Murdering Minorities, who and what are to Blame?

Before I get to the Trump worshiping and fellow bigot, Bob Kroll, and this Red Delicious image of the Minneapolis police Union Chief, the most powerful force within the Minneapolis police infrastructure—

first let’s start at the beginning, with the first cop out. Bad apples or murderers? I will let Chris Rock explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttd4985R0FQ

But I will stick with the bad bad apple analogy—just because it is the starting point. I will address the standard arguments for the status quo. Let’s all try and evolve together. Are bad apples ripe or are they ripened? These are crisper questions than one might imagine. Biting into the Minneapolis George Floyd video and throwing in some other info— the answer would appear to be obvious. But lurking behind the obvious remains the core, both specifically in Minneapolis and more generally  through out the US. But we will begin with the low hanging fruit, and then gravity do the rest. 

Floyd was clearly murdered by Derek Chauvin—a bad apple then? (The standard lone wolf /ranger murderer defense, whenever a white person goes off the tails)

But now imagine that you and some healthy strong chums were witnessing a murder—what would you do, assuming that you have more physical prowess than your Granny Smith—what are you required to do (assuming your personal safety was not risk?  Well Derek Chauvin had his chums—here they are: 

Apparently, business as normal. So a bushel of bad apples then?

Bob Kroll, an apparent White Supremacist,  is head of Minneapolis’s police union and an avid Trump supporter, in an interview in April, 2020  he said that:

he and a majority of the Minneapolis Police Officers’ Federation’s board have been involved in police shootings and that he and the officers on the union’s board were not bothered by the shootings, comparing themselves favorably to other officers.

But I’ve been involved in three shootings myself, and not one of them has bothered me. Maybe I’m different.

OK then, still keeping an open mind—perhaps he has a point???—so moving on to the George Floyd shooting he called George Floyd a…

“violent criminal” and described protesters as “terrorists.”

No, he does not have a point. So it strikes me that four* out of four enabled murder, lead by a police union rep who is a racist (more on that to follow)—who claimed his fellow officers on the Unions’s board shared his lack of racial empathy, adds up to an orchard of bigotry and professional negligence in anything related to racial sensitivity. 

(*update, developing: It seems like two of the four  should not be treated so harshly—brand new on the job and receiving Bob Kroll “training”, and one at-least did question the procedure in real time)

So how powerful is Bob Kroll? As The Guardian reports:

Former Minneapolis mayor, RT Rybak, said the 800-strong police union stood in the way of attempts by successive administrations to change policing culture toward African Americans and other minorities.

“I would say the last five mayors are very different people but every one has been deeply committed to reforming the police department. Every one of them. Collectively we have failed to move enough of the levers of change,” he said.

This is the very definition of institutional racism.

But I have barely scratched Bob Kroll’s surface—this bad apple has a truly rotten core. Calling Trump a wonderful President and hating Obama for trying to police the police…

Kroll was wearing a “Cops for Trump” T-shirt his union started selling after Frey barred officers from wearing uniforms at political events. Kroll has been openly hostile to Black Lives Matter, calling it a “terrorist organisation”. In 2016, he commended four Minneapolis police officers who walked out of a professional basketball game because players were wearing Black Lives Matter warm-up jerseys.

It gets worse—Kroll has a long history of being disciplined, but to no avail. In 2008 he and a chum were suspended for beating a man on the street, having him arrested on false charges—all whilst out of uniforming and whilst not identifying themselves as police. He was suspended for using homophobic slurs (Pink Lady?) to describe an aide the prior mayor. He clearly has problem with the present African American Minneapolis police chief, Medaria Arrandondo—this Golden Delicious quote from The Guardian Report:

The pair have a long history. In 2007, Arrandondo named Kroll in a lawsuit against the police department accusing it of racial discrimination. Arrandondo and four other black officers alleged that Kroll made racist statements in front of senior officers and “wears a motorcycle jacket with a ‘White Power’ badge sewn onto it”.

The lawsuit also alleged that Kroll said then congressman Keith Ellison, who is black and a Muslim, “is a terrorist”. At the time Ellison, who is now Minnesota’s attorney general in charge of the Floyd investigation, was pushing for reform of the police department.

The officers alleged that the force “has a history of tolerating racist and discriminatory remarks by its white police officers and engaged in discriminatory conduct against its African American police 

Having proven institutional racism within Minneapolis, and the power behind—let’s look at the consequences:

About 20% of Minneapolis is black—yet this segment attract almost 60% of force by the police. 

Force includes kicks, neck holds, punches, shoves, take-downs, Mace, Tasers other forms of muscle. Since 2015 there have been 6,700 instances of force against the 430,000 Black population. It is important to note that these are just the reported cases. As reported by the New York Times:

By comparison, the police have used force about 2,750 times against white people, who make up about 60 percent of the population.

All of that means that the police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years

This leads to more deaths, with no one held to account.

 Jamar Clark, 24, shot in Minneapolis in 2015 after, prosecutors said, he tried to grab an officer’s gun;

Thurman Blevins, 31, shot in Minneapolis in 2018 as he yelled, “Please don’t shoot me,” while he ran through an alley; 

Philando Castile, 32, whose girlfriend live-streamed the aftermath of his 2016 shooting in a Minneapolis suburb.

Since 2012, there have been 2,600 civilian complaints against the police leading to only 15 officers getting mildly punished—the worst punishment being 40 hours of unpaid suspension. 

So like the Newtonian laws of physics, by understanding the problem—potential healthy solutions, like bounty from the fields—organically begin to drop.

Is this orchard of institutional racism typical? Well now we need to take a step back in order to get some context.

FACTORS THAT EXPLAIN what is causing the America to be be uniquely culturally flawed.  

1) Gun Culture: And the recent series of events that have been occurring in the USA.

Virtually every day it seems that there is another black guy being shot by a cop. Are we imagining this? Are the media just doing what they do –dramatizing a narrative to get ratings?  Or is there something seriously insidious going on and if so what is happening and why is it happening.

Let’s look at the numbers: I started by trying to look at the data for European Countries. This proved to be a problem because there appears to be no pattern of such incidences. Evidently British police fired off three bullets in a recent year – no apparent deaths or injuries–so perhaps they were officiating at a track meet? There was a death in 2011 and there were headlines about British police being “Trigger Happy”. There may have been some recent European shootings of Terrorists – but beyond that I couldn’t find any pattern and the lack of a pattern is in itself a pattern – that being that fatal police shootings in Europe are  a meaningful issue. I wonder why?

The Rest of the World Compared to the USA. (Gun Ownership)

So that leads to the USA –and it will not take long to establish a pattern. Before we drill down consider that it is projected that sometime in 2015, Gun Deaths will become more ubiquitous in the USA than Auto fatalities— at over 30,000 lives per year. By way of comparison in the UK automobiles are 1,300% more deadly than guns (using 2011 data). The growing childishness of American gun culture can be seen quite clearly by analyzing school shootings.        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_prior_to_2009

And of course the more Stupidparty the state, the sillier the gun culture gets –with obvious consequences:

           http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/

Good Guys with Guns:  (The Loan Ranger Syndrome)

• Drivers who carry guns are 44% more likely than unarmed drivers to make obscene gestures at other motorists, and 77% more likely to follow them aggressively.
• Among Texans convicted of serious crimes, those with concealed-handgun licenses were sentenced for threatening someone with a firearm 4.8 times more than those without.
• In states with Stand Your Ground and other laws making it easier to shoot in self-defense, those policies have been linked to a 7 to 10% increase in homicides.
• Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home
• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.
• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Most Terrorism is domestic terrorism

He was big into segregation and other stuff,” Tyler told ABC News. “He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.

So within this context of America having the most infantile gun culture on the planet—we can now look at Fatal Police Shootings:

What is so remarkable is that there has been no reliable data on police shootings—up until very recently at least. Yes the FBI tries and others, but the reporting requirements are suspect and not all precincts report. I guess the reason is that police shooting people has never been a big cause for institutional concern. Well we are damn well concerned right now. Do we have good reason? To answer this we are going to have to be a bit more creative in order to get a true reflection on what is going on.

Gun toting, freedom fighting, 2nd amendment, eagle soaring, Putin puppet Patriots, pump it it with, hey man—violent crimes are down because of Charles Bronson, Dirty Harry small town heroes—come running at  slightest need, on their trusty Silver steed, ranging alone, to protect every home. They are argue that twice as many guns in households (even though households with guns have not changed significantly) have caused violent crimes to half—because… yes they are that simple

First it appears that we do have good data on violent crimes – and this is important because this will help put police fatal shootings into a more revealing perspective.

Note how violent crimes have halved over the last twenty five years. This has occurred for numerous reasons. But this reduction has not occurred because of the presence of more Guns (a myth promoted by the NRA) –we know this myth is claptrap because the number of households owning a gun has not increased, so unless you are John Wayne in the climactic scene of the movie True Grit, one eyed, on a horse, gripping the reins in his mouth, firing off multiple guns at the bad guys—having fifteen guns in your collection will make little difference in your ability to defend yourself, your ability to shoot your irritating neighbor, or offensive spouse. But perhaps your kid’s exposure to an accident might be significantly higher.

 Cops have never been safer from criminals in modern American history

The past few years in America have seen the fewest number of police officers killed by criminals in the line of duty in American history since the 1870s. This is true on multiple levels: it is true as far as the absolute number of police officers being killed, the percentage of all officers being killed, and the proportion of police officers killed in respect to the overall population; all this is also true regarding assaults and injuries sustained by police officers, except the rate of injuries is going up slightly from a historic low. But taken together, clearly, it has never been safer to be an officer of the law in the United States of America, at least for all of our modern history in terms of being attacked by criminals. In fact, being a cop, you have a slightly lower chance of being murdered than the average American and are far safer than residents of cities like Baltimore, Maryland, New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Louis, Missouri. The number of police killed in the line of duty fell to a record-since-the-19th-century-low 27 officers in 2013, and all recent years averaged together are at a historic low since that period as well.  So the idea that some articulate that there is a “war on cops” is false.

Now we need to try and figure out what is happening with regard to fatal police shootings. I have had to access various different data bases – because I really struggled to find consistency, and it is perhaps not surprising if no one is keeping tabs.

But one would hope that with the police having to contend with half as many violent crimes – that the need to use a gun would also halve.

But what I discovered was that this was far from the case. I seemed to find some consensus on the following 1) Data seems somewhat easier to get in more recent years 2) Everyone seems to agree that the official numbers significantly understate the true numbers 3) Thanks to statistician guru Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight website we may actually have credible numbers since May 1, 2013 from a Facebook page titled  Killed by Police

I used three different sources Green US Department of Justice Red the FBI and Blue the Nate Silver recommended Killed by police. As per Mr. Silver’s recommendations, I took the Facebook data and multiplied by .85   I arrived at my 2013 number by increasing the 8 months of data by 50%. I did a similar pro-rated exercise to project a total for 2015 using data at March 18^th, 2015

Updating the above—it seems like 2015 was an aberration and that the USA over the last 5 years has settled down to about 1,000 fatal police shooting a year. Go knows how many George Floyd’s there are, in addition, and how they are counted when they do not happen to get caught on camera.

Now guess how often the shooter is held accountable for those shootings? Brace yourself: 

Now the racial element:

Blacks are 300% more likely to get shot—even though they are less likely to be armed

Sometimes we actually get to see a good old police fatal shooting—

Now there has been a study by Michigan University that defenders of the police behavior have been touting—and to be fair, it is a far more reasonable contention that the Lone Ranger hero theory. A study, published on 22 July, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Mary concluded that black officers shot as many black suspects as white officers—and this was enough for Wall Street Journal and others on the right to take to their beds at night so that they could keep dreaming of being Wild Wyatt the Billy Buffalo Butch Kid.

They are not likely to be interested in how that study has since been eviscerated by Dean Knox, a political scientist at Princeton University who published a critique of the study in the spring of 2020, on the grounds that: 

“It’s just a completely indefensible conclusion to draw from the data that’s available,” says  To begin to justify such a claim, he says, researchers would need to know how often black and white civilians encounter police officers—something the authors of the original study did not consider in the paper.

Dean Knox had various substantive issues but he went on to illustrate one of their key points by including a thought experiment.

Back to overall USA! USA! USA! infantile gun culture—who is the most guilty party?  The NRA! That’s who. Want proof—that the NRA does not give a damn about its members, the general public or law enforcement? It is impossible to have an intelligent conversation about this because the NRA is not capable of acting in good faith, having been hijacked by the extremist nine member “nominating committee” and has become on odious organization as a result. Most Americans, including at-least 80% of NRA members would be happy to have constructive conversations about gun control ideas 

85%-74% of NRA members favor a waiting period for purchase of handguns,

82% of Americans support limiting the sales of military‐style assault weapons,

94% of police chiefs favor requiring a background check for all hand guns sales.

The following statistics rated true by Polifacts:

That poll found that 82 percent of gun owners were in favor of required background checks, including 74 percent of individuals with current or former memberships in the NRA.

PolitiFact identified two other 2013 polls of gun owners. A Pew Research Center poll taken of 1,502 adults from Jan. 9-13, 2013, found 85 percent of some 529 polled gun owners in favor of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks — nearly identical to the Luntz poll. The gun-owner results had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted of 1,110 adults from Jan. 11-15, 2013, showed that 85 percent of respondents living in a household with an NRA member supported universal background checks.

2) Increasing Bigotry:

All the numbers below are being inflamed by the massive bigotry that is at the core of Trumps efforts to turn the USA into a fascist state. Now we need to look closer at the racial question that every one (capable of critical thinking) recognizes is an issue. Because this is done per million, the under-counting problem discussed above is moot for the below graphic.

Increasing Bigotry Top down.

And here Ia ms not simply referring to the transparently racist Trump with his gelded Senate sycophants. This also goes to the supreme court.

So what is up with the Supremely Stupidparty Court? 

But surely the Supreme Court just recently indicated that Race was a problem of the past and thus scrubbed laws that prevented states with a history of racism from indulging is racist voter suppression strategies. Voter suppression is born out of racism, because it is promoted on the back of inflaming fears of voter fraud. But since Voter Fraud is Mathematically Irrelevant is mathematically irrelevant, there is no case for voter suppression.

As my co-researcher Brian E. Frydenborg wrote for me back in 2014..

Roberts’ thinking on the Supreme Court would lead the way in the dismantling a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013, when he basically wrote in his Opinion that the VRA was so successful, and Jim Crow and Southern racism SUCH a disappeared thing of the past, that the VRA’s requirement that especially Southern states that had enacted Jim Crow and segregation laws be forced to clear anything they did involving voting laws or redistricting with the federal Justice Department—a process known as “pre-clearance”—was no longer necessary and, in fact, was an infringement on the sovereignty of the states that has such a good, established track record (really????), and the only appropriate course was to remedy the injustice being done to the states and allow them to be free from automatic federal supervision in terms of how they treated their minority voters.  It seemed not to occur to him that process of pre-clearance itself might be one of the very reasons that the VRA had been so successful, even in recent years. Dissenting, Ginsburg brilliantly said this was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”  Never mind that the Senate voted unanimously and the House 390-33 in favor of a twenty-five-year reauthorization of the Act, including the pre-clearance provisions, in 2006.  Never mind that black voters in the South still face special challenges.  Never mind that the Act’s pre-clearance provision was used to stop a number of recent measures that, if enacted, would have disenfranchised minority voters in the South in the 2012 election, or that as soon as the pre-clearance provision was struck down by the Roberts Court, Republican lawmakers in various states introduced legislation that would disproportionately affect minority voters who were previously protected by the VRA in places like Texas and North Carolina.  Justice Ginsburg later commented that these moves left her feeling “disillusioned.”

“Chief Justice Supremely SP John Roberts we are seeing a textbook example of the myopia, lack of self-awareness, and narrow-mindedness that can result from attending the non-racially-diverse Roman Catholic grade and boarding schools in 1960s and 1970s small-town, rural, overwhelmingly-white Indiana….”

But if we are in post racial phase – how would the Supremely Stupidparty Court explain the following profile of Stupidparty supporters on issues relating to race. By way of example, if you choose be a birther you are choosing to reveal remarkable ignorance to the point of being a racist. I explain why Donald Trump is racist, since I can show that he himself is not interested in the facts— and that he is just part of inherent racism/bigotry within The Seven Pillars of Stupidparty Hate. Do we have a Party of Hate?

Some Solutions:

Thus having analyzed the problem of Police shootings within the context of America’s infantile gun culture, unresolved racist histories—what are the solutions. The most obvious solutions are also not ones that American’s can understand.

1. Change America’s gun culture—best place to start?  Educate people to understand that more guns do not lead to a safer community—but a far less safe community. Having guns for the purpose of personal safety is very rarely an intelligent idea—and more likely an indication of cowardice.
2. Take money and the power out of the politics of policing. Politicians pander to the police unions. Neutral, non elected experts need to impaneled via federal congressional law. 
3. OK since the above is culturally off the table—we need to stick with baby steps. 

i. Hold officers accountable for their actions, via an independent board that includes academics.

ii. Ensure that police forces are somewhat ethnically reflective of the community that they protect—at every level.

iii. Part of every police officers job should include community outreach and service—not directly related to police work

iv. Reduce the budgets for policing and invest such into the community.

v. Experiment with areas/regions were policing can be done in an unarmed fashion. There should be zero bad apples for any officer armed with a gun.

vi. Reconsider shoot to kill protocols, boost other non lethal back up procedures. 

vii. End the infantile culture of “three strikes and you are out”. 

viii. look at solutions that have been effective and broaden such solutions.

ix. Every police department should be made aware of how other European Countries tackle crime without resorting to guns and violence. Each officer should receive at least one week of exposure to an overseas law enforcement expert—just to plant the first seeds into the core of the myopic institutional infrastructure.

x. Retroactive justice:

Each State should be required to set up a scholastic commission to revisit old cases, looking for injustice, seeking to reduce the prison population and expunging criminal records—focusing on

a. cannabis use

b. “three strikes and you are out”

c. non violent crimes (not blinding accepting police definitions of violence)

d. police departments with a track record of racism—(starting with Minneapolis)

e. Extenuating circumstance

f. I am sure there are numerous other categories to focus on

Finally and most obviously and most achievably:

Elect decent Politicians—and this is not tough. Do not consider voting for anyone who has sold their soul the NRA or to Donald Trump. To do so makes you complicit in racism, mass shootings and an ever more militarized police state.