Kenosha police shoots black man multiple times in his back in front of his children, declares curfew

I like how you use the term townspeople like they're Lutheran settlers who arrived in a wagon train a few years ago and are now defending their town from Apache raiders, hungry for blood and scalps.

It's part of the Chicago MSA and their chief export is Weezer. And actually what started this was when one of their own townspeople policemen shot one of their other townspersons (of color, of course) in the back.

And the people armed and ready to shoot are actually - outside milita group assholes responding to the race war/anarchy fever dream on boogaloo facebook

Sheriff Beth said that the investigation was focused on the group of men with guns outside the gas station, and that investigators were scouring video taken just before the shooting.

In one video, the men are shouting at each other, clutching their guns and occasionally pulling each other away to defuse the conflict.

“I’ve had people saying, ‘Why don’t you deputize citizens?’” he said. “This is why you don’t deputize citizens with guns to protect Kenosha.”​

Otherwise, great post as usual.

@tinman

 

I don’t get this. An expedient end to rioting in the city sounds great, but it does not address the problem. Nor does “we need to be better” messaging from politicians without actually doing anything meaningful.

 

Well, the message would have to include what is being or can be done. Part of the unifying part.

Rioting does nothing except ruin the lives of business owners, who have nothing to do with the situation in the first place.

 

A violent offender with a history of threatening people with weapons in public and an open warrant for sexual assault. He fights with police officers who tried to taze him. Then he runs away from officers telling him to stop and reaches into his vehicle.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

But your righteous indignation is noted. We get it, these cops are terrible racist people on a power trip who enjoy shooting unarmed black men in the back.

And btw, the authorities have not said whether or not he was armed. Hrmm, I wonder why that is.....?

 

Trump needs to shut this down. The optics will be considered racist but lives will be saved.

 

Obviously, in hindsight, the cops should have taken him down. They have weapons to do that. And I don't mean guns.

The guy shouldn't have resisted either. People need to stop resisting. Cops need to stop shooting. These are both real issues, and we don't have to choose sides.

 

He wasn't right wing, here is an interview of him prior. He was just there to protect property from burning/looting. But anyone who attempts to stop their city from burning to the ground gets labeled this way.



Here is video of the incident, the guy is chased down by a mob and knocked to the ground. They throw a molotov cocktail at him as he is running away. He immediately surrenders to the police to tell them what happened.

 

Your description of what allegedly happened is distorted. He didn’t “run away”. He got up from the ground and walked away as the officers followed him with guns pointing at him, as bystanders stood by terrified. ”Fights with police officers” — maybe you can describe what that means, and try to be more accurate this time.

I suspect it would not make a difference to you, either way. You have already made up your mind that he deserved to be put down like a dog.

 

The "stop resisting!" narrative shifts all the burden onto citizens. This is wrong. "Stop escalating!" needs to bookend the discussion, because police seem far too eager to basically get into pissing contests and arrest people out of some combination of a lack of patience, laziness, or bravado.

If you try to arrest someone and you can't control them, that's as much on the police officer as it is on the citizen. Don't try to initiate an arrest if you're not certain you can do it or unless you have literally no other choice (they're a danger to you/others). A failed arrest means someone is likely to be seriously hurt or die.

And hey, maybe we should stop sending people with guns to every single call that comes in.

 

How was shooting this guy protecting the public?

How was the public in danger by this guy with 3 kids in the car.

What weapon?

 

So now we are cursing each other?

Somebody needs attention.

 

If you haven't noticed he's too busy getting his ass kissed right now...

 

Whether or not there's actually a gun in the car is largely irrelevant, other than it would all make us feel a little less angry about what happened. That street is in danger in that moment, particularly with all the onlookers, if Blake pulls a gun from that car and starts shooting. Police don't have x-ray vision through that door panel to know whether there's a gun or not

 

Why isn’t a taser used in that situation, or something else short of deadly force?

 

What?

If it's irrelevant why did they shoot him.

Why do you eep ignoring everything else that led up to the shooting?

If they were so scared about him having a gun why let him get into the car in the 1st place.?

Why did they let him get of the ground?

How is it right to shoot someone based on a if?

 

Do we know if they attempted to deploy handcuffs? I would assume they used words at some point.

 

Given the context (this guy having just got into a brawl with police, tased, disobeying orders, reaching into a vehicle, not showing his hands), there is likely not a cop in America that would not have shot this dude right then and there.

You can argue that we need to retrain police to have positive confirmation of a weapon before using deadly force, but that's a tough sell on multiple fronts, and doesn't really guarantee safety either.

I think context is most important here. The police had every reason to expect Blake to retaliate given what had just transpired. They cannot read his mind. They cannot expect 3 kids in the car (if they're even aware of them to begin with) to be some kind of inoculation against violence. They cannot possibly know what he's reaching for in his car or whether or not there is a weapon.

The #1 problem here is that the cops could not successfully detain Blake. That's just bad policing. If they had successfully detained him, he'd be alive right now. Granted we need to know a lot more about why Blake was being arrested to begin with, as that may expose more police malfeasance, or it may exonerate the police for all we know. But as of right now, this does not appear like an error of judgment, but rather a lack of ability to perform the physical duties necessary to secure the situation.

 

From what I've read, a stun gun was deployed before Blake walked around the car.

 

They need to send the NG in before this degenerates.

 

They simply can't know whether there's a gun in the car or not; I don't know how to explain that much clearer. The logical conclusion is that he's reaching for a gun and you don't wait for someone to shoot you. Doesn't matter what happened before. People don't get a free shot at police just because the police didn't tackle them beforehand