The Atlanta Cop Who Killed a Black Man in a Wendy's Parking Lot on Friday Night Has Been Fired

Plus: "Twitter Robespierres," Trump's campaign does a weird flex on a bad poll, and more....

Huge protests and some rioting rocked Atlanta over the weekend after a white police officer there killed a black man, Rayshard Brooks, in a Wendy's parking lot Friday night.

Brooks, who was 27, died after being shot twice in the back, according to an autopsy report released Sunday. He'd been detained by two police officers after reportedly falling asleep behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot; bodycams and security camera footage show cops administering a sobriety test and subsequently arresting Brooks. It's unclear what happens next, but a struggle breaks out and Brooks appears to grab a stun gun from one of the cops. Brooks breaks away, but is shot from behind as he flees the scene.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms criticized the use of deadly force. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told CNN that Brooks "did not seem to present any kind of a threat to anyone, and so the fact that it would escalate to his death just seems unreasonable." The cop who killed Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, was fired, and the other police officer on the scene was placed on administrative leave. The police chief resigned on Saturday.

While city officials in Atlanta seem to be saying and doing the right things after yet another unnecessary death at the hands of the police, Brooks' shooting sparked another round of protests and violence like those that broke out after last month's killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. By Saturday night, the protests had turned to riots in some places. The Wendy's where Brooks was killed was torched and nearby businesses were robbed.

The Wendys where Atlanta Police shot and killed #RayshardBrooks has been lit on fire by protesters: pic.twitter.com/8i5uiAjPHp

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 14, 2020

https://twitter.com/ElaineLylith/status/1272355440333066240

Looting is not going to solve the problem of police officers killing unarmed people, and it only creates more victims. (Several of the businesses destroyed were black-owned, according to local news reports.) But the palpable anger unleashed in recent weeks seems unlikely to abate until public officials respond to it with substantial reforms to policing. May I suggest we begin by repealing qualified immunity?

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FREE MINDS

Gonzo-ish left-wing writer and Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi enters the debate over the progressive-led purges at major media outlets—like the one that ousted New York Times opinion editor James Bennet after he approved that that cringeworthy but certainly not firable op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) a few weeks back—and concludes that it's a symptom of an intellectual revolution gone wrong:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It's become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

Taibbi's scorching essay is well worth the time to read. So, too, is Robby Soave's Reason take on the upheaval at the Times and the ongoing spate of readers demanding the heads—or at least the jobs—of anyone who deviates from the prescribed progressive responses to the civic unrest that has rattled American cities in recent weeks.

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ELECTION UPDATE

Weird flex. In a since-deleted tweet, a senior legal advisor to President Donald Trump's reelection campaign seemed to argue that a recent poll showing a statistical tie between Trump and former vice president Joe Biden in deep-red Arkansas somehow refuted other polls showing that Trump is struggling nationally.

(Source: Twitter)

Suffice it to say that if Trump struggles to beat Biden in Arkansas—a state Trump carried by 27 points four years ago—he's probably not heading for a second term in the White House. The actual good news for the Trump campaign is that the Arkansas poll looks like an outlier:

The Hendrix College poll of Arkansas--the one cited by a Trump lawyer to dispute the last CNN/SSRS poll--is the single worst poll of the cycle for the president
(it is the one on the veryyy bottom-right corner) pic.twitter.com/Oe9LOMU8be

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 14, 2020

 

Meanwhile, Biden has a plan for reopening the economy. He would create a federal paid-leave program for workers who get sick, would hire at least 100,000 people to duplicate contact-tracing work already being done by states, and would empower the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce social distancing.

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QUICK HITS

• Remember when social distancing was a thing?

"You need to take it, and you need to process it, and you need to keep carrying forward with it every single day of your life."

The area outside of the Brooklyn Museum is packed for the #BlackTransLivesMatter protest. pic.twitter.com/UbZYzs15h1

— Alexis Benveniste (@apbenven) June 14, 2020

• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatens to turn this car around unless you kids start behaving. Other places, too, might halt or reverse coronavirus reopenings as cases continue to surge.

• More than 1,400 professional athletes and coaches have signed a letter calling for qualified immunity to be abolished.

• Radley Balko on one reason talking about black-on-black crime isn't a good retort to the racial disparity in police shootings:

The "blacks commit 50% of homicides" thing just isn't a persuasive rejoinder to the racial disparity in police shootings.

Here's why: The overwhelming majority of time when cops kill, it is not to stop someone from killing someone else. Most of the time, it's in response to…

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) June 15, 2020

• Trump says he won't watch U.S. soccer games or the NFL unless players are forced to stand for the national anthem—which hopefully means he'll stop tweeting about this tired subject too.

• Watch some Long Island cops violently arrest a protester who accidentally bumped into one of them:

Peaceful protest in East Meadow, NY (Long Island):

An officer abruptly stops so the protestor walking behind him bumps into the cop.

Then the man is violently arrested.

Bystanders: "they kneeled on his neck & had about 6 officers holding him down."pic.twitter.com/uNK5DOaFRo

— Rex Chapman???????? (@RexChapman) June 13, 2020

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The police chief resigned on Saturday.

That fat pension suddenly looked pretty good.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

Re Taibbi. He's right. But we called it a long time ago.

It didn't take a genius to see where this was all going.

[Earth Skeptic]

But we are just a bunch of autistic incels.

The mainstream left will have to use another category to dismiss Taibbi.

[Rufus The Monocled]

To be sure.

[Cmustapha]

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[Ricport]

What I find incredible is that you know things are really bad when an off-the-rails leftist like Taibbi says things have gotten out of hand.

[snasercool99]

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[Ra's al Gore]

Andrew Sullivan is starting to get the picture too.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Our boy Robby too.

[MP]

He called it out over two years ago.

[Rufus The Monocled]

He called nothing before we did.

Looking back on my days on campus in the 90s there were already red flags then.

But in the last seven years or so this shit has been accelerating.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Obama's election is what seems to have been the tipping point.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

This is why I've been saying for several years that the lunacy we saw largely confined to college campuses 20 years ago, and has been steadily increasing since then, wasn't going to stay there forever--these vermin would graduate, go on to positions within the public and private sector, and spread their pestilence throughout society.

Hand-waving this away as a "small vocal minority," as the more passive right and libertarians have done for years, was simply a means to avoid the fact that they had friends and family members who were buying this shit and would turn on them in a heartbeat. Now that some of these people are getting shut out over the last three years in particular because they won't participate in the current Two Minutes Hate, maybe they'll see that the chickens have come home to roost.

And as I've said repeatedly, it's actually the white liberals that have been the biggest vectors of McIntosh Disease, not the minority community, and if you look online, it's mostly white liberal women that are pushing these cancel actions and turning American society into a giant middle school.

[Aktenberg78]

Very well said. White liberals are the enemy. The minority community are just the pawns.

[R Mac]

Unfortunately willing pawns.

[Think It Through]

I wonder about the possibility the chief refused to fire the officer, telling the mayor "good shoot," and the mayor said you gotta go then and I will find someone who will fire him….Atlanta's own Saturday Night Massacre.

[Rich]

I wonder about the possibility that the chief, immediately after seeing the situation, said "FTS! I am *so* outta here!"

[Fist of Etiquette]

I don't get that vibe from this police chief, but who knows.

[darkflame]

I could believe that. From what I've heard of how it went down, the cops were in the right based on their training. He was armed, violent, and drunk, he had attacked the cops and there was a chance he'd attack someone else. If he used the taser on the cops, he could have gotten one of their guns. Cops are taught to never be captured because of what criminals will do to them. Based on their training, they were justified in the use of force. Now, you can argue whether the training needs to be changed, but they followed the book and shouldn't have been punished for it. I guarantee you that the rest of the Atlanta cops aren't gonna be too gungho about doing their jobs now, even the bare bone basics.

[I, Woodchipper]

keep licking those boots...

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

As if you'd actually live in a police-free world without pissing your pants.

[darkflame]

I'm the last person to defend the cops when they fuck up. But I also have a degree in CRMJ, so unlike you, I know what I'm talking about.

[Gray_Jay]

Idiot. Get rid of cops, and it'll be a net negative for personal liberty. Unless you want to see things like vigilance committees/neighborhood warlords sprout up, and things like the killing of that Arbery guy in Georgia be commonplace.

Travel outside the US a bit. See how the cops pretty much everywhere outside of W. Europe and Japan behave. (And on the Japanese, woo boy, I hope you don't ever get arrested.)

Things can be improved with policing here. They can also get unimaginably worse.

[darkflame]

Yep. Also, the Japanese style community policing is VERY intrusive, as in, hey, "I just talked to your mom and she said you hadn't called her in a week, YOU SHOULD DO THAT." Or "The neighbors are complaining that you don't socialize enough, why aren't you being part of the community?"

[some guy]

The Wendy's where Brooks was killed was torched and nearby businesses were robbed.

::Picard facepalm::

[Fats of Fury]

She only stepped aside as chief she still remains on the force. Sweet Sweet pension

Shields hardly missed a rung in her climb to become Atlanta’s second female police chief; she also was the city’s first openly gay chief.

From sea to shining sea being openly gay is the number one qualification for police or fire chief. Being a woman # 2. Competence doesn't break the top 10.

Atlanta Police Union representative Ken Allen said the rank and file was loyal to the chief. “She fought for their pay raise,” said Allen

They have each others backs.

[Cyto]

My assumption is that she resigned because the mayor told her to fire the shooter and she refused.

Keeping the position is the price of her silence.

[John Dough]

Some common sense observations:

If Rayshard Brooks were white and had violently resisted arrest, he would very likely still be dead.

If Rayshard Brooks had not violently resisted arrest, he would very likely still be alive.

People saying the situation "was calm, and then it escalated". Who escalated the situation? Was it the police officer politely and lawfully performing his duty, or the man violently resisting arrest?

The suggestion that police should have let Brooks "walk it off", or otherwise ignore the DUI, is laughable.

Brooks was not "Cooperative"; again, he violently resisted arrest.

Brooks grabbed the officer's taser. In the chaos of the scuffle did Brooks have the foresight to grab the taser and not the gun? Or was it just luck that he grabbed the taser instead of a gun?

Brooks punched the officer in the face. (See "cooperative" above).

Brooks was not "unarmed"; he had a taser in hand.

Brooks was not simply "running away"; he turned while running to fire the taser at the officer.

Tasers can be lethal weapons. At the very least they can incapacitate somone long enough for you to kill them, or in this circumstance long enough to obtain the officer's firearm.

Should the officers have decided to let him run and engage in a chase instead of firing at him? If the answer is yes, that means arguing that they should have let a man who is drunk and violent run away while being sufficiently confident that he will not harm other innocent people or himself in the process, that he will be able to be apprehended eventually, and that he does not have a hidden weapon on his person with which to do further harm.

If a cop is trying to arrest you and you attempt to wrestle him, punch him in the face, take his taser and fire it at him, you are probably going to get shot and the cop is probably justified in shooting you.

[I, Woodchipper]

Shot twice in the back while running away unarmed.

Sorry, but if you take your tongue off those boots for a minute you might realize there is no circumstance where this is acceptable. These are the tactics of a police state.

[damikesc]

He had the taser. Not sure what you label that as, but to me, a taser very much is an arm.

Why not accurately describe the situation instead of describing how you wish it were?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Because I, Woodchipper loves it when mobs burn private property to the ground to own the po-po.

[I, Woodchipper]

Incorrect.
One can despise the police state AND rioters at the same time. Takes a little bit of thought though,,,,

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Funny, because the only ones I'm seeing you sperg out about have been the former.

[R Mac]

Except he was armed. Just because ENB is once again being dishonest, doesn’t mean you have to be ignorant.

[Tulpa Disciple]

Eric Boehm, actually, not ENB.

[Woodchipper of the Apocalypse]

What's Eric's middle initial?

[mulched]

I've never seen them at the same cocktail party at the same time. Coincidence?

[R Mac]

My mistake. Didn’t even pay attention to the author.

[Cyto]

Everything you write in this post is wrong. Is this a troll or did you just decline to watch the video?

[Fist of Etiquette]

The cop who killed Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, was fired, and the other police officer on the scene was placed on administrative leave.

In their defense, their supervisors failed to adequately warn them that the rules of engagement had abruptly changed.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

No black man should fear for his life when he drives drunk, steals a police taser, fires at an officer with said taser and then runs away. Running away is a universal sign of innocence.

[Wearenotperfect]

So what if he was driving under the influence and fell asleep behind the wheel! Up to that point he hadn't hurt anyone so after getting him to move his vehicle to a different parking spot they should've just let him be and none of this would have happened.

[IceTrey]

If he hadn't been driving drunk none of this would have happened. If he hadn't resisted arrest none of this would have happened. If he had zig zagged none of this would have happened.

[Wearenotperfect]

Exactly, those are all good points. When would be a good time to stop making criminals out of individuals who haven't physically hurt anyone yet?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

You do realize that driving drunk is a crime, right?

[R Mac]

You know what would really get more people to jump on the libertarian train? Advocate to make drunk driving legal! Or maybe just for black people?

[Wearenotperfect]

I remember the good ol' days of "smoke rolling out the window, ice cold beer sitting on the console" in my East Texas town!

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

So you were an idiot even then? Not really a surprise.

[Gray_Jay]

Road beers were great. I got to Texas just after they stopped it for drivers, but passengers could still imbibe. The looks on my visiting in laws' faces when my wife cracked open a beer in the back seat, were something to behold. About as startling as the face my "I like Scotch" father in law made when we poured him some Laphroaig.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Absolutely. I regularly drink Mad Dog 20/20 liquor in a store parking lot and fall asleep in my car. Cops don't hassle me because of my white and Jewish privilege. As the French say, "Let sleeping drunks lie."

[Lady Dada]

It is a sticky wicket. If officers are instructed to let someone run away with a stolen taser after resisting arrest, then everyone being arrested can wiggle out of the situation and run. The law means nothing if it cannot be enforced.

In this case, they did have his car and they probably had checked his ID, meaning an arrest warrant is an option. However, if you are in the midst of a struggle with an intoxicated man who takes your weapon and fires it back at you, I'm not sure you can think that quickly.

Police unions are toxic (as are teachers' unions), qualified immunity needs to end, posh pensions must be reconsidered, and police who use unnecessary violence or disregard the well-being of someone in their custody should be taken off the force. We especially need to demilitarize the force. But I'm starting to tire of the "All Police Are Bad" rhetoric.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Yeh, I would have still let him run. Dude was drunk. He would have been found in a nearby bush or something.

I don't see the purpose in chasing hoodlums.

First of all, cops are out of shape so they shouldn't be running around because they look foolish. Whenever I see them on Live PD chasing people the heavy breathing and heaving isn't a good look.

Second, they really need to learn to DE-ESCALATE.

I'm one of those 'they played their own part in their fate' guys for sure but they shouldn't be dying for petty crap.

FFS, cops were going around shooting innocent dogs for fear of their lives. That shit has to stop.

[damikesc]

"First of all, cops are out of shape so they shouldn’t be running around because they look foolish. Whenever I see them on Live PD chasing people the heavy breathing and heaving isn’t a good look."

They are hauling way more gear than the perp is, you realize. Twenty or so pounds more.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Agreed. Black men should never be held accountable when they try to de-escalate an encounter by running away from the cops. It doesn't even matter how they are fleeing police. For instance, confronting a suspect is more dangerous than letting said suspect flee in excess of 90 miles per hour on the highway.

[XM]

If he borrows his mom’s car and drives drunk, then lives would be at risk. That the police have his id is moot point unless they go to arrest the guy at his home the next day - this time with backup and dogs.

Breitbart highlights every single incident of illegals killing Americans. Reason does the same with police misconduct. You’d be left with an impression that we’re under assault by illegals and cops, when odds of either happening is small.

Reason and their hapless “reformers” fail to see that hate thrives in a broken, hopeless society where angry people seek someone to blame. If weimer Germany wasn’t inflation land maybe hitler doesn’t come into power. So they argue in favor of anarchy in the name of deescalation.

So sure, don’t arrest that drunken driver. Brooks was only black dui driver in the whole country, right? So effing stupid.

[I, Woodchipper]

"If officers are instructed to let someone run away with a stolen taser after resisting arrest, then everyone being arrested can wiggle out of the situation and run. The law means nothing if it cannot be enforced. "

1. They can use non-violent means for apprehension.

2. They never should have even approached the car. It's not against the law to take a nap and cops shouldn't be called upon to harass someone who is doing so.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

He was passed out in the drive-through on private property, you moron. Does the business owner not have a right to have a drunk-ass moron and his vehicle removed from his private property, or should he have just shot Floyd personally for fucking up his business?

[Seamus]

Does the business owner not have a right to have a drunk-ass moron and his vehicle removed from his private property . . . ?

Well, the business got torched, so I guess its owner now knows that the answer is no.

[Gray_Jay]

Or the owner will just engage in discreet self-help.

[damikesc]

"1. They can use non-violent means for apprehension."

They tried that. He then attacked them, grabbed a taser, and ran off.

"2. They never should have even approached the car. It’s not against the law to take a nap and cops shouldn’t be called upon to harass someone who is doing so."

With the car running while drunk? Yeah, very much is illegal.

[R Mac]

Another libertarian against property rights? Maybe I’ve been misinformed this whole time.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

"Lie back and think of the Non-Aggression Principle."

[Rossami]

Let's be precise. Do any of you have any actual evidence that he was driving drunk? The article above merely says that he was sleeping in his parked car. The cops administered a sobriety test and he might well have been drunk but can you eliminate the hypothesis that he was sober when he pulled into the parking lot, got drunk and then fell asleep in his car without ever turning on the engine?

Yes, I know there are some jurisdictions where cops can arrest you for "driving" drunk merely because you are drunk and have your car keys in your pocket. The hypothetical "control = driving" fiction seems unconstitutional to me but I don't think that applies in Atlanta.

[darkflame]

he wasn't in a parking space, he was in the middle of the drive-thru. The reason the cops were called was that people had to drive around him to access the drive-thru. Logic dictates then that yes, he chose to drive drunk there.

[Rossami]

Okay, got it. If the article above said that he fell asleep in the drive-thru, I missed it and apologize.

[mpercy]

The dude passed out in his car after ordering from Wendys but before he got to the window. He was blocking the drive-thru, which is why Wendy's called the cops in the first place. Watch the body-cam footage, there was a very lengthy interaction with the guy that was perfectly calm and respectful and pretty clear that a reasonable person would say he's probably drunk--they do not show the breathalyzer results in the cam footage, but one was administered. Once the cuffs came out the dude lost his shit, started swinging, wormed out of the grasp, stole a taser and ran. He half-turned and shot back at the cops. Sure it was the stolen taser, but once the one cop sees the other go down after being hit with the taser (glancing shot caused him to stumble into a car, but not go fully down), he opens fire.

In the after-action body cam footage, the cop can be heard to ask "Is there any word on Mr Brooks?" after the cops and EMTs had worked on saving his life.

This was not at all the same sort of situation as Mr Floyd or even Daniel Shaver.

[darkflame]

Yep. These guys were just doing their job properly, had the bad luck to meet the wrong asshole, and now they're gonna get lynched over it.

[I, Woodchipper]

yes it's very hard to make headway with those who worship the police state. But as libertarians all we can do is try.

In the meantime whole swaths of the population think it's just fine that cops shoot you in the back while running away.

[JesseAz]

Do you even bother learning facts or is the initial chosen narrative enough for you?

[Fist of Etiquette]

I can't believe it's so easy to choose to end a life. Drunk guys make bad decisions, and the taser is a nonlethal weapon. This isn't on the level with the Floyd murder but in general it's poor decision making by a presumably sober cop. It wasn't life or death.

The shooter may not need to be charged (no idea) but he shouldn't be entrusted with the responsibilities and authority of law enforcement.

[RabbitHead]

A cop I know said that he possibly didn't 'need' to shoot, because the second cop could have protected the first, but that doctrine says to shoot in that situation. Never let yourself or another cop get tased or knocked out. An incapacitated cop is no longer in control of his gun. I don't know if it's accurate, but the stat he used was that 80% of the time if someone gets a cop's gun the cop gets shot with it. So that's what would be in the cops mind.

He says if you make any move towards the gun or the taser, or point a gun or a taser, expect deadly force.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Legal precedent has been pretty consistent about the fact that you can be arrested for DWI even if you're parked on the side of the road and have been sleeping for several hours.

Regardless, that's not how it went down. The dumbass was so fucking drunk that he passed out in the middle of the drive-through.

[R Mac]

You can keep mentioning that he was in the drive through. Some people will refuse to accept that and keep playing dumb.

[Rossami]

I dislike that legal precedent and think it should be overturned. To me, a charge of drunk driving should require proving both that you were drunk and that you were driving. Being asleep in the car may create a presumption that you were driving but it is not automatically proof.

But, yeah, falling asleep while you're in the drive-through is much more like proof. That seems like an important detail to have skipped in the article above.

[MasterThief]

Here the law is that if the keys are in the ignition and you're over the limit then it's drunk driving. I've slept it off in a parking lot before. I put the keys in the center console and turned on the radio. Cops tapped on my window and asked me some questions. I was told I could be charged with trespassing for staying there overnight but to get home safe as soon as I was able.

[Tulpa Disciple]

Let’s be precise. Do any of you have any actual evidence that he was driving drunk?

One thing I've learned is that anything that gets reported in our national news media will be misreported at first. It's almost guaranteed that additional, important details will come out in the next few days. And other reported facts will be retracted. I won't even try to predict whether those additional details will favor the cops or Brooks.

The other thing I've learned is that those with preset agendas are going to give you their largely pre-canned opinions based on the initial (invariably inaccurate) reporting.

[Marty Feldman's Eyes]

Running away is a universal sign of innocence.

It's also the universal sign for Deadly Force Not Necessary because they are not a deadly threat if they are running away. There's a reason shooting someone in the back is universally considered an act of cowardice.

Let them run and catch them later, except we all know the cops are too lazy for that.

[TJJ2000]

Never-mind he turned and shot the cop with the taser......????!!!!

[I, Woodchipper]

yes
what part of 'he was a deadly threat to no one' do you not understand?

[damikesc]

Cannot figure out why libertarianism cannot make much headway in America. Baffling, to say the least, with these incredibly realistic people...

[Wearenotperfect]

Unfortunately you're missing to whole point. Like the old saying goes, pick and choose your battles.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Driving drunk doesn't constitute a danger to others?

[Rossami]

Not an immediate danger sufficient to justify the use of deadly force, no.

[Wearenotperfect]

What if he would have fell asleep after he had received his order? Then he resisted, ran away and then turned around and threw his Wendy's Double Stack at the cop. Would the cop be justified to shoot then?

[Lady Dada]

How does running away prove someone is not a deadly threat? If the guy had grabbed the cop's gun rather than the taser, would you still say he's not a deadly threat because he's running away?

[Rossami]

Even in your hypothetical, he's not a deadly threat until he turns and points the gun at someone. Merely holding a gun does not make you a deadly threat.

[Rich]

The Atlanta Cop Who Killed a Black Man in a Wendy's Parking Lot on Friday Night Has Been Fired

As Has Been The Wendy's

[Don't look at me!]

Ohh, burn!

[Jerryskids]

Damn, I misread the article about this and I couldn't figure out why they were making such a big deal about fries at Wendy's.

[Earth Skeptic]

Black fries matter?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

You can have the black fries. I'll take the crispy aryan blond ones.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Ouch.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Judging by a statement they recently made I think a name change to 'Wokeys' is appropriate.

You can refit Wendy's look and hair to one with a gender-neutral tattooed face, rainbow hair in pig tails.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

To hell with that ginger freak. Whataburger is KING!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Suffice it to say that if Trump struggles to beat Biden in Arkansas—a state Trump carried by 27 points four years ago—he's probably not heading for a second term in the White House.

Hillary's a - er, I mean Biden's a shoo-in.

[Don't look at me!]

Like those slack jawed gun toting clinger yokels are going to vote for Biden.

[Jerryskids]

Or like the media is plumping for a huge surprise Biden victory so in November when Trump gets 85 million votes and Biden gets 110 million they can claim there's nothing suspicious about those numbers.

[Gray_Jay]

What Jerryskids said. They're preparing the ground for some truly epic voter fraud.

[darkflame]

that won't go well for them. Even politico's reporting now that all the conservatives outside DC believes Trump can't lose. And quite frankly, he can't, not without cheating. A democrat victory wouldn't e considered legitimate by large chunks of the country.

[damikesc]

Hell, Trump's numbers are basically the same as Obama...except Obama had the press fucking blowing him on a daily basis.

[darkflame]

yep. Everyone understands too that the economy going under wasn't Trump's fault, it was Covid's, and at this point, the governors' fault. Trump's proven that he can make a good economy, and that he'll make a good faith effort to complete campaign promises. Biden... well, he has about 50 years of failure to speak up about. I really look forward to a debate between the two.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

Sure they will, at least the ones guarding the borders of CHAZCHOP.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Creepy Joe the Wonder Veep? With Antifa doing a broad based Performance Art piece to get Trump reelected?

Dream f*cking on.

The Democrat Party is committing freaking SUICIDE, as we watch. They will probably cap it off by attempting to steal the 2020 Election via vote fraud, AND GETTING CAUGHT.

These idiots couldn't lead a pack of starving vampires to a blood bank.

(extra credit to anyone who can tell me the Character, Author, and Book I stole that from)

*sigh*

I'm not saying Trump is Abraham Lincoln...or ever Harry Truman. He's crude and crass and a bully. But the behavior of the Progressive Left since his election makes him look like a statesman, which is ridiculous. The Democrats haven't been this arrogant since Preston Brooks thought it was acceptable to beat Charles Sumner nearly to death on the floor of Congress.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

"I’m not saying Trump is Abraham Lincoln…or ever Harry Truman. He’s crude and crass and a bully"

So your saying he's LBJ, FDR, teddy Roosevelt, or Andrew jackson

[Seamus]

Pretty much. Only he can't talk as well as any of those guys.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

I assume that the Democrats wanted a sacrificial lamb to go up against Trump now so that in four years they can roll out a new batch of young progressives to go against a milquetoast Republican.

[R Mac]

Mark Cuban will be running. Not sure which party yet, but probably Democrat.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Mark Cuban is the sort of fart sniffer that deserves to have his ass handed to him, Bloomberg style. I doubt any other billionaire can capture the "lightning in a bottle" Trump has with the American public.

[Moderation4ever]

"behavior of the Progressive Left since his election makes him look like a statesman"

The left reaction to Trump is no different than the right to President Obama. Trump biggest enemy is himself. He is not statesman and that is part of his problem. He doesn't know to lead when he needs to or when to keep quiet.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

Really? When did the right falsify evidence and threaten the kids of Obama officials in order to coerce a guilty plee?

[darkflame]

don't forget impeachment with bs charges made with the help of foreign actors.

[Moderation4ever]

First the right claimed that President Obama was not even a citizen, that he was some African Muslim trying to take over our country. There was no falsified evidence against Trump. Most of Trump's problems were created by himself and much of the evidence was from his own mouth or from his own actions. As for Flynn, this a reprehensible man who would plan to kidnap and turn a political dissenter in for money, who would plot behind the President and VP back with the Russians. The difference between President Obama and President Trump is one knew enough to get rid of Flynn.

[JesseAz]

Hillary is on the right?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

What kind of hilarious fanfiction is this?

[TJJ2000]

Oh B!S! - The right didn't start a lynching mob and burn down the cities moron.

[RabbitHead]

I have buddies on the left who believe that.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

The Left reaction to Trump is miles worse than the Right's reaction to Obumbles. The Right's protests generally do not feature vandalism, setting of fires, or herculean littering.

[R Mac]

This is dumb even for you. And you’re pretty dumb.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

They will probably cap it off by attempting to steal the 2020 Election via vote fraud, AND GETTING CAUGHT.

Caught by who? You think the news would cover this?

[TJJ2000]

Already done. Obama was re-elected because a supposedly emergency deadline (of which counties weren't even notified of) dropped their entire counties vote off the ticket. It was quietly covered in back-stream media and absolutely ignored from there.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Ever since 2016 I have been asking people who said "Hillary won the popular vote", "What makes you think so?". I think Hillary's number out of California and several Democrat enclaves elsewhere are extremely suspect. I think it very probable that Trump does, too. And I think the reason Trump hasn't even TRIED to prosecute any of it is timing. He WON in 2016, in spite of Democrat fraud. If he holds evidence of such fraud until 2020, and the Democrats manage to fake enough votes to 'win', he can drop the freaking SKY on them.

The Democrats spent too much time dealing with Republicans who, if you hit them, beg your pardon. In four years (counting the 2016 campaign) they still haven't learned that gif you hit Trump, he hits you back. And they haven't grasped that "Wahhh! Donny hit me BACK!" isn't a winning campaign slogan.

[Gray_Jay]

It'll be written off as old news, and the bleating of a sore loser, CSP.

It'll change nothing. Legally.

[Finrod]

These polls showing Biden leading? Pretty much all of them poll registered voters not likely voters, and polls of registered voters are well-known to lean D. It wouldn't surprise me if some polling places are polling Adults, which leans even further D.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

It wouldn't surprise me if the (D)s doing the polling recorded (R)s as 3/5-ths of a vote.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Also, after the debacle of 2016, why would ANYONE trust the polls?

[R Mac]

Wishful thinking.

[Think It Through]

"More than 1,400 professional athletes and coaches have signed a letter calling for qualified immunity to be abolished." I've been waiting for the sports world to weigh in on this issue. Are they going to write an amicus brief?

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Will Trump nominate Tom Brady to the Supreme Court when RBG croaks from coronavirus?

[Earth Skeptic]

They have to check with the Chinese government first.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Only if the stores in their states are allowed to sell crayons.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...would empower the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce social distancing.

With chokeholds.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Necessary. Breathing is a major transmission vector for COVID.

[Rich]

Huge protests and some rioting

Or was it "some protests and huge rioting"?

[Rufus The Monocled]

I'm almost getting on the wagon this is all astroturfed and some outside silent person or group (say Soros or the CCP) are funding all this bull shit.

And they use nihilists to execute the plan.

Protests my ass. Reason should change its name to Naive.

[JesseAz]

Nice to see Reason link to Matt Taibbi's piece on the insanity of the left. It is pretty bad when a leftist writer has to lament the insanity he is seeing on the left and especially in his own newsrooms. The irony is that Reason doesn't understand that their own reliance on Twitter is also one of the issues plaguing this magazine. While they don't participate in cancel culture, they do push narratives largely existing in the Twittersphere as reality.

[ThanksForTheFish]

Place your bets now on how long before Taibbi is fired and cancelled.

[Earth Skeptic]

Too late. He is pedaling his reporting direct to readers now.

I am a Taibbi subscriber.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

>Taibbi subscriber
SIMP

[Fist of Etiquette]

...they do push narratives largely existing in the Twittersphere as reality.

That's a good lesson for all of journalism to take to heart.

[Ra's al Gore]

Lockdown boredom + social media = insanity.

[Earth Skeptic]

You left out the other key ingredients: industrialized fear and authoritarian propaganda.

[Sal Paradise]

Shocked to see most of the NYT comments are in support of the article

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

obviously Russian bots are working overtime!

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Is there a connection between Matt Taibbi and the Russian government? Can the House investigate a potential attempt by foreign powers to influence American politics?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

This isn't really new for Taibbi. Post 9-11, he was calling out leftists for buying into the "Bush did it" grand conspiracy theories, while simultaneously saying Bush was dumb.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I'm not a fan of his Hunter S. Thompson-LARPing prose style, but he's one of the few liberal media figures left that is willing to hold his own side to account and treat things in a relatively even-handed manner. He and Greenwald are probably the last ones with any kind of substantial self-awareness.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Is? Probably the last ones?

You do know that Thompson is dead, right?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

It was a comment on his writing style, not whether Thompson was still upright or not.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Remember when social distancing was a thing?

If they weren't before, people better start praying it was all an overblown hoax.

[Earth Skeptic]

No, no, no, no. Everyone knows that righteous morality overcomes logic. And viruses.

[Ricport]

Well, it's more like this virus is the first woke virus in history. You'll be fine as long as you're attending a BLM protest, or riot, or looting spree... Otherwise, if you go outside to shop, get your hair cut, attend religious services, or any other non-BLM activities, you're literally killing grandma. Now do you understand the science?

[Procyon Rotor]

Wait, woke? I thought the virus was racist, and targeting black people specifically.

[JesseAz]

Huffington Post wants to cancel black celebrities that don't push the Democratic narrative...

https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/14/huffpo-wants-to-cancel-black-celebs-who-speak-out-against-riots-and-destruction-n527383

[JesseAz]

Such as... Asking Tim Scott if he's just a GOP token.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/06/13/nbc-anchor-asks-sen-scott-if-hes-a-token-gop-black-n526529

Of course, they are too dense to realize that Democrats only have 2 African American senators.

[Earth Skeptic]

But apparently Chuck identifies as black. At least at press conferences.

[damikesc]

It's even more obnoxious because the anchor was the local anchor here in Columbia, SC for years. He has known Scott for a long time.

[JesseAz]

Los Angeles Times blames Starbucks and stores reopening for the new surge in Covid cases... not the protests. Keeps pushing narrative over reality.

https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2020/06/15/two-weeks-after-blm-riots-started-in-los-angeles-coronavirus-cases-spike/

Media sure does seem to be gearing up for stories about how bad Trump rallies are due to Covid.

[ThomasD]

https://www.thecity.nyc/platform/amp/coronavirus/2020/6/14/21290963/nyc-covid-19-trackers-skipping-floyd-protest-questions-even-amid-fears-of-new-wave

I'm sure Bailey will be all over this.

[Compelled Speechless]

They're the party of Science! Clearly they've done several empirical studies that conclusively prove that truly morally correct righteous anger provides an immunity to the disease and prevents the spread.

[Nardz]

#VirusSoWoke

[Don't look at me!]

Haven’t you heard? Social distancing isn’t needed during protests or riots.
Do try to keep up.

[Earth Skeptic]

Humanity has returned full circle to pre-enlightenment thinking: my god is better than your god.

[Compelled Speechless]

It isn't needed during LEFT WING protests and riots. Do try to keep up.

[some guy]

Protesting is so much more important than working or going to church or going to school...

[free2booze]

Because the virus can't withstand the heat from burning buildings

[Rich]

"If the officer had been a bit more empathetic and a bit less scared, we probably wouldn't have a dead client," Stewart said.

Obviously the solution is MDMA donuts.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The area outside of the Brooklyn Museum is packed for the #BlackTransLivesMatter protest.

If they're running through every subgenre of victim group we're looking at a lot of upcoming PFLAG grandmother funerals.

[Dan S.]

How many black "trans" people can there actually be? The number can't be huge. I thought for a moment it said black transit people, as in transit workers, but no.

[JesseAz]

This is CNN.

"“Listen, white people are so scared right now to do anything, to talk about anything, to broach these conversations,” Lemon said. “They’re sort of frozen because they — who wants to be called a racist, right? Who wants people to think that they have a racial blind spot? But this is what I think. I think that—this is going to sound weird, but, every year, I have hydrangeas in my yard, they come back a different color, or a tulip or an orchid. And it’s not because they’re different, it’s because the soil is different, right? It depends on the nutrients in the soil. So, if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil, considering the history of this country […] how can you not be racist?"

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/14/cnns-don-lemon-wonder-how-can-you-not-be-racist-if-you-grew-up-in-america-n527378

[Rich]

So, if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil, considering the history of this country […] how can you not be racist?”

*** meekly raises hand ***

Don, did *you* grow up in America?

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Don Lemon grew up eating ass in Atlanta.

[damikesc]

Do we need to remind Lemon he has a job in spite of being a low level functional retard and having zero marketable skills whatsoever?

And, again, if he's going to say 70% of the country are bad no matter what, why should we humor the ramblings of 12%?

[JesseAz]

He said 100% thank you very much.

[NOYB2]

Well, I didn't grow up in America.

Don Lemon did, and he is indeed a racist.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

The Lysenkoism is strong with this one.

[A Thinking Mind]

ORIGINAL SIN. You can never cleanse it, you can never repent. Only the Christ can deliver you from it.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

No, at least Christ offered forgiveness and eternal life if you repented and followed him. BLM doesn't even do that; being born white is supposed to condemn you to an eternal purgatory of ResparaShunz.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

So can the Eurythmics.

[mamabug]

How, exactly, do hydrangeas become tulips or orchids because the soil is different? Is Lemon taking gardening lessons from the CHAZ collective?

[Fist of Etiquette]

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatens to turn this car around unless you kids start behaving.

Not you, protesters. You're daddy's favorite.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Don't forget Uncle Chris!

[Fist of Etiquette]

More than 1,400 professional athletes and coaches have signed a letter calling for qualified immunity to be abolished.

They got nothing else going on this summer.

[Rich]

Hey! What is protesting, chopped liver?

[ThanksForTheFish]

"While city officials in Atlanta seem to be saying and doing the right things "

Remember when Reason believed in caution and waiting for an investigation to begin before rushing to judgement?

[n00bdragon]

No. Reason has always acted like this.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Leather Man and Grape Juice Boy love cocktail parties and the fuzzy navels that Michelle Goldberg makes.

[Alan Vanneman]

"the proscribed progressive responses"

You probably mean "the prescribed progressive responses"

You'll thank me later.

[sparkstable]

Everything but the progressive response is proscribed it seems.

[JesseAz]

"It's unclear what happens next, but a struggle breaks out and Brooks appears to grab a stun gun from one of the cops."

And attempted to use the stun gun while fleeing. A slightly important point.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Kinda the key right there.

[Earth Skeptic]

It would have been harder to beatify Brooks if he had also done something rapey, right?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, Boehm's passive-voiced description tellingly omitted certain details there.

They didn't fire the cop because he actually did anything wrong; they fired him because they think it will pacify the mob from burning the evil white supremacist spirits from another Frosty machine.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Which will lead to a mass exodus of cops.

Why in the world would you want to be a cop in this atmosphere?

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Which will lead to a mass exodus of cops.

'A mass exodus' implies there is another market for their labor. It's not like these guys can become EMTs, who are required to apply their training appropriately to specific circumstances. And firefighter's unions are not going to allow reprobates to tarnish their ranks.

No, most (and all of the worst) of these guys will hang in there because they have no where else to be. And those sweet, sweet pensions are not going to fluff themselves.

[RabbitHead]

In a nation of defunded cops, there will be lots of private security jobs.

That can't go badly

[darkflame]

you wouldn't, and they are leaving en masse all over. In fact, while NY knows they're losing 6 cops a day, that's not including the regular retirement rates and churn that you would see in usual times, and they also believe there's a number of cops who've just walked off without letting anyone know.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Why in the world would you want to be a cop in this atmosphere?

Best job evah for bullies, thieves, racists, con artists, fat ass bums, drug users, sex predators, thugs, wife beaters, and low-IQ slobs who couldn't get a job at Wendy's.

[TJJ2000]

I think you mean the best job for liberal protesters. If your state is hiring the liberal protesters mentality (bullies, thieves, racists, con artists, fat ass bums, drug users, sex predators, thugs, wife beaters, and low-IQ slobs) as police officers then your state has a problem.

My state won't even touch anyone with a felony charge.

[Rich]

"Meh. Who's afraid of a damn stun gun?"

[Gray_Jay]

Yep. He's not a case of "police killing unarmed people," Boehm, if he's running away with a taser and worse, trying to use it on the cop.

Trying to use a cop's own taser on them gets you shot 10 times out of 10. It's how police are trained to respond to that threat, everywhere in America.

What exactly, would the critics like done instead? Because they're pushing for a world where blacks only get arrested if they feel like getting arrested. This courtesy will not be extended to other groups.

[BillyG]

The description is wrong, and it's not limited to unarmed people. The problem is cops killing people who aren't threats. And if it's possible to hit someone with a taser while simultaneously running away from them at speed, I'd like to see you demonstrate it.

The problem we have is cops killing people they imagine to be a threat. I don't care what the cause is, the color of the victims skin, or what the cops training is, it needs to be fixed. Proportional response is what we need of police, not a shoot to kill mentality. I've come across too many cases through Volokh where cops were given immunity for killing someone who wasn't a threat because they imagined the person was a threat. In many cases, Cops create the threatening environment themselves when they start with guns drawn, even in cases where the person is not committing a crime. Cop behavior needs to change.

[TJJ2000]

And what do you think the correct response is for literally fighting with the police, taking their weapons, using it on them and running away? Just keep letting them run away and doing all the crime they please against others? Funny thing is; if that drunk driver ran over your children or killed your entire family in a wreck - I don't believe you'd say what your pretending to say.

[Ben of Houston]

First, the man was drunk. The police were called because he passed out behind the wheel in the Wendy's drive through. They actually had to wake him up in order to get him to park. You can't say that it was not a legitimate arrest.

Secondly, your comment on accuracy is irrelevant. He was firing a weapon wildly in the direction of police officers while running. That makes it worse. He could have hit any number of people. So, are you feeling lucky, punk?

I don't particularly care who you are. Firing a weapon at the police, even with bad aim, even if it's a taser (which, I might remind you, is still a potentially lethal weapon), is for all intents and purposes suicide by cop. The fact that he was clearly and explicitly drunk driving beforehand removes and possible defense.

[sarcasmic]

So lethal force is justified when someone points a non-lethal stun gun at a cop, while drunk and on the run. Got it.

[Gray_Jay]

Yes, sarc. It is. Literally every department in America trains their officers that way.

Don't take a cop's weapons from them if you don't want to get shot.

Twenty years ago, it wouldn't have gotten to that point, because one of the officers would have gone upside Brooks's head with a stick. Brooks would have woken up in the ER, owner of a brand new concussion and battery on a peace officer charges to go with his DUI. Forty years ago, the cops may have simply told Brooks to sleep it off, and that he'd better not think about moving that car out of the lot for the next three-four hours.

Clearly, we live in a more civilized age.

[sarcasmic]

I understand that that's how they're trained. Doesn't make it right, because there's no way the guy was a threat.

[JesseAz]

So let's do a different example. If in a struggle a criminal gets the cops mace and blinds the police, are the police able to then protect themselves by drawing a weapon? Or in your view they just have to keep being incapacitated because there is no way a criminal would ever escalate violence against a cop? You may have heard about that whole Vegas murder against the cop... but why would a criminal ever escalate?!?

[sarcasmic]

I'm not playing the "what if" game.

[JesseAz]

Yes you are. Your whole entire defense is that he was no threat. You are literally stating that there was no threat. Yet he had a stun gun whose purpose is to incapacitate people. He had turned it on the officer. You are literally playing what if games.

[Gray_Jay]

That.

If Brooks drops the taser and keeps running, this is probably a bad shoot. I can articulate a set of facts that would probably work: shooting cop thought Brooks had grabbed the pistol from non-shooting cop during their wrestling match, fleeing armed newly violent felon, yadda, yadda.

This? A month ago, this is just another night in South Atlanta.

[Finrod]

Well, the facts are against him, so of course he has to spew bullshit.

[Cyto]

He's right, sarc.

you are unquestionably playing the what if game. And in your what if, you are saying that "if he had incapacitated the officer, the drunk guy who suddenly decided to resist arrest and punched the same officer in the face a couple of times and stole his weapon would not do anything else harmful beyond shooting the officer with the taser". That's an awful lot of what-if.

The confounding factor here is the logic of "should he have died". The answer to that is unequivocally no. The guy was hammered. He was doing fine and was going to get a DUI charge that he could have fought in court and probably gotten a diversion program if he was willing to pay a lawyer who is connected. (a DUI conviction is no joke. It is life-altering because of the loss of license)

But then he made a bad decision. It was clearly a spur of the moment decision - as the entire interaction was very calm until that moment. But he decided to try to escape. Bad choice. Then he punched the officer and stole the taser. Really bad decision. Then he pointed the taser at the officer and pulled the trigger. Fatally bad decision.

All terrible choices that happened in just a very few quick seconds. Choices that he was to drunk to make rationally.

Given the situation at that exact second, the outcome was almost assured.

The "he shouldn't have to die for that" sentiment is valid. But the blame and anger are misplaced. There is zero chance that this will be adjudicated a bad shoot or a proper firing. Absolutely zero. This is not an edge case. Not even close.

If you find this outcome regrettable, the place to look is in the decision of how to deploy forces. We send out all police with guns. That is just our standard. And if you have a gun on your hip, you are always in danger of that gun being taken and used against you. It always factors in to the use of force calculation.

So you could craft an argument that traffic enforcement should not be armed. There are lots of places that do it that way, only calling in armed police when necessary. Having police that are not armed handling the majority of interactions would unquestionably reduce the number of people killed by police. So if that's where the objective lies, that's a better place to start than at the end where a guy who just punched a cop in the face is pointing a taser at him.

[sarcasmic]

And in your what if, you are saying that “if he had incapacitated the officer, the drunk guy who suddenly decided to resist arrest and punched the same officer in the face a couple of times and stole his weapon would not do anything else harmful beyond shooting the officer with the taser”. That’s an awful lot of what-if.

Alright. Fine. But there were two cops, not one, and tasers only incapacitate while the current is flowing. They're not the magical knock-out weapon you see on tv.

They guy wanted to get away. He wasn't going to start killing cops. He just wanted to get away. Call that a presumptive what-if if you want. But I seriously doubt he wanted to kill anyone. He just didn't want to get arrested.

[Cyto]

And a quarter second before he pulled away, he didn't want to resist arrest. He was clearly complying. Then suddenly he got scared and tried to escape.

This is why this is not the hill to die on.

If we want to take lessons from this one, "don't shoot when your taser is taken from you by a resisting drunk guy who probably only wants to get away points it at you" isn't the lesson.

Not introducing a gun to that situation might be the lesson. Then deadly force wouldn't be anywhere in the equation. You'd get a ton of push-back from police on that, but at least it is a rational idea for which there are plenty of examples to look to for guidance.

[Incredulous]

Seriously? He has just assaulted two police officers, stolen a weapon and tried to use it on them. Not only is he a threat, he is a potentially lethal threat. I know he was patted down but in that second that the weapon is pointed at him, is the officer 100% sure it's the taser? What if the taser hits him and he becomes incapacitated? What if the violent criminal then takes his firearm and kills him and/or his partner? There needs to be a full investigation to determine if the officer followed appropriate protocols and acted appropriately, to determine if this fatal outcome was reasonably avoidable. But the criminal did pose a serious threat.

[TJJ2000]

"because there’s no way the guy was a threat." -- defiance of law & order is ALWAYS a threat whether you want to acknowledge that or not. Is your story going to change when Brooks gets away, steals a car and runs over a bunch of people?

[I, Woodchipper]

Yes, sarc. It is. Literally every department in America trains their officers that way.

and that is wrong, bootlicker.
This man was not a violent threat . end of story. That is the only time an officer should even consider firing his weapon at a citizen.

[TJJ2000]

Tomorrows news - Police carelessly let a drunk man loose because they didn't think he was a violent threat after fighting with them and taking and shooting their taser at them - that drunk man later killed an elderly lady when it went off while robbing her car to run and hide out where he ran into a school bus that went off a cliff.

[TJJ2000]

Oh wait; my bad... It was the cops fault because he thought they were going to shoot him. He peacefully stole that car and for good reason (see above) and hitting a bus is just an accident whether intoxicated, running from the police or peacefully stealing cars.

[I, Woodchipper]

so on-the-spot execution for pre-crime is where you stand eh? good to know.

The sad thing is this sounds reasonable to most people. Unreal.

[Nardz]

You just tried saying the dude wasn't violent 5 seconds after he was explicitly violent

[Sevo]

Gotta go with this.
The guy was drunk enough that he was gonna go another 50', trip and fall on his face.
He was also drunk enough that he couldn't have hit a barn with that thing if he was inside and the door was closed.
He was NOT a threat to that cop or anyone else.

[Rufus The Monocled]

My wife always says, 'why don't they just shoot to incapacitate?'

Good question.

None of these guys deserve to be killed for sure.

[Gray_Jay]

"My wife always says, ‘why don’t they just shoot to incapacitate?’"

Because the phaser from Star Trek is still only a fantasy. In the real world, firearms are deadly force. Even aiming at the legs, assuming you hit them.

Because our society is, thankfully, a modern, mostly peaceful society, most people know absolutely fuck and all when it comes to violence in actuality, versus how it appears in popular entertainment. They know even less when it comes to the police's use of force laws and guidelines. Yet that doesn't stop most people from opining on the subject, and expecting that their opinions should be given more than zero consideration.

I read of one frustrated cop, saying the situation was similar to you or I going into an airplane cockpit during an ILS approach, and telling the pilots how they were doing it wrong. Or walking into an operating room and doing the same thing with the surgeon, "Why'd you have to cut him there? And so big?!" I think he was overstating it a tad, but I understand the frustration.

[A Thinking Mind]

You're a fucking crack shot if you can hit a moving target in the legs with a pistol. And you're a wizard if you can do that without puncturing the femoral artery and causing your target to bleed out in five minutes.

[Gray_Jay]

As bad of shots as most police are, it's entirely likely he'd hit the legs anyway. The femoral's what, 10mm wide? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074152149970279X

Compare to the width of a thigh, it's more likely a shot channel misses it rather than hits it. Bad day if it does rupture though.

AIUI, the cop here went 2 for 2 COM, which is pretty good under the circumstances.

I wonder, again, whether the shoot 'em in the leg advice came about from skipping small lead shot (birdshot, basically) off the ground, and into the legs/feet of rioters? That might work to dissuade, rather than penetrate enough to kill. Maybe. Where's my grant application....?

[damikesc]

"My wife always says, ‘why don’t they just shoot to incapacitate?’

Good question.

None of these guys deserve to be killed for sure."

Because aiming for the leg is an idiotic strategy and one unlikely to be remotely effective. "Why don't cops try doing trick shots, like behind their head or something" is about as intelligent a query.

[Seamus]

I dunno. In The Phantom comic strip, the title character never had any problem shooting guns out of the hands of the bad guys. Cops just need better training.

[Cyto]

That's Monday morning quarterbacking though. Let's see you rationally sort through all possible outcomes after that struggle, being overpowered and being punched in the face a couple of times, with a taser pointed at you and the trigger being pulled.... You have maybe a tenth of a second to weigh your options..

Ok...

Go!

Yeah.... "He was no real threat" might be the truth of the matter if you had a crystal ball. But it isn't really relevant. It comes under the heading of "tragic loss of life" not "criminal behavior by the police". Nobody could have predicted that he was going to suddenly start resisting arrest either.

Does a kid trying to show off on his new ATV deserve to die? No. But physics sometimes intervenes. This incident is closer to that scenario than it is to "police brutality".

Given the situation at that exact moment, he made a fatal choice. He obviously didn't know that he was doing that, but he was. It sucks for everyone involved.

The only way I can see to prevent that scenario from playing out the same way in the future is to remove the gun from the traffic enforcement scenario. Because as long as the officer has a gun, overpowering the officer and/or taking his taser is a potentially deadly situation, and they'll be trained to react accordingly.

[Gray_Jay]

"The only way I can see to prevent that scenario from playing out the same way in the future is to remove the gun from the traffic enforcement scenario. Because as long as the officer has a gun, overpowering the officer and/or taking his taser is a potentially deadly situation, and they’ll be trained to react accordingly."

You realize you're de facto keeping women from working traffic as a police officer, right? How is our lady cop going to keep herself unharmed sans a firearm, when meeting a guy who just doesn't want to go to jail like Brooks?

[Cyto]

Good points.

I'd say that this would auger for more and better cameras. Instant upload streaming video. Traffic cop calls for backup for anything beyond a ticket. Does not pursue fleeing person, simply calls for backup and logs the offense, which registers an arrest warrant.

It would definitely be different.

And probably safer. But not definitely safer.

[Nardz]

Here's your chance, sarc: how would things go according to your wishes?
What should the cop have done after Brooks steals his taser and fires it at them while running away?

[sarcasmic]

Considering the fact that he wasn't a threat, wasn't going to hit anyone, was drunk off his ass, and there were two cops, I'd say they could have easily chased him down instead of shooting him in the back.

[Fran DiRezza]

Considering the fact that he wasn’t a threat

"fact"?

[JesseAz]

"the fact that he wasn’t a threat"

Facts not in evidence. He already resisted arrest of 2 officers trying to subdue him. If he had incapacitated the first officer with the use of the stun gun, what makes you think he wouldn't have gone after the 2nd officer?

[sarcasmic]

You do know that this isn't the movies, right? Stun guns don't knock people out. The only incapacitate the person while the current is flowing. Also, Tasers are a single-shot deal. So even if he managed to win the lottery and hit one of the cops, and the barbs actually got to skin instead of being caught up in clothing or stopped by the Kevlar vest, it would have only incapacitated the officer while the trigger was pulled. Your scenario is based on ignorance.

[Finrod]

Giving him plenty of time to grab the cop's gun and kill him with it, you blithering imbecile.

[sarcasmic]

There were two cops and the guy was running away. I seriously doubt he was going to try to kill either of them.

[Incredulous]

Yes, it isn't the movies. You're making unrealistic assumptions. You're assuming that the taser is not a serious threat which could have incapacitated the officer You can consider possible events after that which could be fatal to one or both officers. The officer has a split second to act when he is being fired upon by the violent felon who has just assaulted by him and another officer, stolen a weapon and is now using it on him. And I know we can see everything clearly in hindsight from a position of safety and every angle but it's not even clear he could be absolutely 100% certain that the weapon was not a firearm missed in the pat down or taken from the other officer.

[some guy]

You have to remember too that the cops instigated this. If he was asleep in his car to start with, then he wasn't a threat to anyone. The cops could have left well enough alone. After the sobriety test they could have just taken his keys or helped him into a cab. They didn't have to arrest him for... what? For sleeping while intoxicated?

[A Thinking Mind]

....Driving under the influence. He passed out drunk. He clearly didn't drunk while he was sitting in the Wendy's drive-through.

Yes, DUI is a crime.

[Gray_Jay]

He fell asleep in the fucking drive-through lane. This isn't 1975 anymore. You can thank MADD and their offshoots for making it impossible for the cops to utilize some professional discretion and tell the dummy to just sleep it off in the parking lot.

They can't just let him go either. If he starts driving again, leaves, and runs into a bus of nuns carrying puppies, it's the cops' asses that'll be in a sling. Without QI to protect them, incidentally, as their actions would have unquestionably been against their training and guidelines.

Deciding to turn a DUI collar into a wrestling match just made everything worse. No, Brooks didn't deserve to die for driving drunk. Nor even for resisting arrest.

[Cyto]

Yeah... there is a version of the "facts" running around that says he was sleeping it off in his car.

He passed out cold in the drive through line at Wendy's. In the line. It is clear on the video from the body cam. The cop has to repeatedly pound on the window to wake him up.

If you watch the body cam and dash cam video, it is clear that the officer treats him with respect and care. There is no abuse of any sort, there is no abusive language.

Even the arrest is effected politely.... the supervising officer says that he has determined that he is too drunk to drive and that he's placing him under arrest. As he begins handcuffing him, that's when things very suddenly go sideways.

Even after he begins resisting, the police seem to be slow to react - they don't escalate immediately with violent blows - they try to hold him and get him to stop so they can handcuff him. This lasts a couple of seconds until he starts really fighting to get away. Then they go for the taser, warning him before using it....

There really is no possible way to honestly spin this as bloodthirsty racist cops murdering people for no reason.

I know we have a strong "F the police" contingent here, but this is not the hill to die on. Floyd has 100% agreement on all sides. Cops all agree that this was terrible. Everyone is on board. Change can happen.

Cops are going to 100% be on the other side on this one. There is no way to reach a consensus with this as your standard. Very few people are going to watch that video and see racist police gunning down an innocent man for no reason. And most of those who do will see things differently when passions cool.

Pushing this case to the front ensures that nothing gets resolved. This case gives more power to the race-baiters.

[Incredulous]

He fell asleep, apparently intoxicated, behind the wheel of a car in a drive through lane!! That's a DUI, a serious crime, and in this case, a rather serious DUI.

[BillyG]

Sarcasmic, I agree with you on this. +1 Beer to celebrate. (And yes, I am being serious)

[NashTiger]

Ok, so they chase him down and he punches them some more and this time he gets a gun off an officer

I wish you idiots would STFU

[Juice]

Let him run off. Impound the car. They have his license and info already.

[A Thinking Mind]

Maybe if all he did was run. If he'd dropped the taser or never grabbed it. He took a cop's weapon and turned to use it on them.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Eh, I'd be just fine with keeping police, firefighters, and EMTs out of these neighborhoods permanently.

[Gray_Jay]

Seems to be the goal, RR. How often do the cops go into favelas?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Never. And it's probably not a coincidence that progressives and cosmos think Rio is some kind of paradise, because they've only seen the shiny tourist parts and sweet-tittied hoochies on the beach, and not the shitty ghettos run by gangs where cops won't even bother to show up and identify your dead body.

Come to think of it, there are places like that right here in the US, and these folks notably won't set foot there themselves.

[ThomasD]

"So lethal force is justified when someone points a non-lethal stun gun at a cop..."

Gee if only this had ever been addressed before.

The Georgia Supreme Court has recognized that stun guns and Tasers may be considered offensive weapons that are likely to result in serious bodily injury, depending on how they’re used (Harwell v. State, 512 S.E.2d 892 (Ga. Sup. Ct. 1999)).

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/stun-gun-laws-georgia.htm

[ThomasD]

Also, Georgia code specifically defines stun guns and tasers as firearms.

https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-11/article-4/part-1/16-11-106/

So yeah, pointing one at someone illegally means you can be legally shot.

[sarcasmic]

I'm interested in right and wrong, not legal vs illegal.

[ThomasD]

Drunk driving - wrong
Forcibly resisting arrest for drunk driving - wrong
Forcibly stealing a weapon that is not yours - wrong
Pointing that very same weapon at someone else - wrong

Tell me how again how you are interested in right and wrong?

[sarcasmic]

Shooting a drunk guy in the back - wrong

[ThomasD]

Why does drunk matter?

[sarcasmic]

Good point. He's not a violent felon who poses a threat to the public. Still wrong.

[ThomasD]

" He’s not a violent felon who poses a threat to the public"

Other than the strongarm robbing someone else's weapon (felony), then pointing that weapon at someone else (felony).

He did not merely pose a threat, he had already acted, twice.

[sarcasmic]

I said public.

[ThomasD]

"I said public."

Meaning exactly what?

[sarcasmic]

*facepalm*

[Finrod]

Meaning he's still wrong and blathering bullshit to cover.

[Cyto]

Three times.... also punched officer in the face while resisting arrest. Felony assault on an officer.

Dude made a metric crap-ton of really bad choices in a very short period of time.

That doesn't mean I cant be sympathetic to his plight. I don't think he "deserved" to die. Hell, I'd have been fine with forgiving his drunken transgressions in resisting arrest - not actually having a criminal mens rea at the moment, in my opinion. Just drunk and suddenly fearful. Then he did something that had much worse consequences than he could have imagined. It sucks. It is sad.

[Finrod]

.. that's FIRING A WEAPON AT YOU.

You can't stop the bullshit, can you.

[sarcasmic]

An inaccurate, single-shot weapon that will be stopped by a vest 100% of the time.

[I, Woodchipper]

^this

[Finrod]

If the guy successfully tasers the cop, he has plenty of time to go draw the cop's weapon and kill him with it. If you don't think stealing a cop's taser and trying to shoot the cop with it isn't a lethal attack, then you're as fucking dumb as the wokescolds.

[sarcasmic]

He was drunk and running. You ever shot a weapon while on the move? I ain't like the movies. He wasn't going to hit anyone.

[Archmagus]

While you're at it can I get the lotto?

[sarcasmic]

That guy had a better chance of winning Powerball without a ticket than he had of hitting one of the cops with that stun gun.

[B-Zine]

And impossible has become unlikely just like *that*.

[Finrod]

Be careful not to fall into the trench from those goalposts being dragged.

[sarcasmic]

At some point unlikely is so near to impossible that it may as well be so.

[Finrod]

How about we try an experiment? I'll get drunk and fire a taser at you. When I hit you, you can apologize for how stupid you are when you get done twitching.

[sarcasmic]

Sure. You get drunk and fire a single-shot Taser at me while running. I'll totally take those odds.

[sarcasmic]

First let me put on a vest. Make the scenario more realistic.

[Finrod]

And if I hit you, I get to kill you. Still willing to play stupid games and win stupid prizes?

[sarcasmic]

Um, no. I have a buddy with a gun.

[ThomasD]

Drunk and running didn't get him shot. Pointing the stolen weapon at someone got him shot.

[IceTrey]

Except he was shot after he had fired the taser and missed.

[ThomasD]

So missing your target makes it ok?

You do know that a Taser has two rounds, right?

[sarcasmic]

I stand corrected. I didn't know about the new Taser X2.

[ThomasD]

New? Who the fuck do you think you are fooling?

[IceTrey]

Did it in this case?

[B-Zine]

You don't know? Because you've been pretending you do.

[ThomasD]

Verdict first, facts to follow.

[IceTrey]

Well he only fired it once.

[JesseAz]

I thought you weren't playing "what ifs". Yet you've pushed forward a scenario as fact.

[IceTrey]

But he didn't. He fired the taser and missed so after that point he wasn't a threat.

[Finrod]

Tasers usually have 2 shots.

[sarcasmic]

Every one I've seen had one.

[ThomasD]

LOL.

[IceTrey]

Cite.

[B-Zine]

you fitst

[ThomasD]

https://www.axon.com/products/taser-x2

Never seen a cop wearing a single shot model. Ever.

[IceTrey]

Not even before they came out with the 2 shot model?

[JesseAz]

You do understand what stun guns do right dummy? They incapacitate the officer. What can happen if a criminal incapacitates an officer. Do you really stop all logical thinking at the first step?

Officers are granted use of force when they have fear of either death or being incapacitated. That has always been rules of engagement. Guess what stun guns do?

It is so sad that this is what you've become.

[sarcasmic]

You honestly believe he could have hit one of the cops? Seriously?

[B-Zine]

It exists within the realm of possible outcomes.

[sarcasmic]

So is getting hit by lightning on a sunny day.

[Finrod]

People have been hit by lightning from a thunderstorm 200 miles away, idiot.

[sarcasmic]

That was my point, idiot. Does that mean you don't go outside if there is a storm 200 miles away? No? Why?

[Finrod]

Idiots like you say things are "impossible" that happen all the damned time.

[sarcasmic]

It must suck being a shut-in.

[Finrod]

It must suck being stuck on stupid and defending bullshit. Is your back sore from dragging those goalposts yet?

[Dr. Peter Watson]

https://journals.lww.com/em-news/fulltext/2008/02000/the_medical_effects_of_tasers.16.aspx

Tasers and other high-voltage stun devices can cause cardiac arrhythmia in healthy and susceptible subjects, leading to heart attack or death in minutes by ventricular fibrillation, which leads to cardiac arrest and — if not treated immediately — to sudden death

[sarcasmic]

See my comment above. Your knowledge of stun guns is obviously from Hollywood.

[JesseAz]

Your knowledge of rules and regulations and the definition of what stun guns are and do is based on nothing.

Do you think the viable standard here is Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking?

[sarcasmic]

As yes. Fall back to Appeal to Authority.

Whatever. I've got to get back to work. Argue with someone else who is saying the same thing as me, like Sevo or IceTrey.

But I figure you won't because you don't have a petty, personal grudge against them like you have for me.

[Archmagus]

Whatever. I’ve got to get back to work

Ok he's waving the white flag, call off the hounds.

[Gray_Jay]

I don't have a grudge against you, sarcasmic. That said, you are wrong as wrong can be on this, and are just making yourself look more like an idiot with each ignorant justification of your position.

I blame modern sports television, and specifically, their use of multiple HD replays with perfect lighting, in super slow motion, when watching the best athletes in the world, to create a sense of nuance and difference in athletic endeavors that happen in a fraction of a second. And that gives rise to observations like that of IceTrey that when Brooks fired the taser, it was no longer a deadly weapon. Implying that any shot a second or less after that taser firing would be unlawful. When in practice, all of these actions are happening in the dark, with people who don't experience this kind of stress or these activities every day, and who are fearing for their lives and health. It's ludicrous to expect that kind of instantaneous decision making from anyone, even a police officer.

[sarcasmic]

JesseAz is the one with the petty grudge.

And while I understand your point, I still disagree.

[JesseAz]

Lol. You're wrong because I have an apparent grudge. Lol. Fucking hilarious.

[IceTrey]

Except he fired and missed so the cop had no reason to fear being incapacitated.

[Fran DiRezza]

when someone points a non-lethal stun gun

People die from stun guns all the time. Stop bullshitting us.

[sarcasmic]

No, they don't. It's quite rare.

[Finrod]

No, they die when the cop that was hit by the taser has the perp take his weapon and execute him, fucko. Stop thinking you're clever when you're blathering like a leftist.

[sarcasmic]

Learn a few facts about tasers so you will stop looking like a blathering idiot.

[Archmagus]

That post didn't age well.

[IceTrey]

But that didn't happen. Brooks fired and missed so the threat from the taser was zero.

[B-Zine]

Teasers issued to police deprtments typically have 2 shots.

Stop. This is getting embarassing for both of you.

[Dariush]

So the standard is it’s all good so as long as the criminal misses? Does this apply to handguns and rifles as well? “It’s okay Officer Johnson, Little Ray Ray and Pookie missed every shot they took from their choppa’s.”. Don’t shoot back, it’s only considered deadly force if it kills you.

[B-Zine]

"Amnesty International has documented over 500 deaths that occurred after the use of Tasers."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser_safety_issues

[Ron]

it was only pure luck that he didn't get the real gun, this man had intent and showed it. drunk or not

[sarcasmic]

Had he gotten the real gun then deadly force would have been completely justified. But he didn't.

[Finrod]

Because the cop returned fire, you blithering imbecile.

[IceTrey]

Cop use retention holsters.

[Gray_Jay]

Which basically keep honest people honest. Your experienced crook knows how to defeat them. No idea if Brooks was an experienced crook or not.

They help. They're not something to absolutely rely upon. It's one reason why I won't personally use a smart-gun until the cops do. They have a hell of a lot more motivation to use it if it actually works.

[darkflame]

less than lethal, not non-lethal. Small but still major point, you can die from those things. And the guy wasn't drunk and on the run, he was drunk and hostile, and had just overpowered 2 cops and gotten his hands on one of their tools. Cops are allowed one level of force above whoever they're facing, meaning if the perp has fists, they have tazers, pepperspray, and batons. If the perp has one of those, or a knife, or a 2x4, they have guns. That's the law, and while I don't agree with all of police training, they need to be able to enforce the law.

[ThomasD]

"... a struggle breaks out..."

It's the damned struggles fault.

[Ron]

and would have grabbed a real gun if he could have but wound up with the stun gun and would have used it just like he tried to use the stun gun. You do shoot people like that even when running away

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

I don't necessarily have an issue with the officers' firing at a suspect who dumped them on their asses, took their toy gun and pointed it at them. This is what QI is actually supposed to protect them from. I do think the officer who fired needs to be terminated because the totality of the circumstances don't justify using lethal force (the second officer with his own weapon, the lack of a lethal weapon in the hands of the suspect, bystanders, etc.).

But, the idea that he could have taken their service pistol is silly. You can't see the fight, but you can hear the cop threatening to tase the suspect. The taser was already out, which is probably why the suspect was able to get it. He grabbed the weapon he was being threatened with.

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

"Gonzo-ish left-wing writer and Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi"

A more accurate description would be "#TrumpRussia denialist and phony progressive Matt Taibbi." I just cannot believe Rolling Stone would tarnish its stellar journalistic reputation by letting that hack work there.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Radley Balko on one reason talking about black-on-black crime isn't a good retort to the racial disparity in police shootings...

Balko's off here. While I think the retort is a non sequitur, an argument could be made that the supposed prevalence of black-on-black crime could be in the minds of law enforcement when they "see" that "furtive gesture" at traffic stops.

[mad.casual]

I don't think talking about black-on-black crime is a good retort to racial disparity in police shootings because the problem isn't that officers are shooting black people, it's that they're shooting them for the wrong reason. - Radley Balko

[NOYB2]

How is that a racial disparity?

[JesseAz]

Except when you normalize by criminal incidents, the racial disparity actually turns the other way.

[John]

It is not a substantive retort. The existence of black on black crime doesn't make police shooting unarmed black people any more or less justifiable. It does however point out the hypocrisy of assholes like Balko who claim that black lives matter but then don't give a single shit about the black lives destroyed by black on black crime.

What the retort shows is that people like Balko are lying when they claim to care about black people. They don't care about black people. They care about whatever political mileage and sense of moral superiority can be gained by pretending to care when a cop shoots a black person.

The retort does not disprove the claim that police shooting blacks is a problem. It does, however, put that problem in context and more importantly show what hypocritical pieces of shit people like Balko are. So, of course Balko doesn't like it.

[some guy]

I don't think it's the existence of black on black crime, so much as the proportion of violent crimes that are perpetrated by blacks. If one community commits more crimes, then members of that community can expect to have more police officers around, which leads to more interactions with police officers, which leads to more cases of police abusing their power against members of that community.

This doesn't excuse or explain police misbehavior. It just explains why police misbehavior may disproportionately affect one race even if the police are not racists (which some of them assuredly are).

[Cyto]

He's way, way off on this one, and I'm a huge fan. Commenting at The Agitator led me to start posting here.

He has a minor point - that deadly interactions are rarely "stopping someone who is going to kill someone else". But the point of that stat isn't what he claims it is. The point is "number of interactions with violent felons". That is what the number of murderers is proxy for.
Here's FBI stats from the googles:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21

From 2016 because that's what the googles gave me.
Charged with murder in various forms: White 4,192 black: 4,935

Other violent crimes are skewed quite a bit, but less so than murder.

That is your proxy for "is an interaction with the police likely to be violent"

There are loads of other angles.... how likely are poor people to call 911 to deal with mental health issues, vs how likely are middle class and up to do so? That probably accounts for a big chunk of police killings of the unnecessary type.

so he's right that there are lots of other factors, but he's totally wrong that this is a canard, and he's wrong to frame it as "people claim police shoot people to stop them from committing murders."

[Rich]

Biden ... would hire at least 100,000 people to duplicate contact-tracing work already being done by states, and would empower the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce social distancing.

This is outrageous! At least *500,000* people should duplicate that work, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs should *also* enforce social distancing!

[Damien]

Especially in the Navajo reservations. Living 50 miles apart is too close.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Trump says he won't watch U.S. soccer games or the NFL unless players are forced to stand for the national anthem...

YOU JUST LOST A CUSTOMER.

[Fist of Etiquette]

What kind of cuck do we have in the White House, anyway, if he had been watching soccer in the first place.

[Rufus The Monocled]

This coming from a guy who hates dark chocolate.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Only total cucks add bitter flavoring to the naturally sweet taste of chocolate.

[Gray_Jay]

Depends on the soccer. MLS? Sure, why watch.

World Cup matches, OTOH. Getting your jingo on is most of the fun. USA! USA! USA!!

[Rufus The Monocled]

I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO THE MANAGER.

To be fair, I'm not going to watch a lick of sports myself. Fuck them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

I will continue my boycott of wemons soccer until the become men (real not tyranny) and start playing an entertaining sport

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Not surprising that Balko's running with the "racial disparity in police shootings" line, despite the fact that the number of unarmed black men killed by the cops every year is so miniscule that the current limpout over it smacks of, shall we say it, "privilege," nor can we talk about the fact that white people have more interactions and shootings with the cops. .

We certainly can't talk about "Black Lives Matter" if we're pointing out that more unarmed blacks are killed by their own people than all the cops in the last decade combined. We need scapegoats, not solutions. That's why when we talk about police brutality, we only talk about it in terms of how it affects one particular element of society.

[Rufus The Monocled]

BLM is a scam. A bull shit racist, Marxist organization filled with bad people and dumbass useful idiot wypippo. How does any of this shit help blacks? Hint: It doesn't.

Fuck BLM damn sowers of discord. Dante would have a place in hell for them.

There I said it.

[Idle Hands]

Why do you hate black lives Rufus? That's all they are about well that and a litany of other marxist jumble.

[Rufus The Monocled]

I love them so much - this much - I tell it like it is.

Aw, so cute that Brooklyn protest. I see sheep and useful idiots.

[some guy]

It's sad, isn't it? We might have had meaningful criminal justice reform decades ago if not for the race hustlers turned every case of police misconduct into a discussion of systemic racism. It happens every single time.

And it's also frustrating that the BLM and similar movements from the past always seem to focus on the least sympathetic cases. George Floyd and Michael Brown come to mind immediately. Every account I can read paints both of them as pretty terrible people who were committing crimes when they were killed. Meanwhile people like Breonna Taylor get a brief mention and then are swept under the rug.

It's as if BLM and the other race hustlers don't actually want to build a coalition to solve the problem, but want to alienate the allies they need so that the problem is never solved.

[darkflame]

If BLM wanted to actually fix shit, they would have made Tamir Rice the literal posterchild of their movement. Innocent kid (an actual kid, instead of Michael Brown's 18 year old ass) killed in a park by a cop who's car hadn't even stopped, and who shouldn't have been a cop in the first place due to being emotionally unstable, something the cop was aware of and made multiple attempts anyway to get into police departments. Cop not only gets off scot-free, he gets rehired at another department despite them knowing who he is.

[Gray_Jay]

Go instead with any of the black women shot in their own homes by police: Kathryn Johnson in Atlanta, the lady a few months ago in Fort Worth, Ms. Taylor in Kentucky. None of them did a thing wrong, and the police kicked in their doors (or shot them through their window) and killed them.

Tamir Rice had a realistic looking replica firearm stuck in his waistband. The cops drove up way too close too him, which was stupid, but Rice's hand did move towards his waist. (A similar dynamic is what I think killed Philando Castile.
Don't touch your gun on a traffic stop. Don't go near your gun on a traffic stop, or look like you are. Even if you have a license to carry. Of course, this means not keeping your keys or ID in that pocket where your pistol is sitting.)

Tragedy all around, but I think the homeowners make better examples.

[darkflame]

They'd be perfect poster-children too. Imo though Rice's case had nothing to do with a replica firearm or not once you realized how insane the cop who shot him was. The guy should never have been a cop, and should never have been let near a gun.

[Gray_Jay]

Rice had an Airsoft Beretta 92 he was pointing at people while 'playing.' Reason had a picture of it in one of their articles about the case. I want to say without the orange tip, but I'm not sure, and like that's dispositive these days.

He had it in his waistband when the cops shot him. Given that set of facts, and if my idiot driver of a partner decided to drive right up to the 'guy with a gun', and the guy moved his hand toward his waist while I and my partner are screaming at him to keep his hands up: I'd have shot him too.

As I wrote, there are better examples to rally around.

[Fats of Fury]

Well they did get the California house to vote for a reparations bill. Soon to be voted in by the CA senate and surely signed by their greaseball governor. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment seeing that California was never a slave state (until now).

[Sevo]

"He’s been SF’s most powerful person in pandemic response. You don’t know his name"
[...]
"...Asked whether he would do anything differently with a few months of hindsight, he said, “probably nothing.”"
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/He-s-been-SF-s-most-powerful-person-in-15339439.php?cmpid=gsa-sfgate-result

Of course he wouldn't; didn't cost him a penny.

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

More bad economic news.

Reason.com's benefactor Charles Koch only earned $255,000,000 on the most recent trading day.

For most of us, of course, $255 million for one day of work sounds like fair compensation. But that's the thing — Mr. Koch isn't "most of us." He's much smarter and has worked much harder than we have. He deserves to prosper in his twilight years. Instead he's forced to watch his fortune collapse to a pathetic $51,100,000,000.

#HowLongMustCharlesKochSuffer?
#50BillionIsntGoodEnough

[Fist of Etiquette]

Bystanders: "they kneeled on his neck & had about 6 officers holding him down."

Was that part captured on video?

[Longtobefree]

No need for a 'defund the police' movement.
By the end of the year, they will all have retired, resigned, or been fired.

[I, Woodchipper]

wonderful news.

Any cop who retires due to this 'environment' where the public is becoming highly suspicious and asking for increased scrutiny is a cop who should quit.

[Sevo]

Retail racism:

"Sephora promises to carry more black-owned brands"
[...]
"...“With unparalleled influence and power, not only in the beauty industry but in retail at large, Sephora is making a historic contribution to the fight against systemic racism and discrimination by taking this Pledge,”..."
https://q13fox.com/2020/06/14/sephora-promises-to-carry-more-black-owned-brands/

Why, I know some racists who will not buy anything made by a black-owned business, so they certainly need 'support'!

[Rat on a train]

I certainly check the labels for a full breakdown of the manufacturers identity before buying a product. No gingers, baptists or attached earlobes!

[Longtobefree]

Typical; Sephora fights racism by promising to look closely at the skin color of vendors - - - - - -

Kind of reminds me of the sexist selection process of a certain presidential candidate.

[Damien]

Funny how many white people want defunding of police and reform. Since police departments have desegregated, how much of their motivation is part of their systemic racism?

[Rufus The Monocled]

I don't know if pointing out black on black crime or the fact there's an epidemic of kids born out of wedlock in the community is necessarily a non-sequitur as FOE argues up top. I think it does play into it because civil society starts at home. Then comes the role of politicians and community. On those two fronts, something broke down and the cops have to deal with the after effects.

Balko is also saying, perhaps, you can't point out that a lot of where all this angst happens in Democrat bastions where they have ruled - not governed - for decades.

Start acknowledging those areas need reforming too. Asking only the police reform will NOT solve the bigger problem ailing the black community.

[Sarah Palin's Buttplug]

Meanwhile, Biden has a plan for reopening the economy.

Because The Con Man's $4 trillion Keynesian/deficit spending didn't work?

[Sevo]

Turd, do you post here to prove how stooooooooopid lefty shits can be, or is that a side effect?

[Rufus The Monocled]

You're more retarded than usual.

[I, Woodchipper]

wow just wow.

I'm against it as much as anyone but I'm surprised to see you criticize it. I'm thinking maybe you cay more about principals than principles..

[Ra's al Gore]

Message To BLM Protesters: “Don’t Mess With The Alamo”
https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2020/06/14/message-blm-protesters-dont-mess-alamo/

[Ra's al Gore]

Rolling Stone Editor Torches His Liberal Colleagues: ‘The American Left Has Lost Its Mind’
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/06/14/young-black-man-asks-why-does-a-black-mans-life-matter-only-when-a-white-man-takes-it/

[ThanksForTheFish]

Former editor and now non-person you mean.

[Ra's al Gore]

Sorry, didn't see this was covered.

[Ra's al Gore]

NPR: “Mounting Evidence” Suggests COVID Not As Deadly as Thought. Did the Experts Fail Again?
https://fee.org/articles/npr-mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-not-as-deadly-as-thought-did-the-experts-fail-again/

“After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Duelfer, the leader of the Iraq Survey Group. “As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.”

Today it’s generally accepted that the presence of WMD was the primary basis for the Iraq War. Naturally, the absence of such weapons shook the world. The media blamed the politicians, the politicians blamed US intel, and the intelligence actors involved mostly defended their work.

The official word, chronicled in the Robb-Silberman report, concluded that “the Intelligence Community didn’t adequately explain just how little good intelligence it had—or how much its assessments were driven by assumptions and inferences rather than concrete evidence.”

The Iraq War WMD debacle is arguably the greatest expert “fail” in generations. The holy triumvirate—lawmakers, bureaucrats, and media—all failed to sniff out the truth. If any of them had, a war that cost trillions of dollars and claimed the lives of 100,000-200,000 people likely could have been avoided.

It would be difficult to surpass the Iraq blunder, but emerging evidence on COVID-19 suggests the experts—again: lawmakers, bureaucrats, and media—may have subjected us to a blunder of equally disastrous proportions.

[Rufus The Monocled]

As I've argued many times anywhere and everywhere....it will go down as one of the great all-time blunders in modern Western history.

Not only because it was a hype over-reaction not rooted in any kind of sound data or science but for its aftermath.

You can't spend your way out of this mess and not have some kind of negative effect down the road. In this case, if the Fed gets the power to print...watch out.

Right now we're in a really tough rut and routine of 'spend our way out' while amassing debt.

This impacts GDP and eventually collective standards of living.

Was it worth it for this virus? Of course not.

Hume basically argued you should run surpluses for rainy days. Instead, we did the opposite. Rain deficits while thinking you can manage the debt though Keynesian policies.

The interesting part? I think Keynes was along the lines of Hume in that he said 'sure spend for infrastructure to come out of a recession' but don't do it with public debt.

It's like borrowing from your Mastercard to cover the interest payment on your Visa.

Eventually you will NOT be able to service the capital + principal on the debt incurred.

[Rufus The Monocled]

But take this stance and a remedial fuckhead cowering in fear wearing a stupid mask answers, 'do you have a loved one over 70?'

Such people should be each given a helmet and herded into one area 'call it a benign gulag' so they can go graze in pondering pseudo-intellectual banalities.

[Sevo]

For the children!

[Earth Skeptic]

But enough about Biden.

[Longtobefree]

We could contract this out to the Communist Chinese, they have vast expertise in the area.

[middlefinger]

Comeon Rufus, printing and MMT is so yesterday.

Canceling capitalism and private property is TODAY...Ithaca New York:
https://www.salon.com/2020/06/14/ithaca-cancels-rent-and-capitalism-starts-to-fall-apart/

[Finrod]

Except that we found WMDs in Iraq. Even the New York fucking Times admitted that in 2014, once W wasn't President any more.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

[Ra's al Gore]

We didn't find anything worth 200,000 Iraqi lives and 20 years of occupation.

[Ra's al Gore]

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

[lap83]

"Radley Balko on one reason talking about black-on-black crime isn't a good retort to the racial disparity in police shootings"

What racial disparity? Does anyone have any evidence other than the disparity in media coverage

[NOYB2]

There is a racial disparity: whites are more likely to get shot in a police encounter than blacks.

[sparkstable]

Look.... I think honest proportionality is important. And yes, in real numbers, whites are killed more than blacks. And on whole, unarmed blacks killed amounted to 17/900+ killings in, I believe, 2015.

BUT... "more likely" is a bit misleading. Out of all police killings, any one killing selected at random is more likely to be white than black... true.

However...

IF you are white, the likelihood of being shot by a cop is LESS than if you are black within your particular incident.

Those are both true statements... and is it the latter that is the cause for concern for many. And while the proportionality argument would say, "Yes... but there's better places to spend our energy to get greater positive returns for saving innocent lives, including blacks," that arguments is not sufficient enough to say "Therefore it doesn't matter that the chances of being shot by a cop are increased if you are black." The WHY of that, I would agree, is important and not necessarily due to racism (or more accurately, ONLY racism... to say there is zero racism is prescriptively absurd). But that such a reality does exist is worthy of examination and, if possible, treatment. Even in a world where there are other issues that also need to be addressed.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Except they aren't being honest. In fact, the people making the "proportionality" argument aren't arguing in good faith at all.

[Ken Shultz]

While watching the progressives commit political suicide in this country and the media cheer them on is fascinating, there are other things going on in the world. For instance the Democrats and their neocon allies in Congress are throwing a temper tantrum because President Trump is pulling out of Afghanistan too soon.

"The news that President Donald Trump wants U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by Election Day might’ve been lost amid a flurry of pandemic- and protest-related headlines, but a quartet of national security-focused lawmakers, including Maine Sen. Angus King, haven’t forgotten the story.

This week, King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, joined a letter to freshly confirmed Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe—whose confirmation he opposed—demanding details on the intelligence community’s plans to deal with an early withdrawal, which the senators warned could put U.S. troops at risk in the way that Americans found themselves under fire in Syria last year."

. . . .

Sen. Angus King: What worries me is that a precipitous withdrawal would essentially compromise or eliminate the anti-terrorism mission, and we’d be exactly back where we started.

----Foreign Policy, June 13, 2020

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/13/angus-king-senate-demands-answers-afghanistan-pullout/

Not that Reason has bothered to cover the story of the Trump administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan (except to condemn President Trump at every opportunity), but as I've mentioned here in comments repeatedly, President Trump negotiated a deal with the Taliban so that the United States could leave Afghanistan in 14 months from the time the deal was signed. The Taliban continues to abide by the terms of the deal. The biggest obstacle has been the U.S. backed government of Afghanistan, which dragged its feet on things like agreed upon prisoner exchanges--right up until the Trump administration started withholding their foreign aid. It seems that the Taliban may want us to leave even more than we want to leave. Of course, we should do what's in our own best interests--even if the Taliban wants us to do something that's in our own best interests, too.

[Ken Shultz]

Those who are opposed to President Trump accelerating the schedule of our withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan seem to have three basic complaints:

1) Neocon ideology.

Neocons believe that it is often fundamentally in the best interests of the United States to spread democracy at the point of a gun like Napoleon or Daenerys Targaryen--over the consideration of almost all other factors. I maintain that it is not only sometimes in the best interests of the United States to leave a place like Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan but also that it if we were always pursuing our best interests, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq or Vietnam in the first place. Of course, the question in Afghanistan isn't whether it was in our best interests to invade in 2001 anymore but whether it is in the best interests of the United States to leave now--and the correct answer is "yes".

2) If we leave, we will leave a power vacuum in our wake--and there will be trouble when we leave.

This was always the case. It was one of the good reasons not to invade in the first place. We cannot invade a country, establish control over parts of it, and not leave a power vacuum when we leave. If the local people won't back the democratic government to fill that void, then imposing that "democratic" government on the people of Afghanistan over their objections and against their will is not only undemocratic but counterproductive. Making democracy the enemy of the people does not make it spread.

3) President Trump is timing our withdrawal to help him win in 2020.

Does anyone really believe the neocon contention that they could win in Afghanistan if only they had more resources and time? They've had 18 years and $2 trillion to bring democracy and stability to Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban's influence! What difference is another five months likely to make?

Meanwhile, those who wish to vote against President Trump in November because he withdrew our troops five months earlier than everyone thought is free to do so. Maybe those of us who wish to reward a president at the ballot box for withdrawing our troops ahead of schedule should be free to do so, too. Elected politicians seeking the approval of voters with their policies is only fundamentally undemocratic to those, like progressives, who believe the purpose of democracy is legitimize all the stuff they want to do to the voters over their objections and against their will.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Afghanistan is the Bermuda Triangle of countries.

Lostanistan.

[Ken Shultz]

They attacked us , or, at least, they made an alliance with those who attacked us.

We went over there, and we ruined their shit--just as we should have done.

The purpose should never have been to make Afghanistan the next Japan. If it was, then we should have nuked them.

We fucked their shit up, and we killed Osama bin Laden. Good job! Now let's come home. If they come after us again, next time maybe we should go the less expensive and more thorough route.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Exactly. Just go in to remind them 'Fuck you' and leave.

And kick some sand and a pail in their face while you're at it.

[Rat on a train]

Afghanistan has been know as "The Graveyard of Empires".

[Ken Shultz]

They weren't our graveyard!

They just aren't worth our time, resources, and effort anymore.

If they make themselves a threat to U.S. security again, they'll be more important to us again.

There was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he gets insulted because he sees a sign for him and there's only a $5 reward. He goes on a crime spree, starts defacing national monuments, etc.--sees the reward for him go up to zillions dollars, and starts to feel better--right up until they army comes after him.

That's the Taliban.

One of the biggest losers because of 9/11 was Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Omar

He had most of Afghanistan under his control. He lost it because of 9/11. If he wanted to draw the U.S. into Afghanistan for a Soviet style defeat by way of 9/11 (like ObL), then that was a big mistake.

[Ra's al Gore]

NYC is still shutting down Jewish religious gatherings, and explicitly discussing it on Twitter. Protests go on as planned.

Want a backlash? Keep closing down grandma's funeral after she dies alone in a nursing home w/o visitors, then brag about large crowds of protesters.

[Earth Skeptic]

If grandma and her buddies want some love, they should start looting and burning things.

[Finrod]

I will believe there's a backlash when the people supposedly part of the backlash STOP VOTING FOR THE FUCKING DEMOCRATS THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM.

Otherwise they're getting what they deserve, good and hard.

[Longtobefree]

What the hell ever happened to "NEVER AGAIN!"?

[John]

Are we going to really abolish qualified immunity or are we just going to abolish it for cops and leave the petty tyrants in city and state government on whose behalf the cops are acting immune from any consequences? I would be shocked if it isn't the latter. If it was really abolishing qualified immunity rather than just singling out cops for special treatment, I seriously doubt the Democrats would support it.

This is one case where the gradualism really is the enemy of the good. Depriving only cops of qualified immunity would be worse than what we have now. Either get rid of it all or leave it alone. There is no reason to single out cops who are only a part of the larger problem anyway.

[Ra's al Gore]

We're going to abolish it for local cops. ATF is fine. We can't have Davidians suing, can we?

[John]

That is another great point. How is it in any way fair to abolish it for local cops, who often are the least well trained an in the toughest situations and have the greatest need for it but not abolish it for the feds who are supposed to be better trained and don't respond to really tough situations like domestic abuse calls or are out pulling people over who may or may not be dangerous?

Democrats really can fuck anything up. I have been in favor of eliminating qualified immunity for years. Yet, they have managed to craft a proposal to do so that is so bad that even I am against it.

[Ra's al Gore]

Locals are 'police', Feds are 'agents'. There you go.

[Ken Shultz]

"If it was really abolishing qualified immunity rather than just singling out cops for special treatment, I seriously doubt the Democrats would support it."

Last week, Reason put up a post arguing that if only it weren't for qualified immunity, university administrators would protect the free speech rights of students for fear of lawsuits.

I couldn't help but point out that if university administrators were subject to lawsuits, every social justice warrior on campus would sue individual administrators personally every time they made a decision that might impact any of their favored groups disproportionately--and I'm not sure it's possible to make a decision without impacting any group disproportionately.

If members of a favored group don't necessarily enjoy a high speed internet connection from home the same as everyone else, is it still okay to shut down campus because of COVID-19?

If we want to see public officials making decisions based on who they fear being sued by the most rather than what the law says or what makes sense, then we should definitely get rid of qualified immunity not just for cops but for everybody in government. I'm sure there are plenty of public officials who would rather break the law than get sued personally by a slew of angry social justice warriors.

[John]

You are correct Ken. Foes of qualified immunity don't understand the problem. The problem is not the doctrine, which is needed for the reasons you give. The problem is judges have not properly applied the doctrine. The doctrine is not supposed to protect officials who do things which are clearly contrary to the law. It only protects officials from liability for negligence or unforeseeable consequences of their decisions. Courts have totally forgotten that and time and again grant immunity to officials who have acted in obviously illegal ways. The doctrine needs to be restricted and codified such that judges can no longer abuse it as they have done not eliminated.

[Gray_Jay]

Couldn't judges also crack down on frivolous lawsuits? As it is, you've got to be completely beyond the pale to get smacked with a Rule 11 action. Enforce the rules against frivolous litigation, start going after litigants' counsel that engages in this crap, and maybe some of the excess number of lawsuits that cops and bureaucrats are worried about will go away?

[Ra's al Gore]

Truckers wouldn’t deliver to cities that defund police, poll suggests
https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/truckers-wouldnt-deliver-to-cities-that-defund-police-poll/

Truckers are promising to bring freight deliveries to a screeching halt in any city that cuts or disbands its police department, a new poll shows.

Three out of four long-haul drivers told CDL News, a website for the commercial trucking industry, that they would fear for their personal safety if a city slashed its number of cops in response to the demonstrations nationwide against police brutality.

Trucking ranks consistently as one of the most dangerous jobs nationwide, labor statistics show. In 2018, the occupation topped the list, followed by construction workers, farmers and ranchers, groundkeepers and miscellaneous agricultural employees.

Long-haul drivers have been on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic as stay-at-homes have forced millions of Americans to buy virtually everything online.

[John]

Well, the government will just have to enslave them and force them to do it. Bake that cake Nazi.

I am sure Gary Johnson can explain how this is the "Libertarian Solution".

[Ra's al Gore]

Firefighters and EMTs won't go into bad neighborhoods w/o police backup, so those go too.

[Ron]

or truckers will have private security and look like the war wagon from fury road

[sparkstable]

In a really juvenile way... that would be totally bad ass!

[darkflame]

I wouldn't mind signing up for that job. Does it come with a free AR/AK, or do I need to bring my own?

[Longtobefree]

Ring mounted MA-2, why mess around? That way you get three of four at a time if they are in a mass.

[Sevo]

"...It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It's become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness..."

Hitch was ex-communicated for less.

[John]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-autonomous-zone-chaz-chop-black-organizers-doubt-sincerity-white-protesters

Black organizers of the Seattle Autonomous Zone doubt the sincerity of white protesters. Forget calling in the army to break this up. This needs to be a reality show. Where the hell is TLC when you need them? This shit is made for TV entertainment. If we leave them alone and let the cameras roll, these idiots are going to be murdering each other by August.

[Idle Hands]

August? They'll be starving by july.

[mamabug]

Not really. The truth of the matter is most of the CHAZ 'residents' don't actually live in the area. From what I understand, they hang out during the day (when the weather isn't crappy) then drive (or walk) back to their homes to eat and sleep.

One of the things that annoys me the most about the coverage of CHAZ is how it glosses over the fact that there actually are people who live there. True, they are Capitol Hill liberals so are probably fine with the folklife-festival-meets-pride-month vibe for now, but it isn't like they are being actively included in any of this.

[Idle Hands]

so it really is summer camp for commies.

[Ben of Houston]

Probably not. There are several trust fund babies there. Apparently police aren't allowed to get in, but pizza is regularly getting delivered.

[mamabug]

And those who aren't being funded by mommy and daddy are service industry folks on unemployment.

[Rufus The Monocled]

I look forward to it.

Commies, nihilists, Marxists, racists, naifs, socialists etc. all herded into one stupid zone. We will see these ideologies and morons collide and crash into a splendid concerto culminating into a cathartic crescendo.

How can it NOT be entertaining?

[John]

I would binge watch that every month for years.

[NOYB2]

How about the sincerity of people wanting to get back into their homes? People live there.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

This isn't devolving into a complete shitshow just yet because it has the support of the mayor and the city council. Like Idle Hands said, this is summer camp for the local commies. When the rape tents start popping up, and all the non-white participants look around and start noticing that a lot of this shit is being run by whites, the infighting is going to start up.

[mamabug]

Basically. Being in the area, I have lots of 'friends' on my feeds who keep pointing out how peaceful this is. That's like saying the rabid dog in your house is 'peaceful' as long as you stay completely still and don't try to take back the TV remote it's chewing on.

[Jerry B.]

"Here’s why: The overwhelming majority of time when cops kill, it is not to stop someone from killing someone else."

So most black-on-black killings are to keep the killed person from killing someone else?

[Ra's al Gore]

Meanwhile there are noises about churches being forced to keep records of attendees available to the government for "contract tracing" purposes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/de-blasio-tells-covid-contract-tracers-not-to-ask-positive-cases-if-theyve-attended-blm-protests/
De Blasio Tells Covid Contract Tracers Not to Ask Positive Cases If They’ve Attended BLM Protests

[John]

There was a meme floating around Facebook that pretty much nailed how contact tracing will actually work. It went more or less as follows

Day one - Contact tracer sends positive person a text which person assumes is a scam and ignores.

Day two - Contact tracer calls person but person ignores the call and the voice message assuming it is a scam.

Days two through 14 - Repeat day two process each day.

Day 15 - Contact tracer visits person's home and convinces them they are real. The person then proceeds to give a list of contacts that include several people they have had not contact with but don't like and fails to include Karen in accounting with whom they are having an affair.

Contact tracing is a sick joke straight out of Kafka.

[Idle Hands]

I'm pretty sure they can't do this either based on HIV and AIDS litigation literally hollowing out what these public health institutions can even ask or do.

[John]

Contact tracing works if you are talking about something like an STD that can't be transmitted through casual contact. With an STD there are usually one or two "contacts" or at most some manageable number. But when you have something like COVID that can be transmitted through less than intimate contact, the number of contacts someone can have can be so large that there is no way to trace all of them. It is just an exercise in futility.

[Finrod]

In a just world, de Blasio would have been hung from a lamppost a long time ago.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

In a just world, so many politicians would be hanged that there would be a lamppost shortage.

[Ra's al Gore]

Ron Bailey, call your office

Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed
https://forecasters.org/blog/2020/06/14/forecasting-for-covid-19-has-failed/
COVID-19 is a major acute crisis with unpredictable consequences. Many scientists have struggled to make forecasts about its impact [1]. However, despite involving many excellent modelers, best intentions, and highly sophisticated tools, forecasting efforts have largely failed.

Experienced modelers drew early on parallels between COVID-19 and the Spanish flu [2] that caused >50 million deaths with mean age at death being 28. We all lament the current loss of life. However, as of June 8, total fatalities are ~410,000 with median age ~80 and typically multiple comorbidities.

Predictions for hospital and ICU bed requirements were also entirely misinforming. Public leaders trusted models (sometimes even black boxes without disclosed methodology) inferring massively overwhelmed health care capacity (Table 1) [3]. However, eventually very few hospitals were stressed, for a couple of weeks. Most hospitals maintained largely empty wards, waiting for tsunamis that never came. The general population was locked and placed in horror-alert to save the health system from collapsing. Tragically, many health systems faced major adverse consequences, not by COVID-19 cases overload, but for very different reasons. Patients with heart attacks avoided visiting hospitals for care [4], important treatments (e.g. for cancer) were unjustifiably delayed [5], mental health suffered [6]. With damaged operations, many hospitals started losing personnel, reducing capacity to face future crises (e.g. a second wave). With massive new unemployment, more people may lose health insurance. The prospects of starvation and of lack of control for other infectious diseases (like tuberculosis, malaria, and childhood communicable diseases for which vaccination is hindered by the COVID-19 measures) are dire [7,8].

Table 1: Some predictions about hospital bed needs and their rebuttal by reality: examples from news coverage of some influential forecasts

[NOYB2]

I have yet to see an article by Robby worth reading. Skip straight too the comments: more informative.

[Ben of Houston]

I'm sorry, but "Shot from behind" omits key, REALLY IMPORTANT POINTS. He was fleeing, armed with a stolen taser, after beating up two officers, and was firing it wildly behind him at the officers and everyone else in the line of fire. He also wasn't just drunk. He had passed out unconscious in the Wendy's drive through. The officers had to wake him up to get him into a parking spot so they could arrest him.

Not only was the man was driving while extremely drunk, but he had attacked and was in the process of attacking police officers.

This is as clear cut a case of justified force as can be. The only thing he could have done worse would be to steal the pistol instead of the taser.

[I, Woodchipper]

This is as clear cut a case of justified force as can be.
No not even close. he didn't even have a deadly weapon?

Where are all these cop lovers coming from?

good god we are doomed. liberty is dead in america.

[Ben of Houston]

A taser is a deadly weapon. As has been said earlier, Star Trek phasers don't exist. Tasers are plenty deadly.

And when circumstances change, the decision changes. This is so clear you would write it in a textbook. The only thing that would make it more clear would be if he had a gun instead of a taser.

[lap83]

So the next time a cop tases someone and they die afterwards, I'm sure you'll say it was a coincidence

[Ken Shultz]

The Supreme Court just ruled that LGBT are covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[Ken Shultz]

If I'm not mistaken, this would seem to imply that people who have opposed to gay marriage in public in the past are no longer eligible for management positions--in the public or private sector.

After all, you're a lawsuit waiting to happen.

[John]

I said at the time that creating a right to gay marriage would cause the Court to do this. And any number of people on Reason including Shackford said I was crazy. Yeah well, I called it and fuck everyone who lied and pretended this wasn't going to be the end result.

And it is now effectively illegal in this country to be a practicing Christian and openly proclaim your faith. You cannot reconcile being a Christian, Muslim or Jew with the hostile work environment rules this decision invokes. Religious liberty or what is left of it just died.

[Ra's al Gore]

So that would be Obama and Hillary, from their 2008 debate?

[Ken Shultz]

Don't expect facts and logic to prevail.

Yeah, they'll throw them both under the bus with an, "Okay boomer!"

[John]

Let me guess, Roberts sold out and was the fifth vote?

[Ken Shultz]

Gorsuch went with Roberts, too.

[John]

For all of Gorsuch's many virtues, he is basically a libertine.

[Dillinger]

you can see it on him in every photo.

[Ken Shultz]

They couldn't get ERA ratified in 1979--because they didn't like the implications for women of making the government blind to their gender, specifically.
'
How do you make yourself believe that they meant to extend CRA benefits to LGBT in 1964?

I see how people can get themselves to believe that's the way it should be, but how do you make yourself believe that's the way it was?

When they shot down the suit against the individual mandate and gave us the penal-tax, part of the logic was that Congress could repeal or amend the ACA if they wanted to, and it wasn't the job of the Court to save Congress from itself.

Why doesn't the same logic apply here?

Title IX was an amendment to the CRA. If Congress wanted to extend CRA protections to LGBT, they could do so at any time. They haven't.

It's like the court is saying that you can't use the word "sex" without also using the word for orientation.

[John]

And that is just absurd. It is a terrible decision.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

If Congress wanted to extend CRA protections to LGBT, they could do so at any time. They haven’t.

It has been a non-starter for years. SCOTUS spoke in Obergfell. Congress tried to legislate the ability of the majority to define marriage, but the elected representatives of the people lost. Why would they expect a different outcome if they amend the CRA?

Free exercise is a lost cause, like 2A, reinterpreted into meaninglessness. The BoR is a joke.

What time will the Guard troops to be quartered in my spare bedrooms arrive? I want to have dinner ready so they aren't cranky.

[Moderation4ever]

While the recent Arkansas poll showing a Biden Trump tie is likely an outlier, even that is a problem. You want the outliers in states that are a toss-up, not reliable states. There is no reason Trump's campaign should have to think twice about AR and if they do they are in trouble.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

There is no reason Trump’s campaign should have to think twice about AR and if they do they are in trouble.

And, if I were shilling for Biden, that is exactly what I would try to convince the opposition of in an effort to make them look desperate and get them to waste time and money. Why does anyone believe anything put forth in mainstream media? When the nations top newspapers, NYT and WaPo, have clearly given up all pretense at honest reporting, there is little hope in finding an unbiased source.

[Moderation4ever]

Really? What honest reporting is missing? President Trump mishandled the pandemic, the economy suffered and he has no ability to bring our country together. What reason would anyone have to vote for President Trump, because winning so much hurts?

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

What honest reporting is missing? President Trump mishandled the pandemic, the economy suffered and he has no ability to bring our country together.

Yes, that is exactly the honest reporting that is missing.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

He'd been detained by two police officers after reportedly falling asleep behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot drive-thru; bodycams and security camera footage show cops administering a sobriety test and subsequently arresting Brooks. It's unclear what happens nextIt's clear what happens next from the bodycam footage readily available online, but a struggle breaks out and Brooks appears to grab deliberately grabbed a stun gun from one of the cops. Brooks breaks away, with police chasing him, turns back, fires the taser at the cop, and is shot from behind as he flees the scene.

There's lots of footage of this incident available on Youtube, from multiple cameras at differing angles.

[Butler T. Reynolds]

Yep.

[Cyto]

I can't believe Reason went with this stupid spin narrative.

NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, etc. have all been pushing the spin. When the Wendy's footage was released they all said "the GBI claims that Brooks pointed the taser at the officer". You can see the video for yourself. It isn't ambiguous. He clearly not only points it, he clearly pulls the trigger.

Why are we pretending that we didn't see what we saw?

When we watched the Kelly Thomas video, we didn't pretend that we saw a reasonable escalation of force. We all said that we saw a fat cop taunting a mentally ill homeless guy, threatening to fuck him up, then proceeding to beat him to death as he begged for his life. Nobody pulled punches or couched things to fit the spin.

The same goes for the Floyd case. Nobody said "video appears to show that an officer may have placed his knee near the neck area of Floyd".

If you want to be an authoritative source, you have to be honest, even if some facts don't support your narrative.

The video on this one is as clear as you are going to get. Pretending that the most important facts of the entire encounter are in dispute would be wrong in any case, but in a time of extreme national tension... it is inexusable.

[Longtobefree]

They do not want to be an authoritative source, they want to be part of the propaganda machine.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Disagree. They want to be an authoritative source, but are afraid of being called racist.

[ThomasD]

"... but in a time of extreme national tension… it is inexusable."

Inexcusable, but also entirely transparent as to motive.

Sides have been declared and facts do not matter to Boehm or his editors or publishers.

[I, Woodchipper]

even the most cop-worshipping narrative includes the part where HE WAS SHOT IN THE BACK WHILE RUNNING AWAY.

case closed.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatens to turn this car around unless you kids start behaving.

But only those in The Hamptons and Manhattan. The thousands at the Black Delusional Psychotics Matter protest in Brooklyn are totally cool with him.

[Dillinger]

saw on the news NJ peeps can go outside and eat in your yards now

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Not in Asbury Park, apparently.

[Dillinger]

really? sound was off but I thought she was *in* Asbury Park

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Apparently she's backing down.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

The owner was just on TV - here's the story. Asbury Park passed an ordnance allowing in-store dining at 25%. Gov Murphy, by his divine right, issued an injunction against the township threatening legal action.

The owner changed her mind in support of Asbury Park's mayor.

[Dillinger]

awesome. the Bon Jovis hardest hit.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

If only.

[Ra's al Gore]

France won’t ‘erase’ history by removing colonial-era statues, Macron says
https://www.france24.com/en/20200614-macron-vows-that-france-won-t-take-down-statues-or-erase-history

“We should look at all of our history together” including relations with Africa, with a goal of “truth” instead of “denying who we are”, Macron said.

Macron also said that the fight against racism became distorted when it became exploited by what he described as “separatists”.

[Dillinger]

>>after a white police officer there killed a black man

shame people still described by melanin.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hang on.

Didn't Cummo just threaten Manhattan businesses if they didn't social distance he'd shut them down? How does he square that with the protest in Brooklyn? Wtf?

This has to stop. It's mentally retarded.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

It will all magically disappear on November 4th. Or continue for another 4 years. Depends on the intangibles.

[Butler T. Reynolds]

If you watch the dashcam, bodycam, and other footage of the episode, it's not quite as unclear as you'd be led to think in the news.

Until Rayshard decided to fight them at the point of the arrest, the cops' manner was actually very calm and respectful to Rayshard.

From what I've seen, it does not appear that Rayshard was shot until after he pointed the taser at the officer.

I swear to god I really dislike progressives. They make me defend cops and dipshit Trump way too often.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

So is Reason covering the PA State Legislature's override of Gov Wolf's quarantine and his request for the PA Supreme Court to uphold it? Or is that too local?

[BigGiveNotBigGov]

"Federal Aid for State‐​Local Police
Federal funding for state and local police should be zeroed out."

https://www.cato.org/blog/federal-aid-state-local-police

Most are missing the point on police (state) abuse (terrorism). It is not racism it is statism.

While I agree with getting Federal money out of the state and local police, the Feds need to be forced to muck-out their own barn first. Federal police stink worse and have stunk longer than the locals.

[I, Woodchipper]

Federal funding for state and local policeALL NON-FEDERAL ENDEAVORS should be zeroed out.

there, that's better

[Dillinger]

"He only has a taser and we know who he is, we can get him later."

[Longtobefree]

Before or after he drunkenly tases many bystanders?

[Dillinger]

drunken tasering carries immediate death sentence?

[I, Woodchipper]

IN AMERICA IT DOES!

[NashTiger]

Ok, so they go to get him later and he punches them some more and this time he gets a gun off an officer

I wish you idiots would STFU

[Lady Dada]

I realize this is so far down that nobody will see it but OH MY GOD it is time to drop social distancing. It's a rule that is not consistently applied, is discriminatory (required or not based on the content/purpose of your gathering), and no longer makes any damn sense. Either everyone has to do it or nobody does. ENOUGH pretending that the virus gives a fuck if you're black and trans.

Also, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: WHY ARE WE DOING ALL THIS FOR A VIRUS WITH A 99% SURVIVAL RATE?!

[Longtobefree]

Because the socialists think this time they can actually take over - - - - - - -

[I, Woodchipper]

99.9 to 99.8 actualy

[creech]

Heard a guy on tv this weekend lamenting about how he has to "talk to his (black) son about behaving when around cops." Didn't our white dads have the same talk with us? "Be respectful to police officers. And stay out of trouble because I'll ground you forever if the cops come looking for you." Innocent or guilty, there is no good way to confront, sass, or wrassle with a cop without running the danger of serious injury, death or court time. That's what every kid needs to learn, regardless of color or gender or religion or...

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, pretty much. Hell, we had it in school. This "every black male in America has to have 'the talk' at some point" and "every time I see a cop car go by, my blood pressure goes up" shows just how deep the solipsism goes. If black people think they're the only ones having that talk with their kids, they're delusional. Regardless of your race, if you're not guiding your children in how to navigate a functional society, you've failed as a parent.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

My (white) son has permanent congenital nystagmus (his eyes always twitch from side to side). You can be damn skippy that I have coached him extensively on interactions with police. They are trained to assume that nystagmus means 'under the influence of drugs'.

[Gray_Jay]

"Holy shit! This kid's got a BAC over .30!" In all seriousness though, that sounds awful.

Long ago, I knew a cop who got to get drunk at work to demonstrate for media and other officers, how alcohol affected horizontal gaze nystagmus. Fun day for him. Drink JD until, I want to say he got into the 3s. Next day likely wasn't fun.

[I, Woodchipper]

while this is true, it's shouldn't be that way. You SHOULD be able to mouth off, curse at, and otherwise harass the police without getting a beat down or being shot.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Act like a stupid piece of shit, get treated like a stupid piece of shit. No wonder you anarcho-morons can't build a society.

[I, Woodchipper]

Meanwhile, Biden has a plan for reopening the economy. He would create a federal paid-leave program for workers who get sick, would hire at least 100,000 people to duplicate contact-tracing work already being done by states, and would empower the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce social distancing.

Jesus christ. His plan to "reopen" the economy is to put in place a bunch of government bullshit. WTF

[Rufus The Monocled]

And by the time all this passes, the Covid will be gone. Heck, what is the purpose of this if this virus is once and for all determine to not be as lethal as first thought? Why go on this track? It's not only impractical but irrational.

[Lady Dada]

The most terrifying part is the last one. Will OSHA get some kind of police force? What will the penalties be? If we all put on a shirt that says "White Silence = Violence," can we go to a party? Or with the OSHA cops come bust it up?

[John Dough]

A few common sense observations:

If Rayshard Brooks were white and had violently resisted arrest, he would very likely still be dead.

If Rayshard Brooks had not violently resisted arrest, he would very likely still be alive.

The situation "was calm, and then it escalated". Who escalated the situation? Was it the police officer politely and lawfully performing his duty, or the man violently resisting arrest?

The suggestion that police should have let Brooks "walk it off", or otherwise ignore the DUI, is laughable.

Brooks was not "Cooperative"; again, he violently resisted arrest.

Brooks grabbed the officer's taser. In the chaos of the scuffle did Brooks have the foresight to grab the taser and not the gun? Or was it just luck that he grabbed the taser instead of a gun?

Brooks punched the officer in the face. (See "cooperative" above).

Brooks was not "unarmed"; he had a taser in hand.

Brooks was not simply "running away"; he turned while running to fire the taser at the officer.

Tasers can be lethal weapons. At the very least they can incapacitate somone long enough for you to kill them, or in this circumstance long enough to obtain the officer's firearm.

Should the officers have decided to let him run and engage in a chase instead of firing at him? If the answer is yes, that means arguing that they should have let a man who is drunk and violent run away while being sufficiently confident that he will not harm other innocent people or himself in the process, that he will be able to be apprehended eventually, and that he does not have a hidden weapon on his person with which to do further harm.

If a cop is trying to arrest you and you attempt to wrestle him, punch him in the face, take his taser and fire it at him, you are probably going to get shot and the cop is probably justified in shooting you.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Man, I gotta say, despite what I wrote up top, this is a tough one.

What about just aiming to incapacitate? Is that realistic?

[John Dough]

Aiming to incapacitate is not realistic. The "just shoot them in the leg" thing is an action movie trope.

[Cyto]

What makes this tough is that he really didn't have to die. He had to make a ton of bad choices in an extremely brief time, and things had to go really wrong at the same time.

If he hadn't gotten scared and suddenly decided to escape, he'd be fine right now.

IF the cops had been able to maintain physical control, he'd be fine right now.

If he had not gotten his hands on the taser, he'd be fine right now.

If he had not pointed the taser at the pursuing officer, he'd likely still be fine.

If the officer with the headlock had not shifted tactics and merely tried to maintain a grapple on the ground and let his partner handle things like "use a taser" and "get handcuffs on", he'd likely be OK now.

A lot had to go exactly as it went in order for him to end up dead. Pointing the taser was the last act in a long line of "if only" decisions that began with drinking and driving and ended with a completely unnecessary death.

[ThomasD]

Center mass is aiming to incapacitate.

He shot the guy when he was a threat, then as soon as the guy was down and not a threat he stopped shooting.

That is how it works.

[Hania]

where there is no justice there is violence.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

I note that Taibbi has to get several paragraphs of, “Trump is literally Hitler and this civil war is all his fault and anyone who disagrees with me is also Hitler” in before denouncing his fellow Regressive for the same.

[Cyto]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1271985162448928769

This is a good example of what is wrong with claiming everything is about race.

Joy Reid pushes the notion that "falling asleep in your car while black" can get you killed by police.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I'm not even going to read that autism. Joy Reid is a racist piece of trash, and pretty much everything that comes out of her fat mouth is bullshit.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

It doesn't even make sense in a vague way. If he had stayed asleep he would most definitely be alive. He was not asleep when he fought the cops and ran away while firing a taser.

[I, Woodchipper]

Joy Reid pushes the notion that “falling asleep in your car while black” can get you killed by police.

should be, "interacting the police at any time for any reason can get you killed by police"

[TJJ2000]

... if you think that was "interacting" then I feel sorry that you've been so immuned to such a violent environment.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

It's more likely the opposite, actually. Anything harshing his mellow is police brutality.

[Dillinger]

shooting a dude in the back until he dies is police brutality.

[TJJ2000]

Are you also going to call it "customer brutality" when a cashier tries to apprehend a stolen keg of beer, gets punched in the face, tazed and finally uses that shot-gun under the counter to shoot the guy as he flees the store?

In many circles of legitimate justice the store owner would get off on a self-defense case.

[ElvisIsReal]

Worst flop trying to take a charge since Divac.