Rayshard Brooks Killed

honestly i’m devastated. I can’t do twitter anymore tonight. y’all can say whatever you want, but these kids don’t have their dad. that’s not nothing. it’s not even close to nothing.

— ashley buzzy mchugh (@arbuzzy) June 14, 2020

This is an Iranian-American with roots in Atlanta who is also a mom so is not quite me, shall we say.  [The reason I follow her is because her husband was a former Mets pitcher who articulately voiced his opinions on his blog, making it logical to check out his wife.  She recently also talked about J.K. Rowling's anti-trans comments on Twitter.]  But, the sentiment has a certain basic humanity to it.  This to me is important since a standard thing you here is "you don't understand."

Well, yes, you don't understand a lot of what I experience on some level (the proverbial "you" -- no one actually reads this blog). You still can understand it on a basic level.  You have to do so.  The alternative is the road to perdition.  How do we understand others, even not on juries or voting or whatever, if we can only truly understand our limited core?  You need to have some ability to empathize and consider others.  With humility, you can and should.  It's fine to be careful expressing it.  But, not having some connection is bad.  It is the road to a selfish mindset that at best leaves others be but not wanting to like serve them or something.

The incident began with a call to police at 10:33 p.m. Friday about a man sleeping in a parked vehicle in the restaurant's drive-thru lane, causing other customers to drive around it, the GBI said in a statement.

Anyway, what is this about? You know really -- it is the killing of a black person by the police for some stupid shit reason.  This being now, there were certain consequences, not just protests.  He's still dead.  Like (allegedly) passing bad money, such a person is not just selling loose cigarettes or something.  Doing something about drunk people in drive-thru lanes (or maybe one's own driveway) is appropriate.  It is how it is done here.  The reports are that he managed to take a stun gun away from an officer but how this led to him running away and then being shot three times, shot dead, is unclear.  It never should come to that. 

(Figure a few will be like "leave him there" -- yeah, sure. That's fine. I walked into my dorm room once to see some stranger sleeping something off.  I asked him to leave and he did.  If I was some woman co-ed and he grumbled about me being a bitch and staid, perhaps she should just go away? No, there needs to be a way to get him out.)

There needs to be a means to address people like this who are places where they should not be.  A few times, you will have people have weapons that make them dangerous.  But, you can say that about someone who breaks into a building and security personnel see them.  The #DefundPolice saying is that we should not have the "police" we have now -- we can define that or "law enforcement" in a range of ways so that some rather benign social service mechanism can enforce the law somehow -- dealing with this sort of thing.*  Multiple people with stun guns and lethal force to deal with a drunk guy (he failed a sobriety test) in a parking lot.  The chance something will go "sideways"  (we wouldn't be completely happy if the taking of the stun gun resulted in him getting him getting a concussion when an officer slammed him to the pavement even if some sort of self-defense can be raised -- not being 100% innocent is not enough for even that)  etc.

I still am not a big fan of burning Wendy's or breaking windows on cars etc. in response to this sort of thing.  I have this image of some POC woman working there or whose car was out of commission so that she could not drive her family to church or something.  It isn't the immediate concern at the moment but yes that is what I think too.  I'm some stupid white guy, but as noted in the book cited here at the end, yeah, you can find black people with my mentality.  Sneer all you want, but not great a new image of protest now is setting fast food places on fire.  Block traffic.  Protest.  Yell.  Hell, on some level, you can even target the police.  But, THAT seems off.

Something came to mind -- being on Twitter etc. makes me more skillful at these sort of phrasings -- that a kinder and gentler police service as now set up is at some point like a kinder and gentler slave owner. This is not to say that there lacked ways, until one was able to go all the way, to make slavery a tad less horrible. A basic way was to allow emancipation of slaves as well as means to bring freedom suits.  There were also somewhat different rules in place for slavery even in different states in the United States as well as in European powers in general even for black slaves.  And, even if a slave was arrested, they weren't simply shot -- there was some minimal process involved.  But, at some point, slavery is evil.  Shades of Sherman on war.

The police is not slavery though my usage of the metaphor is far from off bounds for some ("police are fascists" starts to suggest why) and there is clearly a certain neo-slavery aspect to criminal justice at some point.  But, I'm using a raw simile for a reason here. There is a certain core wrong in our current police system, even if it is seen in a very muted form when used in some suburban well off white neighborhoods.  And, let's be honest here.  Pointing out that not many murders are solved now is blithe answer. There are things we can say about dealing with societal violence. But, yes, certain acts of violence will be investigated.  We need to do it in a different way.  You can be mostly right and still be too cute.

And, on a related matter, it is absurd on a basic level that military bases are named after people who led forces to kill those now there.  This was in the news recently, top military people were open to addressing it, but yes, asshole racist guy didn't like it.  A previous episode of John Oliver on Confederate monuments -- when he is off, they should just show an old episode with a timely segment -- is still rather on point here.

ETA: The NYT has a  breakdown of the like thirty minute engagement that suddenly goes sideways (per one analyst on the The Stephanie Miller Show was when an officer suddenly -- after an extended calm discussion -- tried to grab and arrest him) and a minute or so later he is shot dead. He struggled and looked like he pointed a stun gun at an officer (maybe shot it wildly once) but it shouldn't have gotten that far and a stun gun vs. three bullets is not quite even odds. 

---

[The below was added and is repetitive.  But, it has to be repeated over and over, since many do not quite seem to get it.]   

* That article, like people on panels or doing interviews, will speak to some degree in a blithe way that does not address everything.  This concerns me to some degree as I said somewhere but such concerns can also be taken too far.  We can talk about the victims of our current system, e.g., when dealing with sexual violence.  This is not something to handwave at all. And, how we need to focus on the big picture to not only have band-aids, but work toward a long term solution. 

But, at least a small number of people simply put will likely be isolated at the very least from the general population such as someone who murdered multiple people.  Some very small subset can very well skewer how we view things, but should be factored in, especially since (other than the choir) they will be of particular concern of even supportive listeners. Transformative justice is an intriguing idea but this is not erased. Certain countries have prisons quite different from ours and we can learn from them.  But, they still are not merely hotels or something. 

And, though we need to think long term here, my usual pet peeve of hyperbole continues to kick in.  Biden in some interview said he was against putting people in prison for drugs, but supported mandatory drug treatment.  This is rather notable -- some median Democrat is saying even possession of heroin should not be on its own be subject to prison time. I just saw a reference, but that is a potential message.  And, "mandatory" can mean various things.  Doubtful for every single person.  Perhaps, a multiple offender or for someone guilty of more than possession or something else.

There was a response on Twitter that said this was just jail by another name. Oh?  Again, noting the likely qualifiers especially, a limited requirement to go to a treatment (involving testing, discussion groups and other things)  that usually outpatient unless the person needs to detox is akin to spending all your time in a jail cell?  Do people who actually have to spend time in jail believe this?  One person cited that jail would be a means to enforce it.  So, is community service -- like soup kitchen or litter pick-up -- "jail by another name" too?  I find this absurd.

This doesn't mean mandatory treatment is a good policy, especially except in limited cases [e.g., someone committed a violent crime as well as multiple petty thefts arising from a drug habit -- what do we do here? is at least some pressure to have treatment in lieu of other punishment a bad thing?].  But, it is not merely jail by other means.  If you want to call it punitive, fine, but nuances matter.  A vegan might have a universal unity of respect for life but even Peter Singer realized the death of a dog is not the same as the death of a human, at least as a median matter. 

Ditto someone who said a cop is "useless" even to respond to a murder.  We can formulate some alternative universe where the government is not involved in the investigation of murder of its citizens but at some point I think someone with a cop-like function will be involved.  Either way, a police officer has some value as a low level investigatory/patrol official. The problem is how this is done and the basic function is not the problem as such.  The gun or even the uniform -- though knowing the person is not just someone walking down the street is useful -- might be a problem.

Anyway, this very well can be the proverbial dust that is thrown in our eyes, leading us to miss basic things said.  I still find, maybe it's just me, that we should be careful with absolutist language.