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Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

theguardian.com

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Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#281

Post by thaw13579 »

fiatmoney wrote: post #273
thaw13579 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after that there was the FHA: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-raci... Yes, "stuff" continues to happen, for better or worse, but it's hard to believe that the state of housing is independent of bigotry given the evidence.

And those policies ended 50 years ago! Liberals have been in charge of housing policy for literally decades.

And yet, race is still today a factor that can be quantified wrt housing:

https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releas...

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#282

Post by mcguire »

raldi wrote: post #64
true_religion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly. In any case, that makes it to trial, the police by default have always claimed that a weapon was pointed at them, and the suspect refused to cooperate. It's the only reasonable defense, and plays out better than the more realistic "cooperation wasn't instantaneous, we argued, and then my fellow officer started shooting for unknown reasons so I automatically shot too".

In this case, there are multiple bystanders who testify they say Nieto pointing the weapon at people and the dog: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Man-killed-by-S-F-police...

The only witness described as seeing the Taser drawn was the owner of the dog that had just threatened Nieto.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#283

Post by williamcotton »

tptacek wrote: post #271
williamcotton wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mission and Bernal are very real places indeed. I heard a man gunned down by the cops just six months ago on a construction site on my block. Four years ago someone got shot execution style on the sidewalk 10 doors down from my apartment. That same apartment still had three bullets lodged in the walls and ceiling. Two years before that three people got blown away in a pizza restaurant underneath another apartment…

It sounds like a hard life out there in Bernal Heights.

Tom, I seriously can't figure out why you think that I'm trying to show people that "I'm hard" or something. I'm not. I'm a total wimp. I've had very few issues living in the Mission and Bernal because I keep my head down and mind my own business. Whatever picture you're trying to paint of me is completely irrelevant.

The point I'm making is that if you're in a neighborhood where there happens to be a history of gang violence you should know that calling the cops more often than not just escalates the tension and creates more opportunities for unneeded violence.

If different cultures are going to learn to live together peacefully we need to learn how to do so without getting the cops involved. How different would this have been if these people had just talked to Alex instead of making assumptions? That's the whole fucking point of the article. Eric Snow isn't in San Francisco to get to know people like Alex. He's here to make money and he doesn't know about nor care about what was going on in the Mission or Bernal before he moved to town.

And for fuck's sake, these are real murders I'm talking about and they rattle me to the bone. I'm a sensitive dude.

Seriously, follow these simple instructions for a much better life:

https://punchdrunktwolves.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/stop_s...

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#285

Post by raldi »

mcguire wrote: post #282
raldi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, there are multiple bystanders who testify they say Nieto pointing the weapon at people and the dog: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Man-killed-by-S-F-police...

The only witness described as seeing the Taser drawn was the owner of the dog that had just threatened Nieto.

Plus four police officers. And there's also this testimony:

According to San Francisco court records, Nieto's former friend Arthur Vega described a March 5 incident in which Nieto had used a stun gun.

In a March 14 request for a restraining order, Vega said Nieto shocked him four times in the back in front of his wife and 3-year-old son. Vega said he had been picking up his son when Nieto appeared and forced himself into his wife's car. Vega said Nieto had screamed profanities. He and his wife got away, but two days later he saw what he believed to be Nieto's car following him.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Man-killed-by-S-F-police...

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#286

Post by tptacek »

williamcotton wrote: post #283
tptacek wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a hard life out there in Bernal Heights.

Tom, I seriously can't figure out why you think that I'm trying to show people that "I'm hard" or something. I'm not. I'm a total wimp. I've had very few issues living in the Mission and Bernal because I keep my head down and mind my own business. Whatever picture you're trying to paint of me is completely irrelevant. The point I'm making is that if you're in a neighborhood where there happens to be a history of gang…

I don't think you're trying to be hard. I think you're trying to rep San Francisco as hard, to sell a narrative of the city as a place so beset by crime and class conflict† that responsible residents all follow a code. Knowing that code, any responsible white dude should know that letting his dog off the leash could end in someone losing their life.

What I have a problem with are stories with "good guys" and "bad guys". Very few stories are really like that, despite what Solnit so obviously wants you to believe. There's just tragedy layered on top of tragedy. There are injustices to be found, but they're probably not the ones you want --- the injustice isn't "white dude didn't follow the sacred white dude code", but rather "we give all the police firearms and put them in situations where they'd need to be superhuman to forestall tragedy", or "our care for the mentally ill is fucking appalling".

I don't care why Eric Snow is in San Francisco. He's a racist gun enthusiast. I'm never going to be his friend. But I also don't feel like I have any right to tell him where to live, and I don't feel like you do either.

And he sure as shit didn't kill anyone that day.

I'm "Thomas", by the way. :)

† We can both name cities that are really like that.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#287

Post by mcguire »

raldi wrote: post #285
mcguire wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only witness described as seeing the Taser drawn was the owner of the dog that had just threatened Nieto.

Plus four police officers. And there's also this testimony: According to San Francisco court records, Nieto's former friend Arthur Vega described a March 5 incident in which Nieto had used a stun gun. In a March 14 request for a restraining order, Vega said Nieto shocked him four times in the back in front of his wife and 3-year-old son. Vega said he had been picking up his son when Nieto appeared and forced himself…

The previous incident seems irrelevant to the behavior of the actors in the situation in question.

I personally have problems with eyewitness testimony in general. Uncorroborated testimony of the defendants...

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#288

Post by curun1r »

whatok wrote: post #243
tryitnow wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Sorry, Evan Snow's recklessness in not getting his dog under control resulted in a innocent person getting shot, and cops whose careers are probably ruined. Snow deserves a big chunk of blame here. It's simple folks: if you're not highly confident that your dog will behave itself For those of you who still harbor sympathy for Snow, do a Google search for people who have been mauled by out of control dogs. Now S…

I'm pretty sure that pointing a device that appeared to be a gun at a group of cops after ignoring their requests for him to put his hands up had a bit more of an impact than the dog in this case.

One of the key assertions of the story is that he had no reason to believe that the people requesting he show is hands were police officers. It was dark and they hadn't properly identified themselves or used sirens when arriving at the scene.

We can't know the state of mind of the victim, but there's every possibility that he believed he was pointing his tazer at a group of assailants. It's incumbent on police to properly identify themselves before making demands of someone they expect to comply.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#289

Post by tptacek »

curun1r wrote: post #288
whatok wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that pointing a device that appeared to be a gun at a group of cops after ignoring their requests for him to put his hands up had a bit more of an impact than the dog in this case.

One of the key assertions of the story is that he had no reason to believe that the people requesting he show is hands were police officers. It was dark and they hadn't properly identified themselves or used sirens when arriving at the scene. We can't know the state of mind of the victim, but there's every possibility that he believed he was pointing his tazer at a group of assailants. It's incumbent on police to pro…

There was one eyewitness to the shooting. Their testimony contradicted physical evidence in multiple ways (from the location of the shooting, to the number of police cars that were present.) That same witness was forced to admit on the stand that their recall was compromised by alcoholism.

The same eyewitness is the basis for claims Nieto's hands were in his pocket when he was shot. But Nieto's hands were wounded by the shooting, and his pockets were not damaged.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#290

Post by cgriswald »

foldr wrote: post #277
cgriswald wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hacker News" is not made up of a single homogenous group of people who all think the same things. That should be obvious by the commentary in this post. There is much debate and discussion. But even if the majority of posters find Swartz to be a martyr and Nieto to be "basically [at] fault", it does not necessarily mean the same groups of individuals feel both these ways, much less that racism is the reason, as you…

The point that the hacker news community is not homogenous is too obvious to be worth making. It doesn't imply that it's not possible to make generalizations about how it reacts to certain events. Your second paragraph illustrates my point. In the case of Nieto, you're coming up with excuses for the police; in the case of Swartz, you're coming up with excuses for Swartz. There is no objective reason for excusing the…

Your assumptions about both cases and your preconceived notions of racism have lead to you faulty conclusions. The Swartz case was about the response fitting the crime. The Nieto case is about police officers ostensibly fearing for their own safety and the safety of other.

Had Nieto's weapon been holstered and had he been arrested, I might have been just as critical about the prosecutorial response as I am in the Swartz case. And had Swartz come out guns blazing rather than taking his own life, I would not have faulted police for responding with deadly force.

Your generalization is faulty because you've trivialized the relevant details away.

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