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Politics Ferguson

Discussion in 'Tilted Philosophy, Politics, and Economics' started by redravin, Aug 18, 2014.

  1. redravin

    redravin Cynical Optimist Donor

    Location:
    North
    I think John Oliver pretty much locked it down.

     
    • Like Like x 2
  2. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    I am sad that I have to wait to watch this. John Oliver has become one of those shows my husband and I watch together.
     
  3. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    6 shots...all in the front, 2 in the head.
    Left on the ground for 5 hours.

    Something is fishy...their story isn't consistent.
     
  4. Daniel_

    Daniel_ The devil made me do it...

    I can't help but contrast this case (young man killed by armed police shooting him mulriple times) with the UK case of the killers of Lee Rigby (two men, armed with knives, had just killed a guy and tried to behead him, were covered in blood, and were arrested by an armed response unit with no shots fired).

    Every time I hear about a case like this, I can't escape the thought that it's a deliberate extrajudicial execution, by a police service that still believes in the myth of the lone sheriff standing up to the gunman, shooting him down for the public good.

    Here in England, a policeman discharging his firearm is seen as a huge failure of the system, and an action of last resort when all other options are exhausted. It makes national headlines. If multiple shots are discharged, there will probably be questions in parliament, and the Chief Constable of the force involved will probably be expected to resign.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    Without having all of the details, this shooting sounds highly suspect, and it appears that the "Blue Shield" was put in place from the start. The police chief in Ferguson needs to come completely clean about what happened, something he should've done from the start. This 2014, not 1964.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  6. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    Some more on this.

    Armed police: Trigger happy | The Economist
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2014
    • Like Like x 3
  7. Street Pattern

    Street Pattern Very Tilted

    The most unhappy thing about the Ferguson situation, even more than the death of an 18-year-old, is that our responses are not typical. A great many American white folk seem to think the shooting was somehow justified.

    Here's the Internet meme that is spreading like wildfire (along with some text below, debunking it):

    jodah.jpg
     
  8. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana

    no one knows if it was justified or not. the media has already convicted the cop. everything is just hearsay. trayvon martin case all over again. except it looks like this guy robbed a store before hand and the shooter is a cop. however the media and race baiters are ready to convict!

    there might be problems in this town but dont use the wrong incident to protest/riot/loot.
     
  9. Street Pattern

    Street Pattern Very Tilted

    Ah! Six shots to kill an unarmed man for no particular reason is perfectly okay, then.

    And it's just fine to widely circulate a picture of a menacing guy, falsely claiming this was Michael Brown, to promote the idea that he was a thug who deserved to die.

    I guess you must live in a very different world than I do.
     
  10. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana

    it's facebook and social media grow up. anything can get posted by anyone and liked/tweeted a thousand times. dont let it represent the whole or the reality of the situation. the media shows trayvon martin and brown when they are like 12 years old. brown was over 6' and 300 lbs. dont show me pics of how innocent he was at 12.
    --- merged: Aug 20, 2014 4:18 AM ---
    robbed a store, high on weed, walking in the middle of the street and stopped by an officer. accounts of anything from him running away to him charging and attacking the officer, yeah i'll wait till the report comes out till i decide.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 27, 2014
  11. Street Pattern

    Street Pattern Very Tilted

    You're so angry that anyone objects, even slightly, to the killing of an unarmed young man? I guess it must have been his own fault. It just had to be. And marijuana makes people violent. Right.

    Listen, guy, I'm not some starry-eyed idealistic teenager. I've done all the growing up I'm ever going to do. I've been working in the justice system for more than 30 years. I deal with police officers and sheriff's deputies almost every week, and I have lunch with the county sheriff and the prosecuting attorney pretty regularly. I was on the committee that planned the jail expansion. In a past job, I taught classes full of police officers.

    This kind of incident, when an unarmed suspect ends up dead, for no reason that can be clearly explained, shows bad policing. The clumsy attempted cover-up has absolutely disgusted my friends in law enforcement.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2014
    • Like Like x 1
  12. omega

    omega Very Tilted

    Obviously I would like to hear more information about what really happened rather than a bunch of scattered reports. That being said, if, and I mean if Brown attacked the officer while he was sitting in his patrol car, then I feel he would be justified to use deadly force. A person sitting in a car is supremely vulnerable to physical assault. You have no cover. You have no movement. You have no leverage to deliver a disabling blow. You're not even facing your attacker. And a person attacking an armed, uniformed, police officer? What are they hoping to accomplish? If they disable the officer, They have access to multiple guns with the vehicle. Radio, computer, pepper spray, cuffs, baton, taser. Also, let's stop calling an 18 year old who weighs 300 lbs and is six feet tall a teenager. He is an adult. He can join the army, he can vote. It's a bit disingenuous. Also, if he was willing to commit robbery, I think that says something about his mind at the time. If he had not been high on cannabis, would he have committed robbery? I don't know. But the cannabis of today is not the ditchweed being smoked in the sixties. It can have ten times the thc when properly cultivated. So if cannabis is so nonviolent, why did he commit robbery in the first place? Have to look at the totality of the circumstances. Just because there is a racist police force, doesn't mean that people still don't commit crimes.
     
  13. redravin

    redravin Cynical Optimist Donor

    Location:
    North
    I'm going beyond the shooting of the young man.
    Whatever the circumstances, the real problem is how incredibly badly the police handled everything after that.

    You don't release the video of the robbery at the same time as you say the name of the officer who shot him.
    You don't leave him on the ground like a dead deer. hell roadkill gets treated better than he did.
    You don't sit on armored half tracks and aim machine guns at unarmed protesters.

    You don't spray woman and children with tear gas because they aren't moving fast enough.
    You don't shoot members of the clergy with rubber bullets.
    You don't arrest journalists or threaten to shoot them.

    You don't act in a manner that makes Amnesty International send observers to the US for the first time ever.

    This is totally unacceptable.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  14. TheSurgeOn

    TheSurgeOn Getting Tilted

    Location:
    England
    As the firearms unit drove in, Heneghan and other eyewitnesses said the men charged them. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the attackers opened fire with his handgun, and then four to six shots rang out from armed police, and the men were felled by a female police marksman. Woolwich attack: horror on John Wilson Street | UK news | theguardian.com

    A car has a gas pedal, ideal for evading assault.

    Plenty of non-lethal options for the Police to use.

    He could be a year older, taller and heavier, and still rightly be called a teenager.

    Shoplifting doesn't warrant lethal force, and we shouldn't 'accept' a racist Police force.

    When a community reacts like Ferguson they often have good reason to, this is not the first time riots have been caused by Police shootings.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  15. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    The Ferguson PD, whoever made the decision not to be transparent, completely mishandled this, whether the shooting was justified or not.

    I'm going to agree with Omega, let's stop calling a six foot tall 300 pound 18 year old man a teenager. Semantics aside, he was more adult than teenager.

    The merchants having their stores looted are also victims. If they defend their property they face the real possibility of no police support.
     
  16. omega

    omega Very Tilted

    I'm not saying things weren't handled poorly, and I'm sure as hell not excusing a racist police force.

    As far as driving away, that is an option. But have you ever been in a life or death stress situation? Have you ever had a complete adrenaline dump? You might not think of that, because you resort to your training in that situation.

    Once ems has declared a person dead in my county, we don't touch them the coroner arrives. We would cover them with a sheet, maybe move cars to screen the body, but we don't move him or her. We assist the coroner when he arrives.
     
  17. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana

    for someone who works in the justice system you sure jump to a lot of conclusions. i'm not angry at people objecting, i'm just staying neutral until all the information comes out. what has come out looks really bad for brown though. anyone who steals from and store and assaults a convenience store clerk 15 minutes prior to being shot dead looks way more guilty than a cop who has no write ups ever.

    he's just a poor innocent boy shot dead by a racist cop.

    he is a THUG. this is what thugs do.

     
  18. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member

    This whole event is obviously tragic on all sides.


    So the following observation is maybe more of an aside (I'm not sure, could be part of the bigger overall problem too), but is definitely a problem in my view.

    I've read countless posts on various forums about this event. I've read the news stories and autopsy reports and theories suggested by lawyers, media, and commentators. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, with fairly neutral political leanings, and a somewhat pragmatic view of issues such as this.

    But you know what I've noticed with this story?

    If you gave me a name (online handle or real life name) of almost anyone who was relatively active on any of the forums I visit, I could tell you how they'd feel about this event without ever reading their posts concerning it. And so far I am several dozen, maybe more than a hundred, persons deep that I've read their posts and opinions. And I've been right in predicting it every single time, based on their previous social and political posts.

    So whatever the truth is in this one particular case (and I'm not convinced either way, as I feel the evidence hasn't been fully presented in an unbiased way), I think it speaks volumes to how political and social reactions have become a team sport, and not an exercise in reasonable thought process, problem solving, or critical thinking by individuals. A portion of the blame falls on the media IMO, and a portion falls on the people who lap up whatever the media (slanted for the direction their particular audience wants their ears tickles) serves them.

    I am not intending this as a 'call out' for any particular people, just a sad observation that keeps being repeated every time a hot social event happens.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  19. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    To remain neutral, you have to accept that the robbery is merely alleged, that an assault is alleged. (It looks like the clerk touched first. And doesn't it have to be determined in court whether that's Brown in the video?)

    You should also refrain from calling him a thug. Brown had no criminal record.

    You claimed that you will wait to decide. It sounds like you've already decided.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2014
    • Like Like x 1
  20. ralphie250

    ralphie250 Fully Erect Donor

    Location:
    At work..
    ok, first of all how can the coroner drtermine that he has his hands up when the cop was shooting at him?

    why is it that we only hear about the black kids gettins shot? why is there never a white kid shot and the naacp stepping in?

    wht is it jessie jackson is always there when this happens??
    there is more black on black crime in the usa than there is white on white crime, im not saying that white people dont commit crimes, because we do. its just more publically scrutinized when a black kid is shot
     
    • Like Like x 1