Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Disband Its Police Department
from the if-you-want-to-kill-people,-you'll-have-to-do-it-on-your-own-time dept
In response to one of its own officers killing an unarmed, cuffed black man by kneeling on his neck until he was long past dead, the Minneapolis City Council pledged to defund the police department. It did this as the city burned and protests erupted around the nation. It maintained this pledge as city schools said "no thanks" to offers of assistance from police officers seeking to bring this level of violence to public schools and state colleges.
At that point, it was all talk. But it was talk the Council could back up. It had a veto-proof majority willing to disassemble the system that hadn't worked for years and replace it with something new. But it was still talk until it was put into action. And it has now been put into action, as Scott McClallen reports for The Center Square.
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution intending to disband their police department and create a new model of public safety in response to the death of George Floyd.
The resolution states the Council will start a year-long process of research and community engagement to discover a replacement.
City Council President Lisa Bender said that the resolution “advances our shared commitment to transformative change in how Minneapolis approaches public safety so that every member of our community can be truly safe.
How will this work? It's still up in the air. But there's a lot to work with. Cops are asked to police everything, including many things they aren't specifically trained to handle, like misbehaving school kids, people suffering mental health crises, and a variety of other societal issues like homelessness, interpersonal relationships, and wayward house pets.
The police department hoovers up an inordinate amount of the city's annual budget, leaving it little to address underlying causes of crime and providing almost no support for city residents who need it most. Instead of help, they get guys with guns and a shitload of training that tells them all hand movements are furtive and any failure to comprehend conflicting shouted orders a sign of violent resistance.
The resolution [PDF] lays it out very clearly: Minneapolis residents aren't getting their money's worth from their local law enforcement agency.
Whereas, the adopted 2020 budget allocated $193 million to the Minneapolis Police Department, which represents over 36% of the City’s General Fund of $532.3 million, and is more than twice as much as the combined City budgets for workforce development, building affordable housing, homeownership support, small business support programs, environmental sustainability, race equity, arts and culture, violence prevention, family and early childhood support, youth development, senior services, lead poisoning prevention, infectious disease prevention, and protection of civil rights…
Render unto Cop Caesar 36%. And unto man whatever is left over. Under-funding social services to ensure cops have the budget to beat every problem into submission isn't working. It hasn't worked for years. But it took three cops -- one with his knee on a black man's neck -- to drive that point home. The city can't afford to wait around for the department to fix itself. It has no desire to do this. So, the city will move forward without the department and make the changes the PD has resisted for decades.
While still a little short on details, the resolution does lay down the next steps in the defunding process. It does not involve disbanding the PD, but it does severely curtail its responsibilities. A lot of committee work will precede the actual reformation of local law enforcement.
Research and engagement to inform the potential creation of a new City Department of Community Safety with a holistic approach to community safety, including a review and analysis of relevant existing models and programs and practices that could be applied in Minneapolis;
Recommendations that advance the work of the 911 working group and other strategies for transitioning work of the Minneapolis Police Department to alternative, more appropriate responses to community requests for help and identifying the resources needed to perform this work in City departments, other agencies, and/or community partners while the work of creating a new public safety system is in progress…
Hopefully, this means calls for help won't always be greeted by cops trained to view almost everything as a threat. With some budget rerouted to social services, perhaps there won't be as many calls for help, since there will actually be a safety net for residents whose health and well being used to be a law enforcement problem.
The unanimous vote is veto-proof. This is important because the city's mayor still believes the police department can be "reformed" through less drastic measures. This argument has been advanced without a shred of evidence being supplied by the city's leader. Reform can work, but most reform efforts end up being neutered by police unions and legislators unwilling to look "soft" on crime. It's unlikely to work as well as the council's proposal, which trims the PD back to its law enforcement roots and reroutes the leftover money towards improving the lives of underserved communities.
This is a momentous event in the city's history. Unfortunately, it took an untold number of abuses by police officers to make it happen, culminating in the very disturbing killing of a resident by cops in broad daylight in front of several cameras to make the city take its problem seriously. Hopefully, other locales won't wait for daylight murders by cops to address their own law enforcement problems.
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Filed Under: defund the police, minneapolis, police
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'I want you to change.' 'Hmm... no.' 'It's no longer a request.'
The unanimous vote is veto-proof. This is important because the city's mayor still believes the police department can be "reformed" through less drastic measures.
Thing about reform is that it requires that there be something worth reforming, and that both sides are willing to admit that there's a problem that needs reforming. If one side consistently digs in it's heels and not only refuses to admit that there's a problem but actively fights against any attempts to fix it reform is doomed from the start, and at that point you either give up entirely(which doesn't work) or start from scratch.
There's some dark humor to be found in the fact that by absolutely refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem police unions, departments and those in the departments/unions have created the current situation where they are no longer being asked to shape up, but are instead faced with having no other option as those paying them realize that the money could be better spent elsewhere.
Hopefully this will be only the first in a nationwide effort to reign in police and redirect the money to solutions that will actually work for the public, rather than into departments that merely prey upon the public and generate million dollar settlements by their actions.
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Re: 'I want you to change.' 'Hmm... no.' 'It's no longer a reque
The first step is to admit one has a problem.
Or, you know, getting so bad your privileged ass can actually crash and burn, that's another way to go, too.
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Re: 'I want you to change.' 'Hmm... no.' 'It's no longer a reque
Keep in mind that in this context, "both sides" means twelve members of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party and one Green.
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There seems to be something of a black hole created by this action. They have now told the police department that (from the police perspective) that some really bad things are going to happen to many, if not most of them. In the meantime, they don't actually have anything to go to, except some fairly insubstantial suggestions, and potentially a year (or more) to conceive and accomplish them.
What happens in the mean time? Will those police act worse than before out of fear, retribution, uncertainty, and will there be any control over them? Will they be able to cancel the union contract, or will they be stuck with that in the future meaning not much will change?
I have read that Officer Derek Chauvin will collect his $50,000 per year pension even if he is convicted and serving a prison sentence, something the union arranged for their members. How will they go about terminating officers with the union contract in place? Does a lack of funding cause layoff's, and does that contract actually allow that?
I know the City Counsel is acting with the best intentions, now that the citizenry has place them in the untenable political position of if they don't their political careers are threatened. But they did not think this through. At the very least, they should have had, and explained an interim plan while they work out the long term program. And they should have been definitive about the future of that union contract.
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Re:
It's ridiculous to says the citizenry have put the council in an untenable position. The council put themselves there by kowtowing to an out of control police department. The police department even more so put them there by intransigence and refusal to change (and whether that intransigence came from the police leadership or from the police union doesn't really matter). The citizenry has really only woken up and basically demanded no more than is their right.
If the PD pushes things too far, the council still has the option of just closing the whole PD and calling in the state police or asking the governor to send in the national guard while a temporary system is put in place while the final system is designed.
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Re:
This is not a knee-jerk reaction. Organizers in Minneapolis have worked toward this for years, and I trust them, if not the council, to have plans.
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Re: Re:
Sometimes a plan works, sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the plan, the people implementing the plan ... and outside forces that one has no direct control over.
And there is no way to tell if it will work or not until it succeeds or fails. Just, don't be too disappointed, or too gleeful. Successes seldom last, failures often do. But hope springs eternal, and the next plan will work.
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Re: Re: Re:
It's time to try a new failure, at the very least. The incumbent failure has lasted far, far too long.
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Re:
Minnesota statutes allow a city or county to either employ for itself a policing force, or it may contract with another jurisdiction for that service, per MNS 436.05. Also, MNS 471.59 specifically permits the rescission of a policing contract.
I have no experience negotiating such things, but I suspect that the first stop for the union won't be a court, but the NLRB. If not, I'm pretty sure the court will "advise" the plaintiffs of their rights, and their duties in following, and exhausting, the proper course of administrative action first. ;)
You can bet your bottom shekel that a civil "wrongful death" lawsuit brought by Floyd's estate will latch on that that money, mosh-kosh. Chauvin can thank O.J. Simpson for that precedent. Ditto for any monies tendered for books, movies, magazine articles and the like.
And, I'm pretty sure that no contract ever written, even by a police union, can have a clause to the effect of overriding or frustrating a court's decision. But IANAL, so go lightly on the grains of salt.
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Re: Re:
You could've made your point without the antiSemitic bullshit, you know
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Re: Re: Re:
Did I miss it, what part was anti semetic?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Using anything from Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, etc., is apparently anti-Jewish for... i don't know, one person?
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Re: untenable political position
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Re:
The city can turn the payroll dept. of the police into an separate organization, give it all the employment contracts but nothing else, and let it go bankrupt. Trump has used tricks like that for many years, so such behavior certainly has the blessing of the highest powers in the country.
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Re:
"I know the City Counsel is acting with the best intentions, now that the citizenry has place them in the untenable political position of if they don't their political careers are threatened."
It's not that easily dismissed. For ten to twenty years this issue has been ignored as being cumbersome, difficult, too costly, and uncertain to actually fix or even mitigate - all the while it's been growing steadily worse. It's a cancerous tumor which everyone has simply ignored in the hope it'll miraculously go into spontaneous remission.
And now, since the damn thing's gone into rampant metastasis all you've got left is to cut out every bit you think it's spread to out and dose yourself with a near-terminal dose of chemotherapy. Your hair will fall out, your muscles waste away, your bowels cease to work and the preferable outcome will still leave you with one and a half foot in the grave.
"At the very least, they should have had, and explained an interim plan while they work out the long term program."
Yeah, that's been tried. Again and again in many places. Every time any politician even raises the issues the unions hardball and stall the negotiations over even the most minute of issues - until term limits change and the matter is forgotten. Again.
As a result all good options are now off the table. Either swing the knife decisively while there is still political momentum for change, or start negotiations guaranteed to fail once more.
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Re:
I think the police and unions had already violated their city (and social) contracts ages ago. Also, when a company fails, your union contract gets you squat.
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Sucks to be you, Hamilton!
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Heard an interview with a councilman there and he more or less said, "a few years ago we tried to move a little bit of money ($1m I think it was) and they went to war over even that little bit. So, I figure, if they won't even do that little bit, might as well go big and tear it all down."
You could hear the frustration in the guys voice.
Reform will never work with most of these guys.
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'If you're not willing to compromise then neither are we.'
'Give up less than 1% of your budget.'
'Never!'
'Fine, say goodbye to... oh... let's say 90% of your budget.'
'... wait, what?'
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Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither are we.'
"Over our dead bodies."
"I find your terms... acceptable."
"... wait, what?"
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Re: Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither are we
My kingdom for a "Sad But True" button.
Because that's exactly what the unions have very consistently said. As a result they've gotten the city to the point where "No police" is indeed better than anything the unions have offered to agree on.
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Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither are we.'
I can't wait to see what ex-cop violence addicts do with their career trajectories. (Or which cities welcome the rejects into their own departments to replace any potentially festering halfway decent and human cops.)
Will they develop something like the ex-mil private military contractor / "security" route?
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Re: Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither are we
Sad and scary but undeniably a risk.
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Re: Re: Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither ar
Which is why we needs laws saying that whenever a cop (or any other government type) is fired for cause (which has to get much easier, but that is another subject) they can no longer work for the government in any capacity, and not work for government contractors / subcontractors, etc. I don't think preventing them from working in any security capacity (think bouncer, bodyguard, private facility security guard) would pass Constitutional muster, but I think we should be able to keep them out of the public sector completely, so at least the general populace would not be at further risk from them again.
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Can't wait to see the Sheriff's department/State police get overwhelmed. Again.
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Re:
Eh, they'll just pull out their tanks and start using the cannons. That is why they have them, right?
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Funny thing is: Minneapolis PD isn't even in the top 25 of the charts for police killings. They barely appear at all.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/compare-police-departments/
The cities that SHOULD do something--St. Louis, LA, Chicago, NYC, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, etc.--just won't. They like their occupying armies.
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Re:
What do the person capita figures look like? Someone's got to take the lead either way and it might as well be the one in the target sights right now, but it's a bit disingenuous to compare the 46th largest city with the largest based on raw numbers.
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Re: Re:
It is just currently top in the publicly and willfully egregious category.
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Unfortunately, the one thing that cops never seem to police at all is themselves.
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Reminds me of a company I worked for a very long time ago: they had an IT department that took care of the mainframes for a long time (not in bad way, BTW), but was completely unwilling to support PCs, so a separate PC department was set up. When the last mainframe was carried out, de old department was abolished.
Think here we have to look into various departments, like "traffic enforcer", "neighborhood steward", etc., all unarmed (except for body-cams), and in friendly-colored non-imposing uniforms. Exclusively for violent events, you can have the "crime patrols" or something that may have arms appropriate to the occasion.
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Re:
Yes, this, exactly.
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Headline v. Article
The headline says:
but the article says:
Which is it? I'm a bit confused, but I like option #2.
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Re: Headline v. Article
Let's get the rest of the second quote:
the resolution does lay down the next steps in the defunding process. It does not involve disbanding the PD, but it does severely curtail its responsibilities.
So the "next steps" do not involve disbanding the PD - because having no social programs and no law enforcement at all is probably not viable in a city.
It would be difficult for it to be anything but a phased approach in which a program for say animal control is established and the budget for the PD is reduced to pay for it. Rinse and repeat until the PD budget and responsibilities make more sense.
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Re: Headline v. Article
Probably should say "defund" instead of "disband"
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Re: Headline v. Article
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution intending to disband their police department and create a new model of public safety in response to the death of George Floyd.
That's from the Center Square article. I do hope they're disbanding it entirely. The union leader there is a total white supremacist who has pushed hard the killology ideology that suggests murder as a marital aid.
But again, we have mountains of evidence (much of it right here on TD) that the entire justice system is rotten at the core, when it's not captured by ulterior interests. The whole system needs to be scrapped.
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Disband the police now.
At this point, I bet there are zero situations that are improved by throwing in a squad of guys shooting guns and swinging clubs. And that does seem to be the only thing law enforcement is good for.
Yes, problems will arise, mostly because people can now talk about them without the police being sent to make them worse. That's the point to have conversations.
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Re: Disband the police now.
Zero situations improved by throwing in a squad of guys shooting guns and swinging clubs?
I bet people who were at Columbine and Sandy Hook would disagree with you.
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Re: Re: Disband the police now.
"I bet people who were at Columbine and Sandy Hook would disagree with you."
Yeah. Because when you're confronted with berserk killers having a bunch of even more triggerhappy killers unable to observe proper restraint is just what you need.
If I thought the likes of Chauvin, Goines and the squads supporting them (or about a few dozen other named and known examples) would have a chance of showing up when calling 911 it would certainly be a tough call to make.
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Re: Re: Disband the police now.
Though I won't claim that police arriving had no relevance to bringing those horrible massacres to an end (as you could argue police presence itself changes the actions of the shooter) in neither case was it some action-movie moment with the police bursting in and taking down the criminals. At Columbine, cops exchanged a few bursts of fire with the shooters through the windows, but never hit anybody. At Sandy Hook, police arrived about 1 minute before the final shot and only entered the school after all shooting had stopped. In both cases, it was suicide by the shooter(s) that ended things.
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Re: Re: Disband the police now.
About that: So how were those situations improved? Do tell.
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Re: Re: Disband the police now.
Leave those situations to the FBI and their peers. We don't need undertrained, overgeared, trigger-happy assholes in any situation.
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Trained responders
Before SWAT was a joke, municipalities had a small force of SWAT officers to manage hostage-barricade situations (which were often less than one a year, to the disappointment of the entire force). All they'd do is train until a situation got crazy enough to warrant them.
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Re: Trained responders
Honestly, this requires a citation:
which were often less than one a year, to the disappointment of the entire force
Methinks that your era was Viet Nam, where--very rarely-- vets with PTSD would barricade themselves.
But yeah: whatvsick fucks the rookies are, HOPING for these situations.
That aspect of the police personality must be changed; and our society along with it.
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SWAT deployments
Seventies and Eighties. We averaged around 500 SWAT deployments a year and they were all hostage-barricade.
Then the DEA started doing more no-knock busts with volunteer SWAT possés. During the 2010s, SWAT was used to serve warrants and chase drug rumors (often false) at the tune of 50,000+ deployments.
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Re: Re: Disband the police now.
Yeah, funny how that played out...
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How the US approaches rampage killers
It might also be worth pointing out the Sandy Hook Project believes shootings are preventable, though it still imagines Rampage Man as an external agent, a thug that invests the school like a weed or crop-eating-pest, rather than one of its students driven to despair.
We as a species like to do that: imagine threats as foreign that we prevent by identifying the bee-scented moth among the bees, rather than assuming that an antisocial bee is, in fact, an antisocial bee.
I may be biased. I've counseled dozens of people who were angry, furious, desperate, felt trapped, felt driven to express their emotions in a way loud enough and visible enough that our society would actually notice. Often I talked them down. Sometimes I can't take that credit: they left angry but saw to it not to blow something up. But I'm thankful that none of them ever followed through. And I know that in the clinic at which I worked there were hundreds of other cases like those that thankfully never made the news.
And I'd like to say crisis counseling works. But the problem is, when crisis counseling works, nothing dramatic happens. News isn't made. People don't die. And those outside the clinic ask what the heck are we paying for?
It's like a very tiny James Bond. No one knows when Bond saves the world either. Why do we keep hiring him?
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Re: Disband the police now.
I bet there are zero situations that are improved by throwing in a squad of guys shooting guns and swinging clubs.
Actually, I think a combination driving range / shooting range would be a big hit in some areas.
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Shooting / Driving range combo
Except that golfers stereotypically don't like noise?
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I prefer Option 3
1 - If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2 - If it is broke, but worth fixin', then fix it.
3 - If it is broke and was defective by design to begin with, throw it away and make a new, better one. Design it properly, learning from the mistakes of the previous version, build it well, using the highest-quality materials available, and then maintain it so that it will last.
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Re: I prefer Option 3
That sounds good, but changing out a police force is a bit like changing a tire on a car while it is driving on the highway.
There is a city here and there is actual crime and it still needs to be managed. You can bet that as this process moves forward, every opponent to it will be pointing out every crime that "could have been avoided" and any crime stats that go up.
There is no way this is going to be easy. Many things are likely to get worse along the way and this is going to provide a lot of opportunity for those who want to stop it or police departments in other cities to point out what a bad idea it is.
It's probably the right thing for them to do and I hope it works, but they have a rough road ahead of them.
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Re: Re: I prefer Option 3
Doing the right thing is rarely as easy as just putting up with crap with little effort. Which is why it's got to this point in the first place.
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Re: Re: I prefer Option 3
"That sounds good, but changing out a police force is a bit like changing a tire on a car while it is driving on the highway."
Well, they've had the chance to change that tire for a while now. And now that tire is on fire and turns out to have been strapped with explosives.
Yeah, dropping 90% of the police funding will surely hurt but thanks to the unions it's actually arguable that NO police might end up a better case than the police the unions keep offering.
"It's probably the right thing for them to do and I hope it works, but they have a rough road ahead of them."
Yeah. The unions have made damn sure all good options are off the table. And when shit hits the fan they'll be the first to smug over the situation they were instrumental in creating.
If fire department unions had the same standard there'd be municipal legislation demanding that every building be made of dried wood and regularly doused in kerosene - just so the threat of going on strike would be suitably extortionate.
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Re: Re: Re: I prefer Option 3
Reminds me of one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, where it mentions that the Fire Guild (or whatever it was called) was banned in Ankh-Morpork due to its tendency to go around doing the old "Nice place you've got here, shame if it were to suddenly go up in flames, eh?" routine...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I prefer Option 3
I admit, that was what I was thinking of.
Seriously, many police unions have for a long time now tried to turn policing into actual racketeering. And in this they're not alone, looking at Bill Barr's "Would be a shame if you needed a cop and no one bothered to show up" quote.
The US is a big and diverse place so I'm sure there are departments and unions which aren't staffed and led by bigoted sociopaths and gang bosses. Those don't make the news because a well-led police department shouldn't be considered extraordinary.
It's just that just because unions in general are necessary and relevant doesn't mean you can afford to be shy about showing Jimmy Hoffa the inside of a prison cell and disband his gang.
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Re: Re: I prefer Option 3
The only change in crime stats, if any, will be in who is committing them. It is currently the police, maybe that will shift to citizens for a time. But it will work out in the end.
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Headline is misleading. It should read "Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Promise to Replace Police Department With Another Police Department Composed Of Up To 85% Of The Same Cops".
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Hiring the same guys
That's likely to produce disappointing results.
I'm sure the angry mobs who remember our lengthy history of indiscriminate police murder won't stop remembering it when Minneapolis tries and fails and police keep murdering people.
Maybe they'll have to burn down half a dozen precincts next time, or the Minneapolis City Hall.
I didn't know until recently during the French Revolution the crowds were so incensed they would physically just rip the guards apart. No weapons were needed. Guns aren't going to slow them down much. They were that furious.
There are more zombies than bullets.
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It's all cool until
the former police & police union folks start importing crime to "prove" that the police were keeping crime low…
But nah, that would never happen, right?
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Importing crime
Would they hire an organized crime syndicate? They could make more money charging (modest) protection and acting as a better police force.
Would they just commit crime themselves? As soon as we started matching the names of criminals and ex-officers, it would affirm what we thought all along.
Still a great notion to consider in fiction.
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And when it becomes a desert...
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Counterfeit money
tz1 as soon as you suggested you could run your inkjet, it suggests you don't know too much about counterfeiting and real counterfeiters would laugh at you.
First off, let us remember Floyd did not get due process and wasn't convicted of trying to pass funny money. What we know is a store clerk believed a bill was counterfeit, told the police who then murdered Floyd on the pretense of arrest. (They got carried away?)
In real counterfeit investigations, bills often pass through multiple hands before they're detected, and the Secret Service is interested in finding the source. That's to say Floyd was not a high-confidence suspect, and an officer could have knocked on his door and asked him questions over tea.
21st century counterfeits are commonly supernotes, the quality of which exceed those of the ones minted by the US Treasury. The rise of desktop publishing in the 80s facilitated a rise of print standard awareness, meaning more people understood the nuances of making high-quality printed products. From there it was a small step for counterfeiters to match the quality of the products they were illicitly reproducing.
(Incidentally, superior counterfeits are not unique to money, and I learned about them in encountering Magic The Gathering cards that were printed at a higher resolution than the originals. Curiously such cards are now worth more than the originals because secondary markets are weird.
This is to say we don't know if Floyd's $20 note was actually counterfeit, and if it was, if he was aware he was passing one. Typically, we want people to come forward and be open about detected counterfeits, so we don't want to prosecute them unless they're part of the racket.
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Supernotes
I should add, the Secret Service detects supernotes by searching for expected flaws typical of minted notes to see if they are absent. It's tricky, and sometimes even they can't tell which note (between two with the same serial number) is the Treasury print.
This is why we now have blue $100 notes and other weird notes with holographic watermarks and microprint.
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Food Deserts
Regarding the Target, it was an evil Target where customers weren't treated well and only shoddy goods were sold. Its presence and in-store policies exemplified Target Corporation's disinterest in serving markets that featured mainly poor or nonwhite customers, and its presence in the region precluded competing grocers from entering the regional market, say, ones that might treat its customers with respect and provide a good product at a fair price.
This is to say it was straight out of Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes.
Incidentally, food deserts are probably a lower-priority problem than the police actively hunting the population.
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Re: Food Deserts
Uriel, are you talking out your ass? Its not like you....
I shopped at that exact Target store, and got gang stalked there too. My blog documents that exact event.
That Target, on East Lake street, was just another store. The real story is this: Palestinian property developer Basim Sabry and his brother Hamudi brought real commerce to that area, and battled with FBI rats, frame jobs, other outside-the-US-Gangs, and sectarian operators.
Its,EXACTLY like the Adam Sandler movie “Zohan” there.
They built (admittedly shoddy) malls,and collective spaces for Mexicans, Somalis, and more.
These two confronted the monstrosity of corporate/local/tribal sectarian policing (the Swedish Institute and its one store on that street and all their white cops at the 3rd)
So, while I think your heart is in the right place, your head, not so much.
Google “Gandhi Mahal, George Floyd” to see how ROGS single handedly “brought people together” in that area.
Its,an eye opener, but also, guaranteed to “please your palette”
Your analysis fails, because you werent (and are not, nor never have been) there.
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Re: Re: Food Deserts
I shopped at that exact Target store, and got gang stalked there too. My blog documents that exact event.
I just don't believe you, Rogsed. Rather I choose to take the word of a number of twitter accounts of the place with consistent features: shoddy goods, new experimental sometimes-invasive inventory control. Target Corporate HQ (also in Minneapolis) taking an elevated interest in the goings on there to inform outlets in impoverished neighborhoods.
And all told not by people who have a history of trolling Techdirt.
Despite what Trump and his cronys seem to believe, a history of poor behavior adds up.
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Re: Re: Re: Food Deserts
Its ok if you dont believe me Uriel, because others do now.
Look! My story is all over major media right now:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/minneapolis-protest-george-floyd-gandhi -mahal
Derek Chauvin and George Floyd were coworkers next to Gandhi Mahal. Floyds death was no coincidence. And, they both worked next to one of that precincts primary community organizing spots, which I personally created.
And, Chauvin was known to sit in front of our place, and leer through our windows, at our Somali, and Eritrean, and Muslim, and Jewish, and Christian, and radical left, conservative right, and black and white, brown, othered clientele, as if coming tovether over social injustice is a crime somehow.
I mean-it wasnt just Chauvin, it was that cities entire corrupt police farce, along with that precincts dirty little black-bag-jobbing police gangs.
Gandhi Mahal is just one of my ironic works of art, and we started that restaurant, and named it that name, because most whites in that area cant tell a Muslim from a Hindu, from an African American, and whites generally dont care anyways, cuz, privilege.
So, yeah-feel free to not believe me, Uriel, because millions of others do now, and have heard my message, and my slogan: “bringing people together,” and my favorite “bringing peace by pleasing the pallete,” lol.
Yes, I admit that I have no problem trolling shitty people, and other trolls at TD.
My conscience is TOTALLY OK with that. As the avid reader will note, I trolled that entire precinct (and its lily white DFL and police union too) for twelve years BEFORE the Floyd murder.
That said, your usual necessary cynicism seems to have slipped here:
“take the word of a number of twitter accounts”
YIKES. After all that we know of Twitter as a PR tool, and full of cris PR agents, you should remain skeptical, though I agree, Target is similar to what you have described, and now, forced into taking an active stance in that community.
And, its not just an HQ there, it originated there too, after the fall of the Dayton-Hudson empire(former Gov. Mark Daytons inheritance).
URIEL, words matter, but not so much on tribal-sectarian, troll farm friendly forums like TD, which has equal parts armchair fake activists and speech police(and actual police), sometimes its best to sketch a portrait of oneself as an absurdist, so that only other artists can understand the work.
Simple folks, pseudo-rationalists (citation or else!), timesuckers, and TDs gatekeepers know nothing about art.
And even now, I have no expectation that you will get it either. You often fall inline with the Shroud of Turin believers here at TD, asking for blood samples in fake relics .
But you can take a gander at my blog, where I provide the actual evidence, including the sketches of Gandhi Mahal, which was (and will be again)a stones throw from the Target you are discussing.
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Re: And when it becomes a desert...
Naw, dont run your inkjet, lil piggy: just go there, and be a new black/other face.
Pretty soon, all those pink piggies, and their white, female enablers will be flooding you with offers to buy crack, pussy, guns, etc.
Then exchanging your good money, for their small change, paid in Xerox’d cash.
Voila!
The George Floyd gang stalking experience, in a nutshell.
Of course, you cant experience what he did, as a security guard confronted by dirty cops who try to turn you into a police informant, but WTH!
You already are one of those due process violating anti-constitutionalists, right?
If it squeeks like a pig.....
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So....ROGS was right all along?
Yup. I fought the law, and the law lost...kind of.
Because those peachy skinned cockblocks and gatekeepers at Techdirt (bhull, PaulTard, ScarySatanMonastery, and other police enablers) have free reign here.
Google “Gandhi Mahal, George Floyd” for an eye opener.
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