Another man dies in police custody after disturbing video

[pnewton]

They may not have committed a crime. They were fired for dereliction of their duty. In the United States, people have to commit a crime to be arrested. There were others standing by filming that had no duty to intervene as well.

I would also point out that there is now one dead police officer, and eye for an eye, as it were, who was equally innocent. How much blood will be enough for the protesters? How much will be enough for you? What would be a sufficient body count for the condemnation of this violence by all?

It took one video to universally condemn the police in Minneapolis. As a poster above put it, there is no more moral high ground in these protests now that murder is part of them, along with arson, robbery and destruction of private property.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Yes, he was arrested. The three other cops, who stood by and allowed a man to be killed, are still free.

Let’s just summarily execute them. Why wait for charges to be considered and filed? Why bother letting prosecutors actually consider the merits of a case and construct a theory of criminal liability? The point is we’re angry NOW and we want more heads on sticks.

What we need is more acidic references to white people and some show trials. That’s the way forward.

 

[niceatheist]

Well, police seem to have no problem summarily executing people like George Floyd.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Well, police seem to have no problem summarily executing people like George Floyd.

No one is defending the murder of George Floyd. No one is suggesting that the officer shouldn’t be prosecuted for it. Stop deliberately missing the point.

 

[dvdjs]

Folks

It is all on tape.

 

[niceatheist]

I’m not missing the point. There’s a long history of miscreant police officers, accommodating DAs and coddling courts. Cops can kill with impunity.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

I’m not missing the point. There’s a long history of miscreant police officers, accommodating DAs and coddling courts. Cops can kill with impunity.

You are missing the point. You’re moving the goalposts around so much I’m getting whiplash, and you keep implying that people who are trying to inject a little nuance are blind to the problem of racism or don’t think police misconduct is real.

 

[pnewton]

Not an execution. Watch a video of execution. Read the autopsy. This was not an execution. The appropriate criminal charges have been filed.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Not an execution. Watch a video of execution. Read the autopsy. This was not an execution. The appropriate criminal charges have been filed.

Not strictly speaking, but I think a third degree murder charge is entirely appropriate.

 

[niceatheist]

I’m staying there’s a reason people are angry. Should they burn down stores, no, but since the police are clearly incapable of holding themselves accountable, and because a vast and intricate system in place from the blue wall all the way to the Supreme Court’s limited immunity, there’s no sense that justice is anywhere nearby.

 

[Victoria33]

I almost posted this as a separate thread and then, decided there’s not much to say about it but it is a bit shocking.

https://kstp.com/news/george-floyd-fired-officer-overlapped-security-shifts-at-south-minneapolis-club-may-28-2020/5743990/

A former club owner in south Minneapolis says the now-fired police officer and the black man who died in his custody this week both worked security for her club up to the end of last year.

George Floyd and now-former Officer Derek Chauvin both worked security at the El Nuevo Rodeo club on Lake Street, according to Maya Santamaria. Santamaria owned the building for nearly two decades, but sold the venue within the last few months.

“Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open,” Santamaria said. “They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside.”

So, some news sources are questioning whether the two knew each other.

Also, I don’t know what solid evidence exists to confirm it but it’s being said again, a lot of those stirring up trouble are from out-of-state.

 

[Dr_Meinheimer]

That’s akin to saying african americans have no issue with looting and rioting. Both are broad meaningless statements that mask an anger towards the groups in question from the person uttering it.

Select cops have no issue with murder. Select individuals across the world have no issue with it.

Referring to “police” as some unified collective that all support murder does nothing to help things, assuming you actually want to. The majority of police are normal, well intended people, just like most other professions.

 

[Dr_Meinheimer]

I think every group in America has a cause that is personal to them that they feel is not being given justice. I understand the frustration, and things need to be done for sure. Most frustrated groups don’t riot and loot, however.

I think most white-americans (since they have been invoked in this topic) are horrified at what happened to George Floyd, and now they are horrified at what is happening as a result of looters and rioters. Let’s not act like most normal people are okay with either one.

You talk about the blue line and protections for cops, and while that may have existed and may still exist, in this case, all four were fired promptly, and one is being charged with murder less than a week later, and evidence is still being gathered. What else in this case, which presumably is causing the rioters to lose their minds, could have been done?

There are always going to be bad cops, just like there are always going to be criminals. We live in the Valley of Tears and a fallen world, and if others reacted to every homicide (71 in Baltimore as of a month and a half ago) with rioting and looting and destruction, society would cease to exist.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

One is that educational strides have been great, economic and housing, less, but still improvement.

I don’t think the primary schooling educational “strides” have been great, but rather we have simply lowered the bar tremendously for everyone thus allowing virtually everyone who makes it to school to graduate.

Our justice system as a whole is a black eye on this nation, competing with China North Korea for the most oppressive incarceration rate.

I am also a strong opponent of our justice system, but to compare it with China or NK is ridiculous. We don’t lock up our citizens for political dissent, and we don’t ship a million Uigers to concentration “re-education” camps.

The biggest problem with our judicial system is that it has become a Judicial-Industrial system where a primary purpose of the police, attorneys, courts, bondsmen, clerks, etc is to make money from those who are thrust into the system.

End the war on drugs. It affects the poor disproportionally.

Drug abuse also affects the poor disproportionally. I am pretty libertarian on drugs, but in my job I see the scourge of meth on every shift. It just utterly destroys families and lives on a scale that is hard to comprehend.

palliative care for the unwilling.

What does “palliative care for the willing” look like? We give them injections of their favorite poison until they die?

Integrate the country, not just the south. Forced integration was, in the long run, the best thing that happened to the South. It is regretful that this has not been extended everywhere.

We did, and it was a disaster. Forced busing of kids to “integrate” them was one of the ways that government intervention destroyed vibrant black communities.

I grew up 4 blocks from a small elementary school, walked to school in Kindergarden and 1st grade. Had several black classmates who, for some reason unbeknownst to me at the time, didn’t play with us after school/weekends because they lived a long way away and took the bus.

Then in 2nd grade I was forced to be bused to the other side of town to a school in a black neighborhood. No choice in the matter, the government told my parents I had to get on that bus every day.

School was pretty much the same except…none of my neighborhood friends were in my class. My parents didn’t know my teacher, or my principal, or the lunch lady, or the janitor. It was much more difficult for my dad to make it to the school if he was needed (like when I got a minor injury). And by the time I got home from the bus-ride I didn’t have time to go play with my neighborhood friends.

There’s your forced integration…

but peaceful protests aren’t getting it done.

Because protestors aren’t doing it right.

Look at the tactics that DID make great changes, like MLK, and then do that.

Until the time for a true revolution. Are we there yet? No, not yet.

 

[niceatheist]

Yes, I remember how the American revolutionaries politely asked King George to treat them fairly, and how when King George wasn’t amenable, they all just kept politely asking him.

Oh wait. That’s not what happened. They revolted against the lawful authority because they deemed that it had lost all legitimacy due to continued violation of liberties.

But the American Revolution was lead by rich white guys, the kind of violent insurrectionists that always get a seal of approval.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

what do you think Palestinians should do?

Ask their muslim brother nations to accept them in.

I would say that he was a hero. A flawed hero, of course, but a hero nonetheless. Churchill was flawed, FDR was flawed, Pope John Paul II was flawed. Heroes do not have to be perfect.

So were General Lee, and many other confederate generals. Especially if you remove today’s judgements from them. However, as society changes and a small vocal minority demand we apply today’s values to yesterday’s leaders we find ourselves where we are forced to remove their memorials thus casting them into the dustbin of history.

I can see this happening to MLK as well as the #metoo movement forces re-evaluation of those accused of sexual violence against women.

So tell me, how do you fix a judicial system weighted to letting police off the hook, putting more African Americans per capita in prison, and when African Americans are killed by cops, it takes burning a city down to get charges pressed?

Fixing letting police off the hook - District Attorneys are the ones who do this, and they are almost always elected officials. Vote out any DA who doesn’t press charges on abusive police (like Klobuchar didn’t).

A bigger, more difficult problem here is how the actual court systems have rigged it for police actions. Police actions are now considered legit if deemed “reasonable”, and the “reasonable” standard comes from their training, which is run by police. So as police have become more and more militarized (seeing citizens as the enemy instead of those to be served) and become more focused on “your job is to make it home to your family” instead of putting life on line to protect others), their training has shifted in that direction as well…which causes the “reasonable” standard to move that way as well, and voila cops get off doing terrible things because it was deemed “reasonable”. End results no longer matter.

Qualified immunity is another issue that has grown into an enormous problem that needs to be solved legislatively.

Judicial system putting more African Americans in jail - I don’t care a great deal about percentages of what race in jail, especially when not compared to percentages of what race who commit crimes.

Burning down a city to get charges pressed - charges were coming due to the on-line and peaceful protests, and BEFORE the violence began.

 

[RobertAdams]

Hello poster pnewton, I think you might be making the error of assuming protesters don’t already understand the matter at hand better than you do.

Your point that the officer at “minimum” might be responsible for callous disregard is what many knew when this started. I.e “well meaning” people would initially be against the killing but then immediately start qualifying this with noticing that technically the law allows it so maybe the officer was not really murdering anyone. So let’s not rush to judgement. Or maybe it’s not even manslaughter because technically its an approved tactic. So maybe (while you dont think it should have happened) it’s just a regrettable training and bureaucratic problem so no ones actually is responsible but certainly someone should send some memos about changing training…

…all that nonsense of course misses the forest for the trees because if you kneel on someone’s neck til he died right in the street you murdered him regardless of what the law has to say about it. And people who see the forest knew already they cant trust you to see it too just by explaining for the billionth time, so the heat gets turned up in a different way.

 

[RobertAdams]

General Lee is not a flawed “hero” he’s a complex villian. He was a traitor who is attractive to some because while he fought against our country for slavery he did so with genteel manners.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

How did Obama stock the fires of racism?

Well, he was on the wrong side of every politically charged interaction between police and african-Americans that I remember.

“The police acted stupidly” when investigating a break in at a black mans house, and then arresting a black man who they suspected was the perpetrator because he refused to help them understand that it was his house.

“If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin” when talking about a thug who was viciously assaulting someone when shot.

I had high hopes that President Obama’s election would make great strides in our race relations, but it didn’t happen.

I’m thinking a few cities burning will probably convince state and local governments that tangible reforms are necessary.

Perhaps you could change your name to niceanarchist?

anyone not equally condemning the structural racism and economic injustice in America is equally culpable for these protests as the protesters.

So it’s the capitalists fault. You would make a good Marxist revolutionary, like Che. Of course, he was really a coward.

r. Meinheimer coming in hot with the “black people don’t know how to manage money” take.

I read it that he was talking about “poor people” instead of black people. And most poor people DON’T know how to manage money, look at things like rates of smoking, lottery ticket purchases, and other poor financial decision making among those in poverty to prove this point.

 

[StudentMI]

I’m thinking a few cities burning will probably convince state and local governments that tangible reforms are necessary. Being polite has accomplished nothing.

It will certainly contribute to businesses abandoning neighborhoods and areas which won’t help anyone.