Thread by @Cajsa

Require every officer have liability insurance. If the union wants to pay for it, fine, but not taxpayers. Let the union eat the cost of police violence. Insurance companies will raise premiums based on cops who are abusive. Police will have an incentive to purge bad actors.

https://twitter.com/snarkylicious/status/1382160686969540613

Absolutely end the taxpayer subsidy of police violence. Police officers and unions must be on the hook for settlements, not taxpayers. If a few cops end up up bankrupted, perhaps they will think twice before murdering someone for an expired tag.

Not one more taxpayer dollar in settlements for police malfeasance and murder. Why should we take money from schools, libraries, roads, health care to pay for criminal cops?

Not more police training, better police training. Too much police training is focused on shoot first and not enough on de-escalation. The police unions and police bureaus pay for thugs to come teach police to be thugs. That's not training, that's encouraging violence.

theatlantic.com/national/archi…

Police are being trained to kill first
motherjones.com/politics/2017/…

So, no, more money for training is just more money for BAD TRAINING when this is the kind of shit that passes for training.

nytimes.com/2020/10/31/us/…

Anyone who has lost a loved one murdered by police - they should see if the cop went to a Grossman training - and sue this miserable murder-inciting filth
insider.com/bulletproof-da…

Police training is the problem, not the solution. They are trained to see the public as the enemy and kill first.
thetrace.org/2020/06/warrio…

Cities need to prohibit training that focuses on reducing the inhibition against violence. They must prohibit training from stochastic terrorists like Grossman. If the training does not prioritize de-escalation, the city should not pay for it and should demote and dismiss those

who promote the warrior cop bullshit. End it.

OF course, end qualified immunity. Impunity for murder makes this a police state. Police are supposed to protect and serve, not bully and abuse. Current police bureaus are armed gangs with few limits on their abusive behavior.

Of course, we need police to deal with violent crime. But right now, police spend about 4% of their time on violent crime. They are too busy hassling people of petty shit to actually do the job of policing crime.

The majority of their time is on "other calls" such as there are Black people barbecuing in the park and there's a Black girl selling water and that Black boy touched my backpack. Around a third of their time in spent on bullshit. Traffic is another 20%

So clearly, if we were less inclined to call the police because our nose gets out of joint over someone's music or their BBQ or their game of dominos, we could probably cut the police forces in the US in half without losing one hour of crime-solving

Since they aren't interested in that shit anyway. Here's an example. A guy in my neighborhood had his car stolen. He saw it parked by a homeless camp and called the police. He could not just take it because there were people in it.

The police told him they would not come out and just get a new car with his insurance. He was on the phone watching people in his stolen car and the Portland Police said they would not respond. Please don't tell me we need this kind of policing.

Now I suspect the police are being extra lackadaisical here because the public voted 92% to create a more powerful board to investigate police complaints. One that can fire them. It seems there is a general reluctance to do their job, thinking they can "show us" but all they show

is how much smaller the police force can be. They only have time to tear gas protesters, but not to actually address crime.

Of course, this means we have to change our behavior and be more tolerant of what we think of as "disorder" and turn on our own music instead of calling about the neighbors, order in some ribs instead of calling on the folks barbecuing, and stop being such racist assholes

We need to be able to walk past someone who is mentally ill and talking to themselves without calling the police. We need to be able to give homeless people a meal, some change, or a sorry, maybe next time, rather than calling police on them.

We need to be more tolerant of other people who may be noisy, rambunctious, dancing on the sidewalk, and perhaps even being annoying. If someone is merely irritating, that is not a reason to call police.

We need to recognize that the US Constitution allows people to walk in every neighborhood, even ones with mostly white people. Even if they do not live in the neighborhood. If you call police because someone doesn't "belong in your neighborhood" you don't believe in America.

If a young Black man is not free to walk on a street in Ohio because he's Black, America is not a free country, but a police state

And of course, that is why civil rights are not enough, only liberation is enough. Liberation that means a Black youth can walk on any damn street.

Let me tell you, I had super-irritating neighbors who at the drop of a hat would put their karaoke machine outside and do mariachi karaoke very loudly. Super annoying. Not a capital crime, though, so I never called the cops.

Before calling the cops, ask yourself, is this worth someone dying?

And once again, the best way to stop police violence is to change their Use of Force Policies. This is not a hypothesis. This is data-driven fact. Read Zimring's "When Police Kill" and get to work supporting
useofforceproject.org