White America’s Silence on Police Brutality Is Consent
Late Tuesday, news broke that yet another unarmed American, a black man named Walter Scott, was killed by a white police officer. As with Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Rodney King nearly 25 years ago, the brutality was captured on video for the world to see. The New York Times put the damning evidence at the very top of its homepage and it quickly spread throughout social media networks provoking outrage, disgust, horror, grief. These reactions ha…
White America's Silence on Police Brutality Is Consent
Mr. Scott resisted arrest, fought with the cop, shot the cop with his own tazer, and attempted to flee the sceen. Want to tell me again how he was an innocent unarmed opressed black man?
There's no evidence he shot the cop with the taser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott#Shooting
I don't think attempting to flee… because of back child support… meets the criteria set forth by Tennessee v. Garner, "…he or she may not use deadly force to prevent escape unless "the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner
Beyond that… this is really not talking just about Walter Scott but about the larger problem at hand. Statistically the police are white and non white people get arrested more, harassed more, imprisoned more that whites for the same crimes, etc. The title wasn't about this one specific black man… It was white vs police brutality, which we suffer less from any way you cut it. I DID think the title was intentionally done in a buzz feed attention whore style when I read it but it doesn't change the fact that sitting quietly while fellow Americans are abused is a form of silent acceptance. I'm surrounded by white people who don't understand why these people are upset… That's a problem and maybe if more white people simply stated there is a racial problem others would pay attention, open theirs eyes, vote, petition, etc.
+Paul Spoerry
Didn't you see the clip where the tazer wires were trailing off the cop and the leads were stuck in him. Unless it went off in the struggle (which shouldn't have happned in the first place, and is assult as much as shooting the officer), and the cop got hit unintentionally. Even then, all the cop knows is that he has just been shot with a tazer, and Scott is the man he's struggling with.
As far as the artical on wikipedia, from what I read about the incident, the article is wrong in several areas (and I mean come on….it is wikipedia).
I have said it over and over, if you don't follow the orders of the cop, you may end up in the morgue. I seem to not have been shot in the encounters with police I have had, because I did what the cop with the gun pointed at me said to do.
If it seems that non-white people make up the majority of arrests, is it possable that non-whites commit the majority of crimes? Which is real bad if true, since they are a smaller percentage of the population (although if you lump all non-white races together, they make up a lager portion of the population than white people).
Now all that being said, do I think the guy deserved to be shot? Absolutly not. If I were the cop, I would have run the perp down and tackled the fool (assuming I still had my track and football abilities intact). However, Mr. Scott MUST share some of the responsability for his death. You can't count on someone like me being the cop. Was it worth his life to try and evade arrest? We can't ask him because he's dead.
No. I haven't seen a clip where taser wires were trailing off a cop. I saw the one where it sure looked like he went back for the taser and planted it on the dude though.
"… because I did what the cop with the gun pointed at me said to do." WHY did a cop have a firearm aimed at you?! Do tell!
Non-whites don't make up the majority of arrests: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43
…and yet have a drastically higher incarceration rate. "According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in 2010." : http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/06/incarceration-gap-between-whites-and-blacks-widens/
Perhaps when you're systemically targeted and only see a higher likelihood of facing time over something a white person would not… you run. That doesn't mean you should lose your life over it.
"However, Mr. Scott MUST share some of the responsability for his death. " That's a flawed argument. That's like saying if a drunk driver hits me and kills me I must assume some responsibility because I was in a car. I fully acknowledge he should have had to face responsibility… but not with his life.
+Paul Spoerry
"That's like saying if a drunk driver hits me and kills me I must assume some responsibility because I was in a car."
It's not the same thing though. If a drunk runs into you and kills you, you were doing absolutely nothing wrong. Mr. Scott was already doing several things wrong (and I'm not even including the thing he was being sought for).
I do agree that he shouldn't have had to pay with his life. As I said, if I were the cop, I would have run him down and tackled him, but unfortunately for Mr. Scott, I wasn't the one trying to arrest him.
As far as the 'plant' of the tazer. the officer was just securing the sceen. Mr. Scott was dead and no threat to use it again, so he just put it next to him. Seeing the part with the tazer wires in the cop, along with the other part, puts the video in a little diffrent perspective.
I had cops draw their weapons on me 3 times in my life. Once there were 6 of them all pointing their guns at me. That time I had a run in with an angry driver on my way home from work. I don't know what I did to upset him, but the road rage nut got so bent, he called the cops and told them I pulled a gun on him. When I pulled into my driveway I got swarmed by 6 cop cars. They all jumped out, guns drawn and screaming all kinds of directions at me. I just droped to the ground and put my hands straight out to the sides. After they searched me and the car (and found no gun (or anything else) They said sorry and left as fast as they came. I was left standing in the driveway stunded woundering WTF just happened.
One other time I got pulled over for a traffic stop. When the cop got to the window he took a step back, pulled his gun and ordered me out of the car. I had a switchblade comb from a costume I wore to a 50's and 60's theme party sitting on the dash. He said sorry and felt bad enough that he didn't give me a ticket.
The first time I ended up stareing down the wrong end of a cops gun was when I was a senior in High School. My buddies and I were out late and got pulled over. The driver didn't have his licence on him, but the cop wanted to be cool and cut us a break. He asked if anyone in the car had a licence so he could run that one. He wouldn't give the guy a ticket and he expected us to head straight home afterward (i think he felt high school kids shouldn't be out running around at 2:00 in the morning). My cousin sitting in the back said he had his. the cop ran it and then bid us good night. Now here is where it get screwed up.It didn't occur to us that the cop wanted my cousin to drive the car home. So when the original driver drove away, the cop pulled us right back over. Right away we realized our mistake, so we pulled over and since I was sitting in the front, I jumped out of the car to let my cousin out of the back so he could switch with the driver. Well……cops don't take too kindly to folks they just pulled over jumping out of the car. I ended up nose to barrel with Mr. Beretta. I think I hit the ground before the cop finnshed yelling at me to do so.
So as I see it, as the suspect, you have the ability to influence whether you come out of the encounter with or without holes in you. The cops have a tough enough job, no need to force them to make a split second decision on whether or not to shoot. I for one, don't want to roll the dice.