SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

1
Here is an excellent piece by the Southern Poverty' Law Center's "Hatewatch" program on countering the far right through police demilitarization and alleviation of underlying social and economic issues.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/202 ... ize-police

NOT mentioned is any kind of limitations on citizen weaponry.

This is a program LGC can and should get wholeheartedly behind, IMO.
"To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime" - Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson, 1946

Re: SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

4
BKinzey wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 1:30 pm Yet their first call for action is to remove inanimate objects. It's the mindset. Change the mindset of those wielding the inanimate objects with the how and when to use them.

Still a good article.
Ah, I think you're referring to the following (first sentence):
The obvious first step is to demilitarize the police, first by ending the 1033 program that has helped outfit the nation’s law enforcement agencies with military-grade equipment. But we also need to look beyond policing, and instead address the racial and economic inequality that Americans are now protesting en masse.
Yeah, the military-grade equipment could include armored vehicles, as well as various weapons and lots of other stuff. As I read it that' just a part of what they mean by "demilitarize the police", the rest being mindset, tactics, training, etc. But all that needs to be done, IMO.
"To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime" - Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson, 1946

Re: SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

5
Even heavily-armed people don't pour out of their homes to shoot the place up unless there's a good reason.

Root-cause mitigation looks at the reasons people shoot stuff up in the wrong ways. When the reasons to do bad stuff are diminished, so too the bad stuff decreases.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

6
The woman who wrote this article, Cassie Miller, is not a staff writer for SPLC. She is a post doctorate fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies. That's who pays her. She was appointed by the ACLS to do research for the SPLC.

What puzzles me is this. In the balance of power politics that led up to World War 1 an adage of the time was, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Applying this to politics today in the US hyper-militarized law enforcement and antifa are enemies. Far right militias and neo-fascists then are friends with hyper-militarized law enforcement simply because antifa is a common enemy. But that's not to say that at some point far right militias and neo-fascists will become enemies of hyper-militarized law enforcement.

The guy she refers to in the article, Duncan Lemp, was a member of a libertarian political party called The US Transhumanist Party.
Lemp was killed shortly before boogaloo boys got their chance to fulfill their fantasy of facing off against law enforcement. While the nationwide protests for racial justice are, for most attendees, a place to build solidarity in pursuit of racial and economic liberation, for the boogaloo boys they are an opportunity to capitalize on political tensions and sow further unrest. More than a dozen men associated with the boogaloo movement have been arrested since May. Many of those arrests occurred in relation to the George Floyd protests, including the case of an Oakland, California, man who stands accused of murdering two members of law enforcement, and three men in Las Vegas, Nevada, who were arrested on their way to a Black Lives Matter protest with Molotov cocktails in their possession.
So is the boogaloo movement a far right militia or neo-fascist movement? I don't think so. It's more economically and socially libertarian.

https://www.acls.org/research/fellow.as ... 0c29879dd6
http://transhumanist-party.org/

Re: SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

7
I'm not seeing much action on police reform on the local, state or federal levels, hope that changes. A new bill in the CA legislature attempts to rein in county sheriffs who have refused to cooperate with county inspectors general.
There seems to be no low to which sheriffs in California won’t stoop to fight off even a modicum of oversight.

The latest example, of course, comes from L.A. County’s very own Alex Villanueva. Apparently irked by Supervisor Hilda Solis, who recently dared to point out the obvious, saying that law enforcement engages in clear patterns of race-based brutality, the sheriff questioned whether she was trying to create distrust between his department and the community. Never mind that one of his deputies shot a Latino teenager, Andres Guardado, five times in the back last month and the sheriff is refusing to release any information.

“I don’t know,” Villanueva said of Solis, streaming live on Facebook. “Are you trying to earn the title of a La Malinche? Is that what it is?” A “La Malinche”? SERIOUSLY?! You are calling a county supervisor a TRAITOR?
Because sitting on deck in the California Legislature, which returned to session this week, is AB 1185. Authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), it would let counties establish an oversight board or an office of inspector general, and then give them true investigatory powers with the ability to issue subpoenas. Witnesses, including deputies, could be called to testify and sheriff’s departments would have to turn over documents. In short, AB 1185 would mean that sheriffs can no longer just blow off outside oversight anytime they see fit. And in counties, such as L.A., where an oversight board and inspector general’s office already exist and have subpoena power, it would bolster the authority of both.

“We’re saying that the sheriff needs to respect that,” McCarty said. “He can’t ignore information requests.” Because that’s exactly what has been happening.
In an even more ridiculous stunt, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones locked the county’s then-inspector general, Rick Braziel out of his department, revoking all access to records and personnel and effectively bringing all independent investigations to a halt. The reason? Because the inspector general wrote a report that criticized deputies for engaging in a foot chase with a mentally ill Black man, Mikel McIntyre, and shooting wildly amid traffic on a freeway until they killed him. In that case, the Board of Supervisors felt powerless to do just about anything to force the sheriff to comply.
That also was the case for the supervisors in rural Trinity County in 2018, when then-Sheriff Bruce Haney moved six hours away to Oregon and stopped coming to work — while continuing to collect his salary and benefits, of course — because he got mad over the way the board wanted to enforce cannabis regulations.
Elected sheriffs, whose powers come from the California Constitution, aren’t like police chiefs, who are appointed and take direction from mayors, city councils and city managers.

It’s this difference, and that of cities being more liberal and counties being more conservative, that has played out in reform efforts up until now. While sheriffs, by and large, have resisted calls for more transparency and accountability, dragging their feet on things such as body cameras, police departments across the state have generally moved faster to adopt such tools and change their policies to meet the needs of the moment.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -oversight

Democrats in the CA legislature have a history of wimping out when confronted by powerful law enforcement leaders and police unions. They're just like law and order Republicans who back the badge every time. The two most prominent bad acting sheriffs are in blue metro areas, most sheriffs in CA work with their county boards.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: SPLC on countering the far right with police reform and root cause mitigation

8
"When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails." When street cops' only tools are firearms and batons and the training to go with them, all their problems begin looking like the enemy. Now, when one adds military-grade equipment to the mix....

In the last years of my career I had the privilege of getting to know, and working closely with, a Police Chief and the department he led. I know that demilitarization and de-escalation of force can be done. I know that cops partnered with mental health professionals, on the streets, are effective. I know that effective partnerships between cops and communities can work, and work well. I know because I saw it, and heard it, and felt it.

When looking up the term "World-Clas Leader", his picture should be right there. We need many many more just like him.

https://www.californiapolicechiefs.org/ ... nal-review

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests