Posted on 06/03/2020 7:51:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
No one wants to watch an innocent man suffocate under the knee of a cop while bystanders plead for his life. Yet millions now have that haunting image seared into their memory.
The question to ask in response is simple: what could have been done to prevent this? While I’m in quarantine and can’t see my students, I imagine their predominantly minority faces and wonder how can I keep them from a similar fate?
Policy recommendations to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell George Floyd have ranged from defunding the police to ending qualified immunity and military surplus transfers to departments. But if peaceful protests—of which there have been many—are to achieve any meaningful change, they need a goal.
In the particular case of George Floyd, there is an obvious answer: at least two cops should have lost their jobs long before the event even occurred. George Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, had previously received 20 complaints filed against him, resulting in two letters of reprimand. His partner, Tou Thao, was sued in 2017 for stopping a man without cause and beating him in the street. In both cases, their contracts protected them.
Unfortunately, this is more common than not. Even after the most egregious conduct, many cops keep their jobs. As previously reported in The Atlantic, there is a long history of precincts still employing cops that would have been fired were it not for police unions keeping them on the force. One off-duty cop pulled his gun on a supposed criminal while intoxicated, misfired, killed the man who was later deemed innocent, and then returned to work.
There are numerous stories of on-duty boozing, theft, and abuse. In each case, the police union fought to reinstate these officers despite their inappropriate conduct.
Unfortunately, our priors often blind us when it comes to any talk of reforming police unions. On the left, any contention against unions is untenable. An author for Slate acknowledged the tension between social justice and police unions but couldn’t bring herself to renounce support for any organized labor. On the right, there’s a strong wariness against being perceived as anti-cop or weak on crime.
In reality, reforming police unions should be a bipartisan issue. The right has a history of undercutting the power of public-sector unions and, in this case, doing so would help promote a greater degree of racial justice in our country. In response to the critics, a weakening of their powers need not imply a complete abolition of unions. Studies blame collective bargaining and other roadblocks to thoroughly investigating cops, not the existence of unions per se.
Yet as with all unions, so too do police unions protect mediocrity, if not incompetence, in a profession trusted with upholding law, order, justice, and safety.
Studies confirm this position. Rob Gillezeau, professor at the University of Victoria, posted about his upcoming research into police violence and unionization. His team found that collective bargaining leads to “a substantial increase in police killings of civilians.” The protections that their contracts allowed shifted the incentives such that, when there was a swift decision to shoot or not, those protections pushed the decision to fire.
Furthermore, Gillezeau’s research found that “collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate in the disproportionate use of force against the non-white population.” Similar studies conducted by Oxford University as well as the University of Chicago Law School came to the same conclusion: strong unions, and in particular collective bargaining rights, lead directly to an increase in the use of excessive force.
A related negative effect of unions is their tendency to retard or stifle any meaningful reform. After the Ferguson riots in 2014, body-cameras on police officers developed bipartisan support. Then, a union in Miami blocked the initiative.
When my governor Scott Walker sought to limit bargaining rights, police unions got an exemption. Aggressive union contention blocks any structural reform that isn’t merely an increase in funding. But funding is easy. Real, structural reform requires accountability and work.
What could this mean for other proposed reforms? Perhaps ending qualified immunity or the demilitarization of the police isn’t the answer. But if unions are left in such positions of control, such proposals won’t even get discussed.
I’m sympathetic to the crusades against racial profiling and excessive force. But, like many, I’ve spent too much time these past few days watching videos of rioters looting businesses and burning down police stations. Wanton hooliganism will not result in the change we need in America’s police forces.
A man died because a union protected two bad cops. For the sake of the innocent and for the cause of protecting all the good cops out there, the time to reform police unions is now.
Look up what homicide means. They didn’t say he was murdered.
The coroner can give his opinion. The defense will hire medical experts who can question everything.
The coroner hired by Saint Floyds family claims to be quite the medical examiner expert every time he has been on tv for years. He was a medical examiner in New York city for one year back in the 1970’s. He was fired for being incompetent.
The jury will decide.
So much wrong with this statement. Firstly, he wasn't "innocent." He was trying to pass a forged bill. He was high on drugs. He was convicted of armed robbery in Texas.
How less "innocent" can you be?
Secondly, he didn't "suffocate" because the cop's knee was on his neck. It appears he had trouble breathing and had a heart attack because he was dosed up on Fentanyl which will cause breathing problems and heart attacks.
Yeah, the Cop was being an @$$hole cop, but it's looking like he didn't actually kill Floyd. The cop may have triggered the heart attack by arresting him, and the knee didn't help anything, but what the cop mostly did wrong is not realize Floyd wasn't faking as so many arrested people do.
“ The coroner hired by Saint Floyds family claims to be quite the medical examiner”
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner called t homicide, too.
“The jury will decide.”
Yep. And the only open question is what degree of homicide this cop is going to prison for.
L
“”””””””You are using strawmen to represent the prosecution, which demonstrates your bad faith. “”””””””””””
The prosecution said he was guilty of murder immediately.
The mayor fired them all immediately.
They didn’t bother waiting for any investigation at all.
Like you, they have never heard of due process.
They got you fooled immediately. You have been on the “guilty until proven even more guilty” from the first minute.
Are you unable to wait for all information and facts to be available before declaring the cop guilty?
What do you see as the root causes?
This is what I think is the primary cause, but I would be interested in hearing what you think it is.
Everything I ever learned in Life, I learned from "Road House"....
"Be nice, until it's time not to be nice."
It occurs to me the simplest way to clear the policeman of causing his death is to get a volunteer to submit to 9 minutes of a knee on his neck. Or even better, multiple volunteers.
Once it is demonstrated that keeping a knee on someone's neck won't kill them, then the cause of death must move on to something more substantial, like having a heart condition while taking Meth and Fentanyl.
If the knee didn't kill him, it must have been something else.
I think the root causes (for this stuff) is the screening for the police departments.
When you are a policeman you are going to face a lot of bad people on the worst day of their lives. They will run from you, fight you, lie to you, and try to do anything to get away. (Yes, they might even try to kill you.)
The majority of these people are going to be minorities. That is not racist; it does reflect the reality.
The key is to screen your people so that they do not carry their distrust of a black or hispanic person from one event to the next. It doesn’t mean give up situational awareness. It does mean that you need to treat EVERY interaction on its own base. THAT is a difficult thing to do.
When complaints are made about cops the need to be reviewed seriously. Yes, there are a ton of complaints that are not valid. They need to be addressed and published.
When there ARE serious complaints and the LEO is found to be acting outside their training, they need to be addressed.
The fact that the guys in Minn. had so many complaints did not shock me, it was the content of the complaints. Cops being involved in multiple shootings and live threatening events is rare—even in a big urban setting.
This particular problem lies with the municipalities and police unions. There ARE cities where they work together to get rid of the bad guys.
Finally, cops need to know when to turn off the “cop” attitude. I know of Emergency Room MDs who have been stopped, detained, and put up against the wall because they were driving in a white neighborhood at night. That shit has got to stop.
Again, this is a training issue.
I know I am not racist. I don’t think I know anyone who is. I know that in my career (not in law enforcement) where I my actions could have been interpreted as racist. When they were pointed out, I did not have a clue—and took steps to change the behavior. I was honestly surprised.
But the people accusing me of it thought it was a conscious act.
Changing perceptions on either side is difficult.
Those are the areas where we could start right away. We could then move into the equal justice part of the equation—dealing with prosecutions, bail, and other “process” issues. And not to make things “easier” on criminals—but to treat white criminals the exact same as the black ones. Because in the processing, arraignment, and trial portion of the judicial system there are some scary issues that have more to do with the lawyers and judges than it does the criminals.
“””””””Yep. And the only open question is what degree of homicide this cop is going to prison for.”””””””””
It is good that you can keep an open mind and not prejudge the outcome. HaHaHa.
It only takes one honky on the jury to set him free.
if it's so harmless, they have nothing to fear, right?
...and qualified immunity.
The underlying problem is that people aren't being taught right from wrong. Too many grow up in fatherless households, or in households with worthless fathers whom themselves were not taught properly as children.
And the government has exacerbated the problem by funding all these dysfunctional households which continue to produce dysfunctional offspring.
I don't think police training is the primary problem. I think too many criminals is the problem.
Also I think the lopsided representation of blacks in crime, especially young black males, is a great portion of why the police tend to focus on them.
What part of "public trust" and "optics" did you miss?
The nine-minute video on the spot is damning as far as PR goes.
That justifies the firing.
And with the video the cries of "wait for more information" -- like both the state's coroner and the family's coroner agreeing that this is homicide, as another poster pointed out -- seem increasingly out of touch with reality.
...but why doesn’t ANYONE ever suggest that blacks themselves change their behavior...
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3851448/posts
But, it it is impossible to avoid contact with cops.
That is actually a good idea. I'm pretty sure that if he thought it would clear himself, he would do it in a heartbeat.
if it's so harmless, they have nothing to fear, right?
Do you think a knee on your neck will kill you in 9 minutes? I'm inclined to doubt it, but I would like to hear from people who think it will so they can explain to me how it kills someone.
The problem is, a single run of the experiment is inconclusive because there are so many variables, including the weight of the knee presser, the body position of the prone guy, the exact placement of the neck, the level of stress at the time (a heart pounding under the tension of an arrest might be more vulnerable than in a courtroom), any personal health conditions not known at the time and undiscoverable through autopsy (doctors on other sites have suggested a number of them, but I didn’t save that link), so on.
I agree with that. That was too much force for too long. I think the cop was being an @$$hole who wanted to prove to everyone *HE* was in charge. He should be fired.
But i'm not sure he caused Floyd's death by putting his knee on his neck. I think he contributed to Floyd's death by triggering the heart attack, and then not realizing Floyd wasn't faking.
If a fair jury finds him guilty, I would regard it as an reasonable outcome, because a man did die in his custody, but I think more from neglect than intent.
If there is a police officer shooting the automatic response it to put the officers on administrative leave until a full investigation has been completed.
Here all cops were fired immediately. All of them.
Have you ever seen that before? When the somali cop shot the white woman he was still on the payroll for many months afterwards. Can there be a more clear case of murder than leaning over your partner to shoot a civilian who is unarmed and reporting a crime?
Did you go nuts on that one? Of course not. The media told you to wait for due process to happen and don’t prejudge.
You have been parroting the media talking points since the minute this took place. I sure hope you never end upon a jury.
Indeed.
You are making my point for me. The question is whether a reasonable man would expect such a tactic to result in a death, and it's looking like the answer is going to be, barring extenuating circumstances of which a man could not be expected to know, "no."
A reasonable man would not have thought that such actions would result in a death for a normal ordinary man. No mens rea, no murder.
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