Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I liked this one: "maybe you should go to the danish grocery store to buy some danish groceries for your week in denmark. feel like that would be a helpful thing to do."

wtf is wrong with all of u

this subject is too important for bullshit "you're a sock!" stuff imo. threewordusername, I don't know you or Frederik B but please avoid turning this thread into senseless message-board bickering.

That jamelle bouie article is good.

This country is bullshit though

As is Denmark, btw.

This will be my final word in this whole unfortunate sideshow, but I'm not going to be bullied by white americans into keeping my mouth shut about american racism. Just as I think it's only awesome that foreigners has begun noticing the fucked up things happening in my country at the moment.

I ought to have gone with my first impulse, which was simply to ignore Frederick. Sorry. But does anyone else seriously want to take up the idea that concern about racist prosecutors is an "allies' issue" and a mere distraction?

was gonna make a 'joke' about the system working because the affluenza kid has been apprehended but jesus fucking christ

i don't think discussing it in terms of racism of individual prosecutors makes sense -- like there's a whole system which i only partially understand as an outsider of how prosecutors work hand in hand with the police all the time as a single sort of unit, etc. structurally prosecutors are part of the same machine the police are, and expecting them to turn on their colleagues and buddies in order to defend the people that they otherwise both work together to arrest harass and convict every other day of the year doesn't really make much sense any more than we might imagine that fellow police officers of someone who shoots someone will all turn around and say "yo, that guy who i work with every day, doing what we all do, more or less, in this instance nah he's a murderer"

which isn't to ignore prosecutors either, but sort of to just to argue that they really shouldn't be expected to be a check on the system - they _are_ the system.

oh! okay then, nbd

Most states and counties have elected chief prosecutors, and those elections are routinely ignored by everybody but old white folks. There's a reason to focus on individuals, I think.

Also prosecutors are very powerful parts of the system -- the system is designed to work with them as a check on police excesses, and in fact we keep electing and appointing tough law and order who make it very clear that they are not interested in that role but in being "top cops" and kicking ass white supremacist style. Demanding accountability from prosecutors strikes me as a potentially powerful weapon.

Which no-one is arguing against, in fairness.

Your fairness were involved, you would not have felt the need to post that. I'm responding to what s. clover posted and not positioning myself 180 degrees from him.

If, dunno where that "your" came from.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-police-union-president-on-tamir-rice-act-like-a-thug-and-youll-be-treated-like-one-8141523

got caught in a twitter argument on boxing day with a work colleague who was repeatedly asking "well what crime do you think the police officers who shot tamir rice should be charged with, huh?" his dad is a policeman so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but he was having none of it and it was a depressing conversation

Lemme at 'em: my cousin and I have a very effective pincer movement for dealing with these arseholes, which is saying a) the answer should be 'murder one' but is probably manslaughter/unlawful killing and b) our dad/uncle was the US equivalent of a DCI, and your dad is? It doesn't leave them much room to argue.

My uncle would probably be very fucked off with MPD's handling of policing in North Minneapolis, too. He always told us policing doesn't work for anyone if it doesn't work for everyone.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Prince-Georges-County-Police-Officer-Sentenced-For-Threatening-Man-364653471.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_DCBrand

a scintilla of optimism on this, or not?

On the day a heavily armed couple fatally shot 14 people and wounded more than 20 others in San Bernardino, Calif., last month, Michael J. Bouchard, a sheriff here in the Detroit area, got an order to return his department’s 14-ton armored personnel carrier to the federal government.

It was one of hundreds of similar notifications from the Obama administration to law enforcement agencies across the country — from Los Angeles to rural areas like Calhoun County, Ala. — to give back an array of federal surplus military equipment by April 1, in response to concerns that the equipment was unnecessary and misused. The items to be returned: armored vehicles that run on tracks, .50-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, bayonets and camouflage clothing.

Most of the agencies have complied without complaint. But to Sheriff Bouchard and some other suburban and rural sheriffs, the orders were an infuriating, if entirely legal, federal overreach, leaving local officials without critical tools in an age of heightened fears about terrorism and mass shootings....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/us/some-sheriffs-bristle-at-recall-of-military-equipment.html

this is great

armored vehicles that run on tracks

Like, train tracks? Because that's just a recipe for "Dammit, the car we're chasing is no longer driving parallel to these tracks! He's getting away!"

“This isn’t Mayberry, where a guy goes and locks himself in jail because he got drunk,” Sheriff Bouchard said, describing Oakland County, Mich., where he has been the sheriff since 1999. “There are guys who walk up to you and fire off 13 rounds in a couple of seconds.”

Those "guys" are usually likely to be cops.

I think someone has watched a few too many action movies.

tracks, like under the wheels

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/31/af/29/31af29d9baf332ba617592ed6000ebcd.jpg

lol Tarfumes

xp

Chicago Officer, Citing Emotional Trauma, Sues Estate of Teenager He Fatally Shot

CHICAGO — The Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black 19-year-old and an unarmed bystander in December has filed a lawsuit seeking more than $10 million in damages from the teenager’s estate, an unusual legal approach based on a claim that the young man’s actions leading up to the gunfire were “atrocious” and have caused the officer “extreme emotional trauma.”

uh

it is my opinion that one should take solace in experiencing extreme emotional trauma after shooting a teenager and an unarmed bystander as that shows that you retain some vestiges of empathy and are therefore not an unconscionable monster but apparently that's just me

Holy shit, that whole news story is like something you would find in some European satire of the American society (cop shoots black teen, then sues his estate for emotional damage)! It's disheartening to realize it's for real.

Rialmo's attorney, Joel Brodsky, said it was important in the charged atmosphere to send a message that police are 'not targets for assaults' and 'suffer damage like anybody else.'

Brodsky said that relatives of those fatally shot by the police, such as the LeGrier family, are looking for ways to get paid after the city settled the Laquan McDonald shooting case last year for $5 million.

'Ever since the McDonald payoff, people are treating officer-involved confrontations like a lottery ticket and they're waiting to cash it in,' Brodsky said.

Feel like this is important to mention, too:

Brodsky, Rialmo's lawyer, gained fame as the attorney for Drew Peterson, a Bolingbrook officer who was convicted of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, after his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, went missing in 2007.

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160207/austin/chicago-officer-who-shot-quintonio-legrier-hires-drew-petersons-lawyer

Proud of my student writing this for extra credit in my ELD class. She chose an article to respond to from a zine. I cleaned up the spelling and punctuation a little bit, but otherwise I tried to keep the language the same as she wrote it.

From "No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police!"

Daniele Spagnola lives in Baltimore City, Maryland, right next to West Baltimore where police murdered Freddie Gray, an unarmed and innocent black man. The six officers responsible for Freddie's death violently arrested Freddie after he made eye contact with an officer, and instinctively ran. The officers refused to provide medical treatment, Gray died in a hospital a few days later. There is communities of residents and they got movement to declare that black lives matter. They do a lot of activities like activities with black*seed, (and) blocked the San Francisco Bay Bridge on MLK day.

Actually I think that this organisation has a good point to go out, blocking streets or places that can get the attention of the population, because its so ugly the way some officers treat black people, so yes black lives matter, why would they stop doing that? These people has no reason to stop. Officers just don't care about those lives, and treat people who disagree with them as a criminal. They have been on the street saying, "No justice, no peace, no racist police!" and they are absolutely right. We all have to fight for our rights.

The City of Cleveland filed a creditor's claim against the estate of Tamir Rice, the black 12-year old who was fatally shot by police in 2014, for not paying emergency medical service fees, CleveScene reported Wednesday.

The $500 fee is "owing for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent's last dying expense under Ohio Revised Code," according to the report.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tamir-rice-estate-charged

WHAT THE FUCK

this fucking country

the chicago cop murderer suing the victim's family, well, at least you can that's just the awful decision of a deranged individual. the city of cleveland? suing for $500? fuck them

I kind of want to start a gofundme thing for his family to pay that

supremely fucked up

I kind of want to start a FUCK YOU, CLEVELAND campaign

would contribute to both. what the fucking fuck. someone had to actually sign off on that right? like these things aren't just generated by computer?

the only thing i can think of is that with a federal lawsuit against the city pending, the lawyer for the city didn't want to waive the ambulance fee because that could be perceived as at least a partial admission of guilt (shocker!!!!) by the city

but yes, someone should have found a way to pay the goddamn ambulance fee instead of sending Rice's family the bill. it's fucking awful

the city should pay for it, seeing as their officers created the situation that required the ambulance in the first place

i think, like mr malone pointed out, that could be taken as a partial admission of guilt.

you'd think they could like, put it on hold "as it relates to the outcome of a currently pending legal action" or somesuch, and certainly would in another situation. ugh.

definitely. whoever decided to just send the bill is a terrible asshole.

Betcha no individual made any decisions about this, and bills like this go out all the time to people beaten up by cops and nobody notices or cares and fuck Cleveland.

^^^

ime most PDs are run like a mafia racket "fuck you, pay me" etc.

actually, reading the NYT article on it, it wasn't just a matter of sending them the bill, it's a lawsuit. so it wasn't just a matter of a local city worker mindlessly sending out the latest set of overdue ambulance bills, it was something that the city's law director would have to know about. man, fuck cleveland.