Cyclist claims NYPD police car hit him, then officers lied about it

Jamminatrix wrote:

Regardless of the officer lying and failing to signal a turn (hard to tell from camera), that cyclist seriously needs to learn better cycling savy: They were riding in the blind spot of a cars visibility, while riding in a gutter - AKA a bike lane, on a busy city street, while passing a slowing vehicle. That's just not smart or good awareness.

True. He chose to pull an undertake on a deccelerating vehicle approaching a junction, he should count himself lucky he isn't in the hands of the undertakers. 

Rapha Nadal wrote:

At least they didn't open fire on him which is a plus.

He can't have been black...

nowasps wrote:

Rapha Nadal wrote:

At least they didn't open fire on him which is a plus.

He can't have been black...

The pedant in me forces me to point out that many more non-black Americans are shot each year than black Americans. 

darrenleroy wrote:

The pedant in me forces me to point out that many more non-black Americans are shot each year than black Americans. 

Try 10 seconds of googling instead of typing, maybe? The Washington Post reports that unarmed black men were seven times more likely to be killed by police this year than unarmed white men.

vbvb wrote:

darrenleroy wrote:

The pedant in me forces me to point out that many more non-black Americans are shot each year than black Americans. 

Try 10 seconds of googling instead of typing, maybe? The Washington Post reports that unarmed black men were seven times more likely to be killed by police this year than unarmed white men.

Try reading your own article, maybe?

"In any case, the numbers are misleading. “Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black,” the Washington Times article said. “He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic.”

darrenleroy's point stands.   Your article points to something else - the relative chance of a black person being killed being higher as they make up a smaller % of the population:
"...but whites make up 63 percent of the population of this country. Blacks are just 12 percent."

You might argue that the rate of shootings is still therefore indicitive of racism, but you might first want to look at the crime stats by race in the USA first:
(p.11 http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf)

Hypoxic wrote:

Isn't blatant lying completely incompatible to being a police officer?

 

That would be nice, but unfortunately police are people and people generally lie a lot. This is why we should have procedures in place to reduce the reliance on someone's word and instead use independant investigators and examine the evidence.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Why don't they just hold up their hands, admit they made a mistake and pay for his bike and phone? Everyone makes mistakes from time to time and we don't expect police to be "perfect". However, we do expect police to be honest.

Now that they've lied, they can't just hold their hand up because that would be an admission that they lied. So instead they need to drag this out as long as possible and try bury it in the court system. Already there are too many questions this raises. Bad driving, lying in a statement, victim blaming, a cover up from the second group of policemen on the scene - rather than the bad driving of one person the whole system is under scrutiny. It's too late to admit they were wrong, even if it's the right thing to do