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Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

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Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#11

Smearing the victim is SOP for cops. https://fair.org/home/6-elements-of-police-spin-an-object-le...

Excuse my ignorance here. How many police -> suspect interactions are there every day in all 50 US states? What percentage of them are this level of bad/corrupt yearly? Like, 0.2%? I'm not saying it's ok but... I'm pretty sure every business/sector has extremely gross behavior that if we knew about it, we'd be turned off morally. I don't get why hating cops in America is so "trendy" when statistically speaking, there…

In the famous words of Chris Rock

>Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'"

It’s not just the “Few Bad Apples” it’s the entire system where the “Blue Wall” protects them and the justice system doesn’t prosecute. Police rarely blow the whistle on bad actors. That means all of the cops that protect their own deserve all of the flak they get.

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#12
post #7

The article doesn’t mention it, what consequences do the officers/department or those involved face for creating a fake report and fraudulently denying the FOIA request?

I have to guess not much and that's part of the reason people are angry about how policing is conducted in the USA right now.

A personal anecdote: a friend of mine is a former cop and reported one of his colleagues for lying about an arrest. Not even a week later, he was fired for "not being a team player". From what he said, this type of stuff happens all the time.

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse my ignorance here. How many police -> suspect interactions are there every day in all 50 US states? What percentage of them are this level of bad/corrupt yearly? Like, 0.2%? I'm not saying it's ok but... I'm pretty sure every business/sector has extremely gross behavior that if we knew about it, we'd be turned off morally. I don't get why hating cops in America is so "trendy" when statistically speaking, there…

I agree, it's a small percentage. But if we are looking at the percentage of cops willing to lie to protect a bad cop or willing to look the other way when a bad cop does something bad, I'm afraid the percentage is way higher than 0.2%.

In only the past few months: Rochester PD showed up in hoards outside of the courthouse where their fellow officers were being charged for shoving a frail old man to the ground on video.

The reason they showed up was to support the officers that hurt the old man. They cheered them on as the left the courthouse. There's clearly a culture problem that needs to be addressed here.

[1] https://triblive.com/news/world/buffalo-protester-pushed-by-...

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#14

Bodycam of the incident is available [1]. Linking as a footnote because it's NSFW and hard to watch. They basically crush the life out this guy then joke as he lays naked and dead in the street. [1] https://youtu.be/EHpCrmrCtn8

The only thing more dangerous than these bullies is the system that takes incompetent thugs and trusts them with the most vulnerable people in our society.

I'm ashamed that this is still how we treat people under the influence of drugs or mental health crises in 2020. Thanks for posting the footage, I'm disgusted.

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#15
post #7

The article doesn’t mention it, what consequences do the officers/department or those involved face for creating a fake report and fraudulently denying the FOIA request?

Consequences? Brought by the DA? Besides having a very close relationships with their police departments, DA’s have broad discretion in which cases they bring and do not bring.

The largest structural consequence of note was the decision by Philly’s DA Krasner to not call officers whose testimony he knew was questionable, and release those names. He’s not very popular among police

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#18

Hilarious that this was flagged. It's a shame how many Americans see facts they don't like and try to respond with censorship. I wish there was a word like "cowardice" except with 10x the magnitude.

It seems like the unfortunate reality of having a flag button and just giving everyone the ability to use it is that only the content that least offends people's political sensibilities makes it to the front page. If it makes people uncomfortable (such as the realities of police abuse in America) then it gets flagged off the first page.

I worry that it makes HN a bit of a bubble where the people who are made uncomfortable by certain truths and need to hear them the most are also the least likely to hear them because they will flag them away. You can kind of have an entire alternative reality here where police abuse doesn't exist and the police do face accountability for their actions. I wish there was a way to fix it.

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse my ignorance here. How many police -> suspect interactions are there every day in all 50 US states? What percentage of them are this level of bad/corrupt yearly? Like, 0.2%? I'm not saying it's ok but... I'm pretty sure every business/sector has extremely gross behavior that if we knew about it, we'd be turned off morally. I don't get why hating cops in America is so "trendy" when statistically speaking, there…

In the famous words of Chris Rock >Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'" It’s not just the “Few Bad Apples” it’s the entire system where the “Blue Wall” protects them and the justice system doesn’t prosecute. Police rarely blow the whistle on b…

As always, I have to point out - as we know it today, the phrase is "one bad apple spoils the bunch". In it's original form, "a rotten apple quickly infects its neighbor". (Ethyl outgassing from over-ripe apples will encourage other apples to ripen too fast, and mould will spread from one to the next.) The idea has never been that we should tolerate the odd ones out, but that they need to be removed to stop the spread.

There's nothing wrong with describing such officers at bad apples. There's something wrong with leaving where they are.

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

Re: Make Him a Suspect: Rochester PD's Response to Killing of an Unarmed Black Man

#20

Bodycam of the incident is available [1]. Linking as a footnote because it's NSFW and hard to watch. They basically crush the life out this guy then joke as he lays naked and dead in the street. [1] https://youtu.be/EHpCrmrCtn8

It make absolutely no sense that these armed morons with badges are even touching this naked, handcuffed, and head-bagged man - let alone murdering him.
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