Tyre Nichols and a City on Edge

[Pink Cashmere]

Tyre Nichols was beat to death in Memphis, TN after a traffic stop. The 5 police officers involved were fired a few days ago, as city leaders promised to release the video footage from the police officer’s body cams.

The family was allowed to view the video today, and now city leaders are saying it will be another week or 2 before it is released publicly, when they initially said it would be this week. Mr. Nichols is reported to have asked “What did I do” on the video, and was calling for his Momma.

The family and their attorneys held a press conference today after viewing the video. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the press conference. 

Things are already tense. If the video is released and the officers are not charged before that, I am afraid of what might happen, because people are so upset about yet another death due to police brutality. People are preparing to protest, and I’ve read that some businesses are trying to prepare for “civil unrest”. As they should imo.

Things that are being said “on the streets” include that the police officers were in unmarked cars and hoodies. The police claim there were 2 confrontations that led to his beating. Some people say he tried to run away from them. It is my opinion that if you want the respect of a police officer and cooperation, you need to be in a marked car and uniform. They are also saying they beat him so badly they broke his neck. Then stood around joking and smoking while he lay lifeless on the ground. 

There is more, but just what I’ve written so far has upset my nerves too much to continue. Please note that the last paragraph is not what has been officially stated by the media. But in my experience, when “the streets talk”, there is often some truth in what’s being said. Not always, but usually.

If you Google his name, it’s all over the Internet. 

My heart is heavy. I feel for Tyre Nichols and what happened to him. I feel for his family. And I have a son the same age as this young man, and I am so afraid for him.

[mollyc]

I’m sorry this is a concern you always have to keep in your mind.

[busymom]

If half of what is rumored happened, I have no problem with peaceful protest.  But, I hope Memphis doesn't get "outsiders" that burn the town down, like what happened in Minneapolis.  A lot of that community hasn't been rebuilt to date.  So, the local people suffer when businesses no longer exist, especially the poorest who cannot drive to find a grocery store, etc.  


I do sincerely hope charges are filed against those officers, even though they've already lost their jobs.  Some people should NOT have a badge. Ever. 

[Pink Cashmere]

The 5 officers involved in Mr. Nichols beating and death have been arrested. Police are taking extra measures to patrol the area around the jail.

One of the 5, Haley, is apparently known for being physically violent while on duty. I’ve heard that he also use to work as a jailer, and was abusive on that job too. I don’t know if that’s true. It’s been said that there are people in jail that are waiting for him. That’s probably true. But surely they won’t put them in general population. I wouldn’t care if they did though.

City leaders are urging citizens to remain peaceful and calm. 

[Pink Cashmere]

This is what the news said about Haley. link

FOX13 has also learned that in 2016 a federal civil rights complaint was filed against Haley, claiming that Haley and other officers strip-searched an inmate at the penal farm and beat that inmate until he blacked out.

That lawsuit was later dropped.

So at least part of what people had been saying about him was true. Probably all of it. A menace to society, hiding behind a police badge.

[djAdvocate]

what little i have heard about this case is incredibly fucked up.

this is the kind of thing i remember hearing about from the 60's.

i can't believe the US is still living this nightmare.

[Pink Cashmere]

I have heard that a few dozen state troopers have arrived in the city, in preparation for the possibility of civil unrest. I haven’t seen anything officially saying that though.

What I read about law enforcement stepping up with patrols around the jail, included a picture of police officers on horseback on the street in front of the jail. I want to be clear about what is being reported as facts and what is hearsay, so I will say that the picture could’ve been from sometime before. When I saw it, I didn’t think to try to verify that it was current picture.

But even if it is a current picture, people have expressed that it is a reminder of the past, because we all know what has happened in the past, with police officers on horses.

None of this is good. I figured that the city leaders would try to do something to make it look like it matters what happened to Mr. Nichols, before the video was released to the public. The video is supposed to be released tomorrow, so I’m not surprised they charged the police officers today.

A couple of people that work for the fire department, I ASSume paramedics, have been suspended. There’s not been much talk in the media about that. People had already been talking, saying the paramedics that arrived on the scene, and even the staff at the hospital they finally took him to, did not follow protocol. “They” have said that Mr. Nichols was already dead on the scene and it was covered up to try to make it seem like the officers didn’t actually beat him to death. He was declared dead at the hospital 3 days after he was beaten. “They” say he was already dead on the picture that has been posted in the media, and “they” question who took the picture in the first place, and shared it with the media, because it wasn’t his family.

It sounded crazy to me to think that so many people would be involved in trying to cover for the police, and I didn’t believe any of it. But after I read on a local news station’s website yesterday that some paramedics had been suspended because of their actions that day, I started wondering what else that’s been said might actually be true.

[happyhoix]

I don’t understand how cops these days can not be very aware that everyone has a phone now.

Blatant abuse right out on the street will be filmed. It will make its way to the news. People will find out and be outraged.

Must be a lot of confidence on the part of the cops that no one will care. We do care.

[haapai]

Ummh, isn't the video that Pink is talking about body-cam footage? 

[happyhoix]

Jan 27, 2023 12:06:38 GMT -5 haapai said:

Ummh, isn't the video that Pink is talking about body-cam footage? 

Is it?

That makes it worse. That means these officers behaved this way knowing they had body cams on - which means they were confident their bosses would cover for them - which means this is an engrained behavior in this police culture.

And definitely happened before, where the cops got away with it.

Much much worse.

[Pink Cashmere]

Yes, it’s body cam footage

[haapai]

Jan 27, 2023 12:30:55 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Jan 27, 2023 12:06:38 GMT -5 haapai said:

Ummh, isn't the video that Pink is talking about body-cam footage? 

Is it?

That makes it worse. That means these officers behaved this way knowing they had body cams on - which means they were confident their bosses would cover for them - which means this is an engrained behavior in this police culture.

And definitely happened before, where the cops got away with it.

Much much worse.

Yes, it's much much worse when the cops just don't care that the cameras on their chests are capturing everything.  Good grief, the cameras are pretty much mounted on their hearts and they still act like what the cameras capture is meaningless.

[Pink Cashmere]

I guess the video has been released by now, since it was suppose to be done at 6pm today. I don’t want to see it. I don’t even like seeing graphic stuff in movies, where I know it’s not real. I definitely don’t want to see anything like that, that happened in real life. 

Mr. Nichols’ Mom has made a statement saying that if people want to protest, out of respect for her son and his family, any protests that happen should be peaceful. 

Most of the people I care the most about, have said they were going to get whatever they need before 6pm and stay at home after that and probably over the whole weekend.

I have to go to work early tomorrow morning, and unfortunately I will have to travel through downtown Memphis to get to my job. 

Hopefully, nothing is going on and I can get to work safely. I don’t even know if anything is happening now, I have deliberately avoided the news and whatnot this evening. But I guess I need to turn the news on in the morning before I leave home for work, to see what’s going on.

[Pink Cashmere]

Arghhhh! I made the mistake of going on FB after my last post. The video is everywhere, with warnings about it being graphic. I don’t want to see it!

And apparently the protests have started.

My heart hurts so much and I’m trying so hard not to cry. FAIL! Imma just go to bed now.

[happyhoix]

Jan 27, 2023 20:07:43 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Arghhhh! I made the mistake of going on FB after my last post. The video is everywhere, with warnings about it being graphic. I don’t want to see it!

And apparently the protests have started.

My heart hurts so much and I’m trying so hard not to cry. FAIL! Imma just go to bed now.

I’m with you - I don’t want to see it either. I saw his mom on the news, and that poor woman was so distraught. I can’t even imagine.

[Tennesseer]

Watched the videos. Criminal behavior by the police.

Not an ounce of human kindness or empathy shown to the young man. After being brutally beaten, the police sat him up on the ground and against a vehicle for support. He was falling onto his sides and hitting his head on the pavement. The police could have sat a police officer on each side of him to make sure he didn't fall onto his sides.

And why the he'll did it take an EMT so long to start tending to his injuries and an ambulance 25 or so minutes to reach him.

[weltschmerz]

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

[Pink Cashmere]

Jan 28, 2023 16:48:53 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

Why was a tactical unit in an unmarked car making a traffic stop? A tactical unit that has been the subject of complaints before now. It’s been said before that they operate like a gang more than LEO’s.

Why would any LEO do this to an unarmed person, regardless of race? Or even an armed person once they disarmed and subdued them? I talk a lot of shit, and I have a lot of built up anger, but I couldn’t do that to someone even if I hated their guts and they provoked me.

Why, why, why?

Police brutality is not just about racism. It is also about power and being “above the law”. My daughter and her peers say that when they get pulled over for traffic violations or whatever, sometimes the Black police officers are worse than the racist White ones.

There is one rumor persistently circulating, that Mr. Nichols was targeted because he was dating the ex-wife of one of the 5. People are trying to make sense of it, and thinking there was some kind of personal element to it, and I guess that’s what they came up with.

All of them have posted bail and been released. IIRC, their bonds were 6 figures. Who paid to bail them out?

2 sheriff deputies have been placed on leave. I ASSume one of them is the white officer that was on the scene in the video that everybody has been asking about. He didn’t participate in the beating as far as I know, but it’s my understanding he didn’t try to stop it either.

Good Black men are at risk every time they leave home, hell even in their own homes. Whether it’s the thugs and criminals that are wreaking havoc in the city, racist White people, or the police. I won’t pretend that it’s just White people killing my people, as if Black on Black crime doesn’t happen. It does. Far too often. So much for us to worry about concerning our husbands/partners, sons, fathers, male family and friends, and even ourselves.

[happyhoix]

Jan 28, 2023 17:24:49 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Jan 28, 2023 16:48:53 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

Why was a tactical unit in an unmarked car making a traffic stop? A tactical unit that has been the subject of complaints before now. It’s been said before that they operate like a gang more than LEO’s.

Why would any LEO do this to an unarmed person, regardless of race? Or even an armed person once they disarmed and subdued them? I talk a lot of shit, and I have a lot of built up anger, but I couldn’t do that to someone even if I hated their guts and they provoked me.

Why, why, why?

Police brutality is not just about racism. It is also about power and being “above the law”. My daughter and her peers say that when they get pulled over for traffic violations or whatever, sometimes the Black police officers are worse than the racist White ones.

There is one rumor persistently circulating, that Mr. Nichols was targeted because he was dating the ex-wife of one of the 5. People are trying to make sense of it, and thinking there was some kind of personal element to it, and I guess that’s what they came up with.

All of them have posted bail and been released. IIRC, their bonds were 6 figures. Who paid to bail them out?

2 sheriff deputies have been placed on leave. I ASSume one of them is the white officer that was on the scene in the video that everybody has been asking about. He didn’t participate in the beating as far as I know, but it’s my understanding he didn’t try to stop it either.

Good Black men are at risk every time they leave home, hell even in their own homes. Whether it’s the thugs and criminals that are wreaking havoc in the city, racist White people, or the police. I won’t pretend that it’s just White people killing my people, as if Black on Black crime doesn’t happen. It does. Far too often. So much for us to worry about concerning our husbands/partners, sons, fathers, male family and friends, and even ourselves.

Interesting you should mention the Leo’s seemed like a gang.

I read an article

[Pink Cashmere]

Jan 28, 2023 19:27:20 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Jan 28, 2023 17:24:49 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Why was a tactical unit in an unmarked car making a traffic stop? A tactical unit that has been the subject of complaints before now. It’s been said before that they operate like a gang more than LEO’s.

Why would any LEO do this to an unarmed person, regardless of race? Or even an armed person once they disarmed and subdued them? I talk a lot of shit, and I have a lot of built up anger, but I couldn’t do that to someone even if I hated their guts and they provoked me.

Why, why, why?

Police brutality is not just about racism. It is also about power and being “above the law”. My daughter and her peers say that when they get pulled over for traffic violations or whatever, sometimes the Black police officers are worse than the racist White ones.

There is one rumor persistently circulating, that Mr. Nichols was targeted because he was dating the ex-wife of one of the 5. People are trying to make sense of it, and thinking there was some kind of personal element to it, and I guess that’s what they came up with.

All of them have posted bail and been released. IIRC, their bonds were 6 figures. Who paid to bail them out?

2 sheriff deputies have been placed on leave. I ASSume one of them is the white officer that was on the scene in the video that everybody has been asking about. He didn’t participate in the beating as far as I know, but it’s my understanding he didn’t try to stop it either.

Good Black men are at risk every time they leave home, hell even in their own homes. Whether it’s the thugs and criminals that are wreaking havoc in the city, racist White people, or the police. I won’t pretend that it’s just White people killing my people, as if Black on Black crime doesn’t happen. It does. Far too often. So much for us to worry about concerning our husbands/partners, sons, fathers, male family and friends, and even ourselves.

Interesting you should mention the Leo’s seemed like a gang.

I read an article

What did the article say?

There is a community activist that I follow on FB. He’s White, but he’s always shown up for the Black community in several ways since I’ve been following him. I remember him talking some time ago, about a special unit MPD had, and saying that they did not seem to have to abide by the rules regular police officers did, and he said they were bad news. I don’t remember if it was this SCORPION unit that he was talking about, I would have to scroll way back on his page to see for sure, and my IPad does not like scrolling too far on FB, it gets hung up.

I do know that I’ve read that this unit has had many complaints about them being violent, and one officer in particular, Haley, seems to be well known for being violent and physically aggressive. Like I mentioned before, he was included in a lawsuit when he was a deputy jailer and participated in an inmate being beaten until they blacked out. That lawsuit was eventually dropped, for whatever reason. But he was still hired as a police officer and assigned to this SCORPION unit. When the 5 officers were identified, comments on FB said “there’s Haley” and other stuff, like he was known for what he does. He was the only one of the 5 that those kind of comments were about.

People are not and have not been impressed with Miss CJ either. I posted here when her gun was stolen from a vehicle while she was at a store. I said then in my posts about it, that if she didn’t have any more sense than to let something like that happen, in an area where carjackings and breaking into cars is a common crime, I had no problem with her being removed from her position.

I have read and heard, not from any officially media outlets that there was a lot done to cover up what happened to Mr. Nichols. At first I was like nah, that can’t be true, but then the FD employees or paramedics that arrived on the scene got in trouble. That was part of what I’d been hearing about the cover up, that they were a part of it and did not follow protocol. And like I’ve said before, often when the streets are talking, where there’s smoke, there’s at least a small fire. So the cover up story says that the FD/paramedics that eventually arrived on the scene were part of the attempted cover up. If that’s not true, why did some of them get in trouble.

But it’s also been said that Mr. Nichols was already dead when they finally got him to a hospital, and saying he died 3 days later was just to try to put some distance between when he was beaten and when he was reported to have died, to make it seem like his beating wasn’t so bad. Idk, and I initially said none of that could possibly be true. But then the stuff came out about the paramedics, in the media. And then I started to wonder about the rest of it.

I am trying to be very clear with this, about what I’ve “heard” and what has been officially acknowledged. I don’t want to spread rumors and what “people” say, as if they are known facts. But I will say again that when the streets are talking, there is often (NOT ALWAYS) some truth in what’s being said. I know that, because I used to run the streets a little myself.

[Tennesseer]

Police folklore that helped kill Tyre Nichols

Thirty-four years ago, at the height of the cocaine-related crime surge in the early 1990s, two FBI agents launched a new investigation into police threats. One agent was a former police lieutenant in Washington, DC. The other was also a Catholic priest with a PhD in psychology. Together they delved into the prison system, interviewing fifty convicted cop killers. Most criminologists today call such studies pseudoscience. The sample size of fifty was almost anecdotal, and anyway, why would anyone trust a cop killer? The agents also had no benchmark – there were no comparable interviews with criminals who complied. Yet the radical findings of their study, Killed in the Line of Duty, hit the front page of The Times and, thanks to decades of promotion from the Justice Department, became firmly established in American law enforcement culture.

At the top of the list of “behavioral descriptors” associated with dead officers, the study listed traits that some citizens might value: “friendliness”, “loved by the community and department”, “tends to use less force than other officers thought they would use”. them in similar circumstances” and “use force only as a last resort”. Police killers, agents concluded from conversations in prison, attacked officers with a “good-natured demeanor.” The officer’s failure to dominate—to immediately establish complete control over the suspect—proved fatal. “A mistake in assessing the need for control in specific situations can have serious consequences,” the authors warn.

Although few patrolmen today directly cite this study, some of its findings survive as police folklore, such as the cliché that unpolished shoes can make an officer a target. Most importantly, the study’s main finding of the need to dominate was consistent with the turn in 1990s-era law enforcement culture towards what was known as the “warrior mentality,” in which officers learned to see almost any civilian as a potentially lethal killer. an approach that is still promoted by many police instructors, even though the “cops versus citizens” mentality has fallen out of favor among many police chiefs.

This month’s killing of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis is the latest reminder that the “dominate or die” impulse persists among some rank and file officers. Body cameras and surveillance video released Friday by the city of Memphis show that a group of officers apparently beat Nichols to death simply for not following their orders: “Lie down on the ground,” “Lie down, damn it.” . and “Give me your damn hands.”

So far, there has been no evidence that the police could have stopped Nichols, a twenty-nine-year-old FedEx worker and aspiring photographer with a four-year-old son. It also doesn’t seem like the officers gave him much reason to stop him. “Has he been charged with anything?” asked the police operator on the radio in one of the videos. There was no response from the officers on the ground. Police reports described his offense as “reckless driving”.

The battle for dominance over Nichols appears to have been a deadly fight. Police officers are taught never to climb into an open car door, because the driver can press the gas pedal and drag the policeman away. But after unmarked police cars pinned Nichols at a traffic light and he apparently refused to get out, one of the officers leaned deep inside the car to push the driver out and slam him to the ground.

As the stern officers seized him by the arms, legs, and torso, Nichols’ words were gentle. “I did not do anything! . . . Okay, okay, okay, ok. . . I’m on the ground, yes sir, yes sir. . . . Okay, you guys are really doing a lot right now, I’m just trying to get home.” The officers, however, shouted orders and curses as if they were engaged in a life-and-death struggle. “Get out of the fucking car. . . . Turn your ass. . . . I’m going to kick your shit. . . . I’m going to kick your ass.” Under a flood of conflicting commands, Nichols didn’t seem to know how to obey them.

Nichols was unarmed and physically nondescript. He suffered from Crohn’s disease, which made him very thin: according to his mother, six feet three inches and one hundred and forty-five pounds of weight. The officers, all black, like Nichols, looked almost twice their size. Later, in correspondence recorded after the beating, the officers suggested to each other that he had reached for their pistols. But the video footage makes that claim highly implausible, Seth W. Stoughton, an expert on the use of force and a former patrolman, told me.

In fact, several signs indicated that the officers were never afraid of Nichols. Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who testified in 2021 at the trial of the Minneapolis officer convicted of killing George Floyd, noted that an officer usually yells about it right away if he sees a suspect reaching for a gun and no one does. done. nothing like that in the video of their fight with Nichols. When the police threatened Nichols with a taser in one place and a baton in another, the other police officers loosened his grip to get out of the way. This self-protective flinch was, in fact, what allowed Nichols to escape on foot and run to his mother’s nearest house. And when Nichols was later captured and handcuffed, the officers turned their backs on him and bragged about their efforts, like football players in a locker room after a hard-won victory. They would keep a close eye on whoever they thought was dangerous.

Police are trained to weigh several factors before pursuing a suspect, including the potential danger to bystanders and the likelihood that the chase will end in a physical fight. “The first factor is why are we persecuting him? Why are we trying to get him?” Stoughton said. After Nichols escaped, the Memphis officers spoke only of getting back at him for his defiance. “I hope they kick his ass,” one officer said, waving the fourth and fifth police cars to join the hunt. If their goal was only to apprehend Nichols, the officers didn’t need to use a stun gun, pepper spray, or baton. “Just throw a doggy on him – the least technically possible thing,” Stoughton said. – Just stand on it.

The savage, punishing violence by the officers was what elevated Nichols’s arrest above countless other incidents of police aggression that never made headlines. Catching Nichols again, the officers kicked him in the ribs and skull as he spun on his back. They rained down punches on his face at a time when the pavement underneath him left no room for his head to bounce, potentially damaging his brain. Then one pulled out a baton. “I’ll beat the hell out of you,” the officer shouted.

Most strikingly, three officers grappling from opposite sides seemed to keep Nichols on his feet for a while while another punched him in the head, like thugs holding the Snitch for a mob boss in a movie. “I counted five strikes — strong, heavy strikes that looked like scythes,” Stoughton said. Police academies often teach that punches to the face are not only potentially lethal, but practically useless if the goal is submission. “Very few people in the history of policing have been punched in the face and then dared to do what the officer asked. Your instinctive reaction: “I need to put my hands up” or “I need to fight back,” he said. “There is a difference between defensive strength and assertive strength,” Stoughton added. “The officers here were trying to take control of Mr. Nichols without defending themselves, and they used force that was unreasonable and blatantly unjustified – far beyond the amount that would be appropriate or proportionate to who resisted the path. he resisted.” When Nichols, handcuffed, leaned against the car, losing consciousness, one officer even ridiculed his desperate calls to his mother during the beating. “He has a mother,” the officer said dismissively. Nichols died three days later in the hospital.

The officers belonged to a unit of forty police called Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, or scorpion—an acronym that does little to invite community trust. Memphis created the unit in November, 2021, to address a spike in murders and gun violence during the pandemic. Since then, the mayor has touted the unit’s success by citing statistics about the sheer volume of its activity—the amount of money, guns, and cars seized, or the number of suspects arrested. By disregarding whether the arrests end in convictions—or even reduce crime—such metrics encourage aggression, Stoughton said. “You are incentivizing quantity over legality. Thirty years of research tells us that is a bad idea.”

Targeted police units like scorpion, which concentrate on certain high-crime neighborhoods, have a checkered history. There were scandals at the Rampart unit, in Los Angeles, and the Gun Trace Task Force, in Baltimore, among others, and the Memphis Police Department said Saturday that it was disbanding the scorpion unit. “What is supposed to be targeted enforcement becomes ‘We run the streets around here,’ ” Stoughton said.

A growing number of police chiefs and district attorneys, though, argue that there is a way to prevent at least some needless killings like Tyre Nichols’s, by focussing on why the police pulled him over. Along with the shibboleth that a failure to dominate encourages cop killing, the nineties study helped implant a second myth in police culture as well—that stopping cars is exceptionally dangerous to officers. That notion rests on the misuse of a statistic: a large percentage of police killed on the job die at roadside pullovers. In reality, such encounters are so numerous that the odds of death at any given stop are no higher than in other police work.

Yet units like scorpion—created to go after gangs, guns, and drugs, not issue tickets for speeding and other traffic violations—often use such trivial infractions as a pretext to justify pulling over a car and looking inside it. Convinced that they risk their life each time they stop such a driver, many officers approach each encounter prepared for a life-or-death struggle. Few may be as hyperaggressive as the officers who killed Nichols, but their fear and belligerence can still evoke a reciprocal urge in a driver to talk back or flee, sparking a deadly cycle.

Stopping cars on little more than a hunch is also hopelessly inefficient. Five or more patrol cars and eight or more officers spent as much as an hour detaining Nichols on a night when they could have been targeting dangerous crime. Multiple studies have concluded that such a dragnet approach is ultimately an ineffective strategy for confiscating the guns, drugs, or other contraband that police seek in cars. Pretextual stops may even be counterproductive: they alienate law-abiding citizens in the high-crime neighborhoods where their coöperation is most essential. “We are talking about using a hammer on a problem that really requires a scalpel,” Stoughton said.

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, police and prosecutors in jurisdictions from Philadelphia to Los Angeles are attempting to end pretextual stops altogether. The city of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was one of the first to try the experiment, a decade ago. Civilian complaints about the Fayetteville police plunged, and so did traffic fatalities, with no notable increase in gun violence or drug crime. Eliminating pretextual stops, in other words, may reduce crime more effectively than units like scorpion do. Tyre Nichols, of course, would still be alive if the police had never pulled him over.

The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols

[Tennesseer]

During tonight's SNL cold opening, cast member Mikey Day played Merrick Garland.  The opening was about the documents found in Biden's, Pence's and Trump's home. 

At the end of the skit, cast member Kenan Thompson, playing an FBI agent says to Garland "Once were done with the papers, we're gonna head down to Memphis to make sure justice is served down there, right?". Garland replies, " I sincerely hope so.".  Thompson then states "" Yea, you're damn  right.  Just making sure."

[laterbloomer]

I have no words. My heart hurts so badly that I live in a society where this happens. I don't know how Western Society dares to claim any kind of moral superiority to other societies. And I really feel powerless to change it. I will keep using my voice and vote to the best of my ability but I am losing faith it does any good.😓

[andi9899]

Jan 27, 2023 20:07:43 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Arghhhh! I made the mistake of going on FB after my last post. The video is everywhere, with warnings about it being graphic. I don’t want to see it!

And apparently the protests have started.

My heart hurts so much and I’m trying so hard not to cry. FAIL! Imma just go to bed now.

I watched it. Don't do it. It's bad. I feel so bad for his mother. I can't imagine.

[happyhoix]

Jan 28, 2023 20:02:54 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Jan 28, 2023 19:27:20 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Interesting you should mention the Leo’s seemed like a gang.

I read an article

What did the article say?

Sorry I had written a whole long post the other day on my phone, when suddenly the phone seized control and started erasing what I’d written, one word at a time, like demented pac man - and I couldn’t figure out why it was doing it or how to make it stop. I ended up snapping the phone shut to make it stop - I don’t know if it was just my phone making an editorial comment on my writing or some phone demon or what. 

What I was trying to say was I read an article a while back about a police precinct in LA that was infiltrated by a Hispanic gang. There was in theory a head of the precinct but he was just a puppet of the guy who really ran things. The gang members had a small tattoo and a name for their gang, and no one worked at the precinct or got a promotion unless they complied with what the gang wanted. A lot of sexual harassment of female officers too place, too, and if you tried to file a complaint about the harassment or about how the station was being run, the other cops would set you up to respond by yourself to an emergency call, where you’d get attacked. So the cops who didn’t go along with this gang usually quickly asked to be re-assigned someplace else.  

I heard the other day that the cops that beat up that poor guy were all members of a special task group called Scorpion, which has since been disbanded, I wonder if this group didn’t behave like their own gang, with their own rules. A good thing it got shut down, I think. 

[happyhoix]

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an excellent book called Talking to Strangers - what we should know about the people we don’t know. In it he talks about Sandra Bland, a young woman who moved to a town to start a new job and got pulled over by a cop. It was a town with a low crime rate, and while it had some gang issues, they were more in the downtown area. Where she was pulled over was a relatively quiet suburban area, but the white cop who pulled her over was abrasive with her, because he believed, as a fairly young cop, that the world was full of dangerous cop killing people, including people in that low crime part of town, and he ended up hauling Sandra into jail. She was new to town and didn’t have anyone to call, and had a history of some mental health issues, and ended up committing suicide in jail.

I can’t begin to do justice to Gladwells’ commentary on this, so y’all will have to read it, but it’s a very thoughtful piece on how we might begin to de-escalate what ought to be minor interactions between the police and the public.

And another thing to think about - on the news this AM they said despite all the instances of police killing people in the last few years, last year had the highest number of death by cop deaths on record.

So whatever we’re doing, it’s not working.

[djAdvocate]

Jan 28, 2023 16:48:53 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

because this is a POLICING problem, and a PROFILING problem.  if a perp fits the PROFILE, it really doesn't matter what the police look like.  they will treat him the same in many precincts.  

[scgal]

Jan 28, 2023 16:48:53 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

That is a serious issue also. If it was a white cop that killed a black man oh it would just have to be racial. Why can't it just be a bad cop. The reason it just doesn't fit the narrative that there is so much systemic racism. 

[djAdvocate]

Jan 29, 2023 20:22:25 GMT -5 scgal said:

Jan 28, 2023 16:48:53 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

I can understand civil unrest when white cops kill yet another black man. When I saw pictures of the accused, I was shocked! They were all black!
Why would black cops beat a black man to death? Just for the hell of it? A slow day?
I don't get it.

That is a serious issue also. If it was a white cop that killed a black man oh it would just have to be racial. Why can't it just be a bad cop. The reason it just doesn't fit the narrative that there is so much systemic racism. 

because it is never A bad cop.  in this case it was at least five bad cops.  and if you look at every case of police brutality, it is NEVER just ONE bad cop.  so, yeah.  i have really given up on the argument that it is just a few bad eggs.  this is a systemic problem.  and it has been fairly well researched at this point as to WHY.  and yes, there is a racial element to it.  black people can absorb racist practices just as easily as black people can absorb other amoral or immoral behavior.  it is a product of training, in most cases.  that is what i mean by systemic.

[scgal]

Jan 30, 2023 0:11:16 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Jan 29, 2023 20:22:25 GMT -5 scgal said:

That is a serious issue also. If it was a white cop that killed a black man oh it would just have to be racial. Why can't it just be a bad cop. The reason it just doesn't fit the narrative that there is so much systemic racism. 

because it is never A bad cop.  in this case it was at least five bad cops.  and if you look at every case of police brutality, it is NEVER just ONE bad cop.  so, yeah.  i have really given up on the argument that it is just a few bad eggs.  this is a systemic problem.  and it has been fairly well researched at this point as to WHY.  and yes, there is a racial element to it.  black people can absorb racist practices just as easily as black people can absorb other amoral or immoral behavior.  it is a product of training, in most cases.  that is what i mean by systemic.

I disagree the product of training being systemic. At any given time there is approx 750000 officers in the US. There is nothing systemic when you run the numbers