MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
|
|
|
From the Readers
- barefooted 10 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 12 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
Creative corner
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
From the Dagbloggers
- Michael Wolraich 1 year 4 weeks ago
- Danny Cardwell 3 years 3 months ago
- Doctor Cleveland 4 years 1 month ago
- PeraclesPlease 4 years 2 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 4 years 2 months ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 2 months ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 2 months ago
- Doctor Cleveland 4 years 3 months ago
- Doctor Cleveland 4 years 4 months ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 4 months ago
Hits of the Day
Park Police killed a young man in Virginia. Since then, four months of silence.
By artappraiser on Sun, 04/01/2018 - 11:51pm |By The Editorial Board @ WashingtonPost.com, April 1
NEARLY 1,000 people were killed by police in America last year, but extremely few of them under circumstances remotely resembling those surrounding the death of Bijan Ghaisar, a young man fatally shot by U.S. Park Police in November just outside the District. Ghaisar was unarmed. He had no known mental illness. And to all appearances — a clear dash-cam video shows two Park Police officers opening fire at him — there was no reason police should have drawn their weapons, let alone pointed them at him, to say nothing of pulling the trigger.
[....]
Official silence is no longer acceptable. A man is dead. Why?
URL:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/park-police-killed-a-young-man-in-virginia-since-then-four-months-of-silence/2018/04/01/24367d0e-2c81-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html
- Add new comment
- 3908 reads
Comments
Given current events, it is not unreasonable for a driver to fear for his/ her life if the police want to pull you over. Similar fears are expressed when parents of students of color voice safety concerns when support for more armed officers or arming teachers is mentioned. Many citizens do not feel that the police are our friends. A protestor in Sacramento was struck by a police vehicle. The involved officer has not been named and no charges have been filed. Police are not trusted. It should also be noted that in the murder of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, the original police chief lied and said that there was no footage of the incident. The new police chief released video. Sterling was shot six times despite being pinned to the ground. The police used profanity and threatened to shoot the pinned Sterling before pulling the trigger. Despite the video, Sessions’ DOJ and the Louisiana States Attorney found no wrongdoing on the behalf of the police.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 7:59am
I thought this stood out from all the others because there has been no response at all, good bad or indifferent, so much so that WaPo's editorial board feels the need to point that out!
As to fear of the police, to be honest with you, I was taught since I was a little kid to be afraid of them. My father was afraid of them, and he was white and once had pretty racist tendencies. And not only that, his work meant that he often dealt with their labor union on the other side of the table, representing the taxpayers. Yet, he was very afraid of being stopped by police while driving and he taught us all of us kids to have that fear deep in our bones. To even fear getting a parking ticket. To fear having a record. Just to fear the authorities in general, like a social worker or a tax man, too. I think it might have been because he was both in the army, which he loathed, and a hunter, and knew the feeling of having a firearm when you are in actuality an insecure individual. And he also knew a lot about the competence of the people employed by the city. I know how that can affect a person's life, it did his.
by artappraiser on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 9:34pm
We have to change laws to take into consideration the fear citizens have of agents of the state. This includes fear of the police. Fear causes you to flee whether you are guilty or not. Running should not be a death sentence. It is sad when avoiding the police is a primary method that people use to survive. Calling the police in certain nonlethal situations can only worsen the environment. Calling the police for a relative with mental issues can result in a death.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 9:55pm
See this RMRD...
California Eyes Lethal Force Law After Shootings by Police
U.S. News & World Report-7 hours ago
by oldenGoldenDecoy on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 10:10am
Thx for the link. This will be a long battle. Cities seem willing to pay millions for “bad shoots” rather than initiate reforms. Police unions block even minor changes.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 10:31am
Then there's hippie and puno days and knowing the police an and will say anything, incliding planting evidence and making stuff up and having police buddies testify. Get in a car and they can do most anything, to driver and passenger alike. Out late? Dangerous. And if you report a crime? They're often more interested in what you might be doing illegal, including pot or whatever, than investigating your complaint. Trust a guy w a gun? Hardly. They're necessary, but I'm wary.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 12:17am
well as long as we are throwing out examples, there's the light-bulb emoji moment I had circa 2004 when on an online news bulletin board I was struggling with everyone's attitude towards me changing when I accepted the role of moderator and my friend, a self-described dyke from Chicago, explained it to me in a private message: nobody likes a cop, arta. Doh.
by artappraiser on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 1:49am
I suppose, but that pales compare to reporting an attempted rape, and the big concerns were "what were you wearing?" (a punk leather jacket and long skirt) and "why were you walking home on a well-lit boulevard late at night" (I.e. when the bars in the college strip a mile away close). 45 minutes later they got around to looking for the attacker. Or a policeman who backs into my car, but if I want to report it, he'll have to charge me for destroying city property. Too much of their behavior is of self-entitled dicks, and it shows. I kept waiting for police to stand up with the BLM and Kaepernick protests, but they seemed to only care about protectung their perks and mythical position in our society, never acknowledging that shooting and abusing unarmed people in the street kills respect & cooperation, and invites retaliation. Okay, we get some dancing cop videos that go viral, but they're way too few to stanch the disgust.
As for your point, a) Americans never like being told what to do, by anybody, and b) we're pretty used to seeing tiny amounts of power go to people's heads, so this might have been part pre-emptive of them. Or they were just jerks.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 8:17am
A Supreme Court case appears to give “qualified immunity” to officers who shoot citizens who police consider threats. The case involved the shooting of a woman holding a knife, but not making a threatening move. The police shot the woman 4 times and wounded her unarmed roommate. The roommate can’t sue for being shot by police because the police have “qualified immunity”
https://www.theroot.com/supreme-court-deals-major-blow-to-fight-against-police-1824289532
Those with more legal experiences can point out any flaws in how I look at the decision.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 4:07pm