Baltimore Protests and Riots

[RogueIce]

In Maryland, provided you have fully completed your sentence (to include probation or parole), you're allowed to register to vote. Granted there could be a lot of people on probation and parole so that would potentially have an effect.

As for gerrymandering, I'm not sure how much it really matters in this case. City government would be responsible for terminating police officers found to be violating city policy, and that's often the Mayor, who would be elected city-wide. I guess the Council boundaries could be gerrymandered, but I don't know how much that typically matters on the local level.

As far as prosecutions go, that's on the State's Attorney's Office, and the State's Attorney is elected county-wide, so again I don't see gerrymandering having an effect. In that case, though, I suppose you could find residents of Baltimore County who don't give a shit about what happens in the City, but I have no idea what the population split is between them to know if it'd make a difference come election day.

[KroLazuxy_87]

In Maryland, provided you have fully completed your sentence (to include probation or parole), you're allowed to register to vote. Granted there could be a lot of people on probation and parole so that would potentially have an effect.

As for gerrymandering, I'm not sure how much it really matters in this case. City government would be responsible for terminating police officers found to be violating city policy, and that's often the Mayor, who would be elected city-wide. I guess the Council boundaries could be gerrymandered, but I don't know how much that typically matters on the local level.

As far as prosecutions go, that's on the State's Attorney's Office, and the State's Attorney is elected county-wide, so again I don't see gerrymandering having an effect. In that case, though, I suppose you could find residents of Baltimore County who don't give a shit about what happens in the City, but I have no idea what the population split is between them to know if it'd make a difference come election day.

It absolutely matters in this case. We're discussing people's emotional reactions to what they see as an unjust system. So anything that speaks to the mindset of people not only matters, it's extremely on point. People rarely bother to differentiate between local, state, and federal government. People without access to a decent education system even more so. So if people lose faith in even one layer of their government, it's easy to see how they'd lose faith in all government.

Edit: Also, those gerrymandered districts affect the state house.

[Flagg]

And I hope everyone who thinks like you and every murderer cop who got away with it (so like, 99% of them) gets hit by a truck. But then again, I'd feel really bad for the poor truckers who have to get all of the obese white chunks of racist out of their radiators (and of course, the PTSD).

The people who actually shit on every fucking victim of police brutality and murder are the ones who choose to dismiss the problem until they get an opportunity to call for the heads of the victims' community who can only seem to get any fucking attention when they loot and burn down a couple stores (doing far less damage than the number of riots on University campuses when one of their various sports teams wins or loses, I'm sure). So fuck off Ham<Numbers>.

Wishing death and suffering on those who think riots are a bad thing that should be cracked down on and calling them all racists. You really are a piece of work. You lying, vicious moron. Obviously if someone disagrees with you they're a racist who deserves to die.

Also, I love how you talk about the minorities' mindset as if all minorities are a homogenous block who think the same way.

You two are talking past each other. I am pretty sure Flagg doesn't think riots are a good thing either anymore than you think there is not a problem with police. What you really should be arguing about is if the point of no return - where no protests are effective leaving no other option except to riot - has been reached or not.

I only support riots in cases where the regular system has failed on every level and there is no "legal" avenue to go down, but only if along with all of the above, their first amendment rights are violated by the police, which essentially "sparked" the riot. But since most riots in this country involving minorities and police are legal protests in which either a coward cop panics and pepper sprays an 80 year old that got too close for comfort or by a coordinated effort by the "people" in charge to attempt to end the protests early to save on overtime costs with the known risk that a riot could be started. So those ones started by police are the full responsibility of the police and any damage or looting that results from the riotous atmosphere they created is fully their responsibility both legally and civilly. Or so that you can understand: Anyone observed "looting", "committing arson", or "vandalism/ criminal mischief" should be fully immune from prosecution since the situation is wholly the responsibility of the police department both in the initial incident causing protests, and their willful or negligent mishandling of said protest.

As far as The Racist Confederacy's claims that I wish death on those who disagree with me, I clearly do not as I have a very long tradition of what I think is humorous (I don't give a damn if anyone else does and never will) hyperbole where I "wish" or "call for" a certain set of (what I consider, jokingly or seriously) loathsome individuals or groups to be put to death in some cruel or horrific way that goes far and beyond what anyone would "deserve" (to a non-psychopathic, rational, and generally "normal" person or someone like me who doesn't support life imprisonment as a general rule and the death penalty under no circumstances) for whatever their "infraction" is. In this case it was more me just calling you fat idiots that would play in traffic and the hyperbole was that the greatest loss would be truckers having to pull death flesh out of a radiator and later suffering from PTSD. If you took that seriously you have a lot more problems than someone on the internet calling you a fat dumb racist.

And as far as how I talk about the "minority mindset", I'm actually specifically talking about black Americans mindset, and only insofar as what I've read about and learned about on TV (when I watched shitty 24hr cable news) regarding "the talk" about how to try and not get murdered by the police, which basically consists of becoming a "field slave" to the Police Officer's "slave owner" or "rule enforcer" (known as a "cracker" due to the sound of their whips when they snapped and broke the sound barrier cutting into a black American's skin).

But you know, America: Where when the people who were kidnapped, sold into slavery, had their heritage wiped out, are finally free only to suffer another 100 years of legal murder, torture, and segregation finally have enough and demand we not let our police officers murder them with impunity, we insult the state of the culture we forced them into after stealing and destroying their old one.

[Agent Fisher]

BALTIMORE — A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.

Police have said they do not know whether Gray was injured during the arrest or during his 30-minute ride in the van. Local police and the U.S. Justice Department both have launched investigations of Gray’s death.

[Federal investigation launched into Freddie Gray’s death]

Jason Downs, one of the attorneys for the Gray family, said the family had not been told of the prisoner’s comments to investigators.

“We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” Downs said. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”

Baltimore police said they will wrap up their investigation Friday and turn the results over to the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, which will decide whether to seek an indictment. Six police officers, including a lieutenant and a sergeant, have been suspended.

Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, chief spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department, declined to comment on the affidavit, citing the ongoing investigation.

The affidavit is part of a search warrant seeking the seizure of the uniform worn by one of the officers involved in Gray’s arrest or transport. It does not say how many officers were in the van, whether any reported that they heard banging or whether they would have been able to help Gray if he was seeking to injure himself. Police have mentioned only two prisoners in the van.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has admitted flaws in the way officers handled Gray after they chased him through a West Baltimore housing project and arrested him. They said they later found a switchblade clipped to the inside of his pants. Batts has said officers repeatedly ignored Gray’s pleas for medical help and failed to secure him with a safety belt or harness in the back of the transport van.

[Police cite missteps in arrest of Freddie Gray]

Video shot by several bystanders has fueled the rage in West Baltimore. It shows two officers on top of Gray, their knees in his back, and then dragging his seemingly limp body to the van as he cried out.

Batts has said Gray stood on one leg and climbed into the van on his own.

The van driver stopped three times while transporting Gray to a booking center, the first to put him in leg irons. Batts said the officer driving the van described Gray as “irate.” The search warrant application says Gray “continued to be combative in the police wagon.”

The driver made a second stop, five minutes later, and asked an officer to help check on Gray. At that stop, police have said the van driver found Gray on the floor of the van and put him back on the seat, still without restraints. Police said Gray asked for medical help at that point.

The third stop was to put the other prisoner — a 38-year-old man accused of violating a protective order — into the van. The van was then driven six blocks to the Western District station. Gray was taken from there to a hospital, where he died April 19.

The prisoner, who is in jail, could not be reached for comment. No one answered the phone at his house, and an attorney was not listed in court records.

Batts has said officers violated policy by failing to properly restrain Gray. But the president of the Baltimore police union noted that the policy mandating seat belts took effect April 3 and was e-mailed to officers as part of a package of five policy changes on April 9, three days before Gray was arrested.

Gene Ryan, the police union president, said many officers aren’t reading the new policies – updated to meet new national standards – because they think they’re the same rules they already know, with only cosmetic changes. The updates are supposed to be read out during pre-shift meetings.

The previous policy was written in 1997, when the department used smaller, boxier wagons that officers called “ice cream trucks.” They originally had a metal bar that prisoners had to hold during the ride. Seat belts were added later, but the policy left their use discretionary.

Ryan said that until all facts become clear, he “urged everyone not to rush to judgment. The facts as presented will speak for themselves. I just wish everyone would take a step back and a deep breath, and let the investigation unfold.”

The search warrant application says that detectives at the time did not know where the officer’s uniform was located and that they wanted his department-issued long-sleeve shirts, pants and black boots or shoes. The document says investigators think that Gray’s DNA might be found on the officer’s clothes.

Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.

Washington Post via MSN


From personal experience, it wouldn't be the first time a subject attempted to hurt themselves while sitting in the cage of a police van or cruiser. I arrested someone for assault, drunk in public and trespassing, and when I put them in the back of the cruiser to wait for PD to get there to take custody, he started bashing his head against the metal fencing portion of the cage partition and the cage bars over the windows that were there to keep a subject from kicking or smashing out hte window. He kept at it to the point he cut his head pretty bad, and Fire had to transport him to hospital.

Now, according to the article, they did fail to follow policy when ti came ot buckling him in, but it was a policy less than a week old. A combination Gray trying to squirm and kick and bash, the officers taking corners a bit too sharp or hitting the brake a bit too hard to get him to stop, along with the ignoring Gray's requests for medical aid, which along with 'fuck you' or 'i'll kick your ass when i get out' are some of the most commonly said things when someone is arrested. Everybody wants to go to the hospital for something, whether it's for complaints of pain to try and get pills, wanting to delay going to jail, or actually needing medical aid. Within five minutes of putting cuffs on someone, I usually hear a request for medical aid or transport to the hospital.

Now, the above statements are not an indication that I automatically think the officers are innocent. They should be investigated, as a subject was injured while either he was being taken into or during the time he was in custody, and that subject later died as a result of those injuries. That is a very serious issue and needs to be pursued.

[Simon_Jester]

It absolutely matters in this case. We're discussing people's emotional reactions to what they see as an unjust system. So anything that speaks to the mindset of people not only matters, it's extremely on point. People rarely bother to differentiate between local, state, and federal government. People without access to a decent education system even more so. So if people lose faith in even one layer of their government, it's easy to see how they'd lose faith in all government.

Observations like this always leave me wondering, what am I supposed to think about that?

I mean, am I supposed to just unthinkingly accept the decisions people make because they're poorly educated and we assume they don't know any better?

"I'm not going to vote against the city officials that support a police department that terrorizes and murders my own community" is just bad, it's such a bad idea. And I find it... unpleasantly condescending, let's say... to assume that urban voters aren't capable of seeing the problem with that picture.

If nothing else, it points to one of the biggest problems faced by poor minorities being lack of widespread organization with competent, educated leadership that is rationally thinking about how to solve their problems. Because if they have the votes to put an end to crap like this, then it would really, really seem like a good idea for them to at least be trying to use it.

Even if they don't have enough votes, a 20-30% minority of the voter base can usually at least make its interests heard on Election Day.

You two are talking past each other. I am pretty sure Flagg doesn't think riots are a good thing either anymore than you think there is not a problem with police. What you really should be arguing about is if the point of no return - where no protests are effective leaving no other option except to riot - has been reached or not.

I only support riots in cases where the regular system has failed on every level and there is no "legal" avenue to go down, but only if along with all of the above, their first amendment rights are violated by the police, which essentially "sparked" the riot... So those ones started by police are the full responsibility of the police and any damage or looting that results from the riotous atmosphere they created is fully their responsibility both legally and civilly. Or so that you can understand: Anyone observed "looting", "committing arson", or "vandalism/ criminal mischief" should be fully immune from prosecution since the situation is wholly the responsibility of the police department both in the initial incident causing protests, and their willful or negligent mishandling of said protest.

That last is ridiculous.

I mean, seriously, are you arguing that the police's crowd control in cases like this is so bad that human beings lose the capacity for rational thought? Did the police somehow screw up a crowd of nonviolent protestors so bad that the protestors no longer realize that stealing and burning people's homes and business is wrong?

No. That is not what happens, and we both know it.

What happens is that people decide that their anger gives them a license to commit crimes, or even more commonly that someone else's anger gives them a license to commit crimes. Not crimes against the police, who are the offenders. Not even crimes against the larger organizations the police is a part of. Crimes against their own people, crimes against random bystanders. Crimes against the businesses that make it possible for their community to be anything other than the slummiest of slums.

So hell yes people who rob and burn down private property in a riot should be accountable. It doesn't matter if the riot was caused by police mismanagement or police abusiveness. The police may have made you angry, but making you angry doesn't mean you have a license to burn down someone's home.

You might be credibly exonerated of charges like "failing to disperse" or whatever. Charges directly associated with being part of an angry crowd, you could defend against with "the police went out of their way to make this crowd angry."

But "I was really angry at the police" is not an acceptable justification for "therefore I broke into this guy's store and stole one of his TVs."

As far as The Racist Confederacy's claims that I wish death on those who disagree with me, I clearly do not as I have a very long tradition of what I think is humorous (I don't give a damn if anyone else does and never will) hyperbole where I "wish" or "call for" a certain set of (what I consider, jokingly or seriously) loathsome individuals or groups to be put to death in some cruel or horrific way that goes far and beyond what anyone would "deserve" (to a non-psychopathic, rational, and generally "normal" person or someone like me who doesn't support life imprisonment as a general rule and the death penalty under no circumstances) for whatever their "infraction" is. In this case it was more me just calling you fat idiots that would play in traffic and the hyperbole was that the greatest loss would be truckers having to pull death flesh out of a radiator and later suffering from PTSD. If you took that seriously you have a lot more problems than someone on the internet calling you a fat dumb racist.

Just don't play "how dare you" the next time someone talks about you that way... Fling shit, expect to get dirty.

If you can take as much as you dish out, though, no problem!

And as far as how I talk about the "minority mindset", I'm actually specifically talking about black Americans mindset, and only insofar as what I've read about and learned about on TV (when I watched shitty 24hr cable news) regarding "the talk" about how to try and not get murdered by the police, which basically consists of becoming a "field slave" to the Police Officer's "slave owner" or "rule enforcer" (known as a "cracker" due to the sound of their whips when they snapped and broke the sound barrier cutting into a black American's skin).

I don't think it's actually that simple in the minds of African-Americans as a whole, but you just stick with the narrative you like that's patched together from your own selected readings and listenings. I'm sure it's substantially accurate in all particulars.

[Dominus Atheos]

*Snip*

That article has already been debunked:

A leaked police document that claims Freddie Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself” while in the back of a police van in Baltimore after his arrest is being questioned due to inconsistencies with earlier reports.

Gray died a week after his videotaped April 12 arrest due to injuries sustained under uncertain circumstances while in police custody, sparking protests in Baltimore and around the nation.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday night that a prisoner who was in the van with Gray allegedly told investigators he could hear Gray "banging against the walls" of the police vehicle, and said he believed Gray was "intentionally trying to injure himself," according to a document written by a Baltimore police investigator.

The initial shock of the report quickly transitioned to uncertainty and skepticism after questions were raised over the details. WBAL's Jayne Miller told MSNBC that the Post’s story was “inconsistent with what we reported.”

“We have reported for some time that by the time that prisoner is loaded into that van, Freddie Gray was unresponsive. Secondly we have no medical evidence that Freddie Gray suffered any injury that would indicate that he had injured himself,” Miller told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday night.

Gray was only in the van with the second prisoner for the final five minutes of the ride, Miller told Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday evening. There is “no evidence [Gray was] banging [his] head against van,” Miller tweeted. Jane Cook, an attorney for the Gray family, called the report “speculation” as she had seen no evidence supporting it.

Jason Downs, another attorney of the Gray's, told the Post the prisoner's statement was new to them.

"We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord," Downs said. "We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident."

While the timeline of Gray’s arrest remains incomplete, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said that before the second prisoner was loaded into the van, an officer had to “pick [Gray] up off the floor and place him on the seat.” Police said he asked for medical attention at this point. He had earlier been placed in leg irons after an officer felt he was becoming "irate," police said.

Police also admitted Gray was handcuffed but not secured with a seat belt while being transported.

Miller also pointed out that on April 23, Commissioner Batts said that the second prisoner had said Gray was “mostly quiet.”

Another issue that arose from the Post’s report was the fact that the second prisoner was unable to see Gray, as he would have been separated by a metal partition in the van. The prisoner who allegedly gave the account is in jail, and the Post has not been able to reach him for comment.

His identity has been withheld.

The affidavit obtained by the Post was in an application for a search warrant seeking the seizure of the uniform worn by one of the officers involved in the episode with Gray. The document is part of the investigation into Gray’s death, and the police investigator who wrote it is unnamed.

As the Post notes, there is no other evidence supporting the purported claims of the second prisoner. There is no video of his time in the van either.

As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said on Wednesday night, the leak to the Washington Post is the first information we have seen of the investigation into Gray’s death. “Leaks like this always serve somebody’s purpose,” Maddow said, “We have no idea who gave this to the Post.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/3 ... 77356.html

[mr friendly guy]

Considering the prisoner was limp when the cops dragged him into the police vehicle, I found it very strange that he somehow recovered so quickly to hurt himself even worse.

[CaptHawkeye]

"I want you and Fox News to get out of Baltimore City, because you are not here reporting about the boarded up homes and the homeless people under MLK. You're not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue. ... But you're here for the black riots that happen. ... you're not here for the death of Freddie Gray."

[Thanas]

Rivera gets demolished.

[CaptHawkeye]

I always knew Rivera was a huge asshole. This guy's rights were crushed years ago and Fox News, first organization to wax about the rights of whites Americans being under attack, is ignoring him. He's just as bad as Hannity and O'Reilly. He was literally going out of his way to minimize this kid and the struggle of his peers by passively writing him of as "annoying" and just a "vandal". You know what he really wanted to call the kid too.

[Broomstick]

Yes, Gerry Rivers has always been ready and willing to play a race card in his own favor. Alright, a bit unfair, as his last name has always been Spanish but he really was born Gerald and not Geraldo - he explicitly changed his name for professional reasons, which isn't a sin, but can be cynical. He uses ethnicity where it suits him, for whatever goal he has in mind, including slanting a story towards his own bias.

[Zaune]

All I can say is this.

When was the last time in US history that this much media attention was focused on someone getting (allegedly) shot or kicked to death for being an uppity nigger who smarted off to a cop without a riot breaking out?

[The Romulan Republic]

I seem to recall Ferguson getting a fair bit of attention before the rioting started, for a start. Though I suppose I could be mistaken. And what kind of attention is this case getting? A lot of the attention is on the riots, not on racism or civil rights or reforming the police.

[KroLazuxy_87]

It absolutely matters in this case. We're discussing people's emotional reactions to what they see as an unjust system. So anything that speaks to the mindset of people not only matters, it's extremely on point. People rarely bother to differentiate between local, state, and federal government. People without access to a decent education system even more so. So if people lose faith in even one layer of their government, it's easy to see how they'd lose faith in all government.

Observations like this always leave me wondering, what am I supposed to think about that?

Honestly, you can think whatever you want about it.

I mean, am I supposed to just unthinkingly accept the decisions people make because they're poorly educated and we assume they don't know any better?

Accept? No, absolutely not. I'm not promoting acceptance, I'm promoing understanding, compassion, and critical thinking. One reaction to this might be outrage that in a first-world country whose citizens often consider themselves to be living in the greatest country in the world, people are not being provided adequate education. Outrage that an entire segment of the population is being marginalized by the media, government, and business. If you're outraged that people are rioting and protesting, that's fine! I am too! I just to move past that outrage and try to understand the root problem and possible solutions.

"I'm not going to vote against the city officials that support a police department that terrorizes and murders my own community" is just bad, it's such a bad idea. And I find it... unpleasantly condescending, let's say... to assume that urban voters aren't capable of seeing the problem with that picture.

I agree, it is terribly condescending to assume urban voters aren't capable of seeing a problem with deciding to not vote against the city officials that support a police department that terrorizes and murders their own community. I'm not assuming that - I'm not implying that - you're inferring that. It's also terrible condescending to assume that they haven't already tried this. It's terribly condescending to dismiss the evidence that the system is stacked against certain people in our society. It's terribly condescending to shift blame from a corrupt system to those being oppressed by that system.

If nothing else, it points to one of the biggest problems faced by poor minorities being lack of widespread organization with competent, educated leadership that is rationally thinking about how to solve their problems. Because if they have the votes to put an end to crap like this, then it would really, really seem like a good idea for them to at least be trying to use it.

As I outlined above, I never meant to imply that there haven't been attempts to affect change through voting. So I'll address the issue of minority leadership. Multiple factors play into this.
Poor education again rears its head. Slave owners kept slaves from being able to read and write to prevent organized uprisings. I'm not saying today is anywhere as bad, I'm just using this as an extreme case to illustrate how education is correlated to leadership.
Social media has had the undeniable effect of giving seemingly everyone a voice. This can be great, but it changes the formula that was present during the civil rights movements of the past. Martin Luther King Jr. (sadly) wouldn't have risen to prominance in today's society. His voice would simply be one of many. Additionally, social media allows for the fast dissemination of misunderstandings and lies, making it more difficult to find the signal amongst the noise, and limiting the emergence of individual leaders.
I'll continue with the MLK example to illustrate my last point. Segregation laws were on the books across the country. This provided a clear 'opponent' for groups to organize against. Nothing like a common enemy to unite people, eh? Today however, the racial inequality is created by a mix of factors that have been listed and explained in numerous posts through this thread by myself and others. (NONE of which I have seen disputed with the aid of sources, numbers, or statistics) Without a single issue for the entire community to point to, each person picks one or two problems and focuses on those. This leads to infighting, instead of unity, amongst the oppressed about 'what the real problem is' when in fact, most of them are right to varying degrees.

Even if they don't have enough votes, a 20-30% minority of the voter base can usually at least make its interests heard on Election Day.

In some cases, yes. The recent election of Parma, Missouri's first black female mayor proves this. However, what works in one case doesn't work in all cases. Especially in larger government - such as federal, state, and major cities, those in power are less accountable to the people they govern. I've posted it twice already in this threat and I'll say it again in the hopes that people will stop ignoring it. America doesn't function as a democracy.
Ignoring all that for the sake of arguement, even if a new politician wants to get elected on the basis of reforming the community and helping minorities, there are numerous barriers in the way of this. Getting elected needs money, increasing more and more money. A single politician, once elected, only has limited effectiveness, they still have to work with others and compromise. Even if multiple politicians get elected to the point that they're proportionally represented. That still means that the 20-30% will be easily outvoted by the 70-80%.

[The Romulan Republic]

I only support riots in cases where the regular system has failed on every level and there is no "legal" avenue to go down, but only if along with all of the above, their first amendment rights are violated by the police, which essentially "sparked" the riot. But since most riots in this country involving minorities and police are legal protests in which either a coward cop panics and pepper sprays an 80 year old that got too close for comfort or by a coordinated effort by the "people" in charge to attempt to end the protests early to save on overtime costs with the known risk that a riot could be started.

Can you prove that this is what usually causes riots in America?

Also, I don't feel that the conditions you describe have yet been met in America. As for weather those conditions would hypothetically be justification for rioting... I don't know, but I'd at least be somewhat understanding.

So those ones started by police are the full responsibility of the police and any damage or looting that results from the riotous atmosphere they created is fully their responsibility both legally and civilly. Or so that you can understand: Anyone observed "looting", "committing arson", or "vandalism/ criminal mischief" should be fully immune from prosecution since the situation is wholly the responsibility of the police department both in the initial incident causing protests, and their willful or negligent mishandling of said protest.

Yeah, no. "Cops do something bad" does not equal "black check to do pretty much whatever you want to whoever you want on the street for the next few hours."

And shove your condescension up your ass, at least until you grow a functioning sense of Justice.

As far as The Racist Confederacy's claims that I wish death on those who disagree with me, I clearly do not

Good to know.

But calling me a racist because of the positions I hold in this thread is dishonest and cowardly. And suggesting that I am in any way sympathetic to the Confederacy is...

Just go fuck yourself.

as I have a very long tradition of what I think is humorous (I don't give a damn if anyone else does and never will) hyperbole where I "wish" or "call for" a certain set of (what I consider, jokingly or seriously) loathsome individuals or groups to be put to death in some cruel or horrific way that goes far and beyond what anyone would "deserve" (to a non-psychopathic, rational, and generally "normal" person or someone like me who doesn't support life imprisonment as a general rule and the death penalty under no circumstances) for whatever their "infraction" is. In this case it was more me just calling you fat idiots that would play in traffic and the hyperbole was that the greatest loss would be truckers having to pull death flesh out of a radiator and later suffering from PTSD. If you took that seriously you have a lot more problems than someone on the internet calling you a fat dumb racist.

I don't find your sense of humour particularly funny, especially when you are, in all seriousness, defending violence as a means for political reform in America in this thread. Clearly you don't have a problem with violence being visited on people you disagree with (or, for that matter, random bystanders, given the typical indiscriminate nature of riots).

And as far as how I talk about the "minority mindset", I'm actually specifically talking about black Americans mindset, and only insofar as what I've read about and learned about on TV (when I watched shitty 24hr cable news) regarding "the talk" about how to try and not get murdered by the police, which basically consists of becoming a "field slave" to the Police Officer's "slave owner" or "rule enforcer" (known as a "cracker" due to the sound of their whips when they snapped and broke the sound barrier cutting into a black American's skin).

This is an interesting point. You're not a black American. Statistical probability suggests that you're white (I honestly don't know). If so, why are you allowed to have an opinion on this subject, while you feel that I, by virtue of being white, am not?

But you know, America: Where when the people who were kidnapped, sold into slavery, had their heritage wiped out, are finally free only to suffer another 100 years of legal murder, torture, and segregation finally have enough and demand we not let our police officers murder them with impunity, we insult the state of the culture we forced them into after stealing and destroying their old one.

I'm not excusing any of that for one thousandth of a second. A small fraction of the history of abuse of black people in America outweighs any damage the rioting has done by far. I just don't think a great injustice justifies a small one.

[The Romulan Republic]

Particularly, I might add, when the small injustice makes it harder to address the great one.

[cmdrjones]

Since Rotherham, you guys are exceptional too!

Yeah, but here's the difference: Nobody here is pretending that what happened in Rotherham isn't a problem. Hell, the police commissioner for South Yorkshire lost his job over it (despite the primary failure being on the part of the city council, not South Yorkshire Police).

Just imagine how quickly the US would go through senior police personnel if you tried that hard.

(PS: The concept of "American Exceptionalism" is that America is so special and different that no experiences from anywhere else in the world apply there, it's very commonly applied as a justification for doing nothing in the face of social problems, it was deployed against universal healthcare, for instance, "it could never work here because bullshit reason X")

Maybe NOW people are finally waking up to it. After how many thousands of girls? how many YEARS? All that being said, IMHO, they shouldn't have lost their jobs, they should have been drug out of their city halls and dismembered by a mob. Mussolini suffered a similar fate after getting Italy into a disastrous WAR, and I doubt that, say, the girls of the Po valley were mass raped by invading american troops. Let alone people that the Fascist government had IMPORTED.

PS: As for the definiton of "American Exceptionalism" that you've constructed.... man, can I borrow that thing to feed all the cows in texas?

[Thanas]

Mussolini suffered a similar fate after getting Italy into a disastrous WAR, and I doubt that, say, the girls of the Po valley were mass raped by invading american troops.

A lot were, so I don't know what you are talking here.

[The Romulan Republic]

Since Rotherham, you guys are exceptional too!

Yeah, but here's the difference: Nobody here is pretending that what happened in Rotherham isn't a problem. Hell, the police commissioner for South Yorkshire lost his job over it (despite the primary failure being on the part of the city council, not South Yorkshire Police).

Just imagine how quickly the US would go through senior police personnel if you tried that hard.

(PS: The concept of "American Exceptionalism" is that America is so special and different that no experiences from anywhere else in the world apply there, it's very commonly applied as a justification for doing nothing in the face of social problems, it was deployed against universal healthcare, for instance, "it could never work here because bullshit reason X")

Maybe NOW people are finally waking up to it. After how many thousands of girls? how many YEARS? All that being said, IMHO, they shouldn't have lost their jobs, they should have been drug out of their city halls and dismembered by a mob. Mussolini suffered a similar fate after getting Italy into a disastrous WAR, and I doubt that, say, the girls of the Po valley were mass raped by invading american troops. Let alone people that the Fascist government had IMPORTED.

PS: As for the definiton of "American Exceptionalism" that you've constructed.... man, can I borrow that thing to feed all the cows in texas?

Nobody should ever be murdered by a mob. One of the key qualities of a civilized, just society is that it recognizes that even monsters have rights and that justice is decided in a court room, not a street. Granted, that may not always be practical in wartime, but America is not (yet) in a state of civil war, however much some seem to think that it should be.

[Irbis]

BALTIMORE — A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

Isn't that... Awfully convenient?

Unnamed prisoner suddenly surfacing and providing gloving recommendation of Police force, complete with classic claim "I saw him trip and fall on his own knife 27 times, honest"? Totally unrelated to the fact they are hold him imprisoned and might or might not find lost of extra evidence (or take him on another bus trip) if he refuses to cooperate?

Anyway, seeing how trigger-happy USA is judging by the news, I have no idea how the fuck Police can justify having a car actively dangerous to passengers. I read a lot of stories of simple delivery trucks used by secret police forces, from Gestapo to KGB, but it's first time I recall I hear of anyone being actually damaged by transit

[KroLazuxy_87]

Anyway, seeing how trigger-happy USA is judging by the news, I have no idea how the fuck Police can justify having a car actively dangerous to passengers. I read a lot of stories of simple delivery trucks used by secret police forces, from Gestapo to KGB, but it's first time I recall I hear of anyone being actually damaged by transit

It may be the first you're hearing about it, but sadly it's not the first time it's happened.

Story from Philly.com June 3 2001

Story from the BaltimoreSun.com April 23 2015

Story from NationalReview.com April 29 2015

[Simon_Jester]

"I want you and Fox News to get out of Baltimore City, because you are not here reporting about the boarded up homes and the homeless people under MLK. You're not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue. ... But you're here for the black riots that happen. ... you're not here for the death of Freddie Gray."

The kid has an excellent point.

Observations like this always leave me wondering, what am I supposed to think about that?

Honestly, you can think whatever you want about it.

Strictly, yes- but I like to have opinions for valid and compelling reasons. I want to forgive people for things that should be forgiven, but not for things that shouldn't. Things like that.

So it's a matter for debate to me- to what extent does being poorly educated and cynical about politics make it 'understandable' to stop trying to fix those politics by the expedient of participating in elections?

I mean, am I supposed to just unthinkingly accept the decisions people make because they're poorly educated and we assume they don't know any better?

Accept? No, absolutely not. I'm not promoting acceptance, I'm promoing understanding, compassion, and critical thinking. One reaction to this might be outrage that in a first-world country whose citizens often consider themselves to be living in the greatest country in the world, people are not being provided adequate education...

Oh, I'm pretty bloody outraged by that part- my job is to deliver those educations and I end up leaving a lot of them on the doorstep, so to speak, hoping that someone will decide to pick them up before they spoil. It's disheartening.

I could ramble about the root problems there, and possible solutions, but it'd be a pretty blatant derail.

As to the rest- what I keep hoping to see is an attempt by the encircled, besieged victims to break out that has a prayer of linking up with outside forces' efforts to break in and help them. It's not unprecedented, it's not impossible. It's just... brutally slow in coming.

I agree, it is terribly condescending to assume urban voters aren't capable of seeing a problem with deciding to not vote against the city officials that support a police department that terrorizes and murders their own community. I'm not assuming that - I'm not implying that - you're inferring that. It's also terrible condescending to assume that they haven't already tried this. It's terribly condescending to dismiss the evidence that the system is stacked against certain people in our society. It's terribly condescending to shift blame from a corrupt system to those being oppressed by that system.

Ahem.

Put this way.

The first and greatest virtue of any movement serious about reform is persistence. You have to keep trying. You have to exert pressure by all the available tools, even the ones that aren't working very well. The more you let that pressure relax, the more likely your movement is to fail.

The only criticism I direct against the urban minorities is that for a group so cruelly oppressed, they show a disheartening lack of cunning, resourceful fighting-back. Instead there is aimless fighting-back, and fighting-'back' that ricochets back and hits other members of their community in the face.

Winning requires planning, persistence, and a willingness to figure out where the levers of power are and how to exert at least some amount of force on them. I know those traits exist in the communities that are being oppressed, and it disheartens me that urban minority communities have trouble rallying them efficiently (for a huge variety of reasons, many of them created by outside forces).

I would like to see these people get some good shots in for a change. I'd like them to win.

As I outlined above, I never meant to imply that there haven't been attempts to affect change through voting. So I'll address the issue of minority leadership. Multiple factors play into this.
Poor education again rears its head. Slave owners kept slaves from being able to read and write to prevent organized uprisings. I'm not saying today is anywhere as bad, I'm just using this as an extreme case to illustrate how education is correlated to leadership.

I... it is my perception that there is also a split between the African-American middle class and underclass, with the 'lower' working class divided more or less down the middle.

Everyone in both sides of that divide knows that there are problems. But the people on the rich side of it have at least some degree of insulation from the worst of it, and have a lot of motives that tend to cause them to disengage from the poorer side of it. Which tends to separate the people most in need of leadership capable of navigating the system, from the people most capable of providing it. Everyone is made worse off by this.

That is my external perception and if I'm just plain wrong, I am quite happy to accept that in good grace.

Even if they don't have enough votes, a 20-30% minority of the voter base can usually at least make its interests heard on Election Day.

In some cases, yes. The recent election of Parma, Missouri's first black female mayor proves this. However, what works in one case doesn't work in all cases. Especially in larger government - such as federal, state, and major cities, those in power are less accountable to the people they govern. I've posted it twice already in this threat and I'll say it again in the hopes that people will stop ignoring it. America doesn't function as a democracy.

This is a relatively new state of affairs, and I have some hope that it will change in the relatively near future. But yes, democracy has been pretty dysfunctional in a lot of the Western world lately. The US just provides one very good illustration of the process.

Isn't that... Awfully convenient?

Unnamed prisoner suddenly surfacing and providing gloving recommendation of Police force, complete with classic claim "I saw him trip and fall on his own knife 27 times, honest"? Totally unrelated to the fact they are hold him imprisoned and might or might not find lost of extra evidence (or take him on another bus trip) if he refuses to cooperate?

Anyway, seeing how trigger-happy USA is judging by the news, I have no idea how the fuck Police can justify having a car actively dangerous to passengers. I read a lot of stories of simple delivery trucks used by secret police forces, from Gestapo to KGB, but it's first time I recall I hear of anyone being actually damaged by transit

Agreed.

This tends to illustrate the difference between a 'police' organization that is brutal and cruel as part of a calculated, methodical system, and an organization that is merely thuggish.

Thugs hurt and kill people out of carelessness and ignorance. Organized cruelty usually doesn't- it just does worse, on purpose.

[Irbis]

It may be the first you're hearing about it, but sadly it's not the first time it's happened.

Oh, I meant in tales of secret Police brutality here, in this country. I was just under impression someone would sue hard if rough rides were that common in USA, I don't question more of them could have happened, I just find it weird practice apparently continued that long. Man, US Police forces really have reasons to think they are above the law.

[Simon_Jester]

What it basically comes down to is that for the underclass, the idea of actually suing the police for damages is hopelessly out of reach.

If you're a middle-class American, these "rough rides" might as well be happening in another country- because the police know that there is a realistic chance that you or your friends and relatives are going to be willing to put down the money for a lawyer. And that they won't automatically win by picking a jury that can be race-baited and class-baited into blaming the victim.

[Thanas]

Don't assume, Simon, for it makes an ass out of you.

Baltimore has been sued a lot and paid out 5.7 million $ since 2011 alone and spent another 5.8 million $ defending against litigation. See this extensive report. There have been over 300 suits against the department, brought and won largely by the underclass.

Problem is that officers still largely go unpunished and even if they leave the force, they seem to get rehired by other law enforcement agencies really quick, like this one asshole who ground the face of a woman into the pavement, left the Baltimore City police and then promptly joined the Baltimore County police. So he probably didn't even have to move. With over 300 suits and over 100 judgements and settlements, you'd think that at least those 100 would get at the least prosecuted. But no.

Asked about investigations into allegations of police brutality, Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein said his office has prosecuted 10 officers for assault and 10 others for less serious offenses since 2011.

Lolwhut? 20 prosecutions in total and only for assault as the highest charge? Over the total number of lawsuits (and those are just lawsuits, not complaints, which are bound to be much much higher) your completely incompetent and corrupt office only prosecuted less than 8% of those involved? But wait, that number gets even lower if multiple police officers were involved. Might very well be that the incompetent joke of a public prosecutor only looked into less than a half dozen cases.

The situation got so bad that the City Council president said this:

“They violate your civil rights and tell you you can’t talk,” Young said. He added: “[Residents] fear the police more than they fear the drug dealers on the corner.”