by Michael on Tue Sep 13, 2016 11:37 am
I see people on Facebook reacting to Collin Kaepernik's protest by showing a video of a young black man shoplifting some beer and punching the store's loss prevention officer and then implying Kaepernik is protesting for that shoplifter, but they never say it's because they're both black, so obviously, hint, hint. Further discussion reveals they have never seen a single video of someone who is not resisting, with no criminal record and under no suspicion of a crime, such as a car passenger pulled over for a routine traffic stop, never seen one shot dead. Or if they had, it's all about how if you do exactly what you're told and argue later in the courts, you'll be fine.
It's such a lot of projecting about how they've dealt with a single stop and frisk obediently and everything went swimmingly, so would everyone please stop complaining, these police have a difficult job to do. #all lives matter
I pretty much don't want to see or post any more police brutality vids, but I'll certainly see more because of news stories. They're extremely difficult to watch and I have to watch a few times to finally see it clearly without too much emotional reaction, but damn, I just forced myself to watch a vid of a policeman who let his dog bite a man's arm deeply for about two minutes while telling him to stop moving so he could cuff him. All of this over him riding a bicycle at night with no light and not lying face down in the dirt quickly enough. The guy was writhing in pain on the ground with a dog tugging on his arm pit and the cop told his supervisor the man punched the ground in a preparation to hit the cop.
I try to see that from the cop's point of view. I think I can understand many elements of what he's doing and why, but I can never reach any other conclusion than unnecessary force and criminal brutality by letting the dog pull on him for so long, while expecting the man to assume a perfect prone position with legs straight, and his legs are straight. Then he bends his knees and straightens them again to prove they're straight and the cop keeps giving him reasons why he has to let the dog continue chewing on his arm, all while he's screaming in pain and bleeding quite a bit.
In the end, the supervisor shows up and the cop explains to her what happened. He doesn't sound, uhm, like all oars are in the water.
A year later this small PD in Florida is having another role play where it shows citizens how their police deal with deadly encounters. It's also a photo-op and a local reporter is taking pics when a woman from a group of 30 participants volunteers to be the victim. She is given a fake gun and a cop is given a real gun with blanks, as they've been doing in these role plays for two years.
I think you know that I'm about to tell you: (1) they weren't blanks and (2) the cop who killed the woman in the role play with live ammo is the same one who let his dog chew on a man over a missing headlight on a bicycle in a sleepy town with no traffic on the road. Oh, and he was canned from a nearby PD for brutality caught on video where he yanked a cuffed person out of a patrol car, landing them hard on the pavement for no good cause.