tangentially related, the New York Times Magazine profiled the Manhattan District Attorney. Note that his jurisdiction does not cover Staten Island
Cyrus Vance Jr’s “Moneyball” Approach to Crime
It’s a largely favorable profile, though the comments provide an interesting contrast.
In all honestly, they’ll kill anyone they want, regardless of race:
Minorities have it a lot worse, of course, but I worry about the larger conversation of police over-reach and general asshole-ness ignored because of the (admittedly important) discussion around race.
I absolutely agree. The last time I made a comment like this without including a race specifier, it was made very clear that I should always specify race rather than say that this applies to anyone regardless of race.
Well, if he was indicted, then he would be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of manslaughter at the very least (come on, it’s on video), so the only way to ensure that the dude gets a walk is to secure a non-indictment in a closed hearing.
This is America.
I doubt it. I think white Americans are much more likely to admit that law enforcement uses excessive force than that official institutions are still permeated with racism.
How many murders have to be captured, /on video/, with no consequences before the people just refuse to take it anymore? One particular piece of semantics in this case bothers me though, maybe someone can clear it up?
I’ve been seeing the “coroner ruled homicide” tweets all day today, and it’s been kind of grating on me, so I’ll ask here, since BB people are smart and things…
It’s my understanding that a coroner’s ruling of “homicide” is strictly a dictionary definition of the term. If one person kills another person, that is by definition “homicide”. A coroner isn’t judging intent or scale, but just that one person was killed by another person. They’ll never say “cause of death: self defense” or “cause of death: manslaughter” as I understand it. Those are for juries to decide. Juries, which this cop will never be in front of.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s a bit of a cart and horse thing, I think. The John Geer case had a moderate amount of coverage in the DC area, but was pretty much ignored everywhere else. Is that because there weren’t people marching in the streets, or were there no people marching in the streets because the news outlets didn’t think it was a good lead and therefore didn’t stoke people up? It’s a serious question, and I don’t really know the answer.
It’s uncontroversial to say that the media has a defining role in the demonstrations that we’re seeing – after all, if it weren’t for the media, you wouldn’t hear about the incidents outside of the local community. But how do they choose what they run with? How do they decide what makes good content? How do they decide that Garner and Brown get so many column-inches (or the electronic equivalent), whereas Geer gets a different amount?
I guess what I’m saying is that the media does play a big part in what gets discussed, so I wouldn’t be too sure of any issue receiving its fair mind-share.
IANAL, but I think you have the right of it:
For a coroner to declare “homicide” as the cause of death does not mean a crime was committed.
Start mobilising already jesus fuck
I would make a guess that the coroner with his experience made the call that it wouldnt’ve been accidental. That the victim’s death was intentional due to the excessive force that had to be used to stop him from breathing. Hence him calling it a “Homicide”. But yes, at the end of the day it’s just an opinion but an opinion that is backed by evidence and very specific guidelines in that city’s police department that disallow chokeholds.
One black person I’ve spoken to about Ferguson, had an interesting take on it I hadn’t considered: The police have always used excessive force, on whites as well as blacks, but black voices have mostly gone unheard. Which puts white people like David Brame and Milton Olin in a different category- but I don’t think we should have to solve racism before we solve accountability issues.
As I understand it, the autopsy results specifically showed that the cause of death was the chokehold. With that information, the coroner declared it a homicide. You’re right, in that context, ‘homicide’ only means “a man was killed by another man”.
Yeah, turns out it doesn’t work like that. White people get it too.
Christopher Dorner name still ring out.
I would not doubt that black voices go mostly unheard…
There is also a difference in degree (e.g. incarceration rates by demographic). Law enforcement gains power by playing on the public’s fear of crime. Like it or not, that includes race-motivated/class-motivated fears. I figure that reforming the institution would almost necessarily involve fixing both the discrimination and the excessive use of force, so I see no reason to treat these as separate issues.
Oh, by all means, let’s take the dead black man out of the discussion.
We wouldn’t want to complicate things, would we?
We can’t solve them separately.
Especially after seeing something like this that is so well-documented go unpunished, I think we need to re-think body cams as a means to culpability for the police and re-frame this discussion as an issue of wanting to be less surveilled in general, not more.
Concern about a dead man =/= no concern about a dead black man.
