Yeah, Stirling and Castile, in Louisiana and Minnesota. The Minnesota one was in front of his girlfriend and her 4 year old, so... that's fucked up on a fun new level!
Touching back on the anarchy bit, I like to call myself a "naive bullshit anarchist" along the whole "if men were angels" line of thinking. I generally avoid inciting others to attack me, can defend myself personally just fine, but am nonetheless uncomfortable with the fact that I am unable to defend myself against the various armed government agencies and forces which I happen to live within the purview of. I'm not worried about the Army or Air Force rolling up to push my shit in, I'm not even a blip on the radar there, but I've never been a big fan of someone claiming they have the authority to order me around, detain me, remove my possessions, or inflict violence on me up to and including death.
Weirdly, treating a cop as you would any other ridiculously dressed person with a gun seems to result in amiable responses, though it helps that I loved me some crown vic police interceptors. I've been cuffed twice, once released to my mother, and once locked up for a brief period when I was older.
Been pulled over a couple of times over a headlight that died or having to swerve to avoid someone which looked rather alarming to someone who couldn't see the other driver, always kept in mind that I wouldn't want to step out into traffic, so they don't either. As I didn't do anything obviously wrong, I always make a point to pull off somewhere safer than right on the side of the damn highway, and treat them like any other motorist that flagged you down. Can I help you? Oh, my turn signal went out? Thank you! Do you need anything else? Oh, what year interceptor is that? 2001? Nice, I was never able to snag the 2001~2003 cabs from the lot when I drove. Well, I'll go get that fixed, have a good night! Funnily enough, I've only had my license on me once, but if you honestly know you haven't done anything wrong I guess you present yourself in a way that doesn't trigger the "this is a suspect or possible threat" responses.
I suppose it is luck that I was doing my "young and dumb running around at night pretending to be ninjas" shit a couple decades ago, not even a remotely safe sort of activity lately it seems. I've had a gun pointed at me once (the cops had actually been called out because there was something else taking place, then someone saw us and assumed it was related to a break-in or something, we saw the cop cars rolling around and hid in some bushes but got stuck in a cul-de-sac and were going to slip away under a u-haul truck to cross the street when I looked up to see a 9 mm round smiling at me from the inside of a little black square and promptly put my hands on the back of my head.
It isn't remotely fun having someone in the heightened alert/readiness state where they have drawn a weapon and then aim it at you. I don't suppose it is fun having to do it and discover it's a kid laying there on the ground, but it's harder to sympathize when there is such a massive imbalance of power.
Adding a 4 year old into the equation and jumping to "pump 5 shots into the guy" though? Holy shit, I mean, I always kept in mind that there is nothing I could do really to defend myself against a cop, but seeing these videos with people being held down or whatnot and then getting shot repeatedly, reeeeaaaallllyyyy makes me wish I had something better than "well, they know it is wrong to shoot me, and would be punished if they did it in the wrong situation" to fall back on, or wish for a magical anarchist revolution I suppose?
Unfortunately there has only been one true anarchist utopia that I've ever heard of: The Culture, and that involves technomagic, Strong Benevolent AI, and whatnot. So we're left with the system in place and the world that was there when we arrived, it would be nice if more people wanted to make sure it was better after they leave, but that's why I chose the "naive bullshit" moniker.
Author
Topic: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice (Read 428187 times)