I have said that it was more than some general criticism about “the training of service horses” throughout.
Force marching him beside the horses was one of the dangers they were negligent about, in the conditions they knew about him, at that specific time and place, because they didn’t value his safety or basic humanity.
And then the twist at the end is that the time portal was really just a kid’s toy, and they were us all along.
Sure, I get it now.
He didn’t die, so why criticize the cops for also needlessly physically endangering him.
Everyone knows you can only complain about one thing.
Oh for fuck’s sake!
It is irrelevant whether the man was tied with the rope or the rope was “clipped to his handcuffs”. It was demeaning, humiliating, dangerous, and probably illegal. How is that not malicious?
And Galveston police? The only “scenario” in which that behavior is an “acceptable technique” is catching runaway slaves. Which is exactly what came to mind the instant I saw that picture.
Disgusting and shameful…
After much pointless speculation about risks, we are in agreement.
Slippery slope fallacy.
Because the added physical risk adds context to the racism. They could have demeaned him in strictly psychological ways, but in this case, they not only demeaned him socially and psychologically, but also physically. Police take responsibility for the well-being of anyone they restrain. They added a great deal of risk of injury to this encounter as part of the dehumanizing aspect. That makes this situation tangibly worse than if they’d just humiliated him.
Once you start talking about hypothetical risks that a police horse might trip, or the handcuffed man might trip into its hind legs, or a horse might spook at an ice cream cone, you’re already well on your way down that slippery slope.
There are some clear violations of this guy’s safety and humanity documented in these photos without appealing to speculation about horse training or accidents that could have happened.
Because the added physical risk adds context to the racism.
You need extra context for this?
If you replaced the horses with golf carts in that photo, no one is going to think, “Gee that’s totally not racist. It isn’t like they’re riding horses! That would be totally racist!”
Everyone who’s showing any added concern for the guy’s physical safety are the real monsters here.
Today I learned that even when cops are doing something wrong, they’re so highly trained that it must be right.
What does that even mean? I (and others) think it matters that, not only did these officers humiliate this man, but needlessly risked his well-being. It’s one thing to demean someone symbolically; it’s definitely worse to put them in harm’s way as part of treating them as less than a person.
It’s not like there’s only one degree of awfulness in the world. Unfortunately, there are many.
Golf carts would also be bad. But golf carts don’t kick in people’s heads. Horses do, and sometimes it’s on accident. I was raised around farms and horses and rule #1: don’t put yourself in a position behind a horse - exactly the position the officers put this man in while leading him from horseback.
What the heck are you talking about? The photo clearly shows him beside the two horses, not behind them. Heck, I just found a video of him walking beside the horses.
So yeah, if he was walking behind them, sure… that would be reckless. I didn’t see anything that showed that.
You also didn’t see him when he had a welder’s mask obscuring his vision as he walked, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have one before that video.
Great. More theoreticals.
Do you people actually believe this shit or do you just want to argue that the 10,000 ft mountain is really 10,002 ft?
(referring to the idea that he was walking behind the horses, not the welding mask)
You’re the one arguing the mountain is actually a molehill.
It’s not theoretical, he had a welder’s mask on before the video you shared.
You added this bit after I replied, but it doesn’t make sense to me…
You directly replied to me, and quoted me, so forgive me if I find it a little hard to now think you were talking about something else. Either way. it wasn’t a theoretical problem, it happened.
Must have made both cops positively tumnescent
