Thread by @philmandelbaum

Derek Chauvin was involved in 5 police killings before suffocating George Floyd to death

But Chauvin's far from the only cop to get away with murder.

In fact, those who *are* fired just get hired somewhere else.

It's endemic.

Why #DefundThePolice then #AbolishThePolice?

🧵

Even those who still believe the fallacy that police and prisons make us safer understand that police accountability is critical — and "wandering cops" are a major concern

A 2020 Yale Law study found 1,100 terminated cops re-hired and walking the streets in Florida alone

The national decertification database isn't public, isn't checked by most depts before hiring, and doesn't include some of the biggest states, including California and New Jersey

This sorry excuse for transparency has led to numerous deaths

St. Ann, Missouri, is a prime example

As a St. Louis officer, Eddie Boyd III pistol-whipped a 12yo girl in 2006. He said it was an accident.

In 2007 he hit a child in the face with his gun and handcuffs before falsifying a police report.

He was re-hired by St. Ann, and then Ferguson, the dept that killed Mike Brown

As a St. Louis officer, Christopher Tanner shot former officer Milton Green, a Black man, at Green’s home in 2017.

A police chase sped into Green’s neighborhood while he was off-duty working on his car in his driveway. Tanner immediately shot him.

He was re-hired by St. Ann.

Jonathan Foote resigned from the St. Louis PD after a traffic stop caused a crash that killed a bystander.

Foote was re-hired by St. Ann.

Christopher Childers was fired from the St. Louis PD after firing a stun gun at a female officer.

He, too, was re-hired by St. Ann.

Ellis Brown was forced out of the St. Louis PD in 2016 after lying about tailing a car that accelerated, crashed and started burning.

Brown left the scene instead of calling for help and then claimed he hadn’t been there.

He was re-hired by St. Ann.

Mark Jakob was one of two St. Louis County police officers fired for lying about a high-speed chase that ended in two deaths.

He was re-hired by St. Ann.

Roger Goldman, a professor emeritus at Saint Louis University Law School, has spent his career trying to stop wandering cops

He says he's not surprised by St. Ann, but that “My work is not anti-cop. It’s pro-good cop.”

The problem is, policing is a white supremacist institution

US policing can be traced back to Black Codes, chain gangs and the conversion of petty thievery into a felony — to recapture the profit lost post slavery

Policing continues for the same purpose, by criminalizing and caging entire communities

1 in 3 Black boys winds up in prison

As we saw with the flight of officers from all over the country to DC to aid in the right-wing attack on the Capital, police are one united gang

And it's confirmed every time we march:

Cops are 300% more likely to use force against left-wing protesters

40+% of cops *admit* to abusing their partners

Cops kill 3 people a day, and are responsible for 1/3 of all stranger murders

Black people are 300% more likely to be killed by cops. Latinos: 200%

Yet, 98+% of police killings don't even result in an officer being *charged*

So what's the worst part of policing? Perhaps it's the magnitude of the lie.

Cops don't stop crime, and only solve 2% of all major crimes that have been committed

In fact, there is NO correlation between increased policing and incarceration and safer communities

Despite the longest period of sustained protest in our nation's history in 2020:

Municipalities throughout the country continue to spend more on policing than education

And while some cities have defunded and reallocated

Police spending actually *increased* in 2021

The goal of abolitionists is to continue to educate the masses — that reforms like body cams don't make us safer, that indicting individual officers is not justice, and that the apples aren't the issue

The whole tree is rotten, and always has been, with copaganda as fertilizer

The biggest misconception about abolition is that we want all cops and cages to disappear overnight.

We live in a punitive society, without the humanist, reparative, transformative mechanisms to provide true justice

And without the resources to protect and heal our communities

Abolition begins with defunding, down to zero.

With those billions of dollars, we can fund education, jobs training, mental health and drug treatment, harm reduction, mutual aid, and re-entry services

To learn more about the road to abolition, visit tenforjustice.com

Rather watch and listen than read?

The @TENDEMANDS song and video illustrate everything



#AbolishThePolice #AbolishPrisons

Learn why the fight to #EndQualifiedImmunity must be part of a larger strategy toward complete abolition of police and carceral punishment

https://twitter.com/awkwordrap/status/1388915608025280515?s=21

This was Rayshard Brooks, February 2020, months before being murdered by a white cop in a Wendy’s parking lot at age 27

Today, that cop, Garrett Rolfe, was reinstated



Reforms don’t work

We need true accountability until we #AbolishThePolice

Qualified immunity isn’t the only way police get away with violence and abuses of power

There’s a law in 70% of US states that allows cops to rape people in their custody…

If you were looking for another reason to #AbolishThePolice

https://twitter.com/AWKWORDrap/status/1390285152295833605

There were 128,000 civilian complaints of police misconduct between just 2016 and 2019 (that we know of)

That’s 116 a day

During the 3-year span, only 1 in every 9 was ruled in favor of the victim

Ask @samswey: policescorecard.org

This can’t be reformed

#AbolishThePolice

"You could call these the sustaining myths of policing, but… police attempt to achieve legitimacy through the stories they tell about themselves. Police legitimacy means public compliance."

- @stschrader1 on the power of copaganda

newrepublic.com/article/162510…

#AbolishThePolice

This Florida police SEARGENT was just fired… for the SEVENTH time

For excessive force, stealing from suspects, misuse of police firearms, and more.

And German Bosque’s also been arrested — and cleared — three times…

But reforms should fix this, right!?

#AbolishThePolice

“What I saw on that video… I don’t know how he can be working.”

Jon Geiger’s certification kept getting revoked, but he kept getting new jobs, and then became chief

@borywrites called it a local problem, but it’s a *policing* problem

thedailybeast.com/how-a-shady-co…

#AbolishThePolice