patches70 wrote:natty dread wrote:68-year old black man with a medical condition murdered by racist police officers
Oh but no, racism is not a problem in the USA.
Hmmm, I don't think racism had anything to do with that.....
http://www.thedailywhiteplains.com/news ... ying-knife
But who knows, people make up whatever story they want I suppose.
Yeah, kind of like you're doing right now - Making up stories about imaginary knives. In fact the victim had no knife, and the police officers called him a n****er before murdering him in cold blood.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —in Westchester County, so you’re familiar with police procedures in cases like this. I’m struck by the fact that the identity of the police officer involved has not yet been revealed. That’s something that’s pretty routine in cases like this, certainly by this time, because we’re talking about an event that happened in November.
MAYO BARTLETT: Absolutely. I think that anybody who lives in the city of White Plains has to ask themselves whether this individual is working right now. And if so, in what capacity? And I think that it’s just—it’s atrocious that that name has not been released and that the officers involved are not at least on desk duty, some type of modified duty.
Looking at it as a former prosecutor, whenever you talk about a use of force, you always look at a use of force continuum, and it’s an escalation of force. And generally, police departments have rules and protocols which suggest that you should first start out with a verbal command, if in fact there’s even a need to do that and if that’s the least intrusive manner that you can address an issue. And after that, it goes generally to a light hands application, and it goes up from there to possibly a baton, pepper spray, possibly a taser. And you use deadly force only when it’s necessary to prevent deadly force from being used.
And in this case, Mr. Chamberlain didn’t have a gun. Mr. Chamberlain, when I saw the videotape, did not have a knife when he was in his apartment. You see a 68-year-old man with no shirt on and boxer shorts and his hands down at his sides. And I didn’t see any weapon in his hands there.
And the other thing that’s troubling to me is the fact that a taser was used at all, because you’re there for a medical response. You’re not there investigating a criminal act. You are there with the understanding that there may be a person who needs medical assistance.
Relevant part underlined for your convenience.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read part of the initial news coverage around the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. The headline on the News 12 website read, quote, "Officer fatally shoots hatchet-wielding man." TheDailyWhitePlains.com website posted an article titled "Police Fatally Shoot Disturbed Man Carrying Knife." The story begins, quote, "White Plains police say an officer discharged two rounds, fatally shooting an emotionally disturbed White Plains man who attempted to bar officers from entering his apartment with a hatchet and then turned towards police with a butcher’s knife." Randy McLaughlin, would you respond to this?
RANDOLPH McLAUGHLIN: Well, first, one of the problems in a wrongful death case like this is, you’ve got a decedent, the person who’s dead, and the police initially put out their spin. And that’s a spin. That’s clearly a spin. The videotape had—there’s also a videotape of what happened in that hallway. There’s an audio tape. There’s a videotape of Mr. Chamberlain when they come at him with the taser. This is a clear violation of criminal law and of constitutional rights. In our country, we have a Fourth Amendment that says we’re supposed to be secure in our own homes. Mr. Chamberlain wasn’t attacking anyone. He was in his home. This idea that they—he attacked anyone with a hatchet is, frankly, a lie. That’s what it is. It’s a cover story to cover up what they’ve done here. And we’re meeting with the district attorney this afternoon, of Westchester County, to press for a full prosecution of the highest crimes in this state. There’s a petition, and online petition, that Mr. Chamberlain has put out, and we’re presenting that petition to her today, as well.
These are transcripts from the link I posted which clearly show that you are wrong. The police initially claimed that the victim attacked the officers with a knife (or hatchet, lol they can't even get their lies straight) before they realized that audio and video recordings exist of the event, and these recordings show that the police a) called the victim n****er or some other racial slur and b) murdered the victim for no reason.
Now this all raises the question... are you just looking for reasons to defend the murderer because the victim was black? Or are you just getting defensive because you don't want to believe racism exists in your country? In other words... are you a racist, or do you just not want to admit that racism is as big a problem as it is, because of a sort of wishful thinking I guess? I know I'm sometimes guilty of the same - when I hear news of some really horrible shit, I'm reluctant to believe it because of the implications, that I live in a place where horrible shit like that can actually happen...
