De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer • Hacker News Board

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#441

Post by dang » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

just_steve_h wrote: post #10

Folks - don't be obtuse. Police commanders know exactly what will happen when they escalate with tear gas and rubber bullets. Pro-police forces WANT mayhem. It makes people watching on TV afraid of the protests, and it changes the subject away from the widespread peaceful opposition to racist police violence.

Please don't post flamebait to HN. This comment was by far the most flamebaity top-level post in this thread, which predictably led to by far the shittiest subthread. That's not cool. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN? Note these ones:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

"Eschew flamebait."

If you consider the rest of this page, you'll notice that most of the commenters support the protests (though of course they are divided, just as people at large are divided) and doing so without breaking the site guidelines. It's actually a surprisingly not bad discussion—at least relative to the extremeness of what's going on right now.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#442

Post by evan_ » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

km3r wrote: post #408

evan_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say “most” which implies that you agree that some police are racist and violent “bad apples.” Why, then, do the “good cops” not speak out against the bad cops? Surely they could use their overwhelming numbers to get rid of the racist and violent bad apples?

Why don't the "good protesters" speak out against the looters? Why do you demand the cops do what you wont do? (maybe you personally do but most protesters are not speaking against the looters). Often times it's dangerous to speak up or separate groups entirely. I'm sure the oakland police department is less racist than some random cop Jackson, Mississippi.

Bad analogy. You might as well ask why firefighters don’t pull teeth. It’s not their job.

Police swear an oath to uphold the law and it’s ostensibly their job to, when observing illegality, say “hey knock it off.”

Protesters do not swear an oath as a prerequisite to protesting. Protesters frequently do speak out against- and even forcibly prevent- looting and vandalism within their ranks, but if they don’t, it’s not a dereliction of duty in the same way as when cops ignore abuses in their ranks.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#443

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

thelittleone wrote: post #135

panic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police could stop the protests instantly by changing how they deal with racist officers and officers who kill people. They would rather escalate the situation than make these changes.

Governments naturally fear giving protestors what they want as it validates this course of action and may lead to more protests.

[deleted]

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#444

Post by lovehashbrowns » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

tcbawo wrote: post #103

panic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police could stop the protests instantly by changing how they deal with racist officers and officers who kill people. They would rather escalate the situation than make these changes.

Being a police officer is a difficult, thankless, dangerous job, yet critical for a functional society. You don't get the same resources, respect, or pension of the military. If you are let go/fired, you have little chance of finding something comparable close by. It's not healthy for the psyche to be put into harm's way for an entire career span. There is probably a lot of untreated PTSD going on. It's not surprisin…

Cops have guns and close to complete immunity to do whatever they want. They've been getting more and more militarized in the last couple of decades. They really, really don't need you to defend them.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#445

Post by dang » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #89

You Americans need to be way more angry about what has been happening in your country for decades (centuries even). Way more angry.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, such as by preaching self-righteously at some other country. That helps nothing.

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

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#446

Post by andrewzah » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

exolymph wrote: post #356

pjc50 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White protestors were allowed to occupy a state building with guns without a single bit of teargas.

Well yeah, if all of the protestors are armed, the police realize they can't escalate the situation and get away with it.

So the question here is: Would the response have been the same if all the heavily armored folk were black?

As a born and raised American, I'm inclined to think not. I could be wrong of course, but everything that I've seen and experienced growing up and living in the US has led me to believe otherwise.

I want to think that more protestors being armed would make a difference, but ultimately I believe it will just lead to escalation and more deaths by cop (and/or the national guard, as we're finding out in Louisville currently).

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#447

Post by slumos » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #382

malnourish wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston tea party Haymarket riots Black Friday suffragette riots Martin Luther King Jr riots Stonewall riots

You’ll want to remove Boston Tea party from that list. Extremely non-violent event. They broke one pad lock, didn’t steal any tea, and bought the yard a new padlock the next day. It wasn’t a “protest” in any comparable way to this.

“That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men, some dressed in the Mohawk warrior disguises, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water. ... The property damage amounted to the destruction of 92,000 pounds or 340 chests of tea, reported by the British East India Company worth £9,659 worth, or $1,700,000 dollars in today’s money. The owner of the two of the three ships was William Rotch, a Nantucket-born colonist and merchant.”

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#448

Post by dang » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #153

somebrody wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wild narratives on HN about police racism and violence You can see cops wilding out here From reddit: Please share this firing something at innocent person on their porch: https://streamable.com/u2jzoo cop appearing to be enjoying himself today: https://v.redd.it/jjclrdzp8x151 cop shooting something at guy for saying "fuck you": https://v.redd.it/zepg0b43ly151 cops breaking supplies for peaceful protestors: https:/…

If you're going to downvote the comment with more sources than any other in the whole thread I think the OP deserves to know why.

Probably because it was boilerplate. When people show up in threads with a pre-existing list of links, that's not conversation, that's talking-points. HN threads are supposed to be conversations.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#449

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:13 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #362

idealboy wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I and about 90% of the crowd wore masks. Yes, we did our best to keep 6 feet but not always, hence the masks. People were walking around with hand sanitizer to share. A global pandemic is awful, but it does not alleviate us of our civic responsibility. Was it uncomfortable and difficult? Yes. Am I glad I went? Hell yes. Black lives matter.

> but it does not alleviate us of our civic responsibility. The protests haven’t worked though for the last 20 years or so. IMO it’s more important to vote and promote change than to block traffic. People remember how you made them feel more easily than what you actually said. Preventing them from getting somewhere is a great way to just piss people off.

You've got it backwards. Voting and promoting change is what has not worked. Economic damage is likely to be the only thing that's going to persuade the elites to throw the working class a bone. You're witnessing the anger of the masses in its most pure form here.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#450

Post by vertex-four » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #417

vertex-four wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results, like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability. The same as all the other times the police have murdered people. It's not like this is a new thing that people are just waking up to.

No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results Can you substantiate that, or is it just your opinion? You can justify the imposition of your opinion on everyone? (Through violent intimidation?) like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability This has happened, incrementally. Can you design a system, ground-up that will work as w…

> This has happened, incrementally.

Do you have statistics that show that? Are more cops charged and imprisoned after murdering unarmed people every year, or does the number of unarmed murdered people go down, at all? People who die mysteriously in custody?