Jacob Blake Video

[Weezy1973]

After watching it my initial thoughts were:

 

1. The officers here clearly need better training. Why not tackle him to the ground if he isn’t responding to verbal threats?

2. Why wasn’t he responding to verbal threats? If the police are telling him to get on the ground or they’ll shoot (or something to that effect), why not do it?

3. The decision to shoot him in the back was likely due to fear. The officers couldn’t have known whether or not he was going into a vehicle for a gun. 

4. Again, couldn’t you train the officers to shoot non-lethally? Why were 7 shots necessary? 
 

5. How desensitized I’ve become to seeing these things is really tragic

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

I agree with everything you said.  And I'm glad you did not mention his prior record or current warrants since they have nothing to do with him being shot in the back without a weapon.

[lana-banana]

This is why "reform the police" is meaningless to me. There is no amount of training or lessons that can "reform" a system where a guy thinks he should shoot an unarmed man in the back, seven times, in front of his children. Burn it down and start over. 

The US is unique in that its police culture is completely obsessed with officer safety. Cops in other countries don't open fire the second someone turns around or reaches for something. But private contractors are raking in millions every year to teach US cops that every unexpected motion is a threat to their safety and if they don't shoot first then they'll be gunned down. If the cops didn't spend every waking moment assuming that they were about to be killed, especially by Black people, this might not happen so much. But again, that's not possible unless we start over. We can't train ourselves out of a fundamentally unjust and lethal institution.

(As for why he wasn't responding, who knows? Maybe he was terrified? We've seen cops murder people reaching for their registration, moving too quickly, moving too slowly, and complying fully with all police orders. Complying is no guarantee of safety, especially if you aren't white.)

Edited August 24, 2020 by lana-banana

[elaine567]

6 minutes ago, lana-banana said:

The US is unique in that its police culture is completely obsessed with officer safety. Cops in other countries don't open fire the second someone turns around or reaches for something.

Can you really blame them when guns are so prevalent in the general population?

[lana-banana]

5 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

Can you really blame them when guns are so prevalent in the general population?

Yes. America's gun problem is obviously a part of it, but it's not that simple. Even with so many guns in America, incidents in which people open fire on the police are relatively rare, but cops continue to murder (almost always Black) people in traffic stops, in parks, in their own homes, etc. Yeah, it's tied to the contemporary American idea that you should just expect to be murdered at any moment, but there's more to it than that---it's racism, it's an occupying soldier's mentality, it's thinking in terms of "good guys vs bad guys" rather than "these are my neighbors", and so on.

[basil67]

23 minutes ago, lana-banana said:

As for why he wasn't responding, who knows? Maybe he was terrified?

I would expect police to be trained to consider that if one hasn't heard the suspect (for want of a better word) conversing, then them not turning around when asked could indicate they are hearing impaired.   Or they could be having a panic attack.   Or something else.   Anything less than this level of training falls under the category of ableism.  

Edited August 24, 2020 by basil67

[Piddy]

They said his kids were in the car as well.  It's being reported that he's paralyzed, but they're not sure it's permanent. 

And if the cop wasn't trying to kill him, why shoot him 7 times in the back at close range when he's unarmed?

Just another story where there's a lack of sanctity of life by people who take an oath to serve and protect.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jacob-blake-paralyzed-waist-down-after-police-shooting-father-says-n1238009

Edited August 25, 2020 by Piddy

[Prudence V]

19 hours ago, Piddy said:

They said his kids were in the car as well. 

Well done to those cops on radicalising not only those kids, but those kids’ friends too. 

[elaine567]

19 hours ago, Piddy said:

It's being reported that he's paralyzed, but they're not sure it's permanent. 

The report I heard last night, means he will be lucky to survive, never mind walking again.

[alphamale]

some black men are also doing illegal things that eventually cause the police to get involved, and the white men are getting shot at too

[Piddy]

23 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

The report I heard last night, means he will be lucky to survive, never mind walking again.

I'm surprised he's made it this far getting shot 7 times in the back at point blank range.  

[Piddy]

31 minutes ago, Prudence V said:

Well done to those cops on radicalising not only those kids, but those kids’ friends too. 

Yes, those kids will be traumatized for life.  Also, clearly Jacob Blake's life and his kids lives did not matter that day.  They were disposable.  

[elaine567]

Do the police ever use tasers in the US?

[Piddy]

2 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

Do the police ever use tasers in the US?

Yes,  but in too many cases the cops use deadly force as their first option, when it should be their last option.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Piddy

[lana-banana]

There is a gut-churning video of police in Kenosha stopping to engage an armed (white, but that goes without saying) militia. The police say their work "is appreciated" and then hand them bottles of water. The same night an armed white supremacist shot and killed protesters.

We can play pretend and try to ignore that a Venn diagram of supremacist militias and the police would be two almost fully overlapping circles. We can pretend it's just "a few bad apples". But the institutional rot has never been more apparent. And as unrest increases, this is only going to get worse.

Reform my rear end. Disarm, defund, and start the f-ck over.

[Angelle]

4 hours ago, alphamale said:

some black men are also doing illegal things that eventually cause the police to get involved, and the white men are getting shot at too

What??

[rjc149]

Blake was being a tough guy, just waltzing on over to his car with a bevy of cops following him, screaming over and over again at him to comply, guns pointed at him, then suddenly, it looks like he's reaching for something. 

As he nonchalantly did his little "yeah, what, f--k tha police" walk, the cops had more than ample time to tackle him, restrain him, and/or use their TASERs. 

So waiting until he gets to his car, then shooting him 7 times in the back, is very obviously a mishandling of the confrontation, resulting in a gross overreaction. 

But it's like, why couldn't he just do what the hell he was told? Why did he have to be a goddamn moron? 

[elaine567]

I get he didn't deserve to get shot but why was he  wandering around that vehicle and trying to get into it?
Why wasn't he cooperating?
Surely it is some kind of a death wish to do that when surrounded by armed officers.
They didn't know what he was about to produce from that car, so they shot him to make the area safe.
 

[rjc149]

4 hours ago, elaine567 said:

Do the police ever use tasers in the US?

They do. 

The Rayshard Brooks killing in Atlanta is a good example of that. 

You've got a guy who is operating a motor vehicle so drunk that he literally passes out at the wheel in a fast-food drive through line. Cars are driving around him to get their food. 

Cops are called and respond. Brooks gets out of the car and speak to the cops. An altercation ensues which becomes physical, which is caught on camera. 

Brooks repeatedly punches one of the officers in the face, and is able to take one of the TASER's from an officer's duty belt. 

As Brooks flees, one of the officers shoots Brooks with a TASER. He either misses Brooks, or the TASER is otherwise ineffective. 

Brooks turns and attempts to shoot the officer with the stolen TASER. He misses, and continues to flee. 

Officer Rolfe then draws his sidearm and fires 3 shots, mortally wounding Brooks. 

Of course, because of racism. 

[Piddy]

I put Doc Rivers emotional speech (last night) in the Elections thread this morning, but I think it belongs here as well.  "Why we keep loving this country, but this country doesn't love us back." 

Edited August 26, 2020 by Piddy

[rjc149]

11 minutes ago, Piddy said:

I put Doc Rivers emotional speech (last night) in the Elections thread this morning, but I think it belongs here as well.  "Why we keep loving this country, but this country doesn't love us back." 

This is powerful, when considered purely in a vacuum. 

As someone who is mixed-race, I also know what it feels like to be constantly reminded of my non-white status in the US. I have no African ancestry so it's different, I know, but America is, and has always been, a white-preferred nation. 

Still, I think this plays too much into a victimhood narrative.

I think it wants to ignore some difficult truths about young men in inner-city black communities.

It asks a nagging question -- 'why do young black men keep getting shot by police?' but never asks 'Why do young black men so frequently find themselves in confrontations with police?' or 'why didn't he just comply?' or 'why was he resisting arrest?'

Why are the black victims of these incidents so readily absolved of any accountability for their own agency to de-escalate these confrontations, when the opportunity was so ready?

 

 

 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

47 minutes ago, rjc149 said:

 

As someone who is mixed-race, I also know what it feels like to be constantly reminded of my non-white status in the US. I have no African ancestry so it's different, I know, but America is, and has always been, a white-preferred nation. 

 

That's just too easy to conclude, when you don't pause to consider that it may easily be more a function of wealth vs. poverty.

 

The fact that POC significantly overlap  the poorer set of American society is far more significant than your color-fixated analysis would suggest.

 

If you could take away (from the minds of all) the notion that POC implies  poor and/or desperate  (even from popular movie backdrops), then what seems like racism  would shrink down to an insignificant level.

 

It's just too easy for the randomness that is crime in one city/county/state to be reviewed by news reporters whose only goal is to draw your attention, and for those reporters to conveniently forget that   X-large-% of all crime is perpetrated by the poor...     and then fail to mention that  92% of all strong-arm robberies were committed by persons poorer than those they robbed... (I made-up that number)...  while instead locking-on to the notion that X-large% of those convicted of strong-arm robberies were from Y-racial-background even though the surrounding community is made-up of  .5X % of Y-racial-background.

The percentage of the poor in that community from Y-racial-background is never mentioned in such stories and instead the media sensationalizes normal/random  data just to draw attention to their station.

 

If some arena put a red carpet across an NBA floor and invited everyone to walk along that carpet among the players scattered around the court...  just WHO among us would really be afraid to walk along said carpet?   Those POC are almost always much bigger, stronger and faster than the POC who roam your city...   and still almost nobody would be afraid.  So it can't be mere color that people have any problem with -  it's the poverty and desperation not found on any NBA court.

 

The poverty-stricken are NOT a protected class  and thus the discrimination they know on an hourly basis won't be dealt with unless they race under somebody else's umbrella as a means to get something, and at least some attention.

 

The people on the evening news won't report bias against the poor...    (because nobody cares enough to give the station any additional viewers)...  so the same news station takes the same data and makes it about race...   when it simply isn't about race.

 

So the poor, and the media are each doing the same thing...    rewriting random statistics to serve their own purposes...      even though their adjusted line of thinking isn't statistically significant.

[Tamfana]

1 hour ago, rjc149 said:

...... young men in inner-city black communities.....

Honestly, if we're going to be grouping for sociological analysis, young men commit the majority of violent crime regardless of race or economic status.  

So if you're going to analyze any racial subset of young violent men in America, analyze all or you'll have no context. 

I believe that the USA is also the most violent of the democratic/free countries in the world, something we should address as a society too.  

Edited August 26, 2020 by Tamfana

[Piddy]

The NBA postpones all games tonight in protest over the Jacob Blake shooting.

Waiting for Laura Ingraham to say shut up and dribble.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Piddy

[lana-banana]

1 hour ago, rjc149 said:

I think it wants to ignore some difficult truths about young men in inner-city black communities.

It asks a nagging question -- 'why do young black men keep getting shot by police?' but never asks 'Why do young black men so frequently find themselves in confrontations with police?' or 'why didn't he just comply?' or 'why was he resisting arrest?'

Why are the black victims of these incidents so readily absolved of any accountability for their own agency to de-escalate these confrontations, when the opportunity was so ready?

 

What are these "difficult truths" you're talking about? Statistics indicate Black men are more than twice as likely to be pulled over, arrested, and convicted for the same crimes as white counterparts (this is particularly obvious with marijuana arrests). 

"Why didn't he just comply?" --- is this a joke? There is no shortage of Black men who have been filmed complying with police and been brutalized anyway. Look at Charles Kinsey.

Why is it considered acceptable to kill Black people simply for not complying with police? What, precisely, are you trying to say about "difficult truths"?