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

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

#221

Post by uoaei » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #164

uoaei wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ethics? And how can you prove anything if cops always defend their own? In an ideal world where we have an oracle telling us which cops are good and which are bad your comment makes sense. But the nature of corruption is to obfuscate its dealings. You can't just say "well we need independent oversight" then because there are so many institutional pivot points where cops can hide their abhorrent behavior before i…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics In practical application ethics violations are knowable breaking of rules or demonstrable malicious intentions.

You have an ultra-simplified view of what ethics can be and how it can be employed.

This is evidenced in how you think "ethics" can be defined by a wikipedia page.

The concept of ethics is very much different from its numerous instantiations.

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

#222

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

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…

Don't underestimate how much local impact the protests are having.

In my town, the police chief noped out. A rather startled black lieutenant has found himself in the role now. AFAIK he's got a genuine desire to improve things, but I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, 3 proposals to defund some programs like in school officers have been repeatedly proposed by our only black city councillor for the last couple years, always blocked by the majority of the council. The protests changed that in ONE WEEK.

We may not be getting the sweeping reform we want at the national level, but this absolutely has had a huge impact. And looking at the pooling, there's been a fundamental change in how many people agree there's a real problem.

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

#223

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

throwaway_jobs wrote: post #188

lukewrites wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data points to disprove it? I'm not aware of any data on how often police engage in physical altercations with civilians. One of the points the article makes is that the NYPD actively misrepresents such altercations that could cast the department in a bad light. Stop and frisk policies amount to codifying assault, in my opinion.

As to murder: White Murder victims: 3,499 (2,854 of the victims were killed by other whites) Black murder victims: 2,870 (2,570 of the victims were killed by other blacks) 2019 police killings by race: White deceased: 370 Black deceased: 235

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

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

#225

Post by justin66 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #192

justin66 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> invent their own narratives

Your comments in this thread are recursively ridiculous and I'm not sure how far I want to unwind them, but people are "inventing their own narratives" (this is an astonishingly bad way of characterizing the problem here) in preference to siting hard numbers because the police are not holding themselves accountable, a phenomenon that includes the suppression of the hard data on how many abuses there are.

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

#226

Post by distant_hat » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #119

fallingfrog wrote: post #12

My wife was in Indianapolis for a couple days and she saw the same thing: a cop crossed over to the wrong side of the road and up onto the sidewalk to strike an unarmed black man on a bicycle head on. They claimed later that the man on the bike had struck the car while it was sitting still (hard enough to put him in the hospital with a fractured skull). No investigation was made. I think they do this because running…

In San Francisco, I've seen so many occasions where police and fire (not the fire truck, the little cars) do the "lights and full speed" for really no reason. Or screaming high speed U turns just for the heck of it. Honestly, I'm somewhat sure that this is just considered a perk of the job since it lets them ignore road rules.

I had a cop friend who told me he lived for high speed chases. Interestingly he died of an illicitly procured opioid overdose at 46.

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

#227

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #145

dragonwriter wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is completely irrelevant It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.

"Blacks view police as the biggest threat" seems to be perfectly in line with what Black people are and have been saying for decades if not centuries. If only folks would listen to Black voices, they wouldn't be gumming up the conversation with irrelevance. White on white crime is also much more prevalent than crime across racial boundaries. A priori you are much more likely to be a victim of crime by someone you kno…

It's in line with what people have been saying, but as parent observed, it's not in line with risks. But this is nothing new for people in general; we spend way more newspaper inches worrying about terrorism (which kills a fraction of people) than traffic fatalities (which is 8th leading cause of death globally).

This is, of course, as true as it is irrelevant. Because police can be 1/7th as likely to kill black people as non-police, and that's still far, far too many and a completely different category of murder (because the murderers are rarely punished, and are protected by the power of the state). Even if cops were 1/70th as likely to be the murderer of a black person, it's too many.

Some kinds of death are both avoidable and morally reprehensible for a society to allow or condone.

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

#228

Post by fzeroracer » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

eMSF wrote: post #216

marcinzm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black. As you point out yourself, it doesn't necessarily if you consider the average black person. The average black person is not a gang member, not a criminal and doesn't hang out with those groups. It may very well be that for such a person the police are a bigger risk than criminals. It's simp…

Is the black person that gets into deadly altercations with the police an “average” black person? Of the two incidents that have caused much civil unrest lately (enough to be heard of on this side of the Atlantic) there's been one walking catalogue of locally available illicit substances (per the autopsy), and another one passed out drunk driver, with both of course resisting arrest after it is inevitable (with one o…

You seem to be effectively saying that your average black person is a criminal because they see extrajudicial murder as being a bad thing, which is a remarkably racist thing to argue for. Not to mention your incredibly disingenuous takes on the situations that occurred and the reason why people are angry.

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

#229

Post by marcinzm » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

eMSF wrote: post #216

marcinzm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black. As you point out yourself, it doesn't necessarily if you consider the average black person. The average black person is not a gang member, not a criminal and doesn't hang out with those groups. It may very well be that for such a person the police are a bigger risk than criminals. It's simp…

Is the black person that gets into deadly altercations with the police an “average” black person? Of the two incidents that have caused much civil unrest lately (enough to be heard of on this side of the Atlantic) there's been one walking catalogue of locally available illicit substances (per the autopsy), and another one passed out drunk driver, with both of course resisting arrest after it is inevitable (with one o…

I have a co-worker, middle class white collar living in a good neighborhood. Walking home with his kid from school. Stopped by police with hands on holsters and told to turn around slowly. Was afraid for his life. Talk to most any black person in the US and they have a similar story.

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

#230

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

eMSF wrote: post #216

marcinzm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black. As you point out yourself, it doesn't necessarily if you consider the average black person. The average black person is not a gang member, not a criminal and doesn't hang out with those groups. It may very well be that for such a person the police are a bigger risk than criminals. It's simp…

Is the black person that gets into deadly altercations with the police an “average” black person? Of the two incidents that have caused much civil unrest lately (enough to be heard of on this side of the Atlantic) there's been one walking catalogue of locally available illicit substances (per the autopsy), and another one passed out drunk driver, with both of course resisting arrest after it is inevitable (with one o…

Societies aren't judged on how they treat their average members of society alone; also how they treat the outliers.

The US treats its outliers poorly. We have the highest rate of incarceration and a disquieting likelihood of police interactions ending in violence against suspects relative to other countries.