Black Man Down in Chicago
The only surprise is that the authorities in Chicago released the video of - anything. It doesn't show the actual shots fired into the back of Paul O'Neal, a kid who will never see his 19th birthday because the police body cams somehow failed to work. I know, amazing coincidence, isn't it?
Get down! Hands behind your back! You shot at us, mother------!"
Moments later, officers curse at 18-year-old Paul O'Neal as they put him in handcuffs as he lies face down. Hands behind his back, his arms appear limp. The back of his shirt is covered in blood. An officer holds his foot on O'Neal's leg. Another holds down the mortally wounded man's head.
The actual shooting, which occurred on July 28, isn't seen in the footage because the officer's body camera didn't record the moment he opened fire. However, police say the officer who shot O'Neal in the back violated policy. The teen, police learned, was not armed.
One police officer can be heard complaining, as Paul's life blood flowed out onto the ground, that now he would face a 30 day suspension. What a crying shame. Of course, if the tables had been turned and these police officers had been shot in the back by an armed black man, they would be seen as fallen heroes, the fate of the five police officers shot by a lone wolf sniper in Dallas. Somehow, I don't see Paul O'Neal being held up by our media and political elites as a martyr, or as a hero, as anything more than the potential cause of protests and/or (if they get lucky) a riot (hey- ratings doncha know). No, he's just another problem for the City of Chicago's liability insurer (assuming they have one).
Will the officers who shot Paul down be indicted. Seeing as there are no witnesses other than the two of them, and no video has surfaced showing the actual shooting, that seems highly unlikely, despite the near certainty that indictments would be brought in any other case with the same facts if the suspects weren't part of the blue brotherhood. While one officer in Virginia was found guilty for killing unarmed black man accused of shoplifting - for the lesser charge of manslaughter - one case does not a sea change make.
I look forward to the upcoming media smear campaign against Paul O'Neal with both fear and loathing. He must have been guilty of something, amirite? He was a young black man after all, and we all know what that means in the eyes of most white Americans: He had it coming! Oh, and don't forget, Black Lives Matter are the "real terrorists" here.
So it goes. So it always goes, round and round and nobody knows how to make it stop, or cares to try.
Comments
firing
at "shooter level: cop", down a residential street, with at least one emergency vehicle in the target area.
fucking brilliant. amazing these cops didn't kill anyone else. i mean, we'd never hear about it if they did, i guess.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
That would depend on the
That would depend on the neighborhood...
I just wanted to add
Living in the Chgo. area my whole life I am familiar with this area it is not a ghetto but regular middle class neighborhood. This also happened in broad daylight not at night.
Based on the video footage it
Based on the video footage it seems the two bozos who initially opened fire may have been what led to the second pair of police to shoot O'Neal. One of the second pair -- after the shooting -- tells other officers that he heard gunshots coming from the suspect's vehicle as it was coming at his car. No, you moron, it was coming from the other police.
(Not that this excuses what happened -- and for all we know they're making stuff up afterwards -- it just goes to show how idiotic it is to turn a residential neighborhood into the ok corral.)
They shot into a moving vehicle in violation of department
policy. They shot up a residential neighborhood. They yelled that he was shooting at them when he had no weapon. The shooter's body cam "wasn't working". They shot him multiple times in the back.
But the superintendent says, "(We) will not wait to look for ways we can learn from this incident."
Well hey, as long as they "learn" from it, it's all good then, I guess. /s
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Body cams "not working"
Should be considered evidence of guilt under law, unless a technical flaw can be discovered. Evidence of deliberate tampering or destruction should also be considered evidence of guilt.
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Agreed. Even better, no off button. Put them on a charger
or something at the station at end of shift. Have someone responsible for the body cam supplies, perhaps preferably a minority civilian. You don't necessarily get the same camera back as you had the day before, so tampering gets you nowhere.
They do say the guy who shot him was the guy whose car he crashed into, so there may actually be a real excuse in this case. Time will tell. Meanwhile, he violated department policy regarding vehicle crashes, he shot him in the back and the guy was unarmed, so I hope a camera doesn't matter. "I feared for my life" should be a tough sell.
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that's
how radar guns work, at least.
has it been tested? can you guarantee that the technical specifications are accurate? what is the MOE of this particular device?
thus, is the single, gigantic on/off switch on the body cam functioning correctly?
if the single, gigantic on-off switch on the device is faulty, i guess i can see why the "untrained in body cams" officer might be exonerated for not using his mandated recording gear. gigantic on/off switches are difficult to use for the untrained, after all.
i'll tell you what body cams need: body cams need a proximity switch that turns them on as soon as a cop leaves their car. three feet from the cup holders, and they're on. this will cancel out problems of incompetence, failure of training, and maybe deliberate misunderstanding of said gigantic on/off switch. from what i understand, the dash cam turns on when the cherries are on. let's fucking do that with personal cameras, it's not difficult.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
Murder under color of law can certainly be stopped, and will be.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ex-m-eEKsg]Whether it happens by mass uprisings in minority communities as the intro to the great American unraveling, or proceeds in a more pacific fashion, a fed-up citizenry will end this fatal oppression from their public servants. Two things could be done right now, to both radically change our present and future police forces and to put the fear of extinction into those officers who can't be re-educated or terminated.
First, we can change the way we hire and train police personnel. Put simply, police interviews of applicants would be eliminated; no police personnel could rule on new hires. Training would only be at city-approved academies, and would be preceded after hiring by paid community service in the hiring city. The community service requirement would be a trainee's first class and would require a passing grade for advancement to the police academy.
Second, the minority communities need to threaten justice against the actual uncharged murderers in blue. The anonymous vigilantes can call themselves The Eye Committee (biblical, and it acronyms nicely -please don't attribute it to me if you use it) and begin by publicly warning the appropriate prosecutor as each case arises, about the possible consequences of a failure to bring charges.
It will probably take the threat of (and backlash against) the second idea to force us to implement the first one. For our minorities the backlash will almost certainly be bloody, but we are already bleeding. The coming riots (if nothing is done) will be bloodier still.
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We'd have a war if the community shoots back
As it is, with just the uniforms shooting, it's more of a pogrom.
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We've had a pogrom for 151 years. 21st C tools have shown us
we've really been at war for 397 years, and it's time to shoot back. In fact, that has already begun, by individuals, and the minority community is being blamed. It is past time to talk about what we'd have IF, because what we've already got is actual war, though undeclared. It takes two sides to declare a war. As long as one side excuses the fatal incursions of the other side as raids-because-they're-ignorant they can be bled to death with impunity. If they wake up and declare that this situation is a war for survival.. the numbers are against the uniforms.
The establishment can bring in every uniformed American LEO and the entire armed forces, and still be as outnumbered as Leonidas. Every minority American citizen is well aware of this numerical advantage if we come to the last despair. As victims of group punishment for 4 centuries, we expect to be blamed when our first individual members go crazy-enough-to-kill-and-suicide under the strain. At some level of consciousness every American minority 'remembers' Rosewood, even if he or she has never heard of it.
If the people who are the subjects of the 'pogrom' decide it really is a war, all the reasonable explanations about how this is really only a pogrom will fall on deaf ears, and indeed are doing so even as I type. I honestly hope my community won't 'see its lunch naked on the end of its fork' because the resultant firestorm will detract from our combined ability to do something actual and useful about anthropogenic climate disruption. If it weren't for that pragmatic consideration (because climate change is going to kill off the wicked fiction of racial differentiation one way or another) well -deponent saith naught, in a public forum.
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Gee, I dunno. Sounds awfully
Gee, I dunno. Sounds awfully violent. The only way to make positive change is through love and nonviolence. King said so, and he's famous AND black, so he must have been 100% right.
Instead of declaring war, why don't you march around with signs some more? Or put on impromptu street theater where people pretend to be dead. Have you hugged a policeman and thanked him for his service yet? If you love the police more, it will fundamentally change both the institution and those who serve. Somehow.
You just need to protest the white way, and then you'll get results.
Boojum (failed snark)
"For the Snark was a Boojum, you see".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I live in the Chgo. burbs
They have been showing the video on local news all day. while there is no video of the shots that hit Paul Oneil there is plenty of other footage showing a cop gun drawn while still in the squad car, Then in the middle of a residential area jumping out firing at the moving car almost shooting another cop. It looked like gunfight at the ok corral, The video of the cops attitudes and smug remarks is really sickening as well. all of this over a stolen car. It sure appears like another unarmed black man murdered out of cowardice and or racism. The way it appears on the video it is a miracle no one else was shot.
Back in the day, the Black Panther Party got it right
It was called Community Control of Police. With backing from everyone from Ron Dellums to Tom Hayden, it was drawn up as a City of Berkeley charter amendment and put on the ballot in 1971 with something like 15,000 signatures, and would have divided police into 3 districts and 5 divisions, administered by elected boards with the power to hire and fire individual cops, who would have been required to live in the communities they policed. Of course the corporate Democrats and Republicans united to defeat it, using some of the silliest arguments you could imagine, but lots of help from the political, business and media establishments. Vastly watered down, this was the ancestor of today's toothless and sometimes worse than useless civilian police review boards.
www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Community_Control/Community_Control_Police_index...
They will get away with it
mark my words. I can hear the apologists already: If he wouldn't have stolen the car he would still be alive.People who obey the law don't get shot! and on and on. mr Castille did everything right and still got killed.
Our cops are out of control!And they keep killing because they know they get away with it. It's been a month since Alton Sterrling got killed and we have not had an update on the investigation.The autopsy report was sealed by some federal judge so we don't know what they found.
Sometimes I think the cops want to start a war so they can try out their new toys.If they keep this up they will get it!They will only have themselves to blame.
I am so tired feeling helpless
" El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. The people united will never be defeated "
cops high-fived each other after
The absolute inhumanity of police reactions after they kill someone is what gets to me. They don't offer first aid, they don't treat the person with any respect, they immediately start to collude so that they get their stories straight -- and in this case they high-fived each other like it was a football game and they just scored.
Disgusting. Abolish the police
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka