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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

#341
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why unexpected? The Last Airbender is as mainstream as NCIS today.

Not sure that helps much; I’ve never heard of NCIS. Some people just don’t spend their time watching TV.

That's fine but considering NCIS is the most watched TV show of 2019 I'm sure it holds as a reference for "mainstream".

Edit: I know downvote edits are frowned up but... I need to ask: why are people downvoting this? Do you not think NCIS is good example of a mainstream show?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#342
post #311
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. But... aren't there riots everywhere right now? This isn't exactly a normal situation.

What does the existence of riots have anything to do with these instances of police brutality on _peaceful_ protestors?

Everything is connected to everything. If you have riots everywhere then people, including police, are on the edge.

Also, are you suggesting that the riots are peaceful?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 numbe…

> What matters is how the true number compares to the total number of interactions and if that ratio is acceptable to society.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the communities directly impacted by this behavior find the abuse unacceptable no matter how muddied the “but maybe there isn’t enough abuse yet.” crowd wants to dilute the issue.

And honestly, I live a fairly cushy life, and I find the officers in my city to be stand-offish and aggressive, I can only imagine how utterly horrified Id be if they behaved the way we’re seeing. There is no way anyone in my community would have been as patient if we were subjected to the same level of treatment.

And also, it’s probably important to point out, it isn’t only the physical abuse, the day to day attitude of an overbearing police force can drastically impact your own day to day quality of life.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#344
post #23
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be a bit cautious with lists like this: Last time lists like this were posted, most of the links were false accusations, or just someone claiming something, with no way to know the truth. (I spent some time trying to verify until I realized there were far more false accusations than true, and then I give it up as pointless.) Of course even one instance of brutality is too much, but take numbers like this which a…

These are nearly all videos which are pretty self-explanatory (and horrifying).

OK, but let's contrast `greg_douchette thread` TGDs #1 and #2. #1 shows a woman wanding around holding a sign. A mounted policeman rides up behind her and just rides right over her. There's enough context to see that it's obviously completely unprovoked, and that either the officer did it on purpose, or there was criminal negligence in his training of how to handle a horse (and/or the training of the horse on how to avoid trampling people).

Now take for example `greg_douchette thread` TGD #2. That shows the instant that a man with a shirt that says "NYPD" on the back shoves a woman onto the ground. Obviously that was pretty violent.

EDIT: I more or less retract the analysis below; more information here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/nyregion/nypd-officer-vin...

Leaving my original post for posterity / discussion.

---

But I've seen that same scene from a different video (sorry don't have he link to hand), and it raises a lot of questions for me. The person wearing the shirt doesn't have any other equipment on -- no helmet, no belt or walkie-talkie or anything. He's not standing side-to-side with a bunch of police facing off against protesters. There's a long stream of people mixed together, meandering in the same direction. Is this actually a protest? Is the guy in question on duty, or is he just trying to get home like everyone else?

And from the other video you can see that just before the incident, the woman was walking backwards in front of the guy. My best guess is that the guy was off-duty (or trying to get off-duty), just walking somewhere, and that the woman came up to him and was verbally harassing him. Eventually he got fed up and shoved her out of his way; but because he's huge and she's tiny, he shoved her about 5x harder than necessary, causing her injury.

These to me are very different things. In the first we have a man who is clearly on duty, doing something clearly dangerous, to someone who is clearly doing something peaceful and constitutionally protected. In the second, we have a man who may not be on duty, having someone harassing him to his face, and responding in a way that isn't obviously going to cause her injury.

But you wouldn't be able to tell any of that that from the video linked in this spreadsheet. So that makes me question -- of the 700 videos listed, how many are like #1 and how many are like #2? Maybe a lot of people don't care, but I do.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#345
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Ha…

The rationale for Brazil was explicitly the same one in the dead comment.

But yeah, that's pretty radical what you're saying too. Maybe it's fair that you should only compare the richest nation on earth with much poorer developing nations with a short track record of democracy. Not sure I'd agree.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#346

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.

> 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.

This is wrong.

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed lists 1ists at least 104 unarmed black people alone killed by police in 2015.

I went though the first 20, and maybe 8 could have been accidents (one was hit by a car) or otherwise explained (2 pointed toy guns at police).

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the comment wasn't saying the behaviour is fine, just that the job is more likely to produce this sort of content. Even countries with less violent police corps often have episodes like this. To keep it out of political rallies, just think of police vs hooligans in Europe.

Or police vs tekno dancers (remember CzechTek 2005?)

Didn't know about this event, very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CzechTek#CzechTek_2005

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, your correction is - one guy is doing it, not a bunch. I agree with your correction. Other than that, the point remains. They "arrest" the driver, because he is not following the police instructions to get out of the car, and is actively resisting the police. We don't know if he was actually arrested or just detained. I got handcuffed once and then let go, it wasn't an arrest.

Can you explain to me why the driver needed to be arrested, and why it was considered 'resisting arrest'? Try again, because you seem to still be spinning the story in a way as to try to favor the police. Even though I can agree the person running shouldn't have jumped into cars, why do you think the person driving deserve to be beaten too? If that was you in that situation, do you think you would deserve to be beate…

We don't know if he was arrested. And if he was, and he did nothing wrong, he gets to sue the state for a nice payout.

I would not sit in the car if the police ordered me out. So I wouldn't get beaten. I don't mess with the police.

> And try not putting 'arrest' in fear quotes, because they literally yanked him out of his car, threw him against his vehicle and arrested him.

As I told you. I got handcuffed and put in the back of a police car once. But it wasn't an arrest. They let me go. As a lawyer explained to me later, an arrest is a specific procedure, not just the fact of getting detained/handcuffed.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#349

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.

I recommend the latest Sam Harris podcast on this subject, he makes a ton of nuanced points that many people miss when talking about "police brutality".

As Noam Chomsky said, when asked about what he believes about people considering Sam Harris as an intellectual:

"Unfortunately we get the intellectuals we deserve".

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#350
post #239

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.

There are ~10 million arrests per year in the US. That google doc includes non-US cases as well (but is also limited by what’s caught on camera). Still, 0.0007% of arrests leading to a case like this doesn’t seem as horrible as the raw total in isolation.

That's one in 30 being arrested in the US every year. How does that compare to other countries? Is that something that could be improved? It sounds like a lot.
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