Florida man seriously injured and unable to speak after encounter with police, daughter says after her father was falsely accused of stealing a banana
wiredposts.com
A woman in Florida says her 55-year-old “medically fragile” father was falsely accused of theft at a Florida grocery store last week and then seriously injured in a violent encounter with police. Now, she says, he is hospitalized and has lost the ability to speak.
We don't have police. Just corporate enforcers. Pinkertons in different uniforms. Oh, you are accused of a 17 cent theft and didn't do it? Eat lead I guess. I'm just so tired.
If you get your house broken into, or your car stolen the police can't even be bothered to pretend to care. They treat your theft like an inconvenience to them and will tell you there's nothing they can do.
But if you're a corporation, they'll rush right over and cripple a shoplifter for stealing a banana.
Hey now, they also specialize in oppressing minorities.
No, they specialize in protecting minorities. Minority. You know which one.
Don't worry, we still have Pinkertons as well.
There seems to be a lot of gaps in that timeline in the 1800s, wonder what they were doing then 🤔
SCOTUS: processing, processing, processing…..
Complete! If you don’t like it then just vote in a different police chief or mayor!
You can do this?
Some police chiefs are elected yes.
Wow. Who can run for police chief?
For elected positions technically anybody.
Practically it’s a police officer endorsed by the previous chief and/or police union.
Blame boomers and genX. Black/brown ppl have been preaching about police brutality for decades. The only reason they weren't beating the shit out of white ppl then was they where middle class. Now that everyone is either rich or poor they're coming for the rest of you.
It took cellphone footage for ppl to start believing and by then it was too late to do anything
They're the same thing.
They really shouldn't be. The US is seriously fucked up.
They always will be because people are inherently evil and domineering, and quite simply can't be trusted with that kind of power.
Just how they want us. I feel you, but fuck the corporate garbage world those motherfuckers are trying to build.
Time to tear shit down and fix it. The world doesn't have to be like this. We just need to tell the corporations to fuck off and regulate them again.
JFC. Racist piece of shit.
Fuck the cops. Fuck this piece of garbage cashier.
Fuck all this.
No no no, the cashier wasn't the one who followed him around the store.
Yee. Fuck the police,
the cashier, and that employee tooWhy are we saying fuck the cashier?
Fuck, that's a good question. The first time I read it I thought one interaction was with a cashier, but now I don't see "cashier" anywhere lmao. Oopsie daisy :p
Wow. Non American here. My kid regularly eats while I shop. I just bring empty packets to register for them to scan and they normally throw them out for me. No problem. Like zero problem.
I don't even think our police would show up if they were called. They take 3hrs to turn up to a home invasion, so I doubt they'd show up for a banana. This is a crazy level of policing.
A lot of retail stores will have a police officer sit in their car close by so they can have a quick response to e for shoplifters. I see it a lot in areas that have several larger retail stores grouped together.
You can almost guarantee the victim will be Black.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Every time. Every. Single. Time. For real.
That could take years! That's unacceptable.
They are hoping that by then people will forget about it and not notice when its dumped so theres no outrage.
We need a national oversight agency where all this footage should be sent to so it is managed by a neutral 3rd party. Why the fuck would we allow criminals to manage the evidence against themselves?
I've been saying that for years.
Why not a national police force, such that a disgraced cop can’t just mosey on to the next town over and get hired there?
One of the big problems with America is that it is so frictionless for cops to just city-hop whenever they fuck up.
At least in Canada, with the RCMP being in most cities and towns, it is damn difficult for any RCMP officer to job-hop. Especially when the RCMP is a clear cut above in training, and anyone who tries to job-hop from them to a city cop will be intensely questioned as to why they are downgrading so significantly.
Yes, the RCMP has some pretty bad apples; power doesn’t corrupt so much as it attracts the corruptible like flies to excrement. And the RCMP gives its officers plenty of power, for sure.
But in just the last few years alone, I have seen RCMP officers disciplined for behaviour that wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow in any U.S. police force.
I the rules for body cam requests in the city I work for. It can only be denied for the following reasons:
The video was taken in a private home and the homeowner does not consent to the release.
The video is of a non-jailtime citation/interaction and the principal civilian captured on film doesn't consent to the release.
The second one is because the city is a tiny enclave for the super-rich (average new home is about 6 million dollars), and there's celebrities and stuff getting pulled over pretty often. We had tons of ORRs from paparazzi for all incidents.
Even if he was justly accused of stealing a banana, what in the actual fuck?
Police in the US escalate situations instead of de-escalating them. In any country this would have been solved after a short conversation.
USSA VatniksMurica.Someone needs to ship a ton of bananas to the police everyday until the body camera footage is released.
Isn't Florida that state that releases everything?
Yes, though lately it's been taking a lot longer. The state government under 25 years of GOP rule isn't too fond of the Sunshine Law.
I see they opted for the Israeli definition of "measured and equitable response".
Reminder that the IDF trains US cops. Palestinians are used as guinea pigs for policing techniques.
In the US steal a banana get paralyzed, somehow private property even if just a banana is worth more than people
He wasn't even stealing anything. It has nothing to do with theft and everything to do with his skin color I guarantee it.
Neoslavery
Hey morons, that Monty Python sketch about defending yourself from being attacked with a banana by shooting the attacker was supposed to be a joke.
I sure hope they disarmed the guy.
ACAB
The cops’ report noted that she “struck him in the arm against his will”.
I am absolutely fucking disgusted by this weasely use of language
Did anybody read the article and see the part where she were threatening the employees with a bat and admitted to it?
I think they’re sort of burying the lede on this one.
I would completely expect the police to show up, armed and ready for someone who did just receive a call about threatening people with a metal bat.
Fuck the police and what they did to him, but let’s not pretend like this isn’t a whole other thing than the headline.
That being said, can anyone tell me what the cops did to this dude other than make him sit in the back of a police car I very well might’ve missed it.
The latter part of that article go wild
To answer your question on what the cops did:
This is all from the woman's perspective. But it sure seems suspicious that he had chest pains that the police's story can't explain.
And kidney injury, supposedly.
I would upvote you but I keep getting an error screen when I try.
Fair enough I missed that part. Thank you!
If you walk up to someone with a bat in your hand and tell them to pick on someone your own size, you are threatening them with the bat.
If not to be a threat there is no purpose to bring the bat
From her account the Karen in the store had already laid hands on her father at this point and was then continuing to follow and harass him. Sounds like self defense to me.
It’s not self-defense, it may be defense of another, but she was not involved in it until she involved herself
Then you don't understand the concept of self defense.
A bat is a deadly weapon. To justify the use of a deadly weapon in self defense or defense of others, a reasonable person must believe there is a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, and that the deadly weapon was necessary to end that threat.
"Laying hands" does not describe anything remotely close to such a threat.
I think if the person is white you can use "stand your ground" and shoot people of color without issue. This isn't about her having a bat, it's that she doesn't look "white enough" to use the same defense several white folks have used now. And those white folks went looking for trouble and still got to shoot people with impunity. She only had a bat and was basically telling the Karen if she wants a problem to keep it up.
I just don't see how that isn't self defense. She also feared for her father's life from some racist shithead that instead of calling police if she really thought there was an issue, decided to put her hands on this gentleman and then continue to harass him. And I don't know that stores particularly policy, but most chains strongly discourage harassing and chasing down customers because you have a hunch they may have taken something. So she also likely broke store policy in pursuit of her racist vendetta.
Oh dear, a classic case of downvoted for uncomfortable truth. The fickle nature of forums strike again.
How do you know she walked right up to Karen? How do you know she didn't just go and stand by her father while leaning on the bat?
And why didn't the woman just ask to see the receipt instead of going all Karen?
You assume too much.
Based just on the facts, she picked up a bat and then issued a threatening statement. Whether you are 2 feet away or 50, that is still threatening someone with a weapon.
Why are you arguing against this?
I assumed nothing.
I used only the things that the lady herself stated.
If you disagree please point me to the information that you think proves your point.
I will look at it and reevaluate, I might not change my mind but I will at least listen to your opinion.
Please, feel free.
Based on what media is reporting, which is rarely ALL the facts.
And you do assume you know how far away she was standing, what her tone of voice was, etc. If you weren't there = you don't know for sure.
You also didn't respond to my question why Karen just didn't ask to see the receipt ... like a non-racist likely would.
Because I am not trying to defend her actions.
I agree that that is what should have happened.
Can you give me an example of how holding a metal bat in your hand and telling that to someone in this situation would not be a threat?
Look, my personal mantra is "pick on someone your own size", which I chant every morning when I'm roaming the streets with my walking bat.
Only a bigot would find that threatening.
Ok, I can’t help but give an exception for that.
You are making sure to bang it creepily while talking in a sing-song voice right?
Eh, it's more of an summoning Moloch vibe.
But whenever someone makes eye contact, I make sure to never blink.
You have to mix it up and drag it slowly on the pavement behind you for a while, too.
Based on what she has said. Her description of her own actions with the bat constitute a threat. Unless you're arguing she was misquoted, she issued a threat with a deadly weapon.
If you read the rest of the story, they claim she was waiting outside with the bat telling the lady to come out, went inside and knocked a bunch of shit off of shelves, etc.
Which may not be true, but pretty sure a bunch of people were being stupid and escalating things here.
everyone was escalating here, except perhaps the victim. Even then, it seems like you get the manager and make sure they have the cashiers statements instead of trying to leave
Yeah. You're right.
The daughter totally escalated the situation by bringing a baseball bat and threatening the clerk. No wonder they called the police.
And the old man, according to affidavits, was simply taken into the back of a police car without any violence to himself. Then he complained of chest pains while in the car so they called an ambulance. He was alert when the ambulance arrived.
The man had a heart condition that was aggravated due to his daughter escalating the situation and getting the police involved. And now he's in the hospital because of her behaviour.
However this could've all not happened had the store employee not been a dick. So this is really all that person's fault.
I don’t agree with that logic.
You are stripping away everyone’s free will except the employee.
At any point during this, anyone could have made different decisions and just stopped this whole thing
Yeah but the initial instigator was the clerk. That was the spark that started it all.
Friend, I already agreed to that.
My statement is that everyone here was an adult and they all made poor choices.
Granted that the dudes action was small, but now that I think about it that was actually what started it.
It should have stopped with just asking the cashier how many bananas he paid for.
They did not even need to bother asking him and risking someone just thinking they were being called a thief.
I know that is how I feel every time I get asked for a receipt, and I am a middle aged white guy in redneck country, god only knows how often he probably has to deal with it.
Do y’all’s grocery stores charge by number of bananas? Mine does if by weight. Not that I think that makes a difference, if I keep seeing people taking about paying for an extra banana so im curious.
People do it with grapes too, also sold by weight. But here we only have a few. Surely she could have typed in 1/3 extra weight and been pretty damn close
Many cashiers can't do math tho, and if you ask them to they think you're trying to scam them.
I think the fact that this guy had a medical flareup that the potassium in the bananas would help will help him in court, if he would even be able to go to court.
Ah ok I misunderstood.
Yeah, uh, what the fuck?
This case needs to be highlighted to a DA or an org that will bring a suit to have the PD pay for this man’s hospitals bill and some sort of settlement for the distress caused to him and his family.
Cops: "Well, yeah, but he was black soooo..."
Tragic. He was just happy to see them after all.
Fuck the system.
What is the name of the employee?
Mr. Fuk Uhipy
There's a lot of people being shitty to each other in this story.
This is Polk County, Florida, home of the cowboy sheriff Grady Judd who has never seen a camera and microphone he didn't want to use to engrandize himself. Except for the body worn ones. Polk County residents are not the most enlightened of people. But, never discount there being two sides to every story.
What side of this story could justify beating up an old man until he can't speak?
OP, answer this...curious what the other side might be 🙄
The other bananas may have looked like three yellow guns.
Cops only knew that there was a shoplifter threatening the employee, and they saw the daughter with the bat. So they rolled up and took care of it.
I really put almost all of this on the employee. Even in her own words, how do you follow someone out of the store screaming at them and threatening them, then say you’re afraid because the woman had a bat?
So the cops... See the woman with a bat and beat the shit out of the old man? Is this supposed to paint the cops in a better light or make them look less incompetent and stupid?
No, I don’t see how anyone could absolve the cops in this scenario. Incompetent, stupid, prone to violence, ready to violate human rights at the drop of a hat, are all fair descriptions here. Many of these police violence stories have in common that one officer crosses the line out of fear, but the others join in with some sort of mob mentality.
But cops were new arrivals who most likely didn’t know the context. Fault them for excessive violence, having to control the situation with fear, need to be obeyed, etc, but this is sort of like a “swatting”. The person calling with a presumably incomplete story is most at fault. That person should be in prison, but it doesn’t change that those officers shouldn’t be trusted with authority and there needs to be a fundamental change in policing
No answer to their question huh? I'd love to know what you think this old man could have done to justify putting him in the hospital like this. Go on. Tell us what other side to the story makes the end result ok.