Look, you’re asking that these guys do their job at a level above half-ass…

It might be reasonable to have an instinct to be astonished that MPD still requests no knock warrants, such that MPD has had contemporary reasons to reflect on being the worst urban police department in the country [and I don’t think that last part is a hyperbolic characterization, AT ALL].

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/investigations/innocent-mn-family-held-at-gunpoint-in-swat-no-knock-warrant-raid/89-5732a3df-5863-43d5-a546-2567d43a0f2f

But I wouldn’t be astonished…

Police departments are bro paramilitary units accountable to almost no one, and they don’t change unless civilian administration wrests control. Which doesn’t happen even when they think they are doing it. The higher policy question of no-knocks by MPD is in the realm of Minneapolis City Council, and this group of people is so scatter shot / scatterbrained, that they never asked the question post- Breonna Taylor.

Other jeers:

The judge – I’m sure he’s been a judge a long time and can count on one hand the amount of warrants he’s read and rejected.

The detective – “used best available info”. BS. You get some sense these guys have stopped doing remedial gum shoe detective work of the kind that might observe the suspect at the residence…which would have basically obviated the need for an overnight no-knock even had you spotted him there. It’s lazy, and the truth is it’s a lazy class of workers.

Anoka County – yeah, of course there’s never any skepticism when the big city wants you to bust someone’s house up.

Dondo – he’s not actually a reformer.

The South African ME at the Chauvin trial

*** So, this first thing might interest my long time reader who likes Africa and South Africa. Or not.

During the trial I was BSing on Twitter, and I made a reply in someone’s thread about the irony of Chauvin’s defense using an old Afrikaner medical examiner as an expert witness to say Floyd OD’d. Cuz ya know apartheid and South Africa racsim, get it.

Well I got about 200 replies from around the world telling me the guy, Fowler, was British diaspora South African and not Afrikaner. And I’ve never gotten more than 5 replies on anything in my life.

Touchy, touchy, people…

*** There’s one hyperlocal (to say, not Powerline) conservative blog left running in town, and my thing has been to visit there and poke them in the eye about their shit wisdom such that it’s all entirely racialized / racist. So, they believe the jurors were compelled to vote guilty because they feared riots. I said, it was an overwhelming prosecution and a crap defense, and if it would have been a better defense they could have swung a contrarian personality in the juror to force a mistrial, because inevitably there was such a contrarian personality among the 12.

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-trial-juror/index.html

Pull Quote: When it came time to deliberate, Mitchell told Campbell that the hours were spent primarily arguing with one person raising doubts as to Chauvin’s guilt.

“I felt like it should have been 20 minutes,” he said.

Just to say… I was right about that too, I know what I know.

***Oh, no doubt that Irish pulmocologist in Chicago was gold.  https://twitter.com/webster/status/1387385685083000837

CSI Stillwater: The Daunte Wright protests

Ladies and germs, the appropriately named Kimberly Beers:

https://twitter.com/nvlevy/status/1386539241505796097

Who my wife graduated with.

I think it’s OK to protest in front of Orput’s house.

The ask here, that Potter be charged with murder, is not legit. Its a manslaughter, not a murder.

Alex Colome: still bad

https://www.startribune.com/twins-trying-to-rebuild-alexander-colome-s-confidence-but-he-has-another-setback/600050989/

Pull quote: “Physically, he feels great. Actually, his stuff is in a pretty good spot right now,” Baldelli said.

I don’t believe that his stuff is actually in a pretty good spot right now. I believe his stuff sucks, which explains why he’s terrible.

I tellya, another thing might be going on though. Kenta Maeda gave up what, 3 home runs last night? And the dudes had the body language of teeing off on those pitches like they were swinging a 1 wood. Two were sliders. And the same thing happened to Tyler Duffey Monday night on his quite decent slider. And Cody Stashak was in one of the games the other night, and he’s a slider guy and he threw a bunch, and they just didn’t look crisp.

Over the winter MLB supposedly changed the ball to benefit pitchers, but I dunno. Me… for 35 years my thing has been understanding the pro breaking ball on TV. My sense is what I see is the Twins are consistently throwing a lot of sloppy breaking balls. I don’t know how that happens to an entire team.

With Colome, the Twins are really going to have to contemplate the concept of sunk costs

The 60’s – 70’s era of Twins baseball is kinda pre-history now, ya know. Well what it was, was pre TV in a meaningful way. So pre full schedule TV. A thing is, if the Twins had a basket case closer before then, a lot of us don’t have a great handle on that because we weren’t very old or there wasn’t an expanded broadcast schedule of games showing said basket case reliever.

Ron Davis came to the Twins about that time we got an expanded schedule of games on TV. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/davisro02.shtml

He became the closer here because he had a pretty live arm and had been Goose Goosage’ setup man in NY. Thin, 6′ 4″ man with a lot of leg and arm action, and he let go from very low 3/4. Probably threw 93-94 in an era when that was pretty darn fast. I think he had an immaculate inning with the Yankees. His FB really curled arm side in a sinker way. And still he gave up middle of the plate home runs by the bushel basket.

So Ron Davis is Twins’ fandoms touchstone for basket case closers, from those 84-85 seasons. I remember it well, and can explain the whole shebang.

That 1-1 Colome pitch last night was the most feeble closer pitch I’ve seen since Ron Davis, for reals.

Now, the cutter is big these days in the era of clipping filthy pitches for Twitter. It’s useful here to explain what that is. They really should have saved the name ‘slider’ for the cutter, because the cutter actually slides out horizontally 4-5 inches Whereas the slider has become just a very hard curveball at 87-90 (in pro ball) with some late, hard down action (with the curveball being slower with a lot more break).

You throw the cutter by throwing it as hard as you can, like an FB, but by having an offset grip in the hand to give it some frisbee sidespin. If you can do it well, you’re Mariano Rivera or Kenly Jansen. It breaks off late and slides glove side (from a righthander) and the batter can’t handle it.

Alex Colome has had a MLB career throwing a cutter, alright, but that one last night… 89 middle, middle, with no bite. At all. Is not a MLB competitive pitch. And I can tell that from TV as a high info amateur that knows a lot less about baseball than Rocco Baldelli.

https://twitter.com/AaronGleeman/status/1387024048643723272

https://twitter.com/SoxOn35th/status/1386861608576618499

That pitch doesn’t move and it’s too slow. It’s not competitive. I think the stadium radar and laser system has to be telling you that, and the win probability stat is screaming that.

You can’t pitch this guy knowing what you know, even though you gave him veteran money. So the question is, will the Twins continue to beat their heads against the wall with this guy. I’m sure they will, for a time.

I kinda wanted to believe it, but I don’t: The Kamala book and the migrant kids

It’s a mistake in assuming too much of people, but… I think the best, superseding guess is Kamala probably forgot about her book herself some months / years ago.

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2021/04/27/is-dhs-really-handing-out-kamala-harris-book-to-border-crossers-n386058

I’m not buying it.

Eye on Orput

Pete Orput, who took the case to charge Kim Potter for the killing of Daunte Wright. The BLM types, to whom this blog has been highly sympathetic, want a murder charge. Orput charged it as manslaughter.

https://www.startribune.com/prosecutor-defends-charge-against-the-officer-who-killed-daunte-wright/600049641/

Strib pull quote: On Friday, Orput said he wasn’t going to be forced to change his mind. “I greatly respect the First Amendment, but … I’m not going to succumb to pressure like that,” he said. “It’s about the most unethical thing a guy could do, and I’m not going to do it.”

Me on 4/13, before the charge was filed https://zingyskywaylunch.wordpress.com/2021/04/13/in-the-future-every-1st-tier-suburb-will-have-made-a-10m-police-misconduct-payout/

“The evaluation of criminality was farmed out to Washington County. Pete Orput is the CA here, and has reputations for both menschy-ness and straight talk I’d say. He’ll have a manslaughter charge going in the next couple days, and will probably not be cowed into more than that. Is what it is, and is the text book definition of why you manage conflict of interest and appearance of conflict of interest in this way.”

So, I’m right on analysis, again…. I should be doing this for a living.

Side observation 1: Manslaughter is the right charge. BLM and its members are deluded by their own literacy problem here. Ya know… words mean things. It ain’t a murder just because you want it to be.

Side observation 2: BLM has been picketing in front of Orput’s house in Stillwater (sort of my hometown, I grew up in LE, went to HS in StillH20…). Pretty modest Stillwater neighborhood for a guy who makes well over $100k a year. That’s a charming attribute for Orput.

Side observation 3: Mary Moriarity, former HennCo public defender, has been an insightful voice on Twitter on all things George Floyd. She does have a story of where Orput was a prosecutorial dick to her. Not charming.

Chauvin Trial winners and losers

Loser – Derek Chauvin… guilty on all 3 counts

Winner – Derek Chauvin… I was reading about sentencing for this. Best insight suggests Chauvin does a little more than 10 years behind bars. There is an outside and not terribly geriatric life after for Derek Chauvin, probably. I don’t actually see the Biden DOJ pursuing federal cases.

Winner – Keith Ellison… Ya know, I voted for Wardlow, like, just cuz, even though Wardlow is a fundie… Just cuz, I didn’t think it was healthy that there be a (D) monopoly on the AGs office, just cuz I thought Democrat AGs were too reflexively anti business, just cuz Ellison is complicit in the enabling of Ilhan Omar not having to answer for marrying her brother to get him into the country. A Wardlow AG office with its inherent roster of Republican attorney misanthropes wouldn’t have been able to get this prosecution done, though… So whaddya gonna do? Vote for Ellison the leftist.

Losers: Ofcs Keung, Lane, Thao, and then Esqs. Earl Gray, Tom Plunkett. This is going to be some tough fucking sledding boys. The officers probably don’t deserve to go to jail for what was clearly a dynamic of Derek Chauvin’s personality.

Zingy Skyway Lunch League of Impressive Minnesotans Inductee: Judge Cahill. Real good bench temperate. Mildly operationally biased toward the defendant, which isn’t a fault.

Zingy Skyway Lunch League of Impressive Minnesotans Inductee: Jerry Blackwell. I guess he was born and raised in South Carolina… we should claim him.

Zingy Skyway Lunch League of Impressive Minnesotans Inductee: Gretchen Hanson, and several of the other witnesses.

Loser: Tim Walz. Guy transformed into Richard J Daley so fast, and everybody noticed! There’s some pretty deep unhappiness with him on the center left now, to the point that he’s probably defeatable by an unremarkable Republican.

Loser: Jacob Frey. Similar. It’s remarked that an interesting candidate has not yet arisen from the field to overshadow him. I don’t think it matters. When one comes along, the crowd will go to him / her.

Say the verdict comes in Wednesday, Nelson should be telling Chauvin to bring his go bag for DOC intake

And plan on next seeing the light of day as a semi-free man in say 2045.

I make reality based predictions here, and my prediction for the highest charge Chauvin will be convicted of is the highest one he’s charged with, Murder 2.

In the future, every 1st tier suburb will have made a $10M police misconduct payout

That’s actually the joke / non joke. In the future, every first tier suburb will have made a $10M police misconduct payout. Cuz the “in the future” thing is a joke construction. But it’s true here.

Count the big cities, but there’s one grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly malfeasant police encounter a year in these parts. Philando was 2016, Justine was 2017… ya know, Ok, maybe nothing was caught on camera in 2018-19. Actually, I think the guy in St. Paul getting the police dog sicced on him counts there, but it’s not as well known… George Floyd was last year, Duante is this year.

We get one a year. Random, and yet not….

Richfield, Crystal, Robbinsdale, Roseville, North St. Paul, South St Paul, Maplewood, Oakdale… They haven’t had a turn on the ferris wheel. They will.

Interdiction and arrest is bad, risky work. As much as I’m inclined, always, to rag on the low quality of the people who do policing… which is… true… there ain’t a great way to do it right. Which is a superseding problem. Yeah, we shouldn’t be doing pretext stops with tabs or air fresheners the pretext. It’s bullshit. Are we going to get ‘reform’ on that now or the near future? I rilly rilly rilly would doubt it.

Things I’m interested in that I have an eye to have observed:

This mayor of Brooklyn Center and his council yesterday using their charter bylaws late in the day to dump their city manager and police chief was, ya figure, a fight about rules of engagement with protestors and also about how fast they were going to fire the offending officer. Good for them for asserting control.

The press conference…  That chief had a cheek tic going there in Q/A and I thought he might break down crying, piss his pants.

Ben Crump as a national black civil rights lawyer has come into town and started taking the relevant misconduct litigation business away from Bob Bennett. Does it really matter who represents the family such that a big civil payout is guaranteed? I dunno, maybe… Valerie Castile and Bennett took $3M from Falcon Heights because that was the benefit cap on the league of cities policy that would pay the claim (Damond and Floyd’s families got more than $20M from Minneapolis cuz Mpls self-insures…). BC is prolly a member in that league of cities thing, so the challenge is getting a payout way greater than the policy payout cap such that this ‘justice’ might demand it… I would think Crump’s chances are good there.

The evaluation of criminality was farmed out to Washington County.  Pete Orput is the CA here, and has reputations for both menschy-ness and straight talk I’d say.  He’ll have a manslaughter charge going in the next couple days, and will probably not be cowed into more than that.  Is what it is, and is the text book definition of why you manage conflict of interest and appearance of conflict of interest in this way.

If this was pre-body cam, say 15 years ago, the officers would have tarted up a police report that said the kid made a furtive movement to his waistband, and it would have been ruled justified.  Ya know, and the 3 cops at the scene might otherwise be the most wonderful cops in the world as far as it goes but for this oopsie, and they would have had no problem lying their asses off when their necessity for that arrived.  Yesterday’s press conference where they admit what really happened is the world body cams give us.