Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

hopefully my idiocy will bring levity in these hard times

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huge fuckin line of police vans drove across the bridge and down the street outside of my apartment just now. the insecurity is almost adorable

twenty minutes later he said he "misspoke" even though in this clip he goes out of his way to say that he understands his words are offensive and that he means it. fire that ass https://t.co/P3bDQbGWLF

— Hayes Davenport (@hayesdavenport) June 2, 2020

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/01/why-so-many-police-are-handling-the-protests-wrong

Thomson encountered this when he tried to make change in Camden. The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch. “When I had the opportunity to build a new police department, I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do, because of work rules, because of the bureaucracy of collective bargaining agreements—there are a lot of impediments to reform,” Thomson said.

looters and protesters retroactively killed Floyd!

"Their minds, I meant to say it was on their minds."

haha i went to check on whether that was one of those deepfakes because it was so utterly nonsensical

The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch.

here is where right-wingers rediscover union power

A black family tried to get the attention of the police to protect a neighborhood store in Van Nuys and were immediately handcuffed. pic.twitter.com/5iZRXUvbMP

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) June 2, 2020

Moments before they were handcuffed after trying to get the attention of the police, the woman described why it was important for her and her family to protect the store and their neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/BOFknyzUW1

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) June 2, 2020

i am doing a small fundraiser here if people want to donate:

Hey, let me drunkenly animate your photos in about 25 to 60 days!

5 of 8 left

you guys I just looked up ACAB and learned that it does not, as I had thought, mean "assigned cop at birth"

lol

the closest protests to me that I know of were the west side highway ones, but those were further south than I am now (plus I'm too zonked out on ativan right now to do anything but sleep)

Wish I were zonked out on Ativan. Sleep well.

dying @ assigned cop at birth

(you really don't, it's prescribed but I almost never take it because all it really does is nuke a day out of existence, when arguably the "right" thing to do would be to not nuke a day out of existence here)

xp like two-thirds of my friends have made the assigned cop at birth joke

(I had an Ativan 0.5mg prn Rx for a while, which barely did anything but it did enough.)

probably not the best hijack of this thread though

White Cops On Ativan

George Floyd's family is leading a peaceful rally & march tomorrow afternoon in Houston.

What
The
Fuck

Even more proof that the cops are not helping the situation. I got this video from someone on Twitter pic.twitter.com/5SNgnnzNfx

— Cassie (@Cass_is_boring) June 2, 2020

i don't understand what's happening in that video

the people taking it think they are seeing cops unloading bricks and they don't know why

The people shooting the video can be heard saying that they think the bricks are for undercover cops, who can go among the protesters and throw them, to justify arrests. But based on that video alone it's impossible to say what the bricks are for, or even if the two guys are cops. They have some kind of symbols in their shirt shoulders that might indicate police, but the video is shot from too far to see any details.

Sounds like philly was kinda bad last night

Reports of a basement fire and lighter fluid found at an apartment building across the street from me last night. Seemingly the entire national guard arrived with the fire truck.

oops meant to put that in the Minnesota thread

One of my coworkers that lives not too far from Wrigley Field shared an email from someone who lives in her building who watched a car full of guys idle in their alley before stashing two full cans of gasoline in the dumpster behind their building. Luckily they found the gas and were able to dispose of them, but doesn't sound like anyone caught the guys.

gotta say there is a pretty stark difference between Twitter, which is full of videos of the police clearly and blatantly instigating shit against peaceful protestors, and Facebook, which is mostly people whining about ANTIFA and posting long screeds about how "looting won't fix anything"

Riots are by nature confusing and everyone is seizing upon them in order to push their own narrative. No one knows who is "behind" the destruction because multiple groups are.

Here is what is known: there is an unacceptable degree of violence perpetrated by the police in the United States, disproportionately against black people. Any push for reform is rejected forecfully by the cops, who become more antisocial and reactionary. Also, this past week, the cops have been brutalizing peaceful protesters on numerous occasions. And employees of the state, acting in a professional capacity, can be held accountable; anonymous "looters" can't.

I'll bet there are "antifa" assholes setting fires. But, whatever, it's not the root of the problem.

^ this

(xpost to treeship)

(xpost to treeship)

Yup, keyed-up crackers burning and looting small neighborhood businesses, already under unprecedented strain due to a pandemic, where many low-income people and POC work and buy groceries definitely not a problem

^^^

It is *a* problem but is it “antifa” primarily looting? It’s not clear you can pin the looting on any one group but you can pin state violence on the state

IDGAF about looting I’m more concerned about organized arson attempts night after night in residential neighborhoods (the ‘burning’ in Paul’s post)

Of course it’s not fuckin Antifa

anybody can label themselves Antifa, even King Dipshit knows that

It is *a* problem but is it “antifa” primarily looting? It’s not clear you can pin the looting on any one group but you can pin state violence on the state

― treeship., Tuesday, June 2, 2020 10:40 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's true, and I definitely don't mean to imply that antifa are the ones causing all (or even most?) of the destruction. I was just pointing out that it's definitely not helping, and when all of these assholes, whether they're magas or anarchists or just opportunists from out of town, eventually leave, there is going to need to be some serious rebuilding of communities that were already hovering over the precipice of economic collapse long before anyone outside of obsessive DJ Screw fans (hi) had ever heard of Big Floyd. I guess what I mean is I liked it better when it looked for a minute like they might actually try to occupy the White House instead of doing smash and grabs on local businesses

I feel the same, PP, but the thing that has been established is there is no monolithic "they." Most of the looters in my city are just local kids taking advantage of the situation and have no political agenda. A lot of the violence instigators are out-of-towners or the cops themselves. It's a weird fucked up complicated situation.

London went through something a bit like this in 2011 (cops execute black man -> riots, burning etc) and iirc the smart analysis was that much of the looting and burning was heinous and terrible because it was indiscriminate, but that we as a nation definitely had it coming. wonder if that'll be the long-term view here

I think it's too much to credit us with the capability of forming long-term views about anything.

We've had ample opportunities to learn this lesson already.

My friend who was arrested was shoved to the ground, which ripped her mask. She and her fellow protesters were told they could get new ones as they were being arrested. Then as they did, upon being loaded into the van, were told gruffly by the officer "eh, you weren't distancing anyway", before he slammed the door on them.

Later on, a less dick-ish officer gave them some.

I do gaf about the looting, writ large, because at least locally the looting has been a locus of violence before the cops even arrive. That is, of the two shootings in the last day or so near me, cops responded *to* the shots fired. They were not shots fired in response to cops. I've also seen reports/threats of the same looters going to houses, assaulting people on the street, etc. There is some small element of the protests turning to looting, but there is also by every indication organized caravan looting that is causing another, parallel layer of chaos. But I would not be shocked if the police/government/whomever are not making any distinction between the groups. .

complicating the comparison to London '11 is the fact that while kettling and other crudely suppressive police tactics were used around that time, you didn't have a militarised police really actively escalating things into a near-battleground situation

or at least, not to remotely this extent