I would agree. The judge actually said political officials commenting on the need for a guilty verdict could be grounds for appeal. Maxine Waters demanded that verdict over the weekend while protesting the police shooting here (in a Minneapolis suburb) by the officer who thought she pulled her taser.
Minneapolis still has three more trials for the killing of George Floyd, we are not close to done here.
I don't think the Chauvin verdicts will be overturned. Waters did nothing compared to the things Trump did either in trying to influence trials or encouraging violence if his minions didn't like verdicts. Nor was there any evidence that the jury heard of what Waters said and, if the judge feared they had, he might have interviewed them to get the facts on the record. What his failure to do that means is that while he was, for whatever reason, critical of Waters, he did not think she influenced the outcome.
You are right about the remaining three trials. I wouldn't be surprised to see the defendants seek plea bargains rather than risk going before juries. I'd bet second or third degree manslaughter looks pretty good right now.
I just caught bits and pieces of the trial, but it seemed to me that Chauvin got an adequate and even exemplary defense. That the jury came back with a verdict so quickly IMO speaks to the weight of the evidence against Chauvin.
The weight of evidence did not support the verdict. The tear jerking appeal and fear of jurors as to what would probably happen to them if a Not Guilty verdict was given most likely swayed them.
The least of the charges may have held but the Murder charge definitely did not.
csuprovograd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I suspect that there will be a significant number > of resignations, retirements and career changes > coming up.
One can hope.
----------------- > I will be looking forward to the new and improved > methods of law enforcement that will be > developed.
No need for anything new and improved. All that has to happen is that the same methods be applied irrespective of color, gender, and other innate characteristics.
Lot's Wife Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > One can hope.
With any luck, criminals will cease their avocation, since there will be a reduced staff in the ranks of law enforcement.
> > No need for anything new and improved. All that > has to happen is that the same methods be applied > irrespective of color, gender, and other innate > characteristics.
Can’t wait to see who and how someone will effect that minor adjustment.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2021 08:27PM by csuprovograd.
csuprovograd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > With any luck, criminals will cease their > avocation, since there will be a reduced staff in > the ranks of law enforcement.
I don't share your view that only racists want to serve as police.
----------- > Can’t wait to see who and how someone will > effect that minor adjustment.
If you'd paid attention, you would have your answer: police chiefs and prosecutors enforcing the laws.
----------- Seriously, do you think Chauvin's behavior should not have been punished?
> > I don't share your view that only racists want to > serve as police. > I at no time typed anything that could be construed as anything near what you have stated. >
> > If you'd paid attention, you would have your > answer: police chiefs and prosecutors enforcing > the laws.
Been watching. So far, the folks you mentioned have not succeeded in overriding the mindset that prevails these days. > > > ----------- > Seriously, do you think Chauvin's behavior should > not have been punished?
How you can conclude that I am in disagreement with the verdicts?
You seem to either misunderstand my comments or intentionally draw a preconceived conclusion and respond in that manner.
If I lead you to believe something I did not say, it’s on me, I guess.
I am simply observing that the events of today is not the cathartic fix we crave and there will be considerable turmoil in the future.
Intended and unintended consequences always play a part in significant social events such as this entire saga. It’s the unintended ones that can be troublesome.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2021 09:28PM by csuprovograd.
I asked because I sincerely wanted to know how you felt. The way you put things in this post makes sense to me.
You are right: this will not catalyze a 100% change. But it was a necessary precondition. And I am confident that the US can develop and train a police force that is as good as those in many other countries.
Smooth sailing? Nope. But a step in the right direction.
Your tendency to leap to erroneous assumptions is off-putting.
It seems that your style is to attempt to elicit a confrontational response from posters who seem to deviate from your assumed ‘correct’ viewpoint.
It makes it hard to participate in conversation on this board.
Other people have lived a different path than your own. This will tend to cause others to see the same object from another angle and draw a unique conclusion.
And it's not just the "extreme situations," but approaching and confronting "suspicious persons, a.k.a. "the Terry Stop" or "threshold inquiry." This is when a person looks or behaves suspiciously and should be checked out. More cops will say, "why bother? He'll cry 'racism!' the situation will escalate, maybe get violent, and what happens to me then? There's no hope command or the city political block will back me up. No, I'll just let him go, and write a few parking tickets."
In many cities (notably Portland OR and Austin) the cities are disbanding the gang (or "anti-crime") units because these officers do the "stop and frisks." So more thugs will feel comfortable carrying guns...thugs like "Lil Homicide."
1) Defunding police departments. Typically, "community" officers (e.g. family violence specialists, forensic officers, elder or youth officers etc) are eliminated and personnel returned to the street to replace depleted patrol units. 2) Street specialty officers/divisions (e.g. plainclothes, anti-gang, anti-crime) are eliminated 3) Many departments are experiencing early retirements, transfers to suburban departments, simple resignations, etc. 4) reductions in pay and overtime = fewer recruit applicants and weaker cadet classes 5) Older officers tend to gravitate to those "community service" positions I described in #1. Now returned to the street, they're less able to deal with drug-addled uncooperative suspects, and will have to compensate one way or another. 6) Declining moral -- my main point above. More officers' attitudes will be "Why bother?" and let suspicious person go about their criminal business unmolested. Officers will take longer responding to critical incidents--safer to unroll crime scene tape and park little evidence markers than to engage an on-going critical incident. 7) Also contributing to declining moral is how fast known criminals are being returned to the street: reduced charges, easy/fast/no bail, etc
Is that a police state? You tell me. And BTW, I never mentioned skin color. You did.
What do you call a police officer who does not obey the law? A criminal.
What do you call a police officer who illegally kills a civilian? A murderer.
Please stop acting as if giving criminals and murderers the right to use force against citizens is somehow a good thing. Get the criminals off the streets.
Lot's Wife Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- Get the criminals off > the streets.
Crime (homicide especially) is shooting up (pun intended) in America's inner cities, most of which are subject to Progressive governance. Yes, we want to get the criminals off the street, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
You want "de-policing?" "Re-imagining" law enforcement? Hope you like what you see. Affluent Progressives will relocate. The lower classes, not so much.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2021 04:16PM by caffiend.
caffiend Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Crime (homicide especially) is shooting up (pun > intended) in America's inner cities, most of which > are subject to Progressive governance.
Blame the libs?
Nope. Murder is murder regardless of whether it is perpetrated by white, black, or blue.
--------------- > Yes, we > want to get the criminals off the street, but that > doesn't seem to be happening.
Actually, the United States got one serious criminal off the streets yesterday. Hopefully police departments will learn the lesson and insist that officers consistently obeyo,, and answer t the law. Everyone would benefit from that.
Being pro-law enforcement, after all, is about the law and not about the enforcers.
------------ > You want "de-policing?" "Re-imagining" law enforcement?
I don't know what your jargon means. I want the US to have a police force that is as good as those in Japan, Sweden, the UK, Austria, Australia, New Zealand and probably a dozen other countries.
-------------- > Hope you like what you see. Affluent > Progressives will relocate. The lower classes, not > so much.
Can you explain to me why the affluent classes haven't moved out of Sweden, Japan, and the other countries I mentioned above? It seems that they are capable of benefiting from law enforcement that obeys the laws.
------------- Your argument is that for some reason the United States is unique in that it can only have law and order if the police are free to violate the law.
I am not so cynical. I think Americans are every bit as capable of a stable and orderly society as other peoples.
One thing those countries do not have to deal with nearly as much is gun-happy lunatics with semi-automatic weapons. I think that police reform has to go hand-in-hand with gun control. I also think that there needs to be a uniform set of national standards for policing.
The problem is that when people advocate the ready availability of guns, they increase the danger of cop-citizen interactions and end up arguing that police must be free to use extreme force lest they get hurt. But once you've created a supra-legal status for police, they are by definition beyond the law. That is the logical conclusion that arises from what in the US passes as conservative "thought."
The problem doesn't arise in other rich countries because 1) guns are not readily available, and 2) police are expected to obey the law.
There is a primitive brain-flow model that I think if not the majority, at least a significant percentage of police officers fall prey to.
Or it's a Basic Truth, at least from their perspective (which is obviously unknown to me), that, "We put our lives on the line, never knowing if this is the day I die on the job, so cut me a little slack when I play judge, jury & executioner. I'm doing it because it's for the best!"
And they mean it; they believe it.
In America's past, the police had the full and generous support of White America because that's who they figured they were serving. And White America appreciated it and protected the police. Remember the first time you saw the videotape of Rodney King being beaten? And then a jury in Simi Valley decided that those LAPD officers did nothing wrong and acquitted them all.
Today's verdict is a step in the right direction. But of the steps forward being made, how many steps back will follow? It's not going to be a cakewalk.
Cadets go through their police academies and learn the pure and wholesome version of policing. And then they get assigned to a training officer and they learn the low opinion that training officer has regarding what they were taught.
Even worse, Los Angeles County Sheriff's newly hired deputies spend their first year on the job working the county jails. What can prepare a person for that? How brutal & brutalizing must that be?
I don't have any answers, but I do continue to have hope. I've met mostly good cops, and I hope it stays that way.
But again, I know about the 'bad' cops, and I think I know how and why they get to be the way they are, and it's not complex. They want to be alive at the end of their shift, and they think they're doing what's best in that regard. "It's him or me" is a very primitive, very powerful driving force.
Did you see the first incident report the police dept put out? That a man died in custody following a medical incident. Absent the video this is likely the way this death would have been categorized. Maybe those who released the report were going by what they were told by the officers who were on the scene (Chauvin et al) or maybe they too tried to slide it by as an unrelated concurrent medical incident. Or maybe they really believed that's what it was.
In the prosecutor's summation he told the jury "You can believe your eyes". Kind of brilliant, especially in light of the multiple legal and medical complexities that can be a challenge for lay jury members to grapple with.
So many arguments and counter-arguments. But then the video...
My husband and I were thinking that Chauvin probably has done horrible things to other people and gotten away with it because no one was around to video record.
IMO, if that citizen hadn't video recorded George Floyd's murder, Chauvin wouldn't have had a trial; he'd have slipped through the jaws of justice.
He's been accused of excessive force for most of his time as a law enforcement officer. So yes, he's gotten away with it many, many times. I'm sure he thought this would be business as usual.
I believe there have been 18 or so complaints against Chauvin in the past. If it were not for cell phones, he and many other criminals would continue to terrorize our communities with impunity.
The above article claims 22 complaints of excessive use of force, including a knee to the neck multiple times. It's just amazing how often superiors look the other way.
Those superiors are criminals too. Let's hope they realize the error of their ways and stop violating the law and their sworn obligations to citizens.
Things have to change. The United States deserves as good a police force as any other country. We need to stop administering justice according to color: blue is not special.
Devoted Exmo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > He's been accused of excessive force for most of > his time as a law enforcement officer. So yes, > he's gotten away with it many, many times. I'm > sure he thought this would be business as usual.
I keep asking myself what was he thinking? Why, why, why did he not get the hell off a non-responsive person who was declared by one of the other cops to have no pulse? If not out of mercy then because in the clear light of day, with onlookers watching the brutality, how could he possibly explain what he was doing in the first place, never mind for 4 minutes past the time GF had last breathed?
I still don't understand it. But perhaps it was business as usual for him, as you say, and his approach was so customary to him that he had lost sight of basic humanity, never mind procedures and even his own welfare (because what did he think the result of his actions would be and surely it's common sense that it couldn't be good).