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A Git Repo to Document Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests

288 points by novia 6y ago

akersten 6y ago
I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" Projects like this are what you can do.
- rrmm 6y ago
  Also just in general, make sure the people around you are registered to vote, get absentee ballots if they need them, understand how to complete, and send them. Make sure they vote.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    but vote for who? Joe Biden has historically backed legislation for search and frisk, he is only a good choice for people who think "BlueLivesMatter"
    - tomp 6y ago
      BLM started under Obama. I doubt it’s up to the president to solve it... maybe local politicians (county, city, state), or Congress?
    - rrmm 6y ago
      I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. I will only tell you to exercise your civic duty. We are all smart people here: to wield both the abstract and pragmatic concerns into a decision. Make it. It may be the last we get to make.
_bxg1 6y ago
I don't see the source for the linked "Web App" here; just the markdown files. Would be good to be able to contribute to that as well.
- NameDoesntExist 6y ago
  The Web App repo is here [0] 0: https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality
war1025 6y ago
Am I the only one that gets the feeling these riots have nothing to do with George Floyd at this point and are just a massive boiling over of tension from Coronavirus lockdown orders?
- haram_masala 6y ago
  I'd say it's that, plus tensions manufactured by social media and angry clickbait, plus a general sense of increasing income inequality. Humans are sadly well-attuned to how well-off their fellow humans are.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  I think that and the resulting unemployment boom certainly contributes, but you seem to miss the obvious point here - that the Black and Brown people of US have other objective reasons to protest about, too.
  - war1025 6y ago
    Sure, Black and Brown people have legitimate things to protest. But all I see are videos of white kids throwing bricks and otherwise stirring the pot.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      At this point, if that's all you've seen, it's because you aren't looking. So maybe look up videos of cops shooting journalists, smashing windows, bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything, and running people over with their cars. There are literally hundreds of such videos from the past few days. Then you'd be able to say you've seen videos of things other than white kids throwing bricks.
      - TheGrim-888 6y ago
        "bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything" Please link me to any such video. I bet you can't. I bet when I watch whatever you link to, there's more than adequate explanation for the use of force, that it isn't a person just sitting there minding their own business and they just get punched in the face. Unless of course you link to a video which has cut out all context, and all you see is a cop using force, which the majority of all these videos are.
brigandish 6y ago
A laudable idea but why restrict it to the protests? There's a problem with police brutality in lots of places and at lots of times (even just the perception of it), perhaps a more standard way to report and record which can be replicated easily and hence, compared better, might be an idea. (As I was writing an issue opened up on this kind of point https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83 https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83) It seems to me that the current set up excludes the vast majority of people (who are unlikely to know markdown, Git, or Github) which limits its effectiveness.
- akersten 6y ago
  (Not the author) I like Git for the decentralization and ease of someone backing it all up. Agree that there's a huge usability cliff for anyone outside our circle that wants to contribute. Maybe a good add-on project for someone is creating a website where potential new incidents can be submitted and evaluated, then pulled into the repo automatically if they pass muster.
  - demadog 6y ago
    A simple google form or google sheet that feeds into the Git repo would open up contributions from the other 95% of the populace!
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    If Reddit wasn't censored, you could use that, but you'd need moderators to manage duplicates and spam. Backing up Reddit pages / posts / videos should be fairly straightforward. If anything it's a lot more accessible to anyone because you can e.g. post from mobile.
- adjkant 6y ago
  Right now there is so much first person documentation of these acts pouring into Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat's Map, and Tiktok. This is the time to make sure there is a simple way to document all of this so it can be organized later. System perfection is the enemy of preservation here. Anything helps and taking time to make those UI layers could lose valuable documentation in the shuffle. Git's UI will absolutely limit the contributing audience, I agree - Perhaps the author could add a simple form for people to submit through and then technical people could manually add them? Google Form/Jotform/Survey Monkey style?
TheGrim-888 6y ago
It's really interesting the world we live in, some people look at these clips and get enraged at how horrible the police are. I look at the clips and they all make perfect sense. For example, the first clip I looked at claims "Couple of police officers are seen beating and manhandling an unarmed man. The officers are throwing punches while he was on the ground and pinned.". What ACTUALLY happened was that a protester was physically assaulting somebody else, and the police rushed in to separate them and secure the situation. They attempted to arrest the assaulter, who then resisted arrest and started punching an officer in the face, and was therefore punched back as a result. The clips are primarily given without any context of what led up to the event, which is hugely important, and then "conveniently" forget to mention all of the relevant information, such as the fact that the person getting hurt was resisting arrest and punching officers in the face. The fact that you have to "conveniently" leave out facts, leave out context of what led up to the events, and give political spin to what you're trying to show makes me immediately dismiss everything you're trying to say. The second clip I've looked at claims "The Police try to break up the peaceful protest by resorting to hitting individuals with batons.". What ACTUALLY happens is that they cut out all context of what led up to the situation, and cut in to a point where anybody with half a brain could see that the cops had been giving lawful orders for rioters to disperse, for what was probably a long time, they're on a loudspeaker giving them lawful orders to disperse, warning them that if they don't disperse force will be used against them, they decide to ignore lawful orders, and force is used against them to make them disperse. The way the headline makes it sound, they were just nice peaceful protesters, not causing any problems, and police just rolled in and started beating them. Get out of here with this nonsense.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > It's really interesting the world we live in, some people look at these clips and get enraged at how horrible the police are. I look at the clips and they all make perfect sense. OH YES? Do tell us more, please. https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follo... > Get out of here with this nonsense. The door is that way. -->
Melting_Harps 6y ago
Thanks for doing that, during the Hong Kong protests the (presumably) CCP were attacking doing ddos attacks and trying attack servers that hosted footage of the police illegally beating, arresting and pepper spraying lawful citizens protesting or simply just having the misfortune of being around one when the HKPF/PLA decided to get violent. Here is the torrent hash if anyone wants to host it and seed: 9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd8 > I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" I hope something like this is done for these protests (Anonymous?) and undertaken by the greater tech community as the Police need to be held accountable for the brutality and callous inhumane behaviour towards citizens and journalists alike, that many on here simply accepted 'as other people's problems.' And in many cities the police have simply decided of their own accord to just shut off their bodycams. I spent most of the weekend following the events and after you weed through the BS bots, you actually see the numbers are there to make it happen in just about every city. It's really just a matter of coordination and Will. If nothing else this is a stark reminder of what your tax money is going towards, and it isn't going towards roads, schools or whatever absurd notion most use to justify the ever growing militarization and expansion of a Police State in the US. The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley!
- cinquemb 6y ago
  > The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley! Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org)
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org) I don't know who those people are, nor have I taken the time to analyze their work. But let's assume that some were co-opted, you do realize that ultimately it doesn't matter because the few that weren't are responsible for some of the greatest innovation in citizen's use of cryptography and a non-state issue currency, those being: Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Timothy May. Hell, these people inspired a certain loud mouth Cyberpunk who went on to create wikileaks, and tried to expose covert Nuclear armament by the US prior to that, you may have heard of him as he's currently being used as political football in an extradition case: Julian Assange. And he motivated a guy who went to to work on TOR (Jacob Applebaum) and a former NSA contractor that revealed the extensive abuses of the the Intelligence Agencies around the world (Edward Snowden). What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions of said movement.
throwaway391003 6y ago
There's one from NYC that says: "A police officer forcefully pulls off a protestors face mask and pepper sprays him. The protestor had his hands up in surrender when this happened." From https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md#police-pull-off-protesters-mask-to-pepper-spray-him--may-31st https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor... If you look at the video though the guy was pushing towards the officer against the officer's hand. What do you expect to happen when you decide to aggress on an officer instead of back away? Here's the video they link https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232 https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232 How many other incidents are there in this repo that are unfairly listed/described?
- tasogare 6y ago
  A complementary repo which would be interesting to make to give a more complete view of the situation is one listing the destructions, lootings and physical agression made by non-police forces.
- mquander 6y ago
  I watched that video. You have clearly mastered the application of Newton's third law, by pointing out that when someone pushes you away with their hand, you are also pushing against their hand. We only disagree about whether it's correct to pepper spray someone in the face when this happens.
  - throwaway391003 6y ago
    The guy did not take a step or two back, like everyone else seen in the video was doing edit: I just walked the video again. you have to be crazy if you don't think the guy was encroaching on the officer's space
    - mquander 6y ago
      I agree. We clearly have a dramatic difference of opinion about when it is a good time to pepper spray someone. I suppose the police officer in the video shares your opinion, and the authors of the document share mine.
ConanRus 6y ago
What about "protesters" brutality? Now they shooting at cops, so what about that?
Proven 6y ago
Consider also documenting protesters' brutality, looting and so on - one repo for everything
booleandilemma 6y ago
Is there a Git repo to track the stores that have been looted/burned to the ground?
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  Maybe they should do that, but make sure to exclude the ones that are insured. Because that's not a net loss. Also be sure to include the ones that police are responsible for like this car that the Riverside Sherrif busted out for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU
  - zanmat0 6y ago
    Its not a net loss if they have to increase their prices to pay for the new higher premiums? These failures to understand basic economics are frightening.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It is being logged, but in police and insurance reports. Maybe a freedom of information request could get you access to that data. My question though: Why are you interested in that information? Is there something you want to prove or emphasize?
itsbits 6y ago
Just wanted to know why protests are still continuing? Aren't Police involved with the incident are charged?
- mistermann 6y ago
  Some people claim it is in part due to decades of injustice with more lip service than real change from politicians of all political stripes.
- nsilvestri 6y ago
  The one officer who was immediately involved has been charged; the other three have not. However this case is more of the straw that broke the camel's back. It's freshest in our minds and is the face of the protests, but as a whole the protests represent decades of tensions boiling over.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sukilot 6y ago
  A dozen more people have died on all sides and combinations so now it's self-perpetuating chain reaction into civil war.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Because charging the individuals does not mean things will change. It won't mean they get a conviction, and it doesn't mean the police force will reorganize, demilitarize, retrain to use less force, or become not racist. And the other side hasn't de-escalated either, with the president deploying the military. Earlier you could at least hold the police using excessive force accountable - assuming they didn't hide their badge number, which some did. Now, there's faceless, badgeless (not even an indication what branch of the military they're from) soldiers stepping in. The protesters demand change, not a few individuals being held accountable. For every Floyd that died, there's hundreds if not thousands more of unjust incidents.
sneak 6y ago
Please put the media clips into the repo. The original links will frequently disappear from the censorship platforms. Don’t just link, mirror the videos.
alphachloride 6y ago
The organization for this repo has only 2 repositories in their github profile: this one .... and Atom the text editor. Wat.
orwin 6y ago
Seeing US police act almost make me believe French BAC is a peacefull police force trained for violence deescalation. I don't understand how you can not have the equivalent of CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  We do. SWAT teams absolutely exist. You're seeing them here.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    Uh, nobody questioned that you've got trigger-happy and overgeared specialists on a powertrip. That's not what CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei is though. I've only ever seen them running around entirely without protection or with shields to stop people doing dumb shit.
  - orwin 6y ago
    It is not SWAT, it is police forces trained especially to keep protest from degenerating. Negotiator able to defuse situations, will only charge or fire (with water cannons or rubber bullets) on order but have the right to refuse them if they feel the situation can be calmed down.
adjkant 6y ago
This tweet has a good two minute video of some of these cases, for those who are questioning if this is "valid" as I have seen in many threads. https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320 https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320
- ebg13 6y ago
  This one is from a link further down. I think it tells pretty much everything. https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=09 https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=0...
  - asiachick 6y ago
    I don't see what you seem to see in that video. I see an umbrella put way over the fence. I see a policeman grab an umbrella that was way over fence. I see then someone else reach across the fence in response to the police grabbing the umbrella. I see the police then react to that person reaching across the fence. I don't see blame. I just see tinder, a spark, and an escalation. I'm fully 100% for "Black Lives Matter" and 100% against police brutality and the militarization of the police. But that video is too ambiguous convince all people. It's the same with the CNN reporter. People who want to see racism see a black reporter get arrested. People who don't want to see racism see 3 people getting arrested, one black, one white, one latino? Yes, racism exists but that video is also not proof of it.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      > that video. First of all, it's two videos. Watch the aerial view in the immediate reply. (If you didn't see it, you can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...) > I see a policeman grab You see an attempted robbery resulting in the destruction of someone's private property. > I see then someone else reach You see a person trying to hold onto their property as they're pulled over the fence because a cop just assaulted them. > I see the police then react You see the police immediately start spraying and bombing and gassing, with the flimsiest excuse, an entire crowd of people who are literally just chanting. This coordinated initiation of violence is extremely typical from the police playbook. Watch this third video from 26:30 as the filmer explains the meaning of a "posture" change when the police swap in gasmask brutes in place of the bicycle cops who were standing there before, showing that they planned to escalate from the beginning. https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/ https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/
axegon_ 6y ago
Probably a bit of a controversial opinion but in some cases I can sympathize with the police officers. The reality is that the vast majority of them likely condemn the events around George Floyd's death. They are also regular people with families, children and friends they have to provide for. And they have the exact same problems that many of us do. Their daily work involves keeping things in order, which is something I respect. That said, the first video I opened at random[1] shows a small number of people blocking a road in what looks more like a civil war scene rather than a protest. And the authorities are greeted with "F-U" and people tossing objects at them. The people in uniforms are ordinary people. Put yourself in their shoes and tell me: having all the problems you have, seeing all the destruction, which in all cases is no longer a protest, people shouting "f-u" and throwing stuff at you: You can be the most mentally stable human being but everyone has a limit. Many of those men are possibly working overtime, in extreme conditions and I bet they would much rather be with their kids or sick parents for instance. With this idea in mind, I personally can't picture myself being able to remain calm and not overstep my boundaries sooner or later. Now putting myself in the shoes of the protesters: seeing the same destruction, destroying of properties, cars and businesses, I'll call it a day because this is no longer a protest. I'd go back home and wait for this to be taken care of and join a civilized protest once this has been taken care of. A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. And having spent most of my life in eastern Europe, you can say I know a thing or two about protests. Last large protest I was a part of was in ~2013 irrc and the aftermath was very different. The night after each of those protests, everything was spotless clean, people thew all their garbage in the bins, nothing broken or destroyed. People were coming with their children and pets and being completely comfortable with it. There was a completely unrelated incident of a gas explosion at a Chinese restaurant, which burned a nearby shop. People gathered donations fo the shop owner to recover. Incidents with police? Practically none during ~3 months of daily protest. And we are talking eastern Europe - the police officers are anything but the nicest people on the planet. [1] https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024 https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024
- miguelmota 6y ago
  > A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. The protests started out peaceful but became less peaceful when the police showed up and tear gassed innocent crowds. There's people literally getting arrested for practicing their right to assemble and right to freedom of speech.
mehrdadn 6y ago
Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant. Here's why: at least in NYC, I know the protest leaders and the NYPD police chief got together just a day or two ago to have a dialog and try to mend things so they can work together instead of against each other. [1] They don't hate each other, and in any case, both sides realize they need the other's support. They just want to be able to work together to keep things peaceful. And it seems like they're giving each other another chance to do things right, and it's important that they get that chance instead of having more tensions flare again as a result of anger from 3 days ago. So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in text.) In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model that others can hopefully emulate. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- panic 6y ago
  It's hard to believe that report when it doesn't name any of the people or organizations they met with. As far as I know, the protesters don't have any leaders that could negotiate on their behalf.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    I don't know, maybe he's wrong about them being leaders. I'm happy to read more information about this; I just don't have more info unfortunately. Does it really matter if they're leaders or not though? It's not like it doesn't count if the situation improves without the leaders being involved, or without us knowing what their names might be.
master_yoda_1 6y ago
what about the looting on the street?
razius 6y ago
Why not go the other way as well, do one with how many police officers have been killed by protesters.
- netsharc 6y ago
  You're free to start one...
charliebrownau 6y ago
Is github and people willing to document everytime a black person rioting or a white commie (antifa) kills a person (citizen or cop) and steals/destorys/burns down places ?
ghthor 6y ago
If you're going to document violence, do it on both sides and try to document without any bias. Don't let your agenda cloud your judgement about what narrative to tell.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Here's a thread by T. Greg Doucette, a public defender and 1st amendment litigator who is white and conservative-leaning but who also attended an HBCU. https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273 The thread was at 185ish at last count. It has been growing since he started it on May 30.
sbmthakur 6y ago
Nice. Is there any repo that tracks all the riots?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Why do you ask, and what is your end game?
  - sbmthakur 6y ago
    I have no end game.
sagebird 6y ago
GIT (and github) is a terrible tool for general purpose collaboration of non-technical people. Something like shared google doc would fit better. Perhaps google docs, or other collaborative tools are actually able to scale to 30+ users? What is the largest google doc collaboration that you have seen work out?
- bskap 6y ago
  I think Google docs has a limit of 100 concurrent users on a doc
Nemo_bis 6y ago
You can also contribute to the press freedom tracker. https://pressfreedomtracker.us/ https://pressfreedomtracker.us/
dang 6y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914, which is still on the front page.
- adjkant 6y ago
  Hi dang! If I may ask, why is this one not on the front page? It seems to offer something significantly different that that older link which only links to an article indexing police brutality against journalists, while this is against all people. It appears to have enough upvotes to be on the front page - did some other part of the weighting system bump it off or is there a manual flag/bump on it? Appreciate all your efforts here and hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory.
  - dang 6y ago
    We downweighted it as a follow-up submission [1]. Follow-ups are by definition repetitive, and repetition goes against curiosity which is the root principle here [2]. I'm sorry, because this seems like a good project, and as a reader I approve. But as a moderator, the perspective is different—the quesiton is always, is there enough SNI (significant new information [3]) to support a significantly different discussion? in this case vis-à-vis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914, which has been on the front page all day? The answer seems to be no, because the comments in this thread aren't about the specifics of the repository—they're just about the general topic of police brutality. In other words this thread just gets sucked into the stronger gravitational field of the more generic topic, which unfortunately is what happens to most posts that fly too close to a large hot planet (i.e. a hot ongoing thread). All that said, I'm tempted to contradict myself ("very well then I contradict myself") and dump the other thread in favor of this one, because I can feel there's something interesting here. So how about a compromise: if someone still feels like this post is interesting after, say, two weeks have gone by, they can email hn@ycombinator.com and we can arrange a repost. I was originally going to say one week, but that's sort of on the cusp between now and the future. Two weeks is more on the future side. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... p.s. People who say "hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory" are the least of our worries :)
samh 6y ago
You people are credulous and mad. Goodbye Western civilisation.
nojvek 6y ago
This is awesome. However it’s still pretty vague. Can there be any meaningful action from this ? Is there a way for a civilian to get access to the officer’s body camera recording and identify which cops are the trigger happy ones. Basically a more targeted list that says “These officers violated the first amendment constitutional rights of citizens to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, this is the proof, please file charges”. We are protesting because the police are unaccountable for their actions. How do we move to a place where we can hold them accountable and there is a quick as fair process for justice to be served.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
While we're on the topic, here is another useful program that removes metadata from images on github, of anyone can take the time to look over the source code and verify it does what it says that would be super useful: https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/ https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/
throwaway391003 6y ago
This is just inciting and encouraging violence against police, increasing a feud between the left and the police

288 points by novia 6y ago

I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" Projects like this are what you can do.

rrmm 6y ago
Also just in general, make sure the people around you are registered to vote, get absentee ballots if they need them, understand how to complete, and send them. Make sure they vote.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  but vote for who? Joe Biden has historically backed legislation for search and frisk, he is only a good choice for people who think "BlueLivesMatter"
  - tomp 6y ago
    BLM started under Obama. I doubt it’s up to the president to solve it... maybe local politicians (county, city, state), or Congress?
  - rrmm 6y ago
    I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. I will only tell you to exercise your civic duty. We are all smart people here: to wield both the abstract and pragmatic concerns into a decision. Make it. It may be the last we get to make.

_bxg1 6y ago

I don't see the source for the linked "Web App" here; just the markdown files. Would be good to be able to contribute to that as well.

NameDoesntExist 6y ago
The Web App repo is here [0] 0: https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality

war1025 6y ago

Am I the only one that gets the feeling these riots have nothing to do with George Floyd at this point and are just a massive boiling over of tension from Coronavirus lockdown orders?

haram_masala 6y ago
I'd say it's that, plus tensions manufactured by social media and angry clickbait, plus a general sense of increasing income inequality. Humans are sadly well-attuned to how well-off their fellow humans are.
phoe-krk 6y ago
I think that and the resulting unemployment boom certainly contributes, but you seem to miss the obvious point here - that the Black and Brown people of US have other objective reasons to protest about, too.
- war1025 6y ago
  Sure, Black and Brown people have legitimate things to protest. But all I see are videos of white kids throwing bricks and otherwise stirring the pot.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    At this point, if that's all you've seen, it's because you aren't looking. So maybe look up videos of cops shooting journalists, smashing windows, bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything, and running people over with their cars. There are literally hundreds of such videos from the past few days. Then you'd be able to say you've seen videos of things other than white kids throwing bricks.
    - TheGrim-888 6y ago
      "bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything" Please link me to any such video. I bet you can't. I bet when I watch whatever you link to, there's more than adequate explanation for the use of force, that it isn't a person just sitting there minding their own business and they just get punched in the face. Unless of course you link to a video which has cut out all context, and all you see is a cop using force, which the majority of all these videos are.

brigandish 6y ago

A laudable idea but why restrict it to the protests? There's a problem with police brutality in lots of places and at lots of times (even just the perception of it), perhaps a more standard way to report and record which can be replicated easily and hence, compared better, might be an idea. (As I was writing an issue opened up on this kind of point https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83 https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83) It seems to me that the current set up excludes the vast majority of people (who are unlikely to know markdown, Git, or Github) which limits its effectiveness.

akersten 6y ago
(Not the author) I like Git for the decentralization and ease of someone backing it all up. Agree that there's a huge usability cliff for anyone outside our circle that wants to contribute. Maybe a good add-on project for someone is creating a website where potential new incidents can be submitted and evaluated, then pulled into the repo automatically if they pass muster.
- demadog 6y ago
  A simple google form or google sheet that feeds into the Git repo would open up contributions from the other 95% of the populace!
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  If Reddit wasn't censored, you could use that, but you'd need moderators to manage duplicates and spam. Backing up Reddit pages / posts / videos should be fairly straightforward. If anything it's a lot more accessible to anyone because you can e.g. post from mobile.
adjkant 6y ago
Right now there is so much first person documentation of these acts pouring into Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat's Map, and Tiktok. This is the time to make sure there is a simple way to document all of this so it can be organized later. System perfection is the enemy of preservation here. Anything helps and taking time to make those UI layers could lose valuable documentation in the shuffle. Git's UI will absolutely limit the contributing audience, I agree - Perhaps the author could add a simple form for people to submit through and then technical people could manually add them? Google Form/Jotform/Survey Monkey style?

TheGrim-888 6y ago

It's really interesting the world we live in, some people look at these clips and get enraged at how horrible the police are. I look at the clips and they all make perfect sense. For example, the first clip I looked at claims "Couple of police officers are seen beating and manhandling an unarmed man. The officers are throwing punches while he was on the ground and pinned.". What ACTUALLY happened was that a protester was physically assaulting somebody else, and the police rushed in to separate them and secure the situation. They attempted to arrest the assaulter, who then resisted arrest and started punching an officer in the face, and was therefore punched back as a result. The clips are primarily given without any context of what led up to the event, which is hugely important, and then "conveniently" forget to mention all of the relevant information, such as the fact that the person getting hurt was resisting arrest and punching officers in the face. The fact that you have to "conveniently" leave out facts, leave out context of what led up to the events, and give political spin to what you're trying to show makes me immediately dismiss everything you're trying to say. The second clip I've looked at claims "The Police try to break up the peaceful protest by resorting to hitting individuals with batons.". What ACTUALLY happens is that they cut out all context of what led up to the situation, and cut in to a point where anybody with half a brain could see that the cops had been giving lawful orders for rioters to disperse, for what was probably a long time, they're on a loudspeaker giving them lawful orders to disperse, warning them that if they don't disperse force will be used against them, they decide to ignore lawful orders, and force is used against them to make them disperse. The way the headline makes it sound, they were just nice peaceful protesters, not causing any problems, and police just rolled in and started beating them. Get out of here with this nonsense.

ebg13 6y ago
> It's really interesting the world we live in, some people look at these clips and get enraged at how horrible the police are. I look at the clips and they all make perfect sense. OH YES? Do tell us more, please. https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follo... > Get out of here with this nonsense. The door is that way. -->

Melting_Harps 6y ago

Thanks for doing that, during the Hong Kong protests the (presumably) CCP were attacking doing ddos attacks and trying attack servers that hosted footage of the police illegally beating, arresting and pepper spraying lawful citizens protesting or simply just having the misfortune of being around one when the HKPF/PLA decided to get violent. Here is the torrent hash if anyone wants to host it and seed: 9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd8 > I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" I hope something like this is done for these protests (Anonymous?) and undertaken by the greater tech community as the Police need to be held accountable for the brutality and callous inhumane behaviour towards citizens and journalists alike, that many on here simply accepted 'as other people's problems.' And in many cities the police have simply decided of their own accord to just shut off their bodycams. I spent most of the weekend following the events and after you weed through the BS bots, you actually see the numbers are there to make it happen in just about every city. It's really just a matter of coordination and Will. If nothing else this is a stark reminder of what your tax money is going towards, and it isn't going towards roads, schools or whatever absurd notion most use to justify the ever growing militarization and expansion of a Police State in the US. The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley!

cinquemb 6y ago
> The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley! Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org)
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org) I don't know who those people are, nor have I taken the time to analyze their work. But let's assume that some were co-opted, you do realize that ultimately it doesn't matter because the few that weren't are responsible for some of the greatest innovation in citizen's use of cryptography and a non-state issue currency, those being: Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Timothy May. Hell, these people inspired a certain loud mouth Cyberpunk who went on to create wikileaks, and tried to expose covert Nuclear armament by the US prior to that, you may have heard of him as he's currently being used as political football in an extradition case: Julian Assange. And he motivated a guy who went to to work on TOR (Jacob Applebaum) and a former NSA contractor that revealed the extensive abuses of the the Intelligence Agencies around the world (Edward Snowden). What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions of said movement.

throwaway391003 6y ago

There's one from NYC that says: "A police officer forcefully pulls off a protestors face mask and pepper sprays him. The protestor had his hands up in surrender when this happened." From https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md#police-pull-off-protesters-mask-to-pepper-spray-him--may-31st https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor... If you look at the video though the guy was pushing towards the officer against the officer's hand. What do you expect to happen when you decide to aggress on an officer instead of back away? Here's the video they link https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232 https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232 How many other incidents are there in this repo that are unfairly listed/described?

tasogare 6y ago
A complementary repo which would be interesting to make to give a more complete view of the situation is one listing the destructions, lootings and physical agression made by non-police forces.
mquander 6y ago
I watched that video. You have clearly mastered the application of Newton's third law, by pointing out that when someone pushes you away with their hand, you are also pushing against their hand. We only disagree about whether it's correct to pepper spray someone in the face when this happens.
- throwaway391003 6y ago
  The guy did not take a step or two back, like everyone else seen in the video was doing edit: I just walked the video again. you have to be crazy if you don't think the guy was encroaching on the officer's space
  - mquander 6y ago
    I agree. We clearly have a dramatic difference of opinion about when it is a good time to pepper spray someone. I suppose the police officer in the video shares your opinion, and the authors of the document share mine.

ConanRus 6y ago

What about "protesters" brutality? Now they shooting at cops, so what about that?

Proven 6y ago

Consider also documenting protesters' brutality, looting and so on - one repo for everything

booleandilemma 6y ago

Is there a Git repo to track the stores that have been looted/burned to the ground?

gremlinsinc 6y ago
Maybe they should do that, but make sure to exclude the ones that are insured. Because that's not a net loss. Also be sure to include the ones that police are responsible for like this car that the Riverside Sherrif busted out for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU
- zanmat0 6y ago
  Its not a net loss if they have to increase their prices to pay for the new higher premiums? These failures to understand basic economics are frightening.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It is being logged, but in police and insurance reports. Maybe a freedom of information request could get you access to that data. My question though: Why are you interested in that information? Is there something you want to prove or emphasize?

itsbits 6y ago

Just wanted to know why protests are still continuing? Aren't Police involved with the incident are charged?

mistermann 6y ago
Some people claim it is in part due to decades of injustice with more lip service than real change from politicians of all political stripes.
nsilvestri 6y ago
The one officer who was immediately involved has been charged; the other three have not. However this case is more of the straw that broke the camel's back. It's freshest in our minds and is the face of the protests, but as a whole the protests represent decades of tensions boiling over.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sukilot 6y ago
A dozen more people have died on all sides and combinations so now it's self-perpetuating chain reaction into civil war.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Because charging the individuals does not mean things will change. It won't mean they get a conviction, and it doesn't mean the police force will reorganize, demilitarize, retrain to use less force, or become not racist. And the other side hasn't de-escalated either, with the president deploying the military. Earlier you could at least hold the police using excessive force accountable - assuming they didn't hide their badge number, which some did. Now, there's faceless, badgeless (not even an indication what branch of the military they're from) soldiers stepping in. The protesters demand change, not a few individuals being held accountable. For every Floyd that died, there's hundreds if not thousands more of unjust incidents.

sneak 6y ago

Please put the media clips into the repo. The original links will frequently disappear from the censorship platforms. Don’t just link, mirror the videos.

alphachloride 6y ago

The organization for this repo has only 2 repositories in their github profile: this one .... and Atom the text editor. Wat.

orwin 6y ago

Seeing US police act almost make me believe French BAC is a peacefull police force trained for violence deescalation. I don't understand how you can not have the equivalent of CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei.

freeone3000 6y ago
We do. SWAT teams absolutely exist. You're seeing them here.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  Uh, nobody questioned that you've got trigger-happy and overgeared specialists on a powertrip. That's not what CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei is though. I've only ever seen them running around entirely without protection or with shields to stop people doing dumb shit.
- orwin 6y ago
  It is not SWAT, it is police forces trained especially to keep protest from degenerating. Negotiator able to defuse situations, will only charge or fire (with water cannons or rubber bullets) on order but have the right to refuse them if they feel the situation can be calmed down.

adjkant 6y ago

This tweet has a good two minute video of some of these cases, for those who are questioning if this is "valid" as I have seen in many threads. https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320 https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320

ebg13 6y ago
This one is from a link further down. I think it tells pretty much everything. https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=09 https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=0...
- asiachick 6y ago
  I don't see what you seem to see in that video. I see an umbrella put way over the fence. I see a policeman grab an umbrella that was way over fence. I see then someone else reach across the fence in response to the police grabbing the umbrella. I see the police then react to that person reaching across the fence. I don't see blame. I just see tinder, a spark, and an escalation. I'm fully 100% for "Black Lives Matter" and 100% against police brutality and the militarization of the police. But that video is too ambiguous convince all people. It's the same with the CNN reporter. People who want to see racism see a black reporter get arrested. People who don't want to see racism see 3 people getting arrested, one black, one white, one latino? Yes, racism exists but that video is also not proof of it.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > that video. First of all, it's two videos. Watch the aerial view in the immediate reply. (If you didn't see it, you can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...) > I see a policeman grab You see an attempted robbery resulting in the destruction of someone's private property. > I see then someone else reach You see a person trying to hold onto their property as they're pulled over the fence because a cop just assaulted them. > I see the police then react You see the police immediately start spraying and bombing and gassing, with the flimsiest excuse, an entire crowd of people who are literally just chanting. This coordinated initiation of violence is extremely typical from the police playbook. Watch this third video from 26:30 as the filmer explains the meaning of a "posture" change when the police swap in gasmask brutes in place of the bicycle cops who were standing there before, showing that they planned to escalate from the beginning. https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/ https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/

axegon_ 6y ago

Probably a bit of a controversial opinion but in some cases I can sympathize with the police officers. The reality is that the vast majority of them likely condemn the events around George Floyd's death. They are also regular people with families, children and friends they have to provide for. And they have the exact same problems that many of us do. Their daily work involves keeping things in order, which is something I respect. That said, the first video I opened at random[1] shows a small number of people blocking a road in what looks more like a civil war scene rather than a protest. And the authorities are greeted with "F-U" and people tossing objects at them. The people in uniforms are ordinary people. Put yourself in their shoes and tell me: having all the problems you have, seeing all the destruction, which in all cases is no longer a protest, people shouting "f-u" and throwing stuff at you: You can be the most mentally stable human being but everyone has a limit. Many of those men are possibly working overtime, in extreme conditions and I bet they would much rather be with their kids or sick parents for instance. With this idea in mind, I personally can't picture myself being able to remain calm and not overstep my boundaries sooner or later. Now putting myself in the shoes of the protesters: seeing the same destruction, destroying of properties, cars and businesses, I'll call it a day because this is no longer a protest. I'd go back home and wait for this to be taken care of and join a civilized protest once this has been taken care of. A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. And having spent most of my life in eastern Europe, you can say I know a thing or two about protests. Last large protest I was a part of was in ~2013 irrc and the aftermath was very different. The night after each of those protests, everything was spotless clean, people thew all their garbage in the bins, nothing broken or destroyed. People were coming with their children and pets and being completely comfortable with it. There was a completely unrelated incident of a gas explosion at a Chinese restaurant, which burned a nearby shop. People gathered donations fo the shop owner to recover. Incidents with police? Practically none during ~3 months of daily protest. And we are talking eastern Europe - the police officers are anything but the nicest people on the planet. [1] https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024 https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024

miguelmota 6y ago
> A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. The protests started out peaceful but became less peaceful when the police showed up and tear gassed innocent crowds. There's people literally getting arrested for practicing their right to assemble and right to freedom of speech.

mehrdadn 6y ago

Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant. Here's why: at least in NYC, I know the protest leaders and the NYPD police chief got together just a day or two ago to have a dialog and try to mend things so they can work together instead of against each other. [1] They don't hate each other, and in any case, both sides realize they need the other's support. They just want to be able to work together to keep things peaceful. And it seems like they're giving each other another chance to do things right, and it's important that they get that chance instead of having more tensions flare again as a result of anger from 3 days ago. So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in text.) In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model that others can hopefully emulate. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
panic 6y ago
It's hard to believe that report when it doesn't name any of the people or organizations they met with. As far as I know, the protesters don't have any leaders that could negotiate on their behalf.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I don't know, maybe he's wrong about them being leaders. I'm happy to read more information about this; I just don't have more info unfortunately. Does it really matter if they're leaders or not though? It's not like it doesn't count if the situation improves without the leaders being involved, or without us knowing what their names might be.

master_yoda_1 6y ago

what about the looting on the street?

razius 6y ago

Why not go the other way as well, do one with how many police officers have been killed by protesters.

netsharc 6y ago
You're free to start one...

charliebrownau 6y ago

Is github and people willing to document everytime a black person rioting or a white commie (antifa) kills a person (citizen or cop) and steals/destorys/burns down places ?

ghthor 6y ago

If you're going to document violence, do it on both sides and try to document without any bias. Don't let your agenda cloud your judgement about what narrative to tell.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

Here's a thread by T. Greg Doucette, a public defender and 1st amendment litigator who is white and conservative-leaning but who also attended an HBCU. https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273 The thread was at 185ish at last count. It has been growing since he started it on May 30.

sbmthakur 6y ago

Nice. Is there any repo that tracks all the riots?

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Why do you ask, and what is your end game?
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  I have no end game.

sagebird 6y ago

GIT (and github) is a terrible tool for general purpose collaboration of non-technical people. Something like shared google doc would fit better. Perhaps google docs, or other collaborative tools are actually able to scale to 30+ users? What is the largest google doc collaboration that you have seen work out?

bskap 6y ago
I think Google docs has a limit of 100 concurrent users on a doc

Nemo_bis 6y ago

You can also contribute to the press freedom tracker. https://pressfreedomtracker.us/ https://pressfreedomtracker.us/

dang 6y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914, which is still on the front page.

adjkant 6y ago
Hi dang! If I may ask, why is this one not on the front page? It seems to offer something significantly different that that older link which only links to an article indexing police brutality against journalists, while this is against all people. It appears to have enough upvotes to be on the front page - did some other part of the weighting system bump it off or is there a manual flag/bump on it? Appreciate all your efforts here and hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory.
- dang 6y ago
  We downweighted it as a follow-up submission [1]. Follow-ups are by definition repetitive, and repetition goes against curiosity which is the root principle here [2]. I'm sorry, because this seems like a good project, and as a reader I approve. But as a moderator, the perspective is different—the quesiton is always, is there enough SNI (significant new information [3]) to support a significantly different discussion? in this case vis-à-vis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914, which has been on the front page all day? The answer seems to be no, because the comments in this thread aren't about the specifics of the repository—they're just about the general topic of police brutality. In other words this thread just gets sucked into the stronger gravitational field of the more generic topic, which unfortunately is what happens to most posts that fly too close to a large hot planet (i.e. a hot ongoing thread). All that said, I'm tempted to contradict myself ("very well then I contradict myself") and dump the other thread in favor of this one, because I can feel there's something interesting here. So how about a compromise: if someone still feels like this post is interesting after, say, two weeks have gone by, they can email hn@ycombinator.com and we can arrange a repost. I was originally going to say one week, but that's sort of on the cusp between now and the future. Two weeks is more on the future side. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... p.s. People who say "hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory" are the least of our worries :)

samh 6y ago

You people are credulous and mad. Goodbye Western civilisation.

nojvek 6y ago

This is awesome. However it’s still pretty vague. Can there be any meaningful action from this ? Is there a way for a civilian to get access to the officer’s body camera recording and identify which cops are the trigger happy ones. Basically a more targeted list that says “These officers violated the first amendment constitutional rights of citizens to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, this is the proof, please file charges”. We are protesting because the police are unaccountable for their actions. How do we move to a place where we can hold them accountable and there is a quick as fair process for justice to be served.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

While we're on the topic, here is another useful program that removes metadata from images on github, of anyone can take the time to look over the source code and verify it does what it says that would be super useful: https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/ https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/

throwaway391003 6y ago

This is just inciting and encouraging violence against police, increasing a feud between the left and the police