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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

#331

Post by TomMarius »

jpxw wrote: post #299
saiya-jin wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got stopped close to midnight by Swiss border police once, coming from rock climbing session over the border. You would expect Swiss politeness and correctness, right? I got held at the (utterly empty otherwise) border for 40 minutes. They went through my whole backpack (just wet stinking climbing clothing equipment), did some obscure exercises like taking out all my cash & cards from wallet, counting it, puttin…

You got stopped at a border? Wow, poor you.

Well, some places frown upon borders, and some places build a wall. We like the former here in Europe.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#332

Post by luckylion »

harry8 wrote: post #254
camillomiller wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just compare It to police officers in other Western countries...

There's a dead comment in reply to this. I disagree with it as strongly as anything I've seen on HN. I think it racist. I don't think it should be hidden. It highlights a mentality that needs to be known about and considered including any possible sensible response to it. Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country" To what extent do these,…

> Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country"

Can you explain why you feel that's terribly unfair? I don't know why somebody would pick Brazil specifically, but you might easily say "compare the US to countries with a similar income inequality". Take the gini coefficient for simplicity [1] and compare the US to Côte d'Ivoire, Argentina, Haiti, and Malaysia or Mexico, Madagascar, El Salvador, and Rwanda, depending on whether you take the CIA's numbers or the World Bank's. If you look at the list, you'll see that the European countries are closer together and in a different area of the list, the US isn't in their group.

Wouldn't that be a better indicator for "similar countries" than average internet speed or NATO membership status?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#333

Post by chefkoch »

raxxorrax wrote: post #245
lorthemar wrote: post #229

There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have…

Especially compared to other countries, the US police seem to show quite the restrained considering most countries do not allow to carry weapons. It is a significant risk for safety of course. But if you look at the data, the often believed stereotype of US police being glorified cowboys seems to be quite untrue. Frankly I am a bit cynical about politicians declaring the need for police reform. In my country protests…

> Especially compared to other countries, the US police seem to show quite the restrained

There have been multiple instances where the us police shot someone and fired more bullets in this situation than the while german police in a whole year. And i don't mean big standoffs but shooting a single person.

/edit: in 2018 the german police fired a total of 54 bullets on persona killing 11.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_i...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#334

Post by pjc50 »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #324
pjc50 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. if you're of the "native" white ethnicity or a white tourist, yes. The London BLM protests aren't just copycats, there's a long history of poor race relations from the Met.

People aren't being killed left right and centre by the police in the UK of any ethnicity, their main gripes seem to be stuff like stop and search which already has dramatically declined over the last few years. Maybe the met does have "poor race relations" historically but it isn't anything remotely close to the US police.

The scale is very different, yes. The UK kills much, much fewer people. But it still happens occasionally, and when it does we see the same problems of poor accountability. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/11/black-deaths...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#335

Post by onion2k »

raxxorrax wrote: post #306
onion2k wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be issues with profiling here but I don't believe a diagnosis like systemic racism... Profiling is an aspect of systemic racism.

I profoundly disagree with that definition. Racism needs animosity and distrust doesn't qualify as that. You can make a case that this is the accepted academic nomenclature but I would add that the reasoning behind it is not very sophisticated. I would argue that it could even elevate racial tensions if applied to practical problems. Even beyond factoring in the common scholar diagnosing racism in everything.

Racism needs animosity and distrust doesn't qualify as that.

Systemic racism doesn't need animosity for it to happen. Systemic racism is a term for how a system discriminates against race - that might be something like defining how much to spend on schools based on the taxable income of residents. That's not "racist" in the sense that someone deliberately decided to give people of color get less resources, but the outcome of the decision is that people of color get less resources. That is systemic racism. There doesn't need to be any racist intent on the part of any individuals in that system for it to happen (though there often is.)

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#336

Post by hansbo »

torb-xyz wrote: post #251
deepersprout wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon No it's not. Police in Europe is, on average, very kind. When they stop you, you don't have to be afraid of anything, and more often than not you stop them to ask for help, even if it's just to ask for directions.

I know it's tempting to do the whole ”oh that's a problem over in terrible USA” (a very common european way of thinking) but I'd be careful about it. Granted I think european police is less violent than US (a low bar), but to say that we don't have a problem with this at all is pretty naive. Just look at how french or swedish police have responded to black lives matters protests for example.

What are you referring to? I live in Sweden, and have not seen news regarding police brutality during the BLM protests.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#337

Post by secondcoming »

spike021 wrote: post #170
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.

>This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people. A reference I never expected to see on HN. It's insane, but then you realize that a significant portion of the US population _still_ only watches television news media and refuses to spend extra time looking at other sources, like Twitter.

Twitter!? That cesspool is full of bots and trolls.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#338

Post by DoingIsLearning »

pjc50 wrote: post #278
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.

They don't see it as a mistake. In fact, there are plenty of commentators downthread who don't see it as a mistake either. Years of demonisation and propaganda has gone into supporting the belief that as soon as somebody steps out of line it's necessary to beat them back into line, or shoot them if they do not comply. It's no more a mistake than the millions of people in US prisons: it's policy .

As a complete outsider to US reality, to me looking in, it seems like there is a real issue of training regarding de-escalating techniques.

US police forces seem to have a very short training which, as far as I understand is not centrally vetted by any federal organism? And considering the short training time it seems to be mostly focused on tactical and firearm training.

Compare that with European forces and you see a completely different reality. In Europe the police is generally seen as peace-keepers, force is absolutely a last resort (probably not so true for crowd control units but certainly true for daily policing).

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#340

Post by camillomiller »

jagrsw wrote: post #250
camillomiller wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy your alternative reality

I live in EU (where, generally, the police is trained to minimize-harm, rather than take-control-by-all-means), and I feel a bit the same about this list; a sizeable share of those videos show regular-ish riot control techniques IMO (pushing the crowd down the street etc.). Then, many show police overreaction or outright brutality. But, then, why mix all of those in one big list and call them simply 'brutality'? As m…

I live in Berlin. Police gets indicted for drawing a gun, let alone use it. And that’s the way it should be. Not all incidents are the same, but so is the feeling of being above any law that Us police officers enjoy and enforce
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