DP, and where did you go to law school, because the standard you laid out is inaccurate. |
This is nothing like the Eric Garner incident. Unfortunately, many people are so programmed to see institutional discrimination everywhere, that's all they see. |
and the corporate media (all sides) feeds and promotes it…creating more hostility |
Those choices would come with a heavy direct price tag. Instead we all pay in more indirect ways. The 80s led to a pendulum swing, 3 strikes, etc. The status quo is not sustainable It's not just cops, it's prosecutors who are more focused on cops than public safety and judges with no accountability who are also soft on crime in many cases. It's like each piece of the system of public safety and orderly society is breaking down or is inverted in goals. |
That's not going to happen again because people think they have a choice between the tyranny of insanity and tyranny of white supremacy. People need to look around them and ask which is the more likely and imminent threat. |
Order and safety = white supremacy? |
That seems to be the crux of things. Allegedly someone in the car suggested he loosen the hold and that the man seemed to be dying. We really are heading in a direction where basic safety and order seems to be a thing of the past and where a sense that it is provided by government actors no longer exists. The number of addicts, mentally ill and ineffectively supervised convicts roaming around is legitimately putting many in fear in public places. A big unspoken reason that institutions were closed is cost. Of course, that was dressed up with other narratives. The status quo is a predictable effect of decriminalizing so many things and making them misdemeanors. In the past people could be offered MH or substance treatment, compelled, in leiu of a longer jail term. Now the carrots and sticks are gone from the toolbox. It is a part of MI and addiction to lack insight. Even short stints in jail used to offer a chance to detox from street drugs and get a clearer head. Now that is not happening. Large open air drug scenes are allowed to flourish and many current street drugs cause brain damage. CA has taken steps to make it easier to involuntarily commit but it has not made a dent in the scale of the problems they are facing and that they helped create by drawing with cash payments, as DC draws for housing vouchers. As more and more leave LE scary to think where all this will go as more and more feel hypervigilant and driven to protect themselves in shared public spaces. Being trapped in a moving subway with violent people of all backgrounds is terrifying. Bernie Goetz shot people, to literally choke the life out of someone with your hands over many minutes is something else. Has it been clarified why he was perceived as an immediate danger rather than someone ranting about wanting to be locked up again for 3 hots and a cot? |
Is THAT where the narrative is trying to go? That order and safety is tyranny? I call BS. When the tax base leaves cities, as has happened in DC in the past, where is all the money for services to come from? |
He had MI and had seen his mother killed due to domestic violence. Those 2 things strike at all income levels. |
Yes. The argument is that law and order is actually an effort to enslave black people through mass incarceration. So, it is acceptable to put Penny in jail as a white person, because his imprisonment will be the result of the system dispassionately considering the facts and then rendering justice through punishment. However, in a systemically racist society motivated to incarcerate young black men such as Neely, in order to gain cheap slave prison labor, such dispassionate consideration of the facts is impossible. Racism is woven so thoroughly into the system that it is impossible to police marginalized communities in a fair and judicious manner. Therefore, any attempt to provide "law and order" in any non-white communities is a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate white supremacy. That is the narrative. |
That's a good idea make them work in prison to pay back the cost |
Bottom line on mental health services: there is no political will to pay for mental health services, including institutionalization, for all the severally mentally ill people in this country that need help. Ditto substance abuse treatment, not to mention housing for the mentally ill, those with substance abuse problems, or those who suffer from both. Jails/prisons have become the de facto "treatment" centers for those with mental illness and/or addiction. And they provide inadequate treatment at best. That is where we are. No one is going to want to pay more taxes to cover these services. JFC, we can't even agree on health insurance for all.
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Go away troll |
I've lowered my standards, in the midst of all this. I no longer need proof that the treatment centers are effective. I just want dangerous people off the street |
I attended law school at Georgetown in the late 90s when there was a significant homeless problem in DC and the law school is right next door to CCNV, the largest homeless shelter in the country at that time. I had numerous conversations and interactions with homeless people, including some who were clearly in florid psychosis. I never really felt unsafe and yes, I handed out water and food and money too. Just a dumb hick from rural New England who actually believed the stuff they taught in Sunday school about how the extent of our love for Christ is reflected in how we treat the least of these. This earthly world is full of wounded souls walking around bouncing off each other, sometimes causing more wounds - but always with an opportunity to make a real human connection and feed healing. I chose not to step over, ignore or run away from the homeless people I encountered in my journey and I know that I was a real human connection for the people I encountered, that they saw that I was seeing them and had empathy for their suffering. We are so disconnected from the golden rule and the equivalent manifestations in the major religious traditions. We don’t see the homeless except as a nuisance, an other and a threat. Sadly we don’t even see our own children and what is happening to them in this despairing and careless society. I don’t have easy answers but certainly I know we are throwing good money after a lot of bad and neglecting the least of these among us. I’m sad to see us on this path. |