So, yesterday’s discussion about how the majority of people aren’t bad people, otherwise we couldn’t have civilization: In Baltimore in the last decade, the city had a new mayor who wanted to be the governor of Maryland. His solution, once ordinary crime fighting couldn’t reduce crime by more than 10%, was simple: if they’re brown and on the street, round’em up and jail’em overnight. This dragnet caught all sorts of people, it caught little kids, it caught elderly preachers, it caught cast members of the TV show The Wire as they were going home from a late evening of shooting (film shooting, not gun shooting, duh), it even caught a few thugs and criminals. But thing is, even this massive violation of people’s civil rights wasn’t enough, so then they cooked the books by refusing to take police reports about crimes.
So let’s recap: In Baltimore’s black neighborhoods, you had the good people, the pillars of the community, being smashed against walls and hauled off to jail on bullshit charges. And when they tried reporting real crimes, like drug dealers and robberies and assaults and such, they got brushed off.
So is it any wonder that the black neighborhoods apparently trust the Bloods and Crips to keep order more than they trust the cops? That was the most shocking thing I read in a long time:
However, another mass confrontation was averted on Tuesday only thanks to members of the notorious Bloods and Crips gangs, who teamed with community activists to push hundreds more protesters, who had demonstrated late into the evening, back to their homes as the curfew loomed.
I mean, c’mon. The cops won’t take their reports when they try to report crimes, and beat up the pillars of their community, the preachers and the elderly people who keep an eye out for crime and the people working jobs that come home late at night from those jobs, people like that… what use they gonna have for cops? Not a spit’s worth of use. The Bloods and Crips might be criminals, but at least unlike the Baltimore cops they’re criminals who aren’t interested in making the lives of honest hard working people a living hell on Earth. They’re just criminals who want to sell drugs on the streets without interference.
So now, to the right winger who wrote a comment that I refused to moderate (because then he could post anything he wants — I require moderation for your first comment):
Thing is, these people ACT LIKE “Porch Monkeys”
These people.
Dude. Why don’t you just come out and say it. “Niggers.” You know you want to.
seldom do we hear of a good black kid, or a good young man getting the treatment that these people do.
These people. Again. As explained above, the Baltimore police didn’t care who they rounded up. They rounded up anybody brown who they could find around, under the theory that if they rounded up everybody on the streets, then there would be nobody left outside to commit crimes. The dude who ran away, Freddie Gray, did have criminal convictions, but that didn’t matter. If you were black and cops came to that neighborhood you just ran, that’s how it works, ’cause the cops didn’t give a shit who they picked up and slammed into their paddy wagon, if you were on the street they were gonna get you, whether you were an elderly black preacher man, a 9 year old girl (yes, they got sued for giving a 9 year old girl a “rough ride” that broke her arm), or $4.7 million *other* cases that the city lost. Which, because Maryland law caps damages at $200,000 per incident, means that Baltimore cops brutalized at least 24 other people’s rights over the past four years — and that’s the ones that could be proven.
And not a single cop went to jail, because police officers in Maryland don’t have the same Bill of Rights as the rest of us. They have a SPECIAL Bill of Rights, one that basically outlaws disciplining police officers in any meaningful way. Which is why Maryland has a long history of brutal cops, such as the notorious Prince Georges County where a man managed to reach out for police officer’s guns while laying flat on his stomach with his arms handcuffed behind him. And neither the white nor the black power structure really cared, as long as the cops were out there keeping folks from jacking their Jag.
“Road Therapy” happens, but generally not to good citizens. Again, not saying it is right, but that is true. I found that when I quit giving them a reason to hassle me and treat me that way, the cops stopped hassling me and giving me the treatment.
How… white… of you to say that. Having had dark-skinned friends who were stopped by the cops for the crime of driving a nice car, you’ll have to forgive me for saying “bullshit”. It is a sad fact that any dark-skinned person trying to do a long distance trip in this country has to tack on 20% of their travel time to deal with police stops. There’s two laws in this country, my friend — one for white people, and one for people of color. For white people like me, an encounter with the police is a polite exercise in handing over my driver’s license. For my dark-skinned friends it’s an exercise in wondering whether they’re going to get shot down like dogs if the cop doesn’t like how they look in any way. And they’re relatively affluent teachers and engineers, not poor people in the ghetto. I can only imagine what happens down there in the ghetto. Running from the cops makes perfect sense when every encounter with a cop ends with brutality and bullshit charges.
Those to whom you are referring don’t have allies among whites, NOR AMONG WORKING BLACKS. The only group of people they have as allies are the others of their class and socioeconomic level.
You are, unfortunately, correct. So, how do they bring attention to the documented fact that they are being targeted and killed by police officers without any recourse to rule of law, especially in a state like Maryland which basically prohibits charging police officers with crimes and where even if a jury votes to convict, the judge will throw out the charges?
As I mentioned yesterday, the vast majority of people in those communities are good people. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be anybody alive there, because they’d kill each other. The notion that they’re all evil just doesn’t match the facts on the ground, nor the fact that I’m still alive. (Yes, I, a nerdy white guy, have worked census and taught school in those neighborhoods and still am alive to speak of it). But regardless of whether they deserve it or not, they’re all treated like criminals — and nobody gives a shit.
The reason those thousands of working class blacks don’t get arrested? ‘Cause they aren’t doing crimes. Same reason I don’t get arrested or hassled. I’m not a criminal. I don’t do crimes, don’t dress like a “Yo”, I don’t act like one…..and I don’t get treated as one.
How… white… of you to say that. But as was documented above, Baltimore police targeted *anybody* with black skin — even employed people going home from work — without any semblance of respect for fundamental basic civil rights. It was a “round up the usual suspects” exercise where they didn’t care that they were rounding up cast members of a nationally famous television show, preachers, 9 year old girls, 83 year old ladies, whatever… they were all just niggers, so they all deserved it, right? Right?!
– Badtux the “I love the smell of white racist roasting in the evening” Penguin
“‘Road Therapy’ happens, but generally not to good citizens.”
So… if a black man on the street beats to death a white man, who it turns out was an embezzler, then the black man did a service to society and should be appreciated? All conservatives will think the black man is a hero?
No. You commit a crime, you pay the penalty. REGARDLESS of who you are. REGARDLESS of who your victim was. If the cops do that to Hannibal Lector, they should be sitting in the cell Hannibal would have sat in. For just as long.
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It’s laughable how the “good” person with the gun argument the NRA always trots out whenever white folks are getting massacred is AWOL. Visions of Black Panthers with the ability yo defend themselves must cause the leadership of the ammo-sexuals to wet their pants in fear.
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Since 9/11, every politician in America has been flattering the cops. It’s time for that to change. The job of the police is to protect people and keep the peace. It’s time for everyone to start saying that they’re just not good at their job.
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But according to the Denver chief recently (paraphrased) ‘the primary job of the police is officer safety’.
It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than what we’ve seen lately to even begin dragging his view back to ‘serve and protect’.
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I’ve probably posted this link before, but it bears repeating: “This Is What Happens When You Call The Cops.” It’s one of the few rap songs I can stand to listen to all the way through. I wish your reich-wing would-be commenthater would click on the link, because he could see that a lot of the people whose rights were getting violated or they all were getting shot were WHITE. But racists don’t do much follow-up after they’ve dropped their word-turds in a place.
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