Austin Cop Tells Black Teacher His Partner Slammed Into Ground That Black People Have 'Violent Tendencies'
Release of video of incident leads police chief to respond.


Breaion King, a school teacher, was stopped by Officer Bryan Richter for allegedly going 50 miles an hour in a 35 m.p.h. zone, and the situation escalated with the cop pulling King out of the car and slamming her into the ground, KVUE, which obtained video of the incident that happened last summer, reports.
Later, on the way to the police station, King asked another officer, Patrick Spradlin, about relations between police officers and the black community. "I can give you a really good idea why it might be that way," Spradlin was caught on tape saying. "Violent tendencies. And I want you to think about that."
Richter was ordered to undergo "counseling and training" after the incident. "If you've wronged someone, and you haven't been reprimanded, then how do you know that you're wrong?" she asked KVUE.
The Austin police chief, meanwhile, sought to distance his department from the comments. "I can tell you, that those comments are not consistent with the expectations, the mindset the mindset we want of our folks or anyone in law enforcement," KVUE reported him as saying.
Watch here.
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...relations between police officers and the black community. "I can give you a really good idea why it might be that way," Spradlin was caught on tape saying. "Violent tendencies. And I want you to think about that."
He's absolutely right. Oh wait, he WASN'T talking about the cops?
^LOVE IT^
Yeah, if you assume he was talking about the cops, he's spot-on.
Most appropriate reply that could've been made here.
Came here to post this, saw that CX said it, realized I must have been wrong.
Now you know how the rest of us feel about your commenting, Hugh.
Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Ed is all het up this morning.
Is that anything like being woke?
More like just general situational cussedness.
"The lowest level of discipline - counseling and training."
He should get counseling on job-search skills as he looks for a new job in the field of supermarket security.
Assuming, of course, he can find a supermarket willing to take the liability risks of hiring him.
""the situation escalated""
I wonder what the situation was thinking when it did that.
Well, I hope he arrested The Situation too.
Ed... Ed. That title, Ed. Do I need to reapply as copy editor?
Soothing balm for a morning of nutpunches. No, I don't know.
At least they don't have suicidal tendencies.
+1 Pepsi
Sorry guys, this must be my fault. I'm visiting Austin right now and my crazy libertarianism is obviously infecting the noble populace.
Also learned that super-progressive Austin has an ordinance outlawing any activity other than sleep in a short term rental after 10:00 pm. Because, you know, Austinites think that Texas laws governing what consenting adults do in the bedroom are just dandy. Oh well, at least I got to shell out almost as much for a taxi from the airport as it cost me to get from Pasadena to LAX at midday with Uber. Progress!
Welcome to Ausfrancisco!
Thanks. WTF can I get some good mole?
Is there such a thing? Even my cats won't eat mole.
No, no. You want chili gravy. Its like mole but good.
Manuels has good mole.
Thanks, we'll look into it. I'm curious to see how it stacks up against my favorite place in Virginia.
"I can tell you, that those comments are not consistent with the expectations, the mindset the mindset we want of our folks or anyone in law enforcement,"
Wow, that's some meaningless passive-voice bullshit right there. Not even a hint of "he was wrong."
That's what we're up against people.
"During the conversation, the officer's vocal cords vibrated and the words were said"
[wild applause]
*applause was given*
*hands were clapped*
"..So we fired the officer. We wish him well in whatever career he can find where racism of this nature is tolerated."
Oh wait. I need to get me a public union for my job.
I thought Thursdays were nutpunch day. The convention musta thrown things off.
Ed is working our collective scrote like it was a speed bag this morning.
Every day is now a nutpunch day, 'Cisco.
NO NO NO Thursday is "Don't Feed the Trolls" day. But you damn philistines just can't help yourselves.
Ha, watch the police chief's press conference. "I want you to listen to that conversation and tell me that we don't have social issues in this nation. Issues with bias. Issues with racism."
He does an admirable job trying to completely separate himself and his leadership role regarding this particular incident of bias and racism.
The gun discharged...racist remarks were made. See the pattern, there?
Well, the "violent tendencies" guy certainly sounded like a racist.
But yeah, the chief is simply a prisoner of society - why does society do things like foist these bad cops on him and stop him from firing them?
And I love his way of turning it against the community - *now* do you see how we have to talk about race?
(several "training sessions" presided over by contractors related to Austin government officials later)
"Now I think we're making progress."
Also, watch the video at 3:28 or so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reporter seems to call King "Black" as though that was her last name.
Hey! Jack Johnson was black and he beat the crap out of several world champion heavyweights. If that's not a violent tendency, what is? Movies of one of these fights were banned when beer was a federal felony under Republican Ordered Liberty.
The rapid emergence of the modern American police state will insure this evolves from a glib suggestion into truth.
whoa....AC, you run out of your supply? Look man if you need an emergency bump come on out to CO. Many things grow in the mountains.
AC's prefered intoxicant these days is a type of mycelium that grows only by the light of the second full moon in a calendar month beneath the fingernails of a Gypsy who died in an autoerotic asphyxiation incident while listening to T. Rex. It's... difficult to find anywhere.
Fuck that's a beaut of lines.
To be fair, he didn't specify who has these "violent tendencies." It's possible he was admitting that cops have violent tendencies, so you better respect their AUTHORITAY.
Ok, I don't think problems can be solved until people face things that are true and believe them even in the face of their confirmation bias.
Is it not true that black communities are generally more violent than other communities? Isn't it true that black on black crime is a huge problem that dwarfs the number of cop killings/shootings? The reasons for this are many, and need to be tackled, including bad cops, of course.
I guess I'm just saying that after all the shit that cops have to deal with in black neighborhoods, it kind of makes sense to me that he would say that "violent tendencies" are the problem. Because they are.
** runs away **
Yeah this man speaketh the truth!
If you want to play the blame game regarding why relations between cops and the black community are bad, it should be noted that black people didn't start it. Cops have been exercising their "violent tendencies" in black communities (often with impunity) for 100+ years. It's also ludicrous to offer that up as a defense when your partner just slammed someone into the ground over a traffic stop.
I'm not playing the blame game. I'm saying that violent tendencies are a present and prominent problem in black communities. Is that incorrect?
I'm not trying to excuse anything about the bad behavior of cops. The woman asked him a general question, and he answered with something that seems to make sense. Things are fucked up.
But why is it so fucked up? There are huge numbers of reasons: drug war, welfare state, asshole cops, racism, and, gasp, even bad behavior on the part of black people.
You can talk about high crime rates without making it sound like black people all have violent tendencies. And in context, after what just happened in this situation, it's a fucking stupid and tone-deaf thing to say.
This country is insane and does not value the rule of law. What we need is a "Law and Order" strongman to come in and make these stupid fucking pigs understand that we have a Constitution that tells them everything they need to know about how to handle the public and their violent tendencies that are destroying this country every single day.
"Let's get someone strong" is what my Grandmother and friends said back in 1930's.
Before it was all over, my mother was blown out of bed by 1000-bomber raid of Cologne, was chased to Berlin for ignoring SS advances, tried by the Volkssturm for espionage, spent 2 days in Dresden a week before it was firebombed and when Nazi Germany finally collapsed, she had to walk 150 miles back Cologne while pregnant with my sister.
Problem with strongmen is they always go too far.
I have no doubt moral becomes low in police departments as all of these videos started suddenly surfacing in the public eye and law enforcement is coming under actual public scrutiny. I wonder if this will result in professionally trained and tempered officers leaving police work for something else, and all that will remain is the steroid junkies and authority addicts. Between the warrior culture, the apparent lack of supervision and the union protections, I really doubt we'll see much improvement in the years to come.
The police officer in "60 Days In" turned in her badge after the experience. She could no longer put people in jail, in good conscience. It's all in the final episode.
Spoiler alert.
Moral? fisty, you been hangin' with John lately?
Oh, yeah. I could never be a cop, too freedom loving.
Richter was ordered to undergo "counseling and training" after the incident. "If you've wronged someone, and you haven't been reprimanded, then how do you know that you're wrong?" she asked KVUE.
This sounds like my 7-yr.-old. Saying this as an adult is literally a joke.
His cop union buddies could take him out back and cap his knees? After all, they are the ones his actions are likely to put in harm's way. This is 200 miles south of Dallas--a 4-hr drive if you don't mind speeding a little and being brutalized.
I've got the day off, nothing on the schedule. I'm gonna hit the jog down the beach and get in a cool 10 miles on the path. Life is good.
See? We run a tight ship in Austin Texas under "both" the GO Pee and the Democratic People's Republican parties. In Florida or Cleveland manly police Officer Bryan Richter would have shot the brown-skinned girl instead of beating, manhandling, handcuffing, humiliating and arresting her.
I watched the entire video and the female speeder was disrespectful and uncooperative from the outset to an officer who was being very professional. There is no excuse for speeding 15 MPH over the limit in a residential area as that constitutes reckless endangerment to the public. When a person like this person is endangering the public and is a total jerk who resists those who are protecting the rest of the community, which this driver clearly was, I see no problem with the way this went down.
Yes, clearly nothing says 'professional' like throwing someone to the ground.
She has spiwit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJMRxbECzow
Do you have any experience in dealing with violent law breakers in a professional manner or are you an arm chair know it all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqkIOKMdRb8
Welcome back, Dunphy. How go the surfing competitions?
Are you on drugs?
Oh man that was great. not the video you put up, but there was one on the side of the screen where a pig takes in in the throat. So fucking funny. Listenin' to the big tuffgai cry like a little girl, begging for his mommy and god to save him.HI-LARIOUS! I hope that piece of shit drowned in his own blood.
I think it goes without saying that Those People always deserve it. Just like that therapist, with his interferring with the police. It's always just a case of seeing what law they broke that enables Good People to rationalize the street justice.
Well someday when I'm old and maybe ssenile I might be able to base my opinion of hundreds of thousands of people on a couple of videos, but sadly too many courses in math and logic have ruined my brain.
Picured: Space in a logic course
Yeah, it's absolutely not a problem when an officer of the law ascribes "violent tendencies" to an entire race of people. I'm sure the expectation of violence doesn't influence his interactions with members of said race at all, and has nothing to do with why he initiated force on a dusky individual during a traffic stop.
You are obviously a clairvoyant mind reader and know exactly what other people think.
For those of us who aren't blinded by the shininess of them jackboots, merely observing what a cop did and said doesn't count as clairvoyance.
You saw only what you wanted to see.
NOW who's reading minds? My god, the projection with this one.
Let's not go jumping to conclusions here. Remember we're only hearing one side of the story. We don't actually know what happened before the video. These good officers may very well have had reason to fear for their safety, and had to make a split-second decision in a life-or-death situation. If you've never worn the uniform, you have no idea what it's like and really have no business spreading misinformation and your misguided opinions about matters you know nothing about. Let's grow up and just wait for a full and fair investigation, which will conclude that the police were following standard procedure, even if unfortunate mistakes were made in this tragic situation. These brave heroes are, after all, under-staffed, under-paid, and under-appreciated and their training budget was severely slashed in the latest round of budget-cutting.
You're a little bit too good at this.
"Let's not go jumping to conclusions here."
Great idea it's better just to let an arm chair know it all like you decide what everyone else must think and feel.
Exactly what officer Patrick Spradlin meant by 'Violent Tendencies' and how he arrived at his OPINION only he knows as Reason has no information that puts such words into context. According to FBI, DOJ or other sources that provide statistics on violence by race, Backs commit homicides on a per 100,000 statistical basis, at a rate that is roughly 8 times greater than that of White Americans and even higher compared to non-Hispanic White Americans and even a higher rate still when compared to Asian Americans. A blanket statement that Blacks have 'Violent Tendencies' is wrong however statistical evidence suggests that Blacks commit more homicides than Whites or Asians on a statistical basis. Here is an example of just one source of data that is available for those interested.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013
"I require context for what the officer said, and you can't prove it was that bad anyway, but he was definitely justified in roughing up with Negress because people with similar shades of skin are more likely to do murder on people."
"context" = totality of the circs ?
I keep forgetting that an arm chair know it all is always right and knows better than everyone else but I know you'll keep helping me remember.
Space, unless you were there, your opinions are just as much those of an "arm chair know it all" as anyone else's here.
There ARE some of us who have principles, for whom a whiff of prejudice in an enforcer of government's monopoly on violence is very troubling indeed.
Homocide is not the only violent crime.
I know and I've also looked at the data on muggings, rape, etc. have you?
Ok I'm calling 'troll' on this.
I guess FBI statistics aren't your thing.
I guess violence against a 112lb woman is your thing, troll.
She sassed that officer, man. Given the color of her skin, how could he take the chance that her next act wouldn't be murder?
And if one of them said, "she's got a gun!!!11!"...
I am familiar with the crime statistics and, while the issue is complex, black folks are not entirely blameless for their culture. Having said that, the video shows a cop violently assaulting a woman half his size who posed no threat to anyone. I fail to see where race enters into it. If I were caught on video assaulting a woman, of any race, in that manner, I would and should be incarcerated. In this case the victim is taken away in handcuffs. Adding insult to injury, his partner appears to be justifying the assault based upon the "violent tendencies" of other people of the same skin color. Men commit far more crimes than women. Does that give cops license to assault me because I'm male?
These cops are thugs and racists and black people, and the rest of us, have every right to be pissed off by this shit. You've come here to defend these assholes.Fuck you.
My grandfather used to make blanket statements about black people that were, let's say, rather uncomfortable. However, when you consider the black people that he had been exposed to all his life in his small rural part of the country, he was sort of right.
At the same time, he failed to notice that trashy low income white people had the same unflattering tendencies.
If you think that there aren't a lot of dangerous men in low income black areas of town, then you must be living with Bernie in Vermont. But if you think that the danger is simply about race, then you've never been to middle and upper income black neighborhoods in places like Atlanta either.
My dad was a school teacher for many years in two different states. He told me that bad and crude behavior was more common among the black students and parents than other groups. He doesn't know why it is this way, only that it is true. He has to tell me that in hushed tones because it is obviously wrongthink.
Here's an honest and good man, and he is being told that things he observes and knows to be true are either not true or that he is a bad person for believing it.
So, in the aftermath of a video showing a teacher slamming a black student to the ground, let's say he was asked, what is the problem with black students and teachers in schools? If he said it is bad behavior on the part of black students, he would be condemned as a racist and probably lose his job.
Just like the cop, it's probably the wrong time to say that. But really no time is a good time to say it because you're just not allowed to believe such things.
The plural of "anecdote" continues not to be "data."
Yes, that is true, but this is the experience of a person over 4 decades of teaching. Also an experience shared by many of his colleagues. So, it's more than anecdotes.
You are correlating the color of one's skin with a behavioral pattern (and I challenge you to define "black", is that two "black" parents? What if one is from India? What if one parent is "white"?). While groups can and do act in concert (typically intentionally organized groups not groups defined by a simple genetic similarity, like "all blond people" etc.) the actions are done by INDIVIDUALS. Period, Full Stop!
MY preferred form of governance as well as thinking is to take each person as an INDIVIDUAL and hold them responsible for their actions. I don't give a shit if 1000 Peruvian Mayas all walk up to me and spit on me, that does not mean that I wont give the 1001st a clean slate (Obviously human nature dictates this will be difficult and I am not saying it isn't but that is the ideal). To do so otherwise is collectivism which is the fast track to the worst horrors this planet has ever seen...aside from giant asteroids...and Ben Afleck.
Bandit, I agree with you 100%. I never said that my dad didn't give his students clean slates. From everything I know about him, he treated all his students the same. He talked in good terms about both white and black students and grumbled about some challenging ones. It's well known that statistics on larges groups can show a real trend but those statistics are meaningless when applied to one person.
But none of what you wrote refutes my dad's experience that one group had more problems than others. In this instance, black is probably more a cultural term than a genetic one.
The collectivism comes from people who cry racism all the time. If discipline numbers show more black kids getting punished than white ones, people immediately take that a prima facie evidence of racism.
My dad would say, no, those disparate numbers come from real problems that exist within that cultural group. The lazy mind yells racism while people who face the truth want to try to figure out what is really going on.
There is a difference between asking "why are there so many disciplinary actions against black students" or "why are so many black people arrested" and getting the answer that black students tend to act up more or that more blacks commit crimes than the general population, and asking "why did you slam this person to the ground?" and getting the same answer. It is true that people are too afraid to say something like that and appear racist to some people. But that never justifies treating an individual badly because of his race.
Zeb you are correct, but the cop in this story and my dad in the hypothetical were asked general questions, not specific ones.
Full disclosure: I have not watched the video. All I know about the woman's question of the cop is this quote from the story: "King asked another officer, Patrick Spradlin, about relations between police officers and the black community". When I get a chance, I'll watch it, but do you know what the specific question was?
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A Collective Soul cover/parody band?
Actually, Our Collective Scrote was a side project of Tim Hackmyer, founder of Vaseline Glass records. They played a few shows in Minneapolis, Madison, and Chicago in the early 90's. But Tim's main band, Helmet Party and his increasing responsibilities as a record label executive made him shelve OCS. The only recorded material available is a song "Pisst" on the Glass, Needles, and Violence Vol. 4 compilation.
A Collective soul parody could be good. Their ridiculous earnestness always turned me off, but has some comedic potential.
As long as they incorporate a woodcock into their performance of "Shine," i'm down.