Police #2: Burning down the house

[Derfel Cadarn]

43 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

We watched this in the office today. There was a lot of embarrassment, and shame. Also concern, this shit makes it harder and more dangerous or us.

It's the fucking shit lies that gets me. I always tell my staff, If you punch someone in the face 15 times, say so. If you just cleared an area and made it sterile, and someone was trying to go past your cordon and you pushed him too hard, and he fell, and fucked his head, admit it. The cover up is almost always worse than the crime.  

Reminds me of my OST training (was a special for 8 years); we were told that if we had to hit/baton strike someone, use full force. Whacking someone with pulled blows 15 times until it has an effect looks really dodgy to witnesses/cameras.

Never hit anyone or had to draw my baton/cs spray in anger in those 8 years.

[Tywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Never hit anyone or had to draw my baton/cs spray in anger in those 8 years.

This is the sad part. Older police officers, or at least those I've spoken with, took a lot of pride in never drawing their gun on another person. They don't exactly train them that anymore. 

[Fury Resurrected]

4 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

While I liked and agreed with the rest of your post (for there is a tendency to view protesters as a unified and cohesive group) - I had to pause at this sentence. It's effective at what exactly? Sabotaging the legitimately just cause of protests? Giving Trump and his cronies ammunition to use against protests as a whole? There is no logical connection whatsoever between what looters/agitators/troublemakers do and what they claim to believe. How does looting a grocery store or vandalizing a restaurant help George Floyd or black people in general? How does it move America to be a less racist country? How does it punish the guilty? How is it just, useful or righteous in any way, shape or form?

The way I see it, they are ordinary pitiful cowards. They're either unable or afraid to tackle the actual culprits (4 officers in question or police department in general) so instead they're directing their rage towards innocent shop owners who are not in the position to fight back. They're not heroes who bring change, they're lite version of war criminals, and should be condemned both morally and legally. And from what I hear (though you're way better informed than I am, so correct me if I'm wrong), part of the protesters are doing just that - trying to stop the looting and property damage.

You’re buying into parts of an extremely biased media narrative at least about Minneapolis. Most of what got hit hard were corporate chains. Autozone. Arby’s. Walgreen’s. T-Mobile. Gas station chains. Target. These are not small shop owners helpless to fight back, these are multimillion and multibillion dollar corporate entities. And a lot of the things that were hit hardest had a local reason. The Target by the 3rd precinct is the only Target in the state that is in a poor neighborhood at all. Target is headquartered here, and that store is where it is because that’s where Target wants to test run loss prevention policies. It’s there to get poor people to shoplift so Target can collect data by arresting them so they can guard their stores in white neighborhoods. It’s also the closest place to get water and milk and thousands of people got teargassed in the parking lot and needed help. And war crimes?? These are objects. The people of Minneapolis have been widely brutalized by cops all week and had their murders swept under the rug for as long as the cops were there and you think the war crime is that auto parts chains and cell phone stores got robbed? Cool priorities.

Here in Minnesota, we have had mass peaceful protests for each of our murderers By the police. Freeways and big swaths of St. Paul were marched on for Philando Castile. There was no action. The streets in front of the 4th precinct were occupied by camping protestors for weeks in the Minnesota winter and brutalized by cops and shot up by white supremacists, while the freeways got demonstrated on and the capitol and the governors mansion over the Jamar Clark shooting. The officer who murdered Clark is still on the MPD. The American Indian movement was founded in Minneapolis because of police brutality against indigenous people in the 60s and that has continued apace in spite of all those actions. Police brutality against people of color in the Twin Cities remains rampant despite years and decades and generations of peaceful protest.

Days after a riot starts (which I was frankly very surprised did not happen with the Clark and Castile murders), the University of Minnesota, the MIA museum, the Walker Museum, MPLS public schools, and a huge list of other organization drop their security contracts with Minneapolis PD, cutting a decent chunk of their revenue. The city parks cut ties with police. The investigation is handed over to the attorney general instead of a prosecutor who regularly works with the perpetrators. The city council president has vowed to disband the MPD and create a new system from the ground up. The counties are banding together to ask the legislature to write a law to direct these crimes to the attorney general’s office and never their offices for investigation and prosecution. The state legislature is coming out of recess for a special session months before an election where they will answer to the people for what they get done or don’t.

If you think Minnesota would do any of this without the riots you are wrong. You might not like mass destruction of property and this is my neighborhood and it breaks my heart to see places I love closed and it’s impossible to buy necessities like food or gas near me right now. BUT- the United States has never had any major change in its history of providing rights without a riot. I’m a woman. The only reason I can vote is because women before me took that right by throwing bricks and burning buildings. The only reason we have child labor laws and overtime pay or any labor law is because the unions burned factories and workers died for these rights. Pride is the celebration of the Stonewall riot where police attacked LGBTQ people, and without Stonewall we never start down the long road to marriage equality (which the GOP is still attacking). Our history books show us Martin Luther King but never the backdrop of riots in his time. Nobody listens to the peaceful guy if they think they’re only ever going to have to hear from a peaceful guy (and it’s worth noting that even he had his life threatened by the FBI and the King family won a civil suit against them claiming they knew about the plot to assassinate him and let it happen).

I would love to live in a country where polite, peaceful protests get change. I’d love for our work at Standing Rock to have stopped the Dakota Access Pipeline from being out beneath the water supply, but that stretch of pipe is in the ground. I’d love for all of these actions to have been taken in Minneapolis decades ago. But, to my everlasting shame, I do not live in that place. I live in a place where if you want change, close the Targets, and the largest corporation in the state will put more pressure on the levers of power than the citizens could ever access.

And those small shops you’re illustrating? Every fucking one of them in my neighborhood that was smashed into has painted the boards over their windows with black lives matter and justice for George Floyd and ACAB and fuck12, and murals of Floyd. Every owner I’ve talked to (and I’ve talked to a lot and been out helping donate and install those boards) has said “it’s just stuff, we need justice” The people in this city do not think the destruction of property is the war crime, but the mass police brutality visited upon demonstrators. Nobody here is without close friends or family that got hurt by the cops this week. And for places that are closed there has been a huge outpouring of financial and physical support. The businesses that want to reopen will have the funds to do it, whether they were insured or not. The media is showing a lot of destruction porn from here right now, and Fox News did find one black guy to exploit on camera for their agenda- but that guy has enough donations now to rebuild. And I haven’t talked to a single person who actually lives in Minneapolis who isn’t extremely proud of our city right now.

[Ran]

15 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

that store is where it is because that’s where Target wants to test run loss prevention policies.

I don't mean to distract from the broader issue, but this bit feels like it's misinformation. I went and searched for more information on this ... and the claim seems to be sourced from a single tweet from some random person without any evidence. Vox's Recode site asked Target about this and they denied it. Do you have any other sources of information about this that supports the allegation or contradicts Target's denial?

The closest thing I can find to "experiments" at that store is this 2011 article about a funneled-queue system they tried out for a few months at that store. No references to loss prevention there in that article.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't mean to distract from the broader issue, but this bit feels like it's misinformation. I went and searched for more information on this ... and the claim seems to be sourced from a single tweet from some random person without any evidence. Vox's Recode site asked Target about this and they denied it. Do you have any other sources of information about this that supports the allegation or contradicts Target's denial?

The closest thing I can find to "experiments" at that store is this 2011 article about a funneled-queue system they tried out for a few months at that store. No references to loss prevention there in that article.

Seems like Target contributed to "broken window" policing tactics adopted in Minneapolis.

Link

[Ran]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

Seems like Target contributed to "broken window" policing tactics adopted in Minneapolis.

Link

Quote

There’s no evidence the Lake Street Target was singled out by looters for any particular reason

 

[Fury Resurrected]

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't mean to distract from the broader issue, but this bit feels like it's misinformation. I went and searched for more information on this ... and the claim seems to be sourced from a single tweet from some random person without any evidence. Vox's Recode site asked Target about this and they denied it. Do you have any other sources of information about this that supports the allegation or contradicts Target's denial?

The closest thing I can find to "experiments" at that store is this 2011 article about a funneled-queue system they tried out for a few months at that store. No references to loss prevention there in that article.

This is always what the community has said about that Target from their own experiences. So whether it is the corporate released information or not, this is how the neighborhood views it as the subject of disproportionate shoplifting calls at the only Target in the state in a neighborhood of color. It’s close to my house and everyone knows this.

[Tywin et al.]

@Fury Resurrected,

Kay, you know I love your activism and appreciate all you do for our community.

It's okay to let the Arby's get destroyed though.

[Fury Resurrected]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Fury Resurrected,

Kay, you know I love your activism and appreciate all you do for our community.

It's okay to let the Arby's get destroyed though.

Thank you.

 

And for the board members who are not aware- I am a small business owner of color and I was shut down for the past three months. I was supposed to go back to work last Monday and could not, I’m shooting now for this Monday. The windows at my shop weren’t broken but if they were I’d be saying the exact same shit I am now.

[Fez]

Well, looks like the Buffalo police are throwing a hissy fit in response to be held the slightest bit responsible for their bullshit. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/buffalo/public-safety/2020/06/05/buffalo-police-officers-resign-from-emergency-response-team

Quote

 

Spectrum News has learned from multiple sources that all Buffalo police officers have resigned from their positions on the department’s Emergency Response Team following yesterday’s incident in Niagara Square.

It comes after the suspension of two ERT members who shoved a 75-year-old protester in Niagara Square Thursday evening after video from Spectrum News and a local radio station surfaced showing the incident.

We’ve reached out to the Buffalo Police Department for comment, but haven’t heard back yet.

A press conference with police was originally scheduled to be held at 1:30 p.m., but was postponed and hasn’t been rescheduled yet.

 

I always kinda wondered what it felt like to get radicalized, and now its happening in real time to me.

[Guy Kilmore]

1 hour ago, Fury Resurrected said:

This is always what the community has said about that Target from their own experiences. So whether it is the corporate released information or not, this is how the neighborhood views it as the subject of disproportionate shoplifting calls at the only Target in the state in a neighborhood of color. It’s close to my house and everyone knows this.

I don't live in the community, but I work with people who do, and I have heard the same things.  Target has been asked by several community programs, ones that I have been apart of to open in other neighborhoods of color and they have refused.  You can look on a map of Minneapolis and see the areas they are avoiding.

[Kalbear]

Apparently everyone on the Buffalo emergency response team has resigned from that team (but not police) because of the treatment of those two officers.

 

ETA: ninjad by @Fez

[Fragile Bird]

So it was a gutless resignation. They just quit the team, not their jobs. How noble.

[Soylent Brown]

So essentially all 57 of them have flagged themselves as people who need to be removed from policing entirely if things are ever going to improve.

[Fury Resurrected]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well he did trip and fall, after being attacked. 

Sorry BFC, but cops tend to behave like really abusive boyfriends.....

And in the US 40% of them ARE abusive boyfriends and husbands

[Week]

20 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

So essentially all 57 of them have flagged themselves as people who need to be removed from policing entirely if things are ever going to improve.

And NEVER COME BACK /Gollum

[BigFatCoward]

I've been holding off on this, mainly because it's a losing battle, but can I just explain that putting all 'police' in the same bracket is stupid. Where I work there are 1500 officers. About 600 are what you think of as 'police'. In my team of 50+ plus we deal with schools and youth engagement. I.e we try to stop people being dragged onto gangs, CSE and county lines. I have an officer who basically teaches circus skills to under priveledged kids, another who runs summer camps socialising young people and getting them fed (a huge number of our youth people dont get fed of not at school on free meals), another who teaches rugby as a way of dealing with anger, 3 of my staff run police cadets whereby they try to get under priveledged youths into a structure and feeling part of a team, they get them doing outdoor activities working their morale and self esteem. All my officers do something similar. In the office next door to me the unit deals with monitoring sex offenders. Upstairs the team deals with community safety, investigating and prosecuting suspects for domestic violence and hate crime. 

Im guessing most major city forces have similar set ups.  

There is no such thing as 'the police', it's as lazy a stereotype as any other. 

[Conflicting Thought]

30 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I've been holding off on this, mainly because it's a losing battle, but can I just explain that putting all 'police' in the same bracket is stupid. Where I work there are 1500 officers. About 600 are what you think of as 'police'. In my team of 50+ plus we deal with schools and youth engagement. I.e we try to stop people being dragged onto gangs, CSE and county lines. I have an officer who basically teaches circus skills to under priveledged kids, another who runs summer camps socialising young people and getting them fed (a huge number of our youth people dont get fed of not at school on free meals), another who teaches rugby as a way of dealing with anger, 3 of my staff run police cadets whereby they try to get under priveledged youths into a structure and feeling part of a team, they get them doing outdoor activities working their morale and self esteem. All my officers do something similar. In the office next door to me the unit deals with monitoring sex offenders. Upstairs the team deals with community safety, investigating and prosecuting suspects for domestic violence and hate crime. 

Im guessing most major city forces have similar set ups.  

There is no such thing as 'the police', it's as lazy a stereotype as any other. 

There is no thing as the police??, that is the first time i hear that, so they are just individuals that happend to be police?.  With no context? 

Would you agree that there are systemic issues with the police?, with the system that the state uses to coerce the people? 

If the problems with the police are systemic, then how is it not a problem with the police as an institution?. 

 

[Guest]

So, it sounds like the rookie cops who were arrested are giving testimony against the 2 senior officers. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the 2 junior former officers will receive a plea deal in order to nail Chauvin on murder 2.

[Knight Of Winter]

4 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

These are not small shop owners helpless to fight back, these are multimillion and multibillion dollar corporate entities.

Ok, but same questions remain. How is destroying corporate property justified reaction to racism in America? How exactly will looting Arby's or T-Mobile make America a more fair society? How does vandalizing a gas station help extract justice for George Floyd? 

And war crimes analogy was fitting, I think. I've seen people excuse all kinds of horrific behavior - murders, rapes, evictions, exile, labour camps etc. - as long as the perpetrator is "one of us" and is "fighting for a just cause". Is property damage here in rang with abovementioned crimes? - no. But it it has the same dangerous mentality feeding it,
 

4 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

The people of Minneapolis have been widely brutalized by cops all week and had their murders swept under the rug for as long as the cops were there and you think the war crime is that auto parts chains and cell phone stores got robbed? Cool priorities.

False dichotomy. It's entirely possible to oppose police brutality without condoning hooligans bent on property destruction. And the only reason I condemned looters and not police violence is because former is apparently a matter to debate, while the latter is just common sense. I thought it's way too obvious to even mention.

As for the rest of your post...look, I'm not your opponent here. I wish you good luck, truly, and hope you'll manage to achieve some long-lasting positive change in Minneapolis, and in USA. However, you did allow some very destructive and unnecessary elements into your (just) cause that you'd be better off without.

For one - because it's very hard to condemn e.g. police brutality or alt-right violence while at the same time justifying violence from the opposite side of spectrum. Your idea basically boils down to "violence is awesome, but only if my side is doing it".

And secondly - because humanity has worked long and hard to establish a society where problems will get solved without a violence (cos frankly, living in a country where you have to start a war/revolution to change anything - sucked). It established government, courts, parliament, media, independent organizations, voting system etc. Living in the 21st century democracy, one gets a pretty clear picture of what to do in order to change something: vote in elections, join a organization and lobby for your cause, organize a protest, make yourself heard on media etc. And frankly - here it works - and believe me when I say my country is not a model country by any stretch of imagination. But despite that, peaceful and democratic means of changing stuff work. Just a year ago, there were big country-wide protests demanding better laws for violence against women (and the immediate cause was year-long gang-rape of one underage girl. Yeah...we were as riled up as you can imagine). And despite people being pissed and angry, protest successfully achieved its goal without single broken window, much less demolished building. That's just one example out of many. That's how I see stuff should work in modern democracies.

From what I gather from your post, you believe such a approach wouldn't work in America, and that only way to ever achieve anything is though violence. If that's true, then...well, then America is even more fucked up that I thought. It means it hasn't gotten past this primitive assumption that society is made of of various groups beating each other with sticks - and the group with the biggest stick gets to have its way. As long as this principle is correct, you'll continue to have same kinds of problem over and over again.