Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA Today says that policing is the 18th most dangerous job in the US. What makes police injuries and deaths notable from other occupations is that “The most common cause of workplace fatalities among police officers is direct violence from other people”. It is not just a risky job in general, it is a risky job due to people that would intentionally do them harm, done in service of their community. Everyone is a regu…
> The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting...was rightly condemned as not fit for duty. But then got his job and pension back with the full backing of his union[1][2]. This is what I mean by the system propping up bad cops. If the "vast majority" of cops are heroes, why are they supporting someone who has demonstrated a distinct lack of heroism? Isn't he making the rest of them look bad? D…
Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
151–160 of 256 posts
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can read "Police showed up and fired tear gas and agitated the crowd and caused violence", but you're not told WHY they fired tear gas. You're not given the context as to what happened. Police have body cameras and vehicle cameras that can provide much of the rest of the context. The public doesn't have access to that video and the police don't release it save when it reinforces their narrative. If the police w…
>If the police were blameless here, they have lots of tools to clear their name. Is it true though? I saw police actions that looked bad on video, but having been on the scene earlier that day I knew the context that cast it in a very different light. And yet no counter-evidence was published. They did not clear their name, despite being in the right (or much more right than the video shown).
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by protesters? Does it matter? They're being investigated and prosecuted regardless[1], because they're criminals. We expect police to behave better than criminals . Society is always going to have some crime, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute it. But there should be zero tolerance for crimes by cops. Otherwise we can't trust them, and ev…
Does it matter? Where crimes, such as burglary and assault, are being committed, police will generally be called upon to act. A subset of those responses will involve police violence. One would hope that such police violence only occurs in self defense, but we know that to not always be the case. So yes, the two things are mathematically correlated. One drives the other. It would be interesting to be able to tell wha…
Let’s get to the fun part: “if cops perceive someone to be a criminal, how violent will we allow them to be, relative to how violent the perceived criminal is?”
In the case of the cops assaulting that vigil for Elijah McClain (it was a peaceful gathering with people listening to a couple violin players) I’d argue that the cops were perpetrating violence at a level about 100x relative to the people they were trying to police (even if you consider that folks may have been “yelling mean things” at them).
Personally, I would consider 1.1x acceptable, maybe 1.5x in some situations. And so every time I see cops blowing through that threshold and being even 5x or 10x more violent than the people they’re policing, I perceive that as a massive injustice, I think those cops should get fired, and I get pretty angry.
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not only are you not given the context, but you're only given one side of the story. I'm sure if you asked the police what happened, their story would be completely different. But you're only being allowed to get the story from one side, and that side is insanely politically motivated to exaggerate, and do everything they can to make the police look bad, because it strengths their political positions. Is that... is…
I recall reading that some localities have already made changes to their body camera recording rules which rule video footage inadmissible if it has been edited to remove context.
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#155Resubmitted as per this comment from a moderator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23401418
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I checked my local city, some of the incidents are true, others lack evidence, others seem to lack a brutality component all together (such as firing a pepper all at the ground in front of someone breaking the law. No doubt we have a problem, this is a great start to a collection, but we may want to consider filtering for truth or at least incidents with credible evidence
Before we filter for truth lets train our police force to be less violent because that breads more violence on the other end and we all loose except for the powerheads in charge as well as the real gangsters. Police have no right to be violent, they do get a paycheck for fsake, and they have the law on their side as well. I will respect all cops when they earn it. So far I respect only those I interacted with and wer…
Any time an arrestee is not fully cooperative with the police taking them into custody, the arrest is not going to be pleasant to watch. Someone is having their freedoms taken from them by force. I don't see an alternative, though.
Here is a scenario:
A person just committed a carjacking using a gun. It happens every day. (There are more than 30,000 carjackings a year in the US, and a bit less than half involved a firearm.)
What non- or less-violent action do you suggest a better trained police officer would take to bring the offender into custody?
Let's say the carjacker didn't have a gun, but instead had beat the driver up. The police spot them, and they run. What next?
Serious question. I have never heard what I consider to be a practical answer to how policing could work in the United States without use of significant force.
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#157Just a reminder that none of this is factual or evidence. It COULD be, but just because somebody writes something doesn't make it true. You are not given any of the context of what happened in these situations. If there's video the video starts when the conflict is already full swing, you're not seeing anything that led up to the situation. You can read "Police showed up and fired tear gas and agitated the crowd and…
At least in my city, for the protests I attended, this is about the right level of context. The ordering went 1) Peaceful protest 2) Police decide that they need to use extreme amounts of force to break up the peaceful protest 3) Unsavory elements use the cover of the ensuing chaos to loot/burn/tag/etc.
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can read "Police showed up and fired tear gas and agitated the crowd and caused violence", but you're not told WHY they fired tear gas. You're not given the context as to what happened. Police have body cameras and vehicle cameras that can provide much of the rest of the context. The public doesn't have access to that video and the police don't release it save when it reinforces their narrative. If the police w…
>If the police were blameless here, they have lots of tools to clear their name. Is it true though? I saw police actions that looked bad on video, but having been on the scene earlier that day I knew the context that cast it in a very different light. And yet no counter-evidence was published. They did not clear their name, despite being in the right (or much more right than the video shown).
Yes, they do have a lot of tools to clear their name. We've seen quite a few occasions where various departments have provided body-cam or dash cam footage showing that force was indeed justified. Generally speaking when they have provided that footage, it's muted the reactions to specific events.
> I saw police actions that looked bad on video
You'd have to ask the respective agencies why they haven't shared any body-cam footage which might exonerate them.
Re: Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it matter? Where crimes, such as burglary and assault, are being committed, police will generally be called upon to act. A subset of those responses will involve police violence. One would hope that such police violence only occurs in self defense, but we know that to not always be the case. So yes, the two things are mathematically correlated. One drives the other. It would be interesting to be able to tell wha…
It’s one thing to say “given there will be crime, and some criminals are violent, cops may have to be violent sometimes to stop criminals”. That’s a pretty bloodless analysis. Let’s get to the fun part: “if cops perceive someone to be a criminal, how violent will we allow them to be, relative to how violent the perceived criminal is?” In the case of the cops assaulting that vigil for Elijah McClain (it was a peaceful…