A woman in Florida says her 55-year-old “medically fragile” father was falsely accused of theft at a Florida grocery store last week and then seriously injured in a violent encounter with police. Now, she says, he is hospitalized and has lost the ability to speak.
Did anybody read the article and see the part where she were threatening the employees with a bat and admitted to it?
I think they’re sort of burying the lede on this one.
I would completely expect the police to show up, armed and ready for someone who did just receive a call about threatening people with a metal bat.
Fuck the police and what they did to him, but let’s not pretend like this isn’t a whole other thing than the headline.
That being said, can anyone tell me what the cops did to this dude other than make him sit in the back of a police car I very well might’ve missed it.
The latter part of that article go wild
To answer your question on what the cops did:
This is all from the woman’s perspective. But it sure seems suspicious that he had chest pains that the police’s story can’t explain.
And kidney injury, supposedly.
I would upvote you but I keep getting an error screen when I try.
Fair enough I missed that part. Thank you!
If you walk up to someone with a bat in your hand and tell them to pick on someone your own size, you are threatening them with the bat.
If not to be a threat there is no purpose to bring the bat
From her account the Karen in the store had already laid hands on her father at this point and was then continuing to follow and harass him. Sounds like self defense to me.
It’s not self-defense, it may be defense of another, but she was not involved in it until she involved herself
Then you don’t understand the concept of self defense.
A bat is a deadly weapon. To justify the use of a deadly weapon in self defense or defense of others, a reasonable person must believe there is a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, and that the deadly weapon was necessary to end that threat.
“Laying hands” does not describe anything remotely close to such a threat.
I think if the person is white you can use “stand your ground” and shoot people of color without issue. This isn’t about her having a bat, it’s that she doesn’t look “white enough” to use the same defense several white folks have used now. And those white folks went looking for trouble and still got to shoot people with impunity. She only had a bat and was basically telling the Karen if she wants a problem to keep it up.
I just don’t see how that isn’t self defense. She also feared for her father’s life from some racist shithead that instead of calling police if she really thought there was an issue, decided to put her hands on this gentleman and then continue to harass him. And I don’t know that stores particularly policy, but most chains strongly discourage harassing and chasing down customers because you have a hunch they may have taken something. So she also likely broke store policy in pursuit of her racist vendetta.
Oh dear, a classic case of downvoted for uncomfortable truth. The fickle nature of forums strike again.
How do you know she walked right up to Karen? How do you know she didn’t just go and stand by her father while leaning on the bat?
And why didn’t the woman just ask to see the receipt instead of going all Karen?
You assume too much.
Based just on the facts, she picked up a bat and then issued a threatening statement. Whether you are 2 feet away or 50, that is still threatening someone with a weapon.
Why are you arguing against this?
I assumed nothing.
I used only the things that the lady herself stated.
If you disagree please point me to the information that you think proves your point.
I will look at it and reevaluate, I might not change my mind but I will at least listen to your opinion.
Please, feel free.
Based on what media is reporting, which is rarely ALL the facts.
And you do assume you know how far away she was standing, what her tone of voice was, etc. If you weren’t there = you don’t know for sure.
You also didn’t respond to my question why Karen just didn’t ask to see the receipt … like a non-racist likely would.
Because I am not trying to defend her actions.
I agree that that is what should have happened.
Can you give me an example of how holding a metal bat in your hand and telling that to someone in this situation would not be a threat?
Look, my personal mantra is “pick on someone your own size”, which I chant every morning when I’m roaming the streets with my walking bat.
Only a bigot would find that threatening.
Ok, I can’t help but give an exception for that.
You are making sure to bang it creepily while talking in a sing-song voice right?
Based on what she has said. Her description of her own actions with the bat constitute a threat. Unless you’re arguing she was misquoted, she issued a threat with a deadly weapon.
If you read the rest of the story, they claim she was waiting outside with the bat telling the lady to come out, went inside and knocked a bunch of shit off of shelves, etc.
Which may not be true, but pretty sure a bunch of people were being stupid and escalating things here.
everyone was escalating here, except perhaps the victim. Even then, it seems like you get the manager and make sure they have the cashiers statements instead of trying to leave
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Yeah, the police response was still disproportionate, though. By the time the cops got there:
The entire thing was over. But instead of asking “what’s going on here”, hearing an explanation, and going on with their day, they arrest the woman and hospitalize the man.
That doesn’t mean that they didn’t get a call about a woman threatening someone with a bat.
Just because that lady was sitting in the car now doesn’t absolve her of what she did.
I don’t know how the lady was acting to the police, so assuming the worst they came in hot on an assault call and didn’t take, shoot, pepper spray, or beat the shit out of her.
She seems to be upset about her father, but all he had to do was sit in a car.
He may have gotten an elevated risk of a cardiac incident because of just the stress of sitting in the cop car, like I said we are assuming the worst case here, which means that even if his daughter had nothing to do with it and that just sitting in the car under stress about the banana thing was at cause.
They still called him an ambulance and waited with him, not even just left him alone in the car.
If there is anything in the article that I missed that contradicts something I said please let me know
When they showed up, she was sitting in the car, not actively attacking anyone, let alone threatening. Thus, the police response is disproportionate.
In the military, in situations involving threats, the rule of thumb is to be one step ahead of the other person. They’re carrying a weapon, you’re readying your weapon. They’re readying, you’re aiming. They’re aiming, you’re firing. In this case, she wasn’t carrying a weapon, and they were aiming theirs. They were three steps ahead, two more than they should have been.
Does it absolve her? No. But like I said, with no active threat to anyone, the proper response would have been to talk to everyone and find out what was going on. Coming in hot with guns out just makes everything worse.
I don’t know what happened after they pulled up, neither do you. I am not giving the police any undue acclaim here.
FFS I was excited that they didn’t taze, shoot, or beat her.
I led with fuck the police and was just asking about the crazy second part.
Someone actually pointed something out in the article that was helpful and showed what the police did wrong to the old man, but you want to sit here and argue hypotheticals.
You could have done like them and tried to show someone where they were wrong but you wanted to get all kerfuffled.
The cops bounced his head off the hood or some shit like that btw.
The other person even provided a quote so if you just scroll up some you can see it.
You are one of those people who make me want to argue against everything you say just to piss you off because of your attitude.
People like you make someone want to argue against you just because you are making up hypothetical s or saying things with absolutely no proof.
You should be more like them, they supplied with the information to change my outlook.
Yeah. You’re right.
The daughter totally escalated the situation by bringing a baseball bat and threatening the clerk. No wonder they called the police.
And the old man, according to affidavits, was simply taken into the back of a police car without any violence to himself. Then he complained of chest pains while in the car so they called an ambulance. He was alert when the ambulance arrived.
The man had a heart condition that was aggravated due to his daughter escalating the situation and getting the police involved. And now he’s in the hospital because of her behaviour.
However this could’ve all not happened had the store employee not been a dick. So this is really all that person’s fault.
I don’t agree with that logic.
You are stripping away everyone’s free will except the employee.
At any point during this, anyone could have made different decisions and just stopped this whole thing
Yeah but the initial instigator was the clerk. That was the spark that started it all.
Friend, I already agreed to that.
My statement is that everyone here was an adult and they all made poor choices.
Granted that the dudes action was small, but now that I think about it that was actually what started it.
It should have stopped with just asking the cashier how many bananas he paid for.
They did not even need to bother asking him and risking someone just thinking they were being called a thief.
I know that is how I feel every time I get asked for a receipt, and I am a middle aged white guy in redneck country, god only knows how often he probably has to deal with it.
Do y’all’s grocery stores charge by number of bananas? Mine does if by weight. Not that I think that makes a difference, if I keep seeing people taking about paying for an extra banana so im curious.
People do it with grapes too, also sold by weight. But here we only have a few. Surely she could have typed in 1/3 extra weight and been pretty damn close
Many cashiers can’t do math tho, and if you ask them to they think you’re trying to scam them.
I think the fact that this guy had a medical flareup that the potassium in the bananas would help will help him in court, if he would even be able to go to court.
Ah ok I misunderstood.