Florida Governor Signs Law That Punishes Protesters For Protesting, Denies Them Bail
from the bunch-of-assholes-being-protected-by-an-even-bigger-asshole dept
Even though Florida didn’t see many of the anti-police violence protests that spread across the nation in the wake of the George Floyd killing, its legislature and its governor have apparently decided protesters have it too easy. Governor Ron DeSantis feels the best approach to handling people fed up with police brutality and their lack of accountability is to throw more protesters (and rioters) in jail more often, and for longer.
Here are just some of the expansions signed into law by DeSantis:
The law defines “riot” in an absurdly overbroad way, if just three people “meet together to commit a breach of the peace,” triggering all kinds of enhanced penalties for those involved. If nine people are involved and traffic is blocked, participants can be charged with “aggravated rioting.”
Shockingly, it would allow peaceful protesters to be charged with a crime if other people at a demonstration they attend do something violent. “Those individuals who do not engage in any violent conduct under this bill can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony and face up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights,” said an official with ACLU Florida.
On top of that, it forbids anyone arrested under the new law from being released prior to their first court appearance, creating what appears to be an unlawful presumption of guilt that bypasses bail and bond options for those still only accused of violations.
The law [PDF] also expands protections for state monuments (even [or, perhaps, especially] the Confederate ones) and undercuts any local efforts to reduce police department budgets by moving funds to social services or other options that might allow people in mental distress to be handled by someone who isn’t armed and “reasonably” scared. If even a single local official disagrees with law enforcement budget reductions, the state can step in and veto the changes.
Considering the root of these protests lies in the lack of accountability shown by law enforcement agencies, the law’s targeting of unhappy citizens makes it clear Florida cops won’t be punished for violating rights and won’t be expected to treat residents with respect. More power has been given to law enforcement agencies — powers that can be used to easily disrupt and dismantle protests by people unhappy with the services they’re paying for.
If the goal is to exacerbate an already tense situation, Governor DeSantis has accomplished that. He — along with the state reps who voted for this bill — has made it clear he believes it’s the state’s taxpayers who are wrong. This broadly written law that criminalizes the actions of bystanders will convert riot police to goon squads, allowing them to cage as many disgruntled citizens as possible. This treatment will presumably continue until the public’s morale improves and they finally start viewing the people beating and imprisoning them as the righteous warriors cops believe they are.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, arrests, florida, free speech, police brutality, protests, ron desantis
Comments on “Florida Governor Signs Law That Punishes Protesters For Protesting, Denies Them Bail”
Meanwhile, Koby hallucinates "left-wing fascism" in the next thread over.
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You have a right to peacefully protest, but you don’t have a right to riot and loot and be a thug. It turns out that the "fiery but mostly peaceful" destruction was not a hallucination. Perhaps, the leftists should just stick to wrecking their own cities.
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Got a quick and simple question for you in that case: Since this law allows an entire group to be blamed for the actions of a subset of it, and you’re so very concerned about property destruction and ‘thugs’ would you be in favor of charging everyone who attended(both inside the building and outside) the failed insurrection with felonies, years of prison time and stripping them of their ability to vote? A simple yes or no will do, because if it’s good enough for those in florida it should be good enough for those in DC.
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3 police officers attempt to break up a bar fight. How does this law not apply? There is no exception for ‘authorized force’.
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How does this law not apply?
Oh that’s easy, laws don’t apply to police, and even if they did you’d need to find a prosecutor willing to use this law against not one or two but three cops, and good luck finding one of those.
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Can you say, "content based restriction of speech"? I knew you could!
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The heck with that, don’t be so wishy-washy. It’s a well know fact that most if not all the insurrectionists were republican supporters, so why shouldn’t all republican voters and politicians be tried for treason? It’s just as logical and reasonable as this Florida bill. Goose and Gander, don’t ya know.
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The people who trespassed at the capital should be prosecuted for doing so. Those that entered should be charged with breach. Those who caused damage should be charged as such. And those who stole should be charged as such.
Yes. Charge every one of them.
I separate the legal rally from the people who committed illegal acts.
When you trespass you stop being legal protest and become criminals.
You need permission to protest on private property. For public lands this is by permit!
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you mean like the cops that got caught destroying stuff at protests? ya know, the cops that got the ENTIRE undercover division in new york disbanded?
yeah, 95% of the violence at protests was police instigated.
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That is impressive in a horrifying way. Both that they were responsible for all that and they got New York to take that extreme measures when the NYPD is overpowered in influence.
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Oh please Koby, do tell us your thoughts on the violent insurrection that took place at the Capitol building on Jan 6. An insurrection encouraged by the likes of Trump himself, Cruz, Hawley, and how many other elected officials who thought the best way to make sure that Trump retained his presidency was a violent overthrow of congress while they were counting the votes that would eventually lead to Trump’s loss.
With this new bill, had it happened in Florida, everybody involved would be in jail.
Also, I would like to point out that many of the cases of violence during the BLM protests were done at the hands of right-wing extremists. (remember the cop dressed in black smashing windows in MN?)
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No, the new law is not aimed at white republicans. The new law, announced last summer in the wake of Floyd-inspired protests, was intended to clamp down on the uppity persons of color.
You may recall that the police in DC responded differently to Floyd-inspired peaceful protests, which were met with overwhelming force, and Trump-inspired violence, which was met with underwhelming manpower and delayed response. Applying the new law, which requires arrests in order for the detention-without-bail and felony charges to kick in, we see that only the Floyd-type protesters would be affected.
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"while they were counting the votes that would eventually lead to Trump’s loss"
Not quite. The votes had already been counted, multiple times in some areas. They were trying to disrupt the process by which the winner of the election was officially confirmed, because they’d completely failed to show that any fraud had taken place or that there was any reason not to believe the result.
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Not quite back at you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Electoral_College_vote_count
Semantics, they were still this counting votes, albeit not the individual votes but those of the electoral college.
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OK, I’ll take that, I was thinking it was a confirmation of the electoral college after the fact. Still, the popular vote has been counted and Trump had been confirmed as having lost by way more than the 3 million he lost by in the 2016 election by, so it looks bad to challenge that without any actual proof of fraud elsewhere.
As an outsider, I’m actually just glad that it went so badly that the opposition are now reduced to making up lies about Dr Seuss, The Muppets and burgers, and that Democrats are exceeding some of their state goals after the insurrection. Sure, they could be a lot better in some areas, but it could be so much worse.
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"I’m actually just glad that it went so badly that the opposition are now reduced to making up lies about Dr Seuss, The Muppets and burgers, and that Democrats are exceeding some of their state goals after the insurrection."
Most sane people are. I can’t help but worry, though, that what we’ve seen was simply the modern-day re-enactment of the "Beer Hall Coup", with Trump’s failure to lead from the front and get martyred in a symbolic jail stint possibly being what keeps him from being the Führer to lead those people when the time comes for the "Reichstagsbrand".
I doubt the people of the "new right" will just fall apart and disappear, no matter how hopeful liberals are about it. The next few years will be crucial to see whether a new strongman emerges from the alt-right or whether Trump gets it together for another run at the office.
Ironically, and fairly frightening I’d actually be less concerned if Trump turns out to be their next chosen candidate. Malicious as he is he is also too inept, too obvious and too corrupt to bring the sort of harm we might see from a more competent strongman beholden to an actual ideology. He’s a Goering, not a Hitler.
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And of course he has no answer!
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Back long ago,
MLK, was having his protests and walks.
A gov. group figured out that If they paid someone to Break a window, they could interfere with the march and arrest everyone.
MLK noticed this strange happening and TOLD HIS PEOPLE, to GRAB the B*(not his word) and hold him for the police. dont matter whose side that person was.
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What about the people who rioted at the Capitol building on the 6th of January — or are they different for some reason you can’t qwhite articulate?
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They are different, but I can articulate the difference. The ones in DC on 06-Jan were overwhelmingly white republicans, supporting core republican values of whiteness, strong central government, and distrust for data.
The “others” were diverse, distrustful of government which repeatedly failed, and prone to believe the video over reports from Fox and OANN.
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You must hate when far right groups organise rallies and bus people in to left leaning cities like Portlant for the sole purpose of getting into fights before, during and after the event, huh? You know, the kind of thing they’ve been recorded planning, with people like Andy Ngo active participants, so they have more ‘left wing violence’ to record half of and post online for the right wing media to amplify, leaving out the beginning and end, of course, the bits that would incriminate them.
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So you’re okay with the bill redefining "riot" to include protests where there is no property destruction or violence?
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Koby lacks the reasoning needed to understand the consequences of the law for the simple reason that he can only see it used against people he doesn’t like. It’s a huge mental blindspot he has, you could probably drive a freight-train through it without him noticing.
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"…you don’t have a right to… be a thug."
Ooh Koby, you’re getting awful close to saying the quiet part our loud here. You wanna clarify exactly what you think this word means? Coz to most people on your side of the argument, it means a very specific thing…
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You have the right watch this go down in flames????
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What was that which Kennedy said? Something about those who make peaceful revolution impossible making violent revolution inevitable?
Protesting iz now verboten!! Florida Uber Alles!
Time to find a new vacation spot
Looks like I’ll be voting with my wallet by vacationing in a state that still respects the Constitution. So far, FL and GA are out along with the states I never considered going to in the 1st place.
Re: Time to find a new vocation spot
WASHINGTON – March 19, 2021 "Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Bill Nelson to serve as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator. Bill Nelson, Nominee for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator. Senator Bill Nelson, former U. S. Senator" [2001-2019] "is a fifth generation Floridian whose family came to Florida in 1829." This direct quote is the first line of the Whitehouse announcement. In other news from America’s dick, the four people returning from the ISS, splashdown location this Friday is secret; https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/2/21351811/spacex-capsule-boaters-splashdown-boats
I hate to say it, but if Desantis wants a riot this is a guaranteed way to get a real one. In the meantime, it looks like I’ll be voting with my wallet and not vacationing in Florida or making purchases from Florida based companies for the foreseeable future.
Because nothing says the party of law & order like violating the rule of law, fundamentals of justice, & that Constitution thingy.
With all of the hugely wrong things he’s been doing to get press, I think we need to assume that the zombie outbreak has happened in FL and he’s trying to distract from that.
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Every self-imposed label, a rejection.
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Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, you still don’t get it, do you? Law and order means shutting up and doing what the "proper" people tell you to. It means knowing your place and not getting uppity or embarrassing your "betters". It means kowtowing to "right" thinking people (and here "right" is used in the sense of "correct", the fact that this is 100% the same as a political ideology is purely coincidental). It means showing "authorities" the respect they "deserve" without any petty concerns like earning anything – after all, they were appointed to their positions, so naturally they "deserve" respect.
Failure to understand such simple premises is really a little sad.
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Well long before COVID-19 there were jokes about Flordia being in a sustained zombie outbreak.
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I mean its not like DeSantis let a bunch of elderly people we SWORE on tv he would protect and help die & then kept the owners from facing any charges or penalties… oh wait.. MFer did do that.
I heard about the breech in the billion gallon pool of toxic water, my first thought was that if hes willing to mention it & hes doing something the entire retaining pond has failed, the fluids is on fire, & burning its way to China.
Well that's one way to fan the flames
People are pissed off about police brutality and a lack of accountability? Make protests illegal by calling them riots, make it so that there’s no reason not to get violent and destructive allowing a single violent act to result in blame for everyone and ensure that police are given even more protections under the law! Brilliant, what could possibly go wrong!
At this point I find it near impossible to see this as anything other than a deliberate attempt to fan the flames and make things worse, with the goal of provoking even more protests and even more destruction and violence, I assume as an excuse to crack down even harder on the uppity public.
Gotta love the bullhorn regarding pro-slavery monuments too, really makes clear the kind of people being pandered to here in addition to the authoritarians.
Re: Well that's one way to fan the flames
It’s one way to fan the flames of at least two groups: The protesters, and the people who hate them. When innocent (or "innocent") bystanders who are not members of the targeted demographic keep getting arrested (even if they are also quietly released with no actual charges), they will get even more angry. Not angry at the law, the government, or law enforcement, but angry at "those people" who "caused the law to be necessary".
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Given the monument and more protections for police clauses/bullhorns I suspect that so long as anyone ‘watching’ doesn’t have skin of a certain color they won’t have to worry much about being arrested.
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Very probably. Unless they do use this to further engineer the situation.
That's the end to peaceful protesting
Because now every peaceful protest can be arrested whole once someone in the crowd does anything considered violent. And since that is really convenient, likely someone will get paid to do or provoke something violent.
It’s a riot.
Re: That's the end to peaceful protesting
Why pay someone when we have undercover cops whose job it is to infiltrate peaceful protests and turn them violent?
So now not only will they get to indulge their destructive tendencies but ALSO crack the skulls of everyone protesting! It’s a win-win for the boys in blue!
Re: That's the end to peaceful protesting
Remember the last time jails got flooded? That wasn’t a win for them either as peaceful protesters outright flooded them into conceding by being too big of a mess to clean up while state and city authorities shamed themselves nationally and internationally. All the while queueing up for other cities resulting in scaring the crap out of other states?
Not sure how well it would work nowadays but there is a beauty in defeating policies by making it a punishment to overwork those carrying it out.
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One magic word: selective policing.
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Shame has no effect on the shameless.
Making it legal to run over protesters with your car in a "stand your ground" state should make for exciting reality TV.
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‘We must protect property! … lives, not so much.’
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And there’s the GOP defense of the Second Amendment in a nutshell.
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More failure to understand! The 2nd amendment is there to allow "decent", "upstanding" citizens to indulge in self-defense. Even if they have to go to a city in a different state and walk through protesters brandishing a gun to do so. It says so right there is the constitution (or would if the leftist liars would only publish the real constitution).
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Close. It’s gun control that was made to make sure the "undesirables" were unarmed.
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And if anyone thinks otherwise, they should read about the Mulford Act.
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Protesters have no right to block traffic without a permit. If you stand in the street you should expect to be run over. It’s that simple.
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"If you stand in the street you should expect to be run over"
Your bloodlust and demand that nobody protest even state sanctioned murder are noted. Although, I’m going to guess that if it’s a black guy running down white supremacists next time, you’ll have a different opinion.
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Actually I don’t care about colour. And this has nothing to do with protests.
I live in a crosswalk legislated state. The same law that makes hitting a person in a crosswalk a felony with mandatory minimums removes driver criminal liability for hitting a person not in a crosswalk.
(There’s still civil recourse to keep drivers from randomly targeting civilians).
If you stand in the street you should expect traffic. It’s not that hard to understand. If you want to protest in a street you get a permit. The police close The streets and mark detours.
My firm belief in that goes back to the 90s when I had a bumper sticker that claimed “I break for animals, not people”.
Notice I didn’t state you should drive full speed through a crowd. But if you don’t move out of the way I see no problem with a driver pushing their way through. If you then attack the car for doing so expect the driver to floor it. You became a threat.
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"If you want to protest in a street you get a permit."
It must be nice to live in a world where spontaneous protests don’t exist, or where cops and the state don’t deliberately refuse permits to causes they disagree with. It makes things much simpler.
"Notice I didn’t state you should drive full speed through a crowd"
Yet, that was the implication of the original post, which is backed up by several incidents that has led to this discussion to begin with.
As with your assertions elsewhere that nobody who wasn’t involved in criminal activity has been murdered by police, it seems you need to read up a bit more on current events before responding.
Short-lived law
I don’t expect this law will survive even a cursory court challenge. Not even in the 11th circuit.
Re: Short-lived law
That would be just more proof that the swamp-aligned courts think Antifa in Washington should be telling states how to run business, forcing upright citizens to take justice back into their own hands.
How many peaceful protests (with a few cops throwing rocks) will it take before this gets thrown out as unconstitutional?
Run 'em over
Didn’t they also add protections for drivers that hit protesters with their cars if they are blocking a roadway? That might have been dropped from the final bill, but I’m not sure.
Kinda surprised they didn’t go for Wisconsin and Missouri plans to eliminate access to all state aid if convicted of anything protest related. These aren’t the only states, but they include everything from Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), student loans, unemployment benefits (FL doesn’t administer that to anyone already), housing and
mortgage assistance.
Re: Run 'em over
Because if there’s one thing that will calm down people who are already feeling disillusioned and abused enough to protest it’s making them desperate and putting them in a mindset where they feel they have nothing left to lose.
Re: Run 'em over
Wouldn’t matter, drivers kill more than two a day in California, half of the 236 dead in 2019 vehicle deaths in Los Angeles were pedestrians. My neighbor in this block died in the crosswalk this month. Anyone hear of 118 prosecutions? 10? 1?
Florida. Amerika’s diseased penis. And DeSantis makes for a good, young, ambitious would-be Fascist Dictator, which would certainly please many GQP adherents. Yeah, we’re in for a great Amerikan future!
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Hard to ignore that every one of these “heroes” was a criminal who was, or just recently, committed a crime.
Law abiding citizens aren’t randomly shot by the police.
I’m quick to agree that there’s no reason to place your knee on the neck of a man high on drugs and suffocate him for using fake money.
There no reason to dump 10 rounds into someone you know is only armed with a knife.
But burning a city to the ground over it is far worse in my opinion.
Every one of these cases involves actual criminals. If they weren’t criminals the wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place.
Reform is needed in reaction levels. But laws like this are the response to violent highly organised left wing anarchists who intentionally cause riots.
As for bail? You have no right to be released before trial. That’s why you have the right to a speedy trial in the first place.
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"Hard to ignore that every one of these “heroes” was a criminal who was, or just recently, committed a crime."
Nobody’s calling them heroes except for right-wingers desperate to move the conversation away from the real issues, and there’s plenty of examples of people who weren’t committing crimes. Not that it matters, since even if they were committing a crime, the job of prosecuting the crime and carrying out the punishment is not that of beat cops.
"Law abiding citizens aren’t randomly shot by the police."
Do you want the list? Because there’s a big list.
"But burning a city to the ground over it is far worse in my opinion."
Emotions tend to run high when you’ve exhausted non-violent reactions for decades and the response is still to pretend that, say, the guy shot while lying prone on the ground with his hands up still deserved to get shot while complying with police orders.
"Every one of these cases involves actual criminals"
Again, no they didn’t, and even if they did they were "suspects" at the time they were murdered. You don’t become a "criminal" until you have faced due process and convicted. Then, even when they are convicted, the punishment for the crimes is not death.
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Challenge accepted. Show me 10 cases where an entirely innocent person was killed by police in the last 10 years.
That does not include accidental bystanders caught in crossfire,
You have a whole decade. Can you come up with 10?
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Can’t find how to edit.
I’ll go even further. Provide us with 10 cases of a totally innocent person being SHOT by the police.
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"entirely innocent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this stupid comment.
Even if someone was breaking the law, most of them didn’t deserve an immediate death sentence with no trial.
You’re so transparently fascist.
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"entirely innocent"
Interesting where you have to immediately give yourself a way to struggle out of the conversation if I were to mention, say, the guy who was killed for playing with a toy gun in the Wal Mart he was shopping in (I presume you’d say the guy wasn’t innocent because the cops thought it might be a real gun, even though he clearly was not committing any crime).
I’m not wasting my time on dishonesty, so let’s define some parameters:
I can come up with a lot of examples of people who did not deserve to die at the hands of a fascist police force. What I can’t do is spend time dancing around the excuses people like you make for the deaths of so many people who would be alive if they were under the jurisdiction of more competent forces.
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Innocent precludes idiots who run.
Any you’re smart enough to understand I meant the guy down the street filming with his phone in the line of fire who gets shot accidentally when the perpetrator pulls a gun.
Let’s look at some of the most high profile events of police shootings lately.
We have a girlfriend harbouring a fugitive. Sad, and excessive, but not innocent.
We have a gun Brandishing kid in a dark alley
We have a knife wielding maniac trying to stab a girl.
And an accidental shooting of a fleeing criminal wanted on weapons charge.
Random innocent people rarely get tangled up with the police in the first place. If they follow instructions when they do have an encounter things go well. The police tend to apologise (if your polite and respectful) and you move on.
Keep your hands in view. Don’t fidget, and absolutely do not run away.
So again. 10. If the list of innocent cases is that long it shouldn’t be so hard. Just 10 over a decade.
I find it interesting nobody ever comes up with a list when challenged. They simply wave it off with “not worth my time”. That tells us such people don’t want to verify why they scream. They just want to scream.
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"Innocent precludes idiots who run."
It also precludes people who didn’t.
"We have a girlfriend harbouring a fugitive. Sad, and excessive, but not innocent."
Weird how you don’t include names. Is it because this isn’t completely true, or am I assuming the wrong case here? Names are important.
I suspect that you’re talking about Breonna Taylor, who was in her apartment with her current boyfriend, not the ex-boyfriend the no-knock warrant was issued regarding, but I’ll give you chance to explain yourself.
"We have a gun Brandishing kid in a dark alley"
The 13 year old who was obeying direct orders to drop the weapon and put his hands up at the time he was shot?
"We have a knife wielding maniac trying to stab a girl."
The facts of this case are still a little unclear from my understanding, but a cop from my country would have been able to respond without murder.
"And an accidental shooting of a fleeing criminal wanted on weapons charge."
Again, names are important. I don’t know who you’re talking about here, although cops who aren’t raging pussies don’t need to shoot people to apprehend a fleeing suspect. Is the reason you refuse to give names because the actual stories don’t say what you want them to?
"Random innocent people rarely get tangled up with the police in the first place."
Like, say, Philando Castille, who was shot when obeying the order to hand over his licence during a routine traffic stop, while informing the police officer that he had. a legally owned gun in the location he was being ordered to reach for?
Like Atatiana Jefferson, who was shot through the window of the apartment she was babysitting in because she had a weapon while investigating the noise outside that came from officers stalking outside who didn’t identify themselves?
Like Charles Kinsey, who was laid prone on the ground with his hands up trying to ask officers to allow him to take care of the autistic man they were attempting to violently attack?
Like Botham Jean, who was shot by a cop who had the wrong apartment?
Like John Crawford III, who was playing with a toy in the Walmart it was sold in when he was shot?
Come on, which ones count in your eyes? I’m sure I can find others if I look, those are just the obvious examples that prove your premise wrong, but there’s plenty who didn’t even know a cop was there in the first place, let alone have time to react to them in that capacity, or were literally doing nothing wrong.
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Yanez was cleared of wrongdoing in the Castile case. The jury found the officer reacted properly to the threat of a gun. Not innocent
Atatiana Jefferson: the police responsible were held accountable in this tragic accident.
Charles Kinsey: a well covered accident. The intended target, regardless of mental capacity, disobeyed police orders was believed to be armed.
Botham Jean : A mistake, and officers were held accountable
John Crawford: toy or not: he was told to put it down and failed. Crawford failed to comply with a lawful order. Not innocent
We have 2 here out of five. In both cases the officers were held responsible for their actions.
In the third, while the target was hit accidentally, I class it as crossfire. The suspect was close and the cops were worried about the victim’s safety.
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You see, that’s why I poke for details. It’s nice to see how you squirm to avoid admitting that some people do have problems with police despite yopu claims that they don’t. For exa mplke:
"John Crawford: toy or not: he was told to put it down and failed"
But… you said that random innocent people don’t encounter police. Yet, if it is just a toy he was playing with, in the store where it’s sold in, then that’s completely innocent acitivity.
Which is it – people should expect police encounters when playing with toys, or innocent black men run this very real risk when doing something that most people would consider innocent activity.
"Atatiana Jefferson: the police responsible were held accountable in this tragic accident."
So… an innocent person WAS tangled up with police, despite your claim that this never happens…hmm…
"Botham Jean : A mistake, and officers were held accountable"
Wow, another innocent person encountering police violence! It’s almost as if you’re admitting you were wrong and that the people claiming that there’s a problem were right.
You know, it’s easier to admit that this sometimes happens and that something needs to be done about it, rather than claiming that only criminals on the run have a problem then having to squirm so messily when provided with examples of why that is not the case.
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In case it’s not clear, let me clarify to you – your claim is that nobody who is innocent needs to worry about encounters with cops. Your response to my examples of innocent people is to excuse the reasons they were shot, not to think about why it was a problem that they encountered the cops in the first place.
But.. they were accidents! Doesn’t matter – they were committing no crime and still met the end of a bullet, therefore you were wrong about your origin al statements, even if you’re desperate to claim that some of the shootings that resulted from the encounter that should never have happened were justified.
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Let /me/ be quite clear: I was generalising. Why I did not say never.
Butchers don’t set out to slice fingers off.
Auto mechanics don’t set out to be flattened.
Wrestlers don’t expect to have limbs torn off.
Animal trainers don’t expect to be eaten.
In any line of work mistakes are made and accidents happen.
Keep in mind the police didn’t stumble across Crawford and accost him. The police were called to respond to a person brandishing a gun.
They confronted the only person brandishing a gun at the time they arrived. And Crawford ignored orders to put it down.
I’ve said elsewhere there’s an issue with cops dumping a whole magazine into a suspect.
From a military standpoint You either aim properly for a non-lethal stopping target, or you aim for a kill.
10 rounds is excessive for a person 50 feet away with a knife. No doubt.
Lethal force is not generally warranted.
Yes, some reform is necessary. There are less than lethal methods for subduing dangerous and violent suspects.
But the amount of police encounters with “unjustified” police shootings (mistakes, errors, and wrong amount of force) are minuscule compared to total responses.
The public news story is a mass murder spree of white cops. It’s simply not true.
Such nonsense fake news is only hindering support for actual issues that do exist.
I’m sure we have different ideas on what proper reform is as well. But that’s a separate argument.
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You still seem to be avoiding the actual question raised, which is interesting.
What I was responding to is your claim that "every one of these “heroes” was a criminal". You asked for examples of innocent people who also got shot, so I gave them to you.
Then, in response to these examples, you’ve started giving excuses as to why the cops should have shot them, rather than admitting your original assertion was wrong.
I don’t give 2 shits whether you think that Crawford deserved to be shot or whether Jefferson’s murderers apologised. I’m interested in you admitting that you were wrong when you asserted that only criminals get shot in the manner they did.
"And Crawford ignored orders to put it down."
How much time did they give him? I’m sure that if I’m playing with a toy and I’m, suddenly faced with officers shouting at me to put down a weapon, it might take me a few moments to understand what the hell is going on. There was no reason for him to suspect that what he was doing was a problem, until he saw the gun in his face, and the surprise alone would explain a delay in compliance.
Meanwhile, white mass shooters are somehow regularly taken into custody. Crawford died while playing with a toy, Dylann Roof was taken for Burger King after massacring a church full of people. See the issue some people have here, even if you think the shooting was justified?
"The public news story is a mass murder spree of white cops. It’s simply not true."
The public news story is of a vastly disproportionate death rate among black suspects, which includes many situations where the cops had no real reason to be there in the first place (hence the call for defunding police – you can’t have cops killing the people they’re meant to be doing a welfare check on, if the person doing the check is a trained health professional instead).
However you want to spin it to stop admitting that innocent people are getting shot as well as the criminals is your choice, but you’re not going to win over people by defending people getting shot in their own homes or while out shopping by going "sorry it was an accident".
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I’m interested in you admitting that you were wrong when you asserted that only criminals get shot in the manner they did
I admit!!!:
there are exceptions to my generalisation.
Again I was generalising. To be specific, accidents happen in policing like any other job. Accidents in policing are tragic, often resulting in loss of life.
But the MM picture is very tainted. Cops aren’t running around killing every person of colour they cross.
The problem in the movement for defunding is a call to simply pull the plug.
Criminals, by definition, break the law. With no policing you put the burden of protection on the citizens.
Which will quickly dissolve into vigilantism.
There’s no majority support for total defunding. Further pushing this and ramming it through executively, be it local, state, or national level.
There’s a reason the Fed hasn’t tried to pass a defunding bill or regulation. There’s no majority support for it. It would unlikely pass the House, and never make it through the Senate.
The more the activism pushes all or nothing the longer it will take to address actual issues.
I believe that it’s quite clear under this article and others that I
A) support the police and
B) readily admit there are some issues to be addressed.
The answer isn’t to take away their money. The answer is to FURTHER invest in dedicated funding for more training in resolution, mediation, passive compromise… etc.
We need state and federal funding for more, better, body and dash cam equipment.
We need cameras that can’t be turned off in the field.
We need a policy that all footage is released to the public immediately.
Those three steps alone would make a drastic difference in the landscape.
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But the MM picture is very tainted. Cops aren’t running around killing every person of colour they cross.
When did I say that? I have never said anything even remotely like that.
Why do you always lie?
The problem in the movement for defunding is a call to simply pull the plug.
This is not what defund the police means. It means shifting the resources to people who are better able to deal with situations that the police deal with today that they shouldn’t be (e.g., mental health, traffic violations, etc.).
Criminals, by definition, break the law. With no policing you put the burden of protection on the citizens.
Which will quickly dissolve into vigilantism.
This is not what people are saying.
Why are you lying? Why do you keep lying?
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"When did I say that? I have never said anything even remotely like that."
Hmmm… I read that as "mainstream media", just using something other than "MSM". In other threads he’s desperate to pretend he’s not just another right winger struggling outside of his echo chamber (though, interestingly, he does this while parroting all the tired right-wing talking points).
It’s doubly stupid if he’s intending that as an attack on you personally, though.
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"To be specific, accidents happen in policing like any other job"
Stop lying about them all being accidents, then maybe you’ll find honest conversations easier to come by. Every post you’ve made on this subject so far is predicated on a lie, and while you’re desperate to move the goalposts every time, you’re still lying about the facts of the argument.
"But the MM picture is very tainted. Cops aren’t running around killing every person of colour they cross"
What’s funny is that you complain about the picture being tainted, then lie about what others are saying. Almost as if you’re not arguing in honesty.
"The problem in the movement for defunding is a call to simply pull the plug."
Again, that’s not what people are calling for. Either you need to stop lying about others or stop listening to the people lying about them to you.
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When did I say that
mainstream media. I didn’t say you said it personally. Though I implied you agree with it by not countering it. There’s a major difference there.
I read 5 sources for politics. From right to left
Breitbart, NYP, fox local covering my closest city, WSJ, NYT
The first two are definitely Republican alt right and general Republicans. NYP is all over the place. WSJ centrist and NYT is alt left, formerly democratic.
Both non-Progressive Dems and Liberal Republicans agree police reform is needed. Mainly in dealing with situational awareness, deescalation, and limitation of lethal force.
I readily admit that consistently. But there is a large vocal push to simply defunding police out of existence as well. You, you need to own up to that and call it out.
Abolishing police is not the answer. Nor is defunding them to the point they can’t afford protective equipment, weapons, and cameras.
I gave above a very moderate solution that would make officers accountable for their actions. Mandated cameras, no shut offs, and public access.
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"When did I say that"
I’m not sure which comment you’re replying to, but if it’s my interpretation of the abbreviation you used, well that’s the problem when you use abbreviations if you’re not clear on the subject.
"The first two are definitely Republican alt right and general Republicans. NYP is all over the place. WSJ centrist and NYT is alt left, formerly democratic."
I think you need to expand your reading a bit, especially if you think those are accurate descriptions.
In reality, Breitbart is a site that got traction by outright lying to its readers, NYP is a rabble rousing tabloid that veers right, WSJ was a centrist outlet but has increasingly veered right since Murdoch bought it (especially in its opinion pages), and the NYT is a moderately left-leaning outlet that gets a lot of criticism for amplifying voices from the right on its opinion pages.
You have no real centrist material in your diet, and the idea that you think that the NYT is "alt left" (a meaningless term, by the way, invented as a childish "no you" to people accurately using the term alt-right in the way the people who coined it intended) just exposes how little variety you’re actually consuming.
Get back to me when you’ve started reading an actual variety of news, and tell me how that changes your viewpoint.
"Abolishing police is not the answer."
Lucky that nobody’s asking for that, then, isn’t it?
"Nor is defunding them to the point they can’t afford protective equipment, weapons, and cameras."
Again, you lie about what "defunding" means. It means not supplying them with a surplus of military hardware they are itching to use in unnecessary raids. It means moving their funds to social and healthcare workers so that the next time some poor innocent needs a "welfare check", then don’t get gunned down if their mental issue means they take more than 2 seconds to obey.
Where as, you want the rest of us to accept "oops, accidents happen" and do nothing about it.
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Oh, and just an additional thought… NYP, Fox, WSJ… If you want to boast about how wide your reading material is, maybe not state that 3/5 of it is from the same Rupert Murdoch who is famous for enforcing heavily right-leaning editorial requirements on his newspapers.
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Point noted, though the local fox broadcasting stations and their tethered web sites are independent affiliates.
NYT has always long been a Democrat paper. It’s shifted further and further left since 2012.
I’ve subscribed to NYT, NYP, and WSJ over a decade.
I’m also willing to accept the difference between editorial and news. Which I note is an issue with FNC and CNN who have lost the general idea of separating news and commentary