The NYPD’s Aviation Unit and cameras all over the city are the eyes and ears for officers interacting with protesters on the ground. All five boroughs are monitored 24/7 inside the NYPD’s Joint Operations Task Force.
Deputy Chief Ed Mullane was CBS's host. After detailing the communications network that runs alongside the PD's cameras and aircraft, reporters spoke to the NYPD's Counterterrorism unit to see if it couldn't conjure up some speculation about outsiders engaging in rioting and looting.
Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said there is a high level of confidence within the NYPD that these unnamed groups had organized scouts, medics, and supply routes of rocks, bottles and accelerants for breakaway groups to commit vandalism and violence.
Here's the kicker, delivered by a counterterrorism official who apparently believes this is somehow worth mentioning even though it's indicative of nothing.
There are strong indicators they planned for violence in advance using at times encrypted communications, he said.
"Using at times encrypted communications." Oh, you mean like anyone who has WhatsApp on their phone? Anyone using iPhone's messaging app? Criminal or non-criminal, encrypted communications are pretty common these days.
Here's a more direct quote, as supplied to CBS:
"One of the challenges we have is that these are loosely put together groups that have become good at using encrypted communication…"
Being "good at" using encrypted communications means little more than being able to use a smartphone. The only plausible reason anyone would bring something like this up in this context is to try to link encryption to criminal activity. There's no other reason to do this, since NYPD officers themselves use iPhones for work. The NYPD obviously enjoys the benefits of encrypted communications and officers are probably pretty "good at it" by this point.
After amNewYork reported this week of the NYPD’s plans to encrypt police radios in 2020, police officials said Thursday that it would likely not move forward with encryption for at least a year.
Moreover, police brass indicated that they are “open to discussion” as to who, outside of the Police Department, would have access to encrypted communications.
This would present a "challenge" to everyone who isn't an NYPD officer. Journalists would no longer be able to monitor calls and would have to rely solely on post facto press releases and official statements. More concerning is the fact that other entities the NYPD relies on -- volunteer fire departments and ambulance services -- would not have access either, delaying their response time.
Encryption isn't just a tool abused by -- to use Miller's exact words -- "a number of anarchist groups." It's used by regular people all the time. And the NYPD obviously recognizes the benefits of secure communications or it would not be looking to encrypt radio traffic or supply its officers with iPhones.
The United States is a mess right now and it's going to take a long time to sort things out. What we don't need is public officials opportunistically muddying the encryption waters with vague assertions about anarchists and secure communications.
I thought there was still a Drug War being fought in this county. I guess it's not as important as billions of annual budget dollars would indicate it is. When the going has gotten mildly tougher for US law enforcement agencies, the DEA is there to help out by placing people engaged in First Amendment activities under surveillance.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted sweeping new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” and collect intelligence on people participating in protests over the police killing of George Floyd, according to a two-page memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Floyd’s death “has spawned widespread protests across the nation, which, in some instances, have included violence and looting,” the DEA memo says. “Police agencies in certain areas of the country have struggled to maintain and/or restore order.” The memo requests the extraordinary powers on a temporary basis, and on Sunday afternoon a senior Justice Department official signed off.
The DEA has always been able to engage in domestic surveillance. Most of its targets reside in the United States. Domestic surveillance to engage in drug-related investigations isn't really the problem here. (This is not to say the DEA's surveillance efforts aren't problematic.) This is the DOJ saying it's okay for an agency that's supposed to be shutting down drug operations to start snooping on protesters. Even if there has been some criminal activity occurring during demonstrations, in recent days this has been the exception, rather than the rule.
The memo [PDF] notes that the law says the DEA's law enforcement powers are supposed to be limited to drug enforcement activity. But there's always a loophole. And that's what the DOJ is using. The memo admits the "federal crimes being committed in the wake of Mr. Floyd's death are largely not drug-related," but says the Attorney General can re-task the DEA as the DOJ sees fit. That's how the DOJ sees it. No further details are discussed in the memo. And the DOJ has nothing to say about what percentage of observed federal crimes to date might have anything to do with drugs.
It appears no one in the DOJ felt the DEA's assistance was necessary. In other words, the DOJ did not ask the DEA if it would be willing to expend its resources surveilling protests for non-drug-related crime. The DEA asked to do this, suggesting it has some underutilized resources that should be budgeted out of the agency when the next appropriations bill comes up for a vote.
It doesn't appear many DEA agents think they should be involved in surveilling protests. The DEA only needed 25 volunteers to do god knows what with their drug investigation expertise. It couldn't get them -- not without stripping the tasking of its voluntary nature.
Two sources knowledgeable about the deployment said 15 people from the DEA’s elite Special Response Team and 10 special agents were chosen. Not all 25 volunteered, the sources said.
Kruskall’s email did not describe what specific tasks the detachment would be given. It added that if insufficient numbers of agents volunteered, others would be assigned the job. According to the sources, fewer than 25 agents raised their hands [when asked to volunteer].
Leopold's DEA sources aren't happy with the DEA's actions. Three people who spoke with Leopold said they were "troubled" by the DEA's desire to send agents to surveil people engaged in protected speech.
And they're correct. The DEA has no business engaging in "covert surveillance" of protests, especially when there's no evidence pointing to drug-related federal crimes being committed. The agency also shouldn't be sending non-volunteers out to help handle protests by "intervening" on regular law enforcement's behalf or arresting protesters for allegedly engaging in criminal acts.
The DEA saw an opportunity to engage in mission creep, if only for a limited time. A DOJ less in thrall to hypocritical "rule of law" notions would have rejected this naked attempt to put DEA boots on First Amendment ground. But that isn't the DOJ we have at the moment. And now we have at least 25 DEA agents burning through tax dollars for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Defund the DEA.
I have written at least two (admittedly) incendiary posts for this site responding to the response (and -- one level further -- commenters' responses) to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin has been arrested and is now facing a shifting set of charges -- some of which are unlikely to be sustained. Minneapolis is still burning. And it will probably burn again once the justice system is done with what's left of Chauvin and his criminal charges.
In these posts, I openly advocated for the targeted destruction of government property. I do not apologize for that. If the problem is law enforcement, it should be law enforcement's stuff that burns. Say what you will for peace and reason, but we're dealing with unreasonable forces that consider themselves soldiers in a warzone, rather than public servants in troubled areas where a little kindness on their part would go a long way.
Peaceful protests can effect change. I'm not arguing that they can't. But decades of peaceful protests -- interrupted occasionally by violent civil uprisings -- haven't changed much in this nation. And that's just the last 50 years of this on/off cycle. The anger presenting itself now dates back more than 300 years to slavery. And the 300 years following that haven't been much better. Nearly 100 years after slaves were freed, governments in America -- along with the populace supporting them -- treated blacks as subhumans only worthy of very limited rights and privileges.
But let's go with the argument that peaceful protests will bring peaceful resolutions. Here's how that's playing out around the nation.
This guy is bleeding from his skull and the police have the nerve to tell the media he “tripped” pic.twitter.com/WPjvZNAneo
This happened today: Philadelphia Police Officers were firing tear gas on peaceful protesters who were TRAPPED on a fenced off hill on the side of a highway!
Here is a 38 photo sequence of what happen this morning with Joyce Beatty, Shannon Hardin, Kevin Boyce, protesters and Columbus Police. pic.twitter.com/ZZEd6MfJCh
With a nation watching them -- including the hundreds of cameras present at any protest -- police officers are acting as though nothing matters. They have responded to accusations of excessive violence with excessive violence. They have greeted non-violence with violence. And it doesn't appear to be slowing down. Empathy and self-awareness are apparently traits considered to be weaknesses by our nation's law enforcement agencies. Proving protesters right isn't helping the cops win. But leaving it up to ineffective and cowardly legislators isn't ending the cops' winning streak either. The cops claim fear provokes every violent reaction they have. But when they have nothing to fear, they engage in violence anyway.
Let's not abandon peaceful solutions. But let's not pretend they're more effective than violence targeting the objects of state oppression.
We've posted a bunch of times when John Oliver has said pretty much exactly what we've been saying here at Techdirt, but he always does it much better, more pointedly, and (much, much) funnier than we do. The latest is no exception. It was all about the systemic racism that has created, enabled and encouraged so much police brutality, especially against black communities. Just watch it:
It goes over a ton of things that we've written about in the past, and some stuff we haven't. It talks about the history of policing -- much of which was literally designed as a racist tool to keep black communities down. It covers the ridiculous "drug wars" from the 1970s and 1980s, that we now know were designed explicitly as a tool to target black Americans by Richard Nixon. It mentions the debunked concept of "broken windows policing," that (again) was used specifically to target black Americans by police. Oh, and also the unconstitutional stop and frisk policies used by the NYPD and elsewhere which (stop me if you've heard this one before...) were used by police to target black Americans.
It goes on to talk about how politicians across the political spectrum focused on putting more and more money into police departments, while cutting and slashing all other social services, leaving the police to deal with the fallout. So, when we don't have services for the mentally ill... it falls to the police (who too often step in and shoot the mentally ill rather than help them). We've turned drug addiction from a medical problem (for which many people cannot get medical help) into a criminal problem (again inserting the police).
Then he discusses the insane police militarization that we've been highlighting here for the better part of a decade. The whole setup of a militarized police has never made sense, in part because it literally sets up two things you don't want if you want reasonable policing: (1) the attitude that your town or city is "at war," and (2) the view that the public is "the enemy." Both of these are the exact opposite of what effective policing would be. From there, it covers how police training reinforces these concepts, and has literally nothing to do with protecting the public, but often more to do with making the police feel good about themselves.
There's also a good discussion of just how evil police unions are, and how they seem to focus on protecting the ability of cops to violate everyone's rights with impunity. And that, of course, brings us right to one of the biggest travesties around: the concept of qualified immunity, which is about as close to a literal "get out of jail free" card as there is from almost all police misbehavior. Oliver then goes on to talk about how the federal government could step in, but (especially under this administration) usually chooses to look the other way.
All of this brings Oliver around to the discussion that gained prominence last week about "defunding the police." On social media, I've seen a bunch of people push back on this idea as somehow a bridge too far, but they're wrong, and Oliver makes the point quite clearly why. The issue is not a "few bad cops." It's not that police need better training. The problem is that the entire system is built to reinforce its own problems. Put more simply: the problem right now is not that the system needs reform, it's that it's working as intended. The entire concept of policing in America is broken. And you don't fix that with reform. You need radical change from top to bottom.
And that's what the "defund the police" movement is about. It's about a total rethink of what "policing" means. And, that can include wiping out entire police departments and starting from scratch with a new approach. Oliver mentions Camden, New Jersey, which did exactly that. In 2013 it shut down its police department and started again from scratch. And the results are pretty stunning (though, even there, there are arguments that they could have gone much further and been even more successful).
As Oliver highlights for people who really need to hear it: defunding the police doesn't mean ending any kind of law enforcement. It means completely rethinking the entire structure of terrible policing we've built up over decades (while simultaneously wiping away the other various safety nets and infrastructure that support people in need putting more of that work onto police shoulders, who are ill-equipped, at best, to handle it).
So, please, if you think "defunding" the police, or some of our posts from the last few weeks are going "too far," please watch Oliver. Or watch some of the many other smart people who have been speaking out about this for years.
The problem is not a few bad cops. The problem is the system itself. The system is working as intended, and that is the problem.
A whole lot of attention -- and thousands of cellphone cameras -- are focused on law enforcement officers. Nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis PD officer Derek Chauvin have aimed a lot of unblinking eyes at officers around the country.
Unfortunately for the protesters -- and Americans in general -- a great number of officers have chosen to behave badly. Journalists have been targeted, teargassed, and arrested. Peaceful protests are being greeted with violence from police officers, who seem unable to comprehend just how quickly and thoroughly they're making the protesters' points for them.
Via Adam Steinbaugh comes yet another protest-related act of violence and stupidity by a law enforcement officer. This one, however, sits at the top of his county's food chain. And he's apparently unaware of the First Amendment, Supreme Court precedent, or how to properly respond to nothing more than a (self-censored no less!) profanity.
Actual video exists of this confrontation, which has led to stupider and stupider things in the days following this sheriff's initial reaction:
Having stolen a sign from a demonstrator -- one that said "F*CK TRUMP" -- Sheriff Ashley Paulk then decided to grab the woman with the nearly-foulmouthed sign by the neck and shove her around for a bit.
He then doubled-down on his initial error by keeping the sign and declaring he needed it for an "investigation."
No one but Sheriff Paulk seems to know what he'll be investigating, especially since there's nearly 50-year-old Supreme Court precedent on the books saying profanity is protected by the First Amendment, especially in "political" contexts, which these demonstrations clearly are.
Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk says his office will arrest protesters holding signs with profanity, after getting in a brief scuffle Wednesday when he took a sign away from a group in downtown Valdosta.
There are even more dubious assertions further down in the article:
The sheriff says he supports the group's right to protest peacefully, but he does not want them showing signs with profanity.
Oh ok. I guess bad words are now literal violence. That's a dumb take. But this is even dumber. This assertion makes it clear he feels the journalists he's speaking to are dumber than he is.
He went to get the sign after getting several calls complaining about the language, the sheriff says.
Even if true -- which seems unlikely -- the government doesn't get to engage in content-based speech restrictions just because some locals are unhappy.
In support, Sheriff Paulk cites a law that doesn't say what he thinks it does.
Georgia law… makes it a misdemeanor to use obscene, vulgar or profane language in the presence of a person under age 14, which threatens an immediate breach of the peace.
That last clause carries all of the weight and Paulk completely ignores it. The use of profane language in the presence of a person under the age of 14 has to "threaten an immediate breach of peace" to be illegal. Simply swearing (or in this case, almost swearing) in the presumed presence of certain minors isn't a crime by itself.
A young woman was arrested for holding a sign displaying obscene language that alludes to a lewd act between Sheriff Ashley Paulk and President Donald Trump.
Sheriff Paulk doesn't deserve to keep his job. Residents of Lowndes County should take this opportunity to vote him out… oh.
He is running for re-election this year, and is unopposed.
Pretty sure an empty office would be doing a better job handling these very mild (and very mildly profane) protests. Running unopposed guarantees Sheriff Paulk will stay in office long enough to make it easy to serve him with lawsuits, but it's not going to make the state of policing any better in Lowndes County.
With protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin erupting all over the nation, states are beginning to ask the National Guard to step in. The epicenter of these demonstrations is Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the National Guard has already been deployed to handle protests and enforce the curfew.
The US military is monitoring protests in at least seven states, according to Defense Department documents obtained exclusively by The Nation.
In addition to Minnesota, where a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, the military is tracking uprisings in New York, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, and Kentucky, according to a Defense Department situation report. Notably, only Minnesota has requested National Guard support. The documents were originally stored on an unclassified server but were subsequently elevated to a classified system.
In the only state where the Guard has been deployed, troops have been given the green light to enforce the law at bullet-point, if needed.
Another document about the protests in Minnesota, titled “MNNG Civil Disturbance Response Storybook,” is also marked FOUO and is dated May 29. It states that National Guard members have been authorized for “weapon status red,” meaning magazines loaded but safety on.
The good news is the documents seen by Klippenstein express concern about the Guard's response to civilian unrest. They emphasize the protection of human life and personal property. But we'll have an opportunity to see where these two directives meet if more property is targeted by looters or protesters. The National Guard is a branch of the military and crowd control isn't a directive it's had a lot of practice exercising. The few times that it has, it hasn't exactly been applauded for its restraint.
The National Guard is being inserted into a volatile situation with a shortage of equipment and possibly conflicting directives. This likely isn't going to work out well. As Steven Aftergood points out in Klippenstein's article, thrusting a military entity into a situation where there's no clear enemy tends to lead to bad decision making.
They are not trying to defeat an adversary, but to support their fellow citizens, to preserve order and to protect the defenseless. And unlike a response to natural disaster, they have to act in an environment of intense anger and provocation without losing their own bearings. It’s a near-impossible task even with the best training and equipment.
The National Guard has already demonstrated its inability to handle things well in limited action. A video shot by a Minneapolis resident shows troops firing paint canisters onto the porch of a house -- directly at the residents -- for ignoring unlawful orders to go back inside. The curfew only says people cannot be in public places past a certain point in the evening. It does not say they need to remain indoors.
Also in today's criminal justice news, National Guard and Minneapolis PD officers illegally demand taxpayers stop filming from their porch and go inside – you'll hear "Light 'em up!" as they then shoot at these people *WHO ARE ON THEIR OWN PORCH*
There also appears to be a great deal more surveillance happening. A Predator drone on loan from the CBP has been spotted flying over the city and the state's government -- momentarily and mistakenly -- claimed the NSA was engaging in domestic surveillance.
Walz also reportedly said during a press conference that the National Security Agency was providing “intelligence support” and intercepted communications regarding riots.
“No NSA involvement,” a Walz spokesperson told CyberScoop. The Democratic governor was mistaken in suggesting Saturday during a press conference that the U.S. military had provided the state with signals intelligence collected by the NSA, the spokesperson said.
But that doesn't mean there's no domestic surveillance being performed by intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Community provides support to military intelligence and the National Guard is a military component. Governor Walz mentioned "signals interception," which can mean a whole lot of things and it appears the governor is actively seeking access to DoD intelligence collections. The NSA's involvement -- if any -- won't be direct. But domestic-facing agencies -- including the FBI -- have access to NSA collections and can perform backdoor searches to access "inadvertent" collections of US persons' communications.
With President Trump citing the Insurrection Act in tweets and public statements, there's a possibility other branches of the military could become involved in crowd control and curfew enforcement. This Act was invoked during the 1992 LA riots but the law has been expanded twice since then to give the president even more discretionary power, meaning Trump can likely make good on his threat to send the troops in to shut down demonstrations if he feels cities and states aren't doing enough on their own.
This unrest has erupted from the use of excessive force by an armed government employee. It seems unlikely that sending more armed government employees with a directive to deploy force will defuse the current situation -- especially when defusing situations isn't something that comes naturally to them.
Another day, another example of copyright acting as censorship. The folks over at Unicorn Riot have been covering the protests around the country, but apparently they can't do that as they'd like because copyright is getting in the way. Unicorn Riot announced on Twitter that video interviews they had conducted and posted have been pulled down from both Facebook and YouTube due to copyright claims such as this one:
Facebook and YouTube have algorithmically interfered with our media coverage due to ambient copyrighted music. We are forced to delete interview audio overlaying background music 😶 😶 😶 ... standby pic.twitter.com/bbGwLTmakc
If you look closely at that image of the info within YouTube, it shows what are most likely ContentID matches of five different songs that were flagged, playing in the background while protesters were being interviewed. Three of the songs -- by Beyonce, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar -- were listed for demonetization (which would allow Unicorn Riot's videos to play, just without monetization). But two more -- by 2Pac and Marvin Gaye -- said the entire video had to come down.
Now, YouTube does let the user "trim out" that sequence, or "mute" the song, but doing so would trim or mute the interview at the same time, and that kinda defeats the purpose.
And so you have an end result where important historical documentation of huge and important protests, focused on police brutality against black Americans, is being blocked and erased from history, due to the copyright on music created by black musicians.
That cannot and should not be the point of copyright. And yet, it is what we have today.
Unicorn Riot (understandably) is complaining that Facebook and YouTube have "algorithmically interfered" with their reporting, but the reality is that it's copyright to blame here. And we should not confuse the two.
First off, I would like to thank Mike Masnick and Techdirt for publishing my post on the George Floyd killing and the (in my eyes) justifiable destruction of police property as an answer to years of injustice and "bad apple" excuses. Very few sites would have published such a post. Most would have rejected it after reading the title.
I also appreciate the commenters who weighed in, including those who disagreed with me. It was a strong stance for me to take and I expected to be drowned in criticism. That I wasn't buried by critics perhaps demonstrates my points were well-made. Or it may just indicate the general public is sick and tired of cop bullshit -- bullshit they far too often walk away from, thanks to generous union contracts, the almost-obligatory judicial application of qualified immunity, or the continued sheltering of police officers from personal responsibility by legislators.
But I did want to respond to one comment in the thread in particular. This comment suggested I was off-base and that peaceful protests are productive and have resulted in systemic changes. Despite the evidence I had laid down that being peaceful and seeking change through acceptable routes has been a net loss over the last 50+ years, a commenter suggested otherwise.
This is the central argument of the comment submitted by one of our many anonymous commenters. (Just a reminder, we love anonymous commenters and would never demand you give us all your vitals in exchange for your ability to comment on articles. We also allow you to turn ads off if you wish with no financial obligation. That being said, there are multiple ways to support this fiercely independent site, so click thru if you'd like to help. Thanks!)
In contrast to a number of the opinions I have been reading here and on other sites, I am not okay with burning everything down and I do not think that rioting and looting is going to result in any lasting change for the better. Taxpayer dollars were used to build that police station and purchase the police vehicles that got destroyed. A person's life savings might be invested in that house or business that was set on fire. A corporate building (such as Target) might not be replaced in the future. (Black neighborhoods have been complaining of corporate chains avoiding them due to the higher costs incurred.) Yes, insurance might pay to replace the lost things. Yes, corporations and people might rebuild. However, what of the turmoil and hardship that occurs in ALL of the surrounding lives that have to find ways to cope without the services or shelter they previously had?
Rioting seems to only divide us into those who follow the rules of civil society and those who do not. I have read multiple accounts of people who came to peacefully protest, but LEFT when they realized things were going turn violent. They came to PROTEST violence, not PARTICIPATE in it. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi showed us that big changes CAN be be achieved without using violence. The PBS series "Eyes on the Prize" shows how the system in place tried multiple tactics and violence to derail the civil rights movement. Video clips of police violence were aired on TV. But the protesters did not fight back. They did not join in the violence. As those who wanted to maintain the status quo were forced to use stronger tactics against the protesters, the more it became obvious to the other members of society that something was seriously wrong and needed to be changed. The injustice was clear. Those who wanted justice then JOINED the protesters until those in power couldn't ignore the injustice any further. Remember, our political representatives ONLY rule with the consent of the governed. When the governed rise up in unified agreement, change DOES happen.
I appreciate the point being made. Nonviolent protest can result in positive changes. Unfortunately, given the history of this nation and its law enforcement agencies, one cannot apply it to the current situation. The argument is coherent. But the effectiveness of holding back and operating within the confines of numerous social contracts has yet to prove a net gain for minorities -- especially black Americans, who spent years as slaves and years as subhumans following the abolition of slavery.
Here's Trevor Noah explaining eloquently why this flashpoint isn't an overreaction to a single data point, but rather the culmination of hundreds of years of history.
That's why this commenter's argument doesn't work. And here's why the current situation -- as horrendous and shocking as it seems -- is more likely to move the dial on moving cops back into their rightful position as protectors and servants, rather than self-appointed warlords overseeing a mostly imaginary domestic conflict.
Several commenters said I was advocating for violence and destruction. They're only half-right.
I don't want looting and senseless violence either. In fact, I want no violence. I do not want police officers killed or injured. But if anyone should be targeted for destruction, it should be the entities that have perpetrated this violence upon certain Americans for years. Let them experience what it is to live as a black person in America -- one now "led" by someone who openly calls for violence against those exercising their First Amendment rights (protesters, journalists).
I have already pointed out how peaceful protests have failed to effect change. These acts -- the burning of precincts and police vehicles -- may not either, but it will make the point far more effectively than hanging back and being compliant. I don't want to see business owners victimized by opportunists but I think a few burning cop cars is a small price to pay for equality and serious police reform.
The law enforcement agencies of America have earned every bit of the hatred they're now feeling. But during these protests all things are equal. There are no courts, no unions, no "tough-on-crime" legislators standing between cops and the destruction of their property. Sucks for them. And when the shit goes down, they flee their posts and give up any appearance of giving a damn about serving or protecting.
No one forced cops to behave this way. They took it upon themselves to act as warriors while performing a job that asks them to act as society's protector. They talk a lot about the "thin blue line" between us and chaos, and then act as agents of chaos as soon as an opportunity presents itself. De-escalation tactics are an anomaly. Talking about the great sex you'll have after offing a citizen is the norm.
There is no compelling reason for cops to change their standard M.O. And, granted, lighting the occasional cop car on fire will likely only solidify their misguided "warrior" mentality. But it does make it clear that the people still have power, even if the greater power -- the US government that has treated minorities as lower classes for years -- will ultimately prevail.
Then there's the entire subclass of US citizens who spend their days bumper-stickering and forum-posting about how they and their guns will rise up against the government should it prove to be dangerous to American citizens and their rights. WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY? Outside of a few Boogaloo contingents, the "Obama is coming for muh guns" crowd has remained silent and useless, presumably digging into their eight-year supply of dehydrated food until the government makes it safe for white people to walk around again. Fuck those guys. They suck as much as the government entities they claim to view as enemies. When the shit goes down, these motherfuckers start bunkering. Cowards.
The current situation is far from ideal. No one wants to live in a civil unrest hotspot, given the unpredictability of the situation. Governments all over the nation, however, are willing to make things worse -- calling in an offshoot of the military best known for killing Vietnam War protesters. The war is at home, but the instigators are the people we've entrusted to protect society. They have continually proven they're not up to the job. And they've made things worse by pretending every movement is furtive, every black man is probably armed, and every bit of cash in a someone's wallet is probably drug money. They are road pirates, murderers, gang members, and charlatans. Let them feel the flames.
They have created their own personal hell. There should be no more free passes. This is the America they created. Whatever burns, burns. This is on their heads. No matter what any politician says in hopes of mollifying the voting public, the truth remains undeniable: you reap what you sow.
There was a window of opportunity for cops following the George Floyd killing. Floyd, suspected of nothing more than passing a fake $20 bill, was killed by Officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis PD. Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd's neck until he was dead. This act lasted for nearly nine minutes -- and for nearly three minutes after Chauvin checked for a pulse and found nothing. Yet he persisted, and none of the three cops around him stopped him.
Chauvin has been criminally charged and is under arrest. We'll see where that takes us. But the opportunity was there for the rest of the nation's cops to separate themselves from this "bad apple." Cop defenders ignore what bad apples do to barrels, but we won't. Chauvin is a symptom. He is not the disease.
As protests broke out around the nation, law enforcement agencies responded. While a small number attempted to find middle ground with aggrieved citizens, most acted as though they were a law unto themselves in these troubled times.
One site got it completely right -- a site that so often offers up hot takes that it is the source of its own meme. Slate, of all places, nailed this call:
Also in today's criminal justice news, police in Louisville KY – who just watched police in Minneapolis MN arrest a CNN reporter live on-air – say "hold my whiskey" and deliberately shoot a reporter and her cameraman
Photos taken by @PLBarghouty show HuffPost senior reporter Chris Mathias (@letsgomathias), with press badge clearly visible, being taken into custody by the NYPD. Chris was on assignment for HuffPost covering the protests in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/EWcWNoFjMW
"You are part of the problem, if not the entire problem." - MPD officer
Minneapolis Police called our journalist the "entire problem" & threatened he "would get baked" as he filmed them at 31st & Blaisdell after curfew a block away from #GeorgeFloydProtests at the 5th Precinct. pic.twitter.com/K25MIapPcf
I just got hit by a rubber bullet near the bottom of my throat. I had just interviewed a man with my phone at 3rd and Pine and a police officer aimed and shot me in the throat, I saw the bullet bounce onto the street @LAist@kpcc OK, that’s one way to stop me, for a while pic.twitter.com/9C2u5KmscG
— Adolfo Guzman-Lopez (@AGuzmanLopez) June 1, 2020
This should come as no surprise. When the shit goes down, no rights will be respected. The Fourth tends to go first, but the First is often right behind it.
First, we had to deal with the coronavirus and government grabs for power. And this is where we are now: trying to limit a rational response to hundreds of years of racism, manifested as Officer Chauvin's decision to place his knee on the neck of a black man until long after the man was dead.
The streets are filled with cameras. Cops control most of them. But they can't control journalists. So, they seek to intimidate them by making it clear their presence isn't welcomed. The current situation may heighten the response but it has been this way for years. Cops have made it clear -- and they've been backed by the Commander-in-Chief -- the press is the enemy. Journalists record things and those recordings usually make their way to many people -- far more than the average internet rando could hope to rope in. If you can't control the narrative, you can always attempt to control the journalists.
When chaos is on the menu, the cops can still try to maintain control of the reporting. And most of their sins will be forgiven because the situation was unforeseeable. But when it's happening, we can see it. We can see what they do and how they react. And, because they react badly, every unblinking eye must be closed. The power must remain centralized, and if that means taking a few journalists out, so be it.
(Those of you who'd like to read a transcript, rather than watch this powerful performance by Orlando Jones [possibly for "Dear God, I'm still at work" reasons], can do so here.)
This is the history of black Americans. For a few hundred years, they weren't even Americans. And even after that -- even after the Civil War -- black Americans spent a hundred years being shunted to different schools, different neighborhoods, different restrooms, different bus seating, different water fountains. They are not us, this land of opportunity repeatedly stated.
Integration was forced. It was rarely welcomed. Being black still means being an outsider. Four hundred years of subjugation doesn't just end. This is how the story continues:
A hundred years later. You're fucked. A hundred years after that. Fucked. A hundred years after you get free, you still getting fucked out a job and shot at by police.
Fucked.
That's George Floyd. The Minneapolis resident allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill at a local store. The penalty was death -- delivered extrajudicially by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Officer Chauvin put his knee on the neck of the handcuffed Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. This continued for more than two minutes after Officer Chauvin had checked Floyd's pulse and stated he "couldn't find one."
A man was dead under Chauvin's knee and yet he never moved. No one around him moved either. The other three officers at the scene watched Officer Chauvin kill a man, and not a single one of them did anything to prevent this from happening.
The good news is they've all been fired. The other news -- with the "good" excised -- is Officer Chauvin is being criminally charged. That's only news. Buy your insurance now because it's almost guaranteed Minneapolis will burn again once a jury has had a shot at this thing.
First, there's the murder charge. We all want this but there's little that supports it. It looks like murder, but the state has to prove things it's probably not going to be able to prove -- especially when the people doing the prosecuting aren't all that interested in prosecuting cops.
Third-degree murder is the most minimal of murder charges and even that might not be enough to drag Officer Chauvin into the crushing wheels of the carceral state. As Scott Greenfield explains, there doesn't appear to be enough to justify this charge in what's been seen in multiple videos. It appears Chauvin deployed a restraint technique that's been given a thumbs up by multiple law enforcement agencies.
Former police officer Derek Chauvin was charged with Murder 3, a not-insignificant charge even if it lacks the panache of Murder 1, with a potential sentence of 25 years in prison. Unlike intentional murder, the mens rea under Minnesota Statutes § 609.195 requires only a “depraved mind.”
609.195 MURDER IN THE THIRD DEGREE.
(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.
Yet, the complaint filed by the Hennepin County Attorney made almost no effort to assert that the elements of the charge were met, that Chauvin was “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.”
While the video clearly showed Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck, which was naturally assumed, for obvious reasons, to have been the cause of death, that alone does not suffice to meet the element that it was an “act eminently dangerous.” It’s hardly an undangerous immobilization technique, but it’s also not an uncommon restraint, and is a permissible use of force in Minneapolis. That it’s only supposed to be used to restrain someone actively resisting gives rise to a departmental violation, but doesn’t elevate a lawful use of force to an eminently dangerous act.
If that falls, we're left with manslaughter. And that probably won't be enough to convince anyone Chauvin has been punished enough for continuing to use his knee to "restrain" Floyd for almost three minutes after a cop couldn't detect his pulse.
“I am worried about excited delirium or whatever,” Lane said.
From that, we run into the details of the coroner's report. These are preliminary, so they will change. But the exonerative text is already in there, ready for deployment by tough-on-crime politicians, media personnel willing to act like PD stenographers, police union officials (and the police union in Minneapolis is one of the worst), and anyone else seeking to justify Chauvin's actions.
George Floyd didn't die because Officer Chauvin crushed Floyd's neck with his knee for almost nine minutes -- most of which were spent with Floyd stating he couldn't breathe. He died because he was going to die, with or without Officer Chauvin's intercession.
The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.
George Floyd died of heart disease, you guys. It coincidentally killed him while he was having his neck compressed by a cop who checked his pulse and discovered he was likely already dead and continued to compress his neck for another two minutes. Also peep the "potential intoxicants," which probably gave George Floyd the superhuman strength he needed to stay alive for seven of those nine minutes before succumbing to "coronary artery disease."
If Chauvin walks, Minneapolis burns again. Multiple cities burn. Unlike other killings of black men by cops, this has prompted intense protests across the nation. This one -- committed in full view of multiple phones and at least one nearby CCTV camera -- shows cops do not give a fuck who is watching. They will do what they want to do and roll the dice on a favorable ruling by federal courts.
LET IT BURN. LET IT ALL BURN.
In response to this killing, Minneapolis burned. Looting accompanied the protests, as is often the case. We can argue about the positive/negative effects of looting for as long as you want in the comment threads, but let's take a look at a couple of facts.
We have had riots in America for years. And looting. Those arguing that the destruction of businesses during these protests is counterproductive need to have their memories refreshed. This nation began with the looting of British ships. A whole offshoot of the "rule of law" party (also the "free speech" party, which is currently headed by someone seeking to directly regulate social media platforms) named itself after protesters who boarded British ships and threw their merchandise overboard.
Even if you decry the the destruction of local businesses which may not have the funds to recover from this unexpected turn of events, you cannot argue with protesters going straight to the source of the problem.
Police precinct set on fire on the third day of demonstrations as the so-called Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul seethed over the shocking police killing of a handcuffed black man
And, as a bonus, the thin blue line between us and chaos being filmed abandoning their posts and leaving us to the chaos they could never protect us from, no matter how many black men they killed.
This is the moment Minneapolis police abandoned, fled the police precinct during the protests for #JusticeForGeorge - minutes later the precinct went up in flames pic.twitter.com/thYDXBThLe
The cops fucked this up. The cops should pay. Unfortunately, it will be taxpayers funding the rebuilding of the Third Precinct station in Minneapolis, but, by all means, burn every cop car, precinct, etc. that stands between black Americans and the respect of their rights.
The message is clear: cops are the problem, not the solution. Burn the shit that means something to them -- the stuff that protects them from the people -- and see where we all are at the end of the day.
Let's take the long view. What has this accomplished? Here's a list of riots sparked by police violence against minorities -- one dating back nearly 60 years.
1965: Los Angeles 1967: Newark 1967: Detroit 1968: King assassination 1980: Miami 1992: Los Angeles 2001: Cincinnati 2014: Ferguson 2015: Baltimore 2016: Charlotte
What did that get us? Burning small parts of the system to the ground got us Nixon (who ran on a "tough on crime" platform following the riots in the 1960s) and a immensely-harmful drug war that has done nothing to slow the supply of drugs but has done everything to improve the bottom lines of PDs and prosecutors.
Cops haven't changed. And they haven't changed despite having every reason to. Several dozen cop shops are operating under consent decrees with the Department of Justice because they can't be trusted to not violate rights en masse on their own. The rest are still acting like it's a war zone out there, cladding themselves in cast-off military gear and equipment even as crime rates remain at historic lows. It's tough to be a cop out there, say cops, even as unimpeachable data says otherwise to a bunch of impeachable cops.
But let's just say you're arguing that riots/protests/looting don't solve anything. Let's look at the data again. Here are the years where nothing happened:
Did not attacking cops help then? Did leaving retail outlets intact make policing better? Did a lack of looting force cops to realize their systemic bias was hurting communities? Did all of this non-action bring us to a better place in terms of our relationship with law enforcement? (Those of you who are not minorities can put your hands down. Thanks.)
Short answer: it did not. The boot stamping on a human face forever is the past, present, and future. This image was personified by Officer Chauvin, who placed his knee on the neck of a human being suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill until he died. And continued to perform this inadvertently symbolic move for nearly another three minutes after that.
If it's going to burn -- and it should -- it should start with those who have earned the flames. Cop cars are burning. Police stations are burning. Good. There is nothing wrong with this. The cops pretended to fear us whenever it was convenient. They claimed their subjective fear that someone might have a weapon justified every bullet they pumped into a person. Then they did nothing when people carrying actual guns marched on government buildings to demand access to restaurants and haircuts.
Fuck them. If you're going to cry about the threats separating you from making it home to your family every night, at least be consistent. And if you can't be consistent, at least restrain yourself from killing non-resistant people in the street in front of several cameras. And for fuck's sake, if you can't do that last part, it just means you don't fear the public and their representatives. It means you think the courts will clear you, if not your own department and union. No public official deserves this much deference, trust, or unearned protection.
YOU OWE US.
That obligation has never changed. The only thing that has changed is the other branches of the government, which have decided -- either through QI rulings or deference to police unions -- that the public matters less than those sworn to serve it.
This is not me wading into a recent controversy with my eye on harvesting clicks. This is me -- and this site -- covering the abuses perpetrated by law enforcement agencies for years. There is nothing anomalous about this event. It just shows accountability can't be brought solely by the mute witnesses of criminal acts by law enforcement officers. We have our cameras pointed at them. They have their own cameras. And yet, they still don't care.
If this is how they want it, we have the power to give it to them.
Be the god of righteous hellfire. All these years of not setting fire to the possessions of an invading force intent on treating fellow citizens as enemy combatants has done nothing.
