Damifino - is that a brand of cheap sherry?
I'm not even sure what the change I want in BART enforcement to be, although I am sure that I don't want to employ anyone who confuses his firearm with his taser in a job carrying both.
This is the key to the thing. I realise I will bring the wrath of Bob down upon me here, but it's a reliable rule that successful pressure for change happens when the people applying the pressure know pretty clearly what they want to happen. The time spent in advance working out your demands, prioritising them, costing them, identifying your initial bargaining position and you settling position is time well spent, and hugely increases your chance of getting what you want, or some of it.
Also, you can't do shit on your own. Find some like minded people, on twitter or in the pub, and have meetings. Allocate jobs, research, fundraising, publicity, drafting, etc. Don't have meetings for the hell of it. Have them when people have done what they've undertaken to do.
Analyse your problem. Find the weak spots and concentrate on those. Don't be distracted.
Simple stuff. The real question is how much you want to do it.
I realise I will bring the wrath of Bob down upon me her
O no
I used to live with a bunch of crusty punk types, and their approach to activism was to keep a big master list of all the companies that they couldn't do business with for one reason or another (although, if I recall, those reasons were not actually written on the list). Every time some new piece of information came in (via a punk zine or whatever), they would put the name of whatever new company on the list.
I don't think it worked.
3. No, in this strategy you actually run out of stuff you're allowed to eat before capitalism notices you're there. Bad move.
As Joe Hill would have said had he lived in these times, "Don't moan, organise."
You rang?
Daisies are the flower of choice for Bart cops. Seriously, ease his fear and alienation, so your friends can sneak through...wait...so he isn't tense and paranoid, and feels at ease enough to handle a minor crisis without falling back into his authoritarian armor. If Aum Shinrikyo shows up he will be a little slower to respond, but there is a price we pay for peace.
I think that is step number one...be kind and generous. You can't change something outside you.
System, like Soylent Green, is people. Changing the rules doesn't really change people much. They don't have less violence or repression in snowy country X because they have radically different laws and institutions. People talk about homogenous vs heterogenous as if these aren't decisions we each make every day. Let me introduce you to my redneck...wait
3. No, in this strategy you actually run out of stuff you're allowed to eat before capitalism notices you're there.
Indeed. Luckily nobody had come up with any bad acts on the part of Meister Brau, but perhaps that was willful ignorance.
Oh yeah.
And guillotine the top of the fucking food chain. They can never be your friend or ally.
Is there some reason that incident can be laid at the feet of BART? And is there any other incident other than the Mehserle shooting? Please tell me this isn't a call for protest with n=1 and no actual idea of what changes could be or should be made to future incidents.
I am sure that I don't want to employ anyone who confuses his firearm with his taser in a job carrying both.
You know Mehserle doesn't still work for them, right? And I'm pretty sure the whole manslaughter conviction and jail thing kind of guarantees he won't be getting another cop job.
I'm pretty sure the whole manslaughter conviction and jail thing kind of guarantees he won't be getting another cop job
And people wonder why it's a jobless recovery.
I'm not even sure what the change I want in BART enforcement to be, although I am sure that I don't want to employ anyone who confuses his firearm with his taser in a job carrying both.
BART is publicly funded, right? That means they've got budget hearings. They almost certainly have to notify the public of those hearings. (Here in Philadelphia, there are large black-and-white signs posted in the train stations, because under the ADA or some such SEPTA is legally obligated to provide sign language interpreters for Deaf people if requested 48 hours or so in advance.)
Go to the budget hearing, sign up for your three minutes or whatever of public testimony, and say just exactly that: "I don't want someone who confuses his firearm with a taser in a job carrying both." Then add a few general sentences about the skills you think should be emphasized in screening, hiring and training BART enforcement officers.
For more power, you can contact your local association of transit users (you probably have one) beforehand and ask if there are any known issues that they've been hammering on for years -- e.g. is the training for transit officers only 6 weeks long, where other big cities train them for 12 weeks? Do they accept 19-year-olds rather than making 21 the minimum age? Do they accept people for transit officer jobs who have previously been involved in major physical altercations?
There are lots of ways to connect this to the budget -- hammer home on how much it must cost them to have turnover of unprepared employees, or how much they pay in lawsuits if the officer uses excessive force.
If you want to overachieve, bring written copies of your testimony and have it ready to give to whatever two or three reporters show up. That will almost ensure that they quote you accurately and also increase the likelihood that they quote you at all.
Bring a laptop or some work because the odds are high that you will end up sitting around for 1-3 hours waiting to testify.
There are lots of good reasons to engage in visible, on-the-street protests. But this is another angle, and having people nipping at their heels from as many angles at once is what you want.
10.2, 3 is a strong point to add to my generalisations upthread. Don't reinvent the wheel. In the 3rd? 4th? biggest metro area in the United States there are people who have felt this way before. Seek them out.
... Worrying about BART police brutality specifically seems off to me, unless they're dramatically different from other Bay Area police. I'd tend to think that focusing on the broader issue would be more productive.
This seems off to me. I would argue that targetting the BART police just based on one dramatic incident is misguided but if the Grant shooting was simply an extreme example of a broader pattern of misconduct then the BART police would be a reasonable target of activists regardless of how they compare to Bay Area police in general.
Oops, I meant to say +1 to all of chris's comments in 1. We're reinforcing each other.
Well first, you need an orange post title.
8: There was another shooting July 3. That's an n of 2 for a tiny police force. And since we know Mehserle didn't do it...
e.g. is the training for transit officers only 6 weeks long, where other big cities train them for 12 weeks? Do they accept 19-year-olds rather than making 21 the minimum age? Do they accept people for transit officer jobs who have previously been involved in major physical altercations?
Certifications for cops are set by the state and can't be circumvented by a local agency. 21 is the base age pretty much everywhere due the commonality of "no handguns under 21" laws.
Does anyone know of any reason BART should have thought Mehserle would be a problem? Clean background check, passed all his drug tests, placed high in his academy class, good record on the job up t othe shooting, etc. Maybe some think he should have gotten more than two years. But that's not on BART, they didn't sentence him.
21 is the base age pretty much everywhere due the commonality of "no handguns under 21" laws.
Maybe in California. Not in Philadelphia.
Also, is it really true that in CA, transit officers' certifications are set by the state, not the municipality? Or are BART officers considered employees of the city/county rather than the transit authority?
Just feels like whack-a-mole to me, though after eight hours in the backyard pounding moleholes, I guess you get the endorphins from doing a full day's work.
The repression, the contradictions are just gonna show up somewhere else in an even worse form.
Yves Smith posts an interview with David Graeber on debt, jubilees, etc. It is different this time.
And, I might add, if Aristotle were around today, I very much doubt he would think that the distinction between renting yourself or members of your family out to work and selling yourself or members of your family to work was more than a legal nicety. He'd probably conclude that most Americans were, for all intents and purposes, slaves....DG
Taser or gun for the field boss? Anybody readin' Digby on tasers? As soon as they can, they'll just click the chip in your head. But at this rate, it may not even be necessary.
There was another shooting July 3. That's an n of 2 for a tiny police force.
Yeah, a guy with a knife. BART's tiny by large city PD standards but it does have over 200 cops.
Also, is it really true that in CA, transit officers' certifications are set by the state, not the municipality?
Transit just refers to who they work for. If they're a full peace officer then they have to have met certain training requirements via a state approved academy. Certain agencies might have additional requirements to get hired but the certification as a cop is still set by the state.
eight hours in the backyard pounding moleholes
...if you know what I mean.
Maybe in California. Not in Philadelphia.
And is anyone actually hiring 19 year olds these days? Our last class of 13 or so was out of a pool of something like 1500 applicants. I can't imagine a 19 year old making it on anywhere but a small town with obvious nepotism.
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Among the words newly added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary: Americana, boomerang child, bromance, cougar, fist bump, helicopter parent, robocall, tweet, and walk-off.
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Americana? They really have their finger on the pulse.
23: Bromance? This must be a secret plot by prescriptivists to heighten the contradictions.
I'm not even sure what the change I want in BART enforcement to be, although I am sure that I don't want to employ anyone who confuses his firearm with his taser in a job carrying both.
Actually, I think it would be much, much better if cops universally confused firearms with tasers, because the tasers were designed to be indistinguishable from handguns. That way they might actually be used as substitutes for handguns, as opposed to substitutes for verbal orders.
"Boomerang child"? You try to throw them away but they just keep coming back?
27: Essentially, yes. "Young adult who returns to live at her family home, especially for financial reasons."
What lazy kids. Why aren't they debt-free and easily hired like they were back when everyone was white and pretty?
Because their parents raised them wrong.
as opposed to substitutes for verbal orders.
This seems to be more common in the South. Our policy puts the taser in the same category as the baton. There has to be the element of physical aggression or violent resistance that would justify hitting someone. I think policies that let you go to the taser for mere non compliance with an initial verbal command are bad for everyone involved.
This seems to be more common in the South. Our policy puts the taser in the same category as the baton. There has to be the element of physical aggression or violent resistance that would justify hitting someone.
Many police forces/officers have a rather loose definition of violent resistance.
Also, the point is that tasers and batons shouldn't be used in the same circumstances.
BART officers have shot and killed six people since the agency was founded in 1972; three of the shootings occurred during the past three years.
I understand your desire for protests to be constructive, but "n=1"? How many times does Ta-Nehisi Coates have to explain that "it's just a few bad apples" is always invalid?
Shootings by police of the unfirearmed are, to use the latest medical jargon, a "never event."
To be clear, I object to "n=1" not because n>1 but because of the kind of argument it is.
Witt is on the right track, which is always already the case. I know how dull and maddening they are, but as a bureaucrat, I promise you that we really do an influential chunk of our policymaking at those public meetings. Another influential chunk happens in rooms I've never seen at the executive level, but working now to be a political appointee would be playing the long game.
Go to the public meetings and comment every time. If they offer up any citizen's slots on subcommittees, take the slot and do real work. (If you write content they can use, for anything, low level people will be so pathetically grateful they will want to implement your policies. If you just give constructive reviews and criticism, they will like you almost as much.) Become someone they know, and a constant voice for disarming BART police, and in a decade, you may prevail.
If you don't want to do that, I'd say to give a few hundred dollars to Amnesty International and ride BART in peace. It is useful.
I hadn't known the word "Damifino" before this post. Or rather, I had seen it rarely in literature as "Damfino" but took it to mean "Damn fine".
I understand your desire for protests to be constructive, but "n=1"?
I should have been more clear. I'm well aware BART's had more shootings than that but the entire post seems to be based off of the Oscar Grant incident.
Shootings by police of the unfirearmed are, to use the latest medical jargon, a "never event."
Do you really need me to start listing scenarios to illustrate why this is absurd?
I've got some errands to run before work, but to clarify why I think 35.2 is ridiculous:
I will put myself in harms way for innocents and victims and such but my life comes before the offender. If that person comes at me with something capable of killing me or doing me serious harm then that person gets shot.
If that person comes at me with something capable of killing me or doing me serious harm then that person gets shot.
Shouldn't there be an implicit "And retreat is impractical or ill-advised" in there?
Gswift's family has to be very careful in the kitchen.
But I do agree that "Shootings by police of the unfirearmed are, to use the latest medical jargon, a "never event."" is wrong -- someone with a non-firearm weapon who's going to imminently hurt people (cops or otherwise) and can't practically be controlled or retreated from is a perfectly plausible possibility.
If you don't want to do that, I'd say to give a few hundred dollars to Amnesty International and ride BART AC Transit in peace.
Headed to work but I'll apologize in advance if I sound irritable in this thread. Timing and such. I recently had an excessive force complaint which, I shit you not, stemmed from some leftier than thou guy in a Prius who stopped to berate me about force while I'm literally in a brawl with some guy in the middle of the street. And I know he has no idea of the circumstances which led up to me kicking that guy's ass because he said as much in the email to the department.
OK, OK, it's not a never event. But it's completely justified to be appalled by the Grant incident in isolation, because it was objectively appalling, regardless of what happened afterwards. I don't think, every time someone else gets killed without an earthly justification, we need to trot out a governmental audit to justify our outrage. Police forces are not unique snowflakes; the more this shit happens, the more I feel, to quote TNC, that "cops are not agents of the state worthy of greater trust, but people with guns and a broad license to use them."
I recently had an excessive force complaint which, I shit you not, stemmed from some leftier than thou guy in a Prius who stopped to berate me about force while I'm literally in a brawl with some guy in the middle of the street.
Let's stipulate that what happened with you wasn't excessive force at all, but a completely reasonable way to deal with the situation. (Which, I'm being honest, I don't doubt.)
Given that, do you think your department has too many civilians making complaints of excessive force, or too few? How much excessive force is actually used by your coworkers? (If you say "none", I will laugh.) Should there be more citizen involvement in this sort of thing, or less?
I'm sure it's a personal headache for you to deal with whatever process you have to deal with to resolve the complaint that you think (no doubt rightly) was completely unjustified. But, rather than belitting the guy for his leftier than thou-ism, I'd think you'd appreciate that he's at least attempting to do the right thing with this (and that, from his perspective, it probably looked like a situation that at least potentially ought to be brought to someone's attention). I mean, he admitted he didn't know the circumstances leading up to what he saw. The fact that you see this sort of feedback as a something of an interference rather than as helpful citizen engagement (even if in this case maybe sort of a personal headache) is actually a bit troubling.
47: Also, here in DC, I have found that it's basically impossible to talk to a supervisor to give informal feedback. We have an officer in our neighborhood who is just a real asshole. I've seen her in 7-11 insist on being called "officer" (rather than "ma'am") in a totally bullying way. Another time I saw her scream at someone with out of town plates who just seemed confused about where to park. And she once threatened to arrest me if I walked across the street in the middle of the block and then followed me home to make sure that I complied with her "order" - her word. (It's actually legal in DC to cross in the middle unless both ends of the block are controlled by a traffic light, which was not the case where I was.) She's clearly a rageaholic and I would say obviously not fit to walk around with a gun and the power to arrest people.
After that last incident, I made several phone calls asking to speak to someone about it, none of which were ever returned, and then actually went to the precinct and asked to talk to a sergeant, but they wouldn't let me. My only recourse was to file a formal complaint, which I did not do.
"And some would call him 'pig'"
I'm pretty dubious about this idea of showing up to public meetings to confront the cops. That's going to get your name on a list, with absolutely nothing to show for it. I know people in Mpls. who've been doing anti-police brutality work for YEARS -- going to all the meetings, serving on the oversight board, talking to politicians, door-knocking, the whole bit. Doesn't ever seem to make much appreciable difference in the amount of brutality or incompetent policing or whatever.
Copwatch, that's the kind of direct action that can work, sometimes.
And, of course, we could go back to Hammurabi and have citizens enforce "an eye for an eye" against police officers who deserved it. A war of all against all would be preferable to the current war of the powerful against the powerless.
I did mention that the incident I mentioned a few years ago, where my friends saw the run-up to the police shooting of an unarmed black man, resulted in no charges for the cops, but a big $ settlement to the family of the murdered man, right? And people here were all "oh, I'm sure the cops had a good reason". City didn't think so.
I swear I'm not just being an ass about that guy who complained but I'll have to elaborate later when I'm not trying to type from a car on the Blackberry of Justice.