Friday Open Thread ~ "What are you reading?" edition ~ POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT

Submitted by phillybluesfan on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 5:00am

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Police Accountability Report, hosted by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, is a weekly show that seeks to expose and hold to account one of the most powerful institutions in this country—the police.

The show shines a critical light on all facets of American policing, exploring the systemic and political imperatives that put law enforcement at odds with the communities they purport to serve.

Why is it so hard to reform the police, let alone hold police accountable for abusing their power? What are the legal and political protections that have put police above the very law they’re supposed to enforce?

BATTLEGROUND BALTIMORE
One reason why The Real News Network calls Baltimore home is because we know that the struggles the people in this majority-minority city face (unequitable access to resources like education, clean air, and transportation, for example) are the struggles people face all over the globe. You are reading the latest installment of our weekly news roundup from the Baltimore trenches, which we hope will help keep our friends and neighbors abreast of what’s going on in our city, but also resonate with people united in the struggle everywhere.

POLICE UNION DEFENDS CONVICTED COPS KEEPING THEIR JOBS

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Submitted by QMS on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 5:28am
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Thanks for covering this issue.

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Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
-- August Hare

Submitted by Lookout on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 8:00am
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and need to be humanized and trained in conflict resolution instead of escalation.
I remember when most police served the public instead of feeding the private prison industry.

New GA bill to discourage voting while black

Democratic Rep. Park Cannon, a Black woman, was arrested on Thursday after knocking on the door of the governor's office during a press conference about a new bill designed to overhaul elections in the state. Cannon was looking to watch Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sign the Senate Bill 202. She was twice warned that she would be arrested if she did not stop by police but continued to and was apprehended.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/politics/georgia-state-representative-arr...

Hope you all have a good one!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by usefewersyllables on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 9:45am
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Nobody. "Comply or die" is the de facto law of the land.

I've been shaken down several times, had a cop threaten to sic his K-9 on me when I had the misfortune to walk out my front door while they were shaking someone else down, and most recently (just last summer) my wife and I got to sit here sheltering-in-place to wait for the bullets to come through the walls, while they SWATted a house about 6 doors down.

When I see cops, I head the other way with all possible speed. You never know when that friendly smile you might once have been inclined to give them (perhaps before the onset of permanent urban warfare) would be interpreted as a mortal insult, and give them a reason to "fear for their life" you to death. "Don't make eye contact!" is now the rule.

I've said it before: there is something fundamentally flawed about any society in which the first reaction of an ordinary citizen to the sight of a cop is fear.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by Bisbonian on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 4:22pm
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@usefewersyllables , with disgust.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Submitted by ggersh on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 10:26am
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The pigs should all be defunded

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-police-union-contract-puts-taxpayer...

A Police Union Contract Puts Taxpayers on the Hook to Defend Officers When the City Won’t
A little-known labor contract provision obligates New Yorkers to help pay officers’ legal bills in lawsuits that city lawyers won’t defend.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 5:43pm
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@ggersh

The house also dabbled with removing it at the federal level, but I don’t know if either would stand up to the courts because they gave it to them in the first place. Maybe it does take an act of congress to do it.

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Here in the USA arming and funding Israeli genocide and mass murder is perfectly OK, but objecting to it will get you expelled, arrested or deported.

Submitted by on the cusp on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 9:53pm

@snoopydawg provided to them by their employers/government entity. The insurance pays civil claims. Cops pay nothing, except premiums, and that is normally covered by them getting higher wages. In other words, tax payers guarantee cops have insurance that pays when cops are accused of, oh, murder by sheer accident...

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 03/27/2021 - 12:09am
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@on the cusp

That’s what this is supposed to allow happen with it gone.

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Here in the USA arming and funding Israeli genocide and mass murder is perfectly OK, but objecting to it will get you expelled, arrested or deported.

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 03/27/2021 - 12:17am

@snoopydawg In Texas, civil and criminal. Cannot speak for any other state.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 03/27/2021 - 12:16pm
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@on the cusp

so what good then does it to roll back immunity so that people can sue them in civil court? Just that they can get sue for money which many can't cuz it's hard to prove?

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Here in the USA arming and funding Israeli genocide and mass murder is perfectly OK, but objecting to it will get you expelled, arrested or deported.

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 11:04am
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there; a jumped up meter reader ("Parking Enforcement Police") and co-conspirator are checking one of their victims for a pulse, meaning that they either fear that they have killed him and will have to write an extra report, or they fear that they haven't and he can testify as to just what they did do him to make it a question whether or not he will survive; PARKING cops. Almost beyond belief, except, sadly, not really, not at all.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 1:16pm
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Democracy has seen 500,000 US Covid deaths: China hits back as Biden says Xi Jinping ‘doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body’

>No matter how much a country boasts of its democratic values, it sat by and watched more than 500,000 people die from the epidemic without doing anything, and more than 40,000 people killed by gun violence each year without doing anything.

Boo Yah! Blinken's 'rule based' world order is breaking our promise again and leaving our troops to guard the poppies, poppies, poppies in Afghanistan. Except Biden committed to only a year yesterday. He also said that in 2014 so there's that.

The world is laughing at us now after spending 4 years feeling sorry for us cuz of Trump. Lesser evil seems once again more evil because Biden is toying with nuclear powers and he is over his head. As is his cabinet full of war criminals and sociopaths.

And CNN gave Trump's CDC director, Redfield a huge platform to spew his conspiracy theories.

He explained his position: “It’s my opinion. But I am a virologist, I spent my time in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human… [and] became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.”

He suggested researchers in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel virus was first identified, could be working on making it “grow better and better and better” before it accidentally infected a worker, a scenario that Redfield called “not unusual for respiratory pathogens”

CNN staff seemed to be accepting Redfield’s words without reservations. A panel discussion after the fragments of the interview were aired concurred that a CDC head “sees things and knows things that the rest of us don’t see”.

So Biden's going with the Wuhan Flu, the Asian Bug, The China weapon, but also telling people to stop being so mean to Asians cuz racism has no place in America.

Lots of edits....

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Here in the USA arming and funding Israeli genocide and mass murder is perfectly OK, but objecting to it will get you expelled, arrested or deported.

Submitted by humphrey on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 2:36pm

@snoopydawg It is pushing China as the enemy.

Also too.

It distracts from the Cuomo brothers shenanigans.

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Submitted by humphrey on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 3:05pm

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Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 4:03pm
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@humphrey

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!