De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer • Hacker News Board

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#201

Post by runarberg » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

lsh123 wrote: post #194

runarberg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t post misleading statistics, in this instance it is quite racist and you come across as a racist person.

Funny how your call statistics/number racist. Godwin's Law in action.

Statistics can absolutely be racist. Numbers might not lie (except when they do), but they can use some odd definition, use different metrics, or scale different populations differently/unevenly (as is the case here).

When you use any misleading technique on a statistic that obscures the truth, you are lying. When you put up a number to proof a point about a minority that is absolutely not true, that is a lie, and this number is racist.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#202

Post by steve76 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #131

lsh123 wrote: post #121

Could we please stop calling “protesters” all the people looting jewelry stores, Target, Nike, etc? These are not protesters, these are looters. Police should use any means at their disposal to protect lives and property from looters and rioters.

Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? If you care so much, how about petition your local police force to dump their tear gas at the range and stop firing on peaceful protesters, turning a lot of sitting people into a riot.

He was on fentanyl, right? Elephant tranquilizer.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#203

Post by idealboy » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #138

beloch wrote: post #78

We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organize…

I've been on a few demos that turned violent. Among them the famous one when George Bush decided to pay a visit. In all cases , the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. I find it very odd that the polic…

Insightful reply. I marched yesterday and police fired rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd because we were blocking a non-essential intersection. On a Sunday.

We refused to leave and fortunately they left and let us have a peaceful march.

There doesn’t seem to be an interest in separating out the extreme minority that protest violently. There had been zero violence or destruction that day. A very well-behaved crowd exercising peaceful civil disobedience met by violence from police. In 2020.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#204

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

lsh123 wrote: post #184

calvinmorrison wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That stat becomes more useful when you take into account black Americans are roughly 15% of the population.

I am not sure that per-capita is the right metric. I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that. This is slightly old but has some interesting data on killings by race: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom... In these graphs you can see that total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted…

If you adjust by per-police encounter you've already shot yourself in the foot - we know that police stop black people at a far greater percentage than white:

https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#205

Post by somebrody » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #136

somebrody wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said many. Here's many cops being very racist and very violent: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAqt_gHgAxk/?utm_source=ig_embed https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-video-appears-show-...

In a large enough group, you can find "many" people who are whatever you want to generalize the whole group as. Using your logic, saying "many" of the protesters are looting and attacking police and innocent bystanders is completely true. You're picking words that you know are deliberately misleading to push an agenda.

That's a video of George Floyd being murdered by cops. Do you even know what we are talking about? The cops are violent. They could de-escalate instead of use violence. The agenda is talking about this article https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#206

Post by kuzimoto » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #162

stcredzero wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist" and it's inevitable that some dim person will come along and try to make a name for themselves by taking things fart…

> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard. You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.

> You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.

When you commit a crime and violate someone's freemdoms (the primary being right to life, liberty, property), you forfeit your own. When you kill someone and take their life, you steal or destroy property, you are now in debt to society. By living in a society you agree to its rules and when the rules are broken a price must be paid to deter others from breaking them.

Just because someone broke the rules, doesn't mean that everyone else gets to. The police officer was in the wrong. He was arrested, and charged. He will pay for what he did.

Be the change you want to see. Protest in a way that doesn't harm others. Many lost business and their livelihoods due to the destruction. What did they do to deserve that?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#207

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189

jaas wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hopefully you care about one much, much more than the other. They are not comparable in terms of needing discussion at this moment in history. (Edit: In the event that you honestly don't know which one is the more important topic, right now or pretty much any other time - police frequently murdering black people or some store windows getting smashed and merch stolen - it's the police murdering black people.)

I can't actually tell which one you're trying to say is more important right now. The case for "riots are the bigger problem right now" being that there is a whole lot more rioting and looting happening right now than there usually is, whereas the amount of police violence is currently significantly below the typical level (as a result of the coronavirus and everyone staying inside, but still).

We gotta make up lost time for when we made the mistake of thinking kneeling at football games was enough :)

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#208

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #196

scruple wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your motorcycle isn't your shelter and vandalism isn't typically complete destruction.

> Your motorcycle isn't your shelter Not seen news come out of people's homes destroyed. If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that - the cops shot out a couple people's eyeballs, but only after of course kicking off this whole thing by murdering black people with no consequences. There, that settles that.

If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that

No. The Gandhi movie termed that, "An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind."

How about we condemn evil, and try to make sure there's less evil in the world? Just because you say you're fighting evil, that doesn't nominate you to commit evil, especially if it's in the name of others without their consent. Especially if it's so you can coerce others into seeing things your particular way.

Isn't that what sparked the protests in the first place? Someone who committed evil, in the name of fighting evil?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#209

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #172

lsh123 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely and I don’t think that any reasonable person will have any problem with those. I can’t speak for all the places in US but my observations in San Jose (both personal and through FB/media) is that police was cool with peaceful protests. I saw a few times police and protesters hugging each other, doing fist bumps, etc.

From my experience a protest usually becomes exactly as violent as the police initiates. In every protest I’ve attended the police is always the most violent actor.

This is my experience as well, and that also is the conclusion drawn from this article we're all commenting on as well lol.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#210

Post by runarberg » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

lsh123 wrote: post #184

calvinmorrison wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That stat becomes more useful when you take into account black Americans are roughly 15% of the population.

I am not sure that per-capita is the right metric. I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that. This is slightly old but has some interesting data on killings by race: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom... In these graphs you can see that total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted…

That would still be a biased data. Minority populations are often disproportionately targeted for similar crimes.

Please stop using statistics to obfuscate your racism.