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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

#241

Post by jeffdavis »

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…

Blacks are killed by police disproportionately by a factor of around 2-3x.

For such a remote occurrance, a small factor doesn't justify the difference between carefree and paralyzed by fear. Automobile accidents kill a lot more people than police do, but I doubt most people bother to know the risks of cars within a factor of 2-3x.

The fear may be there, but I don't see it justified in the numbers.

Blacks are also disproportionately victims of murder, which is about 20x as likely as getting killed by the police. Why would only white people be worried about criminals?

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

#242

Post by uoaei »

shadowgovt wrote: post #227
uoaei wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 peop…

Agreed, the comparison between who kills black folks is irrelevant. The comparison that is relevant here is who police officers kill.

This page is a good summary of the relevant statistics: https://beehivemedia.com/dataviz/when_police_kill_in_black_a...

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

#243

Post by mistersquid »

adwww wrote: post #239
mistersquid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Black people. "Blacks" sounds totally dehumanising.

As a black person, I'm grateful for this feedback. Thank you.

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

#244

Post by fzeroracer »

austincheney wrote: post #149
uoaei wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nonsensical question. How does one measure "corruption" and how do you quantify it? IMO these sorts of questions are kneejerk reactions without any significant fore- or after-thought. They only serve to disrupt the conversation.

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.

Here you go [1]. This DB contains multiple provable violation of ethics in multiple measurable and easily digestible forms such as graphs and stats.

I assume you will agree that this is close to objectivity and therefore police are indeed corrupt?

[1] https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality

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

#245

Post by geekone »

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…

Are you implying Floyd was resisting while he was being suffocated for 10 minutes?

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

#246

Post by pierrebai »

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…

Resisting arrest should not lead to death. There is no urgency to shoot someone who is drunk in the back as he is fleeing when you have his car in your possession.

Polices are using unnecessarily lethal force indiscriminately for offenses and in situations that don't require in the least. They have been getting positive reinforcement by being not prosecuted and being protected by their force and the system in general.

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

#247

Post by fortran77 »

A car crashed into my Sunnyvale, California home while it was being chased by the Police.

The Sunnyvale Police told me to stop taking pictures of the accident while I was standing on my own property. They refused to release the police report of the accident to me (I needed it for insurance claims) because they claimed I was "not a victim and had no right to see it." (The car ended up on my lawn, smashed into my house.)

The only official way to file a complaint against the Police force in Sunnyvale California is to fill out a form and the Police investigate it themselves. Anything else, you have to go to court. There's no independent overseer.

All police forces are rotten to the core, and will do anything and everything to protect themselves.

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

#248

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> Is the black person that gets into deadly altercations with the police an “average” black person?

Sometimes, they are police themselves:

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/nyregion/27shoot.html?aut...

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

#249

Post by pseudalopex »

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…

Colorado abolished qualified immunity. Other states still could.

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

#250

Post by fwip »

centimeter wrote: post #201
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…

> because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street This is a delusion - they are at least 2 orders of magnitude more likely to be assaulted or killed by another (non-police) black person. This is yet another scenario where a relatively minor source of risk gets vastly disproportionate coverage and almost everyone falls for it. ETA: it’s fun…

One of the big differences is, when a cop assaults or kills a black man, black people are expected to say "thank you sir, you have done a good thing today. We appreciate that you have inflicted violence upon us."

Also, "at least 2 orders of magnitude" sounds like a big overestimate. In 2018, 2570 black people were killed in the US by other black people. About 250 were shot and killed by the police, in cases where the police self-admitted to killing them. This does not include the non-shooting deaths, either those that occur during an arrest, or while in custody.

Even if it were only 250/2570, that's still only about 1 order of magnitude.

You may be getting downvoted because of your false equivalences and your incorrect statistics, not because of your "objectivity."

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