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

#441

Post by alasdair_ » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #321

hinkley wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are making a lot of assumptions there. The most violent people in society will likely have interactions with cops (more often than your average person) so surely that must skew the odds a lot.

>The most violent people in society will likely have interactions with cops (more often than your average person) so surely that must skew the odds a lot.

This is important point. Another one is that it's likely cops ARE some of the most violent people in society. For example, look at the instances of violent crime inside the home (i.e. when a cop is off-duty, so there should be no skew) - the numbers seem to indicate that domestic abuse is more common that not: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

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

#442

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #425

korijn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of your guns

Homicide rate was 4 per 100k in the 50s, spiked up to 10 through the 60s and 70s, dipped a bit in the 80s, then dropped from 1991 to to now back to around 6. The increase in crime in the 60s and 70s didn't correlate with more guns, the decrease in crime in the late 90's didn't correlate with fewer guns. There is clearly something going on in the US that drives crime that is not guns. Culture, welfare state, war on dr…

Your causation goes the wrong way. The GP didn't say that less crime would cause fewer guns, but that fewer guns would cause less crime. You can't say "but guns stayed the same and crime both increased and decreased at points, which means that guns don't affect crime".

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

#443

Post by woeirua » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #420

thephyber wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but being comfortably middle class now, I also recognize it's something of a nonstarter with people who don't have that experience. I think this is one of the two culture clashes happening with police versus civilians right now. After the protests in the wake of the Michael Brown killing, there were articles written[1][2] about how there are a ton (many dozens) of tiny towns around Saint Louis each only a few city…

I don't even think that in most cases it's a case of wilfully ignoring. I think many, e.g several people responding to me, genuinely believe more police would lead to more security in poor neighbourhoods. The trouble as I see it is that police broadly have two functions: to respond to emergencies where violence is likely and to suppress or tax the grey and black economy (huh. just noticed the ufnordunate linguistics…

I'm not naive enough to think that adding more police is the solution, but withdrawing them is _definitely_ not the right answer either.

The inescapable conclusion to withdrawing the police is: 1 - response times will go up drastically, 2 - security will deteriorate, 3 - wealthier and middle class folks will stop visiting/living in those areas because of #1 and #2, 4 - the tax base will evaporate, 5 - the infrastructure, schools, and all other communal areas will deteriorate, 6 - the class divide will become a gaping chasm between the poor who are relegated to the slums and everyone else. We don't have to try this again. We know that this is what happens from our own history in the 20th century!

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

#444

Post by vidarh » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

noobaccount wrote: post #356

Wohlf wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Number of homicides in the USA in 2017: 19,510 Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.0 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Number of homicides in Italy in 2017: 357 Deaths per 100,000 population: 0.6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Italy

Wow, how can we be more like Italy?

The biggest thing:

* Change rules of engagement for police to emphasise de-escalation when possible and gradual escalation when absolutely necessary. E.g. in the UK police won't even have firearms on them most of the time unless specifically called to deal with a suspected incident involving weapons, but even if they do, the focus tends to be on de-escalation and waiting the situation out if possible (e.g. someone sat in a car with a gun for about 12 hours a couple of miles from me some months ago; police just got people out of the way and waited until he calmed down, while neighbours talked to the press and whined about why they didn't just shoot him - he had mental issue and a young daughter that presumably was very happy police were calm and collected).

One of my pet examples here was a case in the US were a guy with an axe was shot after charging a police officer. This was a justified killing in that the police officer was under real threat. But she shouldn't have been in danger in the first place - two of them charged in and confronted the man, instead of clearing a perimeter and waiting for backing. In contrast when I called police (UK) over a possible assault near my house a couple of years ago, they sent 8 officers for an incident with no suspected weapons involved.

Bonus points for:

* Reducing sentences for crimes carried out without weapons significantly. E.g. in Norway, using firearms can easily add 10 years to a sentence that might be 5 or less without weapons.

* Treat any use of weapons to stop e.g. a robber as murder if it's not clearly done in self defense.

Point being that criminals needs to see it as worthwhile to not bring a gun. If it is more dangerous for them to do something unarmed than it is to do it armed, and there's little meaningful difference in sentencing, then why wouldn't they go in armed?

The US has created a perverse incentive for criminals to arm themselves to the teeth.

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

#445

Post by jeffdavis » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

Erem wrote: post #360

jeffdavis wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have aggregate numbers on how that compares to getting similar treatment from criminals?

Let's not compare fear of cops to fear of criminals just based on stats -- there are qualitative differences that matter too. For example, when criminals target you, you have recourse: calling the cops. Having that option can assuage fear. However, when you learn through experience that cops themselves seek to harm you, then what? There is no recourse! Who will try the cops? If you do fight back publicly, who will st…

Maybe you are right, but there is just not any evidence presented for any of that.

You are right that aggregated data is not the only thing that matters. It tends to represent only easily-quantifiable concepts.

But you do have to do a sanity check with the numbers at some point, and reconcile them with the feelings/beliefs/narratives you get from the media and pop culture.

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

#446

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

pnako wrote: post #410

hef19898 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any no-go zones. Sure, some areas in larger cities tend to be more dangerous than others. But still far from no-go zones. No idea where this information comes from.

In France, there are definitely a few. There are places where even the fire brigade gets attacked. That's why they're called "no-go zones". The police can still go there but only with heavy means; you can't just send a random police car with two cops there, you need special units in riot gear. The French term commonly used in the media is "zones de non droit" meaning "areas outside of the law" or sometimes, perhaps m…

Interesting. My wife is french, never really about that. Also, Berlin is assumed to have some. I drank beer in bar in one of those once. Found about it later.

So, I assume a lot of propaganda around that?

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

#447

Post by blub » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #422

randompwd wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This attitude is exactly part of the problem No, it's reallt not. The continued projection of American racial and socio-economic issues in to other English speaking countries by dimwits is the issue. If you actually watched the (heavily edited by the guardian) video, you would see the cop was calm and polite the entire duration. > It was established in court that the windows were not illegally tinted. Yes, and the…

> If you actually watched the (heavily edited by the guardian) video, you would see the cop was calm and polite the entire duration. I have seen it. I'm not denying the cop was calm. I called that out in my original comment. But that does not change the point I made, that he keeps dismissing her obvious signs of distress as lies or indications of guilt, and in doing so demonstrates that he does not understand that pe…

If the officer was calm and professional I don't know what more you want from them.

It's not the job of the police to hold the hands of every paranoid individual and shush them back to a state of tranquility.

Is Theresa May some sort of authority on policing that her name keeps being mentioned here? As an external observer it seems that she was a complete failure at everything during her tenure, surely there's someone more appropriate that offered an opinion on this topic.

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

#448

Post by corebit » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #299

corebit wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. Th US and the Caribbean have a slaver and white supremacists culture that didn't exist in the UK. https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/... https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WLovR6DgNFEC&oi=... https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...

Your sources very accurately reflect the history that slavery was enforced by the legal system and peace officers upholding it. They don't lend any credence whatsoever to the notion that slave patrols morphed into modern police departments. The actual history is that police have slowly become more localized and detached from central authority (like the Kind or his officials - sheriffs, etc) over time as populations increase.

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

#449

Post by alex_young » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #425

korijn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of your guns

Homicide rate was 4 per 100k in the 50s, spiked up to 10 through the 60s and 70s, dipped a bit in the 80s, then dropped from 1991 to to now back to around 6. The increase in crime in the 60s and 70s didn't correlate with more guns, the decrease in crime in the late 90's didn't correlate with fewer guns. There is clearly something going on in the US that drives crime that is not guns. Culture, welfare state, war on dr…

A more likely culprit: Leaded gasoline [0].

I think the GP is correct to point out the gun thing too. Having lived in a place where guns aren’t as accessible and observing how people live, I’m sure there is some correlation.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...

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

#450

Post by throwaway_jobs » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #264

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

And 12.1% of the population - which makes just pasting numbers meaningless. Much better is number per 100,000 so that you can compare like with like.

The point being addressed was fear of murder/assault From officers being a primary concern over fear of murder/assault from non-officers...I think we want to look at absolute numbers, you are either going to be murdered or you aren’t and assuming every single police killing was a murder 90% of murders are committed by non-officers. Why would we need to look at how many murders per 100,000?