Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

A friend in Portland posted on fb this insane story about an small-town Oregon police department just outside Oregon surveilling, arresting, seizing property from, then (falsely) charging an African-American guy with theft, all to get him to drop accusations of racial discrimination/harassment against his employer/boss who was an acquaintance of the police chief.

http://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/02/west-linn-to-pay-600000-to-settle-wrongful-arrest-racial-discrimination-suit-stemming-from-former-chiefs-favor-for-a-friend.html

Despite the settlements the guy received, the end is some kick in the teeth.

This story isn't insane; it's expected.

oregon police are terrible and racist and not accountable to any civil authority. last time portland needed a police chief the mayor undertook an extensive search and wound up hiring a Black lady from california. she was not the police union's preferred candidate but she still seemed to spend most of her time going on right-wing talk shows until she abruptly left this year to become police chief in philadelphia. good luck with that philly. this time around the mayor just randomly promoted somebody, which is probably smart because it doesn't fucking matter who the police chief is.

the worst most hateful shit comes from the police unions, and nobody of course dares to say anything about it because unions are sacred cows whether or not one of them is very obviously a Racist Bastards Club.

just like all of the other american institutions that are failing, i expect this to continue to not be addressed and cops to continue to spend their time hunting for Black people to hurt.

Sorry DJP. I totally agree and did not mean to make this seem like an outlier.

https://gothamist.com/news/photojournalist-arrested-while-filming-nypd-chinatown

Anderson Cooper is a legend. pic.twitter.com/4YYwmJVF2a

— Ian Sams (@IanSams) February 22, 2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/nypd-misconduct-body-cameras-marijuana/

Police shoot, kill man during welfare check

https://www.abqjournal.com/1438375/apd-involved-in-shooting-east-of-downtown.html

not US, but -

Lancashire Police issue apology after officer filmed apparently threatening to fabricate offence (see video): https://t.co/VsR1lmZvU4 pic.twitter.com/OSLwV6i125

— ITV Granada Reports (@GranadaReports) April 19, 2020

an instant classic

this is fucking straight up murder! what a fucking horrible place this is. god damn it !

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/us/ahmaud-arbery-jogging-georgia-shooting/index.html?

and it took a grand jury to even investigate FFS !!

Rolling Thread on Race 2020

it seems no one cares

It’s sickening I just can’t

that motherfucking DA (Barnhill) needs to not only lose his job, he needs to be fucking deported.

how in the hell, even without a video, could you hear the details of the story that the McMichaels reported to police and rule that this was self-defense and in accordance with a citizen's arrest?

this is the sequel to Trayvon Martin - a stalking with a deadly weapon that inexplicably got blamed on the victim who didn't bring a weapon to the fight. self-fucking defense. boy it helps to be a retired ex-investigator for the DA, white, and a resident of Georgia to get that kind of favorable spin.

Gregory & Travis McMichael have been arrested for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. There will be a press conference tomorrow morning at 9 AM in Brunswick, GA (1 Conservation Way). https://t.co/jBhe4eIpeW pic.twitter.com/PEsOdnyXdR

— GA Bureau of Invest (@GBI_GA) May 8, 2020

it seems no one cares

― DJP

i feel that hard. i wish there was something, anything, i could do :(

can't wait for the defense lawyers to find specific frames in the video that proves arbery was 'attacking' them or some shit

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/07/indianapolis-shooting-livestream-facebook/#click=https://t.co/5mb1b55Fwb

I can't believe this guy of all people has written one of the more lucid accounts:

https://thedispatch.com/p/a-vigilante-killing-in-georgia

can't wait for the defense lawyers to find specific frames in the video that proves arbery was 'attacking' them or some shit

Fucking asshats on Twitter are already all over that job. I haven't brought myself to watch the video, but my understanding is the deplorables out there keep pointing to a part when he struggles back. As well as something he might have apparently done at a high school basketball game? In other words, all of the sickening plays straight out of the book that we've had to watch time and time again.

I know everyone is focused on Ahmaud Arbery but, as per my Washington Post link, this 21-year-old named Sean Reed livestreamed the police chasing him down, killing him, and then joking about the state of his corpse on Facebook.

The officer who shot him was black so I expect swift justice.

From my sister-in-law (former death penalty lawyer in GA) on Facebook

Various of you who do not live in Georgia have been asking about how and where the atrocious murder of Ahmaud Arbery occurred. Many thanks to my former boss and friend Brian Kammer
for providing this snapshot of Glynn county’s recent history and climate of utter corruption. It’s beyond time that it comes to light and I pray that Mr. Arbery’s mother’s advocacy brings us—especially the white folks—closer to an honest reckoning of who we are as a people that this murder could happen in 2020 in the way that it did.
————-
Thanks to the advocacy of Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones', at least these two get a perp walk. I've never seen the kind of forceful commentary coming out of our miserable AG's office, the GBI, or the FBI about a case like this -- thank you Ms. Cooper-Jones. Only because of her sustained pressure and media presence is there even a glimmer of justice in corrupt-as-hell Glynn County, Georgia.
Father and son. Greg McMichael, the father, had been a Glynn County police detective and then an investigator with the Brunswick Circuit Attorney's office. Both institutions are irredeemably corrupt, having been responsible, just as an example, for numerous wrongful prosecutions and convictions, especially in capital cases, especially involving young teenagers of color. McMichael has featured in many of those travesties.
If you do an internet search for Brunswick circuit prosecutors Jackie Johnson and John Johnson (no relation), you'll meet two absolutely unregenerate agents of IN-justice, abetted by thoroughly racist/misogynist police agencies. It's clear that they have lost control of this case, because if they hadn't, these men would never have seen a jail cell or a courtroom.
For context, read this piece about the horrific 2010 police shooting of Caroline Small: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a36436/caroline-small-georgia-killing/. In that case, the Johnsons and Glynn Police were able to protect their own, even preventing the GBI from conducting their own investigation. Charles Pierce writes:
"The story has it all. A really bad shoot. Cops refusing to call EMTs after the shooting despite the fact that their victim was still alive and would live for another week. Cops making up a bullshit story to cover their own asses. Cops tampering with the crime scene evidence, also to cover their own asses. An ambitious local prosecutor so far in the tank to the police department that she won't dry off until 2024. Attempts by outside law-enforcement to bring justice in the case that run into a stonewall so thick and high that open bureaucratic warfare breaks out between Glynn County law-enforcement and the detectives from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation tasked to look into the shooting. A grand-jury proceeding that is an embarrassment to 500 years of jurisprudence, so thoroughly rigged to no-bill the tewo officers that one of its members openly expresses his remorse for having been so completely hoodwinked. And, ultimately, no charges against the two officers and a quick-and-dirty dismissal of a civil suit brought by Caroline Small's family."
Then read this 2018 article by Bill Torpy, one of Georgia's best reporters -- about the disgusting corruption of the law enforcement apparatus in Glynn County, which went to absurd, brazen lengths to facilitate -- yes I said facilitate -- a Glynn cop's brutal murder of his ex-wife, Katie Sasser: https://www.ajc.com/news/local/torpy-large-something-stinks-brunswick-and-ain-paper-mills/kHAdn8AY94VuWMEGWrEb4I/
That cop -- one of Caroline Small's killers.
The McMichaels are just the tip of the spear for a lawless, sadistic, and yes, murderous cabal of white-supremacist law "enforcement" gangsters who have run the table on the poor and oppressed in southeastern Georgia for far too long. The circuit prosecutor's office and the Glynn police they protect must be completely abolished as they are presently constituted, and rebuilt from the ground up.
***
God, I hate Glynn County and Brunswick. It has been a bastion of white supremacist oppression since slavery -- though not unchallenged over the decades by enslaved people, civil rights activists, and people like Ms. Cooper-Jones. Whenever I would go there to work on a case, I could feel the anger, hopelessness, and dread wash over me like the thick, pulp-mill atmosphere in Brunswick. Sometimes it feels like a place trapped in amber. Melissa Fay-Greene's book "Praying for Sheetrock" gives a glimpse of the stultifying oppression of the white power structure -- and resistance to it -- in this part of Georgia. If you go to St. Simons Island, you can still see old tabby concrete slave quarters amid the mossy trees -- cherished by many wealthy white residents as part of the "romantic" ante-bellum aura of the place. It's just evidence of old and ongoing crimes.
Captured and enslaved Igbo people who arrived at St. Simons in 1803 knew the place was cursed. They rebelled on ship, running it to ground, then escaped and, when cornered -- walked into the marshy waters at Dunbar Creek to their deaths, in legend chanting "The Water Spirit brought us, the Water Spirit will take us home".
Let the Water Spirit come and cleanse southeast Georgia of injustice.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/video-shows-minneapolis-cop-with-knee-on-neck-of-motionless-moaning-man-he-later-died/

I absolutely am not going to watch yet another black person get murdered but jesus fucking christ. For a FORGERY ARREST.

Not that it would be OK in ANY circumstance but I just

heartbreaking. he was saying "i can't breathe", over and over, calling the cop "officer", saying "please".

why are news orgs incapable of describing what happens in straightforward language? will pigs intimidate them if they do or something? or just editorial cowardice/racism?

i know a bunch of people on this board think their cop relatives are the good ones or whatever, fuck them all

The last two, possibly their own latent racism...all of the above?

Apparently lying on pavement with your knee in your back crushing your breathing is "resisting arrest".

Release the cops' names

i know a bunch of people on this board think their cop relatives are the good ones or whatever, fuck them all

― no (Left), Tuesday, May 26, 2020 11:09 AM bookmarkflaglink

Now, why the fuck would you post this?

I like that it was my post that triggered this when I am the person being targeted, both by police and Left

news to me that i'm targeting you

My cop relative (dead for 25 years) once ran the precinct where this happened. He believed every person was entitled to civil and human rights, particularly when interacting with cops. He’d be fucking furious if he were alive to see this.

that's nice but fuck cops

maybe the real cop... is you

This is literally a POLICE BRUTALITY thread, you can stop the performative caterwauling. Also LOL are you really going to pretend that wasn't a DJP dig when the exchange that you're likely basing this on from March was between silby and DJP:

why do you like cops so much

My father's cousin is a retired NYC Transit cop and my first cousin is a parole officer. I like both of them a lot.

― DJP, Thursday, March 26, 2020 2:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

Xpost

Release the cops' names

Fvck these murdering pigs

1- Derek Chauvin #1087

2- Tou Thao #7162

Minneapolis Police Department 350 South 5th Street, Room 130, Minneapolis, MN 55415-1389

pol✧✧✧@minneapoli✧✧✧.g✧✧ Minneapolis✧✧✧@minneapoli✧✧✧.g✧✧

612-673-3000 pic.twitter.com/cJxua2ncEU

— Feminist Flag Corps (@FemFlagCorps) May 26, 2020

xxp oh yeah. I stand by fuck every cop. these two in particular right now ofc

Unless yr in NWA, u can stop now

ACAB including my born-out-of-wedlock late uncle.

I'll stop except to note how weird it is that we're supposed to believe what cops are constantly doing worldwide with impunity has nothing to do with the function (or origin) of policing

all humans are bastards

Police statement: the officers noticed he was experiencing a medical emergency.

How perceptive! Was the first clue his fifth I CAN'T BREATHE scream?

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/four-minneapolis-officers-fired-after-death-of-george-floyd