Falcon Heights Shooting

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Wampa said:
I live in Minneapolis and grew up a few miles from this intersection.

My apologies if my point has been mentioned already (several posters in this thread are on my Ignore list). I don’t know why this information is not being reported nationally (at least that I have seen), but local stations here are reporting that they pulled him over because they thought he looked like a suspect in a recent, nearby robbery being investigated by the St. Anthony police. You can hear the police scanner audio at: kare11.com/news/police-scanner-audio-1/267042738.

I’m not saying that justifies the shooting at all, but my point is that to immediately conclude racism is the cause before the facts are in, as some CAF posters have and as my governor has, just inflames the situation.

It seems they approached the car thinking they were dealing with a robbery suspect, learned he had a gun, and reacted when he reached for his wallet. That makes logical sense, as heartbreaking as the result is. Isn’t that more logical than concluding that the officer, a minority himself (Latino), was doing a routine traffic stop for an insignificant reason and escalated to this result due to racism?

Our country is so divided and it seems that too many are ready to fit news events into their ready-made narrative. I don’t see how this goes anywhere but spiraling downward. As I saw a commentator on CNN say, we seem to be in a vicious cycle where the two sides (pro-blue and pro-BLM) can no longer empathize with each others’ legitimate fears. Sadly, I see more events like Dallas and Tennessee coming. I fear for our country.
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See that’s part of the problem. Did you hear WHY they thought he was a robbery suspect? Because he was black with a wide nose. It really doesn’t make any logical sense for them to conclude that just because he’s black that he’s a robbery suspect, which was the only motivation they had for stopping him, and which is very much racially based and even arguably racist.

And even IF he’d been a robbery suspect, they asked him to get his ID, which he was apparently doing when they shot him. Compliance in this case cost him his life because of the racially based assumption you’re claiming this cop was making that he was a robbery suspect.
 
Padres1969 said:
Some officers aren’t trained properly, and some are just racist.

Radio transcripts from just before the Falcon Heights shooting are pretty damning of the police and this particular officer’s thinking. He stopped him not because of the tail light, but because he thought he looked like a robbery suspect because he had a “wide set nose”.
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I just listened to the audio. I am curious if the robbery suspects he was looking for were a man and a woman. The officer sure seems focused only on the one, with no comment about whether the woman matched any description. I keep reminding myself that we have not heard yet (except for this audio) any physical recording of what transpired that led to the shooting. This incident is so heart-breaking it will take an act of will to allow the justice system to operate, but that is what the President encouraged all Americans to do.
 
Padres1969 said:
Despicable. The man shot was legally carrying, exercising his second amendment rights, and was shot complying with police orders… And where is the gun nut outrage? There is none, because he’s black. :mad:
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Is the Second Amendment Foundation “Gun Nutty” enough for you?
saf.org/saf-ccrkba-call-for-independent-probe-of-fatal-shooting-of-legally-armed-citizen/

You jumping to conclusions and saying second amendment advocates are not outraged because the man is black is despicable. Shame on you.
 
Padres1969 said:
See that’s part of the problem. Did you hear WHY they thought he was a robbery suspect? Because he was black with a wide nose. It really doesn’t make any logical sense for them to conclude that just because he’s black that he’s a robbery suspect, which was the only motivation they had for stopping him, and which is very much racially based and even arguably racist.

And even IF he’d been a robbery suspect, they asked him to get his ID, which he was apparently doing when they shot him. Compliance in this case cost him his life because of the racially based assumption you’re claiming this cop was making that he was a robbery suspect.
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It has been confirmed that the cop pulled the car over because he thought the guy was robbery suspect, and the reason for that suspicion was because of his wide set nose, according the police radio dispatch.

theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/confirmed-philando-castile-was-an-armed-robbery-suspect-false-media-narrative-now-driving-cop-killings/
 
If this wasn’t a case of racism, it’s a case of how terrible policemen are in this country IMO. Okay, not all, but we have too many cases where policemen accidentally kill someone. He was in a car with a woman and a little girl. Everyone was calm until shots were fired.

5 shots is way tooooo much. The police did not immediately call for medical help when it became obvious that the man did no harm. The woman was filming, she clearly was not being a threat, but he stood there like a fool.

They then took the mother and the child away, kept them till 5am with no food or water, seperated them and according to her, blame it on her boyfriend/her.

Maybe I’m just too shocked because in my country, if you fire one extra shot that was not needed, you are immediately in trouble. And if you were to shoot, it should not be a fatal shot. And you are only to shoot if the situation becomes too dangerous, they are supposed to use tasers, batons first.

The police needs to solve this problem first theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/08/fbi-chief-says-ridiculous-guardian-washington-post-better-inform so that it is difficult for corrupt cops to get away, discipline needs to put in place for cops that are unnecessarily rude or violent (I just saw an video of a cop threatening a black man that he will put a round of bullets in the guy’s “a**hole” , another video of a female cop yelling at a black man rudely because he asked if he was detained or whether he could go).

We need to stand up against negative stereotypes of ALL RACES, including whites, asians, etc. We can’t really make people right now to stop being racist, but these people are going to die and our kids are going to replace them. Teach your kids the right values.

The government needs to step up too. There are members of the KKK going around and whining about how God declared that whites are better than blacks. There are cases of black men being hanged recently but it’s dismissed as suicide with little investigation. They are giving Christianity a bad name. I don’t know if there is a law here about this but in my country, if someone is being very outspoken about how he or she is racist/insulting a religion, the person can go to jail/be fined. A lot of Americans think that’s too strict but I don’t because it keeps us all safe IMO. It encourages people to not be hateful…

If we focus too much on police brutality it could encourage cops to reform but it doesn’t get rid of people hating all cops, so I feel like the focus should be on battling racism as a whole. It would take forever to work but teaching our kids to be decent people will eventually help.

It also does not hurt to be open minded. Racism is a real issue so as cops not being respected properly. Both are not contradictory!
 
Padres1969 said:
Shame on them. Have you seen the NRA response?
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As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.“The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing. Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
 
Lea101 said:
If this wasn’t a case of racism, it’s a case of how terrible policemen are in this country IMO. !
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No. Absolutely not. We must not think like this. This is the beginning of bigotry. What it would be is a case of how terrible this police officer is. No more. Bear in mind that any attempt to generalize from one person to the whole also justifies the generalization of how violent and dangerous black people are in America, based on the sniper in Dallas; or how dangerous Muslims are based on terror attacks. From here we can include priests, foreigners, Mexicans, etc.

I wonder if the protesters realize that others using their same reasoning could now be justified in marching against violence** by **black men. The Golden Rule is always a good diagnostic tool of whether we are on track.
 
estesbob said:
As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.“The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing. Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
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I’m not much of a fan of the NRA and I’ve certainly never said this before about them, but that might be the most reasonable response to this tragedy that I’ve seen.
 
pnewton said:
No. Absolutely not. We must not think like this. This is the beginning of bigotry. What it would be is a case of how terrible this police officer is. No more. Bear in mind that any attempt to generalize from one person to the whole also justifies the generalization of how violent and dangerous black people are in America, based on the sniper in Dallas; or how dangerous Muslims are based on terror attacks. From here we can include priests, foreigners, Mexicans, etc.

I wonder if the protesters realize that others using their same reasoning could now be justified in marching against violence** by **black men. The Golden Rule is always a good diagnostic tool of whether we are on track.
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The problem with both of these scenarios is that there are people that insist that criticism of even the most obvious wrong doing of a police officer or department makes you “anti-cop”, just as pointing out that a black person may have been committing a crime makes you a “racist”. We all need to get over that nonsense. Reasonable people do not disregard all factual evidence of how an incident occurred in order to support or demonize the party on “their side”.
 
Allegra said:
The problem with both of these scenarios is that there are people that insist that criticism of even the most obvious wrong doing of a police officer or department makes you “anti-cop”, just as pointing out that a black person may have been committing a crime makes you a “racist”. We all need to get over that nonsense. Reasonable people do not disregard all factual evidence of how an incident occurred in order to support or demonize the party on “their side”.
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You are right, of course. However, for me, it is not the criticism, but the presumption of guilt. It is discouraging to hear the word “murder” being used on day one in cases where clearly we know little.
 
Padres1969 said:
Shame on them. Have you seen the NRA response?
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Who is them? Second Amendment foundation?

I Saw this Tweet from the NRA

twitter.com/NRA/status/751501317844107266/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

You seem to have a problem with response not being immediate. God forbid someone wait until some more facts are known before they respond. We cant all immediately say the Police acted stupidly before facts are known like the president has done in the past.

It certainly looks bad for the police officer from what is known but convicting anyone before they get a trial is not what should be done.
 
pnewton said:
You are right, of course. However, for me, it is not the criticism, but the presumption of guilt. It is discouraging to hear the word “murder” being used on day one in cases where clearly we know little.
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There’s too much rhetoric on all sides. To some, even calling the officer’s actions into question at all is the same as being complacent in the orphaning of all police officer’s children.
 
XndrK said:
I bet I could make a lot of money selling a dashcam app.
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There are dashboard cams that film in both directions. There are some that have WiFi so that they can copy video from the camera to one’s phone. Continuous backup is a challenge though since that requires a data connection. Video burns through data quickly.
 
Allegra said:
There isn’t any reason to believe that he actually was the robber. The officer felt he had a similar nose. He became a suspect because of the shape of his nose. For that reason, he deserved to be shot?
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No but that’s reason that he was stopped
 
It’s very possible that this cop would be brought to justice through the court in due time, but the media and some parties had to hype up the story so much to paint a picture that cops routinely kill blacks simply because they are black. The rhetoric is so incendiary that even innocent cops getting kills by a black sniper can be seen as justified.
 
Bearing a resemblance to a suspect is usually acceptable probable cause to pull someone over. Happens all the time. We never hear about it because it mostly doesn’t result in something bad happening. This one didn’t go off the rails until the officer panicked.
 
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