"You're going to see acts that defy humanity"

Trapper Gus wrote:

MiamiSpartan wrote:
Case in point, these Nashville cops.  The horrific nature of their brutality has rightly gotten everyone's attention, but beyond that, its like a bunch of Chief Wiggums.  

First, in their attempt to pepper spray Nichols, they pepper spray each other.

Then, after the initial stop when Nichols runs, these guys start to chase him and make it about 100 feet before leaving they have to stop and can barely breathe.

Then 2-3 of them can't even hold down and handcuff one skinny guy.

And then there is the whole stupidity of this in the first place.  Like, how did they think this would end, even if he didn't die?  They know they're wearing body cams.  And ok, there's the whole mob mentality thing, but at some point, perhaps when one guy is clubbing a man held down by two others, or when one guy is asking two cops to hold Nichols up so that he can punch him repeatedly, shouldn't it enter someone's head to think, "Hey, you know, we might get in trouble when they see our body cams."

After the incomprehensible nature of the physical brutality, it's shocking just how fucking dumb and incompetent these cops were.

It would seem the police are caught between those who bitch that they aren't controlling crime and those who are pointing out that they are selective in whom they choose to chase.

IMO both sides of the argument have valid points.

The solution, to put squads of police on the streets to be clandestine crime stoppers and giving them the mandate to act on their own caused this problem.  A lack of foresight by those in charge of this led to a predictable outcome.  They didn't set the boundaries, and I suppose it didn't occur to them they needed to.

As for the anger against Unions, some of you guys have eaten up the 50 years of anti-union tropes like candy.  Sure, there is always a built-in conflict between the owners & the workers over what the workers are doing, because the owners always want more, and the workers always want a life outside of work.  In some lines of work, policing being one, it is much too easy for the management to blame the workers when things go south, thus the unions push back to protect the workers.  It will never be a perfect situation; however, we are better off with the unions than without unions, as it creates a balance of power instead of some crazed manager doing something stupid, like these squads in Memphis & elsewhere and throwing the workers under the bus.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

Trapper Gus wrote:

It would seem the police are caught between those who bitch that they aren't controlling crime and those who are pointing out that they are selective in whom they choose to chase.

IMO both sides of the argument have valid points.

The solution, to put squads of police on the streets to be clandestine crime stoppers and giving them the mandate to act on their own caused this problem.  A lack of foresight by those in charge of this led to a predictable outcome.  They didn't set the boundaries, and I suppose it didn't occur to them they needed to.

As for the anger against Unions, some of you guys have eaten up the 50 years of anti-union tropes like candy.  Sure, there is always a built-in conflict between the owners & the workers over what the workers are doing, because the owners always want more, and the workers always want a life outside of work.  In some lines of work, policing being one, it is much too easy for the management to blame the workers when things go south, thus the unions push back to protect the workers.  It will never be a perfect situation; however, we are better off with the unions than without unions, as it creates a balance of power instead of some crazed manager doing something stupid, like these squads in Memphis & elsewhere and throwing the workers under the bus.

Or they could just be dumb as shit idiots that aren’t thinking about any of that. These dudes barely passed high school civics then we for some reason decide to give power over everyone else to. It’s all an extremely stupid system

tNYT wrote:Culture of impunity

The Memphis police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols were part of an elite unit known as Scorpion that was set up to crack down on high-crime neighborhoods. The officers’ actions as they stopped and beat Nichols show how the squad’s work could, and did, go very wrong.

Stories of botched work by special law enforcement units are notably common in the U.S. In Baltimore, members of a gun-tracing task force robbed residents of cash, drugs and jewelry. By the time federal officials investigated the New Orleans Police Department in 2010, residents perceived its special units as corrupt and brutal. In Los Angeles, a “special investigation section” in the 1990s was involved in multiple deadly shootouts. There are many more examples.

Police departments establish these squads with a good intention: addressing a genuine crime problem. But they fall short in the implementation — tainted by poor leadership, the wrong benchmarks or a culture of impunity.


So what went wrong in Memphis? Officials appeared to emphasize the wrong things, experts said.

Police officials deployed Scorpion to the city’s most volatile neighborhoods — “hot spots” — to crack down on all sorts of crimes, like reckless driving or shootings, with punitive tactics even against minor offenses.

City officials praised Scorpion for high arrest numbers, effectively encouraging aggressive tactics. Chief Cerelyn Davis lauded the approach, advocating “being tough on tough people.” (Officials could have emphasized other goals, like reductions in crime rates in specific neighborhoods, to help focus officers on results instead of antagonistic methods, experts said.)

“It’s the command staff implementing a version of hot-spot policing that is not consistent with what the research evidence says is best,” Harvey said.

The unit also seemed captured by a culture of impunity. Consider that at least some of the officers who beat Nichols were wearing cameras that were recording their actions. The fact that they punched and kicked Nichols anyway suggests that they thought they were above the law and could get away with it, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

It is a common phenomenon among American police departments: Evidence-based policies can fall apart in their implementation. Researchers can call for law enforcement strategies that focus on specific places and people and try to minimize the social costs. But if those ideas are filtered through a culture or leadership style that prizes toughness and aggressive action, they can lead to abuse.

Turtleneck wrote:[tw]1623088722571890689?s=20&t=AiFQZR9cx-0usbazqYUzyQ[/tw]