4 ms·

> falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount. > were “criminals disguised as law enforce

> falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” That appears to have happened; they're claiming it was a miscount. > were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” Seems fair. (And opinion, which can't be defamation.) > They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. I'd note that the jury found Afroman not liable on all these.

tt24 8mo ago
> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” > Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
  - tt24 8mo ago
    Where in this article does it suggest that it’s a statistically safe assumption that most cops are white supremacists?
    - kstrauser 8mo ago
      Behold, the sea lion in its native habitat.
      - tt24 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        Retric 8mo ago
        No, you ignored evidence presented while failing to provide any of your own. Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
        tt24 8mo ago
        Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim. I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
        Retric 8mo ago
        Court cases look at things like when someone arrives in a city as evidence, that alone doesn’t make someone more likely to have done whatever than a million other people, but it’s still evidence. So you dismissed it, but it is in fact evidence that there were white supremests just as your post is evidence you are a serial killer. It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer. Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
        Retric 8mo ago
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion. A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color). https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-reduces-racial-bias-traffic-stops https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu... Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
      - tt24 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 8mo ago
        > This study seems unconvincing. We see that black drivers are pulled over more during the day - why does that necessarily mean that it’s due to their race? Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't. (The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.) It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
        tt24 8mo ago
        Neither your comment nor the article answers my question. There’s no evidence here that the discrepancy is due to race.
        ceejayoz 8mo ago
        Sure. The cops just mysteriously act differently across tens of thousands of stops across the country when the sun goes down and they can't see the car's occupants, in a way verfiably tied to the sun and not the clock time. I do appreciate the proof you're not discussing in good faith.
  - parineum 8mo ago
    You understand that white supremacist groups existing as cops doesn't make the majority of cops white supremacists, right? I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      > I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal. Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
      - parineum 8mo ago
        Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.
        pear01 8mo ago
        People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful. Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis. If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable. Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
- allan_s 8mo ago
  We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
- mothballed 8mo ago
  Won't someone think of those who falsely accuse someone of kidnapping when they get a similarly ridiculous accusation against them? This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
- alpha_squared 8mo ago
  The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5]. [0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-police-originate-from-slave-patrols https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol... [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ [2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/ [5] https://genius.com/123154 https://genius.com/123154
  - tt24 8mo ago
    > The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves I don't see how this supports the claim
    - alpha_squared 8mo ago
      You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
      - tt24 8mo ago
        No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.
        defrost 8mo ago
        Not the claim made. > Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not. Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
- ethagnawl 8mo ago
  Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
  - Spivak 8mo ago
    This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well. 0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life. 1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular. 2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with. 3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection. 4. Boom racism. I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo ago
  You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the claim here is "majority of cops are white supremacists". Thats not the claim. The claim is that it is sensible to assume a cop is. A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case. Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.
terminalshort 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  > I claim that Afroman is a criminal. At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion. If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
  - terminalshort 8mo ago
    Of course it's not defamation. But that's not what you said. You said "seems fair"
- TheCoelacanth 8mo ago
  The bar for defamation is much higher for public officials like police than it is for private citizens. Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
  - terminalshort 8mo ago
    No it's not and neither is Afroman's statement. But the comment I was replying to said it was a fair statement, not merely that it is not defamatory.
EvgeniyZh 8mo ago
Statistically speaking "murderer is black" is a sensible assumption in US [1], but I'd prefer it wouldn't be made [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  The chance of a random black person being a murderer is substantially lower than the chance of a random cop being racist.
loeg 8mo ago
> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. Also, you know, protected opinion.

tt24 8mo ago

> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” > Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. Interesting, is there a source or some data you’re aware of that suggests that it’s a statistically safe assumption?

ceejayoz 8mo ago
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
- tt24 8mo ago
  Where in this article does it suggest that it’s a statistically safe assumption that most cops are white supremacists?
  - kstrauser 8mo ago
    Behold, the sea lion in its native habitat.
    - tt24 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Retric 8mo ago
        No, you ignored evidence presented while failing to provide any of your own. Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.
        tt24 8mo ago
        Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim. I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
        Retric 8mo ago
        Court cases look at things like when someone arrives in a city as evidence, that alone doesn’t make someone more likely to have done whatever than a million other people, but it’s still evidence. So you dismissed it, but it is in fact evidence that there were white supremests just as your post is evidence you are a serial killer. It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer. Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
        Retric 8mo ago
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    It's one data point in a pretty large body of evidence; the FBI thinks they're infiltrating law enforcement in a widespread fashion. A fascinating study from Stanford looked at police traffic stops nationally around the daylight savings switch (as a natural experimental control) and found pretty hard evidence cops treat black drivers very differently during the day (i.e. when they can see their skin color). https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-reduces-racial-bias-traffic-stops https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu... Additional aspect of this: "you're a white supremacist" is almost certainly a First Amendment protected statement of opinion that can't be defamatory.
    - tt24 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - ceejayoz 8mo ago
        > This study seems unconvincing. We see that black drivers are pulled over more during the day - why does that necessarily mean that it’s due to their race? Because on the day time shifted an hour artificially due to daylight savings, the racial discrepancy moved by an hour, even though the sun physically didn't. (The alternative explanation is that black people all decide collectively to drive worse/better when daylight savings changes twice a year. Which seems... unlikely.) It's an extremely clever approach. I'd encourage you to at least skim the article rather than asking questions it readily answers.
        tt24 8mo ago
        Neither your comment nor the article answers my question. There’s no evidence here that the discrepancy is due to race.
        ceejayoz 8mo ago
        Sure. The cops just mysteriously act differently across tens of thousands of stops across the country when the sun goes down and they can't see the car's occupants, in a way verfiably tied to the sun and not the clock time. I do appreciate the proof you're not discussing in good faith.
- parineum 8mo ago
  You understand that white supremacist groups existing as cops doesn't make the majority of cops white supremacists, right? I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal.
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    > I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal. Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.
    - parineum 8mo ago
      Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.
      - pear01 8mo ago
        People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful. Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis. If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable. Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
allan_s 8mo ago
We can't on one side ask for people to not make judgment based on statistics and on the other side saying that making a shortcut based statistics is valid.
mothballed 8mo ago
Won't someone think of those who falsely accuse someone of kidnapping when they get a similarly ridiculous accusation against them? This is part of why we have juries. The letter of the law must be nullified sometimes in the interest of justice.
alpha_squared 8mo ago
The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves [0]. It's well-documented [1]. We can try to argue whether modern policing carries that tradition, but case [2] after documented case [3] keeps bearing out more of the same. It's been the topic of research [4] and pop culture [5]. [0] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-police-originate-from-slave-patrols https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol... [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ [2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-King [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7331505/ [5] https://genius.com/123154 https://genius.com/123154
- tt24 8mo ago
  > The American police force originally started as a formalized slave patrol to capture runaway slaves I don't see how this supports the claim
  - alpha_squared 8mo ago
    You don't see how an organization founded to enforce a cornerstone of white supremacy may have a statistical likelihood of its members being white supremacists?
    - tt24 8mo ago
      No, I don't think that this supports the claim that it's a safe assumption that any given cop is a white supremacist.
      - defrost 8mo ago
        Not the claim made. > Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. was the claim, ie. quite likely, tending toward more often than not. Versus your phrasing that any given cop is
ethagnawl 8mo ago
Do you personally know any police officers? I do and, as a group, I've found them to be more racist than the general population. I don't know what the working definition of "white supremacists" is in this context but it doesn't make me blink.
- Spivak 8mo ago
  This phenomenon happens with more than just police too—I've seen it happen with medical professionals, firefighters and EMTs as well. 0. Be a white person who has little to no interaction with non-white people in your day to day life. 1. Get a job where you interact with some of the dumbest people in the general public on the regular. 2. Some of those dumb people will invariably be, say, black. And you'll interact with way more black folks than the none you're use to interacting with. 3. Because you have no other association with that group your brain pattern matches and draws the connection. 4. Boom racism. I find it hard to judge these people too hard because I haven't been "tested" in the same way. Like I want to believe I wouldn't fall down this pipeline but everyone says that.
ahhhhnoooo 8mo ago
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the claim here is "majority of cops are white supremacists". Thats not the claim. The claim is that it is sensible to assume a cop is. A very different bar. A minority of cops can be white supremacists and because of the power they wield it's still sensible to treat them like every interaction is with a a white supremacist. As an example, a cop can legally kill you in many cases (or deny you freedom or seize your assets). If you had, say, a 20% chance of encountering a cop who was a white supremacist it would be sensible to treat every interaction as if that were the case. Consider how unevenly weighted the outcomes depending on whether you assume a cop is racist when factoring how sensible it is to assume they are.

terminalshort 8mo ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz 8mo ago
> I claim that Afroman is a criminal. At 1:44 his own video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y) says "well, I know why narcotics" regarding the warrant. So I think he'd be OK with that statement of opinion. If that was defamation, warrants like the one in this case are defamatory, having asserted he kidnapped someone.
- terminalshort 8mo ago
  Of course it's not defamation. But that's not what you said. You said "seems fair"
TheCoelacanth 8mo ago
The bar for defamation is much higher for public officials like police than it is for private citizens. Also, while that is a very stupid and racist statement, I don't believe it is defamatory. If you falsely claimed specific crimes, then it might be.
- terminalshort 8mo ago
  No it's not and neither is Afroman's statement. But the comment I was replying to said it was a fair statement, not merely that it is not defamatory.

EvgeniyZh 8mo ago

Statistically speaking "murderer is black" is a sensible assumption in US [1], but I'd prefer it wouldn't be made [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

ceejayoz 8mo ago
The chance of a random black person being a murderer is substantially lower than the chance of a random cop being racist.

loeg 8mo ago

> Statistically that's a pretty sensible assumption. Also, you know, protected opinion.