A Minneapolis police officer has been relieved of duty while his department investigates a profanity-laced video in an encounter with a man at a car stop. During the abusive confrontation, the officer threatens to break the legs of a suspect if he attempts to escape.
The stop in South Minneapolis was captured on video below and the officer can be heard saying “Plain and simple, if you [expletive] with me, I’m gonna break your legs before you get a chance to run.” It is still unknown what led to the arrest. Indeed, the young man can be heard asking why he was being arrested and the officer responds simply “Because I feel like arresting you.”
Some accounts say that the officer is Officer Rod Webber who has been put on paid leave while an internal investigation.
The videotape is another example of the value of videotape in the proving of police abuse. We have been following the continuing abuse of citizens who are detained or arrested for filming police in public. (For prior columns, click here and here). Despite consistent rulings upholding the right of citizens to film police in public, these abuses continue.
Bam Bam, you sound so ignorant. As if educated Germans/Europeans wanted to contribute to sick Nazism. If Europe weren’t completely debilitated from WWI, does ANYONE think these educated folks would have joined the sick shit they did? And does anyone think they’ll allow themselves and family to get carted away during the night and killed because they believed that genocide and more warring was the answer?
Nick
If one takes Shuler’s concept a bit farther, I wonder how he would explain the deranged and sick behavior of the Nazis, especially that of the Nazi elite, many of whom had advanced degrees in various fields? Wouldn’t all that education, which the Nazis highly valued, have, according to Shuler, prevented the atrocities from ever occurring? I’m not anti education. Far from it. The Nazis are, however, a perfect example of how very cultured and educated individuals do not always act in accordance with that education. Mandating a four year college education, for police officers, will not necessarily yield the results he expects. It’s more about personality, temperament and values.
Nick, fine, I mark your words, just as I hope you do mine. Let’s just see how things pan out. Indisputable is that we were both born into “interesting times.”
But if you think money will prevail over a planet of living things without much strife and suffering, you’re fooling yourself. We are here on this gorgeous planet to enjoy beautiful, rich life. Not to shit on each other and kill, pollute, exploit. Don’t see anything wrong with aiming for better, especially since that deep impulse rallies in all of our hearts. Indeed, it speaks to our very (collective) essence.
Or Brava!
Bravo Shuler!
LOL! I would suggest to you that you’re on the loser end of thinking. Got nothing better than that?
* Pharamceuticals, not pharmacies
LOL! Shuler may I suggest a great blog for you called Flowers For Socrates. Enjoy your life.
Oh that’s right, since our similarly screwed up medical system hurts people, that should deflect from police wrong-doings. Not buying it.
Here in the U.S. we are fixated on money and all our actions are done in the name of money. We will soon find more and more problems that come directly from that thinking. How could it not?
The U.S. health care system is the shame of the western world, don’t you know? Since western media is completely censored and propagandized not much talk of this comes out. When health care is monetized, we Americans find ourselves in a losing situation. Not only is it unethical to withhold medical treatment for money, but our grossly distorted for-profit medical system, especially pharmacies, are bankrupting our country. All this shit is coming to a head. Can’t happen soon enough.
Don’t you lawyers on here have enough perspective to see the Fascist ditch the U.S. has fallen in to? You all talk like it’s still good ol’ days but it’s not.
Shuler, I HAVE NOT ARGUED OTHERWISE! I only said a college education is not a panacea. If given a choice of a college educated hot head and a high school educated level headed, common sense person. I’ll take the latter EVERY TIME to be a cop! I have said I value education. I just know it is not the end all and be all that elitists think it is. That’s because liberals control the billion dollar education industry. They need to feed that beast. And make no mistake, it is a big industry w/ incredible waste and abuse. I am college educated[undergrad and some post grad], mostly private so it was a good education. I have taught high school history. I know the good and bad. Just like I do w/ cops. I’ve been around, Shuler. I’ve been around. Your capitalist rant just caught you w/ your fly down. I think we’re probably done here. I don’t waste my time w/ ideologues. They’re tedious and boring as hell.
Dear Nick, the revenue missed from those IRS workers amounts to … ? Perhaps a couple pennies compared to how our shrinking tax dollars are spent on needless, illegal warring and disgustingly innappropriate corporate welfare. Not to mention the monies the U.S. does not receive from obscenely wealthy entities that should be paying their fair share into our collective experiment we have going called the United States. Let’s compare that to the trillions of your and my tax dollars squandered in the military and, in that most grostesque of wastes, corporate welfare. Even Forbes has repeatedly written about the problem of excess corporate welfare.
Shuler, There are BAD cops. You ran into a good one and a bad one. That’s a .500 batting average, superb for govt. work. I can see and feel your story. I’ve had similar experiences w/ cops. I just refuse to hate them like the haters here. Let’s look @ medical malpractice. Darren pointed out some great stats that shows you are exponentially more likely to be killed by a doc or nurse than by a cop. I have worked innumerable med mal cases. defending hospitals, docs, nurse, techs, etc. Now, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be a victim. But, many middle class and wealthy are killed by medical professionals. The vast majority of people killed by cops are poor. So, at least medical killers are more income neutral.
Nick, people like you seem to consider yourselves the salt-of-the-earth types, anti-elitists and all. But you’re destroying the fabric of our once-great country.
The more learning human animals receive, the better world we’ll have, in general, and I don’t mean just basic general learning or the following bit of vocational learning, but the higher intellectual learning that everyone in a civilized society should receive. Why on earth would you argue otherwise? There will always be a small pool of sociopaths who don’t have anything more rolling around in their heads but a few rocks telling them they need to chase money and chase money and chase money and get theirs and to hell with everyone else. We see this western capitalist influence all over the planet right now, wherever people are suffering and dying. I don’t want us to become third-world, but the U.S. is rapidly on pace to become so, while earning enemies around the planet from all those we’ve killed, wounded or displaced from our unquenchable warring. The money is too great for a few. And the majority of Americans aren’t watching and don’t know. Truly sickening.
A recent report shows 1580 IRS workers did not pay taxes over the past 10 years. Although the law says they all should be fired, most were not. There is little accountability in govt. And, although Steve Groen loves his VA healthcare, a bipartisan Senate committee just yesterday called for a thorough investigation due to horrible service provided to our veterans. I guess Obama’s guy hasn’t done the job.
Nick @ 11:17
Yeah, just like the one time a few years ago some teenage kid came to our front yard and, instead of ringing the doorbell as I expected, he made a furtive glance before trying to pull our baby fruit tree out of the ground. I just happened to be in the front of the house at the time and yelled, “Hey!” He heard me, and after breaking a couple of big lower branches of the sapling, left it and ran down the street. At that time, there were a lot of robberies being committed in our neighborhood, many of them unarmed and stealing that which they can access in yard and house and a good amount of them armed, where people were bound and threatened, as well as those who were simply killed. I feared calling the police cuz even back then I feared they’d hurt the teenager. My boyfriend took off down the street after him, to bitch at him, not hurt him, while I called the police. When the police came, a hostile Hispanic police-woman with opaque mirrored sunglasses scowled at me and and talked about people not wanting to share. For real, that’s what she said to me. And I was afraid of her, based on her face and language, and I could not even see her eyes. Her accompanying officer, an older policeman full of experience, courtesy and grace, was thankfully with her, otherwise I don’t know what would have happened. He talked her down from attacking me. Meanwhile, my boyfriend found the teenager hiding behind a bush a couple blocks away and he gave him a talking to, asking him why he did such a thing and admonishing not to do the same. A while later, I saw the teenager in the back seat of a man’s (his father) minivan, driving away, laughing at us.
The most disturbing part of this episode was the young female police officer who treated me like a criminal. I’ve seen some disturbing things since but won’t call the police because they are frightening, especially the rough, apparently uneducated ones. That’s not being elitist, that’s just being human or humane.
Does anyone really care whether or not your neighborhood police officer can recite Shakespeare or pass Organic Chemistry?
Shuler just built him a 7 foot straw man! Lets call him Horseshit.
Pogo, Another dirty secret. It’s tough to get black people to be cops for several reasons. The biggest reason is while white cops get all types of epithets thrown at them in the hood, it is much more brutal and personal for black cops. I have had many black cops tell me stories about the unbelievable verbal assaults they get on a daily basis. Hispanic cops get it also, but WNL compared to black cops.
Back to the good old days.
http://bestbarbershopinatlanta.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/barber-surgeon-pole.jpg
I don’t understand people who poo-poo, or even discourage, higher education, meaning college or above. Does anyone disagree that people who’ve been exposed to great thinking and concepts contained in literature, art, science, culture, etc. don’t offer a benefit to overall society in general? It’s sad this aspect is actively being killed. The powers-that-were in the U.S. used to assume higher education was necessary to create a great, or even “successful,” affluent society. Not just to be competitive or financially successful but “great” in other ways, including those not measured by the money we’re able to fork over to banks and their business-school graduate with their single-track, sociopathic mindset. Like if you go to a store and encounter a worker with whom you have a nice little aside about some reference to a classic piece of literature or work of art or music or political event? These characteristics make a society a great one that the best people want to live in and thrive and share and grow.
+1 on what Shuler’s written!