In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me • Hacker News Board

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#61

Post by noinsight » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:10 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #47

jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

> differences in police training from Germany vs the US To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year. In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already. [1] http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-polic…

In Norway police only fired two shots in 2014. In Finland, 6 shots in 2013.

http://www.thelocal.no/20150706/norway-police-shot-guns-twic...

http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_police_fired_guns_only_six_tim...

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#62

Post by RoboSeldon » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:10 PM UTC

guns wrote: post #44

mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure our police more often than necessary become very aggro. It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms. We need to reconcile gun ownership with the violence it can allow and our desire for less aggro policing. That said police most definitely need to be trained to deescallate rather than automatically double down. We need to seriously emphasize de-escalation.

> It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms. While this may have an influence, it's important to remember that police officers are also trained to be wary of knives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KJ1R2PCMM You can't totally disarm a population, so there are diminishing returns on this front.

While this may have an influence, it's important to remember that police officers are also trained to be wary of knives

Are you seriously comparing a knife with a firearm ?

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#63

Post by _yosefk » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:11 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #47

jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

> differences in police training from Germany vs the US To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year. In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already. [1] http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-polic…

I don't think the amount of bullets used by the police in different places can be meaningfully compared without knowing the number of bullets fired at the police.

Edit: a sister comment cites numbers according to which almost 8 times as many police officers are killed in the US than in Germany per capita. Of course the real question is how many are attacked; if the police is better at gunfights than the criminals it is not a cause for alarm, rather the opposite.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#64

Post by gknoy » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #37

jessriedel wrote: post #11

This discussion of strategies for reducing the use of force by police is more constructive and sensible than most on this issue: http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior...

I just took a quick look, but it looks like a great article, might be worth doing a HN submission?

It's a great article, and was posted in June:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#65

Post by Elrac » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #45

tajen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean for us Europeans, who still have, for the moment, more lenient police? Should we expect that America uprises against their own police? Draw a Fergusson every 3 months? Becomes either less economically stable or more economically agressive? Should we expect that US' political influence requires us to step up our police, the same way France escalated an NSA-style law six months ago? It worries me that…

Your reaction is extreme. Working professionals from rich countries that come to the US on short term Visas are not subjected to intense scrutiny. No one is prosecuted for the name on their Facebook account.

You need to be a bit more careful with sweeping generalizations like "no one." Here are two cases just off the top of my head that almost perfectly contradict what you wrote.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/04/23/Feldmar/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/think-before-you-tweet-why-two-...

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#66

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:16 PM UTC

an_ko wrote: post #53

aikah wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

black people = thugs in most white people's minds. Of course there is always one black guy they like,"but he's different hey ?"...

[citation needed]

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#67

Post by jessriedel » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #34

jessriedel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is that the life of an Israeli civilian is considered (by the IDF) to be worth more than that of a palestinian civilian. It's important here to draw a philosophical distinction between the claim that the lives of some groups are more important than the lives of others, and the claim that a particular person or organization has a greater duty to some groups than others. It's perfectly consistent to…

I think that's a reasonable analysis, but incomplete. If a nation state occupies territory that does not belong to them (for whatever, possibly well-founded reasons), and therefore controls, by force, the lives and freedoms of the inhabitants, then I would argue that along with the authority that force gives them, comes a 'duty of care' towards the civilians of the occupied territory, at least equal of that owed thei…

I agree with most of that.

> I would argue that I have a duty of care to those children and their parents that is AT LEAST equal to my duty of care towards my own children.

Well, first this would only plausibly apply to dangers that have to do with you taking responsibility for the children. Is there is some exogenous risk that has nothing to do with where the children happen to be at a given time (a condition that is not analogous to the middle east) then you probably don't have duty to them above and beyond the normal case.

Second, and more importantly, if a choice really must be made then parents are empirically always going to choose their own children, and this is perhaps something you need to weigh when you let your children leave. Even in the extreme case where I am a parent directly responsible for putting my own and other's children at risk (e.g., I take them on a dangerous hike), I'm going to save my child before others. Note sure if that's moral, but that's the way it is.

> would it be ok for the teachers to carry tasers to protect themselves in case a child attempts to assault them?

Here I think there's a risk of conflating the outside-group/inside-group distinction we've been discussing with the adult/children distinction. I agree that teachers need to err on the side of putting themselves at risk rather than children, but this comes more from the fact that we all have greater duties to all children (regardless of relation) than we do to adults, because children are both more vulnerable and more innocent (in the sense of being less responsible for their predicament).

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#68

Post by maxxxxx » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

When I did my compulsory military duty in Germany I ended up being military police. We had a lot of interactions with American MPs due to the US military being stationed there.

We always joked about how they behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force. We were trained to avoid confrontation at almost any price. When in doubt, retreat.

I guess it's a different view on law "enforcement".

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#69

Post by jessriedel » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

gknoy wrote: post #64

ghufran_syed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just took a quick look, but it looks like a great article, might be worth doing a HN submission?

It's a great article, and was posted in June: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893

Yep, this must be where I read it originally :)

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#70

Post by Elrac » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

Qwertious wrote: post #41

justizin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wishing made it so. The institution of the police is intrinsically corrupt and unbalanced. This has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbor or your Uncle Joe is a police officer and seems like a perfectly nice person, and joined for all the right reasons, their job is not to keep you safe, it is to keep you under control. All of us, collectively. I know it's a big complex discussion to have about, "if we di…

And yet this is a bigger problem in the USA than in Europe or Australia.

My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to become violent killers than underprivileged folk who have precious few career options outside of drug dealing in gangs.