Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

‘Cops,’ Long-Running Reality Show That Glorified Police, Is Canceled

Obviously no idea whether the post ums shares is legit but if the author's identity was verified in some way it would be a pretty powerful testimony

ums’ medium link is great

xpost - I wish it would have been posted on a site with a little more oversight than what I assume exists at Medium

it all * feels * true

sheepledogs

holy shit that ums article

The only thing really in question is the first person nature of the account. If it were written as a third person jeremiad with copious footnotes it wouldn’t be missing much other than the anecdotes about police academy.

And a propos of that, I just stumbled over this podcast called "Behind the Bastards" and the have an ep about that guy who "teaches cops to kill," who is mentioned in the Medium essay. It's...illuminating.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/how-stuff-works/behind-the-bastards/e/70076786

Side note my former employer published that book ON KILLING by Dave Grossman, and I used to have to reprint it periodically. Never realized the full scope of his bastardness.

i wish it had a little more background on the cop's heel turn, could be interesting and add to the veracity

the killology guy is a true psychopath, any video of him makes it apparent

cop: "yes, but he's OUR true psychopath"

Side note my former employer published that book ON KILLING by Dave Grossman, and I used to have to reprint it periodically. Never realized the full scope of his bastardness.

OMG! I learned about this book this week and everything about it was horrifying

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/502009-top-tulsa-police-officer-were-shooting-african-americans-about-24

bruh, you...had a statistic of how much more police should be shooting Black people ready to go?

a fake one, no doubt, but still.

get this guy gone

I'm tired

^ eternal vigilance will do that

Lots of DC insiders are criticizing frontline activists over political feasibility and saying they need a new slogan.

But poll-tested slogans and electoral feasibility is not the activists’ job. Their job is to organize support and transform public opinion, which they are doing.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 9, 2020

I know “Defund the Police” seems radical and scary but “Dissolve Police Departments Then Rebuild Them as One Small Facet in a Network of Specialized Services So Police Aren’t Called To Handle Problems They’re Woefully Ill-equipped to Solve” isn’t as easy to chant.

— David Daut (@DavidMDaut) June 8, 2020

AOC gets it - more than just about anyone in national elective office

yes, but if you could get a lot of people to chant that in unison, it would be impressive and powerful

xp

but not very rhythmic

AOC's previous tweet before that one is even better at framing the issue imo (apologies if you're all seeing both—I have twitter tracking blocked so it might be misleading me):

“Defund” means that Black & Brown communities are asking for the same budget priorities that White communities have already created for themselves: schooling > police,etc.

People asked in other ways, but were always told “No, how do you pay for it?”

So they found the line item.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 9, 2020

this Heather McDonald WSJ essay is getting passed around a lot by the right; like her previous shit about campus rape. First off, she seems to be a horrible person with abhorrent beliefs (to me). But I don't see many people expending energy ripping her to shreds yet.

I got an email from a Portland city clerk that **742** people has registered to give testimony at today’s city council budget hearing. I emailed in my testimony to give airtime to someone else.

iirc you now have to tell them to choke on your cock before yielding your time

choke on my cock
like bulbous ham hock
Let others speak
I yield the clock

Live PD joins COPS in the dumpster
https://deadline.com/2020/06/live-pd-canceled-ae-protests-against-police-brutality-george-floyd-1202956175/

Legit question

Who is holding BLM accountable for this influx of money?? https://t.co/uBj5pmpvWo

— Asia 🇵🇸🇵🇸 (@fkaLuna_) June 11, 2020

Amazon pauses police use of its facial recognition tech for a year https://t.co/Yo0a8eZCGr pic.twitter.com/oGECw32EFA

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 11, 2020

nice, they're updating their facial recognition databases and software for the expanded rollout in 2021

Gotta keep burning those police stations baby

replace facial recognition database with all cops and list them all as having criminal records

This is a good story because it provides a window into police thinking, and that thinking goes "None of us have ever done anything wrong outside of Derek Chauvin" https://t.co/vVDvGo83UN

— Good Idea Dave (@DaveCoIon) June 11, 2020

pic.twitter.com/pGOU2RmTIl

— libby watson (@libbycwatson) June 10, 2020

So Two-Scoops has threatened to invade Seattle if Jay Inslee & "Seattle's Mayor" don't take the city back from 'Ugly Anarchists'.

anyone here in seattle right now? i am interested in learning what it's like on the ground there from a reliable source.

i am sympathetic to cooperative social arrangements, like kibbutzes, and think it would be cool if something like that could spring up in a US city. (like christiania used to be in copenhagen). but i'm hearing about this guy named raz who is fucking everything up?

He’s a rapper who is talking a lot. It generally seems active and cheerful in pictures from twitter.

not enough info to say what is or isn't happening, but I wonder if people would be calling him a "warlord" on social media if he were a scrawny white dude

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/11/28529187/an-exceedingly-chill-day-at-chaz-seattles-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone

saw this on FB fwiw, posted yesterday

**About the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" or CHAZ, which is currently occupied by protesters**

Misinformation has always been an issue on these platforms. But I am seeing an insane amount of it flying around right now, even from “credible” local news sources.
Like a lot of non-Black people, I’ve been trying to filter what I say and share, knowing that my perspective is not one that needs to be amplified at this time. That said, as someone who lives in Capitol Hill, heard the war zone sounds from my own apartment night after night, had friends feel flash bang shrapnel bounce off of their bodies, heard screams of protesters running *from* the police and relentless coughing from chemical warfare, I feel it is important to share my account of things here to dispel some of this widely spread misinformation that could be dangerous to protesters on the ground.

Today in a press conference. The Assistant Chief of Seattle Police Department made *wildly irresponsible and unfounded* claims that armed guards are requiring IDs for people to walk through the area of the East Precinct (which was abandoned by SPD on Monday and taken over by protesters) and requiring business owners in the area to pay a "fee" to enter. She provided zero evidence to support this claim, which was subsequently reported as fact in KIRO 7 News and King 5 news. It is SHOCKING that an official this high up in SPD would make such an unfounded claim, and just adds to the reasons of why the public here can no longer trust the police.

I walked through this area (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, CHAZ) for about an hour today. Here is what I saw:
(1) Zero armed humans. on the contrary —anti-gun signs. While I have heard that there are one or two people in the entire area that have guns... it is not the case that this is a fortress being protected around the clock by armed citizens patrolling its borders.
(2) Zero people asking me to identify myself�
(3) Many people smiling and asking how I was doing
�(4) People organizing and working together in a respectful and collaborative way
(5) Art everywhere�(6) Free educational books written by Black and indigenous authors
�(7) Hand sanitizer duct taped to street poles
(8) Posters raising awareness about their demands
(9) A hot dog stand�
(10) Poems written and taped on the sides of buildings
(11) Tables with free snacks and water�
(12) Some graffiti messages that might hurt the feelings of some police officers

The fact that this information was published in major local news outlets is irresponsible and dangerous. I honestly felt extremely safe and inspired walking around and talking to people. There is a spirit of kindness, care, and collaboration that feels palpable. It is a colorful, artful, inspiring, healing space that has grown in the very place where people were brutalized by the police. It is a beautiful thing happening... and anyone in the media portraying it as otherwise hasn't spent enough time on the ground talking to people here.

Also for the record. Let’s not forget how and why this territory became occupied. A militarized police force with officers wearing up to $900 per person of equipment were facing off against thousands of protesters for over a week. Citizens equipped with little else beyond umbrellas and water bottles were met with tear gas, pepper spray, flash bang grenades, and rubber bullets. People were seriously injured and in at least one case almost died after SPD targeted a civilian volunteer medical tent. Describing the current scene on Capitol Hill as "chaotic," "violent," "scary," or "insane," is just flat out false and missing the point. What was insane was our own police force (who supposedly is responsible for protecting civilians) assaulting us indiscriminately. What is "scary" and "violent" is a racist police institution that continues to kill Black people.

I live ten minutes away from the zone, but I haven't visited since the cops left. I'm making some masks and figure I'll go over there and drop them off when I have enough to make it worth while. It's a very small zone: a little circle around a park, its adjoining streets (most of them small), and two intersections.

Two of my housemates went on the march to City Hall where Kshama Sawant let everyone in with her key. Another housemate walks through the zone every day on her way to her art studio. None of them have seen any guns or anyone being stopped; it seems like a peaceful protest site.

Raz Simone does sound pretty bad. Seems like he's collecting funds for a private police force, and encouraging ppl to carry weapons, neither of which is good at all. But as far as I know he's not actually in charge, just one of several prominent voices in the protest movement. (The local BLM has stayed out of the protests, citing COVID concerns, which has unfortunately left a leadership gap.) As far as I can tell from Twitter and what my housemates have seen, there were some armed people at the barricades the first night because the police were planting rumors (via scanner) of an armed Proud Boy group headed to the park. That's very worrying but I can't see any indication that it's been repeated.

Obviously a lot of this is hearsay and just what I can gather. All I can say for sure is that everything has been more peaceful since the cops left, and I can finally sleep at night without being woken up by helicopters and explosions.

If this was already covered, then my ctrl-f's missed it:

Newly released body camera footage from an arrest in Oklahoma City last year shows a suspect saying “I can’t breathe” before he died at a hospital.

In the May 20, 2019 footage, released this week by the Oklahoma City Police Department, three officers are seen restraining the man, Derrick Scott, 42, who can be heard asking repeatedly for his medicine and saying that he can’t breathe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/i-can-t-breathe-oklahoma-man-tells-police-dying-i-n1229586

Correction: I didn't mean to say my housemates had seen armed people at the barricades. They weren't there the first night; all my info on that comes from Twitter so I can't confirm anything. Nobody I know has seen any armed protesters.

It's been very surreal to see the level of disinformation at work just in the few days since the police vacated the area: first police claimed a "credible threat" that protesters would burn down the precinct building, then they used scanners to plant false rumors of a Proud Boy militia about to attack, and now they're claiming that the zone has armed people checking IDs at the barricades and that protesters are extorting money from local businesses. None of their lies have been adequately debunked in the press, with the result that a lot of people who don't live here think that an armed militia of protesters has seized half of Seattle and seceded from the Union.

thanks for the local perspective Lily

yes, thank you

i hope chaz develops some kind of democratic committee to effectively, and safely govern the area

I wandered through the zone the other night, it was pretty chill, no one stopped me and I didn’t see any aggressive behavior, though there’s a public speaking area that got mildly contentious but was peaceful. Lots of art, memorials, free food and supplies available, I venmoed some money to a few of the people providing them.

Also realized that I had gone to a screening of Stalker at a theater inside the Zone.

they've been having town meetings treesh. Really tho it's by and large a protest with distributed leadership settling in to an occupation with "defund the police" as the top line demand and (probably) not like, suddenly morphed into a self-contained anarchist project.