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Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

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Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#111
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A US Senator thinks we should deploy the military domestically to murder protestors" is pretty important news that the NYT should be covering, and I think there's a fair argument for publishing the piece as part of that coverage. That isn't what the NYT did though; they dropped it as an opinion piece that they implicitly endorsed. Newspapers fairly regularly print opinion pieces that run contrary to the normal bias…

Of course news agencies should report that the US Senator has that opinion. There are plenty of news agencies that reported on the fact that the NYT published this opinion piece, for instance, and I don’t think people are too upset about those reports. It’s the publishing of the opinion piece that is the issue.

News agencies shouldn't report that because the Senator didn't say that. He made it very clear he was talking about rioters and looters, not protestors:

> Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

And nowhere in the op-ed did he call for murdering or killing anyone.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem? I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fau…

Is the bad guy a couple of cops who we hold to the impossible standard of not returning fire? Or are no-knock warrants the bad guy which routinely cause deaths for the sole purpose of keeping some drugs from being flushed down the toilet? Because one of these is very easy to fix and would 100% mean Taylor would still be alive. The other would be super difficult to fix and who knows if it would have saved her life.

Is "not returning fire" really an impossible standard to you?

How about: If you do something that could be met with justified self defense and you encounter that self defense your first instinct as police should be to retreat and clarify the situation?

Why is it reasonable to have the first instinct to shoot back?

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#113
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet, and much could be learned from voting patterns of this demographic. But as far as I can tell, keeping the peace is all that matters. Social good is for other people to do, always and everywhere.

> HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet [...] Oh please. It's mostly just another tech forum.

Identical to all the others. No difference whatsoever.

It would be funny if people on HN programmed computers in the same way they talk outside of shop conversations.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#114
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? If a group of people feel preyed upon and these, plain clothes officers with weapons, no-knock entered, they got what they deserved period. The onus is on the enforcement to manage damage, not a citizen who doesn't even know its coming. The intelletualizing of this is ridiculous, its a common sense issue.

You clearly skimmed my comment without actually reading it. The police were obviously in the wrong. But the exact way in which they were in the wrong remains extremely relevant to all of the discussions going on right now, yet the media appears to have largely cut it out of the story because that makes for a snappier piece. If we want to solve these issues as a society, we need to be working off of good information.

Appreciate the response, but didn't skim it. The "details" are inconsequential here. Im not bailing out the media, because their job has morphed into an attention megaphone in order to survive. The reason details dont matter is that the core problem is police acting with impunity. The problem becomes even worse when you look it relative to the victims accountability in all these cases.

Theres that video from two days ago of that (white) union chief screaming and spitting about "how deserve more respect and we are tearing them down" and it was accompanied by an array of tweets that said "He gets treated like a black guy for 2 weeks and he has a mental breakdown." I think this story even in it's detail loose state is an appropriate weapon to even the fight.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#115
post #47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US leads the world in prison population, compared to other democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorship…

As for your second point, I've seen an article on CNN the other day that says US kills twice as many people (per 1M arrests) than Australia. It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend. I'm with you on the American police b…

based on 2015 data it's closer to 30% - https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#116
post #7

USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under…

> Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon Well, I do. We had a case in Germany a few years back where the police served some kind of no-knock warrant, the guy (a Hells Angel) thought they were from a rival gang, shouted at them and then shot at them. A Policeman died, the guy dropped his gun immediately after police identified themselves. The Case made the news later because the guy got…

[deleted]

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#117

and not a single shred of evidence it was racially motivated rather than an accident having to do with the fact that her boyfriend shot a police officer

If you don't like people defending themselves against plain clothed intruders with guns they legally bought, then maybe you need to revoke the 2A.

Most cops don't need guns. Almost no normal civilians need guns. The entire developed world that's not the USA gets by just fine without the 'right' to own a semi-automatic machine gun.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#118
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of paid leave has always puzzled me. This would be my choice of punishment if I am ever given a choice.

Paid leave isn't meant to be a punishment. There is some expectation that police officers will inherently be involved in controversial activities that will require further investigation, some of which may legitimately reveal that the cop did nothing wrong. Paid leave is supposed to be a compromise to remove cops from active duty during the investigation (in case they are guilty, we don't want them still roaming the s…

Arrest should be made nevertheless, on the grounds of possible witness intimidation. I'm not saying that they do it all the time, but the power dynamics allow it to happen, so the best approach for a crystal clear investigation is to have the officers removed from the community that is investigating them.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#119
post #47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US leads the world in prison population, compared to other democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorship…

As for your second point, I've seen an article on CNN the other day that says US kills twice as many people (per 1M arrests) than Australia. It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend. I'm with you on the American police b…

> only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed

You say this so casually, like the 95% of people killed deserve to be dead? Most other developed countries had problems with guns, and have dealt with it by restricting them, not by making the police militarised and just shooting more 'bad guys'

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#120
post #47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US leads the world in prison population, compared to other democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorship…

As for your second point, I've seen an article on CNN the other day that says US kills twice as many people (per 1M arrests) than Australia. It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend. I'm with you on the American police b…

>and there are ways to obtain justice that are not available in most other countries (mass media, social media, courts).

How many countries in the world do you imagine don't have courts, social media or mass media? Or even lack any of the above?

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