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

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

#371

Post by philwelch »

kdeberk wrote: post #212
ryguytilidie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the article didn't really discuss this, but if you know that there are armed gamblers inside and are worried that they will be a danger to you, why not just announce that you are outside, have the people come out and just wait? Storming through the door with weapons drawn SPECIFICALLY because you believe that they are armed is probably the worst piece of logic possible. You are basically causing deat…

Well I don't think that the police officers risk waiting. I can think of several reasons why you don't want to have this standoff. Mainly, it would give the suspects enough time to destroy any evidence that could incriminate the suspects. Furthermore, if you are assuming that the only way for this standoff to end will be through the own volition of the suspects, then this standoff could turn into a siege and last mon…

A months-long siege over a home poker game!?

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

#372

Post by GFischer »

hammerzeit wrote: post #205
drone wrote: post #117

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 p…

It's hard to comment on this post considering how many times we've seen the "HN-is-dying" meme, but for me this time it really resonates. What has made HN interesting is the fact that it was boring to the vast majority of people on this planet. The topics were generally speaking on a very specific set of subjects that you largely had to be in the technology world (and of a certain technical disposition) to relate to.…

On one hand, I like the "politics" posts (especially the Snowden-related ones).

On the other, I also agree that they mostly detract from the "unique" HN topics, BUT I like discussing them WITH the HN crowd (not with whomever might hang around on other sites).

I also feel like I can contribute more to these kind of posts than to others that I also find interesting and more on-topic (Javascript library for reactive documents, how to hack a high-performance board for a notebook, etc...)

Would it be possible to "wall off" the politics posts from the HN "main topic" posts? Much like what's done with the Ask HN posts...

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

#373

Post by jlgreco »

saraid216 wrote: post #364
jlgreco wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? In fact yes. Many police departments do not have "Internal Affairs". Where they nominally exist, they are rarely staffed by a separate group of people, rather "internal affairs" work is handled by the same people as everything else. The same people behind the same silent blue wall... Hollywood depictions of "Internal Affairs" are largely a "Hollywood thing".

I can support a campaign to increase staffing for more of such divisions so that they're independent and capable of successfully prosecuting cops who lie to protect cops.

One does not simply throw money at corruption.

Even if you could, that would be a hell of a lot of money. In many cases you would be damn near doubling the size of police departments.

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

#374

Post by jlgreco »

saraid216 wrote: post #362
darkarmani wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude Are we still railing against rhetoric? The argument isn't they started it, it's "they have been granted tremendous power, so they need to accept accountability."

> The argument isn't they started it, it's "they have been granted tremendous power, so they need to accept accountability." Yes. "Fuck the police" really captures that argument well.

Argument that was actually made: "It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments.

If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that!

It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops.

Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment.

Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside.

Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally.

Fuck the police."

What you read: "Fuck the police."

Is it really any wonder that you are having problems with this conversation? There is a lot of content in that comment; you appear to have ingested none of it.

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

#375

Post by wdewind »

etherael wrote: post #359
wdewind wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that Warren does not address that situation, you'd need other case law to discuss it.

So your point is not that police actually do have a duty to protect you, but the legal precedent cited to show this did not do so? I have to wonder why even bother to argue that point? It strikes me as debating whether the link currently hitting you with a 10gbps DDOS uses optic or electric signal transfer, it doesn't change the facts of the issue at all. Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physic…

I think you need to read about the case a little more before you start arguing. Warren, and many cases before it, have held that the police have a responsibility to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly.

The police do not have a duty to protect you specifically unless they have told you they are going to protect you. This means they are not liable for preventing a crime from happening to you. That's all it means. It does not touch on the issue of whether or not an officer who witnesses a crime being perpetrated upon you is responsible for intervening, which is what the case you linked to is about. I don't know much about that, and from what I understand that particular case has not been decided yet.

>Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I agree with you that it is a frustrating situation. I would ask you, as an engineer, to consider the enormous complexity of a system required to provide social structure for 300 million people, and that doing so may require some very specific decisions to be made, that while seemingly small have a massive impact.

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

#376

Post by merraksh »

oftenwrong wrote: post #367
merraksh wrote: post #234

But the Occupiers, who tended to be young, white, and middle-to upper-middle-class, knew social media like few other demographics. They knew how to live-stream video directly to the Internet. They all had smart phones, so police couldn’t suppress incriminating video by confiscating one or two or ten phones—someone was bound to have video of not only the original incident but also of police trying to confiscate phones…

The US police have already learned! I have already seen articles about cell service being suspended to stifle protests. For example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/barts-cell-phone-shutd...

Hmmm, then they'll need to use local wifis.

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

#377

Post by ctdonath »

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…

So for now, in the Fourth Circuit, sending a SWAT team to make sure a bar’s beer is labeled correctly is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Oh, it goes much, much farther than that.

The US Supreme Court has ruled (see Raich) that the federal government is justified in sending an armed raid into a terminally ill old lady's home because she allegedly was growing six marijuana plants under her doctor's supervision & approval for her sole personal use in accordance with state law. The "justified" rationale? Her home-grown state-legal personal-use herbs decreased demand in illegal inter-state commerce, therefor affected inter-state commerce, therefor was subject to federal regulation. I kid you not.

(Consequential tangent: if the court had not ruled that way, a pending related case (Stewart) would have permitted felons to home-build their own machine-guns. The court was faced with bizarre rulings whichever way they went with Raich.)

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

#378

Post by vadman »

njharman wrote: post #370
dasil003 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's sad how a default distrust of the government gets one painted as a crazy gun-toting militiaman, or a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. These are after all, the people who founded America, not out of paranoia, but from deep reflection on the nature and history of government.

Default distrust everyone is one thing. But when you single out government (as if the "government" where a thing and not just comprised of people) and not recognizing government is a symptom of more fundamental causes that I'm gonna "default distrust you as a crazy at best, or ignorant at worst".

I think you are oversimplifying things.

People comprising the government are not "just" people.

They may have personality traits that compel them to seek out high-power positions.

They may suppress their natural good intentions because where they work, "things are done that way and everybody does that". After several years of such cognitive dissonance, they may just completely change personality-wise.

&c., &c.

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

#379

Post by hvs »

tsotha wrote: post #189
stcredzero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They also believe anything that makes them unhappy is a violation of their own rights.

This seems like more of a personal opinion of yours than anything based on fact.

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

#380

Post by afterburner »

kdeberk wrote: post #201
noelwelsh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're wrong. From the same article: Indeed, that’s exactly what happened to seventy-two-year-old Aaron Awtry in 2010. Awtry was hosting a poker tournament in his Greenville, South Carolina, home when police began breaking down the door with a battering ram. Awtry had begun carrying a gun after being robbed. Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door, wounding Deputy Matthew May in both…

> "Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door" Yeah, that appears to be a pretty foolish thing to do. What if it were firefighters who noticed a fire through his upstairs window? I don't think that they would just ring the bell and wait for an answer. I know that this a hypothetical situation, but it just seems a really stupid thing to just blindly fire at whatever is behind the door. The onl…

"The only people who claim that the police did not first knock on the door are the friends and associates of the victim."

Well, to be fair, the only people at the scene that weren't police officers were his friends and associates. He was hosting a private gathering in his residence after all.

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