dagblog - Comments for "Confused: this was not the police abuse I was looking for"

Ok, media infatuation

artappraiser — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 05:47:05 +0000

In reply to I must say that even if the

Ok, media infatuation starting to turn, time to get real?

What Pete Buttigieg Has and Hasn’t Done About Homelessness in South Bend

Two years ago, a working group published plans to address what was seen as a growing problem in the city. Critics say the mayor’s office has been slow to act.

by Charles Bethea @ NewYorker.com, June 24

Perhaps I'm wrong about that,

ocean-kat — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 15:44:23 +0000

In reply to I didn't see anything about

Perhaps I'm wrong about that, but I really don't want to get into the details of this case. It's not about this case it's about a history of unresolved problems. For 7 years the camel has been loaded up. Eventually something was going to break it's back. Could be a straw, could even be a strawman. For me this is the take away from the most comprehensive article I've seen. I mistakenly thought it was the one you linked to.

On Thursday, Buttigieg took to a local radio station, WUBS, where he was asked a question by a black pastor, the Rev. Sylvester Williams Jr., that seemed to strike closer to the heart of Buttigieg’s record on racial issues. Why, he was asked, are all six of the new officers he had just sworn in white?

Buttigieg responded with an apology—“We need people of color on the police department,” Buttigieg said, “and I have failed to get us a more diverse police department”—but that uniformly white array of new cadets wasn’t an aberration under Buttigieg’s administration.

He fired a popular black police chief soon after he was elected. Perhaps for good reasons. Then hired three white chiefs over the next 7 years. Why wasn't at least one of those hires black? In a community that's 40% minority the police department went from 10% black to 5% black over 7 years. Why? I don't want him to tell us he agrees about the need for more people of color. I don't want a confession of and an apology for failure to achieve that goal. I want to know why. I don't know, perhaps there are some good reasons, perhaps not. But the important story is about why things went from bad to worse over 7 years. That's the story I'm not seeing anywhere.

I didn't see anything about

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 10:26:05 +0000

In reply to Because the cop was a known

I didn't see anything about "excessive force" from O'Neill - that was Knepper, who drove the man to the hospital. I saw a write-up of O'Neill from 2008 and around for talking about a civilian woman as "black meat" in front of cop, another "that makes me sick" about a multiracial couple, and some anti-Muslim comments. Whether some 11-year-old comments make a cop guilty, Idunno, but I tend to be more concerned about a) comments they make *to* citizens they're supposed to protect, and b) actual abusive behavior.

Here's more detail on the incident that gives some useful context.

https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/publicsafety/south-bend-cop-in-fat...

I must say that even if the

artappraiser — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 07:37:45 +0000

In reply to Confused: this was not the police abuse I was looking for

I must say that even if the protestors are wrong in this case, I do have sympathy in that it's a little maddening to have one's mayor on the road running for president while one is still paying his/her salary and he/she is promising to fix things in the country when the city he's supposed to be running isn't running like clockwork.

Actually, for me this is the one big downside to Buttigieg's candidacy: I haven't read that many articles on "the miracle turnaround of South Bend, Indiana." Maybe I just missed it.

He is doing the right thing by being there, that I'll say for him.

Because the cop was a known

ocean-kat — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 06:49:11 +0000

In reply to Confused: this was not the police abuse I was looking for

Because the cop was a known racist in the community who had been sued a few times for using excessive force. He didn't turn on his lights so the in car camera didn't turn on and he didn't turn on his body camera so we have to trust his word as to what happened. There's been several years of discontent with policing in the community so each new situation, right or wrong, is reacted to based on the history. Instead of the problem getting better it's getting worse. 7 years ago when Buttigieg took office there was a black police chief and 10% of the force was black. The city is 26% black and 14% hispanic. Now the force is only 5% black and the police chief is white.One can debate whether these are good reasons but that and more are the reasons cited in the article for the anger.