The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[DGuller]

I mean, a chokehold is defined as cutting off the windpipe - if you can say "I can't breathe" then pretty much by definition you *can* breathe, since it takes air to form sounds.

Is it really defined like that?  It's a very common beginner mistake to think that choking someone means compressing their windpipe.  That's a very painful and inefficient way to choke someone.  Compressing the blood vessels is how it should be done.

[Berkut]

The weird thing about the entire "I Can't Breathe" thing is that him saying "I Can't Breathe" pretty much destroys the claim that he was in a chokehold, doesn't it?

I seems to me that "I can't breathe" can also be short form for "I am awfully sorry officer but your hold on me is severely impairing my ability to breathe such that I fear I will expire momentarily". 

Granted, but then that isn't a chokehold.

I am not saying the cops didn't do anything wrong, just that the specific charge commonly made doesn't fit my understanding of what a chokehold is, and watching the video it looks more like a headlock.

[garbon]

I've been wondering why choppers have been circling the last couple hours.

http://www.newsweek.com/thousands-protesters-expected-washington-nyc-over-police-killings-291763

Thousands of Protesters March in Washington, NYC Over Police Killings

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington on Saturday for a march to protest the killings of unarmed black men by law enforcement officers and to urge Congressto do more to protect African-Americans from unjustified police violence.

Organizers said the event and a parallel march in New York City would rank among the largest in the recent wave of protests against the killings of black males by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Cleveland and elsewhere.

Decisions by grand juries to return no indictments against the officers involved in the death of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York have put the issue of police treatment of minorities back on the national agenda.

Thousands of people assembled in Freedom Plaza, a couple of blocks from the White House, before setting off at noon on a three-mile march down Pennsylvania Avenue for a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol.

"I came out today seeking justice and also policy changing when it comes to policing all throughoutAmerica," said Aisha Wilson, 37, from Paterson, New Jersey.

The march was organized by National Action Alliance, a civil rights organization headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"We need more than just talk," Sharpton said in a statement before the march. "We need legislative action that will shift things both on the books and in the streets."

Sharpton urged Congress to pass legislation that would allow federal prosecutors to take over cases involving police. He said local district attorneys often work with police regularly, raising the potential of conflicts of interest when prosecutors investigate incidents, he said.

The Washington protest will include the families of Eric Garner and Akai Gurley, who were killed by New York police; Trayvon Martin, slain by a Florida neighborhood watchman in 2012; and Michael Brown, killed by an officer in Ferguson.

Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot to death last month by a Cleveland police officer, also attended.

Protesters are expected to arrive by bus from as far away as Florida, Connecticut and Pittsburgh, according to the organizers' website.

In New York, the march was expected to draw about tens of thousands of people and was meant to reinvigorate protests that swelled after a grand jury declined to indict the officer who killed Garner using a chokehold, organizers said.

"It's open season on black people now," New York march co-organizer Umaara Elliott said in a statement. "So we demand that action be taken at every level of government to ensure that these racist killings by the police cease."

The march was to start at 2 p.m. at Washington Square in Greenwich Village, head north to midtown and then turn downtown to end at New York Police Department headquarters in lower Manhattan.

[CountDeMoney]

"It's open season on black people now,"

derspiess says, "Where's the license application?"

WABBIT SEASON
NEGRO SEASON

[MadImmortalMan]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-12/ferguson-to-increase-police-ticketing-to-close-city-s-budget-gap.html


Oh my freaking god. Can you possibly be more out of touch. 

[CountDeMoney]

Oh my freaking god. Can you possibly be more out of touch. 

Howard Cure, head of municipal research at New York-based Evercore Wealth Management LLC, which oversees $5.2 billion, said Ferguson's reliance on revenue from police citations may have contributed to public anger after officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

"It leads to animosity and distrust that might have even spawned some of the unrest that we're seeing," Cure said.

Government dependence on police fines is a larger issue in surrounding St. Louis County, especially among its "poor" and "small" communities, Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis Municipal League, said in a telephone interview. The poverty rate in Ferguson was 22 percent in 2012, the latest year for which data is available, compared with a national average of 15 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

"They said they weren't going to go after poor people, so to speak, to fund their budget, but I guess that's changed, Fischesser said.

I think somewhere in this car wreck of a thread I posted an article on Ferguson PD's big problems, and its heavy reliance on citations to drive its municipal revenue.  That being said, it doesn't make Ferguson unique in that regard.

[Razgovory]

Pretty much every town in Missouri does that.  People want low taxes.

[Jacob]

Pretty much every town in Missouri does that.  People want low taxes.

So they delegate taxation to the discretion of the police? That sounds almost feudal.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[CountDeMoney]

Pretty much every town in Missouri does that.  People want low taxes.

So they delegate taxation to the discretion of the police? That sounds almost feudal.

Like Raz says, they don't like taxes out there.  So....if it isn't white, we must cite!

[DGuller]

[Admiral Yi]

Awesome.

[DGuller]

Awesome.

I'm done here.

[Ed Anger]

Yi wins!

[11B4V]

Yi wins!

Agreed. D-man is too much of a pacifist.