(07-22-2020 01:56 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(07-22-2020 12:43 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(07-22-2020 12:36 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I just looked at something about the death of George Floyd....
The primary cop implicated in his death has been a cop in Minneapolis since 2001. The chief of Police there has been in office for 3 years... and has been a cop there for 30. Prior to being appointed by the Democrat mayor of Minneapolis, he spent 10 years as the head of Internal Affairs, specifically charged with investigating officer misconduct. He was appointed to this position after he and 4 other African American members of the force sued and won a lawsuit against the force alleging bias against minority officers. They were awarded 740k, and yet he stayed on the force. That sort of screams commitment to me. Of all the people and places where 'bias' should have had time to be worked out, this should have been it. Although the state went slightly to Trump in the general (neither getting 50%), the primaries went much more to Bernie at 60+% (so highly progressive) and Rubio at like 32 with Trump around 20. 500k of the 1.5mm voters in the state are from the county including Minneapolis... from memory, it was like 60% for her... it wasn't a minor win... She took 6 of the largest 7 counties... Trump only taking one... that only had 75k voters. His next largest county he won was about 28k. This is NOT Trump country. Democrats OWN this county.,,, which is 3 times the next largest county in terms of voters.

So you have a known entity in the cop, whom the African-American chief of police had 10 years to vet through internal affairs and the potential to 'know' for 20... in a strongly progressive county lead by Democrats who appoint the chief and set the standards for them....

If ever there was an opportunity to eliminate bias, this was it.... and despite at least somewhat of a focus on it for at least 13 years, it failed... and somehow 'the racist right' is the problem here?

Here's the other things I find interesting...
The second officer indicted is Hmong... he has a spotty record. He became a cop in 2009 but was laid off from 2010-2012. 6 complaints have been filed against him... they settled one for 25k. Doesn't sound horrible, but doesn't sound good either.
The other two had been on the force for just a few weeks. The lead indicted officer was responsible for training one of them... who was African American. They sound like victims to be honest... IDK what their specific part was in the tragedy.

My point is that this was a case where everything you might suggest happen was in place, and progressive democrats controlled the local situation. What are they proposing now that they didn't have 100% opportunity to do in Minneapolis WITHOUT riots and vandalism?

Analysis instead of innuendo. Facts instead of supposition. What a novel approach.

So, lad/93, explain where we see the "systemic" racism?

I feel like this is a great example of how the issue is systemic - even with "progressive" Democrats (side note - do we have any idea if there were actually progressive Dems voted into positions of power in the area, or just how voters voted for Sanders?) we still see these issues because they aren't related to one part or the other, they are SYSTEMIC.

The discussion about whether or not they are 'progressive' is another one of your rabbit trails. You know, you don't have to have an opinion about everything that I say. I've presented circumstantial evidence that leads me to believe that they were 'left of Hillary' in 2016. I have set that as the bar for being 'progressive' in my mind. If you choose to believe that they are actually only moderate democrats and that the bar should be placed elsewhere, it makes no difference. The point is that they went in a big way (2:1) for the 'more left' of the two presidential options available to them from the left in the primary.

Now to the real discussion....
So this guy killed George Floyd because the system is inherently racist? That you can't train him to not hold an unarmed and handcuffed guy being arrested for passing a bad check down by a knee in his neck for a prolonged period when many other options are readily available because of 'the system'? You can't train cops not to kill people who are struggling to breathe?

If that's really the case, then you're saying that the enforcement of laws is inherently racist... and can't be fixed other than to ignore laws and to attack those who seek to enforce it.... because the death of a black man who had no reason to be dead is what happened there after 13+ years of specifically trying to fix it, and ignoring laws is the solution being offered today.

And you wonder why criminals co-opt your position and why generally law abiding citizens don't support them, other than being forced into accepting this rather nebulous, 'it's the system'
comment?

So who does a good job with this? Who has a system that isn't 'racist'?

In the UK, BAME people make up 14% of the population and 25% of the prison population... so not them...

Germany, often lauded for having an incarceration rate 1/10th ours... not surprisingly makes it difficult to find 'incarceration rate by race'... and instead they focus rather heavily on 'foreigners'... which is amusing to me because I keep getting told that we in the US are nationalists and Germany isn't... Well yeah... they started about 70 years ago by ridding the nation of almost everyone else, and now they focus on 'foreigners'. I guess some things never change, no matter what we're told.

I'm laughing as I read... The 'guest workers from the 50's and 60's' (lol... as if those would be Africans, Jews and the like so soon after WW2) showed no increase in crime rates... studies in the 70's and 80's revealed that new foreigners had approximately double the crime rate. I'm sure it's not as simple as I'm making it, but this is exactly what they're saying.

Maybe the reason the incarceration rate there is so much lower is that they break so many fewer laws... because 'native' Germans remember that disobeying government means you get killed or worse??

SOmebody please help me... Germany Incarceration Rate by Race returns 3.7mm hits, but I can't find one actually delivering 'Germany Incarceration Rate by Race'. US incarceration rate by race returns 8.5mm results... and the first few pages all deliver exactly that answer... often just in the 'summary'.... and when I go to wiki and ask for incarceration in Germany, I'm given Incarceration in the US instead.

If it weren't such a serious issue, this would be funny.

Now I'm looking at the EU... they have 'alternative prisons' for foreigners with administrative crimes... I guess those are illegal immigrants being held 'in cages'.... and they have a much larger probation system. I've heard, but it's anecdotal... that you have to be pretty bad to go to prison, but that their prisons are FAR worse than what we find acceptable here. Maybe we need to make fewer prisons, but make those prisons much less comfortable.

Seriously, that might actually have some basis... That's pretty much what that guy in AZ tried... and the left sued him and won/ran him off/scared others off.

The incarceration rate in England and Wales is 148 per 100,000... but according to Marcelo Aebi of the U of Lausanne... without these alternative facilities, their incarceration rate would be 474 per 100,000. The US would still be higher at 730, but that's a big difference... and they still incarcerate far more minorities than anglos.



Lad, to your 'more of the same' question....
Those facts don't tell you anything about what is being done with the money.... or how those departments will operate on less money, or what will replace the now completely defunded police.

My issue isn't that the solutions are necessarily the same... Its that the solutions haven't remotely been vetter or tested or in most cases, even articulated... and 'what Democrats in Minneapolis, LA, Other California Cities, Baltimore, PG county (to name a few)' are proposing.... ALL are run by Democrats and ALL could have been doing these things all along. Once again, other than wanting to see something work or at least show a little bit of promise before agreeing to completely change our way of addressing crime in the US... how are 'Republicans' the problem?

So we're trusting the people who haven't come close to solving this issue that THEY believe exists and have for decades... to suddenly stumble upon the answer... but we have to give them carte blanche and elect them to every level of government nationally before we can even start?

Hint... defunding the police in and of itself doesn't stop George Floyd from dying. It easily means that John Doe ALSO dies.