In Louisiana, Police Reform Led Directly to a “Torture Warehouse”

Salamendacious@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 391 points –
In Louisiana, Police Reform Led Directly to a “Torture Warehouse”
slate.com

A new lawsuit filed in federal court last month alleges that the Baton Rouge Police Department ran a “torture warehouse” where members of its Street Crimes Unit strip searched, beat, and otherwise humiliated people and then released them, often without their being charged with a crime. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, the FBI opened a civil rights investigation into the allegations of misconduct at the now-shuttered warehouse known as “the BRAVE Cave.”

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Can you show me one of these Republican police reform bills? I must have missed it.

Well it's something, can't argue against that. I understand why it failed, though, it's a reform bill in name only. It doesn't even take half measures, just offers some cash if states so choose to enact their own reforms.

I'm not a politician but I'll pretty much always take something over nothing. I think that this was largely about optics. Democrats did not want to have to combat Republicans saying that they did police reform when Democrats couldn't get it done when they were in control. So I get it. By killing it before debate could begin they avoided publicity but also any chance at improving it.

I think it’s more like democrats didn’t want to pass 5% police reform because if they do, republicans will use that to prevent any further reform from ever happening. It will be a combination of

  1. “We already did police reform and the problems solved” OR
  2. “See, police reform doesn’t work”

So I can see why they want to hold out for a better solution. And it’s not like the police aren’t doing everything to prove the democrats right on a daily basis so the dems case just gets stronger and stronger the more these cops out here fuck around and show who they really are and what they’re capable of.