POLICE BRUTALITY CASES: WALTER SCOTT MURDER & MORE

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Well hopefully they will stay calm up there.
I still think some of the 6 cops should be convicted, surprisingly this guy was not.
The last guy acquitted I have no problem with, he was there for the initial arrest and nothing more.
I have forgotten what the hung jury guys part was in the thing.
Next up...lets see

[HairOfTheDog]

Minnesota

Philando Castile was shot and killed by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota last night. RIP. The officer was not wearing a body cam, of course.

But, Philando's fiancee, Diamond Reynolds (who was in the passenger seat with her 4-year-old buckled in the back seat as her fiance sat bleeding to death next to her), had the presence of mind to start video streaming. According to the video:

- Philando was pulled over for a broken tail light.
- The officer asked him for his license and registration.
- Philando told the officer he had a permitted firearm (as concealed carry classes advise) and that he was reaching for his driver's license and CC permit. Philando kept those documents in the wallet in his back pocket.
-When Philando moved to reach for his wallet, in compliance with the officer's request, the officer shot his arm off.

Here's the streamed video.


Philando, 32, had no criminal record aside from a couple of old misdemeanors. He worked as a supervisor at a school cafeteria for more than 10 years. According to what's known thus far, he did everything right.

Philando's mother, who's very well-spoken and focused, says she told her children to always "comply, comply, comply" if they were ever confronted by police officers, which they did. She was not allowed to see her son when she rushed to the hospital. She is incensed, I don't blame her.

Were it not for Diamond's video, I think it's likely that the police union and officials would have claimed that Philando tried to run the cop over or pulled a gun on the cop or something to that effect.

Functional body cams should be mandatory for all police departments across the country, starting like yesterday.

Ref: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/falcon-...minnesota/

[Duchess]

I watched that video early this morning. It's awful. That guy didn't do anything wrong and now he's dead. I was sick of this kind of shit many months ago. It's just one more cop who has no business being in that line of work.

[Blindgreed1]

I don't mean to be insensitive, but his arm appears to be in tact from what I can see in the video. The wounds we can't see are more likely to have been what killed him. The cop clearly lost his shit. Tragic.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Yea that cop fucked up, pretty clear, at least to me.
Malicious or not, that's yet to be seen.
And No, they did not shoot his arm off

[HairOfTheDog]

The fiancee, who's very calm but probably in shock, describes his arm as being shot off in the video. That's probably what it looked like to her.

She also says that Philando was shot 4 times. But, we don't have information from authorities about the number or nature of other gunshot wounds (not that I've seen anyway).

The Governor of Minnesota issued a statement noting that he's requested a Federal investigation of the shooting death; the Minnesota State Bureau of Apprehension is already on the case.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

I think is good that the FBI gets involved, although I don't think they will find anything more than a scared or incompetent cop.

[Carsman]

This shit is out of control! This has happened one too may times already! I'm not black, but I'm on their side.

[HairOfTheDog]

In the wake of a police shooting in a quiet upscale St. Paul suburb that rapidly rippled across the nation, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton said in no uncertain terms on Thursday afternoon that Philando Castile, ended up dead — at least in part — because he was black.

“Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white?” said Dayton. “I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists.”

I thought Obama's public comments on this one were appropriate as well. He essentially said that acknowledging that there is a bias (underlying or direct) in how some officers handle people of color vs. white people, which Obama supported with stats, does not equate to saying that blue lives don't matter.

[Donovan]

Can you feel the absolute terror radiating off that poor woman? Her lover is dying next to her and she can't even reach for him because the gun is literally still in her face. And they have her four year old daughter there too.

It bears mentioning Phil was a properly licensed concealed-carry, did what he was told and announced the presence of the weapon to cops, made his movements slow and deliberate and his intentions clear . And was straight up murdered.

[Maggot]

Is the entire video out there? From first contact? Got a link? I just watched the video on the last page and am wondering why the guy is sitting in the car bleeding for so long. How come they didn't pull him out of the car. Body cams are the way to go if for anything but to cover the cops ass. There's more to this story. I have to say that because the evidence is not all there and I don't want to start humping the cop until its all out. Not just a facebook post. The phone never got taken, she is filming in the backseat with handcuffs on, all kinds of weird shit is going on in the video. I hope it is the cops fault actually.

[Donovan]

Dude is dead for a taillight. Your questions mean nothing.

[Duchess]

This isn't the first time we've seen a cop shoot someone after asking the person for their identification, they ask, the person reaches for it and the cop shoots.

[Duchess]

Last night in Dallas at protests over these shootings 11 cops were fired upon by snipers, 5 were killed.

[Duchess]

I'm watching videos of the chaos in Dallas last night. It's like a war zone. This story is everywhere this morning. Is anyone surprised at what has happened?

[Carsman]

Last night in Dallas at protests over these shootings 11 cops were fired upon by snipers, 5 were killed.

Wow, just when you think it can't get any worse, here it is!

Cops that were jittery to start with are now off the wall, and cops that were not initially jittery, certainly now have cause to be! And that's affecting cops all over the country. What a sad state of affairs!

[Duchess]

Former Congressman Joe Walsh tweeted this - "3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded." "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you."

He has since deleted it.

[HairOfTheDog]

Terrible waking up to the news about Dallas. RIP to the five police officers who were killed last night in the line of duty.

The echos from the parking garage initially made it appear that there was more than one person shooting at the officers who were patrolling a peaceful protest stemming from this week's police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. According to the Dallas Chief of Police, it's looking like authorities now believe the sniper likely acted alone.

I'm curious about the background of the shooter, but details have not yet been released. The Chief did say that the shooter told the negotiator that he was upset about Black Lives Matter and violence against blacks by police. He reportedly told the negotiator that he wanted to kill white people - especially white police officers - and that he was not affiliated with any group or organization. The shooter reportedly proclaimed "the end is near" and that there were bombs in the parking garage from which he was shooting and bombs planted throughout the city. Authorities have not found any bombs or explosives so far.

Initial reports indicated that the sniper killed himself. The Chief disputed that report and told the press that after negotiations failed and the sniper kept shooting, a robot was sent in and the sniper was killed by a bomb.

[Duchess]

Terrible waking up to the news about Dallas.

Horrifying. There are a shit ton of videos on youtube. I saw one of the cops shot like it was an execution.

[Blindgreed1]

Interestingly enough there have 566 killings by police this year and 136 are black. That's a disproportionate to population percentage but 261 white people were killed by police and per capita native Americans get it the worst (and usually by their own tribal police). These are the latest statistics.

So... Again I ask, do we need to use color to differentiate? How about #Livesmatter? Using color only widens the gap between the races. Below is a story that predates this weeks tragedies, but still rings true.

Police kill more whites than blacks, but minority deaths generate more outrage
Analysis contradicts widespread views about racial targets
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says she wants to see an officer shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back before agreeing that the “conversation about race” is over, but she almost certainly already has received her wish.
An analysis released last week shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force.
“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race,’” Ms. Morrison told the (U.K.) Telegraph in an April 19 interview.
“This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back,” said Ms. Morrison, who also has won the Pulitzer Prize for her work, which includes the bestsellers “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon.” “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”
Her comments reflect a widespread view that blacks are routinely targeted by law enforcement while whites shot by police are a rarity. Outrage has surged in recent weeks over the high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police, notably 50-year-old Walter Scott of South Carolina, who was shot in the back and killed April 4 as he tried to run away from an officer after a traffic stop.
The officer who shot him, Michael Slager, has been charged with murder, and the Justice Department is investigating the case for civil rights violations. Department officials announced Tuesday that they have opened a federal probe into the death of Freddie Gray, 25, who died Sunday from injuries sustained while in Baltimore police custody.

Meanwhile, the deaths of whites at the hands of law enforcement typically receive less attention, even when the case is shrouded in controversy. For example, Gilbert Collar, an 18-year-old white student at the University of South Alabama, was shot and killed while naked, unarmed and under the influence of drugs by a black police officer.
The officer, Trevis Austin, was cleared of wrongdoing in 2013 by a Mobile County grand jury in a case that received little media coverage outside Alabama. Mr. Collar’s parents filed a federal lawsuit last year against the officer.
As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police shootings by race is notoriously incomplete, which may explain why Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police.
Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were Asian and other races.
His results, posted last week on his blog Cop in the Hood, arrived with several caveats, notably that 25 percent of the website’s data, which is drawn largely from news reports, failed to show the race of the person killed.
Killed by Police lists every death, justified or not, including those in which the officer had been wounded or acted in self-defense.
“The data doesn’t indicate which shootings are justified (the vast majority) and which are cold-blooded murder (not many, but some). And maybe that would vary by race. I don’t know, but I doubt it,” Mr. Moskos said on his blog.
Adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown of the U.S. population, he said black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.
“If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks,” said Mr. Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and author of the book “Cop in the Hood.”
“Adjusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks die at the hands of police,” he said. “Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.”
Mr. Moskos listed two possible reasons for the racial disparity. The first is that police assigned to largely black neighborhoods face “more political fallout when they shoot, and thus receive better training and are less inclined to shoot.”
The second is that police assigned to black communities with high crime rates are more accustomed to dangerous situations and thus are more likely to be able to resolve them without resorting to lethal force.
Figures on police shootings by race are thin on the ground, but Mr. Moskos’s results have some support: The investigative journalism website ProPublica came up with a similar percentage in an Oct. 10 article, reporting that 44 percent of all those killed by police were white, using FBI data from 1980 to 2012.
The fact-checking website PolitiFact concluded in August 2014 that police kill more whites than blacks after the claim was made by conservative commentator Michael Medved. PolitiFact cited data from the Centers for Disease Control on fatal injuries by “legal intervention” from 1999 to 2011.
“Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks. In that respect, Medved is correct,” said PolitiFact.
But PolitiFact gave his assertion a “half true” rating because whites make up 63 percent of the population, while blacks make up just 12 percent.
“Yes, more whites than blacks die as a result of an encounter with police, but whites also represent a much bigger chunk of the total population,” PolitiFact said in its Aug. 21 post.
But PolitiFact did not take into account the percentage of those by race involved in violent crime or shootings of police, as Mr. Moskos did.
Despite the recent flood of media coverage involving police shootings, Mr. Moskos advised his readers to “keep all this morbidity in perspective,” reminding them that very few people, white or black, will ever be shot or killed by police.
“The odds that any given black man will shoot and kill a police officer in any given year is slim to none, about one in a million. The odds for any given white man? One in four million,” he said. “The odds that a black man will be shot and killed by a police officer is about 1 in 60,000. For a white man those odds are 1 in 200,000.”