George Floyd murder and aftermath

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alexschief
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby alexschief » July 8th, 2021, 7:51 am

I felt sick when I learned the identity of the man who had been killed. Somehow it made the entire thing even worse.

A bit less than two years ago, the MPD revised its guidelines to prohibit high speed chases for property theft, but carjacking was an explicit carve-out for which high speed chases were still allowed. Those guidelines should be revised again to eliminate that exception. At the time, the Star Tribune did an analysis of high speed chases, and found that 28% end in a crash and 9% end in a reportable injury. A simple cost-benefit analysis would suggest these types of chases are not worth it. If over a quarter of attempts to recover stolen property result in the destruction of more property, is that be worth it? If almost a tenth of attempts to apprehend a suspect result in someone being hurt, is that worth it?

The city's guidelines should be revised to restrict high speed chases only to situations in which the target of the chase is expected to cause imminent harm to other people in the near-future. Only that standard can justify a police tactic which puts other people at risk of imminent harm in the present.

Mdcastle
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby Mdcastle » July 8th, 2021, 1:20 pm

I suspect the police were more concerned about "apprehending a suspect in a violent felony" than "recovering stolen property".
It's pretty reasonable to expect a carjacker to cause imminent harm to other people in the near future. Somehow I doubt they're going to call it good at one carjacking or armed robbery or whatever.
If we're sending the message to criminals that they're free to commit violent felonies like carjackings because it's against police policy to chase them, what do you think that will to do the violent crime rate in the city? They weren't chasing this criminal for a burned out tag light or overdue library books or even a nonviolent, unattended car theft.

alexschief
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby alexschief » July 8th, 2021, 1:44 pm

I suspect the police were more concerned about "apprehending a suspect in a violent felony" than "recovering stolen property".
It's pretty reasonable to expect a carjacker to cause imminent harm to other people in the near future. Somehow I doubt they're going to call it good at one carjacking or armed robbery or whatever.

If we're sending the message to criminals that they're free to commit violent felonies because it's against police policy to chase them, what do you think that will to do the violent crime rate in the city? They weren't chasing this criminal for a burned out tag light or overdue library books.
Alright, so how did it go? Was the strategy that the police chose effective?

The Star Tribune's earlier analysis showed that just over half of high speed chases even led to an arrest. That seems like an unacceptable rate of success for such a risky tactic. I know there are a lot of people who are very invested in suggesting otherwise, but I happen to think there's a lot of daylight in between "the police should be abolished" and "the police can't be second guessed in any way." In the past year, one of the things that I have become most certain of is that a lot of the practices that are engrained in policing are not effective. High speed chases seem to be firmly in this category.

I'm no expert, but I can buy right now a commercial quadcopter that can be programmed to follow a moving vehicle for miles. Many cars being bought today can be remotely disabled. Traffic cameras that are used for detecting red light and speed violations will collect license plate data that could be accessed with a warrant. I suspect there's a lot of possibilities once you reject the idea that the choice is between "letting all suspects flee the scene in a car" versus "endangering the public by chasing suspects at 60 mph down urban arterials."

dajazz
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby dajazz » July 8th, 2021, 1:54 pm

I'm no expert, but I can buy right now a commercial quadcopter that can be programmed to follow a moving vehicle for miles. Many cars being bought today can be remotely disabled. Traffic cameras that are used for detecting red light and speed violations will collect license plate data that could be accessed with a warrant. I suspect there's a lot of possibilities once you reject the idea that the choice is between "letting all suspects flee the scene in a car" versus "endangering the public by chasing suspects at 60 mph down urban arterials."
Sure you can buy a drone and do that. Is it legal to operate without line of sight? No. Is it legal to fly within X miles of MSP? No. Can they keep up with a speeding car? No. FAA is highly regulating this area, so even while police may get some exemptions we're not about to see a sky full of drones.

Remote disablement? Sure. Let's ignore the whole legality of that, but most criminals aren't driving around in fancy new cars, at least ones they legally own.

Traffic cameras have been struck down in MN. They're not coming back.

amiller92
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby amiller92 » July 8th, 2021, 2:13 pm

It's pretty reasonable to expect a carjacker to cause imminent harm to other people in the near future.
Imminently? Like, they've stolen a car and now it's reasonable to believe they will do what next? The most dangerous scenarios for imminent harm that I can think of involve fleeing in a high speed chase. Are you thinking of something else?
Somehow I doubt they're going to call it good at one carjacking or armed robbery or whatever.
Maybe, but what's the right level of cost (i.e., danger of a bad crash after a chase) to impose on the completely uninvolved public to prevent that? How many completely innocent people should we allow our policy to kill?
If we're sending the message to criminals that they're free to commit violent felonies like carjackings
I really don't think "criminals" spend any time at all thinking about whether the police can chase them. Why do you?

amiller92
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby amiller92 » July 8th, 2021, 2:44 pm

In the past year, one of the things that I have become most certain of is that a lot of the practices that are engrained in policing are not effective. High speed chases seem to be firmly in this category.
Worse, we don't even have a common understanding of what effective means or a common mental model of what crime is.

On the one hand, plenty of people seem to really think that swift (and even brutal) retribution is important to make bad people afraid so they won't do the bad thing they otherwise want to do. In this model, harm to innocents is just the cost of doing business and can't be avoided.

On another, the harm to innocents is itself a harm to public safety that needs to be factored into how we keep people safe and maybe crime happens for complicated reasons, including the options available and environment surrounding people.

That's obviously super-high level to be nearly flippant, but many of our biggest political disagreements are rooted in fundamentally different definitions and understanding of how the world actually works.

NickP
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby NickP » July 9th, 2021, 7:27 am

Well said.

alexschief
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby alexschief » July 9th, 2021, 8:41 am

I'm no expert, but I can buy right now a commercial quadcopter that can be programmed to follow a moving vehicle for miles. Many cars being bought today can be remotely disabled. Traffic cameras that are used for detecting red light and speed violations will collect license plate data that could be accessed with a warrant. I suspect there's a lot of possibilities once you reject the idea that the choice is between "letting all suspects flee the scene in a car" versus "endangering the public by chasing suspects at 60 mph down urban arterials."
Sure you can buy a drone and do that. Is it legal to operate without line of sight? No. Is it legal to fly within X miles of MSP? No. Can they keep up with a speeding car? No. FAA is highly regulating this area, so even while police may get some exemptions we're not about to see a sky full of drones.

Remote disablement? Sure. Let's ignore the whole legality of that, but most criminals aren't driving around in fancy new cars, at least ones they legally own.

Traffic cameras have been struck down in MN. They're not coming back.
None of these strategies can be stood up tomorrow, I'm fully aware of that.

My point was to suggest that this could be a solvable problem once you reject the binary that you either have to let every suspected criminal escape or you have to pursue them at high speeds to the ends of the earth.

Mdcastle
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby Mdcastle » July 9th, 2021, 9:00 am

Right now we're between the binary in that we chase down people suspected of violent crimes like carjacking and don't chase them down for nonviolent crimes like auto theft.

SurlyLHT
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby SurlyLHT » July 9th, 2021, 11:18 am

So some kids tried to rob me at gunpoint last week. MPD caught them like an hour later through a chase. They had tried to rob like 4 people that evening. We have to chase these folks. There are cars in my neighborhood which drive around running signs and lights like they own the place and at times they rob or shoot at folks.

I watched the video. To be honest it's was an tragic accident. The truth also simply is if you ware walking with your wife and kids, or bike commuting or driving your car you need to keep your heads up for Police Chases or Criminals just racing around. If you don't...you or your loved ones might die. That's where we're at as a city right now. When I hear a helicopter going over, often it's a chase or a suspect is on the run.

We don't have law an order we had death and brokenness and we need both a strong MPD and OVP, and community leaders who step up and lead.

We cannot afford to tie law-enforcement's hands needlessly since individuals are obviously taking advantage of limited MPD resources and are attempting to put them in bad positions for political gain.

Violent Criminals need to be stopped, when we start questioning the need for this we're going down a literally dangerous path.

There is no legal path to replace having licensed Peace Officers. The City has been found in violation of it's current Charter and safety obligations to it's residents. Major events are being canceled due to violence. Major businesses have forgone leasing in the acclaimed Dayton building. Four kids has been shot, two are dead. The death count of mostly BIPOC members of our community who have been victims of violent crime is increasing steadily.

It's time to stop imagining a world where we don't need a PD and start doing real work to implement MPD and OVP plans and ensuring their efficacy.

alexschief
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby alexschief » July 9th, 2021, 11:40 am

Violent Criminals need to be stopped, when we start questioning the need for this we're going down a literally dangerous path.

...

It's time to stop imagining a world where we don't need a PD and start doing real work to implement MPD and OVP plans and ensuring their efficacy.
At the top of this page, I wrote: "The city's guidelines should be revised to restrict high speed chases only to situations in which the target of the chase is expected to cause imminent harm to other people in the near-future," which would obviously apply to your case of someone running around robbing people at gunpoint.

Arguing against strawmen seems to be endemic when it comes to this topic. I keep repeating myself, but there's an obvious middle ground between not enforcing the law and enforcing the law with such single-mindedness that other people get hurt or killed in the process. Both are clearly unacceptable, so alternative approaches and solutions are needed.

Anondson
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby Anondson » September 22nd, 2021, 3:00 pm

Politico tries its hand at explaining the upcoming votes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/2 ... ice-513568

SurlyLHT
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby SurlyLHT » September 28th, 2021, 8:27 am

Politico tries its hand at explaining the upcoming votes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/2 ... ice-513568
Being here and knowing some of the people quoted in the article, I can say I don't think it's super great reporting. Especially since they leave out All for Mpls, and instead mention Operation Safety Now which is more niche. There's also no mention of the lawsuits.

There are a lot more complexities to the story than they're reporting. I think it's fair, just incomplete.

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mplsjaromir
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby mplsjaromir » April 28th, 2022, 9:55 am

Image

Jacob Frey reading the Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department.

Didier
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby Didier » May 16th, 2022, 10:35 pm

Frontline and the Strib have a new doc about Minneapolis policing etc. on May 31. Tbh there has been a lot less documentary stuff from the riots than I expected (unless I missed it?).

https://mobile.twitter.com/frontlinepbs ... 0357538817

NickP
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Re: George Floyd murder and aftermath

Postby NickP » May 25th, 2022, 12:00 pm

Just wanted to recognize the two year anniversary of George Floyd's murder. Rest in Power.


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