“You have your family. I have mine” Then a bunch of guns below it.

“Gun fatalism” reminds me of a mindset that I hear in a lot of conversations with people raised in and around Appalachia: that life is hard and the forces of nature are set against you and cruelly indifferent. Shit happens to people. It happens a lot. It’s fire and flood and mudslides and tornados, and now it’s guns…

That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re talking about someone actually pointing a gun at police. I’m talking about a situation where the cops don’t even know what’s happening and are under no threat. The victim didn’t even say a word to them let alone verbally threaten or actually physically threaten anyone.

Exactly. And: as if Stephon even had time to “comply,” or even to understand what he was supposed to comply with. The cops did not identify themselves as officers. The cops shot him within seconds of seeing him.

So much yes.
Especially to this part, IDK how many times I have said something similar to this in officer involved shootings of both people and animals.
“The police are the ones who took a job that entailed they risk their life and they’re pushing their occupational risk onto the general public. There’s no excuse for…

The weird thing is that police officer isn’t even the most dangerous job out there. There’s a whole list of jobs with higher death or injury rates.

I don’t really believe that ‘consensual sex workers’ is a thing. Give me a society where a living wage is available to women on the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum, where health care and child care are available, and where rape and sexual assault are taken seriously and prosecuted. Then tell me that women who…

I think that the best answer to the ‘cops feared for their lives’ people is that is part of their job. They are responsible for protecting lives, not taking them. Yes, their job is dangerous, but they owe it to the people in their area to do it right. This means not rushing into a situation, clearly identifying…

Yep. If you can’t perform the basic tasks of being a police officer on an overnight boat without pumping 20 rounds into the darkness with no probable cause, then maybe you shouldn’t be a fucking police officer.

If the cops were afraid, why did they have to chase this guy and fire at him when he was only suspected of some minor property damage/theft? If they think their life is truly in danger, maybe just let this one go. It’s not worth risking their lives or the suspect’s life on such low stakes. It’s not like they were…

It’s almost trite to keep reiterating this point, but until America’s police forces repudiate the ideology that these streets are a warzone and that suspects are the enemy combatants things like this will continue to happen. Likewise, it’s absurd to expect that community relations between the police and the most…

You’re nicer than I am. The people who say “well he should have just complied” can just shut the entire fuck up. I’m tired of their idiotic excuses as to why these cops just had to murder this man.

Through millions of years of evolution, we have developed a fight or flight instinct. Instinct being physical actions our body will take to survive a dangerous situation without having to stop and consider or delay, which could mean death.

It’s the very same people who say ‘why didn’t he just comply’ that are the first to say the ‘cops feared for their lives.’

You’ve got a brand new account so you’re probably a troll, but damned if “all seashells are 65 millions years old” isn’t the most hilariously wrong thing I’ve heard in days.

Are we sure Ben Carson was actually a brain surgeon and not a brain surgery patient? (I’ll admit the chance it’s both)

It comes down to power imbalances. If you have two intellectually disabled people of approximately equal capacity and experience*, they can consent with each other. However, if, to use an extremely common example, a caregiver of average or above average intelligence uses their position to take advantage of someone who…

“Because they often lack the executive function to think about long term consequences, they will agree to horribly lopsided agreements just to get something they want right now”

I guess the piece I’m missing is how the hell an ethics professor misses the red lights on this situation. Even setting aside the questions surrounding facilitated communication - it generally tells you what you want to hear and varies based on the facilitator - consent among people with developmental disabilities is…

No, not all cults are sex cults. All cults are about power, which may come in the form of sex/rape (because these are “salacious”, they’re the ones the media likes to cover the most), but it also, probably more often, comes in the form of financial exploitation, control over members’ daily lives, and dissolving any…