13 ms·

If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ...

If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ... At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying. If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence. Otherwise you're not speaking from an honest grappling with what these videos contain.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture. There are way too many cases where a cop provokes a confrontation, often by stopping to allow someone else nearby to run into them, and every other cop in the group responds by beating anyone nearby and shoving back anyone with a camera. You don’t get coordinated responses like that without planning and practice.
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  >I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture. This is absolutely true, but the problem goes much deeper than just the police force itself. We seem to want to solve every imaginable social problem with police/courts/prisons. Drug abuse needs to be viewed as a public health problem, not a criminal problem. Homelessness as a housing and mental health problem, not a criminal one. Many other issues as economic problems not criminal ones. Address the root cause, rather than sending people with badges and guns. I realize this is easier said than done, but it's clear the old approach is no longer acceptable to society.
  - mmsimanga 6y ago
    This! In my country there was a push back by teacher unions because the expectations on teachers has grown over the years. Laws now prohibit many forms of punishment, some schools now have metal detectors at the gate to stop students coming in with knives.
  - cies 6y ago
    Maybe "the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime" should be an amendment. Then homelessness/drugs-whatevers/prostitution can no longer have laws against them. "Address the root cause", exactly, and the root cause is the unjust laws. Though cops pretty much never being found guilty for unjust use of violence is a big one too, and I wonder what law changes can solve that issue.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      > the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime So if I'm driving drunk, then I'm not prosecuted until there's a victim? Hm...
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        I wouldn't necessarily say that DUI is a victimless crime. you might not hurt anyone, but you've exposed everyone on the road to excess risk, which could be argued is a type of harm. I'm not sure jail time is necessary for DUI. having your license suspended is already a severe punishment in places where you really need a vehicle to get around. requiring an interlock whenever the person is allowed to drive again also mitigates the risk to others in the future. of course, then you would have to decide what to do with people who just drive a friend's car or drive on a suspended license... I think this might be a good example of a larger structural problem. culturally, we accept that going to a bar with friends or having a few glasses of wine at a restaurant is a reasonable thing for an adult to do. but a large portion of the US is set up in a way that bars and restaurants are not within walking distance of homes, and the public transit is poor or nonexistent. if I, a 145 lb male, have a cocktail and a glass of wine at dinner, I'm pretty likely to be above the legal limit by the time I leave. I don't do this; I either drink less or arrange a different way to get home, but I do think the combination of law, culture, and (lack of) infrastructure pushes people towards committing a crime here.
        AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
        Well, here we step on a slippery slope of defining a "victimless" crime. Many illegal drugs have a potential of causing harm. Should the harm be purely physical? Homelessness is a public nuisance, which we can choose to ignore, but so is walking naked in a school yard, which will be seen as a much more controversial subject.
- thatoneuser 6y ago
  "You don’t get coordinated responses like that without planning and practice." I disagree. That's what makes this so much more difficult. If it required planning and practice, we could find the meeting place and itinerary and correct it. This is much more subtle. This is the kind of thing you can get when you group like minded individuals together and give them power. Without directly orchestrating, they pick up cues and work together. It's like when a company hires a new person and there's no rule explicitly saying they have to work overtime, but they see everyone else doing it and soon they are too.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    It’s both. Some police officers study “killology” and “how to be a predator” way more than de-escalation.
- cowmoo728 6y ago
  Who holds police accountable? The DA and IAB are supposed to, but they don't. Instead, other police hold them accountable for having each other's backs through social pressure, professional pressure, and some less-than-legal means. Police back each other up because they're responding to these incentives.
peterwwillis 6y ago
Can we begin with the fact that this isn't even remotely in the same universe as a peer reviewed study? There's nothing to compare it to, there's no data on what the timeline is, there's no meta analysis of the different cases, what sparked the incidents, the outcomes, or how often non-violent confrontations or de-escalations happen, etc. Basically you're looking at a single specific dataset, like "number of children strangled", and deciding to extrapolate from that whatever you feel like, like "a systemic and perpetual abuse of mothers and babysitters power by evil matriarchs". Honestly, I credited this crowd with more brains. Horror porn is not an intellectual argument.
- take_a_breath 6y ago
  Is your comment an intellectual argument?
- pjc50 6y ago
  > "number of children strangled" At least in that case you wouldn't have people arguing that the kids deserved it. > Horror porn is not an intellectual argument. This isn't porn, this is filming reality as it happens. I know we're all a bit numbed, but this reminds me of the decisions by the Allied forces to document Auschwitz as well as possible when it was overrun, or how the BBC footage of the Ethiopian famine sparked Live Aid. The act of filming has a habit of cutting through all the pseudo-intellectual bullshit from those arguing in favour of the brutality.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    > At least in that case you wouldn't have people arguing that the kids deserved it. Damn. Well that's the best rebuttle I'm going to see this week. > This isn't porn, this is filming reality as it happens. I know we're all a bit numbed, but this reminds me of the decisions by the Allied forces to document Auschwitz as well as possible when it was overrun, or how the BBC footage of the Ethiopian famine sparked Live Aid. The act of filming has a habit of cutting through all the pseudo-intellectual bullshit from those arguing in favour of the brutality. To add to this sentiment; this is literally what's going on in the USA right now. Obviously it isn't every cop in every city, or protesters would be exercising their 2nd amendment rights en masse. But these actions documented here are inarguably immoral, and IF they are legal, the law needs to be changed immediately. It's absolutely disgusting, and if seeing these videos of police brutality doesn't invoke that feeling in you, take some time to imagine it's you or your loved one getting beaten, maced, tear gassed. These forms of crowd control are immensely painful, pain that a lot of us have never felt, and they leave lasting damage.
koheripbal 6y ago
I pseudo-randomly sampled 30 videos... Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions. This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything. I mean look at this one... https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 A large volume of misleading hyperbolic claims by a biased collector/poster don't get more meaningful through volume of posts.
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  This is why any footage of an incident used in court must include the entire interaction. Police body cam footage can be rejected as evidence if it does not start with the officer stepping out of his vehicle. This is why so many iPhone recordings from bystanders gets thrown out in trial. Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking instances where escalation of force was warranted, but they do not show the full context leading up to that escalation. I would like to see meaningful police reform as much as anyone else. But we need to be pragmatic about any examples we cite as "abuse of force". Let's create a list of absolutely cut-and-dry instances of police brutality, then move from there.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Handcuffing a lifeless freshly shot body is more than enough. I’ve seen it over and over. Why is that a policy? Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy? The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their demeanour. And I act like a scared ghost anytime I get stopped by them: I am afraid that if any answer I’d give them might make them punish me with one more more tickets.
    - racnid 6y ago
      1) Because "freshly shot lifeless" bodies can and have come back to kill people. 2) Because there is no such thing as shoot to wound. If you've gotten to the point where you're shooting at someone they need to be dead. Any bullet holes in your body are potentially fatal. Especially the famous leg shot; damage to your femoral artery will kill you extremely quickly.
trabant00 6y ago
I watched 10. The first 10, not selected 10. Why do I need to watch 100 to find what is claimed - "brutality"? If there are 7 cases of real police brutality make a list of 7, not 700.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Even one is blatantly unacceptable.
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  The entire point of something like this is to be a gish gallop. If you want to refute it you have to look through 700 or so videos, and even if you do by the time you are done going through and checking everyone has moved on. Trying to refute some does not invalidate the entire list and you will be attacked for downplaying the problem. And also people like lists.
lazyjones 6y ago
This is a clear attempt to manipulate opinion, I don't know why HN leaves it up. You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. If after watching carefully select and cut videos on a Twitter propaganda account you believe the police has a systemic issue, you're falling for the same trap. It's the same way media manipulate you with their carefully chosen "interviews" with random people on the street.
- ses1984 6y ago
  >You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. What's the analogous conclusion from this to police brutality videos? You watch 100 and begin to think you should never talk to a cop again? Sure you can post up a bad conclusion to draw and then attack it. I'm pretty sure there's a name for this sort of thing.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    > What's the analogous conclusion from this to police brutality videos? You watch 100 and begin to think you should never talk to a cop again? You can do better than this rhetoric question. The analogous conclusion would be that there is a systemic issue with the police and you'd prefer not to deal with them again, by defunding or dissolving the police force (seems to be a current wish by many). > Sure you can post up a bad conclusion to draw and then attack it. I'm pretty sure there's a name for this sort of thing. Sure you can pretend it's a bad conclusion when it's about the effect of watching selected videos and how drawing any conclusions from that is naive.
    - ses1984 6y ago
      How many videos of police brutality do you need to watch before it's ok to conclude reform is needed?
      - lazyjones 6y ago
piokoch 6y ago
As a non American I am not getting this at all. In many US cities/towns sheriff is elected. In all other cases city mayor is elected. How it happens that all those mayors and sheriffs are still in the office if police brutality is such a big issue? Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that?
- eganist 6y ago
  Voter disenfranchisement and suppression is a pretty big problem here. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-prri-voter-suppression/565355/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-pr... > Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that? Yeah, basically. Especially that last part.
- markstos 6y ago
  Police unions have considerable influence to block reform even when the elected politicians support it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis-kroll.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapo... The efforts to "defund police" would solve some of the same problems that police currently address through other means. This would weaken the influence of police unions. For example, spending more to treat drug addiction as a disease rather than paying police to address possession as a crime.
  - whydoyoucare 6y ago
    Instead of "defund", maybe a better word, then, is "reform", or "reorganize"? Or maybe define that it is "police unions" who should be defunded, not the entire bucket called "police"? I am just curious at this choice of word that seems to be the clarion call, which means entirely different in the dictionary than what is being implied! :-/
    - WesternStar 6y ago
      No because the goal is to have public safety organizations that don't have any of the personnel, historical lineage or goals of the police. By poor analogy, the goal isn't to clone facebook its to make a twitter,Instagram,telegram,etc. Different orgs with different goals with different people ultimately focused on public safety.
throwaway_USD 6y ago
>"the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence. Just to play devils advocate, can't I conclude there is a problem without that problem being the "militarization" of the police force. In other words aren't I allowed to conclude there was a problem prior to the militarization of the police force, and really what we are seeing proliferation of video recordings that are now making us think these acts are new, when the reality is they happened in mass occurred prior to militarization of police...and as scary as it sounds accountability is increasing because of the video? Then on the extreme end of devils advocate, lets say we all watched 100 videos that made us sick to our stomach...how many millions of police interactions have we not seen that might suggest the bad acts is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall data. Not unlike maybe a few bad actors that have looted or committed arson, or committed murder during the BLM protests, do those acts suggest the entire culture of BLM movement is tainted? One of the things that really makes me sick about the George Floyd death which doesn't get a lot of attention is that the prosecutors/state attorneys originally swept it under the rug and refused to bring charges. Thank god for the video, even though it didn't stop the act, we all see the tragedy we see the victim we see the cop and attach names and faces...but who knows the names of the prosecutors who watched this video and said "no, nothing wrong here, no charges?" Nameless, faceless people protecting the officers behind the scene enabling offices to act any way they want knowing they will be protected...and maybe if we corrected that problem and officer didn't feel they could act in any fashion they wanted and receive protection perhaps we would see officers act a little differently in the streets.
- ChefboyOG 6y ago
  I see your example of the extreme end a lot, and while I understand why people arrive at it, I think it's useful to question some of the underlying premises. Oftentimes, I think people say things like "I don't think a few bad police officers ruin policing just like I don't think BLM is evil because of a few violent actors" because they have empathy for police officers who don't do horrible things, and it's sort of a knee jerk reaction against broadly characterizing people. The problem, however, is that the two groups aren't equivalent. If we granted every person who identified with the BLM movement the same authority as we do police officers, the presence of violent actors inside BLM protests would be an issue. But we don't. Police officers are given the utmost authority and deterrence in America. They have particular legal protections, they are authorized by the government to give legally enforceable orders to other citizens, etc. Even if the bad acts are a "drop in the bucket," would that be acceptable? And isn't the fact that these bad acts are persistent—regardless of frequency relative to good acts—at the very least suggestive of systemic issues? In other words, consistent bad acts—even if infrequent—are a bigger deal when the actor is in such a position of authority. Protest groups are clearly not in such a position—hence their protests.
graycat 6y ago
I did that yesterday, more than 100 of the videos. Eventually I saw a pattern, surprising since it was common in major cities all across the US and as if there were some single, central training materials. Apparently: (1) Police are taught to be in control of any contact with a citizen. Recently the police have been taught to act nice initially, but, once it is clear some actual law enforcement is to be involved, be in control. Being in control can mean that the citizen has been intimidated and made submissive so that they won't resist. Part of this is to demand that a citizen DO some little things, e.g., stand with feet apart, move back 10 feet, or tolerate being falsely accused of something, e.g., "weaving" in the road, being too close to the officer, etc. The officers are looking for things, even trivial, fake things, to object to so that they can object. It's like Captain Sobel in the 101st Airborne training in the series Band of Brothers -- "find some" infractions so that can complain about them and force the soldiers to accept being falsely accused so that they will be more compliant -- the police seem to have borrowed this tactic. If the citizen does not look submissive, then the officer provokes a defensive reaction from the citizen so that they can arrest the citizen or threaten to arrest them. Then, finally, maybe arrested, the citizen has been subdued and is submissive, which is what the police wanted to begin with. (2) The police like to teach citizens, to change their attitude, and do this by hurting them, e.g., hitting them with a club, bending their arms, throwing them to the ground and putting a knee on their neck, spraying them with pepper spray, etc. They regard good police work as meting out "cruel and unusual punishment", with pain and maybe serious injury, without "due process". So, the police want to be absolute dictators on the streets. (3) In a confrontation with a citizen, the police want some result where they successfully took some law enforcement action, a ticket or an arrest. E.g., in Atlanta, at first they didn't want merely to leave the citizen alone or, if the citizen was drunk, let him call a cab and (ii) later wanted to make sure the citizen was not able just to run away. The reaction to a citizen running away? "Shoot them and kill them. Gee, they might 'get away'; can't permit that; that would violate due respect for the police; so, shoot the citizen." -- or some such. (4) The expected, usual approach to an arrest is to throw the citizen to the ground, hold them down with a knee to their neck, their arms behind their back, and put on handcuffs. From the 100 or so videos I watched, it appeared that (1)-(4) are so standard that they have been taught from some standard source. E.g., in all of that, some semi-bright guy had the idea that it was good to put a knee on a neck, and it appears that that is now standard. Apparently part of (1)-(4) is the associated support for it from the Blue Line, e.g., police unions, Police Benevolent Associations, liability insurance cities buy for their police, the norm of police sticking together, local prosecutors, DAs, and judges who work daily with police and want to cooperate, politicians who want safe streets, etc. And at times maybe there has been more to police power, e.g., confiscating cash, shakedowns, payoffs, etc. I'm sure that changing (1)-(4) can be done but won't be easy.
vlads_ 6y ago
I've watched 30 clips. ALL of them were 30 second clips with no context. All of them from one Twitter thread as well, so not sure why that was not linked instead. On the other hand, all of the instances of so-called police brutality with context which I've seen elsewhere occur after the police calmly order the protestors to leave a particular area, or to go home because of a curphew order or something else and the protests refuse in a less-than-calm manner. My question is this: is the police using force to manage a crowd always unjustified in your view?
- nojvek 6y ago
  There is a very American viewpoint that the rest of the world is somehow different. There are police in Taiwan, Australia, Canada and most of Europe. They are friendly and don’t over exert their force in a frequent manner like the US. In US the police just take out their gun for absolutely petty reasons. It’s like they just want to escalate the situation rather than calm it down. So yes, the problem is American police don’t know how to calm a crowd down. They stand like robots rather than be humans and listen and work with the crowd. In many instances the first shots are fired by the police. The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right.
  - vlads_ 6y ago
    > The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right. Not going to lie, this actually made me laugh[1]. Other than that, you missed my point entirely. When a policeman calmly explains to you that you are not allowed to be in a particular area for 10 mintues and the whole crowd screams in disapproval and refuses to leave, so the police use force to remove the crowd, and someone tapes a 30 second clip of this, you can see how you can get the wrong impression. Maybe the portestors are in the right and their presence is protected by the first amendment, but that's a whole different story. It'd also be a different story if they weren't allowed to protest at all, but they are. Just not absolutely whenever and wherever they want. Is that the story behind every single one of these instances? Of course not. But I'd wager it's the story behind a vast majority of them. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if I'm right or not, as these clips do not provide any insight into that. Just senzationalism. [1]: https://youtu.be/QjnMuujUGq8 https://youtu.be/QjnMuujUGq8

ashtonkem 6y ago

I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture. There are way too many cases where a cop provokes a confrontation, often by stopping to allow someone else nearby to run into them, and every other cop in the group responds by beating anyone nearby and shoving back anyone with a camera. You don’t get coordinated responses like that without planning and practice.

DebtDeflation 6y ago
>I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture. This is absolutely true, but the problem goes much deeper than just the police force itself. We seem to want to solve every imaginable social problem with police/courts/prisons. Drug abuse needs to be viewed as a public health problem, not a criminal problem. Homelessness as a housing and mental health problem, not a criminal one. Many other issues as economic problems not criminal ones. Address the root cause, rather than sending people with badges and guns. I realize this is easier said than done, but it's clear the old approach is no longer acceptable to society.
- mmsimanga 6y ago
  This! In my country there was a push back by teacher unions because the expectations on teachers has grown over the years. Laws now prohibit many forms of punishment, some schools now have metal detectors at the gate to stop students coming in with knives.
- cies 6y ago
  Maybe "the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime" should be an amendment. Then homelessness/drugs-whatevers/prostitution can no longer have laws against them. "Address the root cause", exactly, and the root cause is the unjust laws. Though cops pretty much never being found guilty for unjust use of violence is a big one too, and I wonder what law changes can solve that issue.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    > the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime So if I'm driving drunk, then I'm not prosecuted until there's a victim? Hm...
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      I wouldn't necessarily say that DUI is a victimless crime. you might not hurt anyone, but you've exposed everyone on the road to excess risk, which could be argued is a type of harm. I'm not sure jail time is necessary for DUI. having your license suspended is already a severe punishment in places where you really need a vehicle to get around. requiring an interlock whenever the person is allowed to drive again also mitigates the risk to others in the future. of course, then you would have to decide what to do with people who just drive a friend's car or drive on a suspended license... I think this might be a good example of a larger structural problem. culturally, we accept that going to a bar with friends or having a few glasses of wine at a restaurant is a reasonable thing for an adult to do. but a large portion of the US is set up in a way that bars and restaurants are not within walking distance of homes, and the public transit is poor or nonexistent. if I, a 145 lb male, have a cocktail and a glass of wine at dinner, I'm pretty likely to be above the legal limit by the time I leave. I don't do this; I either drink less or arrange a different way to get home, but I do think the combination of law, culture, and (lack of) infrastructure pushes people towards committing a crime here.
      - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
        Well, here we step on a slippery slope of defining a "victimless" crime. Many illegal drugs have a potential of causing harm. Should the harm be purely physical? Homelessness is a public nuisance, which we can choose to ignore, but so is walking naked in a school yard, which will be seen as a much more controversial subject.
thatoneuser 6y ago
"You don’t get coordinated responses like that without planning and practice." I disagree. That's what makes this so much more difficult. If it required planning and practice, we could find the meeting place and itinerary and correct it. This is much more subtle. This is the kind of thing you can get when you group like minded individuals together and give them power. Without directly orchestrating, they pick up cues and work together. It's like when a company hires a new person and there's no rule explicitly saying they have to work overtime, but they see everyone else doing it and soon they are too.
- jacobush 6y ago
  It’s both. Some police officers study “killology” and “how to be a predator” way more than de-escalation.
cowmoo728 6y ago
Who holds police accountable? The DA and IAB are supposed to, but they don't. Instead, other police hold them accountable for having each other's backs through social pressure, professional pressure, and some less-than-legal means. Police back each other up because they're responding to these incentives.

peterwwillis 6y ago

Can we begin with the fact that this isn't even remotely in the same universe as a peer reviewed study? There's nothing to compare it to, there's no data on what the timeline is, there's no meta analysis of the different cases, what sparked the incidents, the outcomes, or how often non-violent confrontations or de-escalations happen, etc. Basically you're looking at a single specific dataset, like "number of children strangled", and deciding to extrapolate from that whatever you feel like, like "a systemic and perpetual abuse of mothers and babysitters power by evil matriarchs". Honestly, I credited this crowd with more brains. Horror porn is not an intellectual argument.

take_a_breath 6y ago
Is your comment an intellectual argument?
pjc50 6y ago
> "number of children strangled" At least in that case you wouldn't have people arguing that the kids deserved it. > Horror porn is not an intellectual argument. This isn't porn, this is filming reality as it happens. I know we're all a bit numbed, but this reminds me of the decisions by the Allied forces to document Auschwitz as well as possible when it was overrun, or how the BBC footage of the Ethiopian famine sparked Live Aid. The act of filming has a habit of cutting through all the pseudo-intellectual bullshit from those arguing in favour of the brutality.
- craftinator 6y ago
  > At least in that case you wouldn't have people arguing that the kids deserved it. Damn. Well that's the best rebuttle I'm going to see this week. > This isn't porn, this is filming reality as it happens. I know we're all a bit numbed, but this reminds me of the decisions by the Allied forces to document Auschwitz as well as possible when it was overrun, or how the BBC footage of the Ethiopian famine sparked Live Aid. The act of filming has a habit of cutting through all the pseudo-intellectual bullshit from those arguing in favour of the brutality. To add to this sentiment; this is literally what's going on in the USA right now. Obviously it isn't every cop in every city, or protesters would be exercising their 2nd amendment rights en masse. But these actions documented here are inarguably immoral, and IF they are legal, the law needs to be changed immediately. It's absolutely disgusting, and if seeing these videos of police brutality doesn't invoke that feeling in you, take some time to imagine it's you or your loved one getting beaten, maced, tear gassed. These forms of crowd control are immensely painful, pain that a lot of us have never felt, and they leave lasting damage.

koheripbal 6y ago

I pseudo-randomly sampled 30 videos... Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions. This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything. I mean look at this one... https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 A large volume of misleading hyperbolic claims by a biased collector/poster don't get more meaningful through volume of posts.

SamuelAdams 6y ago
This is why any footage of an incident used in court must include the entire interaction. Police body cam footage can be rejected as evidence if it does not start with the officer stepping out of his vehicle. This is why so many iPhone recordings from bystanders gets thrown out in trial. Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking instances where escalation of force was warranted, but they do not show the full context leading up to that escalation. I would like to see meaningful police reform as much as anyone else. But we need to be pragmatic about any examples we cite as "abuse of force". Let's create a list of absolutely cut-and-dry instances of police brutality, then move from there.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Handcuffing a lifeless freshly shot body is more than enough. I’ve seen it over and over. Why is that a policy? Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy? The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their demeanour. And I act like a scared ghost anytime I get stopped by them: I am afraid that if any answer I’d give them might make them punish me with one more more tickets.
  - racnid 6y ago
    1) Because "freshly shot lifeless" bodies can and have come back to kill people. 2) Because there is no such thing as shoot to wound. If you've gotten to the point where you're shooting at someone they need to be dead. Any bullet holes in your body are potentially fatal. Especially the famous leg shot; damage to your femoral artery will kill you extremely quickly.

trabant00 6y ago

I watched 10. The first 10, not selected 10. Why do I need to watch 100 to find what is claimed - "brutality"? If there are 7 cases of real police brutality make a list of 7, not 700.

TeaDrunk 6y ago
Even one is blatantly unacceptable.
themaninthedark 6y ago
The entire point of something like this is to be a gish gallop. If you want to refute it you have to look through 700 or so videos, and even if you do by the time you are done going through and checking everyone has moved on. Trying to refute some does not invalidate the entire list and you will be attacked for downplaying the problem. And also people like lists.

lazyjones 6y ago

This is a clear attempt to manipulate opinion, I don't know why HN leaves it up. You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. If after watching carefully select and cut videos on a Twitter propaganda account you believe the police has a systemic issue, you're falling for the same trap. It's the same way media manipulate you with their carefully chosen "interviews" with random people on the street.

ses1984 6y ago
>You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. What's the analogous conclusion from this to police brutality videos? You watch 100 and begin to think you should never talk to a cop again? Sure you can post up a bad conclusion to draw and then attack it. I'm pretty sure there's a name for this sort of thing.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  > What's the analogous conclusion from this to police brutality videos? You watch 100 and begin to think you should never talk to a cop again? You can do better than this rhetoric question. The analogous conclusion would be that there is a systemic issue with the police and you'd prefer not to deal with them again, by defunding or dissolving the police force (seems to be a current wish by many). > Sure you can post up a bad conclusion to draw and then attack it. I'm pretty sure there's a name for this sort of thing. Sure you can pretend it's a bad conclusion when it's about the effect of watching selected videos and how drawing any conclusions from that is naive.
  - ses1984 6y ago
    How many videos of police brutality do you need to watch before it's ok to conclude reform is needed?
    - lazyjones 6y ago

piokoch 6y ago

As a non American I am not getting this at all. In many US cities/towns sheriff is elected. In all other cases city mayor is elected. How it happens that all those mayors and sheriffs are still in the office if police brutality is such a big issue? Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that?

eganist 6y ago
Voter disenfranchisement and suppression is a pretty big problem here. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-prri-voter-suppression/565355/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-pr... > Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that? Yeah, basically. Especially that last part.
markstos 6y ago
Police unions have considerable influence to block reform even when the elected politicians support it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis-kroll.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapo... The efforts to "defund police" would solve some of the same problems that police currently address through other means. This would weaken the influence of police unions. For example, spending more to treat drug addiction as a disease rather than paying police to address possession as a crime.
- whydoyoucare 6y ago
  Instead of "defund", maybe a better word, then, is "reform", or "reorganize"? Or maybe define that it is "police unions" who should be defunded, not the entire bucket called "police"? I am just curious at this choice of word that seems to be the clarion call, which means entirely different in the dictionary than what is being implied! :-/
  - WesternStar 6y ago
    No because the goal is to have public safety organizations that don't have any of the personnel, historical lineage or goals of the police. By poor analogy, the goal isn't to clone facebook its to make a twitter,Instagram,telegram,etc. Different orgs with different goals with different people ultimately focused on public safety.

throwaway_USD 6y ago

>"the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence. Just to play devils advocate, can't I conclude there is a problem without that problem being the "militarization" of the police force. In other words aren't I allowed to conclude there was a problem prior to the militarization of the police force, and really what we are seeing proliferation of video recordings that are now making us think these acts are new, when the reality is they happened in mass occurred prior to militarization of police...and as scary as it sounds accountability is increasing because of the video? Then on the extreme end of devils advocate, lets say we all watched 100 videos that made us sick to our stomach...how many millions of police interactions have we not seen that might suggest the bad acts is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall data. Not unlike maybe a few bad actors that have looted or committed arson, or committed murder during the BLM protests, do those acts suggest the entire culture of BLM movement is tainted? One of the things that really makes me sick about the George Floyd death which doesn't get a lot of attention is that the prosecutors/state attorneys originally swept it under the rug and refused to bring charges. Thank god for the video, even though it didn't stop the act, we all see the tragedy we see the victim we see the cop and attach names and faces...but who knows the names of the prosecutors who watched this video and said "no, nothing wrong here, no charges?" Nameless, faceless people protecting the officers behind the scene enabling offices to act any way they want knowing they will be protected...and maybe if we corrected that problem and officer didn't feel they could act in any fashion they wanted and receive protection perhaps we would see officers act a little differently in the streets.

ChefboyOG 6y ago
I see your example of the extreme end a lot, and while I understand why people arrive at it, I think it's useful to question some of the underlying premises. Oftentimes, I think people say things like "I don't think a few bad police officers ruin policing just like I don't think BLM is evil because of a few violent actors" because they have empathy for police officers who don't do horrible things, and it's sort of a knee jerk reaction against broadly characterizing people. The problem, however, is that the two groups aren't equivalent. If we granted every person who identified with the BLM movement the same authority as we do police officers, the presence of violent actors inside BLM protests would be an issue. But we don't. Police officers are given the utmost authority and deterrence in America. They have particular legal protections, they are authorized by the government to give legally enforceable orders to other citizens, etc. Even if the bad acts are a "drop in the bucket," would that be acceptable? And isn't the fact that these bad acts are persistent—regardless of frequency relative to good acts—at the very least suggestive of systemic issues? In other words, consistent bad acts—even if infrequent—are a bigger deal when the actor is in such a position of authority. Protest groups are clearly not in such a position—hence their protests.

graycat 6y ago

I did that yesterday, more than 100 of the videos. Eventually I saw a pattern, surprising since it was common in major cities all across the US and as if there were some single, central training materials. Apparently: (1) Police are taught to be in control of any contact with a citizen. Recently the police have been taught to act nice initially, but, once it is clear some actual law enforcement is to be involved, be in control. Being in control can mean that the citizen has been intimidated and made submissive so that they won't resist. Part of this is to demand that a citizen DO some little things, e.g., stand with feet apart, move back 10 feet, or tolerate being falsely accused of something, e.g., "weaving" in the road, being too close to the officer, etc. The officers are looking for things, even trivial, fake things, to object to so that they can object. It's like Captain Sobel in the 101st Airborne training in the series Band of Brothers -- "find some" infractions so that can complain about them and force the soldiers to accept being falsely accused so that they will be more compliant -- the police seem to have borrowed this tactic. If the citizen does not look submissive, then the officer provokes a defensive reaction from the citizen so that they can arrest the citizen or threaten to arrest them. Then, finally, maybe arrested, the citizen has been subdued and is submissive, which is what the police wanted to begin with. (2) The police like to teach citizens, to change their attitude, and do this by hurting them, e.g., hitting them with a club, bending their arms, throwing them to the ground and putting a knee on their neck, spraying them with pepper spray, etc. They regard good police work as meting out "cruel and unusual punishment", with pain and maybe serious injury, without "due process". So, the police want to be absolute dictators on the streets. (3) In a confrontation with a citizen, the police want some result where they successfully took some law enforcement action, a ticket or an arrest. E.g., in Atlanta, at first they didn't want merely to leave the citizen alone or, if the citizen was drunk, let him call a cab and (ii) later wanted to make sure the citizen was not able just to run away. The reaction to a citizen running away? "Shoot them and kill them. Gee, they might 'get away'; can't permit that; that would violate due respect for the police; so, shoot the citizen." -- or some such. (4) The expected, usual approach to an arrest is to throw the citizen to the ground, hold them down with a knee to their neck, their arms behind their back, and put on handcuffs. From the 100 or so videos I watched, it appeared that (1)-(4) are so standard that they have been taught from some standard source. E.g., in all of that, some semi-bright guy had the idea that it was good to put a knee on a neck, and it appears that that is now standard. Apparently part of (1)-(4) is the associated support for it from the Blue Line, e.g., police unions, Police Benevolent Associations, liability insurance cities buy for their police, the norm of police sticking together, local prosecutors, DAs, and judges who work daily with police and want to cooperate, politicians who want safe streets, etc. And at times maybe there has been more to police power, e.g., confiscating cash, shakedowns, payoffs, etc. I'm sure that changing (1)-(4) can be done but won't be easy.

vlads_ 6y ago

I've watched 30 clips. ALL of them were 30 second clips with no context. All of them from one Twitter thread as well, so not sure why that was not linked instead. On the other hand, all of the instances of so-called police brutality with context which I've seen elsewhere occur after the police calmly order the protestors to leave a particular area, or to go home because of a curphew order or something else and the protests refuse in a less-than-calm manner. My question is this: is the police using force to manage a crowd always unjustified in your view?

nojvek 6y ago
There is a very American viewpoint that the rest of the world is somehow different. There are police in Taiwan, Australia, Canada and most of Europe. They are friendly and don’t over exert their force in a frequent manner like the US. In US the police just take out their gun for absolutely petty reasons. It’s like they just want to escalate the situation rather than calm it down. So yes, the problem is American police don’t know how to calm a crowd down. They stand like robots rather than be humans and listen and work with the crowd. In many instances the first shots are fired by the police. The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right.
- vlads_ 6y ago
  > The crowd has been otherwise quite peaceful exercising their first amendment right. Not going to lie, this actually made me laugh[1]. Other than that, you missed my point entirely. When a policeman calmly explains to you that you are not allowed to be in a particular area for 10 mintues and the whole crowd screams in disapproval and refuses to leave, so the police use force to remove the crowd, and someone tapes a 30 second clip of this, you can see how you can get the wrong impression. Maybe the portestors are in the right and their presence is protected by the first amendment, but that's a whole different story. It'd also be a different story if they weren't allowed to protest at all, but they are. Just not absolutely whenever and wherever they want. Is that the story behind every single one of these instances? Of course not. But I'd wager it's the story behind a vast majority of them. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if I'm right or not, as these clips do not provide any insight into that. Just senzationalism. [1]: https://youtu.be/QjnMuujUGq8 https://youtu.be/QjnMuujUGq8