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George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

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Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#131

Post by marcell »

There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1].

There are millions and millions of daily interactions between police and civilians every year. Sadly, there will be some mistakes, some of which will be caught on camera.

It's important to be aware that what the media can be random, and media coverage is not always correlated with how important or prevalent a problem is.

[1] Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#132

Post by noobaccount »

chaps wrote: post #112
dang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mods didn't touch this post, or see it, until I turned the flags off just now.

Got it, thanks. Since that's that's been a big trend recently, is there anything that can be done to make sure posts like these don't just immediately get flagged into oblivion? I can absolutely see campaigns against HN that flag these sorts of posts to get off the front page. Not expecting the answer to be yes, but figured I'd ask.

Can imagine a lot of folks simply don’t want to see these here, which is understandable, but I’m personally curious what the HN crowd thinks. Maybe once in a while is okay.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#133

Post by vlozko »

grey-area wrote: post #87
fortytwo79 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same experience. It was a video of a riot line of police with shields walking down the street, and people shooting fireworks at them. I welcome any content that shows events that the media isn't providing. But if someone is going to curate a list like this, don't sell it as something it's not.

You're probably mistaking police flash bangs for fireworks. These devices are completely inappropriate for crowd control, but routinely deployed by US police in the protests.

Very unlikely. Fireworks use against the police more common that you think. You’re just not going to see that many videos of them as it doesn’t help the narrative. A buddy of mine is a cop who had the unfortunate duty of being one of the riot police in my city and it’s not easy to keep your cool while having rocks, fireworks, and almost a Molotov cocktail tossed at you.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#134

Post by cm2187 »

devcpp wrote: post #93
DeonPenny wrote: post #65

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.

To be fair you are comparing an adversarial job with a cooperative one. A crane operator won't feel unsafe, or confronted by someone he calls hostile. This is no excuse whatsoever for the multitude of outraging problems in the system, but the comparison isn't straightforward.

And this document uses a very liberal definition of police brutality to say the least. In this document, a lot of references to "police arrests someone", "police pushes back a crowd or clears a street", etc...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#135

Post by MechanicalTwerk »

rabidrat wrote: post #106
MechanicalTwerk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair there's way more people filming the police right now than any of those professions so I wouldn't expect the number of mishaps on video to be comparable.

Which makes these even more egregious because it means there are still more cases that weren't recorded. These are just the ones we know about!

I agree we can be almost certain that there are violations that aren't being captured on video and therefore the true number of violations is actually higher (assuming all the instances presented are violations). What matters is how the true number compares to the total number of interactions and if that ratio is acceptable to society. The absolute number of violations caught on video and the comparison of that number to similar numbers in other professions doesn't really say anything.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#136

Post by jacobush »

marcell wrote: post #131

There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average! Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1]. There are millions and millions of daily interactions betw…

Funny you should mention medical errors. The US is not exactly a shining beacon in that regard either.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#137

Post by SQueeeeeL »

marcell wrote: post #131

There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average! Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1]. There are millions and millions of daily interactions betw…

>It's important to be aware that what the media can be random, and media coverage is not always correlated with how important or prevalent a problem is.

Oh cool, a guy on Hacker News cited a John's Hopkins article. Pack it up protestors, racism isn't real and cops aren't tear gasing reporters in the face!

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#138

Post by tejtm »

Miner49er wrote: post #71
chrisco255 wrote: post #38

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.

They get automatic mandatory paid leave, kinda exactly like extra vacation. I would not be shocked to see flights booked in advance.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#139

Post by reitanqild »

aganame wrote: post #45
kingofpandora wrote: post #32

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?

This is covered in basic military and I guess also police training where I grew up. I only have brief military experience (draft) and yet I know very well that anyone in your custody are to be treated well or you get in trouble.

Besides, staying professional is the right thing to do and police of all should be extremely concerned with doing the right thing IMO.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#140

Post by esperent »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #35
kingofpandora wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 400 ... where there are videos. We know that until a video emerges these…

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.

An important question, and a simple answer: all cases of police misconduct and brutality are unjustified.
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