Re: [Mpls] Bike patrol officer and young boy

[WizardMarks]

Andy Driscoll wrote:

Many police officers may be wonderful, but they are outnumbered in
Minneapolis by those who are not
WM: I don't think they are outnumbered, but they are outflanked.

and they also would rather circle their
wagons around the "brotherhood" than to address the decay and degenerate
behavior of their fellow/sister officers. And those you don't want to circle
the wagons best keep their damned mouths shut or feel the consequences.
WM: A bully is a bully is a bully. He, and I think the preponderance of 
bullies at the MPD are male, would not blink to waste a fellow officer, 
physically or otherwise. Officer Ngo comes to mind as one officer who 
made be paying consequences. This is merely a possible scenario, one of 
several, and should be taken as no more than that.

.... I assume that that's what people really
want: angry, armed men and women prowling the streets for those whom we fear....
We need a police force, yes, but not an occupying army that does nothing but
make trouble for those we fear for no good reason - usually people of color.
WM: The primary tool the MPD uses is the MN Multiphasic which purports 
to weed out those who have no business in police departments. It doesn't 
appear to me, from the observable results, that it fulfills that claim. 
Another possibility is that people come into the MPD in one state of 
mind and circumstances lead them to become jerks. (I'm not sure I 
believe that.) But people do "go crazy" or let their work or their lives 
drive them crazy. I've seen folks go completely bat guano as a result of 
a divorce, for example. They act like jerks while they work whatever out 
of their systems, and then return to being better behaved.
Further, the police do deal with people that I have every reason to 
fear: people hopped on drugs and alcohol and hopelessness who carry 
weapons and seem to be clustering around my block shooting at each other 
and, while missing their targets, shooting bystanders. There are some 
ferocious folks lurking in my neighborhood. Fewer of them are wearing 
conspicuous clothing and tools and running around in squad cars than are 
roaming around in a chemically induced craziness, mad as a hatter, and 
taking it out on anyone who comes within sight.
Police Dept.s attract bullies. What more could a bully want than a 
license to kill? These folks hold a variety of lack-logic philosophies 
with which they can justify their behavior to themselves--race and class 
being the two most often used. They also use people they judge to be 
criminal as punching bags. It goes without saying that criminals are 
treated badly as a matter of course by bullies.
Remember the hoo-hah created by the police federation when Natilie 
Johnson Lee wrote the e-mail saying something to the effect that two 
people died at Horn Tower, one an officer, one a woman committing a 
crime? Regardless of the paramount and good reasons for making a 
statement like Johnson Lee's, the folks who prodded the federation to 
make a stink over that letter will believe to their dying day that 
Johnson Lee had insulted the honor of the police. (I note in passing 
that the leader of our country is among the bullies loosed on the 
populace at the moment.)
I certainly do not want licensed, rageful people roaming around, but 
have no suggestion as to tools to keep them from being employed by MPD. 
I wish I had.
It is possible that Wurster will find probable cause to visit sanctions 
on the officer who beat on Titi's kid. If so, she turns the results over 
to whom, the chief (?) for adjudication. The chief faces off with the 
union or goes to court by leveling charges.
What, exactly, is your suggestion for what we are to do at this 
juncture? I thought federal mediation was a good idea, still do. But I 
don't think mediation solves the problem of bullies in police departments.

WizardMarks, Central

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2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject 
(Mpls-specific, of course.)
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