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The Trial of Derek Chauvin


TexasHooch

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4 hours ago, TexasHooch said:

Not an attorney, but my guess is that if the answer is yes, it pretty much locks up the manslaughter conviction but doesn't get all the way there on murder.  If the answer is that he didn't act outside of training (narrator: he did), then it helps the defense considerably.

The answer is no, not really.  That is a sort of "sub" or "implicit" question that the jury must answer in evaluating the reasonableness of Chavin's conduct in considering the 2nd Degree Manslaughter charge, but it is not a question that will be put directly to the jury.

Here's a document that includes typical MN jury instructions/questions on Man 2 starting at page 5.  https://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/assets/documents/Final-Jury-Instructions.pdf

So whether he was acting within or without his training bears on the question of reasonableness of his action.  But they won't be asked that specific question.  They'll be instructed as set forth in that document, and then will be asked if guilty or not guilty on the charge of Manslaughter in the Second Degree.

 

Generally speaking, no matter how technical the law or the facts of the case, juries are asked very broad, general ultimate questions rather than specific, narrow ones that might guide their reasoning (for better or worse) or give a clue as to what they were thinking (which would probably create endless appeals).  They are, however, instructed on the law and the factors and sub-questions that must be answered to arrive at that general answer in great detail.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Police officers, who work for and are payrolled by the citizens, are murdering people of color without cause or restraint right in front of our eyes

Not really.  The biggest correlation for police shootings is sex.  Then age.  And then race.  And it largely correlates to any demographic's violent crime rate. 

15-20 or so unarmed black males are killed a year by police.  10 are legally justified (trying to disarm an armed cop or trying to run them over with a car).  About 5-10 are gray areas or murder by the cops. What is in front of our eyes is what the media and social media force feeds us.

If George Floyd was white no one would give a shit.  It would be another dead piece of shit -- and let's not kid ourselves he was a piece of shit -- that was killed while high as shit resisting arrest.  And the white community wouldn't care and certainly would not make him a martyr.

I also think this was likely manslaughter.

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11 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

 

If George Floyd was white no one would give a shit.  It would be another dead piece of shit -- and let's not kid ourselves he was a piece of shit -- that was killed while high as shit resisting arrest.  And the white community wouldn't care and certainly would not make him a martyr.

I also think this was likely manslaughter.

Find a video of a cop kneeling on a white guy’s neck for 10 minutes so we have an apples to apples comparison. The shock of the video is what got people’s attention. No one had seen a cop casually suffocate someone to death before like that. Much more jarring than the split second shooting vids we were used to. 
 

Mighty Christian of you to be calling him a piece of shit btw. He’s clearly someone that was losing his battle with drug addiction, but had seemingly left behind his life of violence after he got out of prison. 

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42 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Find a video of a cop kneeling on a white guy’s neck for 10 minutes so we have an apples to apples comparison. The shock of the video is what got people’s attention. No one had seen a cop casually suffocate someone to death before like that. Much more jarring than the split second shooting vids we were used to. 

You haven't seen the Tony Timpa video?

 

(Disclosure I haven't seen it, or even the Floyd video. Just not clicking on that.)

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3 minutes ago, GringoSalado said:

You haven't seen the Tony Timpa video?

 

(Disclosure I haven't seen it, or even the Floyd video. Just not clicking on that.)

My unhealthiest obsession might be watching all kinds of death vids and gore pics on the internet. Ive seen every cop kill vid you can think of multiple times. The only 5 that made me say “fuck that cop outright murdered that guy” are Floyd, Garner, Shaver in Arizona, Scott shot in the back in SC, and Timpa. Timpa might’ve been the worst in terms of officer actions/comments. That was also bodycam footage released over 3 years after the incident, vs the same day cell phone vid of Floyd. Should’ve sparked more outrage. 

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9 hours ago, Hanrahan said:

And I thought I read be had an assload of fentanyl in his system. Like potentially a fatal dose outside of the choke and other contributing factors. If that’s accurate, good luck to the prosecutors getting to reasonable doubt on murder.

This is what you are talking about. It was just a memorandum. Not the official report

https://www.mncourts.gov/getattachment/Media/StateofMinnesotavTouThao/Container-Documents/Content-Documents/Exhibit-4.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US

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5 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

who the hell is tony timpa?

Right?

 

  

1 minute ago, Helobious said:

My unhealthiest obsession might be watching all kinds of death vids and gore pics on the internet. Ive seen every cop kill vid you can think of multiple times. The only 5 that made me say “fuck that cop outright murdered that guy” are Floyd, Garner, Shaver in Arizona, Scott shot in the back in SC, and Timpa. Timpa might’ve been the worst in terms of officer actions/comments. That was also bodycam footage released over 3 years after the incident, vs the same day cell phone vid of Floyd. Should’ve sparked more outrage. 

Good point about the 3 years.

I remember the Shaver vid. Wish I didn't.

Edited by GringoSalado
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51 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

oof-dah, everyone that owns a business in a downtown area is affluent white people, dontcha know. 

As are the employees that used to work there before the business was destroyed. 
 

I know I posted this elsewhere but I know of a law practice based out of Minneapolis that has been pushing tax, legal and advisory services solely for people/businesses moving outside the state. They wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t making money hand over fist doing that type of work and finding plenty of clients.

9 hours ago, Not a cat said:

On a purely anecdotal note, there has been a lot of real estate activity in my little second ring Minneapolis suburb and almost all the buyers have been from Minneapolis proper.  This progression is fairly normal as yuppies get school age kids and move to the burbs but damn if it doesn't seem to be on steroids this spring.  I'm guessing a lot of folks in Minneapolis are getting nervous about the trial.

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2 hours ago, Helobious said:

Find a video of a cop kneeling on a white guy’s neck for 10 minutes so we have an apples to apples comparison. The shock of the video is what got people’s attention. No one had seen a cop casually suffocate someone to death before like that. Much more jarring than the split second shooting vids we were used to. 
 

Mighty Christian of you to be calling him a piece of shit btw. He’s clearly someone that was losing his battle with drug addiction, but had seemingly left behind his life of violence after he got out of prison. 

Wasn't he the guy that pistol-whipped a pregnant woman while robbing her home?

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August 2016 

Tony Timpa

This much is known. At about 10:30 p.m. local time on the night of August 10, 2016, Timpa was taken into custody. 

According to The Dallas Morning News, Timpa was in the parking lot of a Dallas porn store when he called police, telling a dispatcher he suffered from schizophrenia and depression. He told the dispatcher he was not taking his medication. 

From there, the details diverge.

He was initially restrained and handcuffed by private security officers before police arrived on the scene, according to court documents.

A police press release more than a year later, dated December 7, 2017, said Timpa was arrested “due to his erratic behavior.”

“During the arrest, he was combative and aggressive. While taking Mr. Timpa into custody, he was subjected to physical restraint and was later pronounced deceased,” the release said. 

The release said the Dallas County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide and determined Timpa “died of sudden cardiac arrest, secondarily caused by the toxic effects of cocaine and stress associated with physical restraint.”
 

But the body camera footage released this week shows the officers holding Timpa in a prone position, face down in the grass while officers swap out his handcuffs and zip-tie his legs. Timpa can be seen struggling, begging the officers to stop holding him down. He screams, “You’re gonna kill me.” One of the officers repeatedly tells him to relax, saying “You’re going to be all right.”
 

The footage shows Timpa, his face down in the grass, falling unconscious. The officers can be heard making jokes about Timpa falling asleep and about waking him up for school. One officer appears to mimic a teenager, saying: “I don’t want to go to school! Five more minutes, Mom!”

The footage shows officers and paramedics putting Timpa’s lifeless body onto a gurney, and one of the officers can be heard asking, “He didn’t just die down there, did he?”

Once in the ambulance, paramedics tell the officers he is not breathing.
 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/us/dallas-police-body-cam-footage-captures-death/index.html

51026743238_49a4e226b4_b.jpg

 

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The Timpa thing is fucked up.

The arrest and detention I believe were warranted because the guy was running around in traffic on Mockingbird.  He seemed to be a danger to himself.

But I didnt see much/any evidence that he was resisting or a credible threat to the cops that arrested him.

Which is reinforced by the incredibly blase and jocular attitude of the cops that restrained him until an ambulance got there.  

In some sense, it lacks the apparent malevolence of the Floyd arrest and murder, but it's still horrific and reflects horribly on the arresting officers, in terms of a sort of "entitlement" to brutalize whomever they decide deserves it.

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Police officers, who work for and are payrolled by the citizens, are murdering people of color without cause or restraint right in front of our eyes

"Not really.  The biggest correlation for police shootings is sex. "


This doesn't really mean anything. It's like denying that the NBA is disproportionately black because the most common traits of NBA players are height and jumping ability.

Damnit that didn't edit right in tapa but you get the point
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3 hours ago, Helobious said:

Find a video of a cop kneeling on a white guy’s neck for 10 minutes so we have an apples to apples comparison. The shock of the video is what got people’s attention. No one had seen a cop casually suffocate someone to death before like that. Much more jarring than the split second shooting vids we were used to. 
 

Mighty Christian of you to be calling him a piece of shit btw. He’s clearly someone that was losing his battle with drug addiction, but had seemingly left behind his life of violence after he got out of prison. 

He was a piece of shit.  That’s not a debate.  If he had left his life of violence behind him he wouldn’t have resisted arrest.  
 

He can be a piece of shit and a piece of shit who was murdered. I don’t understand why anyone acts like he was anything but a piece of shit. 

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it is, of course, naive pollyanna nonsense. 


Have you traveled much overseas? A police force isn't murderous by default. It's murderous when citizens tacitly permit it, if not celebrate it. There are police departments all over the world that manage not to murder minorities and dogs for sport. I don't think it's "pollyanna" to think that we can move in that direction.

Your attitude part of the problem. It's not as bad as the racists and the hicks, but "trying to fix it via social pressure lol how naive!" is permissive in its own way.
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15 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

He was a piece of shit.  That’s not a debate.  If he had left his life of violence behind him he wouldn’t have resisted arrest.  
 

He can be a piece of shit and a piece of shit who was murdered. I don’t understand why anyone acts like he was anything but a piece of shit. 

I don’t see it that way. I also don’t see how your feelings about him as a person matter at all to the facts of the case, or mine for that matter. 
 

You should probably watch the videos a few more times. I don’t get why you think kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed man that’s been motionless for minutes is justified, regardless how much he resisted beforehand. 

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5 minutes ago, Helobious said:

I don’t see it that way. I also don’t see how your feelings about him as a person matter at all to the facts of the case, or mine for that matter. 
 

You should probably watch the videos a few more times. I don’t get why you think kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed man that’s been motionless for minutes is justified, regardless how much he resisted beforehand. 

I don't think he is saying it is justified.  he's saying he was murdered which means Chauvin should go down for murder.

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1 hour ago, BradInATX said:




 


"Not really.  The biggest correlation for police shootings is sex. "


This doesn't really mean anything. It's like denying that the NBA is disproportionately black because the most common traits of NBA players are height and jumping ability.

Damnit that didn't edit right in tapa but you get the point

Floyd was a piece of shit.  And black. An equivalent white piece of shit dying under the same facts— no one would care.  

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13 hours ago, Not a cat said:

On a purely anecdotal note, there has been a lot of real estate activity in my little second ring Minneapolis suburb and almost all the buyers have been from Minneapolis proper.  This progression is fairly normal as yuppies get school age kids and move to the burbs but damn if it doesn't seem to be on steroids this spring.  I'm guessing a lot of folks in Minneapolis are getting nervous about the trial. 

Don’t blame them. I’d do the same.

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10 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

Floyd was a piece of shit.  And black. An equivalent white piece of shit dying under the same facts— no one would care.  

Yeah Floyd was a career criminal in his past, seemed like a less then stellar citizen, and was under the influence of drugs is not an excuse as to why he'd be dead now.  Cops aren't judge, jury, and executioner.

That a white guy dying under similar circumstances isn't the typical outcome of those interactions sure, most people might not really pay that much attention to it (which would still be fucked up). That a black guy often dies under such circumstances is the relevant point you're overlooking.  

You simply can't ignore the fact that police encounters with minorities often result in death. 

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18 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Yeah Floyd was a career criminal in his past, seemed like a less then stellar citizen, and was under the influence of drugs is not an excuse as to why he'd be dead now.  Cops aren't judge, jury, and executioner.

That a white guy dying under similar circumstances isn't the typical outcome of those interactions sure, most people might not really pay that much attention to it (which would still be fucked up). That a black guy often dies under such circumstances is the relevant point you're overlooking.  

You simply can't ignore the fact that police encounters with minorities often result in death. 

 

Man what the fuck, who hacked Onboard's account?

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6 hours ago, BradInATX said:

Naw. The vast majority of people with your political views are also just fine with police brutality against minorities. I just play the odds.

Nope, but hey you play the cartoon card.  

My political philosophy has nothing to do with race.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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Soooo...... the trial..

Good write up here:

https://www.startribune.com/reinstated-third-degree-murder-charge-against-chauvin-presents-opportunity-risks/600033216/

Spoiler

A judge addded a third-degree murder charge Thursday against fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in a move seen by some legal analysts as strategic to winning a conviction, but not without potential drawbacks.

The development was followed by a day of jury selection that saw several prospective jurors relaying their emotional distress at viewing video of Chauvin pinning George Floyd under his knee for more than nine minutes. Floyd died during the arrest last spring.

Seven potential jurors were questioned; one was chosen. A jury of one multiracial woman, one Black man, one Hispanic man and three white men have been seated over three days of jury selection. A jury of 14, two of them alternates, will be seated before opening statements and testimony begin March 29.

Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill reinstated the third-degree murder charge against Chauvin following a series of appellate decisions that forced him to walk back two of his previous rulings on the matter.

Cahill dismissed the charge from Chauvin's case last fall, but it came back into play after a February Court of Appeals ruling upheld a third-degree murder conviction in the unrelated case of ex-Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor.

Prosecutors asked Cahill to reinstate the count based on the Noor decision, and when he refused, they went to the Court of Appeals. The appellate court ruled last Friday that Cahill was wrong when he said the Noor ruling was not yet precedent and ordered him to apply it to Chauvin's case.

Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to review last week's ruling, but the high court rejected the request on Wednesday, sending the prosecution's motion back to Cahill.

The judge said Thursday that he accepts the Noor ruling as precedent he must follow. He defended his previous reasoning on the issue, saying last week's appellate ruling "implies that this court disregarded plain language in the rules [governing court procedures], or, at worst, was too lazy to look up the rules. Neither was the case."

Cahill said he diligently researched court rules but could not find clear guidance on whether a Court of Appeals ruling is precedent the moment it is issued or whether it only becomes binding after the expiration of a deadline for attorneys to challenge such rulings. Noor's attorney, Thomas Plunkett, asked the state Supreme Court to review the February ruling; the high court accepted the request.

"We found silence, not plain language," Cahill said of the court rules. "I think the Court of Appeals reaches too far by saying there is plain language in the rules. There's silence."

The appellate court "inferred" from that silence that its decisions are precedent upon immediate release, Cahill said, adding that he acknowledges that the court has authority to determine when its decisions are precedential.

Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office is prosecuting Chauvin, welcomed the development.

"The charge of third-degree murder, in addition to manslaughter and felony murder, reflects the gravity of the allegations against Mr. Chauvin," Ellison said in a written statement. "We look forward to presenting all three charges to the jury."

Third-degree murder provides jurors more opportunities to convict Chauvin and could be viewed as a compromise between the other charges he faces — the more serious second-degree murder and manslaughter. But it presents its own uncertainties.

The charge could become a liability given the state Supreme Court's pending review of Plunkett's challenge in the Noor case. The high court will hear arguments on the issue in June.

Prosecutors likely fought to add third-degree murder because they thought it was their best chance at a conviction, said Mitchell Hamline School of Law Prof. Ted Sampsell-Jones.

If the state Supreme Court overturns the Noor decision, it would create an opening for Chauvin if jurors were to convict him on third-degree murder and acquit him of the other two counts.

Jurors can acquit or convict Chauvin on all of the charges or any combination of the counts.

Overturning the Noor ruling would likely prompt Nelson to successfully appeal a third-degree murder conviction, said Sampsell-Jones and Mitchell Hamline School of Law Prof. Brad Colbert. Prosecutors would then be prohibited from retrying Chauvin on second-degree murder and manslaughter because of U.S. and state constitutional protections against double jeopardy, or being tried twice for the same crime, they said.

"There is some risk for the prosecution, but I think what they're counting on, and I think they're correct, is that the Supreme Court will uphold Noor's third-degree murder conviction," Sampsell-Jones said.

If jurors are paying attention to the language of the law and decide to convict Chauvin on third-degree murder, they should also convict him on second-degree manslaughter because the elements to convict on one applies to the other, he said.

However, Sampsell-Jones said, jurors sometimes convict on charges that feel right to them despite legal standards. Disagreements about charges and a desire to compromise can be factors, he added.

"Jurors, even if what they do doesn't make sense legally, it makes sense for them morally," Sampsell-Jones said. "That kind of thing happens a lot in jury rooms. That's why there's been so much fighting over third-degree murder, because I think the attorneys understand the importance of giving jurors a compromise."

Noor was tried on the same three charges facing Chauvin. Jurors convicted Noor in 2019 of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. They acquitted him of second-degree murder.

Noor was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, which is the presumptive sentence under the Minnesota sentencing guidelines for third-degree murder. Prosecutors have said they plan to seek an aggravated sentence for Chauvin above recommended guidelines because of the "particular cruelty" shown to Floyd.

Sampsell-Jones said if Chauvin were convicted on the same counts as Noor and the Supreme Court later overturned Noor, that would leave prosecutors with a lower count on which to resentence Chauvin.

While punishable by up to 10 years in prison, second-degree manslaughter carries a presumptive sentence of four years, Sampsell-Jones said.

"I think that would feel like a victory for the defense and a loss for the prosecution," he said, "and I think it would be perceived by the public as … a very light sentence."

Interesting raised here, as illustrated my the mini pissing contest.

Quote

The judge said Thursday that he accepts the Noor ruling as precedent he must follow. He defended his previous reasoning on the issue, saying last week's appellate ruling "implies that this court disregarded plain language in the rules [governing court procedures], or, at worst, was too lazy to look up the rules. Neither was the case."

Cahill said he diligently researched court rules but could not find clear guidance on whether a Court of Appeals ruling is precedent the moment it is issued or whether it only becomes binding after the expiration of a deadline for attorneys to challenge such rulings. Noor's attorney, Thomas Plunkett, asked the state Supreme Court to review the February ruling; the high court accepted the request.

"We found silence, not plain language," Cahill said of the court rules. "I think the Court of Appeals reaches too far by saying there is plain language in the rules. There's silence."

The appellate court "inferred" from that silence that its decisions are precedent upon immediate release, Cahill said, adding that he acknowledges that the court has authority to determine when its decisions are precedential.

 

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13 hours ago, BradInATX said:

 


Have you traveled much overseas? A police force isn't murderous by default. It's murderous when citizens tacitly permit it, if not celebrate it. There are police departments all over the world that manage not to murder minorities and dogs for sport. I don't think it's "pollyanna" to think that we can move in that direction.

Your attitude part of the problem. It's not as bad as the racists and the hicks, but "trying to fix it via social pressure lol how naive!" is permissive in its own way.

 

Extensively...as well as lived overseas for an extended period of time.  the country i lived in has been wrestling with these issues for a very long time and continue to as we speak just like the united states.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security/macron-says-images-of-police-beating-black-man-shameful-for-france-idUSKBN2870UQ

https://apnews.com/article/france-police-racial-profiling-lawsuit-9a262c2df8874b793e99233d9fbb2ae9

the fact that you are pointing to domestic police forces in foreign countries as evidence that people in positions of authority do not exploit those positions routinely for purposes of corruption (including violence) as i described above genuinely makes me wonder if you have ever left the centex i-35 corridor.  that's your plan?

Morgan-Freeman-Saying-Good-Luck-The-Dark

 it doesn't have to be east asian suppression of rights, central asian violence towards women, central american cartel participation/corruption, subsaharan African genocides...even in the progressive utopia europe, you're out of your fucking mind if you think these things are not prevalent or that they are uniquely american.

while i applaud your optimism and i agree that the long, slow and tedious process of effecting change has to come from the citizenry demanding it, the idea that the inconvenience and disruption from trials and circuses emanating from these events will be the harbinger of those changes over the long-term is naive.  authority and corruption will go hand-in-hand into perpetuity.  i mean, i guess we did see it stop altogether in this country after the fairly low profile trials (and subsequent consequences) of officers koon, briseno, wind, and powell.

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20 minutes ago, sidis said:

Extensively...as well as lived overseas for an extended period of time.  the country i lived in has been wrestling with these issues for a very long time and continue to as we speak just like the united states.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security/macron-says-images-of-police-beating-black-man-shameful-for-france-idUSKBN2870UQ

https://apnews.com/article/france-police-racial-profiling-lawsuit-9a262c2df8874b793e99233d9fbb2ae9

the fact that you are pointing to domestic police forces in foreign countries as evidence that people in positions of authority do not exploit those positions routinely for purposes of corruption (including violence) as i described above genuinely makes me wonder if you have ever left the centex i-35 corridor.  that's your plan?

Morgan-Freeman-Saying-Good-Luck-The-Dark

 it doesn't have to be east asian suppression of rights, central asian violence towards women, central american cartel participation/corruption, subsaharan African genocides...even in the progressive utopia europe, you're out of your fucking mind if you think these things are not prevalent or that they are uniquely american.

while i applaud your optimism and i agree that the long, slow and tedious process of effecting change has to come from the citizenry demanding it, the idea that the inconvenience and disruption from trials and circuses emanating from these events will be the harbinger of those changes over the long-term is naive.  authority and corruption will go hand-in-hand into perpetuity.  i mean, i guess we did see it stop altogether in this country after the fairly low profile trials (and subsequent consequences) of officers koon, briseno, wind, and powell.

 

"Other countries have some bad police too" is reductionist, simpleton bullshit. I'll spare everyone a multiple paragraph self-fellating homage to my own world travels as they've already sat through yours, but I can tell you that I've been around the world enough and talked to enough people to know that minority's fear of police is exponentially worse in America than most places.

 

image.png.aad19f37a9fb3aaa4c7598bf57ff0b2e.png

 

The US kills people at 30x the rate of Germany. 3.5x the rate of Canada. 4x the rate of Australia, which is a good cultural comparison to the US. 

It's not naive to think that we can bring those numbers down. The racism will fade to background noise as boomers die off, we become a majority-minority country, and they become marginalized. Once the bigots get pushed to the background, the obstacle will be people like you who sit back, shrug your shoulders and say "lol at people who think we can't do anything about the fact that our police kill people 3000% more often than our counterparts in Western Europe". 

Look, if you want to continue to be a passive-permissive part of the problem, so be it. But telling people who want to change things that it can't be done or that they're naive is actively and intentionally counterproductive. Find another avenue to make yourself feel like the smartest guy in the room instead of standing in the way of those who would like people of all colors, but especially those of color, to live in a world where they aren't terrified of the people they pay to protect them.

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1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Yeah Floyd was a career criminal in his past, seemed like a less then stellar citizen, and was under the influence of drugs is not an excuse as to why he'd be dead now.  Cops aren't judge, jury, and executioner.

That a white guy dying under similar circumstances isn't the typical outcome of those interactions sure, most people might not really pay that much attention to it (which would still be fucked up). That a black guy often dies under such circumstances is the relevant point you're overlooking.  

You simply can't ignore the fact that police encounters with minorities often result in death. 

I don't think it happens often.  I think that is the misstatement of fact and is not an uncommon perception fueled by our media and social media.  About 15-20 unarmed black people are shot by police in a given year -- the majority of which are perfectly justified shootings (like Michael Brown assaulting a cop and attempting to take his gun or when a cop shoots someone trying to run them over).  Yet about half of liberals polled think police are killing over 1,000 unarmed black males a year and a not insignificant portion think cops are offing 10,000 unarmed black males a year.

spacer.png

 

Our media sucks. And is flaming very dangerous flames by creating these false narratives. Social media makes it worse.

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13 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

I don't think it happens often.  I think that is the misstatement of fact and is not an uncommon perception fueled by our media and social media.  About 15-20 unarmed black people are shot by police in a given year -- the majority of which are perfectly justified shootings (like Michael Brown assaulting a cop and attempting to take his gun or when a cop shoots someone trying to run them over).  Yet about half of liberals polled think police are killing over 1,000 unarmed black males a year and a not insignificant portion think cops are offing 10,000 unarmed black males a year.

spacer.png

 

Our media sucks. And is flaming very dangerous flames by creating these false narratives. Social media makes it worse.

 

"Unarmed" is nonsense and you and I both know that. The police definition of "armed" is broad and it's a CYA catch-all. Car? Weapon. Knife in the glovebox 40 yards away from the shooting? Armed. Pocket knife? Armed. Golf clubs in the trunk? Armed.

Find me some stats where the person who was shot was brandishing or using the weapon. You won't find them, because the first instinct of police in these incidents is to immediately obfuscate and cover up. There is no way to accurately quantify this, and that's by design.

Bottom line is that blacks are killed by police officers at about 2.5x the rate that whites are, and this is in a country where whites own guns at roughly double the rate of blacks. 

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Just now, BradInATX said:

 

"Unarmed" is nonsense and you and I both know that. The police definition of "armed" is broad and it's a CYA catch-all. Car? Weapon. Knife in the glovebox 40 yards away from the shooting? Armed. Pocket knife? Armed. Golf clubs in the trunk? Armed.

Find me some stats where the person who was shot was brandishing or using the weapon. You won't find them, because the first instinct of police in these incidents is to immediately obfuscate and cover up. There is no way to accurately quantify this, and that's by design.

Bottom line is that blacks are killed by police officers at about 2.5x the rate that whites are, and this is in a country where whites own guns at roughly double the rate of blacks. 

And males are killed at a rate of 10x of females, at least.   Why do you think that is? Misandry?

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1 minute ago, Johnny Sack said:

And males are killed at a rate of 10x of females, at least.   Why do you think that is? Misandry?

I know where you're trying to take this, and that's fine, but I don't think I'll engage. We're never going to see eye-to-eye on that, and it's probably a CR discussion anyway. 

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1 hour ago, Johnny Sack said:

I don't think it happens often.  I think that is the misstatement of fact and is not an uncommon perception fueled by our media and social media.  About 15-20 unarmed black people are shot by police in a given year -- the majority of which are perfectly justified shootings (like Michael Brown assaulting a cop and attempting to take his gun or when a cop shoots someone trying to run them over).  Yet about half of liberals polled think police are killing over 1,000 unarmed black males a year and a not insignificant portion think cops are offing 10,000 unarmed black males a year.

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Our media sucks. And is flaming very dangerous flames by creating these false narratives. Social media makes it worse.

I see your stats, and believe many deaths are covered up, attributed to other causes, etc. And yes our media is a collection of outcome based reporting. Journalism is dead.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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I don't think the defense will be dumb enough to bring up Floyd's previous arrest in Houston. Because if they do, it allows the State to remind everyone that the officer who arrested him A) has a long rep of fabricating evidence, and B) is charged with capital murder because of it.

https://abc13.com/george-floyd-arrest-houston-hpd-officer-gerald-goines/6247453/

As for stats on police misconduct, 538 tried to measure it. Stats are notoriously hard to get.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs-cities-millions-every-year-but-thats-where-the-accountability-ends/

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4 minutes ago, GopherRock said:

I don't think the defense will be dumb enough to bring up Floyd's previous arrest in Houston. Because if they do, it allows the State to remind everyone that the officer who arrested him A) has a long rep of fabricating evidence, and B) is charged with capital murder because of it.

https://abc13.com/george-floyd-arrest-houston-hpd-officer-gerald-goines/6247453/

As for stats on police misconduct, 538 tried to measure it. Stats are notoriously hard to get.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs-cities-millions-every-year-but-thats-where-the-accountability-ends/

His prior arrest in Houston has no relevance to anything unless you could establish Chauvin knew about it.

But if it somehow was admissible, you could avoid your A&B by merely getting the female victim to testify Floyd robbed her and put a shotgun to her then-pregnant belly. You don't need the cop.

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If this thread proves anything it is that some people just love to argue, even when they generally agree about the important stuff. Maybe let's at least acknowledge the stuff we agree about before getting too worked up about the stuff we disagree about? That way we at least feel like we are working towards a common interest. 

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I don't think the prior conviction in Houston will find its way in but there's a prior arrest (with video) here that might. To this point, the judge has only ruled that it could be released to the public.

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/10/16/924460503/judge-in-george-floyd-case-allows-video-of-prior-arrest-to-be-made-public

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The video of Floyd's arrest last year captures him initially not complying with police demands to put his hands on his head or the dashboard of the passenger side of the vehicle he was riding in. He also appears to be in possession of pills, according to police in the video.

 

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The Minneapolis City Council is currently in closed session to discuss a potential settlement with the Floyd family in their wrongful death lawsuit against the City. Any potential details (i.e. $$$$$) will come out afterwards. This will not be a cheap settlement. Recall that the Damond shooting cost the Minneapolis taxpayer $20 million. 

Meanwhile, back in the courthouse, defense struck the first potential juror of the morning. They've used 4 of their 9 strikes, and the state has used 8 of 15.

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1 hour ago, BradInATX said:

 

"Other countries have some bad police too" is reductionist, simpleton bullshit. I'll spare everyone a multiple paragraph self-fellating homage to my own world travels as they've already sat through yours, but I can tell you that I've been around the world enough and talked to enough people to know that minority's fear of police is exponentially worse in America than most places.

 

image.png.aad19f37a9fb3aaa4c7598bf57ff0b2e.png

 

The US kills people at 30x the rate of Germany. 3.5x the rate of Canada. 4x the rate of Australia, which is a good cultural comparison to the US. 

It's not naive to think that we can bring those numbers down. The racism will fade to background noise as boomers die off, we become a majority-minority country, and they become marginalized. Once the bigots get pushed to the background, the obstacle will be people like you who sit back, shrug your shoulders and say "lol at people who think we can't do anything about the fact that our police kill people 3000% more often than our counterparts in Western Europe". 

Look, if you want to continue to be a passive-permissive part of the problem, so be it. But telling people who want to change things that it can't be done or that they're naive is actively and intentionally counterproductive. Find another avenue to make yourself feel like the smartest guy in the room instead of standing in the way of those who would like people of all colors, but especially those of color, to live in a world where they aren't terrified of the people they pay to protect them.

Although "kill" is the ultimate expression of police brutality, it is not the only one.

There are probably some uniquely American factors (guns, drugs, carceral culture) that make killings a more common form of police brutality here.

But that doesn't make the broader issue of law enforcement abuse of authority a uniquely American problem.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Although "kill" is the ultimate expression of police brutality, it is not the only one.

There are probably some uniquely American factors (guns, drugs, carceral culture) that make killings a more common form of police brutality here.

 

Sure, good point.

Quote

But that doesn't make the broader issue of law enforcement abuse of authority a uniquely American problem.

Not at all. But we're uniquely terrible at it relative to comparable countries.

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1 hour ago, BradInATX said:

 

"Other countries have some bad police too" is reductionist, simpleton bullshit. I'll spare everyone a multiple paragraph self-fellating homage to my own world travels as they've already sat through yours, but I can tell you that I've been around the world enough and talked to enough people to know that minority's fear of police is exponentially worse in America than most places.

 

image.png.aad19f37a9fb3aaa4c7598bf57ff0b2e.png

 

The US kills people at 30x the rate of Germany. 3.5x the rate of Canada. 4x the rate of Australia, which is a good cultural comparison to the US. 

It's not naive to think that we can bring those numbers down. The racism will fade to background noise as boomers die off, we become a majority-minority country, and they become marginalized. Once the bigots get pushed to the background, the obstacle will be people like you who sit back, shrug your shoulders and say "lol at people who think we can't do anything about the fact that our police kill people 3000% more often than our counterparts in Western Europe". 

Look, if you want to continue to be a passive-permissive part of the problem, so be it. But telling people who want to change things that it can't be done or that they're naive is actively and intentionally counterproductive. Find another avenue to make yourself feel like the smartest guy in the room instead of standing in the way of those who would like people of all colors, but especially those of color, to live in a world where they aren't terrified of the people they pay to protect them.

now there's that capriciously ill-tempered brad we've all come to love...

you are petulantly lashing out, brad...it betrays your emotive frustration.  for example, when you ask a simple question of whether or not i have ever been overseas and i respond with a one sentence response confirming what you asked without commentary...it is rather telling that you then mischaracterize my response as "a multiple paragraph self-fellating* homage to my own world travels" when it that is so demonstrably false.  

*try as i may.

also, mischaracterizing a broader, social - almost anthropological point - that i was making regarding the axiomatic nature of power abuse in human nature as a "passive-permissive part of the problem" that "stands in the way of those who would like people of all colors to live in a world they aren't terrified of the people they pay to protect them" with absolutely no knowledge of my "IRL" efforts to be stem corruption from political and law enforcement authority is not just presumptuous, but is silly and childish.

to your substantive points, if we want to talk about reductionist bullshit, let's talk about a cherry-picking chart like the one you believe my contention that police are corrupt in other countries.  i can't imagine if there may be more to that than such a simple summary.  you use a chart that draws a contrast between the united states, the most armed civilian population in the world with a gun ownership rate of 120.5 per 100 people in the country and violent crime statistics higher than any other "wealthy nation" in the world, to a bunch of homogenous nations with populations smaller than the city of houston and severely more egalitarian economic outcomes (the real, underlying driver of the numbers by the way) to make your point?  do you think it is incidental that the second highest gun-owning population on that chart (canada with 34 per 100 compared to 120.5 per 100 in the u.s.) is the second highest on your police killings chart at almost the precise fraction of said ownership?  similarly, the united states averages 9,960 gun homicides a year.  the next two highest from that list are canada and germany with 173 and 158.  feels coincidental to me.  let's flesh it out...

gun homicides per year - united states: 9,960; canada: 173; germany: 158; the netherlands: 55; england & wales: 41; australia: 30; japan: 11; norway: 2; iceland: 0.  so, you have 470 gun-related homicides per year in all of the non-u.s. list of countries up there combined.  all of those countries combined make up a little less than two weeks of civilian gun violence in the united states.  but i suspect there are no inferences to be made from that vis-a-vis your chart and police interaction with the citizenry.  like i said, seems coincidental.  our problems are far deeper (largely economic, as well as our tired fascination with firearms) and the fact that police corruption and abuse of authority manifests itself in a different way in tiny, homogenous and egalitarian countries given those factors, does not undermine my point. 

finally, the notion that once the boomers all die off that we will live in some post-racial utopia in which awful people stop being awful further betrays an ignorance of history.  you think the youth of the 60's didn't feel that way about jim crow generations?  that cycle goes back to the beginning of time in this, and most every other heterogenous nation state.  i have some bad statistics for you that i know you have seen.  you should go through these poll results and observe the outcomes for the 18-34 and millennial age groups across all tables relative to other groups.  specifically in tablepol1, tablepol8_7, and tablepol8_9.  

https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2021/02/16103155/210259_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v1.pdf

you don't have to join me on the ledge but you also don't dictate facts regarding human nature.

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24 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Although "kill" is the ultimate expression of police brutality, it is not the only one.

There are probably some uniquely American factors (guns, drugs, carceral culture) that make killings a more common form of police brutality here.

But that doesn't make the broader issue of law enforcement abuse of authority a uniquely American problem.

precisely.  stated without the word vomit above...but the empirical evidence for this is included there.

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