George Floyd
#106
Lost in BE Cyberspace










Joined: Nov 2011
Location: Somewhere between Vancouver & St Johns
Posts: 18,336












So lets just say I am a Vancouver cop and they have the same rules as the Minneapolis Police. Your call to the Police for assistance is deemed an emergency and by these rules I have to legally activate my camera at least 2 blocks away but yet you prefer not to have the camera on. What am I supposed to do?
#107

IMO body cams are there for a reason and they should record everything. They should not be turned on and off at a whim, or at the discretion of the officer. They are there to protect a) the public and b) the officer.
#108

So lets just say I am a Vancouver cop and they have the same rules as the Minneapolis Police. Your call to the Police for assistance is deemed an emergency and by these rules I have to legally activate my camera at least 2 blocks away but yet you prefer not to have the camera on. What am I supposed to do?
I am sure police departments can sit down with lawyers and figure out guidelines. I am sure police departments can find some sort of solution.
Last edited by Jsmth321; Jun 2nd 2020 at 3:39 am.
#109

Indeed. I pulled these from somewhere else - words from two well-known black men, both dead now and speaking from an earlier time:
James Baldwin: “Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set? He doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you…He wants to let you know he’s there…The mass media-television and all the major news agencies – endlessly use that word “looter.” On television you always see Black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us, and no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.”
Martin Luther King, Jr: “It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative then to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
James Baldwin: “Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set? He doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you…He wants to let you know he’s there…The mass media-television and all the major news agencies – endlessly use that word “looter.” On television you always see Black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us, and no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.”
Martin Luther King, Jr: “It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative then to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
There's no whites-only drinking fountains, there's no bar to getting the highest job in the country as President, no bar to being on the Supreme Court, there are many black multimillionaires and black culture is often lauded. It's a totally different era to what these men are describing.
#110
So long...










Joined: Jul 2007
Posts: 22,616












My opinions on this:
1. F%$^ these looters and arsonists. Seriously, f#$% off. You are the problem. You want to neatly undercut the viable reasons for the protest? You want to strengthen the hand of your opponents? This is how you do it.
2. Systemic racism exists, but it's only one problem with American police. In fact I would argue racism is not nearly as big a problem as the militarization of police and the general asshole-ness of police. Every interaction I've ever had with the police has been unnecessarily confrontational and insulting. Police have consistently sought to escalate situations I've been involved in, not diffuse them. If you say anything to the police, I guarantee it will be used in the worst possible way against you. Police seem more concerned with ensuring that they have infuriating schoolyard bully power over you than with justice, protection and service (ha). As I'm a white guy, I think this goes deeper than racism. Police hiring and training needs revolutionary reform. The police need to earn respect, they can't just take it for granted. I'm sure policemen and policewomen have their side of the story, I can only report on my experience.
3. It's hard for me to take BLM supporters and leaders seriously when they are silent on cataclysmic violent crime rates in the black community. Deafeningly silent. People saying these are unrelated issues are being willfully obtuse. The ridiculously high violent crime rates in black neighborhoods and police brutality in black neighborhoods are related issues. I also don't buy that black crime is an outcome of white racism. People are responsible for their own actions. Note: this of course does not excuse Floyd's murder and does not mean that the anger over Floyd's murder isn't justified.
4. Similarly, it's irritating to me that the murder of Ahmaud Arbery was uproarious front page news for weeks while no one in the press mentioned that over double the number of white people are killed by black people every year. This is made even worse when you realize that there are 5x as many white people as black people in the US making the rate of black Americans killing white Americans far, far higher than the reverse. This seems like relevant context to provide, but it undercuts the narrative that white racists killing black men is a supposedly a huge issue in the US and is therefore ignored. Note that both are very rare when compared to intra-race murder, another extremely relevant fact. This all makes me distrust press coverage of the issue and roll my eyes at the resulting fury. Perhaps racism was a factor in Arbery's killing, but murder is murder.
1. F%$^ these looters and arsonists. Seriously, f#$% off. You are the problem. You want to neatly undercut the viable reasons for the protest? You want to strengthen the hand of your opponents? This is how you do it.
2. Systemic racism exists, but it's only one problem with American police. In fact I would argue racism is not nearly as big a problem as the militarization of police and the general asshole-ness of police. Every interaction I've ever had with the police has been unnecessarily confrontational and insulting. Police have consistently sought to escalate situations I've been involved in, not diffuse them. If you say anything to the police, I guarantee it will be used in the worst possible way against you. Police seem more concerned with ensuring that they have infuriating schoolyard bully power over you than with justice, protection and service (ha). As I'm a white guy, I think this goes deeper than racism. Police hiring and training needs revolutionary reform. The police need to earn respect, they can't just take it for granted. I'm sure policemen and policewomen have their side of the story, I can only report on my experience.
3. It's hard for me to take BLM supporters and leaders seriously when they are silent on cataclysmic violent crime rates in the black community. Deafeningly silent. People saying these are unrelated issues are being willfully obtuse. The ridiculously high violent crime rates in black neighborhoods and police brutality in black neighborhoods are related issues. I also don't buy that black crime is an outcome of white racism. People are responsible for their own actions. Note: this of course does not excuse Floyd's murder and does not mean that the anger over Floyd's murder isn't justified.
4. Similarly, it's irritating to me that the murder of Ahmaud Arbery was uproarious front page news for weeks while no one in the press mentioned that over double the number of white people are killed by black people every year. This is made even worse when you realize that there are 5x as many white people as black people in the US making the rate of black Americans killing white Americans far, far higher than the reverse. This seems like relevant context to provide, but it undercuts the narrative that white racists killing black men is a supposedly a huge issue in the US and is therefore ignored. Note that both are very rare when compared to intra-race murder, another extremely relevant fact. This all makes me distrust press coverage of the issue and roll my eyes at the resulting fury. Perhaps racism was a factor in Arbery's killing, but murder is murder.
From what I've seen, the training and culture within US Police needs to be updated. I understand that they regularly face armed and dangerous people, but when the culture includes kneeling on a suspect's neck with force, that needs to change when even one suspect dies.
Here in the UK, positional asphixiation resulted in deaths, so any restraining position involving weight on a person's neck or chest is avoided.
<<<SNIP>>>
Last edited by Jerseygirl; Jun 2nd 2020 at 11:03 am. Reason: Post quoted has been moderated
#111

So lets just say I am a Vancouver cop and they have the same rules as the Minneapolis Police. Your call to the Police for assistance is deemed an emergency and by these rules I have to legally activate my camera at least 2 blocks away but yet you prefer not to have the camera on. What am I supposed to do?
#112
Banned










Joined: Aug 2008
Posts: 21,603












Body Cameras should not have an on/off option available to the wearer, since it has been demonstrated time and again that the wearer cannot be trusted with such a feature. In fact, considering how many seem to "break" at specific points in the proceedings, maybe each uniform should contain multiple cams. I mean, they cant all break at once. Right?
#113

It's not the 1950's/60's now.
There's no whites-only drinking fountains, there's no bar to getting the highest job in the country as President, no bar to being on the Supreme Court, there are many black multimillionaires and black culture is often lauded. It's a totally different era to what these men are describing.
There's no whites-only drinking fountains, there's no bar to getting the highest job in the country as President, no bar to being on the Supreme Court, there are many black multimillionaires and black culture is often lauded. It's a totally different era to what these men are describing.
As I've been saying for possibly years, something seems to have gone wrong here. And one of the things that has gone wrong is that a vast number of people feel no connection to this society/culture/economy at all. That is what makes large-scale riots possible. And you can't fix a society by gassing it and shooting rubber bullets at it, and doubling down on the actions that are causing the problems. That has been proven again and again and again all over the world. The only way is to acknowledge that things have gone wrong and fix them.
Last edited by Lion in Winter; Jun 2nd 2020 at 12:56 pm.
#114

It's a proper witches brew. Yep, I wouldn't be surprised if there are so called neo nazis there as well and most likely a heap of other opportunists each also pursuing their particular agenda. To be honest I see little difference between neo nazis and the ironically named Antifa. Both are purveyors of hatred and intolerance and both use racial and other divisions to further their causes.

#116

It isn't the 50s/60s, and yet the same seems to apply much as you might think it should have changed. Nor is it true that there is "no bar" to the things you mention. You only have to look around you. There is no legal bar as there used to be, but reality is quite another matter and for all sort of longstanding and complex reasons, a good many of which have their basis in the fundamental inequities in this country some of which were and are due to race, and certainly due to the way in which race and the economy intersect here and have done for a very long time. This is the difference between positive and negative freedom, negative freedom being the freedom from (ie no rules against something) and positive freedom being the freedom to (what you seek is actually possible in real measures).
OK, there is NO bar, only the drive and acumen to get where you want to get to. Obama was a black kid of a single parent, doesn't get much more of a basic start than that.
Whilst there clearly was historic racism and indeed may be some small degree today (may), the principle problem of blacks in the US is one of culture - they don't value education and don't bring kids up in a stable family culture.
Clearly this is not the case for all, but we are talking generalities. Where I used to work we had to "garnish" quite a number of men's wages as they were not paying the appropriate amount to their "baby mommas" - this was massively swayed towards the black workers. Many black kids grow up with no father figure or an entirely inept one, which just perpetrates the cycle.
Other migrants who also experienced significant racism and bigotry in the past, such as Chinese or Japanese or Vietnamese all value education and hard work - they have all thrived in the US and Asians on average earn more than whites. They aren't rioting much as well, although it is often their stores that are being attacked. Even the more recent Latino migrants earn more than US blacks - they have a different culture.
If you don't accept this, then you are saying that this sort of behaviour is down to simple personal behaviour - yet we don't see much in the way of riots by those who are comfortably off, the 2%, the denizens of Wall Street, and those who live in Zone 2.
Another key driver is the identity politics agenda and associated data-bending - we can all manipulate stats to get the result we want. When the victimhood industry wants to rent-seek they can twist data to suit their current victim status and argue for government or corporate change in the light of this "data". I gave you a Harvard study of the ethnicity of deaths by cop earlier ..... deathly silence. The media are complicit in this too - saying that there is no significant racism/sexism/otherism isn't selling advertising space! This is very damaging for the target group, being repeatedly told that "the man" won't let them succeed, they will always do worse, etc etc can suppress the ambition of many and make many angry at these false stats.
As I've been saying for possibly years, something seems to have gone wrong here. And one of the things that has gone wrong is that a vast number of people feel no connection to this society/culture/economy at all. That is what makes large-scale riots possible. And you can't fix a society by gassing it and shooting rubber bullets at it, and doubling down on the actions that are causing the problems. That has been proven again and again and again all over the world. The only way is to acknowledge that things have gone wrong and fix them.
#117


Heartfelt and moving.
"We just really wanted to show how much we care about love and social justice by burning this community into a powerful reminder of what it's all about," said local protester Jake Hernandez, who had flown in from Portland for the event. "Now, when police and fire helicopters fly over to try to restore order, they'll be inspired by our message of love and harmony."
#120

well, inasmuch as a "Christian satire" isn't just so meta-satirical that it's beyond funny and out the other side, yes. But the Babylon Bee is several shades of crap compared to the Onion, or even (in a Canadian context) the Beaverton's content. The Christian Right doesn't actually do satire very well...