Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

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.

The issue is that he claims to be this lefty-left guy, but cops are still harassing and arresting people for no reason, violating protestors' civil rights, and shooting people in mental health crises.

There are NO GOOD DISTRICT ATTORNEYS. PERIOD.

So yes, my "look it up" statement was kind of useless, and I apologize for that inutility

But it just boggles my mind that anyone can buy a single word out of a DA's mouth. They're all snakes.

Does Krasner have power over the Philly PD to actually stop arrests or their procedures in general?

This is a bit like when AOC didn't give us Medicare for All

structural argument abt the nature of DA's vs being about that guy as an individual actor

Yean, this is more the story of individuals v. systems and systems almost always win.

I guess Krasner could step up prosecute cops breaking the law or refuse to prosecute people who have dubious reasons for arrest—but I don’t see how much immediate effect he could have on police practices that don’t necessarily mean “breaking the law” that a police chief or the Mayor/ city Council could have.

Cops are basically a shadow government, a praetorian guard, and I am totally pessimistic that any civilian no matter how well intentioned can reform them.

Yeah that’s why we need to defund them until you can drown what’s left in the bathtub

to harbl's point, I just saw this on twitter:

I love running news stories through a plagiarism checker, comparing to the prosecutor's press release. KARE 11, please report to the principal's office. pic.twitter.com/CJfI7gwISG

— Tony Webster (@webster) January 5, 2021

IIRC WCCO is the only Twin Cities news channel worth paying attention to

IIRC WCCO is the only Twin Cities news channel worth paying attention to

The issue is that he claims to be this lefty-left guy, but cops are still harassing and arresting people for no reason, violating protestors' civil rights, and shooting people in mental health crises.

So, Krasner is a failure because he is the DA and not the mayor?

He's a failure because he claims a mantle of leftism for a position that can't possibly be one of the left. So, I mean, maybe it's better to call him a liar?

So your position is that the left should concede every DA position to the hard right, because the hard right are the only legitimate heirs to that power?

So there can never, ever possibly be a left leaning DA? Well, fuck, let's all just give up then.

I’m suspicious that Krasner hasn’t called himself a “leftist.”

no charges in the WI David Blake case

sorry Jacob blake

Curious to know table's thoughts on the newly elected Washtenaw County county prosecutor that immediately ended cash bail after his swearing in. I mean, he hasn't yet disbanded the police, so I guess fuck that guy, right? Even though he made a tangible step towards an ostensibly better future?

Y'all are simply much less pessimistic than I am. I've given up any hope of reform, and while I think that changes that cause less suffering (such as ending cash bail, ending marijuana arrests) are good, the carceral state remains. If you're helping to put people in prison, then you're not "good." There is no "good DA."