The Latest Potentially-Explosive Racially-Charged Murder

[SoulBiter]

I don't think they should be stopping anyone. That's unconstitutional (Illegal search and seizure and all). I cant believe it took so long to get this stopped.

But you hit on something. Since whites were less likely to be stopped, they probably were less careful about not having contraband on them. Since minorities were being stopped at a high rate, they were more careful, knowing the high rate of stop and frisk.

However with all races, the percentage of arrests were so stinking low, that it amazes me that it was being put up with. Maybe that's why they didnt frisk whites as much because they didnt want this to end up in court where they would lose.

[Rawedge Rim]

Does that matter? If the police get a call for a domestic violence, and in a black neighborhood they arrest the man accused of the assault, but in a white neighborhood they tell the man to leave and sleep in a hotel until tomorrow; is thier equal treatment under the law? If a black man is pulled over for doing 45 in a 35 zone, and is forced to endure a search for contraband, while a white person pulled over for the same offense doesn't even have to leave the vehicle, is this "equality under the law"?

These things happen. Heck a black person is more likely to recieve a long sentence of an identical infraction than a white person is, regardless of income.

So I can see why there is a frustration.

Is it that they are black or is it because they pull up in a low-rider vehicle with their gangsta gear on, roll down the window and rap/hiphop "I hate cops" music is blaring. They are wearing Sunglasses and its dark or dusk. Maybe to hide the red eyes.

Z had it right above, its not always about the color of the skin but how you come across by how you dress and how you act. You want to dress and act like a criminal? Then don't be all put out when you are treated like one.

By law, and the Letter and Spirit of the Constitution, it's not supposed to matter whether a person is black, driving a low rider with NWA chanting "F*** the police", or a white in a suit listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

This is not to say that some in the black community don't bring attitude into the equation; OTOH, I've seen plenty of attitude from white people. Regardless, the way that people are "supposed" to be handled fairly uniformly by law enforcement.

[SoulBiter]

Again by letter of the law you are correct. But I have to say AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!

People are going to profile each other by their experiences. People don't quit being people just because they put a uniform on.

[Zarathustra]

So any thoughts on the Eric Garner decision?

I think people who watch the video are seeing things that aren't there. The cops did briefly get him in a headlock, but this was released very quickly. Most of the time he complained about not being able to breathe (11 times), no one was even touching his neck. Autopsy showed no damage to his neck. Perhaps he had trouble breathing due to the cops being on top of him, combined with his own weight, but if you truly can't breathe, you can't talk. He was talking.

I've heard lots of outrage over the fact that the coroner ruled it a homicide, but I don't think these people realize that "homicide" doesn't mean murder. It means you didn't die from natural causes. It's not an admission or judgment of a criminal homicide.

Eric Garner was resisting arrest, in several different forms, verbal and physical. If the cops try to put cuffs on you, and you don't let them, you have justified the use of force against you. The man has been arrested 31 times. If he was tired of being arrested, he should have stopped committing crimes. If he didn't want to be harmed by cops, he shouldn't have resisted arrest.

It's tragic, but what else are the cops supposed to do? Not arrest him because he told them not to?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I had said "black leaders" not "black people". Mr. Sharpton's organization may indeed be working to improve black communities but Mr. Sharpton himself, a nationally-recognized figure who, if he wanted to get a message out, need only step in front of a microphone and a camera, does not talk about black-on-black crime. If it concerned him and he wanted to shine light on the issue then he would talk about it...

I finally found the name of the boy from Cleveland: Tamir Rice. This is the story over which there should be outrage, not Michael Brown or Eric Garner (although there is still reason to be upset over the Garner decision).

More than 100 people packed a church in Cleveland, Ohio, for the memorial service of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy shot dead by police last month. Rice, who was in sixth grade, was killed after a 911 caller reported seeing the boy with what turned out to be a pellet gun, which the caller repeatedly said seemed fake. Video shows Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehman fatally shooting Rice immediately after leaving his cruiser, from a distance of about 10 feet. Now, reports have emerged Loehman was deemed unfit for police service two years ago when he worked in the suburb of Independence. A letter from a superior specifically criticizes Loehman’s performance in firearms training, saying, "He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal."

In other words, the cop who shot him shouldn't have been wearing a badge.

Now...on the Eric Garner story...I haven't seen the medical examiner's reports so if there were no damage to his neck then claims of "they put him in a chokehold" are not only overblown but completely false. That being said....the fact that he has been arrested 31 times is irrelevant--that doesn't warrant him being killed for resisting. Besides, how heinous of a crime is it to sell loose cigarettes on the street?

When asked about the Eric Garner case, Mr. Obama replied, "My tradition is not to remark on cases where there may still be an investigation". This is complete and utter bullshit--he spoke out about the Trayvon Martin case while it was still in the investigative state and he spoke out about Michael Brown while that case was still under investigation. What a liar!

[Vraith]

but if you truly can't breathe, you can't talk. He was talking.

Well, that's not true. You can prove it on yourself, pressing your throat between the top of the larynx and your jaw...you can breath out and talk [until you are unconscious or truly empty lungs] but you can't breath IN.
And you won't even leave a tender spot, let alone do any damage to your throat.
You can do it even more easily [and less likely to make yourself cough] with a single finger and about an ounce of pressure. Just push up slightly where the soft underside of your "chin" area meets your neck.
For a fair number of people, [especially the overweight] even that isn't necessary. Just having the head tilted forward can choke them.

Anyway, AFAICT so far, the cops had no reason to arrest him at that time.
Even if people shouldn't/have no right to resist arrest, the police should have to have defensible reason to place someone under arrest.
[heh...and that was some of the wimpiest resisting I've ever seen...next thing you know, it will be "resisting arrest" to call a cop a meanie-head].

I wonder why they couldn't just write him a ticket, if they had any evidence [which so far as I've heard they didn't] since I don't believe there is an imprisonment penalty...only fines.

[Cail]

The issue I have with the Garner case is that they were stopping and questioning him because they were suspicious that he was selling single cigarettes (again) which is illegal in New York. Why on earth that's illegal I have no idea (ask the progressives running New York). Garner said, "not again, not today" before he began resisting. Additionally, the officer in charge at the scene was a black woman. I don't believe there's a racial component here....Just a stupid authoritarian law, and a man who didn't want to be cuffed.

Garner had health issues (asthma, morbid obesity) that certainly didn't help matters.

But more importantly, the police were acting to protect the state of New York and their collection of taxes.

[Zarathustra]

I agree that the law was stupid and authoritarian. Just like the drug war. Unfortunately, we don't get to pick and choose which laws we want to obey.

Resisting arrest is a crime itself. A separate charge. And I think we can all agree that it's a necessary charge, otherwise all the others will be unenforceable.

Vraith, you can't just assume the cops had no reason to arrest him because the dude said so while they were trying to arrest him. If every criminal could get out of being arrested merely by claiming to be innocent, we wouldn't have a justice system. Even if the cops were mistaken, that's not Garner's call to make at the moment. Once a cop decides to arrest you, you must comply and then deal with the right/wrong of the matter in court. No one has the right to refuse to be arrested.

And you can belittle the man's resistance all you want, but I'm sure Null will be around to explain how the "I'm not resisting" game works, while a man is holding his hands up to evade being cuffed. "Hands up, don't cuff" isn't a thing.

The biggest tragedy here (besides the obvious: Garner's death) is how the Mayor came out and called this a case of racism. We're in danger of watering down this term into meaninglessness. It's not racism every time something happens to a black man that people don't like. It's moronic and irresponsible for the Mayor to say that this event has its roots in a centuries-old problem (surrounded by black people shaking their heads in agreement while he says it). It's justifying their sense of victimization.

Not only is this doing damage to real issues of race, it's also hiding the culpability of our government for making stupid laws that justify the cops arresting us for silly things like selling an otherwise legal product ... because they have incentivized a black market with their ill-conceived laws.

Thanks to New York’s laughably high cigarette taxes ($4.35 state plus another $1.60 in the city) and higher prices generally, a pack of smokes in New York City costs $14 or more. That creates a powerful incentive to smuggle smokes in from states such as Virginia, where you can buy a pack for a third of that price. Fill a Ford Econoline van with a few hundred cartons and you can make a nice five-figure profit in a weekend. Some people do.

On a related note, Reason.com had an article about the Congressional Black Caucus members holding up their hands in a symbolic gesture (of something that never happened) on the House floor ... but none of them voted to limit militarization of the police when they had the chance! WTF? You're going to moan and bitch about something, rather than doing something about it? This is all politics, all theater. Neither Obama nor Holder nor any other black leader gives a damn about militarized police force. They're the ones exacerbating it beyond Bush's wildest dreams.

[Cail]

I agree that the law was stupid and authoritarian. Just like the drug war. Unfortunately, we don't get to pick and choose which laws we want to obey.

Resisting arrest is a crime itself. A separate charge. And I think we can all agree that it's a necessary charge, otherwise all the others will be unenforceable.

I agree on both counts. The law is stupid and unnecessarily authoritarian....The state's already collected their regressive cigarette tax when the pack was initially purchased.....You know, just like they do with every other product. For some reason though, reselling cigarettes is different than reselling a shirt.

And yes, right or wrong, resisting arrest is not only a crime in and of itself, but a really, really bad idea. Again, like Martin or Brown, Garner seems to be a really bad person for people to rally behind given his impressive criminal history.

you can't just assume the cops had no reason to arrest him because the dude said so while they were trying to arrest him. If every criminal could get out of being arrested merely by claiming to be innocent, we wouldn't have a justice system. Even if the cops were mistaken, that's not Garner's call to make at the moment. Once a cop decides to arrest you, you must comply and then deal with the right/wrong of the matter in court. No one has the right to refuse to be arrested.

Right. We have a legal system which, while not perfect, is designed to deal with wrongful arrest.

The biggest tragedy here (besides the obvious: Garner's death) is how the Mayor came out and called this a case of racism. We're in danger of watering down this term into meaninglessness. It's not racism every time something happens to a black man that people don't like. It's moronic and irresponsible for the Mayor to say that this event has its roots in a centuries-old problem (surrounded by black people shaking their heads in agreement while he says it). It's justifying their sense of victimization.

Unfortunately though, this is the world we live in. In 2012 410 people were killed by the police (that were reported as such). The racial breakdown isn't listed, which is a shame. 72% of the population is white, 13% is black. Without knowing the racial makeup of those 410 people, it's impossible to really know what's happening.

But........only 750 of the nation's 17,000-plus law enforcement agencies contribute data to the FBI's justifiable homicide database. So.....hell, we really have no clue how often cops are killing people, and what color they are. That's goddamn scary.

Not only is this doing damage to real issues of race, it's also hiding the culpability of our government for making stupid laws that justify the cops arresting us for silly things like selling an otherwise legal product ... because they have incentivized a black market with their ill-conceived laws.

Right, and that's also goddamn scary. We've spoken before about how the police are used by the government as revenue collectors, and this is a prime example.


Edited to add - OK, here we go. The CDC has a database of fatal injuries. Using the filter for "legal intervention", you get 140 blacks killed by the police in 2012 versus 386 whites, and a total of 550 deaths. 72% of 550 is 396, 13% is 72. So yes, given the fact that the overall number of deaths is underreported as I noted above, blacks die at the hands of the police at twice the rate of their representation of the population.

So what does that mean? Blacks are overrepresented as the perpetrators of crime. In 2012, 69.3 percent of all persons arrested were white, 28.1 percent were black, and the remaining 2.6 percent were of other races.

[Zarathustra]

We agree on all counts, Cail, except for one thing. The Reason article said that Virginia is pissed because those cigarettes are often bought wholesale, so no taxes are paid. And then they're smuggled into NY, which gets no taxes whatsoever from the black market cigs. So these aren't really being resold, but skipping the retail level altogether.

Yet another great Reason article on the issue, except for some hyperbole. It called this "murder" and said the chokehold was "illegal." Neither are technically true. But otherwise, I highly recommend it, especially how it echoes your cops-as-revenue-collectors comment.

[Cail]

See my edit above for further statistics.


Yes, I'll agree that if the cigarettes are bought wholesale then that's a different ballgame.

[Vraith]

Vraith, you can't just assume the cops had no reason to arrest him because the dude said so while they were trying to arrest him.

Well, I could.
But that's part of the whole problem here and in general.
The cops ALWAYS have "a reason." Pretty much any and everything somehow becomes a "reason" just cuz they say it.

There's that line---"With great power comes great responsibility."
What a laugh---"With even a little power comes zero accountability" is how it really seems to work.

It isn't purely racist [returning to something more thread-like] because this COULD happen to anyone. But it is race-based. The race part is that it happens to people of color more often. But any and everyone is vulnerable to it.

I understand that a cops job can be hard.
But it is SUPPOSED to be hard...and right now it is way too easy.
And it seems like the system only goes after the easiest/weakest targets, too.

[Zarathustra]

Cail, it looks like according to your statistics that blacks are killed by law enforcement in proportion to how often they're committing crimes. Blacks were 25% of deaths by "legal intervention," while they committed 28% of the crimes. So the fact that they're only 13% of the population in general is only relevant in showing their they're disproportionately engaging in the kinds of criminal that gets them killed by cops.

Vraith, not only does the enforcement of these laws affect blacks more when they break them, but even the blacks that comply with the higher taxes are affected more, since these types of taxes hurt the poor more than the rich. So the law is messed up all around. But that doesn't mean the tax itself (or its enforcement) is intentionally racist. It's the unintentional consequences of liberal policies by politician who claim to be helping these very people.

[Cail]

Cail, it looks like according to your statistics that blacks are killed by law enforcement in proportion to how often they're committing crimes. Blacks were 25% of deaths by "legal intervention," while they committed 28% of the crimes. So the fact that they're only 13% of the population in general is only relevant in showing their they're disproportionately engaging in the kinds of criminal that gets them killed by cops.

Yup, don't know why the end of my post got snipped....It must be the 5pm forum gremlin.

But given that fact, what are we to draw from this? Not just the Garner case, but the current meme in general. Blacks are killed by the police (given the pathetic little bit of statistics we have) at the same rate they're arrested. I guess I can see why blacks would feel victimized by the police, but I'd suggest to them that we all are in relatively equal measures.

[Avatar]

There's that line---"With great power comes great responsibility."
What a laugh---"With even a little power comes zero accountability" is how it really seems to work.

Yep.

--A

[Zarathustra]

The grand jury process is accountability. People just don't like the ruling ... people who haven't seen all the evidence which the grand jury saw.

Watch the tape again. The cop did not have him in a choke hold for more than a few seconds. The choke hold couldn't have killed Garner, because Garner was alive for a while after the choke hold was released. Can anyone explain how a choke hold can kill you after it has been stopped? Did the cop have Darth Vader choking power?

Garner had asthma. Maybe he had an asthma attack during this encounter.

Just because you watch something doesn't mean you've actually seen it.

[Edit: I just watched it again. Garner doesn't complain about not being able to breathe until AFTER the choke hold is released. That's when his first utterance of "I can't breathe" begins. No one is holding his neck at that point. The cop who got him in the choke hold has the "99" on the back of his shirt. Once Garner begins his litany of "I can't breathe," this cop is no longer behind him, but in front of him, over him. Garner continues complaining about his breathing 11 more times while no one is holding his neck.

It's possible that some other cop action killed him. But no one is claiming this. Everyone assumes that it was the choke hold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xHqf1BVE4]

[SoulBiter]

The grand jury process is accountability. People just don't like the ruling ... people who haven't seen all the evidence which the grand jury saw.

Watch the tape again. The cop did not have him in a choke hold for more than a few seconds. The choke hold couldn't have killed Garner, because Garner was alive for a while after the choke hold was released. Can anyone explain how a choke hold can kill you after it has been stopped? Did the cop have Darth Vader choking power?

Garner had asthma. Maybe he had an asthma attack during this encounter.

Just because you watch something doesn't mean you've actually seen it.

[Edit: I just watched it again. Garner doesn't complain about not being able to breathe until AFTER the choke hold is released. That's when his first utterance of "I can't breathe" begins. No one is holding his neck at that point. The cop who got him in the choke hold has the "99" on the back of his shirt. Once Garner begins his litany of "I can't breathe," this cop is no longer behind him, but in front of him, over him. Garner continues complaining about his breathing 11 more times while no one is holding his neck.

It's possible that some other cop action killed him. But no one is claiming this. Everyone assumes that it was the choke hold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xHqf1BVE4]

Quite frankly this should be an illegal arrest. What had he done to deserve an arrest of this nature? Write the man a ticket and move on. What does taking him to jail in handcuffs accomplish? Waste of the officers time, and a waste of our tax dollars.

[Zarathustra]

SB, the man was at the time out on bail for another charge. I don't know for sure if that makes a difference legally, but it seems that it should. If you're committing additional crimes while out on bail, it's kind of like being on probation, right? The leeway granted to you is smaller.

I don't like it. Not one bit. But legally speaking, I can see why the cops weren't charged. If people want to change the laws, then great. But I haven't been convinced that what the cops are doing is illegal.

One additional point ... the cops didn't just randomly target him. The business owners (minorities themselves) called to complain about him. I'm not exactly sure what the complaint was, but that's why the cops showed up.

[SoulBiter]

SB, the man was at the time out on bail for another charge. I don't know for sure if that makes a difference legally, but it seems that it should. If you're committing additional crimes while out on bail, it's kind of like being on probation, right? The leeway granted to you is smaller.

I don't like it. Not one bit. But legally speaking, I can see why the cops weren't charged. If people want to change the laws, then great. But I haven't been convinced that what the cops are doing is illegal.

One additional point ... the cops didn't just randomly target him. The business owners (minorities themselves) called to complain about him. I'm not exactly sure what the complaint was, but that's why the cops showed up.

I dont know the legality of someone being on bail. It basically shouldnt matter because they havent been to court yet and found guilty of a crime. Now if they were on probation, then I would agree because as a condition of being released from jail, you agree to stay out of trouble, etc etc etc.

[Rawedge Rim]

The grand jury process is accountability. People just don't like the ruling ... people who haven't seen all the evidence which the grand jury saw.

Watch the tape again. The cop did not have him in a choke hold for more than a few seconds. The choke hold couldn't have killed Garner, because Garner was alive for a while after the choke hold was released. Can anyone explain how a choke hold can kill you after it has been stopped? Did the cop have Darth Vader choking power?

Garner had asthma. Maybe he had an asthma attack during this encounter.

Just because you watch something doesn't mean you've actually seen it.

[Edit: I just watched it again. Garner doesn't complain about not being able to breathe until AFTER the choke hold is released. That's when his first utterance of "I can't breathe" begins. No one is holding his neck at that point. The cop who got him in the choke hold has the "99" on the back of his shirt. Once Garner begins his litany of "I can't breathe," this cop is no longer behind him, but in front of him, over him. Garner continues complaining about his breathing 11 more times while no one is holding his neck.

It's possible that some other cop action killed him. But no one is claiming this. Everyone assumes that it was the choke hold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xHqf1BVE4]

how does a python kill it's victim, by compressing the chest and abdomen, and increasing that compression everytime the victim exhales, until the victim sufficates from the inability to inhale.

Now pile five cops on a man, press directly into the spine, continue to stay atop the man and as he exhales, he loses ground on the inhale. After a while he no longer to take in enough air to continue to live, and he dies.