Tremaine Lee of MSNBC is reporting live that police in Charlotte have just fired rubber bullets and what he’s describing as pepper spray (most likely pepper ball less than lethal rounds) into fleeing protestors that were marching peacefully towards I277 over an hour before the midnight curfew. Lee is reporting that the police are moving into the area, they then set up a phalanx, move towards the protestors, and as the protestors begin to move out, the police then fire the rubber bullets and pepper rounds towards them.
Police in riot gear pounding their shields, someone said it sounded like they were firing paintballs #charlotteprotests pic.twitter.com/npsA3r9Qd7
— Katie Peralta (@katieperalta) September 23, 2016
Here’s the link to WBTV 3 Charlotte’s live feed.
The next major conflict point will be at 12:00 AM EDT when the Mayor of Charlotte has called a curfew to clear the streets from midnight to 6:00 AM EDT. It is unclear how law enforcement in Charlotte plan to enforce that curfew given the several hundred peaceful protestors and demonstrators in the streets of Charlotte. Earlier this evening Reverend Barber in an interview on MSNBC indicated that the Mayor of Charlotte had agreed during a meeting with faith leaders earlier today not to impose and enforce a curfew.
For everyone in the Charlotte area please stay safe.
I’ll update as new information becomes available.
Update at 11:15 PM EDT
Mayor Jennifer Roberts just told Brian Williams on MSNBC that:
Mayor Roberts to MSNBC: "We want to be flexible… We're saying midnight. We want to have them cleared as soon after as possible."
— Théoden Janes (@theodenjanes) September 23, 2016
We are 45 minutes away from finding out what this means in practice.
Update at 12:00 AM EDT
The Charlotte municipal curfew is now in effect. Significant number of demonstrators/protestors are still out on the street. Hopefully things stay peaceful.
Police say no injuries tonight. Knock on wood #CharlotteProtests
— Katie Peralta (@katieperalta) September 23, 2016
Update 12:07 PM EDT
2 @CMPD officers being treated by @MecklenburgEMS after they were sprayed w a chemical agent by demonstrators.
— CMPD News (@CMPD) September 23, 2016
There are still people milling about uptown. Police say decision abt arresting them needs to come from chief #CLTProtest
— Katie Peralta (@katieperalta) September 23, 2016
Update at 12:12 PM EDT
Protesters in Charlotte stop to hug National Guard members and thank for service.
— Jeff Siner (@jsiner) September 23, 2016
Update at 12:35 AM EDT
More than 5 hours after gathering, crowd still covers about 3 blocks. pic.twitter.com/i5XQkjFfGo
— Ann Doss Helms (@anndosshelms) September 23, 2016
Update at 12:52 AM EDT:
12:42am. Protests continue, but all peaceful. Police say they can continue. #CMPD #Charlotte https://t.co/bkbdWq3glw
— Molly Grantham WBTV (@MollyGrantham) September 23, 2016
Citywide curfew for #Clt; #CMPD says as long as protesters remain peaceful they can continue #KeithLamontScott @WBTV_News pic.twitter.com/8sHhkp7GEt
— Coleen Harry WBTV (@ColeenHarryWBTV) September 23, 2016
Omnes Omnibus
Just tried checking in with an army buddy who lives in downtown Charlotte. I’ll report back if he has anything interesting to say.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks.
sukabi
Sounds eerily like what the cops did in 1999 Seattle WTO protests, drive peaceful protesters / bystanders / pedestrians into box before curfew and let them have it… total bullshit
Mnemosyne
I mentioned in another thread that I got into a huge Facebook fight with my cousin-in-law who’s a cop. He is unable to distinguish between a shooting that may have been “within policy” and the series of mistakes that led up to that shooting.
Until further evidence appears, I am still convinced that the undercover operation got screwed up, they thought Mr. Scott was either their fugitive or someone associated with him, and Mr. Scott was killed because he couldn’t figure out WTF was going on and why people in street clothes were screaming at him and waving guns.
Patricia Kayden
The police need to turn over the video and stop playing. People have a right to protest what appears to be an unjustified killing. There will be protests until the video is released. Period.
Adam L Silverman
@sukabi: While that might be tactically effective it would be strategically stupid.
Holden Pattern
@Adam L Silverman: And since when have American police shown restraint when presented with “tactically effective but strategically stupid” choices? American police (as a whole) seem to be crippled by a toxic need to demand submission to their authority, to “show strength”, to “win”.
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: They’re not going to release it because it is ambiguous. And ambiguous worries them.
I’ve seen a photo on another site that someone took at the scene after Scott had been shot. There is clearly something dark, with right angles and some depth to it on the ground to the right and in front of (towards the picture taker) of Scott and the police. I can not, no matter how much I’ve blown up the picture tell what it is. It could be a book with a dark cover. It could be a ratchet. It could be a brick. It could be a pistol.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: yep, huge escalation when there didn’t need to be… if that’s what they’re planning in Charlotte it’s beyond stupid.
Adam L Silverman
@Holden Pattern: I’m not saying they have been.
waysel
@Adam L Silverman: Haven’t police been known to plant guns at a scene after the fact?
Adam L Silverman
@sukabi: I had a student that went to that protest in 1999. It was unclear if she was going to protest or if she was going to break windows.
Adam L Silverman
@waysel: My understanding is that it has happened. If they did it this time, I would expect it would have gotten picked up on either a dash cam or body cam. What is worrisome is that several officers on the scene when Mr. Scott was shot were wearing body cameras those cameras were either off or not functioning.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Here’s the Washington Post story I linked to earlier. I don’t know why it’s not being widely reported, but Charlotte police have said several times that the officer who shot Scott was in plainclothes, which is a very different matter than if the officer had been in uniform. There are a whole range of ways that plainclothes officers can screw things up — see also the death of Patrick Dorismond a decade ago in NYC, who got into a scuffle with a persistent drug dealer who turned out to be an undercover cop.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman:
And in an open carry state, none of that matters. They have laws that say you can carry a firearm openly in public. So what if there is a gun – show that he pointed it at police, show that he threatened them. They can’t treat possession of a gun as a threat when they’ve enshrined the right to be in possession of a gun. They’ve got to come down on one side or the other of this.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I’m aware he was in plainclothes. I put it in my original post on Tuesday night. There has also been sporadic reporting that Mr. Scott had a disability and, in once case, I think it was reported as a hearing deficit.
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
I still think the Charlotte PD could have prevented a whole lot of this by presenting the story as terrible accident during a police investigation rather than armed assailant shot by police. But, of course, police can never, ever admit to wrongdoing or error, so there was pretty much zero chance they would admit that Mr. Scott’s death was anything other than solely his own fault.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t believe them.
SHOW THE VIDEO
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: I am aware. I’ve been waiting for things to settle down a bit, as well as for the rampaging hordes of distinguished law professors to fade back into the woodwork, and I am planning on doing a post on that. And its a stand your ground state. So if Scott had thought he was being carjacked and shot and killed the cop…
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
That indeed is his disability.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I think the hearing deficit part may be conflating Mr. Scott’s shooting with the police shooting of a hearing-impaired motorist in North Carolina a few years ago.
I know you included that the officer involved was in plainclothes, but a few commenters this afternoon had not heard that and were shocked that it had been left out of the news stories they’d seen or read.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: I was working downtown during those protests, the second day we were told not to come in as the protests were going to be in that area… there was a group (anarchists) that came in specifically to break shit. Rumors that there was a group of professional agitators (cops) brought in to cause trouble…
SPD spent an enormous amount of time and money “training” for urban combat, got all kinds of new toys to prepare…
hovercraft
@Holden Pattern:
They need to institute psychological testing that screens out people with authoritarian tendencies. If you want to be in an environment where people have to be polite and follow your every command, join the military ( even there you don’t get blind obeisance), police are dealing with the public that has rights, and the can be rude and you have to take it, it’s your job. Following orders is a separate issue, but they should be reasonable. And we still have the right to question them as to why. Just because you have the power doesn’t mean you should use it. De-escalation must be the first order of business.
Pooh
Pounding on their riot shields? They think they are the Spartans at Thermopylae or something?
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
I would actually be okay with the police saying, Okay, we’ll show the video up until the moment that trigger gets pulled. That way, people can see what the events were that led to the shooting but the family’s privacy can be protected.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
In a rational world, there would be an automatic criminal charge if someone’s body cam was turned off or mysteriously blank after a police shooting. In reality, that’ll never happen, because the police must not be questioned.
Adam L Silverman
@Pooh: Only if the Charlotte Mecklenberg Police Academy is an agoge.
sukabi
@Pooh: intimidation tactics. Now if they wanted to put on a Braveheart display with kilts and bare asses…..
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Reverend Barber, during his interview earlier this evening, stated that the law needs to be amended so that officers that turn off their body cameras are immediately terminated.
NotMax
May be the reporter that is inaccurate or just plain wrong. May be the police.
Rubber bullets are not intended to be fired at people for crowd control – rather at the ground, lessening chances of serious injury as they rebound up.
If they are being fired at people, that is gross misconduct and reason enough for those firing to be severely disciplined if not dismissed.
The above does not mean I condone the firing of any type of ammunition in this instance in any way, shape or form.
scav
They’re (meaning the Charlotte PD specifically) are verging into playing trite dominance games by refusing to show what evidence they have — “believe what we say or else” really seems to be the takeaway. And it’s a slow-burn of the same message by their (meaning nearly all PDs) chronic inability to manage functioning car or body cams when things go pear-shaped. Their (again, meaning the generality of PDs in the news recently) insistence on being treated as inviolate and automatically worthy of respect in the manner they choose to receive it and no exceptions allowed or they won’t do their jobs is icing on the dominance cake.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I typed it as he reported it. I’m aware they’re supposed to be fired at the ground, not directly at individuals. When its the latter they are just another type of lethal round.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: that would be a good first step. Also civilian oversight boards.
TheMightyTrowel
@sukabi: whose make up reflects the demographics of the community
Mnemosyne
@scav:
The dominance training that cops get is a big, big problem. Even if you screen out the sociopaths, you are basically setting cops up for failure if you train them to expect instant compliance with their orders and then send them out into a world where people are drunk, in diabetic shock, hearing impaired, mentally ill, injured but walking, etc etc etc.
If you train someone to escalate aggression until the other person complies and then have them interact with someone who is incapable of complying for any reason, you end up with dead citizens and pissed-off cops who don’t understand why their training let them down.
Lizzy L
Makes it pretty clear, doesn’t it? Guns are for white people. If you’re not white, if you’re lucky you get stop-and-frisk. If you’re unlucky, you get dead.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: I have some good friends who are police. One very close one. They feel overwhelmed – caught between the municipal officials and the rest of the citizenry. What Dallas Police Chief Brown said about not being social workers, but being forced to do so is something that needs to be paid attention to (in fact his entire remarks) is basically how they feel. They’ve also told me that a lot of their colleagues, however, feel that they are at war with both the municipal officials and the citizenry. That they’re one element in a three way fight. This appears to be a devolution from what we long discussed as law enforcement culture. That for cops there are three subcultures in the US; cops (and their relatives), criminals, and victims/potential victims. This devolution of attitudes is dangerous.
Miss Bianca
As they’re moving out? Jesus. Why? They’re *going*. What, they’re not moving fast enough? Or just piggy spite?
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Wasn’t dissing you, instead pointing out that either the reporter is in some ways a dunderhead or else the police active in the shooting are both inept and out of control.
sukabi
@TheMightyTrowel: yes.
Adam L Silverman
Curfew is now in effect. In Charlotte.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: They wanted to keep I277 open and not have a repeat of last night.
Lizzy L
@Mnemosyne: YES. All of this. That’s why community policing makes sense, and why militarizing the police force is so disastrous for both the community and the police. Full disclosure: I have friends who are cops.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Tracking. Given that Tremaine Lee was trying to report while running with the demonstrators and away from the cops on I277 that were shooting the rubber bullets and the pepper rounds, I’m not sure he saw it. Given that there have been no reports of any citizen or law enforcement injuries reported so far, if they were shooting at the protestors, they didn’t hit anyone.
GregB
It is just so sad that all of this division appeared out of thin air in only the past 7 years.
-Random Republican Musing
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: It just makes me sick. I understand that they’re feeling under siege and all, but Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ, it’s their own tactics that end up creating the situations that they feel they have to use this kind of force to control. Where is the way out?
ETA: When is some police chief actually going to say, “enough – we’re not at war with out own citizens, and we’re going to stop behaving as if we are if I have to replace the whole goddamn force to get there”? The 15th of Never, I imagine…
NotMax
@Lizzy L
Yes and yes again. The very important line between enforcing law and imposing law has, sadly, become onionskin thin.
Elizabelle
That ridiculous no body cam footage release law scheduled to go into effect next week should blow up into a huge issue. It protects the police, not the community.
What constitutional rights of police is Pat McCrory referring to when he says the new law will protect the police’s constitutional rights? What about the community’s right not to be shot by those sworn to serve and protect?
@Mnemosyne: You’ve had such good comments. I have not heard anyone report on “plainclothes.” It’s a huge factor.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Does that come with gravy and a choice of two sides?
It is almost an axiom in security studies that attempts to prevent a revolution are actually what end up causing the revolution.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It seems like a lot of local governments want their employees to be social workers rather than spending the money to hire an actual social worker. G is working at a public library and they are only just now preparing to hire a part-time case worker for the main branch and two smaller branches to help deal with the homeless patrons who need help that the librarians are not trained for.
See also public schools: teachers complain that they’re being expected to take on social work and librarian jobs that they were never trained for because schools laid off those staffers and expect teachers to pick up the slack.
Police departments do need social workers — not as cops, but as expert assistance that’s available to be called in when needed. I still think that the sovcit woman in Baltimore County who got into a shootout with the police who came to arrest her really needed a 72-hour psychiatric hold, not jail time.
scav
@Adam L Silverman: Lots of people are overwhelmed with their jobs and have to cope. And while being caught between the expectations of elected municipal govt and their own expectations of what their job is is unfortunate (and again, not unique to policing), I’m still wrestling with the near universally awfulness of the Police Union reps who have chimed in — officers presumably have more influence there than over the municipal govts. So while I’m convinced there are police sub-cultures, the toxic ones seem to be the squeaky shouty ones in control (what control they have).
sukabi
@Elizabelle: I think the citizen response should be “If there has been no wrong done, you shouldn’t have anything to hide. Release the videos.”
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
By most accounts, the police chief in Dallas had done a really great job of improving relations between the community and police right up to the point where a crazy black nationalist decided that he needed to kill Dallas cops to prove that improving relations was impossible and revolution was the only answer.
Sadly, it looks like other departments learned all the wrong lessons from that tragedy.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: I don’t disagree. The real problem is that police should simply be classified as civil servants and eligible for belonging to the civil service union. They were granted the privilege (and this word choice is deliberate) of forming unions as a perq for being used by municipal authorities to suppress the citizenry.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: He’s (one of) the examples of how to do things correctly.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
LAPD has come a long way since the bad old days of Darryl Gates. Bill Bratton did a really great job of getting the department onto the right path. I don’t know why Bratton gets so squirrelly every time he’s in charge of NYPD, because he was acting totally differently when he was on this coast.
lahke
@efgoldman: AND Evans releases the video right away. That was big in quelling the reaction to the last shooting.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, Mnem, I was thinking that Dallas might be the exception that proved the rule. And yeah…it makes me equally sick when the bad, stupid craziness goes the other way, too, the way it did there. Of all the insulting kicks in the teeth, to have your people killed when you’re TRYING to do the right thing, I can’t think of anything more crushing.
ETA: @efgoldman: Thank you, for that counter-example. Yes, it takes a huge amount of will, time, expense, and, I would imagine, phenomenal people-management skills and the complete backing of your higher-ups and the political infrastructure. I begin to see why it’s rare…
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman: @efgoldman:
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Different mayors, different city councils, different force. All of those things make a difference.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: What he’s calling out is certainly something that makes their job harder.
Omnes Omnibus
wrong thread…
Adam L Silverman
https://twitter.com/ColeenHarryWBTV/status/779178587828215808
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It helped that he acted decisively and said all the right things after the LAPD riot in MacArthur Park in 2007. That was a huge shakeup of the department because the officers were beating journalists who were broadcasting live on local TV. Not, like, I’m coming to you live from the scene of this riot, but reporters who were in tents doing what were supposed to be innocuous updates from the event until LAPD busted in and knocked over the cameraman.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: It was a full service precinct. They bring the riot to you!
Mike in NC
Expect to see Trump and his minions to swoop into Charlotte this weekend to rail against the dark lawless thugs and other scum threatening those Nice White People. McCrory will share the stage. You can bank on it. Nixon redux.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike in NC: Trump has made two different statements on this on Thursday. The first stated this was a war on the poor. The second blamed it on urban drug culture.
Mnemosyne
Last thought before I start getting ready for bed:
Adam can correct me/comment as needed since he’s the actual expert here, but I think the whole “caging + overwhelming force” tactic is meant to scare people into not coming back to protest the next day or night. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a situation where that actually happened and it usually seems to make more people come out to protest the violence of the day/night before. Sort of like how there were multiple attempts to march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, and the crowd just kept getting bigger the more brutal the police were because people were so shocked at the brutality that they felt that they had to participate and support the protest.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@sukabi: There’s actually a very valid reason not to release the videos right away: if you’re investigating the incident in any sort of honest way, you want to get statements from all of the witnesses before they see the video, as that will influence their memories of what they saw and heard. And, sometimes, it takes longer to interview the witnesses than you’d like.
Beyond that, if the video is ambiguous on the key issues, as it is more times than it is not (and as the Charlotte PD has implied in this case), releasing it doesn’t actually help the situation at all. Everyone just sees what they want to see, and it hardens their positions even further. That’s what has happened in Minneapolis in the wake of the Jamar Clark shooting: none of the multiple videos of the incident have the key action on them, some because they were pointed the wrong way, some because there was a body in the way (and, even if the police had had body cameras, this would probably still have been true, because Clark and the cops in question were in a physical struggle, and the key police contention was about something that took place as Clark reached around behind the cop), or because they were too far away to see clearly. And, so, it has resolved nothing and made everyone angrier.*
I’m in favor of body cams, and they will often have a better angle than the cell phone, dashboard, and security cameras we’ve been getting footage from incidents recently, but anyone who thinks that having more video will be a panacea is absolutely and totally deluded. We’re still going to have a lot of cases where it doesn’t answer the really important questions.
We need to have ways to deal with police shootings that don’t rely upon video.
*And, for what it’s worth, the decision not to indict the cops was absolutely the correct one. I loathe the Minneapolis PD, and have no trouble believing both that they lied and that the shooting was not justified, but if you read the witness statements, the parade of people who would have taken the stand would have ensured reasonable doubt about their guilt.
sukabi
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I do get that there are legitimate reasons for keeping evidence, including body and dash cam video under wraps while the investigation is ongoing. Comment was a throw back at the law and order crowds penchant for the “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t have anything to hide” ploy when there is another grab at invading personal privacy on fishing expeditions.
But, until there is some kind of independent oversight that isn’t beholden to / invested in protecting the status quo it would be better to release as soon as possible.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@sukabi: I agree that it should, while at the same time, this isn’t the issue I want to make our first demand, because, as I said, most of the time, the video won’t resolve anything. It just won’t. I work with security cameras, and most of my incident reports have a line to the effect of, “I observed the footage recorded on CCTV, and could not make out what actually happened.” Instead of making things clear, everyone just sees confirmation of what they already thought in the video. That gets no one anywhere, and the fight over the video becomes a distraction from dealing with what actually happened.
sukabi
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: agree the videos can be a distraction, but in a lot of the cases they have put the lie in the official version of events.
scav
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: But that very ambiguity could have worked in the PDs favor if they hadn’t immediately sounded the Totally Justified! Guns Drawn! Immediate Danger! Cops Correct! Bullhorn. If things look ambiguous on the tape, the persuadable ones or the ones waiting for evidence beyond he-say-they-say could then have agreed it might be a judgement call — and could have done so after the police, admitting things needed some time to research and clarify, could have held back the tape so as not to muddle the impressions. But no, the bebadged angelic brass section of bullhorns had to hauled out immediately to announce the inerrant truth. So even formerly persuadables are beginning to the think the bullhorns smell of nothing but bullshit. Not releasing ambiguous evidence does not necessarily reduce ambiguity, especially when things are being generally handled in a fashion that heightens mistrust.
J R in WV
This is grim, so trigger warnings!
Back in Jim Crow days between the end of Reconstruction and the passage of the Civil Rights act, something near to 4,000 people were lynched in the US, from about 1880 to 1968. Here’s a description from the Washington Post article, they’re quoting from a report by Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama:
Evidently lynching in the south was a formal method of keeping the African-American population under control, but lynchings happened in at least 44 states, and not all victims were black.
Now my big question: are police shootings today worse in some ways than the lynchings of historic Jim Crow racism?
According to the Washington Post work on police shootings, there were 990 people shot by Police in 2015, and so far in 2016, the best they can tell, 707. But Police Departments don’t always provide any information about these shootings, even after Freedom of Information requests are filed.
In 2015, 494 Whites were shot, 258 Blacks, 172 Hispanics and 66 other/unknown. If similar numbers on average ran for 50 years, that would be 24,700 Whites and 12,900 Blacks. This is obviously just an off-hand estimate, but it isn’t based on zero data or pulled out of thin air either. In the WaPo graph the lines for 2015 and 2016 lay right on top of one another.
The lynching report ran for 88 years and only got to 4,000 people murdered in terrorist racist attacks up through 1968.
So today we are way more than an order of magnitude worse in terms of death toll counts. That’s pretty grim, isn’t it? And the President can’t seem to do anything significant about it, so far, after 7 years and 8 months. Maybe Hillary will look into this.
It is certainly more likely than expecting Trump to give a rat’s ass about it. He would probably say, “You guys get to work, this isn’t getting us where we need to be!”
At least these victims mostly die quickly, laying on the pavement, or in their yard or porch. They aren’t tortured, burned alive, chopped up alive for souvenirs. I’m not sure if there are collectable postcards, there are sure a lot of internet photos, so it would still be easy for a racist to collect them for fun and entertainment.
There are archives of these postcards out there, by the way. I do NOT recommend you do Google images, I… trust me, just don’t go there.
Sorry to be a downer. But this shit is real, and we have to do something about it if we want to be able to call ourselves a civilized nation. The cops are killing us, by far more than any other group of people committing crimes per capita. They are more dangerous than Radical Islamic Terrorists, who manage to kill 2 or 3 people in the US annually, unless you count that one day when no one was president to take responsibility, that day in 2001, the day George W Bush was NOT the President of the United States. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, who also NOT mayor of New York City on 9/11/2001.
But the Islamic Terrorists would have to knock down skyscrapers over and over every few years to catch up with the murder rate of our own police. That’s pretty bad.
daveNYC
@J R in WV: You want a downer? 4000 is just the number of lynchings. That wouldn’t include acts of terror that happened under the guise of law enforcement or the judicial system.