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Ferguson

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Cine, have you experienced this kind of treatment by police before?  If so would you mind sharing those experiences with us?  If you aren't comfortable doing so that is perfectly understandable.

 

I personally have not experienced negative treatment with cops, for I have never engaged in a situation where I've had to interact with them. But, as a Latino, as the son of an illegal immigrant woman from Latin America, the shadow of unjust treatment and oppression by this country's privileged masses and their "boys in blue" still hangs over my head. This is a country built for and by white, straight, well-endowed men. People of color, women of all races, and LGBQT people of all races are under that shadow of injustice. 

 

The way I've always seen it, society in America lies upon a ladder of privilege, your position on that ladder dictated by your identity not as a human being with flesh, blood, and bones, but as a person of color, by your sexuality, gender, social class...the events at Ferguson is a violent reaction by those at the top of that ladder, willing to kick people off that ladder. People that were already hanging on with their last breath, below those on the very top. This is a issue of race. Don't let anyone tell you the opposite. 

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http://new.livestream.com/timcast/news

 

Two sources for a livestream from Vice News. They were caught in between police lines, escorted, and are being given a ride at the time I post this.

 

None of the officers offered any information, but when they were told one of the journalists was from Canada they started ASKING ABOUT FUCKING HOCKEY. The misogyny is palpable. 

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To be a person of color, to be prosecuted, to be gunned down, to be fucking dehumanized by those who EXIST to protect you. All of you white people got it real good, seriously. You all will never fucking experience this shit. Fucking never.

 

I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, like rubbing salt in a wound.  I suspect that most people have never had criminal interactions with the police much more severe than a traffic violation, and so don't even realize the deep truth of that.  Being white, particularly if you're at least middle class, is a ridiculous how it changes how the police treat you.  Like, if I wasn't a white guy, from a well liked family, I'd have spent some time in jail.  Was never even arrested for anything.  My brother unquestionably should have done some time as a teenager, but wasn't even arrested for the worst offense he committed, just got brought home from the cops and they had a long talk with our dad.  Because he was a good ole boy from a good ole family.  This was a small town, so the cops knew our family well, but I know none of the latino/hispanic kids in town ever got that kind of treatment.  And the one black family, their kids were two of the straightest arrows I ever met, which they probably had to be.

 

Not to say that white kids in that town got away with everything, there certainly were people who got arrested, fined, jail time, etc.  But just like all other privilege, the scales were weighted in their favor, and against the non-white kids. 

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Cop is telling the Vice streaming crew to turn off their camera or point it at the ground because they went wandering away a few hundred feet from the official media area (in a Target parking lot many blocks away from where the curfew is in effect) and were filming the cops processing people who had been arrested tonight. 

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Did the cop show his face? I'm willing to bet they're being told to avoid being on film so that their identity is less clear when this footage appears in court for evidence's sake.

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Did the cop show his face? I'm willing to bet they're being told to avoid being on film so that their identity is less clear when this footage appears in court for evidence's sake.

 

They got a good 5+ seconds of him before aiming the camera at the ground and being escorted back to the press conference area.  He specifically said that he was under orders not to allow any filming in the area that they were shooting (which was literally a 60-90 second walk from where the press conference was being held).

 

Edited to add: To be fair, there are some legal/ethical questions about showing the faces of people who are being arrested, but haven't been charged with anything, without their permission.   Before the cop showed up, the Vice reporter asked her camera person to make sure to angle the shot so as not to show the faces of the men being processed (though they still did show a few).   I have one friend from journalism school who worked on one of those cop reality shows for awhile (not Cops, but another one), and a chunk of her job was making sure of stuff like that.

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My softball team is a fairly diverse group, and we joke around a lot, but I have thought about my friends on the team a lot this week.

 

One of the guys, for the sake of discussion, is very similar to me. About the same age, same height, same build, we both have beards and short hair. I'm white and he's black. One of us has a steady job, a house, and a girlfriend. One of us would walk free if there were suspicious activities happening and we were present. Guess which is which! I feel sick.

 

 

With regard to the journalists filming, from what I understand they have no legal right to be told to turn their cameras off. I have read an awful lot this week, and some of it is hazy but I'm pretty sure that's true.

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With regard to the journalists filming, from what I understand they have no legal right to be told to turn their cameras off. I have read an awful lot this week, and some of it is hazy but I'm pretty sure that's true.

 

From what I've experienced of Ferguson, which is in no way authoritative, I'm pretty sure that these cops are home-grown boys or thereabouts, all of whom have gotten used to their word being law to whomever they meet. Many of them probably figure that, being the most tangible representatives of local government, they have the power to tell reporters to turn off their cameras or anything else that displeases or discomforts them, and it hasn't even occurred to them that they might be in the wrong, which is pretty disturbing considering current events.

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With regard to the journalists filming, from what I understand they have no legal right to be told to turn their cameras off. I have read an awful lot this week, and some of it is hazy but I'm pretty sure that's true.

 

Not just a legal right, but a constitutional right to film police doing their jobs in pubic, so long as they are not obstructing or interfering with their work.  The few laws preventing this have been steadily collapsing over the last few years thanks to the rise of the smartphone.  So far as I know, not a single law prohibiting or restricting filming the police has survived a legal challenge.  Though there are still plenty of examples of arrests, trials, illegal confiscations and lawsuits over it. 

 

Just a few days before Ferguson, the NYPD reminded its officers that the public has a right to film them, and to stop them is a violation of the constitution. 

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Kind of can't wait for John Oliver's show this weekend.

 

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I wonder how this current manifestation of systemic racism and police-brutality will maintain two meanings as people think about it. Are we at risk of using all our political capital removing military equipment from the police and not addressing the racism (or the other way around)?

 

It doesn't seem like anyone talks about cops shooting black people during Katrina anymore. Now they just talk about whether or not the levies are high enough.

 

I can't believe that was 9 years ago.

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The Missouri governor is sending in the National Guard today. I briefly served with folks from the Puerto Rican Guard on one of my deployments and they seemed like decent folks. Looking into the Missouri National Guard, I'm not getting the same vibe. http://m.columbiatribune.com/news/local/tarnished-reputations-a-national-guard-officer-in-columbia-alleges-retaliation/article_5c15b492-7e0c-11e3-a774-001a4bcf6878.html

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The Missouri governor is sending in the National Guard today. I briefly served with folks from the Puerto Rican Guard on one of my deployments and they seemed like decent folks. Looking into the Missouri National Guard, I'm not getting the same vibe. http://m.columbiatribune.com/news/local/tarnished-reputations-a-national-guard-officer-in-columbia-alleges-retaliation/article_5c15b492-7e0c-11e3-a774-001a4bcf6878.html

 

GREAT

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There's also the fraught history of past uses of the National Guard by governors, such as Arkansas using them to keep the Little Rock Nine from going to school, which forced Eisenhower to call in the 101st Airborne to escort the kids to school or the Ohio national guard shooting student anti-war demonstrators at Kent State. Basically every productive domestic use of the guard has been either in response to a natural disaster or when under federal control, whether it was Eisenhower taking the Arkansas guard out of the governor's control or LBJ eventually deciding to protect the marchers from Selma.

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Yeah, I'm not comfortable with the NG being called in, but at the same time, I don't know what else they do.  The local police forces have to be completely removed from the situation.  Who else do you bring in?

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I seriously don't think they'd need to bring in anyone if they just indicted or arrested that officer.

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This is so far beyond Brown now though.  The chief needs to resign, or be removed.  Likely a dozen or more cops ought to be fired.  The killing just started this, dealing with the cop will not be the end. 

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I was hoping the National Guard's orders were to keep the police in check, but apparently their orders are to protect the PD's command center. From who and what?!

 

It's like everyone issuing orders doesn't get it. This protest is about the extreme escalation of authoritative practices.

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This is so far beyond Brown now though.  The chief needs to resign, or be removed.  Likely a dozen or more cops ought to be fired.  The killing just started this, dealing with the cop will not be the end. 

 

But the injustice dealt to Brown is still the prevailing cause of the actual protesting. If that is addressed, I really think that many people wouldn't be out there putting themselves at risk of being attacked by the police.

 

There's no doubt in my mind that there are more crimes that need to be addressed, but the active cause of people wanting to be out there head to head with police is wanting justice to be served.

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Reading at the moment that Governor Shithead didn't notify the White House he would be calling the National Guard in. I'm not sure if he has to get their approval or not before doing such a thing, legally speaking, but given that Obama was on TV last week saying that the state and city officials should be coordinating with Obama's staff to figure this situation out, you'd think he would've concluded they should be in on this before he does anything on his own. Because maybe they can remind him to not escalate the situation.

 

My twitter feed is also started to fill in with mention of marijuana being blamed for making people 'violent' in Ferguson.

 

I also got this news story in my Twitter feed. It's from last month, but it was meant to bring the following perspective: A cop shot and killed a family's dog in front of their six-year-old, unnecessarily, and he was fired for it. Mike Brown is murdered by a cop, again unnecessarily, and the cop is on paid leave and his police department is marching out to stomp any and all objection. Fuck everything.

http://abc7chicago.com/225283/

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For what, upper-middle class stock like me, this whole thing has been an education into what was meant by 'fuck the police'.

 

Like, I can imagine this kind of shit going on in LA in the 90s. Course, there was also a lot of crime, but also I'd guess a lot of poverty and racism fueling the crime.

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That the reefer madness nonsense persists against all evidence, but only when applied to black and brown folks, is maddening.

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I also got this news story in my Twitter feed. It's from last month, but it was meant to bring the following perspective: A cop shot and killed a family's dog in front of their six-year-old, unnecessarily, and he was fired for it. Mike Brown is murdered by a cop, again unnecessarily, and the cop is on paid leave and his police department is marching out to stomp any and all objection. Fuck everything.

http://abc7chicago.com/225283/

Not sure what the time frames are, but it's pretty standard procedure to put any officer who's involved in a shooting on leave until the investigation is completed. Which isn't to say that he won't be fired later. The cop who shot the dog 1) may also have been on leave in the meantime, or more likely,  2) shooting a dog may not meet the standard to trigger the automatic leave-policy.

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For what, upper-middle class stock like me, this whole thing has been an education into what was meant by 'fuck the police'.

 

Like, I can imagine this kind of shit going on in LA in the 90s. Course, there was also a lot of crime, but also I'd guess a lot of poverty and racism fueling the crime.

I got my insight into it when I was growing up.

 

My mother and a friend of hers would go play bingo every Thursday, which meant my brother and I going to a babysitter's. The babysitter being my mother's friend's husband. They're black, live in a black community, and it was policed heavily by white cops (which I'm sure is the same now 20 years later, I should drive over there to check it out). We arrived one night to see the door kicked in, the husband is gone, and everyone else is in tears. The cops came looking for their son - who was an idiot and got involved in a lot of crime. Rather than knock asking around for him, the cops busted down the door, and when the husband came around the corner ready to defend his home from potential burglary the beat him. Like really, really badly, in front of all the kids. Then hauled him off to jail. We missed the whole affair by about ten minutes. The cops didn't even take statements from my mother's friend.

 

My step-family, nieces and nephews included, are also black, and they've had to go through a thing or two as they've grown up. Nowhere near that bad though.

 

I didn't grow up enduring the shit first hand, because I'm light of skin (half Mexican though), but I was in close enough proximity to see the fallout and know the bullshit.

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