Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

jesus

yeah holy shit

:(

essential follow: https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls

there's plenty of video out there of some of the white "counter-protestors" who may or may not have been the ones involved in the shooting. i'm a too infuriated and creeped out to give them a look. maybe this afternoon.

it's well documented that crews of white supremacists have been patrolling the protest site

bummed that they're telling people to disperse, seems like the more powerful response would be to encourage even more people to show up as a show of support - but I get that everybody's scared

has anybody called this terrorism yet cuz, y'know

yes it's all over twitter

also some are calling for more protestors, others to disperse

elsewhere in the midwest: http://abcnews.go.com/US/chicago-cop-allegedly-shot-teen-laquan-mcdonald-16/story?id=35391346

Patrol car dash cam footage of the incident exists and a judge has ordered for it to be released publicly by the end of day Wednesday.

There has been some speculation in the TC that once this video drops, BLM protesters from out of town might end up going to Chicago. After last night's events, tho, I don't know.

That the midwest is, in many ways, possibly the most frustrating and possibly scariest place to be black in America seems less and less arguable at times like this.

really? what's the broader evidence of that?

i don't know one way or another, but a few individual, high-profile incidents don't necessarily speak to this.

it's true that the city where i live (smallish city of 250,000; college town; state capital) has the widest gulf between black and white in terms of things like graduation rates, incarceration, etc. in part that's because the whites in this town tend to be very affluent and educated (a huge percentage have post-grad degrees), so that even if the black community is no worse off than other cities, that gulf is more pronounced.

but i have no idea if this situation is generalizable behind this city; it's probably not.

er, i mean generalizable BEYOND

really? what's the broader evidence of that?

Mike Brown - Ferguson, MO
Tamir Rice - Cleveland, OH
Renisha McBride - Dearborn Heights, MI
John Crawford II - Beavercreek, OH
Laquan Macdonald - Chicago, IL
Jamar Clark - Minneapolis, MN

To say nothing of the studies of the disparity between races on income/opportunity/education.

(Which you yourself mentioned.)

KKK's largest historical base of membership is Indiana

xp

so cops were not routinely observing the BLM protestors in Minneapolis nightly, ie close enough to discourage a violent attack? i ask as someone who has probably seldom been ten yards from a cop whenever i have attended a demonstration in NYC. (if this was not the case bcz it was a protest against police malfeasance, that raises a whole other line of questions)

at it's peak, membership included 30% of white males in the state (over 250,000) including state legislators and the Governor. Granted this was almost 100 years ago but the past isn't really dead it isn't even etc.

xp

xp which is why there's some speculation among protesters that the perpetrators were off-duty cops, but ... not sure I'm buying that.

Some early twitter reports said cops on duty started macing the protesters in the immediate aftermath

Is there a particular reason you're not buying it, out of curiosity? White supremacy and off-duty cops traditionally go together like a horse and carriage.

One arrested:

At approximately 11:20 a.m. on Tuesday, November 24th, officers with the Minneapolis Police Department made an arrest related to a shooting the previous night outside its 4th Precinct. Officers and Investigators worked non-stop throughout the night to develop suspects and leads.

A 23 year old white male was taken into custody in the City of Bloomington in relation to this case. His name will be released upon charging. The search for additional suspects continues.

surprised the cops are interested in arresting anybody tbh

Live details of the Chicago dash video from the Tribune's court reporter:

https://twitter.com/SteveSchmadeke

They really don't want to release this.

From the Guardian's Chicago reporter:

Zach Stafford ‏@ZachStafford
Footage will be viewed in court on Monday. However, city must still produce footage to public by Wednesday. #LaquanMcDonald

xxp i've had cop experiences that remind me of this sometimes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1L7BKzaB7w

xxxp

I imagine they'd like to avoid the escalation of protests that would ensue if they do an obviously half-assed job of finding the shooters.

really? what's the broader evidence of that?

Mike Brown - Ferguson, MO
Tamir Rice - Cleveland, OH
Renisha McBride - Dearborn Heights, MI
John Crawford II - Beavercreek, OH
Laquan Macdonald - Chicago, IL
Jamar Clark - Minneapolis, MN

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 11:38 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To say nothing of the studies of the disparity between races on income/opportunity/education.

― thread of getting sw0le and lena jokes (Eric H.), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 11:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the latter wold be good evidence, the former are six incidents out of many thousands of police interactions

i'm not saying they aren't part of a larger trends indicating the midwest is unusually dangerous for black folks--it may be. but those incidents alone wouldn't indicate as much. (and there are sadly plenty of incidents all over the country.)

Although they may not, in themselves, prove the Midwest is unusually dangerous for black folks, they are certainly sufficient to prove it is not safe, and using the qualifier "unusually" glosses over whether the amount of danger that is "usual" is in any way acceptable.

they aren't sufficient to prove anything. as awful as they are, six cases does not a major trend make. now, those cases might be indicative of a trend showing that the midwest is unusually dangerous for black folk, but the cases won't prove this themselves.

again, i'm not making a substantive argument about the dangers for african-americans in the midwest or the country as a whole. clearly statistics have shown that blacks are not the victims of police harrassment and violence disproportionate to their numbers. but the small number of incidents that have become major media events are not the proof of this, though they are visceral and important evidence of it.

are not the victims of police harrassment and violence disproportionate to their numbers.

er, whoops, i mean they ARE THE VICTIMS... disproprtionate to their numbers.

sorry i'm being pedantic but it's something i talk with my students a lot about so i guess i'm unusually sensitive to it.

you talk to your students about being pedantic a lot?

or do they just infer

"visceral and important" like it's an afterthought

I only listed six cases because going through every high-profile incident of the past 18 months where a black person in the Midwest was murdered for no fucking reason was threatening to make me cry

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/emails-reveal-racists-plotted-confrontation-with-black-lives-matters-activists-days-before-shooting/

the local BLM account links the attackers to 4chan

https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls/status/669247152921579521

the "k" board is dedicated to weapons

you talk to your students about being pedantic a lot?

― a (waterface), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 1:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you think that getting them to grasp the principle of sample size and representativeness is pedantic? in the context of this thread, yes, it's pedantic, sure. but i'm only engaging in this pedantry b/c a few posts seemed to willfully misunderstand the point i was making.

there's a whole subcategory of ILX posts that are principally about interpreting other folks' posts in the worst possible light (and adducing all kinds of arguments that aren't being made) for reasons i wouldn't presume to understand. i guess i should just roll w/ it.

Having grown up in the Midwest and currently fed up with Facebook and how exurban whites routinely flame the towns they used to live in as being "ghetto", I think the Midwest has a huge problem with racism. Not a surprise that whites are big defenders of the police when a shooting occurs, and these people have gotten nasty toward Black Lives Matter. They see the police as protecting them from encroaching urban "problems", and they are absolutely deaf to the other side. Drive away from the city, you start seeing the confederate flags and scary gun culture stuff. Remember Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were not from Idaho or Kansas - they came out of this white flight anti-urban panic culture.

yeah i don't disagree w/ any of that

that said, i see the basic trends -- of midcentury white flight, reactionary suburbia, etc. -- happening in many parts of the country.

there's a whole subcategory of ILX posts that are principally about interpreting other folks' posts in the worst possible light (and adducing all kinds of arguments that aren't being made) for reasons i wouldn't presume to understand.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 4:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

false modesty does not become you.

i wasn't being modest; i honestly have no idea why some folks seem bent on doing this. i guess it's a common enough habit of mind.

i'd rather this not be about "me" though. sorry if i derailed thread however briefly.

Hennepin County had 'sundown towns' until some time in the mid-late 1960s (mine was not one, but I think Edina and Wayzata were).

My sister was supporting the police via the magic of FB after the 4th Precinct killing, and she shared a macro via a white, exurban friend whose father happened to run one of the biggest illegal sports books in the Twin Cities during the '80s. I very politely called bullshit and didn't introduce the irony of her sharer. Furious messaging ensued, and sister seems to have had a Helen Keller moment after I pointed out many of her friends would (if black) have been in the prison system or dead for pulling the crap they did in high school. She replied that all of these people had turned out to be OK, law-abiding types (give or take the odd DUI). I said that all things being equal, adolescent misbehaviour should not preclude any kid from growing up to turn out OK. She's now been packed off with the On Reparations essay to read between shifts, so I live in hope.

doin the lord's work there suzy

murder charge for Chicago cop in Laquan McDonald case

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2015/11/chicago_police_officer_charged.html#incart_river_home

The last thing of any length read by my sister was the James Frey book, and when it was exposed as ~fiction~ she said 'obviously the one time I buy a book, it turns out to be bullshit, so LESSON LEARNED.'

Feel like I have spent the past 24 hours telling various white_folks to break the habit of a lifetime, get their respectable middle-class selves to North Minneapolis and just quietly stand with these people, because white supremacists are also about intimidating potential allies.

Big discussion right now is over whether or not the video should even be released in the first place. Like does it do anything, what's the point

'obviously the one time I buy a book, it turns out to be bullshit, so LESSON LEARNED.'

books, always tryin to trick ya!

Big discussion right now is over whether or not the video should even be released in the first place. Like does it do anything, what's the point

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 7:06 PM (36 minutes ago)

i'd like to hear the argument that it does nothing. of course there are some people who are so entrenched that they will continue to give cops the benefit of the doubt whenever stories like this come out. but to say that seeing footage like this, of cold-blooded, line-of-duty murder, will have no effect on at least some people is to ignore the role that footage of police brutality has played in changing public opinion about civil rights issues in the past, particularly the desegregation era, etc

i mean the charges weren't even announced until the judge ordered that the video be released