[0]:http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/04/28/ctn-cuomo-liquor-sto...
The riots have very significantly raised this issue to the public. Sure a lot of people are just going to write it off as mindless violence (and a lot of it is) but in reality destruction of random private and community property is literally the only way that the rage can be channeled. It isn't feasible for them to burn down the police station, or else they would have.
These people are literally destroying their own community which is failing to serve them. Seems like pretty powerful message and effective imagery for the media to me.
If the black community in Baltimore want to solve police oppression, here is a positive way they can do it: 1) form a neighborhood association with a neighborhood police force to handle issues of crime. These police officers would be elected and controlled by the community. 2) Tell the center city police that they no longer have to police the black neighborhoods, which the police would like, it is not a fun job. When a case of police brutality breaks out, tell the police to stay of the hood from now on or face reprisals. 3) Tell their elected officials - (who are black, the majority of the voters are black in Baltimore) to disband the police.
My argument is that we are seeing undirected anger as a hail mary. The people are powerless, they know they are powerless, and they are knowingly making their own community permanently worse just to have their voices heard for one weekend. That isn't the same as making completely irrational decisions: it is weighing being heard today over the long term economic success of the community.
Consider this: what would it take to drive you to this behavior? Do you think that these community members are really so fundamentally different from you and me, or is their powerless so persistent and severe that even you and I would become so hopeless and full of rage that we would burn our own community and challenge militarized police?
> 1) form a neighborhood association with a neighborhood police force to handle issues of crime. These police officers would be elected and controlled by the community.
A random person on the street being detained by a random neighborhood police force? I'm skeptical there is a legal basis to allow this kind of behavior, do you have any reference to this kind of thing? Even separate from the legal implications (which are significant), I'm also skeptical that the Baltimore PD would honestly go along with this plan happily.
Take for instance, the Los Angeles riots in 1992. If significant mobs of rioters had streamed out of South Los Angeles, marched up La Cienega Blvd., taken a left on Wilshire, and then laid waste to establishments in Beverly Hills, it would make perverse sense.
However, for the most part, this didn't happen. While the violence and looting was geographically widespread across the Los Angeles basin, the neighborhoods where it happened were often the same ones that the rioters lived in. The same neighborhoods that their friends and families shopped in, played in, and ultimately where they continued to live in after the six days of rioting ended.
This represents something else than just a "justification". I'm not a sociologist, but as a person it's pretty clear to me that something else is going on if you decide to, proverbially, "shit where you sleep".
People only point it out as being some sort of new phenomenon when minorities are the ones lashing out.
What does offend me is your assertion that what I said had ANYTHING to do with race.
How do you conclude that justice failed Michael Brown? The physical evidence pretty overwhelmingly backs the officer's account of their encounter. See the DoJ's report for a discussion of this.
If you want a face for people unjustifiably killed by police, why not someone like Eric Garner, who was doing nothing wrong before or during his encounter with the police and so whose killing was clearly unjustified?
There has been no conclusion that that is the case. Those that are rioting are guilty of exactly what they accuse the police of. I believe the mayor called them "thugs".
I'm going to use logic here for a minute. There are only two possibilities for how this happened. Either it happened at the hands of the police, or another force.
Who is this other force, and how were they able to overpower the police? Did they overpower them in public? You know, like in the video we can see? Or did they forcibly stop a police vehicle, beat the man half to death and then let the police vehicle continue on. And how did this arguably criminal act go unreported and un-pursued by the police? The police typically take crimes against their own pretty seriously.
If you find the line of reasoning that some other mysterious force caused these injuries suspect, I would tend to agree with you.
I do not offer that as an explanation of what happened, but simply as a third possibility, that he was already injured when taken into custody, but that the severity of the injury was not apparent.
If we're really going to stretch, it's possible that God reached into the van and snapped his neck despite the police officers doing an incredibly professional job and it's literally nobody's fault; an act of God.
Since you are mocking me, could you please point out where it is reported that his vertebra were crushed?
So let me get this straight. He breaks his neck, but things are mostly OK since he's still walking around. Then he gets arrested and that's when the bones slip and paralyzes him from the neck down? Oh and somewhere in there his trachea gets crushed? Or was that crushed before hand too?
What you're suggesting is very, very implausible and so I wouldn't say that comparing it to something supernatural is all that mocking. The point is that rational people don't know everything about the world and to 100% discount the supernatural is pretty arrogant. But I think the odds that there was a two-factor injury to this guy are about the same as the odds that God snapped his neck. Can't rule it out completely (again nobody knows everything unless you're God), but probably not a good idea to argue it in court.
I don't pretend to be informed enough to say how likely it was he sustained significant injuries prior to the arrest. I guess I think it is more likely that the significant injuries came after the arrest, but given further evidence that more clearly established the nature of the injuries and indicated it happening prior, I wouldn't simply deny the possibility out of hand.
It looks like even if it did happen prior, they still hugely screwed up by not more carefully assessing his injuries (the typical thing to do if a neck injury is even suspected is to immobilize it as soon as is possible).
IF this event leads to better policing, you'll have an argument.
Nobody that holds power is thinking "these people deserve more" right now.
The reality is that this happened, because of ongoing police brutality against a minority that is already feeling the pressure of racism, unemployment, incarceration, and other social disadvantages.
You can't pretend those are just all bad people waiting for a chance for thuggery. We, as Americans, have created this by the way we have structured our society to allow for ever growing inequality. And by allowing the police to become para-military in their methods.
It's obviously too late for protests. You've got civil unrest now. Is it even possible to stop it?
edit: fixed a typo
Further more, in the near future it will be used as an excuse to further militarize the police, increase its budgets and reduce civil liberties even more - think Camden, NJ where drug traffic is an excuse to discourage white people to walk and black people to sit on street corners (VICE S02E12).
This is what I'm talking about in my previous post. It actually ignores that it happened - regardless of how justified or wrong or morally outraged you might feel about it. The reality is it's going on whether you feel it's justified or not.