Musings —04.07.2015 06:47 PM
—Video of a cold-blooded murder
Unlike the Ferguson, Missouri cold-blooded murder of Michael Brown, this cold-blooded murder has been entirely caught on video – and it shows a black man, Walter Scott, running from a white cop, Michael Slager. Who shoots the unarmed Scott in the back multiple times. And kills him.
This was murder, and that is what the charge is. If the video didn’t exist, I have no doubt that it would have been Ferguson all over again.
Warning: this is unedited video, and it shows it all.
The shooting and the apparent planting of the taser beside his body and the command to put his hands behind his back…I’m disgusted to be a member of the human race this evening.
I’m not…a member of the human race is responsible for this asshole getting charged.
On a related matter involving police conduct, you have to read this Superior Court decision released last week. It totally rips a number of Toronto Police officers over falsified statements regarding the arrest of a young person in a park near Yorkdale Mall:
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2015/2015onsc2081/2015onsc2081.html
“In my view, the nature of the unlawful search, coupled with the use of excessive force, inflicted on a presumptively innocent citizen, greatly increases the impact of these events on the constitutional interests of Mr. Jinje….. I conclude, therefore, that the evidence of the gun must be excluded.”
The judge had a lot of courage to hammer these cops for their actions in this arrest. Any police who cross the line and break their public trust should be held accountable to the maximum extent possible.
I’m sure the ‘”Brotherhood” will crowd fund a million dollar defense.
A lot of people refuse to believe that this happens. But this has been a problem over and over as long as I’ve been alive, which isn’t that long.
If this didn’t happen on video, people would have done cartwheels to make excuses for the police.
People complain about “big government” trampling all over our rights, but those same people will always excuse a cop killing someone.
And funny enough, always excuse the government expanding their powers of surveillance and detention.
With all the money that is wasted by all political parties across the spectrum in the US & Canada why don’t people demand that police have body cameras? To me it seems like a very modern, easy, longterm cost effective solution (speed up the courts etc..). I suspect the VAST VAST majority of cops do their job professionally but not nieve enough to think there isn’t 1 or 2 that would abuse their power from the mild to the horrific extreme such as in this case. I suspect it would likely make the criminals think twice about how they acted/confronted the police knowing the film was rolling making the cops job safer and making it safer for the ones being filmed too. From my understanding complaints against cops go down in areas using body cams and it makes good evidence in an honest arrest. It would protect the most vunerable in society homeless, mental health addictions etc.. I don’t see it as a privacy concern bcs the data could be deleted other than actual arrests and stored so privacy concerns would be minimal. If this cop had a body camera filming I bet he would have thought twice about shooting a guy in the back (which appears ot be the case). Am I missing something?
Some Canadian cops are not much better as with the recent case in Orillia where an OPP officer beat the crap out of a grandmother who was trying to get his attention by pointing out where the suspect went. And when they beat the crap out of someone for little reason they always use the triple whammy of charging them for resisting arrest, obstruction of justice and assaulting a peace officer (which can be literally anything).
This is unbelievable. I’m surprised they didn’t assault the person doing the recording. Did they not know they were there?
So many questions to be asked and answered. Are the cops trained to react this way or they just a couple of ‘rotten apples’? If the former, who’s doing the training?
This is what Stephen Harper wants for Canada: run and be shot. Stand and be shot.
Is this what happened to Dunphy in Newfoundland? Was evidence planted? How do we believe ANY story now from law enforcement?
This is a warning to all citizens that believe we live in a free society.
We do not.
You are correct, Liam. This is exactly what Stephen Harper wants. As a matter of fact, how can we be sure that wasn’t him dressed up as a cop pulling the trigger? We can’t, and therefore must assume it was him. Well done, Liam. You deserve the Order of Canada.
Wow.
Some fat fucking lazy cop shoots and murders a fat black dude running away at a snail’s pace that even I, with my bad knees could have caught with ease, and you find a way to tie this to Stephen Harper? Are you pathologically obsessed with Harper? Go seek help.
We are growing into a police state on both sides of the border. Police regularly devour bigger and bigger chunks of our municipal budgets with little to show in return except that we’re all expected to engage in mass grief whenever one dies in a traffic accident (as the woman in Guelph did) or through their own arrogance gets hit by a snow plow (as the man in Toronto). Crime is supposedly down, but how much of that is due to the fact that we can’t even be arsed to report it anymore, because we know the police will do nothing?
If you should ever have your iPhone stolen, try getting the police to get it back for you even if they are able to track the location with GPS… they’ll tell you point blank they can’t be bothered, but if you tell them fine, I’m going to get it back myself then they’ll counsel you that you could get charged with trespassing and incitement.
The police now have become documenters of crime, rather than preventers, and yet pull 6-figure salaries and expect enhanced status in our society. And then when confronted with actual violent criminal behavior they either over-react with deadly force (the masturbator on the Toronto bus a good example – 9 shots? Really?!?!, or the second day of the G20 protests) or they run and hide as they have in Caledonia or whenever they might have to endanger themselves to actually enforce the law.
You are right on that count sir. We are less and less free and nowhere is that more obvious than in Ontario where the OPP are clearly in bed with the Liberals. Once your police are getting involved in politics, we are not that much different than Nigeria, Venezuela, Burma or any other third world backwater where the police are just another mafia to fear and loathe.
Since terror is the theme/meme of our new century how is this not home grown terrorism? An entire segment of the civilian population must walk on eggshells for being born the wrong colour. Isis murders Christians for believing in the wrong God and cops routinely kill black men for being well.. black or worse.. talking back. Before we whip out our jets maybe we should clean up our own backyard first.
Good points, except that the United States is this whole other country. And in this country, cops don’t care if you’re black or white – they’ll kill you either way. So I guess that’s good. A young (white!) man was shot seven (7!) times in Kitchener last week on the steps of his apartment building. He was allegedly holding a small knife, so obviously the police had no option but to shoot him. Seven times. Canada’s finest in action.
http://www.therecord.com/news-story/5544618-friends-seek-justice-for-kitchener-man-shot-by-police/
Time for all cops to wear cameras. Well, overdue, but it’s clear this is coming. Get ready to more accountable in every single interaction, officers.
I wonder if its coming. Cops probably don’t really want it for fear of being judged for one interaction out of the hundreds that occur each week. I’ve never seen the legal industry support a measure that would likely lower billable hours. I also wonder if the “cops are racist, jack booted nazis” narrative would lose steam, if the world had access to the average cop’s full day of work. Then you have the libertarian, anti-surveillance crowd and the “what about the cost?” types.
I agree its long overdue and the technology has been widely available for sometime now. If it hasn’t been used yet, maybe it never will.
Wrong Warren. It would not have been Ferguson. This was clear murder. Ferguson was not. Every activist has egg on their face on Ferguson.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/