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

#301

Post by jeffdavis » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

Invictus0 wrote: post #262

jeffdavis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Blacks are killed by police disproportionately by a factor of around 2-3x. I'm having a hard time figuring out the truth on this particular point. I've seen conflicting reports, such as this study from a black Harvard economics professor which found no racial bias [0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi...

By "disproportionate" I was comparing to the general population as a baseline. You are right that it doesn't imply bias. See this other topic for a breakdown:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578103

Regardless, even if it is purely due to bias, it doesn't really justify the difference in fear between "carefree" and "won't go outside".

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

#302

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #292

Invictus0 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blacks are killed by police disproportionately by a factor of around 2-3x. I'm having a hard time figuring out the truth on this particular point. I've seen conflicting reports, such as this study from a black Harvard economics professor which found no racial bias [0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi...

Black people are certainly killed by police at a disproportionate rate relative to their population, that is an objective fact. This does not necessarily imply that there is racial bias by the police, however. For example if black people encounter the police 2-3x as much, you would expect them to be killed by police more frequently as well even without any bias.

> This does not necessarily imply that there is racial bias by the police, however.

A 2010 NY State report on police-on-police shootings, studying them nationally, found clear evidence of racial bias being a factor in suh shootings.

But I'm sure that either racial bias has been eliminated in the last decade or it somehow doesn't effect police interactions with people who aren’t unrecognized police officers.

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

#303

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #44

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…

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

If you look at the FBI statistics, most White people will be killed by Whites. You are more likely to be killed by people you know.

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

#304

Post by Kluny » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:22 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…

How confident are you that your numbers are accurate, given that police self-report their numbers?

For instance, I've been reading lately that black men have been found hanging from trees by nooses in California recently, and that the deaths were ruled suicide. Do you believe that these deaths were suicide?

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

#305

Post by chillacy » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #143

kleiba wrote: post #37

It's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy. After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they…

Usually police in dictatorships, at least the more successful ones, tend to be much more professional, polite and non-brutal. Until they are very professional, very cruel and very brutal. The latter usually against very well defined groups, in very well defined ways. Simple reason being, that random police violence just results, ultimately, in the kind of uproar and civil unrest the US experience now. Basically the l…

I actually found that most of the police in China are not particularly scary. I'm sure they can mess up your day if they wanted to, but the day to day officers are unarmed, not particularly physically imposing (lots of normal looking men and women). They wear a sort of light blue office collared shirt.

Outside of big cities it gets even more lax. You just see police officers hanging out like regular people. I once saw an old guy get into an argument with the cops that looked like an argument between two people, not between "officer and civilian". In the US that wouldn't happen, the officer would feel slighted and probably arrest that guy, or the guy would never dare to talk back to a police officer in the first place.

But to your point I suspect the military police is very brutal.

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

#306

Post by asjw » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #59

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 They are both worried about criminals. The fact that some criminals have badges and guns and a conspiracy of accomplices in positions of power shielding them from accountability for their crimes doesn't make them any less criminals. > Just to sp…

Not to disagree with the post in general, but at a thousand/year shot and killed by the police in US, they probably are one of the most dangerous threat

For comparison in Italy in 2019 there have been 3 people killed by the police, and people have - rightfully IMO - complained every single time.

In US more than 1k (1040 to be precise) died shot by cops

If we compare the population, there should have been at least 180 victims of police gunning in Italy

That's clearly unacceptable.

Or, from another angle, it means that criminality in US is so much worse than the average EU country that it's ok to kill so many people in the name of safety.

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

#307

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

dragonwriter wrote: post #291

SamReidHughes wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The vast majority of police killings are of people who were armed and chose to get in a fight with them. Even of the few unarmed cases, most of them were asking for it. So if you're just going about minding your own business, the chance is minuscule.

> The vast majority of police killings are of people who were armed and chose to get in a fight with them As the NY State report on police-on-police shootings I posted an article about elsewhere in the thread notes, rapidly turning your head to identify the source of a verbal command from a previoisly unseen police officer is the kind of thing that, to police, constitutes non-compliance and choosing to get in a fight…

There is a database of police shootings. You can look up a representative sample of cases.

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

#308

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #282

Police shouldn't have access to their own body camera footage. And it should require multiparty keys to decrypt. Those decryption events should go on a ledger along with the authorization order. PriorArt

And that's common IT management right there. The group that is being audited for bad behavior gets no say over the audit process, and no say over giving or rescinding access to the audit trail. But when it comes to police, we put cameras on them to shut up the peasants, but we ensure nothing will change by making sure the department has control over the incriminating data.

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

#309

Post by jakelazaroff » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #270

trowawee wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely irrelevant. It's like responding to "It's raining today" with "It was sunny last week". At best, it's a non-sequitur, at worst it's an active attempt to distract from the conversation at hand. And it ignores the facts that A) black-on-black crime does not happen at a substantially higher rate than white-on-white crime, B) the explanation for why most crime is intra-racial in a segregated country is p…

You completely missed the point. It's relevant to this thread that blacks should fear the police more than criminal violence. Well sorry, that's not born out by the statistics, so it's an irrational belief.

You are saying "violence", but the statistics cited in this thread are myopically focused on murder. Non–lethal violence, racial profiling, disproportionate sentencing, etc, are all forms of physical and judicial violence that might justify Black people fearing the police more than criminals.

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

#310

Post by jeffdavis » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

brm wrote: post #295

jeffdavis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If being black caused police cars to steer towards my car when in their vicinity I'd find that perilous.

Going to the beach increases your chance of getting eaten by a shark by 1000X.

My point is just that 2-3X of a small number is still a small number. It shouldn't affect your decision about whether to go outside or not when there are much larger numbers to worry about (like the risk of getting murdered).