Why, oh why, did Daunte resist arrest?

I guess that he had a panic attack and tried to flee.

Maybe because he was “Black” and she was not !

Maybe he resisted arrest so he can get shot and killed just to give racist and cruel people reason to post questions in social media mocking him for his seemingly inexplicable action?

Maybe he panicked. Or is that excuse only acceptable for police off (who should have a better handle on their emotions)?

By Andrés R. Martínez and Edgar Sandoval
April 13, 2021
NYT
——

MINNEAPOLIS — Daunte Wright called his mother. The tremble in his voice told her something was wrong. The police had stopped him, he told her nervously.

“He’s afraid of the police, and I just seen and heard the fear in his voice,” said his mother, Katie Wright.

She tried to keep him calm, as he spoke with her on the phone on Sunday while he was being pulled over in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.

He had told her the reason for the traffic stop had something to do with the air fresheners dangling from the rearview mirror, and she asked him to take them down and to let her speak with the officers over the phone.

Mr. Wright, 20, she said, asked the officers, “Am I in trouble?” Then Ms. Wright heard scuffling and a woman screaming in the background. The call dropped abruptly, and Ms. Wright feared that her son had become another victim of police brutality in America.

Before Sunday, Mr. Wright had been a young Black man unknown to the world, but known and loved by his friends and relatives in the Minneapolis area. He was a young father of a toddler who was almost 2, Daunte Jr. He loved basketball. As a freshman at Thomas Edison High School, he was voted a “class clown.”

But in the moments that his mother overheard in horror, her fears were realized, Ms. Wright said on Tuesday on “Good Morning America” and at a news conference in Minneapolis. Her son was shot by the police in what officials described as an accidental discharge, after a veteran white officer pulled and fired her firearm instead of her Taser as officers tried to handcuff him.

Like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and George Floyd, Mr. Wright’s name and life have become both a chant and symbol, and in the small universe of the Twin Cities region, the police killings of Black men share tragic connections.

Mr. Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, was one of Mr. Wright’s former teachers, his family said.

“This was the worst day of my life,” Ms. Wright said during a news conference outside a Minneapolis courthouse on Tuesday.

Moments earlier, Ms. Ross had wrapped her arms around Ms. Wright. Ms. Ross, who delivered tearful testimony this month in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing Mr. Floyd, led a small crowd in a prayer circle.

But the sight of family members of at least six Black men killed at the hands of the police and a relative of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose lynching remains one of the nation’s most gruesome hate crimes, overwhelmed her and she left in tears.

Mr. Wright’s family said the young father did not have to suffer the same fate.

“He was loved. He was ours. This is no broken family,” said an aunt, Naisha Wright.

He was remembered as a dedicated father with a bright smile and outgoing demeanor. The mother of his son, Chyna Whitaker, said in a Facebook post that the two had been amicably sharing custody of the child.

Mr. Wright attended Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis in 2018, said the school principal, Yusuf Abdullah.

“He was just like any other kid,” Mr. Abdullah said.

He had also attended Edison High School in Minneapolis, where he was voted class clown as a freshman, according to the school’s 2015–16 yearbook.

“He loved to make people laugh,” said Emajay Driver, a friend of Mr. Wright. “He was just great to be around. There was never a dull moment.”

Tenzing Chime, 21, of Minneapolis, recalled befriending Mr. Wright when they were basketball teammates at Northeast Middle School. Later, at Edison High, Mr. Wright played on both the ninth-grade and junior varsity teams.

Mr. Wright, Mr. Chime recalled, “really wanted to win, and after we lost we’d be upset.” “Not at other people, but at ourselves,” he continued. “He loved playing sports.”

Mario Greer, a cousin, said Mr. Wright was also a sensitive soul who enjoyed lighting Roman candles with him.

“I didn’t get the chance to tell my cousin I love him,” Mr. Greer said, holding back tears. “I got to go every holiday now without my cousin, my baby cousin.”

Family members created a GoFundMe page to raise money for his burial, and by Tuesday afternoon nearly $500,000 had been raised. Kristie Bryant, one of Mr. Wright’s aunts who helped draw attention to the page, wrote on Facebook, “I never imagined this happening to someone in our family.”

The police said that Mr. Wright was stopped on Sunday because of an expired registration tag, and that the officers noticed something dangling from the rearview mirror after they pulled him over. There was an arrest warrant for Mr. Wright after he missed a court hearing on two misdemeanor charges that he had illegally possessed a pistol and fled from Minneapolis police officers in June.

In a graphic clip of body camera video from Sunday’s traffic stop, police officers are seen outside the vehicle trying to detain Mr. Wright, who suddenly moves back into his seat as a struggle ensued. Officer Kimberly A. Potter, a 26-year veteran of the department who resigned on Tuesday, then pointed a weapon in his direction and yelled, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” The authorities said she fired a gun instead.

On Tuesday, Ms. Wright described to reporters the excruciating moments on the phone with her son before he was killed. After she lost the connection, she said, she tried calling him back repeatedly. But there was no answer.

Finally her phone rang again. It was a FaceTime call from a young woman who had been sitting in the passenger seat during the traffic stop, she recalled. A horrified Ms. Wright watched a live video image of her dead son, slumped on the driver’s seat.

An autopsy revealed that Mr. Wright died after he was struck by a single bullet in the chest.

“My son was laying there, unresponsive,” she said in tears outside the courthouse. “That’s the last time I have seen my son and that’s the last time I have heard from my son. And I have had no explanation since then.”

You almost make it sound like suicide-by-cop.
Which for a black man is amazingly easy to accomplish; just ask the officer “why?”, or “what have I done?”.
For a white man, plastered with AR-15’s,it’s much harder, if not near impossible, to accomplish that.
You, @crazyguy,chose the absolute right moniker, I’ll give you that.

The cop shooting Daunte is inexplicable. She was a 26 year veteran of the force, so not a rookie, so that justification is out. According to the news, the tazer and the gun do not feel or look similar to each other, so that justification is out. She was questioning him on a misdemeanor warrant, which she could have given him a ticket for and sent him on his way. She made a smart move by resigning.

I would think he felt similar to a German Jew being loaded onto a train.

^Horrible analogy, but perhaps fairly accurate.

@chyna
I am just developing an allergy to this incessant victim blaming when it comes to black people.

@mazingerz88 Do you happen to also know that Daunte was wanted for a crime involving aggravated choking and robbing a woman? See
https://www.foxnews.com/us/daunte-wright-had-outstanding-warrant-for-attempted-aggravated-robbery-when-he-was-killed

I apologize for using a source that nobody on this board reads. BUT I did try to find the same info on other news channels. Here is what I found:

https://www.nytimes.com/article/daunte-wright-death-minnesota.html

and

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daunte-wright-was-stopped-expired-plates-driving-while-black-may-n1263878

Of course, to people like you he was an angel!

I do not condone his shooting; however, I do not whitewash his character, or the fact that he resisted arrest.

@rebbel You, like me, have no idea what went on in Daunte’s mind when he decided to resist. Was he thinking suicide-by-cop may be better than the jail? Was he thinking that he had no chance to prove his innocence at the trial and therefore decided to try and run?

We’ll never know. What we do know is it was incredibly stupid.

@ragingloli @chyna The analogy I would use is a guy jumping off a bridge.

@jca2 Just like we shall never know what was going on in Daunte’s mind when he decided to resist and run, we shall never know why the cop pulled out her handgun instead of a taser.

@Darth_Algar No. Panic attacks can happen to anybody. However, a black man pulled over by the police should realize the possible consequences and think accordingly.

@crazyguy
“However, a black man pulled over by the police should realize the possible consequences and think accordingly.”

By that, I assume you mean they should arm themselves to the teeth and shoot the cops dead on sight in an act of preemptive self defence.

@RedDeerGuy1 Or perhaps he did a mental calculation of his chances of surviving a jail sentence for his earlier crime. We will never know.

“Of course, to people like you he was an angel!”

That’s disingenuous, unless you believe that only angels should be protected from murder. Who cares about the “dark past” that always seems to magically appear? The justice system is supposed to do the sentencing. Not a random person with a gun.

@longgone I agree 1,000%. However, just because a black man gets shot resisting arrest (again!), we should not whitewash the man’s character or the fact that he was resisting arrest.

^ A man – a young father, apparently – is dead. He was loved. His family are grieving. Who is “whitewashing”?

@crazyguy: Whatever Daunte did that he had a warrant for means we should try to lessen him getting murdered by the cop?

It reminds me of friends who told me how George Floyd did time in Texas and wasn’t “a good guy.” That doesn’t mean he should be choked to death in the street, which is worse treatment than people give their dogs.

I just can’t believe that an arrested person is going to stay calm and act rational, immaterial of him/her being guilty. It is stupid to even expect that. People have panic attacks for sillier reasons and getting handcuffed and arrested will put even the calmest of brains into panic mode. The question is, why are the police officers so trigger happy over there? Every country in the world has armed officers and they deal with criminals and suspects as dangerous as they are supposed to be in the states. They don’t go around shooting criminals or suspects for resisting arrest. In fact in my country, they let them actually get away, if they get the impression that things are going to turn ugly. Of course, they catch them the next time, as they go completely prepared for all contingencies….but wanton shooting never happens, no matter how grave the situation is. Each police officer here has to account for EVERY bullet they’ve been issued with…and a missing bullet could lead to immediate suspension (or worse). How can you be so callous with people’s lives over there? I just cannot understand it….I know, this comment of mine will trigger a bunch of pro-whatevers here, who’ll say that I have to ‘clean my house’ first before disparaging a developed country….but I don’t care….these things are just not right. When law enforcers shoot someone (anyone), it is just not right….they need more restraint or alternate solutions, which they can LEARN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES.

@AK You are absolutely right. Something is fundamentally wrong with policing in our country.

@AK
Here is a couple of Swedish cops on vacation in New York, subduing a man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izdfnHBMwSs

Can you see the difference in professionalism?
And remember, those guys are completely unarmed.

Resisting arrest is something that sometimes happens and police are trained to handle such situations. It does not seem highly credible that a policeman would mistake a gun for a taser.

@longgone Yes. He was all of those things. In addition he choked and robbed a woman at gunpoint. That was the crime he was being arrested for, not for air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror.

@crazyguy And? You claimed there is something going on that you call “whitewashing”. What do you mean?

@AK In the US, resisting arrest is futile and can lead to unpleasant conclusions. The police in the US is trained to never let a suspect get away. Before you go too far with how things are done in your country, I will remind you that your country has an unenviable record on lawlessness – see
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/india-is-not-just-a-lawless-state-the-govt-does-not-even-know-the-law

Let me suggest to you that Daunte was not exactly surprised about being arrested. He was expecting it! Therefore, pleading panic on his part is fairly easy to refute. I cannot explain why the officer who shot him yelled: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” when she actually shot him with a handgun.

@crazyguy Are you the guy who argued that terrorist attacks and mass shooting by civilians are the same? In another thread? Well, of course, I expected the ‘clean your house’ loony tunes on this answer too…..so what you’re saying is – just because my country has some issue or the other, I am not supposed to be disgusted by police brutality elsewhere? Get well soon, man….or don’t….I don’t care….

Indeed, why? Not thinking straight for whatever reason!

I’ve read a few articles that have said Daunte had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. Other than Faux news, I’ve not seen anywhere that he chocked someone. Not that I’m saying that’s a lie, I just haven’t seen it.

@AK Actually I do not remember making that point.

It is ok to be disgusted by brutality anywhere. However, before you start lecturing the US about how things are done so well in your country, you need to hold up a mirror.

@chyna Perhaps you will now realize what is faux news and what is real!

^Oh, I do! I hope others realize it too.

Sorry, but the “he was no angel” argument is just BS. I remember it especially with the death of Trayvon Martin, as in “guys look, he smoked WEED! He was no angel!” Floyd and Daunte don’t have to be perfect innocent angels to not be killed by police. I agree with not making them into heroes. I agree that Michael Brown had just robbed a convenience store and was not a “gentle giant”. But that has nothing to do with whether they deserved to be killed or whether the police officer who killed them should be acquitted.

As for why he resisted, what I gathered from the question I asked about this yesterday was that it’s a panicked, irrational reaction and police need to be able to better handle it when it happens. Fatal shooting can’t always be the response.

@crazyguy Are you trying to lecture me from a pedestal man? I can’t question your country? Why not? I wasn’t questioning your country anyway…it was your police I ridiculed….and people like you too….What do you mean I should hold a mirror? I don’t need to hold anything at all. Why did you even bring an oped piece written by a political party owned ‘news’ paper, spewing venom on the current ruling party. You have your fox news, CNN wars, we have our newspaper wars….in any case, how does it matter? A hit piece on judicial system which alludes to an off chance of police getting away with ‘murder’ ...is your basis of sizing me up on a mirror? Why am I even talking about it on a thread that is about straight up murder by a cop who didn’t know a tazer from a gun! I don’t a mirror man…you need it along with a stinging reality check. Like I said, I don’t care if you get well or not….but I think it is time you got a reality check. This – ‘you can’t question me’ mentality is the reason you have police shootings and mass shootings….You aren’t above anyone crazyguy. Not in the modern world. I’ll question anything I want….others will too….without mirrors…deal with it.

I wonder if the OP even bothered to read this Fluther Q which gives plenty of reasons why a Black man would resist arrest:

https://www.fluther.com/226206/why-would-someone-resist-arrest/

^ I realized today that I have never seen him post or respond in “social”. I’m not sure he knows it’s there. I messaged him to let him know.

@crazyguy Yeah, it wasn’t you who argued that terrorism and civilian shootings were the same. I went back and checked. It was a crazy guy but not you…he pulled another oped piece about naxal attacks in my country on a thread that was about civilian mass shooting. The similarity of modus operandi and strong sense of ‘clean your house before questions’ in both the threads is startling….and that probably made me ask if you were that guy.

The better question is why oh why, does a police officer with 20 years experience, not know the difference between a lazer and a service weapon? And why oh why, do conservatives always start up with lame ass excuses for murdering
cops when these things happen?

@crazyguy “I do not condone his shooting”

Yeah, you do. Oh, you can say you don’t, but everything else you’ve posted screams overwise. You’re now basically doing the equivalent of “I don’t condone the woman being raped, but if she wasn’t wearing that short skirt…”.

Even your above response about panic is victim blaming. Evidently the veteran police officer (who, again, ought to have a better handle on their emotions) is allowed to panic, but the black man is not.

^^Not only does he condone the shooting, he’s making fun of the dead man as well.

@Demosthenes I agree that even big bad men deserve their day in court. By pointing out the flaws in Floyd and Daunte, I am not for a moment implying that that gives police the right to shoot or otherwise kill anybody with impunity. However, I think, it is important to correct the statements being made on this thread. Even @JLeslie admitted that the Democrats have been less than honest about what actually happened.

I did read part of the thread in response to your excellent question about why people resist arrest. If I were being arrested, I may do the same thing. However, Daunte knew what the arrest was for; in that case, he should have expected it, and been mentally prepared. Perhaps, he had already done a mental calculation in his head, and come to the conclusion that flight was the better option. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

@janbb Since I am the OP, I will respond to you even though I do not like to be addressed in the third person.

I did read part of the thread you mentioned. While I can understand panic in somebody not understanding why on earth s/he is being arrested, I have some difficulty understanding panic ion a person who should have clearly been expecting to be arrested. Don’t you?

@AK I accept your excuse.

@crazyguy I think these facts are relevant only in establishing the facts of of what happened. If, for example, the police are claiming that Michael Brown grabbed the officer’s gun, the fact that he had strong-arm robbed a convenience earlier lends credence to that theory. It doesn’t prove it, but it’s relevant, I would say. And obviously we shouldn’t let narrative get in the way of facts. To use the example of Michael Brown again, “hands up don’t shoot” remains a rallying cry at BLM protests today but it’s based on a debunked claim from an unreliable witness. My problem, however, is when the fact that Floyd or any of these others did bad things is brought up to somehow mitigate their deaths: “it wasn’t that bad, guys, Floyd was a bad person”. But his criminal past is irrelevant unless it specifically pertains to the events of his death.

And yeah, I’ve never been arrested or been profiled by police, never been in a situation where I thought I might go to jail and that it could ruin my life, so I don’t really know how I would react. It’s fair to question why they react this way (Rayshard Brooks, who resisted to such an extent that he grabbed an officer’s taser and fired it at him), but it’s also fair to question why the police handled the situation so poorly. The burden is ultimately on them. In the same way that Daunte could’ve known an arrest was coming, the police know they may be met with resistance.

@Nomore_lockout I am as puzzled by the panic (or something else) exhibited by the female officer. Perhaps she had a fight with her significant other that day; perhaps she had been waiting for 20-some years to kill a black man because she hated them all. Or, just maybe, she had never faced a similar situation before. Or perhaps the positions of her gun and taser had been recently switched. I hope we learn the truth some day.

However, what we already know, is that:

1. Daunte was resisting arrest.
2. Because of his past alleged deeds, he should have expected to be arrested.

How about panic in someone who expected TO BE SHOT ? And before pimping lessons on “the majesty of the law” in your ADOPTED country, consider how that worked out for the dead man. Angel or not isn’t the point.

@Darth_Algar Even your above response about panic is victim blaming. Here is my response (I think) that you had problems with:

“Let me suggest to you that Daunte was not exactly surprised about being arrested. He was expecting it! Therefore, pleading panic on his part is fairly easy to refute. I cannot explain why the officer who shot him yelled: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” when she actually shot him with a handgun.”

Please explain why you think from my response is about victim blaming.

@mazingerz88 The beauty of Fluther is that you can essentially say what you want and nobody is going to ever change your mind. So, please feel free to think and say anything you want.

Yes we banter opinions. Mine is that ANOTHER unarmed black man was shot by a cop. This time the shooting was carried out by a 20 year veteran for the “crime” of the VICTIM “raising his hand”.

@stanleybmanly With every post, you reinforce my decision to just ignore you!

Along with common sense and basic logic. As you can see, my feelings are hurt. I’m so sad at the thought of your disapproval, I can no longer feed nor dress myself.

I’m not sure the real story on this will ever come out. Let me rephrase that: I’m not sure the real story on this will ever be presented. What are the facts? Daunte was pulled over by the cops and resisted their efforts to detain him. In the process a police officer shot him. Those are the facts.
Now enter all the SJWs that want to paint this into something it isn’t. It wasn’t a racist thing. It wasn’t like the police officer thought “Hey, for 26 years I’ve never shown a hint of racism so I should be able to kill me a black and get away with it!”. It appears it wasn’t like Daunte was a shining angel as @crazyguy pointed out. It wasn’t like he was just sitting in his car and she (the police officer) decided he needed to be shot. None of those things really matter because he got shot. It was a tragedy. The cop even resigned without being asked to because she felt horrible about it. Resigning does not excuse her actions nor keep her out of any potential criminal or civil charges. But it does tell us something about how she felt about it.
The citation that @mazingerz88 has a clue into it that points to what I am talking about. “Like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and George Floyd, Mr. Wright’s name and life have become both a chant and symbol, and in the small universe of the Twin Cities region, the police killings of Black men share tragic connections.” Michael Brown is the key here. He was a black man that was killed by a cop. His name and his exploits were broadcast loud and clear by BLM. However, they ignored all the facts and the ones they presented were lies. According to the well spread story, he was walking along and a police officer tried to stop him. When he ran the cop got out of his car and chased him down. Brown knelt down with his hands in the air and the cop shot him. That was the story his buddy told the world. And it was what the maniacs used as a basis to riot and scream about police brutality, racism and every other SJW evil they could think of. But the truth did finally come out. Brown and his buddy had just robbed a convenient store and accosted the owner when he tried to stop them. They were walking right up the middle of the road and refused to move when the police car came up behind them. When the cop finally put on his lights to get them to move Brown went over and attacked the cop, hitting him and trying to grab his gun. When that was unsuccessful, he turned and walked away. When the cop got out of his car and ordered him to stop he turned and ran at the cop to continue the assault. That was when the cop shot him. This was the cops story of the events and was confirmed by many witnesses (all of whom were black). So Michael Brown was a thug and a menace to society who felt he was above the law. He instigated not one but two attacks on the same cop to show his dominance and got shot for it. But that narrative (the truth) doesn’t make the cops bad, it doesn’t scream racism, and it doesn’t make Brown a perfect angel.
And much like that, it may come out that Daunte actually did something violent enough to make the cop feel the need to at least tase him was warranted. But we will never hear that chanted over and over. It those facts came out, you might hear them once and then they will be suppressed by the mob. All the SJWs care about is that a cop killed a black person.

ANOTHER black person!!! How many would you guess might be enough?

@stanleybmanly You ask questions and believe you have me cornered. So here’s an answer to you…enough would be when the blacks stop acting like criminals. I certainly don’t have sympathy for white criminals. If they act out and get shot I still have the view that it really didn’t need to happen…the idiot could have actually not acted like a fool. When a cop shoots a white person by mistake due to bad intelligence or due to bad judgement I don’t look at race. But if the victim is black it suddenly matters? Why? Are black lives more important that white lives or vice versa? Once again, you folks on the left are focusing on all the wrong things. If you were really concerned about police brutality, you would scream equally loud for white or black or Asian or Hispanic victims. Because then you would actually be focusing on the real problems. Instead you want to make everything about race, even when it obviously isn’t.

Here’s an article about the disproportionate number of black people killed by the police.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

@jca2 I cannot read your link, because I will NEVER provide my email address to the rag called The Washington Post. However, here are the real stats on police interactions by race:
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf

@crazyguy: I didn’t have to provide any email address to read the article I linked above.

Regarding the arrest warrant that was out for Daunte Wright, here’s what Snopes.com says about it:

What’s True
Wright was charged with aggravated robbery for an incident that occurred in December 2019, court documents showed. Additionally, there was a warrant for Wright’s arrest when Brooklyn Police said they pulled him over for expired license plate tabs on April 11, 2021, and one officer fatally shot him. However…

What’s False
A judge issued that warrant for Wright’s arrest weeks before his fatal encounter with police because he missed a court hearing for unrelated misdemeanor charges, not aggravated robbery.

What’s Undetermined
No evidence showed Wright was “on the run” and attempting to evade law enforcement in the days, weeks, or months before his death.

@jca2 Since you know everything about Daunte, please explain why he resisted arrest?

@crazyguy: I cut and pasted this from the article I linked:

Source: The Washington Post:
“According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.”

@crazyguy: “Since you know everything about Daunte, please explain why he resisted arrest?”

I can’t answer that. I can’t ask him. He’s dead.
BOOM mic drop

@jca2 Since I know that you will not bother to dig up any facts for yourself, let me. In 2018, 26% of whites were stopped in traffic stops, compared to 21% of blacks, and 19% of hispanics.

As for the shootings, perhaps you need to dig up stats on percentages of different races that resist arrest.

There ya go @jca2 truth, reality and facts. Now how is a guy going to ignore that . . LET ME count the ways !

@jca2 If he were alive, we would all know the answer, wouldn’t we?

However, I give him more credit than you guys do. He did a quick calculation in his head and realized his goose was cooked either way. He could submit and spend the next 5–10 years in jail, or he could make a run for it.

@crazyguy: Apparently you didn’t read what I cut and pasted a few posts above about Daunte’s arrest warrant and what it was for, and what it was not for.

Told ya @jca2 !

@seawulf575 You talked about Brown again. That thug who was walking away from the cop when the cop kept following him instead of waiting for back-up? That Brown?

The cop executed Brown and got away with it. Brown was walking away and the only reason he turned back was the cop kept giving him orders he didn’t want to do. But he was walking away. Walking. Away. Walking…away. That killer cop could have waited for back-up.

But no, that white cop had to be obeyed by the black thug, right? Because he was a cop. And if you now move angrily towards the cop you’re dead. That angry, vengeful and racist white cop failed to protect that black thug’s life by simply waiting for back-up. Because white racist cops just don’t do those things. If they are not obeyed, you’re dead. Because they’re cops. You must obey. Especially if you’re a black thug, your life is cheap and you’re dead meat. Correct?

Reminds me of George Zimmerman killing the boy who was walking through the white neighborhood with only a bag of Skittles.

This can go on forever, but it’s an exercise in futility. Conservatives will always side with the cops in these situations. Unless of course, the cops are trying to suppress a rebellion they take part in because they don’t like election results. That’s another ball of wax.

@Nomore_lockout You are so correct! Because nobody on this board will ever admit to his/her mind being changed, no matter the excesses on their side of the fence!

Virginia police, Army Lt. Caron Nazario and America’s bloody traffic stop Catch-22
The system as it exists makes it almost impossible for Black and brown Americans to avoid harm.

By Matthew Guariglia

======

On the night of Dec. 5, a familiar scene unfolded at a gas station in Windsor, Virginia. Police pulled over Caron Nazario, a Black and Latino second lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps, claiming that his car didn’t have license plates.

(Reports said that temporary plates were taped to the inside of the new car’s back window and that they were visible.)

Videos of the incident, some of them from Nazario’s cellphone, as well as police body cameras, underscore the deadly truth we have long known about police interactions with people of color: Lawfulness is not always a recipe for safety.

Obedience is not always a recipe for safety. The only person who can control the bodily health and well-being of the person pulled over are the people with the weapons. This is the bloody Catch-22 of modern policing in America.

Videos of the incident underscore the deadly truth we’ve long known about police interactions with people of color.

In the video, police approach the vehicle with their weapons already drawn. The first instruction we can hear from the police is “Keep your hands outside the vehicle.” Nazario, who still has not been told why he has been pulled over, keeps his hands thrust outside his driver’s side window as instructed.

Seconds later, he receives the next order from police: “Get out of the car, now.” Nazario still has his seat belt on, so any attempts to get out of the vehicle would require violating the first order. He receives these contradictory commands all while two guns are pointed at him, and he still does not know exactly why he has been pulled over.

Between calm requests for clarity, Nazario then tries to assert his identity as an active-duty military officer. “I’m serving this country, and this is how I’m treated?” Would respectability and a shared language of patriotism serve to de-escalate the situation?

No, as is made immediately clear by the officer’s response: “I’m a veteran, too, and I learned how to obey.”

Nazario is, in the eyes of the police, a subordinate. He has been taught the chain of command and, as the officers see it, is obligated under threat of physical violence to recognize police as his superiors and obey contradictory orders with no visible justification.

’
As Nazario again asks why he is being so aggressively treated, an officer responds: “What’s going on is you’re fixing to ride the lightning, son,” an allusion to either being Tasered or some other violence.

(“Riding the lightning” can also refer to the electric chair, based in part on the electric chair on the cover of Metallica’s album “Ride the Lightning”).

This types of escalation during traffic stops is just one reason many cities may be following the lead of Berkeley, California, in disentangling traffic enforcement from police departments.

Nazario then tells the officer that he is afraid to try to get out of vehicle, and the officer responds, “Yeah, you should be.” Whether he gets out of the car or stays in the car, it has been made clear that police intend to hurt him.

Less than a minute later, police spray him in the face multiple times with pepper spray. Even afterward, as he struggles to breathe, he still keeps his hands visible to the officers and asks them to remove his seat belt. He, like many other motorists before him, knows putting his arms where officers may not be able to see them can justify a police shooting.

This is the rhetorical trap of police commands. Getting out of the car means potentially getting shot, choked or subdued with unnecessary force. But as we have seen, hesitating and staying in the car, trying to reason with police and understand why you have been pulled over, is also a recipe for harm.

Any police-involved misunderstanding can escalate almost immediately. On the other hand, wordlessly obeying orders means being subjected to the violence of handcuffing, subduing and arrest.

The system as it exists makes it almost impossible to avoid harm.

And as the Nazario videos show, “resisting” officers often becomes the superseding offense, punishable by force, even if there was no underlying reason for the police interaction in the first place.

The incident summons the words of the civil rights leader Robert F. Williams, a critic of the philosophy of nonviolent protest, who wrote: “The majority of white people in the United States have literally no idea of the violence with which Negroes in the South are treated daily — nay, hourly. The violence is deliberate, conscious, condoned by authorities. It has gone on for centuries and is going on today, every day, unceasing and unremitting.”

Within Williams’ critique of the nonviolence movement was the recognition that there is, by design, a great deal of bodily harm implied within nonviolence; it is just one-sided.

We also now have substantial evidence suggesting that obeying police commands, like reaching for a driver’s license or reaching to undo a seat belt, can justify the police shootings of Black men.

In 2014, a South Carolina police officer was sentenced to five years in prison for shooting Levar Jones, a Black motorist who was obeying the officer’s instructions to reach into his vehicle to retrieve his ID.

In 2016, a police officer asked Philando Castile to produce his license and registration. After Castile informed the officer that he had a firearm in the car, the officer shot Castile as he was reaching for his documents.

The novelist Joseph Heller invented the term “Catch-22” in his 1961 novel of the same name. In his book, airmen can avoid danger only if they declare themselves unfit for duty. But fitness is characterized by “a concern for one’s safety in the face of danger.”

So by informing their commanding officers of their unfitness, Heller’s airmen were inadvertently demonstrating their fitness. Police in the U.S. create their own Catch-22.

Police ask for extreme obedience. By obeying, motorists open themselves up to violence — but hesitation about exposing oneself to violence only triggers more violence.

The officer who confronted Caron Nazario has been fired, but his firing will not change the rhetoric, conventions and implied violence of traffic stops.

Until the people expected to handle mass shootings are no longer the first responders who show up for routine encounters with the public, this will continue. After all, the violence Nazario experienced is a part of the violence that, as Robert F. Williams reminds us, is “unceasing and unremitting.”

A heinous offense of driving while not Caucasian. I’d love to see Fox News take on this. Albeit conservatives are all gung ho about military and vets. Oh, a BROWN soldier, well that’s’ different. These ass wipes make me ashamed of my country. Even of my own damn skin.

@Nomore_lockout Please name one country where things are better.

I better cool it in the sun this summer. I don’t want to be mistaken by police as a non – Nordic European. That could ruin my day In Amerika.

@mazingerz88 Boy, you are verbose!

Yes, there are excesses in the US. Please name one country with the freedoms we have and better policing!

Probably any damn country that purports to be civilized and under rule of law.

@Nomore_lockout That is not a specific name.

No need for specifics, and I wont argue semantics with you lot. You damn well know what I mean.

@crazyguy: Sweden.

@crazyguy _“Here is my response (I think) that you had problems with:

“Let me suggest to you that Daunte was not exactly surprised about being arrested. He was expecting it! Therefore, pleading panic on his part is fairly easy to refute. I cannot explain why the officer who shot him yelled: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” when she actually shot him with a handgun.”

Please explain why you think from my response is about victim blaming.“_
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

@jca2 I have lived in Sweden. Have you?

@crazyguy: Living in the country was not what you asked. You asked “name me one country with the freedoms we have and better policing.” If it’s got to be a country we’ve lived in, then the country I’d name could only be the United States.

@crazyguy “Please name one country with the freedoms we have and better policing!”

Germany. Not perfect, at all. But “better”? Yes.

It feels so awkward to praise Germany – with our past, it seems ridiculous that any other country should look to us for a good example. But I’ve interacted with police in both the US and Germany, and the difference is striking. Obviously, that’s anecdotal evidence. Here’s a more objective view.

PS: In Germany, it takes 2–3 years to become part of the police force. How long does it take in your state?

I’m still waiting for one of the resident conservatives, to chime in about how BLM folks are just looters and opportunists. I mean, rioting over a murdered Black guy is so last year. Not like they have a legit reason to riot. Like, oh I don’t know. Turning over an election result we don’t like? And looting is so much more lucrative when you loot the nations capitol. Not some cheesy ass TV or appliance store. These people are full of shit as a damn holiday turkey.

@crazyguy I did not offer any excuse for you to ‘accept’. I can see that you’re looking for a way out of my firefight, as you didn’t reply to any of the points I made and only made a lame ‘excuse’ reply. I can see that you’re busy with tons of other firefights right here with others. So, I will proceed to EXCUSE YOU out of my reply range..

@jca2 Yes, I know the rhetoric surrounding how blacks are killed by police at a disproportionately large number. But hey, here’s an article showing that blacks commit a disproportionately large number of violent crimes. Amazing, isn’t it? Is it your contention that regardless of how many crimes they commit we should only punish or interact with them in the numbers proportionate to their population in the country? Set up a quota system and after we hit “the number” they can do whatever they want without any repercussions at all?

This conversation smells like tiki torches.

@mazingerz88 We have had this discussion about Brown a number of times and you are completely ignoring all the pertinent facts. Brown was a violent person. He pretty much saw himself above the law. When you are crazy enough to willingly attack and beat a cop and then charge him again when he dares to get out of his car, you present a significant threat to society. To suggest that he is somehow a victim is ludicrous, even for you. To say it was the cops fault for not just letting him go is idiotic, even for you. To have the media lump him in as an innocent that was attacked viciously by the police for racist reasons is just plain crap.

@jca2 George Zimmerman…oh yeah! The guy that was following someone he thought looked suspicious and then got attacked by that same guy? Oh yeah! I remember that case. See, you always forget that even though Martin was carrying skittles, he also jumped on and beat someone. Unfortunately for him the man was armed. Again…you guys always want to make it some racist thing but forget many of the facts. Not sure if it is purposeful omissions or if you are just that dipped in the kool-aid

Oh, and @jca2 if you don’t like to read the article I posted showing that blacks commit a disproportionate number of the crimes, here is a like that has a nice table on it that spells it out pretty clearly. For 13% of the population, they commit 51% of the murders, 26% of the rapes, 52% of the robberies, and 33% of the aggravated assaults. So again, maybe you can explain what you really expect? They are committing a disproportionate amount of the crime and they get arrested a disproportionate amount of the time and I’m quite certain they get killed by police a disproportionate number of times. So how is that racism?

@seawulf575 It’s kind of good to know that if it was your son,
Dad, brother or uncle who did what Brown did…hypothetically…you would fully support the cop’s performance in that case.

And stop with reminding me about the facts. I’m guessing you know exactly what I have been talking about with regards to this case. That cop had a chance to save Brown’s life from himself but he was such a weak and unemphatic man and chose execution.

Now now, we conservatives always support police. Unless we are beating them to death with a fire extinguisher, because they have the audacity to try to arrest us for Insurrection. Haven’t these guys gotten hep to redneck, uh, I mean White privilege? When we riot destroy (and kill police officers) it’s an act of patriotism. If Black people do it, they are out of control savages. Guess you libs didn’t get the memo.

@mazingerz88 You mean Trayvon?

I have been doing a lot of research on the Trayvon Martin case, and can say the two things below almost definitively:

1. George Zimmerman did not hate or even categorize blacks. He had reason to do so.
2. He was not guilty of anything. He was acquitted by a unanimous jury verdict, and the Federal DOJ could not find he violated Trayvon’s civil rights after a THREE-YEAR investigation.

Poppycock!! White folks have been getting away with murdering black folks in the South since the founding of the country. It’s another American tradition.

@crazyguy: If you read under “background of the shooting” (last paragraph in that section) and “Shooting” you’ll see why it looks like Zimmerman had it out for black people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

@jca2 I believe the paragraph you are referring to under “background of the shooting” is:

According to friends and neighbors of Zimmerman, three weeks prior to the shooting on February 26, Zimmerman called police to report a young man peering into the windows of an empty Twin Lakes home.[2] By the time police arrived, the suspect had fled. On February 6, workers witnessed two young black men lingering in the yard of a Twin Lakes resident around the same time a new laptop and some gold jewelry was stolen from her home. The next day police discovered the stolen laptop in the backpack of a young black man whom Zimmerman identified as the same person he had spotted peering into windows on February 2.

Because the last paragraph is about his gun license.

Please re-read that paragraph and compare it to:

During the months leading up to the February 26, 2012, shooting, Zimmerman called the police several times to report people he believed to be suspicious. On each of the calls, Zimmerman offered information about the race of the suspects only when specifically asked by the dispatcher to do so; his reports said that all were black males.

The paragraph I referenced occurs directly above the one you cited.

Under Shooting, I find many indications of why Zimmerman is not a racist, and none that he is. You will have to be more explicit.

My apologies, @crazyguy. I was giving you the wrong paragraph. It was the prior one, which was this:

During the months leading up to the February 26, 2012, shooting, Zimmerman called the police several times to report people he believed to be suspicious. On each of the calls, Zimmerman offered information about the race of the suspects only when specifically asked by the dispatcher to do so; his reports said that all were black males.

@jca2 Funny! That is the same paragraph I used in my post to draw just the opposite conclusion.

Here, also, @crazyguy, why is Zimmerman on the street and not in his car (where he would be safest if Martin was such a scary, terrible individual) when Dispatch specifically told him not to chase him?

“At approximately 7:09 p.m.,[Note 4] Zimmerman called the Sanford police non-emergency number to report a suspicious person in the Twin Lakes community.[44] Zimmerman said, “We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy⁠ …”.[2] He described an unknown male “just walking around looking about” in the rain and said, “This guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something.”[45] Zimmerman reported that the person had his hand in his waistband and was walking around looking at homes.[46] He also mentioned that Martin was wearing a “dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie.”[47] On the recording, Zimmerman is heard saying, “these assholes, they always get away.”[48][49]

About two minutes into the call, Zimmerman said, “he’s running”.[50] The dispatcher asked, “He’s running? Which way is he running?”[51] Noises on the tape at this point have been interpreted by some media outlets as the sound of a car door chime, possibly indicating Zimmerman opened his car door.[52] Zimmerman followed Martin, eventually losing sight of him.[50] The dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following him. When Zimmerman answered, “yeah”, the dispatcher said, “We don’t need you to do that.” Zimmerman responded, “Okay.”[53] Zimmerman asked that police call him upon their arrival so he could provide his location.[50] Zimmerman ended the call at 7:15 p.m.”

@jca2 If his attitude is: “these assholes, they always get away.”, and it is true that Trayvon was running, I can fully understand Zimmerman exiting his car. If I were him I would stay in the car, because I am a chickenshit. By getting out, he put himself in extreme danger.

@crazyguy: If Trayvon did something to deserve being an asshole, like if he actually committed a crime, I would think maybe that would lend more credence to the argument. However, since Trayvon was just walking with his bag of Skittles and not breaking or entering into any properties, for what reason would Zimmerman even need to chase him?

@jca2 In Zimmerman’s mind, Trayvon was trespassing and that made him an “asshole”.And this asshole was not going to get away!

@crazyguy: That’s what pissed people off. Zimmerman used his own prejudices to guide his actions. To him, a black boy should not be walking through a white neighborhood.

@jca2 There is zero evidence to support that POV. Even Obama’s DOJ gave up after three years of looking!

@crazyguy You don’t think he was racially profiling? Why did he assume Martin was trespassing?

Zero evidence? Just as you, Zimmerman regarded any black kid on a public sidewalk in a white neighborhood the definition of “trespassing”. All of those phone calls to the police over “ suspicious” black boys very much parallels your own predilection to equate “black” with “criminal”.

@Demosthenes As the neighborhood watch coordinator, Zimmerman would know the residents of the community. Any stranger would be assumed to be trespassing, whether s/he was black or white. I do not know whether Zimmerman reported only black strangers – it would appear so from the police interactions, but perhaps there were no incidents involving white or brown strangers. WE’LL NEVER KNOW!

That’s right a black kid is dead, but It’s “not about race”. That’s scientific! I can’t prove it so “we’ll never know.” I can’t prove that Mexico won’t pay for the wall, or that Trump lies more than Biden or that masks aren’t useless in preventing the spread of disease. Let’s devote ourselves to MORE hours of research on these subjects. Perhaps some research on the dynamics of the ACTUAL function of policing in a land where black people could be lynched with impunity. I suppose it’s easier on one’s sensibilities if those lynched can be regarded “criminally” black in a white neighborhood. It’s always been a crime. It’s only NOW that we are beginning to notice that somehow it isn’t right. The same can be said for the basic function of police forces in this country regarding black folks. Bury your nose in your monitor and look into cops as enforcers of the societal demand that black people be “kept in their place”. The police here, very much like yourself, have a long tradition of operating on the ASSUMPTION that every black man is a criminal. It is simply a reflection of the society at large, and the tendency persists to the present day with folks such as yourself there to reinforce it. It is a CONSERVATIVE tendency and just one of the many reasons I find you knuckleheads SO delightful.

@mazingerz88 if it was my son, dad, uncle that did what Brown did? You mean blatantly steal from a store and then attack the shop owner when he dared to say something? Or do you mean attacking a cop that asked you to get out of the road? Or do you mean trying to steal that cop’s gun? Or do you mean trying to attack the cop again when he got out of his car and told him to stop? Huh. Let me say if my relative acted like that I’d be sad he was shot, but I couldn’t say the cop did it out of some racist reason. Nor could I say he really did something wrong, especially since many, many witnesses confirmed his story. Oh yeah…BLACK witnesses.

But you said all you needed to…“Stop reminding me of the facts”. The facts are getting in the way of your narrative so you want me to stop reminding you of them.

@Demosthenes I can paraphrase for you all day long. But, it may be better if you googled George Zimmerman and read the links that appear.

There you go @stanleybmanly you and I get ignored, because we have a facts and not right wing make believe !

I suspect the world will continue to spin, if we are ignored by conservatives. Get tired of the same old b s talking points anyway. Like a broken record, or a 24/7 Fox News report.

@seawulf575 There you go. Your hatred for Brown and his violent acts tells me a lot about you. That is all you are capable of seeing. Nothing else. That is one fact your brain is incapable of processing.

In your reality, there’s nothing wrong, nothing immoral, nothing cowardly, nothing hateful nor racist….about killing your Dad or your son, uncle or brother because he was such a violent threat to the cop with a gun, but when he removed himself from being a violent threat by walking away, the killer cop just kept following with a killing tool, giving him orders despite knowing at that point his orders will never be followed….the perfect set-up for murder…just waiting for your Dad, son or uncle to charge him so he could avenge himself and execute your Dad, son or uncle…lawfully. Human life is cheap. Good for you.

@Tropical_Willie No, you and @stanleybmanly are ignored because (a) you haven’t made a real contribution to the conversation other than little snippy attempted slams and (b) @stanleybmanly is irrational.

@mazingerz88 Let me get this straight…you support Brown’s actions? You think we should all be thugs? That there should be no consequences regardless of our actions?

I’d say that the real issue in our conversation is that your hatred of cops tells me a lot about you. You see that taking a beating and letting the perpetrator go free is a good thing for a cop to do and any other action is just plain wrong.

Go ahead…tell me how I keep using facts that disrupt your views.

@seawulf575 It’s all warped and twisted the things going in your head. Which sane and rational human being would ever support any of the wrong things Brown did?

But the right one that he finally did which is to walk away from his mistakes was the one that proved fatal for him. He signed his own death warrant because now the cop that he beat up had finally trained a killing tool on him.

The cop will not be humiliated and hurt again. No chance. Judge Dredd is on the case.

Again you do know what I had been talking about. We’re just going in circles. Your heart is more stone than flesh with this case. Wish it’s the other way around.

Your beloved cop found a way to murder Brown by insisting on arresting him alone when he knew it was never going to happen. Never in that moment. After all the things that took place minutes before.

But to you, Brown is already fair game. Could this be your lines? “Dad, son, bro, uncle…you attacked that cop. Unarmed sure but he “feared for his life.” Worse, you made him angry. So now you’re dead. I’m really sad. Really.”

@mazingerz88 “It’s all warped and twisted the things going in your head.” You have stated I am using facts. So are you suggesting that facts are warped and twisted? I guess if your view of reality is warped and twisted they would appear that way.

“Which sane and rational human being would ever support any of the wrong things Brown did?” You have, so you are now saying you are not sane or rational? Okay…admission accepted.
“But the right one that he finally did which is to walk away from his mistakes was the one that proved fatal for him.” Except that wasn’t his final act. He turned around and attacked the cop again. Multiple witnesses AND the cop had this same confirming story. Even the forensic evidence supported it. So your view is indeed warped and irrational.

I know exactly what you have been talking about. You have a warped view of this event and believe that everyone ought to be invested into that viewpoint, regardless of facts. I do not buy into your leftist fantasy. And here’s a clue for you: your leftist media sources are lying to you about this and many other cases.

@seawulf575 You’re hopeless. You just can’t dial down your prejudice against black men who resist and attack cops when they interact. Judge, jury and executioner cops.

@mazingerz88 You, my friend, would be a good ally to have on my team. Even if you are counted out by the ref, you just never give up, do you?

@mazingerz88 Take a look at what you just wrote. It isn’t my prejudice against black men. It is my dislike of thugs. But you can see only race and you fully believe it is okay for a black man to do whatever he likes without consequences. And anyone that says otherwise is a racist in your eyes. Or at least that is what your leftist “news” outlets tell you to believe.

Could it also not be that some ‘lefties’ don’t like thugs, just as ‘righties’ don’t, but that they think that thuggery, be they committed by whichever color person, doesn’t really way up to death by a civilian or police bullet?
There is of course another body that takes care of punishment.

Oops, I wrote “way up” but of course it should be “weigh up”.

@rebbel The real problem with thuggery is that it can, and does, lead to more serious violence.

Protests without thuggery are far more effective in the long run.

Many decades ago, there was a movie called NETWORK. It is worth a watch. The premise of the movie is that news networks depend on big stories so much that sometimes they are forced to create their own!

You are correct. There was a time when the networks (very much like yourself) understood that the random extermination of black folks was “no big deal”. They “didn’t count”, and everybody knew it. How’s that for rational posting? Now that the networks and most of our citizens DO notice, those of us who prefer to resist reality declare the media biased and radically leftist.

@seawulf575 Thugs are still human beings don’t forget. Brown did not deserve execution. None of the thuggish things he did that day warranted that he loses his life.

@mazingerz88 Thugs are indeed human. However sometimes their actions put them into situations where their victims (in this case, the cop) fight back. When that happens they can get hurt or killed if the victim feels enough fear for their lives. But you are still defending the thugs. You haven’t actually denounced Brown’s actions at all. So I will assume that you believe a black thug should be able to do whatever he/she wants without any consequences.

That’s the problem. You’re just FULL of ASSUMPTIONS. Here’s one. How about an assumption that every unarmed black man killed unnecessarily must be a thug? The police have the same lopsided rationale as yourself. “Black is criminal. There’s one now. Let’s stop him and prove it. Whoops, he moved his hand. I had to shoot him. After all, what’s he doing in THIS part of town. Everybody knows THEY only live for criminal purposes.”

@stanleybmanly Here’s a thought for you: this whole conversation about Brown started because I pointed out that he was being canonized by the leftist media. So maybe THIS could be a corollary to your foolishness: Not every black man that gets killed unnecessarily is completely innocent. And since you didn’t specify that every unarmed black man that was killed was killed by the cops, maybe you are finally recognizing that most blacks that get murdered are by other blacks…not cops. And that most of those that get shot are unarmed.

@seawulf575 I’m pretty sure I said this before the pandemic. I’m glad you’re NOT a cop.

Btw, denounce Brown’s actions? What are you a kid? Again, none of what he did that day should have cost him his life. I know it’s impossible for you to understand why.

Just remembered now what that white police chief said about that shooter who killed spa workers. He was having a bad day! Lol The cluelessness and lack of empathy…so depressing.

@seawulf575 Again you duck the issue by changing the subject from cops shooting unarmed black men to black on black crime. Back to the topic at hand and your myopic interpretation of reality. This business about the so called leftist media’s “canonization” of Brown. That’s nonsense. There is nothing said or implied portraying Brown as heroic or a martyr. The press is simply performing its job. And what YOU interpret as “leftist” coverage is in fact merely the press doing the job it IGNORED back when blacks were routinely considered “fair game” for persecution without fear of consequences. Whine all you want about it, but those days are gone and good riddance to them. The days when people can be shot with impunity under the shield of law enforcement are over.

It kind of pleases me to see that George Zimmerman is living the life of a total loser now, including fraudulently selling art as his own that he got off of Shutterstock, and arrests for domestic violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Zimmerman

He was a sad excuse for a truly troubled human being to begin with.

@stanleybmanly You are the one that can’t accept that black people sometimes do things that get them killed by cops. That isn’t to say cops don’t make mistakes…they do. But rarely is it a racist thing.
As for the leftist media canonizing Brown, let me refer you to the statement that started this entire conversation to move to Brown. It was presented by your buddy, @mazingerz88 and came from the NYT. It contained this quote: “Like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and George Floyd, Mr. Wright’s name and life have become both a chant and symbol, and in the small universe of the Twin Cities region, the police killings of Black men share tragic connections.” They are putting Brown into a category he does not, in my mind, belong in. Though I guess you COULD throw Tamir Rice into that same boat. These two were not shot because they were black. They were shot because they acted foolishly when confronted by the police. They seemed to fully believe they were above the law. They did incredibly stupid things that honestly led to them being shot. But the NYT wants to present them as prime cases where the cops shot some unarmed black man as if they were shot for being black. Without presenting the actual facts, they can make this claim and fools believe it. That is the press performing their job? What job? Leftist propaganda?
But you want to talk about the cops shooting unarmed black people. So let’s talk honestly about it, with the facts presented. I know you don’t believe you need to present any citations to back up your nonsense, but let me give you the facts.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/27/cases-of-police-brutality-against-black-people-are-overestimated/

Interesting thing about that article is that most people believe it was lots, lots more that were killed. That is because the leftist media makes it seem that way. BLM, the Dems, and the media have demonized the cops and made them out to be racist murderers.
Another interesting thing is that while the blacks are killed at a higher percentage than white relative to their ratio in the population, they are killed far less than the number of criminals committing murder in the two races. As I mentioned and cited before, blacks commit over 51% of murders. Yet they are only 13% of the population. So what does that tell you? They are more likely to be armed when they interact with the police and are more likely to resist arrest violently. Now, the total unarmed blacks is 27, but that includes ALL cases…even cases like Brown or RIce where they do stupid things to bring on the shooting.

Now, do you any statistics (facts, not leftist news opinion articles) you can actually cite to refute ANY of this?

@seawulf575: Seriously? Using an editorial to back up your claim? and an editorial from a notoriously right leaning newspaper?

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-post/

@jca2 I notice you want to attack the source but not the substance. Got any actual facts to show I am wrong? You know…facts. Data. Things of substance. I mean if you want to eliminate media that leans left or right, you can’t use any “news” agency. So you kinda have to deal with substance. I mean, the citation you just gave, for instance is questionable. It is called an unscientific, amateur effort to rate the news bias.

@seawulf575 you’re wrong again. There is no ethnicity you can name free of individuals that “sometimes do things that get them killed by cops.” But that’s a long stretch from assuming an entire ethnicity defined by criminal propensities. That is absurd. It would be equivalent to me scouring the news then concluding that white folks are meth heads and dope addicts. Let’s give THAT one a look. Considering the meth and narcotic use in this country, how many of those white criminals do you hear about getting stopped and shot? And I’m not talking about black cops shooting white women. When was the last time you heard a white person complain about being stopped for being in the “wrong” neighborhood or “driving while white”?

@jca2 Here is an NPR story that backs up what @seawulf575 was getting at.

Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, an NPR investigation has found.

Here is a link:
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/956177021/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-black-people-reveal-troubling-patterns

Any unnecessary death is too much, and I am not trying to condone any killings. However, we should always keep in mind the extent of the problem. Since some of the officers involved in the killings were responsible for two or more killings it seems fair to conjecture no more than 125 bad guys in police uniforms IN SIX YEARS! Compare that to the good cops we have all encountered.

@stanleybmanly What you are arguing now is that the biased media doesn’t cover it so it doesn’t happen. That just is a complete falsehood from the start. Tell you what…do a little research and prove to me that whites or Asians or Latinos don’t get shot occasionally too. If you can find that I will guarantee you it is a lie.
However it is relatively easy to find proof that all races are shot by cops and more whites than any other.
But you are also trying to argue both sides of the equation of unequal distribution. It is your contention that blacks are shot by cops more than their relative percentage of the population would suggest. And you are right. But you are also trying to argue that the percentage of crime they commit doesn’t matter and that bringing it up condemns the entire race. What you are also missing is that they do violent crime in higher proportions as well. In fact, if you start digging into it you start finding that they get shot by cops pretty much in the same percentage of the crimes they commit. That isn’t saying all blacks are bad, nor all whites are good, or any other such attempt to change what I am saying. What it means is that as they commit more crimes, they interact with the cops more. As that interaction goes up, they have more chance at having a physical altercation with the cops. And as that goes up, they have more of a chance at getting shot. All of this is common sense…if you care to open your eyes and check the facts.
None of this says all blacks are bad or all whites are good. It just pokes a big hole in the racist cop idiocy that the left pushes hard.

@crazyguy , That is at least 135 unarmed Black men killed by cops in six years. That means someone had to have witnessed it. How many cops are going to report on their own, “I shot this Black unarmed man”? And how many enforcement agencies are going to release statistics on the shootings? I am sure the numbers are higher.

@seawulf575 So which is it? Is there a sudden decision by the leftist media to put the cops in a bad light? Or is it just that previously shootings of unarmed black men went unreported or unnoticed? Do you truly believe that shootings of unarmed white people are ignored by the media? Aren’t you always whining that the press overplays massed shootings every time a bunch of kids are massacred? Do you claim that school shootings are not on the rise, or is it only unarmed black men that are out of control?

@LostInParadise There may be a few cases that go unreported; just like a few may be included that should not be. Even if the total number of bad cops over SIX YEARS is 500, does that change the picture?

We are starting to talk some fairly serious numbers

@LostInParadise What number exactly are you referring to?

@stanleybmanly Do you have a link showing that previous shootings went unreported and unnoticed?
As for the media suddenly deciding to paint the cops in a bad light, I believe that is basically what happened. They started backing BLM and Antifa and demonizing the cops. Why? Why does every shooting by a cop get reported at least at the local level, but when it is a white cop that shot a black person, why is it blasted as some racial thing? Why are THOSE broadcast over and over with commentary and opinion that paint the black person as being totally innocent and the cop as being some racist, gun-happy killer?
I just gave you a link showing that cops kill more white people than black. I know, there are more white people than black. But I also pointed out that proportionally to the amount of crime each group commits, the numbers are about even. But you don’t hear CNN blasting the “killer cop” view on any of those where the victim was white. They just don’t. But as soon as the victim is black it gets 24/7 coverage including lots of urges and support for protests claims of racism by the cops.
As for school shootings, your view of my comments shows exactly how warped your views are. I don’t say the press overplays it, though I do know of a case where the families specifically asked the media not to cover it and give the criminal fame. But I do say that politicians (and the media as their mouthpieces) use each of these as pulpits for calling for gun control. And they do overplay that. It almost immediately stops being about the kids that were killed and their families and turns into a political tool. That is heartless in my book. Of course you don’t see anything wrong with it…I know.
You really haven’t addressed, though, the idea that many people fully believe that there have been over 1000 unarmed black people killed by cops every year. That doesn’t happen through ignorance, it happens through grossly irresponsible coverage by the media.

@seawulf575 Is that what many people believe in spite of easy-to-find stats? For instance:

1. Open a browser window.
2. Key in: Number of unarmed black men shot by police.
3. HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN by how low the numbers are!

Have you any example of media claims or even hints that cops kill 1000 unarmed black people yearly? My contention is this. Whether you know it or not (and considering where you claim to live in this country, you cannot possibly NOT know) that within YOUR lifetime black people were murdered, lynched, disappeared, etc. without consequence as a matter of routine in YOUR very neighborhood. The police by necessity were complicit in these undertakings and so was the press. THAT was simply business as usual in America. The ONLY reason this is no longer the case is that people were compelled to confront the extrajudicial reality. The civil rights movement came to grips with this and forced the issue (more or less). But our police forces operating out of sight were free to perpetuate abuses until the arrival of cell phones and dash cams. Of course, now that there is sensational footage of what is REALLY going on, the media is OF COURSE going to broadcast it. You claim the media is leftist simply because they broadcast THE NEWS.

And thanks for the dash of water to my face. Every once in a while I have to be shocked into understanding just how far gone you really are. It is just inconceivable that you might consider a school shooting a “shameful” excuse to advocate gun control. Have you a more honorable “excuse”.

@crazyguy Exactly. They are told over and over that every time a cop stops a black man, he kills him. And they are told over and over that cops stop blacks for being black.

@stanleybmanly You crack me up! Always asking for proof, citations, yet never EVER actually providing one of your own! Hilarious. Sad, but hilarious. I guess it’s true…all comedy has its roots in tragedy.
As for your question of media claims that cops kill 1000 unarmed black people yearly, it is a derivation. This poll shows that most people grossly over-estimate the number of blacks that are killed by cops every year. Across the board, from very liberal to very conservative, every group stated more than the actual number. So let me ask…how did all these people come to these conclusion? And, BTW, the very liberal indicate the highest numbers of blacks killed by cops. So where are they getting this idea? Where do they get their information? From the MSM, for the most parts. As @crazyguy just mentioned, you can do a pretty simple internet search and come up with the real numbers, but that requires effort. Letting someone give you the answer is the easiest. And when that person supplying the answers makes it sound like they are getting killed all the time, you automatically believe it does. So you make a guess that is grossly high. Because to tell the truth will not help the leftist media push the leftist agenda. It is a non-starter. You can’t make claims that there is rampant racism in the police force and then back that up with numbers that are ridiculously low.

So Chauvin is now a felon (on three counts) awaiting sentencing !

. . . officer Kimberly Ann Potter will be next !

Throw the Nazi prick in prison and toss the key away!