Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/police-violence-protests-us-george-floyd

by miles • 6 years ago

87 71 6 years ago

noble_pleb• 6 years ago

Its a vicious cycle, unfortunately. The more rioting and violent protest goes on the streets, the more they will empower the police and thus even more chance for future brutality.

_y5hn4• 6 years ago

In the short-term it escalates the crisis, putting on display the lack of accountability and leadership, opening up positions for real leadership.

siberianbear• 6 years ago

If the police ignore hooliganism on the streets, it just invites more hooliganism.

If the police brutally put down hooliganism, it also invites more hooliganism.

Probably, the right solution involves better policing of police, and throwing out the bad apples. But police culture is very insular, and their labor unions have quite a bit of political power. They protect their own. So, that's easier said than done.

It's quite a catch-22 situation.

tsimionescu7• 6 years ago

Regarding your first few statements, there is also a third option between ignoring the "hooligans" and brutally repressing them. It is listening to them and acquiescing to their very simple and legitimate demands - no more police brutality.

I agree with your note about policing the police though, and the difficulties in doing that. Probably trying to reduce the power of police, and its role in society, will be more feasible than trying to get prosecutors to work against their colleagues in the force.

kstenerud• 6 years ago

With so many guns in the USA, I'm a bit surprised that people haven't started shooting the police...

_y5hn4• 6 years ago

They're busy crimin', or staying in prison. Guess you're referring to criminals, and not non-violent protesters. Any escalation in violence, is a lost cause.

Instead of focusing on extremists and extreme opinions, government and media should be there for every majority and minority. A partisan, is no leader of people.

tartoran2• 6 years ago

The police are always escalating the violence. It’s their way of projecting their power. No wonder they are so “loved” back

irrational2• 6 years ago

The kind of people that own guns also tend to be the kind of people who don't see anything wrong with police brutality.

Maarten88• 6 years ago

I saw an interview[1] with radio host Charlamagne tha God who seems to promote gun ownership to the black community.

It’s sad to say, but I think that might actually be a smart way to promote better gun ownership laws in the US. Using racism against itself: black people (legally, openly) wearing guns might be a good (but really dangerous) argument against any people wearing guns.

[1] https://youtu.be/5qxdCopOeJ4

dragonwriter7• 6 years ago

The guns in the US are largely owned by the same faction that supports and is executing the excessive police violence (and which gets a free pass for violent protest while the opposing faction is violently suppressed even when peacefully protesting); it's also the faction that has provocateurs actively creating violence around the current protest to create cover for violent “responses”.

drak0n1c• 6 years ago

In Couer D'Alene conservative open-carry volunteers protected the protests and prevented any violence and confrontation from breaking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIS4C7ym5YM

If there is to be an alternative to the distant and aloof police state, it will have to be in the form of attentive and caring locals possessing sufficient enforcement power.

sneak3• 6 years ago

As was pointed out in sibling comments, most of the people who are the most upset with police are unarmed.

The overlap between armed and police resistance is still small, but I hope it grows: not so that people can shoot at the police, but that so the balance of power shifts in a larger fashion and the police no longer feel safe in blatantly assaulting people, much the same way non-police feel now about attacking police with sticks and tear gas and “less lethal” projectiles.

They don’t do it because they know their counterparty can and will immediately escalate to potentially lethal force.

Counterintuitively, more arms results in more peace. The violence that is happening now results from the massive available-force imbalance. The police feel safe assaulting and murdering anyone they want, the only recourse against them being neutered by widespread co-conspirator testilying by LEOs.

The average person will need to stop trusting unsubstantiated cop testimony (feds included) before the systemic racism starts to decline.

I imagine that by the end of the year we will see lots of non-gun-owners beginning to question why all of the draconian restrictions on firearms ownership apply only to civilians and not the police.

Good police or bad police (and we know it’s the latter), that is a huge power imbalance ripe for abuse.

tedeh• 6 years ago

Don't you think encouraging more gun ownership will merely encourage even more brutal police tactics in an ever accelerating downward spiral that may only end in another civil war? There has been a debate in the US the last decades about the increased militarisation of the police force, and to me the best idea seems that maybe both police and citizens should be increasingly disarmed rather than the other way around.

maest2• 6 years ago

Counterintuitively, more arms results in more peace.

That's controversial at best. Arguably, part of the reason the police is so aggressive and distrustful when interacting with regular people is the higher gun density in the country.

I mean, maybe if you chart violence (y axis) vs percentage of gun ownership (x axis), you get a bell curve and the US is in an awkward middle position. But that's a maybe, and, anyway, that means that both increasing and decreasing the number of weapons would reduce violence in that case.

tsimionescu7• 6 years ago

The police so far haven't openly fired at crowds. It is all but guaranteed that if they felt there was a real chance that the crowd was armed, they would be directly instructed to fire.

NoahTheDuke2• 6 years ago

People first have to believe that the cause (retribution, resistance, revolution, whatever you want to call it) is worth dying for, because the system (the cops, the media, the milquetoast white public) considers cop death to be the single worst crime and reacts with extreme vengeance and violence.

If you were to try this, they would murder every last one of you – and harass or murder your families – even if you killed 5 cops for every one of you who died. (Just imagine the ending of Les Mis.) Hard for people to believe it’s worth it when the reply by the system is so harsh.

On top of that, there are just so many officers in a given city. Killing one or two or three won’t make much of a difference but it will certainly make the rest worse overall.

fit2rule8• 6 years ago

A nation which allows itself to be willingly ruled by war criminals is, first and foremost, a victim of its own cowardice.

The American People will never be safe until they properly prosecute their war criminals. American policing organisations are riddled with very real war criminals calling the shots.

Don't be so surprised that what these people did to Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Yemen, they will do to the American people.

_y5hn4• 6 years ago

They will not do that, until leadership targets their own population and successfully ousts all principles and caring.

readarticle3• 6 years ago

The 18000 law enforcement agencies in the US are overwhelmingly controlled at the local and state levels.

While a simplistic “get rid of the war criminals at the top” would be a nice solution, the reality of the problem is far scarier and more distributed than that.

fit2rule8• 6 years ago

The same policies and culture that allow Americans to demolish, with impunity, countless other sovereign states while proclaiming their own moral authority, are what's at stake here in the streets today.

America has been kneeling on the neck of countless other nations, which also lost their breath, for decades.

A nation which callously disregards these crimes, will eventually fall victim to the same mechanics, itself.

America is ruled by a death cult which believes only in its own superiority over all other nations on Earth. Until this changes, the American people are as safe as anyone else this very real death cult puts in its sights, which is to say: not safe at all.

basilgohar2• 6 years ago

I believe the grandparent post is referring to the fact that the domestic police organizations are more-and-more frequently being populated by veterans of the US military.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Even the ones that were prosecuted have sometimes been pardoned: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/eddie-gallag...

fit2rule8• 6 years ago

Today Americans feel the boot they themselves have been pressing into the necks of others for decades.

This is why the American people, if they are to turn things around and create a just society, must continue to demand justice for their own very real war criminals all the way to the top.

As long as Obama and Clinton and Bush(es) and now Trump are free to continue to propagate their death cult policies, there will not be justice in America, for Americans - or around the world, for anyone.

Americans must understand: as a nation, they have been kneeling on the necks of others for decades, and the American People are themselves complicit in the act.

Until there is real justice for this magnitude of criminal behaviour, the streets will not be safe for anyone deemed 'inferior' by the death cult.

nabla9• 6 years ago

What you say is true, but as far as I know nobody does it unless forced from outside.

Instead of American people, this is just basic humanity.

We become peaceful trough institutions, gradual development of norms etc. All this is breaking all over the world. In EU Europe Hungary and Poland are getting away from liberal democracy.

swarnie_2• 6 years ago

Considering i've seen armies less well equipped then your police force and civilian population i think its a miracle the shooting hasn't started yet.

Y'all ever considered gun control or is that taboo? Maybe if you weren't all armed like you're going to a Texan wedding your law enforcement wouldn't have to be as well?

CamperBob26• 6 years ago

Y'all ever considered gun control or is that taboo?

"The police are completely out of control. They're basically a street gang funded by tax dollars. Officers with dozens of complaints are sent back to the streets with almost literal carte blanche to run roughshod over minorities without a trace of accountability. Their propensity for violence and escalation has practically torn our entire country in half, while prosecutors look the other way and city officials stand by helplessly. Also, they should have all the guns."

Makes perfect sense. /s

swarnie_2• 6 years ago

Because you militarised them.

I'm sure walking 2 steps further down the wrong road will eventually get you to the right place.

Also i thought the point of the 2nd amendment was so you could rise up and overthrow a tyrannical government. Go shoot some cops and let me know how that works out. I'll wait.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Are you arguing that the public need guns to shoot at the police?

jessaustin2• 6 years ago

Even if it made sense to consider gun control in the long term, why would it make sense now? Police already struggle with the tasks they've been assigned: "Fight stupid Drug War and don't brutalize innocents? Does not compute!" Why give them another impossible task that would set them at odds with another group of citizens? It might be good for Americans in the long run, because we'd all see our real enemies clearly for the first time. (I.e., now that police are attacking 90% of the nation, who are they not attacking?) However, this is wishful thinking because it assumes TPTB are stupid, which they manifestly are not. Once they have robocops they'll repeal 2A, followed swiftly by every other human right. Until that time, cops have to be recruited somewhere.

SethTro• 6 years ago

Some of this is being documented on Github.

https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/tree/master/repor...

There are several open issues that tech could help out on (IPFS backup, front end for viewing, ...)

tsimionescu7• 6 years ago

It is revolting and amazing to me to see the lengths to which police in the self-styled freest country in the world go to brutally repress these protests; and even more so, the fact that there still exists some defense of their behavior in the media.

In my own country, a former communist country in Eastern Europe, there were last year some anti-government protests that ended one night with the police gratuitously shooting tear gas at the crowd. This caused widespread outrage and was universally covered in the press. They didn't dare do it on subsequent protest nights again, and it remained a subject of discussion for months, with almost no defense even from the more government-friendly news outlets.

0823498723498723• 6 years ago

They haven't even reached "brutally" yet.

Dr. King advocated non-violent, economic, protest on 3.4.1968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101 On 4.4.1968 they showed him the violence inherent in the system.

Do you have any good anti-authority songs in your country? I've been trying to think of what might be good ones in the US tradition.

    In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, 
    By the relief office I seen my people; 
    As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking 
    Is this land made for you and me?

But that's an ancient one... probably the kids are way ahead of me on this front?

tsimionescu7• 6 years ago

We do have one [0], from 1990, a series of protests right after the 1989 revolution (the protests were violently squashed by miners with pickaxes summoned by the president of that time).

It goes something like this (in a somewhat word for word translation, and keeping in mind that the big bad at the time were leaders of the former communist party):

    Better a vagrant,
    Than a traitor,
    Better a hooligan,
    Than a dictator,
    Better a hoodlum,
    Than a party activist,
    Better dead,
    Then a communist

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSlUW5Imylc

hereme888• 6 years ago

Alright this is nonsense.

Only a tiny, miniscule percentage of police are criminals. They are by far amazing people who protect us.

The protesters are largely the violent ones, burning cars and destroying property, empowered by paid professionals and criminals like ANTIFA (which coincidentally are fascists themselves).

Let a court and jury judge based on a complete set of evidence, rather than the edited video clips being collected. From what I've seen, the entire videos of what these protesters do oaint a different picture.

And why is news like this even allowed on HN? Its what gets fights and trolling started.

maest2• 6 years ago

empowered by paid professionals and criminals like ANTIFA

Can you back that up with any evidence?

Let a court and jury judge based on a complete set of evidence, rather than the edited video clips being collected.

That's what the current system is doing, and many people feel the results aren't right, as they see many officers abuse their power without consequence. Hence all this talk about the thin blue line, qualified immunity, adminstrative leave being perceived as a paid holiday etc.

Largely, I think there are 2 ways of thinking about systems and they're both valid.

a. You determine which rules make sense from a first principles basis and you build a system. Whatever result comes out of the system, that is the correct result, because _the system is correct_.

b. You determine which results you want to have and build a system aiming for those results. If the outcomes you're seeing don't fit with the results you want, then the system is wrong and needs changing.

Grossly simplifying, it seems to me that the right largely thinks along the lines of a. and the left thinks along the lines of b.

* The right argues for equality (same system for everyone), the left argues for equity (same outcome for everyone).

* The right argues that the police is fine because there is a system in place that deals with abusive cops. The left argues the police isn't fine because the outcomes are unfair/disproportionate. Then the right retorts that the outcomes are disproportionate because the inputs are disproportionate (e.g. unequal crime rates across racial groups). Then the left says these inputs are themselves a result of the previous unfair system. Then someone starts name calling and the reddit thread gets locked down.

And, I mean, intellectually, both view points are kinda valid.

(As a side note, hardcore free market liberalists _really_ believe in a. As in, let the market be free and, whatever the outcome is, that's the _morally right_ outcome because the free market is infallible/the best way of allocating resources. I personally think that's wrong, not becuase a. is wrong, but because the free market needs certain particular conditions to function properly e.g. no monopolies, perfect information etc, and often those conditions are not met in the real world.)

A corrollary of these views is that a. wants the system to stay unchanged and b. wants the system to change. If you're happy with the current system, you tend to subscribe to a. because of course you want things not to change. If you feel you're not getting a good deal, you're more likely to side with b. because you want the system to change. Interestingly, you also get crossover:

* in the US, priviledged upper class whites (people benefiting from the system) siding with option b. (loosely liberals). These are called "beta cucks" by e.g. users of thedonald, the implication being that they're subjugating themselves to the lesser, underpriviledged groups.

* also in the US, blacks who are part of the system (e.g. black LEOs, black republicans). Most common insults I've seen there are "bootlickers" and maybe "uncle Tom" (there was a recent video from the protests with a white protester calling a black LEO an "uncle Tom" which angered a bunch of people).

stanski• 6 years ago

Okay, then what are the police covering for the tiny minuscule percentage of criminals? Cause they are the majority.

tsimionescu7• 6 years ago

As can be seen in the current protests, it is overwhelmingly the police that is the source of real violence. Killing or hurting even one person is incomparably worse than smashing a few cars or breaking some windows.

And the justice system has also been very visibly complicit with police brutality, almost universally excusing the actions of murderers when those murderers were policemen and women 'doing their duty'. In basically all of the high profile police murders that have rocked the nation, the murderers got away with it so far. So trust in the system is justifiably at an all time low.

lostmsu• 6 years ago

Oh really? How about that list?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#Deaths

Mind you this is not a pepper spray or flashangs which are relatively harmless.

dragonwriter7• 6 years ago

Only a tiny, miniscule percentage of police are criminals

Yes, most of the rest just stand by while the criminal commit crime, support unions that attack the groups calling for accountability for those crimes, and resign in solidarity when their colleagues are charged for their crimes.

The ones that are neither criminal nor complicit are rare.

Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US

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