To Serve And Protect

Discussion in 'Politics, Religion and Philosophy -(FORUM CLOSED)-' started by Barnstable, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    I don't agree with you in the least here. Racism is it's own problem and it doesn't just go away. If the black crime numbers went way down (and they have BTW. There has been a huge drop in black crime over the past two decades, "In the last 20 years in particular, the FBI reports, rates of crime among African American youth have plummeted: All offenses (down 47%), drug offenses (down 50%), property offenses (down 51%), serious Part I offenses (down 53%), assault (down 59%), robbery (down 60%), all violent offenses (down 60%), rape (down 66%), and murder (down 82%)." But no one seems to know that), there would still be racism against black people, because the particular accusation doesn't matter, it's the categorization and then separation that breeds stereotypes. People always find a reason to be racist. Mexicans weren't supposed to be violent, just lazy and stupid. The Irish were all supposed to be drunks. Asians were supposed to be stupid and docile. Notice these stereotypes aren't around any more, but there are new ones. Mexicans aren't lazy taking siestas all the time, they're supposed to be hard working now, but dumb and with too many kids. The Irish aren't drunks any more, but they were terrorists (IRA). Asians aren't stupid and docile anymore, they're supposed to be smart, but super strict with small penises. There's always going to be something to separate "us" from "them"as long as we see category first. Race just happens to be a category we can see and make assumptions on almost immediately, hence why racism is such a problem.

    Violence is a separate issue entirely IMO.... an important one no doubt, but I think it confuses issues for people when they are associated with one another when they shouldn't be.
     
  2. John3:16

    John3:16 Moderator Staff Member

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    I'm with ya. Them first. Then I'll consider it.
     
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  3. FreeThePeople

    FreeThePeople - Rookie -

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    I think I agree with you (mostly) here... The first issue of race is simply thinking that it exists. Simply placing people into different categories like race separates us in the first place.

    I see little racism in this Ferguson case. I see one person being reckless, and another person reacting, maybe too harshly. But guess what, cops have guns so they have the capability to kill someone. I think that's the real issue here, not racism. We shouldn't put people into race categories at all, but the issue here is violence. The racist generalizations that we have - drug usage, violence, ignorance/lack of education, sexism in culture - those are the issues we have to tackle. Racism won't go away until race goes away as a form of identity. Sure, people will look differently, but we don't have to identify as "white" or "black" or "asian" or whatever.

    I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess to sum it up, race won't go away unless we stop identifying as having a race, but the problem of generalizations of races won't go away until we actually stop the problems of whatever they are being generalized about.
     
  4. davriver209

    davriver209 - Rookie -

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    Freethepeople, you have good intentions and I respect that. But I don't agree with your philosophy on how to end violence. And I'm assuming you mean all together? The truth is, bad guys will be bad guys. If your idea was to gain some traction, the bad guys would take this opportunity and arm themselves and make us victims. All of us. I say eff that. I'm tired of being a victim (goes back to my highschool days, but I'll save that for another post). The only way to keep someone from continuously doing something is to fight back. When you say let's be peaceful, you're talking to a large portion of the population, and they're reasonable people. But you forget about the unreasonable people, criminals, junkies, evil people... They'll take advantage of the situation, not join it.
     
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  5. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    I agree with you here. I too want peace and no violence like free says, but I think the rout involves changing society at a whole. It's a very slow process but I think the one that will bear fruit in the end.
     
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  6. FreeThePeople

    FreeThePeople - Rookie -

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    Bad guys will be bad guys? Babies aren't born bad guys. They turn into bad guys as a result of their environment. If anything, simply put all the bad guys in jail for life, but fighting bad guys' violence with violence is counterproductive because it just perpetuates a culture of violence and corrupts more babies into bad guys. I can't agree with this. You gotta practice what you preach. You want peace, but you're being violent? No.
     
  7. John3:16

    John3:16 Moderator Staff Member

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    I'm not in favor of the violence / looting either. And while they may be 2 percent of the protestors, they are getting 98% of the attention.

    However, I'll say this. How many people have been killed by police in the last 10 years? no one knows. Surely don't remember the names. Mike Brown. Oscar Grant. Why do we know these names? Because people protested. Drew attention to the situation.
     
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  8. FreeThePeople

    FreeThePeople - Rookie -

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    Yeah, that's why I went to the peaceful protest in my city. The looting is unnecessary, setting things on fire is also unnecessary. Just getting a big gathering of people is all you need. If you protest the police brutality and act like a savage, looting and getting in fights and setting things on fire, how are the cops/gov't going to react? Probably not how the protestors want them to react, rather than if protestors were to act civil.
     
  9. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    For anyone doubting why people are so up in arms about the shadyness of this killing, read this. Someone took the time to collect all the shady facts about this killing in one place. I defy you to say Wilson shouldn't have been indicted with all these facts:

     
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  10. davriver209

    davriver209 - Rookie -

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    Well I'm just speaking from the cop perspective. If we see a violent criminal or bad guy doing something, we will use violence to stop him... There's just no other alternative. You want us to sit in silence and protest a guy stabbing or shooting an innocent person? And it's not the Police's job to raise parent's children. Can we be a role model? Sure we can, it's just that mass media portrays law enforcement as guys with guns who only want to kill anyone who's darker than brown... Notice what things get highlighted in news when cops are involved. Believe it or not, most of us are decent guys who just want to help those that can't. And when we make arrests or lawfully order people to do stuff, it's written in law, that citizens must obey the commands. These past two incidents with Fergueson and the guy in NY, they were ordered to stop, etc... They continued to fight back, resist, and it leads to stuff like this.

    And I think you're vastly underestimating the human psyche. Human's have the capability to be evil.
     
  11. FreeThePeople

    FreeThePeople - Rookie -

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    I think your last statement is probably right. I'm idealistic and often times place my optimism over my realism. And you're right, we do need to use violence to stop someone doing some crime. I guess there's just a big difference in nonlethal violence and a gun, because it's so easy to kill someone with a gun. That's why I wish we had some sort of long-range stun-gun. Anyways, you're right, this all does come from wanting to help people or stop people from breaking the law. I guess my big issue though is giving the people that enforce the law the capability to kill someone so easily. That's my biggest issue with these whole incidents. And I think that the way to have a less violent society is if cops didn't carry guns, because a) we would be able to respect cops without being afraid of them and b) the people that enforce the law are the ones that should be setting the example, what kind of example are we setting if cops carry around guns?
     
  12. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    I think you've got to recognize what is right, not just what is legal in these situations. You can't just tow the company line where an officer is always in the right if he isn't found guilty of a crime.

    You can't allow rational evaluation to go out the window just because someone fights back. If you could, then if any person ever fought back against and officer, the police officer could just pull out their gun and kill them on the spot. Does that sound reasonable? Of course not, so fighting back against an officer can't be reason enough to kill a suspect.
     
  13. davriver209

    davriver209 - Rookie -

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    you're actually correct. I think my statement wasn't stated correctly. I still standby my support of the fergueson thing. I do believe Wilson was in the right to shoot Brown. For this NY thing, I don't have all the details, so please strike my statement from this thread, haha.

    And I agree, that fighting against an officer isn't a reason to shoot them. You're totally right. But let me use the Mike Brown thing as an example. When you're showing such severe resistance, violence and even harming the officer, you're going down with one of our tools. (baton, taser, mace, etc...) No doubt. Then when someone with that size and strength attempts to grab your gun, you're going to be shot. Brown wasn't reaching for Wilson's gun to admire the craft and talk Guns. What would a rationale person think Brown was going to do if he got that gun?

    When someone fighting an officer displays that kind of behavior, and the potential of a deadly weapon (can really be anything, including fists and feet) is present, I truly believe that officers (and citizens) have the right to defend themselves however possible, up to including guns. Sorry, didn't mean to make this post a fuergson thing, but I hope I'm painting a picture that shows when we pull out weapons and when we would use them.
     
  14. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    I think that makes sense if the officer is in danger... but he wasn't in danger anymore when Wilson killed Brown. We now know that the distance from the police SUV to brown wasn't 35', it was actually 148'. So Wilson either chased after Brown and shot him, or Wilson was much further away from Brown when he shot him. Either way, Wilson had to have lied here because he couldn't have been in imminent danger in either case. We also know that brown was facing Wilson and had his hands up, as confirmed by those contractors in this video:


    that said to Wilson that Brown had his hands up just after the shooting.

    These facts are game changers. How could Wilson still have been in the right with these new details coming to light? It became an execution as soon as Wilson was no longer in danger.
     
  15. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    Oh but let me be clear, as much as I criticize the police in threads like this, I do think the vast majority of officers are good and doing something that is needed. It's just that if say, 10 out of 100 are bad, how many interactions do those 10 have? How much harm could they do? A lot IMO.

    I hold the police to a higher standard than the average person. With great power comes great responsibility. I was close to taking the plunge and becoming a volunteer officer myself @davriver209 , so I do have a lot of respect for what a really good officer can do.
     
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  16. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    On video. The victim was not violent. Not attacking anyone, in fact he had just broken up the fight the cops were called to the scene for. Cop killed him. Again NO indictment.... guess the race of the victim

     
  17. davriver209

    davriver209 - Rookie -

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    I didn't follow this NYC thing as much as I should of. From what I seen, it looks like perhaps he shouldn't have used such force. Cops forget to actually listen to citizens when they aren't presenting any danger. In this case, he was wrong. (I don't have all the facts) Its a tragedy, and if this isn't pursued any further, this cop would be extremely lucky.

    I have my opinion about fergueson and you have your view on things Barn. If I was in Wilson's position, and from the EVIDENCE, it seemed like Brown's intention was to grab the cop's gun. If he came charging toward me, (I'm 5'8 and Mike is 6'2 or something bigger) I would've shot him. Here's the thing, there is conflicting witness statements. Some say he had his hands up, others say he charged Wilson, and others say he ran away and Wilson chased him and then shot him in the back. The PHYSICAL evivdence indicates the former, gun residue on mikes shirt (gun was fired close range, in the car tussle), there was mike's blood in the patrol car, there was mike's prints on the officers gun, the bullets that hit mike were all from the front (rendering some eye witnesses statements moot), mike has had prior violent tendencies, he had just robbed a store of freaking cigarettes with his bare hands. Wilson had some bruising and lacerations on his face. For me, the evidence is stacked against Mike, and if I were on a grand jury, I'd find no reason to indict Wilson.

    I don't assume much, but I'm assuming Barns that you haven't been in a tussle with a dude that's much larger than you who tried to take your firearm from you.
     
  18. FreeThePeople

    FreeThePeople - Rookie -

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    First of all, I agree that there is a lot of evidence against Brown (although there is plenty of evidence against Wilson too) but.....

    Do you want to kill someone?

    I imagine you would say no. So why need to still carry around an extremely lethal weapon?
     
  19. John3:16

    John3:16 Moderator Staff Member

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    It's really interesting to me that the majority of white people can look at the Ferguson situation and come to conclusion X and the majority of black people look at the same situation and come to conclusion Y. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but one thing that would help is if people stopped and LISTENED to the other side, tried to gain a better understanding of where they're coming from. You don't have to change your opinion. Listening doesn't cost anything.

    While I'm on Officer Wilson's side, for many reasons. I'll say this in Brown, and the people of Ferguson's defense: In no way should his body be left in the street for 4 hours (that pisses me off). Any city or area with a population overwhelmingly a certain race should have the majority of it's police force that same race. And they should live in that city. Despite the NY situation, I'm still in favor of body cameras for the police, across the country.
     
  20. Barnstable

    Barnstable Supreme Fuzzler of Lakersball.com Staff Member

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    @davriver209 Some of the things you say are physical evidence didn't happen. We can go back and forth forever, but just tell me this... Was this killing so clear cut to you that there is no justifiable way Wilson should have been indicted? I have given you numerous points where Wilson's testimony was inconsistent with the evidence, the police didn't do any of the normal procedures to collect evidence from the crime scene, the fact that the scene wasn't 35' but 148' from the SUV to Brown's body, the DA told the grand jury to use laws rendered unconstitutional in 1985. All this sounds normal to you? There's nothing here worthy of an in depth investigation to you?
     

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