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A collection of videos of police brutality

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Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#351

Post by dang »

alexashka wrote: post #334
Lariscus wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see did not get that from you original comment but please enlighten me on how demanding ethical behaviour from software engineers leads to a eugenics program.

The level of idiocy required to believe that 'demanding ethical behaviour from software engineers' is at all a reasonable request, enables other idiotic ideas, such as 'demand ethical behaviour of all people' because why stop at software engineers, which naturally leads to eugenics if you believe some people are born with unethical tendencies that can't be corrected past birth, due to genetics. Now I understand that…

Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. This is emphatically not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#352

Post by emerged »

codethief wrote: post #300

I wish the site contained more than just the video recordings and presented further information like time & date / location / background story / names / official police report / related news reports etc. Right now I could simply dress up as police officer and stage such a video. I'm not at all saying this is happening, I'm just saying it'd be possible to do that. With fake news as well claims of things being fake new…

The site relies on that lack of contrasting data and authentication (at least, objectively it can be argued).

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#353

Post by alexashka »

dang wrote: post #351
alexashka wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level of idiocy required to believe that 'demanding ethical behaviour from software engineers' is at all a reasonable request, enables other idiotic ideas, such as 'demand ethical behaviour of all people' because why stop at software engineers, which naturally leads to eugenics if you believe some people are born with unethical tendencies that can't be corrected past birth, due to genetics. Now I understand that…

Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. This is emphatically not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Good point. My apologies.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#354

Post by leereeves »

scarface74 wrote: post #348
leereeves wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And again you're using language dishonestly. They didn't "storm" anything. They had every right to be there, protesting peacefully, and it's legal to carry guns at the Michigan state capital. I don't know if they were "very good people", but I haven't heard any reason to think otherwise. And your own source makes it clear that the government wasn't intimidated by these peaceful protests: > lawmakers were meeting to d…

Who were they protecting themselves against by coming in with guns? Why else did they do it if not to intimidate? Do you think 20 or 30 armed Black men could have gotten away with this? https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/05/05/PDTF/5969fca5-...

This conversation has gone too deep, deeper than Hacker News can handle, so we should probably wrap it up.

I'll just say that if 20 armed black men couldn't get away with protesting in Michigan, that says something very bad about the Democrats who run the state.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#355

Post by PappaPatat »

3wolf wrote: post #144
Lariscus wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being asked by your boss to implement such a thing and actually doing it. How spineless and unethical would you have to be to even consider following such an order.

They'd probably take the Volkswagen strategy: Team A builds a feature that detects when the device is in a localized area. (This already exists) Team B builds a feature that disables the camera. (I could see this being a parental control) Both features are reasonable by themselves. It's when they are combined that they become an issue. The trick is that Teams A and B don't know of each other's existence.

TIL the expression "the Volkswagen strategy" and I love it.

Thanks, I'll be using that.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#356

Post by austincheney »

scarface74 wrote: post #302
austincheney wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know anything about those studies so I won’t form any opinion of them.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/nyclu-releases-report-an... Stop and Frisk disparity between Blacks and Whites https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/nyregion/nypd-social-dist... https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/new-evidence-r...

That looks like New York specific stuff. As I have never been there my knowledge and interest of those conditions is absent.

So I looked it up for my state: https://www.superlawyers.com/texas/article/stop-and-frisk-in...

Here it seems to be related almost entirely to traffic stops. I suspect, but don’t know, that racial identity would play a lesser role in that case because an officer wouldn’t likely known a driver’s race until the vehicle is already pulled over. To play devils advocate though I am white and had law enforcement ask to search my vehicle several times in my youth.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#357

Post by downerending »

hug wrote: post #322
downerending wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't commit crimes. And I certainly don't commit aggravated assault on helpless people. Do people even need to be told not to do that?

Pithy answer: Apparently police do, otherwise the US wouldn't have so many deaths in custody or complaints of police brutality. Less pithy answer: The protests, and the videos, are not examples of regular crimes or regular criminals. They're about criminal actions by police, two circles in a venn diagram that should never be crossed without black & yellow stripes and giant red "WARNING" text. It needs highlighting du…

> whataboutism

This is the second time I've heard this word this week (the first had to do with bicycle laws). As far as I can tell, the point seems to be to shame the target into turning off their brain. Hope this obnoxious neologism dies out soon. It's certainly a showstopper for rational conversation.

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#359

Post by emerged »

downerending wrote: post #246
ookdatnog wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misidentifying what the core problem is with police brutality: it's not just about relative frequency, it's about how the justice system responds to it. As a society we give police a monopoly on civilian violence, it is only reasonable to expect the holders of that power to be held to the highest possible standards. But the justice system signals the exact opposite, by systematially protecting even the worst c…

I agree that the situation should continue to be improved. I doubt that websites like this will help. Riots will definitely not help. The cause of righteousness has been set back a generation in a few days.

It seems likely that many people who were not previously racist have become racist after witnessing these riots. I keep asking people the question -- if all racism was cured, if it no longer existed, and all police behaved 100% innocently, except 1 white cop who kills 1 black man -- what is the proper response? Burning down cities? Concluding systemic racism?

Re: A collection of videos of police brutality

#360

Post by hug »

downerending wrote: post #357
hug wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pithy answer: Apparently police do, otherwise the US wouldn't have so many deaths in custody or complaints of police brutality. Less pithy answer: The protests, and the videos, are not examples of regular crimes or regular criminals. They're about criminal actions by police, two circles in a venn diagram that should never be crossed without black & yellow stripes and giant red "WARNING" text. It needs highlighting du…

> whataboutism This is the second time I've heard this word this week (the first had to do with bicycle laws). As far as I can tell, the point seems to be to shame the target into turning off their brain. Hope this obnoxious neologism dies out soon. It's certainly a showstopper for rational conversation.

Astonishing.

The problem, here, is not the word whataboutism, nor is that word a showstopper for rational conversation. The point is not to shame the target in any way. The point is to bring the conversation back to the original point: Instead of "but what about..", talk to the actual point.

Which, so far, you've absolutely refused to do. At no point have you addressed the original point you tried to make, that there is some need to compare police brutality to something else.

So, let me walk back the comment on 'whataboutism' and instead of using the shorthand ask you why should we give any consideration to the question "what about other criminals' while discussing police brutality?

It appears that you're unwilling to stand honestly behind your own statements, nor willing to engage with the substance of the statements others have made, but rather would prefer to be evasive.

I would absolutely love to be proven wrong, here, but sadly fully expect not to be.

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