'I can't breathe' meme will lead to more deaths

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You may notice the phrase, "I can't breathe," showing up in an increasing number of news stories about suspects being restrained by police.

You might think this is good because it will raise awareness of violent police tactics and result in retraining of police to use tactics with less potential for suffocation.

Yes, that would be the good effects, but what else is going to happen: criminals who are used to saying and doing anything, no matter how deceitful, to gain power in any situation will be using the phrase as a meme they hope will give them some power over police during arrest. Police will be trained to take the phrase seriously, so criminals will start abusing the phrase to gain power, and gradually it will become like the story of the boy who cried wolf, where police will come to expect suspects to say they can't breathe even when they can, just to gain some power in the situation.

As a result, there will be people who are really suffocating, and police won't be sure whether to believe them because they are so used to dealing with suspects just saying that they can't breathe because it is a popular meme. It is terrible that this could happen, but the root cause is the total disregard in present day culture for speaking truth and avoiding just saying lies and memes or whatever you think you need to say to manipulate a situation. I don't know if there was ever a time when criminals were honest enough to avoid saying that they can't breathe unless they really can't, but I'm afraid this "I can't breathe" phrase being quoted throughout the media is going to result in a lot of copycat/meme behavior and, as a result, police are not going to take it as seriously when someone who really can't breathe is saying so without it just being an attempt to manipulate the police.

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@livinglava,

This is ridiculous (maybe more than usual).

The police are trained professionals. We give the police guns, and the ability to use lethal force. They have power that we don't have. With that power comes responsibility to act professionally, and a mandate to follow the rules.

If a suspect in your custody says "I can't breath" and you are a professional police officer... you should follow your training. It is part of a police officer's job to keep people in their custody alive.

If the police are going to make an arrest, they should be in control of the situation. It they can't make an arrest safely (i.e. without killing someone), then they shouldn't be making that arrest. They should call for backup until they have enough force to make the arrest professionally.

Of course, in the George Floyd case, there was no excuse for his death.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

This is ridiculous (maybe more than usual).

The police are trained professionals. We give the police guns, and the ability to use lethal force. They have power that we don't have. With that power comes responsibility to act professionally, and a mandate to follow the rules.

If a suspect in your custody says "I can't breath" and you are a professional police officer... you should follow your training. It is part of a police officer's job to keep people in their custody alive.

If the police are going to make an arrest, they should be in control of the situation. It they can't make an arrest safely (i.e. without killing someone), then they shouldn't be making that arrest. They should call for backup until they have enough force to make the arrest professionally.

Of course, in the George Floyd case, there was no excuse for his death.

I didn't post this thread in regard to George Floyd because he is already dead at this point. What I am trying to explain is that if police are used to hearing people say, "I can't breathe," in a flippant way, they are going to be more more likely to distrust it when they hear it. You have to understand that there are people who lie and it is obvious that they are just saying what they're saying to get whatever they want.

You're saying that police just have to call for backup and wait, but if police are used to suspects fleeing and not being able to do anything about it, some are going to try to restrain suspects on their own and when the suspect says they can't breathe, they are going to think the person is just saying that as a meme to get the police to let them go.

What I'm trying to explain is that if no one lies and says they can't breathe unless they really can't, then police are more likely to take it seriously than if they're used to hearing people just say it all the time to escape the situation. Do you understand I am not legitimating police brutality here but rather just trying to explain how certain situations emerge where brutality could have been prevented if everyone had behaved in a more responsible way and not created a meme from "I can't breathe."

It is just as simple as the story of the boy who cried wolf. If everyone is always yelling, "fire," or "rape," or whatever, people are less likely to believe it than when no one says it except when it is really happening. That's what needs to happen with "I can't breathe," because when a suspect is really unable to breathe, the police need to change tactics/holds to prevent suffocation.

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@livinglava,

Do you understand that police are professionals? They are trained to do a job.

Part of that job is to provide medical care to anyone who needs it. If someone says "I can't breath" it is the the job of a police officer to check the situation to make sure they are OK. If they are not sure, they should get medical advice.

If every suspect says "I can't breath", then every time they should check and when not certain get medical aid. That is their job.

When someone has a preventable death in police custody, the police haven't done their job.

You are making excuses; the reasons that police don't do their job correctly. They are irrelevant. When the police kill someone in their custody because they didn't do their job correctly... that is a big ******* deal.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Do you understand that police are professionals? They are trained to do a job.

Part of that job is to provide medical care to anyone who needs it. If someone says "I can't breath" it is the the job of a police officer to check the situation to make sure they are OK. If they are not sure, they should get medical advice.

If every suspect says "I can't breath", then every time they should check and when not certain get medical aid. That is their job.

When someone has a preventable death in police custody, the police haven't done their job.

You are making excuses; the reasons that police don't do their job correctly. They are irrelevant. When the police kill someone in their custody because they didn't do their job correctly... that is a big ******* deal.

I assume you just don't understand that in practice, people lie and cry wolf to try and manipulate situations and, because of that, authorities become immune to what they are saying, even as they are following procedures for how to deal with it.

So what will happen as a result of this "I can't breathe" meme becoming abused is that procedures will be implemented for what to do when a suspect says they can't breathe, and then officers will find ways to ensure that they are following procedural guidelines so that when the person actually does end up suffocating, they will be able to say that they didn't violate any procedures.

What I'm trying to say here is that if suspects would avoid lying and claiming that can't breathe when they really can, then in the event that a suspect really can't breathe, the officer would really respond quickly out of concern for the suspect; whereas if they are just used to following a procedure and not really believing that the suspect is telling the truth, then there is a greater likelihood that the person will suffocate.

When people care and believe in what they're doing, miracles and mercy happen. When people are just going through the motions of following procedures while thinking that the suspect is just repeating a meme/lie to manipulate the situation, the outcome may not be as good. If you have worked in education, you know this is the case with grading where you have students who really put in effort but can't get special consideration because you have to follow grading procedures that avoid special treatment, even though in a traditional teaching situation where you are free to give people extra points for effort, they would get a better grade.

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@livinglava,

It is the responsibility of the police to ensure that people don't die in their custody. Nothing else matters.

They fucked up.

0 Replies

@livinglava,

You got something better for a dying person to gasp if they can't breathe? Should they recite the Gettysburg Address, or something?

As for any bad actors who are pretending in order to squirm out of custody, you can't honestly expect them to somehow indicate hey, I'm just kidding.

The Minneapolis cops had an obligation to bring George Floyd downtown for booking. Instead, they hung around and kept him in a hold that led to his death. Once he was subdued -- and he was; he was on the ground and held down by three cops -- then the job is to cuff him if he wasn't already cuffed, toss him in the back of the squad car, and bring him to Booking. Period.

That's not what happened here.

And it's not even what should have happened with a bad actor pretending to choke. In such an instance as well, the cops cuff them, toss them in the back of a squad car, and bring them in for booking. Period.

2 Replies

It is really simple...

Police officers should know that we expect that no one dies in their custody. Police officers should know, from training and from examples in the news, that if someone dies in their custody... they will be fired and face jail time if they didn't do everything by the book.

If we do this, police officers will do everything they can to ensure that no one dies in their custody. And that is the point.

If there are no consequences for the police officer when Black men die in police custody, Black men will continue to die in police custody.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Veteran friends of mine have said the standards in the military (these are more recent vets; not folks from the Vietnam War or the like) are a lot tighter and the consequences are well-known. The rules are enforced, so they know to really have a damned good reason before discharging weapons and killing people.

That's what's missing here. Actual accountability.

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@jespah,

jespah wrote:

The Minneapolis cops had an obligation to bring George Floyd downtown for booking. Instead, they hung around and kept him in a hold that led to his death. Once he was subdued -- and he was; he was on the ground and held down by three cops -- then the job is to cuff him if he wasn't already cuffed, toss him in the back of the squad car, and bring him to Booking. Period.

The problem was, he wasn't letting them toss him in the back of the squad car. That's why they were pinning him down.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

With one guy keeping lookout?

Who should've been, oh I dunno, calling for backup if the four of them were unable to subdue one person? Or helping?

Their job is to get the guy to Booking. They failed to do so.

1 Reply

@jespah,

I agree that calling for backup is what police should do in those situations.

But more police taking more time to deal with incidents does mean that the police will be dealing with fewer incidents every day.

Unless a lot more police officers are hired of course. But I don't see that happening.

I heard on the news tonight that someplace is actually slashing their police budget in response to this. I didn't catch where it was.

0 Replies

maxdancona wrote:

You are so full of ****, Oralloy.

You should know by now that I can see right through your empty bluffing.

You can't point out anything untrue in my posts, and you won't.

maxdancona wrote:

I live in a suburb of Boston, in a very racially mixed area. I am a White person. I am surrounded by people who are not White. It's fine, I haven't found any reason to be scared. I have never carried a gun or ever wanted one.

I'm sure that being unarmed will serve you well if someone ever tries to harm you.

It'll be a bad idea to call 911 if you are violently attacked. It's unlikely that the police will arrive in time to save you, but if you somehow manage to save yourself, the Black Lives Matter goons will then lynch you for calling 911 against a minority.

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@jespah,

jespah wrote:

You got something better for a dying person to gasp if they can't breathe? Should they recite the Gettysburg Address, or something?

As for any bad actors who are pretending in order to squirm out of custody, you can't honestly expect them to somehow indicate hey, I'm just kidding.

The Minneapolis cops had an obligation to bring George Floyd downtown for booking. Instead, they hung around and kept him in a hold that led to his death. Once he was subdued -- and he was; he was on the ground and held down by three cops -- then the job is to cuff him if he wasn't already cuffed, toss him in the back of the squad car, and bring him to Booking. Period.

That's not what happened here.

And it's not even what should have happened with a bad actor pretending to choke. In such an instance as well, the cops cuff them, toss them in the back of a squad car, and bring them in for booking. Period.

But you don't understand jes. This is just a meme.

Jesus wept.
LL has outdone herself with this one.

0 Replies

@livinglava,

In addition to what's already been said about the police being in control of the situation, and getting the suspect to booking/jail alive; there's a very simple way to know if they're "just saying that"... are they still breathing when the cops put the suspect in the back of the car/van? If the answer is yes, then clearly they were "just saying that"...

... pretty simple, right?

1 Reply

maxdancona wrote:

I live in a suburb of Boston, in a very racially mixed area. I am a White person. I am surrounded by people who are not White. It's fine, I haven't found any reason to be scared. I have never carried a gun or ever wanted one.

You don't have to be scared of people to be concerned with the anti-authority/anti-police/pro-crime culture that is spread through music and other media genres. It is causing conflict between people and police where there shouldn't be any. Police are public servants and friends of any community, as long as the community is against crime and doesn't see it as their bread and butter.

2 Replies

@justaguy2,

justaguy2 wrote:

In addition to what's already been said about the police being in control of the situation, and getting the suspect to booking/jail alive; there's a very simple way to know if they're "just saying that"... are they still breathing when the cops put the suspect in the back of the car/van? If the answer is yes, then clearly they were "just saying that"...

... pretty simple, right?

Let's say you are trying to restrain me and I'm angry as hell at you and trying to get at least loose enough to 'accidentally' jerk my arm a give you a little souvenir for what you're putting me through by arresting me.

So now maybe you're new to the police business and you've had colleagues telling you that you can't trust what suspects say, but you want to be humanitarian and not be like all those other jaded veteran cops; so a suspect starts saying he's in pain or can't breathe or whatever, so you take him at his word, loosen your grip a little, and then . . . wham . . you get whacked in the side of the head.

Such a situation can happen with a suspect of any color/size/etc. It just takes one loose hand to jerk loose and wallop you in the side of the head. Of course if you knew that someone was going to die from restraining them, you would take the punch in the head as the lesser harm; but when you can't trust suspects not to lie and just tell you they can't breathe in order to pop you in the head, that's where the problem starts.

In short, you can't know until after loosening your grip if they really can't breathe or just want to hit you while you are arresting them, so if you give everyone the benefit of the doubt, you're going to get punched in the head every once in a while. How often are you going to get punched in the head before you start doubting when people tell you they are in pain or can't breathe?

2 Replies

@livinglava,

Do you understand what "police" are?

1 Reply

@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

maxdancona wrote:

I live in a suburb of Boston, in a very racially mixed area. I am a White person. I am surrounded by people who are not White. It's fine, I haven't found any reason to be scared. I have never carried a gun or ever wanted one.

You don't have to be scared of people to be concerned with the anti-authority/anti-police/pro-crime culture that is spread through music and other media genres. It is causing conflict between people and police where there shouldn't be any. Police are public servants and friends of any community, as long as the community is against crime and doesn't see it as their bread and butter.

The police have a duty to serve the community. If the community is against the police, that means that the police are screwing up.

When angry people say "**** the police!", it is called free speech. The police are part of the state, and if people are that angry at the police, it means there is a problem that needs to be solved.

When angry police say "**** the community!", they should be fired. The police are supposed to be protecting and serving the community. If they hate the people they are working for, it is impossible for them to do their jobs.

You can't equate the too.

1 Reply

Part of the problem is that the police are not surving poor minority communities. The police are being hired by middle-class white people who expect the police to respond to the fears of middle-class white people.

The police aren't serving or protecting the actual people in the community (who are not middle-class and mostly not White). That is why the police are not getting support in these communities.

If you have a police force that actually works for these communities (instead of for outsiders), then this hostility will go away.

1 Reply

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