Bright red time, all over his hands.
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Sounds not entirely unlike what the cop must have been thinking.
Eliminationist rhetoric, itās contagious.
My father was a police officer who died of a heart attack while restraining a violent, mentally ill man. If he had just shot him he would be alive today. But he would also be a murderer. Not once in 30 years has it ever occurred to me to wonder why he did not just shoot the man. It is unfathomable.
I also used to work in an inner city psych hospital and have seen dozens of violent patients restrained skillfully and compassionately by properly trained cops. I think most cops would consider the ability to restrain a psychotic kid just rudimentary professional competence.
That man (and I wonāt even call him a police officer because he brings shame to the profession) is nothing more than a cold blooded sociopath who deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail.
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More likely theyāll lie to protect a ābrother officerā, if it gets that far in the first place. More likely heāll get (probably paid) suspension.
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What a sad ā and unbelievable ā story.
Apparently the other two cops had an amazingly quick (and correct reaction). It might seem obvious, but if I were a cop and one of my colleagues just flash-decided to murder a boy, I think I would just spend a few minutes in disbelief. I would probably be looking for the threat ā did the boy had a hidden gun? What did I miss? And that would be enough for the maniac cop to shoot everyone.
The explanation I was imagining is that, after the kid was Tasered, the officer heard him yelping and thought he was a puppy.
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Thatās what I was thinking. Itās easy for a callous bastard to transpose his ideas of proper measures when he thinks the people he serves are all vermin.
The only reason why these guys are allowed to stay on the force is because what weād otherwise call good cops donāt do anything to get them off the force. Can you call someone a good cop when they know thereās a ticking timebomb in their ranks, yet do nothing about it? I wouldnāt say so. Iād say they were terrible cops and weak-willed people.
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False analogy.
We may not be able to prevent people from developing mental disorders, but we could stop giving them weapons and uniforms.
There#s the off chance that the office in questions had a spontaneous reaction to a drug or even weird breakdown of his mind, but frankly, the odds are against ist.
Betācha 50 ā¬ that he has a history of violence, apart from what would be justifiable in the line of work.
Sorry, thatās a cop out. He is a police officer. We canāt just say āthis and that isnāt a real $GROUP, especially not when the unwanted behavior is actually linked to the group membership and could be corrected.
Thatās true for leftist stone-throwers, cops who like to inflict violence, priests who molest children, and yes, misogynistic asshole male gamers.
Itās hard to accept that these people belong to groups one may belong to or feel strongly positive about, but itās the group that has to make sure that itās doesnāt actually foster such behavior. And denial is fostering.
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Is it?
Why couldnāt we consider other arrangements? What if, for instance, policing was handled by all able-bodied adults, on a rotating basis?
Plenty of people have guns in this country. Iām sorry. Were they protecting people from the government when I wasnāt looking?
No? The government has killed its own citizens without trial, fought tooth and nail against their right to be secure in their persons and papers, and has worked tirelessly to limit the access the electorate have to the halls of power. Itās a murderous, lying, and utterly corrupt and unaccountable institution. So, I only have one question: Where are your friends? Where are these great patriots that will shed blood to defend the liberty and safety of their fellow citizens? What are they waiting for, exactly?
Hereās an uncomfortable answer for you: It takes a whole hell of a lot more than some guns to keep government beholden to its intended master. It takes guts. This is something notoriously absent in that great mass of people who fly to the gun store with their hard earned cash every time thereās a hint of a whiff of a rumor of a notion that some president (who, by the way, canāt make laws) might be mildly sympathetic to gun control legislation. It takes a lot more than some vague sense of, āHey now, thereās a limit.ā I see a lot of people argue that thereās some kind of line, and am deafened by the crickets when I ask where it is.
So donāt just tell me that people will use their guns to safeguard so much as a cereal box in this country. Show me how thatās supposed to work.
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I donāt remember where I heard it, but I heard a story that some police recruiter in LA said āI wish I could take the pile of resumes of people applying for social worker positions and police positions and switch them.ā
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These are not isolated incidents. Thereās a pattern here. Itās not just a few bad apples.
Radley Balko who wrote Rise of the Warrior Cop talks about this dangerous trend here on a quick MSNBC segment/interview:
Here he is much more in depth:
His book:
I certainly donāt agree with much of Radley Balkoās libertarian leanings, but heās spot on when it comes to this stuff.
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Iām pretty much resigned to never calling the cops. For anything. They can take a perfectly workable situation and turn it into a horrible mistake in a minute. Itās a shame. Stuck between a rock and a hard place with criminals on one side and the police on the other.
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Itās disturbing that the other two police didnāt recognize the murder for what it was. The guy shouldāve been arrested and charged, yet the officers allowed him to walk. Updates to this story say he is now on āpaid administrative leaveā.
50 years ago, cameras caught Lee Oswald as he was being booked after heād been arrested for allegedly murdering the President of the United States. He had a small bump on his forehead where, he said, āA policeman hit me.ā Now we have knee-jerk reactions like this for the most mundane events. And the officers inevitably get a paid vacation, or at worse they get fired and have to find a job as a cop in another city.
If one of we the people had stepped up with a gun, and said āWe donāt have time for this,ā then pulled that trigger, would we not be charged with murder? Shouldnāt our police officers be held to a higher standard?
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This is disturbing. And even more disturbing is that this is just another story in a long line of cop abuses from America. But even though I understand why you Americans are starting to fall into despair, believe me - cops donāt have to be these shitty.
Here in Finland cops are, in general, actually pretty competent. The police force is in no way perfect and there are a few asshole cops here and there, but they tend to be the younger ones who are a still a bit too excited and donāt have the confidence that comes with experience. The cops donāt take out their guns except in extreme situations and are good at using just their voice to diffuse a situation. If a cop killed someone here, it would be a huge scandal.
You might be inclined to believe that Iām just being naive and donāt know the real state of things, but Iām actually speaking from experience because Iāve had to deal with cops on secveral different occasions.
One time, I was at my friendās house when the cops did a drug bust. I think there was 4 officers and a dog. We were both on ecstacy at the time. The cops came through the door and yelled āPolice!ā to announce their presence. But get this; they didnāt have any gus drawn out. They didnāt yell at us to get on the ground or anything. They simply came in and two different officers guided (firmly but gently) me and my friend into different rooms. They questioned us about the drugs and when we didnāt tell anything, they put us on the balcony while they searched the place. We werenāt handcuffed or restrained. One of the cops watched us and chatted with us about school and stuff. I never felt scared for my life or my rights. In the other instances, the cops have questioned me with certain firmness, but still kindly.
When this kind of thing happens in America, cops are always pointing their guns at people and yelling. They seem scared and incompetent. They seem to think itās better to assume that everyone might be packing and ready to kill you, which makes them extremely trigger-happy. I think that when a cop gets into a situation in a state of mind like that, itās much more likely to make things a lot worse.
My guess is that there are three key reasons for this; bad training, lack of consequences and lack of sympathy. Cops should be trained to skillfully use their talking skills and restrain people quickly without hurting them. When you canāt do that and you also know that itās okay to kill a suspect because there will be no consequences and people donāt care about the ābad peopleā, then of course cops will shoot if anything unexpected happens (or even if it doesnāt).
Lack of sympathy for ābaddiesā is something that doesnāt seem to be only a problem with the cops, but certain Americans as well. America is one of the few places where death sentence is legal (well, in some states) and actually supported by many. What also disgusts me is that some people donāt seem to care that your prisons are hell holes where people are treated inhumanely and which are full of violence and rape. Some people actually think criminals deserve it!
When a person grows up in an enviroment where itās normal to think that criminals are scum and donāt deserve to be treated like humans, and then goes through a training that teaches him to fear those people and shoot if he feals threatened, itās no wonder he becomes an inhumane, trigger-happy cop.
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My sister is a cop back in the UK. Sheās said that if sheās ever required to carry a gun sheāll quit.
Her job is mostly dealing with drunk wife beaters, and she manages to do that without needing a gun despite being like 100lbs and five foot nothing.
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So where exactly did this happen? Thatās a pretty major piece of information. I was able to determine that it appears to be in North Carolina by following the link in the story, but most readers who arenāt familiar with that region are not going to know where Brunswick County is or even which Brunswick County the story refers to. This is a pretty common oversight with BB stories and is one of the most basic tenants of journalism.
Iāll bet if you dig around youāll be able to find a few bad cops in Finland too. These stories are sensational, but theyāre not typical.
Maybe I have a skewed perspective because Iām white (I suspect Raita is as well), but cops are generally not the total assholes we see in stories on BB. The vast majority are reasonable human beings with a job to do. If youāre not an asshole yourself exchanges with them tend to be smooth and courteous.
Thatās why Iām suspicious of these stories, the reporting tends to be extremely one sided. The headline reads āAsshole cop shoots unarmed teenager on the side of the road!ā, but when the dashcam footage comes out it turns out the kid had floored his car after the cop said he smelled drugs, then turned around and came back to try to hit him with his car or something. Sometimes the cop is just a total asshole too, that certainly happens, but I never trust the first versions of these stories.
Also, the fewer facts (location, time, names) in the original story, the less likely it is to be true.
The fewer the consequences for cops who do act this way, the more of them there will be over time. Positions of power attract people who want to abuse power. There are more than 300 million people in America, that means there are probably thousands or tens of thousands who would shoot someone just because they were annoying, and many more who would do so if they thought they could get away with it. The intersection between those people and cops is a real problem, and I donāt find stories like this the least bit unbelievable.
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