Here's the test. Reverse the situation. Off-duty cop is buying a car and random good neighbor black person sees all the same "suspicious behaviors" and begins an armed confrontation with the person they believe to be stealing a car. Suddenly pointing a gun at a "suspicious person" is no longer "lawful and proper" behavior. At a minimum, the civilian goes to jail for being reckless.
Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
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Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#32Here's the test. Reverse the situation. Off-duty cop is buying a car and random good neighbor black person sees all the same "suspicious behaviors" and begins an armed confrontation with the person they believe to be stealing a car. Suddenly pointing a gun at a "suspicious person" is no longer "lawful and proper" behavior. At a minimum, the civilian goes to jail for being reckless.
Sorry, but that is not a good comparison. I would assume that off-duty cops (rightly) have more authority when it comes to these types of situations.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#33This was flagged away, but I vouched it back; I think it's interesting to hear a story which almost ended in tragedy, just like it's useful to hear about software bugs which almost resulted in data loss or security vulnerabilities.
In fact the almost case is more valuable because the survivor in this case was doing absolutely nothing wrong and lived to tell the tale.
"Absolutely nothing wrong" is a little bit overstating it.
She wasn't doing anything illegal, sure, but it was a bit reckless to arrange the transfer so that the buyer was expected to go alone, onto someone's driveway, to replace the license plates and drive off with the car without talking to the resident or owner.
Imagine if you sold your Magic cards to someone and told them, "oh, they're in my bedroom at 123 Elm Street -- just jimmy open the window and fish 'em out. If anyone asks, just give them this handwritten note."
Or, "Cool, just pick up the keys from under my office desk. Walk past security, just ignore them if they stop you, and fish them out of the cabinet. Pick the lock if you have to."
No. Bad idea. You look like a thief doing that.
Could they have handled the situation better? Definitely. But it's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#34This was flagged away, but I vouched it back; I think it's interesting to hear a story which almost ended in tragedy, just like it's useful to hear about software bugs which almost resulted in data loss or security vulnerabilities.
Thanks for vouching.
I often read HN through the HackerNews Robot on Telegram and more than once I see interesting stories that seems to have been flagged off the site even if they were upvoted a lot.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#35How is property worth pointing a gun at someone over? It's a car. Cars can be replaced.
It may be just a car to you, but I have a valuable sports car, and if I caught someone attempting to steal it I wouldn't hesitate to point a gun. Not for a moment. Would the intent be to kill? Of course not. It'd be to deter. Edit for the downvotes: it's not just a car to me, and it's not just about the monetary value. It has sentimental value and I wouldn't be able to replace it easily. I don't see what's so controv…
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Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
You didn't research very hard. From the Washington Post[0]: > White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black…
> You didn't research very hard. From the Washington Post: Actually, that very quote was what inspired my research. I wanted to know if the quote was misleading in favor of one narrative, so I filtered out cases where the suspect was armed and otherwise viably threatening. Here's the link to the harvard study: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399 > It is a fact: black people are shot and killed more often by police than…
Then in that case, I suppose it all depends on who is doing the justification. Nearly every police shooting in America is "justified" — be it by a police review board, a prosecutor, a grand jury, or a trial jury.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too just vouched it back (after seeing this comment so we didn't click vouch simultaneously). If you're flagging this story, perhaps you could leave a comment here about why? Edit: And while posting this comment it got reflagged/revouched again...
This seems like a long-standing country-specific societal problem to me: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
That's a fair argument.
I'd argue it's a new phenomenon in that this is the first time (I've seen anyways) people resigning themselves to simply giving advice on how to de-escelate the situation as a non-cop. But I can see how that seems like a stretch.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#38This article makes a lot of claims about innocent black people being gunned down by police, but is there any actual evidence of this happening disproportionately to white people? Last year I trawled the 2015 Washington Post police shooting dataset and couldn't find any evidence, and a couple months later a black Harvard economist released a paper saying he couldn't find any evidence in the data he looked at. Between…
I understand the issue is the loose definition of "innocent" - if you take it to mean someone shot by police who is absolutely innocent of any charge - or if you define it as someone who was doing something criminal or suspect but the situation did not initially warrant their shooting. Hence the emphasis on deescalation training. Consider a hypothetical: two separate scenarios of kids shoplifting, one white the other…
Yeah, I was purposefully vague about "innocent" because I don't know what the most interesting, precise definition would be. I agree with you that comparing results to crimes is important in assessing the role race plays in these encounters.
> I believe the average white police officer would still be more hesitant to use lethal force against a white assailant than a black one.
I thought I heard about studies into this, but I can't seem to dig them up. I'll edit or reply again if/when I find them.
> I won't deny the usual statistics ("blacks commit more crimes per-capita", etc) but don't think that's where I believe the problem is. I'm not content with the sentiment that "black lives matter" - I'd much rather it be "criminals' lives matter"
If the discriminant is criminal behavior and not race, then (by definition), the issue isn't one of race (at least not in any meaningful way). It would be good to identify if this is the case or not, so we can focus our national debate on how to appropriately deal with crime and not on racism.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#39This article makes a lot of claims about innocent black people being gunned down by police, but is there any actual evidence of this happening disproportionately to white people? Last year I trawled the 2015 Washington Post police shooting dataset and couldn't find any evidence, and a couple months later a black Harvard economist released a paper saying he couldn't find any evidence in the data he looked at. Between…
I understand the issue is the loose definition of "innocent" - if you take it to mean someone shot by police who is absolutely innocent of any charge - or if you define it as someone who was doing something criminal or suspect but the situation did not initially warrant their shooting. Hence the emphasis on deescalation training. Consider a hypothetical: two separate scenarios of kids shoplifting, one white the other…
This is not what the statistic or the study the OP pointed says.
The study is clear in its conclusions: in the hypothetical situation you just presented it is the white kid that has the higher probability of getting shot/killed by the police.
In a nutshell what the study based on the data says is: After you get stop by the police, you are more likely to get shot/killed if you are white than if you are black.
Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact the almost case is more valuable because the survivor in this case was doing absolutely nothing wrong and lived to tell the tale.
"Absolutely nothing wrong" is a little bit overstating it. She wasn't doing anything illegal , sure, but it was a bit reckless to arrange the transfer so that the buyer was expected to go alone, onto someone's driveway, to replace the license plates and drive off with the car without talking to the resident or owner. Imagine if you sold your Magic cards to someone and told them, "oh, they're in my bedroom at 123 Elm…
She wasn't doing anything illegal, sure, but it was a bit reckless
Only in a world where random folks from the neighbourhood might come out and point a gun at you instead of simply asking a few logical questions and looking at proffered supporting documentation.
But it's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions.
Who's outraged at her actions being misinterpreted?
The outrage is at the fact that a panicky cop saw something they thought was suspicious and reacted by immediately pointing their gun at someone (something any good gun owner knows you never do unless you plan to shoot), creating a potentially life threatening situation, and the person on the other end of it was forced to defuse it.