OT: Bucks Protest Game 5 to Protest Jacob Blake Shooting [re-LOCKED]

Submitted by JamesBondHerpesMeds on August 26th, 2020 at 4:36 PM

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29747523/bucks-not-taking-court-game-5-vs-magic

"We're tired of the killings and the injustice," Bucks guard George Hill told The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears.

Us too, George. Us too :(

 

[EDIT @6:10pm]: I'm taking the unusual step of locking this thread until 7:30pm.  Emotions in the thread are getting way too heated with insults being tossed left and right; I'm going to remove the most offensive comments.

"DonBrownsMustache" has been banned.

I'll reopen the thread at 7:30 and then hope to keep it open for meaningful discussion.

Everybody please calm down and maybe reflect upon what led to these postponements, what led to the protests and unrest in Kenosha and elsewhere.  

---rob f

[Edit #2 @ 7:20 pm]:. I'll be removing the lock shortly. I've removed 3 or 4 comments but when I did, some direct threaded  replies disappeared with them.  I've also edited out some insults in about a half-dozen posts.  Two accounts have been banned and a couple others are on thin ice. 

Let's see if we can turn this into a civil MGoBoard discussion about an important major sports development, instead of yet another session of shit-slinging, Ok?  If we can't, it'll quickly get permanently locked and more heads WILL roll.

[3rd and final edit]  Re-locking (or should I call it "red-locking?) this thread. It's essentially run its course, and though I wish to thank the large majority who kept the discussion civil once I reopened it @ 7:30, I don't dare risk it going off the rails overnight, and I certainly don't have time in the morning to weigh in.  Also don't want to leave a mess for the other mods to deal with tomorrow.

Again, my appreciation to the many who made thoughtful contributions. 

Bambi

August 26th, 2020 at 5:02 PM ^

All NBA games are being postponed/boycotted today now. Sounds like the Brewers are also considering boycotting tonight as well.

Joined: 10/12/2013

MGoPoints: 23158

BlueTuesday

August 26th, 2020 at 5:08 PM ^

I’d like to know what transpired before Jacob got shot. It’s hard to believe a police officer who was literally surrounded by witnesses would shoot a man in the back unless it was justified.

I’m not taking sides here. I’d just like to know all the facts before I pass judgement either way.

Joined: 04/18/2011

MGoPoints: 6962

taut

August 26th, 2020 at 11:16 PM ^

Tamir Rice weighed 195 lbs and stood 5' 7". He was pointing a replica gun at police. The gun was identical in shape, size and color to a real gun, and unlike toy guns it didn't have the orange tip. I wish he hadn't been killed, but it's unreasonable to think that the cops should have assumed that an adult-sized male pointing what looks exactly like a handgun at them was actually a very large child with a toy gun.

The 911 caller told the operator that Tamir was waving the gun around and pointing it in people's faces. He said it might be fake. The 911 operator didn't relay that possibility to the dispatcher, who told responding officers that a man with a gun was threatening people.

It was tragic, but it's hard to fault cops who believed they were racing to prevent a man with a gun from harming people. When cops arrived Tamir stood up and went for the gun in his waistband, an unfortunate and dumbfounding move that resulted in his death. He made a mistake. The 911 operator made a mistake. The police made a mistake, but it's harder to see how it could have played out differently unless you take the position that they need to wait to be fired upon (and missed) before they can fire, and that's not reasonable.

Joined: 12/01/2015

MGoPoints: 1057

DMill2782

August 26th, 2020 at 5:20 PM ^

Hard to believe? Have you already forgotten about George Floyd? Tons of witnesses and people recording on their cell phone and the cop still knelt on his neck until he was dead. None of the other cops stopped him.

Pulling a trigger is easier than that long, drawn out murder.

Joined: 01/21/2011

MGoPoints: 12483

Bluesince89

August 26th, 2020 at 5:21 PM ^

Watch the video.  He was walking away.  Walking away from cops does not mean they get to gun you down like an animal.  Pumping 7 bullets into a guy when his kids are in the car? I literally cannot think of anything more stupid and dangerous.  There were how many cops there? Block the fucking car.  Tackle him.  I'm a shitty civil lawyer with no LEO training and those are two easy examples off the top of my head that don't involve murdering someone.  

Also, it is easy to believe.  Philando Castile, on video, nothing.  Beronna Taylor, sleeping in her house, boyfriend has a gun with a license, no knock warrant, pump the house full of bullets.  How many more do you want? 

Read some history man.  Policing in this country has been fucked for a long time and as long been associated with the subjugation of black and brown people.  From slave catchers to laws passed after the civil war to make it a crime for black people to look at white people the wrong way, and then arrest them, throw them in jail, and "rent" them out back to their slave owners, farm owners, or factory owners.  

God my blood pressure is through the roof.  

Joined: 09/14/2008

MGoPoints: 14786

Hannibal.

August 26th, 2020 at 8:43 PM ^

He wasn't walking away.  He was walking to his car and he opened the door to reach in, repeatedly defying the instructions of the officers.

Police officers have been shot in this situation before when they failed to act.

Complying with police instructions is one of the easiest tasks in the world.  If you don't and you do something that signals that you might be about to retrieve a gun, then you risk your life doing so.

It's a justified shooting.  All the way. 

Joined: 09/09/2008

MGoPoints: 9051

HailHail47

August 26th, 2020 at 5:34 PM ^

Have you considered how annoying it is to have these cases turn out to be proven hoaxes 90% of the time after the evidence comes out. By the time it’s proven to be a hoax, whole cities have burned in flames. 

The narrative starts before facts come out. The narrative also exists because of selective coverage by omitting other stories and statistics. Believe it or not, the media is not an objective arbiter of truth.

Joined: 10/07/2017

MGoPoints: 5305

Bo Harbaugh

August 26th, 2020 at 5:52 PM ^

HailHail...please change your name to Heil Heil.

Then proceed to read about the origins of the criminal justice system in this country (to capture escaped slaves) and all the inequalities through Jim Crow to our modern day farce of a system.

Or just go fuck off.

Joined: 08/03/2019

MGoPoints: 38798

SalvatoreQuattro

August 26th, 2020 at 6:03 PM ^

Nazis killed white people. 45 million of them in horrors this country really cannot conceive of.

600 villages in Russia destroyed. 250,000 Poles killed in Warsaw Uprising and 90% of city destroyed.. 90% of Polish Jewry wiped out in less than  three years. 3.5 million Russians starved to death in POW camps.

Nazis killed white people. It has no place in this discussion.
 

Oh and the origins of the criminal justice lay in England as was most of everything governmental. You re reading far too many books by activists.

 

 

Joined: 11/30/2010

MGoPoints: 79600

Bo Harbaugh

August 26th, 2020 at 9:52 PM ^

Salvatore,

Does your knowledge and education of history end in 1945, or are you purposefully being intellectually dishonest about far-right white supremacist movements in Europe and the US? 

I'm well aware of the horrors of the Nazis - my grandfather escaped a camp in Poland, the rest of his family did not.  I'm also well aware that Neo-Nazi groups currently exist in the US, hate Jews, blacks and other minorities and use Nazi symbolism like Swastikas and Heil Hitler salutes. 

Welcome to modern America - See Charlottesville.  They very much have a place in this discussion.  You are reading far too few book about white supremacy in the United States.

Regarding policing in the US...

https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

'In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.'

Joined: 08/03/2019

MGoPoints: 38798

HailHail47

August 26th, 2020 at 11:01 PM ^

You are bad at mind reading.

Once you resort to mind reading and Hitler references, I think you’ve lost. If you want to persuade me to your opinion, I’m willing to listen, but calling me racist and pretending to read my mind... that I somehow support fugitive slave act and the Jim Crowe laws... not  true. 
 

Joined: 10/07/2017

MGoPoints: 5305

Hannibal.

August 26th, 2020 at 8:37 PM ^

It was no reason to kill him and the cops did not kill him on purpose.  They restrained him using a known technique that you can find plenty of pictures and videos of on the web.  They have likely been trained to use this technique.  This was their last resort after bending over backwards to try and conduct a nonviolent arrest, which Saint George resisted.

Joined: 09/09/2008

MGoPoints: 9051

Piston Blue

August 26th, 2020 at 9:26 PM ^

That was a part of their repertoire, but Minneapolis PD immediately removed that from their accepted uses of force after Floyd's death. In fact, prior to the incident, it had been almost universally banned in the state but to your point, yes, it was an allowed practice when Chauvin employed it. I'm not going to put myself in the shoes of police officers and say that I know exactly how to handle that situation, I don't because I haven't been trained to do so. I will say that it became clear at a certain point that Chauvin was using excessive force even beyond the hold he used, when Floyd passed out and Chauvin kept his knee on him for a few more minutes.

Side note- I'm going to have a hard time being won over by your argument if you use terms like 'Saint Floyd'

Joined: 11/28/2012

MGoPoints: 3754

Hannibal.

August 26th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^

I see where you are coming from WRT "Saint George".  Please excuse my snark.

"Saint George" is a reference to how absurdly George Floyd has been viewed posthumously.  He had a gold lined casket, he has murals of him on walls and he had a funeral normally reserved for heads of state.  The treatment of George Floyd like he was some kind of saintly figure is ridiculous.  Some balance and realism in this situation would help. 

I can see some criminal culpability for Chauvin in this case.  But I don't think that it's as clear cut as it appeared to be at first.  Floyd was restrained using a legal but risky and questionable technique while he had a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system.  Like almost every other man who is killed by the cops, he had agency in this situation.  If he had been willing to sit in an air conditioned car with the windows rolled down, he would be alive today.  If he had been sober, he would be alive today. 

Race was not a factor.  A white man resisting a lawful arrest with a lethal amount  of fentanyl would have ended up just as dead. 

 

Joined: 09/09/2008

MGoPoints: 9051

Piston Blue

August 26th, 2020 at 10:00 PM ^

As we both know, nobody is perfect. Not George Floyd, and not Jacob Blake (who if I understand correctly was convicted of raping a 13 year old). I also have a hard time with anybody being portrayed as a saint, both these guys all the way up to the pope himself.

That doesn't mean that the police has the right to kill them, and the reason theses deaths have become publicized is because of the way that they were killed (excessive length of time choking Floyd and excessive shots to maim Blake). The reason the black people in my life are upset about this is because they have seen this happen countless times to themselves, their family, their friends, and their community, without it being filmed or even having attention brought to it. They're upset with this because they may not have the record that Blake has, but they still certainly see themselves as him because of those experiences.

When it comes to your claim that race was not a factor, I disagree. I understand why you believe that, I do not believe that Chauvin walked up to Floyd and thought 'I'm going to kill this guy solely because he's black'. However, because of the societal differences between white and black people (income, where they live, educational differences, cultural differences, etc.), I do believe that it was far easier for Chauvin to view Floyd as less of a person, thereby making it easier to act violently towards him.

I also want to commend you for having a thought out discussion with me throughout this chaos of a thread. While we may disagree, I appreciate you taking the time to read and react to what I'm saying.

Joined: 11/28/2012

MGoPoints: 3754

HailHail47

August 26th, 2020 at 10:53 PM ^

Minneapolis is being looted after police were falsely accused of killing a man who committed suicide. Literally happened today. All on extremely graphic videos.  The world has a funny although horrific way of working. The businesses didn’t need to be looted, but they were. That’s what happens when people rush to judgement. But I got negged, which is fine. 

WARNING: very graphic.

I’m not sharing the actual suicide, but just how people responded after. There’s some blood but not super close initially. 

https://twitter.com/TNHTalk/status/1298786369704255489?s=20

Joined: 10/07/2017

MGoPoints: 5305

Piston Blue

August 26th, 2020 at 5:28 PM ^

I was planning on watching basketball this whole evening, but instead I will take some time to reflect on this issue and try to empathize with how the Black people in my life are feeling. I would ask that many of you who were planning on watching the games would do so as well.

Joined: 11/28/2012

MGoPoints: 3754