But that’s already starting from the wrong base, because anyone that’s ever dealt with human beings know most don’t act absolutely rationally under stress. And I would hope everyone here knows this and accounts for it. When police are involved, only one half of the interaction is (supposedly) trained to act properly under stress.
I don’t know how much I trust this Gregory McKelvey character.
The Gazette-Times reported that police launched an investigation of the dorm encounter and arrested McKelvey six days later. He was booked Sept. 30 into the Benton County Jail on suspicion of strangulation, assault, harassment and first-degree kidnapping, a felony, according to records and a jail mugshot provided by the Benton County Sheriff’s Office.
McKelvey posted bail, set at $132,500, the same day, said Deputy John Nordyke.
I think it is important to not just blindly believe every story told. I am sure growing up in a white neighborhood as a black kid, it was bad. I am sure he was held to a higher standard, and that there was institutional racism making his life harder. It is obvious, it is happening across the country.
But I also feel like this guy is a budding politician, and he is trying to get stories out there, for his cause. Trying to make things go viral. This whole thing reminds me of the “story time” youtube genre. We are talking about real events, but just played up for drama. Like, this story is probably 80% true.
He says he smoked pot in high school, I would guess the warrant was for that, and not the calculator? That would make more sense? I am sure the officer hassled him about the calculator that was stolen. (and as a black kid in a mostly white school, he was unfairly targeted) but as @timex said, getting a warrant for a stolen calculator belies belief. The officer could have given the judge some extra information on the warrant request “stolen school property” etc or suspected pot dealing in school, and the guy could have decided to go in guns drawn to teach the kid a lesson. I don’t think it is impossible that a judge wouldn’t grant a warrant for something like that. Some judges are more lenient to that sort of thing etc.
But, after reading a bit about this guy, seeing the arrest for domestic disturbance? He posted 132k bail same day? As a college freshman? He obviously grew up with some means.
Reading that thread again, he doesn’t really try to get the idea across that he was a poor black kid in a white school.
What he is saying is even more chilling than that. He was a black kid who was in the same economic level as his white peers, yet he was still treated like a criminal, because he was black. That I definitely believe.
I bring this up, because as someone who is behind the BLM movement, the metoo movement, it is important that we fact-check ourselves. We gotta have trust and understanding in the community, because it is very easy for “resistance grifters” like Michael Avenatti to come in and just make everyone look bad.
I mean, I would default to believing the guy, but I also understand why someone would want to pick apart this story a bit more.
It appears the case eventually was dismissed, but police and court records have been expunged, so it’s not clear how it was resolved.
There are a lot of black men that get arrested but not convicted, that’s part of the police harassment problem. I’d expect a number of black men have a disproportional amount of arrests due to being signaled out for shit they don’t bother other people for.
Look I don’t know why we think penalizing someone for not being poor and black and just black should be a thing… Middle class and upper class minority families still face unfair problems.
He’s a known activist. I am sure people have gone after him before. It’s not blind belief, it’s the ridiculous idea that even after knowing what he know, 100% fact, of seeing not just the police but their support system can absolutely be corrupt that we have someone show up and still say, still say, well that can’t happen as if you can say bullet in the back or it didn’t happen. That’s crazy. You can hope over to another topic and see how crazy and racist a judge can be. That’s a fact, not some oh gosh maybe… we have corrupt judges, police officers, freaking lawyers and the hurdle is pretty damn high for their victims… even now.
Oh I know there others. That’s part of the reason it’s as bad as it is in this country. Someone has to be blown away in their backyard holding a cellphone with video coverage before people believe.
You compare apples and oranges. Saying one isn’t believe able isn’t denying the injustice of the other.
I mean, I’ve personally, in this thread, pointed out tons of Injustice and police abuse, especially against black people, as i came to the realization that it really was that bad after seeing the cases of the past few years.
But that realization doesn’t mean I’m going to turn off my critical thinking and stop being skeptical of claims that make no sense.
No, these are related.
People have been tormented, harassed, belittled, and targeted for generations. There is nothing surprising about what’s happening today except the number of cameras has increased. So again, the hurdle is so high, show us footage or it didn’t happen.
I don’t know if this guy is telling the truth or why everyone was talking about high school and now we’ve switched to college which is somehow being equated to if this happened the other didn’t happen. That’s flat out not true. He could have very well experienced what he did in high school and got involved in a physical altercation at college. One has nothing to do with the other.
If people actually paid attention and had the critical thinking skills people say they want to employ right now, they’d have zero, zero surprise that what’s happening in 2018 is happening in 2018. They either didn’t pay attention or conveniently turned it off since the 60s because there’s no freaking way you can be surprised with the stories where we have undeniable proof it happened otherwise.
This guy could be rotting in prison right now for murder or theft or any other crime, and it would change absolutely nothing about what he experienced in high school. A huge chunk of that population is rotting in prison, but that doesn’t mean everything they did for the entirety of their life should be dismissed.
I am only talking about the one specific story involving the search over a school calculator. You have compared not believing in that to not believing in the injustice of innocent people being shot. It is possible to not believe the one and to fully understand the injustice of the other.
I’m talking about not believing one because there is another story, completely unrelated, in college.
The fact of the matter is if people had listened over the years to the real life problems individuals faced when these stifling institutions crushed the living soul out of entire neighborhoods and groups of people, we wouldn’t have the problem we have today.
Every single person who dismissed these problems before, decided it couldn’t possibly be happening, that these individuals and these groups of people are no good would claim they were using some xyz intelligent based skill in doing so and didn’t intend lasting harm.
So you tell me, is your approach more of the same, because that’s what it sounds like and that is unacceptable. That’s what brought us here.
The next step to find out what happened with the high school incidents is to investigate the high school and police records not run out to see if he did something wrong later.
I don’t think you really even read what I write.
My post, which you responded to, not only references but quotes the other story, and that entire post is trying to link the two together. Your complaint makes it sounds like I was responding to you but it’s literally the other way around.
And just because I don’t focus on what you want me to focus on does not mean I did not read your post. It’s a ridiculous accusation.
Except people are saying 80% of the story are true. I think we all believe he was persecuted in school. I think we all agree with you that putting police in schools is a problem, because so many police are racist, and so much of the system supporting them is racist.
We just don’t find this guy personally credible, and think it likely he’s omitting details and exaggerating to boost his own profile.
I don’t know if it’s a true story or not, and I don’t really know how I could know it. But what I can’t figure out is why it matters to some people so much, why they’re working so hard to find and offer reasons not to believe the guy.
Yes, exactly. Maybe that will prove a dead end, but at least it’s effort spent in the right direction.
An unnecessary engagement with the cops that, fortunately, didn’t end in actual death.
More on the calculator incident.
This is quite a read
So yeah, it was for a calculator, or i guess suspicion of some calculator stealing ring or something. So not drugs, there never any reason to even think it had anything to do with drugs in the first place.
Well, there more to it than i had originally believed. That being said, his original recollection isn’t exactly what happened.
Based on what he says here:
McKelvey said he once accidentally stole a calculator on loan from the school library.
He had kept the device after it was due, he said, and sold it in a panic for $20. Some of McKelvey’s friends, he said, would sell calculators obtained by other means.
“We were kids,” McKelvey said. “One of my friends stole an entire cart of them and basically was handing them out, and everyone all of a sudden could have $20 at any time. The point is we should have got detention, not warrants.”
A few things are problematic about that.
First he admits to stealing a calculator… But in that admission, he kind of bullshits about it. I mean, you don’t “panic” about keeping it, and then as a result, sell it. That’s kind of bull, right?
And then the part about his friend stealing a whole cart of the school’s calculators? I mean, at some point, you are stealing a non trivial amount of money from a public school… Which doesn’t tend to have tons of extra money.
So it’s a little different than his original story, right?
We’re still talking about… calculators.
Even after all that, I still believe it was a disproportionate response to the nature of the accusation. I knew kids that did this kind of stuff in my high school. It was a mark on the record and the parents were made to pay for the replacement materials. Maybe sometimes a suspension. No police response needed.