6 ms·

I don't think it's helpful to assume the police were racist.

tmp538394722 6y ago
Racism is a system. The police are (a major) part of that system.
esperent 6y ago
Absolutely true. However, there is not much assuming being done. The absolutely stark, clear, and unassailable fact that many police in the US are violent, racist thugs has been repeatedly shoved into my face over the last few months. Not all of them are, by any means. But even the good cops are part of a system that enables and rewards racist, thuggish behavior.
- notassigned 6y ago
  Well I can't argue with that since you said 'many' police in a country of 350+ million people. But what is many? 5? 100? 1000? It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen. If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it. Business as usual.
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    If it happens once that's once too many.
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    This is a nonsense argument. Police in the United States kill civilians at a rate more that 3x the rate of the next first world nation. In almost all cases of police acting with bias, those same officers are surrounded by other officers who do nothing. All of these bystanding officers are guilty of the same crime. These cases are just the ones that are brought to the national attention there are many more that are not. In very many of these cases several police body cameras just stopped working or were not on. "in reality, things like this almost never happen" I am willing to bet your life experience is very different than those of minorities. " If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it" Not sure what you base this on, I feel like to could be based on nothing but the narrative you are attempting spin. Is your argument that police should be more aggressive based on what could happen? Should police just gun everyone down because they may have a gun and pull it out and shoot them in the head? In this country, police have godlike life or death power, every instance of police killings should be heavily scrutinized by neutral parties and stringent protocols put in place to prevent it with harsh criminal penalties for those that dont follow the rules. How you can just shrug and accept any cases of police brutality is beyond me.
    - notassigned 6y ago
      1. I am black. 2. There is no police brutality in my area, or crime for that matter. 3. I don't shrug and accept police brutality, those are your words. 4. I am not trying to spin a narrative, merely point out a narrative that is being spun by the media that directs attention away from actual solutions in favor of self-dealing sensationalism. Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made.
      - learc83 6y ago
        What area is that? Can you link to some stats.
      - wonderwonder 6y ago
        There are very few areas on the United States with no crime... "Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made." They are but when they make mistakes people die or are sent to jail for decades or are stripped of their property. To give people this much power and shrug and say its a mistake is not acceptable. Very often these same cops have many / dozens of complaints against them and they still continue to act with impunity because they know that they are not going to be punished. A mistake is a mistake, 10 / 15 mistakes in and it is a pattern, extrapolated out over tens of thousands of officers and it is a systematic problem.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen. In reality USA has 3-10x the number of police shootings per capita than a random western country (heck, worse than many developing countries of even dictatorships). So, yeah, the metrics are off. If your counter-argument is "yeah, but US has more crime too", then maybe think long and hard if your whole legal system, approach to crime, society goals, etc, are justified then....
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  “Good” cops regularly stonewall investigations into bad cops, and vote for police unions that will do everything in their power to literally allow bad cops to get away with murder.
hkt 6y ago
To suggest it isn't useful suggests it doesn't have massive amounts of explanatory power (which it does)
john_moscow 6y ago
I've googled up the bodycam videos of the incident [0]. I think, the police started acting the way they did, because the suspect didn't stop when the police clearly asked him to do so, and pushed one of the officers when they grabbed him. It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8
- notacoward 6y ago
  > It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. That comment really didn't age well, did it? I think just about anyone can see what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse and recognize that racism was a factor in the disparate treatment.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. What about if the white person in the same situation wasn't even asked to stop in the first place? It's not just about "how police treats blacks vs whites who refuse to stop" but also about "how often police asks blacks vs whites to stop".
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    That would be fair if you could detangle if from specific suspicious behavioral patterns. Like wearing a mask (pre-pandemic) in a neighborhood where robberies by mask-wearing perpetrators are common.
    - wonderwonder 6y ago
      Is it illegal to wear a mask? If the answer is no then the police have no right to stop him for wearing a mask. Police having the leeway to determine what is suspicious vs having to obey the law is what leads to thousands of minorities being stopped, roughed up and arrested for resisting arrest. If you are a minority and do nothing wrong, how many stops for being black would it take before you became a little defensive or frustrated? Imagine your life being constantly interrupted by uniform wearing people with a track record of killing people with your complexion.
coldtea 6y ago
By this point we don't have to assume it. And it's not even up to the individual, racism is systemic in police, part of their everyday talk, their (real, not lip service) training discussions, their protocols, etc.
specialist 6y ago
Okay. So what's your alternate theory for why Elijah McClain was murdered? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24252167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24252167.

Racism is a system. The police are (a major) part of that system.

Absolutely true. However, there is not much assuming being done. The absolutely stark, clear, and unassailable fact that many police in the US are violent, racist thugs has been repeatedly shoved into my face over the last few months. Not all of them are, by any means. But even the good cops are part of a system that enables and rewards racist, thuggish behavior.

notassigned 6y ago
Well I can't argue with that since you said 'many' police in a country of 350+ million people. But what is many? 5? 100? 1000? It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen. If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it. Business as usual.
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  If it happens once that's once too many.
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  This is a nonsense argument. Police in the United States kill civilians at a rate more that 3x the rate of the next first world nation. In almost all cases of police acting with bias, those same officers are surrounded by other officers who do nothing. All of these bystanding officers are guilty of the same crime. These cases are just the ones that are brought to the national attention there are many more that are not. In very many of these cases several police body cameras just stopped working or were not on. "in reality, things like this almost never happen" I am willing to bet your life experience is very different than those of minorities. " If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it" Not sure what you base this on, I feel like to could be based on nothing but the narrative you are attempting spin. Is your argument that police should be more aggressive based on what could happen? Should police just gun everyone down because they may have a gun and pull it out and shoot them in the head? In this country, police have godlike life or death power, every instance of police killings should be heavily scrutinized by neutral parties and stringent protocols put in place to prevent it with harsh criminal penalties for those that dont follow the rules. How you can just shrug and accept any cases of police brutality is beyond me.
  - notassigned 6y ago
    1. I am black. 2. There is no police brutality in my area, or crime for that matter. 3. I don't shrug and accept police brutality, those are your words. 4. I am not trying to spin a narrative, merely point out a narrative that is being spun by the media that directs attention away from actual solutions in favor of self-dealing sensationalism. Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made.
    - learc83 6y ago
      What area is that? Can you link to some stats.
    - wonderwonder 6y ago
      There are very few areas on the United States with no crime... "Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made." They are but when they make mistakes people die or are sent to jail for decades or are stripped of their property. To give people this much power and shrug and say its a mistake is not acceptable. Very often these same cops have many / dozens of complaints against them and they still continue to act with impunity because they know that they are not going to be punished. A mistake is a mistake, 10 / 15 mistakes in and it is a pattern, extrapolated out over tens of thousands of officers and it is a systematic problem.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen. In reality USA has 3-10x the number of police shootings per capita than a random western country (heck, worse than many developing countries of even dictatorships). So, yeah, the metrics are off. If your counter-argument is "yeah, but US has more crime too", then maybe think long and hard if your whole legal system, approach to crime, society goals, etc, are justified then....
ashtonkem 6y ago
“Good” cops regularly stonewall investigations into bad cops, and vote for police unions that will do everything in their power to literally allow bad cops to get away with murder.

hkt 6y ago

To suggest it isn't useful suggests it doesn't have massive amounts of explanatory power (which it does)

john_moscow 6y ago

I've googled up the bodycam videos of the incident [0]. I think, the police started acting the way they did, because the suspect didn't stop when the police clearly asked him to do so, and pushed one of the officers when they grabbed him. It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8

notacoward 6y ago
> It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. That comment really didn't age well, did it? I think just about anyone can see what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse and recognize that racism was a factor in the disparate treatment.
coldtea 6y ago
>It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently. What about if the white person in the same situation wasn't even asked to stop in the first place? It's not just about "how police treats blacks vs whites who refuse to stop" but also about "how often police asks blacks vs whites to stop".
- john_moscow 6y ago
  That would be fair if you could detangle if from specific suspicious behavioral patterns. Like wearing a mask (pre-pandemic) in a neighborhood where robberies by mask-wearing perpetrators are common.
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    Is it illegal to wear a mask? If the answer is no then the police have no right to stop him for wearing a mask. Police having the leeway to determine what is suspicious vs having to obey the law is what leads to thousands of minorities being stopped, roughed up and arrested for resisting arrest. If you are a minority and do nothing wrong, how many stops for being black would it take before you became a little defensive or frustrated? Imagine your life being constantly interrupted by uniform wearing people with a track record of killing people with your complexion.

coldtea 6y ago

By this point we don't have to assume it. And it's not even up to the individual, racism is systemic in police, part of their everyday talk, their (real, not lip service) training discussions, their protocols, etc.

specialist 6y ago

Okay. So what's your alternate theory for why Elijah McClain was murdered? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24252167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24252167.