"All this blather about “do what the cops tell you and you won’t get hurt is bullshit. Lies. False propaganda."
NO, it ISN'T propaganda!
He DIDN'T DO what the police told him to do.
And that could have been you and your family out on the crowded four-lane highway as he sped by on the right shoulder (perhaps at 100 mph or more) with police chasing.
Link
He could EASILY have killed 5 or 10 people, and police could have been killed chasing him.
And NO, I'm not going to even-handed in a process that isn't even-handed, but is adversarial.
I've read and debated with white liberals on the "police brutality" issue, such as at Salon, and they have horrible opinions of police, that most are bad, stupid, ignorant, hateful, and even that there's not much risk with their job. One even pull out statistics of "risky jobs" and because "police officer" wasn't at the top of the "most killed" list, he said I was wrong that it was a risky profession.
Where a whole profession is being PROSECUTED, then it is necessary to be like a DEFENSE ATTORNEY, who advocates for the defendant.
And what I'm saying here isn't far off. People want to rake police officers over the coals, and say "they just want the BAD cops dealt with," which are the cops who never get seriously questioned about anything controversial. THOSE cops, the ones that the politicians, media and Twitter find guilty instantly, are the BAD ones.
Any cop that isn't PERFECT, either, is potentially a BAD cop, if the media and politicians try that cop and find him to be.
PERFECT is now the standard for police, because it's a perfect world, and everyone else is perfect. We just need to be hiring perfect people.
Now, right now the public debate is so skewed, I'm not primarily concerned about going too easy on police.
This man had no respect for the lives of others. He recklessly endangered hundreds of people, and only stopped when he was stopped. He provoked and upset police.
That he was treated harshly might have been avoidable, but it isn't the clear-cut, he was just loitering and refusing to leave somewhere when police attacked him. THAT would be clear abuse. This ISN'T that!