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George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

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Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#241

Post by onion2k »

marcell wrote: post #131

There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average! Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1]. There are millions and millions of daily interactions betw…

There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

I think the issue people are rioting about is that it's not a 1 in a billion chance for everyone. It's more like 1 in a quintillion for a rich white person, and 1 in a million for a person of color. That inequality stems from systemic racism in the police force. What you're saying is that it would be less of a problem if the deaths were evenly distributed across the population. That may be true, but I don't think many people would suggest it as a viable solution to the problem.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#242

Post by luckylion »

yowlingcat wrote: post #147

We might not be able to agree about everything, but can we at least agree that it's in everyone's best interest to have an increasing amount of the world have a generally secure, stable, unconditional personal access to food, housing, education, healthcare, and a labor market and can lives in a society with reasonable laws that they can practically obey? Even if we don't contribute to that personally, can we at least…

> Can we just admit to ourselves that a lot of global military expenditure is just a certain kind of make work?

Being the imperial power has vast benefits, do you think Rome ruled its provinces just so they had a way to spend money? Being the global power is literally worth money. It's hard to say how much, but I'm pretty sure it's larger than your military expenses.

That said, I'd love to see the US cut back, because your benefit comes at somebody else's cost.

If the net benefit to the US is positive however, do you believe the majority of people would be happy to work more to have the same standard of living, or the majority of well-off Americans would be happy to pay European level taxes to redistribute wealth within the US? I have sincere doubts on both fronts.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#243

Post by [deleted] »

lorthemar wrote: post #229

There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have…

[deleted]

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#244

Post by bnjms »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #191
spike021 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people. A reference I never expected to see on HN. It's insane, but then you realize that a significant portion of the US population _still_ only watches television news media and refuses to spend extra time looking at other sources, like Twitter.

Neither you or the parent poster explained what "Ba Sing Se" is. I quickly discovered that it is a reference to a city in "The last Airbender" [0]. I don't want to watch three seasons of it just to understand the reference. A very obscure reference might deserve an explanation to make the remaining 99.9% of the readers able to understand what you mean. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender#Ba_…

“There is no war in ba sing se” is the equivalent of the older phrase “we were never at war with Eurasia”. Which is now more obscure but likely better understood on HN.

OP is saying you’d need to be incredibly delusional to deny police are brutal and there’s a problem.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#245

Post by raxxorrax »

lorthemar wrote: post #229

There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have…

Especially compared to other countries, the US police seem to show quite the restrained considering most countries do not allow to carry weapons. It is a significant risk for safety of course. But if you look at the data, the often believed stereotype of US police being glorified cowboys seems to be quite untrue.

Frankly I am a bit cynical about politicians declaring the need for police reform. In my country protests are regularly "subdued" with excessive violence but the decision to handle it this way comes from the top, not from police officers.

I think clearer legal rules would help. Also maybe teaching people how to behave in case law enforcement conducts a search. The ability for surveillance and raiding homes should certainly be under intense scrutiny. Because I think the fear of decision makers is the main driver we might see some problems.

> I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have never seen more hatred in someone's eyes other than the cops that were beating up people.

That can be true for protesters and criminals too. I am aware of the irony of mentioning them in the same sentence. But the "psychology" study should show, that police is just often required to just do the dirty work and some might adjust to the crime they see in their daily routines. The systematic problems are programs like war on drugs or excessive militarization.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#246

Post by deepersprout »

lorthemar wrote: post #229

There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have…

> because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon

No it's not. Police in Europe is, on average, very kind. When they stop you, you don't have to be afraid of anything, and more often than not you stop them to ask for help, even if it's just to ask for directions.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#248

Post by tprice7 »

lorthemar wrote: post #229

There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

The rate of police killings is vastly higher in the US than any other Western country. So something is going on there that is not a universal phenomenon.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#249

Post by monadic2 »

krzyk wrote: post #234
jennyyang wrote: post #56

The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior. This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime. They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do. We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or rio…

Don't throw all police officers into one bucket. You have some outliers that are violent and the rest just does their job - keeping the city more safe. Also don't assume all cases of police officer shooting a person are cases of police brutality - this is for court to prove.

This is difficult when police literally have a union. If the union were acting in good faith they would be eager to learn & fire. Instead we get the “blue wall of silence” & turn otherwise “good” cops into ones indistinguishable from “bad” cops.

I mean there’s even a “good cop/bad cop” trope that’s got to be the best example of this kind of behavior—I can’t count how many times police are complicit with straight up torture and abuse of rights on Law & Order.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#250

Post by jagrsw »

camillomiller wrote: post #163
cm2187 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this document uses a very liberal definition of police brutality to say the least. In this document, a lot of references to "police arrests someone", "police pushes back a crowd or clears a street", etc...

Enjoy your alternative reality

I live in EU (where, generally, the police is trained to minimize-harm, rather than take-control-by-all-means), and I feel a bit the same about this list; a sizeable share of those videos show regular-ish riot control techniques IMO (pushing the crowd down the street etc.). Then, many show police overreaction or outright brutality.

But, then, why mix all of those in one big list and call them simply 'brutality'?

As much I sympathise with protestors and the cause, there's this not-very-wise tendency among this side of the conflict to portray themselves as 100% peaceful victims, and police as almost universally working for the forces of darkness.

So, I see it as a sad (yet, probably, temporary) tendency, that even the side which I'm sympathising with is feeling that treating me like a gullible person is OK - "The first casualty of War is Truth".

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