> I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place
> The media coverage of it is WILD
> People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground
> There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys last night and they were so proud of what was built because they felt like they fought for it, which in a sense, they did.
Curious, since I can't trust news media to not sensationalize this:
What has been built, according to your friend? Have they set up infrastructure of some sort for housing people? Kitchens, latrines, etc?
I suspect they'll all just get bored at some point.
I don't know, it's like a massive catch-22. People are sick of police abuses, but society needs police to some extent. I agree with much of what the protests are about, but struggle with their solutions.
If you watch YouTube channels like Donut Operator where people do police breakdowns, a lot of people .. really do deserve to get shot. Body cameras also make it way easier to get rid of police who are psychos who shouldn't be on the force, and can help push back against police unions.
Body cams are great solutions, and we're already seeing departments firing people who turned them off in bad faith (mostly due to these protests). Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles?
I think there were already a lot of positive changes, and this whole set of protests may give us more. By disbanding or defunding the police is an absolutely crazy idea, that I think the vast majority of Americans do not support.
I get it. I hated cops in my 20s. I hated speeding tickets and saw friends get busted for pot and minorities get pulled over a lot. But a lot of that changed via policy. Pot is less of an issue in many places, and legal in several states. As far as people calling the cops on people (one of my good friends, black, had a neighbour call the cops on him, while he was jogging in his own neighbourhood, where he was a home owner)... yes that's racism, but not from the police; from a person in his community. That said, I have seen neighbours pulled over and searched in Cincinnati and it seemed like it was totally because they were black in a cheap car. shrug
I no longer hate cops. I've seen some do really amazing things for people they didn't need to. Yes there are probably 8%~10% that are psychos and I think most officers wish they could get rid of those people from their ranks too, but hating police just for hating police is childish. All these people calling for disbanding feel like they're just children.
Shootings aren't the only abuse. When a cop shoots their weapon, there is a bunch of paperwork, body cameras get reviewed, lies have to be created to cover it up, etc etc.
Lesser forms of violence get little or no scrutiny. The officer who killed George Floyd didn't have didn't have any problem with sitting on his neck for nearly 10 minutes and his partner didn't see fit to stop him even though the 2 rookies with them and multiple witnesses tried (verbally) to get him to stop. It's pretty clear the Floyd arrest was not that unusual for this guy.
The other big problem is "Discretion". Cops are encouraged to pull people over for random things and what happens after people get pulled over varies greatly based on who you are. If you are black, a broken tail-light pull over can quickly turn into a vehicle search and escalate from there. This hasn't improved either.
> Yes there are probably 8%~10% that are psychos and I think most officers wish they could get rid of those people from their ranks too,
The problem with the "Bad Apple" theory you espouse is that in so many cases the other officers at the incident, the police department, and the union are perfectly willing to circle their wagons and cover up for the Bad Apples. Cops refusing to stop bad cops and lying to protect them is super common. It's become clear that so long as cops are policing cops, the bad apples will remain.
> but hating police just for hating police is childish. All these people calling for disbanding feel like they're just children.
I suspect the people who hate cops, hate them for a good reason. Likewise, I suspect the people who call for disbanding cops honestly feel like it's the best solution to a difficult problem. Yes, some cops do amazing things for people... but for a lot of people an encounter with the police is literally the most dangerous experience of their lives. In order to address this problem, you need to fix that last bit or we're going to see this problem over-and-over again.
