zlacker

>>mwseib+(OP)
"I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness... But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands."

Laws are just a consequence of an actual cultural change, and can only succeed (and not precede) the conversion of hearts and minds. Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker. We shouldn't conflate voting with "will of the people."

>>kajumi+5o
> Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker.

What else should you expect when people are limited to only two political parties? It could be worse with only one political party.

>>austin+ru
I think the real problem is that those two political parties represent factions of the population with incompatible values.

We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.

>>Press2+Yx
There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth. Even the openly racist people I know were saying it was fucked up.

>>Consul+ly
Yes, but the immediate aftermath of that showed deep disagreement about “what to do about that problem.” Leftists want to dismantle the “systems of oppression” they perceive produces that result. Libertarians want to get rid of qualified immunity and police unions. Conservatives are taken aback by the rioting and violence and for them the immediate need maintaining social order has overtaken the more long term desire to correct these abuses.

>>rayine+6g1
As normal, libertarians have the correct and rational solution to the problem :)

>>syshum+Jr1
Please explain how just dismantling unions is the correct and rational solution? I'm less inclined to believe in qualified immunity, but I can see that it is based on a legitimate concern.

>>Aviceb+2u1
1. police union contracts in major cities routinely include provisions that erase disciplinary records and obstruct meaningful discipline (let alone prosecution) of police officers who abuse their authority. [1]

2. the strong majority of these 656 contracts have a similar disciplinary appeals process. Around 73% provide for appeal to an arbitrator or comparable procedure and nearly 70% provide that an arbitrator or comparable third party makes a final binding decision. About 54% of the contracts give officers or unions the power to select that arbitrator. About 70% of the jurisdictions give these arbitrators extensive review power, including the ability to revisit disciplinary matters with little or no deference to the decisions made by supervisors, civilian review boards or politically accountable officials. [2]

3. We look at the roll-out of collective bargaining rights for police officers at the state level from the 1950s to the 1980s. The introduction of access to collective bargaining drives a modest decline in policy employment and increase in compensation with no meaningful impacts on total crime, violent crime, property crime or officers killed in the line of duty. What does change? We find a substantial increase in police killings of civilians over the medium to long run (likely after unions are established) with an additional 0.026 to 0.029 civilians killed in a county each year of whom the overwhelming majority are non-white. [3]

4. Recent academic research further demonstrates that police disciplinary procedures established through union contracts obstruct accountability and (as I noted in this post) collective bargaining for police officers appears to increase police misconduct. This is not surprising. Through collective bargaining, police unions demand protections from disciplinary procedures that would not otherwise be approved, oppose consent decrees and other measures to increase police accountability, and (given the power of police unions in state and local politics) they receive relatively little pushback. [4]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...

[2] https://crim.jotwell.com/the-power-of-police-unions/

[3] https://twitter.com/robgillezeau/status/1266834185055956997

[4] https://reason.com/2020/05/30/police-unions-and-the-problem-...

I could provide more as well, that was just a real quick look up of my bookmarks

Edit: 1 more source for good measure

[5] https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

  This  Article  empirically  demonstrates  that  police  departments’  internal   disciplinary   procedures,   often   established   through   the   collective   bargaining   process,   can   serve   as   barriers   to   officer   accountability.