Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

trisquel.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 284 posts

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#251

Post by victim2 »

gwright wrote: post #160
kordless wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why shouldn't they? This is a leading question, which is to say it's not a question that can be answered in a rational way. If one desires removal of choice in the conversation, they may answer it irrationally. > Look at the case of the murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The use of a separate case of an individual having choice removed, or individuals in a group removing choice for an individual, applied to…

Seems like 'provocative' and 'provocateur' are reasonable descriptions of this behavior and this person.

The police crossed the street in order to disrupt recording and interact with Chris, not the other way around. Chris crossed over to a sidewalk within the east and west bound lanes of traffic. He remained across from the checkpoint and the west bound lanes of traffic (though there was no traffic of significance at the time due to the time of day and activists successfully re-routing 90% of traffic much further down the street).

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#252

Post by Asooka »

chronic940 wrote: post #229
stale2002 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It improves policing because now police know that they will always be watched. And any excessive force or mistake that they engage in will be trending on YouTube in under an hour. So you better be damn careful.

> And any excessive force or mistake that they engage in will be trending on YouTube in under an hour. So you better be damn careful. And what's the best outcome, huh? They get out on temporary administrative leave? Ha. Go ahead and record the police. They don't care. We on HN don't care. And you won't care after a week.

If you start applying violence you'll be no better than them. Batman fights killers, but he himself doesn't kill. Be like Batman.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#253

Post by EGreg »

maxerickson wrote: post #246
EGreg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Well it's simple: we agree that violent encounters are rare. And we presumably agree that it's not the incidence rate but that times the cost of being shot that informs your actions. So the actions can very well be changed by even a 1% chance per encounter of something like that. Would you fly with a 1% chance of death? How would that affect the economy?

Yeah, but what's the real chance per encounter? There's 600-700 thousand sworn officers in the US. Assume they interact with 1 person per day each (they aren't on duty everyday, they probably interact with more people than that on duty days). So it's easily in the ballpark of 200 million encounters each year. There's less than 200 officers killed in the line of duty each year. You are sort of saying that the police a…

1. First of all not all police officers are in the field every day, many have desk jobs. And not every interaction is of the type that could provoke an altercation. Going out to the scene of a fender bender is unlikely to lead to a shooting. In all the above situations you'll find the police quite calm and courteous, not yelling for people to "get in the ground" or "put your hands where I can see em". However, at traffic stops, raids and random unexpected encounters on the street, the situation is different. Now the number is probably closer to 10 million encounters per year than 200 million. So now divide by 200 cops shot a year and you get a 1 in 50,000 chance per encounter.

2. The statistics of a cop being shot are after they have done all the preventative steps of avoidance, pre emptive aggression and assertion of authority. The relevant question would be, what if cops would always enter a situation calmly trying to de escalate the situation, without clear instructions to "get out of the car" or "drop on the floor" and without guns drawn. What would the rate of cop shootings be then? Suppose it goes up to 1 in 5,000. Would you as a cop be ok with such chances?

3. The trade offs are being tested all the time here and there, and the institutions usually react by erring on the side of cop safety every time something happens or could happen. Perception of fear leads to extra training to "take control of the situation" given that anyone could be armed. My point was: now multiply the 5,000 by 100 and we are back to 500,000 which can have huge policy implications and make cops institutionally nicer. That would change the NORM. Which you can see across the board - I made a prediction that amount of ranged weapons per capita in a population is going to be strongly correlated with police brutality.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#254

Post by dragonwriter »

tomschlick wrote: post #249
dragonwriter wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Assault Rifle" is a defined term as well which is basically the same as "machine gun". The usual definition is quite distinct from the usual definition of machine gun. > Both require the weapon to be "select fire" which means it can be set to fire more than one round per trigger pull. Actually, no; the term is "selective fire", and while that's part of the usual definition of an assault rifle (which typically have…

Agreed on all points. I just tried to keep my response concise for the "non gun people" here. And for the last point I know states have defined the term individually. However the ATF has never issued a letter defining "assault weapon" like they have for other grey area weapon classifications. So it's just a hodgepodge of messy rules random states have (mostly based on cosmetic features).

I don't know anyone who has ever used a firearm who, outside of the context of political debate on gun control, would describe butt stocks, pistol grips, foregrips, attachment points for accessories, grenade or flare launchers, or detachable box magazines (which are many of the typical features used in determining "assault weapons") as cosmetic features rather than ones with a substantial impact on use and function.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#255

Post by Rebelgecko »

user5994461 wrote: post #240
tomschlick wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Judging by the "hundreds of rounds", it might have been modified to automatic or it's an old model. Most likely not, you can empty 30 round mags in 15 seconds or so.

Correct me if I am wrong but this weapon doesn't come with 30 round mags and these mags are not easily accessible for sale.

In California, where this took place, we're allowed to have 30 round magazines for a few more months. Even if he only had 10 round magazines, reloading really doesn't take that long (even with a bullet button)

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#256

Post by sctb »

NoGravitas wrote: post #51
throwaway999b wrote: post #18

There are very few details in this forum post, just some nonspecific mentions of an individual recording a police checkpoint of some kind. What type of checkpoint? Why did this person feel it necessary to record the police? Why did a confrontation start? What were the circumstances of the escalation? In general, if you interfere with the police (even if you disagree with whatever it is they're doing) you can expect s…

It's amazing how quickly posts like this bring out the bootlickers. Are you employed by a law enforcement agency, or a PR firm working for one?

Hacker News is not for personal attacks. Please don't violate the guidelines by calling names like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#257

Post by shallot_router »

stale2002 wrote: post #220
simonh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And why shouldn't they? Because one person (cop or not, doesn't matter) breaking the law over here doesn't in any way justify unreasonable harassment of another person (cop or not) over there? Let me put it another way, how is this behavior intended to improve policing in America, and do you think it has a chance of doing so?

It improves policing because now police know that they will always be watched. And any excessive force or mistake that they engage in will be trending on YouTube in under an hour. So you better be damn careful.

The question is if this guy is merely monitoring police, or also actively trying to harass them or interfere with what they're doing.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#258

Post by oblio »

ythn wrote: post #244
oblio wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Are you sure about the correlation between the two? 2. Off the top of my head, the UK, France, Sweden, etc. have been democratic since at least the end of the 19th century.

> Are you sure about the correlation between the two? No, but can you point to any effective tyrannies where the citizens can freely buy and own guns? It seems as though a universal prerequisite to tyranny is gun control. > Off the top of my head, the UK, France, Sweden, etc. have been democratic since at least the end of the 19th century. That's not very long. It turns out that long term democracies are really hard…

The best defense against tyranny is an educated populated, not guns.

Look at what's happening in the US right now, despite it being brimming with guns.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#259

Post by ythn »

oblio wrote: post #258
ythn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure about the correlation between the two? No, but can you point to any effective tyrannies where the citizens can freely buy and own guns? It seems as though a universal prerequisite to tyranny is gun control. > Off the top of my head, the UK, France, Sweden, etc. have been democratic since at least the end of the 19th century. That's not very long. It turns out that long term democracies are really hard…

The best defense against tyranny is an educated populated, not guns. Look at what's happening in the US right now, despite it being brimming with guns.

I agree. But just because education is the best defense doesn't mean it should be the only defense. Guns are literally the very last resort to prevent tyranny after all other safeguards have failed.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#260

Post by oblio »

ythn wrote: post #259
oblio wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best defense against tyranny is an educated populated, not guns. Look at what's happening in the US right now, despite it being brimming with guns.

I agree. But just because education is the best defense doesn't mean it should be the only defense. Guns are literally the very last resort to prevent tyranny after all other safeguards have failed.

They come with a ton of downsides... I'm European, I don't think that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

If my country is at the point where there's enough popular support for a tyrannical government to take root, things are already lost. In 1989 in Romania not even our generals had the guts to shoot our own citizens, despite being drilled for it during 40 years of very oppressive Communist dictatorships. Why? Because they knew that the government didn't really have popular support.

Your Turkish example isn't fully representative since Turkey hasn't ever had a stable democratic regime for more than ~15 years. Even Atatürk, who was a great man in most regards, was more of a benevolent dictator for life than a fully democratic figure head.

Post reply on HN