About all that institutional racism…

[TSherbs]

Korematsu v. U.S.
" About 10 weeks after the U.S. entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 signed Executive Order 9066. The order authorized the Secretary of War and the armed forces to remove people of Japanese ancestry from what they designated as military areas and surrounding communities in the United States. These areas were legally off limits to Japanese aliens and Japanese-American citizens.

The order set in motion the mass transportation and relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese people to sites the government called detention camps that were set up and occupied in about 14 weeks."

Majority: Conviction affirmed. The Supreme Court ruled that the evacuation order violated by Korematsu was valid, and it was not necessary to address the constitutional racial discrimination issues in this case.

In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Robert Jackson contended: "Korematsu ... has been convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived." The nation's wartime security concerns, he contended, were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the other internees of their constitutionally protected civil rights.

Justice Jackson called the exclusion order “the legalization of racism” that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He compared the exclusion order to the “abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy. He concluded that the exclusion order violated the Fourteenth Amendment by “fall[ing] into the ugly abyss of racism.”

In 1983, a pro bono legal team with new evidence re-opened the 40-year-old case in a federal district court on the basis of government misconduct. They showed that the government’s legal team had intentionally suppressed or destroyed evidence from government intelligence agencies reporting that Japanese Americans posed no military threat to the U.S. The official reports, including those from the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, were not presented in court. On November 10, 1983, a federal judge overturned Korematsu’s conviction in the same San Francisco courthouse where he had been convicted as a young man "
https://www.uscourts.gov/educational...korematsu-v-us (Webpage edited,Emphasis added)

Dangerous Democrat use of an Executive Order, and suppression of evidence.

Yes, racism (and its injustice) has infected American society, culture, law, and jurisprudence for a long time, regardless of which party or president has been in power (or which university, church, or branch of the government, etc, etc).

[Chuck Naill]

This occurred in most of our lifetime. Abstracted from HRC today.
"The Loving case came from the marriage of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, who married in 1958 in Washington, D.C., to avoid their home state of Virginia’s so-called Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized interracial marriage. When they returned to Virginia, police raided their home, and when Mrs. Loving showed them their marriage certificate, the officers said it was invalid in Virginia. The Lovings were charged with violating the law and pleaded guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.” In 1959 the court sentenced them to a year in prison, suspending it if they left Virginia for at least 25 years. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they asked the American Civil Liberties Union to defend their rights."

https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...m_medium=email

This is the type of racism that most Americans never realized was ever in place. It is also a reason to read historians.

"In 2012, Biden got out ahead of the Barack Obama White House when he publicly supported gay marriage. Today he reiterated his sentiments of a decade ago as he signed the bill into law. “Marriage is a simple proposition: Who do you love, and will you be loyal to that person you love?” Biden said in the signing ceremony. “It's not more complicated than that. We all recognize that everyone should have the right to answer those questions for themselves without…government interference.”

So much for calling poor old Joe Biden not relevant.

[Chuck Naill]

This occurred in most of our lifetime. Abstracted from HRC today.
"The Loving case came from the marriage of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, who married in 1958 in Washington, D.C., to avoid their home state of Virginia’s so-called Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized interracial marriage. When they returned to Virginia, police raided their home, and when Mrs. Loving showed them their marriage certificate, the officers said it was invalid in Virginia. The Lovings were charged with violating the law and pleaded guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.” In 1959 the court sentenced them to a year in prison, suspending it if they left Virginia for at least 25 years. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they asked the American Civil Liberties Union to defend their rights."

https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...m_medium=email

This is the type of racism that most Americans never realized was ever in place. It is also a reason to read historians.

"In 2012, Biden got out ahead of the Barack Obama White House when he publicly supported gay marriage. Today he reiterated his sentiments of a decade ago as he signed the bill into law. “Marriage is a simple proposition: Who do you love, and will you be loyal to that person you love?” Biden said in the signing ceremony. “It's not more complicated than that. We all recognize that everyone should have the right to answer those questions for themselves without…government interference.”

So much for thinking poor, old Joe is not relevant.

[kazoolaw]

Korematsu v. U.S.
" About 10 weeks after the U.S. entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 signed Executive Order 9066. The order authorized the Secretary of War and the armed forces to remove people of Japanese ancestry from what they designated as military areas and surrounding communities in the United States. These areas were legally off limits to Japanese aliens and Japanese-American citizens.

The order set in motion the mass transportation and relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese people to sites the government called detention camps that were set up and occupied in about 14 weeks."

Majority: Conviction affirmed. The Supreme Court ruled that the evacuation order violated by Korematsu was valid, and it was not necessary to address the constitutional racial discrimination issues in this case.

In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Robert Jackson contended: "Korematsu ... has been convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived." The nation's wartime security concerns, he contended, were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the other internees of their constitutionally protected civil rights.

Justice Jackson called the exclusion order “the legalization of racism” that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He compared the exclusion order to the “abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy. He concluded that the exclusion order violated the Fourteenth Amendment by “fall[ing] into the ugly abyss of racism.”

In 1983, a pro bono legal team with new evidence re-opened the 40-year-old case in a federal district court on the basis of government misconduct. They showed that the government’s legal team had intentionally suppressed or destroyed evidence from government intelligence agencies reporting that Japanese Americans posed no military threat to the U.S. The official reports, including those from the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, were not presented in court. On November 10, 1983, a federal judge overturned Korematsu’s conviction in the same San Francisco courthouse where he had been convicted as a young man "
https://www.uscourts.gov/educational...korematsu-v-us (Webpage edited,Emphasis added)

Dangerous Democrat use of an Executive Order, and suppression of evidence.

Yes, racism (and its injustice) has infected American society, culture, law, and jurisprudence for a long time, regardless of which party or president has been in power (or which university, church, or branch of the government, etc, etc).

Thank you.

[Chuck Naill]

Good news!!

"Congress Set to Replace Dred Scott Author’s Statue With Thurgood Marshall
A bill passed Wednesday would require officials to remove a statue of Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who wrote the racist Dred Scott decision, from its place on the Senate side of the Capitol."

"Dred Scott (c. 1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African-American man who, along with his wife, Harriet, unsuccessfully sued for freedom for themselves and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott decision".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

Mr. Scott worked on a plantation about three miles from where I live today and the site of Oakwood Academy.

[Chuck Naill]

“Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year “ Malcolm Little aka Malcolm X

[Chuck Naill]

This was posted today regarding Trump's actions, but helps prove how systemic racism was allowed to take place post Civil War.
"In the shorter term, though, Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) and 40 colleagues yesterday introduced a bill in which the term “insurrection” matters a lot. The measure bars Trump from holding office under the restrictions imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Written in 1866, after President Andrew Johnson had pardoned most of the Confederate ringleaders and constituents had voted them back into office, Congress wrote:"“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...m_medium=email

However, some will probably think this historian is woke and liberal; so, anything she writes is tainted.

This is not something taught in American History and for this reason, the American people are unaware how former slaves were again subjugated by the very same people that held them as slaves, reducing their ability to build wealth and experience the same freedoms their white fellow citizens were able to enjoy.

It is not that today African Americans are not able to be successful, but as a percentage of the total, it is a minority compared to white people.

[Chuck Naill]

A quote to consider,
"“It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.” Adam Smith

[Chuck Naill]

She provides a history of the march in Selma, and the continuation of voter suppression going on now.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...m_medium=email

[Chuck Naill]

Carolyn Bryant has passed.
"What Till may actually have done inside the Bryants’ store that day, Dr. Tyson’s book reports — drawing on news media interviews decades later with Mr. Wright and their companion Ruth Crawford (later Ruth Crawford Jackson) — was to break a Jim Crow taboo of which he was almost certainly unaware:

Instead of placing the money for his purchase onto the store counter, they said, young Emmett Till put his two cents directly into Mrs. Bryant’s hand, in the process touching her pale white skin."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/u...nham-dead.html

[TSherbs]

This isn't "institutional racism," but it is interesting nonetheless, in a spooky, racist way:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/...e-its-homeland

[Chip]

Here Are the Most Significant Findings Against the Minneapolis Police

The key findings in the report echo complaints that some Minneapolis residents have made for years. The report could lead to a court-enforced consent decree.

By Mitch Smith, Ernesto Londoño and Glenn Thrush
June 16, 2023

The Justice Department accused the Minneapolis Police Department of rampant discrimination, unlawful conduct and systemic mismanagement in a scathing 89-page report released on Friday. The federal investigation, launched in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer, “found that the systemic problems in M.P.D. made what happened to George Floyd possible.”

The murder of George Floyd. On May 25, 2020, police officers in Minneapolis arrested Floyd, a Black man, on a report that he had used a fake $20 bill. Floyd died after Derek Chauvin, one of the officers, pinned him to the ground with his knee, an episode that was captured on video. Along with Chauvin, three other officers were accused of playing a role in Floyd’s death. Tou Thao, a veteran officer who was Chauvin’s partner, held back a group of bystanders. J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane helped pin down Floyd. The four men have been involved in several proceedings.

Chauvin’s criminal trial. In April 2021, a jury in state court found Chauvin, who is white, guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. In June 2021, he was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. He has appealed his conviction.

In February 2022, Kueng, Lane and Thao were found guilty of willfully violating Floyd’s constitutional rights in federal court. Lane was sentenced to two and a half years, Kueng to three and Thao to three years and half years in prison. Chauvin, who had also been charged with violating Floyd’s rights, reached a plea agreement in December 2021 and was later sentenced to 21 years in federal prison. His federal and state sentences are to be served concurrently.

Kueng, Lane and Thao were also charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. Lane pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in state court and was later sentenced to three years in prison, while Kueng pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. In May 2023, Thao, who had waived his right to a jury trial, was found guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

Here are some of the key allegations in the report, which echoes complaints that some Minneapolis residents have made for years, and which could lead to a court-enforced consent decree:

The Justice Department found “reasonable cause to believe” that police officers engaged in a “pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”

Investigators accused the Minneapolis police of engaging in unlawful discrimination against Black and Native American people and said the police force “patrols differently based on the racial composition of the neighborhood, without a legitimate, related safety rationale.”

Among 19 police shootings between January 2016 and August 2022, federal investigators found that “a significant portion of them were unconstitutional uses of deadly force,” with officers sometimes shooting “without first determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others.”

Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murder in Mr. Floyd’s death, had used excessive force previously. In those other cases, investigators found, “multiple other M.P.D. officers stood by” and did not stop him.

The Justice Department said the city violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against people with behavioral health disabilities. “Many behavioral health-related calls for service do not require a police response,” the report said, “but M.P.D. responds to the majority of those calls, and that response is often harmful and ineffective.”

Federal investigators said Minneapolis officers routinely failed to take arrestees’ health complaints seriously. “We found numerous incidents in which officers responded to a person’s statement that they could not breathe with a version of, ‘You can breathe; you’re talking right now,’” the report said.

Investigators described instances of racist conduct by Minneapolis officers and degrading comments about Black people. “Some officers we spoke with aired fears and grievances about being perceived as racist, even as they made comments to us that themselves suggested bias and contempt for the people they are supposed to serve,” the report said.

After Mr. Floyd’s murder, investigators said, Minneapolis “officers suddenly stopped reporting race and gender in a large number of stops” despite a department requirement to collect that information. About 71 percent of traffic stops before Mr. Floyd’s death had race data, compared with about 35 percent after.

The report said officers routinely violated the First Amendment rights of demonstrators and journalists at protests. When some people at demonstrations break the law, the report said, “M.P.D. officers frequently use indiscriminate force, failing to distinguish between peaceful protesters and those committing crimes.”

The report found that investigations of officer misconduct, “even serious misconduct,” have been “inexcusably slow.” More than 53 percent of cases remained unresolved for at least one year, and more than 26 percent remained unresolved for at least two years.

Officers under investigation for serious misconduct were sometimes assigned to train new recruits, the report found. Some field training officers, they found, “violated a person’s rights while training a new officer.”

The process for residents to file complaints against officers is deeply flawed, investigators found. “People in Minneapolis have reason to question whether making a complaint to M.P.D. was worth the trouble,” federal investigators said. “Our investigation found that all too often it wasn’t.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/u...nneapolis.html

[dneal]

Over half of the Minneapolis city council are minorities.

[Chip]

They're elected by voters.

The cops aren't elected.

[dneal]

Correct.

Do you think the city council has no say in the matter?

[Chip]

How Police Unions Became Such Powerful Opponents to Reform Efforts

Half a decade after a spate of officer-involved deaths inspired widespread protest, many police unions are digging in to defend members.



Lt. Bob Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis Police Union, discussing the release of body camera footage in the shooting death of Thurman Blevins in 2018. Credit...Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune, via Associated Press

Noam Scheiber, Farah Stockman and J. David Goodman
April 2, 2021

Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability. While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10 percent, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.

In St. Louis, when Kim Gardner was elected the top prosecutor four years ago, she set out to rein in the city’s high rate of police violence. But after she proposed a unit within the prosecutor’s office that would independently investigate misconduct, she ran into the powerful local police union. The union pressured lawmakers to set aside the proposal, which many supported but then never brought to a vote. Around the same time, a lawyer for the union waged a legal fight to limit the ability of the prosecutor’s office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the union said Ms. Gardner should be removed “by force or by choice.”

Politicians tempted to cross police unions have long feared being labeled soft on crime by the unions, or more serious consequences.

When Steve Fletcher, a Minneapolis city councilman and frequent Police Department critic, sought to divert money away from hiring officers and toward a newly created office of violence prevention, he said, the police stopped responding as quickly to 911 calls placed by his constituents. “It operates a little bit like a protection racket,” Mr. Fletcher said of the union. A spokesman for the Minneapolis Police Department said he was unable to comment.

A few days after prosecutors in Minneapolis charged an officer with murder in the death of George Floyd, the president of the city’s police union denounced political leaders, accusing them of selling out his members and firing four officers without due process. “It is despicable behavior,” the union president, Lt. Bob Kroll, wrote in a letter to union members obtained by a local reporter. He also referred to protesters as a “terrorist movement.”

The murder of George Floyd. On May 25, 2020, police officers in Minneapolis arrested Floyd, a Black man, on a report that he had used a fake $20 bill. Floyd died after Derek Chauvin, one of the officers, pinned him to the ground with his knee, an episode that was captured on video. Four defendants. Along with Chauvin, three other officers were accused of playing a role in Floyd’s death. Tou Thao, a veteran officer who was Chauvin’s partner, held back a group of bystanders. J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane helped pin down Floyd. The four men have been involved in several proceedings.

In April 2021, a jury in state court found Chauvin, who is white, guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. In June 2021, he was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. He has appealed his conviction.

In February 2022, Kueng, Lane and Thao were found guilty of willfully violating Floyd’s constitutional rights in federal court. Lane was sentenced to two and a half years, Kueng to three and Thao to three years and half years in prison. Chauvin, who had also been charged with violating Floyd’s rights, reached a plea agreement in December 2021 and was later sentenced to 21 years in federal prison. His federal and state sentences are to be served concurrently.

A second criminal trial. Kueng, Lane and Thao were also charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. Lane pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in state court and was later sentenced to three years in prison, while Kueng pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. In May 2023, Thao, who had waived his right to a jury trial, was found guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

Mr. Kroll, who is himself the subject of at least 29 complaints, has also chided the Obama administration for its “oppression of police,” and praised President Trump as someone who “put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.”

In other instances, unions have not resisted reforms outright, but have made them difficult to put in place. Federal intervention is often one of the few reliable ways of reforming police departments. But in Cleveland, the union helped slow the adoption of reforms mandated by a federal consent decree, according to Jonathan Smith, a former U.S. Justice Department official who oversaw the government’s investigation of policing practices there. Mr. Smith said union officials had signaled to rank-and-file officers that the changes should not be taken seriously, such as a requirement that they report and investigate instances in which they pointed a gun. “I heard this in lots of departments,” Mr. Smith said. “‘Wait it out. Do the minimum you have to do.’” He said he believed that the reforms have since taken hold.

Steve Loomis, the Cleveland police union president at the time of the consent decree, said he and his colleagues saw some of the mandated rules as counterproductive.

“Every time a kid points a gun, he has to do a use-of-force investigation,” Mr. Loomis said of his younger colleagues. “Now guys aren’t pointing their guns when they should be pointing their guns.”

Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, posited that many police officers see themselves as authority figures who equate compromise with weakness. Other experts said it was rational for police unions, which are often regarded with suspicion by others in the labor movement and see themselves as distinct from it, to protect their members so relentlessly.

“A major role for police unions is basically as an insurance policy,” said Dale Belman, a labor relations professor at Michigan State University who has consulted for police unions. “The feeling of a lot of officers is that it’s very easy to sacrifice them. Something goes wrong and boom.” This has only become more true in an era of ubiquitous cellphone cameras and social media. And the feeling of being under siege has only strengthened demands from union members that they be protected.

In Baltimore, where the city and the Justice Department reached a consent decree in 2017 to overhaul police conduct, the union has described a police department in chaos, with severe staff shortages and low morale. Those who remain said they feel unsupported by their commanders. “They’re ready to throw police officers under the bus to appease the media and don’t support us even when our actions are appropriate,” said one officer surveyed in a report released last year by a group helping the department implement reforms.

It remains to be seen how the unions will respond to reform initiatives by cities and states since Mr. Floyd’s death, including a new ban on chokeholds in Minneapolis. But in recent days, unions have continued to show solidarity with officers accused of abusive behavior. The president of a police union in Buffalo said the union stood “100 percent” behind two officers who were suspended on Thursday after appearing to push an older man who fell and suffered head injuries. The union president said the officers “were simply following orders.” All 57 officers on the Emergency Response Team, a special squad formed to respond to riots, had resigned from their posts on the team in support of the suspended officers, according to The Buffalo News.

Unions can be so effective at defending their members that cops with a pattern of abuse can be left untouched, with fatal consequences. In Chicago, after the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke, it emerged that Mr. Van Dyke had been the subject of multiple complaints already. But a “code of silence” about misconduct was effectively “baked into” the labor agreements between police unions and the city, according to a report conducted by task force.

New York City’s police unions have been among the most vocal opponents of reforms in Albany, including calls to reform the state’s tight restrictions on the disciplinary records of officers. Amid growing momentum in recent days for making those records public, the city’s police unions joined statewide police groups on Friday in urging the Legislature to keep the law in place. “No rational policy discussion can take place against a backdrop of burning police vehicles and looted store fronts,” read a memo of opposition from the police groups.

The city’s patrol officers’ union, with roughly 24,000 active members, and another representing sergeants have been sharp critics of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014 riding a wave of discontent over stop-and-frisk policing. The mayor promised reform, but after the fatal shooting of two uniformed officers in Brooklyn by a man who invoked the police killing of Eric Garner, Mr. de Blasio faced an all-but-declared revolt by rank-and-file officers.

The head of the patrol officers’ union, Patrick J. Lynch, said at the time that the mayor had “blood on the hands.” Many officers turned their backs on Mr. de Blasio at the slain officers’ funerals. And, days later, many more engaged in what amounted to a de facto work slowdown. Arrests plummeted as did tickets for minor infractions.

Mr. Lynch has stood by officers even when there is ample evidence of misconduct, defending the officers who killed Amadou Diallo in 1999 and another who, in 2008, shoved a bicyclist to the ground during a protest ride. The union provided lawyers for the officers involved in both cases.

Kim Gardner, a reform-minded prosecutor in St. Louis, said police union objections have blocked her proposal for a unit that would investigate police misconduct independently of the department.

When liberal politicians do try to advance reform proposals, union officials have resorted to highly provocative rhetoric and hard-boiled campaign tactics to lash out at them. This past week, the head of the sergeants’ union in New York posted a police report on Twitter revealing personal information about the daughter of Mr. de Blasio, who had been arrested during a protest.

In St. Louis, the business manager of a local police union, Jeff Roorda, penned an unflattering poem about Ms. Gardner, the local prosecutor, in a union newsletter that read: “You’re a disaster, Misses Kim/ Your heart is dark and vile/You’d rather charge a policeman/ Than all the murders you could file.” The union has also run social media ads against an alderwoman who has also advocated reform, Megan Green, referring to her as a “Communist Cop-Hater” and superimposing her head on the body of Mao Zedong. Mr. Roorda declined to comment.

At times, the strident leadership appears to beget still more strident leadership. In 2017, Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police elected a new president who denounced a federal Justice Department investigation prompted by the shooting of Mr. McDonald as “politically motivated” and pledged to fight the “anti-police movement.” That president was ousted this year by a candidate who had derided the ensuing consent decree as “nonsense” and criticized his predecessor for failing to stand up to City Hall.

While statistics compiled by the group Campaign Zero show that police killings and shootings in Chicago have fallen following a set of reforms enacted after a federal investigation, advocates worry that the union will undermine them in contract negotiations. Police unions have traditionally used their bargaining agreements to create obstacles to disciplining officers. One paper by researchers at the University of Chicago found that incidents of violent misconduct in Florida sheriff’s offices increased by about 40 percent after deputies gained collective bargaining rights. “By continuing to elect people who stand for those values, it more deeply entrenches the break between the community and the police,” said Karen Sheley, director of the Police Practices Project for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “It makes it far more difficult for reform efforts to go forward.”

As critics of the police get louder and more mainstream, union members have elected more aggressive leaders. In Minneapolis in 2015, Mr. Kroll defeated the union’s longtime president by a nearly two-to-one margin after the city installed a police chief intent on reform.

“I believe Bob Kroll was elected out of fear,” said Janeé Harteau, the police chief at the time, adding that Mr. Kroll’s message to officers was: “We are the only ones that support you. Your community doesn’t support you. Your police chief is trying to get you fired.” Mr. Kroll did not return a call seeking comment. John Elder, the Police Department spokesman, said the current police chief and Mr. Kroll have a strong relationship.

Ms. Harteau said that the department introduced new rules requiring officers to protect the “sanctity of life” and intervene if they saw a colleague improperly using force, but that the union under Mr. Kroll undermined the changes by protecting officers who violated the policies. Data on police shootings and killings in the city appear to show little change despite the reforms. “I struggle to know if they have gotten more extreme, or if the world has changed and they haven’t,” Mr. Fletcher, the city councilman, said of the union. “Either way, they are profoundly misaligned with the moment.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/u...lis-kroll.html

[Chuck Naill]

Just post the link. Those interested will read.

[Chip]

I don't post blind links.

If you can't read it or don't care to, just scroll past.

[TSherbs]

I don't post blind links.

If you can't read it or don't care to, just scroll past.

I appreciate this.

[724Seney]

I don't post blind links.

If you can't read it or don't care to, just scroll past.

I appreciate this.

In case you have ever wondered what a lemming circle jerk looks like.......this is it!