It's pretty much dead now, isn't it? First we had governors assuming emergency powers often in direct violation of the Constitution and their own state constitutions; now we've got widespread support for rioting. Bernie Sanders has an 8 point plan (some of which are very good and reasonable, like ending qualified immunity) that would replace many cops with social workers, and District Attorneys in blue cities won't prosecute rioters.
The other day Minneapolis police managed to ignore rioters but arrest a guy for defending his business from looting and arson. Why should a jury go along with that?
Well, trials are a moot point right now, because of the COVID lockdown. (At least where I am).
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmm....So....alrighty then. Arm yourselves.
Would you trust a jury in that city with your life?
ReplyDeleteIdeally I wouldn't have to trust any jury with my life, but if I were on a jury, I certainly wouldn't vote to convict such a man on such a charge under these circumstances. Maybe somebody would, but you don't need many jurors to break your way to prevent a conviction.
ReplyDeleteI don't have hostility to Sanders, which may surprise people. He was the backup in case Trump didn't make it. THat may not make much sense to people caught in Red vs Blue political infighting, but if seen from a broader strategic layer, it was always necessary that we have someone who might have had a chance at not being controlled.
ReplyDeleteRight, Mattis? J Roberts?
These events have their own pattern to them. If you think of them as random, they make no sense. But they are not random.
Cases like that join the ever-longer list of "juries some lawyer or another really wouldn't want me on."
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure if this is the post for this question, but has anyone looked at Chauvin’s record? I’m guessing that his past disciplinary actions for excessive force did not reveal a pattern suggesting racism, because that would have been all over the news if the pattern was there. I’m not diminishing the wrong committed, by any means.
ReplyDeleteLarry, I haven't even heard if the complaints were about excessive force. All I've heard is the number, and that is less meaningful than some assume, because anyone can put in a complaint, and the gangs and professional criminals deliberately put them in whenever possible just to be able to point at a cops file and say they're there.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I think there's a lot of value in having a corp of 'social workers' trained in dealing with troubled people to call as a first response to many calls that police are currently called to. Many cases really aren't policing issues till the police show up and people react to that.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a lot of value in having a corp of 'social workers' trained in dealing with troubled people to call as a first response....
ReplyDeleteOne problem with this is how will the caller know his problem is a social worker one and not a cop one?
How will the dispatcher discriminate? How much delay will there be in the dispatcher's already 20-questions list she has to go through from adding a further list of questions--especially when the seconds that matter already are ticking away?
One thing to consider, too, in all the city (and State) panicky moves to disband police in order to correct police ills, or merely to stand up Social Worker Response teams, is just how many police ills are there compared to the myriad of police encounters? How many in the more limited, but still vasty, home/place of business encounters? The disastrous outcomes get all the publicity, but that's no indication of their proportion. So: what problem, exactly, would a social-worker-as-first-responder solve?
And, no, social workers should not be riding along on these calls. The responding cop(s) has enough to do dealing with an inherently dangerous situation without having to babysit/protect a social worker, too.
Eric Hines