The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Police Brutality & Interaction

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    Comments

    Yawn


    Even when you can't find a diversion or a lie to change the dialog away from a subject that is uncomfortable for you you still have to get the last word even if it's without content. That's why I think you're the biggest ass I've ever talked with on the internet.


    You do this crap all of the time

    I said the Black community doesn't trust the police

    You talk about gang intimidation 

    Here are comments by Black police chiefs in Maryland acknowledging the lack of community trust.

    https://www.marylandmatters.org/2020/12/21/black-police-chiefs-in-md-reflect-on-police-reform-civil-unrest-of-2020/

    Here is a Black police chief from Massachusetts admitting that he gets nervous when a police car is behind him

    Black Chief: My Heart Jumps When I See a Cop Car Behind Me

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/black-police-chief-my-heart-jumps-when-i-see-a-cop-car-behind-me?ref=home

    Police departments have to restore trust.

    Nice attempt at diversion 


    Spattering factoids around doesn't make a cohesive argument. 1) when *black* adults (not children or babies) are killed, there are protests - part at times from real outrage, part from a well-oiled protest machine. (from Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson's heyday, but a bit different now)

    2) some police are trusted, but running around with megaphones or Facebook campaigns can change the dynamic. Still, there are huge numbers of police and different cities - some work well, though you've pulled up some dodgy crap about "defunding" (actually outsourcing that failed) in the past.

    3) Floyd stole $20 from the counter help - likely 3 hours work - and his dealer was standing in the store watching, had already been stopped 2x that day himself. So maybe Floyd died because of a greedy counterfeiting opioid dealer? Not such a charming soundbite (was that the dealer's Mercedes or whose? Someone's making money exploiting the junkie poor - are you outraged that Floyd's kept a useless drooling junkie for over a year? Or does that seem right by you?)

    4) Eric Garner's case was bad. So was Sandra Bland's. Or the guy torn up by a dog in the shower. Or the black youth out in the back of a police van unsecured and whipsawed around. In other case cops did well, such as picking off tht girl trying to stab someone. Other cases draw protests even though the guys' behavior is dodgier. In the ACLU's heyday they were more careful about avoiding dodge example cases, as it was counterproductive, diluted the message. Now, they're all equal - an army lieutenant driving a new car doing nothing wrong at all and a kid missing a court date and then driving a car with expired plates. Scream equally? The 2nd guy resisted arrest. There was an Uber driver the other day who resisted having his car stolen, and he got driven around the block hanging out the window and then smashed underneath. All good fun, this resisting, nothing can happen, right? How many innocent bystanders killed when idiots' weapons go off or taking police on a high speed chase?

    5) numbers for "#6 dying by police" are misleading when the killed was killed in the process of shooting at or in some way attacking the police or an innocent person. But this stat is supposed to make us upset at the injustice of gangbangers getting killed by cops mixed in with innocent people killed by cops? It's tone deaf - it's like complaining about Trayvon getting shit when he (by most reasonable evidence and testimony) hopped on Zimmerman. Not quite the "minding your own business" angle, vs Eric Garner or the Army Lieutenant. Same with these guys who've been beating up and threatening their girlfriends - are we really expected to get teary-eyes when things don't go their way?

    6) there are a lot of poor people around the world who don't spend their days dealing drugs and ripping off stores and shooting people and getting into fights. My mom grew up in the depression, got her bag of welfare potatoes dropped off each week, got to ride to school on a horse with her sisters... Sure, blacks had it worse in the depression - are any of those making excuses for these young punks? Black Pride meant something different in the 60's. Now it's just this endless Gangsta attitude, going on 35-40 years.


    Your expert opinion was that Chauvin would go free because........previous video tape, Mercedes SUV, etc.

     


    Nope, it was simply a video showing Chauvin's knee moving, letting up on pressure, plus showing that knee position in training. It felt like that video was better defense than Chauvin's attorney, but maybe it wasn't courtroom ready, convincing but misleading on social media. That's why we have real trials.

    And unlike dogmatists, i look at details and adjust my opinion depending on what i see. Shocking, ain't it?


    The video wasn't "courtroom" ready"

    My humor for the day.

    Chauvin did not go free.

    Edit to add:

    Even the police dispatcher the pressure being applied was not right

    Go with the prosecution experts in this case.

     


    For fucks sakes, my comments were made before the trial, so there were no "prosecution experts" to discuss at that point. You're such a dick to blog around.


    It's so bizarre, as if Dagblog was a decisive battle in a war, not just a few pseudonymous people discussing things on the internet and you offering how you saw the evidence you looked at. Nope you are one of the bad guys who've been defeated and now you have to submit, accept surrender. The other side won and everything will be right with the world when you do. You have to say Hail Caeser Rmrd, Chauvin gang lost PP is part of Chauvin's gang, he has to admit all police are evil and this country is systemically racist.

    Reminds me about how I am always freaked out when  there is disagreement about analyzing one thing or another, it ends up with him saying "all my candidates won". It's like: huh? we probably voted exactly the same, why can't you see that everything is not a sports competition? Everything's not another Manichean metaphorical struggle, just pseudonymous individuals on the internet sharing thoughts.


    I saw a total of about ten minutes live of the trial but that part had still shots of the knee with the toe slightly off the ground. The prosecutor was trying to make the case that that meant half the cops weight was therefore on the neck. I actually kneeled down and put my leg over a neck sized jar to see if I could keep low pressure on it. It was very easy to do by leaning slightly away from that leg as it appeared to me that the cop was doing. I judged the cop to be a prick who didn't mind hurting people but didn't deliberately kill and so the highest level of manslaughter was probably appropriate rather than murder and what the politics would settle on too.. Here is how a lot of other people saw it including a life flight nurse I know well who has been around a lot of trauma and said she could see when his heart stopped. I am posting it for the first installment, haven't yet read the rest myself.


    Intended as reply to PP. Strange, I started composing my comment before you posted yours so how could I have misplaced it?  No matter, just saying.

    Your comment maybe correct but it is funny that you seem to see rmrd as the only exemplar of your gripe.


    hey I thought pretty much like you did on the stuff I looked at, but then I thought: it doesn't really matter what I think, the jury is seeing and hearing a lot more, and even if I would see everything they did and come to a different conclusion than they did, my opinion still wouldn't matter much more than a hill of beans, because they are in charge, that's all there is, I am living in a country where that's the system, love it or leave it. And furthermore, he gets to appeal, it's not over.

    What I think is more important: the people who are making this trial stand for something much bigger are way more of a serious problem. Likely though, they'll get over it, and move on. For the moment, it's the trial of the century, a barometer reading in time, so was the OJ trial and the custody battle for poor little rich girl Gloria Vanderbilt, for that matter.


    p.s. on making my gripe about rmrd, it's about this forum-sure there's lots of other people who do that elsewhere- but for me he's the only one here who regularly tries to turn what other people say here into strawmen to fight the simplistic Manichean battles that concern him, rather than just seeing us as individuals trying to get across our own nuanced takes of any situation with other members. I find that absurd, especially given the small number of people interacting here. I don't try to fight that on bigger sites, but they usually have software tools to filter people who do that out-like "mute" or "block", so that you can think instead of "fight".


    Yeah, Lulu - makes you wonder how much better the defense could have been. Interesting you actually tried it out (hope your cat's ok)


    I was wondering if the defense could have been allowed to put on a demonstration with two men on the floor and the one in victim position able to talk normally. None of this is about defending Chauvin but how I thought he might have been better defended. I am close to the view expressed in the Counterpunch link. Cat chucked some furballs is all. She should thank me but that's not really her way.


    Must admit I was definitely surprised about "guilty" on all three charges instead of guilty on just one, was confusing, didn't make a lot of sense to me, didn't seem like that was possible. And was thinking it might be sort of a flip side opposite of "jury nullification"? Along the lines of a jury being entitled to rule as if the whole system is fucked up for the good of society, as if the charges were wrong. The defense is supposed to simply create doubt about what is charged. Seemed to me the answer was fuck doubt, there is no doubt, guilty guilty of that and lots more. Again, with the major cavaet that I didn't hear/see everything they saw/heard.


    The charge 3 times for same event" is a bit strange to me. Like paying 3 times for a pizza cuz it has dough, sauce and cheese, or maybe cuz they delivered it, it was hot, and i ate it.

    The one charge overloaded, for people who go out and fire guns in the air is prolly the weirdest.


    can you point to where PP said he was an expert at predicting jury outcomes?


    Do you see what I wrote as any criticism of PP's comment? 


    No (and in case you were mistakenly reading the above was a reply to you, it was a reply to rmrd's comment.)


    Right, my mistake. Thanks for the clarification.



    Fact check: Daunte Wright's outstanding warrant unrelated to misaddressed court documents 

    (note this ends up showing that in addition to the arrest warrant, which the police discovered upon stopping him for registration, which was because he did not appear for a court hearing for charge of possession of a pistol without a permit and fleeing a police officer, this also reveals that he had an upcoming court case on Aug. 2 for a 2019 charge of aggravated robbery. I believe the cops would not have known about the latter?-innocent until proven guilty?-and for some reason it was those docs which were sent to the wrong address. But an arrest warrant, that is definitely their business! They are supposed to execute those, it's a very important part of their job. When cops stop you for anything, and they take your driver's license to their car, and then you gotta sit there and wait, scared about why they stopped you, one of the things they are doing is checking for an arrest warrant first.)

    By Devon Link @ USA TODAY, updated April 20, 2:41 pm

    The claim: Daunte Wright had a warrant out for his arrest because the court sent the notice to appear to the wrong address

    Misinformation continues to spread about the April 11 traffic stop that resulted in the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright of Minnesota.

    Police stopped Wright around 2 p.m. because his vehicle registration was expired. When police learned Wright had an outstanding warrant and attempted to detain him, a brief struggle began.

    [....]

    Amid the confusion, a misinformed TikTok video introduced the false claim that the warrant was issued because of an inaccurate address. Comedian Walter Masterson claimed the court issued the warrant after Wright missed his hearing because the court sent the notice to the wrong address.

    Masterson has since removed the video, but the false claim lives on as versions spread across platforms. Adding to its virality, celebrities  including musician Questlove shared the video on their own Facebook pages. 

    In an April 15 video, Masterson explained that he removed the original video after he learned the “information in that video was incomplete,” and he promised to “do better.”

    Neither Masterson nor Questlove responded to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

    Video directs viewers to the wrong case

    In the video, Masterson introduced the claim as “breaking news” that “nobody (knew) yet."

    He then directed viewers to look up Wright’s case number, 27-CR-19-29850, on the Minnesota Judicial Branch's website. There was an outstanding warrant at the time of Wright’s death; however, it was unrelated to this case.

    The case number refers to a 2019 aggravated robbery charge against Wright. The register of actions indicates the notice of hearing for this case was sent to the wrong address, but the court did not respond with a warrant. That case was scheduled to go to trial Aug. 2.

    “They sent the notice of hearing to the wrong address, and then they issued a warrant for his arrest, and now he’s dead,” Masterson concludes. 

    Wright's outstanding warrant was unrelated to address issues

    In March, Wright was charged with possession of a pistol without a permit and fleeing a police officer. The case number for these separate charges is 27-CR-21-4400.

    On April 2, the court issued a warrant for Wright’s arrest for failing to appear at the hearing. That warrant was active at the time of Wright’s death. 

    The warrant is publicly available for download under Case No. 27-CR-21-4400 on the Minnesota Judicial Branch Document Search page. The register of actions for the case gives no indication the notice for hearing was sent to the wrong address. It is unknown why Wright did not appear for his hearing.

    Our rating: False

    We rate the claim that at the time of his death Daunte Wright had an outstanding warrant because the court sent his notice to appear to the wrong address FALSE because it is not supported by our research. There was an active warrant at the time of his death, but it was not related to misaddressed court documents.

    Our fact-check sources:


    The police officer said that she was going to fire her Taser

    Despite being a training officer, she fired her gun, killing Duante Wright

    The warrant does not suggest a death penalty crime.


    we all know those things, even she knows it


    An incompetent police officer killed Duante Wright.

    None of the false information on the internet changes that fact.


    A proud former police officer, Eric dams looks to win NY City Hall with an anti-crime campaign

    By  @ Politico.com, Updated 04/21/2021 10:34 PM EDT

    Caption: Eric Adams, Brooklyn Borough President and a
    Democratic mayoral candidate, speaks during a 'I Want My
    Miracle Back' rally on March 24, 2021.
    John Minchillo/AP Photo

    After 11 people were fatally shot inside a Pittsburgh synagogue three years ago, a politician nearly 400 miles away demanded an immediate shift in protocol.

    “From now on, I will bring my handgun every time I enter a church or synagogue,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired police captain who was then mulling his current run for New York City mayor, said the following day, encouraging trained police officers to do the same.

    The responses were swift: Emails poured into his office from New Yorkers horrified by the suggestion. They invoked red-state Republicans and the National Rifle Association, and one person expressed gratitude to live on the other side of the East River. The anger was offset by a few people who agreed with the proposition — including one who requested a reference letter to obtain his own permit to carry a concealed weapon, according to previously unreported emails POLITICO obtained through a freedom of information request.

    Now Adams is among the top-tier Democratic candidates to be the next mayor, ranking second in most public polls and sitting on a $7.8 million war chest. As he competes in an eight-person field, he is carving a path formed by his biography: A Black man who openly discusses being a teenager assaulted by police officers, only to become one himself at a time when the city was mired in crime. He quickly challenged orthodoxies within the NYPD, protesting the cop shooting of a mentally-ill Black woman when he was in the Police Academy.

    And despite four years as a registered Republican, he considers himself a progressive before it became popular.

    But as a proud former police officer running for mayor with crime on the rise, Adams is often castigated for being out of step with the activist wing of a party whose vote he is seeking on June 22.

    He wants to reinstate a plainclothes unit disbanded by the NYPD last year to focus on gun safety. He readily denounces the “defund NYPD” slogan that surged after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year. He has defended the controversial practice of stop-and-frisk if used correctly. He wants spot checks for guns entering the city at Port Authority bus terminals.

    And he once said he would arm himself if elected mayor — a position he modified in an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday.

    Where some candidates focus on criminal justice reform, Adams has zeroed in on the uptick in shootings — a 64-percent increase this year, according to recent data. “The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety,” he often says.

    As a state Senator, Adams focused on gun safety, demonstrating the ease with which firearms could be brought into the city following a mass shooting at a movie theater in Colorado in 2012. He also pushed for legislation to close loopholes in the state's assault weapons ban.

    Adams — who would be the first police officer as mayor since William O’Dwyer in the late 1940s — must now persuade segments of Democratic voters that his history as a cop does not detract from his plans for police reform, which include publicizing a list of officers being monitored for complaints. At the same time, he is banking on support from voters who are reporting violence as a leading concern, according to a new poll.

    [....]

    from Feb. 2020:

     

    Seems like he agrees with looking for bulges suggesting a weapon, not random searches.

    The random searches included emptying pockets 

    90% of those searches turned up nothing

    Those searches were unconstitutional.

    The NYPD currently does the type of search he describes.


    North Carolina sheriff's deputy fatally shoots Black man while serving warrant

    I'd like to fix the headline for them, tho: North Carolina sheriff's deputy fatally shoots Black man while serving warrant, as he was fleeing them


    I offer a different point of view on the Chauvin case

    I see many who describe Floyd as a junkie, etc, seemingly of no value

    I note evidence presented by the prosecution 

    Because of that, I am said to be dogmatic

    Yet someone said Chauvin would go free

    The statement came before all the evidence was presented 


    Not sure I see a "different point of view" - you just want Chauvin guilty.

    I noted after a year of many proclaiming Chauvin guilty due to the seeming uncaring look on his face and the seeming overwhelming evidence that there was new video and presentation of police procedures, and considering at trial the cop gets the benefit of the doubt, it looked like Chauvin could go free. This was a bit in-your-face, but i wanted a "he'll likely walk" wakeup. And yes, that was way before trial and admitted evidence, like everyone else's speculation. But i gave something novel to chew on for a while, and those training shots weren't faked - somewhere the neck press was taught as standard procedure. What the defense did with that, I've no idea. Lulu was inspired enough by something to try out the knee position himself to see if it really seemed punishing or efficient and whether it required full weight. Curiosity's a good thing in the middle of rote recitation of unverified but repeated viewpoints.

    Yes, junkies are largely of no value. Their mothers may love them, but they're a drain on themselves and society. Don't like it? Clean up junkies. Here 4 cops plus med team got to deal with one thieving junkie for an hour, even if he hadn't died? How much free time and energy and money does society have to serve the useless vs more pressing needs? How many school kids could 5 professionals teach in an hour? How much does it distract from catching murderers, getting guns off the street, keeping petty criminals running around stirring up shit, ruining the neighborhood, making old ladies panic, or worse abuse Asians as we've seen recently.? How much does it support the gangbangers and other dealers/murderers keeping many parts of modern cities shitty places to live?

    And yet after all this crap, Huffpost's new Editor-in-Chief, fresh from The Root, posts her first op-ed about George Floyd's "innocence". If George Floyd wasn't hanging out with a dealer (who took the Fifth, by the way) passing fake bills that steals 3 hours labor from a young counter worker, for Floyd likely to pay for his dope, like he'd done for a year or more, along with lots of other illegal and self-destructive activity, Floyd wouldn't have prompted the kid to call the police to come grab him sitting outside in someone's fairly decent ride. That's not "innocence" - that's "consequences" and "probability". Floyd seemed like a pathetic mess. He may have had a good heart in ways, but he was also a nasty person in ways. Turning him into some kind of street Jesus is absurd. He shouldn't have died under what i see as the usual police methodical indifference and frequent hostility and sometimes abuse, but he did belong in police custody short of coming up with better procedures to handle repeat mostly petty criminal addicts.

    Whether these mostly female social workers will feel comfortable dealing with a muscular 6'6" whacked out delusional man with occasional violent tendencies who 4 cops had trouble subduing is more than a rhetorical question - it's the basic premise of your save-the-day shift funds to more benign community workers. (and even if Floyd wasn't armed, that's not an assumption any social worker can safely make in any encounter)

    Is there a compromise where it's possible to have considerate but efficient police? We're still working on it - it's a small subset of a bigger population - cops who'll take on this tough work for low pay but still be intelligent and good-mannered while taking lots of abuse and dealing with, anticipating a range of clever and often violent/deadly crooks, but also frequently boring and filled with paperwork? (see the shootout when the guy told cops they were "grabbing my balls" when he really had a pistol hidden there).A pretty demanding job offer.

    (your stats exaggerating the # of black youth killed by police and lumping in youth wh were killed shooting at police or innocents with youth mistreated after doing something reasonably awful & criminal vs youth mistreated just because of police mistakes and police hostile attitude towards the community is a grave disservice to the situation, incoming opinion and misdirecting from actual reality-led solutions - especially as you largely ignored the little kids shot by other blacks which has been getting more and more out of control along with burned up smashed up minority-run businesses by self-righteous but unthinking/uncompassionate protesters, while we fret about 1 dead junkie)

    But in general, i feel a comment that brings new insight, lets people think, even if proven wrong, is more valuable than just regurgitated accepted conventional opinion from social media and news orgs, presuming i don't repeat wrong info too much (not that any of that was stated as fact, nor "expert opinion).


    Chauvin WAS guilty

    The idea that Chauvin wasn't guilty WAS proven wrong

    George Floyd used drugs, but did not deserve to die

    When police reform is mentioned, the counter is yammering about defunding the police

    Simultaneously we are told Governors and the President rejects defunding the police

    When creating mental health units is discussed, it is met with nonsense about sending social workers into gun battles

    You are not presenting new ideas

    You are supporting the status quo

    I do not ignore crime in Black communities 

    I think building trust between Black communities and the police is an important step

    Polls say Black communities want more police 

    Black police chiefs say the Black community does not trust police 

    You want to ignore that fact

    You are biased, you said Chauvin would go free, before seeing the evidence 

    Edit to add:

    The defense's forensic expert that Maryland is reviewing all cases of police homicides by former medical examiner David Fowler

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/maryland-medical-examiner-investigation-chavin-testimony/2021/04/23/61951580-a2ed-11eb-85fc-06664ff4489d_story.html

     

     


    Regarding violent Blacks killed by police, we have examples of whites who have shot police being taken in alive

    https://newsone.com/playlist/white-arrested-with-by-police/

     


    We have examples of people swallowing nails and surviving. Draw what conclusions you will.


    A nonsensical response.

    The bottom line is that you look for excuses that provide cover for Chauvin

    You demand alternatives 

    A police officer shots a suspect prone on the ground, blame a hair trigger

    When police kill Black people, you are not going to get the "First lets solve the homicide rate" response you desire

    In the recent NC shooting, the city officials and police department are making clear that their officers were not involved

    They place the blame on the sheriff and the DA who won't release the video

    Police aren't trusted

    People want video documentation, otherwise they feel that their is a coverup.

    Your idiotic response only confirms my position 

    Im not making this a fight, you are.

     


    Thugs assaulted the Capitol 

    Republicans are suppressing votes and free speech

    Drivers are allowed to run over protesters 

    We do not blame all white people

    Crime goes up

    Every Black person is supposed to apologize 


    While i could note that "my people are just fine, y'all go ahead an shoot yousselves up, ya hear?" I'm not so wed to my ethnic profile that i don't wish y'all would at least stop shooting your young'uns. But sorry for being up "excuses_,  obviously no one's gonna listen to me. Toss another opioid on the fire, it's getting cold in here.


    You comment confirms my opinion of you

    Thanks


    AGAIN excepting that it looks a heckuva lot like the "First lets solve the homicide rate" is the response for 65% of blacks

    and that when you write like you are the voice for "blacks" saying the police abuse problem has to be solved first, the group you and your activist friends on tv and social media are actually speaking for is more like 35% of blacks, if that.

    Your view is very much a minority view of a minority. It may also include a lot of white liberals, maybe up to 19% of whites. And up to 29% of Democrats, up to 30% of Hispanics.

    New poll from Data for Progress and Vox finds that basically everyone — Democrat, Republican, young, old, white, black, brown — would feel safer with *more* police patrols in their neighborhoods. https://t.co/5pJecRZaYR pic.twitter.com/eN6fyDCntM

    — German Lopez (@germanrlopez) April 9, 2021

    Still your view doesn't appear to appeal much to majority of any group. It's a minority view all the way. Media these days does pander to individual interest groups, maybe that's where you got the idea. MSNBC, WaPo, is there to make a profit, ya know, and activists do social media to get followers and spread their narrative. Doesn't mean that narrative has won over the majority just because you're seeing it all the time.

    If you happen to think so, there's lot of evidence you as deluded as any Trumpie or Republican who still thinks Trump won the election. You see police abuse blacks stories all the time, they see Trump won the election stories all the time. Not a whole lot of difference.


    Facts

    The DOJ is investigating the Minneapolis police department 

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-announces-investigation-city-minneapolis-minnesota-and

    NYC city council passed a police reform bill to improve trust

    https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/222-21/city-council-passes-comprehensive-police-reform-resolution-confront-legacy-racialized

    Maryland passed a sweeping police reform bill

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/us/maryland-police-reform.html

    Ithaca, NY is recreating how it views of public safety

    https://ithacavoice.com/2021/04/city-of-ithaca-unanimously-passes-reimagining-public-safety-resolution/

    I will stick with what is happening on the ground.

    My reality is fine.


    Me myself and I posted these on page 1 of THIS VERY THREAD of yours

    on the new Maryland laws

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/303749

    federal v. local reform including DOJ

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/302372

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/302806

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/304254

    Brennan Center for Justice on why DeBlasio's oversight reform plan sucks and is stupid:

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/303694

    Chicago

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/304150

    effectiveness of BLM protests

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/303741

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34083/304253

    AND MORE, I'm sure I missed some

    BONUS

    Here's new on your expectations for wunnerful oversight decrees by DOJ:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/24/minneapolis-doj-george-floyd-police-oversight-decree

    You are insulting my intelligence, as you often do to other members here with your sets of links which you have cherry-picked and clearly save on your hard drive for quick recall.

    You have, however, very clearly confirmed all that I said. You have a pre-conceived narrative for which you cherry-pick stories to fit. You do not have an open mind, rather, it's closed shut real tightly and you are here to preach your narrative constructed of cherry picked news. And that's exactly why other members conflict with you. Because the rest of us do not use this site to do that. We actually like to do the opposite: to deconstruct what activists like yourself are actually doing, whether they realize it or not. And to do the same with politics and politicians.


    There is no statistical evidence that I could find and likely it doesn't exist comparing the numbers of those who shot at a cop and were taken alive by race. I'm sure there are times a black man has shot at police and been taken alive. There may be a racial disparity but picking a choosing a few videos doesn't prove anything.


    The mayor of a city  in NC rushed out to the microphones to make sure that his department was not blamed for a death caused by a sheriff's department 

    3 sheriff's deputies resigned and 10 were taken off the streets 

    Police departments are not trusted

    Police departments have to put in the work to gain public trust

    There is continuous yammering about th Woke

    Republicans would imprison Bree Newsome for removing a Confederate flag

    At the same time, they craft bills to legalize running over protesters 

    If you are complaining about the Woke, you don't give a damn about Republican authoritarianism


    Again this has nothing to do with my comment that only addressed your claim that, "we have examples of whites who have shot police being taken in alive." Anytime anyone makes an argument you're unable to refute you ignore it and change the subject. It's the main reason I stopped posting to you, there is no honest dialog. I'll just go back to ignoring you.


    Yawn


    There we go again. Your attachment to getting in the last word knows no bounds, even when you have absolutely nothing to say. It's like you're 3 years old.


    Denial = a river in Egypt. What I see: all about being a zealot about something, for who knows what personal reason, and then cherry picking news to fit and reading it, day in, day out for years. Actually there has been one benefit of interacting with him: using him for a cautionary example for ourselves about buying into narratives.



    Irony:



    [....] The video, given to WSYX by a neighbor who wishes to remain anonymous, gives a wider view of the incident that police had only previously released through the officer's body-worn camera.

    "It was surreal," the neighbor said. "I can't believe this just happened. Unfortunately, the cop had only seconds to respond. Once I saw the body cam video, I realized the young lady had a knife. It could have been worse. It could have been two people dead if he didn't respond as fast as he did." [....]


    is a graph from nyc.gov from 2012; we don't know what the percentages are now, BUT think like how a cop would who had started out 8 years back, and his conscious and unconscious profiling of dangers; just sayin'

    If you care about black lives, tell them to stop shooting at police. pic.twitter.com/h7tzq0S4yF

    — aiden pennington (@aidenps) April 24, 2021

     


    Black man carrying a cordless phone shot 10 times by police officer

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/deputy-shot-black-man-appears-mistake-phone-gun-77284012

     


    The judge in the Chauvin case allowed Floyd's drug use in as evidence 

    Chauvin had multiple complaints against him as a police officer

    These complaints were not to be shown to the jury

    So we had the junkie versus the police officer

    It now appears that the DOJ may investigate one of those cases.

    Things are going very well in my reality

    Police reform, mental health services, and a possible examination of more of Chauvin's deeds.


    A basically unchanging number of police shootings for five years but many more homicides of black people. CONGRATS, you should be so very proud! Must not actually be about black lives for you, they don't matter. Is about fearing and hating police, perhaps.

    Edit to add: You don't think whypipple fear the police? You'd be surprised, apparently you aren't close to any enough to know.Psst: fear is sort of how rule of law works, guess we just got used to idea that it's necessary. You fear things like: killing someone, not filing your taxes, not paying your bills, riding round in an unregistered car while you have a warrant out on you, carrying an illegal firearm or drugs, stuff like that doesn't entitle you to be free of of fear of police...


    Your rant has nothing to do with my post about the Chauvin case.

    I submitted posts that law enforcement officials consider lack of trust between the Black community and police as a factor in being unable to solve crimes

    These officials also note that the lack of trust can lead to people taking the law into their own hands 

    The young man who called police about Floyd's $20 bill regrets that he made the call

    The neighbor who called police to check on Atianna Jefferson regrets that he made the call

    The brother who called police about Daniel Prude regrets his call

    Fortunately, legislators are attempting to change laws and making efforts to reform police.

    Police arrived at the wrong house and murdered Breonna Taylor

    The only criminal charge was for an officer was shot a wall in a neighbor's apartment 

    I say police reform, you yammer about defunding police

    I say mental health support, you yammer send social workers to gunfights

    Rinse, repeat

    BTW, the penalty for selling loose cigarettes or a fake $20 should not be being choked to death

    Build community trust, get support in reporting crimes in neighborhoods 

    We should not have to settle for police backing off enforcing laws if they are held to account when they murder someone.


    AGAIN. 65% SAY POLICE MAKE THEM FEEL SAFE. And would like more.

    + Chauvin IS ONE FUCKING CASE, one victim. Focusing on it as meaning anything reform-wise or society-wise is delusional and irrational like a damn cult member would do, or a fundamentalist Christian, or, maybe like a Proud Boy focusing on Trump. It solves or changes NOTHING.


    Do you feel better repeating idiotic things? Of course the guy feels bad about reporting Chauvin - because he died. Surely anyone would give up $20 to save a life. If you're sure of it. That day, that year. I'm sure he feels responsible - must be horrible. If Floyd came across really mean, maybe, maybe not, but he came across as whack but likeable (i don't know about violent episodes, but we forgive).

    Eric Garner's case is different in so many ways. He wasn't a junkie, it's not even clear he was selling ciggies (and that's not ripping someone off, it's an unlicensed service), he'd just helped break up a fight, the choke hold was obviously deadly, etc - slapping these 2 cases together over and over *hurts* your point. We have to do something about the George Floyds of the world - obviously not death, but mistakes will be made. We don't have to do anything about the Eric Garner's of the world - his case was a travesty and straight up abuse. But you think they're the same because of their skin color.


    Your rant is like the new Root-led Huffpost, provocatively headlining 6 cop killings in 24 hours after the Chauvin verdict - but ones a girl trying to stab another, ones a guy with a bomb, ones a guy who started shooting at police, ones a guy who'd been arrested *200 times* before and was charging at the policeman with a pole, one drove off while being served with a warrant - that one might be objectionable, hard to say. But in each case there's a mother or aunt saying, "you didn't have to kill my baby!", a bystander saying, "man, you didn't have to shoot - could a used a taser or something". 3 seconds to prevent own or bystander's death, but always a backseat driver, Monday morning quarterback.

    If you exaggerate the number of unfair black deaths in large font day after day, people will be outraged. If you tone it down, you see a problem - affecting both whites and blacks, but still tilting more against blacks - that is serious but much smaller than the bigger gun-and-drug-fueled epidemic. There are steps that could and should be taken to improve things - not always clearly identified, but not necessarily rocket science. But it won't satisfy those who think cops have time to talk suspects to death redemption and maintain order on the streets. Maybe with an infinite amount of money, but think of the energy and column space devoted to the unfair death of a junkie, and compare it to the lesser attention to fixing needed urban infrastructure, commerce, training, etc, and then there's the riots that the destroy the very structure that urban communities need built up. All in the time of pandemic. Well played, stoking the Plague.

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6084e77ae4b0ee126f677bc4


    Whenever police kill a Black person, multiple other stories are revealed. We now frequently see police homicides.

    There are demands that police release video immediately 

    The video is requested because police are not trusted.

    At any rate, police reform and mental health support is being activated.

    If legislators thought everything was fine, no change would be necessary

    I repeat this reality because you reject the fact that changes are being made.


    Is English your first language?

    BTW, "policeman saves Black girl's lifefrom lunatic knife wielder" is one way that headline coulda/shoulda read.

    At some point cops are going to say, "why should I risk my life for you ungrateful bastards?" Not talking about cops with a bad attitude, but when every tough step in one of the toughest jobs around is microanalyzed even when you do something heroic, well, fuck y'all. (and it sucks to be agreeing with OJ, but what the hell, once upon a time he was the Juice - in snowy Buffalo no less)


    The video of the girl with the knife changed the tone of everything regarding the teen's death

    Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, for example, defend the officer's action.

    Obviously, English is my first language

    Police are trained to bring down the subject once they pull their weapon.

    There should still be questions of how police in places where many officers are not armed handle similar situations.

    You get to fly your freak flag and hurl insults on dagblog

    In the real world, there are efforts to change police practices.


    What did LeBron say about police and the girl? What are they saying over at Huffpost?

    Pretty sure police pulling a weapon isn't automatic code for shoot to kill.


    Good on the absurdity of this particular recent harangue:

    HELLO, doesn't make sense to complain about prisons being overcrowded with black men and then complain at the same time that they are rarely arrested alive.

    Myself, I find this a valid big picture criticism in reply:

     

     


    The video of the girl with the knife changed the tone of everything regarding the teen's death

    Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, for example, defend the officer's action.

    BLM didn't change their spin on it, though, they haven't amended or changed this April 22 message that she was a slaughtered innocent (which is on their website too), because it fits the narrative they are promoting (thread with videos):

    It's still prominently near the top of their Twitter feed. They're not into facts or understanding a story, they're into making people afraid and angry.

     

     


    Whenever police kill a white person (of the skin color most commonly killed by police) usually there is NO STORY in the news. And on the rare occasion there is such a story, it certainly would be unusual that narrative pushers, like rmrd, will not read, promote or acknowledge it.


    Wrong

    I posted the link to the story of a demented white woman who had her arm broken by a police officer.


    yeah it was shocking what you did there, but it's going to take a lot more than that to undo the damage you've done to your rep as caring only about people with black skin, basically a racist.


    "equity"


    Virginia State trooper looses his mind and hid job during a traffic state

    A Virginia State Police trooper who is seen in a viral video telling a Black driver “you are going to get your a-- whooped” before violently removing the man from his car in 2019 is no longer with the agency, a spokeswoman said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/watch-the-show-folks-va-trooper-no-longer-employed-after-playing-to-camera-in-violent-stop-of-black-driver/2021/04/23/21dd1b36-a3a6-11eb-85fc-06664ff4489d_story.html


    Police face lawsuit for assaulting an elderly Black woman for a traffic violation 

    https://www.theroot.com/68-year-old-black-woman-sues-nc-police-after-they-pulle-1846759354

     


    The state of race relations? During the 3-hour Oscars broadcast, probably 10 Americans were murdered, 6 of whom were Black. Also a 30% chance cops killed somebody in those 3 hours. But we don't have an honest way of talking about any of this.https://t.co/m3IR92HUOx

    — Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) April 26, 2021

    Peter Moskos is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration and the CUNY Graduate Center in the Department of Sociology. He is a former Baltimore Police Department officer. Wikipedia

    Edit to add:

    My thoughts. https://t.co/AaWKbC8ccd

    — Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) April 26, 2021
    '

    full lede from above

    The Big Question: What Should Be Done About Police Violence?

    A Q&A with criminal justice expert and former Baltimore city police officer Peter Moskos on the impact of the Derek Chauvin verdict and why stricter laws won’t prevent all police killings of civilians.    

    By  April 25, 2021, 8:00 AM EDT


    beginning excerpt from the Bloomberg interview with Moskos above. My underlining:

    Francis Wilkinson: The murder conviction of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd was a rare case of punishment for police violence in the U.S. You’re a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and author of the book “Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District,” based on your stint working as a Baltimore city police officer. You also write a blog about policing. Are police killings of civilians a problem specifically of police culture, or is this a broader issue of American culture, with police responding to violence with violence?

    Peter Moskos, professor, Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration, John Jay College of Criminal Justice: I think it’s a bit of both. I do think we could reduce the number of people that cops shoot — [but] not to zero. There are huge differences regionally, especially east to west. The cities where cops shoot the most people are sort of medium-sized cities out west. I’m thinking of places like Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Riverside, California is always high on the list. Albuquerque. (New York City is as an outlier on the low extreme.) There are other variables — crime, violence, drugs, lack of police backup, that kind of thing. But there is low-hanging fruit.

    FW: Low-hanging fruit meaning places where a disproportionate number of police shootings take place?


    PM: Yeah. Off the top of my head, if we could reduce shootings in the state of California to the national average, that would cut out like 100 or 200 killings a year. That seems doable, though not super easy. Part of the problem is the departments that are most ripe for improvement — the ones that have worse numbers on things we care about — those places lack the political will to change it. The idea of protesting shootings in cities that already have better-than-average or best practices — that’s how I get frustrated. We’re not going to improve things by improving New York City. I don’t think you could reduce the number in New York any further.

    FW: But you can elsewhere.


    PM: Given that there are about a thousand killings by police a year, I would say roughly two dozen of those fall under the criminally bad category, and probably another 300 didn’t need to happen. That’s where improvements can be made. But, you know, when there is an active shooter we want cops to shoot the person. That’s not just a legally good shooting, but sometimes morally good. I mean, that’s the unpleasant part.

    FW: But you don’t hear outrage when cops shoot a mass shooter. There’s no movement against that.

    PM: Well, this Columbus case [a police shooting of a knife-wielding 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio] is not a mass killing, but from the cop perspective, it’s so clear cut. She was about to kill someone. And now people say, well, couldn’t the cops have done something else? The answer is no. I mean, you just let her stab her? That’s where we’re at in the public debate? I mean, there are always many, many variables involved, but right now the narrative is just a laser focus on race and that’s a disservice.

    FW: Is it your sense that race is a red herring in this discussion, that there are not a disproportionate number of shootings of Black people?

    PM: Well, there’s a disproportionate number, but does that indicate bias? That’s the question I’m raising. In a hypothetical shooting, would the cops have shot if the person were white? Generally, I think the answer is yes; not all the time. I’m happy Derek Chauvin got convicted and I think it was the correct verdict, but I don’t know how much more can be read into that. It wasn’t society on trial. It wasn’t even policing on trial. I mean, the case was so egregious, you had police unions criticizing it.

    The problem to some extent is cops are shooting too much. Is that the biggest problem in America right now? I don’t think it is. I think the fact that murder went up probably 30 percent last year is a bigger problem. Without discounting individual tragedies, which matter, and people’s emotions, which matter, it’s a big country. There’s going to be another bad shooting in two weeks.

    FW: Well, practically, how do we go from California’s excess of police shootings to New York City’s lower numbers? The New York police are not refraining from killing someone who’s in the act of committing violence. So what's the difference?

    PM: Some of it is simply that New York is a less violent place. Police violence is in proportion to community violence at some level. Some of it is the number of cops; New York cops don’t patrol alone. That’s expensive, but it means that you’re never in a one-on-one situation where you might be getting beat up. You always have backup. Cops shoot because they’re afraid they’re going to get killed, they’re afraid someone else is going to get killed or they’re just afraid. So having two-person patrol, which is really inefficient, is one way to lessen that. Is it necessary? I don’t know, but if it prevents one questionable shooting and civil disorder, it probably is worth it. I think New York also has a better applicant pool because of its immigrant base, quite frankly. There are a lot of overqualified people who want to break into America’s working class.

    FW: So it’s not training, it’s not culture, it’s a better workforce?

    [.....]



    The Russian-Jewish-American "Voice of reason against the madness,"  Cathy Young, doing her nuance thang again, forcing everyone to spin less:

    On average, about 500 white people are killed by police every year. I never hear of a "rash of police killings of white Americans." 90% of people in shootings are men. You never hear of "rash of killing of men." Media picks Narrative that it wants. https://t.co/rbxMJQfzHR

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 26, 2021


    One of the facts I keep in my back pocket is that when it's been studied there is a larger bias penalty for men than being a minority in the criminal justice system. Never hear about it. https://t.co/e8LfpqrVPp. https://t.co/q9romMA4DD

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 26, 2021

    Well one police shootings are rare and two there is no evidence racial bias is the major factor in the shootings, so no I don't think the media should claim that there is an epidemic of white people being shot by police either https://t.co/jENBkHJsER

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 26, 2021

    I think that the extremely large number of police shootings (coupled with a declining homicide solve rate and the presence of qualified immunity) is a big giant huge problem

    — Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) April 26, 2021


    I didn't say it was a non existent, I said it was not an epidemic, and media portrayal of the issue of police shootings is often alarmist and devoid of context. I don't disagree with you that all 4 things mentioned (shootings, homicide clearance, QI, and brutality) are issues

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 26, 2021

    Oh I didn't say an epidemic! just that it's a problem

    — Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) April 26, 2021

    I reported police profiling/abuse stories myself I'm well aware. https://t.co/fH151mZXXp

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 26, 2021

    Justice Department to launch investigation into Louisville PD's policing practices

    That department has faced intense scrutiny in the year since officers killed Breonna Taylor inside her own apartment.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-department-launch-investigation-louisville-pd-s-policing-practices-n1265400

    Follows similar probe into Minneapolis PD


    And you think protests caused that? I don't. If so, there would be a DOJ investigation into P.D.'s everywhere there's a been a lot of protesting about a case. It's the system we've had for a long time. They only interfere if they see a local systemic problem not being well resolved locally, where they see corruption not affording proper legal accountability and/or exceptional systemic failure. It's the proper role of federal government to ensure constitutional human rights are not being denied by local government systems. Clearly they're not seeing it in a lot of places that BLM  thinks it is, they see things working out the way they are supposed to in most places.



    When communities try to hold police
    accountable, law enforcement fights back

    Civilian oversight is undermined by politicians and police,
    who contend citizens are ill-equipped to judge officers

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/civilian-oversight-police-accountability/?itid=hp-top-table-main

     



    In 2016, Senator Tim Scott gave speech on his personal encounters with police. In the course of one year he was stopped by police 7 seven times. He expressed his fear when stopped by police. He said that he did not know many Black men who did not have a similar story. His brother, a Master Sgt, sold his Volvo and purchased a a more obscure vehicle because police considered too nice by the police. Scott described the emotional trauma experienced by Black men who follow the rules but are stopped by police. He talked about wounds that had not healed.

    The senator ended with a plea to his colleagues to "recognize that just because you do not feel the pain, the anguish of another, does not mean it does not 

    https://www.npr.org/2016/07/14/485995136/watch-black-gop-senator-says-hes-been-stopped-7-times-by-police-in-a-year


    well, some people might think the situation is sort of like this:


    But they're both red - are you some kind of Commie?


    Other Black people disagree with Scott.

    Scott is not a reliable source given that he parrots the arguments that follow from the Big Lie. 

    Scott argues for voter suppression 

    There is no obligation to accept his assessment.

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-scott-biden-speech-georgia-voting-1162821/

     


    You parrot lots of dodgy data that serves your purpose - should we treat you the same way? Even now your pimping an article in small town police reform without noting the percent of police killings that are actually controversial (while ignoring the high cost of reforms that may not accomplish any good for cash-strapped small police departments)


    I used an article to support my contention that Scott is used as a prop to support voter suppression and the Big Lie

    Georgia had three reviews of the election results and the Secretary of State stood by the results

    Where is the dodge?

    Rural police departments are included in calls for police reform.

    Different localities will make the decision if they will or won't do reform.

    It is not my job to do an economic analysis for each locality.


    As Psaki says, "Send me the data"


    Cuomo set a police reform deadline for April 1, 2021

    That data will be analyzed for NY as a start.


    "Other Black people disagree with Scott."

    I've posted survey results that show that often the majority of black people disagree with you. If we should disregard Scott for that reason shouldn't we also disregard you.


    I post my opinions

    You are as free to disregard me as I am to disregard you.


    PBS's Fascinating Philly D.A. Poses a Crucial, Timely Question: Can Our Broken Criminal Justice System Really Be Fixed?

    https://time.com/5955624/philly-da-review-pbs/

    The documentary follows a newly elected Progressive DA who defended BLM activists when he was in private practice. 



    ICYMI, I also posted this interview with him on the Chauvin trial thread back on the 29th



    Arkansas may have executed the wrong man for a 1993 murder

    The execution took place in 1917, just as the state was using up the last four of its "legal" execution chemicals

    According to KATV, Ledell Lee was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese. In 2017, he was one of four inmates the state of Arkansas executed before it had exhausted its supply of lethal injection chemicals. Lee maintained his innocence up to the day he was executed, according to THV11. A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arkansas and the Innocence Project on behalf of Patricia Young, Lee’s sister, resulted in the city of Jacksonville, Ark., ruling that new tests could be run on the evidence in Lee’s case.

    The new tests revealed that the DNA on the club used to murder Reese matched an unknown man that wasn’t Lee. The groups added that the DNA found on the club didn’t have any matches across national databases. They also ran tests on a set of five fingerprints found at the scene of the crime, but those also didn’t result in any matches in a national database.

    https://www.theroot.com/dna-test-in-1993-arkansas-killing-reveals-genetic-mater-1846820956
     

    The Arkansas AG stands by her decision to ignore the new DNA evidence.


    Chicago:


    Richard Painter (law professor, Minnesotan, former Republican)

    I don't agree with this anti-police rhetoric. But why did the University president irresponsibly authorize University police to be deployed 15 miles away from campus in Brooklyn Center to confront and arrest protesters, many of them students? That's nuts.https://t.co/olTzKZn6hO

    — Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) May 6, 2021



    So charged & convicted 3 different ways for the same act of killing Floyd, and then adding extra federal charges? I don't get it. It's not like Chauvin had 3 or more knees.

    Also, Floyd was crying for his mother before they even pulled him out if his car, and he was crying for his mother in the back seat if the cop car. Rather than that being a sign of mistreatment, it bears witness to what a fucked up pathetic individual he was (thanks, opioid dealers!), which of course doesn't mean he deserved death.


    It's called "making an example of". 

    Prosecutors do it all the time, to influence other perps that this could happen to them.

    (The IRS is basically run on this principle 100%; they love the news stories about people being tortured by them.)

    It is being done because they think the majority populace wants police reform, and some probably agree with the systemic racism thing as well.

    WHETHER IT WILL WORK OR BACKFIRE, aye, that's the rub.

    A case can easily be made that it's already backfired big time in higher violent crime rate. And of course lots of Blue Lives Matter partisans are making it.

    Personally, I think it's more complex than that, all of this is all tied up with covid hysteria, fearing fear itself, finding anything to explain the inexplicable evil of a virus stalking human life as we knew it.


    ^ and the whether it will work or backfire thing is what governments do! As in: they try out some kind of reforms, some kind of policy, and it fails, and they try something else. And some people even sue when that happens. Unfair things happen. Bad things even happen to good people. All normal in the course of human events. 

    What to watch for, mho: getting to the stage of Jean Valjean vs. Inspector Javert.

     


    Well, most accept Chauvin stepped over the line, prolly even cops, can even accept the bizarre triple charges, but piling on fed charges then 4- or 5-year-old charges will likely shove cops into a defensive corner, especially if you need them to come out fighting against murders or more covid activity or more protests including outnumbered 100-to-1 at the Capitol, but if they make an impassive look like Chauvin it'll prove to everyone they're inhuman and guilty... 

    In "The Stranger" the protagonist was found guilty not because of the bullets he fired, but because he didn't cry at his mother's funeral.

    But at the end of the day, it's cops who most need to be reformed *somewhat* (e.g. putting the black guy on the ground and tasering him just for asking a question, not resisting), not just the public perception, while getting them more effective.

    And i seldom hear any recriminations against new reformed nice guy George Bush, who largely militarized the US police forces with excess Iraq War gear, turned the attitude into an occupation force with tasers and badass smashball attitudes... Not that cops were ever sweethearts, but encouraging their worst with chants of U-S-A was certainly overkill and unhelpful.


    Reason article on it: Why Is the Justice Department Trying To Punish Derek Chauvin Twice?

    The federal charges against Chauvin and three other officers involved in George Floyd's death are more about making a statement than seeking justice.

     | 5.7.2021 4:00 PM

    quotes Douglas Berman, a sentencing expert at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law and Ted Sampsell-Jones, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul. Gets into considerable legal detail including about charges against not just Chauvin 


    Huntsville, Alabama police officer convicted of murdering suicidal man.

    An Alabama police officer was convicted of murder on Friday for the 2018 shooting of a man who called 911 to report his suicidal thoughts and had a gun to his ownhead.

    William “Ben” Darby, a 28-year-old officer in Huntsville, Ala., faces between 20 years and life in prison for fatally shooting Jeffrey Parker, 49, on April 3, 2018, prosecutors said.

    Darby, who was found guilty by jurors during the second day of deliberations, was previously cleared of wrongdoing by a Huntsville review board, which concluded he was justified in using deadly force. The officer, who claimed he shot Parker in self-defense, had strong financial support from a city that put public funding toward his defense. He also received public support from Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle (R) and the police department during and after Friday’s verdict.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/alabama-police-murder-parker-darby/

     


    Shoved another cop aside and fired within 11 secs - not a good sign. City provided funding for the cop's defense w/o seeing the body cams, also bizarre. https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2018/08/blind_faith_council_backs_hun...

    Elsewhere cop who shot Rasyshard Brooks was reinstated.


    Oregon police officer vandalized a home because a BLM flag was flying over the garage 

    The off duty officer came on the property, destroyed the BLM flag, set off the alarm on the home owner's truck, then knocked on the door of the home and kicked on the door.

    The homeowners called police

    On duty officer shows up, not to arrest the other officer, but to give him a ride home

    Now both police officers face criminal charges 

    https://www.theroot.com/2-oregon-police-officers-charged-in-incident-involving-1846855260

    Original AP story

    https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2021-05-08/2nd-police-officer-indicted-in-blm-flag-vandalism-case


    Most police departments in America are small. That’s partly why changing policing is difficult, experts say.


    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police-departments-america-are-small-thats-partly-why-changing-policing-is-difficult-experts-say/


    Uh, Minneapolis, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, Orlando, Atlanta, Philly, DC... tell me the small towns we're seeing the reports of police problems? Sandra Bland was in Austin, right? Hardly tiny.


    From the Boston Herald

    A number of recent studies suggest that police misconduct and excessive force are serious problems in urban and rural communities alike. A study by FiveThirtyEight found that since 2018, police have killed as many people in rural areas as they have in cities. This comes as a shock when you consider that more than twice as many people live in urban areas as rural. Rural officers also arrest civilians more frequently, which is correlated with increased use of force. Vera Institute of Justice found that arrests in rural areas have increased by 26% since 2013 while they dropped by 22% in urban areas over the same period.

    https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/12/22/small-rural-towns-need-seat-at-police-reform-table/


    Ha!

    BREAKING NEWS

    UPDATE: Man who slams SUV into Leicester Police station and points gun at officers is shot, killed by police 

    May 9, 2021 at 1:45 pm

    Is that the kind of person we're worried about police killing?

    ...Despite his refusal to sign the bill in its current form, Gov. Baker agrees with legislators on many other measures, such as new training standards. The Bay State’s efforts to restore public trust in police are commendable, but state officials left out a crucial component: rural police departments.

    While the debate over facial recognition technology rages in Boston, towns in Western Massachusetts are struggling to pay for new brakes in police cruisers. Higher training standards are a step in the right direction, but small departments often don’t have enough officers to cover shifts while other officers are in class.

    And at the core of this disconnect, urban activists and journalists characterize police departments as structurally broken and officers as occupying militants, whereas small town residents tend to see police officers as friends and neighbors.

    Activists & journalists, eh? "Excessive force is only a serious problem with a minority of police officers". $3.3 million in payouts is a prob, but how much will reform cost across all these small poor towns to fix problems that don't hardly exist? oops, prolly more than that.


    Is that the kind of person we're worried about police killing?

    No


    Ah, so what's the % this type & the % we actually care about?


    Here is the paragraph from the Boston Herald article that follows the one noting the amount of money paid out because of rural police departments.

    These lawsuits are bleeding small towns dry. Few towns even have the resources to pay for occasional training, let alone bankrolling payouts for victims of police brutality. The problem is so severe that some towns are at risk of losing their police departments all together. If rural police departments are to survive, local communities must be willing to adopt strategies that will stem the tide of litigation. The best way to do that is police reform.


    $3.3m for whose prob?


    Lawsuits alleging police abuse against peaceful posters in Columbus, Ohio 

    The preliminary ruling carried an ominous message about the way police behaved.

    The case is called Alsaada vs the City of Columbus, Ohio

    The ruling in Alsaada from an Ohio federal court on April 30 was especially eloquent in condemning police abuse as part of a history of biased policing. 

    “This case is the sad tale of police officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok,” wrote Judge Algenon Marbley. Tracing the history of modern police departments from antebellum slave patrols to the murder of George Floyd, Marbley wrote, “New dark chapters have been drafted in this institution’s history books.”

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/09/protesters-police-violence-ohio-court-485435

    I may take years to get the final ruling in the case.


    Rep. Clyburn says qualified immunity doesn’t have to be part of policing reform bill
     

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/09/rep-clyburn-says-qualified-immunity-doesnt-have-be-part-policing-reform-bill/


    excerpt posted here



    Yang's also saying that exactly at the same time this black competitor pulled a few points ahead of him in some polls:

    I would go so far as to call Eric Adams another Giuliani. He would be the most pro police cop New York has seen in a long time. Forget about defunding. Forget about serious reforms. He is a close friend of the department.

    — Peter Sullivan (@PeteTheSullivan) May 9, 2021

    Hello, the unroll you asked for: People on this here website confused that Eric Adams and Andrew Yang… https://t.co/ZI6TBnmHyv Share this if you think it's interesting.

    — Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) May 9, 2021


    here's a  NBC NY segment from today on what many of the Dem candidates are saying after the Times Square shooting:

     

    I think anyone who thinks police "reform" is still a big issue with most people are delusional. Deluded by national media like the MSNBC & CNN talking heads still playing to a small but fervent audience of believers and activists in "systemic racism in policing". Everybody else has moved on since starting to pay attention to their local news now and again, where an epidemic of violence is being reported. Just like a lot of people cared when George Floyd died, they now care that a lof ot people are being shot by civilians, including totally innocent uninvolved bystanders that could have been them.

    The number of shootings, it's almost as if there was a plot to make BLM irrelevant! This is why I said in the past that BLM not disowning those in their circle who attacked police as a racist enemy, were totally counterproductive. Police pulled back (in places Minneapolis and Portlandt, many outright quit the job), street thugs, especially in inner cities and in thrall of a new variant of gangsta culture feel free to commit more violent crime, cause they don't get harassed anymore (some even label that systemic racism, because many are black.) Throw in the effects of riots and looting all last summer. Gets you a voting populace ready to chose safety over freedom, including lock em up including mentallty ill, and please do harass anyone that looks or acts like a gangbanger. Interest in things like bail reform is falling right quick.


    Interesting articles

    My posts focused on reform

    Edit to add:

    Localities are doing reform


    and no way is it just in NYC. It's allover the country. For example, a post on my Crime News thread yesterday, see black Baltimore city concilwoman requesting more police for her district because her constituents are afraid to come out ot fhe house, she wish it weren't so, would rather do other things, but that's what they want

    http://dagblog.com/comment/reply/34223/305083

    Seems like if activists, media and politicians deal in unreal narratives about reforms needed, ginned up from viral cell phone videos, and one legal case, long enough, reality may just eventually smack them in the face, no videos needed.


    Citizens of Baltimore paid out $1.1M for police misconduct in 2020

    The bulk of the money went for crimes committed by the Gun Task Force

    Baltimore’s grim realities have been mined by talented writers like D. Watkins, Wes Moore and, most famously, celebrated author and TV producer David Simon, whose books and television series — “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets,” “The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood” and “The Wire” — deftly illuminated Charm City’s complex web of problems.

    One could be excused for wondering whether there is any more to say about Baltimore and crime. But the gripping new book “We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption” puts that concern to rest. Written by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, the book tells the incredible tale of the corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, an elite plainclothes unit of the Baltimore Police Department tasked with getting guns and drugs off the streets. The unit had the most urgent crime-fighting mission in a city where many neighborhoods are inundated with drug dealing and terrorized by persistent gun violence. But most of the cops on the task force turned out to be every bit as gangster as the drug dealers and other criminals they were pursuing.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-elite-baltimore-cops-who-became-criminals/2021/03/24/5fab25b2-7ddf-11eb-85cd-9b7fa90c8873_story.html

    Not sure giving up freedom to the Baltimore PD increases security. They have continuous payouts for misconduct.


    How many times have Baltimore police been reformed? What makes you so sure it's gonna work this time? I watched all 7 seasons or so of The Wire - "reform" was a recurring theme, an important never-fail piece of every erstwhile mayor's campaign. The best was when they just gave junkies and dealers several blocks, free drug zones, as long as they stayed out of the rest, which worked until word got out what they were doing. But each new idea's better than the last. Until it isn't.

    PS - sometimes it's tough enough just to get 'em to show up - I'm talking to you, Milwaukee!

    https://milwaukeenns.org/2021/04/14/amid-surge-in-drug-overdose-deaths-c...


    Wow

    All 7 seasons of a television show

    The real world data from Baltimore suggest that ignoring nonviolent misdemeanor crimes led to a 20% decrease in violent crime and property crime decreased by 36%. Homicides did not change. 

    https://reason.com/2021/04/01/violent-crime-in-baltimore-plunges-after-city-ditches-prosecution-of-prostitution-drug-possession-other-minor-offenses/

    Obviously, the fear expressed by the politician's constituents differs from the drop in violent crime. 

    Which do we accept as truth of the current level of crime?

    If you are scared to go outside, what would convince you go outside?

    The crime decrease reported in the study came without police intervention 

    If police departments are going to back off if officers are held to account, we may need to focus on other forms of community services.


    Horrible referencing the best researched, award winning cop show in decades - instead maybe you'll go to The Root for in-depth unbiased news?

    Does a 26% increase in opioid deaths for Montgomery County fit your "police reform success story"? Yes, if you stop enforcing drugs, prostitution, urination, etc during a pandemic where most people can't go out, you'll have fewer police encounters (but more drug deaths, passing out drugs with abandon, street prostitution, public drunkenness, nd people peeing around the streets). Go figure. How many unwarranted police killings were there that these extra 326 Baltimore opioid deaths offset - 20? Taking police off the streets is not "reform" - it's just retreat, resulting in a new opioid death record for Baltimore instead of 13 murders. Tradeoffs? Of course seems fewer woke BLM protests burning down storefronts (maybe Baltimore's were already destroyed), so not as many protest-related incidents as seen in Minneapolis, Portland, etc.

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-drug-overdose-2020-report-2021...

    Of course you can apply for your fav community level reform action here:

    http://www.ubalt.edu/about-ub/offices-and-services/provost/reporting-uni...

    Just be advised they're experimental, prone to failure, and may not work in practice - YMMV. Just how experimental? Well let's see how that murder drop is holding out:

    BALTIMORE — During the month of April, Baltimore City reported 28 homicides and 40 non-fatal shootings. So far this year, there have been 100 murders, up 12 from the same time in 2020. Non-fatal shootings, which currently sits at 192 on the year is an increase of 15 at this point last year.May 1, 2021

    Well fuck me running, rmrd failed his homework again, saw a bright shiny object and went off chasing it. Color me surprised. Guess your "real world data" wasn't so rosy after all. Oh well, just a few more black bodies to add to the Black Lives Matter casualty list - only statistics, right? Murders up 14%, non-fatal shootings up 8%, 100 murders in the 1st 5 months - May Day, May Day!

    http://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/murders-shootings-up-as-baltimore-gra...

    So now a mayor's facing heat for a failed crime effort that started out promising - sounds like an episode of The Wire.

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-prem-md-ci-baltimore-crime-scot...

    Sadly we'll be having this same argument tomorrow and the next day as if I never posted this. Zombie arguments rise up over and over, no matter how many times you out a stake through their heart. "Truthy" is an obsession.



    p.s. made me think of Kim Klacik's campaign memes. I checked; it seems she's not slipping back quietly into private life.


    Montgomery County is not Baltimore City

    Good try at diversion

    I specifically said that the homicide rate had not dropped

    Reading is fundamental.

    The Root is a great source of information 

    When the Baltimore police were given free reign with a Gun Task Force, the police became another gang.

    Edit to add: 

    Baltimore City is independent and not attached to a county.

    The Baltimore police chief on the homicides

    Baltimore homicides are up more than 17% this year, with seven dead since Saturday as mayor vows to find a solution

    Harrison defended the department’s patrol deployment strategy, saying that officers were sometimes only blocks away from some of the shootings before they occurred.

    “We had a robust deployment strategy for the weekend and some of the incidents, we had officers a couple blocks away and responded very quickly,” he said. “But as I’ve stated many times in the past, this violence that we see far too often ... occurs when individuals decide to pick up a gun and then to later use that gun to solve their conflicts or to enact revenge on someone because of a previous conflict.”

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-shooting-homicide-man-20210503-veqbf4a5t5hepchr63gfnsc4y4-story.html

    The Baltimore mayor of five months is attempting to improve policing.

    The comments about opioids is interesting. If police are blocks away when a shooting happens, can they prevent an opioid OD?

    I have done my homework and I know Montgomery County is adjacent to D.C., not Baltimore City.


    From the CDC January 2021

    Spurred by a spike in drug overdose deaths over the past year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning public health departments, health care professionals, and first responders of “a concerning acceleration of the increase in drug overdose deaths” coinciding with the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2774898

     


    I posted both Montgomery County and Baltimore (disclosure: no i didn't pay much attention to whether Baltimore's I'm Montgomery County). Fact is, that early success didn't hold up, and it was mostly a retreat, not "police reform" - murders and overdoses surge on. Once people start venturing out this summer, how's it gonna look?


    You threw stuff against the wall to see what would stick

    The CDC predicted a surge in opioid issues and death

    The homicide surge is nationwide

    The opioid surge is nationwide 

    Police units were nearby but could not prevent homicides

    The police are not going to solve homicides or opioid ODs

    I think that the solution is investing in education and job skills in the community 

    The calls for police reform is because the police fucked up

    Baltimore PD is under a consent decree because the department screwed up.


    There was a project that put $130M into Sandtown, a poor area in Baltimore

    There are 38K people in Sandtown

    That amounts to $3421.05 per person

    There are few jobs

    Amazingly, nothing changed

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-couldnt-130-million-transform-one-of-baltimores-poorest-places/2015/05/02/0467ab06-f034-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html


    Dude, you tossed out

    The real world data from Baltimore suggest that ignoring nonviolent misdemeanor crimes led to a 20% decrease in violent crime and property crime decreased by 36%. Homicides did not change. 

    You still stick by thia bullshit?

     


    If the police repeatedly tell the mayor and city council that they are not going to change behavior and the city has to pay out millions for resulting lawsuits, what should be done?



    Anything like Starsky & Hutch?


    Josh Marshall and others: how "progressives" turn blue-run-cities to red-run-ciites:

    The rise in shootings is one of those issues the Left needs to take seriously before the Right does or you'll end up with revanchist figures winning elections in Democratic cities again https://t.co/FLg1cWo6nA

    — Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) May 9, 2021


    Wiley, Yang, and Adams all doing press availabilities on the shooting. Radio silence from the rest of the mayoral field.

    — Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) May 9, 2021

    this is 100% right. progressives have the greatest interest in ensuring public safety and low crime rates. Because rising crime empowers the right at every level of government as sure as night follows day.

    — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 9, 2021

    I think this ship has sailed. Mainstream Democratic voters aren’t going to trust progressives again on policing and crime for a while. https://t.co/zM4Bjspr01

    — Alice in training (@AliceFromQueens) May 9, 2021

    P.S. Just ran across a classic example of how they do this (is like Lee Atwater 101, easy as pie, the new version the Willie Horton schmear, soft on crime)

    If ever there was a screen shot..... pic.twitter.com/yv7HsELsUy

    — Chaskel Bennett (@ChaskelBennett) May 10, 2021

    On how police are handling a surge in gang violence in Vancouver BC and on how difficult the work is:


    I would just like to remind all that Mayor Lightfoot is a Democrat and she also has black skin. So if political orientation and racial affirmative action is supposed to solve this particular problem, in this case: it's not working!

    Furthermore, this is the current chief of the Chicago P.D., David Brown, since April 15, 2020

    SO HOW DOES THE SYSTEMIC RACISM THING APPLY as to the C.P.D.?


    If you are going to play the race card, the majority of the CPD is white.


    WTF that's really rich, this whole thread (plus perhaps 90% of what you posted on the site for a couple years) is about playing the race card

    So you basically think if all police were black everything would be just fine, or what? I  mean talk about ridiculous delusions. You really do need to deal with your cognitive dissonance on this point: THERE IS NO SYSTEMIC RACISM IN CHICAGO GOVERNMENT AND CHICAGO GOVERNMENT IS IN CHARGE OF CHICAGO POLICE. It's not going away as hard as you try to avoid it.


    Interaction. Don't see any brutality, tho:



    Looks like a battalion of NYPD doing a great job at keeping pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters from killing each other (irony is both sides probably vote for the same U.S. politicians):

    (note: looks like mixed race & ethnicity battalion to boot! ) Which begs the point: what was different about BLM protesters? Especially those pushing breaking curfew.



    This: Thank you to our local law enforcement for keeping us safe reminded me of the above. So we have so many conflicting anecdotals from social media about how minority groups feel about police. We get a ton of input on how African-Americans fear them. And we have incidence of attacks on police by Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and Bogaloos.  And then we get frequent anecdotals that Asian-Americans of many varieties that they would like more police protection and appreciate all they can get. And Jews grateful they are there. And polls saying a majority of all kind of people would like more cops, not less. Except for, like, these wealthy celebs pumping the "defund" movements with dollars. Which narrative to believe?



    More popcorn


    of special note here is that the reporter catches Portland's lawyers at their sloppy game

    [....]  The letter argues that the Department of Homeland Security, like the Portland police, has so far failed to implement policy changes recommended by that agency’s inspector general and that DHS has been slow to complete its own after-action reports for protests.

    The Justice Department civil rights division, the group overseeing the settlement agreement with Portland, has no involvement with the Department of Homeland Security.

    Justice Department lawyers formally notified the city it was out of compliance on April 2, after sending a blistering assessment of bureau actions during its 2020 protest response. That letter detailed numerous failures to adhere to bureau use of force directives, and in one instance said bureau leadership exhibited a “fundamentally flawed understanding of the constitutional and policy standard for use of force.” [....]


    From the Root

    Ohio City Agrees to $10 Million Settlement for the Family of André Hill

    According to WBNS, Hill was fatally shot last December by former Columbus Division of Police Officer Adam Coy. Coy and his partner were responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle and approached a garage where Hill was visiting a friend. While the officer’s body cameras weren’t turned on, a brief clip without audio shows Hill approaching the officer with his cell phone in his hand with his right hand not visible. Within seconds Coy shot Hill. After 10 minutes without receiving any aid, Hill was taken to a local hospital where he died.

    Only days after the shooting, Coy was fired by the city and he’s currently facing charges of murder, felonious assault, and reckless homicide. The Columbus City Council will vote to approve the settlement on Monday, which is currently the largest amount the city has ever agreed to pay.

    https://www.theroot.com/ohio-city-agrees-to-10-million-settlement-for-the-fami-1846897722


    NYT article details how medical examiners use sickle cell trait, a benign medical condition, to explain the deaths of Black people while in police custody.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/african-americans-sickle-cell-police.html


    Not good, but we're talking 2 per year for what they call a "national pattern". "15 since 2015" is still 2 per year if you check the math. Assume half aren't bullshit, that's 1 trumped up sickle cell death excuse a year.


    1 is too many

    Not good

    Fortunately, you are not in charge of making changes

    You do an excellent job of making excuses.


    15 motherfucking thousand shooting deaths so far this year (5 months - how many black?)

    600 motherfucking thousand Covid deaths (how many black?)

    87 motherfucking thousand opioid deaths in 12 months (how many black?)

    I didn't "make excuses"  - i said "not good".

    But if these 2 labelled sickle deaths a year in a country of 330 million weren't black you wouldn't even give a shit, nor would the NY Times devote such column space.

    Worse, you only give a shit when you get blacks as victims of police violence - everything else is ho-hum. Other people deal with perspective, proportions, magnitudes.

    You're just on perpetual whine.

    Why wasn't this on NYT's page, seeing as it affects the melting pot pretty extremely?


    A medical examiner is supposed to get things right every time.

    They don't 

    The article leads to questioning biases among medical examiners

    A study of medical examiners reported in the WaPo suggests racial bias is more common than previously thought

    new study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences suggests the role medical examiners play in the criminal justice system is far more subjective than commonly thought. It also suggests their analysis might be tainted by racial bias.

    Medical examiners (also known as forensic pathologists) make two determinations after conducting an autopsy: the cause of death and the manner. The cause of death, though sometimes ambiguous, is usually a fairly objective finding based on tests and observations well-grounded in medicine. But determining the manner of death can be much more subjective. In most jurisdictions, there are five possibilities for manner of death: undetermined, natural causes, suicide, accident or homicide. The evidentiary gap separating an accidental death from a homicide can be significant (the body was riddled with bullets) or razor-thin (whether the victim drowned or was drowned). Yet it’s enormously consequential, because a homicide designation usually means someone will be charged with a serious crime.

    The new study was led by Itiel Dror, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at University College London who specializes in cognitive perception, judgment and decision-making. (His research team also included four forensic pathologists.) There are two parts to the study. In the first, the researchers looked at 10 years of Nevada death certificates for children younger than 6 and found that medical examiners were about twice as likely to rule a Black child’s death to be a homicide as a White child. The researchers then asked 133 board-certified medical examiners to read a vignette about a 3-year-old who was taken to an emergency room with a skull fracture, brain hemorrhaging and other injuries, and later died. All the participants received the same fact pattern, with one important exception: About half were told that the child was Black and had been left in the care of the mother’s boyfriend. The others were told the child was White and had been left in the care of a grandmother.

    Of the 133 medical examiners who participated in the study, 78 said they could not determine a manner of death from the information available. Among the 55 who could, 23 concluded the child’s death was an accident, and 32 determined it was a homicide.

    This is already a problem. Reliability is one of the key criteria the Supreme Court has said judges should consider in deciding whether to allow expert testimony. The same facts applied to different people should produce the same outcome. That clearly wasn’t the case in this study.

    Worse, the medical examiners who were given the fact pattern with a Black child were five times more likely to rule the death a homicide than an accident. Meanwhile, those given the scenario with a White child were twice as likely to rule the death an accident instead of a homicide. These results raise questions not just about how medical examiners look at child deaths, but also autopsy results in other cases, including racially loaded ones such as fatal police encounters.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/20/study-finds-cognitive-bias-how-medical-examiners-evaluate-child-deaths/

    The discussion is about the bias and accuracy of medical examiners.


    A medical examiner is supposed to get things right every time.

    They don't 

    No shit Sherlock, if you paid attention to AA more, noting that doctors kill a lot lot more people than police each year, you wouldn't expect anything close to 100% accuracy from medical examiners. Especially not this year.


    I don't expect 100% accuracy

    I do think it is important that exposure of the variation in reported causes of death is noted

    The problem needs to be addressed

    Perhaps a wider study of medical examiners and variations in cause of death given the same set of autopsy findings would help in setting more universal standards 

    Edit to add:

    The goal is 100% accuracy

    We should expect them to get it right

    The testimony of the former medical examiner for the state of Maryland shows how bad they can be.

    Many of his cases are now under review 


    According to a recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

    Other studies report much higher figures, claiming the number of deaths from medical error to be as high as 440,000. The reason for the discrepancy is that physicians, funeral directors, coroners and medical examiners rarely note on death certificates the human errors and system failures involved. Yet death certificates are what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rely on to post statistics for deaths nationwide.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-de...


    Yeah, the more I read, the more I am actually amazed by the competence level of a lot of our police forces, given that it's not a science either and they are not rocket scientists and don't have the high pressure at length stress training of M.D.'s during residency.

    I have to admit that I suspect one thing that keeps them in check is the amount of media coverage of nearly each and every failure. Whereas there is little along the lines of that to a mass audience concering medical failures. And I think that goes to how we symbolically view each profession in society: police have an authoritarian rep. to be feared while doctors are there to help us. To the point where when you go to reviews of doctors you see a lot of kvetching about not having a good "bedside manner", they are not fufilling the expectations of their stereotype. Likewise, I was interested in recently seeing people discuss what their parents taught them about police when they were kids; it amazed me that some actually were told that police are your friends....I, on the other hand, have a tendency to believe that most young kids, not just black ones, get a variation of "the talk", even to the point of using cops as a threat when children are "bad".


    Why malpractice suits have so little effect?


    You agree that biases within the medical examiner community need to be addressed ?


    I agree i have a bunion on my toe - I'm not sure I agree with the need to amputate, nor to focus on that instead of my lung cancer.

    "biases need to be addressed"? How open ended. At what expense, how much time and energy, taking away from what other possible uses of that effort? (aka opportunity cost)


    Who told you this?  A medical examiner is supposed to get things right every time. 

    A jury is supposed to judge to the best of their ability which medical and forensic expert's testimony is the closest to the truth. Because all medicine and forensics are arts, not science.

    Sounds like you're the type who expects a doctor to figure out what's wrong with you without you saying a word. Like in Star Trek where they use the little hand held machine.

    I.E. Presuming an ill person with black skin needs a sickle cell test and a white person doesn't is "bias"; we should all get tested for it, every single one of us.Same for every other disease


    I read it now, and I see: a NYT editor hunting for a conspiracy that isn't there, assigning two reporters to do that, who dutifully find a handful of fairly incompetent examiners across the country. And they go with the slant anyways to please the boss and get more clicks. Bias verification to the max.


    I had brief professional contact with a top national forensics pathologist in the 80's, a major point he made in private conversation was the incompetence of medical examiners across the country, particularly in 'low education' regions and rural areas.

    Missed or ignored in cases he reviewed were obvious signs on the body indicating the death was not natural, tests that were not done, signs of physical or sexual abuse ignored etc  


    The study noting the variety of opinions on child deaths and the racial bias goes along with that impression.


    As a volunteer in my younger days I worked in a sickle cell research lab at what was then called St. Lukes, now Mt Sinai Morningside. Interestingly, all samples of hemoglobin, sickle or non sickle, was stabilized with carbon monoxide, which was removed later with illumination under a strong light source.


    Gay Pride in NYC going with segregating of gay cops now, maybe not forever, but at least until 2025. The Village People's cop character is officially cancelled until then, I presume:

    “After we issued demands to them in the summer of 2018, they’re finally listening — three years later,” Jay W. Walker of the Reclaim Pride Coalition told Gay City News on May 15. https://t.co/p0OYB4dLaI

    — Reclaim Pride Coalition (@queermarch) May 15, 2021

    It's: Take the blue out of that rainbow flag, dammit.


    the strangest thing is how they lack any self-awareness that this is what people will automatically think:

    What about the construction worker and the Indian? https://t.co/BB2JtDAvBI

    — Wesley Yang (@wesyang) May 15, 2021

    Village People is like the ultimate breakthrough in mainstreaming acceptance, taking gay subculture to become part of culture at large; same thing for promoting the idea that there is such a thing as a gay cop. They're going backwards; shows a desire to be a closeted thing again, apart from society.


    Trump as angry closeted gay boy humming YMCA was already there, Melania as beard. Could it be any more obvious? Roger "Swinger" Stone?


    Commissioner Shea says yuck fou, intolerants:



    just ran across this video of brutal police running over leftist protestors:


    I have so many questions about the above, like: how were those cops involved in bombing children in Palestine? Also: if one gets run over protesting Israeli treatment of Palestinians on a U.S. freeway entrance ramp, how can you sue for injury if there are no courts?


    There's a database whose mission is to stop problematic police officers from hopping between departments. But many agencies don't know it exists

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/16/us/police-national-decertification-index-database/index.html


    Sort the wikipedia table for the last column, police per 100,00 people and you will see that the U.S. is #48 of 146 countries, way below the mean, with 98 countries of the 146 having more police.


    Real clear cut publicly-acknowledged intentional racism can be very expensive:

    Analysis: Arpaio immigration patrol lawsuit to cost Arizona county at least $202 million

    BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/17/21 08:46 PM EDT

    The cost faced by taxpayers in Arizona's most populous county to reform the sheriff's department will have reached at least $202 million by the end of next year, according to an analysis published Monday by The Associated Press.

    The AP reported that Maricopa County officials approved a budget this week that would allocate $31 million this year to cover costs incurred by court orders affecting traffic enforcement and other areas of the sheriff's department. The costs are the result of a lawsuit that concluded with a court finding former Sheriff Joe Arpaio responsible for implementing changes that specifically targeted Latino residents.

    The total cost of the lawsuit is expected to reach more than $200 million by the summer of 2022, according to the AP's analysis, and is reportedly showing no signs of slowing down.

    Arpaio was defiant in a statement to the AP Monday in which he defended his department's policy on traffic stops, which a court declared was racially motivated. The former sheriff was convicted of criminal contempt of court in 2017 for refusing to obey an order to stop his immigration patrols; he was pardoned two months later by his close political ally, then-President Trump [....]

    (even Ivy League colleges know this! they have therefore the task of making it look less clear cut...)


    Police told a man a container in his car tested positive for drugs. It was his daughter’s ashes.
     

    Dartavius Barnes sat handcuffed inside a squad car in Springfield, Ill., looking confused as police told him they’d found a container in the center console of his car that tested positive for meth or ecstasy.

    Then the officer showed him what they’d tested: a small metallic object. Barnes sprang from his seat in horror.

    “No, no, no, bro, that’s my daughter,” Barnes yelled, body-camera video of the April 2020 incident shows. “What y’all doing, bro? That’s my daughter!”

    That container, Barnes told the officer, was a small urn storing the ashes of his 2-year-old daughter — not an illegal substance.

    Barnes has filed a federal lawsuit alleging officers with the Springfield Police Department unlawfully took the sealed urn containing his daughter’s remains, opened it without his consent, and spilled some of the ashes while testing for drugs. Roughly 47 minutes of body-camera footage of the encounter was published by WICSand WRSP last week.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/21/dartavius-barnes-daughters-ashes-mixup/

     


    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison To Lead Prosecution In Daunte Wright Killing

    Ellison led the successful prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd last year.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minnesota-attorney-general-keith-ellison-lead-prosecutor-daunte-wright_n_60a80212e4b0a24c4f7be78d
     

     


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