[blotter_paper]

What if you stop an EMT from checking the pulse of somebody who your co-worker has been choking to death for minutes? Does that make you an accomplice, too? If your city charged these cops justly then nobody would be burning it down; cure your disease and the symptoms will go away.

[drewmol]

>Does that make you an accomplice, too?

Yes, deliberately preventing anyone from providing care or defense for a person who's being murdered makes you an accomplice to the murder.

>If your city charged these cops justly then nobody would be burning it down

Doubtful. Here's a video of East 4th street in downtown Cleveland being destroyed by pillagers last night: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-met...

There's over a thousand service industry workers who've already been out of work for months due to the pandemic that the businesses on this street support. Many of them have struggled to get enough financing to even reopen, some have had to permanently close. Many (possibly most) of these businesses are destroyed and can not afford to rebuild. Who should the city of Cleveland have charged justly to prevent this? How many more innocent and unrelated people's livelihoods need to be burned down and how many more times (this has happened before, more than once)? There seem to be a lot of accomplices in the video.

[blotter_paper]

>Yes, deliberately preventing anyone from providing care or defense for a person who's being murdered makes you an accomplice to the murder.

Are we in agreement that this was documented as happening, and the other cops present were accomplices in the murder of George Floyd? If so, why do you think they aren't being charged?

>Who should the city of Cleveland have charged justly to prevent this?

I assumed GP meant Minneapolis, which I feel is reasonable given the context. But okay, random US city accepted. Let's see if your city has a history of letting cops get away with killing innocent black people... oh yeah, one of your cops killed a 12 year old kid who was playing airsoft in the park and was subsequently hired by another police department in the same state without facing any charges.[0] So maybe charging Tim Loehmann would have helped make your city less sensitive to this pattern being repeated elsewhere in the country.

I don't think violence against businesses is helpful, but I do think violence against the government is helpful; it seemed to get a cop charged. They need to stop this pattern of violence ASAP, and they need to face time for crimes committed.

[0]: http://archive.is/jDQv3

[drewmol]

Semantics... We likely agree on the other officers' responsibility/duty both to police the unlawful/unjustified actions of their colleagues and to protect the life and liberty of Mr. Floyd in this situation.

I think murder requires some threshold of intent deliberation and I'm not very familiar with the details in this incident just yet... but on it's face it's doubtful the officer intended to kill George Floyd and choose a slow, public asphyxiation concealed by the unreasonable/illegal restraint while having him legally detained as a forgery suspect. That, of course, doesn't absolve him of being directly responsibility for this man's death. They are not being charged (yet) because: it's only been a few days, only a very small percentage of crime commission results in charges, having charges at this point in time would have required the suspects to issue charges against themselves/each other and if one of them had that much integrity, George would probably not be dead in the first place, convicting the officer of murder may be difficult, so accessory or accomplice charges will require careful deliberation, information still being gathered, among other reasons.

FWIW, the people filming and/or spectating as George Floyd was killed bare some moral/ethical responsibly for their lack of (or cowardly?) effort to physically interject, although I'm aware many will not agree with me here.

Concerning Tamir Rice, a person called in to report 'a man in a dark hoodie at the park playground, waiving a handgun around pointing it at kids, they think it might just be a realistic looking toy gun' or similar to 911. The dispatcher called a unit to respond but did not include 'think it may be a toy gun' portion of the callers request for a police response. The officer spotted Tamir, standing alone, from 100 yards or more across the open field in the park. The one driving speeded across the field toward Tamir and pulled up close with officer Tim Loehmann in the passenger side, putting him directly in front of Tamir. Allegedly Tamir brandished/pointed/pulled out the gun and officer Loehmann fired in response and fatality wounded/killed the young boy. It was tragic and there were dangerous mistakes made by multiple people but charging the officer who gunned Tamir down with murder would have almost surely resulted in acquittal. Mr. Loehmann then fraudulently concealed his background and got hired as a rookie officer in a small town across the state, then was subsequently fired upon discovery of his past.

The amount of violence, fear, division and destruction I have witnessed in the name of 'Justice for Tamir Rice' is also tragic. Protesters blocking roadways, terrorizing restaurant patrons and vandalizing or destroying uninvolved businesses every time someone else with a similar color skin dies unjustly does not help prevent the CPD from shooting innocence black children.

It seems that 'rules of engagement' between police and civilians have been eroded over time while executive authority has been expanded. This current state of anarchy can be greatly improved with discussion, consensus, enforcement, and public awareness of these rules. Until then some police will continue to act like mobsters and most will accept, take advantage of or enable some level of legal privilege because of their position. Body cams show us that unequal, crony, illegal, racist, and biased enforcement is widespread. Police in America conduct silent home invasions for non violent drug charges, shoot innocent people and pets without consequence (sometimes at a mistaken address), routinely profile otherwise cooperative non violent people as a threat in order to unlawfully discriminate. They point guns at these threatening people with impunity and treat them as hostile while being so threatened by guns that they can justify driving up to a 12 year old in a park with a fake plastic gun and open firing, no words exchanged. This is an area where legal reform and awareness severely needed.

Burning down Wendy's may have influenced a reactionary, politically motivated, premature legal filing. It will probably compound the hardship of those peoples and family's whose jobs and paychecks were destroyed. It will surely hurt a struggling economy and further stress the community by destroying a busy, low-cost prepared food resource and it will deprive the Dave Thomas Foundation of all future donations during a time of intense need.

[blotter_paper]

I would recommend watching the George Floyd murder video, and not for morbid reasons. I think it helps to understand how calmly, with his hands in his pockets, this cop sat on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes (the last 3 of which Floyd was unresponsive for) while an EMT asked for a pulse to be checked. This was not an accidental death.

I don't think the man who killed Tamir Rice understood that he was shooting somebody holding an airsoft gun, but if the killer wasn't a cop then I seriously doubt that they would have decided his actions in that situation were reasonable as self defence -- they probably wouldn't clear me of all wrongdoing if I claimed that a 12 year old kid pointed an airsoft gun at me before I killed him. There's a double standard. Despite the victim being a 12 year old, I can see how this is less egregious than what I consider to be the clearly intentional killing of a known-to-be-helpless George Floyd -- I brought it up as an incident in your specific community where this pattern of violence bubbled up so dramatically that it received nation wide news coverage. I think you misunderstood some facts around the hiring and firing of the cop. He lied on paperwork at the original (Cleveland) police department, which is the technical reason he was fired -- it came up during a review of him following the shooting. The other (Bellaire) police department knew what they were buying. A quote from the link in my last reply:

>“He was cleared of any and all wrongdoing,” the Bellaire police chief, Richard Flanagan, told The Times Leader of Martins Ferry, Ohio, adding that it was unfair to “crucify” the officer. “It’s over and done with.”

I could see there being a causal link between how your city handled this incident (as well as others like it) and how much violence you're seeing now, a few years later, when everybody is focused on this other prominent example of the pattern.

[jessaustin]

"...a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?" -- Martin Luther King Jr.

You mention the pandemic. Somehow, our Congress has passed (in nearly unanimous fashion) five giant "bailout" laws supposedly in response to the health crisis, which have given trillions of dollars to powerful interests and pennies to normal citizens and none of the blessed laws have done a single blessed thing to provide health care to control the blessed pandemic! Meanwhile, comparable (though mostly poorer) nations have provided state-supported healthcare to all citizens, for decades. Are we sure the protests are only about racist cops? Besides, when they burn down the Nike store they aren't destroying too many American jobs.

[augustt]

Yup, I'd love if we were able to be a unified front and collectively say the mayhem will not stop until all four involved are charged. And if they're not convicted... 1992 will look like a joke.

[drewmol]

But once you all agree on your demands, methods and victims it's no longer mayhem, just organized terrorism.

If they don't get convicted, will you be terrorizing only the jury, or do you plan on victimizing other innocent people too?

I sure hope you don't, but if you do get your wish please remember to have everyone print and sign their names on the petition/ransom note/demand letter. When choosing targets for arson just be aware it will take longer to comply if you burn down the courthouse(s).

[giardini]

aaugustt says>"And if they're not convicted... 1992 will look like a joke."

So what if a jury finds them innocent, which is highly likely? What do you mean "1992 will look like a joke"?

[tal8d]

A billion dollars of property damage and the targeted destruction of businesses operated by Korean immigrants, but multiplied by a factor that will ensure laughter at the memory of those killed in the '92 race riots? I don't know how you could more charitably interpret the "wish".

[giardini]

tal8d said 3 hours ago>'A billion dollars of property damage and the targeted destruction of businesses operated by Korean immigrants, but multiplied by a factor that will ensure laughter at the memory of those killed in the '92 race riots? I don't know how you could more charitably interpret the "wish".'<

I believe you're having problems thinking clearly. Here, in a public forum, you threaten

"A billion dollars of property damage and the targeted destruction of businesses operated by Korean immigrants..."

which is little more than a megalomanic wish. Shouldn't you be taking some medication or, at the least, seeing a psychologist instead of wasting our time here?

[CathedralBorrow]

> Shouldn't you be taking some medication or, at the least, seeing a psychologist instead of wasting our time here?

Isn't this way below the HN discourse bar?

[tal8d]

lol, either your reading comprehension is poor or your understanding of the '92 riots is... or both, I guess. That was a response to your question about what one could mean when saying "1992 will look like a joke", and I answered that question exactly. Do you not understand how usernames work?

[astura]

"1992" refers to the riots in LA which were triggered by the acquittal of four police officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King.

I assume the GP means the civil unrest that will happen if there is an acquittal would be much worse than the LA riots.

[jsaxton86]

This whole situation sucks because most people are rightly outraged about police violence, but their anger is totally misdirected. These businesses had nothing to do with the death of George Floyd.

I live in Portland, Oregon now. Without going into too many details, we have an expensive pension program. Many feel that the pension program is too generous, and there has been a lot of thought put into how we can fully fund both pensions and everything else. Last year there was a bill in the Oregon Senate (SB1049) that proposed some modest changes to how pensions work. It passed with bipartisan support, and the public unions went nuts. They said they'd never support a candidate who voted for SB1049.

Last month we had our primaries. The most important primary was the Democratic primary for the Oregon Secretary of State. If the governor were to step down for any reason (to take a cabinet position in the Biden administration, for example), the SOS becomes governor. Someone who opposed SB1049 joined the race at the last minute, got over half a million dollars of union money, outspent her candidate, and won the election.

This is just one of many examples. Even though the unions are only spending a couple of million dollars per year in Oregon, they're really smart about it, and as such, they get what they want. In the Secretary of State race they hit a home run. For half a million dollars, they pushed their preferred candidate through and sent a message that if you oppose them in any way, it will be a career limiting move.

The reason I mentioned that is because I think it is a good contrast to what we're seeing today. With smart leadership, we would have a better chance of solving this problem. But people are enraged and not thinking clearly. And there's no reason to believe that these riots are going to be more successful than the Baltimore riots, the Ferguson riots, the Oakland riots, or even the Rodney King riots.