(06-02-2020, 07:40 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: We know who would have been a loyalist during the American Revolution.

(06-02-2020, 09:31 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: I think the video of police firing rubber bullets at people standing on their own ***** porch may have pushed me over the edge a little bit.

(06-02-2020, 09:40 AM)GMDino Wrote: Oh that is SO two days ago!

@Popehat You see this? Fox 11 report from Van Nuys. African--American cash for gold store owners chase away would be looters, cops show up, try to arrest the owners because they think they're the ones looting. https://t.co/nTDM5Xspk6

— AsdumbasIlook (@AsdumbasIlook) June 2, 2020

 

(06-02-2020, 09:51 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: I was already over the edge, this just pushes me further. Pretty soon I'm going to be posting with #EatTheRich.

(06-02-2020, 10:19 AM)Nately120 Wrote: Wowza, that's amazing.  I love how the woman reporting is telling the cops that the people they are arresting are the store owners and his reply is "Ok, we're putting those in handcuffs!"  Of course that is after they showed up and went right for the most ethnic looking guy on her crew.

I'm actually encouraged the cops didn't shoot the store owners.

(06-01-2020, 03:18 PM)Dill Wrote: Stop and think for a moment

Quote:A fresh look at Trump reversing Obama's police investigations policy



Obama's Justice Department played a constructive role in holding police departments accountable for abuses. Trump's DOJ changed direction.



June 1, 2020, 11:20 AM EDT
By Steve Benen
In the fall, Minneapolis Police Union President Lt. Bob Kroll spoke at a campaign rally for Donald Trump and praised the current president for breaking with the policies of his predecessor. "The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable," Kroll said at a Trump rally. "The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around."


The Minneapolis officer didn't go into a lot of detail about what it was, exactly, the Democratic White House did to "oppress" police departments, but we can probably guess what the complaint was about. A Vox report noted a few years ago that during Barack Obama's presidency, the Justice Department "played a key role in exposing abuses from local police departments, exposing everything from unjustified shootings to a broader pattern of racism in a police force."

The report added that under Obama, the Justice Department took on more civil rights investigations of local police departments than his recent predecessors, launching probes into "nearly two dozen police departments, from Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri to Chicago -- uncovering a wide range of abusive, even racist, police practices."

So what happened? Donald Trump took office, Jeff Sessions became attorney general, and in November 2018, the Republican-led Justice Department went in a dramatically different direction. The New York Times reported at the time that Sessions "drastically limited the ability of federal law enforcement officials to use court-enforced agreements to overhaul local police departments accused of abuses and civil rights violations." The Justice Department had been using court-approved consent decrees to create blueprints for changing law enforcement, but the Alabama Republican decided to make that far more difficult.

Quote:The move means that the decrees, used aggressively by Obama-era Justice Department officials to fight police abuses, will be more difficult to enact. Mr. Sessions had signaled he would pull back on their use soon after he took office when he ordered a review of the existing agreements, including with police departments in Baltimore, Chicago and Ferguson, Mo., enacted amid a national outcry over the deaths of black men at the hands of officers.

The attorney general added at the time that he hadn't actually read the Civil Rights Division's investigative reports on police departments.



Over the weekend, HuffPost's Ryan J. Reilly added that since Trump took office, "his appointees at the Justice Department have all but eliminated the federal government's police reform work. The Civil Rights Division's police practices group has shrunk by half, and it hasn't opened any major pattern-or-practice investigations that could rein in police departments that regularly violate constitutional rights. The Trump administration [also] effectively killed a collaborative reform initiative created by DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that allowed cities to voluntarily implement reform, a move that left the local officials who had partnered with DOJ feeling abandoned."


All of this is relevant anew for reasons that should be obvious. It's a reminder that the Justice Department can, with the proper leadership, play a constructive role in holding police departments accountable for abuses. It's also a reminder that election results matter.


But it's against this backdrop that Attorney General Bill Barr is prepared to launch a federal investigation into George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. And while it's true that Barr and Sessions are very different people, some skepticism about the road ahead is inevitable.


For one thing, Barr's record on these issues does not inspire confidence. For another, the attorney general has apparently already decided that "far-left extremist groups" are responsible for recent violence.

(06-02-2020, 12:49 PM)hollodero Wrote: "You" (the US) also seem to have a culture of violence, for example, which at times might be a bigger culprit than inherent racism, which might just come as an easily persuable byproduct. You have a culture of uncompromising bipolar thought. Which is - initially - the reason why I figured so much defense/non-defense regarding riots; after all, it's the liberal or at least anti-Trump side that does the rioting. But maybe that's not such a hot take after all.
The "other side" now muses about deploying the military in the cities. At this point, my thought process too shifts towards not being on this side by any means, and hence the riots are a tad more justified... and so it goes. It's a spiral.

I mean, damn, those Trump ideas and those pictures are hard to swallow. The opposite of healing.

(06-02-2020, 03:02 PM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fresh-look-trump-reversing-obama-s-police-investigations-policy-n1221056

In the fall, Minneapolis Police Union President Lt. Bob Kroll spoke at a campaign rally for Donald Trump and praised the current president for breaking with the policies of his predecessor. "The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable," Kroll said at a Trump rally. "The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around."...

A Vox report noted a few years ago that during Barack Obama's presidency, the Justice Department "played a key role in exposing abuses from local police departments, exposing everything from unjustified shootings to a broader pattern of racism in a police force."

(06-02-2020, 03:15 PM)Dill Wrote: Well do hang in there, Hollo.  Your comments are much appreciated.

I DO like hearing how this looks from "the outside."

Articulate foreigners regularly describe things about us that we ourselves can't see.

(06-02-2020, 03:15 PM)Dill Wrote: So don't abandon us.  I'm always listening. 

(06-02-2020, 03:15 PM)Dill Wrote: (PS I didn't really write "Stop and think" did I? not in my 6:18 post, anyway.)

(06-02-2020, 03:15 PM)Dill Wrote: (PPS the "Culture of violence" and racism are intimately and historically connected. But not in any way that makes the former a "bigger culprit" than the latter.)

Quote:In an interview with The Post and Courier, Jordan, a 23-year-old Charleston resident, said he spent the night in the county jail. He was charged with disobeying a lawful order, according to a police report.

He is among the more than 60 who have been arrested in the Charleston area since protests began over the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds defended the officers’ actions in Marion Square on Sunday. He stressed that Jordan’s two-minute video does not encapsulate a tense protest where a large crowd had been ordered to break up.

“We specifically asked for them, numerous times, to disperse,” he said. “We said if you don’t you will be arrested.”

Reynolds did not say why officers seemed to single Jordan out from the crowd. Jordan said he was arrested around 5 p.m., well before Charleston’s 6 p.m. curfew.


Reynolds stressed that officers were also on high alert Sunday after a night of unrest Saturday, which included fires and looting.

Jordan was among a crew who volunteered to clean up downtown Sunday morning. He swept the streets and carried plywood to help business owners board up their storefronts. In the afternoon he headed to Marion Square, near King Street.

A crowd of about 200 gathered. At some point, Jordan, a black man, knelt on the ground.

“My plan was to get all the people beside me, kneeling behind me, kneeling with me,” he said in an interview. “Showing the cops that we are no threat. We are no threat at all. We just want to make the world better.”

In the video, several white protesters can be seen crouching around him, placing their hands on him.

“I would love to see the best side of everybody here,” Jordan told police. “This is not the best side of everybody here.”

“If we charge you, if you charge us, what is that really doing?” he added.

None of the officers responded. Instead, they stepped forward, and took him away.

Quote:MINNEAPOLIS POLICE UNION PRESIDENT: “I’VE BEEN INVOLVED IN THREE SHOOTINGS MYSELF, AND NOT A ONE OF THEM HAS BOTHERED ME”

Ryan Grim, Aída Chávez

June 2 2020, 5:05 p.m.

IN AN INTERVIEW in April, Lt. Bob Kroll, head of Minneapolis’s police union, said that he and a majority of the Minneapolis Police Officers’ Federation’s board have been involved in police shootings. Kroll said that he and the officers on the union’s board were not bothered by the shootings, comparing themselves favorably to other officers.

“There’s been a big influx of PTSD,” Kroll said. “But I’ve been involved in three shootings myself, and not one of them has bothered me. Maybe I’m different.”

His comments underscore the rampant nature of police violence in the United States. The number of times police officers fire their weapons swamps the level of violence in most other countries, where authorities rely on nonlethal methods of coercion, persuasion, or control. Many police officers live with post-traumatic stress disorder induced by the violence associated with policing.

But not Kroll’s crew, he said. “Out of the 10 board members, over half of them have been involved in armed encounters, and several of us multiple. We don’t seem to have problems,” he said. “Certainly getting shot at and shooting people takes a different toll, but if you’re in this job and you’ve seen too much blood and gore and dead people then you’ve signed up for the wrong job.”


Kroll has been a central figure in the unfolding protests and riots following the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. In a letter to union members on Monday, Kroll called Floyd a “violent criminal” and described the ongoing protests as a “terrorist movement” that was years in the making, starting with a minimized police force. He railed against the city’s politicians, namely Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and state Gov. Tim Waltz, for not authorizing greater force to stop the uprising. “The politicians are to blame and you are the scapegoats,” he wrote.


On Tuesday afternoon, the Minnesota AFL-CIO called for Kroll’s resignation, blaming him for his role in “[enabling] violence and brutality to grow within police ranks.” Police forces across the country have been escalating violence against demonstrators; driving vehicles into crowds; firing rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash grenades at largely peaceful gatherings; and even killing a man in Louisville, Kentucky.

Quote:
[/url]Minnesota AFL-CIO@MNAFLCIO




Minnesota AFL-CIO Calls for Minneapolis Police Union President Bob Kroll’s Immediate Resignation https://aflcio.mn/3013vwN  #BlackLivesMatter #GeorgeFloyd #1u #mnleg



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THE CONVERSATION, “The Nothing Sacred Interview Lieutenant Bob Kroll,” was posted to YouTube =68.ARDx95bvgoEMFScDR9gEOCXnP1zhvguAX6RU0yF7J6zgwu4D88FJCbA5Kqx-a9T6bAEsAaOB-sGB5av_0nz5sgmot3v9KG2rSon10LMYWPmMC1-N4x-O107F6cviVIjvf-9o6y5p-PAHyYB9kiAHInClO3481r_Ktj886uGbpGb_CF6RWcaX9pieCG4yld7wGwn6WODtI1iBlaDbX6XFfc2N2H2MVsket7rQ7BEGCfoJTL-NO50FkUyAJ26pm1UgpssjAqvxAatdCMUHUrelDigzXSrh5VwGxbsnZEUOyjyau5VduaKaHFhdbb_GXDz2G7hLinISsoy-uX-t7Lxz]and Facebook on April 29, but has gone largely overlooked. Kroll, in the interview with =68.ARDx95bvgoEMFScDR9gEOCXnP1zhvguAX6RU0yF7J6zgwu4D88FJCbA5Kqx-a9T6bAEsAaOB-sGB5av_0nz5sgmot3v9KG2rSon10LMYWPmMC1-N4x-O107F6cviVIjvf-9o6y5p-PAHyYB9kiAHInClO3481r_Ktj886uGbpGb_CF6RWcaX9pieCG4yld7wGwn6WODtI1iBlaDbX6XFfc2N2H2MVsket7rQ7BEGCfoJTL-NO50FkUyAJ26pm1UgpssjAqvxAatdCMUHUrelDigzXSrh5VwGxbsnZEUOyjyau5VduaKaHFhdbb_GXDz2G7hLinISsoy-uX-t7Lxz]STIM Radio host Maxwell Thomas Silverhammer, also discusses efforts by the mayor and city council to pressure the police and other unionized workers to forgo raises in order to help the city mitigate the budgetary crisis brought about the coronavirus pandemic.

“The first thing we said was OK, let’s see the budget, let’s see the city budget. And guys they’re pissing away, millions and millions of dollars to projects,” he said. “Like, you know, they’re giving $15,000 a year to the transgender coordinator of the city.”

Quote:“Guys they’re pissing away, millions and millions of dollars to projects … they’re giving $15,000 a year to the transgender coordinator of the city.”

Kroll said that he asked for an assessment of how much the city would save by postponing raises for the officers and said he was told that it would come to $410,000. That was an unacceptable sum, he said, because the city had been spending similar amounts settling claims of wrongful death by police officers. Kroll’s curious logic argued that the police should be held blameless for the costly settlements because the true blame rested with city attorneys, who didn’t properly defend police officers when they were sued after fatal shootings.



“They just paid a former Minnesota Viking $385,000 in an out-of-court settlement because he was tased when he wouldn’t leave a bar,” Kroll said, apparently not considering the possibility that the police could have declined to tase him. “The cops tased him,” Kroll said.


“You’re giving away money left and right in lawsuits, and you want us to take a bath? So forget it,” Kroll said, adding that the settlement with the family of Terrance Franklin particularly bothered him. Franklin, a burglary suspect, unarmed and 173 pounds, was found hiding in a basement by five officers who unleashed a dog on him. His family’s attorneys say an officer’s semiautomatic weapon accidentally went off, hitting two officers in the legs, and police responded by shooting and killing Franklin in anger. Police claimed that Franklin attacked an officer and took control of the gun, a charge the family’s attorneys said was absurd and contradicted by evidence. The city eventually agreed to a $795,000 settlement. Kroll said that a good friend of his had killed Franklin: “stepped up and shot him in the head at close range.”

“The Franklin one was near and dear to my heart because he shot two friends of mine, and a very good friend of mine was the one who shot and killed him in the confrontation,” Kroll said.


Related
The George Floyd Killing in Minneapolis Exposes the Failures of Police Reform

Kroll’s politics are not incidental to what is effectively a police riot underway in Minnesota and across the country. He’s one of Minnesota’s more outspoken supporters of President Donald Trump and took the stage with him at a [url=https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/06/01/minneapolis-police-union-president-praise-trump-campaign-rally.cnn]2019 campaign rally to praise the administration for “letting the cops do their jobs.”


According to a 2015 Star Tribune report, Kroll clocked at least 20 internal affairs complaints during his three decades in the Minneapolis Police Department, “all but three of which were closed without discipline.” There have also been several lawsuits against Kroll, detailing a long history of allegations of bigoted comments, including one that accused him of using excessive force against an elderly couple during a no-knock raid and another that accused him of “beating, choking, and kicking” a biracial 15-year-old boy while “spewing racial slurs.”


“The big buzzword they had was deescalation,” Kroll said of police reform efforts. “You’re supposed to, you know, even if you’re lawful in using force, it could look bad and give a bad public perception.”


Being trained not to use force is what’s causing officers stress, Kroll said. “Certainly cops, it’s not in their nature. So you’re training them to back away,” he said. “And it’s just not a natural — that’s where a lot of the stress does come from with the cops is not [having] the ability to grab somebody and say, no, step back or you’re going to jail and if need be, by force.”


Kroll also mocked the concept of procedural justice, an institutional reform meant to reduce police use of force through diversity and anti-bias training, saying that it’s an opportunity for people of color to get back at white men. He said that in his early days of training, the rule was to “ask them nicely to do something the first time,” then give them a “direct, lawful order” to do so, and if they refuse — “you make them with force, that’s how you get compliance.”

“Those days are over,” he said. “Now, it is ask them, love them, call, you know, give them their space and give them their voice. And this is what they’re training new officers. … Our cops went through that and they’re going, ‘Oh my God.’ Yeah, procedural justice. And the theory behind it being that, you know, the white men have oppressed everyone else for 200 years. So it’s their opportunity to get back.”


Minneapolis Police Officers Federation did not respond to a request for comment.

(06-02-2020, 01:33 PM)GMDino Wrote:

This white man had a gun to me and my friends face. He was not w/ the police he was just out here instigating. If he had been black he would have been thrown to the ground arrrested and beaten. But he was peacefully tuned away. Because he’s white. pic.twitter.com/0Dxy3PcRFJ

— TGIB (@taygang98) June 1, 2020

 

(06-02-2020, 07:51 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: