Today in cops gone feral

I've been pulled over for expired tags ... I think several times, but I only remember the most recent. They were WAY expired, 5-6 months, I think. The cop had me pull over, then pulled up beside me, rolled down his passenger window and just shouted, "Come on man. Get that shit taken care of!"

I guess that's where race enters. He didn't run my plates. I didn't face the prospect of having a warrant show up, of getting hauled out of the car to get arrested, etc.

And if you go back a few steps further, maybe I got a wink and a stern talking to the last time, when this guy got the warrant that led, accident or not, to his death in this traffic stop.

Just trying to make sense of it all.

 

Heyman got roasted for jumping to this conclusion, but seeing as there have been no player quotes on this issue that I had seen, I believe the "guidance" the Twins and MLB were conferring on with local and state officials was the local and state officials saying they didn't want to devote security to protecting 5,000 people in one location and that there was going to be a curfew.

Conjecturing here, but I think the issue on the regional level is that Minneapolis-area police forces are simply out of strikes when it comes to killing people, whether it be out of incompetence or malice. I'm not an activist, but I can think of at least five fatal police killings in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro off the top of my head. (Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Justine Damond, George Floyd and this one).

 

You know when the cops should pull Guns on you? When you have an actual firearm -- not a hero sandwich, or a toy gun, or a water pistol, or a dildo -- and are threatening actual harm to someone. Not that they suspect they kinda think that maybe their lives might at some point be in danger and OMG I'm really scared. Not because the person they pulled over has warrants, or an expired tag, or no insurance, or owe child support, or their dog ate their homework. And if you are OMG more scared pulling black people over compared to whites go get a job at AT&T with lily because you’re too fucked up to be a cop.

 

I don't think she meant to shoot him, but what she meant to do doesn't matter. Whether it was stupidity or malice, she still killed a guy.

Let's say even the confusion of chaos when things are crazy, the story about thinking the Glock was a taser doesn't hold up. For one, the Glock weighs three times what a taser does. Another is that the pistol is carried on your strong side, and tasers are cross draw.

 

This kid was born in the same month as my youngest child. I'm sure he was "no angel," and I'm sure there'll be plenty of people to jump up and assert that.

But he's dead. Dead because of an expired license plate.

FUCK THIS SHIT. Everything about this is wrong. It wears me out that it keeps happening, and it wears me out to hear people make excuses for dipshit cops.

And could Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz be more tone-deaf? "For those who choose to go out … to exploit these tragedies for destruction or personal gain, you can rest assured that the largest police presence in Minnesota history in coordination will be prepared," Walz said at a news conference Monday afternoon. Great, more cops. Might as well have just said, "Come outside after 7, you're gonna get shot."

Death penalty for an expired tag. "Accident." Like the cop in Dallas who shot the guy in his own damn home, "accidentally." She has an appeal coming up. She'll probably win. She'll end up with time served for murdering a guy in his own house in cold blood.

Fuck all this shit. Defund the police? Whatever, I don't care. Disarm them? Abso-goddamn-lutely.

 

I think the incident is more compelling from a “cops should not be able to use/have their guns for an expired tag traffic stop.” I’ve said before: If we’re going to have cops out doing this nickel and dime DMV enforcement work, no guns. you have to punch in a code or someone at dispatch have to unlock a compartment within your car to get your gun. That changes the entire nature of many stops. IMO, it would have changed this one.

 

Dude was shot and killed by tax collectors. Put that out there for these right-wing asshole cop defenders. They weren’t “protecting and serving.” They were attempting to collect a use tax. Wanna deify those cops now?

 

Someone I know well who spent some time as a public defender in Brooklyn Center sent me this message:

... cops there LOVE to stop any black male they can find, driving or walking.
This dead kid was stopped for tabs and dangling thingy on rearview ... there was no reason to stop the car. Cops know that the Department of Vehicle Services is months if not a year behind in issuing plates and paperwork and tabs...limited times to see DVS in person...due to covid. there should be a moratorium on stopping for tabs...I know this place and these cops ...

Sender of message is a white female in her 70s, btw.

 

I think one reasonable reform - and it has to be done town by town, prosecutor by prosecutor - is to remove, by and large, police enforcement from DMV-related tax issues. There’s a lot of things to do in this regard.

 

Remember a few years ago when cops in North Carolina shot a guy who was holding a book?

There was one idiot who said of the situation "If you're holding a book and a cop tells you to drop the gun, drop the book"

Perhaps if someone can't tell a book from a gun, they shouldn't be a cop.

 

When they pulled him over and ran the tag, the weapons charge warrant popped up. I presume that will be the justification given for why they escalated so quickly. But I think the larger point about seperating crime fighting from revenue collection is a valid one.

And what’s this shit about a citation for hanging an air freshener from the rear view? What a crock. If Republicans were representing the values they originally believed in instead of flying off to the moon on their conspiracy shit, getting rid of piddly ass nuisance laws like that would be a hell of a great argument for them to make.

 

National Guard deployed pre-emptively to prevent riots by what is largely expected to be a minority crowd. Wonder what the reaction would be if the crowd were largely white? Hmmm.