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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

#401

Post by newacct583 »

alkonaut wrote: post #350
_yt0l wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ~10 million arrests per year in the US. That google doc includes non-US cases as well (but is also limited by what’s caught on camera). Still, 0.0007% of arrests leading to a case like this doesn’t seem as horrible as the raw total in isolation.

That's one in 30 being arrested in the US every year. How does that compare to other countries? Is that something that could be improved? It sounds like a lot .

Exactly. I genuinely don't think US police are individually that much worse than they are in other industrial nations (though obviously they have abusable tools available that many other regimes don't). But the US does an extraordinarily large amount of policing. On average, a US resident is far, far more likely to be confronted by police in routine circumstances where they would be ignored in the rest of the world.

Which at the end of the day is what BLM is about, not so much the individual abuses. All that extra policing isn't distributed fairly. There are some communities in the US where the police are the kind of hands-off/come-only-when-called benefactors people expect, and there are some communities where they act more like a street gang controlling their territory, stopping and confronting anyone who seems likely to challenge their authority.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#402

Post by raxxorrax »

onion2k wrote: post #388
raxxorrax wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why draw the line on race? That just leads to divide and conquer between the poorest of a nation. Because > that might be something like defining how much to spend on schools based on the taxable income of residents. is purely economic discrimination. Frankly, I think the recent redefinition is lacking.

Then why draw the line on race? No one is drawing the line on race. No one is saying "Let's fix race issues and ignore gender and poverty issues." All of these problems need to be fixed. People are focusing on race right now because several people have been literally killed by police officers who have been charged with their murders.

> No one is drawing the line on race

Ever seen some racists pushing their views the last 5 years in the most reactionary fashion? Of course you are drawing the line on race, believe it or not. Ever noticed the talk about white privilege by some latte-slurping pseudo academics saturating any discussion on racism without necessary experience? Some people obviously did.

You can argue that there is an established academic jargon, but I would dispute its accuracy and perspective as well.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#403

Post by skissane »

fiblye wrote: post #129
rabidrat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last week I have been starting to realize that what you said is true in general, and not just of protests. It seems that police inflame and instigate most of the violent situations they are involved in. We are literally paying to be abused. We shouldn't be trying to get that money back; we shouldn't even be paying it in the first place.

One example is civil asset forfeiture. Police can and do stop people at random, see if they have “suspicious” valuables or a little too much money, and seize it. It’s virtually impossible to fight the case and it’s literally free money with zero consequence to the police. If you try to deny them their free money, they just arrest you. It’s legally condoned robbery. I’ve had friends who’ve been pulled over while passi…

> It’s virtually impossible to fight the case and it’s literally free money with zero consequence to the police.

This is a problem that could be easily greatly improved with legislation (and without requiring the more radical and controversial step of abolishing civil forfeiture entirely) - each state could legislate that civil forfeiture proceeds are to be paid into the general state budget not kept by the local police forces. This would remove much of the incentive for overuse of civil forfeiture.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#404

Post by [deleted] »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #338
pjc50 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't see it as a mistake. In fact, there are plenty of commentators downthread who don't see it as a mistake either. Years of demonisation and propaganda has gone into supporting the belief that as soon as somebody steps out of line it's necessary to beat them back into line, or shoot them if they do not comply. It's no more a mistake than the millions of people in US prisons: it's policy .

As a complete outsider to US reality, to me looking in, it seems like there is a real issue of training regarding de-escalating techniques. US police forces seem to have a very short training which, as far as I understand is not centrally vetted by any federal organism? And considering the short training time it seems to be mostly focused on tactical and firearm training. Compare that with European forces and you see…

[deleted]

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#405

Post by [deleted] »

gwd wrote: post #344
mimixco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are nearly all videos which are pretty self-explanatory (and horrifying).

OK, but let's contrast `greg_douchette thread` TGDs #1 and #2. #1 shows a woman wanding around holding a sign. A mounted policeman rides up behind her and just rides right over her. There's enough context to see that it's obviously completely unprovoked, and that either the officer did it on purpose, or there was criminal negligence in his training of how to handle a horse (and/or the training of the horse on how to…

[deleted]

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#406

Post by brigandish »

chillwaves wrote: post #177
brigandish wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bare assertion followed by a bare refusal isn't much help. If you would instead provide some information, that would be a big help to all those of us who do not live in Seattle.

If the statement is not factual, what else is there to say? All I know is Fox News has been caught photoshopping images and lying during their news broadcasts about these incidents.

> If the statement is not factual, what else is there to say?

What is actually occurring, as I requested. It was a hint that the reply at least wasn't up to the standard of HN.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#407

Post by fnord123 »

jpxw wrote: post #353
fnord123 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one UK example which is actually a counter example where the police allowed a statue to be destroyed instead of intervening and creating a potentially dangerous altercation.

Oh yeah, we should just let the rioters destroy public property. If the police just didn’t enforce the laws, there’d be no problems!

That's right. Depending on the law and the context, if the police don't enforce it then there are fewer problems. That's pretty much what Superintendent Andy Bennett said in the video.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#408

Post by kthejoker2 »

gwd wrote: post #344
mimixco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are nearly all videos which are pretty self-explanatory (and horrifying).

OK, but let's contrast `greg_douchette thread` TGDs #1 and #2. #1 shows a woman wanding around holding a sign. A mounted policeman rides up behind her and just rides right over her. There's enough context to see that it's obviously completely unprovoked, and that either the officer did it on purpose, or there was criminal negligence in his training of how to handle a horse (and/or the training of the horse on how to…

I watched close to 100 of them last night from Greg's thread, I saw very few "minor" ones like your #2, most involve people being shot / struck by batons, cars, gang tackled and beaten by multiple people ...

I'd put the ratio at something like 85/15.

Most of them are individual or small group acts that are completely unacceptable, fire them immediately sort of things (indiscriminately pepper spraying non-protestors walking down a public street, firing a tear gas canister into a person just standing around's chest, an insane amount of gang tackling, pummeling, and neck kneeling given the context of the protests)

Some are insidious but not necessarily criminal, just groups being tear gassed, military style shows of force, etc.

A small but real minority of vidsos are what I'd call products of anti police bias, ambiguous context, or (at least imo) felt out of context.

But also "verbally harassment" of police is largely Constitutionally protected, but yes, tons of videos of people being arrested, often violently, simply for using words.

As a whole, Greg's thread is terrifying. Our police training here is piss poor.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#409

Post by TomMarius »

butterknife wrote: post #392
TomMarius wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or police vs tekno dancers (remember CzechTek 2005?)

I was there. This is why I left the rotten country. They were using it as some free for all practice complete with tear gas grenades and a water cannon truck. They even brought a tank to show off.

All places seem to be similarly bad today. Where did you go?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#410

Post by ashtonkem »

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…

Where I live, the police costs half my cities budget. And that’s not even including contributions to the pension, to my knowledge.

It does not appear that this is money well spent.

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