I think I found the most outrageous (non Garner) police injustice story yet

clintl said:

Yes, this seems to be a huge problem, and an area where reform in police training is badly needed. I'm not sure that it would be an unreasonable suggestion to make a degree in psychology one of the minimum requirements for becoming a police officer.

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Cops already receive training in dealing with mentally ill people. At least, some do; I know I did.

Officers deal with disturbed people almost every day. After a few years, most get pretty good at it. People who make good cops welcome such training, but actually don't need it all that much. For those who are bad cops, all the training in the world won't matter much.

Training is useful, but not the be-all and end all solution to all problems.

One of the worst, most incompetent cops I worked with had a doctorate in psychology. He was a smart guy, but unfortunately had little common sense and wasn't very good at dealing with people in stress situations.

Amadan said:

If someone becomes uncontrollably aggressive when under stress, it's functionally indistinguishable from a mental illness

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And this is another problem. It's easy to establish after the fact, but when you come upon an aggressive individual there's really no way to instantly determine whether his behavior at the time is driven by mental illness, criminality, or something else entirely, degree or no degree.

Any cop who calls a suspect a "nigger" is a racist and should have his gun, badge and job immediately taken away.

Period.

nighttimer said:

Any cop who calls a suspect a "nigger" is a racist and should have his gun, badge and job immediately taken away.

Period.

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I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing whether that actually happened in this case.

Amadan said:

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing whether that actually happened in this case.

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That's fine because I'm not confirming it did happen in this case. I'm stating what should happen to any cop who crosses that line.

But did you guys discuss the 12 year old girls dragged from her front yard by several strange, adult men and then charged with resisting arrest cause she held on to a tree?

Quite old, but probably one of the craziest I've read in recent times

Just lovely on both those counts. Obviously police get it mostly right most of the time, but perhaps they'd get more sympathy if they didn't try crap like this in so many other cases.

Amadan said:

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing whether that actually happened in this case.

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Of course we should be careful about accepting facts without substantiating them. It's possible that things didn't occur as stated. But I don't find the lack of media outcry, in itself, an indication that the version shown here isn't true. There are a lot of cases that never get a whole lot of publicity, or that fizzle out very quickly. There are people who suffer mistreatment at the hands of the police but never have their voices heard because they're not the right "type" of people who get heard, and maybe they don't feel like they can speak out to begin with.

I also think that due to a few high profile cases, the media is starting to devote more attention to things that may not have received attention in the past, or that didn't receive attention when they first occurred.

Though we shouldn't automatically assume that the claim that the cop threatened a suspect and used bigoted language is true, I don't find it at all implausible.

DancingMaenid said:

Of course we should be careful about accepting facts without substantiating them. It's possible that things didn't occur as stated. But I don't find the lack of media outcry, in itself, an indication that the version shown here isn't true. There are a lot of cases that never get a whole lot of publicity, or that fizzle out very quickly. There are people who suffer mistreatment at the hands of the police but never have their voices heard because they're not the right "type" of people who get heard, and maybe they don't feel like they can speak out to begin with.

I also think that due to a few high profile cases, the media is starting to devote more attention to things that may not have received attention in the past, or that didn't receive attention when they first occurred.

Though we shouldn't automatically assume that the claim that the cop threatened a suspect and used bigoted language is true, I don't find it at all implausible.

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This story got a fair amount of coverage, and it's a few years old but still recent enough that the "not the right type of people" theory seems unlikely. It generated a fairly large outcry because of both the autism and the racial angle - all the kid's defenders claim he was targeted, among other things, for looking like a "suspicious" black kid. They were all over social media.

So the idea that a cop pointing a gun at his head, threatening to blow his head off, and calling him a nigger, would not be repeatedly loudly and everywhere, defies belief. The idea that the Washington Post would not include that detail if provided it defies belief. The idea that all the people who talked to reporters from the Washington Post about how this kid was being mistreated would not mention that detail defies belief.

When I see such an over-the-top inflammatory detail appearing only on a website that believes every last cop is a jackbooted fascist, in a post in which it appears in the middle of a rambling unquoted, unsourced polemic, I think extreme skepticism is the only wise reaction.

Well, gee thanks for answering that part of the question to death, anyone know what happened to the cop? Anyone say anything about his actions (aside from using the N word)? Pulling a gun on the kid, his supposed injuries? The way the whole arrest was handled was not questioned? We just have to accept that the kid got railroaded and another cop goes free? Can anyone address those issues minus the argument from incredulity? I don't seem to be able to find out any of those details.

Fingers said:

Well, gee thanks for answering that part of the question to death, anyone know what happened to the cop? Anyone say anything about his actions (aside from using the N word)? Pulling a gun on the kid, his supposed injuries? The way the whole arrest was handled was not questioned? We just have to accept that the kid got railroaded and another cop goes free? Can anyone address those issues minus the argument from incredulity? I don't seem to be able to find out any of those details.

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Other than the actions that are in dispute, what did the cop do wrong?

Amadan said:

So the idea that a cop pointing a gun at his head, threatening to blow his head off, and calling him a nigger, would not be repeatedly loudly and everywhere, defies belief. The idea that the Washington Post would not include that detail if provided it defies belief. The idea that all the people who talked to reporters from the Washington Post about how this kid was being mistreated would not mention that detail defies belief.

When I see such an over-the-top inflammatory detail appearing only on a website that believes every last cop is a jackbooted fascist, in a post in which it appears in the middle of a rambling unquoted, unsourced polemic, I think extreme skepticism is the only wise reaction.

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Perhaps that is your "only wise reaction". Mine was to dig a little deeper.

Here is another account of the incident from The Huffington Post, not my favorite publication, but still somewhat of a mainstream site. However, their story might be considered even more "inflammatory."

The deputy then asked the young man to identify himself. Neli responded "I don't have to tell you my name. You're a racist, I know my rights, and you're harassing me." Then he turned and walked away. The deputy, according to Neli, grabbed him from behind and choked him. A scuffle ensued during which Neli was tased and pepper sprayed. Police said Neli took the pepper spray from the deputy and sprayed him with it. The deputy reportedly broke his ankle during the altercation for which he required surgery.

According to the official Stafford County Sheriff Department version of the incident, Neli escaped and evaded capture for 45 minutes. He was spotted shortly before 10 a.m. near the same high school. Neli said that when he was arrested, he was thrown to the ground and kicked. He said "I didn't do anything wrong!" The officers responded "You don't have to do anything wrong. Welcome to Stafford County."

Neli told his mother that after he was handcuffed, the police spit in his face and called him a nigger. One said to him "I will blow your fucking head off, nigger."

As Neli sat handcuffed in the squad car, the deputies allegedly taunted him further: "Nigger's going to jail. Nigger's going to jail. Oh yeah, you can make a Snoop Dog rap song about that." Neli said the deputies manhandled him as they were putting him in the squad car. They bent his neck, and tried to slam the car door on his ankle.

More taunting occurred during the ride to the station house, where he was interrogated. During the questioning, investigators tried to coerce Neli into admitting he had a gun. Neli made no such admission, and no gun has been found.

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The problem is, of course, we don't really know what happened. Another example of why body cameras might work.

emax100 said:

Maybe I need more kicks in the ass to be more alert about this and to be more empathetic towards others who are going through this. So be it.

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Or maybe when you read an account supplied solely by the arrested person, you might want to keep an open mind about what actually happened.

Oh, wait -- there's also his mother:

Lisa Alexander says her son has an exceptional recall of events, and it is unlikely he could have fabricated his version of the arrest.

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One of the questions I would have is why the jury, who heard all the facts, recommended 10 1/2 years.

Now it's quite possible that it happened exactly the way Neil said. It's also possible the jury was composed of "tough on crime" citizens totally lacking in either understanding of autism or empathy. And the fact remains that the criminal justice system is incredibly screwed up in some places. (Though not all.) The real question here is how the man was treated by the system after his arrest, not how well the cop handled the call.

But the automatic assumption in every case that the police are both brutal and dishonest, whereas the arrested person is innocent and truthful gets a little old.

And really, there are examples of unbelievable police conduct, up to and including actual, provable murder. The Houston PD back in the seventies was known even among other police agencies to be a cesspool of corruption and brutality.

If you want to bolster your position, you should stick to cases that really are unbelievably sickening. For example, the one of Jose Campos Torres

Torres had been arrested at a Houston bar for disorderly conduct. Six police officers took Torres to a spot called “The Hole” next to Buffalo Bayou and beat him.[1]

The officers then took Torres to the city jail, who refused to process him due to his injuries. They were ordered to take him to Ben Taub General Hospital, but instead of doing so, the officers brought him back to the banks of Buffalo Bayou and pushed him into the water. Torres’s body was found two days later . . .

. . . Officers Terry Denson and Steven Orlando were tried on state murder charges. They were convicted of negligent homicide and received one year of probation and a $1 fine.

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A recent article by the Houston Police Officer's Union admits to the facts of the crime. The only spin they managed to put on it was this:

Perched on a location about twenty feet from the oft-polluted waters of Buffalo Bayou, the six officers stood with Torres while the rookie removed the handcuffs and immediately left to answer a dispatcher's call. "Let's see if the wetback can swim," Denson said. Torres supposedly assured the officer that he could swim. Then Denson shoved him over the edge. (Contrary to many media reports, Torres was not handcuffed when he went into the water).

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http://www.hpou.org/badgeandgun/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_news&NewsID=1065

emax100 said:

I'll say this much, after I posted what I initially thought happened, part of me was thinking maybe I really was going overboard this time. If that account is even partially true, it also makes it easier to believe that the confrontation may have in fact also been partially started because this guy was approached in an overly aggressive manner and reacted as autistic people often do in those cases and the officers thought it would be entertaining to push it further in a "let's pick on the retard" kind of manner.

Thanks for making all of us aware nighttimer. I am more understanding of why you're sick of this shit than I was even a couple days ago. Maybe I need more kicks in the ass to be more alert about this and to be more empathetic towards others who are going through this. So be it.

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The truth will set you free, emax100. But first it will piss you off.

My advice to you is twofold: First, get your information from a variety of sources because the best way to have a superior grasp of the facts is to access and possess as much knowledge as you can. Question the knowledge, be skeptical, but not cynical (when possible) and try to see both sides of the story before making a determination.

Second, discard with the quickness any suggestion from anyone that this is what you should be concerned with and that isn't worth your time. Pick your own battles and fight them by your own rules.

Nobody gets to determine for anyone else what they should get fired up about. When they try to sell you that line, call it what it is: bullshit. Then move on.