Pants-of-dog wrote:I have no idea why you think the number used is close to the actual one. Considering the lack of any requirements to report these fatalities and brutalities, the offical number of deaths at the hands of cops is probably far lower than the actual number.
Please provide proof that police are not required to report fatal shootings on their part. Beyond that, are you admitting that there is no real data to back up your position?
The first step is to force all cops to wear body cams and have third party investigators review the footage and then archive the info.
This is actually something I approve of, and that is spreading through the states. It isn’t the be-all and end-all, though, since of course it doesn’t include what happens outside of the camera’s view.
And I have no idea why you keep up bringing whether or not the killings are justified
Because it’s fundamental to any analysis of police shootings?
I can provide evidence in support of the claim, like looking at the disproportionately high number of black men convicted for drug use, when the actual numbers show that white guys get stoned more often.
Or the massive difference in penalties for possession of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.
You know the second could explain the first, and seems more to me a bias against poverty than race—like Prohibition.
Plus, US policing and justice systems were openly and expressly racist until the civil rights movement came along in the 1960s. Since then, many changes have taken place, but the inherent racism in policing and the justice systems has never been addressed.
The ‘60’s were over two generations ago, please focus on the present.
Is that the kind of thing you are asking for?
On the topic of unconscious bias in US citizens, here is an interesting set of experiments:
Actually, no. If the studies had actually shown a difference between the races
perhaps it might be proof of racism, but the only mention of the race of the participants I saw was of the cops, and in that case it worked the same whether the cops were White or Black. More likely, it’s a subconscious use of population-thinking, where the unknown individual is judged by the group. This is important and definitely needs to be dealt with, but is not racism if the group characteristics that are being used to make the judgments are objectively true. And if the basis for the subconscious judgments are in fact objective, then those subconscious judgments should change as those objective facts do.
And now for some news on the riots front.
Minneapolis City Council that pushed to dismantle police now irate at rising crime The Minneapolis City Council that passed a unanimous resolution in June for a “transformative new model” of law enforcement is confused and livid over rising crime and slow response times by cops.
Police Chief Medaria Arradondo was peppered with questions by council members this week on everything from a spike in armed robberies to illegal street racing.
“This is not new, but it is very concerning in the current context,” Council President Lisa Bender said of claims that cops were turning a blind eye to various crimes, the Star Tribune reported Wednesday. “So, I think there are a number of possible explanations for this. I think it’s possible they are essentially campaigning … because they don’t support the council member or, in some cases, the mayor, or perhaps they think that they are making the case for more resources for the department.”
Another member, Phillipe Cunningham, said he was stunned by seesawing rhetoric by his peers since the May death of George Floyd while in police custody.
“What I am sort of flabbergasted by is … colleagues who a very short time ago who were calling for abolition, who are now suggesting that we should be putting more funding and resources into MPD. We know that this is not producing different outcomes,” he said.
The newspaper noted a macabre statistic regarding 59 homicides, which nearly doubles the city’s year-to-date average since 2015.
“Too often, we as police departments, we are dealing in a reactionary mode,” the chief explained. “We have oftentimes come to finding crime as opposed to preventing it. If we just stayed status quo, right now, we will end this year with numbers that are absolutely unconscionable about what we should have in terms of community violence, and we don’t do a deep dive as a city as to what caused all of those.”
The chief added that council members will be forced to make principled compromises if they are serious about changing the status quo.
“That may mean you making commitments that might be uncomfortable for some of those constituents that you represent, but if your ultimate goal is to have true community safety, I will tell you right now, we have to work together in that effort,” Mr. Arradondo said.
AG Barr told prosecutors to charge violent protesters with sedition: Report Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors last week to charge violent demonstrators with a range of offenses, including sedition, a charge usually reserved for someone plotting to overthrow the government, according to a report Wednesday.
Citing people familiar with the conversation, The Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Barr issued the instructions in a conference with U.S. attorneys across the country.
Also in the call, Mr. Barr warned that the violent protests across the country could get worse as the Election Day approaches, according to the report. Mr. Barr urged the prosecutors to consider a number of federal counts when lodging charges, including sedition, a rarely used law, the Journal reported.
Mr. Barr also urged prosecutors to file federal charges whenever possible, according to the report.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
So far, the Justice Department has filed federal charges against more than 200 defendants arrested during the rioting and looting that has spread across the country since the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in the custody of the Minneapolis police.
However, the charges lodged are largely firearms violations, arson, and offenses related to failure to obey law enforcement.
Sedition is punishable by 20 years in prison and is the act of inciting revolt or violence against the government or a lawful authority with the goal of overthrowing it.
In order to score a conviction for sedition, prosecutors must prove that the defendant conspired to overthrow the government or harm government officials, including federal law enforcement. Simply advocating a government overthrow or injuring federal agents is protected as free speech under the First Amendment.
The last major sedition case in the United States is believed to have occurred in 2012. In that case, a federal judge in Michigan threw out the case against seven members of a U.S. Christian-based militia, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove that the defendants did more than talk about their hatred of the government.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke