I teach a unit on Civil Rights at work, I’ve never seen an example of him making his arguments that isn’t extraordinary. The loss of his voice was such a blow to black rights.
There is such an art to the way he expresses not just anger but refusal to compromise what he knows is right (at any given time) , and the discussion needs that. Or at least I think so, he’d definitely have thought I don’t have damn thing worth saying on the subject and he’d probably be right 
I’m beginning to think police are trying to instigate a violent response as a pretext for a violent crack down against demonstrators.
I work for a Big 4 accountancy firm and there have been public statements of solidarity with our black colleagues from them, although the firm I work for was a bit slower than the rest.
I’m a member of the African - Caribbean Network within my firm and there has been alot of sadness throughout the network all week, and about how racial discrimination and representation is reflected in our firm. We had a conference call with 700 people last night to discuss, and 2 Black partners helped discuss how to drive change in a corporate setting like ours.
They are the only 2 Black partners out of over 600 in the UK, and 150yrs of the firms history. Clearly diversity in the leadership was one of the main points and I also discussed some of the initiatives at the lower level too with my team, and people from the non-black community have been very eager to show support in driving change, which is so important.
The rot is DEEP. I’ve seen it suggested that certain places essentially “restart” their police forces with a focus on non violence tactics and community policing.
I thought it was nuts at first but it’s not completely crazy
Cunts.
Especially this cunt.
“Our position is these officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square,” said Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans. “It doesn’t specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40. They were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards.”
“Simply following orders.” Sure I’ve heard something like that before.
It’s scary shit. I’ve always been careful to criticise how the police conduct their business in the US (and some other countries) as in my country we’ve had 5 policemen killed since the 70’s and in the US a policeman dies every 2-3 days or so on average according to google.
I’m thinking when an actual life or death situation can arise from nothing at any point because anyone can have a gun you’re frequently in a high-adrenaline environment and that naturally requires different behaviour, I expect a lot of acting over reacting and the degree to which you have to trust your partner/team/squad is on a different level when you are actually trusting your life with them on the daily.
Making thousands of micro decisions right under such circumstances over and over day in and out few people would get all of them right and so forth I get that.
That’s about what I would give them in their defence. But some of the shit you see is just such raw desensitisation. I also understand teams who are this tightly knit who have maybe worked together for years etc. will defend each other to the end and even resign in support of each other, they probably understand those two officers on some absurd level.
For an outsider like me I agree maybe you need to restart whole squads or teams from scratch somehow, maybe split them up and move some pieces around etc. but in a country with a 2nd amendment, more guns than people and some 10k gun homicides per year can a restart stop them from essentially just turning into the same type of enforcers down the line?
Not trying to turn this into some gun rights debate but more like: assuming the environment is what it is, how do you get their their job quota filled whilst preventing all of them from becoming desensitised down the line? I can’t see re-training helping enough as I worry about the effect of the environment they work in all the time will override it eventually, but I hope something like what you’ve seen suggested works.
So in ur opinion what exactly is the root of the problem?
Hopeful that Minneapolis policing will change? Meet the police union’s chief …
Donald Trump shakes hands with Bob Kroll, head of the Minneapolis police union, during a campaign rally. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Amid the worst civil unrest in the US in half a century, there have been notably few Americans willing to speak up on behalf of the man who lit the fuse: Derek Chauvin, the now former police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes seems too clear-cut and painful to try to make excuses.
Step forward Bob Kroll, leader of the Minneapolis police union. Kroll wrote to his members this week describing Floyd as a “violent criminal” because he did prison time, in an apparent attempt to imply Chauvin’s treatment of an unarmed man being arrested on suspicion of a non-violent minor crime was legitimate. The union chief also described those protesting over Floyd’s death as terrorists, and the dismissal of Chauvin and three other officers facing charges as depriving them of their rights.
A former Minneapolis police chief, Janeé Harteau, who battled Kroll in attempting to reform a department with a long history of racial abuse, quickly hit back, saying he was unfit to be a police officer and calling on him to resign from the force.
“A disgrace to the badge! This is the battle that myself and others have been fighting against. Bob Kroll turn in your badge!” she wrote on Twitter.
That will not have bothered Kroll. By Harteau’s own admission, the union chief is in many ways more powerful than the police chief in Minneapolis – as is the case in many other cities across the US.
The union fought me at every turn"
Janeé Harteau, former Minneapolis police chief
“The police federation has historically had more influence over police culture than any police chief ever could,” said Harteau. “I was fought at every turn from bringing body cameras to the police department to having implicit bias training to professional development processes and having some more consistency in promotions.”
That power of the union (or federation) has often stood in the way of reform, perpetuating old-school racialised policing tactics and shielding officers from accountability.
Police officers stand outside the Third Police Precinct during the I Can’t Breathe protest in Minneapolis. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Harteau attempted comprehensive reforms as police chief for five years until 2017 after inviting the US justice department to examine the conduct of the Minneapolis police. The result was a strategy, MPD 2.0 A New Police Model, that put a strong emphasis on community engagement, transparency and public accountability. Harteau said it was consistently resisted and subverted by the union.
She said that when she also attempted to address issues around burnout and mental health of police officers, and to institute an early warning system to flag up those prone to abuse, the union characterised the measures as no more than a way to discipline officers and blocked them.
Former Minneapolis mayor RT Rybak said the 800-strong police union stood in the way of attempts by successive administrations to change policing culture toward African Americans and other minorities.
“I would say the last five mayors are very different people, but every one has been deeply committed to reforming the police department. Every one of them. Collectively we have failed to move enough of the levers of change,” he said.
Jacob Frey, Minneapolis’ mayor, has said the union has resisted all his reforms
Mayor, Jacob Frey, was elected on a promise to reform the police department, with a strong emphasis on community policing. But he has said the union has resisted all such change. In addition, Frey said he is “hamstrung by the architecture of the system” of the union contract and arbitration which makes it difficult to discipline and dismiss officers for abuses.
The single largest obstacle, said Ryback, is Kroll and his leadership of the federation that is resistant to any change away from a style of policing that minority communities in Minneapolis describe as acting like an occupying force.
Kroll makes no secret of his taste for old style police tactics and courts controversy. Last year he appeared at a campaign rally with Donald Trump and praised him as a “wonderful president”.
“The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” he told the rally. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around … and decided to start letting the cops do their job; put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.”
Kroll was wearing a “Cops for Trump” T-shirt his union started selling after Frey barred officers from wearing uniforms at political events. Kroll has been openly hostile to Black Lives Matter, calling it a “terrorist organisation”. In 2016, he commended four Minneapolis police officers who walked out of a professional basketball game because players were wearing Black Lives Matter warm-up jerseys.
Kroll wore a ‘Cops for Trump’ T-shirt at his rally and called him a ‘wonderful president’
Before he was federation chief, Kroll had a long record of disciplinary actions against him. He was suspended in 2008 with a fellow officer, while out of uniform and without identifying themselves as police, for beating a man in the street and then having him arrested on false charges. Kroll has also been suspended for using a homophobic slur to describe a gay aide to the then mayor, Rybak.
This week, Kroll was critical of the current Minneapolis police chief, Medaria Arrandondo, who is African American, for immediately firing Chauvin and three other officers since charged in Floyd’s death.
The pair have a long history. In 2007, Arrandondo named Kroll in a lawsuit against the police department accusing it of racial discrimination. Arrandondo and four other black officers alleged that Kroll made racist statements in front of senior officers and “wears a motorcycle jacket with a ‘White Power’ badge sewn onto it”.
The lawsuit also alleged that Kroll said then congressman Keith Ellison, who is black and a Muslim, “is a terrorist”. At the time Ellison, who is now Minnesota’s attorney general in charge of the Floyd investigation, was pushing for reform of the police department.
The officers alleged that the force “has a history of tolerating racist and discriminatory remarks by its white police officers and engaged in discriminatory conduct against its African American police officers”.
The action was settled for $800,000 and a promise of change.
I should have clarified my point which was attitudes like the poster I was replying to are authoritarian and his impulse was to deflect attention from the topic in defense of the status quo of police violence against black people.
As for root cause of the uprisings in the US—economic fall out of COVID-19 and complete lack of support or leadership from the government. George Floyd was just the spark.
As for root cause of black suffering in the US—a complex tapestry of economic deprivation, state violence, negative media depiction, white mob violence, drug addiction etc., etc.—in short that’s a much much bigger question.
Very disgusting scenes coming out from Westminster all day
Dickheads
5,000+ corona cases a day, 39,000 a week, 300 deaths a day, this is nothing but peak virtue signalling by people who have gotten a bit too bored during lockdown lol
The UK is far from perfect, but the problem isn’t nearly as bad as the US and for these demonstrations to be taking place over here during a global pandemic is really silly.
On par with the scenes down in Durdle Door tbh
There is NO reason to take this out on British police.
Selfish actions of a few numskulls who aren’t bothered wearing face masks or keeping 2m apart.
I hope that the officer who was dismounted from his/her horse is OK
Whilst the situation isn’t as bad in the US the protests aren’t that widespread just because of solidarity with the US or boredom. But it’s a typical stance for tolerant white Europeans. To think those issues are so much less or non-existent here.
Matt Hancock said that the return of the horses would buoy the mood of the nation, but I don’t feel at all uplifted after that video.
