Brotherpaecemaker blogs about the acquittal of the homicidal cops from New York:
People in the black community need to rethink our relationship with the dominant community. The disparity between the two communities is getting wider and wider. Police murder us in the streets and suffer no repercussions while black pastors are demonized for preaching about racial disparity in our communities. Even when the most extreme forms of this discrimination is caught on tape it is dismissed as our fault because we didn’t prostrate ourselves in front of the cop fast enough or the police officer was having a bad day and had to release his frustrations on the black citizen or whatever. We are in danger every time we come out in public from the very people sworn to protect the public. The police and the courts are doing their best to protect the public from black people.
“black pastors are demonized for preaching about racial disparity in our communities.”
Nail on the head for the most fucked up thing about the primaries so far. I can’t even believe how marginalized the TRUTH has become in America. It’s so dystopian as to be unbelievable.
I wonder who is the “dominant community”? Is it the mass media, police and courts? Is it most white people? I have trouble believing that most white folks are actually buying into this, but I’ve been living out of the states for a few years, so I have no idea what’s going on over there. It looks scary from a distance, though, I can say that.
I haven’t seen black pastors demonized for preaching about diversity. I’ve seen one black pastor excoriated for claiming that AIDS was the result of a plot to kill black people. This claim is either a sign of appallingly bad judgment, or else a hate-filled lie.
NotACookie, you haven’t seen him excoriated for ANYTHING other than that AIDS claim?
Really?
I guess you don’t own a TV.
… while black pastors are demonized for preaching about racial disparity in our communities.
Wrong on (at least) two counts. First, one black preacher is criticized. One. And he’s not being criticized not for preaching about racial disparity. He’s being criticized for calling for the damnation of the United States and for advancing a crackpot theory that white people developed AIDS in order to wipe out black people.
I find it interesting that in recent speeches Rev. Wright is playing to this by trying to make criticism of his preaching in particular look as though there is a general attack on the “black church”, as if his preaching and theology is typical of black churches in general. I guess he can’t stand on his own two feet.
Having said that, on topic –
I did a search on Sean Bell, but all I’m finding is reaction to the verdict. I can’t find a link that goes into detail about the testimony. I see summaries that state that there were a number of contradictions among the prosecution witnesses, that it was testified that the driver of the car tried to run one of the cops over, that someone present (although not Sean Bell or anyone in the car) may have had a gun, etc., etc. And of course, there are the facts that Sean Bell was unarmed and that there were 50 shots. Is there a summary somewhere of what the actual facts and testimony in this case were?
It’s always interesting to read articles like this one.
The LAPD declares there’s no racial profiling
Over 300 complaints, none of which were sustained but then Bratton admits a sustained complaint comes about when the officer confesses. Oh yeah, right.
Radfem, I read the link you provided. I can see where it’s legitimate to say that in those 300 accusations there was no provable racial profiling. As was pointed out, it gets difficult to prove motivation in the absence of any overt commentary from the person involved. But to say “There’s no racial profiling” is to say that it’s proven that everyone’s motivation was innocent of racial prejudice, and for this very same reason that statement can’t be supported either – you can’t read people’s minds. So I think the Chief is letting his defensiveness for his department lead him astray.
Well, also, notice the standard they were aiming for:
(emphasis mine)
So, if race is only mostly the reason that someone was stopped, it’s not racial profiling. No wonder they couldn’t find any.
Well, clearly, absent it being a part of a description of a specific suspect being searched for, race shouldn’t be a factor at all in stopping someone.
Racial profiling is hard to prove in the complaint process because the investigation (if a complaint is filed) focuses on the intent of the officer and they give that officer a huge benefit of the doubt and state laws that define it are very narrow in California. I did know someone who filed for what was clearly a pretext racial stop with a review board and he received a not sustained finding (neither proven or disproven through the available evidence) which is in itself not common. He received a sustained finding on excessive force which is even less common, but the city the final deciding entity threw that out. There’s other cases like that, but they say, no they don’t racially profile and you can’t prove that we did.
That said, the LAPD did get spanked on how it conducts its investigations of complaints just a couple months ago. If it’s having problems in one category, it’s probably having them in others. Excessive force complaints are usually fairly high priority for investigators. But the LAPD is still struggling to complete a five-year consent decree with the feds, hopefully by the end of the decade. I’ve met up with a Black LAPD officer or two who buy advertising and they called their own agency, racist and not to believe anyone who said otherwise. But Bratton who has led two other agencies, the Boston Police Department and the NYPD, is smart enough to know he can’t say anything to alienate his officers especially the union leadership.
But having experienced the complaint system used by a police department, you have to take the whole thing with a grain of salt. It’s fairly biased in favor of the officer and even if the allegation is sustained, nothing happens. The police unions are so powerful in California and about to become more so, if legislation introduced this week ever gets enacted.
Audit finds that LAPD doesn’t fully investigate excessive force complaints.