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De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

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661–670 of 799 posts

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them. When you commit a crime and violate someone's freemdoms (the primary being right to life, liberty, property), you forfeit your own. When you kill someone and take their life, you steal or destroy property, you are now in debt to society. By living in a society you agre…

>primary being right to life, liberty, property), How does the "pursuit of happiness" become "property?"

I think a better question is how did "property" become "the pursuit of happiness"?

I believe that property rights are a core principal of American freedoms. Otherwise there would not be 'just compensation' for it in the constitution.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion. Seriously? They let him slowly kill a dude right next to him! This isn't a situation where he just whipped out a gun and instantly shot someone, that kind of thing would be hard to stop in time, they had literal minutes where they could've stepped in, and chose not to.

The end result is that he died, but it isn't clear if they all knew the man was being killed. It could very well be plain stupidity that they all thought "as long as he is speaking, he must be able to breathe".

If this is true and every office on the scene was that misinformed, it's still a systemic problem that requires a complete overhaul of the way police are trained and hired. This won't be fixed by punishing a few bad apples and then pretending the problem is solved.

What's the chances that of a sample of officers who responded, those 4 are the only ones who would have let this happen?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only after a police station was burned down. I feel like that's more coincidence than anything > This happens all over America, all the time. Thread is full of links or a quick hop on google will serve you in this regard I bet there is tons of anecdotal data to support any claim. There needs to be aggregated data that shows it's happening in high enough rates to be a "systemic" issue. > Would you merely "lose your…

ah, yes, we’ll use the data collected by the same institutions doing the extra judicial murders. surely they’ve been keeping great notes. and then finally we’ll be able to prove that racism is real to some commenter on hacker news.

I'm not saying there can't be police that are racist or even that racism isn't real. But if anyone claims systemic racism exists, they will have to provide more than anecdotal data to support that.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#664
post #168
post #78

We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organize…

I don't read that article as supporting the title that descalation leads to less violence. it does discuss evidence for escalation being correlated with more violence. but you can't blanket say that's causal. These are complex situations that don't follow rules. The mob consists of peaceful protesters, violent protesters and looters. people's membership in any of these groups can be multiple and shift over time. it's…

> it would be great if there was some sort of sedative gas to just slow people down enough to sap their will to continue.

It's called food. If the price of food hadn't just doubled (no sales, low unit prices sold out), and urban supermarkets didn't continue to have bare shelves, we wouldn't be seeing the same level of unrest.

I'm certainly not trying to downplay the longstanding grievances behind these protests. But there are orthogonal reasons causing them to happen at such scale.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#665
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are purposefully misreading the comment. There are ways to differentiate, mom with kid, old man vs. young guy in black clothes with a backpack. I think I know what you want to imply, but did you note the complete absence of race or colour in OPs comment? And alos the completely different circumstances, crowd control vs. standard law enforcement?

I am not purposefully misreading. I am reading. I was gobsmacked by how ironic the proposal was and felt compelled to point it out. To show that this stuff is hard even when folks are entirely well-meaning. I did notice the absence of race or color and you will note my comment does not include any notion of race. You added race. I did note judging by appearance. You added age, out of nowhere. Using appearance to trea…

It reads to be that you’re being purposely obtuse. Any security is going to take into account the appearance of a person. Undoubtedly you understand what that means in practice in America—-that appearance has been boiled down to just race: “be on the lookout for a black man.” It’s lazy and should be called out so that police are forced to do work and learn the difference between a non-violent angry person and a violent angry person in a crowd.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards. Voting and promoting change is what has not worked. Economic damage is likely to be the only thing that's going to persuade the elites to throw the working class a bone. You're witnessing the anger of the masses in its most pure form here.

> Economic damage Exactly how is destroying low income housing, small businesses (many of them minority owned) and peoples places of employment going to persuade "the elites"?

I'm not promoting or condoning violence. But Apple shut down their retail stores over this, so it definitely is impacting "the elites" to some extent.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s no wonder that the protests over the last 20 years haven’t worked to garner more support considering that those who do participate are treated with violent retaliation. Maybe if those of us begging to be heard were allowed to speak, and scream and chant, it would inspire more people to unite, organize and vote.

Occupy Wall Street was not meant with violence and it was huge headline grabbing protests that went on for weeks. It didn’t do anything meaningful.

I'd say it raised a lot of awareness, which is exactly what protests are for. Protests don't create laws, they raise awareness. Based on that awareness, people vote and change laws.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the MLK of 2020? I want to see someone who can go beyond their anger and have a plan and lead .

You remember a few years back when some athletes took knelt during the national anthem? And they were told to "shut up and dribble" and the president said they were sons of bitches and should be fired? [1] There's your peaceful leadership right there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_protests_...

If you're black in the US, there's just no correct way to protest. Street protests get painted as riots (and often turn into riots due to excessive police response fanning the flames), quiet personal protests are claimed to be disrespectful (since when is kneeling a sign of disrespect?), speak up and they get told to shut up. There's no way to win.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion. Seriously? They let him slowly kill a dude right next to him! This isn't a situation where he just whipped out a gun and instantly shot someone, that kind of thing would be hard to stop in time, they had literal minutes where they could've stepped in, and chose not to.

The end result is that he died, but it isn't clear if they all knew the man was being killed. It could very well be plain stupidity that they all thought "as long as he is speaking, he must be able to breathe".

Do you believe that kneeling on another human being’s neck for 9 minutes is not dangerous?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well documented. For example, in this interview with a police officer: https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article107870345/Wir-werde... > "Ich weiß, dass wir bei brisanten Großdemos verdeckt agierende Beamte, die als taktische Provokateure, als vermummte Steinewerfer fungieren, unter die Demonstranten schleusen. Sie werfen auf Befehl Steine oder Flaschen in Richtung der Polizei, damit die dann mit der Räumung beg…

I don't doubt there are provocateurs, but I doubt this constitutes the majority of the protesting.

The majority of protesters are not provocateurs of course. You just need a few of those, or even one, to justify a brutal police response against peaceful protesters.
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