New Jersey cops shoot Radazz Hearn seven times as he pulls up pants

@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

I'm trying to imagine how people from Oz and England here are viewing this country through the media buzz of "cop killing blacks,

And this is what's worrying you, like Hyacinth Bucket you're concerned about appearance.

I think the general consensus is it's been a long time coming. American police have never had a good rep especially regarding race. We do get TV programmes like The Wire and films like Mississippi Burning over here.

If you're worried about how people over here view your country you would never have elected George Dubya Bush. Compared to that monumental disaster exposing police racism is a breath of fresh air.

2 Replies

@maxdancona,

Quote:

First of all, you don't seem to understand the job of a police officer. The police work for the public. Their job is to "protect and serve" the public. They are, and they should be, accountable to the public

All that is true, but nowhere is there anything in their job descriptions that they must sacrifice themselves. They are daily asked to make judgements and act based upon those judgements. SOmetimes they get it wrong , but because of the recent Bland case, I wonder how much that is provided to us as news is actually factual and how much is gilding the story??

3 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

chai2 wrote:
I'm trying to imagine how people from Oz and England here are viewing this country through the media buzz of "cop killing blacks,

And this is what's worrying you, like Hyacinth Bucket you're concerned about appearance.

Again,an example of putting words in my mouth I haven't said, or twisting them around..
I didn't say it was "worrying" me. I said.....well, it's written right above if you'd like to actually read it.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
First of all, you don't seem to understand the job of a police officer. The police work for the public. Their job is to "protect and serve" the public. They are, and they should be, accountable to the public
All that is true, but nowhere is there anything in their job descriptions that they must sacrifice themselves. They are daily asked to make judgements and act based upon those judgements. SOmetimes they get it wrong , but because of the recent Bland case, I wonder how much that is provided to us as news is actually factual and how much is gilding the story??

Finally a voice of reason.

All things I have already said, and got rabidly thumbed down. Let's see if that happens to your post too. Case in point, I get thumbed down because I ask ehBeth "what do you mean"

Of course now I'll be accused of caring about my popularity votes. Naw, I know it's just being done with no thought behind it at all.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

All that is true, but nowhere is there anything in their job descriptions that they must sacrifice themselves. They are daily asked to make judgements and act based upon those judgements. SOmetimes they get it wrong ...

Being a police officer comes with a certain amount of risk. It isn't that bad, about 6 deaths per 100,000 which is a little less than twice the average occupational risk. But if can't accept this risk while still acting professionally, then you should choose another profession. I chose engineering (which works for me even though I don't get to carry a gun).

Quote:

I wonder how much that is provided to us as news is actually factual and how much is gilding the story??

There are two objective reasons that you should take this story seriously.

1) Look at the data in aggregate. The data show that Black people are more likely to be stopped by police, they are more likely to be arrested and they are more likely to encounter violence .

2) Being a police officer is a service profession. They are there to help and meet the needs of the community they serve. We have a large ethnic group which, as a group, is complaining about the treatment they are receiving from the police.

If the people you are suppose to serve, and your entire reason to exist is to serve, is complaining about your behavior. It the very people who you are suppose to be protecting don't trust you and feel you are a threat, that very fact means you are ******* up.

If you think the problem is the community (rather than the police) then you don't understand what the job of policing entails.

0 Replies

@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

I'm trying to imagine how people from Oz and England here are viewing this country through the media buzz of "cop killing blacks, beware!"

it's got absolutely nothing to do with "media buzz".

interested people in other countries have been looking at the American statistics for years. They are disturbing.

People from around the world have travelled in the US and seen the reality on the street. It is disturbing.

I've seen friends and family treated with less respect because of their appearance. Why do I say that? because politely asking for a cup of tea should not be handled differently for a white customer than a non-white customer. That's before you get to some of the ridiculousness of how some people are treated by the police.

There's a reason I'm almost always the driver/talker when we cross the border into the US. Border control doesn't give me the bs they do my friends/family. If I'm not the driver/talker, things change when I get out of the car.

I've had non-white American friends visit here - and tell me how surprised they were by how they were treated. How were they treated? politely. That should not be a surprise.

There is another angle to this as well. In the US, I sometimes have a difficult time if I ask non-white people for information/help. My friends tell me it's because white people aren't necessarily trusted by non-white people. Fair enough. It's something I have to adjust for when I travel in the US.

___

It's not like people suddenly noticed there is a problem in the US. There may have been a recent increase in coverage - but it's an old problem people know about.

It's also getting old that some people still need to be told this is a reality.

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

I think the general consensus is it's been a long time coming. American police have never had a good rep especially regarding race.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I wonder how much that is provided to us as news is actually factual and how much is gilding the story??

I think a lot of it is smoothed over in the American media, not gilded.

0 Replies

@Foofie,

It was more than schools, foof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified and permitted racial segregation as not being in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which guaranteed equal protection under the law to all citizens, and other federal civil rights laws. Under the doctrine, government was allowed to require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be separated along racial lines, provided that the quality of each group's public facilities was equal. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate."[1]

The doctrine was confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Though segregation laws existed before that case, the decision emboldened segregation states during the Jim Crow era, which had commenced in 1876 and replaced the Black Codes, which had restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans with no pretense of equality during the Reconstruction Era. 17 states had various institutionalized separation laws.

The doctrine was overturned by a series of Supreme Court decisions starting with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. However, the overturning of legal separation laws in the United States was a long process that lasted through much of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s involving many court cases and federal legislation.

1 Reply

@bobsal u1553115,

...And that's how the South became "red" in national elections.

Then again, if the South was still solidly Democratic, and the North "blue," due to its demographics, would we still have a Democracy with only one party likely winning most elections? Isn't a two-party system the minimal number of parties to effect Democracy?

In effect, can one say that integration saved the two-party system (aka, democracy)?

New Jersey cops shoot Radazz Hearn seven times as he pulls up pants

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