Well he's black, so it's perfectly justified to destroy the victim.
I'm just making sure the facts are clear. And those are the facts.
Color is an issue because in this country there is an extra assumption of guilt tied to being black.This is a colorless issue. They did the same to Justine Damond after a MPLS cop blasted her. Really makes you realize how stacked the system is against avg people who have their rights trampled by the state. The state shoots you, then gets to search through your stuff to smear you.
Color is an issue because in this country there is an extra assumption of guilt tied to being black.
Yes I know it was his apartment, yes he was unarmed, yes she had a gun, yes there was no police business but he must have done something.
Your concern was about pro-cop or anti-cop feelings, as you said. My point (perhaps not made clear enough) was that the pro-cop feelings are what has been driving this bus from the very get-go. Because if she didn't happen to be a cop (albeit off duty and with no business being there), then none of this would even be a topic for discussion. She'd be going to prison, and for a very long time at that. That's what would certainly happen if any one of us mere normal folk killed someone like that in their own home.Except this:
is really a rhetorical question based on an assumption about an opinion I might hold, which opinion I have not expressed in this thread.
Not sure why everyone seems to blame the unions for these perks. Unions represent their members, not the general public. They always ask for the moon. It's the city and county governments who gave it to them. They represent the general public interest. I think the ire here is misplaced.
Check out this one. A Portland police officer shot an unarmed man in the back, after the commanding officer on the scene told him to stand down. The bureau fired him, he appealed through the union, and some 5 years later, a state court ordered him reinstated with full back pay and benefits. The officer's excuse for not hearing the order to stand down? He intentionally turned off his radio.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oregon-police-idUSKBN0UE1DF20151231
Yup, sounds about right...
Is there any other union in the country that you could get away with killing someone by "accident" because you intentionally made the situation unsafe like that?
Yes, we have a serious problem with our police. The unions are part of the problem, but the unions are made up of the officers. If the individual officers did not support this sort of immorality then the union would not get away with it. We need to demand higher standards of our police. This will not change until we stop given them excuses and start demanding transparency so that we know when someone has abused the trust we put in them and harsh consequences when they do.
Yes, this will mean that the jobs of police officers will become harder. They have brought that on themselves by abusing the public trust. They have badly failed at policing themselves, and have lost the public trust.
In a highly public rejection of federally mandated reforms, more than 100 Seattle police officers filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal judge to block what they called “mechanical” and unrealistic use-of-force policies imposed on them under a court-ordered consent decree.
The 43-page suit alleges policies stemming from an agreement between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stoked a “bold, new disregard for police authority in the streets of Seattle,” putting officers and the public in unreasonable danger.
The civil-rights suit, filed in U.S. District Court, contends the changes have effectively created “hesitation and paralysis” among officers, stripping them of their constitutional and legal right to make reasonable, split-second judgments in the line of duty.
As a result, officers are afraid to do their job for fear of being second-guessed over burdensome, complicated and voluminous policies, the suit says. read the entire article, it's great.
How exactly are we supposed to do that when the unions have already written in rules in their contracts
Why don't you STFU, you autistic asshole? The very idea of you directing how others should post pretty much defines irony, you serially thread-derailing train wreck.Why not just be honest and direct and say that you think he is doing X? Do you want to know what he thinks, or do you want to show others something?
Why don't you STFU, you autistic asshole? The very idea of you directing how others should post pretty much defines irony, you serially thread-derailing train wreck.
We get so many in this forum who claim "just behave and you have nothing to worry about". Ok guys where so we go from here?The young man tragically cut down in his prime:
Her Son Was Careful to Avoid Police Officers. Then He Was Killed by One.
"He drove the speed limit. He kept his car in good repair. Instead of shorts or T-shirts, he wore Ralph Lauren dress shirts.
For years before he was fatally shot by a Dallas police officer who says she mistook him for a burglar in his own home, Botham Shem Jean had gone out of his way to avoid even routine encounters with the police, his mother, Allison Jean, said during a visit to New York City on Thursday with her lawyer, Lee Merritt.
Ms. Jean said her son had to explain life in America — where for black men in particular, a minor traffic stop can turn deadly — to his family back home on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
“I always told him, ‘Why do you have to be so dressy?’” Ms. Jean recalled in an interview. “He said ‘Mom, I don’t want to be stopped. I don’t want for them to think I’m somebody I’m not.’”
^^^ The burden of being a young black man in America is not something the "right and white" seem to be able to even begin to comprehend . . . even if they wanted to . . . which they demonstrably do not.
We get so many in this forum who claim "just behave and you have nothing to worry about". Ok guys where so we go from here?
Do we need to arm ourselves to be safe from police? If Jean had been armed, shot and killed her first what would be said about him? He would NOT get the benefit of self defense.
I hate that behave and nothing will happen argument. Bullshit. This guy was in his house and was shot. That kid in Phoenix unarmed in the hallway following orders on the floor gets executed by a cop using his personal AR-15 that had written "You're fucked" on the inside of the ejector port cover. We are all targets because the cops are convinced they are going out on patrol in a war zone. And we are the enemy.
This is a colorless issue. They did the same to Justine Damond after a MPLS cop blasted her. Really makes you realize how stacked the system is against avg people who have their rights trampled by the state. The state shoots you, then gets to search through your stuff to smear you.
I hate to rain on another parade here, but they have to search his house. If there is a case to made for murder here, as opposed to manslaughter, they're going to need to find a motive. A prior connection or interaction between the two is how you do that. His house is a murder scene. Not searching those premises thoroughly would be grossly incompetent.
Of course they need to search his house. The questions is why did the search warrant specifically say they were searching for narcotics? Also, why did they not search hers? (which to be fair they might have, but we don't know because they did not release any of that information in stark contrast to how they have treated him.)
Mistake MY ASS. They fucking knew she was off duty. You are correct, it gave them time to develop a cover story, sanitize her apartment and use the presence of drugs to place a level of blame on the victim. Police know because he is black it would be more likely believed he had a level of blame.Does the warrant specify only narcotics? I'm guessing it's a broad warrant. They don't know what there could be in there which would shed light on why this happened. I doubt the point of the warrant is to somehow defame the victim here. The officer's story was that this was an accident, not that the victim did something to deserve it. She hasn't claimed she shot him because he's a drug dealer or drug user. Accordingly, the searches they are conducting are to determine if her claim of error is true or not, and they're looking for anything to either verify or refute that claim.
If they did not search her apartment and phone, that would be grossly negligent. But I suspect they have.
The biggest problem so far with how this was handled was not arresting her immediately. Because she had time to clean her apartment of anything incriminating. Dallas PD admitted they made a mistake in treating this as if the killing had occurred while the officer was on duty. I don't believe it was a "mistake" because it was clear this was an off duty incident from the get go. I think initially they were trying to protect one of their own. Then the story went national very quickly and they realized they had to arrest her. At which point the state police took over.
Hopefully this case, whatever the outcome, calls attention to this issue. Not arresting someone straight away when there is probable cause to do so can compromise an investigation. The fact they gave her this leeway when she hadn't even been on the job underscores why it shouldn't apply even when they are on the job.