 
Fmrdtwn
Member
Username: Fmrdtwn
Post Number: 11
Registered: 07-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 1:15 am: |    |
Serious question here and I know I will be a racist and called many horrible name but I heard a conversation the other day about this subject and I got to hear answers.
Here is the question: Why is it that when a police officer shoots an inner city minority commiting a crime is the population up in arms and causing protests and a call for change but when an innocent kid (boy, adult, girl any person can apply) gets shot standing on a corner minding his business, does this same community not show the same outrage?
Isn't this what should change?
Refrain from bashing me all out and please try to answer the question! |
Lilpup
Member
Username: Lilpup
Post Number: 1636
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 1:19 am: | |
I think your premise is flawed. |
Fmrdtwn
Member
Username: Fmrdtwn
Post Number: 14
Registered: 07-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 1:23 am: | |
lilpup for god sakes you know what I'm asking. It isn't skewed.
Answer the question, its a act that plays out in our county on a yearly basis if not semiannually. |
Hagglerock
Member
Username: Hagglerock
Post Number: 391
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 1:42 am: | |
I think it brings up a perception that many in middle America have. Is it an US vs Them mentality when it comes to the people and "the man"?
Frankly I think it's a combo of what the media wants to portray and that it is much easier to form a group and rally against an established organization, (i.e. the police, uncle sam or the detroit lions) than some low life with a pistol.
my two cents
d |
Lmichigan
Member
Username: Lmichigan
Post Number: 5059
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 2:22 am: | |
It's all anectdotal. Last time I checked, the largest rally in the city in the last few years was against crime when all of those innocent children died a few years back, not a rally against the police.
But, as Hagglerock pointed out, it's much easier to rally against a known quantity, an established organization than an abstract concept like crime. |
Itsjeff
Member
Username: Itsjeff
Post Number: 7370
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 8:08 am: | |
I'm with lilpup. Your premise is that the community gets "up in arms" when a police officer shoots someone "while committing a crime." I can't think of any examples of that.
I can think of instances where the police shot someone NOT committing a crime, like the deaf guy holding a rake, Malice Green, and Magoo. But even then the civic response is always pretty tempered. (In fact, Detroit was the only major city that didn't have a "Rodney King" riot.) |
Warriorfan
Member
Username: Warriorfan
Post Number: 633
Registered: 08-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 8:41 am: | |
quote:I can think of instances where the police shot someone NOT committing a crime, like the deaf guy holding a rake, Malice Green
Malice Green WAS committing a crime. And he wasn't shot. I think you need to review just what happened during the Malice Green incident, you have your facts all screwed up.
Malice Green was spotted coming out of a crackhouse, he was high and had a vial of crack cocaine in his hand. He refused to relinquish the vial to police, he resisted arrest and assaulted officers when they tried to arrest him and pry the crack vial out of his hand. Two officers hit him in the head with a flashlight (which they should not have done) in order to force him to open his hand and give up the crack. Ultimately, he died as a result of HEART FAILURE caused by an enlarged heart, a condition he had thanks to years of crack cocaine abuse. His struggle with police is what aggravated his heart attack, but the blows to the head did not cause his death and neither did the police (it was Malice who chose to get high and buy drugs and then resist arrest). Budzyn and Nevers were railroaded and convicted for crimes they did not commit to appease the African-American community's bloodlust. They were guilty of aggravated assault, not murder. It's not their fault some crackhead's heart gave out during a scuffle, their blows to the head (while illegal) did not play a role in his death. |
Rjlj
Member
Username: Rjlj
Post Number: 234
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 9:07 am: | |
Fmrdtwn, good question. Sometimes in these cases there is a lynch mob ready to battle the police but when an innocent child kids hurt, they don't assemble to seek out the neighborhood person who did it. |
Detroitplanner
Member
Username: Detroitplanner
Post Number: 852
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 9:21 am: | |
Fmrdtwn, you're not seeing the issue. Cops shooting someone IS news. Cops getting shot IS news. Unfortunately, we are unaware of all of the instances where people shoot another. The ones that do make news are the more sensational ones such as the shooting the other day at the check cashing place. There was no uproar in this case because the crime got swift action.
This does not mean that there are people that are not hurt when a non-sensational shooting occurs. Certainly the family, or the neighborhood knows about these shootings and cries out. The media does not hear this because they are more concerned about Lila's good health, or Bernie's Bloopers. |
Southwestmap
Member
Username: Southwestmap
Post Number: 678
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 9:26 am: | |
The deaf guy holding a rake was a deaf guy advanced within 7 feet of an officer's head brandishing an upraised thatching rake - a large, heavy-headed rake with heavy iron prongs on both sides that would be capable of major damage to the officer's face and head, such as losing an eye or two.
The family of the man called the police because they were afraid of him.
By the way, the officer was aquitted but his life appears to be very damaged. A young man from a long line of police officers, , he tried to go back to work but experienced a break-down back on the street. He could not carry or use a weapon and so cannot be a police officer. Some will say 'good riddance" but then they complain mightily for the television cameras that the "police did nothing" to prevent the robberies of schoolchildren the other day. Truth is, the "police" are very few and very cowed. |
Warriorfan
Member
Username: Warriorfan
Post Number: 634
Registered: 08-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 10:41 am: | |
This is interesting since there was a recent controversy in Norfolk Virginia about this very issue. The vice-mayor, who was black, was removed from his position by a City Council vote after making a racial statement to the press. He said "The white cops need to stop shooting the blacks", in an apparent attack on the city of Norfolk's police department. Well, suffice to say, the police department was NOT happy, and neither were many in the city and on the city council who saw this as unsubstantiated slander against the city's white police officers. BTW, the city is nearly 50% black.
The local TV news did some research and looked at all the police shootings in the city since 2002 and broke them down by race. There were five instances of blacks being shot and killed by white police officers since 2002. One black youth was shot and killed by a white officer after the black youth shot and killed a black female police officer. Another black youth was shot dead by a white officer after riddling the officer's patrol car with bullets. Another was killed outside a 7/11 after robbing it at gunpoint. To sum it up, all the blacks youths killed by white police officers were armed and firing at police or pointing their weapon at police when they were killed. So the black Vice Mayor basically just decided to toss out the race card and slander innocent white police officers to win some points with his black constituency. |
Southwestmap
Member
Username: Southwestmap
Post Number: 679
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 10:54 am: | |
From the Detroit News last week:
"For the second time in less than three months, vandals have defaced a mural for Malice Green. Early Tuesday, the letters "KKK" were found scrawled in spray paint across the mural on a vacant building at West Warren and 23rd, near where Green, an unemployed black steel worker, 35, died Nov. 5, 1992, following a struggle with two Detroit police officers. The mural was defaced in October, but community members gathered to repaint it on the anniversary of Green's death. Ron Scott, spokesman for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, said he plans to contact city officials about security at the vacant building. Bennie White Ethiopia, the artist who painted the mural, could not be reached, but his wife, Edna White, said he plans to repaint it."
The absurdity of a claim that the "City" should provide more security for an abandoned building and the Malice Green memorial! |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 322
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 11:02 am: | |
Maybe when the community gets up in arms about other things it just doesn't interest the media as much...... |
Apbest
Member
Username: Apbest
Post Number: 407
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 11:24 am: | |
Fmrdtwn, idk why u get so insistent on people "sticking to the question"...you posed an interesting discussion and it will progress in its own way, this isn't an oral exam |
Janesback
Member
Username: Janesback
Post Number: 196
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 11:37 am: | |
In fact, Detroit was the only major city that didn't have a "Rodney King" riot.)
------------------
Wrong, Houston, Texas and San Antonio, Texas, the 4th and 7th largest cities in the U.S did not have any riots as well. Both mayors praised citizens for not destroying their city, unlike the opportunists who raided and looted T.V. stores and department stores for loot, " all in the name for justice"......... |
Dabirch
Member
Username: Dabirch
Post Number: 2067
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 11:55 am: | |
Maybe, just maybe, it is because the police are given power and authority by the state and its citizenry to uphold and enforce the laws, and are held to a standard that exemplifies such.
Individual citizens are not given such power and authority - they are bound and governed by the laws that the police are expected to enforce.
Individual citizens breaking those laws are the very reason that we have police.
If the police are breaking the laws, or abusing the power that they are granted to enforce the laws, then the citizenry has every right, dare I say obligation, to question the authority and protest the abuse.
This has nothing to do with the media. |
Itsjeff
Member
Username: Itsjeff
Post Number: 7371
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 11:57 am: | |
Warriorfan, in the context of the original post, my reference to Malice Green was appropriate. I agree that he wasn't shot, but he did die as a result of his interaction with the police. That's the subject of the thread.
Janesback, I hadn't heard that. Thanks for the info. |
Warriorfan
Member
Username: Warriorfan
Post Number: 635
Registered: 08-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 12:20 pm: | |
I have to wonder, where were all the protests and the outrage when Officer Eugene Brown was running around shooting a black person every other day? He even got PROMOTED despite being involved in EIGHT shootings (and three fatalities) most of which weren't justified. But you never heard the outcry, because Brown was black, so he could shoot anyone he wants in Detroit. But if a white officer were to shoot someone even if it is 100% justified, here come the protests and cries of racism. It seems anytime a white cop is involved in a shooting of a black man, racism is automatically assumed by many. |
Southwestmap
Member
Username: Southwestmap
Post Number: 680
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 12:30 pm: | |
The Anti-police brutality people have been vocally campaigning against Brown for a long time. So some were up in arms. The difference is that the Feds did not go after him, the city administration did not relentlessly go after him (as they did with the 4th precinct indicted, some of whom have never been let back despite being found not guilty by a Federal jury). So, in then he walks and the white cops don't. |
Itsjeff
Member
Username: Itsjeff
Post Number: 7373
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 12:53 pm: | |
But if a white officer were to shoot someone even if it is 100% justified, here come the protests and cries of racism.
If you're saying that the community ignores black cops who kill black suspects, you're uninformed. Eugene Brown certainly was the subject of protests, media coverage and CC hearings. The Mich Citizen STILL refers to him in every story about possible police abuse.
Does anyone else remember Al Sharpton coming here to lead a protest after the killing of black shoplifters by black security guards?
You're trying to paint a picture that Detroiters are only concerned with white cop-on-black suspect abuse, and that's simply not true. |
Detroitej72
Member
Username: Detroitej72
Post Number: 455
Registered: 05-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 2:22 pm: | |
"Ron Scott, spokesman for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, said he plans to contact city officials about security at the vacant building."
______________________________ ___________________
That comment alone should have folks protesting. Yeh, waste police patrols for an abandoned building instead of, say patrolling city busses or schools. Its ignorant thinking like that which holds us back. |
Fmrdtwn
Member
Username: Fmrdtwn
Post Number: 15
Registered: 07-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 7:43 pm: | |
@ everyone thanks for the discussion, this is what I was looking for, banter back and forth and it has stayied clean and on point.
I wanted opinions here. Great stuff.
@APBEST listen this is a samantical arguement, I didn't ask a factual question only a question about community outcry on police vs. citizens shooting. There was no example given. The first response I get is my question is flawed. No this is a discussion board and that is what I was going for. I didn't mention specifics on purpose.
Thanks everyone. |
Lilpup
Member
Username: Lilpup
Post Number: 1639
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 8:08 pm: | |
Fmrdtwn, if you'd read this board you'd find a lot more outrage about common people being shot, often masked by criticism of lack of policing (Cheli's, Red Square Super Bowl incident, fireworks, the guy by the daycare, etc.) than by police shooting anybody (the most recent case I can think of was the MSP trooper shooting the homeless guy) |
Lmichigan
Member
Username: Lmichigan
Post Number: 5060
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 9:41 pm: | |
I give EVERYONE missed Dabirch's excellent post?
And, again, the largest rally I've remembered in recent years is the rally to raise awareness about innocent bystanders being killed in Detroit the year that all of those children were shot, not a rally against the DPD.
(Message edited by lmichigan on January 25, 2007) |
Lilpup
Member
Username: Lilpup
Post Number: 1640
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 9:49 pm: | |
saw Dabirch's post but there was no mention of the fact that people *do* get outraged over non-police shootings (and I mean outraged in general, not just at the police) |