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How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

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Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#181

Post by filoeleven »

roenxi wrote: post #20
samdamsamm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonight I witnessed a young girl get knocked out cold by a tear gas canister shot into her face from about a 40 ft. range. She was holding her hands up. There was nothing but peaceful protesters standing around, not blocking traffic. No vandalism anywhere in sight. This was in Louisville, KY. The police fired rubber bullets at the group of people carrying her away to a place on the other side of the line of humvees b…

> Everything most middle-income Americans think about our police forces is wrong. That statement is a bit vague, everyone is going to substitute their own interpretation in. The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go after groups who have the least ability to fight back. The middle income might know the symptoms, but they are…

> The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist.

Depends on what you mean by “they.” Individual officers are a mixed bag, but someone else mentioned the ties between police and right-wing/racist groups. “The police” as an institution however is definitely racist.

> The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go after groups who have the least ability to fight back.

The fact that racial minorities have the least ability to fight back is a significant component of institutional racism. Why are they in that position in the first place? Because the USA has not yet excised from its culture the racist policies, values, and attitudes that it has held since before its foundation.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#182

Post by leetcrew »

collyw wrote: post #162
mtts wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone once explained it to me like this: Let's say 1% of the population commits crimes. Let's also, for the sake of argument, say all crimes are committed by black people. Of the general population, 10% is black. If you profile all black people, you will indeed profile the 1% of the population that commits crimes, but you will also profile 9% of the population that does not commit crimes. And before you say "not th…

So it better to target 99% of the population that don't commit crimes rather that 9%? You haven't convinced me. Interesting that you chose black people for your example, its almost like you are profiling them.

it's better not to target any fraction of the population until you have some reason to suspect that an individual has committed a crime.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#183

Post by notahacker »

germinalphrase wrote: post #160
bsanr2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't pass the sniff test. If they were rioters, they would likely not be rioting on their own porch. Hence, ordering them to go inside would mean breaking into someone else's house. On the other hand, if they're legitimately on their own proerty, and if they're not being disorderly, then what is the rationale for that use of force? I hate to say it, but I'm doubting the veracity of this account. There's nothi…

I’m not disagreeing with anyone about the inappropriateness of the police actions, but the account is not claiming that those shot in the video are rioters. Simply that the police we see were actively clearing rioters from the neighborhood and the porch people were caught up in it.

The alleged presence of rioters in the neighbourhood justifies the police being there in armed convoy through the neighbourhoods. It doesn't justify any of their actions shown in the video, which shows a large section of street with no evidence of rioting and unprovoked fire on people in their gardens to a enthusiastic call to action usually reserved for strikes on military targets.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#184

Post by leetcrew »

scarface74 wrote: post #15
samdamsamm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonight I witnessed a young girl get knocked out cold by a tear gas canister shot into her face from about a 40 ft. range. She was holding her hands up. There was nothing but peaceful protesters standing around, not blocking traffic. No vandalism anywhere in sight. This was in Louisville, KY. The police fired rubber bullets at the group of people carrying her away to a place on the other side of the line of humvees b…

Middle America knows that police target minorities - they just don’t care.

it may seem that way, but I suspect it is a bit more nuanced than that.

I think most people understand, at least on some level, that the news is generally about outlier events. when every interaction you have with the police is polite or even helpful, it's tempting to think that these incidences of police brutality are just isolated events. if you live somewhere that you experience aggressive policing in your daily life, it might seem more like the stories that make the national news are merely the tip of the iceberg.

I think it's unfortunate that the national discussion centers so much around these high-profile killings. it obscures some of the more subtle impositions on marginalized communities and leaves gaps for motivated reasoning to reach a less uncomfortable conclusion.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#185

Post by pasquinelli »

roenxi wrote: post #20
samdamsamm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonight I witnessed a young girl get knocked out cold by a tear gas canister shot into her face from about a 40 ft. range. She was holding her hands up. There was nothing but peaceful protesters standing around, not blocking traffic. No vandalism anywhere in sight. This was in Louisville, KY. The police fired rubber bullets at the group of people carrying her away to a place on the other side of the line of humvees b…

> Everything most middle-income Americans think about our police forces is wrong. That statement is a bit vague, everyone is going to substitute their own interpretation in. The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go after groups who have the least ability to fight back. The middle income might know the symptoms, but they are…

I know a number of cops and don't believe any of them signed up to be cops because of what you're describing. you are missing the cause, and are misattributing it individual malice.

The police exist to preserve the established order. If you believed a social order can exist without being preserved by violence, then i'd call you an anarchist, (i'd call myself one too.) If you believe anything remotely resembling the present social order can be preserved without violence then you're naive, and very few people are that naive, least of all the police. Under what circumstances violence is required to preserve the established order may be shocking, but the individual police officers aren't pushing the system around, the system is pushing them around.

Sociopathic bully cops would ve weeded out. They are covered for instead. Video of them murdering people would prompt action from the system to get rid of them, but the system declines to prosecute them, and i'd guess a third of the country hmms and haws and theorizes about what the murder victim should've done to avoid getting murdered. The victims of these bad cops would be treated by the media the same as any other person whom tragedy befell, instead the media digs up dirt on them.

Individual bad cops can't exert the kind of pressure on the system needed to do all that. It's the established social order expressing itself.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#186

Post by tonyarkles »

gonzo41 wrote: post #163
leetcrew wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP is saying the sensors get into a bad state if the drone is powered on but not flying for a while. "normal operation" is powering on the drone and taking off almost immediately, then landing after 15-20 minutes. it's not inconceivable that most testing would follow this "happy path". the battery life of an idling drone might exceed the length of most test cases.

This is where a drone platform with an OS driver / control software would be great. I bet the sensors and the control systems all have memory overflows or number range issues in the software that isn't being dealt with because it's a closed system. Add to that few if any customers are asking to use their drone as a static tripod.

I'm planning on doing some experiments with that after we're done spring surveying.

To start: I'm not sure what you mean by OS driver/control software. The two main (non-proprietary) flight controller platforms are PX4 and ArduPilot, which both basically act OS-like. Depending on which platform you're building for, they can use things like ChibiOS under the hood as well.

It's not memory overflows. These can fly for long periods of time, but sitting on the ground for a couple of minutes can be enough to require a reboot. What it is, best I can tell from the limited debugging I've done so far, is accumulated sensor bias. When the aircraft is in the air, you've got some sensors providing short-term data (accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers) and some sensors providing long-term data (GPS, optical stabilization if fitted); the short-term sensors are noisy, and an Extended Kalman Filter does sensor fusion to provide estimates that are the combined values from the fast sensors and the slow sensors. When a GPS update comes in, the EKF corrects for the biases in the sensors.

When you're sitting on the ground in a stationary position, you're only measuring noise. The accelerometers are saying you're accelerating a little bit this way and a little bit that way; the gyros are saying you've spun a bit; the GPS says you've moved around some. The GPS signal is nominally mean-zero motion, but the rest of the sensors give both bias and noise. The EKF tries to filter out the noise and correct for the bias, but because the GPS is also wobbling around, it seems that it doesn't do the bias estimation correctly. For example, this sample, the accelerometers say that you've accelerated south, but the GPS sample has moved 0.5m north. Also, GPS doesn't help correct everything unless the aircraft is in motion; if there's magnetometer drift and gyro bias in the same, the aircraft has no way of knowing that it hasn't rotated (when you're airborne, you can use the GPS signal to know which direction you're moving, even if the magnetometer says you're pointed off by a few degrees).

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#187

Post by tonyarkles »

leetcrew wrote: post #99
gruez wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense. How is the drone supposed to take off during normal operation?

GP is saying the sensors get into a bad state if the drone is powered on but not flying for a while. "normal operation" is powering on the drone and taking off almost immediately, then landing after 15-20 minutes. it's not inconceivable that most testing would follow this "happy path". the battery life of an idling drone might exceed the length of most test cases.

That's exactly it. Additionally, it seems like you can wait a while before takeoff and it's OK. Maybe some of the filtering mechanisms don't get activated until then? I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into what's going on here, as soon as we're done with our spring field activities.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#188

Post by DuskStar »

mbrameld wrote: post #161
germinalphrase wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a local. Here’s some additional context: “Follow up on video of people getting rubber bullets shot at them in their doorway from a source that was there. This was personally texted to me. Source is a teacher that works at my elementary school. Here’s what was posted. ‘That is my blue house across the street. Apparently this video has gone viral. What they didn’t show was the 20- 30 minutes of the rioters that sur…

Nobody managed to get a video of the rioters? Doesn't that seem odd to you? Additional context is welcome as long as it's either verifiable or doesn't serve an obvious agenda. Here's some additional context that's just as valid as yours: the "rioters" were actually defending the neighborhood from the police who had been there before your context began. The police were beating random people and shooting pets. The pers…

> The police were beating random people and shooting pets.

Well, at least there'll be evidence for that, right? Dead pets?

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#189

Post by cycomanic »

StellarTabi wrote: post #11

It's always ethical to film police misconduct, in fact what's unethical is that they're not already filming themselves. Safety is important, protesters (and even journalists...) have been livestreaming themselves innocently doing nothing (in contrast to other media's hyper-focusing on "looting") then getting shot with rubber bullets. One of them reportedly has permanent blindness in the left eye as a result. Police b…

Police seem to be deliberately targeting journalists: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/31/george-floyd...

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#190

Post by cycomanic »

crispyambulance wrote: post #52
dessant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to leave your porch to get shot. Police and National Guard are patrolling neighborhoods and shooting civilians with paint canisters on their own property in Minneapolis. In one case they yelled "Light 'em up!" before starting to shoot [1] with ammunition that could blind people. It's legal to be outside your house during the curfew in Minneapolis [2]. > Can I be outside my house (on my property) a…

It's a chaotic situation. They (the police/nat-guard) likely wanted people inside their homes to prevent further chaos and confrontations. It all becomes more volatile if everyone's on their porch, outraged, as the police "parade" comes through. I know folks on HN like strict interpretations and reasoning of what's legal or illegal, but all of that gets very blurred during a riot when the situation at any given time…

The irony, how everyone was howling a out infringements of rights (free speech etc) when youtube banned some right-wing conspiracy theorists, but as soon as we see the most blatant major infringements of rights (shooting at people who have every right to be where they are on their own propert) and the same people find all sorts of ways to make excuses why it's OK.

What's next? Saying that George Floyd was clearly at fault because he was trying to breath, where clearly the officer didn't want him to, so the officers actions were justified?!

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