3 ms·

> I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other

by rdtsc 7y ago

> I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,” [...] particularly after big news events such as the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and during the ensuing protests against police brutality. Is Michael Brown a good example of police brutality though? Maybe they didn't have much to say because it turns out a lot of the facts there have been twisted and embellished, to put it mildly. Maybe they just politely refused to discuss it at work? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown#%22Hands_up,_don't_shoot%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown#%22H... https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releas... https://web.archive.org/web/20190811143955/https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190811143955/https://www.washi...

benmmurphy 7y ago
It is interesting he brings up Garner and Michael Brown. I think Garner was a good example of police overstepping the mark that everyone could agree on and Brown was much controversial. But weirdly enough it seemed that Brown was pushed more than Garner by activists. I think this is quite common with activist organisations. They seem to deliberately push more controversial causes. I'm not sure if this is because more controversial causes are more effective or it is because there are weird personal incentives in play. Also, it could be that no-one wants to bring attention to negative effects from a popular policy. Garner had the attention of police because he was selling untaxed cigarettes. Taxing cigarettes is quite popular and I guess no-one wants to explicitly bite the bullet that some people need to die to have these laws on the book. In a country with a population over 300 million there is a good chance people are going to randomly die from run-ins with law enforcement over non-violent crime. All law is a trade off between the good effects and the bad effects but a lot of people believe any serious bad effect means the law is immoral.

by rdtsc 7y ago

benmmurphy 7y ago

It is interesting he brings up Garner and Michael Brown. I think Garner was a good example of police overstepping the mark that everyone could agree on and Brown was much controversial. But weirdly enough it seemed that Brown was pushed more than Garner by activists. I think this is quite common with activist organisations. They seem to deliberately push more controversial causes. I'm not sure if this is because more controversial causes are more effective or it is because there are weird personal incentives in play. Also, it could be that no-one wants to bring attention to negative effects from a popular policy. Garner had the attention of police because he was selling untaxed cigarettes. Taxing cigarettes is quite popular and I guess no-one wants to explicitly bite the bullet that some people need to die to have these laws on the book. In a country with a population over 300 million there is a good chance people are going to randomly die from run-ins with law enforcement over non-violent crime. All law is a trade off between the good effects and the bad effects but a lot of people believe any serious bad effect means the law is immoral.