This is Diamond Reynolds speaking out after the murder of Philando Castile.
The Roseville police held her in custody at the precinct after one of their own murdered her boyfriend. They kept her at the police, and separated her from her daughter, when she should have been at the hospital with her dying boyfriend.
This is appalling. The Roseville police are apparently incompetent bumblefucks — whey else would you treat this woman like a criminal?
Motherfuckers. Remember this. The American police force no longer deserves any respect at all. You have to obey them because they’ve got guns, but they have earned no honor.
Well you know not all cops are….Gah I can’t even. FFS I can’t. I just can’t. My brother is a cop and I try to see things from there point of view but I just can’t.
Not only can’t but don’t want to anymore.
I agree with you, PZ, wholeheartedly, with every ounce of my being (however much that is)!!
“whey else would you treat this woman like a criminal?”
To intimidate her, and anyone else who may dare to film the police, into keeping quiet of course. Either that or to change her story so that her boyfriend was threatening the officers making it a justified murder.
Jesus fuck. You knew it was coming.
Jesus fucking goddamned shit-smeared christ.
Every time. The police kill someone, and immediately they start dredging through their records to find evidence that he was a bad guy. Never mind that driving while black is also an excuse that they use to pull over people.
I got a speeding ticket in Roseville once, many years ago. They now have justification to execute me.
Well PZ, I think you’re overgeneralizing but a correct generalization is that there is a culture of impunity within the criminal justice system for the racist psychopaths who do make up a proportion of people drawn to the profession. There is definitely a personality type among police who hide behind a gun and a badge so they can bully people and make themselves feel like big men. And a lot of them are virulently racist. They aren’t necessarily the modal cop, but the problem is that police departments cover for them.
Yes? Exactly what I said. No honor, no respect for these thugs in uniform.
Every aspect of this is monstrously dehumanizing. Cops murdering Black people. Cops arresting Black people for witnessing these murders. Folks sharing images of the slain on social media without warning, because screw trigger warnings and the trauma of Black people as a whole, right? Black people expected to remain calm–not visibly frightened, never ever ever angry–when pulled over by representatives of the state who will freely murder them even when they do everything “right”. Black people expected to remain calm as their families are murdered. Black children shot for playing, for buying a snack and walking down the street, for daring to exist. Black people labelled thugs and monsters and criminals when they riot against a system that has held them in a genocidal grip for centuries without letting up.
Was there a time when they did? Or just a time when their victims didn’t have camera phones?
@4,
Oh jesus. It’s infuriating that many people will interpret that record as a sign that he was a trouble maker who deserved to be killed. What I see is a man who was harassed regularly for the last 15 years because of his skin color. We are so broken.
“The Roseville police are apparently incompetent bumblefucks — whey else would you treat this woman like a criminal?”
Racism.
cervantes@#5:
the racist psychopaths
Please remember – being a psychopath is a serious mental health disorder. Being a cop is a lifestyle choice. You’re being unfair to psychopaths when you say that.
But you would think even racists would realize that the PR fallout from treating Diamond Reynolds so badly would be devastating. So they’re racists, all right, but they’re also something more: they’re really stupid racists.
Saying “he deserved to be killed because he was a trouble-maker” is justifying killing cops: a lot of them are trouble-makers, too.
See also: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19961228&id=pKgpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VPEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5610,4043093
“New Gun Law May Disarm Some Cops”
No guns for domestic violence offenders.
I believe that the cops got the law changed. Because sometimes it takes a domestic violence offender with a gun to take down a bad guy with a gun.
The point being: they are all bad guys.
Addendum to my above:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/
The cops definitely must have gotten that law changed. If family violence in law enforcement families is 2 to 4 times that of the population at large, how are these cops still out on the street carrying guns?
I interact with law enforcement officers each and every work day – they’re present as security for my office building.
Out of that assortment of officers, only a few would I entrust my life to.
That’s saying a great deal, as beyond the crisis of being murdered just for being black, another poorly reported groupis also over represented in police shootings, my fellow veterans.
In any police interaction, I’m at a heightened state of alert.
To be brutally honest, I felt safer, both for myself and my wife of nearly 35 years, when we were both living in Qatar. At least there, police violence or violence in any form was extraordinary in the extreme. Worse, my wife feels the same way.
Maybe it’s time to abandon this failing nation, as the populace seems content in swaddling itself in its own filth.
I was driving home about a year ago when I forgot/ignored the no right turn on red sign and, rather than wait the 5 minutes or so for the signal to cycle, turned right. When the officer approached, he did not tell me to put my hands in the air. He simply asked for my registration and license. I got he registration but when i pulled my wallet out, I realized I did not have my license and told him so. He asked me where I lived and I gave an address a few blocks away and he toolk my insurance card, registration card and went to his car. I was not told to get out of the car, to lay face down in the street, subjected to orders barked or any disrespect. When he returned, he gave me back my papers, told me to NEVER drive without my drivers license and NEVER turn right when there is a sign saying not to. He may have raised his voice and appeared a little agitates much as a parent might lecturing a teem.
Many years ago, I was pulled over for littering. My car reeked of then illegal marijuana. Did I get treated harshly? No, I was let off with a warning.
I was with a friend in Chicago when we were pulled over for a cracked taillight. Again, the car reeked of pot. We were letoff after a couple of minutes.
I was once following a musician friend after seeing him iin concert. We were going back to his apartment. He was pulled over. His car reeked of marijuana. He was let go with nothing other than a verbal warning to get his light fixed.
I was once pulled over and cited for a non working tail light. This time, the car did not reek of marijuana. I was treated respectfully and given a order to repair ticket. One thing led to another and weeks later, I was again pulled over, the cop found out I had an expired order to repair icket. Did he make me lay face down? Arrest me and haul me in as a scofflaw fugitive from justice? Nope. He said get this done because the next cop may not be so nice.
Need I mention that I am white? My jazz player friend was white? My Chicago friend was white?
However, I have never heard a case where my Hispanic employees at my restaurant have had an interaction with the police where they were treated with respect, where they werent hasseled or arrested etc.
@wzrd1: Were I living in the US, I’d move the fuck out without thinking twice.
Not many have such luxury though.
You know, events like this one remind me that one of the most famous Patriotic song ever written is basically “Kill the cops and make it Painfull“, the anthem.
Not all cops sounds more and more like it should fall on deaf ears as more and more of these cases come out. I have yet to hear this all to rare cop that isn’t at least complicit in one of these cases. A good cop would go out the bad ones. the silence is deafening.
As for ABC news bit of racism, 1) it is fucking irrelevant, and 2) even if the traffic violations were relevant 2 per year is hardly a rate to indicate being a bad driver, let alone a bad person. and that’s forgoing that driving while black is a thing that shouldn’t be a thing.
I had I think 7 the year I gave up driving. (as a touch point). I briefly googled…it looks like 20% of people get at least one a year.
TMM:
You said everything I would have. QFMFT.
Mike @18
Actually it is bit more than 2 per year, but closer to 2 than 2. and half, not a conscientious driver (if they were all driving infractions), but well short of jackass. I have gotten 3 in a year a couple of times. Given his age, I suspect that had they gone back say 5 years instead of 14, the average per year would be much lower. Traffic violations is vague, so it may have included burned out tail lights no seatbelt etc.
This 60 year old white guy hasn’t been let off for anything since I was in my 30s (in Alberta). I attribute this to bad luck.
If a moderately bad driving record is the worst they could come up with, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel in trying to tarnish this guys reputation. This just shows how far they will go to avoid facing the fact that he was murdered by the police.
The sad part is the bullshit excuses they are going to be coming up with are still miles away from justifying this summary execution. That is the state of things in America in 2016. The police has the confidence and the gall to shoot someone and boldly say he had previous charges. They’ll say anything but “because he was black”.
What is really going to be sickening is when the hordes of white people start gathering around in defense of the murdering police officer. Fuck each and every one of them.
Not to mention, if broken tail lights and previous traffic violations were grounds for public execution, a white person would be getting shot by police every minute.
Here are some ideas about what we can do about police brutality:
http://www.ravishly.com/2015/04/10/what-you-can-do-right-now-about-police-brutality
Educate yourself on your city’s police conduct review process.
Pressure your mayor and city council to address gaps in this process.
Vote for reform-minded city government.
Write to your representatives.
Know your right to record police encounters.
Support legal defense funds and activism groups.
I cried when I saw the video on the news this morning. This middle-aged white grandma would just like to hold his mother, girlfriend and precious little girl in my arms and cry with them.
the cell phone TV camera the most powerful weapon in the struggle for human rights to happen in the U.S. since the lunch-counter set-in!.
uncle frogy
are there really any other kind?
uncle frogy
Cops shot in Dallas. This will get ugly.
Details unclear, but 5-6 officers are reported to be in critical condition after an attack from a parking garage by a shooter in body armor with a rifle.
MSNBC is reporting from the Dallas police chief: 10 officers shot – 3 dead, 2 in surgery, 3 in critical condition; 2 snipers
11 shot; 4 dead
No doubt he was mentally ill and not representative of violent, white supremacists, gun fondlers.
Crap, there was suppose to be a /sarcasm line in there. Sorry if I have caused offence.
One thing I fully expect to see, if the media are truly evenhanded (LOL), are small armies of newsroom research interns delving into the background of each and every cop that was killed in Dallas tonight, to find anything in their history of existence on this Earth that could indicate they were a less-than-perfect person. You know, like traffic tickets, littering, broken taillights, farting in church, etc. Because remember, the victim must ALWAYS be smeared to reduce the culpability of the perpetrator.
Sure, not all cops are like that, but that’s the same as not all priests are child molesters. The main thing that keeps this racist violence going is that no cop is ever held responsible. There are big similarities between the police force and the RC church.
Just imagine how many black men were killed for no reason by the police before all these cameras, who then later filed the incident as “the suspect was violent” or “the suspect tried to reach for my gun” or any of the usual excuses police uses for public lynching of black men. The shooting of Laquan McDonald where an army of officers fired tens of bullets into a black man who was talking away from them who then later lied in their reports and covered each others’ backs, shows that it is not just one or two corrupt police officers, it is a sizable number of them. And the system completely backs them up with no regard for the value of men whom they kill.
At those considering the military…
I do have one memory that I’d love to lose., initially
A cop from just outside of Philly. He was also out best unit sniper and that was his MOS (military.
job)
Meanwhile, his primary life job was, as a police officer, on civilian streets.
Considering multiple other issues that abandoned us, we need to figure things out.
“A NBC News analysis of court documents shows that Philando Castile was pulled over by police 31 times since 2002 for traffic violations.”
The response to this kind of drudgery always has to be “Since when is any of that grounds for execution without trial?”.
That might, possibly, be justification for taking away his driver’s license, but what does that have to do with whether or not it was okay to shoot him down in cold blood?
Actually, I would be interested to see what the rates of stops for traffic violations between blacks and whites is. My hypothesis is that blacks get stopped more often for minor violations, but commit minor violations at the same rate as whites, but I admit that that is nothing but a hypothesis and I have no data as of yet. But it seems unlikely that the disproportionate risk of blacks, especially men, being shot by the police exists in isolation so it seems not unlikely that they are also at risk of being stopped and ticketed unfairly.
The body of a black man was found hanging in Piedmont Park in Atlanta
The KKK is becoming more visible in Georgia recently, distributing fliers and even planning to “adopt a highway” so they can then put up KKK signs along the road.
And now five officers dead and seven wounded due to multiple snipers at a protest in Dallas. Things are getting dangerously close to spiraling out of control.
In a separate story an officer killed in New Orleans while sitting in his police car.
“the ACLU released a study that found blacks in Minneapolis are 8.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for a low-level offense“
Years ago a friend of ours in Pittsburgh, who happened to be black, told us about how often he was pulled over by police when driving; I hadn’t been pulled over once in the several years we lived there, but he was pulled over at least once a month, and often stopped when walking down the sidewalk as well. The black experience of “America” is completely different from what the rest of us encounter, and police are a large part of that fact.
By the way, the cars I drove during our time there were older and rougher vehicles than his…
https://news.wsu.edu/2014/09/02/deadly-force-lab-finds-racial-disparities-in-shootings/
mmark, #45
That explains all the videos emerging of white men being shot to death by police for no reason and all the protests and outrage from white communities once every few months.
Unless:
1) White men are afraid to speak out in American society
2) White men like being killed and white men’s spouses and children don’t mind them dying
3) Police only kill white men who have no next of kin and with no witnesses or cameras present
You are a racist asshole. These racist killings are happening on a regular basis, several of them with video evidence. All the work has been done for you to easily arrive at the conclusion. It’s only your racism that’s in the way. Fuck off.
Ah, the authoritarian asshole mmark is still trying to pretend that this isn’t a racist/sexist society.
OK asshole, show EQUAL RESULTS for women, PoC, LGBT, etc. It can’t be done. Ergo, this is not an egalitarian society no matter how much you would like to pretend that is the case.
We have to concentrate on things like race, and how to get around it, until the results become equal. After a generation or two, and things remain equal, we can declare that society is egalitarian.
There’s just one problem: it keeps happening. How many have died since Eric Garner’s murder was caught on camera?
@Saad, there have been videos of white people being killed for no reason. They don’t get much attention because they tend to be marginalized – especially poor and/or homeless.
You could construe nothing I’ve written here as authoritarian, nor could you construe anything I’ve written to mean that we don’t live in a racist/sexist society. I understand you don’t like my opinions but at least be honest when attacking them.
Fact – twice as many whites are shot by police than blacks. Those stories and videos are everywhere but you apparently don’t care to see them.
And thanks for playing the racist card, the last refuge of an idiot losing an argument or – as it appears in your case – having his views challenged in any way, shape or form.
Most recent example – “FBI investigating after cellphone video shows police fatally shooting unarmed man in Fresno”. I saw a ton of BLM supporters publicizing this.
mmark has a PhD in Points Refuted A Thousand Times. I’ll gently advise PZ to ban him and the commentators to turn his predictably incorrect arguments into a bingo card.
I am. YOU ARE A RACIST ASSHOLE.
Your authoritarian uneducated opinions are full of shitty thinking.
You don’t understand evidence. Typical.
@mmark
So a study where the participants knew they were being tested for racism so showed they overcompensated for racism while they knew they were being observed. Colour me unsurprised.
Hmmm. And a quick wikipeek shows that there are only 13 % black Americans, yet you say that 33 % of police shootings are of black people. So that’s makes a black person a little less than three times as likely to be shot by police than a white person. (Ignoring Hispanics and other minorities.)
How odd.
Well, no shit, there are more white people than black people in the US. However, black men make up 40% of unarmed police murders, despite being around 6% of the population.
@mmark
There should be an Internet Law about statements preceded by “Fact”
Usually the statement following “Fact” is false, but if it is true, it is as in this case, it is true but not useful. There are more than twice as many whites as blacks in the USA.
Interesting article from, of all places, Red State:
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/08/uncomfortable-reason-came-dallas-yesterday/
qwints,
Thanks for that info. So a certain marginalized category of white people do get killed due to classism.
mmark, #50
Sorry, average racist. Playing the “you’re playing the race card” simply doesn’t work.
Police murders of black people is a basic fact of American society. Your whining and cries of race card won’t change that. Thanks for playing though, shithead.
The claim that white people are twice as likely to be shot by police ignores proportional population size. There are more white people in the US than black people, so going by simple quantity can make it look like white people are more likely to be shot. If you take proportion into account, black people are three times more likely to be shot by police than white people.
It might be better to look at the number of interactions/confrontations between blacks and police and between whites and police rather than populations. However, that denominator is also affected by racism. No matter how we nitpick the statistics the effects of racism are obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head up their ass.
There’s no justifying shooting those police officers in Dallas. It’s not like it even makes sense as revenge, considering that these particular police didn’t do anything wrong. Even if they had been the cops that shot black people, this wouldn’t have been justified. It also gives regressive assholes an opening to try to gain the moral high ground. All they have to do is continue to deny any sort of wrongdoing on part of the police that shot black people, and they can act like police are entirely the injured party. Some former senator whose name I don’t care to remember already did this. He also made a few cracks about “uneducated black thugs”, and how BLM motivated the shooters. He and others like him are using the Dallas shooting as an excuse to ignore any legtimate grievances that the peaceful protestors have with the police.
mmark
I’ll just repeat Saad at you:
There.
I see others have also pointed out the factual errors in your
PZ
Can you please just take mmark away from this thread? Do we really need to rehash the statistics and coddle someone’s ignorance and/or hyperskepticism?
Like Jon Stewart says: “Being against cops murdering Blacks, and against murder of cops; are not mutually exclusive.”
IOW: being appalled at Castillo’s murder does not necessarily happy for Dallas snipers.
let me jump to a conclusion:
Thanks NRA, for selling guns as THE solution for anything creating ones anger.
Donald Trump posed a mostly reasonable statement, but his reasonable statement was followed by extreme reactions from his Facebook followers.
Here is Trump’s statement (which doesn’t really sound like him … probably written by someone else):
Here is an example of the reactions to Trump’s statement, which include some people claiming that a “race war” was being fought, and that it should be fought.
Here is a Mother Jones article that provides more examples of Trump’s rightwing followers going bananas and talking about race war.
That’s 14 years ago, so that means he was pulled over, on average, once every five and a half months or so.
Is it just me, or does that not actually seem to be that often, especially given that he was undoubtedly committing the violation of Driving Whilst Black?
……………
The murders of police in Dallas are horrific, but were they, as the initial stories indicated, the work of several people; or as has been the case in a number of mass shootings, have the terror and chaos of the event lead to a false conclusion that more than one shooter was involved? The Chief of Police seems to have prejudged the issue, and the guilt of those arrested, reportedly saying:
But it now appears that all the victims were shot by the man the police later blew up (an action that itself seems questionable – surely capturing and interrogating him should have been the aim, although of course preventing him killing anyone else had to be the first priority), and later police statements sound to me as though they don’t have any definite evidence against the three suspects they are holding.
In a comment that is at once utterly bizarre and utterly disgusting, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, said to Faux News:
Which is exactly what the police probably wanted them to do – get the fuck out of the way so they can deal with the situation with the least complications. As it was at least one protester was wounded.
Zmidponk wrote:
I’ll also note that it doesn’t say he was ticketed for traffic violations on those 31 occurrences, only that he was stopped. This particular wording seems deliberate…
Nick Gotts wrote:
Alternate explanation: They quite reasonably didn’t want to be caught in a crossfire between the shooter and the cops. They may have had no expectation being protected by the cops at all.
“These protesters want cops to stop murdering innocent black people, and now they want the cops to protect them? What hypocrites!”
ck@73, Vivec@74,
I don’t think any thought about what the cops might or might not do was necessary: if bullets are flying, you take cover – even if you’re an armed cop, I would have thought!
Apparently, the Dallas police are better than most in the USA.