201–210 of 318 posts
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Your argument here appears to be that I am misguided because tasers are safer than firearms. I am not in favor of guns either.
Ah, sorry, I meant for morbidity claim.
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When middle class families move out it's called *-flight. When poor families move out, it's called gentrification. Both are due to economics, some precipitated, not so much by individual bigotry but rather by self interest (the former wanting to preserve value individually in anticipation of devaluation of property, the latter get pushed out due to economics whereby its not viable to remain in a valuating neighborhoo…
While I'm sure there's plenty of self interest at play, it's important to remember that there were explicitly racist legal practices as well. A specific example is the practice of racially restricted covenants, which literally prevents a home from being sold to a someone who isn't white: http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrict...
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How can you ignore the inciting incident in this case? Perhaps the victim was a man with some personal issues, but before being harassed by Evan Snow, Alex Nieto was a man minding his own business.
That's not what happened. Snow was an irresponsible dog owner; his dog jumped on Nieto. That happens to me on walks once every other week. I am rarely murdered as a result. What made this situation special was that Nieto was armed with a taser. When Snow's dog assaulted him, as poorly managed dogs do, Nieto prepared to zap it with the taser. Snow tried to tell Nieto not to tase his dog (the DA investigation says that…
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No, it's certainly not that simple. It's still a very stark contrast that the SF police department fired a years supply of bullets in a single incident. I picked 2014 because it's the last available stats atm, and it's actually slightly above average. On average, per use of deadly force, the german police fires about 1/20th - 1/40th in terms of number of bullets. One reason for that is that the german police is train…
When you fire a gun at someone, your goal is to kill them. If you're confronting an armed subject and you manage only to wound them, then not only are you making it possible for the to shoot you back, but you're making it overwhelmingly likely that they will --- who could blame them for trying desperately to save their own lives? So to me, 1 bullet, 20 bullets, 40 bullets, who cares? Dead is dead. If you don't want p…
NO NO NO NO NO!
In the US in civilian life, and this includes police although they don't really count as that any more, the goal is to stop them. Deliberate killing is reserved for the judicial system after due process.
Now, if you're not lucky enough to either have a target who stops after the first hit (this is very common) or gets a Central Nervous System hit, you're going to have to keep shooting until they lose enough blood or are otherwise physically disabled, and there's a good chance that'll result in death. Especially since it's not unheard of for that to require a magazine dump, and if multiple police are engaging the target, you'll get this sort of "40 bullets!" outcome.
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I do not like being manipulated by journalists abusing their positions to push their preferred narrative. Solnit would like us to believe Snow was complicit in Nieto's killing, because it supports her narrative. Surely Solnit was made aware, before this article was published, of critically important details, like Nieto's diagnosed and medicated psychosis (he was off his meds), or his record of having violently confro…
no... Solint is using Snow as a narrative for representing the attitudes the gentrification brought into Alex's neighborhood. The attitudes that lead to Alex's death. SoInit is not presenting all the facts because that is not a journalist's job. She has only a limited amount of space (yes even on the web) to work with. But why are you talking about the messenger rather than the message?
This is a very sad occurence but I'd wish an article to read more as facts than as a sob story
Aaron Swartz commits suicide after being prosecuted for a crime that he did commit, and he's a martyr. A working class latino guy in San Francisco gets shot by the police because some white dudes didn't like the look of him, and it's basically his fault. Hacker news values.
You've boiled two cases down to a single factor: race. You've ignored the fact that Swartz was charged with non-violent crimes and that some of the charges were disputed and seen as prosecutorial overreach. Even the B&E charges may have been nonsense, because they were linked to an attempted felony. And you ignore the fact that Swartz was doing what he thought was right.
You've also heavily mischaracterized the Nieto case. 911 was called because a man was seen pointing a taser at people and a dog. Whether the actual caller saw the weapon is irrelevant. The fact of it is not in dispute. The only disputed fact is whether Nieto pointed the taser at police. Given his previous behavior, and the fact that his weapon was found on the ground (i.e., not holstered), it seems at least plausible that he pointed at the police, or at the least, that he was drawing it or had drawn it. So it seems like, yes, it was largely in his control whether police would show up and how they would respond to him.
From a European perspective this is more 'Death by police state' than anything else.
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I can tell you first hand that the neighborhood has been overrun by men like Evan Snow. Considering you live in Chicago and that Rebecca and I actually live in Bernal Heights I think we have a much better perspective on the situation. Where I come from you don't call the cops because you think you saw "a Mexican crazy man waving a gun around". If you see something, you leave, and you don't say anything to anyone. If…
Calling he police on someone waving a handgun around in public is not "snitching," it's doing everyone a favor. That said, this isn't directly related to the story at hand as it is not clear that Mr. Nieto was in fact waving a gun around, but appears to be a convenient story from the police to justify having shot him.
Everyone else I would try to ignore, because I don't want them shot. Anyone remember 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot by cops because he had a toy gun?
I would never live in Texas where I would be surrounded by white males with guns. At this point, I am more worried by crazy white dudes with a gun than I am by non-whites.
Update: I love the fact that I am talking exclusively about my own reactions and getting downvoted; love ya all.
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> Police training demands they shoot to kill. Something that is incredibly fucking stupid, and there are plenty of countries who do very well without this misguided use of of lethal weapons.
If you are saying that it's incredibly stupid to routinely put police into situations where they have less than 5 seconds to decide whether or not they are required to kill someone to protect themselves or their partners, I agree. I think we should disarm most police.
The point here, though is not to deny police their right to self defense, the point is to train them in a way that their first action to exercise that right is not with as much force as possible, but with as much force as is necessary.
Clearly emptying multiple magazines into someone speaks of fear, rather than necessity, and I do not wish to be policed and protected by the fearful.
But to your larger point, I agree: building a society in which there is little to none violence is a desirable goal.
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No shit! I agree. I read the first half of the first graf of the story angry at Solnit, for singling out this guy and scare-quoting his occupation. Then I got to the bit about the dog jumping up on Nieto and the simpering excuse-making this guy made about that and I instantly got angry at the guy instead. What an asshole! That lasted a couple minutes. But "poorly managed, barking dog jumps up on someone" happens mill…
Nieto's mental illness if it exists, is not relevant. Many people are "mentally ill" but not a danger to anyone else. In fact 50% of the people killed by police are "mentally ill". Also consider that having severe depression, autism, ADD, etc. are considered mental illnesses. Alex's Nieto's "mental illness", even if existent, is not an excuse for his death.
I am going to gently push back on you, though, because you're making it sound as if Nieto had a completely unrelated historical diagnosis that is being used here as a smokescreen. Here are some details salient, I personally think, to this case:
* Nieto had been prescribed two antipsychotics. He had not been taking them at the time the police confronted him.
* Just three weeks prior to this shooting, Nieto had tased the ex-husband of a friend while they were putting their kid in a car. The victim removed the taser darts, and Nieto tased him again. The victim managed to get into the car and drive away as Nieto screamed and threatened him.
* The second of Nieto's two antipsychotics was prescribed two years prior, when he was placed on psychiatric lockdown after trying to set his parents house on fire.
There is mental illness of the kind that many of us suffer and manage, with varying kinds of assistance. And then there is uncontrolled, ongoing, and violent psychosis.
Nobody is arguing that Nieto's mental illness is a good reason for him to have been killed. But the notion that the police, dispatched to confront a subject reported in a 911 call to have been carrying a pistol, faced someone who did indeed refuse to show their hands and then did indeed draw a weapon is corroborated by Nieto's history.