Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 650 posts

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

#231

Post by kilburn »

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

You are playing a dangerous game here.

The above poster said:

> 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

Leaving the "more so than criminals" part out of it:

- By your numbers, 10% of the killings are done by police officers.

- Police officers account for much less than 10% of the population.

Hence, a random police officer is much more likely to kill you than a random person.

Now, the "more so than random criminals" part is much harder to pin down. Anyway, you can't know whether someone is a criminal or not just by seeing them on the street, so I don't even see a point in trying.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] »

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

#233

Post by ThinkingGuy »

joshuaheard wrote: post #11

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

"black" = race

"Black" = ethnicity

See also:

"deaf" = the physical condition of being unable to hear

"Deaf" = being part of the Deaf culture (sign language user, shared experiences unique to growing up deaf, etc.)

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

#234

Post by hinkley »

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

First, the fact that you are only 10 times more likely to die from a civilian as from a police officer is an appallingly bad ratio. That ratio should be over 100:1, not 10:1, and certainly not 9:1.

This conversation is missing another statistic: The percent of citizens who are also LEOs, which I'm seeing is about 1 in 300. Which means your chances of dying during an encounter with a random civilian are about 30 times less than your chance of dying during an encounter with a LEO. I cannot begin to express how deeply fucked up that is.

Your chances of encountering a bear in the woods are very low, but once you have done so, your focus should be almost entirely on the bear until the interaction has resolved itself. Any training you had should be employed. You should try to educate any hiking friends just in case they find themselves in such a situation.

Cops should not be a situation. They should not be like bears.

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

#235

Post by shadowgovt »

tomp wrote: post #178
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…

It's a relevant statistic for this discussion, which is not a discussion about generic police brutality. Retracting from "Black Live Matters" to "we're discussing police brutality here" is a common mote-and-bailey tactic that isn't a valid argument.

Moat-and-bailey is perfectly valid if it's used to indicate how failure of the argument to address the more-defensible position implies the argument fails on the less-defensible position (as a general comment on rhetorical process, not a comment on Black Lives Matter or police brutality).

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

#236

Post by ska »

greenhatglack wrote: post #86
fileeditview wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sure worth handing guns to everyone for defense. If everyone is armed that really makes the world a safer place. How else could you e.g shoot somebody to defend your parking spot? /s But seriously.. do you have been to Europe? You need to visit some very extreme areas to be in real danger. What you describe is pure hyperbole.

Most working class in Europe live in "extreme" areas also "not-wanted-to-be-officially-known-as-no-go" zones. Lol, I love how you question if I've live/d there, like the complete inability to take in information that might not be fit to your world view.

> Most working class in Europe live in "extreme" areas also "not-wanted-to-be-officially-known-as-no-go" zones.

This is clearly not true in general.

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

#237

Post by shadowgovt »

jeffdavis wrote: post #186
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…

It's relevent because you need to compare the costs of police (e.g. police violence) to the scale of problem that is supposedly being solved (e.g. murders). You can choose to fear who you want to fear, I guess. But the numbers seem to suggest pretty much everyone should be more concerned about being murdered than being killed by police. Being killed by police is more of a betrayal, for sure. For that reason it might…

Murder is an understood societal outlier that society doesn't tolerate.

Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge and executing a suspect "In the line of duty."

If not for the nationwide protests, it is extremely likely the murderers of George Floyd would still be employed by their police departments, forget arrested.

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

#238

Post by jfengel »

nailer wrote: post #210
jfengel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And boy, those must be some fraught discussions. I think of myself as white but not White, because the notion White Culture connotes white supremacy. Black people outside of Africa share a common element of diaspora, at the very least defined in terms of their shared difficulties, while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole. S…

> while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole. Sure, but how do others define you? Consider that tech companies and activists are trying to redefine the meaning of racism to allow others to discriminate against you based on the color of your skin.

Exactly right, and in fact I am often excluded from whiteness on account of being Jewish. The most explicit white supremacists construct Whiteness very narrowly. And it's in opposition to white supremacy that a notion of Blackness is more important: not how they see themselves, but how they are treated, and how that treatment affects their lives.

I would be considered white in most circumstances so I get a pass from a lot of discrimination that affects others. And that's why I consider it important to take a stand against that discrimination -- though unfortunately, the people propagating the worst of that discrimination see me as a traitor.

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

#239

Post by adwww »

mistersquid wrote: post #172
number364789 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is valid or true, but I sometimes think that the 1990s through early 2000s pop culture depiction of black culture embedded itself strongly in the psyche of many white Americans. It sounds silly to say that gangster rap, and The Wire, and such things are responsible for racial stereotypes, but for many of my white friends, I think this is absolutely true. One sad part of this is that some of the m…

> I sometimes think that the 1990s through early 2000s pop culture depiction of black culture embedded itself strongly in the psyche of many white Americans The portrayal of black people as prone to violence and incorrigibly dangerous goes beyond fiction and well into the past to the founding of the United States. For one example, consider the United States' nominal newspaper of record, the New York Times. Do an inte…

> Stereotypes of blacks

Black people. "Blacks" sounds totally dehumanising.

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

#240

Post by janjiblack »

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

So by those numbers for the population involved:

(2019 population numbers)

Whites killed by other whites: 1 per ~87982

Blacks killed by other blacks: 1 per ~17114

(2018 employed cop numbers)

Whites killed by cops: 1 per ~1855

Blacks killed by cops: 1 per ~2921

Numbers only say so much though

Post reply on HN