It’s true and i’m aware of the discrepancy in gun control between countries but there are cases in the US where the situation is only escalated by the responding officers, not the person they are dealing with.
He had shot at police before, in 2005. Of course the officers in Charlotte had no way of knowing that. But it does go to the narrative that cops always shoot Black people who appear to threaten them. Mr. Scott personally survived shooting at police, as well as punching a Texas officer in the face. One difference here is that after firing at police in 2005, he left the gun on the passenger seat when he abandoned the car, so he was unarmed when arrested.
**** Correction- I cannot find the court records showing him shooting at police. I am still sure that I saw them, but it is not fair to stand behind statements that I cannot objectively prove. Hopefully, some information will surface proving or disproving the existence of that incident. But everything else in his record seems to be easily verifiable, including him having shot 10 times at another man in 2002. I will update this again if I find the court records.
Source? I saw some crazed right-wing blog put that headline up briefly but I can’t find any reputable news sites reporting that. His criminal record includes “misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon” but I find it hard to believe that shooting at police officers would result in a misdemeanor conviction.
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Most of it was at the end of a long article from the Charlotte observer. The misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon was from 2004, But later that year he had felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, misdemeanor assault on a child under 12, and assault on a female.
http://gov.bexar.org/dc/dcrecords.html
https://vinelink.com/#/home
I probably need to get a screencap of the vinelink page.
I understand per previous threads that prior behavior does not necessarily indicate guilt or innocence. Probably previous events would be inadmissible in court. And the police in this instance did not know anything about Mr. Scott’s history. So the history could not have been a factor in their actions. And maybe it does not make any difference in this case. I have to think personally that someone with a long history of violence is more likely to be involved in future violence than someone with no such history. It is not an uncomplicated question.
I still see nothing that indicates he ever shot at police. Where are you getting that information from?
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Has to be vinelink. I will get a screencap.
Yelling “drop the gun” is the first lesson in plausible denial class
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It seems that the entire situation was in escalation mode from the start. The Charlotte PD is trying to cover their ass and it is just resulting in an ongoing trashing of the city. I’m sure that the Internal Affairs investigation will clear everyone involved as they always do of any wrongdoing while they enjoy their paid vacation for mowing down an impaired citizen and bragging about it back at the station with high fives all around.
None of the officers will be punished. Most likely they will receive good marks on their records that will help them with promotions on the next promotion round since they shot a “dangerous bad guy”.
This just dogpiles more loss of respect that I have for any authority figures I see. Whenever I see the police now days, I experience fear instead of calm wondering if the fuckers are just going to shoot me for looking in their direction.
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Damn right it is.
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A lot like the worst call centre you ever dealt with.
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That’s good to know. I can’t bring myself to watch the videos anymore. Just the fact that my previous sentence makes sense is depressing.
I was talking to my wife recently about how to discuss this with our young children, who are hearing about it, but don’t fully understand. She was upset that it seems to be getting disturbingly common these days. Sadly, I don’t think it’s any more common now than it was 10 years ago. It’s just that the cops get caught on tape now.
This thing that our country is going through is ugly and heartbreaking. The only solace I can take is that it will hopefully lead to meaningful change.
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A sensible person doesn’t obey the actually law, but instead infers the law from the behavior of the police and courts. Clearly, it is illegal to be black and in possession of a car, and it is also demonstrably legal to shoot such felons on sight, provided there are no cameras present. If cameras are present during shooting of such “criminals”, the penalty can be as high as extreme inconvenience to said officer and being forced to appear on right wing talk radio. My advice to black people is to avoid driving, the police and generally being out and about. Instead they should stay home and keep quiet. If you cant avoid driving, then make sure you have your mobile device set up for living streaming. That way your relatives may be able to claim appropriate compensation in 3 years time for your “unlawful” death.
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I believe you may have the best possible answer going Mr Stiles for public safety.
These cops are murders. The police are a threat to life and property. We have to do everything we can possible do to take away their uniforms, authority, and weapons. Put these bastards in prison.
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Why not? They have information systems don’t they?
The registration number of his vehicle could have linked directly to a database entry with records back beyond 2005 and beyond the current locale. Automatic systems in police vehicles are capable of retrieving that information in real time with no action from police, like they drive past his vehicle,OCR gets the registration, and details of the event in Charlotte are right there on the screen.
As far as I can tell this is an insinuation that complaints about cops shooting black people are much ado about nothing.
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So at this point my questions are:
When Rakeyia is screaming “Don’t you do it Keith!” over and over again, what is the thing she doesn’t want Keith to do?
When multiple cops repeatedly scream at Keith to DROP THE GUN, if Keith had no gun, why doesn’t he say “What gun, motherfucker? Are you fucking kidding? I don’t have a motherfucking gun. My hands are empty. I can’t fucking drop something I don’t fucking have.”
The reason I ask is because on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell tonight, he (O’Donnell) was making the point that what is claimed to be a gun lying on the street close to Keith Scott’s body might not really have been a gun. But even O’Donnell conceded that the cop in the red shirt seemed to have kicked whatever it was (gun? book?) away from Keith Scott’s body and appeared to be standing in a position to keep the object securely away from Keith Scott, as if the who-knows-maybe-gun-maybe-book object could be dangerous in some way.
I doubt a cop would do this with a book, unless it was “Twilight”. Or “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”. A cop would definitely do this if it were a gun, though.
Of course, it’s a moot point now, since O’Donnell’s guests agreed that cops are notorious for planting evidence (in this case, probably a gun, since a book wouldn’t be of much help) to cover up their misdeeds.
Planting evidence. In broad daylight. With the guy’s wife right there. And other witnesses all around. Filming with their phone cameras.
I gave up looking for reasonable discourse when one of O’Donnell’s guests opined that, well, even if it was a gun there on the street, the cop violated the evidentiary chain of custody by negligently kicking the gun out of reach of the deceased, and leaving it laying on a public street like that for 30 to 90 seconds. I’m actually not kidding: one of O’Donnell’s guests said this. And no one disputed it.
I am willing to believe a cop would do that. They know they’ll never be prosecuted for killing a black man. How could planting a weapon be worse than murder?
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No, the problem, as far as I understand it, is that police shoot people too readily, and use excessive force on people, pets, and property with no consequences. I do not believe this is something that primarily affects Black people.
As of my writing this, 325 White people have been shot by police this year, compared to 173 Blacks and 111 Hispanics. Those proportions have stayed pretty consistent, and also stand when you look at those shot while unarmed, when holding a toy gun, and other categories.
The counter to this is that Black people are a much 13% of the population, and account for 24% of those shot. You could counter that with the fact that Black people represent a much larger percentage of reported offenders of violent crime. But while we argue about that, the real problem of police use of excessive force remains.
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There is another factor that’s not easy to put a statistic to:
How many of those shootings were people who had no weapon/were retreating/not a threat/etc.
No one gets upset when they see a video of a criminal that is shooting at police, get shot themselves. Heck we are even at the point where we can sue robots to blow up active shooters and the country is ‘meh’ about it. The bigger undercurrent (that using pure stats allows people to act like there is no issue purely on numbers) is that these people are being killed by police when they pose no threat.
I’ll remind you that several very public incidents of killing by police had nothing to do with guns - instead they were thrown into a van while handcuffed and taken over the worst roads in the city - tossing the person around like they were in an industrial dryer until they died, or in another case an officer sat on the person and choked them to death - after they were already restrained. The riots and protests aren’t all police shootings. At some point you can’t hide behind pure numbers and have to look at the systemic issues behind these interactions.
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