Another vote for reforming the police not abolishing them.
Does anyone believe that white people would stop killing black people if the police didn’t exist? A police uniform may give some people an excuse to commit crimes but those people would still exist and still have the desire to commit crimes in a world where there were no police.
I think the point is it’s MUCH worse to have those racist criminals be officially shielded agents of the state. At least as “free agents,” they wouldn’t be directly involved in perpetuating any larger oppressive power structure that would allow their abuses to continue unto generations or spread.
It’s true that every organization has some bad apples.
Now the critical question: how does the organization handle those bad apples? Does it work to remove them from the organization and hold them accountable for any acts they committed? Or does the organization seek to protect its members, including the bad apples?
If it’s the latter then fault and responsibility can be laid on the entire organization not just on the individual members.
The police- which are in every nation on earth- are hardly a “failed system”. There are over 20 million cops wordwide. (The number of officers per nation more or less goes by population size).
Having been a Treasury Agent- altho counterfeit money wasnt my thing- They dont really care about a single bad 20. They'd ask you to take it out of circulation, and mail it in with the locations. That is just in case there happens then to be a bunch of them showing up, all from the same counterfeiter in the same area. It is JUST possible that the Treasury had asked the Police to be on the look-out for such .
But no need for a arrest- you just ask the person where they got it from, take down a little statement, warn and counsel them (if they are a merchant, you thank them, instead for turning it in), etc.
So, we know Chauvin was a bad cop. They happen. They are rare, but in a nation with 900K police you cant help but get some bad apples. What is surprising is that after all his complaints he was still out in the field- and worse- as a training officer. That is simply bad judgement. Now, it isnt simply the raw number of complaints necessarily- a long career by a righteous officer might have that number, but two were upheld. A complaint a year is rather high and two closed by reprimand? Neither was for excessive force, but both indicated a anger management issue.
Not for a single bad $20. It is to laugh.
Yes, and we dont know what Floyd said. If he had said he didnt know, then all that should have been done is ask him if he remembered where he got it, take a statement, and send it in. But maybe he started giving them a bad time, calling them names, refusing to hand over the bill, etc. Still, it hardly calls for a felony type stop.
The police department in Minneapolis is a failed system. I don’t see the need to abolish any police department which is successfully filling the actual law enforcement needs of their jurisdiction, but there are a lot of them that do not.
1 & 2) All you are saying is that need to investigate it in a way where nobody is killed. Nobody disagrees with that.
What is a felony under Minnesota law?
What was he charged with?
They had the right to arrest him. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want police arresting guys in your neighborhood for doing that. If he is innocent, he gets bail and his day in court.
Remember, though. The convenience store clerk said he was really impaired and trying to drive off. Police shouldn’t come for that? And he did resist them.
Now, (and I feel the need for some reason to keep repeating this disclaimer on this board) that was not a reason for him to die or for them to put a knee on his neck.
But to say that the police shouldn’t even have been there is ridiculous. Of course you investigate forgery and counterfeit currency.
It currently isn’t law if Wiki is correct:*As a result of the United States federal government shutdown of 2018–2019, the Violence Against Women Act expired on December 21, 2018.[38] It was temporarily reauthorized by a short-term spending bill on January 25, 2019, but expired again on February 15, 2019.[39]
On April 4, 2019, the reauthorization act passed in the House by a vote of 263-158, this time including closing the boyfriend loophole. All Democrats voting joined by 33 Republicans voted for passage. New York Representative Elise Stefanik said Democrats, “…have refused to work with Republicans in a meaningful way,” adding, the House bill will do nothing but “collect dust” in the GOP-controlled Senate.The bill has indeed been ignored by the Senate.[40]
On December 9, 2019, following the firearm murder of a Houston police officer on duty by a boyfriend who had been abusive towards his girlfriend, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo criticized Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Cornyn (R-TX) for preventing a vote on the VAWA reauthorization*
and it goes on the say that coverage for male victims is dubious.
Two points:
Prosecutors even agree with me that such is mutual affray under the common law and not a battery by either party, yet they get grants under the VAWA which requires that they take it to the jury box unless it will be “almost certainly” dismissed on a directed verdict. Most offices have at least two prosecutors that rely on this grant money for salaries. I can get almost anything dismissed with a reasonable story, but not DV…too politically charged and mandated by the grant money that they need.
I haven’t even heard of evidence that he in anyway altered or counterfeited a bill pr intended even to possess one. Have you? Nobody in those circumstances is legitimately arrested or prosecuted. You wouldn’t want to be arrested for an unverified accusation that you passed a phony bill, and you certainly wouldn’t want to be killed for it. So just what are you trying to defend here?
I’m defending their right to investigate both the allegation of passing counterfeit and forged currency a.k.a. bank notes, and an allegation that Floyd was intoxicated and attempting to drive away.
Again, and yet again, he did not deserve to be killed for it.
I don’t want to be arrested for any reason and certainly not unjustly arrested, but I wouldn’t think it unreasonable if a cop started asking me questions about where I got the counterfeit bill, especially if I was impaired and attempting to drive off.
As I said before, maybe they didn’t have enough evidence even for probable cause of the “knowing” aspect of passing off the fake money. If they didn’t, the arrest was bad, but in no way was the investigation improper.
I mean, were these cops supposed to say ah fuck it and let him drive off? What if he ran over three kids because of his impaired state? Then another group would have wanted their ass for not investigating.
You keep bringing up the death, which we both agree was terribly improper. But you keep disputing the investigation which was unquestionably proper.
I disagree. I don’t see how it makes much of a difference to a guy being murdered if it’s by the police or by a lynch mob. Lynch mobs are every bit as capable of perpetuating a larger oppressive power structure.
How about everything in this first paragraph? If you accomplished these changes, you’d be the hero of BLM. You seem to think they want something else, but I don’t really think they do.
Trick is, can our current police forces support these changes?
Your story nails it in one. The police want zero risk to violence in their duties but expect “innocent until proven guilty” citizens to risk violence at their hands.
[quote=“UltraVires, post:72, topic:855205”]
I’m defending their right to investigate both the allegation of passing counterfeit and forged currency a.k.a. bank notes, and an allegation that Floyd was intoxicated and attempting to drive away.
/QUOTE]
You wanna cite any evidence that any crime occurred until in this incident until a cop tortured and killed George Floyd?
Wait, let me get this straight, UltraVires: You think that nobody should ever call the police for anything because doing so always makes things worse, and yet, you also think that the police are absolutely necessary and should not be abolished?
[quote=“TriPolar, post:76, topic:855205”]
Yeah, the whole transcript of the 911 call. A convenience store owner said that a man passed a fake $20 bill. He told the man it was fake and to give him back the cigarettes. The man refused and appeared intoxicated. The man walked out of the store, got into a van and attempted to drive in an impaired state.
That is all first hand eyewitness evidence of at least one and possibly two or more crimes. The police would be derelict in their duty not to investigate these allegations. How is that not evidence?
If a phone call is not evidence, what about when a woman is screaming that her husband is beating her? Do you tell her to piss off until she has “real” evidence?
They are absolutely necessary for the big things: armed robbery, rape, murder. Once you get past that, their utility starts falling and it falls to near zero when it comes to just about any law passed in the last thirty years.
If we scrapped every governing agency that has failed time and again, we would have ZERO governing agencies. And we would start with any of them governing education.
But the point is, for a sizable segment of the population, calling the cops makes things worse even for big crimes like murder, armed robbery, and rape. That’s the problem that needs to be addressed.
And ooh, Kearsen1, how about we also scrap the private companies that fail time and again? Private companies fail even more often than government agencies.