They resigned from the ERT not from the police force

bbiggs said:

tbergs said:

HesCalledDyer said:

rgambs said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

gimmesometruth27 said: 

dignin said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

Not a single post in this on this board (at least according to the search function) about this poor man that was murdered earlier in the week during the riots. Not surprising. His name was David Dorn, a 77-year-old former police chief that tried to help protect businesses in St. Louis during the riots, and was murdered in cold blood. His death as he bled out on the street was livestreamed on facebook. Very sad. 

Why was a 77 year old out there trying to protect businesses? He should have known better.

Just so I'm clear that's sarcasm. It's a horrible story.

Also, I think I did read about that here but maybe without the name of the victim.

this was big news here in stl. from what i have seen he is kind of viewed as an uncle tom by protesters that were interviewed. it is really sad for sure though. 

i guess the lesson here is if there is an angry mob coming at you to try to destroy something, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to lay down your life for someone else's property.

Which raises concerns about policing going forward. Of course the main concern everyone wants addressed is equality in policing so that minorities aren't targeted like Floyd and others have been. But another problem is....who the fuck is going to want to be a police officer? It's already the most dangerous and most important job there is. They're woefully underpaid. Folks on the left are calling to defund police departments. If you're a cop and the mob comes for you, what do you do? Stand your ground and protect citizens? Or protect yourself? The whole situation sucks. From the systemic racism, to the riots, to the good cops being vilified by the public, to the bad cops being protected by their departments....we're in ugly times. Hopefully something good actually comes of these Floyd protests. 

I don't think it's even in the top 15...

I'd love to hear the 15 jobs you think are as dangerous or more dangerous than being a police officer. I'll even start the list for you. 

1) Military
2) Firefighting

That's a start, what are the other 13? 

Logging, anything on a boat, most forms of construction...

I got ya. I guess I'll rephrase to say policing has the a lot of unspecified (and thus, hard to prepare for) danger to it. You don't know who or what you're going to run into. Most of those jobs in that "top 10 most dangerous jobs" you posted have more specified dangers (accidents in transportation being the most common it seems), so you know the safety precautions to take. 

There's definitely a unique aspect to the danger in policing.

Yeah and with public-trust in policing eroding, coupled with low wages, and folks calling for police departments to be defunded, I worry how many people will even want to be cops and deal with those dangers going forward. And the saddest part is, the bad cops will probably still want to be cops because they have ego/racist/control issues they they take out on people through crooked policing. But the good people that want to be cops might not think it's worth the trouble at this rate. Could lead to even more bad cops in power. 

I keep reading that "people want to defund the police" or "disband police".

Where the hell did this come from?

Angry protest rhetoric, mostly.  It's out there, but it isn't all that serious, IMO.

Plenty of Minneapolis organizations have already terminated contracts with the MPD.  The Los Angeles mayor is slashing $150million in funds from the LAPD's budget.  It's not just angry protest rhetoric, serious action is beginning to take place.  Let's hope it continues because this shit needs fixed.  But it runs deep for over 400 years, so it isn't gonna happen overnight.

I will be interested to see the crime statistics for many of these cities in the next 5 years. Defunding and cutting staff isn't going to fix police brutality and abuse, it's going to exacerbate the problem by having less money for training, resources and staff to handle calls. Go ahead and say fuck the police all you want, but that isn't a solution either.

Agreed completely. 

Yeah, like decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana created a nation of drug addicts. We definitely need more laws and police to enforce them or we are doomed as a nation. /s

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1

Some excerpts . . . there are six parts.

The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1

The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979).. . . The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger. . . . 

In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system . . . 

More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good" (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state. 
----------------------------------------------

The last part reminds me of my friend who was recently arrested and spent TWO WEEKS IN JAIL FOR HORRIBLE CRIME OF SKATEBOARDING. (and yes, you guessed it, he's black and couldn't afford the seven thousand dollar fine)  And how we are now transferring the costs from the state back to the private sector in the form of FOR-PROFIT PRISONS.

But sure, let's just reform our way out of this by hiring good people and pay them more.

I posted this in another thread but it's appropriate here, too:


There's a little parable we can watch develop in real time. Consider this when people squawk about "well what legislation have they passed" as they're slagging a candidate.

Early this week Justin Amash drafted a bill to end qualified immunity. Lean, direct, and extremely effective if it passes. Ayanna Pressley signed on as co-lead and a couple dozen House Reps, all Democrats, have come on board as co-sponsors.

Now House Democrat leadership is drafting a much broader bill that will cover all sorts of items:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/politics/democrats-police-misconduct-racial-bias.html#click=https://t.co/v23MjoLEYV

On first blush, there appears to be a multitude of positive items. My fear, however, is twofold:

1. Once this goes through the usual meatgrinder, many items will be defanged and a whole bunch of other unrelated items will be jammed in. Instead of addressing individual items in unique bills, everything may get blunted to pass one bloated piece of legislation.

2. The article already talks about "altering" qualified immunity which sounds different to me than ending it. I worry that this will not only squash Amash and Pressley's bill, but also be not nearly as effective. It really feels like they're about to be steamrolled.

I hope I'm wrong, but am too cynical to be optimistic.

what dreams said:

bbiggs said:

tbergs said:

HesCalledDyer said:

rgambs said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

rgambs said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

gimmesometruth27 said: 

dignin said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

Not a single post in this on this board (at least according to the search function) about this poor man that was murdered earlier in the week during the riots. Not surprising. His name was David Dorn, a 77-year-old former police chief that tried to help protect businesses in St. Louis during the riots, and was murdered in cold blood. His death as he bled out on the street was livestreamed on facebook. Very sad. 

Why was a 77 year old out there trying to protect businesses? He should have known better.

Just so I'm clear that's sarcasm. It's a horrible story.

Also, I think I did read about that here but maybe without the name of the victim.

this was big news here in stl. from what i have seen he is kind of viewed as an uncle tom by protesters that were interviewed. it is really sad for sure though. 

i guess the lesson here is if there is an angry mob coming at you to try to destroy something, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to lay down your life for someone else's property.

Which raises concerns about policing going forward. Of course the main concern everyone wants addressed is equality in policing so that minorities aren't targeted like Floyd and others have been. But another problem is....who the fuck is going to want to be a police officer? It's already the most dangerous and most important job there is. They're woefully underpaid. Folks on the left are calling to defund police departments. If you're a cop and the mob comes for you, what do you do? Stand your ground and protect citizens? Or protect yourself? The whole situation sucks. From the systemic racism, to the riots, to the good cops being vilified by the public, to the bad cops being protected by their departments....we're in ugly times. Hopefully something good actually comes of these Floyd protests. 

I don't think it's even in the top 15...

I'd love to hear the 15 jobs you think are as dangerous or more dangerous than being a police officer. I'll even start the list for you. 

1) Military
2) Firefighting

That's a start, what are the other 13? 

Logging, anything on a boat, most forms of construction...

I got ya. I guess I'll rephrase to say policing has the a lot of unspecified (and thus, hard to prepare for) danger to it. You don't know who or what you're going to run into. Most of those jobs in that "top 10 most dangerous jobs" you posted have more specified dangers (accidents in transportation being the most common it seems), so you know the safety precautions to take. 

There's definitely a unique aspect to the danger in policing.

Yeah and with public-trust in policing eroding, coupled with low wages, and folks calling for police departments to be defunded, I worry how many people will even want to be cops and deal with those dangers going forward. And the saddest part is, the bad cops will probably still want to be cops because they have ego/racist/control issues they they take out on people through crooked policing. But the good people that want to be cops might not think it's worth the trouble at this rate. Could lead to even more bad cops in power. 

I keep reading that "people want to defund the police" or "disband police".

Where the hell did this come from?

Angry protest rhetoric, mostly.  It's out there, but it isn't all that serious, IMO.

Plenty of Minneapolis organizations have already terminated contracts with the MPD.  The Los Angeles mayor is slashing $150million in funds from the LAPD's budget.  It's not just angry protest rhetoric, serious action is beginning to take place.  Let's hope it continues because this shit needs fixed.  But it runs deep for over 400 years, so it isn't gonna happen overnight.

I will be interested to see the crime statistics for many of these cities in the next 5 years. Defunding and cutting staff isn't going to fix police brutality and abuse, it's going to exacerbate the problem by having less money for training, resources and staff to handle calls. Go ahead and say fuck the police all you want, but that isn't a solution either.

Agreed completely. 

Yeah, like decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana created a nation of drug addicts. We definitely need more laws and police to enforce them or we are doomed as a nation. /s

Yeah. That’s what I said. Take law enforcement off the street and I’m pretty sure everyone will suddenly start to follow the rules. No question society will do the right thing and stop breaking laws. We should have thought of this sooner. 

pjl44 said:

The anti-private property takes are all being sent from library computers, I presume 

Hahaha only a libertarian 🤣🤣🤣

Interested in seeing how this all works out. I kinda hate throwing the baby out with the bath water, but it’s bold. 

cincybearcat said:

Interested in seeing how this all works out. I kinda hate throwing the baby out with the bath water, but it’s bold. 

You should read that article about Camden. They also refer to what they're doing as "community policing" but there are actually more cops on the ground - they're just employed by the county vs. a traditional city PD. The other article hints at Minneapolis moving toward something similar (though no talk of head count).

Basically, I don't think the end result in Minneapolis is going to be anywhere near as dramatic as that headline reads