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Remove "most of the time". This narrative that police are boogeymen who will subject you to their emotional whims is so overplayed its not even funny any more.

Remove "most of the time". This narrative that police are boogeymen who will subject you to their emotional whims is so overplayed its not even funny any more. There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there, just as their are truly awful people in every known profession. People share a viral, highly edited video on tiktok to make themselves look like the victim only for the entire world to pile on and go "wow yep police bad". There's a lot that could be improved in our judicial system, but you're not going to identify the areas that need improvement by sharing anecdotes of "Well this one time in Arkansas..."

marcellus23 4y ago
I suggest watching some videos of how police behaved during the protests a couple years ago. The Verge had an excellent compilation. It’s hardly one or two bad actors. My personal favorite was the police pulling parents out of a vehicle and beating them while their children watched — the car was just trying to turn around and get out of the protest area safely. Your argument might be more valid if these “bad apples” faced appropriate punishment, but they never do.
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  I've seen plenty of those videos, and 9 times out of 10 if you're able to find the whole, unedited version of the video the officers actions suddenly seems much more reasonable. Not always, admittedly, but very often.
  - mikestew 4y ago
    With that many examples, it should be simple to post just one example to make your point. But unsubstantiated contrarianism typically does not contribute to a conversation.
    - MathCodeLove 4y ago
      No one else provided examples nor asked for any. Perhaps you should ask for examples instead of assuming I'm acting out of malice. Here's a link to the full video for probably the most widely recognized case in the history of police brutality, the killing of George Floyd. Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so. Does it make those actions appear much, much more reasonable than it was made out to be on social media? Absolutely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKjaCvXdf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKjaCvXdf4
      - mikestew 4y ago
        Thanks for the link, it indeed provides context to your comment.
      - marcellus23 4y ago
        > Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so. I understand and appreciate that social media can (and has) exaggerated things, which you've demonstrated, but I don't see how this demonstrates that police brutality is not a problem, or is an exaggerated problem. Ultimately you agree the police officer's actions were not okay. The Verge article which I referred to originally: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-protest-george-floyd https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-... For example, there were multiple videos showing police cars literally running into protesters, ramming into groups of them. What additional context could ever make that okay? Under what circumstances would that be a reasonable response? Or as another example, police use tear gas on protesters, even though it's banned in war.
        MathCodeLove 4y ago
        The difference is on one hand you have people sharing videos that make police look like they're suffocating people and hitting them with cars for the fun of it, and on the other you see that they're often in a situation where they've already tried a tactful approach, where they themselves are being met with or have been met with violence, and where the expediency of the moment required a difficult decision that may or may not have been correct. I've seen videos of protesters surrounding police vehicles trying to destroy them and harm the officer inside. That's a situation where running people over to get away would absolutely be acceptable. Tear gas is a great way to safely control crowds without firing gunshots. I've been subjected to it myself and while it's not pleasant, no lasting damage results from it. Stop trying to act like context doesn't matter, it always does and here even more so.
sseagull 4y ago
I generally am in agreement. However there's a complication in my mind. My dad was a police officer and I grew up around police. It's there's one thing to know about police, it is that they are human, and subject to all the emotions, inconsistencies, and foibles as other humans. However, they are given an extraordinary amount of power, with very little accountability. Think about what it would take for a regular person (maybe even you) to lose their job. Yet here is an example of an officer, behaving very aggressively, against department policy, causing a major accident and injuring a pregnant woman. As far as I can tell, he still has his job (although he was "disciplined", and the lawsuit was picked up by the taxpayers). https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-arkansas-legal-settlements-6416847226c2b03b7fbc10b32c516e9b https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-arkansas-legal-settlemen...
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for stating "All police are bad and out of control all over the country"
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for stating "All police are bad and out of control all over the country" In this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987681 you wrote: > ...There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there, just as their are truly awful people in every known profession. Your complaint about others' anecdotes would hold more weight if you weren't just making up statistics.
    - MathCodeLove 4y ago
      I think it's extremely clear that I'm not trying to portray that exact number as a fact and more as a general portrayment of "most police officers are good, just as most people are good"
m_fayer 4y ago
I grew up in the late 90s in NYC, and spent a lot of time hanging out "on the streets". I think on average, I saw an act of gross police misbehavior about once a month. Sometimes it was quite savage. Always racist. I'm white, but many of my friends weren't. 20 years later I still have intrusive memories of standing by helplessly while terrible things were said and done to my not-white friends, and I still have violent fantasies about those cops getting theirs in kind. Sure, this was often aimed at young people who may or may not be smoking pot or engaged in other mildly truant behavior. The police were not reacting to the truant behavior. They were targeting the minorly truant young people because they wanted to get their rocks off, and these victims were easily available and had no recourse.
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  I don't doubt your experience but let's not pretend that there haven't been any changes in the past 2 decades.
  - m_fayer 4y ago
    What makes you so sure? Even if there's data showing improvement, this would be data from a supremely untrustworthy source with a long history of manipulation and deception.
    - MathCodeLove 4y ago
      I mean you're making an argument that does nothing to facilitate discussion on the issue. It's basically saying "No it hasn't changed. And if you have evidence or data showing otherwise, it can't be trusted." At the point you refute any provided data or evidence the conversation just devolves into an argument instead of a debate or conversation.
      - m_fayer 4y ago
        Discussion isn't what's needed here. It's reconciliation. This is what it looks like when abuse has built up and trust destroyed. The only way to claw back from that is patient humble hat-in-hands dialogue and persistent incremental trust-building measures. I haven't seen anything that looks like that from any major US law enforcement entity.
rsynnott 4y ago
> There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there, just as their are truly awful people in every known profession. This feels a bit like Father Ted's defense of the Church's child protection record: "Say if there are 200 million priests in the world and five percent are paedophiles. That's still only 10 million." 1 in 100 would be _far_ too high. Maybe 1 in 100 people are awful in the general population, but ideally you'd hold police to a much higher standard.
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  Yeah fair enough, I just pulled that number from thin air to try and portray my point. The actual crime stats in the US is 47.7 per 100,000. Unless there's hard evidence to the contrary, it can be assumed that those number also apply roughly to police.

marcellus23 4y ago

I suggest watching some videos of how police behaved during the protests a couple years ago. The Verge had an excellent compilation. It’s hardly one or two bad actors. My personal favorite was the police pulling parents out of a vehicle and beating them while their children watched — the car was just trying to turn around and get out of the protest area safely. Your argument might be more valid if these “bad apples” faced appropriate punishment, but they never do.

MathCodeLove 4y ago
I've seen plenty of those videos, and 9 times out of 10 if you're able to find the whole, unedited version of the video the officers actions suddenly seems much more reasonable. Not always, admittedly, but very often.
- mikestew 4y ago
  With that many examples, it should be simple to post just one example to make your point. But unsubstantiated contrarianism typically does not contribute to a conversation.
  - MathCodeLove 4y ago
    No one else provided examples nor asked for any. Perhaps you should ask for examples instead of assuming I'm acting out of malice. Here's a link to the full video for probably the most widely recognized case in the history of police brutality, the killing of George Floyd. Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so. Does it make those actions appear much, much more reasonable than it was made out to be on social media? Absolutely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKjaCvXdf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKjaCvXdf4
    - mikestew 4y ago
      Thanks for the link, it indeed provides context to your comment.
    - marcellus23 4y ago
      > Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so. I understand and appreciate that social media can (and has) exaggerated things, which you've demonstrated, but I don't see how this demonstrates that police brutality is not a problem, or is an exaggerated problem. Ultimately you agree the police officer's actions were not okay. The Verge article which I referred to originally: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-protest-george-floyd https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-... For example, there were multiple videos showing police cars literally running into protesters, ramming into groups of them. What additional context could ever make that okay? Under what circumstances would that be a reasonable response? Or as another example, police use tear gas on protesters, even though it's banned in war.
      - MathCodeLove 4y ago
        The difference is on one hand you have people sharing videos that make police look like they're suffocating people and hitting them with cars for the fun of it, and on the other you see that they're often in a situation where they've already tried a tactful approach, where they themselves are being met with or have been met with violence, and where the expediency of the moment required a difficult decision that may or may not have been correct. I've seen videos of protesters surrounding police vehicles trying to destroy them and harm the officer inside. That's a situation where running people over to get away would absolutely be acceptable. Tear gas is a great way to safely control crowds without firing gunshots. I've been subjected to it myself and while it's not pleasant, no lasting damage results from it. Stop trying to act like context doesn't matter, it always does and here even more so.

sseagull 4y ago

I generally am in agreement. However there's a complication in my mind. My dad was a police officer and I grew up around police. It's there's one thing to know about police, it is that they are human, and subject to all the emotions, inconsistencies, and foibles as other humans. However, they are given an extraordinary amount of power, with very little accountability. Think about what it would take for a regular person (maybe even you) to lose their job. Yet here is an example of an officer, behaving very aggressively, against department policy, causing a major accident and injuring a pregnant woman. As far as I can tell, he still has his job (although he was "disciplined", and the lawsuit was picked up by the taxpayers). https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-arkansas-legal-settlements-6416847226c2b03b7fbc10b32c516e9b https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-arkansas-legal-settlemen...

MathCodeLove 4y ago
Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for stating "All police are bad and out of control all over the country"
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  > Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for stating "All police are bad and out of control all over the country" In this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987681 you wrote: > ...There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there, just as their are truly awful people in every known profession. Your complaint about others' anecdotes would hold more weight if you weren't just making up statistics.
  - MathCodeLove 4y ago
    I think it's extremely clear that I'm not trying to portray that exact number as a fact and more as a general portrayment of "most police officers are good, just as most people are good"

m_fayer 4y ago

I grew up in the late 90s in NYC, and spent a lot of time hanging out "on the streets". I think on average, I saw an act of gross police misbehavior about once a month. Sometimes it was quite savage. Always racist. I'm white, but many of my friends weren't. 20 years later I still have intrusive memories of standing by helplessly while terrible things were said and done to my not-white friends, and I still have violent fantasies about those cops getting theirs in kind. Sure, this was often aimed at young people who may or may not be smoking pot or engaged in other mildly truant behavior. The police were not reacting to the truant behavior. They were targeting the minorly truant young people because they wanted to get their rocks off, and these victims were easily available and had no recourse.

MathCodeLove 4y ago
I don't doubt your experience but let's not pretend that there haven't been any changes in the past 2 decades.
- m_fayer 4y ago
  What makes you so sure? Even if there's data showing improvement, this would be data from a supremely untrustworthy source with a long history of manipulation and deception.
  - MathCodeLove 4y ago
    I mean you're making an argument that does nothing to facilitate discussion on the issue. It's basically saying "No it hasn't changed. And if you have evidence or data showing otherwise, it can't be trusted." At the point you refute any provided data or evidence the conversation just devolves into an argument instead of a debate or conversation.
    - m_fayer 4y ago
      Discussion isn't what's needed here. It's reconciliation. This is what it looks like when abuse has built up and trust destroyed. The only way to claw back from that is patient humble hat-in-hands dialogue and persistent incremental trust-building measures. I haven't seen anything that looks like that from any major US law enforcement entity.

rsynnott 4y ago

> There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there, just as their are truly awful people in every known profession. This feels a bit like Father Ted's defense of the Church's child protection record: "Say if there are 200 million priests in the world and five percent are paedophiles. That's still only 10 million." 1 in 100 would be _far_ too high. Maybe 1 in 100 people are awful in the general population, but ideally you'd hold police to a much higher standard.

MathCodeLove 4y ago
Yeah fair enough, I just pulled that number from thin air to try and portray my point. The actual crime stats in the US is 47.7 per 100,000. Unless there's hard evidence to the contrary, it can be assumed that those number also apply roughly to police.