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I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thi

I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out. We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to show how rotten it is in places. Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million people in the U.S. There are tens of thousands of cops. You could run a video like this everyday and statistically there still wouldn't be much incompetence or corruption going on. It presents us with an interesting problem, which I'm seeing in not just police incompetence/corruption cases, but all across the political spectrum: when you have large numbers of people, even if an extremely small percentage of them do bad things, it's easy to paint a picture of them all doing bad things. That's true whether it's cops, members of political party X, members of group Y, or so on. Note that I'm not saying it's an insignificant problem. I'm saying that this type of presentation, while powerful, provides us with zero context to gauge the size of the problem at all. When we consume such content, especially when it's highly emotionally manipulative, we should remember this.

erikpukinskis 11y ago
Why are you bringing it up if you don't think it applies in this situation? I always get nervous when people say stuff like this because it's like... he says he doesn't think it's a small problem, but then the only thing he's talking about is how we have to be careful making claims about scale... Why would he bring that up except to question the scale of the problem? But I must be missing something, because you explicitly said you're not doubting the scale of the problem. Maybe you can help me understand what you are trying to say about this story.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Whenever I read something that emotionally moves me, it sets off my bullshit detector. That's especially true when it's something I'm predisposed to believing. There is no context here, just a sad story. You can post a thousand of these stories. It all adds to to a bunch of "There's a bunch of sad stories in the world" without any other data. It's odd, because I always get nervous about making comments like I did. People are much more interested in "who's side is he on" than critically looking at the information put in front of them. Look, if consuming endless stories about the pain, sadness, and righteous anger that topic X provokes, all without any kind of context, then have fun with it. I gotta point out the logical problems, though, no matter which side of the discussion I'm on.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    You're assuming that a collective (e.g. cops) can be neatly reduced to the sum of individual action without loss of information. This is not the case. Individual cops need not be bad for the police as an institution to be an intrinsically hazardous one.
    - beat 11y ago
      That's a really good way of putting it. I live in Minneapolis, so I'm uncomfortably close to the current protests. There are plenty of nice, well-meaning cops out there spraying mace at people in my city for exercising their right to free speech and assembly. The Minneapolis police, as an institution have down a terrible job of handling the protests. (and please, people, don't turn this into a meta-discussion of the protesters or the original shooting. I'm just observing some facts here.)
- beat 11y ago
  Reflexive defense of authority is a pretty common pattern. People doing it don't realize they're doing it, or they wouldn't. That's one of the fundamental mechanisms of racism, among other unpleasant things. Hardly anyone thinks of themselves as racist, so when they make a racist argument (not saying this one is, just making a broader point), they don't think it's racist - they think it's all about the equality. The classic example of that is the "All lives matter" response to "black lives matter". Saying black lives matter is a response to the daily bigotry and institutional racism that black people in America suffer, every day. Responding to that with "all lives matter" is a way of disempowering even the acknowledgement of institutional racism, of denying the unique (and uniquely negative) experience of being black. But it sounds like equality. People who say it don't say it to be racist - quite the opposite. Being racist by acting not-racist. It's ironic and strange-loopy, but that's how it works. Take it back to the post you're responding to. It's a reflexive defense of authority, the "few bad apples" argument. The first response to obvious institutional racism (really, this case boils down to "all blacks look alike") is to shout "Hey, the System isn't broken!" It's not broken if you're white, and you don't recognize how it treats people who aren't like you. It disacknowledges the experience of the individual at the hands of the System, by making sure defending the System comes first. Thinking about this stuff is hard. Just watch... this comment will get a lot of downvotes, for even saying this stuff out loud.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    You know, I'm perfectly capable of explaining why I do things. Look at what you've done here: you've taken away my agency. Instead of letting me engage in a conversation, you've pronounced some over-arching reason for my comment, thereby not only eliminating anything I might have to offer, but wiping aside any category of comment that is similar to mine. Gotta watch that. It's perfect fine for an internal dialog. After all, we can't take a year to figure out what everybody we run into is thinking, but in an open conversation, well, the important thing is to converse. Who knows, each of us might learn something. "...Thinking about this stuff is hard...." -- It hurts, but somehow I'll manage.
    - beat 11y ago
ncallaway 11y ago
In another comment I proposed tying a financial payout to those who have been wrongfully arrested. Such a payout would (or should) be enough of a financial burden that prosecutors get rewarded for avoiding large payouts — or punished for incurring large payouts. The fact of the matter is there is no real downside for a prosecutor right now to put away the wrong person. Prosecutors have every incentive to put away anyone that they think they can. These payouts would also be a very good metric for judging the relative size of the problems, and which areas have the worst issues.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  I love the financial payout idea. The system is broken structurally -- it's not just a few bad people. The best answer for something like that is not to go after individuals, but make the bad behavior more expensive for all involved. At some cost, it'll work itself out.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    The common point against rewards for wrongful imprisonment is that it makes it harder for the wrongfully imprisoned to get out of jail, by penalizing the government for admitting a mistake. As things currently are, prosecutors will fight tooth and nail and illegally hide evidence just to avoid admitting the mistake, so it's unclear exactly how much harder it would make things.
camgunz 11y ago
While I support your "keep your head" message, I think it would be more helpful to say something like, "here are some stats about the US criminal justice system". Otherwise it just feels like you're throwing a wet blanket on people's legitimate reactions to something heinous (if a private citizen locked me up for 4 months, we'd view that crime as psychopathic), which sets off my "this person has an agenda" detector.
apercu 11y ago
Just curious... are you American? "Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million people in the U.S. There are tens of thousands of cops. You could run a video like this everyday and statistically there still wouldn't be much incompetence or corruption going on." Because it's mind-boggling to me that you don't think there is incompetence and corruption.
- benbenolson 11y ago
  He wasn't saying that there is no incompetence or corruption; he said that it's not statistically probable for you to run across a case like this if considering all cases in the U.S. The United States is a very large country, and I've seen a lot of people give it flak for incidents like this that happen here. Each and every state has different laws about incarceration, and the cultures of each of the states varies very widely. Pushing a stereotype on someone from the United States is like doing the same for someone from Europe-- not only are there many different subdivisions of Europe with completely different laws and cultures, but the United States is also a larger landmass than Europe, and lends itself to a lot of diversity.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > Because it's mind-boggling to me that you don't think there is incompetence and corruption. He didn't say that. He said "much". There are things that need to be fixed. Is the whole system rotten? No.

erikpukinskis 11y ago

Why are you bringing it up if you don't think it applies in this situation? I always get nervous when people say stuff like this because it's like... he says he doesn't think it's a small problem, but then the only thing he's talking about is how we have to be careful making claims about scale... Why would he bring that up except to question the scale of the problem? But I must be missing something, because you explicitly said you're not doubting the scale of the problem. Maybe you can help me understand what you are trying to say about this story.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Whenever I read something that emotionally moves me, it sets off my bullshit detector. That's especially true when it's something I'm predisposed to believing. There is no context here, just a sad story. You can post a thousand of these stories. It all adds to to a bunch of "There's a bunch of sad stories in the world" without any other data. It's odd, because I always get nervous about making comments like I did. People are much more interested in "who's side is he on" than critically looking at the information put in front of them. Look, if consuming endless stories about the pain, sadness, and righteous anger that topic X provokes, all without any kind of context, then have fun with it. I gotta point out the logical problems, though, no matter which side of the discussion I'm on.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  You're assuming that a collective (e.g. cops) can be neatly reduced to the sum of individual action without loss of information. This is not the case. Individual cops need not be bad for the police as an institution to be an intrinsically hazardous one.
  - beat 11y ago
    That's a really good way of putting it. I live in Minneapolis, so I'm uncomfortably close to the current protests. There are plenty of nice, well-meaning cops out there spraying mace at people in my city for exercising their right to free speech and assembly. The Minneapolis police, as an institution have down a terrible job of handling the protests. (and please, people, don't turn this into a meta-discussion of the protesters or the original shooting. I'm just observing some facts here.)
beat 11y ago
Reflexive defense of authority is a pretty common pattern. People doing it don't realize they're doing it, or they wouldn't. That's one of the fundamental mechanisms of racism, among other unpleasant things. Hardly anyone thinks of themselves as racist, so when they make a racist argument (not saying this one is, just making a broader point), they don't think it's racist - they think it's all about the equality. The classic example of that is the "All lives matter" response to "black lives matter". Saying black lives matter is a response to the daily bigotry and institutional racism that black people in America suffer, every day. Responding to that with "all lives matter" is a way of disempowering even the acknowledgement of institutional racism, of denying the unique (and uniquely negative) experience of being black. But it sounds like equality. People who say it don't say it to be racist - quite the opposite. Being racist by acting not-racist. It's ironic and strange-loopy, but that's how it works. Take it back to the post you're responding to. It's a reflexive defense of authority, the "few bad apples" argument. The first response to obvious institutional racism (really, this case boils down to "all blacks look alike") is to shout "Hey, the System isn't broken!" It's not broken if you're white, and you don't recognize how it treats people who aren't like you. It disacknowledges the experience of the individual at the hands of the System, by making sure defending the System comes first. Thinking about this stuff is hard. Just watch... this comment will get a lot of downvotes, for even saying this stuff out loud.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  You know, I'm perfectly capable of explaining why I do things. Look at what you've done here: you've taken away my agency. Instead of letting me engage in a conversation, you've pronounced some over-arching reason for my comment, thereby not only eliminating anything I might have to offer, but wiping aside any category of comment that is similar to mine. Gotta watch that. It's perfect fine for an internal dialog. After all, we can't take a year to figure out what everybody we run into is thinking, but in an open conversation, well, the important thing is to converse. Who knows, each of us might learn something. "...Thinking about this stuff is hard...." -- It hurts, but somehow I'll manage.
  - beat 11y ago

ncallaway 11y ago

In another comment I proposed tying a financial payout to those who have been wrongfully arrested. Such a payout would (or should) be enough of a financial burden that prosecutors get rewarded for avoiding large payouts — or punished for incurring large payouts. The fact of the matter is there is no real downside for a prosecutor right now to put away the wrong person. Prosecutors have every incentive to put away anyone that they think they can. These payouts would also be a very good metric for judging the relative size of the problems, and which areas have the worst issues.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
I love the financial payout idea. The system is broken structurally -- it's not just a few bad people. The best answer for something like that is not to go after individuals, but make the bad behavior more expensive for all involved. At some cost, it'll work itself out.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  The common point against rewards for wrongful imprisonment is that it makes it harder for the wrongfully imprisoned to get out of jail, by penalizing the government for admitting a mistake. As things currently are, prosecutors will fight tooth and nail and illegally hide evidence just to avoid admitting the mistake, so it's unclear exactly how much harder it would make things.

camgunz 11y ago

While I support your "keep your head" message, I think it would be more helpful to say something like, "here are some stats about the US criminal justice system". Otherwise it just feels like you're throwing a wet blanket on people's legitimate reactions to something heinous (if a private citizen locked me up for 4 months, we'd view that crime as psychopathic), which sets off my "this person has an agenda" detector.

apercu 11y ago

Just curious... are you American? "Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million people in the U.S. There are tens of thousands of cops. You could run a video like this everyday and statistically there still wouldn't be much incompetence or corruption going on." Because it's mind-boggling to me that you don't think there is incompetence and corruption.

benbenolson 11y ago
He wasn't saying that there is no incompetence or corruption; he said that it's not statistically probable for you to run across a case like this if considering all cases in the U.S. The United States is a very large country, and I've seen a lot of people give it flak for incidents like this that happen here. Each and every state has different laws about incarceration, and the cultures of each of the states varies very widely. Pushing a stereotype on someone from the United States is like doing the same for someone from Europe-- not only are there many different subdivisions of Europe with completely different laws and cultures, but the United States is also a larger landmass than Europe, and lends itself to a lot of diversity.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> Because it's mind-boggling to me that you don't think there is incompetence and corruption. He didn't say that. He said "much". There are things that need to be fixed. Is the whole system rotten? No.