Originally posted by Neon Ignition
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White House rearranges media chairs to place them close together, basically actively trying to get them infected
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I think this is worse, that Trump just wanted a photo with a whole bunch of people in front of him.
White House rearranges media chairs to place them close together, basically actively trying to get them infected -
By accidental I mean they didn't mean to inflict such an injury. They obviously pushed him and not just him backing up and tripping.
I see the rest of the unit has resigned in solidarity for the two who've been suspended. I don't get it... You're there to uphold the law and protect the public but you're unable to control a pensioner who isn't a threat without causing injury and then you can't even get one single person in your unit to do the human thing and make sure he's not in a serious condition?
I know one calls for an ambulance and I see another goes in to "instinctively" check he's ok... But to then be pulled away, for the entire unit to just walk around the issue...
What are you resigning for? What exactly do you stand for? It's solidarity for the wrong behaviour.Comment
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A Veto-Proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council have confirmed that they intend to dismantle the city's Police Department. It'll be interesting to see what the community-led public safety plan will be because the complete removal of the Police Department... yeah, that won't end well. The insinuation seems to be a crowd pleasing 'break down the existing police system and then build a new one how we want it' which is very crowd pleasing but I imagine will come back on them hard down the line because it's like promising a revolution when in reality they'll get a painfully slow evolution at best.
Will be fascinating to see whether this works or leads to worse things.Last edited by Neon Ignition; 07-06-2020, 23:57.Comment
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I'm not sure that they have very much choice if they want proper reform. A massive massive obstacle to reform are the police unions and they are an intrinsic part of the current police force.
A community led solution may be exactly what they need getting back to where they should be at, policing by consent. Don't under estimate the power of the sense of community and its ability to police itself, even against those who would seek to take advantage at the lack of cops. It may in fact reduce crime if that constant them and us tension is removed.
It's a brave step on their part and impossible to say whether it will be effective or not without testing the water.Comment
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It's interesting the phrase being used to describe the police is "a few bad apples" without realising the whole phrase is "A few bad apples spoil the barrel". A lot of people saying 1 cop beating someone up and 10 cops not stopping him = 11 bad cops.
There's definitely something rotten at the core of America's police that needs to be addressed.
Here's a superthread of 300+ examples of "one or two bad apples" from the last week of demonstrations:
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Did someone on here post the Chris Rock 'bad apples' thing? Can't remember where I saw it ...
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I would have thought that national laws, inter state rules etc would necessitate a state wide police function due to the 'system' being national... well, international these days really. On the Guardian it said that in the few instances it's happened before that it's usually meant other regional policing authorities taking up the duties, also that many of the cities policing staff don't live there so they can't stop it. Presumably though they'd seek work in the alternative authorities and so wouldn't actually be removed from a position they could abuse.
Hopefully they come up with something workable but it feels more like PR than a planComment
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I'd struggle to imagine a functioning society without a good police force but the arguments for tearing it down in the US are very compelling. Certainly on the idea of defunding it, the funding the police get in the US versus funding of education, healthcare etc. is off the charts. One glance at the figures would convince almost anyone that it needs to be redistributed. Then there is the problem of the police force itself and the bad apples idea - as you say, QC, the point is that it spoils the barrel. But what is very clear and becomes even clearer when you see their actions in the protest is that the barrel itself is bad - if it wasn't, the cops wouldn't feel they could get away with this stuff. They'd be careful. They'd be nervous. But they're not. It is very clear that they are within a structure that supports and enables their actions so, even if you got rid of every bad cop, that structure remains and you'll just end up with more bad cops. And having dug around to see what I could find out about reforms (again because I have my doubts about just getting rid of a police force), it seems that almost every suggested reform aimed at avoiding police brutality or police corruption is actually in place in some states and some police forces - they have been tried and the results have not been good. Because really, the barrel itself is bad.
So that pretty much just leaves getting rid of the barrel. There seem to be some quite well thought-out plans out there involving replacing much of the police force tasks with community support. But man, it's going to be no easy task, especially when you consider what else is rotten across the entire US justice system (not least of which is private prisons that benefit from more people ending up in prison). It's a long haul task with a lot that can go wrong. But then sometimes to make things better you have to just tear stuff down and start again.Comment
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That's exactly what it feels like. A barrel being thrown away but it was a barrel stored within a Barrel making factory's warehouse where the production line is still in motion.Comment
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Surely any wholesale reform of the police force needs to be matched by measures to counter the causes of crime? Inequality, poverty, human nature etc are all factors in crime and these things are far harder to reform.Comment
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Yeah I think that's part of the point though. If you look at LA's budgeting for example:
You currently have a situation where tons of cash is getting poured into policing, and relatively little into areas which would help to address those root causes of crime.
BLM is forcing some initial steps towards a rebalancing, which is great news. LA have said that $250m will be taken out of the police's budget and be put towards youth jobs and health initiatives. Percentage-wise it's not huge, but it's a start.Comment
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Yep, that’s exactly the point. That seems to be the core idea behind defunding the police - it’s sending it back into all those social areas that have themselves been defunded over the years,Comment
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LA's infection rate is back on the rise and that comes from before the protests kicked in.
Trump also plans to dismiss the threat of the virus and to restart holding rally's within the fortnight.
Trump is also trying to tie Biden with the Defund the Police movement despite Biden and the Democrats broadly also being opposed to the movement.
Trumps latest plans come from this - his polling has come out showing he's now dropped 10 points behind Biden.Comment
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The University of Washington has projected that 145,000 people could die in the US from the virus by the end of August amidst fears the protests will spark the Second Wave.Comment
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The Memorial Day idiocy has already started a second wave spike in many areas... cases at least, deaths haven't increased in rate, yet...Lie with passion and be forever damned...Comment
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