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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

#381

Post by mjburgess »

downerending wrote: post #369
mjburgess wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may need to wait for the report to be clear on where the failures were, but there's lots going on there. Part of the context of that has to be a pretty systemic UK-wide issue affecting public institutions where child-abuse was ignored. It's not clear that heavy-handed policing, in that context, would lead to a different result. It certainly wouldn't in many high profile cases, where police had been strongly encour…

A lot going on, yes, but impossible to believe the police were not aware. In the US, if higher-ups tried to suppress this, it'd be leaked to the press, and all hell would break loose.

That's true and goes to my point. There's a classism at work here that isn't about the style of policing.

For the UK, class is the defining structural issue, not race. Journalists and the police have typically protected and respected the upper-middle.

That's interacting here with a police oversight in an usual way

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

#382

Post by mcv »

yread wrote: post #360
mcv wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even so, no tear gas, no beatings, and despite the protesters resisting as much as they non-violently can, the police are not using any violence beyond pulling and shoving them into the bus.

I was thinking more of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwrdriLiZc

(It's surprisingly hard to find anything online about events before 2004. This was all over the news at the time, but now it looks like it never happened. My quality newspaper lacks proper archive functionality for searching more than a year ago. Search engines and Youtube have never heard of this, frequently returning 0 results.)

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

#383

Post by randompwd »

tomnipotent wrote: post #379
randompwd wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What 'many other' countries?

Every country has unmarked cop cars in use alongside high visibility marked cars. Every country has armed officers in addition to unarmed officers.

Given the US has liberal gun laws, how would that even work? It's shortsighted & reactionary unless you want people who are already in dangerous situations to be lambs led to the slaughter because you'd like to think you live in a unicorn reality.

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

#384

Post by tyrlo »

Myce wrote: post #279
devin wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in?

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

Hey no offense but tour analysis of how police works un the NL is a best partial. NL is under investigation of countless NGO for having structural racisim, relationships with far right parties and high level corruption within the police force, you can have a look to reports from the league of human right for exemple. Also social helpers system is going nowhere as you have to wait an average of 15 years to get social housing, and in the meanwhile if you're out of options you gotta go into expensive homeless shelters that would make living in the streets desirable given how bad they are, if it wasn't illegal. NL's state build a nice image of nice police and nice social help, but that's an image, reality is far from that

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

#385

Post by guerrilla »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #341
guerrilla wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolishing the police means abolishing it. Nothing will replace it. Crime will be prevented by eliminating its causes and there will be some mechanisms to deal with last resort cases. The articles explain this.

> will be some mechanisms to deal with last resort cases. Like police? I read the article and Twitter threads. They don't explain it.

No, first, like re-callable community self-defense who would answer to competent managers of specific situations rather than being incompetent managers of situations themselves, be internal rather external to the community and be re-callable at any time rather than essentially having immunity.

It's a mistake to assume that police abolition means pacifism. It's also a mistake to assume the use of violence means policing.

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

#386

Post by guerrilla »

crimsoneer wrote: post #339
guerrilla wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolishing the police means abolishing it. Nothing will replace it. Crime will be prevented by eliminating its causes and there will be some mechanisms to deal with last resort cases. The articles explain this.

I sure hope the mechanism for last resort cases isn't men and women in uniform with guns, because then social workers will be very unwilling to approach any potentially violent situation without the not-police-uniform-gun-men there. Sorry to be cynical, just the experience of a police officer in a place where social services are funded far, far better than the US - police don't want to deal with mental health all the…

Indeed, I think it helps to understand what police authority and responsibility is exactly and then one can more easily see what variations are possible. See my response to the comment sibling to yours.

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

#387

Post by jessaustin »

thu2111 wrote: post #343
hipsterstal1n wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tweeted about this a week ago being from the area. It helped the city get rid of officers that the police union were protecting not fire-able. Further, it helped the city (which had declared bankruptcy) get rid of police pensions negotiated decades ago that were draining city coffers.

How does firing people get rid of pensions? That sounds pretty wrong - punishing every cop by taking away their pension because of the act of one? Why would anyone join the police at all if that's possible?

Lots of people work at jobs that don't provide ludicrous pensions.

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

#388

Post by xendo »

jatone wrote: post #359
xendo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to be clear, I’ not in favor of facial recognition. However as a society we need to make informed decision and not to pick some random cons just to dismiss ideas that we dont like. I would be very disappointed if engineer, even junior, showed your attitude towards problem solving.

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

#389

Post by jessaustin »

jsdevwork1 wrote: post #189
chinesempire wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever really tried one for yourself? East Berlin used to be second World, but many of my American friends moved there because they were tired sick of being harassed by their own country brutality and would never go back. Even many African countries are safer than the US if you are black. On the other side, one of the most annoying kind of tourist you can find in my city, which is Rome in Italy, are Americans.…

I sure have, Venezuela. No water, constant power failures, gas at 8-12 USD per gallon (controlled by the military police$$$, though that is a recent development), minimum wage at 5USD per month. Food at international prices. Basically non-existent judicial system. Police brutality several notches above what you see in the US.

Bullshit. If you had really lived there, you would know that Venezuela's problems are mostly caused by USA-imposed sanctions. The police are so "brutal" that they have let the would-be coup leader and CIA contractor Juan Gauido prance about the nation unmolested for a couple of years now. How many poor black Venezuelans have died under the knees of Venezuelan cops in the last month?

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

#390

Post by JshWright »

randompwd wrote: post #378
JshWright wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A letter of reprimand for excessive force should be the end of a police office's career in law enforcement (a similar incident would certainly be the end of my time as a paramedic).
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