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

[mrissa]

That's a good letter. Thank you.

[quadong]

Seconded.

[dewline]

All because one damned fool wanted to torture someone.

[sraun]

Displaying my lack of local awareness - which Cub?

I've heard about calls to fire Arradondo. I'm not certain that's the right thing. I'm afraid the right thing is a massive purge of the police force. What we have is a long-entrenched culture. It's not going to be changed from the top down - at least, not incrementally.

Fifteen years ago the FBI was investigating efforts by white supremacists to get their people into local and state police forces - how much success did they have? Have any attempts been made to identify them and remove them? How successfully?

I read an article on-line somewhere that suggested that one place to start was with police union contracts - apparently a lot of them have clauses that serve to protect police officers from penalties for misconduct. This is a site that talks about that.

[graydon]

Institutional armed force is properly a monopoly of the state. (whether US-state or nation-state, at least that far up the chain of authority. In Canada, I say "of the Crown", which is this complex legal concept involving Parliament, the idea of a monarch, and the construction of legitimacy.)

Anyway -- police unions are alternative power structures and are intended to be alternative power structures. They're armed, and they do not obey civil authority. That's why they're the one non-busted kind of union and why they're so very Confederate in outlook. On those terms, police unions should not exist.

Either everyone is an essential civil servant without any right to strike and without collective bargaining as such (collective arbitration, yes) or they're not armed. But they can't both be armed and not subject to civil authority. That way lies some non-democratic power structure which is, in observed present practice, the point.

[mount_oregano]

I used to participate in martial arts, and I've been trained in choke holds. That hold could not have been carried out safely in any circumstances, and it was done in a way that could arguably have been with the express intention to kill.

hugs I'll help you hide

[haertstitch]

its scary seeing my former home on fire
and much of it is from people out of town!

if you need to bring mattresses
and you all come out here !
just let me know & I'll empty out
the addition into the town hall.
we have room for tents. we'll mow first.
there's room here and a guest room at dad's.
we'll figure out food the cats will just have to cope
yours can have the bottom floor.
gus won't notice and will love having people

[haertstitch]

this all started over a stupid peice of paper.

[dewline]

At best(!), with intent to torture.

[mount_oregano]

I was also taught non-lethal ways to cause intense pain. I can even break your arm so easily it would look like an accident. (Judo is a nastier sport than people think.) If the intent was torture, the officers were extremely untrained in handling prisoners, and I don't buy that. They knew what they were doing.

[calimac]

Thank you for emphasizing the police response to the protests, which as a considered after-the-fact measure has a seriousness that extends beyond the original offense, even though the original offense was murder.

More thoughts on this behind a friends-lock.

[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]

I wish it were that simple. That would make it a tractable problem. But the MPD is racist as fuck, and has been for generations. High profile in the last couple of years have been the murders of Philando Castille, Jamal Clark, and George Lloyd. There are others, but those are the ones that actually made the news. The police "union" head is an avowed white supremicst.

Rage and despair like this don't come from a single instance. Minneapolis is one of the most segregated cities in America. It has one of the worst disparities in educational outcomes based on race. The county attorney frequently refuses to charge cops for their criminal behavior.

This is difficult and scary and not the least bit simple. I don't know what it will take to make it better.

[lydy]

The cub at what David likes to call "The Funny Little Mall," the shopping complex at Minnehaha and Lake street, with a Target, Cub, Dollar Store, across the street an Aldis and a Wendys, also at the intersection Minnehaha Liquor. All, now, badly damaged or razed to the ground. Also damage at Uptown, but a lot of that appears to have been smash-and-grab opportunistic burglary, while the cops were busy not doing their jobs.

Re: hugs I'll help you hide

[lydy]

At the moment, our neighborhood is peaceful. But thank you.

[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.

[dewline]

And there is me, not connecting the geo-history dots to Castile and Clark's killings. I should have remembered that all three happened in your city.

[lydy]

There are two things I wish I could force police departments to do. The first is: if you use your sidearm (gun or taser), you work a desk job for two years. This applies if its a good shoot. If it was determined to be an illegitimate use of force, other disciplinary action. But I want to dampen down the cycle of violence, and forcing officers who are willing to use force to take a time out I think might help with that. At very least, it might make them slower to take out their guns in the first place.

I would also refuse to employ, and instantly fire, anyone who has any affiliation with a White Supremest organization. This would also extend to anyone who has tattoos of white supremest and Nazi iconography. And, of course, all tattoos must be registered. (The FBI does the tattoo thing.)

But disbanding the police unions is probably something even more important to do, for all the things you cite above.

[lydy]

I find that it being geographically close and places I know well ... focuses the mind. I tend to get LA and NYC police abuse stories conflated, which is bad of me in some ways, but in other ways, just points up how incredibly common this problem is.

[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.'

Re: hugs

[haertstitch]

figured one day would be enough
for people to realize
they would need to put up a wall.
and it should be quiet.

as soon as you want to come let me know
bring DDB, Pamela, and anyone else you can
while I pack up
and make ready for stuff to migrate out
we can put the top back on the green house
and tarp the new frames
we can put a double hammock on each swing set :)

[haertstitch]

yes the tattoes are agiveaway
and their social media they used for
the calling in of the rioters.

;(

[arkuat]

Didn't Northern Ireland fire the entire Royal Irish Constabulary or whatever it's called and rehire only the ones they had decided weren't "bad apples"?

[ckd]

The Royal Ulster Constabulary was replaced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, though not in a clean sweep such as you describe. Instead, one of the recommendations of the Patten Commission was an increase in recruitment of Catholic officers, resulting in their proportion rising from 8.3% (Dec 1998) to 29.7% (Mar 2011).

One of the other measures taken was the creation of an independent Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland; any complaint made about police by a member of the public must be investigated by OPONI rather than the PSNI. They also have a remit to investigate historical behavior by officers of the RUC as was.

[womzilla]

I think you know this, but it's something I feel people need reminding of. Dallas was well-known among those who study law enforcement for taking police reform seriously in the early part of the last decade. Even so, when 5 cops were killed in an ambush, it turned out one of them had obvious white supremacist tattoos.

That's 20%, in a *good* force.

(Yes, I know it's generalizing from a small sample. But come the fuck on: an Iron Cross tattoo isn't subtle.)