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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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tyre nichols, a 29 year old black man in memphis, was beaten up by several cops on jan 7th and died three days later. all five of the cops, who are black, were fired, arrested, and charged; the police chief denounced their actions as 'inhumane'. the bodycam video will be released about 3 hours after this post at 7pm EST. hopefully we won't see a recurrence of the floyd riots, although several cities, including atlanta which is dealing with its own controversial cop shooting incident, are preparing for an eventful evening. the police reform movement, which has stalled, may also be pushed back into the forefront of public consciousness.

4 videos have been released on the city of memphis vimeo account: https://vimeo.com/cityofmemphis

Hottest take I've seen on this so far was a comment on Instagram arguing that the fact that the cops in question actually faced repercussions for this (as opposed to, for example, Darrell Wilson) is proof of white supremacy.

I'm kind of unsettled by the fresh new wave of Twitter excitementspew that it doesn't matter if you have black cops, black chiefs of police, black prosecutors, black judges, black city councils, black mayors, black members of Congress, black Presidents: systemic white supremacy makes them all racist too. Just going to chuckle nervously and assume that all of these online people aren't real.

Hard not to wonder if 100 years from now, white people could be only 5% of the population of the US but every bad thing that's done is considered latent white supremacy.

Most of the rhetoric around "white supremacy" is, of course, infantile nonsense, but surely it is not so unthinkable that some might buy into a system or a set of ideas that rationalized their own disadvantage, is it? Untouchables in India certainly did so historically, as did the person quoted [here}(https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/12/magazine/god-created-me-to-be-a-slave.html). And that is what Gramsci meant by "cultural hegemony", which certainly seems to have some truth to it. And note some of its similarities to the concept of The Cathedral.

Note, also, the claim that that black cops are also racist against black defendants is hardly a new one. See this scene from Boyz in the Hood (1991) and these lyrics from "Fuck Tha Police" (1988): "But don't let it be a black and a white one; 'Cause they'll slam ya down to the street top; Black police showin' out for the white cop." John Singleton was 22 or 23 years old when he made Boyz in the Hood; Ice Cube and MC Ren were 19 when they wrote the lyrics to "Fuck Tha Police"; perhaps they had personal knowledge of what they spoke?

People who have escaped from a vicious culture, in this case one which tolerates criminality, celebrates noncompliance, and internally punishes snitching, tend to react negatively when they meet people they perceive as still advocating that culture through their actions.

We see the same with atheists who escape a vicious religious culture, Christians who escape a vicious nihilistic culture, furries who escape a vicious culture of hierarchical power-mad humans, transgender people who escape a vicious gender binary culture, detransitioners who escape a vicious culture of love-bombing and single-minded purpose, alcoholics who escape a vicious culture of “casual” social drinking and enabling into the discipline and companionship of AA, converts to Mormonism, converts out of Mormonism, former (name political party here), and so on.

It’s a very human (great ape) dynamic which should be expected wherever one culture can be an escape from another which has hurt them. In the case of police who grew up on the mean streets, they become mean cops, no matter their race.

Of course, they of all people have no excuse for following this dynamic to its logical end, because a society with mean cops is a vicious society everyone wants to escape from.

(I think I just discovered a good B-plot hook for Zootopia 2: Nick Wilde gets a bit rough with another fox while arresting him, and both the petty criminal and Judy notice.)

I don't mean to dismiss the idea of systemic white supremacy completely. Cultural baggage is obviously real and doesn't go away at the stroke of a pen.

More like immediately jumping to 5 black cops exhibiting lethal brutality towards a black civilian = systemic white supremacy at work.

This is blaming every bad thing that ever happens to black people on white people. Both the victim and the cops In this case, sorry, it's a bit much for me.

It comes across as saying black cops in 2023 are still not responsible for their actions. Give me a break?

The first Untouchables that have equal rights are probably going to be pretty baggage laden. After, oh, I don't know, 2-3 generations of Untouchables achieving the heights of power I have less sympathy for the seemingly complete disavowal of ownership of decision making.

When do we get to stop kneejerk blaming every bad thing on systemic white supremacy? That's the roadmap I want to see.

Again, as I said, most of the rhetoric around "white supremacy" is infantile nonsense, but "systemic white supremacy at work" is not the same as "blaming . . . white people." Or at least not current white people. It is blaming a system. (Yes, I am sure that there are some people who conflate the two. But that does not seem to be the claim made in this specific instance).

Typically, proposed solutions to "systemic white supremacy" involve extracting some cost from white people, or holding non-white people to a different standard. Whether or not this is actually "blaming white people" is a matter of the bow that's put on it.

"systemic white supremacy at work" is not the same as "blaming . . . white people." Or at least not current white people. It is blaming a system.

In principle, I could see how this could be true. In practice, the "systemic racism" argument seems only ever to be deployed as part of motte-and-bailey arguments.

If you think that, you need to broaden your reading. Even people like Glenn Loury talk about systematic racism (while expressing skepticism re its causal effects)

It’s the world’s most perfect motte-and-bailey: most people hear “white supremacy” and think KKK meetings or maybe poll taxes and poll tests. Academics, meanwhile, have been trained to think of whiteness as an orderly society where people take personal responsibility for the consequences of their choices, big and small.

This is blaming every bad thing that ever happens to black people on white people.

Yes. This is unironic white supremacy, the core belief that black people are not agentic, are not capable of being responsible for themselves in the way that white people are. If black people do something wrong, be they criminals or criminal cops, the true blame goes to the nearest relevant white men, even if those nearest white men are actually hilariously far away. In much the same way you blame the parents for the anti-social antics of unsupervised middle-schoolers. This belief, as an unexamined, unadmitted premise is fairly common among the more ideologically-dedicated woke people, especially white ones.

The KKK now see their worldview mirrored in academia. The party who fought a war to free slaves and bring equality find themselves blamed for everything Black Americans have suffered since the Civil Rights Act. The party of slavery and Jim Crow get to be the arbiters of all things racial justice. It’s white supremacy meets 1984.

They have defined "whiteness" as a set of cultural norms. That Smithsonian museum infographic made the mistake of plainly stating the claims of academics in an easy to read format. Plenty of serious academics claim the same things, but that's not easily viewed by the general public so they aren't subjected to the same public derision.

That’s the motte. The Bailey is tons of unjustified racial hatred.

As a white skinned person I kinda wish I had some of those attributes.

It is still absolutely unbelievable to me that this infographic got published.

Yeah, me too. It's hard to envision how nobody at any point said "man it's kind of racist to say that black people don't have these positive traits". Horseshoe theory wins again, I guess.

I'm pretty sure they think those are negative traits, at least most of them.

Some of them clearly seem negative, at least the way they're been portrayed. Some are mentioned in the way that hints white people don't have some other positive trait.

It would be more accurate to say that in the minds of the authors, the positive traits are held to be positive largely because they correlate more strongly with having white skin. That if non-whites had a greater say in the culture, other attributes (not necessarily the opposite of the “white” traits) would be held as markers of good character.

Fair enough. It's hard for me to comprehend how someone could view "shows up on time" and "takes responsibility" as negative traits, but if someone does so then I guess there's no cognitive dissonance there.

No, that's all pretty fair. Their only mistake is that they identify "whiteness" with civilization, and it ironically underscores that white supremacy is suffusing their minds as well. Black cops enforcing the law – sometimes in an unjustifiable way and with terrible consequences – are pawns of the faceless, bloodless, colorless, merciless Power that forces orderly conduct on the mass of bipedal animals, and it's not so much their occasional violence as it's their normal job of discriminating against criminals at all, tribal loyalty be damned, that reveals this fact. Ditto for other black people who do not put their brothers and sisters above the general rule set. They de facto rescind their allegiance to the genetic collective, and this is what defines someone as white in common parlance.

When have you last heard of white racism as actually preferentially treating whites? Today, that's just... beyond the pale.

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Man, this person is so close to getting it.

"...fresh new wave of Twitter excitementspew". Don't worry it's only trivial figures like VAN JONES, at insignificant news outlets like CNN running this narrative.

I watched the videos and I'm just confused. Was there important context that got cut off/wasn't captured? Why does the incident start with the cop getting out of the car gun out yelling expletives? Why are they in such a hurry? Why don't they just handcuff him? Did Tyre have preexisting medical conditions? It's a tough beating but nothing I would expect to be fatal.

It's a tough beating but nothing I would expect to be fatal.

Humans are fragile in stochastic fashion. Blows to the head causing death isn't all that rare.

Seriously. Some people scrap a lot and are never worse for the wear. Other unlucky people get hit or knocked over and bump their head on the ground and die.

Other unlucky people get hit or knocked over and bump their head on the ground and die.

Back before reddit nuked /r/watchpeopledie that was one of the most startling things to observe, for me.

Obviously you've got the situations where someone gets pancaked by a Semitrailer or sucked into industrial machinery, no chance of survival.

But sometimes a person just trips and SNAP broken neck or a sharp blow near the base of the skull or the slip and fall onto something pointy which pierces the head or heart.

It's enough that I would 100% go for a cybernetic upgrade that encases my soft meat brain in stainless steel with inbuilt shock absorbers.

Back before reddit nuked /r/watchpeopledie that was one of the most startling things to observe, for me.

If you're not aware yet watchpeopledie has returned using the same pathway as themotte did(marseyverse) and can be found bigger than ever at https://watchpeopledie.tv/

Does anyone know if Memphis PD still uses affirmative action in their hiring? Google suggests that it was ruled unconstitutional in 1999, but I wonder if it continued in some obscured form.

It stands to reason that a PD that tips the scales in favour of black applicants would have more police brutality than a meritocratic hiring process which can weed out the more reckless hires.

Calling the cops "a gang" continues after the video release. Still weird.

Some people generally refer to all cops as a "gang".

This casual denouncing of cops is unrelated to incidents like LA's Rampart division being literally subverted by actual gang members.

Was gang used in terms of "generic group" or "specific unit"- which these police were as members of a task force or "criminal organization" in which case this is a genuine concern- some police departments can and have been subverted and corrupted by criminal gangs having members with clean enough records join.

Just saw tweet alleging 3/5 are Vice Lords (so yeah, criminal organization), had videos of other beatings on their phones https://twitter.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/1619346737080180736

Well these guys are fucked...

Questions:

  • Did the cops pepper spray each other during the initial traffic stop, while they were trying (clumsily) to arrest Nichols?

  • Are there really remotely operated cameras on top of poles in random residential neighbourhoods in Memphis? I though this was more of a UK thing -- if only because I have a hard time imagining such cameras lasting long in North American cities.

I think two cops peppers sprayed themselves inadvertently. The first during the initial stop. He and his partner then stay behind to treat his injury, probably saving both of their jobs and freedoms.

A second officer does this during the beating. This may actually be what led to the killing as that officer steps aside to regain his composure, then returns with his baton extended and yells “I’m gonna baton the fuck out of you.” Things proceed from there about as one would expect.

They're normally for things like speeding through a red light, but yeah

But those ones are just pointed at the intersection and flag speeders/light-runners so someone can mail them a ticket -- this one seems like it has a desk-jockey pointing it around with a joystick in real-time?

The best view is in video 2 starting around 2 minutes in. While he's struggling with 2 officers on the ground a third one comes up and kicks him in the face a couple of times. Then later he's standing up and struggling and one hits him in the back with a baton. Later they pepper spray him on the ground while it looks like he's not resisting any more. Later two officers are holding him up by the arms and one comes up and punches him in the face and body a couple of times.

I think they knew that the view from the body cameras was crap and only caught audio, because they kept saying things like "give us your hands" while holding his arms behind his back.

Yes, body cams re important, but the cops demeanor changed when they realized there was the traffic light cam. They knew the body cam footage was going to be messy and chaotic; the body cameras didn't stop them. The body cam footage isn't what is going to put them away; the street light camera is.

You can also see one cop accidentally drop his camera before the beating commences, only to pick it up again immediately after they're finished in video 4.

I'm sure some other convenient "data loss" or "camera malfunctions" could've happened if necessary.

An aside, but there was another video of police brutality released this week. I don’t know if the Memphis video will be worse, but it will be hard to top “flying a drone into your home, telling you to raise your hands, then shooting you several times while your hands are raised.”

Hm, you kind of forgot to mention the gun-shaped object he was pointing toward the police. Does not seem to be particularly comparable.

  • -12

The “gun-shaped” object was the drone they flew into his house, with a live video feed confirming he was holding it. Imagine you get woken up in the dark by a mini UFO circling your head. A normal person will grab it, and likely not drop it within the 20 seconds the police are commanding you to get outside with your hands up.

Yes, I am sure a normal person would do that. I am not blaming him. I am pointing out that the two cases are very dissimilar.

That was the drone police threw in there, which has a camera on it.

This is the culture war, so there's one detail of supreme importance you haven't mentioned -- the victim in that case, Jason Harley Kloepfer, is white. The mainstream media is not interested. The article on the shooting on Wikipedia has already been proposed for deletion.

It's not so much the media doesn't care about white victims - it's that the African-American community is organized in such a way that if somebody gets shot by the police, somebody in that family knows a pastor or a community organizer who knows another pastor or a local politician who knows somebody reasonably famous or a prominent journalist to get it out there.

Meanwhile, probably half of the white victims' own family will back the cops over the victim.

Meanwhile, probably half of the white victims' own family will back the cops over the victim.

I think a crucial distinction between white people shot by police and black people shot by police is that a) white racial consciousness is relatively low and black racial consciousness is quite high b) white people are generally positively disposed towards the police while black people view the police quite negatively. The result is that white people don't see the police murdering a white person as an attack on white people the same way black people do and they're much more likely to accept the police's official story or write it off as an isolated incident.

It's not so much the media doesn't care about white victims

depends on the context. Pretty white girl goes missing or gets killed, national media attention. White man killed by the police, no big deal. Vice versa for blacks. One gets clicks, the other is for political violence on the ground.

it's that the African-American community is organized in such a way that if somebody gets shot by the police, somebody in that family knows a pastor or a community organizer who knows another pastor or a local politician who knows somebody reasonably famous or a prominent journalist to get it out there.

Be honest, do you really know this, or is this just your impression of the black community from seeing so many BLM shootings/riots. I wouldn't be surprised if their higher attendance rates for a common meeting place like church influenced the ability to pull a community together, but BLM started in ~2012. If that was the deciding factor these riots would have been much more frequent prior to the coordinated media attention and endorsements.

Pretty white girl goes missing or gets killed, national media attention.

It's actually a little more nuanced than that.

During summer there's a big drop in TV news viewership. News networks get desperate to keep middle aged white women watching the news while at work. So they run with a missing white girl story because it's the most relatable victim for their target viewers.

I think the deciding factor was widespread availability of smart phone cameras and social media sites to make incidents of police violence go viral. One of the biggest pre BLM riots was in response to a video recording of Rodney King being beaten. If camcorder footage of one guy getting beaten up causes LA to burn what is constant high res footage of police shootings going to do?

I'm not saying the traditional media is blameless, but my guess is black teenagers are much more influenced by their peers sharing viral videos of police brutality and leaving "ACAB" style comments than by NPR/MSNBC talking heads.

If camcorder footage

how does this explain Travon Martin 2012? How does this explain Michael Brown 2014? How does this explain Freddie gray 2015? The largest cases in this time had no footage. Treyvon martin was the start of BLM, Michael Brown is where "hands up don't shoot" came from. How can your theory of "camcorder footage" explain this?

smart phone cameras and social media

Motorola Razr sold 100 million units in the first 6 months of 2006 so video cameras existed. Twitter started 2006. Either way, as shown above, footage is not required for BLM riots.

my guess is black teenagers are much more influenced by their peers sharing viral videos of police brutality and leaving "ACAB" style comments than by NPR/MSNBC talking heads.

I don't mean this as an offence but you seem a bit new to everything going on with this topic. Perhaps hearing it from the horses mouth may change your opinion. that is if you are able to read between the lines. "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information" ..."inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital"... This is what they are willing to publish/exposes themselves. This, however is not a new phenomena.

In case you think it was just MSM, they were in talks with social media platforms to fight "disinformation" and "protect" the election

They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.

Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line.

Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home

who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others

ever wonder why BLM wasn't at the capital protests?

The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,”

So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.”

To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was “strenuously discouraging counter activity,”

If camcorder footage of one guy getting beaten up causes LA to burn what is constant high res footage of police shootings going to do?

The Rodney King riots happened in response to the acquittal of the officers, not in response to the release of the video. Timeline is here

Something no one ever points out is that the person organizing all these news “events” is Ben Crump the civil rights attorney. He pretty much makes or breaks cases and whether they become national news. Pretty much every famous case including Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown etc have been represented by Ben Crump.

I particularly remember Ferguson because it was one of the first of these stories where the real-time coverage reached the UK. Initial press coverage focussed on the riots, the over-militarised response by Ferguson PD to the riots, and the fact that Ferguson PD lost control of the situation and State troopers had to be called in. The media coverage didn't start being about the personal qualities of "gentle giant" Michael Brown until Crump arrived.

It is also worth pointing out that the Tyre Nichols case happened two weeks ago, but is only hitting the news now because the PD realised that Crump was going to subpoena the surveillace video and wanted to get out in front of him.

Really? I've never even heard of him, that's crazy. The worst thing is that knowledge of this fact would probably dial down the heat of the culture war.

Yah it’s really crazy that even right-wing media doesn’t ever talk about him but he is basically the one of the most influential people in America since 2014.

Ranting about Soros hasn't turned down the heat anywhere else in the culture war.

You haven't? He's pretty well known.

The worst thing is that knowledge of this fact would probably dial down the heat of the culture war.

I doubt it. He isn't (just) some shadowy figure manipulating things from behind the scenes. He's front and center in the news conferences for all of these incidents.

He has only been mentioned once before in the entire history of the motte, and that was in relation to desantis and his ap course. Including when we were on reddit. This is the only place I read about those things because of toxoplasma. News conferences in particular are generally entirely substance free and more about emotional manipulation.

Not sure how you’re searching, but I’ve certainly mentioned him before on /r/TheMotte, e.g. here

He’s under-discussed, certainly. But it’s not accurate to say he’s never been mentioned

IIRC there were also discussions at some point of the indie documentary film The Trayvon Hoax which prominently features Crump (accusing him of witness tampering), a controversy regarding theaters backing out of airing it, and the resulting defamation suit against Mr. Crump by the filmmaker

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that one is pretty eyebrow raising as well. cops claimed that

“suspected shooter engaged in a verbal altercation with officers and emerged from a camper trailer and confronted officers. Members of the Cherokee Indian Police SWAT Team fired upon the suspect and wounded him.”

which is a very charitable framing of "guy gets woken up with bright lights and horns, mutters some profanities, opens the door, and gets shot after complying with orders to come out with his hands up".

I think the fact that the city could get out ahead of the video, in the sense of terminating and charging the officers involved, will do a lot to mute the response compared to Floyd. In Floyd's case the video was taken by bystanders and was publicly available online before the city had a chance to act. I think this, in part, created the impression that if there hadn't been bystander video Chauvin and the other officers would not have been terminated or charged which increased outrage about the situation. Here the city's actions were much more pro-active.

I didn't know anything about Memphis before this incident but it looks like its murder rate is 7x the national average, at 44.4 per 100,000.

Memphis is not the worst American city in this regard but it's really up there.

Ironically, you used Rio (de Janeiro?) as an example of the pathological case but its murder rate is actually only 20.6 per 100k. (Though the absolute numbers are bonkers since the city is huge)

I doubt it. In theory, I'm okay with brutality for the sake of effectiveness. If a criminal is pointing a gun at police officers, by all means shoot him in the head to protect the police. If a criminal is violently resisting arrest, by all means have 5 policemen tackle him to the ground to restrain him. And if his head gets smacked and he gets a concussion while being tackled, so be it, and the police shouldn't be charged.

That is almost never how these brutality cases go. Usually it's a bunch of tyrants beating the crap out of someone they see as lesser than themselves for fun. It's not only excessive, it's unnecessary. They're not going too far in the line of duty: making a distasteful but utilitarian tradeoff between effectiveness and kindness, there's literally no point. If someone is already on the ground, already restrained, and no longer a threat then beating them further does not help capture them or keep the police safe. Police are humans just like everyone else, and they have the same tendencies towards bullying and abuse of power as everyone else. These people have often grown up in poor violent communities and they are the same poor violent people as the people they're policing, they just have more authority. In theory, the police would screen for this during the hiring process, and most of them do with some effectiveness. That is, I bet the proportion of violent thug-like people in most police forces is less than in the average population. But it's not zero, and it's not close enough to zero to ignore. The 90%+ of virtuous brave moral police officers do their jobs effectively and then don't get arrested for brutality so they don't make the news. Most of the time. There are exceptions, there are false accusations. But most of the time the police who actually get in trouble deserve it, and the issue is with people falsely generalizing that to say that all police are bad when they're usually not.

Assuming the video footage corroborates that this was pointlessly excessive, then these officers being imprisoned will make Memphis better off, because having violent thugs in the police force accomplishes nothing but justify the hatred that criminals and noncriminals alike have for the police and make them less likely to feel guilty about committing crimes. Police who follow the law and have respect for civilians are more effective at establishing a rapport with their communities and disincentivizing crime beyond just the threat of violence. Get the thugs out, hire better and more competent people who actually respect the law to replace them. This is not a tyrannical dictatorship, everyone has to follow the law, including the police and politicians.

That is almost never how these brutality cases go. Usually it's a bunch of tyrants beating the crap out of someone they see as lesser than themselves for fun.

... yeah, because the videos that get blown up on social media, both by casual 'virality' and explicit promotion by activists (not that explicit promotion or activism are bad!), are the worst ones, selected for both the worst cops, bad days of the worst cops, and any other random factor that could increase brutality. the distribution of cases of 'cop beats someone up' and 'cop beats someone up, 50k upvotes on reddit' are not at all similar.

This is a good point, which I was sort of assuming implicitly but did not state carefully in my post. I'm not making the claim that all accusations of police brutality are legitimate and that all police accused of brutality are scum. However, conditional on this being a scandal that we are hearing about, and involving a beating rather than a gunshot, and the guy actually dying from a beating, this is very likely to be an excessive abuse of power by the police involved.

Is it separable? Ideally, obviously, but in practical terms?

If the Mayor of Random City, Guatemala needs to crack down on violent crime, I'd bet his first options are "hire some scary-looking cops" and "tell the existing cops to be more aggressive". From a bureaucratic perspective I'm not sure if there's a silver bullet that lets you beef up your police force, without also accidentally empowering some thugs.

Sure, "hire better and more competent people", if it were that easy everyone would be doing it already. I don't mean to say that violent extralegal police gangs are acceptable, just that it will take some inventiveness to remove them.

This is a hard problem. I can think of a bunch of attempts at solutions, but all of them have costs, tradeoffs, or exploits that can occur if bad faith actors abuse them.

A. Increase salaries which incentivizes more competent people to want to become police officers.

B. Increase training so people know what to do, and make it possible for new recruits to fail their training if they aren't good enough.

C. Make it easier to fire police officers who are misbehaving. It shouldn't take an event that involves national headlines and legal prosecution to fire a police officer. People being sketchy and aggressive is usually discernible by their coworkers and boss, pretty much none of these big scandals involve the people who knew the bad cops say "oh my, I'm so surprised, I never would have seen this coming, he's always been so professional before this instance." It's almost always a pattern of behavior and escalation. Fire them sooner along the path.

All of these have the issue that they cost money, which is politically hard, and wasteful if they end up not being effective enough per cost. They also potentially have issues if the higher up police themselves are bad and corrupt. More money to line their pockets and hire people they like, and more opportunities for them to fire honest cops with less justification while letting their corrupt underlings go free. But from the perspective of a non-corrupt higher up person, these would likely be effective if costly.

D. Weaken qualified immunity. It serves a legitimate purpose that allows cops to do their jobs without worrying about getting sued for normal policework, but my understanding is that it is too strong and has too many loopholes where stuff that was obviously wrong gets dropped anyway and bad cops go free. Making it marginally weaker would likely have a negligible impact on good policemen, while making it harder for bad cops to get away with crimes, and thus disincentivizing them from committing them in the first place, which is the whole point of having laws at all.

E. Make it easier to prosecute/punish higher ranking officers for the crimes of their underlings. Specifically if the underling was ordered or pressured to do the wrong thing, or if the higher ups knew about it and didn't stop it. Although this might create some incentive for higher ups to cover up misdeeds rather than report them, if you combine this with massive penalties for covering up misdeeds and leniency for reporting them (maybe the higher ranking officer gets in trouble if and only if they knew about and failed to punish an underling's crime) you can combat this incentive.

The downside here is that these create incentives for cops to be less aggressive and less effective, just sitting around all day instead of stopping crimes and interacting with the public, which creates risk. If done carefully, it would be set up to only punish actual crimes which are not done accidentally, such that good police officers could do their jobs with no increased risk, and only bad police get in trouble, but that's easier said than done. However, as in Scott's post on tradeoffs and failures: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions-653 there's a dimension where you tradeoff aggressiveness versus mercy, and there's a dimension where you just get more competent at both, and I think there are enough flaws that there's plenty of room to move up on the latter without messing with the balance on the former.

Which brutality cases are you referring to? I can only think of Rodney King as fitting your narrative. Floyd wasn’t that.

Yeah. I'd consider this worse than Floyd if only since there's a legitimate argument that it was more negligent manslaughter from positional asphyxiation compared to continuing to wale on a restrained suspect indiscriminately.

It’s not election season so we won’t see riots. I think this is a simple statement but completely true

I think the simplest explanation for there not being riots is that riots are very rare relative to deaths despite all the media coverage and outrage.

If riots hurt dems, why were there riots in 2020 before election?

We’ll see riots, albeit mostly in cities that are hotspots for that sort of thing. Antifa is it’s own entity that does not have as its primary objective for democrats to win elections.

By riots I mean there might be some localized stuff but they won’t turn nationwide. We don’t have the nationwide activist right now wanting to pump everyone up for an election.

You won't see riots because it's still winter. It's marginally too cold to be outside for too long, utilities are prevented from being cut off and evictions happen less.

every 2 years and then endless campaigning in-between. never ends.

IDK, Memphis has hyped the video pretty extremely, and given provocateurs like antifa ample time to migrate into the city.

they hyped it up to prevent people being shocked by it, in order to prevent a violent reaction. contrast that with the floyd case where the initial police public report was a blatant fabrication compared to the video that everyone saw.

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