99% of Canadians are sitting here wondering WTF is wrong with you guys and hoping you get your shit together. We're offering you all the support we can, but damn, some shit you just have to fix yourselves. Here's the internal company communications coming from our CEO: Everyone – We’re not in anything even approaching a normal time. And, I find I wake up these last few days feeling sad, disappointed and angry with my fellow humans. We’re better than this. What happened last week in Minneapolis is simply horrible. It should not have happened. It seems the result of decades of inattention to racism and lack of protection for the Black community. As a nation, and perhaps as a planet, we’ve not even begun to tackle the tough, underlying problems that make these individual horrible incidents possible, and sadly, all too frequent. I know we all stand in solidarity with George Floyd, his family and for those who have suffered a similar fate in the past. Disappointed, sad, angry. We are better than this. I am sure many of you feel the same. Feeling betrayed by this happening again, and worried this incident will be swept under the rug of history, like so many similar tragedies in the past. But, I think we can do something. First, we can reach out inside of <our company>. Reach out to your colleagues to talk about it. Consider joining one of <our company's> Employee Resource Groups as a member or supporter and ally. You can also make use of some of <our company's> programs. At <our company> we’ve launched programs on Diversity and Inclusion. We talk about Empathy, Respect and Opportunity. And, of these, Empathy and Respect are most critical when we’re going through a time of crisis. We have a long road ahead of us on D&I and Empathy / Respect / Opportunity. We have much progress to make. I know we’re all dedicated to ensuring that happens at <our company>, in the right way. We will be setting up a series of 90 minute conversations on Zoom later this week to provide a safe place to talk, and find and support those most impacted at <our company>. We’ll send out info on this shortly. I don’t have any answers today. I wish I did. As you enter this week, I have one request: A moment of silence and recognition for George Floyd, his family and for those that suffered a similar fate in the past. And, as you go about your week inside of <our company>, take an extra moment to be sure to show the empathy and respect all our colleagues deserve. So yeah, our cities aren't impacted, but we're feeling it on some level.
Admittedly, I have not paid too much attention to the entire situation until this morning. Cutting through all the bullshit, do we know (for a fact) that the murder of George Floyd was racially motivated? Was there something specific the cop said? Does this cop or the department have a history of brutality or unfairly persecuting black people? Did he have a history of terrible things posted across social media? Or is this the a resultant effect of the prior incidences around the country over the years?
We had had tentative discussions about getting back into the office on a limited basis now that things are starting to reopen. This morning I found a pic of one of the shops near our business sitting on their roof with rifles, so uh... yeah, we'll continuing working from home for now.
The Minneapolis police have a horrible recent history, their union is possibly the worst in the country, the cop has 18 complaints against him before this, and this is most definitely a result of police being terrible to people everywhere in America. The first places outside Minneapolis to get aggressive protests were Denver, NYC, LA, and Louisville which all have bad police departments. So people are fed up. They were first asked nicely (about two hundred times) then they were ordered to improve and got worse, so now fire is the negotiating tool. People take the blame for the looting, but cops get the blame for the rage.
No evidence of overt racial motivation for this particular murder, it's more a culmination of disparate treatment over a long period of time with this being the straw that broke the camel's back. The officer in question had a sizable number of complaints in his file, but their exact nature is at this point unknown (at least I haven't seen any details reported).
I've seen something circulate with pictures of the other officers involved. The knee in the neck guy was the only white officer, one was black, one Latino, and the Asian. I haven't fact checked that.
And, those two were brothers-in-law, which makes the whole thing weirder. The white cop was married to his (Laotian) sister. I don't know if he was/ is racist. I think maybe he was just negligent and unsympathetic to Floyd's pleas. The three of them were subduing him, and the white cop thought he was doing his part. He was clearly poorly trained and bad at that part of his job. It is a tragedy, and it certainly appears all of them need to be held accountable for Floyd's death. But, I haven't seen anything yet to indicate this particular incident was racially motivated.
Dude those complaints are meaningless. People file them all the time like candy and most of the time it is over exaggerated or outright bullshit. When ever police departments deploy body cameras for the first time these complaints drop by 50-60 percent. He had slightly more than average, like one or two over the norm. Since this is a weak argument it’s usually tied to his use of force when he smoked the dude with a knife who had been stabbing people. Probably why the grand jury didn’t indict and Amy klobuchur didn’t press the case. I don’t know what people expect her to do in that instance.
I don’t have time right now to get too much into it but the issue isn’t simply whether this cop was going around looking for a black person to kill or said something overtly racist. It’s the difference in how the situation is handled when the person being detained is white versus black. Comparing a video going around a week or so ago where a white guy attacked an officer with a knife and was detained without being killed as opposed to situations like George Floyd.
Why do the complaints drop when body cams are deployed? Do people not file as many unsubstantiated complaints or so officers act differently when they know its being recorded?
I don't disagree with that. I was simply trying to reply to Juice's specific question about whether or not Chauvin's actions were racially motivated. Also, since my original response, I saw this https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html . In that store footage (with clarity added by the narrator), Floyd is in the back seat of the car, and Chauvin pulls him out and onto the street. I have no idea why.
Wasn’t that in California? Do people not realize that police departments operate independently of one another, by-jurisdiction?
Seems like another reason body cameras should just be mandatory for all police departments across the country.
I don’t know what state it was in but your point stands unless it was in Minneapolis. But in that case you can look at every incident as a one off since it’s not an experiment and you can’t perfectly replicate a situation and just replace the “offender” with a white guy and then a black guy and see how it’s handled differently. So the only option then is to compare with the information you have and what you’re seeing as well as data on how these situations are handled. And the people on the side of needing police reforms will point to things like stop and frisk overwhelmingly targeting minorities (citation needed) or other analysis of the data has been done and say that it seems to not matter whether it’s Minnesota, California or Texas the results seem to be similar
If you're curious why people are rioting in LA after a man was shot in Minneapolis, it's due to things like this: https://twitter.com/TheStolenBeer/status/1267093331449909248 USC has already returned her money and revoked her season tickets. Of all the things I've seen so far, somehow the twitter feeds of people who work for police unions have managed to be the worst.
I'm pretty sure it's because they are on their best behavior when the cameras are rolling. I can tell you right now that the Texas State Troopers used to act a lot differently in the '90s, before they had dash-cams.
Someone on my FB feed posted a meme about running over protesters that are on the freeway. No big deal right, except that guy is a cop. And not just any cop, a fucking detective.
So celebrity coroner (what a country!) Michael Baden did a separate autopsy and found he DID die from asphyxiation. You wonder how two autopsies can be that different? I’m wondering why at least the cop on the middle of Floyd’s back hasn’t been charged yet? You think it’d be an easy extension of the same manslaughter charge.
See? He cannot breathe without expelling toxic bullshit. Some people become cops simply so they don’t have to be serial killers. Fuck that retarded clown. They’re also rioting in LA because shit like THIS happens and and the fucking punishment one month later is “desk duty” ...tell me something, folks. What in the FUCK is there to investigate in that video? Fire him, and arrest him for felony aggravated assault. But no, instead he continues to collect a paycheque. Fun fact: this cop has killed people before.