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BamaD -> RE: Arrogant, Entitled, Cry-Baby, and Coward (9/24/2016 2:08:29 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
quote:
ORIGINAL: kdsub
Just remember the vast majority of police shootings are necessary to protect the police and innocents. There are very few that are criminal.
Butch
Well, maybe. We will never really know because police have been often suspected of cover-ups especially following blue on black shootings; police are not trusted to investigate rigorously; mayors and police chiefs make cop supportive pre-judgments; prosecutors don't pursue; grand juries don't indict; and trial juries don't convict. Furthermore, many many communities do not report their crime statistics to the national data base.
It is easy for you and I to make comments like you make above because we do not live in communities that are under siege by the police. . . . Charlotte:
Nearly all of Charlotte lies in Mecklenburg County, which the U.S. Census Bureau estimated had the largest increase in the country in the percentage of people living in distressed neighborhoods during the first 15 years of this century — an index that combines unemployment, poverty rates and other items, like how many businesses close.
Those pockets of poverty aren't immediately evident. Charlotte doesn't have many stereotypical slums. Instead, lower-rent housing is in apartment complexes or condominiums nestled behind tree-lined roads or off the main thoroughfares.
That's the kind of place where Scott lived. Tracy McLean lived in the condominium complex just down the road; she said teams of police frequently come to the neighborhoods full of black and Latino families in a show of force, looking for suspects they often don't find, instead of talking to residents and getting to know them.
"The fear needs to be dispelled," Tracy McLean said. "It's fear, and it's ridiculous fear."
In the mid-1990s, as Charlotte pushed to become a world-class city, its leaders cracked down on crime with a heavy-handed police force. Longtime African-American residents remember James Cooper, a 19-year-old black man killed by a white officer in 1996 as he reached back in his car window during a traffic stop to check on his 4-year-old daughter. The officer said he thought he had a gun.
They also remember Carolyn Boetticher, a passenger in a car that sped toward and then past white officers doing a license check in a high-crime neighborhood. Police fired 22 shots that came from the front, side and rear of the fleeing car. She was shot in the neck.
None of the officers faced criminal charges, but Charlotte created a citizen review panel for its police department.
And even when Charlotte police seem to get it right, the black community has been left feeling justice was not served. Jonathan Ferrell was a 24-year-old unarmed black man shot 10 times by white officer Randall Kerrick. Ferrell had just crashed his car in a suburban neighborhood and banged on a neighbor's door looking for help. She called 911.
Charlotte police charged Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter one day later. But the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict at his trial, and state prosecutors decided not to retry the case. There were peaceful protests then, which prompted headlines like, "How Charlotte Avoided Ferguson's Fate."
SNIP
It reminded him of his lifeguard days, when Barber said he was warned that drowning people would violently fight off the swimmers trying to help them out of confusion and fear.
"The type of riots we are seeing in Charlotte is a systemic response for people who are drowning in injustice," he said.
You can read more about Charlotte here
As I said, it easy for us to dismiss the protests from where we stand. White Americans in the suburbs rarely encounter the police. Maybe we should listen with willing empathy to the complaints of minority citizens instead of reacting automatically with condemnations of disrespecting the flag (Kaepernick) and condemnations of disrespecting the police (Charlotte)
I live in a minority (mostly) neighborhood, where I meet the police often.
Once a cop questioned me about standing on my own porch.
But I guess since I am white I am not allowed to have an opinion.
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