Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, moments after shocking police video was released showing an Illinois officer fatally shooting Sonya Massey after she called police fearing a home intruder.

In his first public statement since dropping his bid for re-election, Biden said the shooting of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by white Sangamon county sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, in her home in Springfield, after a dispute over a pot of boiling water, “reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not”.

Biden, who is recovering from Covid at his home in Delaware, said Massey, “a beloved mother, friend, daughter and young Black woman … should be alive today”.

      • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        so that makes it okay for the Democrats to sit on it because that is way better than actively participating?

        think we went through this with Germany already not just Nazis but the quiet people in power who never spoke up

          • octopus_ink
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            2 months ago

            I haven’t so much as heard them talk about the issue in I don’t even know how long. (Aside from Biden saying we should give cops MORE funding) But now, 3ish months out from the election…

              • octopus_ink
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                2 months ago

                What are they trying to do? I see a soundbite. An empty platitude. D doesn’t have the votes. No one, including Biden, thinks this bill will now get passed because he made this statement.

                • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldM
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                  2 months ago

                  And them saying it last month, six months ago, 12 months ago, or 18 months ago would have been different how?

                  • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    The person you’re replying to is a contrarian troll. No matter what you say, they’re gonna blame Democrats and not Republicans. Because they are a troll. stop, feeding the troll.

                  • octopus_ink
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                    2 months ago

                    It would have been pretty hard for me to call it empty platitudes for votes, aside from the 1 month ago window. But what would really cook my goose would be if they’d said it 18 months, 12 months, 6 months, 1 month, 3 months, 9 months and a shitload of other times ago. The way you message on issues that matter to you.

      • octopus_ink
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        2 months ago

        Funny, I don’t remember bringing up Republicans at all. I already expect nothing good from them.

        The Republican candidate is a real policing iconoclast

        Guess I should excuse any sort of inaction from Dems then. Good point!

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It’s just what we’re stuck with until we get rid of first past the post

            • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Call or write your reps and tell them you want it; more specifically there is the proposed Fair Representation Act which looks pretty good on paper to me. There’s also a non profit lobbying group called FairVote that is seeking Ranked Choice voting in federal and state elections.

          • octopus_ink
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            2 months ago

            You are talking about voting. I’m already voting for them. Aren’t I at least allowed to criticize them while also voting for them, or is that a bridge too far?

            • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldM
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              2 months ago

              Democrats tried to pass the GFJPA in 2020, then again in 2021, and then Republicans took the House. All three times it was blocked by Republicans.

                  • octopus_ink
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                    2 months ago

                    It is when it’s not paired with calls for oversight regarding how that training is used and specific results of said training.

                    I’m starting to sympathize with the 2A folks who are like “why more gun laws when we don’t enforce the ones we have” but in a different way.

                    What training (using only this singular current example) would you say should be required for an officer of the law to know he shouldn’t shoot a woman in the face with her hands up from 10 + feet away when he was under no threat? Do you need training to know that’s wrong? Training beyond what every single person given state power to kill should receive at an absolute minimum?

                    All that heartache and pain, and the final net result was Biden calling for more police funding.

                    And before you get into your don’t blame dems thing again, I routinely post the meme below for how unreasonable people are about blaming Democrats. I get it.

                    But you’ll forgive me for being a bit cynical when I hear not a damn peep from anyone in the administration about police reform all the way from “Biden says fund the police” to “Hey it’s 3 months before the election, cops killed someone again (which has happened many, many times since then), so NOW we’ve got these platitudes trickling out again.”

                    I get it, here’s the evergreen infographic I post over and over that makes your exact point. But damn I’d like some indication of “give a shit” other than when there’s an election close by.

            • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              You are. I just worry about what one sided criticism might bring for us in November, and I say that while completely agreeing with you that policing reform is needed.

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                2 months ago

                You are. I just worry about what one sided criticism might bring for us in November,

                They could have avoided the criticism by skipping the empty platitude that triggered it. But a sincere thank you for acknowledging that it’s OK to criticize them. (though I’m unsure what one-sided means in this context)

    • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Harris was a cop herself so don’t expect anything to change.

      Edit: My dumbass was misinformed. Harris was never an actual cop.

      • leadore@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        She was not a cop. She was a prosecutor. Are you calling her a bad person for having been a prosecutor? Should no one do that job? Should crimes be tolerated, not prosecuted?

        Who’s going to prosecute this murderer we’re talking about here in this thread? I watched the trial of the cop who killed George Floyd. The prosecutors were fantastic. They obviously cared deeply about what they were doing. That’s why they chose the job. To hold people who hurt innocent people accountable.

      • octopus_ink
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        2 months ago

        Everytime I bring up her past it goes about like you see in this branch of discussion. We’re not supposed to mention it lest the (actual) US left get blamed for criticizing her past history if she loses.

        • tamal3@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Are you accurate when reporting about her history, or are you posting fiction? It makes a difference in how people respond to your comments.

          • octopus_ink
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            1 month ago

            Depends on how you feel about The Atlantic, I guess.

            https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/kamala-cop-record/596758/

            Closing paragraphs of that article:

            I can forgive a politician a vote on a crime bill that looks ill-conceived two decades later, or a too-slow evolution toward marijuana legalization, or even a principled belief in the death penalty, something I adamantly oppose. I find it far harder to forgive fighting to keep a man in jail in the face of strong evidence of innocence, running a team of prosecutors that withholds potentially exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys, and utterly failing as the state’s top prosecutor to rein in glaringly corrupt district attorneys and law enforcement.

            At best, Harris displayed a pattern of striking ignorance about scandalous misconduct in hierarchies that she oversaw. And she is now asking the public to place her atop a bigger, more complicated, more powerful hierarchy, where abuses and unaccountable officials would do even more to subvert liberty and justice for all.

            Also:

            Are you accurate when reporting about her history, or are you posting fiction?

            Hey, no need to be a dick. There’s a huge area of being mistaken or just plain old disagreeing regarding conclusions that exists between “accurate” and “fiction”. Just because I may disagree with you doesn’t mean I’m going to say you have posted “fiction.”