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[Reelya]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dLwSdgEOupE


A robbery in France, caught on cam. Just for reference, police arrive at about 5min.

Wow. If that were the US, this would have been a death situation. Also lol@6:02, guy tries to just leave with the cop blocking the door. I'm amazed at how foreign it looks to me to see police not escalate a situation to violence immediately.

I agree about how foriegn it looks. That plus what I said about bursting in like a badass with guns drawn. says something about the police or maybe just the US culture as a whole.

Of course though, completely different gun cultures between the US and France.

Those French robbers look so awkward. "Is this a real actual robbery?" is my reaction. The way they grab the gun from each other, I certainly wouldn't just grab a live firearm from my buddy like that. Maybe it wasn't a real gun.

[Phmcw]

It was a BB guns, but the cops didn't know. And the 12 year old kid that got shot has a bb gun. Even if he had a real gun, the French cop would have tried to have him drop it. Here they are told by the clerck that one of them have a gun at around 7, and aren't told it's false. The cops answer that they'll wait for backup before taking it.

[TamerVirus]

The Eric Garner chokehold officer got cleared by the grand jury....

I have a bad feeling about this

[Levi]

Police officer fired for refusing to turn on body cam.

At least some departments seem to be trying to change for the better.

[smeeprocket]

I am just not sure what alternatives there are other than say widespread rioting (targeting wealthy businesses preferably but those are usually more protected.)

When Occupy Wall Street happened, part of the problem was a lack of a clear message, everyone sort of just hitched their wagon on. People were out there for a long time and the police got very violent. But eventually everyone just got bored and went home.

These discussions seem like they will go the same route. They have been tried before, dialogue has been tried before, there have been serious attempts to work with police on these matters.

These police only know violence. They do not care what citizens think because there is not accountability. Shooting an unarmed black person is easy and easy to get away with. If there are no witnesses you just say they attacked you, if there are witnesses you call their character into question.

Looking to indite Mike Brown's stepdad is another sign of simply not having any fucks to give about whether or not you have any sort of good standing in the eye of the public. They are looking to aggravate the wound, not mend it. Even if he was inciting the rioting, it would be a very poor decision to charge him with that all things considered. But they are looking to do that simply because an officer getting away with murdering an unarmed black youth is not good enough. They have to grind their heel in as hard as possible to assert their dominance.

It's a lot like the football team that did the hands up, don't shoot expression before playing. The police union got mad at them, demanding an apology and trying to strongarm the nfl into punishing them. The police simply do not care what the populace at large thinks about them, and most white people think it's a non-issue because it's not on their radar.

I'm not sure there is any good answer to this continued oppression by the police, and the lack of oversight and accountability they enjoy, other than nationwide riots. You use peaceful methods whenever possible, but these police officers don't understand peace, they only know violence.

[Vilanat]

I was on the fence on brown's case, but Garner's? pure murder. america should riot. violently riot.

[smeeprocket]

it's not even just about garner or brown, though those both highlight the racism in the justice system. I know the grand jury in the brown case was 9 white people of the 12 total jurors. The thoughts on that case are split to a ridiculous degree based on race.

I will hazard a guess that the garner grand jury was majority white.

This kind of thing perpetuates itself. The system promotes more of the same. If white people do not get what is happening, and you put them in charge of deciding if a trial should even go to court the result is fairly obvious.

This is like the jury selection for the zimmerman case. They flooded it with white mothers. You know what scares white mothers the most? Black youth. They filled the jury with the people mostly likely to perceive martin as a threat and the results were predictable.

There's so many of these cases that most of them don't even get mentioned. Killing an unarmed black teen and not getting prosecuted is ridiculously common. Anytime I've seen someone start working out a list, they finally just stop bringing more people up because there's so many perfect examples that you could talk about it for a very long time.

This doesn't just effect blacks either, though it affects them to a disproportionate degree, the police will happily kill the psychologically disabled, the homeless, pretty much any other minority group ever. That's when they aren't busy raping people. I know a girl who was forced to give a cop head because he said he would have CPS take her kid away otherwise. He was brought up on charges, and at the least was convicted, but most of the time that doesn't happen.

Police have a whole lot of power. There is nothing reigning that power in. That is a problem.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

The Eric Garner chokehold officer got cleared by the grand jury....

I have a bad feeling about this

There's even a video of them not following procedure at all, choking the victim as he begs them to stop and it still wasn't even indicted for simple manslaughter via negligence. It's official; the police can murder you for misdemeanors and get off scot free.


Oh, and they indicted the person who filmed the police murdering Garner. That's not terrifying at all or anything.

[Sheb]

Fuck, why do you Americans even bother having criminal gangs when you have a police like that?

[Baffler]

The Eric Garner chokehold officer got cleared by the grand jury....

I have a bad feeling about this

There's even a video of them not following procedure at all, choking the victim as he begs them to stop and it still wasn't even indicted for simple manslaughter via negligence. It's official; the police can murder you for misdemeanors and get off scot free.


Oh, and they indicted the person who filmed the police murdering Garner. That's not terrifying at all or anything.

More details here. The police arrested him for "stuffing an unloaded .25 handgun" into some girl's waistband. That girl, incidentally, was indicted herself on marijuana possession charges not long afterward.

[smeeprocket]

Well, sometimes gangs, or more specifically hate groups, work hand in hand with the police anyway. The police and the KKK have a longstanding tradition of having each others' backs, not accounting for potential members of both groups.

It's bad, and it's been bad for a long time. Our culture celebrates violence and guns, and I think that also influences police behavior. They start wanting to be heroes, and don't want to bother deescalating a situation.

And yea, a lot of places make it illegal for you to record a cop without his/her permission. It can be the most damning evidence out there, and you are probably going to go to jail for releasing it.

There's just no one to stop them. No one to step in and say "this needs to stop." The conservatives love this stuff because it is happening to minorities and not the wealthy white upper class.

The supreme court has even ruled that the police are under no legal obligation to protect you. I read an account of a guy who was stabbed by a serial murderer. The cops hid in the trains front while the guy went all stabby on him, and he ended up taking the murderer out on his own, followed by the cops sweeping in to claim victory. He sued the NYPD, but because of that ruling, he had no case. The cops can sit back and watch you getting raped or dismembered or really anything, and if they don't want to step in, nothing requires them to do so.

Because of this, the officers that watched another officer rape a little girl five different times in abandoned buildings will face no punishment at all.

[TamerVirus]

Police presence in the area is massive around usual protest staging area. A group of 40 or so people right now. I don't think this will escalate into anything violent

[Mictlantecuhtli]

More details here. The police arrested him for "stuffing an unloaded .25 handgun" into some girl's waistband. That girl, incidentally, was indicted herself on marijuana possession charges not long afterward.

Gee, they made up a reason to arrest them both, shocking

[nenjin]

I like how NYPD's response was "we're going to put cameras on officers to increase the public's confidence."

Really. Because that works so well on cruisers right now where police turn off the cameras before they knowingly violate the law, or they conduct their business at the back of the cruiser where the camera isn't. Doubtlessly in violation of their departmental procedures.

Not that it matters anyways because this incident clearly shows officers can flagrantly violate their own departmental procedures in plain view of the public and still not be held accountable. Who fucking cares if a recording shows them breaking the law, if grand juries and prosecutors refuse to prosecute.

As long as no cop gets a jail sentence for breaking the law, nothing will ever change.

I think every cop should have to answer this question on a quarterly review:

"In the course of your duties, it is your highest duty to protect ________"

If any answer anything but "all citizens" they shouldn't get to be a cop. If they answer "myself", "fellow officers" or "non-criminal citizens", that should be a clear sign their departmental culture isn't teaching them their highest priority. If a cop isn't willing to get hurt, to ensure they're not hurting someone else unlawfully, I don't want them on the streets. I don't want them to have a gun. I don't even fucking want them as law enforcement.

[smeeprocket]

body cameras do help, if the people on top are diligent and if the tape doesn't go missing.

There have been police forces that have instituted body cameras and the complaints against police and the use of excessive force dropped dramatically.

But if the people in charge will always have your back and they are willing to delete that tape, and if there is no punishment for even turning the tape off... it does no good. You are hoping the officer will act responsibly when they have proven they will not do that if at all possible.