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

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#211

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

briefcomment wrote: post #188

komali2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change does not require looting and beatings does it? Just how long do you think the civil rights movement has been a thing? 50 years of doing things the way the white people demanded - peaceful protests, sit ins, black political leaders. Yup, it helped, it went down, but it never solved the problem, and I see no indication that it would have on a reasonable time scale. And the whole time you've got people STILL sa…

They will not listen just because a couple thousand people break windows and light things on fire. They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state. The only thing that may work is to get everyone to use their voice. Historically, probably only a tiny fraction of the population have used their voice. The vast majority of us need to stop being silent.

> They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state.

Let them try...

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#212

Post by grahamburger » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

lsh123 wrote: post #137

komali2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

What that statistic shows is that even if some white people can't bring themselves to get angry about police murdering black people they should at least be angry about police also murdering white people.

What that statistic definitely doesn't mean is that people shouldn't be angry about police murdering black people.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#213

Post by ooobit2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 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…

Here's an idea, for whatever it's worth: Address the incentive to riot instead of attempting to assign full control and liability to one element over another.

For all the obvious, on-the-nose proof that reactive states differ from proactive states, I find it very odd that people are still folding their arms and brandishing smug expressions for their equivalently useless ideas as soon as someone else's idea yields a critical failure.

Critical thinking is not an art, nor a science, nor difficult. It just requires someone to maintain a consistent curiosity and skepticism for the utility of information. If someone tells you cats climb trees, you should automatically think, Not all cats can climb trees and How useful is this to me?. And if you have a cat, you might sequentially think, Do I have any trees that my cat could climb? and How much of a tree should I trim to prevent my cat from climbing it? and maybe Do I have a way to retrieve my cat from one of my trees? and so on and so forth. So, someone please explain why, given the seriousness everyone attributes to the lockdowns, to police brutality, etc. Just... why are you doing the equivalent of hearing that cats can climb trees, and then you think, My cat would never climb my trees, because my trees aren't cat-climbable trees, so that makes my cat, my trees and myself better than other cats, trees, and cat owners?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#214

Post by runarberg » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #157

lsh123 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

Why are you linking non-normalized statistics? It is such a basic error to not adjust per-capita that part of me doubts how much you care about the truth.

It is because they are lying. They are trying to obfuscate the truth to hide a racist agenda.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#215

Post by asenna » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

I highly recommend checking out Trevor Noah's recent video on the protests - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4Bg8mu2aM

He mentions how society is at its core a contract on how to engage with one another. Everything we do is in some form conforming to that contract and when this contract is violated (like the stores being looted and vandalized), it angers you.

However, to the people who're really affected by this issue at the very bottom of the society - they feel they're being ripped off in the contract and are being cheated every single day. After a breaking point they can feel like they don't really have to adhere to the contract anymore themselves when no one else sticks to it in their oppressed world.

PS - Please note, he's obviously not justifying the lootings, mainly tries to make sense of it and how we got to where we are right now.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#216

Post by silverreads » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 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).

11,000 claims of abuse in the last 3 days just in seattle is low?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#217

Post by csommers » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

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.

Shooting people over Chinese made Gucci shoes is idiotic. Grow a spine.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#218

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #182

tcbawo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a police officer is a difficult, thankless, dangerous job, yet critical for a functional society. You don't get the same resources, respect, or pension of the military. If you are let go/fired, you have little chance of finding something comparable close by. It's not healthy for the psyche to be put into harm's way for an entire career span. There is probably a lot of untreated PTSD going on. It's not surprisin…

Police are praised as heros and, when you count the pension, make 5x more money than the typical immunology PhD student (without whom we would likely literally be entering a new multi-century dark age). Lots of people do hard society-critical jobs that take an emotional/physical toll at wages far below that of a typical officer. Only one of those occupations has a serious violence problem. I can’t even imagine a worl…

I couldn't believe when they found the salary of the San Jose policeman that shouted "fuck you bitch" at a protester it turned out to be something like $250,000. Like holy fuck I thought bayarea frontend engineers were paid a lot, god damn. Dude looked 25 years old!

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#219

Post by daenz » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #19

Imagine being a cop and having to deal with stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4L97igDjY They literally save this man's life and he kills the guy who saved his life. Cops don't work in a safe space. Years of working in a violent and hateful environment must take a serious toll on them.

I like to share this video with critics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfi3Ndh3n-g to show how police have to be ready to go from 0 to 100 within seconds in order to not be killed. Notice the first thing the activist notices when he's done with the simulation: "I never realized how importance compliance is."

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#220

Post by briandear » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 3:18 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…

> I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction.

I have been in the middle of protests when I worked for Reuters and the difference between peaceful and violent is very tiny. I was in the no-man’s land between the KKK and the New Black Panthers in the wake of the James Byrd Jr. lynching and it went from frenetic but peaceful to riot in 8.3 seconds. Actual combat is a a lot less ambiguous and disorienting. Not defending police or condemning them, but when an airborne brick heads your way, it’s a pretty tall order to expect immediate and accurate identification of friend or foe.

It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. The Charlottesville, VA protest by the extreme right wing however is a counterexample — but it’s an exception that proves the rule. The Tea Party protests were never violent. In almost every large-scale protest that has left and extreme left wing elements, looting, fires, and violence is a foregone conclusion. It’s historical record.

It’s really tragic because pretty much all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death, but as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts, then a large portion of the population now starts discussing and being angry about that rather than the core issue.