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Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by dang on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:11PM (#23545481)
Please don't post empty flamebait and denunciatory rhetoric to Hacker News. Not what this site is for.

Nationalistic flamewar is one of several forms of flamewar tied for the #1 spot of what we don't need here.

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

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by vikramkr on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:55PM (#23545327)
Dead is a defeatist attitude. If a countryfolk thinks their country is dead because there are unsolved problems, then the country is dead for real. Defeatists didn't end slavery, end jim crow, win the right to vote. We've been far worse, and we'll get a lot better because there are countryfolk like the ones creating this tooling to fight police brutality.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by wizzwizz4 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:19PM (#23545537)
> Defeatists didn't end slavery

No, but the people in charge then created the Jim Crow laws, which extended beyond the slavery states.

> end Jim crow

But not its continued influence – not yet. Meanwhile, it's having a resurgence; white supremacist violence is the biggest form of domestic terrorism, and even the President was revoking anti-discrimination legislation as of last week (not in the sensible way that would've had benefits elsewhere, but in the impulsive "I don't like this" way).

> win the right to vote.

Which isn't afforded to criminals – good thing all the illegal things are bad. Apart from numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number Oh, and apparently disenfranchisement of "legitimate" citizens is also increasing. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/07/is-america-a...

If a macro is one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against police brutality, then something is seriously wrong. No, defeatists don't tend to solve problems, but no unacknowledged problem was ever solved.

If you want to solve a problem, start by confronting its extent.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by pengaru on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:57PM (#23545352)
Show me a position of authority/power that doesn't attract the least desirable kind of people you want in that position; those seeking to abuse it.

At least in the USA we have the right to document these interactions with video footage.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by lostgame on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:04PM (#23545418)
Very, very true. I mean, look at the presidential position; it’s attracted literally the worst person I’ve ever seen in a position of power in a ‘free’ country. :/

Least desirable person, indeed - and that person was chosen by the people. It’s what facepalms were invented for.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by fsniper on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:09PM (#23545463)
Please check some civilized countries with "undesirable regulations" and "governing bodies" which puts in checks for authority misuses.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by dang on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:12PM (#23545485)
Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. No more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545481

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by fsniper on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:18PM (#23545531)
Nice.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by dang on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:53PM (#23545832)
Do you really think you can toss bombs like "please check some civilized countries", or "how un-civilized and rotten $country is", and not start a flamewar?

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by wizzwizz4 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:25PM (#23545583)
A good rule of thumb; if you're writing about politics, and it takes less than a minute to write, and you're not correcting something specific (preferably with a link), don't say it.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by quickthrower2 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:55PM (#23545332)
Yes this seems super sad as someone from outside the USA. I admit I know little, but I get the impression the police are more self-governing in the US, where as in the UK/Australia there are independent bodies with teeth that can deal with complaints, and even do major investigations across the entire force, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_the_New_...

Would a federal level watchdog help? Would it even be possible?

Downvote reasons? Happy to edit the question if it's offensive, dumb, or whatever.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by kevin_thibedeau on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:50PM (#23545280)
The murder of Philando Castile 4 years ago should have made that obvious.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by chrisjs96 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:59PM (#23545366)
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by augustt on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:08PM (#23545452)
Deadly force is just the most extreme of many problems with the police. Consider the hierarchy of problems: deadly force is a subset of police brutality, which is a subset criminal police behavior/lies, all of which are encouraged by a system that rarely punishes bad cops.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by thebean11 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:06PM (#23545436)
Doesn't show what?
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by kkotak on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:51PM (#23545298)
Many of the evils in the US are rooted in the 2nd amendment and the NRA.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by seankimdesign on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:56PM (#23545335)
Care to elaborate? I get that gun control is indeed an issue worthy of its own debate, but how do you go from discussing police brutality to legally armed civilians being the root of evil?
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by mikeyouse on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:05PM (#23545428)
Not OP - but the absurd prevalence of privately owned guns means that the police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim. They're not even wrong about that. We have more privately owned guns than people of sufficient age to own them.

The police in other countries can take a much more relaxed attitude toward their interactions with the public because there's almost no chance of the person shooting them.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by catalogia on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:11PM (#23545479)
> police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim.

They could be, but are very unlikely to be. Despite the huge number of privately guns owned in America, the vast majority of cops will never be shot at nor have valid reason to shoot at somebody. Cops who constantly fear for their lives are operating under a warped view of reality.

I think it's a culture problem for cops. They hang out on cop forums, cop chat rooms or facebook groups; they read cop newsletters and generally socialize with other cops. These groups have the effect of amplifying stories about violence against cops, because those stories are sensational and of obvious interest to cops, and that amplification in turn gives rise to a warped perspective on how risky their job actually is.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by jfk13 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:07PM (#23545441)
If the country wasn't so awash with guns, perhaps the police might not be quite so nervous and trigger-happy.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by beervirus on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:54PM (#23545324)
1. Police are murdering people.

2. Only the police should have guns.

Choose one.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by gopalv on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:01PM (#23545402)
Is that a dichotomy?

The "only the police" almost makes it sound like that is what is being discussed around gun control laws.

The cops in the US are definitely more jumpy than I'm comfortable with - their natural reaction to a car door closing and someone (or is it just me, I look like a rake with an afro) stepping towards them is to touch their gun, because they treat every person as possibly armed & dangerous.

And it's not like I was in a high crime area either, all I needed was to know my way to SJC having missed 85.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by dragontamer on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:06PM (#23545430)
Would the Police have shot Brianna Taylor if her boyfriend wasn't shooting at the cops? Sure, no-knock warrants were a problem. But Kenneth Walker's gun didn't make the situation any better.

I'm not "victim blaming" Kenneth Walker or Brianna Taylor here. Its absolutely the cops fault for messing up the no-knock warrant. But in a country with 2nd amendment, cops have the difficult job of entering homes vs armed neutral parties.

In the UK, cops can go in with nothing but a baton and be fine, because the UK citizenry don't have as many guns as US citizens do.

--------

There's a huge and fundamental difference between UK cops and US cops if only because of the 2nd Amendment issue. Each encounter with the citizenry, even if they are neutral, can end up deadly due to our huge proliferation of guns.

That stress in of itself could be making our cops more trigger happy, because US Cops enter life-or-death situations in higher frequency than other countries.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by pluto9 on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @01:21PM (#23554010)
It isn't Kenneth Walker's responsibility to "make the situation better". It is the police's responsibility to not create an unnecessary life-threatening situation in the first place.

You're arguing that people should be deprived of the ability to defend themselves so that the police don't have to worry about the repercussions of trampling on their civil rights, and that somehow this will result in less trampling.

Ban no-knock raids (which have dubious legality anyway) and situations like this wouldn't happen. Better yet, end the war on drugs altogether. Kenneth Walker keeps his right to self-defense, Breonna Taylor lives, no officer gets shot, the constitution remains unviolated, and nobody goes to jail for victimless crimes. Everybody wins. It is astounding to me that people argue "disarm Kenneth Walker so the police can fuck up his (wrong) house stress-free" is a better solution than that.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by progval on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:10PM (#23545469)
Alternative to 2: No one should have guns
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by beervirus on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @08:18PM (#23546076)
A long as were in fantasy land, everyone should get unicorns too.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by kevin_thibedeau on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:56PM (#23545338)
It's the fetishization of guns as an instrument of power that is the problem. Laws don't make people do bad things.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by volkk on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:02PM (#23545410)
right. its not like our second amendment even allows us to protect ourselves from incompetent/evil cops. it only allows for you to shoot other civilians and prey you're in the right. if you even dare try to defend yourself against some plainclothed cops, you'll simply be killed in a heartbeat, or now deal with courts for ages and most likely be charged with something.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by ALittleLight on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:15PM (#23545509)
You're allowed to defend yourself, with arms and lethal violence, against unlawful police. There's a Supreme Court case about it called John Bad Elk versus US wherein police were trying to arrest John Bad Elk for shooting guns on his own land, which was legal, and when the police made to draw on him he shot them, killing at least one officer, and was found to have acted within the law.

A more recent and more famous example is the rapper Tupac who witnessed police beating up a guy for no reason. Tupac grabbed a gun and told them to stop, and when the police shot at him, he shot back wounding one, and wasn't found to have committed any crime. Randy Weaver shot and killed a federal agent and was exonerated at trial.

These are just examples from memory. I'm sure if you looked you'd find many more. It may not be wise to shoot out with the police, and you'd better be certain you're right, but you're absolutely permitted to use your guns on the police and kill them in some circumstances.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by kansface on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:10PM (#23545474)
2016 Man shoots three cops during no-knock raid and is found not guilty because they did not identify themselves as cops.

https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-f...

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by User23 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:10PM (#23545471)
This is categorically false. People can and have prevailed with a self-defense defense against killing police officers who failed to identify themselves as police.

Also, Indiana for example explicitly legalizes home defense against "public servants"[1].

[1] https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-proce...

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by briandear on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:13PM (#23545500)
How? How many criminals are members of the NRA? The 2nd Amendment was created precisely as a counter to a tyrannical government. The ACLU fights over the first amendment, the NRA fights over the 2nd — and you can’t have one without the other. Both organizations are valuable. Free speech and free association is an illusion unless there is a means to back it up. If the UK tomorrow decided that everyone had to go to concentration camps, how exactly would that effort be opposed? One of Hilter’s earliest efforts was to disarm civilians. The Soviets also did the same thing. Now why would they do that? To stop gun violence? Of course not, it was to prevent rebellion. Imagine if the students in Tiananmen Square were heavily armed.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by lazyjones on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:00PM (#23545384)
> This is a declaration of how un-civilized and rotten USA is.

Or it shows how hysterical people are in a country with the most advanced democracy, civil rights and justice system in the world.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by mtgp1000 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:06PM (#23545432)
This. I watch in disbelief as people totally disregard statistics in leu of mass hysteria. There are some 370MM interactions with police every year in the US and the overwhelming majority of them happen without incident. Moreover something like 8 "unarmed" black men died in 2019 vs 50 "unarmed" white men.

Those who disagree, tell me: the ratio of incarcerated males to females is something like 9:1. Similarly a far greater number of men die at the hands of police than women. Is the justice system biased against men?

And if we extend this myopic logic, is there a huge problem of racism in the black community? Because black on white crime (including violent crime) is something like 10x the rate of white on black crime. Is there a systemic problem with racism in the black community?

The entire country has gone insane.

Edit: if there's something wrong with my reasoning, please feel free to point it out. Silent downvotes only reinforce the stigma, yes, stigma that is now associated with the same rational inquiry that I'm paid to perform each day as a research scientist.

Edit 2: I can't find a source for the 370MM number and I suspect it was generous with the definition of interaction...here's another source that gives just shy of 70MM - still high enough that what's going on is blowing things way out of proportion. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pbtss11.pdf

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by fsniper on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:14PM (#23545506)
This data which was pointed here is not correlate well with what you tell: "Police killings are one of the leading causes of death for young men in the United States.[5] A study by Esposito, Lee, Edwards predicts that 1 in 2,000 men and 1 in 33,000 women die as a result of police use of deadly force.[5] The same study predicts the risk is highest for black men, as approximately 1 in 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_...
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by lazyjones on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:26PM (#23545597)
This study seems very bad and polarizing. "One of the leading causes" is already weasel-wording (one of the ... how many? 100 leading causes?) and "young men" is also a rather unspecific limitation to the most violent/criminal demographic. Homicides aren't even in the top 10 leading (overall) causes of death in the USA, nr. 10 is suicide with > 40.000 per year while deadly force from police is 1/40th of that.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by catalogia on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:39PM (#23545715)
To be fair, homicides account for 14.7% of fatalities of male minors, which is significant (about twice as likely as cancer for that age range.) However only a small percentage of those homicides involve cops..

https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/all-races-ori...

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by jschwartzi on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:20PM (#23545553)
I don't think it's blowing it out of proportion to have a zero-tolerance policy toward police murdering the people they're arresting. The George Floyd incident is representative of how the police typically behave when you're merely suspected of committing a crime. That officer literally kneeled on the man's face until he passed out and died. Outrage at that is not "out of proportion" it's totally understandable.

One of these days the cops could sit on your neck or your child's neck until you pass out and die. Do you want to live in a society where that's tolerated, or can you agree that it's unacceptable for the police to murder people who are being arrested?

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by mtgp1000 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:56PM (#23545868)
> don't think it's blowing it out of proportion to have a zero-tolerance policy toward police murdering the people they're arresting

Who is arguing this? Anywhere? Why are people being treated as though they're trying to excuse murder? That's dehumanizing.

>One of these days the cops could sit on your neck or your child's neck until you pass out and die

This may seem like a trivial dismissal, but one of us has a different approach to parenting, and I suspect it is shared by approximately 50% of the voting population. I would teach my children to cooperate with police under the circumstances in the Floyd video. I would also teach them not to do drugs in public.

No, this is not victim blaming, and I do believe that the force in this case was excessive and unnecessary. But I also advocate for teaching people to function in a society where their actions affect others and can create dangerous situations unnecessarily.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by lazyjones on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:31PM (#23545646)
> Do you want to live in a society where that's tolerated, or can you agree that it's unacceptable for the police to murder people who are being arrested?

Why do you think anyone wants to live in such a society and why do you falsely imply it is tolerated in the USA? The responsible officers for the death of Floyd are already charged - and let's not disingenuously assume a known, violent repeat offender who is obviously on drugs is treated the same as me or you or one of our children.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by lazyjones on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:08PM (#23545451)
> There are some 370MM interactions with police every year in the US and the overwhelming majority of them happen without incident.

And this is totally baffling for someone outside the US where crime rates are lower, people are almost never armed and civil liberties aren't so great. The police seem to be doing an amazing job in the USA overall and rare occurrences are being blown way out of proportion.

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by jfk13 on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:02PM (#23545411)
> the most advanced democracy, civil rights and justice system in the world

By way of a case study, may I refer you to Robert Jones: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-5ad914e1-afed-4e0d-...

Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by curiousgeorgio on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:54PM (#23545325)
As un-civilized and rotten as the news portrays things to be, for 99% of the rest of us Americans, this isn't really a common problem. That's not to say it isn't a problem for the few that do experience it (and that problem absolutely needs to be fixed), but just want to point out that what you see publicized is not representative of the country as a whole.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by sidlls on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @06:57PM (#23545348)
It's more like it's a problem for the 30% or so of Americans who live in or near poverty, and the problem is amplified for that segment of the population that is also non-white because of the systemic racism problem we have.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by curiousgeorgio on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:04PM (#23545421)
That's one interpretation. Another is that a certain percentage of Americans live in areas where crime is not just more prevalent, but (unfortunately) it's also the only thing some people living there have ever known. Areas with higher crime rates also tend to have higher police involvement (and no, law enforcement doesn't solve crime, but it is necessary to respond and help victims of crime), and where you have more involvement, you'll have higher raw numbers of anything that follows a normal distribution (e.g., moral judgement of local law enforcement officers). We can do a lot to help skew that distribution toward better-trained, effective law enforcement, but it's still a distribution, and as much as it comes at the cost of real human lives, there will be outliers in every population.
Re:‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police inter... by fsniper on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @07:04PM (#23545417)
I hope it's not for the sake of people of the USA. But Overall the picture drawn by media/people on different aspects of the society there, does not seem to be bright.

Worst of all, USA tries to render itself as a global heaven and better than every other country but still.

I left a country (Turkey) that's considered 3rd world by the rest of the West for Ireland a few years ago. But I wouldn't even consider exchange Turkey with USA.

That's how USA is seen from outside (at least by my perspective)