I still, for the life of me, can not figure out why they did this. Why did they have to have him out of the damned truck. he wasn’t who they were looking for, he was in his truck minding his own business, and they dragged him out and shout him. He didn’t do anything threatening. His hands were at his sides. North Carolina is an open carry state. The cops were undercover. He probably thought he was being jacked or something.
There was literally no reason for them to do this. They could have easily backed up, secured the area, calmed down, assessed the situation, and de-escalated. There is no reason for this. None.
If anyone in the military behaved like this anywhere in the world, they would be court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and probably sent to Leavenworth. There would be a thorough review of training policies, and tens of thousands of man hours would go into making sure something like this doesn’t happen again.
Now the cops are making a big deal about the blunt they found. This is the picture they released:
I didn’t know whether to laugh and roll my eyes or just cry when I saw that. I bet if you fucking scroll back the douchebag will be wearing a hazmat suit. It’s not even a half gram of weed. I haven’t smoked pot in, well, a while, and that’s not even enough to get a person high. Maybe a mild buzz and a craving for a milkshake. They wouldn’t even prosecute this- a half ounce (that’s 14 grams for you squares) gets you a $200 fine. It’s a class 3 misdemeanor, which, btw, just to remind you, is not punishable with the death penalty. They’d most likely just make you shred it in front of them if they caught you with it.
I mean, we’ve all heard the phrase “killer weed,” but they don’t mean it literally. But now, because a bunch of hotheads with gun and a badge killed a man for no reason, this pitiful joint (it’s a shitty roll, too, if that matters) is now causus belli for a public execution. And they didn’t even know he had it. And they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t fucked up and rolled up like fucking commandos on a dude at a bus stop waiting for his kid to come home from school.
RepubAnon
Train the police to be super-aggressive and scream at people, and this is the result. When people are frightened, they freeze. Why do the police trainers think that acting in a way that frightens people, and then tasing or shooting them for failure to comply, is an effective tactic?
P.S.: Screaming “drop the gun” should not be a defense for manslaughter or murder.
Frankensteinbeck
John, you know how this works. The weed isn’t worth killing him. It’s the shred of confirmation racists – including ‘polite’ racists like most national journalists – need to conclude Lamont fits their imagined ‘scary criminal’ profile. Once he qualifies as a scary criminal, who can blame the police for acting rashly? And he’s already 99% there by being black.
Villago Delenda Est
Charlotte PD is not much better than a uniformed street gang at this point.
Brachiator
@RepubAnon:
Cops have learned to use this to justify the claim that they were in fear for their life, even if it later turns out that no gun was present.
singfoom
Watched the video and his wifes. Still can’t understand how a man shuffling backwards slowly with his hands at his sides is any threat. I also don’t understand why the hell he did what he did. I agree, seems like they shot him for no good reason.
Adam L Silverman
How did you get that to embed? Every time I try to embed a video that isn’t Youtube I get no where with it.
Peale
Why not release the full video and get it over with? Clearly they didn’t see the pot and it made no difference in their decision to shoot him. They can’t both claim that they had superior vision and could spot a little weed but couldn’t see what he had in his hand so they had to shoot him. Selective eagle eye vision? We know if he had anything in his hand at all…or if he just had hands…that they’ll get two weeks desk duty before they are exonerated. So just get the damn video out there and get or over with rather than pissing off the already pissed off.
opiejeanne
Is that supposed to be the inside of his vehicle? That is the cleanest floor I’ve seen in a car/truck/SUV unless it’s just come from a fancy carwash.
Funny how the story keeps changing, the way it does when someone is lying and the liar is refining the lie.
magurakurin
It seems like their level of training is shockingly low. And does the one cop say “you on?,” and the respond “I don’t know?” with a very worried voice? are they talking about their cameras?
smintheus
If Lamont had posed any kind of actual threat, or even a perceived threat, those cops in front of the dashcam would not have been wandering around looking away from him for several seconds at a time. Stupid and incompetent cops.
opiejeanne
@Peale: There are grainy, enlarged photos showing up online purporting to show a gun in his hand or on the ground, and an ankle holster; these photos are of such poor quality that I can’t make out anything they claim to show but they are being waved around as proof of something. Really depressing.
Then there’s the police chief’s idiotic comment about wanting to be transparent but not completely transparent. Eh?
hitchhiker
Huh. This cop didn’t have any fear response to a loaded gun pointed right at him. Better training or some other factor??
http://www.cbs58.com/story/32512083/west-allis-man-points-gun-at-police-officer-in-dispute-over-lawn#.V7E9d-ImXmU.facebook
Ruckus
John, we all know that the cops have been hiding behind that thick blue line for ever and they get support from the pants pissers among us. Were cops this afraid when they carried a 6 shot revolver and a night stick? None of the ones that I knew were, yet today they carry a 9mm or .40 cal semi auto pistol with about 40-45 rounds, a tazer, a night stick or huge metal flashlight, mace, a shotgun and an assault rifle in the car, personal communications, body armor……. Now granted a lot more people are armed than there were 40 or more yrs ago, but fewer cops are getting killed, crime is down significantly (except for people being killed by cops), when they show up – they show up in force.
It’s as if the world is upside down or the police all think like Bush/Cheney and their cronies, the world is ending, we have to make it worse!
debbie
Pigs.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck: How does posessing a small amount of weed make Scott a scary monster in a country where several states have already legalized marijuana use? Racists making that argument are not persuasive except to those who always feel the need to defend police killings.
Mnemosyne
As I said from the beginning, I think the cops fucked up. Their attempted raid got screwed up, they saw an unknown guy sitting in his car, and they panicked and thought Mr. Scott was involved.
In a rational world, the question would be, how did this attempted raid go so wrong and end in the death of a bystander? instead of these increasingly convoluted rationalizations for why the cops were totally right in killing a bystander.
Mr. Scott had a diagnosed brain injury — a TBI that was so severe that he was unable to work. And this disabled guy is supposed to be able to calmly react in an instant to a chaotic scene where a dozen armed people are screaming at him?
Lyrebird
I read a report over here that they found a gun on scene which has his blood on it. Okay, did he fall on it and bleed on it after they shot him? They haven’t said it matched anything (bullets etc) from the crime they were investigating, and they haven’t been acting in a way that leads me to trust new reports of what they found. (Yes DNA tests take a while. But his DNA didn’t threaten anyone on the video that’s been released.)
And what John said.
So they were in fear. Isn’t that what first responders have signed up for? Going towards situations the rest of us want to or should flee?
TriassicSands
For the millionth time, the question is not can the police justify this shooting (I don’t see how they could, but Tamir Rice…), but was this shooting necessary? NO! Not in any reality.
Any unnecessary police shooting shoot result in termination of the shooter — and the end of the right to “keep and bear arms.” After that, it’s up to the legal system, which is very suspect at this point. .After watching the police video — I see why they didn’t want it released — someone needs to be fired and face criminal charges.
This has got to stop, but it doesn’t even seem to be slowing down.
MazeDancer
The vids are going to be Zapruder-ed. And rightly so. Which can only mean that the ones the Charlotte police haven’t released have frames that even more clearly indicate how wrong the cops were.
There was no reason to kill Mr. Scott. None.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
From some of the actual gangs, it seems they are more disciplined than the cops.
Lyrebird
@smintheus: Someone pointed out re: Tulsa (uniformed) shooter – had she been so in fear for her life, wouldn’t she have stayed in a position of cover?
Ruckus
@Lyrebird:
The fear came moments latter and it was fear for her job and her freedom after she fucked up and shot him.
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
This. Apologists for bad cops keep insisting that we’re only allowed to look at the actual moment of shooting and not any of the decisions that led up to the shooting.
Take the Michael Brown case. The cop in that instance called for backup because he suspected that Brown and his friend were the shoplifters they were looking for, and then decided to confront the two by himself. Seriously, WTF? The cop put himself into a confrontational situation without waiting for his backup, it didn’t go the way he planned, and he shot Michael Brown, none of which would have been necessary if he’d waited five fucking minutes for his backup to get there.
ARoomWithAMoose
Wondering if a small amount of digging will find a couple of training and seminar companies that travel around and teach this sort of non-de-escalation, and if those companies have some sort of deal that makes it easy to to have federal grant money spent bringing them in to teach that.
smintheus
@Lyrebird: Yep. You don’t, as these clowns did, look away from Scott’s SUV and start wandering around the front of the pickup truck.
Mnemosyne
I had a long comment that got eated by WordPress that I don’t feel like retyping. FYWP.
Mary G
These videos are so painful to watch. The Charlotte cops’ response reeks of bullshit. Mrs. Scott will get a large civil judgment, but I’m sure she’d rather have her husband. Why can’t they take the money they have to pay families and invest in some better training?
I wish cops who shoot people could be required to take a blood test at the scene. A lot of them look pumped up on steroids and probably are also often impaired in other ways, as they can feel sure they won’t be called out on it.
Jay B.
“I still, for the life of me, can not figure out why they did this.”
You can’t be that naive, can you? At long last?
He’s black, cops are psychotic gangsters and they are trained to shoot first and plant evidence later. If we have a death penalty, they should enjoy it. But they’ll get away with it and everyone will wonder why black people smoke dope while white people stay away from it because Americans are fucking dickheaded racists, by and large. Does this make it easier to understand? Shooting blacks is an American pastime. Cops are armed to the teeth, racist and paranoid. Plus they’ve gotten away with it wholesale for hundreds of years. Now they only get caught on video, but later exonerated by a system that rewards the assassinations of black people.
cokane
uhm, Cole, that’s definitely enough weed depending on the quality to get one person high. Not blasted but yeah. Not that it’s a relevant fact. But herb has gotten a lot stronger over the decades.
Adam L Silverman
@ARoomWithAMoose: Doesn’t take any digging. I know of 1/2 a dozen just off the top of my head. And trying to crack into the LEO training business to teach them how to do Engagement and to use it to deescalate is almost impossible. And this with trying to figure it out with a close friend who is his department’s SWAT Team’s training officer. Its a pretty closed and self reinforcing system at this point.
? Martin
Once again, a black man is shot and we get inundated with every questionable thing from his life to justify the killing. A white teenager rapes a woman and all we hear about is how much potential the young man had and how it would be an injustice to throw that all away with prison time.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I just found it and freed it for you.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@PealeThis:
The fact that he had a blunt is irrelevant. They had no way of knowing that until after he was dead. He had TBI, and was probably in pain a lot of the time. So he chose a blunt rather than abuse opioids.
Also, there were a ton of cops there. Was only one of them wearing a bodycam? Was there only one dashcam? It looks to me like they released the dash and body cams that showed the fewest important details so they could claim it was ‘”ambiguous.”
Enough already.
cokane
@Kay (not the front-pager): if he had recently smoked, you cannot know this either. there might’ve been a smell. again weed possession should never be a cause for escalation, but let’s be honest about what WE can know before declaring what THEY can know.
debbie
I@Mnemosyne:
Except that all of these incidents are cops fucking up! Seriously, are there no good cops anymore?
Monala
@Brachiator: That and yell, “step resisting!” Even when the person is already on the ground and motionless.
Mai.naem.mobile
I wonder if they ever put police cadets in training in the position of the potential arrestee and have cops screaming at them the way you see them do all the time. Maybe they would get a clue if they go through an experience like that. Several years ago,I was told to get out of my car to do a sobriety test because,i am not kidding, when I exited a convenience store at an intersection I went straight to the lane 3 instead of going to lane one first,then to lane 2, then to lane 3. I very rarely drink(New Years Eve toast kind of stuff)so I knew I wasn’t dui’ing but a traffic stop is scary none the less because a million things are going through your head and most of the time the cops are being jerks.
debbie
@cokane:
He was on medication for his TBI. He was waiting for his kid. Clearly the drugs are a plant. It’s as unoriginal as those cops’ senses of duty.
rikyrah
He reminds me of my father. The circumstances in which he was murdered, could have easily been my father. ???
cokane
@debbie: clearly…
i mean if they were going to plant drugs, why not cocaine? i just dont understand the need to act like trump supporters and make up shit without any evidence
Gelfling 545
@opiejeanne: Proof that only certain citizens have the gun rights they’re always yapping about?
rikyrah
@? Martin:
Uh huh.
Never about how they died. Always digging into the Black victim’s life to try and determine the justification for their own murder.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@cokane: Go back and look at the picture. Does it look like it’s been smoked? To me it looks like both ends have been twisted, not burned.
Omnes Omnibus
@cokane: “Sprinkle some crack on him.”
Kay (not the front-pager)
@rikyrah: I’m really sorry. In so many ways.
Monala
@Jay B.:
Someone looked up Betty Shelby’s sheriff’s department application. (She’s the cop who shot Terrence Crutcher). In it, she admitted to having used marijuana in the past, to vandalizing the car of an ex-boyfriend, and being accused of harassing the 2nd wife of her ex-husband. (She said she was innocent of the latter charge).
In response to these findings, a blogger wrote about how Shelby is a druggie and violent thug. Some commenters took exception to this characterization, especially calling her a druggie for prior marijuana use… missing the point that this is exactly what is done to the black victims.
cokane
@Kay (not the front-pager): this reminds me of Trump supporters’ photo evidence of Clinton’s Parkinson’s or whatever.
Why pretend to know things you don’t — you cannot yet know?
ruemara
@magurakurin: yes. because having a camera on is very worrisome for these innocent, threatened angels in blue.
@Mnemosyne: could you please tell me again of that place you recommended for my friends Native American rock opera? I got to see it and while some of it was uneven, I was impressed by the music and a number of the performances. I love this one. It’s a little Sondheim, but not too much. Also a bit of Danny Elfman. So I’m helping them with PR. Because I’m a sap.
Another Scott
@rikyrah: That’s horrible. I’m sorry. Sincere condolences to you.
We’ve got to find a way to stop these shootings from happening… :-(
Best regards,
Scott.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Jay B.: “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
I am coming to believe it’s really that simple.
Davis X. Machina
Been reading Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace, about Algeria from 1945-1962.
This kind of event is indistinguishable from, and interchangeable with, the French policing of pre-revolutionary Algeria.
We are lucky we’re only looking at blocking-I 277-scale push-back.
Frankensteinbeck
@Patricia Kayden:
Even fairly polite racists need only that tiny amount of confirmation to imagine a terrifying criminal and give the police the benefit of the doubt. I have known pretty liberal people who fall into that category, even. From what I can tell, almost everyone on national TV thinks like that. The cops are trying to justify themselves to a majority of whites, and I believe it will work. Yes, that’s disgusting.
p.a.
What a fucking point we’ve reached in this country; Trump and his mouthbreathers make us ‘long for’ the days of dog-whistle politics (not really but you know what I’m getting at) and cops today make us ‘long for’ the days when they would unjustifiably beat the shit out of people instead of killing them.
gwangung
@Frankensteinbeck: Believe? They’re seeing it work.
What the Charlottesville PD had been putting out has been total malarkey; very little internal logic or consistency; and the white public will totally swallow it.
PeakVT
I thought the purpose of a police force was to help preserve the peace.
Shooting an innocent person seems like a breach of the peace to me.
Or maybe I’m just being a silly liberal.
Aleta
Person doesn’t have a gun. Two guys appear out of nowhere shouting ‘drop the gun, drop the gun.’ If it’s me, my first thought is ‘they’re talking to someone else cause I don’t have a gun.’ Meanwhile, my brain is slowly registering the noise, making out the words, and mostly I’m thinking that my kid is about to show up here, and what should I do when he comes.
It’s confusing, they’re yelling, so (if it’s me), I stay out of their way. Car is safest place to be.
They order me out of the car, OK, so they want my car. My child is coming, just give them the car. I move away from the car, show them they can have it. Keep them calm, move slowly away from the car, keep my hands and my body quiet.
ruemara
@Aleta: thank you. it’s like people think everything the cops say is the whole story.
singfoom
All the apologists on twitter etc will say: “If he had complied, he would have lived. If an officer tells you to drop the gun, you comply.” Yet, in all of these cases with black men when they have had a gun, they say “drop the gun” and then shoot immediately, like Tamir Rice. With Rice it was probably more like “DROP” and he fired while saying “the gun”. But no fucking convictions.
With interactions where it’s white men with a gun, they don’t immediately open fire, they let them sit down and calmly de-escalate the situation and disarm them. Yet somehow, faced with all of these instances of black men being killed by police for no real reason, most white people still think it’s always the fault of the person shot rather than the person who pulled the trigger.
Somehow, the idea that police officers should not kill people unless they absolutely have to is met with derision and anger. As if that puts one against police. Fuck, I thought it was protect and serve, not comply or die. There is absolutely no one who needed protecting from Keith Scott. He was not harming anyone. Whatever police officer that shot him needs to be removed from the force, prosecuted (not that a jury will convict him because he was afraid of his life because the big black man was shuffling backwards RIGHT TOWARDS HIM) and not allowed to ever serve as a law enforcement officer ever again.
This shit has got to stop and I don’t know how it will when it seems like at least half of the people in the country don’t give a fuck or actively think it was a good thing.
Aleta
@cokane:
Maybe because the joint was right handy inside the cop’s boot top?
Lizzy L
@debbie: There are good cops. I know two of them. These shootings make good cops sick at heart.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@cokane: Huh. And yet you are the one speculating that he had recently smoked and they smelled it.
JMG
Sooner or later, people will figure, might as be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. And more cops will start dying because of their own fear-based reactions.
GregB
Getting killed by your government is the worst possible thing big government can do to a citizen.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I know a number of people with chronic health issues, wheelchair bound, etc. Most of the ones I know don’t want to be on pain suppressors, because in a lot of ways that makes life worse, so the choice they have left is pot. Does it really help? I’ve been told it does and at a reduced cost to ongoing life. So this man may have had a joint, which his state nor the feds approve of. It’s irrelevant to the situation as several have pointed out, unless he lit up while they were watching they wouldn’t have known till he was dead. But just because they are horrible and they shot him doesn’t mean they planted the joint. Not that I’d put that past them, you could be 100% right, it’s just that speculation like this really doesn’t help. IOW it isn’t clear at all to me. It is stupid and asinine of them to make a big deal of it, trying to justify shooting him because of how scary a person who has smoked a blunt isn’t.
geg6
@Lizzy L:
Then maybe they should do something about that, doncha think?
debbie
@Lizzy L:
I don’t hear them speaking up.
Lyrebird
@Ruckus: I wish this weren’t such a plausible explanation…
debbie
@Ruckus:
He had TBI and was on medication. He was picking his son up from school. It is not likely he’d be getting high then. What is likely is that those jackasses would be carrying a joint around “just in case.”
Another Scott
BBC is reporting that a suspect has been captured in the Macy’s killings in Washington state.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@geg6:
My friend who was a cop for 30 yrs and who I believe was a “good” cop did. He retired. And he has told me that the fish is rotten from the head so there is little that a good cop can do. It’s a fucking shame but I think he’s probably right. The change needs to come from us, the good cops can’t do it (there aren’t enough of them) unless they get to be a chief or sheriff and that’s almost impossible because of that thick blue line. It does happen but I think it’s because the town/county/state wants change, and that’s on us to demand it. And in the US that means we have to figure out how to fix racism. And Bernie, as much as I hate to say it, was right, we also have to address the working class economy.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Cops traded in white robes for blue uniforms back in the 40s – so many now are KKK, and have tainted the black ones who have adopted the mentality of their racist bosses because it’s a closed loop of racial sickness. There are 15% good cops, 15% racist criminals in uniform, and the rest could go either way depending on who they’re listening to. So many local cops are the bullying asshole losers from high school who liked to be in and around trouble. We all know those guys – if they didn’t end up in jail, they became cops. I don’t believe anything they say.
Brachiator
@Monala:
Yep. It’s almost comical. There have even been a series of YouTube videos that clearly show cops actively lying when they shout “Stop resisting.”
justawriter
@Ruckus: Actually fewer Americans own guns but the gun nuts that are left hoard them like they were Pokemon.
KS in MA
@Ruckus: Every town or city that has a police department should have a civilian police review board. That would be a good start.
Chris
@Ruckus:
That actually makes sense. Gangs have a lot more to worry about in terms of consequences, both from other gangs and from the legal system, and don’t have the benefit of blind blanket approval from an enormous part of the public simply for showing up. It stands to reason that those who survive would have brains, skills, and caution.
Compare and contrast with the consequences we’ve seen for cops that fuck up.
wenchacha
This bit of shouting at people to disorient them or whatever. Sure, for SWAT and stuff, I guess. It pisses me off, maybe it’s supposed to, but psychologically it would not help me to understand what is happening.
Somebody asked why he was driving if he had a TBI. Good question, but if he had been taking his medication (maybe anti-seizure meds) and had been seizure-free for x months, he might well be able to drive. Maybe just daytime, if he had vision problems. Aside from this case, holy shit the number of people who suffer an illness behind the wheel. People recovering from stroke, brain tumors, diabetes, hearing problems, learning differences, living in early stages of dementia, and this is the best law enforcement can do?
Ruckus
@debbie:
Who said he was sitting there smoking? I didn’t. I said he may actually be a user, he has as much cause as many of the people I know who use. Which means he may have had a joint on him or in his possession. We suspect the cops planted it, because we don’t trust them in the least, especially not this group. But we don’t know that and probably never will. Please don’t take my comment to say I agree in any way with these cops, I don’t. They shot a man in cold blood for no fucking reason. It makes sense that they would plant it because they need any reason they can make up for fucking killing this man in cold blood. I’m just pointing out that he had cause to have a joint, not that they didn’t plant it. We have our suspicions, we have no proof and it does nothing to help the situation to say they must have planted it.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Yeah, this is pretty much what I figured was going on. Police problems probably can be solved by better training, stricter hiring policies, stronger oversight and the like, but the problem is that the powers-that-be like the idea of cops being badly trained attack dogs that they can point at anyone making waves that bother them. That, in turn, can probably be solved by accountability at the voting booth, but there you run back into America’s basic problem – that a very large part of our public is racist as fuck, and authoritarian tendencies are pretty widespread too.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: NY Times:
Did he have a gun? Did he have an ankle holster? I haven’t seen evidence that he did.
We have lots of video of at least one cop yelling for him to “drop the gun”. But if someone is rolling a joint (often, but not always, a 2-handed operation) why would they then be “holding up” a gun? If he’s right handed, why don’t we see a gun in his right hand? How did he get out of the vehicle, holding a gun that they want him to drop, but not in his dominant hand, while also messing around rolling a joint and opening a car door?
Maybe that’s what happened in their view, but it doesn’t make much sense to this outside observer.
Maybe he was rolling a joint. Maybe they thought they saw him with a gun, but it was actually something else.
Maybe it was a convenient excuse.
I don’t know. But it stinks.
It’s not in this Times story, but I believe I saw a TV report that had the police chief saying something like (not a quote) “the presence of marijuana made the officers fear a violent reaction”. That sounds an awful lot like post-hoc rationalization designed to taint the jury pool to me….
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@justawriter:
Yeah I phrased that crappily. I meant that more people seem to be carrying, not more people owning. And yes I knew a fellow who carried 40 yrs ago because he was an idiot. I also used to know a fellow who worked for the state of CA, was the attorney general’s driver about that same 40 yrs ago. The firepower he carried and had stashed in his state car was insane. I don’t know anyone who does now but concealed carry permits are up as I understand it.
jenn
One of the things on my agenda over the next month or so is to write letters to my local police chiefs and county sheriff, and my state’s Attorney General (who’s an egregious dipshit, but I’m going to do it anyway), asking them about the local and state protocols and training for using de-escalation versus aggression in encounters with the public. I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to say yet, but I want to make sure that they know it’s a concern with me, and I’m going to pester them (politely) until I get an answer. I have seen a number of people asking “what can we do?” and that’s one of my answers. If everybody who is concerned does something similar, that could add up to a fair amount of pressure.
Ruckus
@KS in MA:
I agree but I ask this question. Would the citizens in the local of this shooting have been for the cops or for don’t shoot people that aren’t shooting at you? I know which way I’m leaning in how well the civilian review board in this case would go.
IOW I’m not sure that it’s enough now. I think we need a national set of standards for cops and a national review board and a justice dept with even more power than currently exists. We have to change the current way completely, top down. And that isn’t coming from a civilian review board in lots of places. In big cities sure that might help but smaller cities/towns/rural I don’t see it changing anything.
KS in MA
@Ruckus: Totally agree; we need national standards. (And, of course, in lots of jurisdictions a civ. review board might not be terribly proactive … still, if cops knew they would have to answer to civilians in any way, and not just to their own brass, it would be a start.)
justawriter
@Ruckus: I grew up in a time and place in the country 40 years ago where most pickups had a gun rack in the back window any you could park at the school with 2-3 guns visible and the doors unlocked and think nothing of it. But people in that place and time thought of those guns as tools, something you used to feed your family or protect your livestock. Sadly, even back in the dump I grew up in the NRA propaganda has turned the gun into a magical penis extender to be collected and not the equivalent of a hammer or saw.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: It took about two years for the county here to finally set up a police review board, after some infamous incidents. Our government and society only works with the “consent of the governed”. It should be standard across the county for these boards to exist in every jurisdiction, and for them to have enough power to end abusive practices.
I’d like to see national standards on these boards, as well, but we know that’s not going to happen without flipping the House and Senate, and that means GOTV GOTV GOTV from now through 2022 and later.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Please don’t get me wrong. This entire thing stinks from every angle. They killed him for no fucking reason. None. Not. One. Fucking. Reason. They are cops, there are lots of them, if he had a gun it for sure wasn’t aimed at anyone. And no one seems to be able to actually see a gun in his hand on any video shown. Which means to me that the ones they aren’t showing us are probably clear that he wasn’t and they are trying their damnest to figure out a way to hide/destroy those.
My whole point is that this is a fucked situation and it is 100% fucked because of the cops. But we are backseat driving from thousands of mile away and I think we need to be careful of making a 100% wrong situation worse. Not that anyone is going to listen to us but still, we want the cops to be proper, we should be as well.
ETA I should have put in there that I also believe this is an open carry state and that he might have had a permit. The cops should know that and so this falls right into a racist situation. He’s black, he must be dangerous, we have to stop him, no matter the cost. It’s pure bullshit, 1000%
justawriter
@Ruckus: I grew up in a time and place in the country 40 years ago where most pickups had a gun rack in the back window any you could park at the school with 2-3 guns visible and the doors unlocked and think nothing of it. But people in that place and time thought of those guns as tools, something you used to feed your family or protect your livestock. Sadly, even back in the dump I grew up in the NRA propaganda has turned the gun into a magical manhood* extender to be collected and not the equivalent of a hammer or saw.
*used an anatomically correct term before and got put in moderation jail. Sorry.
Lizzy L
@debbie: That’s unfair. You don’t know them at all. You don’t know what they are saying. It does no good, in my judgement, if they piss someone off and get fired. Good cops are an asset in the community. Neither of the cops I know are in NC.
TriassicSands
@Aleta:
And that’s you — un-brain-damaged you — not some person who recently suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury. That person may have been much more confused by the situation. The police officer(s) who shot him need to face criminal charges.
I’m sure the police, guns drawn, adrenaline flowing, weren’t listening to the wife tell them he’d had a TBI. They were focused, unnecessarily, on a man sitting in a truck. Rather than pause and gather information — who is that woman yelling at us and what does she know about this — they followed what seems to be standard police procedure — Resolve every situation in the minimum time necessary, while avoiding police injury (the well-being of non-police is not a consideration).
The whole “justified shooting” concept has become bizarre and dangerous. Apparently any police officer who feels threatened — no matter how compromised their own judgement is by fear or adrenaline (or whatever else) — can kill an unarmed person with relative impunity. Only in rare cases are police officers truly held accountable for their unnecessary shootings (whether fatal or not). The responsibility starts with the powers-that-be, who must abandon the notion of “justified shooting” and replace it with “necessary shooting.” This will create much more responsibility for the field officers and their training must improve to prepare them.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: I’m sorry that I’m not making it clear that I’m agreeing with you, not criticizing you or your posts. I’m just trying to amplify the discussion, using your posts as a starting point.
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
No worries, didn’t consider you were. I type a lot and sometimes need an instant editor. I like to clarify if their is any doubt, even if it is mine, that I am being misunderstood. I also often use someone’s reply to create another bounce point in the discussion as I think this is a vital one and we need to find a way to start addressing it. To me that means we need to talk about it and see it from all sides, even the sides we most assuredly disagree with.
Didn’t we have a cop or two who posted here a while ago? Did we chase them off?
Another Scott
@Ruckus: We had one very good one here for a while – I’ve forgotten her name/handle. I hope she’s still around and will chime in.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: cmm or ccm. She pops in and out.
Ruckus
@justawriter:
I used to go hunting regularly. Ducks and geese. A bunch of us would go all season and then the semi leader of the group’s wife would cook up every thing at the end of the season. I’ve grown up around guns as well and yes the entire concept has changed from a tool into a dick extender. Many people have bought into the southern strategy and faux news bullshit (and Crappy News Network and and and) about the scary crap out there. All the while public mental health care has declined dramatically, social media has allowed the racists to talk to each other just like everyone else and we have a much larger population so large urban areas are more crowded….. So all the issues that could be making crime worse and it isn’t. But the cops are as bad or worse than ever before and I wonder if they look at it from the angle that their way must be working so we can’t stop now, we have to eliminate all crime. Which of course won’t happen period, nor as long as they just keep killing people for no reason. But remember those aren’t crime stats they are anti-crime stats.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Sorry, I only just got home from dinner: it’s the Autry Museum of the American West. They do a lot of programs featuring Native American artists and performers and seem to have a good relationship with the various groups.
justawriter
@Ruckus: You are right. Sorry I wandered off topic. Right now I am a newspaper guy in the Bakken which had a huge influx of bad characters and a law enforcement infrastructure that was more accustomed to handling livestock that busted the fence than meth addicts. In my town of 3,000 the cops have confiscated three hand grenades, not to mention a whole arsenal of other shit, plus more drugs than all of CVS. They haven’t shot anybody or even come close. Wish the rest of the law enforcement community could do as well.
SWMBO
@Omnes Omnibus: @Another Scott: Wasn’t celticdragonchick a cop?
Omnes Omnibus
@SWMBO: I think she was a helicopter door gunner. She monitors the fuck out of cops on-line, but I assumed it was like the people here who read RedState.
Juju
To me it seems they delayed releasing the video because it took the CPD that long to come up with a narrative that would sort of go with the video and also work with the evidence they conjured and scraped up at the scene.
cokane
@Kay (not the front-pager): I only said that it was a possibility. Deliberate misreading to score points in an argument… again, it’s no surprise Trump has a possibility to win, people abandon integrity everywhere
Omnes Omnibus
@cokane: You have a choice. Both of you are frequent commenters here. Neither of you are assholes. (Most of the time) I suggest nothing. But, do think.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, about the joint: even if the cops saw him lighting one up, why the fuck did they need to go running in with the full force of a dozen undercover and regular cops for some dude sitting in his truck? I mean, other than the fact that they were pissed off that their warrant arrest didn’t work out and poor Mr. Scott was their scapegoat.
Again, by all accounts, nobody called the cops to say that some guy was smoking out in his truck. The cops were already there for a different purpose, and decided to roust Mr. Scott since they were already there. That’s bullshit.
mike in dc
The only solution to this stuff I can see in the mid and long term is a federal intervention. Legislation establishing standards, funding and requirements. DOJ consent decrees with the most problematic departments. Body cameras, independent prosecutors, transparency and accountability standards, new policing practices and methods, and an obligation to purge non-compliant officers. Probably more than that. The essential problem is a lack of bipartisan political will, especially with regard to taking on law enforcement.
dimmsdale
@mike in dc: It would have to be national, agreed. Executive response, not congress (never happen). there was a long interview with David Simon (The Wire) after Baltimore, and the impression I got from that was that cops get away with ONLY what their civilian overseers permit them to get away with. He also talked about (as I remember) how the mayor’s office can completely change cop culture by mandating upsurges in arrests so as to look “tough” on crime, forcing foot patrolmen to ditch probable cause and blindly round up bodies. THAT’S the local government civilian mindset, ‘must look tuff on crime’, and they’ll neither take on the police unions nor stand up to the unrelenting tidal wave of abuse that will pour in from RWNJs (tidal waves of abuse being one of the things RWNJs do best), when serious reforms (somehow) manage to get mandated. Personally I think lots of cities will burn before the civilian authorities get the stones to do something meaningful about this. Hope not, but it’s not looking good.
Barry
I was struck by the thing one cop said after the shooting: (paraphrase) somebody get my, uh, bag out of my truck. I need to get, uh, some equipment.” Is this where he’s asking for someone to fetch his throw-away piece?
varmintito
I firmly believe that yelling “stop resisting” when there is conclusive evidence that there was no resistance, or “drop the gun” when there is conclusive evidence there was no gun, should be considered prima facie evidence (i.e., conclusive unless effectively rebutted) of consciousness of guilt on the part of the officer saying it. It is the verbal equivalent of a drop piece.
Paul
Cuban did not mention that he is bringing the entire Dallas Mavericks’ entire cheerleading squad to sit with him.
Think Donnie will be able to concentrate?
leeleeFL
edwidge dandicat, the haitian author has a new book out. One quote from it about what’s happening is so spot-on I wrote it down in a journal I keep. “Because white men(or, now, women) cannot police their imaginations, black men are dying.” I think of it often and I cry every time. I am so white I am sheer and I cannot bear this for much longer. How much worse must it be for Black people who know intrinsically how little their Black Lives Matter?
debbie
@Lizzy L:
A selective sense of “fairness” is about as far from fair as you can get.
trnc
@Peale:
They’re gaming the refs, the same way the Ferguson Police did when they released video of Michael Brown robbing a store and beating up the clerk to imply that they knew before Darren Wilson shot him that he had done that.
PaulWartenberg2016
If the excuse by cops to kill blacks revolves around “they had pot” then we should decriminalize marijuana right here and right now. One less excuse. Take away ALL the excuses cops would have to shoot blacks (and Latinos) until there is clearly the one real excuse left: because those cops are terrified of the color of their skin. At which point we know exactly how bad racism is entrenched into our law enforcement, and we can do something about that (like fire all the f-cking haters).
Lurking Canadian
I watched the video. I can’t figure out what the police who released it think it’s supposed to show. There’s a man walking slowly backwards away from his car and then he gets shot a bunch of times. He doesn’t seem to have a weapon. He’s certainly not doing anything threatening to anybody. What possible justification could they think this video provides? It’s just a film of a murder in broad daylight.
debbie
@Lurking Canadian:
The video shows just how badly law enforcement needs better training. They’re jumping around like amateurs.
Glidwrith
@PaulWartenberg2016: Truly, this is the main reason I support legalization. The laws are being used to arrest or kill black people while whites get a pass? Fine, that toy gets taken away. Not that they won’t find other excuses….
john fremont
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: As recently as ten years ago cops were still trading in their robes for badges. I can only note how much worse this has gotten with Obama in office with white supremist groups increasing their membership.
A Reminder That the FBI Warned Us in 2006
That’s why I get frustrated with my conservative family and friends who say race relations were good until Obama took office. “Look at all of these riots and issues with cops now! Ya didn’t hear about this when Bush was president!”
Oh yes there was issues with between police departments and African Americans when Bush was in office. I can’t remember whose Twitter said something like
that with smart phone cameras everywhere UFO’s stopped visiting and cops just started shooting African Americans.
seanindc
He had a fucking gun. They told him to drop it. He did not.
RaflW
The cops exist to enforce white supremacy. That is all anyone needs to understand as to why black people get shot for absolutely zippo nothing, and white people who go berserk in movie theaters or planned parenthood clinics get extracted alive and handed a pro-bono lawyer.
We can change that. We as a country can decide we don’t want our cops enforcing the horrid racist stain that is perpetuated daily. Or we can enjoy watching the media collectively lick the taint of Donald Trump and toss ourselves on the dustbin of history. Right now, in the utterly foul mood I’m in, I think the country will chose the world’s worst Zonk behind curtain number two.
Fred
The other day I saw a still from police video of a handgun (black shape) on the ground about two feet from Mr. Scott’s feet. No such gun was in Mrs. Scott’s video. A plant? Somehow I think we will never know.
KnaveRupe
@Fred: – watch the video shot by Mrs. Scott. Watch the black officer standing above and to the right (from the viewer’s perspective). At around 1:47 in the CNN version, or 2:00 in the NYT version, he drops something. Then, about 11 seconds later, he drops something else – right around the spot where the alleged gun in the blurred photo appears.