The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[The Brain]

What you describe doesn't sound like a scientific problem, but a problem of politics/willpower.

It is largely that, but there is some science to figuring out how to accomplish breaking the code within the political realities.  There is some science to rooting out corruption, it's not just a matter of finding a resolute enough man at the top who pounds their fist on the table and makes it so.

Yes, and there are eggheads who are paid to know these things. And law enforcement bosses who are paid to deliver. And politicians who are paid to get people what they want.

Many significant problems consist of a myriad of interconnected aspects and difficulties. That's why you have people with the training and skills necessary to solve them solve them. Of course I expect experts (scientists and police) to know expert stuff, and I expext politicians to know politics stuff.

[Sheilbh]

I don't see how Uck's straw man about the lack of white papers from BLM factors in.  I said we need buy in on proposals from the protestors.  If you want to argue that, argue that.

You seem to be dancing around the thesis that reducing black deaths from cops to zero is a no brainer.  Is that your thesis?

Protests make nothing happen. They build pressure, they draw attention, they turn the question back on the state. But they achieve nothing - unless they achieve everything by, somehow, overthrowing a state entirely.

If your goal is to stop the protests then you don't need to get buy-in from the protesters. You need to do enough to convince their more passive supporters that you've addressed their concerns and sort of drain their support that'll take the wind out of them. I think even that will be a big lift on that given the shift in public opinion - I think the police strongly overestimate the depth of support they had from the public.

If your goal is to address issues of police impunity and systemic racism - then I'm sure there's plenty of experts and international models that can be learned from. It might even be enough to convince the protesters or their supporters. But I don't think that's the major issue - you want buy-in from usual leaders, stakesholders, communities etc. The protests create space to pass legislation and in this case to move policy quite decisively. But they're not the sort of militant wing of the legislature.

[The Brain]

Isn't it always both when it comes to these things? For the chain to actually do the job every link in the chain has to be held accountable.

Sure.  And I'm saying Teh People have a role to play too.  That their are no experts that can give us magical solutions.  We, collectively, are the only experts there are.

Yes, the people have a role to play. They can for instance say "we want non-racist law enforcement" and then the politicians can deliver this. But I think that if you expect magical solutions then that is not very productive, and you will definitely be disappointed. My impression is that many people expect and would be happy with quite normal solutions. I also don't think that law enforcement is that fundamentally different from other sectors when it comes to expert knowledge, and if in fact it is then the experts should definitely be fired.

[Admiral Yi]

Protests make nothing happen. They build pressure, they draw attention, they turn the question back on the state. But they achieve nothing - unless they achieve everything by, somehow, overthrowing a state entirely.

If your goal is to stop the protests then you don't need to get buy-in from the protesters. You need to do enough to convince their more passive supporters that you've addressed their concerns and sort of drain their support that'll take the wind out of them. I think even that will be a big lift on that given the shift in public opinion - I think the police strongly overestimate the depth of support they had from the public.

If your goal is to address issues of police impunity and systemic racism - then I'm sure there's plenty of experts and international models that can be learned from. It might even be enough to convince the protesters or their supporters. But I don't think that's the major issue - you want buy-in from usual leaders, stakesholders, communities etc. The protests create space to pass legislation and in this case to move policy quite decisively. But they're not the sort of militant wing of the legislature.

Buy in from leaders et al, experts *we* can learn from, sounds to me that you're basically agreeing with me but presenting yourself as taking Brain's side.  Which is a thought provoking tactic from a political point of view.

[Sheilbh]

Protests make nothing happen. They build pressure, they draw attention, they turn the question back on the state. But they achieve nothing - unless they achieve everything by, somehow, overthrowing a state entirely.

If your goal is to stop the protests then you don't need to get buy-in from the protesters. You need to do enough to convince their more passive supporters that you've addressed their concerns and sort of drain their support that'll take the wind out of them. I think even that will be a big lift on that given the shift in public opinion - I think the police strongly overestimate the depth of support they had from the public.

If your goal is to address issues of police impunity and systemic racism - then I'm sure there's plenty of experts and international models that can be learned from. It might even be enough to convince the protesters or their supporters. But I don't think that's the major issue - you want buy-in from usual leaders, stakesholders, communities etc. The protests create space to pass legislation and in this case to move policy quite decisively. But they're not the sort of militant wing of the legislature.

Buy in from leaders et al, experts *we* can learn from, sounds to me that you're basically agreeing with me but presenting yourself as taking Brain's side.  Which is a thought provoking tactic from a political point of view.

After all these years and you still think I'm precise with language.

It's not for us to learn from experts except on a very generalised social level - we can look at other societies. In terms of policies it's experts, think tankers, politicians, journos and then presenting a compelling enough narrative for us the people to back them. On buy-in you can cut most of those words and just say various stakeholders. I think it's fairly rare you need protesters or their leaders to buy in - in I can't think of a single great protest leader who was placated and rowed in. It's not in their nature they will normally keep protesting forever - and that's great.

[Admiral Yi]

After all these years and you still think I'm precise with language.

It's not for us to learn from experts except on a very generalised social level - we can look at other societies. In terms of policies it's experts, think tankers, politicians, journos and then presenting a compelling enough narrative for us the people to back them. On buy-in you can cut most of those words and just say various stakeholders. I think it's fairly rare you need protesters or their leaders to buy in - in I can't think of a single great protest leader who was placated and rowed in. It's not in their nature they will normally keep protesting forever - and that's great.

Very precise.  Every word redolent with meaning. 

I don't get the distinction between stakeholders  and protestors and their leaders.

You don't think MLK bought in to LBJ's Civil Rights package of bills and various court rulings?

Gays didn't have a leader, but they protested for gay marriage and gays in the military, and celebrated when they won those things.  That's buying in.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe it's semantics

MLK bought into LBJ's Civil Rights Act, and then he went to campaign for open housing in Chicago, and the poor people's campaign, and the campaign against Vietnam - fat lot of good it did LBJ. If you want to stop protests as a politician, your audience isn't the leadership of the protesters. If you can get their support, great - but it won't last, beause they're protesters. You have to get buy in from their more passive supporters both in the affected communities and the wider public.

Gays didn't have a leader, but they protested for gay marriage and gays in the military, and celebrated when they won those things.  That's buying in.

Interesting. I wouldn't have identified either of those as "protest" achievements by the gay. There were protests but I think the more successful was the sort of elite persuasion - journalism, culture, legal cases. I'd say gay protests were Larry Kramer and the various fights of ACT UP for access to drugs, involvement of patients, changes to testing protocols and, above all, attention. Needless to say Larry Kramer was not sated by those achievements.

Maybe I'm wrong but my view is great protest leaders bank wins and move on to the next issue. Buy in is lon term - you all dip your hands and make it work. Which is why you don't look to protests or the people for solutions, that's not what they do.

[Oexmelin]

Yi, I think your stance - as much as I can discern it - is predicated on an optical illusion. Past protest can much more easily be linked to ulterior results. No one who was protesting then had any form of certainty about outcome, nor the sort of coherence that a retrospective view is bound to ascribe to them.

[The Larch]

According to my dives on this topic in the last few days, there are police unions and police unions. Apparently the distinction is between the older, more settled ones (the ones normally called Fraternal or Benevolent brotherhood of this or that), that may or may not be necessarily unions per se (sometimes they might just be informal associations), which are overwhelmingly white, reactionary and absolutely against any change, and more modern, progressive and multiracial organizations (rarely unions as such) that can be worked with.

Regarding precise actions to demand, and also coming from what I've learned on this during this past few days, the following might be advisable:

- End qualified inmunity for cops.
- Require policemen to come from and/or live in the communities in which they're going to work.
- Forbid police unions from making political donations, so they don't influence sheriffs, judges or district attorneys (seriously, stop making justice positions elective, while you're at it).
- Remove competences from police departments that have been dumped on them and for which policemen are not qualified (mental health calls, drug addiction calls, etc.), and move the corresponding budget to the social services departments that can handle them much better, so-called "Defund the police" measures.
- When a given police department is too utterly out of control and unreformable that it can't be worked with, disband it and create a new one from scratch. This is "Defund the police" on steroids.
- Ban overly confrontational police training courses (all that Warrior policing bullshit).
- End transfer programs of military surplus equipment to police forces.
- Banish the "broken windows" school of policing to the dustbin of history.

Another common sense things would be ending the war on drugs, for profit prisons, and the like, and getting into even murkier territory dealing with the underlying cultural issues that drive all this (guns, state of fear, racism...).

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/08/872416644/former-chief-of-reformed-camden-n-j-force-police-need-consent-of-the-people

Listened to part of this on my drive out to the golf course.

[Admiral Yi]

Yi, I think your stance - as much as I can discern it - is predicated on an optical illusion. Past protest can much more easily be linked to ulterior results. No one who was protesting then had any form of certainty about outcome, nor the sort of coherence that a retrospective view is bound to ascribe to them.

The Birmingham bus boycott was aimed at ending separate seating for blacks and whites.  Lunch counter sit-ins were aimed at ending separate seating at lunch counters.

[merithyn]

Yi, I think your stance - as much as I can discern it - is predicated on an optical illusion. Past protest can much more easily be linked to ulterior results. No one who was protesting then had any form of certainty about outcome, nor the sort of coherence that a retrospective view is bound to ascribe to them.

The Birmingham bus boycott was aimed at ending separate seating for blacks and whites.  Lunch counter sit-ins were aimed at ending separate seating at lunch counters.

The George Floyd marches are aimed at ending killing black people on the streets by police.

[crazy canuck]

Yi, I think your stance - as much as I can discern it - is predicated on an optical illusion. Past protest can much more easily be linked to ulterior results. No one who was protesting then had any form of certainty about outcome, nor the sort of coherence that a retrospective view is bound to ascribe to them.

The Birmingham bus boycott was aimed at ending separate seating for blacks and whites.  Lunch counter sit-ins were aimed at ending separate seating at lunch counters.

They were limited purpose protests?  I am pretty sure both protests were aimed at having equal rights generally.

[Sheilbh]

They were limited purpose protests?  I am pretty sure both protests were aimed at having equal rights generally.

And also there had been numerous bus boycotts in different states - which led to test cases in the courts by NAACP, they had considered rallying behind another incident in that city before Rosa Parks but I think there were issues with that woman (from a 50s perspective - so she'd probably had sex or taken a drink). Neither of those examples were spontaneous protests, they were planned and deliberate with lots of work by activitsts before the actual boycott.

There was strategy. It wasn't a tired woman refusing to give up her seat.

[Oexmelin]

And they were planned and targeted thus, because the element of discrimination - lunch counters, buses - was easy enough to understand and visualize. To stage similarly visual protests against "redlining", for instance, would have been a lot more difficult.  So it is with police brutality. There is little to no convenient snippet, enshrined in routine practice, that can easily be so visually protested. Except perhaps precisely how it's now being done: bearing witness to police escalation and the unleashing of violence by law enforcement.