Comments

4

two words rainmist
letter to the edititor
a little Pro Bono's
Good for the Soul.

6

@5 -- always figured
they were Urinals
with Change
my bad.

jk

7

@4: Nevertheless, it's happened multiple times before. There's a NYT story about that. So why?

It is always plausible that humans make mistakes. Under stress our sensory and brain functions are not always predictable. From deleting the wrong file, to missing the clearly marked off ramp, etc, to doing something as horrific as this. I'm not making excuses. Morty also said this is plausible.

An android cop would not have make this mistake.

9

“Daunte Wright, who was killed by police officer Kim Potter, who was also a police union president.”

yeah she couldda been Acting
or she couldda been pre-stressed
god knows why but that Shit Happens
and what a Shitty place for it to show up
we may never Know.

but now
he’s Gone.

and her the President of perhaps thee most Corrupt of all Unions, defending the IN-Defensible since . . . the dawning of Slave Patrols, their Apologists and White (-sheeted, for Liability purposes) [like an LLCorps] Terrorists.

Slave Patrols gotta Go
let’s re-Think the Po-po.

10

@8: Eliminate the taser!

Why do we need this force to take someone into custody when simple running and tackling can do the job?

Reid and Malloy on Adam-12 took down hundreds without one.

11

That Ramadan video was really interesting. Being a morning person, I loved hearing the birds in the background and seeing the sunrise over the horizon while folks walked in to worship. The other cool thing was seeing this ancient building surrounded by modern cranes building the rest of the city. I look forward to traveling in the middle east some day.

12

Thoughts and prayers for the well-insured property that is valued more than human life.

13

You know those Muslims are doing great social distancing but you do know "break fast" means "to eat," right Natalie? So mecca is going to turn into the biggest restaurant/soup kitchen on the planet. Meaning everyone is going to take of their fucking masks. Just remember that the next time you want to shriek about people eating in restaurants and going to worship in the US.

14

7 An android cop would not have make this mistake.

Android cops will just step on everyones necks, regardless of skin color. That's one way to solve racism in policing I guess.

15

@14 -- they're gonna make you
an Honorary Guild Member!

well-done.

16

^take off*

17

@14 I appreciate the equality of that approach but you remember how all those sci fi movies end right?

22

@18: "Once this pandemic is done you MUST travel. Because who knows what will happen. Find anyway you can."

This is excellent advice. Climate change is going to ruin the world as we know it. As long as international jet travel is involved, why not do the most the effective thing you can to make your own contribution toward hastening climate change?

I'm sure Greta Thunberg won't approve. But face it. She's a bit of a prude anyway.

23

Thanks for the advice Professor, the places you described sound amazing. I've definitely seen a fair amount in my day, but still have Africa, South America and the Middle East as open slots.

I'm not quite sure if I understand your post Cressona, so I'll just say this. I strongly believe in climate change and do my best to reduce my foot print, but the value of people traveling abroad and seeing how the rest of the world functions is more important than cutting out international flights. I have no data to back this up, but I'd be willing to bet the most conservative Americans have never left the US, and if they have, never ventured out of their all-inclusive resort (that kind of travelling does not count)!

24

@22 --- then perhaps they too
might Travel as Greta does:
put up a Sign at the
Marina: will work
for Transpo

28

@12:

That's an excellent point that needs to be reiterated every time one of our resident mouth-breathers gets into a lather about "senseless property destruction" or what-not:

Property is insured and once destroyed can be repaired or replaced quite easily; a human being once destroyed can never be replaced.

30

@26: "Individual contributions to climate change are corporate lobbyist propaganda to induce cynicism, division and guilt in consumers rather than implement institutional level changes that have real impact."

Exactly. Whenever one of these annoying vegans tells me about the enormous impact that the individual decision to eat meat has on the planet, I just say, "Excuse me, I can't hear you. I'm too busy enjoying my steak."

And don't get me started on all the density nuts who are jealous of my sweet McMansion. Freedom!

BTW, already booked my flight to Tahiti. I'm looking forward to seeing Tahiti while there still is a Tahiti. "Hey, Tahiti, if you think my visiting you is destroying you, maybe you should institute some 'institutional changes' to stop me from visiting you." No, you say? Yeah, didn't think so.

32

@31, this is an excellent point. As important an issue as some may consider climate change to be (big nothing-burger in my book), it pales in comparison to the question of who's being a jerk on the Slog comment threads.

BTW, I've come to believe that my online behavior makes no difference whatsoever. If we truly want to change the tenor of the Internet, we have to look toward the actions of those few powerful corporations controlling social media. In case I'm being obtuse, very similar actually to: "In fact most of the climate crisis is caused by a handful of corporations and that is where we should focus our ire."

36

yep, Professor you're
likely gonna self-fulfill your
Prophecy of Death to Schlog.

somehow seems a Shame, to me.

38

@33 - Actually, the DA is buying her story, hence the 2nd-Degree Manslaughter charge. If the DA thought it was intentional, it would be a straight-up Murder charge. On the bright side, the burden of proof for 2nd-Degree Manslaughter is much lower than for Murder. We should actually see a conviction.

40

@12/28 not all property is insured 100% and even items that are still take time to rebuild which equates to lost revenue for a business that can never be recouped. I'd love to know how smashing up property in Seattle actually saves lives as I have yet to see any impact whatsoever from these repeated actions. Saying property matters more than people only serves to try to morally justify the actions of those who are victimizing innocent people. If you need to protest injustice by committing injustice upon others then your protest is meaningless.

41

Morty @38 - I checked out Minnesota 609.205 and this is the lowest charge for causing a death and specifically includes things like negligently a person believing that person to be a deer or other animal, and death by negligently failing to properly contain a dog that you know is dangerous. Going "up" from there is Manslaughter 1, and Murder 3, 2, &1. If this doesn't result in conviction... wow.

42

"negligently shooting a person believing that person to be a deer or other animal"

43

BTW the actual standard for 2nd Degree Manslaughter [609.205(1)] she is charged with is "(1) by the person's culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another." Sorry to dominate the thread here...

44

@40: Conflating two discordant or incongruous things (@12) into a snarky quip comes across as profound and insightful to plebeians (@28), but most of us know better.

47

WenWino @45, I've got to stand up for Professor_Hiztory here. Nobody should have to worry about the climate impacts of their personal behavior, and anybody who thinks otherwise is just a nagging busybody. (Insert unattractive picture of Thunberg, Greta here.)

My thinking is, you only live once. Those sweet, sweet fossil fuels can only be consumed once. And once you're dead, the charred ruins of our biosphere (or former biosphere) are somebody else's problem.

50

@49: Belle.

53

@45,

Why not just take a page from his own book and block his comments? Here's the script he recommends using:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

Prior to you becoming obsessed w/ him, I feel like your commentary was worthwhile. It's quickly become dreadfully dull and tiresome.

55

@23 - I've done a fair bit of travelling overseas, and you run into too many Americans all over the world. I bet I can count the number of people from red states I've met on my fingers and toes. I'm trying to remember where I was when I was asked, by one of the locals, "How did Bush get elected in America? I have never met anyone who supports him."

57

The Portland Police Union building caught fire? Heavens, what are we coming to?

It's almost like the Portland Police Union just got wise to insurance fraud....

58

@25:

Then what, pray tell, is the point of even attempting to train frail, easily startled humans to respond differently in a stressful situation if all they're going to do is ignore all that training and just pop a cap in some(POC)ones ass every time they do something even slightly unexpected? Shit, what's the point of having cops at all if they can't even be trained in such a manner?

I guess all that desensitizing training is just futile bullshit, amiright?

60

@58 I suppose you could say that about any occupational training that fails to be 100% perfect and results in a death. What happened is a tragedy and the officer was rightly charged in the death but I’d wager statistically the percentage of times LE training has resulted in a death is infinitely small but that wouldn’t be as good of a narrative would it? Much easier to paint all law enforcement with a broad brush. Looking forward to the day we apply the same standard to other groups.

63

@41,

I'm pretty sure murder 2 and 3 are actually the same crimes as manslaughter 2 and 3. It's just that some states call it murder and some call it manslaughter. So a state that has 2nd degree manslaughter won't have 2nd degree murder.

All 1st degree murder is called that in every state though.

Pretty sure that's correct but I am not a lawyer either.

64

@62: I doubt it, that would be really creative writing/sockpuppetry.

65

@40:

"Saying property matters more than people only serves to try to morally justify the actions of those who are victimizing innocent people."

I think you have this backwards, as I presume you meant "saying property matters LESS than people..." otherwise your "argument" is self-contradictory and makes no sense.

And in any case it's really irrelevant and frankly just deflection. The point being that things CAN be replaced; people CAN'T. If you showed as much outrage for the innocent people being brutalized and murdered on a daily basis by rogue authoritarianists as you do for business owners occasionally suffering a comparatively far lesser degree of property damage, maybe you'd get that, but clearly you don't.

66

@60/61:

Because LEO's have the literal power of life and death, and yet they are almost never held to account when they commit either errors or deliberate actions that result in fatalities.

In every example you cite either the individual or the vehicle they're operating is insured against such eventualities, and in situations where they are found at-fault they can held civilly or criminally liable for the loss of life. Cops in most instances literally have blanket immunity from such prosecution, as this current example shows: charges weren't brought against the officer until AFTER she resigned her position and was no longer protected by the Qualified Immunity doctrine. Had she remained on the force, it's entirely likely - as established by long practice - that she would never have been charged, in part at least for the very reasons you maintain. This is particularly germane given how many use-of-force reviews are conducted internally by the police themselves; or if an external civilian board exists, are entirely dependent on information provided by the very entity they are supposed to be reviewing - the equivalent of foxes watching the proverbial hen house. And we all know how resistant cops are to civilian oversight of their actions.

Now, if you want to debate the relative merits of requiring LEA's to insure their line officers in a similar fashion as a surgeon or airline pilot or driver that would be fine, but given the number of well-documented fuck ups committed by cops on an almost daily basis, doing so would hugely escalate police department budgets, and of course some citizens would be up-in-arms over shouldering those additional costs. OTOH, doing so might entail redirecting funding away from the decades long move towards arming cops as if they're about to resist some third-world uprising (which I imagine is exactly how many of them perceive it), so that would just be an added side benefit.


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