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As a person that makes decisions based on data, rather than emotions, it would be interesting to see a comparison of the volume of such incidents on both sides.

As a person that makes decisions based on data, rather than emotions, it would be interesting to see a comparison of the volume of such incidents on both sides. Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by protesters? I think that would give a more accurate picture of all of this. We would then know if the police brutality incidents paled in comparison to violence/looting by the public, or vice versa.

ebg13 6y ago
> both sides On one side you have police brutalizing journalists and shooting people in the face. On the other side you have not people getting brutalized by the police. Fair and balanced, I'm sure. Or do you think that shooting people in the face is the appropriate police response to property damage?
- downandout 6y ago
  Is this repo limited to police violence against journalists? I didn't pick up on that if it is.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Is this repo limited to police violence against journalists? No, but it does _include_ it. Is it your opinion that only journalists should not be shot in the face? What are your feelings re: knees on necks for 8 minutes and 46 seconds with hands in pockets looking around like nothing's wrong even though the guy with the neck went completely unresponsive minutes before the knee moved? Maybe we should ask how many police necks George Floyd put his knee on.
    - downandout 6y ago
      I don't think any human, regardless of who they are, should be committing violence against any other human. You, and whoever else is downvoting this, are acting is if my comment is pro-police. It is not. It is pro-data. How can any reasonably intelligent person be against fact-based decision making?
      - matsemann 6y ago
        No, it's just enlightened centrism. Where one put two things that shouldn't be compared against each other, and then dismiss the core issue by saying "see, both sides are just as bad".
        TouchyJoe 6y ago
        The middle-ground between two arbitrary positions is the truth. For example the optimal society is in the middle of fascism and monarchy...NOT!
      - tehwebguy 6y ago
        No, you are saying that until you see other data that refutes this repo you will refuse to make a decision either way.
triceratops 6y ago
> Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by protesters? Does it matter? They're being investigated and prosecuted regardless[1], because they're criminals. We expect police to behave better than criminals. Society is always going to have some crime, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute it. But there should be zero tolerance for crimes by cops. Otherwise we can't trust them, and everyone becomes less safe. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-protester-arson-identified-social-media-etsy-instagram-linkedin https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-pro...
- downandout 6y ago
  Does it matter? Where crimes, such as burglary and assault, are being committed, police will generally be called upon to act. A subset of those responses will involve police violence. One would hope that such police violence only occurs in self defense, but we know that to not always be the case. So yes, the two things are mathematically correlated. One drives the other. It would be interesting to be able to tell what the incidence rate is, rather than just seeing a group of cherry-picked incidents designed with the sole intent of satisfying the public's appetite for a specific narrative.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    I see what you mean.
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    It’s one thing to say “given there will be crime, and some criminals are violent, cops may have to be violent sometimes to stop criminals”. That’s a pretty bloodless analysis. Let’s get to the fun part: “if cops perceive someone to be a criminal, how violent will we allow them to be, relative to how violent the perceived criminal is?” In the case of the cops assaulting that vigil for Elijah McClain (it was a peaceful gathering with people listening to a couple violin players) I’d argue that the cops were perpetrating violence at a level about 100x relative to the people they were trying to police (even if you consider that folks may have been “yelling mean things” at them). Personally, I would consider 1.1x acceptable, maybe 1.5x in some situations. And so every time I see cops blowing through that threshold and being even 5x or 10x more violent than the people they’re policing, I perceive that as a massive injustice, I think those cops should get fired, and I get pretty angry.
microtherion 6y ago
One difference being that the public does not, to my knowledge, pay six figure pensions to protestors (If they do, I might consider a change of career). And, if caught, protestors are being held legally accountable (as well they should), while police officers, even after egregious misconduct, often get reinstated: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-in-misconduct-cases-stay-on-force-through-arbitration/ar-BB15V0nj https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-in-misconduct-cases...
proc0 6y ago
People here won't have it. They want to believe the Mainstream media narrative, and it hurts their feels too much to consider there might be another side to this whole mess. Of course they will blame police once crime rates multiplies in all the democratic-run cities. It's blind loyalty, dogma, a secular religion.
tehwebguy 6y ago
So if you find that the ratio R of protestor violence PV over police brutality PB is over 1 or some other arbitrary constant you think we should just allow police brutality? This is the most insidious justification of police brutality I’ve ever seen, here or elsewhere, even if it’s unintentional. It takes a position that police brutality and rioting/looting are two sides of the same coin and that we can (or should) only address whichever one is worse by some numeric calculation. Who cares what the RATIO of cop violence vs protestor violence? Do you know why we don’t need the “other side “of this? It’s because the police already do this on the other side. They are free to make arrests using their own evidence, including their own eyewitness, their own body cameras, their own dash cameras, and any CCTV they get access to. Some even use these videos! Police are arresting protestors like crazy, thousands in the last month alone. You know who else is documenting all the violence and looting caused by protesters? Every news outlet, it’s the only protest related content they bother to show because it’s the only part of the protest that’s interesting to watch for most people. The purpose of this database is to collect and display evidence so that violent police can be arrested and charged. Violent protestors are usually arrested immediately, many are picked up later at home and a small handful of organizers are assassinated in the years following (see Ferguson) We don’t need any help stopping protestor violence, we need help stopping police violence.
goto11 6y ago
> it would be interesting to see a comparison of the volume of such incidents on both sides This "both sides" framing is irrational. If criminals perform a number of bank robberies does that mean police officers should be allowed to perform a similar number of bank robberies? Of course not, that would be absurd and missing the whole point of a police force.

ebg13 6y ago

> both sides On one side you have police brutalizing journalists and shooting people in the face. On the other side you have not people getting brutalized by the police. Fair and balanced, I'm sure. Or do you think that shooting people in the face is the appropriate police response to property damage?

downandout 6y ago
Is this repo limited to police violence against journalists? I didn't pick up on that if it is.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > Is this repo limited to police violence against journalists? No, but it does _include_ it. Is it your opinion that only journalists should not be shot in the face? What are your feelings re: knees on necks for 8 minutes and 46 seconds with hands in pockets looking around like nothing's wrong even though the guy with the neck went completely unresponsive minutes before the knee moved? Maybe we should ask how many police necks George Floyd put his knee on.
  - downandout 6y ago
    I don't think any human, regardless of who they are, should be committing violence against any other human. You, and whoever else is downvoting this, are acting is if my comment is pro-police. It is not. It is pro-data. How can any reasonably intelligent person be against fact-based decision making?
    - matsemann 6y ago
      No, it's just enlightened centrism. Where one put two things that shouldn't be compared against each other, and then dismiss the core issue by saying "see, both sides are just as bad".
      - TouchyJoe 6y ago
        The middle-ground between two arbitrary positions is the truth. For example the optimal society is in the middle of fascism and monarchy...NOT!
    - tehwebguy 6y ago
      No, you are saying that until you see other data that refutes this repo you will refuse to make a decision either way.

triceratops 6y ago

> Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by protesters? Does it matter? They're being investigated and prosecuted regardless[1], because they're criminals. We expect police to behave better than criminals. Society is always going to have some crime, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute it. But there should be zero tolerance for crimes by cops. Otherwise we can't trust them, and everyone becomes less safe. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-protester-arson-identified-social-media-etsy-instagram-linkedin https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-pro...

downandout 6y ago
Does it matter? Where crimes, such as burglary and assault, are being committed, police will generally be called upon to act. A subset of those responses will involve police violence. One would hope that such police violence only occurs in self defense, but we know that to not always be the case. So yes, the two things are mathematically correlated. One drives the other. It would be interesting to be able to tell what the incidence rate is, rather than just seeing a group of cherry-picked incidents designed with the sole intent of satisfying the public's appetite for a specific narrative.
- triceratops 6y ago
  I see what you mean.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  It’s one thing to say “given there will be crime, and some criminals are violent, cops may have to be violent sometimes to stop criminals”. That’s a pretty bloodless analysis. Let’s get to the fun part: “if cops perceive someone to be a criminal, how violent will we allow them to be, relative to how violent the perceived criminal is?” In the case of the cops assaulting that vigil for Elijah McClain (it was a peaceful gathering with people listening to a couple violin players) I’d argue that the cops were perpetrating violence at a level about 100x relative to the people they were trying to police (even if you consider that folks may have been “yelling mean things” at them). Personally, I would consider 1.1x acceptable, maybe 1.5x in some situations. And so every time I see cops blowing through that threshold and being even 5x or 10x more violent than the people they’re policing, I perceive that as a massive injustice, I think those cops should get fired, and I get pretty angry.

microtherion 6y ago

One difference being that the public does not, to my knowledge, pay six figure pensions to protestors (If they do, I might consider a change of career). And, if caught, protestors are being held legally accountable (as well they should), while police officers, even after egregious misconduct, often get reinstated: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-in-misconduct-cases-stay-on-force-through-arbitration/ar-BB15V0nj https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-in-misconduct-cases...

proc0 6y ago

People here won't have it. They want to believe the Mainstream media narrative, and it hurts their feels too much to consider there might be another side to this whole mess. Of course they will blame police once crime rates multiplies in all the democratic-run cities. It's blind loyalty, dogma, a secular religion.

tehwebguy 6y ago

So if you find that the ratio R of protestor violence PV over police brutality PB is over 1 or some other arbitrary constant you think we should just allow police brutality? This is the most insidious justification of police brutality I’ve ever seen, here or elsewhere, even if it’s unintentional. It takes a position that police brutality and rioting/looting are two sides of the same coin and that we can (or should) only address whichever one is worse by some numeric calculation. Who cares what the RATIO of cop violence vs protestor violence? Do you know why we don’t need the “other side “of this? It’s because the police already do this on the other side. They are free to make arrests using their own evidence, including their own eyewitness, their own body cameras, their own dash cameras, and any CCTV they get access to. Some even use these videos! Police are arresting protestors like crazy, thousands in the last month alone. You know who else is documenting all the violence and looting caused by protesters? Every news outlet, it’s the only protest related content they bother to show because it’s the only part of the protest that’s interesting to watch for most people. The purpose of this database is to collect and display evidence so that violent police can be arrested and charged. Violent protestors are usually arrested immediately, many are picked up later at home and a small handful of organizers are assassinated in the years following (see Ferguson) We don’t need any help stopping protestor violence, we need help stopping police violence.

goto11 6y ago

> it would be interesting to see a comparison of the volume of such incidents on both sides This "both sides" framing is irrational. If criminals perform a number of bank robberies does that mean police officers should be allowed to perform a similar number of bank robberies? Of course not, that would be absurd and missing the whole point of a police force.