US Anti-Police Protests and Riots Thread II

[Telconi]

And yet we're drawing the youth away from an institutional bulwark that often served to provide a strong and compelling sense of community for them. A lot of that has to doing with an increasing trend towards secularism, not simply in politics, but in broader society. That's not problematic in and of itself from a social perspective, mind you, but we don't really have a neat replacement which creates a vacuum that can be quite easily filled by criminal gangs, terrorist cells, and other such groups. You cannot deconstruct or weaken institutions and expect well-adjusted citizens to emerge from the ashes.

We can find solutions to that problem that don’t have to rely solely or primarily on religious institutions since we’re a generally secular society. We can better fund and create better after school programs for kids and teenagers, community projects and social functions to get people better involved with their communities like potlucks, cookouts, light service work (like litter collecting and aesthetics impairments like painting murals, planting flowers and trees, etc.), support groups for the lonely, mentally ill, addicted, etc, and a whole host of other things that don’t require the institutions whose primary thing is sitting in a big room with a bunch of other people, listening to someone talk and God and the Bible and sing for an hour a week.

Churches tend to attract like minded people. By default the people there have some sort of common ideology pr belief system.

A neighborhood or school program has no such start point, thus it's more difficult to create any cohesive community bonding.

[Gravlen]

Rochester police chief, entire command staff retire suddenly following protests in death of Daniel Prude

After days of protests against the Rochester Police Department in light of the death of Daniel Prude, its top officer and command staff announced Tuesday they are retiring from the force.

Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary said in a statement that he was honored to serve the city in upstate New York for 20 years and commended his staff. However, he said the protests and criticism of his handling of the investigation into the March 23 incident "are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity."

"As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character," he said in a statement. "The members of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my reputation and know what I stand for."

Well... You know what? It's a good start. The way he resigned confirmed to me that he's doing the only right thing by resigning. Good riddance!

[The Rich Port]

Unarmed, autistic 13-year-old boy Linden Cameron shot by police for running away

Excellent not-abuse of your power, guys.

There really needs to be a better system in place for this. Why the fuck are police called to non-violent mental health cases armed?

[The Black Forrest]

Yes, let's reward them for doing such a terrible job, as if they weren't very highly paid and notorious for time theft and absurd OT requests anyways!

The average police pay in my state is around $42,000, which is well below the average employee pay of around $51,000. My point in calling for higher wages and standards is this. What sorts of people do you want to attract to do a job that, by your own admission, is currently done poorly? If you pay subpar wages, you can expect to attract fewer educated people with plenty of other, higher-paying options as employees and so you shrink your potential recruitment pool by cutting out a lot of the more educated, professional, and competent potential recruits. If you want law enforcement officers to train like lawyers or skilled mental health professionals, you need to pay them like those folks.

Maybe, but the record doesn't seem to show great success with just giving people who can't be trusted with a gun and a badge some extra sensitivity training. It's blown off and they go right back to what they were doing, protected by their colleagues' continuing silence. I think some slightly more punitive reforms may be required. Perhaps we'll have to actually impose consequences on these rogue arms of the state who believe they can operate with impunity! I know it's a crazy concept.

I'm not arguing for mere sensitivity training.

Depends on the state and the town. My area pays much more. Still. I remember over hearing one cop saying he took the job because he though he would see more action.

Pay doesn’t always attract the best people.

[The Black Forrest]

Unarmed, autistic 13-year-old boy Linden Cameron shot by police for running away

Excellent not-abuse of your power, guys.

There really needs to be a better system in place for this. Why the fuck are police called to non-violent mental health cases armed?

It’s fascinating. They just can’t seem to help themselves these days.

Story after story after story; I find I can just defend them any more. Especially when the rally around somebody who did something really bad.

[Salus Maior]

Unarmed, autistic 13-year-old boy Linden Cameron shot by police for running away

Excellent not-abuse of your power, guys.

There really needs to be a better system in place for this. Why the fuck are police called to non-violent mental health cases armed?

Absolutely disgusting.

[Gravlen]

When a trip to the animal shelter to drop off a stray dog goes bad...

Around noon on the next to last day of the year, Robert Earl Lawrence took his girlfriend and three children to a Walmart in Dothan, Alabama. They saw a stray dog outside the store. Lawrence gathered up the dog, put it in the car, and drove to the local animal shelter where he hoped to leave it. An official at the shelter asked Lawrence to provide identification and fill out some paperwork, which he didn’t think he should have to do. He just wanted to drop off the dog. Words were exchanged. Frustrated, Lawrence eventually said “fine,” that he would just leave and let the dog out of the car at the end of the road that led to the shelter. When people who are at the shelter threaten to abandon animals, an officer follows them out to their vehicle to write down the tag number, and an officer did that when Lawrence left the shelter with the dog. At the car the officer asked Lawrence for his driver’s license, and he refused, asserting that he didn’t have to show her one. The officer detained Lawrence at his car for about ten minutes while waiting for the backup officer to arrive. During that time, she and Lawrence argued.

When the backup officer arrived at the shelter parking lot, still more words were exchanged. That officer told Lawrence that if he didn’t stop talking he was going to jail. Lawrence didn’t stop talking and the backup officer, with the assistance of the other two officers on the scene, attempted to arrest and handcuff him. Lawrence would not submit and resisted –– not aggressively, but vigorously. He refused to put his hands behind his back as ordered, he struggled, and twice he temporarily freed himself from an officer’s grip and ran around the car trying to get away, but officers caught up with him. In the last moments of the encounter, while trying to get free from three officers again, he put his hand either on an officer’s taser, or on the officer’s wrist or hand that was holding the taser. In response, an officer pulled her service weapon and without warning, and to the surprise of the other two officers, shot Lawrence while he was being held. He was taken to a hospital where he died from the gunshot wound.

That happened in 2019.

A little bit of good news now: The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal reversed the lower court's ruling that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity.

This fatal shooting “lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent” even without a prior case on point. Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199 (quotation marks omitted). “Simply put, the grossly disproportionate force used in this case was clearly established as a constitutional violation because no reasonable officer could have believed that [Woodruff’s] actions were legal.”

[Telconi]

The average police pay in my state is around $42,000, which is well below the average employee pay of around $51,000. My point in calling for higher wages and standards is this. What sorts of people do you want to attract to do a job that, by your own admission, is currently done poorly? If you pay subpar wages, you can expect to attract fewer educated people with plenty of other, higher-paying options as employees and so you shrink your potential recruitment pool by cutting out a lot of the more educated, professional, and competent potential recruits. If you want law enforcement officers to train like lawyers or skilled mental health professionals, you need to pay them like those folks.


I'm not arguing for mere sensitivity training.

Depends on the state and the town. My area pays much more. Still. I remember over hearing one cop saying he took the job because he though he would see more action.

Pay doesn’t always attract the best people.

I think it's less the issue that higher pay attracts better people, and more the issue that lower pay repels better people. Simply put, the type of person in our society who's capable of taking on the level of responsibility we should expect from a police officer, can generally take on less stressful jobs for higher pay.

This leaves you with two types of people disproportionately attracted to police work, people who are specifically attracted to the power aspect, or people who are attracted to the thrill. Both of those are potentially problematic.

[Kowani]

Depends on the state and the town. My area pays much more. Still. I remember over hearing one cop saying he took the job because he though he would see more action.

Pay doesn’t always attract the best people.

I think it's less the issue that higher pay attracts better people, and more the issue that lower pay repels better people. Simply put, the type of person in our society who's capable of taking on the level of responsibility we should expect from a police officer, can generally take on less stressful jobs for higher pay.

This leaves you with two types of people disproportionately attracted to police work, people who are specifically attracted to the power aspect, or people who are attracted to the thrill. Both of those are potentially problematic.

Proper psych evals would probably help keep some of those people out of the force.
Maybe make them repeating every few years, done by an independent outside group.

Edit: And counseling, to help the officers deal with the stress.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

When a trip to the animal shelter to drop off a stray dog goes bad...

Around noon on the next to last day of the year, Robert Earl Lawrence took his girlfriend and three children to a Walmart in Dothan, Alabama. They saw a stray dog outside the store. Lawrence gathered up the dog, put it in the car, and drove to the local animal shelter where he hoped to leave it. An official at the shelter asked Lawrence to provide identification and fill out some paperwork, which he didn’t think he should have to do. He just wanted to drop off the dog. Words were exchanged. Frustrated, Lawrence eventually said “fine,” that he would just leave and let the dog out of the car at the end of the road that led to the shelter. When people who are at the shelter threaten to abandon animals, an officer follows them out to their vehicle to write down the tag number, and an officer did that when Lawrence left the shelter with the dog. At the car the officer asked Lawrence for his driver’s license, and he refused, asserting that he didn’t have to show her one. The officer detained Lawrence at his car for about ten minutes while waiting for the backup officer to arrive. During that time, she and Lawrence argued.

When the backup officer arrived at the shelter parking lot, still more words were exchanged. That officer told Lawrence that if he didn’t stop talking he was going to jail. Lawrence didn’t stop talking and the backup officer, with the assistance of the other two officers on the scene, attempted to arrest and handcuff him. Lawrence would not submit and resisted –– not aggressively, but vigorously. He refused to put his hands behind his back as ordered, he struggled, and twice he temporarily freed himself from an officer’s grip and ran around the car trying to get away, but officers caught up with him. In the last moments of the encounter, while trying to get free from three officers again, he put his hand either on an officer’s taser, or on the officer’s wrist or hand that was holding the taser. In response, an officer pulled her service weapon and without warning, and to the surprise of the other two officers, shot Lawrence while he was being held. He was taken to a hospital where he died from the gunshot wound.

That happened in 2019.

A little bit of good news now: The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal reversed the lower court's ruling that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity.

This fatal shooting “lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent” even without a prior case on point. Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199 (quotation marks omitted). “Simply put, the grossly disproportionate force used in this case was clearly established as a constitutional violation because no reasonable officer could have believed that [Woodruff’s] actions were legal.”

A “no reasonable officer” test sounds way better than the current “earlier case law” test. Clearer, more basic, more to the point.

[Kowani]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

[Spirit of Hope]

I think they're referring to the idea of departments communicating with one another about officers who move between them, since problem officers going to a new department like nothing happened has been an issue in the past?

I wouldn't really have any objection to that. I think if you get fired for misconduct of some kind that you should have to list previous employment on a resume and that a new department should have to contact your old department.

I was in fact referring to a number of different proposals that all run along the same lines, in some way keeping track of officers who are fired/quit while under investigation for misconduct, so that this misconduct is better tracked. A routine problem is that some towns and cities are desperate to higher new officers, and do not reach out to old places of employment about under what circumstances a person left, and that for various reasons old places of employment will often do no more than verify that an officer worked from them. IIRC there was a study that showed most excessive force cases were tied to wondering officers, i.e. officers who moved between departments a lot because they were fired and/or quit while being investigated for misconduct.

so the two most extreme options, neither of which is seen as viable by mainstream policymakers, might not be "well-considered," and therefore this is grounds to dismiss the movement as a bunch of uppity rioters who should be mowed down

Some municipal governments have considered and even pursued cutting police budgets by as much as a third, which could present a problem in burgeoning urban and suburban areas. So it's not exactly an extreme position to hold - just potentially ill-conceived. But I'm not arguing that we should mow people down in any case. We should arrest or disperse people who commit serious crimes, sure, but people should be able to peacefully protest for whatever they want - even if it's dumb. My point here was that we need to consider what communities want and how best government can provide that. This might mean disregarding protestors, or at least some subsection of protestors, on occasion.

What percentage of a police departments budget you take away is going to depend on a lot of factors, while a third may sound bad, if it is then put into programs that would decrease the calls to officers that could be a good investment. Take mental health calls, take money from the police and give it to a mental health team that intervenes when a mental health emergency is called in. Yes the police lost resources, but they are also receiving less calls. You are also now using a resources directly trained and equipped for the job instead of requiring the police have more training and equipment.

Police budgets also often include spending money on things like SWAT teams and armored vehicles that most police departments don't need. My home town has a SWAT team for a town of 25,000 that literally neighbors LA. If we ever really needed a SWAT team LA's would be far better trained and equipped than ours, had an agreement to respond, and has had a similar response time to our team.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

Honest question, have California Dems ever done anything good?

[Loben III]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

thats weird.

[Telconi]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

Honest question, have California Dems ever done anything good?

Occasionally one of them resigns.

[Greed and Death]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

You are asking Democrats to go against a Union that actually turns out votes for them.

[Liriena]

Police Reforms face defeat as California Dems block George Floyd inspired Bills.

ahhaha I hate these people.

The bills in question weren't even that extreme, Jesus.

Honest question, have California Dems ever done anything good?

I was gonna say "keeping Republicans out", but then again I kinda wanna see Schwarzenegger in the governorship again.

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

Unarmed, autistic 13-year-old boy Linden Cameron shot by police for running away

Excellent not-abuse of your power, guys.

There really needs to be a better system in place for this. Why the fuck are police called to non-violent mental health cases armed?

What. The. Fuck?!

[Greed and Death]

Yes, let's reward them for doing such a terrible job, as if they weren't very highly paid and notorious for time theft and absurd OT requests anyways!

The average police pay in my state is around $42,000, which is well below the average employee pay of around $51,000. My point in calling for higher wages and standards is this. What sorts of people do you want to attract to do a job that, by your own admission, is currently done poorly? If you pay subpar wages, you can expect to attract fewer educated people with plenty of other, higher-paying options as employees and so you shrink your potential recruitment pool by cutting out a lot of the more educated, professional, and competent potential recruits. If you want law enforcement officers to train like lawyers or skilled mental health professionals, you need to pay them like those folks.

Imagine that police officers who don't have to work two or three extra jobs to make ends meet might be less prone to make deadly errors in judgement.

[San Lumen]

Rochester police chief, entire command staff retire suddenly following protests in death of Daniel Prude

After days of protests against the Rochester Police Department in light of the death of Daniel Prude, its top officer and command staff announced Tuesday they are retiring from the force.

Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary said in a statement that he was honored to serve the city in upstate New York for 20 years and commended his staff. However, he said the protests and criticism of his handling of the investigation into the March 23 incident "are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity."

"As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character," he said in a statement. "The members of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my reputation and know what I stand for."

Well... You know what? It's a good start. The way he resigned confirmed to me that he's doing the only right thing by resigning. Good riddance!

Pathetic how instead acknowledging they did wrong and reforming the police department they resign like a bunch of toddlers who can't accept their toy got taken away.

[Loben III]

Rochester police chief, entire command staff retire suddenly following protests in death of Daniel Prude

After days of protests against the Rochester Police Department in light of the death of Daniel Prude, its top officer and command staff announced Tuesday they are retiring from the force.

Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary said in a statement that he was honored to serve the city in upstate New York for 20 years and commended his staff. However, he said the protests and criticism of his handling of the investigation into the March 23 incident "are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity."

"As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character," he said in a statement. "The members of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my reputation and know what I stand for."

Well... You know what? It's a good start. The way he resigned confirmed to me that he's doing the only right thing by resigning. Good riddance!

Pathetic how instead acknowledging they did wrong and reforming the police department they resign like a bunch of toddlers who can't accept their toy got taken away.

what?

[San Lumen]

Pathetic how instead acknowledging they did wrong and reforming the police department they resign like a bunch of toddlers who can't accept their toy got taken away.

what?

I think I was quite clear. Its apparent police forces nationwide think they should be above criticism and their fellow officers can do no wrong ever.

[The Emerald Legion]

what?

I think I was quite clear. Its apparent police forces nationwide think they should be above criticism and their fellow officers can do no wrong ever.

It's less that and more not accepting every crazy ass temper tantrum literally thousands of people throw at them daily. This isn't to say police officers aren't dicks sometimes but when you deal with people being idiots daily, your patience wears awfully thin.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Rochester police chief, entire command staff retire suddenly following protests in death of Daniel Prude

After days of protests against the Rochester Police Department in light of the death of Daniel Prude, its top officer and command staff announced Tuesday they are retiring from the force.

Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary said in a statement that he was honored to serve the city in upstate New York for 20 years and commended his staff. However, he said the protests and criticism of his handling of the investigation into the March 23 incident "are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity."

"As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character," he said in a statement. "The members of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my reputation and know what I stand for."

Well... You know what? It's a good start. The way he resigned confirmed to me that he's doing the only right thing by resigning. Good riddance!

Pathetic how instead acknowledging they did wrong and reforming the police department they resign like a bunch of toddlers who can't accept their toy got taken away.

Let's put a stop to this tactic. Honor their resignations, but stop them using it as a power to strike. Do Not Rehire with any police in the country.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Keeping track of police officers use of force, even after they leave a department, will lead to more crime?

I'm not certain this one is actually legal. I don't think having your employer keep tabs on you years after you left a job is really desirable for anyone. It's a massive invasion of privacy frankly.

Are there any laws against a previous employer giving out information about you, to anyone who calls up saying you applied for a job with them?

No, right? That's quite common, no-one would think twice about it.

Not to mention that this is policing. It's not just the generic private sector job. A police department has not just a right, but an obligation, to know the full history of a new employee with other police departments.