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February 08, 2005
How Many Cops Have To Die?
I just got off the phone with Doc, who is loading up on carbs. Apparently he's going to be on duty all night due to some firey protests happening at Parker Center right about now. Enraged citizens are saying things like 'how many cops have to die before you change?'.
All this comes in the wake of a recent decision against car thief Stanley Williams who got bopped upside the noggin with a flashlight last year. Nobody's going to fire the cop who did it, citing a lack of evidence of excessive force, ie the cop didn't even draw blood. Urban Leaguer John Mack was looking for cosmic justice there, and Hahn himself decided to spite his own police chief for election brownie points with the assumed 'black vote'.
Now just the other night, yet another car theif who took cops on a high speed chase was apprehended - with a rain of bullets. This kid happened to be a black teenaged kid on his way down the slippery slope. And so there is predictable outrage.
Doc is pissed at the local media because, as he put it, "Never in a million years are they going put a mic in front of a reasonable black person who says Williams had it coming." Amen to that.
Obligatorily, it's always a gross miscarriage of justice when suspects die before they get their day in court. But that goes without saying. What needs to be said in this and every case are the particulars. The particulars here are that this kid's father recently died and there was nobody to pick up the slack. A tale as old and tragic as time itself. This poor kid hit a brick wall and that's a shame, but he was running in the wrong direction to begin with.
I'm pleased to see that there are no headlines on this unrest at the moment, but I don't watch local news. If there is bad news tomorrow in the idiot escalation of this series of unfortunate events, I hope it's less than lethal. Nobody has to die over this crap.
Posted by mbowen at February 8, 2005 05:54 PM
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� Sometimes, Perception is The Most Important Thing from Cerberus Blog
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Tracked on February 9, 2005 11:32 PM
Comments
Here's an interesting story. At least, I think it's interesting.
There was a burglar preying on a poor neighborhood here in Memphis. One day in the last couple of weeks or so, some people left their house in broad daylight, and the (black, early-middle-age) burglar was seen by a couple of (young black) guys trying to get the door open with a prybar. They stopped him, he ran off, they gave chase and caught him and beat the stew out of him while waiting for the police to show up. (Don't know who called them, maybe another neighbor.) They hurt the guy pretty badly, put him in the hospital. Anyway, excessive force was clearly used, and the two young men were arrested. The neighbors were outraged, took up a collection for bail and so forth, and this week the charges against the two young men were dropped. The interesting question is, if the man had been initially arrested by police, and suffered some injury in the process, would the neighbors have had the same reaction? Don't know.
Posted by: Laura at February 9, 2005 06:42 PM
I remembered your brother was with LAPD when I first read about this thing. LAPD mangement seems to have a recurring problem in convincing the community that they are on the same side. I've been there and it sucks.
Posted by: Cerberus at February 9, 2005 11:26 PM