Anonymizing photos of the violent ones is therefore likely to support their actions by making accountability less likely. To scrub ethically, limit it to the non-violent protestors. To support non-violence, better to help identify the violent people -- police or civilian -- the opposite of anonymizing them.
In a situation where police feel justified to kill extra-judicially over a possibly fake 20 dollar bill, what hope do we have that protesters won't be targeted in unfair ways? Or worse, that organizers won't be hunted down like animals and murdered like in Furguson? It would be unethical to not do everything in your power to protect those in this position.
secondly how do you plan to identify violent vs non-violent protesters from a static image? How would you find their identity afterwards? There is overwhelming evidence to suggest these methods are at best ineffective and at worst racist, and in either case will lead to innocent people being charged.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109887-police-mass-fac...
Edit: For those downvoting, is there a problem with considering this possibility? I think it's incredibly unlikely, but ignoring black swans can one day come back to bite you. Ideally, everyone should be aware of the theories out there, however ludicrous, on the off chance that they are correct and require critical and swift action.
From my time in Portland, working at the courthouse as a court clerk during the Occupy movement, when hundreds of transient “protesters” camped out in the park, it is not surprising that some of those folks would OD or end up dead for reasons entirely not related to protesting but instead related to their unfortunate life circumstances. I do not know if the same is true of Ferguson, but the article does not seem to provide any evidence of calculated retaliation against protesters.
that's exactly what the murderers want to achieve
It is better that ten innocent persons suffer than that one guilty escape.
-- Bizzaro William BlackstoneThe thing is people are already being held accountable for their skin tone, and the likelihood of changing your behavior when you have lived your entire life in an environment of constant oppression for fear of being identified in a protest is marginal, specially during catharsis, otherwise you wouldn't see for instance people burning police cars in front of a camera.
Keep in mind also that many (most?) of these "violent protestors" are simply reacting against violent cops in a power trip. I can't say I wouldn't react violently against a cop intentionally running over me and others with its SUV, but I can say that I would be thankful if my face was anonymized no matter how I reacted.
That contains as much conspiracy as "somebody is hunting down the protestors".
There are simpler possible explanations, I believe, e.g. people who join (or organize) riots are usually not the stable boring kind that live long, predictable lives full of planning and quiet afternoons. Drugs, crime, violence and mental health issues are probably more prevalent in that group than in the general population.
Is this more or less than the number of attendees we would expect to die based on Ferguson homicide rates and approximations of the number of attendees? I couldn't find that in the article.
Also, what's the theory that this isn't a coincidence? The police are murdering random protestors for some reason?
Sometimes the "other side of the story" (as White Supremacists would say) does NOT need to be heard. Not now.
https://www.theroot.com/ferguson-activists-are-dying-and-it-...
"Crawford was found shot to death Thursday night in his car, just like activist Darren Seals in 2016 and protester DeAndre Joshua the night of the Ferguson verdict in 2014. The latter two had gunshot wounds to the head and their cars were lit on fire. Crawford, it is believed by police, shot himself in the back seat of his car either in an attempted suicide or by accident."
Still, I would hope that as police are investigated they are held to a high standard of behavior. They do after all have a near monopoly on the lawful use of violence.
Who is getting away with what? They are under arrest right now. Or do you want them dragged through the streets?
One of the four officers is charged.
With a lesser charge than some are calling for (third-degree instead of first-degree murder).
I don't think the other three officers are under arrest right now. Some people regard them as involved and getting off too lightly so far.
What percentage of young people will die in a given year?
What percentage of those will happen to be community organizers?
What percentage of those will die by being shot in the head in a car that was then set on fire to annihilate forensic evidence?
Doesn't take too many steps out to get into the realm of zero percent probability that this is random chance
I live in Portland, Oregon now. Without going into too many details, we have an expensive pension program. Many feel that the pension program is too generous, and there has been a lot of thought put into how we can fully fund both pensions and everything else. Last year there was a bill in the Oregon Senate (SB1049) that proposed some modest changes to how pensions work. It passed with bipartisan support, and the public unions went nuts. They said they'd never support a candidate who voted for SB1049.
Last month we had our primaries. The most important primary was the Democratic primary for the Oregon Secretary of State. If the governor were to step down for any reason (to take a cabinet position in the Biden administration, for example), the SOS becomes governor. Someone who opposed SB1049 joined the race at the last minute, got over half a million dollars of union money, outspent her candidate, and won the election.
This is just one of many examples. Even though the unions are only spending a couple of million dollars per year in Oregon, they're really smart about it, and as such, they get what they want. In the Secretary of State race they hit a home run. For half a million dollars, they pushed their preferred candidate through and sent a message that if you oppose them in any way, it will be a career limiting move.
The reason I mentioned that is because I think it is a good contrast to what we're seeing today. With smart leadership, we would have a better chance of solving this problem. But people are enraged and not thinking clearly. And there's no reason to believe that these riots are going to be more successful than the Baltimore riots, the Ferguson riots, the Oakland riots, or even the Rodney King riots.
I'd caution against implying that this is a choice at all. It's not as if 15 times as many are 'choosing' to murder because of the colour of their skin.
That's why I'm glad this fact was omitted - it's not hard to imagine how it might be misinterpreted or exploited.
If he was charged with first degree murder, he would walk if the high bar was not met.
For the record I agree with you, I'm just saying strategically it is a smarter move to ensure he is convicted for his crimes
"""
— MarShawn McCarrel of Columbus, Ohio, shot himself in February 2016 outside the front door of the Ohio Statehouse, police said. He had been active in Ferguson.
— Edward Crawford Jr., 27, fatally shot himself in May 2017 after telling acquaintances he had been distraught over personal issues, police said. A photo of Crawford firing a tear gas canister back at police during a Ferguson protest was part of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage.
— In October, 24-year-old Danye Jones was found hanging from a tree in the yard of his north St. Louis County home. His mother, Melissa McKinnies, was active in Ferguson and posted on Facebook after her son’s death, “They lynched my baby.” But the death was ruled a suicide.
— Bassem Masri, a 31-year-old Palestinian American who frequently livestreamed video of Ferguson demonstrations, was found unresponsive on a bus in November and couldn’t be revived. Toxicology results released in February showed he died of an overdose of fentanyl.
"""
One was "active", one sent tear gas back at police, one livestreamed parts of the protest, and one's mother was in the protest.
The first two people, who were shot in their cars, I didn't see the extent of their involvement.
How many were involved at this level or higher? Tens of thousands? How many should we expect to die of murder, suicide, and drug overdose, and how many have?
What is the theory explaining this? Do you think there is a group murdering Ferguson protestors after the fact?
Only responding to this part. I've seen enough people get dox'd on the internet from static photos that I continue to be impressed each time by the skill of volunteer/angry people on <internet forum>
I even saw a video where one of them killed a guy while three others watched.
So what if a jury finds them innocent, which is highly likely? What do you mean "1992 will look like a joke"?
Actually, a lot more whites are killed by cops than blacks. And before you say that's because there are more white people than black people, blacks represent only 13% of the population but commit 52% of the crime. So, you are less likely to get killed committing a crime as a black person than as a white person.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de... https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-amer...
You've made a number of unfounded leaps on top of that: That "Black people commit 52% of crime." This is wrong in several ways. You're assuming that conviction rates accurately represent rates of crimes, and also that "all crime" has the same statistics as homicide. But instead, we see that black people are convicted of only 27% of overall crime. That's including the fact that certain categories are known to be racially disparate in conviction and sentencing - e.g. white & black people use marijuana at approximately equal rates, yet black people are nearly 4 times as likely to be arrested for it. That the people killed by cops were all committing a crime at the time. I don't have statistics on hand for this, but a well-known counterexample is Tamir Rice.
Yes, deliberately preventing anyone from providing care or defense for a person who's being murdered makes you an accomplice to the murder.
>If your city charged these cops justly then nobody would be burning it down
Doubtful. Here's a video of East 4th street in downtown Cleveland being destroyed by pillagers last night: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-met...
There's over a thousand service industry workers who've already been out of work for months due to the pandemic that the businesses on this street support. Many of them have struggled to get enough financing to even reopen, some have had to permanently close. Many (possibly most) of these businesses are destroyed and can not afford to rebuild. Who should the city of Cleveland have charged justly to prevent this? How many more innocent and unrelated people's livelihoods need to be burned down and how many more times (this has happened before, more than once)? There seem to be a lot of accomplices in the video.
Yes, that's right. See the connection between crime and cops killing civilians?
> But instead, we see that black people are convicted of only 27% of overall crime.
Where do you see this? I can't find this anywhere.
> That's including the fact that certain categories are known to be racially disparate in conviction and sentencing - e.g. white & black people use marijuana at approximately equal rates, yet black people are nearly 4 times as likely to be arrested for it.
That by itself doesn't show anything. It depends on how and where marijuana was used. Smoking a blunt and driving around the neighborhood with the top down is going to picked up a lot more than someone sitting in their home smoking. You need to show situations that are the same which have more blacks being arrested than whites.
> That the people killed by cops were all committing a crime at the time. I don't have statistics on hand for this, but a well-known counterexample is Tamir Rice.
Yea, I'm sure you don't... that subset has to be so minor it has to be insignificant. Oh, an anecdotal incident where a 12 year old boy carried a replica of a pistol and aimed it at an cop, who didn't know it wasn't real. I don't see how your example justifies this as a big problem.
If they don't get convicted, will you be terrorizing only the jury, or do you plan on victimizing other innocent people too?
I sure hope you don't, but if you do get your wish please remember to have everyone print and sign their names on the petition/ransom note/demand letter. When choosing targets for arson just be aware it will take longer to comply if you burn down the courthouse(s).
Are we in agreement that this was documented as happening, and the other cops present were accomplices in the murder of George Floyd? If so, why do you think they aren't being charged?
>Who should the city of Cleveland have charged justly to prevent this?
I assumed GP meant Minneapolis, which I feel is reasonable given the context. But okay, random US city accepted. Let's see if your city has a history of letting cops get away with killing innocent black people... oh yeah, one of your cops killed a 12 year old kid who was playing airsoft in the park and was subsequently hired by another police department in the same state without facing any charges.[0] So maybe charging Tim Loehmann would have helped make your city less sensitive to this pattern being repeated elsewhere in the country.
I don't think violence against businesses is helpful, but I do think violence against the government is helpful; it seemed to get a cop charged. They need to stop this pattern of violence ASAP, and they need to face time for crimes committed.
I assume the GP means the civil unrest that will happen if there is an acquittal would be much worse than the LA riots.
You mention the pandemic. Somehow, our Congress has passed (in nearly unanimous fashion) five giant "bailout" laws supposedly in response to the health crisis, which have given trillions of dollars to powerful interests and pennies to normal citizens and none of the blessed laws have done a single blessed thing to provide health care to control the blessed pandemic! Meanwhile, comparable (though mostly poorer) nations have provided state-supported healthcare to all citizens, for decades. Are we sure the protests are only about racist cops? Besides, when they burn down the Nike store they aren't destroying too many American jobs.
On a somewhat related note, I wonder if the thousands of people being recorded committing various crimes in the US right now realize that their faces are almost certainly being compiled in various government and private databases, to be matched via facial recognition for the rest of their lives. Yeah, not necessarily a good thing, but am I wrong?
I believe you're having problems thinking clearly. Here, in a public forum, you threaten
"A billion dollars of property damage and the targeted destruction of businesses operated by Korean immigrants..."
which is little more than a megalomanic wish. Shouldn't you be taking some medication or, at the least, seeing a psychologist instead of wasting our time here?
I think there could be a pretty compelling 1st degree case there, since the officer had Floyd's neck under his knee for so long. He could have stopped the assault at any point.
Isn't this way below the HN discourse bar?
I think murder requires some threshold of intent deliberation and I'm not very familiar with the details in this incident just yet... but on it's face it's doubtful the officer intended to kill George Floyd and choose a slow, public asphyxiation concealed by the unreasonable/illegal restraint while having him legally detained as a forgery suspect. That, of course, doesn't absolve him of being directly responsibility for this man's death. They are not being charged (yet) because: it's only been a few days, only a very small percentage of crime commission results in charges, having charges at this point in time would have required the suspects to issue charges against themselves/each other and if one of them had that much integrity, George would probably not be dead in the first place, convicting the officer of murder may be difficult, so accessory or accomplice charges will require careful deliberation, information still being gathered, among other reasons.
FWIW, the people filming and/or spectating as George Floyd was killed bare some moral/ethical responsibly for their lack of (or cowardly?) effort to physically interject, although I'm aware many will not agree with me here.
Concerning Tamir Rice, a person called in to report 'a man in a dark hoodie at the park playground, waiving a handgun around pointing it at kids, they think it might just be a realistic looking toy gun' or similar to 911. The dispatcher called a unit to respond but did not include 'think it may be a toy gun' portion of the callers request for a police response. The officer spotted Tamir, standing alone, from 100 yards or more across the open field in the park. The one driving speeded across the field toward Tamir and pulled up close with officer Tim Loehmann in the passenger side, putting him directly in front of Tamir. Allegedly Tamir brandished/pointed/pulled out the gun and officer Loehmann fired in response and fatality wounded/killed the young boy. It was tragic and there were dangerous mistakes made by multiple people but charging the officer who gunned Tamir down with murder would have almost surely resulted in acquittal. Mr. Loehmann then fraudulently concealed his background and got hired as a rookie officer in a small town across the state, then was subsequently fired upon discovery of his past.
The amount of violence, fear, division and destruction I have witnessed in the name of 'Justice for Tamir Rice' is also tragic. Protesters blocking roadways, terrorizing restaurant patrons and vandalizing or destroying uninvolved businesses every time someone else with a similar color skin dies unjustly does not help prevent the CPD from shooting innocence black children.
It seems that 'rules of engagement' between police and civilians have been eroded over time while executive authority has been expanded. This current state of anarchy can be greatly improved with discussion, consensus, enforcement, and public awareness of these rules. Until then some police will continue to act like mobsters and most will accept, take advantage of or enable some level of legal privilege because of their position. Body cams show us that unequal, crony, illegal, racist, and biased enforcement is widespread. Police in America conduct silent home invasions for non violent drug charges, shoot innocent people and pets without consequence (sometimes at a mistaken address), routinely profile otherwise cooperative non violent people as a threat in order to unlawfully discriminate. They point guns at these threatening people with impunity and treat them as hostile while being so threatened by guns that they can justify driving up to a 12 year old in a park with a fake plastic gun and open firing, no words exchanged. This is an area where legal reform and awareness severely needed.
Burning down Wendy's may have influenced a reactionary, politically motivated, premature legal filing. It will probably compound the hardship of those peoples and family's whose jobs and paychecks were destroyed. It will surely hurt a struggling economy and further stress the community by destroying a busy, low-cost prepared food resource and it will deprive the Dave Thomas Foundation of all future donations during a time of intense need.
I should add: In all of the streams and pictures I've seen, all (most?) the looters or violent people were wearing masks, ensuring their anonymity. If anybody's being protected by measures like this, it's your average peaceful protestor.
I don't think the man who killed Tamir Rice understood that he was shooting somebody holding an airsoft gun, but if the killer wasn't a cop then I seriously doubt that they would have decided his actions in that situation were reasonable as self defence -- they probably wouldn't clear me of all wrongdoing if I claimed that a 12 year old kid pointed an airsoft gun at me before I killed him. There's a double standard. Despite the victim being a 12 year old, I can see how this is less egregious than what I consider to be the clearly intentional killing of a known-to-be-helpless George Floyd -- I brought it up as an incident in your specific community where this pattern of violence bubbled up so dramatically that it received nation wide news coverage. I think you misunderstood some facts around the hiring and firing of the cop. He lied on paperwork at the original (Cleveland) police department, which is the technical reason he was fired -- it came up during a review of him following the shooting. The other (Bellaire) police department knew what they were buying. A quote from the link in my last reply:
>“He was cleared of any and all wrongdoing,” the Bellaire police chief, Richard Flanagan, told The Times Leader of Martins Ferry, Ohio, adding that it was unfair to “crucify” the officer. “It’s over and done with.”
I could see there being a causal link between how your city handled this incident (as well as others like it) and how much violence you're seeing now, a few years later, when everybody is focused on this other prominent example of the pattern.
Odd, my dogs are barking
Maybe check real sites instead of your usual racist ones? Google is a good start. Here's the first link! https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-...