Memphis police release graphic video of Tyre Nichols’s beating
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
This wasn't a mistake, or emotions, this is training and group mentality. Cops in this country are just gang thugs.
And focusing entirely on race is missing the point. The race of a cop is 'cop'. And while black people disproportionately are on the wrong side of this, Daniel Shaver and Ryan Whitaker show it isn't exclusive.
Even worse: they have the law on their side.
It's also scary to think of the number of incidents like this that go unreported and unseen only because they don't result in death.
No idea if it's even possible fix this issue though... it would probably have to involve having more stringent aptitude tests, psychological evaluations, training (and a complete rewrite of that training), and subsequently higher pay, and this would have to happen in every state and in opposition to police unions.
https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-tra...
When the same mistakes get repeated over and over again like this, and get defended by the system, they aren't mistakes, they're policy.
The fact that it wasn't just one cop but an entire group of them should also indicate that this isn't just one guy going rogue. It's a systemic problem.
Personally I think the most effective step would be to make funds for civil payouts come out of police retirement and overtime budgets. Relying on policing of the police stopping anything is unlikely: just last year a group of police murdered the officer who was investigating them, and had no meaningful consequences.
The States could start to change this, but that would require activists to stop the racial arguments and go after the State laws.
It's culture. Everyone has "emotions" but, at least in my country, police officers don't regular beat/choke/shoot hundreds of people to death each year.
But if your main argument is saying that police everywhere are terrible Id agree.
US Population: 331.9 million (2021)
UK Population: 67.33 million (2021)
In 2021 ( in the USofA ), there were 1,055 fatal police shootings, and in 2020 there were 1,020 fatal shootings. [1]
Est UK Police Killings ~~ 67.33 / 331.9 * 1020 = 206.9 per annum.
21 Annual deaths during or following police contact (in the UK) 2020-21 [2]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
[2] https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/stati...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...
It's pretty basic.
More violent policing leads to a violent population.
Lack of social support leads to a more violent populations.
Stop making excuses and look to root causes - why are there so many intentional homicides in the US? Perhaps predatory capitalism extending a slave economy isn't all it's cracked up to be.
If you are mad at somebody at work and you hit them a little bit that is egregious and completely unacceptable behavior that should end your career and is an actual crime. Even just hitting somebody a little bit is wildly off base for ordinary and healthy human interaction when angry.
Beating somebody to death is many levels of escalation beyond that. You don't need a superior to tell you not to do that. I am extremely confident that there will be exactly zero situations in my entire life where I am so angry at somebody that I even want to beat them this badly, let alone actually act on it.
This is about police institutionally seeing the populace as inhuman worms who deserve to suffer. This is not about emotions running wild.
The difference is that under no circumstances does an office job require violent interaction where as for a police officer, their job does sometimes require violent interaction. And in that sense, what these officers did is even worse and should be punished worse than if an office worker used the same violence: we empower police officers to use violence to intervene when necessary. We give them weapons and leeway to use force. To take advantage of that power could arguably be considered worse that if a civilian does it.
I absolutely agree with you that we grant absolutely immense power to the police and they must use it with the most extreme possible care. Instead, we've created a system where cops see regular people as enemies to be crushed and where they can solve every one of their problems with extreme violence.
Tyre was viciously beaten to death for running, for aggravating the cops.
fishermen: 86.0 annual deaths per 100k
pilots: 55.5 annual deaths per 100k
pizza delivery: 24.7 annual deaths per 100k
police: 14.6 annual deaths per 100k
Also more dangerous than being a cop: roofers, garbage collectors, iron and steel workers, truck drivers, farmers/agricultural, construction/extraction, grounds maintenance, mechanics/installers/repairers.
There’s a lot of fetishised, institutionalised propaganda out there regarding the noble policeman, putting themselves in supreme danger every day to hold back the tides of evil that threaten to destroy society.
Reality is quite different
If an employee at a store steals a bunch of merchandise do you say “what was needed was a supervisor to come in and order them to stop”? No, it’s understood that stealing is bad and employees shouldn’t do it.
For some reason some folks think cops are like feral dogs and should not have any moral compass of their own or be held to any particular moral standards. It’s a ridiculous take.
strange behavior all around... the pelosi video was weird too heck, so was the dance hall confrontation and the mushroom farmer arrest... please 2023, give us some inspiration
Above not complete
Professional police, as a concept, had to be shoehorned into the Western legal system. It's not the default mode. It was introduced in this form as a way to subsidize the capture of fugitive slaves, because slavery was simply not profitable without violent help from the state.
And before you point to things like the London Metropolitan Police Service to suggest that professional police were a natural and widespread evolution, common to common-law democracies, remember that Robert Peel, partly in response to criticisms that professional police weren't fit for a slavery-free society, wrote the patrolman's instructions in part because he was concerned about the slave-patrol-into-police lineage.
This USA traditionally had elected Sheriffs, who served the courts rather than the prosecution, and who had no extra powers or arms granted them (in other words, they were tasked with catching fugitives by court order, although everyone can participate in that activity at their choosing).
Especially now, in the information age, when everyone can gather high-quality evidence using the tools in their pocket, and call for community help at a moment's notice, the benefits to continuing this experiment of having slave patrols in our communities are very near zero.
Let's get serious about the next stage in our society - one that is free from police, and which thus allows the many good people who become police officers because they want to help others to actually do that, free from obligations to maintain an unjust world order.
I'm pretty white for a Mexican, and it boils my blood when I'm treated different than say, someone from Mayan descent in s restaurant. Shit, for all u know ge is more Mexican than me. My 23andMe says I'm of 50% portuguese Genes .
Are these guys all black? I could watch the video on WP but I couldn't scroll down because of the paywall. The CNN article didn't even show the perpetrators faces which made me assume they were all white cops.
Why would you make that assumption?
They then immediately escalated to pepper spraying him, except they screwed up and got themselves instead (which enraged them). They also Tazered him and scared him badly enough he stopped attempting to comply and instead ran for his life.
I haven’t watched the videos, but from commentary I understand he repeatedly tries to de-escalate the situation and is bewildered at how angry the cops are at him. Police department has subsequently said there wasn’t even a valid reason to pull him over.
I saw a video recently of an incident where the police caught a murderer but then proceeded to kick the hell out of him while he was already down and no longer a threat while their police helicopter recorded the whole thing. Come to find out it was originated because the guy had killed a cop, but I was curious if there was a chance he’d walk free because people in position of authority can’t keep their emotions in check.
In that case probably not since the charges are completely unrelated to the incident.
It also depends on what evidence there is and how important is the testimony of the arresting officers to the case.
In general the prosecution would likely try to suppress the beating and the defense would have to make a case on why the police misconduct was relevant in this case.
Violation of Miranda Rights is also not a cause to get a case thrown out categorically it however can lead to any evidence such as an admission of guilt or any information the police has gained from the subject after their arrest being inadmissible.
TLDR if you are pulled over and beaten for no reason and then charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer no prosecutor would likely take that to court.
If you got arrested for murder and there is a ton of other evidence there likely won’t be any impact. However you can still take the police to court in a civil law suit.
And before you reply that you’re “just sharing practical advice”, no what you’re actually doing is immediately taking the focus off of the police’s actions and putting blame onto the victim, and somehow making the discussion about his actions and what he did wrong. Not to mention reducing plain-as-day murder to simply a “fuckup”.
Beating a man to death is not a fuckup. That's a choice that was made over and over by the cops each time he was struck.