I think there is something to be said for the “Wanted - Dead or Alive” mentality that still hangs over law enforcement in the USA.
Certain suspects are worth more alive than others.
And what defines this worth?
It seems to be mostly skin color.
This is why we say Black Lives Matter.
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turns out the cops did nothing after a previous suicide attempt by him, and a separate time when he threatened to kill his whole family.
you’d think that latter one would have led to something… but no, it’s perfectly fine and normal for white guys to threaten death with guns
( side note: i have seen 5000 articles now with his picture, his name, and the name he used when making music. it’s frustrating how his identity is getting highlighted and broadcast. the press is giving him all the attention he wanted. it can only serve to inspire others to do the same )
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I edited my post to strike that comment about there being enthusiasm for police misconduct here. The responses here (and some sleep on my part after the shelling stopped last night) have convinced me that I was mistaken.
It’s now clear to me that the outrage around this incident is about perceived corrupt motivations for the cops doing the right thing, not about their actual actions.
Digging up those articles for me to read must have taken some work, so I’m inclined to believe you genuinely think I don’t know how prevalent racial injustice is. I guess it’s because I don’t preach much to the choir here.
I am fully aware and outraged over racial disparities in police mistreatment. But I clearly don’t show it in the hyperbolic way that is respected here. I can live with the lack of approval. But when words are put in my mouth and then people start believing I said those things and responding as if I had, that derailment doesn’t serve anyone.
My post was intended to be about communication style in this thread, how it derails threads into hasty strawman arguments. It was apparently misinterpreted as repeatedly pleading for something else. SSDD. Maybe there is a way out of this loop?
I don’t see any sarcasm tags, so I guess we aren’t completely free of progressive bloodthirst.
Mods, feel free to break this out into a separate thread.
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I dunno. Maybe stop equating simple traffic stops with pursuit of a known suspect? 
And serious police overreach over a simple traffic stop of a Black man, compared to the white glove treatment of a white known suspect.
ETA: I worked nine months as a Sheriff’s dispatch, parole division. I’ve seen and heard it myself.
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The main reason I interpret the posters on this thread who are defending the special concierge service level the police provided to this white mass shooter as, inadvertently or not, pushing a white lives matter agenda, and the reason you keep hearing about traffic stops, is the geographic and temporal contrast this case provides with the Jayland Walker shooting in Akron just a week before and a 6 hr drive down I-90, in which a Black man was shot 60 times by police over a traffic stop.
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Do we drink the blood as part of a “cabal” 
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So long as this doesn’t turn into “Slide admits to being a vampire”, I say enjoy an adult beverage in the comfort of your home. Probably not a good idea to get all cabal with it.
Sure there is; the first step is to stop automatically giving unearned ‘benefit of the doubt’ to the dominant group which has all the power but no accountability.
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This is a fantastic comment, so I just wanted to add a reminder on this one area. On top of everything else, we know for a fact that at least some police departments use shooting targets that exclusively portray black people. And where a lot of training is built around reflexive, automatic responses, that’s going to result in a different reaction based on skin color even in cops who legitimately, truthfully have no conscious racial animus whatsoever.
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Because he’s white.
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Indeed. And wasn’t, say, asleep in a drive-thru, holding a phone in his driveway or grandmother’s yard, or walking/running away from them etc., on and on and on.
It’s because he’s white. Full stop.
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I didn’t do that. What I advocate for is minimizing stereotyping. For our own sake. To break out of the SSDD loop. To experience the little freedom from not worrying that everyone is against us. The police whose behavior we want to change are not here in this forum so they will be unaffected by discussions here; nobody can give them anything here. I know y’all try to give them a walloping here, but I don’t think it connects much outside this bbs.
If I want to give any benefit, it is to help people right here feel just a little less under attack, by working past the incorrect logic:
“If they believe in X then they also believe Y
[especially where Y is more intense or more deserving of coercion than X]”
It’s not about you, personally; I’m speaking of the general attitude held by far too many Americans who just happen be people with massive amounts of unearned privilege.
‘Fish don’t understand water’, because it inherently permeates every aspect of their lives.
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Must be nice to be one of the people for whom that is true.
For those of us it isn’t, stop talking over us.
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Gurl…
And now, I’m off to do actual productive stuff in meat-space…
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White supremacy is a fucking thing that exists, and shapes how the police interact with suspects. That’s not a “stereotype” that’s the facts of life. YOU Might be able to ignore that, but let me tell you, that POC can not. YOU might be safe from police violence, no matter what YOU do, but POC are not.
So, good for you, that this is merely an intellectual exercise that you can think about safely without having to worry about the daily ramifications each time you leave your house. Many POC in America DO NOT HAVE THAT LUXURY. That is MY concern, because I would like my friends, neighbors, community members who do NOT carry MY white privilege to be as safe as I am when interacting with police.
If looking at the facts of life in America and being ANGRY that some of us have privileges others do not is stereotyping, then that’s just too fucking bad. We should be ANGRY about the inequality that exists, not some made up “stereotype” that is just describing reality.
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That’s a touch unfair, he would have voted for Obama a third time if he could.
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Even if they were, they wouldn’t change their behavior. Look up what happens to cops who take a stand against police racism and corruption. It’s not pretty. They are either forced out officially, unofficially by threats to themselves or their families, or killed by their co-workers. That is not hyperbole, it’s fact. Police have no incentive to change that and lots of incentive to hold onto every bit of power and priviledge they have accumulated.
Nonsense; change in policing in the US can (and must) be effected from outside their power structure, by pressuring lawmakers and municipalities to re-allocate funds from police into specialty departments to address the real needs of the community while at the same time removing the base of power from entrenched and systemically racist police forces.
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