A racist cop bullies two black men for "acting suspicious," and he actually gets fired

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/19/a-racist-cop-bullies-two-black.html

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If this were the outcome in 100% of these bullshit incidents, we could get the racist, authoritarian, asshole cops weeded out pretty quickly.

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Todays dickhead po po officer award winner.

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and if that were, indeed, the quick outcome in 100% of the bullshit cases it might also encourage those cops who aren’t assertively racist to keep that shit to themselves. not quite as good an outcome as no longer having racist cops at all but substantially better than the world we currently live in. when the world is running down, i make the best of what’s still around.

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Lots of stuff is weird about US law enforcement to outsiders - but one of these things is that police officers can work, in uniform, on their days off for private companies. This would be a firing offence in and of itself in the UK, and most of the rest of the world…

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If he was a Constable- he wasn’t a police officer serving on the force. More of a court bailiff.

Way off his path even if he were acting appropriately for a cop.

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I hope the LT police department doesn’t (as happened on different case not long ago) secretly hire him back… then allow him to secretly retire so that he can collect his pension.

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The weirdest thing to me, is how just about every other profession has some kind of uniform set of regulations and procedures in place, ostensibly to protect the public. Airline pilots, councelors,hot dog vendors, everybody with a public face, has some kind of accountability at the state and/or federal level, has a fixed list of things they could do a d be removed fron their position.

In contrast, Police have secret negotiations between their unions and the city, and it’s purely at the personal discretion of the people involved, what constitutes a firing offense.

If this country had a functional democracy, this state of affairs would not be allowed to stand.

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Jones was off duty and working security for the Nordstrom Rack store.

Came to observe the same. So when I get approached by a cop next time I visit the USA and go shopping, is it good form to ask “are you on the public’s clock or some private employer’s clock, just in case my response might differ, officer?”

They also request multiple times that he call his supervisor.

The floor manager at Nordstrom Rack?

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Nice turtleneck, Charlie Brown!

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and then what are we supposed to do with them ?

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Two hours after the chief constable watched it, Jones was fired.

Jones had been in the role for about 20 years

Better late than never? You know he’s been pulling this shit for 20 years; it’s just taken that long for one of his victims to be prepared with a camera already recording and be unwilling to let it drop afterwards. (Also, it could easily have gone a different direction if the cop who showed up had been like him.)

The screwy thing is, it doesn’t matter, to a large degree. He’s still a cop, with all that authority, regardless of who he’s working for at that moment. This causes all sorts of conflicts and muddies the water, which is exactly stores and events hire off-duty cops - the LEOs are effectively enforcing the rules of a private business with the weight of the law. Also this allows businesses/events to get away with things they’d otherwise not be able to, as other cops know LEOs are working there and don’t want to cause them problems.

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at about 1:47 “I have the right to do anything I want, I’m a police officer”

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His mistake was probably saying it out loud where he could be recorded rather than going through the day and just thinking it, like so many others…

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Next time: Officer am I free to leave?

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Can we step back and acknowledge how the second officer handled this?

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Well those are two seriously brave dudes, I suppose they were assuming that the cop would know he was being taped and be smart enough not to shoot them on the spot for being black while driving/shopping/breathing. I would not have been as brave. Or perhaps stupid, sometimes its hard to tell the difference.

The other thing, judging by the alacrity with which the other cop ended things, and the speed of the subsequent firing, one suspects that the rest of the cops were not exactly unaware of this bozo’s fitness for the job.

But I bet he can find another department somewhere out in the sticks thats a little more congenial for his form of petty tyranny. Or maybe Chicago.

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In the profiled men’s favor, that guy might’ve had a coronary before he made it back to his car.

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[internet points for non-creepy The Police reference.]

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But…what if that’s ALL of them.

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