And another damn senseless police shooting. Idiots.

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/13/2019 - 3:51pm |

URL:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/atatiana-jefferson-killed-by-police-fort-worth-texas_n_5da24aa5e4b02c9da04b6142

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Heartbreaking. More and more, I think the problem is that too many of them take the motto "to protect and serve" to mean protecting and serving themselves. Which is why it has become a joke. One thing I know: the syndrome ain't gonna get better by having more guns everywhere.

by artappraiser on Sun, 10/13/2019 - 5:00pm

Heck, I'm scared of them! I'm scared of them even when they are trying to help, my heart beats a little faster, I don't trust them.

by artappraiser on Sun, 10/13/2019 - 5:03pm

"Don't Tase Me, Bro" already seems quaint.

by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/13/2019 - 5:04pm

This murder by police happened down the road from the murder committed by Amber Guyger.

[Stop this - I post a news piece, and you use it to launch back into what you wrote last week. It's effing boring and tedious and degrades the site. Next time I just delete, no questions asked. Rest of your botherome litany left intact below. - PP]

There was surprise when Guyger was convicted. This cop may go free. The Dallas police may be telling the truth about the murder of Joshua Brown, but there should be an independent review. If the Dallas assistant chief of police had to begin with reasons that his officers should not be considered suspects when a witness was murdered, his police department's credibility is trash.

by rmrd0000 on Sun, 10/13/2019 - 8:00pm

Do what you feel you need to do.

I said that the Forth Worth cop might get away with murder. It now turns out that he didn't identify himself before murdering Atatiana Jefferson. He might actually be convicted.

Video from the cop’s body-camera as he roamed the backyard with a flashlight at 2:30 a.m captures him hollering “Put your hands up. Show me your hands” and then — almost immediately — firing his gun into Jefferson’s window.

Fort Worth police acknowledged Sunday that the cop never identified himself as a police officer before he fired. Along with the video, police released a fuzzy photo of a gun, apparently found in a bedroom, but did not connect it to Jefferson’s death. Their reason for releasing that photo without context provides no confidence in the department’s credibility.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/commentary/2019/10/13/the-outrageous-death-of-atatiana-jefferson-what-was-fort-worth-cop-possibly-thinking-when-he-shot/

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 7:54am

You didn't say any such thing - you mentioned it being down the street, then jumped back to the Guyger trial and the Joshua Brown killing, thoroughly discussed in prior weeks.

This current comment was on-topic.

by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 9:08am

From March 13, good piece rounding up who has done work on the problem with good links:

Police officers convicted for fatal shootings are the exception, not the rule

Since 2005, research shows that only 35 officers have been convicted of a crime related to an on-duty fatal shooting.

By Janell Ross @ NBC.com

In Florida, a grieving family and activists interested in greater police accountability called an all-white jury’s decision to convict a former police officer in the shooting death of a black motorist a victory for justice.

The officer’s conviction can also be described as something else: extremely rare.

Each year in the United States, somewhere between 900 and 1,000 people are shot and killed by police, said Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University’s criminal justice program. Stinson leads the university’s Police Integrity Research Group in gathering data and looking for patterns in police shootings, police arrests and how juries, prosecutors and judges respond.

“None of these cases, cases involving police shootings, is ever easy or exactly the same,” Stinson told NBC BLK. “But today, an officer gets on the stand and says 'I feared for my life,' and that’s usually all she wrote. No conviction, more often than that, no charges at all.”

Stinson is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on police conduct and accountability, creating one of the first datasets tracking police arrests, convictions and shootings. His work with The Washington Post helped to generate a database of every police shooting in the United States during specific years, leading to stories that won the paper a Pulitzer Prize.

“You can not improve policing or public safety if you do not understand what policing looks like, how it works in every community, and the public is not well informed,” Stinson said. “I think the best thing that may have come out of the data we’ve been gathering is that people used to think of these shootings as one-offs. If this is not happening to you, to your family, it’s only in the aggregate that you really see the problem. And there is a problem.” [....]

continues with lots more

by artappraiser on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 1:11am

But do the police themselves ever see this as a blackmark, huge negative PR that they should counter in more and more effective ways? Instead it's usually press conferences ass deadpan as Joe Friday from the 60's, "Just doing our job, ma'am". The deflect-and-denigrate the right including the police used with #TakeAKnee was disgusting, but largely worked - "America's great as it is, protest demeans the troops, let's play ball." With the police, grantees of si much excess Iraq War eqpt, default revered extensions of the military. Now the clubs have extended the no-free-protest stance to Make China Great Again. Funny when people jumped to Nike's defense to assume Avenatti was guilty (wouldn't be a DoJ incentive to shut him up, would there?) - used to be worry about sweatshops in Vietnam, now it's championing American industry - "Just Fuck It", the new jaded slogan for our times. Pick your side, and push it, no nuance need apply.

by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 1:26am

Just ran across this you posted looking for something else

"POLICE LIVES MATTER" RUN FROM KOSOVO

by artappraiser on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 2:34am

Yeah, all r bases r belong to Moscow. You'd think someone wld care.

by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 4:14am

The rapid response from the Forth Worth PD

(CNN)A concerned neighbor called police at 2:23 a.m. to check on the woman across the street because her front door was open. At 2:30 a.m., she would be dead.

A white police officer shot and killed Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, a 28-year-old black woman, through her window early Saturday morning in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say he did not identify himself as an officer before shooting.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/13/us/fort-worth-shooting-what-we-know/index.html?no-st=1571066721

Edit to add:

The officer involved in the homicide resigned

The Fort Worth police chief says a white officer accused in the fatal shooting of a black woman in her home has resigned.

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article236197533.html

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 2:15pm

- Who the hell calls the cops at 2AM saying "the neighbor's door is open"...?

- Who got the call at the PD and did they ask questions, like, did you see any intruder or hear anything? Did you knock on the door and ask if they are OK? Suggest you do so and call us back. PD dispatch to neighbor- "We do not dispatch for doors ajar at 2 AM".

- What did the incurious dispatcher tell the cops? Since nobody calls for just an open door, I suspect the telephone operator called it a "another Code 8", which could be a 'crime in progress, 'suspicion of break and entry'

- Stupid gun wielding reckless cop goes snooping around looking for "the criminal", without knocking on the door or calling out, infiltrates back yard.

and you know the rest. Failure at every level, ending with a man unqualified to carry a weapon or be a cop.

by NCD on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 6:33pm

thank you. I think that all of what you said would be the obvious conclusion to most, except maybe some who come bring a preconceived narrative about this kind of tragic event. Barney Fife syndrome all around, including the fear factor. Neighbor afraid to do the sensible thing, cop afraid too; a big part of this, though, is reading about gun victims everyday, don't you think?

by artappraiser on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 9:18pm

The neighbor is not at fault.

The officer did not identify himself as a police officer. He fired within seconds of shouting "Put up your hands. Show me your hands"

The officer is now arrested and charged with murder

FORT WORTH — A former Fort Worth police officer was arrested and charged with murder on Monday, authorities said, after he fatally shot a woman while she was at home playing video games this weekend in a case that sparked outrage and renewed demands for police accountability.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/fort-worth-police-officer-charged-murder.html

The involved officer and the Fort Worth police department are at fault. If you think that your neighbor is being robbed, you do not walk across the street to knock on her door.

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 10:40pm

Yes, there are times/places checking on your neighbor could be risky.

Non-paywalped version of the murder charges -at least proper charging happened here, which certainly does send a strong signal:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5da50dd7e4b01c76560b86c7

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 12:44am

A door ajar does not mean your neighbors are being robbed.

by NCD on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 1:40am

No, but it might be quite unusual, and we don't know how dangerous the neighborhood is. It wasn't a totally unreasonable option, tho now the guy totally regrets calling of course.

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 3:07am

The most rational to do thing now is to get to know your neighbors and exchange numbers. If something strange is observed, call your neighbor to verify their safety.Calling the police is the more risky option.

As Michael Harriott somewhat facetiously notes

If you think someone might be burglarizing my home, do not call the police. Because they might shoot me like they did 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson. Or 23-year-old Brendon Hester. Or 22-year-old Stephon Clark. My television isn’t worth dying over.

If you love our people and believe black lives matter, then, by definition, you should be anti-cop.

As a black man, there is no imaginable scenario where the presence of law enforcement officers will make me safer. If my car breaks down, send a tow truck. I could wind up being shot and killed like Corey Jones, Jonathan Ferrell or Andrew Thomas. If I have a mental health emergency call a helpline or I might be slaughtered like Charleena Lyles, Quintonio LeGrier or Anthony Hill. If I look like I’m lost, just give me directions, because the police could shoot me like they did Ricky Hayes or taser me to death like they did Eurie Lee Martin. Even if I won’t wake up, slap the shit out of me because cops might decide to use 55 bullets, as they did with Willie McCoy.

https://www.theroot.com/if-you-love-me-do-not-call-the-police-1839039292

by rmrd0000 on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 7:48am

Agreed. Will the police realize they have more than a tiny problem, that they've largely blown it, whatever the bigger problem they think has taken priority, that I suppose they assume they've been handling well?

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 8:08am

From Eugene Robinson

This is a serious question: What can a black person do to keep from getting killed by police in this country?

Driving-while-black has long been potentially a capital offense, as witnessed by the case of Philando Castile, who was shot to death. Driving-while-black got Walter ScottTasered, but it was running-away-while-black that got him fatally shot in the back. Walking-while-black is what attracted attention to Michael Brown, who was also shot to death. Standing-while-black was enough to get Eric Garner choked to death.

Now it appears that staying-home-while-black is also such a threatening activity that might kill you for it.

That is what happened last year to Botham Jean, who was sitting in his Dallas apartment when off-duty officer Amber Guyger burst in and killed him. And it’s what apparently happened Saturday to Atatiana Jefferson, who was playing video games with her nephew in her Fort Worth home when a officer fired through a window and shot her dead.

The officer who gunned down Jefferson is white, but the racism in these killings — and it is racism, pure and simple — has less to do with the color of the perpetrators than that of the victims. After all these high-profile incidents, after all the consciousness-raising and all the soul-searching, black lives still are simply not valued the way white lives are. In too many departments, officers still are being enculturated to see persons of color as both threatening and disposable. From what we know at this point, the killing of Jefferson was unjustified by any imaginable standard.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-can-a-black-person-do-to-keep-from-getting-killed-by-police-in-this-country/2019/10/14/28ab0ea8-eeb9-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 11:02pm

Walking 2 guys in the middle of the road while black is what attracted the police - responding to his shoplifting alert - to Michael Brown. I don't see what is gained by lumping in hooligan behaviour with cases of pure victim innocence in their homes and indefensible police behaviour. Don't we want to keep the light focused on these police actions, not muddy the waters?

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 12:36am

I predicted that you would focus on Michael Brown. The waters are not muddied. The important message is that the police are not trusted and that they have earned that status. The episode exposed the Ferguson police department used black citizens as a piggy bank. The Brown homicide exposed that the department was trash.

The fact that Michael Brown is used as shorthand for police abuse and that the Dallas police have to say that their officers are not responsible for the murder of a witness speaks volumes. The police are seen as an occupying force. The mud is created by police behavior.

by rmrd0000 on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 8:06am

A dumbfuck that steals ciggies and hits a shopowner and runs down the middle of the street is not the poster child you're looking for. He's the type I want police to apprehend, just not kill or abuse.

The NAACP chose Rosa Parks over another girl because she didn't have any moral issues (out of wedlock pregnancy). If only the movements of today we're that careful and strategic, rather than "anything goes".

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 1:22pm

No one trusts police to do independent investigations. Police are out of control.

(CNN)A former Georgia police officer was found not guilty of murder Monday more than four years after he killed a naked, unarmed black man who was mentally ill.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/us/anthony-hill-robert-olsen-trial-not-guilty/index.html

The then off-duty Chicago cop who fired his gun out of his car window, striking and killing Rekia Boyd, an innocent bystander, now wants all evidence of the criminal case filed against him cleared from the public record.

https://www.theroot.com/chicago-cop-who-quit-force-after-shooting-and-killing-r-1839043333

People are fed up

After a police officer killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown five years ago this month in Ferguson, Mo., protests there rocked the nation, leading to a public outcry over race and policing. People were outraged to learn that municipalities throughout St. Louis County had been issuing traffic tickets to finance city services — and jailing drivers who could not afford to pay — with black residents bearing the brunt of those policies.

Five years later, black drivers continue to be stopped at much higher rates than white drivers, a disparity that has actually grown in Ferguson despite changes — including a new state law — that have greatly reduced the number of traffic tickets, fines and arrest warrants issued.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/black-drivers-traffic-stops.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

The dislike for police creates a situation where the actions of Michael Brown really don't matter. The police are hated. Anything goes for the police, so anything goes for the community. Playing nice did not save lives. Police abuse continued. It is on police departments to change the dynamic.

As rapped by NWA, "Fuck Tha Police"

https://genius.com/Nwa-fuck-tha-police-lyrics

by rmrd0000 on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 2:18pm

Double down on that Michael Brown fella.
I hear Jeffrey Epstein was a nice guy and Harvey Weinstein was a helluva producer.

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 6:04pm

The BLM movement is the worse planned worst strategy movement I've seen in my lifetime. They really should look at Act Up to come up with a better strategy going forward. Act up was just so smart using their small numbers for the most effect. Every group should study how they did it.

by ocean-kat on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 7:47pm

No one trusts police to do independent investigations.

Not a new thing. The movie Serpico came out in 1973, made Al Pacino a star. As I recall the phenomenon, us kids didn't have to apologize to the parents for calling them pigs anymore. Power corrupts, and police got it. I haven't seen protest do much to solve the problem. Investigative journalism can, though. And whistle blowers. Which means fair treatment of stories rather than sensationalizing them. The more you push them all as one with angry rhetoric, the more they are going to retreat into a tribal band of brothers. It's got to be broken from inside the tribe.The more protestors push "us vs. them" tribal memes, the worse they will get. Because when that happens, someone good who goes into policing, they'd rather stand by their nasty "brother" as the only thing keeping anarchy at bay.

by artappraiser on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 8:59pm

And another damn senseless police shooting. Idiots.

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