10 ms·

I knew Sal Culosi. He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and mind

by Nrsolis 13y ago

I knew Sal Culosi. He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and minding his own business. If you can believe it, he was an optometrist at a Wal-Mart that just measured eyeballs and wrote prescriptions. If he was a bookie (as alleged) then I never saw anything that gave him away. I followed his story in the paper and was surprised to hear that a 17-year veteran of the Fairfax County Police was the one that shot him. Apparently, he said he was bumped and accidentally discharged his gun DIRECTLY INTO SAL'S CHEST. The police department eventually settled with the family for negligent homicide. That was only after they fought tooth and nail to protect a cop that didn't know how to control a deadly weapon. In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD.

sneak 13y ago
It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment. Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside. Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally. Fuck the police.
- saraid216 13y ago
  It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. If you're accused of a crime, you deserve maximum legal effort applied for your defense.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    > It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. Heh. First off, it's cops killing people, and then being squeamish about it (very contrary to how they'd deal with a civilian guilty of the same thing) that make people use these words. Secondly, there are of course many factors that go into stuff like this; many benign like simple solidarity, some potentially sinister, like being involved in things you'd be shunned for by most of society - such as killing unarmed people and then lying about it - which is an incredibly powerful bonding agent. > maximum legal effort But here too, this means very different things on both sides of the "blue line", doesn't it.
  - hondje 13y ago
    Don't try and blame police corruption on people complaining about police corruption and hating corrupt police, its obviously neither the cause nor a contributing factor. Just deflecting blame to the victims.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      No? Think about that every time you see "hackers" on the news.
      - jessaustin 13y ago
        When are police accounts ever questioned "on the news"? If anything, comparing the different media treatments of the two groups emphasizes the lack of accountability for police.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
    > It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      > Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted. What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? Does it not have enough power? Is that what's really being argued here? Or is this just feel-good we're-the-good-guys they're-the-bad-guys rhetoric intended to undermine what capabilities they have, cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude that is precisely the seed of a police state? Is the argument "they started it"? Is that the level of discourse that a mature, educated citizenry ought to engage in? Fuck people like sneak. All they're good for is exacerbating problems that exist, making it that much harder to fix, fulfilling their own prophecies of doom and gloom, to no useful end other than making themselves feel self-important. It's like discovering database corruption and going, "Hell, let's run DELETE in with random WHERE clauses and see what happens. Because my job title says VP of Marketing."
- yogo 13y ago
  These things are still pretty rare. Unfortunately, once you start raiding barber shops and pool halls with so much heat something like this is bound to happen. I still find it to be an honorable job with honest guys that put their lives on the line; however, statistically there's always going to be some hot-headed trigger-happy guy involved. Plus even if they're not on the force they're in some neighborhood as the unofficial neighborhood watch.
  - unethical_ban 13y ago
    People would be more forgiving to individual departments and officers if ever there was fair punishment and contrition for crimes committed by law enforcement. There is always an excuse or a legal loophole, with no admittance of guilt or evidence of self-reflection.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      Also, if there were even a chance of fair punishment, police would change their tactics to favor low-risk encounters rather than the Wild West raids they favor now.
  - llamataboot 13y ago
    Give someone assault weapons, train them to believe that they are fighting for good, and remove all legal and moral contraints and watch how quick they turn into a "bad apple". It's not a personnel problem, it's a structural problem. See Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Put a bad apple in a barrel, leave it there for a short period of time, and observe that all the apples are now bad. Rotting apples release ethylene gas which is a ripening agent. Through the release of this gas, bad apples will "spoil the barrel" if they are not diligently weeded out and disposed of. Bad cops don't release ethylene gas. The mechanism that rot uses to spread through a police organization is called "The Blue Wall of Silence". I love the "bad apple" metaphor because when you remember to say the whole thing it becomes clear that it is actually an argument against ignoring issues in an organization because only a few people are the "cause". If a police department "only has a few bad apples" then (according to the metaphor) those bad apples must be removed swiftly and decisively or the integrity of the entire department will be compromised.
- ryanSrich 13y ago
  Cops have no legal obligation to protect you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
  - sneak 13y ago
    No, but they do have a legal obligation to not shoot me for no reason, or to not lie on the stand under oath, et c.
    - ihsw 13y ago
      When not enforced, such obligations are meaningless.
    - threeseed 13y ago
      So does everyone. But guess what cops are human too ergo they will on occasion make mistakes, lie, steal, cheat etc.
      - ori_b 13y ago
        And when they lie, steal, and cheat, they should be punished. In fact, they should be punished much more harshly than the general public, because it is their duty to prevent lying, stealing, and cheating. They should be held to a higher standard.
        shef_hauwanga 13y ago
        This cannot be stressed enough. Anyone who enforces a rule through violence but is not subject to that rule is nothing more than a thug.
        lostlogin 13y ago
        This made me laugh. Applying this rule to the US is hilarious. The collection of Gitmo detainees, drone victims, the tortured, the extraordinary rendered, bombed, shot and otherwise victimised non-US citizens that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Uncle Sam came knocking over their countries probably aren't smiling with me.
- phaus 13y ago
  >Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_punishment. I completely agree, whenever politicians, CEOs of megacorporations, field-grade military officers and senior noncommissioned officers, local government officials, district attorneys, and intelligence agents break the law, the punishment is ALWAYS extremely severe isn't it? I mean, it must really suck to have to retire and collect a gigantic paycheck every month or a multimillion dollar severance package. And then have everyone forget about it a few weeks later so you can make a comeback in the political arena.
  - triplesec 13y ago
    don't forget bankers, whose punishment is a multi-Billion dollar gift from the treasury
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    Eliot Spizter is a grand example of this. Prosecuted mercilessly the very type of crime that brought him down, of which he escaped essentially unpunished for because he had the means to evade it. Your average cop and his buddies are of course going to look out for each other, they are usually the ones under the bus when the higher ups go on a witch hunt
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  So-called professional courtesy is the canary in the coal mine. If there's a jurisdiction where police officers can speed with utter impunity, it's a good bet that a lot worse is going on. In my own city, I was appalled by the spectacle of hundreds of police officers protesting in and around a courthouse where officers and union officials involved in a ticket fixing ring were being arraigned. Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-anger-at-ticket-fixing-arraignments-in-the-bronx.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-...
- vehementi 13y ago
  Hear hear. If you are a good cop in a precinct and you do not arrest the bad cops in that precinct, your precinct contains no good cops.
- mynameishere 13y ago
  I agree with you except about UC Davis. I'm on a locked-down computer right now so I can't promise this is the correct vid, but if you see the unedited thing, those kids were 100% in the wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y
  - whiddershins 13y ago
    I am astonished you think spraying people with pepper spray is the correct solution in that situation. Inconvenience is not a justification for violence. And that's what the protesters were doing. Causing inconvenience. If you can't cause inconvenience, civil disobedience isn't all that effective. Civil rights protesters were urinated on!! and had bleach poured on their faces !! by shop owners in the south. This is more of the same. That sort of violence against protesters was widely condemned then, why not now?
beedogs 13y ago
> In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD. And this is why I don't trust cops at all.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
eranation 13y ago
I was trying to find out more about this case and was surprised not to find any direct Wikipedia mention for it, after digging a little bit, I found out that this case was removed from Wikipedia entry 'List of cases of police brutality' about 3 weeks ago, under the comment "no evidence that this belongs as a brutality case" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_the_United_States&diff=560481196&oldid=560481083 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_cases_of_p... Although I don't know anything about the facts, and it might have been technically correct by that Wikipedia editor, this just feels as the opposite of justice.
- lizzard 13y ago
  If there is a list of cases of police shootings, add it to that!
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    http://copsshootingpeople.wordpress.com/ http://copsshootingpeople.wordpress.com/ was going for a while, seems dormant.

by Nrsolis 13y ago

sneak 13y ago

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment. Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside. Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally. Fuck the police.

saraid216 13y ago
It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. If you're accused of a crime, you deserve maximum legal effort applied for your defense.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. Heh. First off, it's cops killing people, and then being squeamish about it (very contrary to how they'd deal with a civilian guilty of the same thing) that make people use these words. Secondly, there are of course many factors that go into stuff like this; many benign like simple solidarity, some potentially sinister, like being involved in things you'd be shunned for by most of society - such as killing unarmed people and then lying about it - which is an incredibly powerful bonding agent. > maximum legal effort But here too, this means very different things on both sides of the "blue line", doesn't it.
- hondje 13y ago
  Don't try and blame police corruption on people complaining about police corruption and hating corrupt police, its obviously neither the cause nor a contributing factor. Just deflecting blame to the victims.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    No? Think about that every time you see "hackers" on the news.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      When are police accounts ever questioned "on the news"? If anything, comparing the different media treatments of the two groups emphasizes the lack of accountability for police.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted. What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? Does it not have enough power? Is that what's really being argued here? Or is this just feel-good we're-the-good-guys they're-the-bad-guys rhetoric intended to undermine what capabilities they have, cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude that is precisely the seed of a police state? Is the argument "they started it"? Is that the level of discourse that a mature, educated citizenry ought to engage in? Fuck people like sneak. All they're good for is exacerbating problems that exist, making it that much harder to fix, fulfilling their own prophecies of doom and gloom, to no useful end other than making themselves feel self-important. It's like discovering database corruption and going, "Hell, let's run DELETE in with random WHERE clauses and see what happens. Because my job title says VP of Marketing."
yogo 13y ago
These things are still pretty rare. Unfortunately, once you start raiding barber shops and pool halls with so much heat something like this is bound to happen. I still find it to be an honorable job with honest guys that put their lives on the line; however, statistically there's always going to be some hot-headed trigger-happy guy involved. Plus even if they're not on the force they're in some neighborhood as the unofficial neighborhood watch.
- unethical_ban 13y ago
  People would be more forgiving to individual departments and officers if ever there was fair punishment and contrition for crimes committed by law enforcement. There is always an excuse or a legal loophole, with no admittance of guilt or evidence of self-reflection.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Also, if there were even a chance of fair punishment, police would change their tactics to favor low-risk encounters rather than the Wild West raids they favor now.
- llamataboot 13y ago
  Give someone assault weapons, train them to believe that they are fighting for good, and remove all legal and moral contraints and watch how quick they turn into a "bad apple". It's not a personnel problem, it's a structural problem. See Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Put a bad apple in a barrel, leave it there for a short period of time, and observe that all the apples are now bad. Rotting apples release ethylene gas which is a ripening agent. Through the release of this gas, bad apples will "spoil the barrel" if they are not diligently weeded out and disposed of. Bad cops don't release ethylene gas. The mechanism that rot uses to spread through a police organization is called "The Blue Wall of Silence". I love the "bad apple" metaphor because when you remember to say the whole thing it becomes clear that it is actually an argument against ignoring issues in an organization because only a few people are the "cause". If a police department "only has a few bad apples" then (according to the metaphor) those bad apples must be removed swiftly and decisively or the integrity of the entire department will be compromised.
ryanSrich 13y ago
Cops have no legal obligation to protect you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
- sneak 13y ago
  No, but they do have a legal obligation to not shoot me for no reason, or to not lie on the stand under oath, et c.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    When not enforced, such obligations are meaningless.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    So does everyone. But guess what cops are human too ergo they will on occasion make mistakes, lie, steal, cheat etc.
    - ori_b 13y ago
      And when they lie, steal, and cheat, they should be punished. In fact, they should be punished much more harshly than the general public, because it is their duty to prevent lying, stealing, and cheating. They should be held to a higher standard.
      - shef_hauwanga 13y ago
        This cannot be stressed enough. Anyone who enforces a rule through violence but is not subject to that rule is nothing more than a thug.
        lostlogin 13y ago
        This made me laugh. Applying this rule to the US is hilarious. The collection of Gitmo detainees, drone victims, the tortured, the extraordinary rendered, bombed, shot and otherwise victimised non-US citizens that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Uncle Sam came knocking over their countries probably aren't smiling with me.
phaus 13y ago
>Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_punishment. I completely agree, whenever politicians, CEOs of megacorporations, field-grade military officers and senior noncommissioned officers, local government officials, district attorneys, and intelligence agents break the law, the punishment is ALWAYS extremely severe isn't it? I mean, it must really suck to have to retire and collect a gigantic paycheck every month or a multimillion dollar severance package. And then have everyone forget about it a few weeks later so you can make a comeback in the political arena.
- triplesec 13y ago
  don't forget bankers, whose punishment is a multi-Billion dollar gift from the treasury
- Shivetya 13y ago
  Eliot Spizter is a grand example of this. Prosecuted mercilessly the very type of crime that brought him down, of which he escaped essentially unpunished for because he had the means to evade it. Your average cop and his buddies are of course going to look out for each other, they are usually the ones under the bus when the higher ups go on a witch hunt
bradleyjg 13y ago
So-called professional courtesy is the canary in the coal mine. If there's a jurisdiction where police officers can speed with utter impunity, it's a good bet that a lot worse is going on. In my own city, I was appalled by the spectacle of hundreds of police officers protesting in and around a courthouse where officers and union officials involved in a ticket fixing ring were being arraigned. Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-anger-at-ticket-fixing-arraignments-in-the-bronx.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-...
vehementi 13y ago
Hear hear. If you are a good cop in a precinct and you do not arrest the bad cops in that precinct, your precinct contains no good cops.
mynameishere 13y ago
I agree with you except about UC Davis. I'm on a locked-down computer right now so I can't promise this is the correct vid, but if you see the unedited thing, those kids were 100% in the wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y
- whiddershins 13y ago
  I am astonished you think spraying people with pepper spray is the correct solution in that situation. Inconvenience is not a justification for violence. And that's what the protesters were doing. Causing inconvenience. If you can't cause inconvenience, civil disobedience isn't all that effective. Civil rights protesters were urinated on!! and had bleach poured on their faces !! by shop owners in the south. This is more of the same. That sort of violence against protesters was widely condemned then, why not now?

beedogs 13y ago

> In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD. And this is why I don't trust cops at all.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

eranation 13y ago

I was trying to find out more about this case and was surprised not to find any direct Wikipedia mention for it, after digging a little bit, I found out that this case was removed from Wikipedia entry 'List of cases of police brutality' about 3 weeks ago, under the comment "no evidence that this belongs as a brutality case" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_the_United_States&diff=560481196&oldid=560481083 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_cases_of_p... Although I don't know anything about the facts, and it might have been technically correct by that Wikipedia editor, this just feels as the opposite of justice.

lizzard 13y ago
If there is a list of cases of police shootings, add it to that!
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  http://copsshootingpeople.wordpress.com/ http://copsshootingpeople.wordpress.com/ was going for a while, seems dormant.