Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I was promised a recession.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Consistently wrong since 2002

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Let’s finish the job.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

It’s the corruption, stupid.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Concerning the Chauvin Verdict

Concerning the Chauvin Verdict

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(Weighty material to start the day, so I’ll put up a respite thread as soon as I can.)

Surprisingly, the saner portions of the right-wing ecosystem seem to have decided to cut their losses:

While the people with the most to lose doubled down:

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Just gotta say, I have always despised the use of the word “justice” in these contexts. There is no justice for the dead.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    So I woke up, jumped out of bed, was out of the shower with a half-cup of coffee in me before I realized I’d jumped an hour before the alarm went off. I can’t even see straight, but I’m counting on anger to keep me alert enough to work today.

  8. 8.

    prostratedragon

    Justice is always conditional, because of time. But maybe “accountability” does better at expressing what we can and must do.

  9. 9.

    Gvg

    @mrmoshpotato: white people who think this is only happening to “others” are delusional. Corrupt power such as out of controlling police forces are dangerous to everyone. One reason for being against police brutality is that they are dangerous to YOU too.

    There will be video showing this at some point. I hope someone gets heard making this connection and not just everyone assuming it is a one off rogue police officer. It is in everyone’s self interest to have a decent, fair non bullying police force.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    It was the video of firehouses that brought about the end of segregation. Who knows what this video will bring?

  12. 12.

    debbie

    @Gvg:

    Never send to know who the bell tolls for; it tolls for thee.

    I don’t think these videos will be fading from public memory anytime soon.

  14. 14.

    prostratedragon

    From The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson, Movement VII: “I Can’t Breathe” –Eric Garner. The wikipedia article about the work includes some remarks from the director of the UMich Men’s Glee Club about how he helped his singers prepare for the world premier of the piece a few years ago. The evidence is that his methods succeeded, but I wonder whether those preparations would need to be the same now. There are several performances on youtube, including the Michigan one; also, Morehouse, Nebraska, and the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus.

  15. 15.

    AndoChronic

    There was much rejoicing out front and back doors here on the northside of Minneapolis after the verdict was read!

  16. 16.

    Gvg

    @debbie: Exactly. First they came for the communists, and I wasn’t a communist, so I said nothing…..and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.

    Black Americans have it the worst, but there is a whole list. Different cops have personal lists etc. it’s not safe. The cop worship, they can do no wrong has to be broken. Cops are just human. There will always be bad ones. It is a system problem when you try to cover it up and never admit a flaw, like some governments have tried. It is healthy when you have a real investigation, and just fire a bad cop who does something. Charge them if it rises to that level. You should normally be firing long before it reaches charging level. And then the other cops should just keep doing their jobs. When a plumber for example commits murder, it does not mean all other plumbers are bad. The cop unions have fallen into a Soviet type of corruption, defending all killings with lies. That actually implies most of them are corrupt too. We are in a bad place.

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction”

    If nothing else, let this please be the end of people taking at face value what the police tell us.

  22. 22.

    hueyplong

    I hadn’t seen a Carlson clip in a while.  It looks like he is consciously copying the orange makeup look.  WTF?  Is that a thing?

    It will be striking when Hugh Hewitt does it.

  23. 23.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I considered clicking on Tucker but decided I didn’t want to start my day that way. Judging from the absence of news about violence, I assume the Twin Cities were calm overnight.

  24. 24.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I just finished reading transcript of Biden’s address on the conviction of the murderer of Floyd. Halfway through, I realized just what I was reading. A profound, deeply thought out statement on the state of our nation in regard to racial injustice. And then I tried to imagine what the words would be if it was Trump speaking. And I just could not. He would have denied reality, and made it all about himself. We had a sociopath in the White House for four years, and the contrast is so stark, it is at times still shocking.

  26. 26.

    Skepticat

    The photo of Chauvin being led away with his hands cuffed behind his back made my bad, vindictive side think that if there were true justice, they’d throw him on the floor face down and kneel on his neck.

  31. 31.

    PST

    @Gvg:

    white people who think this is only happening to “others” are delusional.

    This is not widely enough appreciated. The greater frequency and lethality of police violence against Black people obscures the fact that the rest of us also benefit directly from accountability. In fact, the majority of people shot and killed by police in this country are white. (I’m not claiming that these are all unjustified.) Any caste given a legal monopoly on the use of deadly force must be rigorously held to high standards in the treatment of those they serve, the powerful and powerless alike. This verdict makes us all a little safer.

  34. 34.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid:

    Nothing’s happened to me. I’m just sitting here having my iftar meal.

    Baud’s just being Baud. I made (well, attempted, I guess) a joke (on the Super League thread) about doing a wellness check on you, wot wiv Liverpool looking — for a few minutes/hours — like it might leave the Premier League.

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    @hueyplong:

    It will be striking when Hugh Hewitt does it.

    I have to confess, I have seen orange-y (sort of) cream cheese, but only after the lox have been sitting on it for a bit.

  38. 38.

    leeleeFL

    @mrmoshpotato: He did not surprised me as much as Jeanne Pirro!  I mean to  say, she maybe really learned something as a Judge, in spite of herself!

  39. 39.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    If Fucker Carlson thinks Chauvin did no wrong then Carlson should be cool with someone stepping on his neck like Chauvin did to Flyod. After all Carlson is a manly man and assuredly he isn’t afraid or anything.

  41. 41.

    WereBear

    @leeleeFL: He did not surprised me as much as Jeanne Pirro!  I mean to  say, she maybe really learned something as a Judge, in spite of herself!

     
    They can learn, but only as camouflage. They do not change or grow, except in very rare instances.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    The Florida legislature passed a controversial anti-riot bill last week that’s expected to soon be signed into law by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. Now, experts say other states are following Florida’s lead, with a wave of bills that expand on the definition of riots, criminalizing protesters with harsher penalties, and potentially threatening free speech.
    A new USA Today report shows that similar laws — which have been criticized as racially biased and come amid ongoing mass protests against police killings — are being or have recently been considered in states including Iowa, Kentucky, Arizona, and Tennessee.
    In Florida, HB1 broadens the definition of a riot and increases penalties for crimes committed during one. Critics say it criminalizes peaceful assembly.

    Amusing that all our anti-cancel culture and free speech defenders on the Right are carefully ignoring the fact that conservatives are passing state laws all over the country that criminalize assembly and political speech.
    Actual, brand new criminal laws designed to suppress citizen assembly and political speech and our free speech warriors remain silent.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    A new crime of “mob intimidation,” defined as three or more people “acting with a common intent” forcing or threatening to force another person from taking a viewpoint against their will, is created by the bill. It is punishable as a first-degree misdemeanor, and bail is denied until first court appearance for anyone charged with the crime.

    The bystanders who yelled at police to get off Floyd’s neck could have been charged criminally under this law and hauled away prior to one of them taking the video that convicted the police officer.

    “Three or more people” will scoop up every single one of the gatherings we have seen around police where police are filmed. Bans them. Imposes a criminal penalty and guarantees jail time with no bail until an initial appearance.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    forcing or threatening to force another person from taking a viewpoint against their will,

    They’re all so fucking stupid too. What does this even mean? What is anyone even supposed to do with that? Even if police and prosecutors and judges wanted to do the right thing they’re being given garbage to work with. How do you force someone to take a viewpoint?
    It’s just an arrest engine. It’s designed to impossible to apply in a reasonable way.

  48. 48.

    Cameron

    @Kay: This sounds like a gross perversion of First Amendment protections.  Doesn’t mean that SCOTUS won’t find it A-OK.

  49. 49.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Seems like that will be applied to abortion clinic protesters with verve!

     

    ETA and Ken got there first!

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Cameron:

    There’s a whole slew of identical bills in states. Ohio just introduced one. Some conservative think tank filled with the unemployable adult children of donors churned this poor quality junk out and they’re putting the same new criminal law in all over the country.

    Actually criminalizes speech and assembly- as opposed to people being mean to other people on Twitter.

  53. 53.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WereBear:

    They can learn, but only as camouflage. They do not change or grow, except in very rare instances. 

    Which means they cannot learn.

  54. 54.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: That’s exactly what I thought! How do you force someone to take a viewpoint against their will? How can a court even interpret that law? It sounds to me as if most of the law is unconstitutional, but with conservative judges who knows what kind of rulings we’ll get.

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    @Kay: (and your related comments)

    These “laws” are the kinds of things you read about in nations run by dictators.

    The entire RWMF/Rethug power structure can’t die off soon enough for me. Every fucking one of them.

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Hannity still hasn’t had himself waterboarded!

    And the Doughy Pantload probably still owes Cole that $1000 from the bet he lost.

    OK, so it was Juan Cole, but that’s close enough for me.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    @Soprano2:   Pack that Court.

    We cannot risk the decisions this illegitimate USSC could make.  They are flagrantly political (although occasionally the pleasant surprise, albeit still scary as hell).

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    It’s all performance for the base. They’re all walking around with a giant chip on their shoulder because they are big, coddled crybabies and they are convinced people are “forcing” them to adopt viewpoints.

    I knew they were full of shit on “free speech” but I’m amused it was so quickly shown to be true.

    This is the real thing. Real suppression of speech and assembly. Six months in jail- that’s a mandatory minimum so even if you got a judge who isn’t a Right wing nut the judge has no discretion.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    In response to abuse by police the best conservative minds in the country came up with a law that absolutely guarantees more police abuse of black people. They’ll now have a pretext to engage with every gathering of three or more people, you know, like the gatherings of people with cell phones who record police abuses.

    All the witnesses in Minnesota could have been arrested under this law. The “viewpoint” they were “forcing” was “get off his neck, you’re killing him”.

  62. 62.

    debbie

    These fuckers. Glenn Beck is skeptical that the 12 jurors all really came to a unanimous verdict so quickly. He is also distressed that no one spoke of Chauvin’s family yesterday.

  63. 63.

    Feathers

    The FOP flip flop shows how situational and tactical all right wing outrage is. Before the verdict, fight to the death for the honor of policing. After the verdict, Chauvin dishonored the noble brotherhood of policing with his cowardly actions and we have always believed this to be so. It really is Soviet. Amazing the word didn’t get through to Fox.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That clip is 22 secs and the crucial moments. Tucker collapsing into Batman villain laughter is about 15 seconds in.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    If you’re a police officer and you want to murder a citizen and get away with it first call for backup and have all the potential witnesses arrested under this new criminal law.

    I actually think it’s just stupidity. They were doing their usual performance art for the base and they inadvertently put in a real criminal sanction for political speech and assembly. Every once in a while the low quality work has real negative impact, when they venture into the criminal code.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    That’s why you want a competent, committed defense. Chauvin had a fair trial. His attorney worked hard. He did the best one could do with that defendant and that set of facts. I knew he would have a competent defense. If there is anyone who knows who is and is not a competent defense attorney it is police officers.

    The prosecution is better- they work harder- when they actually have to prove their case. They CHARGE better with a competent defense bar, because they know they can’t get away with bullshit charges.

    Both sides have to work or none of it works.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    Good, the NYTimes has it and I was wrong- it’s 34 states:

    The measures are part of a wave of new anti-protest legislation, sponsored and supported by Republicans, in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests swept the country following the death of George Floyd. The Minneapolis police officer who killed Mr. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was convicted on Tuesday on murder and manslaughter charges, a cathartic end to weeks of tension.

    Is this…cancel culture? Or does that only apply when Andrew Sullivan pens his 50th racist screed and is paid a million dollars for it?

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I actually think “spectacular” is not what you want in a prosecutor. I thought they were effective partly because they weren’t histrionic and dramatic. They just meticulously and repetitively laid it all out, whoch is hard! It’s hard work. I was relieved that they let the thing speak for itself and trusted the jury enough not to direct them how to feel. It’s discipline. They kept it really tight.

  69. 69.

    Edmund Dantes

    @Gvg: Audit the Audit (whole genre of 1sr amendment auditors) on YouTube. It’s just white people encounters tend to end short of the summary execution level. But you will still see white people being harassed, cops on power trips, etc.

  70. 70.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Poor word choice. What you said is what I meant. Am I wrong to think they were so effective they made the defense appear incompetent?

  71. 71.

    Edmund Dantes

    @rikyrah: unfortunately you will never win the war in why her being shot, and this is the perfect scenario for a taser with a lot of people (cop shooting at two people in close proximity).

    The fact he came out and instantaneously went for his gun and did nothing to try to intervene other than using his gun in a situation where lots of innocents people were put at risk is just seen as “right” policing. Plus she “had a knife”.

    Trust me. Even though is another example of cops shoot right away when there are other alternatives.

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    @Phylllis:

    There is nothing honest about fucker carlson. Nothing.

    There is nothing honest about faux news. Nothing.

    They, and far too many others are dishonest every second of every day, using hate and dishonesty in every context because that is all they know. They revel in hate and dishonesty, they have convinced themselves that hate and dishonesty are the by words of human existence. Of the little reality that they know, they have distorted everything to fit into their tiny world of hate and dishonesty. They are among the worst humans, they are the people that hate for hate’s sake, they are the people who spread hate and dishonesty from their every pore and do so about their fellow humans. They are unfortunately a part of humanity that takes negative traits we all have and elevate them to the forefront of their lives, somehow believing that this makes them not worse but far better. It doesn’t. They infect others with their hate and make life far worse for no reason other than hate is their rational for living.

  75. 75.

    Geminid

    Norfolk, Virginia’s  Police Department made the national am radio news just now. The department fired an officer for contributing to Kyle Rittenhouse’s bail fund. I think I heard he was a captain.

  76. 76.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:

    Yes.

     

    Justice would be if it didn’t happen in the first place.

    Justice would be if it wasn’t so important to some people that hate is their first and only emotion.

    The only true justice here would be for DC to have someone else hold him down by a knee till he died. And that’s not justice that’s revenge. And it never, ever solves anything. It’s hate for hate’s sake. It doesn’t fix or change anything, it continues stupidity and hate.

    Accountability is the only thing that is fair. Be accountable for your actions and speech and hold others accountable for their actions and speech. As a great man once said, be accountable for yourself and hold others to the same standard. That’s humanity, not hate and an eye for an eye. Justice is living like everyone matters equally.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I think there’s sometimes a misunderstanding of what the defense is doing. They’re not the flip side of the prosecution. Prosecutors have the burden. Defense’s job to make them prove every bit of it. They’re doing two very different things.

    There can be a defense that is a sort of narrative – proving the defendant innocent, so a direct counter to the state’s case- but that wasn’t …available in this case :)

    IMO we’ve gotten a little off track in this country with how we view criminal trials. They’re not civil trials. The victim is not a party and the case isn’t brought on behalf of the victim- the injury is to all of us, the public, hence it’s “State of Minnesota v Policeman” instead of “Floyd v Policeman”

    Do you think about this case differently if it’s in that context? That police abuse, this crime, was against all of us? Because that’s the idea. It’s a better idea, in my view, than “justice for Floyd’s family” because it brings in the whole public as the people harmed. We’re all harmed when police murder citizens. We’re all on the “don’t murder citizens” team.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    The idea of the victim as a kind of party to the case came out of the victim’s rights movement- crime victims were being ignored and the big legal machine was just rolling over them. But we lose something important when we make it about THIS victim, something that is vital to BLM, incidentally.

    If we want it to be policy, addressing systemic abuse, we need it to be “The People versus the Offending policeman”. The original idea is far superior to the “justice for the victim” frame.

    The complaints of the victims rights people were valid, it’s just that one has to pay attention to what is lost if we proceed under that idea. We lose a lot. We lose the public interest that is the real grounding of criminal prosecution.

  80. 80.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I see that now.

    It’s hard not to personalize the issues. Also, I’ve been brainwashed by too many seasons of Law and Order.

  81. 81.

    Dan B

    @Gvg: I, a Cis white guy, went to the local police station to submit a report that my bookkeeper had stolen from me.  They behaved like I was a threat.  The officers were middle aged white guys who didn’t look like anyone in this minority-majority neighborhood.  They’d be at the top of my list for moving their funding to community organizations.  Intimidation is not policing.

    And *ucker Carlson needs a long rest in a looney bin, preferably isolated from other residents.

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    @Dan B: ​

    I, a Cis white guy, went to the local police station to submit a report that my bookkeeper had stolen from me. They behaved like I was a threat.

    That’s pretty amazing, to treat someone reporting a crime as a threat. I certainly believe you, and hope that eventually that whole process worked out OK for you.

    Typically those reporting a crime to the police are not the criminals… strange that they were totally involved in fear of the surrounding citizenry.

    The other day I listened to the audio of a police interaction with a driver the police had pulled over… the cop was so terrified his speech could barely be understood, so much quaver in his voice from the tension and anxiety the cop was feeling.

    Who does a job that they fear so much?

  83. 83.

    cckids

    @rikyrah:

    No Justice.

    Just accountability.

    I believe it’s Terry Prachett who has Death say “There’s no justice. There’s just us”.

    We have to keep working.

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