All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[The Cool Thatguy]

No lets absolutely talk about prison. Absolutely I agree with you that the whole crack vs regular cocaine disparity of the early 90's pushed by Bush was crap. Mandatory minimums of the 90's though were part of the crime bill signed by Clinton and pushed hard by Biden in the senate. Yet they are the savior now? As I pointed out blacks are committing over 50% of the murders despite being 13% of the population - its even worse when you consider that most are by males meaning its 6.5% of the population. They commit vastly higher rates of crime across the board. As I said my last post in agreeing with someone else its poverty that drives the crime rate and that poverty has its roots in systemic racism. But what are we supposed to do in the meantime, not send those committing seriously violent crime to prison?

As to disparate sentencing, yep it happens. Its going to happen when you give judges discretion and every judge is going to sentence differently. The opposite of that is to set standards for sentencing like mandatory minimums . . . except how well did that work out? However I would also argue that its not nearly as racist as some like to claim because people like to look at things without context, much like the left doesn't look at actual crime stats and who is committing them before proclaiming racism. There was a meme circulating a few months ago about two armed robbers in Florida in front of the same judge where one, the white one, got a year in prison and the black one got 20 years. Sounds bad on the surface but they were different robberies. It was #1 for the white guy and he had no priors and he actually was in the car the whole time (getaway driver) and he flipped and testified on the other two robbers in agreement for a lighter sentence. It was robbery #3 for the black guy who was unrepentant and had a long list of other crimes - he got sentenced like a career criminal would be sentenced based on his life of crime. Suddenly its easily explainable. Or people cherry pick two completely unrelated things to try and make a stupid point. You see Dylan Roof not being shot by police being brought up all the time - well thats what happens when you meekly surrender. Then Dylan Roof getting Burger King - were the cops supposed to not feed him during the day / night long interrogation? Were they supposed to starve him which would then give his lawyers the argument in court that his confession was coerced by starvation?

As to guns. First off 2nd amendment, its a battle you can't win. Secondly there are more gun than people in this country so what is your realistic plan to make these guns go away and get them out of the hands of the majority of owners who aren't criminals? Especially when the majority of the police you want to do it are gun owners themselves who aren't going to want to comply either. How much violence and police shootings are you willing to accept as the police try to round up guns from millions of people who have committed no crime but suddenly have an illegal gun in their possession. And now lets say you've done the impossible and somehow actually gotten all the guns from the people, how do you stop them from flowing in across our borders? People, guns, and drugs are already smuggled in huge quantities across the Mexican border. We aren't an island like England where its much easier to control the flow into the country. Gun control is a fantasy that has zero shot of actually be implementable. Even if you found some middle ground of registration and mandatory training well that doesn't do anything because the vast majority of murders in this country by the people doing it aren't following the law anyway. Do you think you gangbangers on the street are carrying guns they purchased legally? Do you think the drive by shootings done every day in cities across America are done with legally bought guns? No they are stolen. They are traded for drugs. They are acquired by other illegal means.

Yes, straw purchases. Which we can make harder, if it weren't for the NRA

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...ocon/guns.html

[Gray Lensman]

Wait you mean like the street crime unit in New York city whose job it was to go out and prevent street crime before it happened. By getting guns off the street and arresting gangbangers on low level offenses to get them off the street? The street crime unit who was disbanded after George Floyd and the defund the police push. And now the shooting and murder rate in New York is skyrocketing. This date is a couple of weeks old (August 9th) but it in 2020 New York has had 883 shootings with 1017 victims. In 2019 at the same time they had 446 shootings with 551 victims. Shootings and murders skyrocketed after the street crime unit was disbanded.

https://abc7ny.com/nyc-has-1000th-sh...surge/6363550/

Your language tells me that the only voice you are capable of hearing is your own.

Using crime statistics ONLY from last year to this year is a blatant exercise in cherry picking. It would be that under normal circumstances, but with the massive increase in unemployment due to COVID (and obvious increase in poverty as a result) this year would be an outlier no matter how much money was in law enforcement. The underlying factors that influence crime have become several times stronger than they have been in decades.

[PwrdOn]

I agree with you 100% on the part I bolded. Poverty is the largest driver of crime and you can look at the crime map of any city and then look at the poverty map and you'll see tremendous overlap. And obviously minorities suffer in greater poverty largely due to systemic racism going back centuries. However, defunding the police doesn't solve this. All defunding the police will do is cause what we are seeing in the bigger cities right now to grow even more - vastly increased shootings, vastly increased crime, etc.

I don't think anyone is challenging the necessity of having some kind of police force that does the job that you claim to be doing, we're just arguing that, as currently set up, the police in this country aren't doing that job to any satisfactory standard and in many cases are making the problem worse with their hyper-aggressive tactics and hair trigger outrage in response to any criticism. Just the fact that the standard police response to the mere suggestion of reform is ALWAYS to just walk out and let anarchy reign says all we need to know about your actual commitment to protecting and serving your communities, so please, keep on antagonizing everyone and digging yourself an ever deeper grave.

[numberthirty]

This just in, republicans still baffled that people can change their opinions over a period of years and decades.

That's the thing though...

That you have finally managed to get a clue?

Said realization does not somehow magically undue all of the damage that your stupidity was directly responsible for.

[numberthirty]

I don't think anyone is challenging the necessity of having some kind of police force that does the job that you claim to be doing, we're just arguing that, as currently set up, the police in this country aren't doing that job to any satisfactory standard and in many cases are making the problem worse with their hyper-aggressive tactics and hair trigger outrage in response to any criticism. Just the fact that the standard police response to the mere suggestion of reform is ALWAYS to just walk out and let anarchy reign says all we need to know about your actual commitment to protecting and serving your communities, so please, keep on antagonizing everyone and digging yourself an ever deeper grave.

You have to be able to go back and take a second look at everything you are doing.

While you are going to certainly have some situation where you need something like "Classic Coke..." police forces, it is borderline insanity not to put the same thought into if you can get to better outcomes by putting some of those resources into trying to create a different outcome.

A person you do not have to imprison?

That is one more person that can be a taxpayer/small business owner/you get it.

Never mind how many folks you could invest in if you had the money back from lawsuits against the police that were paid out to victims over the years.

[The Cool Thatguy]

That's the thing though...

That you have finally managed to get a clue?

Said realization does not somehow magically undue all of the damage that your stupidity was directly responsible for.

I agree. Biden should have to work with someone dedicated to providing social justice and concerned about the welfare of all. He should have to work under someone who knows the ugly underbelly of our country so he can be a better leader.

[Farealmer]

That's the thing though...

That you have finally managed to get a clue?

Said realization does not somehow magically undue all of the damage that your stupidity was directly responsible for.

But if they aren't given the opportunity to help repair it you might as well throw all the people that fail the purity test into the ocean.

[Kirby101]

Wow, disparity is gonna happen. That is the conservative answer? I will refrain from Google bombing the gigantic disparity in sentencing due to race. It is obvious and ongoing. But the conservative solution is apparently, it's gonna happen.

I'll just leave this.

[skyvolt2000]

Wait you mean like the street crime unit in New York city whose job it was to go out and prevent street crime before it happened. By getting guns off the street and arresting gangbangers on low level offenses to get them off the street? The street crime unit who was disbanded after George Floyd and the defund the police push. And now the shooting and murder rate in New York is skyrocketing. This date is a couple of weeks old (August 9th) but it in 2020 New York has had 883 shootings with 1017 victims. In 2019 at the same time they had 446 shootings with 551 victims. Shootings and murders skyrocketed after the street crime unit was disbanded.

https://abc7ny.com/nyc-has-1000th-sh...surge/6363550/

No how about getting the folks who supply the drugs and illegal guns instead of going after the little guy. Kill the source.

Then you work on fixing the little guy. Even if it means removing kids out of toxic places. Some of those gangbangers are formed before they even see a cop.

Along with removing politicians who needed to go to the house a long time ago or who have benefited from how things are.

You see Dylan Roof not being shot by police being brought up all the time - well thats what happens when you meekly surrender. Then Dylan Roof getting Burger King - were the cops supposed to not feed him during the day / night long interrogation? Were they supposed to starve him which would then give his lawyers the argument in court that his confession was coerced by starvation?

Don't jail and police stations have vending machines????? A cafeteria???

Go ask the Central Park Five if they got fed after being arrested.

But what are we supposed to do in the meantime, not send those committing seriously violent crime to prison?

Nobody said that. The argument is some of these crimes should not require prison.

And if we are talking violent crime-can we get an explanation of why black males who kill black males gets LESSER sentences for it versus being arrest for drugs or robbery?

Or have killed a nonblack person and got longer terms.

Amber Gyger killed ONE man and got a longer sentence than some black males I know who have killed MULTIPLE.

However, defunding the police doesn't solve this.

Biden isn't trying to do that. He's not pandering to the fake woke victim's network. He wants money moved from one thing to another.

Instead of buying Rambo guns use that money for teaching how to deal with a kid like Elijah McClain. Who was an introvert.

I have to learn how to deal with kids like him. So does every other school employee. Autism, Emotional Disturbed, 504 and everything else-we have to learn to deal with those type of kids.

So why not cops?

Some of those gestures are not attacks but the results of disabilities.

[numberthirty]

But if they aren't given the opportunity to help repair it you might as well throw all the people that fail the purity test into the ocean.

How many opportunities and how much slack are we talking about?

A lot of these people were still a part of the problem until recently and defending their role in it as recently as the last Presidential election.

How wrong do you have to be for exactly how long before asking for a measure of purity is just the common sense play?

[sammy_hansen]

Golly gosh, Trigger, are you gonna pretend that racist voter suppression is not a thing pursued by Republicans?

[Mister Mets]

Or, just a thought, the money you take from the police goes to social services and schools to actually help resolve the problem.

Even if this were to work, the benefits of more social services or school funding aren't going to be immediate.

One problem at the moment is that we have some progressive legislatures reducing police budgets, without yet figuring out what the alternatives will be, let alone whether it makes sense to reduce police budgets before the methods of alternative spending make a dent in the crime rate.

[Tami]

My husband was in another room, on his computer, reading the news and he clicked on a video of Donald Trump talking. From where I was, I thought at first it was a woman.

This may not be fair of me to say, but Trump has a very femine voice for a man.

[sammy_hansen]

My husband was in another room, on his computer, reading the news and he clicked on a video of Donald Trump talking. From where I was, I thought at first it was a woman.

This may not be fair of me to say, but Trump has a very femine voice for a man.

Relevance?

[skyvolt2000]

But if they aren't given the opportunity to help repair it you might as well throw all the people that fail the purity test into the ocean.

Correct. In some case some are given a shot and refuse to take it. Others were never told about it.

The later is something I keep seeing among kids.

If you asked most folks which companies will hire ex-cons-a LOT of them would not know. Yet there is a list of at least 20-mainly in food production like Oak Farms.

But the conservative solution is apparently, it's gonna happen.

Oh another reason that arrest rate is low for whites.
Guess who heads to rehab the fastest? If a judge see rehab stints-chances of a longer sentence drops.

Once again this goes back to the lack of health insurance in the black community.
Insurance will pay for rehab up to 60 in some cases. Longer in some cases.

Chip, Medcaid and many of the private ones do. Not sure about Obamacare.

you can look at the crime map of any city and then look at the poverty map and you'll see tremendous overlap.

Well part of the issue is A LOT of folks are not told of all the services they can get.

And some of that falls on WHO gets hired at some of these social places and even schools.
Visit the welfare office, job hunting services and some schools in the black community versus white ones. Night and day.

And in my city there is a part of Dallas where pretty much the prison population of Dallas (if not the STATE) comes from that one area. Which is saying a LOT with Houston around.

And how is the city trying to solve it? CLEARING those folks out. Since it's near the Cotton Bowl and those folks are oblivious to what is being done.