Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Yes, I did just type "peaceful mass arrests". Feeling rather incredulous about this, I asked said acquaintance to clarify, and the response was "the protestors and the cops actually started talking to each other and like chumming it up with one another, it really was something else".
Nor is Charleston (South Carolina) apparently: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/he-told-charleston-police-i-am-not-your-enemy-then-he-was-handcuffed/article_e7de4b0a-a43f-11ea-a019-1f9e6a20ea55.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/killing-of-george-floyd-shows-our-over-reliance-on-police.html
I think there's some merit to the idea that the police are basically being overused as the clean-up crew to solve a variety of thorny situations in society, some of which they might not even necessarily be trained to deal with.
what an idiot
should have bought a wii instead
(n.b. article is old. however, she *is* running for mayor of baltimore again this year.)
I assume that the police in America, like anywhere else, have "levels". Beat cops, and those have varying levels of expectations placed on them depending on where they police. More experienced cops who handle the bigger stuff like calls. Detectives, etc.
The average person does not (and should not) have the license a police officer has. That doesn't mean you shouldn't defend yourself when push comes to shove, but the default position is not inflaming tensions when you feel they exist.
The police might not be trained for something, but they are human beings, and so we give them license to do with common sense what the average citizen is not allowed to or is afraid to do. Not just because they're afraid the situation could escalate, but because they could escape unscathed but end up doing something wrong, or people could see them as having done something wrong, thus ruining their reputation for
evera significant period of time.One example: when school becomes genuinely dangerous for teachers, and you cannot expect somebody to take on the role of educator and go from there to strict disciplinarian all the way up to enforcer. They went to Socrates' School of Boring Students to Death, not Sylvester Stallone's School of Handing Out Hard Knocks.
Removing police from scenarios is not the solution, removing the need for police from situations might be, and that's a much broader issue.
The latter part of the sentence is more of commentary on the de facto result, but the first half points out that they're called on to do a variety of tasks that go well outside of the realm of keeping law and order. Some tragic accidents have occurred as a result of the police mistaking one thing for another, e.g. an addled addict for a malicious criminal.
To some extent, this is unavoidable, though we could at least provide a better support network to help police handle this variety of cases, by partially or wholly offloading some of them to a more resilient set of specialists and/or by having them directly aid the police in handling relevant cases.
Background information: Donald Trump basically called for a harsh response with force against the protests.
Anyhows, I haven't seen the videos yet and won't be seeing them for a while, but I heard the response's been pretty heavy-handed, so...
Also I'd be worried about a COVID-19 spread.
Didn't Donald Trump invite Juan Guaidó to the State of the Union this very year?
Didn't the American Government designate the Venezuelan government narco-terrorists this very year?
Shouldn't the President try deploying Federal forces against rioters before things get even more out of hand?
I mean, in the words of Tsujimura Yuki; Actions Over (Second-Hand) Words.
Man, WaPo is fun.
But you're right, whether the Twitter post is true or not, these two are on completely opposite sides of the political conflict, Trump being on ours.
Also, I wanted to wait until things calmed down to mention this but since we're on the topic of the Venezuelan opposition I guess I'll mention it now
plus I get to sound more neutral, it's something most Venezuelan oppositors can agree on whether they support peaceful protests, riots or acts of terrorism; looting is not protesting. I'm kind of surprised I've seen so much support for looting over this. That's right, but the response has to be proportionate, otherwise it's just more abuse (and the potential of fueling the unrest and things getting more out of hand).Like I said I'm only aware of this second hand so maybe it really is warranted I'unno.
Me too, but I was also kind of surprised that people would shut down the economy over a serious-but-not-extremely-so respiratory disease. I sincerely hope that there are no more surprises this year.
This is a great point, but I think the initial response (first hour or so) has to have force with a capital F as long as it doesn't tread into lethal.
Yeah that'd be the problem with Force.
I'm under the impression that there still hasn't been a major crackdown anywhere. NYC arrested lots of people, but thanks to bail reform a lot of them were eligible to leave on their own recognizance the next day.
Again, if there isn't a strong response, and law enforcement is relegated to hated, spat-upon bystanders, that also emboldens people to go further and further.
And therein lies the problem: Too late. It's already there. For too many people, it's been there for a long time. Whether a protest is considered "peaceful" or not does not seem to matter. Protesters, journalists covering the events, bystanders living in the area, are all being shot at and beaten and tear-gassed. Fueling the unrest is pretty much the only thing it can do at this point.
The rest are public statements that are not mutually exclusive with Mr. Trump privately feeling an admiration for Mr. Maduro and/or his methods.
(Also why does it feel like you're treating this as a proxy for something else to argue against? I'm just confused what that something else is.)
I've seen support for protesting, not looting, while I've also seen efforts by protesters to stop looters (and other malicious actors taking advantage of the situation to start shit).
I've seen disagreements over whether the unrest as a whole is justified, and to what degree.
This is contradicted by a number of instances by now of law enforcement officers marching with, kneeling with, and even passing out water and food to protesters.
Are there conflicts? Yes. Are there bad cops? Yes. Are there bad protesters? Yes. Are there random other jackasses going around trying to start shit? Yes.
But by the same token there are also people coming together, good people on both sides, doing everything from cleaning up stuff that has been broken (literally and figuratively) to figuring out how to move forward from here.
I'll agree with you if by "strong" you mean strength in the sense of honor, dignity, and humility, with an intent for peace, rather than strength in the sense of projecting force and perpetuating conflict. This problem was started because of the improper use of excessive force, and that's not going to be solved by using more force.
And the instances of such, while perhaps not 100% accurate, are still amply well documented. (And I've heard that one instance has even involved a potential international incident involving an Australian reporter.)
Do you mean the police's abuse of power leading to third-degree (or whatever it is now) murder? Do you honestly think in any country on the planet, that will ever stop?
Everybody agrees that it's terrible. Everybody in this situation has agreed that what happened to that man was uncalled for. There's nothing more society can do.
The best that can be done is minimize police brutality, because it will never be wholesale eliminated from society. To think otherwise is insane.
You must never, ever get tired of making your point clear when it can be easily misinterpreted. We're adults. We cross our "T"s and dot our "I"s, especially when you're afraid that you might sound like you're supporting rioters.
This isn't a lax case of somebody misinterpreting you because of a bevy of situations or because of miscommunication. This is just about general clarity. We have all day to discuss this at the moment since the Western world is in lockdown, so do it over and over.
Especially when rioters are still on the streets and wrecking things.
To be clear, right now, everybody knows that every big protest will summon up a bunch of rioters and looters and other sorts of opportunists. I think that, if people were led by their sanity and logic, that the protestors would stop going out now (or preferably, forever ago) because every time they do the light the match that allows terrible things to happen day-in and day-out.
I mean, if anybody claims their message (which, last I checked Black Lives Matter's demands, is insane) hasn't been heard then then they're being disingenuous. Almost the whole media (actual and social) is on their side, who else do they need to support them?
Conservatives and libertarians have been all over police overreach lately due to the lockdown. Parents being arrested in front of their children for leaving the house with them to play a game by themselves, police chasing people on boats in the middle of the ocean when they're by themselves, and a billion other things. Excessive force is a natural outgrowth of allowing and accepting police overreach into society.
In the same breath, I do have to mention a lot of the situations where law enforcement find themselves. Chicago, before this all started, had a weekend with it's highest murder rate yet. When you're dealing with that, the force you use is not the same as the sort you use helping grandmas deal with a tenth grade shoplifter. It all depends on the area in question. That is, excessive force in one situation is (and should be) normal, standard procedure in another.
Things are being wrecked right now. People's homes and livelihoods have actual disappeared in fires. People have been severely hurt by rioters. We're starting to see people get killed by looters.
All of this is happening right now, and it needs to be stopped right now. We can have discussions of the serious issues after nobody has to worry about the rioters piggybacking on protesters any more.
WaPo is saying Donald Trump is a dictator for trying to quell riots. There, I said it. At least WaPo was clever about outright avoiding saying it. Don Lemon just literally said it the other day.
Law enforcement is made up of individual people, and so they can do whatever they want. However, I'm not going to sit around pretending that this is an appropriate way to behave. It's daft, because it's disrespectful to the uniform they wear (and also based on lies).
It's time for a display of the proper use of
excessiveforce!I don't know if you've noticed, but by doing nothing and hanging out with the protesters, all that happened was that the rioters became emboldened to keep going. New York wasn't even a mess when the protests started. Now that situation getting worse by the day.
I certainly wonder what "Protests don't have to be polite", "Destroying property that can be replaced is not violence", "Defund the cops", and well, that whole bailout fund celebrities keep contributing to could all possibly mean.
Then there's the comments of everybody's favorite curly haired Massie Block wannabe*;
And this, which I'm assured is not a joke;
*I'd have gone with outright calling him Alicia Rivera, but I'm already pushing this The Clique thing since I'm the only one whose ever read the books. Also, Massie doesn't wear Nike. I doubt even Kristen wears Nike... kay I'm off track now.
----
Unrelatedly:
I did not know this was a thing.
Granted, I've also seen lots of denouncing, but that doesn't change how easy it is to find justifications for it. I can't agree with these, those people still have their right to protest, even with all the potential for violent outbreaks. If the police's task to keep order is curtailing that right, that's a problem.
Well, okay, I'm saying that without taking the pandemic in consideration, I'd like to think that it still doesn't warrant making an exception out of a basic right but I admit that's much harder. (Edit: harder to justify.)
If police were to clear the streets, I would have no problem with them regrouping and going back on the streets after a week (for cooldown and cleanup purposes) provided they could maintain peace throughout most protests. I mean, at least to the scale of not breaking into stores and stealing things from Gucci and LEGO.
I really shouldn't have to clarify that this is not clearly the case right now, but I will/have.
As for the pandemic, clearly everybody who knew something now knows something that proves what they thought wrong. That or they are being extremely irresponsible.
That or they're right and it does turn out that coronavirus was a plague set upon us by the one true sin; white supremacy (or maybe even just whiteness in general). Now that the gods of racial justice are pleased at the displays of white people kneeling at the feet of their black neighbors, asking for forgiveness, promising to only use their voices in pre-approved ways, attacking No. 10 Downing Street in the UK for some reason (???, also warning I guess this article/gallery has a picture of the George Floyd incident), and teaching their 4-8-year-olds how white privileged they are (thanks, Nickelodeon, Garfield, Mattel, and Peppa Pig), the plague has been lifted.
Except if it hasn't, then we can blame racism somehow;
EDIT: It has occurred to me that I am currently having too much fun, and this may result in a giant bloated argument.
I should be writing fiction instead...
I'm not sure whether it's worse to ask that everyone include disclaimers all the time or just give fewer fucks about it.
Well, he's not exactly being careful to "cross his T's and dot his i's" about supporting the right to protest", and brutal suppression of political dissent is a thing that dictators do, and he's making overtures to it.
(Frankly speaking a lot of people on the internet could probably do more, but aren't. The fact that political conversation is now conducted one social media post at a time makes it worse.)
(But let's not pretend that Mr. Trump lacks enthusiasm for displays of strength. This is the guy who thought it was a great idea to wreck the roads by running tanks over them because he thought that other countries, such as ones with dictators, had cooler displays of military force for patriotism.)
The problem is that those situations are not geographically separate from one another, nor for that matter neatly cordoned into racial groupings. The lesser situations are mixed in with the thornier ones.
That's why I've argued that the police need more resources to properly accommodate the variety of situations they're tasked with.
The following comment might further inflame the argument, but I'll say it anyway: I could point out a similar impact from coronavirus. It's just that it was less visible in the sense of property damage. Meanwhile,...
In a similar vein, now you're asking to shut down the country over a "serious-but-not-extremely-so" problem of opportunistic crime?
How is displaying an understanding of and exhibiting a peaceful response to citizens' problems not "appropriate" or "disrespectful to the uniform they wear"?
Also, what you call "lies" are actually a bevy of documented instances of excessive force and racial bias. Even if you throw out some of them for being low quality data points, you've still got a bunch.
This guy is the Chair of New York City Council health committee, not a rando I just happened to find on twitter.
I dispute the latter. Strongly.
This isn't a case where I'm looking to win or anything. I want to see the data. Show me some good, non-biased data, please. I want to see this data, where if you strip out all the relevant factors (such as crime rates), shows an institutional bias in terms of police officers and black people in the United States.
And, in seeing this data, I want to also see how it relates to the practically catastrophic non-police violence against the towns and cities by their own residents where policing is high.
"A bunch" is not, and will never be good enough to base your life's philosophy on.
To be clear, I do not want to see population proportionality versus incarceration proportionality, or the former with police involved incident proportionality (including arrests).
You've noted my strong anti-lockdown position right?
Either that or you're blaming China for hiding this thing, then exporting this thing and allowing it to ravage the rest of the world?
As Alicia Rivera would say; Point?
Even if I were in favor of a show of force, I certainly wouldn't trust this POTUS to get it right without being drunk on it.
I'm not sure where this came from.
As for your request for data I'll get back to you later on that.
Whether or not this is the case is irrelevant to whether racial bias is a problem in policing.
I've heard various conservatives say "but they commit violence against themselves!" like it excuses police misconduct. No, that's not a meaningful excuse. Nor does it help the problem.
https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-camden-disbands-police-force-for-new-department.html
TL;DR this article was written a year after Camden disbanded its city police force and replaced it with a county-led police force. Camden, which had been known as a city plagued with an extremely high homicide rate, changed a bunch of things in 2013. A year after the change, there were some good signs, though a number of people remained skeptical.
But probably one of the most salient points is that they ramped up community policing:
This, in addition to a variety of other measures ranging from razing blighted abandoned properties to de-escalation training.
By 2017: the homicide rate fell to the lowest level since the 1980s.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-camden/549542/
I was curious what Camden is like now, in light of the wave of protests and accompanying unrest/riots/etc. that's been going around lately.
Well, look what we have here:
https://www.inquirer.com/news/camden-george-floyd-peaceful-protests-20200531.html
https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-jersey-protests-demonstrations-george-floyd-camden-atlantic-city-governor-phil-murphy/
Noticeably more peaceful activity than in Philadelphia across the river.
This does not mean Camden is utopia. Crime is still a problem in Camden. But it's still useful to know that a more peaceful approach is possible.
This is why I say that the police need more resources, not simply more force. The objective shouldn't be to control; the objective should be to engage. In a peaceful way. Before crime gets out of hand.
Contrast what Mr. Trump wants:
He's not helping things.
Here's the beginning of what I've found.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.05376.pdf
You said you wanted to ignore population proportions. Okay, then let's look at the hit rate -- when the officers searched, they found contraband in that percentage of vehicles searched. Oddly, whites have the highest hit rate.
(And if we do look at the search rates themselves, we notice other potential problems as well. For example, are Asians being undersearched?)
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf
p. 66 (because this is a super long document)
Same area, same crime (speeding), different method of assessment. Why they don't use radar every time I don't know, but apparently the radar is picking up blacks at a lower rate (72%) than other methods are (80%).
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854 TL;DR "There's more crime going on" doesn't cover this.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf While you can read the paper if you want all the details (I've just quoted the abstract), I would like to point out that they drew a couple inferences that I've also drawn, namely that:
* Pragmatism is a factor. Note that the use of preconceived notions about what people/neighborhoods/etc. are like is, among other things, a shortcut to a practical, actionable result, albeit not necessarily a desirable one.
* Not all cops are bad, but some are.
If you want more I can keep going. There's a lot more. It just takes forever for me to go through it, particularly since you're looking specifically for stuff that doesn't involve population proportions, plus the fact that I'm specifically looking for papers (and specifically avoiding papers from, say, the ACLU) rather than just news reports or commentary (some of which end up linking to papers which I then have to check) or even lists of studies.
Incidental find:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3202470
This isn't directly related to the topic of racial bias in police work, but it does indicate an underlying problem of ineffective engagement with minorities.
Now, like I showed in my above post, conditions differ from locality to locality. Some places have figured out how to do things better than others have.
https://www.unionleader.com/nh-supreme-court-overturns-precedent-used-to-keep-police-misconduct-secret/article_9335c721-5c65-5555-b07d-fddcd54419a4.html
TL;DR there was a legal precedent set in 1993 that said that internal personnel files of public employees are not public. The state supreme court overturned this (to some extent), stating that internal personnel files are not "categorically exempt from disclosure", and should be "subject to a balancing test to determine whether they are subject to disclosure".
This is relevant to police misconduct since the cases that brought this issue to the court involved police misconduct, and specifically an internal audit that the local newspaper was seeking.
The case was sent back to the trial court which was asked to, well, balance public access with confidentiality.
Glenn clearly doesn't want to be looking up papers right now, probably wants to keep up with news instead (I know I would), so... I'm not going to tell either of you not to argue your points, but I think it'd be good if you don't "entrap" the other, if you don't say something that the other must respond to or "lose", if you address your points to the air instead or something. I think it'd do well for both of you if you could always walk away and do whatever else instead.
Anyways, my stats:
There's a whole thread to go with it filled with points like:
If you wonder why my post is so short, it's because I just spent 20 minutes trying to instruct my grandma on how to connect to her own wi-fi, over the phone. It did not work. Do you know how hard it is to instruct somebody about computer stuff when they can't see the screen?
Did you know that even when you instruct people as to what the windows key is and where it is, they will still ask you what the windows key is if the explanation was given ten minutes ago?
And so on.
EDIT: Anyways, as Stormtroper said: It's clear your stats didn't change my mind (and also you didn't have to do so much). At this point, I'm pretty sure mine won't change yours either. All that means is I'll continue calling what I think are damaging lies as such, and you can do the same. Life goes on.
Also, in that thread, even that guy admits
(also that guy is a libertarianism nut)
Funnily enough, around these parts police will regularly stop you (regardless of race if it needs to be said) to inspect for traffic violations, but they can't actually search the inside of your car since they're traffic cops. This was the premise of a much loved Leon Schuster sketch in a movie a few years ago.
Unrelatedly; did you guys know that there were actually four planes that got hijacked on 9/11? I feel like I'd heard of the third, which struck a section of the Pentagon, but I'd certainly never heard of the fourth, which crash-landed somewhere whilst going towards the East Coast.