Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

That’s always the question isn’t it

If you don't understand why ppl are asking LAPD and LASD "how was the officer involved?" It's because they always say "officer involved shooting" and every single time it's "an officer killed someone"

One particular time someone asked & LAPD responded incredibly disrespectfully https://t.co/jlxMKJZszc pic.twitter.com/nL2ViNit2c

— Montrell Thigpen Ⓜ️✪ (@mot427) March 23, 2021

After cutting the police budget slightly, including reducing the war-crime-approving police chief's personal salary so much (from $300,000 to merely "more than a quarter of a million pa"), the Seattle City Council gave a $3,000,000 contract to a previously-not-existing group to deliver a report on how to further rebudget cop alternatives.

Any contract above $54,000 is required to go to tender.

Listen to @LAPDHQ officers on the police scanner last night talk about how they want to dump gas on protestors and set them on fire.

This is nazi shit.

pic.twitter.com/eS5EIc3IXe

— People's City Council - Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) March 25, 2021

I used to think maybe there was a good cop,,, but then the last eleventy years happened and that cop never once stood up and said “hey y’all, we’ve got some problems in the dept. maybe in a lot of depts”.

not one single cop, not one single time. so yeah, ACAB. abolish. or at least defund.

It would’ve been my uncle in about 1978 when he got on the front pages of the Twin Cities papers alleging corruption in the Minneapolis police but he died in 1995, so...

Proud of my police department

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNbY6H_ra4w

what they fail to mention is that the mental heath pilot program was introduced after the police killed a man with a knife who was suffering from a mental health crisis just a few blocks from there

a touching moment that is so aberrant we put out a press release about it

it was the first successful de-escalation in hyattsville PD history

i didn't finish the video because it made me queasy but wouldn't it be cool if the people on the news asked ANY questions such as "why do we send armed men to calm down people in distress"

then it wouldn't be so touching. it's entertainews

but i am glad hyattsville pd got there before pg county pd. they scare the shit out of me

I remember a big blow-up over a PG county PD unarmed black man murder from a couple decades ago already.

Fun to hear nothing changed

they had one last year iirc and the cop was actually charged

only because the victim was handcuffed so it was difficult for them to make it look legitimate https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/us/william-green-settlement.html

then there's this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/police-discrimination-lawsuit-county-report/2021/03/08/4259dbc0-8046-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html

the related videos on this Hyattsville video are a vortex of the worst White people in America getting shamed into the cornfield by livestreaming minorities

my favorite is the young Latino woman who full on slaps an older White woman harassing her

lol i think i have seen that one before

getting shamed into the cornfield

i haven't heard this phrase before, i'm not sure what it means, and i like it

that and "unrelease" are the two big ilx phrases/words i've added to the ol' stockpile this week

That is my own construction

"getting shamed" - self-explanatory
"into the cornfield" - Children of the Corn reference

No it isn’t it’s an “it’s a good life” reference!!

oh lol you're right

full disclosure, I never saw Children of the Corn

My first encounter with that formulation was back when Jim Woodring and James Kochalka were sparring in The Comics Journal letters column about whether craft is a critical component of cartooning (JK: craft is the enemy, JW: craft is indivisible from expression)... kochalka came out with the old “I’d rather listen to the punk kid who only knows two chords every time”, to which Woodring dismissively responded “Wish it into the cornfield, Jimmy!”
I assumed it was something Jim came up with since he was always coming up with great twists of phrase...

Jon I literally held back from posting "wish it into the cornfield, Jimmy!" earlier bcz I thought you would be the only person to get it and might not see the thread

(actually it would have been the second woodringism I posted this week for your amusement)

Hahaha
That’s where that other bit came from!

I knew it seemed familiar

https://patch.com/maryland/silverspring/video-shows-police-officers-berating-threatening-5-year-old-boy

Sickening.

A long-time Seattle City Councilmember and former Council President is running for Mayor with police reform as one of his platform planks.

Last week, he revealed this plank with an announcement that it is one of his highest priorities, and detailed his reform policy.

"The other day, I watched the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George Floyd's murder, and I'm going to ask voluntarily that every sworn police officer watch that 8 minutes and 46-second video, and I'm going to ask them to sign a statement that says —a very simple statement— that The Inhumane Treatment Of Fellow Human Beings Will Not Be Tolerated In Seattle."

lol he’s got Swiss cheese boomer brain

Don’t leave “mayor for five days after the child rapist resigned in disgrace” off his list of accomplishments!!

imo quitting ASAP is a point in his favour

Yesterday, he followed up with further details of how he intends to root-and-stem reform a police department that has been under a consent decree from the DOJ for *checks watch* nine years without achieving reform:

Harrell explained that SPD culture change will start by identifying "20 to 30" informal leaders; people in an organization who say "what's tolerated or not" and "what's cool or uncool."

To further this mission, I will work to personally recruit officers looking to be internal change agents, heroes within the department to help coach, train, love and inspire our officers to be the department we all deserve.

Having thus achieved internal change, he has a concrete plan to sustain it through positive reinforcement:

"If today an African American was not shot at the hands of police we're gonna celebrate today," Harrell said. "And every Friday we're gonna celebrate."

Because it would be unfair to deprive the reformed department of a weekly party if they only manage to not murder a Black person 2 days, 5 days, or 0 days per week.

He's also going to determine, "for the first time", how to address institutional racism "With the assistance of experts in technology, the developer community, data mining and the use of test cases".

Really giving Goodspaceguy a run for his money

Due to preference trading, a dude just got elected to the Western Australian state senate equivalent on the single issue of introducing daylight saving, with a total of 98 votes, before revealing that he lives in Seattle. Perhaps we can set up a job swap with Goodspaceguy.

prosecution doing decent job in chauvin trial, but i get a pit in my stomach a few times daily

it's really hard to watch

Having had a run-in with the Seattle PD when I was younger and living a life of crime, I can attest to their racism first-hand. Won't go into it more than that.

and another thing: Bruce isn't butthurt. Please put his op-ed in the paper saying he's not butthurt.

I don’t take issue with anyone questioning my proposals – there is always room for dialogue and improvement. But I do believe that selectively ridiculing these two out-of-the-box calls for culture change without including the voices of people who may support them comes from a place of privilege.

Who knows better how ineffective reform efforts have been on the entrenched racism of the SPD than someone who personally failed to reform it and continued to fund it for the past decade? In conclusion, please elect me to continue to fully fund, and pass actively useless laws to reform, the police.

To keep doing the same thing – or to focus only on punitive actions like arbitrary defunding – is to perpetuate an SPD mired in dysfunction, clinging to outmoded and racially biased norms, and led by individuals motivated by fear and division, not unity and commitment to change.

We know this because we live it: Despite a decade of Department of Justice oversight, citizen police commission review, passage of statewide de-escalation mandates, and even the anti-bias laws I passed during my City Council tenure, the culture at SPD has not changed. We still see Black and Brown Seattle residents victimized, we still see foot-dragging and refusal to adopt basic reforms.

13 year old who still played with Hot Wheels killed by pigs.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/02/us/chicago-police-shooting/index.html

this just aired recently on pbs
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/blinding-isaac-woodard/

the upshot of it was: Woodard was a uniquely powerful witness and spokesperson against racist cops because instead of murdering him, the cops merely blinded him for ... not saying "yes, sir" and before that "insisting politely that the greyhound bus driver (white) stop at the next town so he could go to the bathroom

https://theintercept.com/2021/04/05/police-shot-k9-dog-arlo-gofundme/

that is fucking ridiculous

i wonder how 73k for a dog (that they shot) stacks up against some of the human rights violation settlements Washington PD has made

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2021/04/pentagon-officer-charged-with-murder-in-takoma-park-shooting-that-left-2-dead/