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

241–250 of 301 posts

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

#241

Post by thret »

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…

This is the kind of 'shoot first' training American police get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfi3Ndh3n-g&t=01m30s

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

#242

Post by jotm »

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.

Yeah, I was reading an article about how a police officer was forced to shoot an attacker... in the foot. It was kinda funny, which was sad.

The guy had a knife and charged towards the officer, he fired off a warning shot in the air and then shot him in the foot.

And he was very apologetic about it. Not the usual "I feared for my safety so I put 5 rounds in his center mass" we see from American police.

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

#243

Post by rsanek »

manish_gill wrote: post #233
toephu2 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because of one isolated incident you think all cops in the U.S. act this way and therefore will never visit again? You think what you see on TV isn't just handpicked? and is actually representative of the thousands of pull overs cops perform daily? You think every single black person pulled over gets shot?

This excuse ("bad apples") is getting pretty old. One anecdote can be discounted. Tens and hundreds of them in the past several years are a bit hard to ignore. US cops are bad. Face it.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

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

#244

Post by e12e »

meowface wrote: post #226
e12e wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US. Call it 9/10 in the US and 3/10 in Germany[1]. Note that this is number of guns, not number of people owning guns. Not sure how that changes the odds of any one person having access to a gun. Perhaps more interesting is the number of verified homicides commited with a gun[2]: ~4/100 000 in the US, 0.2/100 000 in Germany. So one could guesstima…

>Police in Norway has also been generally armed now, and waltz around with glocks. Is this due to the Breivik massacre?

No, it's based on some hand-waving about "terror threats" due to us helping NATO alienate people in the Middle East. The "threats" are classified (but really dangerous, ok, trust us, wink-wink) -- and no one's tried to explain how moving the handguns from lock-boxes in the police command cars to the hips of random patrol officers are supposed to help counter these "terror threats".

I was recently at a music festival with some ~3000 people -- and a couple of police officers with handguns. I have a hard time divining a scenario where those guns are going to help. If the aim was to be able to shoot attackers, at least some snipers at an elevated vantage point with low-power ammunition might have had a chance at taking someone out without endangering the crowds too much.

On the other hand, if the crowd went mad an rioted, you can be sure that the end result would've been that someone in the crowd would've ended up in possession of those guns.

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

#245

Post by manish_gill »

rsanek wrote: post #243
manish_gill wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This excuse ("bad apples") is getting pretty old. One anecdote can be discounted. Tens and hundreds of them in the past several years are a bit hard to ignore. US cops are bad. Face it.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

No, but when the plural of anecdote is enough to incite riots in cities and communities, inspire trending hashtags, movements all over a country, enough to put the problem in the International spotlight, it's almost as good.

If the actual data were pointing to the completely opposite conclusion, there would be someone arguing for that. Nobody is.

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

#246

Post by vacri »

fweespeech wrote: post #146
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…

> Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me. > I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matte…

Personal safety is the #1 priority of any emergency worker. If you don't keep yourself safe, then that's one less person to be able to help out. Add to this that there isn't an endless stream of people both willing and able to do the job in the first place, and also that training takes a fair while, and it's clear that self-preservation is a requirement for emergency workers.

By all means, question police methods. But to snidely chide them for putting their personal safety first suggests that you don't really understand their job at all.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

smhg wrote: post #82
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…

> For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty. It sounds so unattractive to visit countries stuck with such laws. Despite all the nice things they have to offer. It might be easier to understand from a European perspective. [1] [1] https://en.m.wik…

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by DominikR »

rodgerd wrote: post #225
DominikR wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Switzerland still ranks very high in terms of gun ownership. (4th place in the world) My point is that the mere availability of guns can't be the only reason. This is most likely a very complex problem with many different issues that have to be tackled. Better police training, preventing ghettos, hopeless economic situation for people of certain race, racism - these are all issues that will have to be tackled t…

> Well, Switzerland still ranks very high in terms of gun ownership. (4th place in the world) If you're insisting that the situation with firearms in Switzerland resembles that of the US you are either ignorant, obtuse, or dishonest. They are not even remotely comparable.

I'm not insisting in anything, I'm just saying Switzerland is ranked 4th place in the world in terms of guns per capita.

But it doesn't make any sense for me discuss anymore with you because you seem to believe that insulting others is a great way to exchange opinions.

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

#249

Post by Confusion »

michaelt wrote: post #116
colechristensen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse. Could you add some more detail on this point? I'm having difficulty thinking of a situation I could be in that would be improved by me shooting at the police? I mean, even if they're honest good guy cops surely they'll call in backup and arrest you and make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail f…

  a situation I could be in that would be improved by me 
  shooting at the police
Two situations: 1) a situation where you believe there's a reasonably chance the police are going to shoot you and cover it up. Shooting them keeps you alive.

2) you have committed a minor crime, for which the sentence is sufficiently harsh that you are willing to add murder to the crime to prevent being sentenced. If a cop attempts to apprehend you and you shoot him, your situation is improved in that you are not apprehended and may not have to go to jail at all. Ratios of punishments for different crimes matter as well as the absolute value.

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

#250

Post by wtbob »

smhg wrote: post #82
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…

> For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty. It sounds so unattractive to visit countries stuck with such laws. Despite all the nice things they have to offer. It might be easier to understand from a European perspective. [1] [1] https://en.m.wik…

> I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.

Don't kill anyone and you'll be good.

Or perhaps you're actually concerned about false conviction, which is a different problem and no less bad when someone spend the rest of his life in prison

Post reply on HN