Live data from Hacker News

George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

docs.google.com

411–420 of 855 posts

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#411
post #316
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“There is no war in ba sing se” is the equivalent of the older phrase “we were never at war with Eurasia”. Which is now more obscure but likely better understood on HN. OP is saying you’d need to be incredibly delusional to deny police are brutal and there’s a problem.

With all due respect, 1984 has a much higher cultural impact and awareness than ATLA. The show isn't that well known outside of current 20-30 year olds.

> 1984 has a much higher cultural impact and awareness than ATLA

My anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, but I’d love some real data - how are you measuring that?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#412
If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ...

At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying.

If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence.

Otherwise you're not speaking from an honest grappling with what these videos contain.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to create a list for this cause, at least make it good, make it solid. Don't fill it with random junk to inflate the numbers. What I read is: If you want to create a list for this cause, at least make it perfect and unassailable in every possible way. Because I only need to point skeptically at one thing to dismiss the whole lot.

I think that's not a fair reading of his comment. Is it not legitimate to want accurate sources of data? This does not mean slightly inaccurate data is unusable, simply that it is slightly inaccurate and this to some degree impugns its legitimacy (as it should).

> Is it not legitimate to want accurate sources of data?

Of course. I don't believe you honestly think that I am advocating for inaccurate sources of data.

However, finding and discussing sources of different quality among hundreds is one thing.

Saying that you only looked at two of them, expressing skepticism towards those two, and then stating that the whole thing is "filled" with "random junk to inflate the numbers" is another. That doesn't seem like the interpretation of someone who's honest about their intentions.

If I read two sentences from your thesis, find issue with them, and then claim that you have clearly filled it with random junk to inflate the word count... yould you characterize my position as believing that some parts of your thesis are "slightly inaccurate and this to some degree impugns its legitimacy"?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#414

The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior. This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime. They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do. We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or rio…

That is neither fair, feasible nor practical to be honest. You want to judge them as a group while basically complaining against their practices of profiling.

A department is a group, one that they voluntarily joined.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#415

The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior. This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime. They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do. We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or rio…

I think "just don't pay them for the time" is not reasonable or realistic, and thinking you can get consensus on what caused a riot is naive under the best of circumstances.

On the flip side I'd like to point out that this increased OT often has downstream effects as well, most notably in pensions which are typically based on your last n months of pay. Some contracts include OT in this and some do not. So soon-to-be-retired officers could literally be increasing their pay for the rest of their lives based on increased pay due to working a riot.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#416
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Nations also interact, muddying the “compare” waters further. Where I live, we drive cars, but we don’t fight the overseas oil wars. We’ve outsourced all that brutality to the US. That lets us smugly reap the benefits and point fingers at Americans for the violent, backwards, gun-toting culture.

I don't know that the US would need to have a violent society to be a military super power. China is on its way, and so far at least they seem to have managed to avoid that, so maybe those things are not related.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#417

If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ... At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying. If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the milit…

I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture.

There are way too many cases where a cop provokes a confrontation, often by stopping to allow someone else nearby to run into them, and every other cop in the group responds by beating anyone nearby and shoving back anyone with a camera.

You don’t get coordinated responses like that without planning and practice.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#418
post #355
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Also, are you suggesting that the riots are peaceful? So apparently you haven't watched any of the videos, huh? Guess what? The problem is that police are frequently "on edge" in their normal jobs, and as a result innocent people are seriously injured or die . And worse, police are "on edge" far more around blacks than whites, meaning far more blacks are injured by police than whites. It doesn't matter what the cau…

>So apparently you haven't watched any of the videos, huh?

Yes, I watched a few from this link, and that admittedly small sample didn't show a single peaceful protester being abused by cops. I suppose you watched more of them?

>Guess what? The problem is that police are frequently "on edge" in their normal jobs, and as a result innocent people are seriously injured or die. And worse, police are "on edge" far more around blacks than whites, meaning far more blacks are injured by police than whites.

Could there be a reason for some of that that is not linked to racism? Are only white policemen more on-edge around black people?

>It doesn't matter what the cause is, it's a problem and is has to stop.

I can agree with that certainly.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#419
post #415

The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior. This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime. They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do. We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or rio…

I think "just don't pay them for the time" is not reasonable or realistic, and thinking you can get consensus on what caused a riot is naive under the best of circumstances. On the flip side I'd like to point out that this increased OT often has downstream effects as well, most notably in pensions which are typically based on your last n months of pay. Some contracts include OT in this and some do not. So soon-to-be-…

I think that their continued behavior is putting the pensions at risk, since those depend on continuous taxpayer contributions.

It’s not wise to tear gas the people who are going to pay for your retirement.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#420
post #234

The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior. This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime. They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do. We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or rio…

Don't throw all police officers into one bucket. You have some outliers that are violent and the rest just does their job - keeping the city more safe. Also don't assume all cases of police officer shooting a person are cases of police brutality - this is for court to prove.

Why don’t the good ones arrest the bad ones then? Or even testify in court?
Post reply on HN