I completely agree with this take. 85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

Just from personal experience, I've noticed a growing animosity from police pushing back on the reform movements happening across the country. I've heard officers refusing to be involved in psychiatric calls due to changes in use of force laws which could hold them personally accountable. Instead of working to find a legal solution, their attitude seems to be one of revenge and their actions a punitive measure on the electorate and government which chose to enact those laws.

There is a culture of us vs. them that is being focused towards politicians and reformists. I hope it's not a pervasive one.

It does beg the question; if your the leader of a political faction, who is currently faced off against another faction which has spent the last something years courting the prime authority figures in the region, what's the next tactical step after that faction starts starting shit and those authority figures who are tasked with stopping said shit refuse to act? Is the only solution to quickly bootstrap your own brand of authority figures and hope yours is bigger than theirs?

>85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

That's likely a national statistic. Remember, these are police in DC, a very liberal area.

On police salary they live in Calvert or Charles or Fauquier Counties which are still oases of red.

Very few police officers actually live in the area they work in. Most live far outside the city in the suburbs or more red areas. Either due to cost of living or politics. This often contributes to the "us vs them" divide because the people policing neighborhoods are often from different areas, ethnicity, incomes and political leanings.

Even in places like Chicago where there is a residency requirement, most officers tend to live in "cop and firemen" neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. This has some predictable consequences: https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/12/20/police-heavy-wards-g...

> That's likely a national statistic. Remember, these are police in DC, a very liberal area.

Still cops. I personally know two DC area cops who are quite red. Remember, police organizations have been pushing the idea that anyone who protests police brutality is anti-cop and the right wing have more or less 100% stood by them or encouraged them.

> 85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

Is there a source for this claim? All I could find was https://www.policemag.com/342098/the-2016-police-presidentia...

It says that 84% of responding email-registered readers of POLICE MAGAZINE indicated that that they would vote for Trump. That's not the same as what you said at all.

This magazine "emailed 59,238 readers". There are more than 10x that many full-time police officers in the US. Can one conclude that the responding fraction of this tiny-circulation magazine's readership is statistically representative of all police officers in the country?

It's not surprising that police don't side with Democrats who vilify them for defending themselves, and refuse to respond to psychiatric calls that might make them a target. Consider the killing of Walter Wallace, one of the "psychiatric incidents" you're talking about:

> Several 9-1-1 calls were made by Wallace's sister, brother, and neighbor, telling dispatchers that Wallace was assaulting his parents

> The two officers arrived in the area to respond to a domestic dispute. When they arrived, Wallace walked out of his house carrying a knife. The two officers backed away while telling him to drop the knife, and as Wallace walked in their direction, each officer fired several rounds at Wallace, hitting him in the shoulder and chest. He later died from his wounds in the hospital. Wallace's family stated that Wallace was having a mental health crisis.

> Protests and demonstrations against police brutality and institutional racism in response to Wallace's killing took place across Philadelphia throughout late October.

> The then-presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris published a joint statement saying, "Our hearts are broken for the family of Walter Wallace Jr... We cannot accept that in this country a mental health crisis ends in death."[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Walter_Wallace

Body cam video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl1QBL8TijI

Edit: And it really says something about our ability to discuss facts on Hacker News when quotes from Wikipedia and a body cam video are downvoted to invisibility.

> It's not surprising that police don't side with Democrats who vilify them for defending themselves

I honestly don't disagree with this. However, I think it's possible to believe that police are abdicating their duty instead of handling it like proper authority figures while simultaneously believing that the harsh rhetoric of some reformists isn't helping the situation.

This cuts both ways since, as your comment indicates, we always blame "Democrats" or "Republicans" instead of identifying actual problematic behavior. "Democrats" are no more to blame for this than "Republicans" with their "thin blue line" which quite obviously pits the police against some underworld of crime (or, at this point, the "radical left") instead of presenting the reality that police work for and with the community.

> Consider the killing of Walter Wallace, one of the "psychiatric incidents" you're talking about

Cases like this are a very real concern amongst police, EMS and fire in many jurisdictions. I don't think it should be swept under the rug. On the other hand, police, in particular, have vast amounts of leeway and are often not held accountable (certainly not criminally) in many cases that go the opposite direction of the one you describe. This is evident to everyone reading this, I'm sure.

There are no easy solutions but I'm tired of police departments acting entitled. Refusing to perform your job and acting like the legislature + the reform minded public is your enemy does not help anyone. Responsibility lies in police chiefs, police unions/brotherhoods, and the executive and legislative bodies of our local governments to work together.

I’m sorry, but can you really not think of any other way to subdue somebody with a knife than shoot them?

A knife wielded as a weapon within 20ft of you is very definitely a lethal threat. I don't know the circumstances of this particular situation very well, but if I shot someone coming at me with a knife and an intent to harm I'd be well justified in doing so.

You aren’t a cop. I’m 100% in agreement that if a citizen gets attacked by a knife wielder, the use of lethal force in defense is fine. However cops are professional peace keepers. They have training, equipment and numbers on their side. You can watch videos of European cops dealing with a knife threat, it’s really not hard.

Circumstances matter, but it can be done (eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY made the news a while ago).

Here in Germany, people wielding knives get killed from time to time as well. Pepper spray tends to get used first, and I do not remember any case where a dozen rounds were fired[1] (German police fire on the order of 50 rounds total per year, cf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_... ).

[1] edit: apparently, this does happen, cf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Eisenberg

A police officer i knew, in Europe, had practiced self defence and disarmed the knife person, no one hurt.

I would have wanted a tazer, personally, if i was a cop.

Never having been in a knife fight, I'm not going to speculate or second guess people who put their lives on the line. What's your expertise in this area?

No expertise, but just offhand one could use beanbags, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, tranquilizers, etc - Is there a good reason that these are not options? Why jump straight to shooting someone multiple times? Maybe I’m just not understanding something.

I don't know how effective any of those are at stopping someone who intends to hurt you, but Tasers, which were specifically discussed because the officers weren't carrying any and some people thought they might have helped, apparently are only between 50% to 75% effective.[1] That's a big risk when someone is only a few steps away.

1: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/729922975/despite-widespread-...

That is only with the shooty prongs. Get right in there and a taser works 100% of the time. Hit 'em in the spine and the legs drop out. The problem is cops are too concerned about their own safety. They are cowards, and when they get scared they shoot.

This is oversimplification, and is unhelpful.

Public and local priorities determine budgets. Departmental budgets and priorities determine what equipment is purchased and equipped, and the degree to which their usage is trained. Training and official departmental policy determine the degree to which de-escalation is a priority, and whether the officers are obligated to follow an escalation policy in which tools they employ, or if they're permitted a toolkit approach.

... and all of these things differ per locality.

> Note I am not saying it was some kind of conspiracy with orders from above.

There is no conspiracy necessary. A single officer can simply allocate too few officers to guard the place. And in fact that is what happened and is the reason the national guards weren’t there prepared and stopped it before it happened. No conspiracy, just a chain of sympathetic command.

That just isn’t true. The “Autonomous Zones” lasted for weeks. Left wing protestors and rioters got away with literal murder, violence, looting.

How many people did the protestors at the capital harm? How much property was actually damaged? There are hundreds or more small businesses that were looted or burned to the ground during the left wing protests. How many small businesses or individuals were harmed by the Capitol protestors? There was a unarmed protestor that was shot and killed by a Capitol cop. Where is the outrage over an unarmed woman getting shot? Perhaps because she is a white Trump supporter she doesn’t matter as much as a black felon suspect getting shot by cops?

The hypocrisy is vivid but not surprising.

Left wing riots that destroy and loot small businesses that have nothing to do with the grievances being protested: “peaceful protest” supported by AOC and other Democrat politicians.

Trump protestors occupying the halls of the very institution they are protesting? Somehow they are seditious and horrible.

If these Capitol protesters were leftists protesting a Trump victory, the media and most people here would be singing a different tune.

And what’s frustrating to many people is how even a discussion of election fraud gets flagged and buried. Especially in a place like Hacker News. Has anyone actually looked at the statistical anomolies from the election? We’ve talked about voter machine integrity years ago on HN, but those concerns disappeared all the sudden. Concerns about electronic voting seem to evaporate when it benefits a candidate of ideological choice.

It’s weird. It’s like the entire HN community has no technical curiosity about any part of the clearly “interesting” election. It really feels conspiratorial how all facets of the tech industry have identically but independently have worked to defeat a political candidate.

So yes, I get the protests. When we’re being gaslit on “fair and secure” elections, but with our own eyes we see the appearance of exactly the opposite. People are going to get mad. One case in point: In Atlanta, during the presidential election night. All the media reported that counting was suspended for a “water pipe break” at State Farm Arena. A pipe break that never happened. Not a single work order. No repair. No maintenance record. Not a photo. Nothing. Zero evidence. Then all of the critical battlegrounds coincidentally stop counting votes at the same times? Florida didn’t stop. Neither did Texas. Or New York State. But the critical battlegrounds? Every one of them stopped the counts. Observers being kicked out. Observers being told to go home yet the counting continued. Trucks arriving in the middle of the night with extra votes..

This isn’t made up. This is all real. Was is fraud? Perhaps not. But are the coincidences that all happen to favor Biden compelling? Definitely.

And yet even discussing these weird anomalies that all favor Biden can get you in Facebook jail, suspended from Twitter, kicked off of YouTube.. downvoted on Hacker News. Even debating or questioning the Coronavirus orthodoxy can get you censored.

The world is fucked up and tech companies are a big part of the problem. I don’t think I have ever been more ashamed to be in this industry.

Try to zoom out a bit and maybe back a few years and marvel that a guy with big hair and a permanent scowl has gotten you to believe that storming the US Capitol is a lesser offense than robbing a Foot Locker.

If you have a problem with BLM riots then you should have a problem with these riots. You can't call someone a "protester" if they have gone past a police blockade and are attempting to enter the chamber against the direct orders of Capitol Police. They were rioters.

I have a problem with BLM _riots_ but not anything about the protests themselves. I have a small problem with the MAGA protests, in that they're being led astray, but they absolutely have the right to protest and air their grievances if they're peaceful.

You are the one being gaslighted or trying to fool others. Every challenge to the vote was thrown out because there was no evidence presented. If there are the thousands of millions of zillions of cases of fraud and evidence of any of it why hasn't that been presented? It's because it doesn't exist. You can spout whatever lies you like in the media - social, mainstream or lamestream. But you can't lie to a judge without consequences, so no lawyer will help you lie.

As for Georgia, more than zero evidence: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-fabricated-water-mai... so stop repeating that ridiculous talking point like it's a fact. If someone else sees your posts they might believe the same false things you do because you're authoritative.

There isn't a conspiracy to elect Biden. He's not that interesting.

>Yes, these rioters would have been dealt with quite quickly, and violently, had they not been white right-wingers.

You must not have been paying much attention to events outside your bubble recently. Many Antifa and BLM-aligned groups have spent much of the last year rioting, looting and committing arson. Throughout, they have been protected and excused by the mainstream US media and the intellectual Left, and the relatively small number of individuals that have been arrested during these events have mostly been released immediately - often to commit further violent crimes the same day.

I find that hard to square with your assertion that the protesters yesterday received preferential treatment due to their race and political leanings. As far as I can tell, the only difference in yesterday's events was that the Trump supporters didn't feel the need to burn the Capitol down.

I've attended some of the protests from this summer, some of the larger ones with 40K people. No property damage, no arrests, no one hurt or arrested.

Contrast to the ones that did turn into riots with property damage, looting or people getting hurt, which were perpetrated by a small group of protesters that stuck around after they were told to disperse / broke curfew, it seems similar to what happened in the capitol.

I think a big difference is that the rioting this summer affected insured private property and unfortunately did get people hurt in an effort to bring attention to systemic problems that parts of our country have. The event yesterday was a specific attack at a democratic process our country has in an effort to overturn an election that, at this point, has not had any evidence in court shown to cause doubts of it's legitimacy.

Intent matters. If the riots from this summer tried to assault city halls or state capitols that were in session I have a very good feeling they would have been met with more prejudice.