Madison police last week roughed up a 57-year-old Indian citizen

Oh the horror... he's walking by houses... and looking at the houses he's walking by. The story also mentions that he never left the sidewalk... never went into anybody elses property.

I want the police to be better than this... I want them to be able to recognize what is true "suspicious" behavior vs. what is not. I don't consider what happened here to be what we pay police-men to do (and that's before these idiots get out and end up hospitalizing a harmless old man).

 

The police should be qualified to know what is or isn't suspicious... and if they can't do that without harassing somebody then they're not very good policemen.

 

I don't think it's about whether the behavior was suspicious or not (after all, the police were responding to a call and were not there when the alleged garage peeking occurred).

It's the sidewalk powerslam they felt compelled to try out on the old man that's the issue.

 

Perhaps the person calling should have to re-clarify to police (once they get there) who the person is, what the person of suspicion was doing, and whether or not they still want this to be "investigated".

That person who called this "threat" in is every bit as culpable as the idiot police officers... i'm sure they're not thrilled that the people they pay to protect and serve put this old man in the hospital.

 

The quote about the man walking on the sidewalk was from the son who wasn't walking with him. It doesn't mention that as part of the call.

You are essentially asking policeman to be mind readers. They aren't there, so how can they judge whether someone is suspicious?

 

Right... and there's nothing tangible to refute that statement from the son, with no eye-witnesses or calls/statements that he was in fact trespassing, so till there is, I'm going with the likelihood that he was on the sidewalk the entire time.

As far as your second point, I'm saying there's some grey area between being "mind readers" and getting out on the street to harass an old man.

There are a lot of steps to avoid confrontation that I often don't see being explored/followed or even considered when it comes to police calls (usually in situations like this where something awful happens)... which again goes back to my original point that cops should be better, should be able to discern what is "right vs. wrong" with a little bit more foresight than the average nosy neighbor, and should be better trained in how to assess/defuse/approach situations such as this where an old man on the sidewalk was not committing any crimes.

 

I said who's to say the person who called is qualified to know if the old man was a suspicious individual.... It's one thing for the police to check it out but treating the man like a suspicious criminal was unnecessary.

And my position is I don't make excuses for the incompetence of people in power.

 

I agree with you about the treatment, but I was talking about whether the police should have checked it out in the first place.

 

I have no problem with them checking it out... That's there job. But beating up an innocent old man isn't their job. Police officers should not let the fear of the person who called them delegate how they go about doing their job.

 

My point was that the police may not have know that. As far as the police responding to a suspicious person call, all they have to go on is what was reported...not what the son says after the fact or what the truth may prove to be.

I really don't see this gray area. I mean, maybe if the call is "a man walking down the side walk looking at garages," maybe police do have the authority to ignore those calls. I'm thinking the policy might be to respond to all calls as best they can, just because they are under the assumption that is their job for society and that's what the citizenry (as a whole) expects.

Don't all those crime watch signs in neighborhoods say report anything suspicious to the police? Should they qualify that with an asterisk saying *police may ignore your call?

And for the record, I think it's the likely the person who reported the suspicious person was over-reacting and also believe the way police handled it is worthy of criminal charges.

 

Well, until the police can get "better" and be trusted not to make mistakes such as these... perhaps there needs to be a better filtering system when these calls come in (or a re-confirmation to the original caller on whether or not the suspicious activity is still commencing or re-clarification on what the original complaint was).

I don't see what would have been wrong with the police responding to the call but staying in their vehicle and observing the old man till he possibly did something that was indeed suspicious (or against the law). All we know is that they got out, started asking him questions which he didn't understand due to the language barrier, and they started to use force when he didn't take his hands out of his pocket (which again is likely due to the language barrier along with simple fear).

Again... there are grey areas on what constitutes a "response" to a suspicion call... and if there aren't, there sure as hell should be. A lot of police are over-eager to engage... its part of why some go into law enforcement... perhaps there needs to be higher standards/testing to filter those types of cops out.

 

We need a complete reevaluation and reorganization of how our communities work, the responsibility of individuals, and the role of authority figures like police.

This man lived in this community -- but since no one knows their neighbors anymore apparently, his neighbors reported him as a suspicious person. Someone saw him walking around looking around, and instead of having the decency to say hi or talk to him in order to assess the situation, they picked up the phone and called the cops. People are too lazy and fearful, too isolated, to dependent on Big Brother to protect them and make everything alright.

We need stronger communities. We need to know our neighbors. We need to depend on each other. We need to not be so afraid of our shadows. We do not need cops and the government to come and babysit us over every single thing that happens.

The more we empower the cops and involve them in our lives, the more people they are going to kill and beat and mistreat. We should get rid of the entire institution at this point, considering how diseased and abusive the police have become. We should get rid of it and start taking care of ourselves and our own communities -- just like the people who created this nation (as well as the people they committed genocide on) did.

 

I feel its far easier to correct THIS problem through better standards, training methods, filtering out bad candidates, and more oversight/harsher repercussions... vs. changing community interactions.

 

I think changing our communities is difficult, I think reforming the police is impossible.

They are in essence an entity that sees the people in the community like prison guards see prisoners -- this is not something that can be changed in my opinion. It is how power works. Power always leads to abuse and corruption.

 

You can now watch the video and hear the entire initial "complaint" phone call that the police responded to.

Basically makes everybody involved look like idiots, including the caller. I go back to my original stance that this should have been handled better from the initial phone call.

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/02/madison_police_fire_and_arrest.html

 

Oh dear....

I like how they started brushing the dirt off of him after they realized how bad he was hurt.

However...everything up until the takedown was appropriate

 

Better video and audio here

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Disgusting.

Also, something tells me bigtexxx won't be back in this thread to say, "Now that I see the facts that I ask for whenever people of color get mistreated, I understand the police in this case were in the wrong."

 

That video is despicable. How many of these assaults don't get caught on video? Outrageous.

 

yall notice how he looked at his dashcam like "**** that camera caught this all on tape"? every cop needs to wear a body camera with hd picture and good sound so we can document this BS. indian ppl are rich but i dont think those who live in that alabama suburb know that or what they look like. probably thought he was some mexican looking to rob the garages he was peeking into.