Louisiana police accused of ‘unconscionable’ abuse in ‘Brave Cave’
Louisiana police accused of ‘unconscionable’ abuse in ‘Brave Cave’
Baton Rouge officers allegedly brutalized and disrobed detainees in storage shed once used for anti-street crime unit
The victims? Primarily Black. The perpetrators? Primarily white.
There is no ethnocide in America.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Across from an industrial hose and gasket supplier’s office, in a mostly empty and fenced-off lot behind a precinct house belonging to the police department of Louisiana’s capital city, there sits a white storage shed without any markings explaining its purpose.
That single-story warehouse – within a couple of blocks of a daycare center, an eatery specializing in chicken wings and a gasoline station frequented by unwary residents – is now the focus of local and federal authorities examining alarming claims that officers with the Baton Rouge police department (BRPD) took detained people there and brutalized them.
Allegations portraying the warehouse once used by the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination, or Brave, anti-street crime unit as a sort of black site or torture chamber are contained in two federal court lawsuits filed relatively recently.
On Wednesday, the Advocate reported, he was issued a misdemeanor summons charging him with simple battery after investigators found bodyworn camera video which showed him using a stun gun to shock a detainee handcuffed in the back of a patrol cruiser “without giving the suspect an opportunity to comply [with] verbal commands”.
Baton Rouge officers looked in the underwear and groped the genitals of Clarence Green and his teenage brother during a 2021 traffic stop, subsequently drawing scrutiny of the police force’s methods, as the Advocate reported.
Sterling’s family later received a $4.5m settlement from Baton Rouge’s city government to conclude an episode presaging the worldwide protests against police brutality that were elicited by a Minneapolis officer’s murder of George Floyd in 2020.
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Are we really surprised by this point? The modern police are a collection of state-sanctioned, taxpayer funded, heavily militarized criminal syndicates.
I'm surprised anyone is surprised. Fuck me, I'm a 52-yo white boy and this doesn't make me blink. And it used to be worse!
Almost ACAB
AACAB I can get behind lol. ACAB half the time is just straight up internet trolls and instigators. Meanwhile the same people love to espouse shit like how the wealthy are the real oppressors while ignoring most police are only firmly low-middle class. There are way more people getting into that job who just happened into it like most people in the world. While yes, the abusers and psychopaths are attracted to the job for the above, the separation of powers in places like that are wide. Just like they would be in most businesses. Let alone the real deal PTSD they have to deal with daily to weekly in som areas.
Any direct supervisors for teams that have pretty full automony know it's impossible to track what they do constantly. So much of it is based on the trust system and good faith actors speaking out when they see something. Throw in some bystanders effect and benefit of the doubt for people who'd normally be good to you but a monster in the shadows... I'm not envious of police one bit, or the people trying to make change from the inside. Which is the only real way it's going to happen despite internet tough guys espousing otherwise while refusing to pay taxes for shit like mental health services lol. Elected local/state politicians, DAs, also being the people who could make those changes. Also equally vilified.
It's way more complicated than people give it credit for when you're actually trying to make change. For most people trying to get by, best thing you can do is vote.
Is there such a thing as conscionable abuse?
There was a case where a German police officer threatened to torture a known child abductor and suspected murderer to get hold of the location of the child. The threat was effective, the child already dead, the officer reported himself. Before court, the officer and a subordinate got away with a fine of 90 respectively 60 days of disposable income (that's the standard rate for a day in prison in Germany), on probation. Reasoning for the mere slap on the wrist was (aside from them reporting themselves) that while completely illegal the threat was indeed conscionable, done out of a motive to protect. The defence argued self-defence (which in German law doesn't only extend to yourself but others), but courts would never go for that that in case of police officers that slope is too damn slippery. Parents, different thing.
Ok, yeah. That would qualify, but I also agree with the court's decision there.
Straight to jail.