The George Floyd effect. Monuments down. MS flag gone. Worldwide protests. Police more violent than protestors.
terp said:
PVW said:
terp said:
Funny too how the complaints about the mass gatherings stopped all of a sudden.
I suppose you could have made the same remark about last week's protestors in Hong Kong, though I very much doubt they are unaware of the danger of COVID-19. Nor does it seem likely that the protestors in Minneapolis, whose communities have borne a disproportionate impact from the virus, are unaware of the danger. Both groups have to weigh the risks in deciding whether to make a stand -- against the end of "one country, two systems" in the one case, and it's stubborn persistence in the other.
Because really, that's what this is about -- a protest against an unfair two-tier society, which the police have not created but are merely enforcing. If by bringing up Balko's book you were trying to make some kind of argument about how federal funding and programs somehow means the Minnesota police aren't really a local force, you can put your kilt away.
Chauvin didn't use any fancy federally-provided equipment to kill Floyd. And while the Minneapolis police have acted in direct defiance of the local leaders they are theoretically answerable to, it's not because they are actually agents of an oppressive national government.
This isn't really about the police in the end, but about this county's racial hierarchy. Sometimes it's agents of the national government enforcing it, but usually it's state or local officials. It isn't even always the police -- individuals take it upon themselves, citing reasons from listening to the wrong music to jogging in the wrong neighborhood to looking at the wrong woman.
This goes way back, and it is tyranny certain as any feared by any Gadsden flag waver, but it's sources aren't an oppressive central state.
By all means, we should aim for a demilitarization of the military. That's a good and worthy goal. And we should follow that up with a demilitarization of our populace too. Contra John Lott, more guns mean more death.
But behind all that -- the reason the cops are so heavily armed, and the reason white men with long guns feel entitled to threaten violence in defense of their "rights," is the same reason being an "essential worker" means you're probably making minimum wage and hoping to god the man proudly refusing to wear a mask while demanding service at your place of employment isn't contagious.I do think race is an issue. Is the criminal justice system biased against black people from top to bottom? It sure is.
But it is possible for there to be more than one issue. The police are out of control in general. They kill a lot of people regardless of race and often in cold blood. And the tendency is that they don't get punished. And I should be clear that I do no think all police are bad or anything. They are put in a difficult position, but they often act with impunity. There was actually a similar incident earlier this year in Texas.
And I agree that private citizens do some really horrible things. And some are motivated by race. But the vast majority of murders are intra-racial. That isn't to say that racially motivated crime isn't an issue, but it is what is focused on by the press.
Regarding the militarization of the police. There are elements including equipment, techniques and mindset. These police were not protecting and serving. They were fighting enemies. If you follow any Palestinian journalists online there is chatter that the IDF uses this same technique as a matter of course on Palestinians.
And on the trend of militarization: Are you saying that the growing militarization of the police is a reflection of the growing racism in this country?
It’s not so much that I disagree with your points here, as that I feel they miss the mark. Black Americans are victims of violence by the police and by other Americans in a way that is notable and unique. It is not the case that police targeting of and killing of black Americans is just a part of a general problem with our police – it is a distinct issue.
Yes, the police “kill a lot of people regardless of race and often in cold blood,” but they specifically and disproportionately target and kill people of color. Yes, there are many murders in this country, most of those are intra-racial, but when the topic is specifically about how and why white people kill black people, it’s a change of topic to talk about murders in general. Yes, I agree with you that when we talk about militarization by the police, the problem is that they see themselves as fighting enemies rather than protecting and serving, but to leave it at that ignores the fact that it’s specifically people of color who the police default to assuming are enemies.
It may not have been your intent, but this post feels rhetorically similar to saying "all lives matter." Well of course they do, but that's changing the subject and, in doing so, dismissing the idea that there is something unique to the experience of people of color going on here. If we did not have the war on drugs, did not have a trend of increased militarization of the police, did not have as many guns both in state and civilian hands, fewer white people would be dead -- but I'm pretty certain that George Floyd still would be.
flimbro said:
Cops will shift to protect and serve when mayors and governors no longer find it necessary to control and corral Black, brown and poor white communities. They’ll stop killing Black and brown Americans when they lose funding and have their pensions revoked.
I'm curious as to how you see the increase in people of color in positions of political power playing into this -- eg there are a fair number of mayors, council people, etc who are people of color. My observation is that the police often just ignore any checks placed on them by political leadership, even though in theory the police answer to those political leaders. I wonder what the right levers are that need to be held to make the police accountable -- eg does it take not just the city, but the county, leadership to reign them in? The state? Or is it just sheer force of numbers, that so long as the police can count on the support of the country at large they have enough de facto power to resist any attempt by de jure power to check them?
The NJ.com news organization started this: https://force.nj.com/
"The Force Report, a 16-month investigation by NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, found New Jersey's system for tracking police force is broken, with no statewide collection or analysis of the data, little oversight by state officials and no standard practices among local departments."
The site lists the number of times force was used by each officer (who are named). A limitation -- the data only covers 2012- 2016, indicating that this is the most recent data available.
During that timeframe, Maplewood had the highest use-of-force rate per 1,000 arrests. And in South Orange, Black people faced police force at almost ten times the rate of Whites.
sprout said:
The NJ.com news organization started this: https://force.nj.com/
"The Force Report, a 16-month investigation by NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, found New Jersey's system for tracking police force is broken, with no statewide collection or analysis of the data, little oversight by state officials and no standard practices among local departments."The site lists the number of times force was used by each officer (who are named). A limitation -- the data only covers 2012- 2016, indicating that this is the most recent data available.
During that timeframe, Maplewood had the highest use-of-force rate per 1,000 arrests. And in South Orange, Black people faced police force at almost ten times the rate of Whites.
South Orange Village Use of Force Presentation Jan. 19, 2019
Amidst the racially driven protests we're going through now, it's telling to remember that this happened only a hundred years ago.
While I start with optimism for change (with approaches such as restorative practices, de-escalation, financial penalties for officers, reduce funding for police to reduce policing; body cams, examining the 'goals' of policing, greater transparency of data, and oversight), I then catch a video of the Minneapolis police union leader speaking at a 2019 Trump rally (https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/06/01/minneapolis-police-union-president-praise-trump-campaign-rally.cnn).
And the hope just drains out of me. He's basically saying the role of police is not to serve and protect -- it's to have unrestrained power over others.
the view from Australia media
Here’s how this scene was viewed live in Australia. One of America’s closest and most dependable allies. Rendered speechless. Just watch. pic.twitter.com/IjOzgs3WYo
STANV said:
I can almost never play those videos. What am I doing wrong?
I couldn't play it earlier today, but I just tried again and now it worked. Maybe it was still pending MOL's censorship review board earlier.
I couldn't play it either. Embeds never need review.
If you click on the timestamp it will take you to the tweet. Sometimes video is restricted to be played from certain sites - like twitter or their personal domain.
jamie said:
I couldn't play it either. Embeds never need review.
If you click on the timestamp it will take you to the tweet. Sometimes video is restricted to be played from certain sites - like twitter or their personal domain.
Thanks. I saw it. What a disgrace.
Our son and grandsons (one will be a junior in college next year and other will be a senior in high school) have participated in the protests in St. Paul. (Our son is a hard-wired activist - he got arrested at Brown with Amy Carter many years ago for leading a sit-in to protest apartheid in South Africa.) Almost all of the CVS's in St. Paul are boarded up and closed and our son had to got to the CVS in Little Canada, Many of the pharmacies in Minneapolis/St. Paul were looted for the drugs and are closed, which causes a hardship for many in the communities.
"In riot-hit Twin Cities neighborhoods, a hole where pharmacies used to be."
"Riots, arson leave Minnesota communities of color devastated."
STANV said:
Thanks. I saw it. What a disgrace.
what's going on in DC is a national disgrace. Police purposely "kettled" hundreds of peaceful protesters on a residential street so they could corner them and terrorize them. One DC resident felt the need to shelter more than 50 people to protect them from the cops. I honestly don't give a **** if people who think the police around the country are being reasonable, and citing a handful of incidents of cops kneeling with protesters. There are too many places in this country where police forces are engaging in organized terroristic responses that are obviously organized from the top. These are the tactics of dictatorships. And it's happening in our nation's capital. It's a disgrace.
ml1 said:
what's going on in DC is a national disgrace. Police purposely "kettled" hundreds of peaceful protesters on a residential street so they could corner them and terrorize them. One DC resident felt the need to shelter more than 50 people to protect them from the cops. I honestly don't give a **** if people who think the police around the country are being reasonable, and citing a handful of incidents of cops kneeling with protesters. There are too many places in this country where police forces are engaging in organized terroristic responses that are obviously organized from the top. These are the tactics of dictatorships. And it's happening in our nation's capital. It's a disgrace.
I still don't think you should paint al the cops with the same brush, but I agree with you this is very disturbing. You'd expect stories like this from Putin's Russia, or Nazi Germany, not from our capital.
basil said:
I still don't think you should paint al the cops with the same brush, but I agree with you this is very disturbing. You'd expect stories like this from Putin's Russia, or Nazi Germany, not from our capital.
this isn't about individual cops. Which is what the "bad apples" or "same brush" arguments are overlooking. Of course there are good cops as individuals. But these institutions celebrate and rely on terrorizing the citizens they police. That's why we are seeing what we're seeing. The tactics in DC could not possibly have been carried out by "bad apples" alone. They were devised and strategized from the top.
I'm disturbed by the fact that when Barr gave the unlawful order to attack the protestors, the police followed it. Surely those who were in Lafayette square have standing to sue? I also wonder who gave the order for the helicopters to fly so low, breaking windows and tree. I hope store owners and the DC government sue for the damage.
"The Police are not there to create disorder. They are there to preserve disorder"
Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago, 1968
PVW said:
flimbro said:
Cops will shift to protect and serve when mayors and governors no longer find it necessary to control and corral Black, brown and poor white communities. They’ll stop killing Black and brown Americans when they lose funding and have their pensions revoked.
I'm curious as to how you see the increase in people of color in positions of political power playing into this -- eg there are a fair number of mayors, council people, etc who are people of color. My observation is that the police often just ignore any checks placed on them by political leadership, even though in theory the police answer to those political leaders. I wonder what the right levers are that need to be held to make the police accountable -- eg does it take not just the city, but the county, leadership to reign them in? The state? Or is it just sheer force of numbers, that so long as the police can count on the support of the country at large they have enough de facto power to resist any attempt by de jure power to check them?
Police departments have multiple functions depending on the population/community/economic status. White and or affluent areas are primarily "protect and serve"- Black, brown, and poor white areas are "control and corral". Like all American institutions, law enforcement (in conjunction with the courts) exists to maintain and reify white supremacy.
Having "people of color" in charge is great- but it doesn't guarantee change for many reasons. First and foremost- institutional racism is hundreds of years in the making so a couple thousand Black or brown folks spread across the country will barely make a dent. Second, "all skin folk ain't kinfolk", the presence of melanin does not guarantee any degree of 'wokeness' or morality. Plenty people of color work very hard to make sure white folks are comfortably in charge.
Controlling police departments is a tricky endeavor. On one hand, they do the bidding of an elite patriarchy- protecting their property, creating and maintaining a socio-economic buffer between the working class and the owners/bosses. And then, every once in awhile those owners/bosses represented by politicians have to make a show of reprimanding the cops for the benefit of the working classes. So governors, mayors, or councilmen institute 'civilian' complaint boards or 'require' cops to wear cameras or undergo additional 'training'. Naturally, police leadership bristles when they're punished for doing the job they've been tasked with doing for so long, by the very people who've asked them to do it. So much of the problem involves the dance between actively maintaining a racist two-tiered society and looking as if you aren't maintaining a racist two-tiered society.
The only people who can 'check' police departments are the folks who pay them. But that will never even be considered until white Americans 'see' law enforcement for what it is, acknowledge that it is spinning wildly out of control and demand changes. That's why it's important to be circumspect about pictures of cops kneeling with protestors. The imagery is wonderful but it's aspirational and only exists for the moment, then it gives way to the reality which is that Black Americans are dying at the hands of people they pay to protect them and too few people really care.
flimbro said:
Police departments have multiple functions depending on the population/community/economic status. White and or affluent areas are primarily "protect and serve"- Black, brown, and poor white areas are "control and corral". Like all American institutions, law enforcement (in conjunction with the courts) exists to maintain and reify white supremacy.
Having "people of color" in charge is great- but it doesn't guarantee change for many reasons. First and foremost- institutional racism is hundreds of years in the making so a couple thousand Black or brown folks spread across the country will barely make a dent. Second, "all skin folk ain't kinfolk", the presence of melanin does not guarantee any degree of 'wokeness' or morality. Plenty people of color work very hard to make sure white folks are comfortably in charge.
Controlling police departments is a tricky endeavor. On one hand, they do the bidding of an elite patriarchy- protecting their property, creating and maintaining a socio-economic buffer between the working class and the owners/bosses. And then, every once in awhile those owners/bosses represented by politicians have to make a show of reprimanding the cops for the benefit of the working classes. So governors, mayors, or councilmen institute 'civilian' complaint boards or 'require' cops to wear cameras or undergo additional 'training'. Naturally, police leadership bristles when they're punished for doing the job they've been tasked with doing for so long, by the very people who've asked them to do it. So much of the problem involves the dance between actively maintaining a racist two-tiered society and looking as if you aren't maintaining a racist two-tiered society.
The only people who can 'check' police departments are the folks who pay them. But that will never even be considered until white Americans 'see' law enforcement for what it is, acknowledge that it is spinning wildly out of control and demand changes. That's why it's important to be circumspect about pictures of cops kneeling with protestors. The imagery is wonderful but it's aspirational and only exists for the moment, then it gives way to the reality which is that Black Americans are dying at the hands of people they pay to protect them and too few people really care.
I never understood how white people don't get this. I've had many, many negative experiences with cops, particularly when I was a young man. I was about as law-abiding a white male as you could ever find. And yet, every so often a cop would pull me or my friends and me over, and then proceed to harass us. And the only reason I could ever figure was just out of a perverse desire to dominate us. To show us who was boss.
And if that was my experience as a young white man, I cannot begin to imagine what it's like to go through life with dark skin in this country. Not only are the cops on the ready to arrest you, and maybe pull a weapon, but you've got white civilians looking at you suspiciously wherever you go.
I suppose anyone who denies this reality is doing so more out of a desire for it not to be so than it is a rational reaction to what they see in the world around them.
President Obama will participate in a round table discussion at 5:00 pm today. You can watch it at this link:
cramer said:
flimbro - What's your opinion of the SOPD?
I've had some problems with them. One with their treatment of Black kids gathering downtown and another with them herding my then 14 yr old daughter and some of her friends away from the firework area years ago. I spoke to them on both occasions- one obviously more heated than the other and I was relatively satisfied with their response.
STANV said:
ml1 said:
There are still The Righteous among us.
"In a major break with President Trump, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said Thursday that she is struggling over her support for her fellow Republican and praised former defense secretary Jim Mattis for a statement in which he accused Trump of trying to deliberately divide Americans.
“I thought Gen. Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” Murkowski told reporters at the Capitol, adding that she had been “struggling” to find the right words to express her feelings about Trump’s presidency."
“When I saw Gen. Mattis’s comments yesterday, I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up,” Murkowski said. “And so I’m working as one individual to form the right words, knowing that these words really matter. So I appreciate Gen. Mattis’s comments.”
Asked if she can still support Trump, Murkowski said, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/04/george-floyd-protests-live-updates/
cramer said:
"In a major break with President Trump, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said Thursday that she is struggling over her support for her fellow Republican and praised former defense secretary Jim Mattis for a statement in which he accused Trump of trying to deliberately divide Americans.
“I thought Gen. Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” Murkowski told reporters at the Capitol, adding that she had been “struggling” to find the right words to express her feelings about Trump’s presidency."
“When I saw Gen. Mattis’s comments yesterday, I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up,” Murkowski said. “And so I’m working as one individual to form the right words, knowing that these words really matter. So I appreciate Gen. Mattis’s comments.”
Asked if she can still support Trump, Murkowski said, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/04/george-floyd-protests-live-updates/
At the end of the day there is no different between Cotton and Murkowski. One is shameless and the other pretends to struggle, but they both stand by their man. And that man looks increasingly out of control. Don't be surprised if bullets start flying in our streets, and missiles outside our borders. He will do anything to distract from his own failures, and that will include putting Americans in harms way, but nothing beats a good old shooting war to rally around the flag also. I hope I am wrong on this.
flimbro said:
PVW said:
flimbro said:
Cops will shift to protect and serve when mayors and governors no longer find it necessary to control and corral Black, brown and poor white communities. They’ll stop killing Black and brown Americans when they lose funding and have their pensions revoked.
I'm curious as to how you see the increase in people of color in positions of political power playing into this -- eg there are a fair number of mayors, council people, etc who are people of color. My observation is that the police often just ignore any checks placed on them by political leadership, even though in theory the police answer to those political leaders. I wonder what the right levers are that need to be held to make the police accountable -- eg does it take not just the city, but the county, leadership to reign them in? The state? Or is it just sheer force of numbers, that so long as the police can count on the support of the country at large they have enough de facto power to resist any attempt by de jure power to check them?
Police departments have multiple functions depending on the population/community/economic status. White and or affluent areas are primarily "protect and serve"- Black, brown, and poor white areas are "control and corral". Like all American institutions, law enforcement (in conjunction with the courts) exists to maintain and reify white supremacy.
Having "people of color" in charge is great- but it doesn't guarantee change for many reasons. First and foremost- institutional racism is hundreds of years in the making so a couple thousand Black or brown folks spread across the country will barely make a dent. Second, "all skin folk ain't kinfolk", the presence of melanin does not guarantee any degree of 'wokeness' or morality. Plenty people of color work very hard to make sure white folks are comfortably in charge.
Controlling police departments is a tricky endeavor. On one hand, they do the bidding of an elite patriarchy- protecting their property, creating and maintaining a socio-economic buffer between the working class and the owners/bosses. And then, every once in awhile those owners/bosses represented by politicians have to make a show of reprimanding the cops for the benefit of the working classes. So governors, mayors, or councilmen institute 'civilian' complaint boards or 'require' cops to wear cameras or undergo additional 'training'. Naturally, police leadership bristles when they're punished for doing the job they've been tasked with doing for so long, by the very people who've asked them to do it. So much of the problem involves the dance between actively maintaining a racist two-tiered society and looking as if you aren't maintaining a racist two-tiered society.
The only people who can 'check' police departments are the folks who pay them. But that will never even be considered until white Americans 'see' law enforcement for what it is, acknowledge that it is spinning wildly out of control and demand changes. That's why it's important to be circumspect about pictures of cops kneeling with protestors. The imagery is wonderful but it's aspirational and only exists for the moment, then it gives way to the reality which is that Black Americans are dying at the hands of people they pay to protect them and too few people really care.
Thanks for the reply.
I've been thinking about what concrete actions and goals would need to happen to create real and substantial change. Your perspective is always informative.
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The very fact that people cite the term "militia" as a limitation on gun ownership contradicts your claim that those people want the Police to be the only ones with guns. A militia and an organized, permanent, professional police department are two different things. A militia would be regular citizens permitted to have guns who have undergone screening and training and are available to be called up in a crisis.