Rugby Saint II

Thank you Obama for further dividing our country. Americans have a right to bear arms. But not felons. I've got one thing to say.......ALL LIVES MATTER!!! Criminals have forced the police to become more violent with each arrest.

Cops get sick of the escalating violence against them when they do their jobs against violent criminals. They lay their lives on the line every day against slime and are associated with the lowest element at every turn. Of course they become violent. It's a survival thing!

I'm sick of color being the deciding factor of right and wrong!

SaintFanInATLHELL

It's not as black and white as that. Let's take four recent cases:

Sterling in Baton Rouge
Castile in Minnesota
Tamir Rice in Cleveland
Walter Scott in South Carolina

In two of those cases (Castile and Rice) there is no indication that there was resisting arrest. With Castile at worst he was trying to comply with potentially conflicting orders of "Show me your id" and from the officer's voice on the video something along the lines of "I told him to keep his hands out of his pockets."

Scott was fleeing the scene. So while I guess failure to follow an officer's command is technically resisting arrest, it's clear from the video that Scott was absolutely no threat to that officer.

So only in the case of Sterling was there an active physical confrontation in terms of resisting arrest.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that can always be the case, which is the heart of the problem. What I've learned from watching these is often the officers come into the encounter with a predisposition that something is going to go down. Let's look at each of these four cases as examples:

Sterling: Incident started with a 911 call that Sterling threatened someone with a gun. So we can presume that's information the officers had when they walked up to him.

Castile: Call over the radio was that he fit the description of a robber. In addition Castile volunteered the information that he was concealed carry). I read that in Minnesota reporting that information in voluntary.

Rice: 911 call of some "guy" waving a gun. The additional information that it probabl was a toy I do not believe was relayed to the officer.

Scott: an ID check showed Scott had a bench warrant for missed child support payments.

Finally as an added bonus throw in Mark Hughes who was the guy in Dallas open carrying a rifle at the protest. Once the shooting started, he was named as either a "suspect" or "person of interest" depending on the outlet. They guy was smart and immediately handed over his weapon to police.

So the common denominator that I see is much more of a police perception of a armed and dangerous black man seen as a threat. And unfortunately being black is a critical part of the equation. If you have a moment do a search on "best open carry stop ever" and check out the videos. Generally starts with the same trigger of a 911 call that someone is carrying a gun. A police stop. But honestly with white citizens in an open carry situation, the response in completely 180 degrees than some of the ones I've outlined above.

As a black man, I know that I can do everything right and still end up in a world of hurt. I also know that it hasn't happened and will most likely not happen because the vast majority of officers out there do their job right.

But we all need to work on ways to curtail these events going badly. And there should be some accountability when in fact a bad situation could have been handled without loss of life.

SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.

SaintFanInATLHELL

What exactly did the president say that was divisive in this?

I think few would dispute either of the last two statements. However, there are two or three fundamental issues tied to both:

1. What types of arms do Americans have the right to carry?
2. How do you keep felons from becoming armed?
3. How can law enforcement personnel tell the difference between law abiding armed citizens and armed felons?

Then there's the Dallas shooter who is in fact in a special category: law abiding citizen who snaps and goes on a murderous rampage using legally obtained weapons?
It's just the last in a list that's getting to be too long to list: Dallas, Orlando, Aurora, NewTown, Charleston, Arizona (Giffords), San Bernadino, Oak Creek (Wisconsin).

There's no easy way to process those situations. So we should all simply accept that getting gunned down on the stree, or in church, or at work or school
is fair because some nut job has the right to carry an AR15? It's a tough question for sure.

No doubt.
But the problem is that most of us are not felons or criminals. But it's a slippery slope to making judgements on people as to their status based on previous encounters. As an analogy, if you have continually been bitten by red ants, then eventually you'll stomp any red ant on sight.
It shouldn't be. But we all do that type of instant categorization of people on a daily basis.

But the question remains, how many law abiding citizens, or honestly just citizens who are not an actual threat whether law abiding or not, have to be killed before we find an effective way to change the system?

SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.

44Champs

There are 2 things that are now obvious to many of us about Black Lives Matter:
1) They are not a representation of the Black community as a whole. As a matter of fact, I would even venture to say that they are not even a representation of the MAJORITY of the Black community. MLK Jr would be totally ashamed of them.
2) They are not a civil rights movement. Through the use of violence and intimidation, they have crossed into the realm of a hate group and even into the category of a domestic terrorist organization.
KR and LM, while not necessarily associating themselves w BLM, have aligned their thoughts and views with the organization, so in my book, they're nothing but POS cop haters.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

The Dude

This is about the most sensible thing I have heard a black leader say about police shootings.

Dallas police chief to protestors:

He encouraged those who have been protesting to get off the protest line and apply for a job.

“We’re hiring,” he said. “Get out that protest line and put in an application. We'll put you in your neighborhood and help you resolve some of those problem."

Instead of sitting on the sidelines or using these circumstances to prepetuate violence a rational human being would get out and try to do something to change things. You think police are prejudiced and treat black people unfairly? Do something about it instead of pissing and moaning. Its your community, take it and put it in your hands.

Things just dont go changing on their own. It takes action.

"Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared."

jeanpierre