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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

#451

Post by corebit »

sudosysgen wrote: post #379
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.

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.

Police in england are an evolution of how the King's peace has been enforced, starting, very simplified, from when the King himself enforced it in very early days to delegating it to members of his court and his sheriffs, and ultimately to localities and special departments of the modern day. Cities did not generally have a "police department" but they had the sheriff and whoever the sheriff commanded into service to enforce the peace. As populations have increased the enforcement of these duties have evolved to be taken on by more local organizations that are modern police departments.

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

#452

Post by variaga »

[deleted] wrote: post #383
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

[deleted]

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2020/01/21/25-most-dang...

Being a police officer is less dangerous than logging, fishing, flying an airplane, collecting trash, being an electrician, delivery driver, lawn maintenance, roofing, ... .

Why is it okay for cops to kill people because they're "scared" when it's not okay for people in any of those other jobs to do so?

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

#453

Post by drpgq »

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?

Having an aged population certainly helps. Not a lot of 80 year old gangbangers.

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

#455

Post by woeirua »

sidlls wrote: post #405
woeirua wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, lets further exacerbate class disparities by now only providing safety and security for the rich. At least this way we can stop pretending that we even care about the poor.

I can't second the GPs post hard enough. Police tend to abuse the poor much more often than they help. When they are there to help it's usually a zero-sum proposition: one poor person, usually a non-white, is gonna get a beat down at the hands of "justice" far out of proportion to whatever transgression against another poor person they may be guilty of. I grew up poor, white, in a neighborhood with non-whites (black,…

I understand that the police need to be reformed, and that they disproportionately police the poor. There are much better options than withdrawing them from all poor neighborhoods though. As we have seen time and time again, when the police are impotent, someone else will step up into the void to provide security. Typically, that's either organized crime, or (worse) vigilante justice. The net result is always the same though: the people living in those communities are always worse off.

Edit: I guess I should propose a solution instead of just railing against this idea. How about we: 1 - end the war on drugs, and 2 - fundamentally address poverty for once in this country.

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

#456

Post by dlp211 »

jeffdavis wrote: post #429
dragonwriter wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, you can't bring a body in with a zillion bullet holes and tell the coroner it was suicide. Well, no, because “zillion” isn't a number. But with actual numbers of bullet holes, yes, history shows that happens. And that the inconsistent injuries either get convenient explanations, or are left off the report as if they didn't happen. Now, when these things get additional public scrutiny, it's an embarrassment,…

If you don't trust numbers from the washington post and the FBI, I'm not sure how we can expect to have a productive conversation. That isn't to say that coverups don't happen, and numbers aren't occasionally wrong or manipulated. But how far off do you think these numbers really are? And do you expect these numbers are manipulated even in areas with black chiefs of police, attorneys general, and distict attorneys?

Those numbers can be seen as the minimum, the same way the reported number of COVID related deaths are the minimum. The actual numbers are all but guaranteed to be more.

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

#457

Post by corebit »

dragonwriter wrote: post #317
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.

> but Police are a concept that all of America inherited from the English roots of our governments. No, they aren't. Because police weren't a thing in England when America split off from those roots.

Keeping the peace was a concept in both countries when they split and was the duty of the sheriff which still exists in both countries and is actually still very functional in the US. That some localities with very large populations evolved an even more local office for keeping the peace is entirely consistent with the evolution of police tracing back to England before it existed as a modern concept. The simple fact is that slave patrols just did not morph into the general-purpose peace keeping organizations that today we call police.

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

#458

Post by Kluny »

jeffdavis wrote: post #328
Kluny wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have quite a bit of faith in numbers related to deaths. There is a lot of paperwork involved, a body (with bullet holes), perhaps a 911 call, often a medical examiner or coroner's report, potentially lawsuits, funerals, etc. And now there are cameras a lot of places. I guess there could be outright premeditated cold-blooded murders that are disguised as suicides, but I can't imagine that's very common. I mean, you…

I used to have that faith too, but the stories that have been coming out recently have made me doubt almost all reports provided by police and coroners, even with cameras in place. What motivation do they have to provide accurate information, without any third party oversight?

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

#459

Post by morganw »

vidarh wrote: post #444
noobaccount wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> gradual escalation

Part of the reason for the quick escalation is that (American) cops are taught things like the Tueller Drill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwHYRBNc9r8 that claims that an attacker can close 21 feet in 1500 milliseconds and stab a victim so many times that even a fast ambulance response won't save him from bleeding out.

This idea means the cop has to unholster a pistol as soon as any sign of noncompliance is showm, start firing if a person "reaches for their waist", and empty the magazine because this Olympian attacker won't be stopped by a few bullets.

They just "want to get home to their families" despite the fact that car accidents are deadlier to cops and garbage men have more dangerous jobs.

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

#460

Post by vidarh »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #385
randompwd wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes well done. How do you think police determine if they're in limit or not. They test them. She could have been on her way in 5 minutes but chose to act like an idiot.

> She could have been on her way in 5 minutes but chose to act like an idiot. From the cam video I've seen she was clearly frightened of them. They could have chosen to use empathy instead of force.

Apart from the lack of empathy, it's an interesting study of a refusal to accept logic, in that he is refusing to acknowledge her fear, then continues to argue with her and gets responses he clearly considers illogical, sees the facts of the matter does not correspond to his expectations, yet fail to make the connection that this means he needs to reassess his initial assumptions as they are clearly wrong in one way or another.

They really ought to use this and cases like it as a training case to teach officers to recognize when they start doubling down on a course of action that is so obviously counter-productive instead of pausing to reassess, as whether or not they were technically "wrong", he clearly did an awful job and ended up wasting police resources.

So even in a scenario where the police don't care about empathy at all this way of responding was counter-productive.

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