Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

LA BLM demo forming up now at the mayor's residence with the plan to ignore curfew, so 1) thanks to people putting their bodies on the line 2) look for that on your tv in 2 hours.

Apparently Elizabeth Warren is protesting at the White House fence

hop the fence Liz!

Um

Also: 700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir. 1,400 more soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour. Soldiers are armed and have riot gear. They also were issued bayonets—standard issue but some feel could be inflammatory https://t.co/Ieo86bc4yF

— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) June 2, 2020

I've got a student filming the rally in Naples (!), Florida on Instagram. So proud of her.

christ those LaPorta tweets are disturbing

Alfred, this thread made me feel better than I'd felt all day:

would love to see more visibility for the protests happening in smaller cities and towns. if one is happening/did happen in your area, tell me about it. https://t.co/LKdp19B3Mf

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) June 2, 2020

preceding any military deployment would have to begin with a proclamation ordering "insurgents" to disperse within a specified (limited) period of time, giving them time to cease their activities. troops could then only be sent in with an Executive Order only after the "insurgents" failed to disperse within the declared amount of time has passed.

Obviously, I wouldn't put it past Trump to do something he can't legally do and wait for the court challenge (which in this case, would be horse/barn door), but I don't get the impression he actually wants to do this, or he'd have done it (the rumors have been going back to Friday). He seems like he'd rather get credit for stopping the riots with his speech threatening federal action rather than actually having to take it, which would bear out why he congratulated several states as having 'stepped it up' in his Tweet this morning, and focusing his ire mostly on New York.

But, being that Trump is almost impossible to predict, who knows?
There are several Governors who have indicated they would fight Trump on this, so

wow:

The Minneapolis school board just voted to terminate the school district's contract with the city's police department, and to end the use of police officers as "school resource officers."

The vote was unanimous.https://t.co/bvjuIowfZN

— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) June 2, 2020

previously the University of Minnesota has also cancelled their contract with the MPD. Pretty unprescendented.

To use one of my Minneapolis maps, pay mind to how the police , in two phalanxes, drove the protest and then riot around the 5th precinct up to east lake and then split the group in half, driving it in separate directions from eachother on the streethttps://t.co/s2YmX3Q3mg

— ✈️ 𝕻𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖆 ᴿᴬᴳᴱᑫᴰᴬᴱⱽᴬ 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖔𝖎𝖓 ✈️ (@PartyPrat) June 2, 2020

So, curfew has come and gone in several cities, like DC. But the crowds are still there, right?

some in DC are still voting

Bravery.

looks like everybody I know is in full on "report everything you hear as if it is gospel" mode. just going to scour news and journalist twitters and this thread from here on out, pls nobody make anything up

Meanwhile, in Houston

This feels like when the Riders of Rohan arrived to save Helms Deep pic.twitter.com/tUf8DQNz7l

— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) June 2, 2020

MOUNT UP

Hearing reports of kettling, tear gas, and riot gear in Downtown Houston after the rally. Public transport was cut off, streets are closed, it's looking like if you didn't get out early, you're S.O.L.

That’s great

I meant the horses. Fuckin xp

Dorsey & Whitney, in response to George Floyd's death while in police custody, says it is ending its decades-long Minneapolis City Attorney’s program, through which the law firm's lawyers provided legal services to assist the city in misdemeanor prosecutions. #mnlaw pic.twitter.com/2ZFBfJx2Fd

— Kevin Featherly (@kevinfeatherly) June 2, 2020

XP Oh yeah, the horse crew was awesome. They led the way for the March.

MOUNT UP

Hoos posted a terrifying map of protestors and police locations/numbers in DC at 7 PM versus 9 PM on FB, can't deal with uploading the images but shit is going down and the cops are swarming the entire protest

50 cops in riot gear showed up to arrest 14 high school students for breaking curfew in hoover, alabama

congrats to hoover for this being the way you entered my consciousness

DC map link

https://mobile.twitter.com/sharkespearean

FBI found "no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement" in May 31 violence, per FBI report leaked to me.

That was the same day that Trump vowed to designate Antifa a terrorist organization.https://t.co/Nh2RNTO1NK pic.twitter.com/EmLZE7nkjl

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 2, 2020

Duh.

people apparently blocked in on the Manhattan Bridge for the last hour or so.

curfew in Oakland went into effect last night. Currently there are people standing in the intersection in front of the police station protesting. Tomorrow there is a planned "sit in" starting at the time of the curfew in city hall plaza ... like, who thought it would be a good idea to impose a curfew on Oakland? It's just making shit worse.

wonder if the big storms in the Midwest are affecting this at all

xxxpost re: the Antifa thing, the infuriating thing I've found among some people sympathetic to the protests is their suggestion that we should stop pushing back so much on the idea that "Antifa" has involvement in the riots, because they "probably have some involvement" and "it comes across as 'he started it, no HE started it' bickering."

and somehow they don't see it's actual an act of political other-ing, meant to serve as a dog whistle and direct crackdown on Trump's "political enemies". it's pretty easy to claim anybody on the street is "Antifa", considering Antifa is a weakly-defined umbrella term to begin with. Law enforcement is infested with Trump toadies who wouldn't mind arresting or beating a few folk on the street and just saying they were Antifa, or finding some rando hanging around a group of people with Antifa gear on and deciding he was part of them and carrying out extrajudicial punishment.

like I'm just losing patience with normally-intelligent people who keep want to suggest it's just "casting blame" when really, a President trying to direct action against left-wing protesters in general by using "Antifa" as a convenient excuse.

LMAO MY MAN REALLY SAID "GO FUCK YOURSELVES, I'LL SEE YOU ALL IN HELL" AT THE OFFICIAL LA POLICE COMMISSION MEETING pic.twitter.com/1jNNAkofAZ

— steph #BLM #ACAB (@kdpanthera) June 2, 2020

OK sorry to still be on this "ACAB" thing but why is it "Fuck 12," if 13 = AC ("all cops") and 12 = AB ("are bastards") then why don't people say "Fuck 13"

the internet seems to disagree but i thought '12' was slang of much longer standing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam-12

Oh OK it's news to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57gSH8qxpCU

I thought Fuck 12 was about a jury for a long time (ala the flip side reactionary 'better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6')

The organizers of this evening’s march and vigil through Franklin Park in Boston, namely BLM and Violence in Boston, did a fantastic job. It was massive and beautiful, and I feel very grateful. That’s all I got for now.

Y'ALL!! THEY GOT CRANES TAKING DOWN THE RIZZO STATUE TONIGHT!!!! #PhillyProtest pic.twitter.com/nxaRFIwrpk

— Ernest Owens (@MrErnestOwens) June 3, 2020

Au revoir to the MOVE bomber

Pomenitul many xp but thanks for the Marianne article

Rizzo wasn't actually mayor or police chief during the MOVE bombing- shamefully that was Wilson Goode, the city's first Black mayor.

Rizzo's still a huge piece of shit and wherever the statue ends up will likely only be easier to, you know, make civic improvements to, so that's still awesome news.

Hi everybody. I was arrested at the protests in Richmond last night (or rather after). I wanted to share my experience + shed some light on what the police are doing. 1/

— no moniker (@nomoniker_) June 2, 2020

sent the message that they are disorganized, often incompetent, and that they’ve created a situation that they don’t know how to handle. They are hoping to bully us into submission. 25/

— no moniker (@nomoniker_) June 2, 2020

This bit really sums up so much going on w/authority right now.

My friend has been out every night covering the protests and beyond for the WaPo. Here are a couple of things he's been posting/adding to social media:

26th Street in Little Village is a mellow gathering tonight -- a truce between the Latin Kings, who have been protecting storefronts since Saturday, and surrounding black neighborhoods who felt scapegoated on social media. Yes, a social media war followed by gunshots and a few skirmishes ... a misunderstanding no different from the fake news everywhere else, one kid tells me. "If you come peacefully, you're welcome," another tells me. "If you come to cause harm, it's not happening." These two flag bearers met tonight and are marching together to show the South Side is not about violence. "If the South Side of Chicago can do it, anyone can do it," says Aaron Rivas.

A few hours later:

So this is a Dollar Tree on Chicago Avenue on the West Side. Looters looted all day; then tonight they torched it.
People are saying really nice things about little stuff I'm posting here and what I've been contributing at the Post. I'm just doing what any reporter does. But, what I could use thanks for is reading the many posts by largely white people at home who, since Saturday, have somehow romanticized looting. These are people who are sharing that awful meme that suggests if you are outraged by looting you couldn't be outraged by the death of George Floyd.
No. You can be outraged by both. Looting is a destroyer in these neighborhoods. I'll give you that Gucci can rebuild. And Gucci customers can move on and deal. But you know who can't? The man I interviewed tonight who is the caretaker for his mother. The Dollar Tree looting and fire now means he has nowhere to buy groceries. He has no car. The nearest Jewel might as well be on Mars, it's so far away. "It's a loss. It helped us. It's horrible destroying things we need," he said.
You know who else can't? The 34-year-old woman I interviewed who worked at the Dollar Tree for three years. Tonight she's jobless, along with her five co-workers who stood watching the empty store from across the street. "Now we can't feed our kids," she said. "Now we're going to have to do something else." The steps on all the greystones across the block were filled with people ... largely silent. The sadness on that block was so thick, it was unbearable.
This whole thing is a fucking tragedy, has zero to do with George Floyd, and it's so aggravating to read armchair liberals deciding what's good for the impoverished in this city. Real life is more complex to fit a meme. Or that think piece in Salon you're sharing that got your echo chamber giving you mega likes.
The next time you share that meme and crawl on top of the soapbox proclaiming how looting and destruction is a super good thing because — Who? Trump? The Man? Santa Claus? — is going to learn a lesson about the suffering of people, why don't you drive to Chicago and Homan and ask the people who are actually suffering? Guarantee they'll give you a different story.

Kind of reminds me of when I rewatched "Do the Right Thing" with my kid last year or so. After the riot at the end, and the smashing of windows and burning of the pizza parlor, everyone in the neighborhood is just standing there, sad, in a state of shock, with a sort of "I know why we did it, but what have we done?" exhaustion.

Would you be fine with sharing his Twitter handle, Josh?

He's @markguarino, but the stuff I posted he wrote on Facebook (which I believe he made public, because people I know have suddenly started sharing his stuff.)

Thanks!

The @bostonpolice deliberately attempted to instigate a riot tonight.

— The Real Segun Idowu (@revrenddoctor) June 2, 2020

I have made a point of not focusing on the looting, but I can't deal with well-off white friends getting excited by it or acting like it's a good thing. Maybe the luxury stores on fifth avenue are one thing, but minority neighborhoods suffer long-term serious damage from it. Small businesses lost, live savings lost, jobs lost, ability to meet basic needs like groceries and pharmaceuticals, neighborhood disinvestment, flight, there's no net good from it. I also can't deal with people trying to simplify it into just some kind of pure expression of rage of the oppressed (which tbh I think has some questionable racial overtones in itself), because there are always just people who are opportunistic assholes, shitty dumb teenagers, etc. in the mix.