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Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

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Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#271

Post by marnett »

xendo wrote: post #124
kevmo314 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, the greater group of protesters is incapable of understanding nuanced policy or democratic change. This is a totally uncalled for generalization. That aside, most of the items you've listed work against the policies that police abolitionists are fighting for. Here's a good explanation: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ead8f9692ebee25b72f...

The doc is really weird. It picks and evaluates dimensions that obviously will improve after disbanding the police, but doesn’t try to address the question if the actual safety will improve. Instead it looks at whether disbanding the police will “ challenge the notion that police increase safety?” wtf. Also hard to believe that more training and bodycams have negative effect on actual quality of policing and safety.…

> Also hard to believe that more training and bodycams have negative effect [...]

The police use body cameras for real-time facial recognition of the policed [1]. It 100% has, and explicitly is, a negative effect. It was a right of center “reform” on the police that did nothing but further expand the power (and future of abuse of power) of our policing institutions.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/03/22/real-time-face-recogniti...

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#272

Post by downerending »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #61

Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

It's probably more like deciding that your organization is simply incapable of writing software (which I've seen before).

The typical next step is to outsource it to an outside organization that will cost 3x as much and produce software of far lower quality. It's a win, though, because the exec's can point their fingers at them, perhaps even sue them, and in any case proclaim loudly that nothing could have been done. (And also, that they should get their bonuses anyway.)

We'll see.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#273

Post by elil17 »

kryogen1c wrote: post #40

im not sure how i feel about this. "fire everyone" is too large a scope, but "charge 1-4 officers with murder" is too small a scope. both measures are too extreme. firing everyone is only useful if you restructure the training pipeline and system of accountability, but if you do that you dont need to fire everyone. i suppose a nuanced approach is outside public reactionary purview so this is probably the better optio…

Where are you getting the idea that they will fire everyone? That is how the nation of Georgia handled it but it doesn’t mean that’s how Minneapolis will. They said rebuild they system from the ground up, which means restructuring the system of accountability, not necessarily everyone loses their job.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#274

Post by downerending »

pixl97 wrote: post #96
PaulWaldman wrote: post #61

Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

Police departments are not like software, they are like servers. Sometimes you need to format and reinstall.

Unlike servers, the components can take their balls and go elsewhere. Good luck with that.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#276

Post by devin »

Myce wrote: post #237
malnourish wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fine with more police if we entirely redefine police to mean social workers, counselors, community assistants, etc. And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars. Police should be seen and they should be seen interacting positively with the community, not patrolling in a gradient of (un)identifiable vehicles.

I live in a country where most of this is true. Unfortunately, there are now so many care workers that many people with issues are getting fed up with all the people that come to their house for all kinds of help (think a care worker for finance, one for mental issues,one for physical issues,one to help the person get back to work, one for the kids etc. etc.) So if there will be a shift from 'police as is', to more l…

What country do you live in?

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#277

Post by milquetoastaf »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #61

Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

Jesus christ not everything is mappable to software or tech

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#278

Post by csense »

Wait a minute. If you're not gonna have police, how will you handle things like murders, rapes, robberies, or kidnappings? Do criminals just get to do their thing without fear of the law?

Maybe we're supposed to form a citizens' posse to hunt 'em down like they did back in the Wild West?

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#279

Post by Myce »

devin wrote: post #276
Myce wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a country where most of this is true. Unfortunately, there are now so many care workers that many people with issues are getting fed up with all the people that come to their house for all kinds of help (think a care worker for finance, one for mental issues,one for physical issues,one to help the person get back to work, one for the kids etc. etc.) So if there will be a shift from 'police as is', to more l…

What country do you live in?

The Netherlands. I assume for some more Northern European and Scandinavian countries it's about the same.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#280

Post by stuzenz »

I can't help but wonder if the aggressive nature of U.S. police officers are out of fear that people might have guns - and that it just starts a cycle of escalation along with citizen rights being ignored. It is a real contrast to NZ where officers are smiling, friendly and disarming when they approach you - this would be the norm here even if you are a patched gang member.

We do have issues, here in NZ (racial profiling being one of them) but I am glad we don't have any additional issues brought about by the police having an overriding default concern that citizens could be armed.

I may be over simplifying it - but it is the biggest difference I can see.

To try to add some perspective for myself I compared some stats last week between NZ and the US.

You are __97x__ more likely to be killed by U.S police than you are by NZ police.

I came to this conclusion through looking at 5 years of NZ data and 6 years of U.S data. As a side note it seems to be agreed that the U.S deaths by police is under-reported due to there being no National database and processes in place to collect the data. On the flip side, keep in mind that NZ only had a sample of one police caused death over 5 years, so the NZ stats would change drastically with any increase in deaths.

I really hope the conversation can move to gun control - assuming the U.S. police professional standards to the public would more easily change if guns were off your streets.

The stats were derived from this following links: Sources

https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/tactical-opt...

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

I also wonder if that the high number of ex-military in the U.S. police force also plays into the military-mindset of 'us versus them' approach towards the community.

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