Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Yeah, arrest that bear!

kuma police

not sure where to post this but there's been a fatal shooting in the CHAZ apparently. :-(

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/seattle-shooting-police-free-zone-chaz

Bear say Abolish the Police to Me

What's so frustrating about the CHAZ situation is that anything that happens there immediately gets surrounded by a web of disinformation, usually spread by the police, so it's very hard to get any idea of what actually happened. I'm not super hopeful that we'll find out who the shooter was or where they came from, since the cops have consistently lied about everything and they have a vested interest in implying that the shooter came from within the CHAZ.

an old injustice i hadn't heard about (from last August) is getting new attention:

More than a million people have signed an online petition calling for Aurora officials to reopen the investigation into the death of Elijah McClain — a 23-year-old unarmed black man who died in August following an encounter with Aurora police and paramedics.

The petition calls on Adams County District Attorney Dave Young, along with Mayor Mike Coffman and the Aurora Police Department, to “bring justice for Elijah,” by conducting “a more in-depth” investigation and removing the officers involved from duty....

McClain encountered police on Aug. 24 while on his way home from buying four cans of Brisk tea at a gas station in Aurora.

Officers put McClain, a Denver native and massage therapist in Aurora, in a chokehold and forced him on the ground for 15 minutes. McClain eventually began vomiting and complained he couldn’t breathe.

“There was a physical struggle,” former APD Chief Nick Metz said in October. “When (police) saw (McClain), they told him to stop. He wouldn’t stop. Again, he was wearing a ski mask, it’s 10:30 p.m. at night in a residential area, so obviously that creates some concern.”

At the time, Metz said that because McClain appeared to be in an “agitated mental state,” police requested backup from Aurora Fire paramedics, who injected McClain with the sedative ketamine to subdue his reported anxiety before driving him to a hospital.

McClain apparently suffered a heart attack, fell into a coma and died once taken off life support Aug. 30.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/more-than-a-million-sign-petition-to-reopen-investigation-of-aurora-police-involvement-in-elijah/article_805cd174-a9ba-11ea-a0d3-affe65fb6dbc.html

online petition

Thought this was pretty devastating
https://www.adrianbrandon.com/stolen

i've been hearing about hearing HUGE fireworks at 2-3am almost every night
from lots of old nyc friends. lots of rumors that it was an organized thing to keep people awake in the middle of the night, and then of course lots of conspiracy theories and speculation about who was doing it (teenagers? cops? "government forces", etc)

saw this just now:

In West Harlem, 3am. NYPD putting on a show with fireworks in the background. @NYGovCuomo this is what they are paid for huh? pic.twitter.com/KKOhH5xyBl

— Jeo (@fromzerotojeo) June 22, 2020

any NYC people have any thoughts?

Sounds like psy-ops to me, which fits right in with the fucking counter-insurgency mindset among big city cops.

God it's crazy to see that footage after reading all those folks on Twitter yesterday absolutely screaming that it was impossible for this to be the cops.

lol i complained about that on the facebook neighborhood thread but in the space of 8 hours i'm beginning to believe in the conspiracy

It's fair, tbh. I have a powerful gut instinct to push back against conspiracy theories, esp when there are already enough idiots out there that love fireworks even when it isn't a year when they can be purchased dirt cheap, but that video seems pretty damning.

It’s like Peggy Olsen riding the Honda in an empty studio only not funny

In my neighborhood, the major ones are set off from the top of an apartment building just across the BQE. I wonder if there’s a way I can get a good look.

yeah, in the same "but not funny" way the cops' actions reminded me of a time i got really scared there was a mass shooting because i saw a bunch of cop cars from different agencies driving up a main urban street near me with lights on but later figured out it was the stupid "kinder time toy drive," an annual event that everyone forgets about until they have the same reaction

icymi, the nyc cops who went to shake shack never even got sick, everyone knew it, yet the police and their unions kept pushing it

interesting disparity between the url (how-nypd-faked-shake-shack-controversy-and-conspiracy-theory) and the headline (How conspiracy theories about the NYPD Shake Shack ‘poisoning’ blew up)

It was unclear why the sergeant and lieutenant escalated the situation.

Create a counter-narrative where instead of being the aggressors, cops were the victims.

the cms wouldn't let them change the slug and they were too lazy to rebuild it from scratch xp

aww covid got them jonesin bad for some good ol fashioned evidence planting huh xp

Report finds not one police department in the 20 largest American cities are compliant with international rights lawshttps://t.co/gysBJGax2z

— Jonathan "Boo and Vote" Cohn (@JonathanCohn) June 23, 2020

https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/queens/man-with-samurai-sword-dead-after-police-deploy-taser-in-his-queens-basement

this is a cool tactic, when the data's available:

The person on the megaphone is searching up officers information on a web database and announcing how many complaints they have. #Chicago pic.twitter.com/P9njTxYuSE

— Tyler LaRiviere (@TylerLaRiviere) June 24, 2020

strong read
https://www.propublica.org/article/my-family-saw-a-police-car-hit-a-kid-on-halloween-then-i-learned-how-nypd-impunity-works

Has anyone seen a good article about whatever happened in Milwaukee yesterday? I've found a couple local stories, but they are either nearly incomprehensible or so strongly written to be in favor of the police that I can't make heads or tails about what might have actually went on. Something about a botched or half-assed police investigation into some missing girls that resulted in a suspect's house being burned down, three people shot and the girls being found again.

Wow, you really just went on TV and said that

For a moment I was like, ok Bob Kroll is gonna hide behind his normal friends. But never have I felt more "get the fuck out of my city" than when Sgt. Anna Hedberg talks about the dangers of grocery shopping in Minneapolis with her "two beautiful little girls." pic.twitter.com/K58HtbIdOK

— Wedge LIVE!™ (@WedgeLIVE) June 24, 2020

extremely disturbing re: cell phone data tracking protesters

NEW: A location data company monitored 16,902 devices at protest sites in 4 cities between May 29 and May 31.

The company then tried to predict protesters' race, age, gender, and whether they were outside agitators. Here's the story:https://t.co/Hfbi97vJGi

— Caroline Haskins (@carolineha_) June 25, 2020

what the hell is going on in Milwaukee jfc

https://medium.com/@streetlightalchemist/unheard-voices-are-police-participating-in-sex-trafficking-in-milwaukee-742880d1ac0f

On Tuesday night, the mother of one of the missing girls was able to ping the cellphone of one of the missing girls to a two story townhouse in Milwaukee. The mother, along with several others went to the property, in addition to calling police, who ignored them for 10 hours. An attempt at entry was made, and someone from within the house shot at the group, no injuries were reported. The shots were heard much louder than the phone call, and police arrived at the scene. The people within the home were taken into custody. Immediately after, the report from people on the ground starts to diverge from the police and media narrative.

WtFUCK!

I'm wary of Medium articles as they aren't well-vetted. I responded to a few tinfoil-hatty COVID articles on there a few months ago.

The sources in that Medium article are almost all Tweets, many of them secondhand, from people who weren't there (though some were from people who were reportedly there). And a lot of conclusions drawn seem a stretch based on what is known now.

I couldn't find many articles that didn't just repeat what the police said, and every other article, including this one, shows the situation is a confusing mess, where both sides can't even agree whether any victims were present in the house or if any sex trafficking was going on.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/watch-milwaukee-crowd-burns-down-suspected-sex-trafficking-house/

urbanmilwaukee.com seems to have the best coverage on this.

there were multiple units in the house - the people in the upstairs unit (probably not who the activists were looking for) made comments today: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/06/25/residents-of-burned-home-speak-out/

This house has had 27 service calls over the last several years: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/06/24/burned-home-had-27-police-service-calls/

and here's another: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/06/24/activists-clean-up-around-burned-house-as-questions-remain/

thanks for the additional links there

Yeah, thanks. It's really hard to find good, solid information on this. As Neanderthal points out, it's either news based on second-hand tweets or literally word-for-word the cops' side of things. This story has been on my mind as we watched the last half of season 2 of Mindhunter, which does a pretty good job of how the police completely ignored, then completely mishandled, the 79-81 Atlanta child murders.

Two female protesters injured in a hit and run in Seattle yesterday--one died.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/seattle-protesters-car-death/index.html

Fuck :(. I knew about the incident, did not realize one died.

i know they haven't determined if it was 'intentional' yet, but it doesn't matter, Trump will say some shit like "she shouldn't have been in the road", and her poor family is going to have to listen to her get excoriated in the press :(

The driver drove the wrong way on an off-ramp to get to the protesters, and they've said he wasn't impaired, so it seems pretty intentional.

The police are now saying protests won't be allowed on the freeway in future, and basically if you go on the freeway you take your chances with getting hit.

yes, that's the changed that needed to happen. the protesters need to change their ways.

fuck the police.

and yea seeing the video (or the screenshot,I can't watch the video rn), there's no way it wasn't intentional.

Belgrade riots: Police approaches and brutally beats 3 guys on a bench for no reason.
pic.twitter.com/d7ABrNpboX

— Sergej Dojcinovic (@Serdjosega) July 7, 2020

Attacks by police in Belgrade

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/us/andres-guardado-autopsy/index.html

five times. in the back.

LASD is the worst police force in the country, but luckily the DA responsible for handling this case and all others in LA county ... has a section on her wikipedia page titled "Refusal to prosecute law enforcement", and has a record of going to the trouble of seeking to prosecute exactly one (1) of the 600+ sherrif's deputies and police officers who have killed people since she became DA.

I had to step way back from Twitter this weekend, all of the "well they shouldn't have been in the road" shit was making me physically ill.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-10/3-lapd-officers-charged-with-falsifying-records-to-claim-people-were-gang-members-associates

Not surprising at all but idk where else to put this. Not Apolitical enough for the Apolitical venting thred; too New York is Alive for the is NYC dead thred:

https://gothamist.com/news/nypd-accused-protecting-violent-blue-lives-matter-marchers-bay-ridge

I thought this was quite good, and a nice piece of context for how we got here: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/888184490/the-long-hot-summer

breonna taylor was alive for five minutes after being shot; no one tried to treat her for 20 minutes

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2020/07/17/breonna-taylor-lay-untouched-20-minutes-after-being-shot-records/5389881002

this seems to be the case in every one of these police murders. Are they trained not to assist people they've shot for liability reasons?