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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

#591
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t find someone to fill a position as a police officer, I would suggest increasing the compensation or leaving the position unfilled before simply accepting anyone who might want to be a cop with no standards whatsoever. Similar logic would apply to a position for a crane operator or a pilot. If an airline had a pattern of pilot errors, and their excuse was “if we required all our pilots to have adequate pi…

I've thought of a shorter way to answer your question. > If you can’t find someone to fill a position as a police officer, I would suggest increasing the compensation or leaving the position unfilled before simply accepting anyone who might want to be a cop with no standards whatsoever. Let's say we decide to pay police officers 1 million/year and really raise their standards. Great! We did it! Why don't we just do t…

I generally disagree with the impression alexashka is conveying that we can’t have higher standards ‘because humans‘. There is plenty we can do.

However, it is worth pointing out that there are around 750,000 police officers in the US. It is hard to deny that finding and or training 750,000 highly capable people is a very difficult problem.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#592
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again What about just thinking that restaurants need serious reform and accountability?

It would be stupid. No restaurant reform can prevent employees from doing something bad, unless you want to mandate robotic "employees". The sane way to react to such videos would be to confront the employers, using a lawsuit if necessary, so they can fix the situation. All required laws already exist AFAICT.

> No restaurant reform can prevent employees from doing something bad, unless you want to mandate robotic "employees".

No of course not, but there are measures you can take to reduce bad practices, which is why we do those measures for restaurants! Let's make police accountable for their crimes the same way we make restaurant owners and employees accountable for e.g. food safety issues.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#596
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you have done in that situation?

This is covered in basic military and I guess also police training where I grew up. I only have brief military experience (draft) and yet I know very well that anyone in your custody are to be treated well or you get in trouble. Besides, staying professional is the right thing to do and police of all should be extremely concerned with doing the right thing IMO.

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Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#597

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…

Can we begin with the fact that this isn't even remotely in the same universe as a peer reviewed study? There's nothing to compare it to, there's no data on what the timeline is, there's no meta analysis of the different cases, what sparked the incidents, the outcomes, or how often non-violent confrontations or de-escalations happen, etc. Basically you're looking at a single specific dataset, like "number of children…

It reminds me of vegan documentaries, who think compilations of animal abuse are an argument.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#598
post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one UK example which is actually a counter example where the police allowed a statue to be destroyed instead of intervening and creating a potentially dangerous altercation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston The statue of a slaver and mass murderer had been controversial for the past 30 years. I wonder if things would have gone differently if the "recontextualisation" plaque had been allowed. There has, predictably, been a backlash. Resulting in this fiasco where a guy came from Essex to defend some statues he didn't understand ended up urinating on a monument he did…

Symbols are more powerful than words. Statues have always existed to project values. A plaque adding context won’t actually achieve the goal.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had to restrain a person who might want to kill you? While wearing a firearm? I have done some grappling in MA myself, but I imagine the stakes are in another dimension on a real situation. I'm not totally certain there are any people who can be "good" at it in the sense that they'll never make mistakes or lose their cool. Then consider that there are over 10 million situations every year where somethin…

In the course of one thread, there's now a series of sequential arguments from several different commenters progressing from: "A lot of these videos don't show anything wrong", to "Well, here's at least two videos that show nothing wrong", to "Okay, the video looks bad, but the full context probably justifies it", to "Sure it was wrong, but keep in mind that in a stressful situation everybody makes mistakes". I'm eag…

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Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#600
post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Peaceful protestors are by definition not criminals. People whose rights are violated by the police? Often not criminals as well! In fact, you cant really call someone a criminal until they've been convicted of a crime - cue the video of the cops being called by the black store owner, punching him in the face and breaking his jaw while the white thief leaves.

Right but when you start throwing rocks and glass bottles, when you start blocking ambulances and firetrucks on highways, well then you aren't a peaceful protestor anymore.
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