Why Baltimore Burns...

[Stuart G]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026580215
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It is my opinion that the Baltimore police are totally responsible for why their city burns..This thread by Ichingcarpenter from yesterday, highlights what the cops did to many people. Those who went through this are hurt and very mad in my opinion. So now there are riots. Guess who is getting back at the city for how the city treated them?? It ain't rocket science is it ?
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Ichingcarpenter (33,373 posts)

Freddie Gray not the first to come out of Baltimore police van with serious injuries

But Gray is not the first person to come out of a Baltimore police wagon with serious injuries.

Relatives of Dondi Johnson Sr., who was left a paraplegic after a 2005 police van ride, won a $7.4 million verdict against police officers. A year earlier, Jeffrey Alston was awarded $39 million by a jury after he became paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a van ride. Others have also received payouts after filing lawsuits.


For some, such injuries have been inflicted by what is known as a "rough ride" — an "unsanctioned technique" in which police vans are driven to cause "injury or pain" to unbuckled, handcuffed detainees, former city police officer Charles J. Key testified as an expert five years ago in a lawsuit over Johnson's subsequent death.



Christine Abbott, a 27-year-old assistant librarian at the Johns Hopkins University, is suing city officers in federal court, alleging that she got such a ride in 2012. According to the suit, officers cuffed Abbott's hands behind her back, threw her into a police van, left her unbuckled and "maniacally drove" her to the Northern District police station, "tossing around the interior of the police van."
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Note: in the third paragraph above, the highlighted sentence says that a former city cop testified that this went on five years ago!!!!!
How long has this been going on, why? who? How did this start, and why didn't it stop? When did it start?

[Oktober]

1. The lengths folks will go to to justify criminal behavior...

... is astonishing to me.

Property violence is justified... check...

Personal violence against the police? The general population? White people?

Where is your line and when will it be crossed?

[Stuart G]

2. There is no justification for criminal violence..Just an explanation, clear and simple. Why?

The rioters are probably those criminals who got the so called "rough ride".. It wasn't fair and it was torture. So that torture burns into their minds hatred for the city..So a riot starts..and guess who takes part, angry, fucken mad people. As I said, it ain't rocket science..........

[GeorgeGist]

6. It certainly is ...

[Oktober]

7. What's your point?

Evil shit has happened sometime in the past therefore.......?

[LanternWaste]

8. Seems rather absurd to expect a rational community reactio

Seems rather absurd to expect a rational community reaction to the irrational and consistent actions of law enforcement; though I imagine many people will perform clever dances to justify an absurd premise...

[jeff47]

9. Yes, the criminal behavior of the police should not be justified.

Oh wait, that was the opposite of what you were saying.

Stop brutalizing people, and they will not riot against you. It isn't rocket science, despite all the people who seem to be unable to look past the rioters themselves.

Peaceful protest? You mean what was done after the previous case? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one.....

[Hissyspit]

11. Thanks for your concern.

As cherry-picked as it is.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/

POLITICS
The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore

Years of abuses are every bit as egregious as what the Department of Justice documented in Ferguson, Missouri, and as deserving of a national response.

Jose Luis Magana / Reuters

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
APR 22, 2015
In Baltimore, where 25-year-old Freddie Gray died shortly after being taken into police custody, an investigation may uncover homicidal misconduct by law enforcement, as happened in the North Charleston, South Carolina, killing of Walter Scott. Or the facts may confound the darkest suspicions of protestors, as when the Department of Justice released its report on the killing of Michael Brown.

What's crucial to understand, as Baltimore residents take to the streets in long-simmering frustration, is that their general grievances are valid regardless of how this case plays out. For as in Ferguson, where residents suffered through years of misconduct so egregious that most Americans could scarcely conceive of what was going on, the people of Baltimore are policed by an entity that perpetrates stunning abuses. The difference is that this time we needn't wait for a DOJ report to tell us so. Harrowing evidence has been presented. Yet America hasn't looked.

I include myself.

Despite actively reading and commenting on police misconduct for many years, I was unaware until yesterday that the Baltimore Sun published a searing 2014 article documenting recent abuses that are national scandals in their own rights.

A grandmother's bones were broken. A pregnant woman was violently thrown to the ground. Millions of dollars were paid out to numerous victims of police brutality.

[Oktober]

12. You're welcome...

You need it...

[Hissyspit]

13. Not really. You are seeing things that are, for the most part,

not really there. Both here and in the other thread.

[MineralMan]

3. That police violence continues, despite the huge awards

to victims of it indicates just one thing: Such behavior is tolerated by those in power in those cities. It's pretty simple. If the police can simply do as they wish to citizens without actual punishment, they will continue to use violence unnecessarily whenever it pleases them. When $39 Million is paid out to just one victim, but the deliberate injuring of people in police vans continues to happen, there is approval for that obscene practice.

Approval. In cities where such things happen, approval comes from the highest levels.

[Stuart G]

4. Absolutely Correct...

If the police violence had stopped and that was clear, then those in power would have done something positive. But it did not stop..Why didn't this stop if people at the highest levels knew this was going on? Aren't those at the highest levels responsible? Shouldn't they be tried for torture?

[world wide wally]

5. This reasoning is totally logical.

A "rough ride" would be totally random in consequences and at the same time, absolve anyone from direct responsibility. I am not a forensic scientist, but the injuries sound consistent with someone bouncing around in a van with no hands to protect himself from crashing into the walls and falling repeatedly.
Any arresting officer could say,"What? Me torture."

[Stuart G]

10. "What Me Torture ?"...terrific line...thanks

What Me Torture? " no not us..

couldn't be me...couldn't be us..you are making this up..maybe once..not over a number of ..years....no not us.

This statement from a post now on the front page


.http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026580668...

posted by Are_grits_groceries

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.