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> This is why we tolerate the police for a few hundred years now - on occasion they cause violence that's predictable and can be influenced. The point of these

> This is why we tolerate the police for a few hundred years now - on occasion they cause violence that's predictable and can be influenced. The point of these protests is that the violence is not occasional. It is endemic, and attempts to stop it stretch back centuries. It has persisted across the country, under both progressive and conservative politicians, despite many, many attempts to eliminate it. If the violent system we have has successfully resisted change and accountability for hundreds of years, how is this a regression?

AnHonestComment 6y ago
Police are safer than cars, by an order of magnitude. The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police. So, empirically, it seems like the violence is occasional except when you go asking for it and the protestors just have a problem with authority and society at large. It’s why their complaints are big on individual sob stories but lacking statistics to back them up.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Police are safer than cars, For whom and per...what? Encounter? Mile traveled with them? > The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police. That suggests to me that either your perception of provocation or of anomaly is skewed (or that “anomaly” is used in the software sense of “behavior out of line with spec” rather than the more general sense of “behavior out of line with what is normal”.) > So, empirically, You just recounted what is, by the terms used, your subjective impression, and termed your conclusion built on that (which go far beyond what is justified even if that impression was undisputed fact) “empirical”. That’s...not what that word means.
  - AnHonestComment 6y ago
    Per arrest to one year of driving: you would have to be arrested ten times in a year for your risk from the police to match your risk driving a car that year. Per arrest for violent crime (where most of the deaths occur), blacks are safer than whites. I’ve been reviewing the footage from Seattle — and protestors started every instance of violence by first getting forceful with the cops. Show me any evidence that there’s an endemic problem of violence — because nothing I can find in either statistics about harm or footage from protests suggests there is. That’s an empiric conclusion: studying the statistics about how often police harm people and comparing them to other sources of risk — which show they’re relatively minor.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      The tech industry is trying to get rid of cars as we know it by inventing self-driving technology, so I'm not sure how germane they are to this conversation. Can we not work towards addressing multiple causes of death in society?
    - ubercow13 6y ago
      It doesn’t seem minor compared to other countries police forces. Why should being killed by the police be acceptable as long as the risk is lower than that from traffic?
      - tekknik 6y ago
        Because we need laws and punishments to enforce those laws. What other countries have a population as diverse as the US and then let’s see some stats.
        ubercow13 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... Seems the problem is approximately 90 times worse (!) than the UK for example. The UK is somewhat less diverse, but what has a diverse population got to do with it? That might explain some of the killing, but it doesn't justify it.
jimbokun 6y ago
> The point of these protests is that the violence is not occasional. It is endemic, and attempts to stop it stretch back centuries. I feel like these statements need to be qualified to be useful. Has the level of police violence over the years gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed roughly the same? How does the overall levels of violence compare to places without an organized police force?
- toofy 6y ago
  > Has the level of police violence over the years gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed roughly the same? I understand why some people’s initial instinct is to believe this is a new problem, but groups have been desperately trying to get people’s attention about police violence for decades. Rodney King was nearly 30 years ago. And people were crying for help long before that. I knew there was a problem before, but seeing things unfold the last week made it clear, this is a much more widespread and a significantly deeper issue than most people realized. Even with all of that said, I think we would be silly to imply that abuse has to happen for a significant amount of time before it’s justifiable for someone to demand it stop.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    You have avoided answering the question you have quoted. It’s an important question.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      The point they're making is that the current level of police violence is still unacceptable, regardless of whether it may or may not have been better or worse in the past.
skissane 6y ago
A question – is the problem with police, or is the problem with US police specifically? Do we have the same problem with police in other countries? Canadian police? UK police? Police in EU countries? If the US police have this problem and other (wealthy democratic) countries don't – or even if comparable countries have the problem too, just not quite as bad as the US has it – what makes US police different? Racism and racial inequality. Yes, that's very real, but don't think for a moment other countries don't have that problem too – they do. But yes, historically speaking, the US was very much an outlier of extreme racism – few other countries ever had anything comparable to "Jim Crow laws", and the most obvious comparators (apartheid in South Africa and the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany) are not what the US really wants to be compared to. On the other hand, my personal impression is that contemporary Americans are (on average) actually much more highly committed to anti-racism than people in most other countries are. Could there be other relevant factors causing problems unique to US police? I think, everyone is (quite rightly) focused on the racial inequality issue, but could there be other causes which might be less deeply entrenched and quicker to fix? Easy short-term wins? (My thought: US has more independent law enforcement agencies than any other country on earth – force all the smaller ones to merge – bigger police forces tend to have a more professional culture, and a smaller number of big police forces is easier for the media/NGOs/etc to hold to account than a larger number of small ones.)
- dmode 6y ago
  I don’t know why you are getting down voted. I think your comments are asking genuine questions
- DenisM 6y ago
  In the US it is believed the opposite - more local power structures are easier to influence through local elections. It may not be a huge problem on the scale of Portugal, but as countries get larger things get worse. Imagine the entire EU having one police force - how do you go about changing anything? In the US you can run for mayor or City Council, much more direct connection.
  - skissane 6y ago

AnHonestComment 6y ago

Police are safer than cars, by an order of magnitude. The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police. So, empirically, it seems like the violence is occasional except when you go asking for it and the protestors just have a problem with authority and society at large. It’s why their complaints are big on individual sob stories but lacking statistics to back them up.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Police are safer than cars, For whom and per...what? Encounter? Mile traveled with them? > The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police. That suggests to me that either your perception of provocation or of anomaly is skewed (or that “anomaly” is used in the software sense of “behavior out of line with spec” rather than the more general sense of “behavior out of line with what is normal”.) > So, empirically, You just recounted what is, by the terms used, your subjective impression, and termed your conclusion built on that (which go far beyond what is justified even if that impression was undisputed fact) “empirical”. That’s...not what that word means.
- AnHonestComment 6y ago
  Per arrest to one year of driving: you would have to be arrested ten times in a year for your risk from the police to match your risk driving a car that year. Per arrest for violent crime (where most of the deaths occur), blacks are safer than whites. I’ve been reviewing the footage from Seattle — and protestors started every instance of violence by first getting forceful with the cops. Show me any evidence that there’s an endemic problem of violence — because nothing I can find in either statistics about harm or footage from protests suggests there is. That’s an empiric conclusion: studying the statistics about how often police harm people and comparing them to other sources of risk — which show they’re relatively minor.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    The tech industry is trying to get rid of cars as we know it by inventing self-driving technology, so I'm not sure how germane they are to this conversation. Can we not work towards addressing multiple causes of death in society?
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    It doesn’t seem minor compared to other countries police forces. Why should being killed by the police be acceptable as long as the risk is lower than that from traffic?
    - tekknik 6y ago
      Because we need laws and punishments to enforce those laws. What other countries have a population as diverse as the US and then let’s see some stats.
      - ubercow13 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... Seems the problem is approximately 90 times worse (!) than the UK for example. The UK is somewhat less diverse, but what has a diverse population got to do with it? That might explain some of the killing, but it doesn't justify it.

jimbokun 6y ago

> The point of these protests is that the violence is not occasional. It is endemic, and attempts to stop it stretch back centuries. I feel like these statements need to be qualified to be useful. Has the level of police violence over the years gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed roughly the same? How does the overall levels of violence compare to places without an organized police force?

toofy 6y ago
> Has the level of police violence over the years gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed roughly the same? I understand why some people’s initial instinct is to believe this is a new problem, but groups have been desperately trying to get people’s attention about police violence for decades. Rodney King was nearly 30 years ago. And people were crying for help long before that. I knew there was a problem before, but seeing things unfold the last week made it clear, this is a much more widespread and a significantly deeper issue than most people realized. Even with all of that said, I think we would be silly to imply that abuse has to happen for a significant amount of time before it’s justifiable for someone to demand it stop.
- DenisM 6y ago
  You have avoided answering the question you have quoted. It’s an important question.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    The point they're making is that the current level of police violence is still unacceptable, regardless of whether it may or may not have been better or worse in the past.

skissane 6y ago

A question – is the problem with police, or is the problem with US police specifically? Do we have the same problem with police in other countries? Canadian police? UK police? Police in EU countries? If the US police have this problem and other (wealthy democratic) countries don't – or even if comparable countries have the problem too, just not quite as bad as the US has it – what makes US police different? Racism and racial inequality. Yes, that's very real, but don't think for a moment other countries don't have that problem too – they do. But yes, historically speaking, the US was very much an outlier of extreme racism – few other countries ever had anything comparable to "Jim Crow laws", and the most obvious comparators (apartheid in South Africa and the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany) are not what the US really wants to be compared to. On the other hand, my personal impression is that contemporary Americans are (on average) actually much more highly committed to anti-racism than people in most other countries are. Could there be other relevant factors causing problems unique to US police? I think, everyone is (quite rightly) focused on the racial inequality issue, but could there be other causes which might be less deeply entrenched and quicker to fix? Easy short-term wins? (My thought: US has more independent law enforcement agencies than any other country on earth – force all the smaller ones to merge – bigger police forces tend to have a more professional culture, and a smaller number of big police forces is easier for the media/NGOs/etc to hold to account than a larger number of small ones.)

dmode 6y ago
I don’t know why you are getting down voted. I think your comments are asking genuine questions
DenisM 6y ago
In the US it is believed the opposite - more local power structures are easier to influence through local elections. It may not be a huge problem on the scale of Portugal, but as countries get larger things get worse. Imagine the entire EU having one police force - how do you go about changing anything? In the US you can run for mayor or City Council, much more direct connection.
- skissane 6y ago