The problem is that the police are causing most of the chaos.

Looting has largely stopped in NYC, and all of the protests to which I've been have been entirely peaceful. But police still start beating and arresting people indiscriminately as soon as curfew starts — in some cases, even boxing protestors in so they can't leave before curfew. Most cops I see have their badge numbers covered. They are arresting people to whom curfew doesn't apply (such as delivery workers) and in places that curfew doesn't apply (such as people's own front stoops). They are threatening to take reporters' press badges for covering the assaults.

There are looters/rioters. But there are countless videos showing police attacking peaceful protesters. These are people protesting police violence and the police are responding with violence. Do you think that will lead to more or less chaos?

Sometimes the violence bubbles up from the bottom, like in this case (but notice the signs of systemic problems: (1) cops stop and correct the behavior of the one cop whose first impulse is compassion, (2) The police release an official statement to exonerate the cops involved which the video prove is a lie. The problem in Buffalo isn't limited to one or two cops.)

Sometimes the violence comes from the top down, like in DC when cops were apparently ordered to violently clear peaceful protestors and bystanders from a public park and church yard (including the pastor of the church!), apparently for a brief, cringy photo-op.

Top to bottom, the problem is that cops believe they are above the law, morality, or even just basic decency.

I wish we could say "cops are on the side of order." That's their job, and the whole reason police exist. The huge problem here is that they so often are not.

There has been looting, but to imply that protestors are "causing chaos" is a dishonest comparison given all evidence publicly available.

Of course we can't really say either of us is right or wrong, because their statement inherently relied on bystanders inferring most of the meaning from context.

edit: footnipple replied in additional contexts that they've seen "a lot of destruction at the hands of some very bad people" when asked if they'd been in the protests, so I feel a little more confident that my read of the context was correct.

Please, you need to look beyond NYC.

The riots/looting has been happening across the US. I agree that there have been peaceful protesting, but you cannot deny that there have been riots and looting across the US.

Some black businesses have also been affected by this.

There is no justification for it.

I have White friends who were mostly silent before but are now actively publicly supporting racial justice causes. I’m not saying they were anti Black justice causes before they just weren’t aware of how bad it was. It didn’t hit them viscerally, their only Black friends were the few high income households that lived in their neighborhoods and in their social circles.

Just like I was never as an adult against LGBTQ rights. I just didn’t care either way. It just wasn’t on my radar until a few years ago.

Maybe some fringe elements of the Iraq war protests are an exception.

I've always been amazed at the law and order, respect my rights, follow the Constitution types seem to have so much trust and demand so little accountability from the single greatest threat to those rights, the police.

I'm pretty fine here, when I make a code mistake I can fix it, and I'm paid so much more than a cop.

I suppose that would be a good reason for me to bitch about cops in general right ?

At least, that's what it seems when I read comments on hn the last days.

The police unquestionably have a hard job, and are granted immense powers to do it. We all know what comes with great power. But if the single group of people endowed with the authority to deny you your rights is not held to the highest of standards, can anyone be surprised that so many are having their rights, and even their lives, taken from them?

How exactly do you plan to absolutely eliminate any mistake from policing ?

You know, what we explain to antivaxx people, is that the benefits largely outweight the inconvenience, that's just basic pragmatism.

No other job functions this way. Why do we let the profession with the power to use deadly force function this way?

Kneeling on someone's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds is not a mistake. Shooting someone in their own home after you serve a no-knock warrant is not a mistake. Shoving an old man to the ground and walking past his bleeding body is not a mistake. Even if the officer didn't intend to kill someone, someone is now dead.

If we trust police with the authority over life and death (and really, I don't think we should), we should at least hold them to the highest and strictest standards of conduct.

And every time they shipped a bug someone died?

You might be inclined to improve the process, right?

I won't belabor the analogy. Campaign Zero has a great summary of the policy changes that can help: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/solutions

If you want to make the development argument, then you should know that bugs are unavoidable. Even from the best developers in the world. No amount of code reviews, tests, or processes will change that.

Can you reduce? Of course. By a really large amount? Probably. But "zero" is an impossible goal. The statement "We can live in a world where the police don't kill people" just makes you look dumb and naive.

8cantwait.org at least has a realistic number backed by studies.

Zero is the only reasonable target. Every death should be treated as a process and policy failure. Every death should lead to an improvement.

It will be a long way to get there, but as JFK said, we do these things not because they are easy.

(I'll also point out that 8cantwait.org is a Campaign Zero project. Thank you for linking it.)

I said that we should take actions that have been shown to improve the situation. 8canwait.org goes over many of them, and I'm sure there are lots of other actions we can take as well.

Zero is impossible without a perfect populous. It is the enemy of 8canwait (and I know, it was created by people who think zero is possible).

Someone saying "zero is possible" makes it seem like they don't understand the situation enough to have a real conversation about it.

To answer your question directly, to address systemic racism in America we need to shift the Overton window of discourse. That _requires_ dissemination of values and ideas which many consider radical or unthinkable.

Beyond that, to say someone is dumb and naive because they don't think cops should be allowed to kill people is callous and ignorant when you consider blacks are three times more likely to be killed by police than whites. [https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/]

"Zero is impossible" is implicitly saying, "Cops should be allowed to kill people." Easy to say when it's not your community in the crosshairs.

What's the difference exactly ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been using this site primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for. Some political overlap [1] is inevitable and fine, as long as people stick to the guidelines, but when an account switches into the mode of primarily [2] doing political argument here, rather than curious conversation, we ban it. We have to, because fulfilling the mandate of this place requires that it not burn itself to a crisp [3].

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...