Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I only see two ways that things can change:

1. Police are regularly handed indictments when someone is killed under questionable circumstances. I am not saying that all of these cases will or should result in guilty verdicts but the officers involved should be brought before a court of law and the evidence should be examined as part of a trial. Without this, there is not even the faint hope of justice for the victims.

2. There is a violent uprising against municipal and state police forces, incurring large casualties on both sides and triggering a response from the state/federal level that fundamentally changes the way policing works in this country. I do not predict that any changes from this admittedly unlikely scenario would go well for victims.

I realize how melodramatic that post is but... what else is going to change things?

seems like 1) is really the only viable option. 2) is sort of too horrifying and unlikely to contemplate, nothing good would come of it.

yeah I'm not sure why everyone wants to watch videos of people getting murdered. some people on my fb feed are like 'watch it. sit with it.'

no dude. I know what happened.

yeah I don't watch these

when I was kid 'faces of death' on vhs was like the holy grail of illicit materials.. and nowadays they show people getting killed on tv every couple weeks..

#getoffmylawn?

def can remember when even the idea of someone (in a non-combat zone, at least) being murdered on camera was unfathomable

not even as a kid, for me. My first exposure to shit like FoD was early P2P filesharing era stuff, after people moved on from mp3s and on to videos, but before BitTorrent became the universal client. I watched Mondo Video type shit in high school and that freaked me out enough, when folks fired up FoD I just left the room or found something else to stare at until the creepy contingent decided to move on to something else.

Anyway Dan I see 1 as being absolutely necessary - it will take longer to manifest in most jurisdictions where the problems are most severe, of course - and I still believe in whatever I said upthread (was it this thread?) about changing the attitude we generally have about police work, i.e. that cops are there to clean up every little problem while simultaneously being armed to the teeth and trained extensively in using deadly force as if Heat-style bank heists were the norm everywhere in America.

this one's a few days old.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/off-duty-shoots-man-dead-road-rage-incident-brooklyn-article-1.2698074

i was thinking about the blue wall of silence, and how it compares to how physicians (my guild) respond to mistakes/bad outcomes/etc. not everyone likes doctors, and many have had bad experiences with them, and often have the idea that we close ranks when someone messes up. which isn't really the case most of the time

medicine has a culture of self-reflection that seems entirely absent in the police (another job where ppl are entrusted with the rather serious business of personal and public safety). we have mortality and morbidity conferences ("M&M") every month at most major academic centers, where everyone in a given department (eg Surgery) piles into an auditorium and listens to some poor resident (who may have only been tangentially involved) present a narrative account of a case gone wrong, and then the attending physicians ask very hard and pointed questions of their colleagues about the clinical decision-making. obviously, the point is for everyone there to learn about What Went Wrong, and identify weak points in the decision-making tree so that It Doesn't Happen Again.

while i def agree that DJP's first suggestion is what should be applied as an external corrective, i don't think policing in america will really change until there is a wholesale rethinking of what police are even supposed to be doing in the first place

the guy killed in baton rouge was fucking selling CDs. and he was shot in the chest. if someone is fucking selling CDs and resists arrest, just leave him alone and serve him with a warrant at another time. it really doesn't matter.

really helpful post gbx

wholesale rethinking of what police are even supposed to be doing in the first place

Yup. And the tricky, sticky part of that is that the police unions are going to have to get behind it, and that is going to take a lot of wrangling.
PDs need new org charts with room for uniformed social workers and cops themselves need code of conduct in their profession, that better suits what they're asked to cover in today's world of mass shootings versus "call 911, I see a weirdo"

Jesus Christ, that video.

I'm sorry to say I watched it. I had this impulse to see what the cops were like as they did it - would
I see cruelty in their faces and body language? Fear? Rage? I learned basically nothing though. I couldn't tell anything that wasn't already apparent.

It's currently auto playing on several of my Facebook friends' feeds. I am scrolling past those people and seriously considering blocking them. Most of them are black millenials.

Dan, avoid that video if you can.

it should be possible to turn auto-play off if you want - https://www.facebook.com/help/www/1406493312950827?ref=platform_switcher

Reading the other day that the leading cause of death for black men 15-35yo in the US is homicide, I just can't understand how fucked America must be.

Stat is both slightly misleading and irrelevant to the thread. 15-35 year olds don't die of disease so their leading killers of all young men are always going to be either accidents, homicide or suicide.

Video is still unverified (and shouldn't autoplay in this article) but this just happened in the twin cities and basically I fucking give up.

http://www.citypages.com/news/graphic-video-shows-black-man-bleeding-after-police-shooting-in-falcon-heights-video-8415016

Incident now verified. Condition of shooting victim not verified.

Now reporting that he has died.

Stat is both slightly misleading and irrelevant to the thread. 15-35 year olds don't die of disease so their leading killers of all young men are always going to be either accidents, homicide or suicide.

yeah, but I bet the US is the only 'developed" country where it's homicide and not accidents

And relevant to the thread, surely, when being a black man gets you shot by the police

The fact that the police don't have their own version of M&M rounds is not just an indication that they lack the culture of self-reflection found (most of the time) in medicine, but that Morbidity and Mortality are not things they're actually trying to avoid.

Profile down or deactivated, video pulled, but mirrors and transcripts available.

I just can't get my head round the numbing horror of a woman so brutalised she calls the men who have just fatally shot her partner 'sir'

fuck fuck fuck the illusion of civil order in this country

What illusion? This is exactly how this country has defined civil order since its inception.

Oh man what the fuck.

From the sound of it the Minneapolis shooting is the second, after the Louisiana one - just, what, yesterday? - where the victim was legally armed, which made them a convenient target for police violence. Yet another horrible outcome of our horrible gun policy, though even if they weren't armed obviously the police have a habit of posthumously arming victims.

wholesale rethinking of what police are even supposed to be doing in the first place

It's an interesting question. I guess a major distinction is that a doctor is wed to the individual they are treating, whereas the police are charged with protecting the public at large, which gives them a tremendous amount of power and leeway, especially for people not nearly trained as well or as long as doctors. Which of course is another distinction.

it doesn't matter but was the first guy legally armed? thought he had convictions or was on probation or something. it is totally irrelevant to me, but to see white/right wing reaction to the first one as "he was armed" "he resisted" "he had a criminal record/was a sex offender" in comparison to the second one where a guy was doing everything perfectly and it made no difference.

i don't watch these videos either but this week i'm at my parents' house and they had news on and they played it last night, disgusting how they force it on you

I think the guy in Louisiana legally had a concealed gun. I think the guy in Minnesota, from what the radio said this morning, was shot not long after he or his partner told the police he had a permit and was armed. Neither sound like they were doing anything to justify being killed. Having a gun just makes it that much easier for the police to justify murdering someone, but like a said, shady police have found their way around that one for years.

Still waking up/thinking here. Another big distinction re: police vs. doctors is that afaik police really don't have a "do no harm" moral code a la the Hippocratic Oath, do they? Police are often like last resort front line medics or something, jumping into action with extreme risk, limited resources and the legal right to kill under the guise of protecting others, which is more like a soldier, but with a lot more autonomy than soldiers - solo or paired up rather than operating in a group - which fucks up the power balance even more. (Just learned that police are starting to carry insurance a la doctors, too.)

Is there standard police training, or does it differ from academy to academy, city to city?

there is accreditation for police as well as state police training standards so things are somewhat standardized but quality and resources differ

Another big distinction re: police vs. doctors is that afaik police really don't have a "do no harm" moral code a la the Hippocratic Oath, do they?

no. they're distinguished by their license to harm.

i feel morally derelict in declining to watch these videos, but reading about them is bad enough

yeah i believe police are doing what they are designed to do and the best training in the world, body cameras, whatever, won't stop it

There needs to be a major national initiative to push de-escalation techniques, just like there was a major national push toward militarization. Holding police legally accountable for illegal brutality is of course essential, but it won't actually get to the root of the dysfunction.

That's what I think anyway. There are two issues: cops are immune and violent responses to situations that don't warrant it is normalized. I see more focus on the former than the latter in terms of activism.

there needs to be a nationwide, top-down overhaul of our entire police and criminal justice system. it's monstrous in both construction and execution, one of the world's (many) great evils.

Sorry for the poor grammar - I just woke up.

The videos seem like cynical clickbait. Idk why you would feel morally derelict in not wanting to use a man's death for outrage-tainment. The push now needs to be for reforms and accountability, not prurient shock.

The videos are what's driving the story. Without the videos being publicly available, the police would again just lie about what happened. They're quite necessary. But I'm not watching them either anymore, and they need to be shared in a responsible manner. I would be completely shocked if it came on on the news, and I can't feel how hurtful and frightening it must be to others.

i feel morally derelict in declining to watch these videos, but reading about them is bad enough

― oculus lump (contenderizer), Thursday, July 7, 2016 7:29 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's absolutely nothing wrong with declining to watch videos of people being murdered. There's everything wrong with people and news outlets shoving the videos in everyone's face. It's absolutely a plus that these videos were captured, and it's fine if it helps anyone not involved in the investigation to actually see the video, but I'm perfectly capable of being horrified without a visual aid being burned into my brain.

The videos are what's driving the story. Without the videos being publicly available, the police would again just lie about what happened. They're quite necessary.

yeah, that's what i meant. bystander videos are hugely important. it's essential that they be seen by as many people as possible. but i don't want to watch them.

(old lunch otm)

this also happened recently https://www.rt.com/usa/349585-cleveland-bbgun-boys-rice/

Right now, I am less angry with the people sharing the videos, who are attempting to give a wider audience to atrocity, than I am with the social media sites whose settings all default to autoplaying these things as you scroll past them in your timeline because it never occurred to anyone even after several years of high profile cases where stories where shared around that contained videos capturing the last moments of these people that this setting might turn their users' timelines into a horrible game of snuff film roulette.

Someone in the comments at LGM suggested that all African-Americans (and probably other minorities) should start livestreaming police interactions on FB, given what happened to Philando Castile. That way the interaction is preserved when cops do things like lose their body cameras or destroy cellphones on the scene. Probably a good idea.

Yeah that would be an incredible inconvenience/burden to them that could even put some people in danger if the cops took it badly. I think at this point we all know what the issue is -- we've known for 50 years. Pressure needs to be applied to legislatures, courts, and the police system to make systemic changes.

The need to apply pressure for systemic changes doesn't obviate the need to have documentary evidence for seeking justice in individual cases.