandishing took place.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve from Antioch:
Oddly enough, it is quite hard to lower your gun when you’re 12 and you have two seconds to do it because the cops drive up next to you, on the grass, and shoot you immediately. Your argument does not apply. And if they had shot you, anyone arguing that you being stupid is worth discussing rather than the police being unreasonably brutal would be an asshole, even though I assume you are not a 12 year old black boy.
Steve from Antioch
@Frankensteinbeck: As I understand it, and I haven’t followed the news on this shooting very closely, the officer who did the shooting was in the passenger seat, not driving the vehicle.
So assuming it is in fact wrong to drive towards an reportedly armed person, it really doesn’t have anything to do with the shooters decision making process. But you (obviously) have your mind made up about these things so there’s probably no point in getting into the factual details.
Heliopause
@Steve from Antioch:
What part of what I said do you not agree with?
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
If a 6 mile wide bolide hit the Yucatan Peninsula would the officers be still right?
Take your hypotheticals and do whatever your imagination suggests I might tell you to do at this point.
A 12 year old kid was doing what 12 year old kids have been doing in America for 300 years: playing with a toy gun.
I didn’t get shot when I was 12. Tamir Rice did…and the officers reported him 10 years older and much larger than he actually was. Oh, that’s right…scary magical negro powers again.
They demonstrably lied in the after action report, since we can see in the video that they cold not possibly have told him to drop anything at all…much less 3 times as they said.
They did not do first aid. They arrested his distraught sister. They watched his blood seep into the ground for 4 fucking minutes.
So tell you what…I will suggest something for your hypotheticals: tape them to the hypothetical chainsaw that I will suggest you hypothetically eviscerate your hypothetical (but almost certainly missing) heart with.
sharl
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yep, one of several acts of poor tactical police performance. From the MoJo article I linked at #161:
Steve from Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus:
Grasping nuance isn’t your strong point, but if you re-read what I wrote more slowly, you’ll see that I said there was a continuum between open carry in holster — carrying —- brandishing.
See, I didn’t say he was brandishing. I don’t know what the definition of brandishing is under Ohio law and I don’t care enough about proving you wrong to look it up. But he clearly wasn’t carrying a holstered weapon. if he had been, i imagine he would be alive today.
Plantsmantx
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I’m not so sure of that. As far as I know, they had no way of knowing for a fact, but I think they were convinced that the gun wasn’t real. If they were convinced it was real, they wouldn’t have exposed themselves to the extent they did.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve from Antioch:
That is a wonderful way of distracting from the fact that you have said something indefensibly wrong. Yes, of course my mind is made up. If you told me that I was a balogna sandwich, my mind would be made up. The police officer being in the passenger seat would only mean that two policemen were obviously, inexcusably wrong. I really don’t want to watch the video again to dispute that irrelevant point. It was sickening enough the first time.
Even assuming the shooter thought the child was highly dangerous, this strategy of dealing with the situation was, again, obviously wrong. If you’re not sure the child is dangerous, it becomes even more wrong, since the only advantage of pulling up so fast and so close is to give you a good shot when you’re sure you’re not going to be shot back. Throw in the lack of providing medical care, and you go from ‘incredibly stupid and unreasonable’ to ‘malicious.’
Steve from Antioch
@celticdragonchick:
Okay, I asked you a simple question that you could have answered yes or no but you decide to dodge it and devote several sentences to – well whatever you are hoping to accomplish. You needn’t respond to any more of my posts. Thanks.
@sharl: Am I wrong in believing that the officer that did the shooting was the passenger in the car, not the driver?
@Heliopause: On re-reading your post, I agree with all of it.
amk
oh great, the troll gets in first and does his job.
all you had to was delete his offensive post, cole.
MomSense
This is a tragedy for Tamir and his family. Even if we could get justice for Tamir, it wouldn’t bring him back. That what happened could ever be characterized as reasonable is such an injustice.
sharl
@Steve from Antioch: Your question to me was addressed quite well by Frankensteinbeck at #198:
Monala
@Steve from Antioch: No one is calling for the police to run around shooting the open carry guys in Starbucks. They are calling for them to not carry their guns into Starbucks.If the cops were shooting the open carry guys without first assessing the situation, then yeah, those guys would be victims, too.
And btw, that’s the first time I’ve seen a photo of the airsoft gun. I didn’t know the tip was that small. At the speed at which the cops came up on Rice, I don’t know if they’d have seen the tip even if it had been on the gun. And some of the same people would still be blaming the 12-year-old for his own death anyway because he had the toy gun in the first place.
Steve from Antioch
@sharl:
Look, people are arguing that the shooter acted unreasonably because the car drove up, the car drove on the grass, the car came too close, the car came in too fast, etc.
If those things were out of the control of the officer who did the actual shooting then you can’t fault him for that. Like I said, I don’t know for sure. Maybe the shooter ordered the driver to do what he did. That would make him more culpable because he made decisions that put himself in harm’s way. If, on the other hand, he was just deliver 8 feet away from a guy with a gun – that’s something different.
Plantsmantx
@efgoldman:
I think it’s probably safe to assume that they usually follow correct, effective procedures when it comes to preventing themselves from being killed. I’m sure it’s hard for many people to accept the idea that they would be convinced that the gun was fake, yet still dramatically roll up on the kid and kill him just for the…”adventure” of it.
amk
@Steve from Antioch:
you love pretzels, don’t ya?
cole’s title says it all. your word salad doesn’t.
Gvg
In the early 80’s I had a battery powered realistic looking water gun machine gun I played with and squirted my cat when she got on the kitchen counter. I had just graduated high school and I am white but after only a short time I got rid of it because I had already realized cops or other people might react and shoot me with a real gun. However I was older than Tamar, and had cynical parents. Earlier generations of kids played with realistic looking six guns safely. That has been gone for awhile though. shame really, I’ve never had a squirt gun as good since then. They all leak and don’t allow aim.
Paranoid cops are a problem getting worse I think.
The only way this shooting is not those cops fault is because of the faults of the system that made them incompetent and badly trained and then covered up for them because if they were indicted, their defense would be blaming their departments horribleness. It’s not just the driver and the shooter who killed the kid, it’s the whole department. and the da’s….they don’t serve the public safety. I wonder how many people have left town because of this story? I would. I sort of did leave Orlando 25 years ago because my upstairs neighbor got shot by his girlfriend, and a sniper was shooting kids too but by the 7th one it wasn’t front page anymore. I know newspapers seem to relish gore but when they act bored by some things it’s even more disturbing. An out of control police department is scary.
The Sailor
@Steve from Antioch:
That’s all lies. We saw the video. He was a short, tubby, 12 year old with a toy.
Cain
@Jon Rockoford:
This.
gwangung
@Steve from Antioch:
What a stupid point to get hung up on.
Think. The two work together. If they don’t, it could get a cop killed.
Steve from Antioch
@gwangung:
Actually its quite relevant to assessing the totality of the circumstances.
Like I said, several posters have said that the shooting was obviously unreasonable because (in part) of the way the car approached. If the shooter had not control over that, then you can’t attribute that (potentially unreasonable) behavior to him.
gwangung
@The Sailor: Doesn’t matter if Tamir had a toy or not.
You roll up 5-10 feet to someone you suspect have a gun, that’s just plain stupid; you’re asking to get shot.
gwangung
@Steve from Antioch:
You ignored what I wrote.
Go back and try again, because that was a pathetic attempt that’s an insult to my intelligence.
RSA
@efgoldman:
Wikipedia has it that Officer Loehmann’s former police boss (in Independence, where Loehmann had resigned rather than be fired) judged him to be “unable to follow ‘basic functions as instructed’.” Officer Garmback had cost the city of Cleveland $100,000 in an excessive force lawsuit earlier the same year.
It might have been predicted that things would go badly wrong at some point.
sharl
@Steve from Antioch: At this point, I’m fully convinced – by your grasping at straws and cherry-picking to find self-serving factoids – that you are throwing chaff and acting stupid in a willful manner. A real shame; I’ve seen glimmers of sincere engagement and thoughtfulness from you on occasion in the past. Maybe you or a loved one is an LEO, or you just hang out with them at a bar or whatever; I don’t know and wouldn’t find it terribly relevant in any case, beyond assessing the motivation of your behavior here.
Anyhoo, I’m ending this unproductive exchange now. Sleep well.
ruemara
@sharl: And still that motherfucker has never been the subject of a ranting blog post.
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
As long as you keep slinging your ‘blame the black kid for being dead’ hypothetical bullshit, I will keep responding.
Oh, and fuck your “thanks” passive aggressive bullshit.
It’s almost like triggers just pull themselves!!! Sneaky little things, aren’t they?
I see a huge scary black guy!! I’m out the door shoot him shoot him shoot him!!!!!!!!!
What ever the hell is wrong with you…you aren’t making it any better in here.
gwangung
@celticdragonchick: Heh. He seems to think police officers are unable to say, “Back up, you idiot! You’re gonna get me killed stopping here!”
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
Because his partner also reached across his lap, opened the door and then booted him out while yelling “Shoot the scary black man or we’re gonna diiiiiieeeeeee!!!!!!!!”, therefore, he had no fucking choice at all in anything he did.
Obviously.
celticdragonchick
@gwangung:
Steve is just so droll! You never know what he will come up with next…
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: No, you didn’t say he was brandishing. You just tossed the word out there. No real reason, right? The video is at the top of the thread. The kid was hold what looked like a gun in his hand in an open carry state and cop just rolled up and shot him without any investigation, questioning, or warning.
celticdragonchick
@Omnes Omnibus:
The fact that they actually reported him as approximately 20 years old (scary magical negroes get bigger when you are a cop!)makes that even worse, since he “hypothetically” (fuck you Antioch Steve) could have been entirely legally carrying.
Oh, that’s right…he’s black.
sharl
@ruemara: I thought that was you who brought that up here some time ago, and you were/are absolutely right.
NYT reporting on him was a good first step, but that second step – the step where Big Media commentators and so-called analysts on Morning Joe, the Sunday morning talk shows, etc. amplify selected news reports – well that step seems to have never happened. As usual, I guess it will take more skeevy police shootings of “respectable” white folk, with this demon justifying them in court, for him to get the attention he deserves.
In the meantime, I second your motion for a righteous rant on the guy, Cole is just the right guy to do it (although he may be suffering rage burnout at the moment).
Steve from Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus: If you think that an officer should view someone with a holstered weapon in the same way that they view someone walking around wit a firearm in their hand, then I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you get your mind right.
@gwangung: I’m not sure what you are arguing about.
Dr.McCoy
@Elizabelle: —-The only reason Obama would win is because of the lack, of competition.
No one in the field for 2016 is worth a hoot, except the Vermont Senator.
And 70% of the country can’t handle the truth.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: You haven’t watched the video, have you?
Steve from Antioch
@celticdragonchick: Did you used to post under the name mnemosyne? You seem to mimic her petulant, hyperventilating, facts be damned because I am ratcheting myself up in to a fine lather of righteous indignation, style of posting.
Steve from Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus: Look, you overstated your case and set you straight. Just move on and get over it.
OldDave
@Steve from Antioch:
Argues facts not in evidence.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: Dude, you are tossing out random hypotheticals about what may have happened. The actual video of what did happen is available. The hypotheticals are pointless wanking.
Steve from Antioch
@OldDave: Looks like you’ve been taking legal locution lessons from the Omnibus. Not a good idea.
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
No, I just happen to get along with her, even if I am one of the few liberal gun owners at BJ.
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
FTFY.
Start shooting before you ask any questions! Win!
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
By the by…you seem to be particularly fact challenged here since you keep arguing via hypothetical instead of engaging with the demonstrable facts of the case.
But do carry on.
Steve from Antioch
Tell me some more about these demonstrable facts. :)
amk
Shorter gun nuts like steve. We need the guns to fight against ebil gobinment. But heh, when the police comes for us, we will just piss in our pants and surrender our guns.
Steve from Antioch
@amk: Shorter gobshites like amk: I like to make stupid shit up and attribute it to people in comment threads. That way I get to feel really smart when I dispute their obviously ridiculous positions. WIN!
Lavocat
@A guy: Being roughly the same age, and having practiced law for roughly the same amount of time, I say it all the time to scumbags like you. So, go fuck yourself with a rancid dog dick, motherfucker.
celticdragonchick
@Steve from Antioch:
Watch the video and then read their report of what they said happened.
Does the phrase “Lie my ass off” have an meaning to you? How about “12 year old black kid becomes 8 to 10 years older and substantially larger and heavier” when cops see them…?
The kid was shot before the car even stopped moving. He never had a fucking chance to comply with the orders that they never actually gave.
Take your little smiley emoji and go jack off to some snuff porn. The fact that you keep arguing this and then top it off with that is freaking unspeakable.
Really, what the hell is wrong with you? I can’t even imagine what your malfunction is. I take back what I said earlier about challenging you: You are too damaged and too disturbing to engage with. Whatever fucked you up to make you the way you are now…I want nothing more to do with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@celticdragonchick: But what if he was charging the police car with a bastard sword while screaming “I’ll fucking kill you?”
Steve from Antioch
@celticdragonchick:
You are a silly goose. :-)
amk
@Steve from Antioch:
Keyboard Kommando Klowns like you are the first ones to fold in the face of real tyranny. All your word cloud here proves it. Enjoy your cowardice.
celticdragonchick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Steve would have some new quality jack off video.
Smiling Mortician
@Steve from Antioch: Seriously, just stop. You admitted upthread you don’t know much about the case, you’ve obviously not watched the video. Just fucking stop already.
Steve from Antioch
@Smiling Mortician: Oh, I’ve seen the video. i’ve also seen the portion of the video that precedes the excerpt above in which Rice is shown walking back and forth pointing the gun at things. Have you seen that one?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: At things?
And fuck it, the cops rolled up and shot the kid in seconds. No time to talk. Not time to question. No actual threat.
greennotGreen
@Steve from Antioch: I just watched that video, and you’re right, he was walking around and pointing the gun at things. Nevertheless, for a few minutes before the police drove up, he was sitting quietly at a picnic table. If the cops had acted professionally, they would have had time to observe him and determine he wasn’t a threat. After all, no one – not the 911 caller or dispatch reported “Shots fired,” did they? Yes, Tamir behaved unwisely – he was a kid. They do that. The fact that he ended up dead, though, is on the cops.
sharl
@Omnes Omnibus: Forget it, Jake. It’s Trolltown.
Omnes Omnibus
On another note, based on some of the commenters here earlier, Steve from Antioch should be banned as a troll. He is basically a troll in that he comes in with vaguely contrarian statements all the time. Where should Cole set the ban line? I am comfortable with where he has set it. Even with the shit mclaren says about me.
SWMBO
My son is disabled. He went completely mental when he was 12. Hormones raging and his disability made him unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. He heard command voices telling him to hurt himself or others. He would draw a finger across his throat like a knife and would say “I’m not going to kill myself, I’m just thinking about it.” It took several hospitalizations to get him to the point he’s at now. A 12 year old child is not capable in normal circumstances to react well. If my child was playing with a gun and cops rolled up on him, there is no telling what he would have done (especially if the voices told him to do it). He was picked up by the cops on more than one occasion (he was a runner too) and they never shot him, thank god. They knew he was more of a danger to himself than anyone else and they approached him with the intention of helping him. There is a world of difference in what they did to Tamir. They didn’t go into the situation with the intention of helping him.
Ruckus
I’ve placed a asshole and steve the shithead in the pie filter. Why you ask? Because both of them exhibit the behavior that you see here on every occasion that they show up. They both bring nothing important to any discussion they enter. We don’t need them to be banned, although that would make the threads shorter and would keep people from engaging them needlessly as well as not derail discussions. But it’s not my blog and I don’t make the rules, so in the pie filter they go.
So I ask, as I have before, if you know that someone is a complete asshole on every occasion and is trolling or just so stupid or useless as to stop any “productive” discussion, why in the hell do you engage them?
sharl
@RK:
Lots of people think Carson was saying exactly that. For example, I thought Jacob Bacharach’s piece in The New Republic – Ben Carson Is Wrong About the Holocaust: Jews Did Fight Back – did a pretty good job on that. Do you have some good link(s) that elaborate on your contrarian viewpoint (assuming you revisit this almost dead thread, of course)?
john gurley
@A guy: Whatever was going on with the kid’s hands, the officers entered the scene in a highly unprofessional way. They gave themselves zero chance of assessing the situation, simply thrust themselves into the middle of it. There was no hesitation, they just shot him down.
joel hanes
@Steve from Antioch:
So when guys walk into Starbucks with holstered pistols
Depends. The word missing from your scenario is “white” (it’s hidden in “guys”), and it makes all the difference
So when these black guys walk into Starbucks with holstered pistols …
do you think that would actually be allowed to happen, almost anywhere ?
That’s sorta the point. Young master Rice would be alive if he had had less pigment. Or better cops.
joel hanes
@Steve from Antioch:
my parents raised me right.
Well, they taught you gun safety anyway. Good job choosing your parents! You deserve to live.
Maybe Tamir Rice was less skillful at choosing his parents than you. For that he deserves to die ?
Matt McIrvin
@celticdragonchick: I just saw someone commenting in that vein about an incident in which someone called 911 because a woman had a serious bleeding cut, a police officer arrived on scene, the hurt woman’s dog charged at the officer, the cop tried to shoot at the dog and hit the woman’s 4-year-old daughter in the leg. The commenter explained that it was the woman’s fault for not keeping her dog under control and the officer was behaving completely reasonably, police have to deal with dangerous unpredictable situations, etc. etc. We’re in this situation in which people think it’s completely understandable that you have to treat a police officer like a rabid wild animal or an unexploded bomb.
AxelFoley
@A guy:
Go straight to hell, you sick fuck.
Seriously, Cole, why is this fucktard not banned?
lb22
@A guy: did they chew you out for being an awful lawyer, or an awful human being?
Craig
Lordy, some of you people need your medication adjusted.
Craig
@John Cole:
If comments seem to upset you so badly, then why do you allow comments? Or do you want only comments that you agree with? Seriously dude, chill out or you’re going to have a stroke.
Paul in KY
@Hungry Joe: You’d make a better cop than most of them. Not a fraidy cat, like they all seem to be.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: He filled out the application, without too many spelling errors & his uncle Larry recommended him…and he was white.
What more do you need?!
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: Sammy Weaver made some very bad choices by not surrendering when he saw what the Hell was happening. He was old enough (IMO) to be able to make the decision that I’m not going to walk around with a weapon, when the Feds are here in droves.
His mom was the crackpot who drove the whole thing.
Paul in KY
@Steve from Antioch: The cop was a coward. Whoever removed the orange end cap was reckless.
Paul in KY
@Plantsmantx: If so, then that’s murder 1 in my book.
TG Chicago
Others have mentioned it, but I was also offended by the investigator decrying “Monday morning quarterbacking”.
What the fuck does this investigator think they’re supposed to be doing? They need to review the incident/murder and decide whether the cops’ actions were legal and appropriate. Wanna call it “Monday morning quarterbacking”? I call it your motherfucking job, asshole.
That comment makes it clear that this “investigation” was a sham. They don’t even understand the purpose of an investigation!