Disagree Ljoss, the riots are 100% the fault of the people burning/looting. They made a decision to act in a horrible fashion. This is 100% the fault of the people who did such acts and should have the full weight of the law brought down on them for their crimes. Just because a reactionary counter measure was put in place was not as effective as you would have liked does not make these riots the fault of the government, the blame belongs to the people who are braking the law doing the crime!
Of course the Government is responsible for riots. The government is responsible for all crime in general.
Take note that "responsible" and "at fault" are not the same thing. Being "responsible" means that they're the ones that have to do something about it, regardless of who's fault it is.
This is a total red herring. Note that draftguy never says "responsible" in his post, and the post he's responding to uses the phraseology "partially responsible for creating these riots." They aren't debating whose job it is to control/contain the riots, they're debating who is at fault for causing the riots.
Disagree Ljoss, the riots are 100% the fault of the people burning/looting. They made a decision to act in a horrible fashion. This is 100% the fault of the people who did such acts and should have the full weight of the law brought down on them for their crimes. Just because a reactionary counter measure was put in place was not as effective as you would have liked does not make these riots the fault of the government, the blame belongs to the people who are braking the law doing the crime!
That is not what Ljoss was trying to get at.
Pretty much everyone that is not an anarcho-capitalist would agree that one of the most important functions of a government is to protect its citizens. The fact that the government did not do that when the riots broke out (and not only that, but punishing people for trying to protect others from the riots) implies that the role of government ought to be called into question because it failed at fulfilling that basic function.
The news media has played such a central role in the Ferguson debacle it is sickening. I am an objectivist - I try to stay as impartial as possible with heated issues, and look at both sides. While taking said stance, it has become apparent that the news media IS Ferguson.
Don't believe me? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Whatever happened to ebola? Funny, I haven't heard a peep about it on MSNBC.com (which I view every time I open my Internet browser), the televised news, Facebook, Twitter, or any American-based news outlet or social media whatsoever since the Ferguson grand jury decision last Monday.
The reason is that once there was a better story, the American news media moved to that.
No one was ever really at risk of catching ebola in America. You have a better chance of winning your state lottery than catching ebola in America. Similarly, you have a very low chance of being the victim of unwarranted extreme police brutality, such as a gunshot wound, today. ESPECIALLY TODAY. But the news media would practically have you believe that cops are just begging for African Americans to mess with them so that they can riddle them with bullets. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Today, police are TERRIFIED of African Americans, because they know that with one wrong move they could be the next news story.
No one was ever really at risk of catching ebola in America. You have a better chance of winning your state lottery than catching ebola in America. Similarly, you have a very low chance of being the victim of unwarranted extreme police brutality, such as a gunshot wound, today. ESPECIALLY TODAY. But the news media would practically have you believe that cops are just begging for an African Americans to mess with them so that they can riddle them with bullets. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Today, police are probably TERRIFIED of African Americans, because they know that with one wrong move they could be the next news story.
It depends on where you live. I live in an extremely safe large city with an abnormally low murder rate for a city of its size. The police have killed more people on-duty since Jan 1 than we've had murders in the city. One of the people shot by the police was going to the bank to cash a check and happened to be one of the only black people in the area. The bank robber that had just targeted the bank was reportedly black. So a cop chased this guy who was innocent and shot him in the back of the head.
Your first instinct is "Why would an innocent man run from the police?" Because the American law enforcement apparatus has a several century old habit of chasing any black person and thinking they committed a crime, then charging them with it whether they did it or not. Can't find the exact runaway slave? Go capture a free black man and sell him into slavery. The perp is identified as a white rapist? Obviously the woman was hysterical and it's actually a black guy who the town will now lynch. Crackhead gets caught in Tulia, TX and wants to get a nice plea bargain? Name 18 innocent people who just happen to live in the projects and throw them in federal prison as drug dealers.
Your first instinct is "Why would an innocent man run from the police?" Because the American law enforcement apparatus has a several century old habit of chasing any black person and thinking they committed a crime, then charging them with it whether they did it or not.
That's an incredibly stupid reason to run from the police.
You never run from the police. This is freaking basic.
Now, don't get me wrong, it freaking sucks that this innocent guy got shot. But you're trying to defend his running from the police like it's a smart thing to do. The impression I got from the story you just told is that it got the guy killed.
One of the people shot by the police was going to the bank to cash a check and happened to be one of the only black people in the area. The bank robber that had just targeted the bank was reportedly black. So a cop chased this guy who was innocent and shot him in the back of the head.
Was the bank robber armed? How soon after this guy robbed the bank did the person walk in? How soon was the police response? What happened when the police encountered this guy? At what point did the guy start running?
You're missing a lot of details here. Right now, it's difficult to determine whether the police behaved irresponsibly.
I'm guessing the bank robber was armed, because it's rather hard to rob a bank without a weapon unless you just physically take a big bag of money and book it. I'm guessing the police were informed by 911 because you said that someone reported a black guy robbing the bank, and silent alarms are just that, silent, they don't report anything. You said, "The bank robber that had just targeted the bank was reportedly black." Just targeted. I'm assuming by this that the police had only just arrived onto the crime scene?
Because if the police had reports of an armed black man robbing a bank, they would have come into the bank looking for a black man who they presumed was a danger to everyone around him.
Now, you said that the black guy comes in trying to cash a check. My question then is how did this guy get shot? Did the police see him and immediately start shooting, or did they try to apprehend him, and then he ran, and then shoot him? You said the cop "chased" this guy, meaning the guy ran, and a cop chased this guy down, which meant he had to have gotten some distance before he was shot. So it seems the police didn't immediately open fire once they saw him. So what did they do? Did they tell him to put his hands up and to stay where he was, only to have the guy start running?
I'm trying to figure this scenario out here, because it's one thing to say that the police shot him when he wasn't resisting arrest, but you're describing a guy who was resisting arrest, and whom the police believed was a suspect in a bank robbery, and whom the police believed was armed. Police, as stated in the ruling of Tennessee v. Garner, may use lethal force when pursuing a suspect if they have reason to believe the suspect presents a probable threat of death or injury to the officers or others.
So I'm not sure the officers were out of line in shooting this guy. Again, it really sucks that he died, but they probably thought he was an armed robber, and the guy, by your description, chose to go out of his way to look suspicious.
And I know the common wisdom is that you don't run from police. That's non hood, middle class people wisdom. In the hood things are a little more complex. If it's just one officer and he's chasing you, your chance of getting away is about 10-33% according to informal studies done by sociologists of drug dealers and their getaways from police. And as we've seen from the above article and criminology studies, people have a really bad time of eyewitness reports of a perpetrator of another race. So you can get a generic description of a black or Latino guy that could be just about anyone if he manages to get away. And if the police are on your tail, in the hood there are systems where your friends and relatives can shield you as you live in the same neighborhood. You can move between houses multiple times a day and your friends and family can just lie to the police about your whereabouts.
No, he wasn't a bank robber, he just happened to be black and so did the perp. This article should explain everything.
The article gave me a story that wasn't at all what you just gave.
Kleinert had been inside a nearby Benchmark Bank conducting a follow-up investigation to an earlier, and unrelated, bank robbery when Jackson came to the bank's locked front door and tried to get inside. Unable to do so he left briefly before returning and again trying to enter the bank. The bank manager went out to talk to Jackson and found his behavior suspicious, which she in turn reported to Kleinert. Kleinert went outside to talk to Jackson, a conversation police say was caught on video; Jackson misidentified himself, police said, and then fled. Kleinert apparently believed Jackson intended to "defraud" the bank in some way, police said. The 19-year department veteran decided to give chase – including by commandeering a car and having a civilian drive him around looking for Jackson – and caught up with Jackson as the 32-year-old was walking along the sidewalk over Shoal Creek. The pair somehow got into an altercation beneath the bridge and Kleinert's gun fired – reportedly by accident – striking Jackson in the back of the neck, killing him.
So apparently this isn't an innocent guy trying to get a check cashed and is mistaken for being a bank robber. This is a guy who was behaving suspiciously around a bank, possibly intending to defraud a bank, fled the scene, and got into an altercation with a police officer.
Google search reveals that the cop was indicted on a manslaughter charge saying that, according to the indictment, he did "recklessly cause the death of Larry Jackson by striking and by attempting to strike Larry Jackson with the defendant’s hand while holding a loaded firearm,” as well as finding that he tried “to seize and physically control Larry Jackson without maintaining a distance between himself and Larry Jackson that was sufficient to enable the defendant to holster his firearm, thereby creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the firearm would discharge into Larry Jackson’s body,” so apparently the jury believed that it was an accident, or at least had insufficient evidence to find him guilty of murder.
So this is not even close to the narrative you spun two posts ago.
And I know the common wisdom is that you don't run from police. That's non hood, middle class white people wisdom.
Yeah, it's also called, "How to not get shot by the police."
No, he wasn't a bank robber, he just happened to be black and so did the perp. This article should explain everything.
The article gave me a story that wasn't at all what you just gave.
Kleinert had been inside a nearby Benchmark Bank conducting a follow-up investigation to an earlier, and unrelated, bank robbery when Jackson came to the bank's locked front door and tried to get inside. Unable to do so he left briefly before returning and again trying to enter the bank. The bank manager went out to talk to Jackson and found his behavior suspicious, which she in turn reported to Kleinert. Kleinert went outside to talk to Jackson, a conversation police say was caught on video; Jackson misidentified himself, police said, and then fled. Kleinert apparently believed Jackson intended to "defraud" the bank in some way, police said. The 19-year department veteran decided to give chase – including by commandeering a car and having a civilian drive him around looking for Jackson – and caught up with Jackson as the 32-year-old was walking along the sidewalk over Shoal Creek. The pair somehow got into an altercation beneath the bridge and Kleinert's gun fired – reportedly by accident – striking Jackson in the back of the neck, killing him.
So apparently this isn't an innocent guy trying to get a check cashed and is mistaken for being a bank robber. This is a guy who was behaving suspiciously around a bank, possibly intending to defraud a bank, fled the scene, and got into an altercation with a police officer.
Google search reveals that the cop was indicted on a manslaughter charge saying that, according to the indictment, he did "recklessly cause the death of Larry Jackson by striking and by attempting to strike Larry Jackson with the defendant’s hand while holding a loaded firearm,” as well as finding that he tried “to seize and physically control Larry Jackson without maintaining a distance between himself and Larry Jackson that was sufficient to enable the defendant to holster his firearm, thereby creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the firearm would discharge into Larry Jackson’s body,” so apparently the jury believed that it was an accident, or at least had insufficient evidence to find him guilty of murder.
So this is not even close to the narrative you spun two posts ago.
And I know the common wisdom is that you don't run from police. That's non hood, middle class white people wisdom.
Yeah, it's also called, "How to not get shot by the police."
And you believe the cop's narrative that he had "reasonable suspicion" to defraud a bank because he didn't identify himself properly. The cop didn't have just cause under Texas law to require the man to identify himself. Texas law doesn't require its residents to identify themselves on the streets unless there is reasonable suspicion that the person is committing a crime, and does knocking on the door of a bank qualify as a reasonable suspicion? Or is he considered suspicious just because he's black? Would a white person knocking on the door of a bank be "suspicious?" Austin is a city founded on the ethnic cleansing of blacks and the city planning was based in Jim Crow, so it's no surprise that a black person merely existing in Austin would be considered suspicious. Nope, if you're a person of color that exists outside of Rundberg and Dove Springs you might be accused of a crime that you're unconnected to.
He commandeered a civilian car for no reason, a guy who wasn't considered suspicious of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong color was killed, and there's most likely a civil suit underway because APD is really good at shooting first and asking questions later. And our sociopathic police chief with his friends at City Council will allow APD to shoot people and dogs. The dogs in Tarrytown will get more justice than POC.
And you believe the cop's narrative that he had "reasonable suspicion" to defraud a bank because he didn't identify himself properly.
I have no evidence one way or the other, only what two articles have said.
You, on the other hand, are remarkably quick to presume the innocence of the man in question on the grounds that he was black and the cop was white.
The cop didn't have just cause under Texas law to require the man to identify himself. Texas law doesn't require its residents to identify themselves on the streets unless there is reasonable suspicion that the person is committing a crime, and does knocking on the door of a bank qualify as a reasonable suspicion? Or is he considered suspicious just because he's black? Would a white person knocking on the door of a bank be "suspicious?" Austin is a city founded on the ethnic cleansing of blacks and the city planning was based in Jim Crow, so it's no surprise that a black person merely existing in Austin would be considered suspicious. Nope, if you're a person of color that exists outside of Rundberg and Dove Springs you might be accused of a crime that you're unconnected to.
He wasn't accused of a crime he was unconnected to.
He commandeered a civilian car for no reason, a guy who wasn't considered suspicious of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong color was killed, and there's most likely a civil suit underway because APD is really good at shooting first and asking questions later. And our sociopathic police chief with his friends at City Council will allow APD to shoot people and dogs. The dogs in Tarrytown will get more justice than POC.
But it's not like you're biased in any way here, right? I mean, it's not like you completely fabricated a story four posts ago about a sequence of events that didn't actually occur - oh wait, no, that's exactly what you did.
And no, sorry, not interested in someone ranting about how it's wrong to indict someone because he's black while at the same time indicting someone because he's white. I get that you want to frame all of this into an oppression narrative, facts be damned. However, real life is much more complicated. There are facts to consider, and if all you do is focus on the fact that an event involved a black man and a white man, and decide that the rest of the details don't matter, you miss out on what actually happened, because you evidently don't care what actually happened, you've decided guilt and innocence based on race before even gaining an understanding of the facts.
Question - should we be including discussion of garner in here as well? I also want to see this discussed but don't know if we should start another thread.
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Parsimony: Do whatever is asked by a police officer in a calm, courteous manner. Its really quite simple. In the case of Ferguson, the boy didn't comply and responded with violence. Ergo, I don't believe the officer should be held accountable here. If Wilson had climbed out, and chased down the boy, firing at him, I'd say you have a case. If Wilson murdered the boy in cold blood, while the boy was helpless, you would have an easy case and indictment. As it is, there's nothing worth protesting in Ferguson. That other one in the New York, there's actually stuff worth protesting, mostly the application of lethal force when the perp in question didn't exhibit any violent behavior toward the officers.
But there's context: The perp had a history of 30 arrests including those for violence and resisting arrest, and based on the interaction ("you guys bother me every day"), the cops are aware of who he is. He was committing a crime at the time, and he resisted arrest. Again.
More importantly, the medical examiner did not find and neck/throat damage from the "choke" hold - and actaully said that both pressure on the neck AND chest complicated his obesity/asthma/possible heart issues to cause death. Homocide in this situation is just that - one man's actions resulting in the death of another. This is not a finding of murder or guilt or intent. While it is unfortunate, I absolutely think Garner was at fault. Even so, the cop that "choked" him has already been let go beacuse he violated police policy.
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I was under the impression that intent wasn't necessary for a manslaughter charge, only some level of reckless (or negligent) action that resulted in another's death. The use of a choke hold is honestly not relevant through that lens. While this is borderline, I find it absurd (especially given the video evidence) that this didn't at least see a trial. I gave the grand jury the benefit of the doubt in Ferguson because there was ambiguity of eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence seemed to support the officer's claim. Here though I don't see the same ambiguity.
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I was under the impression that intent wasn't necessary for a manslaughter charge, only some level of reckless (or negligent) action that resulted in another's death. The use of a choke hold is honestly not relevant through that lens. While this is borderline, I find it absurd (especially given the video evidence) that this didn't at least see a trial. I gave the grand jury the benefit of the doubt in Ferguson because there was ambiguity of eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence seemed to support the officer's claim. Here though I don't see the same ambiguity.
I made that assertion beacuse most people seem to be equating homocide with "guilty of murder," both on talk shows and in person. I DO see ambiguity, considering the man's history. He was HUGE and has resisted arrest before. He was commuting a crime and refusing to be arrested. This wasn't the first time he was approached about committing this crime. While the "choke" hold was a violation of police policy, I still don't think that there is any valid claim - the criminal wasn't choked to death.
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Are New York cops not given tasers? My assumption is no, considering they weren't used in this instance, but I feel like use of those would have been a very easy solution to this problem.
Are New York cops not given tasers? My assumption is no, considering they weren't used in this instance, but I feel like use of those would have been a very easy solution to this problem.
You know, it's funny because tasers have their own set of issues. I generally think they're safer and more effective than the alternatives, but there was a quite a bit of outcry after a few individuals with mental illnesses were tazed to death a few years ago.
Are New York cops not given tasers? My assumption is no, considering they weren't used in this instance, but I feel like use of those would have been a very easy solution to this problem.
I worry that, with this guy being obese, asthmatic, and with heart problems, and with his history of resisting arrest, he'd end up dead from a heart attack anyways and we'd have the same problem.
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The real problem isn't so much the race issue, but the militarization of the police. Given how the Ferguson riots have unfolded, the police militarization is finally getting outrage from mainstream media and politicians. This is no longer a conspiracy theory that everyone can laugh at. Seeing the police dressed like soldiers is very real, and extremely alarming. I don't see how a free society can coexist with the police being militarized the way they have in the past 10-15 years.
They might have had it on the scene, but why wasn't it called in to stop the riots?
From a practical perspective, what would that have achieved? Putting the riots down by force, at this point would most likely insight more riots. Which would necessitate more force. Which would incite more riots. etc.
Presumably the plan was to contain the riots without forcibly stopping it, thereby limiting 1) the loss of life/injury potential and 2) preventing the situation from spiraling out of control.
So, here we've got a government partially responsible for creating these riots, failing in many cases to protect people from said riots and even going out of their way to stop others from protecting people from these riots. Sweet.
Disagree Ljoss, the riots are 100% the fault of the people burning/looting. They made a decision to act in a horrible fashion. This is 100% the fault of the people who did such acts and should have the full weight of the law brought down on them for their crimes. Just because a reactionary counter measure was put in place was not as effective as you would have liked does not make these riots the fault of the government, the blame belongs to the people who are braking the law doing the crime!
That is not what Ljoss was trying to get at.
Pretty much everyone that is not an anarcho-capitalist would agree that one of the most important functions of a government is to protect its citizens. The fact that the government did not do that when the riots broke out (and not only that, but punishing people for trying to protect others from the riots) implies that the role of government ought to be called into question because it failed at fulfilling that basic function.
Regarding the article listed the Oath Keepers are a volunteer organization without having an established reputation. The article itself has this an example of the leadership involved:
Quote from Oath Keepers Article[/quote »
Another leader, who would give only his first name, Sam, described himself as a weapons engineer from the St. Louis area who has done security contracting for the U.S.
Seriously, you have no credibility if you want to be Batman. That is the exact problem with groups that spring up overnight for self defense, and they were broken up mainly because of this:
Quote from Oath Keepers Creation[/quote »
Oath Keepers. Yale Law School graduate and libertarian Stewart Rhodes said by telephone from Montana that he founded the group in 2009 to protect constitutional rights, including those of protesters confronted by what he described as overly militarized police.
Okay, so we have an organization that's been around for 5 years.
This is my problem here you need to have authenticity and trust to be an organization that is able to commit resources to service:
Quote from Oath Keepers Article[/quote »
But he wasn’t clear exactly who “those guys” were or where they came from.
Each time, because while these people want to protect others and do have potentially effectively useful backgrounds to help with security they lack one simple thing as an organization; trust.
They problem was mainly this:
Quote from Oath Keepers article[/quote »
Threatened with arrest for operating without a license, the volunteers argued but eventually left their positions early Saturday, Rhodes said.
The core issue was that people feared that the government would arrest them because they didn't have the proper licensing to commit to the kind of work they were doing. What you have to look at is that a riot situation has many thousands of dollars in liabilities for involved persons and people will and do die. There are also times where improperly trained persons will do something stupid and start retaliatory strikes. We also have a long history of the KKK trying to "protect" neighborhoods and other such hate groups. This is why we have licensing requirements to prevent the KKK and other vigilante reactionary groups from entering in and usurping the power structures and beginning to form their own government in the area much of what the KKK did in the wake of Redemption.
Hence why when you see Al Sharpton talk, he always talks about "official" and "licensed" because he wants proof that the people are who they say they are..which is actually a rather conservative response for a liberal activist. Vigilantism you run into some strange persons, let's forget about the Oath Keepers for a moment and talk about the Superhero Movement.
This is Pheonix Jones the leader of such a movement:
Here's where I want to begin, I feel that having a group that is as trustworthy with an established reputation for excellence such as the Red Cross to be effective in these situations are necessary because the current situation in the US deems that we cannot handle riots properly and that when coordinated properly an organization that has a rigid structure can severely augment overwhelmed government forces and do.
But no, absolutely not do I not want a person such as Jones walking around my neighborhood with pepper spray and "doing what is right in his own heart." Give me someone with real training and expertise, sure.. but no I'm not going to accept "Bob of the North" as my protector. That is no similar than to what we see with the Crusades or the current Age of Jihad against the west with people calling for war as a means of "defense." This has a very long history as a gambit for conquerors and other such excuses. Napoleon himself used this argument to invade Egypt and try to pry it away from the Ottomans as an invader. The Oath Keepers may very well be well intentioned, but this very much reminds me of loose and disorganized government programs that also do some good and muddle around and do some really bonkers stuff.
A top down structured environment where each volunteer is identified and placed into a specific unit, not to combat a "militarized police." The reason why the police are militarized, is the result of gang wars and rampages to keep up technologically with cartels and other organizations. Then we have to take into account that we have a very bad mental health system in the US which has had enough mentally ill ex or current military go rogue and commit atrocities to be noteworthy about possible threats to others. I do not like these combustible concoctions going together, especially whenever we saw the rise in military "clubs" and distrust in government prior to the Civil War and the human long standing attitude of "short, quick wars always ending in the favored sides ideals." No, just no. We don't need paramilitary groups like ISIS or a resurgent KKK getting a power base anywhere.
Absolutely not, because they are a far worse situation in which people organize themselves to form violence cartels meant to "protect people" based on their own whims.
The US government has failed with regard to racial violence and controlling neighborhoods that are for all intents and purposes uncivilized and disconnected. So the "necessary action" is to form a 5 year old group that has failed to obtained legitimacy since inception. The US government has legitimacy without competency, the Oath Keepers lack both without either social proof or factual history. They are a collective that has people arriving with an unorganized skill set without any proper identification and understanding with locals.
"I'm Batman."
Doesn't hold the same water as say:
"I'm an Oath Keeper. My name is Bob, I'm from the north."
Think of that, if I introduce myself as an Oath Keeper does that give you confidence? Does that make you "feel" that you can "trust me."
Now if I say this:
"I heard gunfire, is everyone okay? Hi, my name is Jonathan Doors. I am a nurse practitioner with the Red Cross. Does anyone need assistance?"
Then I have a badge on my chest that states me name and a patch on my shoulder of the Red Cross with equipment in a bag and other people. That's called being able to be quickly identified, even if you didn't know I was Jonathan Doors you have seen the effectiveness of the Red Cross in several situations and people say good things about the Red Cross. This is what legitimacy is. Then because my organization has protocal people also know I'm a healer with a clearly defined objective to not shoot the medical professionals because it is in their self interest to have their wounded healed as well. Not always does it work, however it does mean that people are less likely to kill "Dr. Doors" than say Phoenix Jones or Bob of the North.
Stop trying to pretend that the lack of legitimacy with an organization does not mean anything in trying to evoke anti-government rhetoric in the face of government incompetence. Yet, we must also take into consideration that the violence did not surge and was controlled in particular areas so that does argue for government professionalism. We also have a long history with the KKK that makes the use of uniform and legitimacy as a fraternal organization that did take over a lot of American government over time. Which makes people scared about having people they don't know, and this is in part why people want records and social proof so they know they won't get hurt to lessen the liability of stupidity with a fraternal organization turning into a mini-leviathan force trying usurp power. Remember the KKK was built as a defensive organization. Napoleon was defending Egypt. ISIS is trying to protect Islam. You get my point, the Oath Keepers are trying to defend without social proof and just as anarchists fear government stupidity so do we must look at all organizations that lack social proof and legitimacy in terms of emotions even without regard to actual evidence of real competency. In order to achieve competency you have to actually act, but to earn the freedom to act one must have the appearance of success or promise to succeed first.
The Oath Keepers basically have really *****ty marketing in establishing legitimacy, reputation, and trust and building a strong foundational history towards effectiveness, personal responsibility, and a human heart. It's a fraternal organization of do-gooders without the proper organization to coordinate the most effectiveness of their forces. They failed, and they paid the price for that ineffectiveness. Instead of blaming government, they need to blame themselves for not understanding why organizations such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors without Borders, and so on have all succeeded in complex environments is because they do their work with established practices and effective results. How do I know that I get say the quality of the Red Cross with the quality of the Oath Keepers? Who are they? Where they'd come from?
So let us take the reverse effect that Bob of the North shot someone who was black. Really guess what would happen to the Oath Keepers brand and Bob of the North becomes identified as Bob Evans from Massachusetts. That means his family will be prone to death threats, Bob will be hunted and probably sued as a result of shooting a black man potentially in civil court. That's before we even talk about what the government would potentially do, this is all the risk that "Bob of the North" presumes that he wouldn't be hunted and harassed and while the government is "on their backs" he would soon come to realize that the very community he had came to help would just as easily turn on him.
No,
It disgusts me to no end how people who think a world "without government" thinks that voluntary organizations are so easy to come in "help" within a kinetic situation. No, the truth of the matter is that the government sucks and the Oath Keepers all suck at certain things. Because, it's not because people lie.. rather it's because people all suck at something. And it is over time that they improve, and that because of decay and apathy skills disappear. Stop trying to play make believe that the Oath Keepers aren't any better than the government, because whenever the situation becomes kinetic you have to look at the stupid and the symbolism.
No if we truly want to "take back our streets" its that we do need more specialized forces than just the police that act with regard to protocol. I don't care whether the Oath Keepers are trained, but whenever you have one within that article wearing an anti-jihad badge is stupid. Because you know what? If Bob from the North actually wore that, shot a black guy, then you know what the victim narrative becomes? That Bob is a racist twit that shot a black man who he thought was a Muslim.
And you know what? If the Oath Keepers do become an established force for good in this society with the effectiveness of the Red Cross, I fully expect that without official dress and decorum protocols that any sort of issues would run awry without question that would be to the detriment of the Keepers themselves and the Keeper. I don't care if you fought in Fallujah or the Fall of Saigon, if you're not identified with clear power structure and roles of protocol to deal with a kinetic situation you're as useless as the government that you serve/served yet think is incompetent. Which is rather paradoxical. The hate of government, yet the want to serve. I seriously don't get it, I don't understand it. What I do understand is that the Oath Keepers are scared that their government is being taken away from them and some of them have seen some really nasty stuff. So have I, and many other people who have lived normal lives. That doesn't mean we need to have the Iraq War Veteran version of Phoenix Jones of the Oath Keepers dressing up like an idiot "protecting people" with their rifle. No, I'm sorry but I don't like incompetency in either my government nor my vigilante groups.
Ideally, give me something set up in the spirit of the Red Cross/Crescent and we'll talk about what can be done to protect people and rebuild a fallen community in the longer term. You like anarchism? Then build organizations that have the legitimacy and the established reputation of police forces, militaries, and charities that have been around for more than a century. Then you can start talking about how to deal with the problems of civilization and how uneasy they are. Until then, the Oath Keepers need to take a step back and people like Phoenix Jones need to go away or just stick to the cosplay circuit. I do, I'd like to see the Oath Keepers as effective as the Red Cross, but not in their created mission statement. Rather to rebuild, redeem the fallen and to protect our civilization in real concrete terms.
If you want to talk about effectiveness and failure. Look at the black empowerment struggles with the Black Panthers and how they both succeeded and failed at the same time so miserably that they had helped to resurrect entire neighborhoods but also screwed themselves over in their branding. I actually lament that the Panthers never had achieved what they could have become with better leadership and a steadier hand. The same with the Oath Keepers with that talent and capacity. Especially if Bob from the North was Capt. Bob Evans could help secure neighborhoods through watch groups and so forth while his friend Col. Sanders helped to start a nascent business community.
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That "Oathkeepers" thing sounds like something cooked up by someone looking to live out a fantasy and likely putting themselves and others in further danger. So what happens when the protests get ignored and nothing much changes?
That "Oathkeepers" thing sounds like something cooked up by someone looking to live out a fantasy and likely putting themselves and others in further danger. So what happens when the protests get ignored and nothing much changes?
Here's the gist of what happens:
1. Someone dies
2. There's a "big get together" and people lament X getting shot
3. People cry out for more laws and police and community involvement
4. A couple weeks later status quo
That's what happens with most street violence in "communities that want to change." This is why we have governments that can keep a steady work on an issue and apply pressure with steady incentives such as getting a paycheck over people's gnat-like attention spans. This is all free willed and people talking without actually doing something like protesting and marching around.
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This is a total red herring. Note that draftguy never says "responsible" in his post, and the post he's responding to uses the phraseology "partially responsible for creating these riots." They aren't debating whose job it is to control/contain the riots, they're debating who is at fault for causing the riots.
That is not what Ljoss was trying to get at.
Pretty much everyone that is not an anarcho-capitalist would agree that one of the most important functions of a government is to protect its citizens. The fact that the government did not do that when the riots broke out (and not only that, but punishing people for trying to protect others from the riots) implies that the role of government ought to be called into question because it failed at fulfilling that basic function.
Don't believe me? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Whatever happened to ebola? Funny, I haven't heard a peep about it on MSNBC.com (which I view every time I open my Internet browser), the televised news, Facebook, Twitter, or any American-based news outlet or social media whatsoever since the Ferguson grand jury decision last Monday.
The reason is that once there was a better story, the American news media moved to that.
No one was ever really at risk of catching ebola in America. You have a better chance of winning your state lottery than catching ebola in America. Similarly, you have a very low chance of being the victim of unwarranted extreme police brutality, such as a gunshot wound, today. ESPECIALLY TODAY. But the news media would practically have you believe that cops are just begging for African Americans to mess with them so that they can riddle them with bullets. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Today, police are TERRIFIED of African Americans, because they know that with one wrong move they could be the next news story.
It depends on where you live. I live in an extremely safe large city with an abnormally low murder rate for a city of its size. The police have killed more people on-duty since Jan 1 than we've had murders in the city. One of the people shot by the police was going to the bank to cash a check and happened to be one of the only black people in the area. The bank robber that had just targeted the bank was reportedly black. So a cop chased this guy who was innocent and shot him in the back of the head.
Your first instinct is "Why would an innocent man run from the police?" Because the American law enforcement apparatus has a several century old habit of chasing any black person and thinking they committed a crime, then charging them with it whether they did it or not. Can't find the exact runaway slave? Go capture a free black man and sell him into slavery. The perp is identified as a white rapist? Obviously the woman was hysterical and it's actually a black guy who the town will now lynch. Crackhead gets caught in Tulia, TX and wants to get a nice plea bargain? Name 18 innocent people who just happen to live in the projects and throw them in federal prison as drug dealers.
You never run from the police. This is freaking basic.
Now, don't get me wrong, it freaking sucks that this innocent guy got shot. But you're trying to defend his running from the police like it's a smart thing to do. The impression I got from the story you just told is that it got the guy killed.
Was the bank robber armed? How soon after this guy robbed the bank did the person walk in? How soon was the police response? What happened when the police encountered this guy? At what point did the guy start running?
You're missing a lot of details here. Right now, it's difficult to determine whether the police behaved irresponsibly.
I'm guessing the bank robber was armed, because it's rather hard to rob a bank without a weapon unless you just physically take a big bag of money and book it. I'm guessing the police were informed by 911 because you said that someone reported a black guy robbing the bank, and silent alarms are just that, silent, they don't report anything. You said, "The bank robber that had just targeted the bank was reportedly black." Just targeted. I'm assuming by this that the police had only just arrived onto the crime scene?
Because if the police had reports of an armed black man robbing a bank, they would have come into the bank looking for a black man who they presumed was a danger to everyone around him.
Now, you said that the black guy comes in trying to cash a check. My question then is how did this guy get shot? Did the police see him and immediately start shooting, or did they try to apprehend him, and then he ran, and then shoot him? You said the cop "chased" this guy, meaning the guy ran, and a cop chased this guy down, which meant he had to have gotten some distance before he was shot. So it seems the police didn't immediately open fire once they saw him. So what did they do? Did they tell him to put his hands up and to stay where he was, only to have the guy start running?
I'm trying to figure this scenario out here, because it's one thing to say that the police shot him when he wasn't resisting arrest, but you're describing a guy who was resisting arrest, and whom the police believed was a suspect in a bank robbery, and whom the police believed was armed. Police, as stated in the ruling of Tennessee v. Garner, may use lethal force when pursuing a suspect if they have reason to believe the suspect presents a probable threat of death or injury to the officers or others.
So I'm not sure the officers were out of line in shooting this guy. Again, it really sucks that he died, but they probably thought he was an armed robber, and the guy, by your description, chose to go out of his way to look suspicious.
And I know the common wisdom is that you don't run from police. That's non hood, middle class people wisdom. In the hood things are a little more complex. If it's just one officer and he's chasing you, your chance of getting away is about 10-33% according to informal studies done by sociologists of drug dealers and their getaways from police. And as we've seen from the above article and criminology studies, people have a really bad time of eyewitness reports of a perpetrator of another race. So you can get a generic description of a black or Latino guy that could be just about anyone if he manages to get away. And if the police are on your tail, in the hood there are systems where your friends and relatives can shield you as you live in the same neighborhood. You can move between houses multiple times a day and your friends and family can just lie to the police about your whereabouts.
So apparently this isn't an innocent guy trying to get a check cashed and is mistaken for being a bank robber. This is a guy who was behaving suspiciously around a bank, possibly intending to defraud a bank, fled the scene, and got into an altercation with a police officer.
Google search reveals that the cop was indicted on a manslaughter charge saying that, according to the indictment, he did "recklessly cause the death of Larry Jackson by striking and by attempting to strike Larry Jackson with the defendant’s hand while holding a loaded firearm,” as well as finding that he tried “to seize and physically control Larry Jackson without maintaining a distance between himself and Larry Jackson that was sufficient to enable the defendant to holster his firearm, thereby creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the firearm would discharge into Larry Jackson’s body,” so apparently the jury believed that it was an accident, or at least had insufficient evidence to find him guilty of murder.
So this is not even close to the narrative you spun two posts ago.
Yeah, it's also called, "How to not get shot by the police."
And you believe the cop's narrative that he had "reasonable suspicion" to defraud a bank because he didn't identify himself properly. The cop didn't have just cause under Texas law to require the man to identify himself. Texas law doesn't require its residents to identify themselves on the streets unless there is reasonable suspicion that the person is committing a crime, and does knocking on the door of a bank qualify as a reasonable suspicion? Or is he considered suspicious just because he's black? Would a white person knocking on the door of a bank be "suspicious?" Austin is a city founded on the ethnic cleansing of blacks and the city planning was based in Jim Crow, so it's no surprise that a black person merely existing in Austin would be considered suspicious. Nope, if you're a person of color that exists outside of Rundberg and Dove Springs you might be accused of a crime that you're unconnected to.
He commandeered a civilian car for no reason, a guy who wasn't considered suspicious of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong color was killed, and there's most likely a civil suit underway because APD is really good at shooting first and asking questions later. And our sociopathic police chief with his friends at City Council will allow APD to shoot people and dogs. The dogs in Tarrytown will get more justice than POC.
You, on the other hand, are remarkably quick to presume the innocence of the man in question on the grounds that he was black and the cop was white.
He wasn't accused of a crime he was unconnected to.
But it's not like you're biased in any way here, right? I mean, it's not like you completely fabricated a story four posts ago about a sequence of events that didn't actually occur - oh wait, no, that's exactly what you did.
And no, sorry, not interested in someone ranting about how it's wrong to indict someone because he's black while at the same time indicting someone because he's white. I get that you want to frame all of this into an oppression narrative, facts be damned. However, real life is much more complicated. There are facts to consider, and if all you do is focus on the fact that an event involved a black man and a white man, and decide that the rest of the details don't matter, you miss out on what actually happened, because you evidently don't care what actually happened, you've decided guilt and innocence based on race before even gaining an understanding of the facts.
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More importantly, the medical examiner did not find and neck/throat damage from the "choke" hold - and actaully said that both pressure on the neck AND chest complicated his obesity/asthma/possible heart issues to cause death. Homocide in this situation is just that - one man's actions resulting in the death of another. This is not a finding of murder or guilt or intent. While it is unfortunate, I absolutely think Garner was at fault. Even so, the cop that "choked" him has already been let go beacuse he violated police policy.
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Negligence = wrongful death civil suit.
We can, and probably will, still see the latter.
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I made that assertion beacuse most people seem to be equating homocide with "guilty of murder," both on talk shows and in person. I DO see ambiguity, considering the man's history. He was HUGE and has resisted arrest before. He was commuting a crime and refusing to be arrested. This wasn't the first time he was approached about committing this crime. While the "choke" hold was a violation of police policy, I still don't think that there is any valid claim - the criminal wasn't choked to death.
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You know, it's funny because tasers have their own set of issues. I generally think they're safer and more effective than the alternatives, but there was a quite a bit of outcry after a few individuals with mental illnesses were tazed to death a few years ago.
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I worry that, with this guy being obese, asthmatic, and with heart problems, and with his history of resisting arrest, he'd end up dead from a heart attack anyways and we'd have the same problem.
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Regarding the article listed the Oath Keepers are a volunteer organization without having an established reputation. The article itself has this an example of the leadership involved:
Seriously, you have no credibility if you want to be Batman. That is the exact problem with groups that spring up overnight for self defense, and they were broken up mainly because of this:
Okay, so we have an organization that's been around for 5 years.
This is my problem here you need to have authenticity and trust to be an organization that is able to commit resources to service:
Each time, because while these people want to protect others and do have potentially effectively useful backgrounds to help with security they lack one simple thing as an organization; trust.
They problem was mainly this:
The core issue was that people feared that the government would arrest them because they didn't have the proper licensing to commit to the kind of work they were doing. What you have to look at is that a riot situation has many thousands of dollars in liabilities for involved persons and people will and do die. There are also times where improperly trained persons will do something stupid and start retaliatory strikes. We also have a long history of the KKK trying to "protect" neighborhoods and other such hate groups. This is why we have licensing requirements to prevent the KKK and other vigilante reactionary groups from entering in and usurping the power structures and beginning to form their own government in the area much of what the KKK did in the wake of Redemption.
Hence why when you see Al Sharpton talk, he always talks about "official" and "licensed" because he wants proof that the people are who they say they are..which is actually a rather conservative response for a liberal activist. Vigilantism you run into some strange persons, let's forget about the Oath Keepers for a moment and talk about the Superhero Movement.
This is Pheonix Jones the leader of such a movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Jones
This is his twitter account:
https://twitter.com/thephoenixjones
Here's where I want to begin, I feel that having a group that is as trustworthy with an established reputation for excellence such as the Red Cross to be effective in these situations are necessary because the current situation in the US deems that we cannot handle riots properly and that when coordinated properly an organization that has a rigid structure can severely augment overwhelmed government forces and do.
But no, absolutely not do I not want a person such as Jones walking around my neighborhood with pepper spray and "doing what is right in his own heart." Give me someone with real training and expertise, sure.. but no I'm not going to accept "Bob of the North" as my protector. That is no similar than to what we see with the Crusades or the current Age of Jihad against the west with people calling for war as a means of "defense." This has a very long history as a gambit for conquerors and other such excuses. Napoleon himself used this argument to invade Egypt and try to pry it away from the Ottomans as an invader. The Oath Keepers may very well be well intentioned, but this very much reminds me of loose and disorganized government programs that also do some good and muddle around and do some really bonkers stuff.
A top down structured environment where each volunteer is identified and placed into a specific unit, not to combat a "militarized police." The reason why the police are militarized, is the result of gang wars and rampages to keep up technologically with cartels and other organizations. Then we have to take into account that we have a very bad mental health system in the US which has had enough mentally ill ex or current military go rogue and commit atrocities to be noteworthy about possible threats to others. I do not like these combustible concoctions going together, especially whenever we saw the rise in military "clubs" and distrust in government prior to the Civil War and the human long standing attitude of "short, quick wars always ending in the favored sides ideals." No, just no. We don't need paramilitary groups like ISIS or a resurgent KKK getting a power base anywhere.
Absolutely not, because they are a far worse situation in which people organize themselves to form violence cartels meant to "protect people" based on their own whims.
The US government has failed with regard to racial violence and controlling neighborhoods that are for all intents and purposes uncivilized and disconnected. So the "necessary action" is to form a 5 year old group that has failed to obtained legitimacy since inception. The US government has legitimacy without competency, the Oath Keepers lack both without either social proof or factual history. They are a collective that has people arriving with an unorganized skill set without any proper identification and understanding with locals.
"I'm Batman."
Doesn't hold the same water as say:
"I'm an Oath Keeper. My name is Bob, I'm from the north."
Think of that, if I introduce myself as an Oath Keeper does that give you confidence? Does that make you "feel" that you can "trust me."
Now if I say this:
"I heard gunfire, is everyone okay? Hi, my name is Jonathan Doors. I am a nurse practitioner with the Red Cross. Does anyone need assistance?"
Then I have a badge on my chest that states me name and a patch on my shoulder of the Red Cross with equipment in a bag and other people. That's called being able to be quickly identified, even if you didn't know I was Jonathan Doors you have seen the effectiveness of the Red Cross in several situations and people say good things about the Red Cross. This is what legitimacy is. Then because my organization has protocal people also know I'm a healer with a clearly defined objective to not shoot the medical professionals because it is in their self interest to have their wounded healed as well. Not always does it work, however it does mean that people are less likely to kill "Dr. Doors" than say Phoenix Jones or Bob of the North.
Stop trying to pretend that the lack of legitimacy with an organization does not mean anything in trying to evoke anti-government rhetoric in the face of government incompetence. Yet, we must also take into consideration that the violence did not surge and was controlled in particular areas so that does argue for government professionalism. We also have a long history with the KKK that makes the use of uniform and legitimacy as a fraternal organization that did take over a lot of American government over time. Which makes people scared about having people they don't know, and this is in part why people want records and social proof so they know they won't get hurt to lessen the liability of stupidity with a fraternal organization turning into a mini-leviathan force trying usurp power. Remember the KKK was built as a defensive organization. Napoleon was defending Egypt. ISIS is trying to protect Islam. You get my point, the Oath Keepers are trying to defend without social proof and just as anarchists fear government stupidity so do we must look at all organizations that lack social proof and legitimacy in terms of emotions even without regard to actual evidence of real competency. In order to achieve competency you have to actually act, but to earn the freedom to act one must have the appearance of success or promise to succeed first.
The Oath Keepers basically have really *****ty marketing in establishing legitimacy, reputation, and trust and building a strong foundational history towards effectiveness, personal responsibility, and a human heart. It's a fraternal organization of do-gooders without the proper organization to coordinate the most effectiveness of their forces. They failed, and they paid the price for that ineffectiveness. Instead of blaming government, they need to blame themselves for not understanding why organizations such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors without Borders, and so on have all succeeded in complex environments is because they do their work with established practices and effective results. How do I know that I get say the quality of the Red Cross with the quality of the Oath Keepers? Who are they? Where they'd come from?
So let us take the reverse effect that Bob of the North shot someone who was black. Really guess what would happen to the Oath Keepers brand and Bob of the North becomes identified as Bob Evans from Massachusetts. That means his family will be prone to death threats, Bob will be hunted and probably sued as a result of shooting a black man potentially in civil court. That's before we even talk about what the government would potentially do, this is all the risk that "Bob of the North" presumes that he wouldn't be hunted and harassed and while the government is "on their backs" he would soon come to realize that the very community he had came to help would just as easily turn on him.
No,
It disgusts me to no end how people who think a world "without government" thinks that voluntary organizations are so easy to come in "help" within a kinetic situation. No, the truth of the matter is that the government sucks and the Oath Keepers all suck at certain things. Because, it's not because people lie.. rather it's because people all suck at something. And it is over time that they improve, and that because of decay and apathy skills disappear. Stop trying to play make believe that the Oath Keepers aren't any better than the government, because whenever the situation becomes kinetic you have to look at the stupid and the symbolism.
No if we truly want to "take back our streets" its that we do need more specialized forces than just the police that act with regard to protocol. I don't care whether the Oath Keepers are trained, but whenever you have one within that article wearing an anti-jihad badge is stupid. Because you know what? If Bob from the North actually wore that, shot a black guy, then you know what the victim narrative becomes? That Bob is a racist twit that shot a black man who he thought was a Muslim.
And you know what? If the Oath Keepers do become an established force for good in this society with the effectiveness of the Red Cross, I fully expect that without official dress and decorum protocols that any sort of issues would run awry without question that would be to the detriment of the Keepers themselves and the Keeper. I don't care if you fought in Fallujah or the Fall of Saigon, if you're not identified with clear power structure and roles of protocol to deal with a kinetic situation you're as useless as the government that you serve/served yet think is incompetent. Which is rather paradoxical. The hate of government, yet the want to serve. I seriously don't get it, I don't understand it. What I do understand is that the Oath Keepers are scared that their government is being taken away from them and some of them have seen some really nasty stuff. So have I, and many other people who have lived normal lives. That doesn't mean we need to have the Iraq War Veteran version of Phoenix Jones of the Oath Keepers dressing up like an idiot "protecting people" with their rifle. No, I'm sorry but I don't like incompetency in either my government nor my vigilante groups.
Ideally, give me something set up in the spirit of the Red Cross/Crescent and we'll talk about what can be done to protect people and rebuild a fallen community in the longer term. You like anarchism? Then build organizations that have the legitimacy and the established reputation of police forces, militaries, and charities that have been around for more than a century. Then you can start talking about how to deal with the problems of civilization and how uneasy they are. Until then, the Oath Keepers need to take a step back and people like Phoenix Jones need to go away or just stick to the cosplay circuit. I do, I'd like to see the Oath Keepers as effective as the Red Cross, but not in their created mission statement. Rather to rebuild, redeem the fallen and to protect our civilization in real concrete terms.
If you want to talk about effectiveness and failure. Look at the black empowerment struggles with the Black Panthers and how they both succeeded and failed at the same time so miserably that they had helped to resurrect entire neighborhoods but also screwed themselves over in their branding. I actually lament that the Panthers never had achieved what they could have become with better leadership and a steadier hand. The same with the Oath Keepers with that talent and capacity. Especially if Bob from the North was Capt. Bob Evans could help secure neighborhoods through watch groups and so forth while his friend Col. Sanders helped to start a nascent business community.
Modern
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Here's the gist of what happens:
1. Someone dies
2. There's a "big get together" and people lament X getting shot
3. People cry out for more laws and police and community involvement
4. A couple weeks later status quo
That's what happens with most street violence in "communities that want to change." This is why we have governments that can keep a steady work on an issue and apply pressure with steady incentives such as getting a paycheck over people's gnat-like attention spans. This is all free willed and people talking without actually doing something like protesting and marching around.
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<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>