Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death

[The Romulan Republic]

All that said, I do want to be clear that I largely agree with the position of police and prison abolitionist, at least the goal even if I might disagree with some people on the specific methods or time frame. I don't see any compelling reason why between 90 and 99% of police and prisons, at least, could not be abolished, provided that there was a transitional period, with forces being drawn down in stages as the money was shifted to housing, health care including mental health care, education, rehabilitation, etc. And while acknowledging and dealing with the rare incurably violent exception in a just and practical manner is important, that discussion should not overshadow or hijack the argument for abolishing police and prisons in the vast majority of cases.

In my imagining, the end result of such a process in the United States might be a democratic socialist state with heavy investment in education, health, and eliminating poverty, state and local police and border forces eliminated, with a small police force under federal control consisting of perhaps a few hundred officers, a handful of field offices in different regions of the country, and a single "prison" facility that would really be more of a secure mental health facility/hospital, which would be used only for the humane containment of incurably violent individuals- rapists, serial killers, and terrorists, basically. Staff would be trained to the highest standards and carefully screened for psychological issues or histories of violence or violent attitudes, and said institutions would be subject to annual audits (the results of which would be made publicly available) by multiple independent oversight bodies. The overall goal would be treatment where possible, humane confinement when not, and training would be designed to drill this philosophy into staff before they're ever in the same room as a detainee.

Other ideas could, of course, be proposed or elaborated on. I make no claim that my concept is flawless, or that it is the only valid or workable one.

[loomer]

The principal difference is that exile places the fault of the killing on the exiled, and not the society. They were given a chance to leave and, having failed to take advantage of it, face their own fate. What they do outside the confines of the legally-constituted society is largely irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. It's an academic difference, so I'll concede that a pure death penalty for the hypothetical 'evil person' is probably a cleaner solution.

Exile leads to a few problematic scenarios:

- The murder tourist. They come to the society from another country. Their plan is to kill someone for the thrill of it. If they get caught, their plan is to hire a lawyer who argues for their immediate exile. And, unlike exiles born in your country, the murder tourist has a country willing to take them back.

This is not a concern given the parameters involved. The sentence of outlawry and exile as nominated applies only to the exceptional lunatic and no one else - a point I think many of you are missing. The murder tourist would be subject to the ordinary principles of justice, requiring them to make good on their actions to the family and society they have wronged just as any other murderer. If they happen to be a serial killer who continually comes to say, Exilic Estonia, to kill, then the sentence of exile is carried out and if they return they are killed.

- The hostage taker. The exiled person comes back but, before anyone kills them, they take hostages.

This is a concern in pretty much any system that does not execute them, not unique to exile. What stops the exceptional lunatic taking hostages in a prison or other carceral institution?

- The traumatized. The exiled person comes back and tries to attack someone, only for the intended victim to kill him. Unfortunately, the intended victim is traumatized over having been forced to kill someone.

This is also a concern in any system that does not execute them and is not unique to exile.

- The mistaken identity. Someone was exiled. But there is an unfortunate tourist that merely looks like them. So this unfortunate tourist gets kills coming into the country by people who think he's the exiled.

This could indeed be a problem, but it's not one I'm terribly concerned by since, again, we are concerned only with the exceptional lunatic. The likelihood of their existence is essentially nil, and the likelihood of enough people looking sufficiently like them meeting this unfortunate fate is, likewise, essentially nil.

Also, what about when the inevitable happens where a person was convicted, outlawed, killed, then later on was found to be innocent? Sucks to be them I guess?

One of the reasons why I oppose the death penalty in general, even via exile.

That's also not a concern in the parameters. Let me restate them, since people are missing them:

Our subject is a form of the exceptional lunatic - a depraved serial killer or serial rapist who cannot be controlled, rehabilitated, or treated and who, knowing what they are doing is wrong and subject to punishment, proceeds to embark on it again regardless while possessing a rational and capable mind.

It necessarily follows from this premise that the subject has already been the beneficiary of the aforementioned interventions - of control, rehabilitation, and treatment - and has, because they possess a mind with full capacity, rejected the possibility of them not by any inability to be reformed but because they do not wish to be.

Essentially, the 'but what if they're innocent' argument - while it would be valid for any ordinary circumstance and one I generally share - is invalid in this circumstance because the outlawry and exile is reserved solely for those who are repeat offenders who cannot be controlled, rehabilitated, or treated despite efforts to do so. They are people who don't actually exist, as far as I'm concerned, and if they do, their guilt will be so enormously clear due to repeat offending and a total rejection of any and all rehabilitative, control, and treatment mechanisms that the possibility of their innocence, while hypothetically still available, is essentially removed from the equation.

So, again, to be clear: I am not advocating for exile for any old murderer or criminal. This is a penalty I reserve for the imaginary utterly uncontrollable and irredeemable 'evil' man Yan invoked to justify the existence of prisons.

Reg. outlawery, exile, or summary execution as an alternative to prison:

And therein lies the difference. 'Get out before we kill you' is not a death penalty. It may, under many circumstances, act as one - but it is not a death penalty for all that it may result in death. It is the acknowledgement that a person's conduct is such that they have irrevocably broken the bonds holding them to their society, and as such, are entitled to no treatment at all. This is the mess I'm referring to when I say a pure death penalty is cleaner, but the central distinction is that a death penalty does not actually place the person beyond the lawful community but rather reinforces that they are subject to those laws.

The outlaw, by contrast, is - by their own actions - beyond the law, and thus, beyond any consideration owed to them by the community, as the community is the law. This is necessarily an approach that must be indifferent to the suffering of those who deliberately place themselves completely and utterly beyond the scope of the law, but the outlaw under discussion - a person that cannot be treated or rehabilitated in any way, who genuinely cannot be reformed or reached and who has the full capacity necessary to be ascribed guilt - is necessarily one who possesses the rationality to comprehend what they're doing and comprehend that their failure to reform themselves will lead to whatever fate meets them beyond the borders of the law, and so the indifference is to actions wrought wholly and only by their own hand, rationally and willingly. Starvation or disease or exposure (or whatever other fate - more likely they'll be shot by someone) is not inflicted on them by the law, but by their own active and callous malevolence towards the community constituted by the law.

I am deeply wary of any system which promotes and indeed requires a societal indifference to suffering in order to work. Such attitudes can infect a society, and once you start dehumanizing and othering some people, it becomes easier to do it to others.

Bluntly, I think you overestimate the societal indifference to suffering involved in the exile of the exceptional lunatic. The closest analogy to it is actually where a person voluntarily and willingly removes themselves from society, refuses any and all offers of help from society, and then dies in the woods despite those offers because they declined to take them to the point of actively fighting off attempts to provide them. The exceptional lunatic is exiled only when they cannot be rehabilitated, controlled, or treated - only when those efforts are rejected or prove completely unworkable - and where they continue to kill or rape. The 'indifference to suffering' involved comes only at the end of a long and clear path in which the outcome can be attributed only to their own actions.

Now, we could of course simply shoot them, but this would then result in the system having a normative content that admits the legitimacy of the state pronouncing death upon its subjects and of one subject killing another subject as the instrument of the state.

In any case, such a system is unworkable in practice, because it is very unlikely that the exiled person would be able to find another country willing to take them in. If they tried to, they would likely be deported back, at which point they would presumably be killed.

An unobjectionable outcome, from my position - their killing is not unlawful, nor necessarily immoral.

This is, incidentally, a violation of international law:

https://unhcr.com/un-conventions-on-statelessness.html

The 1954 Convention is designed to ensure that stateless people enjoy a minimum set of human rights. It establishes the legal definition of a stateless person as someone who is “not recognized as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” Simply put, this means that a stateless person is someone who does not have the nationality of any country. The 1954 Convention also establishes minimum standards of treatment for stateless people in respect to a number of rights. These include, but are not limited to, the right to education, employment and housing. Importantly, the 1954 Convention also guarantees stateless people a right to identity, travel documents and administrative assistance.

I am also unconcerned by this. The person in question is not rendered arbitrarily stateless but, by their own actions, openly rejects their citizenship or rights of residence, doing so repeatedly and violently. Clear repudiation of nationality is a legitimate grounds to deprive a person of that right under international law provided it is done in accordance with the principles of justice and through a fair hearing, and while there exists a general requirement not to accept repudiation or deprive a person of nationality unless a person has obtained or will obtain nationality or other status elsewhere, this provision can be overruled by the aforementioned violent and repeated repudiation of citizenship. Nor is it necessarily unlawful to execute a stateless person who has broken the laws of the state in which they are resident if the ordinary sentence for said violation would be death - here, of course, the sentence is not execution but outlawry resulting in execution if a person returns. It could be argued that this discriminates on the basis of statelessness but it is not applied to all stateless peoples but only those who, while a national of the state in which the execution occurs, committed a crime carrying that penalty.

I am also curious as to how such a system would deal with the extremely violent while awaiting trial- would they be allowed to run free until their trial and appeals were concluded?

The general answer to this is yes, unless they pose an active and violent threat to others, in which case protective detention is permissible for the duration of that threat. For the exceptional lunatic, this is essentially a certainty, as the hypothetical 'evil' person is of a character such that they're probably boasting that yes, they will kill again as soon as possible.

In any case, since you admit that the practical effect of the law in most cases is to consign these people to a slow death by starvation, exposure, and disease, or a (relatively) quick one by vigilante murder/summary execution, what this amounts to is, indeed, knowingly bringing about someone's death in a deliberately cruel manner, but in such a way that society (and by extension, yourself) could wash its/your hands of it and pretend that it wasn't pulling the trigger.

I concede that these are potential outcomes due to the nature of modern statehood. I do not, however, concede that the sentence extends to the deliberate bringing about of a person's death in a cruel manner. Again, the best analogy is a person who goes into the woods and refuses any and all offers of assistance, up to and including actively fighting off people attempting to bring them food and shelter, and then dies. Every effort is made to avert this fate until such a point that it is unavoidable, and this occurs solely due to the person's refusal to accept assistance and change their course. What the hands are washed of is someone else's voluntary action - namely, the outlaw's and their refusal to accept repeated efforts to intervene in their behaviours.

It's a harsher position than just shooting them, but it preserves an epistemic difference that I find important. To just shoot them as the lawful punishment is to retain them within the confines of the community constituted by the law, which they, by their own actions, have demonstrated themselves not to be a part of. If they remain members of the community, then obligations are owed to them - that one ought not to kill one's own community, for instance. Outlawing them, however, affirms their outside status and places the guilt of any killing that follows squarely on their own heads.

I would argue that it falls on the society and people who knowingly and deliberately took actions that they knew would result in deaths. But ultimately, the academic theory of who is responsible is less significant to me than the actual, practical, physical consequences of a policy in terms of sentient suffering.

The actions taken are nothing more than acknowledging the rupture brought about by the outlaw. They are the ones responsible for their own deaths in a concrete way, in the same way as the man in the woods or the person who, knowing it will prove fatal, deliberately drives their car directly into a wall despite repeated pleas to stop and attempts to get them out of the car. The actual, practical, physical consequences of the policy in terms of sentient suffering are quite simply an acceptance that a person who has full capacity and who cannot be controlled, rehabilitated, or treated and who will continue killing or raping others has removed themselves from society by their repeated infliction of suffering and their complete refusal to cease inflicting this suffering.

It is also, of course, extremely unlikely that such a system would never be abused or punish people in error, and while a wrongfully convicted person can be freed and compensated, the dead cannot.

Under the given premises, it is in fact unlikely. Where this penalty is available only for the exceptional lunatic - the entire scope of the discussion - who is clearly and unambiguously guilty and who actively refuses to be rehabilitated or treated, it cannot be applied to any other person.

It can be difficult to reconcile this approach with a universalist morality, so I completely understand if you'd still rather just shoot them from the get-go than go for outlawry and exile. It's just my personal position and not one I'd expect other people to understand or adopt.

Personally, I would rather maintain a very limited and humane system of prisons or mental asylums for the incarceration of the perhaps a fraction of percent of society who are uncontrollably violent (other countries have much more human prison systems than the United States, so it is possible, and has been demonstrated to be feasible in a modern industrialized nation while your alternative has not), because that is an objectively less harmful course of action than the one that you are describing.

I disagree that it is objectively less harmful, as even the most humane prisons have deleterious effects on people's mental and physical health. The outlaw may die or they may live, but they are free to determine this themselves unless their actions (voluntarily undertaken) are of such a nature that no other nation will foster them. The prisoner is not. Further, if we are concerned with minimizing harm and suffering as our first fundamental goal, then we ought simply to execute them - the only path that in fact minimizes their potential suffering with certainty. If we are consistently pursuing an approach that minimizes suffering, then incarceration is not it - certainly not more than exile. The grounds for incarceration must instead be the possibility of mistake, the ongoing hope of miraculous rehabilitation, or some other grounds than minimizing suffering.

The suffering is incidental and beyond the scope of the exile, not part of the sentence of exile.

But suffering is not incidental. It is a known, acknowledged, deliberate consequence of the policy you are describing, and therefore those advocating, implementing, or enforcing such a policy would bear responsibility for it.

The suffering really is incidental to the sentence of exile. It is attendant only on the actions of the outlaw, and not the sentence itself. Again, the best analogy is the man who goes into the woods and refuses any and all aid, and dies as a consequence. Any suffering is not in fact a deliberate consequence of the sentence, but merely an incidental outcome of the person's rejection of membership within the society constituted by the law.

I'm generally opposed to it myself - if you asked me if I'd sooner shoot them than send them to die of exposure in the desert I'd say 'yes' - but there remains a distinction between a sentence that is ambivalent to suffering and one that creates it. The scope of the law ends, quite abruptly, at outlawry - all that follows is made by the outlaw, not the law. If they live or die, die swiftly or slowly, is solely upon their own heads once they sever themselves from the community.

It is a very strange world view which says "The police and prisons should be abolished because they're abusive, racist and oppressive. Let's replace them with vigilante murders instead!"

I have a very strange world view, yes. But you're mistaken here. Vigilante justice operates without legal authority or trial. Here, there has been a trial, and there is legal authority if a person shoots the outlaw, because the outlaw has been trialled and their rejection of the protection of the law has been accepted as a result of that trial. This is not in fact vigilantism, as it occurs entirely within the confines of the law governing the members of the community.

Further, there is no barrier to creating laws governing the way in which members of the community may engage with outlaws to expressly codify this, if you're concerned that the people taking action to defend themselves against a person who has declared themselves an enemy to everyone in their society will be abusive.

If the sentence was an active, deliberate 'and now you have to die slowly' I'd agree with you that it's moral cowardice. But in this case it's neither moral cowardice nor moral heroism - it's simply an acceptance that, by their own hand, they are removed from the bonds governing the society constituted by the law they are now outside of, and thereby entitled to no regard, consideration, or protection by that law from whatever may come their way. In other words, if we're looking at it in terms of cowardice, it's morally ambivalent. No active physical harm is directly imposed on them by the sentence of outlawry unless they return to the community, and I'll clarify, since it may not be clear, that if you put me in charge of drafting it the policy would very much include ensuring sufficient food, transport, and water to get them to a destination rather than just ditching them in the desert and going 'later bitch'.

Death sentences are probably still cleaner, but for me it's an epistemic distinction worth preserving because of the implications on what is and is not acceptable within a community of law.

And what happens when they are deported back against their will to the community that exiled them, because predictably nobody else will take them? Does the responsibility for their death still lie on them? Or on the country that deported them? Or on the community that exiled them and is now pulling the trigger?

The responsibility remains with our exceptional lunatic, who has knowingly, willingly, and repeatedly committed acts that sever the individual from the community and for which the penalty is the loss of all legal status, and who has subsequently refused to be rehabilitated, controlled, or treated. If no place will take them because of the nature of their serial murders or rapes, then in effect they have rendered on themselves a status you're fond of invoking for certain politicians: hostis humani generis - enemies of all mankind. This status follows directly from their actions, and so the responsibility for it will always remain on them.

The purpose of such outlawry is not to reduce crime or recidivism, but to remove the hypothetical 'exceptional lunatic' - and note that this penalty is one I'm talking about only for the hypothetically rational but totally unrehabilitateable , untreatable, uncontrollable subject that I very much doubt even exists, our hypothetical genuinely 'evil' serial killer that cannot possibly be controlled in any way but execution, incarceration, or other harsh penalty that Yan introduced to justify the existence of prisons - from a society endangered by their existence. For literally everyone else, other modes focused on treatment, resolving the root causes, and rehabilitation are preferable precisely because felon status is an ineffective method of reducing crime.

I am skeptical that truly evil people exist, because I am skeptical as to whether free will exists, or whether we are all ultimately organic computers who's actions are driven by chemical reactions in our brains, in which case nobody ultimately chooses to do anything, good or bad, and the "evil" person is ultimately just a victim of nature- chance or fate, and their own malfunctioning brain biology. But we do know that there are people who are violent or abusive as a result of mental illness, and not all such conditions are, at present, reliably treatable. If you would (rightly) not sentence the mentally ill to exile or to death, or hold them responsible for their choices, but we are currently unable to reliably treat whatever is causing them to behave violently, then what alternative is available but to confine them, as comfortably and humanely as possible and only in the most severe cases, from the rest of society?

Yes, I am also skeptical of the existence of evil, and I feel people have taken this thought experiment to be something it's not and believe I'm advocating for it for a much broader group of people than our hypothetical truly unrehabilitatable, truly competent, truly 'evil' person who cannot be controlled in any way short of putting them in a box for the rest of their lives. The mentally ill are not subject to this penalty because they lack the capacity, and the solution to those who cannot be treated is not to confine them, but to give them guardians who ensure their safety and the safety of others while assisting them to lead as positive a life as possible.

Now, I'll note some abolitionists don't view mental hospitals as carceral institutions but I'm in the school of thought that does, as you can tell.

I would agree that a focus on treatment, root causes, and rehabilitation could potentially address probably upwards of 99% of crime, although there would have to be a transitional period of some years or decades as police forces and prisons were drawn down and resources invested in other areas.

There's not really any argument that a transitional period will be necessary in abolitionist literature - of course it will.

However, the fact is that there is likely a small number of incurably violent people (maybe we'll be able to cure them some day, but not yet). And any system of justice would have to take those people into account, not just hand wave their existence away.

Their existence isn't handwaved away, TRR. These people will fall into one of the following categories:
1. People who can be controlled through incentives;
2. People who can be treated through medication;
3. People who are neither, and are genuinely 'incurable' and too dangerously violent, who, except in rare cases, are unlikely to actually possess capacity.
4. People who are neither, who are genuinely 'incurable', and who possess full capacity.

Abolitionism engages with all 4 categories of person. The first two are poorly handled through incarceration - those who need medication and therapy are better treated than incarcerated, while those who can be controlled through incentives usually respond better to them than to punishment. The third category are a subject of much concern, and the 4th category are extensively debated with options ranging from 'assign people to watch them', 'small-scale prisons, I guess' through to 'shoot them'. I'm admittedly on the fringe with my preference for exile and outlawry, but abolitionists aren't handwaving them away.

And in practice, maintaining a minimal, humane system facility to contain these people would inflict less harm than establishing a system of exile and summary execution which requires unpersoning and fostering a societal indifference to human suffering in order to function, while allowing society to rationalize away responsibility for the consequences.

So, again, it doesn't foster a societal indifference to their suffering, since the exile occurs only at the end of every attempt to assist them. Nor does it 'unperson' them - their personhood is not denied them, but their protection as a member of the community constituted by the law is, by their own hand, rejected and this status is acknowledged. This does not mean they are not a human, not a person, but only that they are owed no obligations because they have themselves rejected every obligation owed to them, and are thus outside of and beyond the available scope of the law. Now we could get into whether they are unpersoned in a strictly legal sense, (they aren't, weirdly enough) but I somewhat doubt you meant person in the sense of persona.

I think that that combination of unpersoning/othering, societal indifference to suffering, and shifting of responsibility is what worries me most, beyond the immediate harms to the people who would be sentenced to exile or death (who might or might not be responsible for their fate). Its exactly the sort of thing that, however well-meaning in its inception, would likely create a society that would rationalize all manner of atrocities against a widening number of people.

So, again, there's actually no unpersoning. There is othering, but it is othering specifically and only for those who essentially declare 'yes, it's me, I am the man outside the system, I am the man who will kill and eat you if you do not kill me first', and it takes the form only of 'I am within the law' and 'I am not within the law'. Nor is there any shifting of responsibility or societal indifference to suffering involved in a system in which every effort is made to avert this fate - there is arguably the precise opposite to an indifference to suffering, as the confines of the premise can only be satisfied if comprehensive efforts have been made to control, rehabilitate, and treat the exceptional lunatic prior to acknowledging that they, with full capacity and by their own actions, have placed themselves outside the confines of law.

By contrast, a carceral state grants to the state the right to imprison and thereby torture people. In doing so it creates categories of unpersoning and othering ('convict', anyone?), and cultivates a deliberate air of indifference to suffering for those persons condemned to prisons and other carceral institutes. These dangers you've identified are not unique to exile, and in the context I've brought forth, are actually minimized compared to their presence in any carceral state, since the process of rehabilitation and treatment must occur prior to exile rather than concurrently with it as it would in a prison sentence. In the carceral model, rehabilitation occurs simultaneously with othering - in a sense to 'remove' the status of Other if it works (not that it actually works terribly well in practice for that) - but in the exilic model I put forth, it is only when rehabilitation is completely rejected that the person is given the status of Other.

There's a lot of practical problems in how such a system would relate to other countries. If all other nations practiced the exile system, then where would an outlawed person be able to go? If others did not, it is still unlikely that they would accept an "outlawed" person (albeit some might be able to apply for refugee status, as said policy would, as noted above, be a human rights violation under international law). So they would presumably be deported home and killed. If there was nowhere for exiled people to go, then you'd potentially see gangs of exiles forming on the margins of society, raiding and killing and forcing a military response to eliminate them.

There aren't nearly enough exceptional lunatics to form gangs of exiles. Again, people are missing the specific parameters of the thought experiment I've allowed Yan to indulge in, which are the 'evil' men who cannot possibly be redeemed - serial killers and serial rapists who cannot be controlled, reformed, rehabilitated, or treated, who have the full capacity to do so but refuse to. They form the most infinitesimal fraction of society by every available metric - a scattering of them across millions.

Now, as to the practical element for international relations: Whether all other nations practice exile is as irrelevant as if they don't. Where the person goes after they are an outlaw is not the concern of the legal system they have themselves rejected all protection under - perhaps New Zealand will be happy to give them a go, perhaps not, but that is no longer the concern of Australia because the person has declared it thus. If they are deported back to the country of exile because their actions are so objectionable to all nations, then they are, by their own hand, enemies of all mankind, and their death an inevitably wherever they go because of actions they willfully and voluntarily undertook.

Note, again, that we are not discussing any old person in our hypothetical, but specifically the depraved serial killer and murderer, the 'evil' man who is beyond any control, rehabilitation, or treatment, who possesses a rational mind and who uses and will only use it to continue to kill or rape despite every effort to induce them to stop - a category of person I do not believe exists.

Also, what about when the inevitable happens where a person was convicted, outlawed, killed, then later on was found to be innocent? Sucks to be them I guess?

One of the reasons why I oppose the death penalty in general, even via exile.

Indeed.

Personally, I am morally opposed to the death penalty as well, but the practical argument is sufficient even if one is theoretically okay with killing "deserving" people.

Opposition to the death penalty but advocacy for life imprisonment are inconsistent with an ethos of minimizing suffering.

For all the faults of the prison system, a wrongfully-incarcerated person can, at least potentially, be freed and compensated. The dead cannot. Further, no society is ever going to be completely immune to human error, so either we have to accept that a certain number of innocent people will, in all likelihood, be murdered by society for the greater good, or we must oppose the death penalty.

This is a much better basis than minimizing suffering, but at the same time, it is inapplicable to the premises under discussion. The nature of that premise is a person with capacity who has repeatedly taken provable action and cannot be controlled, rehabilitated, or treated. There is no meaningful possibility of innocence or wrongful sentencing in the thought experiment Yan has prompted precisely because these people will already have been subject to every other form of possible intervention and then continued to kill or rape.

[The Romulan Republic]

AOC is leading the charge among the Democrats, as usual- she has introduced legislation to ban the use of tear gas in the US, and has also pledged not to take police lobbyist money:

Here's a link if anyone wants to sign a petition expressing support for the teargas legislation:

https://act.democracyforamerica.com/sig ... vtshA2xdJE

[Jub]

I was curious and checked the case clearance rates for the Vancouver police department and fuck are they ever awful.

Overall they clear a weighted 27.5% of all cases they deal with. Unsurprisingly their best rate is drug offences at 68%, violent crime is 52%, other offences (because as you'll see in the reports below the cops literally can't be bothered to properly use the filing system developed to help them categorize crimes*) are cleared at 46%. Property crimes have a 13% clearance rate with a 7% conviction rate, murder is under 50% sitting at a mere 46%**, sexual assault clearance rates are 34%***.

So the police don't prevent crime, bat less than 50% on solving the crimes we'd most like them to solve, and do fuck all about property crime which is the single most common category of crime. I'm struggling to understand what the police are actually good for at this point.

*https://www.ufv.ca/media/assets/ccjr/re ... t_2012.pdf (Pages 10 - 13)
**https://globalnews.ca/news/3866025/vanc ... cide-rate/
***justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2019/apr01.html

[The Romulan Republic]

Canadian Parliament expels NDP leader (who is a person of color and first non-white leader of a major Canadian party) for calling a racist a racist:

https://cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-jagmee ... -1.5616661

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been expelled from the House of Commons for calling a Bloc Québécois MP racist and for refusing to apologize and withdraw his comments.

Speaker Anthony Rota kicked Singh out for the rest of the day after Singh called Alain Therrien racist for refusing to support an NDP motion dealing with systemic racism in the RCMP.

Singh tried to get all parties in the House of Commons to agree to a motion recognizing the existence of systemic racism in the RCMP. The motion points out that "several Indigenous people have died at the hands of the RCMP in recent months …"

The motion also asked MPs to support a review of the RCMP's budget, to demand that the RCMP release all of its use-of-force reports and to call for a review of the RCMP's tactics for dealing with the public.

Therrien was the only MP in the House who refused to support the motion — prompting Singh to call the Bloc MP a racist.

"It was this brazen act of one MP to not just say no but to say no loudly and to kind of gesture like this," Singh said later, waving his hand like someone trying to brush off a fly.

"In that gesture, I saw exactly what has happened for so long. People see racism as not a big deal, see systemic racism and the killing of Indigenous people as not a big deal, see Black people being the subject of violence and being killed as not a big deal, and in the moment I saw the face of racism.

"That's what it looks like when someone dismisses the reality that people are going through. And so I had a moment of anger in seeing that."

Moments after Singh made his remarks in the House of Commons, Bloc Whip Claude DeBellefeuille stood up to express her disapproval.

"I do not believe that a leader of a party can, here, treat another member of this House, call them racist because we don't approve the motion that was just moved. The NDP unabashedly is treating the member of La Prairie as a racist person and this is unacceptable in this House," DeBellefeuille said in defence of her colleague.

Singh stands by his words
Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes responded by saying that she would review the record because she did not hear Singh when he stood up and said, "It's true, I called him a racist and I believe that's so."

Singh was asked by Hughes to apologize. "I will not," he replied.

The matter was referred to Speaker Rota, who returned to the House and ordered Singh to leave the Commons for the remainder of the day.

At a press conference later in the day, Singh was asked if he would repeat his allegation against Therrien outside the House of Commons, where he is not protected by parliamentary privilege.

"Yes. I've said it really clearly. I repeat it really clearly," Singh said. "Anyone who votes against a motion that recognizes the systemic racism in the RCMP and that calls for basic fixes for the problem … is a racist, yes."

The Bloc Québécois issued a statement later in the day saying that "discrimination against Indigenous communities and cultural minorities is a major issue" but the public safety committee is currently studying systemic racism in the RCMP and it should be allowed to do its work.

"We consider it inappropriate to impose findings to a committee before it has conducted its study. We respect the parliamentary process," DeBellefeuille said in French.

"The NDP leader defamed the parliamentary leader of the Bloc Québécois with an unwarranted insult … He should apologize immediately."

Fuck parliamentary protocol.

I've been been on a couple web forums over the years which had rules against calling racists racists. Those rules, in my experience, tend to be portrayed as impartial enforcement of civility, but in practice invariably serve to facilitate bigotry, by allowing racists (and misogynists, homophobes, etc) to cloak their bigotry in obvious but not explicit dog whistles, while punishing everyone who calls them out.

I am also reminded of the insipid hand-wringing from Centrists after some Trump administration officials got heckled (not attacked, not threatened, just heckled) for locking little brown children in cages for the crime of living while brown and foreign. Because clearly, the lack of civility was the real problem, not the children in cages.

Fuck civility.

[The Romulan Republic]

Colorado passes the first major police reform bill since George Floyd's death, including an end to qualified immunity for officers in the state, new restrictions on the use of force, mandatory body cams with footage to be publicly available, requirements to report all stops and the ethnicity, race and gender of the suspect, and holding officers personally liable for up to 25,000 dollars for civil rights violations. The bill was sponsored by lawmakers of color, and written in consultation with the ACLU:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... d-immunity

Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) on Friday signed a sweeping police reform bill into law that includes the end of qualified immunity for officers.

The bill ends the legal doctrine that protects police officers from civil lawsuits, which some have argued gives cover for cops who use excessive force. The issue has gained national attention after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on him for nearly nine minutes.

BREAKING: @GovofCO has signed #SB217 into law. Colorado becomes one of the first states in the country to END qualified immunity as part of this historic comprehensive police accountability bill. pic.twitter.com/ZHCKRpSaGL

— ACLU of Colorado (@ACLUofColorado) June 19, 2020

“By facing the cold hard truth about the unequal treatment of Black Americans and communities of color, we can and we will create real change that will materially improve the lives of countless Americans of this generation and future generations,” Polis said before signing the bill. “And we can bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice.”

The sweeping Colorado bill also requires all state and local police wear body cameras by 2023 — with footage being made public — and bans chokeholds, shooting fleeing suspects and using deadly force unless a life is in immediate danger. It also requires officers to report every time they stop someone they suspect of a crime and record that person's ethnicity, race and gender.

The bill also asks cops to report their colleagues for wrongdoing, and will make officers personally liable for up to $25,000 in damages if they violate someone's civil rights.

The bill was led by State Rep. Leslie Herod (D) and sponsored by fellow Democrats state Sen. Leroy Garcia, state Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and state Sen. Rhonda Fields. All lawmakers are people of color, and they worked alongside the American Civil Liberties Union to craft the legislation.

This law emerged from the power of protest and a community that demanded change, from the boldness of Black and Brown leaders at the legislature, and willingness on both sides of the aisle to trust and listen to our Black and Brown leaders. pic.twitter.com/fcLd3tQLU7

Seattle police ban neck holds
The Hill's 12:30 Report: DC moves toward Phase Two of reopening
— ACLU of Colorado (@ACLUofColorado) June 19, 2020
The lawmakers said their law came in direct response to widespread protests demanding changes to police procedures in the wake of violent deaths of people in police custody.

Colorado is just one of many states passing its own police reform in response to protests, while Congress is expected to tackle the issue nationally in the coming weeks.

This is not, of course, anything remotely approaching a complete or perfect solution. But some of these steps, particularly the end of qualified immunity and holding officers personally liable, seem like a good step.

[Ralin]

Won't work. Cops can't be trusted to follow regulations and courts can't be trusted to punish them. We all know that body cams have a habit of breaking down when they would be inconvenient for the cops wearing them, and call me crazy but I feel like there are some privacy issues with making them publicly viewable.

[The Romulan Republic]

Won't work. Cops can't be trusted to follow regulations and courts can't be trusted to punish them. We all know that body cams have a habit of breaking down when they would be inconvenient for the cops wearing them, and call me crazy but I feel like there are some privacy issues with making them publicly viewable.

I think the extent to which courts will hold cops accountable depends on how much staying power the current movement has. For a long time, being "tough on crime" and backing the police was almost always a winning move politically, but right now, a sizable majority of the public is on board with at least some police reform according to polling. Politicians are people like any others, and while some are better and some are worse, most tend to want to keep their jobs, and if judges and DAs know letting off a cop is going to at best make it harder to get reelected, and at worst lead to riots, then more of them will start taking action. Some won't, the die-hard, committed racists and the ones in safe red districts, but some will have to, if only out of self-interest.

[MKSheppard]

murder is under 50% sitting at a mere 46%

Watch The FIrst 48 and you'll understand the same interpersonal dynamics leading to this.

[Jub]

murder is under 50% sitting at a mere 46%

Watch The FIrst 48 and you'll understand the same interpersonal dynamics leading to this.

The reasoning behind why the numbers suck isn't really my concern. My concern is that in any other field batting well under 50% would be grounds for your entire operation to be restructured. For the police, it leads to them getting new toys and continuing to shrug off external oversight.

[Aether]

This is not, of course, anything remotely approaching a complete or perfect solution. But some of these steps, particularly the end of qualified immunity and holding officers personally liable, seem like a good step.

But the police will be afraid of doing their jobs and letting the guilty walk free because they do not want to be sued. - Mr. Bootlicker

[The Romulan Republic]

This is not, of course, anything remotely approaching a complete or perfect solution. But some of these steps, particularly the end of qualified immunity and holding officers personally liable, seem like a good step.

But the police will be afraid of doing their jobs and letting the guilty walk free because they do not want to be sued. - Mr. Bootlicker

I kind of have to laugh at all the officers walking off their jobs or calling in sick in protest of not being allowed to assault, plunder and murder at will in the name of keeping us safe.

Like, they do realize that them all leaving their jobs is what the Defund side wants, right?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Lately I've been browsing the posts at ProtectAndServe, the cop/LE-specific subreddit community. It's pretty wild how out of touch they all are with everything that is going on. Like, it is literally an outside context problem for them to even begin to understand why people are upset with their institution, and they brush off any attempts at explaining to them. They really do earnestly believe that all of these protests are basically a bunch of dumb kids with no life experience being manipulated by "anarchists" who want nothing but chaos, and that using the harsh tactics they have been is not only the best and only viable way of going about dispersing them but that anyone who argues otherwise just doesn't understand how the world works. Remember that video that went viral a couple of weeks ago with the old man being pushed and his blood spilling out on the sidewalk while the cops ambled past? There wasn't a single cop on that sub that thought the police in that situation acted inappropriately, they unanimously agreed the cops were following correct "police line" procedure for crowd control and that the old man just should have known better than to approach them like that. It is quite literally a fascist cult.

[Ralin]

Lately I've been browsing the posts at ProtectAndServe, the cop/LE-specific subreddit community. It's pretty wild how out of touch they all are with everything that is going on. Like, it is literally an outside context problem for them to even begin to understand why people are upset with their institution, and they brush off any attempts at explaining to them. They really do earnestly believe that all of these protests are basically a bunch of dumb kids with no life experience being manipulated by "anarchists" who want nothing but chaos, and that using the harsh tactics they have been is not only the best and only viable way of going about dispersing them but that anyone who argues otherwise just doesn't understand how the world works. Remember that video that went viral a couple of weeks ago with the old man being pushed and his blood spilling out on the sidewalk while the cops ambled past? There wasn't a single cop on that sub that thought the police in that situation acted inappropriately, they unanimously agreed the cops were following correct "police line" procedure for crowd control and that the old man just should have known better than to approach them like that. It is quite literally a fascist cult.

Could you link some examples?

[Solauren]

And to what level to they confirm that it's a cop posting in this Reddit, and what percentage of the confirmed cops are posting? Could just be some trolls.

I doubt it, but still, it's something to keep in mind. Most government jobs I've been associated with do not let you talk about your work online much. Just in general terms. Cops are not supposed to discuss it much beyond common stuff at all. Posting shit like that, and it being traced back to you, backing of the force and union or not, can be grounds for immediate termination.

[Eulogy]

Most government jobs I've been associated with do not let you talk about your work online much. Just in general terms. Cops are not supposed to discuss it much beyond common stuff at all. Posting shit like that, and it being traced back to you, backing of the force and union or not, can be grounds for immediate termination.

Hah. Since when has a cop ever been punished for blabbing about their work, let alone all the beatings, murders, maimings, extortions, and other nasty shit that's been going on? It's very credible at this point about the rotten orchards being fascist cults.

[Solauren]

I guess it depends on the country/area. OPP officers (Ontario Provincial Police) have lost their jobs for stuff they posted on Facebook, (which is why my sister-in-law deleted her facebook profile when she became an OPP officer, better employed then slip up), and I know the RCMP monitors that too.

Hell, Canadian police organizations discourage you from having social media accounts because it can reveal information about you that could put your family in danger. Yeah, I know it's unlikely, but still.

Maybe it's just the US that is lax on that.

[Ralin]

And to what level to they confirm that it's a cop posting in this Reddit, and what percentage of the confirmed cops are posting? Could just be some trolls.

When I skimmed it earlier there was a prominent rule requiring people who identify as law enforcement to verify themselves and saying that they ban anyone who implies they're a cop otherwise. Not sure what verification means in this case.

[Solauren]

WIth-out knowing what verification means, I'd take things with a slight grain of salt. i.e "They're probably cops, but there's a chance some are not and are just being trolls". Then again, that's the possibility with any online group.

[Ziggy Stardust]

And to what level to they confirm that it's a cop posting in this Reddit, and what percentage of the confirmed cops are posting? Could just be some trolls.

I doubt it, but still, it's something to keep in mind. Most government jobs I've been associated with do not let you talk about your work online much. Just in general terms. Cops are not supposed to discuss it much beyond common stuff at all. Posting shit like that, and it being traced back to you, backing of the force and union or not, can be grounds for immediate termination.

The sub's rules requires any members to verify their LEO status with the mods (you have to send the mods a picture of your "agency-issued credentials" along with a handwritten note of your reddit username and the date of submitting the picture, which is the common method used on reddit for verification), and users are accordingly given flair next to their usernames that say things like "Verified LEO" or "Non-LEO member" and so on. They take impersonation of an officer very seriously and enforce those rules pretty strictly from what I can tell. And you can look back through the sub's archives and see the same posters were active on the sub for years before the recent unpleasantness, sharing generic cop stories about dealing with drunk people and so on. And the one person I personally know who is a cop is a long-time member there. In short, I see no particular reason to distrust the sub. Like any online community there are likely trolls, but I wasn't even talking about any cherry-picked comments in the first place, it's easy to scroll through a thread and see what the general consensus across dozens of different users is.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Could you link some examples?

I can see if I can find the threads about that specific incident, though it's a very active sub with users sharing various dumb memes and stuff so it is kind of annoying to wade through. It may have to wait until another incident goes viral that sparks a discussion.

[Tribble]

And to what level to they confirm that it's a cop posting in this Reddit, and what percentage of the confirmed cops are posting? Could just be some trolls.

I doubt it, but still, it's something to keep in mind. Most government jobs I've been associated with do not let you talk about your work online much. Just in general terms. Cops are not supposed to discuss it much beyond common stuff at all. Posting shit like that, and it being traced back to you, backing of the force and union or not, can be grounds for immediate termination.

The sub's rules requires any members to verify their LEO status with the mods (you have to send the mods a picture of your "agency-issued credentials" along with a handwritten note of your reddit username and the date of submitting the picture, which is the common method used on reddit for verification), and users are accordingly given flair next to their usernames that say things like "Verified LEO" or "Non-LEO member" and so on. They take impersonation of an officer very seriously and enforce those rules pretty strictly from what I can tell. And you can look back through the sub's archives and see the same posters were active on the sub for years before the recent unpleasantness, sharing generic cop stories about dealing with drunk people and so on. And the one person I personally know who is a cop is a long-time member there. In short, I see no particular reason to distrust the sub. Like any online community there are likely trolls, but I wasn't even talking about any cherry-picked comments in the first place, it's easy to scroll through a thread and see what the general consensus across dozens of different users is.

Edit: Assuming that all posters are actual cops and none of them are trolling (there is no reason why you can’t be a cop AND a troll after all) are you really suggesting that all cops in the US / worldwide are therefore fascists, or are you suggesting that particular reddit board is?

[bilateralrope]

The sub's rules requires any members to verify their LEO status with the mods (you have to send the mods a picture of your "agency-issued credentials" along with a handwritten note of your reddit username and the date of submitting the picture, which is the common method used on reddit for verification),

How easy would it be to fake credentials that would fool these mods ?

[Solauren]

Depends on the level of verifification of what's being sent.

Are the mods verifying what is sent to them? i.e Calling that local department/regional office/whatever, and going 'I want to confirm an officers identification he submitted to me?'

If they are, then next to impossible.

You'd have to get a hold of real ID and credentials, duplicate them, change the photo, etc.

Then, if the mods send the digital copies to the authorities, they can go 'no, the photo doesn't match', and now they have a face to run through databases to find the guy or girl impersonating a police officer.

And no one with the brains to do that, is going to do that just to hang out in an online discussion group.

So yeah, sounds like it's police officers, with at least some of them being absolute assholes.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Edit: Assuming that all posters are actual cops and none of them are trolling (there is no reason why you can’t be a cop AND a troll after all) are you really suggesting that all cops in the US / worldwide are therefore fascists, or are you suggesting that particular reddit board is?

Yes, I made a super serious academic claim that LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE cop in the ENTIRE WORLD is an irredeemable card-carrying fascist. That is precisely what I was doing. For real, dude?

How easy would it be to fake credentials that would fool these mods ?

However easy it is to get your hands on paper documentation that you are a cop and however easy it is to then convince a bunch of cops who get really pissed off when people impersonate cops that the paper documentation applies to you. But yes, technically, there is a non-zero probability that the entire subreddit is the work of one or many trolls who have done a convincing job pretending to be a community of hundreds of cops for the past 8 years.

I mean, why the fuck are some of you suddenly acting shocked and surprised and clutching your pearls about this? This is literally a 23 page thread about how the problems with the American police force and the need for some sort of change in our law enforcement system, and this is far from the first time in this thread or on these forums that comparisons have been made between the psychology of American policing and fascism. What the fuck do you think the police are saying when they talk about current events, anyway? That they are all sorry that all of this is happening and that they also support the need for change? That all of these violent mishaps are just misunderstandings being blown out of proportion by the media and that actual professional law enforcement officers would never do such a thing? It's like you all have selective amnesia right now.