Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

fivethirtyeight.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 799 posts

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#571

Post by dmix »

lxmorj wrote: post #454
beloch wrote: post #78

We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organize…

It is flabbergasting to me that we expect self-policing from protestors, but not the literal fucking police.

Why not both?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#572

Post by ReticentVole »

asenna wrote: post #215

I highly recommend checking out Trevor Noah's recent video on the protests - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4Bg8mu2aM He mentions how society is at its core a contract on how to engage with one another. Everything we do is in some form conforming to that contract and when this contract is violated (like the stores being looted and vandalized), it angers you. However, to the people who're really affected by this is…

If you want a more conservative perspective, from Black Pilled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnuJz174H9s

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#573

Post by welterde »

snovv_crash wrote: post #568
welterde wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it quite difficult to get a carry permit for a gun in Switzerland though? Making it not that likely that a random citizen the police officer encounters will actually have a loaded gun.

There is mandatory military service for males, so you actually see a lot of guns being open-carried by people heading home for the weekend on public transport etc.

They are not allowed to be loaded however if I am not misinformed.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#574

Post by TeaDrunk »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #526
rewoi wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police brutality has been problem for past 50 years. Maybe protests could wait for couple of weeks. But your right to protest is more important than my right to life, freedom, going to work or pay rent.

Exactly. As wrong as this incident was, the murderer is already in jail. That may not feel like justice right now, but that's what we do with murderers. Basically, the system worked as it should as long as he receives an appropriate sentence.

The police officers with him, who were watching him kill someone and were keeping a lookout to allow him to kill someone in peace, have not been charged with anything. Additionally, it is not just this incident. There have been many, many incidents of unarmed, often non resisting black people being killed by police and few (if any) actual consequences to police for doing it equivalent to if a civilian did the same.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#575

Post by colechristensen »

ooobit2 wrote: post #213
bjourne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on a few demos that turned violent. Among them the famous one when George Bush decided to pay a visit. In all cases , the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. I find it very odd that the polic…

Here's an idea, for whatever it's worth: Address the incentive to riot instead of attempting to assign full control and liability to one element over another. For all the obvious, on-the-nose proof that reactive states differ from proactive states, I find it very odd that people are still folding their arms and brandishing smug expressions for their equivalently useless ideas as soon as someone else's idea yields a c…

Critical thinking is complicated and the subjects don't fit well in poster boards or chants, the results of critical thinking don't fit in with worldview discrimination "Does this idea fit in with my alignment or not"

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#576

Post by g8tor »

hef19898 wrote: post #552
g8tor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't read that article as supporting the title that descalation leads to less violence. it does discuss evidence for escalation being correlated with more violence. but you can't blanket say that's causal. These are complex situations that don't follow rules. The mob consists of peaceful protesters, violent protesters and looters. people's membership in any of these groups can be multiple and shift over time. it's…

Tear gas and rubber bullets against, at the start, peaceful protesters. not okay tools. Neither is encircling groups or overwhelming them with larger numbers. This way of thinking, looking at it as a war-like situation and vocabulary, is what leads to escalation. On the other hand, neither is a completly off-hands approach. Tough call, right? Funny thing, when white guys with masks, tactical vests and AR-15s stormed…

> Tear gas and rubber bullets against, at the start, peaceful protesters. not okay tools.

Correct from your perspective.

I don't think it was used when the gathering was peaceful unless it was area denial. I think there's some or all of property damage, arson, looting, arming and throwing, before they use those tools.

Interested to see a video with context from the current unrest where that's not the case.

By hand to hand, I mean the stuff that happens when police and gatherers engage at close quarters.

There's lots of these scenes from the HK unrest. it basically is hand-to-hand combat with batons like I said.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#577

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Jommi wrote: post #377
thebradbain wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd love California to try a ballot initiative putting a 10-15%-of-budget cap on police spending in cities. I think it could easily pass, and if NYPD's 2017 strike is any indication, crime rate could actually go down [1]. NYPD ended their strike voluntarily because city officials were recognizing that maybe they weren't as necessary, after all! https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti.…

Less spending on police, even less trained officers, great right?

I live in a city with a monetarily constrained police force.

It's great. They take the big stuff (violent crime and trafficking in hard drugs) seriously but don't have time to be running BS task forces, procuring military equipment they don't need and sitting around watching for "sketchy looking" people to harass. I'm sure it sucks to be them and they're all over worked but frankly it's great for the people.

Not being seen as jerks gives the local police better freedom of operation than the much better funded state cops who are seen as being jerks who enforce every law to the letter and nobody wants to cooperate with. I kinda feel bad for the state cops because cities like mine are where they stick the fresh academy grads who have no connections or seniority to avoid a crap assignment and then they get locals hating them for doing what the state trained them to do (also goes to show you the conflict between what the state wants and what the people of the city want).

That said, were the Real Crime(TM) to vanish I can see the local police using their newfound free time to optimize enforcement for revenue generation which would be very bad.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#578

Post by g8tor »

paulannesley wrote: post #525
g8tor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't read that article as supporting the title that descalation leads to less violence. it does discuss evidence for escalation being correlated with more violence. but you can't blanket say that's causal. These are complex situations that don't follow rules. The mob consists of peaceful protesters, violent protesters and looters. people's membership in any of these groups can be multiple and shift over time. it's…

> instead of CS gas it would be great if there was some sort of sedative gas to just slow people down enough to sap their will to continue That is the most casually delivered fucked up dystopian line I've seen on HN.

heh :). why thank you

I still think it's a great idea

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#579

Post by TeaDrunk »

lazyjones wrote: post #497
bjourne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on a few demos that turned violent. Among them the famous one when George Bush decided to pay a visit. In all cases , the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. I find it very odd that the polic…

> In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. FWIW, German police regularly used undercover, black-clad, violent agents as a pretext for breaking up peaceful protests. It's probably an established tactic. But the situation in the USA looks very different (from here), violent protesters appear to be a small minority of the problematic people, most of which are just crimina…

From what I understand it’s actually untrue- the media are just more likely to film and show destruction rather than peaceful protests. In Minneapolis there were both massive peaceful protests and looting, but the property damage was covered more than the protesting. Given that the argument for looting is that people care more about property damage than about the protection of black lives against police oppression, this only further evidences the argument for property violence in response to human injustice...

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#580

Post by Kye »

californical wrote: post #500
joshuamorton wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the police are willing to escalate violently with one group but not the other.

I wonder if it's related to the fact that the protestors a few weeks ago were carrying lots of guns openly. I genuinely wonder what would happen if a majority the people protesting today were all carrying AR-15's

Historically speaking, it would lead to a sudden interest in gun restrictions from people who were previously opposed.

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

Post reply on HN