Lawsuit: Virginia police officers threatened man during stop

[CJD]

(04-19-2021, 12:49 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I appreciate it, as the phrase isn't a good one to use given the view of many that LEO's are just looking for any excuse to kill anyone who isn't white.




Except he didn't just say that, he also refused to exit the care because he "didn't have to".  You can't have it both ways here.  He continually debated with the officers about what he would and would not do, in fact his statement of fear came about midway through the confrontation.  Saying you're afraid of a confrontation you significantly contributed towards escalating is not a valid excuse.



At some point people on your side of the fence are going to have to make up their minds.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard from the usual suspects on this board statements along the line of, "if you can't do the job then quit".  You want traffic stops to decrease because of uncommon incidents such as this, fine.  Just own it when you get a spike in traffic fatalities caused by an increase in speeding (not aggressive speeding whatever that is).  Why even bother paying for your registration or getting license plates if the police won't stop you for it?




Maybe if the anti-law enforcement side of this argument didn't lump all LEO's into one group and make statements like policing is racist then it would be easier for the pro law enforcement community to actually have a rational discussion.  Extreme rhetoric only makes people dig in their heels.  The number of people, of any color, who are killed by police that shouldn't have been is, at the extreme high end, around 200, and I honestly think it's sub 100.  Every one of those mistakes is tragic, especially for those directly affected.  It is not a national crisis and it is not an epidemic.  Medical doctors kill 100,000's of people a year by making mistakes, yet there is zero outrage or news coverage of that.  While I get that the "state sanctioned" part of a wrongful police killing, it clearly shows that people's lives are not the real concern here, it's an agenda.  It's no different than wanting to ban "assault weapons" even though the kill only around a 100 or so people a year. 




I wouldn't say a slave, you are certainly making an honest effort to actually debate the topic, which is far more than most do.  But you do repeat a lot of points that get hammered repeatedly by the media.  As for my defending them when they don't deserve it, simply point one such instance out.  If you're going to cite this one, I already acknowledged wrong doing on the part of one officer.  If you're suggesting that the initial officer was objectively wrong, and there can be no discussion on that, then I'd say your position would be the extreme one, not mine.

I can cite numerous times in which I flat out called the officer's actions wrong; the Tamir Rice shooting, the Philando Castile shooting, the Daniel Shaver shooting (the most egregious example I've ever seen but got very little attention from the media for some reason), the way in which the officer arrested Sandra Bland (she absolutely should have been arrested, but he should have waited for back up to make the arrest less violent), etc.  So please don't make it out that I knee jerk defend law enforcement, because that's simply not true.  In fact, I've stated for years in this forum that many agencies back east are undertrained, a problem that will not be helped by "defunding the police".



Which is exactly what I said in the third post I made in this thread.  


I think I've already addressed your "bias", or rather my perception of some of your statements.  As for "controlling" the second officer, you don't know if that officer was senior, which makes "controlling" him rather problematic, and in any event, he did try to defuse the situation several times, but neither the Lt. or the second officer were interested in taking him up on that.

It sounds like we mostly agree on the topic then, with the one exception being you feel I am not critical enough of the Lt. 

As far as the number of murders being lower than medical mistakes, I think the reason we talk about the police murders is because of the aforementioned power dynamic. There's a reason we speak for weeks about politicians who do something wrong even when their crime is not always a major crime or, in some cases, even illegal. When a person or group of people are given power over other people, it's natural and expected for their actions to be scrutinized far more than any other group of people. We should be holding people in positions of power to a higher standard, not to the same standard and certainly not to a lower standard. And it's also worth noting that murders aren't the definitive number when it comes to police violence. A member of the state committing violence of any kind on its citizens should be roundly condemned, no matter how uncommon it is. And when there are racial biases attached to that, it starts to get really messy.

This next point doesn't directly follow my previous point, per se, but the Shaver shooting is particularly egregious because not only did the police officer not face consequences for that blatantly terrible murder, but he actually was allowed to retire on medical grounds and collect a pension for the "trauma" that he suffered for having murdered him. I noticed your comment about it not being discussed for some reason as an indictment on the racialization of police violence. I personally see police violence as a socio economic issue more than anything. It just so happens minorities and poverty heavily intersect, for historically racist reasons. I don't think it's correct to state that police violence is only an issue for minorities, but I do think it's correct to state it disproportionately affects minorities due to socio economic issues. 

I think the Shaver's murder was more an outlier than anything else, as Shaver isn't particularly poor nor is he a minority, which is why it probably didn't gain as much notoriety. Him being white undeniably helped also, of course. We've spoken about narratives and his murder was a circle peg in a square hold narrative. However, I think the initial reaction to the murder was also fairly different, as the officer was charged almost immediately (something like a month later following an investigation) and the charge did not require public outrage to be reached. Unfortunately, it ended in the same way, with the murderer walking free.