How do those good cops plan to hold bad ones accountable?

D’anne Witkowski writes the Creep of the Week column for Between the Lines, the Michigan gay newspaper. In the print edition dated April 1, 2021 the creep was Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas. I specified this was the print version because I did not find the same article online, so I don’t have a link. Hutchinson got the award for vetoing the bill that bans gender affirming care for transgender people. Wait, wouldn’t killing a bill like that be a good thing? Yeah, but he vetoed it knowing the legislature needed only a simple majority to override the veto. So this was merely grandstanding. This, of course, is not the only bill approved or coming up for a vote in states across the country. Witkowski wrote:

The purpose of this bill, and all the copycat bills like it across the country, is to distract from the vitally important issues Republicans are either fine with – like racism – or don’t care about – like COVID-19 – or want to stop – like voting.

Another one of these bills is before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs. The witness giving testimony was Kai Shappley. She is a transgender girl, 10 years old. She referred to an anti-trans bathroom bill of a few years ago as she said:

I’ve been having to explain myself since I was three or four years old. Texas legislators have been attacking me since pre-K. I am in the fourth grade now. I do not like spending my free time asking adults to make good choices. ... It makes me sad that some politicians use trans kids like me to get votes from people who hate me just because I exist.

The bill is written so that if Kai’s mother Kimberly approved of gender affirming care she could be accused of being a child abuser. Kimberly urged lawmakers not to force her to leave the state. Yesterday I wrote that Biden has said he is open to negotiations with Congress over his infrastructure bill. EJ Dionne of the Washington Post said there is a second component to negotiations:

“We will know how serious Republicans are when we see a meaningful counteroffer. Until then, there is no negotiating partner for the White House.” @JRubinBlogger GOPers can’t complain about Biden acting without them until they tell us what they’d do.

In a way the GOP has told us what they would do: nothing. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed the inevitability of “vaccine passports.”

The idea that certain venues or means of travel may require you to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, during a deadly worldwide pandemic, is hardly an out-there idea. It's the fastest possible path to returning to "normal," by allowing the known-safe population to fill convention halls, take vacations, attend in-person college classes, and otherwise fill American business coffers with sweet, sweet post-pandemic spending sprees. The idea of allowing the Americans now immune (mostly!) to the virus to again gather together, however, also implies that unvaccinated people who may themselves carry and spread the virus will be left out of those first reopenings. Pandemic denialists are of course particularly irate over that perceived new infringement on their "freedoms" to infect however many Americans they damn well want to, and colloquially calling documents to prove vaccination a "passport" was probably bound to put a United Nations-slash-"globalist"-slash-illuminati tinge to the effort for that very large proportion of the public that sees conspiracy in every coffee cup. ... Proof of COVID-19 vaccination looks like it will become a commonplace requirement among state institutions and private business alike in the coming months because, again, it is the only plausible way to lift emergency pandemic restrictions against large-scale gatherings that have currently shuttered tourism-dependent industries, trade shows, and everything else involving large sums of money provided by large crowds of people.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed all the expenses the unvaccinated will cause the rest of us to pay.

The costs of caring for these vaccine denialists who spent months pooh-poohing the vaccines that were made available free to nearly everyone by the summer of 2021 will be passed on to all of us in the form of higher insurance premiums, and probably higher taxes as well.

We will have to deal with new variants of the virus, perhaps getting a COVID shot into an annual event, like the flu. There is also the cost of damage to the economy. People who get sick are usually away from work for several weeks.

So the next time you hear a Republican declaring he or she has no intention to be vaccinated, be sure to ask how they intend to pay for your increased insurance costs. And you might want to offer them the option of setting up an auto-pay, so the checks to you won’t stop when they get sick.

Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

If you’re going to talk about white evangelicals not getting the vaccine you have to talk about apocalypticism and the Mark of the Beast as tools of political fearmongering and how the church is part of a coalition to protect white, patriarchal, aristocratic power. After all these years, after watching white evangelicals treat Trump as a messiah, after watching the cultish devotion, it’s time to stop treating this like it’s just a religion and isn’t part of a much larger political project.

Curtis Gilbert tweeted:

The Minnesota police officer charged today with killing Daunte Wright isn’t the first cop to mistake a gun for a Taser. It happens every year or two. Departments have tweaked policies to reduce the confusion, but one thing hasn’t changed: Tasers are still shaped like guns.

Leah McElrath responded:

There is no reason for all police to be armed with handguns and live ammunition. There are many other effective tactical options that are less lethal. For certain situations, armed officers with specialized training could be called in, like SWAT teams. There are other ways. The reality is the only way to prevent police in the US from shooting people to death is to disarm them. Again: other tactical options exist that are effective and less lethal. I am talking only about live ammo and handguns no longer being in possession of every street cop. We recruit police by appealing to people who want to be warriors, not peacekeepers or public servants. Then we equip them accordingly. The “blue line” view sees everyone who is NOT a cop—especially folks who aren’t white—as a potential enemy. Other countries do it differently. And if you’re white and think police violence somehow isn’t your concern, who do you think police are ultimately going to be using all that military equipment against? Hungry, thirsty, scared, and displaced people—with little regard to race. That’s where we’re headed.

Four years ago A.R.Moxon tweeted:

Honestly? I don't want to hear anymore about how most cops are good. I want to hear how those good cops plan to hold bad ones accountable.

And this week:

4 years ago, and I still haven’t heard a peep.

Kay Gilbert replied:

A good cop who sees a bad cop abusing their power and does nothing is a bad cop. Training and enforcement both need to send the message that you can't stand by and see the rules broken, and you'll be praised, not retaliated against, for reporting.

A reply from Al Bundy listed eight cops who were fired or driven to suicide for exposing corruption. Ashley Dye tweeted about the governor of Florida:

DeSantis wants to change how Florida verifies mail ballots by making it law for your ballot sig to match the most recent one on file. But would he pass that test? I spent ... a while ... with DeSantis' signatures for this @scontorno report.

Included are fourteen versions of DeSantis’ signature.