Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Not all heroes wear capes.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

In my day, never was longer.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis

Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis

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… The SCORPION unit, launched in 2021, was tasked with tackling rising crime in the city, but has been heavily criticized in the aftermath of the 29-year-old man’s killing. Nichols was brutally beaten on January 7 after a traffic stop. He required hospitalization and died on January 10.

The five Memphis officers who were fired and charged in Nichols’ death all were members of the unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph told CNN on Saturday.

In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, Memphis police said it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate” the unit.

“The officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step,” police said. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.” …

Some city leaders said disbanding the unit is just one step in addressing issues within the police force.

“The community has a lot more questions and a lot more demands,” Memphis City Council Member Patrice Robinson told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday evening.

“We have gotten emails from many citizens in our community, they’re all concerned and they’re expressing exactly what they see and what they want to see in our police department. We really need to investigate and find out what’s going on.” …

If you can’t watch the bodycam video, the AP has a very detailed description here:

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  1. 1.

    sanjeevs

    One of the last of the Tuskegee Airmen, Harold Brown died. What an amazing life he had.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/obituaries/harold-brown-tuskegee-airman-who-faced-a-lynch-mob-dies-at-98.html

    One of 32 Tuskegee Airmen captured during the war, he was imprisoned at a camp near Nuremberg, which the Germans evacuated as American troops advanced. He was then transferred to Stalag VII-A, north of Munich. An armored division led by Gen. George S. Patton liberated them on April 29, 1945.
    When he returned to the South and to Fort Patrick Henry in Virginia, Dr. Brown recalled on the “American Veteran” podcast, “we got off the boat, everything was the same. Patrick Henry was still a segregated base, no changes, no nothing, just the way I left it.”

    The first time I was integrated was in a P.O.W. camp,” Dr. Brown said. “I lived in an integrated base in the military, leave the base and went home to a segregated civilian life.”
     

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    I think we need a rule that anyone who thinks a name like SCORPION is really cool should on no accounts be allowed to start or join such a unit.

    Unless they’re eight years old.

  15. 15.

    Chetan Murthy

    @different-church-lady: This keeps happening every few years (or months), and each time we say the same thing: “hopefully this will be the breaking point”.  And then nothing changes.  Literally nothing.  I think about how I would act if I were stopped by the cops — what would I do, in what manner ?  And the thing is, I know that what they’d see is a brown man, and not a human being.  So really, whether I would emerge unhurt or even alive, is completely out of my hands.

    It’s not a good feeling, and it makes me want to move to a different country — someplace where the police aren’t an armed gang of thugs.

  16. 16.

    different-church-lady

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
      Except something did change this time.
    It’s a small change, but it’s a change.
    It’s going to take a long time for this tide to go out.

  19. 19.

    Chetan Murthy

    @dmsilev:

    What happened in Memphis was clearly a night that went off the rails.

    With all due respect to Chief and Rep. Demings, NO, this is not what happened.  If it’d been a white guy in a nice car, this would not be the outcome.  What happened, was that these cops knew that they could get away with violence, and the situation triggered their desire for violence.

    I’ll give an analogy: when a woman is raped in a dark alley, we don’t blame the woman, and don’t blame the dark alley.  Or at least, we shouldn’t.  We blame the rapist: because that rapist decided he could get away with it in that dark alley.  So he raped.  How often does a man rape a woman in the middle of a crowd of fans at a baseball game, after all ?  They choose when they commit their crimes, in order to minimizer the risk of getting caught, getting punished.

    And these cops do the same: some black guy, and we turn off our body cameras, it’s his word against ours, who’s gonna believe him?  And hell, he ran, he deserves what he’s getting.

    What Chief Demings refuses to admit, is that ALL COPS ARE BAD, because every cop knows cops who have broken the rules of how to treat civilians, and yet those “good” cops never turn in those bad ones.  ALL COPS condone police brutality on the regular.  The idea that somehow these po-po can be reformed is bullshit.

    Wanna reform police?  Take away all their weapons.  All of them.  And subject them to criminal liability for every time they hurt a civilian.  Every.   Time.  And every time, the grade of offense is automatically of the highest degree.  So you kill a civilian, you’re up for first-degree murder.  BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER: you’re a COP, trained in this stuff.  So it’s automatically premeditated, b/c your JOB is to think it thru beforehand.

    Yeah, let’s see how long these fuckers stay in the job, knowing they can end up in gen-pop.  Yeah, let’s see.

  20. 20.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Paul Campos already answered

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/01/the-problem-is-america

    The thread below on the police lynching of Tyre Nichols features a certain type of characteristically American parochialism that educated left/liberal people in general and LGM commenters in particular are usually much better at avoiding.

    What I’m talking about is the discussion of whether police as individuals or more realistically police forces as social structures are inherently authoritarian trending toward sociopathic, and should therefore be abolished if not radically reformed.

    Now I have no objection at all to radical reform, but the whole defund/abolish the police trope is not only politically suicidal for obvious reasons, but also a perfect example of the American parochialism I’m referencing.

    The problem isn’t “cops” — it’s American cops.

  22. 22.

    Alison Rose

    I’ve seen a lot of white assholes trying to use the fact that the cops were Black to, I don’t know…prove white cops aren’t racist? Who knows. But this is a good comeback to that kind of shit:

    If you think the Memphis police officers had to be white in order to exhibit anti-Blackness, you need to take that AP African American Studies course Ron DeSantis just banned.
    — Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) January 28, 2023

  23. 23.

    Alison Rose

    @Chetan Murthy:

    when a woman is raped in a dark alley, we don’t blame the woman, and don’t blame the dark alley.  Or at least, we shouldn’t.  We blame the rapist: because that rapist decided he could get away with it in that dark alley

    Yeah, um. We shouldn’t blame the victim or the environment they were in. But we do. Most of the time. Nearly all the time, I’d say. Sorry, but blaming the perpetrator in sexual assault cases is actually pretty damn rare.

  24. 24.

    HumboldtBlue

    however, hiding behind blatant lies about defunding the police and claiming the legislation went after good officers just doing their jobs.

    There are no good officers, not one, and that includes Val Demmings. Policing in this country is utterly broken, and every “good officer” she tries to materialize out of the blue is just another officer who kept their mouths shut or who refused to act when a fellow officer went on a rampage. Fuck, even the Memphis Police Chief tried to cover up sexual abuse by a sergeant she knew and worked with in Atlanta, doing everything in her power to frustrate the investigators assigned to the case. That sergeant ended up in prison, and she’s considered “one of the good ones.”

    I mean, the Metro Police in DC, the Secret Service, they were in on Jan 6, and she’s out here bleating about “good officers,” fuck off Val, your words are empty and yet another attempt to explain away how police in this country regularly, if not daily, violate the rights and the bodies of American citizens.

    Laying the solution at the feet of Congress is the tell, there is no actual movement at the local level to change any fucking thing, and incidents like this will continue to happen. And they will. Just think of the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of victims of police who will never see a minute of accountability for those who abused or murdered them, who arrested them for no cause or on trumped charges they will never have to answer for.

    If you think the Memphis police officers had to be white in order to exhibit anti-Blackness, you need to take that AP African American Studies course Ron DeSantis just banned.

    Or, as John Singleton pointed out to us 30 years ago in Boys in the Hood, black officers are part of the brotherhood of policing and will do anything a white officer will do to remain in that brotherhood and that includes the brutal torture and beating death of a young father and innocent man

  26. 26.

    different-church-lady

    @Alison Rose: There’s a whole lot of assholes who (a) don’t know what systemic racism is and (b) would deny it exists if they did know.

  27. 27.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose: Very fair, Alison.  I should have said “we shouldn’t blame ….”.  You’re right: too often we (as a society, and thru our government, police, and prosecutors) do blame the victims.

  28. 28.

    Princess

    Since it’s an open thread: is anyone else following the news from Iran? Earth-shattering kabooms, reports of multiple strikes on munitions factories, refineries, army bases. An earthquake. Maybe it started with the earthquake.

    ETA I see Adam covered it, below.

  30. 30.

    West of the Rockies

    I think requiring a B.A. and extensive psychological testing would be a good start in addressing the myriad problems in LE.

  31. 31.

    eclare

    @HumboldtBlue:   Someone on Twitter wrote that part of “the talk” that he got as a young Black man was that the race of every cop is cop.

    Yesterday I mentioned the lines from the song Fuck Tha Police:

    “Cause they’ll slam you down to the street top, Black police showin’ out for a white cop.”

    That song is 35 years old.  Not a damn thing changed.

  33. 33.

    eclare

    @HumboldtBlue:   Awww, so cute!  I brought home a new rescue Staffie Bull in November.  One of my cats is not afraid and will lie right next to her, the other gives a hiss and fluffs out whenever the dog gets close.  Hopefully there will be detente someday.

  40. 40.

    ETtheLibrarian

    They need to do a postmortem on that group and frankly, the rest of the officers in that group need to be investigated, and that’s just a start. Disbanding it was something that should have been automatic.

  41. 41.

    Darkrose

    @Chetan Murthy: And as I said on LGM, Paul is focusing on police killings as the only issue. If you look at the numbers of people killed by police then sure: cops in the US are an outlier. But authoritarianism and the attitude that cops are predators and everyone else is prey are not unique to the US, and acting like it is will ensure that the problems with modern policing are never fixed.

    Paul framed the police in the UK as better than in the US because they don’t kill as many people. This, in a post two weeks after it was revealed that Metropolitan police officer David Carrick was a serial rapist with 85 serious offences charged against him–and that the force ignored multiple warnings about him. Two years prior, there was the case of Sarah Everard, who was kidnapped, raped, and strangled by an off-duty cop. The police showed much more initiative in quashing people holding vigils for Everard–and in joking about it on social media–than in investigating any of the number of complaints against Everard’s killer.

    The problem isn’t American cops. It’s people who want to be cops.

  42. 42.

    TS

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’ll give an analogy: when a woman is raped in a dark alley, we don’t blame the woman, and don’t blame the dark alley.

    I agree with the rest of your discussion but not this.

    When a woman is raped in a dark alley the call comes that she should not have been out alone at night, she needs to be careful as to where she goes and what she wears  etc etc

    Women are endlessly called out as “asking to be raped

    Edit: or as discussed above by Alison & Chetan

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @TS: I agree, and I was wrong to have put it that way.  You’re 100% right, that finger-waggers will blame the victim.  100% right in that.

  44. 44.

    m.j.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Can you imagine them brainstorming?

    “We need to rock like something.”

    “Ya, something big. Ya, Ya, like, wait I think I know , wait, a, a…Hurricane!”

  46. 46.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Darkrose: There is a common rule of thumb, that you can judge the rates of all violent crimes, by the murder rate.  B/c while other violent crimes aren’t reported, murders always eventually show up.  I would think that that’s a reason why the rate at which cops kill people is a useful proxy for the general rate at which cops commit violent crimes.

    I could be wrong about that.

  47. 47.

    Kineslaw

    I would love to see a limit on the percentage of the city budget that can be dedicated to police.  If you are spending more than 20% of your city budget on your police department, you are not eligible for federal money.

    Also your municipal court system must be break-even at best.  No using cops to write tickets to create fines to create the budget for the city that allows them to hire more cops.

    Creative accounting would be used to exceed the caps, but it should get rid of the worst excesses.  I’m sure there are ways to spend the difference between Memphis’ current 38% and 20% on social services that would reduce crime and make the city safer.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:

    It’s the same with gun laws. Most/more places allow all kinds of absolutely unnecessary guns, things that would be right at home on a battlefield. Which turns civilian streets into battlefields. Cops used to think they were part of the community, now they seem to think they are above it. Way the hell above it. I used to duck/goose hunt when I was, well far, far younger. Guns of course were involved, but they were simple, they were obvious, they were not carried in public. Now, a 17 yr old gets taken to another state by his mother, with an assault rifle, and shoots and kills 2 humans – and gets away with it.

    We have, as a species, at least in this country, become far, far less civilized. Well at least a portion of us has. They are losing the thing they want most – control. They want the world to look like the fairy book concept that they hold near and dear. The growing pains of a better world are too much for them, too much, too soon, and they think they must stop change. As the old say, from eons ago goes, change is inevitable, it is often big and it has two speeds, slow and fast. They want a book that is a couple of thousand yrs old to be the complete guideline for life today. And it can’t do that. It likely couldn’t do that then. But it really can’t do it now.

  50. 50.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus: Well, that’s a different (and yet, *interlocking*) reason I contemplate flight.  I mean, I would never set foot in a Red state, for many reasons, but one amongst them is the prevalence of guns.  We used to joke about it when I worked for IBM and had to travel to Austin, TX for business: the Hertz rental you picked up at the airport has a handgun in the glove compartment, b/c that’s YOUR RIGHT, GODDAMMIT!  If California becomes like that, it would be one more reason to GTFO.

  51. 51.

    Mike in NC

    Trump sincerely believed he could coast to reelection by focusing on his two favorite subjects: white supremacy and police brutality. He was drilled on that all his adult life. He loved to address law enforcement groups and tell them they could get away with any shit they wanted.

    All cops are authoritarians and many are fascists. All Republicans are authoritarians. At least one third of the electorate in this country would happily live in an apartheid fascist police state where non-white people were taught to mind their place.

  53. 53.

    cain

    @Alison Rose: Actually, what I’m seeing is that because the cops were black the system was willing to go after them. If they were white cops the system / police union all of them will be working double time to keep them from getting busted. So I still see racism. I still see the system working to protect white cops.

    Busting these black cops will prove to the populace that justice can be done, and the system works. Bullshit. I’m not falling for that con.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:

    “I would think that that’s a reason why the rate at which cops kill people is a useful proxy for the general rate at which cops commit violent crimes.

    I could be wrong about that.”

    I think you are. They seem to know, likely through training, that killing someone always has issues. But beating the crap out of people often doesn’t. But it seems cops think that beating the crap out of people does bring people “into line.” But that isn’t a proper or reasonable line in a civilized world. Now some cops have always been bullies, it’s the nature of some who want to be “The Law.” Most of us have seen, known bullies. In school, on the job, in the military, in adult life. Anywhere there are humans, there will be bullies. And those that don’t grow up are still bullies as adults. Where is a perfect place to get paid to be a bully? Yep, as a cop. Not all cops, not all cities, but likely any big cop store is going to have more than their share of bullies.

  55. 55.

    Ohio Mom

    I not optimistic here. This issue is kryptonite for any Democrat hoping to get elected or re-elected because it sets them up to be accused of wanting to “defund the police.” (I agree they need to be defunded, deconstructed and decommissioned, but that slogan turns a lot of normies  off).

    If Republicans were sane, they’d realize they are in the perfect position to lead this effort but of course they are not sane, they like police being racist thugs, it’s exactly what they would create if they were starting from scratch.

  57. 57.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus: Your thesis (which I would think would be testable) is that rates of police brutality in other Western countries are not correlated with their rates of police killings.  I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s worth digging around to see if there’s data.

  58. 58.

    Brent

    @Darkrose: I didn’t read the comments on paul’s post, but I bet someone pointed out that the low rates of police murder in other places is also,  in part, because there are much stricter gun controls in places like England.

    Its not the whole story for sure.  Not by a longshot. But its a significant aggravating factor that police here work with the awareness that people they encounter are potentially, even likely, to be armed.  It colors every interaction in a way that filters down even to the unarmed and innocent.  So their baseline is an aggressive and confrontational approach to every public contact.

    I bring that up, not to excuse their behavior in any way.  But to say that unless we also reform our gun laws, a certain frequency of these incidents are going to continue to occur.  Our gun worship has ratcheted up the potential for deadly outcomes in even the most mundane settings (grocery shopping etc) let alone incidents where at at least one party is armed and given a license by the state to commit violence in a wide range of circumstances.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chetan Murthy: If you make comparisons across countries, though, you have to have a huge scaling factor for the availability of guns. The chance of any violent behavior killing somebody in the US is far, far higher than in, say, the UK because guns are so much more likely to be involved, and that goes for cops too.

  60. 60.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Matt McIrvin: It doesn’t really  matter, does it, when you’re sitting in that car, wondering whether you’re going to make it home that night or not.  Whether the cop is gonna treat you as a likely killer b/c they think you have a gun, or b/c they’re thugs, either way you’re sitting in that care and wondering whether you’re gonna get home in one piece.

  61. 61.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Matt McIrvin: @Brent: Also, while I’m sure the presence of guns has *something* to do with it, if it were guns, then the po-po would be gunning down white people, too.  And they’re not, are they?  They’re not beating the living fuck out of white people, sending white people on “rough rides” to the jail, etc.  Maybe a few here and there, but it’s damn rare.

    And how do we know?  For the same reason we know there’s no Sasquatch and no UFOs: ubiquitous smartphone cameras would have captured the videos.

  62. 62.

    Brent

    @Chetan Murthy: Well for sure,  black people are disproportionately by police,  but police also kill a lot of white people.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

    As I said,  guns are not the entire story for sure.  As a black person,  I have had a number of uncomfortable interactions with police and I have literally never touched a gun.

    I am only pointing out that as long as we have the kind of lax rules around ownership and carrying that we do, we are going to continue to have a significant problem.

  63. 63.

    Brent

    @Chetan Murthy: Blacks are disproportionately the victims of police violence for certain.  No matter how you calculate.  But police do kill a lot of white people as well.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

    As I said,  guns are only a part of the story.  As a black man myself,  I have had plenty of uncomfortable run-ins with the police and I have literally never touched a gun.  However, as long as ew maintain the sort of lax ownership and carry laws we do, we are going to continue to have a serious problem with police violence.

  64. 64.

    Brent

    @Chetan Murthy: Blacks are disproportionately the victims of police violence for certain.  No matter how you calculate.  But police do kill a lot of white people as well.

    stats

    As I said,  guns are only a part of the story.  As a black man myself,  I have had plenty of uncomfortable run-ins with the police and I have literally never touched a gun.  However, as long as ew maintain the sort of lax ownership and carry laws we do, we are going to continue to have a serious problem with police violence.

  65. 65.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    This Nichols murder really reminds me of the BART police murder of Oscar Grant in 2000. Maybe this will wake people up from the bullshit like the Grant murder seemed to do California.

  66. 66.

    Ruckus

    I think there are many reasons that cops act the way they do.

    Some of it is racism, possibly one could call it copism rather than actual racism.

    Some of it is the guns that are available now vs say 50-60 yrs ago.

    Some of it is the population growth. I live in a county that has a larger population than 40 states. It shows.

    Some of it is the pushback from civil rights progress from the last 50-60 yrs.

    Some of it is financial/monetary. We have a lot more billionaires now and many people still live in or near poverty. Some of this is tax laws in many ways really, really favor the rich. Many people work at minimum wage and that often is not enough to actually have much of a life. So being black may still be for many, second or third class citizenship.

    Some of it is who the hell knows. Not all of the above is going to affect every part of the country, and yet the police problem is at least seemingly everywhere.

  68. 68.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Oh, and Scorpion Unit, you mean like the Stallion movie “Scorpion”.  Perhaps the Memphis PD should rename it the “80s Action Star LARP Unit”, for some honestly.

    I can just see what ever dumbass in the Memphis PD who came up with this brilliant idea weeping by himself and saying “but it worked in the movie!”

  69. 69.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Maybe this will wake people up from the bullshit like the Grant murder seemed to do California.

    Did people wake up in California?  I remember when the movie Fruitvale Station came out (or maybe it was when Oskar Grant’s murderer got that slap-on-the-wrist sentence), and I said something about it in a conversation with a friend and his friends at a bar. Something to the effect of “jesus fuck, you can do anything to a black or brown man if you’re a cop and get away with it, amirite?”

    One of the friends-of-friend jumped down my throat in a big, big way: he was yelling about how those cops were protecting us, and on and on and on.  I changed the subject, b/c fuck it, not like I wanted to ruin my evening, and not like I’d ever see that guy again.

    And certainly in the Bay Area, I haven’t seen any concrete signs that things got better.  During the 2020 Police Riots the po-po in Walnut Creek were out in force with their Urban Assault Vehicles, and absolutely no politeness or respect for the civilian population.

  70. 70.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus: I have one name of a white person murdered by a cop — and that cop went to prison (7yr, IIRC).  Justine Diamond.  I have a long list of names of Black people murdered by cops.  Care to play a game?  I’ll list off names of Black people murdered by cops, and you can list the names of white people.

    ETA: of course, *unjustly* murdered people.

  71. 71.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Chetan Murthy: You remind of the Self Defense line; “if you are constantly getting into bar fights, then it’s you that is problem”

    Please never talk to me again.

  73. 73.

    mvr

    @Chetan Murthy: Yeah. I’m lucky not to be the likely object of such treatment. But I have been going to protests about this shit for 40 years and my parents did it before that. And each time it is just another story just like the last one (and the many more we never hear about). And nothing changes much.

    So I have little optimism.  Or maybe I have a tiny bit but I don’t want to let it out anymore. But some day the dam is going to break.

  75. 75.

    LeftCoastYankee

    5 Black cops beat 1 black man to death.  No real or imagined gun on the victim.

    Guns are an issue, racism is an issue, but cops are huge issue in nearly all US cities.

    And the reason they get to stay there is people who don’t live in those cities offering their opinions (or performative outrage) to insist the problem is something else.

    The roles they are asked to play and trained to perform have nothing to do with what the public imagines cops do, and even less with what people actually need.

  76. 76.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I am not disagreeing with you in the least. I ride the LA Metro train system on occasion and I often see LAPD officers who are assigned to the system and they have several deadly weapons on them, not just one. I’ve said here before, several times that I was in the Navy and carried a loaded .45 automatic pistol on in port watch with a specific order to use deadly force on anyone trying to board the ship to take it over. Shoot to kill. Those words. That’s in any port in any city, anywhere in the world. Did I want to do that? NFW. But the only decision I was allowed was do they or do they not belong. There were 2 of us armed to protect that ship in every port we ever stopped in. If I killed the wrong person, that was on me. This was the order I hatted most of all. Could I be tried for murder if I killed someone? If I made the wrong call – absofuckinglutely. So I’ve been in that position of having the responsibility of life or death, just like a cop does. I never had to take that gun out of the holster, except to empty it to hand to the next guy on watch. I have some concept of what being a cop is like. But boarding a ship is not like walking down the street or driving a car to the store, no matter your skin color. And yet cops beat the shit out of people for no good reason, they kill people for no good reason, and many of them seem to feel good about doing that. That is a huge difference. And I never ran across anyone else in the Navy that even seemed to feel different than I did and still do. Many cops feel like it is their duty to beat the crap out of people, especially people of color, and they often seem to feel justified to kill people because they “had no other choice.” It seems to never occur to them that their actions/behavior/willingness to harm/kill people might be wrong, because they seem to feel like it is their job to do exactly that.

  79. 79.

    mvr

    @Ruckus: I think there are many reasons that cops act the way they do.

    We also need an explanation of why this doesn’t get fixed that doesn’t advert to police motives, or character or initiative. Or the availability of weapons. That’s not to say those things don’t matter. But there is a story involving the rest of us that also goes into this.  Why do we, as a bunch of people acting together to do politics, let this continue?

    I’m not arguing with you. I am suggesting dialing out the focus.

  82. 82.

    TS

    @Kineslaw:

    I would love to see a limit on the percentage of the city budget that can be dedicated to police.  If you are spending more than 20% of your city budget on your police department, you are not eligible for federal money.

    This sounds like a great option. I know there are many countries other than the US that have serious issues with police behavior – sure do in my country, but we don’t have 10 different police forces that have to be funded. We have State Police & a small contingent of Federal Police – no city police, no county police, no park police, no school police, no college police. If police are needed in these areas, the state police attend.

    City budgets for the police are  $0. I have read about towns in the US with populations in the 100s having multiple numbers of police on the payroll. I grew up in a town of 1000 and we had one policeman. I’ve lived in a city suburb of 5000 with the closest police station 15 minutes away. You may not get an instant response to a call, but that is reality when you accept that society does not need a saturation level of policing.

  85. 85.

    Ruckus

    @mvr:

    I agree. If it was simple it likely could be simply fixed.

    It’s not simple, it’s humans. It’s humans conditioned by other humans, by laws, by hate, by camaraderie, by orders, by society as a whole and likely it’s majority, by money, by racism. All of that is in no particular order. Nor am I saying that the list is complete.

  88. 88.

    Darkrose

    @Chetan Murthy: There is a common rule of thumb, that you can judge the rates of all violent crimes, by the murder rate.  B/c while other violent crimes aren’t reported, murders always eventually show up.  I would think that that’s a reason why the rate at which cops kill people is a useful proxy for the general rate at which cops commit violent crimes.

    I would argue that focusing on the murder rate ignores or diminishes other types of violence–gendered violence in particular. Studies have shown high rates of domestic violence committed by police in the US; it seems like that would be something relevant for international comparisons. The same with rape and sexual assault. Saying that cops in the UK are better than cops in the US because they don’t kill as many people sounded like Paul was minimizing the very real problems with misogyny in the UK police.

  91. 91.

    HumboldtBlue

    @mvr: ​ 

    Oh, I’m no woodworker, I just remember watching him back in the day using wood and tools as his instruments. I read an article earlier that pointed out he was always surprised at his popularity when he attended events.

  92. 92.

    West of the Rockies

    @Ruckus:

    The problem with cops has been decades in the making and, as you say, involves a lot of damn ingredients.

    And the solution won’t be just a couple of patch fixes.

  93. 93.

    NotMax

    @HumboldtBlue

    Used to unwind in days long ago, with the aid of a libation or three, by watching Homer Formby’s syndicated show on wood and furniture refinishing.

  101. 101.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @HumboldtBlue: @Chetan Murthy:

    By request here’s the thread that ChatGPT is really Mansplaining As A Service (It’s on Facebook but should be viewable without signing in.)

    I shared a Mastodon post stating that ChatGPT — a new chatbot capable of writing essays — is:

    [A] service that instantly generates vaguely plausible yet totally fabricated and baseless lectures in an instant with unflagging confidence in its own correctness on any topic, without concern, regard, or even awareness, of the expertise of the level of expertise of it’s audience.

    and commented that as a woman in tech, I found the description apt.

    Needless to say the mere mention of man-explaining brought all the techbros to the yard like moths to a flame. Though I’m definitely winning the ratio at this point. But some of the compium has been utterly amusing.

  106. 106.

    John Revolta

    “the pest is always full of dry standard nonsense that he mistakes for self-wisdom. some of his favorite remarks are:
    ‘there is no such thing as ALL bad. you say that all cops are bad. well they’re not. I’ve met some good ones. there is such a thing as a good cop.’
    you never get the chance to explain to him that when a man puts that uniform on that he is the paid protector of things of the present time. he is here to see that things stay the way they are. if you like the way things are, then all cops are good cops. if you don’t like the way things are, then all cops are bad cops. there is such a thing as ALL bad.”

    ~ Charles Bukowski, “Notes on the Pest”

  114. 114.

    Ruckus

    @West of the Rockies:

    And the solution won’t be just a couple of patch fixes.

    No. It won’t.

    I thought about being a cop when I was younger. My 2 best buddies became cops. One a CHP officer for 30 yrs. The other I did a ride along with once. I haven’t talked to him since that night, over 5 decades ago. That CHP friend I had lunch with him after he retired as a sergeant. He hated being a cop, so much had changed, in training, in concept of the job, in the danger in the job – guns.

    No, the solution will not be easy. No, the solution will not get approval of a lot of cops today. No, we really can’t delay a lot longer. Our country is changing, partially because the world is changing, as it always has and will continue to do. There are more of us, a lot more, which makes it harder to change and harder to even see how to make it better instead of just changing and very likely making it worse. One of those things is of course the fucking guns. Another is the Russians, vlad specifically, fucking around. His country isn’t worth a shit so he doesn’t want ours to be any better. Or whatever the hell his reason is. Our success as a country financially is a part of this, because it has given more money to the very wealthy, a lot more. Because they have the money to afford to buy politicians before they really are and get them elected to enact laws that give them even more money. Many of the very wealthy are stealing a country that is supposed to be an actual democracy, of, by, and for the people, all of them, every last fucking one of them, no matter their color, their age, their gender, their sexual orientation, their net worth, their religion or lack thereof. We’ve made strides but Shit For Brains screwed a lot of everything up, as is his nature. People of stature in high government jobs have fucked over this country, for money and who the hell knows what else. vlad has played the long game here and has purchased seemingly at least a few, likely more, traitors towards his end game of fucking over his enemies. He knows what we know, we’ve made world war technically a total ending game. None of us can afford to play that game, which was the entire point. So now if anyone wants more than they have or can earn/buy, they have to steal it piecemeal – Ukraine comes to mind.

    I have no real idea how to make any of this better. I’m not sure anyone does. I’m not saying we’ve backed ourselves into a corner because anything else than what we have now would likely be worse. Quite possibly a hell of a lot worse. We are using up natural resources too fast, but there are quite a few possibilities to help that. All is not lost but we need to figure out how to stop these bullshit wars of selfish assholes like vlad and his asinine war with Ukraine. And his clandestine, so far non violent, behind the scenes underground war with us.

  115. 115.

    catclub

    CNN: How media outlets are handling the Tyre Nichols arrest footage

    For starters.
    Instead of “How media outlets are handling the Tyre Nichols Murder footage.”

  116. 116.

    Low Key Swagger

    Roughly 40 yrs ago, I graduated from the LAPD academy.  Hardest thing I have ever undertaken.  Way way harder than boot camp.  It was non stop full stress heavy on the physical training.  The thing that starts day one and doesn’t stop?  Fear of the populace.  It is drummed into your head daily that EVERY traffic stop could be your last.  It is effective as hell.  There is a reason they make you yell your answers back to the drill instructors.  They are attempting to instill a “commanding presence” in you because your aim is to take control of the situation, any situation, and speaking loudly and authoritatively works well most of the time.  It does save lives.  Interestingly, there was very little emphasis on firearms training.  Yes, we went to the range to practice, but we carried six shot revolvers and frankly you can only get so far with respect to accuracy.  Shitty guns in a shoot-out.

    I mention all this because fast forward to 2021, my son graduated from a police academy.  He is as I type on duty in a nearby city.  His academy experience was completely different than mine.  HEAVY emphasis on gun training.  Heavy.  We were taught to escalate in stages, they are not.  I could go on forever about the training differences, but the thing that stands out the most is that almost all of it is now done by contractors, not employees of the city.  It was figured out long ago that anyone could slap together a training nodule and sell it to the city, or county, or State.  It’s mostly ex-cops who figured out how to grift on the system.  Most of it is useless.  All of it is fear based.

    The training has to be better.  It should cost more than it does.  By the way, spoke to my son about the video and he said he and some other officers that watched it together and were pretty sickened by it.  The consensus was there was no police work on display whatsoever.  They are right.

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