Live data from Hacker News

George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

docs.google.com

71–80 of 855 posts

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#71

It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty: https://www.odmp.org/search/year and many more than that receive serious injuries, even permanent spinal damage: One cop was paralyzed from the neck down in Vegas protests: https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/14/police-officer-shot-... Retired police chief killed at 77 by looters in St. Louis: https://thehill.com/homenews/state…

When someone kills a police officer, they are basically garunteed life in prison or death.

When a cop kills someone, they almost always go unpunished, no matter how unjustified it was.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are more than 400, we know that just by the number of people getting shot. Now, how many are unjustified? That's the important question.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de... just under 1000 police involved shootings each year. Can't find the source, but of these only about 47 were un-armed and most of those involved protecting someone else from a physical attack.

Those figures are for fatal police shootings, not for all police shootings. Police shootings and police brutality do not necessarily result in death.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#73

The fact that is even possible is insane. Imagine there being over 700 videos of pilots messing up in one month, 700 crane operator mishaps in a month, 700+ food poising by a chain in a month. The also imagine you believe there's no problem. This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people.

Ajit Pai is Joo Dee

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#74
post #8

Most posts on this subject keep getting pushed off of the front page by mods. It's pretty sad to watch, especially with the number of posts about coronavirus. They're both major issues, but one is nerdier than the other so it gets to stay.

It's mostly users flagging the post as spam/inappropriate for HN that kills the post. Flagging kills a post super quickly unless it's reached critical mass.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post is a huge list of links of police brutality on innocent protestors, bystanders, and media well within their rights. This post has nothing to do with how the police treat "gangsters", unless you mean something different by that word.

Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police. I think it would be much more productive and realistic to have a really deep study of how policing in America is different from other countries, and what can be done to normalise it. America is pretty gun crazy, and that doesn't make a cop's life any easier. The flip side of that is…

> Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police.

This is a classic example of bad / misleading marketing on behalf of a reform movement. The "Defund the Police" movement has been poorly named. Yes, there are absolutely some folks on the extreme who truly want to disband the police and live in a place without police, but by and large, the major of people who are supporting this movement mean something else:

Defund == defund the CURRENT police organizational structure (militarized, etc.), reallocate funding for things like homeless support, domestic checks, etc. to other departments better suited to handle them, and KEEP a policing organization which is responsible for a much narrower scope of duty with a reformatted training program, etc.

It should be branded "Reboot the Police", not "Defund the Police"...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#76
post #2

I know politics isn't the usual HN topic, but I think this goes beyond politics at this point. Until I saw this list, I had no idea how out of control this situation has gotten here. I'm saddened for my country and hope that this can be a turning point for all of us.

Is it out of control though? The police has 700K members in the US. Millions of daily interactions with people of all kinds. All you could find is 400 cases from ALL the years. And I guess the claim is brutality wasn't justified in every single case. In reality there are not 400 cases on that list, and in many cases the violence was justified. I'm not saying the police doesn't do wrong, they absolutely do. We have ex…

> All you could find is 400 cases from ALL the years.

These aren't from all the years, they're from approximately May 26th of this year. It's 400 cases in the last 3-4 weeks.

That is a startlingly high number, made worse once you actually start digging into the individual incidents, because you realize they're not just isolated. A lot of these videos aren't, "a single police officer does something shifty", they're, "an entire police unit starts firing tear gas at protestors who are kneeling on the ground." And then you start to read the responses from police unions, some of which outright lie about the incidents or contradict the videos. This isn't a problem with individual officers, it's a problem with high-level commanders and police union leaders -- it's a problem that spans entire units.

I personally went through about 200 incidents for a separate project I was working on, some more in-depth than others. I think people are looking at these lists and thinking, "oh sure, but if you zoom in and examine each incident, it gets better." It really doesn't. It didn't take me long to get accustomed to seeing people tear-gassed, those videos don't even make me blink now. But even with that, I was regularly shocked while I was combing through videos with incidents that I wasn't prepared for.

"Tear gas, tear gas, tear gas, holy heck that police officer just body slammed a protestor! Tear gas, tear gas, holy crap they just punched a reporter in the face!"

And again, 4 weeks. Not years. I would challenge anyone who's saying that these are extremely rare or over-dramatized to sit down and devote an evening to just watching the videos in series. It weighs on you. And it quickly becomes obvious that these are not individual rogue officers, these are police units operating in an environment where they know they will not face consequences for hurting protestors.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#77
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically a bunch of thugs attack random drivers. One of the thugs jumps into a random car, the car stops, police come, pull the thug out, he resists, they deal with him. I have zero sympathy for the thug. Even when one cop punches "the thug" in the face while he's being walked away while handcuffed?

What would you have done in that situation?

[deleted]

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider police to be heroes. But that's not what we're seeing here. The sides here are decent folk (police and protesters) against the racists and the violent criminals (police and rioters and looters). And the police agree: "Three big California police unions release national reform plan to remove racist officers" https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/3-big-California... Their plan includes "a national data…

The police have never done anything for me, and I can't think of a time they've done anything for anyone I know. I don't really see how they are heros. I can't even think of things they regularly do that can be called heroic? I know they do some good stuff, but nothing that comes close to the level of "hero" in my opinion. Firefighters, EMTs, nurses, and doctors are all examples of actual heros, IMO.

Isn't being the stick that causes laws to have meaning a good thing? A law is only words unless there's someone who will inflict a penalty if you don't follow it.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#79

I opened a couple of random ones. The first one was this link: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224 Which isn't an example of police brutality. The second one was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTkAOe5UTE Basically a bunch of thugs attack random drivers. One of the thugs jumps into a random car, the car stops, police come, pull the thug out, he resists, they deal with him. I have zero…

What's your definition, threshold for police brutality?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#80

I opened a couple of random ones. The first one was this link: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224 Which isn't an example of police brutality. The second one was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTkAOe5UTE Basically a bunch of thugs attack random drivers. One of the thugs jumps into a random car, the car stops, police come, pull the thug out, he resists, they deal with him. I have zero…

In your second link: At 0:16 a cop pushes Adam partially into the passenger window of an SUV, apparently hoping that he will fall out and be injured while the SUV is moving. When the SUV stops, Adam is mobbed by cops and beaten. The driver Bob (a victim of having a cop push someone into his window) is detained, his hands zip-tied. A bystander Charlie who doesn't seem to do anything is also zip-tied. At 1:43 a cop see…

At 0:32, Adam is apparently surrendering, a cop clubs him.
Post reply on HN