Listen to a Georgia cop reassure a white motorist that “we only kill black people.”

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/08/31/listen-to-a-georgia-cop-reassu.html

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Bingo. Good news, though, they’re on pace to murder fewer of us this year:
http://killedbypolice.net/

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Devil’s candor?

A cynic might be tempted to remark that he’s not wrong, but U.S. police kill white people — they just kill black people in disproportionate numbers, because they are racist as well as violent.

Well sure, but maybe this cop only kills black people. You don’t know him. He might be a very fastidious murderer. /s

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This is beyond fucked up.

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I am not surprised. Georgia police have a reputation for being aggressive in their policing. I have noticed driving through Georgia that nobody really speeds, and have been told that if I am pulled over to just say, “yes sir, no sir, thank you sir”–advice from a white person I knew who grew up there.

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I hate to say this, but I’ve said wildly inappropriate things in the past solely to calm folks down. I worked in mental health, and if folks knew all the shit I said to people to talk them down from their mental ledge (luckily no physical ones) or to get them to open up.

I’m on the fence if this is one of these situations…trying to get someone to comply that is fearful of said compliance, and what is going to get them to drop their guard?

It isn’t right and completely inappropriate, but I wonder if this is what he thought he was doing knowing that it wasn’t all along.

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Kinda made me sick to my stomach.

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I hear you, brother. Been there done that! Sometimes when you desperately need to break a person out of a mental infinite loop you end up saying things that are pretty objectively objectionable. But if it works… <helpless shrug>

Edit: Not responding to video, but to @clifyt’s post above.

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I guess the cop hasn’t heard that they shoot white Australians.

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I actually feel based solely on the tone of his voice that he was trying to make a joke/be snarky to get her to comply. It doesn’t make it ok. It’s still abhorrent. I just do not believe he was stating this with serious intent.

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With the normalizing racial violence.

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For the sake of argument, remove the black/white from the scenario. He’s basically asking her to trust him by revealing himself to be wholly untrustworthy.

Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out the extra layer of fucked-upness.

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Oh, its effed up on many levels…I just do not think this was an admission of guilt, more just being a thundering dumbass when it comes to levity.

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Assume best case scenario for a minute: this was just him trying to de-escalate and calm the driver down. Even then, “we only kill black people” was his crown jewel of de-escalation tricks. Remember, this guy is a 27 year veteran of the force. And this was his go-to strategy. No other decent way to do this? Yeah right.

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They shoot white Australians in Minnesota. This was Georgia where they aren’t as progressive.

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I agree, although I can’t help but think the cop was simultaneously venting over how cops, in general, are widely seen in a horrible light. But even if he had been nursing that concern, a person in authority, armed, and – by necessity – having to interact with the public, would benefit by learning certain social skills; the comment he made could also backfire… and I don’t mean just on social media.

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I figured he was just leading up to asking them if they wanted to go kill Black people with him. Hence the emphasis on ‘we’.

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Could have been the royal ‘we’. Cops can be so imperious.

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And has been for a very long time.

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