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    UngratefulDeadAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:25pm

    Two things that are true, because this comments section is going to be full of people yelling one to people yelling the other.

    1) It is monumentally stupid to stand up to or try to fight the police.

    2) The police should not murder everybody who does 1).

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      cepalgUngratefulDead
      7/18/14 2:27pm

      Pretty much. It's really dangerous to stand up to people who know they can kill you on a whim with no repercussions.

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      Renz004UngratefulDead
      7/18/14 2:30pm

      Exactly. I'll never understand idiots who think talking back to cops is a good idea. They are representatives of a system. If the system is broken then you take it to court, not try to talk back and escalate the situation.

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    Andy CushAndy Cush
    7/18/14 3:10pm

    Full NYPD patrol guide is available here.

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      ArkAndy Cush
      7/18/14 3:17pm

      Is there fine print at the bottom somewhere reading "black people that talk back may be beaten, shot, strangled, or otherwise abused or killed as the officer sees fit"?

      Gotta be written down somewhere...

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      UngratefulDeadAndy Cush
      7/18/14 3:26pm

      This actually substantially raises the chances somebody will lose their job for this. No hope of a prosecution, but sadly an internal rules violation will probably be taken more seriously than killing somebody.

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    Graymyas LeighAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:24pm

    Every single officer involved needs to be arrested immediately and charged with murder. But nah, paid leave is probably what they're going to get. And they wonder why people build shrines to cop killers?

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      ChetBizzaroGraymyas Leigh
      7/18/14 2:26pm

      You know why the police don't choke me to death? Because I'm fucking invisible to them.

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      barracoburnerGraymyas Leigh
      7/18/14 2:27pm

      Whoa. You were making good points until the last one. Terrible thing to say. Nothing justifies building a shrine to the person who killed Melvin Santiago.

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    SensitiveTweetsAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:24pm

    "Thanks for the tweet, de Blasio!" - The Family of Eric Garner

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      UngratefulDeadSensitiveTweets
      7/18/14 2:31pm

      Why can't all burners be like you?

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      MadMan444SensitiveTweets
      7/18/14 2:49pm

      Jeez you're acting like stopping police overreach was his entire mayoral campaign or something. /s

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    SkeveAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:32pm

    I will never understand how cops can put someone in a choke hold and then try and tell them to calm down and follow instructions. When you are being choked and have 5 people on top of you, you go into survival mode and aren't able to listen to anyone or follow instructions. Of course then the cops say "he was fighting us" but that is because he couldn't breath because you were choking him. When someone is being choked, the only thing they can think about is to stop you from choking them. They can't think clearly enough to realize that if the cooperate you will quit choking them (at least in theory). So they fight to try and breath.

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      DeeLiteSkeve
      7/18/14 2:37pm

      ....and he had to fight harder than most. Asthma is some seriously scary shit.

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      amgarreSkeve
      7/18/14 2:49pm

      This. Do they not take classes in how to diffuse a conflict?? He was upset, but he wasn't out of control when he was talking to them. Couldn't they just have said, "Sir, we're not trying to mess with you, but we saw someone selling illegal cigarettes out of here. Come down to the station with us and we can clear this up. And if we don't hear anything else, this is the last time you'll see us." Heck, he'd probably have gotten in the car himself. I mean, it's untaxed cigarettes for Heaven's sake? Do you have to force him into a car to write up a report and fine him that? The punishment was going to be a fine, anyway, right? But throughout, they basically do not even try to talk to him and tell him what is going to happen or what the problem is. Baffling.

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    Philip WesterAndy Cush
    7/18/14 3:02pm

    People really need to get off their The Cops Are Bad Guys high.

    Let's take a look at the objective facts here:
    * Suspect tells cops "Every time you see me, you try to mess with me. This stops today.". Alrighty, then. I someone told me that, I would immediately flag them as hostile in my mind. As in "Might punch me at any moment". The guy was huge. A punch from him might very well kill someone if he punched hard enough and in a vital spot.
    * An officer tries to handcuff him. He resists, raising his arms.
    * The same officer then puts him in a choke-hold to prevent further resistance.
    * Guy dies, presumably because he has asthma, something the cops could not have known since they're not psychic.

    The guy died, which is a tragedy, but looking at the objective facts, the cops did nothing wrong. If someone's being hostile and resisting an arrest, putting them in a choke-hold for a few seconds is not an overreaction.

    This is like when someone aims a gun that looks very real at someone and they get shot in return. People are not psychic. Someone can engage in a response to a situation with tragic and deadly consequences to an innocent without having done anything illegal or even wrong.

    It matters not whether he was being interrogated (because he clearly wasn't being placed under arrest at the start of the video) because he was selling cigarettes illegally or because he was involved in a fight in some way. Let's say that he simply broke up a fight.

    Cops arrive on the scene afterwards. The participants in the fight give conflicting statements (presumably). The cops interrogate everyone involved. One of these people tells them "This ends today!", which clearly signals hostility, at which point you try to put him under arrest. He resists.

    Putting said person in a choke-hold is quite logical. If you're giving the cops a hard time for putting this guy in a choke-hold, you're basically arguing "If a suspect/person of interest says what could be interpreted as a threat to you and then resists an arrest, try to talk to them before doing anything physical". You're basically arguing the cops cannot use force unless the suspects take the first swing.

    And for every tragedy where a suspect with asthma dies from a choke-hold, we'll have dozens of dead police people because they're not allowed to do exert any kind of force unless first swung, stabbed, shot etc. at.

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      Jeff A.Philip Wester
      7/18/14 3:17pm

      "You're basically arguing the cops cannot use force unless the suspects take the first swing." - Yes, actually, this is exactly what we should expect. Police are public safety agents, and being the first party in an encounter to use violence is not what I want my police force defaulting to.

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      JackOfNoTradesPhilip Wester
      7/18/14 5:00pm

      Yeah? Police don't get to arrest someone because they are confused, or because someone says "this ends today." They have to have actual evidence of a crime. I didn't see any contraband cigarettes. And the officers don't seem to have any evidence at all that he participated in a fight. If the arrest was bogus they are in big trouble.

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    nopenopenopenopenopenopeAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:22pm

    "Every time you see me, you try to mess with me," he says to the cops at one point. "This stops today."

    Yeah... I'm never one to take the side of the cops here, and there's absolutely a huge mistake and tragedy here, but man... "This stops today" feels more than a little like a threat.

    Don't threaten officers. Just... Don't.

    EDIT: It wasn't a threat, I didn't say it was, but for someone looking for an excuse, that's exactly what it was. Giving a member of a police force known for brutality and racial profiling even the shadow of an excuse to pull out the billy-club ... Yeah.

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      2 Wheels awesome!nopenopenopenopenopenope
      7/18/14 2:25pm

      Clearly he meant it as a prophetic statement...

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      BoSephusnopenopenopenopenopenope
      7/18/14 2:27pm

      Did you watch the video? There was nothing threatening about the way he said it.

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    e.nonAndy Cush
    7/18/14 2:26pm

    #99 in particular appears to really enjoy assaulting people who have no way to fight back. notice how he's using his considerable body weight pressing the man's head into the sidewalk ... and then he chokes the man to death.

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      Celia the Vampire Slaying VampireAndy Cush
      7/18/14 2:24pm

      Oh gods...sobbing from him gasping "I can't breathe." PIGS. Hey, Bill, can you bring him back to life? No? Oh well then, stop your fucking men from killing people over supposed cigarettes. People are prone to break down when you harass them. They just assumed a bigger guy could take it. WTF.

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        Jerry-NetherlandAndy Cush
        7/18/14 2:29pm

        Anyone else find it odd that the first cop (with DD on his shirt) cop is covered head to toe in tats? Isn't that verboten in NYPD? Are the DD cops just a rival gang in Staten Island?

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