Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/29/minneapolis-ablaze-after-prose.html
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Among those detained Thursday night was a black CNN reporter and his crew.
The arrest was early this morning when when day started to break over there and not late last night. I watched it happen live a few minutes after I woke up.
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Plus this thread:
And before anyone buys the “It’s the protesters being so violent!” narrative
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Hey, Tomi, if the police put all of their “serving and protecting” efforts into wealthy white neighbourhoods, people who live in neighbourhoods where “harassing and flexing muscle” efforts are the cops’ priorities have limited options for how and where they protest that situation.
Put another way, the answer to your question is that this is the system working exactly as intended.
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For sure there are fascists breaking and burning things, damage to be blamed on residents and provoke more violence and destruction.
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Most excessively violent police behavior can be easily explained with steroids abuse. The side effects are very very similar to cocaine’s: aggressiveness, sudden mood shifts, sense of omnipotence, anger outbursts etc. A book called “dopers in uniform” has been written on the subject (no affiliation, never read, just aware of the title). Forcing every patrolling cop to submit for random drugs/steroids tests would probably reduce the problem. And probably save some poor wife from domestic violence too, since there have been numerous reports of that behavior among cops.
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a good riot is always a way to remind everyone what’s at stake.
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Seems like a plausible factor, but white supremacy is clearly a much bigger one.
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Wow. Steroids make people murderously racist… that’s a new one… 
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I said as much in the Teen Vogue post, police purposefully pick out journalists and observers during protests. Safely documenting arrests and protests is an illusion, police can intimidate, harass and even attack at any point for any invented reason.
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Yup. Steroid abuse is a symptom. White supremacy and toxic masculinity are the disease.
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I’d say steroids are a symptom, not the actual disease; THAT would be sociopathy, quite often, mixed with racism and futile rage.
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That cop was probably already a racist bastard who in normal conditions would have made a normal arrest. If he was on drugs or steroids, their side effects might have pushed it into excessive violence and inability to assess the risks involved to the point he lost any control with reality, that is, somebody dying under his knee.
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The whole god damn structure of policing is fucking racist, dude. Stop making excuses.
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That cop has a long history of violent behavior directed at minorities.
Not saying that steroid abuse isn’t involved, but primary blame has to go to the system that has been keeping him in uniform.
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Steroids make regular racists murderously racist I guess.
Or maybe it’s the white supremacist power structure and the total lack of accountability.
Nah, definitely the steroids 
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Absolutely this.
It’s this simple: that cop KNEW what he was doing, at least at some level. The videos make that pretty starkly plain. It was premeditated murder, in my eyes, and he felt he’d get away with it. And sure enough, the waving of blue-clad arms is a blur in the air, as they try to make this go away… -.-’
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When there’s a pandemic on that one of the symptoms is shortness of breath, it’s not kind to post such laughable statements.
Look, I get it. It’s comforting and easier to blame “this thing they do, that is different from me” and say it’s the problem. It’s harder to confront systemic injustices that many of us benefit from. But here’s the thing: racist and gendered violence exist outside of the spectrum of drug use and abuse. They existed before the availability of steroids. They were just as evil.
TW Racial Violence Below The Cut
People have been violently murdering other people in this fashion for all of history. Look at the history of lynchings and organizations like the KKK for something more modern. White people had fucking picnics around the corpses of lynched black people. They ate sandwiches and watched other people die violently, or had a glass of refreshing lemonade after doing the hard work of hoisting a person into a tree by a rope for the crime of having darker skin.
The steroids are not the problem. You could have a chemically clean police force tomorrow and this would still be happening. The problem is with white supremacy, toxic masculinity, the militarization of the police (including US v. Them doctrine) and the carceral state. Take those out (a much harder job, so I can see why it scares you) and steroids would cease to be a problem all on their own.
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