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False Accusations and the Race Card
My wife reported something to me this morning, which occurred yesterday.
She took our older daughter to the dentist for an appointment. A black man came into the lobby and complained about paying his bill. My wife described him as big and towering, and he was talking to a fairly small white woman behind the counter.
All of a sudden, he fell down and claimed that the white woman working the counter at the dentist’s office had hit him. He took out his cell phone to film himself and sort of rolled around on the floor.
My wife witnessed this event, and his claim was absolute nonsense. A blatant lie, apparently in an attempt to get out of paying a dental bill.
This event is interesting in itself, but my reason for posting it relates to the current anti-cop rhetoric. As an example, one comment here at Ricochet at another post stated: “The officer Chauvin (fits, doesn’t it?) had police brutality complaints from those of all races.”
Now I doubt that the person making this comment knows the details of even a single complaint against Ofc. Chauvin. I doubt that the person making this comment knows whether the allegations were credible or not. Apparently, it does not matter.
People lie. They do this all of the time. I would expect that people interacting with police lie more often, in an effort to evade responsibility for an offense that led to the interaction.
Moreover, reports of police wrongdoing are usually filtered to us through the media. If you don’t understand, by now, that the media has a hateful and anti-cop agenda (among other bad agendas), and that the media regularly lies and misleads and distorts the truth so selective editing, you haven’t been paying attention. At least in my opinion.
I have a bias in favor of the police. I do not think that it is an irrational bias, actually. I’ve known some cops, and they’re generally fine people doing a difficult job. They have little or no incentive to oppress anyone. They just try to enforce the law and keep us reasonably safe. I know that there can be exceptions. They have to put up with unbelievable behavior, I think.
None of this seems like rocket science to me. So I have difficulty understanding why so many people, including many of my Ricochet compatriots, seem willing and even eager to believe unlikely tales of police misconduct, generally made by people who are criminal suspects, and generally reported by a media system that is unreliable at best, and actively misleading at worst (probably tilting toward actively misleading most of the time).
I find it very frustrating that I cannot rely on news accounts. The Tony Timpa story is yet another one. The Buffalo story looks like another. I just saw one out of Jacksonville, I think, in which I followed the link to a video of a white man claiming that he was mistreated by police (including being tased) for no reason. As usual, the video showed only tiny snippets of the event, but even on that part, you can see the guy forcibly resisting arrest — and then it cuts to an interview of him, in which he claims that he did not.
Skepticism regarding accusations of police misconduct seems like the proper response.
Published in General
You presented this as if the Patron was not told how much the service was going to cost before the service was performed.
Best business practice, first and foremost, the Customer should be told how much the product or service will cost before said product or service is given. If so, then such situations are less likely to happen.
I suspect that if things evolve, as they did over the last 25 years that I spent in the school system in Seattle, that this behavior will not be uncommon if Trump fails to be reelected in November. What we are seeing on the streets and in the media has a great deal to do with the beating down of majority resistance by a vocal, and very powerful minority.
When I was teaching they referred to all whites as being part of The White Collective. What that meant was that we were responsible individually and collectively for every insult or injury ever inflicted on a black person or other minority (though those others were only mentioned as a side light). What you had to say in your defense was irrelevant. The fact that I was among the first generation on both sides of my family to be born in this country did not absolve me of guilt. My father’s hard won success in his chosen field was somehow based on centuries of black oppression. That is their argument. They accept no contrary viewpoint. If you challenge what they say, you are a racist. They cannot be racist because they, allegedly, hold no power. The entire argument is patently absurd, but repeated often enough, with enough self-assurance it become a fact in their minds, and, if you allow it, in yours as well. Prepare yourself!
Don’t you think this is already becoming the standard?
One lesson I had to learn many times over in police work was it’s a lie. I don’t care what the scene looks like. I don’t care about the person’s relationship to the scene. I don’t care how old or young or sincere they appear. The first story is a lie. Many times I would be listening to a tale of mayhem and be thinking to myself this is believable. I once walked into a covered in blood kitchen.. A five year old boy tells me his mom was stabbed several times by a lady. Hmm, looks and sounds believable. Where’s mom? Tuns out untrue, never believe the first story.
Has there been a full and meaningful explanation of why what was seen of Officer Chauvin’s action with his knee on George Floyd’s neck was taking place?
I think city administrations do pass oppressive laws to raise revenue. Cops have, in the past, been incentivized to act on these laws that frequently will cause reactions because the laws seem harsh and unjust by those accused or ticketed and they reflect that back to the cops and react, frequently on the scene. But much of this is changing with greater use of cameras the tickets are issued without involving a cop.
Maybe a look should be taken at how insurance companies are involved in these processes. I see all the blurbs on the internet about what insurance companies can do for you in cases of no tickets for 3 years. What is behind that? It looks as if there is a lot going on between two parties and it doesn’t involve cops.
I believe the rapper L’l Wayne also said people should calm down until the facts can be determined.
Meanwhile just try using the converse logic on minorities. If I’m responsible for the bad actions of people hundreds of years ago because I’m White, they are responsible for the bad actions of Blacks today.
If I were being paid over $100k and able to retire after 20 years at half pay I’d be willing to put up with it. I would also demand changes in the law requiring hotheads and provocateurs to be charged with violating the policeman’s civil rights or public nuisance charges if they do not treat the police with some baseline level of civility in their interactions.
That will be seen at trial unless the body cam videos are “lost” like the Epstein cell video.
You should talk to my son’s best friend who retired as a cop after being shot twice. He became a salesman for a food product and is now national sales manager. He travels a lot but nobody is shooting at him and he makes about 5 times his cop salary.
Did you read my comment #9? I said cops are doing a job I couldn’t do – I don’t have the patience required. I do not begrudge cops being paid very well for what society demands of them, but I think demanding body cams is not really different than demanding tracking devices on UPS trucks or surveillance over dealers at casinos.
Have you ever worn a body cam, carried a gun, and had to be concerned for your safety at the same time? I haven’t either. But I’d be curious to know the extent to which they interfere with body movement or the performance of one’s duties. I’m not saying that they do, but I think that it’s a legitimate question.
It’s a legitimate question that should be resolved without a veto by the police unions.
Why does that help if you’re dealing with someone who may figure they can get whatever service they want, and then get out of paying for it later? In a situation like that, “how much it costs” is totally irrelevant.
I don’t get “didn’t know how much it would cost” from “complained about paying his bill”.
That was “Jimmy Carter” not me.
Your view in the highlighted section is very strange to me. You don’t seem to consider the possibility that someone who is high on drugs may be more likely to resist arrest, and more likely to be a danger to police and others. Instead, you seem to think that someone high on drugs is no danger at all — apparently not even if his is 6’4″, 223# like Mr. Floyd — and needs to be treated like a poor innocent patient at a clinic.
This is not what was happening in the Floyd case, and I don’t think that it’s representative of police encounters with criminal suspects who are high on drugs.
So I completely disagree with your last sentence. The health risks to a criminal arrestee who is resisting arrest come last, not first. Protection of innocent civilians comes first; protection of the police comes second; successful apprehension comes third. The health risk to the criminal suspect, who is being arrested and is resisting arrest, come last in my book.
I think that your view is quite incorrect, very unfair to cops, and very unrealistic. Cops are not EMTs, and cops are not social workers. It’s a challenge to expect them to do those jobs at all. It’s a very bad idea to elevate those other roles over their principal role of law enforcement, in my estimation.
From the officer himself? I don’t think so, and I don’t expect any such explanation.
Remember that the officer has been accused of murder. Like any other criminal defendant, he has the right to remain silent. I’m not a criminal defense lawyer, so I don’t have personal experience in this area, but it is generally a bad idea to talk to the cops, if you are a criminal defendant.
I didn’t find the legitimacy of the complaint over the bill to be particularly relevant. He may have had a valid objection. But pretending to be punched, by the little gal behind the counter, and then trying to video a selfie of yourself being oppressed by whitey — who you could beat up with one hand tied behind your back — is just ridiculous.
It also goes to one of my points, which is that there are false accusations of racial bias or other improper racial motivation. I don’t know what proportion of such charges are false. It would be interesting to see an empirical study of this, and perhaps one is available. Not from dentist’s offices, but perhaps from investigation of complaints about police.
shortened it for you :)
CoC violations?
Hey Basil. The BBC just pulled one of your episodes.
Don’t mention it.
I’m heading for the box set to get it now.
My wife and I usually watch what we call “The Murder Channel” on TV in the evening when we go to bed. It’s almost the only TV I watch. I think it is called “Discovery ID.” I think it is Wednesday that they run a series of programs based on video surveillance, one of which is all body cam video. Pretty educational. There was a notorious case in LA several years ago where a black woman was having sex in a car with the door open. Office workers saw what was going on and called the cops. The policeman who talked to her was, of course, accused of racist abuse. He had a body cam and the video destroyed her story. I don’t see much objection from cops.
Jesse Smollet IS available to comment.
But he shouldn’t be. He should be in prison.
I agree about not trusting the media, but one thing that makes it easier to believe accounts of police misconduct is the misconduct at top law enforcement levels in this country, e.g. in the case of Michael Flynn. It’s not fair to judge all law enforcement on the basis of what happened there, but we’re human and tend to do that.
But the media says nothing untoward happened regarding Flynn. So there’s the clue: the opposite of whatever the media is claiming, is likely to be the truth.