An Alabama preacher and politician killed himself Friday two days after being outed for having a secret life he shared online as a “transgender curvy girl.”

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    So, I have a question. From the Daily Beast article:

    Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said that deputies who tried to pull Copeland over for a welfare check witnessed Copeland step out of his car and shoot himself.

    Why are we taking the word of the cops for what happened? We know the right-wingers don’t distinguish between cross-dressers and pedophiles. We know that some of them find great satisfaction in abusing, torturing and even killing those that they consider “other”. And we know that cops cover for other cops.

    Yes, it’s entirely possible and plausible that this guy killed himself, but why are we just blindly accepting the cops’ version of events here?

    • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Good point, what kind of wellness check involves a roadside stop?

      It seems quite possible that the police pulled him over to harass him.

    • cricket98@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What incentive would the police have to murder a guy? What do you think is more likely, that the cops decided to murder some guy for cross dressing, or that this dude is so embarrassed that he got outed as a giga pervert who stalked local women and killed himself because everyone now knows

      What a dumb comment. There is no evidence the police shot this guy, and all the evidence to suggest that he killed himself.

            • cricket98@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You know how you can look at people who say the government is trying to kill them and rightfully laugh at them as crazy? That’s how I feel about people who think a cop has a 50/50 chance of killing you in America

                • cricket98@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  not sure what point you are trying to prove. A great majority of those people killed were armed. 8000 people is really not that much over an almost 10 year time span and all the justified shootings. You have 50x higher chance of dying in a car accident than dying by the hands of the police. That number because 300-500x if you are unarmed. The USA population is over 300m, this is a speck in the bigger picture.

                  • Int_not_found@feddit.de
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                    1 year ago

                    Dude it’s is human life your are talking about. Every death that could’ve be prevented, is a death to much. 8000 dead People is a lot of death. Especally if you compare it to countries like Germany, GB or Sweden, where the number of fataly shot people isn’t even in the hundreds in the same time frame.

      • Wirrvogel@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Turn it around: He knew the police in his small town, do you think he expected them to make this roadside stop to help a recently outed queer person that did questionable things like fantasizing about killing a woman that everyone in town knows and becoming her by transitioning or uploading memes in a similar context with pictures belonging to real people to a porn website? I mean he knew them personally, I guess he knew their standing on queer, he might have felt threatened for a reason. I am not saying they shot him, just that he might have expected them to be everything but helpful.

      • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh, sure. Nothing ever happens like that with cops. They never turn their cameras off or lie.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        That doesn’t really count for anything unless people other than cops look at the footage. Not that I’m saying it should be made publicly available but somebody independent should see it.

        If it turns out there’s no body cam footage that’s a problem too but again unless someone outside the police force can see that there’s no body cam footage the lack of footage isn’t ever going to be made public knowledge.

        The police have body cam footage to make sure they’re doing their actual jobs and not something else, for the bloody useless if they turn them off or no one ever reviews the footage. They are not primarily there for the police’s benefit they’re there for ours.

        • cricket98@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          in most states civilians can request body camera footage. if you believe there to be misdoings then request it and have the journalistic scoop of ages “Cop kills transgender woman after claimed suicide”