[Texas Justice] Galveston officers on horseback led a black suspect through the streets by rope.

People need to realize that continual sensitivity and outrage to everything is a weakness. Have the power that words and images
can't hurt you. It makes people stronger, allows them to look to themselves to rise up and not continually feel that the system let them
down.

 

How is leading perps from horseback with a rope even useful in crowd control scenarios? Would they tie 20 black protesters in a long row to the saddle of a horse? And that's better?

This image is disgusting and I wish the officers thought a little about the optics before choosing to do this, but I don't understand why it was even included in their training for anything. I'd really like to hear about one reasonable use case that justifies tying a human being to an animal.

 

O P T I C S

 

Because of these images and the subsequent reactions to said images I'm pretty sure the Galveston Police Department will think of better strategies and/or techniques to arrest people in the future. Not all outrage and/or sensitivity reactions equate to weakness.

 

Good morning America, August 6th, 1919.

 

The judgement on this is just mind boggling. After leaving Texas I can tell you that most people outside the state view this as the norm. I have to correct them, but ish like this doesn’t help

 

They would call in a squad car to transport a detained Individual...

Like this **** isn't that hard. I guess it's easy to **** up when this proffesion is known to attract low IQ Individuals.

 

My issue here is that the solution is so simple (call in a squad car and wait 5-10 minites), that it seems like the officer wanted to be an ass on purpose.

Anyways I hope the officer had fulfilled his Red Dead Redemption fix.

 

The article says they moved the suspect one block away from where they apprehended him before completing the arrest.

I'm not sure why they needed to move him. Perhaps it was easier for them to meet up with a squad car where they took him, or they didn't want to linger on the Strand near tourists. Either way, I'd keep an open mind that this was not a couple of guys who just felt like cosplaying the slavery era.

 

Maybe moving the guy was necessary, I don't know. But, it wouldn't have been nearly so degrading if one of the cops would have gotten off his horse and walked him.

 

Yeah, it's soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo silly. Why would anyone be upset about seeing a person lead around town with a rope by officials on horseback? Who could imagine?

I know some people might argue and say that it isn't people being upset at things like that of which people should be aware, but the history and current state of affairs.

In case you missed it, white nationalism is on the rise. It isn't just anger about the past. Images and words absolutely do cause damage. If you get the chance ask a holocaust survivor how it came about that the general populace was convinced to allow the government to put into place the ghettos, concentration camps and extermination of populations. The answer is words, images, jokes, and stereotypes.

You could also look back at our own history to see why people were so desensitized to allow slavery, then Jim Crow and still discriminate within education, the criminal justice system, workplace, etc. It has to do with words, stereotypes, and images.

 

I agree with this, but it was a bad decision. As @JuanValdez pointed out, had they walked him that block rather than rode over him on horseback it wouldn't have been an issue.

 

I'm guessing escorting a suspect and a horse at the same time is probably not advised.

 

I think one could have handled the horses. One could have guarded the suspect.

 

First of all, I want to meet the above cops.

Second of all (and seriously),

there's some discrepancy with how far they walked him with the rope. I don't live there anymore, but I've seen this guy walk around downtown in the past and you can tell that he was homeless and just... not there. There's a few specific homeless that roam that area and he's one of them.

One of the local reporters mentioned the discrepancy of where the arrest happened, where they were supposed to take him, and a picture from the back that disputes GPD's story.



Some may say several blocks versus the one is unimportant, but why be dishonest about it? There was time to think a lot more time than being reported that the officers had time to think about how this looked.

Anyway, yeah... they needed to do away with this practice if it really was s practice to begin with.

 

The second rider could have led the other horse, if that's an issue. In any case, treating a black suspect like a runaway slave is probably the least advisable thing they could do. I can't solve their logistical problems for them, but I can say the solution they hit upon is not acceptable.