Re: USA Gun Violence & Police Brutality Thread

[BarrileteCosmico]

Can someone please educate me on this whole thing? I don't read the news but from what I understand a white police man murdered a black criminal and then what? Jail the policeman, sack his superiors, see why this case was handled in such an awful way.

Why is this such a big deal?

Basically there were 3 incidents that happened very close to each other and were really egregious:

1. Ahmoud Arbery, a black man, was shot for simply jogging through a white neighborhood when a white ex-cop and his son decided he looked out of place, confronted him, and shot him. They were free for 2 months until a video was leaked to the media and now they have been arrested.

2. Breonna Taylor, a black woman, was shot inside her own bed after the police barged in, her confused husband started shooting back thinking they were being attacked, and the police shot in return. The husband now faces charges and she's dead. The man the police were actually looking for was already in jail. To my knowledge the police officers haven't faced any consequence for this.

3. George Floyd, a black man, was killed by a police officer who kneed on his neck for minutes, even as onlookers filmed it and told him he was murdering him. The police officer has been arrested.

There were also a few other incidents like a white woman getting into an argument with a black man in NYC's central park and then calling the police to tell them that she "feels threatened", making for a callous way to use systematic racism against black people, which hit a nerve with people.

This all happened more or less within the span of 10 days or so, and in most cases there was no crime other than "being black in America". For further context, the US has a long history of protecting its police officers from excessive force even if they're in the wrong, using legal technicalities to help police curb consequences. For this reason we have now reached a "tipping point" where people have had enough.

So the issue won't go away with the arrest of the offending police officer because people see this (rightfully so) as a systematic issue rather than one crazy cop doing something unforgivable. Protests have started all over the US and abroad as a result, some peaceful, some not.

[rincon]

I wonder what's the effect going to be on the US police in general. They're getting a lot of hate and being made out to be the bad guys. Officers facing violence, shootings last night. The whole thing is on course to only worsen the relationship between the police and the public.

Based on what I'm reading, this whole debate should be about reducing police cruelty and to cease protecting them when they do wrong. It is not a race issue at all.

You are missing that US police treats black and non-black VERY differently. Racism permeates these actions, police brutality is much less brushed when it is to a white person.

[FennecFox7]

The funniest thing about all this is that I’m mixed race through my great grandmother. She is Sahrawi/Tuareg and 100%. Algeria and especially Morocco in the south are mixed countries.

I’m not crying about anything, I respect everyone’s opinion M, it’s more so the insult slinging and petty jabs that were being thrown, then the whole “kill cops”.. no? Not okay

[danyjr]

There is always going to be racist people in the world, much like there are always going to be murderers, rapists etc.

The problem for me still is the lack of means to question the police. If measures were in place so a racist policeman couldn't hurt a coloured man and get away with it, then we wouldn't be talking about this at all. For as long as we've given such people a platform to do as they please, we will have the same problem.

You can't eradicate racism from people's minds, but you absolutely can put laws in place to protect people who are being abused with great punishment on the abuser, policeman or not.

[rincon]

True. I just add that is not just about the racist policeman in the sense that at this point we can't say it's just a bad cop gone rogue. There is heavy racism in the police institution as a whole. And in the american society as well.

That's pretty much the point of "black lives matter". To the police (and other racists) black lives in fact matter less than white ones.

When a cop kills or harasses a black person he knows he will face little consequence because there is a whole institution protecting them in this case. This seems to be much less the case when they kill white people. Their system of checks and balances is not color blind.

[danyjr]

Then are you saying that, statistically speaking, white Americans are more racist than white Europeans?

[rincon]

White americans and white Europeans are wide nets to cast and racism is a broad term that comes in many forms. I'm sure things are different in Belarus vs in Belgium and in California vs in Michigan.

If you want to draw comparisons like that then what I'm saying is this: there is more racism and more violence in US police forces than in western european ones.

Absolutely.

[Myesyats]

Trevor Noah was also talking about this, that the police often behave differently in black vs white neighborhoods because they know that if they throw the wrong person against the wall in a white one the chances of them facing the consequences are considerably higher.

[Freeza]

Trevor Noah was also talking about this, that the police often behave differently in black vs white neighborhoods because they know that if they throw the wrong person against the wall in a white one the chances of them facing the consequences are considerably higher.

It's pretty common. NYC had a huge debacle with their Stop and Frisk policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City

I don't know how anyone can look at the facts about it and say there isn't racism in the police force. And this is in a democratic city. They basically stopped and searched people without there being evidence of wrongdoing.

In 2011 685,724 people were stopped.  

90%  were Latinx or African American. That's fucking wild considering they make up 54% of the city's population.

Just imagine a policy like this lasting over 10 years.

[M99]

The system is broken. Its ingrained in police training.

This sheds some light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4uCOAzrbM

[Art Morte]

You are missing that US police treats black and non-black VERY differently. Racism permeates these actions, police brutality is much less brushed when it is to a white person.

That's pretty much the point of "black lives matter". To the police (and other racists) black lives in fact matter less than white ones.
.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6689929/

A study into racial disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings (FOIS). I'll quote some bits, but it's not that long a read-through.

When considering all FOIS in 2015, we did not find anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity.


Concerns that White officers might disproportionately fatally shoot racial minorities can have powerful effects on police legitimacy (31). By using a comprehensive database of FOIS during 2015, officer race, sex, or experience did not predict the race of a person fatally shot beyond relationships explained by county demographics. On the other hand, race-specific violent crime strongly predicted the race of a civilian fatally shot by police, explaining over 40% of the variance in civilian race. These results bolster claims to take into account violent crime rates when examining fatal police shootings (20).


26% of civilians killed by police shootings in 2015 were Black (3, 14), even though Black civilians comprise only 12% of the US population. However, using population as a benchmark makes the strong assumption that White and Black civilians have equal exposure to situations that result in FOIS. When violent crime is used as a benchmark, anti-Black disparities in FOIS disappear or even reverse (20, 23–25).

Basically, when you take into account the fact that blacks commit proportionally more (violent) crime in the US than whites, this study found that there was no anti-black bias in fatal officer-involved shootings in 2015.

[rincon]

Fatalities are only one of many forms of police discrimination. Racial profiling is very present.

Besides that, accounting for crime draws another layer of bias over it. Because of the profiling and systemic issues, black americans are more at risk of being in situations that lead to crime or to police encounters leading to convictions.

The issues are deep, normalizing by another variable just makes the disparity implicit rather than explicit.

[Freeza]

Also that study really fails to account for a lot of things. It doesn't take racial profiling and cops operating in districts that resemble their appearance into account.

This paragraph described the problem with the study clearly:

Dean Knox and Princeton political scientist Jonathan Mummolo are pushing back against those conclusions with a critique that was published on the preprint server SSRN. They say the PNAS study is “uninformative” about racial bias because it assumes that black and white officers encounter black civilians in equal numbers.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/study-claims-white-police-no-more-likely-shoot-minorities-draws-fire

They also mention this study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854

It shows that there's 3.49 times bigger chance for an unarmed black person to be shot than a white, unarmed person.

___

There's also a huge lack on information that makes it impossible to determine the racial bias of police officers because the departments won't make it public, which in itself is a disgrace. Anything funded by tax dollars should be open to the public.

[Arquitecto]

The problem with American police institutions is that they generally have had a long-standing culture stemmed from racism to heavy racial profiling that only has gotten attention in the 90s.

Ive visited them for my own reasons and notice they all usually have a similar profile.

Bad haircuts
Not so educated
Usually one opinion and their dogmatic ideal of justice.

Their culture is just behind as a whole and not evolving their obsolete philosophy and a lot of cops are using it as an escape from their poor life performance and choices or wanting to play cop.


Similar to kids love shooting pixels up on screens and want to join the army just to kill. Literally just for that.


And the institution of the PDs are too protected for them to internally revolutionise themselves unless you have a guy like Frank Serpico in there who will shake things up.


This will only embitter cops more towards black people and the physical anarchy is a fucking joke. Im happy to see Fennec not use his minority status to justify what clearly is unacceptable in these riots. Change is needed but a more shrewd plan needs to be done rather than this degeneracy upon the streets.

[farfan]

The global reaction to this incident serves as a reminder that this is America's world and we're just living in it.

I perfectly understand the outcry in the US, especially among disenfranchised groups. But people taking to the streets to protest in New Zeeland and other countries? What are they expecting to accomplish? enact change in a foreign country from an ocean away? Those scenes reminded me of when non-Americans were protesting Trump's election back in 2016.

I think these people are so plugged into American culture, media, and politics to the point of genuinely believing that every major event that happens there involves them too. Racial oppression and police brutality aren't limited to the US (in fact, they are relatively mild in the US compared to some other countries), yet only incidents that take place in America are capable of generating a global reaction.

[CBarca]

I wish Sports the best. I'm sad that he's gone and we can't debate anymore. I disagreed with him fiercely and often, and over the course of coronavirus and the civil unrest in America, I feel like I saw Sports become more and more "rightward" thinking, if you will, over the course of it. I don't think that's necessarily wrong on its own, even if I disagree with it, but I hope that he stops watching Fox News and other biased, conservative media outlets (just like I would hope people don't get their info from MSNBC). Overall, I liked that he brought a diversity of opinion. For the most part, he was able to do so without the blatant and overt racism that Unique offered.

As for the "state of the thread", I think we should know that we are all friends here. Disagreements may be often, and words, at times, may be harsh. However, I think that people here still have a fondness for the others despite that. EG told me to "fuck a piggy" even though IMO we're on the same side here, and I find his anti science and extreme pro-communism stances alarming and absolutely ridiculous. But I'm proud to say EG is my friend.

And I think people here can take it. I know that we shouldn't discuss moderator actions, but I would be sad to see the thread locked. It's antithetical to what the movement going on is all about. I'll follow this post up with a separate one that is more on topic

[Myesyats]

I thought this index was kind of interesting: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-peaceful-countries/

US ranks very low in those, alongisde Saudi Arabia which is a shock to me.

[Freeza]

A black family tried to get the attention of the police to protect a neighborhood store in Van Nuys and were immediately handcuffed. pic.twitter.com/5iZRXUvbMP

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) June 2, 2020

[Freeza]

I thought this index was kind of interesting: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-peaceful-countries/

US ranks very low in those, alongisde Saudi Arabia which is a shock to me.

[CBarca]

I think it's important to link what's going on back to the title of the thread: gun violence. Ironically, it's the thing Sports said he's realizing is most important. What I think is tragic is my own belief that the existence of guns has been an extremely prevalent issue in fatal shootings of people of color.

The disclaimer here is that I think there are a large amount of measures that police departments need to take, and legislation that needs to be passed, to start to work to fixing the issues that we have. Race is at the root of everything that we're talking about here, even if my talking about gun control actually excludes race. Make no mistake, the biggest issue is racism and what I talk about doesn't solve that denominator.

With that being said, imagine that you are a cop in the United States. There are more guns than there are people. You patrol throughout the night and maybe even answer a couple calls of robberies, muggings, or other dangerous situations. As you enter the scene of the crime, you are acutely aware that anyone could have a gun, because such is the situation in the United States: anyone COULD have a gun extremely easily if they wanted to. As a cop, you feel that every night you're out on the streets, you're risking your life. There is the potential for that. You as a cop are human, and you have the same exact mindset that most other humans do: I just want to get back home alive.

As you enter the scene of a crime, knowing that you might end up having a gun pulled on you at any point (and knowing that you just want to get home alive), might you end up trigger happy? You might have the mindset of "it's him or me".

I think that's the tragedy right there. Because it is that attitude that will lead many cops to shoot people they maybe might otherwise not have shot. Maybe an individual riding on a bike with a toy gun in their pocket. Because you're scared, and you don't want to give up your tactical advantage. You don't want to lose your life.

Of course, this is a failure of police training. There are many moments in this situation where there are failures -- a failure to keep calm is paramount. A failure to de-escalate instead of reaching for the gun. A failure of quick thinking. A failure to properly assess the danger of the situation, perhaps. None of these have to do with the presence of a potential criminal with a gun, and these failures fall squarely on police departments and incompetent police themselves.

But the gun is there.

Imagine if we live a life where guns are relatively rare. Perhaps in a life like that, cops don't even have a gun on them. The gun stays in the police vehicle where it can be accessed if truly needed. The cop instead has to rely on tools like speech, de-escalation, and if it comes to it, a taser, if needed. In the vast majority of situations, that's all that is needed, even in our current life. Not only is that a change in the fact that there would be less fatal shootings, but I think it brings a change in attitude, for both policemen and for the people around him or her. I don't know how many of you have been around people with guns (based on where you live), but it's unnerving and frightening to me. It is to many people. Just taking that away might allow people to breathe easier.

Yes, the police can still make the lives of POC miserable through racial profiling. The police can still be brutal to people who don't deserve it. That's why I say that this is just one thing I've been thinking about (which doesn't even address the core issue of racism).

But that's why I think the second amendment is tragic, and why I find Sports now utter worship of it a shame. I think guns are playing a huge psychological role. And this can even be extended to issues where people of color aren't even affected as well. This is police shootings in general.

[BarrileteCosmico]

Good article I've seen shared around:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/opinion/george-floyd-protest-police.html

Here are some steps to move the country toward a place where citizens don’t live in fear of those charged with serving and protecting them:

USE-OF-FORCE POLICIES

In departments with policies that sharply limit when, where and how police officers may use force, shootings and killings by the police are much lower. For instance, police officers should be required to try de-escalation before resorting to the use of force. They should not be allowed to choke people. Officers should be required to stop other officers from using excessive force.

TRANSPARENCY

When the police do use deadly force, the public should be able to know about it. That means getting rid of provisions like Section 50-a of New York’s civil rights law, which prevents the release of police personnel and disciplinary records and allows bad officers to continue abusing their power with impunity.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Police officers enjoy a web of protections against the consequences of their behavior on the job. From the legal doctrine of qualified immunity to state and local police indemnification laws, it is nearly impossible for a plaintiff to get any justice, even when an officer unquestionably violated his or her rights.

UNION CONTRACTS

Across the country, powerful police unions negotiate favorable contracts that shield the police from investigation and discourage citizens from bringing complaints. The contracts make it easier to hire, and harder to fire, officers with documented histories of bad behavior. Cities are under no obligation to agree to these terms, and they shouldn’t.

LEVERAGE FEDERAL FUNDING

Following the beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Congress empowered the Justice Department to oversee local police departments. That led to scores of investigations and long-overdue reforms in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. But the federal government also has other tools. It can deny grants to police departments that fail to impose strict use-of-force policies or refuse to discipline officers who engage in misconduct.

DEMILITARIZATION

When you have a grenade launcher, even peaceful protesters look like enemy combatants. It’s no surprise that as police departments have stocked up on military-grade equipment, they have acted more aggressively. The Obama administration restricted the flow of certain types of equipment, but President Trump lifted those restrictions in 2017.

It'll be interesting to see what Biden (as the "black people's candidate") comes up with, and how ambitious it is

[Myesyats]

no words

[Young Kaz]

The culture around goods, and property, in the west is a real sight to behold.

Even on here, more outrage was shown over me wanting to use this to get a copy of a game from Nintendo than an actual guy saying he would kill someone for getting near them as a protestor

Wallahi.

[Myesyats]

The culture around goods, and property, in the west is a real sight to behold.

Even on here, more outrage was shown over me wanting to use this to get a copy of a game from Nintendo than an actual guy saying he would kill someone for getting near them as a protestor

Wallahi.

How is that culture different in the East?

[Freeza]

no words

Is anyone surprised?

When the president keeps calling "the media" enemy of the people something like this is bound to happen.

[The Demon of Carthage]

The looks on their faces after they realize he's an FBI agent is priceless and satisfying.



BTW, on Facebook, some people are defending the police for what they did to him.

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