All of these cases are heartrending, but for some reason I find John Crawford’s death particularly affecting, maybe because I find it so easy to imagine doing exactly what he was doing. He was shopping at Walmart. He picked up a gun from the store shelves and was holding it, not in a threatening way, just in the way that you or I might hold an item when we were shopping. He was on the phone, I can imagine being on the phone, at a store, when I’m contemplating purchases. “Hey, I’m just checking, that toy gun we’re buying for nephew, are we supposed to get BBs too? And should I pick up something for dinner?”
He walked around carrying this gun he was planning to buy, again, something I’d do if I was shopping. He was still on the phone. The cops walked in and started shouting. If I were on the phone, and I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I wouldn’t even realize the cop was shouting at me. Within seconds after the cops walked in, they shot him dead, before he even knew what was going on.
To make sure we all would see they are horrible people, the police then interrogated Crawford’s girlfriend, who was pregnant, without telling her that they had just executed the father of her unborn child.
Of course, the police were not indicted, because Shopping While Black is a apparently an offense worthy of the death penalty.
You could be right, LasMa, perhaps Slager was angry. I don’t know, I hope the jury finds out the truth. But if he was angry, I doubt he was angry at him because he had a malfunctioning tail light. It would think it most likely that he was angry that he was running away.
partyof5, there are cases of unjustified shootings all over the place (including men, women, children of all colors and ages). I don’t disagree with that, and that it’s not a problem, particularly for black men. I was merely disagreeing with LasMa’s point of why they were shot.
As far as winning, I don’t know if the goal is to win. The goal is to survive, and you certainly increase your odds of surviving by not doing anything stupid when stopped by the police. You also increase your odds by not committing crimes (I believe that the majority of people shot by police are shot while committing a crime). But I really wish that someone would come up with an effective non lethal weapon (as tasers apparently aren’t reliably stopping people), guns should not be the weapon that cops automatically reach for. There should be dashcams/body cams on all officers. Shootings should be investigated independently, and guilty police prosecuted. There can be things done to correct the dysfunctional police departments, but they obviously have a long ways to go, and the departments have to have the desire to change.
@busdriver11 - I agree that Slager wasn’t angry about the tail light. Like I said, there were no problems until Scott ran, then apparently tussled with the officer, then ran again. Slager, probably angry by then, had a decision to make. Would he take off running after Scott? Would he call for backup? Would he let it go? A professional LEO, trained to handle his emotions in a high-stress situation, should have done one of those things. But Slager chose to do the easy thing – and, importantly I think – the emotionally satisfying thing. Also importantly, he must have believed that there would be few if any consequences.
I hope we can agree that it’s obvious the police have been operating as free agents, with little meaningful oversight, and changes have to be made. Body cams are not a panacea, but in some situations they may make officers think twice before shooting without cause. Protocols need to be followed (in Ferguson, Officer Wilson was allowed to bag his own evidence and wash blood off himself; in North Carolina, Officer Slager didn’t give a statement for several days.) Decisions about investigating and prosecuting cops need to be taken out of the hands of prosecutors who depend on the police every day. There should be civilian oversight. And we civilians need to keep our phone cameras at the ready, and we need to resist laws which would restrict our right to take video of the police in action.
I’m seriously considering installing a dash cam on my car, not just for possible accidents but also for Police stops. If the heavily publicized incidents have shown me anything, it’s that Cops can screw you over just as easily as they can help you.
I bought a wedge dashcaM from Amazon for about $85 and had Best Buy install it for about $55. It is hidden in front of the rearview mirror. It was a very easy process and the camera may provide the evidence I need against a bad cop. If we all did this, we would take back the narrative from the cops and provide the visual evidence.
Lastly, we need to start recognizing that grand juries are not for justice. A grand jury is not needed to indict a police officer. They should never be secret when it involves public officials. As citizens we need transparency to make sure that the process is fair. I believe it is currently far from fair.
“As an aside, I certainly hope that Sllager is charged with manslaughter as well as murder. Charging him with murder alone makes it virtually certain that he will get off entirely.”
Consolation, the way it works in many jurisdictions is that lesser degree offenses are automatically included with the higher one:
Slager shot eight bullets into the back of an unarmed undangerous fleeing person. How is that not murder? He shot to kill, and then Watson died. How is that not second degree murder?
I have the camera positioned to record the road and audio for, I believe, up to 7 hours. There are dual cameras available to record forward and backward but the quality weren’t as good. I am mulling installing a second hidden camera to record the cabin.
Regarding the Oklahoma case, the shooting was clearly accidental, as you can tell from the video. Yes, he should be charged, even if accidental. However, I think the dept that has this policy of anyone being a reserve cop, is even more liable, also the guy that said , F___ your breath, should be fired, if not charged. It seems that he didnt get the victim help, and he had his head pressed into the ground.
I know some cars around campus have cameras in them, but it’s pretty rare. A dash cam wouldn’t hurt, if anything I’d need it to record the drivers around me and not the police!
BTW, the officer who led the chase (because the young black man made eye contact with him and then ran, which apparently is a death penalty offense in Baltimore) is a real piece of work. Seems to have a bit of a problem with anger management:
All the officers deny using force and his spine broke itself. Right.
I’ve watched the cellphone video of the Baltimore case. It looks to me like the guy already has the spinal injury at the point he is dragged into the van. If you take a first aid class, you learn over and over that people with even a chance of spinal injuries should not be moved,because moving makes the injury worse. The first thing the first wider is supposed to tell the injured person, after “Hi, I know first aid. Can I help you?” is “Don’t move,” while the person is checked for potential spinal trauma.