Can anyone explain ...

124

Comments

  • Strangely, the UK media simply reported that he was born in New Zealand ... and, though he certainly has a Maori sounding name I don't think anyone has mentioned him being a "person of colour" in the reporting (the photos that have been produced certainly don't look like his skin tone is different from European - but, I know that's not a reliable criteria to judge. And, mostly he's been referred to as "Matt" which further obscures the non-European name). What has been reported is that he was a dedicated police officer shot while taking someone into custody - and, contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
  • Strangely, the UK media simply reported that he was born in New Zealand ... and, though he certainly has a Maori sounding name I don't think anyone has mentioned him being a "person of colour" in the reporting (the photos that have been produced certainly don't look like his skin tone is different from European - but, I know that's not a reliable criteria to judge. And, mostly he's been referred to as "Matt" which further obscures the non-European name). What has been reported is that he was a dedicated police officer shot while taking someone into custody - and, contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    From the local Croydon rag:
    Born to a Scottish mother and Maori father, Matt was the eldest child of an extended family of stepbrothers and stepsisters. He is a grandson of Iriaka Ratana, the first Maori female MP, and great-great grandson of Ratana Church founder Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana.

    To my eye at least he looks distinctly Maori, with a skin tone to match.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    You've just admitted that indigenous communities don't have a lock on the sort of behaviour you're attributing to an indigenous community.

    Everyone knows that nobody had a lock on bad behaviour.

    Pointing at undesirable behaviour by an indigenous community shouldn't be an issue. Particularly if it is contextualised by pointing at similar behaviour in racial-majority communities. That's acknowledging common humanity.

    Explaining the behaviour by the fact of it being an indigenous community is the opposite - that would be racism.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    You've just admitted that indigenous communities don't have a lock on the sort of behaviour you're attributing to an indigenous community.

    Everyone knows that nobody had a lock on bad behaviour.

    Pointing at undesirable behaviour by an indigenous community shouldn't be an issue. Particularly if it is contextualised by pointing at similar behaviour in racial-majority communities. That's acknowledging common humanity.

    Explaining the behaviour by the fact of it being an indigenous community is the opposite - that would be racism.

    Guess which one happened in this thread?

    And don't start reading when the Hatfields, McCoys, Montagues and Capulets were mentioned. They were only brought into the story afterwards.
  • asher wrote: »
    Strangely, the UK media simply reported that he was born in New Zealand ... and, though he certainly has a Maori sounding name I don't think anyone has mentioned him being a "person of colour" in the reporting (the photos that have been produced certainly don't look like his skin tone is different from European - but, I know that's not a reliable criteria to judge. And, mostly he's been referred to as "Matt" which further obscures the non-European name). What has been reported is that he was a dedicated police officer shot while taking someone into custody - and, contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    From the local Croydon rag:
    Born to a Scottish mother and Maori father, Matt was the eldest child of an extended family of stepbrothers and stepsisters. He is a grandson of Iriaka Ratana, the first Maori female MP, and great-great grandson of Ratana Church founder Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana.

    To my eye at least he looks distinctly Maori, with a skin tone to match.

    O sorry - I thought I'd read somewhere that he was of Maltese origin, and therefore not a 'person of colour' as I understand the term.

    My bad. Unless I saw it in the Grauniad, well-known for tpynig rerros.
    :wink:

    But what point are you trying to make @asher? The incident was widely reported in the news in the UK, so yes, I'm surprised it hasn't yet been discussed somewhere here (unless there was a mention on the prayer thread in All Saints?).

    It was, of course, a most unusual incident, given the apparent circumstances. I wonder if it's now sub judice whilst enquiries are being carried out - hence not much in the way of further news.

  • orfeo wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    Pointing at undesirable behaviour by an indigenous community shouldn't be an issue. Particularly if it is contextualised by pointing at similar behaviour in racial-majority communities. That's acknowledging common humanity.
    Guess which one happened in this thread?
    My italics added to Russ' post.
    It's undesirable behaviour by an indigenous community but not undesirable behaviour by a racial-majority community. When it's a racial majority community the undesirable behaviour is merely in it.
  • @Bishops Finger

    On this thread posters have remarked that 'I think cops are bad and all cops are bastards' without challenge.

    Others have then talked about the siege mentality they perceive the police having.

    When I searched SoF for the terms 'Matui' and 'Ratana' and got no hits, I didn't know what to think. SoF discussions often have a link to the current news agenda.

    You ask what point I am trying to make?

    I don't really know in all honesty. But by all accounts Matui Ratana, (police officer, person of dual maori and scottish heritage) was a person of worth and integrity, who through his involvements outside the police did not live within a siege. By all accounts he was not bad, nor a bastard.

    May he rest in peace, and rise in glory.




  • asher wrote: »
    @Bishops Finger

    On this thread posters have remarked that 'I think cops are bad and all cops are bastards' without challenge.

    Others have then talked about the siege mentality they perceive the police having.

    When I searched SoF for the terms 'Matui' and 'Ratana' and got no hits, I didn't know what to think. SoF discussions often have a link to the current news agenda.

    You ask what point I am trying to make?

    I don't really know in all honesty. But by all accounts Matui Ratana, (police officer, person of dual maori and scottish heritage) was a person of worth and integrity, who through his involvements outside the police did not live within a siege. By all accounts he was not bad, nor a bastard.

    May he rest in peace, and rise in glory.




    There's not a lot to debate, and we're fundamentally a debating board. No-one disputes that his murder was a crime, nor its circumstances. And while "criminal kills cop" is mercifully rare in the UK, it is within the remit of the Sort of Thing Criminals Do - one of the ways of being a criminal.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    Cross-posted with @KarlLB, but yes, there's not a lot to discuss at the moment.

    @asher - re Mr Ratana
    Amen!

    Alas, he appears to have been one of those unfortunate people who get to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and what happened to him might well have happened to another officer, had he (Ratana) been elsewhere.

    I think the reference to 'I think cops are bad and all cops are bastards' was to police in the US and/or Australia.

    I did notice it at the time, but thought it so stupid a generalisation as to be unworthy of response.
  • @KarlLB
    Perhaps you are right.

    Though much of this thread might be characterised as 'ain't it awful' rather than debate.


  • A discussion on criminals shooting police officers doesn't seem to be immediately relevant to the question of police officers shooting innocent women in their bed.

    On the "'I think cops are bad and all cops are bastards" point, I think it's obvious that not all cops are bad, and that not all are bastards. But, I think it's also obvious that police officers work in an environment that is bad and encourages the worst of behaviour, the UK appears to have improved significantly on that regard in recent years, and the reports from the US suggest that there's a lot of room for improvement there (to the point where people are actually talking about disbanding the existing police forces and starting again).

    Those problems in our police forces include systematic racism. They also include the 'siege mentality' where whenever a police officer makes a mistake the rest of the police force (and, supporters in the media and politicians) circle the wagons to defend them regardless of how badly wrong they got it.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    The police officer who was shot in the chest by a suspect ? I believe the IPPC are already investigating - he was shot inside the station so there is concern about what happened with search protocols etc.
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    In the U.S., ACAB* is accurate because all cops are agreeing to support a racist system that regularly does horrible things to people of color and persecutes whistleblowers. As the saying goes, not all cops would do such things but all cops are okay working in a system that does.

    *For those not following along, all cops are bastards.
  • A discussion on criminals shooting police officers doesn't seem to be immediately relevant to the question of police officers shooting innocent women in their bed.

    On the "'I think cops are bad and all cops are bastards" point, I think it's obvious that not all cops are bad, and that not all are bastards. But, I think it's also obvious that police officers work in an environment that is bad and encourages the worst of behaviour, the UK appears to have improved significantly on that regard in recent years, and the reports from the US suggest that there's a lot of room for improvement there (to the point where people are actually talking about disbanding the existing police forces and starting again).

    Those problems in our police forces include systematic racism. They also include the 'siege mentality' where whenever a police officer makes a mistake the rest of the police force (and, supporters in the media and politicians) circle the wagons to defend them regardless of how badly wrong they got it.

    Thank you for commenting on 'ACAB' (all coppers are bastards).

    The murder of Matui Ratana, by all accounts a good man, is relevant to a discussion that at times has othered and demonised all police.

    There are, of course, so many other good police officers across the UK, serving their communities with compassion and diligence.

    In terms of my arms length knowledge of UK policing, I would agree with you that things have changed and improved significantly in recent years.

    I agree about systematic racism.

    The feeling I pick up from serving officers is that they are no longer allowed to make mistakes and learn. Perhaps there are good things about this, but it may also feed into a defensive presentation from the rank and file.
  • asher wrote: »

    I agree about systematic racism.
    If you truly understood systemic racism, you wouldn't have made the post that began this tangent.
    Not every individual police officer is a bad person, but because of systemic racism and the lack of accountability they actively hold to as a group, as a group they are bastards.
    asher wrote: »
    The feeling I pick up from serving officers is that they are no longer allowed to make mistakes and learn. Perhaps there are good things about this, but it may also feed into a defensive presentation from the rank and file.
    The defensive position began before they were started to be held accountable. They are STILL not held as accountable as they should be, their mistakes end lives. Both figuratively and literally.

  • Gwai wrote: »
    In the U.S., ACAB* is accurate because all cops are agreeing to support a racist system that regularly does horrible things to people of color and persecutes whistleblowers. As the saying goes, not all cops would do such things but all cops are okay working in a system that does.

    *For those not following along, all cops are bastards.


    Absolutely. I will gladly say ACAB right now, in regards to US policing. I do not trust them to either want to do the right thing, nor be able to do the right thing.

    Look at the two new officers who were involved in George Floyd's death; they were being trained by the bastard who murdered Floyd and his partner who stopped bystanders from intervening. By all accounts the two new officers were good men who already had careers in helping their communities. But they had been in the force long enough to stand by and watch Floyd call for his mama as he was killed. Bastards.
  • When I was growing up ACAB was a white / right wing / skinhead thing. AIUI 1312 and ACAB is not tolerated in some countries, particularly at football grounds.

    funny how stuff comes around



  • asher wrote: »
    When I was growing up ACAB was a white / right wing / skinhead thing. AIUI 1312 and ACAB is not tolerated in some countries, particularly at football grounds.

    funny how stuff comes around
    ACAB* has always been acknowledged in the black community. Society only just come far enough where it allowed to be said. Read allowed as meaning not an automatic beating every single time.

    *As a group, as explained earlier
  • asher wrote: »
    When I was growing up ACAB was a white / right wing / skinhead thing. AIUI 1312 and ACAB is not tolerated in some countries, particularly at football grounds.

    What do striking miners, skinheads, football hooligans, and black people have in common? They have all, at various times, have viewed the police as the enemy.* If you view them as the enemy, then ACAB. AFAIK, number codes is pretty much a strictly fascist type thing.

    I'd argue that the football hooligans were almost completely in the wrong almost all the time (which is not to say that their treatment by police was always entirely above board either), and I'd argue that the police treatment of black people is generally wrong.
    amybo wrote: »
    I do not trust them to either want to do the right thing, nor be able to do the right thing.

    I think that's a fair point, and it's bigger than the racial issue. Like @amybo, I wouldn't trust the police to do the right thing if a black person was involved. I also wouldn't trust them to do the right thing when faced with someone who was mentally ill, or otherwise acting in an erratic way, because we've seen time and time again that the response of US cops to anything that doesn't behave the way they expect is to shoot it.

    *We're talking groups here. You can insert your "not all XXX" wherever it fits.


  • I was quite confused by All Cat Are Beautiful t-shirts for a while, till I became familiar with the acronym.
  • @lilbuddha

    I'm not sure whether your:

    'I hate the whole group, but not necessarily all individuals within the group'

    position is one you would accept from others when directed towards different groups.

    But I'm confident you will tell me I'm wrong!
  • Re the rookie officers at the murder of Mr. Floyd:

    They did speak up at the time, in the situation, but a superior officer dismissed their complaints. They did not physically intervene.

    "Duty to intervene: Floyd cops spoke up but didn’t step in" (AP News).

    Some excerpts:
    Added Andrew Scott, a former Boca Raton, Florida, police chief who testifies in use-of-force cases: “They’re suffering the effects of an organizational culture that doesn’t allow that or reward that behavior. The fraternity of law enforcement is a tight fraternity and fraternities have a group think.”
    (...) both were on just their fourth day as full-fledged cops at the time of Floyd’s May 25 arrest, while Chauvin was an authority figure as a designated training officer for new cops.
    Departments often don’t reward officers for interfering with their colleagues or reporting that they broke policy, Scott said. And officers who do intervene risk being ostracized by their fellow officers and branded as an informer in the ranks.

    “In law enforcement, if you’re considered an individual who can’t be trusted, you’re not going to have the timely back-up from other officers,” Scott said. “That’s a legitimate fear factor.”


    FWIW.
  • contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    This is hardly fair. White suspects are often brought in alive. Just not those of color.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    This is hardly fair. White suspects are often brought in alive. Just not those of color.
    Just to clarify, the suspect in this case is reportedly Sri Lankan, so not white. Also a Muslim. How common would it be for a Muslim of color who discharges a firearm in the vicinity of police in the US to be brought in alive?
  • Before @asher can get any further, Sgt Ratana was an officer in the Metropolitan police force, which has literally the worst reputation for racism, violence and corruption in the entire UK. He was close to retirement, so has absolutely seen some things, and tolerated them at the least, because he'd know what happens to coppers who speak out. So let's not paint him as some paladin of justice. He was a police officer, within a force that has been labelled by a senior judge as institutionally racist - he may have been a fair and decent man, doing the best he could within the system, but until police officers as a group start rooting out the bad apples from the barrel, the whole crop is rotten.

    Obviously, he didn't deserve to die - let alone through an act of utter and complete negligence by one (or most likely several) of his fellow officers. That the suspect was able to shoot someone with a firearm he should never have had, and then shoot himself, while handcuffed, with his hands behind his back, is a gross dereliction of duty by the Met. Suspects don't deserve to die either.

    Asher's unspoken point is that we're the first ones to point our fingers at the police when they murder a black person. But what happens when someone murders a non-white police officer? Alan cogently points out that the police aren't supposed to go around murdering people, let alone especially targeting black people. While criminals do sometimes kill police officers.

    So, false equivalence.
  • Hmmm...ISTM that shooting yourself, while your hands are cuffed behind your back, is a trick Houdini and his escape-artist colleagues might pull off. But unless the suspect is hyper-mobile or double-jointed, it sounds to me like someone else shot him.

    YMMV.
  • asher wrote: »
    @lilbuddha

    I'm not sure whether your:

    'I hate the whole group, but not necessarily all individuals within the group'

    position is one you would accept from others when directed towards different groups.

    But I'm confident you will tell me I'm wrong!
    Jesus, this is stupid.
    Of course you are wrong, it is a category error.
    Black is something one is, a cop is something one chooses to be.
    Being black does not come with implicit behaviour, being a cop does. Cops stand as a group to protect other cops no matter what the cop is accused of, no matter the situation.
  • Hmmm...again. I didn't see any links on the thread about Sgt. Ratana's death. So I did a Duck Duck Go search, and wound up reading "Matiu Ratana: CCTV captured fatal shooting of police officer shot dead in Croydon custody centre as suspect remains in critical condition." (Evening Standard)

    Details of what's said to have happened start about 2/3 of the way down the page. There are pictures, too, though I didn't switch on security permissions for them, so I haven't seen them.

    And what's a "custody suite"? A basic cell? Or some sort of lesser holding place to get a suspect calmed, and fill out all the paperwork?
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    And what's a "custody suite"? A basic cell? Or some sort of lesser holding place to get a suspect calmed, and fill out all the paperwork?

    AIUI, the secure part of the police station - so the cells, but also the processing area etc. It seems as though the shooting happened in the secure processing area as officers were about to search the suspect prior to putting him in a cell.

    So somehow he had a concealed gun that was not discovered when he was arrested, and was able to access that gun whilst handcuffed.
  • A custody suite is a secure area where the prisoner has their personal items logged and bagged, belts and shoelaces removed, confirmation of name, address, the offence they were arrested for, and any other details - phone call, lawyers, vulnerable suspect, do they need a doctor, etc.

    The suspect will absolutely have been searched on arrest - it is routine, and more than a simple 'bored at an airport' pat down. Or at least, it should be.
  • Thx re custody suite explanations.

    {Thinking out loud.} Odd. The article says they had him in the suite, and were preparing to search him with a metal detector. Unless they were only concerned that he might have swallowed something metallic, ISTM odd not to check him before taking him to the station. If the squad car had no metal detector, then a thorough pat-down. There are only so many places on a body to stash objects. If he stuck his gun in the back of his underwear, it would easily be found. A small pistol might be actually stashed *in* his backside and possibly missed in a pat-down. But I would think that would cause great trouble moving. And that it would be nearly impossible to reach in there when handcuffed.

    I can almost imagine Sgt. Ratana coming up behind him; the suspect feeling Ratana's waist-level (?) gun holder pressed up against him; the suspect maneuvering to get the gun; and, in the process, accidentally shooting Ratana and himself. Add in Ratana or another officer possibly wrestling for the gun.

    The article says no police guns were used. If that's accurate, maybe one of the officers had a non-police gun stashed in their uniform, and the suspect found it?

    The only other thing I can thin of is if the gun had somehow been stashed in the back seat of the car, and the suspect found it. The cops could've searched him before putting him in the car, and they wouldn't have known about anything he picked up *after* that. Until they got him to the station.

    FWIW, YMMV.
  • A non-police gun? Have you any idea how hard it would be to obtain a handgun in the UK? It would involve making contact with the criminal underworld, and if discovered a significant prison sentence.

    It's vanishingly unlikely. And that's from someone very critical of the police.
  • I do wonder whether the protocols around Covid, might have buggered up the search process. As in maybe they’d have needed to do a Covid triage before a search or something similar ?
  • I also note how very rare this sort of thing is:
    Sgt Ratana is the eighth police officer in the UK to be shot dead in the last 20 years and the first to be murdered by a firearm in the line of duty since Pcs Fiona Bone, 32, and Nicola Hughes, 23, in September 2012.

    The Met sergeant is the 17th from the force to be killed by a firearm since the end of the Second World War, according to the National Police Memorial roll of honour.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    contra the common US experience, the suspect is still alive, though in hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    This is hardly fair. White suspects are often brought in alive. Just not those of color.
    Just to clarify, the suspect in this case is reportedly Sri Lankan, so not white. Also a Muslim. How common would it be for a Muslim of color who discharges a firearm in the vicinity of police in the US to be brought in alive?

    Not very, to be sure.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    I can almost imagine Sgt. Ratana coming up behind him; the suspect feeling Ratana's waist-level (?) gun holder pressed up against him
    Unless I'm completely mistaken UK police officers would not be carrying guns in that kind of situation. Police officers AIUI need to sign guns out with authorisation from senior officers and it is not done routinely.

  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Golden Key wrote: »
    I can almost imagine Sgt. Ratana coming up behind him; the suspect feeling Ratana's waist-level (?) gun holder pressed up against him
    Unless I'm completely mistaken UK police officers would not be carrying guns in that kind of situation. Police officers AIUI need to sign guns out with authorisation from senior officers and it is not done routinely.

    You are not mistaken. Sgt Ratana was the custody sergeant. There are no circumstances in which he would be wearing a gun.

    Agree with those who suggest that the inquiry is going to be looking rather closely at the initial search of the suspect. My best guess is that he had it in his waistband in the small of his back, and the initial frisk missed it, which also explains why he could reach it whilst handcuffed. But that's speculation.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    "All cops are bastards" is the kind of bullshit that led someone to gun down police in Dallas - a city with a black chief of police and with a demonstrable improvement in police interactions with the community - following the deaths of black people at the hands of police in other parts of America in 2016.

    You have thousands upon thousands of police forces in the USA. Assuming that they're all exactly the same as each other is just idiocy. And yet people constantly talk as if all those police forces are exactly alike, never mind all those individual police.

    Seriously, we've got people here happily talking about how all police are bastards for working in "the system" - there isn't a fucking system you morons. There are an endless hodgepodge of hopelessly uncoordinated systems, and holding a policeman in a county in California accountable for something that happened in Pennsylvania makes about as much fucking sense as constantly telling Muslims they need to stop terrorism.

    We've got a world where people think that marching down the street halfway around the fucking world is supposed to influence events. No. What you can influence is your sphere. Your city. Your community. You can engage with your local police force. You can reform it. But fucking find out whether it actually needs reform first, and stop assuming that because the way the police somewhere else is demonstrably shit then you just transfer all that shit onto all police everywhere as some undifferentiated mass - in exactly the same way that police are blamed for treating people of colour as some undifferentiated mass.

    We've got a thread elsewhere about what's politics and what's wrong with it. I'll tell you what's fucking wrong with it. People spend their entire fucking time engaging in debates about other parts of the world and do fucking NOTHING to actually get involved on the ground in finding out how their own part of the world is working. And then go and make absurdly wild generalisations.

    You think all cops are bastards? Go and tell your local police chief and the people that local police chief are answerable too. Provide evidence about THEIR police being bastards. Not some cops who aren't in any way part of the same organisational structure. For fuck's sake.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Golden Key wrote: »
    I can almost imagine Sgt. Ratana coming up behind him; the suspect feeling Ratana's waist-level (?) gun holder pressed up against him
    Unless I'm completely mistaken UK police officers would not be carrying guns in that kind of situation. Police officers AIUI need to sign guns out with authorisation from senior officers and it is not done routinely.

    You are not mistaken. Sgt Ratana was the custody sergeant. There are no circumstances in which he would be wearing a gun.
    And, likewise, no other police officer present would have been carrying a gun. It's quite likely that none of them were specialist officers - the relatively small number of Met Police officers (it's less than 2,500 officers - including those tasked with diplomatic protection and working at Parliament, Downing Street etc) who have undergone the rigorous training needed to be issued with a firearm would be a valuable resource that wouldn't be deployed in such circumstances - the reports I've seen have said the suspect was arrested after a routine stop and search by regular police officers, so there wouldn't have been police firearms deployed then either. Even if an authorised firearms officer was involved in the arrest or otherwise present in the custody area they wouldn't have had their gun on them, that would have been secured elsewhere.
  • Not the best source, this is from the Daily Mail:
    They searched the suspect after he was seen behaving strangely before handcuffing him and driving him to the police station.

    Sergeant Ratana - who has a 26-year-old son from a previous relationship - was about to search the handcuffed suspect with a metal detector in a Covid screening cell when the man produced a revolver that he had stuffed down his trousers.

    The 23-year-old fired the gun with his hands still handcuffed behind his back hitting the veteran officer allegedly several times in the heart at point-blank range.

    In the ensuing chaos the attacker's weapon went off again, wounding him in his neck, but he remains alive in a critical condition. The suspect is believed to be autistic and of Sri Lankan origin, according to The Times.
  • @Orfeo, until limited immunity is overturned, all American cops are the same inasmuch as it is excruciatingly difficult bordering on impossible to hold them accountable for anything they do in the line of duty.

    Further I have yet to hear of a police department with any kind of whistleblower protection, where bad cops are rooted out based on complaints, and not reinstated under pressure from the "union".

    Multiple jurisdictions blah blah blah is all well and good. But the union is everywhere, and limited immunity is either everywhere or damn near, and whistleblowers getting fired is everywhere. But I don't know, why do YOU think Americans don't trust their police?
  • Police officers in my jurisdiction who are corrupt get taken down by members of the public making complaints about them. Not, interestingly, by other police officers making complaints about them.

    While they might just be very careful in their wrongdoing, a recent case involved having sex with a vulnerable witness in the police station itself. Not once, but twice. I'm going to suggest that the officer's colleagues knew, and not only did nothing about it, but also covered for him. While the officer in question is clearly a bastard - that doesn't let the rest of the station off the hook. Might they also be bastards because they let it go on?

    And this pattern is repeated, over and over again. It's a lot more difficult for them to access the police computers to find out information about members of the public now, because each request is logged - but it still happens. Evidence disappears, CCTV footage is wiped, bodycam files are deleted, suspects and witnesses harassed and intimidated. It's more than the action of one rogue officer. It's allowed to go on by the majority (vast majority/everyone) of other officers deliberately looking the other way.

    Whatever else you feel about the police force, the job they do, the risks they face, the public have to have confidence that officers will act fairly. Once that that confidence is gone (and largely, it has), all that's left is fear. And it's not the public's fault - this is entirely down to the police, collectively, not having their shit together.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    "All cops are bastards" is the kind of bullshit that led someone to gun down police in Dallas - a city with a black chief of police and with a demonstrable improvement in police interactions with the community - following the deaths of black people at the hands of police in other parts of America in 2016.

    You have thousands upon thousands of police forces in the USA. Assuming that they're all exactly the same as each other is just idiocy. And yet people constantly talk as if all those police forces are exactly alike, never mind all those individual police.

    Seriously, we've got people here happily talking about how all police are bastards for working in "the system" - there isn't a fucking system you morons. There are an endless hodgepodge of hopelessly uncoordinated systems, and holding a policeman in a county in California accountable for something that happened in Pennsylvania makes about as much fucking sense as constantly telling Muslims they need to stop terrorism.

    We've got a world where people think that marching down the street halfway around the fucking world is supposed to influence events. No. What you can influence is your sphere. Your city. Your community. You can engage with your local police force. You can reform it. But fucking find out whether it actually needs reform first, and stop assuming that because the way the police somewhere else is demonstrably shit then you just transfer all that shit onto all police everywhere as some undifferentiated mass - in exactly the same way that police are blamed for treating people of colour as some undifferentiated mass.

    We've got a thread elsewhere about what's politics and what's wrong with it. I'll tell you what's fucking wrong with it. People spend their entire fucking time engaging in debates about other parts of the world and do fucking NOTHING to actually get involved on the ground in finding out how their own part of the world is working. And then go and make absurdly wild generalisations.

    You think all cops are bastards? Go and tell your local police chief and the people that local police chief are answerable too. Provide evidence about THEIR police being bastards. Not some cops who aren't in any way part of the same organisational structure. For fuck's sake.
    Would you fucking use your brain for a mother-fucking second?

    Only an idiot thinks Islamophobia is the equivalent of characterising a profession.
    Catamotherfuckinggory error.

    If there is not a commonality in how police behave, then why the fuck are millions of people across multiple continents and countries gathering to protest the SAME. FUCKING. THING? Why are there examples EVERYWHERE of the same abuses, covered up and ignored by the police? Why are there so few police officers willing to stand against the cops who directly commit these violations?

    I guess it is just the crazy yoofs, having their mad fun getting beaten, tear-gassed and run into by police vehicles for no damn reason.

    Fucking hell.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Why are there examples EVERYWHERE of the same abuses, covered up and ignored by the police? Why are there so few police officers willing to stand against the cops who directly commit these violations?

    Why do you think cops are somehow special in this regard? Aravis just posted an example on another thread of therapists doing exactly the same thing - closing ranks to try to conceal wrongdoing. Cops have more power over us than therapists or shop assistants, and so bad behaviour by cops causes much more harm. But as far as I can see, cabals close ranks everywhere.
  • While this is true, pretty certain that I'm not going to get teargassed by a bunch of teachers or accountants.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    "All cops are bastards" is the kind of bullshit that led someone to gun down police in Dallas - a city with a black chief of police and with a demonstrable improvement in police interactions with the community - following the deaths of black people at the hands of police in other parts of America in 2016.

    You have thousands upon thousands of police forces in the USA. Assuming that they're all exactly the same as each other is just idiocy. And yet people constantly talk as if all those police forces are exactly alike, never mind all those individual police.

    Seriously, we've got people here happily talking about how all police are bastards for working in "the system" - there isn't a fucking system you morons. There are an endless hodgepodge of hopelessly uncoordinated systems, and holding a policeman in a county in California accountable for something that happened in Pennsylvania makes about as much fucking sense as constantly telling Muslims they need to stop terrorism.

    We've got a world where people think that marching down the street halfway around the fucking world is supposed to influence events. No. What you can influence is your sphere. Your city. Your community. You can engage with your local police force. You can reform it. But fucking find out whether it actually needs reform first, and stop assuming that because the way the police somewhere else is demonstrably shit then you just transfer all that shit onto all police everywhere as some undifferentiated mass - in exactly the same way that police are blamed for treating people of colour as some undifferentiated mass.

    We've got a thread elsewhere about what's politics and what's wrong with it. I'll tell you what's fucking wrong with it. People spend their entire fucking time engaging in debates about other parts of the world and do fucking NOTHING to actually get involved on the ground in finding out how their own part of the world is working. And then go and make absurdly wild generalisations.

    You think all cops are bastards? Go and tell your local police chief and the people that local police chief are answerable too. Provide evidence about THEIR police being bastards. Not some cops who aren't in any way part of the same organisational structure. For fuck's sake.

    From Letter from a Birmingham jail:
    But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

    I mean, really, this is a shit argument, bro.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    While this is true, pretty certain that I'm not going to get teargassed by a bunch of teachers or accountants.
    Teachers and accountants are also not official arms of the government. They are not protected by the government in the way that police are.

    And they cannot kill people with relative impunity.

    That last bit might be important to some people. You know, the ignorant whinger types.
  • Given the incestuous relationship between the four major UK accountancy firms, other large financial institutions, and government, I'm not sure I'd be so quick to say the police are more protected by government or get more people killed with impunity.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Before @asher can get any further, Sgt Ratana was an officer in the Metropolitan police force, which has literally the worst reputation for racism, violence and corruption in the entire UK. He was close to retirement, so has absolutely seen some things, and tolerated them at the least, because he'd know what happens to coppers who speak out. So let's not paint him as some paladin of justice. He was a police officer, within a force that has been labelled by a senior judge as institutionally racist - he may have been a fair and decent man, doing the best he could within the system, but until police officers as a group start rooting out the bad apples from the barrel, the whole crop is rotten.

    Obviously, he didn't deserve to die - let alone through an act of utter and complete negligence by one (or most likely several) of his fellow officers. That the suspect was able to shoot someone with a firearm he should never have had, and then shoot himself, while handcuffed, with his hands behind his back, is a gross dereliction of duty by the Met. Suspects don't deserve to die either.

    Asher's unspoken point is that we're the first ones to point our fingers at the police when they murder a black person. But what happens when someone murders a non-white police officer? Alan cogently points out that the police aren't supposed to go around murdering people, let alone especially targeting black people. While criminals do sometimes kill police officers.

    So, false equivalence.

    Your first paragraph seeks to denigrate the character of a murdered police officer based on significant structural and cultural racism and other failings within the organization he worked for. I see this move as problematic, as it is not based on any assessment of the actions and conduct of the individual concerned.

    The analogy that comes to my mind would be denigrate the character of all clergy in Chichester, based on the very large cluster of paedophile priests that flourished in that diocese, and the associated significant institutional failings. Or to denigrate the character of all labour supporters based on the apparently significant anti-semitism that Corbyn apparently failed to tackle.

    You make reference to my ‘unspoken point’. If it is unspoken, then I didn’t make it. You made it.

    If I have any point here, it might be my disgust at hate speech* directed towards all police on this thread.

    And the idea that saying ‘all teachers are bastards’ + ‘Asher is a teacher’ is not equivalent to saying ‘Asher is a bastard’. Well I don’t think stands up at all.

    In the week that Matui Ratana was murdered, to read people write ACAB made me want to vomit.

    So yeah, disgust is my point here.

    Asher

    (* the anti defamation league catagorise ACAB as a ‘hate symbol’)
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Given the incestuous relationship between the four major UK accountancy firms, other large financial institutions, and government, I'm not sure I'd be so quick to say the police are more protected by government or get more people killed with impunity.
    Finance is tied to government and the financial system has been indirectly responsible for privation and death.
    But individual members of financial institutions are often sacrificed to protect the institution and they cannot directly kill people.
    Financial institutions need to at least pretend. Police don't.

    Accountants are not financial institutions in the way police are the law.
Sign In or Register to comment.