Darren Wilson helps prove justice is an illusion in one hand, and a tool of oppression in the other.
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Yes, Ferguson is about race, but the events are important for us all.
The reality of police getting away with murder makes me physically sick to my stomach. Is this what authority means?
The lack of accountability for police officers who murder “suspects” in the line of duty is shocking. The Washington Post reported in Sep, 2014,
“There is no reliable national data on how many people are shot by police officers each year.”
The lack of even tracking the number of deaths from police related shootings is frightening. Think about the quote that begins,
“…then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew…”
We all know how that quote ends. There is personal impact for each one of us when power is not held in check or accountable for it’s actions. This is where we are with the police force in the US, and many other countries around the world. Police no longer serve and protect the citizens.
Every person of color, every mental health patient, every innocent bystander, or petty criminal who faces the Badge has the potential to be snuffed on the spot. The police force can act as judge, jury, and executioner without legal repercussions.
When the law is unaccountable, we all have something to fear. The blatant disregard for justice and truth in Officer Darren Wilson receiving no charges in the murder of Michael Brown leaves no doubt about where we stand in the eyes of the law. We are expendable.
The police only need to demonstrate some threat, and the courts allow them to get away with murder. Maybe not all police, but when the judicial system is organised in an obviously unbalanced way, I find it difficult to see how the system does not support the killer cop mentality.
The justice system lies broken. The police who choose to use and abuse the systematic oppression written into law in the US do not see citizens as innocent until proven guilty. That privilege is gone. The citizens have become threats and targets in the reflection on the Badge.
What is the way forward?
The legal route has failed. Civil unrest only leads to a tighter crack down. Peaceful vigils are susceptible to provocateurs and agitators. Is there still time to try at legislation again?
The route forward will have to be new, uncharted. People are seeing how the system is abused by those who are supposed to uphold it.
How do we fix a culture that allows cops to kill indiscriminately?
Who among us knows what action to take?
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“The reality of police getting away with murder makes me physically sick to my stomach.”
Yeah, me too. Good thing that didn’t happen in this case.
Correction: “not so blind as to think they are targeted the same.” Darn double negatives.
I am incredibly frustrated with a men’s issues site, of all places, failing to notice that the Ferguson case is also about GENDER, not just race. It has to do with both. I’ll concede that it has more to do with race than with gender, if you can concede that his gender was also a factor. If Michael Brown was killed because he was a black man, then that is because of two things: 1.) He was black, and our society assumes black people are dangerous. 2.) He was male, and our society assumes males are dangerous. Yes, I completely… Read more »
It might help if you didn’t look at this site as a men’s issues site. Try looking at it as a site for progressive issues.
And the racial sentencing disparity pales in comparison to the gender sentencing disparity yet the media only focuses on the fact that black men receive lengthier sentences than white men under otherwise equal circumstances. It’s as though society is saying it is justified that women receive 63%less stiffer penalties than men for committing the same crimes and under similar circumstances. Everybody yapps about the racial sentencing disparity but they remain awfully quiet about the even bigger gender sentencing disparity.
Under actions to take, cameras and audio on every cop and cop car, and the development of less dangerous, but more effective non-lethal tools.
Look at the cops in the photo: Nazi helmets, facemasks and body armor. The only thing missing are the swastika armbands. As long as the government keeps giving surplus military hardware to police departments this will never stop. The only real defense is an armed citizenry.
I give you credit for saying this. It goes against the stereotypes I have about people fighting against gun control. I’ve noticed that when it’s a black man killed, the NRA and Second Amendment defenders get real quiet all of a sudden. Their idea of an armed citizenry tends to run up against their culturally conservative views about race, and their views on race tend to trump their constitutional idealism. It serves as a reminder that a lot of our gun control laws dating from the 1970’s were put in place by political conservatives afraid of the specters of Malcolm… Read more »
At http://www.jpfo.org is a pamphlet called “Gun Control Is Racist”, which explains how gun laws were used to oppress blacks and other minorities.
As a geographical outsider looking in on cases like this, there’s one thing I find weird: I always understood that throughout the world police/court work also had an element of “keeping the peace of the land”. Look at the Rotherham mass child abuse scandal, for example, where authorities refused to investigate in order not to rock the boat. In other cases a small fish gets designated as fall guy for a big scandal, because there would be rioting if nobody was indicted. But this is strikingly different. Here the authorities do nothing whatsoever to deescalate and placate the masses, instead… Read more »
The questions really start to pile up once we scratch the surface.
The US ‘justice’ system really has little or nothing to do with justice. As a public defender in Washington State said to me, “If you think the US legal system is about justice, you are sadly deluded.”
“…indict him as a public gesture of goodwill.” And who gets to decide that? Only the good people with good intentions…who agree with us?