The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN last Monday, May 25

[mamselle]

I am deeply saddened, and at a loss to understand how one human being could treat another so.

This tribute

   https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amberjamieson/george-floyd-obituary

and these reports

   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-worked-together.html

   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/minneapolis-police-george-floyd.html

offer some background.

How do we learn from and teach about such situations so as to make a difference going forward?

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Now we need to decide how to go forward when we see this atrocity repeating itself.  New protocols and training, more bodycams.  And this sort of sentiment:

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2020/05/flint-area-police-join-protesters-marching-to-seek-justice-for-george-floyd.html

Police are not necessarily the enemy.  They do a lot for us.  But they need to change their culture.  The ball is in their court to change the dynamic that is ripping us apart during already bad times.

[mamselle]

Wow. Thank you for that post.

Yes, that's a totally different paradigm.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

It looks to me like "reform" has not worked. We've been talking about reform for decades, and yet police still routinely abuse, assault, and murder suspects, especially those of colour. They routinely plant evidence, as we've seen in Baltimore and elsewhere, and still can't interrogate suspects properly, without leading them to false confessions. They can't be trusted to investigate certain kinds of crimes (like sexual assault) or crimes committed against certain kinds of people. And they can't even be trusted to rely on accurate, credible, reliable scientific evidence, as the widespread reliance on forensic odontology, gunshot residue, and lie detectors attest (to say nothing of the problems with fingerprinting, or the widespread assumption that asking for a lawyer indicates guilt or, hell, attempts to deny suspects access to their lawyers).

And then there are the prosecutors, into whose hands plea bargaining has concentrated the powers formerly vested in the judge and jury, who routinely violate Brady by withholding  material and exculpatory evidence, and who enjoy immunity from the law for all of their many misdeeds. And whose case histories are never reviewed after they've been found to habitually violate prosecutorial standards (or the law).

It's all broken, and the time for piecemeal reform has passed. Body cams and implicit bias training simply will not do. You need to disarm regular police, and you need to consistently and systematically prosecute police and prosecutorial misconduct, and make real efforts to stamp it out. And no more of this firing officers only to see them transfer to a department in some other state.

It's popular to attribute such misdeeds to a few bad apples, but people seem to forget the rest of the saying: a few bad apples spoil the bunch. The rot here runs very, very deep, and needs to be systematically extirpated.

[Parasaurolophus]

Oh, and maybe states should do away with the maximum IQ threshold for cops. No more denying applicants "because they're too smart".

[mamselle]

I'm often reminded of the longstanding differences between UK police (who did not, maybe still do not) carry guns, and the US, where (correct me if I'm wrong) most do.

The difference being, of course, also, that in the UK, even knives have been banned to the general public on safety grounds, and guns were even further beyond the pale (at least up to the times I'm familiar with; if recent changes have occurred, I might be out-of-date in my assumptions).

Just putting the means of lethal force into the hands of a cop-on-the-beat seems to send a worrisome message, empowering a kind of life-or-death decision-making power that needs to be dialed back as well.

The philosophy of care and enforcement unfold from some of those decisions, I think, as well.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Charged: The New Movement to Change American Prosecution.

Many ways to start the conversation.  A book might not be the best way, but it helps to have facts at your fingertips.

[mamselle]

Thanks.

In a pebble-in-a-river way, an editor friend is working with a local author in her Texas locale on a book on mitigation, to help families of those detained understand their rights and the procedures by which retributive sentencing can be addressed.

Apparently there are no non-expert books on the topic that advise individuals of their rights or options for redress; she's trying to help with that.

M.

[sprout]

Now we need to decide how to go forward when we see this atrocity repeating itself.  New protocols and training, more bodycams.  And this sort of sentiment:

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2020/05/flint-area-police-join-protesters-marching-to-seek-justice-for-george-floyd.html

Police are not necessarily the enemy.  They do a lot for us.  But they need to change their culture.  The ball is in their court to change the dynamic that is ripping us apart during already bad times.

Thank you for sharing that.  The whole situation is so incredibly sad and frustrating and I feel powerless to effect actual change, and hopeless that actual change is possible.  It's heartening to see a story with a positive interaction between police and protesters.

[writingprof]

You need to disarm regular police.

I wish Biden would come out in favor of this.

[mamselle]

Yes.

The worship service I've been watching from my 'home' (raised-as-a-child) church in Columbus, OH, included a reflective sermon by one of the clerics who was in the demonstration there on Saturday.

    [This: http://fcchurch.tv/4838-2/  was last week's service, it will be a couple days before today's service is posted to the archives]

Looking up other nearby events, there was an article on another event that went less well.

But at one point they apparently did try to suggest that the police put down their batons, so the idea, albeit ignored in that setting, has traveled.

The cleric's description of providing milk and eye drops for those affected by the tear gas made me remember the day in 11th grade when our student teacher came into class after the weekend of riots on the OSU campus in sympathy with the Kent State killings of the previous week.

He, too, described being affected by the heavy presence of tear gas near his on-campus apartment, and being told by the police nearby to "go home."

To which he replied, "This is my home. I live right over there."

I don't think people knew about milk and eye drops then, though.

M.

[secundem_artem]

I heard a former police officer (Baltimore maybe??) interviewed on NPR a couple of years back.  He claimed that many officers are fairly frightened of black men, which explains their frequent over the top reaction when arresting them.  As a result, black men are frightened of the police and may choose to resist arrest.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Do that long enough and you get neverending Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, George Floyd kinds of scenarios. 

As long as both sides are unduly afraid of each other, I don't see this stopping anytime soon.  Eventually the pressure builds.  And pressure must eventually be relieved.  So demonstrations turn into riots which turn into an armed response and both sides can blame the other for being the bad actors.

[theblackbox]

I'm glad to see discussion on this topic here since I think there is much more potential for this unrest and response to police brutality to grow than before. Unemployment is high. People are economically stressed. What made the George Floyd murder so distressing was how blatant it was, how unafraid those officers were to continue what they were doing despite being filmed, despite bystanders and eye witnesses pleading that they stop. When all pretenses of being able to hold cops accountable are gone (good cops will intervene, witnesses can be allies and not stand for it, recording/bodycams will regulate this kind of behavior, etc.), so is any last remnant of public trust or confidence in justice.

Disarming the police sounds great, but the reality is that with an armed citizenry, you need an armed police force. You can't expect American cops to raid a suspected murderer's house with batons and knives; the likelihood that the murder has a gun is too high. According to a Gallup poll last year, 43% of American households have guns in them. https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx

[spork]

The USA has what is probably the most heavily militarized municipal, county, and state police forces in the world. Right now I'm watching video of armored personnel carriers on city streets and police wearing more body armor than Marines who walked patrol in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, responding ineffectively and violently to peaceful protesters (while not responding at all to criminal activity like theft and arson). Police in this country are generally trained to respond to members of the public with overwhelming force -- including deadly force -- when they perceive non-compliance with their commands (whether or not the non-compliance is actually occurring). Toss in implicit racism and you get blacks being killed by police at far higher rates than whites, usually without judicial prosecution afterward.

It's pretty easy to feel like the policy are an occupying army in this kind of situation.

[mahagonny]

You need to disarm regular police.

I wish Biden would come out in favor of this.

So when he doesn't will you like him more, or less?