Only a tiny, miniscule percentage of police are criminals. They are by far amazing people who protect us.
The protesters are largely the violent ones, burning cars and destroying property, empowered by paid professionals and criminals like ANTIFA (which coincidentally are fascists themselves).
Let a court and jury judge based on a complete set of evidence, rather than the edited video clips being collected. From what I've seen, the entire videos of what these protesters do oaint a different picture.
And why is news like this even allowed on HN? Its what gets fights and trolling started.
Can you back that up with any evidence?
> Let a court and jury judge based on a complete set of evidence, rather than the edited video clips being collected.
That's what the current system is doing, and many people feel the results aren't right, as they see many officers abuse their power without consequence. Hence all this talk about the thin blue line, qualified immunity, adminstrative leave being perceived as a paid holiday etc.
Largely, I think there are 2 ways of thinking about systems and they're both valid.
a. You determine which rules make sense from a first principles basis and you build a system. Whatever result comes out of the system, that is the correct result, because _the system is correct_.
b. You determine which results you want to have and build a system aiming for those results. If the outcomes you're seeing don't fit with the results you want, then the system is wrong and needs changing.
Grossly simplifying, it seems to me that the right largely thinks along the lines of a. and the left thinks along the lines of b.
* The right argues for equality (same system for everyone), the left argues for equity (same outcome for everyone).
* The right argues that the police is fine because there is a system in place that deals with abusive cops. The left argues the police isn't fine because the outcomes are unfair/disproportionate. Then the right retorts that the outcomes are disproportionate because the inputs are disproportionate (e.g. unequal crime rates across racial groups). Then the left says these inputs are themselves a result of the previous unfair system. Then someone starts name calling and the reddit thread gets locked down.
And, I mean, intellectually, both view points are kinda valid.
(As a side note, hardcore free market liberalists _really_ believe in a. As in, let the market be free and, whatever the outcome is, that's the _morally right_ outcome because the free market is infallible/the best way of allocating resources. I personally think that's wrong, not becuase a. is wrong, but because the free market needs certain particular conditions to function properly e.g. no monopolies, perfect information etc, and often those conditions are not met in the real world.)
A corrollary of these views is that a. wants the system to stay unchanged and b. wants the system to change. If you're happy with the current system, you tend to subscribe to a. because of course you want things not to change. If you feel you're not getting a good deal, you're more likely to side with b. because you want the system to change. Interestingly, you also get crossover:
* in the US, priviledged upper class whites (people benefiting from the system) siding with option b. (loosely liberals). These are called "beta cucks" by e.g. users of thedonald, the implication being that they're subjugating themselves to the lesser, underpriviledged groups.
* also in the US, blacks who are part of the system (e.g. black LEOs, black republicans). Most common insults I've seen there are "bootlickers" and maybe "uncle Tom" (there was a recent video from the protests with a white protester calling a black LEO an "uncle Tom" which angered a bunch of people).
And the justice system has also been very visibly complicit with police brutality, almost universally excusing the actions of murderers when those murderers were policemen and women 'doing their duty'. In basically all of the high profile police murders that have rocked the nation, the murderers got away with it so far. So trust in the system is justifiably at an all time low.
Yes, most of the rest just stand by while the criminal commit crime, support unions that attack the groups calling for accountability for those crimes, and resign in solidarity when their colleagues are charged for their crimes.
The ones that are neither criminal nor complicit are rare.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#Deaths
Mind you this is not a pepper spray or flashangs which are relatively harmless.
1. 3 Shop owner killed alleged looter / passerby
2. 4 Killed by police
3. 8 Killed by protesters/rioters/looters
4. 5 Other deaths
And that is assuming all of the looters are part of the protests, when in fact at least 2-3 of the deaths in category 3 could also be black protesters targeted by radicals, or simply robberies happening around the actual protests.
In the meantime, there are 25 separate police violence incidents on the same wiki page, with another 50 against journalists collected by a journalist. The same page reports 7 incidents of violence against the police and 4 against non-police.
So I believe my point stands. Not to mention that the police should always be held at a higher standard of conduct and respect for the law than random people.