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Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing bla

Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? If you care so much, how about petition your local police force to dump their tear gas at the range and stop firing on peaceful protesters, turning a lot of sitting people into a riot.

lsh123 6y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  Why are you linking non-normalized statistics? It is such a basic error to not adjust per-capita that part of me doubts how much you care about the truth.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    It is because they are lying. They are trying to obfuscate the truth to hide a racist agenda.
- komali2 6y ago
  Hahahaha I gotta say I wasn't expecting a gamer statistic poster on HN. At a minimum I'd expect everyone here to understand the difference between "volume" and "per capita."
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  That stat becomes more useful when you take into account black Americans are roughly 15% of the population.
  - lsh123 6y ago
    I am not sure that per-capita is the right metric. I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that. This is slightly old but has some interesting data on killings by race: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-america-by-the-numbers https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom... In these graphs you can see that total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted. Edit: fix autocorrect typo
    - komali2 6y ago
      If you adjust by per-police encounter you've already shot yourself in the foot - we know that police stop black people at a far greater percentage than white: https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/ https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/
    - runarberg 6y ago
      That would still be a biased data. Minority populations are often disproportionately targeted for similar crimes. Please stop using statistics to obfuscate your racism.
    - jamescostian 6y ago
      > I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that How would that fix anything? Look at the numbers of white vs black people who were picked for stop-and-frisks (read: number of white vs black people who were suspected of crime) as well as the innocence ratings: https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data To see how innocent minorities are, look at this article about stop-and-frisks: https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-releases-report-analyzing-nypd-stop-and-frisk-data https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-releases-repor... If 5% of a population ("Young black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24") accounts for 38% of the stop-and-frisk and is innocent 80% of the time, doesn't that sound like targetting? If you look harder for crime from certain demographics, you'll find more crime from them. Replace the targetted demographic with another demographic and you'll find way more crime in that other demographic. But get this - once you target people and get stats on them, you now have "statistics" and "facts" that show you were right and should continue to target them - even though your statistics are garbage collected on unrepresentative samples! This is why per-capita is the best metric to use - any other metric is tainted. > total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted. What does this have to do with anything? Just because there are a lot of "black on black" murders doesn't justify the amount of black people killed by cops. Honestly, I don't even care if the officers are white, black, or any other race or ethnicity. It's the victims who matter. Just because an innocent black person is killed by a black police officer, does not mean it had nothing to do with the victim's race, nor does it mean we can ignore how disproportionately policing is applied.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  The 2020 data there is interesting. It's less dramatic than it looks on that graph because they only have the numbers from the first quarter for 2020, but even extrapolating from the quarter to the year, it looks like "number of people shot to death by the police in the United States" has been more than cut in half by the coronavirus.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    I noticed that too, and had the same thought. It will be fascinating to see the full statistics for the year.
- runarberg 6y ago
  Please don’t post misleading statistics, in this instance it is quite racist and you come across as a racist person.
  - lsh123 6y ago
    Funny how your call statistics/number racist. Godwin's Law in action.
    - komali2 6y ago
      After adjusting your statistics to take into account that black people are 14% of the US population, I have come to the conclusion that black people are murdered by cops at a terrifyingly higher level than white people. Why didn't you come to the same conclusion? Is it a lack of knowledge of statistics, or is it an irrational value system that depends on confirmation bias to continue to exist, i.e., racism? It certainly doesn't help that the same people I've seen post that exact page with no context whatsoever on twitter were self-avowed racists. Any particular reason you find yourself in their camp?
      - InfiniteBeing 6y ago
        It's not really the case when you take into account their violent crime rate, homocide rate, rate of shooting at police and killing police.
        komali2 6y ago
        You really just burned a 3 year old account by positively IDing yourself as a racist. Nice one.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      Statistics can absolutely be racist. Numbers might not lie (except when they do), but they can use some odd definition, use different metrics, or scale different populations differently/unevenly (as is the case here). When you use any misleading technique on a statistic that obscures the truth, you are lying. When you put up a number to proof a point about a minority that is absolutely not true, that is a lie, and this number is racist.
- grahamburger 6y ago
  What that statistic shows is that even if some white people can't bring themselves to get angry about police murdering black people they should at least be angry about police also murdering white people. What that statistic definitely doesn't mean is that people shouldn't be angry about police murdering black people.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    It does show however that the police very likely doesn't target people by skin color or that some is disproportionate violence. I am not from the US and I thought the numbers to be higher to be honest.
bluGill 6y ago
I care about both. Two wrongs are two wrongs.
- komali2 6y ago
  Is it? Is it wrong to remove someone's freedom of movement... After they assault someone? Removing someone's freedom of movement (jailing them) is Wrong, after all.
- jaas 6y ago
  But hopefully you care about one much, much more than the other. They are not comparable in terms of needing discussion at this moment in history. (Edit: In the event that you honestly don't know which one is the more important topic, right now or pretty much any other time - police frequently murdering black people or some store windows getting smashed and merch stolen - it's the police murdering black people.)
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Riots have a history of escalating (often by someone with an agenda), my family and town was worried last night that they would come here (several arrests were made), and do real harm. That is they might be less now but from store windows to killing people is not that big a stretch. I'm not convinced the rioters care about police violence either. From what I ca see the riots are outside groups with riot and anarchy as an agenda. My right wing friends are blaming George Soros, my left wing friends some nameless white supremacist group. I have no idea what the truth is, and don't expect to find out for months if ever.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    I can't actually tell which one you're trying to say is more important right now. The case for "riots are the bigger problem right now" being that there is a whole lot more rioting and looting happening right now than there usually is, whereas the amount of police violence is currently significantly below the typical level (as a result of the coronavirus and everyone staying inside, but still).
ineedasername 6y ago
It's not a minor issue. It detracts significantly from the really issue at hand, making it nearly impossible to engage with protestors in a dialog as the small number of folks intent on violence and looting take all of the resources and attention, severely undermining the point of the protests, especially because it provides those disinclined to sympathy for the real issue to paint all with the same brush and so dismiss them.
- komali2 6y ago
  Before it was looting, it was that kneeling at a football game distracts from the game. Before that, it was "no, no, protest will never work, you need to get more black people elected! Try to get a black president maybe!" Before that, it something else equally absurd. No matter how black people try to get their voices heard about police violence, there will be people who doggedly tear those voices down by any means necessary. We're talking about the fact that 14% of the US population can't call the cops for fear of dying. It's NEVER good enough for white america. NEVER.
  - endogui 6y ago
    Kneeling during the national anthem at football games should have been an issue between the players and the NFL, but the kind of people who attend football games disapproved of it. In Minneapolis today due to the videos which were captured even those anti-kneeling americans largely recognize the problem and support solutions. But by allowing the rump to be violent (or equivalently, serruptitiously distribute bricks and gasoline) the activists are losing public support. Roughly 200 mostly commercial buildings burned in the main shopping area for (working class) Minneapolis over the weekend. The food and pharmaceutical desert is going to kill far more of the poor and marginalized than police violence would have, in a city that already votes D up and down the ticket. The violence is not necessary, nor productive, nor are the situations comparable.
    - komali2 6y ago
      > But by allowing the rump to be violent Expecting the protesters to somehow control everyone in the protest, when the cops fire indiscriminately on people whether they're peaceful or otherwise, doesn't seem like a working system.
ThemalSpan 6y ago
I agree and I'm sorry that the empathy needed to understand is sorely lacking here. Lives over property always.
- efnx 6y ago
  Sadly it’s expected here. We all know PoC are sorely underrepresented in tech. We are a reflection of the problem at hand - the result of years and years of systemic racism and sexism.
steve76 6y ago
He was on fentanyl, right? Elephant tranquilizer.
autokad 6y ago
> "until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people?" Can we please stop making this just about race and recognize we have a general police brutality issue? You do realize cops kill just as many whites as they do blacks. The same police that killed George Floyd also killed Justine Damond. When you rationalize away the white people who also have been killed, you polarize the issue and give justification to those who are committing violence and looting.
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  > You do realize cops kill just as many whites as they do blacks Normalized for population, in the US the rate is 3X for black people, and a white person's expectation to be killed by police is less than the average. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shooti...
  - autokad 6y ago
    and you could do the SAME thing with black people and homicide and aggravated assault rates. Then you would go on to say those particular rates are racist to say. Are you ready to stop rationalizing away the deaths that everyone is facing and stop arguing over skin color and start talking about police brutality? or do you want to keep arguing about something besides the point? if so, why?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - robotresearcher 6y ago
      No one is arguing we don't have a police brutality problem. I'm not sure why you hear that. I think a large rate difference between white and black is meaningful information. Why do you prefer that information not be added? > Then you would go on to say those particular rates are racist to say. That didn't happen either. Your expectations are off.
    - 6y ago
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
No, we can't. There's simply no stable state where cities are abandoned to looters for weeks. Someone will inevitably deploy force to reestablish control, and if that someone isn't the government then there's gonna be a lot more indiscriminate killing.
proc0 6y ago
How are you going to fix police brutality with more brutality? What is the end goal anyway, the state won't be defeated and the #1 group suffering are the people who lost jobs, homes, and loved ones. Is the idea to make a mess and then police will be "ok guys, we get it now, we will be nice". Obviously you will have to change the laws and this could have been the initial objective through peaceful protests only.
lenkite 6y ago
Relatively minor issue ? There are store owners defending their property who are being brutally beaten to near-death by "protestors". Residences containing children are being set on fire by "protestors". No, these are not 'minor' quibbles that should be skipped over.
- komali2 6y ago
  Neither of the things you said happened.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    Of-course these things happened. However, they will never reported by the "progressive" MSM. The HN community has blinkers on because the vast majority (not all) of people here are rich and un-affected by such matters. Do not take my words for it - Please do your own research. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rochester-store-owners-attacked-trying-143346674.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rochester-store-owners-attack... https://twitter.com/PatrolRpd/status/1267202275895803904 https://twitter.com/PatrolRpd/status/1267202275895803904 https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21140391/va-police-chief-firefighters-blocked-from-house-blaze-with-child-inside https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21140391/...
mr_spothawk 6y ago
> Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? Seconds of thought aren't wasted. Stay in the present. It's only an emergency if you make it one.
mydongle 6y ago
https://imgur.com/FsgRSJb https://imgur.com/FsgRSJb Minor issue huh? Video is from the LA riots in the 90s.

lsh123 6y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

dwaltrip 6y ago
Why are you linking non-normalized statistics? It is such a basic error to not adjust per-capita that part of me doubts how much you care about the truth.
- runarberg 6y ago
  It is because they are lying. They are trying to obfuscate the truth to hide a racist agenda.
komali2 6y ago
Hahahaha I gotta say I wasn't expecting a gamer statistic poster on HN. At a minimum I'd expect everyone here to understand the difference between "volume" and "per capita."
calvinmorrison 6y ago
That stat becomes more useful when you take into account black Americans are roughly 15% of the population.
- lsh123 6y ago
  I am not sure that per-capita is the right metric. I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that. This is slightly old but has some interesting data on killings by race: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-america-by-the-numbers https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom... In these graphs you can see that total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted. Edit: fix autocorrect typo
  - komali2 6y ago
    If you adjust by per-police encounter you've already shot yourself in the foot - we know that police stop black people at a far greater percentage than white: https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/ https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/
  - runarberg 6y ago
    That would still be a biased data. Minority populations are often disproportionately targeted for similar crimes. Please stop using statistics to obfuscate your racism.
  - jamescostian 6y ago
    > I would prefer to look at it by police encounter or by crime or something like that How would that fix anything? Look at the numbers of white vs black people who were picked for stop-and-frisks (read: number of white vs black people who were suspected of crime) as well as the innocence ratings: https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data To see how innocent minorities are, look at this article about stop-and-frisks: https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-releases-report-analyzing-nypd-stop-and-frisk-data https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-releases-repor... If 5% of a population ("Young black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24") accounts for 38% of the stop-and-frisk and is innocent 80% of the time, doesn't that sound like targetting? If you look harder for crime from certain demographics, you'll find more crime from them. Replace the targetted demographic with another demographic and you'll find way more crime in that other demographic. But get this - once you target people and get stats on them, you now have "statistics" and "facts" that show you were right and should continue to target them - even though your statistics are garbage collected on unrepresentative samples! This is why per-capita is the best metric to use - any other metric is tainted. > total number of killings for white on white or black on black is roughly the same despite the 15% number you quoted. What does this have to do with anything? Just because there are a lot of "black on black" murders doesn't justify the amount of black people killed by cops. Honestly, I don't even care if the officers are white, black, or any other race or ethnicity. It's the victims who matter. Just because an innocent black person is killed by a black police officer, does not mean it had nothing to do with the victim's race, nor does it mean we can ignore how disproportionately policing is applied.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
The 2020 data there is interesting. It's less dramatic than it looks on that graph because they only have the numbers from the first quarter for 2020, but even extrapolating from the quarter to the year, it looks like "number of people shot to death by the police in the United States" has been more than cut in half by the coronavirus.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I noticed that too, and had the same thought. It will be fascinating to see the full statistics for the year.
runarberg 6y ago
Please don’t post misleading statistics, in this instance it is quite racist and you come across as a racist person.
- lsh123 6y ago
  Funny how your call statistics/number racist. Godwin's Law in action.
  - komali2 6y ago
    After adjusting your statistics to take into account that black people are 14% of the US population, I have come to the conclusion that black people are murdered by cops at a terrifyingly higher level than white people. Why didn't you come to the same conclusion? Is it a lack of knowledge of statistics, or is it an irrational value system that depends on confirmation bias to continue to exist, i.e., racism? It certainly doesn't help that the same people I've seen post that exact page with no context whatsoever on twitter were self-avowed racists. Any particular reason you find yourself in their camp?
    - InfiniteBeing 6y ago
      It's not really the case when you take into account their violent crime rate, homocide rate, rate of shooting at police and killing police.
      - komali2 6y ago
        You really just burned a 3 year old account by positively IDing yourself as a racist. Nice one.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    Statistics can absolutely be racist. Numbers might not lie (except when they do), but they can use some odd definition, use different metrics, or scale different populations differently/unevenly (as is the case here). When you use any misleading technique on a statistic that obscures the truth, you are lying. When you put up a number to proof a point about a minority that is absolutely not true, that is a lie, and this number is racist.
grahamburger 6y ago
What that statistic shows is that even if some white people can't bring themselves to get angry about police murdering black people they should at least be angry about police also murdering white people. What that statistic definitely doesn't mean is that people shouldn't be angry about police murdering black people.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  It does show however that the police very likely doesn't target people by skin color or that some is disproportionate violence. I am not from the US and I thought the numbers to be higher to be honest.

bluGill 6y ago

I care about both. Two wrongs are two wrongs.

komali2 6y ago
Is it? Is it wrong to remove someone's freedom of movement... After they assault someone? Removing someone's freedom of movement (jailing them) is Wrong, after all.
jaas 6y ago
But hopefully you care about one much, much more than the other. They are not comparable in terms of needing discussion at this moment in history. (Edit: In the event that you honestly don't know which one is the more important topic, right now or pretty much any other time - police frequently murdering black people or some store windows getting smashed and merch stolen - it's the police murdering black people.)
- bluGill 6y ago
  Riots have a history of escalating (often by someone with an agenda), my family and town was worried last night that they would come here (several arrests were made), and do real harm. That is they might be less now but from store windows to killing people is not that big a stretch. I'm not convinced the rioters care about police violence either. From what I ca see the riots are outside groups with riot and anarchy as an agenda. My right wing friends are blaming George Soros, my left wing friends some nameless white supremacist group. I have no idea what the truth is, and don't expect to find out for months if ever.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  I can't actually tell which one you're trying to say is more important right now. The case for "riots are the bigger problem right now" being that there is a whole lot more rioting and looting happening right now than there usually is, whereas the amount of police violence is currently significantly below the typical level (as a result of the coronavirus and everyone staying inside, but still).

ineedasername 6y ago

It's not a minor issue. It detracts significantly from the really issue at hand, making it nearly impossible to engage with protestors in a dialog as the small number of folks intent on violence and looting take all of the resources and attention, severely undermining the point of the protests, especially because it provides those disinclined to sympathy for the real issue to paint all with the same brush and so dismiss them.

komali2 6y ago
Before it was looting, it was that kneeling at a football game distracts from the game. Before that, it was "no, no, protest will never work, you need to get more black people elected! Try to get a black president maybe!" Before that, it something else equally absurd. No matter how black people try to get their voices heard about police violence, there will be people who doggedly tear those voices down by any means necessary. We're talking about the fact that 14% of the US population can't call the cops for fear of dying. It's NEVER good enough for white america. NEVER.
- endogui 6y ago
  Kneeling during the national anthem at football games should have been an issue between the players and the NFL, but the kind of people who attend football games disapproved of it. In Minneapolis today due to the videos which were captured even those anti-kneeling americans largely recognize the problem and support solutions. But by allowing the rump to be violent (or equivalently, serruptitiously distribute bricks and gasoline) the activists are losing public support. Roughly 200 mostly commercial buildings burned in the main shopping area for (working class) Minneapolis over the weekend. The food and pharmaceutical desert is going to kill far more of the poor and marginalized than police violence would have, in a city that already votes D up and down the ticket. The violence is not necessary, nor productive, nor are the situations comparable.
  - komali2 6y ago
    > But by allowing the rump to be violent Expecting the protesters to somehow control everyone in the protest, when the cops fire indiscriminately on people whether they're peaceful or otherwise, doesn't seem like a working system.

ThemalSpan 6y ago

I agree and I'm sorry that the empathy needed to understand is sorely lacking here. Lives over property always.

efnx 6y ago
Sadly it’s expected here. We all know PoC are sorely underrepresented in tech. We are a reflection of the problem at hand - the result of years and years of systemic racism and sexism.

steve76 6y ago

He was on fentanyl, right? Elephant tranquilizer.

autokad 6y ago

> "until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people?" Can we please stop making this just about race and recognize we have a general police brutality issue? You do realize cops kill just as many whites as they do blacks. The same police that killed George Floyd also killed Justine Damond. When you rationalize away the white people who also have been killed, you polarize the issue and give justification to those who are committing violence and looting.

robotresearcher 6y ago
> You do realize cops kill just as many whites as they do blacks Normalized for population, in the US the rate is 3X for black people, and a white person's expectation to be killed by police is less than the average. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shooti...
- autokad 6y ago
  and you could do the SAME thing with black people and homicide and aggravated assault rates. Then you would go on to say those particular rates are racist to say. Are you ready to stop rationalizing away the deaths that everyone is facing and stop arguing over skin color and start talking about police brutality? or do you want to keep arguing about something besides the point? if so, why?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - robotresearcher 6y ago
    No one is arguing we don't have a police brutality problem. I'm not sure why you hear that. I think a large rate difference between white and black is meaningful information. Why do you prefer that information not be added? > Then you would go on to say those particular rates are racist to say. That didn't happen either. Your expectations are off.
  - 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

No, we can't. There's simply no stable state where cities are abandoned to looters for weeks. Someone will inevitably deploy force to reestablish control, and if that someone isn't the government then there's gonna be a lot more indiscriminate killing.

proc0 6y ago

How are you going to fix police brutality with more brutality? What is the end goal anyway, the state won't be defeated and the #1 group suffering are the people who lost jobs, homes, and loved ones. Is the idea to make a mess and then police will be "ok guys, we get it now, we will be nice". Obviously you will have to change the laws and this could have been the initial objective through peaceful protests only.

lenkite 6y ago

Relatively minor issue ? There are store owners defending their property who are being brutally beaten to near-death by "protestors". Residences containing children are being set on fire by "protestors". No, these are not 'minor' quibbles that should be skipped over.

komali2 6y ago
Neither of the things you said happened.
- lenkite 6y ago
  Of-course these things happened. However, they will never reported by the "progressive" MSM. The HN community has blinkers on because the vast majority (not all) of people here are rich and un-affected by such matters. Do not take my words for it - Please do your own research. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rochester-store-owners-attacked-trying-143346674.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rochester-store-owners-attack... https://twitter.com/PatrolRpd/status/1267202275895803904 https://twitter.com/PatrolRpd/status/1267202275895803904 https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21140391/va-police-chief-firefighters-blocked-from-house-blaze-with-child-inside https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21140391/...

mr_spothawk 6y ago

> Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? Seconds of thought aren't wasted. Stay in the present. It's only an emergency if you make it one.

mydongle 6y ago

https://imgur.com/FsgRSJb https://imgur.com/FsgRSJb Minor issue huh? Video is from the LA riots in the 90s.