Given the scale of police violence and brutality we have seen - in response to protests against police violence and brutality - all cops are bad cops. Which is a children's-book way of saying state-sponsored terrorists, at this point. — StreetlightX

I wonder if that whole "good cop / bad cop" dichotomy ought be rejected as bad framing, just like the good protester / bad looter dichotomy. It's about systemic violence, not individual merits. Anyone bringing up how "some cops are genuine good people" is missing the point. I hope we all agree people are people regardless of their job. Asking individual cops to be "better people" and speak up isn't going to work. The system must be such that ordinary people will speak up.

Nope, I mean "spend less money so there are substantially fewer persons playing the role of police officer" - get rid of beat cops. Make it a service you request rather than one that shows up to keep "order". — Moliere

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had on what social functions the current police fulfills, what functions it should fulfill, and which ones should be transferred to other kinds of institutions.

I don't know enough about American beat cops, in my experience with the police, they're mostly on beat so they can respond to calls from the area quickly. Not sure what else their job is besides "making people feel safe", which obviously doesn't apply to many black communities in the US.

We do as the Elite's please and your words follow suit. I came here in hopes to interact with great minds and indulge in the love for knowledge. some of you at least somewhere between the "everything is subjective, to the trapped in the day to day societal paved road of survival" not post ass whooping pulling your pants down asking "may i have another?" not making snow angels out of the regurgitation or Elites funneling the last morsels of our arbitrary right you imbeciles!! — ModusOperandi

Are you all right? That post is almost indecipherable.

More reform responses to the protests dripping through:

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-da-to-prohibit-officers-with-history-of-misconduct-from-being-hired/

"[San Francisco]: A resolution to prevent law enforcement from hiring officers with a history of misconduct was announced by District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Supervisor Shamann Walton on Tuesday. They are urging the Civil Service Commission to forbid the police department and sheriff’s department from making such hires."

Still barely anything. But this stuff is working.

Take a wee break. Watch this cartoon about some other black folks in another place with problems. It's the same shitty British Colonial legacy, but it has a different flavour. I think the white-man is less afraid.

A proposal: tie federal funding of police departments to incidences of use-of-force complaints, as assessed by a third party civil rights (i.e. non police) department.

With so many instances of being able to (re)consider his actions during those 8 minutes and 46 seconds and the possibility of asking for help from fellow officers or moving Floyd to the car, the continued stranglehold using his knees became premeditated during the course of those 8 minutes and 46 seconds. — Benkei

I have also been reflecting on what we are actually seeing.

Though your reasoning I think is completely adequate to establish first degree murder, it is an unsatisfactory explanation on the whole.

What I mean by that is that if we conclude we are seeing a premeditated murder, it seems completely implausible for such a desire to be formulated spontaneously. Though such a hypothesis maybe true, it is the least psychologically plausible.

If we entertain the hypothesis that the murder was planned before arrival on the scene, both the will to murder and the complicity of the other police, the events make much more sense. The accomplices are there to ensure the murder takes place without interference from bystanders nor other officers, not part of the conspiracy, that may arrive by accident (off-duty, other law enforcement agencies, other responders etc.).

The evidence for this is exactly consistent with what you describe in that there is otherwise no explanations for the actions we are seeing. It explains why there is no other plan pursued other than to wait for an ambulance, and explains why the suffocation was carried out for minutes after the victim is unresponsive (which is obvious to witnesses and can only be more obvious to someone in intimate contact with the victim).

We know that the victim and the murderer knew each other over an extended period of time.

However, in formulating this more plausible theory of why cold and deliberate actions would be carried out to murder George Floyd, there are further questions.

Although we have evidence that point towards a conspiracy by police officers involved, we do not have good evidence that the conspiracy was somehow contained to these officers to resolve a private dispute or retribution with George Floyd. The fact that the murder is carried out in daylight in front of witnesses and video and the fact that the "covering for" the murderers is institutionally pervasive (from the prosecutor, the judges, the coroner, without any meaningful intervention by higher levels of the judiciary or law enforcement), leads to the only intellectually satisfactory conclusion: that if we are witnessing a plan and not some bizarre series of coincidences, that the conspiracy involves the key elements of the justice system to ensure the murders are treated as lightly as possible, and therefore key elements of the justice system are also involved in the crime.

Since George Floyd has no institutional relevance (and again, if he did have some specific institutional relevance there are better ways to murder a specific person), the only motivation available of a larger conspiracy is to carry out a murder for the purposes of starting a race war.

If we entertain this possibility we notice an immediate congruency with several facts of the case that otherwise seem benign. First, the crime George Floyd is accused of is of using counterfeit currency: A crime easy to setup (just give him a counterfeit bill, or then give the shop owner the counterfeit, or just never have any counterfeit and just tell the shop owner to make such a call) and so it is entirely compatible with plan to setup the situation in which the murder can take place (if we had actual proof of George Floyd engaging in a crime or altercation under his own direction, it is of course then much more implausible that anyone could engineer that to happen or then design a plan predicated on the mere possibility that George Floyd "might" get himself involved with police; rather, if there is a setup it must therefore be for a crime that cannot, at the end of the day, be proved to have actually happened), but, furthermore, the nature of the crime renders it the jurisdiction of the secret service (who could take steps to guarantee the circumstances of the originating event would not be investigated), whom, within the span of three years, we may reasonably assume the President has selected, at least for his immediate entourage, the most fanatical, loyal and devoted members willing to carry out illegal actions if they are either ordered to or then come to the spontaneous conclusion themselves of what sorts of national events may play favorably to the reelection, or continued power by other means, of their employer. If such an enterprise was embarked upon, whether spontaneously or by some direction (or then the perception of an order that could also be categorized as incomprehensible speech although communicates a fundamental feeling and desire), we can reasonably assume that secret service members would have connections within the law enforcement community in which to identify the people and the department that could be entrusted with the task, the kinds of people required and the institutional setting within which they could know the legal consequences to themselves would be as minimal as possible (and, in any case, would be worthwhile for the good of the white race).

For, otherwise, it is simply bizarre that a 20 dollar note would motivate a murderer and several accomplices to murder in broad daylight (why would they decide to spontaneously kill, or then stand idly by, this particular black man for this particular crime), but for purposes of jurisdiction management within a wider law enforcement conspiracy it is entirely reasonable and fully consistent with such actions.

The presence of the counterfeit bill in the events places what we are seeing in 2 degree separation to the President and other white house officials.

Such a theory, though more evidence would be needed to prove it, satisfactorily establishes the motivation and the institutional means to explain the crime and transparently obvious cover up as it appears to us. George Floyd may have therefore been selected because of his heart condition as I posit in a previous post, and the exact plan of the murder designed to ensure that there is a strategy to minimize or avoid the consequences while also ensuring it is an obvious murder carried out in broad daylight with multiple camera angles that would be more than sufficient to insight violent and sustained protest.

If there were other motivations, private to the murders, to kill George Floyd, it seems unreasonable that they would decide to carry out the murder in broad daylight without even attempting to provoke some chaotic series of events difficult to or impossible to interpret clearly.

We know the President has the desire and the motivation to implement martial law, and we can reasonably surmise the secret police have both the intellectual and covert means to organize a crime convenient for the purposes.

Furthermore, as the protests unfolded (which is completely reasonable to assume in the formulation of such a plot) we have evidence (though again not proof) of police or otherwise intelligence or professional agent provocateurs that started the initial violence as well as completely unreasonable delay in any political actions that might calm the protesters (therefore, we have evidence that response to the crisis was already organized in such a way as to ensure a descent into the violence necessary for a race war for the purposes of rallying the white supremacy base as well as put soldiers in the streets as a necessary step towards suspending civilian rule).

I am of course open to analyse other theories, including that the will to murder was entirely spontaneous, however, given the wider context of: failed policies with regard to the pandemic and economic survival of ordinary people, the rise of organized white supremacist groups infiltrating law enforcement (which @StreetlightX points out is admitted to by the FBI and US Marshals), the prospect of electoral loss, it is not outside the bounds of reasonable historical analysis to consider the possibility of a Reichstag type event (knowing full well the truth of such events may never fully come to light). The purposes of considering such a possibility being that there maybe non-corrupt elements of law enforcement that may have the means to prove or disprove it and to do something meaningful with the information if it is the case, before it is too late to do so.

Here's a little more progress:

A proposal: tie federal funding of police departments to incidences of use-of-force complaints, as assessed by a third party civil rights (i.e. non police) department. — StreetlightX

That would have a big impact very quickly. But why would Trump ever do that?

But why would Trump ever do that? — Marchesk

Aie, there's the rub.

Systemic racism today is based on human prejudice, which has it's biological origin in the human way of finding problems and solutions and also on the societal structure and ideology of capitalism that the U.S is fueled by today.

If you play with the thought that black people are over represented in crime, it makes sense for humans/cops to identify that section as a more probable cause to the structural problems of crime that they're trying to solve, and therefor have a more destructible/aggressive approach towards it. However, police brutality is not something that black people face alone so this statement is not entirely true and lacking other variables.

How systematic racism came to be probably derives from the history of US slavery and the abolishment of it. After the end of slavery in America, black people probably didn't have the academic possibilities of gaining a medium or high class position in society so they took place in low class society as it were their only choice.
Life in a low class society creates prerequisites for a human to be more inclined to shift into a criminal life style and it's also hard to get out of which creates a slow momentum in their evolution.

I don't think it's easy even for the government to make a change for black people since it's all based on class indifference from a capitalism ideology. What are they going to do, cash out more paychecks, change to socialism welfare culture?

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see.

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see. — EpicTyrant

Should white people in the US rise up against themselves and really show the world they are ready to make a change and be left out of typical "white privilege" stereotype that you see on real footage of the real world? Would that be a remarkable human feat to see? If so, what would it look like to you?

I don't live in america so i can't look from a white persons perspective there. I don't think that white people necessarily see themselves as privileged, they just exist in whatever comforts that were given to them, and the majority of white people are not racist today. White people are making a change and have been trying to make a change if you look at people like Abraham Lincoln and his decisions. There are even successful black people today and there has even been a black president. If Martin Luther king lived today he would be joyful over how far black people have progressed and how much freedom they have been given in society.

The issue today is probably less about the color of your skin, and more about the structure of capitalism society which thrives on indifferences and it's all just a chain reaction since the time of slavery.

Theoretically, if every black person in low class society set their goals on making a better life for themselves in an honest way they would probably succeed. Unfortunately that's not in every black persons mindset.

It's great that white people are showing solidarity to black people with #BLM hashtags but it also overshadows white people that has suffered the same fate of police brutality, which probably make these protest more about showing solidarity to black people and their suffering in low class society than actual police brutality.

I don't live in america so i can't look from a white persons perspective there. — EpicTyrant

So why can you look from a black person's perspective there?

If you play with the thought that black people are over represented in crime, it makes sense for humans/cops to identify that section as a more probable cause to the structural problems of crime that they're trying to solve, and therefor have a more destructible/aggressive approach towards it. — EpicTyrant

How do cops solve a structural problem, especially with aggression and violence?

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see. — EpicTyrant

Didn't you just write that this is an impossible demand due to the structural discrimination they face?

I can try to understand it but i can't feel it. I can only make sense of how to live in this world based on the values and way of thinking that is passed on to me by my parents while raising me and the freedom of choice.

If i can imagine being a black person in low class society it would all largely depend on the values that were given to me by my parents. If my parents were absent and i were given too much freedom to absorb into it's chaotic society i would be tempted to turn into a criminal lifestyle.

If my parents had listened to Martin Luther king and teached me good values and given me a goal to strive for, it would increase my chances of becoming an unprejudiced black man accepted by society.

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see. — EpicTyrant

This is a nice sentiment but it partakes of the trope of the 'model minority' which is, at it's core, a racist one (to be as clear as possible, I'm not calling you racist, but the trope employed in what you said, probably unconsciously). You can read about issues with it here and here. The problem with it is that it ties race to action in a way not expected of others: white people are allowed to be trash human beings without it being tied to their race - why not black people? Perhaps the most freeing element for any race is to be able to be perfectly average or utterly flawed and not have those flaws and failings reflective of their 'race'. To not have to bear responsibility for an entire race just because one is black or any other skin color.

One measure of freedom from racism is: the ability to be an utterly awful failure of a human being and not have people pin that on to your race. Most white people don't have this happen to them. They can be garbage without it being said of them: 'ah, they're not very good representatives of white people, they're really letting down the white team'. It should not happen to black people either.

The cops only wants to do their job, and they're given many means to do them. Some cops choose a more destructive approach because it either feels safer for them or if they're lesser good by nature, and that aggression could be related to them being unprofessionally trained to deal with stressful situations so they use the destructive tools that was given to them. Cops should be more professionally trained.

I don't think that they suffer structural discrimination, more like structural deficiencies. They have the same rights as white people but harder prerequisites to abide by the core values of the white man.

Perhaps the most freeing element for any race is to be able to be perfectly average or utterly flawed and not have those flaws and failings reflective of their 'race'. To not have to bear responsibility for an entire race just because one is black or any other skin color. — StreetlightX

But this is a problem but it’s one that can be applied to whites as well. Whites are accused by blacks and whites of being “privileged” and being “privileged white males”. This is obviously not true of all white people or all white males but it’s a feeling applied by many to whites. So there appears to be a problem here that’s a human failing.

The cops only wants to do their job, and they're given many means to do them. Some cops choose a more destructive approach because it either feels safer for them or if they're lesser good by nature, and that aggression could be related to them being unprofessionally trained to deal with stressful situations so they use the destructive tools that was given to them. Cops should be more professionally trained. — EpicTyrant

How do you know it's individual cops "choosing" to be destructive rather than a system that encourages them to be destructive?

I don't think that they suffer structural discrimination, more like structural deficiencies. — EpicTyrant

What's the difference?

They have the same rights as white people — EpicTyrant

On paper, yes. But they don't appear to have the same rights in practice.

but harder prerequisites to abide by the core values of the white man. — EpicTyrant

What are the core values of the white man? What does it mean to have "harder prerequisites"?

This is a misunderstanding of what 'privilege' - a misnomer, I think - is meant to convey. Watch this to understand it.

Whites are accused by blacks and whites of being “privileged” and being “privileged white males”. This is obviously not true of all white people or all white males but it’s a feeling applied by many to whites. So there appears to be a problem here that’s a human failing. — Brett

I think you misunderstand what the theory behind white privilege claims: namely that all white people (in a given society) have white privilege, regardless of the other factors that influence their station.

I think it’s possible that the police force is not racist but that there are cops who dislike their job and the people they deal with until they reach the point where they have a hatred towards these people. It’s possible the job has damaged these people. Somewhere along the line they must have exposed what was happening but nothing was done about it. Those cops don’t have any others skills so they’re not likely to resign and look for another job, policing is the only thing they know. It seems to me there have been many examples of cops crossing the divide in a positive way. Obviously bad cops are more newsworthy and get more coverage. But what I’ve seen over the last week or so makes wonder about the idea that the cops are “racist”.

e — StreetlightX

Sure i can agree to that, but you forget about the heavy responsibilities of a white man. It is expected of a white man to be an achiever and to strive to reach higher goals.

We all choose to aim our empathy towards people we can connect with that share our same values, regardless of color.

I would probably put a low class society criminal black person in the same category as a "white trash" person.

They have the same rights as white people but harder prerequisites to abide by the core values of the white man. — EpicTyrant

The core values of the white man expressed in systematic racism, for instance?

It is expected of a white man to be an achiever and to strive to reach higher goals. — EpicTyrant

I don't think this is true at all.

I would probably put a low class society criminal black person in the same category as a "white trash" person. — EpicTyrant

'White trash', is, curiously, more about class than race, although it's obviously a racial concept. It's far more specific than your equation suggests.

I think racism, at its core, is the belief that human beings can be subdivided into races. Once those sorts of abstract aggregates disappear from thought it becomes impossible to treat them as members of it. I don’t think it’s a human failing so much as it is a rational one.

Yes I’m aware of that video. I don’t think that’s a convincing argument. Nor do I understand how a black could become a President in a racist society or Colin Powell serve in the government or Condoleezza Rice serve as Secretary of State. There’s obviously a clash of cultures between blacks and whites but I don’t think “systemic racism” is a good enough term to address the problem.

I disagree, but OK.

Thank you.

Why don't you think it's true? You can see it reflective in the societies that white man has created. It's all about advancements and making a life for yourself and to behave in a certain way which is expected of you. Your parents tell you to go to school and study, to obey the law and find love. There are many black people that follow these values themselves because they're at the foundation of a good life in this society and they suceed.

However, since many black people are born into poverty and gets more exposed to shitty parentship they are not given these values to be a an achiever and to strive after further goals, which further cements your descent into criminality.

That's why this is more a problem about class level society than race and color.

Why don't you think it's true? — EpicTyrant

Because I don't believe the drive to high achievement is specific to white people at all (which would mean what? Other people don't have that drive?). In fact, it simply isn't a generalizable trait for white people - or really any 'kind of people'.

Because I don't believe the drive to high achievement is specific to white people at all — StreetlightX

I’d agree with that. There is actually a very powerful black upper class who have success and influence. So that drive for success is not specifically white. Though it does appear to be that way and it makes one wonder why and how.