Forgery suspect killed by cop restricting his airway

[lpetrich]

Trump’s response to protests is ‘election strategy,’ British official says - POLITICO

The U.K. government should condemn a "deliberate election strategy" by U.S. President Donald Trump to use anti-racism protests to activate his electoral base, said Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary.

Trump demanded 10,000 troops be deployed to quell protests: Reports - Business Insider

• President Donald Trump was reportedly involved in a heated meeting with top officials Monday, when he demanded the deployment of 10,000 troops to Washington DC.
• The president wanted the military engaged in quelling the anti-racism demonstrations sweeping the capital after the death of George Floyd.
• Mark Esper, the defense secretary, and Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Attorney General Bill Barr, resisted the request, a senior official told ABC News.
• Critics say Trump is dangerously escalating the unrest in seeking to involve the military in quelling civilian protests.

White House wanted 10k active duty troops to quell protesters - CNNPolitics

The White House wanted to have 10,000 active duty troops on the streets of Washington and other cities earlier this week to quell protesters, but Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint of Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley pushed back at the use of any active duty troops, according to a senior defense official.

Esper did move approximately 1,600 active duty troops to be in the Washington, DC, region to respond if needed but the approximately 5,000 National Guard troops already there never needed assistance and the active troops began to leave Thursday night.

Seems like his only "news source" continues to be Fox & Friends. Also, those officials seem reluctant to use the 25th Amendment on him.

 

[lpetrich]

View attachment 28113

Cute.

Looks like a good natural experiment. Tracing of outbreaks suggests that it's being indoors that's the biggest risk. So outdoors is likely to be relatively safe. Wearing masks is likely also helpful.

Epidemiologists ought to be watching these protests closely, and some of them may already be doing so.

 

[blastula]

It's considered safer to be outdoors, when you're not surrounded by a bunch of people shouting or by people coughing from tear gas.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

According to Russian writer and political activist Garry Kasparov, it is a word that was coined to describe the frequent use of a rhetorical diversion by Soviet apologists and dictators, who would counter charges of their oppression, "massacres, gulags, and forced deportations" by invoking American slavery, racism, lynchings, etc.

This isn't Whataboutism. The point is that you're committing a composition error, because the thing that everyone is talking about is broader than the things that could be captured in your statistic on murder. You're offering this statistic as a proxy but people don't accept it because it doesn't address the thing being discussed (and that's assuming that your statistics are accurate and free of methodological issues or biased data).

I can measure the mass of things I observe through a telescope, but the telescope only tells me about things it's capable of observing.

Her response was an attempt to show discrimination based on a single incident for which we have no proof it was racial at all.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This doesn't look like an excited delirium case, it's unlikely that his drug use had anything to do with his death other than making him talk back to the cop and thus provoke the neck pressure punishment.

I disagree. Over and over again these "deaths in custody" cases involve people who are high on something. There was another case in Tacoma, WA that is now getting attention. Manuel Ellis was trying to steal cars, police allegedly beat him up, he died after saying "I can't breathe". Tox screen found he was high on meth.

Excited delirium cases don't cause a can't-breathe reaction. The people are really strung out on drugs, often PCP, and acting totally irrationally. They very often strip off because they're overheating. The rebound can be so severe that they die without apparent cause, but very often after being subdued by the police. It used to be thought that they were dying from the force needed but since the taser came along we have seen the same pattern when they are brought down electrically.

Police get involved in those situations because of disturbed-persons calls, not counterfeit money calls.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Exactly. They are suspected more, accused more, convicted more ... so in this case the data is biased in itself. So anyone who cites this flawed statistics is not really proving a point, because the data itself is biased.

Murder gets investigated enough that we have a high enough clearance rate to have pretty good data on the racial distribution of murderers. It's consistent with what we see with arrests with other crimes.

We also have data from automated systems that obviously can't see the race of the driver--and such systems select black-driven cars at about the same rate officers do.

What data is that? Here's data that says there is bias in traffic stops.

I'm talking about automated plate readers that flag cars where the owner has a warrant.

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

Which has poor controls for the number of drivers on the road at that time.

 

[Elixir]

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

Which has poor controls for the number of drivers on the road at that time.

Bubba and JimBob went home to their sisterwives after dayshift. So of course there is a higher proportion of black drivers on the road at night.
Therefore any significant reduction in the frequency or ratio of black driver stops would be against expectation. Just a matter of "by how much".

 

[laughing dog]

This doesn't look like an excited delirium case, it's unlikely that his drug use had anything to do with his death other than making him talk back to the cop and thus provoke the neck pressure punishment.

I disagree. Over and over again these "deaths in custody" cases involve people who are high on something. There was another case in Tacoma, WA that is now getting attention. Manuel Ellis was trying to steal cars, police allegedly beat him up, he died after saying "I can't breathe". Tox screen found he was high on meth.

Excited delirium cases don't cause a can't-breathe reaction. The people are really strung out on drugs, often PCP, and acting totally irrationally. They very often strip off because they're overheating. The rebound can be so severe that they die without apparent cause, but very often after being subdued by the police. It used to be thought that they were dying from the force needed but since the taser came along we have seen the same pattern when they are brought down electrically.

Police get involved in those situations because of disturbed-persons calls, not counterfeit money calls.

Talk about missing the forest for the bark on the trees. The point is that police over-react to these situations.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

This just in: MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ANNOUNCE INTENT TO DISBAND THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, INVEST IN PROVEN COMMUNITY-LED PUBLIC SAFETY.

Evidently, this has been long in coming...

On Sunday afternoon, a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members will announce their commitment to disbanding the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25.
...
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response. In a TIME op-ed published the next day, Council Member Steve Fletcher cited the MPD’s lengthy track record of misconduct and “decades-long history of violence and discrimination”—all of which are subjects of an ongoing Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation—as compelling justifications for the department’s disbandment. “We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs,” Fletcher wrote.
...
For years, activists have argued that MPD has failed to actually keep the city safe, and City Councilmembers echoed that sentiment today during their announcement. MPD’s record for solving serious crimes in the city is consistently low. For example, in 2019, Minneapolis police only cleared 56 percent of cases in which a person was killed. For rapes, the police department’s solve rate is abysmally low. In 2018, their clearance rate for rape was just 22 percent. In other words, four out of every five rapes go unsolved in Minneapolis. Further casting doubt on the department’s commitment to solving sexual assaults, MPD announced last year the discovery of 1,700 untested rape kits spanning 30 years, which officials said had been misplaced.

The Council’s move is consistent with rapidly-shifting public opinion regarding the urgency of overhauling the American model of law enforcement. Since Floyd’s killing and the protests that ensued, officials in Los Angeles and New York City have called for making deep cuts to swollen police budgets and reallocating those funds for education, affordable housing, and other social services. Law enforcement officers are not equipped to be experts in responding to mental health crises, often leading to tragic results—nationally, about half of police killings involve someone living with mental illness or disability. As a result, public health experts have long advocated for dispatching medical professionals and/or social workers, not armed police, to respond to calls related to substance use and mental health. Polling from Data for Progress indicates that more than two-thirds of voters—68 percent—support the creation of such programs, versions of which are already in place in other cities such as, Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Denver, Colorado.

I guarantee you that if this happens, we will start seeing alt-right terrorists and cops and ex-cops all committing violent crimes there in order to "prove" the need for (corrupt) police departments.

 

[Jarhyn]

What data is that? Here's data that says there is bias in traffic stops.

I'm talking about automated plate readers that flag cars where the owner has a warrant.

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

Which has poor controls for the number of drivers on the road at that time.

Given the well documented arrest bias and enforcement bias and conviction bias against black people, how could you possibly expect that data to be valid?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This just in: MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ANNOUNCE INTENT TO DISBAND THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, INVEST IN PROVEN COMMUNITY-LED PUBLIC SAFETY.

Evidently, this has been long in coming...

On Sunday afternoon, a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members will announce their commitment to disbanding the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25.
...
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response. In a TIME op-ed published the next day, Council Member Steve Fletcher cited the MPD’s lengthy track record of misconduct and “decades-long history of violence and discrimination”—all of which are subjects of an ongoing Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation—as compelling justifications for the department’s disbandment. “We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs,” Fletcher wrote.
...
For years, activists have argued that MPD has failed to actually keep the city safe, and City Councilmembers echoed that sentiment today during their announcement. MPD’s record for solving serious crimes in the city is consistently low. For example, in 2019, Minneapolis police only cleared 56 percent of cases in which a person was killed. For rapes, the police department’s solve rate is abysmally low. In 2018, their clearance rate for rape was just 22 percent. In other words, four out of every five rapes go unsolved in Minneapolis. Further casting doubt on the department’s commitment to solving sexual assaults, MPD announced last year the discovery of 1,700 untested rape kits spanning 30 years, which officials said had been misplaced.

The Council’s move is consistent with rapidly-shifting public opinion regarding the urgency of overhauling the American model of law enforcement. Since Floyd’s killing and the protests that ensued, officials in Los Angeles and New York City have called for making deep cuts to swollen police budgets and reallocating those funds for education, affordable housing, and other social services. Law enforcement officers are not equipped to be experts in responding to mental health crises, often leading to tragic results—nationally, about half of police killings involve someone living with mental illness or disability. As a result, public health experts have long advocated for dispatching medical professionals and/or social workers, not armed police, to respond to calls related to substance use and mental health. Polling from Data for Progress indicates that more than two-thirds of voters—68 percent—support the creation of such programs, versions of which are already in place in other cities such as, Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Denver, Colorado.

I guarantee you that if this happens, we will start seeing alt-right terrorists and cops and ex-cops all committing violent crimes there in order to "prove" the need for (corrupt) police departments.

But how can you replace the police department with an organization that works without killing citizens. I mean it isn’t like we have a continent or two that has examples we can follow. We’d be starting from scratch.

Also, it’d upset Trump, and we don’t want that. He might bomb Annapolis, because he told Jared to bomb Minneapolis.

 

[lpetrich]

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when "a veil of darkness" masks their race.

That is one of several examples of systematic bias that emerged from a five-year study that analyzed 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018.

The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites. The researchers also examined a subset of data from Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized marijuana, and found that while this change resulted in fewer searches overall, and thus fewer searches of blacks and Hispanics, minorities were still more likely than whites to have their cars searched after a pull-over.

"Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias, and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities," the researchers write in the May 4th issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

Journal article: A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States | Nature Human Behaviour - "For all three depicted time windows, black drivers comprise a smaller share of stopped drivers after dark, when a veil of darkness masks their race, suggestive of racial profiling."

 

[lpetrich]

Why Are Black Women and Girls Still an Afterthought? | Time

Breonna Taylor was an essential worker. An EMT with aspirations to be a nurse, she was one of the people whose daily labor of keeping people safe we have come to value anew in the age of COVID-19. In March, Louisville, Ky., police officers killed her after their choice to serve a no-knock warrant in plain clothes after midnight was met with gunfire by her boyfriend, who was startled by the intruders. Investigations are ongoing, but no charges have been brought against the officers.

Julia Salazar on Twitter: "The @NYCMayor announced this morning that the curfew has been lifted.
There is thankfully no curfew in place tonight or for the foreseeable future." / Twitter

Zack Fink on Twitter: ".@NYCMayor announces reforms of NYPD:
-Shift funding from NYPD to youth and social services
-Repeal of 50-a ( making disciplinary records of NYPD public )
-Move vendor enforcement out of NYPD
-Bring community voices into NYPD leadership" / Twitter

Senator Zellnor Y. Myrie 米维 on Twitter: "THREAD: Now that curfew is lifted, it’s a good time to discuss reverse warrants. ..." / Twitter

THREAD: Now that curfew is lifted, it’s a good time to discuss reverse warrants. What's a reverse warrant you say? Basically, if you were in the vicinity of a suspected crime, the police can issue a warrant for your arrest. They “geolocate” you by using cell phone data. (1/6)

“That can’t be right!” Sorry, it is. Even if you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong or criminal, you can have a warrant out just for being around. Police departments across the country are already doing it. (2/6)

Again, it is legal to use cell phone data that shows you were in an area of a suspected crime to issue a warrant. This is important because thousands of us have taken to the streets to protest injustice and were met with handcuffs, especially under curfew. (3/6)

So @NYPDnews should tell us right now whether they have, currently are, or intend to use reverse warrants resulting from peaceful protests. Reverse warrants are constitutionally dubious under normal circumstances, they are downright dangerous now. (4/6)

Working with @STOPSpyingNY, we intro’d a bill that would outlaw this practice. I hope to get that passed, but NYPD could end the practice right now and give us assurances that exercising our constitutional rights won’t get us in a database. (5/6)

Lastly, have a good Sunday and if you’re protesting, mask up, be safe, drink water, and fill out your Census http://my2020census.gov. (6/6)

 

[lpetrich]

Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police - The New York Times - "The tech giant records people’s locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent."

The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected. As privacy concerns have mounted among consumers, policymakers and regulators, tech companies have come under intensifying scrutiny over their data collection practices.

...
The technique illustrates a phenomenon privacy advocates have long referred to as the “if you build it, they will come” principle — anytime a technology company creates a system that could be used in surveillance, law enforcement inevitably comes knocking. Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.

The new orders, sometimes called “geofence” warrants, specify an area and a time period, and Google gathers information from Sensorvault about the devices that were there. It labels them with anonymous ID numbers, and detectives look at locations and movement patterns to see if any appear relevant to the crime. Once they narrow the field to a few devices they think belong to suspects or witnesses, Google reveals the users’ names and other information.

NY State Senate Bill S8183 - "Prohibits the use of reverse location searches"

 

[blastula]

What data is that? Here's data that says there is bias in traffic stops.

I'm talking about automated plate readers that flag cars where the owner has a warrant.

Understood, but do you have a citation?

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

Which has poor controls for the number of drivers on the road at that time.

They chose the hours before and after dusk. Yes, there could be a difference in those populations, but I do doubt it would mean a smaller black population at the later hour.

 

[J842P]

Understood, but do you have a citation?

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

Which has poor controls for the number of drivers on the road at that time.

They chose the hours before and after dusk. Yes, there could be a difference in those populations, but I do doubt it would mean a smaller black population at the later hour.

It's also something that would have to be addressed by reading the methods section.

 

[lpetrich]

The Hill on Twitter: "Rep. @AOC: "We would not be giving local police departments who are undertrained A TANK if we didn't give the military too much money to have extra damn tanks lying around to begin with." https://t.co/8VUBieyTZD" / Twitter - she also claims that half the NYC budget goes to its police force.

Rashida Tlaib on Twitter: "Transformative change starts with us in the streets demanding it. https://t.co/FfdTktQ4ao" / Twitter
showing a picture of some civil-rights activism with "The Birmingham movement lasted 37 days", "The Freedom Rides lasted seven months", "The Greensboro sit-ins lasted six months", "The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 382 days"
then
Ayanna Pressley on Twitter: "Know y/our history, American history, don't sanitize or whitewash it. You can't celebrate Dr. King & in the same breath rebuke #BLM There will be unrest in our streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives. We are following the blueprint: organize, mobilize, legislate." / Twitter

RT's quoted picture makes an important point about social change. Making change requires activism, and activism requires a lot of effort. It can be difficult to sustain, especially if it has some big successes. Like the first wave of feminism ending after women got the vote. That's a part of Arthur Schlesinger I and II's theory of liberal-conservative cycles. Liberal periods have a lot of reform efforts, but they eventually burn out. Conservative periods accumulate unsolved problems, and that provokes efforts to solve them. -  Cyclical theory (United States history)

 

[lpetrich]

Minneapolis Will Dismantle Its Police Force, Council Members Pledge - The New York Times

Protesters’ cries to defund or abolish the police are often not meant literally. Rather, they are demands to rethink a law enforcement system from the ground up and to grapple with deeply ingrained issues, including employing officers who do not live in the city they police — as is done in Minneapolis — and sending armed officers to respond to situations that turn out not to be crimes, as when a mentally ill person is in distress.

Some proposals have focused on ending heavy-handed police tactics like no-knock search warrants and military-style raids on the homes of suspects, restricting the flow of military gear to police departments and banning the use of military equipment on protesters.

A common thread has been the tendency of police departments to consume ever larger shares of city budgets

The New York Times on Twitter: "Breaking News: A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to dismantle the city’s Police Department, vowing to create a new public safety system (links)" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "“A new world is not only possible, she is on her way.”
- Arundhati Roy" / Twitter

 

[blastula]

Who let the woke mittens out?

[TWEET]1269758561720156160[/TWEET]

 

[Trausti]

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race | EurekAlert! Science News

The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when "a veil of darkness" masks their race.

That is one of several examples of systematic bias that emerged from a five-year study that analyzed 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018.

The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites. The researchers also examined a subset of data from Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized marijuana, and found that while this change resulted in fewer searches overall, and thus fewer searches of blacks and Hispanics, minorities were still more likely than whites to have their cars searched after a pull-over.

"Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias, and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities," the researchers write in the May 4th issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

Journal article: A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States | Nature Human Behaviour - "For all three depicted time windows, black drivers comprise a smaller share of stopped drivers after dark, when a veil of darkness masks their race, suggestive of racial profiling."

Finally, we limit our analysis to drivers classified as white, black or Hispanic, as there were relatively few recorded stops of drivers in other race groups.

We need an explanation as to why police are biased against stopping Asian drivers.