Ferguson

[Kaitzilla]

Hundreds of bankers in handcuffs would make me pro-cop again if the police are looking for ideas.

Check out the latest stories of undercover officers in California posing as protesters being outed. They have been caught on video trying to incite looting. Ferguson protesters reporting the same thing, but I'm not aware of anyone in Ferguson coming forward with video. Sorry, my cut-and-paste of links is broken.

Two cops in Oakland claimed to be "gathering intelligence". Protesters around them saying they were trying to incite violence. When the two tried to walk away, several protesters followed them. One of the cops shoved a protester, the protester shoved back. At which point the other cop drew a gun on the protesters, identified themselves as police officers, and arrested the guy who shoved back for felony assault on a public servant. The cop who shoved the guy in the first place was not arrested. He is who made the arrest.

Sickening if true.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1671917/be...-undercover-officers-tried-to-incite-looting/

 

[Gary Childress]

Or maybe it's all the racism? Maybe the protesters are being sincere when they keep telling you it's about racism? And maybe middle class white people should start listening to working class black people for a change and stop trying to deduct the "real" reasons for these protests? And maybe Rush Limbaugh, of all the people on the planet, is not the best positioned, sociologically, institutionally or politically, to achieve those sorts of insights?

Y'know, maybe.

I think maybe you are right and I was wrong.

 

[onejayhawk]

Or maybe it's all the racism? Maybe the protesters are being sincere when they keep telling you it's about racism? And maybe middle class white people should start listening to working class black people for a change and stop trying to deduct the "real" reasons for these protests? And maybe Rush Limbaugh, of all the people on the planet, is not the best positioned, sociologically, institutionally or politically, to achieve those sorts of insights?

Y'know, maybe.

Maybe it is not racist at all. Maybe that is a cheap label being used inappropriately. I would like to hear from the working class non-blacks, but no one is asking them questions.

Maybe Rush Limbaugh has been there and done that.

Maybe.

J

 

[Zkribbler]

As much as I hate to admit it, Limbaugh may have a valid point. A man dies in an altercation with police over the selling of lose cigarettes. Maybe it's the fact that authorities are trying to intervene in people's private affairs at the micro level that put the police as well as Mr. Gartner in this awkward situation to begin with. I mean Gartner was resisting arrest and apparently it was not the police intention to kill him. Maybe the government really is sticking its nose too much in the affairs of average citizens? And maybe it's putting police officers (who really do want to protect and serve their community) in difficult situations?

What "private affairs" are you talking about?
Commercial transactions on the street?
Smuggling?
Failure to pay taxes?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Had no idea October 22nd was National Police Brutality Day.

Here's a group dedicated to the idea:
http://www.october22.org/

 

[Gary Childress]

What "private affairs" are you talking about?
Commercial transactions on the street?
Smuggling?
Failure to pay taxes?

If selling lose cigarettes on the street is the government's business, then what is the problem in our society? Is it indeed racism then? Do the police just need to walk on eggs whenever they approach a citizen because 95% of what we do in our lives may be "illegal" to whatever degree? I mean, will they make breathing oxygen "illegal" at some point?

You tell me Zkribbler. What is the solution to the problems we're facing right now?

 

[Traitorfish]

I think maybe you are right and I was wrong.

Well, sorry for the snarkish response. It's just, one of the things I've seen around the Brown and Garner protests is people pontificating about the "real" reason behind the protests, and it can try my patience a little. Sometimes well-meaningly, sometimes not, but always with the unspoken assumption that the protesters themselves can't be trusted to know what they're doing. But sometimes, it really is as simple as reading the placards, and I think this is one of those times.

 

[Gary Childress]

Well, sorry for the snarkish response.

It's OK. I deserved it.

What a world we live in.

 

[tetley]

Looks like there in fact was at least one video of police starting fires in Ferguson.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9cc_1417389791


Here is one link about the undercover cops fraudulently inciting riots in Oakland:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...oints-gun-protesters_n_6312200.html?hpcrime=y

Here we have the same undercover cop pointing his gun directly at the photographer:
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/undercover-cop-points-gun-at-photographer/

 

[Commodore]

Looks like there in fact was at least one video of police starting fires in Ferguson.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9cc_1417389791


Here is one link about the undercover cops fraudulently inciting riots in Oakland:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...oints-gun-protesters_n_6312200.html?hpcrime=y

Here we have the same undercover cop pointing his gun directly at the photographer:
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/undercover-cop-points-gun-at-photographer/

I didn't see the police light that vehicle on fire in the first video. All I saw was a cop shining his flashlight into the car and the light the narrator said was flames looked like the light from the flashlight to me.

Second link: How exactly did the cops incite a riot there? The article clearly states they were walking among the crowd to gather intelligence (legit tactic) when they were recognized as cops and attacked by the protestors.

Also, I highly doubt we are getting an unbiased version of the incident in the third link from a site called photographyisnotacrime.com, so I take that article with a huge grain of salt.

 

[MobBoss]

If selling lose cigarettes on the street is the government's business, then what is the problem in our society? Is it indeed racism then? Do the police just need to walk on eggs whenever they approach a citizen because 95% of what we do in our lives may be "illegal" to whatever degree? I mean, will they make breathing oxygen "illegal" at some point?

You tell me Zkribbler. What is the solution to the problems we're facing right now?

Well....

He was selling 'unstamped'/bootleg cigarettes (untaxed) which means they were part of an ongoing huge black market problem in New York.

What you may not know is taxed cigarettes cost about $13 bucks a pack due to high tax on them. However, just a little bit away, in Virginia they only cost $4 bucks a pack.

The estimated lost tax revenue due to bootleg cigarettes in New York is about a half billion dollars each year.

So now you know why its the governments business. The single individual selling cigarettes on the street may not seem problematic...but multiply that a thousand fold and all of a sudden it's costing New York more than a half billion dollars in tax revenue a year.

Perhaps the overall problem was just a bit bigger than you thought?

 

[James Stuart]

I didn't see the police light that vehicle on fire in the first video. All I saw was a cop shining his flashlight into the car and the light the narrator said was flames looked like the light from the flashlight to me.

Second link: How exactly did the cops incite a riot there? The article clearly states they were walking among the crowd to gather intelligence (legit tactic) when they were recognized as cops and attacked by the protestors.

Also, I highly doubt we are getting an unbiased version of the incident in the third link from a site called photographyisnotacrime.com, so I take that article with a huge grain of salt.

The Guardian story also implies that the crowd attacked them when they found out they were cops. I doubt we're getting an honest story from either side, to be honest. We need to hope there is enough evidence, photographic or video, to unravel this. The initial reports I picked up indicated that the cops were actually trying to incite the crowd to violence, which, if true, is absolutely disgusting and a pretty sad indication of the state of policing in the US.

 

[MobBoss]

The Guardian story also implies that the crowd attacked them when they found out they were cops. I doubt we're getting an honest story from either side, to be honest. We need to hope there is enough evidence, photographic or video, to unravel this. The initial reports I picked up indicated that the cops were actually trying to incite the crowd to violence, which, if true, is absolutely disgusting and a pretty sad indication of the state of policing in the US.

The US is a pretty big place. I think it a bit of a mistake to take a handful of bad situations and apply it in broad brush fashion to all officers across a nation of 316 million people.

Point being, positive stories about cops aren't exactly burning up the media frenzy, although they do occur. But they aren't as sexy as things like we talk about here, so they go mostly ignored.

 

[Hygro]

The Guardian story also implies that the crowd attacked them when they found out they were cops.

I'm really, really, really skeptical. One of the five or so chants we were doing was a variation on the "lets go home team clap clap clapclapclap" was "peaceful protest clap clap clapclapclap". I was out a different night but my night had a determinedly peaceful crowd for sure. We police our own.

This is a crowd that values its legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream, and doesn't want to get beat, nor arrested.

 

[JollyRoger]

Cops are government workers and generally union members. It is hard for many Americans to give either of those groups much positive coddling.

 

[Gary Childress]

Well....

He was selling 'unstamped'/bootleg cigarettes (untaxed) which means they were part of an ongoing huge black market problem in New York.

What you may not know is taxed cigarettes cost about $13 bucks a pack due to high tax on them. However, just a little bit away, in Virginia they only cost $4 bucks a pack.

The estimated lost tax revenue due to bootleg cigarettes in New York is about a half billion dollars each year.

So now you know why its the governments business. The single individual selling cigarettes on the street may not seem problematic...but multiply that a thousand fold and all of a sudden it's costing New York more than a half billion dollars in tax revenue a year.

Perhaps the overall problem was just a bit bigger than you thought?

What exactly is the problem? Racism? Poor media coverage? People jumping to unwarranted conclusions?

 

[MobBoss]

What exactly is the problem? Racism? Poor media coverage? People jumping to unwarranted conclusions?

Perhaps none of the above? Or a combination of them?

My point was to address to you why it was 'governments business'. That's all.

 

[James Stuart]

The US is a pretty big place. I think it a bit of a mistake to take a handful of bad situations and apply it in broad brush fashion to all officers across a nation of 316 million people.

Point being, positive stories about cops aren't exactly burning up the media frenzy, although they do occur. But they aren't as sexy as things like we talk about here, so they go mostly ignored.

Fair enough. Amend it to "California State Patrol," rather than "the US."

 

[JollyRoger]

Just as 99% of lawyers make the rest of us look bad, I am sure the same applies to law enforcement.

 

[James Stuart]

I'm really, really, really skeptical. One of the five or so chants we were doing was a variation on the "lets go home team clap clap clapclapclap" was "peaceful protest clap clap clapclapclap". I was out a different night but my night had a determinedly peaceful crowd for sure. We police our own.

This is a crowd that values its legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream, and doesn't want to get beat, nor arrested.

I must admit I'm sceptical as well. Having a series of such negative stories about the police come out in such quick succession is not a good look, and makes it very easy to believe the worst about the police involved.