Notice that the other officers are not doing anything to stop the abuse. I am sure they see themselves as good cops.
As for his chances of getting another job, it is quite likely. Until we convict prats like this no change will ever come about.
I am sure some apologist can somehow explain how the use of force here was justified.
The summary is that the police picked up a guy for jaywalking, handcuffed him and while walking him back to the cruiser and the suspect obviously complying, the cops decided to slam his head into the windshield hard enough to crack it. Then they teased and insulted him in the back of the squad car.
You have to love the quote from the Chief who has now called for an investigation:
This incident happened two years ago. The only reason he is calling for an investigation now is that it has been made public. This incident involved 4 different cops and yet none of them have come forward and no one has been charged with a crime. Another total failure of the system and it demonstrates how many of these supposed “good” cops are nothing of the sort. When it is your job to enforce the law and you turn a blind eye to such conduct you are just as culpable as the one who performed the act. Which fundamentally is no different than the law that if you join in a felony and someone is murdered, everyone who was involved in the felony can be charged with murder.
At a basic level, law enforcement in the USA is broken. Probably irretrievably, in terms of the current way it is structured. It attracts the wrong people, it trains in the wrong ways, it has a culture that has the wrong priorities, and it is manifestly ineffective in actually addressing the root causes of crime or of actually insuring the safety of the public. This is across the board, at all levels, in all regions.
Yeah, that’s a fairly harsh indictment, but really, the existence here and there of good men and women, or even good departments, trying to do a good job doesn’t counter the overwhelming inertia of a system that some time ago gave up on actually enforcing the laws and switched to officially sanctioned vigilante-ism in the service of an authoritarian and misanthropic Hobbsean world view.
And we let it happen. Hell, we encouraged it. From the Death Wish movies to the stand your ground laws to three strike rules, we kept pushing and pushing and pushing until everyone from Washington to the local sheriff believed we were a nation under siege from Bad People, and the only possible response was open war on crime. Except it wasn’t crime, usually, it was a perception of crime that we wanted to make war on, usually a perception that others, people not like us, were a dire threat, even when the statistics didn’t back that up.
And it was largely white, middle class America that fueled all of this. This slice of America wanted the feeling of security of armed men on the corner keeping surly black people at a distance, making sure neighborhoods were filled only with people like them and with a culture just like theirs, and not something foreign. Rather than engage with a changing culture, white American tried to police itself into the past, equating physical safety with cultural stasis.
And the police were more than happy to oblige. Police departments, everywhere and at every time, ultimately tend towards the authoritarian and the cynical. The mood in America gave them more guns, more power, less oversight, and more leeway. The laws let them decide who to pull off the streets and send to the American gulags.We allowed ourselves to believe that we’d never be on the receiving end of police abuse of power, because usually, middle class white people weren’t. And we started to believe, ourselves, that if the police arrested you, you must be guilty of something–we had to believe that, or face the reality of what we had created.
I’m sure folks will–perhaps rightly–decry this as a rant and an overstatement, a hperbolic screed that ignores the good work law enforcement does, etc. But I’m pretty fed up at this point. I honestly feel that it’s not safe to call the police for just about anything, because you have no reasonable expectation they will tell the truth, won’t fabricate evidence, and won’t simply skew everything to cover their asses rather than actually investigate or seek the truth. I’m white, middle aged, and middle class, and I get nervous when I see cops, not because I think they’ll shoot me (being white does have its benefits) but because I’m pretty sure that, if they decide to, they can pull me over and lock me up whenever they want, and no one can do a damn thing about it because we are so paranoid about things that we let the police do pretty much whatever they want.
I don’t know how to fix this though, except to create an entirely different paradigm of laws and enforcement that focuses on broad-spectrum approaches to social order, cohesion, and safety. Maybe one start would be ditching the archaic and awful drug laws that fill up prisons and provide a ready excuse for any officer, anywhere, to arrest pretty much anyone. Maybe we could also dispense with private prison camps and the commodification of “justice.” I don’t know. But right now, it’s looking pretty grim.
Heh, I read your post in my email notification thingy. Not sure why you withdrew it; you made a couple of really solid points.
I read it earlier too. I thought it added to the discussion.
It’s an interesting post Wombat and it does feel a bit hyperbolic but it also has a lot of good points. I really hate to say “look how much better we are in Canada” because we have plenty of our own problems, and many of the same issues with the police are manifest here as well. But I want to make three points:
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Police in Canada are generally funded from taxes, not from enforcement. There are departments in the US that are funded 95% by ticket revenue such as Ferguson. This to me is absurd. It creates an enormous friction between the public and the police, where the police essentially have to be confrontational over minor offences in order to put food on their own table. And what happens when the recipient of a ticket can’t pay? Fees, surcharges, notices, eventually the license plate gets flagged, and then arrest. Jail. Court. More friction, angry public. Over a parking ticket, or 10mph over on a interstate in broad daylight. And this usually happens to black people, lower income. I looked up Halton Police in Canada for interest’s sake and tickets comprise under 5% of revenue (possibly much under, as 5% is described as “other revenue” and the rest of the incomes listed are clearly not tickets).
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In Ontario, Canada we have completely independent, civilian, police investigations department (that is also independent of the provincial government) that are called every single time there is an injury or death involving police (active duty or not). Police car skids on ice and crashes into another car, they’re called. The unit’s director is not a former police officer but a former government attorney. Sexual assaults too, both civilian accusations and department accusations, all of them go to the unit. Fundamentally and in practice they are NOT part of the boys club.
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We have gun control in Canada. Pretty strict with respect to pistols (you can still have one if you really want it, but be prepared to fill out some forms and they WILL call your references and there’s basically no carry at all allowed). Yes there are still pistols used in crime (mostly smuggled from the US) but there are in general far fewer guns. Police don’t need to start under the assumption that you’re armed and go from there. They can actually use their eyes and try and judge a situation.
My 0.02 maybe some food for thought:).
Is this true? I’d be interested in seeing statistics showing the general breakdown of funding source for police in the US. I’m not turning up information with a quick search.
For my local police I had to search for their budget specifically, couldn’t find any source that summarizes or aggregates it.
When you get a ticket from the provincial police in Quebec you pay the fine to the municipality where the infraction occured.
Similarly if I get a ticket in Montreal I pay the fine to the city.
So yes, here in Quebec at least there is not a direct relationship between police budgets and ticketing.
Don’t think this needs comment, but it reinforces Wombat’s (very accurate imo) observations:
Darn Discourse! I forgot it emails everyone.
Sometimes, especially when I’m at work and distracted by ten things at the same, reducing my self control, I get carried away. After I posted I felt Wombat’s comments didn’t need further contra-arguments.
They didn’t shoot this guy, they just jumped him for stealing his own car.
If black motorists would just stop stealing their own cars, it would solve a lot of the police issues we have right now. The article says the cops involved are still on duty. How on earth is that possible??
I love how all these recordings ALWAYS have audio of the cops talking amongst themselves, saying crap like, “Well, he have to charge him with SOMETHING…What can we get him for?”
It’s not even that. If that black man just drove an appropriate car, this situation would have never happened. It’s like those women who insist on wearing the red dress and then complain about getting raped. I mean, come on.
Because laws don’t apply to cops. And I’m not joking, look at places like Popehat’s blog, http://blog.simplejustice.us/ or http://mimesislaw.com/
Cops have their own set of magical rules that apply to only them. Ignorance of the law is a valid excuse. Disproportional force is SOP. Negligent homicide is acceptable. It tends to happen to people of color more and the “penalties” tend to be less when they’re involved, but they (often literally) get away with murder fairly often. That immunity tends to extend to the whole criminal justice system. You can leave someone who needs a respirator to live without one in a cell until they die and that’s fine. Hell you can beat them mercilessly and let them die in their cell while having a coffee and that’s also okay.
There are aspects of our criminal justice system which are just totally fucked, even if you’re not black.
Like the quadrapalegic in 2008 who got sent to jail for 10 days for marjijuana possession. He needed a ventilator to breathe while sleeping, and the folks working at the jail said they didn’t have the equipment to meet his needs. The prosecutor didn’t even WANT him to go to jail, and wanted the judge to give him a fine.
But nope! The Judge was like, “FUCK THAT GUY AND HIS DEVIL GRASS” and sent him to jail, against the wishes of literally everyone involved. The guy died 4 days later. Because he was a quadrapelegic who had some weed for his own personal use.
That seems like proportional punishment.
Best part, there is literally nothing that anyone can do to hold the judge accountable. She is absolutely immunized against any kind of reprisal at all. Despite the fact that she effectively murdered a guy who was already a quadrapelegic.
If you’re willing to go to jail there are a lot of reprisal options available. Not condoning such a thing, just sayin’
Ok then perhaps:
There are no legal options within the system that will enforce any form of reprisal against malevolent actors.