The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.

Nationwide American Protests Against [Police Brutality]

EddyEddy Gengar the BittersweetRegistered User regular
edited June 2020 in Debate and/or Discourse
I am compiling as much information in this OP for quick reference as I can. Please let me know if there's anything I could add.

POLICE BRUTALITY VIDEO DOCUMENTATIONS (not nearly comprehensive)

https://2020policebrutality.netlify.app/
https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/gvllqc/megathread_current_incident_reports_list/
here's a supercut, spoiled for violence
CHARITIES
state-by-state bail funds: https://bailfunds.github.io/
some good advice here: https://money.com/how-to-help-black-lives-matter-protests/
a wide selection of regional and national funds: https://www.theverge.com/21277358/protests-donate-police-bail-demonstrations-minneapolis-nyc


celebration of black artists in nerdspace
Fantasy subreddit put together a list of black fantasy authors: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/gtf34j/what_are_some_underrated_sff_books_by_black/
Link to the racial issues tag on Tor's website, for essays and short fiction centered on people of color: https://www.tor.com/tag/racial-issues/
Magazine of black speculative fiction's 2018 science fiction and fantasy writer survey report: https://www.fiyahlitmag.com/blackspecfic/bsfreport-2018/ (and of course, the rest of the site is great for non-sff)

Seek out not just stories of oppression, but those of black joy, promise, hope - celebrate our common humanity. I can personally recommend ross gay's book of poetry catalogue of unabashed gratitude (one poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58762/catalog-of-unabashed-gratitude )

A stream of various protests going on nationwide: https://www.twitch .tv/woke
(not directly linked just in case you don't want autoplay)
Two direct links to Facebook profiles where they've been streaming the front line of the protests in Seattle
https://www.facebook.com/brandon.frost.4
https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79

Also, similar, coverage of the smaller towns doing protests (not nearly comprehensive):
https://twitter.com/annehelen <- seriously if you want some tiny moments of hope, check out her feed
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/black-lives-matter-protests-near-me-small-towns

Tangentially, there is now a self-declared autonomous zone in Seattle. The CAPITOL HILL AUTONOMOUS ZONE (CHAZ)


If you'd like to know more, I follow @anarchomastia on Twitter but it's really hard to get more knowledge unless you're in the Seattle scene

There is a lot of disinformation on social media so always name the source and do a cursory vet of its authenticity/validity. Just check the twitter bio, read a couple tweets on their feed. There will be a lot of primary sources, so go with your gut on those and just warn that it's a rando
Debunked claims:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/antifa-rumors-spread-local-social-media-no-evidence-n1222486
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/technology/george-floyd-misinformation-online.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/misinformation-in-action-false-claims-of-antifa-protesters-plague-small-cities-2020-06-02
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/no-the-thurston-county-democrats-did-not-offer-to-pay-anarchists-misinformation-flows-in-wake-of-george-floyd-protests/
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/viral-tweet-alert-wasnt-from-antifa/

DEMANDS OF PROTESTERS
PLEASE note that every local protest has its own specific, immediate action items for their respective mayors/councils. BLM's main website is currently down due to what I imagine is insane traffic and possibly DDoS, but here are is a general summary:
https://populardemocracy.org/news-and-publications/black-lives-matter-releases-policy-demands-includes-reparations-and-abolishing
Ending the War on Black People: This includes abolishing the death penalty, mass surveillance in communities of color, the privatization of police, violence against all Blacks (including Black trans, queer and gender nonconforming people) and using a past criminal history as a means to seek a job, housing, license and voting rights.

Reparations: To address the past and current harms that slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration have done to the Black community, BLM is seeking reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities, guaranteed livable income and free access and open admissions to public community colleges, universities, and technical schools, to name a few.

Invest-Divest: Instead of federal, state, and local monies being invested into prisons, police, surveillance, and exploitative corporations, BLM would rather see that invested into long-term safety strategies such as education, local restorative justice services, employment programs, and universal health care.

Economic Justice: This is calling for Black communities to have real collective ownership of wealth in the U.S. This could be achieved with restructuring tax codes, creating federal and state job programs that specifically target the most economically marginalized Black people, breaking up large banks and ensuring better protection for workers.

Community Control: This would include the end of the privatization of education and making sure communities have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action, control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information when needed.

Political Power: To ensure that real democracy can be achieved for all Black people, BLM wants for all political prisoners to be released, eliminating Super Pacs that fund candidates, ensuring election protection, early registration at the age of 16, full access to technology and the internet, and increased funding to HBCU’s.

Other common platforms are:

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing (free book, insightful on data-driven alternatives to police departments as we know them)

On the justification of looting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go&amp;feature=emb_title

What can you do to help and/or get involved?
Apart from physically joining the protests, call your local officials! City councils, mayors, especially in smaller towns are more than willing to take constituent calls. Find your mayors and councils and state legislatures here: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials
Also this gives you your mayor's contact info and a list of easy-to-implement reforms that have been shown to reduce police violence! https://8cantwait.org/

Donate to local organizations who are setting up basics like medical supplies, food, etc (contact whatever local BLM or Antifa or whatever chapter you can find; mutual aid groups are proliferating across the country especially with Coronavirus) - otherwise, simply donate to one of the funds listed above. A little goes a long way.

Adding more stuff continuously

"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Eddy on
«134567105

Posts

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Central OhioRegistered User regular
    Fuck Drew Brees

    l7ygmd1dd4p1.jpeg
    3b2y43dozpk3.jpeg
  • MazzyxMazzyx Comedy Gold Registered User regular
    @Eddy I would add the Woke Twitch Channel. It has on average 6-9 live feeds from on the ground protestors across the US.

    u7stthr17eud.png
  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    Godspeed, you mad bastard.

    *pours one out for Eddy*

    Those letters and videos shared last thread from the military brass and former officials are quite the thing.

    Even without the dream of some movie moment where the military protects the protesters from the police or some shit, it strikes me that a whole lot of them seem to be done with staying silent on this shit.

    Which is heartening.

    And also scary, because I'm wondering just what they're being told/ordered/having to push back on behind the scenes.

    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • MazzyxMazzyx Comedy Gold Registered User regular
    Forar wrote: »
    Godspeed, you mad bastard.

    *pours one out for Eddy*

    Those letters and videos shared last thread from the military brass and former officials are quite the thing.

    Even without the dream of some movie moment where the military protects the protesters from the police or some shit, it strikes me that a whole lot of them seem to be done with staying silent on this shit.

    Which is heartening.

    And also scary, because I'm wondering just what they're being told/ordered/having to push back on behind the scenes.

    I mean in the last two days we have had the Joint Chief, the Chief of Naval Operations, the highest ranking enlisted member of the Air Force, and the head of the Air Guard come out with some pretty crazy stuff. And its kind of mind blowing.

    u7stthr17eud.png
  • ahavaahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    I gotta say, while this whole thing is just...

    the umbrellas are truly incredibly surreal.

    like, Mary Poppins vs Facism.

  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    That the WH appears to be using prison riot cops to guard the grounds tells me lots of other agencies told him to go fuck himself

  • ToxTox I kill threads they/themRegistered User regular
    Tangential but in "fuck white supremacists" news

    Steve King lost his primary

    Discord Lifeboat | Dilige, et quod vis fac
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    A useful resource to drop in any arguments are Consent Decrees by the Department of Justice. Trump and Sessions effectively eliminated any new ones, but there are currently 20 active ones under Federal oversight.

    Here is Chicago PD's
    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-investigation-chicago-police-department


    No need to find all the proof of rampant racism and criminality when someone already spent years investigating and made a several hundred page summary for you.

  • JoolanderJoolander Registered User regular
    Can someone explain the umbrellas to me? I’m afraid I am an old

  • thatassemblyguythatassemblyguy Janitor of Technical Debt .Registered User regular
    I gotta say, while this whole thing is just...

    the umbrellas are truly incredibly surreal.

    like, Mary Poppins vs Facism.

    I know this is a serious time, and a very serious topic, but this was brilliant and sparked some joy in an otherwise depressing week.

  • KruiteKruite Registered User regular
    People are using them to protect themselves against the pepper spray canisters. They spray like mini fire extinguishers and have quite the range

  • thatassemblyguythatassemblyguy Janitor of Technical Debt .Registered User regular
    Joolander wrote: »
    Can someone explain the umbrellas to me? I’m afraid I am an old

    Dual purpose - Primary objective is to deflect most of the bear mace sprayed at the front lines. Secondary objective, makes it difficult for agent provocateurs to launch rocks/water bottles that will provoke the police into a riot.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Joolander wrote: »
    Can someone explain the umbrellas to me? I’m afraid I am an old

    uib95v06easa.jpg

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    A lot of seattle protesters were watching Hong Kong carefully

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • EddyEddy Gengar the Bittersweet Registered User regular
    edited June 2020


    (I used to sometimes tweet about fashion before fascism)

    Eddy on
    "and the morning stars I have seen
    and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
  • AiouaAioua Ora Occidens Ora OptimaRegistered User regular
    Also in the Seattle protests one of the nights the cops started the riot by grabbing an umbrella out of a protestor's hands, then spraying the protestor.

    Every night since everyone's bringing umbrellas as a fuck you

    life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
    fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
    that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
    bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
  • TomantaTomanta Registered User regular
    That the WH appears to be using prison riot cops to guard the grounds tells me lots of other agencies told him to go fuck himself

    How does policing authority/ jurisdiction work? Like, how do prison guards have the authority to arrest or control crowds outside of a prison?

  • JoolanderJoolander Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Joolander wrote: »
    Can someone explain the umbrellas to me? I’m afraid I am an old

    uib95v06easa.jpg

    I died, I am dead

  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    Tomanta wrote: »
    That the WH appears to be using prison riot cops to guard the grounds tells me lots of other agencies told him to go fuck himself

    How does policing authority/ jurisdiction work? Like, how do prison guards have the authority to arrest or control crowds outside of a prison?

    They likely don't, hence why they are covering their identifying markings and instead trying to be faceless.

    He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Athenor wrote: »
    Tomanta wrote: »
    That the WH appears to be using prison riot cops to guard the grounds tells me lots of other agencies told him to go fuck himself

    How does policing authority/ jurisdiction work? Like, how do prison guards have the authority to arrest or control crowds outside of a prison?

    They likely don't, hence why they are covering their identifying markings and instead trying to be faceless.

    They're SORT teams, they're sent in to deal with prison riots. Basically federal prison SWAT. So since they're already federal law enforcement, they can be sent anywhere by the government really.

    matt has a problem on
    nibXTE7.png
  • ArdArd Registered User regular
    The phalanx is exactly what happened when the police finally charged the line last night after 11. Given the nonsense with the trumpeter tonight, I fully expect to see dozens tomorrow. I love the people of this city and their amazing passive aggressive protesting

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Ard wrote: »
    The phalanx is exactly what happened when the police finally charged the line last night after 11. Given the nonsense with the trumpeter tonight, I fully expect to see dozens tomorrow. I love the people of this city and their amazing passive aggressive protesting

    Nowhere else Id rather live.

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Brandon Frost

    and

    Jessica Frost

    Have been streaming for 3 days, their apartment is above the police line in Seattle at Capitol Hill. It's an angled view of the barricade and a second camera showing the size of the crowd. It's basically the best angle I've seen during all of the protests because of their very fortunate position on that intersection. They're active in chat and answering questions about things off camera. They're not professional reporters and are working with what they've got, but are doing a damn fine job - given how crap Facebook is for streaming.

    Edit: I'm linking profile pages because it's a new thread. They're public and the stream goes down every few hours and gets a new URL so a direct link would be useless. Hurray Facebook?

    dispatch.o on
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    MSNBC correspondent:
    Just In: NBC’s Mike Kosnar obtains a statement from the Bureau of Prisons about their un-badged officers in DC. It’s long so I screen-shotted it, and their previous statement, sent upon their deployment
    Treating prison guards that are trained for dealing with prison riots as the same sort of thing as police officers who need to handle a protest where most people are peaceful protesters is so obviously nonsense that I would be surprised at any other administration attempting to pretend they are equivalent.

  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    Sadly, I can imagine cops pulling a "The Penguin" defense of their brutality by claiming the umbrella in a protester's hand was a gun.

    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
    Law and Order ≠ Justice
    xu257gunns6e.png
  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    Of course it was Barr who called in the prison guards!

    Just... make that metaphor even more on the nose!

    (Also reform prisons and close for-profit prisons)

    He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
  • mittensmittens he/himRegistered User regular
    Couscous wrote: »
    MSNBC correspondent:
    Just In: NBC’s Mike Kosnar obtains a statement from the Bureau of Prisons about their un-badged officers in DC. It’s long so I screen-shotted it, and their previous statement, sent upon their deployment
    Treating prison guards that are trained for dealing with prison riots as the same sort of thing as police officers who need to handle a protest where most people are peaceful protesters is so obviously nonsense that I would be surprised at any other administration attempting to pretend they are equivalent.

    Yeah, seems like cracking skulls is an occupation rather than just a hobby for these guys :bigfrown:

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    "They aren't wearing BOP specific clothing as they are serving a broader mission"

    Ah yes, that's the thing about uniforms: You don't wear them when you're assisting in a joint-operation.

  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Shedrain or some other company could make a killing in good will and public support if they just donated a few hundred umbrellas to protesters every day.

    "Good enough for rubber bullets, good enough for rain."

    dispatch.o on
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Sadly, I can imagine cops pulling a "The Penguin" defense of their brutality by claiming the umbrella in a protester's hand was a gun.

    They would just claim that umbrellas are deadly weapons and can kill.

  • Anon the FelonAnon the Felon In bat country.Registered User regular
    Sending guards out like this is truly insane. I would have never even considered that a possibility.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Central OhioRegistered User regular
    Wait

    By Miami do they mean Mar-A-Lago?

    It’s in the metro even though it’s kind of up there- they trying to kinda-sorta hide that?

    l7ygmd1dd4p1.jpeg
    3b2y43dozpk3.jpeg
  • edited June 2020
    This content has been removed.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    Somebody posted this new article from the Wall Street Journal over in the SE++ thread. Does anyone know where I can find a rebuttal?

    Spoilered for size:
    George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US

    George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.

    Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”

    Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.

    Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.

    That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.

    Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.

    This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.

    Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.

    The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

    On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.

    This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.

    The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.

    A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.

    The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.

    If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.

    The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.

    But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.

    I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    Couscous wrote: »
    GONG-00 wrote: »
    Sadly, I can imagine cops pulling a "The Penguin" defense of their brutality by claiming the umbrella in a protester's hand was a gun.

    They would just claim that umbrellas are deadly weapons and can kill.

    someone got shot in Vallejo last night and the cops are explaining that they thought the hammer he allegedly had on him was a gun, which totally explains why they shot five times through their own windscreen at him as he tried to get in a car.
    I'm sure an umbrella is worth at least 4 shots.

  • thatassemblyguythatassemblyguy Janitor of Technical Debt .Registered User regular
    Couscous wrote: »
    MSNBC correspondent:
    Just In: NBC’s Mike Kosnar obtains a statement from the Bureau of Prisons about their un-badged officers in DC. It’s long so I screen-shotted it, and their previous statement, sent upon their deployment
    Treating prison guards that are trained for dealing with prison riots as the same sort of thing as police officers who need to handle a protest where most people are peaceful protesters is so obviously nonsense that I would be surprised at any other administration attempting to pretend they are equivalent.

    un-badged officers in DC

    i.e.,

    William Barr just activated 2020 USA Gestapo.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Somebody posted this new article from the Wall Street Journal over in the SE++ thread. Does anyone know where I can find a rebuttal?

    Spoilered for size:
    George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US

    George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.

    Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”

    Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.

    Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.

    That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.

    Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.

    This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.

    Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.

    The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

    On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.

    This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.

    The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.

    A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.

    The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.

    If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.

    The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.

    But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.

    I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.

    They put out a rebuttal yearly.

    It's the skewed ratio of black people the police kill vs every other race in the country.

  • ArteenArteen Adept ValeRegistered User regular
    Are the Bureau of Prisons officers commonly used outside of their normal duty?

    I found an article about them being deputized for security after Hurricane Harvey. Seems reasonable. I couldn't find much else.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Central OhioRegistered User regular
    You won’t find a rebuttal because it’s trash

    It deflects to black-on-Black crime, “look at scary Chicago,” is basically built on the assumption that black people are more violent and that’s why they get shot more (it literally makes the case that since 60% of arrests are of black folks, why are we getting mad that only 23% of people fatally shot by cops are black...without the self-awareness to hear a record scratch at the “60% of arrests are of black folks”)

    It’s gutter trash and anybody buying into it was looking for an excuse to ignore the protests anyway

    l7ygmd1dd4p1.jpeg
    3b2y43dozpk3.jpeg
  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?

    Edit: It's me from 4 pages later. No. Tonight is not quieter.

    Athenor on
    He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
This discussion has been closed.