I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome.
The firemen were examining Rebecca and Josh. Ben was still supporting Rebecca’s back when Sgt. Espinoza and Officer Gabriel grabbed him from behind without warning, putting him in an arm lock and jerked him backwards over the pavement.
Something seems missing from the timeline here. Even if you assume the worst about cops there’s almost always something that they can at least perceive (rightly or not) as a threat or an escalation.
The mistake was not immediately uploading the video to youtube and livelink. Screw their procedures. We have a right to post whatever we like. It’s called the 1st amendment. Citizen journalism. They have no expectation of privacy in the performance of public duties.
Okay, look, I am autistic, and I have ptsd. I’m going to be scared and triggered around cops. Now I’ve had a lot of trouble from people who decided that my voice was sarcastic, or that my avoiding eye pressure was evasive. I’ve also had a lot of trouble from people who beat me. Seriously I can’t do the stuff you expect people to do to avoid being killed by the cops. And look at the record of people, either autistic, or otherwise neuroatypical, or disabled, being killed by the cops.
… this sort of advice is writing us off as acceptable losses.
No. You never get the whole story. But do a search for ‘police’ on reason.com and you’ll find that these kind of stories are more common than they should be.
Oh, the other side of the story: The police did nothing wrong, he got what he deserved.
New one here. Help as much as possible and call 911. When police arrive, follow directives from police. Challenging police during these situations, and otherwise adding to the issue at hand, should result in detainment /discipline. Police are trained to manage these situations. Managers make mistakes, deal with it. Challenging management in work settings often results in discipline as well.
Why wouldn’t this be a no-brainer?
Perhaps this has been said before, but at least I’ll be one to further cement the point:
How screwed up is it that one has to treat the police- the ones who are supposed to be the very beacons of compassion, benevolence and protection - as some kind of unstable, crazed animals?
“Do what you want, but if a cop tells you something, don’t be a smartass. That’ll justify their violence toward you.”
“He never should have disagreed. Of course he got his ass kicked”
I mean, what the hell? They’re supposed to be professional protectors, not some sort of “violence is ok if presented with a situation slightly outside of prescribed parameters”.
The single biggest reason why I have a hard time not freaking out at a traffic stop (I’ve civilly endured a few of them in my time) is that I have no idea whether I’m being stopped by somebody who knows and understands and wishes to uphold the law, or someone who will kill me if I excersise my rights as a citizen in this country. My country. Not f’ing officer i-have-a-small-dick-amd-an-authority-complex’s country. It’s a spin of the cylinder every single time, and I can’t possibly know every officer in my locale, so I have to be thinking at a million miles an hour every time I interact with the thought “which rights must I suppress, and what can I say that minimizes the risk of this guy taking out his billy club and beating me to death/shooting me/running me over.” Because everyone here knows that cops don’t get punished when they royally fuck up in the worst possible ways. They aren’t discouraged from escalation, and if they are discouraged, they get five minutes with the chief, and are turned back out on the streets. Or they spend some time on paid leave. They get all the equipment of a cop without any dashcams.
Ulysses is close. When you call 911 and the authorities arrive they become, well, the Authority. You have ceded any control of the situation and your subsequent activities to them. Your job is to shut up and obey. Your calling them meant “I have a situation here that I cannot handle, I need you to come and take charge.” You’re not calling for assistance or for neighborly support. You’re giving them they keys. If they ask you to leave, leave. If they ask you to help, help. They don’t want your input or unsolicited opinions unless they ask for it because what they care about is control of the situation.
There’s the practical question of how to avoid danger when engaged with the police, and there’s the political question of how to resist the tyrannical authority of the police. And I think a fair number of people, who have had some experience with resisting trivial examples of authoritarianism, but have had little experience with police, underestimate the danger of the police.
The police are an organized, military force. (I would have said paramilitary, but that’s really not true anymore.) They aren’t vulnerable to individual acts of resistance. What’s required to stop the police is a coherent strategy of resistance with mass participation. And that’s just what’s missing from contemporary political thought and practice, even among radicals.
I disagree. It reads to me like someone who is carefully documenting the situation, not simply cracking off about it.
I am astonished that many of these comments seem to be bickering about the character of the person, rather than trying to figure out how to get this to the news.
My response to the guy is: call the papers. Call the TV news. You have the video, which makes it very newsworthy. Please do not let this go down quietly. I have already notified a reporter friend of mine. I encourage others to do the same.
Which is akin to saying “the drug dog found something in your car”. There’s almost always something anyone can perceive as being a threat. Oddly enough I think I’ve come across that horrible quote (from the Inquisition, I believe?) about a man being able to hang any another man with less than a paragraph of his testimony. That strikes me as the heart of the problem of this story, that the cops have already judged that this guy and his friend were problems/threats that had to be eliminated. Another cliche, and yet so true: When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In this case, the hammer carries a lot of firepower and has twenty more friends sitting at the local donut shop, all waiting to get some action.
One can hold two thoughts in one’s heads at the same time. I think he’s a smartass AND I think this should probably get to the news (assuming his account is honest). See?
I live in Norway.
Cops here can be assholes, but very rarely violent.
Still, the police is supposed to be exactly that: beacons of compassion, benevolence and protection.
Cops are supposed to be the closest thing to super heroes we have.
Seems missing, for the officers to NOT be jerks who assaulted otherwise helpful citizens
Has it occurred to you that you may be experiencing cognitive dissonance, where your opinion meets reality, so you make up what should fit in the gaping maw between the two, rather than let the facts threaten your current worldview?
It’s very human to do so, though from the outside it looks like you are attacking the victims, or giving them a higher bar for acceptance of their story then you actively give the police officers. (which the loudmouths who made you even think about such unpleasant things have coming, better to ward it off and live in blissful ignorance). I am not accusing you, I am asking, because people do that, all the time.
