There are some unwritten rules, wildly
in conflict with US laws and the US
Constitution.
In the case of the OP, a relevant rule is,
a poor, old, handicapped, black man is
not permitted to be on the sidewalks of
the high rent business district.
In such a case, the police respond as in the
OP and its video clip.
The sentence for violating the rule is
to be pinned down, painfully, insulted,
humiliated, have some belongings, e.g.,
crutches, stolen, and generally treated
like dirt.
But, with witnesses, smartphone video,
and lawyers, the black man may no longer
be poor but may get $500,000 from the
city of San Francisco. If I were
on the jury, he'd win, big time, big
enough to make all of SF taxpayers
feel the pain.
The whole scene was in wild violation of the
US Constitution. The police are
guilty as sin, of assault and battery, at least.
Toss in false arrest. Add in theft of his
crutches. And more. He was guilty of what?
Self defense against assault and battery?
If he died, and maybe his health was so
poor he might have, e.g., he might have
had a heart condition or
high blood pressure which could yield
a fatal stroke,
then the police would
be guilty of murder -- literally murder.
And they should be prosecuted for just that.
Better not ask me to serve on
a jury where that poor guy was
the plaintiff -- I'd call for
the cops to be treated like
wild, mad, rabid dogs, enemies
of the citizens, making war on the
citizens, sadists.
The situation is entirely similar
to what the Nazi Brown Shirts did
in Hitler's Germany: In that country,
some citizens were regarded as unwanted.
Then, via the Brown Shirt thugs, those
citizens were subject to just whatever,
robbery, beatings, murder. Now
in SF, some citizens are again regarded
as unwanted, and the police act like
the Nazi Brown Shirts and
rob, beat, and, maybe, murder such
citizens. Not much difference.
It's inhumanity of man to man, and it's
ugly. We've seen the consequences from
Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, ISIS, and more.
We don't like it. We have our Constitution
to help stop it. We don't want it.
One really good use of smartphones, their
video capabilities, the Internet, social
media, and the US legal system is, finally,
to stop this ugly stuff.
Police: Here's your lesson. Here in the
US, that stuff's going to stop.
It's going to stop the easy way or the
hard way. I have to believe you want
the hard way, and it's coming.
Net, the power in the US is definitely
not in the hands of the police and,
instead, is in the hands of the
voting citizens. And, each such story,
with video, on the Internet creates
a lot of votes to stop the ugly stuff,
via the hard way if necessary.
Cops will be going to jail,
for assault and battery, murder,
etc., for long terms but likely
in prison conditions where they
won't last even six months.
Blue shirts, you're going to have to
stop that Nazi stuff, however much
it pains you not to be a thug --
you can't beat the voting
citizens with video cameras. Can't
happen.
All we have to do is quietly,
calmly, privately pull a lever
in a voting booth, and you and your
Nazi behavior are toast.
The police in the US have always been brown shirts for business interests, but it's gotten quite bad lately-- still not as bad as during the first Gilded Age, but it's getting there. Of course, the other real problem is that a hammer will find a nail, which is why we see people getting slaughtered during traffic stops etc.
Definitely agree about the pigs choosing the hard way-- it's all they know.
Their only strategy is escalate to force, whether in the micro situation of a traffic stop or the macro situation of rioting against police brutality. They just don't get it, and they don't want to get it, because they enjoy smashing heads and being unaccountable.
Voting aint gonna fix it, though-- most local candidates aren't about to make a problem with the cops that they rely on, and most national candidates aren't going to make it a problem because hey, all politics are local politics, so there's nothing to gain. Riots and peaceful protests are the way forward now, which is tough because neither are remotely legitimate or acceptable in the US. Predictably, the police will smash the peaceful protests, causing riots, which will ultimately end in disaster.
We saw a bit of walkback after the Ferguson / Baltimore burnings caught national attention, but there were no formal concessions and certainly no adjustment of police training. The de facto state of affairs is actually worse off than before the riots, since now the police have realized that the public has turned against them. Maybe a few more cities will be wrecked and then there will be some serious reparation. The shit factor here is race relations, which are already being played as hard as possible in order to keep the blacks and the whites separate from each other, leaving the blacks to carry most of the burden of police reform. Obviously, this doesn't work, because the blacks aren't considered to be legitimate political entities when it comes to police reform specifically because they've borne the brunt of the drug war's ravages.
In my pipe dream of police brutality being solved, we'd first need to get our national politicians to effect a formal surrender ending the drug war-- this probably won't happen, because "America never loses a war", but it's no secret that the drug war is lost. Ending the drug war formally would open the door for demilitarization/disarmament of the losers, along with closure of the legal loopholes and abuses that allowed police to raid houses and commit warrantless wiretaps nonstop etc. Once the weapons have been removed and the law patched to revoke the wartime leeway, I think we'd be in much better shape, and could focus on normalization of police-citizen relations via force drawdown, culling of the worst abusers, and retraining of the moderate abusers. We'd have a proper (European style) police force in the next generation or so.
Lawyers an bring law suits against the
police. My understanding is that there
are a lot of such suits and that they
cost taxpayers a bundle.
If the guy in the OP got a lawyer and won
a big judgment, say, $500,000, then
voters and, then, politicians would start
to take notice. If the SF police keep
attacking
old guys, then too soon one of them will
die, and the law suit could cost SF
millions. Then the politicians will
start to take positions and the voters
to vote.
Sure, one of the reasons the police get
away with stop and frisk, etc. is the
war on drugs. And if drugs are found
often enough, then that in effect justifies
the illegal stop and frisk.
But drugs do not have to have any direct
relevance: I doubt that the OP was really
about drugs. Instead, the cops just got
their jollies beating up on a poor, old,
handicapped, black guy on the sidewalk
in a high end business district -- jollies.
There are some unwritten rules, wildly in conflict with US laws and the US Constitution.
In the case of the OP, a relevant rule is, a poor, old, handicapped, black man is not permitted to be on the sidewalks of the high rent business district.
In such a case, the police respond as in the OP and its video clip.
The sentence for violating the rule is to be pinned down, painfully, insulted, humiliated, have some belongings, e.g., crutches, stolen, and generally treated like dirt.
But, with witnesses, smartphone video, and lawyers, the black man may no longer be poor but may get $500,000 from the city of San Francisco. If I were on the jury, he'd win, big time, big enough to make all of SF taxpayers feel the pain.
The whole scene was in wild violation of the US Constitution. The police are guilty as sin, of assault and battery, at least. Toss in false arrest. Add in theft of his crutches. And more. He was guilty of what? Self defense against assault and battery? If he died, and maybe his health was so poor he might have, e.g., he might have had a heart condition or high blood pressure which could yield a fatal stroke, then the police would be guilty of murder -- literally murder. And they should be prosecuted for just that.
Better not ask me to serve on a jury where that poor guy was the plaintiff -- I'd call for the cops to be treated like wild, mad, rabid dogs, enemies of the citizens, making war on the citizens, sadists.
The situation is entirely similar to what the Nazi Brown Shirts did in Hitler's Germany: In that country, some citizens were regarded as unwanted. Then, via the Brown Shirt thugs, those citizens were subject to just whatever, robbery, beatings, murder. Now in SF, some citizens are again regarded as unwanted, and the police act like the Nazi Brown Shirts and rob, beat, and, maybe, murder such citizens. Not much difference.
It's inhumanity of man to man, and it's ugly. We've seen the consequences from Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, ISIS, and more. We don't like it. We have our Constitution to help stop it. We don't want it.
One really good use of smartphones, their video capabilities, the Internet, social media, and the US legal system is, finally, to stop this ugly stuff.
Police: Here's your lesson. Here in the US, that stuff's going to stop. It's going to stop the easy way or the hard way. I have to believe you want the hard way, and it's coming. Net, the power in the US is definitely not in the hands of the police and, instead, is in the hands of the voting citizens. And, each such story, with video, on the Internet creates a lot of votes to stop the ugly stuff, via the hard way if necessary. Cops will be going to jail, for assault and battery, murder, etc., for long terms but likely in prison conditions where they won't last even six months. Blue shirts, you're going to have to stop that Nazi stuff, however much it pains you not to be a thug -- you can't beat the voting citizens with video cameras. Can't happen.
All we have to do is quietly, calmly, privately pull a lever in a voting booth, and you and your Nazi behavior are toast.