This may be a more relevant thread to link to something I've mentioned here earlier, Dawon Gore, a black police officer charge by McCulloch's office several months earlier for assault on the job. Here's a news report on it prior to the Brown shooting. And here's Gore's side of the story (interviewed at the Fergiuson protests). You can see from the interview that Gore is clearly not an "organization man" in any sense which I think in the end is his real crime.
While I don't disagree that it's a national problem, I think it's the sort of thing that has to be fixed force by force. I have a strong belief in organizational personalities -- that in any organization, you get norms that aren't simply attributable to the people involved. (I represent a number of state agencies Most of them are perfectly functional places. One is a hateful nest of snakes. It generates incredible amounts of employment litigation, not because they appear to be discriminating in any particular direction, but because everyone hates everyone else, and when anything happens all the bad feelings erupt. Individuals who I've dealt with there seem individually non-malicious, although jumpy -- the culture generally is just horrible.)
Something has to be done to change the culture at forces with a problem (and it's perfectly possible that there are forces that don't have a problem), force by force. Moskos (the Cop in the Hood guy) had a post on something that sounded effective in Philadelphia? I'll look for it.
I know the only black cop in our town, and with even a little prodding, if he doesn't think your pro-cop he'll admit that everyone else is basically racist as hell.
Being a cop is a white conservative job, and given that white conservative politics in the Unites States is wedded to white supremacy, how could it be any way else.
We could select by random lot people to serve as police officers.
"The biggest thing I've taken away from this project [to track all police-involved shootings in the US] is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government--not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force--wants you to know how many people it kills and why."
You can see from the interview that Gore is clearly not an "organization man" in any sense which I think in the end is his real crime.
Be a google using mammal. If you smash a dude with your baton and break three of his fingers the first your department hears of it better not be when that guy calls in looking for help with the medical bills.
From the link in 7:
The second biggest thing I learned is that bad journalism colludes with police to hide this information...In Philadelphia, the police generally don't disclose the names of victims of police violence, and they don't disclose the names of police officers who kill people. What reporter has time to go to the most dangerous sections of town to try to find someone who knows the name of the victim or the details of a killing?
What, a reporter go the scene where there's scary brown people and ask questions? I bet they don't even make decent lattes down there. Ain't nobody got time for that!
I added another article to the post.
Swiftamus, there are always going to be parts of accusations that seem (or are) unfair, but there's a real problem here.
9: Re-read the first sentence of that quote.
I think it's the sort of thing that has to be fixed force by force. I have a strong belief in organizational personalities
That's been my experience as well. Part of it is this from 4, "Being a cop is a white conservative job". Well yeah you fuckers, because loads of liberals won't do the job. But hey, we've got English departments all locked up so that's good.
9: Re-read the first sentence of that quote.
So it can seem even more stupid the second time? Why aren't the police just releasing victim info to reporters? Mysteries abound!
but there's a real problem here.
No one's denying that.
12: Please never respond to anything I say again.
So it can seem even more stupid the second time? Why aren't the police just releasing victim info to reporters? Mysteries abound!
Did you miss the part where he calls it bad journalism?
I'm seeing in more places, not just here, the idea of having independent prosecutors for all police matters routinely, and am increasingly liking it. Not because police are unique monsters, but because even with ideal police forces, to do most of their jobs right, prosecutors simply have to be close and friendly to police, which is bound to be a handicap in police cases.
It's also fucking rich for you to be complaining that he doesn't call out reporters when half the post does exactly that.
14: I didn't actually address you, but I guess I'm disregarding the request just by typing this. Oh well.
15: The collusion part is where I am going to roll my eyes a bit.
But further to 13.2, it really is a problem like LB describes. It varies hugely by organization and yes, it's not too difficult to imagine there's a lot of it in Missouri and like areas. But it's a very fixable problem. LAPD is a great example.
16: Right. There's an inherent conflict of interest there.
prosecutors simply have to be close and friendly to police, which is bound to be a handicap in police cases.
This, and there's also the fact that often the DA is an elected position. These guys shouldn't be making decisions with an eye to their campaigns.
16 -- independent prosecutors are a good idea, but in terms of changing department culture individual criminal prosecutions of individual line officers are pretty far down on the list of what will help. Basically at the top police departments are political and bureaucratic entities, and you need a combination of good well-trained leadership at the top, local politics that's reasonably supportive of change, and the threat of DOJ consent decrees. (1) and (2) aren't as insuperable as they might seem. And it's also not particularly a liberal/conservative thing, plenty of extremely liberal and majority-minority cities (looking at you Oakland, but there are plenty of others, also roughly true of the LA Sherriff's Dept until recently) are happy to let their police forces be run incompetently as part of a general level of civic incompetence.
12 is a bit ironic in an article about a liberal cop who would and did do the job except that he got sick of having to work in such a racist environment.
The collusion part is where I am going to roll my eyes a bit.
I didn't take that to be active, conscious collusion. He talks a little bit about the pressure reporters get from departments, but focuses way more on lazy and sloppy reporting.
But I do note that now we're talking exclusively about shitty journalists, and have completely ignored the notion that law enforcement agencies have any responsibility to track this stuff.
Also, police demographics are much much worse than the military, which suggests it's not the danger that's making minorities less willing to do the job.
23.2: I'm just more interested in making fun of journalists and don't disagree it should be tracked.
which suggests it's not the danger that's making minorities less willing to do the job.
Keep it straight. It's liberals who won't do the job because they're all giant pussies. Minorities aren't doing it for totally different reasons.
12: look, clearly the answer is to work with what we've got, rather than just posing imaginary solutions that won't happen. You aren't going to find many serious liberals interested in becoming police officers because it's violent work in the service of occasionally-but-not-usually-but-definitely-the-cases-where-liberals-notice-it questionable goals. And an organization with mostly conservatives serving generally conservative(not movement conservativism sense) goals with a strongly conservative culture (right now) just isn't going to be a great place for liberals. You see plenty of liberal social workers, and it's not like that job is somehow less difficult or dangerous. What I mean is that, instead of just complaining about liberals not joining the police force, we should consider other possible approaches. I say give all the English professors and employees of liberal non-profit organizations high powered handguns and legal immunity for their use. I bet that would make things more interesting.
The job can definitely attract racists and dicks. The real question is how the low-level bosses respond when their officers are being racists and dicks, and how the bosses of the low-level bosses respond when they find out that there's excessive tolerance of racists and dicks. Badly run, incoherent, unsupervised departments will also almost definitionally be (literally) stomping grounds for racists and dicks.
While increasing hiring minority staff is definitely a good thing to do it's so not even close to sufficient and may not make that big of a difference, because the relevant "racism" is largely about tolerating being horrible to residents and treating them as second class citizens, and it turns out that there are plenty of minority officers willing to do that if given a chance -- the New Orleans PD is majority black in a majority black city and run by black chiefs and still "racist" as all get out; Bernard Parks, a black man (and now black politician) ran a far more "racist" LAPD than did white guys Bratton and current chief Charlie Beck.
As to the second link in the OP, I don't understand how these guys are keeping their certs. Out here there's usually also an investigation by the state POST council and they can, and do, revoke your cert to be a police officer. That's the end of the game. It doesn't matter if another agency is willing to hire your dumb ass or if an arbitrator says your firing was unfair. No cert, no police powers, end of story. You can't be on the street without that cert.
"Time's up. Everyone put your hands up and back away from your exam or I'll shoot."
Also, in the grand scheme of things there just aren't that many white liberal men. If you have a job that's almost all white men it's also going to be 2-to-1 conservatives without any secondary affects being considered.
It would be a penny ante response, but the feds could do the same paltry behavior-steering my department does. They could have an administrative rule that if a department killed someone in the previous couple years, that department isn't eligible for federal grant money. I bet Obama could do that within his executive powers, no Congressional approval needed.
What 28 said.
What I mean is that, instead of just complaining about liberals not joining the police force
Sure, it's a multi pronged approach. I'm not just about calling you all pussies, I'm also about calling you all pussies. We should probably give Von Wafer a gun or at least a cane sword. Dude can't even run away anymore.
Also, in the grand scheme of things there just aren't that many white liberal men. If you have a job that's almost all white men it's also going to be 2-to-1 conservatives without any secondary affects being considered.
Put that way, I realize that's part of the problem with big sections of the tech community.
8: Be a google using mammal.
Don't be condescending cunt. All of that information is in the articles that and videos I linked.
Don't be condescending cunt
We're just making up crazy rules now?
Out here there's usually also an investigation by the state POST council and they can, and do, revoke your cert to be a police officer. That's the end of the game.
Again, you seem to be in a much better (and better supervised) department than is the norm.
a black man (and now black politician) ran a far more "racist" LAPD than did white guys
Yeah, I was going to say this in response to Stanley's (joking) comment upthread: there's something about the job (as currently defined and practiced) that makes people act a certain way. It's not just that the dudes doing the job are stone racists or assholes (although some are), but that there's a culture of self-valorization, impunity, and demanding obedience that's a really toxic mix.
35: And you think his real crime is that he's not an "organization man"? Not the baton smash episode?
37: Many police depts. are minimally staffed and rely on, don't know what to call it, zero-tolerance dominance to handle everything? I was told this by a French classmate yonks ago & it comes up in descriptions of Richmond, CA improving overall safety.
38: No. I agree that in a normal world he should probably be indicted. But in the context of the fucked up racist St. Louis County cop world of chief John Belmar and Prosecutor McCulloch he's being railroaded. He's not a poster child by any stretch he just happens to be at hand.
Again, you seem to be in a much better (and better supervised) department than is the norm.
Sure, I think we do a lot of things right but what I'm talking about is the state level POST council. Even if our city dept was terrible they still can't put a guy back on the street whose cert has been pulled by the state. I'm curious as to where the state is in all those cases in that second link.
Out here, a DUI is a 12-18 month cert suspension. Sex on duty is often a three year suspension. FFS, we had a guy up north this year get a one year suspension for using his friend's hunting license and getting caught with a deer that didn't have a tag.
If the deer doesn't have a tag, you only get store credit if you return it.
Is state certification a thing in most states? It sounds like a good idea, and might exist in NY, but I've never heard of it. The Ohio cop who killed the kid with the toy gun had an awful record at a prior cop job, that sounds as if certification existed, he should have lost his somehow.
I think we can all agree that Ohio is a dystopia.
May I have a sword cane, if they're being passed around willy-nilly?
I don't remember reading this when it came out last year.
http://prospect.org/article/how-keep-bad-cops-beat
The fact that all these episodes are set in California may be no accident. It's one of a few states--along with Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Hawaii--that don't have authority to take away a police officer's certificate or license to continue serving.
Unfortunately 46 for California really is an example of "when public sector unions (and Gray Davis) go wrong." Just because there's a lot of anti-union bullshit out there about public sector unions doesn't mean that it's always bullshit.
46: Interesting. I should write my state representatives.
Of course having a POST isn't a guarantee of it being functional either. Ohio has one, but it didn't do anything to keep Loehmann, of whom a deputy chief said "I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies," from being quickly hired by another PD in the state.
47: Unrelated, but have you ever tried cutting a leg of lamb into steaks and throwing them on the bbq? I've been doing it lately with the steaks rubbed with Lindberg Snider Porterhouse and it's amazing.
If you bone and butterfly the leg, the whole thing grills nicely. We do that occasionally when we've got access to a grill.
I endorse both 49 and 50. You can do lamb steaks on the stove pretty well too.
May I have a sword cane, if they're being passed around willy-nilly?
Careful! They're illegal in many jurisdictions, IIRC.
I say this very quietly, as I see the thread has become contentious. But what gswift says upthread about liberals being unwilling to do the job has some traction here and there. It's not only being a cop that's a white conservative job; apparently it's also being a soldier.
My co-worker's son is an Army Ranger, and he reports that the majority of his mates are indeed deeply conservative, and racist (along with being not terribly bright, but that's a different matter).
I don't know what might be done about this.
This thread actually seems a lot less contentious than most of the recent ones on similar topics.
That would've worked better in the era before timestamps.
I'm just very bad at remembering to refresh.
Maybe you could tie a string around your computer.
It's not only being a cop that's a white conservative job; apparently it's also being a soldier.
Hmm...maybe true about the Rangers, but in the army overall, African Americans make up ~21%, which is nearly double their 12% of the nation's population.
We've been grilling excellent pork shoulder chops lately, relatively thin and large with bonus lovely knobs of fat that cooks up into gorgeous nuggets of crackling. One chop feeds 3 of us (including a teenager) with some leftovers, very fast and easy.
Gray Davis and the prison unions caused so much lasting harm, the prison building program in rural California created a "demand" for prisoners those rural communities will be incentivized to fill for decades to come.
60: Yeah. Perhaps there's a difference between those who move up the ranks, and those who sign up for half a dozen years.
49 & 50 are basically some of my favourite summer foods ever. Butterflied BBQ'd leg of lamb, yes please! (I did lamb shoulder tonight, because winter.)
The military, post-WWII, has been one of the more aggressively anti-racist - in the traditional American black-white sense, at least - institutions in the US, hasn't it? Truman era desegregation, emphasis on integration in training and education - ok, my knowledge is limited to seeing historical stuff on the Internet Archive -, etc.
I suspect the average police department, while taking some steps to combat discrimination, has put a lot less effort into anti-racism than the military has.
62: Yup. AA are 9.5% of active duty officers and 18% active duty enlisted. I couldn't find numbers on NCOs.
Special forces are much whiter than the rest of the military. There's also differences between branches (marines are the whitest, then air force, army, navy).
OT at this point: This is a good post at Balloon Juice.
OP.2, 46: Pretty much every cop who gets fired or demoted or whatever around here gets reinstated once they appeal. Specifically, the special tribunal that cops who are military veterans get virtually never upholds any punishments. It's all a sick joke.
66: Navy is less white than the army. I didn't have any stereotype in my head about those being different, race-wise. Interesting.
I guess the white folks I know who have served in the Army as NCOs left way more openly racist than they entered. These are folks who've finished their tour of duty in the past 3-4 years. Most racist complaining I hear is about Afghans/Iraqis, though, not African Americans. However, I suspect that referring to those groups as sand-n**ers means they're differentiating from the "regular" kind.
You'd think navy would be blue.
69: Neither did I, but I looked up the numbers. The gap between army and navy isn't large.
73: Just out of curiosity, where are those numbers to be found?
One person I know very well spent 20 years in mil intell, leaving as highest rank nco, exited as if not more left than he went in, but astoundingly cynical re foreign affairs (not surprising).
http://www.statisticbrain.com/demographics-of-active-duty-u-s-military/
There aren't complete breakdowns, but they Navy is both less White and less Black than the Army. I can't totally tell from that list, but presumably it's more that there's way more Asian/Pacific Islanders in the Navy, which makes sense.
That page doesn't make it clear, but I think (due to what I saw somewhere else) that those numbers count Hispanics as White.
Most government stats differentiate Hispanic/White from Hispanic/Non-White based on self-identification, don't they?
The Census Bureau, at least, counts Hispanic as an "ethnicity" that cross-cuts the racial categories.
79: I didn't look it up, but I was thinking about the census. Also, am I right that not all Latinos are Hispanic? How are Brazilians classified?
80: Sure, for example people who have or identify with indigenous heritage may not self-identify as Latino.
Sort of to the OP and I hope in the spirit of twisting it rather than suggesting an analogy, one thing that's been bothering me as all these stories of bias in policing come out is that the stories about bias in child welfare are covered up by privacy laws and will not come out in meaningful ways. Foster care is also a broken system with a whole lot of bias at its core and yet I don't hear quite the same rhetoric about that, although there too it crops up most often when someone dies who shouldn't have and didn't need to if things had been run better.
To 75, the white Air Force officer I know came out of the service more left than he went in. But that may have been because he was stationed for a time at D\ov\er.
(And on that note, here's a petulant personal aside! I'm having a grumpy little night. I thought it was because it's my last night as a foster parent and that's been such a big part of my identity and I also thought, I'm sure even more rightly, that it's because I'm still sick and thus easier to annoy, but then I realized that the biggest thing is all this grief I have about not being able to be a legal parent to all of my children. I mean, the state went to court to say that the reason we can't allow gay marriage is that gays have to work harder to have children and so they don't need the incentive of marriage to protect their children's interests, whereas straight couples need the encouragement of marriage to keep them from procreating recklessly or some shit. I just know I had to take Mara aside before she saw the proceedings tomorrow and explain that I'm not legally her mom but that we've done all that we can to make sure I can legally do all the "mom jobs" and it sucked and made her feel as insecure and mad at me as I'd expected, which is why we had the conversation at home rather than in court. There are really almost no inconveniences about this in day-to-day life, but it's emotionally really hard for me, maybe not as much as it was last time around when it was possible Mara would be our only child. Lee doesn't feel the same way and I guess that's why I haven't thought about it much this time around, but it makes me so sad and angry. The end.)
you guys, my mom has been puking a lot for over a year, since she fell off a ladder pruning bamboo and hurt her back really bad. god, two years. she waited until she became eligible for medicare to get surgery. she consulted doctors in the meantime and they said the constant vomiting was just from the terrible pain. but we were thinking it was bullshit. she had to wait four months to get an appointment with the neurologist, because we have the best healthcare system in the world. she started passing out even, and slurring her words. my sis went with her to the neurologist on nov 5 and told him she was worried something was wrong with her brain and balance. he said, "if I were an ordinary doctor I'd be sending you to the ER right now, but I'm not an alarmist, I'm going to schedule these tests first (more waiting for MRI). my sister was up with her all night five nights ago, couldn't keep any liquids down, not even the electrolyte freeze-pops. then they went to the ER. she has a tumor in her brain, five cm, compact, not on her brain stem. there was just a shadow in her lung-- at sibley they did a scope and said it was just bronchitis. my uncle jon browbeat people and we transferred her to john's hopkins, with new neurosurgeons who gave my bro their cell phones and all. the shadow in her lung has cancer. it was always my worst nightmare that I was making the worst mistake in my life living so far from the people I love. I'm really scared she's going to die. well, obviously she's going to die pretty soon. she'll feel better after the brain surgery they're doing in 12 hours. WHY DID NO ONE GIVE HER AN MRI THIS WHOLE TIME FUCK AMERICA! why didn't my brother and I just pay for everything put of pocket? why did I believe my disabled sister when she said she could take care of mom? I said it was the blind leading the lame--when my brother got there there were no sheets on my mom's bed and cigarette butts and popsicle wrappers and a piece of cat shit on the bed. I'm waiting in the departure gate for my (delayed) flight to dulles via seoul and SF. they are going to try to let her go home for christmas before they start treating her lung cancer. if she is facing loss of mental capacity or agonizing pain or the risk of being caught up in a cascade of medical failures she made me and my sister promise not to hide the guns and ammo and I respect that but. I haven't cried yet the whole time except when I got onto the futo with girl y to cuddle in the pitch-black pre-dawn and say goodbye and merry christmas I really felt a Stan through my heart, a real pain. she's only 65!
I'm sorry Al. I'm thinking of you, and my wife's aunt, an important and very difficult person in her life will probably be dead within the week, so I'm already in this frame.
Oh, al, that's so awful. I'm sorry. I hope things will get better and be clearer after the surgery. Safe travels and so much hope for some good things for a change.
Alameida, wow, that is awful. I'm so sorry. Thinking of you.
And Thorn, I feel for you too. I was thinking that you and Lee were alternating to make it a little easier.
90: We are, and the reason she went first was that it's pretty obvious to everyone that I'm the primary parent by any meaningful definition, which would leave me in the stronger position to make a custody claim for a non-adopted child if it ever came to that. Technically I will adopt Nia and she will have adopted Selah and Mara, but we've got a good joint custody agreement that we'll actually be able to file with the court now, which is even stronger than what we did with Mara. It's just annoying and sad, not actually all that difficult.
So sorry for all this alameida. This is too much to bear. Good luck with everything.
Oh, alameida. I am so terribly sorry you and your family are going through this. The world can be crazy unfair.
Will hold you in my thoughts.
Very sorry to hear that Al. Thoughts going your way.
Alameida, so very sorry. If you need anything while you are local, just ask. I hope your travel is swift and that Hopkins is both incredibly competent and compassionate in her care.
Idp, sorry for your approaching loss.
Thorn, best to you and your girls. I hope the law changes quickly. Also, congrats to making it to the finish line with your family intact.
Oh, no, Alameida, I'm so so sorry.
And Thorn, I'm sorry the law is such a mess, but at least the girls know you're their mom in their daily lives even when the legal system won't acknowledge it.
Oh Al, I am so sorry. Will be thinking of you as you travel. And you and your family, idp.
Thorn, you're a wonderful mum, and your feelings make complete sense. I'm sorry you have this to deal with and I hope it changes soon.
alameida, many sympathies and I understand and share in a currently less personal way your rage and disgust at the needless human suffering our hideous health care system imposes.
Damn! My sympathies to all of you. Don't forget to take care of yourselves too.
61.2: Why the specific hating on Grey Davis (governor from 1999-2003) for this, when the graph of California's prison population looks like this? The big boom in prison population and construction happened during the Deukmejian (1983-1991) and Wilson (1991-1999) administrations (and started with legislative changes back in the first Brown administration). Davis didn't do a lot to challenge the prison guard's union or the status quo on this, but the prison population was roughly stable during his term in office.
Damn, sorry to hear about that, alameida.
I'm so sorry for both alameida and idp. And I'm sorry that Thorn and her family are stuck for now in a state with crappy rules about same-sex couple adoptions, but I am deeply hopeful about that changing throughout the country over the next few years, especially given all the progress towards universal marriage equality in the past few months. I hope you can get full legal recognition of all your family relationships soon.
Damn, so sorry about that alameida. Also, "WHY DID NO ONE GIVE HER AN MRI THIS WHOLE TIME FUCK AMERICA!" - you got that right. Sounds like a pile of professional incompetence. Very best wishes to you all.
Also, idp, that's a bugger. People should have the courtesy not to die at Christmas.
I'm very sorry to hear about that, Alameida. You have my sympathies.
112: antisemitic. And sorry, al. That's just horrible on so many levels.
114. Alright, then. People should have the courtesy not to die at Chanukahristmas.
Idp--Oh, yuck. I'm sorry. That's hard.
Thorn--I'm hoping that the legal situation gets better. Even without getting married, it ought to be possible for 2 people to legally adopt together. (I mean 2 people who aren't romantically involved ought to be able to be co-guardians or whatever if someone with a kid dies.) Sucks all around.
Alameida--I am so very sorry.
Thank you everybody, I really hadn't meant to compare, except that it had preoccupied our day and feelings when Alameida's sad comment appeared.
The last, youngest holocaust survivor in our family. A teenaged girl hiding in occupied Europe, part of the infamous Velodrome roundup, mistakenly released because of some paperwork irregularity, back into hiding. The weird propriety of German administration.
Her beauty and vitality leap out of family photos and grab you. A whirlwind in my wife's childhood, a figure of magic. But her extreme narcissism has poisoned the family, like magic, for forty years, most of which I've witnessed. Nonetheless, she will not die alone, nor unmourned, nor in the Far-off Forests and Fields we evoke on Yizkor.
In one of Roth's novels, which I haven't read but expect I will now, a young man who is disgraced and alienated from his family becomes convinced that a young woman he encounters is Anne Frank, miraculously survived. And that by marrying her, he will redeem himself, put himself beyond reproach.
The largely-invented story of Anne Frank addresses that hope, that desire. That a compensating ennoblement might follow from the terror, and break its power. A childish wish evading the sad fact of never-ending damage. I didn't need Cynthia Ozick to know that.
If you bone and butterfly the leg, the whole thing grills nicely.
Does "bone" here mean "de-bone"? (I assume yes only because I've never heard of adding bones. But the world is full of mysteries.)
Ugh, I didn't see that the thread had taken a tragic turn. Sorry alameida. Condolences.
Sorry to hear that, al. My own interactions with how (American) hospitals have treated my elderly, ailing relatives scare the hell out of me.
You too, idp. You have my sympathies.
And you too, Thorn. It really sucks that you have to go through that song and dance and the state's so shitty, but it sounds from here like you're doing an amazing job.
Safe travels Al, and best of luck.
That supremely sucks, alameida.
Thoughts also to idp and Thorn.
108: Perhaps that the Democratic establishment, as represented by Gray Davis, for some time didn't really oppose the tough-on-crime binge, or even embraced it?
(As linked here a few weeks ago, it's notable that the prison guards union is no longer being activist the way it used to.)
Wishing the best for alameida, Thorn, and idp.
All my sympathy to alameida, IDP, and Thorn, (and anyone else having a hard time).
What an awful story Alameida, that's dreadful.
My sympathies to Alameida, Thorn, and IDP.
Sympathies to everyone. What a hard time for everyone, ugh.
Sympathies and good luck to Alameida, idp and Thorn.
Echoing the sympathies and best wishes for alameida, idp, and Thorn.
Catching up, and I wanted to add my sympathies for almeida and Thorn and dip.
I'm in SFO and it seems like the surgeon's leaving the OR now and that the operation was pretty successful. I'll know more about it when I get there and can talk to my bro and sis and the doctors in person. the thing about the blind leading the lame and all is that I'm so sick as to pretty much count as being disabled, and I know my husband was looking at my exhausted face thinking "why does she think she's going to rush in there and fix shit up?!" I got three seats across on the seoul-SF leg (9 hrs) and slept the whole time, but I'm still in so much pain. it's always been dismaying that I was able to do so much more stuff physically when I was drinking and using. it's the same for my mom and sister. people self-medicate for physical pain as well as emotional pain. but I'm happy we can all take this on together sober. I'm also happy that, like I was saying just the other day, I love my mom and have a great relationship with her now. if she were this sick and I had never yet forgiven her in my heart it would feel squeezed out of me, blood of forgiveness from a stone of bitter resentment. but...my mom is like an electric charge of humanity, more alive than other people, unforgettable, someone you can't look away from. I wonder if she'll bother to stop smoking. if not I'm totally giving her a carton of salems for christmas, because my family is vicious and loving.
and thorn and idp, love from the internet!
Same to you al, glad it seems to have worked.
133: Sympathies and good luck to Alameida, idp and Thorn.
Ditto cubed.
I once had an extraordinarily prissy doctor explain to me that he wouldn't prescribe more pain meds for one of my dearest friends in the world, who was dying of irremediable rampant cancer, because on her intake form she'd been honest about drinking a little whiskey before dinner, 1/2 bottle or so of wine with dinner and, depending on the company and the conversation, a nightcap or so, and had done so for decades, hardly surprising given the place (Paris) and time (50s-00s) she'd been living. He told me she could take her pain patch down to Ashby Ave and sell it, it was so powerful. She was bed bound and racked with agony. If she'd wanted to chain smoke I would have held the fuckers to her lips.
I appreciate the sympathy, but I just posted an adoption photo in the pool and Nia's grin says it all. This was not about me or my angst but about the girls and the family we're creating. My parents took us out to dinner at an Indian/Ethiopian restaurant (because those are the origins of the couple who owns the place, whifh seemed apt) and now I'm putting Mara to bed because she's sick. I finally started antibiotics today and Selah was back to school after a week off for pneumonia, and life is good!
Well maybe we are pussies but I suspect that being a cop and the social atmosphere around police would tend to make anyone not a committed leftist into a conservative. It is also a little unfair to say we wouldn't join when most forces wouldn't have us. If your IQ is over 120 and you personality isn't authoritarian you may not be allowed a career as a police.
I suspect that being a cop and the social atmosphere around police would tend to make anyone not a committed leftist into a conservative.
There's a running joke made to the new guys in the police (I've also heard it bandied around EMTs)
Veteran officer: "So, are you a racist?"
Rookie: "What? No!"
Veteran officer: "Give it time. You will be."
I've heard the IQ thing before and it's appreciated as it's always good for a laugh. Yes, yes, liberals are just too smart to be police.
The authoritarian thing? I guess it depends on what you mean. It's not something you have to embrace every minute of the day but you do have to accept that you are the police and that a, maybe the defining aspect of the police is the govt. sanctioned use of force. It doesn't preclude you from being a patient and respectful person. But the job means you're going to making a lot decisions that involve taking someone's freedom. Usually they go easy. Sometimes they go hard. If you're not comfortable with that then yes, the job is not for you.
145: Hopefully I haven't succumbed yet. Mostly the joke is kind of grim acknowledgement that the job is a never ending string of encounters with people who embody negative stereotypes.
Liberals are underrepresented in a profession that fundamentally revolves around depriving people of liberty? Shocking!
Whatever the reason, I'm sure it reflects well on us.
148: It's a necessary role. Somebody has to do it. For liberals to widely believe they are too good and/or too smart for that role might be a colossal mistake.
150: I'm just saying, there's a bit of a mismatch between an ideology that (rightly or wrongly) highly privileges individual freedom and a role in society that, while definitely necessary, is all about restricting individual freedom.
Which is to say that it's really the socialists, rather than the liberals, who should all become cops.
My dad and another cop once wired a cop's gate shut. The cop who couldn't get into his yard blamed the kids at the school. I think they told him they did it before he shot anybody.
I wasn't claiming to be too smart for it. I was referring to this story;http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
And I agree with you in 150. I think it's liable to get us all killed.
This really excellent article helps to explain why the libertarian-anarchist, abolish-the-cops approach to police issues is such total bullshit, particularly for poor people and minority groups. Under-enforcement -- that is, under-protection from violence and crime by the State for poor people, especially black people, by crimes committed by other citizens -- is rampant and a huge problem that disproportionately hurts the poor. An absence of policing and protection from crime is real in America, and it primarily affects those at the bottom of society. Having high crime, particularly high murder rates, that the State can't protect you from is also a fundamental and terrible violation of basic civil rights. The state needs to function and protect people from unjustified violence, full stop, very definitely including unjustified violence from police officers but also very definitely including (much more common) violence from non-police officers.
I hate the idea that liberals shouldn't be cops. Basic protection against crime and violence should absolutely be a priority for "liberals" (in the US sense of social democrats); it's a basic good that the State should be providing and isn't effectively providing to many of its citizens. Policing is an important public service, one that's disproportionately important to the poor and it's something that everyone should want to see well and effectively provided.
to 146 I meant don't you guys take the Minnesota multiphasic and have a psychological interview process where those who won't fit in get steered away?
Key paragraphs:
The use of lethal force against Black Americans by the police or the state more generally, should not be untethered from the heightened risk of criminal violence that Blacks experience. Doing so simply reinforces the assumption that the primary tool for ameliorating racial inequality is to further constrain the state, which exercises its criminal justice authority disproportionately against African-Americans.
But this view misses the larger problem of racial inequality in the U.S., which is the failure of the state to act affirmatively to successfully protect Blacks, to the same degree as whites, from a wide range of causes of early death. Understanding the link between the disproportionate exposure of Black Americans to one of these causes - murder - as well as to state violence reveals a far more tragic reality than a singular focus on the police suggests, and that is the racialized failure of the American state.
What is a failed state? There is no single definition but, at a fundamental level, failed states are unable to deliver on the most basic of positive goods: security from violence. The United States, as a whole, fails to protect its citizenry from the risk of murder to the same degree as other rich democracies. But for Black Americans, this failure is astounding. The risk of being murdered is seven to eight times as high for Black men as white men, and three to four times as high for Black women as white women. More starkly, at the height of murder risk in the 1990s, the lifetime risk for Blacks was one in twenty-three, compared to one in 160 for whites.
This exposure to violence is coupled with heightened exposure to other forms of physical risk, including police harassment, arrest, imprisonment and execution, often for offenses, such as drug violations, that they are no more likely to engage in than whites. Sociologists Becky Pettit and Bruce Western estimate that, for men born between 1964 and 1969, approximately three percent of whites and an astonishing twenty percent of Blacks had served time by their earlier thirties. It is not hyperbole, then, to say that African-Americans, far more than their white counterparts, experience devastating under-protection and over-enforcement of, the law.
155: That's kind of an outlier case. AFAICT a lot of departments have gone to things like the PT being pass fail and a lot of your placement on the list is based off of the written and oral exams.
158: We took something that was definitely based off of the MMPI. There was also an in person psych. My understanding that a big function of the MMPI test is looking for integrity problems on the L scale. That is, people who are answering the questions in a way that overstate how virtuous they are, no admission of minor flaws, etc. You know, the "I am always 100 percent honest in my dealings with my fellow man" type questions.
I took one of those tests when I was in high school and trying to get a retail job. They didn't hire me, possibly for a whole variety of other reasons, but I always felt it was because on the test I was afraid of overstating how virtuous I was and I may have erred on the side of not claiming sufficient virtue.
They are definitely looking for that and also uncontrolled aggression and instability. But they also look at attitude about rules i.e. authoritarianism.
To be fair, attitude toward rules is a pretty important thing for a job that is entirely about enforcing rules.
I'm guessing that for retail testing they don't hire the sort of trained psychologists capable of really assessing the whole "pretending to be too virtuous so probably there to steal shit" thing. I think there you're supposed to treat it like the "what is your greatest flaw" questions.
I have a friend who applied to the police force and didn't get in. It certainly wasn't because he wasn't smart enough. My guess is that certain personal characteristics didn't help in a way that would certainly not be obvious enough to give cause for a lawsuit (gaygaygaygaygay), but also that the correct answer to "If you had to shoot a minor, how would you feel?" was not "[awkward pause]...bad?". This is the Minneapolis police department, though, and probably doesn't apply to ones not run/staffed by the sort of people who make up the Minneapolis police department.
While I'm sure that attitudes towards rules consistent with pretty authoritarian personalities are what get selected, I do kind of wander if the opposite wouldn't be better. I mean, gswift has talked about (and his department seems pretty known for) taking seriously the idea that police officers have to spend a lot of time not enforcing the law in the interests of actual people's interests/keeping the peace/etc. And it seems like someone with a generally skeptical view of social rules, lawn order, and so on would be better at doing that than the Junior Judge Dredd types we often see running around with badges.
I guess I should make more explicit what I was getting at. I think that stereotypical liberal traits like: nonconformity, creativity, love of personal freedom, a casual attitude toward the rules and social order and an appreciation for novelty would be collectively pretty disqualifying for a position on most police forces. The opposing traits are pretty good predictors of conservatism and also likely viewed as desirable by most police chiefs. IMHO
I dunno, guys. I feel like you're making a lot of unsupported assumptions about both "liberals" and cops.
One of the things on the previous assessment of the Cleveland cop who shot the kid was an inability to follow rules if he felt that he knew better.
Seems like something both overrepresented in unfogged commenters and undesiredable in police.
What rule am I breaking?
Oh, I agree with 167 completely. Unless there's an implied value judgement which is maybe up for debate.
Conservatives make good police, but leftists make good secret police, amirite? Now where's my conservative website columnist job?
taking seriously the idea that police officers have to spend a lot of time not enforcing the law in the interests of actual people's interests/keeping the peace/etc.
And this is where the department leadership and policies make a big difference. A focus on order maintenance and protection against violence and crime looks very different from just enforcing every legal violation you see. In our policy manual the section on discretion specifically a conversation (I think the exact phrase used is "timely word of advice") "can be a more effective means of achieving a desired end."
Teo might be on to something. Maybe I enjoy the job because I'm actually more socialist than liberal.
Unrelated but neat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM
174: Weren't you an anarchist before you started?
Liberals are underrepresented in a profession that fundamentally revolves around depriving people of liberty? Shocking!
SERGEANT - It is most distressing to us to be the agents whereby our erring fellow-creatures are deprived of that liberty which is so dear to us all; but we should have
thought of that before we joined the force.
POLICEMEN - We should!
SERGEANT - It is too late now.
POLICEMEN - It is.
SERG. When a felon's not engaged in his employment
POLICE. His employment,
SERG. Or maturing his felonious little plans
POLICE. Little plans,
SERG. His capacity for innocent enjoyment
POLICE. 'Cent enjoyment
SERG. Is just as great as any honest man's
POLICE. Honest man's.
SERG. Our feelings we with difficulty smother
POLICE. 'Culty smother
SERG. When constabulary duty's to be done
POLICE. To be done.
SERG. Ah, take one consideration with another
POLICE. With another,
SERG. A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
POLICE. Ah, when constabulary duty's to be done (to be done),
A policeman's lot is not a happy one (happy one).
A focus on order maintenance and protection against violence and crime looks very different from just enforcing every legal violation you see
"Myself a Mandarin" is a book by a guy called Austin Coates who was a district magistrate in Hong Kong in the fifties. Locals could opt to have their cases tried under either British law or Chinese law and custom. Coates knew nothing at all about either, and so adopted the strategy of finding the only textbook on Chinese law and custom in the library, speedreading it, putting it back on the wrong shelf in the library at the top of a high ladder and then moving the ladder, and then encouraging all his petitioners to choose Chinese law and custom, on which basis his decisions could not be gainsaid (because there was only one textbook on it in the library, and no one could find it for some reason).
Anyway, he came to adopt a very similar approach - that his job wasn't to enforce law and pronounce guilt but to maintain peace, order and good government, and a lot of the time that wasn't even remotely the same thing.
ajay, do you have any idea what the line, "When a coster's finished jumping on his mother..." is all about.
167: The police in the United States are overwhelmingly white and male. Unless you are specifically not hiring conservatives or racists, that cohort is going to be more conservative and racist than the general population. I suppose a concerted effort could be made to hire ethnic minorities. Fergerson is useful here: it's a majority-minority city whose police force is something like 97% white, and this is seen as normal, not the kind of thing that needs attention. Now, is it even possible for a majority white community's police force to be 97% black. No, that is literally impossible, if it were to happen they'd be hit with a successful race discrimination law-suit so fast the heavens themselves would look on in surprise.
179: I haven't the faintest idea. A coster is a costermonger - one who sells fruit and veg from a stall. If one were to jump on his mother, it would be assault, battery, and very probably actual bodily harm, and therefore an arrestable offence under the Offences Against The Person Act of 1861.
Why a coster in particular should want to jump on his mother in particular is a complete mystery to me. All the other people in the song are typical criminals - the enterprising burglar and the cutthroat.
181. I assume it refers to a case that was in the papers at the time; I just wondered if you knew which one. It's niggled me ever since I was eighteen and volunteering on an adventure playground* where one of the kids was a Cypriot called Costa and one of my cow orkers thought it amusing to rile him up by teaching his friends to sing that all the time**.
*This was in the olden days before Health and Safety, when it was regarded as normal to turn thirty-odd kids between 7 and 15 loose on a bomb site with a load of reclaimed lumber, a box of used nails and some lengths of stout rope and wire and let them get on with it, while supervised by two or three completely untrained school leavers.
**It wasn't all that amusing, even at the time. But the kid in question went on to become a Tory MP and was tipped for a ministerial future until he blew it all by getting caught in a particularly stupid and needless expenses scam. So it was all of a part, really.
So exactly when did Health and Safety take over?
I didn't notice it happen. Probably in the late 70s /early 80s.
182.1: that was my assumption too. There's a lot of contemporary jokes in G&S - "the keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky" refers to Ignatius Pollaky, Hungarian immigrant, private detective and anti-immigration campaigner. But I've done a bit of googling and the only hits are people plaintively asking what on earth the coster reference is about. If it was a famous case then, it's not now.
I've been waiting for 177. Didn't think I'd have to wait this long.
I have a friend who got a Math PhD, pivoted into being a yoga instructor, and is now a cop. He's one of the smartest people I know, and would be a success at pretty much anything he tried, but he just wants to drive around and help old ladies across the road and so on. It doesn't hurt that he has a big-ass trust fund which means he never actually has to work.
The problem is that the rule-lovers on police forces, or rule-lovers in general when in power, bend the rules when they can identify with the person breaking them.
Your stereotypical bleeding-heart liberal, as immortalized in that Tom Wolfe thing about how Leonard Bernstein loved the Black Panthers, would do the opposite.
Both forms of "discretion" are not ideal, but I think the one that reinforces the social hierarchy (from those who have little, more will be taken away) is worse.
The local homeless guy got selected as a photographic exemplar of his class. The reporter should have asked some questions because I've always been curious why he sits there. He's not really begging. For the first couple of years, he didn't even put out a cup for change or any for anything. Now he does, but he doesn't ask or have a sign.
This is good - strange that you so often get good, skilled cops dealing with one sort of person and unaccountably bad cops with another sort.
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So fuck. My Dad was in the ER over the weekend. My mom called to say that he's in the hospital now due to liver complications. Over the weekend I just took it in stride, like part of the backdrop of life.
Not as bad as brain surgery, right? Or dying tomorrow? But man, my heart is pounding, and I want to cry. I'm so tired of this shit.
|>
so sorry BG! I hope it turns out ok. liver problems can be super-serious obviously, but on the plus side your liver is really resilient and can come roaring back from things. that's why they can take half your liver out, give it to someone else, and each of you will have an entire liver in a short time!
my mom is already sounding much more 'herself' and more lucid than she has been for the past month or two, according to my brother and sister. the surgeon mentioned idly in passing to them that it might have metastasized to her lymph nodes also. that is game fucking over right there. game. over. she and her dad always shared and loved the quote that I thought I could love with her too. she has it on a flagstone in her garden, near the peonies: "grow old along with me, the best is yet to be." I thought I had time to love her more.
I have jet lag so I'm awake at my least favorite time of day: dawn. not to say it can't be pretty in summer when the grass is heavy with dew and it smells of privet hedges and the salt sea. but I associate it with the eight squares of the window paling into existence when I've been up all night getting wasted, and am out of drugs now, unfolding the tin-foil straw I've been smoking dope out of, so I can smoke the residue off that (which is refined and delicious and smells like burnt sugar. in the candy-making tables they have an index, which temperature equals "soft ball" or "hard crack." when you fuck up and boil the sugar syrup too long it's "blackjack," useless and irremediable. that's what heroin smells like. or I associate the gleaming into life of those panes with the opposite: up all night trying to kick, withdrawal, sickness unto death, insomnia that's the devil's own work. I like sunset. my property in lombok looks due west, out over the torres straits, to bali with its three mountains lined up like dominoes. sunset is better, but it's the end of things. normally I like that. fuck today! maybe tomorrow will be better. maybe tomorrow.
I don't think they really bother to do much shit to you when your cancer has metastasized to your lymph nodes, right? there's not a point?
I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think that's the kind of situation where the patient and family need to be vigilant to avoid useless but painful overtreatment. There's a risk of running into doctors who want to keep doing the next thing, even if there's no point to it.
And I'm so sorry this is happening. Sick and dying parents happen to all of us eventually, but that really doesn't seem to make it any easier when it does.
193: I think that LB is right about the need for vigilance. I think that sometimes doctors "lie" about what they are able to do.
Thanks for the sympathy, al. My Dad's well and truly fucked. -- heart disease (coronary artery and congestive heart failure), diabetes, hep c from surgery, alcohol abuse, cirrhosis, nerve damage. A few weeks ago he was in the hospital unable to speak because of hepatitic encphalopathy. Last week he got a blood transfusion inpatient and then another hospitalization this week.
He's dying, but he or my Mom or both managed to convince themselves that the new Hep C drugs would cure him and that he would get a liver transplant. It's just a slowish, painful way to go.
My father has a DNR. My mother is Catholic and pretty much believes that any and all life should be saved. But as far as I can tell my father has decided that he wants to go for aggressive treatments because he has started to think that he will get better. His moods were pretty out of control, and he has denial down a lot of the time. This is the cost of poorly treated mental health issues. My Dad's medical bills in the past 5 years have been ridiculous.
He's getting some kind of treatment (I think it might be a stent) and a course of drugs for 3 months. I think that this is an invasive procedure that's supposed to relieve pressure, but my mother believes it's a cure.
al, I am so very sorry about the timing. You deserve more time with your mother. I love that quote about growing old together, and I love even more that it is next to the peonies.
I'm sorry to hear about your father. That does sound like a very painful way to go.
I don't think they really bother to do much shit to you when your cancer has metastasized to your lymph nodes, right?
They shouldn't, but that's not always what happens. One of the doctors caring for my mother wanted to keep trying stuff when her liver had basically dissolved. Fortunately my sister was there and I was on my way with her living will in my pocket saying "palliative care only". She was dead in an hour, what fucking good would it have done her to hook her up to more machines to keep her heart beating? What I'm saying is, it's good you're there to make hard decisions if you have to. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's reality. Best wishes to both of you.
Good luck to your dad, BG. Livers are indeed robust.
191: I hope you find some peace and calm for yourself. I'm sorry you're going through this.
192: There are two types of lymph node involvement, close and distant. Don't despair until you have better information. Hopkins is probably the best place she could be for treatment, clinical trial access, and getting a competent palliative care team. (Insist on this when and if you need it. They'll help you all decide what seems worth it to do or not. It's not like hospice where you need to be a certain level of ill.) I'm so sorry.
Thanks moby and Chris.
My Dad cut me out of the medical loop a while ago. I can't make the decisions. He gave the Health Care Proxy to his brother, because I talked to the doctors about my concerns about his taking up driving again. He had no car and then got one with his brother's help (registered in my uncle's name) even after the doctors told him not to drive. I think that he may still be driving (except for all of these hospitalizations) despite the fact that his license has since been revoked.
chris-- as recently as last year he had relapsed and lied--even when alcohol was found in his blood. Livers are robust, but compromised livers aren't that resilient in the face of an assault from alcohol.
I really don't like dawn either. But I've never been a party-til-dawn kind. I've only done it on a couple of occasions where it was socially required (e.g. prom). If I stayed up all night until dawn, I was doing something really pointless like writing a term paper or playing a computer game and accidentally entranced myself.
I never found staying up all night to write papers effective, so I would go to bed and get up very early. If I had stayed up all night, it was horrible, and I hated it. If I had gotten up early, it was okay.
In winter, I generally have to get up before dawn.
yeah, if he's going to stubbornly keep drinking, then...that's really tough BG, I'm so sorry.
yes, my mom wants to live longer and see her grandchildren more and all that, but I don't think she would want to go through the rigors of surgery and chemo and radiation just to fight something that's got her "all et up inside with the cancer," as my stepmom's family used to say in statesboro. I never really understood until now why you would want to lie to the patient about how ill she was, but I can see that wanting her to focus on one thing at a time is helpful. like, let's just see if you can get back on your feet walking steady, and hopefully go home for a few weeks, and we'll worry about the lung cancer later. but I know she'd rather die at home after a short time with palliative care than suffer endlessly for the sake of living six months longer. why did I have to live so far away? I hate it. I hate it so much. I feel so stupid. if only she could be well enough to travel in business class and go to Lombok and go out on a long tail boat at night with my girls, and see the stars when there are no lights anywhere around on the water, and the milky way a river of stars with black clouds. they are being such shits with pain medication already: they gave her TWO TYLENOL 18 hours after her brain surgery. she should be covered in fucking fentanyl patches right now. goddamn I will fight some people about this.
Wow. I'm taking stronger pain medicine than that because my ankle hurts.
Fuck two tylenol. They need to give pain medication according to the patient's perception of how much pain they're in. Who else knows? When I had (minor) brain surgery I wasn't in a lot of pain, so tylenol (paracetamol) was fine; but when they did my aortic valve I was on morphine on an intravenous drip for nearly a week. They need to get real.
they gave her TWO TYLENOL 18 hours after her brain surgery
They don't give you the good stuff after brain surgery because they want to be able to assess your cognitive function.
Man, Al, I am so sorry that this is happening.
I never found staying up all night to write papers effective, so I would go to bed and get up very early. If I had stayed up all night, it was horrible, and I hated it. If I had gotten up early, it was okay.
This is me, too.
These days the whole house wakes up before 6, so we're always up for dawn. It's not that nice, peaceful feeling that you get when you're alone at dawn, though - mostly because there's too much commotion for me to notice that it's getting lighter.
....
Al, BG, all my sympathy.
He may not be drinking right now. Did in the fall of 2012 and was hospitalized for it that December. Saw liquor purchases on his credit card last March. He may be too sick right now
Several years of sobriety, but sobriety is a fragile thing.
Very, very sorry, al, and I didn't mean to hog the thread with my own shit. Best thoughts (and prayers, if you believe in that sort of thing).
125.3: Well, yeah, Davis was afraid of being tagged as soft on crime, and I said as much above. I think I once said that it was nearly as hard to get paroled for murder under Davis as it was to get executed for it. But while he wasn't doing much to fix the problem, he wasn't the governor who was pushing for the construction of all those prisons, either.
My sympathies to both al and BG on their respective situations. I'm grateful that when the time came for my dad it went about as well as could reasonably be expected, and I hope the same ends up being the case for both of you.
