[News] Protests Against Police Violence After Death of George Floyd

Discuss police violence, the victims of police violence (including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor), the Black-led protests against said violence, and related topics.

I just saw this story about Elijah Mclain a 23 year old black man who was stopped by police last year and was killed. The coroner was unable to determine a cause of death. Officers used chokeholds, and their body cameras only partially captured the interaction. It's a sickeningly familiar pattern at this point.

I don't remember hearing anything about this last year. It was horrifying to read. My first thought was that I couldn't fathom why nothing arose out of this young man's death last year - no charges, investigation concluded with no discipline of the officers. Then I thought about it some more and the most logical answer is that to too many people with power have been overtly and covertly valuing black lives as less than. If you're reading this thread that concept is nothing new. It's just one more example of what's been happening and it's abhorrent.

I am not new to evaluating police conduct.
I spent the last five years as a prosecutor. I left that job last year. I learned that I need to gather evidence to properly evaluate it before jumping to a conclusion. And this is one news story, not a full investigation.

But I can't for the life of me figure out what those officers thought was probable cause sufficient to detain him, let alone arrest him or use any force whatsoever.

I heard Larry Wilmore recently say that this "bad apple" bullsh*t excuse needs to end, that the soil is bad. When I read stories like this, and the story from North Carolina above, and dozens of others in this thread and all over the news, I have to agree.

I personally believe that above all else police officers need to have integrity. And while I know and worked with plenty of law enforcement that I think have unimpeachable integrity - I also knew officers I believed were sketchy. I never encountered anything like this in my work, but after so many decades of credible stories about corruption you cannot point to a few good officers and hold them up as standard bearers for the culture.

Dear The Simpsons, Texas realtors and Oregon/Oregon State Athletics:

No-one was asking for that. We'd much prefer the bigger stuff first.

EDIT: Or, to put it better:

@johnlegend wrote:

Real problem: realtors don't show black people all the properties they qualify for. Fake problem: calling the master bedroom the master bedroom. Fix the real problem, realtors.

In other news, this is all getting very complicated and in some places, frustratingly dumb. It's going to be a very, very long summer.

Also, if anyone wants one black guy's opinion, "White Fragility" is terrible, just read Frederick Douglass and MLK instead.

From the author's Wikipedia page: "her thesis constituted a discourse analysis of whiteness."

What the actual...

I have a general policy of avoiding anything written about black history or culture by a white author, and that extends to anything written about how white people should interact with POC. I don't care how many degrees they have. Actually that policy is generalized to any group disadvantaged by white cis het society, but right now it is especially important to hear the voices of POC describing their own experiences and history.

Doesn't basic human decency apply here? A white person doesn't need a white voice telling them how to think if they can read about the black experience and apply a little empathy. I will never really understand in my bones what it's like to live in this society as a disadvantaged person, but I like to think I can see and help work on the real problems without getting all navel-gazy.

There are so many incredible black writers writing incredible books and other media. For myself, back when I started reading Coates it was a revelation. He is an outstanding writer, and he does not pull punches.

For me, it's that it turns every single interracial interaction into a f*cking HR meeting. It is the worst. I don't ever want to hear the word "microaggression" in real life. Ever.

Zwickle wrote:

I just saw this story about Elijah Mclain a 23 year old black man who was stopped by police last year and was killed. The coroner was unable to determine a cause of death. Officers used chokeholds, and their body cameras only partially captured the interaction. It's a sickeningly familiar pattern at this point.

The URL tag for Zwickle's link to the Elijah McClain story was messed up, so I wanted to make sure everyone could get to it here:

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/26/88403...

I actually came here to post a link to a story about this case that I read on another site. I had somehow missed Zwickle's earlier message.

I think it's great that the governor has taken this step, but I also don't remember reading about it until now. Why did it take ten months for a proper investigation to begin? Oh, I know why, it's because a whole lot of people had enough after another incident like this, and they started protesting all over the USA.

And the officers responsible for Elijah's death are still on the job.

Saw this version the other day starring the incomparable Daveed Diggs and updated by modern black writers-

I think those two videos pair well together. I never was really into "the fourth" as a holiday for many years. Always felt weird. I certainly won't "celebrate" it from now on. It's definitely a day to keep quiet and reflect.

I choose to celebrate the 4th of July as the day the South was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg (and ultimately the war).

Nevin73 wrote:

I choose to celebrate the 4th of July as the day the South was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg (and ultimately the war).

That works!

I don't know if this belongs in the George Floyd protest thread, because Native Americans have been doing their own protests (and getting killed by the FBI) for ages, but there was a protest today that blocked off access to Mount Rushmore, involving among others the NDN Collective and Lakota tribe members.

I celebrate the 4th because I recognize the Founding Fathers, while very flawed, started something amazing that day. At their time in history there were few, if any, democracies in the entire world. Nearly every nation had some form of slavery and the majority of countries were ruled by brutal oligarchs. We have a long way to go but the 4th was the spark that spread to France then across Europe and eventually much of the world. Now it’s up to our generation to carry the torch further.

It does seem like a good day to reflect on both the fact that the creation of the US was a huge step forward, and that it's certainly not the final word in how to create a government. The Founders came up with incredible ideas for the time and made many new things possible, but their mistakes were numerous and terrible. We can improve on what they started, and desperately need to.

The US is under attack in a way uniquely dangerous to our system, with a vociferous minority that flat doesn't believe in the values that the country was created to spread. We're teetering on the brink of losing control to fascists, and it's quite possible that historians will mark 2020 as the passing of the American Republic.

Watched Hamilton last night.

I remember as a former history major, our profs (one of whom is the preeminent US scholar on the Holocaust) regularly counseled us to examine historical figures within the context of their time...as well as comparing that against our current knowledge/enlightenment.

Through that lens, the Founding Fathers were extremely radical. The King George character in Hamilton, while played for laughs, really does encapsulate the pre-1776 world where monarchs were to be obeyed because that was "natural."

Our country has many, many challenges to be overcome and injustices to rectify. I believe we can do that by channeling the spirit of those radicals of 250 years ago. They weren't "progressive" by our standards. But they started us on the journey toward a more just world.

Crim J reform/revolution has its roots in the American Revolution and my sense is we should use those same appeals to universal rights/fairness to improve our current situation.

I'm starting to wonder if things might not have been better if we had lost the American Revolution and stayed a British colony.

Brexit?

A protester was killed in Seattle on the 4th around midnight; a driver drove around vehicles blockading the road and plowed into the protest.

AP: 1 of 2 protesters hit by car on closed Seattle highway dies

SEATTLE (AP) — A car drove onto a closed freeway early Saturday and struck two people in a crowd protesting against police brutality, killing one and critically injuring the other, authorities said.

Summer Taylor, 24, of Seattle died in the evening at Harborview Medical Center, spokesperson Susan Gregg said.

Taylor and Diaz Love, 32, of Portland, Oregon, were hit by the car that barreled through a panicked crowd of protesters on Interstate 5 early Saturday morning, officials said.

Dawit Kelete of Seattle drove the car around vehicles that were blocking I-5 and sped into the crowd about 1:40 a.m., according to a police report released by the Washington State Patrol. Video taken at the scene by protesters showed people shouting “Car! Car!” before fleeing the roadway.

Louisville, KY is rotten to the core.

Louisville Courier Journal: Breonna Taylor warrant connected to Louisville gentrification plan, lawyers say

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Breonna Taylor's shooting was the result of a Louisville police department operation to clear out a block in western Louisville that was part of a major gentrification makeover, according to attorneys representing the slain 26-year-old's family.

Lawyers for Taylor's family allege in court documents filed in Jefferson Circuit Court Sunday that a police squad — named Place-Based Investigations — had "deliberately misled" narcotics detectives to target a home on Elliott Avenue, leading them to believe they were after some of the city's largest violent crime and drug rings.

The complaint — which amends an earlier lawsuit filed by Taylor's mother against the three Louisville officers who fired their weapons into Taylor's home — claims Taylor was caught up in a case that was less about a drug house on Elliott Avenue and more about speeding up the city's multi-million dollar Vision Russell development plan.

"The execution of this search warrant robbed Breonna of her life and Tamika Palmer of her daughter," Florida-based attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the family, told The Courier Journal on Sunday.

"Its execution exhibited outrageous recklessness and willful, wanton, unprecedented and unlawful conduct."

The city has a lot of money invested in the project.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Greg Fischer said the allegations are "outrageous" and "without foundation or supporting facts."

"They are insulting to the neighborhood members of the Vision Russell initiative and all the people involved in the years of work being done to revitalize the neighborhoods of west Louisville," Jean Porter said in a statement. "The Mayor is absolutely committed to that work, as evidenced by the city’s work to support $1 billion in capital projects there over the past few years, including a new YMCA, the city’s foundational $10 million grant to the Louisville Urban League’s Sports and Learning Complex, the Cedar Street housing development, new businesses, down payment home ownership assistance, and of course, the remaking of the large Beecher Terrace initiative."

And it looks like they may have been targeting Jamarus Glover specifically because they wanted to re-appropriate his house.

The warrants carried out in the narcotics investigation on March 13 were meant to target one of the "primary roadblocks" to the development: A man named Jamarcus Glover, according to the complaint.

Glover rented a home in the 2400 block of Elliott Avenue in the Russell neighborhood, the filing alleges, placing it squarely in the area of the planned redevelopment.

Glover is an ex-boyfriend of Taylor's with whom she maintained a "passive" friendship, Sam Aguiar, one of the attorneys, has previously said.

In the affidavit seeking the no-knock search warrant for Taylor's Springfield Drive apartment, Detective Joshua Jaynes wrote that he had seen Glover leave Taylor's apartment in January with a USPS package before driving to a "known drug house."

The detective wrote he then verified "through a US Postal Inspector" that Glover had been receiving packages at Taylor's address.

A U.S. postal inspector in Louisville, however, told WDRB News that LMPD didn't use his office to verify that Glover was receiving packages at Taylor's apartment and that a different agency had asked in January to look into whether Taylor's home was receiving suspicious mail. The office had concluded it wasn't.

Jaynes is now on administrative reassignment until questions about "how and why the search warrant was approved" are answered, interim Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert Schroeder said last month.

It is that tenuous connection to Glover that led police to Taylor's apartment on March 13, Aguiar and his co-counsel, Lonita Baker, say in the complaint.

"Breonna’s home should never have had police there in the first place," the attorneys wrote in the filing. "When the layers are peeled back, the origin of Breonna’s home being raided by police starts with a political need to clear out a street for a large real estate development project and finishes with a newly formed, rogue police unit violating all levels of policy, protocol and policing standards.

"Breonna’s death was the culmination of radical political and police conduct."

According to the police department's organization chart, the Place-Based Investigations squad was created to address "systemically violent locations" and help existing crime deterrence efforts.

Detective Jaynes seems to have been deeply involved in the project.

Court records show Jaynes sought five warrants on March 12, including one for Taylor's apartment, a suspected drug house in the Russell neighborhood at 2424 Elliott Ave., two vacant homes nearby on Elliott Avenue and a suspected stash house on West Muhammad Ali Boulevard.

Glover and a man named Adrian Walker were named on all five search warrants and were among the night's primary targets.

"The reality was that the occupants were not anywhere close to Louisville’s versions of Pablo Escobar or Scarface," the court complaint says. "And they were not violent criminals. They were simply a setback to a large real estate development deal and thus the issue needed to be cleaned up."

Glover was arrested on Elliott Avenue that night for trafficking and firearm offenses. The case remains pending in Circuit Court.

In the aftermath of shooting Breonna and arresting Glover, the city has been able to seize the house in question.

The Jefferson County property value administrator's website shows after police arrested Glover the second time, the city moved to purchase the property on Elliott Avenue.

Land records show Metro Government bought the home for around $17,000 in June.

In a three-week span earlier this year, eight homes on Elliott Avenue were demolished by the city's contractor, the complaint alleges. Only nine homes total had been demolished on Elliott Avenue in the past 16 years combined, it says.

Fischer’s administration has been promoting “Vision Russell" since 2016 as a plan to stimulate affordable housing and economic growth in the West End and bridge a racial and economic gap that has been Louisville's defining divide for decades.

His top economic development official called the accusations “a gross mischaracterization of the project."

"The work along Elliott Ave is one small piece of the larger Russell neighborhood revitalization and stabilization work we’ve been doing for years, including the transformation of Beecher Terrace through Choice neighborhoods grants," Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, Louisville Forward chief said in a statement. " We have partnered with a community organization to understand community needs and wants, and the public land bank has been acquiring properties through foreclosure, donation, and some sales; less than half the homes there are occupied. We have also been in conversation with nonprofit housing interests about using the publicly acquired properties to create Louisville’s first community land trust to ensure investment without displacement. Our goal is to provide a safe, clean, desirable, and affordable neighborhood for the residents of Russell.”

Yeah the irregularities with the warrant and the post office we knew. Now we know why they lied to get the warrant.

And apparently we now know why the mayor won't fire or arrest anyone.

AZ politics has been like this as long as I can remember. Real estate developers and mining interests run the state government and pretty much every city in Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix. It’s revolting.

One example from the 1990s:

Wikipedia wrote:

in June 1996, [AZ governor] Symington was indicted on 21 federal counts of extortion, making false financial statements, and bank fraud. He was convicted for seven counts of bank fraud on September 4, 1997. He was charged with defrauding his lenders as a commercial real estate developer, extorting a pension fund and perjuring himself in a bankruptcy hearing. As Arizona state law does not allow convicted felons to hold office, Symington resigned his office the next day.

AZ history is full of fine public servants like that weasel.

It would not surprise me in the least to learn that POC have been murdered by cops at the behest of AZ politicians on behalf of real estate developers. Remember, Maricopa county was the domain of sheriff Joe Arpaio for decades, and he famously loved torturing Mexican immigrants.

Are they doing a Longmire spin-off in Arizona?

Woman who accused Central Park birdwatcher of threatening her faces charges, DA says

CNN wrote:

The woman who was caught on video accusing a Central Park birdwatcher of threatening her will be prosecuted, the Manhattan district attorney said Monday.

Amy Cooper, the White woman who was filmed accusing a Black man of threatening her, faces a charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, according to the DA.

It's a Class A misdemeanor in New York so it carries a penalty of up to one year in jail or three years probation and up to a $1,000 fine. Either punishment is dramatically less than her attempt to have the NYPD execute a Black man because he caught her breaking another law.

Some hilljack asshole was just on the news here in NC. Apparently a dozen racist traitors (sons of Confederate veterans) got together and hoisted a 20x30 foot flag on an 80 foot pole down in Western NC, right along I40. And he said "take down our statues and we'll put up more flags along the interstate".

Time for a ban on all Confederate imagery. Should have handled this sh*t like Germany did. Gather it up and burn em all down.

Segment here

Nevin73 wrote:

I'm starting to wonder if things might not have been better if we had lost the American Revolution and stayed a British colony.

... it’s ego egocentric to think that way though. The French Revolution happened because of ours, clearly they had some things to work out, but in the end, they did. The Dutch too, while often not even mentioned as participants most of the time, were also instrumental in the war for American independence - they forced the British to disperse their fleet across the globe and even when they lost their colony in the Caribbean to the British Navy (I can’t remember which one) the captains decided to log all the spoils, and left Cornwallis high and dry at Yorktown without a means of escape because they wanted their share of the loot they had taken.

National Guard coming into Atlanta, GA

(CNN)Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday declared a state of emergency and activated as many as 1,000 National Guard members.
Kemp, a Republican, said the executive order follows "weeks of dramatically increased violent crime and property destruction in the City of Atlanta."
The governor's statement says more than 30 Georgians were wounded by gunfire over the extended holiday weekend, including five people who died.

Well that's a relief. The national guard will surely put an end to all the violence perpetrated by the white nationalists.

ಠ_ಠ

(cue rage against the machine)

According to the NYT there's been a whooping 4% increase in the number of murders YTD in Atlanta over 2019.

Even APD's own data shows that, as of June 27th, citywide rapes, robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and auto thefts are down by 20% or more YTD over 2019 and aggravated assaults are flat.

So someone's not telling the truth and my money's on the guy who stole the gubernatorial race and has a vested interest in keeping the white voters of Georgia terrified of the people who live in Atlanta.

Well Phoenix PD shot someone and police statement is that he armed himself and refused to comply. Why don't they just release the body cam footage if this is true? They must know that they have very little good faith left. The longer they hod that info the more it looks like they are hiding it.

They released the footage of after the shooting from a cop who from the looks of it came in after they killed him.

I will link but not embed it. Releasing this on it own just kinda looks bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBon...

BadKen wrote:

Well that's a relief. The national guard will surely put an end to all the violence perpetrated by the white nationalists.

ಠ_ಠ

(cue rage against the machine)

Now crawl amidst the ruins of this empty dream.