So, we have an unarmed dude, Terence Crutcher, who seemed somewhat intoxicated and wasn’t obeying police very well. From looking at the helicopter footage, it appears that he had his hands up but wobbled as he approached his car, and as he gets to the car is pretty much passing out against his car, with one hand going in the back window. From the dash cam, it appears he gets lit up by the taser, starts slumping but his hand in the window keeps him from going down, and then the short cop shoots him in the head, pretty much instantly killing him.
Now, I must admit to being pretty much old school. My dad’s shop was a few blocks from the local police headquarters, and a lot of his customers were cops. I grew up around cops and cops’ kids. That was back in the day when cops in my city were big Irish bruisers who often had a juvenile record for getting into fights that they won a bit too handily, and they knew how to take care of themselves in a fight.
Now, if you had two big Irish bruisers of my childhood’s era responding to this scene, here’s what would have happened. When he started slumping against his car one of them would have grabbed Terence and slammed him to the ground like a WWL wrestler, then both of them would have whaled on Terence for a while with their billy clubs until their arms got tired. Then they would have searched Terence’s unconscious body and, once finding no weapon, they would have cuffed him and called for an ambulance. Yeah, these big Irish paddies of my youth weren’t exactly pacifists. They weren’t particularly nice people either, they were racist and brutal. But: They knew what their job was, and they were pretty damn good at doing it without killing people who didn’t need killing.
And Terence Crutcher didn’t need killing. And wouldn’t have been killed if it wasn’t for the fact that so many of today’s cops are pussies. They rely on that technological bullshit, tasers and pepper spray, and don’t know what to do other than shoot someone if the tasers and pepper spray don’t work — which they don’t, a lot of the time (thus why I am scathing towards those who criticize cops for shooting dudes who are coming at them with a knife… “the police should have used a taser!”…. uhm, no, someone high or crazy enough to charge a cop with a knife in his hand is unlikely to be stopped by a taser).
We need the PR-24 back, and cops who know how to use it, and cops who know how to handle themselves in a fight. This politically correct bullshit where we hire cops who are pussies because we don’t want racist brutal cops like the cops of my youth just isn’t working. Because the institution of policing is racist in our country, it doesn’t stop the racist crap from happen, all it means is that when cops do racist crap, there’s more dead bodies because they end up resorting to their guns rather than their billy clubs. Even if I take the cops’ statements at face value (which is hard to do given the contradictory video evidence, but still), Terence Crutcher would likely still be alive if this had happened in my childhood, because the cops back then would have slammed his butt on the ground and given him a ass-kicking with their billy clubs rather than shoot him. Sometimes progress ain’t. And note that I haven’t said anything about how the cop who shot this dude literally had a pussy, because it’s pretty much irrelevant. I’ve met some bad-ass women in my time. This woman wasn’t, but a whole lot of her male coworkers are missing their badassitude too. And people end up dying because of that.
– Badtux the Politically Incorrect Penguin
In these incidents, I keep hearing cops and others saying, “He could have done this–he could have had a weapon–he could have been a black belt in every discipline–he could have tripled in size and turned green.” Shit like that. Followed by, “A cop has to protect himself.”
A rule of thumb that would lead to cops murdering each and every citizen on sight. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.
You don’t arrest people because of their capacity to commit a crime. And you certainly don’t fucking shoot them because of some fear inside your puny head. When you’re a cop, you have to wait for a crime to happen, or if you can intervene to stop a potential one, you don’t intervene with deadly force.
One of my grandfathers was a cop who single-handedly walked in on a bank robbery and arrested five. It was one of the only times he drew his revolver in the line of duty. What we seem to have now is a collection of 8-year-old schoolyard bullies in cop uniforms and grown-up bodies, with deadly weapons they don’t really understand.
“You don’t arrest people because of their capacity to commit a crime.”
Oh, it’s coming Nangleator, it’s coming. Just do a search on ‘crime precognition’ or ‘predictive policing’ or ‘future crime’ or ‘precognition software’.
And I’m sure I’ve missed a few search options.
How’s about this for a rule: if a cop kills an unarmed civilian, then immediate discharge. No exceptions. Reinstate, maybe, just maybe, only if he can prove there was danger. Community civilians on the review board, with a veto. Bottom line: end a life, lose your living.
For who shall police the police?
The shooter has been charged w manslaughter, which suggests this was a very, very “bad shoot”, as bad as the video suggests. I’m guessing that no material evidence suggesting some of the exculpatory stories spread about PCP were true was found, either.
Mind you…the bar is set pretty high to convict.
My point was that *EVEN IF WE ACCEPTED EVERYTHING THE COPS AS TRUE* (which clearly it wasn’t, the videos seem to contradict it and the shooter being charged is sorta a “tell”), Terence Crutcher would be alive if this encounter had been in my childhood. Maybe bloodied, maybe even hospitalized, but alive. And the difference is both an institutional and cultural difference that we ought to think about.