Words of Wisdom for Ferguson and America

[DaGip]

Don't put out fires with gasoline! Awesome word to the wise!

[rishaed]

More like theres a group of idiots in every group of people.... hahahahhaha. (Based on race, but still).

[Metsfanmax]

Don't put out fires with gasoline!

Translation: be good little Negroes and accept your state oppression gracefully.

[Phatscotty]

Don't put out fires with gasoline!

Translation: be good little Negroes and accept your state oppression gracefully.

Translation: the peaceful protesters were doing it all wrong, MLK was full of it, it's okay to act like animals, it's okay to steal, it's okay to destroy O.P.P., it's okay to waste your mind and be an emotional barbarian, it's okay to start a riot over something you don't even know the truth about, it's okay it doesn't even matter what the truth is.



I didn't know that being called out by a police officer for walking down the yellow line in the middle of the street just after committing a few crimes qualified as 'state oppression'.

[Metsfanmax]

Don't put out fires with gasoline!

Translation: be good little Negroes and accept your state oppression gracefully.

Translation: the peaceful protesters were doing it all wrong, MLK was full of it

Why did this turn into a referendum on MLK?

And I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

The point here isn't to condone or condemn violent protests -- it is to understand why those protests are occurring. Ask yourself how bad it must seem to be, to be a black person in Ferguson or elsewhere, if you feel that the best way to be heard is to burn cars and buildings. MLK advocated non-violent protest precisely because of how hard it was not to be violent, in response to the awful degradation of black people in America. I want you to seriously reflect on that. As white people, we do not understand what it is like to be in that position; the best we can hope for is at least to try and understand. If want to get noticed by the media, all we have to do is set up in lower Manhattan and wave our hands a bit. Or graze our cattle on federal land and not pay for it.

[owenshooter]

all i know is, a black man can't even go into a wal-mart and buy an air soft rifle without being shot in the back by cops, before being killed with the "weapon" clearly laying on the ground... yeah, a black guy can't walk into a wal-mart and buy something off the shelf without becoming a victim... even better, no indictment in this, either!!!-Jésus noir

[shickingbrits]

all i know is, a black man can't even go into a wal-mart and buy an air soft rifle without being shot in the back by cops, before being killed with the "weapon" clearly laying on the ground... yeah, a black guy can't walk into a wal-mart and buy something off the shelf without becoming a victim... even better, no indictment in this, either!!!-Jésus noir

But Owen don't you see



If the police had just shot his parents before they could buy this bb gun, their child would be alive today.

Think of John Crawford III kid, he has been saved by the forward thinking police.

[BigBallinStalin]

Two problems:

(1) police: training, military equipment, etc. They're becoming more like a bunch of rednecks who don't enforce equality before the law. (It seems that enforcement in many places is systematically discriminatory by race; that's a huge problem because justice won't be meted out correctly).

(2) white people/the socially distant people who don't deal with crap cops: they look at the demonstrations, riots, and stories about alleged injustice, but then reaffirm this belief that nothing's really the problem because the cops only have a few bad apples and the victims nearly always deserve it--unless they belong to our in-group.

(1) won't stop until (2) changes. (3) is a politically connected person gets treated like crap by the police. That'll bring change real quick.

[shickingbrits]

Different strokes for different folks.

If the policy side of this is taken into account: how this can add or detract from the economy, how it can augment government authority, how it can stabilize or destabilize the nation, how it can be profited from, who it profits, how the problem may be adjusted to optimize the desired results, then we see what we see.

[Phatscotty]

wait a second...

Group x is 12% of the population
Group y is 70% of the population

an individual from group x, for a fact, is 8 times more likely to commit murder than an individual in group y, this, for a fact, while only being 12% of the population.

question: how could it be possible group x and group y be treated exactly the same (overall) by police, given the extreme differences?

[Phatscotty]

Don't put out fires with gasoline! Awesome word to the wise!

It certainly did so something for the attackers...it made them feel better. And as we all have seen, how people feel is all that matters.

[warmonger1981]

Obviously black culture in the inner city has nothing to do with it. I mean gangster rap and idolizing violence would never influence a person. I am upset so I'm coming over to your place Mets to f*ck up everything you own. Don't get mad at me just understand me. If you get upset then you are the one in the wrong. How about we call out the race baiters or take a close look at why the democratically controlled areas of black neighborhoods have failed so bad. It must be the democrats and TV/radios to blame. Never let a person take responsibility for themselves its always somebody else's fault, not mine. Someone better explain to my I don't have shit. Does that sound right?

[_sabotage_]

Why is group x 8 times more likely to murder than group y?

Do you think it's a genetic predisposition? Maybe a child with a father in prison for whatever reason may think that as well.





What does it mean in practice that by far most of the drug arrests are urban black folks (men)? Late night police raids, stop and search, fear of snitches, fear of police, low expectations, fatherless children, few opportunities, likelihood of arrest.

Let's say you are a black man who was arrested at 15 with a joint and at 17 with a bag of weed. You have a prior, you are an adult, you don't have references or a lawyer and you are 48 times more likely to go to prison than a white person.

Those who face trial and are released have a 10% chance of reoffending. Those who go to prison have a 90% chance of reoffending within a year, often for a more serious crime than their initial one.

The government's policy is breeding crime at a high cost to taxpayers. When government policy towards a group of people produces heroes for them like Biggie Smalls and Tupac, and you call for more of the same treatment without wondering about the root cause, then you are just putting lipstick on a pig.

[AndyDufresne]

Obviously black culture in the inner city has nothing to do with it. I mean gangster rap and idolizing violence would never influence a person. I am upset so I'm coming over to your place Mets to f*ck up everything you own. Don't get mad at me just understand me. If you get upset then you are the one in the wrong. How about we call out the race baiters or take a close look at why the democratically controlled areas of black neighborhoods have failed so bad. It must be the democrats and TV/radios to blame. Never let a person take responsibility for themselves its always somebody else's fault, not mine. Someone better explain to my I don't have shit. Does that sound right?

This all sounds like warmonger1981 (just add in a dash of conspiracy and stir until thickened).


--Andy

[Metsfanmax]

question: how could it be possible group x and group y be treated exactly the same (overall) by police, given the extreme differences?

It is possible because "extreme" is relative. The number of homicides every year is approximately 15,000. If the ratio of black people committing murder to everyone else committing murder is 8:1, then about 88% of these 15,000 deaths are being caused by black people. But 88% is also the percentage of the population that is not black. So black people may be 8 times as more likely to kill someone, but any given person is also about 8 times more likely to be non-black than to be black. So if you're a police agency, you should be about as concerned as non-black people committing homicide as you are about black people committing homicide, because in numerical terms they're probably roughly equal.

Something else to consider too. If we assume that each homicide is one person killing one victim, then the percentage of people overall who are killers is about 0.005%. This fraction is so low that to decide that the way we're going to deal with black people is by assuming that they're all murderers is horribly wrong. They may commit more crimes, but the number of people who commit violent crimes like these is a very low fraction of any population. So to treat them all on the basis of the few bad apples *is* a racist method of policing.

[DaGip]

Don't put out fires with gasoline! Awesome word to the wise!

It certainly did so something for the attackers...it made them feel better. And as we all have seen, how people feel is all that matters.

I "feel" better that Reginald Denny thinks mostly with his "soul" then with his anger. He could have said some really nasty things in that video, and he came across as forgiving and just wanting to put everything behind him. Even Rodney King said "Can't we all just get along?"...in this video, Denny basically says the same thing...in a different way.

I believe the Garner issue is a much more convoluted problem.

It came so soon after the Ferguson Thingy, and the public has access to the actual video.

Did Garner resist? Yes, but he wasn't being violent about it. Did the police officer commit homicide? Yes, the coroner said so by the evidence. Did the officer mean to kill Mr. Garner? No. Was there negligence in handling the situation and when Garner was clearly telling the officers that he couldn't breath because of a collapsed trachea? I believe so (as do many others, both conservative and liberal).

Not only do you have the coroner evidence, but you have clear video taped evidence; and yet there is still no indictment by a Grand Jury. It befuddles my mind, because one of the arguments in the Brown case was that there was no video evidence of what some of the witnesses were saying. Yet here we have both forensic evidence and video evidence, but the Grand Jury in NYC still comes up with no indictment.

You are right (even though I am sure you are being quite sarcastic), we indeed tend to put our "feelings" first. That's really what matters, right? That's how you judge the world around you, right? With feelings?

Your emotions govern everything in your life. That's how we live.

When you hate something, you abhor it. When you love something, you covet it. When you do things against your feelings, you then feel regret. So, yes..."feelings" is all that really matter.

But burning cars and throwing bricks at people's heads won't solve a friggin' thing.

[warmonger1981]

Bada bing
Bada boom
Watch put Andy
I'm in you room
BOOYAH!!

[AndyDufresne]

Bada bing
Bada boom
Watch put Andy
I'm in you room
BOOYAH!!

--Andy

[thegreekdog]

If you're going to pick a martyr for your cause pick someone who didn't commit a robbery and an assault.

There are plenty of better people to pick as poster children for this cause. And it's an important cause to be championed. By picking this guy, you're letting the deniers invalidate the cause. As a supporter of civil rights, it makes me angry that this criminal is the person I now have to support to make sure civil rights violations are noticed.

[Metsfanmax]

If you're going to pick a martyr for your cause pick someone who didn't commit a robbery and an assault.

Alleged robbery and assault. Was Garner ever convicted of these crimes?

There are plenty of better people to pick as poster children for this cause. And it's an important cause to be championed. By picking this guy, you're letting the deniers invalidate the cause.

Indeed. We should only be standing up for the rights of clean, wholesome black men. Petty criminals deserve to be choked to death by the police.

As a supporter of civil rights, it makes me angry that this criminal

MLK was a criminal too.

is the person I now have to support to make sure civil rights violations are noticed.

You don't have to "support" him. You just have to support the notion that selling untaxed cigarettes does not warrant a death sentence administered by a police officer on the street.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

If you're going to pick a martyr for your cause pick someone who didn't commit a robbery and an assault.

Alleged robbery and assault. Was Garner ever convicted of these crimes?

There are plenty of better people to pick as poster children for this cause. And it's an important cause to be championed. By picking this guy, you're letting the deniers invalidate the cause.

Indeed. We should only be standing up for the rights of clean, wholesome black men. Petty criminals deserve to be choked to death by the police.

As a supporter of civil rights, it makes me angry that this criminal

MLK was a criminal too.

is the person I now have to support to make sure civil rights violations are noticed.

You don't have to "support" him. You just have to support the notion that selling untaxed cigarettes does not warrant a death sentence administered by a police officer on the street.

I don't think he was referring to Garner. He was referring to Brown. Nobody sane would think selling loosies is cause for an arrest.

-TG

[_sabotage_]

How can you arrest someone for selling loosies? You can't get a witness, because no one would care and the police couldn't threaten someone they bust with a cigarette. Even even they had him under surveillance, what does it prove? Non-nonsensical harassment that could be said of anybody.

[Phatscotty]

How can you arrest someone for selling loosies?

Because, the government isn't getting it's precious tax dollars. Dude was 'stealing' from the government and from all the people that money is supposed to be redistributed to.

[warmonger1981]

Remember that people don't actually work for themselves, we work for the Federal Reserve. Your birth certificate is used to obtain a social security card. This card is your ID or tracker number. Without it you can't work legally or really do anything.

[_sabotage_]

How can you arrest someone for selling loosies?

Because, the government isn't getting it's precious tax dollars. Dude was 'stealing' from the government and from all the people that money is supposed to be redistributed to.

I get that. Let me make an example. In Portugal, I don't know if it has changed since, but they decriminalized up to an ounce of hash/weed. This effectively makes it legal because the first layer of investigation is to arrest a buyer, put the scare into him and get him to turn on his dealer. The police take the witness statement to the judge who authorizes a warrant. They use the warrant and get further evidence of criminal activity and whatever they turn up is then used against the person at trial. But without the first arrest, the whole chain breaks down.

In selling loosies, there is no way to get a witness to testify. There is no way to get a warrant except with an exhaustive investigation that would cost excessive amounts of money that would not be approved. So the only way to actually arrest this guy would be to get him to self-incriminate. They go up to him and say, are you selling loosies and he says, yeah. As the video shows, he quite clearly didn't confess, he asked the police to leave him alone and maintained his innocence. There is then no reason for the police to search him, arrest him or further bother him.

By following the law, there is nothing that the police can do to prosecute Garner. As such, if your job as a police officer is to arrest loosie sellers, you are required to violate the law to do so.

My question isn't why you would arrest someone for selling loosies, but how is it legally possible?