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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

#81

Post by shawnee_ »

DrScump wrote: post #60
shawnee_ wrote: post #8

Thank you, this was an interesting read. On the tangent of arbitrary and unneeded flagging, there seems to be quite a great deal of it lately... it's not improving the site. After I got off work, I tried to find a story that I'd noticed earlier and wanted to comment on, but it was completely gone from not just the front page but everywhere. A completely benign, tech-related story. Makes no sense: https://news.ycombin…

Given that that same submitter submitted at least six copies of essentially the same press release within minutes of each other, I'm not surprised if several received many flags for duplication. Click "Past" on that link to see what I mean.

Okay... but I imagine dupes happen a lot when companies make an announcement. Doesn't mean we should bury all instances of a story. The one I noticed had 19 votes at the time I read it, and this was the one I'd planned to comment on.

Isn't there a "merge" feature or something similar you can do to prevent squelching of a topic entirely? Let the site readers be the collective mechanism that votes or ignores something.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#82

Post by sturgeongeneral »

mnm1 wrote: post #80
sturgeongeneral wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is, but yes, I accept the lethal outcome.

If you mean murder, don't say 'deter' and then wonder why you're getting downvoted.

Murder is unlawful and premeditated.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#83

Post by weberc2 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #79
weberc2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and unfortunately I don't have a good idea about how to audit the entire justice system. My gut says it's unlikely that an entire diverse industry is prejudiced against one particular racial group, and that thousands of laypeople are in on it. Hopefully we can get better data if it doesn't already exist.

You think it unlikely that there is a systemic bias? Bearing in mind that systemic bias isn't usually the result of an overt plan or even hidden conspiracy but instead the simple average of the bias of all the parts of the system.

Something like that. I guess I don't think bias is as responsible or pervasive as we're lead to believe. Frequently when we look at a disparity, I find myself thinking "Why didn't they check if X, Y, or Z were responsible instead of bias?". One example is the gender wage gap; we now know that women make less than men because they elect into different careers, because they have different priorities. Different groups have different distributions of any given behavior, and not all behaviors have the same outcome. This is all just a hunch, so I won't defend it too much; it just seems more plausible to me than the current "everyone is subconsciously biased against one racial group" theory.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#84

Post by [deleted] »

weberc2 wrote: post #46
3JPLW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, and unfortunately I don't have a good idea about how to audit the entire justice system. My gut says it's unlikely that an entire diverse industry is prejudiced against one particular racial group, and that thousands of laypeople are in on it. Hopefully we can get better data if it doesn't already exist.

[deleted]

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#85

Post by dTal »

weberc2 wrote: post #46
3JPLW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, and unfortunately I don't have a good idea about how to audit the entire justice system. My gut says it's unlikely that an entire diverse industry is prejudiced against one particular racial group, and that thousands of laypeople are in on it. Hopefully we can get better data if it doesn't already exist.

>My gut says it's unlikely that an entire diverse industry is prejudiced against one particular racial group, and that thousands of laypeople are in on it.

Is that a general statement? Because the 20th century would like a word.

If we really managed to eliminate institutional racism in the justice system, we should probably try and work out the date that occurred, and make it a national holiday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#86

Post by nojvek »

akytt wrote: post #76
LyndsySimon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the gun is the issue here - I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something. Police in the US are generally seen as adversarial, while police in the UK are generally seen as mostly helpful. In my estimation, the problem in the US is one of culture. Police here are looking for a reason to charge you with a crime, not trying to keep…

The issue that the police in UK fire their guns a few orders of magnitude less might have something to do with it. It makes no sense to dive into statistics as to encounters and guilt and race and what not. Police in US is seen as adversial because they tend to shoot people and that's the core problem. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-police-sho...

Police in the US also get shot at magnitudes higher than the UK. Something something about everyone having guns.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#87

Post by LyndsySimon »

extra88 wrote: post #73
LyndsySimon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the gun is the issue here - I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something. Police in the US are generally seen as adversarial, while police in the UK are generally seen as mostly helpful. In my estimation, the problem in the US is one of culture. Police here are looking for a reason to charge you with a crime, not trying to keep…

> I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something. And yet you wrote in another comment that had you been the son-in-law, you would've brought your rifle to go talk to the person at the car. Why? In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a c…

> In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a car?

It's not unreasonable to expect that someone willing to steal a car might also be willing to harm you to do so.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#88

Post by geofft »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #87
extra88 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something. And yet you wrote in another comment that had you been the son-in-law, you would've brought your rifle to go talk to the person at the car. Why? In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a c…

> In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a car? It's not unreasonable to expect that someone willing to steal a car might also be willing to harm you to do so.

In a country where gun ownership for private citizens is difficult in practice, that's somewhat unreasonable to expect.

Also, if someone feels like the expected penalties for stealing a car and wounding/killing someone are close enough that they should be prepared to kill someone while stealing the car if needed, that speaks to a failure of the justice system: either the penalty for causing physical harm should be much higher, or the penalty for stealing a car should be much lower.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#89

Post by gozur88 »

extra88 wrote: post #72
gozur88 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Which is meaningless, since black people commit more serious crimes than white people. If you break it down by people suspected of hav…

> black people commit more serious crimes than white people. Convicted? Yes. Arrested? Sure. Commit? I don't know, maybe, but I bet if you factored in economic status there'd be a lot of evening out; i.e. poor people commit more serious crimes, black people are disproportionately poor, therefore more black people commit more serious crimes.

Commit, yes. For serious crimes like murder and A & B there's a victim.

The causes are irrelevant from the standpoint of police officers. Cops have to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.

Re: Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police

#90

Post by extra88 »

gozur88 wrote: post #89
extra88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> black people commit more serious crimes than white people. Convicted? Yes. Arrested? Sure. Commit? I don't know, maybe, but I bet if you factored in economic status there'd be a lot of evening out; i.e. poor people commit more serious crimes, black people are disproportionately poor, therefore more black people commit more serious crimes.

Commit, yes. For serious crimes like murder and A & B there's a victim. The causes are irrelevant from the standpoint of police officers. Cops have to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.

That's assuming there's an officer involved at all. I also didn't have a specific definition of "serious crimes" in mind, whether it would only include violent crimes or also non-violent ones like burglary or fraud (of significant value).
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