Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We do bad job, give us more money." doesn't sound like a good incentive, though.
Have you ever improved a team by taking away resources?
Have you ever improved an overfunded team by giving them more resources?
George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
801–810 of 855 posts
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
Washington DC is unusual because it's not a state, and in practice it's the only place where the President can order the police about directly. You would expect directly elected police to increase accountability, but the question as always is: to whom? If the local electorate is racist, they're going to support racist violence from the police. The very large number of police organisations produces some stupidities, l…
> You would expect directly elected police to increase accountability I don't. I have a sheriff and I barely keep up with the issue between elections. And to be honest, local police in my area are a non-issue, I've never had issues with them personally. (IMO: this is because I live in a richer suburban area. Police are well paid, college-educated, and low-stress compared to the city police) Between the county council…
Sounds to me like your sheriff might be doing a good job and the system might be working. Now if you had a sheriff that were a real problem and still couldn't get voted out, then you'd have an example of a broken system.
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cops kill about 1600 people total (justified and non-justified combined) per year in the US. There are about 16,000 murders per year in the US. Out of the ~1550 people killed by police in 2019, about 40 were unarmed. > You should be much more concerned about a criminal harming you than a police officer. There's a lot wrong with your comment, and one issue is your conclusion obviously does not follow from your (unso…
Sorry for the lack of citation, my stats come from the Washington Post Police Shootings Database [^2]. As far as I know, it's the most comprehensive one currently, though unfortunately it has a paywall. > Being killed by police is more like being murdered by a stranger, which is much less common than being murdered by anyone including people known to you [1]. The question at play as I understood it is whether, being…
> This then comes back to our question of de-escalation. If someone is unarmed and behaving violently.. the police will probably successfully de-escalate them and indeed, de-escalation is the correct approach. However, if someone is threatening lethal force, then de-escalation is no longer the correct approach.
Look, obviously there are some rare situations where de-escalation is not possible, like the North Hollywood Shootout, but it sounds like you're saying that the police should come in guns blazing whenever they think a suspect is threatening lethal force. That's obviously wrong. Police should try, to the greatest extent possible, to avoid shooting anyone. Whenever possible, they should de-escalate the situation, which refers to stuff like this:
> De-escalation more broadly refers to the strategic slowing down of an incident in a manner that allows officers more time, distance, space and tactical flexibility during dynamic situations on the street. Applying these specific skills increases the potential for resolving the situation with minimized force or no force at all, which reduces the likelihood of injury to the public, increases officer safety and mitigates the immediacy of potential or ongoing threats. A reduction in use of force incidents also reduces community complaints, promotes the perception of procedural justice and, most importantly, promotes resolution of events with the public’s compliance. [1]
Here's one case of what not de-escalating looks like, and the kinds of police attitude problems that are at play here:
> “Last week, there was a guy in a car who wouldn’t show me his hands,” the officer said. “I pulled my gun out and stuck it right in his nose, and I go, ‘Show me your hands now!’ That’s de-escalation.” [2]
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-applauds-a...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-for...
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Some questions to be answered in the 1 second he points it at you:
+ How do you know your partner is behind you?
+ How do you know he won't take your gun after he uses the taser on you?
+ How do you know it was a taser?
+ Are you confident enough in those answers to miss your daughter's next birthday?
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'd place a $1000 bet that you are either a Republican, or you have a close friend or family member in law enforcement. The police are uniquely powerful against normal citizens. Not only are these videos clearly representative of a large number of abuses, but their colleagues rarely try to stop those abuses. Few of them will be held accountable. The police are almost always above the law, if not outright immune. In "…
> I'd place a $1000 bet that you are either a Republican, or you have a close friend or family member in law enforcement.
You lost that bet.
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#806I opened a couple of random ones. The first one was this link: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224 Which isn't an example of police brutality. The second one was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTkAOe5UTE Basically a bunch of thugs attack random drivers. One of the thugs jumps into a random car, the car stops, police come, pull the thug out, he resists, they deal with him. I have zero…
I didn't know about such stories. It is fair to ask for context of each videos. Videos are just like words, they can be taken out of context.
In what context is it OK for a policeman to assault someone in handcuffs?
Or shoot an accredited camera person in the eye with less than lethal ammunition designed to only be used by shooting at the pavement first?
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of "defund", maybe a better word, then, is "reform", or "reorganize"? Or maybe define that it is "police unions" who should be defunded, not the entire bucket called "police"? I am just curious at this choice of word that seems to be the clarion call, which means entirely different in the dictionary than what is being implied! :-/
No because the goal is to have public safety organizations that don't have any of the personnel, historical lineage or goals of the police. By poor analogy, the goal isn't to clone facebook its to make a twitter,Instagram,telegram,etc. Different orgs with different goals with different people ultimately focused on public safety.
So the new org should have all new personnel, new goals that do not overlap with those of the police ("serve and protect", from what I understand), yet focused on public safety.
I am now genuinely curious to know how this is to be achieved, and what safeguards/guarantees are to be encoded so the new org does not devolve into the existing police.
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a complete outsider to US reality, to me looking in, it seems like there is a real issue of training regarding de-escalating techniques. US police forces seem to have a very short training which, as far as I understand is not centrally vetted by any federal organism? And considering the short training time it seems to be mostly focused on tactical and firearm training. Compare that with European forces and you see…
European forces do not police cities where 18 people get killed in a day(Chicago just set a new record). Normal summer weekend you have at least couple dozen people shot(not by cops, so you never hear about them)
This is a really important point and you are right that the level of gun violence is abysmally higher in the US.
Nevertheless, a large percentage of situations can be de-escalated by police forces. What is even less acceptable, is that in many cases the escalation is originating from police officers. Which is why, to me, de-escalation and conflict management training is lacking among these officers.
Going back to your point, it is a really complex issue and I am not going to claim a deep understanding of US society.
There is a huge percentage of GDP spent on welfare in most EU countries, the welfare and safety nets put in place are (mostly) accepted in the EU because of a sense of solidarity and dignity and a mutual understanding that _anyone_ can be caught in a situation where they are facing social/family/health/finacial issues. Being misfortunate should not be punished with falling through the cracks of society. I get the impression that in the US this type of belief would be an outlier.
However, putting aside the humanitarian values, there is a very practical and utilitarian aspect to EU welfare and social benefits programs, they actually detract people from marginal behaviour because it stops them from being pushed into a corner.
There is a lot of evidence that social welfare safety nets reduce crime. Equally, there is evidence that insufficient welfare correlates with crime rise. [0]
And this I think, is a huge cultural shift. The outrage in the US would be huge if we tried to rationalize that we have to take tax money from everyone, to give free-money to people on the fringes of society, in order to reduce gun violence. However, all the EU policies for the past 40 years confirm this reasoning.
[0] Social determinants of health in relation to firearm-related homicides in the United States: A nationwide multilevel cross-sectional study, D. Kim, 2019 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pizza delivery drivers have to deliver over 10 million pizzas a year. Any one of those deliveries could be cut short by a drunk driver that causes a head-on collision at 60 miles per hour. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're at risk. Contrast that with your average cop issuing citations and filling out paperwork and I'd say their job is incredibly…
Pizza delivery can be dangerous in certain neighborhoods, for sure. At least one or two were killed in my home town. However, let's not pretend that the emotional and mental weight and responsibility of being a pizza delivery driver is anywhere close to what a cop has to deal with on a daily basis: "Police respond to murder-suicide in Durham" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei4D2toAHQ4 "Man shoots, kills police weari…
This is bordering on the absurd. Almost all police officers go through their career without being in objective danger of dying. If they do run in to danger, they call for backup and are trained to handle it. You can find examples of death in any profession. Like it or not, policing is not one of the most dangerous jobs out there, it's just filled with scared people.
Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
European forces do not police cities where 18 people get killed in a day(Chicago just set a new record). Normal summer weekend you have at least couple dozen people shot(not by cops, so you never hear about them)
This is a really important point and you are right that the level of gun violence is abysmally higher in the US. Nevertheless, a large percentage of situations can be de-escalated by police forces. What is even less acceptable, is that in many cases the escalation is originating from police officers. Which is why, to me, de-escalation and conflict management training is lacking among these officers. Going back to you…
> de-escalation and conflict management training is lacking
Hiring and firing by this metric is also lacking.