I don't think it is helpful for people to view Rittenhouse as a hero. But that was going to be inevitable in today's media...er...dumpster fire.
But I would put the people who hero worship KR into the same overall milieu as those people who try to sanitize the actions of Rosenbaum, Huber, Grosskreutz (both on that night and in their past). Or the victim blamers who think that KR somehow "had it coming because why was he there?"
On all of that, you and I have been in agreement.
But you've gone way beyond that in this thread in your defense of him
Pretty speechless watching the treatment this guy got after he lynched another human being. She couldn't be any nicer. I guess I should be used to this stuff by now, but I'm still not. Now that those 3 scumbags are going to jail forever it's time to take out the rest of the trash that bumbled this murder at the beginning.
If she is sincere, I don't have much of a problem with her assuming she would have acted this way had the guy been Black or Asian or whatever. That may or may not be true. We'll never know. But it's better that the police remain calm and respectful when there is no immediate harm. I don't see the point in trying to vilify her because some other officer treated other suspects improperly, rather we should condemn those who treat non-dangerous suspects poorly and strive for all suspects to receive this type of treatment.
On the other hand, this could also be very tactful. If she was a good cop, I mean both morally and trained, this friendly demeanor has him opening up to her. He's voluntarily providing information that can be used against him later. He believes the police are on his side, he's willing to go down and talk to investigators and make a statement without a lawyer present because he thinks they are on his side. He could have been falling into the standard trap of talking to the police. Simply don't.
The McMichaels, whether intentional by the police or not, provided them with a lot of damning evidence during these moments. Notably, the elder told police he yelled "Stop, I’ll blow your ####ing head off." He told the police he did not see Arbery steal anything, only that he had a gut instinct he did. And most importantly, during their recount of events to the police on scene and with investigators later, they never said they told Arbery that they were making a citizen arrest.
In an alternate world where we get some roided out ######bag cop on scene who immediately escalates the situation and arrests them violently, they get a lawyer, they shut the #### up, they discuss with the lawyer and then they tell the police "After watching him take something from the home, we told him he was under arrest and that's when he threatened to kill us and went after my son's gun." And now the case isn't so clear cut.
I don't think it is helpful for people to view Rittenhouse as a hero. But that was going to be inevitable in today's media...er...dumpster fire.
But I would put the people who hero worship KR into the same overall milieu as those people who try to sanitize the actions of Rosenbaum, Huber, Grosskreutz (both on that night and in their past). Or the victim blamers who think that KR somehow "had it coming because why was he there?"
These are the people - many of which are in this thread -that are just grist for mill of the current media environment. And they don't realize it because they think their side of the milieu is righteous.
Wrong.
The Following User Says Thank You to Scroopy Noopers For This Useful Post:
If she is sincere, I don't have much of a problem with her assuming she would have acted this way had the guy been Black or Asian or whatever. That may or may not be true. We'll never know. But it's better that the police remain calm and respectful when there is no immediate harm. I don't see the point in trying to vilify her because some other officer treated other suspects improperly, rather we should condemn those who treat non-dangerous suspects poorly and strive for all suspects to receive this type of treatment.
Georgia.
White man killing black man.
2+ months to place the men under arrest.
Yes, I fully admit I am assuming that the way those men were handled in this case would have been a 180 if the shooter was black. He literally had blood on his hands and still couldn't have been placed in cuffs and taken away.
Honest question: if the roles were reversed, a black man killing a white man in Georgia with blood on his hands, do you think he would have received the same treatment? You are correct......we will never know. But I have a pretty good idea how that body cam footage would have went.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to KootenayFlamesFan For This Useful Post:
It’s also a video from Rekieta Law, aka Nick Rekieta, whose only claim to fame is being popular with alt-right incels, getting the Chauvin case completely wrong, siding with a sexual predator and encouraging him to sue his accusers losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, and wearing blackface.
But don’t worry guys, BoLevi knows about joke lawyers.
Maybe he was a just a young drama teacher who didn't know any better at the time.
__________________
The Delhi police have announced the formation of a crack team dedicated to nabbing the elusive 'Monkey Man' and offered a reward for his -- or its -- capture.
The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to monkeyman For This Useful Post:
Georgia.
White man killing black man.
2+ months to place the men under arrest.
Yes, I fully admit I am assuming that the way those men were handled in this case would have been a 180 if the shooter was black. He literally had blood on his hands and still couldn't have been placed in cuffs and taken away.
Honest question: if the roles were reversed, a black man killing a white man in Georgia with blood on his hands, do you think he would have received the same treatment? You are correct......we will never know. But I have a pretty good idea how that body cam footage would have went.
If the Black man was a former officer with direct ties to the District Attorney? I wouldn’t be surprised. The police contend they wanted to arrest the pair. They did not because of Jackie Johnson. Who is now facing charges of her own because of it:
I’d never doubt the blue wall of silence even for Black police officers.
But even if not we should be raising the bar on how police officers interact with Black suspects. Not lower it for white ones. And again, because of the way the police acted that day, whether racially-biased motivated or not, it’s almost 100% the reason Roddy just got convicted of a crime with a minimum of life in prison. So I’ll give them a pass on this one.
The officer responded knew that the suspect was Black wearing a white shirt and that the men were non-aggressive and distraught. They showed their hands, indicated they had no weapons. Told the officer (I believe after telling him he was a former cop) that they had it on video and that Ahmaud had attacked them. This is probably about as much case of racial profiling as it is giving the benefit of the doubt to the 911 callers. Probably relatively rare that you call 911 before murdering someone, it would be as stupid as leaking a video after you almost got away with said murder...
Keep in mind that the video you linked was at a time where maybe a dozen or so officers were already on scene, of which I think some knew of McMichael as a former officer. The actual first responding video is probably easier to critique but much harder to watch.
But at the end of the day, I don't think the responding officers handled it that poorly. There was probably enough probable cause to arrest without anyone batting an eye, but again then they shut up and get a lawyer. Instead they voluntarily went down and gave statements that lead to their conviction. Roddie's defense of simply being a "witness" was destroyed because he told the responding officers and immediate investigators that he had pursued and hit Ahmaud with his truck.
When I hear that police disproportionately attack and kill unarmed minorities, my mind isn't that they they should start attacking and killing more unarmed white people but rather reduce the times they kill unarmed minorities. So in this case had the McMichaels been Black, I think the police should have handled them very similar.
The Following User Says Thank You to OptimalTates For This Useful Post:
The reaction from the cops is predictable. They have an extreme systemic bias from decades of poor recruiting and training efforts. Being black, brown, gay, or transgender is a sure way of being approached with suspicion and an increased potential to escalate encounters beyond a casual stop. This has been a problem that I've referenced many times over the past 15 years, especially after the infamous DHS report on extremism was swept under the rug in 2009.
Cops have connections to many of the groups identified in the report. Many cops are proud members of the three percenters, some wearing the patch on their uniforms against policy, but allowed to do so because of the brotherhood. The Oathkeepers have a huge contingent as well, again proudly displayed on personal vehicles. Here in the southwest we have a group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Keepers Association who are basically anti-brown people. The Proud Boys movement has a unique connection to law enforcement. Law enforcement is a big problem in the United States. They need to be more focused on peace keeping than law "enforcement" and they need to be more representative of the communities they serve. It's cultural, and that culture needs to change.
When I hear that police disproportionately attack and kill unarmed minorities, my mind isn't that they they should start attacking and killing more unarmed white people but rather reduce the times they kill unarmed minorities. So in this case had the McMichaels been Black, I think the police should have handled them very similar.
I'm not asking for them to treat white people worse, I'm asking they treat everybody the same. I think we agree there. What I'm saying is that I have absolutely zero faith that if that was a black man in that same situation that he would have been treated the same, at all. It sure would be nice, but in that country, deep south.........not buying it.
Sorry about feeding the troll, but ignore list him if you must. BoLevi, tell me which takes you disagree with.
I heard a lot of legal opinion from a lawyer, that largely supported this idea that his was a tough decision that reasonably could have gone either way by the letter of the law.
Ad libbing here so it's not word for word, but I heard what could be considered 3 takes from him;
1) If you agree this was self defense, then you should probably have come to the same conclusion should KR have been the one murdered.
2) KRs narrative should be taken with a grain of salt as it would have been carefully sculpted to put himself in the best possible light.
3) Vigilantism creates these fog of war situations where there is wrong doing without being able to prove legal culpability and that is a bad thing. And accepting that as a reality of the laws is bad too, even if that currently is the case.
Do you disagree with any of those takes?
What takes did you hear?
I'm not asking for them to treat white people worse, I'm asking they treat everybody the same.
Okay, but you seemed to take issue with how the police handled this situation with your first post with the tweet. Perhaps I misunderstood. This is how they should have handled it had the McMichaels been Black or green.
Now there's obviously going to be a lot of implicit racial bias had the races been reversed. Of course the McMichaels were just straight up racist white hillbillies. Their Black counterparts probably aren't noticing a white jogger at all. And maybe if the elder was Black he wouldn't have climbed far enough to be friends with the District Attorney or bothered to become an officer at all. And if he was just a random Black person, he may have avoided calling the police at all because he knows #### can go south real quick for him even if he was completely right. I get all that. And of course maybe the officers immediately escalate and arrest them because of explicit or implicit racism. Again, pretty reasonable, but all I'm saying is how they handled this is how they should have handled it (with maybe the exception of the actual first officer) and therefore we shouldn't need to vilify them.
As for Black people calling 911, I'm totally with you on how ####ty they can get treated:
(Black woman flags down police as looters attempt to rob store, her and the store owners handcuffed)
And then if we wanted to look at 911 calls done by others because of "suspected" crimes like a Black man working on his own car, or a Black kid living with his white family, or a Black babysitter.. or Black realtor showing his client a house.or..or..or.. we would crash this board.
But given that the McMichael's had called 911, were cooperating, not trying to flee and posed no danger, the police handled it reasonably it appears. And again in handling it how they did they got convictions despite all the other corruption above them.
Also looks like a Black guy shot a would-be-white robber in Houston in September and experienced a similar experience to the McMichaels. Hard to make out races though. He was questioned, no charges, police came out in support. It's hard to really know how often a Black person justifiably shoots in self-defense (depending on castle-doctrine, stand-your-ground laws) as often times they are unnamed, undescribed victims.
Last edited by OptimalTates; 11-25-2021 at 01:17 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to OptimalTates For This Useful Post:
Another take from Devin, this time about the judge in the Rittenhouse trial.
I look forward to BoLevi's analysis on how biased Legal Eagle's hot takes about this judge:
This one seemed much better.
Although, I think he could have been harder on the judge over the handling of the two big constitutional issues (the video evidence and the 5th amendment violation). The judge could have immediately declared a mistrial with prejudice on either of those two right on the spot. Instead, he wanted to wait for what the jury came back with before ruling on those.
It's quite probable that he would have declared a mistrial with prejudice if Kyle had been found guilty. Watching people lose their minds over that would have been entertaining. In the end, they came to the right result.
Sorry about feeding the troll, but ignore list him if you must. BoLevi, tell me which takes you disagree with.
I heard a lot of legal opinion from a lawyer, that largely supported this idea that his was a tough decision that reasonably could have gone either way by the letter of the law.
Ad libbing here so it's not word for word, but I heard what could be considered 3 takes from him;
1) If you agree this was self defense, then you should probably have come to the same conclusion should KR have been the one murdered.
2) KRs narrative should be taken with a grain of salt as it would have been carefully sculpted to put himself in the best possible light.
3) Vigilantism creates these fog of war situations where there is wrong doing without being able to prove legal culpability and that is a bad thing. And accepting that as a reality of the laws is bad too, even if that currently is the case.
Do you disagree with any of those takes?
What takes did you hear?
1. At best, the legal position of GG and Huber with respect to self defense if KR had been killed would have been much murkier than Kyle's was.
2. No part of KR's story was sculpted. He didn't need to. The facts were on his side, and almost entirely on video.
3. No part of what KR did would fit in any useful definition of the word vigilante. Legal Eagle going off on a tangent about KR and vigilante-ism was pure straw man.
