@spaceinsomniac:
"Police have been known to lie about this sort of thing" is about as far from useful as I could imagine. This guy isn't the entire American police force. He's one office. He should be treated as such. You yourself say that it's prejudice to treat blacks based on the bad apples just as much as to do the same with police and you're right.
And to be fair, if someone reached for my gun, and then sprinted away, I'd potentially feel the need to put an end to that person's life. I have no idea where he's running to. For all I know his car could be across the street or he could be running to cover to pull a gun out of his waistband or any number of things. If the kid really did reach for the gun, he made a massive mistake and it likely led to his death. Reaching for a gun is intent to kill as far as I'm concerned, and you can't do that lightly.
Also remember that you can't possibly put yourself in the shoes of those involved unless you've been in a similar situation. When your fight or flight switches to fight, you fucking fight. It's a biological imperative to stay alive. That instinct is not considering anyone other than the entity it is working on. It doesn't give two shits if the kid lives or dies it just cares that it doesn't die. It's something I don't think people really understand about situations like this. They aren't often premeditated murders like some people tend to pain them as. It's just a manifestation of adrenaline and fight or flight.
@rongalaxy: When those crowds contain trouble makers who want to stir up trouble, that's totally reasonable. Those measures that you mentioned exist to deal with exactly this situation. They are designed to disperse the crowd so that there isn't a mass of people when some asshole throws a molotov (one of the reprehensible things happening in the area because of the situation). It's non-lethal force and it's actually probably best that the police force use things like rubber bullets to disperse those crowds before they get innocent people REALLY hurt.
And, the police have been allowing peaceful protest. But there has to be a limit and there has to be an understanding of the complete picture. You left out the looting and vandalism and violence coming from a minority of the people protesting.
I'm sorry, but I think you're just plain wrong. There's more to the situation and while it's probably true the police could back down a bit, I'd rather have them be a bit heavy handed than see them have to wait until the situation gets irreparably out of hand. As far as I know, no major injuries have been caused by police other than to Brown. It's certainly possible that something has developed since last I checked but that was the reporting at the time of my last check up.
I've been on and off Twitter following this since I got off of work. It's actually pretty sad, but predictable, that Twitter has served as a better news source for what's going on in Ferguson than any of the so-called major news networks. It's just a horrid mess of a situation that keeps threatening to get worse, the media isn't reporting it properly, and no one with any authority above the Ferguson police department is willing to step in to bring order. (And by "order" I mean "stop an over-equipped police force from holding a municipality hostage".)
FBI has been involved for a while, actually. In fact there was a dumbass tweet about some journalist trying to get clicks off of the situation (gross) who said he interviewed the "primary witness" (Brown's friend who was with him at the time of the shooting) before the police department did. Which was technically true, I think probably because they were giving the kid to the FBI to handle. So there are higher powers getting involved, have no doubt about that.
The police in the US have a nasty reputation. So bad is their public image and so little is the trust that NYPD is now considering equipping the officers with Go Pro type camera to track their behaviour. This is not the only isolated incidence when cops allowed their authority go to the their heads and as a result an innocent person gets murdered. There are stories from New Mexico where a transient was basically gunned down for not directly obeying orders, and a black man being head locked by a cop to death by asphyxiation in NY. They are armed to the teeth, overflowing with so many diverse and high tech weapons that small town PDs now command SWAT APCs and high calibre machine guns in their arsenal. They are even coming up to Canada to train RCMP how to snipe by renting an entire 50,000 seat stadium for a week. Let's be honest, it is just as easily assumed that if there is a smoke, then there is fire, that if restive black communities have so and so reputation then the thin blue line could be more a blue barbed wire just as well not to serve the public, but their own organizational and fraternal interests. If the witness is correct, Brown was gunned down in cold murder, and if anyone thinks this is bad, wait until the course of so called justice metes out the burden of proof on the victim and the perp gets off scott free. The dead tells no tales, and that is an inconvenient truth well-grained in the gun-crazy America.
I'm going to leave most of what you say alone, but I do agree with one thing you brought up. I do believe all officers should be required to have a personal recording device on their person and running when on duty. It wouldn't be difficult, and would allow for far more answers. Had their been a police recording of the events that happened there would be a lot less confusion about what really happened. It'd benefit the right people every time.
But then everyone would bitch about being watched by the police. Because Americans never want what is good for America, just what seems best in that short sweet moment they are in at that particular point in time. Insert eye roll.
Also majority of America is for gun control, etc, so enough with how America is gun crazy. Almost every statement you made was a generalization about a demographic based on a few bad apples and as has been pointed out, that's pretty much the same damn thing as racism. The only thing is it's cool to hate cops and support minorities, so it's not seen as the same.
As the warrior poet Ice Cube once said, "fuck the police."
Well in that case why don't you move somewhere without people who work a job that offers little real world job experience, relatively lacking pay for any but the most ambitious, and next to no appreciation from those they serve? Seriously, a couple of bad apples and people think that cops are a bunch of shitheads who should all be thrown in the ocean, and that everyone would be better off for it. Go to somewhere like Russia or any of the former Soviet countries. You'll be begging for even a shitty American officer within a week after you have to bribe every SOB that pulls you over for not actually speeding or kicks your head in for saying the wrong thing about the wrong people.
Most cops are at the very least decent people. Many of them serve selflessly and at great cost to themselves and their loved ones, and give greatly to their communities on a variety of levels.
EDIT: this is my millionth time trying to post this so I'm probably lagging behind by like day or two.
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