I got nothing:
A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.
Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.
The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.
“This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.
Bloody fucking hell.
WereBear
Wow.
On a side note, the minute I saw the blog title, I knew who was publishing.
sharl
@WereBear: That’s actually a game I play – look at the title of the next post [in the link at top or bottom of the {now} penultimate post I’m currently on], then see if I can guess the post’s author before clicking on the link to see if I’m right, as well as (usually) to actually read the link.
For me at least, Cole and Levenson are usually easy, as is DougJ, if I know the song reference. The other front-pagers are hit-or-miss.
sharl
And on the topic of the post, Adam Weinstein said this:
Aaaaand – of course – his only two replies were from somewhat miffed Ayn Rand fans.
ETA: Well, maybe just one Ayntard. The other respondent may be just genuinely confused about the relevance of Ayn Rand.
MomSense
@John Cole
Have you seen the reporting on the psychologist who has been training cops to shoot first? http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html?referrer=&_r=0
I’m on my stupid phone so I hope the link works.
PaulW
fair question: how common is it for a cop to threaten to have someone killed and make it look like self-defense? does it happen often enough that those cops get to keep their jobs and remain positioned to kill people “in self-defense”?
the very optics of this story would make a sane person remove that cop from street duties and away from anything that would involve homicide investigations. Instead the police chief keeps him on the streets and say “oh he didn’t mean anything by it.”
There’s a reason why OJ walked after what happened to Nicole and that restaurant guy. One of the lead detectives on the call was a known bigot with a documented history of planting evidence. You would think the police would remove such potential threats to secure investigations and honest law enforcement… but gosh, 20 years later the police don’t f-cking care about professionalism do they?
Splitting Image
“Heritage not hate”.
Oh, I’m sorry. I meant “Heritage and hate”.
mike with a mic
That’s not the only stupid that came out today http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/two-men-open-fire-mississippi-military-facility
Wingnuts are shooting at specops soldiers in Jade Helm.
SatanicPanic
KEPT HIS JOB!?!
sorry for yelling, but wtf
oldster
But come on, now:
“[Police Chief] Robinson denied Bias was unfairly targeted by his officers. “I don’t care if you’ve got a record or not; we’re gonna treat you just as fair,” he said.”
If the Chief says he’s going to treat you fair, then that’s good enough for me.
Are you going to doubt the word of an officer, sworn to uphold the law and protect the citizenry?
Honus
“He was just talking”? No way this guy should have a badge and a gun.
JPL
@efgoldman: That money will disappear quickly because he is going to be stopped for every time he rolls through a stop sign, or goes 36 in a 35 mile zone.
RSA
@SatanicPanic:
WTF is right. For context, I’m trying to think of any occupation where you could make statements like that and keep your job. Not coming up with anything.
micah616
From the linked article:
Because that makes the whole thing better.
Honus
Let a judge or the state bar association hear me saying something remotely approaching that about an opposing party in a lawsuit. See how long I keep my law license.
Arclite
Just a few bad apples, amirite? No systemic issues here at all. Nosirree.
Shouldn’t that officer be in jail? Crazy.
SatanicPanic
@RSA: Rapper? Pro-wrestler? That’s about the end of my list
Benw
@oldster: so he claims they weren’t biased towards Bias? Seems legit.
dexwood
@micah616:
That’s what you call creative thinkin’, what’s that word… initiative. Yeah, that’s what that is. He’s a real go getter.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@PaulW: I don’t know, but cops kill people and claim self-defense multiple times a day in this country.
As per the linked audio, well, my personal gut feeling is that this also probably happens a lot more than the average citizen would be happy about, were it known. But it isn’t, and furthermore, I find that most people really DON’T want to know that their local police could be indulging in such activities. It’s a head in the sand approach to be sure, but fuck, what are you going to do, protest? Sue? That just gets you on the list.
ellennellee
i do believe that is the best description of sweet home alabama to be found.
gene108
@efgoldman:
From the article the city attorney said they kicked the matter to the city’s insurance company and that is what the company agreed to settle at.
I do not know Mr. Bias’ financial situation but dragged out lawsuits can be expensive and not sustainable by one side or the other, which is why so many cases settle.
beltane
I have an aunt who is a white, Afrikaans-speaking South African. She is appalled by the stories she sees about police killings on black people in the US.
RepubAnon
@Honus: Imagine if the situation were reversed, and a citizen had made that same statement about a police officer…
Isn’t it interesting that the “He didn’t mean that” and the “He was just funning” defenses are only available to persons of certain racial backgrounds and political beliefs?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@micah616:
After all, soliciting someone else to murder somebody is a lesser crime than if you do it yourself, right?
Oh, no, wait, it’s fucking SOLICITATION OF MURDER and you get punished just as bad (if not worse) than the guy you hired to pull the trigger. You’d think a cop would know these little details.
gene108
I also want to know another profession, other than police officer, where you can cost your employer ten’s of thousands of dollars, at a minimum, to settle lawsuits brought on by your lack of professionalism on the job AND BE PRAISED by your bosses for being such a stand up guy, let alone keep your job.
If anyone else, in any other line of work, fucked up so badly he cost his employer that kind of money he would not only be fired, but also not receive a glowing recommendation (to put it mildly).
sharl
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Yeah, of all the awfulness in this story I found when I read it this afternoon, Mr. Bias’ resignation about the whole thing – y’know, just another day in this effed up town, where a policeman wanted TO HAVE ME MURDERED – seems to be unaccompanied by any sense of surprise.
I mean, dayum!
Groucho48
@RepubAnon:
We don’t have to imagine:
Steeplejack
@RSA:
Well, U.S. senator. You can talk about wiping out whole countries and not get fired.
RSA
@SatanicPanic: Good choices! You’re more creative than I am. People you want to trust with guns, like cops… not so much.
Another Holocene Human
Thank you for frontpaging this, Cole.
Tree With Water
Lest We Forget: the politicalization/attempted subversion of the United States Justice Department under Bush-Cheney. Same fish, smaller pond in Alabama is all.
Honus
@RepubAnon: and this guy still has the power to arrest, and remains an officer of the court. After threatening to kill a nigger. Because his boss thinks he really didn’t mean it.
sharl
@Tree With Water: Yep, and as far as I’m concerned, the indictment and conviction of former AL governor Don Siegelman still stinks to high heaven. I’m convinced Karl Rove had his grubby paws on that whole thing too.
SiubhanDuinne
@sharl:
I can usually guess both Anne Laurie (apart from the pet blegs and the regularly scheduled garden and food threads, which don’t even count), and Betty Cracker.
SP&T always catches me by surprise, and I never can guess a TimF thread unless the title is something like “Here’s an open thread with a picture of Max playing in the community swimming pool” or something. I’m mostly good with John and Tom.
RandomMonster
@mike with a mic:
Do you imagine if their skin color was any shade other than white, the follow-up “questioning” from the police would have come from the barrel of a service pistol?
Morzer
@oldster:
“We will gratuitously threaten, abuse and plan to murder any and all residents in this town we love, because that’s what puts the community in community policing.”
mike with a mic
@RandomMonster:
I think it really depends on if they are armed at the time, where they are found, the type of police who finds them, and the specific officers involved.
Case in point. I don’t think the Bundy Ranch assholes got away with it because they were white. I think they get away with out of fear of triggering a violent firefight with the possibility of Waco 2.0 Nevada edition with a potential OKC bombing 2.0 as a follow up. Plus, federal agents tend to go for the long term deep cover sting, not shooting people were they stand in a rage or panic.
Does race enter into it, sure. But biker gangs and other idiots are shot on site as well at times even if white. And we don’t hear about the legions of minority gang bangers who are questioned and turned into informants and survive. The major thing armed wingers have going for them is actual government fear of (semi and idiotic) organized right wing violence. Like it or not, Waco and OKC loom large in LEO and the CT community.
Hell, here in DC brown people who shoot at federals or military don’t always get blown away. Normally they just get rounded up and processed. But that’s not news, and it happens so fucking often it would have to be it’s own 24/7 TV show and people would get bored. Ditto for general crime in the bad areas. Usually they don’t kill them, but it’s too common and too often for anybody to give a flying fuck about it or bother with it on the news.
And had these yahoos shot at anything not military and not political, it wouldn’t be news and we wouldn’t hear about it either.
Not saying cops aren’t racist and minorities don’t get it worse, but I’m aware of what makes for good TV to various groups and what isn’t.
I agree with your question for making political points and skewing the debate for a quicker win, but it’s way too blanket of a statement to be worth debating on a factual or evidence based level. It’s a good emotional cheap shot, not much else.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
That’s simply scary. Reading the article, I noticed that Dr. Lewinski’s reasoning could be used to justify shooting cops, at least in a rational world where people in some situations could successfully argue that they feared for their lives when they see a police officer’s gun.
Certainly if I knew that Dr. Lewinski was teaching local cops, I would fear for my life every time i encountered a cop, even as a white person. Any random twitch could result in a justified shooting, and if there were no body cam, anything at all could result in a “justified shooting”.
RaflW
Absolutely horrible. Altho, and it pains me to say it since it should not be the black person who needs to do this, but … perhaps Vincent Bias should move out of town post haste. There will probably be some seriously ugly repercussions with the KKKers in his town. And it does not sound like he’ll get decent police protection if they come to f*k with him.
JMV Pyro
Jesus. And there are people wondering why police violence has become the central cause of many African American activists?
ruemara
As I said http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html
This is why they can get away with it too.
pseudonymous in nc
Alexander City: population 15,000.
Show me a developed nation that has autonomous police forces for bumfuck towns of 15,000.
Said it before, will say it again: stick your small government up your fucking arse when it comes to policing. And the Deep South probably still needs the equivalent of the Voting Rights Act for policing, in which most cities aren’t considered capable of policing themselves until they prove otherwise.
rikyrah
Sigh
Sigh
I read the story several times and just shook my head in disgust.
RandomMonster
@mike with a mic:
Sorry, but this is utter BS. If the Bundy Ranch assholes were black, or let’s say muslim, but just as armed as a Waco 2.0 scenario, it would be deemed a ‘riot’, or ‘terrorism’, and met with appropriate (I should put that term in quotes, really) violence. Isn’t this obvious?
You aren’t seriously saying that someone randomly shooting at a federal or military person in DC is the same as a pair of swivel-eyed conspiracy-minded assholes shooting at troops exercising in the field, are you?
Imagine any headline that substituted a person of any color for the suspects. Do you imagine the same police response in those circumstances?
jackie chiles
@mike with a mic:
Um, I’m gonna have to call BS on this entire post. I Grew up and currently live in DC too. In a 99% minority neighborhood. Ward 7 to be exact (a place incidentally where poverty looms large and the unemployment rate is approaching 50% for AA males).
Washington, DC and it’s surrounding areas are probably the most heavily policed place on Earth. You’d be hard pressed to see more visible representations of state power in Beijing.
So no, Black and Brown people are not frequently (or even occasionally) getting into armed confrontations with Federal officers. It’s rare. Not even the MS13 guys would do that crazy shit. The response would be………like a Michael Bay movie.
And I don’t have to imagine what the response would be if black people tried something like Cliven Bundy and Friends. We have the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia as a representative example of what happens if you engage in Standoff With Law Enforcement While Black.
Fred
@Honus: But he wasn’t threatening to kill anyone, he was just trying to talk someone else into doing it with the suggestion that the other guy could get away with it by making it look like self defense. See that’s not so bad, is it? It’s just conspiracy to commit murder and obstruction of justice. hardly worse than changing lanes without signaling or selling loose cigarettes on the street and nobody goes to jail or gets killed over that stuff.
Paul in KY
@RSA: Mafia hitman? Maybe pro wrestler?
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: It’s also the south and cities are good at settling low on totally legit claims. Why? all the local attorneys are beholden to the local power structure.
Another Holocene Human
@sharl: me too
Another Holocene Human
@pseudonymous in nc: WTF was up with city and county cops patrolling the interstates in the Deep South?
I felt very safe on Amtrak rolling through AL. The only assholes you gotta deal with on there is Homeland Security-TSA (and I guess Border Patrol). (They do random and non random stops but they definitely don’t come on every train. I ride an interstate train at least once a year and I’ve never had them come on a train I was on.)