Portland residents warned of delayed responses to 911 calls amid record-breaking murder rate - "Portland's police department has warned residents of the woke but crime-ravaged Oregon city to expect delays in cops answering all but the most serious 911 calls... The city is famed as America's most woke, and is renowned as a hotbed of Antifa activists, who regularly protest and riot in the dilapidated streets of downtown Portland. Thousands marched to call for the city's council to defund or even abolish its police department in the wake of George Floyd's May 2020 murder. A total of $15 million was duly slashed from the city's budget, with progressive Portland prosecutors also blamed for the spiraling crime for refusing to charge 70 per cent of people arrested by the city's police. In January, the department said it faces 'critical' staffing shortages 'due to budget cuts, retirements and separations, and the backlog of needed training for new officers caused by the pandemic.'"
'Lawless city?' Worry after Portland police don't stop chaos - "A crowd of 100 people wreaked havoc in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week – smashing storefront windows, lighting dumpsters on fire and causing at least $500,000 in damage – but police officers didn't stop them. Portland Police Bureau officials say that's because of legislation passed by Oregon lawmakers this year, which restricts the tools they can use to confront people vandalizing buildings and causing mayhem."
Citing hostility, Portland police leaving mid-career - "In an unprecedented situation for Portland, a racially diverse and experienced group of police officers is taking pay cuts to get away from the city, while citing poor working conditions here. And the city's police recruiter tasked with boosting bureau diversity isn't looking for replacements — because that person is gone, too... for the first time that anyone can remember, the number of people resigning has outstripped retirements... Complicating things is that the bureau has no plans to hire new officers anytime soon — so much so that it's done away with the recruiter position that spearheads efforts to diversify the force and attract quality candidates. In part, that's a result of how the bureau has shifted resources to cope with the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis... the bureau quietly put its hiring on pause July 1, after taking a cut of more than $15 million from the City Council... it's not suprising officers are unhappy given Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty's claim in July that police were setting fires to blame them on protesters, as well as District Attorney Mike Schmidt's decisions not to file charges against numerous people the police arrested after declaring that protests had become riots. A major goal of some of the protesters has been to abolish all police, or at least reduce the number, arguing that to do so will reduce racial inequities... Given the overtime spending, the bureau's pause on hiring and the wave of resignations, is it fair to say the "defund the police" movement is getting its way? "For a lot of these people that are choosing to go somewhere else, they spent a lot of months this last summer constantly being yelled at to 'Quit your job, quit your job.'" Frome said. "That cumulative toll on our officers, it builds up. So in some ways, yes, there is a win by those that would want the police to be defunded.""
USA TODAY/Ipsos poll: Just 18% support 'defund the police' movement - "Only 18% of respondents supported the movement known as "defund the police," and 58% said they opposed it. Though white Americans (67%) and Republicans (84%) were much more likely to oppose the movement, only 28% of Black Americans and 34% of Democrats were in favor of it... the responses were even more negative when Americans were asked if they thought the police should be abolished or eliminated, with 67% overall saying they were opposed, including a majority of Black Americans and Democrats"
From 2021. There're other polls showing the same. So much for those claiming that in the George Floyd era, sentiment has changed
Two Defund-The-Police Lawmakers Carjacked In Less Than 24 Hours - "Five people were arrested in Delaware on Wednesday night after U.S. Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania) was carjacked in broad daylight at a city park in Philadelphia, just one day after an Illinois lawmaker was carjacked in suburban Chicago... There has been a massive surge in carjackings in Philadelphia this year... Scanlon has not been a supporter of law enforcement in the past, FOX News reported. She was one of the original co-sponsors of the Mental Health Justice Act that sought to replace law enforcement officers with mental health experts. The legislation, sponsored by 125 Democrats, is supposed to make it easier for state and local governments to defund the police by instead funding mental health services to respond to emergency calls instead of armed officers... Another advocate of defunding the police – Illinois State Senator Kimberley Lightford – and her husband were carjacked at about 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday night in a suburb of Chicago... Investigators said almost every home on the street has video surveillance and they were working to get copies of footage from those homes, WLS reported. Lightford is also a vocal advocate of defunding the police who proposed slashing the Chicago Police Department’s budget by $80 million last year"
Defund-the-police doesn’t work — as mayors are finding out the hard way - "The social experiment with people’s lives is over. The defund-the-police mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, just did a 180... San Francisco embarked down its disastrous defund-the-police, fund-other-agencies road last year, and it didn’t turn out well. Its police department shrank, and violence, thefts, open-air drug dealing and overdose deaths soared... And Mayor Breed has another huge obstacle in her way in trying to turn things around: District Attorney Chesa Boudin. San Franciscans accuse Boudin of being soft on criminals, and he’s now facing a recall. Indeed, he’s become the poster child for soft-on-crime DAs and is often pointed to by let’s-get-tough politicians across the nation. Voting has consequences, and so do policies... Victims and their families are angry, and it shows. Want to know the definition of irony? The defund-the-police crowd just helped elect an ex-cop, Adams, mayor of New York City. Adams wants to bring back plainclothes units and usher in a new era of stop, question and frisk. He also chose a new police boss who believes in enforcing quality-of-life crimes. All of which has landed him in the crosshairs of Black Lives Matter, and I can only imagine what other activists are saying now. Those who watch matters of policing closely sounded the alarm two years ago (that includes me, in a column in these pages, “Get Set for New York’s Coming Criminal Justice Disaster”). The pols didn’t listen; instead, they labeled us fear-mongers. Maybe they’ll listen now."
Jumaane Williams lives on an Army base despite 'defund the police' agenda - "Gotham’s far-left public advocate Jumaane Williams, who’s running to become the state’s next governor, has pushed to slash funding to the NYPD and Department of Defense. Yet he traverses the city with an NYPD security detail and he lives on a US military base where he enjoys free, around-the-clock security... Anyone who steps foot on the garrison must go through security checkpoints and submit to a background check, a requirement that led to the detainment of an illegal immigrant who was trying to deliver a pizza in 2018. Even so, Williams has pushed for “stopping ICE” from enforcing the country’s immigration laws. Why does Williams live on the base when so much of what it represents is antithetical to his beliefs? The answer, according to a rep, is housing costs: Fort Hamilton offers relatively cheap housing to a sliver of in-the-know civilians... Williams, in his position as the city’s public advocate or ombudsman, is provided with an NYPD security detail like the mayor, comptroller and other local politicians. “I feel like it’s a situation where regular citizens are not allowed to defend ourselves, and people like our elected officials can. What I would say to the elected officials is if you’re so anti-police and so anti-gun, then you should give up all of those privileges that allow you to protect yourself. “I’m not upset that he gets to protect himself on a military base as long as the citizens of the city can also protect themselves, whether it’s through private security or our police department, which we pay taxes for”"
What Does Defund the Police Really Mean? - The Atlantic - "In the fall of 2016, a journalist popularized a catchy binary to describe the bizarre behavior of Donald Trump and the effect he had on his rapturous followers. Supporters of the then–Republican presidential nominee, Salena Zito wrote, take Trump “seriously but not literally.” Meanwhile, his detractors, including most of the mainstream press, “take him literally but not seriously.”... Maybe I’m making the same mistake, but I am relieved to see now that I am no longer supposed to take liberal activists and politicians literally either. The airwaves and websites—even the newspapers, what’s left of them—have been overloaded with experts and journalists acting as interpreters for their left-wing brothers and sisters hollering from the barricades. They take the straightforward words of the activists and translate them into the soothing tones of the op-ed and the think-tank chin-wag. They serve as kind of a reverse version of Key and Peele’s Obama Anger Translator, the hovering id who bluntly expressed the passion that allegedly lay behind Barack Obama’s phlegmatic demeanor. To take the most recent example, we are learning that “Defund the police” does not mean defunding the police. This will be a relief to many, many millions of Americans. The cry has been taken up nationwide over the past 10 days, from one street protest against police brutality to the next. Last weekend it became the occasion for public condemnation of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. He appeared at a protest in his hometown to confess his shame over “my own brokenness, my own failures” and also the failures of his city’s police department. All well and good, said one of the protesters. (Not in those words.) The mayor’s brokenness aside, the relevant question was: “Will you defund the Minneapolis Police Department?” After a pause to make a slight adjustment to his drooping face mask, Frey said, “I do not support the full abolition of the police department.” “All right,” replied his questioner, “then get the fuck out of here.” Which Frey did, through a gantlet of shouting protesters that recalled Cersei’s walk of shame in Game of Thrones. The mayor managed to remain fully clothed. Maybe he can buck up now. Although the protesters explicitly, and without a doubt sincerely, told him they no longer wanted any police in their neighborhoods, more establishmentarian voices suggest we shouldn’t take them literally. “Defund the police” just means moving government money around, taking some from police and giving it to other parts of local government—schools, health clinics, housing authorities—that are more popular with protesters... “For most proponents, ‘defunding the police’ does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety,” Lopez writes, “and police abolition does not mean that police will disappear overnight—or perhaps ever.” These are reassuring words until you dwell on them. That ever rings an unsettling little bell. So the ultimate goal is for police to disappear, “perhaps” at some moment in the future? And note that “defunding” might very well zero out budgets for police, just not for “public safety”—a field that will come to include, by Lopez’s telling, therapists, medics, social workers, addiction counselors, and many other traditionally irenic trades. But … any cops in there? That is, the kind of public employees who arrest bad guys? Lopez is hazy on the point. Maybe bad guys will be zeroed out too. So fear not: “Defund the police” does not mean defunding the police, except when it does, whether next week or in the next decade. One observer who insists on taking the phrase both seriously and literally is Joe Biden. On Monday the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee hastened to let American voters know that he doesn’t like the idea, whatever it is... The literally/seriously conundrum is hard to avoid as the power of radicals increases on both ends of the political teeter-totter. When mainstream Democrats such as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren embraced the catchphrase “Abolish ICE” (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency), they insisted the idea should be taken seriously, if not literally. They didn’t mean they wanted to literally abolish enforcement of customs and immigration laws, just to get rid of the agency that does the enforcing. And Biden himself was recently tripped up by a literal reading of the slogan “Believe women.” Many of his supporters joined him in insisting the words be taken merely seriously, to mean “Believe women, but not Tara Reade.” The number of activists, partisans, and politicians who hop back and forth across the literal/serious divide—saying something with no expectation they will be taken at their word—will only grow this season. The spectacle raises the obvious question of how we should take them: seriously, or literally? The answer, of course, is neither."
Push to Defund the Police Faces Headwinds in Some Poor, Black Neighborhoods - WSJ - "an increasingly vocal number of business owners, community leaders and residents say they are tiring of calls to defund police departments, viewing protesters largely as outsiders unwilling to do the hands-on work they say is required to improve Black communities. Black leaders in other cities have pushed back against activist demands to shrink or abolish police departments... Lance Williams, a professor of urban community studies at Northeastern Illinois University, said opinions likely depend on how closely people are affected by neighborhood violence. A person living in a safer part of Englewood may like the idea of cutting police budgets, while neighbors on a more dangerous block probably worry about what will happen with fewer police. “Not everybody from the community is the same,” he said."
Liberalism is just virtue signalling about something that won't affect you, while ignoring the harm you're causing to the people you claim to care about
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The normally bright students at the University of Chicago held a sit in demanding the end of police on campus. I can only assume that sexual assaults and drunken brawls are now a thing of the past in this enlightened age. Instead of arresting the students the officers locked the doors at closing, locked the bathrooms, prevented pizza deliveries, and every half hour loudly reminded the students that they were trespassing and violating social distancing requirements. The protestors responded by reciting Nikki Minaj lyrics. After 20 hours of the 24 hour protest the last protestors left."
Philadelphia man fatally shot one of three men trying to steal his car - "The shooting victim was identified as Satario Natividad, 51, by grieving relatives who demanded charges for the gunman, who was questioned by homicide detectives. “He did not have to come out and shoot him,” one of Natividad’s lifelong friends, Tanya Dunn, told the paper. “It was a car! All he had to do is call the police. … You don’t shoot someone out in the street over a car.”"
I thought the US was supposed to defund the police and people were supposed to police their communities. So why would he call them?
If the shooter isn't charged, SJWs are going to blame "racism" and "white supremacy"
The White House’s slipshod claim that Republicans are defunding the police - The Washington Post - ""Republicans spent decades trying to cut the COPS program — which, again, is public record.”"... We often fact-check claims in which huge spending bills are reduced to one cherry-picked expense out of thousands. In this case, there’s not even a line item to attach to the White House’s claim that Republicans are trying to defund the police."
California woman shot dead after stabbing cops serving eviction notice - "Harrowing bodycam footage shows the moment a San Diego woman was shot dead by cops serving an eviction notice — after she went ballistic and stabbed an officer. The newly released video shows Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Bunch knocking on the door of 47-year-old Yan Li at the Acqua Vista Condominiums on March 3... Li had also threatened her complex’s managers and a maintenance worker with a knife a day before... a deputy is heard shouting “bean bag” before firing the less-than-lethal weapon at Li, who is standing by the bedroom. But the projectile fails to incapacitate the woman, who proceeds to charge at the deputies and officers, who are seen retreating to the hallway outside the apartment in the ensuing chaos. In the pandemonium, several cops are seen stumbling to the floor before shots are fired and Li falls face down as one officer is heard shouting that he was stabbed. The wounded cop was treated at UC San Diego Medical Center"
Clearly we need to abolish the police and make housing free
The US seems to be the only place where people attack the police then are supposedly victims when the police defend themselves
Robbery beatdown videos heighten MPD staffing debate - "disturbingly violent videos of recent downtown robberies are made public, causing business owners to speak up. The surveillance video is brutal. One shows a group of people on the Target Field Plaza start punching a man, then jumping on him, stripping off his pants and stealing from his pockets, throwing a potted plant on him, then running over him with a bicycle. "I don't think I have ever seen anything like what I saw at Target Field," said Ken Sherman, owner of 7 Steakhouse and Sushi on Hennepin Ave."
After pushing ‘defunding,’ Seattle mayor wants to pay new cops $25k bonus - "The police union for the Seattle Police Department blasted Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for granting up to $25,000 hiring bonuses for police officers as part of a last-ditch attempt to fix staffing shortages brought on by the defund the police movement and the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that she has imposed."
More than a dozen Chicago cops turn their backs on Mayor Lori Lightfoot - "More than a dozen Chicago police officers have turned their backs on Mayor Lori Lightfoot after one of their own was shot dead and another gravely wounded... 'It's a very sad and tragic day for our city,' added the Democrat, who proposed cutting $80 million from the CPD budget amid 'defund the police' demonstrations last year. The proposal was later scaled back and Lightfoot has denounced the 'defund' movement, but Chicago's police union still issued a vote of 'no confidence' in the mayor earlier this year."
Facebook - "Yep. It appears that they are removing all of the police altogether and replacing them with unarmed social service agencies. This can either be a mind-boggling success and paradigm changer, or a "I told you kumbaya doesn't work" moment in the making."
Comment: "I work at a state hospital as a forensic psychiatrist. Somehow the first thing we do when a patient gets severely agitated is to call the hospital police (the alarm system calls them automatically actually). Sure, we try to resolve the situation clinically while police is on their way but I would not want to work there if there was no hospital police... It seems to me that this is even more true out in the community where there is the possibility of people having weapons etc."
Seattle lacks enough cops to probe adult sex assaults after cuts - "Nearly two years after Seattle led the way in defunding the police, the Washington city’s force is so understaffed, it did not assign a detective to investigate a single case of a sex assault on an adult last month... The depleted department now only has four detectives in the squad handling sex assaults, nearly all dedicated to child abuse cases... “The Seattle Police Department sexual assault unit is not at all investigating adult sexual assault reports or cases unless there was an arrest,” one police department source told the station. The lack of manpower even means people reporting sex assaults are sometimes routed to an automated telephone hotline designed to handle non-urgent crimes such as stolen checks, the report said. Seattle’s council in 2020 voted to slash the police budget and cut officers’ jobs as the city saw some of the most troubling Black Lives Matter protests in the US, including a deadly cop-free “autonomous zone.” The 1,281 deployable officers the force had at the end of 2019 were slashed to just 958 at the end of last year, after the cuts... The city’s new mayor, Bruce Harrell, in February called for more police, partly blaming the early defunding and cut in manpower for a troubling surge in crime there. However, KUOW’s anonymous sources also blamed the moderate mayor for pushing the already widely stretched manpower into meeting his campaign promise of cracking down on “visible crime.” They claimed that an Alternative Response Team that largely helps break up homeless encampments has seven officers, nearly double the number of detectives in the sex crimes unit."
Clear proof that the police are misogynistic and need to be defunded more
Camden, New Jersey's Police Were Disbanded, but There's More to the Story - "I saw a slew of media outlets hailing Camden's County Police Department as a potential model for urban locales experiencing conflicts between their residents and police... the city's 140-year-old police force was terminated. And with a skeleton police crew operating in the city, Camden that year experienced a record number of homicides: 67... In 2010, Camden had roughly 77,000 residents; today, the number is closer to 70,000. In addition to fewer people, there are also fewer public housing complexes, less affordable housing, and fewer Section 8 offerings within city limits. There is also a widely held suspicion among Camden residents that violent crimes are going unreported in media and reclassified at department headquarters as nonviolent offenses. This is on top of the spike in abuse-of-power allegations against the CCPD since its inception and the beatings of residents captured on camera and viewable on YouTube."
Did Camden 'Defund' Police? No. - "In the coming days, you will see Camden, N. J., held up as a shining example of the miraculous effects of “reimagining policing.” This supports the narrative that achieving racial justice requires us to defund the police, reallocating law enforcement dollars to more useful and compassionate social programs... Step one was busting their police union by disbanding the force in 2013. At the time, the cop cartel had pumped up average annual costs per officer (including extraordinarily generous fringe benefits) to $182,168. At that monopoly price, poor Camden could afford to employ just 175 cops, and during peak nighttime crime hours only a dozen might be on patrol. But laying off the union cops and then rehiring many as county employees reduced costs to $99,605 per officer, enabling lots of new hires while keeping total expenditures roughly the same. Within a couple of years, Camden’s force exceeded 400 — a little over 50 cops per 10,000 residents, about triple the national average for similarly sized cities. So Camden did not “abolish police,” as some of the more radical voices in the current debate claim, but actually employed more police — and more law enforcement. As the now-retired chief who led the transition explained, understaffing had made his city force a “triage unit going from emergency to emergency.” Staffing up enabled more proactive policing (including the use of some surveillance tools that civil libertarians consider problematic). That made policing in Camden not just more cost-effective but better overall, incorporating training, rules of engagement, and accountability protocols otherwise unaffordable or unacceptable. While its approach has been branded as “community policing,” a great deal of Camden’s crime turnaround came courtesy of what looks like an application of “broken windows theory” (that treating small signs of public disorder can head off larger problems)... That monopolies do not merely overprice their products but otherwise abuse their customers is no secret, of course. Thanks to the eponymous board game, even children know monopolies are the devil. We tolerate them in labor markets in the (often erroneous) belief that for-profit employers hold so much market power that it is necessary to fight fire with fire. But even as he encouraged unionization in the private sector, Franklin D. Roosevelt deemed public employee unions “unthinkable and intolerable” because they might “obstruct the operations of government.” That they do. FDR’s primary worry was the possibility of crippling strikes by police, teachers, or others, but strikes were often precluded in the legislation allowing government workers to “organize.” It turned out, however, that strikes are unnecessary to win generous wage and benefit packages and ultimate job security in the public sector, since unions can deliver money and blocs of votes to the elected officials with whom they will be negotiating contracts. Ka-ching. Beyond policing, labor monopolies have made many public-school systems both scandalously ineffective and extraordinarily expensive. Students in strong-union states have lower proficiency rates than those in weak-union states; restrictive labor contracts have a negative impact on academic achievement, particularly for minority students. One recent study found that, nationally, this reduces graduates’ future earnings by over $200 billion annually — with the greatest effects among nonwhites. The problem for reformers, however, is the awesome political power of these monopolies, especially in large, deep-blue cities. Given the vote blocs and money the unions wield, elected officials are loath to challenge them in any meaningful way. Until and unless they do so, the ongoing demonstrations for greater racial justice may lead to mostly symbolic change — as they have too often in the past."
Liberals love unions - except police unions. The cope is that they only protect them from legal accountability (when teachers unions do the same. They also hate broken windows policing, so)
After Police Reform, Crime Falls In Camden, New Jersey - Bloomberg - "Camden’s violent crime rate in 2017 remained dire enough to place the city at number four on Neighborhood Scout’s annual list of America’s most dangerous cities... The numbers themselves can be potentially misleading: Homicide rates, for example, aren’t necessarily a complete measure of urban violence. Just because fewer people are dying from gunshot wounds doesn’t mean fewer people are getting shot: It could also mean they’re getting better treatment, faster... The national experiment in community policing is young, and the available data pool is small. “We just don’t have good data on how changes in policing produce changes in these kinds of outcomes,” he said. “[W]hat we haven’t had until now is a comprehensive test of all that in one place—Camden allows for an anecdote about that.”... Five years after launching Camden’s reforms, Thomson is quick to agree that the city’s public safety improvements have not been a unilateral effort. Investments in the local economy, workforce development, and education have gotten offenders off the streets. An aggressive razing campaign removed blighted abandoned properties that once housed drug dealers and users. Mayor Moran says they have invested $8 to 10 million in the demolition program so far, and he plans to continue eliminating stash houses this year."
Why Camden, N.J., the Murder Capital of the Country, Disbanded Its Police Force - "For Camden residents, the influx of additional police has taken some getting used to. Officers are making more traffic stops and issuing tickets for minor violations, such as tinted windows and obstructed license plates. They’re citing bicyclists for failing to have a bell or other audible device on their bikes. Even pastor King expressed frustration over being pulled over five times within a month for, among other things, driving with a broken headlight during the day. Many locals view the citations, which they say were never before enforced, as harassment. Police, however, say the city’s most egregious offenders also commit these types of minor violations. Armed robbery suspects, for instance, often drive cars with tinted windows. Drug dealers deploy lookouts on bikes... There have been other clashes. The makeup of the newly expanded force is more suburban -- and much more white -- than the old city police department. More than two-thirds of the former department’s officers were minorities; they now account for about 43 percent of sworn personnel in a city that is 95 percent minority... The key to bridging any divides between officers and city residents, Thomson says, is increasing interaction. “When a cop works hand in glove with them to fix the problems that are keeping them from sleeping at night,” Thomson says, “they don’t care what the color of the skin of that officer is, what the accent is in his voice or where he grew up.” Accordingly, the department has placed a major emphasis on a community policing strategy. Officers routinely walk the beat, listening to residents’ concerns and hosting Meet Your Officers events to further engage residents -- things they couldn’t do before with such a limited force... By and large, residents remain roughly evenly divided over the still-young department."
From 2014
Looks like "racism" is the recipe to reduce the murder rate, and "community policing" requires funding the police more
Black Leaders Call For NYPD To Bring Back Recently-Disbanded Anti-Crime Unit As Murder Rate Soars - "Black community leaders are calling for the New York Police Department (NYPD)’s Anti-Crime Unit to be re-established due to the massive increase in murders and shootings throughout the city... “Babies are not supposed to be wearing these in a coffin,” said Adams, as he held up a pair of toddler shoes."
We must vaccinate children against covid because children are not supposed to die. But fighting crime is racist
As murders surge, Democrats find a new message: Fund the police - "New York pivoted from slashing almost $1 billion in police funds last year to adding $200 million this year. Oakland, California, boosted its police budget in June by $38 million after last year setting a goal to cut it by $150 million. Austin, a liberal bastion in conservative Texas, this year passed its largest-ever police budget under pressure from state Republicans over rising crime. Last year, Austin had diverted $150 million in police funds to other priorities. In Washington, Bowser asked the city council last month for $11 million to hire 170 new police officers after a series of shootings. The council agreed to fund 40 officers...Voters reject cutting police budgets by large margins, polls show. A USA Today/Ipsos survey last month found that about two-thirds of respondents believe crime is worsening and that 7 in 10 support bigger police budgets. Only 22% said they support defunding police."
Brian Benjamin on Twitter - "I support the movement to defund the police because I believe that there are parts of the NYPD budget that are not essential for public safety."
New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin resigns after arrest in campaign finance fraud investigation
Meme - "Daily Gondor
potions recipes middle earth gardening trinkets.
Moria disbanded its guard force and is now beautiful. Why Elves don't visit it anymore?
Grima Wormtongue
Known for its rich history, generous hospitality and exotic drum performances, Moria is no longer visited by travellers as Elven irrational biases are laid bare
Local performance bands, known for their signature track "Drums in the deep" have failed to bring more visitors in. Experts remain confounded, but more research is needed"
Woman swinging baseball bat and screaming 'Defund the Police' arrested outside Capitol amid protests - "A woman who was screaming 'Defund the police' and swinging a baseball bat outside the Capitol on Friday has been arrested, photos from the scuffle show. She was detained by law enforcement while climate protesters swarmed the White House on the final day of a week-long program of anti-fossil fuel demonstrations. The woman, identified as Olivia Romano, 25, 'appeared agitated'... A Twitter account appearing to belong to a 'Liv Romano' has a post about today's protest. 'Today's the day. Headed to #WashingtonDC to protect our Indigenous Water Protectors & allies being illegally arrested by @POTUS @JoeBiden Secret Service for peacefully protesting. This s**t cannot stand. We The People are taking back our power,' @liv_romano wrote... An accompanying photo shows a woman with similar features to Romano making a peace sign with a hand that was also wrapped around the handle of a baseball bat. The Twitter bio claims she's a co-chair of the Maryland Green Party. Past election records show a 'Liv Romano' unsuccessfully running for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018"
What the left claim is "peaceful"
Do All Black Lives Matter? Or Just Some? - "Nationally the toll on black lives from violence is shockingly disproportionate. The data from 2019 show 7,484 homicides of African-Americans, compared with 5,787 homicides of whites. That we have become used to this discrepancy doesn’t make it any less awful: African-Americans form only 13 percent of the population and yet comprise 54 percent of homicide victims. If you look at black men alone, it’s even worse. They comprise less than 7 percent of the population and a whopping 46 percent of the murder victims. Black men, in other words, are over six times more likely to be killed than the general population — and young black men face even worse odds... the disproportion for African-Americans killed by civilian shootings is almost twice as skewed as that for those killed by cops. And the scale of it is on an entirely different level. In 2019, 243 black men (including only 13 unarmed black men) were shot dead by cops. In comparison, a whopping 7,484 were killed by civilians... Yes, I know many now insist that abolishing or defunding the police is not their real agenda. And for some, that may be true. But the record is quite clear: abolition of the police and of incarceration was exactly what many BLM activists and critical race theorists demanded, and still demand. It’s what the Minneapolis City Council voted for last June. It’s what Ilhan Omar explicitly demanded. It’s what the autonomous zone in Seattle enforced. It’s what BLM’s DC branch explicitly endorsed. It’s what the newly elected congresswoman Cori Bush supports. It’s what was painted on the streets of DC in letters large enough they could be read from an airplane. Abolition, in fact, is integral to critical race theory, and its view of the police as mere extensions of “white supremacy”, even when police departments are often very racially diverse or majority black, and run by black police chiefs... A Gallup poll this summer found that “61 percent of Black Americans said they’d like police to spend the same amount of time in their community, while 20 percent answered they’d like to see more police, totaling 81 percent... So mostly white leftists last summer campaigned for something a hefty majority of actual African-Americans oppose. And, of course, it is the African-American community that endures the murderous consequences. The notion that the cops are universally reviled in the African-American population is just as false. In a Vox/Civis analysis poll, 58 percent of black Americans said they have a favorable opinion of their local police"
Black lives only matter when they can be used to shit on white people
If Black lives matter, don't simply reform policing — dismantle the system entirely - "The system of brutality, rooted in the origins of policing — patrollers trained and paid to monitor and harm Black people who dared to wander off the plantation, who dared to escape torture, who strolled in the city without a pass, or who just wanted to stay alive during the eras of enslavement and following emancipation."
We're still being gaslit that no one wants to abolish the police
