The Police Brutality Thread

[Paperback Writer]

By the way, here is one of the hotels I'm referring to: the Econolodge in Richardson, TX. It is a cheap place to stay but not necessarily trashy looking from the outside. It sits next to office buildings housing mostly IT and high-tech type companies. As a law abiding citizen I never would have known it was a hotbed of lower level drug dealing.

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en...DQcQoioIlwEwCg


And they do catch some people possessing drugs when they do this. But it makes me wonder how many of these we didn't hear about because the person didn't have drugs and they let them on their way with just a minor traffic ticket instead. I'm cynical enough to assume the latter is the majority. While we had to follow the law and move these cases forward when the search was done legally and the evidence was there, it kind of became a running joke within our group about how we all learned never to be in those neighborhoods. But, if we were unfortunate enough to ever find ourselves in one of those hot spots, to make sure we're not doing anything as egregious as changing lanes without signalling.

Thanks for the tip. That motel isn't too far from where I work; lots of IT office space in that area. Would never have thought there would be drug activity in the area.

[falafel]

Thanks for the tip. That motel isn't too far from where I work; lots of IT office space in that area. Would never have thought there would be drug activity in the area.

Add it to your list of solid locations to score!

[cowboy]

...You live in a very small town with a very homogeneous population. You know most people around you. The anonymity that the city affords is largely an otherness to you, something you experience only when you leave (as I know you do many days of your life) your land and venture afield. You are also a handsome, strapping, wealthy white man. People give you the benefit of the doubt, often without you ever realizing it. Ergo, I doubt you have been the victim of police overreach or overreaction during your adult life. Perhaps you have, but I don't see it happening to someone who looks like and carries himself like you do.

While I take issue with your flattering description, I absolutely recognize that I get breaks others don't. I don't get out of as many tickets as my wife, but I'm almost always let off with a warning. Hell, the other day my hired man was pulled over for a missing sticker, and when he called me I had him put the cop on the phone and I told him I damn well better not get a ticket or I was going to spit in his barbecue at the town picnic. He laughed and gave my guy a warning. I'll not deny my white, small-town privilege for a moment.

Now, I agree with your last sentence, and a lot of what you said that I didn't quote, but the first sentence that I've quoted here is not as simple as I think you'd like it to be. For example, I have been asked by white cops to lie and say that a black man ran a stop sign and caused an accident when a white cop was the one who caused it....

Make no mistake, I don't think there is anything simple about this problem, and I agree that there are bad cops. Some start out that way, but most become that way as you describe very well below. BTW, I have seen areas of the country as racist as South Carolina, but for a state as a whole, South Carolina is the most racist state in the country in my experience.

That said, I don't think that most cops overreact. I do think that cops react differently to lower income people. If I pull over a late-model BMW, I'm not going to be on guard the way I am a 1994 Caprice Classic with no hubcaps, paint color = primer, and something so heavy in the trunk that the suspension is barely keeping the wheels from scraping the wells--no matter the race or sex of who is driving it. Shitty cars get pulled over more often. Poor people have shitty cars. Poor people often didn't grow up in houses without cars, so they learned to drive as adults. People who learn to drive as adults make for really shitty drivers. Shitty drivers get pulled over more often. Poor people often can't afford to fix shitty cars or get their tags renewed. They get pulled over for this. Minorities are often poor. Minorities view getting pulled over as the worst because it means that the system is going to make them pay more money that they don't have. Fines, taxes, 'tickets', and tolls. Driving in a big city is ridiculously expensive. So, you get pulled over with a broken tailight that maybe you didn't even know was broken. Maybe the cop warns you; maybe he doesn't. If he doesn't, that's $100 probably, plus you've got to go down to city hall. You fix the taillight, but, that $100 is a fortune to some people, so you don't pay it. Your license gets suspended, and now there's a bench warrant. So, the next time you get pulled over, you get arrested. Now, you need to make bail or you go to jail. The judge sets bail at $2,000 because you have corn rows and a scar on your face that makes you look sinister. You lose your job because you can't afford the bondsman. You get evicted and have to move, all over a broken taillight that the cop could've just told you to fix with a warning. So, "fuck tha po-lice" for ruining your life makes sense to you.

The next time you get pulled over, you are a dick to the cop. He sees your record and responds accordingly. The cop gets more jaded, and you get more jaded too.

Repeat this over and over and over and over and over.

This was an example of a tax payer. Throw in gang members and drug stuff and it's even worse for cops. Everyone lies to them, so they think everyone is their enemy. They treat everyone like an enemy in the big city. So, the tax payers get treated with indignity.

This explains very well how cops become jaded and prone to overreaction, and how people of high-crime demographics come to see every cop as an enemy.

If we want to solve these problems, the solution is to legalize drugs. Make it so that cops don't have to worry about drugs anymore, and drug dealers don't have to be armed anymore, and I believe that this violence will abate.

I agree that this is a major component, but I believe it's much more complex. Poor and ethnic people are treated differently by some cops because they are from high crime demographics, and the crimes aren't isolated to drugs. Regardless, I think the politically popular blame game does nothing but make the situation worse, as evidenced by recent violence against law enforcement. Jumping to the podium and laying all the blame on racist cops before the facts are even gathered ignores the root issues. As a result, no valuable discourse or action occurs to make the situation better. Instead, poor and minorities have their justifiable discontent fanned into full-blown rage, more cops, including the good ones, become targets, violence escalates, and everything gets worse.

This is about more than race. It's about culture, crime, law enforcement burnout, and other issues I'm not even aware of. Distilling this down to a race issue alone does nobody any favors and only ruins more lives. Also, please don't interpret my remarks to mean I don't agree with the vast majority of what you wrote.

[wuapinmon]

http://www.kansascity.com/news/state...e90247307.html

WICHITA – What was originally planned as a protest march turned into a cookout where Wichita police and a diverse group of residents broke bread together.
The Wichita Eagle reports that organizers of the protest met with Police Chief Gordon Ramsay for several hours, ending with an agreement for the cookout, which took place Sunday at a city park. Several Wichita police officers took part.
Black Lives Matter protesters had planned to march on Sunday, but after organizers met with Chief Ramsay for hours, according to the protesters, they agreed to break bread together instead.
The goal was to open communication and build trust between police and the communities they serve. The crowd at the cookout included people who were white, black and Hispanic.
At one table, three men – a black man, a Hispanic man and a white man – sat down with burgers next to police Lt. Travis Rakestraw to share their ideas.
It was the first time since 1992 that Jarvis Scott, the black man, said he’d sat down with a police officer, and the other two said it was their first time ever sitting down with an officer.
Capt. Rusty Leeds said that community policing used to be a bigger part of the department, as a response to gang violence in the 1990s. “Then it was the gang violence, and now it’s the conduct of police,” said Leeds, about why the police had to get back out in the community again.
Leeds said that budget issues were part of the reason the police had moved away from these kinds of events.
Rakestraw listened to Ivan Ray, a Hispanic student at the University of Kansas who had recently taken a class about racial disparities. He was impressed with how Ray framed the issue of police violence in terms of many other social issues, including poverty and education.
“The community needs more people like you who can see the problems in wide open eyes,” Rakestraw told Ray. “What should we do about it?”
The three men said they were surprised to hear that Rakestraw seemed to care about what they were saying, and that he had thought about the same issues. But they all said that they were planning on still marching.
Rakestraw, in his turn, said that from the police perspective, a conversation like the one they were having at the cookout felt more productive than many of the protests he’s seen across the nation, which are based on confrontation rather than dialogue. But he had no complaints about the Wichita protest last week that was nonviolent.
“I don’t think it’s a conscious effort,” Rakestraw told them, about why racial biases sometimes persist. “I don’t think anybody does it intentionally but we fill in the gaps with life experiences, what we read in the paper, and we start to view people as a generalization instead of understanding people as individuals.”
The three men nodded.
These smaller conversations, between community members and police, turned into a public forum at around 7 p.m. when hundreds gathered around a microphone to ask questions of Police Chief Gordon Ramsay.
The community did not hold back. One of the first question was whether the black community being bought off with food? How would a cookout help with racial profiling?
Another woman told Ramsay about an experience with police where she said she’d been physically mistreated. Ramsay told the crowd that every officer will have a body camera and they will be able to look at that footage with him when they make complaints about officers.
“If you feel mistreated, I want to know about it,” Ramsay said. “If they feel they are being mistreated, at the scene is not the time to argue about it, wait until it’s over.”
Another questioner asked Ramsay about weeding out bad police officers. “Loud and clear I have zero tolerance for racial profiling or racial bias,” Ramsay said.
Ramsay told the questioners that he wanted to hear more about their situations later. Many praised Ramsay for holding the event, and several audience members said that in all the years in Wichita, they couldn’t remember a police chief coming out in the community like this.

[Eddie]

http://www.kansascity.com/news/state...e90247307.html

Somehow I don't envision a cookout with Gordon Ramsay bringing the community together. I just see him telling everyone they're doing it wrong while dropping expletives all over the place.

Glad it worked out for them.

[wuapinmon]

God dammit.

[Omaha 680]

Good hell.

[Topper]

Where are some of these numbnuts trained, at McDonalds?

[smokymountainrain]

speechless

[Bo Diddley]

Dollars to donuts this was accidental. You get an officer amped up on adrenaline, pointing a gun, and sometimes it just happens. They're not thinking clearly, don't realize their finger is on the trigger, and BAM!

[wuapinmon]

Dollars to donuts this was accidental. You get an officer amped up on adrenaline, pointing a gun, and sometimes it just happens. They're not thinking clearly, don't realize their finger is on the trigger, and BAM!

And, in that case, I think that that person should never be authorized to carry a weapon again. Give them a desk job for life.

[Bo Diddley]

And, in that case, I think that that person should never be authorized to carry a weapon again. Give them a desk job for life.

Last time I personally remember that happening, it was the highway patrolman from Green River back in 2006-2007. I think there was a robbery, high speed chase, and they had the suspect in hand-cuffs. He was still covering the suspect with his gun, and ended up shooting him in the gut. He was fired and decertified.

[byu71]

And, in that case, I think that that person should never be authorized to carry a weapon again. Give them a desk job for life.

Agree or just fire them for incompetence. I know that can't be done in some professions, but few professions can cause death and bodily harm even if an accident.

[wuapinmon]

Last time I personally remember that happening, it was the highway patrolman from Green River back in 2006-2007. I think there was a robbery, high speed chase, and they had the suspect in hand-cuffs. He was still covering the suspect with his gun, and ended up shooting him in the gut. He was fired and decertified.

Maybe the attorneys will scoff at this, but I think the victim has one hell of a civil suit against the cop who shot him.

[Bo Diddley]

Maybe the attorneys will scoff at this, but I think the victim has one hell of a civil suit against the cop who shot him.

It'll be the department, with the deep pockets to pay. He'll get a hefty settlement, no doubt.