mekka okereke :verified:
You don't have to be racist to participate in systemic racism. US policing produces racist outcomes even from "not-racist" people. I'm going to explain (again):
* why I've probably been pulled over way more times than most people you know, even though most of the times I'm pulled over, I get no ticket (because I did nothing wrong)
* how I stopped getting pulled over so much (because I understand the system)
* And why lots of cops say that the average voter is more racist than the average cop
mekka okereke :verified:
In this whole thread, I haven't even talked about how many openly racist police officers there are. I haven't even addressed qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture, corruption, genocidally violent tactics, racist sentencing laws, or any of that.
I just talked about one way a "non-racist" person who becomes a police officer is incentivized to contribute to violent racism that destroys Black lives at a horrific scale.
mekka okereke :verified:
If you were a cop in Chicago, 5 years away from your pension, and the mayor's office told you to hit your arrest quota or be fired, would you do the right thing and not contribute to systemic racism? Or would you just say,, "This is kinda messed up!" And over-arrest innocent Black folk?
Trick question. Because it doesn't matter what you as an individual would do. You're only one person. Most Chicago cops are just making the arrests that the system incentivizes them to. Yes, even the Black cops.
mekka okereke :verified:
When people say, "Fewer cops reduces crime" they're not being hyperbolic. US policing is so violent and racist, that the only thing that has been consistently shown to reduce the level of police violence against Black people is... not having police there at all.
Reduce the number of police interactions, and reduce the number of negative police interactions experienced by Black people. Solve problems without guns.
mekka okereke :verified:
Now understand why civil rights leaders say that Chicago's plan to make murders go down by giving police officers an arrest quota, is doomed to fail.
Cops are just going to arrest the poorest, Blackest, people in the city for petty crimes, starting them down a poverty spiral that will ruin their lives.
This *reduces* trust in a way that can't be made up by "positive interactions."
"You arrested my mom, but later you smiled at me." Doesn't exactly win hearts and minds.
mekka okereke :verified:
This phenomenon has been known since the 70s.
So when in 2021, we are still making SCORPION units to "address the rising murder rate," it makes no sense at all.
Brutalizing Tyre Nichols makes the murder rate *go up* not go down. It makes it *easier* to get away with murder, not harder.
Think of any US city with a high murder rate.
Notice that it has a low murder clearance rate (they're not catching any murderers).
Notice that police brutality in that city is even higher than average.
mekka okereke :verified:
So cops can make the murder rate in a city *go up* just by brutalizing innocent Black civilians more. 🙃
Because then Black people call the cops less.
So murderers are more likely to get away with it.
So instead of being caught after one murder, they rack up *huge* body counts.
Out of every 1000 white folk or Black folk, N are multiple murderers. But in white neighbourhoods, the killer is often caught before their second murder. In Black neighborhoods, the killer is often never caught.😢
mekka okereke :verified:
Because police don't solve crimes the way that TV shows pretend they do. Most serious crimes, especially murders, are solved by:
1) someone calls the cops (caller)
2) someone tells the cops exactly what happened (witness)
3) cops gather enough evidence to show that the witness' story is credible
4) DA builds a case
Without callers or witnesses, it's almost impossible to even know who committed a murder, let alone get a conviction in court. And Black folk don't call or play witness.
mekka okereke :verified:
As part of trying to understand why I get pulled over so much I've straight up asked cops and police chiefs why they pulled me over so much. And they say this.
For the most part, cops hate this system! It doesn't exist because cops like the arrest and ticket metrics. It exists because voters elect people that put ticket and arrest quotas on cops.
And because city budgets live on the revenue from tickets and court fees.
And this explains why cops can't solve crimes in Black neighborhoods...
mekka okereke :verified:
This makes Black people not trust police officers. Because police officers seem like they are always trying to find some reason to mess with you, violate your civil rights, and "hem you up." And you visibly see that they don't seem to do this with white folk.
Again, I'm not even talking about the racist cops here, of which there are many! I'm just talking about the ones who just go with the flow of what the system wants them to do.
Black cops do this too. Black cops pull over Black drivers.
mekka okereke :verified:
If you write 220 tickets and 30 get overturned, you only wrote 190 tickets. Your job is at risk. If you write 210 tickets and only 2 get overturned, you're good!
Not all Black folk are poor, but your probability of getting a ticket that sticks is higher with Black drivers. If you (illegally) search the vehicle and find weed, you might get 2 tickets! The daily double!
But you can't search the car or the person, without escalating. You are *incentivized to escalate*.
mekka okereke :verified:
If they overturn that ticket, it doesn't count to your total. If they show up in court and you don't, they win by default. If you go to court to make sure the ticket sticks, you're in court, and not out writing more tickets. As a police officer, you lose.
You're incentivized to write tickets that "stick."
If you wrote an $80 ticket for a Black janitor in East Palo Alto, they can't afford the ticket, but they *really* can't afford to take a day off of work. And they don't like courthouses...
mekka okereke :verified:
Imagine yourself as a police officer. Hopefully you don't consider yourself racist! You're all ready to fix the system "from the inside" by being a good cop.
Your police chief tells you that you must write 200 tickets a month. If you fail to write 200 tickets a month you will be fired.
Imagine you write a ticket for a rich white lawyer that lives in Atherton. They can easily afford the $80 ticket; they bill out at $800/hr! But they will take a day off work just to go fight the ticket in court🤡
Misuse Case
@mekkaokereke Most police departments, if not all of them, behave like shitty state-backed protection rackets. So of course they make crime worse. They are committing a lot of crimes.
Paul Cantrell
@MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
For anyone whose response to that is “huh?” or “show me!,” hoo boy do I have a story for you:
I live in the neighborhood, I know what these cops are like, and still…the number of times my jaw dropped reading that article….
(For those who don’t live in the neighborhood: El Nuevo Rodeo was a short block away from the 3rd precinct, epicenter of the George Floyd uprising.)
Paul Cantrell
@homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
Yeah, I think there’s a whole low of painfully obvious low-hanging policy fruit here that would help reign in police brutality.
The question is why such things have trouble making it through even a solidly left-leaning city’s local government. (If you want me to turn green and gigantic and start smashing things, ask me about the first Minneapolis city election post-George-Floyd.)
🍥SarahBurnout🍥
minnesota ought to follow california's lead and require even law enforcement to be licensed as private security guards to prevent this. following the same model, private security guards are required to work for a private security company and freelancing is forbidden. also, even leo's must have the same weapons permits security guards must have to possess them on the job. no permits==no weapons, no exceptions.
Paul Cantrell
@homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
I’m open to trying any available avenue to rein in the lawlessness of police, though I suspect a state-level approach may work better in CA than in closely divided MN. Even some pretty basic reforms have struggled at the state level here. (Though to the credit of Gov Walz and AG Ellison, the executive branch has accomplished some important things: Chauvin conviction, scathing MPD report, consent decree)
🍥SarahBurnout🍥
cities are often in thrall to law enforcement, or at least too weak to stand up to them.
changes must occur at the state level.
🍥SarahBurnout🍥
indeed. it wasn't easy but it was done, bit by bit, and rather quietly. iirc, it took over 30 years just to get to where police had to follow the same rules every other privacy security guard and company had to.
Paul Cantrell
@homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
Well, here’s hoping we follow that example over here! I realize these things take time…but dang it, it’s already •been• a really long time. I’ll take heart from what you said.
Oggie
@homelessjun @inthehands @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
It's also worth remembering that even the slightest pushback can result in quite a lot of nastiness. Remember this whole thing?
https://gizmodo.com/nypd-union-doxes-mayors-daughter-on-twitter-1843813751
They basically threatened the sitting mayor's daughter, and effectively got off without any reprisals. This is...kind of horrific when you think about it.
🍥SarahBurnout🍥
i hope it happens. in the long term, it is to everyone's benefit, even law enforcement's.
Paul Cantrell
@mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
100% accurate that Mpls Police went on invisible strike post-uprising. Folks had sulky officers delaying responses or even openly refusing to answer 911 calls.
And police deliberately fomented the violence of the uprising itself, amped it up past the breaking point. Actively stopped firefighters from putting out fires.
I wish all this were more widely understood — nationally, and even here in the city.
Mathaetaes
@inthehands @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke it’s not much of a question when you realize that any change to the law gets turned into a police labor issue, and the union will just stop working… much like they did after the Floyd protests. When cops stop showing up to white folks’ calls, and local news orgs (who need police favor if they want to get statements on breaking news) run articles about how crime is in the rise (regardless of reality), citing statements from police, white donors stop donating or switch to whatever “law and order” candidate is the most oppressive. Sometimes it’s a retired cop.
The whole system of civic violence is broken, but so entrenched it will require a substantial, determined force to dislodge it.
P J Evans
@homelessjun @inthehands @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
I know a couple of people who were licensed security guards in CA. They were unarmed guards by choice - they'd passed the (very easy at the time) test to be armed.
Paul Cantrell
@PJ_Evans
Smart people.
Ben Ford :grinchsmile:
@inthehands @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke here in Portland too
Paul Cantrell
@drgroftehauge @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
Yes.
It sounds bonkers, it sounds make up, but 100% yes.
Morten Grøftehauge
@inthehands @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke Wait so Chauvin knew Floyd from his extra gig running a protection racket?
Davie Duck
@inthehands While serving as a firefighter/EMT, I was twice stopped from rendering aid to a shooting victim because it would “contaminate “ the crime scene. @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke @Itchy
Yeshaya Lazarevich
@inthehands
Hey that's when I checked out of local politics once and for all
@homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
🍥SarahBurnout🍥
@mekkaokereke despite quotas being banned in california, joe macnamara jr, as cheif of SJPD, set arrest quotas and pesonally reviewed offocers' records to give them black marks for not meeting his quota.
to meet the quota, they arrested anyone they could get away with... they provoked people and committed fraud, to meet their quotas. most were not white, and most arrested had charges dropped.
it made crime worse. and police violence was as bad as LA was under his father.
clacke
@lispi314 @mekkaokereke "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it."
"Yes, Minister", Politician's Logic:
LisPi
Paul Cantrell
@crazybutable @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
Just can’t imagine why the police didn’t investigate that
Real mystery
John Wilson
@inthehands @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke hey, remember all the random gunshots in Minneapolis for about 6-9 months after the George Floyd riots?
I remember seeing multiple videos on Twitter of big SUVs with blacked out plates, rolling up in a neighborhood. Big jacked white dude wearing a mask gets out, fires a weapon a few times, and drives off.
So weird!
Paul Cantrell
@beckett
Zero lies detected.
Dadbod AntiFa
@jonobie @inthehands @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke
I believe cops sat on their hands nationally, being butthurt snowflakes drinking their own koolade who could not comprehend why people didn’t like them.
#uspol
Jonobie
@inthehands @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke Similar stuff happened in Seattle around that time. Capitol Hill residents and business owners reported that police just stopped responding to calls, even blocks away from the protests, saying it was “too dangerous”. 🙄 Firefighters still went in as long as firearms weren’t involved, partially because the Fire Chief in that area clearly didn’t agree with the police.
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