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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

#461

Post by aikinai »

Shish2k wrote: post #411
dtech wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1984 was standard school reading in America for a very long time (maybe still is?). That’s definitely going to make it more well known than a cartoon.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#462

Post by fareesh »

From what I understand, all of these people are breaking curfew and ignoring instructions to leave the area, and in some cases are acting belligerent when confronted, and this is happening at scale.

Is the expectation that curfew is an order that should not be enforced in the strictest sense?

From what I could see on the news, parts of your country were being burned down and looted by some rogue elements who used the cover of peaceful protests to spring into action. To protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected, a curfew was imposed, which was then violated. If I lived in those areas I would have liked to see the curfew enforced as harshly as possible because if it is not enforced then I will lose the local businesses who I depend on to live in that area.

What is the expected approach to law enforcement when extreme measures like curfew orders are not obeyed, particularly during a pandemic?

A lot of these videos seem to be omitting the all-important context. In my country I would want the police to beat the ever loving expletive out of people who do go out in large crowds during a pandemic. I would want the police to use all measures available at their disposal to injure and dissuade people from breaking a curfew and unwittingly providing cover for criminals.

Perhaps in first world countries life has become soft and comfortable so there is some expectation of civil behavior from everyone in society, but clearly that has not happened in the USA and many other countries.

Many of the protests are peaceful, and a lot of anger can be easily empathized with, I can't imagine anyone who was not furious after seeing these horrible videos of police inflicted killings. Under no circumstances can I be convinced that looting and rioting is an acceptable outcome. If protesters know that their peaceful assembly is being hijacked by criminals who go out and loot and riot under the cover they provide, and they go out and protest more, then they are complicit in the rioting.

Perhaps these are cultural differences, but coming from a police where the police are infinitely more barbaric, corrupt, rude and ruthless than the USA, I find the police doing the best they can to manage the absolute mess that the citizens are creating.

You all live in a country where many police wear body cameras. That is privileged beyond anything I can hope to imagine for my country. It's weird to empathize with you when you have it so good.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#463

Post by DebtDeflation »

ashtonkem wrote: post #417
kthejoker2 wrote: post #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 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.

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

This is absolutely true, but the problem goes much deeper than just the police force itself. We seem to want to solve every imaginable social problem with police/courts/prisons. Drug abuse needs to be viewed as a public health problem, not a criminal problem. Homelessness as a housing and mental health problem, not a criminal one. Many other issues as economic problems not criminal ones. Address the root cause, rather than sending people with badges and guns. I realize this is easier said than done, but it's clear the old approach is no longer acceptable to society.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#464

Post by dragontamer »

Lio wrote: post #458
dragontamer wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly... among my generation of roughly 30 year olds, I'd expect Avatar the Last Airbender to have higher cultural impact than 1984 (which was written in 1949). Most of us were forced to read 1984 and didn't really enjoy it. ATLA however, is something that we organically grew up with through high-school / college and actually paid attention to. My group of friends would be aware of 1984 concepts... such as "Big Bro…

Among your generation _where you live_ maybe. 1984 is a very popular and influential book. I fairly confident that if you asked the authors of Avatar The Last Airbender they would tell you straight that they’d based that idea on 1984. I’d be willing to bet people will be quoting 1984 long after ATLA has been forgotten.

Either way, I'm able to connect with the root comment here about Ba Sing Se more readily than "We're at war with Eurasia".

The original two posters in this thread were also intimately familiar with Ba Sing Se / Avatar the Last Airbender. So multiple people here are fully aware of the reference and are in good communication.

I probably wouldn't reach for a reference to ATLA myself. But, apparently its popular enough that plenty of different posters in this very discussion are aware of it and able to explain to other people here the concept.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#465

Post by SamuelAdams »

koheripbal wrote: post #434
kthejoker2 wrote: post #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 milit…

I pseudo-randomly sampled 30 videos... Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions. This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything. I mean look at this one... https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 A large volume o…

This is why any footage of an incident used in court must include the entire interaction. Police body cam footage can be rejected as evidence if it does not start with the officer stepping out of his vehicle. This is why so many iPhone recordings from bystanders gets thrown out in trial.

Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking instances where escalation of force was warranted, but they do not show the full context leading up to that escalation.

I would like to see meaningful police reform as much as anyone else. But we need to be pragmatic about any examples we cite as "abuse of force". Let's create a list of absolutely cut-and-dry instances of police brutality, then move from there.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#466

Post by harry8 »

luckylion wrote: post #454
harry8 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA can /afford/ to be better. Comparison with other wealthy nations seems to me to be the right benchmark. I mean the richest nation on earth bar none. The amount of wealth in the nation. Literally that. The USA cannot plead poverty as an excuse for why anything is worse there than any other nation. Do you see it now?

Put like that, I agree. If the US fundamentally changed their culture towards being less individualist and more collectivist, a lot of things would change with it. I don't think US-citizens by and large want that change bad enough to accept restrictions upon their freedoms and an end to low taxes, European-level wealth redistribution does not seem to be popular in the US. I suppose they'd like the result without doin…

I'm not suggesting there is one and only one solution to any given problem at all. That's the scoreboard. How does the USA do compared to other rich countries with long established democracies. My read on it is most americans want to be first on that scoreboard. Badly want it. Most americans can't and don't believe how badly they're going in certain benchmarks. These are the benchmarks. This is the story. Americans can fix it, of this I have no doubt. I'm sure that it can be fixed without embracing socialism in /any/ way if that's how americans choose to go. All they need to do is say "Here is the scoreboard - let's get fixed. Let's try something and if that doesn't work let's try something else and not rest until we get it done in a way that works with our views as Americans and preserves all the stuff we hold dear."

I have no doubt that American can-do and talent will get it done.

None.

Just decide what it is, what the scoreboard looks like and get it done as Americans the American way.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#467

Post by sethammons »

deathcakes wrote: post #397
krzyk wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you report your fellow in company that e.g. goes late to work? Or uses corporate assets (printer, laptop) for personal things? This is similar, if you know someone you have less incentive to report on one. The better you know them, the higher is the bar for reporting.

I would report someone in my company who attacked someone else with no provocation. Or murdered someone. I don't think this comparison is as good as you think it is.

Would you tell on your loved one, good friend, and/or favorite cousin if they attacked someone? What if you could rationalize what they did? What if you told on them and that meant turning your back on the rest of your family and them all shunning you, or hurting and harassing you?

I think we need some massive overhauling of how accountability works in police situations and I think that will have to start with shit rolling uphill.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#468

Post by alkonaut »

alkonaut wrote: post #366

Some ideas: - Less immunity, and discharge without pension for blatant violations, for example being caught on camera hiding a badge, or deliberately bumping into someone to be able to argue that they were "assaulted". - Longer police traning. A 6-12months is how long you should train to be an unarmed mall security guy. Two or three years for a policeman seems like a minimum if you want qualified officers. - Federal…

I'll add one I forgot: outlaw any incentives to do "more policing" or more incarceration than nacessary. Fines should never end up in the hands of a local department. Any benefits provided by e.g. private prison companies to local police departments should be investigated as organized crime.

If there is an incentive program doing measurements it must never be measurements of "number of arrests" or similar. It should be measurements of job approval instead.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#469

Post by DanBC »

koheripbal wrote: post #434
kthejoker2 wrote: post #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 milit…

I pseudo-randomly sampled 30 videos... Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions. This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything. I mean look at this one... https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 A large volume o…

So, for the example you provide the only contradictory claims come from accounts that have very few followers. The few posts saying "she was throwing things" have fewer than 10 followers.

But, also, rubber bullets are less lethal, not non lethal, and so they should be reserved for situations where life is at risk. If she wasn't throwing molotov cocktails or bricks they shouldn't have used rubber bullets on her.

The other claim is that she was pregnant and thus shouldn't have gone. This is incoherent: we want protests to be non-violent, so we want pregnant women and children to be able to attend.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#470

Post by alkonaut »

z9e wrote: post #452
alkonaut wrote: post #366

Some ideas: - Less immunity, and discharge without pension for blatant violations, for example being caught on camera hiding a badge, or deliberately bumping into someone to be able to argue that they were "assaulted". - Longer police traning. A 6-12months is how long you should train to be an unarmed mall security guy. Two or three years for a policeman seems like a minimum if you want qualified officers. - Federal…

Yes. And this is quite the opposite of the current “defund the police” initiative. We actually need to fund them more to get the above to happen.

I think people are sick of departments getting more funds and buying mine protected vehicles instead of sending officers to deescalation refresher classes.
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