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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

#691

Post by freeflight »

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 list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything.

Yet lists like that is all we have to actually quantify the problem because there are literally zero attempts of doing it on a federal level [0].

In that context, I always consider it quite fascinating how the federal US government is allegedly very informed how many protesters are killed by security forces in countries like Iran, yet the same federal US government couldn't tell you how many of its citizens are killed each year by their own police.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-year-after-ferguson...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#692

Post by CWuestefeld »

graycat wrote: post #627
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 did that yesterday, more than 100 of the videos. Eventually I saw a pattern, surprising since it was common in major cities all across the US and as if there were some single, central training materials. Apparently: (1) Police are taught to be in control of any contact with a citizen. Recently the police have been taught to act nice initially, but, once it is clear some actual law enforcement is to be involved, be…

I don't have anything to add, but I just want to give you a shout out because this seems to be the most specifically constructive post in the whole thread.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#693

Post by nojvek »

vlads_ wrote: post #687
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 watched 30 clips. ALL of them were 30 second clips with no context. All of them from one Twitter thread as well, so not sure why that was not linked instead. On the other hand, all of the instances of so-called police brutality with context which I've seen elsewhere occur after the police calmly order the protestors to leave a particular area, or to go home because of a curphew order or something else and the pr…

There is a very American viewpoint that the rest of the world is somehow different. There are police in Taiwan, Australia, Canada and most of Europe.

They are friendly and don’t over exert their force in a frequent manner like the US.

In US the police just take out their gun for absolutely petty reasons. It’s like they just want to escalate the situation rather than calm it down.

So yes, the problem is American police don’t know how to calm a crowd down. They stand like robots rather than be humans and listen and work with the crowd.

In many instances the first shots are fired by the police.

The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#694

Post by tartoran »

ha4fsd3fas wrote: post #660
bakuninsbart wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans certainly know more than western/northern Europe about shooting people, but police here is trained to shoot to incapacitate, and it generally seems to work, as the fatality rate of police shootings is only about half as high as in the US.

Half seems insignificant since in America the shootings are more commonly two sided, which warrants more deadly use of force. You wouldn't stop with the first bullet if your target had a gun in their hand(as opposed to a knife).

If the target has a gun in their hand no doubt they represent a threat. Use the body cam to prove that and you're good in the eyes of the law. But, I've seen plenty of people fleeing being shot and that is just so wrong, the said cop being the justice and the executioner, with a decision which they have taken in blink. And I've seen cases where the cop got away with it and that is what hot buttoned the protesters.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#695

Post by vlads_ »

freeflight wrote: post #684
ha4fsd3fas wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are comparing apples to oranges. Your comparison would be more accurate if all humans were law abiding citizens. I don't think you could put blame on pilots if airplanes could sabotage flights at will. Of course if all humans are law abiding citizens there would be no issue to begin with. I think every society with lower crime has significantly smaller police brutality issue with some rare exceptions like…

> I think every society with lower crime has significantly smaller police brutality Crime-rates do not correlate with police brutality and mass incarceration. Canada locks up way fewer people, has way less harsh sentencing than the US, yet Canadian crime rates are not that different from those of the US [0]. It's also really weird to evoke HK in this discussion when the current police response in the US is way worse…

You claim that law enforcement culture differs in the countries which you are comparing and that is indeed true. But is the crime culture the same? Or is that not a factor worth considering?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#696

Post by mindslight »

dragonwriter wrote: post #682
mindslight wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police generally have contracts where they have weaseled out of criminal, civil, and even administrative sanctions, allowing them to break the law with impunity. If you don't see this as extreme corruption, then you don't actually believe in the rule of law. > Per the latest Monmouth poll, about 60% favor the police (compared to ~11% for congress) and most people see the police as their protectors Unfortunately this…

> Police generally have contracts where they have weaseled out of criminal, civil, and even administrative sanctions No, they don't. You can't contract out of criminal sanction, for one thing. You could be indemnified from civil sanction, but QI makes that mostly moot anyway. And, to the extent they do, those contracts are negotiated with and approved by local elected officials. Work—and, yes, this takes convincing o…

> You can't contract out of criminal sanction

You're just nitpicking the word "contract". The arrangement with the cities generally result in public prosecutors do not bring charges against the police. That's part of the de-facto contract, even if it is not written down.

> The idea that citizens don't have control of local police through local government is wrong. Normally, local citizens are between actively approving and tacitly tolerating the behavior of police rather than actively seeking change, but they absolutely do have the power should they choose to exert it.

I've been caring about unaccountable police for well over a decade, so forgive me if I don't see myself as having much power to change anything. The vast majority of people will never be victims of the police, so as long as police keep up the illusion of providing safety, they will continue to be supported by the masses.

For what I was referencing specifically, look at Minneapolis city council members' descriptions of what happened to their districts when they previously tried to reign in the police. Yes, those same council members are now at a breaking point where enough is enough, and do actually have the power to act in concert and change things. This doesn't invalidate my description of where the vast majority of cities are with respect to the police unions. And the police unions know this, which is why their instinct is to start riots when citizens protest.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#697

Post by jyounker »

Tainnor wrote: post #393
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…

Fun fact: as a kid in 8th grade or so, we were supposed to read and summarise a book for English class Most picked easy books, I picked 1984, probably out of a desire to be edgy. Little did I know that my level of English at the time was not enough for that book. The result is that, since I never went back and re-read the book, I kind of only half-read it because half of it I didn't really understand. :D I think I go…

Here's a great summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIr_v3a5T-s

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#698

Post by Chris2048 »

pjc50 wrote: post #433
fnord123 wrote: post #322

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…

> a guy came from Essex to defend some statues he didn't understand ended up urinating on a monument he didn't notice

That article doesn't say much about the guy who urinate, how do you know what he knew/understood, or where he came from?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#699

Post by freeflight »

vorpalhex wrote: post #653
GurnBlandston wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't follow in the slightest. Lethal force is not the only way to protect - de-escalation is how you protect without destroying lives.

Can you de-escalate when there are innocent bystanders? And if a bystander is harmed while you are attempting to de-escalate, doesn't that make the officer negligent? Sure, if there's someone hanging out by themselves then de-escalate and do whatever. The moment there are innocent people in harms way though, that calculus changes. De-escalation is a great catch phrase, but it's not a universal solution. It's one tool…

> Can you de-escalate when there are innocent bystanders?

Sure you can, it's what the vast majority of police forces in developed countries are doing all the time [0].

That way they also don't end up shooting innocent bystanders, which is apparently quite a common thing in the US [1] [2]

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/ge...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/12/06/785561122/4-dead-after-armed-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/nyregion/firing-at-man-in...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#700

Post by pera »

hansbo wrote: post #336
torb-xyz wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's tempting to do the whole ”oh that's a problem over in terrible USA” (a very common european way of thinking) but I'd be careful about it. Granted I think european police is less violent than US (a low bar), but to say that we don't have a problem with this at all is pretty naive. Just look at how french or swedish police have responded to black lives matters protests for example.

What are you referring to? I live in Sweden, and have not seen news regarding police brutality during the BLM protests.

I believe Sweden requires a bachelors degree and 2.5 years of training to become a cop. In the US it's just a high school diploma and 4 to 6 months of training depending the state.
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