Abolish the Police

“I feel like my prison experience of artmaking in prison, and the hurdles that come with it—my fears and hopes and goals . . . all of me—finally I’m not alone in it and can see that there are so many others like me. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted, like I don’t have to keep trying to convince people what this whole experience is.”

https://www.artforum.com/print/202007/nicole-r-fleetwood-in-conversation-with-rachel-kushner-83681

i am going to that show on opening day and buying that book. pretty excited about it.

was just reading that article last night. i would love to see that show

re: upthread discussion of DV https://gothamist.com/news/after-six-months-rikers-nurse-stands-accused-murder-case-she-says-was-self-defense
every day i wish there was even a tenth as much said about prosecutors in this discussion as police. but now the "progressive prosecutors" are on twitter talking about police reform (at least the one in my city is) while their line attorneys argue to keep people like this in jail. the "violence on both sides" argument is garbage and they know it.

prosecutors are police. i don’t know why (apart from electoral cynicism) some people seemed to react to the statement that [person now professionally involved in pretending to oppose trump’s police state] is a cop like it was an absurd insult or hyperbole rather than a literal description. there are way more cops than the ones on the street

they literally are. if they're not being police they are covering up for them. also they marry cops ALL the time.

oh also if you click the “was drunk” link in that article it goes to another article where they talked to the building super and he had seen the guy drunkenly trying to get into the building and wouldn’t let him in because only she was on the lease, not him. so they know this and are just maliciously keeping this woman locked up because she was a traveling nurse six years ago. traveling means you come home!

Left and harbl, glad at least some of us are on the same page re: prosecutors. Felt like I was going absolutely bananas watching people defend *politician* as not being a cop when it is so obvious that she is!

but if we abolish the police, armed militia members will have free reign to do whatever they want: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/austin-police-release-boogalo-bois-minneapolis-precinct.html?via=taps_top

Conservative rhetoric turns out to be projection again. Although I'm still a little unclear about that story. Are they saying the buggalo bro started the fire, or just that he was there?

NYPD officers in Flatbush were allegedly saying “Trump 2020” over and over again on their patrol car’s speaker tonight.

They stopped when someone started filming but couldn’t resist one more — in violation of the NYPD’s policy against endorsing candidates on duty. pic.twitter.com/BJMv4UCvnd

— talia ‘stop filming faces’ jane (@itsa_talia) October 25, 2020

NYPD officers in Flatbush were allegedly saying “Trump 2020” over and over again on their patrol car’s speaker tonight.

They stopped when someone started filming but couldn’t resist one more — in violation of the NYPD’s policy against endorsing candidates on duty. pic.twitter.com/BJMv4UCvnd

— talia ‘stop filming faces’ jane (@itsa_talia) October 25, 2020

whoops that second one was supposed to be a different clip

anyway, yeah

In my neighborhood:

https://www.inquirer.com/news/west-philadelphia-police-shooting-locust-20201026.html

fuck em

Disturbing video. Mere blocks from where the MOVE bombing occurred, too.

These fucks have been running a helicopter in circles around the neighborhood all night. Hardly slept. Kept thinking of the way this man's mother screamed and walked to her son's body in the middle of the street.

The FOP put out a statement that said they were thinking of the officers and their families. They shot a man ten times, when he was in mental health crisis, in front of his mother. On the block he grew up on.

These ratfucking SOBs are waging war on all fronts against the population they are ostensibly supposed to serve. They all need to go.

otm

Fuck em all

fuck, that's a hard story. sounds like a terrible fucking night all around, i'm sorry table.

The sound his mother makes after the shooting is over will haunt me for the rest of my life. (Normally don't watch videos, stumbled upon it trying to figure out what the fuck was going on last night).

there’s so much in this @NewYorker
story abt the vise grip the police of Vallejo have on the city and its politics, but *this*? No words. https://t.co/XYnVike5Ht pic.twitter.com/2JuJcR40JE

— G.D. (@GeeDee215) November 17, 2020

Vallejo PD is disgusting.

All PDs are disgusting

i couldn't find an easy tick/check gif but fuck yes

✅

APDAD

*TW: Police assault on black woman*

8 officers pinned a black woman to the ground and punched her. She said that the officer holding her down was killing her. She says a female officer "smirked" and responded: 'If you can talk, you can breathe" https://t.co/FUVvQjWRaB

— #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) November 24, 2020

🇨🇵Un manifestante lanza un cóctel molotov a la policía en París.pic.twitter.com/BzNtMWmGGl

— Descifrando la Guerra (@descifraguerra) November 28, 2020

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/02/portland-police-guard-dumpster-face-off-with-residents-trying-to-get-discarded-food-from-fred-meyer.html

Roundup:

Rochester sure seems like a fucking racist shithole.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/nyregion/daniel-prude-rochester-police.html

Unsurprisingly, so is Aurora, CO:
https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/the-killing-of-elijah-mcclain-everything-we-know.html

Salient quote from that second article:

On February 22, the independent investigators released the results of their months-long inquest that combed body cam footage, videotaped interviews with the responding officers and their follow-up reports, notes from the scene, the 911 call and the dispatch record, the autopsy report, medical records, and more. In 157 pages, the investigators contend that the APD “stretched the record to exonerate the officers rather than present a neutral version of the facts,” and that police — particularly Woodyard — escalated “what may have been a consensual encounter with Mr. McClain into an investigatory stop,” without reason to suspect criminal activity. “This decision had ramifications for the rest of the encounter,” the report states, emphasizing the speed with which officers resorted to (what investigators deemed) unnecessary force, and questioning the justification for a “pat-down search” in the first place.

The report also notes that first responders injected McClain with an inappropriately large dose of ketamine “based on a grossly inaccurate and inflated estimate of Mr. McClain’s size,” without attempting to “examine or question” him first. “At the time of the injection,” the report states, “Mr. McClain had not moved or made any sounds for about one minute.”

After the fact, the report says, detectives with the APD’s Major Crimes unit “failed to ask basic, critical questions about the justification for the use of force” and “seemingly ignored contrary evidence” in its investigation of the incident.

On Monday, City Manager Twombly said he and City Council were “reviewing their report and look forward to hearing additional context during their presentation before we comment further,” according to ABC. McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, told CNN: “It was overwhelming knowing my son was innocent the entire time and just waiting on the facts and proof of it. My son’s name is cleared now. He’s no longer labeled a suspect. He is actually a victim.”

“I looked at everything that happened to him because it’s my responsibility,” she added. “Even in death, he’s still my son. His name, his legacy. All that matters.”

There've been a bunch of other recent happenings and issues in regards to various cases, too. So many that those are just the first two that popped into mind.

aurora definitely, "unsurprisingly" otm.

it's taken me a long time to realize that a big part of what drove western expansion was a vision of white supremacy. the whole west is in the grip of that legacy and it sees particularly brutal application in places like aurora or albuquerque or west valley city, ut, although sometimes i think i'm actually grateful for the mormonism in utah because there is a utopian strain of it that makes the racism more genteel (for better or for worse).

a big "more anti-racism bias training" bill is about to pass in utah. i mean, i wish it would help and i'm sure there's some good / important stuff in the training but it's pretty obviously a case of "implement a new policy as a way of lying to ourselves and sweeping the larger dynamic / material reality under the rug."

anything other than "fewer cops with fewer jobs and fewer weapons" is a smokescreen

i 100% agree.

map, there are loads of books on the issues you're getting at, but i highly recommend this one by Manu Karuka: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520296640/empires-tracks

cool, thanks for the rec!

it does an excellent job of mixing polemic with historical fact

my kind of material lol

thx table

the other new developments (i posted on police brutality thread) were the buffalo cops not being indicted for shoving the guy to the ground, and rochester police spraying a handcuffed child with OC spray in a premeditated fashion.

i mean i posted the buffalo one on the other thread, not that it matters

hi harbl, thanks for the info

also philadelphia police demand "accountability pay" in exchange for measures intended to make them follow rules. truly the specialest profession. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-police-contract-discipline-reform-accountability-20210209.html

ok we've tried reform

the Philly PD is the most obviously racist and corrupt police force of almost any i've ever encountered.

This has some great dataviz work:
https://www.leonardonicoletti.com/work/deathtoll

Abolish “defund the police”.

— San (@sansdn) April 2, 2021

this ebook is free https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-the-end-of-policing

haven't finished it but it seems pretty solid and accessible (if US-centric) and probably as inoffensive to the unconvinced as a book with this title/premise could be (downplaying of UK police awfulness rankles, but at least it acknowledges the british colonial origins of modern policing). as usual i find the diagnosis more convincing than many of the suggested alternatives but that's just me

if we abolish the police wont you have to leave?

is the zing that I'm a cop or that I'm a broken record? just so I know how offended to be

but of course I would take that deal