It's not how ya beat, it's who ya beat...

[Timsup2nothin]

Or maybe not.

So, the question is whether the rising tide of disgust with police violence will get more of a boost from the NYPD breaking an NBA player's leg, thus removing a key player from a top seeded team on the eve of the playoffs, or is killing ordinary folk still going to be the dominant point in the discussion?

Either way, it certainly makes the outcry against the black athletes who justified their concerns with "that could happen to me" look stupid, since apparently they were right and it could happen to them.

I would like to believe that police killing ordinary folks is going to be the bigger deal, but I actually don't. I expect the NBA money, Sefelosha's money, and his agent's money, to make him a central figure in the history of police brutality and reform.

 

[warpus]

You post that as though I know who Sefelosha is or how much money she has.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You post that as though I know who Sefelosha is or how much money she has.

Ooops.

He is a player for the Atlanta Hawks in the National Basketball Association who got his leg broken last week by the NYPD while "resisting arrest". He doesn't have Michael Jordon money, but you won't find any NBA players in line at a soup kitchen, and the league is not going to take kindly to the number one seed in the eastern conference having their big playoff story being about how they are a man down.

Safe to say if you punch his name into any search engine you should get video of the event and any number of takes on the story, since there are not going to be many members of the Sefalosha clan in the news.

 

[warpus]

Well.. in that case all I can really say is that I feel money and fame are power, and in the U.S. such power, once you're past a certain threshold, allows you to get more favourable results in legal matters. Actually, that's probably true for almost anywhere, but in the U.S. there seems to be more corruption than here in Canada. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's the impression I get.

Why isn't Snoop in jail right now? He's probably doing 3 different kinds of drugs as we speak.. and the cops know that. The man has money, fame, and influence. If he wasn't a famous rapper, but was the exact same person, doing the exact same drugs, he would have been facing 2 decades in jail by now.

But I don't really know that much or pretty much anything about this particular case involving Sefalosha. I looked him up, didn't really expect him to be Swiss, but I didn't really get into the meat of anything. So take my opinion as a "first impression" type thing that's incredibly generic and pretty much not at all invested in any of the pertinent details.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Money is certainly power, and money attached to fame is even better. For as long as the Hawks are in the playoffs this is going to get press every time they play. It is possible that their first round series could be against Brooklyn, which will provide ample opportunity for mayhem.

 

[Wrymouth3]

How fitting that the only ankles Thabo Sefelosha would break in his dull career are his own

 

[Timsup2nothin]

How fitting that the only ankles Thabo Sefelosha would break in his unsurprised career are his own

I don't know if getting hammered with a billy club counts as "breaking his own."

 

[Borachio]

Well.. in that case all I can really say is that I feel money and fame are power, and in the U.S. such power, once you're past a certain threshold, allows you to get more favourable results in legal matters. Actually, that's probably true for almost anywhere, but in the U.S. there seems to be more corruption than here in Canada. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's the impression I get.

Is that corruption, or is it market forces at work?

As far as I can tell, money and power are interchangeable commodities.

I'm not so sure about fame, since it comes in at least two varieties: celebrity and notoriety.

 

[ummmm........]

If he wasn't a famous rapper, but was the exact same person, doing the exact same drugs, he would have been facing 2 decades in jail by now.

If he wasn't a famous rapper, but was the exact same person, doing the exact same drugs, neither you, nor I, nor the cops, would know or care . . .

Money is certainly power, and money attached to fame is even better.

I think that's a myth. I think people believe that punishments for crimes generally include longer incarceration times than they actually do, and there may also be some misunderstanding as to the portion of those sentences that are actually served. So when a famous person gets the same sentence as everyone else people are shocked because they have a misconception about what would happen to a 'normal person'.
As a result of this, high profile convictions are punished more harshly to avoid the appearance of impropriety. So it's better to have money and be unknown than it is to have money and be famous when -- and perhaps only when -- you are convicted of something truly heinous . . .

 

[Commodore]

He should be happy they only broke his leg. They could've sodomized him with a plunger or choked him to death.

 

[warpus]

Is that corruption, or is it market forces at work?.

Well, it's a bit of both, I suppose.

If he wasn't a famous rapper, but was the exact same person, doing the exact same drugs, neither you, nor I, nor the cops, would know or care . . .

He would be pulled over and/or arrested at some point, statistically speaking. I mean, he has been arrested already, several times, so it is bound to happen in this "alternate reality" as well. And in that alternate reality, his life would revolve around coming in and out of jail, spending long periods of time there, and not smoking dope in a $2 million house with his buddies and hos.

 

[ummmm........]

Maybe. There is certainly that chance that he would have gotten caught up and I agree that once you get that initial arrest it's pretty much all downhill. But I imagine drug use is a lot like drinking and driving: The people who get caught get slammed but most people who do it get away with it without ever getting caught . . .