Redundancy intended?
*lolz
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Cops get caught beating/killing black and brown people all the time. They usually get to keep their jobs.
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Addendum:
He got caught doing something directly embarrassing to his otherwise “cool” coworkers. They’re so cool. They’d back him up if he shot a fleeing black man, but this is completely indisputable as shit-bag assholery with no other excuse than this guy is gloating at the death of someone, instead of “fearing for his life” from a fleeing person of color. Sorry, belongs in the other thread.
In anycase, it’s bad PR for the department, and in fact it’s incontrovertible since he claimed he did it. So he has to go. He can’t claim he “feared for his life” as if that’s a good excuse for a cop to first put themselves into a dangerous situation (they’re so un-tactical. They often put themselves into dangerous situations, seemingly on purpose, then seemingly on purpose escalate the situation. As if they want to create an excuse for killing someone.)
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Hmm. We may be on to an income generation scheme here.
And with credible financial projections too.
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If we could keep that dollar swirling around fast enough BoingBoing might end up with a GDP to rival a small American state!
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a vile and disgusting ASSAULT on a citizen and due process itself. The arrestee had submitted to it and was in custody during the period of due process. The officer held himself above due process, and used that access to a person in his care to further an assault.
Without due process, arrests are just kidnappings.
This is why their pensions have to be on the line.
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That list, as with many others, might backfire on us. I think there ought to be a felony prison sentence, and the logical results of that outcome on a future in law enforcement.
We need charges before we can keep any lists of who was charged. The charges are the deterrent, not the list. The list would be irrelevant IF WE FILED CHARGES AND GOT CONVICTIONS. That’s easy for even small-town departments to learn of.
I’d rather fix the system then add a thin smear of bureaucracy to the top of a broken one.
That said, I bet we’re on the same side here @brenbart.
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Taboos still exist. He found one and violated it. Of course, I thought that shooting dogs was another, so I may not be the best judge.
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Violaing the rights of prisoners is not ‘taboo’. They’re ‘crimes’.
Would you really cheapen the very foundation of this nation for rhetorical relief?
It could be you or someone you DO care about. What then?
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ain’t that some shit.
It’s only a few thousand bad apples.
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Agreed. They manage to justify it as being “in the line of duty” even when it’s clearly and obviously not (because we have video). But the racists structures we still live with is enough doubt for them to get away with it.
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You have me backwards here. I was explaining why this drew a reaction more serious when crimes (including murder) do not.
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why this crime drew a reaction more serious than the crime of murder? or why this non-crime taboo-crossing behavior drew a reaction when other actual crimes do not.
I may have you wrong, but the miss might be in what you said, not in what I read. I didn’t read you as calling this violation of human rights by the government a crime, because you called it a taboo. I’m open to receiving clarification, if you care to offer any, but I don’t think misreading you is what I did there.
It’s literally making me feel queasy that I was read that way, so I’m going to have to get out of this and do something else. I can’t remember feeling quite so viscerally ill in a thread before.
(ETA: I consider it my responsibility to may my ideas clear. It’s not on you or anyone else reading. I’m thus ashamed to have written anything that someone could be take that way.)
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Sucks to be you. IF you were misunderstood THEN you could always clarify and I’d at least understand. What did you mean to say?
I don’t see you saying you made a mistake. I see you saying your ashamed to have written something that could be taken that way… but that’s not clarifying anything about what I don’t understand about what you wrote - AND WHAT YOU DID NOT WRITE.
I noticed that you don’t call it a crime, more than once, but you do call other things crimes. I disagree with that, and I assume because of what you have and have not said, that you did mean it that way, and to minimize the experience of the actual crime victim here.
The one fed the actual shit sandwich, and not the rhetorical one.
Please, understand that if you don’t say you think it was a crime - and you have not said that - it’s not on me to believe that you think so.
I surely can take your word for it that you didn’t mean that, ONLY IF YOU GIVE IT. Like, the actual words “that is a criminal act, to feed a prisoner feces” - something you have referred to as taboo and an action, so far. If you feel badly to have not said that, allow me to submit to you that it is not too late to clarify.
Do you think it was? It’s not ungenerous to not attribute to you a thing you have not said. And you haven’t.
I do too. It’s good to consider that.
You have a few words yet to use if you want to make clear that you think of the shit sandwich as a criminal act. I asked. You still haven’t said. You did change the subject. Nope. No thanks!
How do you feel about not yet clarifying your point, but going on about how you feel about being misunderstood? How is that not you changing the subject to you? Are you the victim here? I’m sure as hell not. I’m just a guy asking for some clarification and being offered muddy waters.
FWIW, I didn’t get what you did from their posts. I thought it was clear that the distinction being made wasn’t between ‘crime’ and mere ‘taboo’ but rather that the deal-breaker on which crimes a LEO can get away with versus be turned in to IA by his fellow officers is when the crime violates a cultural taboo. Sadly, LEOs shooting black people is not yet the cultural taboo it SHOULD BE.
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sure! yes! I see that too. Totally possible. If I wanted to offer credit for things not said I could totally imagine that. But things not said are things not said.
So I asked for clarification and got something else that felt more rhetorical and slippery… which is my perception so I asked for clarification and got… nope.I got to hear about how badly me saying made them feel… which isn’t a clarification. It’s a dodge.
So, I hope they come back and say one way or another. Because that was either a mistake or a master class in not admitting a mistake (and in a way that most people will buy as admitting one).
I’m honestly not sure which, YMMV. I don’t recall that user as being ‘that way’ particularly.
Thanks for saying. I didn’t ‘get’ one solid POV. I got a logical construct that didn’t hold enough water for me to understand their point. And I did ask!
FWIW I don’t think that user probably meant to come across that way. But I read and write carefully too, and I know plenty of folks who slip pretty awful things into conversation and laugh when they put one over on others. Laugh the way that officer did when he left the shit sandwich, actually.
So, pardon my confusion and mistrust.
and I hope that people generally remember that pointed questions on hot-button topics are not accusations. I’ve not made accusations. I’ve explained my POV, my confusion, and what would clarify that for me. That’s not even a demand. It’s just not clear to me that that user sees a crime there, because at no point among the lots of things they did say, did they say that.
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In my state, this offense would be a form of aggravated battery with a sentence enhanced beyond the standard sentence for aggravated battery, as it ought to be, I’m struggling to wrap my brain around a way of thinking in which the status of such an act as a crime would be anything but a rhetorical question. So there’s your answer: I cannot imagine any proper code of criminal law in which giving someone a shit sandwich is not a felony. Further, that it was done by a law enforcement officer is a deeply aggravating circumstance.
Now, for why your reading left me aghast. Here’s my reaction to these stories: every time I read a story like this, I imagine myself on the receiving end of it. Vividly. With this one, don’t think I’ll want to eat a sandwich for a month and chocolate’s probably out too. The stories about the roadside internal searches haunt my nightmares. When I think about it happening to someone I care about, that’s how I understand that I could become a murderer, which reminds me how horrifying prisons are.
Despite my strong reaction, my anger at this sort of thing has largely burned to ashes. I’m not up to faking outrage to sound the way people expect. I am interested only in any tool that can be used to effect change. When I see that the police did something here, even if it was inadequate, I want to understand why so that I can see if there is something useful in there reaction that can be worked with. If the police have taboos, that’s something to understand that can perhaps be worked with. To an extent, this is hope in the face of a kind of despair, but the alternative is anger without direction, and that just fucks a person up.
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