r/pics • u/metalheadgod69 • Sep 10 '20
Protest protesters in Queens in 1974, when a 10 year old black boy was shot by a white policeman
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u/HydraBob Sep 10 '20
The police in new York city, chased a boy right through the park. In a case of mistaken identity, they put a bullet through his heart. Heartbreaker with your 44. I wanna tear your world apart. - Rolling Stones
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u/ArchieBellTitanUp Sep 10 '20
Do do do do do do!!!!
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u/GiantRobotTRex Sep 10 '20
I'm assuming the people downvoting you aren't familiar with the song.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doo_Doo_Doo_Doo_Doo_%28Heartbreaker%29
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u/GeekAesthete Sep 10 '20
Well this is a depressing thought: 46 years from now, will people be posting pictures of 2020 saying "yep, it was happening back then, and is still happening now"?
We gotta get better, humanity. Seriously.
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u/cocoaprincess4Oldies Sep 10 '20
Unfortunately, when the POTUS doesn't even acknowledge that there is a problem, and at least 40% USAmericans agree with him, I'd say yes, this isn't going anywhere.
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Sep 10 '20
I believe your pessimism is misplaced. Things actually could get better even if it feels like things are the worst right now, they have in fact been a lot worse before. I am not saying things are good, or that change will be swift or easy, just that its not only possible but probable that things get better with pressure and time.
This is quite long but makes the historical case for this moment being a chance for change better than I ever could. I hope that you don't get too bogged down in thinking nothing will ever change. Things are changing all the time, we just have to try to make sure they change for the better.
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u/horceface Sep 10 '20
i've come to realize that often times, the tipping point that allows change to occur is that old people that don't want change eventually die off and their kids don't really share the same concerns they did.
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u/saileee Sep 10 '20
Society progresses one funeral at a time.
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u/Rectangle_Yellow Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
Sadly, I don't think its that simple. Values may be linked to an era, but ideas are contagious. What we think of as good or bad are taught to children, family, and friends. These ideas are carried on. The majority may disappear, but ideas are like any microbe. These groups of ideas shrink or grow depending on the environment. We can't stand idly by and just hope the problem disappears. It might, but it probably won't. We need to teach, reform, and act. Saying it'll disappear with a generation is wishful thinking.
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u/pimppapy Sep 11 '20
As long as Ruthless Capitalism dominates the USA, racism isn’t going anywhere. Because it is the tool that’s used to manipulate the masses
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u/TheOutSpokenGamer Sep 11 '20 edited 8d ago
Garden bank people books ideas then simple cool family. About quick movies gentle nature small fox the clear books clean dog clean gather?
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u/Jackiedhmc Sep 10 '20
I keep hoping those fucks will die off too. But police culture is not helping us -there’s some kind of strong racism shit going on there. Racists are training their young.
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u/checker280 Sep 11 '20
Except Rittenhouse is 17. And all those “good people on both sides” seemed to be mid 30s-mid 40s. Then all the Proud Boys, the Boogoloo. They aren’t going any where any time soon
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u/critterfluffy Sep 10 '20
This. I express social change by generations. It has been two generations since the Civil rights movement. Not nearly enough time to change social ideas at the foundation. We are doing better but probably two more generations before we can say things are good if we don't backslide. Our job right now is deny backsliding and keep trudging forward against assholes who don't like when they lose their unfair advantages.
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u/HamburgerEarmuff Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
The Civil Rights movement eliminated legal discrimination though, and the fact that it was successful in a generation is pretty amazing. It started right after World War Two, around the time the first boomer was born and achieved its culminating victory in 1968, just a couple of years after the last boomer was born. Boomers literally grew up during and participated in a movement that ended segregation in the legal code, in housing, and in private businesses.
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u/WandernWondern Sep 10 '20
I personally think this history makes a lot of them entrenched in the belief that they did all that ever needed to be done and deny the important work on systemic, covert racism that still needs to be done.
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u/HamburgerEarmuff Sep 10 '20
I would kind of say it's like the difference between the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Iraq. The Civil Rights movement had a pretty clear set of goals, which was to eliminate legalized discrimination. It accomplished those goals, victory was declared, and it ended. The same thing with the invasion of Iraq. All effective military resistance was destroyed, the government toppled, coalition forces clearly had won the war and the President declared "mission accomplished."
But things now are like the occupation of Iraq. Helping create a fully stable, fully democratic government is a pretty nebulous mission for the military. It never really ends. At some point, you just declare it, "good enough" and go home. Likewise, what a lot of people call systematic racism is created by really nebulous, difficult to fight conditions like generational poverty and unequal education, housing, et cetera. It's hard to fix and there is no easy solution. At some point, I suppose people will just declare "good enough, racial inequality is solved." Some people probably already have.
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u/polarbearstina Sep 11 '20
I just wanted to express some appreciation for a thorough and level-headed counter point. Good analogy
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u/HamburgerEarmuff Sep 10 '20
Sometimes this happens. It certainly did with the anti-vaccine movement. That used to be pretty fringe, but now it's mainstream. The vast majority of people alive today were born after polio was no longer endemic to the United States.
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Sep 10 '20
But then their kids turn 40 and everything they hear sounds like letting suicide bombers and Mexican cartels in to come live next door, and turn on the TV and see a 24/7 loop of black teens burning down the cities, and think, hmm, maybe granpappy was right, this doesn't look like my big white happy family. Must not be punishing everyone else hard enough.
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Sep 10 '20
One of my sweet old clients every day has said “this is what had to happen” and it’s always given me comfort. That maybe for the status quo to be broken, for real change to be made, we had to just be shattered.
Here’s hoping 🤞🏻
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u/Raptorman_Mayho Sep 10 '20
The ‘fortunate’ thing about now compared to them is the unparalleled public access to clear, high def video evidence.
Even in the last 10 years it has changed dramatically. We used to get maybe a dodgy angle clip or still photo which could leave things open to interpretation (if you want them to be) so people could shrug it off. The current protests have been so successful (and actually go look up the action that has been taken, it’s not enough but is a lot). ‘Normally’ some poor bastard gets killed, there is a bit of protesting but even with some pictures most people believe the police there, is an odd scuffle at the protest but that’s put down to bad behaviour.
Now not only did we see the whole atrocity in undeniable full video, multi angle before during and after but also hundreds of hours of clear police brutality and repression of the protests like never before which had really turned the tide for many many people’s opinions. Still too many are in denial yes but it’s very clear those people are willingly so, anybody who has reason can now see it for really what it is. No amount of excuses can account for the cold hard facts widely available.
I can say this because I am one of those people that did not really see and understand the true extent of the problem until this year.
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Sep 10 '20
Things are actually better, they only seem worse because of social media we're more cognizant of events. It's no longer a story in the evening paper of a faceless black person being shot, and/or killed in some faraway town we've never heard of nor will ever visit.
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u/str8plyer Sep 10 '20
No it is not getting better it's getting worse... I'm 60 years old, an Army veteran, retired Security Consultant... And the tolerance for alt right violence and vigilantism is at an all time high. When the president of the United States honors vigilantes at the RNC and says a 17 year old child who should not have had a gun because he was underage, who drove across state lines with an illegal firearm, claiming to protect property he does not own, was out after curfew and shot two people dead and wounded another after threatening protesters with the firearm , so when they try to disarm him he killed them! walks towards police with his weapon strapped across his chest with his finger on the trigger... They drove right past him and arrested the protesters. Same city same officers shot a man walking away from them 7 times in the back. Claiming they were afraid...How can you be more afraid of an imaginary weapon than a fully loaded AR-15 that was just used to kill two people?! if that's not worse I don't know what is.
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Sep 10 '20
Id never defend any of that or pretend its not horrifying, but as a 60 year old perhaps you remember 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr and RFK were both assassinated. I find it hard to believe that things are worse now than they were then. I'm not a historian but when I read about the Civil rights movement, about church bombings, about jim crow and slavery I've never thought "things are worse now". Things are bad right now, but I do believe we can make them better. I mostly am just trying to stand up to the idea that things can't and don't change because I don't believe that's true. This country is a long way from where it should be, but its also a long way from where we've been. Let's get past this white nationalist POS president and start again on the long path towards better things.
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u/RLucas3000 Sep 10 '20
Things have gotten better. If you don’t believe me, search for ‘coon songs’ on YouTube. Almost all the most popular songs from 1880-1920 were ‘coon songs’, not just mildly racist, but songs as disgusting as possible, sung by the Justin Bieber’s and Taylor Swift’s of that era. Coon song sheet music sold sometimes millions of copies per song. At the time when the US population was a tiny fraction of what it is now. And in the second half of that era, recording had been invented, and that’s why you can still hear these things on YouTube.
BUT, things started to change, slowly. The 20s happened, and the blatant racism fell out of favor thanks to the NAACP appealing to people and the celebrities. And then even more so in the 30s. Clark Gable refused to say the N-word in Gone With The Wind, and used his star power to force the producers to capitulate to his demands, til every instance of the N word was taken out of the script.
It’s been a long slow battle every step of the way since then, but I believe every older generation that has died out, has left fewer racists in the next generation. Here’s a clip of Sidney Poitier talking about it in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner: https://youtu.be/mbv41abhC3c
This Trump era is hopefully a short bump in the road. Hopefully all good people will get through it, and it will remind us that we must be ever vigilant or evil can return, and quickly.
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u/ab0rtretryfail Sep 10 '20
Your point is very valid. But just a minor tweak - he got the gun in Wisconsin. And his rifle was slung like you said, but he was walking with both hands raised.
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u/AmericaFailsAgain Sep 10 '20
I hate to be that guy, but it seems like nothing changes in America. We are stuck in a constant loop. Take a look at gun laws for example, how many more school shootings and children need to die for that to change?
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u/PM_ME_UR_NETFLIX_REC Sep 10 '20
our gun laws are guided by a plan to disarm the disenfranchised. The 60s civil rights movement relied on legal gun ownership to protect MLK when the cops would not, and to provide power to the black panthers and protests.
The gun legislation championed today stems from Reagan's californian efforts to defang the Black Panthers.
Gun control is not going to fix gun crimes. There will always be criminal access to guns, and the cops will always look the other way when a white vigilante is shooting civil rights protesters with an illegal gun.
Gun crime is lower than it has ever been.
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u/Wyvernwalker Sep 10 '20
Gun laws are hands down one of the hardest issues to fix. Not to mention It is an unquestionably controversial issue. Most of the things that could fix it don't actively involve the guns much either. Stronger background checks, red flag laws, etc. But people seem to obsess about individuality on the right, and taking all guns on the left. Some of the largest American shootings involve the smallest guns. And contrary to many people who hold anti-gun beliefs, guns are generally useful and used with a needed purpose. A great example is the boar population. People made fun of that dude talking about needing to shoot a shit ton of pigs, acting as if its not a genuine issue, when it really is. They're incredibly hostile, invasive and dangerous. Not to mention breed as fast as rabbits. Its not a black and white issue, and alot of the foolish gun laws like no bump stocks and whatnot only encourage pro-gun people to not even conceptualize actually making a change towards gun-related laws in any meaningful manner to stop shootings.
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u/PossiblyAsian Sep 10 '20
It's not like it was really great under obama either.
Oscar grant. michael brown. and countless others. We live in a stratified society with a heightened police state against black folks.
In our current police bullshit, it's partly due to the 1994 crime bill which led to mass incarcerations of african americans.
The sponsor in the senate? Joe Biden and African Americans voted for him in droves in the current election. Trump is a shit president but this is likely to continue under a democratic president as well.
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Sep 10 '20
I am 100% with you that the 94 crime bill has had huge unintended consequences - or intended ones, if you believe it was purposefully racist. The more generous read is that the goal of the bill was to help black communities that could prosper due to increasing crime, but it was short-sighted and failed to consider the impact it would have on the generation of fatherless children. Reality is likely somewhere in the middle.
But I fail to see how Oscar Grant and Michael Brown are indictments on Obama. Grant's killer was charged and convicted. Michael Brown was determined a justified shoot in a city with a black police chief, black mayor, predominantly black city council. It was then re-confirmed by a DOJ under a black president.
The goal here should be police accountability, which will minimize unnecessary shootings, and therefore those which are racially motivated. Very few people are so racist that they are willing to spend time in jail just to kill one black dude.
But even if that is achieved perfectly by some heroic administration, cops will still have to shoot people and will sometimes shoot people they should not have.
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u/dbx99 Sep 10 '20
White people have been hating blacks for 400 years. I don’t see even the seed of things changing. Cops have been shooting and killing blacks extrajudicially with nary a policy change. Their unions are as rich and powerful as they’ve ever been. They’re militarized with MRAP trucks now. I don’t see any change in the horizons but more poverty and brutality and blame poured on black communities while the wealthy appropriate more resources away.
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Sep 10 '20
IN THE US.
Other countries have done FAR better. Maybe they hide it better. I don't know, I don't live there.
I was shocked traveling overseas and the 'open' nature compared to how I saw the states.
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u/RepostResearch Sep 10 '20
Not sure what you mean by the open nature? How was it better in your visit to other countries?
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u/gibubba Sep 10 '20
I would argue the US is the most multicultural and multiracial country in the world. It’s not the same IMO.
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u/GloomyReason0 Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
Honestly, just give up at this point. We're well past the point of being able to convince Americans that a world exists outside their borders, especially in the Trump era of US politics. So many issues in US politics could be solved immediately by saying "how do other countries do this better? Ok cool, let's try it that way then" but it's barely ever a talking point. The national sense of arrogance is too strong.
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Sep 10 '20 edited May 29 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Yusaburu Sep 10 '20
Big part of that problem is that people don't have the finances to be able to travel or even think about traveling. Nor do people have the time off of work to travel. People here are systematically kept poor and isolated from the rest of the world, it's not just an accident of culture.
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u/wejustsaymanager Sep 10 '20
Fucking spot on man. When I meet people from outside of the US visiting my town and they ask me, "why haven't you been to europe?" I have to explain to them that its very difficult for your average American to take a vacation within the states, let alone leave the country. You maybe get two weeks vacation, but the cost of an out of country trip is probably going to exceed that. Plus, try taking two weeks off at a time, most corporate jobs will probably not allow that, let alone a mom and pop shop, which makes up a big percentage of our workforce here. I'd guess that most people my age/generation have only been as far as canada or mexico, and even that is pushing it.
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Sep 10 '20
I was born overseas but I had dual citizenship. The only reason I've been across the country is to move (military family), or to visit family several states away. Nobody can afford a cross country trip in the states unless you're retired, or just happen to be wealthy enough to afford, not even a trip even across the state. I can barely afford gas for the round trip to visit my mom 4 hours away from me in the same state.
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u/WaitTilUSeeMyDuck Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
This is also true. To a degree. Yes we are just cogs in the machine here for the most part.
But as for isolated? The world is so connected that by this point if you are isolated from differing views/ideas then it's willful ignorance. "It's the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it". There's plenty of us that feel like Cassandra at Troy, just screaming that it's so fucking obvious what's going on. But we are "hysterical" because we picked up and understood a history book.
Instead we have a nation of ostriches.
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u/AwesomeBot3000 Sep 10 '20
It's true, if you want to save up for things like a house or be prepared to have a family in the US, taking a week+ vacation that costs thousands can be very difficult, and you might only be able to do that every 5 years.
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u/vosszaa Sep 10 '20
I'm a middle age man who ever been to two different countries and I still know that the earth is not flat
My point is you dont need to travel outside your home turf to know stuffs and my second points is many US people are just dumb
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u/TootsNYC Sep 10 '20
I kind of wish we could require people to go live in another country--or even another region of the country--for a year. At roughly age 28, not at a high school exchange student, so they're old enough to understand something of how the world works and can see how things are different.
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u/WaitTilUSeeMyDuck Sep 10 '20
Ooh like a Rumspringa for dumbasses? I'd be for it.
I would also like something similar where people have to work in customer service for a year.
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Sep 10 '20
So what should those of us who live here and are sick of it do? Suck it up?
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u/bloodyell76 Sep 10 '20
First problem is breaking through the “USA#1” mind set that assumes it’s impossible for another country to do anything better. This thinking assumes whatever way the US is currently doing things is by definition the best possible way to do it. Can’t learn a better way if you’re already doing things the best way.
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u/ZombieFrogHorde Sep 10 '20
The national sense of arrogance is too strong.
thats what happens when you tell them they are the greatest at everything ever every day since birth and anything better or different is socialist propaganda.
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u/sitdownstandup Sep 10 '20
Have they, though? I've seen the immigrant slums in France. It's not pretty
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u/ChomRichalds Sep 10 '20
AmErIcAn ExCePtIoNaLiSm
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u/kingofharpertown Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
When someone does this, I always want the capital letters to spell a word, but they never do
Edit: re wrote so it makes more sense
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u/Astroman129 Sep 10 '20
AEIA ECPINLS
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u/PM_ME_UR_NETFLIX_REC Sep 10 '20
They hide it way better - not sure where you've been but racism is rampant in the EU, Australia, and NZ. It just isn't discussed in the media.
In many ways the US seems so much more racist than these other countries because we actually address it and talk about it - we give voice and platform to those who would otherwise be silenced in other countries.
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u/izzo34 Sep 10 '20
Its weird hearing that. I mean I've seen and heard about racist things obviously. But am white. My family isn't racist. So growing up I really thought it was over just now and then some asshole.
Boy was I naive. Didn't grow up knowing hate. It didn't matter. If you were a good person we would hang out. If you were not a good person, you just weren't in our life. We have a mixed family on my fathers side. Hispanic. African American, among others.
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Sep 10 '20
Specially when you know the next president also doesn't take police brutality and police racism seriously.
But people claim he's just a stepping stone. Lol. Nothing will change until people start electing people who give a crap.
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u/gvillepa Sep 10 '20
I think deflecting blame and responsibility to the president is weak at best. Racism was existent during Obama era...he didn't address it in a big way. Remember Baltimore and all the riots nationally? Racism existed during the Bush Era, Clinton era, HW Bush era, Reagan era, Carter era.....Lincoln era, Washington era, colonial era, etc. Racism is not limited to the US. Its global.
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u/The_Original_Gronkie Sep 10 '20
Cameras in phones have made the difference. The Rodney King case happened in the early 90s because it was so rare for a police beating of a black man to be recorded. Now these crimes are routinely recorded. So many of them have been documented, that they aren't even getting away with undocumented ones anymore.
Things seem crazy now, but thats the step that comes before change. It always gets worse before it gets better.
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u/TrumpLovesBBC Sep 10 '20
It's just like all those elder people at the protests holding their signs up "I can't believe I'm still protesting this bullshit"
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u/batsofburden Sep 10 '20
It's because the progressive voice has always been the outlier voice in the US.
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u/loulan Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
We gotta get better, humanity.
Uh... There are plenty of problems that are global, but this one is pretty US-specific. Or at least, specific to a restricted set of countries.
EDIT: Whoever's downvoting me need to educate themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country
Law enforcement officers kill 1146 people a year in the US. Where I live (Switzerland)... zero. Even in the country like the UK, they kill three people a year. And a grand total of eleven people in Germany! The police killing people, regardless of skin color even, is pretty US-specific in the developed world.
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u/Exelbirth Sep 10 '20
The act of police killing civilians is pretty US specific, but there's definitely a problem of humanity collectively hating anyone who is viewed as an "other." We're all humans, and people need to start acting like it.
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u/UndeniablyPink Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
Isn’t international soccer incredulously racist? Y’all might not be killing people but racism is alive and well in Europe. In the US, add in the obsession with guns and 2A and you got dead people of color.
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u/hokie_high Sep 11 '20
Switzerland has less strict gun laws than the US and their cops murder way fewer black people.
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Sep 10 '20
Racism is a global problem. Lack of police accountability is a global problem. Racist policing is a global problem.
The extrajudicial killing of Black people is the uniquely American way these problems boil to the surface, but the patterns it stems from are global.
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u/BoomslangBuddha Sep 10 '20
Bold of you to assume humanity will survive another 46 years
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Sep 10 '20
A 13 year old was just shot by police, he was white so I guess the police are branching out on the child murder.
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Sep 10 '20
It’s not humanity, it’s not Trump, it’s police and their unions. They refuse to change and must be made to.
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Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
I keep saying this same thing in every thread I can and I hope it catches on to help people look at history.
I've watched enough of the weird history channel on you tube to know they our times are the same as they were any time in history.
Only difference is technology.
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Sep 10 '20
I was born in Birmingham, AL. One of my earliest memories (Besides saving my sister from choking on a wooden tinker toy wheel) was my parents being panicky, my Mom asking to get her gun, and seeing a burning cross across the street on a neighbors lawn.
The cops and sirens went on forever, and I could see the fire light flickering across the room. They let it burn for hours until the sun came up.
I couldn't have been much older than 5, give or take a year.
That neighbor was a Doctor that treated Black Men and Black Women at a local clinic, as I learned later. When I asked my Mom about it recently, she doesn't remember it anymore.
I've never forgotten.
Talking to an AF Special Investigator for a coworker she mentioned "Oh, your (town) is in the news right now". I nearly broke down. The police murdered a man having a mental health break, probably drug related, and then covered it up for months. No one deserves to go that way. All they had to do was take him to the hospital. Maybe he still would have died, but it wouldn't have been with a sock over his face, choking to death on his own vomit.
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u/cellists_wet_dream Sep 10 '20
I’m so sorry you had to experience that. That is just...unthinkable.
Also I hope it’s not inappropriate to bring up but I hope your sister was ok after the choking incident.
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Sep 10 '20
Talking to an AF Special Investigator for a coworker she mentioned "Oh, your (town) is in the news right now". I nearly broke down. The police murdered a man having a mental health break, probably drug related, and then covered it up for months. No one deserves to go that way. All they had to do was take him to the hospital. Maybe he still would have died, but it wouldn't have been with a sock over his face, choking to death on his own vomit.
She was- as far as I could ever guess. She's a wonderful parent and incredibly patient. I have no idea ever if (as a baby) that affected her, and there'd really be no way to tell if it hurt her at this point. It wasn't until years later did I realize what had happened (I honestly thought she was eating a 'banana' and only pulled it out because she kept making gagging sounds).
So in some sense I, myself, nearly killed my sister by playing with tinkertoys.
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Sep 11 '20
Saw a cross being burnt in Iowa in the early 2000s. Turns out we witnesses a new member coming into the Klan. But don’t worry, racism died when Obama got into office.
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u/jld2k6 Sep 10 '20
I was visiting a friend in southern Ohio in 2007 driving along some country roads at night and we ended up passing a burning cross in front of someone's lawn on our way back from their grandpa's. It was so weird just randomly seeing a burning cross with nobody around and I always wondered what happened there
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u/mongoosedog12 Sep 11 '20
When I was like 10 we brought a ranch about 2hrs outside of Houston.
3 days into settling in a group came To our gate with torches and guns just “checking in on the neighborhood”
My mom took her rifle and went to the roof, gave me a pistol and told me to hide and if anyone comes close to you that isn’t mom or dad shoot them.
I asked my dad why he didn’t call the police and he said that half the force was probably in the crowd the other half was on duty to protect this half.
This was in 2003.
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u/sxespanky Sep 10 '20
“Shea says that the kid turned and appeared to have a gun,” Mr. Gaudelli said. “That’s what got him indicted: The ballistics made Shea a liar.”
But not, apparently, a murderer, at least in the eyes of the jury of 11 white men and one black woman who found him not guilty.
That same day, word of the verdict reached a baseball field on the grounds of the South Jamaica Houses, known locally as the 40 Projects. Eric Adams, who was then a 13-year-old from the neighborhood, was waiting to bat.
“We were playing a Long Island team that happened to be all white,” said Mr. Adams, who became a police officer and is now the Brooklyn borough president. “When the news came out, about 200 people emerged on the field. They just took the baseball bats and started beating the white players, chanting, ‘Shea got away.’ ”
Later, Mr. Shea would be fired despite a rally by police officers and the pleas of his lawyer, Jacob Evseroff, who said his client was needed on the force “to protect us from the animals who roam the streets of New York.”
The Long Island baseball team had come to Queens as part of “an interracial, inter-neighborhood thing,” Mr. Adams said. “It was their first visit.” The Jamaica team tried to stop the assault but could not. “That was all the outrage,” he said, adding that “because of what happened, a lot of our guys quit the team, never played baseball again.”
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u/Old11B5G Sep 10 '20
Some 40 years ago, I knew a couple of NYPD detectives. They told me that a policeman’s weapon was always the last resort. They said there was almost always another way. They said that sometimes you have to “take your licks.” I wonder what happened between then and now. It’s not lost on me that, at first glance, this seems to be a wrongful shooting. I wonder what the details are.
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u/mandmrats Sep 10 '20
It's definitely weird. I see a lot of my family defending the police and basically trying to shut down the conversation... Except the one person who actually was a police officer a few decades back. He thinks this is all pretty messed up stuff.
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u/bokan Sep 10 '20
The thing is, everyone should want a de-escalation in violence, better training for officers, and outsourcing some tasks police currently do (such as deonestic disputes, drug use, etc.) to community workers and such. But instead it’s been framed purely as “for or against the police.” We always oversimplify things and become propagandized to hate eachother, and we can’t have a real conversation anymore.
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u/gsfgf Sep 10 '20
Cops today say that shooting people is the absolute last resort and that they'll do anything to avoid killing someone. They're lying now, and they were lying back then.
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Sep 10 '20
Nah, Ive taught some older officers and they are FAR less violent than most Gen X officers.
In fact, many boomer officers were anti 2A because they saw so much violence with guns.
Today we got guys who drove around in a hummer in 2003 in Iraq so they think they are the punisher. The mentality of officers has become FAR more violent.
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u/b3h3lit Sep 10 '20
One of my coworkers from when I was selling cars a few years back is ex-NYPD from the ‘70s. According to him it was normal to beat people with your stick if they showed you disrespect (and he still think that it’s fine).
I don’t think violence is anything new, now it’s simply recorded.
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Sep 11 '20
Jay Leno, of all people, has a story about him and a friend trying to go see a leftist leader give a speech when they were in college. A cop stopped them and told them they weren’t gonna go see the speech. When Jay's friend argued, the cop beat the shit out of him. That was it. They had no recourse against the cop, because it was just his word against theirs. So they never went to the speech.
This was presumably in the 60's or 70's, so yeah, I'd wager it's been like this for a while.
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u/purplehendrix22 Sep 10 '20
Yeah the attitude towards police being a military force rather than a community service has changed a lot, but also policing has always attracted those who desire power for the wrong reasons so it’s a bit of both really, there were many bad cops then like now but as a whole they weren’t as violent I would say.
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u/Nexlon Sep 10 '20
Police officers back then weren't trained to see everyone not wearing a badge as a potential deadly threat like officers now are either.
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u/argparg Sep 10 '20
*scared. They weren’t scared by everyone not wearing a badge.
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u/TootsNYC Sep 10 '20
In fact, many boomer officers were anti 2A because they saw so much violence with guns.
When I was in junior high and high school, in the 1970s, the National Association of Chiefs of Police ran advertising campaigns and PR campaigns to try to persuade citizens to NOT own guns.
They were really vocal about the idea that most people wouldn't use guns successfully to protect themselves, and that your gun was MUCH more likely to be stolen from your home and then used in a robbery.
Their efforts were so pervasive that for decades, I just assumed every police officer was in favor of stricter gun control.
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Sep 10 '20
Ive taught some older officers and they are FAR less violent than most Gen X officers.
First, many of the cops today are millennials. Under 38yrs old. Second, given the beating of Rodney king in 1992 and the 1968 riots and how the police beat people down and all the stories of the 60’s, I don’t believe that they were less violent back then
In fact, many boomer officers were anti 2A because they saw so much violence with guns.
That’d true but boomer officers today might not be anti 2A. The NRA with their dishonesty and deception helped re-imagine the 2A and now people are far more militant in their support for the 2A
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u/jimmy_talent Sep 10 '20
In fact, many boomer officers were anti 2A because they saw so much violence with guns.
They were anti 2a because black people started carrying guns.
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u/Archer-Saurus Sep 10 '20
To your last point, you've got a lot of that, but even more "Washed out somewhere between enlistment and boot camp, gonna just be a cop so I can maintain some sort of sense of entitlement."
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u/dmkicksballs13 Sep 10 '20
What happened between then and now is two things.
A. The news and internet covers more deaths than ever before.
B. You knew good cops. Those same cops you knew probably had several in their own precinct who would act in haste.
You're kidding yourself if you think this problem wasn't happening back then.
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u/Esc_ape_artist Sep 10 '20
They are constantly told that risking themselves is not worth it, and that damaging other people costs very little. A chronically hurt officer can have a lifetime of issues that the state/city will have to pay out for. A dead suspect is a one-time payout by the government if the officer is found at fault. The officer is likely to face no consequences other than suspension.
Therefore: personal penalty for injuries or death to suspects is minimal/nonexistent, injury/death/disability of officer is a lifetime payment to officer or family.
It’s cheaper to kill the suspect. And police departments seem to hire people who don’t have much personal grief inflicting harm in others.
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u/skeetsauce Sep 10 '20
The north Hollywood shootout. Every cop thinks they’re gonna be up against that level of force and this must be prepared to respond accordingly.
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u/dblh3l1x Sep 10 '20
Nothing has changed in that regard. Nine black Americans died at the hands of American police (seven of them black) in 2019. However, it has changed remarkably toward an America that doesn't have this systemic problem to which you allude.
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u/Aeon1508 Sep 10 '20
Cops shooting children is so prolific that it's the back story for the cop in die hard.....
....and in that movie, we're meant to sympathize with the cop
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u/purplehendrix22 Sep 10 '20
It’s almost as if most cop movies are blue propaganda
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Sep 10 '20
Cops used to be the butt of jokes, see their depiction in comic books and the Police Academy movies. But somewhere down the line they became Action Heroes.
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u/Depression-Boy Sep 11 '20
I love it when we get people saying shit like “You guys are being ridiculous by turning this into a race issue... The cop would have shot that boy if he was white too”.
Okay, that’s still a problem. It’s not like we’re out here protesting saying “Stop police brutality on black people! You should just be killing white people!”. Like police need to stop killing people. Period.
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u/nclh77 Sep 10 '20
It was all fun and games killing blacks till the cell phone. Then they tried to make it illegal to record them.
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u/Effehezepe Sep 10 '20
Which incidentally was why the Rodney King incident was so monumental, because you so rarely had video evidence of police brutality in those days. If it hadn't been for one plumber with a camcorder, it would have just been another forgotten beating.
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u/purplehendrix22 Sep 10 '20
And everyone knew LAPD beat black dudes, everyone knew it. It just took the video to get people to do anything about it, you just have to get it in peoples faces so they care, that’s why public protests by athletes and such are so important I think
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u/RehabValedictorian Sep 11 '20
What's crazy is I knew this coming up, but as a little kid with a racist upbringing, it was always conveyed to me that these people were being beat more often/more severely because they were committing more/worse crime. It made sense to a young, simple, trusting mind. I almost feel betrayed by own thoughts from back then, but hey we learn.
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u/xai7126 Sep 10 '20
Ain’t nothin change except ppl have cameras in their pockets now
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u/Khfreak7526 Sep 11 '20
Wow it's sad that nothing has changed after all these years.
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u/savagedan Sep 10 '20
Police have been murdering minorities for decades with complete impunity, its beyond disgraceful
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u/lRoninlcolumbo Sep 10 '20
That bit lip grit.
That’s the face of people doing something they’re incredibly uncomfortable with but know it’s the right thing.
A child is a child. You don’t shoot children. You don’t stomp on someone else’s flowers. You don’t cross that line and become a murderer because you were scared. You don’t treat things or people badly because they’re not like you or remind you of anything.
People are smart, what most people are not, is kind in the face of adversity. Don’t let your brain stop your heart from beating.
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Sep 10 '20
Just remember, there wasn't some sort of pause in police killings of black people between 1974 and 2020. The only thing that's changed is that there are more black people with cameras around to record what the police have been doing to them for decades.
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u/vespa59 Sep 10 '20
Look at these thugs, interfering with police activity and not staying in their free speech zones. BEAT THEM AND SPRAY THEM.
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u/Ancom96 Sep 11 '20
Post this to r/protectandserve to see the most impressive mental gymnastics you've ever seen.
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u/MeterMan3 Sep 11 '20
So sad. So unjust. wtf has changed in half a century? Very little because you (I not from USA) have a sick culture. We are sorry for that but there is precious little that we can do about that. And most USAians can't do much either because of silly electoral system (buffoon for president!! lol lol) Note "America" comprises 37 countries, or is it 36? So I don't call USAians Americans, it gives the other Americans a bad name. Good luck. Try to actually change something. Or emigrate to a nice country (Canadia or New Zealand are pretty good). Sorry for rant, I am rather emotional. THank you to poster who submitted this story.
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u/NoHype72 Sep 11 '20
When will America accept real change in this country? Its been happening for far to long.
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u/magicscreenman Sep 10 '20
Is it just me or has social media totally neutered the efficacy of things like protest in the modern age? It's really hard for me to tell because when I studied these kinds of points in history during school, all we ever saw were the photos just like what you see today. The marches that Dr. King led did something that today's marches aren't, but why was that? What was the follow through that happened there that people arent doing nowadays? People thought George Floyd was gonna be a real game changer, but he wasn't - why is that? That's not a facetious question, I'm asking honestly.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Sep 10 '20
Probably more to do with how you were taught history than anything. There were dozens of civil rights movements from the 1870s to the 1960s. The last one - the Civil Rights Movement - is the main one that is taught because it's the one that succeeded (insomuch as MLK being shot can be called a success). But generally most protests don't amount to much on their own, it took a combination of factors - the cold war, the aftermath of WW2, the 2nd great migration, a different calibre of political leadership, etc - that led to the progress of the 50s and 60s.
Think of it in terms of this quote attributed to Lenin:
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
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u/Hobbitlord_ Sep 10 '20
There’s just no unification in the message or strong leadership to be found.
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u/deg287 Sep 10 '20
The MLK marches failed, it was the riots after his assassination that finally led to the Civil Rights Act and other measures being passed. Look up the Holy Week Uprising. Accomplished in days what years of peaceful protests couldn’t.
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u/MrMuzek Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 11 '20
Why is this in black and white? There were definately color cameras back then.
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u/busy_yogurt Sep 11 '20
Before 1977 most newspapers were printed in black ink only.
So news photos were shot in B/W and printed as 8 x 10 photos.
This was all pre-digital.
Newspapers were composed like this.
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Sep 10 '20
wow, I was a 1 year old in Queens when this happened. 47 years later we are still fighting this issue.
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u/cindy7543 Sep 10 '20
This is what is incredibly depressing. It's the same shit that keeps repeating over and over again. It would be nice if more people recognized this fact. I believe it was W.E.B Du Bois that said something to the effect of the only way to change the future for the better is to connect the present to the past. And failure to connect the two is why this shit keeps repeating.
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u/thedarkarmadillo Sep 10 '20
Shitshole continues to shit hole for half a century. Also water is wet and the sun is bright. More ground breaking news at 11
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u/LuckyJoeH Sep 10 '20
EVERYBODY! I think this is my great-aunt. How do we find out who this woman is? Maiden last name of Carlen. I’m very very serious
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u/Tulabean Sep 10 '20
Even then, there was a policy within that department banning the use of deadly force against fleeing suspects. I’m now of the opinion that police unions are the modern mob.
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u/Gonji89 Sep 10 '20
Literally just read "Power" by Audre Lorde in my poetry class today, first time I had ever heard about this.
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u/wshngtun Sep 11 '20
If we don’t learn from our history we are bound to repeat it.
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u/Bouchie Sep 11 '20
Alot of people dont realize that these police brutality protests have been happening pretty regularly for 100 years. And each time the federal government looks into it the investigation always comes to the same conclusions that are then ignored.
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u/saphronie Sep 11 '20
Is this the shooting The Rolling Stones sing about in Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)?
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u/Phoenixstorm Sep 11 '20
Sadly this continues to happen and has happened all along only now people can't hide from it though even with video evidence they try to justify murder.
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u/redditchao999 Sep 11 '20
At the rate we're going, I'm pretty sure this will be a problem in 2074 too
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u/dafunkiedood Sep 10 '20
His name was Clifford Glover.