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

#131

Post by adventured » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:33 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #33

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.

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…

The next US response will be gradual de-escalation of its police aggressiveness.

The beginning of the end of the war on drugs, body cameras, attention being cast on asset seizures and minimum mandatory sentencing - it has become obvious to most of the population that over the last 30 years the policing system has gotten out of control. You know it's understood to be bad when the president is openly discussing how much worse imprisonment is in the US than other countries, and becomes the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.

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

#132

Post by ghufran_syed » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:33 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #67

ghufran_syed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

And I would argue that in a trade-off between police or military safety vs civilian safety, civilians are similarly "both more vulnerable and more innocent (in the sense of being less responsible for their predicament)" than the military or police that interacts with them.

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

#133

Post by nchammas » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

The author's recommendation that the police build up community relationships to increase trust and reduce unnecessary confrontation reminded me of a book, Fixing Broken Windows [1], that made a similar recommendation for what it called "community policing".

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Broken-Windows-Restoring-Commun...

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

#134

Post by zurn » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:41 PM UTC

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #106

I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely. They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job. A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear. Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger a…

Same in Iraq.

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

#135

Post by adventured » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:42 PM UTC

Elrac wrote: post #70

Qwertious wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an incorrect conclusion.

Check out the historical murder rate of Appalachia in the US.

Extremely high gun ownership, extremely low murder rate. I grew up there, deep in poverty, everyone owned guns, and the murder rate was on par with the best of Europe per 100,000 people.

The difference? Cultural. Where I grew up, people simply did not believe in killing each other, period. Desperation was widespread, yet there were no gangs, there were no drive-by shootings.

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

#136

Post by darklajid » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

DasIch wrote: post #112

darklajid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I'm from the neighboring country to the north. I know nothing. I _thought_ that you're supposed to have some ammunition at home though? 'Taschenmunition' or something? Like, say, 20 rounds? Let's ignore the standards for storing those, but my impression is that a) ~a lot~ of people in CH have rifles _with_ ammo b) ~a good number~ of kills at home in CH happen using said rifle ("Cheating wife? Thank the mi…

Also from the north but Taschenmunition hasn't been a thing since 2007. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taschenmunition

Thanks a lot. I feel old, both for learning that my information is absolutely outdated and for not .. asking Wikipedia about it, before I posted here. :)

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

#137

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

noinsight wrote: post #61

grecy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by adventured » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:50 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #42

rogeryu wrote: post #30

This reminds me of Sandra Bland who was put into jail for three days because of improperly signaling a lane change. Police in the US is totally out of control it seems.

She was put into jail for committing an unwritten infraction called "Pissing Off the Police" Most officers feel entitled to a considerable amount of respect and many of them are prone to use their discretion in order to extract revenge for perceived personal insults. This has always been the case. Recently we have technology that increasingly exposes this and other sorts of wrongdoing.

I always find it interesting that most people don't realize police brutality, and people being killed by police, was worse 40 years ago than today.

The difference is, today there's a bright spotlight on police brutality, and 200 million smart phones.

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

#139

Post by tessierashpool » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:53 PM UTC

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #106

I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely. They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job. A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear. Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger a…

Their number one job is not to kill anybody innocent, and they are terrible at it.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

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

#140

Post by fixxer » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:55 PM UTC

hellbanner wrote: post #78

fixxer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was growing up in LA in the 80s, several family friends were cops in rougher areas like Hawaiian Gardens, etc. I recall hearing multiple times that engaging with violent force was discouraged because they never knew what kind hellfire was going to erupt. They proceeded with extreme caution and did not act like warrior cops. If there was any doubt, they backed way up. Now, I'm well aware of the sins of LAPD in…

You hit the emergency 911 button and SWAT instead of regular police showed up? What kind of button was that?

Kinda funny. I was about 10 and after the button was hit, it went on speaker and dispatch was listening for ~10 minutes trying to figure out what was going on.

Second time was less funny.