This is pretty much SOP (Delay, frustrate, cover) to a greater or lesser degree, for every police force that I have ever encountered.
Occasionally an overtly 'bad' apple is sacrificed, unwillingly.
My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
371–380 of 650 posts
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. And of course the more private property one has, the better the protection...
Civil Forfeiture means private property can be a liability unless one has a lot of extra liquidity to fund a legal defense.
Civil asset forfeiture only matters for personal property. Private property, such as investments, stakes in ventures, and so on, is not affected by civil asset forfeiture. I've never seen anyone have their business seized without trial, but people have had their houses destroyed without trial.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#373When I was younger I lived in a fairly rural area. I was driving home late from work one day on a remote highway and came across one of the most horrific accidents I've ever seen. A driver was pulling onto the highway and was hit by a police cruiser at an almost impossibly high speed. The highway was marked at 55mph, and under normal conditions, the driver of the other car would have had plenty of time to pull out, s…
Once saw a police car in a smallish town whip a u-turn for no clear reason, no lights, nothing, nearly hit a car that was pulling out of a bank parking lot and the driver of which had clearly already looked that way and seen no-one coming, then the cop freaked out, u-turned again (lights this time) and pulled over the car they nearly hit. Guess whatever they were breaking traffic laws and driving very dangerously to…
A friends was rear ended by a police cruiser while stopped at a red light. Ten police cars showed up. They did everything in their power to find anything wrong. They photographed everything in the car. They intimidated her into saying something was her fault.
She never got the money to repair her car because they don't carry insurance the same way normal people do. She ended up buying a new car. She was lucky to not be put in jail.
It's hard to imagine there are any good cops out there with all this rot.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#374> “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…
The problem with police in the USA is the lack of accountability (unless millions of people mobilize/protest).
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
How familiar are you with the bail and plea bargain system? Police regularly get no punishments for murdering civilians, as they are trained to give the "I was fearing for my life" line in courts. Whereas if I'm a Black individual, especially in a poor area that's over policed, I won't be able to pay for bail, and won't be able to afford a good lawyer if I'm pinned for murder. Over 90% of cases are settled by plea ba…
If people only knew how many cases are closed with incarcerating innocent people who were at the wrong time in the wrong place ... And being black qualifies them to be guilty. It’s so sad, it’s not only police but a whole system form police to prosecutors to judges... We need reform!!
Definitely, it's also why seeing "data-driven policing" makes my spider sense go off, since the "data" in this case has been tainted by decades of racist policing and policy.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
So, let’s look at the numbers. What’s the ratio of people to police? I would bet that it’s a lot higher than 20:1. In other words, a black person meeting a polic officer is a whole lot more likely to get killed than a black person meeting another black person. That’s why fear of police is perfectly rational for blacks.
But the point is about whether you are afraid to go outside or not, and if so, is it because of criminals or police. Before you leave, you don't know how many criminals or police you are going to encounter.
Even if tigers are really scary when you meet one, I am not afraid to go outside because I might get eaten by a tiger.
I guess we could do a lot of subgroup analysis here and try to figure out based on day of the week and the route you are taking how much of your fear should be allotted to police versus allotted to criminals. But you start with the big, easy-to-find numbers and do a basic sanity check. I don't think being carefree about criminals and afraid of police is rational in very many situations.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public education has plenty of funding; maybe enable parents to choose where their kids go so failing schools and teachers can be shutdown and fired. I like how state abuse is considered capitalist greed - prisons and police forces are run by the state.
> Public education has plenty of funding; maybe enable parents to choose where their kids go so failing schools and teachers can be shutdown and fired. That will make things worse, not better. School inequity right now stems almost entirely from the practice of funding schools with property taxes, leading to schools in wealthier districts getting good budgets and schools in low-income areas getting shoestring budgets…
Always a bit shocked how much is spent, even on schools which don't perform well. Baltimore spends $16k per student per year, NYC $23k. Maybe it's even higher in rich suburbs but that's quite the "shoestring".
For comparison, these numbers are 2-3x the OECD average. Germany spends about 11k, France 9k. (All from quick googling.)
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#378Earlier 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
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 p…
> - 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.
It’s odd you would say I’m playing a dangerous game...we are talking about murder, and if you or a loved one is murdered there is a 90% chance you will be murdered by a non-LEO. Not to mention we are playing a dangerous game by converting all justified police killings to murder.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Police did not exist in England in the 1600s. The first professional police in England dates to the 1800s. Even in the 1700s, up until the American revolution, there were only patrols of citizens organized as the night watch, and only in big English cities.
Re: My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are incorrect. Not all police departments started as slave patrols, in fact many of them did not. But to deny that it was a widespread event is counterfactual.
The first American police dept was founded in the 1850s, well after the split from England. The first police department in England was founded in the 1830s.
Prior to that, our communities either took collective action to regulate themselves and the 'spirit of the community', insisted on night watch duty as a rotating responsibility, paid a constable or sheriff (a word whose roots are 'shire reeve', meaning 'shire official'), or hired private guards to protect property.
In the 1850s, around the time of the first police departments in the US, the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced as law -- requiring officials to hunt and 'return' runaway slaves. This was adopted to a greater or lesser degree depending on the area, but it absolutely was a role of law enforcement across much of the US, and it's without a doubt a part of the roots of many police departments in the US.