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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

#561
post #475
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 just don't get it. The number of unarmed black men shot by police across the entire US in 2019 was 14. [0] How does such a small number spark this level of fear and protest? Also, do people actually think the police generally and on average does more harm than good as to request abolishing it? [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...

> The number of unarmed black men shot by police across the entire US in 2019 was 14. [0] How does such a small number spark this level of fear and protest?

That's not a small number, though. Do you think that any number is acceptable? Any number above 0 deserves the kind of protest response we see in America today.

Your post is invalidating to the centuries of oppression faced by Blacks in America and to their struggles today.

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

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bear in mind she was stopped because the car she was in had (illegally) tinted front windows. From the article linked in the parent's post: "Court documents later established they were within the legal limit." There was no need for the police to use violent force against this terrified woman, but they did it anyway.

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.

Yes, we definitely need people authorized to use deadly force going around making sure windows aren't overly tinted.

/s

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

#563
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everyone in southern states visibly carry guns. That is not an excuse to ignore or forgive an absence of data or accountability.

>Almost everyone in southern states visibly carry guns. Umm... no they don't.

I’ve lived in the south my entire life. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen a gun in public. I know folks who pack a concealed gun, but they’re the minority. Most of us don’t carry. This is a stereotype, and it’s false.

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

#564
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…

All of those are multiple times higher than Italy. There are other factors that cause decade-level differences in homicide rate, but if you want to bring the baseline homicide rate down, you could do worse than looking at access to guns.

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

#565
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…

> This is child abuse

And assault with a deadly weapon.

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

#566
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't get it. The number of unarmed black men shot by police across the entire US in 2019 was 14. [0] How does such a small number spark this level of fear and protest? Also, do people actually think the police generally and on average does more harm than good as to request abolishing it? [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...

To address your first point, there're a constellation of relevant answers. 1. Most people who dislike or distrust the police don't actually trust those numbers. There are decades worth of documented evidence of police lying about people carrying weapons, and sometimes even carrying weapons to plant on people they kill. So from the start, a lot of us think that number is an undercount, possibly by a dramatic degree. 2…

> what do you think is a reasonable number of shootings of unarmed people? Personally, I think that number is zero

I humbly suggest that if you give this some thought, you'll see that isn't a very good answer. Any complex system, especially one that involves humans, will have errors. There's no way around that. So the only way to eliminate errors completely is to eliminate the system entirely. This understanding is perhaps what fuels the call for police abolition: No amount of reform and training will get the error rate to zero, so the only way to get zero police accidents is to not have any police.

To illustrate my point further, consider medical malpractice. How many deaths caused by doctor error is acceptable? If the answer is zero, one needs to abolish medicine. How many automobile accidents are acceptable? If zero, we must abolish all motorized transport. I think for the most part people accept the unfortunate fact that accidents are an inevitable part of any system, and should be accepted if we consider the system to do more good than harm.

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

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. Not sure if anyone can feel anyone else's pain. If millions of people are complaining about a problem, why try to say the problem does not exist? My experiences are nothing compared to the terrible stories I've heard from PoC, but I'll give you an example. I'm Muslim. In 2004, I ended up on the restricted fly list, effecti…

I have never been to NYC so I am certainly not saying anything about the problem in NYC.

We can quote stats about police violence all day long, but in nearly every personal story, it usually ends with "and then the cops just did nothing and there wasn't a paper trail." I have 4 stories,4 witness accounts, and not a single one went or would have gone anywhere. That's not a small problem. And, they're in every state, in every county. This is a mafia.

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

#568
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To address your first point, there're a constellation of relevant answers. 1. Most people who dislike or distrust the police don't actually trust those numbers. There are decades worth of documented evidence of police lying about people carrying weapons, and sometimes even carrying weapons to plant on people they kill. So from the start, a lot of us think that number is an undercount, possibly by a dramatic degree. 2…

> what do you think is a reasonable number of shootings of unarmed people? Personally, I think that number is zero I humbly suggest that if you give this some thought, you'll see that isn't a very good answer. Any complex system, especially one that involves humans, will have errors. There's no way around that. So the only way to eliminate errors completely is to eliminate the system entirely. This understanding is p…

For starters, I'm a little disappointed that that's the only thing you decided to engage with. That said: this isn't actually terribly complicated. This isn't medical malpractice, where some degree of risk is an inevitable side effect of any medical intervention. Police in the United Kingdom shot one (1) person to death in 2018. He was carrying an airsoft rifle that looked like a real gun. I still think that's terrible! He should be alive. But still: one person, in the whole year. There are countries where the police don't kill anyone. This is the healthcare conversation all over again; Americans insisting that some goals are impossible while other countries that have already achieved those "impossible" goals look at us with a mix of pity and disdain.

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

#569
post #447
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someon…

In the UK, if you call the emergency services and tell them you believe someone is likely to commit suicide, there's a good chance the police will turn up at their door. The police have a dual role, ridiculous as it is - they are meant to both be community workers capable of handling a wide variety of people and situations, and investigate crime, sometimes at the same time.

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

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the fact that 99% of people murdered by police are getting a lot of airtime right now, I think we can say that the ratio is closer to 100:1.

So take Eric Gardner’s death in 2014, NYPD had him in a chokehold his last words “I can’t breathe”...justice dept refused to bring changes, I won’t get into right/wrong (murder/justified killing) but hell AG Barr sides against the justice dept.

Right, you know Eric Gardner's name, which means that he is one of the people cops have killed that many people generally consider more of a murder.

You add up all those people and the ratio is about 100:1.

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