@JoyAnnReid @nickveach Can there be congressional hearings on police activities instead politicized events? Real and serious.
— Susan K (@sck915) July 7, 2016
We’ve got a real and serious problem in this country, and it’s not the email server Hillary Clinton used during her Secretary of State gig. It’s not the urgent need to hold yet another completely symbolic vote to repeal Obamacare.
Perhaps our elected officials could hold hearings on the urgent matter of how police officers interact with black citizens — encounters that too often result in dead black citizens. Instead of grandstanding political bullshit, maybe they could review alternative policing tactics that might yield fewer deadly encounters between cops and citizens.
Just a thought — one that I’m sharing with my elected officials today. Half of them are shitheads, so it’s probably a waste of time. But damn. This situation has got to change.
Aimai
Thank you!
cokane
Only way to do that is to elect Dem House Reps and Senators. Seize this Trumportunity
D58826
From a times article. So just like all thing bad started on Jan. 20th 2009, then all security issues started the day Hillary became SOS. Nothing bad every happened under the Bush watch. Condi and Collin ran tight ships and never used private e-mails for state dept business. The Bushes never leaked misleading top secret information to Judy Miller about Saddam’s WMD program. The Bush WH never lost 4-5 million e-mails on a GOP server. And no one in the Bush administration leaked the name of a CIA operative. It all started on Jan 20th 2009.
There may well be valid criticisms of the state dept. security culture but why make it sound like Hillary invented it.
Why are Comey’s comments being treated as gospel? He has a twenty year ax to grind with the Clintons, he would like to run for gov. of NJ so has to keep the GOOPers happy. He has every incentive to ’embellish’ the facts. They keep talking about the one e-mail chain with ‘classified’ information in it but it seems the ‘classified’ information was an article in the Times about the drone program. Now at that pointy maybe the CIA still thought it was a secret but even the moon rocks had heard about it. How do you spell kangaroo court? Why don’t they just wear their Trump[ for president buttons and be done with it. Bush slept thru the summer of 2001 while the alarm bells were going off and was never treated this way. He and Chaney lied their way into the Iraq war and then sanctioned torture (a war crime) and they were treated as heroes and were re-elected. Trump is right the system is rigged but its rigged in favor of the GOP
JPL
There have always been police shootings, but I wonder if the lax gun laws, are adding to the problem. Already paranoid, officers now assume they are going to get shot. Shoot first, just in case seems to be the approach.
They have to increase the pay, and hire professionals.
@D58826: We live in strange times.
philpm
Unfortunately, they see no reason to hold hearings on something that entirely too many of them agree with.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Lax gun laws are absolutely part of the problem, but I think the focus has to be on the deeply racist framework that allows AR-15 toting white morons to waltz around town unmolested to make an idiotic point while black people who are unarmed or legally armed get killed. That’s the urgent issue, IMO.
peach flavored shampoo
Whoa….wait a minute. The cops aren’t doing anything wrong, by nature of them having a silver/gold medal thing on their chest. They’re not the problem; just ask pretty much any criminal jury, despite the clear video, the clear audio, and clear common sense. So please stop blaming the cops for finding all these dead black guys with mysterious holes in their bodies that somehow magically manifest during traffic stops and street corner music sales.
White lives who “mistakenly” shoot black lives dead somehow matter.
Pogonip
@JPL: didn’t PDs used to do testing on prospective employees to try to screen out people who are not best suited to making split-second life-or-death decisions? I had to make such a decision myself Friday night and let me tell you, I was shook up all weekend. It’s not for me. Might not be for a lot of the people who are paid to do it, either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Are conservative intellectuals speaking out about Baton Rouge or MN? If so, good on’em. I look forward to some actual proposals on reining in this particular brand of big government overreach, the kind that kills people. I have somewhere in my to-read pile a review of a new book by Heather MacDonald (IIRC) of I forget which Wingnut Welfare Institute on how we’ve got to stop picking on our Boys in Blue.
Elizabelle
I think a lot of it is a society awash in guns. Law enforcement is pulled from that segment; they and probably lots of peeps they know have guns, so they assume all of the general public does too.
I think the police are afraid of the public, but cannot say that out loud. I think Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown because he was afraid of him. Wilson started something he could not finish, except with a gun. And him in a car.
They don’t learn enough about de-escalating.
Plus: misreading of their mission: they’re guardians to serve and protect, not an occupying force.
Bush 43 pretty much got rid of community policing. It’s expensive, but it would be good with protecting, law enforcement and getting to know one’s potential homegrown terrorists.
And let’s be honest: a lot of communities do not cooperate with police — no one saw anything. Suspect it makes police cynical. They need to remember the good people they encounter, day after day after day. It’s protecting THEM that’s the mission.
Something’s gone really wrong, and thank Dog for cellphone footage or no one would believe all this crap.
Major Major Major Major
I don’t know. That sounds an awful lot like governance, which everybody knows is a communist plot to sap and impurity our precious freedumb.
Elizabelle
FYWP ate my comment. I am not going to waste my time typing up another.
FY WP.
celticdragonchick
Tips for black motorists who get pulled over:
1) Don’t make any sudden movements.
2) If possible, don’t move at all.
3) Try not to breathe.
4) However be sure to get your driver’s license when asked.
5) Just be sure to not use any movements to do so.
6) It’s best if you keep your driver’s license out in the open, levitating in the air, so they police officer can see it when you reach for it.
7) Scratch that, they’d shoot you for witchcraft.
8) Also, don’t talk.
9) But be sure to answer all of their questions.
10) Do everything the cop tells you.
11) Unless that requires talking/moving.
12) Don’t make eye contact (cops see that as an apparent threat).
13) But be sure to look them in the eye, otherwise you appear shifty.
14) And most importantly, never ever carry a licensed gun if you’re not white.
H/T TPM
bemused
No one would say a police officers job isn’t difficult, dangerous and stressful but it should be completely obvious there are just too damn many of these shootings, so many they blur together.
MattF
Except that ‘police officers interacting with black citizens’ is only the final step in a long series of steps. How are the police recruited and trained, how are the policies for recruitment and training determined? Who’s in charge? People no longer talk about ‘institutionalized racism’– somehow, that kind of talk became taboo. But that’s what’s happening.
Iowa Old Lady
The omnipresence of video is making the police treatment of African Americans much more obvious to white folks whose instinct is to trust the police. You’d think it would be hard to ignore.
rp
In one shooting yesterday, you have a cop firing straight down a point blank range into a suspect’s back. His gun was only inches from the ground and his partner.
In the other, you have a cop firing multiple shots into a car at point blank range with a child in the back seat.
Even if you completely removed the issue of race from these incidents, they demonstrate AMAZINGLY bad judgment and training.
RSR
Considering they won’t even allow research on guns as a health care issue, I’m not holding my breath.
It’s a viscous circle, their support for this racist system. I’m currently looking at the tweets of someone calling himself at ex-law enforcement officer and “Ph.D in Disaster Mgmt and Terrorism” who is complaining via twitter to our local transit police chief about POC exercising their rights via civil disobedience. Guy also referred to the house dems who participated in the sit-in as “Retards that failed out of special Ed!” and “They look like my hired help at my house!”
Elizabelle
Oh shit, I guess i will.
1) Society awash in guns. Law enforcement pulled from segment most likely to own them; they and their friends have plenty.
Law enforcement is afraid of all the guns out there, but cannot say that.
I think Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown because Wilson started something he could not finish. He was afraid of Brown, although he had a vehicle and could have withdrawn.
2) They don’t know how to de-escalate; it’s not practiced enough, apparently. Although it may be more accurate to say that it is the bad apples in law enforcement that don’t de-escalate. Lots of good officers out there, and the bad ones, and all the guns, imperil their lives and careers too.
Elizabelle
FYWP just ate another comment.
What is up with this?
FlipYrWhig
@D58826:
I don’t recall that Comey said anything about “inviting” anything. I thought it was conventional wisdom already that “foreign hackers” are everywhere probing everything all the time. I don’t see that the State Dept. under Clinton did anything to aggravate that situation — especially not when you look at some of the postmortems on the Comey presser, like the one at Wonkette, which appear to indicate that the devil-lady Clinton’s email exchanges were lackadaisical roughly… twice, or zero times, depending on how you count it.
rikyrah
Mother of Philando Castile:
And yet…
HE’S STILL DEAD
Emma
My decency barometer in these issues is my (very conservative) father. This morning when I walked into the kitchen he told me there had been another police shooting of a black man. I said I had heard about Baton Rouge and he said “you don’t understand, this is another one.” He looked shell-shocked. Sat there and couldn’t get a word out.
rikyrah
I’ll bring this over from the previous thread:
On a serious tip..
The reason why all you DRONES DRONES DRONES…
NSA SPYING ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE….
CIVIL LIBERTIES….BLAH BLAH BLAH….
Can miss me is because, in terms of my life as a Black person in America…..
I told you before… I don’t give two shyts about drones or NSA Spying..
the biggest threat to my PERSONAL security is an encounter with law enforcement..
RIGHT HERE EVERYDAY IN AMERICA.
rikyrah
Mr. Castile’s child, who saw her father murdered before her eyes…was FOUR YEARS OLD.
amk
@Betty Cracker: This.
FlipYrWhig
@MattF: IMHO it’s institutionalized racism mashed up with non-racists getting warped by the institutionalized paranoia that flows from our crazy gun culture. It’s like both of the nation’s original sins-qua-third rails braided up together.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
If white people have any doubts that they’re benefiting from unearned privilege, all of these shootings should eliminate it. Unfortunately, too many white people have no problem with this particular feature (not a bug) of the racist operating system that supports their unearned privilege. I just can’t understand it though – it’s absolutely heartbreaking hearing that little girl. I just can’t even anymore. I’m white and it’s hard to not hate white people for not treating this like the crisis it is.
amk
1st and 2nd. Great job, ‘Founders’.
Emma
Huh. The whatever is happening is spreading. I had edited my post but now part of it is missing.
TS
@rp:
How can you remove race from these “incidents” when it is black people being killed? If you removed race – these “incidents” would not exist.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: This might be what’s so irksome to me about my ‘civil liberties’ acquaintances, who tend to be white male gun-owning software developers. They only seem to care about it when it’s *their* civil liberties.
There are plenty of civil libertarians out there who actually care about these things, but it’s not these folks. The fact that they speak the same language just gives them cover to appear ‘reasonable’ when mostly they’re just selfish.
The worst, I’ve long thought, are the people who put tape over their laptop cameras. I should note that Comey is apparently one of these.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Emma:
Mr. Conster’s reaction to the Baton Rouge shooting was similar – he’s in no way conservative, but he’s a white guy who is continually being reminded (by me) how much he gets to take for granted every time he leaves the house. He was shocked. Today’s is somehow much worse. I don’t know – maybe the cell phone videos will make a difference to creating more woke white men. Things seen cannot be unseen.
Cermet
Comey is a right wing thug and a typical dick; that said, Hillary really did know better but her fear of the right wing nut jobs easily over rode all common sense and she made her own bed. She needs to chill out, admit the truth – she was careless – and say that she learned from her mistake and will not repeat this behavior. Also, Bill didn’t help matters. If he had stayed away from the attorney general to start with, I bet the report would first have gone through her office and she would have likely deleted those political comments by the dick director.
As for killing another black amerikan, when will people in this county admit that black lives don’t matter. Until then, people will deny, deny, and deny as more black men and children die at the hands of cops.
debbie
@JPL:
I think the problem is the lax use of guns, specifically on the law enforcement side. They need to go back to using non-lethal force, like shooting in the thigh. Law enforcement needs to review their training methods.
rp
@TS: You’re right, and I’m not trying to downplay the issue of race. My point is that even if you assume the cops’ motives are 100% pure, they’re completely incompetent.
I also think the horrible training and racism are all of a piece. The cops are taught to view themselves as soldiers patrolling hostile territory, and that their first priority is to come home safe. That combined with their view African Americans as inherently dangerous causes them to panic and reach for their gun as a first and last resort.
Humboldtblue
I’m not one to regularly link to Reason but before he left Bradley Balko was the only reason to read Hit and Run and now Brian Doherty covers the regular police abuses that occur every single day in this country. As he so simply put it in an earlier post — I stress this a lot, because it always seems important. We have far too many stupid reasons for police/citizen interactions to happen to begin with.
pseudonymous in nc
What kind of training and protocol is going to stop a significant and deadly minority of white cops from going batshit? Drug testing for steroids? Widespread consolidation of police forces?
Where are the non-batshit cops to speak up against this?
Locking some fucking cops up would make a difference. I don’t care if they panicked and fucked up, you lock them up so that the next one doesn’t happen.
Ella in New Mexico
Fucking Jason Chaffetz just announced he will be requesting the FBI investigate Hilary for lying under oath to Congress.
Seriously, why not just make shit up and command they start investigating that, too? Keep it going for years and years while cops kill our brothers and sisters at will and our roads and bridges crumble and the economy tanks and the Zika virus creates millions of neuro-impaired human beings.
This shit will never end unless we take back both the House and Senate.
BR
Every time this happens my suggestion is the same — the money paid out in settlements for police violence needs to come out of the budget for bonuses and perks for the brass, not out of the city general fund. They need to have skin in the game.
Major Major Major Major
@Humboldtblue:
What are we supposed to do, just let black people drive around with broken tail lights? Everybody knows that’s a gateway infraction to broken headlights, which lead to drug addiction and murder.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: It’s like rikyrah and hovercraft said in the other thread–those laws are for white people.
It’s the unspoken subtext in statements like “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The assumption is that you can easily tell who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. Why would it be so easy to tell, just by looking? One guess what they’re thinking.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
At some level the whole gun-rights gun lobby agenda is designed to allow white supremacists to stockpile weapons for the coming race war. This is the underbelly of the gun lobby that’s sort of lying below the surface, but no one wants to bother to investigate. Larry Pratt, founder of Gun Owners of America (GOA), a gun lobby set-up because they feel the NRA are a bunch of liberal squishes, got kicked off of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 Presidential campaign staff because he was palling around to too closely with white supremacists for Pat’s taste. There’s probably other areas of overlap, but that’s the one that comes readily comes to mind.
You never hear a gun lobby group bemoan “jack-booted” thugs, when blacks get killed by cops. But there was a lot of rumbling about government overreach, when the Bundy Boys took over the wildlife refuge in Oregon.
pseudonymous in nc
@Humboldtblue:
There are too many cops with too much time on their hands, too many police departments, too many bullshitty interactions designed as pretexts for other shit. See a broken tail light and actually give a shit about it? Your car has a camera: take some footage, run the plate, send a fucking ticket to the registered owner.
rikyrah
My heart breaks for her.
“Even when we do everything right, the cops still murder us.”-Philando Castile’s mother.
#PhilandoCastile
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) July 7, 2016
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: The ‘invited’ was the comment in the NY Times. And yes hackers have been going after gov’t computers for as long as there have been hackers. They have hacked into DOD servers. So why dump on Hillary about a lax security culture at the state dept. That also ignores the repeated budget cuts pushed by the GOP that prevents any of the agencies from upgrading their computer systems. BUT IT’s ALL HILLARY’s FAULT, except WHEN IT”S OBAMA’s. (caps intentional). combination of snark anger and disgust.
Maybe Sarandon is right (only I’d expand it to Hillary or Bernie) . It would be better to have Trump win. Since so many people are willing to buy into the GOP nonsense maybe it’s time they get to live it. Why should the people of Kansas have all of the fun. Brownbeck for everyone.
rikyrah
#PhilandoCastile’s girlfriend: Police lied about which hospital he’d been taken to.
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 7, 2016
Martha
@rikyrah: As an older middle aged white woman, all I can say is I agree. All other words right now seem utterly trite. I understand all the humanitarian arguments for international everything, but sometimes, I really really really wish all the do-gooders and scolds would focus their time, energy, money, and political capital at home, to make our community a better place.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: Yeah, I know, I wasn’t finding fault with you, rather trying to ride your coattails and amplify what you were already saying. I don’t see any basis for the NYT to say that the lax culture of whatever “invited” anything. I don’t think Comey either said or even implied such a thing.
D58826
@Ella in New Mexico: If Hillary wins in Nov. the first order of business in the 2017 House will be an impeachment hearing. To put it bluntly I think we are in less danger from Daesh inspired terrorists than we are from the GOP
Humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major: You make good points but miss the giant white elephant in the room. Black people driving cars with a broken tail light and who may have a small amount of weed in the car (ignore the 4-year old in the back seat, she’s a thuglet in training is only headed for a life on welfare) equals vicious black drug dealer who will in an instant shoot a cop dead the moment that brave officer steps to the window of the car.
Happens every day.
Ella in New Mexico
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/07/06/police-officer-involved-shooting-in-falcon-heights/
But he didn’t say “Please, sir, Mother May I take my wallet out of my pocket like you just asked me to??
He broke game rules, didn’t obtain additional permission, even to the most obvious request. He loses.
A whole lotta fucking trigger-happy, scared as shit pussies in uniform these days…
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: True but I think he did talk about the lax security culture at state.
MattF
@D58826: Hilz is presumed guilty. House R reaction to Comey’s statements demonstrates they truly expected an indictment and a perp walk.
lamh35
SON OF A BITCH!
Apparently a homeless man called the police on Alton Sterling because he wouldn’t give him money !!!!
if time the police department learns to not go in guns ablaze…not everyone who calls 911 do so for legitimate reasons and yes some could be lying!!! that’s why they are supposed to be trained to de escalate!!!
link
Mnemosyne
@TS:
I know what rp is saying, though — even if you remove race from the equation, these cops’ actions are still frighteningly reckless. But because of race, those incredibly reckless actions are going to be dismissed by people who say stupid shit like, You weren’t there! You don’t know what it was like! so they don’t have to think about the fact that one man was shot in the back while he was pinned down and the other was shot while following the cop’s instructions.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: IIRC he said that there was a lax culture and that hackers exist even when they aren’t obviously detected, but he didn’t say that that lax culture invited hackers (a phrase that’s starting to remind me of the Bush-era “embolden the terrorists”).
Iowa Old Lady
@MattF: I don’t understand why they hauled Comey in so quickly. They gave themselves no time to even read the report, much less pick out their points and confer about how to most effectively make them.
I expect Cummings and his colleagues have been working frantically to get their act in order.
hovercraft
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
Sadly, this is probably why cops get away with this stuff in front of juries — it really was a stupid mistake on the cop’s part, and the jury feels sorry for him despite the fact that the cop’s stupid mistake meant that a 4-year-old girl had to see her father shot to death right in front of her.
MattF
@Iowa Old Lady: Kevin Drum notes that House Rs are breaking the first rule of cross-examination– Never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@rikyrah: Yes exactly this. Edward Snowedem is the epitome of white privilege along with his fellow travelers.
D58826
If the g-dm Congress critters want to investigate something maybe they start by reading this report. Bush and Blair lied. period. end of story. full stop. Both are war criminals. Nobody died because of Hillary’s d***M e-mail server. But its ok because a GOOPER did it.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Governor Dayton just released a statement asking the Justice Department to start an investigation immediately, wants to see justice served. So, good for him.
Shell
Facts? who needs any stinking facts? The repubs already had their talkng points at the ready.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: I know that when I want hackers, I always invite them.
Of course, for me that’s called brunch. Maybe these folks mean something else.
JPL
@debbie: I agree with all the comments made.
@rikyrah: That is so sad, and I didn’t realize how old she was. Her dad did everything right, and he was still shot.
JPL
I had to run a few errands, and haven’t watched any of the interrogation of Comey. Are the repubs going to indict Hillary for being a Clinton?
Dead Right
“Investigate the investigation”, classic ’90s playbook.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Betty Cracker:
Sometimes police shootings are racist, most often, they’re not.
I see it as a really ugly combination of “broken window” policing gone amok, an institutional culture of “blue before you”, shitty training and an extreme prolifieration of duty sidearms that were initially developed for military use as opposed to sidearms designed for civilian use (like the reliable tried and true .357 revolver).
Northridge was over 20 years ago, and bigass shootouts with militarily armed perpetrators are still vanishingly rare. The problem is that we’re handing relatively law caliber semiautos with a very light trigger pull and practically no recoil to suburban, small town and village cops in low-adrenaline policing environments. In that environment, it is VERY easy for the most mundane action to be misinterpreted, and that hair trigger is the cherry atop the sundae, with multiple pulls easy to do until the target is “down”. If forced back into the revolver, the trigger is harder to pull on that first round, which buys split seconds of reaction time and can prevent a disaster.
I got no problem with them keeping everything from riot guns to full auto weapons in the trunk – I just don’t want their interactions at the initial level to be with military grade sidearms.
rikyrah
And about Alton Sterling..
As the New York Daily News pointed out on their front page…
HE.DID.NOT.HAVE.A.GUN.IN.HIS.HANDS.
So, where’s the threat from Mr. Sterling?
The threat that warranted his execution.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
At this point I’m not even really trying to. (Not hate (millions of) white people).
ETA: I’m also white.
gwangung
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I think part of the problem is thinking the latter precludes it being racist. The problem is that broken window policing is inherently racist and its application is racist.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
If I remember from my days helping domestic violence victims, wasn’t that statement an “excited utterance” which could be used as evidence that he knew he did the wrong thing? If not in a criminal trial, at least in a civil trial?
rikyrah
@Ella in New Mexico:
I’ve been Black in America longer than 3 days.
I don’t believe the officer – AT ALL.
I believe the girlfriend.
Philando did exactly as the officer told him to do – BECAUSE HE WANTED TO GO HOME ALIVE.
You all can believe that bullshyt if you want to that he’d disobey what the police officer said and went for a GUN.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
hovercraft
@Emma:
Last night we had two threads the gremlins were eating all the posts, so this is an improvement, Adam e-mailed Alain the site fixer to look into it today.
Quinerly
@JPL:
Josh Marshall’s TPM has some nice short pieces up. House Repugs now want hearings on Petraus’s guilty plea. I kid you not.
Ella in New Mexico
@lamh35:
Perhaps this tactic could work as a means to get rid of a few shitty Republican House and Senate members….
No, I jest. Really I do. No kills. Maybe just a rough up…
Emma
@rikyrah: To me it sounds liked the second man is trying to remind the first of his proper lines. It’s a script and the first guy blew the take.
Betty Cracker
@gwangung: That rings true to me. We can’t wave a magic wand and cure racism, but there are policing tactics used in other countries (and perhaps in some municipalities here in the US) that focus on deescalating confrontations, where the measure of success isn’t immediate citizen compliance but citizen safety. Perhaps we could start there.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I’m going to talk a minute about shitty training.
The emphasis (particularly for suburban and village departments) should be toward defensive placement and scripted commands. Instead, they rush up to the window in the hopes of catching sight of some bit of evidence of other offense.
My take is that the officer should stand a few feet back from the rear window post at about a 45 degree angle, hand on pistol on hip. First command is to roll down the window, second inquiry is whether any occupant of the vehicle is armed. If the response is negative, approach the window. If positive, calmly inquire as to the location of the weapon, and ask the occupant closest to it to exit the car while keeping the hands in plain sight, and to allow you to secure the piece before further interaction.
This is the world that the NRA has made, and this is the only way to safeguard all those lives that we claim matter, both blue and black.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@JPL: I watched a cop, on live TV, walk over to a handcuffed suspect and put three rounds in his head.
This was 1986.
He’d killed a cop, but we have a process for justice and executions in this country – and the police have always ignored that. This isn’t new, and has nothing to do with ease of access to guns, and everything about “disrespecting mah authoritah!”
No charges were filed, no investigation launched, in spite of what several hundred thousand Southern California TV viewers saw.
celticdragonchick
@Ella in New Mexico:
Oh yes, I have already seen the victim get blamed for not merely showing his CCW along with his DL instead of verbally informing the officer he had a CCW. Obviously that means he had to die.
celticdragonchick
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Christ, I remember something about that. Who the hell got shot?
Ella in New Mexico
@rikyrah: I believe the girlfriend, too, Hon.
And it’s breaking my heart. Cuz I can’t tell you how many times my white husband or I have been pulled over and were already digging out the damn licenses and registration and insurance cards and if he wanted to the cop could have decided we were pulling out a gun on him.
But he didn’t. Mostly because, I think, we still live in a relatively sane part of the US. But deep down inside, I know it really could have been different. And I am fucking sick of this shit.
celticdragonchick
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
No, the NRA did a lot of things but they did not make that.
Cops have been scared of magical, super powered baby eating radioactive mutant African Americans for 175 years. (I would say 400, but we have only had actual “cops” for about 175 years)
There is plenty of social science research on cop reactions to pictures of African Americans. It isn’t good.
Capri
@D58826: I see the Chilcoat mess as part of the long arc of justice. Sooner or later, crimes of the magnitude of what Bush/Blair did come out and are seen for what they really are. It’s too bad nobody in either government didn’t address this sooner, but sooner or later in some guise it was going to come out.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Whyever would they read the report? Heavens, it might temper their righteous indignation.
D58826
State has released two of the e-mails that the great and powerful Comey said were classified. Only they were mislabeled as classified. Wonder if Comey is going to call a press conference to say oops. He also got caught exaggerating the many phones/servers comment.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
They want to strike while the iron is hot, right now the media is OUTRAGED at the “Clintons” ability to get away with ‘skirting the rules, riding the rail between legal and illegal’ and never having to pay a penalty for it. The media is mad that every time they buy into the gop’s narrative that this is the time the “Clintons” are going to go down, they get off ‘scot free’. Homework is for suckers, a good prosecutor knows that it doesn’t matter if you prove your case, in the end if you’ve won the news cycle you’ve won the battle of perception. Casting a taint on Hillary is the goal at this point, she already got off so smearing her is all they have left. Maybe they’ll haul her back to testify again seeing as it went so well last time.
D58826
in moderation again because of a link. what am i doing wrong??
tsquared2001
@rikyrah: True that. I couldn’t two shits about drones, the NSA – I seriously got other shit on my mind
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Democratic governors are smart enough to know that not calling in the DOJ is political malpractice, it would damage them with their base, and to give them credit it is the right thing to do. Countdown till the Police Union and the PBA start giving their victim blaming press releases and pressers.
Diana
you just don’t get it, do you? The “silent majority” thinks this is perfectly OK. (Of course, the “silent majority” consists of extremely vocal old straight white guys, who are “silent” and represent the “majority” only in the fantasy world they imagine they live in…)
anyhow, gin & tacos has the most perfect takedown of the people who are just fine with the cops shooting innocent black men:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2016/07/05/jim-ruth-gets-the-fjm-treatment/
says it better than I ever could.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I also just can’t help but feel that if this man, legally carrying with a permit, was white, the NRA would have the lawsuit already filed in the Alexandria Federal Courthouse at opening this morning.
Lax gun laws are for whites only.
D58826
comment w/o the links – state has released two of the e-mails that the great and powerful Comey said were classified. Only they were mislabeled as classified. Wonder if Comey is going to call a press conference to say oops. He also got caught exaggerating the many phones/servers comment. original post is on kos.
The thing is demand as many documents as you can get away with. Then complain that need more because of what you found in the first batch. rinse repeat. closest thing we will ever see to a perpetual motion machine
MattF
Somewhat OT. Der Trump met with House members, was asked if he’d defend Article 1 of the Constitution:
The Constitution has seven Articles.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MattF: Shit, it’s a rule for direct examination too, but most trial attorneys figure that one out. Emphasis on most, because I’ve seen some get carried away and go off the planned track.
But asking a question you don’t know the answer to on cross is like driving into extreme weather – you may get out fine, or you could get blown away. It’s often worth the risk, but you’d best be competent to evaluate the risk. I’m not sure House R reps are…
Punchy
You, uh…do know…that he was…uh…of a darker complexion, right? Pretty much the reason for each and every shooting. Dark skin blends so well with dark guns, or perceived or made-up ones. Makes everything so scary and stuff.
What Internet Law is coined for when snark so approaches reality that the two become indistinguishable? Cuz upon reflection, I think my comment is damn close.
low-tech cyclist
Here’s a simple proposal (that I’m gonna put in a letter to my Congresscritters):
The Federal government should require police departments to fill out a form any time a civilian dies in the course of an interaction between police and civilians, giving the who-where-what-when-why-how, including (a) name, age, sex, and race of the victim and of the police officer who ended his life, (b) the date, time, and location of the fatal encounter, (c) why there was an encounter in the first place, and (d) the nature of the apparent immediate threat to the officer or others by the victim that made the officer react with lethal force.
These forms would be public documents, available to anyone with Web access.
Failure or unwillingness to fill out such a form by a police department would result in the sanction of their being denied access to all Federal criminal databases, and loss of any direct Federal aid they might otherwise be in line to receive.
Such a measure shouldn’t be controversial. And just knowing that these deaths are being kept track of would probably make police a bit more circumspect about settling matters with guns.
MattF
@Punchy: Poe’s law.
GregB
IN contemporary conservative logic, all government is tyranny that is constantly over reaching and will destroy all citizens and must be resisted at all times, especially with weapons in the spirit of the Second Amendment unless you are an African-American and then you must instantly comply with all branches of the government instantly and unquestioningly and if you don’t comply you will be murdered and that death cannot be questioned without insulting the very foundation of America.
ruemara
@JPL: Philando Castile had a carry permit and was complying with the guidelines for disclosing to an officer during a stop. He wasn’t even the driver of the car, he was the passenger. Stop using the myth that guns are why cops feel unsafe. They are terrified of black men first, black women second. They face angry, belligerent, murderous white men without fear and arrest them. They MURDER black people within seconds based on feeling “fear”.
Hal
The thing that struck me the most about that interview Darrin Wilson gave in The New Yorker is how he clearly did not see Michael Brown as a person. Not to mention his talk of Brown as this inhuman creature with the strength to kill him with a punch. I think this sentiment is repeated over and over again in police all across the country. This is especially true when you have white, suburban dwelling cops who come into neighborhoods of color to police and then go back home to their comfy planned communities at night. Until these people stop seeing themselves as soldiers heading to a war zone in their day to day jobs, these killings are not going to stop.
Patricia Kayden
The witch hunt is NOT going all that well for Rethugs. Stephanie Miller played a few clips from their questioning of Comey this morning, and he said unequivocally several times that while Secretary Clinton was careless, nothing she did was criminal.
Give it up, Rethugs, and find something productive to do with your time and resources. And with tax payers’ money.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
President Trump will bring you Americans a YOOOGE and CLASSY new Constitution with more and better Articles!
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: Kind of ironic that they don’t shoot first unless it’s a Black gun owner, ain’t it? Then all of a sudden they feel “threatened”.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Amen.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: And speaking of Poe’s law, I wouldn’t dare make up that quotation.
Shell
Theres a saying “The mills of the gods grind slow but they grind exceedingly small.” I don’t know if I believe that anymore.
D58826
so Comey is now saying Hillary isn’t smart enough to understand the meaning of the words classified. The Marx brothers would not have come up with anything this stupid.
hovercraft
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Oh via TPM, we may have a Petreaus hearing in our future.
celticdragonchick
@ruemara:
This. They arrest white guys with guns all the fucking time. It is RACE...not the presence of guns. If we had not one privately owned gun in America, black men would still be getting shot because of the possibility he had a knife, or his hand was too close to the officer and he might go for the officer’s gun, or looked like he wanted to charge or…fuck it. I’m so damned mad right now I don’t even know what to do.
rachel
@rikyrah: New Video Emerges of Alton Sterling Being Killed by Baton Rouge Police
Apologies if this was posted already. I’m not gonna watch it, but some of you all may want to.
chopper
@hovercraft:
how about a hearing on chaffetz dropping some classified info in a public hearing? that would be nice.
MattF
@hovercraft: And, just coinkidentally, Comey states that he is ‘no longer’ a registered Republican. Hmm.
hovercraft
@D58826:
Here is the text of his testimony I assume you are referring to. Via TPM
celticdragonchick
@Shell:
There is nothing in history that I know of that would support that saying. The strong victimize who they can and they usually get away with it.
hovercraft
@chopper:
I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain Representative E. Cummings has that land mine laying in wait for Chaffetz to step on during any such hearing.
rachel
@hovercraft: If Chaffetz doesn’t step on a rake first.
hovercraft
Now Comey is just being mean to the GOP
hovercraft
The gremlins keep eating my words. Testing, testing, 123
scav
@celticdragonchick: The claims that the mills work on geologic time plus the creation of heaven as an accounting gimmick to balance the books helps comfort the willing to be comfortable crowd. See also the hereafter as a hustle.
hovercraft
Okay let try this again.
via TPM
hovercraft
@MattF:
Based on his comment in my last post about Petreaus this morning, if he was still a republican before today he would have been excommunicated after this morning. His assessment of this great generals behaivior is scathing.
Geeno
@shomi: So the first rule of Emailgate is don’t talk about Emailgate?
rikyrah
@ruemara:
tell that truth.
rikyrah
@rachel:
I will not watch it either.
John Weiss
@Iowa Old Lady: I’m a ‘white folk’ and I trust the po-lice about as far as I could throw one.
Bostonian
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yeah, pretty much. This man was just murdered in cold blood by an agent of the state for exercising 2nd Amendment rights. If the NRA doesn’t send lawyers after this one, they’re showing pretty clearly what the real gig is.
My Truth Hurts
“Perhaps our elected officials could hold hearings on the urgent matter of how police officers interact with black citizens — encounters that too often result in dead black citizens. Instead of grandstanding political bullshit, maybe they could review alternative policing tactics that might yield fewer deadly encounters between cops and citizens.”
Well said. I’m calling my congress people and urging everyone I know to do the same.
D58826
@John Weiss: I’m an old white folk also. And I second that. I was just out of college (1969) waiting to pick up my sister at the local mass transit hub. I was with the car, it was 9pm on a Friday night, not another car in sight. I was parked in a spot that everyone and his uncle used as a drop off/pick up spot. Cop came up and told me to move. When I tried to explain why I was there he informed me he was going to teach me some respect. So I got a ticket. He also taught me that maybe the African American folks had a point.
I guess I got the last laugh because my sister’s BFF in high school Dad was a commander on the police force and he took care of the ticket. I did have the presence of mind to note the cops badge number.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Betty Cracker:
There’s a dark part of my personality that’s starting to think that the whole purpose behind pushing open carry was to make the police even more likely to shoot not-white people.
celticdragonchick
@Bostonian:
I think it is possible the NRA will get involved. This was so fucking egregious that right wing sites are taking notice.
-ly Ballou
@GregB: This is what Billmon, formerly of Whiskey Bar, calls herrenvolk libertarianism.
Linnaeus
@John Weiss:
This was a common sentiment in my family as well. I suspect it’s class related to some extent.
Arclite
THe media is a big reason the actual problems with our country don’t get addressed, because they never get coverage, so it’s hard for the population to keep the outrage going. In the case of policing, however, the “If it bleeds, it leads” news maxim works in favor of keeping the spotlight on this issue.
Betty Cracker
Police academies spend 110 hours on firearms and self-defense training and 8 hours on conflict management. Could that be part of the problem? Maybe!
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: The most iron-clad of my father’s rules was: “Don’t do anything to bring the cops to my house.” But we didn’t live in fear of cops killing us; we merely wanted to avoid the unpleasantness, expense and inconvenience of legal hassles. It’s not in the same universe as what black folks of any income bracket experience, IMO.
retr2327
@D58826: It’s not clear why you think these were “mislabeled” as classified. Kagan, at Slate, explains that all discussions with foreign leaders are considered classified (regardless of how innocuous, trivial, etc.). So these emails might legitimately be “classified,” but also exemplify how absurd the classification system is. Kagan’s conclusion is that none of the “classified” information at issue (the other topic was drone strikes, officially top secret but hardly news to anyone) presented the slightest actual risk to national security. It’s worth checking out for your rabid but still rational Republican friends wondering how Hillary could be so “extremely careless” with “secrets.”
Oh, and one more rant while we’re at it: Chafetz, that festering putz, was yammering on again about Hillary not using the State Dep’t’s official email system for these discussions, as if that would have been more secure. But the official system isn’t secure either: no classified information is supposed to be discussed on that system either. He’s intentionally conflating two different issues (a: should Hillary have used a non-official account, because doing so increases likelihood that official conversations will not be preserved as required; and b: was classified information improperly discussed on ANY non-secure system, which would include an official, but non-secure, DOS account) in order to make the conduct seem much worse than it actually is.
sunny raines
might as well cut to the chase – republicans control the media most Americans get their information from. Big Media (including all corporate media, not just fox) carries water for the racist, bigoted republican/conservatives that obfuscate and frustrate all “real and serious” conversations needed by most Americans to first understand the problems facing the society and then address them.
There can be no addressing the problems facing American society until Big Media is broken up.
Linnaeus
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, I’m definitely not saying that it is. What I am saying is that I suspect that the “lower” you go on the SES scale, relative to other white Americans, you are likelier to have more negative interactions with the police and have more suspicion of the police (again, relative to other white Americans). Just a conjecture, mind you.
eclare
@BR: Don’t forget money coming out of police pension funds…
sukabi
@Ella in New Mexico: the Dems need to start holding “hearings” on all the security breaches, other self-serving and illegal, immoral things each of the GOPers have been up to these last several years instead of doing their damned jobs.
Cluttered Mind
So I’ve noticed black people in this country seem to have a problem surviving being pulled over by police, sometimes even getting shot while complying with the request to show their IDs. Officers seem to think that any sort of movement on the part of the black person, even movement directly ordered by the officer, is cause to fear for their life and respond with deadly force.
A modest proposal, then:
Instead of driver’s licenses, perhaps all black people in this country should be given easy to display forms of ID that do not require them to reach into any sort of pocket to show to the police? Recording their license number in a tattoo on their arm should do the trick nicely. Problem solved, right?
eclare
@lamh35: As I said in a previous thread, I will never, ever call the police unless I see someone literally drag someone else away at gunpoint.
Mnemosyne
@Cluttered Mind:
In blue ink, yes?
Even better, we can give all black people nice identification badges they can wear on their clothing at all times. Perhaps in a nice, cheerful color like yellow! It’s for their own protection, after all.
//
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
I was (pleasantly) surprised that the murder of John Crawford caused quite a stir in some gun-loving circles, especially since Ohio is an open-carry state (for white people).
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: I think you’re right, and I didn’t mean to imply that YOU were implying, etc. On a related topic, it’s also dismaying how much law enforcement has begun to resemble a shake-down racket that disproportionately affects the poor (and therefore even more disproportionately falls on black people). That was one of the things that struck me about the post-Ferguson investigations into how that city was run. I suppose it’s a natural consequence of the wingnut mania to defund government.
eclare
@celticdragonchick: This, one thousand times. You have idiot white guys in OCT go to Starbucks, Targets with their guns slung over their backs. And look at the huge biker fight in TX, no one was shot. Full disclosure: middle age white lady who is disgusted by this. And I don’t live in TX, if they want to secede, I say let them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne: All open carry states are only open carry for white people, of course. You know that, but let’s recall how gun control began in CA – the shitty grade Z movie star was all askeered of Panthers engaging in legal open carry. That couldn’t stand. You know that too, I know, so I’ll shut up now.
Elizabelle
@sunny raines:
Agreed. They are both a cause and a symptom, and do us no good.
VFX Lurker
Ijeoma Oluo on what actions people can take:
https://mobile.twitter.com/IjeomaOluo/status/750932797963898880
Betty Cracker
@VFX Lurker: Excellent advice.Thank you for passing it along.
Mr. Mack
Former police officer here. I attended the LAPD academy when it was still quasi military in structure. Since I was in the Army, I was accustomed to being yelled at from morning formation till the end of the day. From your first day, ALL DAY every day…the emphasis is on staying alive. There was no conflict resolution taught whatsoever. Self-defense and tactics ruled each day. The academy does instill fear in young recruits, but it is not generally about any one particular race or ethnicity. The trouble starts in the rank and file, where a siege mindset settles in quickly. The thin blue line is very real…calling out a fellow officer who displays racist tendencies can and does get officers killed. It just is not done. I did not last long, brutality was rampant and I could not stomach it. Years later, I was sitting in the Nashville Police Headquarters waiting to interview the top dog. I was leafing through a police magazine and it was chalk full of ads for personal safety gear, with Mexicans (and other brown people) portrayed as killers in waiting. The whole system is wrong, top to bottom. It may take decades to change, but I tell young people that this is the number one domestic issue they face.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: Sad, but true. LOLed at the witchcraft one.
Paul in KY
@shomi: For once, a decent point.
Paul in KY
@gwangung: Agree with your comment. ‘Broken Windows’ is targeted at minorities & is racist, IMO.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: They should NEVER have their hand on the pistol grip when they 1st come to see you (assuming they are not pulling over a known criminal on the run).