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

#251

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #212

alistairSH wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already is... Irish-American, Polish-American, Jewish, etc. "Black" isn't just about skin tone, it's about the shared cultural experience.

But that's not correct - while both would generally be considered 'black', sub Saharan Africans share very little cultural experience with African Americans.

Fair enough. But, as soon as the sub-Saharan African moves to the US, I suspect his experiences from that point forward will rapidly start to match those of Black Americans, particularly WRT to police use of force.

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

#252

Post by corebit » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #109

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,…

It's become popular to regurgitate that bit about police and slave patrols but it has no real basis in reality. That isn't to say that there isn't some example of a slave patrol that was pressed into service as police, but Police are a concept that all of America inherited from the English roots of our governments.

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

#253

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

pierrebai wrote: post #246

eMSF wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They have been getting positive reinforcement by being not prosecuted and being protected by their force and the system in general.

Also, a number of cases have come out recently of police were disciplined, including dismissals, for reporting or intervening against excessive use of force by other cops, so there is negative reinforcement for good cops as well as positive reinforcement for the bad ones.

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

#254

Post by charlesu » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #99

psychometry wrote: post #7

This is why we need civilian oversight of every police department. Cops are generally too corrupt and/or too incompetent to investigate their own. They've proven their inability to hold themselves accountable for their actions, so it's up to the rest of us to do it.

Is there evidence that indicates police are more corrupt than anybody else?

This is a question without a purpose. Police officers carry guns, have qualified immunity, and can kill people. Are they using excessive -- and in some cases deadly -- force in situations that do not require it? That is the only question that matters. Evidence suggests that in some cases that they do use excessive force. It doesn't matter if in many cases they don't. It doesn't matter if the corruption ratio is 1:100 or 1:10. The people who's loved ones are being hurt or are being hurt themselves don't have time for intellectual exercises with no real implications. Police officers wield authority and are therefore are held to a far higher standard than other people.

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

#255

Post by foxfired » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #137

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…

> 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. A minor but significant adjustment: Average black parents worry about both

Let's put it like this. Everyone worries about criminals, to the point that a mother will always tell you to be careful when you go out.

But when I went out, my mother (and elders in our community) would say specifically, may God protect you from the police. That is a significant statement.

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

#256

Post by CrazyStat » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

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…

Your statement is both factually incorrect and missing the point.

There are (at least) two different conditional probabilities we might be interested in here:

1. If a black child is assaulted or killed, who was responsible?

In this case you are partially correct: it is (by about one order of magnitude, not at least two) more likely that it was another non-police black person.

2. If a black child interacts with a particular person (e.g. police, or a non-police black person), how likely are they to be assaulted or killed?

If we are willing to assume (as is certainly the case) that black children have more interactions with non-police black people than they do with police, by more than one order of magnitude, then we can conclude that police are more likely to assault or kill than a non-police black person, conditional on an interaction. It is thus extremely reasonable for black parents to teach their children to avoid police and to try to keep them away from police.

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

#257

Post by dagnabbit » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #241

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 dis…

Being killed is not the only bad thing that police do. Look at drug use by a group vs punishment for drug use. Look at stops for no reason. Look at questionable arrests. Look at all the other impacts.

But I think we all know that you're just a white supremacist who is purposefully making a bad faith argument. Hell, you named yourself after the president of the confederacy, you racist fucking traitor.

It fucking sucks that HN does not merely tolerate, but actively welcomes your style of bullshit. If dang was a decent person who gave a single shit about minorities, he'd delete vile bad-faith white-supremacist bullshit like your post.

Luckily for you, dang is 100% okay with dishonest, bad-faith, anti-minority comments so long as they're polite. Because dang is fucking incompetent, and dang has literally zero empathy for people who aren't rich white men.

Fuck you, fuck dang, and fuck each and every HN commenter who allows white supremacists like jeff davis to use this as a platform to spread bullshit.

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

#258

Post by jeffdavis » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #194

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…

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 wou…

Right, a more clear number would have been total murders.

The race of the murderer was irrelevant to my point, and the difference between police killing versus getting murdered would have been even more pronounced had I included all murders.

I'm a little confused about your point about stopping crime. Surely it can't be stopped completely, but just as surely, some policies are more effective than others. For instance, ending the war on drugs would likely dry up funding for gangs.

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

#259

Post by wccrawford » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #241

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 dis…

I think it's further exacerbated by the fact that the whole point of police is to protect people, so when they do the opposite, it's much, much worse.

Others have pointed out that it's about a 9:1 ratio of civilian killings to police killings, which is an absolutely appalling ratio, made even worse by the fact that there are far fewer police than civilians.

But something I have seen here yet occurs to me after typing that: Cops protect each other over everything else, so if you're the victim of a cop, you literally have nobody to turn to for justice.

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

#260

Post by creato » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #234

throwaway_jobs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 time…

This is comparing murder to every instance of police killing someone, justified or not. Police murdering someone is much more rare. The ratio you are talking about probably is in fact well over 100:1.