Clearly the Sheriff of Tulsa believes it’s a bloody great idea to give a 73 year reserve officer full legal powers and it’s totally not just because he also happens to be an extremely generous donor to the department, what could ever go wrong?
I read that there are more of these fake cops on the Tulsa force. Do we think they have the belated good sense to terminate this program now, or not?
Dollars to donuts the old guy sues the city. “You should have known better than to give me a gun and send me out on patrol.”
The police chief doesn’t see anything wrong with cosplay cops armed with real weapons. Nor do I, provided they are get to chase cosplay robbers-- no doubt the real members of the force would be happy to don blackface to be tased by the pretend cops.
Manslaughter is the appropriate legal charge. It’s not premeditated murder. It’s not an intentional killing without premeditation nor a killing showing some depravity or indifference to human life. It was manslaughter. I don’t know about the penalties in OK for manslaughter.
The police chief should be charged with manslaughter too. Or worse. Arming an unqualified old guy with police weapons shows a depraved indifference to human life.
With each of these stories, I think that it is the worst possible situation. And then the next story comes along and proves me wrong. I think the country has gone crazy. Seriously.
“Depraved indifference to human life” – good phrase, Fang. Not just in this case, but in all of them.
That article by Serpico is excellent.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/north-charleston-shooting-116871.html#ixzz3XFQclxza
Argue a fact against a hypothetical? I’m trying to give that up.
We can both agree Sharpton’s a dangerous nitwit, but besides a microphone, Sharpton’s been a frequent visitor someplace special. Point being, not everyone thinks as we do and it’s not a wonder some might be confused as to exactly where he stacks up in the leadership sweepstakes.
Last one-on-one attention I got from a cop (the bad kind) was in 1988. He was parked in the striped turn lane of a major road on the west side of Houston, scanning for up to date registration/license stickers on the cars that passed him - Texas has them on the driver’s side of the windshield. My current registration sticker was in my glove box (hadn’t applied it yet… didn’t figure it’d drive a low IQ public servant insane that my car was up to date, even if he couldn’t see it.)
I was wrong.
Told a co-worker about it the next day, one that had grown up here and I’d always considered pretty hardnosed. He commiserated and said something along the lines of… "he’s got a gun - what are you going to do, other than nod the head?
Well then, keep that steady course if you simply must believe crime committed by a minority of blacks would continue to have a more devastating social impact than the demise of the entire US economy. Never mind that “hypotheticals” based on known variables are cogently argued against “fact” all the time, in politics, in business, in economics, in education. They are used to advance forward thinking, contingency planning, risk management (something obviously lacking in the financial sector prior to all those chickens coming home to roost), and any number of other real world decisions. People far more educated and knowledgeable than either you or me filled the nation’s most respected financial publications with educated hypotheticals as to what would be the national and global impact of the complete collapse of the US economy. That that impact would be dire and far reaching on a scale never before seen in recorded history was something few argued against, but I suppose you have reason to believe otherwise. Indeed, I admit I’ll never understand the out sized importance of the scary black man narrative among conservatives, but as they say, “carry on.”
I don’t think I ever said nor intimated that Sharpton was a “dangerous nitwit” (there goes that scary black man meme again…), but rather that I’ve never had much use for him. I believe he is largely self-serving and self-aggrandizing, but I certainly don’t find him any more “dangerous” than Rush Limbaugh (yet another self-serving and self-aggrandizing media whore who has himself been a “frequent visitor someplace special”—heck, he even had a sitting President carry his bags for him into the Lincoln Bedroom). As far as where he stacks up in the “leadership sweepstakes”? Well that’s a matter of opinion, don’t you think?
@poetsheart “Indeed, I admit I’ll never understand the out sized importance of the scary black man narrative among conservatives, but as they say, “carry on.””
Mmm…I believe black conservatives would strongly disagree with that generalization (see Ben Carson, Alan West etc.). Since we’re casting wide nets, maybe you prefer the liberal mindset that “everyones a victim” that needs big brother to step in to take care of them because they can’t take care of themselves. Conservatism empowers the individual, you “as a person” are free to write your own ticket in life. It presents logical arguments that liberals don’t know how to counter so they label them falsely as “racist”.
Oh and I second that Sharpton’s a disingenuous, self-serving nitwit.
@judasGOAT - Was Walter Scott " writing his own ticket" when Officer Slager illegally and unconstitutionally shot him to death?
@judasgoat, you are going to get this thread shut down if you persist in political rants.
Judasgoat sounds very much like another poster, who has mysteriously disappeared. We really dont need our threads shut down.
@Consolation I guess poetsheart’s political rant was perfectly acceptable?
That post addressed most issues without using political labels. It was even-handed in criticizing political celebrities. It contained one line that perhaps unwisely mentioned one group alone. There have been other on-topic posts where people similarly made statements about “liberals,” but they generally confined it to one line or a very small part of their point. In all cases the posters may be treading on the TOS line.
The post by judasgoat was way, way over it and had virtually nothing to do with the topic of this thread.
“One cop’s actions are just that, ONE cop’s actions…”
I have to disagree with this statement (another vast oversimplification). Slager and others use excessive murderous force because the actions of their fellow officers ---- as well as judges and juries ---- have allowed them to feel comfortable doing so. Not only comfortable, but in the case of the "feeding frenzy" instances of police brutality, absolutely obligated to get their kicks in.
NOT wanting to take this political, so I'll just say that no "mindset" can claim to "empower the individual" if allows a societal acceptance of police brutality (and willingness to excuse, exonerate and cover it up) to trample all over the most important individual right there is....to live.
The phenomenon of a few “black conservatives” doesn’t negate the fact that one prong of conservatism relies heavily upon an out-sized fear of black men in specific (and minority communities in general) in order to help keep some among its base galvanized. It’s long been my observation that black conservatives have shown a propensity to be “more vehement than ye all” in the promulgation of the scary black man meme. Indeed, there have always been blacks who’ve enthusiastically sung the amen chorus to the “Blacks are Stupid, Shiftless, Criminal, and Weak minded” song.
I shall not be goaded into arguing the tenets of Liberal socio-political thought, nor stating where I stand concerning such. You are, of course, free to think what you want. As it is, I think we might be veering dangerously on the edge of having this thread closed, so I propose we walk the discussion back toward the topic at hand.
Like I said, one’s a fact & the other is a hypothetical event meant to diminish the first. You could just as well downplay the cascading effects of criminality against, say, a future comet impact and the resultant extinctions. Hmm… not exactly true, since the banking industry wouldn’t necessarily be involved in that one, but…
If you accept the fact that cops, besides all being fallible humans, are sometimes bad by nature, then it would follow that the less interaction one has them, the better the chances of not ending up the wrong kind of statistic.
Good rules to live by include such things as: obey as many traffic laws as you can remember, keep your vehicle registration up to date, have clear title to your car in case you get stopped, keep your record clean because things like warrants/priors are only going to prolong the interaction you didn’t want in the first place, etc., etc., etc.
What’s a good rule to follow when shopping in a Walmart that sells BB guns?
Don’t be black and scare the white people?