Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

docs.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 855 posts

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#511

Post by itsoktocry »

DanBC wrote: post #469
koheripbal wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

>The few posts saying "she was throwing things" have fewer than 10 followers.

What does the number of followers have to with whether a statement is true or not? That's absurd. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have tens of millions of followers on Twitter; I have very few. Does that make me a liar?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#512

Post by butterknife »

TomMarius wrote: post #409
butterknife wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there. This is why I left the rotten country. They were using it as some free for all practice complete with tear gas grenades and a water cannon truck. They even brought a tank to show off.

All places seem to be similarly bad today. Where did you go?

You will laugh. UK. I value the respect of law that penetrates their society noticeably deeper than in Czechia.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#513

Post by tartoran »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #465
koheripbal wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inst…

Handcuffing a lifeless freshly shot body is more than enough. I’ve seen it over and over. Why is that a policy?

Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy?

The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their demeanour. And I act like a scared ghost anytime I get stopped by them: I am afraid that if any answer I’d give them might make them punish me with one more more tickets.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#514

Post by downerending »

baddox wrote: post #103
devcpp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite the opposite. The adversarial job should have higher standards of conduct, not lower.

Unfortunately, criminals aren't going to have higher standards of conduct, even if they "should". That's why we call them criminals. And the police have to deal with these people all day long--there's no easy comparison to other jobs.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#515

Post by cowmoo728 »

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.

Who holds police accountable? The DA and IAB are supposed to, but they don't. Instead, other police hold them accountable for having each other's backs through social pressure, professional pressure, and some less-than-legal means. Police back each other up because they're responding to these incentives.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#516

Post by esperent »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #471
esperent wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a term for the type of response that, instead of furthering the discussion, just tries to overwhelm you with questions?

So you can't answer 4 simple questions. So you pretend to be overwhelmed. Got it.

The answer to your questions is that those are not examples of police brutality, so long as the police respond with reasonable force.

Along with reading your other comments here, I viewed these 4 questions as a bad faith attempt at steering the conversation off topic. When people complain about police brutality, we are not talking about the times when police have to legitimately defend themselves or disarm someone. This thread is specifically about the hundreds of clearly documented examples of unprovoked violence by police in the US over the last few weeks, many of them against journalists, elderly people, kneeling protestors and so on. Please engage with that and don't try to change the subject again.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#517

Post by lazyjones »

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…

This is a clear attempt to manipulate opinion, I don't know why HN leaves it up. You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. If after watching carefully select and cut videos on a Twitter propaganda account you believe the police has a systemic issue, you're falling for the same trap. It's the same way media manipulate you with their carefully chosen "interviews" with random people on the street.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#518

Post by mindslight »

clairity wrote: post #493
evil-olive wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US police forces seem to have a very short training Correct; some states have laws mandating training hours for barbers that are longer than that mandated for police [0]. > not centrally vetted by any federal organism As with many things in the US, these rules are mostly state-based (read: 50 different, often overlapping but also often contradictory systems) but with a patchwork of federal oversight. For example, i…

you're entirely warranted to be pissed about tear gas use, but it's misguided to expect quick and accurate federal redress, as the executive function intentionally doesn't cover state or local jurisdictions. states run themselves, and the federal judiciary basically only steps in when state/local governments don't follow their own rules (the presumed expression of the will of the people) or violate the constitution.…

I'm generally for states' rights, but the federal government stepping in to enforce civil rights in the face of local corruption has a long and storied history. Furthermore, the consent decree was already in place, so yes, enforcement should have been pretty quick and should actually have teeth to get these criminals prosecuted.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#519

Post by thrownaway954 »

honestly... the biggest problems with the police is unions. you de-unionize the police you will see all this stop in no time. over my life i have witnessed personally numerous times when an officer should have been fired for brutality or another offense, but the union used their negotiation power and saved their job. cops know that as long as they have the power of the union legal team behind them, that 99% of the time there will be no punishment or it will be minimal.

cops are entitled because unions make them this way. take away their safety net and you seeing more terminations and less bullies and entitled people applying for the job.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#520

Post by downerending »

jennyyang wrote: post #56

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…

> the police are causing most of these protests and riots

Free will is a thing, and the police cannot make you go out and commit vandalism, mayhem, and murder.

Post reply on HN