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Good Samaritan Backfire

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Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#51

Post by [deleted] »

diminoten wrote: post #40
jellicle wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet your reply condones the violence and abuse of authority. Why is that? Here's the basic rule: as a police officer, you must be polite, fair, kind, and law-abiding, even if the public you deal with is rude, nasty, entitled, somewhat drunk, and otherwise unpleasant. Period. If you can't do that, you're in the wrong profession. And if the profession permits people who can't do that, the profession has systemic is…

I disagree. As a police officer, you must be fair and law-abiding. Why must they be kind and polite?

[deleted]

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#52

Post by danielweber »

Karunamon wrote: post #44
diminoten wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By his own account, he was ignoring police officers while interfering with their work at the scene of an accident. You can't do that and expect to not get physically removed.

Even then, that still doesn't necessitate violence and solitary confinement. Stop making excuses for bad behavior!

So when he says "that doesn't excuse what the officers did" you think he's excusing their behavior?

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#53

Post by Karunamon »

PeterisP wrote: post #48
Karunamon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He reports doing plenty I'm not sure how essentially "hanging around" justifies violent treatment, solitary confinement, etc. Perhaps you could explain?

Well, the guy definitely doesn't deserve all the followup treatment that he's rightly complaining about, but about that particular single episode it is quite clear - if you're given a lawful order to not hang around i.e., cross the street; for whatever technically valid reason (and not disturbing 911 ops == not hanging around == not only a technicaly valid, but a very very valid reason) - then there are two options:…

Except when the order is not lawful because the person is not "interfering" in any meaningful way, that is. Police absolutely do not have carte blanche to dictate what someone must or must not do outside of specific, limited circumstances.

Not that it matters, because the behavior demonstrated here and the current climate of the justice system (i.e. he-said-she-said vs a cop, you always lose) means that those limitations are mostly invalid. Police can order you to do whatever and if you decline, knowing that they have no right to say such a thing, you'll just get hassled and imprisoned anyways.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#54

Post by Karunamon »

danielweber wrote: post #52
Karunamon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, that still doesn't necessitate violence and solitary confinement. Stop making excuses for bad behavior!

So when he says "that doesn't excuse what the officers did" you think he's excusing their behavior?

>You can't do that and expect to not get physically removed.

This is an excuse/rationalization.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#55

Post by bronson »

jellicle wrote: post #35
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's police corruption, etc. But there's also the fact that American cities are war zones. The homicide rate in San Francisco, a relatively safe city, is 8 times higher than the homicide rate in London. It's 31 times higher in Oakland. Police in the U.S. are surrounded by violence.

Police in the U.S. are in no sense surrounded by violence. The United States in 2014 is one of the safest, least dangerous societies the universe has ever known.

Replying to facts with your own opinion isn't real useful.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#56

Post by icebraining »

bronson wrote: post #47
Karunamon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask.. why does it matter? I find the sequence of events the author was subjected to is impossible to justify with any conceivable amount of being "smug and obnoxious". This is behavior that should be reserved for dangerous, combative criminals (and probably not even then), certainly not bystanders who are merely annoying.

Read the police report (linked in other commments). Author was buzzed and buzzing around, and creatively left a few important details out of his story. (not saying the police report is 100% of the story either of course)

What makes you think that the police didn't creatively add a few details to the story?

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#57

Post by danielweber »

Namrog84 wrote: post #34
michaelt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When cop 1 says to cop 2 "I think he's going to be a problem" cop 2 probably says "oh yeah, he's going to be a problem" regardless of what the suspect says.

If a cop says that about you and you are able to walk away without issues. That should be the moment you shut up and go home. Or at least cross the street down a block away from them...

He was in the back of caged van at that point. No walking away.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#58

Post by nemo »

jellicle wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being nosy is the part that didn't end well. Neither did being obnoxious, I imagine: "I told them that it was an early stage startup; I’m doing this because I feel it’s a way to make the world around me better, to bring people joy through better food." I don't condone the violence and abuse of authority, obviously. But imagine being a cop, and having to deal with this at 1 am after a long day at work.

And yet your reply condones the violence and abuse of authority. Why is that? Here's the basic rule: as a police officer, you must be polite, fair, kind, and law-abiding, even if the public you deal with is rude, nasty, entitled, somewhat drunk, and otherwise unpleasant. Period. If you can't do that, you're in the wrong profession. And if the profession permits people who can't do that, the profession has systemic is…

If you walk in the street you might get hit by a car. I don't condone a driver hitting you, but reality is what it is.

Cops have to constantly deal with the worst elements of society doing the worst things imaginable. It'd be great if they didn't get hardened, but the reality is they often do. Expecting cops to be polite and kind to the drug addicted guy beating his wife because she isn't turning enough tricks to support his habit is probably an unreasonable expectation. Until we've fixed society, cops aren't going to change.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#59

Post by jhart3333 »

bronson wrote: post #55
jellicle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police in the U.S. are in no sense surrounded by violence. The United States in 2014 is one of the safest, least dangerous societies the universe has ever known.

Replying to facts with your own opinion isn't real useful.

>> But there's also the fact that American cities are war zones.

That's an opinion claiming to be a fact.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#60

Post by ColinWright »

Namrog84 wrote: post #31
incision wrote: post #20

This was posted previously and drew a mountain (793) of comments [0], including mine [1]. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235079

Does hacker news not flag/block duplicate posts urls. Especially when first one was clearly recognized?

The URLs are different:

7233730 : https://medium.com/p/9f53ef6a1c10/ [0]

7496137 : https://medium.com/human-parts/9f53ef6a1c10 [1]

HN's dup detector is crude and simplistic. Suggestions over the years to help fix it have been ignored, and efforts to help cross-link items have been lauded by some, and vilified by others who somehow seem to see the repetition as a feature. I guess that since it's documented (many times over, again, discussions repeated ad nauseam) it's definitely a feature rather than a bug.

Largely, I've given up. Let the discussions repeat the same points over and over - most don't care, others don't even notice. An engineer at heart, I find it almost physically painful to see such inefficiencies and loss of opportunity.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496137

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