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The behaviour of US police officers

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dudalb said:
Niether do I.
But I do know the idea of shutting down police departments completly until they can be reformed (and I think many departments badly need reform) is just plain stupid.
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Seems to me you're strawmanning every critic of the police as advocating abolition. As far as I can tell, abolition is a somewhat fringe position. Most of the conversation is around defunding or otherwise reallocating spending, which is not abolition.
 
The Defense rests in the Floyd case. FInal statments, then it goes to the jury.
Instant ti goes to the Journey, Minnesotat National Guard will probably start mobilizing. If the cop gets off, it is going to be ugly, very ugly.
 
jimbob said:
That's missing the point. It's the utter lack of oversight and accountability, and that many of the bad apples are in influential positions, for example, heads of police unions, where presumably a plurality of local cops think they're exemplars of appropriate behaviour.


We know that Ferguson PD was racist throughout, and had policies that regarded its (black) population as cash cows. What we don't know is how many of the 18000 organisations with police powers also had systematic (not just systemic) racist implementation of policies.
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Ferguson police spent most of their time issuing tickets for trivia. Jaywalking, parking two inches too far from the curb or hanging a graduation tassel from the rear view mirror. The reason was simple. These fines provided a big chunk of the city budget.

Were the Brooklyn Center officer playing the sane game when they pulled over a car for having an air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror?
 
A lot (too much of this IMO) is just semantics and branding.

A society is going to have rules and it is going to have someone to enforce those rules. I'm fine with calling whoever that is "the police."

The actual word has gotten to much focus.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Man I have no idea. I've been trying to find even a hypothetical way out of the post-fact world for a long time now. If you see a potential path let me know.
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dudalb said:
Niether do I.
But I do know the idea of shutting down police departments completly until they can be reformed (and I think many departments badly need reform) is just plain stupid.
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One thing that might start to make the problem less intractable is to think at what level laws and law enforcement should be determined locally. State level seems appropriate to me - certainly no lower than county level - I'd say laws that have the chance of penal sanction as opposed to civil fines should be defined no lower than state level.

There will be laws against theft etc, but why should smallish towns have their own legal systems? We saw how that worked in Ferguson when the DoJ investigated - it wasn't just the police department, it was the local courts as well. There is no reason to suppose Fergusson was an outlier, in fact its disparity index for vehicular stops on some occasions had been better than the Missouri average.

ETA: So as a start - set it so those more-local police forces report to the state justice department, and also that the state is in charge of recruitment and training.

There would also be economies of scale.

Of course this is not very much in line with the principle of devolving as much as possible to the lowest level.
 
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Kestrel said:
Ferguson police spent most of their time issuing tickets for trivia. Jaywalking, parking two inches too far from the curb or hanging a graduation tassel from the rear view mirror. The reason was simple. These fines provided a big chunk of the city budget.

Were the Brooklyn Center officer playing the sane game when they pulled over a car for having an air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror?
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It would be very surprising if Ferguson had been the only police department to do that.
 
So yesterday a 61 year old man went into a Menards (a chain of home improvement stores) in Minneapolis. He got into a confrontation with an employee because he refused to wear a mask, a confrontation that escalated to the man striking the employee with a piece of wood.

The police were called. By this time the man had fled the parking lot and was inside his vehicle. The suspect proceeded to drive off, dragging the police officer at high rate of speed and hitting the officer with a hammer.

The suspect was not shot. He was not tased. He wasn't "oopsie doodled a shot him while I was trying to tase him." Nobody kneeled on his neck. Nobody gave him 87 warning shots into the back. None of the officers "feared for their lives so were forced to make the decision to engage the suspect." He was arrested without incident.

Take a random guess what color the suspect is?

This is the problem.
 
Kestrel said:
Ferguson police spent most of their time issuing tickets for trivia. Jaywalking, parking two inches too far from the curb or hanging a graduation tassel from the rear view mirror. The reason was simple. These fines provided a big chunk of the city budget.

Were the Brooklyn Center officer playing the sane game when they pulled over a car for having an air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror?
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In the UK all money from fines and fixed penalties goes to the Treasurey, the police don't get any of it.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
In the UK all money from fines and fixed penalties goes to the Treasurey, the police don't get any of it.
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In America they can just take your stuff without even arresting you and you have to sue them to get it back, which you never will.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
In the UK all money from fines and fixed penalties goes to the Treasurey, the police don't get any of it.
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If you think of the Treasury as local ... i.e. city or county treasury ... the same can be true in the states, the police don't get to 'keep' the money in their dept..

But when it comes time for the respective cities and counties to allot their various budgets, the amount of revenue which the police have contributed can certainly be taken into account and certain revenue sources (minor traffic violations, for example) can be earmarked for specific budget areas ... like the police.

There are endless ways to see that police depts. are rewarded for bringing revenue into the public coffers.

One strategy which was popular among small towns, especially in the South, was speed-traps, with strategies as blatant as a speed limit sign of, say 45mph clearly visible, with one immediately past it that was much more obscured dropping to, say, 25mph. And a cop behind a billboard shortly after that. Locals knew they were there and behaved accordingly, out-of-towners were a prized source of municipal income.

This sort of thing was significantly different from the Ferguson method, though, since in Ferguson the targets were their own citizens, so long as they were of the properly dusky skin hue.
 
JoeMorgue said:
In America they can just take your stuff without even arresting you and you have to sue them to get it back, which you never will.
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Yes - asset forfeiture always seems to me to be a semantic game to get around the 4th Amendment
 
jimbob said:
Yes - asset forfeiture always seems to me to be a semantic game to get around the 4th Amendment
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Yeah, but then you don't get to see legal filings like this:

State of Texas v. One 2004 Chevrolet Silverado

or this:

State of Texas v. One 2004 Lincoln Navigator

Isn't that fun?
 
Please tell me they called the trucks to the stand.

That would almost make it all worth it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Please tell me they called the trucks to the stand.

That would almost make it all worth it.
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The Navigator was found in contempt when the theft alarm went off and wouldn't shut up. It had to serve 36 hrs in the county lockup to fix its attitude.
 
jimbob said:
Yes - asset forfeiture always seems to me to be a semantic game to get around the 4th Amendment
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TO a degree, yes. It was originally meant to give the Government a new weapon to use against organized crime; it was never meant to become the sheer graft it has become.
 
jimbob said:
One thing that might start to make the problem less intractable is to think at what level laws and law enforcement should be determined locally. State level seems appropriate to me - certainly no lower than county level - I'd say laws that have the chance of penal sanction as opposed to civil fines should be defined no lower than state level.

There will be laws against theft etc, but why should smallish towns have their own legal systems? We saw how that worked in Ferguson when the DoJ investigated - it wasn't just the police department, it was the local courts as well. There is no reason to suppose Fergusson was an outlier, in fact its disparity index for vehicular stops on some occasions had been better than the Missouri average.

ETA: So as a start - set it so those more-local police forces report to the state justice department, and also that the state is in charge of recruitment and training.

There would also be economies of scale.

Of course this is not very much in line with the principle of devolving as much as possible to the lowest level.
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Problem is that idea that local government should provide most government services is a very basic part of the US Political system. Fear of a over centralized govenrment lies at the heart of the Constituion.
 
Graham2001 said:
I don't know if this story has been covered. Police Officer shoots and kills a boy holding an airgun, interestingly both shooter and the victim are of the same race...


https://news.yahoo.com/shooting-occurs-near-maryland-state-190731044.html
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What's your point? Do you see any real comparison? The young man pointed a gun and then a knife.

How does this compare to unarmed individuals like George Floyd (unarmed), Daunte Wright (unarmed), Adam Toledo (unarmed), Trayvon Martin (unarmed) Ahmaud Arbery (unarmed) Eric Garner (unarmed), Breonna Taylor (unarmed)?

There are many, many, many more.
 
Graham2001 said:
I don't know if this story has been covered. Police Officer shoots and kills a boy holding an airgun, interestingly both shooter and the victim are of the same race...


https://news.yahoo.com/shooting-occurs-near-maryland-state-190731044.html
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That sounds just like the incident in which Chicago police shot a 13 year old boy dead who was holding a gun and the police had to shoot.

Oh hang on - did we say he was holding a gun - we meant he dropped the gun* and was putting his hands-up when we shot him. Easy mistake to make:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...oledo-chicago-police-department-b1832387.html


*ETA: Yeah I know I am being very naive here in thinking the boy had dropped the gun without collaboration from a non-police source
 
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