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Graphic video shows man dying after being shot by San Francisco police
In this dramatic video from the weekend, a man dies in a pool of his own blood as he lies on the sidewalk surrounded by San Francisco police.
A crowd of onlookers lets the officers know they think the cops fucked up.
Here's the story from AP:
Authorities said Kenneth Harding, 19, was killed Saturday after firing at officers who were trying to cite him for light-rail fare evasion. The shooting occurred during a foot chase in the Bayview-Hunters Point area.
Harding had recently been released from Washington state prison after he served time for convictions stemming from a King County sex offense.
San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr said Sunday the man who had been killed by officers was a person of interest in last Wednesday's killing of 19-year-old Tanaya Gilbert in South Seattle. Family members said Gilbert was several weeks pregnant.
The video, though, tells a story of distrust of the police and a history of racism.
As the angry and upset crowd gathers around the cops at the scene of the shooting, you can hear onlookers say "Fuck the police", "Where the gun at?", and "The police shot him, and they gonna get away with this shit too."
You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui.
Sad. Reminds me of Robert Dzieka?ski lying on the floor at YVR while the mounties did nothing. The Richmond fire captain who was on duty that night said when he arrived, he didn't think anyone had been checking Dziekanski and "it appeared as if the man was already dead."
Law enforcement needs to be clearly regulated, transparent, and accountable.
In this day and age there is no excuse for all police officers to not be wearing first person cameras on their person. For the small investment of a couple hundred dollars each officer could be held accountable for their actions. It might be worth spending a few dollars training them in basic first aid as well.
That's not what they do. That's a liberal myth used by police-state lackeys. The police exist to protect themselves and their families first, so that they can cash those fat, extorted-money paycheques and yuck it up wherever they yuck it up. That's Mission No 1.
Mission No. 2 is to keep everything nicey-nicey for Corporations, so they may continue to loot and plunder. Every police department/board/etc. by the by, is a corporation. Police Corporations are the Militant Arm of the Corporate State. Historically, the English people had only volunteer constables, not paid mercenaries.
Mission No. 3 is to keep workers safe insofar as they keep their heads down and do nothing to rock the Corporate Boat. This involves roughing up poor people who bother the working classes, &c &c. Writing up people for "Fair Evasion" is on this leg of their mission, as it really bothers nice working people when they spend their hard-earned coloured paper on a train fare, and then they see some hobo get on for free. Thus, they want to have armed men checking tickets, writing tickets, etc. etc.
But their mission has nothing to do with protecting "us." Like every militia, they protect themselves and those who give them their food. An army moves on its stomach. If you regard the police as anything other than an occupying corporatist army, you're either in it with them, a collaborator, or you're ignorant, inexcusably at this point.
Yep he bled out all right. Do you think that the cops should have turned their back on that mob? I wouldn't have.
@kspace
I don't see any gun on the ground. Did the cops say, look, there is a gun on the ground? The gun, if there is one, could be anywhere. This video was not shot for the purpose of showing that there is a gun on the ground.
@Standing Water
Every human rights report on policing mentions ill paid police as an incentive to police corruption. Volunteer police are awesome in theory -- my favourites are Batman, Daredevil, and Wonder Woman, because she's hot and has an invisible plane -- but in the real world, where the police and, oh yeah, everyone else gets money from the corporate boat, they are bad news.
The reason I put "protect us" in quotation marks is because I agree the current system is broken and not focused on providing a service to the people, but rather pushing a narrow agenda that caters to their own self interest. For example the drug war, which is a perpetual cash cow that actually increases the harm done to society.
There are some things I want an active and reliable police force for. Such as acting as a deterrent to murder/violence, bringing those people to justice who they don't deter, stopping drunk drivers, protecting property, investigating fraud, etc.
It is a fact that positions of power employ a larger percentage of psychopaths than other sectors, and I have certainly met a few of them. The best weapon we have to combat corruption and abuse of power is transparency. Transparency of interactions with the public would prevent many of the abuses perpetrated by police, such as the roughing up of people you mention above.
I have news for you, its not the police force keeping things fine and dandy for corporations, it's the government you live underneath. Our current political system is broken and until we achieve proportional representation, special interest groups will be consistently catered to.
Volunteer is not the same as ill paid. I think you're confusing the issue. What problems do you forsee with volunteer police? The major issue is that it would provide Constables to arrest the paid police union goons, when they violate the common law, e.g. when they rob people of marihuana.
Well, I govern myself. I can walk a straight line, you know. What you're calling "Government" is nothing more than _another corporation_, one that masquerades as a Government due to the mass of Blank Cheques it gets every election cycle from greedy proles who want it to give them free stuff over and above what the common law would provide for them.
The Stanley Cup Riot very much shows it's not the "government" or the "corporations" that keep this order going---it's the police militia. And they don't even maintain the order continually; they had a breakdown that evening, so, what did they do? They _made war_ on huge crowds of civillians by gassing them and then by forming lines and closing the gap between them, beating on anyone who got in their way, even though there was not always a clear exit. The "kissing couple" come to mind---where were they supposed to go? Why did the police assault them?
"acting as a deterrent to murder/violence"
Do they do this? I think this is a folk-myth about both the average person and the average police officer---the average person does not refrain from violence and murder because he is worried about the police; he refrains because he is better than a dumb beast. And those dumb beasts who use violence and who murder (cops included), they don't worry about the consequences, either because their Police Union protects them or because they simply don't reason that way. The better way to deal with violence and murder are early childhood education and proper programs for children---childhood is when miscreants learn violence is acceptable/tolerated.
"bringing those people to justice who they don't deter"
Volunteers would be just as capable of this. Indeed, every man over the age of 14 should be physically fit enough to respond to hue and cry and to chase suspected criminals to a district's boundary. The real problem isn't that we cannot do without police in general; it's that because of paid hacks acting as police, we've become soft---we no longer carry arms; we no longer practice martial skills, generally. Hey, how about a physical fitness program in the schools that actually teaches useful physical fitness skills, like how to arrest thieves and robbers? Absent some sort of physical crippling, why shouldn't _everyone_ be able to participate in law enforcement?
"stopping drunk drivers, protecting property, investigating fraud, etc."
These three, especially stopping drunk drivers, I think you have a decent argument for a paid militia to do this---but as with murder/violence, the best antidote to drunken driving is likely early childhood intervention and an end to the war on drugs, so people resume using drugs that are completely mindfucking, but which do not impair executive function in the same way as alcohol. As for investigating fraud, why do you think they do that at all effectively? As for protecting property, why should every fit man not be able to protect his own land? And why should he not be able to call on his fit neighbors in time of need?
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the need for a police force is born of a drunken, unhealthy population that is too weak and inebriated to defend itself---and this over generations causes serious problem; as the old saying goes, who will watch the watchers? The answer is nobody---and even if there are videocameras watching, they all just say "he shot at us," plant a gun and then go home to enjoy those fat union salaries and fuck their wives.