National Guard called into Minneapolis
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
- Start date
- Status
Oh, so remember when I celebrated that Seattle was running out of tear gas and then got called a terrorist? They found more and that was just the mayor lying. So yeah, a mayor saying they will stop police brutality will not stop it, the police chief saying they will consider reforms will reform nothing. Do not let one of these fuckers off the ropes. Pummel at them until they give up. You can vote Democrat as many times as you want, they’ll enact the same brutal police policies. But in numbers we have power they cannot deny, and we will win.
There is no easy way to fix Police and do Police Reform but the current thinking of police seems to be "The Beatings will continue until moral improves". People will only be pushed so far before they decide to start pushing back.
At this point, it absolutely feels like either The Government steps in to do the reform or The People are going to be the ones to do it. Considering The People's idea of reform is to burn down the Third Precinct of Minneapolis, I would think The Government would rather they be the ones to do it instead but it's ultimately going to be their call.
Except for when you remember one major common through line of these protests across the country, regardless of city or elected leadership: law enforcement forces have been repeatedly shown to be the escalating, aggravating, and provoking party. There is no other valid or rational conclusion that can be drawn from the tactics and materiel employed against protesters, all the way from preemptive kettling and blocking protesters from lawful vacation at curfew times, luring protesters into kill boxes, to outright unprovoked assault and battery such as that seen the other evening in Buffalo.
Ignoring completely the immediate physiological effects of smoke grenades, what exactly is their intended tactical use and what justification might police departments have to deploy them against protesters? What use does obscuring visibility and screening maneuvers have in crowd dispersal and riot control, two applications of force that require maximal visibility and force coordination?
Off hand, I can think of two uses that fit the patterns well developed over the past two weeks based upon protest footage seen on social media and news: cops are trying to provoke protesters to justify escalation, and cops are trying to hide brutality against protesters. Because once again, this isn't policing, this is state-sponsored terror.
Oh, they’re still using tear gas actually. They’re just calling it smoke bombs. Same thing happened in DC.
A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to defund and dismantle the entire city's police department.
www.cnn.com
Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department
Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council on Sunday announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department following the police killing of George Floyd.
www.cnn.com
Welp, can't see this going wrong.A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to defund and dismantle the entire city's police department.
Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department
Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council on Sunday announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department following the police killing of George Floyd.
Jostle fence? Seattle Police gas and beat you with “not tear gas” tear gas. Drive into a crowd and shoot (possibly just at) a guy? Calm arrest as you approach the police line with gun drawn. The police have decided who their allies and enemies are, have you?
I thought it was no longer possible but I am actually shocked at the stupidity of my species.A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to defund and dismantle the entire city's police department.
Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department
Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council on Sunday announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department following the police killing of George Floyd.
When the police show zero desire to reform, disbanding them and implementing alternative solutions seems wiser than doing more half-assed efforts.
Edit- also, consider that they are heading into a terrible legal battle with the Minneapolis police union which will stall any efforts at reform or removing any “bad apples” if they choose to keep the current force in place.
Having had to call the police to deal with, among other things, violent altercation, which resulted in injury of colleagues before the police managed to arrive, you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical about the notion of disbanding the police.
Yes.
Not sure why this is the point you're honing in on. Point I AM making is that in a world where the police didn't exist, more people would almost certainly have been injured. And again, while this is the most extreme example, I can cite other examples where police have had to be called in.
You realize that most of what police do isn’t respond to emergencies, and that’s why disbanding and going with something else is the plan? A force that responds to violent emergencies more similar to the fire department would be of more practical use in that scenario than one where they’re mostly untrained to deal with that and primarily exist to arrest people for speeding.
Why shouldn't people be arrested for speeding?
I've seen this argument come up before, how a lot of police time is spent on stuff like tickets, speeding, etc. Okay, and? If I want to park somewhere that says no parking, but live in a world where there's no-one around to write me a ticket, rest assured that I'm far more likely to park.
But this seems like semantics. Police already have numerous divisions. It's why your average patrol officer isn't the person who's going to be the person who engages in hostage negotiation or whatnot. The police who I had to call in aren't the same police who cordoned off the area in the Lindt Cafe Siege. If you want to reserve the police for the latter, and replace the former with something else, then okay, but you're basically having people doing the same job under a different name.
And look, I don't have a problem with that per se, but that's not what some people are calling for. There's calls for the complete disbandment of police. And I'm skeptical of such a thing working. Looking at the US for instance, deaths at the hands of police are absolutely dwarfed by firearm deaths by civilians.
Uh, the officer in question here was called in for a fraudulent note then killed a man. All cops carry guns and these divisions are not known or apparent to most people. Virtually all police in Minneapolis, including those traffic cops, are now handling riots and firing rubber bullets into crowds despite being undertrained for that purpose. Maybe it’s good to explicitly separate these guys up a bit and move more of their responsibilities over to social workers?
I'm not sure what point you're making here.
Divisions being non-apparent to people doesn't change how those divisions exist.
Also, in a world where all those things were handled by separate departments (i.e. street patrol and riot police being two completely separate organizations), that would accomplish...what, in this context? If riot police are insufficient in number to deal with something, and they have to call in people from Street Patrol Inc., then SPI is still going to be undertrained for the task at hand, unless SPI already had riot patrol training as well, in which case I ask what the point was in breaking them up in the first place.
And "responsibilities to social workers." Well, which responsibilities are you talking about? If it's a round-about way of saying that more resources should go into social welfare, of helping people afflicted by poverty, then sure. I'm all for that. But that isn't the crux of the abolition argument, the abolition argument is that police should be disbanded entirely. And while social workers do a lot of good, I'm skeptical of their ability to deal with armed confrontation, highway patrol, terrorist actions, or whatnot.
- Status