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My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

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Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#101

Post by usrusr »

kleiba wrote: post #37

It's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy. After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they…

I think the central difference is that in much of Europe, the the ideal of the perfect police officer would be someone who actively helps people to stay out of trouble, e.g. calming down a brewing pub fight situation before it gets out of hand, or warn you before doing something wrong. I guess this ideal also exists in the US, but there it is counteracted by the opposite ideal in which the police is no position to bother anyone who isn't clearly and undeniably in the wrong, but then cracking down hard. "Don't mess with Freedom unless it's of gunpoint-grade importance."

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#102

Post by cliffy »

treis wrote: post #74
kleiba wrote: post #37

It's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy. After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they…

The US has an order of magnitude more crime than Europe but is policed by roughly the same number of officers. That, justifiably or not, leads to short cuts where extrajudicial and unjust tactics are used to enforce compliance.

[flagged]

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#103

Post by trowawee »

Balgair wrote: post #96
trowawee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. Most violence is committed by people you're around, and in an intensely segregated country, that will usually be people that are the same race as you. It's a complete digression from the actual conversation here, which is about agents of the state, entrusted to act as enforcers of the state's mono…

The commentor's name is literally 'jeffdavis'. I'm not sure what else one could suspect about their motivations.

True. And looking at their comment history, this "What about black-on-black crime?!" seems to be a recurring bit over the last few weeks whenever people here talk about police brutality. Still, I think it's worthwhile to name and push back on this tactic when we see it, because it's pretty commonly used when people want to minimize or ignore police violence.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#104

Post by yarrel »

jfengel wrote: post #15
joshuaheard wrote: post #11

Why is "Black" capitalized, but "white" is not?

I don't know what style guide ProPublica uses, but very recently AP decided to capitalize Black when used as a cultural term when it conveys "essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black". They go on to say that they expect to make a decision soon about whether to do that with "white" as well. https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize... https://a…

Capitalizing "Black" is in response to people who identify as Black doing so, I believe. Doing so for people who identify as capital-W "White" would be very different and hand them a victory that will badly distort public debate.

It's amazing how powerful just applying capitalize() to a string can be.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#105

Post by coffeemaniac »

vkou wrote: post #38
minikites wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could abolish the police and create a new public safety department without the structural racism and ingrained power-hungry culture.

I don't understand why you are being downvoted. The point of abolishing police isn't so that nobody shows up when you call 911. It's so that the right person for the right situation shows up when you call 911. Given the current state of American policing, there is only one situation where I would call the police, and expect the right person to show up. That situation is an active shooter. For nearly everything else,…

Yep exactly. In America we used to have SWAT teams who would fulfill this latter role, for situations when violence of action was urgently needed. The first letter in the acronym stands for "special." These days it's not abnormal for regular beat cops to acquire surplus military equipment and roll up to a petty dispute in an MRAP.

I think taking away officer's weapons will drastically change who they decide to engage and how they do so.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#106

Post by [deleted] »

js2 wrote: post #66
jeffdavis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the numbers in another comment[1], and it seems that for every one black person killed by police (justifiably or not), over 20 black people are murdered by other blacks. So either there's something wrong with my analysis, or the fear of police is somewhat misplaced. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579467

Most white people are killed by white people. This is an artifact of segregation and systematic racism. But that's beside the point. We fear the police because they operate with impunity, and especially so among black people. - https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11510274/black-on-black-crime-... - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/07/27/wh... - https://www.amazon.com/Ghettoside-True-Story-Murder-America-…

[deleted]

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#107

Post by jorblumesea »

kleiba wrote: post #37

It's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy. After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they…

Europe has a huge leg up on this problem due a variety of factors. One of which is relatively homogeneous population, which has historically made it easier to make decisions, approve/fund social programs and also not treat fellow citizens as "the others". Ethnicity and citizenship are closely linked.

The US has always had this exclusionary divided culture due to its diversity and racism. It makes it hard to fix some of the larger issues that exist, since much of the debate is framed as "us vs them".

You can see similar issues in countries like Malaysia, where the parties are mostly split on ethnic lines.

This isn't excusing this behavior at all. Just context.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#108

Post by dantheman »

cliffy wrote: post #102
treis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has an order of magnitude more crime than Europe but is policed by roughly the same number of officers. That, justifiably or not, leads to short cuts where extrajudicial and unjust tactics are used to enforce compliance.

[flagged]

Public education has plenty of funding; maybe enable parents to choose where their kids go so failing schools and teachers can be shutdown and fired.

I like how state abuse is considered capitalist greed - prisons and police forces are run by the state.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#109

Post by Pfhreak »

ixtli wrote: post #4

I've lived here a long time and come to the realization through observation that the NYPD operates like a private security force for capital. Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. The "community outreach" they do is just enough to keep us from getting accusatory.

Historically, this is what police were in the Northeast US. (In the South, police trace their heritage to slave patrols. I'm sure they would argue that these patrols were also just defending property. Gross.)

Landowners and merchants hired private police to watch over their holdings. Over time, they convinced locals that it would be in the public good if the guards they hired were paid for by everyone.

In the 1850s, in Boston, they formalized this arrangement into the first police department in the country. (There's an interesting history here around the oppression and then incorporation of Boston's Irish population by the police force.)

Edit: Curious about the downvotes -- this is a review of US history.

Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works

#110

Post by austincheney »

vkou wrote: post #43
austincheney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would such a new public safety department be and how would it differ from police? What would such a department do differently in the circumstance of failure to follow lawful orders and how would it have no systemic racism?

Having a peace officer department that is not given guns, or a mandate to apply violence first, and ask questions later, would be a substantial improvement for doing 95-99% of the work police currently do. It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower. We've already tried reforming departments. It doesn't work. The entire management structure of your neighbourhood police d…

> It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower.

If that’s the final output I suspect most people will want to retain the status quo because the primary problem is ignored at great expense.

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