The DOJ has looked into several of these recent big cases and lack of meaningful evidence gets these cops off everytime. Thats not the answer. You need to reform the racism before it happens, not after.To quote the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division:
When there's serious police misconduct, especially when police murder innocents, they should be filing federal charges, not letting police departments handle it internally.
The President has a large amount of ever increasing administrative and executive discretion, and neither Congress, nor the Courts will call him on it. Especially when he's not doing something other than enforcing the actual law with greater effort.Yes the president executes laws and he has veto authority. He does not make laws, he enacts or vetos what is presented to him from the congress. If you want to call these basic facts semantics then whatever but this reeks of a bad attempt to save face after your earlier snark.
I mean he is being sued by almost half the states for trying create immigration policy via executive order and was threatened by congress for another lawsuit. And he is still begging congress to actually write a bill.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/224948-obama-to-congress-pass-a-bill
If this doesn't explain to you the scope of his law making ability, I dont know what will.
The DoJ is borderline blind to police abuse cases. The FBI took a quick peek at the Kelly Thomas case and left and that was a white guy blatantly beaten to death. The FBI hasn't made any statements in the Eric Garner case since February. They throw these down the rabbit hole until people hopefully forget.The DOJ has looked into several of these recent big cases and lack of meaningful evidence gets these cops off everytime. Thats not the answer. You need to reform the racism before it happens, not after.
Exactly what good would it do to ban employers from asking about criminal convictions?
Any decent job is probably going to have a background check anyway.
It's not a 100% fix, but it would at least give some people a chance to be interviewed so they can make a good impression and perhaps explain in person what happened. A 50 year old man's drunk driving conviction at 17 shouldn't follow him around forever and keep him from even being considered for a job.
Somebody explain this joke or comment in a non-sarcastic way so a noob at politics like me can understand please.So, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything. But have you guys heard about George Soros's connections with the leadership of BLM? I'm not saying that Soros is a giant Bernie stan. But it's a little suspect, right? Just asking questions!
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977So, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything. But have you guys heard about George Soros's connections with the leadership of BLM? I'm not saying that Soros is a giant Bernie stan. But it's a little suspect, right? Just asking questions!
I'm just saying where there's smoke...Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign.
Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive.
The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on anothers website, referencing each others news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook likes and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds.
Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation all funded in part by Mr. Soros descended on Ferguson starting in August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city until late last month.
All were aimed at keeping the medias attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August.
I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership, said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October.
We recognized this movement is similar to the work were doing at DPA, said Ms. Frederique. The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about.
Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida and helped promote it on DPAs news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundations tax filings.
I think #BlackLivesMatters success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then, said Ms. Frederique. Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. Black Lives Matter is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.
#BlackLivesMatter
With the backing of national civil rights organizations and Mr. Soros funding, Black Lives Matter grew from a hashtag into a social media phenomenon, including a #BlackLivesMatter bus tour and march in September.
More than 500 of us have traveled from Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and other cities to support the people of Ferguson and help turn a local moment into a national movement, wrote Akiba Solomon, a journalist at Colorlines, describing the event.
Colorlines is an online news site that focuses on race issues and is published by Race Forward, a group that received $200,000 from Mr. Soross foundation in 2011. Colorlines has published tirelessly on the activities in Ferguson and heavily promoted the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and activities.
At the end of the #BlackLivesMatter march, organizers met with civil rights groups like the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment to strategize their operations moving forward, Ms. Solomon wrote. OBS and MORE are also funded by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Soros gave $5.4 million to Ferguson and Staten Island grass-roots efforts last year to help further police reform, accountability and public transparency, the Open Society Foundations said in a blog post in December. About half of those funds were earmarked to Ferguson, with the money primarily going to OBS and MORE, the foundation said.
OBS and MORE, along with the Dream Defenders, established the Hands Up Coalition another so-called grass-roots organization in Missouri, whose name was based on now-known-to-be-false claims that Brown had his hands up before being shot. The Defenders were built to rally support and awareness for the Trayvon Martin case and were funded by the Tides Foundation, another recipient of Soros cash.
Hands Up Coalition has made it its mission to recruit and organize youth nationwide to start local events in their communities trying to take Ferguson nationwide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtYSomebody explain this joke or comment in a non-sarcastic way so a noob at politics like me can understand please.
What is a stan?
Administrative or executive powers don't get laws passed. It certainly doesn't clean up state or county run police.The President has a large amount of ever increasing administrative and executive discretion, and neither Congress, nor the Courts will call him on it. Especially when he's not doing something other than enforcing the actual law with greater effort.
The George W. Bush administration to its credit held back on medical marijuana prosecutions because it regarded those to be state issues. It could have cracked down on them as hard as the Obama Administration has let the DEA but it didn't because of the people in positions of power and their discretion.
The DoJ is borderline blind to police abuse cases. The FBI took a quick peek at the Kelly Thomas case and left and that was a white guy blatantly beaten to death. The FBI hasn't made any statements in the Eric Garner case since February. They throw these down the rabbit hole until people hopefully forget.
Somebody explain this joke or comment in a non-sarcastic way so a noob at politics like me can understand please.
What is a stan?
I think we should probably go check their Facebook histories.So, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything. But have you guys heard about George Soros's connections with the leadership of BLM? I'm not saying that Soros is a giant Bernie stan. But it's a little suspect, right? Just asking questions!
Somebody explain this joke or comment in a non-sarcastic way so a noob at politics like me can understand please.
What is a stan?
Dude, this is the entire point/job of the FBI Civil Rights Division.Administrative or executive powers don't get laws passed. It certainly doesn't clean up state or county run police.
I dunno if she's still covered by the Secret Service or not...
Somebody explain this joke or comment in a non-sarcastic way so a noob at politics like me can understand please.
What is a stan?
It's not a binary choice between "sit down and shut up" and "disrupt organized event in a fashion that upsets and alienates people who might help you".
Stan is a reference to an eminem song about an overly attached fan that lost their grip on reality and eventually hurt both themselves and the people around them. It's a good song.
The George Soros bit is a conspiracy theory spun up by Bernie Sanders stans after BLM protested Bernie. The theory is that a rich hillary backer (Soros) paid the BLM movement to ruin Bernie Sanders chances at president. The subtext is that the BLM movement is not really about black lives.
Anyone who has ever even once entertained the theory is a racist asshole.
It's give an applicant the opportunity to interview and explain him/herself .. Currently many applicants won't even get to the interview because they are already written offExactly what good would it do to ban employers from asking about criminal convictions?
Any decent job is probably going to have a background check anyway.
Dude, no it isn't. They can investigate alleged crimes but that isnt reform.Dude, this is the entire point/job of the FBI Civil Rights Division.
You said:Dude, no it isn't. They can investigate alleged crimes but that isnt reform.
It certainly doesn't clean up state or county run police.
Tinfoil hat theory that George Soros, funds Black Lives Matter and other "civil unrest" to create a fate narrative that racism is a problem and reaching a tipping point.
Only gained steam when Standers(overzealous Bernie Sanders fans) got pissy when he and O'mally got interrupted. People forgot O'mally got the work too
Thanks everyone. Lol, didn't think about eminem.Stan is a reference to an eminem song about an overly attached fan that lost their grip on reality and eventually hurt both themselves and the people around them. It's a good song.
The George Soros bit is a conspiracy theory spun up by Bernie Sanders stans after BLM protested Bernie. The theory is that a rich hillary backer (Soros) paid the BLM movement to ruin Bernie Sanders chances at president. The subtext is that the BLM movement is not really about black lives.
Anyone who has ever even once entertained the theory is a racist asshole.
Berniestan is a place in central asia where Sanders' fans are going to flee to when Hillary wins the nomination.
As in reform. You know what we've been discussing?You said:
me said:Explain to me what you think a president can do in regards to police reform. Because apparently its easy as pie and Obama is just a dolt
They'll probably register bernieis45.com or something.Especially i_am_ben. Dude has a way with explain things for noobs like me. What if Bernie Sanders fans don't run though? Will they get turned into Hilary Clinton fans?
Exactly how would one compile that data I wonder. Ten or twenty years ago who exactly was going to be writing up cops en masse for actual brutality incidents? Other cops? lol
So only legislative changes is "reform"?As in reform. You know what we've been discussing?
Oh one more thing, some posters have been saying Sanders has taken the protest at his rally and used it as a talking point to bolster his campaign. Others are saying people are angry because he mishandled it? Which one is it?
Hilary and Sanders are the only two viable canidates (well Hilary is way more) but has neither one really campaigned anything for BLM or police brutality? Guess I better really look into their party platforms. I thought Hilary's site/side mentioned her talking about police brutality though so I'm not sure.
Registered to vote so I want to be informed. Any websites would be helpful. Thanks everyone.
They'll probably register bernieis45.com or something.
Why would I compile date for people I don't give a shit about? How many years have people said the data on this issue sucks and the gov't should take action?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/criminal-justice-reform/Oh one more thing, some posters have been saying Sanders has taken the protest at his rally and used it as a talking point to bolster his campaign. Others are saying people are angry because he mishandled it? Which one is it?
Hilary and Sanders are the only two viable canidates (well Hilary is way more) but has neither one really campaigned anything for BLM or police brutality? Guess I better really look into their party platforms. I thought Hilary's site/side mentioned her talking about police brutality though so I'm not sure.
Registered to vote so I want to be informed. Any websites would be helpful. Thanks everyone.
Hillary will work to fix these disparities by:
Ending the era of mass incarceration. As president, Hillary will work to reform our criminal justice system by changing the way we approach punishment and prison. She will reform mandatory minimum sentences for low-level nonviolent offenses, increase support for mental health and drug treatment, pursue alternative punishments for low-level offenders, and end private prisons. The campaign does not accept contributions from federally registered lobbyists or PACs for private prison companies, and will donate any such direct contributions to charity.
Encouraging the use of smart strategies—such as police body cameras—to fight crime and rebuild trust in our communities. Hillary has called for every police department in the nation to have body cameras to improve transparency and accountability on both sides of the lens. She also believes that the best practices of successful police departments that are protecting the public without resorting to unnecessary force should be applied by police forces nationwide.
Urging Americans to come to terms with hard truths about race and justice. Black men across this country are being killed at a rate that far outpaces any other group. We must address the role race continues to play in America in order to reform our criminal justice system and move the nation forward.
Strengthening America’s families. We cannot ensure smart policing or reform the criminal justice system unless we also address the underlying issues facing African Americans. This is why Hillary plans to provide better economic opportunities for the middle class, make college affordable for all, and ensure that families are reaching their potential.
We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.
At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.
We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.
We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.
We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.
States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.
...
We need to re-enfranchise the more than two million African Americans who have had their right to vote taken away by a felony conviction.
Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act’s “pre-clearance” provision, which extended protections to minority voters in states where they were clearly needed.
We must expand the Act’s scope so that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely.
We need to make Election Day a federal holiday to increase voters’ ability to participate.
We must make early voting an option for voters who work or study and need the flexibility to vote on evenings or weekends.
We must make no-fault absentee ballots an option for all Americans.
Every American over 18 must be registered to vote automatically, so that students and working people can make their voices heard at the ballot box.
We must put an end to discriminatory laws and the purging of minority-community names from voting rolls.
We need to make sure that there are sufficient polling places and poll workers to prevent long lines from forming at the polls anywhere.
...
We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full.
We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.
We need to boost investments for programs that help people who have gone to jail rebuild their lives with education and job training.
We must abolish civil asset forfeiture programs which allow police departments to seize property from people who have not been convicted of a crime and profit off of such seizures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tHVVm_fWC8Since taking office, I have found that one of the biggest impediments to finding a job is a criminal record. Upon examining our nation’s criminal justice system, I found that the system is in desperate need of reform.
I have called for comprehensive reform measures to fix America’s broken criminal justice system, ease the burden on taxpayers, and break the cycle of incarceration for non-violent ex-offenders.
In his 1967 address to Stanford University, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of two Americas. He described them as, "two starkly different American experiences that exist side by side." In one America, people experienced "the opportunity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all its dimensions." In the other America, people experienced a "daily ugliness" that dashes hope and leaves only "the fatigue of despair."
Although I was born into the America that experiences and believes in opportunity, my trips to Ferguson, Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago have revealed that there is an undercurrent of unease brought forth by our unjust criminal justice system.
I have worked across the aisle to reform the system with various pieces of legislation including:
The REDEEM Act: Creates a judicial process for adults to seal non-violent criminal records on the federal level. It also creates an automatic expungement of records for non-violent juveniles under the age of 15. It mandates the FBI to update their criminal background check system to ensure that employers receive accurate information. States are incentivized to have substantially similar legislation on the state level or risk losing appropriations for law enforcement agencies.
Justice Safety Valve Act: Judges can depart from mandatory minimum sentencing laws if they find that it is in the best interests of justice to do so. This would increase judicial discretion and allow judges to make individualized determinations about the proper punishment for defendants.
Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act: If passed, this would restore the voting rights of every non-violent felon in the country. Non-violent felons would be able to vote in federal elections only and states that do not change their laws to reflect this would not receive federal prison funds.
RESET Act: This bill re-classifies simple possession of controlled substances – very small amounts – as a misdemeanor rather than a low-level felony. It also eliminates the crack-cocaine disparity.
FAIR Act: This bill ensures that the federal government would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that seized property was being used for illegal purposes before it’s forfeited. Forfeited assets would be placed in the Treasury’s General Fund instead of the DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture Fund. This shift would remove the profit incentive police officers currently have to seize and forfeit property. The bill would also protect the property rights of citizens by eliminating the ability of state law enforcement to circumvent state asset forfeiture laws and use more lenient federal standards instead.
So only legislative changes is "reform"?
And what are they supposed to legislatively reform here? Create an FBI Civil Rights FBI Civil Rights Division to bring charges against the FBI Civil Rights Division for not investigating state and local police misconduct enough?
This stuff is already illegal. Administrative reform is what's needed.
Political reform means improving the laws and constitutions in accordance with expectations of the public.
This is embarrassing honestly. They're barking up the wrong tree. If they wanted to help, they would be protesting to law makers. And trying to rally people to actually vote for their state's lawmakers when it actually matters
Seriously people. Midterms. City and state elections. But nobody cares about those for whatever fucking reason and we get Congress' like we have now.
the left didn't get anywhere by coddling each other
Good their technique seems to work quite well.
Oh one more thing, some posters have been saying Sanders has taken the protest at his rally and used it as a talking point to bolster his campaign. Others are saying people are angry because he mishandled it? Which one is it?
Hilary and Sanders are the only two viable canidates (well Hilary is way more) but has neither one really campaigned anything for BLM or police brutality? Guess I better really look into their party platforms. I thought Hilary's site/side mentioned her talking about police brutality though so I'm not sure.
Registered to vote so I want to be informed. Any websites would be helpful. Thanks everyone.
You're right. GOP it is.
Republicans held Congress 1994-2000. And were Presidents during much of the other years.
What did the crime bill do? In 1994, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which accelerated the country's emergence as the most voracious incarcerator in the world — today the U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but a quarter of its prisoners.
The law put 100,000 new police officers on the streets, funded close to $10 billion in prison construction, expanded the death penalty and created a number incentives for states to impose harsher prison sentences. The policy offered federal money to states for prison construction, but only if they adopted "truth in sentencing" laws that lengthened prison time by reducing or eliminating parole. It included mandatory minimum sentences and the notorious "three strikes" provision, which meant that someone convicted of a violent felony after two previous convictions — which could be drug crimes — was given a life sentence. And it did away with federal Pell grants to assist prisoner education.
And I'm telling you that the federal government already has in place an enforcement body that can be ordered to focus resources on it.And I've never said that reform comes from federal government. This whole time I've been arguing against this notion. Im tired of repeating myself.
And states have basically full control over their police programs. They can legislate everything from the processes in which police departments are staffed to disciplinary procedures to monitoring requirements and oversight. Transparency would be the first place I started to ease public concern.
He only did that because the Republicans would have said mean things about him otherwise! They'll probably do the same thing to Hillary and Bernie! Well, just Bernie, since Hillary is headed to federal prison.True, but the guy in this video seems to be taking quite a bit of credit, and he's no republican:]
HalfwayOrbAll Lives Matter.
All Lives Matter.
All Lives Matter.
Why are the protesting potential presidents in the first place? I think a fundemental misunderstanding of the seperation of powers between local, state and federal government and the 3 branches of federal government is to blame more than anything.
Tinfoil hat theory that George Soros, funds Black Lives Matter and other "civil unrest" to create a fate narrative that racism is a problem and reaching a tipping point.
Only gained steam when Standers(overzealous Bernie Sanders fans) got pissy when he and O'mally got interrupted. People forgot O'mally got the work too
Couldn't they just like write a letter to the editor of their local paper though? That's not so disruptive for other people.
All Lives Matter.
He only did that because the Republicans would have said mean things about him otherwise! They'll probably do the same thing to Hillary and Bernie! Well, just Bernie, since Hillary is headed to federal prison.
goddamnit EA....All Lives Matter.