Re: USA gun violence thread

[Pedram]

^That's the biggest problem with Obama type Democrats Hans, they still believe in this West Wing fairytale of reasonable republican, look what they did to Obama when he offered Merrick Garland as the middle of the road compromise on the vacant SC seat.

[McLewis]

I have a lot thoughts about Obama that aren't relevant to this thread, but suffice it to say, his response to SandyHook, to Charleston, and many other shootings that happened during his administration were incredible. That was his strength as a president. We miss that more than anything else he did now more than ever.

After Trayvon was shot, Obama said that could've been his son and teared up talking about it. The right-wing lambasted him mercilessly for it too. They called him racist against whites because he would never say that about white kids who were victims of gun violence. It was bullshit to the nth degree, but not surprising.

With Trump, I don't think he actively roots for these shootings. Even he's not that morally deprived. However, they do not bother him like they did Obama. Because he lacks a moral compass. He lacks ethics and morality. He's literally incapable of comforting people during tragedies like this, especially people not of his same income bracket and skin color.

[McLewis]

New information on the Breonna Taylor murder:

- Her family are suing the LMPD over her death. They are represented by Benjamin Crump, who became sought-after for representing Trayvon Martin's family and many other black families who have lost loved ones to police shootings. He's also currently representing Ahmaud Arbery's family as well.

The lawsuit, obtained by CBS News, says LMPD officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankinson and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who are named as defendants, arrived at the home in plainclothes and unmarked vehicles.

According to the lawsuit, they had a "knock and announce" search warrant for Taylor's apartment, and were looking for a man who lived in a different part of Louisville who had already been apprehended by LMPD the previous day.

The search warrant, obtained by CBS News, named two men: Adrian Orlandes Walker and Jamarcus Cordell Glover, and said they had been observed transporting packages suspected to be drugs from the address. The search warrant does not name Kenneth Walker, Taylor's boyfriend.

The family's lawsuit alleges, "The officers then entered Breonna's home without knocking and without announcing themselves as police officers. The Defendants then proceeded to spray gunfire into the residence with a total disregard for the value of human life." Breonna Taylor was struck eight times.

The lawsuit states Walker and Taylor "believed the home had been broken into by criminals and that they were in significant, imminent danger."

Police, on the other hand, say the officers knocked on the door and announced themselves, and that when the officers forced entry they were "immediately met by gunfire."

Mattingly was shot in the leg, police said. Walker has been charged with first degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer.

Mattingly, Cosgrove and Hankison have been placed on administrative reassignment during an internal investigation. "The Public Integrity investigation into this case remains ongoing, therefore it would be inappropriate for us to comment beyond what we already have said immediately following the incident," the LMPD said Monday in a statement to CBS affiliate WLKY.

The lawsuit brings up Cosgrove's and Hankinson's history of use of force as officers. Cosgrove, the lawsuit claims, shot a Louisville resident seven times in a different case, and Hankinson allegedly had "dozens of situations where he has sent citizens to the hospital for injuries from being tased, pepper sprayed and struck repeatedly in the nose and eyes."

So it's basically playing out as previously thought: The cops say they knocked and announced, the neighbors said they didn't, which is the stance of the family.

The prior history of excessive force by the cops combined by the fact that neither Taylor nor Walker had criminal records and were not named in the warrant, is damning and not a good sign for these cops. That said, I have no faith in Kentucky's justice system until they give me a reason to have faith in it. This state continually elects Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to the US Senate, where they are Trump's most outspoken supporters. Even with evidence on their side, Taylor's family are far from guaranteed justice here.

Full link here - Family sues after 26-year-old EMT is shot and killed by police in her own home

[sportsczy]

The problem is that too many things were tagged as "racial hate" when they weren't at all... so when something is truly a racially influenced crime (like this one), nobody really cares much, unfortunately.

It's like the wolf crying fire too many times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21

The stats aren't good at all.  It's really up to the minority group to turn the data around and then kill the stereotype.

[Arquitecto]

Trump has been disappointing to say the least I agree as a whole and by now it is more silly to defend him given most of his supporters resort to some silly circular examples to stand up for him. It is as if their core identity is validated in his success, not knowing he has lied to his own supporters as well.

But Obama whilst a superbly charasmatic man was by no means a good president either and committed some questionable actions, atrocities and in general was a poor leader and just a coward.


And this coming election is between one disappointment while the other is a not even worth considering. Shame.

[rincon]

Calling Obama a coward or a pussy speaks to a massive double standard of the expectations you place on him. To become the first black president in the US was monumental and it surely took immense courage to go against all odds and succeed to that degree. It's not cowardly, and certainly not poor leadership, to try to unite the country and lead it together. That takes more courage than doing what Trump or Bernie do and just appeal to your base. He tried to do something more, and he always tried to do it with class, rising above the the usual dem/rep politicking.

[McLewis]

The problem is that too many things were tagged as "racial hate" when they weren't at all... so when something is truly a racially influenced crime (like this one), nobody really cares much, unfortunately.

It's like the wolf crying fire too many times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21

The stats aren't good at all.  It's really up to the minority group to turn the data around and then kill the stereotype.

I originally chose to ignore that you minimized decades of systemic racism from law enforcement towards communities of color down to "crying wolf", but had to come back and edit my post. That is extremely offensive. I think you're a far better thinker of these issues than to resort to such a lazy remark.

Numbers never tell the whole story.

How do black communities "kill the stereotype"?

Let's really unpack this because I don't think it's as straightforward and clear cut as you seem to think it is.

[sportsczy]

Didn't mean to offend (although I thought it might).  Better to follow up on private message.

My first point is that, as a victim of racism myself (mostly in France), my experience has been that you need to pick your battles so that people don't get desensitized.  

Second, I hated being viewed as a victim and never wanted to play that role.  There was no benefit in it for me.  

The third point is that the police get promoted and honored by finding and solving crime.  Reducing crime rates basically. So, they focus on an area where they feel that they will get the biggest bang for the buck.  That's their incentive system.  Underprivileged neighborhoods aren't being targeted because they're underprivileged...  it's because the crime rate is higher.  In order to change that, you need to make it statistically less worth it for them to come to your neighborhood as opposed to another.

[McLewis]

Didn't mean to offend (although i thought it might).  The African American community is doing itself a disservice and will never get out of this cycle unless they stop playing the victim (even if you are being victimized).  It serves no purpose at all... I've been part of a persecuted minority group in Iran and then I was stereotyped as a "pied-noir" in France.  Coming to the US in the late 80s was no joke either, although far less than those two places.

In your opinion, how does the black communities in the US move away from this "alleged" victimhood? You're on the outside looking in so maybe the solutions you provide are more objective. I'm on the inside looking out so I don't have that same objectivity.

I can speak to what was happening in France, which I think is a FAR more racist country than the US btw.  Lack of education led to hopelessness and crime...  which (justifiably) caught the attention of law enforcement since that's where the crime was concentrated.  Of course, the HLM system was a complete failure which created the issue to begin with.  However, you have to beat the system and stop hoping to get saved because you're a victim.

I cannot speak to the situation in France so I won't. On the topic of lack of education, look at the school districts in Chicago and Detroit. They are bankrupt. Students here in Detroit literally had to sue the state government because of their school district not having enough money to buy textbooks. Drive 15 minutes down any road away from the city limits and this problem disappears. Because those districts have money. Those districts are also predominantly white. That is not a coincidence. How does that get solved?

"Beat the system" is a lazy copout. That's no better than telling a homeless person to get a job or a poor person to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Come on, man.  You can do better than that.

Police gets paid and promoted based on statistics.  It's really that simple...  criminals caught, cases closed, etc.  So given this incentive, the police are going to focus on areas where there's the most crime.  You can call that systematic racial law enforcement or whatever else you like.  Until the neighborhoods bring their criminal activity down to the point where law enforcement focuses on something else, it's not going to change.

So we've moved from "protect and serve"  to "gotta meet our monthly quotas". Doesn't that bother you? At least the former motto at least tried to mask the blatant disregard the police have for black and brown lives in this country. Neighborhoods with high crime are also neighborhoods with high poverty. You can't fix crime without fixing what causes it. How do we fix poverty in these neighborhoods? We already touched on education, but what else?

I have some really great friends that went to Morehouse College that are just killing it by any standard.  They're the examples in your community that should be emulated.  Now, I grant you, most of these guys come from very stable families...  that's the core issue.  It's very hard to make it up when you're growing up in chaos.  That's what needs to change...  solving the chaos in the neighborhoods.  The solution won't come from outside... it has to come from inside.  I've helped where I could btw.  I was a mentor with BUILD in NYC where I took the subway to the deep Bronx every week to try and guide inner-city kids (great kids too) towards a productive path.  Really loved it.  But with a good number of them, I was fighting against the trauma they suffered once they went home after school.  It was heartbreaking.  I got through to some of them though.

Why can't the solution come from both the inside and the outside? Why does have to be 100% inside or 100% outside? Why can't there be collaboration? There is mutual benefit if/when success is achieved, right?

The chaos in these neighborhoods is caused by a system at every level government that has given up on these people and have left them behind with no real hope of catching up to the more affluent white neighborhoods. It's been that way for decades. You can trace it back most prominently to the Nixon crime bill of the 70s and the Clinton Crime bill (which Joe Biden wrote and co-sponsored) in the 90s that accelerated the mass incarcerations of black and brown people for petty crimes, leading to broken homes, which broke the peace in these neighborhoods, leading to poverty and thus crime. You can trace it to the crack epidemic of the 80s that decimated once peaceful neighborhoods, while leaving white ones untouched. Again, this resulted in broken homes, poverty and eventually crime. Black crackheads were seen as criminals to be locked up in jail while white opioid addicts are seen as victims to be helped in mental health facilities and drug treatment centers. It was not seen as a crisis until it started hitting white kids. This stems from a political system that sees black/brown people as lesser than. So how do we fix such a system?

So my heart isn't in a place where I'm passing ignorant judgement.  I just think that you need to pick your battles.  If you fight every battle, the really important ones get lost in the shuffle.  This murder case is an important battle... but since so many less deserving incidents were made into a battle, then it's not having the impact it should.  That's my point.

Picking our battles indicates that we walk into them with a fighting chance of winning. In reality, we don't have the luxury of picking our battles as we're handicapped from the start by everything I said above. The playing field is not even. I don't see Breonna Taylor's case in the singular view that you see it. I see it as not so much a battle, but 1 more casualty in the overall struggle black and brown communities have waged for decades to not die at the hands of trigger happy cops who "feared for their lives". I frankly don't even like viewing this in terms of a "battle" as it does not accurately capture the struggle. A battle indicates a fighting chance of winning for at least one side. We don't have that right now.

Here's my bottomline. If your message to me essentially boils down to "stop playing the victim and do something about it", you do not understand any of the issues in communities of color in this country. That's super unfortunate given your own background and experiences because you really should have a better grasp at this point. If everything you've experienced has left you at that conclusion, then I don't know how you can be considered an ally of communities of color. No one I've encountered or worked when volunteering in the inner city as part of a charity or any other community outreach program has come away saying "If only they worked harder or didn't play the victim, they'd be fine." No one that truly understood the plight of these folks would ever think about that way. It's a whole lot deeper and lot more complex than the trivialization that I continue to see hurled at these communities. That helps no one. It's a codification to make those hurling that bullshit feel better about themselves and less guilty about the unfortunate situations of those less fortunate. The people who truly get it are all about solutions to the most basic of problems. That's where I'm at. I have as good a grasp on the issues as I'm going to get. Now it's all about realistic, detailed, well thought out, logical solutions.

[CBarca]

Obama's problem as president was that he was a pussy

he needed to be like that to get elected - he needed to get away as far as possible from the "angry black man" stereotype that is so prohibitive of black men's career opportunities

and it's not an unlikeable personality to have anyway

but he kept governing like a moderator, not realizing he was actually appeasing raging lunatics and thus giving them massive power

he should have taken their fucking guns away, then they wouldn't be still able to kill Afro-americans as they please now. But he wanted to be "everyone's" president, even of people who wanted to see him lynched and nothing else

A president can't just take away an entire amendment.

It would have taken like 0 seconds for him to get destroyed by the courts. That's what is amazing about US government. Very strong checks and balances and institutionalized checks and balances. Well, McConnell has tried his best to destroy those institutions.

[Hapless_Hans]

Calling Obama a coward or a pussy speaks to a massive double standard of the expectations you place on him. To become the first black president in the US was monumental and it surely took immense courage to go against all odds and succeed to that degree. It's not cowardly, and certainly not poor leadership, to try to unite the country and lead it together. That takes more courage than doing what Trump or Bernie do and just appeal to your base. He tried to do something more, and he always tried to do it with class, rising above the the usual dem/rep politicking.

First, I was talking about president Obama, not candidate Obama. There is a huge difference. Candidate Obama was amazing.

And then, of course I apply a double standard. Of course I expect more from Obama than from someone like fucking Trump. We can't compare everything to the lowest possible value
I mean, the Trump administration even made Mitt Romney a beacon of political courage

I absolutely call Obama a pussy merely in the context of the high expectations I had of him, and above all in the sense of how he decided to economize his 'political capital' once he had been elected.
I think he made crucial, consequential mistakes in his decision to moderate.

The first he made immediately after taking office, and it was the "let's not look forward" one that basically had his Justice Department give a free pass to the war crimes of the previous administration.
Not holding these people accountable meant a few years later they were back on TV to attack him, and then back as fucking National Security Advisors to the next president...

Then there was the case of immediately firing Van Jones when the right started to attack him with BS stuff just like they have since made a habit out of doing.
https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/van-jones-resigns-amid-controversy-026797

Obama should have defended his people instead of appeasing right wing mad men. He judged the situation very wrong, and decided to not take on the fight for reasons of political capital (he wanted always to be able to present himself as centrist)

For me, the decision to cave in in the Van Jones case was tragically, monumentally wrong, and it embodies everything that was wrong and fateful about Obama's approach at governing.

This set the tone, the frame, for the 2 party discussion since then. He acted as if he accepted their absolute unhingedness as a position which to take seriously.
That is what I mean and I strongly stand by that.

This is no way meant as a comparison to Trump or any spineless, pathetic cowards like that, that's another dimension, don't get me wrong

[BarrileteCosmico]

Obama didn't want to present himself as a centrist, he was a centrist. He believed in free trade and markets. He believed in hard borders that needed to be enforced. He believed in US intervention abroad as a dominant military power. You're asking him to be something he was not.

I agree with some of your points, totally agree that he chose to spend his political capital wrong, but the president is not an all powerful position, and he didn't have the majority in congress for 6 of his 8 years. His hands were literally tied.

I think his main mistakes were: not doing more in those first 2 years when he could get anything accomplished, letting his ego get the better of him and calling the Affordable Care Act 'Obamacare', a botched Obamacare release with many campaign lies, and a general lack of political ability from a minority position (I think his prior experience being only a junior senator really hurt him here). We have seen how centrist Republicans have kept some of Trump's impulses on check, those same could've been tapped on to to get things done, IMO.

[Adit]

I second what BC said. Even though the left brought him up as some leftist Messiah , Obama was no where near a leftist.

He was more brutal than many right wing presidents when it came to bombing middle East.

[BarrileteCosmico]

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/18/rand-paul-no-knock-warrants-should-forbidden/5215149002/

Hoping this stance becomes widespread and they ban it. Who could oppose it?

[McLewis]

And the LMPD have changed their policies on no-knock warrants and body cams in the fallout of this:

https://www.wlky.com/article/breonna-taylor-death-prompts-changes-to-lmpds-no-knock-warrant-body-cam-policies/32583687

Basically:

- No knock warrants now need to be signed off by chief of police in addition to a judge.

- Body cams required for all sworn-in officers.

[FennecFox7]

Sports, we can't make the same mistakes as France. McLewis is right. No matter how many times someone cries wolf, we have to understand that black americans have been persecuted and continue to be persecuted. The racism against them is very real. They deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I do agree they should strive to become better just like the Jews and Muslims here, but then you do have the issue of them growing in shitty neighborhoods like Detroit and Compton and not having the same opportunities due to generational poverty.

As an Algerian, being in France absolutely shocked me at how disgusting people can be and how racist they can be to me. I've had my issues in the US but they were mostly trivial and in high school.. never as an adult. France is bad.. really fucking bad guys. It's the one place I'm scared to actually say where my origins lie.

[The Demon of Carthage]

And the LMPD have changed their policies on no-knock warrants and body cams in the fallout of this:
- Body cams required for all sworn-in officers.

I'm actually surprised it wasn't required before, especially with all the controversy surrounding police brutality in the US. Good news if you ask me.

[sportsczy]

Sports, we can't make the same mistakes as France. McLewis is right. No matter how many times someone cries wolf, we have to understand that black americans have been persecuted and continue to be persecuted. The racism against them is very real. They deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I do agree they should strive to become better just like the Jews and Muslims here, but then you do have the issue of them growing in shitty neighborhoods like Detroit and Compton and not having the same opportunities due to generational poverty.

As an Algerian, being in France absolutely shocked me at how disgusting people can be and how racist they can be to me. I've had my issues in the US but they were mostly trivial and in high school.. never as an adult. France is bad.. really fucking bad guys. It's the one place I'm scared to actually say where my origins lie.

Trying to change things from your perspective (the victim's) will never work. That's my point. You have to understand the perspective of those you're trying to change and implement change using their perspective.

You can rage about all the injustice until your face turns blue... it won't matter one bit unless there's a big enough political and/or economic reason for those who drive things to listen to you. That's step one. Step two is to become one of the drivers yourself.

I'm not trying to be cold. I'm being practical.

[The Demon of Carthage]

Practical, maybe, but not just.

Ideally, what you need to do is make sure there's no injustice in the first place. Why does a black person have to put in extra effort just to even things out?

In what world is it acceptable to go jump in a truck with shotguns and pistols and go murder a young man in the street just because he 'looked like' a suspect in a string of neighborhood break-ins?

I agree that he shouldn't have stopped by that house in construction, but even if that kid was a Harvard graduate with a spotless record, the Macmichaels wouldn't have treated him differently.

We are not asking for much here. Only for people to stop shooting black people just because they are black. I don't think you need any "political" or "economical" reason to be heard here.

[sportsczy]

Agreed dude.  I'm on the side of people that are victims of injustice.  I just don't want to give the perpetrators the satisfaction of knowing they inflicted hurt/pain.  F them.  F the system that accommodates this behavior.  But in order to get things to change, you have to take the power out of their hands.

Not saying it's easy either... it horribly difficult given the road blocks. But imo there's no other way.

[elitedam]

The guy who recorded Arbery's death has been charged with felony murder.

According to the father of the killer, he was in on the chase.

[McLewis]

The least surprising thing about that shooting honestly. As racist as the rest of them. His interview on CNN with his lawyer was a hot mess too.

[Myesyats]

Not guns, but related to previous discussions:

4 Minneapolis cops fired after video shows one kneeling on neck of black man who later died

"Please, I can't breathe," the man said, screaming for several minutes before he became silent. Bystanders urged the officer to release the man from his hold.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/minneapolis-police-encounter-death-trnd/index.html

[El Gunner]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av1sM1ME5lk

[sportsczy]

That police officer committed straight murder and the other officers were accessories to the crime... they deserve everything that's coming to them.

[CBarca]

They should all be charged with murder, absolutely. That's what it was, and everyone knows

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