Minneapolis PD Suspect Dies On Video While Handcuffed. FBI Investigating.

[Guerrero]

Another night of protest near Casa de Guerrero. Thankfully no shenanigans.

[Wondering Beard]

Because words matter:


https://twitter.com/@twitter/status/1267124085517099010

[willie]

The U.S. is a country of many contradictions in its policies.

Some insights from my earliest years working for the federal gov't:

When I would suggest that anyone who was able bodied but received financial relief should be compelled to work, whether street sweeping, ditch digging, public works, whatever...I was told that the unions wouldn't tolerate the incursion on its fiefdom. They wanted that work to go to union members. (Who obviously paid dues.)

When I shoveled snow in front of the federal building where I worked in Brooklyn, I was told I couldn't because it wasn't in my job description. I said "then fire me" because I didn't want little old ladies falling down and breaking their hips on un-shoveled sidewalks. They didn't fire me.

Yet, in East New York, (Brooklyn), the district manager (back in the late 70's) thought nothing of sending me out with a baseball bat to escort some of the women into the office when they came off the subway. It was a very high crime area. The bat wouldn't have gotten me very far.

However, when I drilled holes and mounted coat hooks under the female employees desks so their pocketbooks wouldn't be stolen, I was told I wasn't an electrician and wasn't allowed to do it. (I still finished the job.)

If we could only get out of our own way and allow common sense to rule our decisions. Hell, to even enter into the decisions.

Anyway, I digress...

That reminds me of the time at the jail when I got an ass chewing for lubing cart wheels that squeaked loudly. Or when at school upon moving a desk from one room to another. Not my job.

[RevolverRob]

Kidding? no, I do take 'my/your right to x ceases when/where it infringes upon the rights or property of others' very seriously.

Ludicrously, outlandishly hyperbolic - yep.

One of the most difficult challenges of being a libertarian - is trying to determine where the overlapping rights meet infringements. Which is not to say, I disagree that blocking a freeway and creating havoc doesn't infringe on free movement. However, here's a difficult one - does anyone have a right to use a highway? If the answer is yes. Doesn't that mean whether marching or driving you have a right to use that freeway?

My point here isn't to criticize you regarding this. I take the separation of this things very seriously as well. I just think somewhere between being "inconvenienced" and "having property, life, and prosperity threatened" - there is some more space. And one thing I think we owe ourselves is to consider where the lines could/should be drawn. Particularly, because other people don't buy into our radical liberal (classical sense) ideas.

I don't like blocking freeways, roadways, etc. by marching crowds. Simultaneously, I think the idea that a protesting group should have to file for a permit and provide a marching route to the city/state is complete fucking bullshit (something that occurs in many locales). As a result, I'm okay with groups occasionally blocking a road if organically a protest takes them there. Every day? No. But we don't have protests every day, to be honest*.

Another night of protest near Casa de Guerrero. Thankfully no shenanigans.

Good to hear. Everything was farther away from us last night.

___

*The last week not-withstanding

[JHC]

A bit of history on institutionalized racism in housing. Doesn't excuse current bad behavior, but shouldn't be ignored.

-------------
Today African-American incomes on average are about 60 percent of average white incomes. But African-American wealth is about 5 percent of white wealth. Most middle-class families in this country gain their wealth from the equity they have in their homes. So this enormous difference between a 60 percent income ratio and a 5 percent wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to federal housing policy implemented through the 20th century.

African-American families that were prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs in the 1940s and '50s and even into the '60s, by the Federal Housing Administration, gained none of the equity appreciation that whites gained. So ... the Daly City development south of San Francisco or Levittown or any of the others in between across the country, those homes in the late 1940s and 1950s sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to working-class families with an FHA or VA mortgage. African-Americans were equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them. Today those homes sell for $300,000 [or] $400,000 at the minimum, six, eight times national median income. ...

So in 1968 we passed the Fair Housing Act that said, in effect, "OK, African-Americans, you're now free to buy homes in Daly City or Levittown" ... but it's an empty promise because those homes are no longer affordable to the families that could've afforded them when whites were buying into those suburbs and gaining the equity and the wealth that followed from that.
--------------
The Federal Housing Administration's justification was that if African-Americans bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk.

There was no basis for this claim on the part of the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, when African-Americans tried to buy homes in all-white neighborhoods or in mostly white neighborhoods, property values rose because African-Americans were more willing to pay more for properties than whites were, simply because their housing supply was so restricted and they had so many fewer choices. So the rationale that the Federal Housing Administration used was never based on any kind of study. It was never based on any reality.

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/52665...egated-america

Apparently Minneapolis specifically has a history from the early 20th century where by leases/mortages for properties in the better areas specified the property may never be leased or sold to anyone other than those of "100% Caucasian blood". These practices eventually died out but created momentum by neighborhood. I was also surprised to learn Minneapolis has like the highest gap in ave income between blacks and whites, rivaled only by Milwaukee.

Saw a breakdown of all that over the weekend. It surprised me.

[RevolverRob]

Apparently Minneapolis specifically has a history from the early 20th century where by leases/mortages for properties in the better areas specified the property may never be leased or sold to anyone other than those of "100% Caucasian blood". These practices eventually died out but created momentum by neighborhood. I was also surprised to learn Minneapolis has like the highest gap in ave income between blacks and whites, rivaled only by Milwaukee.

Saw a breakdown of all that over the weekend. It surprised me.

I wish I could say that surprised me. But the reality is - most midwestern cities have a substantial economic gap between minorities and whites. Far greater than any southern city. Though the south is classically thought of as "racist" - the most racist places I've seen are major cities north of the Mason-Dixon line. Substantial efforts to segregate and maintain segregation continue in many of these areas. Though there isn't a direct policy about it, gerrymandering combined with real estate development drives these things.

I could list a half-dozen or more cases of things I've seen the City of Chicago do, just in the time I've lived here, that are veiled acts to continue to force racial segregation and income disparity. Worse, in the case of Chicago at least (and I'm sure in other areas as well), the efforts to oppress are perpetrated by black leaders who are voted in, repeatedly, by those they oppress. I understand these groups feeling like the system is broken...because it is broken.

[UNM1136]

Last night we were on edge, waiting...1/4 my squad was set as "liasons" with State Police so we were short handed for a while. They did not have the largerst PD in the State's operations channel programed, and we did. We also were at minimum staffing, so 80 State Police studs were VERY welcome. Very nerve wracking for a supervisor, when you have to weigh assignments with availability and have then dispatch shit on you when you make assignments. On top of "anticipated" problems and actual calls for service you really have to pick and choose.

The rain helped, I am sure. Everything just petered out about 0130. We stayed busy with "regular" calls for service until about 0430. Swing shift had no calls for service other than "liason" and evacuating a VIP during the protest. They spent the rest of the shift at the station, monitoring radios and hunkering. We were hustling straight out of briefing.

pat

[HCM]

This is just one of dozens of attempts to loot gun stores across the country.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/philadelp...s-armed-looter


South Philly gunstore owner guarding shop overnight shoots, kills armed looter: repor

A 67-year-old South Philadelphia gun store owner shot and killed a man he said was looting his business for what he suspects is the second night in a row.

Greg Isabella, who owns the Firing Line Inc, one of the oldest gun shops in the city, said he saw a group of looters on his surveillance video breaking a padlock on his gate using bolt cutters and descending on his shop in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The incident occurred just after 4 a.m. when Isabella then confronted the thieves, and one -- in a group of what he says consisted of 3 or 4 people-- pointed a gun at him, according to reports by Fox affiliate WTFX.

Isabella fatally shot the gun-wielding robber using an AR-15 and the alleged thief died on the scene, reports say. The owner likely injured a second suspect in the shoulder. The rest of the thieves fled, but a local hospital informed police that a man was being treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and police suspect he may have been involved in the botched heist.

The owner suspects that on the previous night, looters attempted to break in through a back door of the shop, ramming and beating at a steel door that showed signs of battering, and even marks that a crowbar was used to pry it open -- to no avail.

[critter]

One of the most difficult challenges of being a libertarian - is trying to determine where the overlapping rights meet infringements. Which is not to say, I disagree that blocking a freeway and creating havoc doesn't infringe on free movement. However, here's a difficult one - does anyone have a right to use a highway? If the answer is yes. Doesn't that mean whether marching or driving you have a right to use that freeway?

My point here isn't to criticize you regarding this. I take the separation of this things very seriously as well. I just think somewhere between being "inconvenienced" and "having property, life, and prosperity threatened" - there is some more space. And one thing I think we owe ourselves is to consider where the lines could/should be drawn. Particularly, because other people don't buy into our radical liberal (classical sense) ideas.

I don't like blocking freeways, roadways, etc. by marching crowds. Simultaneously, I think the idea that a protesting group should have to file for a permit and provide a marching route to the city/state is complete fucking bullshit (something that occurs in many locales). As a result, I'm okay with groups occasionally blocking a road if organically a protest takes them there. Every day? No. But we don't have protests every day, to be honest*.

An expressway has two regulations, "minimum speed 40mph" and "motorized vehicles only." So by plowing into them, we are actually obeying both of those and fulfilling our requirements as good law abiding citizens! At least until we're bogged down in corpses and miscellaneous body parts.

I don't necessarily disagree... Protesting on public property technically owned by all citizens, as long as the protest is not precluding non participants from carrying on with their daily business, shouldn't require a permit. Peaceable assembly should require no permit or permission regardless of what government 'fears' might happen. If it turns to violence, looting, arson, etc. then I really don't have a problem taking them out by whatever means necessary.

[TGS]

I don't like blocking freeways, roadways, etc. by marching crowds. Simultaneously, I think the idea that a protesting group should have to file for a permit and provide a marching route to the city/state is complete fucking bullshit (something that occurs in many locales). As a result, I'm okay with groups occasionally blocking a road if organically a protest takes them there. Every day? No. But we don't have protests every day, to be honest*.

I very lightly mentioned this, but I guess this is as good a time as any to speak to it.

Most permitting practices for demonstrations are predicated on ensuring the safety of participants and sanitation of the community. The police need to ensure for your own safety that they can provide officers to blocks intersections, are aware of the nature of the protest to provide officers to maintain peace if it's a controversial topic likely to attract violence, that the route doesn't interfere with critical services such as a hospital, that the organizers provide an adequate number of porta johns for the number of people at a rally of X number of hours so you don't have 10,000 people shitting and pissing in public, etc.

I agree that it's unconstitutional to use such permitting processes to stifle 1st Amendment rights and some places teeter or outright use it in such a manner, however that's not the intention behind the practice in general. Most people doing this shit don't think through more than 5 seconds of the who/what/where/when/why and its safety and health impacts.