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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

#351

Post by randompwd »

mcv wrote: post #334
david38 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren’t police. They are part of the social safety net and community wellness. How would you ask a police officer to react to a criminal brandishing or firing a gun in public or at him? How would you ask detectives to work cases against gang leaders if they cannot conceal their identity?

@malnourish has a good point, though. Quite often police respond to calls that require a social worker or mental health professional. And in some of those cases, the police decides that a bullet is the best solution to the problem that they are equipped to provide. Many problems require very different solutions, and many police officers are not equipped to provide those solutions. That is a major problem. Either poli…

Immediately stained by the simplistic naievety of:

> And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars.

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

#352

Post by randompwd »

JshWright wrote: post #150
dcposch wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did a more than just a reorg. Disbanding and replacing a PD eliminates the old police union contracts. Those lopsided contracts are at the root of the impunity and violence we've seen over the past week. Many cities have made extraordinary contractual concessions, including: - Secrecy clauses. Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him, but the city is contractually forbidden from making th…

I don't understand why there isn't a professional license required for LEOs. I'm a paramedic. If I harmed a patient once (let along 31 times), my card would get revoked and that would be that. A cop, meanwhile, is likely to face no consequences at all, and in the absolute "worst" case scenario, they would just get a job in the next town over.

> If I harmed a patient once

You're conflating allegations of harm vs harmed. Given your position is just assisting the person and not enforcing the law(which the person does not want the cop to do against them), you are magnitudes less likely to have allegations made against you.

Allegations aren't an objective historical fact. They can and are used to spite.

Apples and oranges.

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

#353

Post by jmcqk6 »

downerending wrote: post #268
pickpuck wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding, based mostly on what I’ve seen on Twitter: 911 call -> Dispatch unarmed City employee, typically a social worker, who specializes in the relevant situation, population or neighborhood. Goal is to assist the individuals involved, to be compassionate instead of punitive, to get to the root cause of the issue. There is still some kind of armed security backup for the social worker’s protection in situa…

That's admirable in theory, but sounds like a recipe for getting your head blown off. There really are unrepentantly awful people in the world, and sometimes we need to save innocents from them.

>There really are unrepentantly awful people in the world, and sometimes we need to save innocents from them.

As we have seen, more than a few of them work in law enforcement.

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

#354

Post by JshWright »

randompwd wrote: post #352
JshWright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why there isn't a professional license required for LEOs. I'm a paramedic. If I harmed a patient once (let along 31 times), my card would get revoked and that would be that. A cop, meanwhile, is likely to face no consequences at all, and in the absolute "worst" case scenario, they would just get a job in the next town over.

> If I harmed a patient once You're conflating allegations of harm vs harmed. Given your position is just assisting the person and not enforcing the law(which the person does not want the cop to do against them), you are magnitudes less likely to have allegations made against you. Allegations aren't an objective historical fact. They can and are used to spite. Apples and oranges.

I'm not talking about allegations. I'm talking about confirmed incidences of bad behavior that result in, at most, a short suspension.

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

#355

Post by mcv »

yread wrote: post #346
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…

There is also a wijkagent - "neighborhood cop". Actual policeperson (with gun and all) that has "office hours" when they are walking around the neighborhood talking to people (even just for a chat) at the playgrounds, business owners and so on. People come to them with problems. There is a website where you can look up wijkagent for each neighborhood. Sometimes they're also active on Twitter, FB... Works quite well

It's very important that police is connected to the community they police, and cares about that community. My impression of police in the US is that that is rarely the case in cases where this police brutality occurs.

I'm fairly happy with Dutch police. They're visible and approachable. They're not perfect; there was a case in the 1990s where they cracked down unreasonably hard on a peaceful student protest. And in that case, it turned out that many of those cops were indeed looking forward to a fight, which is a dangerous and harmful attitude. Those instances are fairly rare, though.

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

#356

Post by curryst »

catalogia wrote: post #180
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's why I said should . I think bodycams themselves are fantastic tools—but like most technology, they cannot by themselves fix a human problem.

Our system doesn't assume criminal guilt under any circumstances, by design, and that's a good thing. Everybody accused of a crime has the right to a trial, even cops.

That's not entirely true. There are a category of legal defenses called "affirmative defenses" [1] where you are presumed guilty and have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt something that makes your typically unlawful conduct lawful. Self-defense, insanity and fair use are common affirmative defenses.

I would expect affirmative defenses to be fairly common in trials involving police; there's typically not a lot of argument around whether an officer assaulted/killed someone, just over whether the use of force was authorized.

That being said, I would be more in favor of changing jury instructions to indicate that the lack of body cam footage can be seen as an incriminating factor. Not that it 100% means that they are guilty, but that it can be considered suspicious circumstantial evidence. Much in the same way that you cannot be compelled to self-incriminate, but that juries are allowed to interpret invoking the 5th amendment as incriminating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense

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

#357

Post by randompwd »

slickrick216 wrote: post #149

A model for this is the PSNI in Northern Ireland. Irish catholic’s faced arguably worse racist violence from the Royal Ulster constabulary. Faith and trust was lost on both sides within the community. Seems to be working given that there’s been 19 years of peace over there.

To attribute the RUC->PSNI change(2001) as the reason for peace is wrong.

That change was on the back of a much larger, much broader set of changes brought in as a result of Good Friday Agreement in 98:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

> Issues relating to sovereignty, civil and cultural rights, decommissioning of weapons, demilitarisation, justice and policing were central to the agreement.

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

#358

Post by xu44 »

yawaramin wrote: post #207
xu44 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just ignore the scores of videos of businesses being looted, cars being flipped, places set on fire or the killing of David Dorn.

Time to choose a priority: more important to stop the roadside executions of Black people by cops, or to stop 'looting'?

Strawman

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

#359

Post by jatone »

xendo wrote: post #313
marnett wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-f…

Now you would have to argue that real time face recognition is truly and solely a bad thing. If used correctly it can help reduce the violence in communities, catch child molesters, rescue kidnapped kids etc. Finally it would help defund the police as it can increase its efficiency.

only thing I can see facial recognition doing is causing police forces to constantly single out individuals for previous crimes by removing their anonymity from the police force.

this doesn't improve safety it causes a feedback loop where the person targeted will struggle to move to a normal life.

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

#360

Post by yread »

mcv wrote: post #355
yread wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a wijkagent - "neighborhood cop". Actual policeperson (with gun and all) that has "office hours" when they are walking around the neighborhood talking to people (even just for a chat) at the playgrounds, business owners and so on. People come to them with problems. There is a website where you can look up wijkagent for each neighborhood. Sometimes they're also active on Twitter, FB... Works quite well

It's very important that police is connected to the community they police, and cares about that community. My impression of police in the US is that that is rarely the case in cases where this police brutality occurs. I'm fairly happy with Dutch police. They're visible and approachable. They're not perfect; there was a case in the 1990s where they cracked down unreasonably hard on a peaceful student protest. And in t…

Yes, no one is perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCdrFYm5b8
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