Running racism in America thread

The complaints went up from 2012.

2012: 41
2013: 46 (switched in May)
2014: 65
2015: 44

Anyway, from the Washington Post, last week, proves exactly my point. Camden's police force went heavy after the switchover.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...t-is-being-misused-debate-over-police-reform/

With the city under duress, over the objection of Camden community members, local officials partnered with Christie to enact a plan to disband the city’s police force and replace it with a regional county force. The goal was to dissolve the local police union, which would allow for a cheaper force that would enable more policing, not less.

The immediate results of the new force were negative. The new Metro Police (no other police forces in the county chose to join the “county” force) hired more police (from 268 in 2012 to 418 in 2013) and became dramatically whiter.

The new force embraced broken windows policing. In the first year of the new force, summonses for disorderly conduct shot up 43 percent. Summonses for not maintaining lights or reflectors on vehicles spiked 421 percent. Summonses for tinted car windows similarly increased 381 percent. And farcically, summonses for riding a bicycle without a bell or a light rose from three to 339. It was straight out of the Giuliani handbook.

Unsurprisingly, these moves provoked tensions between the community and the police producing a parallel rise in excessive-force complaints. These tensions were still bubbling in 2014 when a particularly harsh and disturbing arrest was caught on video with officers using violent techniques similar to the ones that killed George Floyd in Minnesota. When pressed about the incident, Camden County Public Affairs Director Dan Keashen said that an investigation showed it to be “a good arrest.”

One resident described the time period by saying, “with the new police force, we all became suspects.” Rann Miller, a Camden-born education activist, said recently that it was the “same team with new jerseys.”

Now, here's the thing...I suspect it worked in reducing crime. Camden got rid of the open-air drug markets in those three years, for one thing. The WaPo article concedes the drop, but also argues it had nothing to do with the police shift; the Post is going to argue that because the Post can't argue anything else. (And there's some data to suggest it's true.)

But the rebranding/reformation only worked if you believe going heavy in those first three years worked.

Here's the conclusion of the Post article:

What can we take from the real, messy story of Camden’s police restructuring? The disbanding of the Camden City Police Department was not a silver bullet. In fact, it was deeply anti-democratic and done with the purpose of increasing enforcement.

 

There is so much money poured into social work now. A lot. There are a lot of people trying to do their very best work, too. Doesn't get a ton of coverage and attention, but there is. More is fine. Maybe it helps some.

 

Just defund an Aircraft career group and you can have social workers, affordable housing case workers, employments counselors, psychologists, dietitians and free to some mass transit.
Reform the corporate tax structure and you can Have no cost to user Inpatient mental health and substance abuse placements.

integrate suburban schools with urban schools and have equitable education. Remove the mortgage tax deduction from 2nd generation homeowners. And allow first time homeowners to live without property taxes for 10
Years. Add a $1,000 tax to the price of a car sold so the government can buy cars for those unable to fully utilize urban mass transportation whose income falls below that if the median white family in that jurisdiction.

 

happy to do all those things

 

Yeah, but Moscow used prisoners to build its magnificent subway system, so . . .

Can any non-wealthy person even use this anymore? With the standard deduction $24,400 for a married couple and interest rates so low?

You borrow $300,000 for 30 years (shame on you, but that's another argument), and you pay less than $13,000 in interest the first year. And less every year after that.

 

Defunding police to boost social services is a false choice. It’s not either or. More psychologists need to become police officers. As well as addiction specialists and psychiatrists. Those capable immediately identifying and treating mental health issues on the spot. Which we are now asking cops to do

 

Then just forgive income taxes by blacks for the next 30 years. That would be fair.

 

The thing is, a lot of people don't realize how little many of us actually pay in "federal income" taxes. Most of the taxes we pay --- and this is even more true for blacks --- is in all the OTHER taxes. My "effective federal income tax rate" is barely 6 percent.

This is an old chart. But one of my favorites.

 

Not to mention that that's how it was in his day. I could literally see, in my mind's eye, TR riding up to them, or interacting with them in as much as occurred in those days.

I also am not at all sure that the goal of all the tearing down and defacing of such things is to only see them in museums. I think the goal is destruction, period, and, with such, the generation of more anger between people, and that makes me dislike it. Just like I disliked all the destruction and looting that went on through the recent protests.

 

Burning property and Looting is the tax non blacks pay for living in a racist country. Because that is how it appears. When 2 people break into Target at night and steal it’s a burglary. When 20 people do it, it’s a political statement.

 

I think the point, that you are either missing accidentally or perhaps on purpose, is that the way we celebrate American history has, in many ways, obscured the truth. The Founders created something great, but hiding their flaws doesn't make it greater. Lincoln ended slavery, but allowing the south to build monuments to American traitors mostly to help intimidate Blacks during the Jim Crow years and then looking away from those things for more than a century, while allowing racism and 'southern pride' to fester into perpetual ugliness on the American soul, is wrong. It's a GOP talking point in fact... oh, Lincoln was a Republican. No shit. But you cannot ignore the last 160 years of American history in which the GOP became the party of minority oppression. And yet, looking way from the truths allows that to happen.
Roosevelt did a lot of good things, but that statue ... my goodness. The Black American is particular is quite subservient, looking down, barefoot. There's Teddy is all his muscled glory, not just on the horse so as to tower above these two groups, natives and Blacks, but clenched and standing on the stirrups as the very picture of the strong white male supremacy. Roosevelt is rampant. White man is rampant. Long live the American white male. And yes, the statue says all of that.

 

I would say its primary purpose is destruction intended to manufacture anger and ill will where/when there might not be any, or much, otherwise.

This statue stuff is getting to be a case of people just not wanting to look at things they've decided they don't want to see.