https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/obama-administration-...
But...
I feel the complete opposite of “hopeful” when I see these riots, when I see people so angry they will destroy their own cities.
Because it accomplishes the exact opposite of they hope it will accomplish:
1. Those who side with heavy-handed police tactics feel vindicated for their prejudices.
2. The communities of those who feel unheard and left out are torn down even further.
3. Every civilian-police officer interaction post-riot will be even more contentious, thus making violence more likely.
Don’t get me wrong I believe there are corrupt officials and police officers. Obama is right about how to fix that on the local level.
About the actual problem being protested: One of the themes of the protests is to say the names[1] of those have been killed at the hands of the police. Just using common sense tells me that if you can name off the victims it means the problem isn’t widespread or systemic across the country.
Try naming the victims of rape or suicide or even murder.
Name the police officers killed in the line of duty in the last ten years. You can’t there’s way too many.
George Floyd should not have died. And the police officer(s) who contributed to his death should be held 100% accountable for their actions.
But there will always be unnecessary deaths in law enforcement situations. Rioting and burning down your own city will not make that fact go away.
So, I feel a loss of hope when I see these riots. To me, it means we are so far from working together to fix the problems that can be fixed. It creates a bigger divide in our society.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865261916/a-decade-of-watchin...
Do any of the people who got gassed in this video look like they are committing violence or destruction? The cop who tossed the gas grenade is certainly committing violence, but that's about all I can see.
> I'm not a tough person, I'm not an aggressive person, I'm not a violent person. I was just standing there quietly alongside other peaceful protestors. I wanted desperately for the police to prove us wrong and show compassion and a desire to serve and protect the people. I was speaking gently to the officer who shoved me back before this...trying to look him in the face through his gas mask...telling him my name, about my wife and my family. I don't know why really.
> Then this gas was dropped and it went to hell. I was already blind within seconds. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see. When I opened my eyes the smoke was too thick anyway to see a way out. I shouted that I couldn't breathe several times. The police just told me to move. I yelled, "Where?" with my last breath, but no help. I stumbled through the gas. The whole time in a complete panic. I could not breathe, and my involuntary response when the gas hit was to push all the air out of my lungs. I felt like I would collapse within seconds, and nearly did.
> Somehow I got out, after going a couple blocks through the smoke. I was nauseous, I had vomit in my mouth. Snot poured from my face. I still couldn't breathe. Every instinct told me not to breathe, but I figured I needed to get the gas out of my lungs, and I forced some breath.
> I stumbled away for the next 30 minutes, trying to get home. Some kind people gave me milk to pour in my eyes and face to help with the burns. Someone sprayed me with baking soda and water. As I was leaving, I saw more and more people coming down silently to join the protests.
> It's the next day, about 20 hours later. I still feel the tear gas in my lungs. It still burns.
> Not being able to breathe is the most terrifying experience of my life. A little fucking ironic, isn't it, to have the police forcing tens to hundreds of protestors to not be able to breathe at this protest?
It is going to be an us versus them, because not a single cop broke line, to do anything about the one who threw the grenade. They are making this an us versus them, because they stand as a united block, protecting their own, regardless the circumstances.
The job of a peace officer is to de-escalate the situation. Not a single one of them in the video is de-escalating the situation. One of them is committing assault, and the rest are standing there, watching.
'But my job in the end is to prove he violated a criminal statute - but there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge.'[0]
This quotation is from a tabloid, but the quote--and the DA's failure to say unequivocally that he would prosecute Floyd's killer, Chauvin--contributed to the riots.
And then Chauvin was arrested the day after riots started.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8367221/Prosecutors...
"The SBA [Sergeant's Benevolent Association], run by union boss Ed Mullins, the mayor’s fiercest critic, included a photo of a computer screen which appeared to be his 25-year-old daughter’s arrest report. The report included her date of birth, New York state ID number, and various biographical details, such as height, weight, and citizenship status. It also included an apartment number and home address, which appeared to be Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence (though the zip code did not match.)
"Twitter’s policies expressly forbid users from posting personal information, including identity documents, including government-issued IDs. Posting home addresses “or other identifying information related to locations that are considered private” is also forbidden.
"The SBA’s tweet remained up for more than an hour before eventually being taken down after a several users (including this reporter) flagged the tweet for abuse. The account was temporarily locked until the tweet was voluntarily deleted."
https://gizmodo.com/nypd-union-doxes-mayors-daughter-on-twit...
I wonder if a similar model, with different details, could work in the US? In the limit, that could involve police cars or foot patrols working in pairs, one unarmed and doing the actual policing, and another one following some way behind, but not getting involved unless a gun was spotted. Put body cameras on the unarmed unit, with the armed officers watching a live feed, so they don't even have to wait for a call.
That said, as the wikipedia article points out, the British model does not extend to the whole of the UK - police in Northern Ireland routinely carry guns, which in 2020 is rather depressing.
[1] https://www.eliteukforces.info/police/CO19/weapons/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_firearms_in_the...
Worth reading to familiarize oneself with leftist views on institution of Policing. Likely some eye-opening viewpoints for most.
The problem right now is that excessive use of force by an LEO rarely results in actual, hard time or fines for that officer. Consider the death of Eric Garner [1]. The city of New York paid 5.9 million to his family and the arresting officer was fired from the NYPD. Additionally, the Department of Justice declined to bring criminal charges against [the arresting officer] under federal civil rights laws.
If we reorganized our justice system to actually pursue officers who use excessive use of force, perhaps officers would be more careful about using it. But the current state of affairs has no penalties for the officers if they do use excessive use of force when it is not justified.
The period after Lincoln's death until Grant's election is nearly unbelievable. Johnson was an avowed racist and openly apologistic to southern gentry. The south and a sizable percent of the population was under armed guard and were essentially in military dictatorship under Grant. Grant was the obvious next pick for president and, wisely, was quiet about being the 'real' power in the US, physically right next to Johnson.
Then, as Johnson can't help himself but to be a bullheaded moron, he gets impeached by the radical left wing of the house: the 'newish' Republican party. His trial is wild, by the way. He gets impeached, and is then sent to the senate. Where the southern states, still under the war department, can't vote or sit; it's all Union states. Bribing was rampant in the senate, but not publicly known. Johnson misses conviction by one vote. The left-wing Republican senators that vote to acquit never serve in public office again.
Again, Grant is a dense read, but Chernow did a fantastic job on it. Big recommend
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm
See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that legislation can't solve the problem, it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can't change the heart through legislation."
To summarize it, he disagrees with you.
The goal of policing should be to make the community safe. If the goal of policing is to rack up violations, and you basically streamline it where a cop can go around and rack up tons of alleged infractions, then that’s what will happen. In fact, that’s exactly what happened when some police departments enforced quality of life infractions. Suddenly every cop had the mandate to write you up to meet their quotas, and they are able to internalize their value system organically since the word from above is zero-tolerance for even the smallest infractions.
I don’t want to live in that kind of society honestly. Take a look at this reddit thread if you want to see examples of this, and get anecdotes of how people get harassed by cops (regardless of race) for the smallest things (and this type of policing is a vector for physical escalation):
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gu8xlv/cops...
This one here is particular infuriating:
Your point #1 is a must, tech has to really step up and make this one happen.
[1]https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Impl...
Malcolm X conceived of things much more honestly than Barack Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiSiHRNQlQo
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-police-admit-they-went...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/quebec-police-defend-officers-actions...
So instead of condemning the few who 'incite violence', it might be useful to ponder if the game isn't rigged and external malicious actors could be acting as agent provocateurs.
Additionally, this thread lists actual legislation that has been proposed and, in some cases, passed in cities and states to address police violence: https://twitter.com/samswey/status/1266855519425384450
Here is a protestor in NY claiming that looters were actually undercover NYPD detectives https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/126693546402143027... Another example I can think of is the video of Jon Jones taking the spray cans from couple of rioters. These rioters are caucasian and we can only assume that they were more interested in wreaking damage than on "protesting" and hence can only be incidentally related to the movement. While strictly anecdotal, this simply disproves the false narrative on conservative circles which are inevitably going to focus on the rioting / looting rather than how to improve society.
https://twitter.com/ChrisPalmerNBA/status/126741517304573542...
https://thepostmillennial.com/journalist-supported-protester...
2. the strong majority of these 656 contracts have a similar disciplinary appeals process. Around 73% provide for appeal to an arbitrator or comparable procedure and nearly 70% provide that an arbitrator or comparable third party makes a final binding decision. About 54% of the contracts give officers or unions the power to select that arbitrator. About 70% of the jurisdictions give these arbitrators extensive review power, including the ability to revisit disciplinary matters with little or no deference to the decisions made by supervisors, civilian review boards or politically accountable officials. [2]
3. We look at the roll-out of collective bargaining rights for police officers at the state level from the 1950s to the 1980s. The introduction of access to collective bargaining drives a modest decline in policy employment and increase in compensation with no meaningful impacts on total crime, violent crime, property crime or officers killed in the line of duty. What does change? We find a substantial increase in police killings of civilians over the medium to long run (likely after unions are established) with an additional 0.026 to 0.029 civilians killed in a county each year of whom the overwhelming majority are non-white. [3]
4. Recent academic research further demonstrates that police disciplinary procedures established through union contracts obstruct accountability and (as I noted in this post) collective bargaining for police officers appears to increase police misconduct. This is not surprising. Through collective bargaining, police unions demand protections from disciplinary procedures that would not otherwise be approved, oppose consent decrees and other measures to increase police accountability, and (given the power of police unions in state and local politics) they receive relatively little pushback. [4]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...
[2] https://crim.jotwell.com/the-power-of-police-unions/
[3] https://twitter.com/robgillezeau/status/1266834185055956997
[4] https://reason.com/2020/05/30/police-unions-and-the-problem-...
I could provide more as well, that was just a real quick look up of my bookmarks
Edit: 1 more source for good measure
[5] https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
This Article empirically demonstrates that police departments’ internal disciplinary procedures, often established through the collective bargaining process, can serve as barriers to officer accountability. black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million
white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million
black deaths by police: 4.5 per 100k
white deaths by police: 1.5 per 100k
USA black population: 13%
USA white population: 75%
Again, If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-cup-foods-police...
It was all over a shop owner losing $20.
Fortunately, creative WFA solutions will allow individual freedoms to blossom again.
Time is still the most valuable Commodity in the 1st world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/nyregion/a-manhattan-dist...
It touches on two NYC schools that share a building (The Earth School & PS64) but have remarkably different racial and socioeconomic makeups. I found it fascinating after touring Earth School earlier this year.
Furthermore, this data is from reports not arrests. So selective enforcement is not a factor.
But as has already been pointed out, it's way more than 30%. The numbers given in the original comment hide the real impact of the bias, since "arrest" was implicitly being treated as a fair event (which it isn't; as just one example, blacks in particular are many times more likely to be subject to a traffic stop than whites, while they tend to have contraband on their possession less often [1][2][3][4]).
Moreover, this isn't just about deaths in police custody. This is about inhumane and repressive policing practices that perpetuate a longstanding effort to deprive blacks of meaningful political power [5]. It is both foolish and cruel to see an entire population struggling and assume it's because they are bad people.
[1] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/sites/default/files/Document/... [2] https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Fina... [3] https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/traffic-stop-data-... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traff... [5] See Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow
"President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
The FBI has been making some efforts on the issue, but it's quire recent: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announc...
According to Pew, gay marriage was supported by more people than opposed it in 2010, a full five years before legalization.
Not even leaders for the liberal party, like Obama and Hillary Clinton supported it until a few years later.
https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
> Name the police officers killed in the line of duty in the last ten years. You can’t there’s way too many.
First of all, the number of people killed by US police is an order of magnitude higher than the number of police officers killed in the line of duty. I have provided sources about this here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23373468
Of course, not every death caused by police is unjustifiable. But let's keep the whole picture in mind.
Second, I don't think any reasonable person is arguing that police officers nonchalantly murdering random black citizens is the systemic issue. What is systemic is police misconduct and brutality, as well as bias towards minorities especially black people. In extreme circumstances, this can result in loss of life; but most of the time, it won't.
You may have heard of Heinrich's law. If you have not, please take a look at the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_triangle
The gist of Heinrich's law is that for each accident causing serious serious injury or death, tens of accidents had occurred previously causing minor injury. For each accident causing minor injury, there had been tens of accidents causing no injury. For each accident causing no injury, there had been tens of unsafe acts. To give an example, a drunk driver killing someone had probably driven drunk hundreds of time before. He had scraped the paint on his car a couple of times, and the rest, he had driven without any accident of any sort.
For every death on that list, how many people have suffered life altering injuries and permanent disabilities at the hands of the police, e.g. blindness [1] or paralysis [2]? For every person suffering life altering injuries, how many have suffered serious yet healable injuries, e.g. broken ribs, ruptured spleen, etc.? For every person suffering serious yet healable injuries, how many have suffered minor injuries, e.g. broken nose, broken teeth, bruises, cuts, etc.? For every person suffering minor injuries, how many have been harassed, targeted, unjustifiably arrested or carded?
This is the systemic issue people are protesting against.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-p...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/assault-charges-d...
Politics is about compromise and deal making yes, but it should also be about looking at the problems that plague society and trying to find a solution that does the most good while incurring the least harm.
But when decisions are made that significantly affect the lives of a group of citizens is there any effort made to consult with them? Or do they just get to find out when their life get's turned upside down?
How much of the process is about what's convinient for who's currently in power or currying favour with them than trying to take apart problems that affect the citizenry and make a best effort at a solution?
Part of my thinking on this came from reading about and hearing how vTaiwan was used to try and decide how to legislate how Uber would be treated there.
Full disclosure, I've only read around the topic, I may get details or points wrong. I'm only mentioning it here because I've not spotted it being discussed and I think it's relevant.
An overview is here for you to look at [0], however please read around it yourself if you want more detail =)...
At a high level, they broke the process down into several stages: 1) Contact the stackholders and inform them a decision is being made and provide a place for engaged citizens to participate. This encompases fact finding as well as translating complex areas like legal information to be understandable to the general public. 2) Allow people to air concerns and highlight potential issues. Try and understand what groups exist and what they want, ensure that participants who will be significantly affected have a proportional voice. Treat this as a period of relflection so people can get a deep understanding of where things are. 3) Take subject matter experts as well as appropriate voices in industry and have them study what was produced in the prior stage, then have them put together a series of briefings and Q/A sessions designed to dispell common misconceptions brought up during the prior stage and put together a series of clear proposals that can be enacted outlining the pros and cons as such as feasible. This will help educate the public as well as give them a much clearer idea what the state of possible outcomes are. At this point the public are actively able to question and ask for more detailed information around the proposals on offer. 4) Take the proposals that were the outcomes of the prior stage and turn draft it into a law.
Note that I'm not saying tech is the solution here, just that we might want to think more broadly about what the problem is.
And now it's way past my bedtime, I'll respond to any replies after I get up =)...
- [0]: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/building-co...
I don't know about you, but if I had 18 complaints against me at work, I would probably have got in trouble by now, and I'm not talking about two "letters of reprimand".
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/us/derek-chauvin-what-we-...
https://www.amazon.com/Edmund-Morriss-Theodore-Roosevelt-Tri...
> Not if we're building a metaphor for representative democracy here.
This statement seems incorrect to me. I could provide many examples, but one should do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election
A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before that official's term has ended. Recalls, which are initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition, have a history dating back to the constitution in ancient Athenian democracy[1] and feature in several current constitutions. In indirect or representative democracy, people's representatives are elected and these representatives rule for a specific period of time. However, where the facility to recall exists, should any representative come to be perceived as not properly discharging their responsibilities, then they can be called back with the written request of specific number or proportion of voters.
If you think about it a bit, you may also realize (or at least consider the possibility) that the variety of democratic implementations that currently exist (and have existed over time) were man-made, as opposed to being an artifact of nature. We can do whatever we want, in this domain - we are literally the masters of our own destiny. Or, we could be at least, but there seems to be significant rhetorical resistance to these ideas, from the strangest sources.
> Well, it seems like nobody better is able and desires to endure the grueling, ridiculous, perverse eligibility and interview process the hiring committee demands.
It may seem that way, but is it actually that way?
Both the Republicans and Democrats fielded numerous candidates - are you suggesting that Trump and Biden are the very best candidates from within those two lots (which implies that the processes by which they were chosen are perfect)?
And the "hiring committee" itself - is this literally the only possible approach that could be taken? Not one single improvement could be made there, or at any other stage within the entire electoral system?
(I haven't visited the States since his presidency, but although I found much to dislike about the man, this is an argument I could get behind)