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

Afroman found not liable in defamation case

nypost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 798 posts

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#341

Post by dec0dedab0de »

voxic11 wrote: post #167
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity just protects the police, and other government officials personally. If there is grounds for a lawsuit then he could still sue the government that employs the police department. I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going…

The government has sovereign immunity which is why you usually have to sue the people involved rather than the government directly.

I didn't know about sovereign immunity, but I just looked it up and there are exceptions to it. I think this one in particular could fall under a civil rights violation.

People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.

Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.

On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#342

Post by john_strinlai »

qup wrote: post #307
notepad0x90 wrote: post #294

Is there anyone who isn't super rich who feels safe in america anymore? Is it the same in other countries, can cops just raid you for no reason, or abduct people (ICE) and that's not the biggest story in the country?

[flagged]

ice has literally abducted citizens with no criminal record. those people are victims.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#343

Post by breakyerself »

kej wrote: post #313
breakyerself wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths. It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer d…

>interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths. Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.

Upon closer inspection it seems it's more a result of decreasing accident rates than increasing homicide rates although that is a factor lately.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#344

Post by mothballed »

maest wrote: post #328
qup wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hardly make stricter gun laws; we have a right to them in this country. It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.

Maybe that right is not worth the trade off

Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty.

Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#345

Post by tehjoker »

ddellacosta wrote: post #311
amiga386 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're implying "An establishment calling itself a 'newspaper of record' can be expected to have high standards, such as correctly reporting dates, and I'll hold them to that" If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.

Myself and most other programmers I know have at least once (more like 100 times) had the experience where you can't figure something out in some code you've been staring at for an hour, then another person comes along and immediately sees an obvious glaring error that you missed. I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."

Newspapers used to have copyeditors for this kind of thing. I thought NYT still did.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#346

Post by tt24 »

defrost wrote: post #284
tt24 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.

Not the claim made. > Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not. Versus your phrasing that any given cop is

Is there evidence to support the claim that, more often than not, a given cop is a white supremacist?

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#347

Post by tt24 »

alpha_squared wrote: post #303
tt24 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.

I've attempted to take your responses as made in good faith twice now, despite evidence to the contrary in other threads. I understand if this topic is uncomfortable for you, either because it challenges your world view or because it feels personally invalidating. It appears as though you're looking for one very specific statistic or logical vulnerability in what others are sharing to refute the overall claim. Howeve…

Sorry, just looking for evidence that supports the claim that was made. So far there isn’t any.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#349

Post by tverbeure »

EQmWgw87pw wrote: post #301
cortesoft wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife. However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun? I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a…

Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?

In most civilized societies, there's an extremely high chance that somebody wielding a knife doesn't have a gun.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#350

Post by NikolaNovak »

mindcrime wrote: post #323
LPisGood wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.

> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth. Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way t…

Can you tell me more?

As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?

Post reply on HN