I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they seem to keep them drawn and hair triggered throughout the search? :O
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.*
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Most of the other places I'm aware of with such penetration of arms but no police basically rely on monetary bonds through family ties and intertribal appeals rather than trying to capture and imprison them. If the family won't accept the bonds and the criminal refuses to pay then they become an outlaw of sorts and have no recognition in society. A bit brutal, but then again so is mass imprisonment and a heavily armed police state. I make no claim whether it is better or worse.
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
A black friend of mine did exactly this, asked for a permission to get a pen from his pocket. The cop laughed “sure” and the moment he put his hand inside his pocket they jumped him and arrested him.
> Cop says, 'Knock down drag-out fight, cuffed 'em and stuffed 'em. Finally get home at the end of the shift, and?' Cop says, 'Gun fight. Bad guy's down, I'm alive. Finally get home at the end of the incident, and?' They all say, 'The best sex I've had in months.' Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.
The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation:
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.
Damn, hoss, didn't think I'd wake up and have to read someone normalizing police violence.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
They go around barking orders at people who haven’t done anything wrong because they look “suspicious,” escalate what could otherwise be calm encounters by showing up to everything armed to the gills, make it clear they can’t wait to use force against persons and property, demonstrate a consistent us-vs-them mentality that looks the other way for clear cases of corruption, commit brazen armed robberies under euphemisms like “civil asset forfeiture,” bypass policymakers wherever possible and lie to them when they can’t, and then wonder why some people don’t like them very much.
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
I think the traffic stop paranoia stems from a couple high profile incidents like
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
Policing isn't in the top ten most dangerous jobs. It's usually listed around the 15-25th most dangerous job in the US. Many Americans including myself are regularly in more danger.
It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.
Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique?
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
You are naive for assuming that the government aren't the bad guys with guns. Just ask the 30,000 Iranian protesters that were slaughtered if you don't believe me.
Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
> That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.
If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
If you're there to arrest people, that seems reasonable. But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
and I would argue no knock is unconstitutional, the whole point of a warrant is to prove you’re allowed to search me and the law was written in a time where everything was on paper, we’re suppose to be secure in our papers short of a warrant, if you can’t show a warrant how do I know I’m not being robbed and need to defend myself? it’s totally bonkers
The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.
Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.
This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).
American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around.
Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).
Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs?
You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing.
It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently".
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose.
They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic.
US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
> don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not?
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
> The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular.
AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client.
Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer.
> Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor.
No, no way they could have known stealing money and destroying evidence is illegal. So the Post-It note on the old court case gives them qualified (absolute) immunity.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
> but a reasonable person might assume these rumours to be true
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
We are, of course, not privy to the jury's reasoning unless they choose to divulge it.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
Even if this were true, are we really so far gone in the political discourse that we can't appreciate a win as Americans because of the perceived political orientation of the recipient?
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
I mean, both him and Trump have similar approach to opponents or those who wronged them. In this case, the opponents are deeply unsympathetic to most, so it is harder to see.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
He’s willing to publicly criticize government corruption and child abuse, so there’s no way MAGA would accept him. (Both these stances came up in the defamation lawsuit and in the music video.)
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
That's good to know. The second sentence you gave was superfluous because the first one told us that -- I add this not to dismiss your efforts but to highlight them.
Pretty funny, worth seeing at least once to be able to reference it at appropriate times.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
Hoping it wasn't the SWAT guys. Those guys go hard and everyone is a meth terrorist until zip tied on the floor and proven otherwise. They also tend to shoot your dog. =(
Judging by the videos, they look like the typical American "deputy" that wouldn't even pass the fitness tests in other countries, which probably means it's easier to escape, but also that they are more trigger-happy.
Mime was in Australia, so much lower chance of violence, more polite.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
The ACLU called it a SLAPP lawsuit. If true, they probably didn't care if they won or not.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
>Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
That didn't seem like faux crying. Making fun of her in that way is the hardest to defend IMO, since it had nothing to do with her job performance or relevant character attributes. (E.g. how the other officer had been accused of stealing before, or had a brother resign from the force after being charged with a crime involving a minor).
Aren't cops by default public figures? They're the de facto face of the police for the ordinary citizen, not sure they should be the type of individual who cries because someone calls them fat, lesbian or whatever. These people have the legal right to essentially execute you in public, I think we should set the bar a bit higher on who should be allowed to be a police officer in the first place.
I was raised by LEOs. My mother and all four of her husbands were career long LEOs in the South.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
It seems the job selects for those types. I suppose people interested in law enforcement / justice that aren't that way either end up as lawyers or working for the FBI or something.
If you don't have any kind of marketable skills yet want to make a decent living with plenty of benefits, becoming a LEO is the easiest choice for most people.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
It's a use it or lose it skill. When you carry a badge and gun around and can bark orders at people all day and they have to comply or face the infinite violence you can summon with your radio your skin will grow thin over time.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
I do agree with you and the other comment in this vein. I have very little sympathy for these officers.
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
> say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it?
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
This is not some footage issue, there apparently was a smear campaign online.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5].
You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
I've attempted to take your responses as made in good faith twice now, despite evidence to the contrary in other threads. I understand if this topic is uncomfortable for you, either because it challenges your world view or because it feels personally invalidating. It appears as though you're looking for one very specific statistic or logical vulnerability in what others are sharing to refute the overall claim. However, I can only lead you to water.
Your post is essential. No one is claiming 100% of cops are white supremacists. One is claiming that it's sensible to assume they are.
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical
professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
Doesn't really matter since police officers are public officials. The bar for defaming a public official is actual malice, which is clearly not the case here. They need to prove that he deliberately said facts that he knew were false with the deliberate intention of harming them. It was also obviously a satirical song which further weakens the case. This is such a weak case it should have been thrown out before it ever reached trial.
They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property.
I don't understand how they found nothing in the raid, wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant? If they forgot those that's a whole new level of police incompetence.
Is the NY Post some kind of National Enquirer analogue? This article reads like it was written by a grade school child trying to emulate the voice of an villainous news reporter.
I made this joke in another thread, but: I keep imagining Afromans court getup as the formal attire for American civil lawyers. Like robes and wigs, suits n ‘fros.
I've heard "Randy Walters is a son of a bitch, ooooh oooooh, uuh!" the entire day today after hearing the song yesterday, probably the most catchy one to come out of this whole story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U
One of my favorite parts is when Afroman is being cross examined about why he brought the media and his lawyer to retrieve his money.
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
It's a small county with an extreme minority of black people, like a couple hundred or less. It's quite likely he had personally encountered some of these officers before, and almost certain they knew who he was. Within the realm of possibility he saw something like this coming. Small rural sheriff depts are astoundingly corrupt.
Y'know, officers, if you'd shown up to his house after the raid and apologized and offered to buy the guy a new door of his choosing and the installation for it, we're probably not having this conversation.
This was also on youtube - Afroman made his points very clearly. That was an easy case.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
Well, he probably interacts with them on a daily/weekly basis, or at least other people from their department, and probably don't want to end up on their bad side.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
If you think "justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed", then please consider the people who aren't famous and can't get media attention when this sort of thing happens to them. Justice and freedom of expression fail to prevail on the regular and this is just one win amongst many, many, many losses.
Even just in this instance justice would include damages for their destruction and an inquest into the warrant from the cop that wrote it to the judge that signed it.
Justice didn’t prevail. Afroman had to spend THOUSANDS defending himself in this bullshit civil lawsuit, and his countersuit got thrown out because police have qualified immunity.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
Which is great for him. The point being this happens to other people who aren't famous, and maybe don't want to spend their time asymmetrically fighting for themselves on social media.
One of the more interesting parts of the whole ordeal was officers getting on the witness stand and declaring that the lyrics that insinuated he had had sex with their wife were deeply traumatizing.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
I know things are bad in the USA right now, but news like these show that you still have your basic rights. This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. There have been some people abusing their freedom in recent times cough Kanye cough, but for every loud nazi there are ten more excellent people whose right to speak should not be infringed!
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
This wasn’t a 1A case, it was a civil defamation suit. He won because they failed to prove defamation, NOT because the judge threw out the lawsuit because of a violation of constitutional rights.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
Perhaps interesting here is that some of the things he said were definitely not defensible via "truth is an affirmative defense." But it's ultimately up to the jury, and they can also find him innocent because a reasonable person wouldn't be offended by outlandish accusations.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
This is not remotely true. Furthermore, the way people don’t get away with stuff like this is via extralegal/extrajudicial harassment, abuse, violence, and sometimes assassination (see also: MLK, Huey, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Barry Cooper, etc), so we aren’t really sure that he has gotten away with it yet.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
I'd work the same in pretty much any European country, as in you'd record them, you'd publish that, they'd make up some lame excuse why that's not allowed, it'd go to a court, and a judge would decide who was right case-by-case?
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)
I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they seem to keep them drawn and hair triggered throughout the search? :O
(on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop
Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it.
"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.*
* and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
> and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
What a poor attempt at trolling.
EDIT: And a drive by downvote from somebody who has almost certainly never been to Norn Iron in their life!
So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Most of the other places I'm aware of with such penetration of arms but no police basically rely on monetary bonds through family ties and intertribal appeals rather than trying to capture and imprison them. If the family won't accept the bonds and the criminal refuses to pay then they become an outlaw of sorts and have no recognition in society. A bit brutal, but then again so is mass imprisonment and a heavily armed police state. I make no claim whether it is better or worse.
American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last.
I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
If only your country operated on the Peelian principles of policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
Relevant fictional quote:
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama
In the US police have no obligation to protect the people.
Is that a problem for the Gendarmerie?
> I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
Something I learned from a friend is to ask permission for every movement or at the very least narrate and move slowly.
"I'm going to reach in the glovebox for my registration. Is that ok?"
I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
Edit: friend and I are also white.
A black friend of mine did exactly this, asked for a permission to get a pen from his pocket. The cop laughed “sure” and the moment he put his hand inside his pocket they jumped him and arrested him.
> I think it's the only way to protect yourself from their hyper-nervousness.
“the only way” puts me in mind of The Onion headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
Could also be that this is at least partially justified due to the incredible pervasiveness of guns in the US.
It started after the Iraq war. They got Hummers and vets.
Trained to be afraid and trained to think shooting people is awesome.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/police-trainer-best-sex-ki...
> Cop says, 'Knock down drag-out fight, cuffed 'em and stuffed 'em. Finally get home at the end of the shift, and?' Cop says, 'Gun fight. Bad guy's down, I'm alive. Finally get home at the end of the incident, and?' They all say, 'The best sex I've had in months.' Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author)
The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation:
> That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context.
-They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event.
-They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen.
-They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime.
-They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
-They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.
Yeah, shitty people often claim the context is exonerating.
> They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people.
People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving.
Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
Damn, hoss, didn't think I'd wake up and have to read someone normalizing police violence.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
“Warrior mindset”. When you’re trained to assume that everyone you interact with is a lethal threat, you tend to react as such.
They go around barking orders at people who haven’t done anything wrong because they look “suspicious,” escalate what could otherwise be calm encounters by showing up to everything armed to the gills, make it clear they can’t wait to use force against persons and property, demonstrate a consistent us-vs-them mentality that looks the other way for clear cases of corruption, commit brazen armed robberies under euphemisms like “civil asset forfeiture,” bypass policymakers wherever possible and lie to them when they can’t, and then wonder why some people don’t like them very much.
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
> Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
There's likely natural experiments in cases where police was misinformed either way about the danger of the suspects being arrested.
I think the traffic stop paranoia stems from a couple high profile incidents like
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Police_Shootout_-_De...
[2] https://youtu.be/NqxTf-Vz12o?t=475
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
Policing isn't in the top ten most dangerous jobs. It's usually listed around the 15-25th most dangerous job in the US. Many Americans including myself are regularly in more danger.
Also around 40% of police deaths are accidents.
It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
>interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.
This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?
> So it’s funny
They didn’t say it’s funny.
If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.
> human error
Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.
I think intentionally and willingly doing something whilst informed of the consequence doesn't count as human error. At least not in this context.
Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
You can hardly make stricter gun laws; we have a right to them in this country.
It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.
Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique?
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
If tweets were a leading cause of death in children we should probably at least consider making it harder to tweet.
I don’t know if there is any precedent from taking away hundreds of millions of guns from an armed country actually
Australia de-armed pretty successfully.
Australia has more guns now, and more guns per capita, than it did at the time it almost unified all gun laws.
It didn't "de-arm" - it brought all states and territories into near alignment on gun regulation.
If you're interested I can link to good footage of my actual IRL neighbour shooting 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards, here in Australia.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
Alternatively you might be interested in Australian footage of feral control, taking down 800 oversized wild pigs in 4 hours from a helicopter.
> Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world.
You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
True!
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
I think “culture change” is what is ultimately proposed here.
You are naive for assuming that the government aren't the bad guys with guns. Just ask the 30,000 Iranian protesters that were slaughtered if you don't believe me.
> Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Got any data?
It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly?
What is "regularly"?
Doing quick research says about 1 shot at per day, 1-2 fatalities per week, and about 26,000 assaults per year
Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it.
I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
#1 - He's Black.
#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
> That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.
You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.
There's a reason we had a few years of heavy anti police protest across the US.
I'm not saying what they did was correct, but they were allegedly told that he had a drug operation and a kidnapping dungeon.
which is fine. But they didn't vet this info, just ran with it. Massive negligence & duty failure
When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you.
Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice.
With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
If you're there to arrest people, that seems reasonable. But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.
I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.
I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...
and I would argue no knock is unconstitutional, the whole point of a warrant is to prove you’re allowed to search me and the law was written in a time where everything was on paper, we’re suppose to be secure in our papers short of a warrant, if you can’t show a warrant how do I know I’m not being robbed and need to defend myself? it’s totally bonkers
> When you break into someone's home…
So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
Best to kill anything that moves; it's the only way to survive.
The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
Dead men can’t sue!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.
I suspect it was less about the legal merits and more about punishing (whether or not they won) through the lawsuit itself.
Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.
This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).
American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around.
And there is some evidence that the institutions themselves recognize this (or they did, until we elected an openly-corrupt white supremacist to the highest office): https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-doj-res...
There’s a name for that, SLAPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc.
Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).
Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs?
You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing.
It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently".
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose.
They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
This is a key insight.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
"The process is the punishment"
This may be true in many cases.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic.
US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
> don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not?
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
> The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular.
AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client.
Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer.
>I know cops aren't known for being smart
Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart.
https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
(granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue)
Mega-streisand effect ... they stacked together so many of em
I hope he makes another song with additional material from the court case.
His instagram has daily updates from the court case.
> Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor.
> way less people (including myself) would have never heard about it
I think the never here is a typo.
Thanks, `(subs "never" 1)` been applied now!
So, in the music video, the cops pretty clearly steal something (probably money, as alleged), and attempt to destroy evidence.
They’re facing charges too, right?
Right?
Yes and as a result they will give taxpayer money in a deal and, officer will be moved to nearby county.
Or just promoted. https://www.13abc.com/2026/03/18/toledo-police-promote-lieut...
No, no way they could have known stealing money and destroying evidence is illegal. So the Post-It note on the old court case gives them qualified (absolute) immunity.
Yes, but not limited to just that one. https://www.youtube.com/@ogafroman/videos
He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.
> pedofile
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
> but a reasonable person might assume these rumours to be true
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
We are, of course, not privy to the jury's reasoning unless they choose to divulge it.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
"Of course?"
Where is that coming from?
Do you seriously not believe (well, know) that sadly, many cops do this ALL THE TIME?
This all feels extremely mild next to what these people did to Afroman.
I think you're confusing gender and sexual orientation. He's calling her a lesbian
No, I'm not. He also posted about her deep voice and people should check what genitals she really has.
here appears to be his celebration of his victory, pretty catchy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8Ee6pcXvQ
> here appears to be his celebration of his victory
No, that video seems to be from 4 days ago, the verdict of the jury came yesterday.
even more amazing then
This might be peak Streisand effect.
It gives me immeasurable delight seeing afroman at the top of HN.
Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops.
Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
I think this all started with cake in the face of a cop not pie!
Lemon pound cake you say?
Unfortunately Afroman is not particularly pro-freedom (big MAGA supporter). He seems to support certain rights for himself and not for others.
Even if this were true, are we really so far gone in the political discourse that we can't appreciate a win as Americans because of the perceived political orientation of the recipient?
I think the answer is yes, but I still naively hold out hope that we can eventually move beyond this.
Not sure he's "big MAGA" but I assume this is where the idea stems from - https://www.newsweek.com/afroman-explains-his-new-song-hunte...
It is interesting that his treatment is being cast in the light of racial politics rather than persecution of a political dissident.
I see he celebrated anti-ICE protests in some videos on his YouTube channel. Where does his MAGA support you claim come from?
I mean, both him and Trump have similar approach to opponents or those who wronged them. In this case, the opponents are deeply unsympathetic to most, so it is harder to see.
I do see how someone whose reaction to being wronged is "I fucked his wife doggy style" could be attracted to the Donald Trump personality.
I’m not at all convinced, because that would mean N A S is a Trumper because:
> “When these streets keep callin’, heard it when I was asleep/That Gay Z and C*ck-A-Fella Records wanted beef”
JayZ responded in kind insinuating it back on N A S.
And Drake is also a Trumpist because he told Chris Brown that he fu*ked Chris’s girl.
Tupac also, for some reason:
> ”… You claim to be a player, but I f*cked your wife/We bust on Bad Boys, n*g*as fu*ked for life.”
2Pac in hit-em-up:
> "That's why I fuc*ed your bitch"
Eminem:
> "I f*cked your mother and made her my bitch,"
You know what? Maybe it’s a rapper thing and not an indication of MAGA alignment?
He’s willing to publicly criticize government corruption and child abuse, so there’s no way MAGA would accept him. (Both these stances came up in the defamation lawsuit and in the music video.)
When he ran for president in 2024, he registered as an independent, “citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues”.
Even if he is ultra right wing on secondary issues (I have no idea) those are all anti-MAGA or bipartisan stances.
https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/664027-afroman-2024-presidentia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroman
> citing inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption, and legalizing marijuana as key campaign issues
The first two of those issues were Trump issues in his campaign and Trump rescheduled marijuana to schedule 2.
That's good to know. The second sentence you gave was superfluous because the first one told us that -- I add this not to dismiss your efforts but to highlight them.
Pretty funny, worth seeing at least once to be able to reference it at appropriate times.
Having had my house raided, I love this. Police incompetence should be exposed at all opportunities with the hope that it makes some small amount of difference to future competence.
Hoping it wasn't the SWAT guys. Those guys go hard and everyone is a meth terrorist until zip tied on the floor and proven otherwise. They also tend to shoot your dog. =(
Judging by the videos, they look like the typical American "deputy" that wouldn't even pass the fitness tests in other countries, which probably means it's easier to escape, but also that they are more trigger-happy.
Mime was in Australia, so much lower chance of violence, more polite.
The incompetence was:
1. The entire suspicion was based on an IP address
2. They did no background investigation for potential counter evidence - they didn't even know to expect children in the house (school aged children that have been attending public school for at least 5 years each at that point).
3. As a result of the above, one of my kids was somewhat traumatised by being woken up with a police officer in her room
7 cops. They called in two more because I had so much computer hardware, so 9 cops altogether for an entire morning.
8 months later I get told I can pick up my (~$10k worth of) gear that they took. No case to answer.
Should never have made it to a warrant. Useless, lazy, waste of a lot of resources. And creates an entire extended family with significantly diminished respect for, and increased suspicion of, the police force as a whole...
... you know, that whole erosion of trust in the system that's playing out writ large right now.
Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
Or claiming you don't know what crime your brother was charged with that led him to resign from the same police department.
The ACLU called it a SLAPP lawsuit. If true, they probably didn't care if they won or not.
That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.
>Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.
if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.
if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.
it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult
Those cops embarrassed themselves. Especially that one lady that was faux crying. Shameful behavior from the largest gang in the US.
That didn't seem like faux crying. Making fun of her in that way is the hardest to defend IMO, since it had nothing to do with her job performance or relevant character attributes. (E.g. how the other officer had been accused of stealing before, or had a brother resign from the force after being charged with a crime involving a minor).
That said, I don't disagree with outcome.
Aren't cops by default public figures? They're the de facto face of the police for the ordinary citizen, not sure they should be the type of individual who cries because someone calls them fat, lesbian or whatever. These people have the legal right to essentially execute you in public, I think we should set the bar a bit higher on who should be allowed to be a police officer in the first place.
I was raised by LEOs. My mother and all four of her husbands were career long LEOs in the South.
Of course this is just based on my anecdotes, but LEOs have some of the thinnest skin imaginable. The first time I fought a grown man was when I was 13 and I had to fight my mother's fourth husband. He was a Deputy Sheriff and combat veteran and that dude had the emotional strength of a 12 year old girl who didn't get asked to the winter dance.
It seems the job selects for those types. I suppose people interested in law enforcement / justice that aren't that way either end up as lawyers or working for the FBI or something.
If you don't have any kind of marketable skills yet want to make a decent living with plenty of benefits, becoming a LEO is the easiest choice for most people.
Or if you don't have any marketable skills yet have a spouse that has a job with health benefits, you can become a real estate agent.
Those two career paths seem to be the most chosen for almost all of the 'not so bright' folks I grew up with.
Other way around, right? Those types select that job. You're weak but you want to appear powerful, so...
It's a use it or lose it skill. When you carry a badge and gun around and can bark orders at people all day and they have to comply or face the infinite violence you can summon with your radio your skin will grow thin over time.
Power corrupts, or some half baked version of that.
This is a career that quite literally selects for "not too smart" [1]
1 - https://www.wirthlawoffice.com/tulsa-attorney-blog/2013/07/c...
These people carry guns and can kill you on the street and they can't take getting called some bad names?
Yes, exactly. Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face. Or breaking up with a cop. Or just say no to something they’re asking you to do.
“Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.
> Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face.
At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.
I cannot imagine living in a place where I can't tell someone what I think of them once in a while.
I do agree with you and the other comment in this vein. I have very little sympathy for these officers.
However, there are different situations. For example, I imagine this person is not very surprised or upset to be called "dyke" in a verbal altercation. That is different from sitting in a quiet courtroom, knowing it is being filmed, watching a popular video where your gender identity and expression is repeatedly insulted.
Let's say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it? We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
By all means, call cops pigs, liars, thieves, idiots. If you want to be racist, sexist, or call them pedophiles, I'll defend your right to do so but not be as sympathetic.
Otherwise we're just the hypocritical liberals as the right wingers accuse...
> say the officer was black, the defendant was white, and made a video with lots of racist stereotypes. Would we think that was funny and cool? Would we be surprised if the black man had a breakdown in the courtroom watching it?
This is very common in the US? Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show (Cross), which is to say the audience will be familiar with the material. Also explored in e.g. True Detective. No, the Black cop does not get to break down in court while being racially taunted. Either on TV or real life. This is expected by all to be a part of doing his job.
So? Even if the officer doesn't live up to our emotionally resilient ideal, it doesn't mean the stereotyped insults are any more acceptable.
And to the genesis of this thread, it doesn't mean I must believe the tears are fake.
> "On March 14, 2023, seven Adams County police officers sued Foreman, alleging that his use of the video of the raid invaded their privacy."
THEIR privacy?!?!? Their privacy ... in his home? This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard.
The term I learned for this yesterday is “crybully”.
This is not some footage issue, there apparently was a smear campaign online.
FTFA:
> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.
> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.
> falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money”
That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount.
> were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,”
Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.)
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,”
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5].
[0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
[1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/
[5] https://genius.com/123154
> The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves
I don't see how this supports the claim
You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.
I've attempted to take your responses as made in good faith twice now, despite evidence to the contrary in other threads. I understand if this topic is uncomfortable for you, either because it challenges your world view or because it feels personally invalidating. It appears as though you're looking for one very specific statistic or logical vulnerability in what others are sharing to refute the overall claim. However, I can only lead you to water.
Not the claim made.
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption.
was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not.
Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
Your post is essential. No one is claiming 100% of cops are white supremacists. One is claiming that it's sensible to assume they are.
If 20% of cops were white supremacists, and I was a minority, it would be sensible to behave as if every encounter had a significant chance of being with someone is looking to ruin my day.
The majority do not need to be unsafe for me to feel unsafe around the community. You have to factor in the potential power they wield (to kill you or take your freedom or seize your assets), combined with the odds that one will do it because they have wrong headed ideas about race.
Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well.
0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life.
1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular.
2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with.
3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection.
4. Boom racism.
I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
Where in this article does it suggest that it’s a statistically safe assumption that most cops are white supremacists?
It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion.
A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color).
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu...
Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
Warnings going back to 2006:
* https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/24350/ocr
Behold, the sea lion in its native habitat.
Asking for evidence of a claim is sealioning? Very funny suggestion. I can make claims too, watch
“Zero cops are or have ever been white supremacists, they’re all very nice and would never steal money or be racist”
Don’t ask me to support my claim, you’d be sealioning!
No, you ignored evidence presented while failing to provide any of your own.
Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
You understand that white supremacist groups existing as cops doesn't make the majority of cops white supremacists, right?
I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
> I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.
We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
Won't someone think of those who falsely accuse someone of kidnapping when they get a similarly ridiculous accusation against them?
This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
Statistically speaking "murderer is black" is a sensible assumption in US [1], but I'd prefer it wouldn't be made
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
It's a NY Post article. Expect some slant, and find a second opinion.
Doesn't really matter since police officers are public officials. The bar for defaming a public official is actual malice, which is clearly not the case here. They need to prove that he deliberately said facts that he knew were false with the deliberate intention of harming them. It was also obviously a satirical song which further weakens the case. This is such a weak case it should have been thrown out before it ever reached trial.
It's not smears when it's (mostly) true or opinion.
Civilians, in the middle of the forest: We want our privacy.
This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.
Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.
This flavor of police: Stop being mean!
They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property.
I was gonnna click the link, but then I got high.
I would’ve posted to say what I think, but I got high.
Can't be bothered to upvote, and I know why
I don't understand how they found nothing in the raid, wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant? If they forgot those that's a whole new level of police incompetence.
I guess they assumed that a musician whose whole persona is built around weed would supply the evidence.
> Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show...
You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.
Is the NY Post some kind of National Enquirer analogue? This article reads like it was written by a grade school child trying to emulate the voice of an villainous news reporter.
Yes. Here's an AP article:
https://apnews.com/article/afroman-police-raid-lawsuit-ohio-...
Yes, it's a pretty over the top paper. Feels like you're reading TMZ for stuff that didn't happen.
Yes, it's a right-wing tabloid. Our equivalent of the Daily Mail.
Never thuoght i'd see Afroman at the top of the Hackernews articles haha
I haven’t found any information about what cause the police had, why a warrant was issued, etc.
I’m not suggesting suspicion has merit, but given all the idiocy I’m wondering what other forms of chicanery may have taken place to get a warrant.
Tip from a “confidential informant”, I believe I read somewhere.
From Afroman's BATTERAM HYMN OF THE POLICE WHISTLE BLOWER: https://youtu.be/HM8Ee6pcXvQ?t=190
Gotta say I love Afroman's choice of courtroom atire.
I made this joke in another thread, but: I keep imagining Afromans court getup as the formal attire for American civil lawyers. Like robes and wigs, suits n ‘fros.
cowsay "lemon pound cake"
I’ve had “lemon pound cake” stuck in my head all morning thanks to this
I've heard "Randy Walters is a son of a bitch, ooooh oooooh, uuh!" the entire day today after hearing the song yesterday, probably the most catchy one to come out of this whole story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U
My mind went to K&P rap confession skit : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14WE3A0PwVs
Damn, that case took a long time to resolve. You know what they say about justice delayed...
Okay at first I was like this music is not my style, but the humor was so good.
Same. It was such low quality video and audio, but I stayed for the same reason you continue listening to a comedians story
Is there anyone who isn't super rich who feels safe in america anymore?
Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?
Arrests aren't abductions. You can't change the words and suddenly make criminals into victims.
One of my favorite parts is when Afroman is being cross examined about why he brought the media and his lawyer to retrieve his money.
He says, well that was for my protection because they came to my house with AR-15's and turned off the cameras. "I didn't want to get beat up or Epstein'd".
And the lawyer is trying to make that out to be unreasonable, that a black man in the US shouldn't be scared of the police. Afroman just continues to assert that of course he was scared.
Those cops are the epitome of the term “cry bully”.
How come so many cctv’s inside his house?
Maybe he’s justifiably paranoid?
He got burglarized before, and got threatened with arrest after demanding police investigate. https://www.tmz.com/2022/08/22/afroman-home-raided-police-oh...
It's a small county with an extreme minority of black people, like a couple hundred or less. It's quite likely he had personally encountered some of these officers before, and almost certain they knew who he was. Within the realm of possibility he saw something like this coming. Small rural sheriff depts are astoundingly corrupt.
Y'know, officers, if you'd shown up to his house after the raid and apologized and offered to buy the guy a new door of his choosing and the installation for it, we're probably not having this conversation.
They don't have the emotional intelligence for that.
They got what they wanted.
Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.
If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.
This was also on youtube - Afroman made his points very clearly. That was an easy case.
Makes you wonder why taxpayers have to pay for incompetent cops all the time. I understand that some proection is needed, but the whole system is really defunct if such cases even (have to) come to court.
Everyone has an agenda, even ycombinator and the bots
was this on the regular media? I've been bombarded by this case on tiktok for the last 5 days. and i don't follow police, law, celebrity, or rap.
Yes.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit...
Including internationally:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq57557d6p6o
The judge really loved the cops for some reason. So embarrassing for him.
Well, he probably interacts with them on a daily/weekly basis, or at least other people from their department, and probably don't want to end up on their bad side.
In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.
If you think "justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed", then please consider the people who aren't famous and can't get media attention when this sort of thing happens to them. Justice and freedom of expression fail to prevail on the regular and this is just one win amongst many, many, many losses.
Even just in this instance justice would include damages for their destruction and an inquest into the warrant from the cop that wrote it to the judge that signed it.
For this one case. He seems to be a horribly biased judge though from what I saw in this case over the three days.
Justice didn’t prevail. Afroman had to spend THOUSANDS defending himself in this bullshit civil lawsuit, and his countersuit got thrown out because police have qualified immunity.
This is after they raided his house, bashed in his door, broke his cameras, stole his money, and then didn’t charge him with a single thing (and only returned part of the money).
There is no justice here.
One of my local (several states away) bakeries announced a "Afroman lemon cake macaron" today.
His legal costs are gonna be tiny versus his YouTube/Spotify revenue out of all this.
(And I wouldn't ignore the value he probably applies to being proven right in court, either.)
Which is great for him. The point being this happens to other people who aren't famous, and maybe don't want to spend their time asymmetrically fighting for themselves on social media.
That's fine, but "There is no justice here" is incorrect.
As someone who has never seen that video before, could I respectfully say:
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Thank you, Ohio cops and lawyers, for bringing this to our attention.
When he started reversing the video around lemon pound cake I really thought the officer was backing up to take a piece lol
I highly recommend watching the video that made the other cop cry.
Licc’em Low Lisa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wWQxSV8CK8 (NSFW, depending on your workplace)
Please post the link!
One of the more interesting parts of the whole ordeal was officers getting on the witness stand and declaring that the lyrics that insinuated he had had sex with their wife were deeply traumatizing.
People keep throwing around 'cuck' as an insult, but if trained officers of the law familiar with application of deadly force when necessary can be severely traumatized by the notion of another man sleeping with their wife... Maybe the cucks have been the brave ones all along?
It's important to remember to thank them for their service.
gotta love some Streisand effect in the morning...
As fellow Ohioan Chrissie Hine and The Pretenders said, "Ay, oh, way to go, Ohio."
Yeah, it was from "My City Was Gone," which isn't a pleasant song about the state, but pfft, it works here.
It works here because it isn't a pleasant song about Ohio.
I would argue that using the footage ought to be legal; they are in his home.
Posting their names is questionable; as officers they are public servants, but naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
Lying however would be slander and illegal, in my humble opinion. Not worth 4 million in damages, but at least a cease and desist?
> naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?
No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.
> Lying however would be slander and illegal…
They couldn't prove he did.
I’d argue that’s rather different than just a cop somewhere.
He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man..
> He said they were criminals, and that the woman was actually a man.
If that were defamatory, 90% of QAnon would be in court.
I know things are bad in the USA right now, but news like these show that you still have your basic rights. This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. There have been some people abusing their freedom in recent times cough Kanye cough, but for every loud nazi there are ten more excellent people whose right to speak should not be infringed!
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? You have no idea what you are talking about.
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.
What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.
This wasn’t a 1A case, it was a civil defamation suit. He won because they failed to prove defamation, NOT because the judge threw out the lawsuit because of a violation of constitutional rights.
Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.
There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.
Perhaps interesting here is that some of the things he said were definitely not defensible via "truth is an affirmative defense." But it's ultimately up to the jury, and they can also find him innocent because a reasonable person wouldn't be offended by outlandish accusations.
(Ultimately, though, they can find him innocent for any reason. If they decided he should walk because you can't legally offend cops, that's fine too.)
Truth is far from the only defense.
Opinion is not defamatory. Satire is not defamatory.
With public officials like police, even false factual statements are not defamatory unless you knew they were false and lied about it specifically to hurt them.
> Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump.
The Germans would argue such powers prevent the Trumps.
The US is possibly the only place in the world where one can get away with things like this.
You mean the cops. Right?
I’m curious what the alternative is? I’m not aware of anyone, save you and the aggrieved police, who think this went the wrong way.
This is not remotely true. Furthermore, the way people don’t get away with stuff like this is via extralegal/extrajudicial harassment, abuse, violence, and sometimes assassination (see also: MLK, Huey, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Barry Cooper, etc), so we aren’t really sure that he has gotten away with it yet.
He beat a civil defamation suit; these cops still know where he lives. Do you think the events of today made them less angry at him?
Feels like some unfair downvotes, so I'll ask again.
In what other countries could one publicly shame the authorities this severely? I think that's what was meant here.
And yes, it's great.
I'd work the same in pretty much any European country, as in you'd record them, you'd publish that, they'd make up some lame excuse why that's not allowed, it'd go to a court, and a judge would decide who was right case-by-case?
Not quite sure which part of this process do you think is even remotely unique to the US.
100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)
Exactly what I meant. For example, in Germany one would have a hard time for much less.