Because they can. Punishment, no matter how questionable the circumstance, is incredibly rare for this particular flavor of murderer.
Because they don’t value all human life equally?
Is this a trick question?
And especially so for this particular flavor of victim.
When the fuck is the government going to take this seriously? How the fuck is it that we’re in the 21st godforsaken century and black kids are still growing up learning you can’t trust the cops cause they’ll assault you then shoot you when you run away? If you can’t trust law enforcement then what the hell chance do you have to feel safe ever?
this is sickening! these are just regular kids, kids with dreams and ambitions like anyone else. he was just going to start college for gods sake!
man… fuck the police
This is the government. The question is: When is the government going to take us seriously?
When it’s pretty, rich, white girls? It is sickening and it’s the sad truth… our society is still deeply racist. How we change the structures that have been built up over decades… rather centuries… that cater to that, I don’t know. And it makes me sick. Everytime something like this happens, I feel like I fail to do anything about it, because I do. Maybe Malcolm X was right in the first place, way back in the 60s, in the violence/non-violent debate. The only effective self-defense is a violent one. And, where does that leave us? I don’t know.
Pardon me, while I go cry over the book I’m supposed to be scanning for Cold War/Music articles…
Because they’re pigs, Rob. Because they’re pigs. This won’t stop until every cop has a camera and every cop that DOES go brutal is marched out in chains in front of his precinct and is capped in the head with their own service weapon.
You had me to that last bit, but then again, I invoked Malcolm X…
Law enforcement suffers from the the same problems plaguing the rest of America, but they are magnified through the unchecked use of force. Tribalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, corruption, etc. are much, much worse when they’re backed by power.
I fear you’re right. “the government” is busy assaulting brown people in foreign lands and shooting them when then run away or, heaven forbid, fight back. And our dear fascist leaders undermine every peace organisation at the international level too, so what hope for justice?
Because anyone who is not a cop is only possibly human?
On Monday, as the streets were being cleaned up in Ferguson, the F.B.I. said that it would investigate, and the Justice Department said that it was following the case.
All we can do is hope that maybe this time there will be justice… and that the cops and FBI don’t fabricate evidence with their usual alacrity.
ugh I couldn’t even avoid being cynical for a whole sentence.
I don’t think it’s just that, though it plays a role. Cops aren’t evil, they are indoctrinated to be thinking that they are “protecting society” from the undesirable element… It’s about defending the “mainstream, normal” people from those who deviate. It’s about the use of the force of state power to weed out the deviants and put them in their place, in the margins, in their graves, in a prison or asylum. When you buy the line that you are the thin blue line, the only thing that is saving society from the malcontents, then you tend to see the use of violence as necessary. Of course, all the things that @WalterPlinge mentions plays a role in how cops see people. If they are tribalistic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, then these violent actions are necessary to keep people in their proper place.
That’s the thing, we do ourselves a disservice in seeing the truth when we dehumanize the cops. These are horrible deeds, but there is an extra added layer of tragedy in the utter banality of the men who do these things. They aren’t monsters, they are human beings acting in what they think is the right manner, and that just makes it all the worse.
I agree that racism disproportionately targets black people–heck, when I worked retail, I even had to admonish our security people for failing to answer when I called for help, because they were too busy following the local high school’s choral director who happens to be black–it’s not just big cities, and it seems to cut across all barriers anymore.
Locally, we have Justice for Molly signs all over the place. Young white woman, dating a dispatcher, gets a call from him with him sounding suicidal. She went to his apartment. Hours later, 911 was called with some bullshit story about how she’d ODed and was bleeding from her nose. What really happened is that she’d been shot in the head with a Colt 1911 .45, and her hands had no powder burns. Some of the first people on the scene were the dispatcher’s parents, both in law enforcement…and a lawyer. Even more hours later, Molly’s parents were informed that their daughter was dead.
What’s happened with the case? Not much, really, and it’s not the only controversial death/coverup that the local PD is embroiled in.
Kids, if you’re going to SIU-C, I suggest living on campus (where you can deal with the student police) or live outside Carbondale, at least until they clean up their act. Thankfully, I live outside of city limits…for now. If city limits expand to contain my house, I’ll likely move. EDIT: Not that it helps all that much. One of our friends was a deputy, and part of his nickname when he was on the force was “By The Book”. It was not a compliment.
I’m sure, nationally speaking, they leave rich people alone because they know they’ll sue, and probably win.
There’s a current Twitter trend by African-American teens/young adults, putting up two photos of themselves and asking (rhetorically) which photo would be likely publicized in the event that they were shot by cops or Zimmerman-types.
One reason the police keep getting away with this is because the victims are always shown as likely miscreants rather than the students (etc.) that they are.
Everyone has a photo of themselves that they hope is never seen by a potential employer. And that’s the one that is inevitably used in these situations, to obliterate the victim’s credibility.
I’m not trying to make light of women who are the victims of violence. As a white woman myself, this obviously concerns me, as a demographic.
But my demographic isn’t being shot by the police at an alarming rate. This has become an epidemic. I want justice for the Mollys of the world, but it’s not an either/or. And we’re not talking about violence against women in this thread, it’s about the cops shooting yet another unarmed black kid. Let’s not derail it by weighing and measuring wrongs. Let’s focus on this issue here and that issue in another thread, why not?
It’s the old problem of “Who watches the watchmen?” There needs to be independent oversight. Therefore, recording everything with cameras is a good solution. Draconian punishment - probably not so much.
