News

Yeah. The details are in the article. Officer had his knee on the victims upper back for at least 30 seconds while the victim begged the officer to move as he couldn't breathe. At some point he stopped responding entirely while the officers were holding him. He needed immediate medial attention from the instant he stopped breathing. Instead of helping him officers told him "shut the fuck up you're fine". And only after he had stopped moving for 5 minutes did they check and realize he was dead.

The knee on the upper back position is illegal. The correct thing to do is to have 1 officer hold his shoulders steady and the other hand cuff him. If there's only 1 officer present (which there never should be), there are many other holds that are not life threatening. I think it's entirely fair and legitimate to say that they killed him. It's not libelous, or exaggeration, they killed him and did not seek medical attention when he very clearly stated he wasn't able to breathe. That's manslaughter and negligent homicide at least.

Its too much to ask for what should be an anti-police story related to them murdering a civilian to not use passive voice to describe the murder.

Maybe they just don't like lawsuits? There is a reason the word allegedly is used so often.

It's because they don't see them as people, they see them as violent criminals that the world would be better off without.

If you step into their shoes for a minute, and one of the criminals you just successfully took off of the streets said they can't breathe, your first thought might be "good. Maybe that'll teach you a lesson about doing crimes in my neighborhood." Your second might be "I wish I could shoot you right now and get this over with, but maybe I'll get lucky and I can say I didn't hear you."

Note that the second one is inherently a stupid thought, there's body cams. That kind of logic didn't stop my 5-year-old from telling me she cleaned her room when I could easily check and find out she didn't, and it won't stop cops from fantasizing about everything working out here.

That's exactly why they do things that way. They're living out a fantasy world where there are no real rules and there are no consequences, and they have to live a balancing act between indulging in that and dealing with reality. Sometimes cops fail to balance that, and that's what we see here.

As for who trains them, it's their fellow cops. This isn't a bunch of individual fantasies, these men work and train and talk together about how it'd be so much better if they had less restrictions and just talk about that hypothetical world. New cops who have any kind of racism or similar "My group is best" can join the conversation and add in their own unique version to the group fantasy. New cops who aren't already racist, though, won't hear blatant racism. No, they will just hear about crime stats and reoffending rates, about cops that died trying to deal with all the supposed crime, and about how stopping them is justice and will help everyone, not just cops. In time they'll share the group fantasy, too, and stop seeing their victims as people. Occasionally someone just doesn't join in the fantasy and they get bullied until they quit.

This is why the easiest way to move forward from this kind of thing is to gut the police departments and start over, or we at least need bodycams that can't be turned off so easily.

I used to be an EMT (am going to be working as one again soon) and where I worked we had some good cops and some real shitty cops who had no business being cops, but one thing that they all had in common was that the rules were if someone asked for medical help, they had to call the ambulance. Didn't matter if it looked like obvious bullshit, all the departments in the area I worked had a blanket policy that they weren't medical professionals and they couldn't make that decision. You could have a tiny little cut on your finger and ask for medical help and even the shittiest cops would sigh and call for EMS. These cops infuriate me. How many more people have to get murdered? If someone asks for help fucking help them and sort out the details later.

Because cruelty is the point.

Because the power of inflicting pain without consequences is the main reason why most people become cops.

Something like a schmevolution.

I used to go out wearing a leather corset (not tightened) and leather bra under my shirt. Shit was literal body armor.