yeah you probably missed this part: But let’s get back to the question that the public is screaming at the top of their lungs. Where were all the cops? Police Commissioner Dermot Shea came out yesterday and announced a “surge” of 500 more cops being sent to the subways “immediately.” Some were even being pulled off of desk duty to bolster the ranks. It’s a good start, but it still doesn’t explain how we arrived at this crisis.
Gotta say Jewish Space Lasers trump Defund The Cops. Why are the Rs solely focused on Jewish Space Lasers while they ignore everything else? Why! Why! Why!
Was going to post this in the "George Floyd Trial" thread but more fitting here. This is a good piece from the NYT and matches what I'm seeing here on the ground. There is a lot of tension here with the start of the trial and there are many who don't believe that Chauvin will be convicted. Crime, both petty and violent, has risen markedly since the June and there isn't much faith in city leaders. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/us/minneapolis-george-floyd.html Ten Months After George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Residents Are at War Over Policing As the trial of a former officer accused of murdering Mr. Floyd kicks off, residents and community leaders have struggled to reach consensus on how to radically change public safety, and the role the police should play in that MINNEAPOLIS — The sacred intersection where George Floyd died beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has seen such a spike in violence that food delivery drivers are afraid to venture there. There have been gun battles, with bloodied shooting victims dragged to ambulances because of barricades keeping the police and emergency vehicles away. “Having no police: This is the experiment right here,” said P.J. Hill, a leader of Worldwide Outreach For Christ, a church that’s been on the corner for almost 40 years. “This is their one-block experiment.” Residents all over town still complain of officers using excessive force, like a recent confrontation in which a white officer appeared to wind up and throw a punch at a Black teenager. And officers accuse some community members of antagonizing them, like a recent dispute over a homeless encampment that erupted into a melee with punches and pepper spray. Ten months ago, Minneapolis, and the country, seemed to coalesce around the belief that policing needed an overhaul after gruesome video surfaced of the last moments of Mr. Floyd’s life. Now, with the murder trial of the officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck slated to begin on Monday, the struggle over what to overhaul and how to do it has left Minneapolis at war with itself over public safety and the role of the police. A pledge by most City Council members last June to defund and dismantle the Police Department and create a new system of public safety met fierce resistance. It has since given way to a grab bag of efforts which have yet to prove their effectiveness and have left the city fractured. Looming over everything is a palpable unease over what the 12 jurors will decide in the trial of Derek Chauvin, who is facing second- and third-degree murder charges, as well as manslaughter, after being captured on video kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes last May. Many worry that an acquittal could set back the work that has been done to reform public safety and to attempt healing, and put the city right back where it was last summer with buildings ablaze and the streets roiling with anger. “People don’t have much faith that he’s going to be convicted,” said Pastor Brian Herron of Zion Baptist Church in the Near North, the historic heart of Black Minneapolis. “I think there’s hope that he is, but we have seen this movie before. We’ve watched this movie over and over and over again. We can recite the lines.” Cities all across America last year faced a surge in violence, fueled in part by the economic despair and alienation brought on by the pandemic, criminologists said. Minneapolis was no exception: it saw a 25 percent increase in homicides, rapes, robberies and assaults. But zero in on the four neighborhoods surrounding George Floyd Square, the name given to the corner where Mr. Floyd died, and the story is far bleaker and deadlier. In those areas — Powderhorn Park, Central, Bryant and Bancroft — violent crime shot up 66 percent last year, according to Police Department statistics. And this year, so far, little has changed. The area has become something of an autonomous zone, with barriers and signs calling it “the free state of George Floyd.” The police have stayed away for almost a year to avoid inflaming tensions. Residents and city leaders have tussled over the role that the Police Department’s depleted ranks have played in the violence plaguing the entire city. Around 200 officers have left the force, some temporarily, over the past year, with many taking leave for post-traumatic stress disorder. The City Charter allows for 888 officers, but there are currently 648 on active duty, city officials said. Supporters of defunding the police have applauded steps to redirect $8 million from the Police Department’s budget, which now sits at about $170 million. Some of those funds have gone to the Office of Violence Prevention, which has seen its budget grow more than fourfold over the past year to about $7 million. With that money, the office is expanding programs that offer social services, said Sasha Cotton, the director. The office is also developing a program modeled after Cure Violence, a national violence-intervention initiative. The city’s version will consist of six teams of about 15 people, some former gang members, working in communities to settle any simmering disputes that may lead to violence. The growth in resources won’t make the work any simpler, Ms. Cotton said. That’s because the challenges have grown, too: the surge in violence, the pandemic-induced economic hardship, the unease over the trial. “We’re under a microscope and at an epicenter that no city wants to be in,” she said. “I think that from these challenges there is real growth happening and that we will come out of it better on the other side. But it’s sort of like that awkward teenage space that people have to go through.” Pastor Curtis Farrar, who leads Worldwide Outreach for Christ at George Floyd Square, said gang violence has long been a problem in the area but things had been improving before Mr. Floyd was killed and the police pulled back. Now the sounds of gunshots are a constant, and recently workers he had hired to change his church’s windows refused to come to the area because they felt it was too dangerous. In many ways, the future of the intersection could turn on the outcome of the trial. For too long, he said, the community has watched police officers kill and get away with it. “I don’t know if anybody at this point knows how it’s going to be solved unless they see justice as really being blind,” he said. “If they don’t we’re going to have some serious problems in this community.” Many officers worry about further unrest, said Sgt. Sherral Schmidt, the president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. Officers began leaving the department in droves after the uprising last summer, she said, and morale has only gotten worse. With short staffing, officers have found themselves bouncing from call to call, with little opportunity to engage with the community, she said. Even the members of the community engagement team have been reassigned to different jobs to help make up for the patrol shortage, she said. Officers are expected to have to work 12-hour shifts once the trial reaches closing arguments, Sergeant Schmidt added. “The biggest thing for our cops right now is they feel no support,” she said. “So every day they come in and it’s like, ‘Oh, what are we going to be scrutinized for today?’” cont.
Cont. Some longtime civil rights activists are very critical of the police, but also of how supporters of the defund movement have gone about trying to effect change. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer, criticized the defund movement as nothing more than, “catchy slogans and catchphrases.” She said that last summer she warned Jeremiah Ellison, a City Council member supporting efforts to dismantle the police department, that it would only lead to chaos. “You’re going to turn Minneapolis into the wild, Wild West,” she recalled telling him. But Mr. Ellison said the uptick in violence in the city began long before any money was redirected from the police, and he credited council members for investing in alternatives to policing. “To do what we’ve done in 10 months,” he said, “as far as city government is concerned, that’s kind of moving at light speed.” Last June, nine council members, a veto-proof majority, stood on a stage in a park behind large block letters that read, “Defund Police,” and pledged to dismantle the Police Department. “They stood on a stage in Powderhorn Park in front of the entire nation with a big sign, with one million point font saying, ‘defund the police,’” said Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, calling it an ill-conceived move. He could not support that position, he added, because he did not agree with it and “it wasn’t going to be delivered.” Many of those members have since backtracked. They proposed a measure last year to change the City Charter to create a Public Safety Department — of which the police would be just one part — that they say would promote a more holistic approach to public safety. That effort failed, but a new proposal is on track to appear on the ballot this fall. Activists are also gathering signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would perform a similar action. Though he has disagreed with most council members, Mr. Frey has acknowledged the urgency to do something. “There’s clearly a lot of passion and pain and frustration,” he said. He has favored working with the police chief, Medaria Arradondo, to implement policy reforms — many of which his critics have said were too incremental. A slew of new policies on the use of force has been implemented, including requiring officers to intervene when a fellow officer is using impermissible force and requiring greater scrutiny when force is used against someone in handcuffs. For many residents, though, the policy changes have done nothing to upend what they see as an underlying culture of aggression and disrespect. D.A. Bullock, an activist and filmmaker who lives in North Minneapolis, recalled recently going to a scene where the police had just shot someone and having officers aggressively tell him to get back. “I’ve seen a number of interactions between police and residents since George Floyd was murdered, and I can’t, from a practical standpoint, I can’t identify anything that they’re doing differently,” Mr. Bullock said. “They still roll up and they roll up in force. They’re still very much aggressive. I haven’t seen any de-escalation tactics.” Still, if the city feels tense over the continued debate about policing and public safety, there are small signs of racial healing. One of them is on display every Sunday at Pastor Herron’s church, which is predominantly Black. More white faces have been appearing in the pews. It gives Pastor Herron hope that even as the city feels these days as though it is under siege — with National Guard troops on the streets, and concrete-and-wire barricades fortifying government buildings downtown — some people, at least, are trying to come together. “If you look physically, it doesn’t look like much has changed,” he said. “But if you look with spiritual eyes, you see a conversation. You see a movement toward each other, instead of away from each other.” He continued, “It’s being done organically. We’re not on purpose trying to be a multicultural church. It’s what’s in the atmosphere now.”
I don't want to start a new thread on this and am not sure which thread to put it in so will put it here. Was having a discussion with a friend the other day about disarming LEO on patrol the way the UK does it. This would very likely reduce the likelyhood of police shootings for example LEO Potter wouldn't be able to mistake her firearm for a taser if she wasn't carrying a firearm. The problem that I see with that is that there are too many firearms out in the the US than the UK. LEO in the US not carrying firearms will likely lead to more dead LEO but given how many mass shootings, including ones like Indianapolis that are seemingly random with no relation to known crime, LEO will need to respond rapidly with deadly force. Waiting for a SWAT Team might not be practical. My own feeling is that if regular LEO on patrol didn't carry firearms we would see a massive backlash if a mass shooting happened where LEO couldn't respond with lethal force quickly.
I always thought "defunding the police" was stupid but do police actually prevent murders from happening? Do murderers actually think, "maybe I shouldn't do this because cops around?" I think Covid and the lockdown associated with has caused a lot of mental health issues for tons of people. Even my daughter who is super well adjusted has been feeling a little depressed, and we aren't totally in lockdown either.
"Mayor Frey: Calls To Defund Minneapolis Police Have Played Role In Crime Spike": https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021...polis-police-have-played-role-in-crime-spike/
"Minneapolis to bring in outside help to deal with surge in violence": https://www.startribune.com/minneap...ith-surge-in-violence/600060508/?refresh=true excerpt Minneapolis police are bringing in outside help as they try to temper violence that killed four people this weekend alone, including a college senior who was out celebrating graduation. Mayor Jacob Frey said the city has asked state and federal agencies for assistance, citing the city's shortage of officers. "Safety in our city has to be a priority," Frey said at a news conference Sunday, calling the reinforcements "really, really critical." The weekend's victims include two men believed to have been struck by gunfire on the North Side and two men killed in a mass downtown shooting: one of the suspected gunmen and the student, whose family said was "an innocent bystander." The increase in violence has tested the commitment of city leaders who unanimously promised to transform policing and public safety in the wake of George Floyd's death — but are deeply divided about how to proceed. While debates about policing have proved to be divisive within City Hall, some of the victims' relatives said they hope to remove politics from the discussion. They want a solution that will keep other families from feeling pain like theirs. more at the link
I love the idea of social problems being handled by people that are trained to do it. We need to DEMILITIARIZE the police...... That is better for the idiots that just like slogans. DD
Yes that's the way to go and contrary to the opinion of some, that is a pro-police stance. They are overworked
Yea, the way budgeting works for police and access to ultra military arms and hands me down is a whole different argument. Also talking about what we incentive them to to do. Public Forfeiture should be unconstitutional. But Defund is just a terrible slogan name and as far as I know even the supporter say its not defunding the police but rellocating a heavy amount of resources but for some reason the damn title sounds like you will just remove the police force of which law enforcement is needed for any society. You can make a strong, strong argument for accountability, abuse of power issues with the police, constant transparency including cameras and a community liasion, but they still will have a hard job dealing with violent crime that hasn't gone away in history, there are bad actors and we need a police force for this. How about stop the frivolous **** like making quotas on non violent small amounts of infractions, arresting people for cannabis or non violent drug related where enforcement cost billions, then jailing cost another load for the tax payers. I just don't know how to make it a hashtag.
Hmm, remember when republicans were claiming Democrats were doing this? republicans actually and literally defunding the police...
