I can't seem to wrap my head around Furguson (Page 4)

I'm interested to hear what you all think the takeaway from this "movement" will be.

I'm getting some t-shirts printed.  "Don't infringe on my right to break the Law!"

HA!      Sometimes I wonder if that's not exactly what this is all about.

I worry that Police Officers will come out of this answering, "don't worry, we won't.....let's see how you like that". 

I often speculate about various scenarios, no matter how outlandish, just to exercise the imagination.

One of the more recent thoughts I have now is:  After Ferguson, and the 12-yr old getting shot, and the non-indictment of the NYC officer.  How many more of these questionable deaths have to occur before people have "had enough".

(disclaimer - I know the argument is if these are "questionable" or not.  Some say all are clearly justified, other say no.  Unfortunately, in all these cases, there is just enough "gray" in the case that it's not clear cut). 

Do you suppose it's just peaceful protests?  More riots?  War against cops?  All our race war and victimizing innocent people of the opposite race?

I guess I'm just speculating there is a "breaking point" and wonder when/what would get us there and what could happen after.

I would pray we could come to change with peaceful protests and communication, but often wonder if destruction may happen instead.  Remembering the Oakland riots and now Ferguson, it's not out of the question that it could happen again, maybe at a different scale.

I watch coverage and get scared that people may not just throw bottles or rocks at the police/natl guard.  What if some yahoo takes a shot?  Do we have another Kent State?  I pray people can keep their composure.

I have to say, I'm not loosing sleep or living scared, but have to admit, these are somewhat worrisome times and people are definitely on edge.

on the "had enough" front, I think it's important to keep things in proportion.  There are millions of police interactions every day of the year and there's approximately 1 police involved shooting death per month.  Of those police involved shootings, there's maybe one or two a year that are "questionable".

I'm not saying that the police shouldn't look for ways to make things safer for everyone because I know they do that every day.  However, I am not going to go out and ban the police from carrying guns (I know you're not suggesting that) or something stupid like that for a problem that's so astronomically small it almost doesn't exist.

The craziest thing to me is that the incident that requires the most attention, where the mistakes are so obviously glaring, and where the majority of police officers stand shaking their head when they see it......is the shooting of the 12 year old in Cleveland.  It's on the back burner it seems.....and I'm not sure I understand why.

But......you'd likely be surprised at how many of the protesters aren't there because of Garner or Brown.....they are actually members of the occupy movement, or other radical anti-establishment movements.  Their agenda has nothing to do with what I hear from many in the black community.  Many of them simply want anarchy and the destruction of our financial systems.

Damn.....you're more cynical about the "movement" than I am.

I'd say he's just realistic.  If there is a true movement to enact change then there will be a HUGE majority of people protesting said cause.  Yes, there are a lot of people protesting, but if you were to poll the american people I'm going to go out on a limb and say a huge majority support the GJ's decisions and police.

I know this much.......a 1000 man force couldn't eat all the food and drink that people have dropped off at our station the last few weeks.  The support for what we were doing was humbling.

As for the GJ decision in Michael Brown's case there have been some polls out.  It's pretty consistent that the majority of America (overall) feel that the shooting was justified, but the feelings in the African American community are completely opposite, in that they feel it was unjustified, or even worse that he was specifically targeted (or murdered) because he was black. 

I agree, that we cannot change if we don't acknowledge there's a problem however what is the problem that we need to acknowledge?  In the case of Michael Brown, we have a criminal individual whose life is in such ruin that he feels the need to not only rob a grocery store, but to also get into a physical altercation with the police.  That is absolutely a problem that needs to be acknowledged and changed, yet many people only want to focus on the police officer trying to do his job and prop up Brown as a poor kid just walking down the street.  /facepalm

I work a lot with kids and young adults in the inner city and there is so much hopelessness it's ridiculous and it has nothing to do with the color of ones skin.  It's not about being Black, White, or whatever nationality, it's about growing up in poverty.  These kids have grown up in mostly broken homes, with drugs, alcohol, and crime around them their whole life.  They have been told repeatedly that the world is against them and that there's this "huge divide" between the rich, the white, or the <insert group> to the point that they don't even try.  Even when they go out and try to get a job and fail it's all because of the "rich man" or "because I'm black" because that's what everyone tells them.
In today's world it has very little if anything to do with their skin color, it has to do with their employability and how they present themselves.  If an 18 year old kid can't make eye contact, shake a hand, bathe, or speak halfway normal English then she is going to have a very difficult time getting any meaningful job.  If a kid grows up with the whole world telling him that he can't succeed because he's black and everyone is against him what is his motivation to even try?
Yet, so many people like to focus on the "racist" business owners for not giving them the jobs versus the fact that the kids can't do the jobs or worse yet lack the basic integrity to even show up for the job in the first place.  Same thing with the police, there is an entire culture within the African American community that the police are out to "get us".  Even when there are blatant examples of laws being broken it doesn't matter.

I grew up in a very poor family and was surrounded by people with no hope.  Our whole world was about scamming the system and getting more entitlements from various groups.  Crime amongst my friends was an almost daily occurence, and I spent more than a few nights in jail as a teenager.  None of my friends went to college and more than half my extended family didn't even graduate High School because there was no reason to.  The world was against us "poor people", so why even try right.  I was a poor white kid and the negativity and pressure to stay poor was ridiculous.  When you throw in being a poor black kid, the internal negativity is even harder to get past, yet our politicians and supposed black leaders seem to want to do nothing more than build a greater divide and convince people that the problem is getting worse.

African American lives are valued every bit as much in America today and anyone who thinks otherwise is part of the problem IMHO.  Everyone keeps looking at the symptoms which is more and more minorities being arrested and roughed up, but they completely ignore that more and more people are becoming so hopeless and desperate that crime is their only out.
The police investigate suspicious and criminal behavior, they don't go shaking people down just because they're a certain color.  The problem is that you have neighborhoods that are predominately one race that are infested with hopeless people who resort to lives of crime.  It's simple math, it's not racism.
In Omaha we have two areas that are relatively rough parts of town.  One is primarily Black and the other is primarily Hispanic.  The Black neighborhood has a huge percentage of Black arrests and the Hispanic neighborhood has a huge percentage of Hispanic arrests.  One set of cops aren't anti-Hispanic and vis versa, it's all about the neighborhood demographics.

I'm sure LB can chime in, but the police look for suspicious/criminal behavior and investigate/question people based on that behavior.  If I'm carrying a bag of tools at 2:00 in the morning through a neighborhood that's had a lot of robberies I'm going to say there's a pretty good chance I'm going to get talked to by the police.  If I rob a store and then attack a police officer who tries to arrest me, I am absolutely going to get shot more times than not.  These behaviors are what lead to the police interaction, not my skin color.

There is no question that there are police shootings that are unjustified or accidental, but It is extremely rare in both cases.  For anyone of any race to sit back and be fearful of getting shot or for their children to get shot by the "out of control police" is just ridiculous.  It's yet another boogieman that people in power are using to control and segregate a population even more through fear.

I did a speech a few years back at a local university about the poverty problem in America which I feel is the real issue.  People like to tag race onto it, but the more I dig into it, the more I see it's poverty, employability, and ultimately hopelessness that's the problem.  Even prejudice is more a byproduct of how somebody carries themselves versus the color of their skin.  One of my close friends is an undercover DEA agent and he looks gnarly as all get out with long hair scraggly beard and goes days without bathing.  When he walks into a store it's very common for security people follow him around and question him frequently.  He's a military veteran, federal law enforcement agent, father of 2, well educated, great guy but when people look at him they think "loser" and treat him accordingly because of how he presents himself (intentionally, in his case).

I know I'm rambling along a bit and I personally have my share of issues with the police, but there is no out of control police problem when it comes to shootings.  There's most certainly not any evidence to support increased targeting against minorities that I've seen anywhere.

no worries.  I do agree with you on the Garner case about public opinion.  I think the GJ "technically" may have gotten it right, but watching the video it seemed a lot more wrong than the Brown case.  I do think that race still had nothing to do with the Garner case because he was breaking the law (albeit a minor stupid law) and refused to initially comply with police, so he wasn't specifically targeted and "killed" and there were other circumstances.

It's always tricky for me to dive into the numbers because it's so challenging to pick out trends with discrimination and "racism".  Using your company hiring example I find it very hard to use population percentages and correlate those to businesses because there are a lot of other factors in play.  For example, I have a company with 12 employees and in over five and a half years of business and hundreds of job applications I have yet to have a single even slightly qualified minority ever apply for a job opening.  Not a single one.
So, if you looked at my percentages based on 12 people (3 being women) it would be easy to conclude that I'm discriminating against minorities (by the numbers).  However, when you look at things like education level of various groups we see things like nationally  30% of Whites have a college degree (probably higher in Omaha) and 15% of African Americans and 13% of Latinos have a college degree it automatically skus the general population numbers by quite a bit.  So, even though almost 30% of people in Omaha are classified as Minorities there would be approximately 15% of those which works out to approximately 4.5% of the overall minority population in Omaha that have a college degree.  Then you break it down to technical degrees and other requirements the percentage is almost non-existent.  That being said, I have a hard time finding good people period but that's a whole other issue.  

I'm a huge civil rights guy and I can't stand the stupid stop and frisk policy, so I'm definitely with you there.  If you're not committing a crime, or exhibiting suspicious behaviors to lead someone to believe you're involved in a crime then you have the right to not be searched.
I am certainly not naive enough to think that there is zero racial profiling, but I still feel it's more of a profiling based on behavior/appearance (ie being poor) than it is the color of skin.  There's really no way to prove it unfortunately though.
When it comes to numbers, similar to above it's really hard to nail it down.  For example the stop and frisk percentages you gave are very compelling and make a lot of sense, however if I dig a little deeper and we determine that 45% of NYC is white, 25% is Black, and 28% Hispanic, but of the white only 14% live in poverty compared to nearly 20% of African Americans and 25% Hispanic.  We could go into education, family values,  and other metrics within those subsets, to break things down further,  but using just the poverty numbers about 6% of people living in poverty in NYC are white and 4% are Black, and 7% are Hispanic.  Not, that only poor people are profiled, but I'd say the percentage is very high compared to more well off people.  So, purely based on poverty rate I'd say 35% of people "frisked" should be white, 24% should be Black, and 50% should be Hispanic.
These numbers don't line up with the data you posted, but if you dig a little deeper into crime statistics for NYC the crimes committed by Blacks are far greater than Hispanics and Whites so you could easily sku the numbers even more:
http://libertyfight.com/2013/New_York_City_Crime_stats_based_on_race.html

So, if you multiply the percentages in that link to the percentages I came up with above, it doesn't seem too far out of line.  I know there is an argument that more Blacks targeted for crime equals more blacks convicted of crimes.  Based on my personal experience I feel that all poor people get jacked equally by our criminal justice system so erroneous charges get washed out.

I think you and I have grown up in times that have changed significantly.  For example when I was younger (I'm now 41) racism was a lot more common and people did get singled out or secluded based on their race.  So, I fully expect my minority peers to have been victims of racism at some point in their life.  I personally experienced being singled out because of my economic status which in many ways is similar to racism.  I had a crappy old car that barely ran as a teenager.  I was pulled over several times because of my crappy car, which I could argue was being "profiled" or "singled out", but I think it was more because I had a crappy car and couldn't afford to fix it.  lol.  However, if I had a nice car, I don't think I would have had those same issues.

I kind of chuckled about the tools example because NYC is vastly different than Omaha, NE.  That city never sleeps, so walking around with tools probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.  However, in my neighborhood there's zero people out at night, so heck I'd probably get stopped for just walking at 2:00AM not carrying anything.  Perhaps that's not a very good example overall.  

As with all things, I always try to take a big step back and look at root causes versus symptoms.  There's no question that there are a lot of symptoms out there.  There's no question that racism still exists (getting better every year) and profiling happens, but I get so frustrated when I see people pushing and even promoting racial divides for whatever purpose they want (anarchy, taxes, control, whatever).  It's such a complex issue that has no one easy fix, but I feel so passionately that it is employability, education, and hopelessness that is where most of it starts so that's where I focus all of my efforts.
It's so rewarding to see kids of any race to break the family cycle of poverty and work their way to not only graduate High School, but go to College.  I will spend the rest of my life battling in that area.  

I'm always curious, do people really expect change to come from these movements?  If people really did get fed up, can someone please explain to me what "Change" is going to happen?  

I just don't see anyway to mandate any change from this.  I truly believe that in both cases you will always have the chance that the exact same situation would elicit the same response.  And even if next time the GJ decides to prosecute, it will have no effect on how cops react if they feel threatened.  It is really hard to mandate reaction...

Tony - stop and frisk laws do not allow the police to stop you and search you for no reason.  In fact, as ruled in Terry v. Ohio, which is the case law for stop and frisk.....I can't frisk you unless I can articulate why I may think you have a weapon.  And then, I can't search you.....I can do a patdown of your outer clothing for a weapon and I'm not even allowed to manipulate anything I may feel....although I can certainly ask you what the object is. (you don't have to answer)

The problem with this "movement" and most of the conversation surrounding it?  Ignorance.  I don't know how we got to the point where the public doesn't really understand what the Police do/can do.  If I had to guess......I'd say cop show on TV.  Too bad, because they are not even close to what we actually do/can do/don't have to do.

A "frisk" is for weapons.....period.  The law does not allow a frisk for anything else.  I may be able to say I immediately recognized something as contraband which is why I conducted a further "search"....sometimes referred to as a "plain feel"....but I better have the experience and knowledge to back it up in court.  Those are pretty easily defeated without the proper background/training of the officer involved.

I'm not claiming I know anything about anyone else's experience. I usually think it's silly to post stuff just because you agree with it. But here I go....

With the turn in conversation.... the truth is it is both. Yes, there is bias. Yes, the cause is not solely whiteys fault. Even Garner's wife said on Face the Nation she does not think race had anything to do with her husband's death. 

Good video

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT2v64Ykxc0

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Nice to know I'm not that far off on the subject. Wiki does wonders for Terry Stops and Requirements to ID case law.