Fish Fear Me

Bender's Folly

Today the Minneapolis City Council, led by Council President Lisa Bender, approved by a 12-0 vote a proposal to amend the city charter to remove the language requiring a police department and replace it with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. What that would look like exactly and how the transition would take place has not been worked out, but the council wants voter approval this year anyway. There will be little opportunity for debate and community input since the deadline for final language is August 21st for November's ballot. This is a classic "Ready, Fire, Aim" setup by the council and even Feckless Mayor Frey realizes how reckless it is. I suspect this serious exercise in dumbfuckery has a good chance of getting on the ballot and being passed this year, but there's also a chance that even a minimal conversation will lead the people of Minneapolis to question the dubious assumptions and outright fantasies at work here.

The details, such as they are, are these...

The Minneapolis Police Department will be replaced by the Minneapolis Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. The mayor will nominate and the council appoint a director of that department who meets the following requirements:

"Individuals eligible to be appointed as director will have non-law enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches."

I'm pretty sure that title will be changed from "Director" to "New Age Priestess" by the time this is over.

The department would be required to prioritize "a holistic, public health-oriented approach." 

The city council would also then be authorized, but not required, to maintain a Division of Law Enforcement Services within that department. The division would be composed of "licensed peace officers," aka "cops," who would report to a director who would report to the New Age Priestess Director of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. A number of local "community leaders" object to even the possibility of armed police officers in Minneapolis, but trust me, the Kenwood and Lake of the Isles crowd will not allow a total ban on cops.

So what's the problem?

To start, I think the council seriously underestimates the number of flat-out sociopaths that reside in Minneapolis and the extent of the subculture that creates and nourishes them. They also overestimate the ability of the rest of the community to reach and reason with said sociopaths.

I think the council overestimates the number of current police calls that can be redirected to unarmed first responders. They also overestimate the number of unarmed first responders who will be willing to arrive before the PD declares the area code 4. They underestimate the calming effect an armed officer can have with a sociopath who may be ruthless, but still doesn't want to spend the night in the clink.

I think the council overestimates the willingness of licensed peace officers, men and women who have invested 2 or 4 years of post-secondary education and attended a police academy, to be led by someone required to have no law enforcement experience. On top of that, licensed officers will be reserved for only the nastiest and most violent calls by design. The rest will go to the legions of social workers and councilors. Back in the day I knew a couple of thumpers on MPD who liked to fight, but even they cherished the good calls where they could help people and be the good guys. What kind of cops are you going to employ if they are only there to respond to the worst the city has to offer? What kind of person would apply for and enjoy that kind of job?

The real problem with policing in America is the sheer number of assholes who desperately need to be policed. The goddamned sociopaths we keep creating year after year because we don't have the courage to confront the self-destructive subcultures that exist in America. The ones that create these sociopaths. It's not about race or racism, it's about fuckups and assholes. Having to deal with them corrodes not just our police forces, but our society as a whole. Talking about reforming or defunding police is just a scam to avoid dealing with why the many assholes who need to policed exist in the first place.

Period.

Nothing Will Change

This is my post about the death of George Floyd and the looting and burning of my old neighborhood in Minneapolis, where I don't actually say much because nobody gives a shit about the truth anymore and it wouldn't do any good.

I mean, the Minneapolis City Council had the gall to issue this unanimous statement:

"We urge the state to use its full weight to hold the Minneapolis Police Department accountable for any and all abuses of power and harms to our community and stand ready to aid in this process as full partners. The City Council’s oversight of the Minneapolis Police Department has been historically constrained by the City Charter and state law and we welcome new tools to pursue transformational, structural changes to how the City provides for public safety."

That's complete bullshit. The council and mayor, all Democrats for the last 45 years, have had all the power they need to change the Minneapolis PD. They haven't done it for one simple reason:

This is the police department The Powers That Be wants.

The purpose of the MPD is to keep the sociopaths of Minneapolis down and out of the nice neighborhoods where TPTB can enjoy their wealthy lifestyles and virtue posturing. I saw it firsthand when I lived 6 blocks from where George Floyd died, back in the 80s, and I'm still in tune enough today to think nothing has really changed. When I say sociopath, I'm not talking about the vast majority of residents who would not, and did not, participate in the looting and burning that has terribly scarred their neighborhoods. I'm talking about the lowlifes in these neighborhoods that the Minneapolis PD is organized to keep down to a low simmer. 

Whole industries, attorneys and judges, law enforcement, state and county welfare, corrections, and god knows how many NGOs all depend on the existence of those sociopaths and the minting of new ones. They will never solve the problem of the sociopaths of Minneapolis and St. Paul because their jobs depend on them. But they will demand that their police departments do what they must to keep the sociopaths under control. Until an inconvenient video shows up and they are forced to throw the police department under the bus. For the moment.

The link above quotes a couple of Minneapolis council members bloviating about disbanding the Minneapolis PD. It will never happen, because beside the fact that it's just plain stupid, the Democrat PTB of Minneapolis will never allow something like that. It would screw up the finely-tuned and lucrative merry-go-round that exists today and it might let the sociopaths get uncomfortably close to their own neighborhoods.

Nothing will change, because the people of Minneapolis will keep voting for the people who will make certain that nothing will change.