Milwaukee police release video showing violent arrest of NBA player Sterling Brown

[Toews]

Quote

Milwaukee police release video showing violent arrest of NBA player Sterling Brown

What started with a nonviolent encounter over a parking ticket became a nightmare for the Milwaukee Bucks player.

The Milwaukee Police Department released body camera footage on Wednesday of the January arrest — and tasing — of Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown at a Walgreens.

The incident sparked outrage at the time. But the video reveals that Brown, who’s black, seemed to pose no threat to the officers, yet multiple cops were deployed to the scene and used a Taser on him, during an arrest that began with a dispute over a parking violation.

 

The video begins with an officer standing by Brown’s car, preparing to write a ticket because the vehicle was parked across two handicap spaces. Brown then arrived and argued with the officer, but ultimately they came to a standstill when the cop said that he needed to wait for backup. Within minutes, multiple police cars arrived at the scene. Several cops — at least six at one point — surrounded Brown, and he talked with them.

 

Brown had his hands in his pocket for much of the conversation, which officers did not seem to mind at first. But after a while, an officer ordered him to take his hands out. Suddenly, and with no sign of aggression by Brown, the cops got extremely aggressive, grabbed Brown, and pushed him to the ground. As Brown was on the ground, an officer yelled, “Taser, Taser, Taser!” The officer then used a stun gun on Brown.

 

At no point did Brown appear to pose a threat to the officers, based on the video.

 

Brown was initially arrested for resisting or obstructing an officer, but he was not charged with any crime after review of the body camera footage. The officers involved in the arrest were disciplined, Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said in a statement.

 

“My experience in January with the Milwaukee Police Department was wrong and shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Brown said in his own statement. “What should have been a simple parking ticket turned into an attempt at police intimidation, followed by unlawful use of physical force, including being handcuffed and tased, and then unlawfully booked.”

 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that “although the Milwaukee Police Department’s use of firearms has dramatically declined in recent years, there has been a rise in the use of Tasers” — suggesting some sort of substitution effect. Stun guns were originally marketed as nonlethal, but they were relabeled “less lethal” after their use resulted in deaths in some cases.

 

Milwaukee has a long history of struggles with police and racism. A 2013 ranking, for example, deemed Milwaukee the most racially segregated metropolitan area in America. In 2016, riots broke out in the city after a police officer shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith — leading City Alder Khalif Rainey at the time to remark that the city’s struggles with racism had led to a “powder keg.”

 

City officials are concerned that this new video could lead to a similar backlash. According to the Journal Sentinel, police shared the video with community leaders prior to its release to help prepare the city. Officials warned the Journal Sentinel before the video’s release that “this could be bad.”

 

The escalation of the arrest once again puts a spotlight on police use of force in America, particularly against black Americans. There are vast racial disparities in how police use force. These kinds of incidents, in which a dispute over a parking ticket can escalate into a violent arrest, are a major reason that police have lost so much trust and legitimacy within the black community.

 

The racial disparities in police use of force

 

Consider the use of deadly force: Based on nationwide data collected by the Guardian, black Americans are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be killed by police when accounting for population. In 2016, police killed black Americans at a rate of 6.7 per 1 million people, compared to 2.9 per 1 million for white Americans.

 

There have also been several high-profile police killings since 2014 involving black suspects. In Baltimore, Freddie Gray died while in police custody, leading to protests and riots. In North Charleston, South Carolina, Michael Slager shot Walter Scott, who was fleeing and unarmed at the time. In Ferguson, Missouri, Darren Wilson killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. In New York City, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by putting the unarmed 43-year-old black man in a chokehold.

 

One possible explanation for the racial disparities: Police tend to patrol high-crime neighborhoods, which are disproportionately black. That means they’re going to be more likely to initiate a policing action, from traffic stops to more serious arrests, against a black person who lives in these areas. And all of these policing actions carry a chance, however small, to escalate into a violent confrontation.

 

That’s not to say that higher crime rates in black communities explain the entire racial disparity in police shootings. A 2015 study by researcher Cody Ross found “There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.” That suggests something else — such as, potentially, racial bias — is going on.

 

One reason to believe racial bias is a factor: Studies show officers are quicker to shoot black suspects in video game simulations. Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor who conducted the research, said it’s possible the bias could lead to even more skewed outcomes in the field. “In the very situation in which [officers] most need their training,” he previously told me, “we have some reason to believe that their training will be most likely to fail them.”

 

Police need to own up to these problems to do their jobs

 

It’s these type of statistics, along with cases like Brown’s, that explain the distrust between police and minority communities. But more than simple distrust, these issues also make it more difficult for police to do their jobs and stop crime.

 

There’s a longstanding criminological concept at play: “legal cynicism.” The idea is that the government will have a much harder time enforcing the law when large segments of the population don’t trust the government, the police, or the laws.

 

This is a major explanation for why predominantly minority communities tend to have more crime than other communities: After centuries of neglect and abuse, black and brown Americans are simply much less likely to turn to police for help — and that may lead a small but significant segment of these communities to resort to its own means, including violence, to solve interpersonal conflicts.

 

There’s research to back this up. A 2016 study, from sociologists Matthew Desmond of Harvard, Andrew Papachristos of Yale, and David Kirk of Oxford, looked at 911 calls in Milwaukee after incidents of police brutality hit the news.

 

They found that after the 2004 police beating of Frank Jude, 17 percent fewer 911 calls were made in the following year compared with the number of calls that would have been made had the Jude beating never happened. More than half of the effect came from fewer calls in black neighborhoods. And the effect persisted for more than a year, even after the officers involved in the beating were punished. Researchers found similar impacts on local 911 calls after other high-profile incidents of police violence.

 

But crime still happened in these neighborhoods. As 911 calls dropped, researchers also found a rise in homicides. They noted that “the spring and summer that followed Jude’s story were the deadliest in the seven years observed in our study.”
 

That suggests that people were simply dealing with crime themselves. And although the researchers couldn’t definitively prove it, that might mean civilians took to their own, sometimes violent, means to protect themselves when they couldn’t trust police to stop crime and violence.

 

“An important implication of this finding is that publicized cases of police violence not only threaten the legitimacy and reputation of law enforcement,” the researchers wrote, but “they also — by driving down 911 calls — thwart the suppression of law breaking, obstruct the application of justice, and ultimately make cities as a whole, and the black community in particular, less safe.”

 

That’s why, especially in the context of racial disparities in police use of force, experts say it’s important that police own up to their mistakes and take transparent steps to fix them.

“This is what folks who rail against the focus on police violence — and pull up against that, community violence — get wrong,” David Kennedy, a criminologist at John Jay College, previously told me. “What those folks simply don’t understand is that when communities don’t trust the police and are afraid of the police, then they will not and cannot work with police and within the law around issues in their own community. And then those issues within the community become issues the community needs to deal with on their own — and that leads to violence.”

 

Cases like Brown’s feed into the distrust — by signaling to black communities that police aren’t there to protect them but are instead likely to harass them and use excessive force. In that way, these cases make it a lot harder for police to achieve the basic roles they’re meant to fulfill.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/5/23/17384720/milwaukee-police-sterling-brown-video-bucks-nba

 

Story's blowing up because its a pro-athlete but this is all too common. I have had good and bad experiences dealing with cops, nothing even remotely comparable to this. 

[Rounoush]

Vox? Yeah, no thanks.

[luckylager]

Cops overstep their boundaries all the time in Canada, but American cops are completely &^@#ed.

 

Time and time again they prove themselves to be poorly trained cowards. 

 

Hey, at least they didn't blow his head off...

[taskicon]

Maybe don't park in two handicap spaces then argue with the police? No one should be tased over a parking ticket but maybe don't park like an a-hole?

[ilduce39]

1 minute ago, taskicon said:

Maybe don't park in two handicap spaces then argue with the police? No one should be tased over a parking ticket but maybe don't park like an a-hole?

It's two separate issues.  One, Sterling Brown is an entitled jerk. He deserved a ticket. 

 

Two, the police seemingly arbitrarily escalated that situation into a physical (and potentially deadly, as we in Vancouver know) incident.  According to the law, they really had no reason to do that. 

 

Write the guy a ticket, I could even take the cops popping off a bit calling him a jerk since money really isn't an issue.. but no need for backup, takedown or tazing.  None.

[SabreFan1]

1 hour ago, Rounoush said:

Vox? Yeah, no thanks.

Which news source would make you happy?  It's being reported by most.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sterling-brown-milwaukee-police-release-body-cam-video-showing-arrest-of-innocent-nba-player-2018-05-23/

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2018/05/23/milwaukee-police-apologize-for-bucks-guard-sterling-browns-arrest-as-video-released.html

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/23586406/video-shows-arrest-tasing-sterling-brown-milwaukee-bucks

http://fox6now.com/2018/05/23/body-camera-video-involving-arrest-of-sterling-brown-to-be-released-at-5-p-m/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/23/613657447/milwaukee-police-disciplined-for-tasing-arrest-of-nba-player

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-milwaukee-police-acted-inappropriately-in-encounter-with-nba-rookie-sterling-brown

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/sterling-brown-milwaukee-police-video-tased-arrest-1.4675588

[SabreFan1]

 

[riffraff]

Big deal.  Famous guy gets roughed up by the cops so it makes the news.

[Toews]

18 minutes ago, riffraff said:

Big deal.  Famous guy gets roughed up by the cops so it makes the news.

He is not famous. He is a rookie who was picked with a mid 2nd. Unless you are a hardcore basketball fan you have probably never heard of this guy in your life.

 

I suppose it's true that this isn't a "big deal" as African-Americans are regularly beaten, tased, shot and arrested without cause while the rest of the society pretends the problem doesn't exist until of course another incident like this one pops up somewhere else.

[Tortorella's Rant]

Most people defending the police in these instances and their abuses of power are the same ones who assert the FBI has crossed the line in doing their job investigating the Trump admin. Shocker..

[riffraff]

8 minutes ago, Toews said:

He is not famous. He is a rookie who was picked with a mid 2nd. Unless you are a hardcore basketball fan you have probably never heard of this guy in your life.

 

I suppose it's true that this isn't a "big deal" as African-Americans are regularly beaten, tased, shot and arrested without cause while the rest of the society pretends the problem doesn't exist until of course another incident like this one pops up somewhere else.

They article mentions his position on the NBA team he plays for.  This automatically sets his story aside from the everyday man.  That's my point.

 

all people are harassed by police in both the US and Canada.  Police harass their own police - if you're a female.

 

i won't get into my personal experiences of mistreatment.  I won't get into my family members experiences of mistreatment or my friends.  

 

In Canada......

 

but I will say that one of the instances made this video look like a cake walk.

 

 

 

[Toews]

9 minutes ago, riffraff said:

They article mentions his position on the NBA team he plays for.  This automatically sets his story aside from the everyday man.  That's my point.

 

all people are harassed by police in both the US and Canada.  Police harass their own police - if you're a female.

 

i won't get into my personal experiences of mistreatment.  I won't get into my family members experiences of mistreatment or my friends.  

 

In Canada......

 

but I will say that one of the instances made this video look like a cake walk.

 

 

 

I don't know about your experiences with the cops but cops in the US target black people at a rate significantly higher than the rest of the population. The numbers, the numerous videos of unarmed black men murdered by cops all show conclusive evidence of this occurring. 

[riffraff]

5 minutes ago, Toews said:

I don't know about your experiences with the cops but cops in the US target black people at a rate significantly higher than the rest of the population. The numbers, the numerous videos of unarmed black men murdered by cops all show conclusive evidence of this occurring. 

I agree.  The law enforcement system is broken.

 

Sadly we see videos like this far too often but let's not pretend their is only one guilty party.  Let's not pretend that many of the responses to injustice don't involving the shooting murders of police officers, rioting, and destruction of family business.

 

responsibilty has to be take by all involved.

[Toews]

31 minutes ago, riffraff said:

I agree.  The law enforcement system is broken.

 

Sadly we see videos like this far too often but let's not pretend their is only one guilty party.  Let's not pretend that many of the responses to injustice don't involving the shooting murders of police officers, rioting, and destruction of family business.

 

responsibilty has to be take by all involved.

Nvm misread post

[189lb enforcers?]

44 minutes ago, Toews said:

I don't know about your experiences with the cops but cops in the US target black people at a rate significantly higher than the rest of the population. The numbers, the numerous videos of unarmed black men murdered by cops all show conclusive evidence of this occurring. 

What actually IS conclusive are the stats that show that a sliver of the population in the USA commits most of the crime. Lots of stats out there on the actual. This claim of yours has been debunked to death, but the liberal social engineering outlets of the MSM don’t share this with the willfully ignorant. 

 

What do you have against cops?

 

Maybe you should go to Chicago and spend a month as an auxiliary. 

There is no way you would return to this victimhood agenda/SJW crap, after being a target, yourself. Like a zero % chance. 

 

 

 

 

[Toews]

Just now, 189lb enforcers? said:

What actually IS conclusive is the stats that show that a sliver of the population in the USA commits most of the crime. Lots of stats out there on the actual. This claim of yours has been debunked to death, but the liberal social engineering outlets of the MSM don’t share this with the willfully ignorant. 

 

What do you have against cops?

 

Maybe you should go to Chicago and spend a month as an auxiliary. 

There is no way you would return to this victimhood agenda/SJW crap, after being a target, yourself. Like a zero % chance. 

The claim is a fact. Black people get killed at a disproportionately higher rate than the rest of the population. I don't really care what some conservative yahoo with 20k subscribers on YouTube told you.

 

I am against cops brutalizing innocent African-American youth like Sterling Brown.

 

I know I wouldn't come back feeling that cops are justified to beat, tase or murder unarmed African-Americans who pose no threat to them.

[Rob_Zepp]

11 hours ago, taskicon said:

Maybe don't park in two handicap spaces then argue with the police? No one should be tased over a parking ticket but maybe don't park like an a-hole?

Do you think a white entitled jerk would have had same treatment in the US?   I don't.

[peaches5]

11 hours ago, luckylager said:

Cops overstep their boundaries all the time in Canada, but American cops are completely &^@#ed.

 

Time and time again they prove themselves to be poorly trained cowards. 

 

Hey, at least they didn't blow his head off...

There are counties in the US that make you take an IQ test before entering the police academy and if you score too highly you are not accepted. The reasoning is people with higher IQs have a very high drop out rate. So a lot of the officers have below average IQ's. There are also volunteer officer programs in places and they literally give volunteers police badges and guns, who have actually shot and killed people.

 

 

[Warhippy]

1 hour ago, 189lb enforcers? said:

What actually IS conclusive are the stats that show that a sliver of the population in the USA commits most of the crime. Lots of stats out there on the actual. This claim of yours has been debunked to death, but the liberal social engineering outlets of the MSM don’t share this with the willfully ignorant. 

 

What do you have against cops?

 

Maybe you should go to Chicago and spend a month as an auxiliary. 

There is no way you would return to this victimhood agenda/SJW crap, after being a target, yourself. Like a zero % chance. 

 

 

 

 

After you.  Please, lead the way.  I am sure you don't have any sort of issue working around those people on a full time basis based on numerous comments

[Xbox]

Was only a matter of time before this happened to a professional African-American athlete. This is going to be a bad look for the Milwaukee police...