Here two officers tazed someone who couldn't hear them and held them in jail for 4 months because one of them fell and broke their leg while trying to jump the poor kid who, again, couldn't hear them.
One of the officers was later fired for excessive force. Maybe if they'd handled this situation better that second incident wouldn't have happened and some 75 year old man wouldn't have have been unnecessarily assaulted by government forces.
Maybe with enough public pressure, we create a climate where officers are less likely to assault some guy with his hands up yelling "no ears" instead of throwing him in jail for 4 months for maybe rolling a stop sign.
We do not need to get rid of policing, but we definitely need to change the way they treat the people they serve.
Maybe rolling a stop sign and having counterfeit money. They buried that part pretty far into the article.
Regardless are either of those offenses reason to tazer and tackle the perpetrator who isn't actively resisting?
He admitted to resisting in the article.
You can see how changing one small fact completely changes the nature of the article.
If police are trying to arrest you, and you fight back, that's a major escalation it almost puts 'the thing in question' they were pulled over for as a side show.
And - he's deaf, he's not blind.
The notion that 2 Police officers in uniform are upon you, and you can't tell they are police is a bit rich, it sounds like something made up by an attorney.
'Blinded by the light' would make sense when they were in their car or behind the lights. And certainly maybe he didn't recognize them or hear them at that time.
But by the time the police are upon him, it would seem very well within reason that he knew they were police.
That said, we don't quite know the details: maybe they came up on him from behind. Maybe they walked straight up to him and it was perfectly evident that they were cops.
That nuance is really important, because 'resisting arrest' is a serious thing, and if he did in fact know they were police, and he fought them, well then he's not going to have much of a defence in getting tased. If he was legitimately surprised then obviously some kind of reaction like that is warranted.
All of that said, why was he in prison for 4 months, that seems very bad.
You do realize that movie-prop money is clearly identifiable, and only meant to "look" like real money from a distance, and this is completely legal to possess until it is attempted to be passed as tender. If they have no evidence he was doing so, then this is just "hmm what charges can we throw at him" bullshit that is regularly employed in the US to trump up one incident to a whole list of charges.
I just don't understand the motivations of the police officers in this case, they just wanted to beat this guy up because they are big meanies? Just picked his car out and said "I want to use the taser on this random guy"? It couldn't have been due to his disability as it isn't visible to someone in another car. I feel like a lot of detail is missing from this account.
“Counterfeit money” lmao what a joke. Online commenters are so big on this legalese upgrade business. This guy had some joke currency on him and it’s now “counterfeit money”. Next thing you know you’re going to be calling kids using twigs to play cops and robbers “brandishing replica firearms”.
Oh oh, I know, we could call water balloons “simulated improvised explosive devices”. Coffee pods? “Psychoactive drugs”.
“Counterfeit money” hahahaha. I declare your comment “domestically sourced misinformation”.
https://www.newsweek.com/boy-13-who-drew-stickman-holding-gu...
Also, coffee really is a powerful drug, just that it's not regulated.
Many of us were raised to believe the police are the good protectors of all, but as we learn about these stories we see that the police are not protecting everyone. Even when their intent is pure their methods are often unhinged and sloppy in a way that leads to senseless loss of life.
And so, faced with this reality, many see that the system of policing in the USA must be changed. And those with the will take that action with the support of others who know these stories.
Tho many people forget, and so many tabloids do exist to stir up outrage, I think the point of this NPR story is to educate as I have described.
If you're a cop, and you ask someone to stop because something is up, and they just don't - if they react in any suspicious way it may cause you to want to stop them.
It's going to be extremely rare to the point of 'never happening' that you come upon someone who is both 'deaf' and temporarily 'can't see due to light' so it's not going to cross your mind.
The person admitted resisting arrest - he's deaf, not blind. When officers are physically upon you, how on earth do you not know it's them?
His lawyer said he was 'blinded by the car lights' which is understandable when the cops are behind the lights, but clearly not otherwise.
So there's a lot of room for the truth here, both parties could be innocent, both parties could be guilty.
Even more nuanced: both parties could be just slightly guilty, i.e. the cops were taking a subtly more aggressive posture than they needed to, and the civilian did something he knew he shouldn't do, which was actively resisted arrest when he for sure knew they were cops.
So cops needlessly put hands on him but still without intention to do anything, he resists which results in escalation, they fall to the ground, he breaks his legs and then you have a headline.
The story feeds into the preconceived notions that people have, people are overwhelmingly more likely to fill in the blanks with their narrow views than they would be to consider the multitudes of nuances that lead to a situation. It's a rorschach test.
That said: I would say the '4 month' bit is outrageous, we don't quite know what happened, maybe the toss-up between the police and civilian got quite serious but I can't fathom why he was not out on bail.
Edit: I will also add, that the 'firing' of the cop is also meaningless in terms of determining culpability. The cops firing will be as ultra-political as when they close ranks and defend themselves, and is further away from actual justice than anything in a court of law. If the cop brought in a bad headline for the police force, he becomes a really easy target for the leadership as a potential scapegoat and political cover. "Oh look, we've reformed!". The details of the situation may be more complicated.
It's really odd how these institutions work, they are so deeply politically entrenched and work on the basis of power, it's almost as if they are incapable of acting with thoughtful nuance. Advancement in these systems comes entirely from 'playing the game' and having a stellar record on paper and that's that.
If "possession of forged currency" is really just "found movie-prop money in his wallet", then is "resisting arrest" really just "he dragged his feet a little"?
But police don't lay charges, prosecutors do.
Once law enforcement is involved, and you're the 'bad guy' in their purview, then the prosecutors will stack charges. Like a negotiation "Oh, and you have this other thing, the fake money - we'll drop that if you admit to resisting arrest" etc.. It's more of a tactical ploy that I think police officers use everywhere, more aggressively in the USA.
I think that's an artifact of prosecutor's mentality, than policing.
That's another big opportunity for reform.
Some people propose having a very local, municipal for small towns, or even smaller for large towns, mercenary force with license to use lethal force that answers to direct democracy of the area they are assigned to and nobody else.
Just like police, only their contract is reviewed every year, for everyone in the force.
Odd. Plenty of other countries manage watching their watchers just fine...
>Some people propose having a very local, municipal for small towns, or even smaller for large towns, mercenary force with license to use lethal force that answers to direct democracy of the area they are assigned to and nobody else.
... and they don't even need local murder squads answering only to populist rage to do it.
The core issue is they are paid your tax dollars, but you have very little input or control on what and how they do, and municipalities in general rely on the fact that moving away is high friction to retain citizens.
Unfortunately you cannot easily fire them, if they underperform.
https://www.clearcreekcourant.com/stories/body-cam-footage-s...?
I'm hopeful better policing can be designed.
You're absolutely supposed to get angry– these cops attacked an innocent man, tased him, and stole 4 months of his life. I'm not sure why you'd think you're supposed to forget, though.
However, here is the question to everyone reading this article. How many of you are projecting this angry to the all policemen, the whole police system, institution and law enforcement? How much of you say " what we could do to make police better?" how much of you say "police is evil and we will defund police" maybe think about why?
The reason why people say defund the police is because "we'll make it better!" is the same repeated statements that have gone literally nowhere, police abuse continues unchecked to the point where we have to write and publicly humiliate public officials to do their damn jobs.
Any stats about a rise in crime is very misleading. The cause of the rise in crime is in no way related to systematic policy changes in funding because there have been no changes made.
It means different things to different people. Some want to literally abolish police, some want to reduce funding.
No. They say "this current implementation of our police force are constantly committing evil acts and we should decide as a society whether that is acceptable".
Maybe you should think about why you think your opinion is superior to theirs. I imagine you're not on the receiving end of said evil acts. Dismissing the pain of members of the same society as you seems a bit rough, in my opinion.
That’s why “defund the police” got started: just build a new system that actually works to “protect and serve” where old entrenched interests have no power to block progress. The police can still have some role, but it will be diminished and vestigial.
To fix policing we need real transparency, and real accountability. I don’t think we want an opaque, unaccountable organization with a legal monopoly on violence roaming our streets, do you? So why are police so resistant to being held accountable, the way we all are in our roles in society? If any other organization were throwing grenades into cribs and tasering innocent people, there would be immediate and fundamental changes to bring that behavior to a grinding halt. But because it’s “the police” we tolerate this. Why?
The problem is: how do you get this off the ground? Well the obvious way would be to take the money that the police spend on mental health calls and use some of that to fund the helper force. The problem is when you take money away from one group to give to another, there's always going to be objections, and that's what I think happens a lot of the time. I think the police like their role in society, and don't want to give it up quietly.
1) Have enough money, time, and connections to take legal action and hope that maybe you come to parity someday.
2) Draw enough publicity that the money, time, and connections come to you, in hopes that you can bring social change to prevent someone else from being victimized.
When you turn away from stories like this, you are complicit in why these are the only two options we have in our system.
It is totally legit to ask how you can help beyond just feeling outraged. Answers to that question should exist and get talked about more.
For my case, I already vote and contribute in a way consistent with values that are anti-police-abuse. I otherwise do not live in this city or this state, and am not running for any higher political office, so for me personally the story amounts to outrage-bait noise.
- Be considerate that people around you may have different abilities
- Support movements that aim to make society less violent and police less aggressive
I don’t see any mystery here.
When we’re bombarded with hundreds of “outrageous” things every time we get online (Kanye said X! This new book says Y!) it all just becomes background noise.
> I think it's interesting to consider these types of articles that get popular online.
These types of articles were popular way before the internet
> It seems perfect for creating outrage, but for what?
Reporting on issues of injustice and inequality tends to elicit that reaction. But to imply that outrage is the end goal isn't entirely accurate. It's a fairly unbiased piece that's just reporting what happened, for the most part.
> If the purpose of the news is to inform, what does this news inform me of?
Informing you of abuse of power in local police departments. Information is power. Did you really read that article and get literally nothing useful out of it?
> What am I to do except get angry and ruminate and forget and repeat for the next story?
Next time you vote for your local sheriff or engage in the civic process, you should be more aware of these problems. The article has, in theory, informed you about something you may have not been aware of.
The goal is to instigate an emotional mood in the limbic system, and insert a semantic construct to associate with that mood. The science has been abstracted into career jargon and lost all connection to its roots.
It’s not about factual communication of current events, but emotional information transmission. It’s to titillate the emotional system and inject banality. To keep people thinking about the angry shit.
We’re doing what religion does; instigate anxiety with unverifiable “truth” as our culture is based upon that empty truth.
You are not to «[feel] and forget». First, you are to be aware that there are systemic failures (which could even save your life, same as a dispatch "rabid ferals invaded area"). Then, you are to demand that the systemic failures are fixed. Republic does not just mean "there are no kings above the rest", it means matters are everybody's business.
if you feel troubled by the information presented here, i'm sure there are activists in your area that are seeking support and participation, or providing education and other resources, that could perhaps alleviate your feelings of disorientation and helplessness.
i presume the article doesn't include any reference to any course of possible action because, for better or worse, they are making an effort to maintain journalistic impartiality.
By continuing to make people aware of abuses these stories provide a critical function to inform people about the problem.
Given in this thread we have the usual sneering about movements seeking to "defund the police" and 'crazy dangerous BLM Marxist anarchists' it's clear there's a lot of people who are either acting in bad faith or will never change their views.
But by continuing to highlight the terrible abuses by people the state grants a monopoly on violence to (just check the headline news in England) the media can build a new consensus and change minds and build a critical mass to support progressive improvements to the nature of policing.
For someone who already supports reasonable and proportionate reforms to policing such news is often more infuriating and disempowering but essential to cut through to the rest.
Taking the example of the torture and murder of a random woman by a serving police officer in England, plus the court judgement on the rapist Spycops scandal plus the rate of domestic abuse by serving English officers we will have a lot fewer people claiming the police in England is fine and doesn't have issues after this week. Perhaps then we can improve oversight of policing with broad political support and avoid any more victims.
But I think there's another way to think about this story: consider the opposite of this article. Maybe "WATCH: Police officer saves deaf man seconds before train hits his car," or more abstractly "Fire department saves six kittens from blaze," or whatever other good news. What's the purpose of that news? I think most of us are happier to read it, but it is no more actionable - it is the same sort of background information. (Or, perhaps, it is in the same category as "entertainment" - things you consume for the sake of enjoying the consumption - but that seems like a poor place for the news to be, so let's hope that isn't it.)
The purpose of informing you that the police is made of brave selfless officers and the fire department is made of brave kitten-rescuers is to influence you when you decide whether your city should increase sales taxes to pay its officers well and get the fire department longer ladders. To be abundantly clear, I'm not alleging a conspiracy here - I'm claiming this is a legitimate thing for them to do, and the thing society wants the press doing. In a well-functioning democratic society, the press reports on what's going on so that we can make informed votes. The information is actionable, though not immediately.
So, conversely, the purpose of informing you that the police is made of trigger-happy dunces who get mad when a deaf person can't hear them, or that the fire department is being courted by some startup that tied fire extinguishers to drones and wants to charge them millions of dollars, or whatever, is also to inform you when your city wants to increase sales taxes for them.
There are many other things you can do, besides voting, if you're asking "What am I to do." You can write to your elected officials. You can show up at local government meetings. You can campaign for or give money to political candidates that seem likely to be effective. You can volunteer with or give money to community organizations tackling specific problems (e.g., if you see a lot of stories about how the government is failing to provide social service X because of bureaucracy, I'm sure there's a local volunteer organization that would love your time or money).
What happened when, for example, word got out that America was wasting its time in Vietnam? What was the purpose of them media showing Americans at home what was going on? The people who had been opposing the war as immoral or doomed were, of course, angry and cynical; the people who changed their mind couldn't individually do anything about either a war half the world away or the orders of the US military. But once enough people changed their minds, expressed in part (but by no means entirely) by who they voted for, the US started to withdraw.
You can write your elected representatives at the federal level and encourage them to end qualified immunity, thus allowing people to sue individuals when their rights are violated.
You can write your state level elected representatives and encourage them to provide a right of action under state law against law enforcement to end qualified immunity.
You can contact your local (city, county) representatives and encourage them to rewrite contracts with law enforcement such that law enforcement members who are found to have acted innappropriately face financial penalties, can be fired, etc, and those who have done so in other jurisdictions are not eligible for hiring locally.
You can, if you favor more bold choices, also explore ideas around which government programs are priorities, and giving more money to social support programs, homelessness prevention etc, so that people don't need to interact with law enforcement, and less to law enforcement.
The Socrates three sieves test is a good tool to evaluate whether a source is actually informational or merely entertainment trying to pass off as informational.
Are you saying you were not aware of police brutality before? Can you say that knowing about this specific episode is as useful to you as reading documentation or learning how to garden?
You'll have to forgive me if this sounds too utilitarian, but unless you're directly involved in this incident or policy making that affects future instances, then for all intents and purposes, there's no informational value in transmitting this story to you since you're not going to do anything about it anyways. In that sense, it is just vapid consumption, hence entertainment.
To be clear, I'm not criticizing the news reporter. They're doing what they believe is a service to others, and I respect that. What I'm talking about is how you as an entity with limited attention span could alternatively think about news.
Frankly, that's nonsensical. There is a national conversation happening in the United States about policing, police brutality, and the lack of consequences when police abuse their authority. Engaged citizens should be informed enough to participate in that conversation.
I've always known there was police brutality, but seeing and reading as much about police as I have over the last several years has certainly changed my views, which impacts which candidates I would support in an election, for example.
I've read on numerous occasions how the US flavor of democracy is similarly not actually all that representative of the opinion of the masses (honestly, I have a hard time believing in any claim that the same political environment that passed Texas' recent abortion laws is a high functioning democracy).
I maintain my utilitarian position that reading about something in the news and talking about hypothetical candidates on some tech forum is nowhere near the same level of civic engagement as actually getting involved directly.
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with reading news and not engaging in civics as a reaction, but the comment that prompted this discussion was about the relationship between reacting to news and the bigger picture for each person individually, and I think that identifying when time is being wasted is a pretty good start towards redirecting energy to activities that one considers important. </two-cents>
I'd heard this before, but never called that.
I think it's interesting to consider these types of articles that get popular online. It seems perfect for creating outrage, but for what? If the purpose of the news is to inform, what does this news inform me of? What am I to do except get angry and ruminate and forget and repeat for the next story? I don't want to seem like the archetypal angry cynic that so often appears in these comment sections, but this is genuinely the reason I stopped paying attention to most of the news. I'm not sure what else to add here. I just think about this a lot.