I mean, it happened live on air, they were clearly identified as CNN and willing to comply with police orders - making the police's claim laughable.
I wonder what those officers were thinking, arresting a reporter on live camera.
I wonder what those officers were thinking, arresting a reporter on live camera.
Speaking as someone who's been to a lot of protests, ranging from "peaceful as a baby" to "as street medics we treated 1/3-1/2 of the protestors"... the same thing cops are always thinking. As an institution, they don't like the press, oversight, or public scrutiny of their actions. They react the same way to people with press credentials for less prominent organizations, and to regular humans with phone cameras who have just as much a right to record video, the same way all the time.
I can't help but feel that strong independent oversight is necessary, as the status quo is clearly insufficient.
I would not be shocked if a majority of the property crime was also police instigated. If they are willing to do this to people, it's far easier to knock out some windows.
That seems to be the problem. It's not so much that one gets out of hand, it's that they don't police themselves. If they want to stop it they'll have to begin with the smaller digressions - like speeding or illegal parking when there's no reason for it. Stop your bro from thinking he's above the law even when it's not a really big deal.
For a more organized version of the mentality, see the Constitutional Sheriffs movement. I forget where I first came across the movement but here's a top Google result about it:
https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/the-army-to-se...
Never heard it put quite this way. Well said!
It was pretty surreal to watch, for me, and notice absolutely no actions from law enforcement, fire departments, or the national guard on site obviously strategically chosen by some upper leadership (governor?), likely to minimize the situation from escalating. The reporter pointed this out multiple times. It was probably the right call IMHO.
I suspect when law enforcement finally did move in afterwards, it was also strategic to minimize that escalating the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if the arrest was strategic just to minimize on-the ground coverage.
I tip my hat to Omar Jimenez and crew for the coverage they provided.
Having police officers paid so little that you put up with 18 violations, or willfully ignore them out of comraderie is fundamentally a system that is not sustainable or worth having pride over.
Then you factor in top tier healthcare and a very generous pension program, and their total compensation balloons.
That's not even getting into collusion by the department to defraud tax payers. Quite a few departments have gotten in trouble from auditors for paying overtime to officers who didn't work the OT, which went on for years before being discovered. Then you have retirement benefits which are based on the last few years salaries, so people close to retirement get a bump in salary and OT in order to pad their retirements. That's no illegal, but I think it's unethical.
I once helped to organize a permitted bike race. As part of the permitting process, we needed approval from several city departments, including the police department.
In the prior five years of attending races, I never encountered a situation that would call for on-site security. Despite that, our permit required us to hire 4 security people. Oh, and the security people were required to be officers from the local jurisdiction.
It really felt like paying protection money to the mob.
Seattle starts at $65k+ and the avg is $100k.
To be clear, when I referred to making the "right call" I was referring to the choice of inaction from police and national guard units last night/this morning during ongoing protests. I think ultimately, this will lead to less damage.
At this point, from some of my friends in the city, it sounds like there just isn't much oversight at all---they've now been caught on video taking guns from people with valid licenses and now arresting the press. I don't think that we can effectively apply logic when the police system seems so disorganized.
I can't say anything about the situation with the Minneapolis PD, but it seems like it has a major training problem, there was also the case a couple of years ago of the cop that shot and killed a (white) woman in her PJs who was reporting a possible crime out of the window of their patrol vehicle.
> On May 18, the court turned away three of these appeals, including a jaw-dropping case in which police were granted qualified immunity after literally stealing $225,000. (There is no clearly established right not to be robbed by cops, the court held.)
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-sup...
In this particular instance, surely CNN has a strong case against the Minneapolis police department?
[0]: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/1712-police-settl...
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cases-police-officers-ch...
Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found criminally liable for murder even in the most egregious of circumstances (only the most egregious ones are prosecuted at all and even most of those result in acquittals).
On the other hand you are right that link [0] shows that it is much more common that the police are found to have civil liability. Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
> Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
I think this might actually be eminently desirable that the taxpayer is on the hook. We shoulder a lot of responsibility for our police (not the actions of any given officer, but the system that either fails to weed out 'bad apple' officers or fails to adequately train them or whatever other systemic failure is responsible) and it's right that we shoulder the cost for our lack of will to enact police reform or take it seriously. Of course, I don't think the liability--criminal or civil--is adequate in magnitude, and I would like to see more of both.
Just put the officers on the hook instead, reform done.
Doctors are on the hook for medical malpractice, works quite well and we still have doctors.
I understand that the criminal justice system is very often lenient on police officers, and I'm strongly in favor of increased police accountability; however, there are still many cases of police officers going to prison and departments/municipalities being sued for police misconduct, so to say that there is no actual liability is hyperbole.
When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
Now, if we'd looked at the statistics (homeownership gap, achievement gap in education) or listened to black Minnesotans, we'd know that we're not better than anyone else in the US. But there is at least a desire. We really do have folks in leadership who want to be/do better, even if we're failing at it.
I don't doubt this, but I don't see how you get from there to "there is no liability at all".
> The present one is the first case I know of where anyone from inside the government actually called for an investigation, and it was probably because they were afraid of the very riot situation we now find ourselves in.
I'm not sure what you mean by "anyone from inside the government is called for an investigation"; do you mean you don't think police officers in these situations are never or rarely investigated, charged, etc? Or are you speaking about some other government official (and if so, I don't know what you're talking about specifically or how it relates to this broader conversation about liability).
> When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
Your premise is wrong. A quick Google search turned up this collection of police department settlements[0] and this collection of police officers[1] charged in recent, high-profile killings.
Note that there is a middle ground between "there is no accountability" and "the system is working just fine"--we absolutely should increase police accountability, but "there is no liability/accountability" isn't accurate or helpful.
[0]: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/1712-police-settl...
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cases-police-officers-ch...
You are both right. However, in the article [1] a large number of police officers were either acquitted, are awaiting sentencing, or were not punished, what the general population would consider, fairly.
When we hear about police departments agreeing to settle - that does not give us, as a society, a closure. Individual police officers have committed crimes, but now the tax payers are paying for that? That's not accountability.
My position is that there is some accountability but it's not sufficient for any reasonable standard of justice.
If the intent was to arrest them all, they would have said "you're all under arrest". This smells like they arrested the guy, went "oh shit lets arrest the others too so people don't say we're racist"
This is very much systemic.
That's being extremely charitable.
Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusation to make.
The larger story is that there is close to zero accountability for police in this country. At least a small minority of cops are racist and violent and use the opportunity to murder citizens and other police will not speak out.
The arrested crew did not move. They asked for clarification and were arrested. That’s wrong.
But the crew that was not arrested did move. They didn’t ask for clarification, the just moved then went back to reporting.
The accusation above is that the white, Latino and black guy were arrested because the reporter is black. Is there anything to support that?
> Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusation to make.
Come again? First, the post doesn't rise to the level of "accusation." In fact, it explicitly leaves open the possibility that it's a coincidence.
Second, should we just not mention statistically relevant variables? Not report on facts? Do you doubt that race played a factor in this specific case, or that it is often relevant?
Except that also arrested was a white guy and a latino guy.
Aren’t those relevant variables?
In the after math of the 1999 WTO riots, many of the worst abuses were committed by LEOs brought in from the outlying areas. Scrubs who didn't have the same training as the locals (and state patrol). Nor have any kind of personal regard for the city and its people.
Even so, at the time, I was really struck by the comparison between our SPD and DC Metro. DC has more crowds, riots, protests, disturbances, etc. DC Metro has a lot more experience, training, professionalism. And it shows.
From my personal experiences in Seattle, there's no way I'd risk protesting in and around the Twin Cities, and risk some noobs shooting me.
(I'd like to believe I'd never riot.)
I have protested in St. Paul and Minneapolis many times and in general SPPD have been decent at protests, and MPD has made an effort at protests. There has been a real effort to improve community relations but there are some notable bad apples (as long as Bob Kroll is speaking for MPD employees, we are going to have trouble -- listen to any interview with him to see why.) They have experience with the Super Bowl, many Black Lives Matters protests (Philando Castile was killed in 2016), and the RNC a while ago in St Paul. I was at the RNC protests and the interaction with the police was like a dance -- a relatively polite interaction with horses and concussion grenades, in which I honestly was not that worried about bodily harm -- until the Hennepin County law enforcement came in. Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey.
Everyday policing has been quite different than behavior at protests. And things are different now.
"Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey."
Exactly. That's what I was trying to say, thank you.
I'm guessing: "we do not want our actions in the next few minutes to be broadcast on live television"
It's possible that they didn't know it was a live broadcast.
It really seems like their intention was to cook up charges, then realized they screwed the pooch and pretended it's all okay because now they're free. It's not. The intimidation has lasting effects and they know it.
The point is that it's not even in the officers' own self-interest.
"This man is Black, therefore he is the enemy", probably.