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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops / There’s No Comfort in Responsibility

There’s No Comfort in Responsibility

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I’m finally back from taking care of my parents in the Dakotas, having my time there increased by my sister and brother being exposed to COVID+ individuals and having to quarantine (both tested negative in the end).  I got back just in time for Rochester to be the center of yet another police homicide of an unarmed black man.

For those of you who’ve missed this one, the short recap is that Daniel Prude was killed in custody on March 23 (he died a week later but he essentially choked to death that night).  Here’s a tick-tock from CNN that covers the details of his death, which has been ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner.

His death wasn’t an issue until the family obtained bodycam footage through a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request and held a press conference on Wednesday to release it.   There have been demonstrations ever since.  Last night, a group of protesters with three elected officials at the head was met with pepper balls from the police — one of the elected officials was shot in the head with a pepper ball.  This occurred immediately after the police declared that the protest was an unlawful assembly – which, at that point, it clearly wasn’t.  After that declaration, the crowd pitched water bottles and other debris at the cops, and the cops shot a number of reporters in the head with pepper balls.

Here’s a shot of another city council member confronting police:

Throughout this crisis, Mayor Lovely Warren has been, as usual, awful.  Her transparently false excuse that she couldn’t make any announcements about Prude’s death because it was being investigated by New York Attorney General Tish James was rebutted by James’ office.  The day after a shambolic news conference where she made that claim, Warren suspended all officers involved in Prude’s death.

This afternoon, at another weak news conference, (video link) Warren and Police Chief LaRon Singletary outdid each other in the quest to form words into sentences without conveying meaning.  The main announcement at the press conference was that a local pastor was going to form a group of “elders” who would create a buffer between protesters and police.  Reverend Myra Brown will lead this group, and volunteered to do it, after protesters sheltered in her church to avoid pepper balls — in other words, she’s pushing Warren to agree to have a set of pastors and community leaders act as human shields.

So, this is where we are right now.  The police are so out of control, and Warren is such a weak leader, that someone from the community has to step up to serve as a human shield.  I predict injuries, because our cops are as bad as all the rest, which is to say, pretty bad.

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  2. 2.

    germy

    I will no longer be accepting political contributions from police unions. Elected officials have a responsibility to hold officers accountable, and can only do this independently from police unions. For me, that means being off of their political payroll.

    — Senator Megan Hunt ? (@NebraskaMegan) September 6, 2020

  11. 11.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    Not to criticize the victim, but why isn’t he naming the official?

    Agreed. I’m not saying that we need to end all anonymous sources, but the NYT and Village Courtiers have definitely overdone it.

    And I’m not entirely putting on the reporters. If there are witnesses to criminal activity who do not come forward, it’s on them. The witnesses to Trump’s remarks about soldiers should go on the record. But the reporters and news organizations could reduce the practice by refusing to publish anonymous insider stuff.

  12. 12.

    Central Planning

    You can follow the protestors in Rochester on twitter – @ftp_roc. The news says that is For The People, but I suspect it is really Fuck The Popo

  15. 15.

    Mike in NC

    So in a couple of days we can probably expect to hear that Fat Bastard is going to Rochester to assess the situation throw gasoline on a raging fire.

  16. 16.

    germy

    @James E Powell:   He’s not really a source, though.  He’s a top ranking official who threatened a former diplomat.

    I hope we learn his identity, but it could be anyone.

  18. 18.

    BCHS Class of 1980

    To mistermix: my wife went to RIT (or as they called it, South Henrietta Institute of Technology). What sort of bad is this mayor? Terrified of the cops bad, or actively on their side bad?

    As for McFaul, an active threat to my mind disqualifies one from any expectation of anonymity.

  20. 20.

    piratedan

    @debbie: agree, Barr appears to enjoy the “power of the office” and I have no illusions that he’ll use it to its fullest extent.

  22. 22.

    Calouste

    @germy: First lie there of course is that the shitgibbon is a “democratically elected official”. He neither democratically elected nor does he behave like an official.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    @James E Powell: Maybe to get the official to back off?  The implicit threat to name him if he does it again, or something.  Or to keep it in the news longer.

    Dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    Agreed that too many police departments are literally out of control. The local(ish) example – https://bluevirginia.us/2020/09/weeks-after-announcing-felony-charges-against-sen-louise-lucas-and-others-in-confederate-monument-case-portsmouth-police-chief-removed-from-her-position

    tl;dr – a Black woman state senator attended and spoke at a protest against Confederate monuments and some police guy decided to charge her with a felony.

    But for the courage of a few good officers and former Chief Tonya Chapman, who put themselves in harms way by telling the truth about the Portsmouth Police Department; there would be no end to bad cops targeting black elected officials without consequences. https://t.co/BFQn9Cjz3w

    — L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) September 6, 2020

    There’s an awful lot of rot that needs to be cleaned out.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  29. 29.

    dr. bloor

    I’m old enough to remember my parents quietly murmuring about “a long, hot summer” in ’67, although I didn’t really understand any of it at the time.  RPD hasn’t changed a fucking bit.

  30. 30.

    Denali

    I am in the Rochester area and I support the protest. I have attended protests. I do think protests should happen in the day time; after dark there is a different feeling. I am so sad that this death happened in Rochester. Will we ever learn?

  31. 31.

    scott (the other one)

    I know nothing about Rochester, having not been there in decades, nor Mayor Lovely Warren. But whenever I hear about mayor being so reprehensibly weak in the face of such blatant police misconduct, I’m at the point where I assume the mayor’s physical safety has been openly threatened by the cops.

  33. 33.

    J R in WV

    104??????

    There’s some global climate change for you~!!~ It was 53 last night here, and maybe 75 this afternoon.

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    @Jay: That was last night. 17 hours ago. Portland, OR is a fucking mess. The cops are out of control, and the mayor is useless and needs to resign.

  36. 36.

    Jay

    <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>The secret list of convicted cops<a href=”https://t.co/TxF2DvmWtE”>https://t.co/TxF2DvmWtE</a></p>&mdash; Firestorm on Fascism ?? #AntifascistaSiempre (@AntifascistF12) <a href=”https://twitter.com/AntifascistF12/status/1288345311426097157?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 29, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

  37. 37.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Dear Lord!

    It’s 111 where my sister lives, and she doesn’t want to move up here when she sold her house because she’s afraid she’ll be cold. We all told her we’d make sure she is warm enough but she doesn’t believe us.

    It’s 79 right now at my house and it’s been nice all summer. The highest temp this week will be 90, on Wednesday. Good for ripening corn and other things.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @opiejeanne:

    We follow Robert Lewis, a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, as he tries to report on a secret list of police officers with criminal convictions. What begins as a simple story becomes a collaboration with dozens of reporters across California, from McClatchy, the USA Today Network, MediaNews Group and Voice of San Diego.

    https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-secret-list-of-convicted-cops/

    It’s a podcast episode that covers the many ways and tricks that Cops, their Unions and Police Forces, use to stay one step ahead of being held accountability.

  44. 44.

    dopey-o

    Any chance of you providing a link or an explanation of what McFaul is referring to? Who is he ‘subverting’? Who has threatened him with what?

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