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The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich nei

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routine check/stop can turn into a deadly gunfight in seconds. There are minority neighbourhoods where 97% of violent crime/murders are committed by people of the same race/culture living in that neighbourhood. And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this. Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Knowing that the next person you stop might try to do his/her best to kill you. While also knowing that any mistake you make will be headline news around the world. It’s an impossible situation.

inetknght 4y ago
The problem isn't policing and racism. Racism is the symptom. The problem is all of the other problems that lead to the increase of violent crime in the first place. Police are put into an impossible situation indeed.
- feet 4y ago
  Police are also part of the problem. They enforce the systemic violence enacted by shitty policy. Which is weird, because during the pandemic a whole bunch of police were super vocal about not wanted to enforce 'unjust mask mandates' yet they'll go and terrorize minority communities with glee They are definitely part of the problem, but you're right that it extends far beyond just them
scotty79 4y ago
Admit only minority people into the Police force. Problem solved. If a Policeman kills minority unlawfully then it's just minority on minority crime so nobody will care.
- anon291 4y ago
  Minority police shoot members of their own minority more often than whites though, so this policy would likely mean more dead black men https://www.rutgers.edu/news/bad-policing-bad-law-not-bad-apples-behind-disproportionate-killing-black-men-police https://www.rutgers.edu/news/bad-policing-bad-law-not-bad-ap... That's the data, not my opinion.
  - samhyde69 4y ago
    Yes, but fewer cities would burn as a result.
    - MrMan 4y ago
      ah yes the burning cities !
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I didn't mean it would solve the problem of Police killing minorities, just a problem of public caring about it.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Half the officers charged over Freddie Gray's death were black. No one was less mad over it because of that. The system can be racist even if its constituents aren't. It shouldn't be a new or unfamiliar idea to anyone here that complex systems can have unexpected outcomes, biases, and emergent properties.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    Top ranking guy was white though? Right?
  - samhyde69 4y ago
    - 4y ago
joe_the_user 4y ago
...if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). Let me outline the counter claim. Police spend more effort on actually solving crimes in rich neighborhood (as per article) but they still need arrests in poor neighborhoods so they arrest people more randomly and on flimsier pretexts. When people complain, they throw out the line you have above.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Do you have any data for this counter claim?
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  This does not match with my experience in poor areas. In my experience, the bar to get in trouble with the police is higher because of the vastly greater violent crime rates. Most minor laws see zero enforcement
zzzeek 4y ago
> And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this. that's because when the police kill people, there are no repercussions for them, no matter how much obvious bias, incompetence, disregard for human life, and malice is apparent in their activity. police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted. The George Floyd murder required that it was videoed from start to finish for there to be any chance of an actual criminal trial proceeding. All of the police murders that we hear about now are all news because there is now video. Think of all the decades and decades when there was no video, how many people must have been murdered on a whim, without the event even being considered a crime. But even today, obviously immensely negligent acts, such as the murders of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, still basically have zero repercussions for their killers. This is nothing like the usual "murder rate", where the violence that occurs between people who are not cops is all considered to be crime, and is handled as such. There's no disagreement on what justice looks like. Murder is bad, but aribtrary murder by state actors with no accountability is worse. > Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. please review the accounts of Uvalde as children and teachers were murdered over an hour while heavily armed and armored police stood around and did nothing but prevent anyone else from being able to help. There are many ordinary jobs that are statistically much more dangerous than that of the police including things like roofing, truck driving, construction (source: OSHA https://www.invictuslawpc.com/most-dangerous-jobs-osha/ https://www.invictuslawpc.com/most-dangerous-jobs-osha/)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- daenz 4y ago
  >police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted Same with medical professionals. Medical errors kills over 250k people each year in the US. It generally isn't criminal if they make a judgement that results in someone's death. There's been a number of serial killers in medicine because we give medical professionals the benefit of the doubt due to the nature of the profession. My point is that these professions aren't your average jobs. It's normal for doctors and police to deal with life and death, and to make decisions that could set off a sequence of events that quickly results in death. So either we have to say that nobody deserves to make these decisions, or we have to hold them to realistic standards.
AlexandrB 4y ago
> Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Now imagine being a logging worker, risking your life every day[1], and not having anyone ever say this about you. [1] https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/ https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
  I think plenty of people say that, actually. There was a very popular discovery channel (or maybe history channel) show that followed around various groups of loggers and just about every episode had someone getting injured or barely escaping injury. Deadliest Catch, similarly, highlighted the risk faced in one of the other most dangerous jobs, offshore fishing.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    A single show vs an entire culture lol
    - usrn 4y ago
      Where I grew up we heated the house with wood and talked about professional loggers quite a bit.
  - drekk 4y ago
    That's wonderful! Do loggers or fishers have the ability to kill someone off duty without repurcussions? Do they get paid similarly? Do we give them discounts at stores?
panny 4y ago
>Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Knowing that the next person you stop might try to do his/her best to kill you. While also knowing that any mistake you make will be headline news around the world. It’s an impossible situation. Defender problem. Just like how pen testers are insufferably smug that throwing random input at your endpoint causes unexpected problems. Nevermind that building secure endpoints is harder than building random fuzzers.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  but the pentesters are right and you should be thanking them for finding the xploit
  - feet 4y ago
    That's not how we do things in the US. Here we punish whistleblowers and tell you that what they found isn't a real problem, the problem is actually the brown people crossing the border Don't look up

inetknght 4y ago

The problem isn't policing and racism. Racism is the symptom. The problem is all of the other problems that lead to the increase of violent crime in the first place. Police are put into an impossible situation indeed.

feet 4y ago
Police are also part of the problem. They enforce the systemic violence enacted by shitty policy. Which is weird, because during the pandemic a whole bunch of police were super vocal about not wanted to enforce 'unjust mask mandates' yet they'll go and terrorize minority communities with glee They are definitely part of the problem, but you're right that it extends far beyond just them

scotty79 4y ago

Admit only minority people into the Police force. Problem solved. If a Policeman kills minority unlawfully then it's just minority on minority crime so nobody will care.

anon291 4y ago
Minority police shoot members of their own minority more often than whites though, so this policy would likely mean more dead black men https://www.rutgers.edu/news/bad-policing-bad-law-not-bad-apples-behind-disproportionate-killing-black-men-police https://www.rutgers.edu/news/bad-policing-bad-law-not-bad-ap... That's the data, not my opinion.
- samhyde69 4y ago
  Yes, but fewer cities would burn as a result.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    ah yes the burning cities !
- scotty79 4y ago
  I didn't mean it would solve the problem of Police killing minorities, just a problem of public caring about it.
Tao3300 4y ago
Half the officers charged over Freddie Gray's death were black. No one was less mad over it because of that. The system can be racist even if its constituents aren't. It shouldn't be a new or unfamiliar idea to anyone here that complex systems can have unexpected outcomes, biases, and emergent properties.
- scotty79 4y ago
  Top ranking guy was white though? Right?
- samhyde69 4y ago
  - 4y ago

joe_the_user 4y ago

...if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). Let me outline the counter claim. Police spend more effort on actually solving crimes in rich neighborhood (as per article) but they still need arrests in poor neighborhoods so they arrest people more randomly and on flimsier pretexts. When people complain, they throw out the line you have above.

vorpalhex 4y ago
Do you have any data for this counter claim?
s1artibartfast 4y ago
This does not match with my experience in poor areas. In my experience, the bar to get in trouble with the police is higher because of the vastly greater violent crime rates. Most minor laws see zero enforcement

zzzeek 4y ago

> And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this. that's because when the police kill people, there are no repercussions for them, no matter how much obvious bias, incompetence, disregard for human life, and malice is apparent in their activity. police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted. The George Floyd murder required that it was videoed from start to finish for there to be any chance of an actual criminal trial proceeding. All of the police murders that we hear about now are all news because there is now video. Think of all the decades and decades when there was no video, how many people must have been murdered on a whim, without the event even being considered a crime. But even today, obviously immensely negligent acts, such as the murders of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, still basically have zero repercussions for their killers. This is nothing like the usual "murder rate", where the violence that occurs between people who are not cops is all considered to be crime, and is handled as such. There's no disagreement on what justice looks like. Murder is bad, but aribtrary murder by state actors with no accountability is worse. > Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. please review the accounts of Uvalde as children and teachers were murdered over an hour while heavily armed and armored police stood around and did nothing but prevent anyone else from being able to help. There are many ordinary jobs that are statistically much more dangerous than that of the police including things like roofing, truck driving, construction (source: OSHA https://www.invictuslawpc.com/most-dangerous-jobs-osha/ https://www.invictuslawpc.com/most-dangerous-jobs-osha/)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
daenz 4y ago
>police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted Same with medical professionals. Medical errors kills over 250k people each year in the US. It generally isn't criminal if they make a judgement that results in someone's death. There's been a number of serial killers in medicine because we give medical professionals the benefit of the doubt due to the nature of the profession. My point is that these professions aren't your average jobs. It's normal for doctors and police to deal with life and death, and to make decisions that could set off a sequence of events that quickly results in death. So either we have to say that nobody deserves to make these decisions, or we have to hold them to realistic standards.

AlexandrB 4y ago

> Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Now imagine being a logging worker, risking your life every day[1], and not having anyone ever say this about you. [1] https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/ https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/

Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
I think plenty of people say that, actually. There was a very popular discovery channel (or maybe history channel) show that followed around various groups of loggers and just about every episode had someone getting injured or barely escaping injury. Deadliest Catch, similarly, highlighted the risk faced in one of the other most dangerous jobs, offshore fishing.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  A single show vs an entire culture lol
  - usrn 4y ago
    Where I grew up we heated the house with wood and talked about professional loggers quite a bit.
- drekk 4y ago
  That's wonderful! Do loggers or fishers have the ability to kill someone off duty without repurcussions? Do they get paid similarly? Do we give them discounts at stores?

panny 4y ago

>Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Knowing that the next person you stop might try to do his/her best to kill you. While also knowing that any mistake you make will be headline news around the world. It’s an impossible situation. Defender problem. Just like how pen testers are insufferably smug that throwing random input at your endpoint causes unexpected problems. Nevermind that building secure endpoints is harder than building random fuzzers.

cuteboy19 4y ago
but the pentesters are right and you should be thanking them for finding the xploit
- feet 4y ago
  That's not how we do things in the US. Here we punish whistleblowers and tell you that what they found isn't a real problem, the problem is actually the brown people crossing the border Don't look up