Police shot 8 YO boy in the back

[Racket_Man]

Just to show that the current crop of white cops shooting unarmed black males is NOT a new thing

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-p...973/ar-AAb86z9

This happened in 1973. Again it involves a young black male running from the cops on questionable grounds. The cops shot the black male BY THE MEDICAL evidence fully back to front with the cop "claiming" he saw a gun.

The cop was however tried for murder and a 99% (11 white 1 black) white jury found him not guilty but he was fired from the police force.

[Greenday]

I don't think anyone believes this is something new. But the witch hunt it has been made into makes it look like all cops are racist when in reality it's a small minority.

[HYHYBT]

I don't think anyone believes this is something new. But the witch hunt it has been made into makes it look like all cops are racist when in reality it's a small minority.

As with the molesting priests, that it's only a few doing it does not in the slightest excuse others going along with it, accepting excuses, protecting their own from inquiry and prosecution, etc. The culture within the police that ALLOWS THIS TO HAPPEN needs to be broken to the point it can never recover.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't think anyone believes this is something new. But the witch hunt it has been made into makes it look like all cops are racist when in reality it's a small minority.

Even if the murders-in-cops-clothing are a small minority (which I agree is the truth), the support network they receive to not only not be punished for their crimes, but to continue to be police is disgusting and infests the police in the US on pretty much every single level.

When people like Schoolcraft are forcibly institutionalized for daring to speak up about corruption in his own department, the whole bushel is rotten, not just a few apples. And that only happened in the last 5 years.

Frank Serpico is penning articles about this shit. Again.

[Gravekeeper]

Even if the murders-in-cops-clothing are a small minority (which I agree is the truth), the support network they receive to not only not be punished for their crimes, but to continue to be police is disgusting and infests the police in the US on pretty much every single level.

^ Yep. Its never just one bad apple acting alone. If there's one racist asshole in a department that keeps his job then its likely systematic racism and assholeness in the entire apartment.

Honestly, I don't buy the bad apple argument anymore when it comes to American cops. A racist/abusive cop can only exist in a department whose culture allows it and in a system which excuses it.

[Aragarthiel]

I think the "bad apple" thing comes from cops being like a family, much like soldiers. They go out every day knowing they're risking their lives, and it's hard to believe it when a family member is accused of something that there's very little evidence of. It's only when big things happen that the rest of the officers can finally believe it, and then they're blamed for letting it happen.

It reminds me of a Stephen King book I read once, called "Rose Madder." Long story short, police officer's wife is being abused, and she feels she can't go to the police because they'd stand up for him. Fortunately for her, once they find out, they come down HARD on him. However, that's just fiction.

[Andara Bledin]

Their jobs just aren't that dangerous. Not in the top ten. And most of the time, they die by auto accident, not violence. Being a cabbie is more likely to get you murdered than being a cop. Hell, EMTs are way more at risk than cops.

[Aragarthiel]

Their jobs just aren't that dangerous. Not in the top ten. And most of the time, they die by auto accident, not violence. Being a cabbie is more likely to get you murdered than being a cop. Hell, EMTs are way more at risk than cops.

They may not actually be dangerous, but I attribute that to safety equipment. Cabbies and EMTs aren't provided with bulletproof vests and helmets (though they should, but that's a topic for another day). Police officers, despite having safety equipment, know that they go out every day and they might never go home, and that makes them family. And it's not just police, but fire fighters have the same sense of closeness too.

[Hyena Dandy]

I think the "bad apple" thing comes from cops being like a family, much like soldiers. They go out every day knowing they're risking their lives, and it's hard to believe it when a family member is accused of something that there's very little evidence of.

Except it repeatedly happens that there IS evidence of it, and they go on to conspire to cover it up, and then get upset that people think they're assholes for it, because don't we appreciate how much work they do? We just hate cops because we're trying to be cool or something. >_>

[Aragarthiel]

Except it repeatedly happens that there IS evidence of it, and they go on to conspire to cover it up, and then get upset that people think they're assholes for it, because don't we appreciate how much work they do? We just hate cops because we're trying to be cool or something. >_>

There's evidence of big things, yeah, those are the ones that make the news. Smaller things that can happen with only one officer involved in a short span of time (drug planting, illegal tickets, mostly traffic stop stuff) are harder to prove. There's nothing to cover up because nobody can be sure that anything happened at all, even within the police force. There's only a civilian's word against a police officer's, with no evidence to either.

Right now, just miles away from me, there's a big uproar because some fishermen were shot at while fishing on a lake. They know where the shots came from, and they know who did it, but he's a huge name in the local medical community and because he and his family are rich, it seemed to be okay for him to just say to the officers who came to investigate, "I'm on call, come back tomorrow." And they did.

I understand that there is corruption, and a lot of it, I just hate when someone assumes that every single officer in a police force is involved because there is one person doing corrupt things.

[Gravekeeper]

I think the "bad apple" thing comes from cops being like a family, much like soldiers. They go out every day knowing they're risking their lives, and it's hard to believe it when a family member is accused of something that there's very little evidence of. It's only when big things happen that the rest of the officers can finally believe it, and then they're blamed for letting it happen.

No, its not like that at all. What we're talking about here is the Blue Wall. Which can only exist when the department has a culture that allows it and once a department has that culture its basically impossible to get rid of short of clearing out the whole department.

Its not a matter of other officers not believing a fellow officer did something wrong, its a matter of other officers knowing full well a fellow officer did something wrong and helping cover it up. You can take any given random "Cop does x to y" headline from the US and its pretty much guaranteed there's at least one more officer, if not several that were involved in covering the incident up. If not the whole department.

I mean fuck, even with that poor guy that was shot in the back running away there were a couple more officers involved that covered for the shooter. They conspired to get their stories straight with the shooter's version of events. And the thing is, even in the rare case an officer actually is fired or brought to the trial, the other officers that helped cover the shit up never are. They might get a slap on the wrist for public appearances but they go right back to work and right back to covering shit up like this.

Why? Because there is no consequences. If there had not have been video of this shooting it would have just been swept under the rug by the officers involved. You literally have to get caught on film shooting a fleeing suspect in the back and planting evidence on his corpse in order to get charged with anything as a US police officer.

[Aragarthiel]

While the corrupt cops do need to be cleared out, there's really no need for blanket statements. Everyone likes to point out the few incidences of police corruption and say, "All cops are corrupt and bad!" when five or ten incidents out of thousands of police departments is actually not much.

As for the consequences, yes cops need to be punished more harshly for things they do, but nobody actually stops to wonder, what if it really was an accident, despite the cover-up? Police officers are held to a higher regard than civilians but they are just normal people, so making a mistake is worse for them. That alone might contribute to the need to cover something up. Civilians won't ever believe that police officers can make mistakes and accidentally kill people, so unless you're on the jury or directly related to the case, no civilian should be the one to decide whether or not an officer deserved the punishment they got.

[Andara Bledin]

While the corrupt cops do need to be cleared out, there's really no need for blanket statements. Everyone likes to point out the few incidences of police corruption and say, "All cops are corrupt and bad!" when five or ten incidents out of thousands of police departments is actually not much.

Excuse me a moment while I get this out of my system...

*breathless hysterical laughter*

Five or ten? You are honestly that clueless about the incidence of police violence against the general public?!?

Shit, there's a thread on the Ars Technica forums about police abuse in the US that's up to page 131. And then when you add in that the vast majority (and, no, that's not an exaggeration) of incidents never see the light of day, the prevalence of the cops being utter and complete fucktards is so pervasive that you have to wonder if there really are any truly honest cops left in the system, or if they've all been driven out (or committed, or framed, or otherwise subject to the same thing the rest of us are, up to and including being outright murdered).

I mean, hell, we don't even have raw numbers for how many people the police kill each year. It doesn't even exist. And even though the government has demanded that it be tallied and passed up the chain, too many departments are pretty much ignoring it.

Plus, just for added insult to injury (death), anyone that dies as the result of police action is automatically a felon.

That's right; getting murdered by police is a felony in the US. >_<