Minneapolis Riots

[PetraG]

What is being “missed” is that the writer of that article doesn’t distinguish between gross numbers and per capita figures. The writer states:
In fact, in about 75 percent of police shootings, the decedent is not black.

I say: One would hope it would be much lower, since only 12.7% of the population is African American.

Look at this from the article you sited:
Just three days ago, the site posted another series of bar graphs, showing that, in fact, whites are nearly twice as likely as blacks to be shot to death by police. Here are the numbers:

Year White Black
2017 457 223
2018 399 209
2019 370 235
2020 (so far) 42 31

My comment: Let us look at the 2017 number and do a little math. If 60.4% of the population is non-hispanic whites and 12.7% is black, then compared to 457 a proportionate number of deaths among blacks would be 96, not 223.

 

[PetraG]

Military equipment aside, the way some cops act, the general public is their enemy.

Like civilians are enemy combatants.

Shoot first, talk later.

There is unfortunately an adversarial attitude on both sides.
Honestly, the way some people talk, you’d think they meet an officer in a bullet-proof vest and say, “What is with the vest? You don’t trust me? I feel so judged…”
No, the officer wants to go home alive, and you are not the only kind of person that police officers meet.

 

[Zach]

The writer does address that. He says blacks commit 53 percent of murders and 60 percent of robberies. Two times their percentage being killed but four to five times their percentage to
commit murder and robbery. You commit more violent crime you have a better chance of violent confrontation with police.

 

[StudentMI]

The writer does address that. He says blacks commit 53 percent of murders and 60 percent of robberies. Two times their percentage being killed but four to five times their percentage to
commit murder and robbery. You commit more violent crime you have a better chance of violent confrontation with police.

Ultimately this needs to be addressed along with police reform.

What ultimately needs to happen is a transfer of power to the local level instead of this focus on bigness, consolidations, merger. Power must reside at the lowest level possible. Parents need to be given the power and means to decide where their children go to school. Families must become stronger. There must be a transfer of resources, capital, into the hands of the community. Vacant land must be put to use, perhaps empty storefronts turned into co-ops.

Subsidiarity requires something like that. Local but also being helped if need be. Socialization where such serves the common good.

 

[Zaccheus]

The writer does address that. He says blacks commit 53 percent of murders and 60 percent of robberies. Two times their percentage being killed but four to five times their percentage to
commit murder and robbery. You commit more violent crime you have a better chance of violent confrontation with police.

But is it actually true that blacks commit 53% of murders?
Or is it just that white bigots make such claims to justify themselves?
And how many blacks in prison were convicted because they’re black, not because they’re guilty?

I’m sure most people who read my post will have come across the expression “convicted of Driving While Black”.
You get arrested more when the police are biased against you, and convicted more when judges and juries are biased.

 

[PetraG]

So, if the same situation existed with Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, there was no injustice at the root of any of it. The problem was that the Irish produced more of the criminal class.

Is that about right?

 

[StudentMI]

But is it actually true that blacks commit 53% of murders?
Or is it just that white bigots makes such claims to justify themselves?

Check the FBI statistics. They’re the best we have. That doesn’t change their dignity. But to solve problems one must deal with facts.

Race and crime in the United States - Wikipedia

 

[Socrates92]

This appears to me to be opportunistic anarchy.

A combination of that and desperation. A lot of people are in really bad straits due to being unemployed, or having lost their businesses. Looting seems like a logical thing if you can’t put food on the table. You can always turn around and sell the items you stole to pay for food. Technically, I guess, it’s still opportunism, but not really of the same flavour.

 

[PetraG]

The truth is, police brutality doesn’t become OK in a rough neighborhood. It is understandable. That’s a very difficult place to try to bring law and order. It still isn’t OK, and what’s more exactly what it does not do is to bring law and order. It makes the police into one more of the gangs. That sets things up for an explosion. Not an explosion that’s OK, but one that’s understandable. Maybe tragically predictable is a better phrase in both cases than understandable. It is a vicious cycle, even when most of the police and most of the residents aren’t contributing directly to it. It only takes a few to keep it going.

 

[StudentMI]

The truth is, police brutality doesn’t become OK in a rough neighborhood. It is understandable. That’s a very difficult place to try to bring law and order. It still isn’t OK, and what’s more exactly what it does not do is to bring law and order. It makes the police into one more of the gangs. That sets things up for an explosion. Not an explosion that’s OK, but one that’s understandable. Maybe tragically predictable is a better phrase in both cases than understandable. It is a vicious cycle, even when most of the police and most of the residents aren’t contributing directly to it. It only takes a few to keep it going.

Yep. Well said.

 

[QContinuum]

see now what you alluded to earlier. Not disbanding the police, but defunding them significantly and re-directing the money to more community service professionals for those calls that should not need the police.

Yes, exactly. This solution is not what most communities should have to use to solve issues with police departments. If you can cut out the cancer more easily, do so. For advanced stage, go nuclear or it will come back worse.

For Minneapolis, we have a completely corrupt police union that buttresses the entire force. The chief, Bob Kroll, has faced multiple and credible charges of racism in the PD and the city has had to pay out multiple times for lawsuits both from police inside the department as well as by victims of police brutality.

Even now, Kroll has announced his intention to get the four fired police involved in Floyd’s death hired back. This is the head of the union who has a long established history of racism yet had been repeatedly reelected. That along with other indicators is why we residents don’t trust the department - they continue to endorse an unapologetic racist.

Many other cities and towns are certainly in a better spot with their PDs and can weed out the bad ones. With MPD, if we try to reform it, the union will just move to protect them.

That leaves us little choice. To build a better police force, we need to defund this one first, and use a combination of community security solutions in the meantime.

We want a new department that has a narrower scope of work and clear and high standards of behavior, professionalism, and ability to disarm and neutralize combatants without lazy reliance on guns, tasers, etc. They have these weapons but they shouldn’t be the default option.

 

[StudentMI]

That leaves us little choice. To build a better police force, we need to defund this one first, and use a combination of community security solutions in the meantime.

Can you guys organize tax protests, perhaps?

 

[QContinuum]

With the deficits facing the city thanks to Covid-19, and a 64M budget increase the mayor signed off on last year over the objections of many voters, protests on taxation are likely. For what we pay in taxes, we expect a high level of services including a competent police force. Tax protests are a logical outcome.

 

[PetraG]

I would be broke ten times over if I bet on politics to ever having a logical outcome. What is predictable about politics is that you can’t use logic to predict what it will do. You’re really with it if you can logically make heads or tails of it when it is all over.

That, by the way, is something the President understands very well. He made his money getting people to buy-in on big ideas and splashy products. You don’t do that with appeals to logic. You have to get people emotionally attached to either your brand name or what you want to do.

These riots and protests aren’t about logic, either. They’re about emotions: very strong emotions about a very compelling event that people do not want to allow to go by without feeling they have “done something.” (With respect, I dare say that includes us here.)

 

[QContinuum]

I disagree. Rioters and looters are opportunists and use the noise and distraction of protests. They are not protected by law and shouldn’t be.

Protests, however, are a very logical response to a system that is otherwise unresponsive to previous complaints and calls for reform. So logical in fact that the right to protest is codified into constitutional law. That’s not an accident or oversight by the founders, who recognized protest as one of the necessary remedies for governmental abuse of power.

 

[PetraG]

Did you have some idea that only logical human pursuits are constitutionally-protected, whereas lawlessness is illegal because it is illogical? I’m really not getting your meaning at all.

There are logical choices and there are choices that humans find satisfying. Those portions of the Venn diagram do not overlap as much as you seem to be implying.

 

[QContinuum]

No, although the Constitution was hardly an eclectic collection of unaffiliated ideals. It is based upon a rational understanding of humanity.

That said, I think it’s fundamentally logical and indeed built into us to protest wrongs done to us. If a person is wrongly treated, he or she protests. Naturally. I don’t know why that fact of human nature is considered alien or illogical.

 

[PetraG]

I don’t see emotion as alien to logic. I see the two as complementary, like vision and hearing. There is more to humans than even those two; we understand things by the light of faith as well. I hardly see how anybody could ever be so bold as to start a nation by logic alone. I don’t think it would ever happen.

Protests aren’t vehicles for purely logical expression. They serve a deeply emotional purpose. That doesn’t make them illogical. It makes them more than just logical. It is like adding music to a documentary. What is the purpose? It adds emotional depth to the rational communication. It completes the message; it humanizes it.

 

[QContinuum]

Protests aren’t vehicles for purely logical expression.

Who is making this argument? The only thing I objected to was your broad statement that protests aren’t logical. Of course they are emotional; their emotional response to injury is logical.

 

[silentwitness]

Hardly anyone is communicating that evil is a reality, that it can and should be resisted.

Minneapolis is secular showplace, a role model for social solutions. The local archdiocese is known for Peace and Justice advocacy, in a city where advocacy is a way of life.

With some exceptions there hasn’t been emphasis on doctrine, conversion, evangelism. There will be yet more social solutions.

Yes this in a more general sense is a huge problem that i do not see the church addressing.

Because of this i think in many places the church is just managing decline now or desperate for constant immigration before resuming the decline. This decline is in accordance with secular Leftist wishes.

If the church wants to grow they have to throw out the secular infiltrations.

I live in a country that is 99% non white. My rights and justice as a minority come from the Christian mindset of the people, not Leftist politics.

The church is healthier here because of it and so are minorities like me.

I will not respond to activists posting in bad faith.