Note, this is a different case from the recent one where a man was killed sleeping with a gun in his lap in his car at a Vallejo Taco Bell.
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He doesnât speak much, but when Thomas does, he is always a giant dick.
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Something to point to when someone claims that gun control laws somehow means more shootings (it means the opposite):
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Latest phase of Operation: Sceptre beginning in the UK or parts thereof. Stop and frisk in pursuit of knife-law violations.
https://www.met.police.uk/cp/crime-prevention/skc/stop-knife-crime/operation-sceptre/
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Thanks for the context. I just saw about this, so I have none, other than the known injustices of stop-and-frisk as it was done in NYC (violation of civil liberties, finding crime where you look and not where it is generally, disproportionately applied to POC, every encounter with police is dangerous for the people stopped, etc.).
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Thatâs a start, but I canât find any mention of them laying charges against him.
⌠And part of me canât help but think that heâd have gotten away with it if his name were Gary Jones and not Khalil Muhammad.
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Those powers were given to the UK police under the Terror Act 2000 and have been routinely abused by the Metropolitan Police (Londonâs cops) since then, whenever the press decides that knife crime is worth writing about again.
The implementation of the stop and search powers is exactly as you would expect.
Back in 2008, I was working for the Civil Service in Whitehall and saw the knife arches from afar as I walked through Victoria Station (the main transport hub for the typically poorer suburbs of South London) when I was wearing a suit from Monday to Thursday. I wore a hoodie for dress down Friday and lo and behold, I was ârandomlyâ selected for screening.
Officer: âExcuse me, can I have a look in your bag?â
Me: âEr, no? I mean, I thought that you stopping me for no reason and demanding to search me would be illegalâŚâ
O: âWell, you see, it would be, but weâve invoked the Terror Act, which means we can conduct random searches.â
M: âUm. What happens if I still say no?â
O: âWe take you to the station where you can have a lawyer present as we open your bag.â
M: âSo I donât really have a choice about this, do I? Iâm not really sure what this has to do with TerrorâŚâ (Hands over bag, which is passed to the other officer present but not yet opened)
O: âWell, you see, we are not actually looking for terrorists, weâre looking for knives. Because of all the press at the moment, we are just doing whatever it takes to make the public feel safe.â (Smiles reassuringly)
M: âBut it doesnât make me feel safe. It makes me feel like Iâm living in a police state and youâre massively overstepping your authorityâŚâ
O: âWell, you would say that but thatâs because youâre innocent. But if we donât stop the innocent ones, how are we going to catch the guilty ones?â
I should point out that I am very white and sound as middle class as they come. There were other (overwhelmingly black and working class people) being searched around me who were not being treated in anywhere near as civil a fashion. None of them were wearing suits.
They gave me a piece of paper to sign to show that I had âconsentedâ to the search and I asked if they needed ID. They said no but I pulled out my civil service security pass anyway. They looked at the pass, said âohâ sheepishly, unzipped my bag, peered into it and then handed it back.
Again, this was not the procedure that the other people around me were being subjected to. To this day, Iâm amazed that no one thought to give them a quick mandatory training session, so that they knew what was acceptable and unacceptable to say to people, especially in an area where so many people work in journalism or politics. My guess is that the Met thought it would be okay because those sorts of people typically arenât young, black and wearing sportswear.
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It took substantial protest to get them to raise the suspension from the original 90 days.
Itâs an offensively inadequate wrist-slap either way.
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Probably a good time to mention that today is the day we vote in a run-off election for mayor of Chicago. Why is a relatively unknown, non-politician favored to win?
Lightfoot returned to the public sector in 2015, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to replace 19-year incumbent Demitrius Carney as President of the Chicago Police Board. The boardâs main responsibility is to make recommendations for or against disciplinary action on certain disputed cases of police misconduct. Under Lightfootâs leadership, the board became more punitive, firing officers in 72% of its cases. In the wake of the controversy over the murder of Laquan McDonald, Emanuel also appointed Lightfoot as Chair of a special Police Accountability Task Force. In 2016, the Task Force, led by Lightfoot, filed a report critical of the Chicago Police Departmentâs practices. She specifically criticized the police unionâs "code of silence. The anti-police brutality activist organization Black Youth Project 100âs Chicago chapter released a statement denouncing Lightfoot and the Board and Task Force for a âlack of accountabilityâ.
In 2017, Emanuel re-appointed Lightfoot to a second term as president of the Police Board. The decision came after Lightfoot and Emanuel had publicly come into conflict, particularly over Emanuelâs attempts to reach a police reform deal with Trump Administration Justice Department officials that would avoid a consent decree and a oversight from a federal judge. Lightfoot called Emanuelâs approach âfundamentally flawedâ. At the time, there was already speculation that Lightfoot was planning a run for mayor of Chicago in 2019, though she denied the rumors. Lightfoot resigned from the Police Board in May 2018, just before announcing her mayoral campaign.
(Notice that she is not considered a saint for her work, but sheâs still better than what weâve had.)
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Donât mind me, I just flew back in town last night and my brain is fried. The run-off election is not THIS Tuesday, itâs in three weeks.
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I agree with most of that butâŚ
#9. Tax Law Subsidizes Sprawl
U.S. tax law also upholds the supremacy of driving, mostly through the mortgage interest deduction, says Shill. This tax benefit privileges homeownership over renting, helping fuel sprawl and car dependence.
How does owning your house or apartment, rather than renting it, privilege drivers? Itâs the same building, whether you own it, or pay someone else who owns it.
Edit to add: I can see living in a house, rather than a denser building, could contribute to sprawl and car dependence. But you can own a house or rent it, just as you can own an apartment or rent it. I donât get how whether you pay the bank and utility companies directly, or pay a landlord who pays those same companies, makes any difference at all to make it easier / more encouraged / more subsidized to drive.
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#12. Criminal Law Rarely Punishes Dangerous Drivers: People who kill or injury pedestrians with vehicles are almost never charged criminally and convicted even more rarely, Shill writes.
In addition to here and the Boingoverse, I also read along with a community of bike people, and theyâve pretty much concluded that if you want to kill someone and get away with it, one of the best ways is to catch that person on their bike and target them with your car. âOfficer, I donât know what happened, he came out of nowhere.â Consequences for the driver are typically light, as your article says.
pedestrians, who make up 16 percent of total U.S. traffic deaths â a portion that is growing as cars become safer and safer for their occupants and more dangerous for everyone else
And as people have come to keep one eye on their smartphones as they drive.
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And as headlights, turn signals, etc. become more blinding.
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i completely agree, itâs terrible.
And in general, I think thereâs such a thing as too bright, and weâre there now. (The same LED revolution that gave us great cheap on-bike lighting gave us so-called light boxes on the sides of homes and buildings at levels formerly found illuminating shopping mall parking lots.)
I live on a street with buried cables and therefore neither utility poles nor street lighting, and walking at night there is heavenly. The stimulus level is so low, itâs entirely restorative.
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