Summations Only

In fact all the recent cases of supposed racism in the deaths of blacks by white cops aren't racism. Witnesses against the cop in Ferguson admitted to the Grand Jury that they were lying and making things up because they wanted to believe the young man who was killed was a victim of racism. Or they believed what others had told them. Some said he was shot in the back, then admitted they didn't even see the event, and forensic evidence showed that he was not shot in the back. The cop was confronted by a young guy who seemed to be threatening him and reacted accordingly. If Brown had simply not come at him there would have been no shooting. But lies and hysteria prevailed.The Garner case in New York city is a similar situation. The man had a long record and was caught illegally selling cigarettes again. He resisted arrest and kept pushing the cop away. The cop did what he was trained to do when resisted, he didn't do anything unusual or out of racist motives though the result was tragic nevertheless. And he was acquitted rightly.Who is whipping up all this racist antagonism in these communities anyway? And what justifies looting and burning down the town? It's the black people who suffer from that too.

Of course I said nothing even remotely implying such an attitude but that doesn't stop the lies does it?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's hard to tell who the victim is in a case like that, which is why special investigation is needed to determine what really happened. If the police were acting according to protocols and not out of line in any way according to the protocols and they can show that they had reason for their actions then the victim who got killed was in fact at fault. It happens. Again, the witnesses who said the cop was out of line in Ferguson were shown by the Grand Jury to have lied. The video and the investigation in the case of Garnerk, who was being arrested for illegal activity, showed that he resisted arrest and the cop acted according to his training in his attempt to restrain him. Unfortunately Garner had health problems that made it hard for him to tolerate it though the cop of course wouldn't have known that.The idea that white cops go into black neighborhoods with racist motives in this day and age is ridiculous.By your standards cops should never try to do anything about crime or trying to protect the public safety, though, oddly enough, that's their job.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, EvC has been down all day but it's back up again, so without further ado I'll answer this post:==============
If the protocols are wrong, nevertheless if they were being followed there is no error on the part of the police for following them. Changing the protocols is another subject and perhaps that should be the next project. But indicting an officer for what he was trained to do would be a miscarriage of justice. In order to indict or not indict a Grand Jury must examine the evidence, right? And apparently that can mean interviewing witnesses. Who then changed their story or confessed they hadn't actually seen the incident and other things like that.This guy tells it according to the facts I got in an email which I now can't find: Ben Shapiro on Lies About FergusonI read conflicting reports about whether the choke hold had been outlawed or not. Apparently the cop who tried to restrain Garner apparently didn't know it was outlawed and he was acquitted. And how could a person be held accountable for a guy's complex health issues when he was doing only what he was trained to do? You're the legal expert here but that makes no sense to me.You could be right about the general situation and the need for reforms but that doesn't justify criminalizing a cop who was doing what he thought was his duty. If reforms are needed, full speed ahead on them, but it sure sounds like there were people in Ferguson who intentionally promoted lies about how the cop Wilson dealt with Brown in an effort to make a racist case against him that he didn't deserve. Also whipped the people up to burn down the town. On the basis of lies.

Well, I've been watching a bunch of the different videos of the Eric Garner incident at You Tube and my overall impression after all that is that the cops acted with undue force and I have no idea why they felt that necessary. Racism probably not, but overreaction for sure. The crime if he was even involved in it at the time was petty crime after all, how does that call for the degree of force you might use to take down a really dangerous criminal? Too many of them, too much force, no attempt to talk to the guy in a reasonable way. I don't get it. They probably didn't act outside their guidelines but those are indeed strange guidelines. Good grief. One of the videos said that what had happened before was that Garner had broken up a fight and then the cops moved in. Something is wrong with this picture. I don't think racism says it but something is wrong.And what ABOUT the idea that those who police a neighborhood should look like they belong in the community? I was wondering that early on but got caught up in the Ferguson horror where they are screaming racism and trying to burn the place down. Then it turned out the witnesses against the cop lied and there was a whole gang promoting lies and violence. Why? But also why don't they put black cops in the black neighborhoods? I'm sure they've thought about it, so why did they decide against it?Garner at first looked like a similar situation to Ferguson but it's not.ABE: The more I think about it the more I think what you need to do is TALK to a guy like that. You don't just close in on him expecting to have to throw him down and restrain him, you TALK TO HIM. Don't you? Hey Eric, you selling the cigarettes again? Come on man you know you've been busted for that. Or maybe that isn't what he's doing at the moment, how would you know unless you talked to him?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Are all those vaunted IQ points of yours rolling around in your skull like so many loose marbles? What makes the difference? The fact that the kid was WAVING IT AROUND, acting in a way some people thought threatening enough to call the cops. Sheesh.

As Jon keeps saying the police probably shouldn't have shot him. I'm responding to your saying what's the difference between a bunch of white guys carrying guns pointing down and a guy in a park waving a gun around. It's the waving. Real gun owners know how to hold their guns safely. My father took us all shooting as kids, out in the desert or the fields of the family ranch, and the one thing he said over and over again was Keep the gun pointed down when you're carrying it. Of course that was a rifle. A hand gun would normally be holstered and if it's in a person's hand instead, then it would look menacing.I just watched one of the videos at You Tube and unfortunately the shooting by the cops is blocked by the police car and although the gun isn't visible in the kid's hand the cops are both acting in "threatened" mode, pointing their guns at this kid even after they've shot him. Which is apparently the case as he had dropped out of sight immediately behind the car.From the video there is no way to tell the age of the guy with the gun but he's been walking around with it for some time before the cops show up. Then he sits in the gazebo for a while, looking lonely and at loose ends really, then gets up as the police car drives in and is immediately shot. From all the testimony he didn't pull the gun out but instead of raising his hands as ordered lifted his shirt to show the gun in his waistband and that is what got him shot. So it looks to me like the cops did overreact and shot before understanding the actual situation.You know, you don't serve the cause of truth or justice by posting pictures that are completely irrelevant to the situation being discussed and accusing people of defending positions they aren't defending.

Yes, guns scare people, even holstered, and I'd say that man was acting irresponsibly in that situation too although he wasn't doing anything threatening like waving it around. If he had been I'm sure he'd have been shot like the kid was. You are making irresponsible false comparisons, Dr. A.

He was treated as a "menace" because HE WAS WAVING THE GUN AROUND IN A PUBLIC PARK, didn't have it holstered, sometimes pointed it at people. Good grief. If there is a racist element in any of this it simply is not apparent from the facts of the situation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I agree with your assessment of the situation from the cops' point of view, but after watching a number of videos of it myself I think they way overdid it. The guy himself is no threat, there is no need to arrest him immediately, he IS protesting that he's done nothing wrong and the videos don't indicate that in fact he was selling the cigarettes at that time. Perhaps he was but at least one video says the cops acted right after he'd stopped a fight.And even if he'd been selling the cigarettes again, he's just a guy standing there on the sidewalk objecting to the cops coming after him and there is no reason anyone can see from the videos for them to come after him either, certainly with force. I can see a need for some other kind of police work in such a situation.I understand that resisting arrest is against the law but it's also the normal reaction of INNOCENT people to police action. There should be some wisdom applied that doesn't seem to be getting applied. The cops seem to know nothing but force. I know cops are threatened by criminals all the time, shot etc. They are rightly scared in many situations. I was once stopped by a cop years ago about one in the morning on New Year's Eve, as I was speeding through darkened streets to pick up my young teenage daughter from a party. I think I might even have run a stop sign. Well, you know, there weren't any other cars for blocks ...except that cop car unfortunately, that must have been parked out of sight.I was impressed by the fear the cop showed. After I'd pulled over, he stopped some distance behind me and kept crouching as he came up to ask for my ID. I guess the circumstances hit him as suspicious. I can sympathize. Perhaps I could have been shot, I'm glad he merely crouched and didn't pull his gun. He was visibly relieved to find a harried Mom behind the wheel.So again I sympathize. Police work is dangerous work. On the other hand Garner didn't look like a threat. The kid in the park could have looked like a threat, and it sounds like Michael Brown did too, but not Garner. The police may have done what they were authorized to do but still....

The statistics might tell you that there is a problem when white cops confront blacks in their community when they've committed a crime, but it wouldn't show racism on the part of the whites any more than it could show it on the part of the blacks. Resisting arrest, coming at the officer etc. And, again, all this is occurring in relation to having just committed a crime, Brown having robbed a convenience store, Garner selling cigarettes again. The circumstances do not suggest racism on the part of the cops.Now maybe you could argue that the cops were particularly scared of the kid in the park because the kid was black, I wondered about that myself, but I don't know how far that could go, either. Would they have been less trigger-happy if the boy had been white? How would we know?In any case the kid was waving around a toy gun that looked like a real gun. I think his parents should have some of the blame. They should have known that it looks real and it could get him in trouble. My father would have known that, any gun-savvy person would, and told his kids not to wave it around. Actually, he wouldn't have let us have such a toy anyway.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I only skimmed the article you posted back there because it was your usual tactic of comparing unrelated things to imply that an opinion about one case implies the same opinion about the other. The story you posted looks like a really bad miscarriage of justice by the cops, but we weren't discussing that kind of situation at the time. The current context is the attempt to arrest someone for a crime actually committed so that's what I responded to. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The thing is, that kind of advice is good for whites or blacks. Don't resist arrest, don't do anything to cause the police to suspect or distrust you.

I don't know what it says for sure but I know I'm wary of your attempts to hang some accusation on me that you've made up out of thin air. White kids ARE taught that resisting arrest is wrong, and that you are to do what the cops tell you to do. It does appear that Brown, Garner and Rice were not told that.

You brought up a case of mistreatment by the cops in an attempt to put the Garner and Brown cases in the same light although as the conversation was going they were entirely different situations, and I refused to let you get away with it.