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John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
@JohnFPfaff
Apr 5, 2021 • 10 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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I am not easily shocked. I get nervous, sometimes, at how insured I feel abt the persistent violence I study.

This article, about how two police officers terrorized a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY, shocked me.

I've rarely put trigger warnings on my threads, but...

washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
The boy left school. So the school CALLED THE COPS.

Where did the cops find him? ONE BLOCK FROM SCHOOL.

He wasn't missing. He was ONE. BLOCK. AWAY.

This is the unnecessary start. Calling the cops. On this.
The cop immediately starts berating the boy. The five year old boy.

A FIVE YEAR OLD WHO KNEW TO BE AFRAID HE COULD GO TO JAIL.

Just... sit with that for a moment. Not just that it could happen. But that a five year KNEW TO FEAR IT.

FIVE. HE'S FIVE.

I mean, God damnit. FIVE.
What comes next is an absolute barrage of dehumanizing behavior.

Again, he's FIVE.

Crate him. Beat him. Expel him.

COPS. Told his mother. TO BEAT HIM.

THEY CUFFED HIM. CUFFED.

HE.
IS.
FIVE.
Yeah, obviously.

Basic humanity should have been enough.
Yeah, obviously.

HE IS FIVE.

He was yelled at by cop. Threatened w beatings, heard his mother get told to beat him, heard a cop say he should go in crate because he was "a beast." Handcuffed.

I'M going to have nightmares having just read this, and I'm 45.

Not FIVE.
I mean, this behavior was so bad that even the union said it things "should have been handled better"...

... though "by all involved," which: no. The FIVE YEAR BOY did nothing meriting this.

Also, you need special training to... not do this? No. You don't.

Again: FIVE.
The end result?

Nothing. "Thoroughly" investigated, but kept their jobs.

Who wouldn't get fired for doing this?

No accountability at all.

For doing all this.

To a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY.

Just... revolting.
That last part--about the lack of any accountability--should silence any effort to invoke "... but a few bad apples."

If you can investigate this and keep the officers on the force, the problem is systemic.

(Like the dept in WV that fired the cop for NOT shooting someone.)
In a field defined by horrific outcomes every day, the trauma inflicted so cruelly on a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY stands out for its horrificness.

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More from @JohnFPfaff

John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 13, 2023
Fair—it wasn’t right of me to say that the “we’re being silence” intellectual-dark-web McKinsey-is-too-woke types are annoyed solely over their inability to state certain racial views publicly.

They’re also annoyed they can’t dehumanize trans ppl openly too.
But it is fair, and not cynical at all, to point out that a HUGE chunk of what the “forbidden knowledge” types complain about boils down to not being able to openly dehumanize certain marginalized groups.

Thus their need for safe-space echo-chambers in which to do so.
Like I said when it came to opera-watch SCOTUS buddies, I can be friends and politely debate anyone over tax policy or the goals of punishment.

The “I don’t want to hear it” only comes up when they start making it clear that they don’t see certain ppl as full ppl.
Read 4 tweets
John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 4, 2023
I’d add, without sarcasm: I think I see a way to push for SCOTUS retirement.

Congress surely CAN pass a law saying that justices can receive $0.00 in royalties, honoraria, etc while in office. Prob can limit above-market returns on housing sales, etc.

Wanna cash in? Retire.
It’s clear that outside payments—whether direct cash payments or cozy “teaching” gigs overseas or sudden land sales—are a non-trivial form of SCOTUS compensation.

A chunk unprotected by Art III.

Cut that off, maybe lifetime employment is less appealing.
“Won’t that reduce the quality of ppl who apply?”

1. The what now?
2. Short terms as a philosopher-king followed by big bucks? Think lots of quality ppl will be fine with that.

“What abt the incentive to look to that future payment?”

They’re getting paid NOW. ON the job.
Read 5 tweets
John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 4, 2023
If this is the best The Daily Wire can come up with, then it looks like the liberal justices are pretty clean.

How did the DW learn abt the $3M?

From Sotomayor DECLARING IT ON HER DISCLOSURE FORMS. ImageImage
Sotomayor was in full compliance w the Court’s (pathetically-nonexistent) recusal rules.

Thomas and Gorsuch were out of compliance with the Court’s (anemic) disclosure rules.

These are … not remotely the same thing.
Obviously, maybe some other shoe will drop, Thomas-and-Gorsuch style, for a Dem appointee.

But this rushed effort to force a both-sides—which reflects how indefensible Thomas’s growing misreports are—is not that.
Read 6 tweets
John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 4, 2023
I’m not saying that the causal story here isn’t true, but I feel like at this point we should basically just ignore studies that are purely correlational with—AFAICT here—absolutely NO identification strategy beyond “we control for confounders.”
Like, this is an issue where reverse causation is really, really plausible—the vulnerability to schizophrenia CAUSES the self-medicating use of marijuana. Which makes correlational-only so so risky.

And that it may align w other such studies tells us nothing, if all are biased.
Given all the alleged benefits of weed, it shouldn’t be hard to create an ethically sound RCT that simultaneously tracks for these sorts of risks.

They did it for Vioxx with heart risk. Surely can do for weed.
Read 4 tweets
John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 3, 2023
Thread, on the murder--it was a murder--of a homeless man on the F train this week: on how we have consistently failed to provide adequate services, disrupted effective self-support the homeless have devised in their absence, and thru it all dehumanized them.

To lethal effect.
The coverage of this, from every source, has made the consistent, deadly, dehumanizing error of equating disorder with danger.

The claims of "threatening behavior" are simply asserted, although nothing I've read suggests he *actually threatened* anyone.
Can it be somewhat scary when someone in a mental health crisis acts erratically on the train? Sure.

But the time between stops on the F in Manhattan is ~1 minute. If you're scared, that's more than enough time to just ... change cars at the next station.
Read 6 tweets
John Pfaff, and now @johnpfaff.bsky.social Profile picture
May 3, 2023
This is why I always disliked those allegedly heart-warming stories abt how the justices were all chummy across the aisle.

Why would you want to go to the opera with someone so openly racist as this? (And no: this isn’t funny, or sarcastic, or anything. It’s just racist.)
Moreover, by going to the opera w Scalia rather than shaming him, those who went w him failed to impose any costs for this racist behavior, despite being among the few anywhere who could. Which only likely encouraged him more.

(This applies to his takes on homosexuality too.)
Also, honestly? If you could go and laugh and have fun with someone who thought like this, it makes me wonder about the seriousness of one’s commitment to the rights of Blacks or gays.

How was this sort of thinking not repulsive on a personal level?
Read 7 tweets

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