Pretty typical in towns like this. Said it from Day 1 that if towns like this (and Newark, where I know more about it..) would institute rules that forced public servants to live in those communities, it'd go a long way to changing some things.

The great part of that video is at 27:00, where a prosecutor comes on and says "everything he said was right".

By all means, limit the pool of qualified personnel. That should fix things right up.

Agreed. I got pulled over one time for speeding in an area where I knew a small town cop always hangs out. He approached me. I first apologized to him for stopping along the side of the road rather than pulling onto a side street. Asked him if he wanted me to pull around the corner to a safer area. He thanked me and said no. He then asked me if I knew why I was pulled over. I said I'm assuming I was going too fast. He said I was going 57 in a 45 MPH zone. He asked if I had any reason to go that fast. I told him to be honest, I know you all patrol this area regularly, but my wife and her grandmother were arguing about something and I was distracted. He went back to his car, checked my history and insurance, and then came back. He said he was going to let me go this time on a warning, but to focus more on my driving going forward. I shook his hand and thanked him.

There's absolutely no way that situation ends how it did if I follow the instructions of that guy in the video.

Yeah - I've watched it before.

That being said - I like some of what it has to say, but I think you've got to take everything in context.

If I get pulled over for a rolling stop at a stop-sign on St. Patrick's Day or something, and I know I have nothing in my car, and I haven't been drinking that day or anything, I'm not going to 5th Amendment up and turn it into a confrontation. I'm not going to voluntarily incriminate myself as far as why I was pulled over (I'll pull the "please enlighten me officer" bit, but I'm not going to go out of my way to turn it confrontational.

Both because it would only take more of my time then the ticket was worth, and it would also take the officer's time when he could be out there going after actual drunk drivers who were a danger.

Now if they've pulled me over for doing 70 in a 50 or something and I'm looking at a huge ticket - then yeah...I'm going to act differently.

I feel like you guys are all arguing the two extremes "be a sheeple" or "be confrontational" and nobody's acknowledging that the reality for most people in most interactions is going to lie in the middle ground.

I'm going to note that this is only somewhat effective. Here in KC, they have a rule that all public servants (firefighters, police, etc.) must live in the city limits of KC proper. I live in the far northeast corner of KC in a small slice of the city that is in a well-respected suburban school district. This area has great property value, one of the best school districts in the state, and is 15-20 minutes from the core of the city. Last I checked, a good portion of firefighters and police in the city live in our area. It's wonderful from our perspective because we are a ridiculously safe area of the community due to the number of public servants in the area. But I doubt the policy in place is really having the intended effect they'd like it to have. Those people are looking for areas to live that meet the requirements, but are far away from the core of the city.

I can see both sides of this argument. Just presenting my personal experience in regards to this kind of policy.

Right - but you can only go so far with that type of policy before it becomes ridiculously nit-picky.

But, on another day, if the officer was in a bad mood/needed to make a quota/whatever, you gave him an opening to ticket your wife and her grandmother for distracting a driver. It obviously didn't happen here, but that is exactly what the video was referring to. Why give them extra info?

Because, in general, police are going to appreciate honestly IMO. I know quite a few KCPD cops who frequent my establishment. They say the same thing. If you have nothing to hide and you're honest with us from the start, we're going to move on to looking for the bad guys rather than waste our time talking with you.

I'm not sure I care if he gives me a ticket either. I've already admitted I broke a law. Should I be upset if he gives me a ticket? I'm sure there's an exception somewhere, but for the most part, honesty is the best policy.

Want to know how I know you didn't watch the video?

If you want the job, move there. Period. Works for rural communities and other enclaves, it's only when we talk about majority black towns in the North where people want to assume "well, there aren't enough qualified applicants."

Bullshit. Find them. Move them there.

To be fair Arles & DT have qualified what I was trying to say with what I assumed people would take as read - i'm talking about situations where either you're completely clear of any wrongdoing, and/or not being accused of murder or anything. If you didn't get that, well, I didn't explicitly state it I guess.

But no, I don't agree that taking the 5th is the best possible option in most circumstances. In fact, it is IMO, a very poor option most of the time in a traffic stop like CU Tiger found himself in, and he also says himself that he would do things differently if there is a next time.

What is also true in my belief in initial attitudes set the playing field is that it's a two-way street: you react to the attitude of the other, and if the cop is aggressive, it is more difficult to be rational and open. Note open: not sheepie or however it was described: I'm not saying roll over but just why be awkward if you don't have to be?

I'm done in terms of this: my perspective is from UK police who are generally unarmed, and clearly very different to a US inner city cop in Ferguson/CU's case, but I wanted to express my opinion - I know it's a bit hippyish to an extent, but I do genuinely believe if all other things are equal, you do better by being helpful than obstructive in these situations.

I'm talking about small towns that have the distinct problem of being run by outsiders, specifically. Not large cities, where I know places like Chicago require you to live there within six months if you want to work for school district.

There are tons of these inside of the urban core towns that are largely overrun by outsiders coming in, getting training and then leaving for greener pastures. It really depends on the community, I'm not an absolutist about it. But there are a lot of places that have the demographic issues in terms of civil servants that Ferguson boasts that would be solved by ordinances to make people live there.

Rather than Jon's inference that no qualified people would chose to live amongst the uncouth, alternatives, you'd just get white enclaves that probably already exist would just become more appealing and housing values would go up as a result.

That's if the argument that the only qualified people to be police officers, firefighters or teachers in these communities are predominantly non-black people who'd otherwise choose to not live there.

Actually it hasn't been a rule in any of the rural or suburban counties I've lived in. And in the town most comparable to Ferguson it was far from the case. Our best and most respected officers tended to both come from AND live outside the area, the most corrupt (both black and white) were the locals. Too much history, too many relatives, too much personal crap, etc etc.

No one who has said "don't talk" has said be confrontational. That's a myth from the "sheeple" side who believe you should answer questions, allow searches and so forth. I've never said be confrontational. Ever. In fact, I've repeatedly said I would be polite. I'll politely give them my license and registration. I'll keep my hands where they can see them. I don't feel like getting tased, clubbed or shot.

I'm just not giving them any information or allowing them to search my person or my car.

No, the evidence is the evidence. I'm already assuming the most cop-friendly position where the anonymously-sourced report from the St. Louis police department is true and Darren Wilson suffered an orbital blowout fracture.

What I'm saying is that it's entirely consistent for someone to have minor bruises and swelling that don't require immediate medical attention while also having a broken bone. Conversely, it would be incredibly easy to put a spin on that information and convince a dumb person (aka a potential juror) that an orbital blowout fracture is a big, scary life-threatening injury (Whoa, a broken skull!) that demands a lethal escalation of force when it isn't even close. In fact, you could probably argue that in court without having to provide a definitive answer about whether the orbital fracture was the result of an unprovoked attack or self-defense.

My goal at any routine police interaction is to have the least amount of disturbance and lowest chance for a fine/ticket possible. I've found the best path for this is to be polite and answer their questions. I guess it depends on your goals. If your goals are to never talk to the police because you have that right - have at it. I just don't see that helping the case for my goal. But, again, maybe people don't mind paying tickets/fines and paying attorneys to fight every situation. That's just not me.

It is when they get an escalated ticket or additional charge for being difficult. You have the right to tell an officer you aren't going to speak to them and invoke your 5th amendment when they pull you over. They also have the right to give you a ticket and/or add additional "petty offenses" because you aggravated them. Now, you can hire an attorney and fight those offenses and try to bargain the ticket down. But, is that really a better solution than just simply cooperating either getting a minimal ticket or no ticket at all? At a minimum, my time is worth more to me to quickly answer their questions and get on my way as opposed to being difficult and having them detain me longer or add more red tape I have to deal with.

According to the video that everyone is lauding over, there is NEVER any situation to EVER talk to a policeman. Seems like that advice is pretty cut and dry. If, instead, the video offered a more reasonable approach and saying never talk if you are accused of a serious crime or may have committed a more serious offense, I wouldn't have the issue I do with it.

Lots of people here ordering the Nate Silver jailhouse burrito, apparently.

Did you watch the video, or stop it a minute or two in? They go over exactly why even what you think is a nice and innocent statement can still land you in hot water. You have every right to waive your 5th Amendment protections, just as you also have the right to invoke them. If you feel in your situation that answering questions is fine, that is your right. It should be (but as you mentioned isn't) that if you decide to invoke your 5th Amendment right in a respectful manner, that shouldn't be viewed by a LEO as 'being difficult' and subject to punitive damages. By treating someone invoking their rights in that way, aren't they just trying to create an environment to keep you from using a constitutional right?

I prefer to deal with reality, not some kind of constitutional utopia. Yes, officers should handle the 5th amendment perfectly in every situation - but that just isn't real life. Again, my goal is to get out of normal traffic stops with as little hassle/fines as possible. If your goal is instead to ensure that every cop treats you properly in regards to invoking the 5th, maybe you don't mind a longer hassle or higher fine/ticket in certain instances. Good for you for fighting that fight, I just choose the path of least resistance on these minor stops and it has served me pretty well so far.

In Subby's link, they've posted an update that he has been removed from service and suspended indefinitely.

Same here - although I can't imagine I'd ever put myself in a situation to be searched, so that's really a non-issue in that regard.

haha,

Dude on CNN is standing in the crowd of protesters chatting with Treyvon Martin's mother via satellite. Somebody start yelling at him and he snaps back, "I'm talking to Trayvon Martin's mom, show some respect!" and continues on with the interview. I couldn't help it, but I pictured Napoleon Dynamite yelling that.

An orbital bone fracture CAN be a big, scary deal. Not life threatening, no, but incredibly traumatic. Depending on the severity, it can cause near instant blindness in the eye or double vision. The only orbital bone fracture I've seen in person knocked the guy out and sent him to the hospital for 2 full days. (TKD tourney, a kick that landed right under the left eye)

I'm not saying the cop was in the right, I'm not saying the 18 year old deserved to die, I'm not saying this makes it an open and shut case. (Nor am I saying that Brown was in the right and the cop is a racist murderer)

We now have two sides of this story. One side saying it was the execution of a black kid in the street and the other stating the black kid attacked a cop, walked away and then charged the cop before getting hit.

I don't buy #1 and never have. #2 is much more likely, but probably doesn't state the entire story either.

Looks to me like both guys were in the wrong place, wrong time:

Kid robs store, walks in middle of street with friend.
Cop pulls up and tells kid to get out of street. Kid in a nervous state due to seeing a cop so shortly after robbing a store gets aggressive and throws a punch. A struggle ensues, more punches, the cop get drilled in the eye.

Kid turns and tries to get away. Cop pulls gun, tells him to stop. Kid turns around "What are you going to do, shoot me?" Takes step forward. Cop with blurred vision and addrenaline unloads the gun wildly. Kid dies.

I'm sure tomorrow more evidence will come out with different "facts" It's why RainMaker is right. Wait until they all come out before acting like the answer has already been given. If the story is accurate that the cops have 12 witnesses, the cop who fired the shots was hit hard enough to break bones in his face, and the already poor testimony of the "friend" falling apart. (All three main witnesses put forth in the media as friends of Brown say he was shot from behind and the cop was "trying to pull him in the police cruiser" He wasn't shot from behind and it's pretty psychotic to think that Wilson would have tried to throw Brown inside the care while sitting at the steering wheel. That pretty much defies explanation.

The people who want the cop to go to jail need some more evidence to turn their way and fast. Note: if the cop started, escalated and then shot Michael Brown, he should spend a long time in jail. I am not picking sides and haven't posted in this thread before now. Make no mistake, if the police show Wilson looking like Rocky Balboa after a fight, that IS the game changer as far as a conviction goes.

Just stopping there, if it had been a severe fracture we would have 100 percent heard by now that Darren Wilson had to have surgery, was still in critical condition, or whatever else by now.


That is absolutely true. Also, one guy got shot 6 times and is dead while the other guy got punched in the face and is on a paid vacation.

Baby steps.

I like this and agree we should let the story play out.

It is curious how long it took for the cop side of the story to come out, you would have thought the police would have immediately responded with evidence of the assault on the cop. This does make me wonder if the stories coming out now are somewhat iffy.

Someone who knows more can correct me, but I don't think a "step forward" from allegedly 35 feet away would constitute enough reason to shoot a minimum of six times. That would lean more towards #1 in your scenario than #2. Of course, change that to "charged the cop" and it's a different story, although still hard for me to comprehend why someone would do that when a cop has pulled a gun on them. My unscientific guess would be that 99.9% of the times criminals face a cop yelling to freeze, they try to run away, not towards.


He may have been shot from behind. The bullets that hit his arm could have just as easily come as he was running away/back turned/process of turning around.

As for "trying to pull him in" I think you're overstating that. The witness statements I've seen said that Wilson grabbed Brown through the window of the car and was trying to hold him against the car. Not that he was trying to throw him into the backseat.

Yeah, I don't know why people keep saying "the autopsy showed all the shots were from the front" when it doesn't and I've already posted the quote from the medical examiner who says they could have come from behind.

I think it's because the Times article on the autopsy said, without a direct quote, "Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front." So maybe that was written explicitly and quoted in the autopsy, I don't remember. But what's important is that the "front" of the arm from a medical examiner's perspective is "palms up, elbows pointed down" which obviously isn't a natural way anyone would ever stand.

Doesn't mean that he 100% wasn't facing forward either, but just simply that arm position is impossible to determine based on what we know.

That article was wrong then, given the direct quote I've already posted from the guy who did the examination.

1) If the medical examiner said that, then what I've read/heard is wrong. Obviously, IF it can be proven the shots were from behind, it is some sort of a murder charge against the cop. Or should be.

2) In my "story" above, I'm NOT saying it was OK for the cop to put 6 rounds in the kid at 35 feet away. I'm saying if he was suffering from blurred vision, blindness due to the orbital bone injury, he may not have been thinking very clearly. Fearing for your life, vision blurred/depth perception off, addrenaline pumping. . . I'm stating a "reason" the shots may have been fired.

3) The idea that the cop was trying to hold Brown to the side of the car or trying ANY type of physical altercation from inside the police car is just beyond my scope of reason. Why would a cop intentionally put himself in a horrible position? Grabbing someone (especially someone who is much bigger than you) from inside a car gives the other individual a vast advantage in any altercation. If the cop did it, it's one of the dumbest things I have ever heard.

4) As for the police side of the story, they have done a pretty amazing job of locking down the fort on BOTH sides. The Brown witnesses came forward to the media, their testimony was not released by the cops. The video tape of the robbery was a freedom of inormation act request. There have been zero leaks from the FBI who have been out since the start of this thread.

What does that mean? I don't know. I know we haven't seen the cop, so he may look like Rocky after a fight or he may look like a male fashion model. Everything about the cop's side of events has been given through anonymous sources. I've heard one say Brown was charging and actually died about 3 feet in front of the cop.

Witnesses suck in situations like this. Forensics like CSI happen mainly in TV shows. The one great thing is eventually all of the evidence will come out. We will see the officers "injuries" We will hear the witnesses from both sides give their information. Then everyone will make their own opinions fit what they believe happened, they'll have a heated discussion about it and we will move on.

IMHO, every cop needs to be wearing a camera. All day, every day, every city. I don't care about the cost. It needs to happen.It won't make things perfect, but it will give a clearer picture than we get now. Instead of spending money on F'ing tanks, it should be spent on technology to protect both the cops and the citizens.

Coverage like this too, Noop: When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims

That articulated what I have been thinking better than I could.

There's video of the Kajieme Powell shooting out now too. I don't know if this was suicide by cop, or goading them to prove a point. Either way...the police certainly didn't hesitate to do what he told them to, or to even attempt to talk him down.

Well, you could add Tim McVeigh to the white side. We could also take innocent white guys shot by police (it happens) and throw in blacks who have multiple homicides who were arrested and not killed. We could also throw up hispanics, american indians and others on our poster.

Overall, I don't know the situations of everyone on the poster, but I do know one right off. James Holmes was sitting in the parking lot when the police got him.

Rather than a picture with the word "murdered" under it, how about telling both sides of the stories, the aftermath (did the cop go to trial and get convicted) and use those cases to rally the cause?

Just a thought.

You have decided your opinion and view. I commend people like you and Jon for sticking to your views but I disagree with it.

The media is going to put what sells out there. Doesn't everyone get that by now? The smart, gym rat is always white, the "athlete" who needs to learn how to play the game is always black.

Picking out headlines is also pretty easy and isn't all that accurate. James Holmes was portrayed as a guy with deep psychological problems.It all depends on the timeline.

It ALWAYS goes in a full cycle until all of the facts come out. In the first couple of days of the Trayvon Martin case, he was a good kid with no problems. Then some people start digging and find he's had issues in school. More digging and they find pictures of guns and dope on his phone. Then the headline is changed to "Martin was suspended from school 3 times"

The killer in these situations also has the narrative change. Zimmerman goes from homicidal maniac, to his head beat in, to "look those are only scratches" to the trial.

But that's what's fucked up about it and needs to be called out, otherwise it won't change. Prevent the media from offering up the same tired narratives and perpetuating the same cycle. Though admittedly that's hard given that there is going to be some segment that can't wait to demonize the black guy (there was a political cartoon posted by someone on FB that was flat-out racist, and the responses were appalling but 100% unsurprising) or vilify the white guy (I think there is more harm in the former because it is more widespread and endemic in our society).

First of all, racism is and will always be and underlying factor that needs to be accounted for. I think it's better than it was in 1980, but there's still room for improvement and I think when my 9-year old son is an adult, it will be much better than it is now.

That said, the practical issue that can be looked at is kids in poverty. 12% of white kids under the age of 18 grow up in poverty. 40% of black kids under the age of 18 grow up in poverty. You could have a completely colorblind society and more African American young people are going to be in prison/issues with the law just due to the economic factors. So, the real issue we should be tackling is how to reduce that 40% number. I think part of it is cultural (not a lot of African American parents have college degrees compared to whites so they end up in poorer areas with less focus on going to college), and I think that will improve as more black kids see college (esp academically) as a legit option. Still, I feel like more could be done and there are opportunities here for people legitimately concerned about improving African American crime/police arrest rates. The arrest/police altercation is the cough, the poverty is the underlying disease.

Disgusting. Bet if he was white they would have tried to talk to him or tazer him.

I don't necessarily agree. The police were onsite at 1:26 of the video I saw. The guy approaches the police officer and gets shot at 1:41 right at the officer's feet. There wasn't much time to talk and the suspect was already within feet of the police. This is pretty much an unambiguous case of suicide by cop.

I agree. He was very close to the officers holding a knife and not responding to their instructions.

A shockingly even-handed & rationale piece from AP I saw a little while ago

My Way News - Supreme Court case to shape Ferguson investigation

It was a 9-0 vote which I find interesting.

These are also two cases that were decided by the US Supreme Court. It is apparent that our Supreme Court gets it wrong at times and sanctions oppression on the people of the US. Hopefully this nasty decision that seemingly allows Cops to behave badly and just say "I was threatened" so they can pretty much do anything they want anytime they want, gets fixed too.

The people are increasingly getting fed up with this. And it sheds a negative shadow upon all Cops who support and stick up for this bad behavior.

I don't remember the 1980s being that antiquated, but WOW! That court was apparently full of some bad people.

Those Cops refused information that was presented to them and abused a guy and just dumped him in his front yard when he needed medical attention. And you wonder why people think the Police are among the most dangerous people in the US.

I wish things like this would result in protests, FBI agents, black leaders flying in, comments from the President, and the Attorney General coming to town. But the 9 year old is not as important as an 18-year old criminal.

Parents visit block where boy, 9, was slain: 'Where he took his last breath' - Chicago Tribune

I'm not seeing the parallel? Is anyone out there saying the shooting of the kid was justified?

Colin Ferguson, DC Snipers, Nathan Dunlap, Arthur Wise, I could go on and on. And then I could fill in a bunch of white people who were shot dead by cops and come to the complete opposite conclusion. Shit like this has only one purpose and that is to cherry pick cases to create a narrative.

Just that the black community doesn't care as much about a 9-year old being gunned down as an 18-year old criminal because the 9-year old was likely gunned down by a black gang member.

The black community values the life of a person killed by a white person more than anyone else.

This I agree with. That picture is pretty pointless, good for propaganda when you are preaching to the choir, but it really doesn't mean anything.

or that theyre more likely to lash out when the one who fired the fatal bullet is a cop...

Just because the media isn't covering it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-crime/378629/

That article says nothing. It just begs people to stop bringing up much bigger and more important issues in the black community when cases like this arise.

Playing the victim and deflecting blame hasn't worked for decades. At some point it needs to stop.

Did you click through on any of the links to efforts by blacks to combat violence? Do none of those count?

I did. I know there are efforts to combat the violence. I live in a city where every month you'll see some rally or some politician shaking hands with community leaders. They just never gain any traction. The community doesn't fully get behind them. There isn't a tenth of the vitriol that you find in situations like this.

The strategy for the last few decades has been to focus on how the white man is keeping down black communities. To focus most of the efforts on complaining about racism. To blame the lack of jobs, education, parenting, and so on on white people. You can see the results of these efforts. It doesn't work.

And that's the problem with someone like Coates. He wants to downplay many of the issues that plague the black community. He wants to call anyone who brings it up racist. To him it's about pointing out how evil white people and conservatives are. Because if you write enough articles on that things will magically get better in the community. Until people like him are willing to call out the real issues plaguing the community, nothing will change.

And by the way, Coates writes a lot about how downtrodden the black community is. How white people fled for better areas. Guess where Coates doesn't live? A black community. The minute he got a nice job he got the fuck out. He's a hypocrite race hustler.

An example of someone who did is Don Lemon. He got on CNN and said "dress appropriately", "stop having kids you can't support and who won't have a father around to raise", and "go to school". Some things that I think every single community could benefit from. Yet he was hailed as an Uncle Tom for daring to criticize the culture. Mainly from black celebrities who profit off that culture but want to live nowhere near it.

Or you could look up more than a cherry-picked handful and have enough to identify a statistically significant trend. Do you honestly believe that statistically significant trend would be counter to the what the picture presented for bite-size consumption suggests, or are you just a contrarian whose track record of making points on your own is practically nil?


Sorry, didn't catch anything in your rant about whether Coates is right or wrong about the points he makes. Sounds like by living in a downtrodden black community and a wherever he lives now (all I can gather is that he lives somewhere in New York City because he's a writer and that's where the jobs are for writers, but I'll just assume for your benefit he moved somewhere super white and wealthy like Park Slope) he has a couple data points on his experience as a black man and can point out the differences between those communities in which he's lived. If he's a race hustler for that, then what does that make a white man who has lived in a white neighborhood his entire life and makes sweeping generalizations about the black community? Does Coates need to get Michael Jackson surgery so he can experience living in black and white neighborhoods as a white person?

I don't know what statistically significant trend that chart is showing. It cherry picked some white murderers and put them next to non-murderers who had been killed by cops. If it's trying to say that the police kill shoot more black people than white people, that may be true. I'd also argue that the crime rate in black communities is significantly higher and perhaps more interactions with police are a cause for that. I would expect the rate of white people killed by cops to be higher in communities that have high crime rates too.

If it's trying to say that white murderers get treated nicely and apprehended instead of shot, I don't know how you'd even begin to sort that statistically. How do you parse out instances of murderers who willingly turned themselves in as opposed to those who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. I'd also argue that in black communities the clearance rate is much lower so perhaps they are treated better by not having the police catch them at all. Chicago for instance has a clearance rate of around 25%. So 75% of murderers don't even get caught.


I think I made it clear that I think he is wrong on most counts. I don't think the problems in the black community are all a result of white supremacy as he states.

"Wait, wait, wait.. don't go putting words into my mouth!" - half of FOFC


Sometimes it can be good to think of what could potentially undermine your argument and go from there rather than completely relying on some Hail Mary of an unconfirmed report being true.

It's true that figures on how many people the police kill are notoriously incomplete, but there's always somewhere to start. You could break down the people killed by police by race and by prior criminal history (you could draw the line at only counting being wanted for murder, including stuff like assault, weapons charges whatever you think). That could be a relatively easy linear regression where you assign 0/1 dummy variables for race (0 = black, 1 = other) and criminal history (0 = no history, 1 = yes history). Race of the officer could be relevant too.

You might ask, "why don't you do it then?" and the answer is because the person making the claim less supported by evidence should have the burden of doing the legwork to find some evidence. The current counterargument lists five black murderers who were taken in to custody (two were sleeping, one was unconscious following a suicide attempt, and one was unarmed and subdued by multiple bystanders) and zero innocent white people killed by police (but it happens).

The clearance part could be a confounding factor, but in light of the fact that the vast majority of murderers are the same race as their victims due to proximity, could just verify several of the links posted that discuss how "Black people don't pay any attention to black-on-black violence" is closer to "White people don't care as much about black-on-black violence," especially given what we know about the demographics of police forces.


Again, the more audacious the claim, the more evidence required. You are a random message board poster saying someone who is a professional writer who is pretty well-regarded by other professional writers is actually wrong about most stuff, but you are right. Going to need more than "he's just a race hustler because he has not stayed in West Baltimore his entire life."

Just saw this on youtube.

Holy. Shit. Wow. That was... something else. He dropped from the first bullet, and they just kept pumping in shots, nine in total.

And they cuff the dead body. WHAT.

Heh

Michael Brown Shooting: Why Ferguson Police Never Filed 'Incident Report' - NBC News

Police in Ferguson, Missouri, did not file an “incident report” on the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Michael Brown because they turned the case over to St. Louis County police almost immediately, the county prosecutor’s office tells NBC News.

Critics and news media outlets have questioned why Ferguson police released an incident report from a robbery in which Brown was a suspect, as well as security video showing the stick-up, but not the report on the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old a short time later by Officer Darren Wilson.

The reason, according to the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, is that it doesn’t exist.

Would seem important to have a sense of what "almost immediately" means.

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reports that violent crime by young blacks has plunged 60 percent.

In 1995, the FBI reports, 9,074 blacks were arrested for homicide. In 2012, the number was 4,203—a decline of 54 percent.

All these details that would have - in theory - supported the police and the police department are coming forth awfully late after the fact.

So then the heavy policing in urban areas is a rousing success.

Im trying to figure out 2 things

1. Why didnt the taze him?

2. Why was this idiot taping everything unless he was in on the plan to have his buddy get beat down and it didnt go to plan?

I'm a big believer in the lower lead levels explanation.

It is an opinion. There isn't any chart that will show you empirical evidence that one opinion is correct over the other. If there was there would be no debate.

I think Coates is a hack writer who has such little regard for the black community that he feels they can't possibly be successful without the white man allowing it. A person who has such disdain for upper-middle class white people who have trampled on black communities that he decided he wanted to be next door neighbors to them. He offers no solutions, just excuses. A tactic that has failed spectacularly over the last few decades.

Well, there you go, guilty as all hell. I knew he was lying about that.

A member of St Louis's finest.

Suspended St. Louis Police Officer: "I'm Into Diversity, I Kill Everybody" - The Wire

I hope he gets committed.

I wouldn't necessarily associate him with an entire police department until after we figure out what the police department does with him.

I'm going to assumed this dude will be fired...or committed. :)

Tomorrow's cover of the STL Post-Dispatch

Couldn't they have done better than to include University City?

Of course those numbers don't take into account some other facts

roughly 24 percent of African-Americans in Missouri have been convicted of a felony, according to unpublished estimates by academic researchers.

Or that roughly 1/3rd of the young black population in Missouri doesn't graduate from high school

Or that nearly half of police officers (AZ and MN used as representative sample states) in a study reported having four year degrees ... a standard met by only 10% of blacks nationwide (15% of whites)


Bottom line: the pool of potential applicants is a number lower than the total population ... but that doesn't fit the narrative so it should probably just be ignored

It should fit the narrative. It's an incredibly difficult problem to solve. We can't just wall off towns like Ferguson and say, "sorry, no police for you," because giving up on policing difficult areas - letting felons operate with impunity - only ensures that another generation grows up facing even worse challenges.

Something has to break this cycle. Compromising the standards for new officers isn't the answer. Insisting that officers are a specific color isn't the answer. What do you do to get everyone invested in his or her community? What will make the people of Ferguson feel pride in their home town?

For now, I think police have to use cameras - both on their cars and in their hats or vests. There should be maintenance rules for these cameras just as there are for radar guns and other equipment. There have to be independent panels to investigate complaints. Communities need to be involved and supported. There's no short-term answer to this problem. We've allowed this situation to fester for decades. It may not be our fault - the America of today isn't the America of the 1960s when MLK was shot simply for expressing peaceful strength. But we have to work to find real solutions rather than just throwing money at the problem and hoping it goes away. America doesn't work well with walls and artificial separation.

OMG! And St. Louis and Ferguson both have white mayors! Those stupid black people don't even know how to vote for someone who represents them best!

EDIT: The other problem that only locals probably fully understand is the fact that there are like 100 municipalities most of whom exist only to write traffic tickets for their town of <1000. They all could conceivably be under the St. Louis police department or at least St. Louis and St. Louis County police departments. Beverly Hills, MO is probably the worst offender. About a 1/4 mile of road outside a major commuter university for traffic ticket writing.

DOUBLE EDIT: Some of the statistics appear to be outright misinformation/wrong. Was looking up Beverly Hills just to see how small the police department really was. Turns out the website has a picture. Not sure how this is 64%? Maybe newspaper spin math?

Increasingly, that snippet is something I can agree with.

Probably shady math...but I'll bet that Beverly Hills, MO is poor and downtrodden because of that white cop. He's holding the entire community back!

Yeah but the problem is now that St. Louis seems to be in the center of the national spotlight stories like that one will make the rounds on twitter etc like they are on here. Actual statistics be damned!

Much like how Ferguson (and sometimes the implication St. Louis) is made out to be a war zone when in fact like 95% of Ferguson is completely removed from the CNN/FOX cameras. They focus on the one stretch of street in the worst part of town like that is St. Louis.

Never forget that CNN and FOX need $$ more than they need a cut back on drama and if you look at this thread alone, they know for a fact that we eat this shit up, real, perceived, or even fabricated.

However, there is an imbalance in Ferguson, and that shit needs to be fixed. The problem I'm hearing is that the young men and women of the community rule themselves out from those positions. Either by getting involved in gangs, doing drugs, dropping out of high school, or getting pregnant. That's not a white people problem, that's a community problem and it's almost laughable to not see those problems being addressed seriously. Why are we so afraid to discuss that nationally? Or are we just concerned it won't make money.

The problem is solving the problem is difficult and requires people to seriously look in the mirror. It is much easier to moan, complain, and point the fingers at others.

Do you have stats to indicate that this is a legitimate issue in Ferguson or are we just relying on some snapshot of national data as reality?

Like you can't just say things like "there are no qualified people," and even reading the actual article rather than looking at the graphic, people realize that the article has a lot of "well we tried, but no one was interested" and yet, I bet if we're throwing out statistics these same communities surely tend to send disproportionate amounts of men & women to the military.

The thing is, police and other civil servant jobs are good paying jobs, have long been one of the many sources to a middle class lifestyle and so, if these people are so qualified, why can't they get hired in their own towns that they choose to live in?

There isn't a shred of evidence anywhere that supports this myth of no qualified people living in their communities and I'm not arguing people should be hired from within, shit...just force these paragons of quality and upstanding morality to live within the borders of the communities they police.

I think most people understand this and also understand that the burden of funding these 100 municipalities' police departments by being disproportionately stopped and fined for traffic tickets falls on St. Louis's poorer black people. Therefore, it's not BS for these communities to feel unfairly targeted by law enforcement - racism takes more forms than just shooting unarmed people.

It couldn't possibly be that they're disproportionately, you know, breaking the fucking law.

No, that couldn't POSSIBLY be it.

It's just GOT to be racism. It's just GOT to be "da man". It's just GOT to be something.

Ta-Nehisi Coates lives in Harlem. He writes about it often.

As for this canard that he doesn't talk about the "the many issues that plague the black community," and he's not the only that talks about it. Despite what Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Larry Elder tell you, colored folks actually care about what happens in their communities, because they have to live in them.

If you believe in freedom, this idea that one person has a responsibility to live amongst the squalor they themselves did not create in an effort to lend authenticity to the very real things they're exposing.

It's reality. It's history. And that history has been codified into the realities that we're seeing now. None of that excuses criminal behavior. But trying to detach pathology from the realities of how things got that way -- and that those actions were intentional and deliberate, with no disregard for how the future would play out as a result -- doesn't excuse those of us living in the present from reflecting on how those things got to where they did, how they impact what we do now and if we continue to perpetuate half-truths about the reality of the circumstances of millions of Americans (not just black ones) that were legislated and put into the public code using their tax dollars...

The Ghetto Is Public Policy - The Atlantic

Just a quick search:

Black People Are Not Ignoring 'Black on Black' Crime - The Atlantic

Why Don't Black People Protest 'Black-on-Black Violence'? - The Atlantic

The Myth of Black-on-Black Crime - The Atlantic

Black Pathology Crowdsourced - The Atlantic

Black Pathology and the Closing of the Progressive Mind - The Atlantic

But stop with the fake even handed concern trolling, like "oh I'm really objective, but the reality here is...Negroes need to take care of their own house."

They do. And they are. But it's complicated. Like everything is complicated. But dismissing a wide swath of people that you don't agree with as race hustlers is unproductive and unbecoming of the serious person you're purporting to be and rids you of the supposed moral high ground flying carpet you're using to drone around and point fingers at communities that you don't approve of for whatever reason.

The whole crux of this argument falls when the main premise appears to be "there are just more black criminals and so it's okay if we target them more than we target white people."

I mean, if that's the starting point...it's a hell of a place to find common ground from.

No, it's that there might just be areas where there is a higher rate of criminal activity by blacks than whites. So if everything else were perfectly equal there would obviously a higher rate of arrests of blacks than whites.

But few of those crying about "disparity" seem to give a damn about that. I guess we're just supposed to overlook X amount of criminal activity by blacks in order to keep their arrest/conviction/incarceration rates down.

Screw reality, let's just keep the math nice & neat.

Of course then there is the middle ground where both of you are right.

What if Blacks do committ crimes at a higher rate than whites in a given community, and as result blacks get increased scrutiny.

That seems to be logical based on Jon's thought process. The law of unintended consequences states that then blacks will be arrested/ticketed at a higher rate than whites. Even the ones who arent "hardened criminals" since the crime rate is higher among one community as a result all members of that community get increased scrutiny. As a result you are more likely to get an average traffic ticket if you are black than if you are white.

Chicken meet egg and the cycle repeats.

I look at the end result of growing up in Ferguson. 67% Black/5% Black Police Officers. I see that as a community failure.

But to get away from race for a second...I've spoken with a couple of cops since this shooting (Tampa PD) and they say the same thing...most kids in the poor neighborhoods simply aren't eligible to be cops by the time they are 18 for one reason or another (and that goes for whites, browns, and blacks).

I would add that some (most?) kids in bad neighborhoods have a negative perception of the police department and refuse to join. But nobody is telling them that the way to fix that perception (particularly a racial divide) is to join those departments.


Off-topic a bit, but the poor communities should be exploiting the fact that anybody can join, not bitching that not enough of those jobs go to middle and upper class kids. I know that we should all be pulling our weight equally in the military, but damn, that's opportunity right there, don't let that pass you by! It's a great way to get out of those shitty neighborhoods with no future. But I'll admit, I'm a bit biased on that one.

Why Ferguson, Missouri's, police department is so white - Courant.com

The town just got majority black. Can't fire a bunch of cops just because things flip.


Right, okay. I give up.

I believe in freedom and he can live where he wants. But for someone who writes incessantly about white supremacy and the evils of gentrification, it's odd he would use that freedom to live in one of the centers of it.


I'm just saying the strategy of constantly looking back and constantly blaming everything on the white man has not worked the past few decades. Maybe a different approach is in order.

If only there was some nice and neat math that said vehicles driven by blacks in Ferguson were searched twice as often even though finding contraband was only two-thirds as likely.

Bloomberg - Injustice in Ferguson, Long Before Michael Brown


In the meantime, continue trying to obfuscate the truth. Keep insisting that people in St. Louis have no need to make any changes as the city becomes more and more synonymous with urban decay and brain drain.

Okay, so let's break down the article.

The Great Inversion:

1990 - 75% white, 25% black (~5% black cops)
2000 - 50% white, 50% black (~5% black cops)
2010 - 35% white, 65% black, ~5% black cops

To be fair, parenthesis indicate my assumptions.

What else am I missing from the Great Inversion beyond that? In twenty years since the Great Inversion the Ferguson PD could only muster 3 black cops? Seriously?

This is the only area where I think it would help the community from an external point of view. First dibs should go to people who live in the community, second goes to "by-name" requests. The article didn't dive into the possibility of whether or not Ferguson actually has a qualified and willing pool to draw from...which I don't know for sure, but suspect they don't.