Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobboau on October 08, 2015, 02:19:43 pm
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/10/08/youtube-effect-has-left-police-officers-under-siege-law-enforcement-leaders-say/
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"There is no evidence of a broad retraction of police engagement with the public in major cities, and no participant in Wednesday’s summit presented a single example of lackluster policing that somehow contributed to a violent crime."
The babies, they are a'whining.
It'll keep happening as the spreading of information turns the tables on institutionalized abuse. I might start feeling teeny amounts of sympathy once the police stop locking people up for weed.
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It's almost as though they have a significant problem with being recorded doing their jobs; as if they don't feel they do them well.
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I posted the previous version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmUvgTNVFuE) of this, so here's the sequel:
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I noticed a typographical error in that piece.
"Chiefs of some of the nation’s biggest police departments say officers in American cities have pulled back and have stopped policing as aggressively as they used to" - Should read "Chiefs of some of the nation’s biggest police departments say officers have stopped shooting black people for no good reason"
Still, it's a pretty easy mistake to confuse those two terms.
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Imagine people being held accountable :shaking:
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I do sympathise with the feeling of being watched and "held accountable" by other people. However, the cops are the last people in the world who should be complaining about this.
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While I understand the privacy concerns that prop up in relation to the debate and similar ones (e.g. in Germany we have a large debatte during the last two decades (!) on how Police Officers have to identify themselves (in addition to the uniform), esspecially at protests and the like), but it always puzzels me how officers of law have this distinct fear of the law being applied to themselves at times.
Things might be worse in the US where there is no real standard for police training nationwide, and as such the quality of the training for law enforcement officers varies from point to point. But then again I am oftentimes gnerally puzzeled by the philosophy behind law enforcement in other countries.
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Imagine people being held accountable :shaking:
Considering I was being recorded for three years of my job history, frankly I'm pretty happy with being recorded.
But then, I was a bank teller. And I got robbed twice. (I think if you dig through the previous WHIYL threads somewhere I mentioned one of them.) In the pre-recording days there would have been a significant incentive to shoot me as the only real witness to the crime.
Frankly I don't see that come up much and it's puzzled me, especially because when the SDPD did their analysis of the issue it was an obvious benefit: the officers and suspects are no longer the only witnesses. Officers equipped with bodycams had a massive drop in use-of-force complaints from the public, precisely because the incident is recorded and he-said strategies don't work as well. Far more officers were cleared of use-of-force complaints based on bystander video than the reverse.
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it always puzzels me how officers of law have this distinct fear of the law being applied to themselves at times.
Probably been watching too much TV. So they probably see themselves as the good guys who are being hamstrung by evil pen pushers, rats who talk to internal affairs and nosey-parkers who feel the need to get in the way at every arrest. You know, the bad guys in every cop drama.
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The thin blue line is a very real thing.
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What the non-Americans here need to realize is the American culture of policing is very different from the rest of us. The hero complex is alive and well, there has been a lengthy cultural and legal presumption that police are always justified and tell the truth, that policing routinely needs to involve violence, and that the police are rarely held accountable even when there is considerable evidence they've done the wrong thing.
I've worked in LE for years. It is my belief that body cameras are unquestionably a good thing. While I understand some of the apprehension, I don't think police using caution to determine where and when physical intervention is required (as opposed to leaping in and shooting 12-year olds dead: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/10/us/tamir-rice-shooting-reports/) and thinking things through is a bad thing.
As it happens, I've even noticed a shift in our use of force refreshers, where there is considerable emphasis on thinking through situations and focusing on the "is this really something requiring my intervention right now." It's a good shift.
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Don't want this to derail the discussion, but police being almost by definition authoritarian assholes probably has something to do with American gun culture.
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Don't want this to derail the discussion, but police being almost by definition authoritarian assholes probably has something to do with American gun culture.
Personal experience says that the people who generally have a stellar opinion of police are generally the same people who want unlimited gun rights.
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Don't want this to derail the discussion, but police being almost by definition authoritarian assholes probably has something to do with American gun culture.
can you even cite a single instance where someone successfully defended themselves against police brutality with a gun
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Don't want this to derail the discussion, but police being almost by definition authoritarian assholes probably has something to do with American gun culture.
can you even cite a single instance where someone successfully defended themselves against police brutality with a gun
That doesn't make any sense. You probably misread what he said.
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and I failed.
I meant it more in a "cops are assholes I would rather just defend myself" sense.
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And here I was taking it as, "Many people who become cops were probably gun nuts in the first place." You could go in multiple directions there.
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well it is true that cops have to deal with the fact that literally every person they see could reasonably have multiple guns on them. so that might also have some effect on why cops are assholes. but I honestly think it's mainly down to the fact that they basically have defacto complete and unquestioned authority. If they are just driving down the street and want to shoot someone they basically can. and it's not just black people, anyone who probably doesn't have semi-rich relatives who are going to cause them problems they'll just rather shoot you than arrest you.
side-note/additional derail, this is why #blacklivesmatter pisses me off, I'd probably be out in the streets protesting too if they hadn't decided to make it a race exclusionary movement.
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side-note/additional derail, this is why #blacklivesmatter pisses me off, I'd probably be out in the streets protesting too if they hadn't decided to make it a race exclusionary movement.
Obligatory: (http://chainsawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20141204-patreon.png)
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If the goal of your movement is specifically to address police racism and increased brutality against black people only, then focusing on black people is correct. And there is nothing wrong with such movement, certainly anti-black racism among the police does exist.
But police brutality also affects other races. If your goal is to address police brutality in general, then making it about race is very much counterproductive and doesnt make sense.
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Obligatory
yeah, it really was. :(
and yeah, what he said.^
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ok, Josh, I do get the joke, I see the humor. But you do see why that's complete strawman of what I said, right?
or is that actually how you see the situation?
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ok, Josh, I do get the joke, I see the humor. But you do see why that's complete strawman of what I said, right?
or is that actually how you see the situation?
Not really. However, I do think that framing the black lives matter movement as race-exclusionary is in itself a strawman. The implication there would be that you're not allowed to complain when you're not black. But black lives matter does not focus on blacks because blacks, but because it's primarely black people that get slaughtered lately (12 year old kids and everything). So, the focus is currently on black people as that is where the most pressing concern is right now.
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maybe you should've said that first instead of a snarky comic that just invites hostility, then
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right so it is, as the hashtag would suggest, focusing on black people exclusively?
that's obvious, right? I mean, I'm basically restating a small part of what you just said, right?
what is the problem here? that innocent people are being mowed down by the government for no reason? or that it's not happening to white people more?
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what is the problem here? that innocent people are being mowed down by the government for no reason? or that it's not happening to white people more?
The former, and the inverse of the latter: That it is happening to black people more, which does suggest problems beyond police brutality.
maybe you should've said that first instead of a snarky comic that just invites hostility, then
I did not intend to invite hostility. Sorry!
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That's just a different wording of the same thing.
So, you've got two things here. First, police feel like they have the right to just murder anyone they like combined with an ability to get away with it. Second they seem to like murdering black people more than white. I just think that focusing on the second issue takes an issue that should be a grave concern to everyone and makes it needlessly divisive. It's like you're handicapping yourself. In fact if I were a conspiracy theorist I'd probably think it was aliens. oh, also that the aliens had somehow manipulated the situation like this so nothing actually gets solved for some nefarious purpose, because if I were trying to sabotage a movement that threatened to upset the authoritarian monopoly on power the police have, I'd probably try to distract everyone with something that would just end up splintering all resistance. I mean this is almost exactly what happened to Occupy Wallstreet, there was a good solid core issue, that got buried under all sorts of inane identity politics bull****, and the end result is no coalition was built, and nothing changed,
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That's just a different wording of the same thing.
So, you've got two things here. First, police feel like they have the right to just murder anyone they like combined with an ability to get away with it. Second they seem to like murdering black people more than white. I just think that focusing on the second issue takes an issue that should be a grave concern to everyone and makes it needlessly divisive. It's like you're handicapping yourself. In fact if I were a conspiracy theorist I'd probably think it was aliens. oh, also that the aliens had somehow manipulated the situation like this so nothing actually gets solved for some nefarious purpose, because if I were trying to sabotage a movement that threatened to upset the authoritarian monopoly on power the police have, I'd probably try to distract everyone with something that would just end up splintering all resistance. I mean this is almost exactly what happened to Occupy Wallstreet, there was a good solid core issue, that got buried under all sorts of inane identity politics bull****, and the end result is no coalition was built, and nothing changed,
I would disagree that they are a different wording for the same thing. "White people don't get shot enough" is really not a cause to rally around :P.
The police brutality seems to focus almost entirely around black people, indeed giving the impression that, say, the St. Loius police force genuinely feels that black lives do not matter. Putting the focus on the people who need help the most should not cause any division at all - the two issues are not mutually exclusive, and focusing on the racial issues that black people are the victims of the most will not lead to more people from other racial groups getting murdered, whilst disregarding the influence of racism means that an extremely significant problem of the police force (and, indeed, society in general, as this is a perfect example of institutionalized racism at play) will go unadressed. You can't make racism go away by pretending it does not exist.
And yet, somehow, simply saying that racism is a problem is considered a dividing issue :banghead:. This in itself is a big issue! It shouldn't be!
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The fact that victims of police brutality are disproportionately black is indeed a big issue. Racial profiling is not the only possible cause, but it may be the primary one.
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Don't want this to derail the discussion, but police being almost by definition authoritarian assholes probably has something to do with American gun culture.
I would attribute that more to the position being ripe for abuse by bullies. So, if that position allows bullies to assert themselves without fear of reprisal, they will seek to fill those positions. You get the same thing with asshats joining the military and later soiling the image of American forces everywhere. On the flip side, if things don't go so well for the bully and they end up being bullied themselves, they might seek to take out their frustrations in another manner (see: 'gun-free zone' shooting sprees).
It's just opportunistic assholes using what they see as an opportunity to do things their way. The American policing method might have worked / still work if you have responsible, self-sacrificing individuals who genuinely care about the communities they serve, but if you get a good-ol' boy circle jerk going on in the local PD, it can easily turn into the nightmare that makes the headlines now.
So while not every officer / PD is bad, the policies of giving every LEO as much leeway as possible with as little accountability as possible just doesn't cut it.
Bodycams and different engagement tactics might make the job harder for the honest officers who are just trying to do their job to the best of their ability, but they will understand the reasons why this must happen if they aren't brainwashed by the establishment who either doesn't want to bother with it or are actively abusing the system.
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Josh, it's not saying racism that is divisive, it's saying only that black lives matter that is divisive. It literally divides people into two groups, and it even labels those two groups 'lives that matter' and 'lives that do not matter'. It should be pointed out that included in that second group are (non-black) women, Latinos, Asians, every poor person who is not also black, literally every person who is not black. If 90% of police brutality cases are of black people, then it's appropriate to spend 90% of the energy perusing those cases, so it's not like I'm saying we should be looking for the one white guy to promote as much as the 9 black guys. I don't think it's appropriate to take police brutality and turn it into racism, because now my life doesn't matter, so why should I care? I guess you don't need my inconsequential support. Think of it as a marketing/message problem, this is not an inclusive way of doing things. What is your objective? Is this the best way of achieving this objective? Could anything about it have been done better? It's probably too late to possibly change any of this, but it's good to learn from your mistakes so you can do better the next time/if you get another chance even if you have to stick with something suboptimal in order to try and get as much good out of it as you can because you're basically locked in to it due to momentum. I just look at this whole situation and I weep for what could have been, the missed golden opportunity, this could have been a amazing unifying movement but then it got turned around into... this. why?
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It's incredibly disingenuous to assume and interpret that because 'Black lives matter' that all other lives do not. Come on, Bob.
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you don't think that's how it comes off? I'm not saying it was intentional.
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Assuming that indeed that's what the movement has turned into, it would be because the people at the top of the movement didn't steer it right. Or a lot of people at the bottom hijacked it. Or both.
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you don't think that's how it comes off?
No.
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you don't think that's how it comes off? I'm not saying it was intentional.
That's kinda nutty, Bob. The point of saying Black Lives Matter is that they are being undervalued in comparison to others, not that they should be the only ones with value.
I dunno, do you just assume whenever someone says that "x matters" they are automatically saying nothing else does? As a phrase it's usually deployed to indicate something is being undervalued.
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Ok, but if I were to say 'white lives matter', how would that sound to you? How the **** is it that 'all lives matter' is considered racist?
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Ok, but if I were to say 'white lives matter', how would that sound to you? How the **** is it that 'all lives matter' is considered racist?
The problem is that it's in response, Bob. It's condescending in the extreme when it's not being used to actively attack the other movement. "All lives matter" isn't racist inherently, it's when it's used as a counter-point response to "Black lives matter". There's a deeply implied "no, you're wrong" in there.
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Ok, but if I were to say 'white lives matter', how would that sound to you?
Stupid. Unless you're dealing with the Nuwabian Nation of Moors or something then there's nobody who would challenge the statement or the practical application that white lives are valued by society in general and governmental agencies with police powers in particular.
How the **** is it that 'all lives matter' is considered racist?
Because while literally true it has been employed in a racist fashion; it presupposes that the burden falls equally, and it is used to critique those who are aware it does not and want it to.
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you mean racists like Bernie Sanders? :wtf:
The only reason it's treated as racist is because it's been defined as racist, if someone who is racist uses it at this point it's probably because it's become a tribal signifier. It would have been the better brand to have started out with because it brings everyone together as opposed to singling some out.
but, whatever, you're stuck with it now so you got to try and get as much out of it as you can.
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I'm fine with focusing there, then focusing on the other problems once we get the 'treatment of black people by cops' problem under control. Really, the training and practices that will fix this problem will fix the other problems incidentally.
Also, Bob, the internet did this whole discussion a couple weeks ago. The 'all lives matter' is implied.
Really, no lives matter, but that's a different story.