Rioting in Ferguson Area

[BROUSER]

I don't see racism in the jury's decision...but I do see it in the prosecutor's presentation of the evidence. And the Cleveland video? Hey, the cop showed remorse. That goes a long way.

[Pepster]

I completely agree with Baghead on this one. The cops story doesn't really make any sense. Beyond that a cop has a batom, taser, pepper spray, all kinds of shit to stop someone. I think the shots while he was in his car were fine but when the kid is 150+ ft away from you there's no need to use lethal force.

[Nicotti]

Yeah I hate people who have opinions too...

Especially if they're not the same as mine

Yes, cause that's obviously what I said and/or meant.

[BagHead727]

I've learned one sure thing from this ordeal. Around 50% of the people I went to high school with and am friends with on facebook are racist. But I sort of already knew that #Jeffcountyprobs

I don't see any racist posts coming from my university friends though.

[BROUSER]

That's because most university students are brainwashed to accept cultural differences. Either that or they are taught to hide their racism behind a PC facade. I teach at a university and try to shame my students when they express racist views so they can learn not to expose themselves to possible repercussions in hostile liberal environments.

[BagHead727]

Yup. Most of them realize posts like that can cost them a job if potential employers do a social media background check.

[Nicotti]

One of the stupidest protest signs I've seen yet said something about the grand jury being "Bullshit" because it was chosen to be 9 white and 3 black.

I'm like, "You idiot, that jury was chosen in April, not specifically for the Furg case."

For some reason this sign bothers me, though not for my quoted reason.

I started thinking about it and I find that I am confused by the person's message.

He says that having more whites then blacks on the jury is bullshit, so is he saying that he believes that the jurors voted based on their race?

The context of the sign certainly points that way. If he thought race didn't matter in the vote, then why make a sign about it?

The man clearly believes there should have been an indictment, so is he saying there should have been an equal number of blacks and whites (or more blacks than whites) on the jury thus making such a decision more likely?

Perhaps his life experiences cause him to assume all people are racist and thus the jury should have been structured in a way for an indictment vote to be cast.

Thus my confusion, why he would choose to protest police racism (and I assume racism in general) with a sign that promotes racism in the judicial branch?


I realize that I may be "weird" for musing on such trivial things. I'm okay with that.

[SubLunar]

I realize that I may be "weird" for musing on such trivial things. I'm okay with that.

The assumption is because they're white, they're automatically racist and gonna side with whitey. All white people are racist. Duh.

How about "black lives matter". Why not "all lives matter"? Here's your new motto: "Our lives matter".

Why are people acting like police only harass black people? The police harass ALL people. I'm saying instead of making this segregated, let's include all races in the unrest. We're with you. Police brutality needs to stop. But the ones screaming racism are helping perpetuate the racial divide. Drop the racism card unless you have proof, otherwise it's a distraction. This is all of us vs the bad cops. Blacks and whites and all other colors. ALL of us against police brutality.

Here's a white cop killing an unarmed white kid. Just another scared cop killing someone for no reason other than he isn't qualified for his job, like so many others. If the kid was black, you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork screaming racism based on nothing but the color of their skin, the automatic reaction if the skin colors don't match. When the skin colors match, we can more easily see the situation for what it really is. This incident was not racism, but it played out just like all the others. So you have to ask yourself: When is it actually racism and when is it just a scared and unqualified cop?

Basing our reactions solely on the color of the people's skin = racism.

http://kdvr.com/2014/11/29/watch-utah-p ... white-man/

[RedRook]

People are pattern seekers plain and simple, and I think a lot of the perception issues on both sides are based on that.

Crime around the world is consistently matched with poverty, and a disproportionate amount of the African American Community lives in poverty in our country. If cops encounter desperate black people at a crime scene more often, it is natural as human beings to start thinking other black people are more likely to be criminals.

I have known three white people that went to federal prison. All of them project intimidation as part of their personality. None of them are violent guys in my experience, but something about their experience makes them hold themselves as if they are a threat to everyone around them. I'm sure that's not a good trait to have when encountering cops, and the African American community also has a disproportionate amount of people that have been to federal prison. Cops are most likely to encounter this particular portion of the African American community, so they might start incorrectly seeing the easily recognizable skin color as part of the cues that someone is threatening

I've encountered cops with their hands on their holstered weapon twice. Both times, they instantly calmed down the second they got a better look at me. They had to be solely making that decision based on how I looked. I've never had cops search my car, my house, my neighbors house, or harass me in any way. I have no past experience to think cops are out to get anyone.

If you live in a community where cops are stopping people, shooting people, searching houses, searching cars, etc.. It doesn't matter if the cops are justified or not, you see cops as someone that is constantly disrupting the lives of everyone around you. If you know a few of these people to be wrongly harassed, then you obviously are going to start assuming cops are out to get people.

Assumptions are being made on all sides based on experiences that give a distorted version of reality. I don't know which cop actions were justified or which ones weren't including this Michael Brown case, but I think most people's first reactions are based on weak patterns in our heads. You aren't going to find the truth about a specific incident unless you really work hard to find the facts about that single incident.

[SubLunar]

I agree with some of that but I'm white and I've had cops go out of their way to pull me over for no reason, detain me for no reason, search my car-tearing it up in the process and treating me like shit. They're not just out harassing black people. I've posted a long and insane story here before about what happened to my brother once. He's also white, btw. He did nothing wrong. But by the end of it there were like 10 squad cars in his yard and he was being arrested. Amazingly none of the cars had their dash cams on. They ganged up on him, assaulted him and tased him in his neck until he passed out. Then they invented a narrative and his lawyer went along with it. The prosecutors and the judges, they're all buddies. It's a money making scheme. And who's gonna believe one guy over 10 cops? Seems to me like conveniently not recording incidents is equal to destroying evidence. but they're cops, so they can destroy evidence if they want.

If you're white and have never had an encounter with the police, it's not automatically because you're white. You've just gotten lucky. The link I posted above is a white cop killing a white unarmed guy. Being white sure didn't help him out...

[SubLunar]

When cops have pulled me over for no reason, guess what the ticket they gave me every time was. "Following too closely". Why "Following too closely"? Because there doesn't have to be any evidence. That's a ticket they can invent and hand out-apparently just to make it worth their time to pull me over.

I don't follow cars closely. Everyone I've ever ridden with follows cars more closely than I. I'm always pressing the imaginary brakes on the floorboard on the passenger side, out of habit. One time I was on the way to pay a following too closely ticket when they pulled me over in front of city hall to search me and give me yet another following too closely ticket when they found nothing else to charge me with. There wasn't even anyone in front of me this time.

[RedRook]

Yeah, I'm sure the actual abuse goes across racial lines. Some of it might even be community based. I only knew felons, because my father only hired ex-convicts. They would recommend each other, and they were all good guys. He liked felons, because they worked extremely hard and reliably for the pay he was giving them, because if they lost a job with him, their other options were for a fourth of the pay. I remember once, a guy named Vic showed up to work an hour late claiming the cops held him on the side of the road while they tore apart his car, Rick had the cops break down his front door once only to find he had zero drugs in his house. They were all white, and as far as I know, none of them were criminals anymore. I'm not saying the reality is that cops pick on race, I'm saying I can see why it might seem that way.

Some of it might be community based. Up in KC, if you are around the old Bannister mall area, you aren't only more likely to be black, but you are more likely to be around crimes than in Overland Park where almost everyone is white. There are white people around Bannister mall as well, so it isn't a pure racial issue, but if you generalize it looks like one on the surface.

I have a friend who is a sergeant in KC. He's married to a black woman and seems to have pride in the fact that he treats people equally. The way he's put it is that they know where the crime is going to happen. It happens in the same places all the time. They just have to drive there and they are going to find something eventually. Even if he's not racist, if he's assuming people off of Blue Ridge are more likely to be criminals, he's assuming people that are more likely to be black are criminals. If people on Blue Ridge notice the cops are showing up more than on the other side of town, I can easily see how race seems like the key issue.

[RedRook]

In my personal opinion, the way of finding criminals with the least effort would involve watching the work of accountants closely. Cops have zero power to focus on a random accountant, just because they want to. The cops can pull over people and search their cars though. Our law is extremely lenient to cops that do that. If I remember correctly, mobile enclosures like cars, mobile homes, and tents are considered to be an exception to normal search and seizure law, because there is a danger it won't be found by the time a warrant is issued. I think it is called the Carroll exception. Maybe they found drugs in a car like yours in the past. It doesn't matter why they pulled you over instead of someone else. You are right, what matters is the system in general causing people more grief than help. Cops are going to go down avenues of least resistance where they consistently find criminals, even if innocent people get caught in the dragnet as well. If you want them to act differently, the whole system has to be changed.

[ropingk]

never mind

and a big thank you to Nicotti
you were right

[BagHead727]

This one really pissed me off
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/indict ... ner-video/


I remember watching the video right after it happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo

Fuck cops