Buffalo PD assault older gentleman, leave him to bleed

[SDS]

10 minutes ago, KD in CA said:

 

It was a pretty gentle shove.  They attempted to do him a favor by not arresting him and there was no apparent intent to knock him to the ground.  They probably figured the video of them arresting the guy would be what triggered all the outrage (and it likely would have in the current environment). 

 

If we are to expect better from the cops (and we certainly should), we need to expect better from the citizens.   Being an activist doesn't bestow one the right to interfere with the police.

it seems to me you have this completely backwards. We do not exist to serve the police. 

[Reed83HOF]

11 minutes ago, Back2Buff said:

 

Not sure I'm looking for credibility.  I'm just showing other sides on what is out there in regards to the event.

 

There are two sides to every story.  I think when before the incident another protestor is literally saying the guy is here is looking to get his butt whooped, why does he have a helmet, he is here just for fun, and is looking just to get punched in the face, you start to question some things.  Then you go to his twitter feed and the whole thing is about people getting beat up by police.

 

Let's wait to pass judgement on these officers.  I think people calling it excessive force is ludicrous. 

Look my whole feed is about the police brutality and aggressiveness, but I'm not damn well going to start anything with them.

 

Saying excessive force starts to get into too many semantics around the word excessive and starting to pretend that "my life was in danger" that is not always the case, those really are rare situations. His whole twitter feed and his politics or lack thereof , have nothing to do with what happened to him, since that information was not available to police at the time, that is a null argument.

Excessive (and seemingly unnecessary) force is more along this line to me
 

 

The tactics used against the guy in Buffalo were too aggressive, especially given the subjects clear advanced age and he isn't a hulking or imposing figure. What has been shows honestly, around the country is the same techniques that are inappropriate for many situations, this one included. If the officers in question had actually stopped and showed a moral compass, this would not have gone to the level that it is. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

8 minutes ago, Reed83HOF said:

I will say on the officers side, they are being overworked, put in very uncomfortable situations by the politicians from both parties and asking to make snap judgements. I think one thing all of us have seen is that the concept of de-escalation is a missing tactic. Once an engagement starts, it suddenly becomes very violent and that isn't how it should go and I understand that it is very tense out there. The role if you will of a police officer is to keep the peace and protect and serve all; not everything has to go to 0-100 in a second, but it does. All I am arguing is that more of that has to be on the officer as that is what their job is and the expectations that come with it - you all have to be good, just like a medical doctor. It almost feels like that the country as whole has too many officers that are littered through the various skill categores and not truly enough elite ones. A lot of these situations should never have to occur and it more or less is an officer's job to be able to keep the peace, which is far from easy and might be one of the most thankless and hardest jobs there are...

 

You aren't just a-kidding from the officers I know who have lived through this.  One of them saw it coming the day Floyd died and retired - said two riots late in his career was enough, he didn't have a third one in him.  I think it's a pretty good bet the officers involved knew what was coming and they unavoidably had their adrenaline up.

 

I think perhaps de-escalation and being immersed in a crowd control situations intrinsically don't work well together.

 

But I also don't see this as being immersed in a crowd control situation when the encounter occurs - the elderly man is about the only non-officer in the frame as the police start moving.  So I think probably there was a bit of space for de-escalation there, and certainly there is such space in many other situations that have resulted in death of a citizen at the hands of police officer(s).

 

It might help to recruit officers who "all have to be good", if they were better paid.

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

4 minutes ago, Reed83HOF said:

We totally agree there and I apologize if I offended.

 

I will say on the officers side, they are being overworked, put in very uncomfortable situations by the politicians from both parties and asking to make snap judgements. I think one thing all of us have seen is that the concept of de-escalation is a missing tactic. Once an engagement starts, it suddenly becomes very violent and that isn't how it should go and I understand that it is very tense out there. The role if you will of a police officer is to keep the peace and protect and serve all; not everything has to go to 0-100 in a second, but it does. All I am arguing is that more of that has to be on the officer as that is what their job is and the expectations that come with it - you all have to be good, just like a medical doctor. It almost feels like that the country as whole has too many officers that are littered through the various skill categores and not truly enough elite ones. A lot of these situations should never have to occur and it more or less is an officer's job to be able to keep the peace, which is far from easy and might be one of the most thankless and hardest jobs there are...

No offense taken, like you, I just believe what I believe.  A number of years ago a friend had a son who ended up on the police force.  I really didn't know the young man, but I knew his dad on a personal level through work (and quite a few beers over the years). The son was a nice boy, good athlete, well-rounded young man and ended up being a police officer in central NY.  He was shot responding to a robbery, caught the bullet just above the vest he was wearing, and died at the scene.  Apparently, the guy who robbed the store just decided to fire over his shoulder, not all that concerned with what might happen.  It was a tragic situation, and I tend to view things from the perspective of "How the %$$@ was he supposed to know???".

 

You're right though, the officer has the greater degree of responsibility, and I would bet most agree. I just see this one as a series of unfortunate events, and certainly feel badly for the guy with the head trauma, and certainly feel badly that the office is about to be sacrificed to the masses.  

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, KD in CA said:

It was a pretty gentle shove.  They attempted to do him a favor by not arresting him and there was no apparent intent to knock him to the ground.  They probably figured the video of them arresting the guy would be what triggered all the outrage (and it likely would have in the current environment).

 

Just as I'm not "down with" imputing impeccable motives to the elderly gentleman like returning a helmet, I'm not "down with" imputing impeccable motives to the police.  I have no idea what their specific orders were, whether or not they "attempting to do him a favor", and while it wasn't a knockout blow from George Foreman from the Katie Gibas (2nd) video it seems pretty clear that one officer pushes him with the baton (held in a two handed grip) while the other officer gives him a shove.

Not having experienced the combined force of these two things, I am not going to speculate on its level, but the gentleman does immediately go staggering back a number of steps before going down, which doesn't lead me to believe it was "pretty gentle".  At least, when I give my 87 year old mother what I would describe as a "pretty gentle" push, she staggers back zero steps.

Edit: It's apparent from another video that he was there in the square with the helmet for a good while prior to the police line and had opportunity, if it was not his helmet, to return it prior to the curfew.  And  I've seen a still photo that I'm trying to paste in here where is clearly pushed up on his toes and his stomach/chest pushed back (hunched) from the force applied by the baton and arm shoves.

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

10 hours ago, Bill from NYC said:

I don't know, but it begs the question: what was he doing there to begin with? Once again, I would make a huge wager that he has a psych history. Would you walk into police in riot gear and proceed to touch them?

 

As far as psych history, apparently he is well-known in the area as a peace activist.  I can't speak as to whether or not he was known to the police, but it seems possible that over the years he has dealt with police in the course of demonstrations for other causes and has not found the interactions adversarial.  I say that because IMO he advances very confidently towards the police line, continuing after the "forward" command is given and the line starts to move forward.  IMO he acts as though he expects to be treated with consideration, which is not what I would personally expect from police advancing in riot gear even if I recognized two of them as close relatives of neighbors/friends who have known me 30 years.

 

But that's just my opinion.

[Reed83HOF]

10 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

You aren't just a-kidding from the officers I know who have lived through this.  One of them saw it coming the day Floyd died and retired - said two riots late in his career was enough, he didn't have a third one in him.  I think it's a pretty good bet the officers involved knew what was coming and they unavoidably had their adrenaline up.

 

I think perhaps de-escalation and being immersed in a crowd control situations intrinsically don't work well together.

 

But I also don't see this as being immersed in a crowd control situation when the encounter occurs - the elderly man is about the only non-officer in the frame as the police start moving.  So I think probably there was a bit of space for de-escalation there, and certainly there is such space in many other situations that have resulted in death of a citizen at the hands of police officer(s).

 

It might help to recruit officers who "all have to be good", if they were better paid.

 

The rioting and looting appear to happening after all hell breaks lose, from what I have witnessed first hand and from obliviously social media, the protesters are doing a good job of keeping people in check, there have been many people who tried to start breaking windows and were quickly stopped by the masses. Besides if you are looking to loot, large protests is like leaving cheese out for a rat. Upfront, everything should focus on the de-escaltion and be preventative. The curfews have been an utter disaster and have lead to a lot of unnecessary violence, arrests and injuries to everyone. I understand the need for the curfews, to a degree, because forces cannot stay out there 24/7. I truly believe most do, it's the actions that follow it, pulling people from cars, rubber bullets, tear gas and now it has turned into everyone against the system. The police and the system themselves have done themselves a huge disservice with the handling of all of it. They have put the cross-hairs firmly on themselves, right wrong or indifferent.

Out here, if you want to laugh you should watch the clips for the LA police commission zoom meeting on Tuesday, those poor people took 8 hours of verbal dress downs from tons of people. They mentioned that to be an officer takes 600 hours of coursework,where as a cosmologist requires 1600 hours. Also if an officer is terminated, they can go to a town a couple towns away and reapply - there is no tracking mechanism for that and honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about that. The pay should certainly be higher, but I try to look at the whole picture. A lot of techniques are old tried and true, but that doesn't meant they are correct. The entire education/training needs to be looked at. Peer pressure has to be be awful for anyone to speak up, much like when players in sports get dragged for making the locker room public. Al biet to a much more serious and amped up degree.

 

This is a discussion that has to be had, right now there is much larger of a focus to defund and dismantle these institutions right now based on the handling of this that is out there for the world to see. Nothing seems like an isolated incident

[Reed83HOF]

22 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

No offense taken, like you, I just believe what I believe.  A number of years ago a friend had a son who ended up on the police force.  I really didn't know the young man, but I knew his dad on a personal level through work (and quite a few beers over the years). The son was a nice boy, good athlete, well-rounded young man and ended up being a police officer in central NY.  He was shot responding to a robbery, caught the bullet just above the vest he was wearing, and died at the scene.  Apparently, the guy who robbed the store just decided to fire over his shoulder, not all that concerned with what might happen.  It was a tragic situation, and I tend to view things from the perspective of "How the %$$@ was he supposed to know???".

 

You're right though, the officer has the greater degree of responsibility, and I would bet most agree. I just see this one as a series of unfortunate events, and certainly feel badly for the guy with the head trauma, and certainly feel badly that the office is about to be sacrificed to the masses.  

 

I'm a white dude and yeah I knew racism existed and understood to a degree how the system seems to always lead to the "bad black guys". It honestly never felt right to feel that way, but that is what I saw and knew. I honestly didn't know the full depths of the systemic racism and red lines and all of that for a long portion of my life. Hustling becomes a way of life, the only way to get head and barely provide for yourself or family, the behavior you describe and many of us have witnessed is a result of this. Not having any type of wealth passed down, going to poor schools with not great teachers, college is out of reach for many, not being able to get home loans, earning on average $5.04 for every $100 of a white person, someone named Joe is more likely to get a job over a Jamal etc. All leads to hustling while possibly working a minimum wage job to barely make ends meets, you hit depression and start to abuse drugs and get placed in the for profit prison system. Having to attend how many funerals like George Floyd for all of your family members; schitt I can't even imagine. Talk about a viscous cycle that is virtually impossible to break. 

 

A video Emmanual Acho put put a few days ago, the one from Malcolm Jenkins to Brees and hearing the countless other stories from friends and other people have changed me in more ways than I can count. If you haven't seen them here they are (not trying to be preachy btw)

 

 

 

 

You can't say that for 100% for any given population, white, black, yellow purple etc.

 

I am assuming you might be referring to officer Joseph Corr? I'm from Utica and still remember it to this day. No one (or very few )want a life lost. I think there is a generational change occurring to between enforcement vs prevention and there is a rebellion from everyone against enforcement; government institutions tend to evlove very slowly.  Just as every black person lives in constant fear, so do the officers who are in harms way all the time and you can't just draw a line in the sand and say ok the system changed, but you have generations of people out there who are behind everyone else. I mean how the hell do you make that right and disarm both sides?

[Hapless Bills Fan]

6 hours ago, Reed83HOF said:

 

That context is missing and not known via video as far as i know. I am also trying and would like everyone here to keep it away from PPP and politics. I believe most individuals take issue with the fact that, I mean let's be honest he is an older guy, shouldn't have been pushed as hard as he was. You can easily make a case for an adrenaline rush with the officers, some level of exhaustion, but the most egregious part was when one of the officers went to go check on him, he was physically moved away by another officer and it iwas either the National Guard or state police who went to administer help; not one BPD officer stopped. There is zero excuse for that behavior; enforcing a curfew to arrest a guy with a sign, when they directly caused injury to a citizen is nonsense. The extra 5 minutes or even 2 officers out of the what 20ish there, would not have affectedthe guy holding the sign who would have still been there after curfew anyways. it's simply more pitiful police behavior.

 

To be fair, the officer who prevents the first officer from stopping to assist does key a mic button on his collar and say something that looks to me like it includes the word "med" (can't hear).  So it is entirely possible that he promptly summoned the designated medics, who may have been guardsmen.

 

 

[JoPoy88]

1 hour ago, KD in CA said:

 

It was a pretty gentle shove.  They attempted to do him a favor by not arresting him and there was no apparent intent to knock him to the ground.  They probably figured the video of them arresting the guy would be what triggered all the outrage (and it likely would have in the current environment). 

 

If we are to expect better from the cops (and we certainly should), we need to expect better from the citizens.   Being an activist doesn't bestow one the right to interfere with the police.

 

So true. Gotta remind myself to never ask the cops for any "favors." ? Fascinating power you possess, able to leap into the minds of these cops and clearly discern what they were "figuring."

[Reed83HOF]

6 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

To be fair, the officer who prevents the first officer from stopping to assist does key a mic button on his collar and say something that looks to me like it includes the word "med" (can't hear).  So it is entirely possible that he promptly summoned the designated medics, who may have been guardsmen.

 

 

fair point. overall the optics are just pitiful even if everything was done by the book after the injury took place, given what is out there all over the place. Not saying that should be on the forefront of an officer's mind either.

[Taro T]

When the gentleman that was shoved is recovered, would really like to know why he was holding the helmet.

 

Was he trying to return a police helmet as had been speculated?  If so, why try to return it to a line of riot police in formation rather than a police station or a singular police officer?  He was hanging out in the square (from the other video) for at least a 1/2 hour.  It would seem that he'd've had an opportunity to turn it in prior to the line being formed, though maybe not.

 

If not that & it was his, why wasn't he wearing it?  Would've saved himself a lot of pain & trouble and might've saved two police officers' careers.

 

Hope he's ok.

 

 

[Lurker]

Another very useful thread.   

 

Very sad, but also very useful...

[Hapless Bills Fan]

26 minutes ago, JoPoy88 said:

 

So true. Gotta remind myself to never ask the cops for any "favors." ? Fascinating power you possess, able to leap into the minds of these cops and clearly discern what they were "figuring."

 

Yeah, I can't fathom the "favor" thing.  I also can't fathom the concept that when a citizen is approaching, reaching towards, or possibly touching an officer, the only or best action available to the officers are to give the man a simultaneous shove with a baton and push.

 

I personally have caused citizens to step back from me and give me space with the power of the air in my lungs, in this case shaped into sounds by my vocal apparatus.  Go figgur.   But one does have to allow a moment or two for the sounds to be processed, understood and acted upon.

 

The whole approach to crowd control sucks, IMO, but that's a discussion for another time and place.

6 hours ago, Bill from NYC said:

Really? Our perceptions must differ, whereas I am not sensing lost tempers, shouting, name calling, etc.

 

Agreed, I'm seeing reasonably civil and respectful discussion and disagreement.

[Warcodered]

56 minutes ago, Reed83HOF said:

Also if an officer is terminated, they can go to a town a couple towns away and reapply - there is no tracking mechanism for that and honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Jon Oliver talked about police accountability a few years ago and one of the things in the video was "gypsy cops" including apparently a guy that had been with 9 departments in 9 years.

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by Warcodered

[x-BillzeBubba]

 

[Rico]

Nice, 57 Buffalo cops resign.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/buffalo-officers-shoving-75-year-old-ground-decried-governor-where-n1225776

Edited June 5, 2020 by Rico

[x-BillzeBubba]

I tell you something I saw at the Toronto march today gives me hope for the next generation...there was a large peaceful demonstration downtown today that went by my office so I went down to get a feel for it, and two things stood out: the average age was young maybe 20 (not surprising) but the march was at least 70% white or non-black kids.

 

the other thing is that the businesses on the route spent a LOT of $$ putting plywood in front of their stores...I mean huge dollars worth so I assume the big march hasnt happened yet. If you need cheap plywood, go to Toronto on monday

[Reed83HOF]

5 minutes ago, Rico said:

Nice, 57 Buffalo cops resign.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/buffalo-officers-shoving-75-year-old-ground-decried-governor-where-n1225776

[Rico]

2 minutes ago, Reed83HOF said:

Time for the Guardian Angels to step up.