Live data from Hacker News

De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

fivethirtyeight.com

791–799 of 799 posts

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work. Volunteer. Take care of your family. Vote. It's a bit of a bad timing for protests right now - easily exploited, will likely result in negative change.

perhaps ask the US police if they could kill unarmed black males at more appropriate times maybe?

It is not a good idea to protest on the streets right now. It is selfish to protest on the streets. First - it spreads COVID. Which kills people in thousands. Second - it prolongs shelter-in-place and associated damage. Third, likely increases the possibility of re-election of the current president.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a disease killing more people than malaria despite the massive lockdowns , there is no legitimate way to have a conversation. And in case you think 'yeah but the lock downs don't work' look at Vietnam: they are the first country to have local transmission outside China, and they started anti-pandemic measures in December. Results? 95 million people, 329 caught the virus, 0 deaths as of today. Not 329 th…

> there is no legitimate way to have a conversation really, as in having that conversation would bring it into your home??? i dont know where this intolerant shutdown ofconversation even among the educated folks is going to lead us...

There are things that it is pointless to discuss. Fire is hot, water is wet, covid19 is one of the worst diseases to hit the world in 50 years and lockdowns and isolation are an absolute necessity to prevent it becoming an even bigger tragedy.

Of course there are people in the world who, genuinely or out of other interests, try to contest all sorts of things. The earth is flat, man made global warming is not happening, the earth is 6000 years old etc. That doesn't mean we need to seriously entertain these ideas just because some people do so, or claim to do so.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#793
post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mention protesters, I'm talking about the huge amount of people destroying, looting, beating other people in most cities.

It is not a huge amount, and it is not happening in most cities. Take a random example here in California, probably 50 people looted Best Buy this weekend? For a city of 70k? Vast minority. In a country that has 20k cities. There is no way more than 10k cities are experiencing looting. There is “more than I would actually like”, and there is actual huge/most. It simply isn’t as bad as you make out to be.

I don't know what's your number reference from. I watched several videos from cali and i counted +50 people looting all kinds of stores.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete nonsense - if you believe for one second that those “reports” were legitimate or that this was a genuine public safety measure you’re an absolute rube and a mark. This was just an elected official pandering to his electoral base of suburban fascists by validating their heroic-murder fantasies.

Citizens who kill looters are heroes. That part is not a fantasy.

No, people who murder people over property are murderers

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. thats very interesting. The difference seems to be in initial reactions of the police to peaceful protests. With lockdown protesters, police showed up in soft clothes and didn't initiate vi…

> much more incisive and dangerous to the government. Why the "government"? I don't think the police automatically defend the interests of the currently-elected politicians. In the absence of distinguishing evidence, I assign much higher priors to them defending their own interests.

"the government" is much more than simply the currently-elected politicians. The currently elected politicians simply operate certain positions within the government.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, humans have a lot of built-in reactions that are very hard to resist in the face of certain stimuli. It's hard enough to get people to talk peaceably in an online forum where we aren't smelling pheromones, feeling an adrenaline rush in reaction to physical threats to our well being, etc. It's vastly harder to stay calm and behave "competently" in the face of that sort of thing. My ex was career military. On…

This is true, but irrelevant.

Thank you. I think in this case you are probably right.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But cities don't want to spend that kind of money on these things as they would rather not tax people to pay for it. I'm certainly no expert in police budgeting, but when you see some police forces literally buying tanks, at least in some cases there must be room for money to be better spent. John Oliver did an interesting story on police militarization after the Ferguson riots following the shooting of Michael Bro…

They're not buying tanks, they're being gifted them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_program

Thanks for clarifying as I hadn't watched recently and I was misremembering. But certainly there must still be some expense associated with training and maintenance.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, three of the four guilty cops are free with no charges, and the fourth is only being charged due to the protests and would not have been otherwise.

He was detained before the protests. Not after. Also, why you would protest BEFORE a sentence.

Floyd was killed May 25, 2020, the protests began on May 26, 2020 and Chauvin was charged on May 29, 2020. Please don't lie.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#799
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta love a three-hour old account trying to convince people that police racism and violence isn't real. Are we twitter now @dang? The astroturfing hasn't been subtle lately.

We've banned that account for breaking the site guidelines. But why are you breaking them yourself? Insinuations about astroturfing without evidence are not allowed, for reasons I've explained extensively (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... ). And obviously you shouldn't be responding like this or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386438 . Doing that helps nothing; it only makes…

I'll read them today. Apologies for making the forum worse, I'll try to change. I've been struggling with a lot of anger surrounding this issue lately. Maybe it'd be best if I took a break from HN for a while.
Post reply on HN