US policemen threaten to shoot black mother dead

I carry the majority of the time. 50% of homeowners in my state own a gun. However I never see a gun in public and I feel much safer than I did living in the UK.

Definitely something wrong with society when you feel safer with a gun. There’s no point in arguing with someone who has lived their whole life in the white privileged bubble and has been brainwashed to believe white people are always right.

Although I do agree there is still racism within our police force, something like THIS would never happen. A mother with a baby in her arms would never be threatened or held at gun point over a toy doll being taken by accident. Ffs, was this toy doll worth more than the life of the 4 year old who took it?!!!!

I also hope they get the payout. Money talks, and if every family got a huge settlement when something like this happened then eventually something would be done regarding training and culture in the US police.

I do hope they get the 10 million dollar payout that has been discussed

First of all, why all the talk of racism?

Because the US Police have a known, systematic racism problem. Please show me a video of them doing this to a pregnant white Lady holding a baby, after her kid stole a barbie. I have seen so many videos of us police doing this crap. I’ve seen them give a black woman an internal exam on the side of the fucking road. Ffs.

As a brown person who spent a considerable amount of time in the US this sadly doesn’t surprise me. I was stopped several times by police because “why is a darkie like you driving a car like this?” I have also been called Osama, terrorist and nigger by police officers in the US for merely driving a car or walking down a street. My all time favourite was being arrested for reporting a crime as the person who attacked us was white and the thick as shit police officer refused to listen to anyone but the white person.

The US police is a bastion for poorly educated, racist thugs.

The interaction was a little unprofessional and heavy handed. But the officer had no idea if there was a weapon being concealed, or if there was one in the car.

Fuck me.

Standing that close to a woman holding a baby, waving a loaded gun 6 inches from her face and telling her she is going to get shot in the fucking head.

There is no way to justify that.

If they thoight she was armed, they shouldn't have been escalating the situation
She would me more likely to panic and fire on them. Clearly they can see she can't pull a gun on them because she is holding the baby. At that point she is no longer a threat.

The fact that they continued their threatening, aggressive behaviour long after it was clear she wasn't a physical threat to them shows it was nothing to do with protecting themselves.

Whether it was racism, misogyny or a hatred for poor people, they behaved in a reckless, disgusting way and could easily have ended up hyping themselves up to the point where they ended up killing an unarmed mother in front of her children.

I am glad I don't live where your police friends work Blackwood if they think that is ok.

Show it to any European police officer and see if they think it is ok.

"Those of us suggesting that there are a set of reasons this kind of thing has become part of the culture in the US with regard to policing are trying to look at the sorts of causes, systemic, psychological, etc that come into play."

I think most of us can appreciate that.

I think we can also appreciate that when it comes to systematic failures in the US policing system, it's not generally the police who lose out.

The police don't exactly make an effort to de-escalate the situation did they? They literally fabricated a life or death confrontation.

The US police need dismantling and start again because this is fucked up.

Fine, all of you who say we just don't have full context and can't possibly understand how terrified the poor, poor men with guns were:

The difficulty with the kind of explanation you are proposing is that it isn't really an explanation at all. It's just, these are bad people. Sure, maybe, but why?
Those of us suggesting that there are a set of reasons this kind of thing has become part of the culture in the US with regard to policing are trying to look at the sorts of causes, systemic, psychological, etc that come into play.
As far as being afraid of a woman with a baby, you are right, it seems irrational. No one is saying it is rational. But it's not unexpected given the problems they have. People that go into unpredictable situations involving violence on a regular basis can begin to behave abnormally, its why you so often see these kinds of behaviours in certain kinds of setting. You can control it to some extent, even in bad situations, by creating the right kind of organisational culture, training, making sure you can give people different types of work ad breaks, and so on. If those things aren't happening though it can get really bad and also, people don't always realise it. In a tainted organisation people really lose sight of normal behaviour, there are all kinds of studies on this. It's happened across the culture in the US too, many people think this sort of thing from police is normal.

That video is appalling, I struggle to see how anyone can even try to justify the actions of the police. It just looks like overt racism from people who see themselves as some kind of (badly trained) military force, not members of a service who are supposed to protect the public.

It's hard to comment as from the description I don't want to watch the video. I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to be a mother holding a child and pregnant to have guns pointed at her and not know what action is the least dangerous to her children.

And the reality is black people are much more likely to be targeted by the police in the US, there's a racism problem in the UK police as well but you're not very likely to be shot by the police because of it

jq

If that was happening to people from your community on a regular basis, don't you think you'd be rather 'emotive' too?

Just fucking awful.

I don't even know what else to say. There is no justice for black people in the US. This happens time and time again.

The people who honestly think that a pregnant white lady with a baby in her arms has the same chance of this happening as this woman does are completely deluded.

Fine, all of you who say we just don't have full context and can't possibly understand how terrified the poor, poor men with guns were:

Please show me one incident from the last 5 years in which a police officer has been shot by a pregnant woman holding a baby.

I'll wait.

Agree, JQBased

It reminds me of trans allies reactions to GC.
And I was the same not so long ago.

After peak transing I looked at the likes of mainstream media, greivance studies at uni's etc, and readjusted my biased opinions on lots of things.
I don't even think Trump cap wearers are racist stupid arseholes any more. (And that doesn't make me pro Trump by any stretch of the imagination)

First of all, why all the talk of racism? There is zero evidence of racism here, not everything involving two different people of race is automatically racist. As much as the media and various vested interests would like you to think it is.

As usual with mobile footage of police actions, it's impossible to see the bigger picture as to everything that went on in this situation. This seems like the police officer is a headcase, but then again there is a huge issue beyond this of a society that's gone off a cliff in America. Violence in some urban areas is horrific, gun crime off the chart, chances of a police officer being gunned down are high and police training nowhere near as thorough as over here and a general militarisation of the police in America setting the conditions for recruiting individuals with questionable personality traits. This seems a crazy response to what seems like a minor incident, but then again nobody knows the full story other than watching some footage on a camera and being directed to emotional thinking by race baiting titles and emotive narratives.

Today's cops in these situations would have been yesteryear's overseers looking forward a little too eagerly to whipping whoever fell behind while picking in the fields.

There's a certain type of man attracted to a job where you're given control over the dignity and lives of others, in a way where even blatant abuse of that power is unlikely to be punished (or, possibly, even really noticed).

I had cops in my family too. Like a huge percentage of cops, they beat their wives. They were total shitheads. Cop glorification is absurd. They get into it for guns, but I had better accuracy than the police qualifying exams in my area after practicing shooting for less than 2 weeks, and the qual exams disqualify over 2/3 of applicants!

Training methods for larger city police forces include one where police are electrically shocked if they don't pull their trigger on a "bad guy" fast enough, and are told the electrical shock represents being shot because they were too slow on the draw. They transform these people into hair-trigger killers on purpose.

BackwoodsGirl - your post is minimising and excusing APPALLING behaviour!

That you feel you NEED to say such placatory comments to police officers says it all. You are literally living in a police state!

That isn't and never will be normal, acceptable or right!

People like the police officers in that video

A SHOULD NEVER have been allowed to become police officers

B SHOULD DAMN WELL NEVER have access to guns!

The behaviour of the civilians being ATTACKED and THREATENED (in NO WAY is this acceptably described as reasonable detainment) was placatory, polite and compliant there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the police to behave like that!

That you think it remotely acceptable says so much about you and that country - none of it even close to good!

"BUT why is everyone crying racism??" Because they wouldn't have treated a mc white family this way, they wouldn't dare!

Re the "interesting document" I don't bloody blame them for suing! What IS interesting is that the police officers didn't even file an incident report AND weren't wearing what is apparently meant to be standard policy bodycams - I'd want to know what the HELL these officers aside from THIS incident (which happened in broad daylight with clear witnesses and THAT didn't temper their disgusting behaviour much!) have been getting up to! Why are they hiding their activities by not wearing their bodycams? Not completing the paperwork?!!

They've got NO business being police officers!

"I am sat around a campfire with 2 US police officers right now who watched the video" if they defended this in any way (which it sounds like they did!) they too have NO business being officers!

"proud that the British police would never be caught doing something like this"

Sorry but even as the sister of a British police officer, there are some British officers (and forces) that don't have the greatest track record either. They're not perfect, they just don't carry guns as a matter of course (which admittedly ramps up the threat significantly)

"We don’t know if that is a area known for violence." NO EXCUSE

"We don’t know if the couple are known to the police for violent behavior." NO EXCUSE

"Police forces are at a town level, so set up very differently to the UK so training is very local and tailored to the area" NO EXCUSE - and actually shows you know NOTHING about how policing is organised in the uk.

You're utterly deluded if you think you're safer there than in the uk - plus you're contradicting yourself. If it's oh so safe over there WHY do you need a gun at all? Let alone to conceal carry most of the time?

I'm also sceptical of those statistics you linked (which notably don't include manslaughter I notice) as I suspect from the text at the beginning of the link that it's heavily manipulated.

Percentages allow for the comparisons to make sense.

All of which is merely your attempt to derail. But is fairly typical of your sycophancy on this and other USA issues.

Whatever the homicide rate even in the state where this occurred - that's NO EXCUSE for how these officers behaved!

In the US, I'm sure the bloke would have been shot. And there's really no reason to scream and swear like in the video in a supposedly free country.

Americans I know are all really careful about talking to or dealing with the police, they assume if they make a wrong move there could be violence. It's very alien to me but they don't really seem to see them as people who are there to help, but more like an army in a foreign land keeping order. I don't think they value the model of policing where they are trying to resolve the situation the best way for all, including those who are in trouble. I suspect it doesn't help that many of them are wearing uniforms that look pretty militaristic.

The police themselves seem to be under a lot of stress with inadequate training and difficult situations.

It is true that states where people have a lot of guns can sometimes have lower violent crime statistics. It seems to be kind of a complicated set of issues that also is related to things like urbanisation, drugs, and so on. It's not all about the numbers of guns.

But as far as the racism thing explanation - that is something to be really careful about jumping to as the explanation. It could be true, but the stats again aren't as cut and dried as we might expect. And police forces with a lot of black cops and leadership seem to have a lot of the same problems, as do towns and cities with black leadership. I have heard people suggest this is caused by colonialism or something like that, but I don't find that an entirely satisfying explanation.

My sons school was in lock down a few months back in London.
A bloke was in a car with a gun, apparently had a fight at home and was out to shoot someone.
The police surrounded him and talked to him. It took them 8 hours but they got there in the end. Just normal Met police without any guns.
In the US, I'm sure the bloke would have been shot. And there's really no reason to scream and swear like in the video in a supposedly free country.

Backwoodsgirl that's OK then. As long as you're a OK. Fuck everyone else.

And that’s ok, I know and trust my 5 town police officers.

I wanted to reply to this earlier but haven’t yet had time to watch the video. No trouble believing it’s every bit as bad as advertised however. I did want to chime in on guns in America.

The gun issue is possibly the number one reason I hesitated for a long time to move back to my native USA. Gun laws here are unconscionable.

The only thing I can add to maybe shed some light is that, like many other political issues in America, gun access is a HIGHLY divisive issue, so you can go from a place where guns are generally reviled and almost no private citizen owns one, to (say 100 miles away, not that far) places where many people own them and don’t see any issue with that.

Your personal perception is not supported by the homicide figures, simple as that.