Why are there suddenly increasing reports of cops killing blacks?

Media one-upmanship and sensationalism. It’s really in.

More body cameras. Before it was the cops word against a dead guy.

Black people have been complaining since slavery of the double standard involving law enforcement and the black community. @Adirondackwannabe gets it exactly right. And these sorts of events ARE NOT exceptional, because most of us are completely unaware of the REAL function of the police force when it came to our black citizens. I almost feel sorry for the cops, because technology has changed the unwritten rules for their behavior, and nobody bothered to warn them about it. The most important aspect of all of this is that it will force good men and women of conscience to ask the question “is this the way it has always been?” which leads to the BIG one————“why?”

I suspect it has been happening for a long time
You hear about it more because the story currently sells on the 24 hour news cycle

I can remember these stories from the 80s and 90s that just barely got mentioned. I remember these horrible stories specifically about Chicago area officers doing horrible things to black men they arrested—for some reason I keep thinking of one story involving a home made electrocution torture device someone discovered and one guy died in custody and there was evidence that he was raped with a broom handle. It was sick and crazy stuff. I don’t know why it’s finally getting attention now.

I have a good deal of suspicion for the media being something less than colour blind, with an eye for the money that a sensational story will bring. That being said, I have nothing to offer as to why, even with cameras, there seems to be an uptick in the violence. I know it almost always rises in summer for violent crime in general.

It’s a way of focusing on the fact that the US police force is rapidly turning into a military occupation.

Obama recently signed into law limits on the equipment police can get from the military. Sorry, I was specifically looking for a ban that I believe included grenade launchers, but couldn’t find a succinct list.

All lives matter, but at the moment “Black Lives Matter” is bringing that to national attention.

I think this has been going on for some time. It’s just been contained before. But with so many cameras now in squad cars and on people and in and around public buildings, this is one genie that can’t be put back in the bottle.Also videos can’t be denied by all those who wish to keep their head buried in the sand about racism, and police brutality.

The killings aren’t new. It’s only the interest and the outrage that is new (amongst the general public, at least).

Ratings.

I wonder how many whites ditch their cars and run during traffic stops.
I was stopped on the highway because my license plate was covered in snow. I handed the trooper my license when asked. Simple. I did not run. I did not argue. I just did it. I got my ticket and drove on.

In every case currently on the news the black driver argued and /or tried to run. I’m not saying it is ok to shoot . I’m just wondering if there is a pattern here..

^ This question is in “General”.

@LuckyGuy That isn’t so. There are too many instances of police being overly antagonistic to black drivers, bystanders, pedestrians, while letting known violent criminals that are under arrest be comfortable (Waco Biker Killings) or whites that are argumentative go with a ticket. But Sandra Bland din’t run away, she just wanted an answer, and she gets throwing jail for days for lane changing while Black.

Much of the increased attention is because of the prevalence of video recording. And the video records show this is happening as much as the Black Community has been saying for years.

The police in his country are out of control and need to be disarmed.

There are examples like this of white people getting harmed or killed also, but I don’t think those stories are making the rounds as much. Did you all see this story?

There are twice as many whites killed by police but as noted above, those don’t make the headlines. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a spike in police killings. Surprisingly there has also been a spike in the number of police officers getting killed as well. I wonder if there is a connection. There seems to be little respect for the police and thye confrontational you are, the more likely you are to be considered a danger.

@JLeslie Yes, stories like that don’t seem to make the headlines. It should be enough that unarmed people are being killed by police (newsflash to police officers: being pissed off and frustrated is not justification for using lethal force), but not being able to pin the killings on “racism” makes for a much less interesting story.

I think these incidents are getting more attention in the media and I also think there are bad cops with anger issues and trigger finger…however, that said, I also think that if you’re dumb enough to take a defiant or resistant stance over a minor request, whatever your age, race or gender and you pull some stupid stunt , well…....

It’s en vogue. It’s been happening as long as I have been alive. I think it’s good. Now the whole world can see what “law enforcement” means in this country. Tsk. Tsk.

Around six months ago my sisters 14 year old twins stole some booze from her house at 3am and snuck out and met a bunch of friends at their schools football field. They got drunk and the cops came. They ran. One was in high heels and tripped quickly clutching her iPhone. The other managed to hide in some bushes to eventually be found by the police.

The punishment was a ride home in a cop car and my sister being woken up. Yup, that is it. Houses in her neighborhood run in the millions.

If her twins were black males of the same age in a poor part of town I would have been at their funeral instead of hearing the constant whinging about having their phone taken away for three months.

@LuckyGuy :: Good job obedient citizen. But you are a affluent white guy. You have no idea what it is like to know that cops will always assume you are guilty.

I grew up is a pretty liberal place (Eugene,Or) and I crashed house parties with a friend that was black. He was thrown on the ground by the police while I was drinking a 40 a lot of times.

The racism is so very deep with the police. Even in Liberal Hippey land.

@johnpowell‘s story reminds me of one of my own. Has nothing to do with actually answering this, but it remains that this happened much before this was an awareness, apparently. Except where I lived everyone knew that if you weren’t white, you’d get the shitty treatment if the cops busted your for shit. Mostly. Except in this case it was Indians, not blacks. Winnipeg, Manitoba, just look it up, srsly. (natives is the term they seem to prefer, by saying Indians I mean no disrespect)
Me and my Inuit friend ran across the street on a red light and got stopped by cops. Long story short, she was searched, then her info was looked up in the cruiser computer, and she had a knife on her, which was taken away.
I myself was left unmolested, not searched, my info was not taken, all that happened to me was one cop flashed his flashlight in my eyes to see if I was on drugs. We got let go after. Could have been much worse for my friend since she had that blade on her, but I guess shit got lazy.

This shit has always happened, but I guess technological advance makes it easier to track down. But eh I don’t really think this is something people didn’t know before. We’re prolly just singing an old song here.

Back in the 20’s there was no fuckin technology, yet everyone knew that blacks weren’t allowed to buy toilet paper or eat in restaurants.

@johnpowell I’m pretty sure parties with drunk black teens are broken up all the time by the police and the kids just go home unharmed. Are you really going to let the media sway your thinking that police officers always do the more violent or wrong thing when confronted with black people doing something wrong? Maybe we should also think black people are committing most of the crimes since that is often pirtrayed in the media?

I grew up in a very diverse town and I never heard of the black kids getting more harrassed by cops. It might have happened,, but no one was every badly physically harmed or killed. I do think black people are more likely to wind up in jail than rehab for drugs, and that there are definite inequities in the system, more in some places than others, but it’s not like every single time a black person breaks the law a cop goes racist crazy and does something outrageous.

@Jaxk That twice as many whites killed as blacks statistic might bolster your argument IF black folks comprised 50% of the population. The fact that the 2010 census places them at 13% drives a large hole through your case for “the spike” being the mere reflection of sensationalism on the part of journalists. So which is it? Are the nation’s police forces suddenly in the very un-pc business of ramping up unprovoked killings of black people, or have the killings always been with us (as the victims have insisted for better than 150 years), and the cops are now simply getting caught at it?

@stanleybmanly – That wasn’t my point. Deaths by police have gone from 500 annually to 600. That is a real spike with or without medias hype. As far as the deaths by race it would seem more appropriate to measure deaths per arrest rather than population.

@Jaxk I strongly suspect that the rise in the casualties experienced by the police is a direct reflection of stresses involved with the unraveling of our society. The cops are in the same boat as the rest of our civil service infrastructure in that they are expected to correct problems over which they fundamentally have no control; only they are distinct in that their involvement boils down to matters of life and death, frequently their own. When you think about it, there should be no surprise that the death rate is climbing for those where the rubber meets the road as the economic situation grows ever more grim for the majority of the civil population. The cops in the streets like the teachers in the schools, are located where the cracks and crumbling become visible. And for the cops, the odds are daunting. Just consider the implications of a law enforcement job in a society distinguished by growing economic insecurity, strained and failing social services, prisons as the primary resource for mental health, all awash in an absolute deluge of guns.

I agree 10,000% with @stanleybmanly
How many of us could sustain a job where every minute of your day is fraught with the potential to be your last, especially if your patrol is in the really bad parts of major cities, already plagued with drugs, crime, violence and repeat offenders. Black, white or purple, matters not, crime and violence is an equal opportunity employer.

The modus operandi of the news has always been ”If it bleeds, it leads”. Carnage has always been a better seller than the cat that got rescued stuck in an old chimney. There are a few plausible reasons it is more out there, as said before, it is the bandwagon the news want to ride because off their sources society is watching. There are more camera phones and other devices to capture this behavior, which was said before, was going on for a long time. The mentality of most people is if the cops are accosting you, it had to be for a reason, so the person was seen as guilty of something just by fact they were in contact with the cops. If it would have been a rash of gay people being bashed after the last SCOTUS debacle ruling, the news would have been all over that and every incident they could find on it. News organizations are into selling ad space, the more viewers they have the more ads running during their telecast will be seen, and the more they can charge, or the network behind them, so having stories people seem to be watching is imperative. You ride the wave until you can’t ride it any longer. This is nothing new, or more of it, it is simply more exposed because you have an impartial witness, the video. In times past the cop can simply say the witnesses to him beating a cuffed Black man were lying to get him in trouble, the Black man was resisting and brought it on himself, they were mistaken, and if he had another fellow officer back him, it was their word against the witnesses who were biased, and the cop’s version won, wrong or right.