46 Comments
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NubbyShober's avatar

Refusal to Release BodyCam Footage = Coverup.

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Adam's avatar

That is always the way of it. They lie and lie even to themselves they lie.

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NubbyShober's avatar

They lie to cover up the fu*&ups of officers in their employ. Because even if they later get successfully sued for wrongful death or other violations, it costs them NOTHING. The County or City or whatever foots the bill, and passes it on to the taxpayers. A system of zero accountability.

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Adam's avatar

Exactly. Now if they had some skin in the game and had to be insured like doctors, things would be a little different.

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Amy Alexander's avatar

He approached the vehicle and smelled the odor of marijuana. 1)OMG not marijuana, for crying out loud can we get past this not harmful drug and move on. 2)sounds like he was looking for a reason to engage and I call b/s on whatever the officer says, especially w/o body cam footage.

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Janet Jeffers's avatar

Cameras should mean accountability. They are meaningless for public protection if their recordings are only shared when it benefits the officer.

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Rachel Baldes's avatar

It's infuriating to have been sold the costs of these cameras and then see them refuse to allow them to serve the purpose for which they were funded. Half the time they turn them off, it's such bullshit.

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Rickey Woody's avatar

Although the cameras are a great idea, qualified immunity is the worse part. Cameras provide a record of their miss doings, but also can show the properness of their actions. Not sharing the footage = guilt.

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Adam's avatar

This^^^^

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Katy Bolger's avatar

As for body cam footage, there should be an independent INDEPENDENT group to review all contested body cam footage within a very reasonable time. We don't trust the victims, why trust the cops?

When I was a NYC teacher, occasionally a very bad kid would come through and test everyone around them. If I took that experience and painted all kids (who looked like the one who was a monster) with that single brush, no kid would have been happy in my classrooms. Because one kid made me miserable, all kids must be monsters and pay the price. That is what cops do - they paint all black boys, for instance, with the "must be a criminal" brush.

If a cop is so frightened by we the people, quit your job. You are a coward with inherent racism. Go be something else where you cannot cause harm.

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Adam's avatar

"If a cop is so frightened by we the people, quit your job. You are a coward with inherent racism. Go be something else where you cannot cause harm."

More folks need to understand and to accept that there are issues of implicit bias and inherent prejudice in our police forces and have been since their inception.

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gerald f dobbertin's avatar

Ms. Bolger, hatred, cruelty, fear, macho, pain, damage; these constitute the whole point of the job for these people.

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Joseph Mangano's avatar

Assuming they haven't already started, I'm waiting for the right-wing Jabari Peoples character assassination news mill to start churning out stories. It's as predictable as it is reprehensible.

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Joe Weicher's avatar

Not too much point to body camera footage if it isn’t released.

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Susanna J. Sturgis's avatar

The same could have been said of the (in)famous Watergate tapes, until they *were* released and the 18+ minute gap was revealed.

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Adam's avatar

What must it be like to have to work at convincing yourself that you really didn't kill that man for nothing, no damn reason? And because you are who you are and he is who he is, you get a pass on committing murder because you wear blue clothes and he wears black skin. Hasn't changed since their introduction as paddy rollers, slave catchers, etc.

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Rachel Walker's avatar

Cops lie constantly - it has become an integral part of US law enforcement culture. I guarantee they are lying about this one too.

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Eddie's avatar

"Peoples" shot in the back‼️‼️ Some shit writes itself!!

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NiaK's avatar

1. There was a second person in the car. What happened with (and/or "to") this person? This person's eyewitness account with or without fear of law enforcement retribution?

2. Where is the gun from the scene? Was it secured for all testing including FINGETPRINTS and its firing?

3. "Shot in the back"? Can you trust the medical examiner? Based on the bullet entry, how close or far was the "officer" at the time of shooting?

4. Has the family and the legal team been contacted to review the video in its entirety, including video experts who can determined intentional editing?

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Mary's avatar

But for too many of us this is the America we know. From the looks of its about to get worse.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land whereeveryman is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

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john a's avatar

even if cop got convicted trump would just let him out......this is the America we now live in.

America's first Auschwitz just opened yesterday in Florida.

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Rachel Eldridge's avatar

The gun is another key piece of evidence. What is the status of it? And could there be forensics done on the car to validate the presence of marijuana. It seems the police would want to share these things to corroborate their version of events. I am wish this article wasn’t just focused on the body camera footage.

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Adam's avatar

Are we even certain there was a gun? Can't take the officer's word for it.

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Edward G. Bryant's avatar

It is clear to anyone willing to see, that the state of policing in America is fundamentally broken and must be reformed. Qualified immunity must be revoked and lawsuits against police departments and officers must be paid out of police budgets and officers(and their pensions) pockets.

If you want police to 'police' themselves, only hitting them in their pocket books and benefits/retirements will cause the less bad cops to eject the real problems. Also civilian oversight and transparency, but money talks the loudest.

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Mark Epping-Jordan's avatar

Normally the FBI would investigate such shootings and the DOJ Civil Rights Division would determine if the police violated the person's rights. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino (I still cannot believe it when I type those words) will certainly do no such thing and AG Pam Bondi basically "completely and totally obliterated" the Civil Rights Division.

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