BAU in Greece where a couple of days ago a demonstrator died after being brutally attacked and tortured by police a month ago. The relevant minister was quick to deny police had to do anything with it but breaking several ribs to a previously healthy guy who then dies off lung failure is somewhat suspicious. Not to mention that for a month now no state entity investigated this incident despite it being clearly caught on cam.
In general we witness at least one incident of police brutality almost weekly for months now. The frequency has been increased to almost daily lately not to mention passing a law that essentially curtails demonstrations and gives even more authority to police on them. I'm in fact quite surprised that none of these have been covered to almost no extent in international news.
The irony is that all this is coming at a period when Greeks barely demonstrate at all. The vast majority just seems to have accepted their fate, i.e. economic misery ad infinitum, and it's been like that for years now. So, I'm guessing this has to do with a special agenda of the relatively new right-wing govt. Who knows. Fact of the matter is that policemen != protectors.
I believe it is a sign of deep rot of western democracies that police is the most dangerous thing you can happen upon in a number of western "democratic" countries.
It tells you what the government really thinks about its population and the situation. The army equipment handed to the police, tells you how dire the government views the whole world wide economic and ecologic situation, and how it expects the violence resulting from this, to spread in waves into its city.
Like having new ambulances in place, before the accidents happen.
Until there are consequences for unnecessarily escalating violence cops will continue to to do it because the more violent the situation the more the law favors them.
People who care about this issue have been analyzing police use of force for decades. You can find people saying basically what I just said above going at least as far back as the 1990s. The problem is well known.
It might be well known to those who have experienced, witnessed, or study the subject. But there are still plenty of people who deny these claims or are unaware.
There will always be a ton of people who will deny these claims simply because they are too afraid to accept the alternative. It's very comforting to think that there is this force of good that is there to protect you from harm when you need it.
They deny the claims because they support the systems US policing has historically defended. When you confront people with writings from marginalized communities going back to the 1800s about police, they still manage to "be unaware". That's intentional.
Forget denial, most people actually like it this way. They want to see unruly people being beaten by police, and violent individuals shot and killed on the spot. This looks like law and order (As seen on TV*TM), keeping the angry unwashed mob at the gates. Woulnt happen in my community, or to me, Im a good guy! keep tazing him mister officer.
This like when the younger sibling keeps punching big brother behind moms back. Eventually big brother snaps and hits the younger brother back and younger brother goes and cries to mom. It's hard to be sympathetic when radical individuals are trying to hurt officers in an effort to force their moral agenda on us.
This is like when an older sibling keeps beating the tar out of his younger sibling, the younger sibling goes and cries to mom (protests), and the moment mom's back is turned, the older sibling really really gives it to him.
We're paying generous blue collar salaries & $2MM+ pension to one of those sides, and reasonably expect them to not behave like a 12 year old bullying their sibling.
Couldn’t give a damn what the courts do with actually violent protesters, but Police who want their comp packages to be upper-bounded by something other than SNAP benefits and medicaid would be well-advised to not use this particular rhetorical strategy.
... where one side has unilateral power to arrest and kill virtually anyone without any fear of punishment.
Violent non-police are arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned every single day at an alarming rate. Police are not, so no this isn't in any way a "both sides" issue.
For those who watch anime - the Alabasta arc of One Piece shows a SIMPLE tactic dictators use with peaceful protests & organizations.
Seed the protesters with your own troublemakers who attack the police FIRST and then disappear when shit hits the fan.
The police would have an excuse to use weapons against the protesters.
China used this in the recent Honk Kong protests. US intelligent agencies also pulled this same trick against community organizations run by black people.
A recent article in The Atlantic details a number of examples of “good cops” getting disciplined, bullied, threatened, and fired for reporting bad, corrupt behavior or even just trying to de-escalate a situation when another cop gets too worked up: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/what-polic...
I think due to the type of training and framing of protest situations most police departments receive in the US, as well as the culture instilled in officers, their ego and need for absolute control of the situation stands in front of any other other considerations including avoiding excessive and disproportionate use of violence.
To them a thrown water bottle is a sign of greatest disrespect and loss of face in their power position before the crowd. As Straub points out in the article they are trained to imagine the high likelihood of bricks or molotovs or acid to follow. They are specifically trained to respond with fear-inducing force. Their primary de-escalation tactic is escalation - pure and simple.
Sure, but an officer's mental process is irrelevant to whether they're committing assault, murder, etc. Focusing on the training is a red herring, the immediate problem is one of incentives. We've already got a straightforward way of categorizing prohibited behavior - the law - and we need to start by applying it to the police as well. Every one of those videos shows an aggravated assault, and these violent criminals need to be prosecuted and locked away from society.
All these protests are because police murdered innocent people.
The police continue to murder innocent people and the police officers involved are not punished.
What part of that is little brother big brother like you indicated?
> All these protests are because police murdered innocent people.
I would argue the protests are demanding general change of policing, not limited to killing of civilians (dark-skinned or otherwise).
There is nothing special about the lack of accountability when police kill. They are also not held sufficiently accountable when they screw up the address while executing a warrant, strangle or punch or kick or taze or detain innocents or torture arrested civilians in a police black site (in Chicago) or (as happened in my city) harass the private practice of the Independent Police Auditor (who quit the role because the harassment adversely affected the business).
Every little interaction with police that causes civilians more stress, financial burden, or even just disrespect is a potential cause for someone to demand police accountability. Hell, even when an officer covers their badge number or demands that a video recording of them on the job be deleted is sufficient for me to demand accountability. Police killings in the USA (according to police reports) are a rare occasion (consistently about 1000 per year). The total number of police-civilian interactions per year is something like 100Million (I've seen police unions use this figure).
You're right about the larger issue. But the murdering makes for the clearest examples, especially to be judged in the court of public opinion. If a cop gets into a small scuffle arresting someone, it's hard to definitively say which party was unreasonable, or to argue it was a false arrest due to profiling or extrajudicial punishment. Whereas when a gang commits a nighttime home invasion and murder, as was done to Breonna Taylor, the lack of justice is glaringly obvious.
Yes, videotaped killings are the most visceral, so they are most likely to catalyze protests, but the 1000 killings a year don't sufficiently explain why so many people are protesting. There's more video of the less-than-lethal police actions that are more likely to explain the crowds that are far larger than in 2015 after Ferguson.
Looks mostly fine to me, maybe some are over the top but these are cherry picked examples. Most of these situations there is riot police trying to clear an area. Do what you're told. Most people are hanging around waiting for a fight to start then complain when one happens. And dont say we need more protesting, there are plenty peaceful protests around. I'm glad I'm not a cop you couldn't pay me enough to put up with that.
I'm not sure you've been watching the same videos as me. Or maybe the fact that I'm not a US citizen has some bearing on the matter. Our police are far from perfect but the stuff I've seen from the US has been on a different level.
What free expression? Shoving a camera in a cop's face, encircling a cop's car and banging the windows? If you act like an asshole in the name of free expression, you will be treated like one. Cry as much as you want, it will never change as everyone has a short memory and will move on to the next outrage.
Do you've unedited videos of these escalations that show the complete context? You may be able to find 0.1% of the videos that show the complete context. Everything is conveniently edited to make people angry. No question that there are a few shitty cops but the media wants to show that every cop is one.
Exactly. It's mostly people who are looking for trouble that cry police brutality. There were so many instances of people shoving their camera in a cop's face and get beaten. Why would you do that? There are a lot of dumb people who believe everything the media tells them to believe.
Look, if the police officer in question was a bear or something, I could kind of see your point. But police officers are typically humans, and have free will. If they're not able to deal with that sort of thing without assaulting people, then perhaps they should consider less demanding work.
20 people are encircling your car, banging your windows, shouting and ready to break your car. Can you tell me how you would respond? Sit there and wait for them to assault you?
No the person is closer but so what? What crime has been committed that justifies extra-judicial beating? Are the police so poorly trained they cannot be filmed at close range without becoming violent?
> 20 people are encircling your car, banging your windows, shouting and ready to break your car.
Of the 400 videos, how many of them were this type of situation? I would guess 3 or fewer. This isn't a representative scenario.
> Can you tell me how you would respond?
People (police or otherwise) who aren't trained will respond in any number of inappropriate ways. Your argument is basically just justification for police to act inappropriately anytime they encounter a situation for which they haven't been explicitly trained. We don't pay police departments 40% of all municipal revenues to put untrained people on the street to act in completely unprofessional ways towards the same people who pay their paychecks, retirement, union dues, medical bills, and department lawsuits.
Actually check that. Apparently we do and those departments settle for billions of USD per year in legal settlements. The problem is that the officers largely aren't held accountable -- but the taxpayers frequently are. Moral hazard.
> Sit there and wait for them to assault you?
Professional police have a whole belt full of tools, a radio (to 40,000 other officers in NYC), a megaphone, a long gun, a short gun, and frequently a tazer.
Also, why is an officer in a car surrounded by angry citizens? Because someone in the same uniform mistreated their brother/father/son/husband/etc. Police have a lot of ability to de-escalate the problems before they happen, but they aren't doing it. Instead, police {departments, chiefs, unions, officers, wives} are pointing at violent protesters as if violent protesters have no incentive or excuse to be angry at police.
And while we're at it, shouldn't your logic be equally used against officers who assault civilians? Why shouldn't the entire country support civilians defending themselves against officers who use "extralegal" force? (rhetorical question)
The first line of defense against authoritarianism is eyes on the regime. You're defending disproportionate response to a non-violent checking of power. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Ahh, is that why white people shielding black people stopped police attacks or why multiple journalists were shot in the eye with rubber bullets? Seems you've picked which side of justice will support.
Why do we all need to conform to every order from every police officer, even, and sometimes especially, when that order is unlawful?
When the police are using unlawful orders to escalate violence, and then justify that violence by asserting that one was not complying with their order, which was unlawful, or otherwise stated illegal, is that not wrong?
I do not believe that any law, or logic, supports a situation in which anyone must "do what [they are] told" in this context. This argument can be restated as "do what I say, no matter what, or die". This is pure terror enacted by the state against its population.
It’s a jaundiced view but a lot of American society seems predicated around the idea that the person with power is correct. Whether that’s a policeman or corporate shareholders or your obviously incompetent president.
As someone who recently sat through jury selection, it's a remarkably common view. So many American citizens revere the badge, are willing to trust the person in uniform despite evidence to the contrary, and automatically assume the person sitting in the defendant's chair is guilty.
Between the 2 attorneys and the judge, one of them might have been disbarred if I was allowed on a jury. I was in the jury box as a potential juror for a few days, but was challenged out.
Yes, because staying put on the train tracks when you hear the train whistle is a good idea. This reminds of those "self-defense" classes my elementary school used to do- they're not martial arts, they're practical ways to keep yourself safe. Should you cross the street the second the traffic signal gives you the go-ahead without even looking up the road? Of course not. No amount of right-of-way or moral authority will restore your shattered body. So no, staying in place when you're clearly in danger and are actively being warned about this danger is a pretty stupid idea. Enjoy being a martyr though.
This is exactly the same wrong point again. A human with a badge is not similar to a lighthouse. It’s a person with agency, when they beat, shoot, strangle or arrest another person they make a choice.
I thought a bit about this argument here, and I just want to sum it up, so we can understand where this landed.
The sum of the final argument is “I believe that you should do whatever the gunman says, so much so that I don’t care if they kill you”, directed at a commenter here.
In the story, the admiral is conceited about his position so much so that he believes that he has the right not to understand the situation. Which is exactly why the commenter is in the stated position about the "righteousness" of their argument.
Interesting to hear someone from the police respond to the actions of those officers.
And regarding this quote:
> Law enforcement experts stressed that viral protest videos, while visceral, only show a moment in time and may miss what officers were facing outside of the frame.
Isn't that what body cameras are for? If we only have one source of video, then it's hard for police to justify saying, "That wasn't the whole story."
I am no fan of the police, but the problem is not a lack of footage, the problem is the lack of attention span on the part of the viewers. Videos usually get edited for brevity, and the shorter you make the video, the more likely that you get a misleading edit.
I have read that this was the case for the Rodney King incident, where the public watched a short clip on the news and got one impression, and the jury watched a longer video, which gave them a different view. The longer video was available, but not aired on TV.
OP's point is that you can't make those kind of claims without evidence. If you're saying a video only looks bad because it's misleadingly edited, you need to provide proof of your claim. Unfortunately, the police also routinely fight tooth and nail to prevent access to their own video footage.
I don't care what the context is; there is absolutely zero justification for the police to be kneeling on someone's neck until they die. Or pushing over a 75-year-old man and then leaving him there to bleed from the ears. Or shooting a fleeing suspect in the back.
There are dozens of similar incidents from the period since the protests started that don't matter if they were "taken out of context"—the actions themselves, no matter their context, are reprehensible from any institution that is supposed to be "serving and protecting" the people.
Your outrage is against points I didn't make. I never said the police acted properly in this, or any other example. In fact, I think the police 'serve and protect' only the state and themselves.
My points were about our current social-media situation, where we have vast amounts of information, and people are able to filter it through their lens of choice.
I’ve seen plenty of videos of the police walking up to peaceful protesters and suddenly beating them with clubs, or video of boring traffic stops where the police decide to shoot the person. What fuller context could be provided that would change the meaning of these acts?
> I’ve seen plenty of videos of the police walking up to peaceful protesters and suddenly beating them with clubs, or video of boring traffic stops where the police decide to shoot the person.
Youth protection services did a lot worse to a kid with mild autism quite recently (who had done nothing except "kicking a wall"). Kept him in a face down restraint on the ground until about 30 minutes after he died. Yes, really.
There's another difference as well. Help was called for George Floyd before he died. It was established that the California Youth Protection Service did not call any help whatsoever for this child until 30 minutes after he died.
Note that this kid was not even suspected of committing a crime. Not then, not ever. To me, that this happens calls into question why institutions like this are allowed to exist at all.
It's certainly true that some of the institutions that are being talked about for being pushed to take up some of the slack when we defund the police do not have the best records, either. My family has had harrowing experiences with the mental health system, so I am absolutely cognizant of the genuine concerns with trying to increase their role.
But that means that we should also fix the problems with those institutions, not that we should just allow the police to continue to operate with impunity, no matter their abuses.
It may be a long, hard road, but ultimately I believe we can have a safer, kinder, more just society as a result.
What? While it's true that there is a small minority of kids in youth protection because of involvement with the police, at least 90% of them are there because social workers decided, mostly against their and their parent's wishes, that they needed help and couldn't be allowed to be free to refuse that help.
And of course 0% of kids in youth protection facilities are convicted of a crime (they would be somewhere else if that were the case). Youth protection services don't "take up slack for the police" at all ...
I personally think that body cams are great, and that more video is good, but it won't solve the problem of people viewing vast amounts of information through biased filters.
On a side note, police officers are civilians; pretending they are military or paramilitary officers is dangerous.
Body cams aren't the end all of "what the police saw" either. And even when you have bystanders and body cam footage side-by-side, it's hard to see what really happened. This was covered well here:
I believe that policies regarding camera use during protests in many cities were changed as a direct response of civil liberties complaints from organizations like the ACLU. People said they didn’t want police to use them for surveillance.
"The Seattle Police Department said Wednesday that officers will be ordered to turn on their body-worn cameras during protests in a departure from longstanding policy.
The new policy comes after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order requiring the cameras to be used during demonstrations.
The Seattle Police Department has been outfitted with body-worn cameras since 2017 but a longstanding policy designed to protect the privacy of peaceful protestors prevented officers from using cameras during the demonstrations of the past two weeks.
That policy was written in consultation with civil rights groups, like the ACLU, that worry body cameras could make it easier for police to track and target protesters, particularly in communities of color that have a history of over-surveillance."
"Several major cities, including Seattle, Boston, New York and Minneapolis, have specific policies against police recording with body cameras at protests.
Protesters have long been worried about surveillance at demonstrations, the latest twist being police use of technology like facial recognition and social media monitoring to identify people in crowds. Using body cameras as surveillance tools at protests threaten people's privacy and could have a chilling effect on free speech."
I did find it choppy, also. I think that's an effect of the scrolling algorithm's acceleration/deceleration, and could be adjusted. There are two effects with scrolling--advancing the page/narrative, and advancing the video. That transition benefits with subtle visual signals.
And, I'm not much into video editing, but I've done a little graphic design practice. I think 'disorientation' is par for the course when you're not playing a video at constant speed. That's an unsettling thought--the webpage authors are taking advantage of the UX's disorientation effect to heighten the emotion of the video content.
I watched all of these videos and they certainly don't need any additional emotive effects. I had the feeling that I was sharing the privileged insight of the 'experts' observations with the narrative callouts and graphics to pace my consumption.
I looked at The NY Times mega page of videos posted earlier. Watching one video after the other was brutal. And it was my own doing. I just jumped from one video to the next. click. click. click. and feeling worse and worse and worse.
Turns out that when a heavily armed force carries out extrajudicial execution and lopsided violence without consequence over many years people will eventually respond with violence of their own.
Nonsense. Marxists attacking a Federal courthouse in Portland, OR has nothing to do with George Floyd being murdered by a local police officer in Minneapolis.
They are doing their part. There are Marxists in their ranks.
21st Century Marxists focus on exacerbating all of the fault lines in society they can find. Old school techniques that relied on economic disparity didn't work in the West.
The West doesn't have serfs like Russia and China did so 20th Century Communism didn't take. Also, most Western countries were rich enough and democratic so they could implement reforms that answered many of the 20th century communist charges without requiring a Marxist revolution.
Today, Marxists focus on anything and everything that can divide, including economic issues.
As soon as Trump leaves office, the mass media will flip to supporting the President (assuming he or she is not GOP) and all this will die down.
The media already seems to recognize that antifa is not helping their cause so they do not report honestly on the violence in Portland. As soon as the US has a Democratic Party President, antifa will be re-branded as rioters or anarchists. In the mean time they are lionized as defenders of freedom.
Note, I don't think this latest Marxist action will change America, any more than the earlier attempts.
"Straub said that police officers shouldn’t be expected to determine what's being thrown at them before responding.
"“If you're standing there in that skirmish line, and somebody's throwing something at you, is it really up to you to be figuring out whether it's gasoline or whether it's metal, or whether it's water or whether it's acid?”"
His use of military terminology ("skirmish line") is telling.
That “reasonable people on both sides” cop commentator also called the amount of pepper spray a cop used on a peaceful protester with his hands in the air “judicious”.
The terrible (and currently true) idea that the police are exempt from assault and battery laws is so widespread that people don’t seem to notice how biased they are. The police need to be held to a higher standard, as public servants, but the first step is just holding them to the same laws as everyone else that say you don’t get to arbitrarily pepper spray or beat anyone you feel like.
Contempt of cop is not a crime, and cops retaliating violently should be tossed in the same hellish system they force others into for breaking the law. There is no equal protection in practice so long as one group can attack and harm anyone they wish under the guise of their job title.
They’re already entirely exempt from gun controls that apply to the rest of society; if they aren’t restrained from illegal activity by legal process, then the situation is indistinguishable on a practical level from military dictatorship.
'Avant-garde', as a military term, is obsolete in English; the English word is now 'vanguard'.
'Skirmish line', to my knowledge, has no accepted non-military uses, but even if it did the interviewee is clearly referring to the military formation and therefore considering the protesters to be hostile enemies.
There's a clear difference between protestors and enemies no matter the amount of hostility. Thinking of the protestors as enemies is bound to escalate conflict instead of deescalating it.
Police say "stop resisting" as an alternative to something more vulgar. They do not really mean it, they shout that as a way to release stress.
They are also taught that the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR) is the safest way to restraint someone. The truth is, that it is not. It is stupid to believe that cutting blood supply to someone's brain is safe. LVNR is a scam that nobody actually believes in but everyone is silent about it because it is a plausible excuse to kill people.
> Result: No death, injury or litigation for excessive use of force for 40 years against agencies using the certified Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR®) System!
No death, injury or litigation? Bullshit. It only resulted in 1 month of protests and billions of dollars lost.
Worth posting the whole description, because it's... really quite something.
> The LVNR® is the number one law enforcement system of neck restraint --standing, kneeling or on the ground. If your agency is now using or considering the use of neck restraints for officer safety and subject control, then the copyrighted and US Patent Office registered NLETC/KCMO PD LVNR® is the one method you need to assess. It has been extensively field and medically tested and has proven to be safer, more effective, and less controversial than any other known neck restraint method. That is why the NLETC/KCMO PD LVNR® is the predominant method of neck control, and is now being adopted nationwide by those law enforcement agencies that teach ground defense/control systems.
> Agencies and trainers should avoid the use of single-level, or time limit approved neck restraint methods since their use has resulted in all the claims of excessive force, death, and resultant litigation involving neck restraint use. Combined arm, neck and body controls are not as effective for most officers as the direct, rear, neck-specific compression which requires minimum physical effort for LVNR® vs. maximum physical exertion for other methods. Our statistics show that 50% of all subjects will cease resistance at Level One with low-level compression on the sides of the neck; 25% will comply at Level Two with medium compression on the neck; and the other 25% will comply at Level Three or be rendered unconscious in 4 to 7 seconds. Result: No death, injury or litigation for excessive use of force for 40 years against agencies using the certified Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR®) System!
> The NLETC is the sole-source provider for the LVNR® System. No other training provider is entitled to teach the LVNR® System to user agencies or to include the term LVNR® as their own when teaching other neck restraint systems. Contact the NLETC if you plan to adopt the LVNR® System.
> Two Fort Wayne police officers were seriously injured during a training session on the lateral vascular neck restraint, a doctor who evaluated the men said Thursday.
> Dr. Bill Smock, police surgeon at the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky, said he traveled to Fort Wayne to examine the officers Tuesday after he was contacted by the Allen County prosecutor’s office.
> Smock said both officers suffered serious injuries and that one officer’s family is calling his injuries a stroke. The officers were injured Monday, Smock said.
As far as I can tell from googling "Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint", it's just a rear-naked choke, which was not what killed George Floyd. Or Eric Garner. It's used on a daily basis in jui jitsu competition throughout the world. When done properly it does not obstruct your breathing whatsoever.
In Jiu-Jitsu competitions there are referees and paramedics. The referee is an impartial third party.
In law enforcement, the cop is both fighter and referee. And the decision to get paramedics and when to get them also belongs to the cop.
Imagine a Jiu-Jitsu competition where you were fighting one or multiple referees, where they were armed with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Now, imagine all those referees belonged to a union that maintains a code of silence in case they break the rules. Imagine that once you lose the match, they can continue beating you down and never call paramedics. That would be a closer comparison.
Blood chokes can kill if sustained, and they are not safe to perform on random people. No other police force in the world requires such an agressive use of chokeholds.
Even if you solved the chokehold problem you would be still left with: excessive force, blatant inefficiency, racism, arrest quotas, rapists, stupid legislation, lack of accountability, inadequate training, plus a complete lack of proportionality and common sense... A complete shitshow. Plus a fucking passive aggresive portion of the citizenry that uses 911 to harass minorities.
I'm not going to defend police culture. It's toxic without a doubt. But if we're removing things they're allowed to use, what are they going to replace it with? In an ideal situation the police would always substantially outnumber the suspect and could simply pile on and each control a limb until they're handcuffed. What if it's just 2 cops and 1 really large, strong guy they have to arrest? If you're never worked in a job where you are required to physically subdue people larger than you, it's hard to imagine the stress of the situation. Pain compliance techniques like wrist locks are a big risk if you get it wrong, and becoming proficient takes years of practice. Even if you execute a common submission technique on someone, good luck getting them handcuffed after you release it.
And to your point about referee: the cop isn't a referee. They're just another fighter. And if they lose, there's no ref to stop the person from seriously hurting or killing them. Combine this with the fact that most cops are just average people with little to no hand to hand combat experience, aside from a few confidence booster sessions at the police academy.
I think cops deserve a lot of criticism. But let's make it constructive criticism. If we're going to take something out of their toolbox, let's at least clearly define realistic tools they can use.
> And to your point about referee: the cop isn't a referee. They're just another fighter. And if they lose, there's no ref to stop the person from seriously hurting or killing them. Combine this with the fact that most cops are just average people with little to no hand to hand combat experience, aside from a few confidence booster sessions at the police academy.
This is a good point that goes over some of the misconceptions that people may have about the level of training and proficiency of police.
>I think cops deserve a lot of criticism. But let's make it constructive criticism.
> And to your point about referee: the cop isn't a referee.
Maybe, but then the point is that the referee is their friend. If I go and punch a police officer, I'm going to the jail. If the police officer comes and punches me out of nothing, good luck having a fair investigation and trial. The police department will cover their actions, avoid releasing the information they have. Maybe the officer face cannot be seen on the available footage because they have a full helmet and the police department refuses to say their name, so the judge cannot (or does not want) judge them guilty on the ground we cannot be sure who they are. I don't have all these protections, but they do. This means that have effectively become the referee as well.
I'm totally in favour of giving the police the exclusive usage of force when this is required, but they should as well stand the responsibility of its misuse. Nowadays they get the former but not the latter, and this is terribly unfair.
I think we're talking past each other. I'm specifically referring to situations where a cop has to subdue someone else, and what they're allowed to do to accomplish this. If you're at a size and/or strength disadvantage with someone who is willing to kill you to win the fight, taking their back and applying a rear-naked choke is one is the better options I can think of. It makes it much more difficult for them to reach for your gun, strike you, and the blood choke will eventually cause temporary unconsciousness where you can properly restrain them with handcuffs.
I see lots of people saying cops shouldn't be allowed to use chokes, but they never provide a reasonable alternative. I'd rather see cops using chokeholds than shooting unarmed people.
It's a marketing term for a technique you could probably learn for much less in any wrestling or jujitsu gym for thousands of years, but isn't as defensible in court.
We can be critic to the police, but who is willing to take their place and do a better job ?
What do we find if we look for the opposite in thoses 400 videos ?
That doesn't excuse anything. You may be afraid of blood and have a palsy making you a terrible surgeon but that doesn't excuse a surgeon burning their signature onto your pancreas.
I think you have misunderstood the purpose. There is no need for a collection of "the opposite" of this, whatever that would even mean.
Police have arresting power, so if non-police assault them they will simply arrest or kill them immediately, largely without the possibility of facing any consequences. Thousands have been arrested at protests in the last couple of months.
The non-police public have no such powers, and in fact even with video evidence will almost never see justice for police brutality. There is a huge violence problem here and it lies almost entirely on one side.
This ex Spokane cop Frank Straub guy is a complete asshole and his responses are uniformly bullshit. In his response to every single video, no matter how shitty the cops behaved, he starts from a position of trying to make excuses for their bad behavior. His default position is the same garbage "us versus them" mentality that people want to change. At best he gives a soft criticism of truly egregious behavior. He's an apologist for police brutality and has no integrity. Yet another example of how incredibly far out of touch the police and anyone associated with them really are.
Unsurprisingly some of the techniques required are a little counter-intuitive which is interesting when weighed into public opinion or uninformed politicians etc. Naturally, the most effective techniques techniques don't involve violence.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadIn general we witness at least one incident of police brutality almost weekly for months now. The frequency has been increased to almost daily lately not to mention passing a law that essentially curtails demonstrations and gives even more authority to police on them. I'm in fact quite surprised that none of these have been covered to almost no extent in international news.
The irony is that all this is coming at a period when Greeks barely demonstrate at all. The vast majority just seems to have accepted their fate, i.e. economic misery ad infinitum, and it's been like that for years now. So, I'm guessing this has to do with a special agenda of the relatively new right-wing govt. Who knows. Fact of the matter is that policemen != protectors.
I believe it is a sign of deep rot of western democracies that police is the most dangerous thing you can happen upon in a number of western "democratic" countries.
People who care about this issue have been analyzing police use of force for decades. You can find people saying basically what I just said above going at least as far back as the 1990s. The problem is well known.
It might be well known to those who have experienced, witnessed, or study the subject. But there are still plenty of people who deny these claims or are unaware.
We're paying generous blue collar salaries & $2MM+ pension to one of those sides, and reasonably expect them to not behave like a 12 year old bullying their sibling.
Couldn’t give a damn what the courts do with actually violent protesters, but Police who want their comp packages to be upper-bounded by something other than SNAP benefits and medicaid would be well-advised to not use this particular rhetorical strategy.
Violent non-police are arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned every single day at an alarming rate. Police are not, so no this isn't in any way a "both sides" issue.
Seed the protesters with your own troublemakers who attack the police FIRST and then disappear when shit hits the fan.
The police would have an excuse to use weapons against the protesters.
China used this in the recent Honk Kong protests. US intelligent agencies also pulled this same trick against community organizations run by black people.
See Fred Hampton's story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Early_life_and_yo...
The nice part about this is that it's virtually impossible to prove without self confessions which typically happen decades after the event.
That's part of the problem. That's only happening for one side.
To them a thrown water bottle is a sign of greatest disrespect and loss of face in their power position before the crowd. As Straub points out in the article they are trained to imagine the high likelihood of bricks or molotovs or acid to follow. They are specifically trained to respond with fear-inducing force. Their primary de-escalation tactic is escalation - pure and simple.
It doesn't require training. My first thought when I read "thrown water bottle" was, "I have no idea whether that's water or urine".
What part of that is little brother big brother like you indicated?
I would argue the protests are demanding general change of policing, not limited to killing of civilians (dark-skinned or otherwise).
There is nothing special about the lack of accountability when police kill. They are also not held sufficiently accountable when they screw up the address while executing a warrant, strangle or punch or kick or taze or detain innocents or torture arrested civilians in a police black site (in Chicago) or (as happened in my city) harass the private practice of the Independent Police Auditor (who quit the role because the harassment adversely affected the business).
Every little interaction with police that causes civilians more stress, financial burden, or even just disrespect is a potential cause for someone to demand police accountability. Hell, even when an officer covers their badge number or demands that a video recording of them on the job be deleted is sufficient for me to demand accountability. Police killings in the USA (according to police reports) are a rare occasion (consistently about 1000 per year). The total number of police-civilian interactions per year is something like 100Million (I've seen police unions use this figure).
I guess the cops haven't learned that lesson yet.
> 20 people are encircling your car, banging your windows, shouting and ready to break your car.
Of the 400 videos, how many of them were this type of situation? I would guess 3 or fewer. This isn't a representative scenario.
> Can you tell me how you would respond?
People (police or otherwise) who aren't trained will respond in any number of inappropriate ways. Your argument is basically just justification for police to act inappropriately anytime they encounter a situation for which they haven't been explicitly trained. We don't pay police departments 40% of all municipal revenues to put untrained people on the street to act in completely unprofessional ways towards the same people who pay their paychecks, retirement, union dues, medical bills, and department lawsuits.
Actually check that. Apparently we do and those departments settle for billions of USD per year in legal settlements. The problem is that the officers largely aren't held accountable -- but the taxpayers frequently are. Moral hazard.
> Sit there and wait for them to assault you?
Professional police have a whole belt full of tools, a radio (to 40,000 other officers in NYC), a megaphone, a long gun, a short gun, and frequently a tazer.
Also, why is an officer in a car surrounded by angry citizens? Because someone in the same uniform mistreated their brother/father/son/husband/etc. Police have a lot of ability to de-escalate the problems before they happen, but they aren't doing it. Instead, police {departments, chiefs, unions, officers, wives} are pointing at violent protesters as if violent protesters have no incentive or excuse to be angry at police.
And while we're at it, shouldn't your logic be equally used against officers who assault civilians? Why shouldn't the entire country support civilians defending themselves against officers who use "extralegal" force? (rhetorical question)
Why do we all need to conform to every order from every police officer, even, and sometimes especially, when that order is unlawful?
When the police are using unlawful orders to escalate violence, and then justify that violence by asserting that one was not complying with their order, which was unlawful, or otherwise stated illegal, is that not wrong?
I do not believe that any law, or logic, supports a situation in which anyone must "do what [they are] told" in this context. This argument can be restated as "do what I say, no matter what, or die". This is pure terror enacted by the state against its population.
Lighthouses don’t.
The sum of the final argument is “I believe that you should do whatever the gunman says, so much so that I don’t care if they kill you”, directed at a commenter here.
In the story, the admiral is conceited about his position so much so that he believes that he has the right not to understand the situation. Which is exactly why the commenter is in the stated position about the "righteousness" of their argument.
Without it, how are people supposed to demonstrate about things they want the government to change? How can democracy function?
And regarding this quote:
> Law enforcement experts stressed that viral protest videos, while visceral, only show a moment in time and may miss what officers were facing outside of the frame.
Isn't that what body cameras are for? If we only have one source of video, then it's hard for police to justify saying, "That wasn't the whole story."
I have read that this was the case for the Rodney King incident, where the public watched a short clip on the news and got one impression, and the jury watched a longer video, which gave them a different view. The longer video was available, but not aired on TV.
There are dozens of similar incidents from the period since the protests started that don't matter if they were "taken out of context"—the actions themselves, no matter their context, are reprehensible from any institution that is supposed to be "serving and protecting" the people.
My points were about our current social-media situation, where we have vast amounts of information, and people are able to filter it through their lens of choice.
Anyways, I just assume by full context they mean something like "you gotta show those n______ and bums who is boss or they might get uppity".
Examples, please
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/max-benson-el-dorado-california...
There's another difference as well. Help was called for George Floyd before he died. It was established that the California Youth Protection Service did not call any help whatsoever for this child until 30 minutes after he died.
Note that this kid was not even suspected of committing a crime. Not then, not ever. To me, that this happens calls into question why institutions like this are allowed to exist at all.
But that means that we should also fix the problems with those institutions, not that we should just allow the police to continue to operate with impunity, no matter their abuses.
It may be a long, hard road, but ultimately I believe we can have a safer, kinder, more just society as a result.
And of course 0% of kids in youth protection facilities are convicted of a crime (they would be somewhere else if that were the case). Youth protection services don't "take up slack for the police" at all ...
Actually from what I've gathered right here on HN over the years, lack of footage is actually the problem.
Police simply refuse to release footage. Excuses typically used include:
* It's evidence
* Releasing the video could danger the lives of officers
* We're reviewing it as part of an internal investigation (which would take months)
Also read of an instance where a civilian was allowed to watch footage from police cam but was barred from recording or taking notes from the video.
On a side note, police officers are civilians; pretending they are military or paramilitary officers is dangerous.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/01/us/police-bod...
Source?
The new policy comes after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order requiring the cameras to be used during demonstrations.
The Seattle Police Department has been outfitted with body-worn cameras since 2017 but a longstanding policy designed to protect the privacy of peaceful protestors prevented officers from using cameras during the demonstrations of the past two weeks.
That policy was written in consultation with civil rights groups, like the ACLU, that worry body cameras could make it easier for police to track and target protesters, particularly in communities of color that have a history of over-surveillance."
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/seattle-police-will-use-body-c...
https://www.cnet.com/news/police-body-cameras-at-protests-ra...
"Several major cities, including Seattle, Boston, New York and Minneapolis, have specific policies against police recording with body cameras at protests.
Protesters have long been worried about surveillance at demonstrations, the latest twist being police use of technology like facial recognition and social media monitoring to identify people in crowds. Using body cameras as surveillance tools at protests threaten people's privacy and could have a chilling effect on free speech."
https://www.cnet.com/news/police-body-cameras-at-protests-ra...
And, I'm not much into video editing, but I've done a little graphic design practice. I think 'disorientation' is par for the course when you're not playing a video at constant speed. That's an unsettling thought--the webpage authors are taking advantage of the UX's disorientation effect to heighten the emotion of the video content.
I watched all of these videos and they certainly don't need any additional emotive effects. I had the feeling that I was sharing the privileged insight of the 'experts' observations with the narrative callouts and graphics to pace my consumption.
I looked at The NY Times mega page of videos posted earlier. Watching one video after the other was brutal. And it was my own doing. I just jumped from one video to the next. click. click. click. and feeling worse and worse and worse.
Antifa were shining lasers at the cops eyes.
Also, one loud rioter was calling out individual officers promising them that they would find out where they live and kill them and their families.
Good times.
21st Century Marxists focus on exacerbating all of the fault lines in society they can find. Old school techniques that relied on economic disparity didn't work in the West.
The West doesn't have serfs like Russia and China did so 20th Century Communism didn't take. Also, most Western countries were rich enough and democratic so they could implement reforms that answered many of the 20th century communist charges without requiring a Marxist revolution.
Today, Marxists focus on anything and everything that can divide, including economic issues.
As soon as Trump leaves office, the mass media will flip to supporting the President (assuming he or she is not GOP) and all this will die down.
The media already seems to recognize that antifa is not helping their cause so they do not report honestly on the violence in Portland. As soon as the US has a Democratic Party President, antifa will be re-branded as rioters or anarchists. In the mean time they are lionized as defenders of freedom.
Note, I don't think this latest Marxist action will change America, any more than the earlier attempts.
And then people are surprised at the news articles about officers covering up their badge numbers(which are public record)?
"“If you're standing there in that skirmish line, and somebody's throwing something at you, is it really up to you to be figuring out whether it's gasoline or whether it's metal, or whether it's water or whether it's acid?”"
His use of military terminology ("skirmish line") is telling.
The terrible (and currently true) idea that the police are exempt from assault and battery laws is so widespread that people don’t seem to notice how biased they are. The police need to be held to a higher standard, as public servants, but the first step is just holding them to the same laws as everyone else that say you don’t get to arbitrarily pepper spray or beat anyone you feel like.
Contempt of cop is not a crime, and cops retaliating violently should be tossed in the same hellish system they force others into for breaking the law. There is no equal protection in practice so long as one group can attack and harm anyone they wish under the guise of their job title.
They’re already entirely exempt from gun controls that apply to the rest of society; if they aren’t restrained from illegal activity by legal process, then the situation is indistinguishable on a practical level from military dictatorship.
'Skirmish line', to my knowledge, has no accepted non-military uses, but even if it did the interviewee is clearly referring to the military formation and therefore considering the protesters to be hostile enemies.
They are also taught that the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR) is the safest way to restraint someone. The truth is, that it is not. It is stupid to believe that cutting blood supply to someone's brain is safe. LVNR is a scam that nobody actually believes in but everyone is silent about it because it is a plausible excuse to kill people.
http://www.nletc.com/lateral-vascular-neck-restraint-lvnr
> Result: No death, injury or litigation for excessive use of force for 40 years against agencies using the certified Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR®) System!
No death, injury or litigation? Bullshit. It only resulted in 1 month of protests and billions of dollars lost.
> The LVNR® is the number one law enforcement system of neck restraint --standing, kneeling or on the ground. If your agency is now using or considering the use of neck restraints for officer safety and subject control, then the copyrighted and US Patent Office registered NLETC/KCMO PD LVNR® is the one method you need to assess. It has been extensively field and medically tested and has proven to be safer, more effective, and less controversial than any other known neck restraint method. That is why the NLETC/KCMO PD LVNR® is the predominant method of neck control, and is now being adopted nationwide by those law enforcement agencies that teach ground defense/control systems.
> Agencies and trainers should avoid the use of single-level, or time limit approved neck restraint methods since their use has resulted in all the claims of excessive force, death, and resultant litigation involving neck restraint use. Combined arm, neck and body controls are not as effective for most officers as the direct, rear, neck-specific compression which requires minimum physical effort for LVNR® vs. maximum physical exertion for other methods. Our statistics show that 50% of all subjects will cease resistance at Level One with low-level compression on the sides of the neck; 25% will comply at Level Two with medium compression on the neck; and the other 25% will comply at Level Three or be rendered unconscious in 4 to 7 seconds. Result: No death, injury or litigation for excessive use of force for 40 years against agencies using the certified Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR®) System!
> The NLETC is the sole-source provider for the LVNR® System. No other training provider is entitled to teach the LVNR® System to user agencies or to include the term LVNR® as their own when teaching other neck restraint systems. Contact the NLETC if you plan to adopt the LVNR® System.
> Two Fort Wayne police officers were seriously injured during a training session on the lateral vascular neck restraint, a doctor who evaluated the men said Thursday.
> Dr. Bill Smock, police surgeon at the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky, said he traveled to Fort Wayne to examine the officers Tuesday after he was contacted by the Allen County prosecutor’s office.
> Smock said both officers suffered serious injuries and that one officer’s family is calling his injuries a stroke. The officers were injured Monday, Smock said.
The cops involved wanted him to pass out but killed him instead.
In law enforcement, the cop is both fighter and referee. And the decision to get paramedics and when to get them also belongs to the cop.
Imagine a Jiu-Jitsu competition where you were fighting one or multiple referees, where they were armed with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Now, imagine all those referees belonged to a union that maintains a code of silence in case they break the rules. Imagine that once you lose the match, they can continue beating you down and never call paramedics. That would be a closer comparison.
Blood chokes can kill if sustained, and they are not safe to perform on random people. No other police force in the world requires such an agressive use of chokeholds.
Even if you solved the chokehold problem you would be still left with: excessive force, blatant inefficiency, racism, arrest quotas, rapists, stupid legislation, lack of accountability, inadequate training, plus a complete lack of proportionality and common sense... A complete shitshow. Plus a fucking passive aggresive portion of the citizenry that uses 911 to harass minorities.
And to your point about referee: the cop isn't a referee. They're just another fighter. And if they lose, there's no ref to stop the person from seriously hurting or killing them. Combine this with the fact that most cops are just average people with little to no hand to hand combat experience, aside from a few confidence booster sessions at the police academy.
I think cops deserve a lot of criticism. But let's make it constructive criticism. If we're going to take something out of their toolbox, let's at least clearly define realistic tools they can use.
This is a good point that goes over some of the misconceptions that people may have about the level of training and proficiency of police.
>I think cops deserve a lot of criticism. But let's make it constructive criticism.
Or at least logically consistent criticism
Maybe, but then the point is that the referee is their friend. If I go and punch a police officer, I'm going to the jail. If the police officer comes and punches me out of nothing, good luck having a fair investigation and trial. The police department will cover their actions, avoid releasing the information they have. Maybe the officer face cannot be seen on the available footage because they have a full helmet and the police department refuses to say their name, so the judge cannot (or does not want) judge them guilty on the ground we cannot be sure who they are. I don't have all these protections, but they do. This means that have effectively become the referee as well.
I'm totally in favour of giving the police the exclusive usage of force when this is required, but they should as well stand the responsibility of its misuse. Nowadays they get the former but not the latter, and this is terribly unfair.
I see lots of people saying cops shouldn't be allowed to use chokes, but they never provide a reasonable alternative. I'd rather see cops using chokeholds than shooting unarmed people.
What's wrong with these people?
Police have arresting power, so if non-police assault them they will simply arrest or kill them immediately, largely without the possibility of facing any consequences. Thousands have been arrested at protests in the last couple of months.
The non-police public have no such powers, and in fact even with video evidence will almost never see justice for police brutality. There is a huge violence problem here and it lies almost entirely on one side.
Unsurprisingly some of the techniques required are a little counter-intuitive which is interesting when weighed into public opinion or uninformed politicians etc. Naturally, the most effective techniques techniques don't involve violence.