Yup. I've spent the last seven months organizing with inner-city Indigenous people re: police practices where I live. Neither me nor any white person I know in this town -- including the activists -- has ever been arbitrarily stopped by police. Whereas literally every Indigenous male I know in this city has been fucked with on the regular, including a close friend being violently detained for no reason on his way to a Xmas party I was co-hosting and another friend being arrested and dragged out of his home in front of his kids for a "cat at large" violation (as in their pet cat was outside). His children have grown up terrified of the police.

garthplinko wrote:treat a cop like you would any other crazy person with a gun and you should be ok.Wrong wrong wrong. The crucial difference is that, while both could kill you, one can do so in broad daylight among witnesses with near-guaranteed impunity.garthplinko wrote:If you don't draw attention to yourself, you pretty much don't have to worry about them.Once you see that "draw attention to yourself" includes minor infractions and regular, everyday human behavior stuff, this advice becomes useless.Matt Taibbi has a good recent piece on the "just behave!" narrative here.

jimmy spako wrote:garthplinko wrote:You're an idiot if you ever get shitty with a cop.or maybe you're just a person who has had enough of getting terrorized arbitrarily by "crazy people with guns"?For real.There's a lot of this shit going around the Internet right now, ie. white people saying that if that person had just behaved themselves, they wouldn't be dead. That whole mentality is akin to victim blaming when it comes to sexual assault. Sure, personally, I act much like you described when dealing with police, I stay calm and keep my distance, but I'm also not constantly being targeted and victimized by police.I'm not about to call someone an idiot for getting frustrated after being fucked with by cops on a regular basis.Fuck all that.

From the sounds of it, it's probably safer not to get shitty with a cop, because they'll probably kill you in broad daylight and try and hide the murder.Well, fuck Chicago then.

garthplinko wrote:You're an idiot if you ever get shitty with a cop.or maybe you're just a person who has had enough of getting terrorized arbitrarily by "crazy people with guns"?

While not the danger that immediately springs to mind, a few folks have been hurt as collateral damage during police chases recently.

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