The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[Eddie Teach]

I've noticed hard right people seem to think the George Floyd bodycam footage completely backs up their side.
Any idea of their attempts at logic here?

The relationship between resisting arrest and use of force by the police.

My interpretation is that their argument is that if you don't comply with police orders and are not completely subservient, everything they do to you is your own fault. And if you've committed a crime or have prior convictions you have no rights anyways.

I think it would help to know who Tyr is talking about.

[Sheilbh]

Not quite a BLM issue but this seemed like the most appropriate place for this story:

Belgian police officer made 'Nazi' salute in cell of man who died
Slovakian citizen Jozef Chovanec died after being held in cell at Charleroi airport in 2018


A video image shows a police officer apparently giving a Nazi salute while Jozef Chovanec was held down. Photograph: VRT
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Published on Thu 20 Aug 2020 19.17 BST

The Belgian government has been urged to investigate the death of a man in police custody after an officer sat on his rib cage for 16 minutes and another apparently made a Nazi salute.

Jozef Chovanec, a 38-year old Slovakian citizen, was arrested at Charleroi airport in February 2018 after causing a disturbance while boarding a flight to Bratislava. Taken to a cell, he started banging his head against a wall, causing bleeding.

On Wednesday video images emerged showing how he was pinned down in the cell by six police officers. One officer sat on his rib cage for 16 minutes, according to Het Laatse Nieuws, which obtained the footage.

The officers laughed "exuberantly" while one danced and made a Nazi salute, according to a doctor's report. A blanket was over Chovanec's face for some time. Chovanec died in hospital the following day.

His wife, Henrieta Chovancova, has said the killing of George Floyd in the US in May was reminiscent of her husband's death. "When [the police] saw the blood, they should have given him first aid. Instead they sat on him with so many people. He couldn't breathe properly," she said.

She fears the case is being covered up and has called for a new judge to be appointed.

A spokesperson for Charleroi's public prosecutor, which has been investigating the case for two and half years, told Belgian media there had been "a delay" because of the coronavirus pandemic, but said all the officers involved had been interviewed.

A police source told the regional paper Sudpresse that the officer who appeared to make the Nazi salute would be dismissed.

On Thursday the number two federal police official, André Desenfants, said he was temporarily leaving his post until an investigation had been carried out.

An autopsy found Chovanec had not taken drugs or alcohol, and his family do not know the reason for his behaviour at the airport. He commuted between Slovakia and Belgium, where he ran an agency recruiting Slovakian workers to work on construction sites.

On Thursday the mayor of Charleroi, Paul Magnette, called on the interior minister, Pieter De Crem, to examine the case. "I am, like so many people, shocked by the images in the press," tweeted Magnette, who is also leader of Belgium's francophone Socialist party. "This behaviour is unacceptable. As for the federal police, under the authority of the minister of interior I am asking the latter to do everything to shed light on these acts."

[Zoupa]

It takes a special kind of people to be cops I guess.

[Tonitrus]

It takes a special kind of people to be cops I guess.

Maybe.  The ability to have power over others can definitely attract the wrong type...but also as a society, we've generally have not given much value to the policeman as a profession to either hold the qualifications to a high standard (or perhaps, the right kind of standards), or make it such as to attract the right kind of applicant we would all like to see in that kind of position of authority.

Tied with that, my impression of the hiring process in most (US) jurisdictions is that the hiring/selection process is very insular to the relevant police department...in that they control it almost entirely in-house, allowing them to consciously or unconsciously choose applicants who are "like them", and thus perpetuating the cycle.  I tend to think a lot of ground could be made in taking police hiring completely or mostly outside of the police department itself. Or, if we'd like to have more citizen review...have applicants interviewed, and approved by a panel of citizens* of the relevant jurisdiction.



*Though my cynical self will tend to think those would end up being either filled mostly by jaded activists, busybodies, or go the way of jury pools...filled by a bunch of folks that don't really want to be there or the only people they could force to be there.

[Sheilbh]

Latest video from Kenosha is awful

[Josquius]

]

I think it would help to know who Tyr is talking about.

Nobody here (I think?).
Just around social media you see it a fair bit.

[Maladict]

Latest video from Kenosha is awful

Apparently his kids were in the back of the car

[merithyn]

Latest video from Kenosha is awful

Apparently his kids were in the back of the car

Initial reports look grim. He was separating two women from fighting when the police arrived. How the hell did he end up getting shot?

[HVC]

He ignored the cops and got into his car.

*edit* to clarify, not saying he deserved to get shot for doing that. its just the action that occurred leading to his getting shot.

[merithyn]

The cop that shot him was yanking on his shirt from behind. It strikes me as a really bad time to be flailing around with a gun.

And why on earth was he even being addressed by the cops in the first place? He's trying to break up a fight, the cops arrive, and he tries to leave. What, did he get mouthy with the cop, so the cop got testy with him? Told him not to go anywhere?

I'm just trying to wrap my brain around how the guy was ever in any kind of trouble at all. Like, why did the cops even tell him not to leave? What was the cause for that?

Way more questions than answers right now, I guess. Have to let the investigation play out.

[merithyn]

I admit that I don't know a lot about how police are trained, or what they're taught regarding conflict resolution. So I have questions.

If it's determined that the major issue with why police respond with deadly force more often than we'd like is due to how they're trained, how long would it take for any real change to happen? For instance, I think the general sentiment is that police are taught to always be on the look out to avoid being shot, so they are always on the defense. If the training changes to more conflict resolution as the first and best option, how long before we would see the rewards of that training?

I mean, if cops are taught to always be on guard, a handful of classes on conflict resolution isn't going to fix that way of thinking in a week, a month, or even a year, I wouldn't think. We've been training our officers this way for decades. Seedy had talked about it from when he was on the force 30 years ago. On top of that, we've militarized them, which has also given them a defensive posture instead of a conciliatory one.

But it won't be fixed overnight. So what is enough now? What is the recommendation to get us over this hump and fewer people killed while this new training - assuming its implemented - actually impacts citizens?

[Zoupa]

If you take all the necessary steps now, a culture change usually takes a generation, historically. So 20-30 years.

Good luck down there.

[Syt]

[Sheilbh]

What's kind of astonishing about that is there's no apparent impact of lockdown in most states in March/April which is weird because you'd expect that would have an impact on crime and just police/public interactions. So in South Africa, for example, they had fewer deaths than normal while they were in lockdown because of its effect on crime and violence.

[Razgovory]

I admit that I don't know a lot about how police are trained, or what they're taught regarding conflict resolution. So I have questions.

If it's determined that the major issue with why police respond with deadly force more often than we'd like is due to how they're trained, how long would it take for any real change to happen? For instance, I think the general sentiment is that police are taught to always be on the look out to avoid being shot, so they are always on the defense. If the training changes to more conflict resolution as the first and best option, how long before we would see the rewards of that training?

I mean, if cops are taught to always be on guard, a handful of classes on conflict resolution isn't going to fix that way of thinking in a week, a month, or even a year, I wouldn't think. We've been training our officers this way for decades. Seedy had talked about it from when he was on the force 30 years ago. On top of that, we've militarized them, which has also given them a defensive posture instead of a conciliatory one.

But it won't be fixed overnight. So what is enough now? What is the recommendation to get us over this hump and fewer people killed while this new training - assuming its implemented - actually impacts citizens?

Can't say that Seedy didn't see this coming.  He said those idiots would get him killed or in jail and he was 100%.