Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Shocking, but not surprising

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Verified, but limited!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Everybody saw this coming.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Reality always wins in the end.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

All this crying. this is why i don’t click on stuff.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The revolution will be supervised.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Well, except the wingnuts. fuck those guys!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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Crazification Factor

The Answer To Charlie Pierce’s Question Was Answered Before He Asked It

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This morning The New York Times reported a story on the rise of Hispanic Republicans in the Rio Grande Valley with a special focus on the Latina women who are leading the rise. Charlie Pierce, from his shebeen at Esquire caught the crazy that was clearly visible from orbit:

So the story ably tracks a genuine political phenomenon, and certainly one that’s worth watching going forward. But this is 2021, and these are Republicans, and sooner or later, there’s a serious bustle in the hedgerow.

Elisa Rivera, 40, said she had voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016, but did not understand the fierce reaction against Mr. Trump. “I was following along the family tradition, my dad is a hard-core Democrat, my father was really for unions, and I thought the Democrats defended the union,” Ms. Rivera said, before adding: “But then I started to research myself and found out the Democrats are supporting witchcraft and child trafficking and things like that, things that get censored because they get labeled conspiracy theory.”

He then concludes with:

If you think the Republicans won’t weaponize this thinking, and if you think it won’t work, I have a couple of first-term members of Congress I’d like you to meet. It’s just so damned exhausting.

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The Black PSYOP Comes Home To Roost: The National Security Implications of Today’s DOJ Raids on Giuliani and Toensing

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So About That Third Party Spoilers Thing... The Libertarian Presidential Candidate And A Possibly Rabid Bat Edition

Now that the news has broken that the DOJ executed search warrants at Rudy Giuliani’s home and office, as well as for Victoria Toensing’s electronic devices from her office in DC, here’s what I think is going under the water line. This is connecting the known, through open source reporting national-security dots. It is not a legal analysis of what the warrants and their execution means in terms of potential criminal prosecutions. For that, I recommend Ken White, who tweets as Popehat. His excellent legal analysis is in this thread. And Ryan Goodman’s excellent analysis in this thread, which has a much more national-security approach to the news.

Back in October 2019, I laid out what Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and her husband Joe DiGenova were doing in Ukraine, especially in terms of where the national security and political implications overlapped. And this context is important to review and keep in mind in regard to today’s news. Pay specific attention to the second and third parts of the operation:

That larger operation, which is a domestically focused Black PSYOP, has three lines of effort, each with multiple parts, and they all are now interconnected.

1) The Ukrainian deliverable.
A) The real deliverable wasn’t manufactured dirt on the Bidens. Rather, it was getting Zelensky to go on CNN to announce the opening of an investigation into the Bidens, because CNN is a mainstream news outlet and is in opposition to the President in its reporting. As soon as that happened, the President’s team would have campaign ads running 24/7 with this. They’d be pushing the reporters they often use, or who are primed for this type of cheap high like Ken Vogel, at mainstream outlets to get all over Zelensky’s announcement, thereby further laundering it and disseminating it through mainstream and legitimate outlets.
B) The fallback, when Zelensky wouldn’t play ball, was to have Hannity interview Shokin – the disgraced, corrupt prosecutor who was forced out under pressure from the US, EU, the IMF, and others. From the reporting over the past two or three days, Parnas and Fruman and Giuliani were all going to Vienna to arrange for this to happen the next night, which would be the night after Parnas and Fruman were arrested. It was also the night after Barr both returned to the US from his “fact finding trip”, met with the SDNY, and then had dinner with Rupert Murdoch.
C) The Romania and China gambits are also fallbacks. The President’s senior advisor for trade issues, Peter Navarro refused to answer CNN’s Jim Sciutto’s questions yesterday about whether the PRC had been told that in order to get a trade deal they had to manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden. I think it is reasonable to conclude that his refusal to answer should be taken as a yes. NBC/MSNBC had new reporting on Hunter Biden and Romania earlier this evening.
D) Barr’s criminal investigation is another fallback here. In this case it turns the DOJ into the propaganda laundry.

2) The Firtash initiative. Firtash wants off house arrest in Vienna and out from under the extradition order to send him to the US to face the Federal crimes he’s been indicted for. The reason Firtash wants this done is because he’s Putin’s man in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. If Firtash can get back to Kyiv he can then once again try to take over Ukraine’s natural gas sector, suck it dry of profits, and fuck up its operations, which will force the Ukrainians to buy natural gas from Russia while removing Ukrainian natural gas as an alternative to Russian natural gas for the rest of the EU market. This all benefits Putin, who is Firtash’s krysha (roof/ceiling) in the Russian mob. Just as he is for every other one of these oligarchs aligned with him.
A) Firtash’s efforts weren’t going very far, so he fired his US attorneys and hired Toensing and DiGenova. They then hired Parnas to do their translation work despite it being reported that Firtash and most of his staff speak fluent and/or functional English.
B) Firtash was laundering manufactured dirt and conspiracy theories about the Bidens, about the Democrats working with Ukraine to steal the 2016 election, etc through Parnas and Fruman and Toensing and DiGenova to Giuliani. Giuliani who was being paid/worked for Parnas, but also somehow also Parnas’s boss.
C) Toensing and DiGenova are also working for free to assist Giuliani with manufacturing dirt on the Bidens.

3) The lift Russian sanctions initiative. Here’s where it all ties together, by laundering these conspiracy theories, especially that the Democrats and the Ukrainians, in conjunction with DNI, CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ, conspired to steal the 2016 election by running a false flag (maskirovka) operation to make it look like Russia was actually conspiring with Trump, his campaign, Republicans, and major conservative movement organizations to steal the 2016 election, it provides a fig leaf for Trump to order the lifting of US sanctions against Russia that went on after the seizure of Crimea and the invasion of Donbass and were expanded as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A) Manafort, through his attorney, was feeding Giuliani this conspiracy theory from jail and then prison.
B) This provides cover to pardon Manafort and Flynn and several others.
C) It was reported today that DiGenova and Toensing are the attorneys representing the conspiracist masquerading as an investigative journalist John Solomon who was (finally) just fired from The Hill. And here is where #3 wraps back into #1. Solomon was laundering all of these conspiracy theories, from Uranium 1 to the Democrats conspired with the Ukrainians, the DNI, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ to frame the Russians for trying to steal the 2016 election in order to steal the 2016 election for the Democrats to the Biden bullshit.

A couple of final points. Giuliani and Toensing and DiGenova are now claiming that Parnas, Fruman, and now, I suppose, Solomon cannot be deposed, questioned, etc by investigators since they were either working for Giuliani and/or Toensing and DiGenova or are represented by them and therefore everything they know is either attorney-client privilege or attorney work product. So you can’t ask Giuliani about what Toensing or DiGenova are doing. Or what Parnas or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova about what Giuliani, Parnas, and/or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Parnas and Fruman what Giuliani or Toensing or DiGenova are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova what Solomon is doing. You can’t ask Soloman what DiGenova and Toensing are doing. You can’t ask Firtash what Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Parnas and Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Firtash is doing. And because Giuliani claims all of this is on behalf of his client, the President, you also can’t, because of executive privilege, ask Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman who are working for him and who he is working for, and/or Toensing and DiGenova who are assisting him pro bono and employing Parnas anything because they are all covered from having to divulge anything or answering any questions under executive privilege.

If this sounds familiar, it is similar to how Roy Cohn handled his legal representation of the organized crime families he represented in New York. They’d hold all their business/decision making meetings in his dining room with him present or with him on the phone in case of an emergency, so it was all covered under attorney-client privilege. Nobody, from any angle of inquiry, can say nothing about nothing and no one because everything is privileged.

It is important to note that John Solomon, who was laundering disinformation and agitprop through The Hill and Fox News is referenced in the warrant for Giuliani and Toensing’s phones/electronic devices.

(Do read Goodman’s entire thread)

Now that we’ve refreshed ourselves on the context, here’s what I think is going on:

  1. Parnas, recognizing that his only way out is to give up people more important, more powerful, and more well connected than him, which is basically everyone, agreed to cooperate early on and has given the Feds what they need to work their way up the network.
  2. All of this is going to wind up connected back to Firtash, who, again, is Putin’s guy in Ukraine’s natural gas sector, and, likely, several other pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarchs.
  3. A Federal magistrate seems to have decided that the Roy Cohn gambit – that every one of these people’s communications regarding Ukraine was covered under attorney-client privilege because they were working for Giuliani who is Trump’s lawyer or for Toensing who is a lawyer and was assisting Giuliani for free as he was assisting her for free while working for Trump for free – is not in play here. Hence, the specific reference to communications regarding John Solomon and others.
  4. Trump world has just an astounding level of connections to pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarchs. The Philadelphia lawyer they brought into the campaign to advise on Pennsylvania’s recount rules is the attorney for Igor Kolomoiski. So is Bruce Kasowitz, who is one of Trump’s other personal attorneys. Just off the top of my head, Giuliani is tied to Kolomoiski, Derkach, Firtash, and several others. Toensing is tied to Firtash. And there’s plenty more that would take too long to list.
  5. I expect that the Feds will play the bigger fish off of each other as the investigation moves forward. If part of that is playing Toensing off against Giuliani, she’s going to eat him alive to save her, her husband’s, and her son’s tuchases as she’s still very sharp, despite being way through the map, whereas Rudy is Rudy.

If you want in on the “will Rudy Giuliani be able to stay off of Sean Hannity’s show tonight” action, please see Ann Laurie on the mezzanine level between the concession stands and the merchandise shop. While you’re waiting to get in on the action, I recommend the nachos and the Balloon Juicers hockey jersey. Pro tip: spring for the authentic one with the tie down strap, it comes in handy in a fight…

Open thread!

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Tucker Carlson Is Now Trying To Do Reflexive Control On Live Television In Real Time

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Reflexive control is defined as:

Reflexive control is a “uniquely Russian” concept based on maskirovka, an old Soviet notion in which one “conveys to an opponent specifically prepared information to incline him/her to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action”.[ii] That is, reflexive control is a sustained campaign that feeds an opponent select information so that the opponent makes the decisions that one wants him/her to. Methods of reflexive control include spreading false information, leaking partial information at opportune moments, and projecting a different posture of oneself than what may actually be the case.[iii] The goal of reflexive control is to ‘control’ the ‘reflex’ of the opponent by creating a certain model of behavior in the system it seeks to control.[iv] The most fundamental way to do this is to locate the weak link in the system and exploit it through moral arguments, psychological tactics, or appeals to specific leaders’ character.[v]

Unlike the Russians, Carlson isn’t trying to control his opponents. Rather, he’s trying to control his viewers. To see if he can actually get them to do what he’s telling them to do.

This is how authoritarian demagogues with political ambitions leverage platforms that disseminate information set the conditions for mass atrocities. The most recent examples are, of course, Radio Rwanda and the Myanmar ethnocide against the Rohingya.

This is incredibly dangerous. It is incredibly reckless. And it is likely to produce very, very, very bad results.

Open thread!

 

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LTC (ret) Grossman Has Grossly Misrepresented Himself, His Service, and His Qualifications

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A while back one of my closest friends, who is a SWAT sniper, asked me about Grossman, specifically because I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with US Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF). I said I didn’t think he was SOF, especially not a Green Beret as I’ve never seen a Green Beret not mention which Special Forces Group they’ve served with in their professional bios. After yesterday’s post I emailed a friend who’d have a better idea and he responded that Grossman was conventional infantry who’d done the Ranger course, served only in conventional line units, and never saw combat. This was fully confirmed when the Marine vet who tweets as The Warax tweeted Grossman’s DD 214, in this case the National Archives Form 13164 (NA 13164), which is what is released when someone makes a FOIA request for someone else’s military service record:

Fixing American Policing In the 21st Century Means Fixing the Training and Education Problem

Fixing American Policing In the 21st Century Means Fixing the Training and Education Problem 1

For the uninitiated, LTC (ret) Grossman is a conventional infantry officer who only ever served in conventional Army assignments. He attended and completed the Ranger course in 1979, meaning he is Ranger tabbed. He never served in the Ranger Regiment, he was never a Green Beret/Special Forces. He wasn’t even Army Special Operations despite listing himself in his bio as a US Army Ranger. He was not branch qualified as a major and not selected for battalion command. He has no combat experience or deployments at all. This guy has never killed anyone, at least not while in uniform.

Failing to properly vet people’s actual credentials, experience, and expertise as opposed to their claimed credentials, experience, and expertise is a HUGE problem in the US. I’ve spent years fighting this problem within different US Army programs. I’ve managed to expose more phony PhDs than I can shake a stick at. Unfortunately, some of them are dug in and protected and can’t be gotten rid of. So I’m not surprised that law enforcement has the same problem.

Grossman is a fake and a fraud in terms of what he is promoting himself to be versus what he has actually done and is qualified to do.

He’s not a psychologist in the sense that anyone who is a psychologist in the civilian world of practitioners or academics would use the term. He’s qualified to be a high school guidance counselor. Don’t take my word for it, here’s how the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Counselor Education describes the masters in counselor education:

Graduates of our program will be prepared to:

  • Pursue employment as academic advisers, career counselors and student affair officials in colleges and universities
  • Pursue doctoral studies in counseling psychology or other related fields
  • Pursue certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor or School Counselor (with additional requirements / coursework – see Program Details for more information).

He’s not Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) in the sense that anyone within the various communities that make up Army Special Forces would use, he’s just Ranger tabbed. This is an accomplishment in itself as the course is brutal. It makes him Ranger qualified. But to those who haven’t served or haven’t worked with the Army/military, the way he presents the qualification is meant to imply something that he is not.

He has no experience in combat as he’s NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN IN COMBAT! He has no experience, that we know of, in actually killing anyone. And certainly not while in uniform in the US Army. He certainly has no law enforcement experience.

LTC (ret) Grossman is a combination of the death of expertise and a dearth of expertise pretending to be the expertise in order to run a very lucrative grift at taxpayer’s expense on both the front end (what he gets paid to teach this bullshit) and on the back end (when municipalities have to pay out in the lawsuits because law enforcement practiced what Grossman preaches).

I’ve placed a correction and an update to yesterday’s post to reflect this new, accurate information regarding Grossman’s misrepresentation of himself.

Open thread!

Just in case anyone decides they want to know who this Adam L. Silverman guy is to say such things, here’s my credentials:

I have a PhD in criminology and political science (awarded by the Department of Political Science with a specialty in Criminology) from the University of Florida. I have taught in several criminology programs and was the undergraduate and graduate core curriculum – epistemology, research design and methods, theory, and statistics – coordinator in an applied criminology and security program. In 2007 I was recruited to go to work for the US Army. First in a supervisory contract position, which included my deployment to Iraq in 2008. This was followed by a civilian mobilization under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act of Title IV of the Federal code, where I served as a supervisory GS 15 assigned as the Cultural Advisor to the Commandant and Professor of Culture, Strategy, and Policy at the US Army War College, as well as the staffer acting as the Deputy to the Director of the Army Culture and Foreign Language Directorate. During this assignment I served, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor to the following: the Commanding General of US Army Europe, the Commanding General of III Corps, the Director of the Institute for NCO Professional Development, the Branch Chief of Civil Affairs. I also provided subject matter expertise support to SOCOM, CENTCOM, EUCOM, Army Special Operations Command, Army Central Command, the 101st Airborne Division, SOCOM’s Civil Affairs Capability Based Assessment, SOCOM’s Joint Civil Information Management Test Development, JIEDDO, and the Near East Desk at the Department of State. My subsequent civilian mobilization was with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East and my assignment was as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. Following that I served as Senior Fellow for Special Operations, which was a contract position, at SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University. My training to work for the US Army as a cultural subject matter expert was overseen and conducted by retired Green Berets, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations Soldiers.

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Breaking: Israeli Neo-Fascist LeHava Is Wilding Through Jerusalem

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The Israeli extreme right, neo-fascist movement LeHava organized a night of violence for this evening in Jerusalem.

LeHava is one of the most recent incarnations of Meir Kahane’s Jewish supremacist movement and is represented in Knesset, thanks to Bibi normalizing them in his quest to remain in power and out of prison, by the Jewish Power Party.

Noga Tanopolsky, a journalist covering Israeli and Palestinian issues, has been covering the events in Jerusalem in real time on her Twitter feed. She’s in Jerusalem right now. Here’s some of it and since this is tweet heavy, I’m going to put a good chunk below the jump:

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For Our Readers In the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul Area: Be Prepared, Be Alert

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The Chauvin trial is in closing arguments. For our readers in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area, you need to be following events outside the courtroom as the case goes to the jury and a verdict is reached and returned.

This isn’t me saying this, it is the City of Minneapolis saying it!

Resident safety

Stay informed and create a plan to be safe during the trial.

Be prepared

Create a hazard plan

Residents should create an all-hazards plan. All-hazards means learning to how to protect yourself, your family and your business during and after a disaster. This could include a tornado, transportation accident, snowstorm, civil disorder and more.

  • Create a plan and emergency kit.
    • You should be prepared to either shelter in place or evacuate, depending on the circumstances.
    • You should plan for disruptions to normal services for up to 72 hours.
  • Create a communication plan.
  • Document and insure your property.
  • Know how to receive and understand alerts and warnings.
  • Take steps to safeguard documents and valuables.
  • Conduct a home security review and make any recommended improvements.
  • Know and practice alternate routes to and from key locations.
  • Review insurance coverage with your insurance agent.

Explore guides and templates for creating your plan

I haven’t seen an equivalent alert for St. Paul regarding the Chauvin trial and its outcome and aftermath, just the general St. Paul resident hazard information page, but what Minneapolis put out should cover you regardless.

Especially because the Boogaloo Boys have been planning to use the outcome of the trial to engage in their own brand of mayhem. From The Minneapolis Star Tribune 18 JUL 2020 (emphasis mine):

Solomon, who manages the maintenance division for a local property management company, called himself “an armed redneck” who joined the Boogaloo movement after dabbling in right-wing conservatism, libertarianism and militia activity. The police bulletin that named Solomon noted that he had a “III%-er” militia sticker on his truck.

In an interview, Solomon said his allegiance rested with the Boogaloo movement and that he had neglected to remove the armed militia sticker. Like many Boogaloos, Solomon also said he now recants his past support for President Donald Trump. Now, Solomon views himself as an “anarcho-capitalist.”

Both Solomon and experts who have tracked the movement add that it was initially miscast as an offshoot of far-right white power extremism.

“Our whole thing is, we believe in freedom and absolute liberty for everyone regardless of race, creed, sex, gender, whatever; we don’t care,” Solomon said.

J.J. MacNab, a fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said the confusion can distract from the movement’s true beliefs and plans, particularly “accelerationism,” which holds that the political order can be dismantled through increased civil disorder.

“Just because they’re not white supremacists doesn’t mean that they aren’t antigovernment extremists wanting to take down cops and the rest of the government,” MacNab said. “What they want to do is to kill cops, to kill politicians, to start chaos so that their anarcho-capitalist world can emerge. It’s accelerationism. It’s just not white supremacist accelerationism.”

In Minnesota, Solomon said, Boogaloo Bois rarely gather in groups of more than 20 or 30. More common are training exercises in smaller “squads.” That’s what Solomon said is happening now in anticipation of another looming wave of unrest. Solomon predicts one or more of the four fired officers charged in Floyd’s death will escape conviction, sparking fresh chaos.

“Round one is going to look like a trip to Disney World, and we’re just trying to get ready for that,” Solomon said.

Have a plan. Stay informed. Stay alert. If you need it, follow your plan!

Open thread!

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A Quick Word On What We Know About the Police Shooting of Daunte Wright

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I’ve just finished watching the very, and not surprisingly, combative press conference held by Brooklyn Center, MN leadership regarding the police shooting of Daunte Wright. This included watching the body cam footage that they released and played. That video is below from Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.

WARNING, THE VIDEO IS GRAPHIC!

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described it as an accidental discharge, but that is both an antiquated and not exactly accurate description. The more accurate term, though equally banal term, is negligent discharge. It was negligent because it is clear that, as Chief Gannon described, the officer that shot and killed Daunte Wright was intending to use her taser. This is clear from the audio where she says:

I’ll tase you! I’ll tase you!

Get clear! Get clear!

TASER! TASER! TASER!

BLEEP!!! (ALS: this was either Fuck, Damn, or Shit) I shot him!

I shot him!

You can hear this in the audio in the video above. And you can see she’s holding her service GLOCK and has brought it to bear on Wright, not her Taser! And that she drops her gun/puts it down as soon as she realizes she’s shot him, which, in the video, is between the “BLEEP!!! I shot him! and “I shot him” as Wright drives off as he’s bleeding out from the wound.

The Tasers, as you can briefly see when the one on the officer trying to cuff Wright comes into focus on the video, has a yellow grip. The color is to help law enforcement distinguish it from their service weapons, regardless of make, to prevent shootings like this from happening. You can see the taser on his left hip (weak side) between the 52 and 54 second mark of the video above. It is holstered for a right handed cross draw, so the butt of the grip is facing out from the front of his body. I have no idea where the female officer’s Taser was holstered or how it was set up for draw, but it is usually they holstered on the opposite side of the body from the service firearm to prevent this from happening.

This doesn’t justify the shooting, it just explains it.

There were three officers on site and this quickly escalated from him being cuffed to a couple of seconds of scuffle before she decides to escalate to using “less than lethal” force, which, because of negligence in confusing her GLOCK with her Taser, turned into lethal force.

Daunte Wright was pulled over for expired tags, which is a running problem in Minnesota because of pandemic related delays in processing renewals. Expired tags are a misdemeanor offense. When they ran him in the computer, they got a return that he had a warrant for failing to appear after being sent a summons for a court appearance on a different misdemeanor. Neither of these things would seem to necessitate any form of escalation. Wright is not heard threatening the cops. He’s not moving towards them when he pulls away from being cuffed after the female officer intervenes while one of the two male officers is trying to cuff him. I’m not even sure why she would escalate to the Taser.

I’m going to make a semi-informed guesstimate, however. I would put money on the fact that this officer has attended a continuing education class with Bill Lewinski* and the absolutely bullshit training from his Force Science Institute, which teaches law enforcement to immediately escalate to the highest level of force lest they be killed by any interaction with the citizenry. Lewinsky created his own course of study and “field” within psychology when he did his doctorate and Canadian courts won’t allow him to provide expert testimony anymore because he is a “self proclaimed authority” on law enforcement use of force. Lewinski’s “police psychology” and his expert witness testimony justify every police shooting on the basis that police cannot wait to employ force lest they be harmed or killed. And if she didn’t take one of Lewinski’s continuing education course, then she had one on “killology”, which is equally garbage. Or one of the other similar courses that have turned too many law enforcement officers into “shoot first and don’t answer questions later” responders.

I write this as someone who has taught hundreds of law enforcement officers as a former criminology professor, as well as conducted continuing education for Federal and state law enforcement on how to conduct Engagement to deescalate situations in order to be more effective. And as someone who is a member of the Nassau County, NY Detectives Association**. Until or unless law enforcement training – both the initial entry education and especially the continuing education – is revised to remove the bullshit junk science that justifies immediate escalations of force, this is going to continue.

I expect that the community response is going to escalate, especially because some idiot prevented most of the news media from attending the press conference, so the mayor, the city manager, and Chief Gannon were predominantly taking questions from community activists.

I’ve now seen far too many of these types of press conferences and whoever is in charge of crisis communications for these departments are terrible. Too many of these pressers are combative and/or uninformative. This one was both and did far more harm than good.

The bottom line is that Daunte Wright is dead. For, at best, a pair of misdemeanors. Even if he had been adjudicated guilty of both of those misdemeanors, neither of them carry a sentence of death. Daunte Wright is dead because a cop made four errors in a matter of seconds. The first was to escalate the arrest as Wright was being handcuffed. The second was to decide the escalation warranted applying her Taser. The third was to draw her service GLOCK when, apparently, she intended to draw her Taser. And the fourth was to then pull the trigger on the GLOCK even though a GLOCK’s grip and a Taser’s grip feel very different. Daunte Wright was extrajudicially killed under cover of law because one of the three responding officers to a potential misdemeanor traffic stop.

Two things need to happen now. The first thing, which is general and applies everywhere, is this has to stop. The second is that a thorough, independent investigation needs to take place to figure out why this officers made several operational and tactical errors in short order that resulted in her shooting and killing Wright. And the lessons learned from that independent investigation need to be applied so this doesn’t happen again.

I expect that Brooklyn Center, MN is going to be a powder keg until explanations are forthcoming.

Open thread!

* Lewinski’s work has been raised in regard to Officer Chauvin’s defense in his murder trial.

** During my year teaching criminology in New York, prior to leaving academia and going to work for and with the military, one of my students was the then Deputy Commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department. He took my graduate research design and methods and graduate statistical analysis classes. I provided a small amount of analytical support to him and his department after he’d completed my classes and my membership in the Detectives Association was his way of thanking me. The membership got me a lapel pin, which is the crest of the Detectives Association, a money clip that has the crest of the Detective Association, and a membership card. Interestingly, he encouraged me to leave academia. He said to me one day: “What the hell are you doing wasting your time doing this for? What you can do is needed and can be put to better use elsewhere.” Two months later I’d quit rather than fix student grades and three weeks after that when I was recruited to go to work for the Army I took that job. And that ultimately led me to you lovely people…

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