[HN Gopher] Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot ...
___________________________________________________________________
Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020
Author : mycologos
Score : 320 points
Date : 2021-04-24 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nj.com)
| logicslave wrote:
| I'm a highly educated individual, commonly read dense scientific
| works, philosophy, political science etc. Its my opinion that
| violent crime, and especially brazen violent crime is just flat
| out more common. Police are more frequently in life threatening
| situations. The demands on them to act perfectly are enormous.
| And so we see mistakes, broadly painted as racism. Its a
| cancerous thought framework, and it threatens the law and order
| of a civilized nation. But the video that is coming out is making
| it clear to the common people, that despite what the media says,
| you can see for yourself what occurs. The narrative can only be
| held for so long before too much video evidence to the contrary
| piles up.
|
| George Floyd robbed a women by holding his gun to her pregnant
| stomach.
|
| Duante Wright robbed a girl by choking her, holding her at gun
| point, for 800$
|
| Adam Toledo was known in his neighborhood as "Lil Homicide"
|
| The 16 year old girl shot recently was running at people swinging
| a knife.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Imagine thinking anyone would believe someone with such an
| idiotic opening sentence is actually "highly educated,"
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Don't repost this all through the thread, please. It was bad
| enough the first time.
| [deleted]
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Why is this such a rarity these days?
|
| My grandfather was an AP (MP) for decades and never shot at
| anyone, despite handling uncountable hairy/critical situations
| with individuals trained in killing.
|
| Shoot first and ask questions never? Deescalation and self-
| control should be job #1 along with verbal/social skills to solve
| problems before jumping to the nuclear option out of fear.
| logicslave wrote:
| Because criminals have alot of guns
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| That seems oversimplified. Do you have any data about the
| trends of gun possession by criminals or gun crime related to
| attacks on police?
|
| There are also a lot of innocent people being shot too, or
| the visibility of it has increased.
|
| Edit: also, could it be police are less trained or more
| fearful than in the past?
| logicslave wrote:
| I'm a highly educated individual, commonly read dense
| scientific works, philosophy, political science etc. Its my
| opinion that violent crime, and especially brazen violent
| crime is just flat out more common. Police are more
| frequently in life threatening situations. The demands on
| them to act perfectly are enormous. And so we see mistakes,
| broadly painted as racism. Its a cancerous thought
| framework, and it threatens the law and order of a
| civilized nation.
|
| But the video that is coming out is making it clear to the
| common people, that despite what the media says, you can
| see for yourself what occurs. The narrative can only be
| held for so long before too much video evidence to the
| contrary piles up.
|
| George Floyd robbed a women by holding his gun to her
| pregnant stomach.
|
| Duante Wright robbed a girl by choking her, holding her at
| gun point, for 800$
|
| Adam Toledo was known in his neighborhood as "Lil Homicide"
|
| The 16 year old girl shot recently was running at people
| swinging a knife.
| simfree wrote:
| Were Adam Toledo, Duante Wright or George Floyd
| threatening anyone's life or liberty at the time of their
| deaths?
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| > I'm a highly educated individual, commonly read dense
| scientific works, philosophy, political science etc.
|
| For a second, I thought you were going to mention MENSA.
| So do many of HN old guard. Appeal to authority isn't
| evidence; it's an opinion, and not even an expert
| opinion.
|
| > threatens the law and order of a civilized nation
|
| The US has the highest incarceration per capita on the
| planet (sans Seychelles), disproportionately imprisoning
| minorities. Consider the works and interviews by Chris
| Hedges, who teaches classes in prison. Many of his
| students are in for petty drug crimes. Furthermore, there
| are numerous aging inmates who were snared by the War on
| Drugs and in prison for no good reason. Remember, the WoD
| was explicitly used to target Nixon's perceived enemies:
| hippies and minorities. Then, (Nancy) Reagan decided it
| would be a good idea to go after drugs while
| simultaneously arming the Contras using cocaine, leading
| to the crack epidemic.
| logicslave wrote:
| "disproportionately imprisoning minorities"
|
| Go look at the murder rate of ethnic groups, against
| their own groups and then against other groups. If
| minorities are killing alot of people, its not a "racism"
| problem. Framing it as so is brainwashing. You are a
| political pawn
|
| If you want to take it further, look at a break down of
| murder rate of ethnic groups by income decile.
| olivermarks wrote:
| A sobering article to back up @logicslave's point
| https://www.city-journal.org/media-silence-on-black-on-
| black...
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| > George Floyd robbed a women by holding his gun to her
| pregnant stomach.
|
| A quick DDG says this is an urban legend, or do you, Mr.
| "Highly educated individual, commonly read dense
| scientific works, philosophy, political science etc" know
| better?
|
| And did those things you read justify the death he
| suffered? The cops didn't even know his past, and even if
| they did, so fucking what, their job isn't to judge
| someone to be worthy of death and then executing them...
|
| But well, it's easy enough for people like you to find
| excuses that "those people were bad guys" who "deserved
| it", so you can sleep at night and not admit to yourself
| that maybe you're biased.
|
| > Police are more frequently in life threatening
| situations. The demands on them to act perfectly are
| enormous.
|
| The 4 fuckers had 9 minutes to change the situation and
| not end up being shit cops, with at least one of them
| rotting in jail because he was deemed to have broken the
| law (although maybe not in your book(s), Mr. Dunning
| Kruger?). Were they in a life threatening situation for
| those 9 minutes?
| stevenicr wrote:
| You got me to search on this - I used startpage - Only
| used the first three results..
|
| I learned more about the situation than I had 'heard'
| before - so thanks for that. I do not think the
| 'undisputed' facts make the thing total 'urban legend'
| however.
|
| It seems there is some questioning as to whether or not
| the girl was pregnant or not - even the places that seem
| to be trying to downplay the 'social media legend' - aka
| politifact giving a "false" because a wrong picture was
| being used on an instagram (meme?) - It seems that there
| is no debate that he (with others) forced into a home,
| and using a gun, threatened a couple of people and a
| toddler - at one point shoving a gun into the stomach of
| a woman - demanding to know where the money and drugs
| are.
|
| I do not write this to justify anything - I am a seeker
| of truths, which more and more these days seem to elude
| 'both sides' of many discussions.
|
| For what it's worth I wish things ended differently with
| the Floyd situation, and I think a majority of people on
| either side/any side also feel the same.
| mkl wrote:
| Maybe you should base your opinions on data:
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| Violent crime in the USA has fallen dramatically in the
| last 20 years.
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'If it is fact, not fiction, that violent street crime
| today is almost exclusively a minority phenomenon, then
| it would appear that one simply may not speak about it.
| That proscription injures law-abiding residents of high-
| crime areas most of all, people like the aunt of a child
| victim in St. Louis, who told the Washington Post in
| October: "I live in fear of living in St. Louis. I feel
| trapped." Such citizens beg for more police protection
| and see the police as the only thing standing between
| them and anarchy.'
|
| From https://www.city-journal.org/media-silence-on-black-
| on-black...
|
| Maybe you should spend less time looking at government
| data and more time experiencing the streets.
|
| https://youtu.be/QfCZqkpS4PA
| mkl wrote:
| Logicslave said: "Its my opinion that violent crime, and
| especially brazen violent crime is just flat out more
| common."
|
| The data don't seem to support that.
|
| Obviously violent crime still exists in the USA, and from
| my point of view in NZ the rates seem scarily high. That
| doesn't mean they haven't decreased.
| olivermarks wrote:
| @mkI In San Francisco where I am violent crime has
| absolutely exploded since theft under $950 per day has
| been reduced to a misdemeanor. Adding fuel to this fire
| are opioid addicts stealing to feed their habit, a toxic
| combination of extremely violent attacks coupled with
| endless petty crime. The big Walgreens drugstore chain
| Walgreens has closed ten stores in SF primarily due to
| rampant crime, with a lot of small retailers also closing
| to protect staff.
|
| https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-
| def...
| [deleted]
| rolha-capoeira wrote:
| "George Floyd robbed a women by holding his gun to her
| pregnant stomach." Even if true, cops aren't supposed to
| be judge, jury, and executioner. Talk about threatening
| "law and order".
|
| "Adam Toledo was known in his neighborhood as "Lil
| Homicide"" Even if you believe this, let's just kill all
| children with violent nicknames, eh?
|
| I don't know why I bothered, when you opened your comment
| by boasting about your alleged intelligence. I hope you
| are never in a position to hurt anyone with your law and
| order.
| logicslave wrote:
| Both of those examples are easily verifiable with a
| google search. Murals of Adam Toledo have "Lil Homicide"
| as part of the mural.
|
| "Well you know so what if George FLoyd threatened to
| shoot a pregnant woman in the stomach! Hes a gentle
| giant! A working class honest man!" -Brainwashed
| Americans
|
| Go look at the murder rate of ethnic groups, against
| their own groups and then against other groups. If
| minorities are killing alot of people, its not a "racism"
| problem. Framing it as so is brainwashing. You are a
| political pawn
|
| If you want to take it further, look at a break down of
| murder rate of ethnic groups by income decile.
|
| This is a cultural problem, and people are not owning up
| to the glorification of violence
| xsmasher wrote:
| >George FLoyd threatened to shoot a pregnant woman in the
| stomach
|
| Snopes says it's not true; who (outside of right-wing
| faxlore) says it is?
|
| What's it called when you believe something that matches
| your bias, even when it isn't true?
| orf wrote:
| > I'm a highly educated individual, commonly read dense
| scientific works, philosophy, political science etc
|
| And yet you wrote something as cringey as that.
|
| > Adam Toledo was known in his neighborhood as "Lil
| Homicide"
|
| Imagine having such a highly educated brain, filled with
| dense scientific works as well as philosophy, and using
| it to justify the murder of an unarmed 13 year old child
| by the state.
|
| None of the examples you used in any way justify their
| death nor do they lend any evidence to the idea that
| systematic racism within the police force doesn't exist.
|
| Edit: to the person who replied saying that not liking
| kids being shot by the police is nothing but 'the "woke"
| liberal "narrative" that is leaking onto HN' then deleted
| their comment, seek help.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Different training. Different level of
| accountability/liability/etc. Cops are not trained to
| deescalate, their are taught to have commanding control and
| respond aggressively. And they are trained to shoot to kill.
| They are also taught to fear a lot, the emphasis is on danger
| they are in.
|
| And plus, this behavior is rewarded with promotions. And courts
| progressively removed legal obstacles to the above.
| creato wrote:
| I'm not sure about entire departments, but for individual
| officers, it's not rare. Many if not most police officers never
| fire their weapon on duty for their entire careers.
|
| For some perspective, there are around a million police
| officers in the US
| (https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=249).
|
| A lot of police shooting incidents have made the national news
| in recent years, but I can think of tens of such incidents over
| a decade.
| dfrankow wrote:
| Police kill about 1000-1200 people per year in the U.S.,
| depending on who's counting. See for example the Washington
| Post data. So it's not just tens over a decade.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| IIRC, isn't the CDC forbidden by law from investigating all
| types of deaths by firearms?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The CDC WISQARS database contains fatal and non-fatal
| injuries for many different mechanisms, including
| firearms. The law you are thinking of is the "Dickey
| Amendment" which forbade the CDC from spending its budget
| advocating for gun control. It was named after Republican
| and galactic asshat Jay Dickey of Arkansas, who
| thankfully has been removed from influence over national
| politics by his much-awaited death in 2017. His idiotic
| law passed out of effect in 2018. Just before he died, in
| a meaningless act which did not redeem his evil life even
| slightly, he recanted and called for government funding
| of research into gun violence.
| [deleted]
| creato wrote:
| First, that means ~99.9% of police officers in the US _don
| 't_ shoot someone, so that isn't rare, as the post I
| responded to suggested.
|
| Second, I didn't say the police only kill tens of people
| over a decade, I said tens of incidents have made the
| national news. Only the noteworthy cases make the national
| news, which is kind of the point here. People's opinions
| are shaped by the most extreme incidents.
|
| I think we should try to reform how policing is done to
| improve these issues. But I also don't think it's the
| crisis that our society has made it out to be recently.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's not the _deaths_ , per se. It's the entire structure
| around it that enables those deaths to happen, and
| prevents consequences for the killers.
| eaurouge wrote:
| > I think we should try to reform how policing is done to
| improve these issues. But I also don't think it's the
| crisis that our society has made it out to be recently.
|
| Perhaps because you don't see yourself as being affected
| by said perceived crisis. For affected groups, it is very
| much the crisis it has been made out to be. Besides,
| shooting statistics are often symptoms of deeper issues
| that need addressing.
| randomopining wrote:
| Yeah so "defund the police!" Should actually be "fund better
| police training!"
|
| Of course the AOC-type libs are utterly wrong. Biden is right.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yeah so "defund the police!" Should actually be "fund better
| police training!"
|
| Most people saying the former would support it being
| accompanied by the latter, however, they will note that that
| the past several decades have involved several police reform
| movements that have driven additional net funding to police at
| the expense of other local services, contributing to the
| expansion of police roles. "Defund the police" is about driving
| down the proportion of local funding consumed by paramilitary
| law enforcement and, along with it, the scope of
| responsibility. Increasing the share of those remaining
| resoueces devoted to training, and even moreso the quality of
| that training in respect to the remaining role of the
| paramilitary law enforcement services, is not something
| "defund" activists oppose, just something that they see as
| inadequate and not the first priority.
| samatman wrote:
| There were 287 homicides in Newark in 2020, up from 234 in 2019.
| That's 53 more lives lost, a shocking 23% increase.
|
| How related are these two facts? I don't know, but if you're
| going to come at this with "completely unrelated" I question your
| honesty.
|
| Source: https://www.nj.com/crime/2020/12/homicides-in-nj-
| soared-22-i...
|
| Edit: apologies for not reading the source carefully, I was
| mislead by the search I used to retrieve it. That was for all of
| New Jersey, not Newark, where homicides have been flat (and that
| is unusual for the United States in general).
|
| I'm pretty distracted today. Sorry about that.
| darkerside wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/chart/23905/change-in-homicides-in-...
| 5vforest wrote:
| Your cited source literally says the opposite:
|
| > While Trenton and Paterson saw spikes this year, other cities
| like Newark and Jersey City haven't seen much of a change.
| vanviegen wrote:
| 2020 was by no means a typical year. A rise in domestic
| violence, perhaps? Still seems weird though.
| tyingq wrote:
| You're quoting stats for all of New Jersey, not just Newark.
|
| This sentence is in your linked source:
|
| _" In Newark, the state's most populous city, 51 homicides
| occurred in 2020 as of Dec. 30 -- the same number the city had
| in 2019, officials said."_
|
| Which seems pretty notable. The most populous city is flat,
| while the state itself is up 23%.
| koolba wrote:
| Given the lack of commuters and total cancellation of
| sporting events limiting tourism, I'd expect a drop in
| overall crime of all kinds in Newark. A flat number with the
| lower flow of people isn't necessarily a drop.
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't know the reasons, but that wasn't the case for
| murder. Murders in US cities were almost universally up, by
| big numbers, in 2020. "Flat" for Newark was an actual
| accomplishment.
|
| https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343950694672379905
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-
| rise...
| martin_bech wrote:
| One of the big differences between the US and Europe. Violence
| is way down here, as the nightlife is pretty much gone because
| of the covid restrictions.
| tyingq wrote:
| Some time ago, I watched Frontline's "Policing the Police"
| episode that featured Newark and Baraka's efforts. The episode
| was fairly early in their process (2016), and does a nice job of
| framing up both the problem, and how they intended to solve it.
| Jelani Cobb hosts it. He does a ride-along, and somewhat
| incredibly, sees the problems first hand...despite the cops he's
| riding with knowing full well he's filming everything.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/policing-the-police/
|
| Edit: Apparently this link works outside the US:
| https://player.pbs.org/widget/partnerplayer/2365792793/
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| It's on youtube [1]. They released another documentary with the
| same name and the same Newark subject with 2020 updates [2].
| They both have the same duration but are different.
|
| [1] Policing the Police (2016)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_8vTl6D940
|
| [2] Policing the Police (2020)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taNwWilMVLg
|
| Both come with optional English subtitles.
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| Can't edit above comment. Invidious to the rescue [1]. Just
| enable 'proxy videos' in settings (circle icon).
|
| https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=2_8vTl6D940
|
| and
|
| https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=taNwWilMVLg
|
| Notes: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
| imagineerschool wrote:
| Extra confusing that they share a lot of footage. The 2020
| release is an update more than a new work.
| gadrev wrote:
| I guess it's US only? Can't access from EU.
| imagineerschool wrote:
| Confirmed, can't access it from Canada, but with a VPN to
| the US, it's available.
|
| Who makes these choices?
| jmartrican wrote:
| I didn't even know YouTube did this.
| oivey wrote:
| It's similar to the BBC blocking non-UK streamers.
| WandOfALeftFoot wrote:
| The BBC is not free though.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Neither is PBS. It's funded through grants, donations and
| government funding via the _Corporation for Public
| Broadcasting_ [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Publ
| ic_Broad...
| monocasa wrote:
| Right, but even to endusers, the BBC isn't free, unlike
| PBC.
| DanBC wrote:
| The BBC is free. There's no charge to use the BBC.
|
| There's a TV licence, but that's payable if you watch any
| live tv as it's broadcast.
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| Works in India.
| tyingq wrote:
| On the off chance PBS allows access outside the US:
| https://player.pbs.org/widget/partnerplayer/2365792793/
| piva00 wrote:
| Surprisingly it worked here in Sweden, thank you!
| bmn__ wrote:
| Works for me, also EU.
|
| Use torsocks and youtube-dl to circumvent your region
| blocking.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Looking at the 28-day periods, aggravated assault is up a lot,
| robbery is down by a lot, and most of the rest are within what I
| imagine are the yearly fluctuations. Is there more convincing
| support for the claim that crime is down in Newark?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Police rarely stop crimes in progress. As the saying goes,
| "when seconds count, the police are minutes away."
|
| A strategy of high visibility, or "omnipresence" may have more
| of a deterrent effect than anything else.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Violent crime has been on a decade-long decline in Newark[1] so
| wouldn't at all be surprising if crime as a whole declined in
| 2020.
|
| [1] https://www.city-data.com/city/Newark-New-Jersey.html
| jghn wrote:
| Even if it stays stable, isn't that enough evidence that we
| don't need the Warrior Cop model? Being able to demonstrate an
| _improvement_ in crime by toning down the violence is just
| gravy on top.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| What it does confirm is that you don't need "warriored" up
| cops. Regular protect and serve types will work.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think this only addresses half of what's wrong with Newark PD.
|
| Newark still spends about a third of it's city budget on police,
| at the expense of essential services like infrastructure and
| education.
|
| Newark PD still arrests Black people at a much much higher rate
| than white people. The disparity of arrest rates is even greater
| when it comes to drug possession.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I'm sure I'll get downvoted but isn't it possible that BOTH the
| real crime rate is higher in more poverty stricken areas AND
| that cops are more likely to arrest blacks in general? Does it
| always have to be one or the other, rather than both?
| loeg wrote:
| > Newark still spends about a third of it's city budget on
| police, at the expense of essential services like
| infrastructure and education.
|
| How does that compare with other metros? My impression is that
| police and schools are some of the most expensive services
| cities provide, and both consume a significant chunk of most
| cities' budgets.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Check the demographics, white people make up only about one
| third of the population in Newark.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Never let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
| commentingbadly wrote:
| Is there a Goodwin's Law for citing FBI statistics yet?
|
| Why doesn't the FBI calculate this by income?
|
| And just so you know, probably about 50% of people that
| read you citing the FBI statistics will think you are a
| hardcore racist. I'm not calling you a racist, but I'm
| letting you know how hard everyone rolls their eyes when
| you post something like this.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/despite-being-
| only-13-percent...
| elil17 wrote:
| Arresting at a hire rate means in comparison to the
| demographics of the city. In 2020, 50% of Newark residents
| were Black but 80% of arrests were of Black people. 80% of
| victims of police use of force were Black. A third of the
| city is white but only 4% of police use of force victims are
| white. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/07/newark-must-do-more-
| to-st...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Won't there always be racial disparities in policing
| outside of the police's control if different socio-economic
| classes commit crimes at different rates, and different
| races are differently distributed among the socio-economic
| classes?
| OJFord wrote:
| It doesn't mean anything without specifying the
| denominator, they could've meant per unit time, population,
| or crime.
|
| Now that you've specified though, the only remaining wiggle
| room is 'who is actually committing the crimes'.
|
| 80% arrests being black people is 'fine' if 80% of
| 'arrestable crime'[^] is committed by the black population;
| it just points to something other than policing needing
| improvement. Education perhaps, or welfare.
|
| [^] by this I just mean that not all convicted crime
| involves an arrest, and maybe there are demographic
| differences in the types of crimes committed
| nerdponx wrote:
| The problem with all this data is that it doesn't inform us
| of who is actually _committing crimes_.
|
| If we are overly fixated on racism by the police and
| confuse correlation with causation, we might entirely miss
| other structural/systemic factors that might be leading (or
| forcing) black people to criminal behavior more often than
| white people.
|
| I am aware of some research that tries to estimate
| propensity to actually commit crimes using victim surveys
| instead of police data, but I see so many conflicting
| results from different academic fields that I don't feel
| like I can form an opinion.
|
| All I know is that measuring disparities in arrests is not
| enough and cannot possibly be enough to distinguish police
| racism specifically from other racial disparities.
| stadium wrote:
| The police don't get to decide who committed a crime, the
| judicial system does.
|
| Yours is the same argument that George Floyd deserved
| what he got because he was a criminal. Being arrested or
| frisked by police does not a criminal make. Conviction
| does.
|
| It's a duck.
| OJFord wrote:
| It seems oddly philosophical to suggest that a crime
| hasn't been committed until its would-be committor has
| been convicted...
|
| Regardless of what you want to call it in the time
| between the event later deemed criminal, and the
| sentencing, surely you see that that's what GP was
| referring to? That there may be differences in demography
| of 'who is involved in these events'.
| stadium wrote:
| It's not philosophical, it's the law. And GP dismisses
| the overwhelmingly higher rates of arrests for non whites
| as not being a systemic racism issue and assumes that
| white people commit fewer crimes with no data to back it
| up.
|
| > If we are overly fixated
|
| Sorry but that is gaslighting and victim blaming. Tell
| the parent of a black teenager to not be overly fixated
| on police reform.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > It's not philosophical, it's the law.
|
| All of these are considered crimes in all jurisdictions I
| know of in the USA: theft/burglary/robbery, violence or
| threat thereof, and reckless endangerment. If you commit
| one of those acts, you have definitionally committed a
| crime, even if you are not convicted in a court of law.
|
| > dismisses the overwhelmingly higher rates of arrests
| for non whites as not being a systemic racism issue
|
| I encourage you to re-read what I wrote, because that
| isn't what I said.
|
| My post raises a question of _causality_. There are
| several common proposals for why arrest rates for blacks
| are disproportionately high:
|
| 1. Police are racist, so they arrest black people at
| higher rates than other people, regardless of
| criminality.
|
| 2. Criminal law is written specifically to target black
| people.
|
| 3. Black people, due to systemic racism elsewhere in
| society, end up committing more acts-that-are-legally-
| defined-as-crimes, and this eventually leads to a greater
| number of arrests.
|
| 4. Actual racist ideology, which is generally vile and I
| will not repeat it here.
|
| The reality is probably a combination of explanations
| 1-3, and there is surely mutual causality among them.
|
| Any serious attempt to understand the problem must
| attempt to disentangle these explanations from each
| other.
|
| > assumes that white people commit fewer crimes with no
| data to back it up
|
| I said that we specifically _don 't have good data_, but
| it's not safe to assume that all demographics commit
| crimes at the same rate. See above.
|
| > Sorry but that is gaslighting and victim blaming. Tell
| the parent of a black teenager to not be overly fixated
| on police reform.
|
| This is a bad faith misrepresentation of what I wrote.
|
| If anything, the media getting stuff kinda-wrong but
| still raising awareness is a net positive.
|
| Also it should be obvious that police reform is
| necessary, and obviously people will care the most about
| the issues that affect them personally.
|
| Moreover, nothing ever seems to get done without single-
| minded people focusing intently on a single problem. We
| need people working on _all_ aspects of the racism issue,
| including racism in policing and law.
|
| But you simply cannot look at the arrest numbers and
| assume that the discrepancy is definitely and entirely
| because of police racism. It would be fallacious to do
| so, and if you intend to put forth policy based on data
| then you should try to avoid logical fallacies in the
| process.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The police do get to decide on _probable cause_ that a
| crime has been committed. That 's not enough for
| punishment, but it is enough for arrest and
| investigation.
| kar5pt wrote:
| It seems like a completely different argument to me. He's
| not arguing that committing crimes (or being involved in
| events that may be legally deemed crimes after the fact)
| means that someone _deserves_ to have force used on them.
| He's saying that it makes sense that police would be more
| likely to use force against people who are more
| frequently involved in said events.
| stadium wrote:
| > it makes sense that police would be more likely to use
| force against people who are more frequently involved in
| said events
|
| Hence the systemic racism problem in a nutshell. It only
| makes sense through the lense of human bias and racism.
| Are those "people" really more frequently involved in
| said events, or are they more frequently policed?
| runako wrote:
| > The problem with all this data is that it doesn't
| inform us of who is actually committing crimes.
|
| Arrest records do not provide this data either. If an
| area or activity is policed at a lower rate, it will look
| like fewer crimes are committed there.
|
| Example: there have been public "420" festivals all over
| the country dating back to well before the recent
| legalizations. These were not accompanied by mass
| arrests, despite mass public lawbreaking. Drugs and
| underage drinking are endemic on college campuses.
| Somehow police are unable to arrest these lawbreakers. If
| you prefer finance, what percentage of financial fraud do
| you believe results in an arrest? Or consider the
| discretion allowed to police in deciding when to arrest
| someone for riding an unlicensed bicycle. There are many
| other examples of less-policed spaces.
|
| Arrest records frequently tell you more about who is
| permitted to break laws than the number of crimes
| committed somewhere.
| burlesona wrote:
| How closely do the arrest numbers match poverty numbers?
| param wrote:
| And do we know why this disparity exists?
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| I'd assume it's some combination of the cops being
| racist, or actual differences in crime rates among
| demographics. I see no reason to conclude it has to be
| one or the other, not sure if there's any actual way to
| determine how much each cause contributes though.
| erikerikson wrote:
| One might add inherited circumstances that are predictive
| of outcomes.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...cops being racist..._
|
| This is vague and leads to confusion. We shouldn't
| imagine we can learn anything simply by judging the
| characters of individual officers. If our laws and police
| practices are racist, the beliefs and actions of the
| officers themselves won't matter. Of course, there are
| racist officers, just as there are racist judges,
| legislators, grocers, veterinarians, etc. I doubt that
| _Newark_ has a high concentration of racist police
| officers relative to the rest of the nation, however.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This distinction is critically important and is almost
| never even mentioned in popular media discussions of
| police racism.
|
| Yes, policing and criminal justice in America fucking
| sucks (especially if you have dark skin) and needs major
| reform no matter what. But I don't want to start seeing
| ghosts where none exist, and chasing after them instead
| of focusing on other problems.
|
| Edit: I explained this better in a different comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26925138
| bbulkow wrote:
| A disparity that high is unlikely to be rate of crime. It
| is hard to study rate of crime, obvious reasons, but when
| you slice drug use by race, blacks use more, when you
| investigate drug contraband found per traffic stop, the
| is not a high racial bias. I tend to believe the crime
| rates aren't effected much by race, it seems really
| unlikely a difference that high is race.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| I see. My mistake.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| This sentiment about arrest rates really needs to go.
|
| I've done a deep dive into the numbers. Murder rate data from
| the FBI has a large "unknown" category, so I'll handle that in
| a few ways for simplicity. Focusing on murders rather than
| other violent crime is the best thing to do because, while
| there may be a lot of ambiguity about what constitutes
| "assault", how often it's reported, etc., there really isn't
| much ambiguity about murder. We don't lose track of bodies very
| often. Here's the murder rate in the U.S. broken down by race.
| All numbers are murderers (offenders) per 100,000 people:
|
| White (simple, ignoring "Unknown"): 1.8 Black (simple, ignoring
| "Unknown"): 13.3
|
| White (assuming all "Unknown" are White): 3.7 Black (assuming
| all "Unknown" are Black): 23.2
|
| White (splitting up "Unknown" by existing proportion of total):
| 2.6 Black (splitting up "Unknown" by existing proportion of
| total): 18.8
|
| The difference is stark. Using the 2.6 vs. 18.8 numbers,
| probably closest to the truth, Black people in the U.S. are
| about seven times more likely to murder in a given year than
| are white people. The number becomes even more stark if you
| compare Black to non-Black (because Asians are less likely to
| murder than Whites), and yet more stark if you just look at men
| (women murder at something like 1/8 the rate of men, so having
| them in the system dilutes all differences). If you remove
| Black Americans from the system, U.S. murder rates look like
| much of Western Europe.
|
| This is a hard thing but it is a true thing. Most of the
| differences in how police treat Black vs. White people in the
| U.S. are driven by this phenomenon, not racism on the part of
| cops or "the system". There is an argument to be made about a
| legacy of slavery or systemic racism, and maybe it's important
| to do that, but those arguments are completely irrelevant to
| the cop who's walking a beat in a bad neighborhood--White or
| Black. That cop will (involuntarily) collect statistics on the
| world around him or her, and will act accordingly. We call it
| learning. You can't help but do it. I think some small
| proportion of this enormous difference is due to a feedback
| loop, i.e. people end up murdering more because they're policed
| more.
|
| Insofar as you are "outraged" by this simple statement of fact,
| you are part of the problem--not the solution. Real solutions
| to the real problems of murder and differential policing in the
| U.S. require people who are brave enough to look the problem
| right in the eye. Ignoring the obvious truth proves to me that
| you don't really care about actually helping people, and are
| really in it to impress your friends with how woke you are.
|
| There's a lot of work to be done, please be part of the
| solution.
|
| FBI UCR murder offender data: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-
| the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... Census data:
| https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2020/population-e...
| cozzyd wrote:
| Those statistics are probably "correct," but missing lots of
| context.
|
| First of all, most police stops and arrests aren't for
| murder, but for various petty crimes (particularly drugs and
| traffic violations) that are certainly unevenly enforced,
| even controlling for other factors (see e.g. see e.g. https:/
| /scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...), so
| citing murder statistics here to seems a little irrelevant,
| as they are such a small fraction of police stops. It is also
| probably not an effective means of catching murderers
| (instead turning communities against the police, perhaps
| contributing to the pathetic murder clearance rates achieved
| by police). As you probably know, many have argued that there
| is both overpolicing of petty crimes and underpolicing of
| violent crimes in minority communities ( see, e.g.
| https://www.vox.com/2015/4/14/8411733/black-community-
| polici...).
|
| But, sticking to murder rates, these statistics also ignore a
| lot of dynamics. At least in urban areas (I don't have much
| familiarity with rural areas), most murders aren't
| individuals acting independently to commit murder. Instead, a
| large fraction of murders are gang-related (either directly,
| or collaterally), suggesting that to large extent,
| differential gang prevalence might be a dominant factor in
| the difference in murder rates.
|
| Why are gangs prevalent today in some communities and not
| others? 100 years ago, gangs in places like Chicago were
| predominantly ethnic white (think Al Capone), though those
| gangs have largely declined and no longer play a larger role
| as far as I can tell. Nowadays, 90% of gang members appear to
| be Black or Hispanic
| (https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-
| analysis/demograph...). Gangs of course are not all the same
| (some are probably more violent than others), but maybe the
| right question to be asking is why are gangs so prevalent
| among urban minorities.
|
| I don't have any special knowledge here, but I imagine that
| in many cases, differential policing may certainly be a
| direct or indirect contributor to high gang prevalence. .
| There of course other many other reasons (community
| disinvestment, inertia, the "war on drugs."), but
| differential policing has the potential to cause a positive
| feedback loop here (unfair treatment -> higher gang
| membership -> higher violent rates -> unfair treatment) that
| probably needs to be broken. Of course, historically, unfair
| treatment of Blacks well predates the formation of Black
| street gangs (according to
| https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
| binaries/434..., Black street gangs didn't become prevalent
| in large urban areas until the 50's/60's).
|
| It might be "natural" for police to treat communities with
| higher murder rates differently, but that does not mean that
| it's the smart or right thing to do.
| deepakhj wrote:
| I don't believe white and black people are on the same
| footing economically. They've been held down since slavery
| and it still affects them today. Here's a few examples: real
| estate redlining (even though that was banned it's still
| happening today in other forms
| https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-
| agents-...), the Tulsi race massacre (This story is crazy),
| urban renewal (Fillmore, West Oakland), all the neighborhoods
| they destroyed building freeways through them
| (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-
| of..., https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/01/11/senate-
| considering-10...). The crack cocaine sentencing disparity
| split up families, creating the single parent unit, throw in
| the gang explosion in the 90s, and tough on crime sentencing,
| it's amazing people make it out of the hood.
|
| Do you think we can improve the damage we've done through
| policing?
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| >I don't believe white and black people are on the same
| footing economically.
|
| I agree! I infer you think it has some causal connection
| with murder rates. I think that's probably true, but that
| the relationship is weak. Black people in the U.S., while
| poorer than average compared to the rest of the U.S.
| population, are some of the richest people in the world in
| terms of their actual material consumption. There are lots
| of poorer (and much poorer) populations out there who do
| not display similar murder rates. I take that as evidence
| that not being on the same footing economically is probably
| not a primary driver of the high murder rate among Black
| Americans.
|
| >Do you think we can improve the damage we've done through
| policing?
|
| Yes! Step one is stop causing new damage. I think the
| easiest way to accomplish this is to end the War on Drugs
| once and for all. It's the lowest-hanging fruit--a
| watermelon-sized apple really. We're starting to go down
| this path as a nation, and it's imperative we keep going
| down that path. There will be negative effects, but I think
| the positive effects will greatly outweigh them.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I have heard the 'red-lining' problem, at is is a problem
| in wealth accumulation but it still doesn't explain high
| crime rates at all.
|
| Problem is that you have lots of poor immigrants that
| immigrated here from former communist countries, or latin
| america, or Laos/Cambodia, with no money and no savings
| whatsover. Some came as starving refugees, and are still
| poorer than the average.
|
| Yet, they don't end up doing crime at the same rate as some
| other poor people.
|
| Being poor seems like a copout and doesn't address the
| issue.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Immigrants are by definition the hardest working people.
| Comparing them to normal people is worthless.
| triceratops wrote:
| I imagine immigrants self-select for traits like
| conscientiousness, ambition, and drive. Comparing them to
| the general population won't yield useful results.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| There are all sorts of immigrants...economic migrants,
| refugees, etc.
| js2 wrote:
| I was surprised to learn that overall, the U.S. spends about
| 0.8% of GDP on policing, which places it in about the middle of
| OECD countries.
|
| https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-police-compare-differen...
|
| Budget seems like the least of our problems in fixing U.S.
| policing, though I recognize in some cities it may be more of a
| problem than others. The biggest problem seems to be the huge
| amount of resistance from police to any change at all.
|
| I'm watching this closely:
|
| https://cornellsun.com/2021/04/02/mayor-svante-myricks-09-po...
| seneca wrote:
| > The biggest problem seems to be the huge amount of
| resistance from police to any change at all.
|
| A huge problem is the massive, and influential, police union.
| Police resisting change at an individual or local level is
| one thing, but their union is a huge coordinated lobby that
| works against anything that would be better for the public if
| they perceive it as even slightly unfavorable to police.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| That surprises me as well! Particularly if it includes
| departments like ICE and FBI within that definition of
| policing.
|
| I tried to search for the original source to see if I could
| find how they are calculating theses costs but didn't have
| any luck.
|
| I mention this because NYPD budget is often referenced as $6
| billion, but that's only operating costs, and the actual
| amount is closer to $11 billion (including fringe benefits
| like overtime and funding the NYPD pension).
|
| With a 2020 GPD of $20,936 billion Then 0.8% of that is $167
| billion
|
| If we assume that policing costs are more closely tied to
| population rather than GDP we'd expect that NYPD costs to be
| about 2.5% of national amount. That's approximately $4.2
| billion.
|
| But NYPD costs are $11 billion, which is 6.5% of estimated
| national policing costs (for 2.5% of the population).
|
| Admittedly, I can imagine that there are reasons why a big
| city area might have higher than average costs, but 6.5%
| makes me feel that the 0.8% of GDP might be either
| underestimating how much US spends as part of GDP, or
| calculating national costs using different methods for
| different countries.
| jccooper wrote:
| New York is a huge outlier in terms of police department
| size.
| bluthru wrote:
| >which places it in about the middle of OECD countries
|
| This means we're not spending enough on policing because the
| US's crime is above OECD average.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| >Newark PD still arrests Black people at a much much higher
| rate than white people.
|
| And if it's the case that people in the city's black community
| are committing arrestable offenses (however stupid some
| definitions of what is an offense for which you can be arrested
| and charged with for are), then what should the department do?
| Not arrest people for doing things it's been ordered to arrest
| people for doing just because it's bad PR?
|
| It's apparently not popular to mention and undoubtedly there
| are many social victimization factors at work contributing to
| it, but young men in the black community really do commit more
| violent crime and crime of many other types than do many young
| men in a number of other ethnic communities.
| elil17 wrote:
| > Not arrest people for doing things it's been ordered to
| arrest people for doing
|
| Yes. No one's ordered police to focus on anyone one kind of
| crime. Police in America have total discretion to choose
| which laws they enforce and which they don't.
|
| In Arizona you can get six months in jail for spitting in a
| public park, but you don't see Arizona cops trying to arrest
| everyone for that. It's a federal crime to let your dog bark
| in a National Park but the park police don't really care.
| Similarly, there's nothing forcing cops to focus on marijuana
| possession.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is there a reason to believe these drug possession arrests
| were primarily for marijuana? New Jersey passed a law in
| mid 2020 to decriminalize it starting January, so I'd be
| surprised if it were a big police focus in the interval.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _focus on marijuana possession_
|
| NJ recently legalized weed, so pretty soon those arrests
| won't be an issue.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Except see Chicago, where its also legal, and arresting
| black people for marijuana related crimes continues
| unabated.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-
| marijuana-le...
| refurb wrote:
| _"Most arrests involve possessing or attempting to sell
| amounts over the legal limit of 30 grams._
|
| I mean, they are breaking the new marijuana laws. Is this
| wrong? If I try and make my own moonshine and sell it
| I'll go to jail too.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Making your own moonshine can kill people via methanol
| poisoning. Weed can't kill you. What's your point again?
| Hundreds of thousands of pounds of weed are sold via the
| black market every year, yet nobody dies[0].
|
| You could also never be caught for moonshining, I know
| drug dealers who have sold for years without any police
| contact.
|
| [0] People died from consuming THC carts that were
| tainted with Vitamin E acetate. Otherwise, weed products
| have not killed anyone ever.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > People died from consuming THC carts that were tainted
| with Vitamin E acetate. Otherwise, weed products have not
| killed anyone ever.
|
| there are also concerns about microbial contamination
| with weed that is improperly grown/processed. this is
| exactly why weed ought to be legal but regulated. people
| engaged in grey market sales are performing an end run
| around the new safety regulations.
| lupire wrote:
| Is microbial contamination of weed more dangerous than
| contamination of vegetables?
| leetcrew wrote:
| I dunno, probably depends on the microbe? there are also
| laws that apply to produce growers over a certain (very
| low) revenue threshold, if that's what you're getting at.
|
| but anyways, that's kinda besides the point. if people
| are growing stuff for their own consumption, I don't
| really care how safely they do it. I'm all for people
| distilling whiskey at their own risk. but if you're going
| to make money selling stuff to other people, it should be
| as safe as is reasonably possible. somehow I get the idea
| that random dudes selling flowers/concentrates/cartridges
| aren't looking that deeply into their supply chain.
| people died recently from what should be a fairly
| harmless plant.
| ineedasername wrote:
| With vegetables they are part of a regulated legal
| industry that has the ability to perform nation-wide
| awareness initiatives & recalls if there is some form of
| contamination.
|
| And events like that also represents a significant
| financial loss to the producers, which itself acts as a
| form of accountability above & beyond regulatory
| penalties that might apply.
|
| Basically, it doesn't matter if microbial contamination
| of weed isn't any more dangerous than for vegetables
| because current agricultural products have a remediation
| process in place to mitigate the danger, a process that
| doesn't exist for unregulated weed.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Will you? It depends on the law, the resources law
| enforcement dedicates to moonshine enforcement, the
| attitude toward you of the individual officers, and your
| personal power - including your ability to afford a good
| lawyer.
|
| And much of that is strongly correlated with race.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Black and brown people are left out of the windfall and
| continue to be arrested for selling weed illegally.
|
| I would hazard a guess that if they were instead selling
| bootlegged booze illegally they would also be arrested.
| I'm not clear what point you're trying to make.
| refenestrator wrote:
| I hear you, but:
|
| 1) Selling bootleg booze has health/quality risks that
| selling weed doesn't. You don't see crackdowns on people
| selling other plants without a license.
|
| 2) Legalizing possession and then only giving licenses to
| well-connected people who are excellent at getting
| paperwork through the system is, well, a lot better than
| nothing but doesn't really solve the whole problem.
| OJFord wrote:
| Why does the business of selling cannabis need to be so
| accessible?
|
| If someone wants to do it, they can put in the work to
| 'get the paperwork through the system'; if they just want
| it to be available to them and their friends, well, now
| it is, because someone else _has_ put in that work. I don
| 't really see the issue?
|
| (But then, I'm glad to live in a country that _hasn 't_
| legalised it, so what do I know.)
| mulmen wrote:
| The issue is that legalization is a new development and
| the effects of asymmetric enforcement continue to
| disadvantage racial groups.
|
| Drug laws were not created in a vacuum. They are just one
| step on a long journey of racially motivated oppression.
| refenestrator wrote:
| In most states the licenses are _extremely_ hard to get,
| it 's not a matter of just 'putting in the work'. They're
| effectively out of reach for your standard weed dealer.
| ineedasername wrote:
| A standard weed dealer is not on the same level as the
| person that would get the license. A standard dealer is
| part of a very large organization. They're the equivalent
| of a person working a cash register. I expect it's
| extremely hard for someone who starts out working the
| register at a McDonalds to become a franchise owner.
|
| That's not to say that getting a license isn't harder
| than starting a fast food franchise, but the metric of
| difficulty we use here shouldn't be the typical weed
| dealer.
|
| Probably a better comparison would be an entrepreneur
| trying to start a liquor store. Even then, it makes sense
| to me that as society tries to figure out the best way to
| do this, it goes carefully & with a lot of scrutiny to
| figure out how to do it right. It's not the sort of thing
| that should have a "move fast & break things" approach.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Selling is different, I think, than possession because
| dealers are often not just selling one thing like
| marijuana, but more dangerous drugs as well. I can
| understand an arrest in the case of dealing.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Worth remembering that Alcohol is more dangerous than
| most illegal drugs, including meth, ecstasy,
| hallucinogens etc.
| ineedasername wrote:
| By what metric is meth less dangerous?
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _It's a federal crime to let your dog bark in a National
| Park but the park police don't really care._
|
| The regulation (36 CFR SS 2.15) says it is prohibited to
| take pets to any "area closed to the possession of pets",
| or to "[allow] a pet to make noise that is unreasonable
| considering location, time of day or night, impact on park
| users, and other relevant factors, or that frightens
| wildlife". It is entirely reasonable to have this written
| down, so that it can be enforced if necessary.
|
| The presence of dogs has a significant impact on the
| behavior of wild animals, and park rangers absolutely do
| care if you bring your dog to areas of a National Park
| where it should not be, or if your dog is incessantly
| barking or howling in areas of the park where it is a
| nuisance. They will walk up to you and tell you to take
| your dog directly back to your car, or tell you to shut
| your dog up or leave.
|
| If you refuse to follow directions / give them a hard time
| about it, this regulation gives them authority to take
| further action, including charging a fine etc.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| This is trolling. It's purely a strawman setup - nothing
| factual is provided, it's all speculative; many of the
| conditions are known to be false; and it ignores our well-
| established knowledge about racism in law enforcement.
|
| Yes, trolling, ignorant BS is not popular.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > if
|
| There is a lot of evidence, that is easy to find, that laws
| criminalize African-Americans (e.g., drugs abused by poor
| African-Americans are criminal and result in prison; those
| abused by wealthy white people are sicknesses and result in
| treatment); that police harass and are brutal toward them
| (e.g., driving while black, predictive policing, and all the
| well-documented brutality and racism), and that prosecutors
| and courts sentence them to disproportionately harsh
| sentences, including long probation and loss of voting
| rights, and the inability, with a conviction, to get
| employment.
|
| In my city I've seen the police in action many 5 times.
| Twice, it involved clear abuse and harassment of peaceful
| African-Americans. It's just my anecdotal experience, but are
| the odds?
|
| Your argument is decades-old at this point; we know so much
| more now. What do you think of all that's been learned in the
| meantime (and by learned, I mean learned by the wealthy white
| population - it was known by some for generations)? Are we
| going to just rehash decades of learning? Nobody is making
| the points you are arguing with.
| chitowneats wrote:
| You must be referring to the crack/cocaine sentencing
| distinction. That policy was rectified many years ago.
| Besides that, you're incorrect that black and white
| Americans consume "different drugs". I would argue that
| your argument is also "decades old". And the way in which
| you suggest that issues of race and crime in America are
| settled, or that we've "learned" the right answer, suggests
| that you believe people on the other side of this issue are
| somehow remedial. Surely you see how this can be an
| obstacle to convincing them you are correct.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I listed a few examples; there are many others that are
| well known and easy to learn about. If you want to
| provide evidence, address the issues, and advance our
| knowledge, please do!
|
| > you suggest that issues of race and crime in America
| are settled, or that we've "learned" the right answer,
| suggests that you believe people on the other side of
| this issue are somehow remedial. Surely you see how this
| can be an obstacle to convincing them you are correct.
|
| But these strawperson characterizations and this
| victimhood are more distractions from the issues, as is
| the ignorance of the GGP post I responded to above - they
| are well-known ways of halting progress. And yes, there
| are some things that are well-established (though again,
| I haven't said the words you put in my mouth); I'm not
| going to spend time reviewing all human knowledge (also a
| well-known technique of stopping discussion). I'm here to
| move forward.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I'd be happy to. A good place to start is the excellent,
| nuanced commentary on this topic from black professors
| Glenn Loury and John McWhorter:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0H4M5uP_y8
|
| One thing they reference during this podcast but don't
| talk about in much detail is the case of Tony Timpa. Many
| of the things many claim only happen to black Americans
| are in fact more general issues of police brutality, poor
| training, or hard realities of policing. And that means
| yes, it happens to white Americans too.
|
| The last thing I want to do is distract from the issues.
| I want us to move past these surface level discussions
| that we are inundated with in both the professional and
| social media realms. Please watch the Glenn and John
| episode above for more on what I mean.
|
| Edit: Apologies. To be clear, Tony Timpa was a white man
| killed by a police officer in Dallas a few years ago via
| knee on neck. No media attention or mass protests.
|
| Edit 2: For those more textually inclined, here is
| McWhorter's most recent post on the topic
| https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-victorians-had-
| to-a...
| bigfudge wrote:
| The thing is, it can be true that the police are both
| generally brutal and racist. In fact that seems the most
| likely thing given my limited observations of US
| policing.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Please show evidence for your claim. Anecdotes not
| accepted.
|
| Edit: Both links I posted discussed studies, statistics,
| and analysis relevant to this that belie your claim.
| Please rebut those or post your own.
| bigfudge wrote:
| It seems like it's quite widely known that US police
| shoot everyone at a higher rather than any developed
| country. You can google those stats as well as anyone.
| That's evidence for 'brutality', not excluding the
| possibility that they may also be brutalised by a
| difficult job with poor training.
| bigfudge wrote:
| If black Americans smoke weed rather than alcohol then
| yes, they take different drugs. Weed is criminalised far
| in excess of any justification based on personal or
| social harms. It just seems normal to drink, in a
| rational drug policy it would be more controlled than
| many other drugs.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I'm sorry but you're just incorrect if you're suggesting
| white Americans don't consume cannabis at high rates.
| bigfudge wrote:
| No I wasn't suggesting that. However in black populations
| in the UK at least smoking weed is more 'normal' than it
| is in white populations. By normal I mean accepted and
| not deviant, not necessarily to imply higher consumption.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I see. There is a history of racist or xenophobic
| criminalization of marijuana (when it was called that
| commonly) in the US. See reefer madness and associated
| politics. Disparity in use is no longer the case in the
| US.
| Seam0nkey wrote:
| >That policy was rectified many years ago.
|
| You're half right - the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act reformed
| the punishment ratio from 100:1 to about 18:1, and later
| in 2018 Congress made this change retroactive. This
| certainly improved the issue, but lawmakers continue to
| discuss whether it should be eliminated entirely.
|
| Source: https://www.vox.com/2021/3/19/22336224/equal-act-
| cocaine-sen...
| chitowneats wrote:
| Thank you. I was not aware of this.
| astura wrote:
| I always point to the case of three black teens arrested
| for the "crime" of waiting for the bus to a basketball
| scrimmage.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/04/charg
| e...
| commentingbadly wrote:
| What a disgusting and false comment
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/29/fac.
| ..
|
| - Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide are
| similar, at around 80% and 90%
|
| - Rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide also
| within 8 points
|
| - Police kill Black people at disproportionate rates
| bitcurious wrote:
| I encourage everyone to actually read the linked article
| and draw your own conclusions.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| nah. This rhetorical technique of posting raw data and
| "begging the question" is a pretty frequent white
| supremacist talking point. Important to label its
| argument as disingenuous and move on.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think the article uses an odd way to frame it. To me, a
| rate should be measured in "people per year" or "people per
| year normalized by population size". Meanwhile the article
| is using the word "rate" to refer to what is actually the
| ratio between two different rates.
|
| The FBI stats seem to back up the above commenter (however
| one would expect policing biases to be reflected in their
| statistics). If you compare a random white person[1] and a
| random black person, the black person is ~5x more likely to
| be murdered by someone of the same race[2]. Even though the
| absolute number of murders is about the same, the
| population sizes are very different, which lines up with
| one group being disproportionately represented in
| arrests[3]
|
| 1: It's worth noting that the FBI stats lump most
| Hispanic/Latino people under 'white', I'm not sure if the
| numbers would look different if you used the colloquial
| definition of 'white'
|
| 2: 0.001% chance of being murdered per year vs a .006%
| chance
|
| 3: If anything I think that's proof of of institutional
| racism's impact. I'm guessing the disparity is really just
| showing income inequality
| commentingbadly wrote:
| > The FBI stats
|
| Is there a Goodwin's Law for citing FBI statistics yet?
|
| > I'm not sure if the numbers would look different if you
| used the colloquial definition of 'white'
|
| You say you're not sure, but you seem to be suggesting
| something. Care to say it out loud?
|
| > If anything I think that's proof of of institutional
| racism's impact. I'm guessing the disparity is really
| just showing income inequality
|
| But, you spent the whole post talking about race, but you
| really think it is income? I'm confused.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >You say you're not sure, but you seem to be suggesting
| something. Care to say it out loud?
|
| I'm suggesting that the fractions might be different but
| it's a pain to do that math on my phone's calculator
| while also referring to pages in a web browser so I won't
| bother. Feel free to run the numbers if you're so
| inclined and update me!
|
| >But, you spent the whole post talking about race, but
| you really think it is income? I'm confused.
|
| I don't think it's controversial to say that racism and
| classism in the USA are inextricably linked. Sometimes
| this is even enforced via laws (a common example being
| the disparity in sentencing guidelines for crack vs other
| forms of cocaine).
|
| >Is there a Goodwin's Law for citing FBI statistics yet
|
| Don't make bad faith attempts to invoke Godwin's law. I
| cited FBI statistics because you used them first in your
| own comment.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Please do tell me what's "disgusting" about mentioning a
| statistical fact? Feel free to look at the FBI's uniform
| crime statistics, among others and see what I mean.
| Ideological considerations only make progress harder when
| they blatantly try to ignore realities. As for your claim
| that police disproportionately kill black people, well,
| actually it's a bit more complicated than that and doesn't
| quite negate what I mentioned above about crime stats.
| Every unjustifiable death of a black individual or anyone
| at the hands of the police is a tragedy and a probabl crime
| that needs to be addressed, but here, read these if you
| like, for additional perspective: https://www.bostonglobe.c
| om/2020/06/11/opinion/statistical-p...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-
| rac...
| commentingbadly wrote:
| Maybe you think you are being helpful and informative,
| but citing the FBI statistics is a tired trope and you
| are behaving, online, indistinguishably from hardcore
| racists.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/despite-being-
| only-13-percent...
|
| EDIT: themgt, this is not a throwaway account. I'm a long
| time user that often gets banned and returns to try again
| to have reasonable discourse. I find it hard because for
| educated people, many on this site are full of unexamined
| biases.
|
| Ok, so I cited another take on crime statistics when
| presented with the super-trope of OP citing the FBI crime
| statistics. What I'm trying to do is educate you and
| others that if you don't socialize with the other half of
| the internet, well they see someone post the FBI crime
| statistics and they think, "Wow, what a total racist or a
| total knucklehead."
|
| What is the _truth_ that you want me to know that you don
| 't think I don't?
|
| I'll tell you the truth that I want you to know: if you
| reach for the FBI crime statistics instead of the
| testimony and experience of law-abiding people of color
| then your trust is in authority and not in the integrity
| of good people everywhere
| themgt wrote:
| _You_ posted the link to USA Today which cites and links
| multiple times to _the exact same_ FBI Uniform Crime
| Reporting statistics, which are the USA 's canonical
| summary of national crime data.
|
| I am flagging this because you're a throwaway account
| who's calling people Nazis and "hardcore racists" for
| referring to the exact same dataset you yourself brought
| into the discussion. This type of grossly unprincipled
| behavior is why having a productive discussion about
| crime in this country is impossible.
| tynpeddler wrote:
| That article only covers homicide, which is a relatively
| rare crime. There are many other types of crimes that can
| warrant a police response and arrest such as property
| crime, assault, robbery, etc.
|
| In addition, the link provided only covers relative
| homicide rates, ie what percentage of homicides that occur
| are committed by member of a given race. It does not
| address what percentage of individuals in a given
| demographic that have committed homicide.
|
| These sources from the fbi provide a bit better context:
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf
|
| Of course, looking at crime statistics only through the
| lens of race and ethnicity also misses a lot of context.
| Poverty rates have a huge impact on crime rates and due to
| racism, both present and past, poverty rates in the
| American black demographic are much higher than poverty
| rates in the American white demographic.
|
| https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/422520/us-rate-of-
| violen...
| lolinder wrote:
| Those stats don't say what you think they say. Those show
| that white people are no more likely to kill black people
| than black people are to kill white people. They do not say
| that black people are no more likely to kill _someone_.
| commentingbadly wrote:
| > They do not say that black people are no more likely to
| kill someone.
|
| And you believe it is racial makeup that makes a person
| more likely to kill someone? I disagree and I think race
| has nothing to do with it
| bingbong70 wrote:
| Large % of black Americans don't trust the criminal
| justice system and police, I expect this leads to more
| extrajudicial crime fighting carried out by the community
| that skews assault/murder rates.
| lolinder wrote:
| That's not skewed numbers, "extrajudicial crime fighting"
| that ends with someone dead is correctly categorized as
| murder. Lack of trust in the system is a problem, but
| retributive killings are not the solution.
| bingbong70 wrote:
| >someone dead is correctly categorized as murder.
|
| Yes but how the data is recorded and interpreted is
| definitely skewed by a population not being able to rely-
| on/trust what should be public services.
|
| What is the correct solution for tax payers that are
| criminalized by the institutions that they are forced to
| fund?
|
| For decades nobody even believed the black horror stories
| about police misconduct until body cams/camera phones
| were widely available and the news was forced to cover
| them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "extrajudicial crime fighting" that ends with someone
| dead is correctly categorized as murder.
|
| That is no more true than it is without the word
| "extrajudicial". It's homicide, sure, but not all
| homicide is murder, and not all exteadjudicial crime
| fighting that results in death meets the definition of
| murder (or even criminal homicide.)
|
| > Lack of trust in the system is a problem, but
| retributive killings are not the solution.
|
| Retributive killings (and extradjudicial response
| generally) aren't intended as solution to lack of trust
| in the system, they are solutions to other problems for
| which the palpable hostility of the system forecloses
| otherwise superior solutions.
|
| Dismantling the system and replacing it with one that is
| trustworthy is the solution, but it was one that is
| actively opposed by those whosd relative position is
| supported by the features of the system that render it
| untrustworthy to the population at issue.
| jchook wrote:
| Significant to note that Newark Police officers did not wear body
| cameras until early 2020. It seems like part of the same "decree"
| but I didn't see the article mention it.
|
| I recall a similar stat from CA where body cameras reduced
| complaints by 80%.
|
| Also it looks like Merrick Garland reversed Jeff Sessions'
| limitations on consent decree.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Anecdotal counter-argument: police have been filmed planting
| evidence, assaulting suspects, on their own body cameras. It
| may be useful at catching them, but not necessarily a deterrent
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Good for Newark!
|
| But, from what I understand, they gave the cops better training
| and got better result. That is how education works.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Sam Harris has a new, very interesting podcast with Rener
| Gracie about police training and how inadequate it is across
| the entire United States. Officers in California get one - 4
| hour course every two years to learn how to subdue criminals,
| and of the 4 hours, only one is actually spent training, the
| other three are instruction.
|
| Rener Gracie is obviously famous for Brazilian jiu-jitsu but he
| also trains police on how to subdue criminals in a safe way. He
| has some interesting ideas about how to identify bad cops also.
|
| It was worth the listen.
|
| https://samharris.org/podcasts/246-police-training-police-mi...
| bitexploder wrote:
| My BJJ gym offers deep discount to police. This is a good
| thing. I've rolled with many police fresh to grappling and
| even with my limited skills they are very easy to subdue. No
| wonder they resort to weapons (lethal and less than lethal)
| so quickly. I have been training a few years now.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Judo (the mother of bjj) is seeing a revival in police
| circles.
|
| It's good to see grappling arts make a comeback, as there
| are plenty of non-lethal ways to make someone submit.
|
| Edit: For cases where the police officer already is in
| control.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I think American wrestling and or BJJ are much more
| practical than Judo as a martial art for police, but Judo
| is better than nothing. Judo is good for getting things
| to the ground, but the ground system of Judo is
| inadequate for many situations. (I've trained Judo and
| with many judokas, even advanced ones just aren't very
| good on the ground without some other ground fighting
| system). Regardless it's a big step in the right
| direction.
| stouset wrote:
| As a fellow judoka, I'd agree.
|
| It's unfortunate because there are some aspects that
| could make judo a better groundfighting base than BJJ for
| this type of situation. When a judo match goes to the
| ground, the competitors must be clearly making progress
| toward a pin or submission or the referee stands them up.
| This favors more explosive movements (resolving a
| situation quickly) over a slow positional game from your
| back.
|
| Of course, a skilled BJJ practitioner could also make
| quick work of an untrained opponent. But judo's focus on
| quickly establishing a dominant position has some
| advantages.
|
| Unfortunately this ruleset also enables competitors to
| "turtle up" in a defensive position on all fours. It's
| hard for your opponent to quickly get a submission or a
| pin from this position, so the fight will quickly be
| reset by the referee. This has led to a lot of even
| competitive judoka having very weak ground game, as they
| can get by for the most part by assuming this position.
| Obviously that's not going to be very effective in a
| real-world situation.
|
| BJJ has its flaws for this sort of thing too. At least in
| the gyms I've trained in, there was very little focus on
| throwing. So once a fight is on the ground someone with a
| BJJ background will excel. But against a resisting
| opponent, they don't have nearly the tools that a judoka
| has to bring things there.
|
| In the end I think either one will give you a massive leg
| up, but it's important to keep in mind why you're
| training in the first place and understand the bad real-
| world habits that their respective rulesets can encourage
| when taken too seriously for the sake of competition.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Good points, gyms can vary a lot. My gym and most gyms I
| have visited focus on wrestling style takedowns, and
| maybe some Judo stuff too depending on what the
| instructors know.
|
| Honestly, for the general self defense you only need a
| few well practiced takedowns. We drill single leg, double
| leg, and I drill a couple collar based judo trip/throw.
| It mostly comes down to spending time on the feet. No-Gi
| at my academy lets you do basically anything from
| standing. My gym does a lot of MMA and has a strong
| competitive nature (we train for comps a lot) so we get a
| lot more focus on the standing game I think.
|
| FWIW I have done Judo some too and find it fun. Except
| when I get slammed lol.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I suspect I'm going to get crucified on hacker news for this.
|
| And my criticism it isn't necessarily related to this
| specific episode.
|
| _BUT_ Sam Harris has been pretty credibly described as being
| islamophobic, sympathetic to fascists, amplifying and
| platforming "race scientists" aka: white nationalists
| attempting to maintain a veneer of respectability, and being
| a recruitment pipeline for the alt-right.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris
|
| I know how well the "don't listen to Sam Harris" argument
| would go down around hacker news, but I'd say that one who
| does, should listen to him with the lens of being aware that
| he gives a suspicious amount air time to the online racist
| grifter community.
|
| If that's the world's only source in the world on Renee
| Gracie, then maybe Harris is an ok choice.
|
| I find it hard to justify giving bandwidth to a guy who gives
| so much bandwidth to nazi propaganda.
|
| https://medium.com/@tedheistman/does-sam-harris-want-you-
| to-...
|
| https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/3k7jx8/too-many-
| atheists...
|
| I'm not saying that Sam Harris is definitely a Nazi, but the
| venn diagram of online nazi content and Sam Harris' content
| has more overlap than one might generally expect to occur by
| chance.
|
| https://idontspeakgerman.libsyn.com/episode-22-sam-harris-
| is...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| It seems like a great idea, and that they've gathered
| significant evidence that other police departments can now
| take advantage of to start their own similar programs. That's
| really exciting. The episode did kind of devolve into a
| commercial for Gracie JJ though. Well, maybe that just keeps
| it simple for others. One phone number to call for
| training...
| odonnellryan wrote:
| NJ is decent. We had one small issue of police violence during
| the large BLM protests. Compared to NY...
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| In addition to education, as per the article, "They hired more
| Black and brown officers" ; "required any officer who uses
| force in any way to report it in detail, and for the supervisor
| to review it". Resulting in "The bad cops were suddenly outed."
| [deleted]
| zero_deg_kevin wrote:
| They're now proof points that governments can reduce police
| fatalities by training their police to use more than guns. This
| hopefully makes it a little easier to sue a city into the
| ground for failure to adequately train its police force.
| tomerico wrote:
| I disagree. The largest factors are likely to be culture
| (coming from leadership) and higher scrutiny (mentioned in the
| article as a requirement to report and investigate any use of
| force).
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| Couldn't possibly be a confluence of all the above? Not even
| in the tiniest degree?
| bluecatswim wrote:
| "Largest factor" implies there are others as well.
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| Ah ok, perhaps I fixated on the curt "I disagree", for a
| moment too long.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's more complicated than that.
|
| They disbanded the entire department -- breaking the police
| union in the process, and then hired far _more_ (but somewhat
| lower-paid) police than before.
|
| The new, larger, but reformed department has done dramatically
| better than before. So there's really something for everyone --
| breaking the union was important, _increasing_ funding was
| important, but also increased de-escalation training helped.
| oivey wrote:
| I think that was Camden, not Newark.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| As another comment noted, that was Camden. There's also more
| to that story - the city significantly stepped up its
| surveillance of public spaces
| (https://www.insider.com/inside-camden-new-jerseys-high-
| tech-...). Personally I think using technology to ensure
| public safety, with the right safeguards to prevent
| government abuses, is both acceptable and very possible.
| However, the anti policing activists are now against the
| Camden model - they initially held it up as evidence that
| defunding works but quickly changed opinion when more details
| came out (that funding simply shifted to the county level).
| You can find an example of arguments against Camden's
| surveillance model at https://jacobinmag.com/2020/07/camden-
| new-jersey-police-refo...
| enaaem wrote:
| I wonder why cops in the West don't use man catchers? It's a
| great tool to subdue any non-gun wielding person.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-2SpSMZtyU
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4z-gzkb6s4
|
| Pepper spray and stick don't work against someone who is strong
| and aggressive.
| virtuous_signal wrote:
| I had never even considered the possibility of something like
| this. I wonder what effective interventions we might be missing
| simply due to lack of creativity.
|
| I imagine a version of these wide enough for a person's waist
| and with a locking mechanism could be used for knife/fistfights
| and be much more humane than shooting. Perhaps they could be
| stored in squad cars the way shotguns are.
| cdot2 wrote:
| While the crime rate has been going down since 2013, Newark still
| has a murder rate of 57 per 100,000 while the US average is 5 per
| 100,000. Perhaps their policing model should not be copied.
| http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Newark-New-Jersey.html#
| evgen wrote:
| This is the most pathetic attempt to lie with statistics I have
| seen all week, congrats!
|
| JFC, can you not even be bothered to read the stat you tried to
| pick to prove your point? The rate according to data you
| provided was 20.3/100k. The murder rate is proportional to
| population density across the country as a general rule, so the
| 'US average' is a bullshit stat to try to use for comparison
| with a large city. If you compare Newark to its own past rates
| they are currently at a rate that was last seen in the 60s
| (this period of low homicide and crime rates was present
| _before_ covid, so do not bother trying some sort of 'all
| because of lockdown' lie.) While the general trend in large US
| cities is downward, Newark started from a higher rate and has
| dropped significantly faster than comparable cities.
|
| I can see why you would create a throwaway account if you are
| not even going to be bothered trying to provide a truthful
| stat.
| monoideism wrote:
| Why reply like with insults like this ("pathetic", etc), and
| most of all, why did people flag the comment? Assuming your
| own stats are correct, you refuted his comment really well,
| and using abusive language only diminishes your response.
|
| If HN is going to actually engage in these political debates
| (and I question whether it's wise to do so for the
| community), then people are going to have to stop flagging
| comments that go against whatever they believe, and just
| refute them like you just did (using your facts, not your
| insults).
|
| If you believe (like I do, increasingly) that HN should avoid
| the political topics, then flag the whole article, not
| individual comments.
|
| PS: the reason why people use throwaways for unpopular
| opinions is because they are well aware that there's a large
| group of people out there who will go after their jobs.
| tomerico wrote:
| I agree that the tone of replies matter, but flagging
| comments spreading misinformation seems like a positive
| thing.
| [deleted]
| Klinky wrote:
| It's not a different belief, it was a flat out lie and
| spreading of misinformation, their own source doesn't even
| back them up. Stop pushing a narrative that misinformation
| should be "equally considered" or is "just another point of
| view".
| monoideism wrote:
| This is where you and I disagree, and frankly why our
| country will continue to decline into more polarization
| and violence.
|
| I believe that you convince people that they're wrong by
| making a reasoned argument. You seem to believe that you
| convince people that they're wrong by shutting them up,
| and censoring them.
|
| And as a free human being, I'll push whichever POV I so
| choose.
| Klinky wrote:
| If you make a statement and provide a source that
| contradicts your statement, yes, you should be questioned
| on why you even provided that source in the first place,
| and if you actually read/comprehended it. That isn't
| "shutting them up", they invalidated their own claims
| with their own source.
| monoideism wrote:
| Question?
|
| Absolutely. I encourage respectful questioning and
| refuting.
|
| Flagging and censoring? (cdot2 had been flagged into
| invisibility until he was unflagged) "paradox of
| tolerance"[1]?
|
| Nope
|
| 1. People should read _Open Society and Its Enemies_
| before making that argument, because how they're applying
| it is not what Popper argued.
| Klinky wrote:
| I don't see why the HN community has to
| honor/uphold/tolerate/defend the opinion of a throwaway
| account posting inaccurate information its own cited
| source refutes. These alternative viewpoints need to have
| some level of credibility to them, we should not defend
| every rando's opinion blindly.
|
| I don't think an "open society" has ever actually existed
| or is even possible. All freedoms are measured in degrees
| based on the society. "Open society" likely leads more to
| vacuums filled by whoever has the best propaganda. George
| Soros, one of the bigger proponents of Popper, what with
| his Open Society Foundation inspired by Popper's works,
| has noted that deceptive modern advertising and
| propaganda casts doubts on the viability of Popper's
| vision of an open society[1]. However, Soros is often
| viewed as a liberal mouthpiece propagandist attempting to
| suppress conservative viewpoints, and is often the target
| of misinformation conspiracy theory campaigns himself.
|
| How much tolerance must we show? "The sky is purple"?
| "2+2=5"? Society must acknowledge these viewpoints? The
| mere act of acknowledging them as "viable alternative
| viewpoints" lends them credibility, which only festers
| more misinformation. It feels like as of late there has
| been increased pressure by certain groups to recategorize
| repugnant viewpoints as not being repugnant, but simply
| "a different perspective, worthy of tolerance and
| legitimacy".
|
| 1.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/11/f
| rompo...
| monoideism wrote:
| > I don't see why the HN community has to
| honor/uphold/tolerate/defend
|
| Those are all _very_ different words. And you do the same
| below when you mix up "tolerate" and "legitimize". Are
| you trying to confuse the debate? To be clear, I'm solely
| arguing for _tolerate_ and _not censor_ , not any of the
| other things. And wow, looking at that comment that was
| flagged, I can't comprehend how you would believe it's so
| repugnant that it's worthy of censoring and suppression.
|
| > Soros is often viewed as a liberal mouthpiece
| propagandist
|
| He's the target of unfortunate conspiracy theories, but I
| want to get this straight: you _don 't_ believe Soros is
| a liberal propagandist? Do you also not think the Koch
| brothers are libertarian propagandists? Of course, they
| all are!
|
| But yeah, I strongly disagree. I think censoring people
| who disagree, combined with the power and income
| inequality that was created by the plutocrats, will
| together kill our country. I don't want to give away my
| identity since I'm aware there are lots of people who
| would try to get me fired for disagreeing with them, but
| I've seen ethnic conflict up close and see every sign
| that the US is heading in that direction.
| Klinky wrote:
| >Those are all very different words.
|
| Not really. You are arguing that misinformation needs to
| have a place on this platform, and have a chance to be
| heard. Again an outright misinformed post, that couldn't
| even back itself up, _needs_ to be here. You are
| defending and legitimizing it with this point of view.
| Much evil has been done in the world because people
| "tolerated" things and just let injustice slide.
|
| >you don't believe Soros is a liberal propagandist
|
| Yes, but practically everyone is a propagandist, and has
| bias. Though he has more sway because money speaks.
|
| >I've seen ethnic conflict up close and see every sign
| that the US is heading in that direction.
|
| Where have you been for the last 250 years? The US was
| founded on genocide and slavery. Ethnic conflict has been
| here forever.
| syops wrote:
| From my perspective the U.S. has steadily shifted to the
| right the past 40 years. I doubt that a person advocating
| Reagan's policies would be supported by today's
| Republican Party. We have entered into territory where
| the paradox of tolerance is very much a reality.
| Tolerance is no longer a good option when confronting
| disingenuous comments. There is a significant segment of
| the American public that simply can no longer be reasoned
| with. As an example people who believe that Michelle
| Obama is a man can not be reasoned with.
| monoideism wrote:
| This is what has actually happened to the country's
| political values (click animate to view the data over the
| past several decades):
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/politic
| al-...
|
| Here is a more detailed discussion of the data.
| Tragically, Pew Research describes the situation as dire
| even back in 2014, which was before polarization really
| started to accelerate.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political
| -po...
|
| As you can see, both parties are moved toward the
| extremes, but in recent years the left has moved further
| to the left than the right toward the right.
|
| These moves to the extremes of the right and left are
| driven partly by social media, and partly by traditional
| media (since most traditional media these days originates
| in social media: original reportage is getting
| increasingly rare).
| syops wrote:
| Thank you for the link to the Pew research. Here's my
| response to the claims of the research and this response
| is solely based off of my observations and clearly my
| observations could have led me astray.
|
| In 1980 anyone claiming Jimmy Carter's wife was a man
| would have been labeled a kook by the vast majority of
| Republicans. Today we have a nontrivial amount of
| conservatives/libertarians who believe this claim about
| Michelle Obama. We have non-trivial amounts of
| Republicans who think Covid is a hoax. We have non-
| trivial amounts of Republicans who think vaccines are
| harmful. I'm not talking about Covid vaccines but another
| measles vaccines and polio vaccines. We have Republicans
| today call the affordable care act socialism when it was
| a proposal of the Heritage Foundation in the early 90s.
| We have Republicans today decry cap and trade when cap
| and trade was used by Reagan to combat acid rain. Today
| any Republican who says that the tax on labor should be
| less than the tax on capital would not be supported by
| the party and this was Reagan's position. The list goes
| on.
|
| The Republican Party has shifted into crazy land. They
| supported a President that mocked a former prisoner of
| war in their own party. The party of family values
| supported a serial sex abuser. They supported a man who
| wondered if nuclear weapons could stop a hurricane. They
| supported a man who thought Obama wasn't born in the
| United States.
|
| This is a party that resides in cuckoo land. There is no
| middle grounds with such spineless, inconsistent,
| hypocritical people. There is no way to reason with such
| people. The party is detached from reality.
| monocasa wrote:
| That says nothing about the actual policies, only how
| polarized they are against each other relatively. Since
| 1992, both parties have moved to the right, just the
| Republicans have moved moreso. That's how we ended up
| with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation's 1994
| HEART Act becoming Obamacare and radioactive to the
| Republicans two decades later.
|
| Go check out the concept of the overton window and see
| how a window can move to the right while both sides
| become more distinct within that window.
| monoideism wrote:
| Why don't you at least look into the study methodology
| before answering with such certainty? Since Pew Research
| uses the same questions, there's no shifting of the
| "Overton Window" (I'm well aware of the concept).
|
| So this poll measures both absolute and relative
| movement.
|
| I actually agree that there has been some shifting to the
| right of the Overton Window in _fiscal and economic
| issues only_ as the Democratic Party has abandoned its
| traditional working class constituency. But that has no
| bearing on this poll.
| monocasa wrote:
| I've read the entire study many times. Perhaps you can
| point out how explicitly how they adjust for shifts of
| how definitions like "consistently liberal" shift over
| time?
|
| Even the fact that "liberal" means left now is a function
| of how far to the right the democrats have gone, the
| Third Way Democrats having cemented their hold on the
| party.
|
| Additionally being "fiscally right wing" is an overall
| right wing position. Being lukewarm for left wing
| positions only on the condition that it doesn't come out
| of public funding is at best a center right wing
| viewpoint.
| monoideism wrote:
| > Perhaps you can point out how explicitly how they
| adjust for shifts of how definitions like "consistently
| liberal" shift over time?
|
| Once again, the questions are just policy questions. They
| don't mention anything about "liberal" or "conservative".
| They ask policy questions, which is exactly what you seem
| to have wanted initially. If you've read the study
| methodology, then you should be aware of exactly what the
| survey respondants are asked.
|
| > Additionally being "fiscally right wing" is an overall
| right wing position
|
| If you believe that, then the coming years are going to
| be a big surprise to you. The GOP of Reagan is on its way
| out. People like Hawley, who are happy to work with
| Bernie Sanders on certain fiscal policies, are on their
| way in. You may well still hate them because they are
| populists, but they have a different outlook on
| multinational corporations and the ultrawealthy than the
| old GOP.
| monocasa wrote:
| > Once again, the questions are just policy questions.
| They don't mention anything about "liberal" or
| "conservative". They ask policy questions, which is
| exactly what you seem to have wanted initially. If you
| read the study methodology, then you should be aware of
| exactly what the survey respondants are asked.
|
| Then you should be able to list one policy qustion they
| asked in 2014 and 1994 that doesn't use the word
| "liberal" or "conservative"?
|
| > If you believe that, then the coming years are going to
| be a big surprise to you. The GOP of Reagan is on its way
| out. People like Hawley, who are happy to work with
| Bernie Sanders on certain fiscal policies, are on their
| way in. You may well still hate them because they are
| populists, but they have a different outlook on
| multinational corporations and the ultrawealthy than the
| old GOP.
|
| I'm not sure why you started thinking I hate people for
| being populists, or that you think Hawley has even a
| modicum of support from the Republican party as whole
| (both voters and politicians).
| monoideism wrote:
| > Then you should be able to list one policy qustion they
| asked in 2014 and 1994 that doesn't use the word
| "liberal" or "conservative"?
|
| Read them all here:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-
| content/uploads/site...
|
| Those are the actual questions they ask. They "grade"
| them as liberal or conservative as shown in the columns
| (they mention that in the methodology section).
|
| Also, it's not just 1994 and 2014. They've done it at 3-5
| year intervals since 1994 up to 2017. Look at 2017 in
| particular, since that explains a lot about where we find
| ourselves today.
|
| Personally, I'm glad there are people like Hawley. GOP
| has been in the pocket of big business for far too long.
| And now the Democratic party is thoroughly embedded
| there, too. There is a strong grassroots contigent with
| more reasonable fiscal views (read: much less
| plutocratic) coming up in the local and state GOP
| (unfortunately, some of them are also conspiracists,
| which is very bad). They may lose in the end, but there
| will be a fight for the party between the old wing and
| the new wing.
|
| Edit: Those have been the questions all along. I've
| followed this poll for a decade. I'd pull up evidence of
| that, but I suspect you'd put some new requirement in for
| being convinced. I mean, you thought that the questions
| included "liberal" and "conservative" in them initially.
| And I'm really not interested in continuing a debate with
| someone who feels the need to ask me to "stay on task"
| with how he feels the discussion should proceeed (Hawley
| came up because you said right == fiscally conservative
| and he's a counterexample). So I'm out.
| monocasa wrote:
| Those are the questions they asked in 2017. I
| specifically asked for a question asked in both 1994 and
| 2014. My whole point is that the shape of the questions
| would change over time to reflect the shifts in the
| overton window.
|
| That citation does not reflect the requirements I set
| out.
|
| And I'm not sure where you're going with this Hawley
| stuff, but it seems pretty off topic from the line being
| discussed. I'd appreciate if we stayed on point.
| andrew_ wrote:
| "misinformation" is the rallying cry of those who wish to
| suppress speech, even if that speech is patently false.
| Enough with the Gestapo tactics.
|
| Instead, allow the incorrect statement to be contrasted
| with correct information.
| Klinky wrote:
| >Instead, allow the incorrect statement to be contrasted
| with correct information.
|
| That's exactly what the person replying did.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I'm sure you you would agree that there are limits. Or
| what would you say if someone here started to create
| throwaway accounts spreading persinal lies about you?
|
| Would you still argue that it's enough to just correct
| those lies? What about if the person isn't just a single
| person but a group.
|
| Also, I hope you do realise the irony of arguing by
| calling someone's opinion gestapo tactics.
| ccsnags wrote:
| I appreciate the clarification. I do find it interesting that
| population density is a factor for understanding these rates
| over time.
|
| Pardon my ignorance, as I am just trying to understand this
| (not my field of expertise). What is the relationship with
| violent crime rates and population density? That seems to be
| an important factor in this that isn't getting highlighted
| enough. Are we jamming too many people into a small area?
|
| I am asking because I am from a large city. I moved outside
| of the metro area years ago for work and found it to be
| refreshing, even though I first hated it and found myself
| stereotyping these people as ignorant bumpkins. After I got
| over my initial prejudice (not something I am proud to have
| felt), this place is more home than any place I've ever
| lived.
|
| It's an anecdote, but I have experienced a major benefit to
| living in a place where humans aren't stacked on top of each
| other like factory-farmed chickens. I've never been put in a
| position to have to fight for my life out here. Could
| population density be a factor for increased crime rates?
| Could we help people by spreading them out a little bit and
| giving them space to live their lives? Access to nature, etc.
| Is this a housing problem? I think that more people could
| move out of the cities if we broke down the stereotypes and
| made sure to enforce equal housing rights.
|
| This has kind of been a pet theory of mine but, again, I am
| no expert in this field and I only bring it up here to see
| what people with better info think about it.
| DenisM wrote:
| > can you not even be bothered to read the stat you tried to
| pick to prove your point
|
| Don't do this here. The HN rules specifically discourage it:
|
| _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that."_
| evgen wrote:
| I did not claim they did not read the article, I explicitly
| called out the fact that the source they reference in
| support of a numerical claim actually said something
| completely different. Please do not try to be a pseudo-mod,
| we already have people with that task and they seem to be
| doing a better job of it than you.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Reacting with this kind of attack and breaking the site
| guidelines this badly is not cool. It destroys the commons
| and discredits your argument. Supposing your argument to be
| correct, that is particularly bad, because now you're
| discrediting the very truth you're advocating for (https://hn
| .algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Not
| only does that not help, it causes harm. If you're in
| possession of more of the truth than others, you have a
| responsibility to handle it better. On this site, that means
| responding to inaccurate information with better information
| and explaining _why_ it 's better without attacks, swipes, or
| putdowns. Here's one edit that takes all of that out of your
| comment:
|
| _The rate according to data you provided was 20.3 /100k. The
| murder rate is proportional to population density across the
| country as a general rule, so the 'US average' is a
| misleading stat to try to use for comparison with a large
| city. If you compare Newark to its own past rates they are
| currently at a rate that was last seen in the 60s (this
| period of low homicide and crime rates was present _before_
| covid). While the general trend in large US cities is
| downward, Newark started from a higher rate and has dropped
| significantly faster than comparable cities._
|
| That would have been a fine post, much more effective in
| persuading readers, and without provoking the tedious off-
| topic flamewar that we got below. Would you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the intended spirit of the site? We'd appreciate it.
| tootie wrote:
| Do police actually affect the murder rate?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, they murder tons of people.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I don't know. But it really should. If it turns out that it
| doesn't, there's something very wrong with the entire
| situation.
| atonse wrote:
| Probably but for an extreme example, look at what's happened
| in Portland.
| tootie wrote:
| Probably not causation. Crime rates are up nationwide. NYC
| is seeing a spike too and we've got the most expensive
| police force in the world. More likely the pandemic is to
| blame.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Not happening in other countries though?
| tootie wrote:
| It has other countries that were always bad. Western
| europe and asia are fine as ever. And some do it with
| unarmed police. Which is why it seems overwhelmingly
| likely to be determined by social policy (ie healthcare
| and gun control) and not enforcement.
| ggreer wrote:
| In 2016, Portland had 20 murders. In 2020 they had 55
| murders (50 of which happened in June or later). This
| year they're on track to break 100. Crime has gone up in
| the nation, but not by a factor of five. Portland's
| problems are very much due to Portland's policies.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > More likely the pandemic is to blame.
|
| You mean the response to the pandemic, not the pandemic
| itself.
| JamisonM wrote:
| I don't know what the OP meant but I certainly would mean
| specifically "the pandemic is to blame".
|
| If there were no discernable response to the pandemic
| from any organized institution in society there is a
| pretty good chance the pandemic itself could be blamed
| for a /lot/ of terrible things.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _If there were no discernable response to the pandemic_
|
| I think this is the point GP's making.
| tootie wrote:
| Probably both. 550K people are gone and we are likely
| experiencing a peak in fear, grief and despair. But
| business and school closures are probably not helping.
| And given the prevalence of domestic violence, quarantine
| is probably prison for some percentage of people.
| syops wrote:
| Instead of comparing the murder rate to the entire U.S. it's
| more telling to compare Newark's current murder rate to it's
| historic rate [1]. In 2019 it was at a 6 decade minimum.
|
| https://abc7ny.com/newark-crime-rate-murders-city-of-new-jer...
| monoideism wrote:
| In a discussion about new police techniques, I agree that
| it's far more appropriate to compare Newark's current
| homocide rate with its historic rate.
| [deleted]
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| That link shows that things are improving every year in Newark.
| sanguy wrote:
| We need Robocop more than ever in this country. Or Judge's like
| Dredd.
|
| No judgement for color, gender, age, or appearance. Just policing
| based on the facts of the situation and the criminal record of
| those being policed.
| brigandish wrote:
| > We need Robocop more than ever in this country. Or Judge's
| like Dredd.
|
| Both were a satire on fascism, I'm not sure they're the best
| examples you could find.
| zo1 wrote:
| And yet here we are, in just the last few days:
|
| 1. Making organ "donation" default and you have to "opt out".
| 2. Talking about a 100% inheritance "tax" so parents can't
| leave their possessions to children.
|
| Talk about fascism, most people can't even see it coming.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Once you're dead, what's wrong with being used for parts?
| It's like the "would you kill 1 person to save 10 people"
| thought experiment except the 1 person is already dead.
|
| If you object, object. It's not like that's being taken
| away from you. There's a change in policy that will save
| hundreds of lives, at the cost of... no problem for anyone
| who cares enough to fill in a form.
| stadium wrote:
| > criminal record of those being policed
|
| What if there is bias in the criminal record? This ignores the
| idea of rehabilitation and assumes that one crime, one bad
| decision, makes someone a criminal for life.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The story describes positive change and this is good. However the
| detail is rather dark.
|
| "On Jan. 1, a Newark officer fatally shot Carl Dorsey III, of
| South Orange, during a confrontation in the South Ward, a case
| that's being investigated by Attorney General"
|
| The link there says that officers arrived on Jan 1 2021 at
| 12:03am.
|
| So 3 minutes after 2020 they shot someone dead.
|
| https://www.nj.com/essex/2021/01/nj-protesters-rally-demand-...
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Fair enough, so let's say it was 1 shooting. Based on that
| incident, it sounds like that's still 1 too many, but is it an
| improvement over previous years?
|
| I can't find any stats on that, here's the department's site
| for this year though:
| https://npd.newarkpublicsafety.org/statistics/transparency
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