@IceStationZebra #
Clearly that didn’t happen with Chauvin so you’re wrong.
What didn’t happen with Chauvin? His 18 known disciplinary actions which somehow failed to get him taken off the street? Or getting shuffled around to save face which probably would have happened if this didn’t get such a high profile and by now is far too late? They decided to give him a very patronizing punishment until the intensification of the protests made them punish him for real but this was more a political move and a cookie to throw to quiet the people they were treating like noisy children. None of this was addressing the point.
And the level of police brutality never justified trashing up your town over it.
Nah, we white people save that for when when we’re mad about taxes or our team wins or loses at the big game. And despite that being an annual thing (or even more frequent) we don’t seem to ever prepare for that as a source of chaos or demonize the participants nearly so much in the aftermath as these protests.
When you actually look at the numbers:
1. there’s no racism
2. there’s no “white privilege”, police will kill a defiant white criminal just as easily
Funny how you invoke numbers but don’t actually give them. Also funny that you jumped from “druggies deserve to die, let’s ignore dirty cops because numbers” to avoiding defending that statement and focusing on the racial disparity even though I hadn’t explicitly mentioned it until just now. But hey if you want to make this not about conduct and all about race (in the process admitting you’re presuming and attributing negative conduct to race) let’s roll with that. How exactly do numbers prove there’s no racism? For one thing as a blanket statement, that’s almost hilariously naive if not infuriatingly bald-faced lying. Are you measuring reported acts of racism against fucks given? Because we’re coming up with different figures here.
But if you want to throw numbers around here’s something to consider: When you compare fatal police shootings of white people to those of blacks the measurement of time is minutes compared to seconds. Shots fired in the single digits to the dozens including reloading a gun to shoot a dead body. Chances to stand down? You are unlikely to hear of a case where police didn’t issue warnings and verbal commands before opening fire on someone unaware even of their presence if they’re white while that happens to be something of an issue for black people. When you compare the amount of time it takes for an internal review of whether or not the shooting was legally justified you go from automatic within days of the incident to only after months of outside requests, protests, and uphill legal battles during which people like you spin the narrative and reversing the onus of action from “what did this person do that was threatening enough to justify an escalation of force?” to “what didn’t this person do to proactively convince the officer they’re not enough of a threat to deserve getting shot?” The burden of proof shifts from proving a crime, habeas corpus, to proving there isn’t one. From “innocent until proven guilty” to “guilty until we figure out what you’re guilty of.”
The difference in how the shooting of LaVoy Finicium was handled and how it was okay to portray the police as murderous psychopaths during that whole fiasco speaks volumes.
And where was the outrage then? I don’t mean the outrage at the shooting, there was no escaping that. I mean the outrage at the outrage! The inquiry was immediate and the FBI officer who shot him was punished despite disproving a false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative, Finicium resisting arrest, fleeing, attempting to run over officers, and finally going for his gun and the shooting ultimately being concluded as lawful. (An interesting aside, that FBI agent appears to have been the only one armed with actual bullets. The rest, despite being tasked with taking in armed and violent offenders, all had rubber bullets and tasers. I guess that FBI agent didn’t get the memo that they wouldn’t be treating these criminals as criminals.) But that did’t stop the cries of “murder” and demands for restitution that you’re saying should have been good enough - retroactively, even - in the case of Chauvin’s punishment even though the point wasn’t to punish one man but to make sure that a stink this loud didn’t have to happen to punish the next. You got your cookie, but you still made noise. And notably there have been more extremely questionable police shootings since Floyd, which intensified the protests and are the only reason those shootings are talked about at all. But then again, people like you quite deliberately frame it as all being about one man. Not the dismissed thousands before, not the ones they know will be dismissed the same way after, but one man. And that this is all a childish overreaction to one man. Like the protests for Eric Garner before him. Rodney King before him. Emmet Till before him. Sitting down and taking the lumps hasn’t done shit for the last couple hundred years.
But if you don’t have the time or really don’t give enough of a shit to run through such morbid comparisons take a look at how protests for police accountability today are treated against protests against measures to contain a pandemic. Those protesting the pandemic trespass on both government and private property armed to the teeth and scream in the faces of police and restaurant employees daring them to start something so they can feel justified kicking off a bloody revolution.
And the police, dressed in plain clothes rather than riot gear, keep their hands away from their weapons and try very hard not to scowl so as not to provoke the protesters as opposed to screaming at the animals to behave themselves and prepping volleys of less-lethal ammunition at them and any nearby reporters. Wouldn’t want them to feel threatened or like they’re rights are being treated as a joke. Of the hundreds of peaceful protests nationwide for police accountability the only ones being talked about are the ones that devolved into riots and people like you work their asses off to make the word protest interchangeable with riot. The thing is at the peaceful protests the police acted like they were there for the previous category of protesters: the armed far right who demanded the right to endanger lives so they could enjoy simple leisure activities.
At BLM protests where the police weren’t handed some kind of memo that ziptie-and-flak-jacket were requirements for attendance and their stance wasn’t that they had a bunch of feral animals to corral and simply stood silently watching sometimes officers would even join in, or there’d be a spontaneous dance-off. We don’t hear about these so often, just the ones where the police went in heavy and looking for a fight even if they had to start it themselves you want to make the movement as a whole look bad. Just like how you claim we don’t hear about the good cops, just the one we want to make cops look bad. Except that you want the bad apples to spoil the barrel for one and the overwhelming majority to excuse and actively shield the bad apples for the other. As it is now I feel sorry for good cops who are made complicit covering for bad cops. They know if they “rat” out the psychos their careers are over and next time they call for backup it won’t be coming. Incidentally BLM’s demands would actually make their lives easier and safer.
But the real kicker is in how the riots you keep painting as the only thing they’re up to actually start.
It devolves into looting and breaking things after the police display the exact kind of behaviour the protests exist to draw attention to. In Minneapolis quite famously protesters were stopping and turning over to police scattered handfuls of people breaking windows, many of whom were not actually there for the protests at all and just wanted a riot to start. That is, until the police started their offensive and used tactics such as kettling to create pretenses for violence. Kettling if you don’t know is blocking off the exits but then demanding the crowd disperse, meaning if they move towards the exit they are “advancing upon” police but if they stay put they are “resisting” police. Inventing the appearance of violence either way. But if you think the people should just sit down, take the beatings and flash bangs and pepperballs to the eye waiting for the police to get tired or bored or run out of ammunition and hope the medical bills aren’t too bad or that they’re not permanently crippled just hoping the people doing all of this to them spontaneously grow consciences despite their whole reason for this show of force being to teach people not to question them at all or simply fail to control the narrative even though people like you will jump up of your own accord to do it for them if it ever falters first I’ll point out that it only take a handful of looters vs a thousand protesters who do actually lay down and take it for the protesters to get labelled as looters. Which is what happened. Second I’ll just wonder aloud if you’d have said the same thing to the original Boston Tea Party when they decided to riot and vandalize Crown property and then I’ll stress again that pretenses were being made for violence on the police end of things and again point back to the reaction to the LaVoy Finicium shooting, the entire fiasco with notable thief Cliven Bundy and his arsonist friends the Hammonds who often expressed gleeful anticipation to killing police, and how a violent reaction to police and county officials demanding they vacate the refuge they illegally occupied assaulting them and driving them off was seen as appropriate for them to do somehow.
And while I’m on the subject how about we compare the perceptions of the end goals? Bundy’s being a government handout and for the illegal shit they did to not go punished was somehow a noble crusade for their rights compared to the black community’s current demand for the actual rights they are supposed to be guaranteed by law that have been characterized quite aggressively and profanely as “privileges” to be withheld until they “deserve” them which is somehow anti-American and only meant to extort some kind of handout in the form of… better police training and not being terrified to go outside for fear that being singled out as “not belonging” in a public place will be a death sentence followed by character assassination and it being held as further “proof” that they have everything coming. You know, the thing you’re working hardest to ignore is that it’s NOT exclusively thugs being harassed by police. Every day people just trying to get on with their lives - go to work, go shopping, picking up their mail, asking for directions - and at any moment for less than no reason at all they will suddenly be held at gunpoint in mortal danger. It is assumed that they are criminals that deserve this treatment, and that they are incredibly dangerous… and it’s up to them to de-escalate except they can’t say anything without it being seen as provoking the police, can’t make any moves without it seeming hostile, and basically their resting state is considered to be “threatening” even if literally unconscious so how exactly are the supposed to de-escalate from what would be considered neutral and non-threatening for anyone else? But until the man with the gun is satisfied any wrong move, any wrong look, just the tone of their voice rubbing them the wrong way, is an excuse to put them in their place. And they want that excuse. They will push and provoke and try to create traps to give themselves that excuse. It looks good on their record to aggressively bust random people and issue fines and it’s easy when the people they shake down can’t complain without then being turned into the villains. Those who walk out of that situation alive and unbruised are no less harassed. They’ll experience it again tomorrow, probably from the same cop. As an endless parade of BBQ Becky’s and Pool Patrol Paula’s will show there are people who grievously abuse the police as a blunt instrument for the pettiest possible trolling and the cops will roll with it. Just being in sight is considered an offense and it can cost you your life. To live through that every single day is a nightmare. To be told every time you relay the story of being treated like shit that you obviously did something to deserve it and should instead be apologizing to the person who did it? Beyond a nightmare. I should know, I lived that being abused as a kid.
Can you say that if every day somebody stopped you in the sidewalk and pulled a gun on you - daring you to make them make an example of you - that you would not be up in arms? It’s funny, really, that bigots sometimes try to paint that as the life of white people in areas with whatever minority they want to scare people with. Cowering in their homes every day as thugs swagger about and everyone tells them they have no right to fight back. Because that’s what you’re demanding these people live with - and say thank you sir - for the rest of their lives or else get the fuck out. And those same people have to watch their neighbours, the assholes who SWAT them or even threaten to call the cops as a means of ending an argument they started themselves, retaliate at being held to any kind of standard let alone the high bar they set for others to deserve to live. Seriously, why the fuck is it okay to storm Subway with rocket launchers?
