Tribute

[Bark's Lounge]

I figured something would be posted on this topic today by now. Maybe It's probably too raw still. It disgusts me and infuriates me - that I know for sure.

 

This is my Tribute to Philando Castile...

 

[Badsmerf]

I'm not ready for this yet. I just can't even.

[Craig Arko]

I'm not ready for this yet. I just can't even.

Yup. Words fail.

[TheLeviathan]

That video and this incident could be the true rallying cry needed for change, it's the only optimism I can generate from this horrible situation.  I feel so badly for the little girl who was in the car at the time, I can't imagine.  

 

This issue (if it can be boiled down simply at all) is so layered, so steeped in contradictions, and so thick with issues engrained for some time in this country....it's going to be one hell of an uphill fight.  I can only hope that maybe this will set things moving in the right direction.  

[Bark's Lounge]

 

That video and this incident could be the true rallying cry needed for change, it's the only optimism I can generate from this horrible situation.  I feel so badly for the little girl who was in the car at the time, I can't imagine.  

 

This issue (if it can be boiled down simply at all) is so layered, so steeped in contradictions, and so thick with issues engrained for some time in this country....it's going to be one hell of an uphill fight.  I can only hope that maybe this will set things moving in the right direction.  

Yeah, that's pretty much all we've got. It has got me feeling pretty depressed. I want the madness to end and I want the righteous to have there day and in the honor of the departed in this thread and the many more who have perished - we need some ****ing change. It has to be demanded and given. No more BS and no more politics.

 

We cannot stand for this kind of loss anymore. I am washed away on the shore of my sadness.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Yeah, that's pretty much all we've got. It has got me feeling pretty depressed. I want the madness to end and I want the righteous to have there day.

 

I know police officers are trained in de-escalation, but it has to be the most important part of their job.  We may also need to start requiring higher standards for officer hiring and for officer behavior.  Even then, I don't think people understand just how difficult it is to make your brain work properly in a tense, potentially violent situation.  I lived through enough of that in my own work with kids in inner-city Chicago to speak to how unbelievably difficult that really is.  

 

And the thing is, that goes for cops understanding that difficulty for those they are confronting and for those assessing the reactions of police officer.  But we have to be able to do better than this.

[biggentleben]

The horrible thing is that I had friends walking in that crowd tonight when gun shots erupted in Dallas. This is getting so far out of hand.

 

I fancy myself a writer, but right now I don't have words. I'm going to bed to pray, to cry, to hurt.

[Bark's Lounge]

 

I know police officers are trained in de-escalation, but it has to be the most important part of their job.  We may also need to start requiring higher standards for officer hiring and for officer behavior.  Even then, I don't think people understand just how difficult it is to make your brain work properly in a tense, potentially violent situation.  I lived through enough of that in my own work with kids in inner-city Chicago to speak to how unbelievably difficult that really is.  

 

And the thing is, that goes for cops understanding that difficulty for those they are confronting and for those assessing the reactions of police officer.  But we have to be able to do better than this.

Yeah Levi, It is a tough job to be a police officer. I am not sure it is a sought after career anymore. If you are not getting the best.... that is troublesome. Being a police officer is certainly tense, but being pulled over by a police officer is greatly tense to us civilians, we will come off as nervous or awkward and we are in a bad place - that is when the bad starts happening. I think that people who should  know would become police officers know the risk and are passing it by.

 

 

That is what I'd like to think.

[TheLeviathan]

Oh, I agree, officers really need to understand the fight/flight feelings they generate merely by confronting someone. And for black men and women that feeling has to be even more powerful. And justifiably so.

 

This chaos in Dallas only adds more need to find peace and progress.

[Mike Sixel]

I hate being right about predicting violence. It is only going to get worse. Sucks

[PseudoSABR]

Look at this culture of violence. What is happening in Dallas?

[Craig Arko]

Look at this culture of violence. What is happening in Dallas?

We live in a war zone. Great sympathies to the family and friends of the slain officers.

 

This will not end well for anyone. Except maybe the vendors of bullets (again).

 

[Vanimal46]

Wish I could type out articulately how I'm feeling about these acts of violence. But I can't... It's infuriating, and depressing. We need to start getting back to our country's founding principles of presumption of innocence. I wish I was more qualified to propose ways we can accomplish that.  

[ashbury]

I joined in to say Je Suis Charlie back when that was the thing. I felt noble to later think of saying Je Suis Pulse.

 

But there's no way I can say Je Suis Philando and have it mean anything. This isn't any kind of "there but for the grace of God go I" situation for me. I've been pulled over for minor traffic things, and failed to do things quite by the book, and felt dumb for forgetting but didn't get shot because of it. I just can't comprehend what it must be like. I can't comprehend Lavish icily recounting the details while Philando went into shock next to her. I. Just. Can't.

[Willihammer]

Presumption of innocence would only apply to the cop, no? The driver wasn't even under arrest. The shooting appears to have resulted from a miscommunication about the driver reaching into his pocket. In the video the cop says "I told him not to reach for it," and the woman replies "you told him to pull out his ID."

 

[Vanimal46]

Yes, the presumption of innocence has to be put back on law enforcement's shoulder. Based off of the information we have about the MN shooting, there's no reason why that should have happened. Of course more information will be presented over the next couple of days/weeks... 

[Willihammer]

 

Yes, the presumption of innocence has to be put back on law enforcement's shoulder. Based off of the information we have about the MN shooting, there's no reason why that should have happened. Of course more information will be presented over the next couple of days/weeks... 

Everyone agrees that this was a tragic outcome, but how does presumption of innocence apply to the driver? He wasn't charged with a crime or even under arrest.

The cop on the other hand could be looking at criminal charges.

[Vanimal46]

 

Everyone agrees that this was a tragic outcome, but how does presumption of innocence apply to the driver? He wasn't charged with a crime or even under arrest.

The cop on the other hand could be looking at criminal charges.

It doesn't apply to the driver. The way the girlfriend in the video explained things, Philando did everything the right way to make it known he had a firearm with a license-to-carry permit. That burden presumption of innocence all falls on law enforcement. 

[Willihammer]

But Van, a cop's job isn't to try people, its to arrest them and then turn them over to the courts. That's where presumption of innocence comes in, its a judicial principal. The man wasn't on trial for anything. The cop, however, could be. Therefore we should assume the cop is innocent until proven guilty, no?

[Mike Sixel]

 

But Van, a cop's job isn't to try people, its to arrest them and then turn them over to the courts. That's where presumption of innocence comes in, its a judicial principal. The man wasn't on trial for anything. The cop, however, could be. Therefore we should assume the cop is innocent until proven guilty, no?

 

Assume what you want.....but denying institutional racism exists? Denying this wouldn't happen to a white person? come on.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Assume what you want.....but denying institutional racism exists? Denying this wouldn't happen to a white person? come on.

 

I'm unclear where you pulled that from in his posts?

 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in these situations is to avoid a rush to judgment, even when it seems pretty clear.  We've steadily gone further and further down the path of trying people on social media long before all the facts are in.

 

Saying that is not denying either of those things, both can be true.

[Willihammer]

 

Assume what you want.....but denying institutional racism exists? Denying this wouldn't happen to a white person? come on.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

 

If this was a criminal homicide by the cop, he should be  punished. If it wasn't, then we need to look at the system, the protocol governing traffic stops, where a man can wind up dead. Its either one or the other, but one of those needs to happen.

 

I only commented because, unsurprisingly, the public is unanimously against the cop when all we really have about the shooting is a he said-she said, and when "presumption of innocence" was brought up, it didn't seem to apply to the cop.

[Mike Sixel]

Well, since we know from the last decade he'll be found innocent anyway, I guess we should presume he's innocent. That's what history tells us. Does anyone have any reason to believe otherwise?

[TheLeviathan]

 

Well, since we know from the last decade he'll be found innocent anyway, I guess we should presume he's innocent. That's what history tells us. Does anyone have any reason to believe otherwise?

 

You mean, other than the very principle our justice system is based on?  Something all sides (including many of the cops in these situations) seem to be forgetting?

 

What I believe is that he panicked and murdered this man, but I'll save my outrage for the results.  I am hoping that this case results in a clear response by the judicial system, but I don't have all the information. 

 

The fact that cops are not prosecuted is one difficult part for people to accept, it's one of those many layers to this issue that contradict across political lines. For most, their politics are in a constant state of confusion responding to these situations. That is going to make this really, really hard to fix.

[Mike Sixel]

I am almost out of hope that white cops will ever be prosecuted for killing innocent black men. Maybe that tiniest bit of hope will come true someday. Maybe someday people will stop hating others that look different than them. But, we seem to be a long way away from that, given that we have candidates spewing this hatred daily. And yes, I'm mad.

[TheLeviathan]

 

I am almost out of hope that white cops will ever be prosecuted for killing innocent black men. Maybe that tiniest bit of hope will come true someday. Maybe someday people will stop hating others that look different than them. But, we seem to be a long way away from that, given that we have candidates spewing this hatred daily. And yes, I'm mad.

 

I don't like it either.  We need body cams on every officer and on every dashboard. (It has demonstrated positive results in many places) We need to encourage officers and applaud those that step outside their group to hold each other accountable.  And, hardest of all perhaps, is that some of this will also involve breaking their union and I wonder how much stomach we'll have for that?

[PseudoSABR]

I might characterize the presumption we should put in place is one to protect life at even the risk to the cop him/herself.  The problem is the training that seeks to protect police from any potential risk with deadly force.  The standard should never be "the person was reaching in his pocket": the tactical training of a police officer whose weapon is drawn should allow for enough time for the police to assess the situation.  In Minnesota the cop made the assumption that he was reaching for his weapon and not his wallet, and this is an assumption that police are trained to make--but that assumption makes no sense when a person is seated in a car, in no position to draw, aim and take the police officer down.    As soon as a citizen announces that he has a concealed weapon.  The cop should withdraw, and command the person at distance to get out of the car, etc.  

 

Police are trained to react to even unreasonable suspicions of fear to protect themselves.  It's not individual police make individual assessments that is the problem; it's that the protocol relies on the subjective emotion of a police officer, who have been tactically but not emotionally trained.   

 

I think we also need to reassess our hiring tradition of the police; we need value less the tactical prowess and far more the capacity to make reasonable judgments in tense situations.  There needs to be caution when considering former military personnel because their training--esp. in regard to the requisite emotional disposition--flies in the face of what we want from police; there is already a great danger that the police treat citizens (whom they believe to be a criminal) as enemy combatants.

 

That police were murdered systematically while protecting the peace at a lawful assembly makes my blood boil; I hope that tragedy won't derail an honest assessment of police protocol and tactics.  

 

I know that policing by the Constitution should be left to the States, but I really think we need a national solution, national protocols and standards for police training.   Part of the problem has been that individual police agencies have become too autonomous and have too little oversight.

[PseudoSABR]

 

What I believe is that he panicked

I think in both situations, the police panicked.  Police protocol deals with that phenomenon in the exact wrong way, to assume that the panic is reasonably-based fear.  

 

As for prosecuting police, it shouldn't even be question--police should be held to higher standard of upholding the law and safeguarding life, not a lower one, that grants them immunity from systematically negligent behavior.   

[TheLeviathan]

 

I might characterize the presumption we should put in place is one to protect life at even the risk to the cop him/herself.  The problem is the training that seeks to protect police from any potential risk with deadly force.  The standard should never be "the person was reaching in his pocket": the tactical training of a police officer whose weapon is drawn should allow for enough time for the police to assess the situation.  

 

Honestly asking - is that even possible?  I'm not a soldier or a cop, is such an assessment even possible?  

 

I can only speak to situations I've been in (physically restraining a person out of control) that fluid, cognizant thinking is extremely difficult.  And that's without real risk to anyone's life being in the mix.

 

I agree about placing the emphasis on everyone walking out alive, not just the cop.  From a philosophical standpoint, I'm in total agreement.  I'm not sure when the rubber meets the road.

[TheLeviathan]

 

As for prosecuting police, it shouldn't even be question--police should be held to higher standard of upholding the law and safeguarding life, not a lower one, that grants them immunity from systematically negligent behavior.   

 

This is a contradiction the political left is going to have to deal with here (the right has a lot too...like the militarization of the police against citizens as one example) - their ability to skate from these situations is largely driven by negotiated policies put in place by their union.  Most of the protections that allow them to be held to a lower standard start there.  Are we willing to break that union?