Another day, another police beating in America

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The "honorable cops" can stop sitting by letting collegues get away with murder and start doing something useful for a living like the rest of us. Maybe work for Amazon, they have a lot of openings. Or work in retail. They just need to remember that when some lady hurls insults at them for not letting them use an expire coupon, they aren't allowed to break her spine and say it was justified because she scared them.

Better yet, why don't one of these honorable cops go over and arrest the not-so-honorable cops who murdered Breonna Taylor? There's an entire city's worth of police who seem to have no interest in doing that. Isn't that why cops are supposed to be so great, because they find, catch and arrest murderers?

Hate against the police is at an all-time high because they are poisoning, beating, and attacking us more than usual.

[GreyICE]

Near as I can tell, the left-wingers are insisting that this just means less financing, and to clean house in the upper management of law enforcement. I find myself dubious, though. It sounds nice in theory, but who are going to be the ones here to replace the cops which need to be replaced, and what about the honorable cops they and the media don't want you to know exist who will lose their jobs?

For the honorable cops who lose their job, and then have to reapply, get re-trained, and deal with all that hassle, it's going to suck. No lie. I imagine it won't be fun in the least.

We've been trying to reform the police since 1991? If not 1960. What is that? 40 years? 70 years? How long have people been trying to reform the police? Reduce violence? What's happened since 1991?

• Qualified immunity was expanded to include violence done by the police (previously it was only violation of civil liberties)
• "Civil asset forfeiture" has skyrocketed from a very rare thing (used mostly for drug money) into pouring literally billions of dollars into police departments. It is essentially robbery by police.
• No Knock warrants were created, and issued for potential 'destruction of evidence' even if the police did not believe there was a threat to officer safety.
• "Stop and frisk" policies were implemented that deliberately targeted minorities
• Police have continued to plant evidence
• Long interrogations to elicit "confessions" and casual brutality continues. Beating, maiming, an killing suspects to "get them complaint" continues.
• Courts have developed a holy veneration of officer testimony, despite plenty of evidence that police are little better than the average person as an eyewitness. Police are allowed to coordinate before testimony - something known to produce bad testimony - and often give similar matching stories.
  These sometimes contradict actual physical evidence, yet when evidence contradict's the police's story, nothing is done to the officers

Yes, I'm very sorry the lives of the "good apples" will be disrupted a bit as we go about actually fixing this problem. It genuinely sucks for them, and they do have my sympathy. Unfortunately there's a bigger problem, and if a few months of inconvenience and stress for them fixes a much bigger issue, then okay. Lets do it.

[Captain Crimson]

As I'd said before elsewhere, people nowadays come down like a bag of bricks on the 1994 crime bill, but near as I can tell, many black communities supported that at the time. So it's not the smoking gun opponents like to make it seem like. And leftists get too hung up on words like "superpredator" which having met some actual Gen X gang members who are now reformed, can be white too, you know!

The issue here isn't about the good apples, as you say. It's the hate mob coming down on police. Hate, hate, hate, nonstop seething hate. And that simply makes us versus them more ingrained and harder to fight. Mr. Witwer shouldn't be compelled to bow to pressure in defending his police friend, as I trust his word that he is honorable, and you got users like Fuzzy Necromancer still showing such disbelief toward that. More of the same "collective war criminals" rhetoric. How do you deal with a society that is being increasingly radicalized? Maybe we should stop in thinking the other side are traitors out to destroy the US. That would be a start.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Near as I can tell, the left-wingers are insisting that this just means less financing, and to clean house in the upper management of law enforcement. I find myself dubious, though. It sounds nice in theory, but who are going to be the ones here to replace the cops which need to be replaced, and what about the honorable cops they and the media don't want you to know exist who will lose their jobs?

For the honorable cops who lose their job, and then have to reapply, get re-trained, and deal with all that hassle, it's going to suck. No lie. I imagine it won't be fun in the least.

We've been trying to reform the police since 1991? If not 1960. What is that? 40 years? 70 years? How long have people been trying to reform the police? Reduce violence? What's happened since 1991?

• Qualified immunity was expanded to include violence done by the police (previously it was only violation of civil liberties)
• "Civil asset forfeiture" has skyrocketed from a very rare thing (used mostly for drug money) into pouring literally billions of dollars into police departments. It is essentially robbery by police.
• No Knock warrants were created, and issued for potential 'destruction of evidence' even if the police did not believe there was a threat to officer safety.
• "Stop and frisk" policies were implemented that deliberately targeted minorities
• Police have continued to plant evidence
• Long interrogations to elicit "confessions" and casual brutality continues. Beating, maiming, an killing suspects to "get them complaint" continues.
• Courts have developed a holy veneration of officer testimony, despite plenty of evidence that police are little better than the average person as an eyewitness. Police are allowed to coordinate before testimony - something known to produce bad testimony - and often give similar matching stories.
  These sometimes contradict actual physical evidence, yet when evidence contradict's the police's story, nothing is done to the officers

Yes, I'm very sorry the lives of the "good apples" will be disrupted a bit as we go about actually fixing this problem. It genuinely sucks for them, and they do have my sympathy. Unfortunately there's a bigger problem, and if a few months of inconvenience and stress for them fixes a much bigger issue, then okay. Lets do it.

Really everything I've seen you say on the police reformation seems pursuable given what I know about city agendas. Any cost complications could easily and probably come from the feds given it seems like essentially a one-time/limited cost.

And yeah, you'll have people going through rehire which is a pretty minor inconvenience, though I imagine gets blowbacks from the unions or police employee committees.

[Antiboyscout]

Maybe we should stop in thinking the other side are traitors out to destroy the US. That would be a start.

You sure about that?


https://nypost.com/2020/06/12/raz-simone-accused-of-acting-like-warlord-in-seattles-chaz/

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Only difference I see is one hides behind a badge

[Antiboyscout]

Only difference I see is one hides behind a badge

[TGLS]

You know, if you asked me last year whether or not the Liberal Crime Squad was actually making or referring to a political statement labeling all cops as Conservative, I would have said it was basically an engine limitation.

[Darth Wedgius]

Black Americans shot to death by the police in 2018, justified or not: 235
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

That's regardless of whether the shooting was justified or not.

Black Americans murdered in the US in 2018: 7,407.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-race-ethnicity-and-gender/

So if we get rid of the police, is this going to, overall, help black people?

I have my doubts.

Near as I can tell, the left-wingers are insisting that this just means less financing, and to clean house in the upper management of law enforcement. I find myself dubious, though. It sounds nice in theory, but who are going to be the ones here to replace the cops which need to be replaced, and what about the honorable cops they and the media don't want you to know exist who will lose their jobs?

Look at how somebody like Mr. Witwer defended his friend, who was a cop, for being a generally honorable human being who tried to fight any injustice he saw within the system, admitted we need more cops like that one, and then got so stomped on by a hate mob of angry twitter SJWs, he went on to hashtag #DefundThePolice not long after that. Hate against police by PC crusaders is at an all-time high, and while a cop who abuses power deserves no excuse, the reverse is just as sad.

I think a lot of left-wingers do use "defund" to mean "less funding," and I don't want to give the impression that defund always means abolish. Thanks. But some do mean abolish. Minneapolis is disbanding its police department. The people running CHAZ have also demanded the abolition of the police. Then again, after a few days, CHAZ is asking for food donations.

Even those who just want it cleaned up and policies changed (noble, IMHO, and we really can do a better job at least at gathering relevant statistics), aren't likely to find themselves in a world with 0% police abuse. The whole "We tried reform and it didn't work!" narrative is probably going to get louder next time. And, unless cops are replaced with AI, I think there will be a next time.

Which I'm OK with, as long as they do it first, and the farther away the better. Minneapolis will be an excellent test case from y point of view -- it's far away. If it works out OK, that's great. Sincerely. I'm pretty libertarian (small "l"), and, without law enforcement, California becomes a lot less restrictive. I think a lot of 2nd Amendment supporters will be happy, too. Want to own an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine? Not a problem!


youtu.be/egsfYdxQRr8

I imagine it'll come down to some benefits and some drawbacks. As Mr. Sowell has said, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

[GreyICE]

Oh boy, people from outside Seattle posting about Capital Hill. I expect lots and lots and lots of ignorance.

Step one, yes, they have free food, and yes, the homeless did come and eat all of it at one point. That's what it's there for. It's literally free food for people who need it, why would anyone be sad that the people who need it ate it? Do you think the free food was some sort of modern art piece? People donated more, and as of last night they were stocked up. After today's march? Who knows. But the homeless eating food that's out there for people who need food is why it was donated in the first place.

Part 2, there's no "closed borders" and part 3, the only guns were from one night where the cops were radioing about 30 armed Proud Boys (their description) who were coming to attack everyone in Capital Hill. They reported multiple armed groups, and "tracked" them through the city on the scanner. Yes, the "Proud Boys" didn't exist, but they got their photographs of people in the neighborhood with guns. Yes, we have guns here. Yes, we allow open carry. Yes, some people came out in case the crowd of 30 white supremacists the police were reporting about showed up. Yes, the cops lied on their scanner. Trusting a cop... don't do that.

Since then it's a block party more or less. Big march today, about to head over. It's funny to see the usual suspects just jump on this one to distract though. Trust me, here in Seattle, it makes you look like a fool.