Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ opeds.

It's easy to lose track of the other failure of leadership costing American lives.  The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. is now over 112,000 and is predicted to reach as high as 143,000 by June 27.  New cases are averaging about 20,000 per day. Keep in mind the numbers are almost certainly an undercount, due to limited testing, reporting cause of death as "pneumonia," and lack of reporting by some Trump- allied governments (e.g., Florida).  A new study estimates that shut downs prevented 60 million coronavirus cases in U.S.  Now, in some states, the initial delay in taking action and limited testing, followed by a rush to "open" the economy, is likely causing the virus to spread aggressively again, especially in the South and Midwest.  In those regions, small cities and rural communities are showing the highest per capita infection rates (some linked to meat processing plants or penal institutions).  It turns out there's a heavy price to pay for incompetence -- and this is only part of the damage it's wreaking on our country.

Ruth Marcus, columnist and deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post, writes that the problem with policing isn't about "a few bad apples":

Every day — every night, to be more precise — more bad apples roll before our eyes. The video is horrifying; the camera unflinching. So, more Americans — white Americans, even Republican Americans, a majority of Americans except, it seems, those who work behind fortified barricades for President Trump — have come to understand: The problem of policing is not individual apples, but bushels full of them. It is a diseased tree.

A diseased tree with three infected and intertwined branches that each must be lopped off. The worst, by far, is systemic racism in police departments nationwide — and here perhaps the arboreal metaphor fails, and the disease is in the trunk itself, if not in the soil of our national history. The second is the embedded culture of brutality and tolerance of brutality among police officers. The third, connected to the second, is the militarization of police departments, with combat-style equipment designed for battlefields and heedlessly deployed in American streets, that reinforces this culture of violence and, as Trump would have it, “domination.”

Those who were inclined, who had the distance — and, yes, the privilege — to be inclined to give officers and departments the benefit of the doubt can no longer soothe themselves with the illusion that these are random, unrepresentative incidents. Technology in the form of omnipresent video cameras has conclusively ended that debate. Those who are white can no longer rest comfortably in the fiction that this is a problem confined to the other. The affected communities will no longer tolerate the murderous knee on the neck, nor should they; the ensuing outrage consumes us all. As it should. As it must.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, the City Council is moving forward to defund the police department and replace it with a new model:

Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council said Sunday that they are planning to disband the police department. The veto-proof majority said they want to replace the police department with a community-based model of public safety. “Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to re-create systems of public safety that actually keep us safe,” Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said.

The council members made the announcement that they were committed to disband the Minneapolis Police Department through the budget process at a rally Sunday afternoon. “It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Bender said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.” Jeremiah Ellison blankly said what the goal was: “This council is going to dismantle this police department.”

If they succeed, Minneapolis won't be the first city to disband its police department and replace it with a community- based system.  Camden, NJ, might offer a good model:

The entire force of cash-strapped Camden was disbanded a few years ago and reconstituted with a new mentality drilled into its officers: community service.

Out went the urban-warrior attitude. In came the guardians. The new departmental policy said officers would no longer be judged by their number of arrests and tickets. 

Instead, they were told to patrol on foot, mingle with residents, and build a reservoir of trust to draw upon in a crisis.

Residents of Camden, located near Philadelphia, say it's been successful. Murders are down by two-thirds since the year before the police reform, and overall violent crime is down nearly half.

The new police chief didn't just participate in a Black Lives Matter protest last month. He helped lead it. 

Today in Houston, private funeral services will be held for George Floyd, and Joe Biden is offering support in a decent and sensitive way:

Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden will travel to Houston on Monday and meet with the family of George Floyd, two weeks after Floyd’s death in police custody triggered nationwide protests over racial injustice, aides said.

Biden is expected to offer his sympathies to Floyd’s relatives and record a video message for the private funeral service scheduled to take place on Tuesday in Floyd’s hometown of Houston, two aides said. He is not expected to attend the service to avoid any disruption to mourners that could be caused by his Secret Service protective detail.

Meanwhile, Bunker Boy is meeting with police officials today.  'Nuff said.

We close with our usual strong recommendation to get over to Infidel 753's link round- up to get a fuller picture of what's going on around the country and the world.  (We also strongly suggest you read his meditation on liberation!)