Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Jesus

BREAKING: Louisville police confirm at least seven people shot tonight during protests over Breonna Taylor's death.https://t.co/ZVIYvm6Mqz

— Tessa Duvall (@TessaDuvall) May 29, 2020

xp both protesters and law enforcement seem to be approaching things quite strategically/tactically. i'm watching these in about the same way i watched the philando castile protests, and just the degree of deliberate back-line support for protesters—setting up nearby locations for provisions and medical assistance in churches and such—seems conspicuously higher. and everyone seems to have the game down, of staging confrontations around the police authority to project force and compel people to disperse, with back-and-forths that last a while before police deplete the crowds or they're called away to some more urgent site. i imagine the police are getting exactly what they'd always dreamed of, a little warfare in the city.

Trump tweeted the T word. didn't take him long.

Wtf?!?

Andrea Jenkins, vice president of Minneapolis City Council, says George Floyd and Officer Chauvin worked at restaurant near Third Precinct.

"They were coworkers for a very long time." pic.twitter.com/Xv90wfLtDu

— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) May 29, 2020

yeah, but she was quoted elsewhere saying she didn't know that they actually knew each other, as they had different jobs, and one primarily worked outside, and one inside. less "interesting" a detail in that context.

Seems like a pretty big coincidence, but I guess it could be nothing

Then they crashed the second truck into it. pic.twitter.com/Z6ov1chhMm

— Nick Woltman (@nickwoltman) May 29, 2020

: o

(a postal service truck)

CNN arrested live on air

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/29/minneapolis-protests-omar-jimenez-arrested-newday-vpx.cnn

What the hell?

Is it overly cynical of me to think that they only arrested the white crew after a pause b/c they figured it might make them look less racist?

nope, sounds right to me

Amazing that these cops can see all that has unfolded and do the thing that plays into the narrative on live TV

Trump tweeted the T word. didn't take him long.

― I am a free. I am not man. A number. (Neanderthal), Friday, May 29, 2020 1:31 AM (seven hours ago)

This particular part of the dog whistle eluded me: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-when-looting-starts-shooting-starts-come-n1217676

The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums,"

Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."

Miami hadn't faced "racial disturbances and looting," Headley added, because he let word filter down that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

trump's tweet is beyond disturbing

the american president advocating the massacre of american civilians

Good people on both sides.

He doesn't consider looters people.

Or anybody people.

Least of all minorities.

Scum

i'm really glad twitter put a content warning on that tweet. at the same time, there is something really bleak about seeing the white house in the same category as infowars or whatever. also, it feels like we are fucked when we are looking to a massive tech company to protect us from our own government's information warfare.

just dark, dark shit

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

he's a plague

watching a police station burn is a moment of perfect truth and clarity

— michael (@Sisyphusa) May 29, 2020

so the rumor is that Derek Chauvin (murder cop) fled to Windermere, FL. 20-30 mins from me.

It seems that it's been confirmed that he owns the place but I'm a bit unnerved at people already scheduling protests there (as they're already doing on Reddit), when it's not clear if the person residing there is actually Chauvin and not a random renter.

What an idiot, he's just making it worse

When the protesters are white vs when the protesters are black pic.twitter.com/sZ0NLiaq0S

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 29, 2020

It took 145 years but it looks like the Confederacy finally won the Civil War

— DJP (@djperry1973) May 29, 2020

if twitter took its own rules seriously he would have been banned long before he took office and the world might be very slightly less terrible

Twitter should beat him with billy clubs

Too bad the US is so sprawling. More centralized countries like France make it easier to effect change through protests and rioting by going for the jugular, i.e. Paris (DC doesn't quite count because it's not an international metropolis on top of its stated function as the seat of government).

Comedian Chris Rock praises New York Governor Cuomo, says Coronavirus press briefings ‘bring him joy’

pic.twitter.com/ce71whGVEm

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 29, 2020

in the end it was the american people who were increasingly frustrating and isolated

all this shit is horrifying to wake up to.

I keep going back to this passage from a Ta-Nehisi Coates-piece written during the Baltimore-riots following the killing of Freddie Gray in 2015:

"When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

The owner of Gandhi Mahal, a (very delicious) local restaurant in South Minneapolis that was damaged in the fires last night: "Let my building burn, justice needs to be served." pic.twitter.com/hM1qt4tGEx

— Molly Hensley-Clancy (@mollyhc) May 29, 2020

I wonder if the President of the United States encouraging the military to murder citizens is a violation of Twitter rules

"when the looting starts, the shooting starts"

not just the military - he's also encouraging (knowingly or not) private citizens to take matters into their own hands as well.

i understand the origins of the phrase (walter headley, 1967, regarding a police department). but that was 1967, and i would assume a bunch of second amendment activists living in rural MN figure trump's talking to them.

Confirmed, Chauvin owns the property in Windermere, but isn't actually here:

https://www.orangeobserver.com/article/minnesota-cop-derek-chauvin-owns-property-near-windermere

xxp

Twitter blocked his tweet, so presumably the answer is yes

Not surprised he's not at that property, I mean the cops aren't going to go all in on protecting one of their own by letting him stay somewhere that easy to find.

Xpost they didn't block his tweet, they hid it with a disclaimer as powerful as your school librarian telling you to stop putting gum under your chair

xp they didn't block the tweet. they did put a public service notice up ("this dude is a fucking liar", iirc), and prevented people from replying or "liking" it. they didn't block the tweet, or prevent people from retweeting it with a comment

Aka the Deep State is getting bolder by the minute.

Watched some of Wiseman's 'Law and Order' recently and it is phenomenally disturbing and still very topical. There's a clip on youtube (and the full film on ilplex) if you wanna hunt for it.

https://www.screenslate.com/features/413

The Police Tapes (1977), which follows cops from a South Bronx precinct going about a routine that they explicitly describe as colonial, was a precursor to Cops (1989–present), which would take a much more exploitative stance and make the poor and insane into objects of entertainment. An even older precursor is Frederick Wiseman’s Law and Order (1969), in which the prolific documentarist followed the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department for six weeks.

After opening credits over slide-projected mugshots, we see a perturbed white woman on the precinct’s phone, saying she was “thrown bodily in a paddy wagon by a negro policeman” and giving us an immediate glimpse of the town’s inhabitants’ assumptions about the way the law works. She’s never been picked up before, and for her this means she’s simply been mistaken for a “criminal”—as if catching criminals weren't by definition the process of snatching people off the street and calling them criminals. We then get a cop’s perspective, who’s asked why he joined the force. His response of a half-minute’s blank-stared silence suggests that maybe he wasn’t looking for anything beyond a pay-check.

In classic liberal newsgathering style, Wiseman is neither pro- nor anti-cop. He's said that “it’s extremely important for the filmmaker to try at least to remain open to the material, otherwise you’re making propaganda.” In Law and Order, this material is brutal enough to leave no doubt about the fluid ethics of policework. An astonishing scene shows a detective strangling a prostitution suspect until she can’t breathe, all the while repeating “Stop resisting.” It illustrates at least two things: 1. That for cops, the word ‘resist’ refers not only to intentional resistance but also to the resistance caused by mere inertia. No one can fully “stop resisting” unless they cease to be a physical body in space. 2. That this detective is not at all ashamed of violence. Wiseman wondered in an interview, “if that cop didn’t think that what he was doing was okay, why on earth would he do that when it was being recorded?” The presence of the camera doesn’t guarantee objectivity, but at least it gives a truthful impression of how people want to be seen.

The white house twitter account retweeting the ayotollah in Iran and asking twitter why they didnt censor him is chef's kiss. yeah censor him too. idgaf just get rid of incitement and hate speech pls.

"if you awnt to ban Trump, you might as well ban Twitter from the internet"

"cool, I'm down"

Police are at the US Bank now. I asked him what are his orders. And he told me it’s anarchy so basically I could kick rocks. pic.twitter.com/9o2RRVGNPt

— D.A. Bullock (@BullyCreative) May 29, 2020

My friend’s house is pretty close to the 3rd precinct - he just told me he lost power at 3am and the air is so chokingly plasticky he’s gonna evacuate

officer chauvin in custody

Chauvin of chauvinism fame iirc.