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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

#191

Post by bsanr »

kens wrote: post #113
danharaj wrote: post #2

The NYPD has a budget for spying on people in other countries. State power is weird.

Another weird thing about the NYPD is that each police officer gets 20 so-called "get out of jail free" cards to give to friends and family. The recipient can show the card to the police if pulled over and use the card to "wiggle out of minor trouble". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42780382

That's a joke, right? Police aren't so stupid to have institutionalized petty corruption with an actual laminated pass, right?

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

#192

Post by austincheney »

justin66 wrote: post #169
austincheney wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption is a provable violation of ethics which is measurable. In so many of these police related threads on HN lately people make absurd claims and then are upset when asked about data or objectivity, which suggests people are looking to complain about something and don’t want their complaint validated with data, which is strange.

> Corruption is a provable violation of ethics which is measurable. Police do everything they can to keep ethics violations from being measured. That is what the story is about. In light of that, your objection to psychometry's comment calling for oversight is quite absurd.

I am absolutely not objecting to oversight. I am not sure how you came to that. I am advocating for the opposite, for increased measurable data so that people don’t have to invent their own narratives.

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

#193

Post by crooked-v »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #181
jorblumesea wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And the Roma have never had a problem with systemic racism?

Or, for another blatant example, the way the Irish were long treated as subhuman by English overlords.

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

#194

Post by tzs »

trowawee wrote: post #52
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

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…

He definitely should not have brought up "black-on-black" crime. The statement he was trying to refute was that blacks are more likely to die from police than from random criminals.

To evaluate whether or not that is true, we just need two numbers: (1) how many black people a year are killed by the police, and (2) how many black people a year are killed by random criminals.

It's hard to think of a good reason one would narrow #2 to just "black-on-black" crime if the goal is to show that the original statement is wrong.

It's also kind of irrelevant in another sense. People have been working on stopping crime for millennia and are still nowhere near figuring it out.

Police killings are something we might actually be able to do something about, so it makes sense to concentrate on them even if they are not actually the biggest immediate danger to individuals.

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

#195

Post by sambull »

pjc50 wrote: post #22

> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…

Oppression of a population, more specifically.

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

#196

Post by treis »

dhosek wrote: post #63
treis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. It's part of the story, though. The incident in the linked article started because a group of teens jumped another and stole his phone. If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.

[edited to add context] a comprehensive reply to the "what about black on black crime" comment from journalist Michael Harriot. https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/126846376828518809...

I don't see anything in there to refute what I said. In fact, he seems to agree with my numbers at least. He admits that Blacks are roughly 10x as likely to commit murder. If we agree with that and agree that is some rough proxy for criminality why wouldn't we expect about 10 times as much police violence against Black people?

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

#197

Post by dragonwriter »

bradly wrote: post #189
throwaway_jobs wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals I don’t think that is framed correctly. Black or white statistically you are far more likely to be killed (or assaulted) by non-police Of the same race as you. I think everyone knows that, and to say police are the most likely to assault of kill black people t…

> Black or white statistically you are far more likely to be killed (or assaulted) by non-police Of the same race as you. That really doesn't matter that much. If a stranger assaults someone and a police office assaults someone, those are not equal. The stranger can be tried and convicted, but the police officer not as easily if at all. Also the stranger is a stranger, while the police officer I pay for and exists to…

> The stranger can be tried and convicted,

Not if law enforcement institutions, and society as a whole (including jurors) doesn't treat crimes as seriously where people who look like you are the victim. Were that the case, you might want to correct it by starting a movement dedicated to convincing society of the proposition “Lives of people who look like me matter”.

Not that there is a currently-relevant group with exactly that origin story, where the crystallizing event was the lack of accountability for a particular act of non-police homicide.

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #179
mistersquid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. Not to put too fine a point on it and with all due respect, but are you black? Have you asked your black neighbors about it? I am half-black and was raised in California. I have lived in SF for the last 10 years. While I have not directly been troubled by police in SF, I put myself on notice every. Single. Time. I go outsi…

I think it may depend on the socioeconomic class of the neighborhood - I'm a white dude, but I used to drive beater cars, and when I was a field engineer driving my own car, it was amazing, because like clockwork whenever I was in a we'll to do area I'd get pulled over for (what I presume was) looking "out of place". Similarly I've been pulled out of cell sites at gunpoint and bent over the hood of my car, and patted…

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by tartoran »

danso wrote: post #92
fallingfrog wrote: post #31

The protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder are currently tapering off, but I don’t see any evidence at all that substantive changes have been made, which means that this is all going to happen again, and soon, and the protests will be bigger, the police response more violent. The black lives matter organization in my city presented a list of demands to the city council and every one of them was ignored, instea…

In terms of sweeping reforms, no – especially re: qualified immunity with SCOTUS recently declining to reexamine it [0]. But I would venture to claim that the Overton window on what police can be held accountable has certainly changed. That all 4 police in the George Floyd case were arrested and charged was unexpected, given the lack of consequences in the Eric Garner case. The arrests and assault charges for officer…

It changes because of overwhelming evidence, public outcry and protests. We shouldn’t need to have to protest for that!! Maybe ubiquitous incident footage will make the window shift. Maybe we’ll end up self surveilling any encounter we may have with police but also with crime.

Imagine we’re all streaming to a personal blackbox in the could that gets overwritten say every month or every hour or however we set it up.

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

#200

Post by marcinzm »

treis wrote: post #58
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…

>Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. It's part of the story, though. The incident in the linked article started because a group of teens jumped another and stole his phone. If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.

>If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.

Why do you consider it okay for police to stop and harass innocent people with no evidence simply because they live in a certain neighborhood?

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