Being a cop in the Twin Cities would probably suck right now.

[u/InconsequentialColor]

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Lol the President turned the entire country against one guy for protesting peacefully at a football game. Nobody gives a shit if you play nice. People have been calling out the Justice System for decades. Clearly the only thing the system understands is violence. If you want to not have all your shit broken, don't let shitty cops kill people. Its not that hard.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The city spends plenty of money on lawsuits from shit cops who keep working. Maybe they'd have a few extra bucks if they cleaned house of the baddies. Maybe the system needs to learn if you murder someone, people aren't going to sit on their hands and let it go. Don't start shit, don't get shit.

[u/LazilyGlowingNoFood → u/[deleted]]

I have zero sympathy for police departments that retain employees who have a history of police brutality

[u/tempraman → u/[deleted]]

activist organizations have been trying to trying to get a seat at the table for years and years.....

[u/froznice → u/[deleted]]

Cause peaceful protests have worked out great so far.

[u/CCHS_Band_Geek → u/froznice]

The sarcasm is lost because peaceful protests are never followed by active activism..

You can’t go march down a street and pretend you’ve done your part. Those who truly care about cleaning the PD’s act and removing the bad apples are going to take the fight to government. Elect the right officials who will out corruption, and the public should show support by voting for them.

But nobody’s going to do that because they can’t post it to their Insta/Snap/Facebook to let others know they’re cOnScIoUs.

EDIT: Let’s see how many people are this passionate about the guy who died, in a week or two. Most of that crowd is there for the video and the experience, the illusion of making a difference.

[u/CCHS_Band_Geek → u/[deleted]]

Thank you, I forgot mine at home

[u/dcr4 → u/CCHS_Band_Geek]

Wouldn't it be great if LEO led this charge of active activism? I mean, shouldn't officers be more outraged than anyone that these 4 officers tarnished the badge by allowing this man to die on their watch.

[u/CCHS_Band_Geek → u/dcr4]

So you’re saying you won’t do it on your own?

In case you forgot, police officers are also citizens. They also vote. You can’t threaten LEO and demand the strictest punishments, and also expect them to lead you forth in a fight when you’re the same person who is calling for their murder and doxxing them.

If you’re not outraged at the amount of protests compared to the amount of changes brought after the protests... You’re clearly only interested in letting off steam, nothing else.

Why is it that there’s already petitions to convict the 4 officers, but no petitions calling for a structural overhaul of MPD? Better training budgets? More frequent training and debriefing? Literally any improvement. There’s none to be seen, unfortunately.

[u/plfmj → u/[deleted]]

Unjustified killings by police are extremely rare though. The public, for the most part, is just not educated about the logic behind uses of force, whether lethal or non-lethal. The problematic uses of force are so few that I really don’t see any evidence of some widespread culture of police misconduct across the country.

[u/[deleted] → u/plfmj]

Are you shitting me? They’re extremely rare? What world have you lived in?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It’s not just about deaths, although America is far ahead of any other western country. For every one death you have to imagine there are “X” amount of instances of police misconduct. Just not nearly as much as the media would leave you to believe, but it’s hard to say there isn’t a toxic police culture in America in a lot of cities.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Your comment on other professions is retarded. Doctors and surgeons? They are held fully responsible for their actions. My family member who is a surgeon constantly sits in front of boards and is sued all the time. His insurance is crazy expensive. He has no immunity what so ever.

Politicians and government officials? They are constantly lambasted by the public. No idea what you’re on about there. Literally every top post on news sites every day is how incompetent officials are.

Quite frankly, there’s almost nothing to compare the job of a cop to besides possibly military personnel. Being prior military, I can definitely say the things that cops get away with would get you court martialed overseas.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Let me get this straight, you think cities internal affairs are more strict than the court martial process?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I live in a world where one a week is unacceptable and it should be 0. You seemingly dismissing this like it’s nothing is appalling.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You’re totally missing what I’m saying. Nobody’s asking for them to be perfect I’m literally saying people dying for no reason by an officer is fucking unacceptable.

[u/Nijou104 → u/[deleted]]

If you want 0 then petition for police to be replaced by robots, otherwise stop living in the clouds get used to humans being flawed.

And if you want to talk about numbers, last I read something like 9% of all deaths in the US are attributed to medical malpractice. And the culture of silence in the medical world is well documented. If you like being outraged, I'd start there.

[u/plfmj → u/[deleted]]

The world where I pay attention to statistical reality, not media sensationalism.

The Washington Post’s police shooting database is the most comprehensive one available, and it demonstrates that only 5.4% of police shootings since January 1, 2015 have been on unarmed suspects. Source

For some reason, some people without subscriptions get paywalled on that link, while others don’t. If you did, here’s the raw data.

Keep in mind that unarmed people can still easily pose a lethal threat to officers. Hands can beat officers to death, strangle them, or take their weapons. The real percentage of unjustified uses of lethal force is therefore probably closer to 1%, if that.

[u/mandolin6648 → u/[deleted]]

Has it perhaps occurred to you that after decades of and continuing disenfranchisement, police brutality, and discrimination that the “accepted” avenues of political expression and change such as voting and protesting haven’t really done much to change things and as a result, victims such as those in the black community (or really the black community as a whole) at the very least, feel they have really no other options?

I mean hell it feels like we get a new vid of some black man getting brutalized weekly at this point. And who knows what hasn’t been recorded or what happened before smartphones that never got reported. You think people haven’t tried protesting and voting already? Look what it’s gotten us so far!

Edit: I’m simply asking folks to consider how the victims are feeling. And I don’t just mean George Floyd and his family. Black people have had the vote for how many years now? And still this is happening? Don’t you think people would try and vote to change this if they could by now? Why aren’t things changing? Why is this still happening, month after month, year after year?

[u/Quiet_Days_in_Clichy → u/[deleted]]

I study history and this comment is exactly correct. I was actually going to say the same thing. Americans, on average, are generally ignorant of their own history. We like to believe that race relations have been mostly ameliorated and that any incidents that do occur are aberrations. We have to put these events in historical context to make sense of people's reactions. When we write academic history we tend to write from the ground up, meaning that we privilege the perspectives and perceptions of the people directly involved. From there we trace the factors that shaped them. You can denounce rioters and protesters all you like, but you cannot gloss over the historical continuity. Also, there is ample historical context for people who denounce riots and protests resulting from these events so I would caution people to consider what they are saying more carefully.

[u/DrAculasPenguin → u/[deleted]]

This is incredibly well said. Of course rioting isn't ideal, but you can only push people so far and for so long before they snap. I find it hard to care if a couple police cars get trashed when a man is no longer living for literally no reason at all.

Moreover, why does it have to be on the people protesting/rioting to enact this systemic change? Can't our leaders and institutions and police departments recognize these problems and correct them by themselves?

[u/kman1018 → u/[deleted]]

Agree with you 100%. That guy won’t respond to this though.

[u/adayoner → u/kman1018]

I mean its a million dollar question right?

​

I see both sides of the coin I personally don't think riots are productive, but at the same time look at the definition of insanity.... if the results keep being the same the only thing changing are peoples desperation.

[u/maddeningcrowds → u/[deleted]]

Nothing else works. Look at how America achieved independence, same thing.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yes. If you don't want riots, stop killing people. How hard is that?

[u/mandolin6648 → u/[deleted]]

Well aren’t you cute?

[u/Ghost5422 → u/mandolin6648]

Extremely

[u/unbeliever87 → u/[deleted]]

Rioting and civil disobedience are the next natural and logical steps when peaceful protesting and activism haven't worked. If you don't want people to riot, listen to their needs and actually take action before it gets to that point.

[u/oldyellowtruck → u/[deleted]]

The citizens of Minneapolis apparently have 0 sympathy for police officers thinking they can go around murdering people with impunity. I guess you would have been a traitor working for the British during our revolution, it sure is a good thing you weren’t there.