As the World Burns

"From a black man who has tried his hardest to be apart of your community." Panda-kun is black and is the embodiment of this website. MO's Mascot for 22 years. Like I said I don't know how you got banned the first time. From what I've read of your posts it seems like you just came here to fuck with people and just started getting banned from the get-go for troll activity. But if you legitimately want to come here so we can get to know you, there has to be some give and take.

VerucAssault @verucassault Ah, I see. Thank you been trying to get a real opinion about myself for the longest for clarity. If what you say is how everyone feels then I am at lost. I don't get people at all then. I understand your words. But the signs you mention I don't see. It's probably best I do something productive as you said. All of this is understandable. I don't think I am capable of these things and correct communication. I Don't Get It. Even how I communicate now Is extremely hard. If what you say is true. I have no business doing what I am doing. I had no idea I was trolling. I always knew I was incapable of things. But, no one would tell me. This is me I thought I was displaying myself the whole time. I'm Big Different. I Don't Get It Not Even In The Slightest. I mean I get it... But I don't know how to do what you do. I didn't know I was viewed like that. Definitely wasn't my intention. I'm big off it's probably best I don't interact with others cuz I completely don't get it. I'm so lost. Gonna focus on getting help I've been wanting to know how off I was for a long time. Now Isee I need big help. There is no me but the one I displayed.

^^^That's how you do it. Talk to us. Don't berate or attack us. Have some real conversations and get to know us as we get to know you. Everything else will just happen organically.

I would add you as a friend but you keep getting banned. Like I said, I don't know how this started. The mods here are reasonable. Maybe if you ask they will let you keep one of your profiles. I'm not a mod, so I don't know.

I am a very mentally iLL person please forget everything I said over my time being here. I wholeheartedly apologize for any damages or grief I may have caused. I tried I really did there's nothing else. Something's wrong. I don't think I want to try anymore. I can't grasp real conversation. I definitely thought I was doing it but I don't think there's nothing there. Thanks Veru but I don't get it. I'm ok leaving now. I don't see a way forward if I can't grasp even the slightest idea of a real conversation. I can't form a consensus. Something's wrong. Nope, I really do give up. I really do thank you tho. Sorry for berating and attacking you guys.

Pentagon chief on shaky ground with White House after breaking with Trump over protest response By Zachary Cohen, Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak, Vivian Salama and Jim Acosta, CNN Updated 2:48 PM ET, Wed June 3, 2020 https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/esper-insurrection-act-protests/index.html Washington (CNN)Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is on shaky ground with the White House after saying Wednesday that he does not support using active duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd and those forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a last resort.

Here's a good article showing how broken the system is for cops to not get reprimanded - Minneapolis https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd.html ......... The St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed five years’ worth of such appeals and found that between 2014 and 2019, Minnesota arbitrators — a group that hears a range of public service complaints — ruled in favor of terminated law enforcement and correction officers 46 percent of the time, reinstating them. In three terminations involving law enforcement officers that were reviewed this year, two were overturned. Dave Bicking, a board member of Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Twin Cities advocacy group, said many disciplinary actions are overturned because they are compared to previous cases, making it hard for departments to reverse a history of leniency or respond to changing community expectations. “Because the department has never disciplined anybody, for anything, when they try to do it now, it’s considered arbitrary and capricious,” he said. Mr. Bicking described a history of attempts to clean up the Minneapolis police force, which is overwhelmingly white and for decades has faced accusations of excessive force, especially by African-American residents. In Minneapolis, a city heralded for its progressive politics, pretty parks and robust employment, the racial divide runs deep. From education to wages, African-Americans are at a disadvantage, graduating at much lower rates and earning about one-third less than white residents. And while black residents account for about 20 percent of the city’s population, Police Department data shows they are more likely to be pulled over, arrested and have force used against them than white residents. And black people accounted for more than 60 percent of the victims in Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 through May 2019, data shows. When there was a civilian review board to field the complaints, it would recommend discipline, but the police chief at the time would often refuse to impose it, said Mr. Bicking, who served on the board. Across the country, civilian review boards — generally composed of members of the public — have been notoriously weak. They gather accounts, but cannot enforce any recommendations. In 2008, the Police Executive Research Forum issued a report on disciplinary procedures in Minneapolis, at the department’s behest. It recommended resetting expectations with a new matrix specifying violations and consequences. But Mr. Bicking said the department soon fell back to old ways. In 2012, the civilian board in Minneapolis was replaced by an agency called the Office of Police Conduct Review. Since then, more than 2,600 misconduct complaints have been filed by members of the public, but only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined, Mr. Bicking said. The most severe censure has been a 40-hour suspension, he said. “When we say there’s a failure of accountability and discipline in this city, it is extreme,” he said, adding that the City Council had promised to review the board, but has yet to do so. Any member of the public may file a complaint, and experts say that the volume of complaints may reflect a host of issues other than actual misconduct, such as the level of trust the community has in its department. Maria Haberfeld, an expert on police training and discipline at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said Mr. Chauvin’s complaint tally averaged to less than one a year, not unusual for a street officer, and probably not high enough to trigger an early warning system. But the patchwork nature of the city’s disciplinary tracking was clear in Mr. Chauvin’s case. The city released an Internal Affairs summary with 17 complaints. The city’s police conduct database listed only 12, some of which did not appear to be included in the summary, and Communities United Against Police Brutality, which also maintains a database, had yet more complaint numbers not included in the first two sources. The nature of the complaints was not disclosed. Mr. Chauvin was one of four officers who responded to a call on Memorial Day that a man had tried buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. The other officers, identified by the authorities as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, also were fired and remain under investigation. The county attorney said he expected to bring charges, but offered no further details. Neither Mr. Lane nor Mr. Kueng had misconduct complaints filed against them, according to the department. But Mr. Thao faced six in his career and also was the subject of a lawsuit that claimed he and another officer punched, kicked and kneed an African-American man, leaving the man with broken teeth and bruises. According to the lawsuit, the incident occurred in early October 2014, when the man, Lamar Ferguson, then 26, was walking home with his girlfriend. A police car approached and Mr. Ferguson’s girlfriend kept walking. The lawsuit states that Mr. Thao asked Mr. Ferguson to put his hands on the roof of the car and then handcuffed him. The complaint said that the other officer then “falsely stated there was a warrant out” for Mr. Ferguson’s arrest regarding an incident involving family members. Mr. Ferguson told the officers he had no information to tell them. During the encounter, “Officer Thao then threw” Mr. Ferguson, “handcuffed, to the ground and began hitting him.” Patrick R. Burns, one of the lawyers who represented Mr. Ferguson, said in an interview on Friday that the city settled the case for $25,000. “What I learned from that case and several others I have handled against the department is that some of the officers think they don’t have to abide by their own training and rules when dealing with the public,” he said. The head of the police union, Lt. Bob Kroll, is himself the subject of at least 29 complaints. Three resulted in discipline, The Star Tribune reported in 2015. Mr. Kroll was accused of using excessive force and racial slurs, in a case that was dismissed, and was named in a racial discrimination lawsuit brought in 2007 by several officers, including the man who is now the police chief. Teresa Nelson, legal director for the A.C.L.U. of Minnesota, said attempts by the city’s police leaders to reform the department’s culture have been undermined by Mr. Kroll, who she said downplays complaints and works to reinstate officers who are fired, no matter the reason. She said that in a 2015 meeting after a fatal police shooting, Mr. Kroll told her that he views community complaints like fouls in basketball. “He told me, ‘If you’re not getting any fouls, you’re not working hard enough,’” she said. Mr. Kroll did not return several messages seeking comment this week. Changing department policies and culture can take years, even when there is a will to do so. In 2009, the Minneapolis department instituted an Early Intervention System to track red flags such as misconduct allegations, vehicle pursuits, use of force and discharge of weapons. Such systems are supposed to identify “potential personnel problems” before they become threats to public trust or generate costly civil rights lawsuits. In a case similar to the death of Mr. Floyd, David Cornelius Smith, a black man with mental illness, died in 2010 after two officers trying to subdue him held him prone for nearly four minutes. The chief at the time defended the officers, and they were never disciplined, said Robert Bennett, a lawyer who represented Mr. Smith’s family. In 2013, the police chief at the time, Janeé Harteau, asked the Department of Justice to review the department’s warning system. A federal report found that it had “systemic challenges” and questioned its ability to “create sustainable behavior change.” Early warning systems are considered a key part of righting troubled departments, criminologists say. Most cities that have been found to have a pattern of civil rights violations and placed under a federal consent decree, or improvement plan, are required to have one. Ms. Harteau, who left the top post in the wake of a 2017 fatal police shooting, said she took many steps to reform the department, including training officers on implicit bias and mandating the use of body cameras. But the police union, she said, fought her at every turn. In 2016, the department updated its use-of-force policy to hold officers accountable for intervening if they see their fellow officers using excessive force, Ms. Nelson said. The new policy, made in the wake of previous fatal shootings, was part of an effort to reform police culture in the city. “It’s why you saw four officers fired” in Mr. Floyd’s case, she said. It is not clear whether an improved early warning system would have flagged Mr. Chauvin, who also had been involved in at least three shootings in his career, or the other officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death. Departments choose from a number of benchmarks, and from a range of responses when they are exceeded. Ms. Haberfeld, the training expert, said police departments will not change until they invest significantly more in recruitment and training, areas where the United States lags far behind other democracies. Otherwise, she said, “There is a scandal, there is a call for reform — committees and commissions and nothing happens. Nothing.”

https://youtu.be/Duy6CthJ6Bo Atlanta protests from the ground