USA Politics

[JBS]

If it was so common you'd probably hear more about it.
I don't think any PD or any dreaded police union actively supports or condones brutality. Individuals are the issue, and some will violate proper conduct and act unethically, abuse a maneuver like a chokehold, etc. A bad apple is a bad apple and every profession has them. Punish the bad actor. Adding more laws and regulations won't make it any easier for the police to do their job; a crooked or bad cop will most likely find ways to abuse his badge and authority regardless. As a libertarian conservative you should be aware of this reality.

Your naivete is touching.

Police abuse people constantly. A lot of the apples in the police barrel are bad ones.  Police unions protect them. 

So we can at least outlaw the most obvious abuses, limit union's ability to protect bad cops, make it easier to sue cops and police forces for abuse.

We can also stop allow police departments to buy military equipment and weapons that are more suitable to fighting ISIS than any street gang.

[BasilValentine]

POC are disproportionately arrested and killed because they commit a disproportional amount of crime. The cops are supposed to go where the criminal activity is being committed, after all, and detain or prevent the suspects. You're basically asking for lawlessness and anarchy, which is what we've seen in the last month or so.

You know that crime statistics are influenced by choices LEOs make about who to stop and search, right? Surely you've heard that blacks have been shown to be statistically less likely than whites to be carrying contraband in their cars, but they are consistently convicted of possession at higher rates. That this continues to happen proves that it is biased policing that produces the higher statistical crime rate for blacks with respect to this kind of offense. Have you thought about how many other areas of enforcement might be influenced by differential enforcement and bias? 

Here's is a Stanford study on traffic stop/search statistics:

https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/

[JBS]

Hence why I said you loath LE. You cannot deny it now.
Yay for trial lawyers and criminals.
I think military equipment is needed in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

I don't loathe LE. I loathe LEOs who act like thugs and abuse the powers of their badge. And there are a lot more of them than you think there are.

It's very simple.
Police can deal with crime without acting like thugs. 
So we need to stop them from acting like thugs.

[arpeggio]

One can easily come up with bogus rationalizations to validate police behavior.

The bottom line is that we have been made aware of many people of color who have died as a result of police misconduct.

The actual number is probably much higher.

So what if most crimes are committed by minorities.  Even Judge Dredd would not execute someone for passing counterfeit money.

[milk]

Your naivete is touching.

Police abuse people constantly. A lot of the apples in the police barrel are bad ones.  Police unions protect them. 

So we can at least outlaw the most obvious abuses, limit union's ability to protect bad cops, make it easier to sue cops and police forces for abuse.

We can also stop allow police departments to buy military equipment and weapons that are more suitable to fighting ISIS than any street gang.

I'm not necessarily against any of this. I think restorative justice and conflict resolution programs are successful too. I just don't agree to fold this into an unquestionable intersectional ideology. I think the drift of the larger discourse is troubling and I think social media gives us a false view of reality.

One can easily come up with bogus rationalizations to validate police behavior.

The bottom line is that we have been made aware of many people of color who have died as a result of police misconduct.

The actual number is probably much higher.

So what if most crimes are committed by minorities.  Even Judge Dredd would not execute someone for passing counterfeit money.

it's a crucial question to ask what the larger context is. Either police are killing black people more as a murderous expression of white supremacy and we need to rush to dismantle the police force or there's something less than that happening.

Yes, we should be able to, as it seeks to completely reinterpret American History with bunk like the 1619 Project...

From what I've seen, black conservatives think this is white liberal paternalism - a narrative that robs black people of agency.
It's interesting to me how divided things are and how much the left has taken hold of the narrative. As others have pointed out, BLM is a brand now, just like anything sold during the Super Bowl.

[Gurn Blanston]

One can easily come up with bogus rationalizations to validate police behavior.

The bottom line is that we have been made aware of many people of color who have died as a result of police misconduct.

The actual number is probably much higher.

So what if most crimes are committed by minorities.  Even Judge Dredd would not execute someone for passing counterfeit money.

Or selling untaxed cigarettes (New York City), or selling bootleg CD's (New Orleans), or riding in a car with his girlfriend (Minnesota). Or a thousand other things that pass for excuses (I feared for my life!!).

[drogulus]

     

What's the percentage of bad cops then? You seem to know that many are deplorable human beings so enlighten me further.
By exposing them to criminals on the street who don't obey laws to begin with and later trial lawyers in court? Sounds like a recipe for stability and fairness. 

     How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian

     

[arpeggio]

Geez, out of the tens of millions of arrests we've isolated three cases to make the police look as bad as possible.

Talk about bogus.

And your remarks are not bogus?

How many people have to die as a result of police misconduct?

We are only talking about the few incidents that have been recorded.  It appears to most of us that the actual number is much more that just three out of whatever.

[milk]

     
     How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian

   

That was in 1922.

It's almost 100 years later, and thousands of Americans are in the streets daily, protesting the same violence and racism that the Chicago commission documented.

This is the very thing economists like Glenn Loury are challenging. So, is this or is this not a contentious notion that Muhammad is making? I think this conclusion is a kind of dogma nowadays. I'm not saying there's no truth to it. But I certainly do not think it's beyond question.

[drogulus]

That was in 1922.

It's almost 100 years later, and thousands of Americans are in the streets daily, protesting the same violence and racism that the Chicago commission documented.

This is the very thing economists like Glenn Loury are challenging. So, is this or is this not a contentious notion that Muhammad is making? I think this conclusion is a kind of dogma nowadays. I'm not saying there's no truth to it. But I certainly do not think it's beyond question.

     Other commissions came to the same conclusions. At the commission level there's no controversy. I can't explain the forgetting aspect. Maybe we can't do that any more.

     

[milk]

     Other commissions came to the same conclusions. At the commission level there's no controversy. I can't explain the forgetting aspect. Maybe we can't do that any more.

   

as far as I can see, the article is talking about 1922. This is the problem. He is saying now is the same. This is a very big stretch of a claim. Glenn Loury (a Brown University economist who comments on these issues from right of center), and others, say it's ridiculous to even compare our current situation to the 60s let alone 1922. Why should I begin by accepting his assertion?

[drogulus]

as far as I can see, the article is talking about 1922. This is the problem. He is saying now is the same. This is a very big stretch of a claim. Glenn Loury (a Brown University economist who comments on these issues from right of center), and others, say it's ridiculous to even compare our current situation to the 60s let alone 1922. Why should I begin by accepting his assertion?

     That doesn't seem to be a stretch at all.

This report in 1922 should have been the death of systemic police racism and discrimination in America. It wasn't. Its recommendations were largely ignored.

And a decade later, Harlem breaks out into what is considered the first police riot, where African Americans believe that an Afro-Puerto Rican youth has been killed by the police. Turns out he hadn't been, but the rumor that he had leads to a series of attacks directed towards white businesses in Harlem and against the police. And eventually, that uprising leads to the Harlem riot report in 1935.

That report comes to the same conclusion, notes there needs to be accountability for police that need to be charged and booked as criminals when they engage in criminal activity. They call for citizen review boards and an end to stop and frisk, which they name in the report. And Mayor [Fiorello] La Guardia, the mayor of New York, shelves it, doesn't do anything with it, doesn't even share [it] with the public. The only reason it ever saw the light of day was because the black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, published it in serial form.

And a similar report is produced in 1943, and another report in 1968. They essentially all keep repeating the same problem.

     

[milk]

     That doesn't seem to be a stretch at all.

This report in 1922 should have been the death of systemic police racism and discrimination in America. It wasn't. Its recommendations were largely ignored.

And a decade later, Harlem breaks out into what is considered the first police riot, where African Americans believe that an Afro-Puerto Rican youth has been killed by the police. Turns out he hadn't been, but the rumor that he had leads to a series of attacks directed towards white businesses in Harlem and against the police. And eventually, that uprising leads to the Harlem riot report in 1935.

That report comes to the same conclusion, notes there needs to be accountability for police that need to be charged and booked as criminals when they engage in criminal activity. They call for citizen review boards and an end to stop and frisk, which they name in the report. And Mayor [Fiorello] La Guardia, the mayor of New York, shelves it, doesn't do anything with it, doesn't even share [it] with the public. The only reason it ever saw the light of day was because the black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, published it in serial form.

And a similar report is produced in 1943, and another report in 1968. They essentially all keep repeating the same problem.

   

if you're saying nothing has improved in America for the last 50 years - I think it's hard to believe. I'm not saying there aren't many problems or that racism doesn't exist. I just feel more and more agnostic on the question America's current situation. I'm also pessimistic about the possibility of debate and reason.
Social media drives the moment and amplifies every incident, aberrant or otherwise.
Muhhamed isn't very convincing in his thesis that what we're seeing is the same as 50 years ago.

[Que]

Here is an interesting graphic.
Are US citizens - of whatever colour - as safe as the citizens of any of these other wealthy countries?

And of course there is an even bigger picture that plays into this: social inequality - poverty - crime rates - proliferation of fire arms.The more there is of any of that, the less safe you are in general, and even more so if you are one of the disadvantaged in any society. Of wealthy nations, the USA as the wealthiest of them all scores relatively high on all points.

[Que]

A more comprehensive global list here:

List of killings by law enforcement officers by country

On this list the USA is nicely tucked in just below Burkina Faso and Saint Lucia and before Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

What an embarrassment for a highly developed and wealthy society as the USA....

Q

[Daverz]

if you're saying nothing has improved in America for the last 50 years - I think it's hard to believe. I'm not saying there aren't many problems or that racism doesn't exist. I just feel more and more agnostic on the question America's current situation. I'm also pessimistic about the possibility of debate and reason.
Social media drives the moment and amplifies every incident, aberrant or otherwise.
Muhhamed isn't very convincing in his thesis that what we're seeing is the same as 50 years ago.

The article is pointing out patterns of historical behavior.  It's not saying there has been no progress in some areas.  I'm not sure why you find this offensive.

[arpeggio]

Non-Americans must understand that it is a minority of Americans who support the Trump Movement.  At the most only 30% believe that:

1. The police are not to blame.
2. The carona is fake.

We are not the monsters that it appears we are.

What is so sad is the in spite of the very informative graphs, we will have to listen to all sorts rationalizations supporting the police.

[arpeggio]

The key issues of the current right wing minority:

1. Everybody ought has to have a gun.
2. The universal solution to all problems is no government and no taxes.
3. If a person is poor it is because he is lazy and does not go to church.
4. Law and order.
5. Science that supports Darwin and climate change is bad.

There are few more goodies.

This minority has been dominating American politics for twenty-five years.

As a result:

1. We have a police that is our of control and makes a mockery of our American ideals.
2. A failed medical system that has killed over 100,000 of our countrymen.
3. A failed economy.

And like Trump they will refuse to acknowledge that their policies MAY have wreaked this great county of ours.

[milk]

The article is pointing out patterns of historical behavior.  It's not saying there has been no progress in some areas.  I'm not sure why you find this offensive.

Here is the quote again:
"That was in 1922...It's almost 100 years later, and thousands of Americans are in the streets daily, protesting the same violence and racism that the Chicago commission documented."
I'm not offended by this article. I'm pointing out that there is disagreement over this kind of assertion.
Isn't interesting the way social media drives actions and discussions? Is it reasonable to ask if there is evidence of racial animus in these cases and if there's evidence that the violence of 2020 is the same as the racism and violence of 1922? Seriously, do you think it's reasonable to ask this question? This kind of conclusion is being prescribed the by presidents and boards of universities and branded by Amazon. I guess the boat has kind of sailed.
It's not just this issue these days. "Believe all women" is another irrational (social media) driving force of the same ilk.
I feel the need to keep pointing out that I'm voting Biden. It's not only the right who have this sort of question.

[Karl Henning]

Your naivete is touching.

It's pretty, too, to see how someone who is blind to a racist white president's illegal activities, is keen to grind POC under the heel of thug police.