I see right wing media focusing on the looters rather than the fact that a mentally ill man armed with only a knife was shot multiple times when, having guns, the police officers on the scene could have taken a bit more time, called for back-up, or found some non-lethal means to subdue the young man.Protesters took to the streets for a second night after officers in Philadelphia shot and killed a Black man who was holding a knife in an encounter city officials say raises questions https://t.co/lHvUfovmkE
— CNN (@CNN) October 28, 2020
If he had to be shot--why not once? Why multiple times? He was killed in front of his mom and people on his block who knew him. No one is congratulating anybody for the looting and vandalism or considering that activity to be great activism--but you can't look at one incident and think you get what the whole dynamic of an area is.
You can't look at the aftermath and decide that the incident itself was suddenly redeemed because of the response.
The entire city isn't being "destroyed". We'll still be here. Riots and looting look bad, there's broken glass and strewn merchandise and things look ugly. There are injuries and conflicts. But it's remediable. Sure. It looks bad.
Having a police department that scares the shit out of its citizens is also bad though. The looters and rioters don't represent all of the people here, but I watched several city blocks burn on my tv when I was a kid and realized why some people didn't love cops. Many families here have at least some personal knowledge of brutality or police misconduct. Without respect or a good community relationship, though, how are things supposed to be? When law and order means law for some and order (violently imposed if need be, or even if it doesn't need to be) for others? I don't think it does police any good for things to continue as they are either.
Beautiful things also happen in Philadelphia, and our problems are not about what party our mayor or our governor belong to--they go deeper and have a lot of history. Viewing this incident solely through a partisan lens, like calling looters "Biden's base" or whatever, dismisses the reality that this isn't what any of us want, it's just what is happening right now. In an America where Trump, who is pro-police brutality, happens to be president.
Trump's original comment that "bad things happen in Philadelphia" was about, in all honestly, lying about voting here, in order to (further) suppress voting. But I feel like he might seize an unfortunate opportunity to lie about us some more.
There is a bad dynamic in here also that I think is being encouraged--but Philadelphia is bigger than this mess. We are (despite what Boston thinks) the cradle of liberty.
This city is not here to be disrespected.
3 comments:
They don't teach cops in cop school these day's how to disarm a knife wielding assailant?
That's chickenshit.
I don't know if they do--my dad showed me how he was shown to do it in the Marines (but that was the marines, and 50 years ago). One of my neighbors is a cop, and she explained she does have to side with her co-workers in that they felt he was coming after them with the knife, but the amount of force is excessive. The thing this year is, we've had a high murder rate and multiple bad cop/citizen interactions, plus the pandemic plus "economic anxiety". There's just a fuck-ton of stress out there, and how the media portrays it is...not helpful at all.
Might be one of the first moves I learned as an LA street-kid fifty odd years ago, but the Army is where I really learned it. Trained, instinctive movement. There are several versions, my favorite the one that breaks the forearm, dislocates the wrist, elbow and shoulder and smashes the bridge of the nose three times with the back of your fist. Looking at the video it would have been simple enough to literally walk up to him, slap it away and roll him across your hip to the ground. He wasn't just mentally incapacitated, physically as well.
Unfortunately, then they would have had their knee on his neck.
This was a lynching.
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