I get your point, and I'm onboard with this. But at the end the whole burning it down thing by the protestors only hurts the people that shouldn't be hurt by this.
I remember the Rodney King riots where people that had nothing to do with King or the protests like a Truck driver doing his job was pulled out of his truck by a mob and stomped pretty well to death while protestors stood around and jeered. Or the shop owner in a documentary that had a business neighbor in the neighborhood for years and had paid his taxes and worked hard to feed his family had his business looted and burned down.
Violent protests achieve very little, except for feeding stereotypes.
Burning and looting aren't acts of protests. They don't get a point across, and gives the other side a pulpit to say, look they are what we said they are, and that's why the cops act like they do.
There was a reason why MLK Jr was not an advocate of violent protests, because it achieves nothing, builds community resentment and hatred and fuels racism, not stops it.
I was watching protest clips this morning, and I've said it before, its the job of the protestors to really stop the idiots that show up to loot, or burn or assault or whatever. The protests should bring the protestors together in a common goal, not victimize and destroy the innocent or the bystander.
Seeing young white protestors in masks hotwiring a bulldozer so he can bust windows on stores is not protesting, its violence for violence sake and they get off on it, and that should be your messenger.
The Million Man March worked because it didn't feed into the stereotypes, it wasn't about chaos and burning and beatings, it bought the community together into a common goal.
If your answer to police violence is more violence, what does it achieve, nothing, it just increases the budget of the police, it just ensures that the police will have more brutal responses, it ensures that the National Guard, a formation that's not trained in police work or law enforcement, but riot suppression is bought into play and more people get hurt, and more peoples lives get ruined.
A few things:
1. Violent protests don’t “achieve very little,” but non-violent protests are more effective at achieving the same goals.
2. It is not the protestors job to control violent protestors, and the guilt by association you're suggesting is somewhat silly. It is the violent protestors job not to be violent, but given human nature, good luck.
3. The most effective form of protest is not one which lacks violence, but where nonviolent protest encourages violent response from the state. THIS is why MLK knew what he was doing. The places he chose were more prone to violent responses from the police force. They were looking for violence, but to be the victims of it, not the perpetrators.
Establishing intent to kill at the moment would be required for 2nd degree. 3rd degree would be that he should have known that his acts could kill, but recklessly disregarded it.
I don’t expect that they could establish that the cop was truly intending in that moment to kill, but more likely could establish that he reasonably should have known the risk of kneeling on a guy’s neck for 8 minutes when that guy is telling him he can’t breathe
Burden of proof etc, lies with the courts. The prosecutor can lay a charge against him if they believe that they can meet the evidentiary standard. Maybe this will change down the road and they charge him with 2nd degree murder. I hope that is the case.
Burden of proof etc, lies with the courts. The prosecutor can lay a charge against him if they believe that they can meet the evidentiary standard. Maybe this will change down the road and they charge him with 2nd degree murder. I hope that is the case.
Burden of proof lies with the prosecuting party in this case
What hope may they have other than the cop directly admitting he intended to kill the guy? And how likely is that to happen
Burden of proof etc, lies with the courts. The prosecutor can lay a charge against him if they believe that they can meet the evidentiary standard. Maybe this will change down the road and they charge him with 2nd degree murder. I hope that is the case.
It would be extremely easy to get reasonable doubt trying to prove intent in this case. They are better off going with 3rd degree to guarantee the guilty verdict than a coin-flip (at best) at 2nd degree.
This is really what your focus is? “Not all cops”? Funny.
Of course not every cop is a racist murderer, and to distort the point to mean that is to fail to actually listen to what’s being said.
The fact is this: their fraternity is responsible for instilling the fear of death into an entire population of people based solely on the colour of their skin. Nobody gives a #### if a cop is scared tonight. Be scared. Welcome to how other people live their entire lives, not knowing if the person behind the badge is a good person, or if you got the bad lucky of the draw and might die tonight.
Police need to get their house in order and stop killing people they’re sworn to protect before they get any sympathy for being “on edge.” Dang, on edge, wow. Tough life.
There are no shortage of people excusing cops for murdering innocent people. Saw it just today with the news that a Calgary cop who murdered someone needlessly is going to avoid punishment, with responses like “don’t do drugs and you won’t get shot.” Even murdering cops have plenty of sympathy, you don’t need to go grifting for them.
I’m not sure how you could possibly take my post as sympathizing with the police. But then again you continuously talk about things you know nothing about, like you’re some sort of expert. Please tell me about your experience being an American cop, or an African American, I would love to read it.
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It would be extremely easy to get reasonable doubt trying to prove intent in this case. They are better off going with 3rd degree to guarantee the guilty verdict than a coin-flip (at best) at 2nd degree.
Especially given that the context and surrounding circumstances dictate that he's going to receive something on the high end of the sentencing range. To wit, I don't agree with this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acey
Only 3 states have 3rd degree murder, hence all the confusion today. This Minnesota county just put away a cop for 12.5 years on a 3rd degree murder charge after he got "spooked" and shot a woman who walked up to the side of his car, the woman who had called them to come out in the first place. If that had been what happened here, the entire Twin Cities would be on fire right now.
Really? This seems much worse, to me, in that it's not a split-second thing, or even close. He didn't get spooked and make a bad decision in the moment. He decided to put his knee on the guy's neck, and decided to keep it there for an extended period of time. While he may not have asphyxiated the guy, that action still seems to be the proximate cause of his death, unless somehow the defense can show that there's a reasonable possibility he would have died if they'd just handcuffed him and left him.
I suspect he gets the book thrown at him, for a number of reasons. I don't think the other police involved get anything beyond being fired, but I'm not really convinced about whether they should.
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I think it might depend on how they train cops in Minneapolis. A lot of departments are teaching the danger of choke holds and their effect on blood circulation. There's no way in hell anyone would teach you it's ok to pin a guy's head to the ground for 9 minutes. If there was specific instruction against this kind of action then he's guilty of 2nd degree murder, He should have known better because he was trained. And in fact another officer was suggesting he get off his neck. So there's that.
It may also be telling if this guy took extra departmental training from ex soldiers teaching cops how to be soldiers. It's very common in the states.
I also wonder if there is a felony murder type charge for the other three guys.
The Minneapolis Police Department failed to fully adopt changes recommended by federal officials to weed out bad cops, local critics said. At least two of the officers involved in Floyd’s fatal encounter, including the officer who knelt on his neck, had complaints filed against them in the past. At the same time, the department continued to use choke holds, allowing the controversial practice in some circumstances—even as an option for lethal force.
I do feel for some police officers in other cities that don't have these problems, if there exists such a thing.
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While I certainly don't condone random violence or looting, quite often protesting is the only means of achieving change, because it's only when people feel scared that they are inclined to actually change things. Look no further for examples of all these people who think COVID is a hoax and not dangerous until they get it, and then they're in the news talking about how stupid and how blind they were.
Police culture, in most countries, is largely toxic. This is not to suggest that call cops are bad or even most of them. I don't honestly know how many that are. I've met more good ones than bad in my life, although since none of those encounters involved violence in any way, shape, or form, who really knows for sure?
There's that tweet floating around saying if you have 1000 good caps and 10 bad ones and the 1000 don't root out the 10 bad, then you have 1010 bad ones. I don't like that tweet, because while technically it's true, I think it's an incomplete summary, and focuses on the cops rather than the institution of policing, which is where I think the real culprit is.
Not to say officers such as this murderer are not to blame for their actions; they are. But I don't think you're going to root it out but firing and jailing them, because I think the culture not only attracts more, but breeds them.
We've seen it in Minneapolis with the official statement that was pretty much completely made up and not supported by video evidence. That happens in Canada quite often too. Cops protect each other, because they're trained to. They're taut that they're a brotherhood and they need to have each other's backs at all time. They're trained to deny, deny, deny until you have no other choice.
There are far too many examples to count of police making up stories or creating evidence. A guy I used to work with was just awarded 65000 dollars because he was falsely arrested and charged for a crime he didn't commit, a charge that made him lose his job and have to fight for over ten years, and the judge ruled that the case was a joke from the get-go. And his wife was a detective with the same department.
Every time a person is killed, usually a person of colour in the States at least, there are social media posts and news stories, and they don't change a thing. They just don't. Things fade from public (read: white) consciousness, until the next one. School shooting are exactly the same thing. People get upset, and people post about it, and nothing changes.
It's a terrible thing to contemplate, but protest is quite often the only thing that works, that gets through, and those protests get violent. When the President of the United States is a proven racist in how he describes the actions of protesters, when an entire group of people have to fear for their life when they are out jogging or driving or walking, when indigenous people are belittled because they are indigenous, change has to happen, and usually that won't happen without more violence. That's sad, but it s the way it is.
The Arab spring happened with protests, often violent ones. The examples of others are numerous.
Police forces, ,and society in general, is resistant to change. Even when that change is forced upon them by the courts, they resist. Peel Region was told ot stop carding and they kept doing. Minneapolis was told to enact reforms and didn't follow through. Why? Because there are no real consequences when they don't.
And not only does police culture need to change, the inherent racism in how they treat people needs to change. This isn't anything new, and despite the outrage, and it keeps happening. Examples all over this thread, such as Rodney King, the CRASH scandal, etc etc etc. Remember Hurricane Katrina, and a news site showed two pictures; one was black people taking from a store, and one was white people. The black person headline said they were "looting" and the white person headline said they were "foraging."
Until those consequences become real, things don't change. Until the people in power have something to lose, things don't change. That is the world we're living in, and that's the issue the US is facing right now. Continue to protest until you get that change, or let it die out until tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or whenever something happens.
If the goal of your "protest" is to make people scared enough that they effect the political changes you want to see, that's actually called "terrorism", not protesting.
The purpose of a protest is to show the authorities that there are a large number of people who believe passionately enough about their cause that they're willing to organize and take the time to protest for it, and to raise public awareness.
Who do you think is made fearful by these riots? Is it the people who don't think any change is needed? You really think this whole episode is frightening those people into changing their tune? Do you think rioting frightens police, or does it galvanize them and allow them to view themselves as the forces of law and order protecting society from chaos, rather than taking the time to examine how they do their jobs?
If you want to scare bad cops, the attention should be focused entirely on what happened to the police involved here, including the prosecution and murder trial. Not on people smashing windows and setting cars on fire.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Scaring people, burning houses and businesses and general threatening violence as a means to protests doesn't scare people to your side, it turns them against you.
They might say that sure absolutely the cops are bad and at fault in this place, but then the protesters destroyed my neighbourhood and killed my business or beat up my friend so they're just as bad as the thing they're protesting against.
If you hold a gun to a person and threaten them, they'll agree with you long enough for you to put that gun away, but they'll resent you and hate you for the threat, and do everything they can to see you caught and punished.
Protests that take place without violence or threat of violence, where you convince a person or group or organization to change without burning down their neighbourhood or harming that person is probably going to create longer lasting change.
Just my 2 cents. It might be naive.
What was the result of the LA Riots, outside of the devestation of Korean American and Latino businesses and homes, and casualties among those communities? They got the Webster Report, Gates resigned but how much really changed there?
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I’m not sure how you could possibly take my post as sympathizing with the police. But then again you continuously talk about things you know nothing about, like you’re some sort of expert. Please tell me about your experience being an American cop, or an African American, I would love to read it.
I was mostly responding to transplant, your post was just a lead-in. Why exactly would you even ask me about my experience if you’ve already decided I talk about things I know nothing about without having any idea about who I am?
You don’t actually need to be an expert to have an educated opinion on something. Sometimes you can take your own experiences, the experiences of your friends and loved ones, you can read books and actually learn about our history and current events. You can combine all of this things and generally they will help you form an educated opinion. Really, the first step is to actually give a #### about the world around you, because generally that’s required to learn.
At the end of the day though, my opinions are just that, and if you don’t like them and think I’m just constantly talking out of my ass, use the ignore function. Nobody cares. If you want to actually engage in conversation about the topic and you’ve got something relevant to say, let’s hear it.
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I was mostly responding to transplant, your post was just a lead-in. Why exactly would you even ask me about my experience if you’ve already decided I talk about things I know nothing about without having any idea about who I am?
You don’t actually need to be an expert to have an educated opinion on something. Sometimes you can take your own experiences, the experiences of your friends and loved ones, you can read books and actually learn about our history and current events. You can combine all of this things and generally they will help you form an educated opinion. Really, the first step is to actually give a #### about the world around you, because generally that’s required to learn.
At the end of the day though, my opinions are just that, and if you don’t like them and think I’m just constantly talking out of my ass, use the ignore function. Nobody cares. If you want to actually engage in conversation about the topic and you’ve got something relevant to say, let’s hear it.
Agreed not a fan of appeal to authority for everything. Smart reasonable educated people’s opinions should not be outright dismissed merely because they haven’t gone through similar experiences or are experts IMO.
Did they just roll on in from the Dakotas? It not like Minnesota is surrounded by mass population.
When I was watching the Unicorn Riot live feed, there seemed to be a good number of people saying they were from out of state, some of them saying Wisconsin and others not specifying. One guy said he drove up from Texas.
Impossible to know how many by percent based on that, but I have no doubt there were a lot of people from out of state.
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