Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.

    • @Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      301 year ago

      I can understand how “fascist” has become popular but I’m curious how you see fascism here. It’s fucked up and shitty and the officer and those involved should face charges, but fascism?

          • @Eldritch@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah it kind of does. Literally the police’s only job is to protect wealth and the wealthy who own it. They have no duty to serve or protect the people in general. The guy they killed and buried was not wealth, nor was he wealthy. Worse still he was part of the demographic that our police forces were literally created to capture round up and return to their owners.

            Just because they haven’t managed to completely dismantle, our democracy doesn’t mean they aren’t fascists. And that police don’t serve them. Because I’ll tell you for sure who they don’t serve. The community or anyone that looks like that man or his mother. That’s just unacceptable. But totally normal for fascist groups. Lots of potter’s fields out in Germany the United States and even Canada. It’s a shame people still defend these groups so much.

      • @ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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        31 year ago

        What charges should they face?

        I only have the information in the article, but from that it seems like the investigator originally assigned to the case was lazy, incompetent, or perhaps biased against this family because of their history with the police. That last thing seems like it is (or should be) illegal but the first two aren’t, and the investigator is retired so it’s too late for him to be penalized by the department (although I suspect that they wouldn’t have). Other than that, the behavior of the police appears to have been appropriate - any driver could have hit a man crossing a six-lane highway at night, it isn’t the coroner’s job to track down a dead person’s next of kin, and the new investigator assigned to the case appears to have been diligent.

        IMO the behavior of the first investigator justifies an internal investigation and I would be quite cynical about the impartiality of that investigation, but I don’t see strong evidence that a crime took place.

          • HubertManne
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            31 year ago

            satan! People need to stop insulting people due to their laziness in accessing both the article being disucssed and a persons comment in relation to it. Name calling should not be happening but especially so if someone has not read and understood the article. The person you responded to obviously did so he knows not only were people told it was reported and documented. This is the salient point from the article you did not read. It really was the original investigator not doing shit.

            "This account has been pieced together with interviews with his family and a coroner’s investigator, along with court records and documents provided in response to public records requests: a crash report, incident reports and coroner’s office records. Bettersten also shared personal notes, emails, Dexter’s death certificate, a coroner’s report and case information cards provided to her by police. "

          • @ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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            31 year ago

            Hitting a man crossing a six lane highway in the dark is not automatically vehicular homicide. Sometimes the pedestrian is at fault when a car hits a pedestrian, and this appears to be one of those times. It isn’t literally impossible that the driver was drunk or going twice the speed limit and the cops covered it up, but assuming that something like that happened without any evidence is unreasonable even when the driver was a cop.

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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      41 year ago

      Not to excuse those fascists, but a simpler explanation is just lack of communication. Some incompetent somewhere didn’t bother with part of their job, and everyone else assumed it was done

      • @gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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        641 year ago

        The decision to call the police was difficult for Bettersten. She did not trust them. In 2019, her 62-year-old brother died after a Jackson officer slammed him to the ground. The officer was convicted of manslaughter but is appealing.

        Odd coincidence that this happened to a family that’s put a cop behind bars. How often does stuff like this happen anyway?

        • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Our firm took a civil case (wrongful death. the cop ran a stoplight, no lights no sirens, not responding to a call. killed a mom and two kids.) against a police department a few decades ago. Every employee of the firm had to pay about 10 grand in bribes to the cops in the towns where they lived before they stopped getting pulled over for nothing. Yeah, it’s a real honorable profession.