hat tip = Addicting Info
Stopped for a seatbelt violation, the driver makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to cooperate and comply with the cop's instructions. Of course, that near-fatal mistake followed the obvious mistake of having dark brown skin in South Carolina, and then the guy just makes it worse by raising his hands trying to demonstrate he was actually not a threat to the officer - all of which taken together tends to cause a lot of stress in the minds of some people (maybe like this cop) - people who've been over-trained to expect trouble, to the point where their brains will manufacture a threat even tho' all their sensory input indicates otherwise. The cop did in fact shoot that guy at least once AFTER he put his hands up.
More simply - if we teach people to expect trouble, let's try not to be surprised when they find it even where it doesn't exist.
In this case, at least the Cop Shop Mgmt made the right calls in firing that officer, charging him with "Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature", with bail set at $75K. But I do wonder how they plan to address a pretty obvious failure when it comes to training their officers, and in their reckless inability to identify and neutralize potential fuck-ups like this guy.
And BTW - with so many of these incidents coming to light, at what point do we stop considering these guys "Rogue Cops" and start to understand there's a big fucking problem here? What dots can we connect between cops shooting unarmed citizens, and the proliferation of guns, and the headlong slide into authoritarian governance, and the trend toward militarized policing, and the post-trauma emotional time bombs ticking away in the brains of way too many veterans (many of whom are now cops), and and and?
We need to get this thing unfucked in a big fuckin' hurry.
(As of 10:24am EDT, I'm waiting to hear from Lt Kelly Hughes at SC State Patrol as to how long Groubert had been a trooper and whether he's a US Military Veteran)
Stopped for a seatbelt violation, the driver makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to cooperate and comply with the cop's instructions. Of course, that near-fatal mistake followed the obvious mistake of having dark brown skin in South Carolina, and then the guy just makes it worse by raising his hands trying to demonstrate he was actually not a threat to the officer - all of which taken together tends to cause a lot of stress in the minds of some people (maybe like this cop) - people who've been over-trained to expect trouble, to the point where their brains will manufacture a threat even tho' all their sensory input indicates otherwise. The cop did in fact shoot that guy at least once AFTER he put his hands up.
More simply - if we teach people to expect trouble, let's try not to be surprised when they find it even where it doesn't exist.
In this case, at least the Cop Shop Mgmt made the right calls in firing that officer, charging him with "Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature", with bail set at $75K. But I do wonder how they plan to address a pretty obvious failure when it comes to training their officers, and in their reckless inability to identify and neutralize potential fuck-ups like this guy.
And BTW - with so many of these incidents coming to light, at what point do we stop considering these guys "Rogue Cops" and start to understand there's a big fucking problem here? What dots can we connect between cops shooting unarmed citizens, and the proliferation of guns, and the headlong slide into authoritarian governance, and the trend toward militarized policing, and the post-trauma emotional time bombs ticking away in the brains of way too many veterans (many of whom are now cops), and and and?
We need to get this thing unfucked in a big fuckin' hurry.
(As of 10:24am EDT, I'm waiting to hear from Lt Kelly Hughes at SC State Patrol as to how long Groubert had been a trooper and whether he's a US Military Veteran)
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