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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 inc

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.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    What does this comparison have to do with anything though? Traffic deaths are themselves dwarfed by deaths from cancer and heart disease. So what?
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    > I’ve been reviewing the footage from Seattle — and protestors started every instance of violence by first getting forceful with the cops. That's funny, because the majority of the clips I've seen have unprovoked or inappropriate responses from the police. Seattle alone [0] has had numerous incidents. It's trivially easy to see this, to the point that one would have to ignore many incidents to say "every instance" was started by protestors. I believe that you are not arguing in good faith. [0]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/Washington.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...

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.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  What does this comparison have to do with anything though? Traffic deaths are themselves dwarfed by deaths from cancer and heart disease. So what?
- andrewzah 6y ago
  > I’ve been reviewing the footage from Seattle — and protestors started every instance of violence by first getting forceful with the cops. That's funny, because the majority of the clips I've seen have unprovoked or inappropriate responses from the police. Seattle alone [0] has had numerous incidents. It's trivially easy to see this, to the point that one would have to ignore many incidents to say "every instance" was started by protestors. I believe that you are not arguing in good faith. [0]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/Washington.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...