Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The newest racial incident involving police:
I had to laugh early in the tape when I heard a girl with a Black accent yell at a cop “I’m calling my mother on you.”
Honey, if you had a Mother worthy of the title, you wouldn’t be threatening to call her on the cops; you’d be praying to God the cops didn’t call her on YOU.
If I went home and said: “Mom, the cops were mean to me at the race riot,” I’m dead certain her response would NOT be: “Those dirty sons of guns, oppressing your First Amendment Rights, we’ll sue them.”
I’m dead certain her response would be: “You went to a race riot? What the Hell is wrong with you? Wait till your Father gets home.”
Of course, I had a Mother who gave a damn and a Father who came home. I guess I need to check my privilege.
Joe Doakes
The “Texas pool party” incident has been interesting on a couple of levels.
Counting Those Chickens: The burgeoning “Cops are guilty until proven innocent, because Video!” crowd that is so in vogue on the left and among some Libertarians should get some pause with this case, as it seems – if you believe the pushback from the police union, anyway – that there was a big ugly incident before the video starts, with trespassing and fighting and assaults, which the local, mostly black, residents called in to the police.
I said “Should”. They won’t, of course. Dogma means never having to say you’re sorry.
Pathology Verging On A Berg’s Law: As we’ve learned after every high-profile mass-shooting, as well as after every controversial, racially-tinged event in recent years; the mainstream media will get all the basic facts wrong for the first 2-3 weeks. Any impression of any ambiguous event will be colored by the fact that the mainstream media – everyone from CNN to MPR – will, without exception, be simultaneously be playing the story for sensationalist ratings, and have coverage that is entirely at the mercy of sources who are in the bag for one side of the story or another (and that side is usually the “progressive” one).
The media won’t give honest coverage to a story like this, or Ferguson, or Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, until it’s not a “sexy” headline-grabber anymore.
Hobby Horses: Don’t get me wrong. I have a serious beef with bad cops – and lazy, entitled and incompetent ones, too. I’ve encountered some of each in my time in Saint Paul – along with good, even excellent, ones who came through when my family and I really needed it.
And I understand why young (and not-so-young) black males and their supporters are concerned about prejudice and the dangers it brings. I say this while remembering that young black males do commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
And, most interestingly, while the “Cops are guilty until proven innocent” crowd has a thin veneer of urban activists, that veneer is wrapped around a lot of white liberals – and, increasingly, libertarians, who, God bless ’em, are as white as it gets.
More interesting still? I’ve seen research that shows black inner-city residents support aggressive, strong policing. Not every aspect of it, and not everything aggressive cops do, of course – but they, the people who live daily with the worst that urban culture provides, tend to want the cops to have a solid, aggressive (and fair, and just, and even-handed) presence in the neighborhood.
As with most such stories? I’m pretty much sick and tired of everyone.
The cop’s lawyer said he let his emotions get out of control.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/10/us/mckinney-texas-pool-party-video/
I think he’ll be happier in some other line of work.
1. News reports say that upper-class, gated community has a respectable black population, but hardly “mostly”. The video shows mostly white adults standing around.
2. THE COP PULLED A GUN ON UNARMED TEENAGERS IN SWIM SUITS!
There is a little thing called the Use-of-Force Continuum…this copper missed class that day. He had backup, but he jumped right from verbalization to lethal force anyway. Once you get there, you’ve come to the end of your options, and someone usually ends up dead.
Teenage kids can be real lippy, black teens x2. They can definitely push some buttons, but if you cannot handle a crowd of lippy kids without drawing down on them, you’re in the wrong frickin’ business, pal. If you think he handled things correctly, picture a couple of those kids laying in the grass, bleeding out in their swimsuits. Still good to go?
I don’t think this was a case of race bias, I think it is a case of stupid. This copper was a supervisor, too…sheesh.
I got into a big discussion on another forum about what is a “community pool”. The police chief called it that. I said no it wasn’t a community pool, it was private. A community pool is one funded by a municipality and open to the public.
Nobody agreed with me.
What do you guys think?
if its a pool owned and operated by my condo/HO assn for the benefit of everyone in that community it most certainly is not open to everyone else in the neighborhood – the liability insurance alone would close it down immediately.
It was a Community pool in a sense that it was operated by an HOA – only open to HOA residents. Rules state residents could only bring 2 guests per.
Swiftee, cop was already out of cuffs when he was sitting on a squirming perp resisting arrest and watching a couple of youts approaching him lipping off with their hands in their pants – out comes the gun. Watch the ENTIRE video… geez! It’s all about context.
Oh, and by the way – HOA residents praised the cops and are now besieged by violence threats by the youts. But hey, you are right – just lets them youts break laws and do whatever the heck they please… When you have no authority, there is no respect for it either.
I tend to agree with Swiftee, but with one caveat; if an officer has been to two suicide calls already that day, he really ought to be given the rest of the day off and a free appointment to the department counselor. I heard a guy take his life one time by jumping off Berkeley’s math building and saw the aftermath, and I couldn’t sleep the next two nights. I guarantee you that I would not have been capable of handling that pool party afterwards.
(and yes, heard; I was in the stairwell while he screamed his last)
OK, yes, I’m not a cop, but mental state matters. Hopefully cooler heads prevail and someone at the department figures out how to make sure that someone with his veins full of adrenaline gets a chance to cope. Perhaps the officer actually ought to get his job back, with a hearty apology to the people he was interacting with that day.
“As with most such stories? I’m pretty much sick and tired of everyone.”
I’m there. I don’t like media pushing my buttons. If that is “their job” then it’s just not valuable to me.
I wonder if it’s going to get to the point for cops that some parts of the country go on strike. Honestly at this point Im about ready to support that drastic of action. It’s like cops can do no right at this point.
Keep in mind the goal of the left is to nationalize the police “because of the proven disparities” that local control has produced. The uniformity they seek is in the management structures not in the citizen facing activities.
Remember, when seconds count the police may have already reached their nationally mandated quota for the month.
Kel wrote:
Keep in mind the goal of the left is to nationalize the police “because of the proven disparities” that local control has produced.
They want to make your local cops — who are paid with your local tax dollars — responsible to unelected civil rights lawyers in the Justice Department.
POD, it sounds as if the Baltimore PD has essentially gone on strike – at least as it applies to certain areas of Baltimore where they are not answering calls.
The video is damning, but I also wonder at what point should the cop draw his gun? Should he wait until he’s kicked, at which point the other cops can start shooting? I’m thinking about this because of an incident in St. Paul two weeks ago where an armed security guard tried to evict an underage party from a night club. The aggrieved minor summoned his posse and five of them attacked the guard who fled to the parking lot, where he fell and the group started kicking him. At that point he pulled his gun and placed a single, fatal shot into one of his assailants. Police reported that when they arrived the group had “dispersed”. The guard drove himself to the hospital for treatment (nothing serious). The story lasted in the Strib about one day and disappeared without follow up (as far as I can tell). Maybe because the gang was Asian? Because witnesses and security cameras indicated it was a righteous shoot? Who knows – but credit to the guard for trying to de-escalate the situation, but he was playing a dangerous game if one of the kicks or punches had done serious damage.
POD, on my journey through life I’ve been burgled, shot in the damn leg and stabbed in the damn stomach; in none of those instances were cops helpful.
On the other hand, I’ve been illegally jacked up by cops more times than I can count. Got pulled over for “failure to signal” once…they set a stinking dog on my bike, after I’d refused to allow a warrantless search…$700 later, my saddle bags looked good as new; ’cause they were. The only dope involved was wearing a badge.
Coppers on strike? I wouldn’t even notice. Ambulances though, well that’s a different story.