A mother reported her son missing in March. Police kept the truth from her for months.
A mother reported her son missing in March. Police kept the truth from her for months.
Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
That is so fucked up!
This is America
Don't catch you slippin' now
I’m so tired of Enforcers choosing the most expensive option for the taxpayers.
Yeah, who in their right mind would cross a six lane interstate highway? He was playing Frogger with his life.
Look, not even getting into the cause of his death, it's extremely fucked up that they didn't attempt to contact family of the deceased after he died, and even covered it up and had it from his mother after she approached them for information.
You can say it was his own fault all you want, but that changes nothing about how atrocious they handled the whole thing.
How edgy of you.
What a shitty investigator. It took the new one less than a week to figure it out. I can't see how this could have possibly happened for any reason other than malice or gross incompetence. Either way both the original investigator and the rest of the department need to be looked into.
I hope very soon police can face the same amount of suffering they dish out to people and families.
If that were to become a reality, they would be no cops. Is that what you want? No cops? Because that sounds nice.
Every time I hear about (more) police violence, I just get stuck thinking about the number of times I've been assaulted by patients as a healthcare worker and how I was still required to put their safety above my own if at all possible...including the one that was twice my weight and tried to strangle me.
Yeah but she literally didn’t even thank them for their service.
PSSH, the gall
His name was Dexter Wade.
The decision to call the police was difficult for Bettersten. She did not trust them. In 2019, her 62-year-old brother died after a Jackson officer slammed him to the ground. The officer was convicted of manslaughter but is appealing.
Two of her family, wow. Now, I don't know what the environment is like there, but the son was crossing a highway at night on meth. This one could be.. I'm not sure of the word.. no bad behavior? Accident? But the lack of identification and contact is absolutely absurd.
They did identify him. They just didn't contact her.
Police had known Dexter’s name, and hers, but failed to contact her, instead letting his body go unclaimed for months in the county morgue.
Disgusting behaviour.
Darnella Frazier is the woman who recorded George Floyd's murder. Her uncle was also killed by police. Recently a man was released and awarded several hundred thousand dollars after spending over a decade in prison for a crime he didn't commit. After release, he was shot and killed by police. The police are a street gang, legitimized by capital in exchange for capital's occasionally being allowed to direct the police's constant stream of violence.
Yeah, the cover-up is the bad part.
Might as well be considered a hit-and-run.
This behavior is cowardly and disgusting. There’s no excuse.
Also, I didn’t realize we still had “pauper’s fields.” The repeated use of the word “pauper” in this article makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not from the south, so maybe it’s a regional thing? But that term strikes me as antiquated and dehumanizing.
Just curious what word would you use? Those without wealth or status have always been dehumanized regardless of the terms used for them.
As for right or wrong, pauper's fields will always be a thing as long as there are poor and indigent people. Have you ever wondered what happens to the homeless when they die? Many end up unified in death. So there is no way to inform family if they ever have any.
I believe that it is much more common to cremate unclaimed deceased then bury them these days. Even still the ashes are not carefully interred, but just spread out on a common site.
That makes sense, and I totally understand the utility of having municipal graves for unclaimed remains. I guess I would just call them that: unclaimed or unrepresented remains. I’m not saying “pauper” is inherently bigoted or anything, it just took me by surprise and struck me as a dehumanizing label that fits better in Medieval England. I don’t think we would call someone a pauper to their face in 2023, so I’m not sure why we’d use it to refer to their remains.
I don't think their issue is with the practice, just the term used. It's like saying "poor people cemetery", kinda distasteful sounding. They could just call it something else with less stigma attached than the term "pauper", like calling it a public graveyard. Or just use the older term "potter's field".
In 2019, her 62-year-old brother died after a Jackson officer slammed him to the ground.
A family having to deal with this much awfulness... it beggars belief.
God Damn Mississippi! What the fuck are you doing?!
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Jfc. That's was heavy.
Really shitty article.
Just give us the facts without all the dramatization.
I can understand how "fascist" has become popular but I'm curious how you see fascism here. It's fucked up and shitty and the officer and those involved should face charges, but fascism?
Looking at Umberto Eco's list, I'm seeing (at least) 4 5 9 & 10
Read Kafka's The Trial and you will understand. A justice system with no accountability to victims and communities is a feature of fascism.
What charges should they face?
I only have the information in the article, but from that it seems like the investigator originally assigned to the case was lazy, incompetent, or perhaps biased against this family because of their history with the police. That last thing seems like it is (or should be) illegal but the first two aren't, and the investigator is retired so it's too late for him to be penalized by the department (although I suspect that they wouldn't have). Other than that, the behavior of the police appears to have been appropriate - any driver could have hit a man crossing a six-lane highway at night, it isn't the coroner's job to track down a dead person's next of kin, and the new investigator assigned to the case appears to have been diligent.
IMO the behavior of the first investigator justifies an internal investigation and I would be quite cynical about the impartiality of that investigation, but I don't see strong evidence that a crime took place.
Not to excuse those fascists, but a simpler explanation is just lack of communication. Some incompetent somewhere didn’t bother with part of their job, and everyone else assumed it was done
Odd coincidence that this happened to a family that's put a cop behind bars. How often does stuff like this happen anyway?