FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'
reason.com
reason.com
To summarize: the Minneapolis PD was executing a no-knock warrant in a homicide investigation. Locke was not the target of the warrant but was sleeping on the couch. He was licensed for the firearm and it was completely legal. When startled awake, he reached for his gun (natural reaction) and the police shot and killed him.
You'd think the NRA would be all over this: a legal gun owner killed in his home by police? Nope [2]. I wonder why.
Let's also compare to Kyle Rittenhouse. Attorneys wanted to use the fact that one of his victims was a sex offender as a defense [3]. There are two possibilities here:
1. Rittenhouse didn't know of this, in which case it's immaterial; and
2. Rittenhouse knew, in which case this was a targeted killing (ie murder).
No one is arguing Rittenhouse knew. The whole point here is post facto justification. This is for the court of public opinion and to give the jury something to hang their hat on with an acquittal. That's it.
I bring this up because I want to highlight the different worlds people live in when it comes to law enforcement. Yet you can't bring the above up without some (predominantly white) people getting offended at the mere suggestion that the system is inherently racist.
Think about that.
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/amir-lockes-death-prompts-ban-knoc...
[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/where-nra-gun-rights-group-slammed-...
[3]: https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/kyle...
This kind of violence affects everyone. Some people, particularly those in the media, have worked hard to elevate certain shootings while almost completely ignoring others in order to push a specific racial narrative.
1- You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police. [1] 2- The media attention Breonna et al. received was not about the individuals but for the community in general due to my previous point.
If you want to argue that this kind of violence affects certain races more, that's fine. But why downplay the fact that it affects all races? The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact.
You actually see the a similar attitude when racists attack social programs. If members of a minority group are more likely to benefit from a program, they treat it as a program for minorities, even if the majority of beneficiaries are non-minorities.
It's also interesting to see how people divide the demographic information. If you look at the breakdown by sex, you'll find that the divide between men and women when when it comes to these shootings is much, much greater than the divide between races. Yet the latter is talked about a lot all over the media, and while I don't think I've ever seen the latter treated as an issue. My guess is that we'd also see another large divide if we divided the numbers by wealth (and this article is a good example of that).
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
People fighting for black lives aren't hiding bad things that happen to white people. The reason Duncan Lemp doesn't have posters up about him isn't because black activists against police violence haven't fought for him, it's because both black and white activists against police violence haven't fought for him. And as white people still make up the majority of people shot by police[1], far more white people than black failed Duncan Lemp.
I find it to be a fantasy that somehow, if people fighting for black lives would emphasize the suffering of white people, it would suddenly turn the white people who are hostile or ambivalent about this stuff into supporters. Again: you can't get white activist gun owners to defend a licensed gun owner who was surprised and shot in his own home by police executing a no-knock warrant that wasn't for him. The NRA supported gun control to criminalize the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were an absolutely straightforward open carry movement, with one important difference.
edit: I meant to exclude Reason-style libertarians from this. They're scrupulously consistent.
That's patently false at the very least. Everyone I've talked to said it was a horrible act and those officers deserve legal charges.
Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all.
It's almost as if there is an ulterior motive to actually solving the problem, or perhaps the leadership just won't look past their own environment. Either way, the shiz is way out of hand and everyone should be afraid of it.
I remember reading an article where police were serving a warrant and they straight up shot the guy next to his pregnant girlfriend through the window while they were sleeping. They justified it by saying the room was boobytrapped. The guy was staying at his parents house when this occurred. It was very suspect, but I never saw national media attention it deserved, and I find it highly unlikely a kid living with his parents would place a active, lethal booby trap in his bedroom inside his parent's house. It was an actual murder squad. Pretty crazy. I wish I could find the article (it was local.)
It's hard to believe that anyone who's actively downplaying the way an issue affects the majority of the population is actually interested in solving the issue.
It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. In fact fixing the issue would be counterproductive, as that stops power accumulation and requires finding some new issue.
Of course, you have to plausibly pretend to actually care about fixing the issue. What's the solution? Demand unworkable and absurd fixes, like 'defund the police'. The social engineering in it was remarkable - its planned ineffectiveness relied on extremist demanding complete abolition of the police to make it unworkable and scare people away, while at the same gaslighting opponents of the absurd extreme it's _really_ only about small redirection of funds to health services and similar.
What would a real solution look like? It would try to solve the root of the issue rather than symptoms. One major current cause is that new meth is significantly neurotoxic due to unknown impurities from currently dominating synthesis methods. Good article about the issue:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...
The most effective solution would be to legalize meth and ensure only pure, pharmaceutical grade is being sold. Pure meth isn't especially neurotoxic - and in small doses it's actually neuroprotective due to hormesis. Amount of people with damaged brains would plummet, fewer people would be homeless, fewer people would be violent. Which is exactly the reason it's never going to happen - nobody would gain politically.
Same logic for fentanyl and heroin deaths - cheap, pure (consistent purity = much lower risk of accidental overdoses) heroin would reduce fentanyl deaths to near zero, virtually eliminate health damage (pure heroin is relatively safe and can be used for decades) and reduce crimes committed by addicts to near zero (by virtue of being cheap).
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Numbers are cool and all, but they can't be divorced from context: intergenerational poverty, police brutality and surveillance, the prison industrial complex. And so on.
What is the attempted statement here? To imply that black people are inherently violent? What are you getting at?
The way i see it, those numbers reflect the state of racially focused stunted development in many communities.
It's like when people throw single-parent household statistics around with blacks. What do we think is the root cause here? That their skin color inherently made them do this? Or maybe, just maybe, the living conditions are not prone to healthy structured families and healthy individuals.
So why don’t you apply the same logic to OP’s statement above? The data shows that there is no difference in police killings by race on a per incident basis: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-data-say-about-police-.... Blaming police racism is like blaming teachers. Maybe some are racist, but to a large extent you’re blaming them for problems in the communities they’re serving that are outside their control. Note that there is a five factor difference in incarceration rates between white people in Oregon and white people in Massachusetts. Reducing disparities in criminal justice to race blinds you to the myriad factors involved.
This is an instance of what I call the “liberal conflict of interest” with respect to racial justice. Liberals have taken up racial justice as their cause, but like everyone have strong incentives to view the facts on the ground as vindicating their own ideologies. Liberals don’t like law and order, and they do like teachers, so for disparities involving police they blame “racist police” but for disparities affecting education they don’t reach for “racist teachers.” In the long run this liberal conflict of interest hurts minorities, by obscuring the “root causes.”
Your comment about “single parent household” statistics is another example of a liberal conflict of interest. Let’s stipulate that the “cause” of disparities in single parenthood is generations of slavery and segregation destroying the social structure of these communities. But what about the effect? Countries all over the world with high levels of fatherlessness suffer from high levels of violence by young men. Conversely, the single parenthood rates among white people in Appalachia would be cause for alarm and panic in a number of African countries. But liberals don’t want to explore that avenue (which could lead to solutions) because they’re invested in social theories that reject patriarchy and the importance of fathers in socializing boys. Hence liberals bankrolling outfits like BLM that push not to shore up, but to deconstruct notions of traditional families.
> The number 13 used in conjunction with either the number 52 or the number 90 is a shorthand reference to racist propaganda claims by white supremacists against African-Americans to depict them as savage and criminal in nature.
If anything, it's evidence of overpolicing.
But this continues a centuries-old narrative that black people are violent and white people are a civilizing force. Both of these provided moral cover for slavery. This include religious figures justifying slavery as the slaves were being converted to Christianity and it would save their immortal souls.
I hope, for your sake, you can deconstruct this propaganda you've been exposed to.
[1]: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1352-1...
They are arguing that "historical travesties" -> "current situation for Black Americans" -> "increased risks of criminality and violence" -> "more interactions with cops" -> "more deaths by police".
Which requires different tools to solve than "cops are racist" -> "cops shoot more Black Americans".
And if our goal is to actually help Black Americans than we need to be clear eyed about the causes even if that makes us uncomfortable.
Soon, we shall fear all numbers as dogwhistles.
The intention of pointing that out was in response to a specific comment. Context matters.
I want police violence to stop. Period. I want them to be held accountable for their actions. But when an article talks about the way law enforcement treats people of different classes with two different standards, and someone starts complaining that black people are getting more media attention, I feel obligated to reference the reason why, without dismissing anyone's hardship. Again, context.
In the case of race you can't just ignore that black people do roughly 50% of violent crimes (just look at arson, don't even try to excuse it) and make up 25% of the lethal shootings with police.
It's also obvious why the racism is the other way around than some people make it out to be. Every police officer thinks twice to shoot on someone with dark skin because of the media coverage that can and often does take place. With killing white people, even if unjust this is rarely if ever a headline (except you can spin it, like when he helped a PoC).
I don't introduce new standards for them. If you want to mitigate racism, hold them accountable for their actions and don't act like people with a different skin tone can take no responsibility.
Thank you for this information. So do you support the fact that police in this country are working as a judge, jury and executor?
I am sorry, but if I were you, I'd be ashamed to use such justification for people's killings.
Let's focus on the issue at hand, policing violence is a problem that needs to be addressed, putting the blame on one side or the other because "they're more violent" is not a good start to any serious discussion except to shield police from their actions.
It's a statistic, that is more relevant than plain population share.
First let me say that the bodycam footage to this day hasn't been released. Until it is, I give very little weight to the claims made by police. In fact this should be a rule: bodycam footage should be required for serving all warrants, arresting any suspect and so on. The police simply have too much power that can be abused and video footage (bodycam and amateur) has many times exposed the police lying.
Kemp at least was the subject of the warrant. I'm not saying this to justify excessive police violence. But it is a key difference.
As for what happened during the raid, it's hard to make conclusions since we don't have the bodycam footage.
You were comparing the Locke case to the Abou-Khatwa case in the article (about a white collar criminal the FBI was going after, where guns weren't involved) and the Rittenhouse case (shootings which didn't involve any law enforcement agency). The shootings of Locke, Lemp, and Taylor all have certain differences, but they're much more similar to each other than to those other cases.
You will find very little support for no-knock raids but with the circumstances related to their deaths[0], comparing Duncan Lemp to Breonna Taylor is a disingenuous tu quoque.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/duncan-le...
Just because something didn't become an internet cause célèbre doesn't mean it didn't get attention. I mean, just from this site:
- https://reason.com/2020/03/16/maryland-man-killed-in-no-knoc...
- https://reason.com/2020/07/02/why-havent-we-seen-the-body-ca...
- https://reason.com/video/2020/10/16/the-complicated-truth-ab...
- https://reason.com/2021/01/08/prosecutors-office-clears-mary...
Google search for "Duncan Lemp" site:nytimes.com[1]: Two articles, neither of which are about his shooting, but which mention him in passing when talking about Boogaloo "extremists."
Google search for "Breonna Taylor" site:nytimes.com[2]: Dozens of articles from the Times.
Google search for "Duncan Lemp" site:cnn.com[3]: No articles on CNN.
Google search for "Breonna Taylor" site:cnn.com[4]: Dozens of articles from CNN.
It's simply impossible to not notice the glaring disparity with the media coverage (and again, these two shootings happened a day apart).
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22duncan...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22breonna+ta...
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22duncan+lem...
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22breonna+ta...
Simply for what it is worth, if I Google "duncan lemp", I see articles about the shooting from The Washington Post, USA Today, the AP, ABC and The Guardian.
Again, Breonna Taylor's story became an example of the case against the status quo of policing in America. Her story was elevated precisely because it was yet another example of injustice carried out by police that ultimately went unpunished. Community leaders and activists elevated this story on racial grounds because they believed it was important to do so.
Who in Duncan's community elevated his story? Who thought it was important to tell the story that a white guy died in a similar situation? It was covered as an event in the press when it happened, but it didn't get the kind of traction that Taylor's did because it ultimately didn't have the community support. Who would be the white equivalent of an Al Sharpton talking about how whites are mistreated by police? I really struggle to name someone that fits that description.
It's easy to speculate. For example, Duncan didn't fit the racial narrative the media is comfortable with. This framing achieves several goals that the more accurate narrative, that police violence is evidence of severe problems with our justice system. The racial narrative pleases left-leaning viewers, it also plays better to right-leaning viewers because the problem of individual racism is still big, but much smaller and easier to accept. Or, they can love to hate the story.
A general failure of the American justice system is just not a narrative anyone wants to hear; it's too big. That narrative is one that challenges the mainstream view that the police are the good guys, and that American justice is fair. It's like "climate change", as a subject - much easier to pick it apart into anecdotes and pass judgement on individuals, which feels good and has no effect, or ignore it entirely, rather than confront the true scope of the issue.
Ultimately the problem is that "news" has shifted firmly from a "public service" of broadcasters, that loses money, to a for-profit endeavor chasing audience, aka "content". The former service tells us what we need to hear, but the latter only tells us what we want to hear. And precious few of us want to hear the truth, especially about ourselves.
This shooting appears to have been covered by the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun and the AP.
People like to blame a certain story not going viral on the media, but it's kind of a scapegoat argument. The press covered the event and people on Twitter chose not to elevate it. That doesn't mean the media was pushing a particular narrative.
In Breonna Taylor's case, black community activists raised their voices in the community to state plainly that her death was an indicator of a fundamentally toxic policing system. There is no such analog for the white right, because those folks are largely ones defending the police right now.
1. You omit the defense's stated reasoning for bringing up Rosenbaum's prior convictions. Their theory was not "pedophiles bad kill pedophiles good." They wanted to argue that Rosenbaum lunged at Rittenhouse in order to take his firearm, because, as a convicted felon, Rosenbaum was not legally able to purchase that firearm. It was important that they show evidence that Rosenbaum had a pernicious motive to lunge at Rittenhouse, because the prosecution was alleging the only reason he did so was in self-defense.
2. More crucially, you omit the fact that the judge prevented his defense from mentioning these convictions in court for fear it would be prejudicial. Because of this, the jury never found out about Rosenbaum's extensive criminal history. [1] This craters the relevance of this example. It doesn't demonstrate any sort of double standard.
[1]: https://www.insider.com/details-the-kyle-rittenhouse-jury-wo...
That reason provides the moral cover for mudslinging at the victim but we all know what's going on.
From the perspective of those around Rittenhouse, they had no knowledge if this was about to turn into a mass shooting or not. Disarming him may well have saved lives (and would've as it turns out).
Defenders of these "stand your ground" type laws ignore the consequences of cases like this. Here's the lesson from the Rittenhouse case: as soon as he pulled out a gun, someone else should've shot and killed him and then argued (with some justification, honestly) they were in fear of their life.
The extreme here is the case of Curtis Reeves [1], who started an altercation with another man who was texting during the previews to a move. When the man stood to confront him, Reeves shot and killed him and successfully argued he was in fear of his life.
Take that further: the victim can reasonably argue he feared for his life when confronted by Reeves so, if he had a gun, he should've pulled it out and shot Reeves dead.
Like, this is just absolutely bananas.
[1]: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investi...
1. A person released from prison recently for disorderly conduct and a domestic abuse charge
2. An arsonist and convicted child molester
3. Convicted felon affiliated with the "Peoples Revolution" group best known for attacking a police officer, and pointing a loaded gun at your client.
These facts demonstrate without even showing the video footage, that all 3 had the capacity for violence and are the type of people that you may find yourself having to defend yourself against (as other have had to in the past)
Everything in this world is not race based. There are other nuances to the world that the MSM is hiding to push their race based fear mongering.
The issue isn't whether the jury would have liked the victim. The question was "did the victim attack Kyle?". The fact that the victim had a known violent past is very relevant to that question.
Courts use a victim’s (or a perpetrator’s) character in almost every trial. The prosecution used Rittenhouse’s tiktok username and about me section as a way to paint him as a killer driven by fame. The goal is to determine if the person is guilty or not.
2. The defense needed to present a motive for Rosenbaum's having attacked Rittenhouse, and they felt his prior convictions helped establish that motive.
3. The judge did not allow the defense to bring up Rosenbaum's prior convictions in court.
Would they, though? Because one is a criminal of one type, they are criminals of all types?
Edit: I am not defending a sex offender. I just don't think one crime is a gateway for all crimes.
It's certainly not a 100% always the case sort of thing, but yes, crime stats show that this is generally the case.
I am tired of Rittenhouse being used as race bait. Everyone involved in that story was white. Kyle, and all the people that he shot / attacked him.
I don't even see how your point about Rittenhouse applies at all. There are plenty of examples of white people getting off easy, but you're instead nitpicking the legal defense of this one case.
You're instigating a fight more than making a salient point.
But calling what was going on in Kenosha a "civil rights protest" makes you look foolish. It was rioting and looting. The kid did not go to some daytime march and shoot people carrying signs. He was LARPing as a security guard because people were torching businesses.
Opinion is divided so much already... if you want to convince anyone to join your side who isn't already there, you have to have your facts straight and be honest about what happened.
Like we're not 6 years old, surely we're not so naive to believe "I'm not shoooting youuu. I'm not shooooting youuuu" is somehow peaceful.
It would be no different than showing up to a freedom rally/protest with weapons and the idea to police the area.
I would really love to see some laws that allow us to defend ourselves against police. If they decide to just beat my ass, they can and I can't defend myself. WTF!?
My understanding of the current state of things is that in some jurisdictions it's simultaneously legal for armed police to violently enter your home without identifying themselves and for you to defend your home by firing a weapon at them.
Basically, we have legalized gunfights, as long as the police have a warrant. In almost all of these cases the police will "win" and therefor we essentially we have legalized murder where the police at least know they're about to get into a firefight whereas the suspect likely does not.
Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend was cleared of charges of shooting back at police. Had it not been as publicized he would probably be in jail though. It's possible but it's an uphill struggle, the system will defend itself any way possible.
>1. Rittenhouse didn't know of this, in which case it's immaterial; and
>2. Rittenhouse knew, in which case this was a targeted killing (ie murder).
>No one is arguing Rittenhouse knew. The whole point here is post facto justification. This is for the court of public opinion and to give the jury something to hang their hat on with an acquittal. That's it.
No, the whole point is arguing that Rosenbaum likely instigated the altercation, using his repeated violent behavior in the past as character evidence to show this. If Rittenhouse had instigated the fight then he would have had to additionally prove in court that he attempted to retreat in order for his shooting to be considered self-defense, if Rosenbaum instigated then it remains simple self-defense.
I mean, he would have been able to, since we have video of the time period leading up to the shooting, where he's running away from Rosenbaum before he turns around right before the shooting, and the prosecution witness testified Rosenbaum appeared to be trying to take the rifle.
You can't threaten to kill someone then violently attack them and expect them not to defend themselves.
If you're this woefully uninformed about the rittenhouse situation, have you considered that your sources of information are misleading you?
The NRA is horribly corrupt and self serving. It seems many organizations have come to this demise in the US the past few decades. I've heard of many gun owners abandon them.
>Let's also compare to Kyle Rittenhouse. Attorneys wanted to use the fact that one of his victims was a sex offender as a defense [3].
I assume it's a tactic to show he was a "bad guy," which was used to prove that Rittenhouse wasn't the initial aggressor. I believe the person in question had also been discharged from a mental facility that day and had quite a few issues with the law.
>I bring this up because I want to highlight the different worlds people live in when it comes to law enforcement.
While I completely agree with what you are saying, there are many different law enforcement organizations in the US (each city/town has one) and in those departments there are many different officers. Some of those organizations are highly corrupt and shouldn't exist and some of those officers are highly corrupt and shouldn't be employed or be jailed.
Having said that, any organization that tries to cover up the actions of a bad officer shouldn't exist and is part of the problem.
All of this is the result of the 50+ year drug war our government has been waging against its citizens.
It's relevant because it proves that the guy who was killed already had a lengthy violent criminal record. This helps to build up the case for a self-defense shooting. In most countries past offenses are taken into consideration when prosecuting a wide variety of crimes, meaning this is nothing new.
Also, I have zero pity for someone who raped children, and neither does any jury. Why wouldn't the defense bring it up?
Well, I am sorry, but bringing it up in a thread about a wealthy insurance broker Tarek Abou-Khatwa from D.C. definitely makes it sound like an alarmist racebait by a nutter.
Like, sure, government hides some stuff from the public. But it doesn’t make people who talk about UFOs and Zone 51 look reasonable when declassification is discussed.
Many gun-owning folks I know have joined other pro-second amendment advocacy groups in disappointment.
Also, as to the Rittenhouse case, you’re missing option 3:
> Rittenhouse’s attorneys wanted the jury to know that Rosenbaum was a low-life who was in Kenosha to riot and not for social justice protests.
Agreed,
> with an acquittal
Disagree.
It was the other way round for the Rittenhouse case. (I watched the entire stream. So for once, I can say I know about the case). Bringing their integrity into the conversation was a hail-mary play for conviction by the prosecutor, because they suspected they'd lose.
The Rittenhouse trial had gone from a cut-n-dry innocence case to one that was attempting to make his trial appear as if it was a hate crime. The prosecutors actively tried to make Rittenhouse look like an out-for-blood killer, the victims look like the nicest people alive and make it appear impossible that the victims could've threatened his life (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary).
It makes complete sense for the defense to counter accusations of bad character with the same when trying to establish plausible threat from the rioters. This was a white-on-white crime, and I still don't understand why the left chose this case as their 'systemic racism' hill-to-die-on.
> mere suggestion that the system is inherently racist
It isn't the mere suggestion is it? It is an active effort to defund and abolish the police. The lasting legacy of the BLM protests was the murders seen in emancipated-zones (CHAZ) and the massive spike in homicides following police defunding. The BLM movement was an ideological package, and I can see why someone would reject the combo-deal even if they agreed with certain aspects of it.
Just because I agree with the general direction of the identified problems, doesn't mean I agree with the solution.
Kyle Rittenhouse's trial occurred alongside Ahmaud Arbery's, and his white killers were sentenced to life in prison by a grand jury of eight white people, three black people and one hispanic person. As long as we are looking at anecdotes, there are plenty on either sides, making grand claims rather hard to substantiate.
___________
The American police system has a problem. It ties into the availability of guns, astronomical gun homicide numbers [1] and the general atmosphere of fear in this nation. I am certain that stereotypes amounting to racism are a part of the greater victimization of black men in 2022 America and that every unarmed killing by police is a tragedy. But, both those issues are nowhere close to the biggest problems in American law enforcement.
Its hyper amplification plays into the current political polarization of the US, such that the only acceptable & amplified opinions are ones on the fringes. It reminds me of Germany's Greens banning all nuclear power in their scorched-earth approach towards imperfect renewables; and that leading to greater CO2 emissions and Russian willingness to invade Ukraine.
Unless American society is willing to accept that their opponents come from a place of good-faith, they will never be able to work towards a mutual-compromise solution. In my experience, those are the only solutions that work in a democracy.
[1] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)01030-X/pdf#:~:...(
Where have the police been defunded? Where is the massive spike in homicides?
See https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-murder-rate-violence-big-citie...
In the gun community the NRA is generally seen has having failed gun owners. There are many cases similar to Amir Locke's. One in particular is Duncan Lemp.
NRA accomplished some wicked and absurd goals (one might not think it possible if it hadn't already happened) and I think by proxy accomplished a huge one through Justice Scalia which significantly, drastically and fundamentally changed the meaning of the 2nd Amendment from a selfless right to stand guard against tyranny to an intensely and grotesquely selfish right to legally murder in defense of trivial things such as property and indulgences such as pride. This was illegal, unconstitutional, and a massive overreach by Scalia, because obviously he undermined the Founders' expressed requirement for a Constitutional convention and 2/3rds both houses of Congress or of State legislatures to change the Constitution. That this defacement of the Constitution occurred in the way that it did, the 2nd was vandalized without altering the literal words, is interesting, but I believe it only a matter of time before parts of DC v Heller (2008) are overturned for lack of accuracy, overreach, and flippantly reversing a hundred plus years of court precedent with garbage reasoning. Scalia claims knowledge of what most Americans believe, without any support or any evidence whatsoever, which is what he bases his argument and ruling that the right of self-defense is inclusive in the 2nd (a small part of the decision which was entirely skewed to the rest and the case before the Court).
First of all, even one Supreme Court Justice claiming to know what all Americans think and basing decisions on that... is crazy, so he was probably a little senile by then. But I think Scalia knew (or knew once) and we also know from the minutes of the Constitutional Convention that the Founders debated including self-defense in the 2nd and intentionally left it out, and we also know that the 2nd specifically concerns militia (to guard against any tyranny from a professional military) and not a personal right to firearms, which it never meant until the NRA made up that it did and ran propaganda to manipulate others into believing what they, really, just invented, which itself is merely a lie. So the NRA succeeded in campaigns they ran, I think starting in the early 1900s and onwards to try to get Americans to believe the 2nd Amendment meant self-defense and guaranteed it.
But by 2008, contrary to Scalia's claimed omnipotence, I suspect most Americans were far better educated and aware of, at least, the fact that that the NRA's propaganda regarding their claims the right of self-defense was guaranteed by 2nd, was false, and knew and know that the right of self-defense is a natural right that would be redundant to include in the Bill of Rights, and is far older than the 2nd, which concerns militia. Personal gun ownership, right to carry permits, and all other ownership of guns beyond beyond militia (hunting, collecting, engineering & manufacturing, etc.) is really covered by the 10th Amendment. I don't know why the NRA, and everyone that listened to them, got hung up on the 2nd, and obsessively tried to, in large part successfully, mindcontrol Americans into believing literal BS and the NRA's wet dream, which of course could only have led to a needless increase in gun deaths since 2008.
Sure the close knit and loving gun community blames the NRA when it's gun owners that failed America by being duped by the NRA into shirking their 2nd Amendment duties, and falling down on the job by not being well-regulated militia, but instead playing with guns, or leaving guns unsecured resulting in tragedy, or being vigilantes, or intentionally placing themselves where they might get antagonized to use lethal force when such situations could easily have been avoided.
You are obviously not a lawyer.
"That this defacement of the Constitution occurred in the way that it did, the 2nd was vandalized without altering the literal words, is interesting, but I believe it only a matter of time before parts of DC v Heller (2008) are overturned for lack of accuracy, overreach, and flippantly reversing a hundred plus years of court precedent with garbage reasoning."
Have you read Heller, McDonald, or any of the various Circuit cases on Second Amendment rights?
Flattery will get you nowhere. If you're going to disagree, then please just do so and defend your position rather than... I don't know what this is... empty heckles from the peanut gallery I guess. FWIW, since the Heller decision was unconstitutional, and McDonald was based on Heller, then it also is invalid and unconstitutional. The 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and never did, not unless you ignore the first three words of the Amendment, placed there at the beginning almost as if to underscore their importance in clearly laying out the scope of the Amendment, "A well-regulated militia."
Perhaps by the standards of those outside the gun community. For our agenda they've been a failure. The modest policy successes, by our measure, have been obtained in-spite of them.
I don't expect you to agree with our agenda, but don't forget that we define our agenda. All the NRA did was water it down.
NRA's agenda is guns for everyone, and to change the Founders' intent to make the 2nd include a right self-defense that it neither ever contained nor needs to contain. That's watered down, you say. If that's watered down, wtf.
It has been proven over and over, just about every week, that more guns means more gun deaths, and that is all it means, iow, it does not mean anyone is safer. In fact, owning a gun doubles the chance of death of anyone living in the gun owners' household. Also, it is more likely a gun owner will injure or kill themselves, or someone they love, than they will ever successfully defend themselves against crime. Also, no one needs the 2nd Amendment for self-defense. We all already have the right of self-defense, so it would be awesome if we didn't let pet agendas unnecessarily monkey with the Constitution.
The Founders never intended the citizenry to be armed, unless organized as a well-regulated militia. It's fine to have your own agenda and opinions about guns, certainly, but let's not ever try to wrap that in patriotism, nor label it American, because the Founders had far far different ideas about this than the gun community. And if guns for everyone and warping the 2nd to include self-defense doesn't please the gun community, then no one need ever find out what will. Secure your weapon, and just sit there and be dissatisfied, and try not to hurt yourself or kill anything.
I imagine if you're an FBI field agent, the last thing you want for your career is for the director to be getting angry calls from other high level officials because of you.
If you look at the neighborhoods to the west of Kalorama on Google Maps [1], bounded by Rock Creek, they are Kalorama Heights and Kalorama Triangle Historic district, which I think most locals would just consider Kalorama. Although I think a lot of people would consider most of the lower triangle to be part of Dupont Circle rather than Kalorama.
There's also this map [2] which, admittedly, is not trying to be an official map of anything, but it is an artwork featured in one of the DC government buildings. It shows Kalorama more as a single triangle.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/WNii05X [2] https://imgur.com/a/QprVzJm
I can point out dozens of such intersections in my NYC neighborhood where streets cross at angles not 90 degrees.
Or similar, with some VIP who's got trigger-happy private security - because he knows that (say) Mr. Putin would much prefer that he was dead.
When (and where) is there a difference?
What neighborhoods are there where rich people reside who have no more social or political influence than people living in The Projects?
Compared to this one? Nearly all of them. The neighborhoods in Mountain View are filled with affluent people that have no connection to federal politicians and no influence over the FBI at all.
The highest paid government employees earn around $400k [1], foreign diplomats probably earn considerably less (e.g. £150k for the UK's [former] representative to the EU [2], which is the highest-paid ambassador position) but have perks like paid-for private school for children and tax exemptions.
[1] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/top-100
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Money can buy political influence, but that's beyond the reach of lower echelon of wealthy.
The same is going to be true of a lot of people living in Kalorama - they're on "personally know the President" level of political influence or they work directly for someone who does.
It's the neighborhood where Obama lived after his term ended. It's where Ivanka Trump and Jared Kuschner lived during Trump's presidency. That kind of thing.
It's a little different than a standard affluent neighborhood of doctors and lawyers and executives that you might find in any random city in the US.
But just for another data point, in California the average salary for a software developer is $139K, while the average for sheriffs is $28/hour.
Money can buy some forms of power, but as the Taliban know, money and all the technology it buys aren’t the only form of power.
It's not that they're particularly rich, as far as rich people go, it's that the neighbor is like, the chief of staff for the Senator who's in charge of the committee that sets the FBI's budget. Imagine you're a low to mid level employee of a company, and you go do something that makes all of the CEO's friends, business partners, and investors pissed off at him. Do you think that's going to be good for you?
After all, maybe I make $300k a year and think our mayor is, by the standards of politicians, one of the good ones; and getting invited to fundraising dinners and charity galas and rubbing shoulders with influential people makes me feel important and successful. So maybe I'll donate a few thousand dollars every election cycle.
On the other hand, maybe you make $300k a year but think political donations are a grubby embarrassment; that fundraising events are full of fools, the stuck-up and the self-important; and that the two parties produce policies that are barely worthy of your vote, let alone your money. So you don't donate anything.
Obviously I don't know anything about FBI tactics, but it's conceivable that they choose what to do based on experience of what works best instead of just applying the same strategy regardless of where the property is.
I believe there's evidence that property damage in a neighbourhood can lead to more crime ("broken windows"), so avoiding visible property damage in vulnerable neighbourhoods actually sounds like a good idea.
At the same time, for a sense of justice and equality, it can also be important for people to see that rich people are held accountable for their crimes just like poor people are. So maybe they should only bash in doors in rich neighbourhoods and not in poor neighbourhoods.
I get why the outrage is here, but we seem to be in a race to the bottom. Instead of getting cops not to kick in front doors, make sure they do it to rich people too? Or maybe I've lost the plot.
Or is violence reserved for poorer people?
I'm not sure I could confidently say that a rich person is less likely to draw a gun when someone kicks their door down in the middle of the night.
Maybe they are more likely to have a panic room, or just long corridors that provide enough time for the situation to become clear before they have a gun held in their face by someone claiming to be the FBI.
There was an interview with the Cops (tv show) producers, where they asked them why they show mostly black and poor white guys on the show, and not some white collar workers... and they said something along the lines of "get me a middle manager, that'll tear his shirt off and start fighting the police, and we'll record that"... Arrest of rich people usually go along the lines of the rich person saying "i want my lawyer" and pecefully following the police to the station.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/ferrero-says-knew...
Things like this are violence too.
The rich most of the time don't go to jail and if it's a different kind of jail. So they don't fight the police because they know it would make jail time more likely.
If they would have the same jail risk as the poor they would fight and run like the poor.
Was "Tarek Abou-Khatwa" not a minority?
[The surname "Abou" appears to be most commonly associated with either Niger or Egypt](https://forebears.io/surnames/abou ), while ["Khatwa" appears to be most commonly associated with Egypt](https://forebears.io/surnames/khatwa ).
Whole of North Africa is filled to the brim with Abou-xyz family names, even first names (Abu Madyan "Boumedienne" in Algeria for example) and also many many such names in the other parts of the arab world.
The “ou” spelling of و is French style and would usually indicate a French speaking country or an former French colony.
Tribal affiliation is more important (though it is true that Abou-x can be a reference to a tribe instead of a particular family) so you get names like Al Alaoui, Al Idrissi, Al Zitouni etc. To me Abou-Khatwa has more of a levant/gulf sound to it.
The possibility that the person is from the Levant from among a family who decided to spell their name in a Francophone way cannot be eliminated.
But how could we possibly do such a thing? Here, in the United States?
Guess we'll never know if the racist part is true or not!
At this point, I'd say no knock should be unlawful.
Add to the fact that police will be stationed there over multiple days to investigate the domicile… sounds like quartering to me.
> Use of no-knock warrants has increased substantially over time. By one estimate, there were 1,500 annually in the early 1980s whereas by 2010 there were 60,000–70,000 no-knock or quick-knock raids conducted by local police annually, the majority of which were looking for marijuana.
> Currently, Florida, Oregon, Tennessee, and Virginia ban no-knock warrants; however, state-level bans do not affect federal law enforcement. Thirteen states have laws explicitly permitting no-knock warrants, and the remaining states issue them based on a judge's discretion.
Also this man committed insurance fraud, a non-violent crime with no history of violence so the need to catch them off guard before they can begin a shoot out with law enforcement was simply not a requisite. If he was selling illegal drugs and hoarding cash that required him to have fire arms and defend against possible home intruders trying to rob his black-market products/cash than this story would be different, and then the 'systemic racism' people could race bait the story, fortunately not the case, unfortunately the comments persist.
From the article that you definitely read.
My original point was also that if they had performed a no-knock raid on this minority in an affluent area it would be a sign of 'systemic racism' to people who are race baiting. To elaborate further, law enforcement is now in a kafka-esque story of having to figure out the wealth of the suspect, racial demographics of the neighborhood, and race of suspect and his crimes before performing a warrant to decipher the level of force that is allowed and will regardless be the villain according to vocal minorities and journalists. Truly progress.
Lets say law enforcement was given the task to examine the affairs of 100, randomly selected, poor/medium income households and 100, randomly selected, very wealthy households.
Statistically, where would they find the most amount of criminal activity? Has any similar research been done, and would you care to share the data?
Think of it this way: In 1,000,000 people of race blue, the crime rate is 0.01%. So of those million people: 10 are criminals. In 1,000,000 people of race purple, the crime rate is 0.03%. So 30 are criminals.
All kinds of horrible sounding statistics here: purple people are 3x more likely to be criminal. Purple people neighborhoods have 3x more crime. Purple people 3x more likely to be murderer, drug user, etc.
All of that misleads about the situation: for the most part both purple and blue people are law abiding and any given person you talk to is likely not a criminal.
Now there is a second order problem. (The one that the article is referencing). The truth is that among blue and purple the rate of criminals is much higher. Pretend it's +0.3 for each. So 0.04 and 0.06. But the enforcement of laws at each point in the system are subject to discretion of the enforcer. Does the cop pull you over? Does the cop let you off? Does the prosecutor indict? Does the system give you bail?
Because of focus on "where would they find the most amount of criminal activity?" we are now creating a self fulfilling prophecy where laws are selectively more greatly enforced against purple.
Using the law as a measure of objectivity is nonsense. The law is in many cases written by rich people for the purpose of policing poor people.
For your thought experiment, you would have to have an universal definition of what's legal. While that may be hard to come by, I have it on good authority that one of it's most strident claims is: "Retaining more wealth than 80% of citizens is a capital offense."
Age of criminal
Sex
Income
Type of crime
Residence area
Profession
If the police is just investigating, they shouldn't have any kind of violent behavior.
Is it common for poorer neighbourhood houses to have a rear entrance? Genuine question - I don't know what the typical USA poor neighbourhood house has
Wrong guy? Whoops. Sorry.
No reimbursement.
The police should be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. They are granted incredible power with no real accountability.
Police pension funds should be the source of all police misconduct payments. The older guys would _immediately_ weed out the bad apples when it starts hurting their own wallet badly enough.
Paying for misconduct from city funds is a joke.
I highly doubt there'd be any immediate weeding out, but it would begin to restore some accountability and make it less police vs the world and more about police vs incompetent/corrupt police.
Do they? I'm honestly asking, but I would be surprised if most of the time the police (or any 3 letter agency) reimbursed victims for their negligence.
They can literally blow your house up and not pay for it. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-...
No, they wouldn't.
Law enforcement (to include the FBI) mistakenly search the wrong address all the time, and frequently kill animals and people. Despite the fact that they are literally breaking into people’s homes unlawfully and often shooting them to death for no reason, there are basically no consequences to any LEOs involved.
But because it's white collar fraud, the readers can empathize.
Aside from the observation that the rich class is made up of mostly white people the problem is 1 rule for them 1 rule for the rest. Look at the lockdown parties in the UKs political capital whilst idiots were fighting over face-masks in shops.
I applaud the FBI for being raked through the mud for this, they bloomin well deserve this. They will no-doubt counter with the cost of restoring a building and public money as if often the get-out.
Either stand-up/speak-out to all of the oppression or don't, picking and choosing is just enabling fighting amongst those who are also being trodden on.
This principle plays out in small ways, too. Be diligent about picking up trash in your neighborhood and over time, the rate of littering will decrease. Park carefully on your curb and fewer will park haphazardly or on the wrong side. And so on.
This is why I could never enjoy NYC. As a normal middle class dude you always feel everywhere that you are a nothing: no fame/no power/no money = people are rude, aggressive, hostile to you. I never felt that in London, which is a quite comparable city to NYC. I felt welcome in most places despite not being rich or famous.
No, some New Yorkers, rich or poor, are rude, aggressive, hostile regardless of who you are.
Unless you work for Axe capital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF46Cel3EUo
This is a non-story. If you don't have gang relations, no criminal record, no violence, no gun ownership ... there's no reason for the cops to bang down the door.
That said, I think cops are too aggressive in general about this.
That also said - the cops do have a policy of 'bang down the door' because I think it's actually safer for the cops (I loathe to find that data sorry).
So, like everything, it's complicated.
Definitely policing, like everything else has to be 1) 'smart' i.e. materially proportional, use force where required and 2) we have to accept at least some wiggle room. No matter what, the cops will be wrong some time.
So, like everything, we have to be smart about it.
We could start by prohibiting IQ caps enforced by police departments.
No, really, they went to court to ensure they could continue to refuse candidates who exceed their own intelligence or any other arbitrary intelligence limit they want to enforce.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
It is expensive AF though, so yeah, depending on how one defines "middle class", living here could be really suboptimal.
There will always be elite people. At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people. In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition.
Unfortunately I don't think it really stands scrutiny.
First of all, there's no proper idea of what value is. It's a super deep conversation so I'll just leave that headline for now.
Second, even without a clear explanation of what value is, we can distinguish between value created and value captured. You can easily come up with cases where multiple people have done more or less the same thing but one guy gets more out of it than others. Is that the system we want?
Third, even without an explanation of what value is, we can see that there are people who provide no value but get paid a heck of a lot. Heirs, scam artists of various sorts. Not just straight give-you-nothing for something thieves, but also plenty of way overpaid people who live in the space between totally honest trading and totally dishonest thievery.
The value of a society is the weighted sum of values based on individual power.
Amazon is creating a lot of small value to a lot of people by delivering goods next day.
People on wall street are creating a lot of value for wealthy and powerful people.
An engineer can automate a lot of value creation that was previously done by a large number of people, allowing companies to have a shot at making a lot of money, hence why they're paid more.
Some of those powerful and wealthy people got rich by providing value, some of them got rich by exploiting the government's centralised power, its corruption and the possibility of stealing value from all the taxpayers.
A scam is a crime on par with stealing or charging taxes. Stealing doesn't create value, it just transfer wealth.
Perfect is the enemy of good, we wan't a system we can change and improve, communism failed because of the great stagnation the leaders in change had no interest in change or improving and the workers underneath them had no means to affect change.
Worker parties offer the optics of democracy that the workers have a say in their work but in reality that didn't happen the workers worked for their boss or starved. Under capitalism you have the same options work or starve but you also get a third option, you can compete against your boss it was ultimately this competition that allowed capitalism to change and improve where communism stagnated.
Does capitalism guarantee success 100% of the time? nope, but it does provide a mechanism to affect change from the bottom up, other systems don't do that.
> At least in capitalism you become rich by providing value to other people.
One could easily find examples that counter these points. I doubt pyramid schemes (think Madoff's schemes) or crypto scams are the only counter-examples possible.
These more often than not come from an imbalance of information. People (or the market) could make better decisions with all information being accessible at the time of the decision. But all too often one side has more information than the other. Giving this side an edge.
> In socialism you become elite by stealing from your comrades and forcefully eliminating the competition.
In capitalism it is basically the same as long as you can get away with it. I know it isn't a popular opinion, but without regulation capitalism is in now way better than other systems.
Their excesses would all need to be reigned in. Because no unregulated system would be acting in the common good. The system may be organized in a way to slightly enable more or less perdonsl freedom. Or more or less societal freedom. But in the end - for average Joe - uncontrolled capitalism boils down to the working and living conditions of the early industrialisation or (in case of socialism) towards the living and working conditions of late soviet times.
it would be more convincing if you could come up with counterexamples that aren't illegal.
Pyramid schemes steal a great amount of wealth, and should be regulated. Regulated capitalism is the good thing. The thing is, pyramid schemes aren't run by the state (or shouldn't be) and you don't have a gun to your head forcing you to participate.
I almost feel like "unregulated capitalism" is just a straw man argument that others get tricked into trying to defend.
The "shouldn't" isn't very relevant here though. People shouldn't do that under a communist system either, and yet it happens under both.
> I almost feel like "unregulated capitalism" is just a straw man argument that others get tricked into trying to defend.
I wish it was a strawman, unfortunately libertarians who promote this kind of capitalism (which to be clear isn't all libertarians) are a prominent political group whose members include many elected officials!
Without a government, companies made of people with guns would emerge punishing scammers and criminals in general, advising companies and reputation systems would emerge protecting people from scams.
Due to the nature of entrepreneurship, all these companies could be held in check by competitors. Without regulation slowing down new competitors, if a cartel emerges, there would be a great incentive for a better alternative coming up and making money.
You may argue the systems of companies providing these services would make a sort of government - and you would be right. It would just be more decentralised and therefore there would be less space for corruption. You also wouldn't force people to pay you a part of their profit or they go to jail and you wouldn't force people to avoid certain substances or limit what activities thay may be doing.
You can at best say: "If you don't pay a protecion agency, you won't have protection against criminals / foreign invaders", "You may take this drug but this recommendation company suggest it's bad for you".
I'd rather live in a free society, a society where I'm free to even damage myself, than in the regulated prison we live in today.
Tho, after USSR fell, inequality in Russia went up by a lot. And it gave rise to what are now oligarch - the mix of very powerful mafia and business with very little constraints on them at the time. And that situation made Russians appreciate Putin, going full circle back to authoritarianism and imperialism.
You become rich by capturing value. Often times, as Silicon Valley and its investors like to remind the world, a lot of value is also being provided so it is indeed a win-win. But you don't become rich by providing value.
1. The purpose of many laws and regulations that support capitalism is to make it very difficult to capture value without creating it. (When compared to a world without these laws.) 2. It's generally much easier to capture value that you create than to capture value that others create.
The result is that there's a massive incentive to create value for others, and a great deal of rich people and organizations are creating value, even if it's not all of them.
IMO this is under-appreciated and taken for granted in the modern era, as if it couldn't be any other way.
I think that's probably true in general, but that over the course of ~100 years of capitalism the edge cases where this isn't true have been exploited sufficiently that it's starting to become a big problem. The clearest illustration of this being real estate. There are a lot of people getting rich by doing nothing other than buying and holding onto to real estate, often at the expense of others being able to make use of that resource.
And if Sam Walton were taxed at 100% for all wealth over $100 million, so John Walton were only worth $20 million, then would John have provided less value to his parents?
My parents spend several $100,000 on my upbringing. Does that represent my value to my parents?
The children from the world's poorest families also provide value to their parents.
From this I conclude that "obvious value" of evolution and capitalism's "monetary value" aren't the same.
John T. Walton became rich through inheritance.
Ergo, there are ways of getting rich other than providing value.
Ergo, looking at someone who is rich doesn't tell you that they provided value.
> Walton cofounded the Children's Scholarship Fund, providing tuition scholarships for disadvantaged youth.
Plus knowing rich people, he evaded/avoided taxes (probably hundreds of millions, if not billions) that regular Joes making $36.4k a year would never be able to.
Or you inherit your wealth and politicians. Or you break the rules to get to the top and then pay a small fine if you get caught.
Yes yes we know the glorious Soviet society that was the pinnacle of fair and just.
It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth. "But it is not so" - well it should be so, don't ask for further coupling of economic systems.
For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken.
The opposite of end-stage capitalism isn't Stalinism. It's very American to view the opposite of "capitalism" as the Soviet Union, but the truth is there's a whole spectrum in between socialism and capitalism, totalitarianism and libertarianism.
In my opinion this criticism is just as low-effort.
> It's almost like justice and rule of law are separated from the economy and wealth.
I respectfully disagree. Societies with less inequality tend to be more peaceful. Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined.
> For law and justice to be fair, liberties need to be given. Not taken.
Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties to support a functioning society - not the giving of liberties. You begin with the full universe of liberties and law/order is all about choosing which ones are sacrificed by whom to optimize along a certain axis.
Yes absolutely, but that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about "justice".
> Economic policy and social policy are very much intertwined.
Cause and effect, yes, but economic policies don't (or shouldn't) affect the notion of justice. Laws should not be written as "if you own X amount or produce y units" as they were in the Soviet union.
>Law and justice is by definition the restriction of liberties
I don't agree but I can see the argument. If I were to never throw rubbish over my neighbours fence, then whether or not the law is there doesn't affect my liberty. Neither if there was a law forbidding the dumping of oils in the water supply.. this isn't a "restriction of liberties" but rather the guarantee of protection to the water: or I would put it as "giving liberty to me and others of the quality of the water"
I understand that this is all subjective and slippery arguments so I'll digress from that.. what else are we meant to do in HN comment sections..
But I do hold to my judgement of "little to no brain use" for anyone who tries to support communism or similar measures.
People need to be free, free to succeed (and unfortunately, free to fail).
Laws and justice should protect people from each other, not enforce someone's failure to understand mathematics or entropy.
And you mention freedom, but freedom is orthogonal to how economic production is managed. You can have a capitalist society with very little freedom (fascism) and you can have a communist society with lots of freedom (anarcho communism).
But we can also critique capitalism on its own, because the status quo is always worth criticizing, and that doesn’t automatically mean a person is talking about communism at all.
I think that America is much more classist than one may think if one is distracted by the disproportionate cultural focus on racism.
Black senators and Congressmen complain that they are not treated equally as their white counterparts in the Capitol building by the Capitol police. These black politicians are literally upper class and yet they face these issues.
Perhaps our greatest failure is the generation that takes any contest to this claim as heresy.
Or that law enforcement has a bad racism problem? To be clear, I don't think most cops are racist or bad (in our current culturo-political moment, I probably err on the more pro-cop side), but it's certainly a problem that hasn't been given any real thought or attention by most police departments.
If the people the are grabbing have zero history of violence, no gun ownership, no gang association, there's no reason to smash down the door.
Even judging by neighbourhood:
It's probably unfair but my bet is diplomats don't generally get into shootouts with the cops.
They could probably safely do the same in middle class neighbourhoods as well.
It's not a nice statement about equity, rather my belief that the 'risk' to police is probably entirely from specific kinds of problem areas which are probably poor.
If you look at a map of violent crime in cities, the delineations are pretty clear.
Some neighbourhoods have almost zero violent crime, two blocks down, it's Caracas.
'Zip Code' profiling might actually be just, but I don't see why they could not do it on a case to case basis.
Gun ownership, stupidly, is legal in the US, so it seems like poor grounds for a police action