Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Finally, Green Infrastructure Spending in an Amount That Starts with a “T” - But is it enough? And how would we know if it were? - link

• The Meaning of the Democrats’ Spending Spree - Do President Biden’s stimulus and infrastructure bills represent a moment of political expedience, or a more permanent change? - link

• Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment - When the coronavirus arrived, the country decided not to implement lockdowns or recommend masks. How has it fared? - link

• Why It’s So Hard for America to End Its Wars - Is there any way for Biden to achieve peace with honor in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan? - link

• Vladimir Putin Has a Message: “Hey, Joe, Are You Listening?” - The Biden Administration can’t escape the Russia problem. - link

From Vox

• The effects of Black Lives Matter protests -

  

  Research shows places with BLM protests from 2014 to 2019 saw a reduction in police homicides but an uptick in murders.

  There’s long been a fierce debate about the effect of Black Lives Matter protests on the lethal use of force by police. A new study, one of the first to make a rigorous academic attempt to answer that question, found that the protests have had a notable impact on police killings. For every 4,000 people who participated in a Black Lives Matter protest between 2014 and 2019, police killed one less person.

  Travis Campbell, a PhD student in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, released his preliminary findings on the Social Science Research network as a preprint, meaning the study has yet to receive a formal peer review.

  While Campbell’s research does not encompass the events of summer 2020, George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent wave of protests became potentially the largest movement in American history, the sudden growth of which relied on a wave of anger and grief at the police homicides Americans are continually greeted with on the news. Opinion columnists, activists, lawmakers, and even the president of the United States (current and former) have weighed in on these protests and what the appropriate policy changes should be. But first, it’s important to grapple with how the protests have already changed policing.

  From 2014 to 2019, Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters. His main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers — roughly 300 fewer police homicides — in census places that saw BLM protests.

  Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests. Campbell’s research does not include the effects of last summer’s historic wave of protests because researchers do not yet have all the relevant data.

  It’s worth noting that Campbell didn’t subject the homicide findings to the same battery of statistical tests as he did the police killings since they were not the main focus of his research. (He intends to do more research on how these protests affected crime rates.) But his research on homicides aligns with other evidence. Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton University who has done seminal research on the effect of protests, told Vox that the results are “entirely plausible” and “not surprising,” considering existing protest research.

  The reasons for this rise in murders are not fully known, but one possible explanation is that police morale drops following scrutiny, leading officers to reduce their efforts and thereby emboldening criminals. Another is that members of the public voluntarily withdraw from engagements with the police after a police homicide delegitimizes the justice system in their eyes. (More on this below.)

  Protests can do a lot. They can raise awareness, create solidarity or undermine existing relationships, change public opinion, strengthen or weaken institutions, and affect the outcome of elections. But, according to this study, BLM protests also produce their intended effect.

  A few quick notes on methodology

  It’s important to understand how Campbell conducted his research and the potential pitfalls when trying to quantify and isolate how protests can affect policy. Researchers who study crime, police lethal force, and protests are hampered by something out of their control: The underlying data can be faulty.

  For lethal force data, there’s no federal database to turn to. Instead, Campbell and other researchers have to rely on nonprofit- and media-collected data, which has some drawbacks. This means Campbell may be missing some police homicides in his research.

  Harvard University sociologist Joscha Legewie told Scientific American that the study’s design is “‘very well suited’ for the kind of data Campbell” is looking at.

  Additionally, there could be something systematically different about the places that have BLM protests that make them more poised for increased police accountability than places without. For instance, a new mayor or district attorney who championed police reform gets elected and then protest movements mobilize to ensure their desired reforms are implemented.

  To account for this problem, Campbell controls for various factors — from the localities’ unemployment rate to the Democratic vote share in the 2008 presidential election — to try to make sure he is isolating the effect of BLM protests on police homicides and other murders. But, unless you’re able to conduct a randomized controlled trial (which is impossible for studies like these), there could always be hidden variables that researchers are unable to account for.

  To try to further prove his findings are sound, Campbell also shows that before 2014 there were almost parallel trends of police homicides in both the places that would go on to see protests and places that wouldn’t. That suggests that what changed in 2014 and beyond — regarding both the reduction in police homicides and the increase in murder — is likely the effect of the BLM protests, not some other hidden variable.

  Campbell notes that “BLM did not transform into the protests movement it is known as today until the police killings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014,” which is why he begins his research with that year.

  

  The effect of BLM protests on police lethal use of force

  The major finding in the paper is that places with BLM protests experienced a statistically significant decline in police homicides. Further, the biggest declines are when protests are relatively large and/or frequent.

  Campbell also observes that, over time, the gap in police homicide rates widens between places with and without protests. In year zero, he finds a 13 percent drop in police homicides; by year four, that decline expands by 14 percentage points. That means it’s likely that the effect of BLM protests is strong enough to lower the number of police homicides for several years.

  Campbell believes there are three potential mechanisms that could have led to this decline, none of which are mutually exclusive.

  First, he observed an increase in the use of body cameras and different types of community policing. It’s possible that, in response to BLM protests, police departments implemented reforms that reduced lethal use of force. Campbell’s research finds a significant increase in the likelihood of an agency obtaining body-worn cameras (55.3 percent), patrol officers within a designated geographic area (20.6 percent), and SARA officers, a type of community policing (57.5 percent).

  The existing literature on body cameras is mixed, though, undercutting the idea that widespread body camera use alone is the driving force behind declining instances of police brutality.

  A Brookings Institution expert explained that while randomized trials “in American and European police departments found that body worn camera’s reduced the number of complaints filed by local residents against the police … they showed mixed effects on use of force by and against police officers.” In a major 2017 study conducted in Washington, DC, the researchers found that “the behavior of officers who wore cameras all the time was indistinguishable from the behavior of those who never wore cameras.”

  One bright spot in the research on body cameras is a recent job market paper by University of Chicago economics researcher Taeho Kim; the nationwide study found that the use of these cameras reduced police-involved homicides by 43 percent.

  As for other elements of this possible explanation, the research is less clear. Campbell writes that the lethal force impact of expanding community policing and patrols is “understudied,” but activists have frequently called for community policing in response to instances of police brutality.

  Wasow explained that it may not be the specific reforms per se but that the increase of administrative or training changes indicates more people are taking accountability seriously within the justice system. Accountability culture is hard to measure, so researchers can observe it in an uptick in measures like body-worn cameras or community policing. If this is true, police reform may have less to do with specific policies than just an increased commitment to holding officers to a higher standard.

  

  The second mechanism is that civilians are becoming more wary of the police in the aftermath of these protests and the publicizing of instances of police homicides. That could mean people call 911 less or engage with police officers less of their own volition, which has the effect of reducing civilian/police interactions and thereby fatal interactions as well.

  Finally, the third mechanism is something called the Ferguson effect: the supposition that protests against police brutality reduce officer morale and effort due to the “intensified scrutiny from the community and media.” In other words, officers stop doing their jobs as aggressively. This can lead to reduced arrests, especially for less serious crimes like disorderly conduct or marijuana possession.

  Deepak Premkumar, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, found in recently released research that police do reduce their efforts following officer-involved fatalities: Theft arrests fall by 7 percent, and for “quality of life crimes” like disorderly conduct or marijuana possession, arrests decline by up to 23 percent (weed possession alone declines by up to 33 percent).

  It’s these latter two mechanisms that could explain the increase in murder following BLM protests.

  Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

  Did BLM protests lead to an increase in murder?

  This is where things get more speculative. Campbell’s study finds that BLM protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murder. That is, there were a few thousand more homicides in the places where there were BLM protests than would have been expected if those places followed the same trends as the ones that didn’t see protests.

  We don’t know why BLM protests correlated with an increase in the murder rate, and there’s not a lot of research in this space to help guide us. Additionally, Campbell’s research question was focused on the effect of BLM protests on police homicides, so these other observed changes regarding other homicides were not subjected to the same robustness tests.

  A number of factors could be driving the increase. Premkumar, who studied the Ferguson effect, also observed a “significant rise” (10 to 17 percent) in murders and robberies following highly publicized officer-involved fatalities.

  But from talking with experts, there are a few ways we can understand what may be happening here.

  First, it’s possible criminal activity rises in areas that have seen protests because people stop calling the police or working with them out of fear or anger — thereby emboldening criminal behavior. Moreover, some experts believe people will try to resolve their disputes extrajudicially if the system loses legitimacy following a police homicide.

  If this were happening, we would expect to see a reduction in the reported rates of low-level crime — fewer low-level crimes would be reported relative to high-level crimes like murders. Murders are less likely to go unnoticed because, well, there’s a missing person and/or a body. So the murder rate is usually the best indicator of what’s actually going on with crime writ large.

  Campbell observes a significant increase in the murder rate but a simultaneous 8.4 percent decrease in total property crimes reported. That is consistent with people voluntarily reducing interactions with the police, and other criminologists are in favor of this explanation. However, research by Michael Zoorob, a PhD student at Harvard University, finds that “across a large number of cities, incidents, and analytic strategies well-publicized brutality incidents do not reduce 911 calls to report common property or violent crimes,” casting doubt on the idea that police homicides reduce voluntary civilian engagement with police.

  

  One other possible explanation for the increased murder rate is that law enforcement officials are the ones voluntarily reducing their interactions with the community and as a result emboldening criminal activity. One way to observe whether police are reducing their efforts is to see whether the share of property crimes cleared falls over this period. In other words, are police not trying as hard — either because they are demoralized or angry at public scrutiny of their behavior — to solve low-level crimes that are reported to them? Campbell observes a 5.5 percent decline in the share of property crimes cleared, which is consistent with police reducing their efforts immediately following the protests.

  The good news is that even if Campbell’s finding about the increase in murders following BLM protests holds up to further scrutiny, the effect doesn’t appear to last for long. By year four, Campbell no longer observes a statistically significant increase in murders, indicating that whatever is going on with murders is hopefully not long term.

  None of Campbell’s data covers the protests in 2020 or the rise in murders in 2020. As German Lopez explains for Vox, “some experts have cited the protests this summer over the police killings of George Floyd and others,” but Covid-19 made the year so unusual that experts are cautious about drawing any conclusions yet.

• How the US could make its new climate target fair — to the rest of the world -

  

  Biden is about to announce a new 2030 climate target. Will it go far enough?

  On April 22, President Biden will convene global leaders for a virtual climate summit in a bid to reassert US leadership and motivate countries to cut emissions much more aggressively.

  Of course, the US is only just recommitting to climate action itself after a long leadership vacuum. During his presidency, Donald Trump tore down dozens of environmental regulations and withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement, undermining global progress to reduce emissions.

  Now, to reassure the world that the US takes the climate threat seriously, Biden plans to announce a new 2030 climate target under the Paris agreement ahead of the summit.

  The administration is considering a goal to cut emissions somewhere between 48 and 53 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. This is in line with proposals from many green groups, which have coalesced around a 50 percent reduction target. While that goal will require significant changes, to take place in less than a decade, many recent studies show it is within reach.

  But a new report, produced by a group of environmental organizations including Friends of the Earth and the youth-driven Sunrise Movement, approaches the question from a different angle. Instead of determining what is feasible for the US, they start by asking: What should the US’s responsibility be in reducing global emissions to keep the planet from warming to dangerous levels?

  The result is a much more audacious vision for US emissions reductions in 2030: 195 percent.

  That’s right — they are proposing that the US’s true responsibility isn’t just to eliminate all its emissions by 2030 (which would be 100 percent) but to go even further.

  The advocacy groups acknowledge that it isn’t actually feasible for the US to pull this off within its own borders. Instead, they suggest that the country reduce its domestic carbon footprint by 70 percent and contribute the remaining 125 percent by financing developing countries’ emissions reductions.

  The authors argue that if the US hit these targets, it would be contributing its “fair share” toward tackling climate change, as the world’s largest historical emitter and wealthiest nation.

  Still, the number stretches the imagination compared to other proposals that hew closer to the political reality. But that’s the point. “If we frame our understanding always relative to what we can actually imagine this current Senate doing, it’s not a discussion about what’s actually needed,” said Sivan Kartha, a US-based senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute and co-author of the report.

  Biden’s new target will inevitably be politically constrained. But as we hurtle toward a future climate that will unleash severe impacts on the people least responsible for the problem, it is worth pausing to consider this question of fairness further.

  A broad vision of US climate responsibility — and how much it might cost

  To come up with an idea of what the US owes the rest of the world in the climate fight, a broader coalition of civil society groups under the US Climate Action Network met to forge the 195 percent proposal last summer.

  The process, they argued, should start by casting back in time. As the animation below shows, the US stands out as the biggest historical emitter by a wide margin.

  Animation: The countries with the largest cumulative CO2 emissions since 1750
  
  Ranking as of the start of 2019:
  
  1) US – 397GtCO2
  2) CN – 214Gt
  3) fmr USSR – 180
  4) DE – 90
  5) UK – 77
  6) JP – 58
  7) IN – 51
  8) FR – 37
  9) CA – 32
  10) PL – 27 pic.twitter.com/cKRNKO4O0b

  — Carbon Brief (@CarbonBrief) April 23, 2019

The groups chose to look at the emissions since 1950, when the global economy and emissions really took off. The cumulative emissions figure is relevant because once carbon dioxide molecules enter the atmosphere, they linger for hundreds of years — so past emissions are still very much shaping the trajectory of global warming.

The other major factor in the coalition’s fairness calculation is the capacity any given nation has to tackle the problem. They use a nation’s income as an approximation for capacity but exclude income from individuals below a certain poverty level.

Between these two factors, the coalition concluded that the US is responsible for 39 percent of the global effort to tackle climate change. (You can play around with the Climate Equity calculator to see the assumptions behind the final outcome.)

To take on that share of the burden, the US would have to reduce emissions by 195 percent, or 14 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, by 2030 from the 2005 level in order to stay in line with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has showed is required to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But, as mentioned above, the coalition proposes the US only cut its own emissions 70 percent, or by about 4 gigatons domestically.

“The 70 percent is not our fair share, it’s what we can manage to do if we really put our minds and muscles to it with the US proper, and the rest of that fair share […] would need to be done by cooperating with other countries — poorer countries,” Kartha explained.

USA Fair Shares NDC Report

As for the US responsibility to help other countries, the new report also proposed a corresponding financial commitment. Using the lowest estimate for the cost of reducing a ton of carbon, the authors calculate that it would cost the US $570 billion by 2030 to help other countries reduce emissions enough to meet their 195 percent goal.

But to also begin to compensate countries for the impacts of climate change already in motion from current warming, they argue that the US should funnel similar amounts to adaptation and “loss and damage.”

While funding adaptation would help countries reduce suffering caused by a warmer climate in the near term, funding for “loss and damage” would serve as a form of reparations to compensate countries for irrecoverable damage, say, from sea level rise. The total, then, would be somewhere in the order of $1.6 trillion by 2030.

These are just initial estimates because these losses are so difficult to calculate. “The questions on the finance side are actually way more — painfully — complex,” said Kartha.

To give some perspective, Biden recently proposed spending roughly $1 trillion on the US clean energy transition over the next eight years, and progressives have called for that amount to be spent annually.

Still, $1.6 trillion for other countries is way beyond anything the US has ever openly contemplated. So far, we have only given $1 billion total in funding to the Green Climate Fund, the United Nations mechanism that supports developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, because Trump refused to provide further support.

These numbers might be very ambitious — but the US should move toward them

The coalition isn’t entirely alone in pushing for a much more ambitious 2030 target. The think tanks Climate Analytics and the NewClimate Institute also proposed a similar fair share: 75 percent for domestic cuts, with further support given to overseas efforts.

But the question looms: How technically feasible would achieving such a target be?

The new report doesn’t reference any particular study informing the choice of a 70 percent domestic target. A 71 percent target was featured in Sen. Bernie Sanders’s climate plan as a presidential candidate. Most studies have focused on lower targets, although engineer-inventor Saul Griffith has modeled a path to 70 to 80 percent cuts by 2035.

Dan Lashof, US director for the World Resources Institute, which has recommended a target of 50 percent, said, “Scientifically there is a good case for going much further. I personally don’t see the political or economic forces aligning to get us up into the range of 60 to 70 percent reductions from 2005 levels by 2030. I would love to be wrong, but that’s my judgment.”

Just reaching 50 percent cuts will require a significant economy-wide effort, including phasing out all US coal plants by 2030. And the Trump years have put the US at a disadvantage compared to other developed countries like the UK and EU where a stable political commitment to climate action has allowed governments to target 68 and 55 percent cuts, respectively.

“There’s no question that the four years under the Trump administration put the US behind the eight-ball and makes the job harder,” said Lashof.

Karen Orenstein, the climate and energy director of the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth, who also co-authored the new report, acknowledged that it is unlikely to gain traction politically. “I don’t expect many members of Congress to embrace these numbers, but I also think that you see more new and existing progressive members who are talking about a sea change in how we approach these things,” she said.

While Biden himself is unlikely to embrace the proposal, Orenstein argued that it reflects his approach to addressing racial and social injustice through climate action domestically, including by allocating 40 percent of the benefits of climate investments to disadvantaged communities. To be a global climate leader, Biden should extend that focus on equity overseas as well. “Biden so far had done a good job talking about centering environmental justice,” she said, “and you can’t restrict that to US borders.”

• The Derek Chauvin trial won’t make cops start policing themselves -

  

  The officers who testified against Chauvin are simply protecting their legacies.

  On Monday, prosecutor Steve Schleicher led a line of questioning that perhaps stands as his team’s strongest case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin so far — not because the witness’s testimony was especially riveting but because it was coming from Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo.

  That the department’s highest-ranking officer was testifying against a team member immediately set the trial apart. In fact, nine other officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have testified against Chauvin in the past week. While Arradondo, the department’s first Black chief, has testified against an officer before (as assistant chief in a highly publicized 2019 case that involved the shooting of an unarmed woman), it’s rare for so many officers to take the stand against a onetime colleague.

  During his testimony, Arradondo was asked about the nature of the trainings that MPD officers receive, with specific attention paid to MPD policies and protocol like use of force, deescalation, procedural justice, and crisis intervention. And Arradondo did not hold back.

  When asked whether the force that Chauvin used against George Floyd was consistent the MPD policy that authorizes use of reasonable force, he responded, “It is not,” and went on to say of Chauvin’s behavior: “That is not what we teach and that should be condoned.” To a similar question, Arradondo said that he “absolutely” agreed that Chauvin’s restraint violated policy since Chauvin did not apply “light to moderate pressure” on Floyd’s neck. “That in no way, shape, or form is anything that is by policy. It is not part of our training. It is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”

  The moment represented a triumph for the prosecution, bolstered by other police testimony so far. The previous day, three officers — including Chauvin’s former supervisor, retired Sgt. David Ploeger; the longest-serving officer at MPD, Lt. Richard Zimmerman; and Inspector Katie Blackwell, who ran the department’s training program when Floyd was killed — all testified against Chauvin’s neck restraint of Floyd, saying it was “uncalled for” and “totally unnecessary.” And in the days after the police chief took the stand, additional officers testified for the prosecution.

  The rare testimony from several officers has led viewers to question whether the “blue wall of silence” — an unwritten gag rule among officers to band together and stay silent when one of their own is under fire for misconduct — was beginning to crumble, a moment of hope that signals a shift that more officers may now be willing to intervene when they observe their colleagues engaging in wrongdoing.

  But a different reality is likely at play. While the officers’ testimony can be interpreted as a changing tide in an opaque culture, it’s likelier that the high-profile nature of the trial is forcing them to cast Chauvin as the bad apple — the one officer who doesn’t represent the broader department and system of policing, the one they need to throw out — as a way to avoid greater examination of police.

  “They’re throwing Chauvin under the bus because that keeps the bus intact,” Howard University law professor Justin Hansford told Vox. “For each officer who has come forward, this case will determine their legacy.”

  The “blue wall” isn’t about friendly camaraderie — it’s about covering up misdeeds

  One of the most respected pillars of policing is loyalty, wrote political science scholar Roberta Ann Johnson in “Whistleblowing and the Police.” “Loyalty is exacted with a code of honor that requires officers not to ‘snitch on,’ ‘rat out’ or turn in other officers. The police officers’ respect for and loyalty toward their peer group encourages them to abide by the code of honor and to heed the obligation of silence,” she wrote.

  Being silent when a colleague engages in wrongful practices like use of excessive force is a norm in policing, one that has prevented reform. In the wake of the brutal Los Angeles Rodney King beating in 1991 that was caught on camera, for example, the city formed the Christopher Commission to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department, including the department’s training practices and cases involving excessive force. The commission’s critical findings, released in a report, highlighted how the code of silence among officers was “perhaps the greatest single barrier to the effective investigation and adjudication of complaints.”

  The commission noted the duty of police to be transparent with the public: “Officers are given special powers, unique in our society, to use force, even deadly force, in the furtherance of their duties. Along with that power, however, must come the responsibility of loyalty first to the public the officers serve. That requires that the code of silence not be used as a shield to hide misconduct.”

  Officers are reluctant to break that code because there are consequences for speaking out. For example, in 2012, Baltimore detective Joe Crystal reported two fellow officers whom he witnessed assault a drug suspect, though his sergeant warned him not to. After Crystal stepped forward, his colleagues taunted and harassed him, ignored his requests for backup, threatened him with perjury prosecution in the criminal case against the officers he reported, and left a dead rat on the windshield of his vehicle. There are many documented cases such as this.

  So it’s no surprise that it’s rare for officers to testify against a peer. A 2015 Washington Post analysis found that since 2005, 54 police officers nationwide had been criminally charged with murder or manslaughter for shooting and killing someone in the line of duty. The study found that a fellow police officer gave statements or testified against the shooter in just 12 of those cases.

  And even when officers do testify for the prosecution, it’s not always certain they’ll act with integrity. Officers may engage in “testilying” — a specific term for officers providing false testimony in court. In the 2016 trial of Ray Tensing, the former officer charged with murder and manslaughter for fatally shooting Samuel DuBose during a July 2015 traffic stop, some experts concluded that two officers who testified against Tensing were untruthful on the stand in an effort to abide by the code of silence. In their testimony, the officers maintained that they did not see the fatal encounter, though they were present at the scene. After two mistrials, the prosecutors dismissed the murder indictment against Tensing.

  That’s why it may feel refreshing that Chauvin’s colleagues are testifying against him, saying he did not follow procedure. “It’s true that we don’t have many examples of police testifying, especially the police chief testifying against one of their own, because there’s the blue wall and police unions that create an atmosphere where you’re not supposed to ever speak out,” Hansford told Vox. “We often think of the blue wall of silence as a sort of solidarity move or a loyalty pact but often it’s really just a CYA move — cover your own ‘tail.’”

  The collection of officers coming forward to testify has less to do with the egregiousness of Floyd’s killing and more to do with the high-profile nature of the case, Hansford said. “These officers have seen people killed before,” he said. “This is about how big this case is. The Mike Brown case, for example, was big, but it didn’t create this level of response. These officers don’t want to be associated with those pictures of Chauvin on Floyd’s neck.”

  Christopher Brown, principal attorney at the Brown Firm, which has sued police officers in excessive force cases, agrees. “We’re seeing such a heavy reliance upon other officers in the prosecution because of the infamous nature of the death of George Floyd. When you have international protests over the death of a man in the hands of an officer, we have a unique scenario, unfortunately, where officers really want to distance themselves from that behavior,” he said. “No one wants to go down in history as being associated with or trying to defend or stand up for Chauvin. They’re taking the opportunity to protect their own legacies.”

  Hansford recognizes the media’s instinct to say this is an unprecedented display of officers turning on their own, yet we will not see the three former officers directly involved with the May 25 killing testify in this trial.

  Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane, who were all fired after Floyd’s death, face their own charges, and have each presented a different version of events in court documents. They are in disagreement over who was in charge of Floyd’s arrest, furthering the idea that each former officer is trying to save himself.

  “I can’t really say that this is the piercing of the wall until we hear from the people who were right there, until we hear from the people close to Chauvin in the department,” Hansford told Vox. “I don’t know what the officers who were on the scene have to say and the officers who were there in that moment as part of the response.”

  Chauvin’s exoneration would be disastrous for police departments

  Hansford and Brown see the officers’ testimony against Chauvin as an effort to cling to the toxic “one bad apple” belief — that it’s not the entire system of policing that’s corrupt but just a few officers who are lone actors.

  “This is certainly the idea that the Minneapolis Police Department is trying to paint — that ‘this is not what our department does’ and ‘this is not how our department trains its officers,’ ‘this is not behavior we condone,’” Brown said.

  And though the officer testimony might seem to be creating an opening for greater accountability when it comes to speaking out against a peer, this might not play out on a broader scale outside of this trial.

  “Regrettably, I don’t expect to see officers lining up to testify against other officers, but I do expect to see a greater focus on addressing, reevaluating, and updating policies and procedures within departments,” Brown told Vox.

  And even when the code of silence is challenged, the culture remains. The brutal police killing of Black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014 and the subsequent years of an alleged cover-up on the part of the Chicago Police Department (a judge found officers not guilty of covering up the shooting) rocked the department’s code of silence by bringing to light the city’s and officers’ coordinated effort to withhold the video that shows officers shot McDonald 16 times. Despite this and other challenges over the years, Chicago’s police department remains plagued by systemic use of excessive force. A 2017 Justice Department investigation found that Chicago had received more than 30,000 complaints of police misconduct from 2011 to 2016, but there was no discipline for police officers in 98 percent of the cases.

  To Hansford, Chauvin’s acquittal would be damaging for police officers since that would mean more protests and more pressure to change. “It would be cataclysmic. We don’t know if it’ll be another Rodney King situation. And if he’s exonerated, a lot of people will say this is something that’s allowed in the rules. They’re going to have more pressure to change the rules, and police don’t want those rules changed.”

From The Hindu: Sports

• Indian Premier League 2021 | It’s MSD vs Pant as CSK takes on DC - Delhi Capitals ended runners-up last season while Chennai Super Kings had a forgettable IPL 2020.

• Football | India women lose to Belarus - The Indian women’s football team lost 2-1 to Belarus in its second international friendly here on Thursday.While both the sides played out an even fir

• Euro Leagues | Lukaku powers Inter closer to title - Juventus inches up to third with a win over Napoli

• IPL 2021 | Withdrew due to COVID-19: Josh Hazlewood - The Chennai Super Kings speedster became the third Australian after Josh Philippe (Royal Challengers Bangalore) and Mitchell Marsh (Sunrisers Hyderabad) to withdraw this season

• IPL 2021 | Gun slinger takes on smooth operator in the season opener - RCB’s batting firepower will test Mumbai Indians’ balance

From The Hindu: National News

• COVID vaccine stock to finish in two days, provide at least 30 lakh doses: Gehlot to PM - Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the stock of coronavirus vaccine in the state will finish

• MP: 11-day ‘yagna’ against COVID-19 begins at Ujjain temple - An 11-day ‘yagna’ (ritual fire) against coronavirus began at the famous Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain city of Madhya Pradesh on Friday morning.The

• A solo march against farm laws - Ex-techie communicates with people on minimum support price and other issues while on the way to Delhi

• Night shift employees must reach place of work before 10 p.m. during corona curfew - The Karnataka government on Friday came out with guidelines for corona curfew (night curfew) which would come into effect in urban areas of seven citi

• Six arrested in Dalit youth murder case - The police have made arrangements to ensure compensation for the family of the victim’s under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

From BBC: Europe

• Prince Philip has died aged 99, Buckingham Palace announces - Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband of 73 years, had recently spent time in hospital with an infection.

• Ukraine conflict: Moscow could ‘defend’ Russia-backed rebels - A senior Kremlin official issues a warning as tensions rise in eastern Ukraine.

• Belfast: Police attacked during another night of violence - Petrol bombs and fireworks have been thrown at police near a peaceline in Northern Ireland.

• Czech vaccines: European rights court backs mandatory pre-school jabs - Families had challenged the Czech government’s ban on unvaccinated children entering pre-schools.

• COP26: Greta Thunberg says Glasgow summit should be postponed - The climate campaigner is concerned about the impact of Covid on attendance at the Glasgow summit.

From Ars Technica

• Comcast nightmare: Six months without Internet despite $5,000 payment - Comcast falsely said service was available, still hasn’t delivered 6 months later. - link

• Windows and Linux devices are under attack by a new cryptomining worm - With new exploits and capabilities, the Sysrv botnet poses a growing threat. - link

• Rocket Report: SpaceX abandons catching fairings, ULA bets on upper stages - “All of the resistance, that is going to be gradually disappearing.” - link

• DNA analysis solves curious case of the stillborn fetus in the bishop’s coffin - The fetus was probably the grandson of 17th-century Swedish Bishop Peder Winstrup. - link

• Partial count shows Amazon workers rejecting union by a 2-to-1 margin - With almost half the Bessemer votes counted, there were 463 yeses and 1,100 nos. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• I’m giving up drinking, for a month. -

  (oops, incorrect punctuation)

  I’m giving up. Drinking for a month.

  submitted by /u/mptpro
  [link] [comments]

• What’s Sisyphus’ least favorite band? -

  Rolling Stones

  submitted by /u/DanielRJonesWriter
  [link] [comments]

• I told my boss that three companies were after me, so I needed a raise in pay to stay in my current job. He asked which companies? -

  I told him the gas, electric, and phone companies.

  submitted by /u/Lebnene-min-Saida
  [link] [comments]

• I’m 25 years old and finally decided to tell my parents and the rest of my family that I don’t want kids -

  The look on my mom and dad’s face was pretty judgmental, but my wife and two children took it really, really hard.

  submitted by /u/pikindaguy
  [link] [comments]

• I once went to visit Japan and I haven’t seen a single ninja. -

  Impressive.

  submitted by /u/Year-20-20
  [link] [comments]