Brickbat: Slapjacks
A Harris County, Texas, grand jury, has indicted deputy Ellison Collins for misdemeanor assault for slapping a 61-year-old man hard enough to knock him to the ground outside an International House of Pancakes restaurant. Collins' body camera was not on at the time, but another officer's camera caught him repeatedly telling them man to slap him. The man raised his hand to Collins, but it's not clear from the video if he actually struck him. Collins then slapped the man. Afterwards, two other deputies handcuffed the man. Media reports say it isn't clear what led to the encounter. It also isn't clear if any of the other deputies present will face any sanctions.
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What the fun of being a cop if you can’t slap the shit out of a old man half your size?
So this is what cops do for a living?
Tell me again why we wouldn’t be better off with vigilantes to deal with actual criminals?
Don’t be silly, cops only do this in their spare time. Their main job is protecting us from unlicensed churro vendors.
“It also isn’t clear if any of the other deputies present will face any sanctions.”
Yes. Yes it is clear. They won’t .
CB
“Go ahead, knock that block off my shoulder. I double dog dare you”
Everybody grows old. Some grow up.
Someone in another thread said there should be a (rebuttable) presumption of official misdeeds and exclusion of the police officer’s testimony whenever the officer’s body camera is “disabled”.
I initially opposed that idea because I don’t like the idea of bad guys going free because of equipment bought from the lowest bidder. Stories like this are causing me to rethink my objections.
If the camera is found to be in good working order, then yeah.
I am increasing thinking that if it’s broken, we should be more than a little suspicious about who did the breaking.
Yeah. I agree that there’s a few cases were some nogoodnik might skate away, but enforcing a presumption of wrongdoing on the cops when their monitoring equipment mysteriously “malfunctions” is gonna save a lot more people than it harms, in the short term. In the long term, some legal (and perhaps cultural) reforms might make it so cops stop being power-crazed fascists we have to surveil at all times, and then the rule might reasonably be in dispute.
Enforce that presumption of wrong-doing and actually do something about cops caught misbehaving on camera[1] or lying, and the power-hungry fascists won’t want to be cops.
[1] This time the cop is being prosecuted, but quite often they are neither prosecuted nor fired. And the proper charge in this case is not just misdemeanor assault, but kidnapping.
Were any fish involved?
The fish were shot.
Is it Slapsgiving Day already?
Just in case… Happy Slapsgiving Day!