(th)ink by Keith Knight for April 23, 2015

I brought up this sketch not too long ago; might work here, too. ‘Not the Nine o’clock News, Constable Savage

Ummmm….Why was he arrested and put into cuffs AND then needed restraints?Jeez, so sick of these clowns whining about abuse when THEY are the criminal thugs attacking innocent people.Cry me a river.

@ agrestic" But maybe you’re talking about the criminal thugsin the Baltimore PD attacking someone whoseonly crime was to nonviolently run away."Oh I’m sure that’s what he meant.

Even cops don’t have the right to kill a prisoner on the way to the lock up. Maybe the guy was a bad guy but he is still a citizen with rights and should be treated properly. The cops don’t get to kill who ever they don’t like.

Now the cops in this case say that the guy “wasn’t wearing his seatbelt” and that’s how his spine got severed. I believe every word of that . . . NOT!

grapefroot: How does one fasten a seatbelt when one’s hands are immobilized behind their back?

Innocent until dead.

I can remember the 1950s when white kids, identified as “hippies” had the same kind of targeting; juries outdid each other in length of sentence for having an ounce marijuana, which Dallas police regularly carried for planting. It finally reached two thousand years! A popular brand of blue jeans featuring a penticle (five pointed star outline, this was before the witchcraft association) on the hip pocket because kids wearing them were arrested for “desecrating the flag”.

While I was too old to be targeted in that police terror, I can easily see the attitude of blacks targeted by badge-wearing genocide squads supplied with military weapons.

I remember windows getting broken by errant baseballs. None of us kids stuck around for the consequences. I can’t imagine sticking around if cops popped up. It would be every kid for himself.

Strange American Urban Fruit – Adapted from an American poem, Strange Fruit, published in 1937 by writer, teacher, and songwriter Abel Meeropol.

American traffic stops bear strange fruit, Blood on the road and blood at the root,

Black people falling in an urban police conspiracy, Strange fruit dropping on urban highways.

Pastoral scene of the gallant urban America, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of urban flower gardens, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of dead black flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the urban police to drop, Here is a strange and bitter American urban Fruit.

If assaulted by the Blue Suit Gang, do not run. Stand there and wait for death like a man.

Maybe you missed the witness accounts where Gray was screaming in pain and didn’t seem to have proper control of his legs even before he was put into the van. The way the van was driven isn’t particularly relevant. Or maybe it is, in that it means it is more likely that Gray was injured before ever being put into that van.

And maybe you should read the police commissioner’s words more carefully. (While keeping in mind that police hierarchy would never cover up for other cops. [That’s sarcasm, churchie.]) What he said is that the other person in the van didn’t witness people harming Mr. Gray in the van, not that he was healthy. Also, he heard Gray thrashing around. Is this because he couldn’t see him?

At the very least, the department has admitted to wrongdoing in that they didn’t buckle a seatbelt around Mr. Gray in the van, and that there were at least three times when cops could and should have called a medic, but did not.

You’re also forgetting that all signs are pointing to the lack of probable cause to even arrest Mr. Gray. And yet at some point in police custody he went into a coma, which led to his death. But of course you’ve got a pattern of trying to justify people’s deaths at the hands of police. So there we are.

So which is scarier:- this is happening a lot more lately, something changedor- this has been happening forever, but the news just started reporting most of the occurrences

Perhaps you’re unaware that a significant percentage of suspects being arrested complain that they’re in pain during their arrest, regardless of whether they are or not.

What might you mean by “a significant percentage”? And how would you know whether they were or not? Are you, unbeknownst to us, an expert on being arrested? Also, regardless whether they truly are in pain or not, police have a responsibility to treat them as if they were: the police are, after all, the custodians of those they detain.

Perhaps you skipped through the part where I stated “We don’t know, and neither do the cop haters” (I include you in that group; you show a “pattern”) and “I’ll wait for further investigation.”

Based on your pattern, these sorts of statements come across the same way as do the obfuscations of climate change denialists.

I bet you still believe “Hands up, Don’t shoot”, right? So there we are.

Nope, you’re wrong that I believe that. But let me ask you this: does the pattern of cops brutalizing and killing people not prick your conscience? Does the documented blatant racism within many police departments not give you pause? Do the larger problems of oppression of which this is all a part not cause you any sort of distress at all?