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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

#371

Post by downerending »

newen wrote: post #368
downerending wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family is recently from Germany, and at least 50 years ago, they had an extremely strong culture of social order and obeying laws. I suspect variations in crime rates have a lot more to do with that than with differences in policing style.

It's not just Germany. Police killings are significantly lower in many many other countries compared to the US.

Arguably we have a lot of violent crime here, so that stats would need to be normalized somehow for that. But yes, US culture is different than a lot of other countries. I suspect policing style is more the effect than the cause.

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

#372

Post by slickrick216 »

randompwd wrote: post #357
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.

Didn’t suggest it was one thing. I just didn’t think in the context of this thread that the background was relevant. Can it not be a combination of things.? The good Friday agreement started the ball rolling the change to PSNI was one of the measures.

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

#373

Post by therealdrag0 »

newen wrote: post #319
downerending wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every wrong shooting, there's what, maybe a hundred righteous ones? A thousand? Yes, I'll take it for now, and advocate for improvements.

How can you possibly think so when there are about 25 police killings in Germany in the last 30 years and about 25 police killings in the US in the last month?

Do you really think that's apples to apples comparison?

Perhaps consider reading "how to lie with statistics".

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

#374

Post by novok »

elil17 wrote: post #269
sneak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is no organization that is incentivized to uncover or investigate police crimes. All other portions of government have cross-checks to stop people breaking the law. The police don't, and cover for one another. There needs to be an organization that has clear and direct incentive to prosecute abuses by the police, that doesn't have a century+ long tradition of violence, selective enforcement,…

For the FBI, there is such an organization. The FBI Inspector General investigates malpractice committed by FBI officers. However, the scope of their ability to fix problems in the FBI is limited because prosecutors rarely take up cases against law enforcement. They also hold FBI officers accountable by writing reports for congress. Again, the usefulness of this is limited by the unwillingness of Congress to act on t…

It has to be an organization separate from any specific police agency, with prosecutors solely devoted to prosecuting police crimes, complete with their bonuses and careers linked to convictions complete with scummy plea bargaining behavior.

There also has to be new crimes of negligence for things like 'body cam turned off' or 'records suddenly missing' and so on.

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

#375

Post by emilecantin »

akudha wrote: post #242
limelight wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, that's what will come from "abolishing" the police. That's not necessarily a bad thing! A big problem with existing departments is decades of corruption, poor leadership, and entrenched policies. Tearing the department down and rebuilding it from scratch—even if you end up with a similar size as before—gives you the opportunity to remove the excesses/abuse. You can also do things like hiring more speci…

How would they go about doing this in practice? Are they going to fire the entire police force, and recruit new people from scratch? If that is the case, can the current cops apply? How would they make sure bad cops from the current force don't get recruited again? A simple first step would be to maintain a national level open registry of fired cops and bad behavior reports. At minimum, if a cop gets fired, then he c…

I think applying to cops something along the lines of what we have for professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. could be a solution.

All cops nationally would be required to have a license from this organization in order to do some "reserved acts", like arresting someone, using force, firing a taser, etc. Any complaint about cops would be evaluated by this organization, and could result in the suspension / revocation of their license. There would be a strong emphasis on deontology, and the organization's explicit mission would be to protect the public.

This would probably have a similar effect overall to what you're describing, but it'd be more of a whitelist than a blacklist.

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

#376

Post by bluesroo »

_-david-_ wrote: post #264
joe_the_user wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disbanding the force is more important than everything on your list. As others have said, once you lose institutional control, and the mayor and the police chief have both effective said that they have lost this, than small reform don't matter. Plus Minneapolis PD has a strong reputation as one of the most corruption in the nation. https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-police-officers-convic... https://www.patrickbur…

It seems like the mayor and police chief should be voted out as well. If they cannot maintain control they should go as well.

I think you're missing some significant details. The NYT did a really good episode on it last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/podcasts/the-daily/george...

TL;DR When a cop is fired there are several safety nets that can reinstate them. If I remember right, the union reinstates ~45% of fired officers. Neither the Chief nor the mayor have the LEGAL power to even fire bad actors in the police department. They literally cannot do anything about the problem within the law.

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

#377

Post by randompwd »

slickrick216 wrote: post #372
randompwd wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didn’t suggest it was one thing. I just didn’t think in the context of this thread that the background was relevant. Can it not be a combination of things.? The good Friday agreement started the ball rolling the change to PSNI was one of the measures.

You implied it by omission

> A model for this is the PSNI in Northern Ireland

> Seems to be working given that there’s been 19 years of peace over there.

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

#378

Post by randompwd »

JshWright wrote: post #354
randompwd wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The line in parent comment is:

> Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him

A complaint is an allegation. It's not a confirmed incidence of bad behaviour.

Using Chauvin as example (17 complaints), From WAPO:

> A summary of the complaints against Chauvin posted by the department offers no information on why they were filed, and police declined to comment on the nature of the cases. Sixteen of the complaints were closed without discipline. The remaining complaint resulted in two letters of reprimand against Chauvin, according to the summary.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/29/officer-cha...

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

#379

Post by tomnipotent »

randompwd wrote: post #351
mcv wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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.

Except this is how many other countries work, so how is it even remotely simplistic or naive?

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

#380

Post by _-david-_ »

bluesroo wrote: post #376
_-david-_ wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the mayor and police chief should be voted out as well. If they cannot maintain control they should go as well.

I think you're missing some significant details. The NYT did a really good episode on it last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/podcasts/the-daily/george... TL;DR When a cop is fired there are several safety nets that can reinstate them. If I remember right, the union reinstates ~45% of fired officers. Neither the Chief nor the mayor have the LEGAL power to even fire bad actors in the police department. They l…

I think you are missing what I am saying. The person I was responding to said the police cheif and mayor has lost control. If they have then they failed at their job and should be replaced.

This does not mean that other things should not also be done.

I beleive getting rid of / modifing the police unions would be beneficial. Fixing the whole qualified immunity issue would also be good. But I also think police need representatives to protect them from false accusations or from being railroaded. Maybe that is from a union or maybe its from something else.

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