Police Misconduct Catch All Thread

[Toni]

So much violence, I get lost in the details.

Obviously not lost enough to blame parents for letting their kid play at a recreation center.

How many other kids were there? Kids who's behavior didn't result in 911 calls.

The cops didn't show up there mistaking it for a donut shop.
Tom

FFS: The call to police was to say that a CHILD was in the park playing with a toy gun and it was freaking out some people. The caller made certain to say that the gun did not appear to be a real gun.

The police did not bother to find out if they even identified the correct person with a toy gun. They just fired their guns at the kid.

Your post reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were on a planet and every offense resulted in the death penalty. Only less sensible.

 

[marc]

Your post reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were on a planet and every offense resulted in the death penalty. Only less sensible.

There is also the DS9 episode where Worf is fighting Klingons, and accidentally destroys a civilian vessel. It was actually a setup, but still the point was made that he should have been sure of his target before firing.

 

[Gospel]

So much violence, I get lost in the details.

Obviously not lost enough to blame parents for letting their kid play at a recreation center.

How many other kids were there? Kids who's behavior didn't result in 911 calls.

The cops didn't show up there mistaking it for a donut shop.
Tom

FFS: The call to police was to say that a CHILD was in the park playing with a toy gun and it was freaking out some people. The caller made certain to say that the gun did not appear to be a real gun.

The police did not bother to find out if they even identified the correct person with a toy gun. They just fired their guns at the kid.

Your post reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were on a planet and every offense resulted in the death penalty. Only less sensible.

TomC is all about holding adults accountable for their actions except when those adults kill kids within two seconds of arriving at a recreation center.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trial begins for two Aurora police officers charged in Elijah McClain's death

A jury will decide if officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt are guilty of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault

coloradosun.com

Elijah McClain’s fatal encounter with police began on a summer night in 2019 when a 911 caller reported that the young Black man looked “sketchy” as he walked down the street wearing a ski mask and raising his hands in the air in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

In reality, McClain, who was often cold, was just walking home from a convenience store, listening to music.

But moments later, police stopped him and after struggling with him, put the 23-year-old in a neck hold. Then paramedics gave him a sedative that officials eventually determined played a key role in his death days later. McClain, a massage therapist known for his gentle nature, was unarmed and hadn’t committed any crime.

Four years after his death — which left a gaping hole in his mother’s heart and sparked outrage over racial injustice in American policing — a trial for two of the officers was set to begin Friday with jury selection. Trials for a third officer and two paramedics are scheduled to start later this year.

 

[Gospel]

"I can't breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That's my house. I was just going home. I'm an introvert. I'm just different. That's all. I'm so sorry. I have no gun. I don't do that stuff. I don't do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don't even kill flies! I don't eat meat! But I don't judge people, I don't judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I'll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I'm a mood Gemini. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ow, that really hurt! You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. [after vomiting] Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. I just can't breathe correctly."

Elijah McClain

 

[lpetrich]

Some of the usual suspects around here are going to shit an aneurysm.

Minneapolis police face federal oversight for excessive force, discrimination

The move comes after an investigation into the police killing of George Floyd.

www.reuters.com

...

Full report found here, but basically what BLM protesters were protesting about in 2020 actually did happen. Sorry, Derec.

Catching up

Minneapolis Police Department Investigation: Key Findings From the DOJ Report - The New York Times

Investigators accused the Minneapolis police of engaging in unlawful discrimination against Black and Native American people and said the police force “patrols differently based on the racial composition of the neighborhood, without a legitimate, related safety rationale.”

In effect, being much softer on white-people crime.

Among 19 police shootings between January 2016 and August 2022, federal investigators found that “a significant portion of them were unconstitutional uses of deadly force,” with officers sometimes shooting “without first determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others.”

Something that some people seem to consider exemplary policing.

Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murder in Mr. Floyd’s death, had used excessive force previously. In those other cases, investigators found, “multiple other M.P.D. officers stood by” and did not stop him.

So he had a pattern of misbehavior that only stopped when he was caught for murdering someone.

 

[lpetrich]

The Justice Department said the city violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against people with behavioral health disabilities. “Many behavioral health-related calls for service do not require a police response,” the report said, “but M.P.D. responds to the majority of those calls, and that response is often harmful and ineffective.”

That's why alternatives like social workers and mental-health professionals are good in many cases.

Federal investigators said Minneapolis officers routinely failed to take arrestees’ health complaints seriously. “We found numerous incidents in which officers responded to a person’s statement that they could not breathe with a version of, ‘You can breathe; you’re talking right now,’” the report said.

Seems like a lot of cops have grudges against many arrestees.

Investigators described instances of racist conduct by Minneapolis officers and degrading comments about Black people. “Some officers we spoke with aired fears and grievances about being perceived as racist, even as they made comments to us that themselves suggested bias and contempt for the people they are supposed to serve,” the report said.

Much like many right-wingers that I've known online. "Don't call me racist!!!" they shout. But they should take responsibility for their actions.

After Mr. Floyd’s murder, investigators said, Minneapolis “officers suddenly stopped reporting race and gender in a large number of stops” despite a department requirement to collect that information. About 71 percent of traffic stops before Mr. Floyd’s death had race data, compared with about 35 percent after.

As if they have something to hide.

 

[lpetrich]

The report said officers routinely violated the First Amendment rights of demonstrators and journalists at protests. When some people at demonstrations break the law, the report said, “M.P.D. officers frequently use indiscriminate force, failing to distinguish between peaceful protesters and those committing crimes.”

A problem with a lot of other protests against police brutality.

The report found that investigations of officer misconduct, “even serious misconduct,” have been “inexcusably slow.” More than 53 percent of cases remained unresolved for at least one year, and more than 26 percent remained unresolved for at least two years.

That seems to be a problem in many places, not taking claims of police brutality very seriously.

The process for residents to file complaints against officers is deeply flawed, investigators found. “People in Minneapolis have reason to question whether making a complaint to M.P.D. was worth the trouble,” federal investigators said. “Our investigation found that all too often it wasn’t.”

Thus enabling cops to get away with misbehavior.

 

[lpetrich]

6 key points from the scathing report on Minneapolis police after George Floyd's killing | AP News - the AP is not paywalled, unlike the NYT

Investigators found numerous examples of excessive force, unlawful discrimination and First Amendment violations. They reviewed 19 police shootings and determined that officers sometimes fired without first determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others.

In 2017, for example, an officer fatally shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond, an unarmed white Australian-born woman who “spooked” him when she approached his squad car, according to the report. She had called 911 to report a possible rape behind her house. The city paid $20 million to settle with her family.

A good reason to use Tasers instead of guns -- greater fail-safety.

In another case, officers shot a suspect after he started stabbing himself in the neck in a police station interview room.

Officers also used neck restraints like the one Chauvin used on Floyd 198 times between Jan. 1, 2016, and Aug. 16, 2022, including 44 instances that didn’t require an arrest. Some officers continued to use neck restraints even after they were banned in the wake of Floyd’s killing, the report said.

At protests, it found, people were sometimes shot with rubber bullets when they were committing no crime or were dispersing. According to the report, one journalist was hit by a rubber bullet and lost her eye, while another was shoved to the pavement while filming and pepper-sprayed in the face. One protester was shoved so hard that she fell backward, hit the pavement and lay unconscious for three minutes.

The only good thing is that rubber bullets have relatively low lethality.

 

[lpetrich]

The MPD cops were found to stop black drivers over 6 times more than white drivers, a pattern of racial discrimination found elsewhere.

When one Black teen was held at gunpoint for allegedly stealing a $5 burrito, the teen asked the plainclothes officer if he was indeed police. “Really?” the officer responded, according to a video recording. “How many white people in the city of Minneapolis have you run up against with a gun?”

In another case, a woman reported that an officer said to her that the Black Lives Matter movement was a “terrorist” organization. “We are going to make sure you and all of the Black Lives supporters are wiped off the face of the Earth,” she recalled him saying. Her complaint against the officer was closed by the department with a finding of “no merit.”

The investigators found that the police often made mental-health crises much worse.

What happened when people complained?

Supervisors also were quick to back their subordinates. In one case, an officer tased a man eight times without pausing even as the man protested that he was doing “exactly” what he was told. The supervisor found no policy violations and told the man after the fact that if he hadn’t been resisting, “they wouldn’t have had to strike you.”

The report also highlighted the case of John Pope, who was just 14 when Chauvin struck him in the head with a flashlight multiple times and pinned him to a wall by his throat. He then knelt on the Black teen, as his mother pleaded, “Please do not kill my son.” Chauvin, the report found, kept his knee on the teen’s neck or back for over 15 minutes.

But due to poor supervision and a failed internal investigation, commanders did not learn what had happened to Pope until three years later, after Chauvin killed Floyd, the report said. The city ultimately agreed to settle a lawsuit in the case for $7.5 million.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | Half the Police Force Quit. Crime Dropped. - The New York Times

The Minneapolis report was shocking, but it wasn’t surprising. It doesn’t read much differently from recent Justice Department reports about the police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Ferguson, Mo., or any of three recent reports from various sources about Minneapolis, from 2003, 2015 and 2016.

Amid spiking nationwide homicide rates in 2020 and 2021 and a continuing shortage of police officers, many in law enforcement have pointed to investigations like these — along with “defund the police”-style activism — as the problem. With all the criticism they are weathering, the argument goes, officers are so hemmed in, they can no longer do their job right; eventually they quit, defeated and demoralized. Fewer police officers, more crime.

In effect, "Waaahhh! You won't let us be brutal!"

Lying just below the surface of that characterization is a starkly cynical message to marginalized communities: You can have accountable and constitutional policing, or you can have safety. But you can’t have both.

In accord with that view, some academic studies have found that more police officers can correlate with less crime. But the studies don’t account for factors that the Minneapolis report highlights — the social costs of police brutality and misconduct, how they can erode public trust, how that erosion of trust affects public safety — and they don’t account for the potential benefits of less coercive, less confrontational alternatives to the police. We don’t have as many studies that take those factors into account, but to see the effects in real time, you need only step over the Minneapolis city line.

 

[lpetrich]

Then discussing a Minneapolis suburb, Golden Valley. After the death of George Floyd, the town's citizens decided on some changes, like abolishing restrictive racial covenants.

Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.

The first hire was Officer Alice White, the force’s first high-ranking Black woman. The second was Virgil Green, the town’s first Black police chief.

“When I started, Black folks I’d speak to in Minneapolis seemed surprised that I’d been hired,” Chief Green said when I spoke with him recently. “They told me they and most people they knew avoided driving through Golden Valley.”

Members of the overwhelmingly white police force responded to both hires by quitting — in droves.

An outside investigation later revealed that some officers had run an opposition campaign against Chief Green. One of those officers recorded herself making a series of racist comments during a call with city officials, then sent the recording to other police officers. She was fired — prompting yet another wave of resignations.

Though GV cops have 6-figure incomes with good benefits, more than half the police department quit.

“I haven’t been on the job long enough to make any significant changes,” Chief Green said. “Yet we’re losing officers left and right. It’s hard not to think that they just don’t want to work under a Black supervisor.”

Yet the crime rate went *down*.

It’s no coincidence that the cities we most associate with violence also have long and documented histories of police abuse. When people don’t trust law enforcement, they stop cooperating and resolve disputes in other ways. Instead of fighting to retain police officers who feel threatened by accountability and perpetuate that distrust, cities might consider just letting them leave.

 

[lpetrich]

Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data | Reuters

A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives.

...
Records provided by the sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Riverside showed the same longstanding pattern of racial disparities in police stops throughout the country for decades. Black people in San Diego were more than twice as likely than white residents to be stopped by sheriff’s deputies, for example.

The researchers looked at how these cops spent their time.

Those results, too, comport with existing research showing that U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.”

Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report.

Something fundamentally ineffective.

The LA County sheriffs spent 88% of their time on officer-initiated stops, and of that, 79% was on traffic violations and only 11% on actual suspicion of crime. For Riverside County, it was 83% and 7%.

Moreover, most of the stops are pointless, other than inconveniencing citizens, or worse – “a routine practice of pretextual stops,” researchers wrote. Roughly three out of every four hours that Sacramento sheriff’s officers spent investigating traffic violations were for stops that ended in warnings, or no action, for example.

Researchers calculated that more of the departments’ budgets go toward fruitless traffic stops than responses to service calls -- essentially wasting millions of public dollars.

 

[Patooka]

I'll say it again - sack half the US cops and with the savings give the remaining cops raises and you would see less crime and less dead citizens.

 

[bilby]

I'll say it again - sack half the US cops and with the savings give the remaining cops raises and you would see less crime and less dead citizens.

The trick is to sack the right half.

Appointing a black chief of police and then letting the bad cops sack themselves in protest seems like a fairly effective strategy.

 

[Gospel]

Obviously that doesn't work for Memphis.



He as the police chief of Minneapolis MN faced the same challenges as the black Memphis TN police chief & has since retired having gotten nowhere. Nothing short of



Will work.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'll say it again - sack half the US cops and with the savings give the remaining cops raises and you would see less crime and less dead citizens.

Firing police officers seems a less effective route than demilitarizing them. Or maybe actually militarize them in the ways of occupation related allowable force protocols. And reprogram this "hard ass" persona into a civilian friendly persona.

Was in an elevator at the hospital, this officer steps in, all happy, positive, buoyant, talkative. Guy was built like a bull and I'm pretty certain he could take me down before knowing anything happened. We need more like that!

 

[Gospel]

The police Unions are the problem. Until the people stop taking it to the police department and go picket in front of the police Union, nothing will change. We sending the heat in the wrong direction.

 

[TomC]

Was in an elevator at the hospital, this officer steps in, all happy, positive, buoyant, talkative. Guy was built like a bull and I'm pretty certain he could take me down before knowing anything happened. We need more like that!

Not to rain on your anecdote, but I'd bet a lot that Chauvin used to have days like that.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Was in an elevator at the hospital, this officer steps in, all happy, positive, buoyant, talkative. Guy was built like a bull and I'm pretty certain he could take me down before knowing anything happened. We need more like that!

Not to rain on your anecdote, but I'd bet a lot that Chauvin used to have days like that.
Tom

That you'd bet a lot without knowing Chauvin (or his parents) seems without any rational basis.