If he were not part of the Seattle police I might be willing to put down my pitchfork and give him the benefit of the doubt, but since he is, in fact, a prominent member of a lawless gang that is notorious for egregious civil rights violations, I say guilty until proven innocent. He’s already actively lost the trust of the public.
SPD has gotten “less bad” since 2021, when many officers quit after the protests because their fragile egos were too hurt. Those cops are now “serving” the local rich communities of Mercer island and Sammamish, where there are very few people of color. Seattle proper also lost some of their “finest” when a shit ton of them got caught up in the January 6 insurrection. Fairly sure all of those goons were fired.
Lately, as a Seattle resident, I’ve only seen SPD being lazy and not really responding to anything but the biggest emergencies. They do still occasionally sweep a homeless camp but they now give advance warning and give them a way to get their stuff back.
The city council voted to defund and this is the lukewarm result. It’s probably still a work in progress but they’ve drastically changed the size of the “force” here.
That sincerely sounds like someone caught saying something stupid trying to spin it into something less bad.
So his current claim is that he wasn’t mocking the victim, he was mocking the process of trying to get justice for victims and holding the police to account.
First responders have to develop a bit of a callous to gruesome scenes, because those that don’t end up not being able to do the job.
The humor is likely a facade that exists to protect him and those around him from the reality of an unfortunate situation that they can not change.
If you’ve ever spent time with EMTs, you will know what I’m talking about. Those guys do not get paid enough and joke about everything in all the worst ways. Still, if you ever get one of them drunk and pry about something they glossed over, they’re as likely to cry as to keep cracking jokes.
It isn’t a good look, but these guys are still human.
You don’t need to develop a callous to gruesome scenes if you don’t cause gruesome scenes.
“unfortunate situation that they can not change” except by not driving over people at 70mph.
Don’t conflate cops with EMTs. The job of EMTs is to save lives.
From an interview on a right-wing talk radio show. Context clues are important. Dude’s lucky he didn’t say anything more stupid that couldn’t be backpeddled like this was.
And as for ‘turning himself in’, it’s pretty suspicious that another city employee who was responsible for reviewing the footage also reported it up the chain of command, but the city couldn’t determine who did it first.
But yeah, let’s trust his version.
What is “super important” about this? They are going to say whatever nonsense excuse they can come up with, it’s completely predictable.
Fair to point out, and prompted me to listen to the video. Having done so, the tone in the minute or so leading up to the comments does not strike my ear as backing up the officer’s claim. It’s not openly mocking like the comments, but it’s absolutely thin-blue-line bullshit, minimizing the possibility of culpability by his colleague, and spinning the facts right from the get-go. I can almost buy that there is an element of wonder that this is the world they live in, but it felt a lot more like happy relief that they have the privilege of their position, rather than the sarcastic gallows humor you might expect from someone who finds the situation depressing.
