No but I think a lot of people take for granted law enforcement in modern society — things can get ugly fast when there is no one to uphold the law
Of course. We all should be thankful there are people -- law enforcement included -- who will put their lives on the line to protect society.
However, as cliched as this is, with great power comes great responsibility. And there are those, especially in law enforcement, who take their power for granted and use it to harm and, in some cases, kill people.
A database that lists the officers responsible for force by name, frequency and race. Resulting in neat graphs that strongly suggests that police violence is caused by two factors: individuals and/or race. Police brutality is a serious problem and data like this should be available, but several things here are (maybe intentionally) provocative: 1. Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ulti…
yeah this is not good. Being a police officer, putting your life on the line to protect citizens... the guy showing up at your place at 3 am to deal with a crazed meth addict neighbour next door.. doing this dangerous task for many years. To have armchair 'law enforcement' experts in each living room of the nation linking to an officers behaviour on twitter, not having the context of the case, the background and prev…
Are you saying that cops are and should be thugs? I think police officers are better than that and should be held to a higher standard than that. There are plenty of good cops out there, but they are very much not advantaged by systems which protect the worst offenders, encourage silence, and discourage accountability. If you think cops are thugs then by all means, encourage a lack of accountability, and they'll become exactly that. Our communities should have higher standards, and the police themselves should have higher standards as well.
>"race is a social construct" seems strange. It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes. Racism can be physically dangerous if 'race' is associated with ethics (be it high or low), such as in this database. But mainly, racism is just stupid (i.e. it…
You cannot simultaneously claim that racism is a social construct and it has no relevance in analyzing social behaviors. I doubt anyone here disagrees with you on the biological reality of race and how it has far more to do with social convention than anything else. But that _does not_ mean it can be discounted in this kind of analysis.
> You cannot simultaneously claim that racism is a social construct
Where do I claim that racism is a social construct? I said 'race' (not racism).
>"race is a social construct" seems strange. It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes. Racism can be physically dangerous if 'race' is associated with ethics (be it high or low), such as in this database. But mainly, racism is just stupid (i.e. it…
> It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes. With this in mind, are police not agents working on behalf of a society? Funded largely (if not solely) by members of that society? You don't have to look much further than "blue lives matter" to see that…
Agree racism in policing is a real and core issue. Racism in other walks of life is a real problem too, for example in journalism or social studies: i.e. when any kind of (un)ethical behavior is directly linked to 'race', either expressly or insidiously implied which was my point. The obfuscation that takes place here is that the cause of police violence is reduced down to 2 factors (race and individuals), at the expense of such things as actual racism, individual drug abuse, a propensity in police stations to pick that same sturdy officer for difficult and potentially dangerous situations, general militarization of the police, a culture steeped in violence, and a cultural tendency to see crime (any problem really) as something you solve by bombing it out of existence. Etc.
No but I think a lot of people take for granted law enforcement in modern society — things can get ugly fast when there is no one to uphold the law
Of course. We all should be thankful there are people -- law enforcement included -- who will put their lives on the line to protect society. However, as cliched as this is, with great power comes great responsibility. And there are those, especially in law enforcement, who take their power for granted and use it to harm and, in some cases, kill people.
Yes that’s great . I don’t know how I came off as suggesting they should be thugs in the prev post . We should rather have a separate org, a police watchdog that has access to the footage and actively monitors rather than give public access to officers actions and personal info. That org should also have access to offender info and police info so they can interpret each case accordingly
>The problem with isolating the 'race' factor is that it promotes race hate How is your stance any different from the common and absurd refrain that discussing racism is racist? We can't discuss racism without looking at race.
I'm not familiar with that refrain, and agree it sounds absurd. FWIW I really do believe we need to discuss racism, however not with racist arguments.
I don't think anyone here will disagree with you on that either. But I fail to see the relevance of that in the context of this article.
>Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ultimately might threaten their personal safety. As soon as: * The blue code of silence collapses. * Judges and politicians stop covering for cop brutality and protecting cop killers. * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. I'll maybe start to buy this line of reasoning. It's an insult to the memory of every unar…
> * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. How is this at all relevant to whether a police officer deserves privacy? Yes, their fatality rate is around half that of a trash collector. Since when was HN anti-privacy? You can use data like this to analyze and criticize the system , but I see no reason why the officers' identities would be helpful for any legitimate purpose, especia…
Hello, I've never commented on Hacker News before so please forgive me if I am breaking any rules, but I worked on this project. Let me know if you have any questions about our process. - Erin Petenko, data reporter for NJ.com