Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Well that oughta tank his re-election

mccrory is such a piece of shit

McCrory is definitely more popular in the rest of the state than in Charlotte, where he pretty much can no longer appear in public. NC is a deep red state outside of the urban pockets and at this point McCrory has doubled down on attracting support from those constituencies. What he does to infuriate the left (e.g. banning videos of police shootings from being released without a court order, letting Duke Power bury their coal ash wherever they damn well please) no longer matters. I don't think that's a winning approach for him, given that McCrory's conservative support was never that strong to begin with because of his moderate roots. But this won't really change the essential calculus.

There might be some schadenfreude here... National Guard showing up to bail out those annoying, pansy liberals down in Charlotte that are always starting shit. Probably will play well in the rest of the state and reinforce the perception that Charlotte is some kind of degenerate liberal wasteland.

RCP currently shows him losing to cooper by a few points, I would think this plus previous LGBT bill and accompanying business losses (NCAA etc.) would only compound his problems

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/governor/nc/north_carolina_governor_mccrory_vs_cooper-4096.html#!

"...pansy?"

i'm doing some googling and it seems like he signed that bill in july, but still, complete jaw-dropping shitbaggery and i hope he gets creamed in his reelection bid (where he is currently down by a few points in most polls AFAICT).

This obviously isn't the right place to discuss this, but I do hope McCrory loses. I don't think he was ever the driving force behind the state government's conservative turn (look at the rabid dogs in the state legislature for that), and to a certain extent it was unfair that he became the figurehead for it as events such as HB2 often seemed to drag him along in their wake. But after 20 years of at least being perceived as a moderate and reasonable public servant, he ultimately chose to become a fellow traveler, presumably calculating it would end up benefiting him politically. And in some ways that is much worse than being a true believer. And I hope that will be his political obituary.

amen

unbelievable

https://twitter.com/grisuy/status/778779246693154818

the tone/thinking behind these tweets permeates Mother Jones's stories, which is why I stopped reading it

Every day another fucking atrocity.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/busted-cops-caught-on-video-pepper-spraying-handcuffed-biracial-girl-after-a-car-hit-her/

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-night-of-tear-gas-and-chaos-in-charlotte-1786933107

'Tear gas hits your nose first and quickly carries down into your throat and chest, like bad indigestion. It feels like huffing chili powder. My eyes weren’t affected until later police progression, but after the watering passes your eyes don’t lose the blur effect for a startling amount of time. I was taking photos with no idea what was in the frame or in focus. '

Less than a day after protests over the police killing of an African-American man turned violent in North Carolina, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump placed some of the blame for the turmoil on the impact of drugs.

"If you're not aware, drugs are a very, very big factor in what you're watching on television at night," said Trump in a speech to the Shale Insight 2016 Conference in Pittsburgh today.

lol wut?

it's true tho i got stoned last night and watched old episodes of futurama for 3 hours

actually reading Phil D.'s link and it's many times more horrible than even what the headline might make you afraid of. jesus fucking christ.

you could say the war on drugs kinda demolished many urban centers and encouraged a militarized police mindset

Good point but surely not something that idiot could conceive of

Every day another fucking atrocity.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/busted-cops-caught-on-video-pepper-spraying-handcuffed-biracial-girl-after-a-car-hit-her🔗/

this is nauseating

Tulsa officer charged with voluntary manslaughter

US Congressman Robert Pittenger with some helpful comments on the ongoing situation:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article103537677.html

I know I'm talking too much on this thread, but people are currently burning things in my city and my employer is forbidding us to come to the office, so...

Things I'm hearing from people around me here are starting to make me fear that this is the tipping point and McCrory is going to come out of this looking like a hero. My mother in law was ranting about "thugs coming up from South Carolina" and how the mayor didn't have the courage to let the police do "what they needed to do" before McCrory had the guts to call in the National Guard and restore order. Which... god knows what's going to happen tonight. This isn't just an isolated opinion-- my wife is a public school teacher out in Cabarrus County and heard several of her colleagues express similar opinions. It might be a law and order moment. Plenty of people on the fence about McCrory (and Trump) seem susceptible to these arguments. Someone talk me down. Or don't. Whatever.

Video: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/us/charlotte-keith-scott-shooting-video.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Funny how no one mentioned the traumatic brain injury (or the medication). It looks like the police pointlessly escalated an encounter with a person with a mental impairment.

https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/779376112497467392/photo/1

my fuck this shit so bad wtf

preach:
https://twitter.com/oksvdney/status/779098754833985536

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cs9lQ0ZVYAACNF-.jpg:large

aren't both Oklahoma and North Carolina open carry states? why then is it relevant whether the murder victims were armed?

that tends to get to the heart of the matter, where permissive gun ownership rights only extend to white people who are using the guns against the tyrannical government or the dude trying to break into their house. though there have been a few cases of minorities dying at the hands of police in open carry states where members of the NRA have condemned the group for not speaking up in the victim's defense, it's never anybody prominent doing it.

recall that the horrific Walmart incident also occurred in an open carry state, and the guy was actually holding a product sold in the goddamn store.

Plus, plausible deniability has become the new tactic du jour of folks defending the police in these shootings. After a while, when it became apparent that the victim blaming ("he/she was no angel", "this was just a dangerous thug") was no longer something one could win over the general public with, many folks have gravitated towards the "well, ok, maybe it wasn't the victim's fault, but you GOTTA UNDERSTAND WHAT THE COP WAS GOING THROUGH" approach.

The classic tactic of late has been blaming the people who have called 911 dispatch for giving misinformation. Because apparently, see, the police aren't capable of actually assessing whether a threat is real or not when they arrive at the scene. No, if you call 911 cos a kid is in his yard with a toy gun, and the cops show up and shoot him seconds after arrival, a la Tamir Rice, well...it's unfortunate, but "if only the call who called 911 hadn't given bad information" this wouldn't have happened. (kind of a bad system where you are reliant on your flawed populace to give 100% accurate intel on a 911 call in order for innocent people not to die).

and then there's the phrase "felt threatened", which is subjective and has a low threshold to meet for most people. I suspect most armed people who shoot someone because they felt threatened actually felt threatened as a byproduct of themselves having a gun and being woefully unsure as to whether to use it. Would their brains immediately gravitate to life or death in many of these situations if they weren't armed?

the other shorthand is "reached into his waistband". Now this isn't to say someone reaching into their waistband couldn't actually be going for a gun, but there are a number of innocuous behaviors that resemble reaching into one's waistband (hitching one's pants up, adjusting one's boxers, nervous reflexive hand motions). None of which are recommended, naturally, when a cop is asking you to put your hands in the air, but cops seem to be allowed to translate hands gravitating towards waist as "hostile movement for a weapon" without even identifying if a weapon exists. Even Zimmermann used this in his 911 call when he shot Trayvon, when in context, it is obvious he wasn't reaching for a weapon (as he had none on him).

conservatism circa now = turning people who kill unarmed black men and children into folk heroes

circa now?

i guess the inclination has always been there, to varying degrees. idk the current climate just seems to be palpably different/ more aggro than the (also very disgusting) welfare queen myths that permeated conservative rhetoric in the 80s & 90s.

This shit has been happening for decades, it's just that after getting shamed out of consuming lynching pictures as entertainment in the early 20th century, it took Amercia a while to desensitize to the point where it was mainstream again to gawk at images of (black) people dying

Another one

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Officer-Involved-Shooting-in-El-Cajon-395014341.html

Victim apparently unarmed, disabled

He has died.

"Officer-involved shooting" means that an officer shot someone. Maybe we need to start speaking of "penis-involved rape."

yeah all of the stupid bureaucratic language designed to vaporize culpability in police killings is so fucking exasperating

The classic tactic of late has been blaming the people who have called 911 dispatch for giving misinformation. Because apparently, see, the police aren't capable of actually assessing whether a threat is real or not when they arrive at the scene. No, if you call 911 cos a kid is in his yard with a toy gun, and the cops show up and shoot him seconds after arrival, a la Tamir Rice, well...it's unfortunate, but "if only the call who called 911 hadn't given bad information" this wouldn't have happened. (kind of a bad system where you are reliant on your flawed populace to give 100% accurate intel on a 911 call in order for innocent people not to die).

I've sat through an NYPD civilian informant workshop (they don't call it that, of course) in which a community affairs officer told a room full of mostly older Black people that they should call the police whenever they see someone "suspicious" and that if they even think that person might be armed, they should tell the dispatcher so the police can get to the scene properly prepared, presumably to shoot one of your neighbors. It was infuriating. No one in the room seemed phased at all. But this was 3-4 years ago, maybe they would hear that differently now.

i'd imagine today, that person would not make it out of the room.

xpost yeah I mean the logical conclusion is you can use the police to do your dirty work if you just invent a threat.

the other thing is...when did failure to comply become an offense that validated shooting? granted, they usually couple it with "he was reaching for an object", but I mean....people resist arrest all the time. IT'S WHY THERE IS A CHARGE CALLED "RESISTING ARREST". and in the case of mentally ill or if someone is disoriented, it may not even be resisting, but confusion.

when I was a kid, I was at the bowling alley one day, and this tall, unkempt middle aged white man walked into the alley. guy was slurring his words and stumbling around, and then for some reason, he started getting aggressive with alley staff, and for some reason, got angry at an employee and said "YOU MOTHERFUCKER" and ran at him and put him in a fucking chokehold. they call the cops (who are literally across the street from this alley) and they show up in moments, and he releases the employee and refuses to comply and basically comes at them.

they used mace, and billy clubs to subdue him, but he lived to tell the tale. and this is a guy who was physically harming somebody, refusing to comply, and being aggressive with police. nowadays? who knows.

it also infuriates me that the police seem to think they can use a cookie cutter approach to handling situations - like the case where they killed a kid with Down's syndrome in a movie theatre because he 'reacted aggressively' to the police, when really he didn't understand what was happening. like they really don't realize they can't just treat each situation the exact same way.

... they really don't, though? cf armed crazy white gun-nuts walking around with their fingers on triggers have long negotiations with police rather than a bullet.

I was gonna say; if the problem under discussion was that the police are indiscriminately gunning down EVERYONE, opposing the current state of affairs wouldn't be controversial because it would also affect a larger number of white people.

Oh it's definitely disproportionate by race - that's without question. But i mean the mentally ill/disabled are another group that the police do a horrible job handling. Lots of instances of family members calling 911 out of concern for a family member only for the police to show uo and kill them.

There was a video circulating for a while though depicting a white suspect in a weaver stance with a gun pointed at other people where the cop demonstrated endless patience with them. Which we almost never see afforded to minorities who aren't even armed.

obama wtf are you talking about here

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/obama-colin-kaepernick-anthem-228880

"President Barack Obama wants Colin Kaepernick to think about the pain he’s causing military families the next time he takes a knee during the national anthem."

Great! I thought about it and I'm causing them zero pain, and also it's not the Armed Forces Anthem, it's the National Anthem. We're not singing "As The Caissons Go Rolling Along" here.

JFC. This country.

Ugh, thank you for reminding me about this. I saw it this morning and it's VERY confusing to me.

Even for Obama's usually measured responses thought it was a bit of a weak move there

Don't think his full quote(s) on the topic were that bad tbf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDUEqMGUwcI
(25:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIB8I62-F-4

and btw, Colin DID change his tune a hair after hearing out the frustrations of the military folk that took it so personally. he acknowledged it and changed from sitting to kneeling out of respect for the military, and he made sure to focus his message a little more while giving thanks to service members.