Violent Protests in Baltimore

[fonzob1]

Watch the video in the link. Once the Humvee passes, he's gone. If he's not in the Humvee itself, they used it to provide cover while they moved him behind their lines or somewhere else off-camera.

The guy is in central booking now, but it's just a weird tactic to try and handle it off-camera like that. Certainly not something that screams trust and transparency.

I watched this happen live. He was being arrested because he was out an hour past curfew, and he was taunting the police walking up and down a row of them by himself. He was taken away in the Humvee, but it did seem as though law enforcement attempted to use it as cover from the media cameras just in case the arrest went badly (i.e., in case they injured the guy).

You can look online and find all kinds of incarceration statistics and how they relate to race. They will tell you that roughly two times as many African American people are incarcerated than White people in America. That is a pretty huge discrepancy considering African Americans make up only 13% of the American population and whites make up about 60%. We are also the biggest incarceraters in the western world. We jail people at a far greater rate than do European countries.

 

[JES]

I'm very late on this topic, and wish that I had commented back when the riots were still fresh, but:

I think calling the attacks on the police justifiable was really stretching it. It'd be one thing if the rioters saw police officers who had abused them in the past, but just going out and chucking stuff at police officers who you don't even know have been abusive in the past just seems...uncivilized.

Setting police cruisers on fire or wrecking them is going to hurt tax payers, not to mention no way to treat a car (don't care about the Chevy Impalas, but I happen to like the Chevy Caprice).

But what did the CVS, that mall, that liquor store, or that senior's center ever do to them? Attacking and looting random businesses, not to mention putting random people in danger, is just as unacceptable as the circumstances surrounding Freddie Grey's death. Attacking firefighters while they are trying to do their job is even more so. I wish the guy who stabbed a hole into the hose on camera get arrested right then and there.

If you're pissed at something, at very least, have the decency to focus ONLY on the source of your ails!

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Watch the video in the link. Once the Humvee passes, he's gone. If he's not in the Humvee itself, they used it to provide cover while they moved him behind their lines or somewhere else off-camera.

The guy is in central booking now, but it's just a weird tactic to try and handle it off-camera like that. Certainly not something that screams trust and transparency.

I watched this happen live. He was being arrested because he was out an hour past curfew, and he was taunting the police walking up and down a row of them by himself. He was taken away in the Humvee, but it did seem as though law enforcement attempted to use it as cover from the media cameras just in case the arrest went badly (i.e., in case they injured the guy).

That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming it for me.

I assume the second part of this (below) was in response to Emilia's post rather than mine?

You can look online and find all kinds of incarceration statistics and how they relate to race. They will tell you that roughly two times as many African American people are incarcerated than White people in America. That is a pretty huge discrepancy considering African Americans make up only 13% of the American population and whites make up about 60%. We are also the biggest incarceraters in the western world. We jail people at a far greater rate than do European countries.

I think calling the attacks on the police was really stretching it. It'd be one thing if the rioters saw police officers who had abused them in the past, but just going out and chucking stuff at police officers who you don't even know have been abusive in the past just seems...uncivilized.

Setting police cruisers on fire or wrecking them is going to hurt tax payers, not to mention no way to treat a car (don't care about the Chevy Impalas, but I happen to like the Chevy Caprice).

If you're pissed at something, at very least, have the decency to focus ONLY on the source of your ails!

Those first two paragraphs don't seem to align with the last one, unless you don't believe black citizens in Baltimore and across the country have a major grievance against law enforcement as an institution.

 

[JES]

I think calling the attacks on the police was really stretching it. It'd be one thing if the rioters saw police officers who had abused them in the past, but just going out and chucking stuff at police officers who you don't even know have been abusive in the past just seems...uncivilized.

Setting police cruisers on fire or wrecking them is going to hurt tax payers, not to mention no way to treat a car (don't care about the Chevy Impalas, but I happen to like the Chevy Caprice).

If you're pissed at something, at very least, have the decency to focus ONLY on the source of your ails!

Those first two paragraphs don't seem to align with the last one, unless you don't believe black citizens in Baltimore and across the country have a major grievance against law enforcement as an institution.

I mean that I don't believe that going out and attacking officers is at all civilized, and most people would consider it to be unacceptable, yes.

But I also think that if they have a lot of pent up energy, and just have to try to mess something up, then yeah, maybe they should focus all rage of that on the police, their equipment, and their vehicles, if that is their source of frustration, leave everything else, like random stores alone, and maybe they should take it all out on them, at the very least. Looting is still unacceptable, or did all those stores do something to them too?

 

[fonzob1]

I think calling the attacks on the police was really stretching it. It'd be one thing if the rioters saw police officers who had abused them in the past, but just going out and chucking stuff at police officers who you don't even know have been abusive in the past just seems...uncivilized.

Setting police cruisers on fire or wrecking them is going to hurt tax payers, not to mention no way to treat a car (don't care about the Chevy Impalas, but I happen to like the Chevy Caprice).

If you're pissed at something, at very least, have the decency to focus ONLY on the source of your ails!

Those first two paragraphs don't seem to align with the last one, unless you don't believe black citizens in Baltimore and across the country have a major grievance against law enforcement as an institution.

I mean that I don't believe that going out and attacking officers is at all civilized, and most people would consider it to be unacceptable, yes.

But I also think that if they have a lot of pent up energy, and just have to try to mess something up, then yeah, maybe they should focus all rage of that on the police, their equipment, and their vehicles, if that is their source of frustration, leave everything else, like random stores alone, and maybe they should take it all out on them, at the very least. Looting is still unacceptable, or did all those stores do something to them too?

I agree with you that the looting and destruction of private property was just wrong. Most Americans probably agree with you. Ray Lewis agrees with you. Even Freddie Gray's family asked people not to do it.

I assume the second part of this (below) was in response to Emilia's post rather than mine?

It was for anyone who cares to read it since it has been part of this discussion as well.

 

[ichab]

Baltimore woman now homeless and jobless thanks to the riots.


http://m.nydailynews.com/news/natio...omeless-jobless-due-rioters-article-1.2202301

 

[Saito S]

Baltimore woman now homeless and jobless thanks to the riots.


http://m.nydailynews.com/news/natio...omeless-jobless-due-rioters-article-1.2202301

An important distinction is made in that article, in fact by the very woman in question, between the protestors and the people that were doing things like destroying people's homes, whom she didn't recognize from the area. The justified anger that boils over into rioting also attracts troublemakers and assholes who don't even care about Freddie Gray, police brutality, or systemic racism, and just want to smash and burn things. Sad, but unsurprising.

Meanwhile, for anyone who has managed thus far to convince themselves that a LOT of this isn't primarily about racism (note, not only, but primarily), or that police have been mistreating black protestors whether or not they become violent, this happened.

An act of not treating everyone equally based on the color of their skin doesn't get much more blatant than that (not to mention the one officer grinning in the last photo of the set, the fuck is wrong with him).

 

[fonzob1]

Baltimore woman now homeless and jobless thanks to the riots.


http://m.nydailynews.com/news/natio...omeless-jobless-due-rioters-article-1.2202301

And a homeless center for youth was torched...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...riots-anger-is-legitimate-20150428-story.html

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The curfew in Baltimore was lifted a couple days ago, but it's not been widely publicized exactly why. It's at least in part because the police department was caught enforcing it a lot more leniently in white neighborhoods. Go figure.

 

[fonzob1]

I still think video cameras are the solution; posting them on Facebook or otherwise circulating them. The officers involved in this incident are "under investigation," but have not been placed on leave or been penalized yet in any way:

http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/28974783/racial-profiling

 

[Robert Maxwell]

They are "a" solution, but not "the" solution. (There is no "the" solution, except a significant cultural shift through which all the attendant problems would gradually die off.)

 

[fonzob1]

Just food for thought. Here is the perspective of a Baltimore police officer not involved with the arrest of Freddie Gray.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/freddie-gray-case-in-baltimore-one-police-officers-perspective/

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, if there's anything we have a shortage of, it's police talking about how hard they have it.

 

[ichab]

Just food for thought. Here is the perspective of a Baltimore police officer not involved with the arrest of Freddie Gray.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/freddie-gray-case-in-baltimore-one-police-officers-perspective/

Very enlightening.

 

[BillJ]

Just food for thought. Here is the perspective of a Baltimore police officer not involved with the arrest of Freddie Gray.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/freddie-gray-case-in-baltimore-one-police-officers-perspective/

I have no doubt being a police officer is an incredibly tough job. It still doesn't mean they should be going into poor neighborhoods like the damned Gestapo.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I tune out the second a cop starts talking about how they're discriminated against. If only the legal system "discriminated against" black people that way!

Police enjoy an incredible amount of public support and not much accountability, considering the power we grant them.

 

[-Brett-]

Recording proof of police bad behavior only helps when they face consequences for it. So far all video cameras have done is prove America's fundamental cowardice. Not only will we not hold them accountable for bad behavior, but we lack even the courage to admit that said behavior was bad.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

In other police abuse news, a cop was sexually harassing a woman, and one of her friends tried to capture it on his cell phone. A scuffle ensued in which the cop claimed the man filming the incident "lunged" at him. Unfortunately for the cop, a nearby security camera caught it all. (Spoiler: the man never made an aggressive move toward the cop.)

Last spring, Jason Disisto and some friends were hanging out in front of a restaurant in Washington Heights when an NYPD officer named Jonathan Munoz came up to one of Disisto’s female friends and started to frisk and paw her. Munoz stuck his hand in the woman’s sweater and took her by the wrist.

Disisto then grabbed his friend’s cell phone to record the incident. Another officer, Edwin Flores, charged at Disitso to prevent from filming. Video footage shows Munoz and Flores attempting to wrestle the phone of Disisto’s hand and then cuffing him. The two officers arrested Disisto and put him in a police car, throwing the cellphone out of the car window.

In Munoz’s incident report, he claims that Disisto lunged at him and that’s why he was arrested. Three angles of the incident show that Disisto did not lunge. The criminals charges against Disisto were later dropped.

If cops won't change on the own and the law isn't going to change to police (ha ha) their behavior, at least catching them misbehaving on camera will help reduce their ability to lie and abuse with impunity.

 

[fonzob1]

Recording proof of police bad behavior only helps when they face consequences for it. So far all video cameras have done is prove America's fundamental cowardice. Not only will we not hold them accountable for bad behavior, but we lack even the courage to admit that said behavior was bad.

We'll see. There is an officer in North Carolina with some really damning video evidence against him. He is facing murder charges.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

The curfew in Baltimore was lifted a couple days ago, but it's not been widely publicized exactly why. It's at least in part because the police department was caught enforcing it a lot more leniently in white neighborhoods. Go figure.

Also because small businesses, especially restaurants and bars, and their employees were losing a lot of money and begging for the curfew to be lifted. And things had calmed down. Most of the violence was on just the one day.

I still think video cameras are the solution; posting them on Facebook or otherwise circulating them.

Video cameras will help, but they should normally be available only for supervisors, investigators, etc. to view. Posting them publicly would create a whole new set of safety, legal, and privacy issues. Imagine being the victim of or witness to a crime, and having your interaction with the police made public...