U.S. Politics

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, Genie said:

I can’t find it now but yesterday he replied to one of his own tweets agreeing with it.

To be fair, it would have been more concerning if he'd disagreed!

[nick76]

56 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

From what I read he first had a physical confrontation with the police, then stole a tazer off them, then fired the tazer on them. 

I don't think shooting a man in the back or anything is acceptable. Quite the opposite in fact. But you have to be very very careful about these discussions. Stealing a non lethal weapon and shooting it at law enforcement is not ok. 

but let’s make it clear, it’s not a death warrant!

[maqroll]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

What is the process for that?

Well, I reckon Biden has to die first.

[villa4europe]

 

2 hours ago, Keyblade said:

So many conflicting reports I don't even know what's true anymore.

Most say he took the taser and ran and was shot in the back. Even if he tased the cop in the face, I don't think the response is shooting him 3 times with a gun.

From the video @sne posted (disturbing warning) he was clearly shot while running away. So unnecessary. 

Its another incident where its the police that caused the escalation not the guy they were arresting, they spent so much time trying to trick him in to admitting drink driving and then no time whatsoever explaining what law he'd broken* or why he was being arrested, he says he's going to walk home because he doesnt want to break the law and then gets arrested because the officer says he's not safe to drive? In that state of course he's going to be confused which then leads to aggression

* if they found him drunk asleep in the car with no evidence (bar him talking) as to how he got there did he even break the law? And with that talking from him without his rights being read and the leading questions which he doesn't understand would a lawyer get him off that charge? 

[Keyblade]

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

 

Its another incident where its the police that caused the escalation not the guy they were arresting, they spent so much time trying to trick him in to admitting drink driving and then no time whatsoever explaining what law he'd broken* or why he was being arrested, he says he's going to walk home because he doesnt want to break the law and then gets arrested because the officer says he's not safe to drive? In that state of course he's going to be confused which then leads to aggression

* if they found him drunk asleep in the car with no evidence (bar him talking) as to how he got there did he even break the law? And with that talking from him without his rights being read and the leading questions which he doesn't understand would a lawyer get him off that charge? 

They escalate at the drop of a pin. Are they trained to do that or are they just that chickenshit? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who want to get away with shooting human beings join the force for that reason. I can't think of any other reason why so many of them are quick to escalate to the point of shooting someone in the most benign and non threatening situations.

[villa4europe]

The other thing I don't get is if he runs... If they don't taser him, if they don't shoot him... Then what happens? They have his car, you like to assume they took all his details first before talking so they know who he is and where he lives, they can find out where he works, he's told them his girlfriends details, they smash his front door in at 6am and collect him or hope that he turns himself in...You know actual police work... 

He's a drink driver that they've elevated to dangerous through their own thought process and decision making (as well as no doubt pressure to get arrest statistics from the powers that be) 

 

[Keyblade]

Full body am footage from the officer. Very disheartening to watch the first couple of minutes where everything seems routine and benign knowing that the exchange is going to end in a death

Spoiler

 

 

[sne]

Been another police shooting tonight in San Bernadino where they shot and killed a guy at a gas station.

He may have pointed a gun at the police, or it might have been a flashlight. Supposedly he was a homeless guy who was going through the trash.

Nassau state police pulled this move to provoke an arrest against a protester. Obviously I don't know the whole story but it looks bad.

 

[Stevo985]

It’s kind of infuriating that the opposition to trump is a guy that would be 86 at the end of his second term if he became president. And the guy he beat would have been 87. 
 

I know age shouldn’t really matter, but it must be a factor for voters. 

[bannedfromHandV]

2 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Full body am footage from the officer. Very disheartening to watch the first couple of minutes where everything seems routine and benign knowing that the exchange is going to end in a death

  Hide contents

 

 

Just watched the entire video.

I mean, the guys blatantly pissed, the cops were actually very nice up to the end, the whole time you’re watching it and you can’t imagine it’s going to escalate like that.

I’m flabbergasted, he had no reason to resist and then fight back, but then that’s the problem with drunk people, they’re unpredictable. 
 

I actually (for once) feel sorry for those cops, particularly the original one, the second one on the scene was a bit of a knob but still was respectful, although in hindsight I’ll bet he wishes he’d approached the actual arrest just slightly differently, given the volume of dialogue im surprised they didn’t calmly explain he was being arrested and talk him into agreeing to it rather than just going for the hands and cuffs so quickly (after the testing etc had been completed).

 

There was a point where the original cop goes back to his car early on and he blows out air in a way that you just know meant ah balls, last thing I need this, fingers crossed it goes okay, but of course it hasn’t and now he’ll be on placards of demanding protesters for the sack or worse.

Just a totally avoidable waste all round.

[Brumerican]

 

[LondonLax]

5 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Just watched the entire video.

I mean, the guys blatantly pissed, the cops were actually very nice up to the end, the whole time you’re watching it and you can’t imagine it’s going to escalate like that.

I’m flabbergasted, he had no reason to resist and then fight back, but then that’s the problem with drunk people, they’re unpredictable. 
 

I actually (for once) feel sorry for those cops, particularly the original one, the second one on the scene was a bit of a knob but still was respectful, although in hindsight I’ll bet he wishes he’d approached the actual arrest just slightly differently, given the volume of dialogue im surprised they didn’t calmly explain he was being arrested and talk him into agreeing to it rather than just going for the hands and cuffs so quickly (after the testing etc had been completed).

 

There was a point where the original cop goes back to his car early on and he blows out air in a way that you just know meant ah balls, last thing I need this, fingers crossed it goes okay, but of course it hasn’t and now he’ll be on placards of demanding protesters for the sack or worse.

Just a totally avoidable waste all round.

Part of it is just the culture of fear that exists between police and black people. When that guy is being pinned down and arrested I bet he was thinking he was about to be the next George Floyd. 

There’s no simple way to undo years and years of mistrust.

[KenjiOgiwara]

11 hours ago, nick76 said:

but let’s make it clear, it’s not a death warrant!

Definitely. Lets make that perfectly clear, I don't find that acceptable at all. 

I do however have a problem with how these social discussions about change, whether it's BLM or Metoo or other stuff, in the sense they tend to develop into a fashion statement. You're supposed to support it without looking at the context in each situation. And there's just not enough room for context in these situations cause it gets very emotional for so many people. 

Personally I don't like armed law enforcement. Norway is very much like the UK in the sense it's one of the few places in the world law enforcement only is armed at necessity by active approvals. Either from commanders or the politicans (say and increased terror threat). I don't feel comfortable around police with guns. I don't trust them, nor do I think it's beneficial to the society. The US law enforcement is not something I consider civilized or something I'd be comfortable with. It's all backward.

There is however akward for me when they bring this case into the BLM movement. This dude first faught the police. Then stole a weapon. Then shot the weapon at the police. I don't think they should have opened fire, it doesn't make sense on any level. But that's what you get with the US law enforcement when you allow any idiot to carry guns and their entire country is obsessed with the second amendment. I am pretty sure if some white dude had faught the police, stolen a weapon, used the weapon towards the police, they would easily have shot him as well. This case is less about racism and more about poor law enforcement and a trigger happy nation. If those police had pepperspray instead of a smith & wesson that murder would not have happened. 

[nick76]

3 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I am pretty sure if some white dude had faught the police, stolen a weapon, used the weapon towards the police, they would easily have shot him as well.

1) fought the police???...struggle, yes....tussle, yes...resisted, yes.

2) stolen a weapon....agreed but it was a non-lethal weapon yet he was shot with a lethal weapon but I do take your point that he took a weapon from the officer

3) As for the comparison to a white guy, this is the issue.  The stats seem to suggest that in a like for like situation this outcome for a black man is multiple times more likely to happen than to a white man.  That’s the issue on the table.

i, like you, have issue with guns but that is secondary in this conversation. It seems the disproportionate use of those guns in a situation with a black man to a white man that is the conversation.

[KenjiOgiwara]

9 minutes ago, nick76 said:

1) fought the police???...struggle, yes....tussle, yes...resisted, yes.

2) stolen a weapon....agreed but it was a non-lethal weapon yet he was shot with a lethal weapon but I do take your point that he took a weapon from the officer

3) As for the comparison to a white guy, this is the issue.  The stats seem to suggest that in a like for like situation this outcome for a black man is multiple times more likely to happen than to a white man.  That’s the issue on the table.

i, like you, have issue with guns but that is secondary in this conversation. It seems the disproportionate use of those guns in a situation with a black man to a white man that is the conversation.

Lets call a spade a spade. Yes he did. 

[bannedfromHandV]

13 hours ago, villa4europe said:

The other thing I don't get is if he runs... If they don't taser him, if they don't shoot him... Then what happens? They have his car, you like to assume they took all his details first before talking so they know who he is and where he lives, they can find out where he works, he's told them his girlfriends details, they smash his front door in at 6am and collect him or hope that he turns himself in...You know actual police work... 

He's a drink driver that they've elevated to dangerous through their own thought process and decision making (as well as no doubt pressure to get arrest statistics from the powers that be) 

 

I’m a pretty liberal guy, and as I’ve stated many times before I usually have very little time nor respect for police through a combination of my own experiences and opinions.

But given that this is the US, given that as a parameter of their jobs they carry and will discharge firearms - so this guy (inebriated or otherwise) fully understood this - I’m not sure that you can apportion blame on the cops who had a suspect resisting arrest, taking a weapon and attempting to flee - if of course, that is what happened, which the video would appear to suggest.

Yes, it’s just a drunk driver, but I think given that he was found passed out in a drive-thru queue it can be reasonable to attach dangerous driving to the equation too (although he wasn’t seen by a cop actually operating the vehicle admittedly).

Then of course he’s resisted arrest, fought back and taken a taser gun, then he’s running away, what are the cops (with their parameters of being able to carry and discharge a gun) supposed to do? Let him run off with a weapon pissed up - he didn’t even know where he was for most of the video.

As I’ve already written, it’s tragic all round potentially, there’s a vibe right now that all white US cops are gun toting shadow KKK members but they won’t be, there’s a chance they might have just been decent folk (the first cop definitely seemed very reasonable) who know have to go through an inevitable avalanche of trauma and scrutiny. And then of course there’s further, needless loss of life in the guy who, when caught blatantly breaking the law (albeit minor in the scheme of things), chose, in his inebriated state admittedly, to resist arrest and run - and that is 100% of the time a dangerous decision to take when you’re dealing with people who are armed and trained to do what they did in that situation.

 

[Sam-AVFC]

10 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Then of course he’s resisted arrest, fought back and taken a taser gun, then he’s running away, what are the cops (with their parameters of being able to carry and discharge a gun) supposed to do? Let him run off with a weapon pissed up - he didn’t even know where he was for most of the video.

Well, the law (via Wikipedia) says:

Quote

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), is a civil case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that, under the Fourth Amendment, when a law enforcement officer is pursuing a fleeing suspect, the officer may not use deadly force to prevent escape unless "the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others."^[1] It was found that use of deadly force to prevent escape is an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, in the absence of probable cause that the fleeing suspect posed a physical danger

I'm not making a judgement on the relevance of the case myself, it's what a lot of lawyers and activists seem to have been quoting on Twitter.

I watched the first video, but haven't sat through the bodycam footage. Did he discharge the taser and miss as he was running as some people have said? If he did he was back to being an unarmed drunk guy running, with the most likely threat of danger being running under a bus.

Bear in mind the guy was asleep in  his car. If they hadn't already identified him it wouldn't be hard to do so. Let the guy run and go and beat him home. If it's instinct to shoot a fleeing suspect as they were a bit shaken then it just further highlights issues with police training and the mentality of many individuals who do the job even if they were 'good guys'.

Not the first video I've seen of American police casually radioing in next to a suspect choking on their own blood.

[chrisp65]

It’s a very sad case, one of too many.

But I suspect, the circumstances are too muddled for it to be a major rallying point for the protests as a whole. It’s sad, but some time soon, too soon, there will be a more obvious case of a more clearly ‘innocent’ or respectful person being shot dead by an excitable or scared or racist cop.

To go back to the symbolism of it again, Rosa Parks was not the first black person to push against the stupid racist laws. Others had carried out similar acts. But she was one of the first where the circumstances didn’t allow any sort of defence of ‘she deserved it’ or that she was a serial offender, or drunk or cussing.

There will be other ‘better’ (in a deeply cynical sense) cases to get behind.

[bannedfromHandV]

5 hours ago, LondonLax said:

Part of it is just the culture of fear that exists between police and black people. When that guy is being pinned down and arrested I bet he was thinking he was about to be the next George Floyd. 

There’s no simple way to undo years and years of mistrust.

But he wasn’t being pinned down and arrested was he? They were stood up and all was calm, he kicked off which is when he may have ended up pinned down but given that for 30 minutes of that video he didn’t know which State he was in (literally and figuratively) I doubt he had much of a George Floyd related thought process ongoing.

I think the problem very much was that he wasn’t thinking at all. 

[villa4europe]

10 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

But he wasn’t being pinned down and arrested was he? They were stood up and all was calm, he kicked off which is when he may have ended up pinned down but given that for 30 minutes of that video he didn’t know which State he was in (literally and figuratively) I doubt he had much of a George Floyd related thought process ongoing.

I think the problem very much was that he wasn’t thinking at all. 

there lies the problem

for me its the policeman who kicks off by arresting him without a proper full explanation as to why

agree with the other comment, he's blind drunk, doesn't know where he is, the cop hasn't completely misread and mishandled the situation, I can guarantee you that down any high street in the UK on a Saturday night a drunk reveller is doing the same thing when the handcuffs come out like that, he's oblivious as to what crime he has committed and that's because the for as calm as the conversation is the cop never actually tells him what he has done wrong