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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

#761
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overarching point here is that it’s pointless to debate Switzerland v Germany as if they exist in some sort of vacuum without interaction. Without Germany, there is no Switzerland. Without Switzerland, there is not Germany. A theory where every nation is a data point can’t get you anywhere. All the nations interact meaning we should reason about the system as a whole. I say something about a nation, you expect me…

> I say something about a nation, you expect me to back it up with other nations. But there are very few data points, and they are interconnected, and the problem has a huge number of dimensions. Sure, but there's little/nothing that suggests the effect you speculate about, it seems to have no parallel in history although empires have existed before, there are counter examples ... so it seems not too likely that that…

Thought provoking, thanks.

I’m not asking you to accept anything: I don’t evangelize. In particular I have no theory that generalizes over nations. It seems very limiting. Like ignoring a mechanism I see work in my apartment because it doesn’t hold true for buildings writ large.

Edit: Probably shouldn’t have written “the superpower” posts ago because that makes it sound like a general claim.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#762

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 watched 10. The first 10, not selected 10. Why do I need to watch 100 to find what is claimed - "brutality"? If there are 7 cases of real police brutality make a list of 7, not 700.

The entire point of something like this is to be a gish gallop. If you want to refute it you have to look through 700 or so videos, and even if you do by the time you are done going through and checking everyone has moved on. Trying to refute some does not invalidate the entire list and you will be attacked for downplaying the problem.

And also people like lists.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#763
post #707
post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 polic…

> The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right. Not going to lie, this actually made me laugh[1]. Other than that, you missed my point entirely. When a policeman calmly explains to you that you are not allowed to be in a particular area for 10 mintues and the whole crowd screams in disapproval and refuses to leave, so the police use force to remove the crowd, and someone tapes a…

It's still correct the vast majority of the protests are peaceful.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#764
post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopsy says shot in the back twice.

He pointed a taser at the police behind him in pursuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbf0x_K9i54

Tasers are nonlethal weapons, and also don't work at that range anyways, or the police would've tased him. Multiple other cops had tasers.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#765
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am completely in support of the idea that these videos show unnecessary police brutality, I have no argument with the message here. I just want to answer your question about shooting to kill vs incapacitate. The first part of the answer is that nobody should shoot anyone who they don’t reasonably believe is trying to kill them. This applies to citizens or police. Generally it is the standard applied in citizen self…

> would require training and practice that simply isn’t available to cops Generally agree apart from this - if cops don't have training to be expert (or at least above-average good) shooters, then that's a failure. We've read tons of articles about militarization of US police. If they have budget for armored vehicles, for sure they have budget for (very cheap but quality basic) 9mm ammunition for practice.

There are good reasons for police to receive a lot more firearms training and practice than they do, but no amount of training will change the need for them to shoot to ‘kill’.

Even the best handgun shooters in the world are unlikely either to be reliably be able to shoot to incapacitate.

It just isn’t a capacity that handguns have in realistic use cases.

The primary reason police need more training with firearms is so that they become less afraid of them and more generally competent and confident.

That will give them more capacity to exercise better judgement in when they actually need to shoot.

Of course it depends a lot on the training and whether it is aimed at increasing or reducing their fear levels.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those stats means anything without context. Not surprisingly, criminals get killed a lot.

The point is that "black on black violence" is essentially a myth. If crime was responsible for the elevated rate of homicide among black people you would expect a higher proportion of strangers killing each other. All those intraracial homicides are essentially familial, and indeed when you control for household crowding the difference between white and black murder rates completely disappears[1]. You don't even nee…

>Black Americans are more likely to be killed by a police officer than a criminal.

According to what data?

In 2017, 223 black people were shot/killed by police in the US[1], while 2,627 black people were murdered by black people in the US.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

[2]https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#767
post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you're generalizing a bit too much or I'm weird as I'm mid 30's now, and I have definitely read 1984 but have never seen Avatar. In fact when I read "Avatar" I think of blue space aliens before I think of the anime.

If you're in your mid 30s now you'd be in your early 20s when Avatar the Last Airbender originally aired. Since it's a children's show (Nickelodeon), you wouldn't have been in the target demographic, so I don't think that's unusual. I'm your age and I never even heard of Avatar the Last Airbender. I'm sure my younger cousins know about it.

The claim was that "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)." - if you and I would have been early 20's, that would have made that cohort late teens, so I still find the demographics weird.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely." That's really all we need to know to demand radical changes to police culture, if not the entire concept of ubiquitous armed police forces.

That isn't a logical conclusion to draw. Are there instances where doctors negligently kill their patients? Absolutely. That does not mean we need to "radically" change doctor culture, if not the entire concept of doctors performing surgeries with sharp objects. The RATE is abuse is more important than the mere existence of abuse. These emotional comments have lost touch with logical thinking. The media is driving pe…

Doctors aren't granted a monopoly on violence by the state, so that comparison makes no sense.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified Immunity just sets the default and is mostly a red herring (not that it shouldn't be addressed). A city could easily declare that an officer acted outside their explicit government duties when committing a crime. Furthermore, this could be straightforwardly clarified in their contract. In general you're repeating talking points about fragments of what I said, while ignoring my substantive points. For instan…

> why haven't Breonna Taylor's killers been charged and put in jail, or at the very least quickly fired? Because they are "innocent until proven guilty". It's not as if they've been going on calls and continuing to kick in doors - the investigation was handed to the FBI (a federal body) and the officers were put on leave until that investigation is finished. If they are fired and it turns out they were acting lawfull…

> Because they are "innocent until proven guilty".

That...doesn't stop people from being arrested. Proof of guilt is required before imposing sentence, but arrest happens way before that.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those stats means anything without context. Not surprisingly, criminals get killed a lot.

The point is that "black on black violence" is essentially a myth. If crime was responsible for the elevated rate of homicide among black people you would expect a higher proportion of strangers killing each other. All those intraracial homicides are essentially familial, and indeed when you control for household crowding the difference between white and black murder rates completely disappears[1]. You don't even nee…

> The point is that "black on black violence" is essentially a myth.

This doesn't even pass the laugh test.

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