Shitty Cops

Swift action in the shooting of Daunte Wright:

The Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, after appearing to mistake her handgun for her Taser was arrested on Wednesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter following three nights of protests over the killing.

The arrest of the officer, Kimberly A. Potter, who is white, came a day after she resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department, as did the Minneapolis suburb’s police chief. Hundreds of people have faced off with the police in Brooklyn Center each night since Mr. Wright’s death on Sunday, demanding that the former officer be charged, even as the region is on edge amid the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer charged with murdering George Floyd last May.

Again, IANAL, but this seems to me to be the correct charge. I don’t think she intended to shoot him with a gun, and I think you would be guaranteeing she walked if you charged her with murder. I know this will anger many, but I find much more guilt in the system in this shooting than I do in Officer Potter.

Why is Daunte Wright dead and why is an officer going to trial and why is there unrest in the streets of Brooklyn Center? That’s the question everyone responsible for policing in this country should be asking themselves. And to answer that, you have to go through how we got where we are.

Why are police still stopping people for non-moving violations?
Why are police still racial profiling?
Why are police pulling people over for bullshit like expired tags?
Why were there so many police there- they feed off each other and act more aggressively in groups.

And on and on and on. I’ll even take it a step farther- why did they have to arrest him for the warrant right then and there. Why even elevate it to the point that a taser was “needed.” Even though he was showing mild resistance and got back in his car, why was it so important that he be arrested that very second? You have fucking radios. You know where he lives. It wasn’t a big enough deal to have him in jail to send anyone to his house to arrest him, why all of a sudden just because you’ve nailed him for the crime of having air freshener from his mirror or whatever bullshit pretext you used to initiate the stop did he have to be arrested right then and there.

Again, what is the worst that could have happened if he just got in his car and drove home, and you followed him home and arrested him there with his mom? Or a week later?

Why do we have a system of policing built around violence, dominance, and requiring instant submission and deference? It’s the same with all these fucking no-knock warrants and other bullshit. The Breonna Taylor murder is another instance of this. They had surveilled her apartment. They fucking knew she and her boyfriend were in there. Why the fuck could they not just sit outside by his car and wait for him to head to Sheetz or Getgo for a pack of smokes or a soda? Why did they have to go HAM and raid the place with pistols blazing.

Our system of policing makes no sense to me.

Update at 6:35 PM EDT by Adam L Silverman

Cole asked me to do a quick update for him because he’s away from his keyboard.

What’s even worse in the Breonna Taylor case is that the warrant was NOT for her fiancé, which was the man she was in her apartment asleep with, but, rather, for an ex boyfriend who did not live at her residence and who had been arrested ten blocks away, and, according to the attorney’s for Taylor’s family, 40 minutes before the time that the warrant for Taylor’s apartment was executed. Additionally, Taylor’s family’s attorney has alleged as part of their lawsuit against the city that the warrant issued for Taylor’s residence really had less to do with her ex’s allegedly criminal behavior and more with a local development scheme to drive residents out of the neighborhood so that it could be gentrified. We’re still waiting for further details on if this alleged scheme is at the heart of why the warrant was issued for Taylor’s residence, but if it does turn out to be one of the motivating causes, then someone in municipal leadership, including someone in the local prosecutor’s office and, perhaps the judge who signed off on the warrant, are dirty. Additionally, local reporting by the Louisville Courier Journal indicates that the Louisville Police made numerous false representations of facts – colloquially lied – on the warrant application for Taylor’s residence. This includes falsely claiming that the US Postal Inspectors in Louisville had provided them accurate information that Taylor’s ex – Jamarcus Glover – had been receiving packages at her apartment for him. The Postal Inspector indicated that Louisville Police hadn’t asked, that there was no evidence this was the case, and that when a different agency had asked several months before the Postal Inspectors had investigated and found the allegations unwarranted.

Potter ChargedPost + Comments (72)

This morning I went off on an angry rant on the twitter machine when reading about the killing of Daunte Wright, and discovered that the cops pulled him over for fucking expired tags. Basically, it is my belief that cops who pull people over for shit like expired tags, not being able to see a second license plate, air freshener hanging from the mirror, or other bullshit like that, are in essence online trolls in real life. And the cities and communities that have their cops out doing this are doing so for several reasons:

1.) To raise money to fund the government so taxcut Jesus won’t get a sad.
2.) To harass and keep minority communities in “their place”
3.) To maintain a militaristic carceral state

Who, exactly, is safer in that Minnesota community because a couple of bored cops decided to fuck with a black kid with expired tags? Who is safer in Virginia because a bunch of bored cops decided to fuck with an Army LT because they couldn’t see his second license plate? No one.

It’s the same god damned thing that went on in Baltimore and NYC with the street level harassment of fucking with people sitting on their stoop listening to music and having a beer. It’s the same bullshit as roughing people up and breaking down doors because you smelled weed smoke. It’s the same fucking thing that was discussed in the detailed Ferguson report in 2015 when we last had a functioning DOJ.

And, it doesn’t just happen to minorities. It happens at a far greater rate of occurrence for minority communities and is far deadlier for them, but the same shit happens to poor white people here in West Virginia and elsewhere. There aren’t enough black people to fund the government here, so you gotta fuck with other “undesirables.”

And it makes life a living hell for everyone. People lose their ability to drive over bullshit because they can not pay the cascading fines or take off to make all the court dates, and shit spirals out of control and before they know it they owe thousands of dollars for a fucking nine dollar license plate tag, have lost their car, lost their job because they can’t get there, and are further mired in poverty and hopelessness. It’s the same fucking thing credit card companies do to trap people in indebtedness. Why do many poor people drink to excess and do drugs? Because we have made their lives fucking unbearable without them.

And this is not new. We all know this. It has been happening long enough that we all are aware this goes on. I’d also posit that it has been going on so long that people who like to abuse people are drawn to policing, because it gives them a license to bully and hurt people. So, at this point, if you are not actively working to try to fundamentally reform policing and government, you are part of the problem.

It’s the Policies, StupidPost + Comments (83)