Another cop "fears for his life" - Officer Michael Slager Shooting Unarmed Black Man In The Back

[Sarpedon]

But that doesn't mean that the cop himself is a racist. If he's simply following  department policy then that policy itself being racist doesn't speak at all to his own motivations.[/QUOTE] Irrelevant. My comment was that racism and shooting was the easy way out. Mindlessly following racist policies is also easy. What's the difference between a racist and one who mindlessly follows racist policies? There is no meaningful distinction. All that matter is the act. The act is unambiguous. The statistics are unambiguous. The result is unambiguous.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But that doesn't mean that the cop himself is a racist. If he's simply following  department policy then that policy itself being racist doesn't speak at all to his own motivations.[/QUOTE] Irrelevant. My comment was that racism and shooting was the easy way out. Mindlessly following racist policies is also easy. What's the difference between a racist and one who mindlessly follows racist policies? There is no meaningful distinction. All that matter is the act. The act is unambiguous. The statistics are unambiguous. The result is unambiguous.[/QUOTE] No, racism has to do with the intent behind the act. If he's finding excuses to pull over black drivers himself, then he's a racist. If he's simply following a set of procedures laid out for him on how to do his job, then there's nothing racist about his own actions, regardless of whether or not the policies themselves happen to be racist. It's the statistics which are irrelevant. We're talking about the attitude of this one individual and statistics can't be applied to specific individuals.

 

[thebeave]

This is still hot with the media. I do not hear a lot from Al Sharpton. He must be busy.

Please try to contain your rage aeebee.

 

[Sarpedon]

Yes, and the officers true motives cannot be known, because no one can read his mind, therefore he must be acquitted and nothing can be done, and we have another corpse in the ground and another officer walking.

Choosing to follow racist policies is a choice that one can be held accountable for, as the Nuremberg trials established.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yes, and the officers true motives cannot be known, because no one can read his mind, therefore he must be acquitted and nothing can be done, and we have another corpse in the ground and another officer walking.

What are you talking about?

He shot an unarmed man in the back and killed him. How does his not being a racist suddenly make this not a crime?

Choosing to follow racist policies is a choice that one can be held accountable for, as the Nuremberg trials established.

Really? Just going straight for the Nazi references and not waiting for the conversation to devolve a little bit before heading there?

While I agree with you that following a policy about enforcing traffic violations is exactly the same and as serious as following a policy about rounding up and executing millions of people, making it an apt analogy which is in no way completely stupid or out of context, it is still considered poor form to jump right to the Nazi comparisons before you've even bothered to insult my mother or made aspersions about some odd sexual piccadillo that you feel I must have. You don't just go around Godwinning your argument at the beginning.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, and the officers true motives cannot be known, because no one can read his mind, therefore he must be acquitted and nothing can be done, and we have another corpse in the ground and another officer walking.

He shot a man (6 or 8 times) who was a threat to no one... and allegedly planted the stun gun on the victim. Not First Degree murder, but it can be manslaughter.

 

[Sarpedon]

Yeah and smearing someone for supposedly godwinning obscures the fact that, occasionally, the nazis are relevant, especially when talking about bland, bureaucratic racism, as we have here.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yeah and smearing someone for supposedly godwinning obscures the fact that, occasionally, the nazis are relevant, especially when talking about bland, bureaucratic racism, as we have here.

No, the Nazi comparison was not relevant here. While it occasionally is, this is not one of those situations. It was just as dumb and out of place as 99% of the other Nazi references on the internet are. Undue Nazi references are the thing which undercuts your argument and obscures what you were saying, not the pointing out of how you're doing that.

 

[ksen]

What about Lt. Calley? Can we reference him?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What about Lt. Calley? Can we reference him?

It would depend on who he is. If he was a Nazi officer, then probably not. The exception would be if he's a Nazi officer who rounded up a bunch of Jews by arresting them for having broken tail lights.

 

[NobleSavage]

Everyone seems to have forgotten that the victim was trying to do a runner! Put yourself in the cop's shoes, what would you do?

I wouldn't even give chase. I'd just get on the radio and say "Violent black male fugitive on the loose". Then 10,000 cops would show up with the State Troupers, helicopters, and the news media.

 

[ksen]

What about Lt. Calley? Can we reference him?

It would depend on who he is. If he was a Nazi officer, then probably not. The exception would be if he's a Nazi officer who rounded up a bunch of Jews by arresting them for having broken tail lights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Everyone knows that broken taillight policing is racist. Officers stop cars driven by blacks more often than whites, deliberately. This leads to a greater number of confrontations, and thus, more violence.

Racist policy leads to murder = Racist murder.

For some strange value of "Everyone" maybe.

I'm white, I've been stopped over a brake light.

No big deal, after checking my paperwork and asking about alcohol and weapons she told me about the burned out light, asked if I happened to be carrying a spare (no, nor the tool needed to get access to the light on that car) and told me to get it dealt with promptly. End of stop, no ticket, no written warning.

It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable thing to do as it's not exactly obvious to a driver that a light that only comes on when you're in the driver's seat isn't coming on.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Everyone knows that broken taillight policing is racist. Officers stop cars driven by blacks more often than whites, deliberately. This leads to a greater number of confrontations, and thus, more violence.

Racist policy leads to murder = Racist murder.

For some strange value of "Everyone" maybe.

I'm white, I've been stopped over a brake light.

No big deal, after checking my paperwork and asking about alcohol and weapons she told me about the burned out light, asked if I happened to be carrying a spare (no, nor the tool needed to get access to the light on that car) and told me to get it dealt with promptly. End of stop, no ticket, no written warning.

It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable thing to do as it's not exactly obvious to a driver that a light that only comes on when you're in the driver's seat isn't coming on.

Well, it passes the Loren Anecdotal test. It's clean.

 

[ksen]

Thank god, I can rest easy now.

 

[atrib]

Everyone seems to have forgotten that the victim was trying to do a runner! Put yourself in the cop's shoes, what would you do?

Trying to evade arrest or fleeing the scene of a crime (assuming a crime had been committed) is NOT punishable by summary execution. The police officer had several options open to him, including pursuit on foot while calling for backup. Shooting the unarmed, fleeing suspect who apparently posed no immediate danger to him or to the public at large is NOT a viable option.

 

[ZiprHead]

It doesn't make it acceptable but it shows that one increases the change of a bad outcome by acting stupid.

Was anyone in doubt that behaving stupidly can result in negative outcomes? How is it relevant to the case at hand? I find it disturbing that when an unarmed man gets shot five times in the back while fleeing from a police officer who then planted a taser beside the body to incriminate the victim, that some people's most prominent thoughts on the matter are "well that victim was stupid!" instead of thinking "well that cop just straight up killed that guy for no good reason and planted evidence to incriminate the victim!"

What's very telling is that the victim is being blamed (and yes, it is victim blaming even if you insist it isn't) for "panicking and doing something stupid" while the cop is simultaneously being defended for "panicking and doing something stupid" (see Loren's earlier post about planting the taser beside the victim).

When you've been shot five times in the back by a cop you were running away from, it's not that bad because you "panicked and did something stupid". And if you're a cop and plant evidence beside a dead body, that also isn't too bad because you "panicked and did something stupid". It's just amazing to see the hoops people will jump through to excuse gross abuse of power by a cop.

The absolutely biggest stupid thing in this case is the cop shooting an unarmed man in the back. If Derec wants to argue about stupidity, maybe he should start there.

 

[ksen]

Cop Recorded Laughing About Adrenaline Rush After Walter Scott Shooting

 

[arkirk]

Everyone knows that broken taillight policing is racist. Officers stop cars driven by blacks more often than whites, deliberately. This leads to a greater number of confrontations, and thus, more violence.

Racist policy leads to murder = Racist murder.

For some strange value of "Everyone" maybe.

I'm white, I've been stopped over a brake light.

No big deal, after checking my paperwork and asking about alcohol and weapons she told me about the burned out light, asked if I happened to be carrying a spare (no, nor the tool needed to get access to the light on that car) and told me to get it dealt with promptly. End of stop, no ticket, no written warning.

It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable thing to do as it's not exactly obvious to a driver that a light that only comes on when you're in the driver's seat isn't coming on.

The man had just bought this car, Loren. He had no time to stock up with spare parts. He had been hassled for non payment of child support and thought he might go to jail and ran. Obviously he wasn't hip or he would have realized that they shoot black men when they run in that neighborhood. You seem to think that is alright. Why ever he may run, it becomes a shooting match. If that is policy, then something needs to be done about that. Now cometh Loren telling us "I'm white and it didn't happen to me." Is his answer that the deceased should have somehow become white?

I have been stopped for a bad tail light by a very racist cop (I know he is a racist cop because I have seen him treat black people entirely different in the same situation.) who called me sir and just told me my light was out...no ticket, no questioning about alcohol or weapons. Loren must have looked suspicious.

His being black probably had something to do with being too poor to keep up with child support judgments. His relatives said he was on his way out of hard times...the perfect target for a racist gunman with a badge. Court judgments can be very unfair. I think it is bad to get shot to death just as you start to see light at the end of a long tunnel, but obviously the cop wasn't concerned with that and didn't even know the guy had anything wrong but a taillight.

I have a friend who had a developmentally challenged son and was also divorced. The wife, who had a child support court order tired of raising the boy, gave up, then sent him to his father who not only raised the kid but also paid all the kid's expenses. After a number of years of this, the ex-wife took him to court for unpaid child support and got a $7000 judgment against him, most of which he still owes to this day. He recently had a stroke, and still cannot have a bank account because the D.A. will raid it. He is white and also an example of court unfairness. With black people, the courts and the cops seem lined up to take their shots.

 

[ksen]

You know who also doesn't keep up on their child support payments?

Dead guys.