Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks
from the get-busy-working-or-get-busy-retiring dept
The police in Minneapolis are giving the public what they think the public wants: fewer police officers, fewers interactions with police, and, of course, MOAR CRIME. Calls to defund the police began following the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. Law enforcement officers expressed disdain (rather than dismay their actions had provoked this), asking rhetorically who would show up to tell people there isn’t much officers can (or will!) do in response to reported crimes.
The disingenuous interpretation provided by most police departments was “Fuck ’em.” Let the city fall into criminal chaos if residents continued to express their opposition to excessive force and rights violations. The application of the “defund the police” mentality by the Minneapolis PD is every bit as disingenuous as cop supporters’ interpretations of “defund the police” movements — ones that generally only want to move resources being used poorly by police departments to other entities more suited to handling common calls, like people suffering from suicidal thoughts or mental breakdowns.
Because the cops can’t be honest about their own contribution to the current state of affairs in Minneapolis, they’re giving residents the part that’s easiest to do (fewer cops handling fewer crimes) without doing the difficult part (relinquishing their paychecks). An investigation by Reuters reporter Brad Heath shows cops are doing less cop stuff in the Twin Cities while still collecting the same salaries they always have.
Almost immediately after Floyd’s death, Reuters found, police officers all but stopped making traffic stops. They approached fewer people they considered suspicious and noticed fewer people who were intoxicated, fighting or involved with drugs, records show. Some in the city, including police officers themselves, say the men and women in blue stepped back after Floyd’s death for fear that any encounter could become the next flashpoint.
Ignored in the police response to public criticism is what’s driving this fear of “becoming a flashpoint.” Millions of police interactions happen every day. Only a minute percentage result in protests. So, the fear of “flashpoints” is overblown. But if Minneapolis cops think it’s more likely to happen now — following the murder conviction delivered to one of their own — they may be correct. But they’re missing the point: the protests following George Floyd’s murders were the result of years of racist policing and disproportionate force deployments against minorities. Floyd may have been the flashpoint, but cops were the tinderbox.
Now, having failed to apprehend criminals their contribution to this shitshow — one governments are now, finally, trying to get under control — cops are admitting they’re too cowardly to face this challenge and too shameless to stop cashing paychecks they haven’t earned.
“There isn’t a huge appetite for aggressive police work out there, and the risk/reward, certainly, we’re there and we’re sworn to protect and serve, but you also have to protect yourself and your family,” said Scott Gerlicher, a Minneapolis police commander who retired this year. “Nobody in the job or working on the job can blame those officers for being less aggressive.”
Wrong, recent retiree Gerlicher. I can. I can blame those cops for being “less aggressive.” I mean, we want cops to keep their aggression in check when interacting with the public, but the “aggression” this quitter is referring to is nothing more than doing the sort of stuff we pay cops to do… like combat and deter crime.
The upside is rights are probably being violated far less frequently, as stops of “suspicious” people have dropped more than 75% since the murder of George Floyd. On the downside, there’s a bunch of self-righteous badge-wearers hanging around the office, bitterly stoking the fires of their self-pity.
“It’s self-preservation,” said one officer who retired after Floyd’s death, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said the force’s commanders didn’t order a slowdown, but also did nothing to stop it. “The supervisor was like, ‘I don’t blame you at all if you don’t want to do anything. Hang out in the station.’ That’s what they’re saying.”
Wrong. Self-preservation is exiting a career you think no longer suits you or could be damaging to your health (both physical and mental). Self-preservation is not being paid to do a job you’re no longer willing to do until the general public’s internal “WE [BLANK] COPS” swings back to the ?? emoji.
If there’s any time cops need to step up and show the public they can not only fight crime but do so lawfully, it’s after incidents like these. But when the going gets tough, the people who claim to be the toughest retreat, secure in the knowledge their union contracts will keep the paychecks coming in while the cities they’re employed to protect suffer the consequences of their inaction.
There are some solutions out there, but none cops are willing to honestly engage with. And then there are the useless things being done in response to the unofficial slowdown in Minneapolis. As cops continue to abandon their posts, the courts have stepped up to issue mandates that cannot possibly be enforced.
Between retirements and a surge of officers taking medical leaves, the city had 200 fewer officers to put on the streets this year than it did in 2019, a drop of about 22%. A judge this July ordered the city to hire more officers, but officials have said it will be difficult to make that happen because the embattled department has struggled to attract new recruits.
You can’t just summon police recruits into existence, no matter how strongly worded the court order. And there’s little to draw people to the policing business at this point in time, most likely because the PD can no longer assure potential employees there’s almost zero chance they’ll ever be meaningfully punished for even the most egregious conduct. When cops get rung up on murder charges, the hiring pool shrinks to bullies and assholes too stupid to understand actions will (every so often) have consequences. The cops need to be at their best. And now, thanks to years of blowing off accountability and discipline, cop shops are discovering the only people who want a job like this are people who should never be given a job like this.
The Reuters report should be seen as a damning indictment of the police officers unwilling to do their jobs while their actions are being actively scrutinized. For far too many cops, the only acceptable work environment is one that combines an immense amount of power with almost nonexistent responsibility. And, like always, it will be the public that pays the price. When the public needs them most, those still wearing a badge in Minneapolis have decided the best thing to do is hang back at the station and play poker with a deck loaded with victim cards.
Filed Under: derek chaufin, george floyd, minneapolis, minnesota, police
Comments on “Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks”
Well, that’s a terrible name—especially today when there seems to be no capacity for nuance in political reporting. It’s equally disingenous to coin a phrase like that and then complain when everyone interprets it to mean exactly what it sounds like: that the police should get no funding. I’m guessing that more than a few people who came into that movement later think they’re supporting exactly that.
I could just as well go around shouting "kill the police", and then when they complain, say that I just meant police who kill innocent people such as Floyd should get the death penalty.
Re: 100% this
Words have meaning after all.
Re: Re:
"Well, that’s a terrible name"
It is. A case can be made, however, that in quite a few areas residents might indeed be better off with no police than with.
I've never understood...
How many of the standards for my high school retail job were higher than a cop. If I half-assed it, I would get a warning then fired. If I didn’t help someone I didn’t personally like with just as much gusto as someone I did like, same.
If someone was yelling in my face, my 17 year old self had to have more composure and restraint than a cop.
Re: I've never understood...
It is all sorts of disturbing and horrifying when you realize that the power and legal protections US police enjoy are inversely proportional to how much responsibility and expectations they face.
‘We trust and authorize you to carry and use at your discretion a deadly weapon in the form of a gun, don’t worry about using it though because the legal system expects you to be dumber than a rock with less care and knowledge of the lives and rights around you than a sociopathic toddler.’
Re: I've never understood...
"How many of the standards for my high school retail job were higher than a cop."
It’s the height of irony. I live in a country where everyone is in a union and employers need to be careful how they treat their staff and under what circumstances they can fire them. In the public sector there’s a running joke that with enough years on the job you’d have to commit felonies before you’d get fired.
Yet compared to a US policeman who can barely get the sack unless they work real hard at committing public assault and/or murder for years…
And americans apparently take that for granted. You can sack someone for not pulling a 60 hour week or wearing a shirt management doesn’t agree with, but it’s understood you can’t fire a cop. Un-fscking-believable.
Re: Re: I've never understood...
I doubt you know what irony is, since you barely grasp basic English grammar. You have no idea what the standards are for police, including their termination, so keep your ignorant yap shut.
Re: Re: I've never understood...
I doubt you know what irony is, since you barely grasp basic English grammar. You have no idea what the standards are for police, including their termination, so keep your ignorant yap shut.
Re: I've never understood...
You’re an idiot. What was your high school job, flipping burgers, just like what you have now? Did you even make it through high school?
Let’s see. Cops have to deal with violent animals trying to kill other people and then kill the cops when being arrested. But you think your high school job had higher standards? Get a clue.
Re: Re: I've never understood...
"Cops have to deal with violent animals trying to kill other people and then kill the cops when being arrested"
Not on a daily basis, unless there’s something really messed up where they operate. Even then, they do themselves no favours by announcing themselves as a violent force who will not hesitate to murder if they’re crossed, thereby introducing a reasonable expectation for those they encounter to need to defend themselves.
A VERY telling response
If their response to the conviction of a murderer is to bunker down in case they are next they are basically admitting that they would and do engage in similar behavior and they don’t like the fact that there might actually be consequences for that sort of stuff now.
Between the cowardice, admission of corruption and refusal to do the job it sounds like the city has a prime opportunity to really trim the budget by getting rid of some useless(at best) employees and letting them find jobs more suited to them.
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You were a police officer, Tim? Did not know that.
"The more you know."(tm)
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Hitting Home
After years of denying the Ferguson Effect, it’s totally here. I think Tim owes us an apology for previously calling it a myth.
Re:
The only “Ferguson Effect” is the cops being too fucking paranoid about enemy combatants in the field (read: average people on the street) to do their goddamn jobs.
Re: Hitting Home
if by ‘Ferguson Effect’ you mean corrupt and/or cowardly cops hiding away because they might face the dreaded Personal Consequences then that’s a feature, not a bug.
Re: Re: Hitting Home
All I can think of is a certain meme…
"Well, well, well… if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions!"
Re: Re: Hitting Home
If that’s a feature, not a bug (police hanging around in the station and not enforcing the law)… then why is Cushing whining about it?
Re: Re: Re: Hitting Home
Because they are still drawing the same (hazard) pay. I think the Insurrection Party has a phrase for this: Welfare Queens.
Re: Hiding in your basement
Cool, lets just see your peer reviewed study…and he’s gone!
Re: Re: Hiding in your basement
Why do you need a peer-reviewed study? Cushing himself is telling you the Ferguson Effect is happening. Do you think he’s lying?
Re: Hitting Home
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Hitting Home
I’m fairly sure that at this point, if you look at the definition of the word "myth", it’s listed as "whatever nonsense Koby has decided to believe in".
Cite your sources if you disagree, but your ability to address reality has never been prove in any peer reviewed environment.
Re: Hitting Home
I’m all for cops just sitting there not doing their jobs. As long as I’m not the fucking taxpayer sitting there paying for it.
Let them quit and jockey a cash register or flip burgers for all I fucking care. I’m fine with them seeing how well their ‘principles’ hold up in poverty.
Re: Hitting Home
"After years of denying the Ferguson Effect, it’s totally here."
That’s a novel way of describing a profession categorically unable to hit even the lowest bar of effectiveness, ethical standards, legal accountability and personal morality imaginable among any of the G20.
Tell me, Koby, when you keep turning up here to drop utter bullshit in the debate, has it ever occurred to you that "failing to meet any international standards" is neither a good look for the US police – nor for you when you imply the cops walking off to sulk when they’re held to actual standards are the people in the right.
Re: Re: Hitting Home
Koby is not the one who asserted the Ferguson Effect is real; Cushing is, in this very story. So is Cushing lying?
Re: Hitting Home
Sir, this is an Arby’s
I disagree. If the police are struggling to attract (good) recruits, it’s not because of the sliver of accountability recently introduced. It’s because of the whole lot of accountability that the department is still fighting against.
Decent people don’t want a job where the management is covering up their coworkers’ murders.
Re: Re:
"Decent people don’t want a job where the management is covering up their coworkers’ murders."
I think you may have delivered the reason as to why Minneapolis PD have decided to sit in corners and sulk at the idea that standards may be imposed.
It’s frightening to think that you can’t hold US law enforcement to the same standard of behavior that you could a spoiled 8 year old.
"for fear that any encounter could become the next flashpoint"
It almost sounds like they are unable to do their jobs without violating someones (read POC) rights.
If you are more terrified of causing the needless death of a citizen than doing your job, perhaps you are in the wrong fscking job sparky.
If you are more terrified that you can only do your job in a way that if other citizens watched you would result in them demanding you be charged, perhaps you are in the wrong fscking job.
It really is high time that we stop listening to unions, pundits, ‘history’ and resort to using actual facts.
We’ve demanded cops do more & more, while giving them battlefield tools rather than the tools to deescalate a situation.
We want them to "fix" X and haven’t paid much attention what their definition of "fix" is until the video is to disturbing for primetime.
Its a self supporting cycle, someone sees a POC & freaks out, the cops show up assuming they must have done SOMETHING to result in a call being made, they then work from the smrt place of you did something, I dunno what but I’m gonna figure it out.
A POC who can’t walk, talk, drive, shop without being stopped maybe just maybe can’t control how pissed off they are, the cops see this as a reason to fear for their safety and each side pours gas on the fire.
Imagine if the call of ‘gasp, i just saw a negro’ was met with… ‘and did they do something beyond being black in your sight?’ rather than ‘we’ll send someone out right away’.
Need to admit that racism is alive & well, its not always openly driven. You see someone who isn’t like you, you default to the ‘collective knowledge’ society has imparted to you.
This often leads to dead Shiks, because all turbans are middle eastern & they dare to practice their faith in OUR country.
We don’t mix with people unlike us enough, defaulting to the popular caricatures… then become angry when that nicer old man isn’t sweet and polite like Uncle Remus was when we talked to him like a servant & not a person.
TAC recalls the oddest insult/compliment he ever got, You’re gay but you’re not like gay gay. That person "knew" how gays are "supposed" to be, and I broke that image.
We aren’t all that amazingly different, but we should set aside what we’ve been told & treat others as individuals not just a smaller facet of a monolith of the stereotype we want to label them with.
Re: Re:
"If you are more terrified of causing the needless death of a citizen than doing your job, perhaps you are in the wrong fscking job sparky."
Maybe less "terrified" than "throwing a tantrum because daddy told you to stop bullying the other kids"? I think the problem might be that the badge and uniform means you can get away with assault, harrassment, rape and murder in ways the normal serial killer couldn’t dream of. Although the combination of both does make for an interesting Venn diagram.
Somehow other countries manage to have their police accountable for their actions and still attract plenty of recruits. It must be possible.
Re: Re:
"Somehow other countries manage to have their police accountable for their actions and still attract plenty of recruits."
Yeah, among the rest of the G8 and possibly the G20 the idea of police officers often being posses of gangbangers seems like yet another "Only In America" thing. An expression which used to stand for something weird and wonderful more often than not but is now usually expressed along with heartfelt gratitude they weren’t born stateside.
Well, they would have gone with the "good cop, bad cop" routine… but they ran out of good cops awhile back.
Of course cops are afraid..
How else do you fight crime if you can’t commit crimes yourself?
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Bravo
Since Floyd died of a frenatnyl overdose and it was conclusively proved in Chauvin’s trial that he did not hamper in any way the overdosing drug addict Floyd from breathing (as the chief of police had to admit on the stand), the police are prudently realizing that they can never get a fair trial in the city and that they will be charged at any time for anything that the mob deems chargible, why would they put much effort into police work.
Add to that the proven fact that the coroner was pressured by the prosecutors to change his autopsy conclusions (the basis for legal action being taken by the remaining defendants) and the recent higher court’s reversal of that Somali cop’s murder conviction, and you can easily understand it.
In short, it’s very hard for the human beings who work in law enforcement to do their jobs without risking death or injury or the loss of their freedom from juries afraid to acquit lest the mob dox and hurt them, with Maxine coming into town demanding they convict.
It’s obvious that Chauvin will be reversed, but it may take several years. He did nothing but his job, and the prosecutors again as in so many other cases in the past few years, cheated in order to convict. That’s not justice. The cops and everyone else can see it. Who’d want to go to one’s work one day and never return for 35 years because a stoned out overdosing drug addict resists arrest?
Answer: very few.
Re: Bravo
How’s that horse deworming coming along bro?
Re: Re: Bravo
Horse dewormer?
You mean that drug that was cleared by the FDA YEARS ago and is safe for human consumption?
Re: Re: Re: Bravo
"You mean that drug that was cleared by the FDA YEARS ago and is safe for human consumption?"
In very restricted dosage, prescribed only as a last resort in serious cases of parasite infection, by specialist medical doctors, yes.
Did you have an argument to make which isn’t trying to have the back of benighted morons ingesting a neurotoxin in dosages and preparation meant to be administered to half a ton’s worth of horse?
The FDA has cleared every active substance in chemotherapy cocktails as well – doesn’t make them safe to use, it only means a licensed MD can prescribe them in the rare and unfortunate cases where they can be used as a cure marginally less bad than the illness.
Our resident trolls do manage to squeak out single sentences that effortlessly divorced from contextual reality. But not often. Congratulations are in order.
Re: Re: Re: Bravo
COVID isn’t a parasitic infection.
Re: Re: Re: Bravo
Yes, that drug that was cleared for treating certain types of parasitic infection that bears no relationship whatsoever to COVID, and which requires a prescription. Which is why so many idiots are turning to horse paste since no competent doctor will prescribe it – since even the company that makes the damn drug say that it won’t treat COVID.
Re: Re: Bravo
"Horse deworming"?
Paraphrasing another commenter here, "not everything is about race, COVID, or Trump". Techdirt wants it to be, but it’s not.
Re: Bravo
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Bravo
Someone didn’t watch the trial and only saw the MSM coverage and the final verdict, I see.
This article is so full of ignorant insensitive rhetoric it can only contribute to police feeling demonized and isolated. As a Vietnam era veteran I can relate to those feelings of betrayal when you volunteer to risk your life for your country and then are vilified by the very people you did it for. As a father of two in law enforcement whose spouses are also in law enforcement I know their motivation for doing the job, the pride they took in doing it and the betrayal they now feel. During a demonstration in Seattle a city councilwomen was laughing and giggling while next to her was a protester with a bull horn telling the police to “please kill yourself so we don’t have to”. My son was standing in formation at a demonstration when a green and orange haired young women who had never met him before started to lecture him about what a racist piece of shit he was and how his children should be ashamed of him. My son had been on patrol longer than she had been alive. The Principle at my granddaughter’s school sent home a letter to all the parents about how we must stand united against the “racist police”.
The police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they use proactive policing to get guns off the streets then they are called racists and if they don’t then they are “not doing their job”. The felons and parolees who once feared being caught with a gun can now arm themselves and drive or walk around knowing they won’t get stopped. If they do they’ll simply flee and the police won’t or can’t give chase.
Since the WOKE have linked EVERYTHING to racism every police encounter with POC is viewed as a possible hate crime not only by the “community” but by the mayors, city officials and now even the President. Children are being murdered weekly so soon these same politicians will demand police officers go out into a much more dangerous and hostile environment to restore order. No one should blame them for walking and not running to do that.
My son once told me he would do the job for free if they just paid him enough to sustain his family. Now he says “I am so done!” My daughter in law has retired and my son has transferred from patrol after 25 years. He has 3 years to retirement. Needless to say he will be advising my grandchildren not to risk their lives for the ungrateful.
Re: Re:
You know, you’re not exactly dispelling the idea that cops are a corrupt clique who view the public as the enemy.
Well, half of it sounds like fan fic from someone who watched too much OANN when they decided that Fox admitting reality was too "woke" for them, but if there’s any truth you’re not doing yourself any favours.
"The felons and parolees who once feared being caught with a gun can now arm themselves and drive or walk around knowing they won’t get stopped"
Unless you’re like the ones who do get stopped and shot… oh wait, that’s not always the felons is it, or even the ones armed, hence the opposition?
"Since the WOKE have linked EVERYTHING to racism every police encounter with POC is viewed as a possible hate crime"
Did you consider maybe not having so much racism caught on video that it’s impossible to ignore – and impossible not to wonder how much was happening before video was available? Well, of course you did because that’s why you’re trying to make video illegal but that’s not really the best solution.
Re: Re: Re:
If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist. As bad as the George Floyd murder was, the murder of Kelly Thomas was worse but neither was motivated by racism. Keith Ellison said if he had seen any evidence of racism he would have charged Chauvin with a hate crime.
My son (like most cops) loved his body cam. I have nothing against videos but sometimes they are very misleading. My son told me of an episode he was involved in. There was this Black guy in his late 40s or early 50s who liked to sit in a wheelchair (he could walk btw), get drunk and harass people walking by. More often than not, he would piss and shit himself so everyone dreaded getting the call. My son got the call only this time the guy was on something. He was jerking and twitching and seemed scared and started yelling “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. My son soon realized he was saying “I’m sorry” because he couldn’t control his body so my son called for an ambulance. Since paramedics won’t touch him until he has been restrained on a gurney my son also called for backup. Had someone videoed the incident they would have seen 4 policemen using all their strength to drag a Black man out of a wheelchair who was screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. By the time they got the man on the gurney, my son and the three other cops were exhausted and hadn’t noticed the man had quit breathing. Fortunately the paramedics were able to revive him.
My son did everything right and probably saved the man’s life but had the man died and an out of context video made the news, I’m sure my son would have been used as an example of just another racist cop run amok.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist."
If you think race isn’t a massive factor in the current issues facing American society, you’re probably a moron…
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Let me put it another way. If you make everything about race then everything is racist. Doctors, teachers, dogs, cats, hurricanes, police, global warming, dairy, cigarettes, being on time, doing your best, band aids, liberals, conservatives, education, and a million other things have been labeled racist. In the same way you can use six degrees of separation to link every human being to Kevin Bacon there are those who will link every noun to racism. If it exists, it is racist and they can prove it.
Having traveled quite a bit around the world, I KNOW race has NOTHING to do with character. I have seen the same person in Spain that I saw in Fiji, that I saw in Jamaica, that I saw in London, etc. Same mannerisms, sense of humor, love of family, all the good found in the best of people. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and we were taught to judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Now we are being told by some that the most important part of a person is their race. Let’s fast forward that concept and see where it leads because eventually we will judge a race not by its best but by its worst members.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
"Now we are being told by some that the most important part of a person is their race."
…and in the US statistics and any number of studies clearly show that it is.
You want a loan? Odd how skin color alone will change your credit rating. An apartment? Odd how skin color alone determines your suitability, all other criteria being equal. In front of a judge, charged with the exact same crime, burden of proof, circumstances and mitigation a black man gets twice as hard a sentence as a white man. Black people die twice as often in proportion to police violence than white people.
You could argue that black people are more often disadvantaged and are exposed to a life of crime more often than white people…but that argument would in itself acknowledge that racism is systemic.
Racism means bias. It can be the mere opinion of some inbred rural tennessee klansman, sure…but it’s also equally valid a term for the fact that for some reason black people and latinos are disproportionally represented among the disadvantaged in the US.
"Having traveled quite a bit around the world, I KNOW race has NOTHING to do with character."
A pity the takeaway you needed to bring home – the one where the US has begun to come out horribly unfavorable to many other places in the world – was left by the roadside in those faraway vistas then.
"Let’s fast forward that concept and see where it leads because eventually we will judge a race not by its best but by its worst members."
Ask ten random police officers in Minnesota about their opinions around how much skin color affects their snap judgment of a situation. Do it off camera and fish for what they really say. Chauvin wasn’t an aberration, he was a very common type of Minnesota officer, and had been given many years worth of being given a free pass for actions which would have any non-police citizen in the slammer doing 10 to 20.
If the police won’t crack down on the toxic rot which lets the force elect an actual open white supremacist as their union rep – as is the case in Minnesota – then the unavoidable result is that those who abetted and assisted the criminals will be tarred with the same brush.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
We have credit ratings that determine if you have a history of not paying your bills. When I was in my early 20’s I maxed my credit cards and found myself way over my head in debt. It took nearly 8 years to break even. During that time I was turned down for car loans and apartments and had to pay cash for everything. Once I straightened out my credit, the same people who had turned me down were more than happy to have my business and couldn’t care less whether I was Black or White.
Attorney General Keith Ellison said had he seen racism he would have charged Chauvin with a Hate Crime. The worst police beating in US history was against Kelly Thomas a White guy. The police officers were fired but not tried for murder. Why? Racism?
Racism is more often than not a self-serving excuse and there are those who are skilled at using it.
Late for work—racism.
Failed a test—racism.
Flat tire—racism.
Toast is cold—racism.
Didn’t get a promotion—racism.
Got cancer—racism.
Couldn’t get a loan—racism.
Dog bit me—racism.
Got evicted—racism.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
"Once I straightened out my credit, the same people who had turned me down were more than happy to have my business and couldn’t care less whether I was Black or White. "
It’s somehow ironic that you raise that tale in a way which shows that you aren’t a black person. Statistics have shown time and time again that if your credit history is spotty then the color of your skin does have bearing.
You may want to google any of the hundreds of studies to have been made for the last century of financial history of black people. Here’s a good start; "Tackling Disparities in Finance for Black and African Americans".
According to the federal reserve the average white family has eight times the wealth of the average black family. Give me one single reason that is the case which doesn’t boil down to "racial bias" and you get a gold star. Here’s a hint though – you can’t. The fact itself proves race bias.
"Racism is more often than not a self-serving excuse and there are those who are skilled at using it."
Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s a good excuse because it’s so damn plausible. And every demographic has assholes keen to use the plausible excuse for <whatever>.
"Dog bit me—racism."
This is, I guess, a problem with people who lack self-awareness. In the american south especially, dogs, owned by both police and private individuals have been taught by or learned from their owners that dark skin color is an attack signal. Any dog owner knows damn well a dog will adopt the values of its owner. There’s even a documentary about it; "Mauled". Hence yes, black people do get bitten by dogs more often than white people do, because racist dog owners get racist dogs.
"Got evicted—racism."
Is this where we drop the thousands of pages worth of studies regarding redlining past and present, or racial bias in housing and tenancy, or how notables like Trump and other housing owners spent decades making sure black people weren’t welcome to rent with them? And we aren’t exactly talking about people showing up in gang jackets either – but normal people with no strikes against them save for their skin.
So yes; Eviction and refusal to rent based entirely on skin color is inherently part of the US. Has been for a long time.
"Didn’t get a promotion—racism."
Another google for you; "Why Black workers still face a promotion and wage gap that’s costing the economy trillions".
Here’s a clue; If statistics show there’s a gap in wages and position based entirely on skin color with all other factors being equal then that is racist bias. Dictionary-definition.
You don’t even get it; The reason black frauds can use excuses no white person would get away with is because all of those excuses are very plausible to begin with – if you’re black.
I’m pretty sure most black people would rather not have that "advantage".
Is this how you and your relatives in law enforcement approach their job? Ignore factual reality as long as it’s out of sight and explain away inconvenient facts with any thin straw of an excuse so you can pretend there isn’t a problem?
Here’s the reality; You live in a society where a white person has advantages in every aspect of their lives denied people who are darker in skin tone or have a different name.
You just don’t want to own that fact.
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98% of all statistics are irrelevant.
Home ownership is the most indicative indication of middle class and prior to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the fastest growing demographic in the US was the Black middle class. Laws were passed to allow financing of homeownership even if the borrower didn’t have the means to pay the mortgage. As long as home prices continued to increase the system worked but in 2007 prices collapsed. Those people who walked away from their investments lost everything. My son bought his house in 2005 and in 2007 it was worth half of what he paid for it but he kept making the payments. Now the house is worth twice what he paid. A disproportion of Black people walked away.
Just as the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was able to link every human being to Kevin Bacon within 6 steps, the rest of your comments only prove that there are those who can link everything to racism within 6 steps and there are those that will buy into it.
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"If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist."
Facts don’t care about your feelings. Or ours, for that matter.
Everything may not be about race, but enough is.
For the same crime, with the same burden of proof, the same severity and the same legal statutes? Black people are sentenced far harsher than white people.
Black people get killed by police proportionately twice as often as white people.
Black people are barred from bank loans, tenancy, subsidies and grants – by far more than white people in the same situation.
Black people are overrepresented in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Now, come up with any explanation to the above which doesn’t make the assumption that somehow those black people are a lesser people – and if you do you get a gold star for your efforts. I’ll save you some trouble and tell you beforehand that’s something you won’t be able to produce; Either the system is weighted against black people or the people manning the system are weighting it against black people. In both cases the result is dictionary-definition racism on a massive scale.
Realizing this isn’t being woke, it just means you’ve faced reality through empirical observation rather than wishful thinking and blinders. If the system turns down three black people for every white person when all other variables are equal then what you have is racism. That’s how that word works. It doesn’t require a burning cross on every black person’s lawn or a judenstern-equivalent mandate. It just requires that a demographic is denied the fair shake everyone else gets.
Meanwhile the FBI, for the umpteenth time in a row has declared the greatest domestic threat to national security being white supremacy organizations who have to a disturbing degree recruited from the military and police force.
I advise googling for "Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement" written by a former FBI agent regarding his undercover work among the white power crowd for an inkling on just how deeply rooted deliberately malicious racism is within the framework of government agencies nominally tasked to protect the public.
To state that "not everything is about racism" is accurate only in the same sense that saying "not everyone falling from the third floor dies" is. It’s not the exculpation of the situation you apparently think it is.
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You yahoos never seem to explain how white people calling other white people "racist" is racist. It comes across as trying to dodge being called racist by epic-level projection.
Situations like your son had to deal with would never be an issue if all the bad cops (enabled by the good cops) didn’t actually kill people for nothing at the drop of a hat, then close ranks around the offenders. if someone in other jobs was half as murderous as the average US cop, they would be kicked out by their own colleagues.
In Britain we have a word for the red-faced, angry, shouty, racist PoS (male and female) Karens. "Gammon". Man up and stop whining, and take responsibility. Sorry you had to deal with Vietnam, but supporting murderers is unforgivable.
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First of all nobody hates bad cops more than good cops. Good cops pay for the actions of bad cops. My son was standing in formation being call a racist piece of shit for what a cop a thousand miles away in Minneapolis did. I’ve asked my son if he had ever seen a cop do something illegal and he said no and that shouldn’t be surprising. Most cops value their careers and freedom much too much to risk doing something that might get caught on a video. He did say there are occasions where he would advise another cop on a better way to handle something but that’s it.
While my son has never shot anyone, my daughter in law has. She was tasked with serving felony warrants and the man she was serving fled so she gave chase. She and her partner cornered the guy and he came at her so she maced him. The man turned his back, reached in his pocket and pulled out a buck knife and came at her again. She fired 3 shots. The first one went into the ground, the next two went into his chest. Fortunately the man lived. My granddaughter was 3 at the time.
BTW Doctors and nurses kill 100s of times more people every year in the US than the police. Maybe we should start throwing them in jail and see how many people want to enter the medical field.
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"First of all nobody hates bad cops more than good cops."
If that is really the case, then how can Code Blue even be a thing? And we know it is, because those few Bad cops who finally end up getting caught invariably turn out to have a record many years long with the rest of the precinct and PD having stood at the back of that cop.
There are two possible scenarios left on the table at this point; Either Bad cops so outnumber the Good cops or the Good cops are so loath to crack down on "their own" it doesn’t make a difference. Either way means the corps as a whole is compromised.
"I’ve asked my son if he had ever seen a cop do something illegal and he said no and that shouldn’t be surprising."
Lucky him, I guess. Because it sure as hell isn’t plausible that the cops every member of a given community knows is on the take or likes himself a good game of bullying the other is somehow unknown to the people he partners up and works with for years under normal circumstances.
Putting it bluntly, if it’s the police’s job to serve and protect then every bad cop who lives right in their back yard for years on end is one massive clusterfuck on par with stuff which would get any other person fired from their job for being incompetent. Hell, even the US army has stricter lines drawn. And a better record at not killing civilians with soldiers on the ground patrolling cities on hostile turf. How the hell a batallion of gung-ho jarheads armed to the teeth in the middle of Kabul can manage less accidental murders than some police precincts on their home turf is beyond me.
But sure, "good cops" hate "bad cops". Let’s have a look at factual reality…
Minneapolis; The police union president is an active member of a White Power biker gang and…fairly well known for his views. I posit that every last cop in the state knows damn well they’ve basically elected a Klansman to the job.
Los Angeles; 18 confirmed gangs within law enforcement, some of whom have as initiation rite they need to have killed in the line of duty. Given that a lot of them use actual gang tattoos to proclaim their allegiance…all the "good cops" they work with must be blind.
New York; Starting with the "Dirty Thirty" and moving on to such luminaries as Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa…although given NY’s history in general with law enforcement it almost feels unfair to pick on the low hanging fruit in bringing it up.
We can pick any city with a scandal in law enforcement and find that the pointed out guilty parties had been known for years. Covered up for by other cops. Where are these good cops you speak of? They all just grind their teeth and put their blinders on?
Few other country has these same issues within their law enforcement system as the US does. Those who do tend to fall in under categories of places your travel agent is bound by good conduct to advise you not to go there.
No nation I’m aware off has anything as ridiculous as civil forfeiture on it’s books, arms its police with military weaponry, or teaches them to fire for effect before a threat manifests.
In fact, even the US military condemns standard law enforcement "warrior" training and conduct.
"Doctors and nurses kill 100s of times more people every year in the US than the police."
Really? You went down that road of blatant dishonest strawman rhetoric?
Before I have to just start flagging you as a troll here I’ll cordially invite you to spot the difference between a doctor or nurse doing their best to operate on a patient in dire need…and an officer of the law who stands idly by and keeps bystanders at bay while their colleague takes a knee on someone’s throat. Like the three cops assisting Chauvin. Two of whom were apparently young idealists – who stood by and chose not to do their job if it meant saving a life at the cost of talking back to a senior officer*. Code Blue once again.
The US police forces have an uphill struggle ahead of them before they can regain the trust of the public, and the first step will be to have an effective zero-tolerance policy, both concerning abusing the violence monopoly they hold and regarding the willingness of officers at all levels to allow bad apples to spread the rot.
This isn’t about making decent people knuckle down to any demand set by shameless petty grifters willing to pull the race/brutality/abuse card – it’s about making sure the hammer comes down, effectively, where all can see it, on every person with a badge using that badge for a power trip.
Because as long as a Chauvin is plausible any suspect shouting about police brutality will have benefit of doubt. US law enforcement needs to get to the point where a cop being crooked or a joykiller is as sensationalist as when a SEAL officer is caught as such.
And if you can’t accomplish that the barrel of apples keeps rotting until replacing the police with rent-a-cops beholden and accountable to standards of the ones paying their salaries becomes the less bad option.
That won’t be easy, nor painless. But it’s something you needed to get done before Code Blue ever became part of US policing and the difficulty to fix it now is the interest paid because no one ever cared enough to even try.
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Your allegation about gangs in LA law enforcement is just that, an allegation that has been going on for over 50 years. I read the Mother Jones and Rolling Stone articles about the gangs in the LASD that are months old (January and May) that also claims these accusations are being investigated by the FBI yet nothing has surfaced. I will reserve judgment till something concrete is produced.
Doctors, and nurses are doing their jobs and sometimes they make mistakes that cost lives yet we don’t throw them in jail.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
When you test the police, sometimes even the best police fail. Kim Potter was a 26 year veteran officer with no accusations of racism or brutality. Just like the doctors and nurses, she was doing her job when she made a mistake that took a life. She mistook her gun for her taser (a mistake that has happened at least 9 times before). However unlike doctors or nurses she will probably be going to jail for the Daunte Wright shooting. In fact they just upped the charges against her.
Officer Rolfe in May 2019, he was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for making more than 50 DUI arrests the previous year. In early 2020, he undertook training in the use of deadly force and in de-escalation. Just like doctors and nurses he was doing his job and for 41 minutes he patiently explained to Rayshard Brooks why he was being arrested before Brooks resisted that arrest. I have been in many fights as a kid and I am very familiar with the fight or flight syndrome. Within 5 seconds the officers were thrown around and onto the ground. The one officers taser was taken and being pointed back at them. Officers are not supposed to flee so the reflex is to fight with all you have. Rolfe did that and is now facing felony murder charges that could get him the death penalty in Georgia.
Do you think in this environment anyone in their right mind would want to be a police officer? These are not examples of the “bad apples” that you see as the problem. These are people doing the best they can and yet made mistakes.
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"First of all nobody hates bad cops more than good cops."
Weird. If that’s the case then you’d expect the bad cops to be ousted quickly from their positions, rather than all cops backing them without question unless there’s actual video evidence of how bad they are becoming quickly available. Yet, all these "good" cops seem to back their bad apples uniformly even when there’s a long known history of abuse and illegal actions from that very same cop.
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"Rcist" is an anti-White racial slur for White people (see also "Kren" and "Nzi"), just like "ngger" is an anti-Black racial slur for Black people.
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Man, aren’t you the epitome of Gammon.
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While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t think anything’s being gained by responding to a 4 month old comment whose only message is "I’m a moron".
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What the fuck is wrong with you?
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"not to risk their lives for the ungrateful"
But you are perfectly okay with them risking their lives for other officers who do wrong & expect the blue wall to protect them from justified repercussions & will put anyone who speaks the truth about how shitty a cop that bad apple is in dangerous situations without back up for being a rat.
"Children are being murdered weekly so soon these same politicians will demand police officers go out into a much more dangerous and hostile environment to restore order. No one should blame them for walking and not running to do that."
Assumes fiction spun on Faux News as being reality.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
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Murders are up 30% this year. Try this, every Monday google “people shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend”. The answer will usually include at least one under the age of 10.
I wouldn’t want my son to risk his life for you, but he probably would.
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You can usually tell that a person is getting his news from biased, ridiculously misleading news sources by the way they fixate on Chicago and its easy to mislead people with stats. If you don’t understand how you’re being misled, I suggest widening your reading material.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Generally if I want the unvarnished truth I have to rely on a source outside the US like the Daily Mail or Al Jazeera. But I have every confidence that when the news outlets report the death of a child they’re not joking.
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"But I have every confidence that when the news outlets report the death of a child they’re not joking."
…but depending on the spin of the media agency you listen to you may walk away with a VERY different view as to the guilty party responsible for the death.
The police storming the wrong house and a twelve year old falls riddled with bullets? Will come out truthful in some reports but I can predict the OANN/Fox angle – "Child dead in drug bust! Police Chief laments the ruthlessness of drug dealers setting up shop in family neighbourhoods! News at 11!"
"Generally if I want the unvarnished truth I have to rely on a source outside the US like the Daily Mail or Al Jazeera."
It’s a biting irony that today to get accurate news out of the US you need to go find it from Al-Jazeera, China’s English news channel, or Haaretz…
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Ah. Finally we can agree on something. The news media here is short on facts and long on opinion. That is why we are such a divided nation on the verge of a civil war.
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"The news media here is short on facts and long on opinion."
Ironically many EU nations all have one or more tax-funded media outlets run by trusts divorced from elected politicians to maintain a relatively objective view whereas the media-for-profit crowd have all knuckled under to the demands of the market.
Some things are just unhealthy to run with a profit motive. If the money is in sensationalism, infrastructure monopolies and keeping people sick longer what you get is infotainment, Ma Bell, and industries vested in keeping people sick longer or eating more medication.
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"Unvarnished" "truth" from the Daily Heil? The paper that supported literal Nazis? The one which yearns to be a tabloid version of Fox News? Ha! Even the (London) Times would be much better if you want a "Conservative" bent. But it’s not /those/ Conservative values you prize, I’ll wager.
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"I have to rely on a source outside the US like the Daily Mail"
If you’re relying on a source that’s well known to lie to its readers, I have some very bad news for you…
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CNN: "1,606 people were shot in a single three-month summer period in Chicago."
First Google hit, first line of story. From CNN. 03 OCT 2021.
Is CNN lying? Is it a "biased, ridiculously misleading news source", PaulT?
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"Murders are up 30% this year. Try this, every Monday google “people shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend”."
Proportionally US police murder more people per capita than actual criminals do in half a dozen other nations in the world…so you’ll have to forgive those of us not american if we don’t consider your revelations on Chicago as much more than yet another reason never to go stateside. I don’t believe adding more trigger-happy gang members to the streets will help.
All this mess boils down to, to me, is that this is yet another aspect where the ‘US fails to meet any sort of international standards.
Just about every household in Switzerland has a full-auto assault rifle in the weapon cupboard and the swiss do love them guns, and yet they have one of the smallest gun murder rates per capita in the world. Sweden has more high-power hunting rifles per capita than the US does and yet gun violence here is never anywhere close to the US.
You people are doing a great many things fundamentally wrong if this is the result you get. And one of the very many things you’ve gotten wrong is policing. If you’d held your cops to higher standards in the first place you wouldn’t be in the place where by now very many assume anyone with a badge not to have any standards at all. This is the end result of Code Blue.
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And your response is why people assume the readers of Techdirt are leftists. You live in fantasy world. Join us in reality and you’ll see that YOUR actions are the ones that have consequences.
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"As a father of two in law enforcement whose spouses are also in law enforcement I know their motivation for doing the job, the pride they took in doing it and the betrayal they now feel."
So to summarize you consider it "betrayal" when law enforcement is held to any standards of accountability?
US police kill, every day, more than a thousand times more people per capita than any other police force in the civilized world – or the not so civilized, for that matter. In order to find law enforcement so riddled with joykillers and abusers as in the US you literally have to visit third worlod hellholes and war zones.
Those are the facts.
The US stands alone as a nation with this problem. No other country in the world this side of the G20 has any kind of similar issue.
Your son and other people like him are, today, Schindlers. When you’re wearing the uniform associated with harrassment and abuse you don’t get the benefit of doubt.
"Since the WOKE have linked EVERYTHING to racism every police encounter with POC is viewed as a possible hate crime not only by the “community” but by the mayors, city officials and now even the President."
Know how I can tell you aren’t black? I’m guessing when your kids were young you held "The Talk" with them at some point – which for a white person means discussing the birds and the bees. To black people, today, that "Talk" is about how to recognize they’ve encountered a White Supremacist with a badge and how to make it out alive.
The FBI finding that white supremacy organization membership and police employment has become an overlapping Venn diagram isn’t WOKE. Banks, Judges, Government agencies of all stripes persistently producing statistics skin color makes them judge far harsher for coloured people given the exact same criteria found in white people. But hey, go ask a black person sometime whether they consider racism "real".
"Needless to say he will be advising my grandchildren not to risk their lives for the ungrateful."
And good riddance. No one needs a person who believes the standards every other police officer in the world takes for granted are burdensome to carry a gun in the government’s employ.
It all boils down to you, trying to defend a rot in the US police force which no one outside of america even recognizes – because it’s such an unholy aberration everyone else considers it abominable. But because you have a family background in the force, anyone telling you that force needs to shape up is the enemy. Nice gang code you’ve got going there.
This shit happens because almost every officer who didn’t take part in murder and abuse still defended those officers who did. Today there are no good cops left in US policing. Only those who abuse their badge – and those who have the back of those abusers.
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Let me call BS on your facts. Truth is…
Police in the US kill approximately 1000 people each year in a country of 333 million people with at least that many guns. That includes car accidents and suicide by cop. The majority of them are White and the VAST, VAST majority are male. There are approximately 20,000 gangs and a million gang members in the US with just under 90% of their membership being POC. Black men (only 6% of the population) are responsible for more than half the murders in the US. While Blacks kill mostly Blacks they also kill twice as many Whites every year as Whites kill Blacks.
Given the fact that in 2020 the police killed 983 men and only 38 women why aren’t the police considered more sexist than racist? That’s rhetorical we both know the answer.
Given the fact that only 6% of the population is responsible for more than half the murders in the US maybe the TALK should include “DON’T KILL PEOPLE”.
Given the fact that Blacks kill mostly Blacks and therefore make up nearly half the murder victims in the US wouldn’t it be more racist to allow that to go unchecked than to try and do something about it? In the endeavor to do something about it I will grant racism without racist intent. Police have limited tools to stop the killings with the most effective being proactive policing. In areas of more gun violence and crime they (the policy makers) will send more police to make more stops in an effort to separate guns from the potential perpetrators. That was somewhat effective and greatly reduced the murder rates from their highs in the 90s. The police know from the victims that most of the perpetrators in that area are not White, not female, not Asian, and not old, then when they encounter the remaining demographic there is the tension and suspicion that Black men have complained about.
If you believe there are no good cops then let’s do the experiment and eliminate them from a small area and see what happens. Maybe like CHOP in Seattle—Oh wait, that didn’t turn out so well. Maybe we should go overseas to recruit since nobody here in their right mind wants to do the job anymore. Maybe even hire entire police departments from a city of your choice and see how they fare. Better yet you do it, they are dishing out signing bonuses. BTW Black people are disproportionally represented in the criminal demographic of every country in the world so don’t look for that to change.
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I’ll note that you didn’t respond to this statement:
If you people inside the system won’t weed out the rot, and instead get angry at other people for pointing it out… what hope do you think we have when you rally in defense of cops who shoot people who flee while naked and unarmed?
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This is what I wrote to someone else
First of all nobody hates bad cops more than good cops. Good cops pay for the actions of bad cops. My son was standing in formation being call a racist piece of shit for what a cop a thousand miles away in Minneapolis did. I’ve asked my son if he had ever seen a cop do something illegal and he said no and that shouldn’t be surprising. Most cops value their careers and freedom much too much to risk doing something that might get caught on a video. He did say there are occasions where he would advise another cop on a better way to handle something but that’s it.
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As in people trust them less, or good cops realize that trying to report bad cops gets them in even bigger trouble? The former is what’s happening now. The latter is anecdotally what happens in most police departments.
Members of a group generally don’t act in a way that jeopardizes other members of the group. No, it’s not really surprising. We’ve seen too many situations where bodycam footage just conveniently disappears, or all seven bodycams of a troop of trigger-happy cops happen to fail all at the same time.
Track records would indicate otherwise.
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"If you believe there are no good cops then let’s do the experiment and eliminate them from a small area and see what happens."
If there were good cops then how come every officer who finally is convicted of a crime turns out to have a track record several years long where every complaint and charge was buried by…alibis and backup freely provided courtesy of Code Blue?
Sorry, but as long as the police are willing to close ranks behind casual criminals come hell or high water then there are indeed no good cops. And those who would be good cops are, by now, reaping the fruits of that very long policy.
"Let me call BS on your facts. Truth is…"
If you want to call BS then perhaps some context would be in order;
USA: 28,54 killed by law enforcement per 10 million people, annually.
Same number for the last dozen countries in the same statistic…between 0 and 1,7.
So OK, not a thousand times as many in most countries, but even "only" ten times as many does not make for a good look. Germany’s been slipping lately and with their 1,3 ppl killed per 10 million annually by law enforcement they’re already hollering about police overreach.
You guys? You’re on par with Mexico, Rwanda, Swaziland, Bangladesh, Argentina when it comes to killing by law enforcement alone.
This is just another utterly sad statistic in a long list where the US turns out to "lead". Back in the 50’s and 60’s american presidents proudly held your nation up as a great example for others. Today? Not a day passes but we see the news and go "Only In America". And that’s not a compliment any longer.
The police carry the violence monopoly. The right of a government to exert force of violence against it’s citizenry in narrow and restricted circumstances. Every other nation considers this task incredibly important and vets the people entrusted to bear that burden extensively with a large and usually very effective structure aimed to ensure accountability of it’s police forces.
Only in america is the task of "Being a Cop" treated with less consideration or auditing than a corporate janitor or MacDonald’s burger flipper. Only in that nation has the accountability of law enforcement been practiced in reverse for so long that by now when a PD is called to question over a premeditated murder on camera, performed by four officers in the open the result is that the corps as a whole decides to pull a passive-aggressive sulk campaign because they’re being called to question over how the fuck someone like Chauvin could become a veteran on the force.
And if you don’t see the massive problem here then you are part of that problem.
Re: Nail On Head
DaveC, you’re exactly right: "The police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t."
Cushing has made his living saying "Fuck the police, they need to stop doing their jobs!" Now that Minneapolis PD is doing exactly what he asked for, he’s complaining "Fuck the police, they need to do their jobs!"
Which is it, Techdirt. Do you want police to enforce law and order, or not? Make up your minds. But since Techdirt has never had the courage of its convictions, we shouldn’t expect them to start now, I suppose.
Ah yes...
People are LITERALLY GOING "take money away from police officers", AKA "DEFUND THE POLICE" and you’re going "that’s not what they meant". Except that it is, they admit as such.
But, of course, YOU won’t admit that YOU’RE wrong in this situation. This is what you wanted, Timmy! You and everyone else here, for all the lies, hate and vitriol you pour on cops. You wanted this. Now you’re upset that you’re getting what you wanted.
"Wrong, recent retiree Gerlicher. I can. I can blame those cops for being "less aggressive." I mean, we want cops to keep their aggression in check when interacting with the public, but the "aggression" this quitter is referring to is nothing more than doing the sort of stuff we pay cops to do… like combat and deter crime."
Uh, no, this is WHAT YOU WANTED!
YOU WANTED LESS COP INTERACTION! YOU WANTED THE COPS TO TONE DOWN WHAT THEY WERE DOING! YOU WANTED COPS TO STOP ARRESTING PEOPLE!
You can’t tell me that you didn’t want this. I’ve been on and off techdirt for YEARS and I’ve seen almost NOTHING but BITCHING from you, Mike and other writers about "cops are bad". But people called you out on it and said "if the cops disappeared, you’d be screaming "WHERE ARE THE COPS?!", just like you’re doing now.
Oh, you CLAIM to be "concerned" about the innocent people. But if you were, you wouldn’t be demonizing cops like you have for years.
This is on you, Mike and the other Techdirt anti-cop writers. You can’t spend YEARS (since 2012 and earlier) going "cops are bad" over and over and over and OVER again and then go "we’re just thinking about the poor people of [insert city] here" without being scum.
There’s a reason the saying is "be careful what you wish for, you may just get it" after all.
Re: Ah yes...
Then what’s your solution to the problem of bad cops’ misdeeds being covered up by their fellow officers? What’s your solution to police abuse of power? Put up some solutions or shut up.
Re: Re: Ah yes...
"What’s your solution to police abuse of power?"
What does that have anything to do with this commenter correctly pointing out that Techdirt (and Cushing especially) has spent a decade wanting police to not do their jobs. Now the Minneapolis PD is doing exactly what Techdirt has been asking for… and Techdirt complains.
Your comment is a non sequitur.
Re: Re: Re: Ah yes...
Why does your job require harassment and torment of the unarmed and cooperative?
And again, if you’re not doing your job, why do you still deserve to get paid for all the nothing you do?
Your numbers are still way off! Try this not so officer friendly website.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
Of those countries on the list none have the gangs or guns that the US has.
The rest of what you said is also wrong.
When my son completed his academy (10 months) he was hired by the Sheriff’s department and assigned a training officer. He was amazed by his training officer because when they pulled someone over his training officer would ask if they were on probation. The training officer didn’t ask everyone but 90% of the ones he did ask said yes. My son wanted patrol, but after completing his training he was told “you can’t spot the bad guys and you don’t know the area” and he was assigned to work in the jails and spent the next 3 years there. After 6 months in the jails he told me he could spot someone who had been to prison just by the way they walked down the street or by the way they acted around him.
My daughter-in-law spent 2 years as MP in the army and had a degree in Criminal Justice before she hired on to the Sheriff’s department. My son’s favorite joke is “I met my wife in jail”.
My daughter wanted to be an FBI agent since she was 4 years old. She doesn’t work for the FBI but is doing exactly the same work for a different agency. She has a master’s degree in Forensic Investigation. She met my son-in-law when they both working on the US Capitol police department.
Re: Re:
"Your numbers are still way off! Try this not so officer friendly website."
Uh, ok. Yeah, 33,5 killed per 10 million is indeed higher than 28,54.
"Of those countries on the list none have the gangs or guns that the US has."
Switzerland has a full-auto assault rifle in just about every home and a gun culture even more gun-loving than the NRA’s wettest dreams could envision. The issue then being gangs.
Gangs…is a separate discussion. If you are making the argument that the US is socially in a similar situation as Argentina, Mexico, Sudan, Rwanda and Colombia then…yeah, I actually can’t argue, except to point out that something is well and truly fscked up stateside if you consider that situation normal in any way, shape or form.
"When my son completed his academy (10 months)…"
It’s a good thing and all that your son and your family have been lucky enough in that regard; I’m not sure where he does his job but I’m guessing he isn’t in LA or Minneapolis. It’s obvious quality control among police cadets is…greatly varied.
And that’s the problem. Anecdotal experience is local and doesn’t scale. That bad cop? He’s the PR department of the precinct. Chauvin has indelibly become the face of the Minneapolis PD.
Anecdotal evidence will blind. Even in the worst of cases there’s always at least one benevolent example to raise. In the case of police, a handful of bad cops will do more harm than an entire precinct can prevent. They operate with immunity – which they only needed to be given in the first place since due to blatant malfeasance by uniformed officers any complaint by suspects was all too plausible for a judge to just shake out of court. And the community? They know the uniform which comes around mostly doesn’t interact with them. When it does, though, someone too often dies or burns through their life savings for a hospital visit.
And it isn’t just one bad cop when Judges in the US have the infamous Brady List – a list of officers proven to lie or manufacture evidence so often any normal citizen would have done time for perjury, not just get registered as "non-credible" and still get to remain on the job.
By now I’m not convinced anything short of an inquisitorial purge will salvage the reputation of US police.
Because for every conscientious officer quietly going about their job there’s someone taking a knee to a throat, charging some battered black guy for destruction of state property (bleeding on the officer’s uniform – Henry Davis), getting caught on camera beating some minority into oblivion or shooting some child half a dozen times point blank. Those guys? They’re the ones everyone will remember, because their badge gives them power and backup.
One issue and possible reason I could point to is that "policeman" seems to be, in the US, very low on the totem pole when it comes to skilled professions, if ten months is the academy term. I only have Sweden to compare with but over here police training consists of 30 months of education. Only after that do they start their stint as rookies under mentors at a precinct. I have no idea why the US would consider providing the holders of the violence monopoly with less education than you’d expect from a bachelor’s degree or have so short a time under supervision for superiors to properly vet candidates.
It doesn’t seem, to me, that the sort of job where you’ll be responsible for lives – or if necessary, taking them – merits the sort of education, training and supervision you’d expect from a short-order cook. As it is the US police regularly finds itself doing jobs they are poorly trained to do – and this obviously includes de-escalation.
I’d honestly ban warrior training and offer every officer candidate actual army training instead. Deeper vetting and a better trained response to angry citizens than approaching them with what every soldier swears is the worst possible way to inflame the situation would probably do wonders.
But what you have instead is a force which when citizens protest peacefully or cooperate in every possible way still risks them dying, if they were just a bit unlucky in the officer they encounter.
That just isn’t acceptable. Chauvin should have been an aberration, not something as common as dirt.
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I disagree since most police departments have similar requirements it is not the training to begin their careers that is at issue. How often can you train for that split second decision of taking a life that may occur 0 to 2 in a 25 to 30 year career. Most “bad cops” have never taken a life previously nor have they done it in the first or second year of their career.
Police respond to crime and criminals so they see the worst in people and that will taint you. Where my son patrolled is the tenth largest city in the US with a population of 1 million. He saw his first murder after only a few weeks on patrol and in the more than 20 years of patrol he has seen dozens more. He even experienced a man try and kill his wife (my daughter-in-law). Rapes, child abuse, assaults, domestic violence, robberies, are almost a daily occurrence. Most police officers signed up to stop that and the frustration of the never ending violence committed by just a few can be overwhelming and numbing at the same time.
The one unanswered question everyone has about Chauvin was what the hell he was thinking. I’m not sure even he knows. He knew he was being videoed, he knew he had his knee on George Floyd’s neck and that the entire department was under a consent decree and being scrutinized yet he arrogantly starred back at the camera and continued. Even had George Floyd survived this was probably going to end Chauvin’s career.
As a parent of a police officer I worried about not only his safety but his mental health. Throughout his career he has received the very latest in training yet little was been done to relieve the stress. One of things that maintained his commitment was that his job was necessary and appreciated. Now he is being told by the very people that he dedicated decades of his life to protect that neither of those is true. 32 months till retirement and he is only staying because he is no longer on patrol.
Most young talented people are idealist looking for a meaningful career. It will be a long time before those people once again consider law enforcement. The experienced officers at the end of their careers can’t wait to get out. Those at the beginning are looking to change careers and those in the middle are transferring away from high crime cities. Despite high signing bonuses, cities like Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis where the protests were loudest can’t get even unqualified applicants to apply. Murder rates are way up and I doubt if they recruited every cop in Sweden that it would make a difference at this point.
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And yet, people in other jobs get trained for scenarios they rarely come across. When they mess up on these rare scenarios they don’t get a free pass.
The definition of "bad cop" doesn’t exclusively cover taking a life. If you’re a racist asshole who goes on a high from power tripping, "not taking a life" is not a sign that you’re not a bad person. The fact that you’ve met the bare minimum for not being a completely irredeemable, soulless jerk is not something to be celebrated as an achievement.
If anyone had to guess, he likely believed that he wouldn’t be exposed to consequences. The reactions of police apologists from most police abuse cases largely focus on the reactions you have – police are under so much stress they shouldn’t be held accountable, and what would you rather they do, not do their jobs? Same thing for many of the reactions of departments when the courts tell them that cops should wear body cameras. The general sentiment is that cops can’t do their jobs if they’re not free to act without consequence.
Of course he probably didn’t think he was going to end up being the match that lit the powder keg the US was sitting on, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
Realistically, would it? Had Floyd survived, it’d be far easier for the department to brush off any questioning and put up their typical explanations. "It’s standard procedure." "Our officers are trained." "We have to be tough or criminals will think we’re pushovers." Hell, Chauvin would likely have got away with a "I feared for my life" response and got himself some paid vacation and a department transfer, as tends to be the norm. The idea that police brutality automatically ends careers is simply not backed up by the stats.
Welcome to most jobs. Unless you’re someone senior or in a position to be so, your overall contribution is unlikely to matter much more than a blip in someone else’s shareholder portfolio.
Again, this is most jobs around the world at this point. More people are realizing that they’re not valued as individuals or contributors; they’re numbers meant to uphold someone else’s legacy and have all value squeezed out of them before being tossed in the trash like a rotting banana peel. The truth is most jobs are simply not valuable enough for young people to support a growing career, never mind a family, home ownership, and most of the other "life milestones" their parents think they should have.
Re: Re: Re:2 Just another job?
Just like any other job.
Doctors and nurses’ mistakes kill roughly 400 times as many Americans as the police do and of course (as always) those mistakes disproportionately affect African Americans. If we use statistics (as they do to prove all racism) we will find that not only is the medical profession more deadly than policing, it is also more racist. Yet I can’t find one doctor or nurse sent to jail or even charged with a felony for a death. Not one protest or riot. Not one hospital burned to the ground. Not one doctor ambushed or assaulted. You demand consequences, then let’s see what the consequences are of sending doctors and nurses to jail. Tell them their job is just like most jobs if they kill somebody they are going to jail and if that person was Black, then they are racist. Let’s see how many people join the medical field. Let’s see how many doctors and nurses risk their freedom and livelihood to treat the sick.
My son once told me, “When I go to work, I carry pepper spray, a Taser, a baton, and a gun. That doesn’t make me dangerous that makes me well armed. She (he pointed to my granddaughter) makes me dangerous, because I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure I come home to her.” We demand the police put themselves in perilous situations for us yet not be dangerous. When things go sideways you want them to pay the price. Well now we are seeing the consequences you asked for. Chauvin is in jail, Kim Potter is in jail, officer Rolf is facing the death penalty, police are retiring or quitting, more guns on the streets, murder rates not seen in 30 years, more cops killed, more unsolved crimes, departments overwhelmed, slow response times, businesses closing due to theft, and of course the most important result of all, more Black Lives Taken.
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Your tired excuses are just as pathetic and weak whether you’re signed in or out, davec.
Get bent.
One of the Black thugs you defend will assault you
I’m a former bleeding heart liberal. I used to buy all the "poor Black people" BS, and made the same stupid excuses made by other bleeding hearts, such as poverty, racism, etc holding the poor Black man down. Then I woke up and faced reality.
Even if I had never seen the DOJ stats on crime or other sources showing the statistics that Blacks commit more violent crime than all races combined (57% on average every year, 90% in the last year due to defund the police), or hadn’t seen all the videos on the news and on sites like youtube, I’d still have the experience of living in the ghetto and seeing firsthand the utter savagery of these animals.
I’m not saying there aren’t good Black people out there, but they’re getting more and more hard to find. You either get those that are committing the violent crimes, or those that defend them with those excuses. Sure, there are those who don’t defend them, but they’re Trump supporters for some reason, which proves how stupid they are.
I’m also not saying cops should go around killing people unless their lives are on the line. Floyd didn’t pose a threat, and Chauvin could have left him in the back seat of the squad instead of killing him.
You know what, though? I really don’t fucking care. Floyd was a criminal, just like all the other Blacks who were killed or injured by cops, except for a couple rare instances, like Elijah McClain. They were either violent criminals or associated with them.
In my neighborhood, I know of at least 3 people shot and killed by Blacks in the last couple years where it was close to home. I know of others through media reports, of elderly women getting beaten and having their purses stolen, of women getting raped mere blocks from cop stations, and so on.
You bitch about the cops collecting paychecks for not doing their job. Well, let them do their fucking job and stop calling them racists for doing it. Kim Potter should not be in jail for shooting Daunte Wright, who was a gang member that shot a kid in the head and choked a woman at gun point while robbing her, and then fought with cops to avoid jail time.
That’s why they get shot. That’s why they’re in jail the most, because they commit the most violent crime and attack cops the most. Less that 13% of the population is responsible for 90% of violent crime. Let that sink into your thick skills, before you become yet another one of their victims.
Re: One of the Black thugs you defend will assault you
"I’m a former bleeding heart liberal"
Interesting. I’t’s my experience that virtually nobody who claims such things is being truthful, but that’s noted.
"You either get those that are committing the violent crimes, or those that defend them with those excuses"
Weird, that’s exactly what others are saying about the cops. You know, the convicted murderers who only saw the inside of a courtroom because public backlash convinced their defenders to do something.
"Floyd didn’t pose a threat, and Chauvin could have left him in the back seat of the squad instead of killing him."
Indeed. If Floyd has seen the inside of a cell instead of a morgue, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This isn’t really hard – stop killing people and others will stop complaining about the bodies.
"Floyd was a criminal, just like all the other Blacks who were killed or injured by cops"
Well, how to unpack this? First, there’s a long list of examples of innocent people being killed or injured by cops, so it’s a long way from "all". Then, the law states ideas like due process, which apply even to people with a history of criminal activity. Then, there’s little evidence that Floyd was guilty of what he was accused of doing, and even if he was guilty, the punishment for that was not death. Even if he was guilty, the issue is potential jailtime after a fair trial being replaced by summary execution without one, not the fact that he encountered a cop.
"In my neighborhood, I know of at least 3 people shot and killed by Blacks in the last couple years"
In mine, I don’t. If I did, the race of the perpetrators would not be a primary factor of concern. Where I live, a bunch of violent crime is linked to English and Irish drug cartels, but I don’t see anyone focussing on the fact that they were white.
"Less that 13% of the population is responsible for 90% of violent crime"
Yet, the majority of black people are not violent criminals, and the system is heavily weighted toward ensuring they are recorded more often. The historical disenfranchisement and systematic abuse against those populations certainly don’t help the figures, but you do yourself no favours by pretending that skin colour and crime are directly related and pretend that all 13% of those people are bad guys. I know it’s hard for knuckle-dragging racists to understand context, but you should at least start by pretending to be in the same area.
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You poor, slow witted liberal. You’re typical of the problem our society faces, and people like you have existed throughout history: Too focused on your ideology that you refuse to face the facts in front of you.
Really, you don’t think people can change based on evidence put before them? If you intend to cross the street thinking it’s safe, only to have a car come speeding out of nowhere, are you still going to cross the street? I wish you would.
I’m a centrist democrat who hates Trump and his idiotic supporters. Of course, you’ll claim that’s a lie too. In fact, everything you say is the typical cut and paste argument that idiots like you resort to because you’re too stupid to think for yourself. Right, "knuckle dragger"?
The fact of the matter is that a group of people that represent a small portion of the population, not just in America, but worldwide, commit the most crime. Get off your lazy, ignorant ass and do some research, and keep your mouth shut until you know what you’re talking about.
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"You’re typical of the problem our society faces"
Nah, I’m just an outsider laughing at idiots.
"Really, you don’t think people can change based on evidence put before them?"
Evidence has context.
"I’m a centrist democrat who hates Trump and his idiotic supporters"
Why do racist idiots who adhere to right-wing fascist and racist ideologies always seem to thing everyone else will be fooled if they claim the opposite before spouting said ideology?
"a group of people that represent a small portion of the population, not just in America, but worldwide, commit the most crime."
I’m hoping that you will read some facts and figures about world demographics to see why I’m laughing, even before you start to read why the figures about US crime is skewed that way to begin with, but I’m frankly surpassed that someone so stupid managed to write such coherent sentences.
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You’re making ridiculous statements that do nothing to refute the facts. So, you think that, because you don’t live in a neighborhood where Blacks commit crime that it means it doesn’t happen? Does that mean that, if Trump didn’t rape someone you know, that he didn’t rape over 40 women and a girl? Do you understand basic logic?
Look up the DOJ stats on violent crime, specifically the rate of crime in inner city Black neighborhoods. Look up the car jacking that happened a few miles west of South Minneapolis while the Fox 9 news crew were there to do a story on another crime that happened there, and they filmed it happening. Tell me what color the criminal was. Look up the elderly White women being assaulted for their purses and tell me what color the criminal was.
Go to Youtube and search "Black people attack" and see what you get. You think that’s a hoax, that it’s some kind of deep fake? That’s reality, something you’re clearly detached from.
Don’t tell me that poverty or any other nonsense is the reason, because plenty of other people who face those issues don’t rape, beat, rob, and murder people, including other Blacks.
I never said the majority of Blacks commit crime. That’s you throwing in a nonsensical argument to deflect. Even if you say it’s a high 30% though, that means less than 5% of the population is guilty of committing 60% of violent crime every year, and 90% in the last year. That’s followed by Hispanics at around 20%, Whites at 10%, and other races at the remaining 10%.
You’re just as stupid, ignorant, and racist as the Trumpers you condemn, and you do the same thing they do, which is to point their fingers accusingly at others to avoid facing what’s wrong with yourself. Like I said, I’m a centrist democrat who was a bleeding heart when I was younger. Unlike you, I care about the truth, not forwarding an extremist agenda.
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"So, you think that, because you don’t live in a neighborhood where Blacks commit crime that it means it doesn’t happen?"
No, I think that it’s an anecdote, which is meaningless in wider conversation.
"Look up the DOJ stats on violent crime"
Does that include things like population numbers and historical information, or do you just take it out of context because it fits your prejudices? Because I might already be aware of the actual context…
"Don’t tell me that poverty or any other nonsense is the reason, because plenty of other people who face those issues don’t rape, beat, rob, and murder people, including other Blacks."
So, why do Americans shoot school children so much regularly than everyone else, most of them white?
I do, by the way, love the fact that you rant like an Alex Jones parody then accuse me of being emotional. Funny, really.
"I’m a centrist democrat"
I’m fairly sure that the only time I’ve ever seen this said is by a Trumper who wants to pretend otherwise. people who know things about political know that Democrats are not neutral (hint – they’re centre-right in most of the world, the US has no leftists in meaningful power)
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You are such a laughable little bitch, it’s hilarious. See, I have a sense of humor, you Black dick sucking bitch.
Look up Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, you retard. You accuse me of taking things out of context to justify my "racism" when you’re doing just that.
Seriously, get off your lazy ass and try to read something that counters your hatred of White people. These are DOJ and FBI facts. They aren’t right wing propaganda. They aren’t "taken out of context".
You want watch any news report on any given day, go to youtube, etc to see the evidence, which your slow, tiny brain will try to excuse as "over representation". If Blacks are shown committing crime more, it’s because they commit more crime. Is that too fucking logical for you?
I made it pretty fucking clear in my last comment that Trump is a rapist. He’s a racist, a punk, a traitor. Do you have severely limited reading comprehension issues, or are you just such a stupid fucking liberal you can’t see it?
I know it’s hard for morons like you to understand, but there are democrats who see the truth about you liberals, just like they see the truth about the communist conservatives. I’m sure you’ll resort to your typical stupidity because you like taking it up the ass from Black guys, though.
I really do wish you could come to North Minneapolis so I could kick your fucking head it. At least you wouldn’t get shot from one of the hoods you defend though, dipshit.
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Fuck me, it took 6 weeks for that comeback, and all you managed to say is "yes, us racists are insecure pathetic children who cling to desperate fantasies to justify our own failures in life!"?
Well done, I guess.
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Wasn’t a complete loss. We found davec’s other working pseudonym.