If you need more evidence of how easily police in the US are provoked to violence, just watch this video. We have a man walking alongside the police with no problem but as soon as he accidentally bumps into one of them while changing directions, they suddenly treat him as if he were a violent criminal who had attacked them.
This is appalling: https://t.co/5otD45LHSo
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) June 14, 2020
Authoritarians don’t realize that the cops demand utter submission from everyone. They simply haven’t been targeted -- yet.
Just once I’d like to see a plan like this go wrong.
Just once I’d like to see a dozen police try some shit like this, and have two hundred unarmed but motivated protesters rush them -- firearms, pepper spray tasers and nightsticks be damned -- and leave their naked beaten bloody bodies by the side of the road for their backup to find. They’re just so used to having the crowd outgunned and intimidated. Just once I’d like to see what superior numbers could do in a situation like that -- what a crowd who’ve gone out with the intention of not tolerating this bollocks could do to a relatively small bunch of cops who step out of line. Handguns are a force multiplier for sure, but only up to a point…
If you haven’t watched that video yet, take a close look. It’s not that “he accidentally bumps into one of them while changing directions”, but that the cop carefully edged over so that he was right in front of the guy and then suddenly stopped. They guy was trying to change directions so that he wouldn’t be right behind the cop, but the cop was too quick for him. It was like a car that cuts you off and then slams on its brakes.
@ 3 ahcuah
Well caught. I saw that the policeman moved over but missed how deliberate it was.
Those police are crazy.
You would think that after the events of the last 2 weeks, the stormtroopers would have the common sense to back off a bit. But, no, the Gestapo reigns with impunity because they know they are superior. Heil!
Interesting how the level of submission expected can vary. Take a couple of minutes to watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6n_SC5xgeA
Now imagine if a heavily built middle aged black man had angrily got out of his car immediately it had stopped and demanded to know why the cop had pulled him over. The only matter in doubt is how many of the cop’s shots would have been on target at that range.
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On a related subject: it’s mindblowing that, in the teeth of national, nay, global protests that police haven’t thought even for a second “oh hey maybe we should tone down the violence just for a week or two to maybe protect our jobs and pensions?”. It’s mindblowing that their leaders have not INSTRUCTED them, on pain of firing and loss of pension, to tone it down for a couple of weeks.
It’s also mind blowing that with all this so far up the news headlines it has displaced the ongoing (worsening?) global pandemic that a middle aged black man being arrested by a white cop for a fairly trivial offence (DUI) could think resisting arrest was a good plan. He claims he’s only had a couple of drinks, so he’s not THAT drunk that he thinks he can outrun a bullet. You’d think by now that every person in the country, black or white, would have got the memo that if they’re putting the cuffs on you, you go limp and maybe say “I can’t breathe”. He must surely have realised the moment he started a conversation with a policeman* that there was a very real chance he could die right there? He’s in America.
*At the very least, every single person in the country should be required to watch this video and answer a quiz about it afterwards -- a quiz where every answer is “I don’t say anything.”
@stderr
Actually they don’t require obeisance from anyone.
Take a look at the video of people yelling in the faces of the cops in Lansing during the ‘I need a haircut’ protests.
Or the video of the white guy who drove over protesters being ‘held’ by police as he lounged on the hood of the cop car and talked to reporters.
Or the video of the cop telling the proud boys to get inside bc the cops didn’t want them to get roughed up
Or the video of the cop telling the Unicorn reporter to leave the ‘protecting mass murdering explorers’ statutes’ protest.
Lots of examples of people they don’t require obeisance from.
Asylum
I have wondered for years why we have not had more young,Black, US males at the border applying for asylum.
@ sonofrojblake
That video makes sense in a lot of countries. As the old saying goes, “Even a fish would not get caught if he kept his mouth shut”.
jrkrideau -- There’s a reason Black Lives Matter is a necessary movement in Canada as well.
(This is a reconstructed cross-post from poopyhead’s current [Pandemic and] Political Madness all the Time thread here at FtB.)
If Black Americans were to seek asylum, they would easily qualify: