Loganville Man Alleges Police Brutality

[Bonobo]

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/loganville-man-alleges-police-brutality-071610

LOGANVILLE, Ga. - A man says he called Loganville police to his home for help and ended up being beaten by officers. Kenny Dixon said Friday that he arrived home Wednesday to find that his son had committed suicide.

Crews responded to the emergency, but Dixon said police made one of his family's darkest days even worse by attacking, then arresting him.

Dixon had black eyes and scrapes on his face Friday, injuries he said he received in addition to his broken heart.

The Loganville man said found his stepson Wednesday, dead inside his garage. The 24-year-old had committed suicide.

"I tried to do CPR on him and couldn't bring him back. I yelled for people in the neighborhood to call 911," said Dixon.

When police and emergency crews arrived, Dixon said paramedics took over the rescue effort.

"I left the garage, walked to the front door. One of the police officers came up behind me, grabbed my arm, and said, 'You need to sit down.' I jerked my arm away from him and said, 'Don't touch me.' That's all I said to the man, and he tackled me," Dixon said.

Dixon said other officers then joined in and two allegedly held him down, while two others punched him in the face.

[LAGC]

1. ENOUGH COP BASHING THREADS!

Why must you broad-brush! The police are just doing a job no one else wants to do. They are dues-paying union members, Democrats one and all. Enough is enough!

:sarcasm:

[proteus_lives]

3. Violence leads.

People aren't interested in the headline, "Hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers do their duty everyday without brutality or corruption."

I don't imagine that would help site-hits, ratings or circulation.

[Bonobo]

4. It's because that is, as you put it, THEIR JOB.

Why should their be headlines about them doing their jobs properly, as they are trained and paid to do?

:shrug:

[proteus_lives]

7. There won't be.

Because regular work-a-day people aren't as valued as they should be.

Just like the millions of teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses who do their jobs without incident.

But people like negative stereotypes. You like seeing a uniform and being comfortable judging the person wearing it because of the last news story you read.

Human condition.

[Bonobo]

8. No, it is for the reasons stated. It is because it is their job to do their job correctly.

To post about people doing their jobs correctly would not only make for a very boring post, but it would also be meaningless to the point of absurdity.

[proteus_lives]

10. "but it would also be meaningless to the point of absurdity"

That's a good definition of group stereotypes.

[Bonobo]

11. Is my OP a "group stereotype" or is it reporting news you don't want to admit is the truth? nt

[proteus_lives]

12. The truth about the people in the story.

What about the hundreds of thousands that it's not about?

If you can bring yourself to say it.

[Bonobo]

13. You do not get it.

The reputation that the police have earned is what they have earned. That is why it is a problem.

The relationship between police and the citizens is very important, you and I can agree on that.

But instead of blaming the citizens for pointing out their fear and distrust, you need to actually recognize it and value it as their truth. Blaming people for speaking up about how they feel in no ways helps to solve the problems that really exist.

And to reiterate, the problem is NOT that people blame cops too much. It is not even that cops do bad things.

The problem is that US cops have largely lost the trust of the people.

THAT is a big problem.

[proteus_lives]

15. No you don't.

Like I said, you're in a comfortable zone and you don't want to leave it.

It's a normal reaction.

You throw the word blame around. You should think about that.

[Bonobo]

16. Some people can not be made or even encouraged to think.

Usually we call them Republicans, but I have increasingly found it to be equally ture of some people here.

Comfort has nothing to do with it.

But an incapacity for deeper awareness does.

[proteus_lives]

23. Looking in a mirror?

"Some people can not be made or even encouraged to think."

It's a very human reaction. It's tough to judge people on the individual level. It's safer and easier to assign group-judgments.

That is why we should keep working on it and discussing it on DU! That's why I like challenging the acceptable stereotypes here.

[notadmblnd]

18. Are you suggesting it should all be swept under the rug?

Are you blaming the messenger for the bad behavior of the officer? If the good ones don't want to lumped in with the bad, shouldn't they stand up and do a better job of policing themselves?

[Mariana]

21. THE officer? If this story is true

then a bunch of the officer's colleagues joined in the fun.

Again I'll point out that I've never once heard of a cop that observed another cop committing a crime and then arrested him or her for it. It seems they always either participate in the crime themselves, conspire to cover it up, or just pretend they didn't see it.

It's not surprising that so few people trust them.

[proteus_lives]

24. "If the good ones don't want to lumped in with the bad"

That is why they have internal affairs divisions.

Like all organizations and professions, they admit to police themselves. And like all orgs/pros sometimes it work and sometimes it doesn't.

"Are you blaming the messenger for the bad behavior of the officer?"

No, why would you think that?

[ThomCat]

31. Internal Affairs is well known to be toothless by anyone who pays attention.

So few officers get even a suspension, and then it's usually with pay, so they are essentially getting a paid vacation as a reward for brutality. Some few get a note in their file, but how much of a punishment or deterrent is that when it doesn't seem to prevent those officers from getting promotions?

Such a tiny fraction of abuses result in any real judgment, and when it does it is the municipality that pays, not the officer(s) or police department. The town, city, or state pays the judgment. The taxpayers are on the hook. Maybe the officer gets fired. Yhat won't prevent getting hired in another police department. Web sites that post cases of police brutality sometimes list an officers history of abuse from one city's police department to another, despite substantiated reports of brutality.

How much abuse could be prevented if anyone tagged as an abusive cop by internal affairs in one place could never work in law enforcement again anywhere else? But it doesn't work that way.

So what good does Internal Affairs do, exactly?

They seem to exist as a symbol mostly, deliberately ineffective, just so that departments can point to them and claim "well, at least we're doing something about the problem" without having to worry that anyone effective is actually policing the police.

Police departments in two states now, and in many individual towns, cities and individual encounters are trying to make it a crime to videotape or film police in public. Or even in your own home. It would be illegal to film the police anywhere according to them. (an absurd interpretation of law they won't allow for anyone but themselves)

The only way we citizens can definitively show and prove that the anyone in law enforcement has abused authority or committed acts of brutality is with videotape, and they are trying to take that one tool away from us and make it illegal. They're doing it deliberately BECAUSE they know it is our only way of proving abuse or brutality.

Law enforcement as a whole industry knows that if filming them in public becomes illegal then they are effectively above the law. The only check on their behavior is gone. They could keep brutalizing anyone they wanted, and charging their victims with resisting arrest to cover their asses. Nobody could challenge them.

Without video evidence to show the truth of brutality courts rarely ever disbelieve any lie told by anyone in law enforcement, no matter how blatant or obvious. We all know that officers can arrest anyone on a false charge to criminalize that person, immediately discrediting that person, creating a presumption of dishonesty in the mind of judges and jurors and put that person entirely on the defensive. Only the video tape challenges this effectively.

A organized, premeditated campaign to make it impossible for citizens to defend ourselves from abuse or brutality, and the predictable lies that defend it, can Only have two purposes. To deliberately make it easier for law enforcement to be abusive and brutal, and to defend departments from claims of abuse and brutality.

Every time officers claim that filming them in public is illegal, knowing that it isn't, and every time a police department representative makes or defends that same claim, it is a public admission that their officers violate the civil rights of citizens with at least informal departmental knowledge and protection. It is a public announcement that the department's first priority is protecting the freedom of their officers to act as they please, their second priority is defending order, in an authoritarian manner if they wish, in which violence is acceptable and civil rights are optional, and in distant third place they finally get around to serving and protecting.

One final point, about your insistence that failing to talk about all the cops who do their job well means that someone is biased against cops. That is like saying that someone who challenges homophobic attacks against the LBGT community is somehow biased for not posting about all the nonviolent straight people. nonviolent straight people aren't the issue or the point. The issue is the ones who aren't nonviolent, and the one's who defense and protect and rationalize for violent ones.

To insist that people have to ignore the violence, and ignore the persistent problems, and only recognize the ideal people in a group because some don't want to see the bad people in that group, or the bad things about that group... take a look there.

[Ignis]

39. When those in power break the social contract, it IS a big deal.

Sorry if the prevalence of police brutality threads/stories bothers you. I'd suggest working to stop/prevent the abuses, rather than focusing on the media.

[my2sense]

2. These incidents seem to be more and more frequent-SMH n/t

[Bonobo]

5. Well, our own country's leadership tortures and spies and breaks the rules

in the name of a "deeper reason".

If our own executive branch does it, isn't that a pretty clear signal that it is acceptable?

Nothing surprising about it at all to me.

[EFerrari]

6. In 1982, we called 911 when my grandmother had a little stroke.

She'd been bedridden for years but we thought she might need oxygen. The cops came with the medics and they wanted to transport her to the hospital.

We refused because there was nothing that could be done for her at the hospital and it would have been hard on her in her already stressed condition.

The cops put us through hell before their supervisor finally called them off. Oh, and the paramedics didn't give Mami oxygen because they said she was already breathing.

If we tried that today, I've no doubt whatsoever there would be tasing and arrests.

[Bonobo]

9. You certainly would be in danger these days, no question about it.

And that is the sad thing.

90 good, professional cops out of 100 is not enough if it causes citizens to view the remainder with fear and distrust.

THAT is the weakness in Proteus Lives' argument. He wants the 90 cops to be pointed out and wants to discount the clear feelings of justified fear and distrust.

He is literally blaming the victims and discounting their story.

[EFerrari]

17. The point you brought up, up thread, about trust is the crux of the matter.

Police forces all over the country have adopted paramilitary tactics and worse, a paramilitary mindset. The federal government is largely to blame for that because they keeping tapping local police forces for security, immigration, who knows what, and every time that happens, local communities are undermined. But since cooperation with the feds means funding, local police forces are on a no-winning slippery slope for themselves and for the public.

The public has no reason to trust that.

[The Magistrate]

19. To My Mind, Ma'am, The Problem Is What They Call 'Force Protection' In the Military

Obviously, an armed force in war must take heed of casualties, and try and hold them to a minimum. But if minimizing casualties becomes the most important element of planning and execution, you will have real problems.

Police training nowadays seems to place the highest value on removing the least hint of a shadow of a threat to the officer, so that anyone may be considered an armed felon fleeing the scene of a crime, so to speak, because there is a small possibility that might actually be the case. The problem is that the overwhelming preponderance of people police interact with, even the overwhelming preponderance of people police ought to arrest, do not really present any threat to the officers involved. But police are trained to act as if everyone they encounter just might pull out a pistol and shoot at any moment, if they are not wholly dominated and restrained from the first moments of the encounter. This is something of a change from the days of my adventurous youth....

[Bonobo]

20. That is PRECISELY the problem.

Thy have lost sight of their proper objective.

Thank you.

[Mariana]

22. And then when the officers discover

that there was no threat after all, do they apologize and send their victim on his or her way? No, they usually decide to add insult to (literal) injury and arrest and charge the hell out of the poor sod they misjudged. Assaulting an officer. Resisting arrest. Disorderly conduct. Public drunkenness. Anything else they can think of.

Nice work if you enjoy that sort of thing, I guess.

[Newest Reality]

14. Are we good for a new slogan?

"To Clobber and Tase!"

I liked, "To serve and protect"

There is also a question of serving whom and protecting what these days. I firmly place those kinds of decisions and responsibility higher up the chain. That's where we focus. We're just seeing the results.

[hayu_lol]

25. Loganville is a tiny town of fewer than 10,000 people...

the town itself is in two counties(jurisdictions). Typical FAUX journalism with many of the facts left out or ignored completely. The comments section to the article is more interesting and colorful. This must have been a very slow news day in Atlanta.

The only way to make the anti-cop contingent here happy, is to eliminate all police/sheriff departments across the country. Then we could all just live happily together.

[Bonobo]

28. Ha ha, you're not doing your rep any good with idiot logic. nt

[MrScorpio]

26. Police misconduct is an epidemic in this country

And I'm sorry to say that it's spreading to Canada as well

[panzerfaust]

29. as in any other Police State

No. We are not there yet - Quite.

But with the continuation of the anti-democratic policies of our government, we soon will be.

Less Change than anyone imagined they could believe in.

[Obamanaut]

27. Interesting that usually anything reported with 'fox' in the source is

said to be all lies, UNLESS it has to do with cop-bashing, then it is the unadulterated truth.

[Bonobo]

30. That's not a very intelligent comment. nt

[Obamanaut]

33. Lack of consistency is a bugger, isn't it. We regularly read

statements such as "I never watch faux snooze", "Faux is blocked on my teevee", "I made them change the channel at the waiting room."

But, since this is a cop-bashing report, it is a good, reliable report.

[Bonobo]

34. How is it a "cop-bashing" report?

Seriously, how do you figure?

It reports what was said and contains nothing indicating cop-bashing unless you think anything that reports bad behavior by cops to be "cop-bashing".

Your straw-grasping is considerable.

[Obamanaut]

35. "Alleges" is used throughout, and the source is generally (at least

here on DU) said to be unreliable.

"...reports bad behavior..." in the above post might have included 'alleged' as well. Consistency is still a bugger.

[Bonobo]

36. OMG! You mean they practice responsible journalism!?

It is standard practice to use "alleged" when the facts have not yet been proven in a court of law.

What's the problem with that?

Your problem is you don't like people alleging that police did something wrong?

Do you have any reason to disbelieve the direct quotes from the man whose son killed himself?

Do you have any reason to believe that he wasn't beaten by the police?

So where is the cop bashing? It sounds like a well-written article that is careful to use the word "alleged" appropriately.

It is ironic to here you talk about bias when your own bias is so apparent.

All I did was post an article with no comment and you are hysterically refuting it for no reason.

I repeat: Your bias is obvious.

[Mariana]

37. Don't forget the direct quotes from the man's neighbor.

"I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on over there," said neighbor, Lisa Neighbors.

Neighbors said she woke up to screaming and looked outside.

"They were just waling on him, punching him and punching him. It was awful," Neighbors said.



Cop bashing, indeed. I guess we're supposed to assume that Dixon, Neighbors, and Channel 5 News all conspired to publish this story just to make all cops everywhere look bad.

[Mariana]

38. WAGA in Atlanta is generally considered unreliable?

Really? Since when?

[Ignis]

40. So you contend that this story cannot be confirmed, that FAUX fabricated it?

:shrug:

[Obamanaut]

32. posted in wrong spot