Shivanthi Sathanandan posts to Facebook that she has been Carjacked
From Minneapolis’s Shivanthi Sathanandan (Warning if you click through: she includes a picture of her own bloodied face):
Yesterday my children and I were violently car jacked in the driveway of our home in Minneapolis. Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight.
Look at my face in the picture. This is the face of a mother who just had the sh$t beaten out of her. A mother whose only thought was, “let me run far enough and fight hard enough so that my kids have a chance to get away.” This is the face of a mother who just listened to her four year old daughter screaming non-stop, her 7 year old son wailing for someone to come help because bad guys are murdering his Mama in the back yard, her neighbors screaming in outrage… all while being beaten with guns and kicks and fists.
I have a broken leg, deep lacerations on my head, bruising and cuts all over my body.
And I have rage.
These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse.
I’m now part of the statistics. I wasn’t silent when I fought these men to save my life and my babies, and I won’t be silent now. We need to get illegal guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM.
PERIOD.
Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
You could have been reading the obituary for me and my children today. But instead I’m here. To write this.
Look at my face. These criminals will not win. We need to take back our city. And this will not be the last you hear from me about this.
Thank you to the incredible Minneapolis 4th Precinct Officers, Mayor Frey, Chief O’Hara, Paramedics, neighbors, friends and DFL family, who all came to our aide during this terrifying experience. I’m so grateful for this community that wraps us in love.
Some have pointed out Shivanthi Sathanandan’s post from June 5th, 2020:
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We live in a time of emotion, outrage, and hyperbole. I’m not sure it’s fair to describe the internet as being responsible for it all, but I think it’s in the mix.
I know that. So my interpretive lens that I would read the thing you posted would translate it as “I want a police department that doesn’t kill black people for almost no reason, and I’m really, really mad. I want a different police department than the one we have.”
Which is entirely consistent with “I’m so glad for the assistance provided by the police department”.
Contradictory behavior is an everyday event. I don’t necessarily call it newsworthy. It’s the result of conflicted emotion, which we all have.
That’s my interpretive lens as applied to the statements above. I’ll add something that I think is really interesting.
It seems to me that the increasing emotionality we see, especially in social media, comes from a desire to be seen, to be noticed, to matter. To have influence. To not feel so alone in the world. It’s a problem of our times, and covid made it worse, I’m sure.
And yet, the hyperbolic strategy, which is very common, holds the seeds of its own defeat. It is like the boy who cried wolf.Report
A ton of right-wingers are pointing fingers and laughing saying “KARMA!”
A small, non-representative, handful of left-wingers are looking at her photo and asking if the photo is faked. “That doesn’t look like blood to me!” and so on.
Less conspiratorial, but still pretty conspiratorial, posted links to other prominent politicians getting carjacked and wondering if there is an Op.
More reasonable people are guessing that she hopped on the “Defund” bandwagon in 2020 when “Defund” was cool and now it’s 2023 and so she’s hopping on the “HOLD CRIMINALS ACCOUNTABLE!” now that that’s looking like it’s becoming cool again.
Even more reasonable people than that are paraphrasing Irving Kristol and saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been carjacked.
For my part… I think that we’re going to see a couple of years of “Tough On Crime”. From the state level to the federal level. And Biden, once again, will be key to the legislation getting through.Report
Anyone, at this point, who got on the “defund” train for short-term political gain who now (rightly?) claims victim status is fair game.
There are legitimate reasons to advocate for police reform, but the James Madison quote is perpetually in play: “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”Report
Maybe she meant that the MPD had been failing the black community by not taking enough violent criminals off the street, and that they should be dismantled and replaced by a new police force that would bring the hammer down.Report
This has been fact-checked and has been determined to be false. She never called the police or reported being attacked or carjacked. This is just rhetoric because she is not going to be re-elected due to her stance on dismantling the police. The blood marks on her face are indicative of micro-dermabrasion.Report
Really? I’m not seeing that reported anywhere.
Not on twitter, not in Google News.Report
What happened to her is terrible and is a thing that needs to be addressed in a variety of ways – including capturing and incarcerating the offenders.
What her story doesn’t provide however is any evidence these young men were released pending other trials, or released after serving sentences etc. Her story also doesn’t tell us whether the suspects have been apprehended, nor does it tell us what carjacking is like in Minneapolis right now. So while she may be right that there is an apprehension and incarceration problem feeding carjacking, she may be wrong too.
Her prior statements about defunding the police really have no bearing here unless you are intending to be one of those who wants to yell “Karma” at her. Which is cruel, heartless and needless additional violence.Report
This is an area where a few things can be simultaneously true:
1. The American Police force are massively stacked against black people especially black men;
2. We use prison as new Jim Crow;
3. Our chronic underfunding of drug treatment, mental health, and other social services increases the number of people in prison for longer periods or who exist in a perpetual pipeline to prison;
4. Prison might be the worst form of punishment ever tried except all the others.
I often find that the abolish prison side sweeps a bunch of inconvenient facts under the rug and pretends it is all about 1-3 while ignoring people like SBF or the woman who was just arrested in Utah for child abuse.Report
I think that her prior statements about defunding the police would be irrelevant were she a private citizen.
Given that she is one of the vice-chairs for one of Minnesota’s Democratic Party offshoots, I think that puts her earlier comments in a different light.
For one thing, it indicates that the DFL party is on the cusp of changing its attitudes toward law enforcement and her earlier statements give a good idea of whereabout those earlier attitudes were back in 2020.Report
If the city is in fact so lawless as this, maybe the police force needs to be disbanded and reformed into something competent.
I mean, how many failures does a government bureacracy get, before we look at alternatives?Report
I still think we should just institute Peelian Principles rather than try to recreate the wheel as Americans are want to do. If we do need a particularly American, but expensive, idea of reforming police than we should combine the fire department, E?MS, and the police into one department and have people rotate duties. The theory is that this will deter the people who go into police work for the reason to be violent.Report
Hey, don’t tell me.
Tell the politicians in Minneapolis.
(One thing you’ve gotta admit: It’s pretty dumb to carjack the politicians. Carjack the store owners! Carjack the guys who work at the dealership! Carjack the guys coming out of the DAV! Don’t carjack the people who help craft policy.)Report
Aren’t you the one saying we need to dismantle the police and reform them like Camden?
You, me, and Shivanthi are all in agreement here.Report
Sounds like Shivanthi has gone wobbly, Chip.Report
As long as what happened to her was happenbing to others, it was unconsequencial. She called for defunding the police.
But now that reality have caught her back, she ask for being ‘tougher on crimes’.
Now, what happened to her and to her kids was HORRIBLE, no doubts about it.
But it is also a DIRECT consequence of teh VERY policy that she used to stands for. And it hurt a LOT of people , not ONLY her.
So, maybe she could also recongnise that her decision mattered. And that they had cosnequences. Above her.Report
I’m less interested in the apparent hypocrisy than the larger lessons. Defund was dumb, and we need good police departments, and part of being a good department is accountability. Ultimately though what this reiterates is that no matter how good or bad the police are we are all ultimately responsible for our own self defense and the defense of our families. It can never be totally outsourced.Report
I think that there are plenty of interpretations where there is no hypocrisy whatsoever.
Back in 2020, I thought that police were worse than the various ruffians out there. Killing people under color of law! Now that I have had my own up-close-and-personal encounter with these hooligans, I know that they are worse than in my naïve imaginings and, good God, if they were willing to do this to me, I know that they’re going to do this to others and *NOBODY* and I mean *NOBODY* should go through what I went through! Thank you police! You guys are great!
See? No hypocrisy required.Report
Can you think of other interpretations, which also don’t require hypocrisy?
Ones that might be closer to your own thoughts on policing?Report
Why do I need to? I came up with one that was good enough and fit the facts that we know about. If I need another, I can come up with another but I’m satisfied.
My own thoughts on policing? “Man, I really wish we had gone with ‘Abolish QI’ or ‘Abolish Asset Forfeiture!’ or maybe even ‘Abolish Police Unions!’ instead of falling for COINTELPRO’s ‘Defund the Police!'”Report
Unless you have mind reading ability, no, your idea doesn’t fit the facts.
But if it satisfies you, I’m cool with that.Report
How not?
Is it your opinion that she *MUST* be a hypocrite and the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks otherwise?
Poor Shivanthi. Unable to change her mind, even after being beaten in front of her children, thanks to… what’s your guiding principle here?Report
Shivanthi Sathanandan Spuzaholic.Report