641–650 of 650 posts
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The US has an order of magnitude more crime than Europe but is policed by roughly the same number of officers. That, justifiably or not, leads to short cuts where extrajudicial and unjust tactics are used to enforce compliance.
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> “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…
An alternate perspective is cops are trying hard, and are succeeding, at making poor neighborhoods safer. However, due to gang culture, many people are heavily and illegally armed, and do not hesitate to shoot to kill. Cops, like all humans, are not fans of dying, so they are trained to respond very quickly if armed escalation is a possibility. As an unfortunate result, innocent people are sometimes killed in these n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternate perspective is cops are trying hard, and are succeeding, at making poor neighborhoods safer. However, due to gang culture, many people are heavily and illegally armed, and do not hesitate to shoot to kill. Cops, like all humans, are not fans of dying, so they are trained to respond very quickly if armed escalation is a possibility. As an unfortunate result, innocent people are sometimes killed in these n…
Relating this back to the article, I just want to let you know Carroll Gardens is definitely not a poor neighborhood. Your alternate perspective does not hold up there.
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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…
Some people thrive on the empowerment, liberty and responsibility associated with these incredible death machines. But that's no reason to mistreat the data. For instance, the ratio associated with other death machines like cars, which have somewhat similar availability across the pond between US and Europe, is a more reasonable factor of 2/3.
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Coming from a poor (and incidentally very white) area myself, I understand the sentiment behind 'defund the police', but being comfortably middle class now, I also recognize it's something of a nonstarter with people who don't have that experience. I prefer 'Police Out Of Poor Neighborhoods'. Police actually add value in rich neighborhoods (maybe by definition), and it's got a humorous acronym. Edit: And police are m…
Hearing from someone who’s lived in both environments is interesting. The empathy exercise for those of us in privileged neighborhoods is to imagine: How toxic must the dynamic be for entire communities to feel less safe with police and want them out altogether?
Technically a crime. But we all knew they and their children needed the meat. If everyone did it, the deer population would collapse and no one could hunt effectively even in-season. If someone had called a wildlife officer they could have certainly made the trek down. But no one would think to call the wildlife officers on them, because we knew it would lead to their children going hungry.
I think the thing people from rich neighbourhoods miss about that sort of thing is that when they hear stories of that nature [1], people's children going hungry over a minor infraction is seen as a failure of empathy on the constabulary's part. It's not. It's a failure of the law, and the constabulary's job is to uphold the law, not play social worker to people who break it. Hence our community's collective judgement that it was in everyone's best interest if the wildlife officer never found out about our neighbor's poaching activities.
[1] Joe Oliver has a great rant about a similar situation, lest readers think this only works in rural settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto
In the article white is written with a lowercase w but black is written with a capital B. Seems odd.
Similar to how deaf and Deaf have different meanings, and you don't read stories about Hearing people. If you're intellectually curious, read up on that.
Thanks for the heads up. Others just down voted my comment out of contempt for me I guess.
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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
This figure is rarely brought up in good faith, but if you're curious, it mainly consists of inter-gang violence, i.e. turf wars. Which is not generally something regular people are exposed to all that much. It also asumes death could be the only negative outcome of interacting with police. It is also something exacerbated by the war on drugs, the criminal justice system and deap-seated discrimination. Police seems l…
On complex topics is when it's most important to be clear about a point, rather than just throwing out a few data points and simplistic conclusions.
My point was that misplaced fear (e.g. not supported by data) has its own risks, and fear is probably not the right emotion for injustice anyway (anger makes more sense). The point may be right or wrong when the totality of the data is examined.
On HN, this could have been a productive discussion but my comment was a distraction. Next time I'll ask a question instead.
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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.
I prefer data over social media stories.
I've lived here a long time and come to the realization through observation that the NYPD operates like a private security force for capital. Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. The "community outreach" they do is just enough to keep us from getting accusatory.
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,…