Damn. This video is raw. You may not want to watch it if violence makes you cringe…even if it is state-sanctioned violence that the perpetrators get away with.
You can also buy the single on iTunes, and all proceeds go to the baby who was hit by the policeman’s flash-bang grenade.
The unmitigated gall of those criminal cops, they don’t even care that they’re being filmed. The expectation they have is that it doesn’t matter what documentation there is. Fucking hell.
But cops protect us from rapists, murderers and shoplifters. Surely that gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want?
Disgusting. They weed out the good cops. Look at what happened to officer Park at UGA, who had the gall to help someone, in full accord with medical amnesty laws, but against the orders of his superiors.
What? It’s just two or three hundred bad apples! Notallcops!
Nice. Since that video has nicely summarized the police brutality aspect, I can just focus on pervasive, general racism in the Reagan’s Morning thread.
Can’t watch it twice. :/
Note that I could identify at least three clips as being Toronto police, who used to take street kids like me for a ride on The Cherry Beach Express: down to the dockyards for a nice quiet beating with phone books. They spread the impact of nightsticks so it hurts like hell with almost no bruising.
FTP.
Toronto’s Pukka Orchestra got Canadian airplay with their 1984 single “Cherry Beach Express,” despite attempts by the Toronto police to have the single banned.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve been getting annoyed with this idea (not slamming you for it, just the idea).
The thing is, one bad apple does spoil the bunch. So, if you decline to do anything substantial about the bad apple, reasoning that it’s just one, you’ll soon find yourself with a whole barrel of bad apples.
The point of the proverb is that the rot from one can quickly spread, so you better make sure to root out that rotten one as soon as possible. I don’t know when the proverb came to mean the exact opposite of its original sense.
As for the current situation, I think it’s clear that the bad apples have been allowed to fester to the degree that the only remedy is to burn the entire barrel and start fresh with a new crop.
@LykeX:
I’ve noticed that too. It annoys me that journalists don’t simply call attention to it:
Factual, facially neutral, and corners the mayor neatly so that the mayor ends up answering why he isn’t concerned about spoiling the police force and/or why someone paid by the city to speak on its behalf could make such a ludicrously idiotic statement in contravention of the city’s PR interests.
Good writing by journalists can go a long way toward preventing future problems. In this case, both linguistic massacres and a ballistic massacres.
Fucking Ferguson. “A few bad apples”. Fuck their smug indifference.
The militarisation of US police, and their casual violence and racism, really is utterly terrifying. This is what happens when you arm police with military grade equipment and a ‘war on crime’ rhetoric is taken literally by shrieking rightwing ideologues and their legions of followers. Add in a pervasively racist society, and abominations like the police crimes in Fergusson and the events in this video become not only likely, but inevitable.
As noted by other commenters, not only are the criminal cops utterly unconcerned about being filmed because they don’t fear any consequences for their actions, but it has now reached the point where it is the (seemingly increasingly few) beleagured decent cops who will face the end of their careers if they try to take a stand for innocent citizens (especially if those innocent citizens are guilty of the ‘crime’ of being abroad while Black) against their corrupt collegues.
Every day the US looks more and more like an oppressive police state. it is hardly the ‘land of the free’.
One is either part of the solution or one is part of the problem.
If a “good” cop tolerates and does nothing to take care of (as in get rid of) an abusive, out of control fellow officer, then said cop is worse, because they ignore their own values.
At 0:38, he touches upon the problem, I think: “Code of silence”. The cops have no impartial, objective oversight whatsoever, which is why they are all corrupt. That is where I’d apply pressure: force (by law) IA to have a chinese wall between them and the rest of the force.
@Gregory Greenwood #10, I’m assuming you didn’t read CaitieCat’s #6. This problem is bigger than just the US.
As a matter of curiosity, looking in from outside the U.S, does anyone ever pursue private prosecutions against these thugs?
I don’t think I want to visit the US any more :(
Any attempt at private legal action is likely going to fail. Cops threw a flash bang grenade and it blew up in the crib of a baby, and the argument is that paying any money for their mistake is a ‘gratuity’ and that if cops happen to injure you, you’re screwed.
US cops are just a gang of pea brained, dimwitted thugs. The whole system needs to be razed to the ground and I don’t think that as long as anyone is around who was part of the old system there will be any hope.
All said, the way these cops decided to kick people in cuffs who were no longer any possible threat – it’s this ‘street justice’ attitude that needs to go.
Of course, it probably doesn’t help that any single person could be, perfectly legally, concealing a firearm. I mean, being a police officer is pretty tough in the UK where ordinary citizens aren’t actually allowed to carry handguns at all. I hate to think how tough it is when anyone could pull a piece on you at any time…
@fentex:
“private prosecution” is unknown in the US – so much so that smrnda seems to think you’re referring to civil actions by an unfamiliar name. (I, however, am from the US and in law school outside of it, so I was better equipped to recognize right away what you were really asking and how you weren’t likely to get a good answer – I suspect even many bar-certified lawyers practicing solely in local matters like property don’t know/remember that “private prosecution” isn’t just a foreign name for a civil suit.)
Of course cops get sued all the time. But no, there is no opportunity for private prosecution in the US justice system.
“One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch girl…”
Blame Donny Osmond.
The Ferguson mayor then noted that they had “a few bad apples” in the police force
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere in the context of the “bad apples” at CIA.
The “bad apple” idea is bullshit. People inside organizations know a lot more about what’s going on than they suddenly are unable to remember when the bright lights are shining on them. If you actually, really, had a conversation with some cops, you’d hear that so and so is a bit rough and such and such carries a throwdown bag and so and so’s “camera malfunctions” happen when they are taking a break at a strip club, etc. Ask a cop who’s got the real anger management issues, or who’s a gun-toting nut who’s eventually going to kill someone – they can tell you. They just don’t say anything until it’s too late — and once it’s too late, then they don’t say anything because it’d make them look bad. People know this shit. It’s what a “society” is and it’s the glue that holds it together – knowing what other people get up to. It’s in the emails. It’s in the coffee machine conversations. It’s in the chat over a couple beers in a bar.
When someone says they’re shocked to find there are dangerous cops (or CIA agents who eagerly tortured people to break their minds) they are lying. They’re not shocked. You could go to any police department and ask – if you could get an honest answer – “which cop in this precinct is most likely to lose their shit and shoot or hit someone?” and if you tabulated those answers you’d find, miraculously, that the same names would be at the top of virtually everyone’s list. Including the managers’ lists. People know this stuff. They’re only shocked that there’s a bright light suddenly shining on something they thought was safe. Like the Ferguson cops: oh, yeah, they’re so shocked that there are racist comments in emails. Really? Bullshit. People who send racist emails to co-workers also tell racist jokes to co-workers when they’re hanging out in the break room. Same deal: if you could get honest answers “which cops in this precinct have a problem with people’s skin color?” you’d get the same names at the top of everyone’s list – unless you got half or more of the precinct on the list.
People aren’t fucking shocked that there are a “few bad apples” – they’re shocked that they got caught. And they’re all bad apples. Because they didn’t say anything before shit went off the rails.
Burn it all, burn it to the ground.
The coppers have been bashing the shit out of people for thousands of years. It will never change. The very people who apply for police work are the very people (power hungry) who should not be applying.
Jaffa…You really should blame a fellow named George Jackson who wrote the song with the Jackson 5 in mind, but the Osmonds got to it first.
Addendum to the previous:
And, what’s worse is that the people who run these organizations are the baddest apples of them all.
Why? Because anyone who’s a manager of any type, if they are managing humans, ought to understand how people behave. Oversight managers need to know the Iron Law Of Bureaucracy – that organizations’ agendas always switch from solving the problem they are there to solve, to self-protection and self-perpetuation. Executive managers need to know what “circling the wagons” looks like and how to break through that behavior (after all, cops in principle know how to do that because that’s what criminals do too) a manager ought to be just as able to recognize signs of criminality in his police force – that’s their job.
Let’s talk Ferguson for a second. Officer Killer is issued a Taser but doesn’t take it on the fateful day because it’s uncomfortable to wear. So, some cop manager back at the station, who issued that Taser, apparently never thought “hey the blokes need more training in non-lethal encounters – because it’s fucked up that they’re leaving their tasers in the charger instead of taking them along…” It wasn’t just Officer Killer that wasn’t doing their job: it was also Officer Killer’s sergeant at arms, and Officer Killer’s boss. You know, the same incompetent chucklefucks that blink into the bright lights and say “Officer Killer hasn’t done this before.” But, yeah, chucklefuck, you should have seen this coming. It was your job to see it coming. Your job is not just to stop drunk drivers from being a danger to the community, it’s to stop your own fucking people from being a danger to the community – the people you know best and who you are most qualified to help prevent from becoming that danger.
It’s bad apples all the way down.
The coppers have been bashing the shit out of people for thousands of years. It will never change.
Oh, right. So “SHUT UP AND DON’T COMPLAIN” is what everyone is supposed to do about it, mmm?
Officer Killer is issued a Taser but doesn’t take it on the fateful day because it’s uncomfortable to wear.
How many weeks or months had Officer Killer been leaving his Taser back at the station-house? Surely the day he gunned someone down wasn’t the first time he’d left it.
Arrgh, I got pissed off and omitted the critical sentence of that train of thought because I couldn’t see through the red haze in my eyes.
Marcus Ranum
There’s a DearMuslima in there somewhere …
I learned really, really early on, never to trust anyone in any position of power unless he or she (and so, SO rarely “she”…) gives you reason to trust. It’s an awful thing to realize at age 6, and I’m glad I learned it through “adults are useless at stopping bullies” rather than “the police killed my brother and there’s nothing we can do about it” like some people do.
KRS-One agrees…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oENrgffA5VI
I think Douglas Adams’ quote for politicians applies to police too: “it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. “
What I kind of meant by “two or three hundred bad apples” was that the whole barrel had gone bad, which is what happens, as we all well know, when you don’t throw out the first bad apple.
Separately, #13, we do get prosecutions of police in Canada. Recently, the cops were found guilty of tort assault against a civilian from the G20. The Appeals court overruled the Ontario judge and said the intimidation was not “just touching” and that the effect of this, plus telling the victim he effectively had no civil rights, was actually illegal. Go figure.
I was about to go on a rant in my induced blood-rage, but Marcus said everything I had in mind, minus the long string of profanities and revenge fantasies.
Unlike NWA’s “Straight Outta’ Compton”, none of the violence perpetrated by cops is acted. But I’m sure NWA would have willingly used real video – and had plenty of it – if camera phones and youtube were around in 1988.
Very powerful, very close to the bone.
It’s ugly to watch but it needs to be seen.
I’m not a fan of rap, but this? This is what it was meant to be — social and political commentary, raising awareness, goddamn protest music. (And it’s catchy as fuck, which never hurts.)
Now, can someone explain to me how bloody protest songs got turned into a celebration of bullets, bling, b*tches, and bragging rights?
That’s what always happens when new music is discovered by the “music industry.”
“That’s what always happens when new music is discovered by the “music industry.””
AKA white men, amirite?
#13
The most recent episode of Criminal is about one of the very few of those cases that got anywhere.
Mostly it seems you have a great deal of trouble making a sympathetic local court system care about anyone’s word besides that of the police. Higher judiciaries then defer to them rather than get involved, unless there’s a long record and a mountain of evidence against some department or other. And even then…
But one time they didn’t.
http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-18-695bgk/
ffff
I hate living in interesting times
..
No
I love it
I “enjoy” (because there’s no real enjoyment when watching this sort of thing) how the police strikes are synchronized to the beat of the song. It makes the whole thing even more powerful.
I’m not asking for utopia. I’m just asking for better. We can do better. We can change the culture to be better. We can change the policies and laws to incentivize being better. Off the top of my head, does anyone have any opinions about rules that require police to live in the areas which they police? Body cams also sound like a great idea, especially ones that transmit live to servers not under control by the police.
Now that truly is violence.
It is depressing to see how many of those citizens are being beaten AFTER they have been handcuffed.
Couldn’t make it all the way through the vid. Sweet merciful FSM.
Numenaster @ 12;
I was specifically addressing the problems in the US, since they seem to be the most egregious examples, but I completely accept that this is an issue that goes far beyond America, and is expressed to varying degrees and in varying forms in many societies.
I was looking around for something fun and awful to watch the other night, and found that the entirety of Cop Rock is on youtube. (it’s an early 90s cop show that had an awful, terrible premise of being a musical). I had never really watched it when it was on, since it was a punchline from the very beginning. I started watching it, and was surprised to see that the entire thematic arc of the season was cops who tried to do things properly v. cops who broke every law possible to terrorize criminals. And at the end of the season, the bad guys kind of won. And this was 25 years ago. If the show had been better, maybe it would have started some kind of larger awareness then.
(Not to say that people didn’t know this, because of course they did. But I meant in the media.)
@Saad, #40:
Once again you slay me, you murderous creature, you.
Nice to have a laugh to break up this thread. Just watched the heartbreaking video of the North Charleston shooting. Fuck the entitlement that leads someone to shoot someone else in the back, but damn, the fucking entitlement **couldn’t actually cause that level of damage** if we didn’t have the gun culture that we do.
Ugh.