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Reminds me of the kid shot in St. Louis about 3 weeks after Ferguson....
-Fired 3 times at a security officer, then shot dead.
-Family claims he was a good kid and he had no gun.
-Kid had on an ankle bracelet for.....upcoming trial on gun charges.
-Family claims gun planted on him
-Social media pics of him with 4 different guns flashing gang signs, including the gun found at the scene
-Prints on the gun, residue on his hands...
It's guys like this that are killing the vast majority of young men of color.
All police shootings aren't justified. But the whole "unarmed" meme is really getting old, especially in it's inherent racism where they always have to check the cops race first.
I could post COUNTLESS examples of people being killed by officers who were doing nothing wrong.
Someone sleeping in their house thinking their being robbed, traffic stop gone wrong (officer panicked), Police shooting a homeowner on their own problem after the cops were called, etc, etc.
Are Police killings and corruption a real issue? Yes.
I don't care what argument you give me. You can't build an argument to excuse the raw numbers and percentage of our population in prison. You can't excuse the injustices in our justice system. And you can't excuse the actions of officers who either make mistakes, act maliciously, panic, whatever the case.
If doctors were killing people, by mistake or on purpose, there would be an outcry. Pretty much any other profession. I understand that Police work is dangerous, but in many cases, these killings could have been prevented.
America is a violent country, there are violent criminals everywhere that can appear in any kind of neighborhood. The use of deadly force is justifiable except that many cases the police cannot distinguish a violent criminal from a citizen having some panic or under the influence.
I wish the police can use safer methods to apprehend someone vs all their current methods that involves shooting a deadly projectile.
The biggest problem I have with that article (other than the fact that it is an abuse of statistics and common sense) is that it serves no other purpose than to polarize. For that reason it is likely to have the exact opposite of its intended effect.
There may very well be good intentions behind manipulating statistics to make it look like we should all be wearing bullet proof vests when dealing with the police while starting a friendly dialogue with Al Qaeda. The real net effect is that it will make the cop haters hate cops even more and will push the non-cop haters to reflexively defend the police. There are two very bad potential consequences of this.
First of all, by overstating the case, it actually undermines the legitimate examples of police brutality and misconduct that should be publicized, scrutinized and prosecuted. I think most reasonable people agree that the majority of law enforcement officers are decent people and not blood thirsty racists. However, there probably are some cops that are awful blood thirsty racists that we need to get rid of. Just the same as most police shootings are justifiable, there are some that are not. We need to talk about and do something about those.
It is unfortunate that Michael Brown became the literal and figurative poster child for this movement. Despite all of the talk, drama, looting and "hands up, don't shoot," the facts supported the officer. Because of the publicity that case received, every time there has been a police involved shooting since then, it becomes a big news story; especially if there is a potential racial component. Most (but not all) of these cases end up falling to the wayside because the actions of the police prove to be justified.
This article and this whole "movement" are acting like the boy who cried wolf. Before gathering any REAL facts, people jump to conclusions, make assumptions and accusations of brutality, racism etc. At a certain point, the rest of the world is going to tire of the story and change the channel. This will be a great disservice to future cases that really do deserve the attention that these cases are getting just because of the current focus on this issue.
Even worse, all of the phony stats and rhetoric about how awful the police are will probably cost more young men their lives. How? By reinforcing the narrative that the police are the enemy of young men of color, you are indirectly encouraging these young men to fight with the police instead of respecting them. If you get in a physical altercation with the police you are 100,000,000 times more likely to be killed by them than if you are respectful and courteous and let them do their job.
So, congratulations on peddling false narratives at the expense of real victims. I'm sure the author of the article and the "black lives matter" crowd will never acknowledge the blood that is and will be on their hands. They will probably be too busy making noise and stopping traffic on the highway to realize how much harm they are actually doing.
Last edited by MidwestRedux; 03-10-2015 at 10:12 AM..
We have an entire Revolution taking place because of this corruption and some of you are STILL acting like its not a problem.
So be it.
Don't get mad when your on the outside and we're all "partying" together.
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