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When a white guy is seen wandering around in public waving a gun, the police usually try to talk him down; he’s probably just having a bad day. Even if the white guy happens to be pointing his gun directly at an officer, his interaction with the police is unlikely to end in the exchange of gunfire. This is called white privilege.
Recent history suggests there’s a certain methodology for how police handle nearly identical gun-related incidents: white guys get arrested, while black guys get shot. Outraged? If not, you need to pay attention.
1. Armed White Guy Has Standoff With Police, Then Gets His Gun Back.
Last May, an armed Michigan man had a standoff with the police as he stood in front of a Dairy Queen waving a loaded rifle around and angrily shouting. When cops arrived, the man, Joseph Houseman, refused to identify himself, grabbed his crotch, flipped the bird, and cursed them out. Houseman was intoxicated and didn’t have an ID. For 40 minutes, the police tried to get the belligerent man to put his weapon down. All the while, he was screaming, “The revolution is coming,” and accusing the cops of being a “gang.” He told the police he had a legal right to “threaten” police officers and their families.
There’s an excerpt from their encounter at the full story link.
2. White Guy Points Gun at Police Officers and Children During Hour-Long Standoff. Video and summary at full story link.
3. White Man Arrested Twice For Road Rage With a Gun.
In October, a Tennessee man was arrested for waving a loaded gun during a road rage incident involving another man and his son. E.J. Watson confronted the pair when they came to a stop, exited his vehicle with his pistol tucked in the front of his pants and was very belligerent, cursing and making derogatory remarks.
The victims called 911, and police pulled Watson over a few miles from the weapon-wielding episode. His car was littered with empty beer cans as well as a loaded Smith & Wesson revolver. Watson refused to exit his vehicle and had to be physically removed. Only three months earlier, he was arrested for a separate drunken road rage incident.
Good thing for Watson he was white—otherwise he might not be alive today.
4. White Guy Arrested for Firing BB Gun at Officers.
A 22-year-old from New Hampshire faces one count of reckless conduct after firing a BB gun at Concord police in September. The two police officers were making a routine traffic stop at an intersection when the man opened fire from a nearby apartment building. They arrested the culprit, Jesse Deflorio, who was on already on probation for a similar incident. The judge residing over the case commented that he was worried about the white guy’s safety following the most recent BB gun-firing episode. Poor white guy.
Tamir Rice, 12, was walking around a Cleveland park, holding a toy gun that uses nonlethal plastic pellets. A police cruiser pulled up and within two seconds Rice was shot and killed by rookie officer Timothy Loehmann.
5. Two White Men Shoot Up Walmart With BB Gun and Live to Tell the Tale.
6. White Guy Arrested After Pointing Gun at Pennsylvania Police Officers.
7. White Woman Dressed In Body Armor Arrested After Shooting Into Cars and Pointing Gun at Police.
8. White Man Arrested After Pointing Gun at Phoenix Firefighters During Hour-Long Standoff.
Full story, summaries, videos, and links here. If you’re one of those people who insists racism, cops, and guns aren’t a problem, do some fucking homework. Read until reality seeps into your brainpan.
It’s becoming a fucking epidemic (at what point is death from a single particular cause considered an epidemic by the CDC?).
Why is it that nothing seems to change, even with all the bad publicity shit like this brings (two more black deaths in the last couple days)?
CC:
The CDC wants to do studies on guns and gun violence. They can’t, they are prohibited by government mandate. After all, you can’t have the CDC pointing out the reality or anything, that would be bad.
Racism. As the above examples show, the cops know damn well they can get off scot free for murdering a person of colour, even if that person is a child. They also know that if they do the same to a white person, they’ll end up in prison. Things don’t change because institutional racism runs deep, and right now, personal bigotry is out, open, and fucking proud.
Nothing changes because black lives do not matter.
If this was white men being routinely executed for “going for a gun” the NRA and the majority of politicians in America would bring a whirlwind reforms to the police force within a matter of weeks.
Caine, #2
Holy shit. I don’t know why I continue to be shocked.
And then people (like the asshole in PZ’s thread right now) have the nerve to pretend to be not racist while placing the blame on the victim and blindly siding with the racist cops.
Saad @ 3:
No, they don’t. Neither do the lives of Indigenous people, who also have a high rate of being murdered by police, and those cases don’t even make stories. Same as the high rates of rape and murders of Indigenous women. The racist sentiment of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” simply extends to other people of colour. The narrative remains “oh, well, they are criminals anyway, most of them, they deserve killing, because you cannot trust them, ever.”
This goes back to what I post about, every Tuesday, with the presidential retrospective. These people weren’t just seriously invested in stomping on Indigenous people and forcing them to assimilate, as in you be as white as you possibly can be, this was also going on in regard to slavery at the same time, and after that, the really big problem of “oh fuck, now we have all these free negroes running around!”
Saad:
Me neither, but it keeps happening.
Caine, #5
Good point. The original and most destructive form of white supremacy in America has to be the one against the Indigenous people. It makes sense that the rest of it flowed from that to other groups as an extension.
Saad:
Hells yes. Could you imagine what would have happened if Tamir Rice had been white? The outrage would have shaken the earth itself. Heads would have rolled, cops would have gone to prison, and people would be talking reform in a big way.
All my money on there never being a 911 call in the first place.
I’m at the point where I want #bluelivesdontmatter to be a thing.
Then there’s this:
https://www.facebook.com/reverbpress/videos/1059413514148006/
CC @ 11:
Jesus Fucking Christ. Even there, you see people defending the cops’ actions.
Crimson Clupeidae (#10) --
My response to the shooting in Dallas has been, “Those cops were killed by the two cops in Minnesota and Louisiana.” Does anyone really believe that shooting would have happened if cops in the US were held legally accountable, if we didn’t see cops celebrating themselves for getting away with murder? Then again, there wouldn’t have been a #blacklivesmatter protest if cops were held accountable for their crimes.
“Blue lives”? Blue balls is more like it. They’re pent up and looking for a reason to shoot their load or rape members of the public. And they expect to get away with it because they usually do.