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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBaltimore Police Sergeant warns superiors...
Its about to get ugly...For fucks sake, Like it wasnt already ugly...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/baltimore-sergeant-warns-superiors-its-about-to-get-ugly#.agwaxJyg3
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)they slowed down in New York when they got mad at the mayor, and it was great - no more "broken windows" policing. for a while.
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)arcane1
(38,613 posts)Imagine that.
chillfactor
(7,580 posts)dmr
(28,349 posts)I mean, come on ... FIVE different challenges to ONE officer in such a very SHORT time span?
If that's the case, then we'd be hearing dozens of officers stating the same thing. Stands to reason.
chillfactor
(7,580 posts)she laid out each charge one-by-one and the reasoning behind each charge....go back and listen to her press conference...
dmr
(28,349 posts)If you re-read the OP you'll see what I mean.
uponit7771
(90,359 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Live with the consequences.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)I think every time a citizen talks or is upset over what is happening, police think they are challenged to a fight.
longship
(40,416 posts)This is not going to play out well tonight.
Meanwhile SA Mosby obviously has a witness who is talking. Otherwise such very specific charges would not have been handed down so quickly. I highly suspect that at least one of the cops has turned. My money is on Sgt. Alicia. She has few charges against her and the most to gain. She might lose her career, but she might avoid prison. If I were her lawyer, that is what I would be advising her.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Staring into the eyes of 10-15 years in the Big House can change your attitude in a big hurry. If she turns state's evidence she will avoid prison at the very least. She might even need a witness protection program. But whoever it is that has flipped will be doing a great service for justice.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)i am doing a whole lot of guessing here, seeing the young black woman that kicked ass
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)The Baltimore Police Department is half black. The commissioner is black. Most of the ranking officers are black.
Yes, you are doing a lot of guessing here. And it's repugnant.
In his 1997 book, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, The Wire creator David Simon explained why Baltimore policing in the 1990s benefited little from the addition of more black cops in the preceding decades:
"A white patrolman in West Baltimore has to at least
take into account that he is messing with black folk in a majority black city. Not so his black counterparts, for whom brutality complaints can be shrugged off
because the racial aspect is neutralized."
And speaking of race:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/1/class-not-race-the-engine-of-police-harassment-in-baltimore.html
Baltimores poor white residents also feel sting of police harassment
Residents of poor white Pigtown, also called 'Billyland,' say money means more than color to police
BALTIMORE Pigtown is a Baltimore neighborhood some two miles south of Sandtown, Freddie Gray's neighborhood.
Gray's death on April 19, a week after the 25-year-old black man was arrested and suffered injuries while in police custody, triggered mass protests against the treatment of Baltimore's black communities by law enforcement. The protests escalated into violent unrest, and both local authorities and the Department of Justice are investigating the circumstances of Gray's death.
In a city that is 63 percent black, Pigtown is a white enclave, created by migrants from West Virginia and western Maryland after World War II. What aligns it with Sandtown, where most residents are black, is poverty.
Pigtown's white residents say that while skin color plays a role in who is targeted by police, they've come to believe police harass them as well because like Sandtown residents, they're poor.
We all get treated the same: badly, said a 54-year-old woman who gave her name only as Sarah, as she sat on a stoop with her brother Roy. Both are white.
Michael Brown, 22, who grew up in Pigtown on the same street as Sarah and Roy, echoed his neighbor's sentiment.
Because most Pigtown residents are poor, police assume they're committing crimes, Brown said, treating black people as drug dealers and white people as drug buyers.
Like you see how me and my daughter are sitting down on the front step? Theyd pull up and act like this is not my house, Brown said as he sat with his toddler on his stoop.
Theyll say Im loitering. How can I be loitering when this is my house? I think its a poverty thing," Brown said.
In 2014, there were 952 violent crimes in Sandtown and 217 in Pigtown, according to Baltimore data. The city statistics include murder, assault, rape and armed robbery in its compilation of all violent crimes.
Even taking into account the difference in population size Sandtown has about 9,000 residents, or about three times more than Pigtown Sandtown has more violent crime, according to city data.
Pigtowns lower crime rate means little in how residents are treated by police, say locals, many of who believe police look down on them.
The cops' nickname for Pigtown is Billyland, derived from hillbilly, a derogatory term for poor white people, former Baltimore Sun police reporter David Simon wrote in "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets."
Simon spent all of 1988, as what he called an "intern" with homicide detectives, some black, some white.
For Baltimore cops, hard-core billyness is generally regarded with as much disdain and humor as the hard-core ghetto culture, Simon wrote. If nothing else, this attitude provides some proof that it is class conscious, more than racism, that propels a cop toward a contempt for the huddled masses.
Pigtown locals say not that much has changed since the year Simon spent with the police.
At Fielders Tavern, Pat Long, a 63-year-old bartender, has a straightforward take on Gray's death and what should happen to the six officers allegedly involved.
I believe right is right, and wrong is wrong, and if they did wrong, they should be punished, Long said as she served beers in Pigtown.
Like many residents of Baltimore, Long, who is white, believes that violence will erupt again if the Maryland attorney general's office decides not to punish the officers.
Its going to be bad, she said. Its going to be bad.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)kwassa
(23,340 posts)That is the quick summation of the comparison between Pigtown and Sandtown.
You are also denying that police response has anything to do with race.
Is that it? since you are the one accusing people of being bigots.
edit to add:
The white people in Pigtown BELIEVE they are treated as badly as the black people in Sandtown, but they actually have no way of knowing that. None.
Nor do you.
Historic NY
(37,452 posts)who really cares anymore.