My stance on this... take a knee thing.
So for starters, here are roughly a few bullet points for me to lead with:
• I am a pretty conservative, right leaning individual.
• Although I claim conservativism, I do not like Donald Trump and think he is a dingbat.
Now from my perspective I feel like the NFL is using the wide reaching platform they have in order to reach a greater audience to garner attention on a very real issue in America. I do not believe all cops are bad, not in the slightest. I do believe, however, that trigger happy police officers and police brutality is becoming more of an issue... or maybe it was always this bad and it is just now being called attention to in a way the rest of the country can see or hear about it. I believe these men are standing up for those whose voice may not be as loud or may not reach as many ears, which I think is pretty stand up.
• I love and respect my country's war vets and those serving for our freedoms... But I absolutely feel these same service men and women have fought hard for these peoples' right to protest and voice their disdain for the growing violence, in a peaceful manner.
We can't complain when these protestors are rioting and burning flags in the street, hurting people and damaging property, and then turn around and complain when they find a peaceful way to do it. To me if that's what you're doing, all you care about is silencing the voices of men and women who are being gunned down by bad men in police uniforms for being minority.
• I do not think race applies to EVERY police shooting involving a person of color.
I believe there are some cases where s/he warranted the ending to their life by putting the lives of others in danger around them with violent behavior. Koryyn Gaines for example, who agitated her encounters with the police that would have probably been otherwise peaceful (in her first livestream the officer gives her several verbal warnings without even drawing his weapons, starts off in the video speaking very calmly and politely and treating it like a routine traffic stop) and then fired a weapon on the police because they tried to serve a warrant that was actually lawful and justifiable.
• To be clear, she even states in the beginning that she is knowingly driving around with NO tags on her vehicle and she wants to see how police will respond.
• When she inevitably gets pulled over for driving with no tags, as would any other citizen (hell I have had tickets for expired tags before), the officer doesn't come at her aggressively or rudely or out of traffic stop norm. He is polite and calm, and I'd venture to say extremely patient.
• He asks for her license several times. Now given that she was breaking a traffic law (driving with no tags on the car), the officer was well within the law to ask for her drivers license and registration for the car. She refused to comply. This back and forth went on for a while without the officer so much as drawing his weapon, until finally he asks her to step out of the car. What's even worse is before asking her to, when he is requesting her license, she demands he show HER his proof and license of law enforcement AND HE ACTUALLY SHOWS IT TO HER IN AN EFFORT TO COMPROMISE.
• With her refusal to step out of the vehicle, she then tries to use her infant as a shield, forcing the officer to remove her children from her custody in as safe a fashion he could and then place her under arrest.
• She has several other interactions that she records like this from this first traffic stop up until the moment of her death, all where she was being non compliant and aggressive despite not being given a reason to be. When they finally came to serve that warrant for her arrest at the time of the shooting, she started a shoot out with the officers who were forced to take her life before the child could get caught in the cross fire, as she was inevitably going to use him as a shield to protect herself in a situation where she was firing a gun at the police IN FRONT OF HER CHILD.
So I'm very well aware that not every cop is bad and not every minority death at the hands of police is completely uncalled for. If she had been white, I'd still feel she was a dumb coward and horrible mother who brought it on her own self.
However shooting a man who was reaching for his wallet after being asked for his license, AN UNARMED MAN, is absolutely nothing more than racism. Recently my local police force shot a Hispanic man in the back of the head in front of his family while he was breaking no laws, just for the hell of it, and still months later no one has been held accountable for it. This is inarguably a racial issue.
janainaart
romaincrisis
germansingergirl
prguitarman
pixelskylines
