It’s so strange living in NYS, because like, Buffalo is having a comeback (good) and we’re fairly progressive (good) and we just got paid parental leave and got rid of the tampon tax and such (good), but we’re run by the shadiest people and you’re right, we probably always will be.

Percoco is only getting in trouble because he fucked something else up. Upstate NY politics is just corrupt. It’s been corrupt since (at least) the early twentieth century and it’s always going to be that way. The end.

When people, including our city’s police chief, who is a remarkably restrained guy who has managed to create a pretty diverse police force in a very racially divided urban area, gives a radio interview casually equating violent protestors and terrorists with Black Lives matter organizers, I really don’t know what to…

Where are you getting these numbers? Breitbart? There have been 750 so far this year. 1150 last year. Even if that’s ok with you, it’s clearly not ok with quite a few Americans.

Some of it seems to be a matter of training. You see pictures of Ferguson police and Rio gang members, and the gang members have better trigger discipline. We keep giving police military surplus - since we have an unsettling amount of that - but not regulating how to use it.

What police in other countries do? Use their training, backup and non-lethal weapons?

In a just society those two things go hand in hand. Just societies don’t execute unarmed people in the street, regardless of their crimes. They give them a trial and punish them according to the law.

I’m sorry, what were you saying?

“Protesters don’t have a right to injure loot and put the safety of others at risk[.]” There isn’t one person in this country, protester or not, who has the right to injure, loot, or put others at risk. Our constitution, civil, and human rights protect each and every one of us from that.

Police violence isn’t down because police violence was never measured before. The Washington Post started a police shooting archive less than 2 years ago, the first in the country. It counted nearly 1000 police killings in its first year. That’s more people killed by police than any gang in the country. 3 people a day…

What is really amazing is how little people want to hear about the difference between how the actual military behaves and the police behavior at this point. I mean if trained soldiers will put out more effort to not kill an enemy soldier than our police will put into not killing an unarmed citizen what the hell does…

According to witnesses he was unarmed, though. So yeah, that seems to be more or less what happened.

idk, I feel like surplus military gear and tear gas is worse than dogs and hoses

Here’s a fact, there’s a video from Oklahoma that’s shows a man with his hands up in the air being called a ‘bad looking dude’ from several hundred feet up in the air by someone in a helicopter.

I don’t know the situation on the ground but it’s kinda funny to see police in body armor and weaponry acting as if they’re being attacked by wild animals when approached by a guy in a pony tail and a woman holding a sign. When did the police become so skittish?

The fact that the police will act this way, with the whole world watching, is beyond disgusting.

Apropos of nothing in particular...Isn’t it delicious how the noun ‘haters’ is now a part of respectable speak? As a class of persons their existence is now beyond dispute.

I really like this idea. I’m fluent in French and the most I regularly do with it in the US is when I’m trying to get out of a conversation with a stranger. Can’t chit chat if I don’t speak English!

Telling off trolls sounds so much classier in French. Next time someone is mean to me, I’m going to say “à tous les haters, je vous souhaite sincèrement... un prompt rétablissement” then put on sunglasses and glide away.