Category: BIG TECH

Council advances plan to dismantle Minneapolis Police Dept

in this June 1, 2020 file photo, an emotional Terrence Floyd, second from right, is comforted as he sits at the spot at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn., where his brother George Floyd, encountered police and died while in their custody. A dispatcher who was …

By Breitbart – 6/26/2020

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis City Council on Friday unanimously approved a radical proposal to change the city charter that would allow the police department to be dismantled, following mass public criticism of law enforcement over the killing of George Floyd.

The 12-0 vote is just the first step in a process that faces significant bureaucratic obstacles to make the November ballot, where the city’s voters would have the final say. And it came amid a spate of recent shootings in Minnesota’s largest city that have heightened many citizens’ concerns about talk of dismantling the department.

The Minneapolis force has come under heavy pressure since Floyd, a Black man in handcuffs, died May 25 after a police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes. Activists had long accused the department of being unable to change a racist and brutal culture, and earlier this month, a majority of the council proclaimed support for dismantling the department.

Doing so would first require amending the city charter. Draft language of the amendment posted online would replace the department with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, “which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach.”

The amendment goes on to say the director of the new agency would have “non-law-enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches.” It also provides for a division of licensed peace officers, who would answer to the department’s director.

Council members who support the change are looking to seize on a groundswell of support for significant policing changes following Floyd’s death. If they don’t get the charter change on the November ballot, their next chance won’t come until November 2021, they say.

“It is time to make structural change,” Council Member Steve Fletcher said. “It is time to start from scratch and reinvent what public safety looks like.”

The proposed amendment is expected to be approved Friday, but that’s just a first step. It goes then to a policy committee and to the city’s Charter Commission for formal review. The commission’s recommendation doesn’t bind the council, but it takes time.

Barry Clegg, chairman of the Charter Commission, said the process feels rushed.

“As I understand it, they are saying, ‘We are going to have this new department. We don’t know what it’s going to look like yet. We won’t implement this for a year, we’ll figure it out,’” Clegg said. “For myself anyway, I would prefer that we figured it out first, and then voted on it.”

Clegg said that to get the proposed amendment question on the November ballot, it has to be finalized by Aug. 21. He said if the Charter Commission took its final action at its Aug. 5 meeting, there would likely be enough time for it to get passed by the full council, go through a veto period, and then, if vetoed, have time to spare for a possible mayoral veto override. Once on the ballot, the measure would go to voters.

Mayor Jacob Frey doesn’t support abolishing the department, a stance that got him booed off the street by activists who demonstrated outside his house following Floyd’s death and demanded to know where he stood.

Frey expressed concerns about the proposed amendment as currently drafted, including whether the change would eliminate police altogether or allow for a police presence going forward. He also said that when something currently goes wrong, the chief and the mayor are accountable — but under the new plan, accountability would be dispersed among 14 people. Frey also questioned whether policing practices would vary, based on ward or other factors.

“There is a significant lack of clarity. And if I’m seeing a lack of clarity, so are our constituents,” said Frey, who has said he supports deep structural change in the existing department.

Fletcher said under the new agency when someone calls 911, there will always be a response that’s appropriate, including the option for a response by employees authorized to use force. But he said the vast majority of calls that police officers currently take will be answered by employees with different expertise.

Miski Noor, an organizer with Black Visions, criticized the proposed amendment for creating a division of licensed peace officers at all. She said it “would give current and former police way too much power to shape public safety in Minneapolis.”

Steven Belton, president and chief executive of Urban League Twin Cities, said the way some council members went forward without a concrete plan is “irresponsible.”

“The problem that needs to be stated up front, from my perspective, is racism. … I’m not sure what they are trying to fix here,” he said.

Don Blyly, whose beloved science fiction and mystery bookstores were destroyed by arson in the unrest that followed Floyd’s death, said if local leaders do something “sufficiently stupid” when it comes to policing, he won’t reopen in Minneapolis.

“There are legitimate problems with the Minneapolis police, but the way the politicians are going about it is just ridiculous,” Blyly said. “They are pandering to a certain segment of the electorate.”

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Video: Terrorized Virginia Woman Being Attacked by BLM Mob is Told to “Call City Hall” by 911 Operator

A Virginia woman and her child were being attacked by a Black Lives Matter mob, so the woman called 911. Her call reached the 911 operator who did absolutely nothing but tell her to “call city hall.”

Tucker Carlson played the 911 call tonight as an example of how our local leaders are not protecting the citizens they were sworn to represent. When it comes down to it, local governments are caving to the mob and telling their police officers to stand down.

Listen to the frightened woman who is in shock when the 911 operator calmly refuses to help her:

There are numerous examples of citizens who desperately tried to reach the police or were attacked in their cars, but no one helped. Here is one from Santa Monica, California:

The victims are being made out to be the enemy. A recent article by NPR claimed people on the “far-right” have been running over people in the street. They cited 50 incidences. NPR would have their readers believe that far-right Americans suddenly decided just to start running over people? Doesn’t it have to do with the frightened motorists like the woman above who gunned it for safety when the mob came for them?

NPR is partly taxpayer-funded, so it’s important for them to be fair and balanced. They’re not. Americans need to know that their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are going to a media outlet that is as biased as CNN or MSNBC. In fact, one of their reporters is a regular on MSNBC. Yamiche Alcindor has been needling President Trump at White House press conferences for months. Should a reporter for NPR be grandstanding for the left?

NPR got caught and apologized yesterday for using the wrong photo. They replaced the photo with one from three years ago! They continued to push the false narrative that “right-wing extremists” are “turning cars into weapons”:

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 11.25.54 AM

NPR didn’t consider that people were frightened by a crowd surrounding their car and attacking them.

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 11.27.05 AM

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Rep. Waters: “Incompetent and Heartless” Trump More Concerned About Statues Than Coronavirus

Just as her broken district begins to recover from riots, looting, and arson, the Los Angeles representative, Maxine Waters denounced the President claiming he “is more focused on saving statues of slaveholders, Confederate generals, and racists, than protecting the health of living and breathing Americans.”

“The United States remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.4 million cases and more than 124,000 deaths. My home state of California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida have seen their coronavirus cases skyrocket in the past two weeks,” Waters added. As the country and markets react to a second “scare” of coronavirus, Waters sidetracked the growing, social plague threatening the United States. The movement flooding major U.S. cities from Los Angeles to New York has caused the torching and looting of generational businesses.

The protests began following the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in Minneapolis under police custody. The phone-recorded video of his arrest showed an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while the man called, “I can’t breathe.” Those three words have become the rallying cry for democrats as they call for defunding the police.

As reported by The Hill, The twenty-nine-year, career politician, Maxine Waters, issued a lengthy statement attacking the President’s focus on condemning the actions of rioters and protestors as historic statues across the country increasingly fall or become defaced. Later this week, Trump will take up the pen to direct law enforcement to prosecute individuals involved in the devastation of federal or state monuments.

“I think many of the people that are knocking down the statues don’t even have any idea what the statute is, what it means, who it is when they knocked it down,” Trump said on Wednesday, in an unrelated press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda, according to NY Daily News.

 

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Progressive Justice: Retail Stores Sue to Escape from New York City

6/25/2020

Famous retailers sue landlords to break their leases and escape from New York City as rioting makes business unprofitable. Is this the Progressive justice protestors demand? With Jay-Z among the business people longing to flee, will Mayor Bill de Blasio still continue his slacker approach to law enforcement? Will New Yorkers call up former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to restore order and prosperity to their beleaguered city?

 

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Seattle CHOP Leaders Tell Protesters to Go Home, Support “Revolutionary” Candidate Joe Biden

Organizers admit violence has ruined Communist utopia.

By Paul Joseph Watson – 6/25/2020

Suggesting that violence has distracted from the movement’s message, Seattle CHOP leaders have told protesters to go home vote for “revolutionary change” by electing Joe Biden.

Far-left Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been occupying the 6 block area of downtown Seattle for weeks, but entirely as predicted it has descended into violent anarchy, with two people being shot in the space of 48 hours over the weekend.

Indications are that the police will return to take back the SPD East Precinct that was ransacked by rioters early next week, prompting CHOP leaders to urge the dispersal.

“The CHOP project is now concluded,” a message posted on the official CHOP Twitter account said. “While we expect a very small handful of holdouts may try to remain in the CHOP no further organizing will be occurring to support this presence and the number on-site will be too small to be more than an annoyance for pedestrians rather than a zonal blockade.”

Andre Taylor, whose brother was killed by Seattle police in 2016, suggested that violence in the area had diluted the message organizers were trying to get across.

“If there was no violence you should’ve stood there for as [long as] you wanted to stay there, but the violence creates a different narrative where the people in authority have to look at it differently,” Taylor told KING-TV.

The message concluded by urging protesters to vote for “revolutionary change” by electing Joe Biden, a strange directive given that Biden is a veteran of the political establishment.

Despite Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan declaring the occupation to be a “summer of love,” violent crime skyrocketed by 300% and residents reported hearing gunshots and the screams of women likely being raped on a regular basis.

After numerous complaints from locals who said they were living in fear of their safety, Durkan was forced to do a 180 and order cops back in to reclaim control.

CHOP, which always felt like some weird chimera of the Burning Man festival and Charlie Manson’s Spahn Ranch, is over.

In summary, the utopian experiment has once again proved that Communism, on whatever scale it is attempted, always descends into violent mob rule.

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Strzok Notes Reveal Biden Knew About Flynn Probe Despite His Denials ‘personally raised the idea of the Logan Act’

CAP

By KRISTINA WONG  – 6/24/2020

Former Vice President and now 2020 Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed months ago that he knew “nothing” about moves to investigate former Trump National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michael Flynn, but newly-released documents proved otherwise.

Biden, appearing in May on ABC News’ This Week, was asked by news anchor and host George Stephanopoulos what he knew about moves to investigate Flynn while he was vice president.

Biden first responded, “I knew nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.”

When confronted by Stephanopoulos that he attended a now-famous January 2017 Oval Office meeting with then-President Obama and other top officials where they discussed Flynn, Biden claimed he understood the question to be whether he had anything to do with Flynn’s prosecution.

Then he said, “I was aware that they had asked for an investigation,” without specifying who “they” were.

“But that’s all I know about it. I don’t think anyone else — look, think about this,” he said, changing the subject to coronavirus. “This is all about diverting attention.”

However, newly-released handwritten notes from former FBI agent Peter Strzok show that not only was Biden aware of President Obama’s order to investigate Flynn, but he had suggested that Flynn had violated the 1799 Logan Act for speaking to then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak as incoming national security adviser.

Those phone calls — just some of hundreds Flynn had with foreign leaders during the transition period after the election — were used as the basis for the Obama administration to continue investigating Flynn and to interview him and get him to admit to violating the Logan Act or to get him to lie and be prosecuted.

Previously released documents showed that the FBI had moved to end its investigation on whether Flynn was a Russian agent until Strzok intervened, based on the calls with Kislyak. That happened right around the time of the Obama Oval Office meeting.

Strzok’s notes were released Wednesday, after an outside prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to look into the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Flynn, U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, found the notes and handed them over to the DOJ.

Flynn’s defense team, led by lawyer Sidney Powell, then filed a motion for the release of the notes.

The notes also show that Obama had directed the FBI to have the “right people” look into Flynn. They also show that then-FBI Director James Comey said Flynn’s phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak were “legit.”

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