[News] The USA Police State will never satisfy its lust for beating, gassing, and imprisoning minorities

What we need is MORE SERVICES!

In a recent video, I forget specifically which, but a city police chief complained about how much people ask of the police. (paraphrasing) "A man trying to kill himself? Us. Homeless guy freaking out downtown? Us. A mentally unfit man at the beach? Us. A kid shop lifting a carton of milk? Us. A man shooting his wife? Us. Investigating a serial killer? Us. We have to do nearly everything and are expected to know how to handle it all."

This is what I think people mean by "Defund the Police". We are not asking for that money to just vanish into thin air. We want the police to get less money and focus on what they are supposed to focus on. ENFORCEMENT.
Every time a city cuts a service they once provided, they always dump that service on the cops to handle it. We need to rewind that by shrinking the police and bringing back services that act as a sort of buffer between police and society, with police being the "last resort" when violence or breaking the law is inevitable or just a support crew when others need help. It works fine with other services like Fire Departments and EMS, so why can't we get services for say mental health, homelessness, drug rehabilitation, job services, etc using some of the the millions (or in some case BILLIONS!) the police get every year? Let's get people that's entire job is to uplift those faltering and try to bring them to a better way, rather then just throwing the cop at it who puts the dude in jail because it's the only thing cops are really supposed to do when someone is "problematic".
 
This isn't your "See it's not racism" card.
Even if it wasn't racism, how is that even an argument against the protests?

If the cops are just indiscriminately killing unarmed people isn't that more of a problem for american society, since it means it's not just a certain subset of people that are put in danger by it?
 
If the cops are just indiscriminately killing unarmed people isn't that more of a problem for american society, since it means it's not just a certain subset of people that are put in danger by it?
That's when they bust out the "He was a criminal that tortured a pregnant woman, was high on drugs, and did porn." to justify it being okay that he was murdered. Some people feel the police hurting or shooting someone dead is always justified, because they are the police, and if the police shoot you, you either did something wrong, or previously did something wrong that warrants such use of force. This is actually how some people believe.
 
I mean, community police departments OBVIOUSLY need some reworking/retraining/shaking up, but is right now the time to be talking about funding such an effort? Nooo it is not.

--Patrick
 
That's when they bust out the "He was a criminal that tortured a pregnant woman, was high on drugs, and did porn." to justify it being okay that he was murdered. Some people feel the police hurting or shooting someone dead is always justified, because they are the police, and if the police shoot you, you either did something wrong, or previously did something wrong that warrants such use of force. This is actually how some people believe.
The one that gets me a lot - I won't say the most, because all of these things suck and I can't pick one that I hate the most - is the old "he was known by the police department." Ok, so he was known by the police department, so what? I was known by the Whitman County Sheriff's office for 10 years. I was known by the Pullman PD for 15 years. I was known by the Wazzu PD for 7 years. Being known by cops - even in their official capacities - cannot be used as an excuse for those cops to execute someone. When I backed into another vehicle (unoccupied), and drove off without leaving a note or any insurance info, the cops came and picked me up and got a statement from me. They didn't kill me, because I'd committed a crime and was known by them.
 
This is actually how some people believe.
Frankly, that's the best case scenario.

Because right now i'm pretty sure those are just excuses they came out with because they can't actually admit in public they just don't want to see cops punished for hurting minorities.
 
What we need is MORE SERVICES!

In a recent video, I forget specifically which, but a city police chief complained about how much people ask of the police. (paraphrasing) "A man trying to kill himself? Us. Homeless guy freaking out downtown? Us. A mentally unfit man at the beach? Us. A kid shop lifting a carton of milk? Us. A man shooting his wife? Us. Investigating a serial killer? Us. We have to do nearly everything and are expected to know how to handle it all."

This is what I think people mean by "Defund the Police". We are not asking for that money to just vanish into thin air. We want the police to get less money and focus on what they are supposed to focus on. ENFORCEMENT.
Every time a city cuts a service they once provided, they always dump that service on the cops to handle it. We need to rewind that by shrinking the police and bringing back services that act as a sort of buffer between police and society, with police being the "last resort" when violence or breaking the law is inevitable or just a support crew when others need help. It works fine with other services like Fire Departments and EMS, so why can't we get services for say mental health, homelessness, drug rehabilitation, job services, etc using some of the the millions (or in some case BILLIONS!) the police get every year? Let's get people that's entire job is to uplift those faltering and try to bring them to a better way, rather then just throwing the cop at it who puts the dude in jail because it's the only thing cops are really supposed to do when someone is "problematic".

This CAN be achieved without defunding the police, if it's handled differently. It all sort of depends on how you want to approach things and how you want to name things.
Right now, you're expecting pretty much the same people to be social worker, mental health worker, first line child protective service, traffic enforcer, community advocate, emergency responder, rapid response team, etc etc.
You can say "let's slim down the police to being just one or two of those", but historically, that isn't necessarily sensible. Carl Winslow, the fat guy walking down the street who knows all the kids in the neighborhood, is a cop, too - he was a (negative) stereotype of a black cop even! That type of officer has just almost disappeared.
You can defund the police and create a whole bunch of new agencies (or upgrade existing ones) to work alongside them, or you can re-organize the police to incorporate different departments. One isn't necessarily better than the other.
Of course, proposing "let's give the cops more money (for reform and education)" right now is a pretty bad idea, luckily no bigtime Democratic politician is making that kind of dimwitted oh whoops.
Anyway, asking one group of uniformed men to be navy, army, and airforce all at once doesn't work, and you'll have to split 'm in three and teach one group to handle planes, one to handle boats, and one to handle tanks - otherwise you just get people trying to use ships in the desert.
Beat cops walking down the streets (being pillars of the community, giving aid, knowing everyone, doing a bit of parental control, etc) aren't even armed in many countries - and they don't need to be (UK, Belgium, France),.... When things escalate to the point someone attacks you or someone pulls a gun, you've already lost as a regular old cop, and you call in reinforcements. being such a gun-riddled country means people might pull out a gun when they're stopped for speeding, so you arm even those guys...And then you're surprised they end up using them.
If a regular cop feels threatened, pull back to your car, call in armed forces/superiors and let them handle it. By the time they arrive, things have quite probably calmed down...And if not, it'll be a lot safer to take a dangerous individual down with professionals there.
 
Y'all, the president has spoken. These anarchists must be stooped. This isn't a game. If Inslee and Durken won't do what needs to be done, he will.
 
General Milley gave a keynote speech today to the National Defense University's Class of 2020 Graduates. It is a good speech overall, but I found the most interesting part to be when he spoke on his role in the church photo-op:
 
<sigh> You know, it's almost like the brass in Seattle just want this thing to keep escalating, or something. So, yesterday, after being forced to abandon the 3rd precinct building, the chief of police, Carmen Best, sent a memo to all of her officers begging and pleading with them to understand that it wasn't her choice to abandon the building, she was forced to by the mayor, and she had to bend to intense political pressure, blah blah blah. Today, there were two meetings - a press conference with the mayor and Chief Best, and a council meeting involving the heads of the protest group and the mayor. During the press conference, Best spent the majority of her portion explaining that she had pulled her officers back, because she had listened to the complaints of the protesters, and she had made the call on their behalf, and she was listening to their wants, and she loved what they wanted but that overnight, when someone had to call 911 for an assualt, it took cops 16 minutes longer than it usually did, because they don't have access to their precinct building anymore. There are two problems with her claim about that 16 minute cal time. First - there was only one call in their precinct overnight, it was for a fire, and the police refused to respond the first time because it was in the CHAZ, and then by the time a second person called to warn them about the fire, they responded and watched someone inside the CHAZ put the fire out and spray down the dumbass who started it with their extinguisher. Second, the cops have been using the scanners to send false info to the protesters for several nights now, claiming that there are Proud Boys loading up at this location or that, trying to incite panic, and etc. After the second meeting, which the mayor left after an hour, the cops pepper sprayed four people as they left the building, completely peacefully, just for existing.
 
Canadians with heads up own asses: At least our cops aren't that bad right?

Native Canadians: Uhhh.

CWHUOA: Ha ha ha, stupid America with their violent cops.

RCMP: Is that a dare?!



His crime, an expired license plate, which by the way is punishable by a fine.
 
"King County cops don't quit, even when a young brother's legit." - Sir Mix-A-Lot
He wasn't wrong. We've spent a lot of time talking about SPD so far, but that doesn't even take into account the Bellevue PD, which is just on the opposite side of Lake Washington from Seattle, where the police completely and utterly failed to actually investigate the disappearance of Sky Metalwalla, because the police chief at the time refused to arrest a "grieving mother," or do anything else to make her "uncomfortable" during interrogations. They've also been caught on camera beating the hell out of people and etc. And then there's the King County Sheriff's department, which is at least as bad as the others, if not worse. The current sheriff swore to clean up the mess of an insanely-openly racist ass-hat that was Sheriff John Urquhart; but she hasn't done shit. They had a deputy back in 2009 who caused a dude a TBI and such severe spinal damage that he never recovered from his injuries and died of them six years later.

The county had to pay out $10M in settlement, because the deputy never identified himself as a cop and he was all in black tactical gear instead of a regular uniform, so the dude was just running from some aggressive asshole that was chasing him in tacticool gear. Deputy Paul shoved him into the wall of the Cinerama so hard he never recovered. Deputy Paul was still on the force as of 2015, at least, and continued to rack up use of force complaints to that point. Oh, and a judge fined the Sheriff's department an additional $300,000 for lying about the circumstances surrounding the investigation into Deputy Paul's use of force. See, the sheriff's department IA said that there was no evidence to suggest that Deputy Paul's actions were criminal, and therefor, he shouldn't be punished. But internal files showed that there'd been no investigation at all.

Honestly, I shouldn't really be surprised about any of this, given everything I've witnessed first hand living in Washington, and the various things I've discovered about the corruption in my own region through our state's Odyssey portal; but we have some really fucking bad cops out here.
 
And tonight it was Portland that popped off, again. Didn't catch the start of it, by the time I got back into Twitch, there was smoke and gas everywhere, and pepper pellet and rubber bullet fire going off like firecrackers. Plus the cops were playing more of that sadistic Simon Says that they're so fond of, where one group chased the protesters into another group, and the chasers were yelling at them to move and the line were yelling at them to stop; so they couldn't follow both instructions and got wailed on, gassed, and hit with concussion grenades again. Oh, and the main streamer was, once again, complaining about the cops aiming at his nuts, because rupturing one person's testicle and eight peoples' eyes so far hasn't been enough chaos for these complete and utter fuckwads.
 
I know he caught a lot of hell for his opinions on trans people in his latest specials, but one thing Chappelle excels at is being honest about what he's thinking. Not a lot of laughs, but well worth watching IMO.
 
Top