Boardroom suggestion
└ posted on Tuesday, 2 June 2020, by Novil
It’s often said that reality isn’t black-and-white, but that there are various shades of gray. But in this conflict, there rather seem to be shades of black.
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lol right, not on this life dude
i come here to get away from real life problems not get reminded of it
@ Kotih:
Silence is violence.
@ Ruka:
No, Silence is silence, and silence is complex. To equate saying nothing as morally equivalent to going out and hitting people is absurd, and encourages the very sort of ridiculous situations made fun of here.
Ha! Accountability in our government? What a laugh! To do that, voters would need to hold elected officials responsible. Instead people get angry at their local conditions and turn it toward the president as if he’s responsible. They don’t seem to realize State, County and City governments are responsible for things like police and really the majority of what affects people.
You can’t train a brute whose first response to a suspicion of a crime is to whip out a weapon or hurt the suspect.
Better training, yes – but train people who are already suited to the task, or don’t bother.
Even Arthurian legend dealt with the subject of what makes a “good” person with power distinct from a bad one – and the basic distinction remains.
Accountability? Yes please. But start before all that with better screening and observation.
Here in germany, our police has between 2 to 3 years of training before they start working properly and even then, they’ll usually first be deployed to bigger police units where they usually aren’t confronted with problems alone. And even with those measures, there are still occatuinally problems. To let someone work as a police officer after a few weeks of training sounds like a really bad idea.
If good lawenforcement with proper training and a decent salary is too expensive for a society then maybe people should loot and riot until even the cheapest politician understands that it’s more expenisve not to train your police properly…
There are many who should never have become police, so well said.
@ Regis Earsquake:
Derrick said: Silence is silence… Hmmm
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Right now – I think silence is violence
And here I was confused for a moment because I misread the first word of the title as “Bedroom”… though better accountability of what happens in the bedroom would probably also help improve society.
@ Derrick:
Simple solutions are usually easy to grasp, while a multi-pronged approach could be long and complicated.
That might be the appeal.
Menlo Park tried the whole better training and accountability thing. Worked pretty well actually. Then the guy who implemented those reforms moved away and everything reverted back to the way it was.
Sure there are rioters, but where are the police? They are some of the most well paid people in any city and yet its clear they would rather spend their time harrassing bystanders and peaceful protestors. NYPD remains the biggest disgrace as they hold the city hostage. LAPD too. As a reminder it took 5 years for the killer of Eric Gardner to ever face punishment. Because Police protect their own, and always for the worst.
Yeah… as if looting is the answer. I rather give my money to the poor people whose shops were ruined than the rioters.
Yep – THAT looks familiar.
I kinda liked it better when it was trashing network brass (and FOX in particular) for trying to cash in on “trends” they didn’t understand, and for not recognising good programming when they had it.
Basically:
“Guardians of the Galaxy is a huge hit! Why don’t we have something like that?”
“We did. It was called Firefly.”
“Silence is violence” is one of those statements that are so absurd that when people say them they think they are saying something profound.
@ jb:
I swear, everything is violence: Silence is violence. Words are violence. Walking is violence. Violence is violence. Gets tiresome trying to understand.
@ jb:
Yup, up there with ‘If you aren’t part of the solution then you are part of the problem’.
Among model responses to that are:
‘So what are you doing about the whales then / plight of the frogs / tackling the great garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean’?
“silence is violence”
“meat is murder”
Short ‘n punchy, but the strained overloading of the word “is” makes them too easy to dismiss.
Save ’em for shouting matches and protest signs, where you need emotional impact and there’s no time for your audience to think or respond – they’ll work better.
To paraphrase an old saying:
“The beatings will continue until behavior improves”
I worked for a major police department as a civilian for nine years back in the ’90s doing IT. Whenever we had an incident remotely like this, it was immediate retraining and reeducation of the entire force. This sort of stuff was completely unacceptable and was prosecuted.
Five years ago I met a guy who worked for the same department at the same time I did, we never ran into each other. We talked about then-current times, and we both agreed that we were mystified at what was going on and neither of us could go back to working in law enforcement in the current state that it was in. The military-grade hardware has got to go, and de-escalation has got to be trained and enforced.
@ Ruka:
And the opposite is also a form of violence too. Its a catch 22 either way.
For some reason, the last one is my major gripe with Marvel Civil War besides being an awful storyline.
I mean if you really REALLY look at Registration Act, it sounded like Accountability and Training yet portrayed as “government doing evil things”. Also having a black guy killed by a (clone) white god, which the context isn’t much better since he was sent to attack a group of anti-registration superheroes saving their friends backed up by convicted supervillains used as soldiers by Tony Stark himself. And it wasn’t portrayed as a bad thing and a passing woman considered it justfiable as “police shooting a punk” in a funeral where a black man was buried in tarp and chains because no one knows how to shrink him down (you know, fricking Ant Man of all people).
The movie kinda avoided that but seems to have the same demonization (or at least unexplained) on such notions. That and UN delegation kinda blew up and Thanos kinda caused delays (a rather permanent one).
This is kinda political, but it’s a political topic.
These problems, at least in the US, are all happening in cities a particular party has controlled for decades to generations. I kind of like the definition of insanity, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
Beyond badge cams and getting rid of judge invented (un)qualified immunity, the people claiming to be oppressed have to start voting for somebody other than their oppressors. Or nothing will change.
Brett P Bellmore wrote:
That is some pretty impressive victim blaming. There are two parties in the US that hold the vast majority of power. They give lip service to different ideologies but in essence they are the same. They both prioritize corporate profit over human wellbeing. To say that these people need to vote someone else in is to ignore the stranglehold that the establishment has on politics. Due to the fact that for some irrational reason “money is free speech” corporations and wealthy donors can buy (oh i mean donate to) politicians to purchase (oh, i mean persuade) that candidate to have certain views and policies… and if there is a principled candidate that isnt going to play ball, then that candidate is denigrated by the officials in power and crushed monetarily. The American political system is deeply flawed. To insinuate that if they only voted for the other party they would be better off is ridiculous. Look at democratic states and compare them economically to Republican states. Are you seriously suggesting that Kentucky is in a better economic state New York? Is Mississippi better off than California?
As messed up as it is to be forced to say it (because focusing on the riots and looting is gaslighting of the highest order) NO ONE IS SUPPORTING the looting and property damage. That said, it is not particularly surprising that among the anger and outrage there are people willing to take advantage of the situation to take items. The world is in the middle of a pandemic, and while democrat areas are largely trying to combat covid with stay at home orders.. an administration controlled by a “particular political party” has done nothing to help the citizenry. People are out of work and still expected to pay rent and for all the normal expenses like food. In a country where before covid started over half the population could not cover a 500$ emergency, how do you think they are doing after months of stay at home orders without government relief?America has failed its response to this global crisis in a tragic fashion, and while the law is the law and these arsonists and thieves have broken the law and should be held accountable for those actions… they are NOT THE PROTESTERS.
The protesters have a legitimate grievance that has been a problem for a long, long time. To dismiss those concerns because individuals that do not represent the movement and do not make up a significant percentage of the movement, is gaslighting. Whataboutism is bullshit.
The entire protest is political.
There is simply no other way to interpret it during an election year.
Silence is Violence is as bad as saying Defund the Police.
The change needed in individual cities can only come from local government.
The process of blaming or expecting sweeping responses from the federal government is pointless.
I want the protests to stop and reforms to occur.
Well it seems some of the US will opt to go Robocop /Cyberpunk way with abolishing public institution police altogether…
do we have popcorn? and hopefully watch from distance?
@ Disgusted Republican:
“The change needed in individual cities can only come from local government.”
Precisely my point: You don’t like what the police are doing? The police are controlled by the local government, which you elect. The local government which has, in basically all these places, been controlled by the same party for generations.
It’s a democracy; If you don’t like what the government is doing, put somebody else in charge. Don’t complain to the people you’ve seen to it aren’t in charge.
Disgusted Republican wrote:
Local government cannot change a nationwide problem. What you suggest would result in a few municipalities trying to reform the police only to have the police union successfully resist those reforms because as each city tries the union has a strong bargaining position against the changes. You would also have a few cities where things are fair and others where the police will shoot you for calling them (like any number of police shootings when concerned family or friends call for help about a person having a mental episode or break). All americans deserve better police, not just ones that live in a more progressive location by accident of birth.
There currently are no federal guidelines for what police should do. A national standard of training could go a long way to fixing the problem, as could a federal law mandating the use of bodycams or the creation of a separate department to investigate accusations of police brutality or excessive force — the police cannot police themselves as they have clearly proven so far.
Vex wrote:
Well said both times.
Look at what the democrats actually do to the conservative that wants competent police instead of a source of political strife.
Okay…my two cents on a real-life issue. The real problem with police accountability is the police unions. They block 99% of all disciplinary action taken against police officers. Even when a city Mayor (Democrat or Republican) wants to fire an officer, he can’t…the union threatens a police strike or other nonsense. The police act like they are above accountability because they are as long as the unions make sure there are almost no consequences to their actions.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled web-cartoon.
@ Mutazoia:
I live for over 5 years in Sri Lanka. The Private Bus Owners Associate was notorious for similar reasons, and acted with a fair degree of impunity, if any of its members were held to account by Police (themselves quite corrupt) or the public, they would threaten to go on strike until the matter was resolved.
Inevitably the government would give way.
Jesus, what the fuck kinda enlightened centrism bullshit is this comic, and, partially, comment section. The police are to blame. The rioters have not killed anyone. C’mon, this is basic-human-decency level shit.
“If you are neutral [or slient] in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” – Desmond Tutu
Sweet troll jegus. This isn’t hard, people.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There is problems to be fixed, sure. But the solution is not and canot be to destroy everything in a fit of rage. This will only exacerbate the problem until everything get worst and everyone pay the price.
John Smith wrote:
Please come back to reality. Dozens have been killed so far in the riots and ironically, most are black. Please take the time to search for ” breitbart black americans killed in riots ” and click the first result. It’s a June 2nd article that highly just a handful of the riot victims so far.
“The police is to blame”. How about the spineless politicians who do nothing? How about the opportunistic criminals who come from outside the city or even the state just to do the maximum of damage and destruction?
People are getting literally slaughtered in the streets and you think riots are just made out of unicorns and rainbows.
@ Freddie!:
Body parts ARE murder.
Better training and accountability take time. They absolutely must be done, but when we have active violence against innocent people who are no more guilty of crimes than George Floyd, we do need the police – however good or bad they may be – to put a stop to it.
And then we need to hold them accountable.
If we genuinely can’t trust them, then we (tragically) need the National Guard. Or the *shudder* FBI. Right now, trust in our law enforcement agencies is at an all-time low on, I think, both sides of the political aisle, and I won’t go into reasons because I’m pretty sure everybody can at least name their own side’s reasons for it.
Sadly, they’re what we’ve got, and active violence and rioting and looting only makes them MORE necessary with active powers to exert potentially-violent authority, delaying the desperately-needed thorough investigations, cleanings, and possible disbandings and fresh starts all the longer.
And I must emphasize that any disbanding MUST be accompanied immediately by a new force put in place, made up of new, vetted, trained people, because you cannot have no law enforcement and have anything like order.
Local / City police forces have to be a joke, they are too tied up in local politics to be effectively controlled.
Then again the USA is probably too big for a nationwide local police service (not FBI) so is not the answer state police?
This would give a force of sufficient size to be manageable, but large enough to have an independent oversight authority.
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Segev wrote:
Why do you think they’ve been letting the riots cause as much damage as possible while they focus on the protesters a few blocks/miles away? When police are spending more focus on inflicting violence against protesters than on stopping violent looting, they’ve become worse than worthless.
@ Missingnoleader:
As to NYC, Giuliani and his police commissioner’s reforms brought the murder rate down from 2,000 annually to less than 300. Homeless were housed and the city’s budget brought under control. Bloomberg, kept most of those reforms and NYC stayed the most peaceful city in the USA, Comrade de Blasio dismissed all those reforms and sent the city back into the abyss. Typical Democrat rule to ruin.
@ Vex:
The USA is a federal republic. States are the testing grounds of the republic. To force rules and standards from above (federal government) is similar to central planning. Which results in scarcity, rules than don’t match the situations, and misery,