Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 428 posts

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#111

Post by solistice »

alexvr wrote: post #17

In order to stay safe from the government, 1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student 2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution 3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage 4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car"…

6. Do not come into posession of short lobsters. http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/alobsterst...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#112

Post by nahname »

stcredzero wrote: post #98
mikeash wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…

> Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. Many young people coming out of school seem to have no conception of rights. To them, it's excusable for rights to be violated if they feel enough justified anger. They are unclear on the concept that rights apply to people and situations in ways they may not like.

Don't even try to blame this on the youth. They are still to apathetic to even count. We only have ourselves to blame for this. It is our mess to fix.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#113

Post by MarkHarmon »

mikeash wrote: post #87
Ovid wrote: post #23

Is this really the America that America wants? The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find? Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bo…

Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…

My thoughts exactly. One way of changing public opinion would be to use the same tactics that the opposition uses. Mainly taking back the airwaves and presenting unbiased information, rather than pre-chewed, here's what you should think, distillation of ideas. Unfortunately that takes tons of money and those with the money aren't going to do something that takes their own power away. Fortunately there are future generations that are more apt to find their info on the internet, which isn't perfect, but at least there are many perspectives presented. That is why it is vitally important that we continue to evolve our free networks, whether it be darknets or balloon nets, or whatever.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#114

Post by hammerzeit »

danbruc wrote: post #92
wavefunction wrote: post #7

Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot th…

Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of b…

I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this.

I'd expect better from Hacker News.

For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from them. In 2012, there were 587 people killed by police [1]. This is much, much larger than in Germany, even accounting for population difference.

I would argue that more relevant than pure population is differences in homicide rate. By the data you've given, approximately 1-2% of all homicides in Germany are by police officers (6-12 officer killings, 690 homicides in germany [2]). It's worth noting that in the USA, approximately 3% of all killings were by police officers (547/14748[2]) which seems in line with what my understanding would be -- it's worse in the USA but not ridiculously disproportionate.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#115

Post by stcredzero »

drunkpotato wrote: post #22
kdeberk wrote: post #11

To me it seems that there are a lot of issues at play that led to the death of this man, but temporarily ignoring the fact that it seems hypocritical for a state to both punish gamblers while promoting a state lottery, it appears necessary that SWAT teams are required to arrest people within their own homes given the fact that people are free to own weapons and use those for protection. I'm not saying that firearms n…

People have always owned their own weapons, and if anything the percent of households with guns has declined [1]. The burden is on you to show why the increase in police militarization is necessary. What is different now that requires SWAT teams to participate in poker room raids and alcohol regulatory inspections? What the article posits is that what has changed is not, in fact, the level of danger that police face,…

> departments justify bigger budgets by using personnel and equipment on more and more trivial tasks. What used to be routine enforcement and arrests become full SWAT takedowns.

Seems that all that DHS money spread all over the country has put local police into the mindset of pork barrel spending and big government largesse.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#116

Post by sliverstorm »

sophacles wrote: post #96
llamataboot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be harrassed if you film cops, but it is plainly legal[1], and the courts have recently begun to be more aggressive about slapping down municipalities that try to restrict it.[2] Normalizing it will go a long way to keeping police from thinking they can harass activist-types that are filming cops. I have been filming cops with copwatch groups from the days we had to carry big shoulder mounted video cameras. 1…

Legality doesn't stop regular occurrences of filmers being arrested for "obstruction of justice".

Then get arrested. What ever happened to civil disobedience?

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#117

Post by drone »

It seems like every day, more and more political posts about the US are made here. It's getting to the point that it seems that 35% of the point of HN is about getting opportunities to make political statements about the US. There are so many, so so many, places to have on-going political arguments.

I'm of the mind that any place that allows free commentary ultimately becomes a political discussion board, and HN is proving this well. It used to be that HN was a place to get away from that - but it looks like these days it's becoming not much different than the comment section on any political newspaper.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#118

Post by Ygg2 »

alexvr wrote: post #17

In order to stay safe from the government, 1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student 2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution 3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage 4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car"…

Additional things to not do:

6. Write 'disturbing' material (for any definition of disturbing)

7. Own a permanent marker

8. Connect to an unsecured WiFi

9. Use a fake name on the Internet

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#119

Post by rday »

mtgx wrote: post #84
akiselev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans vote for those who are tough on crime. I think CATO estimated (on the high end) about 40,000 SWAT/paramilitary raids a year and the public perception is that the targets are all criminals. To them this is just "acceptable collateral damage."

The problem is the public thinks that those being targeted are all dirty evil criminals, and I also think America as a whole doesn't have an "innocent before guilty" mentality. It's not just the American leaders that have corrupt minds. It's also a lot of Americans, who are supporting this sort of stuff. The media is also not helping at all, and making the problem worse, because they are usually on the government's s…

I had a very charged discussion with friends just the other night about this very idea. I argued that even if a defendant has the resources to get to a jury trial, the jury is prejudiced against the "criminal" from the start.

It turned out, however, that each person in the room had either been wrongly accused of a crime or knew someone that had been railroaded by the system. They knew that the prosecution wasn't perfect. My sample size is 6 people, myself included, and we are all fairly educated.

Regarding the media, everyone in the room agreed that the Nancy Graces of the world are actively harming our society...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#120

Post by stcredzero »

matwood wrote: post #30

After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. All the more reason to never speak to the police. Ever. What happened to 'protect AND serve'? The police have made their jobs harder by syst…

> What happened to 'protect AND serve'?

The breakdown of community happened. Now citizens are just the environment from which an officer can harvest points for his record.

Post reply on HN