Violent riots underway in Kenosha, WI

[Arctish]

Police union has.

Police Union In Kenosha, Wis., Provides Account Of Jacob Blake Shooting

We don't know what he had in his hand. If it was a knife, it's a wonder the second cop didn't try to tase Blake when the first cop's attempt failed.

Actually, two officers attempted to tase Blake.

The statement from the Kenosha Professional Police Association also says officers twice shot Tasers at Blake but these failed to subdue him.

Well that only took five days.

Meanwhile the Wisconsin AG refuses to say whether the cops knew about the knife.

I'm going to wait for the AG to make up his mind on that count. It seems strange that he still won't (can't?) answer the question but maybe he's being a stickler for protocol so he doesn't screw up the case. .

It's an even bigger wonder why they weren't both shouting "Drop the knife!" the entire time Blake was walking to his car.

Funny you should say that!

Video taken by onlookers shows something in Blake’s hand but it is grainy and difficult to make out. The man who made the widely shared cellphone video of the shooting said he heard officers yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” but he said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.

Good info, thanks.

And there is more about the union statement.

In a full-throated defense of the officers' conduct, union attorney Brendan Matthews said Blake refused to follow commands and violently resisted, despite being tasered twice, and at one point put an officer in a headlock.
"The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle," he said.
It is unclear from Matthews' statement when the knife would have been drawn by Blake, before or after the fight on the ground.

New details in Kenosha shootings: Jacob Blake tasered twice; Rittenhouse attorney says he did not transport gun
So yeah, according to the police he did have a knife, and the guy who shot the video confirms that they were yelling for him to drop it.

According to the police union, not the Kenosha Police Department or the Wisconsin AG. The union is defending its members. I don't expect them to do anything less.

I'm going to wait for the AG's investigators to release their official report before reaching any conclusions. There's too much still to learn about how that all went down.

 

[Arctish]

You mean like how the national media never mentioned Daniel Shaver, who brought that shooting on himself by pointing a pellet gun out a window and then not following the instructions of the cop pointing a gun at him?

Compare that coverage to the amount of coverage Blake is getting. And Blake did not even die. Nor did Shaver have felony warrants.
So the cases are not exactly comparable. Also, Shaver is just about the only case of a white guy who got any media coverage in recent years. Compare to several black guys this year alone.

And do you think that's because the media doesn't care enough about white guys to report on their mistreatment at the hands of police, or the cops don't care enough about black guys to not mistreat them?

About 1,000 civilians are killed each year by law-enforcement officers in the United States. By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.

<link>

If you want to discuss what would be a fair amount of coverage for say, one white guy who endured cavity searches and two colonoscopies in a clinic vs. sixty two black men who endured roadside strip searches and body cavity searches by untrained non-professionals, we can do that. I'm interested in hearing your rationale for the amount of coverage given to each, and what you might say if the national media failed to give one or the other story the coverage you think it deserved.

 

[ruby sparks]

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and call shenanigans on those there graphs. I live in Atlanta, have watched footage of the protests and riots and while there were a lot of white people there, the majority of the protesters were black.

Maybe. I might trust a data and analytics company more than I'd trust media footage not to accidentally or otherwise have a certain (possibly understandable) emphasis.

I definitely think the skin colour demographics of the BLM protesters is interesting.

I take your point about what I think is a bit of a no true scotsman fallacy regarding misbehaving white protesters. It's too convenient to say that are white supremacists, boogaloos or even just 'not BLM'. And that last one goes for violent black protesters or rioters too.

 

[ruby sparks]

Statement from police association - https://webcache.googleusercontent....ust-28-2020-PS.docx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

If that's correct, I think it changes things quite substantially.

It shouldn't be too hard to compare the knife found on the floor of front of the driver's side of the car with the images of what looked like it may have been a knife in his hand as he walked around the car, and presumably others at or viewing the scene also saw him holding the knife, or heard the officers telling him to drop it (and would hopefully say so under oath).

Now, whatever he was intending to do with the knife, it does not appear that that involved threatening the officers with it, at least we can't see him threatening anyone with it, but clearly, even having a knife in his hand during the encounter substantially changes the narrative, especially if he was asked to drop it.

Also, it not being his suv would add a new twist.

My guess is that what was going on here was a bit of an informal 'custody battle', with Blake maybe trying to take his children (rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, I don't know). It does not seem to me now that Blake merely intervened to break up a fight (which I think I read somewhere, correct me if I am wrong).

But, if he was getting into, say, his partner's (or ex-partner's) car, which had their kids in it, and he was carrying a knife....I'd say stopping him was warranted. I wonder what he was going to do. Did he have the keys of the car? Etc.

 

[ruby sparks]

So, it is false to say that firearms and rifles are associated just with white people.

I did not say that.

 

[Trausti]

If Jacob Blake was white, would the national media give a shit?

Yes.

Would you?

Bullshit. Plenty of unarmed white guys shot by police; at best local media does a story.

 

[Trausti]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=k5Mgc84iLvU

 

[thebeave]

Statement from police association - https://webcache.googleusercontent....ust-28-2020-PS.docx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

If that's correct, I think it changes things quite substantially.

It shouldn't be too hard to compare the knife found on the floor of front of the driver's side of the car with the images of what looked like it may have been a knife in his hand as he walked around the car, and presumably others at or viewing the scene also saw him holding the knife, or heard the officers telling him to drop it (and would hopefully say so under oath).

Now, whatever he was intending to do with the knife, it does not appear that that involved threatening the officers with it, at least we can't see him threatening anyone with it, but clearly, even having a knife in his hand during the encounter substantially changes the narrative, especially if he was asked to drop it.

Also, it not being his suv would add a new twist.

My guess is that what was going on here was a bit of an informal 'custody battle', with Blake maybe trying to take his children (rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, I don't know). It does not seem to me now that Blake merely intervened to break up a fight (which I think I read somewhere, correct me if I am wrong).

But, if he was getting into, say, his partner's (or ex-partner's) car, which had their kids in it, and he was carrying a knife....I'd say stopping him was warranted. I wonder what he was going to do. Did he have the keys of the car? Etc.

Yup. If he had been allowed to get in the car with his knife and drive away with the kids in the there, no telling what might have happened next. A high speed chase as a minimum, putting the kids' life in serious danger. Or perhaps he'd get away, and then kill the kids' out of spite to the kids' mother.

 

[Trausti]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUGHEAhvRk

 

[Shadowy Man]

Yup. If he had been allowed to get in the car with his knife and drive away with the kids in the there, no telling what might have happened next. A high speed chase as a minimum, putting the kids' life in serious danger. Or perhaps he'd get away, and then kill the kids' out of spite to the kids' mother.

So, we are going to accept, as a society, that it is ok for police to execute someone because they don’t know what might happen next?

 

[Elixir]

Yup. If he had been allowed to get in the car with his knife and drive away with the kids in the there, no telling what might have happened next. A high speed chase as a minimum, putting the kids' life in serious danger. Or perhaps he'd get away, and then kill the kids' out of spite to the kids' mother.

So, we are going to accept, as a society, that it is ok for police to execute someone because they don’t know what might happen next?

Well... if they're black, yeah. If they're white and they show up in public with an AR15 and start shooting people, no worries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Where is the evidence that he was brandishing a knife at the police? Where is the evidence that he attempted to stab an officer?

Quit moving the goalposts.

I never said he tried to stab the police--I see no indication he did. I said we have a photo with the knife in his hand. It's close to his body, he's not going after anyone with it.

He's basically playing porcupine here but then he went for his car. To escape, to run over officers with, or because it held a better weapon? The officers have no way to know, they do know they're trying to serve a felony warrant on someone engaged in armed resistance, there's no reason to bet their lives on his plan being to escape. (And allowing him to escape with kids in the car is a bad idea anyway.)

We have a photo of Blake holding something in his hand as he walks to his car.

Someone said it looks like a knife. Others said it looks like a transponder equipped car key. The cops haven't said what it was. But that random guy on the internet had you at "knife", didn't he? And now you are building your entire argument on a 'fact' not in evidence.

We don't know what he had in his hand. If it was a knife, it's a wonder the second cop didn't try to tase Blake when the first cop's attempt failed. It's an even bigger wonder why they weren't both shouting "Drop the knife!" the entire time Blake was walking to his car. And it's truly remarkable that no one in the entire Kenosha Police department of the State AG's office has mentioned a knife being in Blake's hand when he was shot, especially considering all this outcry and rioting.

You'd think they'd want people to know the shooting may have been justified.

A knife was recovered from the floorboards of the car. That's not where you would normally keep a knife, thus it's likely it got there because he dropped it when he was shot.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And do you think that's because the media doesn't care enough about white guys to report on their mistreatment at the hands of police, or the cops don't care enough about black guys to not mistreat them?

Or that it's not mistreatment in the first place, it's just being cast as mistreatment to inflame the situation?

The more we see on this the more it looks justified. This is a guy who had demonstrated that he was going to resist arrest with force. After tasers failed that leaves guns.

If you want to discuss what would be a fair amount of coverage for say, one white guy who endured cavity searches and two colonoscopies in a clinic vs. sixty two black men who endured roadside strip searches and body cavity searches by untrained non-professionals, we can do that. I'm interested in hearing your rationale for the amount of coverage given to each, and what you might say if the national media failed to give one or the other story the coverage you think it deserved.

Yeah, it's these lesser things where there's a problem, not the shootings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Now, whatever he was intending to do with the knife, it does not appear that that involved threatening the officers with it, at least we can't see him threatening anyone with it, but clearly, even having a knife in his hand during the encounter substantially changes the narrative, especially if he was asked to drop it.

Also, it not being his suv would add a new twist.

My guess is that what was going on here was a bit of an informal 'custody battle', with Blake maybe trying to take his children (rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, I don't know). It does not seem to me now that Blake merely intervened to break up a fight (which I think I read somewhere, correct me if I am wrong).

But, if he was getting into, say, his partner's (or ex-partner's) car, which had their kids in it, and he was carrying a knife....I'd say stopping him was warranted. I wonder what he was going to do. Did he have the keys of the car? Etc.

I think you very well might be on to something here.

I believe his intent was to escape the situation, he did not desire to harm the officers. That doesn't mean he wouldn't, though--most of the time when an officer is hurt or killed it's because they were impeding the escape of a felon, not because the felon was actually after them.

Note that if you're right (and it makes a lot of sense--remember his warrant was about domestic sexual battery) it's a very big deal for him, he's committing a major felony although the cops would have no way of knowing that. Of course he's desperate to escape.

 

[laughing dog]

The more we see on this the more it looks justified. This is a guy who had demonstrated that he was going to resist arrest with force.

How did Mr. Blake demonstrate that? By trying to leave, and even with an alleged weapon in his hand, he turns to get into a car. It takes a lot of willful disregard of reality to come up with your analysis.

Should Mr. Blake have been stopped from leaving? Yes.

Was shooting him in the back while he posed no immediate threat to anyone the only way to stop him from leaving? I don't think so.

 

[Derec]

Brussels sprouts taste good!

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I've told cops to go and get fucked. I've called them cunt-stables. I have pissed on a cop car.

Charming!

Funny how I am still alive. Weird huh? Because obviously I deserve the death penalty.

It's not that you or Blake "deserve the death penalty", it's that certain behaviors, like reaching into the car, make police think you are going for your gun. That can get you shot, and it's not a matter of deserving, it's a matter of almost terminal stupidity.

Of course, this young man will, unfortunately, probably come ahead given the toxic political climate - the city will probably pay him millions and the spineless DA will probably dismiss the charges he has warrants for given that now Jacob Blake is the hero of the #BLM movement. I do not think it is smart that we as a society encourage behavior like his.

Well, it's not that society is encouraging it. It's that individually, people are sick of our nazi fucking cops and the police are no longer legitimate in a lot of people's minds. Certainly not in mine. Take your violent repression fantasies with you. You can hold them when you are afraid. In the meantime, our police have lost their legitimacy for enough people that the only way out is negotiation and a dramatic change in policing, including real accountability for their crimes, or a police state that protects you by shooting the people who already killed you and burnt your house down because you supported the police. It seems that you don't really understand how democracy works and your white privilege feeds you a narrative that the millions of people who no longer respect the authority of the criminal justice system can just be forced to accept it.

Maybe. Violence has a long history of working in the short term but it always begets more violence. That is what we have now. Cops are the enemy of a massive number of people now. In a democracy, problems like this are supposed to be addressed through compromise and negotiation. Because the nazi side doesn't even understand that negotiation is an option since compromise is not an option for them, they see the problem as needing more force rather than more politics. The solution is the problem. More force makes us all less safe. Although, it is possible to make a case that safety is overrated.

Anyway, you can hold onto your blind faith in repression and create the illusion of safety if it makes you feel better. It will not change the minds of a movement that is millions strong.

And the more you cling to your stormtrooper security blanket, the more people will be inclined to destroy the institution and the less safe we a will be. You are putting yourself above half the country and saying that violence is justified to repress them because your wants are more important than theirs. That is where democracy collapses. If it becomes time for individuals to say fuck it, they will take people with them. And your response will be the same as it ever was, more violence with retribution as the goal. Retribution isn't justice and the dead don't value revenge.

 

[Elixir]

... certain behaviors, like reaching into the car, make police think you are going for your gun.

Obviously the gun industry needs to make sure that there's a gun pretty much everywhere, so the police can be even more "justified" in blowing anyone away who does anything the cop has not commanded them to do.
Cops in England or Japan - or damn near anywhere else - won't kill you for reaching in your car.

The number of people pretending this isn't a societal problem is the thing that I find most depressing. It's not only racism producing the difference between life and death for blacks and whites, it's the ubiquity of firearms brought abut by the greed and conscientious paranoia-peddling by the industry, the NRA and their Russian money laundering "investors". Throw in rampant (and often well justified) American male insecurity, mindlessly repeat 2nd Amendment "right to bear arms" with utter disregard for "well regulated militia", tell them "they're comin' fer yer gunz"... and sure. Now damn near everyone is packing, which is the most compelling reason that ever existed to get a gun if you don't have one or two or ten already. Or even if you do ...

At this point, anyone hard up enough or dumb enough or simply sadistic enough to want to become a city street cop can hardly be blamed for "fearing for their life" (the only required justification for killing civilians). The fact that cops in general experience more of that level of fear when dealing with a black person than a white person and that results in black people getting killed, is a result of the guns guns guns problem. Yeah, it's exacerbated by racism, but racism is a global phenomenon. The number of guns - legal and illegal - circulating in the US is unique, with more than double the rate of guns per person than the runner up (Falkland Islands).

 

[SLD]

... certain behaviors, like reaching into the car, make police think you are going for your gun.

Obviously the gun industry needs to make sure that there's a gun pretty much everywhere, so the police can be even more "justified" in blowing anyone away who does anything the cop has not commanded them to do.
Cops in England or Japan - or damn near anywhere else - won't kill you for reaching in your car.

The number of people pretending this isn't a societal problem is the thing that I find most depressing. It's not only racism producing the difference between life and death for blacks and whites, it's the ubiquity of firearms brought abut by the greed and conscientious paranoia-peddling by the industry, the NRA and their Russian money laundering "investors". Throw in rampant (and often well justified) American male insecurity, mindlessly repeat 2nd Amendment "right to bear arms" with utter disregard for "well regulated militia", tell them "they're comin' fer yer gunz"... and sure. Now damn near everyone is packing, which is the most compelling reason that ever existed to get a gun if you don't have one or two or ten already. Or even if you do ...

At this point, anyone hard up enough or dumb enough or simply sadistic enough to want to become a city street cop can hardly be blamed for "fearing for their life" (the only required justification for killing civilians). The fact that cops in general experience more of that level of fear when dealing with a black person than a white person and that results in black people getting killed, is a result of the guns guns guns problem. Yeah, it's exacerbated by racism, but racism is a global phenomenon. The number of guns - legal and illegal - circulating in the US is unique, with more than double the rate of guns per person than the runner up (Falkland Islands).

A-fucking-men! We’ve had decades of Republican fear mongering coupled with a massive gun sale mentality. I see more and more of this coming down the pike. Soon it will be the excuse that if only the victim had obeyed the shooters order, it wouldn’t have happened. I fear that in November, Trump will effectively deputize these militia groups to secure his presidency. We are sinking into a police state quickly.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Since violent protests seem to follow police shootings(or kneeling on someone's neck until they die), what play would a Wednesday evening quarterback call which might reduce violent protests?

My solution would be to arrest and prosecute the rioters to the full extent of the law, contrary to what fauxgressive prosecutors like Mike Schmidt are doing.

I guess your "solution" would be to give in to violent thugs and stop using lethal force against black people no matter the circumstances even if it leads to more dead cops (an outcome Jarhyn for example has explicitly said he supports). Giving in to terrorists is never a good idea!

Put a million people in prison and see how that works out.