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9 hours ago, Brad said:

Don’t let the door hit them on the way out.

From a PR perspective, you have to wonder what they’re thinking. 

They didn’t resign from the police force, unfortunately. They just resigned from the emergency response team. But yeah, point # ad infinitum against the “few bad apples”’argument. There are a lot of inherent and systemic issues with policing culture in this country. Excellent NY Times opinion piece, btw:

The police are rioting. We need to talk about it.

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When I very first skim read the headline to this story I thought "great, they've resigned in protest at their colleagues behaviour, there's some police with integrity" ...NO!

Un -fkn-believable but not so really, which is the sad part.  Close them ranks, don't let the world in. 

Happens with our police here too with some historically, and less so, tragic consequences.

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25 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

They didn’t resign from the police force, unfortunately. They just resigned from the emergency response team. But yeah, point # ad infinitum against the “few bad apples”’argument. There are a lot of inherent and systemic issues with policing culture in this country. Excellent NY Times opinion piece, btw:

The police are rioting. We need to talk about it.

It’s hard to fathom the response. Now I understand they said we were doing what we were told to do but had any of them shown any humanity to the man they knocked down, perhaps the public response would have been different. It goes to my point that individuality is drummed out of military organizations.

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34 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Un -fkn-believable but not so really, which is the sad part.  Close them ranks, don't let the world in. 

Happens with our police here too with some historically, and less so, tragic consequences.

Here too. "Esprit de corps" is what it is called. Except that it is a pretty rotten "spirit".
OTOH over here some political decisions from "interested circles" at power all too easily tend to reverse the accusations and make the police appear guilty until proven innocent (in whatever confrontation, even with what are just criminals) will fuel this esprit de corps of the police. A lose-lose situation for everyone else.

19 minutes ago, Brad said:

It’s hard to fathom the response. Now I understand they said we were doing what we were told to do but had any of them shown any humanity to the man they knocked down, perhaps the public response would have been different. It goes to my point that individuality is drummed out of military organizations.

I am afraid this is how such things work at all in the first place. Everybody (many of whom ought to know better) ducking away behind the "just obeying orders" one-excuse-fits-all approach. Been seen before. Up to and including in circumstances that I sincerely hope the US will never reach.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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And now we can pivot to one of the overriding issues of our day - does law enforcement need to be militarized/"militarized" in order to be effective?

Because like Brad said, an effective military depends on people being able to sublimate their individuality, and there is no room for empathy once that happens.

War zones, drug lords, yeah, that's shit's real. But so are a lot of other things. Protecting and serving is not by definition an act of aggression against a citizenry, it is an act of love, of empathy for and with a community.

Your loved ones should not be your enemies, and that should be a reciprocal feeling. But how can there be love where there is no trust? And how can there be trust where empathy is repressed?

Lord knows, I want cops to be heroes, and many of them are. But...there's a lot of culture changes that need to happen so we can evolve forward, changes from and in all cultures, citizens and cops alike. And money, THAT culture needs to change more than any of them because is it just me, or does it seem like when push comes to shove, the institutional structure is going to protect top-down, with money always determining where the top is? Like that mountain-top is just going levitate as the rest of the mountain underneath it burns and crumbles away?

I'll call on Johnny again to ask the question that must not go unanswered, and once answered, acted on until all is ready to go, go forward?

s-l500.jpg

 

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Not in anyway related to what is going on other than that we could use him right now but Bobby Kennedy died 52 years ago today, a day I will never forget. I went to bed the night before hoping that he had won the California primary.  The next day my mother woke me up early for school (I was 17) saying he had been shot. In many ways it’s a day I’ve never recovered from. Just thinking about it right now fills me with incredible sadness and emotion. Coupled with the death of Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War, it was the end of innocence, at least for me. 

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1 hour ago, Brad said:

Not in anyway related to what is going on other than that we could use him right now but Bobby Kennedy died 52 years ago today, a day I will never forget. I went to bed the night before hoping that he had won the California primary.  The next day my mother woke me up early for school (I was 17) saying he had been shot. In many ways it’s a day I’ve never recovered from. Just thinking about it right now fills me with incredible sadness and emotion. Coupled with the death of Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War, it was the end of innocence, at least for me. 

Horrible time.  Kent State was the toughest day for me.  I was in 10th grade in Ohio.

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2 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

In both the Floyd case and this incident, it is dumbfounding that the cops behaved this way when they knew they were being filmed.  Where is the self-awareness?  Even though a cop doesn't care about the person he is abusing, one would think that he would say to himself, 'I probably should not behave like this on camera.'  I can only assume the worst about what occurs when there are no witnesses. Of course, when there are often zero negative consequences, it makes people think that they are untouchable.

 

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5 hours ago, JSngry said:

And now we can pivot to one of the overriding issues of our day - does law enforcement need to be militarized/"militarized" in order to be effective?

Because like Brad said, an effective military depends on people being able to sublimate their individuality, and there is no room for empathy once that happens.

War zones, drug lords, yeah, that's shit's real. But so are a lot of other things. Protecting and serving is not by definition an act of aggression against a citizenry, it is an act of love, of empathy for and with a community.

Your loved ones should not be your enemies, and that should be a reciprocal feeling. But how can there be love where there is no trust? And how can there be trust where empathy is repressed?

Lord knows, I want cops to be heroes, and many of them are. But...there's a lot of culture changes that need to happen so we can evolve forward, changes from and in all cultures, citizens and cops alike. And money, THAT culture needs to change more than any of them because is it just me, or does it seem like when push comes to shove, the institutional structure is going to protect top-down, with money always determining where the top is? Like that mountain-top is just going levitate as the rest of the mountain underneath it burns and crumbles away?

I'll call on Johnny again to ask the question that must not go unanswered, and once answered, acted on until all is ready to go, go forward?

s-l500.jpg

 

Who do we trust?

More government, less government oversight? Right, left, middle?

Groups that have had a distrust of government for years or want less government involvement have always been branded as right wing lunatics, rednecks, conspiracy theorists and so on.

People that have armed themselves for self protection have been called the same. Who fills the gun shops these days?

DC doesn't have a single right leaning politician on the City Council. Minneapolis is also zero. Louisville, 19 D, 7 R. NYC is 48 to 3 in favor of dems. Los Angeles, only one independent, the others? You guessed it, democrats. Chicago, just 4 independents. With most municipalities, the mayors and councils have direct oversight and make the policies and locals laws, they hire and fire police chiefs and sign off on promotions. LA has a citizen Board of Police Commissioners, all appointed by the Mayor and LA is not alone in having oversight boards. The mission?

The Commissioners’ concerns are reflective of the community-at-large, and their priorities include implementing recommended reforms, improving service to the public by the Department, reducing crime and the fear of crime, and initiating, implementing and supporting community policing programs.

These cities are in firm control of a party that wants more government involvement and claims to be looking out for all of us, especially minorities. These cities have very strict gun laws and yet shit still happens.

Protests/demonstrations are now calling for de-funding and disbanding of police departments across the country. What the fuck does that look like?

Some people are on edge and some cops are on edge. Understandable, no? I mean how many cops have gone down since these demonstrations started? How many injured? Hell in NY, two lawyers tried to fire bomb a fucking precinct and were handing out Molotov cocktails. So, not everything has been peaceful.

We like to finger point that somehow this is all the fault of a president and his sidekicks. What the fuck was happening before he was in the WH?

No doubt, dude needs to keep his mouth shut or learn to speak with some compassion but is that really the problem?

People better find a way to get past this shit and start neutral dialogue that respects all sides and doesn't concede too much to one side or the other, or, we will reach a point of no return. Some of this knee jerk reaction is going to have consequences and certain parties will be waiting in the weeds to take advantage of the situation.

So..., who do I trust?

Myself, family and some close friends. I do trust others out there with a reasonable approach and solution to problems and I do trust those that are willing to talk things over with civility and respect. This is not to say heated discussions are unacceptable just that I'd rather have an argument with a person and walk away then the other way.

For the time being, I will  continue to have some trust in a system, that with all it's flaws, will work more times than not.

I have a long list of who I do not trust.

 

 

 

 

Edited by catesta
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18 minutes ago, JSngry said:

"Systems" are just tools. No system is better than the people executing it.

 

Really? Tell that to the AI tech world. :)

I answered the question and specifically about who I trust. If the system has those kind of people executing, it will be more good than no good, if not we may all be fucked. 

I'm realistic and don't expect 100%.

 

 

 

Edited by catesta
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Just now, catesta said:

Really? Tell that to the AI tech world. :)

 

You can tell them all you want to, but they don't listen. They want to get their version of "works", period. And then there will be no "right" or "wrong", just "is" (which is to say, the way of the coders will be THE way).

It's more Get In Line shit.

we-are-the-borg-you-will-be-assimilated-

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1 hour ago, catesta said:

 

DC doesn't have a single right leaning politician on the City Council. Minneapolis is also zero. Louisville, 19 D, 7 R. NYC is 48 to 3 in favor of dems. Los Angeles, only one independent, the others? You guessed it, democrats. Chicago, just 4 independents. With most municipalities, the mayors and councils have direct oversight and make the policies and locals laws, they hire and fire police chiefs and sign off on promotions. LA has a citizen Board of Police Commissioners, all appointed by the Mayor and LA is not alone in having oversight boards.

No surprise here—police unions have stifled reform in many cities. And look no further than the NYCPD’s violent and insubordinate behavior for an example of a belligerent police force in a city largely under Democratic governing.

1 hour ago, catesta said:

 

We like to finger point that somehow this is all the fault of a president and his sidekicks. What the fuck was happening before he was in the WH?

No doubt, dude needs to keep his mouth shut or learn to speak with some compassion but is that really the problem?

That dude is not going to change. You’re a leader, you know how important the tone of leadership is. The systemic problems certainly existed long before he took office and go all the way back to the origins of this country, but you seriously think he hasn’t made the situation worse? Hell, just look at Kroll in Minneapolis, the guy who called the state’s AG a “terrorist,” has white-nationalist ties, and was photographed with DT at a rally—and who’s said “Obama put the handcuffs on cops, DT took them off and let us put them on criminals again.” WTF? And btw there’s an answer to your previous remark—after Michael Brown and Ferguson, the Obama DOJ worked with a number of problematic police departments to establish federal consent decrees that were intended to help PDs establish better and fairer policing policies, strategies, and rules/guidelines. Guess what happened when DT and crew came in? They threw that all out. 

Not saying that that would have solved all problems, or that there’s any magical or easy solution to fixing all of this. But it seems to me that some of your criticism is misdirected.

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On 6/4/2020 at 3:10 PM, ghost of miles said:

 

Turns out they’re federal prison riot teams.

Double WTF. 

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/05/protests-washington-dc-federal-agents-law-enforcement-302551?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Citizens - Know your infrastructure!!!!

The public has little understanding or appreciation for the size of some of these agencies, each of which has its own protocols, training, hiring guidelines and responsibilities. On the lighter side, few tourists know, for instance, that the National Gallery of Art—home to some of the world’s most famous artwork—has a shooting range for its police tucked away above its soaring central rotunda.

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I don’t how many of you saw the interrogation of Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, was subjected to by the demonstrators yesterday.  They wanted to know, yes or no, if he would defund the Police Department. He said no, he wouldn’t abolish it and he was told to get the fuck out of there and the crowd (more like a mob, in my opinion) yelled shame at him. My son showed me a 4 minute video and it reminded me of something that could have taken place during the French Revolution.

I believe it could turn off a lot of people to the movement. My son and wife were definitely turned off and I think the conduct left a lot to be desired.

For Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, a Stinging Rebuke

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I'm very much in favor of rethinking the very notion of what "law enforcement" looks like in this country. Apparently other people do as well, although they may or may not have a different take on the notion than I do. We'll see.

But, you know, the status quo is no longer sustainable by any means other than an increasingly tyrannical imposition of force on a massive section of the citizenry that ain't no longer smelling what The (Plymouth) Rock is cooking.

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