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Good Samaritan Backfire

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Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#91

Post by glenra »

rayiner wrote: post #42
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.

American cities are the most dangerous in the developed world, by a large margin.

> American cities are the most dangerous in the developed world, by a large margin.

Um, can you give a source on that? I rather doubt it's true, but probably depends on what you mean by "most dangerous". (And also perhaps "developed").

Here's an article titled "Violent crime worse in Britain than in US": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-...

Or here's PolitiFact:

> For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: "violence against the person, with injury," "most serious sexual crime," and "robbery." This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

> For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

[Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/... ]

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#92

Post by Karunamon »

a8000 wrote: post #69
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!

The point when he was in handcuffs on the ground would have been where he should have waited the situation out kept quiet and not talk to officers "how he appreciates their service." or enquire if their actions where "standard protocol". That is just asking for trouble.

> That is just asking for trouble.

It's also perfectly legal and doesn't deserve the treatment he received.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#93

Post by stuaxo »

glenra wrote: post #91
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American cities are the most dangerous in the developed world, by a large margin.

> American cities are the most dangerous in the developed world, by a large margin. Um, can you give a source on that? I rather doubt it's true, but probably depends on what you mean by "most dangerous". (And also perhaps "developed"). Here's an article titled "Violent crime worse in Britain than in US": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-... Or here's PolitiFact: > For England and Wales, we…

The Daily Mail is not a good source for, well anything.

Already you can see that adding up those categories doesn't make sense as some will overlap (in particular violence and the other two).

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#95

Post by pdonis »

bostik wrote: post #84
mcphilip wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've witnessed two horrific wrecks and been a witness for the cops one of those times. There's a time and a place for projecting your importance as an individual, but assisting someone else in an accident is not one such time. Do what you can until the authorities arrive and be helpful and respectful, and for fuck's sake, follow directions. Obviously the cops should have handled the situation better, but the mature r…

So, in effect the correct response for seeing someone you happen to know get hurt in the US is "don't give a toss" . As if caring for someone was a crime in itself? I am left speechless.

You're kidding, right? Obviously the correct response when you see someone get hurt (btw, the author of the article did not know either of the people who got hurt in the bicycle accident; he asked them what their names were) is to assist them and call 911 if necessary. Nobody is saying otherwise--unless you count the author of the article himself, who at the end says that calling 911 is often a bad idea (which I don't agree with).

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#96

Post by blisterpeanuts »

foobarian wrote: post #77
Karunamon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limitat…

They probably take things safe as a matter of policy. Imagine that the bystander was actually a murderer who got interrupted. If they let him hang around and he managed to finish the job there would be lawsuits to kingdom come and the cops would be vilified. There is just no way to tell in a situation under pressure, so the prudent thing is to do the safe thing and remove the unknowns.

I think there's a good point here. The police don't know what happened, only what some complete stranger told them. For all they know, Partensky is the one who knocked the bike down, and then terrorized the victims into keeping quiet about it.

I don't condone the behavior of the police in this situation; what looked like a bike accident in all likelihood was simply a bike accident.

The fact that Partensky did not comply with the order to move away from the scene is disturbing and I don't remember it being part of the previous, heavily HN-commented version of the story.

However, as others say, he probably didn't merit arrest, solitary confinement, strip to underwear, and all that lunacy. Surely the police have more important things to do than go after some goofy slightly inebriated nerd who calls in an accident.

Actually I'm more likely to believe that they were anti-gay. He apparently is gay, and came out of a "gay leather bar". You'd think in SF of all places this wouldn't ever happen, but who knows; perhaps there's some bad blood between the SFPD and the gay community that I'm not aware of.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#97

Post by jmzbond »

danielweber wrote: post #46
rburhum wrote: post #18

Sadly, I have many friends with similar stories from police departments in different places. I attribute the officer's behavior to constantly being surrounded by violence. If everyday, most people around you are violent unreasonable delinquents that want to hurt you, then you start developing personality characteristics to compensate and survive that environment. Add to this the types of personalities that are attrac…

> attribute the officer's behavior to constantly being surrounded by violence. If everyday, most people around you are violent unreasonable delinquents that want to hurt you, then you start developing personality characteristics to compensate and survive that environment As I get older I wonder if there are certain jobs that everyone in society should cycle though, because they can be soul-crushing to do them long te…

I've wondered the same! But often in an organizational context. One thing I love is that at Method, Inc., everyone rotates through the receptionist position.

I feel like we're so focused on outsourcing "menial" tasks when doing them can teach us a lot about workplanning and efficiency (which some people could certainly use), and more importantly about ownership (the Millennial generation, myself included, tends to look for handouts. Enter apps to do everything for you).

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#98

Post by mycousinvinny »

subpixel wrote: post #81

Officer Kaur, should you read this: thank you for doing your job, for regularly exposing yourself to great risk in the line of duty, and for carrying on in spite of interactions you must endure with all manner of bozos (including, as we are now aware, over-privileged, self-righteous, know-it-alls).

Yeah lets just ignore the cops instructions and act like a smug hipster, yeah then we'll post about it on the internet. That will get 'em!

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#99

Post by wlesieutre »

agrona wrote: post #82
Karunamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I then walked home." should have been the next line Unless it's against some kind of law for someone to observe police, you should know better than that. And seeing the way these animals acted, I'd say being concerned for the welfare of the downed biker is a perfectly legitimate reaction. > Being nosy is the part that didn't end well. Not illegal, and certainly not worth violent treatment and solitary confinement.…

>Unless it's against some kind of law for someone to observe police, you should know better than that. What isn't against the law? This probably doesn't apply exactly, but there are plenty of laws about "disobeying lawful orders of a peace officer". Here's an example (it may not apply in these case, I dunno, IANAL): > It is unlawful to willfully fail or refuse to comply with a lawful order, signal, or direction of a…

While I'm not a lawyer, I would assume that "lawful order" has a specific legal definition and that "pursuant to this code" means that it's restricted to orders for enforcing the laws.

There are certainly laws against interfering with police, but the right to observe them if you're not in the way is pretty well established.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#100

Post by blisterpeanuts »

ColinWright wrote: post #60
Namrog84 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree... and yet... here we are!

In a way, though, news is a cyclical thing. It comes up again and again. Maybe it's a good thing in this case; seems to be an instance of police brutality and wrongful arrest, so the more exposure, the better.

This story also brings out a couple of bits of information that we didn't get last time around, more of the police point of view.

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