urbanSTL

southsidepride wrote:Deandre lived in Jennings according to the police reports I've seen. Not that he couldn't have been in Canfield that morning, but this article is full of speculation with few concrete facts.

Also I've seen this " Conservative Tree house" website linked quite a few times on Facebook, and many of the articles seem to be race baiting...from the white side.

Yep, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson aren't the only ones doing it. In fact Jon Stewart did a great bit last night showing the hypocrisy of FOX News when it comes to this subject.

moorlander wrote:

wustl_eng wrote:On another note...

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football ... ef983.html -- Belmar claims Rams apologized for hands up gesture

This whole story is a farce. It's hard to believe the sheer gall of the police in this situation--it's almost like they're pouring salt on the wound. From Roorda's letter:

I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I've got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I'd remind the NFL
and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser's products.

Can you believe this guy?! Equating a symbolic gesture of protest with some kind of solidarity with "violent thugs" (what word do you really wanna use, Jeff?) And the whole first amendment thing is just bizarre--acknowledging the players' rights while trying to punish them for exercising them.

To me it says a lot about the attitude of the police in the region. It also says a lot about why/how the region got to this point.

"hands up, don't shoot" implies that police go around shooting people for no reason. If I was an officer I'd be offended too!

quincunx wrote:What are the details of his firing?

According to him he was fired by his boss for filing accusations against his boss who was later fired for the conduct he had complained about.

wustl_eng wrote:Just when you thought the County police couldn't get any pettier....

"Apology: "expression of regret for not being able to do something"
@kdemoff: "I regretted any offense their officers may have taken."

Ugh...

shimmy wrote:

Trap8648 wrote:About the Barkley comments, ehh...I'm not about to call these people scumbags. I do understand the rage, and everybody ALWAYS seems to say, "that isn't the way to get what you want...this isn't the way to do things" and I agree. But what IS the proper way to go about change? Because the way we've BEEN doing it, and the way that is being proposed ISN'T gonna happen. All the talk about "let's come together and talk about the underlying issues and how we can fix them" is great...but we've known the underlying issues for YEARS. We KNOW the issues in education, we KNOW the issues regarding white flight, de facto segregation, redlining, St. Louis' major decline, its provincial nature, poor leadership, all the ills of society. We KNOW the answers. We know HOW we got to this point and we know why. Its about DO we WANT to fix these issues. And I for one, after all these years am not sure that we really do. I think people would much rather go back to how things were and forget about this. And this is coming on BOTH sides of the issue. NOT just white folks.

Wow, really? Torching businesses is the way to go about change? Really? How about voting? Based on recent election results, that's not the way you've been doing it. Apparently the whole situation didn't inspire people enough to register to vote so that they could elect their local leadership, but people are going to take you seriously when you torch your own businesses?

The cops, regardless of who their spokesperson is, have every right to be offended when the city's professional football team accuses them of indiscriminately shooting people, when any intelligent person can look at the evidence and conclude that Michael Brown was shot after/while assaulting a police officer - a crime that would get me, with my blond hair and blue eyes, shot if I did the same thing. I told myself and everyone that I would stop with this thread, so I'll divert from the facts of the case since obviously people don't care about the facts and focus on the current issue at hand.

Of course, no one has a constitutional right to not be offended, and if it was just that then the cops should just suck it up. But when your actions perpetuate a lie (hands up) that has put thousands of people in danger and has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage, then there's more to it than someone simply being offended. I wonder how many people here who applaud the Rams/NFL for supporting the players' "free speech" would then condemn the Dolphins/NFL for fining the player who called the Michael Sam kiss "horrible." That was a case where people were merely offended with no other consequence besides hurt feelings.

Trap8648 wrote: I doubt that you'd be shot and killed...I can't recall an unarmed white person being shot an killed by a police officer, and you're not about to tell me no white person ever resisted arrest either...but that's a convo for another day.

shimmy wrote:^No, but you did imply that white people aren't shot by the police.

Here's the point, there are some real issues that are worthy of discussion and that need to be changed. For example, I think stop-and-frisk is racist and a blatant violation of the fourth amendment. There is also a lot of truth to the justice system being unfair when it comes to sentencing, but that's a result of the laws being written unfairly regarding certain laws (coke v. crack, for example) not of judges being like "Well, you were going to get 3 years. But you're black, so I'm going to give you 5." The legislature changes laws and the people elect the legislature. Yes, it does take some time for democracy to work, but we have that system for a reason. You may want change now, but you're never going to get it if you don't act in a legitimate fashion (I say "you" generally). Burning buildings because a man who just robbed a store and punched a cop in the face got shot, and then rejecting all the evidence and logic that comes out of the Grand Jury, makes other people not even want to address the real issues because there appears to be no point if they can't think logically and act reasonably.

In the meantime, if young black men don't want to be a victim on an unfair justice system, then a reasonable solution would be to not get involved in drugs, not shooting each other, and not assaulting cops. This may come across as insensitive, and I honestly don't mean it that way, but here's just the blunt truth from a white American perspective: I just acknowledged some real, systematic issues regarding race in this country that need to be address politically. I will give you that and agree that these are issues. But a major factor in this is personal responsibility. What is it, 70% of black children are born out of wedlock? That's not a systematic problem, that's a lack of fathers taking responsibility. The stigma of if one values education and speaks correctly that they're acting white (for a recent example, see: Russell Wilson). Tied to that, a wide-spread disregard for authority in general (among many reasons, this is a major one of why good teachers don't want to teach in the inner-city). And I'm sorry, wearing one's pants around one's knees isn't a respectable fashion in any Western society, and defending this as "black fashion" is, I think, absurd.

This may be painful to read, but the big takeaway from Ferguson is that we need to have a conversation on race. That goes for leaders, but it also goes for us common folk who interact with each other. And so, I'm trying to have one. And I'm just trying to be honest. On a forum that is dedicated to the progress of St. Louis, a city that we all love, I think it's appropriate to have a thread dedicated to it where we can discuss these issues respectfully. And I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I get frustrated and pissed let passion take precedent over respectfulness, and for that I apologize.