The Rochester NY PD has distinguished itself once again by pepper-spraying (or, as they reported, using “an irritant”) on a 9 year-old girl in handcuffs. Now, full disclaimer: call me weak, but I can’t stomach watching a 9 year-old being pepper sprayed, so I didn’t look at the video. My wife is built of sterner stuff than me, and for a variety of reasons, she’s much more qualified to observe what happened, so this is secondhand from her watching the video:
The police were called to a full-blown domestic disturbance. One apparent factor in the disturbance was a mother who was out of control yelling at passers-by, and at the 9 year-old. The 9 year-old had run away from home and, when caught a short distance from her house, threw a temper tantrum which included kicking officers. They brought her to the ground and handcuffed her. She was loaded into a police car after being sprayed. The police ability to process only two modes of interaction — “comply, citizen” and “here’s your punishment for noncompliance” — were on full display. The daughter apparently claimed that her mother had been stabbed by her domestic partner, a male who was not in the house, and it looked like there might have been blood on the mom’s clothes. After a mental hygiene arrest and trip to the hospital, the girl was released to the custody of her parents.
Unlike the case of Daniel Prude, whose killing in police custody happened last March but was only revealed in September, this event happened Friday afternoon and was reported quickly. In the aftermath of Prude’s death, a couple of different initiatives that would dispatch mental health workers instead of police to calls like this one were started. According to the Monroe County Executive, Adam Bello, the county’s team was available for dispatch but was not called. Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said that that the city’s crisis team wasn’t summoned because the event generated a 911 call. (Note that any statement by Lovely Warren should be treated as a lie until proven otherwise.)
After the Prude death, Police Chief La’Ron Singletary quit. (He’s also sued the city, claiming that Mayor Warren, who’s also under indictment for campaign finance violations, told him to lie about Prude’s death.) The new interim police chief has suspended all the cops involved. The case will be investigated by our new Police Accountability Board, which was established by a ballot initiative. A lawsuit by the police union seeking to strip it of disciplinary powers has resulted in a preliminary injunction against the PAB being able to discipline cops, and that case is still working its way through the courts.
I thought this quote from City Council President Loretta Scott and Vice President Willie Lightfoot pretty much sums up the issue here:
“It is clear that law enforcement is not properly trained to respond to mental health crises. However, that does not relieve them of their responsibility to serve with empathy and compassion. “
In case it wasn’t clear from the way the cops treated them, the child and her mom are black and live in a poor part of town. Even though it’s 25 degrees and snowing off and on, protests are underway. And this is a good cartoon.
Ohio Mom
One of the recent efforts of one of our local disability agencies is an education program, “What should you do if you get stopped by the police?”
They did not seem to appreciate my complaint that their energies should be directed to, “Why you should never call the police or otherwise involve them in your life.”
Now I realize that these are two different scenarios, getting stopped by the police versus calling them, but I think it is always a mistake to teach that the Police Are Our Friends. Half of all people who are killed by the police have a mental disability (includes mental illness and developmental disability).
debbie
I don’t know about her ethics, but the mayor’s statement was very heartfelt: “That could have been my child.”
Old Man Shadow
@Ohio Mom:
I would advise anyone to never talk to the police beyond the statement, “I wish to call my lawyer” and to never call the police unless you ascertain that there is a likelihood of severe bodily harm or death already or in the immediate future.
I’m sure there are the proverbial good guys out there who want to and try to protect and serve, but there is no way for us to tell who is a good cop and who is a bad cop. And adding the possibility of a racist reactionary with guns and near total immunity to using those guns almost never makes a situation better.
Baud
Given what happened at the Capitol, maybe it’s time to retire the ACAB meme.
Glad the child wasn’t killed.
croaker
Didn’t watch can’t deal w torture especially children. Lock the Bastages up
skerry
During the incident, an adult police officer told the girl to “stop acting like a child.” Her reply, “I am a child.”
Patricia Kayden
I guess it’s easier to pepper spray a defenseless child than defend the Capitol from marauding White Supremacists.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Ohio Mom: My son is developmentally disabled. I’m terrified by the rate at which people like him are hurt and killed by police.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I listened to this last night and had to stop because I started crying.
MomSense
It is common to have a police officer or officers accompany social workers on wellness checks and other types of calls. The difference is that these calls often come in directly to the social/case worker or team. I personally would not want to respond to a domestic dispute with a possible stabbing without back up. Part of the problem is that we just don’t have the staffing and the mechanism to have social workers respond to all of these calls. Social workers are called when the subject is already receiving services from the social worker or agency. It would be great to have funding for social workers or peer support people to staff every shift with police.
Social workers and LEO could have complimentary skills if we could change the state contracts and work together.
A lot of hospitals now have peer support teams and they really enhance patient care especially with mental health and substance abuse – and those are things ED staff don’t really want or have the time or space to deal with adequately.
There are plenty of examples in other settings we could try. We need some state governments to set up pilot programs.
Lobby your municipal and state reps!
skerry
NPR (I know, I know) is reporting that the mayor has suspended the officers
West of the Rockies
Seems like mental health liaisons should be on site and have a strong voice in how such interactions are conducted. If it is decided that a person (man, woman, teen, or child) must be apprehended, conveying them to a waiting car can present problems. If four adult men grapple with a child, it’s going to look bad. Zip ties look bad. Tasers and pepper spray and other so-called less-than-lethal methods look (and are) bad.
We need a national conversation conducted by experts in multiple fields (mental health, health care, law enforcement, race relations, etc) to figure out how we humanely help a fellow human who is struggling.
Doug R
Our autistic spectrum daughter who is in her 20s has on occasion left the house in the middle of the night not in the summertime. Our only option was basically the police. So far they’ve found her each time.
It’s the RCMP, the same detachment that had that female officer dragging a depressed woman by her hair out of her dorm at UBCO.
What we do need is more options besides police. If we fund that, we won’t need so many cowboys with guns.
Ohio Mom
polyorchnid octopunch:
Me too. Ohio Son (23 and on the spectrum) is rarin’ to go out in the world by himself.
Before Covid, he’d discovered that with Lyft, the world was his (or at least, our metropolitan area). That is the best thing about our current lifestyle of hunkering down st home, he’s not going anywhere and my nervous system is getting a reprieve.
West of the Rockies
Going further, if a person is violent, they may end up hurt. If you’re going to bludgeon someone with a fire extinguisher, fuck you, you’re going to be stopped.
Edmund Dantes
@Baud: how about you don’t try to talk for other people. There are good reasons why activists have come up with it.
Your second paragraph says a lot as to one of the reasons why. We have to be thankful the child wasn’t killed.
Starboard Tack
Maybe OT
No Surprise: TPM reports Tim Ryan running for Senate.
Baud
@Edmund Dantes:
I talk only for myself. I don’t have to sign on to what the activists decide.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: There was a big uproar over a local BLM-friendly restaurant having some “ACAB” signage up inside their place a few months ago. Even after literal days of patient explanation it was still causing problems for them and their black employees were being threatened, so they took it down.
I agree, it’s not a particularly helpful slogan. I get it and agree with it, but it’s tonedeaf the same way “Defund the Police” or “Abolish ICE” is. And especially not helpful after 1/6 when we had a few actual good cops (or good in the moment) keep our government intact.
Anya
New York has the worst police departments in the nation and that’s a scary thing to say. I feel like blue states have some of the worst and lethal police departments and their unions are run by psychopaths.
Ohio Mom
Doug R:
A few months ago, in a suburb near me, a long-haired white autistic young man was on a walk, barefoot (in not exactly barefoot weather), carrying a hair pick he was using as a fidget.
A cop saw him and convinced the hair pick was a knife, ordered him to stop and put him through a few paces. After putting his hands up and I forget what else, he apparently ran out of compliance and stopped obeying.
So the cop tased him. According to the newspaper (as I remember it), he asked the cop, “Why’d you do that?” “You have a knife.” “It’s just a pick, man.”
Putting aside the question, What’s illegal (in this open carry state no less) about walking around by yourself with a knife?, the police supervisors were very apologetic to the young fellow’s parents (oops, white taxpayers who pay our salaries!) and promised to institute all sorts of training ‘so something like this will never happen again.’
But really, if you can’t figure out someone bopping along a street by himself can be left alone to mind his own business, or that you don’t need to, absolutely shouldn’t pepper spray a young child, I don’t have a lot of hope training to going to make a dent in your thick skull.
West of the Rockies
@MisterForkbeard:
“… good in the moment…”
That probably describes all of us. We all have moments where we wish we could have summoned more grace, more forgiveness, better words and actions. But there seems to be an industry-wide problem in LE.
I think maybe requiring a BA/BS to be a sworn officer is a good idea. Six months of us-against-the-world academy experience ain’t cutting it for too many officers.
Yutsano
@Ohio Mom: Oh my God. You just made me worried about my friend. He can function pretty much independently except he will break into dancing just randomly. To me (because I know him) it’s one of his charms as he’s a musician and it suits him. But now I’m left wondering how a cop would interpret this and…I just went scared. He’s never had any previous issues like that that I know of, but all it would take is one bad cop and things could go south really badly. At least if he gets arrested here all he has to do is demand to call the nearest Dutch embassy and he has no further obligation to talk after that. It’s the what happens before that that I’m suddenly worried about.
cliosfanboy
ACAB?????
Chetan Murthy
@Ohio Mom: I would hope your neighbors sued the bejesus out of the police department. B/c while it won’t help much, it is all that we have, to force them to start doing something about brutality. If enough police departments get sued for enough $$, eventually their funders (city governments) will do something about it.
Sure ain’t gonna happen any other way: of that I’m pretty convinced. Notwithstanding all the excellent work by BLM and other protestors. Notwithstanding all the PABs and all. The only way this ends is when it’s too damn expensive to continue.
I’m sorry to be so downer.
P.S. I -do- think that all the protests make it more likely that court cases against brutal cops and the departments and unions that support them, are more likely to win. That’s the way that, I think, these protests help. It’s important work, and I’m certainly not saying otherwise.
Chetan Murthy
@West of the Rockies:
I remember that “too high IQ” is disqualifying in some (maybe many) jurisdictions. ISTR there was a suit brought by a po-po candidate who scored too high, and was thereby rejected. He lost the suit.
Yeah, that shit’s gotta stop, too.
Chetan Murthy
@cliosfanboy: All Cops Are Bad.
Ohio Mom
Cliosfanboy:
I believe that is All Cops Are Bastards.
ETA: Bad, Badtards, what’s the diff?
WaterGirl
@cliosfanboy: “All Cops Are Bastards”
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
I don’t think lack of training is the only, or even the main, problem. The bigger problem is that too many people, and especially too many cops, see the police in terms of us and them. When the understood mission of the police is to keep BIPOC in line, we’re never going to get good police no matter how much training we give them. They’ll learn to give the expected answers during training and go back to cracking skulls the moment they leave it. Even worse, too much of police training is handled by former police who pass on the us vs. them culture. Demanding a 4 year degree will just give them 4 years of indoctrination before they start on the beat instead of 6 months.
cliosfanboy
Ah. Thank you
Geminid
@West of the Rockies: Germany cops are trained 2 1/2 years at Police Academies. Some earn Bachelors and Masters degrees.
Nora Lenderbee
@Ohio Mom: All cops are French bread?
dexwood
@Baud: Happy to do so when good cops everywhere make it a regular practice to drop a dime on bad cops.
taumaturgo
Very few issues bring unity and bipartisanship to conservatives on both sides of the aisle than law and order enforcement, especially the kind used in the poor working neighborhoods, not the polite policing of the suburbs or white rioters while breaking and entering the Senate and House offices.
Constance Reader
““It is clear that law enforcement is not properly trained to respond to 9 year old children.” There, FIFY.
John Revolta
@Chetan Murthy: Trouble is, in a lot of places the lawsuits against the cops get paid by the City (i.e. taxpayers) and don’t cost the cops a dime. The cities just pass the cost along as the price of doing business.
Gvg
@Roger Moore: radically changing where the cops come from might break the current old cops train the new cops to be the same bad attitude problems. I think this is too simplistic but we should think about it further.
West of the Rockies
@Roger Moore:
Perhaps more strenuous psych evaluations for candidates should he part of the equation.
LE is ugly work. I did it for 13 years as a civilian (non-sworn) evidence tech and then CSI. You see ugliness upon ugliness. It can change you, make you more cynical. It’s why I got out (and went to teach CC English for 14 years).
I knew good cops. I knew bad cops. DWB is a thing. I left over 20 years ago and regret it never. But the solution is complex.
geg6
I just can’t even with these damn cops. WTF is wrong with them? And yes, I know they are white supremacist thugs, but what is this need to visit violence against kids and the mentally ill? I don’t get it. Doesn’t make me think they are badasses. It makes me think they are vicious cowards.
Edmund Dantes
@West of the Rockies: also the “warrior cop” training program needs to be banned and thrown into the dustbin.
A Ghost to Most
“I ain’t never goin’ back to Buttholeville.”
Roger Moore
@Gvg:
I agree that training cops differently has to be part of the solution. But requiring a 4 year degree won’t do it if the degree program is staffed by people who come from the existing system, which seems likely to be the case. We need a really radical break from the current system in order to clear out the people who accept the thin blue line mentality.
The really hard part of all this is that it’s going to be nearly impossible to do just because of the numbers. How in hell are you going to throw everyone out and replace them all, all at once? Where are the hundreds of thousands of new police who haven’t been corrupted by the current policing system supposed to come from? I mean this as a serious question that anyone who proposes we need to get rid of all the cops and start over from scratch needs to answer. Even replacing a single medium-sized police department is going to be very difficult. And what is going to happen to the city where this happens while you’re rolling out the new police department?
This kind of thing is why some kind of reform that centers around throwing out the bad cops is so attractive. It at least seems vaguely possible to root out the worst of the worst and put the rest of the department on notice that they might be next if they don’t get with the program.
Bill Arnold
Hive mind, WV Governor Jim Justice said “We need to quit counting the egg-sucking legs on the cows and count the cows and just move.”
From context, “egg-sucking” means something like “motherfucking”, right?
And the whole thing means something like “don’t get bogged down in the details; keep it simple”?
Help!
Ruckus
@Edmund Dantes:
It’s been in use for at least 8 decades, I doubt that it’s going to be discarded anytime soon. And because it’s actually about people there is both truth to it and a reason to possibly consider that it maybe inflaming the situation.
And personally I see both sides. Because I’ve sort of been on both sides and know that sometimes the law is all there is and that when push comes to shove, there are only so many responses that work, and they often don’t.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
All Cops Are Bastards.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I think the root of it is a flawed idea of policing that is sadly a big part of a lot of police training. The basic idea is that when there’s a chaotic situation, the police are supposed to come in and get things under control. That is sensible as far as it goes, but they are further taught that the way to do this is to take charge and basically boss everyone around. People who don’t listen to them are seen as part of the problem and need to be forced into compliance.
This is obviously a disastrous approach to dealing with an emotionally fraught situation. People are all wound up and not in the mood to take orders from a bunch of cops who show up and don’t really understand what’s going on. They want the cops to come in and help them deal with the situation, but the cops are taught their first job is to establish themselves as being in charge. It’s very easy for the people to get angry at the cops for barging in and shouting orders instead of listening. The cops then shout orders harder, the people get madder, and the situation quickly spirals out of control.
JDM
As an old white guy, I might feel secure enough in my whiteness to call cops if I was attacked. But I don’t have much confidence in how much help I could possibly receive from guys who can’t handle a handcuffed nine year old girl without violent force.
In other words, I want better cops in my locale, cops who can handle their jobs, and that’s from a purely selfish reason. There’s lots of other reasons to want better cops, too.
jl
@Roger Moore: We need comprehensive police reform, a minimum standard of better and longer training. Maybe Biden could get some standard passed and tell states to get on board if they want federal funding for anything.
I don’t know about other parts of the country, but places in Southern California planned for the police to basically be tactical squads that swooped into problems, beat heads and dragged off bad guys. They’d live in a few big forts and bunkers scattered around town, and emerge whenever a long-range patrol was required to suppress and extract.
Why? Cheaper that way. Now police with that mindset deal with all sorts of things that they are not trained to deal with. Used to be school counselors, social workers, etc., who were trained. But they’re all gone now, because it’s cheaper that way.
It’s a huge mess, on top of the bigotry, racism, and anti-democratic authoritarian attitude.
Anya
I’ve stumbled into an episode of ‘Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates’ and it has Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. What kind of a satan meeting came up with this combination?
Dan B
@taumaturgo: We moved from a 90% white neighborhood to a 10% white neighborhood twelve years ago. The cops here act like Chicago police in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I was treated with hostility. I’m a retired white guy.
The crime rate in our current neighborhood is half that of our previous neighborhood – HALF OR LESS! Violent crime especially!! There is some gang activity three miles south around the high school. The cops probably don’t live in the neighborhood, or the city.
Subsole
@Bill Arnold: Yep. You read it right on both counts.
jl
@JDM: It’s still much rarer to see someone who is not a racial minority, immigrant or young person get brutalized, but it is an increasing problem. Older adult and elderly white women who lip off to cops giving them a fixit ticket get tazed, etc. This kind of mindless police brutality can’t be contained forever.
Also, the list of enemies of established power keeps getting longer and longer. So, more targets for discipline without any consequences.
Baud
@Anya:
Is it the Halloween episode?
Subsole
@Anya: “How could Republicans possibly be the party of white supremacy? They have a brown! And a black! And a woman!”
I may or may not be suffering creeping paranoia when it comes to social messaging and media agendas…
Anya
@Baud: Ha! I don’t know when it was originally aired.
@Subsole: If you only know these three by Henry Louis Gates’ introduction and this show, you would think they’re three honest, dedicated public servants who devoted their lives to serving the public.
trollhattan
@debbie:
I remember a more naive time when Obama said about Trayvon Martin, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon” and was excoriated for being “so divisive.”
Thankfully, shooting and abuse of innocents ended after that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya: I wonder what Paul Ryan had to say about HL Gates when Cambridge police arrested him for being ‘uncooperative’ that time he lost his keys and was locked out of his own house. He was in Congress and hungrily pursuing a national profile at the time.
trollhattan
@Anya:
How did a molten-lava filled void not open the moment the entered the studio? Physics is a lie!
Yutsano
@Dan B:
They don’t. Hell the former police chief got busted for having that big house outside of town. Almost all the Seattle police live in either Pierce or Snohomish County where they can be around other white people and drive the voting statistics even more Republican down there. There used to be a requirement that cops had to live in their jurisdictions but the unions bitched about it (blaming it on “housing costs”) and now they’re all detached from the communities they police. We can’t force them back, but dammit they should be spending actual time in the communities!
trollhattan
@Subsole:
“The black” died (r.i.p. Herman Cain).
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He was probably one of those attacking Obama for being mean to the police. That’s one of the most painful episodes of the Obama presidency. I actually hate that more than the birth certificate stuff.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: Never fear! They still have Tim Scott! Seriously, when is too much going to hit that guy? The harassment by Capitol Police wasn’t enough?
Ella in New Mexico
NOT GONNA WATCH.
PRAYING HER PARENTS OR GUARDIANS SUE.
Anya
I am so tired of all the media profiles of the insurrectionists. We never see profiles like these about the young people who join isis or even become radicalized.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya:
I’d bet a large amount of quatloos this is true, but my google skills aren’t up to the search.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Can you imagine how many drink orders people try to give him at Republican fundraisers?
Even more than “log cabin Republicans” I can’t wrap my head around the notion of black Republicans. Not in 2021. Although they’re welcome to that sheriff dude.
Chetan Murthy
At least attitudes are slowly changing. I remember in 2012-13, after the Mehserle verdict came out (he basically got off — “involuntary manslaughter”, served time in LA county -jail-, not gen pop, protected, paroled after 11mos) that I was having drinks with a friend and his friends, in what I assumed was a liberal crowd in SF. So I made a wry joke about Oskar Grant’s murder and Mehserle getting off. Hooboy, one of my friend’s friends -went- -off- on me about it. Banging on about cops protecting us and all. Fast-forward 8yr, and we all know that there are a SHIT-TON of cops who are bad, and almost all the rest who are more-than-willing to cover for them, violating their oaths in the process.
So there’s that, at least. Not enough, but hey, 8yr, and some attitudes have changed.
These last years (since Trayvon was murdered, and smartphone video became ubiquitous) have really been an education in what Black Americans have undergone these last 150yr (and sure, these last 400+, but let’s focus on what should have been fixed), their incredible patience in the face of adversity.
More than anything else, *patience*.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can’t find anything so maybe he kept his mouth shut.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: Even as recently as a year ago, people would comment at LG&M, arguing that it was just a problem of “bad apples”. Funny, seeing a large-scale police riot in every damn city, with no po-po arrested, seems to have put paid to that misapprehension.
trollhattan
Turtle has decided he needs a Trump inoculation, has extolled Cheney and called MTG “a cancer.”
Way to be leadery, Mitch.
Viva BrisVegas
@Old Man Shadow: I might be imagining it, but I seem to recall an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets, in which the principal detectives, while in character, said almost the exact same thing in an introduction to an episode. It was set up like a public service announcement.
Basically, if you are being questioned by the police, don’t talk, don’t trust anybody, get a lawyer. Not necessarily in that order.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anya:
It apparently first aired 2/12/2019.
https://www.pbs.org/video/roots-in-politics-gdlisx/
Bill Arnold
@Subsole:
Thanks. At least with the Jim Justice statement there was some context (he was saying enact a big COVID-19 stimulus, please) around the idiom to work with.
Frosty Fred
@SiubhanDuinne:
Personally I’m just as glad HLG does shows with lineups like that, I can skip an episode and not miss anyone I want to see.
John Revolta
@Chetan Murthy: I learned 50 years ago from Richard Pryor
UncleEbeneezer
The case will be investigated by our new Police Accountability Board, which was established by a ballot initiative. A lawsuit by the police union seeking to strip it of disciplinary powers has resulted in a preliminary injunction against the PAB being able to discipline cops, and that case is still working its way through the courts.
You actually got disciplinary powers? Wow!! That’s huge. We (Pasadena) are pressing the city to follow up with their vote to create a Civilian Oversight Commission using an IPA (Independent Police Auditor) and the police, unions and their fans are trying to make sure the Commission has absolutely NO INFLUENCE on disciplinary measures for problematic officers. And they will probably win, making the Commission advisory and fairly useless except for stoking public outrage and hopefully a ballot proposition for 2022 that would give us something with more teeth. Of course, our hands are still tightly tied by CA’s Police Officers’ Bill of Rights which really restricts everything.
Dan B
@trollhattan: I wonder how many CoC and old money donors helped raise Mitch’s consciousness?
The man has nothing but power and money on the mind.
Dan B
@Frosty Fred: I remember a recent episode where Henry Louis Gates’ guests found out they were not as white as they believed and one “illegal” immigration crank (monster) had an “illegal” immigrant grandparent. This was revealed after the triumphant story (trope) of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps was spooled out and the hook set.
Patricia Kayden
Martin
@Dan B: Oh, none. Mitch hasn’t been on board with the big lie. He knows it’s going to destroy the party. Not that he’s doing a hell of a lot to stop it, mind you. He’s probably also worried about some Senators getting drawn into Trumps defense strategy of ‘I did it, and I’d do it again!’.
Anya
Watched AOC detail account of hiding from insurrectionists and it made me think about how petrified Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were feeling. These terrorists need to face justice and pay for the terror they’ve caused.
Ken
That would be Senator McConnell, and Representatives Cheney and Greene?
There’s a proverb that more-or-less fits, something about getting one’s own house in order.
Yutsano
@Anya:
Especially Omar. She’s already been a refugee once. Imagine her terror at having to flee danger again.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Why? Capitol Police were complicit in that attack, the fact that were honorable men and women among them is moot. The insurrectionists had police help and it’s another example of just how badly the industry of policing in this country is broken.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: I’m good with “SCAB” (Some Cops Aren’t Bastards). Until it is routine for cops to rat out their racist, authoritarian, and otherwise criminal colleagues, that’s as -far- as we ought to go.
That cops, sworn, SWORN to uphold the law, turn a blind eye to their colleagues’ criming, should be a major scandal. But hey, it’s a day starting with “y”.
Anya
@Yutsano: I didn’t even think about that. That’s horrible to contemplate.
Mary G
Anya
@Mary G: I hope this is not true. You can’t reward someone for covering up the murder of a teenager.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: @Anya: Remember a month ago when somebody who probably looked a lot like Rahm leaked that he was being considered for several cabinet positions?
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was thinking the same thing. Rahm has a lot of friends in the media and he’s been working extra hard to make this happen.
Yutsano
@Anya: Rahm had a connection through Obama. He does not have as strong as one through Biden. The only Emmanuel I could see as an ambassador is his brother the doctor to Israel. And I doubt Biden has considered either there.
But if we’re talking ambassador to China, I bet Biden could convince Gary Locke to go back again.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Anya:
@Yutsano:
Biden has emphasized that everyone who works for him has to show respect for everyone else, and anyone yelling at a colleague or anything like that will be fired on the spot. Rahm wouldn’t last five seconds. and I have a wholly unsubstantiated belief that Joe Biden was on the receiving end of one of Rahm’s famous tantrums, and wouldn’t hire him to be a WH janitor. Plus Rahm is one of the worst people to hire for a diplomatic post, second only to Mike Pompeo.
And as Anya points out, his conduct trying to shield Chicago PD from their responsibility in the death of Laquan McDaniel in this day and age have made him pretty radioactive in Democratic voters’ eyes, so he’s not getting what he thinks he’s entitled to.