Six officers known as the ‘Goon Squad’ plead guilty to torturing two Black men, using a sex toy on them and shooting one of them

Pat12@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 775 points –
Six officers known as the 'Goon Squad' plead guilty to torturing two Black men, using a sex toy on them and shooting one of them
mississippitoday.org
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Makes you wonder how often stuff like this happens … it seems that they were only caught because they accidentally shot one of the victims.

I remember seeing a film years ago called Mississippi Burning (set in the 1960s) about how entire communities and institutions condone behaviour just like this - and thinking “thank god such stuff doesn’t happen any more”. That now feels like a remarkably naive attitude.

Pretty grim reading.

I'm white and I was punched by a cop in front of my house last year that then denounced me of hitting him, falsified a medical report, forced a courier to testify against me and of course has his partner who confirms everything he says. No matter the fact that I recorded with my phone him saying that he hit me (in self defense he says but in the report he wrote there's no mention of a self defense), asking if I had cameras (if not he could tell whatever he wanted), that he pushed me the prosecutor is accepting his version. So fuck the police. I'm disabled by the way.

Only the chosen whites are immune from police brutality. If that’s not you then you’re no better off than me.

Sorry that happened. ACAB.

Yeah mostly if you can pass as mid-upper class minimum. I think making police brutality purely a race issue can suggest if the brutality was equally distributed it would be better. That's the view that benefits politicians and capitalists at least, and the mainstream notion of diversity and inclusion that corporations promote. Connecting police brutality to people's position in the political economy challenges a lot more than abstract racism.

Sorry to hear that happened to you. I had cops falsify a report to pin something on me once too.

Thanks. Sorry to hear they didn't behave properly with you either. I mean, it's nothing compared to what happened here but still they are too prone to resorting to violence and go unchecked most of the time. I'll serve no time but I'll still have my criminal record tainted for the first time which sucks.

Not to twist the knife, but looking at all the cases that have relied on bodycams or bystander phone cams - almost always coupled with a police report that the video proved later to be a lie - makes me shudder to imagine what was going on every single decade before cops had to always worry about likely being on someone's camera.

I have my concerns about what the increasing proliferation of cell phone cameras, private security cameras, and doorbell cams mean for general privacy, but no doubt this behavior is only going to get harder and harder for cops.

We'll know we've crossed a turning point when most of the time the video doesn't prove the initial police statement was a lie. Don't think we're there yet, but we'll get there. And frankly it's become clear that police aren't going to change their behavior without being caught a lot more, so at this point I say bring on the cams.

I mean, it wasn't that long ago that we learned PD's in major cities were running black sites.

All the time. This is how the police normally operate in the United States. If you meet a cop that doesn’t do this then congrats you’ve found a unicorn.

Source: I have relatives that are cops 🤮

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