Jogging in Georgia while black.

[quadraginta]

To be honest, I was rather surprised when so many posters said that they routinely wander around construction sites. Where I live, every construction site I've seen is fenced and locked, so that random passers-by without hard hats and safety boots can't enter the site and wander unchecked. If I did enter through an unlocked gate I'd be spotted and immediately ejected by the construction workers.

In heavy commercial construction, especially in densely populated urban conditions this is probably not unusual, but certainly not ubiquitous.

In single family residential it is quite common for there not to be any security fencing.

Thinking about it, I drove by two multi-home/apartment developments while out shopping the other day, and neither of them had security fencing. These were several acres or more with at least a dozen or so homes and condos.

I was on a project on Duke University campus not long before I retired from construction. About twelve years ago, so not in the misty depths of the past. It was a $60 million lab and classroom complex. Not only was there no security fence, we even had groups of people using the access road between our office trailers and the construction area as a shortcut to get from parking lots scattered around campus to the football games. We could tell when the Duke team was underperforming by how many started wandering back through before the game was over.

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm not suggesting anyone's lying, by the way. But it's not something I've seen, like, ever. My understanding is that protective equipment is required by law on all construction sites (they call certainly have signs up calling for it) and since the land the construction is on, you could be charged with trespassing for entering.

But Australia is certainly more open to regulation than the US is, where it seems to be a dirty word.

 

[pgwenthold]

To be honest, I was rather surprised when so many posters said that they routinely wander around construction sites. Where I live, every construction site I've seen is fenced and locked, so that random passers-by without hard hats and safety boots can't enter the site and wander unchecked. If I did enter through an unlocked gate I'd be spotted and immediately ejected by the construction workers.

Depends on the "construction." Major office building downtown? Sure.

Single family home in a residential neighborhood? Not at all.

We built our house in 2013. Since then 3 houses have been built in the neighborhood. Not a single fence built around any of them.

And yes, I did go into the neighbors' houses while they were being built to check them out. Heck, when our house was being built, I stopped by pretty much every day. Some days workers were there. Other days they weren't. Didn't matter.

Heck, I even did some work on the house in the meantime (I put insulation up in the interior walls for sound protection.

There were random sub-contractors in and out of the place all the time.

 

[arthwollipot]

Depends on the "construction." Major office building downtown? Sure.

Single family home in a residential neighborhood? Not at all.

During primary construction - pouring the slab, putting up the frame, etc - a residential construction will absolutely be fenced. Once they're on to the trimmings and final bits of painting and stuff, the fences come down.

My brother had a new house built recently. He was able to call the construction company and get access to the site during primary construction, but he couldn't just rock up unnanounced and expect to be given access.

Anyway, this is an derail which probably should not be continued.

 

[smartcooky]

Anyone "confident" while charging a man with a shotgun unarmed would have to be certifiably insane. Arbery may have assessed that this was the correct action, or even just acted on instinct when faced with an imminently deadly situation, but I very much doubt he was "confident" about anything once this trio of murderers started stalking him.

I have ZERO doubt that if Arbery had chosen to run when he saw the redneck get out of his truck with shotgun, that redneck would have gunned him down as he ran. Given the way that rednecks have gotten away with murdering black people with impunity (George Zimmerman, Jeronimo Yanez, Terrence Mercadal, Jared Robinet, Daniel Pantaleo et al) I am also 100% certain that Arbery knew it too.

 

[pgwenthold]

During primary construction - pouring the slab, putting up the frame, etc - a residential construction will absolutely be fenced. Once they're on to the trimmings and final bits of painting and stuff, the fences come down..

There were no fences when our house was built. Not during excavation, pouring the concrete or framing. Nor was there for any of the houses built in our neighborhood.

So your "will absolutely be fenced" is complete nonsense. Stop talking about things you don't know about.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

To be honest, I was rather surprised when so many posters said that they routinely wander around construction sites. Where I live, every construction site I've seen is fenced and locked, so that random passers-by without hard hats and safety boots can't enter the site and wander unchecked. If I did enter through an unlocked gate I'd be spotted and immediately ejected by the construction workers.

It depends on the site. Reporting on this story showed that the vacation home was being built at a leisurely pace, and often nothing was happening at all at the construction site. The owner kept a trailer parked out back to live in while he was working on his summer home. That's probably why the owner had a surveillance camera, because he knew it was going to be in an open state for a long period of time, as opposed to a normal construction project which moves along more swiftly.

These people weren't trespassing on a active construction site, they were poking around in a mostly inactive site. In my youth I "trespassed" in several vacant lots, abandon properties, and so on. Had there been a long-standing, inactive construction site, I probably would have trespassed there too. The owner reports that nothing was ever stolen, besides a few pieces of lumber by a couple kids. Mostly just lookie-loos, as you might expect.

 

[catsmate]

Racists gotta racist.

Shouldn't that be 'racialise'?

 

[catsmate]

Interesting wording in that quote. It says white cotton fibers were found,(not exactly a unicorn-level rarity), and notes that Arbery was wearing a white shirt. Does that mean no positive match was made, just assumption (if a reasonable one)?

Given the generic nature of 'white cotton' and the scale of production it's unlikely (barring some unique contaminant) that any sample could be definitively tied to a particular source.

 

[catsmate]

I think he probably had a pretty good adrenaline dump too. It’s one thing to run a quick mile under ideal conditions, and another to do so under duress. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got exhausted quickly.

Yeah, adrenaline fatigue can be a bastard.

I have said this a couple of times:
From his perspective, what's the difference between this and a typical 1950s lynching? Rednecks in a truck chasing after him. As a black person growing up in GA, why SHOULDN'T he assume they are armed?

Cellphone video.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yeah, adrenaline fatigue can be a bastard.


Cellphone video.

Cannot be overstated enough that these three killers had already gotten away with their crime until release of the cell phone video caused a public outcry.

The whole murder was successfully swept under the rug as a "self defense" killing of a man fleeing a lawful citizen's arrest. Had Roddie not taken the video, or had the video not escaped to the public, all three men would be free today and Arbery would officially be known as a violent criminal who caused his own death.

 

[Dave Rogers]

This whole could-Arbery-have-run-a-mile-in-3:57 discussion seems to me analogous to the discussion of whether a rape victim fought back enough to make it a proper rape, and no less despicable. Men with guns hunted him down and shot him when they had no legal justification for doing so, and how he reacted to their ultimately successful attempts to murder him has no bearing on the fact that they murdered him.

Dave

 

[Belz...]

This whole could-Arbery-have-run-a-mile-in-3:57 discussion seems to me analogous to the discussion of whether a rape victim fought back enough to make it a proper rape

It's not analogous. It's exactly the same argument.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And it must be noted that the McMichael's actions are undergoing absolutely none of this level of scrutiny.

 

[Meadmaker]

This whole could-Arbery-have-run-a-mile-in-3:57 discussion seems to me analogous to the discussion of whether a rape victim fought back enough to make it a proper rape, and no less despicable.

Except that Thermal has been quite explicit throughout that the accused are guilty of murder.


He isn't absolving anyone of guilt. He isn't saying that it's Arbery's fault. He isn't excusing any actions of the accused men. He isn't blaming Arbery for his own death.

So, maybe words like "despicable" are a bit of an overreach.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Except that Thermal has been quite explicit throughout that the accused are guilty of murder.

He isn't absolving anyone of guilt. He isn't saying that it's Arbery's fault. He isn't excusing any actions of the accused men. He isn't blaming Arbery for his own death.

So, maybe words like "despicable" are a bit of an overreach.

Yeah that's always the game. 40 pages of pro-murder fan fiction with a mumbled "But yeah they are still guilty I guess" at the end of it.

At the very least whenever a black person gets murdered we also have the same peanut gallery in the thread who are way more interested in talking about what the black person did wrong than anything else which is icky regardless of who they claim to think is in the wrong after they are done character assassinating the victim.

 

[Dave Rogers]

He isn't absolving anyone of guilt. He isn't saying that it's Arbery's fault. He isn't excusing any actions of the accused men. He isn't blaming Arbery for his own death.

There aren't two viewpoints here, there's a continuum. Towards one end, there's "Three white men in trucks chased down a black man on foot and killed him with no legal justification." Towards the other end there's "The black guy brought all this on himself so he deserved to die." Somewhere in the middle there's "Yes it was murder but here are all the things he could have done differently and maybe they wouldn't have killed him." Personally, for the sake of my own moral sense, I'd rather stay at, or close to, the first end of the continuum.

Dave

 

[bruto]

It occurs to me that some of this argument depends also on the presumption that Arbery was not jogging, and therefore had no reason to be tired from that.

 

[catsmate]

To be honest, I was rather surprised when so many posters said that they routinely wander around construction sites. Where I live, every construction site I've seen is fenced and locked, so that random passers-by without hard hats and safety boots can't enter the site and wander unchecked. If I did enter through an unlocked gate I'd be spotted and immediately ejected by the construction workers.

That is my experience too. Liability alone tends to ensure sites deter unauthorised visitors.

 

[Thermal]

Yeah that's always the game. 40 pages of pro-murder fan fiction with a mumbled "But yeah they are still guilty I guess" at the end of it.

Just curious: do you see your own lies or have you developed a blind spot to them?

From page one, I have called this a cold blooded murder, and have not wavered an inch.

I have maintained unwaveringly that the DA should be strung up by their short hairs for the cover up.

I have questioned what the **** is up with GA gun laws that this use of firearms could possibly be considered legal open carry.

No, I don't talk much about the murderers, because **** them. Don't care about them or what happens to them, as long as they pay for the rest of their lives. I identify with Arbery, and am only considering what happened from his POV.

Even my current proposition is that Arbery was a man with balls of steel (a trait I greatly admire), while the paternal racists here insist he be considered no more than a frightened pet.

The weirdest part is that I am without question Arbery's biggest supporter and fan, and have uncompromisingly blasted his murderers from page 1.

Yet you and yours continue to lie about it. Christ, this **** gets boring.