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Biden calls for justice after footage released of police killing Black woman
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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And wouldn't you know it, it's thanks to bodycam footage that we have irrefutable proof of this clear and unquestionably excessive use of force against an innocent victim.
The bodycam footage that thousands of police departments throughout the US are still pushing back against because they want people to think it impedes their ability to appropriately deliver justice, when it is actually, finally, allowing justice to take place. The necessity of which was caused primarily by police brutality against people of color, just like this situation, where there was no witness account other than the cop's side of the story.
If this happened ten years ago, back before bodycams became more widespread, the cop would have gotten off with a short paid suspension and no other punishment, because all there would be is the cop's one-sided account of how she clearly assaulted him with a deadly weapon and reached for his gun.
If I were a cop I'd be happy to have a body cam because it would help me cover my ass in case someone accused me of something.
But this attitude is probably why I'm not a cop.
I had a similar experience with something that Lemmy would generally oppose. I used to be concerned that Google kept track of my location and nearly everything I do on my phone. However, I was accused of something serious that typically cannot be disproven otherwise, and since it's something perpetrators often get away with, people tend to believe the accuser without evidence. When that happened, I was so happy that Google had a record of my location because it would have demonstrated that I wasn't where the accuser said I was, nor did I have the contact they said I had. I not only offered to show my location history to investigators, but asked them to so it would clear my name. I guess my sincerity was evident because they didn't even bother and dropped the whole thing shortly after.
I agree with you. If I were a cop, I'd want every second of my day indisputably recorded to clear my name in case I'm ever falsely accused of something. I don't know what it is about me. Maybe my autistic traits make me seem suspicious or like a careless asshole to others, maybe my evident self-doubt make me an easy target for predators, or maybe my lack of conformity and unique style of accomplishing things give people an uncomfortable intuitive feeling about me, but I think I get accused/blamed for a lot of things I didn't do or had any intent of doing more than normal. I know I would eventually be accused of some bs and would need evidence to demonstrate my innocence.
Are body cams really providing justice? Where is Sonya's justice? Hailing body cams as the ultimate police reform is the type of thing I'd expect a cop to say. For people who have been experiencing this racist police violence for generations, it's clear that body cams are at best a half measure, and at worst a means of documenting all of the brutal murders that pigs continue to carry out on innocent people while body cams are running. The answer isn't in body cams, but in comprehensive police reform. So long as the pigs are running around with sus norse tattoos, toxic masculinity ("nah im good" -cop who just developed a tremor in has hand after holding in the brains of a gasping woman for 5 min), guaranteed firearms, no psychological training, gang support via departments, body cams aren't really going to do shit to protect at-risk people.
I am very critical of this ultra pro body cam discourse. It seems like a distraction. Make no mistake, there is no justice today because of the body cams present for Sonya's execution.
I suppose the definition of justice is flexible, between preventative justice and restorative justice and so on, but in this case I am referring specifically to holding guilty people accountable for their actions. There will be no making right what happened here, not by any stretch of the imagination, and there is still a lot more work that needs to be done to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. But while I am sure it is of little consolation to Sonya's family, her murderer is going to prison.
I know there are long-standing charicatures in media of the "corrupt cop" type of character shooting some innocent person and then planting a knife or drugs on them to make it look like self-defense, but that wouldn't exist if there wasn't some grain of truth to it.
With the body cam footage that had been released, there is no question of his guilt. There's no way for the police to cover this up by painting another innocent victim as a criminal, dragging her name through the mud, just to keep this racist scumbag on payroll and free to keep terrorizing the people he's supposed to protect. The racists don't have to gather in droves to protect this monster and put a community through hell to further some disgusting agenda or another.
It doesn't fill the void, but it is some degree of justice which is better than none.
... You act as if cops don't love bodycams too lol.
Everyone but the people doing dumb shit loves accountability. Cops love that it gets bad apples out before they spoil anything too.
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/body-worn-cameras-what-evidence-tells-us
Too late!
Dude, the bad apples spoiled things long before any of us were born.
That's not really how churn works but okay.
Unless by apples you mean society in general, because people are everywhere. But that's more indicative of your bushel, not ours lol.
No, I mean the police in general. Do you really not know how police were even worse to black people before the Civil Rights act?
... so... you're in agreement with them lol?
How did you even come close to getting that from what I said?
It's a hard time trying to understand what you're even saying. You're agreeing or even qualifying what I wrote, but replying in a tone like you're not lol. It's hard to take it seriously.
I am neither. I am telling you that there are no "few bad apples" to get out of the police because the whole thing is already rotten to the core and has been for a very long time since there's never been reformation, just a few laws to stop some of the most egregious behavior.
So maybe you're not familiar with churn then. Churn is the turn over rate for employees. I also think you misunderstand what reformation means, how long it takes, and that there's no tipping point of when something is reformed or not. It wasn't magically Roman Catholicism to Lutheranism after Luther penned the 95 Theses lol.
You already said that civil rights have gotten better.
You already agreed there are new laws and increased oversight regularly.
Employees turn over as there is natural churn. Combined with churn from increased oversight and scrutiny preventing bad people or stopping heinous shit. You also have lawsuits and criminal proceedings to get rid of bad police.
How do you propose 1 works without 2 and 3? How do you posit that police aren't better almost year by year if the entire bushel is spoiled?
No, I said the civil rights laws exist, making the most egregious behavior harder to get away with.
I'd tell you to ask George Floyd if things have gotten better. Or Breonna Taylor. Or Philando Castile. Or Sonya Massey. Except none of them can tell you anymore.
There are no "good apple" cops. None.
... Again, that doesn't make sense. Do the laws make their behavior better, yes or no?
Because once again you're saying they do, but somehow they're not as well. Schrodinger's ACAB.
Here, have some literature about past, current, and future reformations and best practices. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0002716219889328
Have some on churn: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-morale-and-department-scrutiny-are-driving-them-away-from-the-job
Police killings not being statistically higher or lower between 2013 and 2016: https://policebrutalitycenter.org/police-brutality/statistics/
Police shootings of black people and unarmed lowering in 2020: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/2/21276472/police-killing-statistics-african-american
Little hard data to show that policing hasn't improved since the civil rights era but I have a hard time believing differently: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-painful-history-police-brutality-in-the-us-180964098/
You're showing how they're all bad apples and you don't even realize it.
No, it just sounds like you're only useful to certain people lol.
I'm not useful to anyone. Why are you making this about me when it's about cops?
It was a joke about being a useful idiot lol.
Cool, there are still no good apple cops no matter what your insult "joke" was about.
So you don't even understand how the spoiling ethylene analogy works lol.
Either way, I hope you reflect today and stop making yourself useful to bad actors by sowing discord and division.
I wasn't interested in your analogy. You take the ludicrous position that there being fewer crimes by racist cops has some meaning that there are somehow good cops now, not the fact that laws were absolutely necessary to stop their behavior. And it still didn't stop it anywhere near as much as it should have. And if those laws were gone, it would go back to being as bad as it was.
I don't have to sow discord and division, we have an entire group of uniformed people in blue who do that just fine themselves when they do things like shoot an unarmed black woman in her home. You know, this event you seem hell-bent to use to tell us all about how there are good cops.
Oh I understand. It doesn't make you not wrong both literally and metaphorically in one of the worst ways possible which is frustratingly sad in how it's completely antithetical to your goal. But I understand.
You do know that just declaring someone to be wrong doesn't make them wrong, right? You are not the arbiter of reality.
True. Sauce, logic, and objective reality is. Which I provided.
You have provided anecdotal hogwash based on feels making reals just as brainwashed through doomscrolling media as some of the worst MAGA Republicans I've ever met.
People can understand you. They can even agree heavily. That doesn't make it true lol.
You didn't provide "objective reality." You said that civil rights laws mean cops aren't as racist anymore, which is hilarious, because if cops weren't racist, *we wouldn't have to keep using civil rights laws to hopefully punish them for killing black people.
This seems to be a lot more about you excusing cops for killing black people.
No, you're blind to what you're typing is all because you're just not reading the replies. You're arguing against a hypothetical person you've already made up in your mind with a gamut of very different things every time you reply but it's okay.
Nobody is arguing cops don't kill black people at unacceptable rates nearly 2x higher than other races.
Nobody is arguing there aren't racist cops, or bad cops.
You are arguing something completely different while not understanding the difference is a failure on your education system and multiple levels of failure at the local and government levels.
It'd be pitiable if it wasn't for reasons I've labored on ad nauseum about already.
Trust me when I say everyone understands your position. It's wrong. You trying to make up arguments other people aren't saying is doing nothing but wasting both our times lol.
I have been saying the same thing I have been saying this entire time: There are no good apple cops. I have not wavered from this position. You have yet to show me anything that suggests otherwise. The closest you've gotten is that they've done less racist things than they used to.