Plague Diary, In Which My City Is On Fucking Fire

[lydy]

I live in Minneapolis. The most recent murder by a cop happened 10 blocks from my house. The Target and Cub that have been set on fire were the places I most often bought Target-like objects and groceries. I've watched a fair bit of the live-streaming from Unicorn Riot. This didn't have to happen. This is what happens when cops are left unchecked.

I sent email to my city council person and my mayor, as follows:

I am terrified and heart-sick.  At every point, the police have escalated.  I stand firmly with the protestors, and against the police.  Further militarizing the situation is going to make things more violent, not less.  

I ask you to work to having the officers who killed Floyd arrested.  I ask you to stop the deployment of additional force, such as the National Guard.  I ask you to force the police to stand down, to call the Chief of Police to account for the actions of the officers.  I ask for an investigation to determine how this escalation happened.

I ask you to stand up for the people who are enraged and despairing, and not for the men who terrorize and abuse my neighbors.

I thank you for your time.  I apologize for my lack of eloquence or coherence.

I am tired and angry and frightened.  And it may be, again, a long, hot summer.  This has happened before.  It should not have happened again, and yet, here we are.  

Comments

[thewayne]

I worked for a police department through the '90s as a civilian doing IT work. Dumb-ass fuckery like this was not tolerated and you'd get sacked and prosecuted. Five years ago my dad, brother, and I went shooting at the public range. I went to the office to rent a spotting scope, was talking to the guy working there, turned out he was a retired cop from the same force, was working there the same time I was, though we never ran in to each other: 3,000+ people worked there, I met lots of people but not everyone.

We absolutely agreed that we did not understand just WTF was going on now and that we could not go back to working in law enforcement with what is going on now. It was just inconceivable to the standards that we worked under.

[lydy]

The MPD has been committing this level of dumbass fuckery for a very long time.

Back in the 80s, I think, there was a cop that my boyfriend would refer to as the 2 million dollar man. He had repeated, substantiated charges of brutality against him and the city paid out more than $2 mil in compensation. And he got reinstated every goddam time. Mike Soro, maybe? Been a while. But this city has been hugely willing to cover for the abusers for more than a generation.

[thewayne]

In some cases, City gov'ts bowed to union pressure to ensure votes.  Which is utterly ridiculous.  In our city's case, if you followed all rules and regulations and someone died - you were backed to the wall.  If you screwed up and did something egregious, you were out on your ass.  We had two incidents when I was there that resulted in the Chief losing his job.  One was an officer misjudgement - followed the rules, the second was a bad tactical situation dealing with a man drugged out of his mind wielding a shotgun in a project - who just happened to be a friend of the person who died in in the first incident.  Both were black.  Very weird situations.  And add'l training was put into place immediately after each situation. But in our dept, they wouldn't allow something like a $2M man.  Even the union would say 'there's something wrong here, that guy has got to go.'