Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Good news, Dan! God said he'd forgive you :)

dude, what

huh?

For years I have auto-SB'd anyone who uses the phrase "virtue signaling" & encourage others to do the same

what about "virtual signaling"

btw it's FP not SB, Dan S

oh, shit, sorry, you're Dan I. my bad

I and I try to understand the difference between Dan S and Dan I & I encourage others to do the same, Jah bless

Hey, Burrito, as someone who has needed to hear this in the past on various fora, can I say you’re posting like someone who needs a break from posting for a bit.

It’s a stressful time and I hope you’re ok, but maybe you oughtta just cool it.

I appreciate that but I've checked myself and am in no danger of wrecking myself. If you need to vent about your PTSD from unpleasant message board experiences past, go ahead and send me a webmail - mine works.

just one. maybe one? will step up and say “yeah shit that’s kinda fucked up”?

literally one. a single cop. then I’ll shut up. seriously. I’ll log off the internet for life.

Actually, burrito, I do believe that all cops are irredeemable.

If a person chooses to become an enforcer of state violence, of laws that are created and made manifest in a field of pain and death, then I don't understand how anyone can trust that person.

p@trick sk1nn3r tho

Lol a former CIA spook, member of the coast guard, and current cop? Please.

https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/kenosha-man-facing-felony-charges-for-giving-kyle-rittenhouse-gun-used-in-shootings/article_38bc2084-5763-5985-9a12-573ea87de66c.html

The gun that Kyle Rittenhouse had was straw-purchased for him by a 19-year-old friend.

Black told police that when they went to his stepfather’s to get the guns he was concerned about Rittenhouse having the rifle because he was not 18. “Black thought in his head he could have stopped it, but he knew if he would have told Kyle ‘no’ (meaning taking the rifle), he (Kyle) would have thrown a fit,” the Antioch report states.

oh noes, a fit

doesn't sound that bad, but it's important to clarify that when Kyl3 R1ttenhouse throws a fit, he murders people with a gun

So this seems the best thread to post this in, but I've been kind of struggling with watching some protests happen in our town that are anti-police, but seem to be having the effect of only actually helping the police.

Background:
We live in a town with a major university, a big name that pretty much everyone has heard of and the university dominates the town in terms of employment, taxes, prime real estate, yadda yadda. The university has their own, rather sizable police force. A group of students has been carrying on their passion from the summer and have been pushing for them to abolish their police force. (Let me pause here to emphasize that I am completely on their side here, this police force for the school is ridiculously well funded and has had a lot of issues in terms of bias and focusing only on minority students - so the students are incredibly on point here and targeting the right thing). So they started protesting on campus and calling for the abolishment. The president of the university has been an absolute dick and completely dismissive of their protests, threatening to have them arrested and expelled, yadda yadda. Of course this bullshit has only pushed the students harder and caused their number to grow.

So, now they protest pretty much every night and they have moved their protests to the areas with most visibility - downtown, but well off the campus grounds. The protests have been 99% peaceful, other than Halloween night when things got a little tense and some instigators in the crowd started firing fireworks at (from all accounts) both the cops and the protesters. Things calmed down again the night after and they've been peaceful since. Anyway, the university police have had nearly nothing to do with these protests since it's not on campus, so it's been our city's police that have been manned around these protests (which, again, given our town, consists of them mainly doing traffic control and watching things). What has ended up happening is that our city cops keep getting paid a bunch of overtime money every night there's a protest, which I believe have been going on for about four and a half weeks now?

Our mayor has repeatedly pushed back on the university president, telling him to listen to the students and take them seriously (and also threatening to make them pay all the overtime for the cops, but I'll believe that when I see it). The president remains really obstinate and, understandably, keeps enflaming things.

Anyway, I'm torn here because I support the students and I 100% understand them protesting where they get the most visibility and press, which protesting on the interior of campus likely wouldn't do. That said, at the same time, I feel like right now they are just filling up the pockets of cops while protesting somewhere that has no control over the decision making for their goals. I don't know what the answer is, but it annoys me that the only net result so far seems to be more money for cops.

I don't know, paying cops more to just stand there instead of actually hurting people is okay with me (particularly if the mayor makes the university pay for it)

Huh, I guess I didn't think about that end result.

jvc - i wonder if there are other net results that could be included here? that is, if you're looking for ways to feel more optimistic about this situation, maybe there's other ways of measuring it than whether the board of trustees has (yet) caved and told the pres it's time to pack it in.

like idk -- do you think the mayor's current stance has been influenced by the endurance and evident organizing strength of the student protests? have the views of townies at large shifted at all? i'm kinda projecting my now-dated college-town experience from Athens GA which had a lot of well-intentioned NPR/recycle-bin white liberals of 2004, who i don't picture being immediately on board with police reduction, but who also might be persuadable, capable of gradually adjusting their mental sense of what things are good and progressive to support. that kind of thing can count as a net result. or on the other side, getting reactionaries to show their ass and make shitty public statements that will come back to haunt them in years to come.

plus also, as always, the benefits of protests aren't always measured in terms of changing the thing they're protesting --- protests also form social/emotional/political bonds, build phatic infrastructure, get people in the habit of showing up for the next thing etc. for each individual person, showing up and seeing all the other people showing up is a high, it fills you up with energy and fire, anger and also joy.... these are powerful and important things imo.

All fair points DC, all good to keep in mind. I don't have any insight in the BOT and how they may be reacting, at least nothing that has been reported on or widely shared. It's hard to tell how the townies around here feel, with the pandemic I'm not really interacting with people anywhere near as much as I might otherwise. I mean, the friends and folks I do regularly talk to are all supportive of the protests but annoyed that the university isn't being responsive at all. That said, there are a few local, small business owners that have been pretty vocally pissed about it, saying that it's keeping customers out of downtown at a time when they most need customers after having been closed for many months.

The mayor is weird, he's been vocal about pushing back on the president but he also recently announced he isn't running for election after his one term, so he's kind of become a non-presence in other ways.

But yeah, good things to keep in mind and glad the visibility remains out there for the larger movement.

Just a note that while DJP is correct, there's also the notion that the town police don't have to be there at all, or get paid overtime. Those circumstances have nothing to do with the protestors and more to do with the fact that we live in a police state. The protestors aren't filling up the pig pockets, you and your fellow town taxpayers are. So it's up to them to figure it out, not the protestors!

It’s actually totally possible to not have the police stand around during protests!

table and silby otm

in my experience being in protests that took the streets without police presence, we just directed traffic ourselves

absolutely, same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI7SKb9H9lc

BOSS LADY is right that cops can't just always be reacting to things, they have to be proactive. but she is wrong that the front end of a busy Target is a good place for an interview

good piece

i know it's late on bandcamp friday and it's a faux pas to post about things you're connected with, but this is a great, great cause, and 100% of it goes directly to supporting people released from cook county (chicago) jail:

https://chicagocommunityjailsupport.bandcamp.com/album/warm-violet-a-compilation-for-chicago-community-jail-support

46 bands! this is an interview with one of the people involved with putting it together: https://chicagocrowdsurfer.com/warm-violet-interview

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/technology/police-drones.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Here's a Boston cop bragging & laughing about hitting protesters with his car before he realizes the cop he's bragging to has his bodycam on pic.twitter.com/AyKgmWfiRf

— jordan (@JordanUhl) December 19, 2020

what a lovely guy
you begin to understand the brilliance of these people

damn I wonder if some Good Cops will band together and root out the few bad apples

how many bad apples does it take to spoil the whole barrel? I can't remember

7.53419

oh god...that means we only have 2.39214 bad apples left to spare...:0

you can actually knock out a protestor with a good apple. a bad one will probably just splatter.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007348445/breonna-taylor-death-cops.html

a thread from the new LA DA

1/6

I appreciate thoughtful critiques & questions (even the creative ones :)

My directives are based on data & science, & there's extensive evidence that involvement in the juvenile justice system results in negative outcomes for young people & our communities... https://t.co/pBBJYfJEwM

— George Gascón (@GeorgeGascon) January 5, 2021

(who is being sued by his deputies for the changes he's made since he won in november: https://witnessla.com/la-association-of-deputy-district-attorneys-lawsuit-against-george-gascon-aiming-to-reverse-many-of-the-new-das-reforms/)

Still won't put any faith in any DA, it is foolish to do so.

Look at what happened in my city of Philadelphia if you want to see what happens when so called 'left' DAs come into office.

I looked this guy up the last time you brought this up and his record as captured on his Wikipedia page is as follows:

In his first week in office, Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney's Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.[25][26]

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession.[27] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.[28] Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail.[28] He also announced that the DA's office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city's opioid epidemic.[27] Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.[29]

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner's staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments.[30] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to reduce sentence lengths to defendants making pleas, refuse to bring certain low-level charges, and publicly explain their reasoning for pursuing expensive incarcerations to taxpayers footing the bills.[31] He said,

"Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer."[32]

In 2018, some judges rejected the reduced sentences which Krasner's prosecutors had sought for juveniles who had previously been sentenced to life in prison.[33] In June 2018, Krasner made an unprecedented request for a comprehensive list of police officers who had lied while on duty, used excessive force, racially profiled, or violated civil rights, an unprecedented move in order to spotlight dishonest police officers and check their future courtroom testimony.[34]

In 2019, Krasner filed a motion in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to declare capital punishment in Pennsylvania unconstitutional. He claimed the death penalty was illegal in the state because of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Pennsylvania Constitution, citing the high turnover rates of convictions by appeals, the racially biased number of sentences given to black and Hispanic defendants, and the large number of convictions overturned due to ineffective counsel.[35]

Following the fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer James O'Connor IV, Krasner faced criticism from William McSwain, a federal prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump.[36] McSwain, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, blamed the shooting on a prosecutorial discretion decision by Krasner's office to drop drug charges against suspected killer Hassan Elliott. While on probation for a gun possession charge, Elliott was arrested again on January 29, 2019, for cocaine possession and was released on his own recognizance. Nearly a week later on February 6, Elliott took part in the fatal shooting of Tyrone Tyree. Krasner's office dropped drug charges after Elliott failed to appear in court, choosing to approve an arrest warrant for Tyree's murder instead.[36] On March 13, as part of a SWAT unit carrying out an arrest warrant, O'Connor was fatally shot and Elliott was charged. Prosecutor spokeswoman Jane Roh responded to criticism by stating that the office believed murder to be a more serious crime than drug possession and charged Elliott accordingly.[37] On the night of O'Connor's death, Philadelphia police officers formed a human chain at Temple University Hospital entrance to prevent Krasner from entering.[37]

In July 2020, Krasner's office charged Philadelphia SWAT officer Richard P. Nicoletti with simple assault, reckless endangerment, official oppression, and possession of an instrument of crime. Video footage taken during the George Floyd protests showed that Nicoletti pepper sprayed three kneeling protesters. He pulled down the mask of one woman before spraying her in the face, he sprayed another woman at point blank range, and sprayed a man numerous times in the face while he laid on the ground.[38]

So... what did he do wrong?

I did find an article accusing him of being a revolving-door prosecutor who isn't incarcerating enough people but I don't think that's your problem with him

i don't know anything about philadelphia but i have observed myself the contrast between what is reported by papers/tv news and reality and i'd assume the same thing goes on there. we have a "progressive" prosecutor who goes on tv and holds press conferences to brag about her progressiveness, saying we should legalize marijuana, end cash bail, prosecute cops, etc., but has prosecutors in court doing the same old shit. which does not end up in the paper, so people who are not lawyers or people personally affected by it goes on believing she's progressive. it's really hard to get the full story since crime reporters don't sit in court watching what happens every day, they mostly regurgitate press releases.

So… we are supposed to look up information on what a failure the allegedly progressive reformer DA in Philadelphia is but not trust any sources that represent his record in a positive light because they’re just regurgitating spin that masks the failure to change anything?

i don't know what anyone is supposed to do, i'm just saying in my experience most news stories about what prosecutors are doing are derived from, or at least initiated by, press releases, i.e., what the office wants people to hear about. you pasted a wikipedia article which is presumably linking to news stories as "his record," i am suggesting that is what his office would like the record to be.

Right but… the assertion was that this guy is 100% bullshit and all we had to do was “look him up” and so I did, and everything I found across left and right sources was a confirmation of what was in the Wikipedia article, so either “look it up” isn’t helpful or useful because the sources won’t show the evidence of his failures or his failures are being overstated. I can imagine that Krasner’s DA office would have a record that was not as good as the picture painted by his campaign because no one ever matches their campaign rhetoric from the simple fact that interacting with other people by definition creates compromise. Table is calling this dude an outright failure and telling other people it’s easy to see why, and I’m saying I looked through an array of sources across the political spectrum and, from the outside at least, nothing that is being complained about from either the left or the right points to him being an abject failure and asking for clarification since it was his assertion.

So... what did he do wrong?

― Totino's Fortnite Training Room (DJP), Tuesday, January 5, 2021 9:28 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

well, I do see cars with "Fuck Krasner" bumper stickers, but since the cars usually also have a bunch of pro-cop stickers I figure they don't have the same beef as table.