Another black man was killed by police in Atlanta yesterday- apparently drunk in his car and passed out in line at the Wendy’s. Cops were called, they talked for a while, a struggle ensued, he was tazed, ran, and they shot him in the back:
A 27-year-old man was shot and killed by police in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday after resisting arrest, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI). The GBI said it was asked by the Atlanta Police Department to investigate the incident.
A press release from the agency said Atlanta police were called to a Wendy’s drive-thru late Friday night after receiving a complaint that the driver of a vehicle in the drive-thru had fallen asleep, forcing customers to drive around him. When police arrived around 10:30 p.m. they performed a sobriety test on the man, later identified as Rayshard Brooks.
According to police, Brooks failed the test and then resisted arrest. He allegedly struggled with officers outside the fast-food restaurant.
“A field sobriety test was performed on the male subject. After failing the test, the officers attempted to place the male subject into custody,” reads the press release. “During the arrest, the male subject resisted and a struggle ensued. The officer deployed a Taser.”
Brooks was allegedly shot after he took an officer’s taser. The officer who fired the fatal shot has not been identified.
Why? Why not just let him run away? You have his fucking name. You have his fucking car and license plate. You were arresting him for being drunk and asleep- it’s not like he was on a murder spree. Just call more cops, follow him, and get him when he sobers up or passes out again. What the fuck is there to be gained from this?
The same with Breonna Taylor. The entire reason the cops broke down her door was because she and her boyfriend were under surveillance because GUYS DOWN THE HALL were suspected of selling drugs. Breonna and her boyfriend sometimes accepted packages for them, AS NEIGHBORS FUCKING DO, so they got pulled into the dragnet. If they had them under surveillance, then they had to know WHEN they went to work and WHEN they would not be there, so they could go search the apartment either when they were not there and apprehend them in the broad daylight on their way to work. There literally was no fucking reason to do a no-knock raid and come in guns blasting other than that the VIOLENCE IS THE FUCKING POINT.
Qualified immunity has got to go, and the police have got to be retrained and priorities have to be set straight.
Furry Friends – Cowgirl in the Sandi – Indiana Jones Wants To Be A TV Star
FelonyGovt
It’s insane that this happens over and over, especially now when you’d think maybe the cops would be a little more conscious of the reaction.
Yutsano
That’s training cops like they’re military. That comes from so many LEOs being former military themselves. That shit gotta get rooted out too.
EDIT: I mean the Breonna Taylor incident, although treating fellow citizens as enemy has to change too.
Mai naem mobile
I wonder how many newspaper stories in the past 35 years have started with ‘A black man was killed — fill in the blank day — by police….’ ?
Baud
Just from reading the excerpt, my guess is the cop was embarrassed that he let a drunk, half-asleep guy somehow disarm the cop of the taser he was about to use on the guy, and decided to use his gun to not feel embarrassed anymore.
HinTN
@Yutsano:
Necessary but not sufficient. There has to be the racist element to account for the disparity in numbers.
MelissaM
It’s like they can’t handle someone getting away from them, ignoring their commands and they need to physically stop the person. Meaning they shoot. Laquon MvDonald, Michael Brown, too many who were shot simply because they wouldn’t comply. A man running from you poses no threat except to your ego.
cmorenc
This same shit has been going on for years with police reacting lethally heavy-and-quick with blacks, only it fell beneath our notice until a particularly obvious, egregious example (george floyd) was caught on video and such incidents suddenly became shiny objects for the media to focus on public attention on. Nothing new here with police behavior that they’ve been getting away with below the radar of general public attention
John Revolta
@Baud: This sounds right. He was gonna get shit from all the other guys when they heard about it. This way, they’ll probably buy him drinks and stuff.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC!
raven
@Baud: You need to watch the video.
Miss Bianca
@MelissaM: I think that’s part of it. Because, shit – the guy was *drunk* and running away, and the mofo couldn’t have just, I dunno, run *after* him if he had to apprehend him?
Jesus, cops are not only lethal, they’re damned lazy. Time to disarm them.
Josie
@MelissaM:
And it’s a vicious circle. The men run because they fear/know what will happen to them in police custody.
Yutsano
@HinTN: I’m wondering if it’s academy culture. Yes policing attracts bullies and racists. But does something change once the new recruit gets in the environment and there’s relentless us vs them pressure. But we could just tear everything out root and stem. That might be the only thing to do.
The Moar You Know
Don’t know about the rest of the country, but until 1986 (at least here in CA) fleeing from a cop was a legally acceptable reason for a cop to shoot you. No further questions needed to be asked.
This is going to be a long, hard mountain to climb. They’ve seen themselves basically as being at war with the entire civilian populace for decades.
James E Powell
This is hard because it represents a revolution in policing. They had his ID, they had his car, they didn’t really need to take him into custody. It’s a misdemeanor. Give him the ticket and tell him he has to call someone to come get him.
m.j.
As long as we’re so outraged, could we get rid of the 2nd Amendment? Our Constitution should be free of the vestiges of racism, no?
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
It strikes me that the police system is just irreparably tainted and stained. There’s a poison there that has run through policing in America for at least 250 years.
Right from the beginning, police in America never saw black people as citizens to serve, but rather as subjects to be controlled, exploited and put down.
The whole point of police in much of America 200 years ago was to put down real or imagined slave revolts. After the Civil War, it shifted. It became a slave labor industry. Police would go around, pulling in law abiding Black guys for no reason, because once they were in the state prison systems, plantations and mills factories could essentially buy these people from the state pen, and work them into the ground.
It makes sense that police would begin to pick up the attitude that Black men were incorrigibly violent criminals, because buying into that fantasy was the only way to justify the continued brutalization. And now we have police systems all over the country directly descended from these older systems. Hell, they are the same systems, the same organizations. And the lessons police learned 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 or 250 years ago are the same lessons new recruits are learning today: Black men are aggressive. Black men are violent. Black men are dangerous. Black men are eaten up by uncontrollable lust. Black men are a threat.
I just see no other road we can go down other than to tear these systems down wholesale, and then build them back up again, without letting anybody from the earlier systems get in the door. We need a clean break. A new start.
raven
The mayor is on, she wants him fired. The Chief has offered her resignation and they have an interim.
Miss Bianca
@m.j.: Hey, I got no problem with that. Don’t expect to see it in my lifetime, but a bit of “Repeal the 2nd Amendment” action might actually get us some substantial gun law reform, if nothing else.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Yes and this is why we need to take this opportunity to also reform the prison system and work with states to incarcerate fewer people (including incentives for states to reform at the federal level).
raven
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: That was happening in Washington County Ga in the 80’s.
Kirk Spencer
@Yutsano: Yes.
Well, it starts there.
It starts with the informal indoctrination motto “better judged by 12 than carried by 6”, with video after video showing officers killed as part of ‘lessons to learn to protect your self’. Over, and over.
It continues with the abuser tactic. “The rest of the world is either stupid or villainous, and only we are looking out for you. Don’t break trust and we’ll take care of you.”
Add qualified immunity to protect you under color of doing your job. Add asset forfeiture to incentivize you taking what you want as lesson, as opportunity, as desired.
It’s broken, and it’s going to have to be taken apart to fix. We’re going to have to realize that most law enforcement is social work and mediation, not defense against militant criminals.
It needs fixed. Until it’s fixed, don’t talk to the police.
Another Scott
@MelissaM: +1
It’s all about demanding unconditional compliance.
People who don’t hear well, or who don’t understand what’s being asked, or are simply having a bad day, too often end up injured or dead.
It happens in far too many places.
It must stop.
People that cops interact with aren’t “civilians” or “them” or whatever. They’re human beings. People that cops take an oath to “serve and protect” everyone.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ian R
They didn’t even solve the problem they were called there for, as the now-empty car was still blocking the drive thru. So the cops show up, kill someone completely unnecessarily, and do absolutely nothing positive. Sounds par for the course.
This sort of thing is why I’d never even consider calling the cops.
Another Scott
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: +1 My state senator agrees.
(I hope this doesn’t have too many links…)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: That’s okay, I stumbled on it pretty much in real time.
Benw
The cops are out of control. We focus on them because they are so violent, murderous and easy to film. But they are only one enforcement arm of an appalling system. And right now that system is not broken but working as designed to keep America’s racial inequality firmly in place. The entire system needs to be fixed:
defund and disband police where necessary
end discriminatory housing laws
end unequal pay and hiring
reform the racist criminal justice system and prisons
end discriminatory voting laws and disenfranchisement of minorities
address inequality in schools and colleges
the list goes on….
Martin
If you can’t understand why they can’t stop shooting black people, maybe the answer is that their entire institution exists largely for the purpose of shooting black people. (Sub in latino, poor, as necessary).
I draw your attention to NYPD challenge coins.
Page 9:
Page 13:
Note that one of the ‘justified 4x’ is the victim who called the police.
Let’s try page 21:
Challenge coin commemorating an abduction of a whistleblower police officer. [queue bad apples quote – so many bad apples that the bad apple’s commemorated the moment they pushed out possibly the only good apple]
Page 22:
So even in the peaceful neighborhoods they see themselves as killing machines.
Page 26:
Outreach to the NYPD means arresting them. The racist imagery on the coin is purely accidental, I’m sure.
Page 29:
Cutting your commute in half.
And page 70 celebrating pension fraud.
I get inside jokes and fuck if I don’t like black humor, but never, ever do I do that at the expense of my students, even in private, because now you’re just serving to normalize it.
Baud
@raven:
I don’t enjoy watching snuff films. Does the video make the cop’s actions look better or worse than the story?
Miss Bianca
@Ian R:
Right? They lost the fucking plot so completely. It’s like once they got into a situation where they could put a black guy down, that they completely FORGOT they were actually there to deal with a traffic situation.
lamh36
I mean are some cops just lazy? Is shooting a suspect that running away the easier than just doing policework to apprehend them? I mean as you said, dude was drunk and sleeping it off. Ok, so he ran away..do police offiers no longer run after suspects? I mean but they had his car, they had license plate and they had his discription. He wasn’t running from a homicide or robbery was he? He wasn’t armed.
Why da fuq did he need to be shot in the back? Too many police officers are too trigger happy.
raven
@Baud: I’m not making that judgement. The dude fights with two cops, hits one with a pretty good whack to the face while getting away, grabs the tase and runs.
James E Powell
@raven:
I’m having trouble finding the video. My google is only giving me news reports of the incident and reports of people reacting to it.
Orson
Too many times, cops killing black people for no good reason, and getting away with it. So many racist cops in so many places.
JPL
@raven: Whoa!
Martin
If people are wondering why I don’t think reform is possible, and support tearing institutions down and rebuilding them. Culture is policy. Culture is the set of rules established god knows when to solve some problem that have been passed down organically through generations. Stuff that made perfect sense 200 or 500 years ago, we still do today, for reasons we don’t understand, other than our parents or whoever taught us to do it, and we complied and now do it instinctively. Go ahead and pass a law forbidding people to ‘bless’ others who sneeze. It won’t work. It’s muscle memory. Maybe I could teach my kids to not say it, or maybe my grandkids, but that shit is buried in my subconscious now.
Police culture is similarly durable when it is that deeply entrenched. You can’t reform it, you have to burn it to the ground, create a new institution, and steer it toward a new culture. Germany has a culture that looks unfavorably on celebrating the flag because they had a bad experience with nationalism and they are now understandably cautious about burying whatever roots from that old culture might have been passed forward while also trying to prevent new seeds from popping up. The police are going to have to go through that process – maybe not everywhere, but certainly in most if not all big cities. Plus places like CBP, parts of if not all of the FBI, and so on.
raven
@James E Powell: I know, it was all over earlier but I had to really search to find it. try here
https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/13/atlanta-police-fatally-shoot-black-man-wendys/
there is a second vid in this one showing the guy aiming the tase at the cop.
lamh36
@raven: again, I’ll ask, do police officers no longer pursue suspects on foot? They just shoot rather than attempt to capture?
Is that standard police procedures now?
Martin
@Miss Bianca: I love this headline.
Rubio Adds to Viral Freak Out Over Hippie Jugglers Mistaken for Antifa Invaders
Same thing. Police lose the plot, then try to cover it up by ticketing the jugglers for blocking traffic, something the police forced them to do.
raven
@lamh36: ask who? What the cops are going to say is that they were chasing him and he turned and
pointedfired something at them. It’s on the video. Should the cop have known it was one of their tasers and not a gun? Beats me.Juju
As Eric Cartman says on “South Park” , “Respect ma authoritah .” I think it’s that simple.
trollhattan
@lamh36:
Right? It should be a badge [heh] of honor to have gone through a police career without having ever drawn your service weapon, much less discharged it. Maybe they can incentivize that, for a change.
patrick II
@MelissaM:
The shooting of Laquan McDonald was the most terrible to see for me. The young man was going slowly shambling down the middle of the street, obviously tired, stumbling, probably drunk or high, the police surrounding him with squad cars, and then one policeman decided it was necessary to shoot him sixteen times. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, (Laquan falls to the ground) pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. The other police stood and watched, their cameras turned off or away, except for one rookie less refined in cop cover your ass protocol, which is the only reason we know about this. Two officers went into the nearby Burger King to unlawfully take the video recording from there to attempt to complete the cover-up. A conspiracy of silence followed all the way up to the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanual.
The shooter was only charged after the video was made public a year later. No one had stepped up before that time.
The shooter, Jason Van Dyke, was found guilty
But the police union was not moved. After the trial, the head of the Chicago police union said:\
It’s not just the shooter who is guilty here. It is the silent witness cops, the silent politicians up for reelection, the culture of police righteousness that allows their representative to feel wronged by a correct verdict and threaten citizens in return.
Somethings gotta change. The stupidity and hatred infects everyone, not just the cops and their victims.
Baud
@raven:
If that’s what the video shows, how was he shot in the back?
Martin
@raven: It’s hard to tell from the camera angle, but it sure looks like the officer was aiming uncomfortably close to the white car when he shot.
Reminds me of the UPS driver hostage situation in Florida where the police appear to shoot at everyone and everything on the freeway, and wind up killing the hostage.
Martin
@Baud: He turned briefly to discharge the taser, and then the officer shoots when the guy turns back in the direction he’s running.
I mean, they have the guys car. They know his id. Just let him run and pick him up tomorrow.
JPL
@Baud: He turned half way around and shot the taser and then ran.. It happened in a split second.
RSA
The taser part is especially egregious, given police departments’ efforts over the years to tell us that tasers are not dangerous or cruel or anything. None of those cops could have been fearful for their lives, right? It was only a taser.
Fair Economist
@Martin: Those coins are – unbelievably evil.
raven
@Baud: He was running away and turned his trunk and fired. Martin is right about the white car looking awfully close to the line of fire.
JPL
Video of shooting
raven
@RSA: Yea, if you’re in the middle of a fight and someone points something at you and it flashes you will do what?
raven
@JPL: Yea that’s the Wendy’s vid, the one the guy took from the car in line shows the lead-up.
Baud
@raven: Thanks for the report.
raven
@Baud: I’m not happy about any of it.
JPL
A better look at the shooting.
Baud
@raven: Didn’t mean to suggest you were.
Another Scott
@RSA: + Eleventy billion.
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@Baud: I know.
Another Scott
@raven: There never would have been a fight if this trained, professional officer had done his job properly.
If it were Karen passed out in the Wendy’s drive-thru line, would any of this have happened??
Cheers,
Scott.
The Thin Black Duke
This was a lynching. I’m so tired of this shit.
raven
@JPL: And this from the car.
raven
@Another Scott: There were two cops.
lamh36
@raven: ok you’ve convinced me. shoot first ask questions later, what’s one more dead suspect.
I still maintain they shot him in the back cause they didin’t want to run to pursue him. The guy was fuq’n drunk.
But hey, silly me to want to trust that police officers would rather not esculate a situtation.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
It would have involved tigers, believe you me.
Suzy
@Yutsano: Here’s a testimony of a retired police officer.
He says that during his training, he was shown over and over and over again clips, videos of police officers being killed, or injured. The
I don’t know if it’s everywhere, but it seems that the training almost gives them PTSD in advance. They’re obsessed by the fear of being killed.
Last week, I’ve seen the video of that young couple in Atlanta who was in a car and was harassed and tased by a group of six police officers. Apparently the officers were afraid this young couple was armed and/or violent. The officers are yelling, and obviously look terrified themselves.
Another Scott
@raven: I haven’t watched the video and don’t really intend to.
People can pass out for all kinds of reasons not related to being drunk or stoned (e.g. blood sugar issues). It shouldn’t, by default, result in a person being arrested or beaten or killed.
My opinion doesn’t matter, but I think we all know that this would not have happened if he had not been a black male. It’s a systemic problem and it needs to be fixed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
Philadelphia:
scav
I’m beginning to wonder if some cops aren’t rather enjoying doing this all on camera now. Some are still in the phase of turning them off (or even on-off-on) as a signal that they’re still the boss but others are getting thrills from doing their worst on film. They’re counting on getting away with it, so why not, but now they’ve got their macho display to show round to their admiring blue buddies. Exactly like the military photos of tortured prisoners and dead Afghanis. Not much different from incels and mass shooters now trying to do it all live on youtube. Serial killers collecting trophies.
RSA
Since you ask, I’d probably panic and hide, even if it didn’t sound like a gunshot, because I’ve never been in such a situation.
James E Powell
@raven:
Sure looks like a taser in the video. The police officer closest to the victim can see what it is. And it was the same thing he had in his hand at the start of the video. He didn’t reach into his pocket and pull something else out.
I question why they were tasing him in the first place. The other video shows a wrestling match. Probably a bad idea to initiate that with a guy drunk enough to
pass outfall asleep in the drive through.I go back to John Cole’s and my questions about the need to take this guy into custody. Why was that so necessary
ETA – I’m not addressing these questions to you, @raven, just what strikes me when I watch that.
JPL
@Another Scott: The video shows how poorly trained the cops are that they did recognize that there was no threat.
lamh36
Sigh…all I’m saying is this…the esculation of these incidences seems to almost always involve a Black suspect.
I’ve seen footage of police with white suspects carrying all manner of things, and attacking police directly and yet the incidences don’t esculate to shooting and killing those folks
Calouste
@lamh36: Cops in the US go through about 6 months of training, and then get a well paid job from which it is hard to get sacked with a good pension. We’re kind of self-selecting for lazy.
Calouste
@JPL: Also letting a suspect you’re trying to arrest steal your taser also doesn’t sound like you’re well-trained.
prostratedragon
@Martin: Thanks for this. It implies something that I’ve suspected, which is that some, at least, police shootings are intended to rack up points in some in-crowd register. Some of the ones that I’ve seen on video look as staged as a football play.
lamh36
@JPL: that’s all I’m saying.
The problem is that it seems that when the suspect is NOT white the some police officers seems to escalate situations that otherwise they would not have.
Mike G
Why not just let him run away?
Because Rule No. 1 of Cop Law is “Obey me”. Rule No. 2 is “Anything I damn well please”, punishable in any way of the cop’s choosing, up to and including death.
lamh36
See what I mean…esculation…in this case the damn cop is the one who actually got in front of the guy and stops abruptly so that the protestor can bump into him
mrmoshpotato
Fucking hell. Or if you’re scared of him driving away, block his car in. I mean, WTF?
Martin
@Mary G: $20 says they were at Woodstock.
Boomers would be far more admirable if they had let the radicals lead the way. Instead everyone keeps putting Neidermeyer in charge.
banditqueen
@lamh36
@The Thin Black Duke
@RSA
@Martin
I want to thank all of you for saying the things that clearly need to be said here–and everywhere. 27 years old, dead. ‘Officers’ so poorly trained that 2 of them couldn’t even hold Brooks safely (since they just absolutely had to arrest him) for.?.), and unable to anticipate the fear their presence would instill. The cops had the advantage of being “prepared and ready” and still couldn’t manage not killing Brooks by shooting him in the back. G_d. They do it because they think they will get away with it. I hope they are arrested.
Martin
@Fair Economist: What’s notable is how completely routine they are, across the NYPD. Remember, this is their inside voice. This is how they talk when they don’t think you can hear them.
I will again qualify that I have numerous family members in the NYPD. I don’t wish harm to come to the police, but I sure as shit am okay with the NYPD being disbanded and new organizations built up.
raven
@lamh36: I never tried to convince you, or anyone else, of anything and you know to.
J R in WV
Really good point — drunk guy, why not just write a ticket, ask him who to call to come and pick him up? Instead these assholes make it as much worse as it could possibly be.
I wrote a long comment, decided to delete it. Dunno what to do, this is obviously horrible and criminal. Rules need to change, cops need to know if they draw and shoot, they are not going to be a cop in the morning. Find another job, selling used cars, anything, but not carrying a gun for a living!
banditqueen
@J R in WV: Right you are. How many young, white, drunk guys are advised “to drive home carefully” after they are stopped for erratic driving?
prostratedragon
On hyped-up cops: Way back in the day I was diddybopping down the street toward my apartment in Morningside Heights — while stuff happens there occasionally it’s hardly the urban “jungle.” Was just rounding the corner with my hand in my pocket to fish out keys when a cop at the back of his patrol car whirled around pulling his gun. I stopped cold, took a deep breath then explained that I was headed into the building just up there, and would like to slowly remove my door keys using this other hand here, if I may. He kind of nodded and returned his gun, and I walked on.
I’ll never forget how amazed and also terrified he looked. I was in much better shape throughout the scene than he was, though I’d had much less reason to anticipate being pulled on as part of my day than he’d had of seeing someone coming around a corner on a residential street in broad daylight. Since then I’ve wondered what in the world goes on in some people’s minds?!
prostratedragon
@lamh36: Like I said, football play. The whole thing needs rethinking and rebuilding from the ground up.
Martin
@Mike G: As a bit of a tonic from all of this, go watch videos of people in the UK pushing police into the water. Sometimes it’s someone they’re chasing (obviously over something trivial as sometimes the guy running is answering the crowd why he’s being chased which is pretty fucking funny in itself) then pretending to give up and then pushing them in, and sometimes it’s a kid pranking them and pushing them in. Nobody is outraged. Everyone is laughing. Nobody has any expectation that any violence is going to take place. Sometimes the embarrassed cop tries to catch the person (much slower as they’re 10lbs heavier), and sometimes they just accept that got punked and head back for a dry uniform.
What’s notable is how utterly different the expectation is by EVERYONE – the guy being chased, the crowd, and even the police.
My wife son and I took a vacation last year to Europe. At one point we’re watching police set up a line to stop spectators from running onto a sporting area. The police were heavily armed – because this was an event where terrorism might occur. At one point some of the crowd run by when one officer turned to answer a question. My son was sure the police would start shooting. He was terrified. And then the police just let everyone through. They tried. They made the rule clear. People broke the rule. Obviously they weren’t terrorists. No harm done.
We’re the whitest people in the world in the safest community in America and my kids are still dead certain the police will shoot anyone who breaks even the most minor rule. We can’t imagine what it’s like for black people who are targeted for that treatment.
evodevo
@Another Scott: Yes. This. If this were some high on who knows what white frat boy college student in an expensive car, would this have happened? I sincerely doubt it…
debbie
It should be a given that an African-American man would try to run. It’s not like he would have any chance of surviving if he were to be taken into custody.
While we’re making lists of what needs to be fixed, how about shutting down police unions and after a decent interval of time, allow new ones to be formed with far less powers.
I can’t remember which FOP pig it was, but he angrily demanded, “Stop treating us like criminals!” I yelled back at the radio, “Then stop your goddamn criminality!”
Omnes Omnibus
?????
Steeplejack
@Martin:
The fact that the NYPD has an award called the “Combat Cross” is a travesty in itself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Yeah, the Combat Zone was in Boston anyway.
O. Felix Culpa
@Another Scott:
This. The targeting of black bodies has to stop. There are always defenses and excuses trotted out, but at the root it’s about police power to destroy black bodies. It won’t stop until the police are disbanded and reconstituted and police immunity is removed.
piratedan
@J R in WV: and that THIS happens, after two fucking weeks of people marching, loudly protesting the racism and unneeded violence in police response… it’s like these fuckers live in a Fox News bubble and have no fucking awareness whatsoever about what is going on in this country.
J R in WV
@piratedan:
Yes, that too. But I think this is an ingrained reflex, if the black guy runs, shoot him down.Even if he isn’t a felonious criminal, no gun, he’s running and that MAKES HIM A TARGET!!!
I saw the family’s lawyers, who said that witnesses saw the “officers” pull on their blue gloves and pick up their shell casings BEFORE they even approached the dead guy, which is illegal tampering with a crime scene, and then used their feet to push him over.The lawyers are sick of these cases, even though they probably make a shit ton of money from them.
The cops knew he was dead or they would have run up to him before tampering with the crime scene. Or one kept a gun aimed at him while the other cop did the tampering. Sick, evil cops…
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
When did the military start with the concept that everyone is an enemy and has to be killed? Because that was never in my training. I realize that the world is not the same as it was 50 yrs ago, but still I never understood that anyone could be killed for any reason. I know there were situations that I never was put in where seemingly everyone was trying to kill you, but that was far more rare than a lot of people think.
My point is that I think racism plays a dramatic role in police shootings. Like it sounds, in this one. Or George Floyd, or, or, or, or, or ad infinitum. Racism is not distinct to the US, it is a human problem but it is here at the very least as much a political concern as any other issue if not more. We have a political party that favors, OK demands a racist tint to every issue and has for the vast majority of my almost 71 yrs
From John’s twitter feed.
Bernie Kerik’s take on the police killing of Rayshard Brooks is that “radical left-wing” mayors who want reforms should “tell the thugs in your community don’t attack our police. Don’t assault our police. Don’t resist arrest.”
I’d ask why is it that police in other countries don’t have to shoot people, especially black people on a regular basis? Is there some component of US policing that says shoot first, shoot always, do not allow not deference by anyone – only immediate and full obedience and then we might not shoot, suffocate, beat you to death? And why is that?
Ruckus
@lamh36:
I posted before I reading the rest of the comments and you’ll see that I agree with you. I work/owned a business blocks from south central LA for over 25 yrs and saw a lot of police work that I would never see in my home town 25 miles away. All of it racist based. A lone black woman accosted by police for the crime of being black and walking. Yes it was a poor area. Yes some people did petty crime to live, but not the majority. None of any of that which I saw deserved death or beatings. And if the country was less fucking racist, most of those involved would not have had to resort to crime to exist. We had black employees over the years and every single one of them was someone I am very honored to have met and work with.
It’s way, way past time to work to make this entire system, entire country better, dramatically so, because it’s broken, and broken badly. And it looks like a vast majority see this.
Procopius
Must be about sixty years ago, I read that many cities were abolishing cash bail. They found that releasing suspects on their own recognizance, at least for residents of the city, did not result in people fleeing or failing to show up for their court appearance. Police probably influenced the change from that, but it seems more a case of the
corrupt justice systemlocal governments seeking revenue.Around the same time, I remember reading that police departments in cities trained their officers to only shoot if they were being attacked, because of the risk to innocent bystanders. Most bullets are going to miss their target, especially if he’s moving, and in a crowded neighborhood you have no idea where they are going to go. or what they are going to hit. Even if you hit your suspect, if a modern high powered bullet passes through his body (I’m assuming police rarely shoot at a fleeing female suspect) it’s going to continue on. The media rarely report on the “collateral damage” that occurs during arrests. This is something that probably should be passed into statute — never, ever, shoot at a fleeing suspect. I don’t know when that policy was abandoned, but I imagine it had to do with the War on Drugs, which also needs to be dismantled.
Soprano2
@Martin: “This American Life” did an episode about Schoolcraft and his tapes. It was so shocking – he’s the kind of person who should be a police officer, and they ran him off.
Plain Dave
@Baud:
I suspect disobedience as the motivation. “I am the law, obey me!” Or die if you somehow can’t be beaten into submission. Failure to obey an officer should not be a capital offense.
Tasers and batons should be sufficient for 99.99% of all encounters. Disarming the police is long overdue.
Jay Noble
Several of the martial arts teach to use only as much force as needed to diffuse a situation. Not much of that kind of training is much in evidence.
As far as shooting someone who is running away, what happened to the training of running them down? Tossing a baton/billy club to trip them? Or a bolo? Or entagling them in a net? A boomerrang to the noggin? None of these is going to be 100% non-lethal but immensley less lethal than a taser or bullet.
And no this isn’t being Batman simplistic. As has been mentioned other countries’ LEOs are pretty good at not shooting the citizenry.
BellyCat
This has been a very interesting thread to read. Martin’s point about “culture is policy“ is entirely on point. This is why policing (and justice) needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Repair is simply not possible with the same players.
“Respect ma authoritah!” is a root problem, fostered by absurd amounts of immunity and lack of proper (any?) oversight or consequence.
While Blacks unfairly suffer the worst—by a HUGE margin—to believe that Whites are as immune as some seem to believe is not only incorrect, it misses the larger problem, one which allows horrific racism to go unchecked.
Too many police feed on those who are powerless, regardless of race, creed, gender, etc. Because police are less sure of the power of an unknown White person, Whites tend to get a pass initially while all others don’t. BUT… ask for your rights or fail to be 100% submissive to any illegal action or demand and all bets are off from that point on, no matter who you are.
Also, lots of talk about urban police, for good reason, but rural police, with few minorities around, also need to get their yayas off and can be utterly deranged with strangers, even if their skin matches.
Another Scott
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-atlanta/protesters-burn-down-wendys-in-atlanta-where-black-man-was-slain-by-police-idUSKBN23K0RI
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
I saw that about the Wendy’s being burned down. I hate when things like that happen, because it gives white people an excuse to dismiss everything that is wrong with what happened to that man with “See how ‘those people’ are? They’re all violent and unreasonable”. What good does it do to burn Wendy’s down? They certainly didn’t expect the police to kill that man. They just wanted help with their problem. Don’t blame Wendy’s, blame those crappy cops who shot him and a crappy police culture that says it’s ok to shoot a fleeing man in the back.
davecb
@Martin: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” (Peter Drucker)
If you don’t fix the culture, you get police killing black folks in the US, first nations in Canada and the insane in Toronto.
Not impossible: the Toronto cop who arrested the “Toronto van attack” perpetrator refused to kill him, despite deliberate provocation