The United Police States of America

[Long Run]

Wow, really good review of that issue, Guin. Thanks for posting. On a slight tangent, Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, is set during the Boston police strike of 1919 which explains some of the concerns that have lead to the union and its positions (and the book is just a good read).

[Guinevere]

Thanks Long Run, I added that book to my list. One can get Lehane-d out in this town, but it looks fascinating.

[eddieq]

Interesting perspective on civil service, Guin. I actually sit on my local Civil Service Commission. We have 5 officers on our local police force. However, only 2 are "full time" and really, only 1 since the chief is a political appointment and (I'm told) doesn't count against the CS requirement. So our commission exists, but we have no jurisdiction due to the lack of 3 full time officers. It always felt like our borough was skirting the requirements by hiring part time guys, but the officers are willing to come work without the benefit of CS and such. I believe at least two of them are retired from a larger force (three if you count our chief) so they are probably set as far as "real" income from their retirement.

[BoSoxGal]

Watch this:

[Guinevere]

Eddie - interesting! In MA, the Civil Service Commission is generally state level. The Appointing Authority is either the select board, town manager, mayor, city council, town council, or Chief, depending on the local form of government. The MA CSC generally hears complaints relating to hiring (appointments and bypasses), and some but not as much, discipline. Many contracts allow discipline to be grieved and resolved via arbitration, which is generally a more favorable forum, so thats how they roll (and a little preview of my arbitration issues).

[eddieq]

There is a state level civil service commission, but the PA title 8, chapter 11 establishes that each borough forms it's own civil service commission (Subchapter J specifically).

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/le ... =0&chpt=11

[liberty]

Since it appears no one is going to mention it I will do it: There is now a liberal idea to counter my plan to eliminate police misconduct. Instead of my idea of having a state-level organization that exclusively certifies and decertifies police and constantly searches for and deals with bad police the liberals have a different plan. The liberal idea is to defund and disband police forces. That is a great plan you guys in blue states get to get on right away. What could go wrong with that? But, who do you call when you have a missing family member.

[BoSoxGal]

This liberal idea has been done and succeeded - in Camden, NJ.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newswe ... %3Famp%3D1


I don’t think any reasonable person really expects to have a major city go entirely without police. But when a department is as corrupted by anti-citizen sentiment as the Minneapolis PD appears to be, given the remarks of its union leadership, disbanding it and starting from scratch seems like a good way to weed out the bullies and psychopaths. Everyone can reapply, but under new standards, new screenings, new use of force policies, new community policing priorities.

Seems very sensible to me. Now it’s up to the council and mayor of Minneapolis to make it work within their legal framework. Same with every other city in the USA that has a really messed up police department.

I certainly think, from my own experience, that police budgets could be cut back significantly and those funds diverted to social programs far more beneficial to the community. There is a ton of victimless crime that cops chase down every day and which creates unmanageable caseloads for prosecutors and public defenders alike. Do we really need to catch and prosecute so many traffic offenders? Be stopping and harassing people so we can catch every person carrying a joint? The policing policies that were put in place in the 90s and which have persisted make many neighborhoods feel like occupied territories.

Cops should be there for violent crimes and significant property crimes - though I’ll tell you from experience most unoccupied break-ins and vandalism cases never get solved, they get written up and the report is used for insurance claims purposes.

There are a lot of good ideas out there for police reform, we just need to break the stranglehold of unions and PBAs so we can experiment to find what works best in each community.

[Econoline]

Watch this:

That was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for posting that, Karla.

It's too bad that the people who most need to see that probably never will. But to the extent that we *might* be able to persuade someone who would otherwise refuse to listen to at least *TRY* hearing and learning from John Oliver (not to mention Kimberly Jones!) we each have to at least *try* to break through at least one person's resistance to change.

(Personally, I think I'm going to start my efforts with my conservative Republican brother in Atlanta. Even if he uses the video as an occasion to argue against its message, it might get him to at least start thinking about it....)



ETA: liberty, you ought to watch that video...at least the part (starting around 25 minutes in) where he talks specifically about what people mean when they say "DEFUND POLICE." It doesn't mean what you (and many other people) think it means.

[RayThom]

John Oliver said it all -- almost.

The denouement was one of the most chilling and compelling things I have ever heard.

Black Lives Matter

[liberty]

Watch this:

That was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for posting that, Karla.

It's too bad that the people who most need to see that probably never will. But to the extent that we *might* be able to persuade someone who would otherwise refuse to listen to at least *TRY* hearing and learning from John Oliver (not to mention Kimberly Jones!) we each have to at least *try* to break through at least one person's resistance to change.

(Personally, I think I'm going to start my efforts with my conservative Republican brother in Atlanta. Even if he uses the video as an occasion to argue against its message, it might get him to at least start thinking about it....)



ETA: liberty, you ought to watch that video...at least the part (starting around 25 minutes in) where he talks specifically about what people mean when they say "DEFUND POLICE." It doesn't mean what you (and many other people) think it means.

I can't, but I will try to find a transcript.

[liberty]

Watch this:

That was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for posting that, Karla.

It's too bad that the people who most need to see that probably never will. But to the extent that we *might* be able to persuade someone who would otherwise refuse to listen to at least *TRY* hearing and learning from John Oliver (not to mention Kimberly Jones!) we each have to at least *try* to break through at least one person's resistance to change.

(Personally, I think I'm going to start my efforts with my conservative Republican brother in Atlanta. Even if he uses the video as an occasion to argue against its message, it might get him to at least start thinking about it....)



ETA: liberty, you ought to watch that video...at least the part (starting around 25 minutes in) where he talks specifically about what people mean when they say "DEFUND POLICE." It doesn't mean what you (and many other people) think it means.

That is not defunding that is a reorganization. I don’t have anything against it and it might be a good idea; it all depends on how it is done. However, it is not going to stop police misconduct; it might reduce it and it might have an effect on racist motivated misconduct, but as long as people are powered by the government some are going to misuse that power. For example, more whites killed by the police than blacks. Do you think they all were justified?

[BoSoxGal]

No, of course not - many whites are also killed by police in circumstances involving excessive use of force and outright murder, and almost all of those police get off without being held accountable. You’d think that truth would only serve to broaden the resolve to reform policing in this country.

Defunding is a shorthand, an easy to remember (and chant) slogan that stands for a much more complicated process that needs to happen in our communities. And frankly, it’s a process that most police should support - since they often complain about the ‘social work’ they are far too often called to engage in. We need to take away (defund) a significant percentage of their funding and cut way back on their workload.

When someone is having a mental health crisis in our community, 911 should have a mental health crisis team to call in to that location - people with extensive training in mental health crisis deescalation, and who are not armed with guns and all too ready to use them on someone who is suicidal but not actually a danger to others.

When there is a domestic violence incident we should have a highly trained crisis team that can respond to that type of call. These are one of the most dangerous types of calls for cops and I believe a large degree of the danger is created by the escalation that happens when an aggressive cop comes into an already highly charged environment and ratchets up the tension.

When a kid with behavioral and developmental issues gets unruly at school, we should have properly trained child psychologists at the ready, and not be beating up and handcuffing 8 and 10 and 14 year olds and hauling them off to detention. Such a thing was unheard of in my youth, and needs to not be happening now - it shocks my senses when I see those kinds of cases reported in the news.

We also just don’t need cops out looking for crime. There is enough crime reported for them to respond to, and their focus should be on serious violent crime. The broken windows policing that started in the 90s has clogged the system and our jails and prisons with tens of thousands of nonviolent, victimless crime offenders whose lives - and families’ lives - get destroyed and ultimately costs us as a society far more, to imprison them and in the social costs of broken families. The war on drugs must end, and we must reinvest the associated massive funds now going to law enforcement and the prison industry into treating those with substance use disorders and providing alternatives in our communities to the hopelessness that drives so many into substance use to begin with.

[Scooter]

[Scooter]

[Scooter]

[Crackpot]

It is also a reasonable assumption based on its title.

Why do progressives have such a hard time with branding?

[dales]

Scooter would rather have police raise needed funds via the policeman's ball.

<snicker>

[Econoline]

How Apples Go Bad

An apple tree in bloom is a thing of majesty: armlike branches, held aloft in an eternal pose of praise (or perhaps exasperation), wreathed in a stippled cloud of blossoms. Bees rest on the flowers’ quivering stamens to sip their golden nectar, then move in drunken joy to another tree, their legs and backs powdered with pollen. When the pollen from one tree’s flower meets the pistil of the flower of another, a small miracle of creation occurs. Apples take months to grow: the fruit from a flower fertilized in April may not reach maturity until October or November. Only then will it begin to ripen.

All apples are born from members of the same species, Malus domestica, but, in a manner more familiar to us in Animalia than Plantae, their offspring don’t grow true from seed: the child of a round, speckled Winesap and a muscular Gravenstein might resemble one or both of its parents, or it might go off on a path entirely of its own. The calculated sweetness of a Honeycrisp, the astonishing ruby flesh of a Pink Pearl, the early ripening of a Carolina Red June, the bumps and warts of a Knobbed Russet—there are thousands and thousands of named cultivars and innumerable varieties unnamed.

Perhaps owing to these gonzo genetics, apples are remarkably susceptible to disease and rot. Their tender skin and light flesh are a haven for small creatures. Their trees embrace myriad molds, viruses, and fungi: apple scab, black pox, southern blight, union necrosis. For farmers and hobby gardeners, the business of apple-growing is not so much aiding the fruits in their growth as scrambling to ward off their demise. Blight spreads quickly, and it’s not always apparent on the fruit’s surface. Even without the influence of invader or infection, an apple abets its own spoilage: its skin, minutely porous, exhales ethylene, a gaseous compound that induces ripening, and the fruit has no interest in stopping at the point where it serves our needs.

The closer an apple is to rot, the more rot it spreads—one spoiling apple, in a crisper drawer or a fruit bowl, or a storage barrel or a cross-country shipping container, or even still hanging on the bough, speeds the rot of every apple it touches, and even of ones it doesn’t touch. The whole bunch quickly begins to exemplify what the artist Claes Oldenburg called “the brown sad art of rotting apples”: a swamp of ferment, infecting the air with the hideous sweetness of decay. Chaucer was likely the first to write a version of the now commonplace proverb: “A rotten apple’s better thrown away / Before it spoils the barrel.” But I’m partial to Benjamin Franklin’s version: “The rotten apple spoils his companions.” The saying is often used to refer to the corruption of select individuals within a group. But the point is the fruit’s susceptibility to collective rot.

“We are in the war zone against this disease,” George Sundin, a fruit-tree pathologist at Michigan State University, said in 2019, about fire blight, the most recent major threat to apples. The process of eradicating it “is not necessarily trial and error,” he added. “It is things we know are effective, but they need to be more effective. If the disease takes off, it can spread so quickly.” The only way to avoid rot is to be proactive: check every apple, every tree. At the first sight of something amiss—a bruise or broken skin, a sunken place—toss that apple out, but don’t stop there. Scrub all the others and monitor them closely, but know that it’s likely already too late. Better to trim and burn the infected branch, or even the whole tree.

[BoSoxGal]

The House is holding hearings today on police reform; can’t believe I had to switch from MSNBC/CNN to FOX NEWS in order to see the second speaker when both of the former networks switched immediately to commentators to basically reiterate the points that George Floyd’s brother made in his opening 5 minute testimony.

The one massive drawback to YouTubeTV is it doesn’t carry CSPAN channels.

And now even FOX has left the testimony after the second speaker on the panel.

Why do these commentators think we want to hear them yap yap yap ?