12 ms·

For police PR flacks, quack lives matter

113 points by greyface- 4y ago

Luciatrutth 4y ago
[dead]
dmix 4y ago
So basically a slightly less malicious version of how photographers started faking drama by placing children's dolls/toys into the rubble for photos of ruined buildings? Which became a meme in the terrorism era and some TV shows/movies satirized it. It all started after a real story won the Pulizter (or photo equivalent) of an Elmo-style doll in some building rubble and photographers decided to create their own versions.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > So basically a slightly less malicious version of how photographers started faking drama by placing children's dolls/toys into the rubble for photos of ruined buildings? Which became a meme in the terrorism era and some TV shows/movies satirized it. No, they're just typical human interest stories being misleadingly portrayed as some kind of conspiracy. There are all kinds of stories about firefighters saving ducks, regular people saving ducks, kids saving ducks, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34623180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34623180. I guess "people saving ducks" is a common, easy, heartwarming story to write.
victor9000 4y ago
Seems fair to identify this as PR folks doing PR. You do PR where you need it, and they need it.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
  There is another term for when the state does it — propaganda.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    It's annoying that the word “propaganda” has ended up meaning “PR efforts I don't like”. There was once an era when propaganda was a normal word.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      Okay, but this is propaganda in the original sense of the word.
    - groestl 4y ago
      AFAIK propaganda is used with a positive connotation as well. It's just debatable if you interpret a specific act of propaganda as positive or negative, depending on the objective of the message.
      - azubinski 4y ago
        Despite this particular story which is probably a "matryoshka" of propaganda inside a propaganda inside... you are one step away from discovering the reason for the frequent appearance of Chekhov and Dostoevsky in HN :)
        groestl 4y ago
        Please forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand (probably because of my lack of knowledge wrt Chekhov and Dostoevsky), yet I want to. At the risk of giving away the joke, could you explain your point to me?
    - Johnny555 4y ago
      When did propaganda not mean "PR efforts I don't like", especially government PR efforts? Wikipedia says: The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere Do you long for the days of the 1850's?
    - lostlogin 4y ago
- runnerup 4y ago
  If the police departments are actually fortuitously finding baby ducks, sure...that's smart PR. But if the entire event is staged, that's propaganda instead of PR.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    If it's staged, then it would border into animal mistreatment since the ducklings would have been removed from their environment to be used as prop.
  - kyleyeats 4y ago
    It's propaganda either way because it's funded by public money (PR is funded by private money).
  - ddevault 4y ago
    Propaganda and PR are the same thing. The term "public relations" was invented in the wake of public sentiment turning negative regarding "propaganda" in the wake of the second world war. Prior to that PR was just called propaganda, and did not have a generally negative connotation.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > You do PR where you need it, and they need it. But sometimes you need to step back and ask why you need that PR in the first place, and if perhaps there are better avenues to recover your standing rather than staging PR-worthy displays. At some point the PR becomes completely disingenuous and starts actively harming you.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  If it's staged, it's the police lying about the work they're doing in the community, which is an ethical problem.
  - nisegami 4y ago
    Doesn't even crack the top 10 of ethical problems resulting from the police.
  - seanicus 4y ago
    Whether or not it's staged it's the creation of a PR person who's likely never even so much as been on the inside of a squad car, trying to spread an insipid, demonstrably false narrative about a bunch of wife-beating knuckleheads hiding in their SUV's between bouts of extreme violence.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xracy 4y ago
Wow, it's nice to know that police protect and serve ducks. Would be cool if they also protected and served people, but I guess ducks are a little easier to work with.
- lukas099 4y ago
  They often do. What do you think the world would be like without police, roses and fairie dust?
  - cm2187 4y ago
    "Often" is an understatement. I wish software had as few bugs per line of code as there are incidents of police brutality per number of police interactions in the country.
    - pksebben 4y ago
      the stakes are way lower. My buggy code doesn't kill people.
      - xracy 4y ago
        I think that's the point they're making...
        xracy 4y ago
        Nvm, I misread it. Yeah, you're right.
    - ilostmyshoes 4y ago
      https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
      - Georgelemental 4y ago
monero-xmr 4y ago
[flagged]
- kid64 4y ago
  In fairness, this is linguistic sleight of hand; police unions aren't actually unions.[1] [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-police-unions-are-not-other-unions-167750 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-police-unions-a...
  - msla 4y ago
    They are unions. Stop this nonsense.
  - leosarev 4y ago
    No. This article literally says: I don't like police unions, they vote for Republicana, therefore they are different.
    - kid64 4y ago
      Again, getting distracted by the language. Consider the actual point, which is the comparison to organizations we normally think of as unions.
      - leosarev 4y ago
        You define unions as "left orgs". I define unions as "orgs that protect collective rigths of the employees".
- stonogo 4y ago
  It's pretty straightforward. A labor union exists to enage in mediated conflict with the employers of its members. The employers of police are the citizens they're supposed to be serving. From there, it's pretty clear that police unions and citizens are at odds, basically by definition. Since the police are already given wide berth in the law, thanks to things like qualified immunity and civil forfeiture, why do they need additional legal defense in the form of labor unions? In fact they don't, and that's why police unions are almost universally fraternal organizations instead of actual labor unions.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Watch for "cops save baby ducks" stories in the next few months. Media collaborates with police to produce these puff pieces after every police brutality incident. > Literally every dept does these after police killings, it's amazing. Maybe, maybe not. There's no evidence of causation or conspiracy shown here. Even the prediction seems a little bogus. "The next few months" seems like it might just be when ducks start having ducklings. I predict in about six months, you'll start to see dozens of stories about cops saving kids who were drowning in lakes and rivers. I assure you, it's totally a conspiracy to distract you from police brutality and has nothing to do with summer and beat reporting. Edit: And a lot of these supposed propaganda stories are actually about animal control officers. This blog post itself and the tweet it's based on are starting to look like shoddy pieces of propaganda: https://wokq.com/manchester-nh-police-rescue-seven-ducklings-from-drainpipe/ https://wokq.com/manchester-nh-police-rescue-seven-ducklings...: > Enter Manchester's Animal Control Officers, including Kayla Tremblay. Tremblay knew exactly what to do after the officers located the storm drain and the missing ducklings. https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/whats-viral/us-california-based-officer-uses-mobile-to-rescue-11-baby-ducks-from-storm-drain.html https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/whats-viral...: > A California animal control officer with her presence of mind saved a group of baby ducklings from a storm drain. https://fox4kc.com/news/officers-rescue-flock-of-ducklings-from-spillway/ https://fox4kc.com/news/officers-rescue-flock-of-ducklings-f... > OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Animal control officers responded to a different kind of emergency at one of the Overland Park’s parks. https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/story/news/2022/05/18/rescuers-save-ducklings-fell-marlborough-ma-storm-drain/9809112002/ https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/story/news/2022/05/18/res...: > Alyssa Giaquinto, of The Giaquinto Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, along with the Marlborough Animal Control Officer and members of the Marlborough Police and Public Works departments all worked together to rescue the ducklings from the drain.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > I assure you, it's totally a conspiracy to distract you from police brutality Not sure if this is intended to be sarcasm, but it's like the adage goes -- just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. I don't know if it's a conspiracy or just an emergent status quo, but the media do constantly provide puff pieces for the police. Old ladies crossing the icy street in the winter, ducklings in the spring, kids and swimming pools in the summer and Halloween/Thanksgiving in the fall. Regardless the season they'll find some way to spin the cops in a positive light.
svag 4y ago
For a split second I thought that this article was AI generated... :)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
kube-system 4y ago
These pieces don’t diminish the necessity of police reform, or excuse the actions of other people wrongs. And I think some people do need a reminder that it’s not helpful to generalize large groups of people. Humans have a natural tendency try to fit their ideas about the world into neat little black and white boxes. It’s important to have balance and remember that the world is more complicated than we all sometimes want to believe. If all police were bad, it would be easy to solve police brutality, just get rid of them. The hard part is fixing an organization that has some good people and some bad people.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  These pieces enrage people because it makes them feel they are being manipulated. Because as it shows they clearly are.
  - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      > All hotbeds of police brutality, I'm sure. Hotbeds? Probably not. Problematic? Ooooh yeah. All four of your example countries have well established histories with oppressive and heavy-handed policing at various times throughout the last century, with incidents as recent as this year. If anything, you're providing strong evidenced that this is not an America-only problem, but a more general one that many societies with a police force will suffer from. The fact that duck rescue feel-good stories work outside of America ain't exactly a revelation from the burning bush.
      - orwin 4y ago
        Just a point : we don't have riot for the retirement age. Unions security forces won't allow it yet. It's just the largest manifestation and strike we have in years.
KwisatzHaderack 4y ago
The freemasons are responsible for this
- elkos 4y ago
  Not the Space Guild?
exodust 4y ago
Ducks and brutality aside, it's obviously best to comply as you're getting arrested. If wrongful arrest, sort out later as it's all recorded. "Give me your hands," they shouted. He refused. "Lay down on your stomach!" Again he refuses, argues, struggles, breaks free and runs off. No punches had been thrown at this point. Education is needed on how to behave if you ever get detained. All he had to do was comply with the initial instructions, and he'd be alive today. Same with Floyd who refused to get in the car when repeatedly ordered to. The police brutality comes after the sheer stupidity of these suspects who decide that getting arrested is not for them.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/01/30/report-reveals-police-issued-71-conflicting-commands-and-impossible-orders-to-tyre-nichols-in-13-minutes/ https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/01/30/report-reveals-pol... Nice try. But even if we disregard the impossible commands, how good would you be at obeying commands when fearing for your life?
  - exodust 4y ago
    I wasn't 'trying' any more than you tried replying, or the author tried painting a duck-saving story as bad faith agenda. Of the 4 videos released, the first shows the initial stop with guns drawn. Cops won't greet you with "evening sir" when approaching with guns out. Not sure what he did to attract attention, but was likely more than failure to indicate. Your linked article claims punching and kicking happened at the car, but this isn't visible on the released video_1. What I see on video 1, is a messy aggressive mob of cops barking orders, yelling over the top of each other, but also a subject unwilling to play along the whole way. He isn't about to go ragdoll for these cops. He's not fearing his life, he's fearing arrest. So he runs rather than be cuffed. Cops relax when cuffs are on, everyone knows. So let them put cuffs on. Or risk injury.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
raspberry1337 4y ago
The hatred or dislike of police in a country seems to be strictly correlated to the levels of criminality, progressivism and ethnic heterogeneity. Looking at law, Singapore, Japan and South Korea would be brutal police states, but there is none of that dislike for police that we find in countries like France, US or Britain where people sing about how much they hate the police. Instead, in those countries people respect and appreciate police officers.
- pydry 4y ago
  Singapore has no freedom of expression and the police are actually held accountable for doing their job.
- Vosporos 4y ago
  Thankfully correlation doesn't equal causation, imagine how stupid you would look like online.
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    Almost as stupid as someone who thinks the existence of a police force is the source of the problem every time this _context_ occurs. For some reason, countries without progressives and their shitty policies don't have these problems. There's no horrible police force from Switzerland to Singapore I feel bad for the stupid youth who choose to become a police officer in a progressive country, imagine getting shit on endlessly for trying to uphold the law.
    - seanicus 4y ago
      I can help you find the address of your local police department if you need some more boots to lick.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >Instead, in those countries people respect and appreciate police officers. Because they aren't murdering disabled people in the streets like rabid animals. It's pretty simple.
graycat 4y ago
Sounds like the citizens have a problem with their government. Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade: Here in the US we have a democracy, a Constitution, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. We are supposed to have free elections and a free enterprise system. Soooo, Step 1: When government is doing bad things -- illegal, unethical, violent, nasty -- with freedom of speech, some people should complain and with freedom of the press journalism should present the information, say, meeting common high school term paper standards, to the voters. If the journalism is not doing that, then it looks like there is a business opportunity in the US free enterprise system. Step 2: Seeing the information, the voters are supposed to complain to their elected representatives in government. If the voters do not complain, then the representatives might wonder if many voters care and, thus, be reluctant to take action. Step 3: The elected representatives are supposed to correct the problem. If the representatives don't do this work, then it looks like in our democracy there is an opportunity for some new representatives. Sooo, why don't these three steps work, i.e., why don't the problems get reported by the journalists and corrected by the representatives? For an answer, my guess is that journalists believe that, for their ad revenue per hour of work as journalists, they have more profitable places to allocate their time than reporting on problems with government. For a change, we might guess that the journalists will change and report about (A) representatives lying, police beating up citizens for no good reason, graft, kickbacks, wasteful spending, dangerous infrastructure, payoffs, no-show jobs, unfairly serving powerful special interests, cushy contracts, ignoring crime, etc., i.e., problems with government, instead of (B) police saving baby ducks as soon as voters and readers insist they want such change. So, in my opinion, given our democracy and Constitution, the real, basic fault lies with the voters who don't give strong feedback to the journalists and representatives.
- pksebben 4y ago
  the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. 1 - most news is published by one of a few conglomerates. It is impossible to be competitive in this space without a staggeringly large bankroll, and most 'competition' is just the illusion of, not the genuine article. An example of this is the chairman of the Associated Press (nominally a non profit news organization) also being the CEO of Hearst Communications (named for William Randolph Hearst - one of those conglomerates I'm referring to) 2 - Things getting in between your opinion (that is, anyone's opinion) and enacted policy: first-past-the-post elections, the two party system, gerrymandering, the Senate (unless you live in Vermont, Wyoming, or one of the Dakotas), the DNC, the RNC, primaries, voting happening on a single day, voting not being a national holiday, the supreme court, relying on representatives rather than voting directly, corporations are people, and money buys elections.This list is incomplete but touches on most of the key players. You get the picture. 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. The thing is, it's a really complicated mess and like any sufficiently complex system, it's nearly impossible to reason about without making some deep assumptions. For a light introduction to the scope of the situation, I recommend reading Republic Lost, by Lawrence Lessig. He's a constitutional scholar who started talking about all this before the system started to show late-stage symptoms of what's probably terminal cancer, from a societal perspective.
domador 4y ago
Just looking at the headline, I thought the article was going to be about a different kind of quack: "expert" witnesses that champion theories such as "killology", which are pretty convenient for police.
- chalst 4y ago
  An attempt to Google 'killology' returned to Wikipedia article on Dave Grossman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author) The article claims he is the source of research into 'killology', but makes it pretty clear that he is against the costs that the more violent approaches to policing involve. He was on the prosecution team for Timothy McVeigh, FWIW. Has there been a subsequent move in the usage of 'killology'?
Luciatrutth 4y ago
[dead]

113 points by greyface- 4y ago

[dead]

dmix 4y ago

So basically a slightly less malicious version of how photographers started faking drama by placing children's dolls/toys into the rubble for photos of ruined buildings? Which became a meme in the terrorism era and some TV shows/movies satirized it. It all started after a real story won the Pulizter (or photo equivalent) of an Elmo-style doll in some building rubble and photographers decided to create their own versions.

tablespoon 4y ago
> So basically a slightly less malicious version of how photographers started faking drama by placing children's dolls/toys into the rubble for photos of ruined buildings? Which became a meme in the terrorism era and some TV shows/movies satirized it. No, they're just typical human interest stories being misleadingly portrayed as some kind of conspiracy. There are all kinds of stories about firefighters saving ducks, regular people saving ducks, kids saving ducks, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34623180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34623180. I guess "people saving ducks" is a common, easy, heartwarming story to write.

victor9000 4y ago

Seems fair to identify this as PR folks doing PR. You do PR where you need it, and they need it.

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
There is another term for when the state does it — propaganda.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  It's annoying that the word “propaganda” has ended up meaning “PR efforts I don't like”. There was once an era when propaganda was a normal word.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    Okay, but this is propaganda in the original sense of the word.
  - groestl 4y ago
    AFAIK propaganda is used with a positive connotation as well. It's just debatable if you interpret a specific act of propaganda as positive or negative, depending on the objective of the message.
    - azubinski 4y ago
      Despite this particular story which is probably a "matryoshka" of propaganda inside a propaganda inside... you are one step away from discovering the reason for the frequent appearance of Chekhov and Dostoevsky in HN :)
      - groestl 4y ago
        Please forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand (probably because of my lack of knowledge wrt Chekhov and Dostoevsky), yet I want to. At the risk of giving away the joke, could you explain your point to me?
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    When did propaganda not mean "PR efforts I don't like", especially government PR efforts? Wikipedia says: The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere Do you long for the days of the 1850's?
  - lostlogin 4y ago
runnerup 4y ago
If the police departments are actually fortuitously finding baby ducks, sure...that's smart PR. But if the entire event is staged, that's propaganda instead of PR.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  If it's staged, then it would border into animal mistreatment since the ducklings would have been removed from their environment to be used as prop.
- kyleyeats 4y ago
  It's propaganda either way because it's funded by public money (PR is funded by private money).
- ddevault 4y ago
  Propaganda and PR are the same thing. The term "public relations" was invented in the wake of public sentiment turning negative regarding "propaganda" in the wake of the second world war. Prior to that PR was just called propaganda, and did not have a generally negative connotation.
genocidicbunny 4y ago
> You do PR where you need it, and they need it. But sometimes you need to step back and ask why you need that PR in the first place, and if perhaps there are better avenues to recover your standing rather than staging PR-worthy displays. At some point the PR becomes completely disingenuous and starts actively harming you.
nitwit005 4y ago
If it's staged, it's the police lying about the work they're doing in the community, which is an ethical problem.
- nisegami 4y ago
  Doesn't even crack the top 10 of ethical problems resulting from the police.
- seanicus 4y ago
  Whether or not it's staged it's the creation of a PR person who's likely never even so much as been on the inside of a squad car, trying to spread an insipid, demonstrably false narrative about a bunch of wife-beating knuckleheads hiding in their SUV's between bouts of extreme violence.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xracy 4y ago

Wow, it's nice to know that police protect and serve ducks. Would be cool if they also protected and served people, but I guess ducks are a little easier to work with.

lukas099 4y ago
They often do. What do you think the world would be like without police, roses and fairie dust?
- cm2187 4y ago
  "Often" is an understatement. I wish software had as few bugs per line of code as there are incidents of police brutality per number of police interactions in the country.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    the stakes are way lower. My buggy code doesn't kill people.
    - xracy 4y ago
      I think that's the point they're making...
      - xracy 4y ago
        Nvm, I misread it. Yeah, you're right.
  - ilostmyshoes 4y ago
    https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
    - Georgelemental 4y ago

monero-xmr 4y ago

[flagged]

kid64 4y ago
In fairness, this is linguistic sleight of hand; police unions aren't actually unions.[1] [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-police-unions-are-not-other-unions-167750 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-police-unions-a...
- msla 4y ago
  They are unions. Stop this nonsense.
- leosarev 4y ago
  No. This article literally says: I don't like police unions, they vote for Republicana, therefore they are different.
  - kid64 4y ago
    Again, getting distracted by the language. Consider the actual point, which is the comparison to organizations we normally think of as unions.
    - leosarev 4y ago
      You define unions as "left orgs". I define unions as "orgs that protect collective rigths of the employees".
stonogo 4y ago
It's pretty straightforward. A labor union exists to enage in mediated conflict with the employers of its members. The employers of police are the citizens they're supposed to be serving. From there, it's pretty clear that police unions and citizens are at odds, basically by definition. Since the police are already given wide berth in the law, thanks to things like qualified immunity and civil forfeiture, why do they need additional legal defense in the form of labor unions? In fact they don't, and that's why police unions are almost universally fraternal organizations instead of actual labor unions.

tablespoon 4y ago

> Watch for "cops save baby ducks" stories in the next few months. Media collaborates with police to produce these puff pieces after every police brutality incident. > Literally every dept does these after police killings, it's amazing. Maybe, maybe not. There's no evidence of causation or conspiracy shown here. Even the prediction seems a little bogus. "The next few months" seems like it might just be when ducks start having ducklings. I predict in about six months, you'll start to see dozens of stories about cops saving kids who were drowning in lakes and rivers. I assure you, it's totally a conspiracy to distract you from police brutality and has nothing to do with summer and beat reporting. Edit: And a lot of these supposed propaganda stories are actually about animal control officers. This blog post itself and the tweet it's based on are starting to look like shoddy pieces of propaganda: https://wokq.com/manchester-nh-police-rescue-seven-ducklings-from-drainpipe/ https://wokq.com/manchester-nh-police-rescue-seven-ducklings...: > Enter Manchester's Animal Control Officers, including Kayla Tremblay. Tremblay knew exactly what to do after the officers located the storm drain and the missing ducklings. https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/whats-viral/us-california-based-officer-uses-mobile-to-rescue-11-baby-ducks-from-storm-drain.html https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/whats-viral...: > A California animal control officer with her presence of mind saved a group of baby ducklings from a storm drain. https://fox4kc.com/news/officers-rescue-flock-of-ducklings-from-spillway/ https://fox4kc.com/news/officers-rescue-flock-of-ducklings-f... > OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Animal control officers responded to a different kind of emergency at one of the Overland Park’s parks. https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/story/news/2022/05/18/rescuers-save-ducklings-fell-marlborough-ma-storm-drain/9809112002/ https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/story/news/2022/05/18/res...: > Alyssa Giaquinto, of The Giaquinto Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, along with the Marlborough Animal Control Officer and members of the Marlborough Police and Public Works departments all worked together to rescue the ducklings from the drain.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
> I assure you, it's totally a conspiracy to distract you from police brutality Not sure if this is intended to be sarcasm, but it's like the adage goes -- just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. I don't know if it's a conspiracy or just an emergent status quo, but the media do constantly provide puff pieces for the police. Old ladies crossing the icy street in the winter, ducklings in the spring, kids and swimming pools in the summer and Halloween/Thanksgiving in the fall. Regardless the season they'll find some way to spin the cops in a positive light.

svag 4y ago

For a split second I thought that this article was AI generated... :)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

kube-system 4y ago

These pieces don’t diminish the necessity of police reform, or excuse the actions of other people wrongs. And I think some people do need a reminder that it’s not helpful to generalize large groups of people. Humans have a natural tendency try to fit their ideas about the world into neat little black and white boxes. It’s important to have balance and remember that the world is more complicated than we all sometimes want to believe. If all police were bad, it would be easy to solve police brutality, just get rid of them. The hard part is fixing an organization that has some good people and some bad people.

tinus_hn 4y ago
These pieces enrage people because it makes them feel they are being manipulated. Because as it shows they clearly are.
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    > All hotbeds of police brutality, I'm sure. Hotbeds? Probably not. Problematic? Ooooh yeah. All four of your example countries have well established histories with oppressive and heavy-handed policing at various times throughout the last century, with incidents as recent as this year. If anything, you're providing strong evidenced that this is not an America-only problem, but a more general one that many societies with a police force will suffer from. The fact that duck rescue feel-good stories work outside of America ain't exactly a revelation from the burning bush.
    - orwin 4y ago
      Just a point : we don't have riot for the retirement age. Unions security forces won't allow it yet. It's just the largest manifestation and strike we have in years.

KwisatzHaderack 4y ago

The freemasons are responsible for this

elkos 4y ago
Not the Space Guild?

exodust 4y ago

Ducks and brutality aside, it's obviously best to comply as you're getting arrested. If wrongful arrest, sort out later as it's all recorded. "Give me your hands," they shouted. He refused. "Lay down on your stomach!" Again he refuses, argues, struggles, breaks free and runs off. No punches had been thrown at this point. Education is needed on how to behave if you ever get detained. All he had to do was comply with the initial instructions, and he'd be alive today. Same with Floyd who refused to get in the car when repeatedly ordered to. The police brutality comes after the sheer stupidity of these suspects who decide that getting arrested is not for them.

cycomanic 4y ago
https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/01/30/report-reveals-police-issued-71-conflicting-commands-and-impossible-orders-to-tyre-nichols-in-13-minutes/ https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/01/30/report-reveals-pol... Nice try. But even if we disregard the impossible commands, how good would you be at obeying commands when fearing for your life?
- exodust 4y ago
  I wasn't 'trying' any more than you tried replying, or the author tried painting a duck-saving story as bad faith agenda. Of the 4 videos released, the first shows the initial stop with guns drawn. Cops won't greet you with "evening sir" when approaching with guns out. Not sure what he did to attract attention, but was likely more than failure to indicate. Your linked article claims punching and kicking happened at the car, but this isn't visible on the released video_1. What I see on video 1, is a messy aggressive mob of cops barking orders, yelling over the top of each other, but also a subject unwilling to play along the whole way. He isn't about to go ragdoll for these cops. He's not fearing his life, he's fearing arrest. So he runs rather than be cuffed. Cops relax when cuffs are on, everyone knows. So let them put cuffs on. Or risk injury.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

raspberry1337 4y ago

The hatred or dislike of police in a country seems to be strictly correlated to the levels of criminality, progressivism and ethnic heterogeneity. Looking at law, Singapore, Japan and South Korea would be brutal police states, but there is none of that dislike for police that we find in countries like France, US or Britain where people sing about how much they hate the police. Instead, in those countries people respect and appreciate police officers.

pydry 4y ago
Singapore has no freedom of expression and the police are actually held accountable for doing their job.
Vosporos 4y ago
Thankfully correlation doesn't equal causation, imagine how stupid you would look like online.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  Almost as stupid as someone who thinks the existence of a police force is the source of the problem every time this _context_ occurs. For some reason, countries without progressives and their shitty policies don't have these problems. There's no horrible police force from Switzerland to Singapore I feel bad for the stupid youth who choose to become a police officer in a progressive country, imagine getting shit on endlessly for trying to uphold the law.
  - seanicus 4y ago
    I can help you find the address of your local police department if you need some more boots to lick.
ramesh31 4y ago
>Instead, in those countries people respect and appreciate police officers. Because they aren't murdering disabled people in the streets like rabid animals. It's pretty simple.

graycat 4y ago

Sounds like the citizens have a problem with their government. Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade: Here in the US we have a democracy, a Constitution, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. We are supposed to have free elections and a free enterprise system. Soooo, Step 1: When government is doing bad things -- illegal, unethical, violent, nasty -- with freedom of speech, some people should complain and with freedom of the press journalism should present the information, say, meeting common high school term paper standards, to the voters. If the journalism is not doing that, then it looks like there is a business opportunity in the US free enterprise system. Step 2: Seeing the information, the voters are supposed to complain to their elected representatives in government. If the voters do not complain, then the representatives might wonder if many voters care and, thus, be reluctant to take action. Step 3: The elected representatives are supposed to correct the problem. If the representatives don't do this work, then it looks like in our democracy there is an opportunity for some new representatives. Sooo, why don't these three steps work, i.e., why don't the problems get reported by the journalists and corrected by the representatives? For an answer, my guess is that journalists believe that, for their ad revenue per hour of work as journalists, they have more profitable places to allocate their time than reporting on problems with government. For a change, we might guess that the journalists will change and report about (A) representatives lying, police beating up citizens for no good reason, graft, kickbacks, wasteful spending, dangerous infrastructure, payoffs, no-show jobs, unfairly serving powerful special interests, cushy contracts, ignoring crime, etc., i.e., problems with government, instead of (B) police saving baby ducks as soon as voters and readers insist they want such change. So, in my opinion, given our democracy and Constitution, the real, basic fault lies with the voters who don't give strong feedback to the journalists and representatives.

pksebben 4y ago
the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. 1 - most news is published by one of a few conglomerates. It is impossible to be competitive in this space without a staggeringly large bankroll, and most 'competition' is just the illusion of, not the genuine article. An example of this is the chairman of the Associated Press (nominally a non profit news organization) also being the CEO of Hearst Communications (named for William Randolph Hearst - one of those conglomerates I'm referring to) 2 - Things getting in between your opinion (that is, anyone's opinion) and enacted policy: first-past-the-post elections, the two party system, gerrymandering, the Senate (unless you live in Vermont, Wyoming, or one of the Dakotas), the DNC, the RNC, primaries, voting happening on a single day, voting not being a national holiday, the supreme court, relying on representatives rather than voting directly, corporations are people, and money buys elections.This list is incomplete but touches on most of the key players. You get the picture. 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. The thing is, it's a really complicated mess and like any sufficiently complex system, it's nearly impossible to reason about without making some deep assumptions. For a light introduction to the scope of the situation, I recommend reading Republic Lost, by Lawrence Lessig. He's a constitutional scholar who started talking about all this before the system started to show late-stage symptoms of what's probably terminal cancer, from a societal perspective.

domador 4y ago

Just looking at the headline, I thought the article was going to be about a different kind of quack: "expert" witnesses that champion theories such as "killology", which are pretty convenient for police.

chalst 4y ago
An attempt to Google 'killology' returned to Wikipedia article on Dave Grossman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author) The article claims he is the source of research into 'killology', but makes it pretty clear that he is against the costs that the more violent approaches to policing involve. He was on the prosecution team for Timothy McVeigh, FWIW. Has there been a subsequent move in the usage of 'killology'?

Luciatrutth 4y ago

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