General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTHIS is the police attitude that shows up over and over again:
"Police Officer Calls Ferguson Protestors Animals"You can see and hear the cop at about 00.15s.
VIDEO:
In a video report posted on CNN, a local police officer is heard yelling at protestors, Bring it, all you fucking animals! Bring it! You can hear it in the video above, with the expletive censored out, at 00:15. Fergusons mayor James Knowles tells CNN, The officers did their best. Theyre only human.
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Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)tblue37
(65,483 posts)police departments) have with Black citizens is racist. This cop was just caught on camera saying the sort of thing he probably says all the time.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)The failure to address racism, as a nation, ensures its survival.
tabasco
(22,974 posts)when the police are the worst criminals.
Strelnikov_
(7,772 posts)No better way to divert attention from how this started and sway public opinion.
Sounds like that cop was instigating.
Divide and conquer . . .
tblue37
(65,483 posts)the cops these days never seem interested in calming and de-escalating the situation. Always they do everything they can to amp up the stress and the potential for violence. They always seem to approach people cursing and screaming orders (and the orders are often contradictory and thus not possible to comply with). They bully people, grab them, and shove them around or knock them to the ground.
Even when the person immediately complies, the cops just keep escalating things. They also use any movement as an excuse to shoot or to go into full beat-down mode. So, for example, if they shove someone and the person's hand comes up, either in an attempt to catch his balance or else the way anything automatically moves in a counterforce reaction to a push, the cop will claim that the person was resisting arrest, which gives him another excuse for beating, kicking, or shooting him.
And then that gives the cop something to charge the person with,even if the person was originally accosted for no reason at all, but just because the cop was in the mood to mess with someone (and again, especially someone of color).
freshwest
(53,661 posts)A lifetime ago, the first quiz my psychology prof in college was on the matching traits of two groups who one would think would be very different.
The two groups were career criminals and cops. Of a hundred characteristics, there were only 2 items of difference. Shocking at first glance, but going into the developmentall history of both, it made sense. At that time, we had an extremely racist police force in our city. They were in your face, overt, deadly.
I didn't like them at all and felt like I was in danger whenever they were taround, they were very sexist, too. At the university I was digusted with the professor trying to sign up students to their criminal justice courses. To me, he was acting like an animal, a dangerous one at that.
It took a lot of political pressure from the voters to create a true civilian review board. Things weren't perfect by any means, but the level of violence went down. And courts recognized as valid the reasons why minorities did not want to stay in place when police ordered to do so.
History showed their lives were in danger and judges ruled against the LEO's who stopped people on the highway. It is a dangerous thing to get into the hands of any bad acting officer.
Strelnikov_
(7,772 posts)Whenever I watch an old movie, Brit show, etc., there are clues there as to how cops used to act . . . like they were there to 'protect and serve'.
Now, jump forward to today. How much difference is there from how cops in this country treat the average citizen, and how the US Military treated Iraqi citizens? That is, the goal of the occupier is to keep the populace cowed.
Those that 'protect and serve' view the majority of us as the enemy.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Americans. Any hope that we, collectively, might get beyond this kind of shit, is almost gone now. The dreaded demographic shift can't happen fast enough.
God forgive me, but just once I'd like to see racist Teabagger types gunned down like fucking dogs, in the same way they defend and applaud when it happens to the dark-skinned folks.
rock
(13,218 posts)Can we wait for the FBI report before we go making wild jumps out of nowhere?