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

[Nephrology]

You're right.

I nominate the new shitty mod, @Nephrology, for the shitty duty of sifting through the last 100+ pages to sort posts into new breakout threads.

I guess there had to be some sort of hazing eventually...

[tjmitchem]

Many teachers, preachers, and youth directors have stood in line to fuck children. Believe me when I say that minority children have not fared well in this respect. Where is the outcry for this?

I'm not sure how you missed the outcry. It's been ongoing for 10+ years. I wasn't able to open up a news site without demands for some Catholic priest's head.

Granted, it's died down some the last year or two.

[Zincwarrior]

Last night, I finally made the decision to dump Facebook. I only got involved to keep up with my kids and they're smart enough to stay off anymore. Social media should bring us together in an unparalleled way. Instead, it's the biggest social cancer imaginable. I'm done with it.

Really? My FB is is just competition notifications, dad jokes, and pictures of cute dogs for rescue.

[snow white]

Last night, I finally made the decision to dump Facebook. I only got involved to keep up with my kids and they're smart enough to stay off anymore. Social media should bring us together in an unparalleled way. Instead, it's the biggest social cancer imaginable. I'm done with it.

Good for you! I think I've been off all social media for five years or so now. Pistol forum is the closest thing to social media I participate in. I also have not watched the news for over five years as well. Quality of life has increased by orders of magnitude just by cutting that bullshit out. If there is a topic I am interested in or a current event. I do my own research on the issue from a few different sources. Less stress, less propaganda, less negativity, feels good.

[BehindBlueI's]

I just read an interview where the author was arguing that one of the problems with modern policing was that the police were being asked to do too much social work. The idea is that that the task of dealing with things like homelessness and drug abuse -- which are fundamentally social issues, not law enforcement issues -- should not fall on the police, because the tools of law enforcement are not appropriate and often lead to more conflict. Your thoughts?

We're being asked to solve everyone's problems, and some of that isn't new. 911 as Dial-a-Dad has been a running commentary for longer then I've been a cop. (Referencing parents who don't really need a cop, they need a parent, but call 911 because they can't or won't) Police have dealt with homelessness since vagrancy laws were still a thing, it's just now we're supposed to "fix it" instead of "move it". Pre-everybody has a cell phone, police were often "roadside assistance" as well. There's no laws broken in most traffic crashes, but who does the initial leg work for the insurance company? We've *always* done things that don't have anything to do with law enforcement.

While I get LEO is a handy acronym to encompass everyone, police and deputies are very seldom LEOs. That's just one of many functions. Law enforcement, community care taking functions, conflict resolution, initial medical treatment, traffic warden functions, etc. etc.

My personal opinion is there is a role for police in many of these matters, but as partners or clearing houses for referrals to actual experts. We're actually seeing some decent outcomes with police/mental health providers partnerships. I don't know what to do about drug use, but arresting our way out of it hasn't worked. I'm fine with clean needle exchanges and not arresting those using them, for example. Addicts *know* what they are doing is killing them, what's the risk of arrest going to do to dissuade them? If a program reduces the overall cost to society, keeps them holding their needles instead of dropping them, and reduces the spread of disease why would I discourage that? So there's a role for law enforcement there, but law enforcement isn't the answer to the overall problem.

[gomerpyle]

Sorry, not just your opinion check out Professor Adolph Reed (set aside the connotations of his first name) or Thomas Piketty....

here's an excerpt of Professor Reed's thoughts:

"But, when we step away from focus on racial disproportions, the glaring fact is that whites are roughly half or nearly half of all those killed annually by police. And the demand that we focus on the racial disparity is simultaneously a demand that we disattend from other possibly causal disparities. Zaid Jilani found, for example, that ninety-five percent of police killings occurred in neighborhoods with median family income of less than $100,00 and that the median family income in neighborhoods where police killed was $52,907. And, according to the Washington Post data, the states with the highest rates of police homicide per million of population are among the whitest in the country: New Mexico averages 6.71 police killings per million; Alaska 5.3 per million; South Dakota 4.69; Arizona and Wyoming 4.2, and Colorado 3.36. It could be possible that the high rates of police killings in those states are concentrated among their very small black populations—New Mexico 2.5%; Alaska 3.9%; South Dakota 1.9%; Arizona 4.6%, Wyoming 1.7%, and Colorado 4.5%. However, with the exception of Colorado—where blacks were 17% of the 29 people killed by police—that does not seem to be the case. Granted, in several of those states the total numbers of people killed by police were very small, in the low single digits. Still, no black people were among those killed by police in South Dakota, Wyoming, or Alaska. In New Mexico, there were no blacks among the 20 people killed by police in 2015, and in Arizona blacks made up just over 2% of the 42 victims of police killing.

What is clear in those states, however, is that the great disproportion of those killed by police have been Latinos, Native Americans, and poor whites. So someone should tell Kai Wright et al to find another iconic date to pontificate about; that 1793 yarn has nothing to do with anything except feeding the narrative of endless collective racial suffering and triumphalist individual overcoming—“resilience”—popular among the black professional-managerial strata and their white friends (or are they just allies?) these days."

Please don't take this as trivializing the prevalence of racism - I think it's real and pernicious. As is sexism. And instances of police brutality (I take as real too - Chicago history is stained with the legacy of Jon Burge, and of one Democratic former states attorney named Richard M. Daley who likely covered up for him). But there are other issues afoot that Lincoln Park/North Shore Liberals ( I was born, raised, and live in the Chicago are) should consider.

Super short form: I view most of the racially disparate outcomes in this country are more the effect of being poor/ living in a poor community rather than folks acting on racist ideas. Black folks live disproportionately in those communities. No surprise that therefore, since more crimes always happen in poor areas v.more affluent ones, more black folks get shot by the cops, more black folks kill people per capita (but they get much harsher sentences for killing whites than blacks, that's probably a more classically racist problem), and so on.

So, "systemic racism" is probably not really the right term. It's more like systemic resource access problems. White folks are much more likely to have family with money to help during bad times than black folks , hence the "fragility" of the black middle class. (But that's getting worse for whites, too)

(ETA: and this is why policing the police (while needed at times) will never fix the actual problems that people are protesting and rooting about--really, people need better economic situations)

But that's just like my opinion, man.

[Shoresy]

People would rather buy into fairy tales, optics and narrative than face hard truths...hell, any truth, it seems.

Screw Covid masks, a guy could make a killing selling blinders.

There have been a significant number of times over the years when I've looked at a situation and wondered "I wonder why they're doing that?", and an adequate answer has been found in "because thinking is hard and people are lazy". The vast majority of those situations/questions are not at all related to race, race relations, or frankly anything discussed in this thread - just observing behavior and seeing decisions that do not appear rational. People (at least in our culture, which is to say 21st century Western culture*) want easy decisions, black and white options, and to be able to use developed simple heuristics to rapidly come to assessments and decisions. I think it's part of human nature and I'm not trying to preach here; I'm certainly not without sin in the matter and the best I can do is try to recognize it in my own thoughts and actions and try to steer against it when I find it.

*I'd be curious to see if this changes when you move off that point - I'd suspect that it does not with respect to culture, but may with regard to historical period. People who were asked to process less information may not experience the same information overload/fatigue we do in the Information Age. Or it may be a "tale as old as time". Just my observations and thoughts.

[BehindBlueI's]

"At the same time, the study found blacks and Hispanics were more than 50 percent more likely to experience physical interactions with police, including touching, pushing, handcuffing, drawing a weapon, and using a baton or pepper spray."

Why, though?


I've never had an asian fight me, period. Yell, cry, roll around, but never fight. I have arrested countless Bhurmese immigrants, mostly for DUI and hit/run offenses, but some domestics and a few violent crimes like stabbings.

So my use of force against Asians is limited to handcuffing during my entire career, about 8 years of which has been street patrol.

Racism?

[Nephrology]

We're being asked to solve everyone's problems, and some of that isn't new. 911 as Dial-a-Dad has been a running commentary for longer then I've been a cop. (Referencing parents who don't really need a cop, they need a parent, but call 911 because they can't or won't) Police have dealt with homelessness since vagrancy laws were still a thing, it's just now we're supposed to "fix it" instead of "move it". Pre-everybody has a cell phone, police were often "roadside assistance" as well. There's no laws broken in most traffic crashes, but who does the initial leg work for the insurance company? We've *always* done things that don't have anything to do with law enforcement.

While I get LEO is a handy acronym to encompass everyone, police and deputies are very seldom LEOs. That's just one of many functions. Law enforcement, community care taking functions, conflict resolution, initial medical treatment, traffic warden functions, etc. etc.

My personal opinion is there is a role for police in many of these matters, but as partners or clearing houses for referrals to actual experts. We're actually seeing some decent outcomes with police/mental health providers partnerships. I don't know what to do about drug use, but arresting our way out of it hasn't worked. I'm fine with clean needle exchanges and not arresting those using them, for example. Addicts *know* what they are doing is killing them, what's the risk of arrest going to do to dissuade them? If a program reduces the overall cost to society, keeps them holding their needles instead of dropping them, and reduces the spread of disease why would I discourage that? So there's a role for law enforcement there, but law enforcement isn't the answer to the overall problem.

The years I spent in the ER really opened my eyes to how much of society's problems are dumped on the first responder system, which seems to be expected to sweep the pieces under the rug. Particularly re: homelessness/mental health. It was often deeply tragic. A lot of frustration and heartbreak.

I think every American should have to spend a year in HS/college doing weekly ridealongs, candystriping in the ED, volunteering with a shelter or social service-oriented non-profit. It might convince enough people that this is not somebody else's problem.

[BehindBlueI's]

I think every American should have to spend a year in HS/college doing weekly ridealongs, candystriping in the ED, volunteering with a shelter or social service-oriented non-profit. It might convince enough people that this is not somebody else's problem.

The level of pushback you'd get from that would be fucking staggering. What kind of tyrant are you?

Muh rights are completely divorced from "and responsibilities" in much of today's society. Look at the results.