Carolinamom, “different vantage points” don’t put a gun in someone’s hands that clearly wasn’t there. “Different vantage points” don’t change someone being shot in the back running away, and the cop planting a weapon by his body afterwards, as happened in South Carolina.
And all the right-wing talking points in the world won’t change the fact that citizens (black or white or anything else) who kill someone are usually prosecuted and put in prison (along with the hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders who don’t belong there in the first place, and have made the U.S.A. the greatest incarcerator per capita in the world and probably in history – yes, more than the Soviet gulags). And won’t change the fact that cops who kill people are virtually never convicted or imprisoned. Guess how many police officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter for killing black civilians in the last few years? Guess how many have been convicted and sent to prison?
It’s the disparity in justice, and the fact that police officers effectively have a license to kill. Especially black people. That’s what people are upset about.
For all the apparently willful obtuseness, all BLM means is that black lives matter TOO. Because there are way too many people in this country who speak and act as if black lives – and black deaths at the hands of law enforcement, with zero consequences – mean nothing at all. White lives already matter here. They always have.
If she is filming and asks for permission to tend to her SO, or for the officer to tend to him and is refused, that gets her a lot, in terms of the filming and its benefit.
@DonnaL Each circumstance should be evaluated individually. I am well aware of what happened in SC , and I agree in that situation that the video helped prove that the police officer was definitely guilty. Because I think that situations should use various ways to evaluate a situation in no way suggests that black lives don’t matter or that police officers don’t commit egregious crimes.
Oh jym. Please. Don’t. Just don’t. please don’t tell us what SHE should have done. What you would have done. Because you and I are not sitting in that car, and the chances are remote that we ever, ever will be.
“Half of all homicides in LA and Chicago are gang murders. Up to 80% of all crime is gang related. 2,000 people every year are killed in gang murders. Most of these are minorities. This is what needs to be the priority. Otherwise, it is like worrying you are going to die by being struck by lightning when your body is riddled with cancer.”
Imagine then if you’re the mother of a young black man who has stayed away from gangs, stayed away from drugs, stayed away from crime altogether, yet is still murdered by a police officer during a traffic stop? How can you not see that this is an entirely different issue? Of course, everyone wants to reduce gang warfare. But does that mean we should turn our backs on the murder of young men who happen to share the same skin color as many of those in gangs? Isn’t it every parent’s worse nightmare to lose your child because of pointless violence after you have helped to successfully guide him towards adulthood without falling into one of its many traps? And don’t you see how awful it is that every young black man lives in fear of being stopped by a police officer and every parent prays not to get that phone call? That black parents must teach their sons at an early age how to survive police encounters? The deaths and the culture of fear have to end. If we want to cut down on crime in black neighborhoods, people need to trust LEOs, not fear them.
And the bad eggs in law enforcement are not just those who racially profile or who shoot unarmed citizens, they are also those who hide or even tamper with evidence to get convictions and pressure people into false confessions. And that happens to people of all colors. Our criminal justice system is not what many of us imagine and hope it to be. We need to do better. And there needs to be consequences for those in law enforcement who exercise their considerable power unlawfully.
Carolinamom, I should have made clearer that the second part of my post had nothing to do with you. I was only addressing you about the video issue. What I said about BLM was addressed to others.
Again, for you all with your crime statistics. Here’s a random example from near where I live in North Jersey. No one died so it didn’t make national news. Thankfully. A guy cooperating with the police who they beat up and then accuse him of multiple crimes, until, thankfully, the video from the police car surfaces, showing a different story. All charges against the “suspect” dropped, the officers eventually convicted. No camera, and this guy would have been sent away.
Multiply this over and over, and subtract the video cameras.
Some of those “statistics” are odd and seem skewed. Why should we care how many blacks “commit robbery” in NYC in order to justify whether police kill them or not? NYC is not the whole picture and we know that whoever “commits a crime” is skewed towards who the police go after.
Not saying they’re entirely wrong but if there is such a thing as racial profiling, then the people who are profiled are going to be pulled over, searched, charged, and convicted at a higher rate than those who are not profiled making those “commit crime” statistics more than a little skewed.
It is entirely likely that Philando Castile was pulled over because of racial profiling. Apparently he “fit the description” of someone involved in a robbery 2 days before. Fit the description = young black male (who happens to be driving through a white suburb). Was their taillight even broken? The girlfriend says it wasn’t. And from this profiling comes tragedy all around.
You don’t get it @awcntdb . The protest is about cops shooting black people with impunity. There is a mechanism in place to deal with those not-cop killings and while it is imperfect, very often those killers DO get arrested and convicted.
There isn’t anything to protest when the system works as it should, obviously.
The post was originally about cops getting killed by a sniper. Being a cop is very dangerous work. I doubt most of them feel that people appreciate what they do to protect all of us. In our city we have a community Facebook page which has over 18,000 members. For a least the last couple of years people have posted about how thankful they are for the police officers and responders, especially when they are there to help them through something and others have been dropping off pizza’s, cookies or cards from their kids from time to time. Our city has coffee with a cop and others events that people can go and met the police officers. Each school has a police officer. If kids get to know that cops are there to help us then hopefully that can help. There seems to be a lot of hate and finger pointing in the world today. While here are some bad apples there are plenty more good police officers. I hope that more communities are doing this sort of thing.
I think people do appreciate them. People who don’t get pulled over for nothing all the time, anyway,
But while we may or may not appreciate them, we also, as taxpayers, support them with money and benefits (and often very good ones though there certainly are exceptions).
Perhaps we should pay them more, though that likely means higher taxes…
@zobroward – please tell us you’re joking. You don’t really expect anyone here to take information from The Daily Wire seriously… did you? Isn’t it like asking Liberty University to comment on evolution?
Zobroward, I looked at the article you cited from a far-right website. Did you really not notice the fundamental flaw in the author’s attempt to excuse the majority of police killings of black men? Namely, the claim that many of those killed were “reportedly” trying to grab the cop’s gun? You do know that that’s ALWAYS the claim cops make when they kill an unarmed person? And that there have been many times when video evidence has failed to support such claims? In order to find that article convincing, you have to believe that cops usually tell the truth about that. Given how often they’ve been proven to be lying, given how obvious an excuse it is after-the-fact, given how police who’ve killed people are almost never interrogated on the spot and are usually sent home first to think it over, and given how often the police making such claims use almost the exact same words (“He reached for my gun. I feared for my life”), I don’t believe that for one moment. So the article doesn’t impress me one bit.
@MichiganGeorgia - You can respect and support police officers – and still expect them not to murder unarmed and already-subdued citizens. I don’t think the latter is asking too much.
Wow I’ve been offline most of the day and I see there is no reasoning with some folks even in the face of evidence. Some feel we should be happy with status quo. How dare us to expect someone who is sworn to uphold the law and protect, to do just that regardless of race.
Some of you will never understand, as I’ve said until you have to teach your kid at an early age don’t run, don’t leave the gas station if you buy something without a bag because you might be accused of shoplifting, don’t wear a hoodie, triple check your lights at all times because that’s a reason always given, keep your hands on the wheel , and the list goes on.
I’m traveling right now and you would be surprised when they call first class, how many people have actually said " oh they called first class. " as if I hadn’t heard. It happens all the time