No doubt the numbers would surprise even a cynical bastid like me.
In that case, they are being racist and/or malicious & have no business being in a position of authority.
In that case, they are incompetent & need to find something within their limited capabilities.
It ain’t just the cops when the whole damn barrel is rotten.
The State law seems a bit low.
I hope they sue the Police Union as well.
Hate to see the taxpayers on the hook for the whole thing.
Even better (and more economical) would be if they stopped doing this kind of shit.
strangely, they don’t seem to mistake young black men for white guys when it comes to not violating their constitutional rights…
If it were some sort of truly impartial incompetence, you’d expect to see it go the other way with equal frequency.
Since it doesn’t, one has to have at least a wee bit of suspicion that maybe blatant fucking racism has a hand in these sorts of things.
I actually somehow doubt this was intentional. Not because I don’t think there are cops who would intentionally torture an innocent black man for the fun of it, but because this seems like an unusually roundabouts way to do it that even a kindergartner would be likely to see was almost certain to blow back on them. Unfortunately, from my observations, the truly evil/sadistic racist cops usually aren’t also that dumb.
I think this is much more likely to be a case of bias meets incompetence. It was so “obvious” to them that a crime would be committed by a black man that they never even noticed that the description said he was a middle aged white dude.
Either way, I hope their careers as public servants come to a swift conclusion (though I’m not going to hold my breath).
It’s less a matter of dumb then arrogant, entitled and knowing that they’re protected & not likely to get discipline because it gets shifted to the union. Where it dies in the dark.
Bad officer! You’re being given a paid leave of absence to think about what you’ve done.
So we’re ignoring not only the article but the last 400 years of history?
Intentional is correct.
Will you take the $550,000 - or come back next week and play for a burial at sea with the girl of your choice?
It’s hard to even imagine doing something at my job that would cause the kind of negative repercussions this would on another person’s life and not having serious fucking consequences to pay.
Do the thought exercise: you’re driving home from work and get locked up for 6 days with no warning and 1 phone call. What if you had kid duties? Who does pick-up? Is that your one call and can anyone even accommodate?
What if you live alone and have a dog or other pet?
What if you were supposed to work the next day and the absence leads to losing your job?
That’s not even getting into the mundane shit of missed appointments or dates or food going bad.
Just because several cops couldn’t be bothered to read the paperwork. Several of them.
Part of me wonders if most never had any empathy from the beginning, or if it was trained out of them. Some get tased during training, but your proposed exercise would probably be rejected as too difficult. The most rotten apples consider those repercussions to be part of the punishment, even though those people arrested or detained haven’t had a trial or hearing.
Here’s a proposal:
Federal law that states if law enforcement at any level kills, injures, or incarcerates anyone through incompetence or malfeasance, that law enforcement groups union must provide benefits to the harmed person as if they were a member. Disabled when a cop beats you? Collect disability insurance as if you were a cop. Incarcerated for a week? Get paid time/overtime/double time as if you were a cop. Killed by a cop? Your family gets death benefits as if you were a cop who was killed on duty.
It’s not a solution, but it’s a start.
So we think they didn’t notice he was black?
No, they intentionally grabbed the first black man they saw and accused him of something he didn’t do. No matter what was going on in their heads, that’s not an accident.
If federal law is going to address cop unions at all, it should address cop unions by banning them
And now you know why so many people plea ‘guilty’ just to get out of jail as quickly as possible. Most people don’t have the freedom to stick around and fight for their innocence. There are children to feed and a job to do.
When “I don’t see color” is taken wayyyy too far.
Agreed, but that’s unlikely to survive court challenge even with a more left leaning court.
I have a hard time thinking (theoretically) about blanket-banning any unions, per se, but I think there should definitely be mechanisms to ban certain types of union activities. Like, some things should just not be considered “protected,” regardless of if there’s union representation or not. And if records are sought (like with cops, disciplinary records) there should be no allowances not to provide them…
But I freely admit I have no idea if that would even be possible, or what it would look like. And I also admit that our law enforcement here is so fucked up that any kind of control or means to rein them in would be very welcome.
Exactly. I don’t see the local teacher’s union trying to prevent a teacher from being prosecuted for murder.
