re: #289 Mattand

Not that it needs to be said, rioting is wrong, but Jesus Fucking Christ: the “Rioting is always wrong” brigade never, never mentions or puts together why the riots and protests are starting. If cops would stop using shooting black people as their default in these situation, there wouldn’t be any fucking riots.

This.

No where else in the world has the number of percentage of officer involved shootings we have in the US, let alone the excessive/deadly force incidents we have in the US.

It all flows from a law enforcement and criminal justice attitude that spares cops the consequences of killing people on the job. They’re granted qualified immunity to murder unarmed people, and even if prosecutors do bring charges, they’re usually watered down, and then juries do the rest to give the cops the benefit of doubt, when none was earned or deserved.

We see this time and again. Cops barge into a house and murder a black woman but prosecutors don’t even bring homicide charges at the grand jury. They start off with a reckless damage charge that essentially treats drywall having greater rights and protections than the life of a black woman.

Cops murder POC on the streets, even when the POC are following the cops’ instructions to the letter. Heck, cops murder POC when giving absolutely no time for a person to react (Tamir Rice), or when exercising their 2A rights in an open carry state (John Crawford, etc.)

Every time this happens, cops ascribe superpowers to the POC - that they were struggling and feared for their lives.

How the fuck is it that Europe, which has similar crime rates to the US, doesn’t have the officer involved death rates here? Because firearms are more strictly regulated and the training/tactics are different and better.