Police:
+ Shoot and kill more unarmed white people than any other race
+ Overall shoot more white people
+ Shoot and kill people by race proportional to the recorded violent crimes stats
+ Shoot less than a hundred unarmed people per year, total
And, none of this is really surprising. White people make up more of the population so of course they're going to be a majority of police encounters, including Use of Force (UoF). Not every UoF encounter is illegal or unethical, even if the other person is unarmed - life is not an action movie where you can vulcan pinch someone unconscious.
Whenever somebody brings up that UoF incidents by race match the violent crimes committed by race, usually it ends in a shouting match of who can claim racism the loudest. Yet we can recognize over-representation in violent crimes by any race is probably due to lack of resources - and we know the things that reduce violence in any population (marriage, having kids, being meaningfully employed[1]) are less accessible to many minority populations.
We'd make a bigger dent in UoF incidents and crime in 5 years by just making pre-K childcare free and widely accessible than any amount of angry protests will ever accomplish.
[1]: This doesn't mean low paying temporary or part time work, but either a trade or profession with longterm gain
It's just racism, being rich doesn't insulate you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_contr...
Every major police force has a systemic racism problem and everything else is just window dressing. It's like the Civil War. In middle school you learn it's about slavery. In high school you learn it was about states rights and the balance between federal power and state power. In college you learn it's about slavery. There are always small factors worthy of study but sometimes the core reason really is that simple.
>We'd make a bigger dent in UoF incidents and crime in 5 years by just making pre-K childcare free and widely accessible
Good luck getting any Republican to vote for this. Republicans only care about people who are old enough to vote.
Yeah, usually when you see people forcing a door open, you should let the police know.
> It's just racism
It's just the results of spiritual decline. Obviously anyone who has deeply found religion would know that spiritual decline is the cause of human suffering, and that you only need a belief in <deity> to reverse these problems. If only we still taught the bible/koran/whatever in schools!
Single cause claims for complex phenomenon are almost always nonsense, especially ones without actionable solutions that fail scrutiny. They make great headlines, but they don't really hold up. They're used to attack the outgroup, not fix the problem.
> In college you learn it's about slavery.
If that's all you learned in college about the civil war, you should ask for a refund. Slavery was absolutely one of reasons several southern states entered the war, but it was by far not the only. Most southerners would not have fought purely for slavery because most of the soldiers were too poor to have owned slaves.
> Good luck getting any Republican...
Ah yes, we all know <purple team> is to blame! If only it wasn't for purple team, us green team would have solved every woe and problem. After all, every place where green team is in control is a bastion of prosperity, equality and liberty - and everyplace where that isn't true is due to purple team somehow, for some reason!
Culture wars are useful for pushing narratives and keeping both sides locked in a relative stalemate. Coke and Pepsi both benefit from these antics (Are you a coke drinker or a pepsi drinker?), but it's not an appropriate framework for political decision making where you often need to find compromise and pressure points to move the conversation forward.
It was still about slavery: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slavehol...
>What concerned Southerners most about Lincoln’s election was his opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories; Southern politicians were clear about that. If new states could not be slave states, went the argument, then it was only a matter of time before the South’s clout in Congress would fade, abolitionists would be ascendant, and the South’s “peculiar institution” – the right to own human beings as property – would be in peril.
As I said before, while there are other factors and while they are interesting and worthy of study, sometimes the core reason really is that simple. It's not "enlightened" to pretend that simple things are complex.
>Culture wars are useful for pushing narratives and keeping both sides locked in a relative stalemate. Coke and Pepsi both benefit from these antics (Are you a coke drinker or a pepsi drinker?), but it's not an appropriate framework for political decision making where you often need to find compromise and pressure points to move the conversation forward.
It's worked great for the Republicans for the last 40 years (Ronald was the original Donald) and there is no sign it will stop working any time soon. It's only ever the left who have to compromise. Name a time in the last 40 years where a Republican has compromised and been rewarded for it.
Shoot, they really did a bad job of that... Looks like they need to take some notes from the British on how to do it properly! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington#U.S._Cap...
Then they should be shot on sight. The only reason they weren't fired upon is the color of their skin.
In my estimation the Capitol Police were some combination of surprised, unprepared, under-equipped, and under-manned. The police didn't seem to have any plans or preparation. Some police are seen standing aside and letting protesters in to the Capitol (which, I agree is a light touch, but I also saw police kneeling in solidarity with BLM protesters, which is also a light touch). Other police are brawling with protesters (which, I think is probably about the right level of violence, we just needed more police to be there doing it and for all the police there to understand what they were supposed to be doing).
I don't think the police should shoot Capitol protesters or BLM protesters. I do think they should use physical force against both when they do things that are unacceptable - e.g. entering the Capitol or destroying or looting stores. I would say both groups call for a similar medium touch.
The Capitol should have been much better fortified by a much larger force given that the FBI, MPD, and Capitol Police knew or should have known about this plan for months. Had the presence of several hundred officers with multiple layers of fencing and visibly-manned M249 positions not been sufficient to convince their vanguard to run away, they would have been able to escalate to spotlights, LRAD, and less-lethal projectiles before needing to go with the real deal. A suitable amount of publicity for these preparations could very well have resulted in the Q Cucks Klan deciding to find an excuse to either make it a legitimate protest or call the whole thing off.
The deaths would have been at most two or three rioters, and possibly a few who get trampled in the panicked retreat. That would have been a light touch; it accomplishes the objective using a minimum of force, and if they saw reason nobody would even have been scratched. A medium touch would just be shooting anyone who tries to breach the perimeter until they stop trying (which would have been totally legal); a heavy touch would have happened to the BLM protestors if they had escalated to violence.
Kneeling in solidarity with protesters is fine because neither the protestors or the officer are breaking the law or indeed doing anything wrong. Letting an enemy force (and that's absolutely what a crowd of people with unlawfully-possessed guns and Army of Northern Virginia battle flags is) past your position is at a minimum conspiracy to enter and remain in a federal building without authorization.
https://nypost.com/2020/07/26/portland-protest-declared-a-ri...
Using BLM as an example, is it still fair to call them protesters though they sometimes fight with police (violent behavior), graffiti or break windows (vandalism), loot (breaking and entering)?
Here is the link you shared in a sibling comment: https://deadline.com/2020/12/armed-protesters-enter-oregon-s...
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/07/26/portland-protest-declared-a-ri...
When we do that, we still get shot by the police and nothing changes. Maybe if white people face consequences for once, things will change.
Like the Dalai Lama?
I don't think it's as simple as "these people were idiots because they recorded themselves committing a crime", to paraphrase this line of thinking. I'm pretty sure these people convinced themselves, and each other, that they were breaking the law to save the country. They thought they were recording a revolution in which they would be the new heroes.