New Cop Controversy...

[Lord Jim]

I was somewhat reluctant to post about this, out of concern that I was just going to be inviting yet another round of generalized cop bashing from our resident cop bashers...(I'm not going to mention any names; you know who you are... )

But I thought it raised some interesting and important issues that were worthy of discussion:

Philadelphia, St. Louis police departments roiled by racist and hateful Facebook posts

(CNN)The police departments of Philadelphia and St. Louis are taking action following allegations that officers posted hateful or racist content on social media. In Philadelphia, 72 officers were taken off the streets and placed on administrative duty, and in St. Louis, 22 officers have been barred from bringing their cases to the Circuit Attorney's Office.

The social media posts were compiled by The Plain View Project, which describes itself as a "database of public Facebook posts and comments made by current and former police officers from several jurisdictions across the United States."

"When a police officer's integrity is compromised in this manner, it compromises the entire criminal justice system and our overall ability to pursue justice," Gardner said in the release. "After careful examination of the underlying bias contained in those social media posts, we have concluded that this bias would likely influence an officer's ability to perform his or her duties in an unbiased manner."

The office is currently not prosecuting cases where these officers serve as primary witnesses. Circuit attorney spokeswoman Susan C. Ryan said she does not know how many cases that affects.

CNN has reached out to the St. Louis Police Officers' Association and is waiting to hear back.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner put the 22 officers on her office's exclusion list this week, her office said in a news release.

Earlier this month, Philadelphia police launched an investigation into a public database of social media posts by officers that included Confederate imagery, anti-Muslim sentiments, violent rhetoric and racist comments.

As the investigation is underway, the officers have been taken off of street duty, but are still reporting to work.

An independent law firm will assist with the ongoing investigation, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said Wednesday at a press conference. The department plans to review each post to see if the speech is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, he added.

"If the speech is determined to be protected, no further action will be taken," Ross said. "An example would be an opinion on a matter of public concern that may be unpopular ... but does not include threats of violence or pejorative language against any protected class."

In addition, the Philadelphia Police Department will consult with the Anti-Defamation League and review its social media policies. The department aims to provide an update regarding disciplinary action in the next couple weeks.
Ross said that these posts are "disturbing, disappointing and upsetting."

"They will undeniably impact police community relations ... there's no question that this puts us in the position to work even harder than we already do to cultivate relationships with neighborhoods and individual groups that we struggle to work with, even those that we have great relationships with," Ross said.

"Our officers are entitled to due process just like any other citizen," Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5 President John McNesby said in a statement. "We will support and represent those officers during this overly-broad social-media investigation."

"Far too many officers have been taken off the street during a time of increased violence in our city," the statement said.

The Plain View Project combed through thousands of posts from officers in eight jurisdictions in the United States.

Some of the accounts have since been deleted, but the Plain View Project provided screenshots of the posts.

Since 2017, the group has compiled more than 5,000 posts from current and former officers, both in big cities such as Dallas and in smaller jurisdictions like Lake County, Florida.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/phila ... index.html

Okay...

The first thing I'd like to do is add a little context and perspective to these numbers:

The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) is the nation's fourth largest police department, with over 6300 sworn members and 800 civilian personnel.

https://www.phillypolice.com/about

Our workforce is made up of over 400 civilian employees and 1,300 sworn officers

https://www.slmpd.org/

So while 72 and 22 police officers respectively being caught up in this is COMPLETELY unacceptable, it's important to bear in mind that this is still a very small percentage, and in no way indicative that the cities of Philadelphia and St. Louis are awash in a sea of racist and bigoted cops...

And from the extent of the investigation it conducted, it looks like The Plain View Project did a pretty thorough job...

This particular CNN article doesn't have any quotes, but I can say that from the ones I have read in other articles and seen on cable news, all of the officers who posted the quotes I've seen are fully deserving of suspension and investigation...(Of course I have no way of knowing if the quotes I've seen are a fair representation of what was posted in general, or if they were picked by the media to highlight specifically because they were they were so offensive and egregious...)

Another very important aspect to this is how these lame-brained posts may jeopardize prosecutions of criminal cases involving these officers, and the serious damage to public safety that this could represent...(Even folks who are generally supportive of the police...like myself...should certainly be angry with these officers about that...)

[RayThom]

72 "rotten apples" in Philly?

Pfft! There's much more from where they came.

[ex-khobar Andy]

You're right it raises a lot of issues. I went to the site last night but it's just the database and the investigation itself was elsewhere.

Two things. If 1% of officers (approximately) are so stupid that they post these thoughts onto their SM accounts - publicly viewable - you can bet that there are others with a few more brain cells who hold these views but are smart enough not to make them public. Secondly I suppose that we have all come across racist/sexist/general intolerants who assume that the rest of the world are like them and casually announce these feelings expecting a receptive audience. If I recall correctly from my younger days it was generally in pubs or bars and one could blame the alcohol in part; but I've been surprised by, for example, a taxi driver who burst into some intolerant rage expecting some sort of agreement from me and being offended at getting none.

So I'm with Ray - tip of iceberg. Luckily still a minority, even a small minority, but who knows what is real now in the days of Trump and Boris Johnson.

[BoSoxGal]

It’s not just a few cops in Philly:

To Protect and Slur

Hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers from across the United States are members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook, a Reveal investigation has found.

These cops have worked at every level of American law enforcement, from tiny, rural sheriff’s departments to the largest agencies in the country, such as the Los Angeles and New York police departments. They work in jails and schools and airports, on boats and trains and in patrol cars. And, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting discovered, they also read and contribute to groups such as “White Lives Matter” and “DEATH TO ISLAM UNDERCOVER.”

The groups cover a range of extremist ideologies. Some present themselves publicly as being dedicated to benign historical discussion of the Confederacy, but are replete with racism inside. Some trade in anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant memes. Some are openly Islamophobic. And almost 150 of the officers we found are involved with violent anti-government groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.

More than 50 departments launched internal investigations after being presented with our findings, in some cases saying they would examine officers’ past conduct to see if their online activity mirrored their policing in real life. And some departments have taken action, with at least one officer being fired for violating department policies.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Interesting piece, BSG.

It's all disturbing (the mildest word I could find) but this was especially so:

While Facebook vows that it prioritizes meaningful content, its algorithms also appear to play a role in strengthening biases. The more extreme groups we joined, the more Facebook suggested new – and often even more troubling – groups to join or pages to like. It was easy to see how users, including police officers, could be increasingly radicalized by what they saw on their news feed.

Like most people I have a Facebook account but I use it very passively. Occasionally I get notification that one of my tuned-in friends has posted something and I take a look and even sometimes add a comment. I have no idea how you join a FB group and my active engagement with social media pretty much starts and ends with you lot. But those younger than us - our children - have this world to deal with. There were certainly those who opposed the printing press on the grounds that it was the thin end of the wedge and pretty soon ordinary people would be able to read stuff which had not been approved by the Church. (I'm obviously Eurocentric on this but I think that there were similar concerns elsewhere.) I'm sure there were others who opposed the telephone for similar reasons and yet it survived. Facebook itself may not persist but the door they opened will stay open. We all need to understand how it works because that's how life is, nowadays.

I have noticed with Firefox, my default browser, that when I open a new tab there are icons for my 'top sites' - four or five newspapers, CNN, Google, YouTube and PlanB. There are also three stories which some algorithm somewhere has picked for me. Until recently these were usually rehashes - if I had clicked on an item about Mount Everest in one newspaper, it might find another piece about the Himalayas from elsewhere. But recently these picks have evolved to items maybe aligned with what I had been reading but which might present a parallel or competing view or even a very different aspect. I might click on one in five of these suggested pieces, but that's a lot more than it was six months ago.

What I'm getting at is that AI, which surveys our preferences, is getting better at predicting what might interest us. I don't have a problem with that in the sense that when someone - even someone here - says "This might interest you" I usually take a look. After all, I think I can assume that if a friend recommends something - a book, an article, a movie, a restaurant - s/he knows me and my taste and genuinely thinks that I would enjoy said book etc. It's not hard to imagine AI in the services of Shitty Restaurants, Inc. (SRI.) The algorithm gets to know my tastes and recommends me to a decent place down the street. Fine. Next it suggests somewhere a little pricier and again, it has done its job and I enjoy the evening. It does this for a couple of months and I am impressed with its recommendations. Then it tells me about the local franchise of SRI and all enthusiastic and lulled into that false sense of security off we go. By the end of the evening they have relieved me of $100 and I am perhaps a little wiser.

Maybe.

[Bicycle Bill]

When you consider that the ranks of the police, just like the ranks of the military, or firefighters, or EMTs, or teachers, or even the legal profession, are drawn from the general population of the United States. it is only logical to expect that all shades of social viewpoints, religious doctrines, and political leanings will be reflected within these groups, just as it is in the civilian workforce.  I'm sure there are bigots in police forces, just as I am sure there are creationists teaching school, flat-earthers manning the ambulances or firetrucks, and religious fundies that have been admitted to the bar, and until you can figure out some way of modifying an individual's personality to eliminate any traits that are considered to be 'undesirable', in effect making an automaton out of them — and getting enough people to go along with and accept this policy of the radical alteration of another human being's individuality in order to make them "fit" for a job — you will always have them.

-"BB"-

[Long Run]

Like most people I have a Facebook account but I use it very passively. Occasionally I get notification that one of my tuned-in friends has posted something and I take a look and even sometimes add a comment. I have no idea how you join a FB group and my active engagement with social media pretty much starts and ends with you lot. But those younger than us - our children - have this world to deal with.

The use of social media for political purposes gets all the news, but the vast usage is as you suggest, personal and generic stuff: nice pictures, updates on family and friends, travel, etc. In my social group, about 80% of pages have zero or very limited political content; but there is that 20% that use their page as a soapbox which, of course, only the like-minded sub-group of the 20% listen to, as everyone else tunes them out (stops following). As for format, FB is terrible at having any kind of involved discussion; our BBS format is far better for a reasonable exchange of thoughts.

You have to be invited to join a FB group, and most groups are things like alumni pages, parents of kids sports teams, and other social categories to provide information and help keep a real life group organized and operating. I know there are groups that focus on politics, and they get all the attention, but they make up a fraction of the FB groups. As for age of users, FB is heavily used by those in the 35-70 age range, as those who are younger have migrated to other social media.

[BoSoxGal]

The New York Times just did a magazine cover story on the radicalization of a young man via YouTube - it’s worth reading to understand how social media algorithms can be very, very dangerous.

The Making of a Radical

[RayThom]

Oops!!

Look what happens when a black man knows the law.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1142503528188919808

[BoSoxGal]

The ranks of law enforcement and the military have long been known to include a disproportionate number of right wing conservative white supremacists - they’re intentionally infiltrating these agencies to get weapons and combat training and to know how law enforcement operates. It’s also a very comfortable environment for bullies and sex offenders, both being fairly rampant in the military and far too common in law enforcement, too.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.or ... nforcement

[Bicycle Bill]

Oops!!

Look what happens when a black man knows the law.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1142503528188919808

After watching and listening to that clip, I would like to know when the three-letter word meaning 'to request an answer' became 'aks' (or 'axe') instead of 'ask'.  It used to be just an Ebonics/pidgin-English sort of thing; but I've noticed more and more people of all races and educational levels are now using this particular permutation of the word.

-"BB"-

[RayThom]

...After watching and listening to that clip, I would like to know when the three-letter word meaning 'to request an answer' became 'aks' (or 'axe') instead of 'ask'.  It used to be just an Ebonics/pidgin-English sort of thing; but I've noticed more and more people of all races and educational levels are now using this particular permutation of the word.

Hmmm! Very interesting. Maybe that's why the cop let the unsuspecting civilian go without a fight and/or arrest.

I guess I need to axe myself if racial tension is fomented more on the basis of bad grammar, or authoritarianism.

Wouldn't that be something?