#Nicholls state

[smallcollegebasketball]

This is about one of my long-time mentors, Don Landry. This is really special......

[lesliemeyers]

she can be your angle... or yuor devil

[thoughtportal]

MEMPHIS, TN—In an attempt to quell public outrage over the upcoming release of body-cam footage showing the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols by five of its officers, the Memphis Police Department continued to urge calm Thursday in light of the unspeakable evil they had committed. “I understand that this heinous atrocity beyond the comprehension of anyone with a shred of basic human decency might be upsetting to some, but we are asking everyone to please maintain their composure,” said police chief Cerelyn Davis, explaining that while it was regrettable that officers were mercilessly slaughtering innocents in the streets with complete disregard for their humanity, it was no excuse for causing a big commotion. “This barbaric instance of malice and savagery need not inspire uproar. I pray that cooler heads prevail during this time of unending death and misery being inflicted upon the powerless masses.” Davis went on to insist that any sign of unrest would only give the forces of unconscionable evil an excuse to impose even more wanton suffering on those who have no choice but to endure it.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Sharon Black 

In President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address on Feb. 7, there was one honest moment. Biden said, “I am a capitalist.” Well, he fudged a bit; he should have said, I am a capitalist and a servant to capitalism. But that’s a quibble. Behind all of the rhetoric of “leave nobody behind,” almost everyone — with the exception of the wealthiest 1%, including the arms dealers, big oil and gas, and, of course, the Pentagon — have been left behind.

[nellarw95]

Happy Birthday Natasha 🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

April 4,1979

Buon Compleanno 🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

4 Aprile 1979

[horizonmlm]

Tired of the grungecore and coquette and thinspo people taking hold of the things I love most. Bmth is literally for the trannies the homosexuals the gender weirdos the scenesterz the recovering scemo kids the kids who were spiritually awakened listening to suicide season out of their brothers car because they had to hide the cover of the album from their mom, kids who have braved through the entirety of lads on tour, kids who draw bmth album logos all over their arms as they listen to them on full blast, the ones that reblog those this band saved me 2014 cringe posts unironically. No more of this “UwU tiktok cyfmh gigachad” bullshit. You either put ur middle fingers up if u don’t give a fuck or I’m calling you a poser and spitting in your eyes. Goodbye.

[athleticperfection1]

Nicholls State Cheer

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a State of Emergency Thursday and activated 1,000 National Guard troops in response to ongoing violent protests in downtown Atlanta following a shooting last week near a controversial future law enforcement training site in which a Georgia state trooper was wounded and a man was killed.

The State of Emergency is in effect until Feb. 9, according to the document, unless renewed by the Governor.

The Atlanta protests center around the building of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, nicknamed "Cop City." Protestors have been at the site for months, but on Jan. 18, a protestor identified as Manuel Esteban Paez Teran was shot and killed by law enforcement after authorities said he shot and wounded a Georgia state trooper during a planned multi-agency operation to remove protestors from the area. The trooper was hospitalized and survived.

On Jan. 21, six people were arrested after protests at "Cop City" led to property damage and a police vehicle being set ablaze. Some of the arrested protestors were found with "explosives," Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said. No one was injured.

Kemp specifically referenced the burnt car in his declaration of the state of emergency.

"Masked activists threw rocks, launched fireworks and burned a police vehicle in front of the Atlanta Police Foundation office building," the declaration read, in part. "Georgians respect peaceful protests, but do not tolerate acts of violence against persons or property."

The State of Emergency declaration authorizes the Georgia National Guard to be used in response to continued protests. Activated troops will have "the same powers of arrest and apprehension as do law enforcement officers."

The Atlanta Police Department also told CBS News in a statement that it is monitoring events in Memphis, and protests related to the death of Tyre Nichols, who died on Jan. 10, three days after a violent traffic stop. The five officers involved in the arrest were charged with second-degree murder Thursday. Video footage of the arrest is expected to be released Friday afternoon, officials said.

"We are closely monitoring the events in Memphis and are prepared to support peaceful protests in our city," Atlanta Police said. "We understand and share in the outrage surrounding the death of Tyre Nichols. Police officers are expected to conduct themselves in a compassionate, competent, and constitutional manner and these officers failed Tyre, their communities and their profession. We ask that demonstrations be safe and peaceful."

[gwydionmisha]

Re: Tyre Nichols.

Yes, I've watched the footage and it is legitimately devastating and I suspect the worst thing of this kind I've seen.  I do feel a duty to witness, especially because of what I do in this space.  At the same time, I am deeply concerned about the effect on people of seeing police brutal beat an unarmed, terrified person they had already entirely at their mercy to death.  It took him another three days to die, but this is murder, and I don't think that commentators calling it torture and terrorism and state sponsored violence are wrong.

They did it because they could, and absolutely nothing that young man did provoked it and nothing he could have done could have stopped it.  Those police did it because they wanted to plain and simple.  they couldn't tell him why they stopped him.  They refused to tell him anything he did wrong or why they were arresting and beating him to death about 80 yards from home.  They refuse to produce any evidence of a crime Mr. Nichols could have committed, likely because there is none.

This is what happens when the right to murder with impunity is considered a perk for joining the police.  If free reign to murder is the selling point for a job only monsters will stay in that job.

Police culture is corrupt top to bottom.  It needs to be torn down and something better put in it's place.  (I've written before about what that better system would look like, and places working on a whole community model where poverty and mental health are addressed, where the goal is to prevent crimes of poverty and desperation by meeting people's basic needs, where when things do occur there is mental health and addiction diversion, where justice works on a restitution and rehabilitation model instead of a punishment and revenge model, and the goal for offenders who do real harm is to do what is possible to humanely rehabilitate people if they can be helped.  I do think there are some people it is not safe to release.  I'm not convinced that state sponsored violence behind bars is healthy for us as a culture.  Trust me, I get why my mother wished we had the death penalty in my state for single premeditated murder, but I feel differently.  I'm glad Skye's murderer is sorry.  I'm glad he is doing a good long stretch, but I don't think keeping him in there forever or killing him is right, and I hope they gave him access to mental health services in there.  I hope there was some kind of anger management program.  I wish there was some sort of planning for people like him when they get out.  I'd rather we pay to help violent criminals not be violent anymore than simply brutalize people like him for twenty years and let them loose, because he pretty clearly did need good psychiatric care to learn to live with it, to be better instead of worse when he gets out.  Yes, he's still in there.  I have victim notification, though I suspect we are moving into the parole zone.  do yes, the issue is real and personal and I am still furious Skye isn't here because some idiot decided bullets were better than words, but I'd still rather live under a government that didn't do terrible things in my name.)

I am endlessly furious that tax payer money funds state sponsored terrorism against our own people, that all our hands are stained with blood.  I have believed that the police are just another form of organized crime, since I was old enough to understand.  There are no good cops in a system like this.  There can't be because the ones who go in wanting to change it from with in, generally get fired for whistle blowing or get corrupted by cop culture.

I have been trying to pick which coverage to put up in this space, because I feel like what happened is important for people to know about what happened, but I also don't want to brutalize people with images they are not in the right place to see.  To witness directly or not to witness is an incredibly personal decision and whatever you chose I do not judge that choice.

I intended to post things either early Saturday morning or late Saturday night, but I am wrung out from emotion and the med change and I have had far too little sleep and Friday and particularly Saturday were for more physically strenuous than my body can handle.  I burnt through every spoon I have.  Because of the way I work at this, I was prepping and reading and watching footage and coverage Friday in small chunks in between posting things I'd already prepped, because, honestly, it's not good for me to do things like police murders and mass shootings and wars all at once.  

Sunday, I am going to have to rest.  I have nothing left.  This is a hard limit.  I have an obligation Monday, but I will try to work on getting the Memphis coverage and the aggregate up, hopefully by Tuesday morning bedtime.

I am sorry.

[mannyblacque]

by Darrin Bell

[professional-apotheosis]

Blast off! It's party time,

And we don't live in a fascist nation!

Blast off! It's party time,

And where the fuck are you?

- System of a Down, BYOB

[memenewsdotcom]

Tyre Nichols video released

[commiepinkofag]

AC-a-a-a-a-B, screamed the goat

again, we see the police PR machine & a complicit press present the innocuous, bumbling barney fife ‘we’re here to protect’ trope.

the ubiquitous coverage of the screaming goat has reached an international audience [if the BBC counts in that regard].

it reminds me of the ‘ah, look! cops dance with ice cream’ which should have been ‘two scoops of fuck you.’

__

one of the more recent and disgusting examples of police PR/media collaboration has been the ‘viral’ PR: ‘Police dog in Wyandotte accused of stealing fellow officer's lunch.’ 

this ‘story’ originated from a facebook post by the Wyandotte PD, with an accompanying image edited to appear as a mugshot of a black police dog – named ‘Officer ICE.’

however, i found this posted on a ABC affiliate news website, on the same page as an article about Tyre Nichols’ family pleading for justice and calls for the bodycam footage to be released.  

__

the timing and content of these press releases is no coincidence.

on august 1 2016, within weeks after the series of murders by police of Delrawn Small, Alton Sterling and Philando Castille, the cop PR machine rolled out #copsgiveouticecream. 

one particular headline — ‘these cops pranked drivers by giving them ice cream instead of tickets’ — fell under the ‘feel good’ category, much like ‘officer ice’ and case of the screaming goat.

text beneath the image reads: "You can see the sense of relief when the officers explain this ‘violation’ to the anxious drivers who all got a big laugh out of it." 

i can see intimidation, fear, injustice…

‘no cameras!’ — nor accountability

social media has changed the playing field in the propaganda war for policing. like in the instances of feel good news, cops only like social media when it works in their favor. 

the fbi has warned about ‘cop baiting,’ ‘viral attack’ and potential liability. [Social Media and Law Enforcement: Potential Risks; leb.fbi.gov] 

unsurprisingly, this particular article expresses an overarching sense of fear and need for control:

Empowered by social media, cop baiting presents a crisis for law enforcement. Questionable videos of police officers are popular on sites, such as YouTube, and can be financially rewarding to malefactors who file claims or lawsuits. For some individuals, a citation or jail time is worthwhile if a cash payoff results. Cop baiting could become so common that officers may not know whether they are facing a situation that is legitimate, staged, or exaggerated for someone else’s benefit. This puts officers’ personal and professional well-being at stake.

so strange, their fave defense for surveillance [search, et al] isn’t mentioned: ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry…’ 

copspeak + providing those good feels

i posted the link back in 2016, but i find it’s still relevant: 

Copspeak: 7 Ways Journalists Use Police Jargon to Obscure the Truth [fair.org]

FAIR’s CopSpeak series is good for examining the media-PR symbiosis: 

“The linguistic gymnastics needed to report on police violence without calling up images of police violence is a thing of semantic wonder."

privatization of public policy has helped drive much of this. [Meet the Company That Writes the Policies That Protect Cops; motherjones.com], [Police Policy For Sale; theappeal.org/]. 

the lexipol rabbithole can take you through an insular cop-cult[-ure] & convenient shopping for all of your militarized force needs.

‘Police Chief Magazine’ run by a 503c lobbying group, International Association of Chiefs of Police [IACP], reveals some PR tactics in ‘Media Coverage: When It Doesn’t Work Well… and When It Does’ [policechiefmagazine.org]

The Secrets to Success “It is the role of the public information office to push the positive stories to the media,��� says Sergeant John Roth, Glendale Police Department’s public information officer (PIO). His office publicizes the department’s Coffee with a Cop events, as well as other newsworthy items, such as when major cases are solved. … 

it is imperative to develop a rapport with media representatives. He makes a point of meeting with them and establishing relationships built on trust.

‘trust us,’ said at gunpoint… 

[btw, national police week 2023 has begun]

[indizombie]

According to data collection by Mapping Police Violence, black people in the US are approximately three times more likely to be killed in comparison to their white counterparts... Frank Sykes, a former Tennessee deputy sheriff, who is also African American, said that abusive behaviour comes down to how officers are trained - something that caused him to leave the force. Officers "will judge a person off a look because you've been trained if 'they look this way, they're bad'", he said. Until Americans take a closer look at how officers are taught, he said, these tragic incidents of police brutality would continue to happen. "It's bigger than just the personal officers, it's something that within the whole process of training, that keeps pushing these things to happen," he said. "And it's going to continue creating the same outcome of us vs them."

‘Tyre Nichols: Memphis reckons with police killing by black officers’, BBC

[rabbitcruiser]

Clouds (No. 899)

New York City