Live data from Hacker News

A collection of videos of police brutality

thishastostopnow.com

281–290 of 413 posts

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#281

Remember a few years ago it came out that Apple filed a patent to disable cameras in a localised area. Speculation was so that law enforcement could disable cameras during protests and riots. In the next few days/weeks, watch if people start saying that they're in these hot zones and their camera phones stop working

I think that’s be rather hard to do without contentious enabling legislation. It was more likely intended for company issued phones, to stop employees taking photos in the office (some offices still ban camera phones).

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#282
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the dangerous people you're talking about I suppose

Exactly. IIRC alphabet agencies operate many tor exit nodes.

Easiest way to track somebody on tor is to follow them through their bounces.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I understand, how are the 2 related? You seem to suggest that the "protesters savagely kicking unconscious victims in the head" are criminals. I agree, they likely are. By those terms then all of the police officers kicking downed protesters are criminals as well. Why are their fellow officers not arresting them on the spot? There is a very large difference between random protesters committing violent acts an…

For starters, the rioters are already breaking the law at the point of police contact, and they know that they are. Secondly, the officers are typically in a dangerous situation, and have more pressing concerns. If you find yourself in a riot, leave. Common sense and common decency, no?

So because the rioters are breaking the law it gives the police carte blanche to do the same? Amazing how cops in other western countries are able to enforce the law without killing thousands of citizens every year but ours cant.

Sorry the cops have more pressing concerns than obeying the law? Then they should not be police officers. A whole lot of cops seem to have a whole lot of other pressing concerns standing around watching George Floyd get murdered. A whole lot of cops seem to have a whole lot of other pressing concerns standing around watching Rodney King get beaten. There are hundreds of incidents of whole lot of cops seem to have a whole lot of other pressing concerns standing around watching their fellow officers assault prone or unresisting civilians.

Just so I understand, if you spent your whole life getting treated as a second class citizen and peaceful protest did not work, and voting did not work, and nothing changed, could you not see yourself getting a little tired of living a lesser life? Now imagine having kids and having to watch them live the same lesser life.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#284
post #106
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the dangerous people you're talking about I suppose

Leaders in black protests have been killed off by white power supremacists over the years. The creator of this site risks the same.

Yelp! Hopefully it doesn't come to that. I've not created a "We need to stop the KKK" and blasted their faces on the internet... yet.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#285

I know this is hard for some people to accept, but the police deal with the worst dregs of society every day so you don't have to. They get pissed on, stabbed, punched in the face, shot, and killed working for less than 1/4 of the pay of many software developers do. We bitch about JavaScript vs Golang while they have to wonder if the next person they pull over for a speeding ticket is going to pull a gun on them. The…

I'm 100% with you on this. I see it as the worst job in the world. Everybody is against you and all you are trying to do is keep people safe. I do not think that it is acceptable however to shoot somebody that is on the ground with multiple people on top of them.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#286
post #247
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world we wouldn't need police at all and we wouldn't be having this conversation. In my example, I was pointing out that if we remove police corruption from the equation, police would still kill some number of civilians. Because of that fact, the parent's post doesn't make much sense.

But why would you hypothetically remove bad actions from just the police? I genuinely don’t understand. By the exact same argument, if you removed all bad actions from everyone who isn’t a police officer, then of course you’d expect police to kill more people. In the original comment, before all the ridiculous hypothesizing, the actual world is what was being discussed.

> But why would you hypothetically remove bad actions from just the police?

Because the person I'm responding to is claiming that police kill more civilians than civilians kill police, with the implication that it's because police are corrupt.

I used a hypothetical scenario to point out that this doesn't follow, because the same would be true even if there were no police corruption.

> By the exact same argument, if you removed all bad actions from everyone who isn’t a police officer, then of course you’d expect police to kill more people.

Not clear what your point is here.

> In the original comment, before all the ridiculous hypothesizing, the actual world is what was being discussed.

Yes, some times people use thought experiments to highlight facts about the real world.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#287

This post was number one on HN. Now it’s nowhere to be found on HN’s pages unless you search for it. I happen to remember the posters handle and was able to dig up the post. The post is not even flagged back so am curious why did it disappear?

It's been flagged to oblivion so as not to pierce HN's tender bubble. Should have mentioned which JS framework was used to build the site so the post would stay on the front page.

Even better, it should have been implemented in rust. HN’s rust fixation (I get it, I like rust, but...) and aversion to anything involving society would have been held in perfect balance.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#288
post #31
post #5

Ha. I have a similar type of domain name in my shopping cart... I have another angle for this, which is we have to clearly identify a path where legitimate policing can occur, but aims to end police misconduct systematically.

I'm interested to hear more of your ideas around this

  * Require police to be self-insured, backed by their pension plan
  * Refactor qualified immunity for police work (no more carte blanche)
  * Legalize all drugs (tax and regulate, treat abuse as a medical issue)
  * Legalize and (and regulate the hell out of it) sex work
  * National LEO database to prevent bad cops from moving one county over
  * National guidelines and certification of police behavior
    (a Geneva convention of sorts). No excuses of ignorance of the law
That's a quick brain dump on it. Just doing the pension thing would be a game changer and is not an insurmountable goal.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#289

Genuine unprovoked and unnecessary police brutality incidents are incredibly rare (relative to all police interactions) and hardly an epidemic. When someone is breaking the law and resisting arrest the police have no choice but to be violent with the resistor. Unfortunately these incidents often get categorized as "police brutality" when they're really just a necessary use of force. More broadly, the entire narrative…

The issue is not the rarity of police brutality (although I disagree) it is the acceptance and silence of the perpetrators fellow officers who witness it. It means that all of these officers who don't intervene are guilty of dereliction of duty and condone the violence. These people should not have power of citizens. It means the entire system is corrupt and broken. "When controlling for violent encounters with polic…

Cops having to deal with many bad people on a daily basis, in a country of 330 million, will inevitably lead to a few outrageous cases. Similarly writing code inevitably leads to bugs.

But first, those cases are not racially biased. Black men are involved in far more violent crime per capita than white men which leads them to getting in violent altercations with police more often. This is common knowledge, so the 2.5x statistic is easily explained without invoking racism.

A white man was killed in almost exactly the same way as George recently but there were no protests, because the man was white. People have the unjustified belief that blacks are disproportionately targeted so that's why there were protests.

If people actually understood the facts that police killings are not racially biased then we would not have destruction in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#290
post #167

As always, you have to ask, compared to what ? Are the majority of police actions brutality, or only a miniscule fraction? This is the crucial question, and a site like this provides no insight at all. (or so I imagine, since site is down) If you want to fan the flames, though, add a section for protesters savagely kicking unconscious victims in the head.

Is there an okay percentage of brutality by police? When a failure in the system happens, it needs to be magnified, studied, dissected, and the system must evolve to make sure it doesn't happen again. This is how we have safer nuclear plants, airplanes, etc. And in human systems too: coal miners and people on oil rigs have adopted new protocols to help their workers be more safe. The police is not immune. One act of…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN