Shot in the Dark

The New, Old And Future Normal

One’s outrage over George Floyd’s death varies depending on one’s definition of normal.
If you’re just going about your business, acting in an ordinary and normal way, the cops shouldn’t hassle you and certainly shouldn’t kill you. So what is “normal?”
Philandro Castillo was driving and carrying a pistol while high on marijuana. The Black community considered that normal. His death was an outrage… to them.  The rest of us could understand why the officer panicked and shot him. Driving and carrying while stoned is not normal…for us.
I don’t know how hard it is to restrain a 6 ft 6 in tall, 250 lb former NBA player, who is drunk and passing counterfeit money. Does that take a polite request? Or three cops kneeling on his neck? I have no idea. But to me, getting arrested for committing a crime would be normal, and you sort it out later in court. For the Black community, passing funny money while stoned is normal and the cops should have left him alone.
The autopsy report shows George Floyd did not die of asphyxiation. He had an underlying medical condition. His arrest may have contributed to it, but the cops didn’t murder him. His death was merely incident to the arrest which makes us question whether the arrest itself was justified, which brings us back to whether his behavior was so unusual and abnormal as to justify an arrest.
This difference in perception – what is normal and acceptable behavior – is the heart of the dispute, not just for this one fellow, but for Black lives matter, antifa, achievement gap, racial reparations, affirmative action …
Joe Doakes 

And the perception gaps among so many different, parts of society are so radically different, it’s hard to see how any of it squares up, ever.   Especially since arriving at some sort of consensus is both absolutely vital…

…and utterly impossible given not only our current political, social and media state, but the opposite of what most of Minneapolis’ ruling class wants.  

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9 responses to “The New, Old And Future Normal”

  1. This chopper for official use only Avatar
    This chopper for official use only

    The rest of us could understand why the officer panicked and shot him. Driving and carrying while stoned is not normal…for us.

    No, boss. I don’t understand why that cop panicked. Castillo never reached for his pistol. If being high is enough to get a guy shot, there’s gonna be a lot of lead flying.

    Rioting Negroes and their leftist terrorist enablers are doing a fine job of hanging themselves. It’s not necessary, or helpful to muddle the facts with silly suppositions.

  2. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Philandro Castillo was a lawful gun owner and had a permit to carry issued by Hennepin County.

    Surprised the NRA and 2a advocates didn’t articulate their support for him.

  3. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Philandro Castillo was driving and carrying a pistol while high on marijuana. The Black community considered that normal. His death was an outrage… to them. The rest of us could understand why the officer panicked and shot him.

    Sorry Joe, I disagree.

    Let’s talk about normal.

    Philandro Castile was a 30 year old male without a criminal history and a permit to carry.

    Let that sink in.

    The guy had also been pulled over 49 times in 13 years.

    49 times.

    That is about once every three months.

    Repeat: no history of criminal behavior and hassled 49 times.

    By the time a guy is 30 years old and has no history of criminal behavior, the odds of him being a criminal are astronomical and you have to figure he is pretty much a decent human being, so why in the name of hell is he being hassled?

    As an IT guy who has worked in law enforcement for about as long as Philandro Castile was alive, I would ask how come we don’t have a system that informs the officer, “Hey dickhead, this guy has been pulled over 49 times and nothing came of it. Leave him alone or don’t bitch when the city goes up in flame because of pissed off people like him.”

  4. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Allow me to add a few thoughts on my previous rant.

    Philandro Castile was high and George Floyd was trying to pass bad paper or something like that. These things are petty crimes and we should not excuse them (hear that Mayor Frey) but they do not threaten my safety.

    What threatens my safety, and literally the safety of my children who live in the area, is the corrosive effect of over-policing.

    Say, a cop pulls over someone for a petty traffic violation…

    If they find an unlicensed firearm being carried by a gang-banger, that is a good thing, everyone wins.

    If they find nothing, no big deal.

    But after the next time and the next time and the next time and the next time of finding nothing, the guy who is getting pulled over gets really and rightfully pissed.

    Maybe, the cop writes him a ticket for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign or failing to signal a change of lane. Those are moving violations and the guy’s insurance skyrockets. Maybe then, he can’t afford insurance but still has to get to work….

    And his life deteriorates from there.

    You don’t have to be a flaming progressive liberal to understand the corrosive power of the state.

  5. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Philandro Castile’s case may have been a turning point in awareness and outrage against killer-cops for conservatives. The more libertarian ones already fell more on the anti-cop spectrum, but this case got a lot more people saying ‘WHAT the F—?” You had compelling video from the scene immediately after the shooting, and a very relatable incident. (Plus the history of 49 “contacts”). You also had a clearly hair-trigger cop.

    Then you had the Justine Damond shooting that was pretty cut and dried (even though it took 8 MONTHS to charge Noor). After those cases I don’t think you had many people automatically inclined to give the cops a pass on shootings. At least in those two cases you could kind of understand a split-second decision going disastrously wrong (understand, but not excuse). In George Floyd’s death, there were about 500 seconds in which the cop could have chosen to act differently, and they were all on camera. I don’t think there’s going to be anyone in the Twin Cities willing or able to shrug these incidents off as just being part of a tough job.

  6. This chopper for official use only Avatar
    This chopper for official use only

    Philandro Castile was high and George Floyd was trying to pass bad paper or something like that. These things are petty crimes…

    One is a felony, the other is a petite misdemeanor. Counterfeiting is an especially grievous crime in that it undermines our national currency. I’m not even sure anyone can say with certainty Castile was “high”. Evidently they found THC in his blood, but I’ve never seen how much. THC lingers, a blunt he smoked 3 days ago would show up in a test, but not in his behavior at 4:00pm on the day of his murder.

    Castille is the one high profile instance where I can say unequivocally that man was completely innocent and murdered by a cop because he was black. All the rest of these BLM “martyrs” are, in fact thugs, with sheets a mile long or recent felony convictions; including Floyd.

  7. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    When a person is in state custody, as George Floyd was, there should be strong procedural standards to enforce what should be a fiduciary level of care. The state must set the example. When the state does not set an example of fairness and due process, they you just have localized authoritarian rule (under local political control, typically corrupt). In the south and other regions of the US, corrupt and discriminatory government have gone hand-in-hand with income and wealth inequality favoring some local faction. That’s the ugly side of divide-and-rule democratic government by faction. At its ugliest is vigilante government, and if the vigilantes ride at the behest of a government leader.

    There’s also a utilitarian argument that applies to everyone’s best interest (if not a corrupt beneficiary). Fairness is a hallmark of an effective and efficient organization and everyone benefits from more effective and efficient organizations providing society’s goods and services. That is why for most Americans the broadening of freedom through “fairness” and “equal rights” has been seen to go hand-in-hand with the advancement of living standards and the “progress” of the American economy.

    There’s only one road to a better America, and that is the road of fairness. The other roads are dead ends.

  8. golfdoc50 Avatar
    golfdoc50

    I believe the Castillo shooting was bad, as Justine Damonds was. Both cops had other options, chose shoot first. The public response was wildly different of course. The Floyd case is going to cause months if not years of pointless protests and riots. A few more lives will be lost. He wasn’t asphyxiated. The cop had the advantage, chose to ignore the mans complaints. Cop cars carry oxygen and an emergency kit, at least the suburban ones answering my clinics 911 calls when we needed a patient transported. I don’t have information about when the cops called medical. The longer the delay the more the state can argue negligence. And it might not have made a difference. If the EKG strips show he had ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation but they couldn’t save him that’s one thing. I didn’t watch enough of the video to see if they ever started CPR. All in all a cluster fruck of mammoth proportions. I’m not ready to call it murder. The medical examiner will be under tremendous pressure to rule it a homicide. I don’t see that’s happened but I’m not watching this thing minute to minute. But no homicide, no murder.

  9. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Are we missing the point here?

    If Philandro Castile had not been killed, we would not know who he was – but he would continue to be pulled over 48, 49, 50, 51….73…87 times.

    Now maybe he was a bit of a loser (he did have a job though) and maybe he liked to blow a little weed. Like a lot of other people.

    The point is, harassing a guy like that is corrosive. It is dangerous.

    Philandro seems to have been a pretty mellow guy and maybe all the harassment flowed off him like water off a duck’s back – but how about the next guy who is not so mellow?

    We need strong, effective policing, but we do not need policing that makes ordinary people into criminals.

    Seriously, there is a way to do this. Record contacts and alert the officer via his in-car computer that the person he/she is pulling over has been pulled over too many times before without finding anything wrong.

    Law enforcement is driven by discretion. Without the discretion to NOT enforce laws, you have fascism.

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