Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond)
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More reading on the topic. Found this interesting and definitely raises some questions for me.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police
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@FarmerJayhawk said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@FarmerJayhawk I’d be interested to see result from a similar poll conducted in the last year or so instead of 5 years ago.
I’ve only just started to learn about the abolish police/prison idea so I’m in no way an expert. But the more I read about it (whether I agree or not I am still working through) it’s clear to me it is not close to the same level of “crackpot” idea as the Soros paying cops to murder black people then paying black people to riot conspiracies. That was my main point of contention. I was having myself a day yesterday and perhaps didn’t explain my point of view clearly enough and maybe got a bit fired up in my general crankiness.
You seem like an academic who likes to read and learn so I’d encourage you to at least understand more of what the movement is advocating for before rejecting it completely. Never hurts to learn more about why massive numbers of people are protesting in every single state.
Teen vogue of all places has a couple good intro articles if you’re interested. If not, obviously that’s your perogative.
I found a similar poll (not the identical question so it’s not a great comparison) that found only about 1/3 of black adults favored cutting funding to their police department. https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/s23agrrx47/20200531_yahoo_race_and_justice_crosstabs.pdf
I’ll take another look at it for sure. I did take on the absolutely masochistic task of reading White Fragility, Foucalt’s postmodernism, and How to Be an Antiracist so I’m getting where they’re coming from, but the philosophical foundation seems incredibly shaky. I’m open to reducing the amount of police if we can maintain public safety, but the details of actually pulling it off will be very difficult to work through. For example, one of the biggest expenditures in police forces is pension obligations to retired officers. In some states (notably California) it’s unconstitutional to touch those pensions. There’s a lot of unanswered questions and not a lot of policy detail out there, hence my severe skepticism.
A LOT of good data in that survey. And while you say 1/3 support cutting funding only a third oppose cutting funding as well so it’s not like it’s a clear cut issue.
The rest of that policing data though. Man there are some stark differences in the way police are viewed/received by white and black people. The saddest and most telling to me was 5% of black people feeling safer in the presence of police. What an absolute failure of policing that is.
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Minneapolis City Council has apparently voted to dismantle the Minneapolis PD with a big enough majority that it cannot be vetoed. https://theappeal.org/minneapolis-city-council-members-announce-intent-to-disband-the-police-department-invest-in-proven-community-led-public-safety/
I’m sure the debates about this nationally will will be calm and respectful, lol!
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@Texas-Hawk-10 wow, never act surprised what idiots will do once given power. The Democratic Party claims to love BLM but have done little to improve conditions in the inner cities. Most of these police brutality case are in democrat led states, cities and majority counsel leaders.
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@kjayhawks That’s literally what Minneapolis is now doing. Redirecting the massive amount of funding currently going to further militarize the police into community based programs. And it won’t happen overnight nor will it be without bumps and missteps.
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I’m not sure the council knows what they’re doing. At all. From their statement, “We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said, reading off a prepared statement. “We’re committed to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.” The phrase police-free should scare the bejeezus out of everyone. https://www.startribune.com/mpls-council-majority-backs-dismantling-police-department/571088302/
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@benshawks08 defunding militarization is a good step. Disbanding the entire police department is quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Call your support team when someone is breaking into your house or when your being assaulted lmao. They could’ve defunded and put money towards a more diverse police force, and proper training. Police training or lack there of is an issue. So having some random neighborhood watch guy with little to zero training is better?? Stuff like what happened down in Georgia to that kid trespassing will become the norm. People will take the law into their own hands. Several things could’ve been done logically, guess it’s back to the old west…
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@kjayhawks I’d encourage you to read more about what the defund the police movement is really asking for. Currently, police respond to way too many types of emergencies. Someone struggling with mental health, police. Today APD tweeted that they responded to a hand gliding crash. Surely that should have been EMS. Why would that situation need someone with a gun and a license to use force? Most burglaries/assaults and crimes in general aren’t interrupted by the police but instead investigated by them after the fact. And the clearance rates of those cases is laughable. You obviously don’t have to agree with disbanding the police but it would help if before you dismiss the idea you take a look at where it comes from.
Also, jogging while black is not trespassing. But good to know where you stand on that.
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Another interesting interview on the topic of you are interested in learning:
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/871083599/the-history-of-police-in-creating-social-order-in-the-u-s
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And some data to process:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/us-police-floyd-protests-country-comparisons-intl/index.html
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@kjayhawks I’d encourage you to read more about what the defund the police movement is really asking for. Currently, police respond to way too many types of emergencies. Someone struggling with mental health, police. Today APD tweeted that they responded to a hand gliding crash. Surely that should have been EMS. Why would that situation need someone with a gun and a license to use force? Most burglaries/assaults and crimes in general aren’t interrupted by the police but instead investigated by them after the fact. And the clearance rates of those cases is laughable. You obviously don’t have to agree with disbanding the police but it would help if before you dismiss the idea you take a look at where it comes from.
Also, jogging while black is not trespassing. But good to know where you stand on that.
Why would police respond to a hang gliding accident is because they do have first aid and basic medical training that can help stabilize a victim while paramedics/EMS make their way to a scene. Because police are out patrolling an area, they are usually closer to scenes like that than paramedics are. They can also radio to dispatchers if there are any special needs or circumstances the paramedics need to prepare for, if fire and rescue is needed with jaws of life and stuff like that.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 Right. I get that. I’m saying that job could instead be done by someone without a gun, without license to use force against citizens.
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@benshawks08 You just completely missed the point. If a police officer, regardless if they’re armed or not, has the basic medical training to help in a situation like that, FYI they do, why would they not be the first ones on scene if they are closer than anyone else to give help?
Your position is delaying medical care to someone who needs it and could needlessly result in a person’s death when they could’ve been helped by someone going into the situation knows it’s a medical issue that can assist until better trained professionals can take over.
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@benshawks08 said:
…jogging while black is not trespassing. But good to know where you stand on that.
C’mon, don’t start looking for gotchas when you guys are arguing means while trying to attain common goals. The background of that Georgia incident involved reports of trespassing and burglary in the house being built, and videos are online that appear to show murder victim on site on prior days. But no one here said he deserved it because of trespassing. The concern raised was how vigilantes, if no police exist, would react to even simple trespass by going nuclear as happened to that poor guy.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 You are also completely missing the point. Defunding the police means reimagining the way our society works so that just maybe the person closest and most ready to handle a medical emergency is NOT an armed law enforcement officer.
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The city council literally said they were eliminating police, not just tweaking some things. Unless police-free doesn’t actually mean police-free, like defund the police doesn’t actually mean defund the police?Nobody has ever tried that. Even the poster child for the movement, Camden, NJ, hired most of the same officers back after rebuilding their force.
Here’s what could happen: crime rates fall because people stop reporting crime because why report if there aren’t police to investigate? I guess the rich people with really great insurance can get PI’s?
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@FarmerJayhawk They also said they will be replacing it with an alternative model for public safety. Wholly re imagining a system to keep people safe is not the same as abandoning safety.
Here’s what else could happen (because since it’s never been tried, you have absolutely NO IDEA):
Crime rates could fall as community and education programs lift people up and remove the primary motivation for crime, poverty.
People from the poorest and most marginal groups in our society begin to develop a level of trust in a system that wasn’t built to oppress them.
Homelessness will finally have enough funding to seriously address the issue (also reducing crime).
Here is what is already happening: People in certain communities aren’t reporting crime because they fear reporting to the police will only make the problem worse or nothing will be done about it anyway. Rich people have private security and hire private investigators because they know police clearance rates are crap.
And if you are paying attention the “the movement,” Camden, NJ, is not their poster child for the very reason you say.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@Texas-Hawk-10 You are also completely missing the point. Defunding the police means reimagining the way our society works so that just maybe the person closest and most ready to handle a medical emergency is NOT an armed law enforcement officer.
I’m not missing that point, I just don’t respect it because the plan is to defund without a plan in place to replace police is dumb. Considering who the representative of Minneapolis is and what her political beliefs are (socialist/communist leaning), I have even less respect for what she’s probably going to end up trying to propose because I strongly disagree with her political beliefs and how law enforcement looks in countries with those political systems.
Fixing 350 years of legalized racism in this country isn’t an overnight fix which is what many are demanding and it’s not realistic and any solutions that made by strictly partisan groups will have zero chance at long term success because the other side will ways be resentful and trying to prove that solution won’t work. Just look at Obamacare, it was crafted pretty much exclusively by the left with little to no input from politicians on the right. What happened when the right gained control of Congress? They started working to dismantle Obamacare because they largely had no input on it when it was created.
The only way to create lasting and permanent change in law enforcement is to get political leaders from both parties, law enforcement leaders from different parts of the country, and leaders from black communities together and talking to one another to come up with solutions that will have a lasting impact on the issue of law enforcement. What Minneapolis is trying to do will end up being an absolute failure.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 So you refuse to even consider the plan because you don’t like one person who represents the area and have rejected “what she’s probably going to end up trying to propose” before she even proposes it. Yep, that’s definitely the best way to get people from both parties and leaders from different communities talking.
You also have no idea that what they are doing will be an absolute failure because as @FarmerJayhawk said, it’s never been tried. And nothing is happening overnight and to suggest it is is simply ignorant of what is happening. They voted to work towards the goal of disbanding the police department. All police officers haven’t been fired today.
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@benshawks08 I believe the idea of any community suddenly deciding to devote funds to a wholesale approach to community support (catch-all phrase), while revamping police depts, is a dream only. Every antitax nut will use defunding police as a way of advancing extremist no-government and will insist on taxes being cut instead of devoting funds to alternate uses.
The most immediate result, I fear, is one that the people seeking it have not contemplated and will abhor: I predict the single greatest explosion in private gun ownership in our nation’s history.
Defunding might work in gun-free societies. That is not the US.
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@benshawks08 The Minneapolis City Council’s own words on the matter are they don’t have a plan in place on how replace Minneapolis PD. They also said that the reforms put in place 2 years ago aren’t changing things fast enough for their liking. No fcking sht on that one!!! You don’t fix decades worth of issues in two years. People have to be trained on new procedures, that takes time. New policies have to be given time measure their effectiveness with those who have been trained in those policies. They listened to people who are being emotional and not rational about a situation and made a decision that’s not based in logic, they made an emotional based decision without a plan in place to address the issues their decision will cause.
I have two personal stories of why what the Minneapolis City Council is doing is going to end up an absolute sh*tshow for them. The first one is the old principal at my school. A big percentage of students at the school I work come from one of the roughest neighborhoods in Houston (Greenpoint, aka Gunspoint for anyone familiar with Houston) so these are kids that don’t get much discipline at home and are usually major behavior issues at school. So this principal was desperate to get these kids behavior under control because we were one of the top scoring schools in the district prior to the rezoning that brought Greenpoint kids to my school. Our principal tried a bunch of different programs to help with discipline, but when there weren’t immediate results, she would abandon that idea to try something else. Nothing she did had any meaningful effect because she didn’t give anything time to work before declaring it a failure. Before she was principal, and before I got there, it was common that my school might have less than 5 openings a year (mostly retirements and upward promotions), there were actually some years where there were no openings. The year I got hired, there was about a 60% turnover in the staff all because of how bad a leader the principal was because she never either didn’t have a plan for something or didn’t give a plan enough time to determine it’s effectiveness. The only reason I’m still at the school is so I can finish up my 5th year at a Title 1 school and get the rest of my student loans forgiven. If it wasn’t for that, I would’ve been gone after year 1 or 2 due to terrible leadership.
I see the same thing happening in Minneapolis. There were tangible and measurable steps taken to reform their police department to address issues, but we’re not given a chance to be successful and are being abandoned without a plan going forward that they’re going to basically be coming up with on the fly. That’s a recipe for disaster for Minneapolis and they will probably become the poster child city for how not to handle police reform.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
All that tweet says to me is how much education in this country has been devalued over the years by both parties.
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@benshawks08 the young man that was gunned down in Georgia was caught on the people that shot him cameras for trespassing several times and identified by his mother. Which doesn’t dismiss them murdering him but a far cry from the mainstream media report of him just being hunted while jogging. People don’t go running in cargo shorts man common on. I refuse to comment further, good day sir.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 So how much time is enough time for Black people to live in fear of the police? How long should they shoulder a disproportionate weight of bad policies that negatively impact the community?
I too have worked at a school under bad leadership and all seen good leadership but your post about your situation shows how far we all still have to go. If you are trying to get somewhere, do you take 4 small steps and then measure how far you are from your goal now?
It hurts me to see your willingness to classify a neighborhood in need as “gunspoint” and then resent them “coming to [your] school.”
And to address the ACLU tweet, you agree education has been long ignored and underfunded by both parties. Where do you think that funding has gone? What is one group both democratic and republican mayors and council groups continually add funding for? Hmm… Of only such a group existed.
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@kjayhawks I have seen many people jogging in cargo pants and cargo shorts, particularly people of color.
And if you read the testimony at the hearing last week you will see that the 3 assailants literally chased him while he was running, bumping him with a truck and finally cornering him. There is no adequate word for it other than hunting.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@FarmerJayhawk They also said they will be replacing it with an alternative model for public safety. Wholly re imagining a system to keep people safe is not the same as abandoning safety.
Here’s what else could happen (because since it’s never been tried, you have absolutely NO IDEA):
Crime rates could fall as community and education programs lift people up and remove the primary motivation for crime, poverty.
People from the poorest and most marginal groups in our society begin to develop a level of trust in a system that wasn’t built to oppress them.
Homelessness will finally have enough funding to seriously address the issue (also reducing crime).
Here is what is already happening: People in certain communities aren’t reporting crime because they fear reporting to the police will only make the problem worse or nothing will be done about it anyway. Rich people have private security and hire private investigators because they know police clearance rates are crap.
And if you are paying attention the “the movement,” Camden, NJ, is not their poster child for the very reason you say.
So I guess we’re putting people who commit violent felonies in detention? If a white kid rapes a girl, do we send him to therapy? There are so many unanswered questions that they have zero clue how to think through or come up with a coherent answer. We’ll never solve poverty entirely either. Without sufficient state capacity to enforce contracts, there’s little incentive to follow them, which will very much exacerbate issues of poverty that already exist.
Let’s just look at this from a game theory perspective. Effectively, you’ve created an incentive for crime. Without the ability to effectively enforce the law, you’ll have bad actors decide crime is a more attractive path. In GT parlance, you’ve made the payoff to crime higher than it otherwise would’ve been. No officer to bust you for drugs? Might as well sell on the busiest street corners. Nobody to respond to a break-in? Becomes more attractive to break into that Apple store for a Mac upgrade. Or: Apple hires private security at night and goes off half-cocked and kills a dumb kid for breaking in because well-trained police weren’t available. The multitude of things that could go VERY bad here are staggering.
A well-respected black leader in St. Louis texted me last night and asked, “dude what the f*** are they doing? This is craziness.” And look, I’ll be thrilled if it works. Really. But the thought of a “police-free” city absolutely terrifies me.
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“Analysis: Why the call to defund police is music to Trump’s ears”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/defund-the-police-blm/index.html
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@Texas-Hawk-10 So how much time is enough time for Black people to live in fear of the police? How long should they shoulder a disproportionate weight of bad policies that negatively impact the community?
I too have worked at a school under bad leadership and all seen good leadership but your post about your situation shows how far we all still have to go. If you are trying to get somewhere, do you take 4 small steps and then measure how far you are from your goal now?
It hurts me to see your willingness to classify a neighborhood in need as “gunspoint” and then resent them “coming to [your] school.”
And to address the ACLU tweet, you agree education has been long ignored and underfunded by both parties. Where do you think that funding has gone? What is one group both democratic and republican mayors and council groups continually add funding for? Hmm… Of only such a group existed.
So how much time is enough time for Black people to live in fear of the police? How long should they shoulder a disproportionate weight of bad policies that negatively impact the community?
Not the same question that I addressed. The change itself needed to happen much more recently than 2 years ago, but since there’s no time machine to go back and address that issue, you have to start addressing them today. Minneapolis City Council’s own statement suggests those changes didn’t begin until 2 years ago when new policies and procedures were put into place. 2 years is nowhere near enough time to determine if those changes have had any meaningful positive effect. Instead, the city council decided to nuke everything and did so without a plan moving forward. That’s bad leadership.
I too have worked at a school under bad leadership and all seen good leadership but your post about your situation shows how far we all still have to go. If you are trying to get somewhere, do you take 4 small steps and then measure how far you are from your goal now?
Yes, you take those small steps forward, evaluate what’s working and what still needs to be improved on and keep moving forward. You don’t backtrack just because you don’t go from a standstill to full on spring immediately.
It hurts me to see your willingness to classify a neighborhood in need as “gunspoint” and then resent them “coming to [your] school.”
I don’t resent those kids being zoned to my school. They were zoned to our school despite 3 other schools in the district being closer to that neighborhood because we were one of the top performer schools in the district and they were their previous school was the lowest performing. My issue was with the principal who end up being completely unprepared for that change in demographics and didn’t do her homework and then didn’t give any plans the leadership team at my school came up with enough time to work.
And to address the ACLU tweet, you agree education has been long ignored and underfunded by both parties. Where do you think that funding has gone? What is one group both democratic and republican mayors and council groups continually add funding for? Hmm… Of only such a group existed.
Considering that funding for education and police come from two different levels of government, that fact kind of ruins the story you’re trying to create. School districts are funded at the state level while police departments are typically funded at the local level of government. The decrease in funding of public education isn’t going where you’re trying to imply it’s going.
Properly fixing these systemic issues will never happen as quickly as anybody wants them to happen. That’s the first thing people need to realize. Second thing is that these issues weren’t created overnight and therefore will not be solved overnight either. You don’t fix 350 years of legalized racism in 50 years. This issue is a marathon, not a sprint. Leaders from different groups with differing ideas need to come together to have discussions about applicable solutions that are achievable. The reason you have to have representatives from all sides involved because it gives ownership to all parties involved and gives them incentive to make these changes happen.
What’s happening in Minneapolis and other places that are calling to defund police is that cry is pretty much only coming from one side, the far left. Even most moderates on the left are against this idea of defunding police departments. All that’s going to come from what the Minneapolis City Council is doing is resentment and resistance from the right and moderate left because the city council is giving them little reason to want to see a new plan succeed because they no input into the new ideas.
They’re doing exactly to the right what has been happening to the black community for generations and that’s silencing their voices. Most BLM supporters aren’t anti-white, they just want their voices heard and respected as well along with white people. We know what silencing an influential groups voice does because we’re seeing it right now with these protests and riots and the left trying to silence the voice of the right isn’t going to end well for anyone in Minneapolis.
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@mayjay the point went light years over your head. No people don’t typically don’t go jogging in cargo shorts, to say otherwise is a lie. The point was the mainstream media portrayed as random rednecks hunting random minorities. Did they hunt him down? Sure they did but it wasn’t a random deal. They took the law into their own hands and should be punished accordingly.
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@kjayhawks said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
the point went light years over your head. No people don’t typically don’t go jogging in cargo shorts, to say otherwise is a lie
Maybe you need to live in a different place. Incidentally, I wasn’t lying but I can see why I only now remembered why discussing something with you is difficult. Disagree or different experiences=stupid or lying.
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@FarmerJayhawk said;
So I guess we’re putting people who commit violent felonies in detention? If a white kid rapes a girl, do we send him to therapy? There are so many unanswered questions that they have zero clue how to think through or come up with a coherent answer.
Let’s start with how the current system handles “a white kid rapes a girl.”
What happens first? Well a majority of the time absolutely nothing as most rapes go unreported. But let’s say she goes to hospital to get help and is even able to identify the culprit (most people are raped by people they already know). It is still unlikely that she will press charges because as she reports it to the police she will be told, “most of these cases come down to he said, she said so there really won’t be much of a case.” So she goes home and faces the arduous task of dealing with just about the most traumatic injury that can happen to a person knowing nothing will happen to the person she sees regularly. She will be forced to make drastic changes to her normal routine and likely lose many friends and people who support her because they won’t believe her especially because she didn’t press charges.
In this scenario, sending a white kid to therapy would be a win for me. You?
Now, what if she doesn’t know who committed the rape and does want to press charges. Clearance rates for these cases is horrendously low and likely her rape kit will be stuck in a giant line of rape kits that have yet to be evaluated. And all the stuff that happened to the girl in the first scenario still happens and now she also adds the fear of knowing her rapist (whom she can’t identify) is still out and about without anyone addressing the issue.
So that is from her perspective.
Now let’s look at it from the rapist’s perspective. White kid rapes girl, nothing happens. What incentive or motivations are there for him to not do it again. In the current system, he raped a girl knowing that if caught he would go to prison (though not for as long as his black friend if he were caught doing the same thing). Knowing that he’d be labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. But for him that didn’t happen the first time (because it rarely does). What does that do to the fear of punishment (remember that originally wasn’t enough to prevent him from raping in the first place)? Is he now more afraid or less? Is he more likely, or less to rape again?
Even if he is caught, if he is charged and if he is found guilty (three pretty big ifs if you’ve been paying any attention to the goings on in America), his rate of recidivism is still very high and he is likely to rape again within his lifetime.
Unfortunately, as has been proven over and over again, punishment is not the best way to shape human behavior. Our entire system is built on a false pretense. You may want revenge, and seeing someone punished might make you feel better, but it doesn’t change behavior.
This is without even getting into the ridiculous race disparities in these punishments. And just to throw this out there, for every 9 people put to death by the state for crimes committed, 1 is set free due to new evidence proving their innocence or demonstrable evidence that justice and rule of law was not upheld during their original conviction.
Next let’s take this one: “Nobody to respond to a break-in? Becomes more attractive to break into that Apple store for a Mac upgrade. Or: Apple hires private security at night and goes off half-cocked and kills a dumb kid for breaking in because well-trained police weren’t available.”
A. Trained cops kill dumb kids for breaking in at a higher rate in this country than any other comparable democracy.
B. Apple, the mall, and everyone else who can afford it, already hire private security at night, during the day, when they are open and when they are closed.
THIS is the system you are upholding and claiming there is no alternative to. I think we can do better and it would be immoral not to at least try.
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@benshawks08 Now you’re deviating away from police into the court system which is a separate issue that needs work and that’s quite frankly a much simpler fix than the law enforcement issue. Judges at that level are usually either elected or appointed positions which means politics interfering with the justice system. Two things fix that issue quite easily. Judges are appointed based on merit because it’s not their job to interpret laws at that level, that’s for higher levels to decide after appeals are made. Second thing is term limits for judges. Judges get 5 years on the bench then they return to their legal practice.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 It’s all part of the same criminal justice system. I was just addressing the situation @FarmerJayhawk brought up?
I agree judges are yet another piece of that system needed major overhauls. I like term limits. What does “appointing on merit” look like?
Also, (note this is highly in jest and not meant to offend) what happened to no easy fixes?
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https://twitter.com/alt_uscis/status/1270092313088397312?s=21
I’m sure some reforms will change this mentality…
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@mayjay I’m not trying to insult you buddy but logically cargo shorts don’t seem to fit the mold for jogging and I’ve literally never seen anyone jogging in them. Maybe it’s a northern thing but in Kansas or Georgia with the humidity you had best have a ton of gold bond power down there or it ain’t gonna feel too good lol.
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https://twitter.com/statesman/status/1270086447664631808?s=21
There are so many of these we just don’t know about. I’d never heard of this until just now and I live very close to Williamson county. It was filmed by a documentary crew…
The reason for the stop: failure to dim lights to oncoming traffic.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@FarmerJayhawk said;
So I guess we’re putting people who commit violent felonies in detention? If a white kid rapes a girl, do we send him to therapy? There are so many unanswered questions that they have zero clue how to think through or come up with a coherent answer.
Let’s start with how the current system handles “a white kid rapes a girl.”
What happens first? Well a majority of the time absolutely nothing as most rapes go unreported. But let’s say she goes to hospital to get help and is even able to identify the culprit (most people are raped by people they already know). It is still unlikely that she will press charges because as she reports it to the police she will be told, “most of these cases come down to he said, she said so there really won’t be much of a case.” So she goes home and faces the arduous task of dealing with just about the most traumatic injury that can happen to a person knowing nothing will happen to the person she sees regularly. She will be forced to make drastic changes to her normal routine and likely lose many friends and people who support her because they won’t believe her especially because she didn’t press charges.
In this scenario, sending a white kid to therapy would be a win for me. You?
Now, what if she doesn’t know who committed the rape and does want to press charges. Clearance rates for these cases is horrendously low and likely her rape kit will be stuck in a giant line of rape kits that have yet to be evaluated. And all the stuff that happened to the girl in the first scenario still happens and now she also adds the fear of knowing her rapist (whom she can’t identify) is still out and about without anyone addressing the issue.
So that is from her perspective.
Now let’s look at it from the rapist’s perspective. White kid rapes girl, nothing happens. What incentive or motivations are there for him to not do it again. In the current system, he raped a girl knowing that if caught he would go to prison (though not for as long as his black friend if he were caught doing the same thing). Knowing that he’d be labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. But for him that didn’t happen the first time (because it rarely does). What does that do to the fear of punishment (remember that originally wasn’t enough to prevent him from raping in the first place)? Is he now more afraid or less? Is he more likely, or less to rape again?
Even if he is caught, if he is charged and if he is found guilty (three pretty big ifs if you’ve been paying any attention to the goings on in America), his rate of recidivism is still very high and he is likely to rape again within his lifetime.
Unfortunately, as has been proven over and over again, punishment is not the best way to shape human behavior. Our entire system is built on a false pretense. You may want revenge, and seeing someone punished might make you feel better, but it doesn’t change behavior.
This is without even getting into the ridiculous race disparities in these punishments. And just to throw this out there, for every 9 people put to death by the state for crimes committed, 1 is set free due to new evidence proving their innocence or demonstrable evidence that justice and rule of law was not upheld during their original conviction.
Next let’s take this one: “Nobody to respond to a break-in? Becomes more attractive to break into that Apple store for a Mac upgrade. Or: Apple hires private security at night and goes off half-cocked and kills a dumb kid for breaking in because well-trained police weren’t available.”
A. Trained cops kill dumb kids for breaking in at a higher rate in this country than any other comparable democracy.
B. Apple, the mall, and everyone else who can afford it, already hire private security at night, during the day, when they are open and when they are closed.
THIS is the system you are upholding and claiming there is no alternative to. I think we can do better and it would be immoral not to at least try.
So in that first scenario, who A) arrests the guy and B ) ensures he sticks to the program and C) what penalties are there and how do we enforce them if not? Being incarcerated is a pretty big incentive to not assault anyone again. That’s most of the reason we do it. With child predators, we incarcerate then warehouse them if deemed a continual threat to society. We can more easily mandate things like therapy when the dude is locked up. And again, if he does reoffend, who then takes him into custody? Like a violent felon is just going to be like “yeah, ok, you got me” to a non-police officer who isn’t armed?
Yes, and I’ve made suggestions on training police. Eliminating them doesn’t change the calculus there. Does your small mom and pop shop have to hire private security as well if they get robbed during the day? Go all vigilante and smoke the robber with a 12 gauge? Who investigates that crime? Do we just take every victim’s word for it? Do prosecutors have to contract out all investigations? Do we just have a team of unarmed investigators without the police power to enforce subpoenas? That seems pretty legally dodgy and shortsighted.
I oppose the death penalty, but believe some level of force is required to deal with violent crime. It’s unsavory and gross, but I really don’t see the alternative (and frankly, nobody else does either at their own admission.)
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@kjayhawks I agree it doesn’t seem logical, but think of how many people you might have seen wearing sweats on summer runs. And actually I am in SC!
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Is five years long enough?
https://twitter.com/loneberrywang/status/1270087421531652104?s=21
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More reading if you are tired of hearing about it from me and are looking for a more knowledgeable and practiced writer:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/police-brutality-cop-free-world-protest-199465/
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
@Texas-Hawk-10 It’s all part of the same criminal justice system. I was just addressing the situation @FarmerJayhawk brought up?
I agree judges are yet another piece of that system needed major overhauls. I like term limits. What does “appointing on merit” look like?
Also, (note this is highly in jest and not meant to offend) what happened to no easy fixes?
Different aspects of the criminal justice system. Law enforcement generally deals with 4th and 5th amendment aspects of due process and the court system deals with the 6th and 8th amendments. Different areas of the system require different fixes.
To your last point, I never said anything about easy fixes. I said they wouldn’t happen overnight which is not the same thing.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
Is five years long enough?
https://twitter.com/loneberrywang/status/1270087421531652104?s=21
That post gives zero context to those numbers so they’re not usable to support any position because it doesn’t break the numbers down by race/gender/jurisdiction of any other way to make a determination about anything. Did a city like St. Louis or Baltimore see a decrease in that 5 years because of changes made in the wake their incidents while another city saw an increase for some other reason? Those numbers are useless without context.
5 years is a good time frame to evaluate how effective reforms have been. Evaluate what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, what just needs slight tweaking to become effective and make appropriate changes to keep moving forward.
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@benshawks08 said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
Is five years long enough?
https://twitter.com/loneberrywang/status/1270087421531652104?s=21
In short, this evidence is not causal at all and is subject to all sorts of interpretations. How well did individual officers adhere to new guidelines? Were there sanctions if officers didn’t follow the rules? Did the unions gain power during that time? We have 1000 possible confounds that make a causal interpretation impossible since we only have really two variables: policymakers saying new guidelines exist, and police shootings. We know nothing else about either variable from this tweet.
This is basically where my mind is at: https://reason.com/1969/11/01/the-cops-heroes-or-villains/ . We need a retaliatory force to correct acts of coercion criminals impose on victims. For example, if someone stole something of yours, there should be justice. This justice could be in terms of utility, the criminal steals my car, he goes to jail for as long as it takes for me to get a new one (in terms of utility). Or could be retribution, we as a society decide how long a car thief should be deprived of freedom for said act. If we attribute those same guidelines to cops (use coercion initiating violence) the officer should be held accountable. We expect our police (and courts) to act as the corrective force, that is to even the field between victim and perpetrator. Like it’s not a coercive act to take my car back from a car thief since it wasn’t the thief’s right to take my car. You can only be coerced if you had the right to the thing in the first place (like me and my car.)
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I’m a little confused how canceling shows like cops and live PD are helping this cause. I don’t watch much tv but I enjoy those shows. If we continue to treat all cops as if they are bad and continue to cut funding, it will only make matters worse. Less training hours and low pay won’t fix anything. I read they are considering canceling Paw Patrol for having good cops, yes teaching all children cops are evil will pay dividends smh. There is little common sense or logic these days…
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@kjayhawks wow, that’s dumb.
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That’s just crazy, especially the Paw Patrol part. My 3 year old son is obsessed with the show and the toys…
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@kjayhawks Like most things that create such reactions by Ted Cruz and company, the Paw Patrol cancellation is manufactured speculation. It is based on a NYT critic’s recounting of satirical comments made on the show’s website (the cop puppy is a “species traitor”?). She used those as a way to launch into a larger attack on TV cop shows (her commentary is a whole different level of overwrought, IMO). There is no announced plan to cancel it, and it did just get renewed.
https://decider.com/2020/06/11/is-paw-patrol-being-cancelled-protests/
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Also:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-paw-patrol-get-canceled/
Surprise, Eric Trump & Dana Loesch are another source of the false rumor.
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@kjayhawks said in Racial Truths and Untruths and the Search for Justice while Doing Justice (previously titled To Infinity and Beyond):
I’m a little confused how canceling shows like cops and live PD are helping this cause. I don’t watch much tv but I enjoy those shows. If we continue to treat all cops as if they are bad and continue to cut funding, it will only make matters worse. Less training hours and low pay won’t fix anything.
On the issue of TV shows, those shows were problematic because the police department that they filmed got to decide what got aired and how the video was cut. As a result, they could manipulate how they were being portrayed, and even had a say in whether or not things aired. It wasn’t as “real” as the shows advertised themselves to be.
As far as defunding, its really shifting funding away from police and into community redevelopment and mental health. Police Departments do not do a good job handling people that are mentally ill. All of the research says that. Most law enforcement groups agree. They are not designed to handle people with mental health issues because the whole idea of law enforcement is based on people understanding actions and consequences. If that isn’t present, law enforcement is not designed to respond.
There have been numerous incidents where police have injured or killed someone that was mentally ill because that person did not understand the officer’s commands, or even that the officer was law enforcement. While those situations are not the officer’s fault, it shows how much the system can fail if law enforcement tries to engage on mental health. It simply cannot work.
Moving law enforcement funds to mental health funding actually could save even more money because now you are treating people rather than just arresting them and having them in jail, where they injure themselves and others, require extra monitoring, damage property, etc.
Putting funds back into community development and youth programs can make a huge difference in deterring kids away from some of those initial issues like trespassing and vandalism that are typically the result of bored kids out running around. Again, this could result in savings because instead of having to imprison and monitor, you just have programs that kids and young adults can participate in.
The funds that get moved could end up being twice as effective as just leaving them in the police budget. There is research out there that early childhood and youth programs cut crime rates later by a significant percentage. If that is true, every dollar you spend on early childhood saves you money later on. So dumping $100M into those types of programs now may result in $5-$10M in savings in the future (i.e., money not spent on additional programs or policing later). That is a huge benefit for society overall. And your taxes may go down, too.
