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

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 301 posts

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

#121

Post by brownbat »

maxxxxx wrote: post #102
brownbat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, why don't criminals in Germany exploit this, always threaten confrontation and have their run of the city? EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info. EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of ch…

Because the German cops are not push overs either. If somebody will attack them they will fight back. But by trying to deescalate first you set the tone for the interaction. Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too an…

Thanks, I really appreciate your response, that adds useful context to your earlier comment.

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

#122

Post by elektromekatron »

RoboSeldon wrote: post #79
eric_h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within about 3-5 feet, a knife is just as dangerous as a firearm.

Lets try a metal experiment, you have your knife and 3 enemies attack you at the same time. How many can you neutralize from 5 feet with your knife ? Suppose you have special training and you can throw your knife and kill one of them, you still have 2 ... Try the same mental experiment when you have a firearm in your hand ... You can inflict much more damage with a firearm even without special training (not everybody…

If you are being attacked by three people, you probably shouldn't start by throwing a knife at one of them. You will probably then have two people, one of them armed with your knife.

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

#123

Post by mikeash »

colechristensen wrote: post #76
_yosefk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't overlook the very likely strong coupling between the bullets fired 'at' and 'by' police and how it likely goes both ways. People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse. This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have en…

"Contentious interaction" is an interesting way to say "killing by police," some of which are outright murder.

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

#124

Post by hippich »

DominikR wrote: post #84

I once used to believe that the problem in the US is that guns are so widely available, but today I'm not so sure about that anymore, because there are many very safe countries that rank high in number of guns per capita like Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Canada and Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c... In Switzerland every male has a military type machine gun and two magazi…

People in this thread forget - Europe as a whole existed for far longer than US. USA is home for booming business, and not only IT business. Unfortunately as a consequence - "bad" people use weapons to fight for their place under the sun, that's why police here works with high violence expectations first. This soaks into mentality, because humans are built this way. That's how you get officers who ready to taze/shoot for minor traffic violation.

So solution is not remove guns, but remove "bad business". How to do that - different question. Legalization vs Extermination - yet to see which one is more efficient.

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

#125

Post by harshreality »

RoboSeldon wrote: post #79
eric_h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within about 3-5 feet, a knife is just as dangerous as a firearm.

Lets try a metal experiment, you have your knife and 3 enemies attack you at the same time. How many can you neutralize from 5 feet with your knife ? Suppose you have special training and you can throw your knife and kill one of them, you still have 2 ... Try the same mental experiment when you have a firearm in your hand ... You can inflict much more damage with a firearm even without special training (not everybody…

That is a poorly specified, unrealistic thought experiment with lots of hidden variables.

Everything hinges on who attacks first. The weapon is secondary.

Knives are extremely dangerous and more difficult for your assailant to control at close range, and it doesn't seem like you have an appreciation of that.

If you have a gun and if you decide to attack first, maybe you can shoot two or three of them, disabling them, before they can kill you. I've never been in combat, but I don't think that kind of scenario is likely to happen in the real world. Also, even fatal shots are not immediately disabling unless they're to the CNS. Slashes across the arms can readily disable someone in a way that shooting them, even in the chest, won't, unless you hit their spine or some critical nerve or muscle area.

Guns are vastly superior if you have the advantage of distance. Otherwise, not so much.

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

#126

Post by jowiar »

ams6110 wrote: post #107
pjc50 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough that whenever it happens, there are plenty of people keen to manufacture justifications for it being the dead person's fault. If hundreds of Americans were being shot every year by terrorists, there would be an outcry and a demand to invade somewhere. If hundreds of Americans were being killed every year by a faulty product or staff negligence, there would be legal outcry and improved procedures and quality co…

In the US, most homicide victims are killed by another person of their own race, not by the police. This is true for whites, blacks, hispanics, etc. for the simple fact that races tend to segregate into neighborhoods. For all I know it's also true for non-racial demographics such as homosexuals. Simply put, if you're killed, it's most likely by someone you are related to if not by family then by proximity. This doesn…

Killings by police, though, are killings ostensibly on our behalf. The blood is on our hands.

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

#127

Post by brownbat »

Virginia is a special puzzle.

For Violent Crime in 2011, it ranked 46th of the 50 states. Property Crime was 43rd.

The Federal & State Incarceration Rate was 13th, and general funds spending on corrections (2008), it was ranked 11th highest.

Sometimes Europeans are alarmed by the high US incarceration rates, with our 700-800 per 100,000 over twice most other countries. If you want your eyes to just pop out of your head though look at the state by state numbers. (The US is a big place, and all social trends are not perfectly distributed.) Louisiana incarcerates over 1400 of its 100,000, four to fourteen times most other countries. The one thing you can say for Louisiana, though, is that it also has over double the national murder rate. So maybe it has other endemic problems that are running both numbers up simultaneously.

Virginia's up there in incarceration with 900-1000 per 100k, but it doesn't have the violent crime stats that could even attempt to excuse it. It has below average homicide and violent crime rates.

It's a high incarceration state for no damn reason.

Some resources:

http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents...

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Louisiana

http://www.vsp.state.va.us/Crime_in_Virginia.shtm

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

#128

Post by adventured »

vowelless wrote: post #50
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.

> 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. I think that the likelihood of civilians being armed in the US is a lot higher than in Germany, so I can imagine why American cops are a little more paranoid. I've seen cops put a hand on their gun as they approach suspects, which I think is part of the training here. I…

Germany has 30 guns per 100 people. The US has 88.

It's the rate of violence that is dramatically different, and not nearly as much the per capita gun ownership rate.

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

#129

Post by meowface »

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…

To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US. Police in Germany likely carry weapons to deal with knives and other close range weapons, while police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
Post reply on HN