A cop kicking us out of a party was twisting my friend’s arm really hard holding him face down on the ground for tossing a cigarette. I never touched the cop and yelled to stop hurting him. I got face first tossed on the hood of the cop car and a disorderly. Touching a cop is a felony usually I’m pretty sure. Then, you could get shot also.
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Abolish the police.
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i’m aware 
guy was slowly dying in front of them though. i dunno. admittedly i still make really dumb decisions sometimes. this whole cop situation sucks, and that video got me on one.
I haven’t watched the video, but from a distance, I’m not sure if I’d be able to tell if a man was dying in this way. Before this, I wouldn’t have thought kneeling on someone was a way to murder them.
I’m not the sort of person who feels like I have to something for the sake of doing something. I’d assess whether there is anything I can do, act accordingly, and accept if I can’t figure out a way to help.
My instinct would be to document as much information as possible, not only to try to spur action, but also so that it would be possible to track down the identities of the officers involved in case of an attempted government cover-up. I would very much be willing to facilitate public protests that follow these police to their homes.
If I were to decide that physical action was appropriate, my first instinct would be to see how many people are around and if they can be incited into throwing objects at the police. I doubt I can take on four officers by myself, but maybe an angry mob can.
Seeing this video and the lady in Central Park in succession reminds me that the root cause here is that a large chunk of white Americans have been trained from birth to be terrified of black men, even when they present no threat. I have no idea how to combat that. You can fire crazy dog lady and even jail these cops, but terrified white people are going to keep doing insane things when they panic, and they’re going to keep panicking when a black man gets within 10 feet of them.
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The answer is well known. Meeting each other. Policy around education, housing and labour needs to disincentivize segregation.
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All good ideas but what I meant was that there’s not much you can do to change culture in the short term. Locking up racist murderous cops is a good idea because it’s just, but it won’t stop all the other racist cops in the short term from being terrified and panicky every time they are close to a black man.
I don’t think either the officers involved in this murder or the lady in Central Park are actually terrified in the least. I just think they don’t see the other person as an equal. They are something less that can be abused and treated as disposable, especially in cases where the black guy doesn’t act according to the perceived, lesser role. At that point all bets are off as far as the lady and those police are concerned.
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Like, putting your knee on someone’s neck and holding it there isn’t the act of someone who feels scared or threatened, it’s punitive behavior. But you would never punish a child or, like, a student or employee in this way. This is punishment doled out by a person who clearly thinks they are dealing with some lesser being, like a dog. Hell, most people wouldn’t even do that to their dog.
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You may be right but I think the underlying motivator is fear. Dog Lady even offered up “in the bramble you can’t really see what’s happening” as her excuse, she is overtly asserting that terror of a random black dude is legit and explains her reaction.
Similarly with cops when pushed they always say “we were in fear for our lives” to justify killing black men. That’s the whole narrative.
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Very much agree, and I don’t think that’s necessarily inconsistent with living in a system of terror. Bullies are ACTING tough, they’re not really tough.
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Hopefully this isn’t flippant, but I’m reminded of when herc, carver, and prez decided to go to the towers at 1am to fuck with people. They are bad at their jobs, unequipped for life really, and in the back of their minds they know it. They see Daniels trying to do a real investigation and they know they can’t keep up with that shit. So to have some form of control over their situation, they act like assholes to the only people they see as worse than them: random public housing residents.
But the moment there’s any kind of pushback from those they’re bullying, they are genuinely terrified. It’s completely consistent with both seeing black people as beneath them, but also living their life terrified at being exposed for the weak, useless, sniveling pieces of garbage that drove them to hide behind a badge in the first place - and the ultimate nightmare is if you’re exposed as weak by a fucking… well, you know.
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It’s the narrative, yeah, because they know that works. That’s kind of my point, they all say they are scared and come up with some superficial narrative that ostensibly makes sense from a 10,000 foot level, but when you look at the situation in any detail it just completely falls apart. Listen to the lady’s tone when she is telling the guy that she is going to call the cops and tell them a black guy is threatening her. She is lording it over him, brandishing it like the way you would threaten a disobedient child to get it to behave. I just don’t read her tone as scared. Granted people can have vastly different responses to feeling threatened And I could be wrong, so I’m not going to be too argumentative over the point. But from my view, that woman’s behavior and tone are really strange for someone who feels physically threatened or scared for their safety.
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Good points. My read on the tone is that she firmly believes that she is entitled to feel secure and comfortable, and yes she knows that society gives her power over him. But she clearly seems panicked to me.
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Re: the cops, I view those statements even more cynically than I do the smart, entitled white lady’s. They are basically trained to say that shit every time. Certainly there are times when the officer is irrationally afraid, like on a traffic stop walking up on a rando at night. Irrational fear of black people as violent criminals certainly heightens the fear and influences behavior in that type of situation. But I think there are a significant number of instances of police abuse where fear isn’t a factor, and it’s just hatred and abuse of power. This being one of them. It’s broad daylight, the guy has three other officers around and he’s on top of the guy for a long time. Might just be my perspective is biased. But I think accepting. The narrative that this can be chalked up to fear is letting many of these people off the hook. Imo, their actions are much more cynical and depraved because they are terrorizing/causing grievous harm to these people as a power play because they see them as inferior, not as some kind of physical threat.
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Yeah, definitely. I think the distinction I’m drawing is very slight and probably bordering on inconsequential. For instance, I perceive panic in her voice/actions like you do, but I get the sense it comes from being made uncomfortable getting scolded by someone she sees as inferior, not because she feels physically threatened. But maybe what I’m describing is a psychological threat to her self-image and sense of social standing? Anyway, I’ve probably gone way too far down the road of armchair psychologist for anyone’s good, lol.
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Of course. “We were in fear for our lives” “stop resisting” - these are things they are trained to say (formally trained or not). If anything, falling back on a catch phrase like that is a positive indication that they are lying.
The most dangerous people, like the Catholic Church during the inquisition or people making US foreign policy, are people who are doing something bad, but they have a story about how it is actually good. Cops view the system as working against them in their mission to take on bad guys. Lying is a virtue. They are subverting the system that protects criminals so that they can protect good people. As it is with Christians they don’t have to 100% believe it, they just need the thought to hold up to something approaching no scrutiny.
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Day #1, lesson #1 at the police academy.
I want to @zarapochka on this because there’s something similar to the way she seems to think I feel about rich people. I don’t hate police officers or landlords or rich people or people in the military even prison guards (not counting the ICE detention camps). There are institutions, situations and norms which lead people to do bad things. These things affect people’s values. I don’t even say the typical Nazi was a bad person. They were no different than the typical American or even the typical person in a German concentration camp. The banality of evil and all. I think most people are good and want to be the good guy/hero. The problem is when society teaches people that actually villainous things are heroic.
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We don’t want the truth because deep down in places we don’t talk about at parties we want that knee on that neck. We need that knee on that neck.
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