Anyone who follows Twitter or other social
media platforms has seen the sickening videos of police using excessive force to attack peaceful protestors. We are witnessing in public the brutal tactics that people of color have long experienced. And we are seeing the effects of Trump’s advice to officials to “dominate” the streets even when people are exercising Constitutionally protected rights. You may even recall when he spoke to a convention of police in New York and advised them not to be too nice to the people they arrest. At the time, some police officials worried that Trump was encouraging police brutality. Of course he was.
One of the prime examples of violent action by law officers occurred a few days ago in Lafayette Park in D.C., when armed men in uniforms violently cleared away peaceful demonstrators so the president could walk with his entourage to St. John’s Church to brandish a Bible. Observers saw the political stunt as typical Trump phoniness, staged in front of a church he never attended with a book he never read. Trump retweeted a letter by his former lawyer John Dowd referring to the unarmed peaceful demonstrators as “terrorists.”
The White House has since been turned into a “fortress,” symbolizing government’s fear of the people.
Some of these videos show police beating anyone in their path. This video from Los Angeles is a shocking example. Two police officers in Buffalo were suspended for shoving a 75-year-old man to the ground, where he lay in a puddle of his blood. Police used their batons as clubs to beat back peaceful demonstrators.
The imposition of curfews, intended to curb looting, has created clashes between people exercising their First Amendment right to assemble peaceably and police tasked with enforcing the curfew. See here and here
Over 400 people who formerly worked in the de Blasio administration signed a letter strongly opposing his failure to rein in police brutality or reform the city’s policing policies. The mayor was booed when he spoke at a memorial for George Floyd.
The police are supposed to serve and protect the public. They are law officers. They are supposed to administer the law, not break it.
I respect the police. I have always respected the police. I am white and privileged. Many people like me are now at the receiving end and are seeing for the first time how people of color have long seen the police, as an occupying force.
There must be a concerted effort at every level of government to stop police brutality, to weed out those who don’t respect the rights of citizens and those who are racist.
If you want to understand how people of color see the police, listen to Jitu Brown.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
People in Russia grow up learning that the government is a menacing authoritarian force to be feared (think of all the defenestrations of Putin’s critics). This is done to quell dissent and economically pillage the citizenry. This is the model of governance Republicans like Barr and Trump are now attempting to graft onto the US body politic. They will not be successful but nevertheless we are in dangerous waters. Trump’s prop Bible stunt is just the warm-up. Putin’s orders on those two phone calls recently were surely to outlaw mail-in voting to try to steal yet another election…
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I’m old enough to remember when we referred to the neighborhood police as “peace officers.” My mother passed away at age 93 last October. I’m glad she isn’t experiencing our sad current events.
Tim H Doylestown PA
On Fri, Jun 5, 2020, 10:02 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Anyone who follows Twitter or other social media > platforms has seen the sickening videos of police using excessive force to > attack peaceful protestors. We are witnessing in public the brutal tactics > that people of color have long experienced. And we are s” >
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In Washington, DC there were units of unidentified police officers that were representing law enforcement. This is a dangerous practice if someone is injured or killed by one of these anonymous agents. Likewise, the use of tear gas to control crowds is a poor choice as we are in the middle of a pandemic that compromises pulmonary function. Tear gas is not allowed to be used internationally so why are police using it domestically?https://www.npr.org/2020/06/04/870048760/no-names-no-insignias-democrats-call-for-anonymous-policing-of-protests-to-end
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Wondering when we will have our “tank man” moment. Oh wait, we had our tank man moments in 1932 when Hoover called out the troops on the Bonus Marchers. From wikipedia: President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers’ campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned. end quote
There have been many incidents of police roughing up and even arresting TV reporters both foreign and domestic. Some of these encounters between police and protesters resemble the protests in Hong Kong.
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We had a couple, but they have received no coverage whatsoever. The first was in Minneapolis last week when a tanker truck raced through a crowd on a bridge. If you look closely, he stopped only when an anonymous person laid down in the street in front of one of his wheels. The other was during the beginning of the Lafayette Square police riot when a white man was being pushed along, saw a woman fall to the ground and, as he bent over to help her up, was pushed over and had tear gas sprayed into his (and her) face. And, of course, the elderly man who had his head split open when pushed by Buffalo police. These moments are happening all the time and I feel guilty about being in a quiet neighborhood so far removed from places of consequence.
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I know it’s heresy to say this around here, but police report to police commissioners who report to mayors, not the president. Nearly all the mayors in question are liberal Democrats.
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Neither the political identity of mayors nor the chain of command under them is relevant to actions taken by individual officers during a protest or riot situation like the ones we are experiencing. Those “liberal democrats” are not setting the tone nor are they defining the rules of engagement, many of which are obviously being violated. Your statement is absurd on its face.
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Jon The writer is obviously looking for “gotcha” trails to thin and so barely-plausible relationships and moments. It’s a common method of those with “set” ideologies and similarly-thin thinking.
As an “older person,” however, I’m beginning to know what “frail” means. My first thought upon viewing that video (of that white-haired man being pushed) was that police training should include a section on the frailty of older people. A painful truth, but we are not healthy young people anymore.
I never understood it as a young person either–I just got annoyed with older people . . . everyone had energy and balance . . . like I did! Never gave it another thought. My guess is that younger people (as a general rule?) don’t think about it either–It’s too easy to project our own young-health-situation out on older people and so HAVE NO CLUE what it’s like to actually be frail. Just a thought . . . But working with the public demands that we are aware of such issues? And that policeman was obviously not. CBK
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I know it’s heresy to mention this but long before George Floyd, those liberal democrat Mayors were demonized by the police when they stood up against them. And while African American voters supported them, the white progressive voters often simply ignored it, or the white progressive voters would “condemn” the Democratic Mayor for not standing up to the police “the right way”.
There were so many articles in the NYT about how “everyone” hated de Blasio and all of those articles ignored that he actually had a lot of support in the African American community at the time (not now) for standing up for things that simply were not urgent issues to white voters – even progressives – at the time. So they simply allowed the demonizing from the right to happen instead of standing up for the Mayor when he took a position that was unpopular with many white folks with the rest being indifferent and not thinking it was very important – but meanwhile those positions were supported by many African Americans.
And separately, there was an element (a small but vocal one) of white progressive voters who raged against “identity politics” all the time and belittled every democrat concerned with civil rights, under the questionable (and racist) cover that what matters is economic justice, and concern with racism is just not as important. Which is much easier to say if you are white.
It would have been terrific if long before the George Floyd protests, that there was a huge outpouring of support for those Mayors from the progressive white community when the police turned their backs on them or blamed them whenever a police officer was shot. Instead, they basically remained silent and complicit, ready to jump in to say that the progressive Mayor just wasn’t doing it “the right way”.
The police unions in Minneapolis and NYC are INCREDIBLY powerful. If they want to slow down response time to punish a local politician who they decide is trying to limit their power, they can do that.
The difference between Trump and those Democratic Mayors is that the Democratic Mayors want to do the right thing but they need the voices of huge swaths of the public to have their back so when the backlash happens — a policeman gets shot or a group of criminals or anarchists use the protests to loot and vandalize — there is not an immediate “blame the Mayor, he stopped the police from doing their job”.
Trump isn’t like that. That is clear from the alarming public statements by prominent law and order Republicans. Trump simply wants to use “law and order” for his own means. And he is being aided and abetted by police unions who know they will be protected as long as white people — even progressives — start backpedaling as soon as there is an incidence of looting and violence they can blame on those Democratic Mayors.
I have been disgusted with de Blasio’s response to the protests. Truly, it has been a failure and he deserves non-stop condemnation. But there are a lot of non African-American NYC residents who previously attacked him who are now saying that in this one thing, he’s doing the right thing — “standing up for the police”. There were a lot of outraged Manhattanites blaming de Blasio for the looting. They didn’t blame the police. And that makes it extremely difficult for Mayors of big cities to stand up to police knowing that they are to blame for any bad outcome without having any power over the police who aren’t at all on the same page as the Mayor and have a vested interest in demonstrating that the police tactics they want to use are the only ones that work.
However, as much as I am disgusted with de Blasio, I absolutely believe that he will try to address the most recent police brutality in a very different way that someone like Rudy Giuliani did.
And look what happened in Buffalo, NY when the Mayor dared to do anything about aggressive policing after we all saw the older man being shoved and hurt by the policeman:
“At least 57 members of the Police Emergency Response Team in Buffalo have resigned from their posts in response to the suspension of the two officers involved in the shoving of a 75-year-old man, a source close to the situation confirmed to CNN.
Guess what happens when there is an emergency in Buffalo and someone gets hurt because 57 members of the Buffalo Police Emergency Response Team (or maybe more) have resigned? The MAYOR gets blamed. Will white voters have the Mayor’s back? Or will they say that he did not respond “the right way” and it’s his fault that so many ERT officials resigned and no one was left and someone was badly hurt or died?
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^^By the way, it is no coincidence that the leaders of those police unions are frequently rabid Trump supporters — as we saw in Minneapolis.
Is it a coincidence that certain people want to blame the Democratic Mayors and not the police themselves who represent Trump?
Think about it. “It’s all the fault of the Democrats, not the Trump-supporting police unions who hate the Democrats.” Haven’t we heard this story before?
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There’s no other country that requires state/city leaders to report to the president. Your statement is nothing more than absurd.
Go ahead and secretly cheerlead your idol Trump for sending federal troops to cracking down on the protesters. The ratass clown loves division and chaos for his political gain.
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Thank you!
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What a difference. The Flint police head put away his guns, walked into the crowd and said we are here to protect you. He walked with them. Not ONE arrest, not one broken window. Other situations have been handled in a similar manner with similar results.
Yes there are people who take advantage and loot, break windows etc but as so many people have said, what Trump is doing is NOT helpful. THAT is to put it mildly.
Frankly I would not wish to be a policeman. They face death every day, people who fear, dislike, whatever, them when they try to do their job.
They too have cause to fear the public even when they try to do their job.
That a few police cause situations such as we see happening now help cause these situations to occur is shameful at the least, counterproductive and is antithetical to the “peace officers” – named above – who try indeed to protect and serve.
However there are way too many people in America who are prejudiced and knowingly or not foment the fear, the division that so many in America rightfully fear. Not only blacks but Hispanics, Native Americans and people who are gay etc.
There is a LOT of growing up to do to keep America civil and peaceful.
THAT is where our educational society can help. It is not easy. I had a student who refused to sing a beautiful spiritual. It was a N…. song and I was not going to change his mind. His folks had ingrained that in him.
Still, we must try and in the long run I think we can make a difference. We HAVE to.
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Too many police departments have been recipients of military hardware that they received after 9/11. Some police departments are militarizing how they police communities. I saw a special on how Richmond, Virginia transformed how its police treat citizens. A new black police commissioner has been able to reduce the amount of violence in the police department through “community policing.” When police walk a beat and get to know the community, they are less likely to treat locals like “enemy combatants.” Police should start taking their role to protect and serve more seriously.
Richmond has had some violence with the Floyd protests, but they are reporting that outside agitators were instigating some of the violence.https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/police-233-arrested-during-sunday-protests-most-from-outside-of-richmond
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“As we work in coalition together, I want you to know that those screams for justice are inside of me every day, every day of my existence. I have an eleven-year-old son that I am terrified for because I view America as a wolf that preys on us, and it has never stopped. We have never stopped being lynched in this country. . . . That officer that laid on that man’s neck, let it sear into our spirits. There’s no escape. There’s nowhere to turn. And the question is, WHAT WILL YOU DO? Not to save us, because I don’t need anybody to save me, but TO SAVE THIS COUNTRY. . . . We are tired of SUVs full of white men patrolling our communities and beating us at their will.” –Jitu Brown
Amen. Jitu Brown. One of the great ones. One of my heroes.
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What will you do? is the key question for our time. Nothing else matters if you can’t answer that.
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I’m just hearing from my brother, who is in Bloomington, Indiana, where there have been days of peaceful protests. Well, word went out on the alt-right forums, and right now, truckloads of guys with guns and Confederate flags are descending on the protesters. I wish I were there. I would cherish the opportunity to lay out a Nazi.
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I would suggest that your brother document his experience as you did for him and see if he can get it published as op-ed or extended letter to the editor. We need stories like this to circulate. This is reminiscent of a scene from In the Heat of the Night. And I know what you mean at the end of you comment. I’m not a violent person by any means, but I think there would be a certain satisfaction in that. Did you see the video of the Australian reporter who was punched in the face at Lafayette Square by one of the police thugs? Just think, one more of those unimaginable things until a few days ago: Lafayette Square is now somewhat synonymous with Selma, Christopher St., etc. I’ll be reminded of it every time I walk in the vicinity from now on.
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Same thing happening in Cleveland, Bob:
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2020/06/the-big-story-how-three-sets-of-arrest-are-shaping-clevelands-narrative-of-whos-behind-the-destruction-at-citys-george-floyd-protest.html
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We must also be focused on the attacks on those who are quite obviously journalists by the police, another thing tRump has obviously enabled and at the very least tacitly encouraged. That a president of the United States would be complicit in a direct assault on the constitutional rights of the nation, on the constitution itself is an obscenity beyond measure.
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It is indeed. This is the nadir. So far.
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There’s a reason I did not let my children, boys, watch TV cop shows… Hill Street Blues and such.
Is there any research on how TV cop shows influence “white” kids to want to become a cop to “punish the bad people?”
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The cowboy films did the same. Kill the others.
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I have to wonder about the value of curfews in such situations–huge crowds where you KNOW that a curfew is an invitation for force which becomes an easy-excuse for those police officers who WANT to be brutal, to be so. CBK
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Here’s another formerly unimaginable example of where the pandemic, health care, and the success of the so-called pro-life movement intersect in perverse, tragic ways:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/86841
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Bravo to Bob Shepherd for wanting to clobber the right-wing thugs threatening folks in Indiana. I feel the same way. Thug violence can only be countered by force equal to the threat. Police will not protect us. Police will not stop brutalizing folks of color or poor white folks(beaten for different reasons)until police are arrested and prosecuted for their violence. This has not happened in our urban areas as we all know, police not accountable for the generations beaten, harassed, and killed by officers. Police violence has a long history since police were first organized in the 18th/19th C. In prior days, labor organizations of working-class white men were attacked by sheriffs, state troopers, police and deputized vigilantes.(Battle of Battle Mountain, WVa; “Little Steel” Massacre, Chicago, 1937; Centralia, WA 1929….) White folks on 1960s Civll Rights freedom rides, voter registration drives, etc., were beaten by sheriffs. The current demos against police violence are not the first, but are the biggest, b/c of the filmed brutal murder of George Floyd seen by tens of millions, the depraved disregard for life on display. If demos funnel into a mass movement for Black Lives Matter a long campaign against police violence can win. Very promising start, massive, multicultural, creative, and non-violent(the marchers are not the looters, arsons, or vandals).
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The problem with Americas police predates Trump. Not that I am giving Trump a break. NYPD has been abusing peaceful Demonstrators for decades. In fact as I reflect back NYPD turned me from a right wing youth member of YAF into a radical lefty in 1967. Some poor bastard had the audacity to hang a sheet with bring the boys home on it outside his window off 5th ave, the Day of a support the boys in Vietnam March. He was dragged down his fire escape to a squad car as 12 year old Sea Cadets pummeled him with rifles butts . So much for freedom of speech.
Who can forget the thuggery of the police riot at City Hall when Dinkins was Mayor. Was that 91 ? Then of course there was the 2004 Republican National Convention in NY. The City spent 10s of millions to settle law suits for those police actions. I personally saw them abuse 1000% peaceful Demonstrators at occupy wall street . Using some of the same tactics they used last night in the Bronx. Penned in by cops in front and behind with no place to go,told to disperse then and arrested for not doing so. . Who can forget the Fox News Reporter who came to slander the demonstrators; crying because her head was smashed by a police baton. . And of course when Bloomberg decided to shut it down the police barred the press and beat even City Councilmen.
The NYPD has been out of control for decades not much has changed since the Kerner Commission report.
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So how to change this? For the first time in 2 decades, Mayor de Blasio came in with a real desire to change things. I know people hate him now, but I remember him standing up to the police beginning with ending “stop and frisk” and being willing to take all the blame if that backfired. That was a huge political risk, and if crime had gone up at all I am sure he would have been a one term Mayor.
And de Blasio continued to try to change the NYPD and despite the widespread police propaganda, de Blasio never “demonized” the police and he never promoted the view that all police were bad or violent.
But that didn’t matter. As soon as there was a police shooting, everyone jumped on the bandwagon to condemn him. Watching the media NORMALIZE the police turning their back on the Mayor because he just wanted to end the most violent practices of some police was probably one the nadirs of journalism. The narrative that “de Blasio hates police and wants to hamper them so they die and the criminals live to kill more innocent people” was the overriding narrative everywhere. And almost no one — and I include some of the most progressive politicians at that time — had his back. There should have been outrage and condemnation of the police that was so widespread that the police were ashamed and apologized. Instead it was de Blasio who was left to apologize and “prove” that his goal was not for criminals to be able to shoot and kill police at will.
Because the narrative became that any limits or criticism of police means that you “condone violence”.
And that is exactly what happened last week. There was no widespread criticism at the NYPD for somehow not seeing all the looting and vandalism in midtown Manhattan soon enough to step in. The criticism was almost entirely about how the “police’s hands were tied” and it’s all the Mayor’s fault for not stopping the protesters. Imagine how different the narrative would have been if, from day 1, every progressive politician and journalist was writing “where were the police when the looting and violence were going on and why was the NYPD focusing on attacking the peaceful protestors when they should have been stopping that midtown looting?” Instead, the right wing narrative pervaded — that the police’s “hands were tied” to stop that looting and vandalism. and thus leaving de Blasio stuck having no real good choices. I’m mad at him for not standing up stronger against the NYPD anyway, but I do recognize that another night of looting would have been entirely blamed on him, again.
One thing I wonder is whether as the NYPD becomes more diversified — with many women as well as non-white officers — that the culture might change. But while the NYPD union is still ruled by the Trump supporting law and order crowd, I have no faith that any reforms forced on the department will be given time to work.
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Its interesting in this vid
The guy fails to explain what he explained here
Which basically amounts to the fact that you can literally hold your breath until you’re dead when you’re on dope like fentanyl. You also would never need to announce you couldnt breath let alone in a suspicious emotionless monotone. This floyd thing looks scripted and rehearsed.
And lets not forget what happened next, the death was used by racists to launch a race riot.
There’s two ways for the queen’s honor guard to get paid. One of them is to do stupid sht for the camera for a kickback from newspapers.
Heres what happened. A black guy commits suicide by cop with his buddy he works and shares lines with so his family can get a lawsuit and the cop can get a kickback. The death was used by enemy subversives to incite race riots and radicalise leftist sympathizers who deal them both the cheap drugs they both use.
https://deplorablefeed.com/u-s-soldiers-punished-under-obama-admin-for-blowing-whistle-on-afghan-muslim-pedophiles/
Btw, i tracked this deplorablefeed group to bulgaria. But pretty sure it’s all legit.
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