Unnamed Belgian Police Officers #psycho #racist

Unnamed Belgian Police Officers #psycho #racist bbc.com

Belgium custody death: 'Shocked' police chief steps aside

Belgium's director-general of police has said he is deeply moved by a video showing a Slovak man being pinned down in a cell hours before he died. In the graphic video, Chovanec is seen banging his head against the wall of his cell and eventually bleeding. Officers then forcibly restrain him. A female officer appears to make a Hitler salute while laughing and a male officer is seen sitting on the man's chest for 16 minutes. Chovanec, 38, died of a cardiac arrest in hospital the following day.

The video was released by his widow, Henrieta Chovancova, after she became frustrated with a two-year inquiry that police said had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. "Why did they treat him like this? Worse than even an animal, like he wasn't even a human being," she told Belgium's VRT News. She told Het Laatste Nieuws; "After the videos of the arrest of the American George Floyd, I immediately thought, 'my husband died the same way', except that police also laughed out loud at my husband and a policewoman next to him did a Hitler salute."

A lawyer for the policewoman told Het Laatste Nieuws that she was interviewed by the police inquiry in May 2018 and was asked about the video. "She was embarrassed but it was a kind of knee-jerk reaction," François Feron told the paper. "Because she heard Jozef Chovanec making accusations - she assumes in German or a Slavic language - at the time and in that context she thought a Hitler salute was funny. Wrongly, of course, but she realises that too."

5 comments

Just FYI, this is causing quite the shitstorm here on the political level. I doubt that some things are going to remain the same here after this.

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

@Timjer #55449
Good to hear that it is taken seriously.

No matter who the victim, where the event, police misconduct is misconduct and should damned well merit an entire nation’s collective shock and disgust. A man from the description given appeared to be having a self-harming, psychotic episode and the officers reacted not as those with a medical emergency on their hands and a subject they needed to save from himself but literally as Nazis, salute and all, deciding the best thing to do is mock and punish the “unfit” until one way or another he isn’t their problem any more.

As far away as Belgium the name of George Floyd and the manner of his death, the breath crushed from him over a nearly ten minute period with no resistance and no justification beyond “I’m arresting him” is bringing questions of basic humanity into sharp focus causing people to realize the importance of having the highest standards for those who enforce the law, that the law must apply to them just as much as the lowliest vagrant and said vagrant’s human dignity must be just as inviolable as that of society’s finest. Why not closer to home? Why is it even here in Canada I have heard people mutter “why care about criminals?” with a frightening lack of concern for the facts let alone the underlying principle.

A counterfeit bill. Something some people don’t even realize they’re using. That was all the justification needed to kneel on the neck of a compliant man. Being high was also used as justification, but then again he was debilitated by those drugs at the same time. The idea of the world being fine with police summarily killing someone - slowly and torturously - pretending it is mere “restraint” of a subject, that someone can be shot dead just to stop their movement, subjected to the use of tasers or pepperspray or a chokehold not as a response to a threat or even mere “belligerence” but just as a matter of course simply for being called to the area or worse making a random stop and check for an excuse as thin as “you don’t look like you belong” is frightening and unacceptable.

And medical emergencies? Particularly matters of mental health? The idea that you may inadvertently be calling for a loved one’s executioners when you’re trying to talk them out of suicide or get them safely to an institution should pierce the very soul of anyone with a shred of awareness or human empathy.

Why care about “criminals?” I hear so many idiots ask.

I’m glad somewhere in the world my fears are being alleviated.

She's only embarrassed because she got caught. I'm glad it's coming out though. Police brutality should not be a thing anywhere.

They sound like psychopaths who signed up for police work only to have power on the public, just like Dennis Rader, aka “BTK”, who stopped his killings once he got a post at City Hall.