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

Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

niemanlab.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 835 posts

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#551

Post by grecy »

mindslight wrote: post #463
grecy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen quite a few videos and read a lot of articles about what's going on, and from my perspective Law Enforcement are scared Sh&^less they will lose control and get completely over-run by the protesters. Realizing how angry the people are and how massively outnumbered they are they've decided to come out hard with violence in an attempt to squash the protests, which makes sense. I don't think it would take much…

Overcome the police to what end, though? All most of the protestors want to do is protest , ie partake in some of their 1st amendment rights. So the protestors "overrun" the police and then what? Continue to stand in the street chanting? This feels like straight projection, and focusing on the few people taking advantage of the situation by looting etc. The police could solve that in a heartbeat by deploying small un…

I don't know.

I'm not saying it's productive or a good thing, I'm just saying that's what it feels like.

People are only going to stand and watch their fellow citizens get shot point blank in the face with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and rubber bullets for so long.

Law Enforcement are denying people their right to demonstrate, and I feel like people are going to fight hard to keep it.

EDIT: I mean, watch this [1]. Those look like Police who are desperately trying to maintain control with the only means they know how - violence.

Do you think everyone will continue to just watch them swing batons like the first few seconds and do nothing?

[1] https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1267968926761312256

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#552

Post by krapp »

manigandham wrote: post #518
krapp wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would I believe that Americans are any different? We don't have violent riots after every election, for one thing.

America certainly had violent riots during elections. Also after sports games. It happens.

>America certainly had violent riots during elections.

Not in recent memory, and certainly not as a regular occurrence.

>Also after sports games.

Ok, you got me there.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#553

Post by lawnchair_larry »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #509
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you find it acceptable to shoot some footage of a handful of looting/arsonist incidents and proclaiming “protesters are doing X”, just like we are complaining that “police” are doing X? Or would you correct someone and say that isn’t happening, and when confronted with a video of someone somewhere doing a bad thing, inform them of the fact that a few cherry picked anecdotes do not represent the activity of the…

No one disagrees that in any group only a small number of bad actors are causing this issue. However, when a civilian acts inappropriately there are legal consequences. When a police office acts inappropriately there are few legal consequences and they are very-very-rarely enforced. I'll ask the question differently, "Is destruction of property what you expect from rioters?" Yes, 1% or less of rioters are going to be…

Aha, but the analogy that you made with those questions has a critical error. The correct analogy would be questions that read:

Is destruction of property what you expect from civilians?

Yes, sadly, 1% or less[1] of civilians are are going to be stupid and riot instead. And that is unacceptable.

Should they be reprimanded?

Absolutely. And we have specialized government entities that can utilize appropriate-force to reprimand them.

Is unwarranted destruction of property what you expect from police?

Yes, sadly, 1% or less[1] of police are going to be stupid and abusive. That is unacceptable, their job is to protect and serve. Even from each other.

Should they be reprimanded?

Yes! but we as civilians have no legal way to do this, and even the "good cops" have no good way to do this.

[1] We do not have data for either of these figures, so 1% is being used as a placeholder, and is not meant literally. I suspect that the percentage of criminals in the general population is far bigger than the number of police who destroy property for no reason, but I admit that I have no data for that.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#554

Post by rayiner »

selimthegrim wrote: post #532
rayiner wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don’t believe it. Rioting is natural human behavior. In Bangladesh we have violent riots after every election. The police aren’t instigating them, they are nowhere to be found. Why would I believe that Americans are any different?

I’m sure you know who Shibir and Chhatra League are? Who are their American counterparts?

There are instigators involved in the hartals, no doubt. But working with the police?

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#555

Post by viraptor »

oh_sigh wrote: post #533
viraptor wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that LE is largely not accepting any blame right now. That's a signal for protest not to deescalate. But since you mention that, cops do not have to be heavy handed. Training around handling mental health helps. Training around de-escalation helps. Not being a murdering racist helps. Body cameras work. If the guns were the main reason, we'd see similar reactions every time a group of open-carry white proteste…

> I meant that LE is largely not accepting any blame right now. Well, multiple people have been fired and imprisoned. And investigations are on the way to probably arrest and imprison more cops. Mental health is probably a small part of the picture of civilian-on-police violence, unless you consider anyone who considers it a good idea to kill a police officer as intrinsically mentally unhealthy. > If the guns were so…

> Well, multiple people have been fired and imprisoned

1 out of 4 initially involved people has been charged. People who did the initial coverup are still untouched. One chief of police was fired by a mayor. Firing someone for helping with murder or current attack on unarmed civilians is a joke and bringing that up will only make people more angry. (Fired cops often go straight into security jobs)

Re. mental illness issues, have a read: https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/2016-12-07/how-c...

> Cops aren't generally worried about open carry nuts

Yeah. Turns out it's not about just any people having guns. Black Panthers and all...

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#556

Post by fzeroracer »

oh_sigh wrote: post #510
viraptor wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand why the protests started though, right? It's not like the protesters can say "ok, if we stop protesting now, will you please consider following the law?" How to you expect protesters to deescalate this with absolutely nothing changing and high level LE people still not accepting any blame and pushing for military help?

You understand why US cops are so heavy handed though, right? It may be because they have to deal with a population with 3 guns per capita, where the amount of police killed per year on duty(even disregarding accidents) is more akin to a third world country than anything going on in the EU. > and high level LE people still not accepting any blame I don't know how you get that from OP saying that both sides need to de…

> where the amount of police killed per year on duty(even disregarding accidents) is more akin to a third world country than anything going on in the EU.

Police officers in the US face 12.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers. In comparison, construction workers see 14.3, agricultural workers see 17.7, farmers and ranchers around 24 and truck drivers 26.9.

Being an officer is not even close to the top most dangerous jobs in the US. Saying it's on the level of a 'third-world country' is objectively wrong.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#557

Post by mehrdadn »

staticassertion wrote: post #193
ravenstine wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it was pretty clear that the police in Santa Monica and Long Beach allowed the looting to occur while treating the protesters like criminals from the outset. This isn't to say that other local precincts weren't significantly better in their treatment of protesters, but there's clear evidence that many police departments are either corrupt or completely inept in addressing violent crime. This has been a long ti…

The police seem to clearly be allowing looting on purpose. SoHo was looted two days in a row . Where were the NYPD? There are 10's of thousands of uniformed officers Maybe you can say the first day they somehow missed it, but two days in a row? Come on. I refuse to believe that they didn't see this coming - they brag about how they're "gathering intel" on terrorist groups, but they couldn't check twitter to see #soho…

> SoHo was looted two days in a row. Where were the NYPD?

Local news reporting tries to explain what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m01s

"What you've been seeing is basically a cat and mouse game all night. The police have been here with a huge show of force, but they can't stop people, because they don't know that they've necessarily been looting. And so they're waiting for somebody to do something, police move onto the next block, and then someone does something."

I don't know one way or another whether this is the whole truth, but it appears to play a significant role according to the reporter.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#558

Post by strken »

karatestomp wrote: post #438
CamperBob2 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the police do not have a monopoly on the lawful use of force. Not in the USA... or, at least, not in most areas of the USA. It's ironic that the people trying their best to change that are also the ones who are most closely aligned with the victims of police brutality, politically speaking. One of many things I don't understand.

"Monopoly on violence" or "use of force" is the way I've seen it put by political scientists defining what it means for a state to be sovereign (that quality is really high up the list of things that go along with that). It doesn't mean only the state can legally engage in, say, violent self-defense, but it means the state is capable of dictating where and when "legitimate" violence may occur, and backing up those di…

Orwell, writing about the Spanish civil war, gives the release of arms stockpiles to trade union militias as a key factor in the early fighting against Franco. That war saw a combination of foreign intervention, plus soldiers and police choosing either side, but militias still played a crucial role.

It's not clear whether arms stockpiles would have the same impact on a modern war, but they might.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#559

Post by [deleted] »

morsch wrote: post #367
CamperBob2 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the police do not have a monopoly on the lawful use of force. Not in the USA... or, at least, not in most areas of the USA. It's ironic that the people trying their best to change that are also the ones who are most closely aligned with the victims of police brutality, politically speaking. One of many things I don't understand.

What are you hinting at? A second amendment thing? Because that really has nothing to do with the monopoly on use of violence. You can be violent without a gun. Who gets to be violent in a legal manner is an orthogonal issue. And how is it ironic? When has the second amendment ever done anything for victims of police brutality? How often has widespread gun ownership been used as an excuse for excessive police force?

[deleted]

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#560

Post by leetcrew »

oh_sigh wrote: post #545
leetcrew wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be because they have to deal with a population with 3 guns per capita where did you find this figure? this is off by more than a factor of two from any source I can find.

Sorry, I took the total gun count(~400M) and didn't state that I did some math based on how many adults there are in the US since children and the extremely elderly tend to own far fewer guns than run of the mill adults. The result is still more or less the same if there is 1.1 guns per capita.

that's not unreasonable. I saw your post a few minutes after another that claimed there were a billion guns in the US, so I was starting to wonder if this was a common misconception.

I personally don't feel that pervasive civilian gun ownership is incompatible with proportionate policing, but that's certainly a debate that reasonable people can have.

Post reply on HN