Oh I'm sorry, I guess it makes it better if it was 3 other Aurora PD and not the 3 guys who all conveniently lost all 3 bodycams?
Doesn't make it better, never said it did. Just said your statement was either disingenuous or ignorant, cause it was factually inaccurate. I just didn't know if you were aware of the inaccuracy or not.
And as far as reaching for his gun?
"According to the police report, McClain resisted when confronted by the responding police officers, and Officers Woodyard and Rosenblatt heard Officer Roedema shout "he is going for your gun". An attorney representing McClain's family said the officers involved slammed McClain into a wall immediately after apprehending him.
[11][12] Roedema said that McClain "reached for and grabbed the grip of Rosenblatt's gun that was holstered."
[13] There was no visual body-camera footage of McClain's alleged reach for the gun, which the officers explained by stating that all of their cameras had fallen off.
However, the cameras continued to record audio, and one officer can be heard to say he did not remember feeling McClain go for his gun.
"
...
" Very little of the officers’ protocol can be seen, however, because all of their body cams allegedly fell off during the arrest. But if you watch
the video from about the 15-minute mark (warning: the footage contains violent and upsetting content),
you’ll see someone pick up the body camera and point it toward McClain and one of the officers, before dropping it back into the grass. Around 15:34, one of the officers seems to say, “Leave your camera there.” "
You obviously haven't read my posts about body cam usage. Feel free to read back if you actually want my thoughts on it. I'm pro body cams.
But in regards to the reaching for the gun issue. I'll ask you again, cause I don't believe you answered earlier.....did you actually watch the body cam footage? Its very, very simple, and if you can't grasp the concept, I can only assume it's because you have a preconceived notion about the police's intentions. But I'll spell it out for you again.
If you watch the body cam footage, one cop clearly tells his partner that Elijah "grabbed your gun dude." Whether the body cam footage captures the guy reaching for his gun or whether or not the cop actually recalls feeling the guy reach for his gun is completely and utterly irrelevant. All that is relevant is if the guy trusts his partner in that moment, and whether his partner is lying or not. So on the first point, you gotta assume the guy believes his partner. Why wouldn't he? So then all your left with is whether or not his partner is lying. I have zero reason to assume that the guy would be lying. And neither does his partner. And when a cop is told by his partner that someone is grabbing his gun, it's very reasonable for the cop to believe there is a threat and take the guy to the ground. The only reason that the cop would be lying in that situation is that he is an utter racist or an utter A-hole, has predetermined that he and his partner are going to do something illegal and violent, and he therefore is planting an alibi for all his future actions. If you watch the body cam footage and that's your conclusion, I don't know what to tell ya. But you've already stated that you inherently doubt the veracity of police, I guess simply cause they are police? Either way, you got your mind made up it seems like.
Additional point, the officers body cams, at the time the claim was made about Mr McClain grabbing the officer's gun, were still on their chests and recording. They had not fallen to the ground at that point in time. So whatever article you are quoting (which you didn't source) got that wrong. And you would know that had you actually watched the body cam footage. Just a tip, it's helpful to watch the actual footage of what happened and make your own opinions, don't just take some 'journalists' take on the story.
Finally, the last thing I'll say to you on unarmed black deaths at the hands of the police. You seem to have a desire to find racism where it simply doesn't exist. I don't know why that is. No one is claiming there are no racists. I certainly haven't. No one is claiming that black people's general experience with police isn't different than white peoples'. I certainly haven't. And as an aside, here's a great discussion on this topic for anyone interested.
Again, it goes back to my point that I made earlier. If you want to change people's mind who don't agree with you, focus on a REAL problem, not an over-the-top narrative. If you want to talk about general police brutality, that's fine. If you wanna talk about how the black person in the inner city is treated vs the black person in the suburbs, fine. If you wanna discuss whether chokeholds are a valid police tactic, thats a great topic to discuss. When you keep spouting the false narrative that cops (regardless of the race of the cop) are killing black unarmed men at crazy disproportionate rates due to racism, that's a losing argument and not supported by data.
Jumping to conclusions about racism makes people who aren't full on 'woke' very frustrated. We like to believe most people are good at heart, and treat people the same regardless of their skin color. It's really such a sad thing to not have that world view to be honest. Perfect example is how AMEhigh claims racial bias because of disparities in kindergarten expulsions. Her assumption is because there's a disparity, there must be bias/racism. I mean....wow. I just can't imagine what it's like to live in a world where you assume the worst about people based simply off data that could be explained by many other factors, but instead what makes most sense to you is that most kindergarten teachers are racist/biased?
I don't know what she exactly was referencing, but here's some info about preschoolers and expulsion.
"The rates of preschool expulsions varied dramatically with age, gender, and race: 4-year-olds were expelled at a higher rate than 3-year-olds; boys were over four times as likely to be ousted from prekindergarten as girls; and black children were expelled about twice as often as Latino and white youngsters, and over five times as often as Asian-American children."
The frequency of punishment has a troubling racial skew.
www.theatlantic.com
Does one look at that and really conclude the teachers must be racist against the black children? Really? If so, one must also conclude that the teachers are sexist and ageist then too, right? And also that they must be Asian supremacists, yeah?
What if there were no black kids at that school, and someone wrote an article claiming that the teachers must hate the white and Hispanic kids because they get expelled more often than Asians?
Cmon people, use some common sense. Perhaps there's some correlation with culture, with values, with up bringing that has some impact on how people behave and interact with society. It's illogical to assume that with over 7 1/2 billion people in the world, with all sorts of upbringings, with all sorts of family values, and all different kinds of culture, that every single person should have the exact same outcome when interacting with various aspects of life. People have different outcomes, and I'd say the vast majority of the time, the outcome is dictated by that person's choices and actions, or secondary to the actions and choices of their parents. Are people treated unfairly sometimes? Of course. And when we see racism, and bias, and unfair treatment, we should of course call it out, but we shouldn't spend our lives constantly entrenched in victimhood, and rushing to explain every single disparity in our world by pointing the finger at someone else and claiming racism/sexism/etc.
