[Police brutality] American injustice, yet again.

[Ranxerox]

6 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

From what I've learned so far on this guy.  It seems he entered the freeway through an exit ramp (weird).  It's also possible the police failed to close an on-ramp and aren't admitting it.  He doesn't seem to have the kind of history that would make him *want* to run down protesters.

 

My guess is he was simply speeding at 1:40am in the morning and then ran into a very strange situation.  Three out of four lanes were blocked off by cars.  Two of the cars were black and all of them had their lights off.  So he probably doesn't see them until he's kind of close and tries to swerve into the only un-blocked lane.  As he does that he probably doesn't see the protesters (all dressed in dark clothes) until he's right on top of them and then swerves to miss as many as possible.  In the video you can hear his tires squealing and see the brake lights glow on the road behind the car for quite awhile.

 

Additionally, it doesn't seem he fled the scene.  He pulled over just passed the area of impact and the protesters attacked his car so he drove further down the road and waited for the police who then took him into custody.

 

 

I'm not finding collaboration that he did not flee the scene or that protesters attacked his car.  Everything that I have read has state troopers claiming to have pulled him over and describing him as “reserved and sullen”.  Maybe the video from the Ian Miles Cheong tweet substantiates the claim, but you posted a screen shot instead of a link.  I don't have a Twitter account, and I am not going to get one just so I can go far enough back in Cheong's Twitter feed to see the 24 second video.

[ScottishFox]

2 hours ago, Ranxerox said:

 

I'm not finding collaboration that he did not flee the scene or that protesters attacked his car.  Everything that I have read has state troopers claiming to have pulled him over and describing him as “reserved and sullen”.  Maybe the video from the Ian Miles Cheong tweet substantiates the claim, but you posted a screen shot instead of a link.  I don't have a Twitter account, and I am not going to get one just so I can go far enough back in Cheong's Twitter feed to see the 24 second video.

 

Well, that's what I get for using pictures instead of links.

 

Here's a site with a functional copy of the video showing the car pulled over until a couple a guy starts trying to break into it.  Dawit then drives off to a safe distance where he is shortly after picked up by police.

 

https://myv949.com/2020/07/04/man-who-drove-into-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-seattle-is-identified/

[Cygnia]

Police Social Media Accounts Are Full Of Hate

[massey]

10 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Well, that's what I get for using pictures instead of links.

 

Here's a site with a functional copy of the video showing the car pulled over until a couple a guy starts trying to break into it.  Dawit then drives off to a safe distance where he is shortly after picked up by police.

 

https://myv949.com/2020/07/04/man-who-drove-into-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-seattle-is-identified/

 

It's a weird story.  Black guy in car hits two white ladies at Black Lives Matter rally.  My gut instinct on this is that he's not a white supremacist.  

 

People should not intentionally run over other people with their cars.  People should also be aware that protesting in the middle of the highway carries very real danger of accident.  It's also not crazy to think drivers might become seriously afraid when their car gets surrounded by protesters.  Even if a demonstration has been peaceful, the driver who finds himself surrounded doesn't necessarily know that (or know that it will stay peaceful).  

 

I once represented a client who ran over a repo man with his car.  I got the case dismissed when I got the repo man to admit that he intentionally stood in front of my client's car to block him in.  The guy thought he was so smart.  "Yeah I wanted to make sure he couldn't leave."  The judge knew where I was going with it though -- the guy's actions technically fell under the definition of felony Kidnapping (any person who, without lawful authority, causes another person to be confined or imprisoned against their will).  It's a technical argument, but I've had clients charged with kidnapping for less than that.  My client was simply using necessary force to prevent himself from being kidnapped.  The DA gave in and dismissed the charge, and then the judge called repo man back into the courtroom after the hearing was over and chewed his ass out for like 10 minutes.

 

[Pattern Ghost]

I'm going to drop this in here, not as a denial of any issues surrounding police misconduct, but because I found it a pretty typical example of the many interactions I've seen of SPD with people, including subjects. Most of our local LE are pretty decent folks.

 

https://mynorthwest.com/1999855/rantz-bodycam-seattle-racism-cop-false/?

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, massey said:

People should also be aware that protesting in the middle of the highway carries very real danger of accident. 

 

The local government had been permitting the protest on I5, and providing police closures of the road for the protestors. IMO, tragedy could have been avoided if they just enforced the law about staying off the highway on foot in the first place. I haven't read a follow up for the last couple of days, but the radio news on the way in to work last Sunday said that this guy was the same one who ran the police barricades a week prior and almost hit protestors. Even if it turns out this was a different guy, it's a damned shame the local government had to wait for deaths to shut this down the same way they waited for several deaths to shut down the CHAZ/CHOP. I'm pretty disgusted at how the local government has been handling a lot of aspects of these protests.

[Cygnia]

Joliet Police Sgt., Who Blew Whistle On Death Of Eric Lurry In Police Custody, Stripped Of Police Powers

[pinecone]

1 hour ago, Cygnia said:

Joliet Police Sgt., Who Blew Whistle On Death Of Eric Lurry In Police Custody, Stripped Of Police Powers

One bad apple, right? The rot runs from the top to the bottom.

[ScottishFox]

1 hour ago, Cygnia said:

Joliet Police Sgt., Who Blew Whistle On Death Of Eric Lurry In Police Custody, Stripped Of Police Powers

 

This, I feel, is one of the most legitimate complaints against police.  When they find a bad apple in their midst the blue wall goes up and nobody will admit anyone did anything wrong.  Going so far as to throw away fellow officers who break rank and point out the bad actors in the bunch.

[csyphrett]

I don't know if this is more than a conspiracy theory but Breonna Taylor's family has hired a lawyer to sue Louisville for her death. One of the contentions filed is the police weren't there to execute a drug search warrant. They were there to move Taylor and her boyfriend out of their place so it could be gentrified, and the mayor's office knew it at the time of her shooting.

CES

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

We live in a country where people try to legitimately argue that one rich guy is worth 10's or even 100's of thousands of poor people. Nothing surprises me anymore. Honestly...I'm just totally disgusted with what our society has become.

[Ragitsu]

5 minutes ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

We live in a country where people try to legitimately argue that one rich guy is worth 10's or even 100's of thousands of poor people. Nothing surprises me anymore. Honestly...I'm just totally disgusted with what our society has become.

 

Well, in this country, "wealth" correlates to "moral". I hear you, though: depression is an all too easy pit to fall into.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

1 minute ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Well, in this country, "wealth" correlates to "moral". I hear you, though: depression is an all too easy pit to fall into.

 

Yes...I find it hilarious when people say...well if only they worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. The system favors the rich in every way to prevent the poor from breaking out of their "status". I don't even know why I bother talking about it. The country obviously doesn't have the balls to do anything about it. 

[Lord Liaden]

There's also an unspoken assumption behind that argument, that wealth is the measure of someone's inherent quality and importance to society. That wealthy people have money because they deserve it, and poor people wouldn't be so poor if they were better people. That work our society chooses to reward more monetarily contributes more to society, and that skills one can make more money at are objectively better.

 

Maybe that's inevitable for a civilization that quantifies everything, and makes everything a competition.

[TrickstaPriest]

 

[Starlord]

He was very believable.

[Badger]

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

There's also an unspoken assumption behind that argument, that wealth is the measure of someone's inherent quality and importance to society. That wealthy people have money because they deserve it, and poor people wouldn't be so poor if they were better people. That work our society chooses to reward more monetarily contributes more to society, and that skills one can make more money at are objectively better.

 

Maybe that's inevitable for a civilization that quantifies everything, and makes everything a competition.

I'd be happy at this point that we could just acknowledge people's talents are different, and they are capable certain skills better or worse than others.  It doesn't make them better or worse, just different. Instead it seems easier to pigeon hole everybody into 1 size fits all

[Lord Liaden]

12 hours ago, Starlord said:

He was very believable.

 

Many people in the comments on that video disagree. Most of those comments are from years ago, but others are very recent.

[Ragitsu]

 

[ScottishFox]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

 

My brother-in-law and wife have both worked in law enforcement for quite awhile while my father was a judge and defense attorney at different parts of his career.

 

I could NOT agree with this man more.  Don't say a MF'ing thing, ever, for any reason.  Hand them the card to your lawyer and get out of there.  The only direction the situation can go is worse.

[Cygnia]

A Heist on Time and a Half: Inside The Most Corrupt Police Squad In The Nation

[pinecone]

2 hours ago, Cygnia said:

A Heist on Time and a Half: Inside The Most Corrupt Police Squad In The Nation

Sounds true, except the "most corrupt" claim...

[csyphrett]

DHS shot a protestor in the head in Portland with less lethal munitions and put them in the hospital. The guy cataloguing this stuff puts it at 750+ for police incidents since the protests started

CES

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, csyphrett said:

The guy cataloguing this stuff puts it at 750+ for police incidents since the protests started

 

They don't care about doing what's right. They don't care about the optics. They don't seem to care about anything other than preserving their power structure.

[ScottishFox]

6 hours ago, Cygnia said:

A Heist on Time and a Half: Inside The Most Corrupt Police Squad In The Nation

 

Respectfully, these guys couldn't even be a warm-up act for Honolulu PD.